Читать книгу The Times Great Victorian Lives - Ian Brunskill - Страница 13

THE DEATH OF STEPHENSON comes with startling rapidity upon that of Brunel. Both men of rare genius, and both occupying a sort of double throne at the head of their profession, they have gone to their rest together, and their rivalry has ceased. Distinguished sons of distinguished fathers, the two men who in these latter years have done most to perfect the art of travel, and in this way to cultivate social intercourse, multiply wealth, and advance civilization, have been struck down at one fell swoop in all the maturity of their power. Mr. Stephenson’s health had been delicate for about two years, and he complained of failing strength just before his last journey to Norway. In Norway he became very unwell; his liver was so much affected that he hurried home, and when he arrived at Lowestoft he was so weak that he had to be carried from his yacht to the railway, and thence to his residence in Gloucester-square, where his malady grew so rapidly as to leave from the first but faint hope of his recovery. He had not strength enough to resist the disease, and he gradually sunk until at length he expired yesterday morning. If his loss will be felt severely in his profession, it will be still more poignantly felt in his large circle of friends and acquaintances, for he was as good as he was great, and the man was even more to be admired than the engineer. His benevolence was unbounded, and every year he expended thousands in doing good unseen. His chief care in this way was for the children of old friends who had been kind to him in early life, sending them to the best schools and providing for them with characteristic generosity. His own pupils regarded him with a sort of worship, and the number of men belonging to the Stephenson school who have taken very high rank in their peculiar walk shows how successful he was in his system of training, and how strong was the force of his example. The feeling of his friends and associates was not less warm. A man of the soundest judgment and the strictest probity, with a noble heart and most genial manner, he won the confidence of all who knew him, and perhaps in all London there were not more pleasant social gatherings than those which were to be found in his house in Gloucester-square, he himself being the life of the party. Without a spark of professional jealousy in his own nature, he was liked by all his fellow engineers, if they did not know him sufficiently to bear him affection; and we do not believe that even those who had the most reason to wish him out of the way, such as the promoters of the Suez Canal, which he strenuously opposed, ever bore him any ill will. He has passed away, if not very full of years, yet very full of honours – the creator of public works, a benefactor of his race, the idol of his friends.

He was certainly born under very humble circumstances. George Stephenson, his father, deemed himself a right happy man when, on earnings of 1l. a week, he could offer his hand and fortune to the pretty farm servant, Fanny Henderson. He took her to his home at Willington-quay, on the north bank of the Tyne, about six miles below Newcastle, towards the end of 1802, and his biographer tells us that his signature, as it appears in the parish books on the occasion of his marriage, was that of a person who had just learnt to write. On the 16th of December in the following year George Stephenson’s only son, Robert, was born; and there on Willington-quay he was familiarized from his earliest years with the steady industry of his parents, for when his father was not busy in shoemaking or cutting out shoe lasts, or cleaning clocks, or making clothes for the pitmen he was occupied with some drawing or model with which he sought to improve himself. Robert’s mother very soon died, and his father, whose heart was bound up in the boy, had to take the sole charge of him. George Stephenson felt deeply his own want of education, and in order that his son might not suffer from the same cause, sent him first to a school at Long Benton, and afterwards to the school of a Mr. Bruce, in Newcastle, one of the best seminaries of the district, although the latter was rather expensive for Stephenson. There young Robert remained for three years, and his father not only encouraged him to study for himself but also made him in a measure the instrument of his own better education, by getting the lad to read for him at the library in Newcastle, and bring home the results of his weekly acquirements, as well as frequently a scientific book which father and son studied together. On leaving school, at the age of 15, Robert Stephenson was apprenticed to Mr. Nicholas Wood, at Killingworth, to learn the business of the colliery, where he served for three years, and became familiar with all the departments of underground work. His father was engaged at the same colliery, and the evenings of both were usually devoted to their mutual improvement. Mr. Smiles describes the animated discussions which in this way took place in their humble cottage, these discussions frequently turning on the then comparatively unknown powers of the locomotive engine daily at work on the waggon-way. The son was even more enthusiastic than the father on the subject. Robert would suggest alterations and improvements in all the details of the machine. The father would make every possible objection, defending the existing arrangements, but proud, nevertheless, of his son’s suggestions, often warmed by his brilliant anticipations of the triumph of the locomotive, and perhaps anxious to pump him as much as he could. It was probably out of these discussions that there arose in George Stephenson’s mind the desire to give his son a still better education. He sent him in the year 1820 to the Edinburgh University, where Hope was lecturing on chymistry, Sir John Leslie on natural philosophy, and Jameson on natural history. Though young Stephenson remained in Edinburgh but six months it is supposed that he did as much work in that time as most students do in a three years’ course. It cost his father some 80l., but the money was not grudged when the son returned to Killingworth in the summer of 1821, bringing with him the prize for mathematics, which he had gained at the University.

