DECLINING YEARS OF BOULTON AND WATT--BEREAVEMENTS--GREGORY WATT--DEATH OF
BOULTON.
On the dissolution of the original partnership between Boulton and Watt at
the expiry of the patent in 1800, Boulton was seventy-two years old, and
Watt sixty-four. The great work of their life had been done, and the time
was approaching when they must needs resign into other hands the great
branches of industry which they had created. Watt, though the younger of
the two, was the first to withdraw from an active share in the concerns
of Soho. He could scarcely be said to taste the happiness of life until
he had cast business altogether behind him.
It was far different with Boulton, to whom active occupation had become
a second nature. For several years, indeed, his constitution had been
showing signs of giving way, and nature was repeating her warnings,
at shorter recurring intervals, that it was time to retire. But in the
case of men such as Boulton, with whom business has become a habit and
necessity, as well as a pleasure and recreation, to retire is often
to die. He himself was accustomed to say that he must either “rub or
rust;” and as the latter was contrary to his nature, he rubbed on to the
end, continuing to take an active interest in the working of the great
manufactory which it had been the ambition of his life to build up.
The department of business that most interested him in his later years was
the coinage. His chief pleasure consisted in seeing his new and beautiful
pieces following each other in quick succession from the Soho Mint. Nor
did he cease occupying himself with new inventions; for we find him as
late as 1797 taking out a patent for raising water by impulse, somewhat
after the manner of Montgolier’s Hydraulic Ram, to which he added many
ingenious improvements. His house at Soho continued to be the resort of
distinguished visitors; and his splendid hospitality never failed. But,
as years advanced and his infirmities increased, we find him occasionally
expressing a desire for quiet. He would then retire to Cheltenham for the
benefit of the waters, requesting his young partners to keep him advised
from time to time of the proceedings at Soho. Thus we find young Watt
writing him during his absence on one occasion,--“Everything is going on
well here: the Mint works six presses at present with ease; but, unless
you have secured a supply of copper, I fear they will soon work out the
present stock.” In the same letter his young friend advised him that he
had duly despatched the chemical apparatus; for even at Cheltenham Boulton
could not be idle, but undertook a careful analysis of all the waters
of the place, the results of which he entered, in minute detail, in his
memorandum-books.
An alarming incident occurred at Soho towards the end of 1800, which is
worthy of passing notice, as illustrative of Boultons vigour and courage
even at this advanced period of his life. A large gang of Birmingham
housebreakers, knowing the treasures accumulated in the silver-plate
house, determined to break into it and carry off the silver, as well as
the large sum of money usually accumulated in the counting-house for the
purpose of paying the wages of the workmen, upwards of 600 in number, on
Christmas Eve. They had provided false keys for most of the doors, and
bribed the watchman, who communicated the plot to Boulton, to admit them
within the gates. He took his steps accordingly, arming a number of men,
and stationing them in different parts of the building.
The robbers made the attempt on three several occasions. On the first
night they tried their keys on the counting-house door, but failed to
open it, on which they shut their dark lantern and retired. Boulton sent
an account of the proceedings each night to his daughter in London. On
the first attempt being made, he wrote,--“The best news I can send you is
that we are all alive; but I have lost my voice and found a troublesome
cough by the agreeable employment of thief-watching.” Two nights after,
the burglars came again, with altered keys, but still they could not open
the counting-house door. The third night they determined to waive art, and
break in by force. They were allowed to break in and seize their booty,
and were making off with 150 guineas and a load of silver, when Boulton
gave the word to seize them. A quantity of tow soaked with turpentine was
instantly set fire to, numerous lights were turned on, and the robbers
found themselves surrounded on all sides by armed men. Four of them were
taken after a desperate struggle; but the fifth, though severely wounded,
contrived to escape over the tops of the houses in Brook-row.
Writing to his friend Dumergue, in London, of the exploit, Boulton
said,--“You know I seldom do things by halves; so I have sent the four
desperate wolves to Stafford Gaol, and I believe the fifth is much
wounded. If I had made my attack with a less powerful army than I did,
we should probably have had a greater list of killed and wounded.”[384]
It was in allusion to this exploit that Sir Walter Scott said of Boulton
to Allan Cunningham, “I like Boulton; he is a brave man, and who can
dislike the brave?”[385] The incident, when communicated to Scott
during one of his visits to Soho, is said to have suggested the scene
in ‘Guy Mannering,’ in which the attack is made on Dirk Hatterick in the
smuggler’s cave.
[384] Boulton to Dumergue, 25th December, 1800.
[385] Lockhart’s ‘Life of Scott.’ 8vo. ed. p. 457. One of Scott’s
visits to Soho was made in company with his wife in the spring
of 1803. Boulton was so pleased with the visit, that he urged
Scott, or at least his wife, to repeat it, which produced the
following letter, dated London, 13th May, 1803:--
“My dear Sir,--He was a wise man who said ‘Trust not thy
wife with a man of fair tongue.’ Now as I have very little
wisdom of my own, I am content to gather all I can get
at second hand, and therefore, upon the faith of the sage
whom I have quoted, I should be guilty of great imprudence
were I to permit Charlotte to wait upon you on her return,
or even to answer your kind letter to Mr. Dumergue. That
task I therefore take upon myself, and you must receive my
thanks along with hers, for your very kind and flattering
invitation to Soho. But independent of my just suspicion
of a beau who writes such flattering love-letters to my
wife, our time here (owing to the sitting of our Courts
of Justice, which I must necessarily attend), lays us
under an indispensable necessity of returning to Scotland
as speedily as possible, and by the nearest road. We
can therefore only express our joint and most sincere
regret that we cannot upon this occasion have the honour
and satisfaction of visiting Soho and its hospitable
inhabitants. Mrs. Nicolson, Mr. and Miss Dumergue join
Charlotte and me in the most sincere good wishes to Miss
Boulton, to you, and to all your friends; and I suspect
so foolish a letter will make you believe you have escaped
a very idle visitor in,
“Dear Sir,
“Your very faithful servant,
“WALTER SCOTT.”
With Watt, occupation in business was not the necessity that it was to
Boulton; and he was only too glad to get rid of it and engage in those
quiet pursuits in which he found most pleasure. In the year 1790, he
removed from the house he had so long occupied on Harper’s Hill, to a
new and comfortable house which he had built for himself at Heathfield
in the parish of Handsworth, where he continued to live until the close
of his life. The land surrounding the place was, until then, common, and
he continued to purchase the lots as they were offered for sale, until,
by the year 1794, he had enclosed about forty acres. He took pleasure in
laying out the grounds, planting many of the trees with his own hands;
and in course of time, as the trees reached maturity, the formerly barren
heath became converted into a retreat of great rural beauty.
