Читать книгу Lives of the Engineers - Samuel Smiles - Страница 7

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George Stephenson had now been diligently employed for several years in the work of self-improvement, and he experienced the usual results in increasing mental strength, capability, and skill. Perhaps the secret of every man’s best success is to be found in the alacrity and industry with which he takes advantage of the opportunities which present themselves for well-doing. Our engineman was an eminent illustration of the importance of cultivating this habit of life. Every spare moment was laid under contribution by him, either for the purpose of adding to his earnings, or to his knowledge. He missed no opportunity of extending his observations, especially in his own department of work, ever aiming at improvement, and trying to turn all that he did know to useful practical account.

He continued his attempts to solve the mystery of Perpetual Motion, and contrived several model machines with the object of embodying his ideas in a practical working shape. He afterwards used to lament the time he had lost in these futile efforts, and said that if he had enjoyed the opportunity which most young men now have, of learning from books what previous experimenters had accomplished, he would have been spared much labour and mortification. Not being acquainted with what other mechanics had done, he groped his way in pursuit of some idea originated by his own independent thinking and observation; and, when he had brought it into some definite form, lo! he found that his supposed invention had long been known and recorded in scientific books. Often he thought he had hit upon discoveries, which he subsequently found were but old and exploded fallacies. Yet his very struggle to overcome the difficulties which lay in his way, was of itself an education of the best sort. By wrestling with them, he strengthened his judgment and sharpened his skill, stimulating and cultivating his inventiveness and mechanical ingenuity. Being very much in earnest, he was compelled to consider the subject of his special inquiry in all its relations; and thus he gradually acquired practical ability even through his very efforts after the impracticable.

Many of his evenings were now spent in the society of John Wigham, whose father occupied the Glebe Farm at Benton, close at hand. John was a fair penman and a sound arithmetician, and Stephenson sought his society chiefly for the purpose of improving himself in writing and “figures.” Under Andrew Robertson, he had never quite mastered the Rule of Three, and it was only when Wigham took him in hand that he made much progress in the higher branches of arithmetic. He generally took his slate with him to the Wighams’ cottage, when he had his sums set, that he might work them out while tending his engine on the following day. When too busy to be able to call upon Wigham, he sent the slate to have the former sums corrected and new ones set. Sometimes also, at leisure moments, he was enabled to do a little “figuring” with chalk upon the sides of the coal-waggons. So much patient perseverance could not but eventually succeed; and by dint of practice and study, Stephenson was enabled to master successively the various rules of arithmetic.

John Wigham was of great use to his pupil in many ways. He was a good talker, fond of argument, an extensive reader as country reading went in those days, and a very suggestive thinker. Though his store of information might be comparatively small when measured with that of more highly-cultivated minds, much of it was entirely new to Stephenson, who regarded him as a very clever and ingenious person. Wigham taught him to draw plans and sections; though in this branch Stephenson proved so apt that he soon surpassed his master. A volume of ‘Ferguson’s Lectures on Mechanics,’ which fell into their hands, was a great treasure to both the students. One who remembers their evening occupations says he used to wonder what they meant by weighing the air and water in so odd a way. They were trying the specific gravities of objects; and the devices which they employed, the mechanical shifts to which they were put, were often of the rudest kind. In these evening entertainments, the mechanical contrivances were supplied by Stephenson, whilst Wigham found the scientific rationale. The opportunity thus afforded to the former of cultivating his mind by contact with one wiser than himself proved of great value, and in after-life Stephenson gratefully remembered the assistance which, when a humble workman, he had derived from John Wigham, the farmer’s son.