In 1822 Robert Stephenson was apprenticed to his father, who had by this time started his locomotive manufactory at Newcastle; but his health giving way after a couple of years’ exertion, he accepted a commission to examine the gold and silver mines of South America. The change of air and scene contributed to the restoration of his health, and, after having founded the Silver Mining Company of Columbia, he returned to England in December, 1827, by way of the United States and Canada, in time to assist his father in the arrangements of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, by placing himself at the head of the factory at Newcastle. About this time, indeed, he seems to have almost exclusively devoted his attention to the study of the locomotive engine, the working of which he explained jointly with Mr. Locke, in a report replying to that of Messrs. Walker and Rastrick, who advocated stationary engines. How well he succeeded in carrying out the ideas of his father was afterwards seen when he obtained the prize of 500l. offered by the directors of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway for the best locomotive. He himself gave the entire credit of the invention to his father and Mr. Booth, although we believe that the ‘Rocket,’ which was the designation of the prize-winning engine, was entered in the name of Robert Stephenson. Even this locomotive, however, was far from perfect, and was not destined to be the future model. The young engineer saw where the machine was defective, and designed the ‘Planet,’ which, with its multitubular boiler, with cylinders in the smoke-box, with its cranked axletree, and with its external framework, forms, in spite of some modifications, the type of the locomotive engines employed up to the present day. About the same time he designed for the United States an engine specially adapted to the curves of American railways, and named it the ‘Bogie,’ after a kind of low waggon used on the quay at Newcastle. To Robert Stephenson we are accordingly indebted for the type of the locomotive engines used in both hemispheres.

The next great work upon which Mr. Stephenson was engaged was the survey and construction of the London and Birmingham Railway, which he undertook in 1833. He had already been employed in the execution of abranch from the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, and in the construction of the Leicester and Swannington line, so that he brought to his new undertaking considerable experience. On being appointed engineer to the company he settled in London, and had the satisfaction of seeing the first sod cut on the 1st of June, 1834, at Chalk Farm. The line was complete in four years, and on the 15th of September, 1838, was opened. The difficulties of this vast undertaking are now all forgotten, but at the time they were so formidable that one poor fellow, who had contracted for the Kilsby tunnel, died of fright at the responsibility which he had assumed. It was ascertained that about 200 yards from the south end of the tunnel there existed, overlaid by a bed of clay 40 feet thick, a hidden quicksand. The danger was so imminent that it was seriously proposed to abandon the tunnel altogether, but Robert Stephenson accepted the responsibility of proceeding, and in the end conquered every difficulty. He worked with amazing energy, walking the whole distance between London and Birmingham more than 20 times in the course of his superintendence. All this time, however, he had not ceased to devote his attention to the manufactory in Newcastle, convinced that good locomotives are the first step to rapid transit; and his assistance was sought by many companies anxious to secure his advice if not more constant service. His evidence before Parliamentary committees was grasped at, and it may be said that in one way or another he has been engaged on all the railways in England, while in conjunction with his father he has directed the execution of more than a third of the various lines in the country. Father and son were consulted as to the Belgium system of railways, and obtained from King Leopold the Cross of the Legion of Honour in 1844. For similar services performed in Norway, which he visited in 1846, Robert Stephenson received the Grand Cross of St. Olof. So also he assisted either in actually making or in laying out the systems of lines in Switzerland, in Germany, in Denmark, in Tuscany, in Canada, in Egypt, and in India. As the champion of locomotive in opposition to stationary engines, he resisted to the uttermost the atmospheric railway system, which was backed with the authority of Brunel, and had at one time a considerable repute, although it is now nearly forgotten. In like manner he had to fight with Mr. Brunel the battle of the gauges, the narrow against the broad gauge, and it is superfluous to say that he was successful here as in all his undertakings. In the sphere of railways he has been since the death of his father the foremost man, the safest guide, the most active worker.