Annexed to the house, in the back yard, he built a forge, and upstairs,
in his “Garret,” he fitted up a workshop, in which he continued to pursue
his mechanical studies and experiments for many years. While Watt was
settling himself for the remainder of his life in the house at Heathfield,
Boulton was erecting his large new Mint at Soho, which was completed and
ready for use in 1791.
When the lawsuits, which had given Watt so much anxiety, were
satisfactorily disposed of, an immense load was removed from his mind;
and he indulged in the anticipation of at last enjoying the fruits of
his labour in peace. Being of frugal habits, he had already begun to save
money, and indeed accumulated as much as he desired. But when the heavy
arrears of Cornish dues were collected, about the period of expiry of the
patent, a considerable sum of money necessarily fell to Watt’s share; and
then he began to occupy himself in the pleasant recreation of looking out
for an investment of it in land. He was, however, hard to please, and made
many journeys before he succeeded in buying his estate.
“I have yet met with nothing to my mind,” he wrote from Somerton;
“Lord Oxford has some very considerable estates to sell near
Abergavenny, but the roads to them are execrable, and it seemed
that it would be a sort of banishment to live at them, though the
parts I saw are in themselves pleasant. I am to-day informed of
one with a house near Dorchester, which I have sent to inquire
about, though I have my doubts that it will prove like the rest.
I propose, if nothing hinders, to be at Taunton to-morrow night,
and shall then visit the Wedgwoods, who at present live at Upcot,
near that place. Afterwards, I propose making a tour through the
eastern part of Devonshire, and returning by Dorsetshire to Bath;
but my resolves may be altered by the attractions of various
magnets, so that I cannot tell you where to write to me till I
get some fixed residence.”[386]
A fortnight later he was at Exmouth, but still undecided.
“In respect to estates,” he writes,--“I have seen nothing
that pleases me. Most of them, as you know by experience, are
surrounded with bad roads, beggarly villages, or some other
nuisance, and one need not purchase plagues. On the whole,
something nearer home seems more suitable to me than anything in
these western counties, which, though they have more luxuriant
vegetation, and perhaps a milder climate, are not exempt from
cold, as I experience here colder weather than we had last autumn
in Scotland. But the greatest drawback is the absence of such
society as one is used to, and their abominably hilly roads, as
they never flinch, but go straight up any hill which comes in
their way, and Nature has bestowed plenty upon them.”[387]
Eventually Watt made several purchases of land at Doldowlod, on the hanks
of the Wye, between Rhayader and Newbridge, in Radnorshire. There was a
pleasant farmhouse on the property, in which he occasionally spent some
pleasant months in summer time amidst beautiful scenery; but he had by
this time grown too old to root himself kindly in a new place; and his
affections speedily drew him back again to the neighbourhood of Soho, and
to his comfortable home at Heathfield.
[386] Watt to M. Robinson Boulton, 9th September, 1799.
[387] Watt to M. Robinson Boulton, 26th September, 1799.
During the short peace of Amiens in the following year, he made the
longest journey in his life. Accompanied by Mrs. Watt, he travelled
through Belgium, up the banks of the Rhine to Frankfort, and home by
Strasburg and Paris. While absent, Boulton wrote him many pleasant
letters, telling him of what was going on at Soho. The brave old man was
still at the helm there, and wrote in as enthusiastic terms as ever of the
coins and medals he was striking at his Mint. Though strong in mind, he
was, however, growing feebler in body, and suffered much from attacks of
his old disease. “It is necessary for me,” he wrote, “to pass a great part
of my time in or upon the bed; nevertheless, I go down to the manufactory
or the Mint once or twice a day, without injuring myself as heretofore,
but not without some fatigue. However, as I am now taking bark twice a
day, I find a daily increase of strength, and flatter myself with the
pleasure of taking a journey to Paris in April or May next.”[388]
[388] Boulton to Watt, 10th October, 1802. One of Boulton’s
objects in making his contemplated journey to Paris, was to
undertake the erection of coining machinery for the French
Government, who were about to recoin the whole of their gold,
silver, and copper money. With their imperfect machinery,
he calculated that it would take them nearly twenty years
to accomplish this; whereas with his new machinery he could
undertake to turn out a thousand million of pieces in three
years. He communicated to Watt, that he had been making
experiments as to the maximum speed of his coining machines,
worked by the steam-engine, and found that he could regularly
strike fifty-three of his copper pieces or fifty-six English
crown-pieces per minute, while he could with one press in
collars also regularly strike India copper pieces of half the
diameter at the rate of 106 to 112 per minute, or from 6360 to
6720 pieces per hour; but when pieces of half an inch diameter
were wanted he had recourse to his new small press, with which
he could strike from 150 to 200 pieces per minute! “My presses,”
said he, “are far more exact and more durable, and my means of
working them are now infinitely beyond anything they (the French
coiners) have ever thought of, and my mint is now in far better
order than ever.”
On Watt’s arrival in London, a letter of hearty welcome from Boulton met
him; but it conveyed, at the same time, the sad intelligence of the death
of Mrs. Keir, a lady beloved by all who knew her, and a frequent inmate at
Soho and Heathfield. One by one the members of the circle were departing,
leaving wide gaps, which new friends could never fill up. The pleasant
associations which are the charm of old friendships, were becoming mingled
with sadness and regret. The grave was closing over one after another of
the Soho group; and the survivors were beginning to live for the most part
upon the memories of the past. But it is one of the penalties of old age
to suffer a continuous succession of such bereavements; and that state
would be intolerable but for the comparative deadening of the feelings
which mercifully accompanies the advance of years. “We cannot help feeling
with deep regret,” wrote Watt, “the circle of our old friends gradually
diminishing, while our ability to increase it by new ones is equally
diminished; but perhaps it is a wise dispensation of Providence so to
diminish our enjoyments in this world that when our turn comes we may
leave it without regret.”[389]
[389] Watt to Boulton, 23rd November, 1802.
One of the deaths most lamented by Watt was that of Dr. Black of
Edinburgh, which occurred in 1799. Black had watched to the last with
tender interest the advancing reputation and prosperity of his early
protégé. They had kept up a continuous and confidential correspondence
on subjects of mutual interest for a period of about thirty years.
Watt, though reserved to others, never feared unbosoming himself to his
old friend, telling him of the new schemes he had on foot, and freely
imparting to him his hopes and fears, his failures and successes. When
Watt visited Scotland he rarely failed to take Edinburgh on his way, for
the purpose of spending a few days with Black and Robison. The latter
went express to London, for the purpose of giving evidence in the suit
of Watt against the Hornblowers, and his testimony proved of essential
service. “Our friend Robison,” Watt wrote to Black, “exerted himself
much; and, considering his situation, did wonders.” When Robison returned
to Edinburgh, his Natural Philosophy class received him with three
cheers. He proceeded to give them a short account of the trial, which he
characterised as “not more the cause of Watt _versus_ Hornblower, than of
science against ignorance.” “When I had finished,” said he, “I got another
plaudit, that Mrs. Siddons would have relished.”[390]
[390] Robison to Watt, 3rd February, 1797.