His leisure moments thus carefully improved, it will be inferred that Stephenson continued a sober man. Though his notions were never extreme on this point, he was systematically temperate. It appears that on the invitation of his master, he had, on one or two occasions, been induced to join him in a forenoon glass of ale in the public-house of the village. But one day, about noon, when Dodds had got him as far as the public-house door, on his invitation to “come in and take a glass o’ yel,” Stephenson made a dead stop, and said, firmly, “No, sir, you must excuse me; I have made a resolution to drink no more at this time of day.” And he went back. He desired to retain the character of a steady workman; and the instances of men about him who had made shipwreck of their character through intemperance, were then, as now, unhappily but too frequent.

But another consideration besides his own self-improvement had already begun to exercise an important influence on his life. This was the training and education of his son Robert, now growing up an active, intelligent boy, as full of fun and tricks as his father had been. When a little fellow, scarcely able to reach so high as to put a clock-head on when placed upon the table, his father would make him mount a chair for the purpose; and to “help father” was the proudest work which the boy then, and ever after, could take part in. When the little engine was set up at the Ochre Quarry to pump it dry, Robert was scarcely absent for an hour. He watched the machine very eagerly when it was set to work; and he was very much annoyed at the fire burning away the grates. The man who fired the engine was a sort of wag, and thinking to get a laugh at the boy, he said, “Those bars are getting varra bad, Robert; I think we main cut up some of that hard wood, and put it in instead.” “What would be the use of that, you fool?” said the boy quickly. “You would no sooner have put them in than they would be burnt out again!”

So soon as Robert was of proper age, his father sent him over to the road-side school at Long Benton, kept by Rutter, the parish clerk. But the education which Rutter could give was of a very limited kind, scarcely extending beyond the primer and pothooks. While working as a brakesman on the pit-head at Killingworth, the father had often bethought him of the obstructions he had himself encountered in life through his want of schooling; and he formed the noble determination that no labour, nor pains, nor self-denial on his part should be spared to furnish his son with the best education that it was in his power to bestow.

It is true his earnings were comparatively small at that time. He was still maintaining his infirm parents; and the cost of living continued excessive. But he fell back upon his old expedient of working up his spare time in the evenings at home, or during the night shifts when it was his turn to tend the engine, in mending and making shoes, cleaning clocks and watches, making shoe-lasts for the shoe-makers of the neighbourhood, and cutting out the pitmen’s clothes for their wives; and we have been told that to this day there are clothes worn at Killingworth made after “Geordy Steevie’s cut.” To give his own words:—“In the earlier period of my career,” said he, “when Robert was a little boy, I saw how deficient I was in education, and I made up my mind that he should not labour under the same defect, but that I would put him to a good school, and give him a liberal training. I was, however, a poor man; and how do you think I managed? I betook myself to mending my neighbours’ clocks and watches at nights, after my daily labour was done, and thus I procured the means of educating my son.” [52]

Carrying out the resolution as to his boy’s education, Robert was sent to Mr. Bruce’s school in Percy Street, Newcastle, at Midsummer, 1815, when he was about twelve years old. His father bought for him a donkey, on which he rode into Newcastle and back daily; and there are many still living who remember the little boy, dressed in his suit of homely grey stuff, cut out by his father, cantering along to school upon the “cuddy,” with his wallet of provisions for the day and his bag of books slung over his shoulder.

When Robert went to Mr. Bruce’s school, he was a shy, unpolished country lad, speaking the broad dialect of the pitmen; and the other boys would occasionally tease him, for the purpose of provoking an outburst of his Killingworth Doric. As the shyness got rubbed off, his love of fun began to show itself, and he was found able enough to hold his own amongst the other boys. As a scholar he was steady and diligent, and his master was accustomed to hold him up to the laggards of the school as an example of good conduct and industry. But his progress, though satisfactory, was by no means extraordinary. He used in after-life to pride himself on his achievements in mensuration, though another boy, John Taylor, beat him at arithmetic. He also made considerable progress in mathematics; and in a letter written to the son of his teacher, many years after, he said, “It was to Mr. Bruce’s tuition and methods of modelling the mind that I attribute much of my success as an engineer; for it was from him that I derived my taste for mathematical pursuits and the facility I possess of applying this kind of knowledge to practical purposes and modifying it according to circumstances.”