Of his railway doings we have spoken in very general terms, only mentioning the great Kils by tunnel incidentally. It is, however, in this tunnel and in the bridges which he erected for railway purposes that his genius as an engineer is most strikingly displayed, and by these it is that he will be best remembered, Of his bridges, of course, we refer to the high level one at Newcastle, constructed of wood and iron, to the Victoria-bridge at Berwick, built of stone and brick, to the bridge in wrought and cast iron across the Nile, to the Conway and the Britannia bridges over the Menai Straits, and to the Victoria-bridge over the St. Lawrence. Those who care to examine the matter more closely will find a full account of most of these works in an article on iron bridges contributed by Mr. Stephenson himself to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. They are all splendid works, and have made his name famous over the world. The idea of the tubular bridge was an utter novelty, and, as carried out at the Menai Straits, was a grand achievement. Considering the enormous span of a bridge placed across these straits, the immense weight which it has to sustain, and the height to which it must be raised in order that great ships may pass beneath, the undertaking seamed chimerical, and he must have been a man of great daring, as well as of no common experience, who could think of conquering the difficulty. Robert Stephenson, however, fairly faced the difficulty, and threw bridges of 460 feet span from pier to pier across this formidable gulf. It was the first thing of the kind ever attempted, and the success was so triumphant that under Mr. Stephenson’s auspices it has been repeated more than once. In the Egyptian railway there are two tubular bridges, one over the Damietta branch of the Nile, and the other over the large canal near Besket-al-Saba; but they have this peculiarity, that the trains run not, as at the Menai Straits, within the tube, but on the outside upon the top. It is with this method of tubular bridging that Stephenson’s name is peculiarly identified, and by which he will probably be best known to posterity as distinguished from his father, who has almost the entire credit of the railway system.

It will not be supposed that Mr. Robert Stephenson’s labours were confined to the construction and survey of railways. We have reports of his on the London and Liverpool systems of waterworks. In 1847 he was returned as member of Parliament for Whitby, in the Conservative interest. He took a great interest in all scientific investigations and was a member of more than one Scientific Society. As a specimen of his liberality in the cause of science, it may be mentioned that he placed his yacht the Titania – and it is said he had the best manned yacht in the Squadron – at the disposal of Professor Piazzi Smyth, who was sent out with very limited means to Tenerife to make sundry scientific observations, and thus materially assisted the researches of that gentleman. In the same spirit he came forward in 1855, and paid off a debt amounting to 3,100l., which the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society had incurred, his motive being, to use his own phrase, gratitude for the benefits which he himself had received from it in early life, and a hope that other young men might find it equally useful. It was like the man to do so, for, as we have already suggested, his heart was worthy of his head, and in one form or another he was always doing good.

Robert Stephenson, the only son of George Stephenson, died at his house in Gloucester Square, north of Hyde Park, on 12 October 1859, just short of a month after Brunel. The achievements of both men were a matter of national pride but Stephenson’s relatively humble origins and somewhat basic education rendered him all the more heroic as a prime example of what Samuel Smiles styled ‘Self Help’. Smiles approvingly quotes Stephenson’s modest claim that the development of the railway locomotive was due to ‘not one man, but to the efforts of a nation of mechanical engineers.’ Robert Stephenson was buried in Westminster Abbey underneath a monumental brass designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott. A window in the west aisle of the north transept of the Abbey, installed in 1862, commemorates both Stephensons, father and son.