No one was more gratified at the issue of the trial than Dr. Black,
who, when Robison told him of it, was moved even to tears. “It’s very
foolish,” he said, “but I can’t help it when I hear of anything good to
Jamie Watt.” The Doctor had long been in declining health, but was still
able to work. He was busy writing another large volume, and had engaged
the engraver to come to him for orders on the day after that on which he
died. His departure was singularly peaceful. His servant had delivered to
him a basin of milk, which was to serve for his dinner, and retired from
the room. In less than a minute he returned, and found his master sitting
where he had left him, but dead, with the basin of milk unspilled in his
hand. Without a struggle, the spirit had fled. As the servant expressed
it, “his poor master had given over living.” He had twice before said to
his doctor that “he had caught himself forgetting to breathe.” On hearing
of the good old man’s death, Watt wrote to Robison,--“I may say that
to him I owe, in a great measure, what I am; he taught me to reason and
experiment in natural philosophy, and was a true friend and philosopher,
whose loss will always be lamented while I live. We may all pray that our
latter end may be like his; he has truly gone to sleep in the arms of his
Creator, and been spared all the regrets attendant on a more lingering
exit. I could dwell longer on this subject; but regrets are unavailing,
and only tend to enfeeble our own minds, and make them less able to bear
the ills we cannot avoid. Let us cherish the friends we have left, and do
as much good as we can in our day!”[391]
Lord Cockburn, in his ‘Memorials,’ gives the following graphic portrait of
the father of modern chemistry:--“Dr. Black was a striking and beautiful
person; tall, very thin, and cadaverously pale; his hair carefully
powdered, though there was little of it except what was collected into a
long thin queue; his eyes dark, clear, and large, like deep pools of pure
water. He wore black speckless clothes, silk stockings, silver buckles,
and either a slim green silk umbrella, or a genteel brown cane. His
general frame and air was feeble and slender. The wildest boy respected
Black. No lad could be irreverent towards a man so pale, so gentle, so
elegant, and so illustrious. So he glided, like a spirit, through our
rather mischievous sportiveness, unharmed.”[392]
[391] Cited in Muirhead’s ‘Origin and Progress of the Mechanical
Inventions of James Watt,’ ii. 264
[392] Lord Cockburn’s ‘Memorials,’ 51.
Of the famous Lunar Society, Boulton and Watt now remained almost the
only surviving members. Day was killed by a fall from his horse in
1789. Josiah Wedgwood closed his noble career at Etruria in 1795, in the
sixty-fifth year of his age. Dr. Withering, distinguished alike in botany
and medicine, died in 1799, of a lingering consumption. Dr. Darwin was
seized by his last attack of angina pectoris in 1802, and, being unable
to bleed himself, as he had done before, he called upon his daughter to
apply the lancet to his arm; but, before she could do so, he fell back
in his chair and expired. Dr. Priestley, driven forth into exile,[393]
closed his long and illustrious career at Northumberland in Pennsylvania
in 1803. The Lunar Society was thus all but extinguished by death; the
vacant seats remained unfilled; and the meetings were no longer held.
[393] It is a remarkable fact that Dr. Priestley was regarded with
as much suspicion in America as he had been in England. The
American government looked upon him as a spy in the interest
of France; and he had great difficulty in forming a Unitarian
congregation. The horror of the French Revolution, which had
extended to America, was the cause of the hostile feeling
displayed towards him. “The change that has taken place,” he
said, in a letter dated 6th September, 1798, “is indeed hardly
credible, as I have done nothing to provoke resentment; but,
being a citizen of France, and a friend to the Revolution,
is sufficient. I asked one of the more moderate of the party
whether he thought, if Dr. Price, the great friend of their own
Revolution, were alive, he would now be allowed to come into
this country. He said, he believed he would not!”--In 1801 Dr.
Priestley, by deed of trust, appointed Matthew Boulton, Samuel
Galton, and Wm. Vaughan, Esqrs., trustees for Mrs. Finch (his
daughter) and her children, in respect of 1200_l._ invested for
their benefit in public securities.
But the bereavements which Watt naturally felt the most, were the deaths
of his own children. He had two by his second wife, a son and a daughter,
both full of promise, who had nearly grown up to adult age, when they
died. Jessie was of a fragile constitution from her childhood, but her
health seemed to become re-established as she grew in years. But before
she had entered womanhood, the symptoms of an old pulmonary affection made
their appearance, and she was carried off by consumption. Mr. Watt was
much distressed by the event, confessing that he felt as if one of the
strongest ties that bound him to life was broken, and that the acquisition
of riches availed him nothing when unable to give them to those he loved.
In a letter to a friend, he thus touchingly alluded to one of the most
sorrowful associations connected with the deaths of children:--“Mrs. Watt
continues to be much affected whenever anything recalls to her mind the
amiable child we have parted with; and these remembrances occur but too
frequently,--her little works of ingenuity, her books and other objects
of study, serve as mementoes of her who was always to the best of her
power usefully employed even to the last day of her life. With me, whom
age has rendered incapable of the _passion_ of grief, the feeling is a
deep regret; and, did nature permit, my tears would flow as fast as her
mother’s.”
To divert and relieve his mind, as was his wont, he betook himself to
fresh studies and new inquiries. It is not improbable that the disease of
which his daughter had died, as well as his own occasional sufferings from
asthma, gave a direction to his thoughts, which turned on the inhalation
of gas as a remedial agent in pulmonary and other diseases. Dr. Beddoes
of Bristol had started the idea, which Watt now took up and prosecuted
with his usual zeal. He contrived an apparatus for extracting, washing,
and collecting gases, as well as for administering them by inhalation.
He professed that he had taken up the subject not because he understood
it, but because nobody else did, and that he could not withhold anything
which might be of use in prompting others to do better. The result of his
investigations was published at Bristol under the title of ‘Considerations
on the Medicinal use of Fictitious Airs,’ the first part of which was
written by Dr. Beddoes, and the second part by Watt.
But a still heavier blow than the loss of his only daughter, was the death
of his son Gregory a few years later. He was a young man of the highest
promise, and resembled Watt himself in many respects--in mind, character,
and temperament. Those who knew him while a student at Glasgow College,
spoke of him long after in terms of the most glowing enthusiasm. Among
his fellow-students were Francis, afterwards Lord Jeffrey, and the poet
Campbell. Both were captivated not less by the brilliancy of his talents
than by the charming graces of his person. Campbell spoke of him as “a
splendid stripling--literally the most beautiful youth I ever saw. When
he was only twenty-two, an eminent English artist--Howard, I think--made
his head the model of a picture of Adam.” Campbell, Thomson, and Gregory
Watt, were class-fellows in Greek, and avowed rivals; but the rivalry
only served to cement their friendship. In the session of 1793–4, after
a brilliant competition which excited unusual interest, the prize was
awarded to Thomson; but, with the exception of the victor himself, Gregory
was the most delighted student in the class. “He was,” says the biographer
of Campbell, “a generous, liberal, and open-hearted youth; so attached
to his friend, and so sensible of his merit, that the honours conferred
on Thomson obliterated all recollections of personal failure.”[394]
Francis Jeffrey was present at the commemoration of the first of May,
two years later, and was especially struck with the eloquence of young
Watt, “who obtained by far the greatest number of prizes, and degraded the
prize-readers most inhumanly by reading a short composition of his own,
a translation of the Chorus of the Medea, with so much energy and grace,
that the verses seemed to me better perhaps than they were in reality. He
is a young man of very eminent capacity, and seems to have all the genius
of his father, with a great deal of animation and ardour which is all his
own.”[395]
[394] Beattie’s ‘Life of Campbell,’ i. 112.
[395] Letter to M. R. Morehead, 7th May, 1796.
Campbell thought him born to be a great orator, and anticipated for
him the greatest success in Parliament or at the Bar. His father had,
however, already destined him to follow his own business. Indeed, Gregory
was introduced a partner into the Soho concern about the same time as
Mr. Boulton, jun., and his elder brother James. But he never gave much
attention to the business. Scarcely had he left college, before symptoms
of pulmonary affection showed themselves; and, a physician having been
consulted, Mr. Watt was recommended to send his son to reside in the
south of England. He accordingly went to Penzance for the benefit of
its mild climate, and, by a curious coincidence, he took up his abode as
boarder and lodger in the house of Humphry Davy’s mother. The afterwards
brilliant chemist was then a boy some years younger than Gregory. He had
already made experiments in chemistry, with sundry phials and kitchen
utensils, assisted by an old glyster apparatus presented to him by
the surgeon of a French vessel wrecked on the coast. Although Gregory
possessed great warmth of heart, there was a degree of coldness in his
manner to strangers, which repelled any approach to familiarity. When
his landlady’s son, therefore, began talking to him of metaphysics and
poetry, he was rather disposed to turn a deaf ear; but when Davy touched
upon the subject of chemistry, and made the rather daring boast for a boy,
that he would undertake to demolish the French theory in half an hour,
Gregory’s curiosity was roused. The barrier of ice between them was at
once removed; and from thenceforward they became attached friends.[396]
Young Davy was encouraged to prosecute his experiments, which the
other watched with daily increasing interest; and in the course of the
following year, Gregory communicated to Dr. Beddoes, of Bristol, then
engaged in establishing his Pneumatic Institution, an account of Davy’s
experiments on light and heat, the result of which was his appointment as
superintendent of the experiments at the Institution, and the subsequent
direction of his studies and investigations.
[396] Paris’s ‘Life of Davy,’ i. 48–9.
Gregory’s health having been partially re-established by his residence at
Penzance, he shortly after returned to his father’s house at Birmingham,
whither Davy frequently went, and kept up the flame of his ambition by
intercourse with congenial minds. Gregory heartily co-operated with his
father in his investigations on air, besides inquiring and experimenting
on original subjects of his own selection. Among these may be mentioned
his inquiries into the gradual refrigeration of basalt, his paper on
which, read before the Royal Society, would alone entitle him to a
distinguished rank among experimentalists.[397]
[397] ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ xcix. 279.
By the kindness of his elder brother James, Gregory Watt was relieved of
his share of the work at Soho, and was thereby enabled to spend much of
his time in travelling about for the benefit of his health. Early in 1801,
we find him making excursions in the western counties in company with Mr.
Murdock, jun.; and looking forward with still greater anticipations of
pleasure to the tour which he subsequently made through France, Germany,
and Austria. We find him afterwards writing his father from Freiburg,
to the effect that he was gradually growing stronger, and was free from
pulmonary affection. From Leipzig he sent an equally favourable account of
himself, and gave his father every hope that on his return he would find
him strong and sound.
These anticipations, however, proved delusive, for the canker was already
gnawing at poor Gregory’s vitals. Returned home, he busied himself with
his books, his experiments, and his speculations; assisting his father in
recording observations on the effects of nitrous oxide and other gases.
But it was shortly found necessary to send him again to the south of
England for the benefit of a milder climate. In the beginning of 1804,
his father and mother went with him to Clifton, where he had an attack of
intermittent fever, which left him very weak. From thence they removed to
Bath, and remained there for about a month, the invalid being carefully
attended by Dr. Beddoes. During their stay at Bath, Gregory’s brother paid
him a visit, and was struck by his altered appearance. The fever had left
him, but his cough and difficulty of breathing were very distressing to
witness. As usual in such complaints, his mind was altogether unaffected.
“Indeed,” wrote his brother, “he is as bright, clear, and vigorous, upon
every subject as I ever knew him to be. His voice, too, is firm and good,
and when he enters into conversation I should lose the recollection of
his complaint if his appearance did not so forcibly remind me of it. It
is fortunate that he does not suffer much bodily pain, or, so far as I can
discover, any mental anxiety as to the issue of his complaint.”[398]
[398] J. Watt, jun., to M. R. Boulton, 8th June, 1804.
When Gregory was sufficiently recovered from the debilitating effects of
his fever, he was moved to Sidmouth, where he appeared to improve; but
he himself believed the sea air to be injurious to him, and insisted on
being again removed inland. During all this time his father’s anxiety may
be imagined, though he bore up with as much equanimity as was practicable
under circumstances so distressing. “Ever since we left Bath,” he wrote
to Mr. Boulton at Soho, “ours has been a state of anxiety very distressing
to us, and the communication of which would not have been pleasing to our
friends. To add to this, I have myself been exceedingly unwell, though I
am now much better. Gregory suffered very much from the journey, which
was augmented by his own impatience; and though he seemed to recover a
little from his fatigue during the first week, his breath became daily
worse, until we were obliged to remove him, on Thursday last, to the
neighbourhood of Exeter, where he now is with his aunt.”[399] The invalid
became rapidly worse, and survived his removal only a few days. “This
day,” wrote the sorrowing father to Boulton, “the remains of poor Gregory
were deposited in a decent, though private manner, in the north aisle
of the cathedral here, near the transept.... I mean to erect a tablet to
his memory on the adjoining wall; but his virtues and merits will be best
recorded in the breasts of his friends.... As soon as we can settle our
accounts, we shall all return homewards, with heavy hearts.”[400]
[399] Watt to Boulton, Sidmouth, 14th October, 1804.
[400] Watt to Boulton, Exeter, 22nd October, 1804.
Davy was deeply affected by Gregory Watt’s death; and in the freshness of
his grief he thus unbosomed himself to his friend Clayfield:--
“Poor Watt! He ought not to have died. I could not persuade myself
that he would die; and until the very moment when I was assured of
his fate, I would not believe he was in any danger. His letters
to me, only three or four months ago, were full of spirit, and
spoke not of any infirmity of body, but of an increased strength
of mind. Why is this in the order of Nature,--that there is such
a difference in the duration and destruction of his works? If
the mere stone decays it is to produce a soil which is capable of
nourishing the moss and the lichen; when the moss and the lichen
die and decompose, they produce a mould which becomes the bed
of life to grass, and to a more exalted species of vegetables.
Vegetables are the food of animals,--the less perfect animals of
the more perfect; but in man, the faculties and intellect are
perfected,--he rises, exists for a little while in disease and
misery, and then would seem to disappear, without an end, and
without producing any effect.
“We are deceived, my dear Clayfield, if we suppose that the human
being who has formed himself for action, but who has been unable
to act, is lost in the mass of being; there is some arrangement of
things which we can never comprehend, but in which his faculties
will be applied.... We know very little; but, in my opinion,
we know enough to hope for the immortality, the individual
immortality of the better part of man. I have been led into all
this speculation, which you may well think wild, in reflecting
upon the fate of Gregory! My feeling has given wings to my mind.
He was a noble fellow, and would have been a great man. Oh! there
was no reason for his dying--he ought not to have died.”[401]
[401] Paris’s ‘Life of Davy,’ i. 198–200.
More deaths! A few years later, and Watt lost his oldest friend, Professor
Robison of Edinburgh, his companion and fellow-worker at Glasgow College
nearly fifty years before. Since then, their friendship had remained
unchanged, though their respective pursuits kept them apart. Robison
continued busily and usefully occupied to the last. He had finished
the editing of his friend Black’s lectures, and was occupied in writing
his own ‘Elements of Mechanical Philosophy,’ when death came and kindly
released him from a lingering disorder which had long oppressed his body,
though it did not enervate his mind. A few years before his death he
wrote Watt, informing him that he had got an addition to his family in
a fine little boy, a grandchild, healthy and cheerful, who promised to
be a source of much amusement to him. “I find this a great acquisition,”
said he, “notwithstanding a serious thought sometimes stealing into my
mind. I am infinitely delighted with observing the growth of its little
soul, and particularly with the numberless instincts, which formerly
passed unheeded. I thank the French theorists for more forcibly directing
my attention to the finger of God, which I discover in every awkward
movement and every wayward whim. They are all guardians of his life, and
growth, and powers. I regret that I have not time to make infancy, and
the development of its powers, my sole study.”[402] In 1805 he was taken
from his little playfellow, and from the pursuit of his many ingenious
speculations.[403] Watt said of him, “he was a man of the clearest head
and the most science of anybody I have ever known, and his friendship
to me ended only with his life, after having continued for nearly
half a century.... His religion and piety, which made him patiently
submit without even a fretful or repining word in nineteen years of
unremitting pain,--his humility, in his modest opinion of himself,--his
kindness, in labouring with such industry for his family during all this
affliction,--his moderation for himself, while indulging an unbounded
generosity to all about him,--joined to his talents, form a character so
uncommon and so noble, as can with difficulty be conceived by those who
have not, like me, had the contemplation of it.”
[402] Cited in Muirhead’s ‘Mechanical Inventions of James
Watt,--Correspondence,’ ii. 269.
[403] One of these, thrown out in a letter to Watt, may be
mentioned--a speculation since revived by the late Dr. S. Brown
of Edinburgh,--the transmutation of bodies. “These are wonderful
steps,” said he, “which are every day making in chemical
analysis. The analysis of the alkalis and alkaline earths by
Guyton, by Henry, and others, will presently lead, I think,
to the doctrine of _a reciprocal convertibility of all things
into all_. It brings to mind a minister lecturing on the first
chapter of one of the Gospels, when, after reading, ‘Adam begat
Abel, and Abel begat,’ &c.,--to save himself the trouble of so
many cramp names, he said, ‘and so they all begat one another
to the 15th verse.’ I expect to see alchemy revive, and be as
universally studied as ever.”
Little more remains to be recorded of the business life of Boulton and
Watt. The former, notwithstanding his declining health and the frequent
return of his malady, continued to take an active interest in the Soho
coinage. Watt often expostulated with him, but in vain, urging that it
was time for him to retire wholly from the anxieties of business. On
Boulton bringing out his Bank of England silver dollar, with which he was
himself greatly pleased, he sent some specimens to Watt, then staying at
Clifton, for his inspection. Watt replied,--“Your dollar is universally
admired by all to whom we have shown it, though your friends fear much
that your necessary attention to the operation of the coinage may injure
your health.”[404] And again he wrote from Sidmouth,--“We are all glad to
hear of your amendment, which we hope will be progressive, and possibly it
might be better if you could summon up resolution enough to rid yourself
of some of those plagues you complain of; but while you suffer yourself
to be intruded upon in the manner you do, you can never enjoy that quiet
which is now so necessary to your health and comfort.”[405] Mrs. Watt
joined her entreaties to those of her husband, expressing the wish that,
for Mr. Boulton’s sake, it might rain every day, to prevent his fatiguing
himself by walking to and from the works, and there occupying himself with
the turmoils of business. Why should he not do as Mr. Watt had done, and
give up Soho altogether, leaving business and its anxieties to younger and
stronger men? But business, as we have already explained, was Boulton’s
habit, and pleasure, and necessity. Moreover, occupation of some sort
served to divert his attention from the ever-present pain within him; and,
so long as his limbs were able to support him, he tottered down the hill
to see what was going forward at Soho.
[404] Watt to Boulton, 13th May, 1804.
[405] Watt to Boulton, 14th October, 1804.
As for Watt, we find that he had at last learnt the art of taking things
easy, and that he was trying to make life as agreeable as possible in his
old age. Thus at Cheltenham, from which place Mrs. Watt addressed Boulton
in the letter of advice above referred to, we find the aged pair making
pleasant excursions in the neighbourhood during the day, and reading
novels and going to the theatre occasionally in the evening. “As it is the
fashion,” wrote Mrs. Watt,--“and wishing to be very fashionable people,
we subscribe to the library. Our first book was Mrs. Opie’s ‘Mother and
Daughter,’ a tale so mournful as to make both Mr. Watt and myself cry
like schoolboys that had been whipped; ... and to dispel the gloom that
poor Adeline hung over us, we went to the theatre last night to see the
‘Honeymoon,’ and were highly pleased.”
Towards the end of 1807 Boulton had a serious attack of his old disease,
which fairly confined him to his bed; and his friends feared lest it
should prove his last illness. He was verging upon his eightieth year,
and his constitution, though originally strong, was gradually succumbing
to confinement and pain. He nevertheless rallied once more, and was again
able to make occasional visits to the works as before. He had promised to
send a box of medals to the Queen, and went down to the Mint to see them
packed. The box duly reached Windsor Castle, and De Luc acknowledged its
reception:--
“As no words of mine,” he said, “could have conveyed your
sentiments to Her Majesty so well as those addressed to me in
your name, I contented myself with putting the letter into her
hands. Her Majesty expressed her sensibility for the sufferings
you had undergone during the period of your silence, and at your
plentiful gift, for which she has charged me to thank you; and
as, at the same time that you have placed the whole at her own
disposal, you have mentioned the Princesses, Her Majesty will make
them partakers in the present.”
De Luc concluded by urging Mr. Boulton to abstain from further work and
anxiety, and reminded him that after a life of such activity as his had
been, both body and mind required complete rest.
“Life,” said he, “in this world is a state of trial, and as
long as God gives us strength we are not to shun even painful
employments which are duties. But in the decline of life, when
the strength fails, we ought to drop all thought of objects to
which we are no longer equal, in order to preserve the serenity
and liberty of mind with which we are to consider our exit from
this world to a better. May God prolong your life without pain
for the good you do constantly, is the sincere wish of your very
affectionate friends (father and daughter),
“DE LUC.”[406]
[406] De Luc to Boulton, Windsor Castle, 25th January, 1807.
It had been arranged that George III., the Queen, and the
Princesses, should pay a visit to Soho in 1805, though the King
had by that time become quite blind. When told of Boulton’s
illness, and that he was confined to bed, his Majesty replied,
“Then I will visit Mr. Boulton in his sick-chamber” (MS. Memoir
by Mr. Keir). The royal visit was eventually put off, the
Council advising that the King should go direct to Weymouth and
nowhere else.
Boulton’s life was, indeed, drawing to a close. He had for many years been
suffering from an agonising and incurable disease--stone in the kidneys
and bladder--and waited for death as for a friend. The strong man was
laid low; and the night had at length come when he could work no more.
The last letter which he wrote was to his daughter, in March, 1809; but
the characters are so flickering and indistinct as to be scarcely legible.
“If you wish to see me living,” he wrote, “pray come soon, for I am very
ill.” Nevertheless, he suffered on for several months longer. At last he
was released from his pain, and peacefully expired on the 17th of August,
1809, at the age of eighty-one. Though he fell like a shock of corn in
full season, his death was lamented by a wide circle of relatives and
friends. A man of strong affections, with an almost insatiable appetite
for love and sympathy, he inspired others with like feelings towards
himself; and when he died, they felt as if a brother had gone. He was
alike admired and beloved by his workmen; and when he was carried to his
last resting-place in Handsworth Church, six hundred of them followed the
hearse, and there was scarcely a dry eye among them.[407]
[407] The following is the inscription on the mural monument
erected to his memory in the side aisle of Handsworth Church,
in the composition of which James Watt assisted:--
Sacred to the Memory of
MATTHEW BOULTON, F.R.S.
By the skilful exertion of a mind turned to Philosophy and Mechanics,
The application of a taste correct and refined,
And an ardent spirit of enterprize,
he improved, embellished, and extended
The Arts and Manufactures of his country,
Leaving his Establishment of Soho a noble monument of his
Genius, industry, and success.
The character his talents had raised, his virtues adorned and exalted.
Active to discern merit, and prompt to relieve distress,
His encouragement was liberal, his benevolence unwearied.
Honoured and admired at home and abroad,
He closed a life eminently useful, the 17th of August, 1809, Aged 81,
Esteemed, loved, and lamented.
Matthew Boulton was, indeed, a man of truly noble nature. Watt, than whom
none knew him better, was accustomed to speak of him as “the princely
Boulton.” He was generous and high-souled, a lover of truth, honour, and
uprightness. His graces were embodied in a manly and noble person. We
are informed through Dr. Guest that on one occasion, when Mr. Boulton’s
name was mentioned in his father’s presence, he observed, “_the ablest
man_ I ever knew.” On the remark being repeated to Dr. Edward Johnson,
a courtly man, he said,--“As to his ability, other persons can better
judge. But I can say that he was _the best mannered man_ I ever knew.”
The appreciation of both was alike just and characteristic, and has since
been confirmed by Mrs. Schimmelpenninck. She describes with admiration his
genial manner, his fine radiant countenance, and his superb munificence:
“He was in person tall, and of a noble appearance; his temperament was
sanguine, with that slight mixture of the phlegmatic which gives calmness
and dignity; his manners were eminently open and cordial; he took the lead
in conversation; and, with a social heart, had a grandiose manner, like
that arising from position, wealth, and habitual command. He went about
among his people like a monarch bestowing largesse.”
[Illustration: BOULTON’S MONUMENT IN HANDSWORTH CHURCH.[408]]
[408] The monument to Boulton is on the left hand of the altar in
the above illustration; that of Murdock is opposite to it, on
the right.
Boswell was equally struck by Boulton’s personal qualities when he visited
Soho in 1776, shortly after the manufacture of steam-engines had been
begun there. “I shall never forget,” he says, “Mr. Boulton’s expression to
me when surveying the works. ‘I sell here, sir, what all the world desires
to have, POWER.’ He had,” continues Boswell, “about seven hundred people
at work. I contemplated him as an iron chieftain, and he seemed to be a
father of his tribe. One of the men came to him complaining grievously of
his landlord for having distrained his goods. “Your landlord is in the
right, Smith,” said Boulton; “but I’ll tell you what--find a friend who
will lay down one half of your rent, and I’ll lay down the other, and you
shall have your goods again.””
It would be a mistake to suppose that there was any affectation in
Boulton’s manner, or that his dignified bearing in society was anything
but natural to him. He was frank, cheerful, and affectionate, as his
letters to his wife, his children, and his friends, amply demonstrate.
None knew better than he how to win hearts, whether of workmen, mining
adventurers, or philosophers. “I have thought it but respectful,” he
wrote Watt from Cornwall, “to give our folks a dinner at a public-house
near Wheal Virgin to-day. There were present William Murdock, Lawson,
Pearson, Perkins, Malcolm, Robert Muir, all Scotchmen, and John Bull, with
self and Wilson,--for the engines are all now finished, and the men have
behaved well, and are attached to us.” At Soho he gave an entertainment
on a much larger scale upon his son coming of age in 1791, when seven
hundred persons sat down to dinner. Boswell’s description of him as the
father of his tribe is peculiarly appropriate. No well-behaved workman was
ever turned adrift. On the contrary, fathers introduced their sons into
the factory, and brought them up under their own eye, watching over their
conduct and their mechanical training. Thus generation after generation
of workmen followed in each other’s footsteps at Soho.
There was, no doubt, good business policy in this; for Boulton knew
that by attaching the workmen to him, and inspiring them with pride in
the concern, he was maintaining that prestige which, before the days
of machine tools, would not have been possible without the aid of a
staff of carefully-trained and highly-skilled mechanics. Yet he had many
scapegraces amongst them--hard drinkers, pugilists,[409] cock-fighters,
and scamps. Watt often got wholly out of patience with them, and urged
their dismissal, whatever might be the consequence. But though none knew
so well as Watt how to manage machines, none knew so ill how to manage
men. Boulton’s practical wisdom usually came to the rescue. He would
tolerate any moral shortcoming save treachery and dishonesty. But he
knew that most of the men had been brought up in a bad school, often in
no school at all. “Have pity on them, bear with them, give them another
trial,” he would say; “our works must not be brought to a standstill
because perfect men are not yet to be had.” “True wisdom,” he observed on
another occasion, “directs us, when we can, to turn even evils into good.
We must take men as we find them, and try to make the best of them.”
[409] Isaac Perrins was one of the most noted among the fighters
of Soho. Mr. Scale, a partner in the hardware business, wrote to
Mr. Boulton, then at Cosgarne (15th October, 1782),--“Perrins
has had a battle with the famous Jemmy Sargent for a hundred
guineas, in which Perrins came off conqueror without a fall
or hurt: in 13 rounds he knocked down his antagonist 13 times.
They had it out at Colemore on our Wake Monday. The Sohoites all
returned with blue cockades.” Mrs. Watt, in a gossipy letter to
Mr. Boulton of the same date, says “1500_l._ was betted against
Perrins at Birmingham, and lost.” Perrins’s success led him to
turn “professional bruiser” for a time, and he left his place in
the smith’s shop. But either not succeeding in his new business,
or finding the work harder than that of the smithy, he came back
to Soho, and, being a good workman, he was taken on again and
remained in Boulton’s employment till the close of his life,
leaving sons to succeed him in the same department.
Still further to increase the attachment of the workmen to Soho, and
keep together his school of skilled industry, as he called it, Boulton
instituted a Mutual Assurance Society in connexion with the works; the
first of the kind, so far as we are aware, established by any large
manufacturer for the benefit of his workmen. Every person employed in the
manufactory, in whatsoever condition, was required to be a member. Boys
receiving 2_s._ 6_d._ a week paid a halfpenny weekly to the box; those
receiving 5_s._ paid a penny a week, and so on, up to men receiving 20_s._
a week, who contributed 4_d._; payments being made to them out of the fund
during sickness and disablement, in proportion to their contributions
during health. The effects of the Society were most salutary; it
cultivated habits of providence and thoughtfulness amongst the men; bound
them together by ties of common interest; and it was only in the cases
of irreclaimable drunkards that any members of the Soho Friendly Society
ever came upon the parish.
But this was only a small item in the constitution of the Soho
manufactory. Before its establishment, comparatively little attention
had been given to the organisation of labour on a large scale. Workshops
were so small that everything went on immediately under the master’s eye,
and workmen got accustomed to ply at their work diligently, being well
watched. But when manufacturing was carried on upon so large a scale as
at Soho, and separate processes were conducted in different rooms and
workshops, it was impossible that the master’s eye should be over all his
workers, or over even any considerable portion of them at the same time.
It was therefore necessary to introduce a new system. Hence the practice
of inspection by deputy, and the appointment of skilled and trustworthy
foremen for the purpose of enforcing strict discipline in the various
shops, and at the same time economising labour and ensuring excellence of
workmanship. In carrying out this arrangement, Boulton proved remarkably
successful: and Soho came to be regarded as a model establishment.
Men came from all parts to see and admire its organisation; and when
Wedgwood proceeded to erect his great pottery works at Etruria, he paid
many preliminary visits to Soho for the purpose of ascertaining how the
difficulties occasioned by the irregular habits of the workpeople had been
so successfully overcome by his friend, and applying the results of his
experience in the organisation of his own manufactory.
Though Boulton could not keep his eye directly on the proceedings in
the shops, he was quick to discern when anything was going wrong. While
sitting in the midst of his factory, surrounded by the clang of hammers
and the noise of engines, he could usually detect when any stoppage
occurred, or when the machinery was going too fast or too slow, and issue
his orders accordingly. The sound of the tools going, and the hammers
clanging, which to strangers was merely an intolerable noise, was an
intelligible music in his ears; and, like the leader of an orchestra,
who casts his eye at once in the direction of the player of a wrong
note, so Boulton was at once conscious of the slightest dissonance in the
performances of his manufactory, and took the necessary steps immediately
to correct it.
From what we have already said, it will be sufficiently clear that
Boulton was a first-rate man of business. He had a hearty enthusiasm
for his calling, and took a just pride in it. In conducting it, he was
guided by fine tact, great knowledge of character, and sound practical
wisdom. When fully satisfied as to the course he should pursue, he
acted with remarkable vigour and promptitude, bending his whole mind
to the enterprise which he had taken in hand. It was natural that he
should admire in others the qualities he himself desired to possess. “I
can’t say,” he wrote to Watt, “but that I admire John Wilkinson for his
decisive, clear, and distinct character, which is, I think, a first-rate
one of its kind.” Like Wilkinson, Boulton was also distinguished for his
indomitable pluck; and in no respect was this more strikingly displayed
than in his prosecution of the steam-engine enterprise.
Playfair has truly said, that had Watt searched all Europe over, he could
not have found another person so fitted to bring his invention before the
public in a manner worthy of its merits and importance. Yet Boulton was
by no means eager to engage in the scheme. Watt could with difficulty
persuade him to take it up; and it was only in exchange for a bad debt
that he at length became a partner in it. But when once fairly committed,
he threw himself into the enterprise with an extraordinary degree of
vigour. He clearly recognised in the steam-engine a power destined to
revolutionise the industrial operations of the world. To M. Argand, the
famous French lamp inventor, he described it as “the most certain, the
most regular, the most durable, and the most effective machine in Nature,
so far as her powers have yet been revealed to mortal knowledge;” and he
declared to him that, finding he could be of more use to manufactures and
to mankind in general by employing all his powers in the capacity of an
engineer, than in fabricating any kind of clincaillerie whatsoever, he
would thenceforward devote himself wholly to his new enterprise.
But it was no easy work he had undertaken. He had to struggle against
prejudices, opposition, detraction, and difficulties of all kinds.
Not the least difficulty he had to strive against was the timidity and
faint-heartedness of his partner. For years Watt was on the brink of
despair. He kept imploring Boulton to relieve him from his troubles; he
wished to die and be at rest; he “cursed his inventions;” indeed he was
the most miserable of men. But Boulton never lost heart. He was hopeful,
courageous, and strong--Watt’s very backbone. He felt convinced that the
invention must eventually succeed, and he never for a moment lost faith
in it. He braved and risked everything to “carry the thing through.”
He mortgaged his lands to the last farthing; borrowed from his personal
friends; raised money by annuities; obtained advances from bankers; and
had invested upwards of 40,000_l._ in the enterprise before it began to
pay.
During this terrible struggle he was more than once on the brink of
insolvency, but continued as before to cheer and encourage his fainting
partner. “Keep your mind and your heart pleasant if possible,” he wrote
to Watt, “for the way to go through life sweetly is not to regard rubs.”
To those about Watt he wrote, “Do not disturb Mr. Watt, but keep him
as free from anxiety as you can.” He himself took the main share of the
burden,--pushing the engine amongst the Cornish miners, bringing it under
the notice of London brewers and water companies, and finding money to
meet the heavy liabilities of the firm.
So much honest endeavour could not fail. And at last the tide seemed to
turn. The engine became recognised as a grand working power, and there
was almost a run upon Soho for engines. Then pirates sprang up in all
directions, and started new schemes with the object of evading Watt’s
patent. And now a new battle had to be fought against “the illiberal,
sordid, unjust, ungenerous, and inventionless misers, who prey upon the
vitals of the ingenious, and make haste to seize upon what their laborious
and often costly application has produced.”[410] At length this struggle,
too, was conclusively settled in Boulton and Watt’s favour, and they were
left at last to enjoy the fruits of their labour in peace.
[410] Boulton to De Luc, 20th October, 1787.
Watt never could have fought such a series of battles alone. He would
have been a thousand times crushed; and, but for Boulton’s unswerving
courage and resolute determination, he could neither have brought his
engine into general use, nor derived any adequate reward for his great
invention. Though his specification lodged in the Patent Office might
clearly establish his extraordinary mechanical genius, it is most probable
that he himself would have broken his heart over his scheme, and added
only another to the long list of great martyr inventors.
None was more ready to acknowledge the immense services of Boulton in
introducing the steam-engine to general use as a working power, than Watt
himself. In the MS. memoir of his lately deceased friend deposited among
the Soho papers, dated Glasgow, 17th September, 1809, Watt says,--“Through
the whole of this business Mr. Boulton’s active and sanguine disposition
served to counterbalance the despondency and diffidence which were natural
to me; and every assistance which Soho or Birmingham could afford was
procured. Mr. Boulton’s amiable and friendly character, together with
his fame as an engineer and active manufacturer, procured us many and
very active friends in both Houses of Parliament.... Suffice it to say,
that to his generous patronage, the active part he took in the management
of the business, his judicious advice, and his assistance in contriving
and arranging many of the applications of the steam-engine to various
machines, the public are indebted for great part of the benefits they now
derive from that machine. Without him, or some similar partner (could such
a one have been found), the invention could never have been carried by me
to the length that it has been.
“Mr. Boulton was not only an ingenious mechanic, well skilled in all the
arts of the Birmingham manufacturers, but he possessed in a high degree
the faculty of rendering any new invention of his own or of others useful
to the public, by organising and arranging the processes by which it could
be carried on, as well as of promoting the sale by his own exertions
and those of his numerous friends and correspondents. His conception
of the nature of any invention was quick, and he was not less quick in
perceiving the uses to which it might be applied, and the profits which
might accrue from it. When he took any scheme in hand, he was rapid in
executing it, and on those occasions spared neither trouble nor expense.
He was a liberal encourager of merit in others, and to him the country is
indebted for various improvements which have been brought forward under
his auspices....
“In respect to myself, I can with great sincerity say that he was a most
affectionate and steady friend and patron, with whom, during a close
connexion of thirty-five years, I have never had any serious difference.
“As to his improvements and erections at Soho--his turning a barren heath
into a delightful garden, and the population and riches he has introduced
into the parish of Handsworth, I must leave such subjects to those whose
pens are better adapted to the purpose, and whose ideas are less benumbed
with age than mine now are.”[411]
[411] The MS. memoir is dated Glasgow the 17th September, 1809, at
which period Watt was in his 73rd year. It had evidently been
written at the request of M. Robinson Boulton, Esq., shortly
after his father’s death. We find various testimony to the same
effect as the above in the Soho papers. Thus Mr. Peter Ewart,
C.E., speaks of Mr. Boulton’s remarkable quickness in selecting
objects to which machinery might be applied with advantage,
and of his great promptitude and determination in carrying his
plans into effect. He also describes the contagiousness of his
example, which strengthened the weak and inspired the timid. “He
possessed,” says Mr. Ewart, “above all other men I have ever
known, the faculty of inspiring others with a portion of that
ardent zeal with which he himself pursued every important object
he had in view; and it was impossible to be near him without
becoming warmly interested in the success of his enterprises.
The urbanity of his manners, and his great kindness to young
people in particular, never failed to leave the most agreeable
impression on the minds of all around him; and most truly may
it be said that he reigned in the hearts of those that were in
his employment.”--Boulton MSS.
We have spoken of Boulton’s generosity, which was in keeping with his
whole character. At a time when he was himself threatened with bankruptcy,
we have seen him concerting a scheme with his friend Wedgwood to enable
Dr. Priestley to pursue his chemical investigations free from pecuniary
anxiety. To Watt he was most liberal, voluntarily conceding to him at
different times profits derived from certain parts of the steam-engine
business, beyond the proportions stipulated in the deed of partnership.
In the course of his correspondence we find numerous illustrations of
his generosity to partners as well as to workmen; making up the losses
they had sustained, and which at the time perhaps he could ill afford.
His conduct to Widow Swellengrebel illustrates this fine feature in his
character. She had lent money to Fothergill, his partner in the hardware
business, and the money was never repaid. The consequence was, that the
widow and her family were seriously impoverished, and on their return to
their friends in Holland, Boulton, though under no obligation to do so,
remitted her an annuity of fifty pounds a year, which he continued to the
close of her life. “I must own,” he wrote, “I am impelled to act as I do
from pity, as well as from something in my own disposition that I cannot
resist.”[412]
In fine, Matthew Boulton was a noble, manly man, and a true leader of men.
Lofty-minded, intelligent, energetic, and liberal, he was one of those who
constitute the life blood of a nation, and give force and dignity to the
national character. Working in conjunction with Watt, he was in no small
degree instrumental in introducing and establishing the great new working
power of steam which has exercised so extraordinary an influence upon all
the operations of industry.
[412] Boulton to M. Vanlinder, Rotterdam, 24th April, 1788.