During the time Robert attended school at Newcastle, his father made the boy’s education instrumental to his own. Robert was accustomed to spend some of his spare time at the rooms of the Literary and Philosophical Institute; and when he went home in the evening, he would recount to his father the results of his reading. Sometimes he was allowed to take with him to Killingworth a volume of the ‘Repertory of Arts and Sciences,’ which father and son studied together. But many of the most valuable works belonging to the Newcastle Library were not lent out; these Robert was instructed to read and study, and bring away with him descriptions and sketches for his father’s information. His father also practised him in reading plans and drawings without reference to the written descriptions. He used to observe that “A good plan should always explain itself;” and, placing a drawing of an engine or machine before the youth, would say, “There, now, describe that to me—the arrangement and the action.” Thus he taught him to read a drawing as easily as he would read a page of a book. Both father and son profited by this excellent practice, which enabled them to apprehend with the greatest facility the details of even the most difficult and complicated mechanical drawing.

While Robert went on with his lessons in the evenings, his father was usually occupied with his watch and clock cleaning; or in contriving models of pumping-engines; or endeavouring to embody in a tangible shape the mechanical inventions which he found described in the odd volumes on Mechanics which fell in his way. This daily and unceasing example of industry and application, in the person of a loving and beloved father, imprinted itself deeply upon the boy’s heart in characters never to be effaced. A spirit of self-improvement was thus early and carefully planted and fostered in Robert’s mind, which continued to influence him through life; and to the close of his career, he was proud to confess that if his professional success had been great, it was mainly to the example and training of his father that he owed it.

Robert was not, however, exclusively devoted to study, but, like most boys full of animal spirits, he was very fond of fun and play, and sometimes of mischief. Dr. Bruce relates that an old Killingworth labourer, when asked by Robert, on one of his last visits to Newcastle, if he remembered him, replied with emotion, “Ay, indeed! Haven’t I paid your head many a time when you came with your father’s bait, for you were always a sad hempy?”

The author had the pleasure, in the year 1854, of accompanying Robert Stephenson on a visit to his old home and haunts at Killingworth. He had so often travelled the road upon his donkey to and from school, that every foot of it was familiar to him; and each turn in it served to recall to mind some incident of his boyish days. His eyes glistened when he came in sight of Killingworth pit-head. Pointing to a humble red-tiled house by the road-side at Benton, he said, “You see that house—that was Rutter’s, where I learnt my A B C, and made a beginning of my school learning. And there,” pointing to a colliery chimney on the left, “there is Long Benton, where my father put up his first pumping-engine; and a great success it was. And this humble clay-floored cottage you see here, is where my grandfather lived till the close of his life. Many a time have I ridden straight into the house, mounted on my cuddy, and called upon grandfather to admire his points. I remember the old man feeling the animal all over—he was then quite blind—after which he would dilate upon the shape of his ears, fetlocks, and quarters, and usually end by pronouncing him to be a ‘real blood.’ I was a great favourite with the old man, who continued very fond of animals, and cheerful to the last; and I believe nothing gave him greater pleasure than a visit from me and my cuddy.”

On the way from Benton to High Killingworth, Mr. Stephenson pointed to a corner of the road where he had once played a boyish trick upon a Killingworth collier. “Straker,” said he, “was a great bully, a coarse, swearing fellow, and a perfect tyrant amongst the women and children. He would go tearing into old Nanny the huxter’s shop in the village, and demand in a savage voice, ‘What’s ye’r best ham the pund?’ ‘What’s floor the hunder?’ ‘What d’ye ax for prime bacon?’—his questions often ending with the miserable order, accompanied with a tremendous oath, of ‘Gie’s a penny rrow (roll) an’ a baubee herrin!’ The poor woman was usually set ‘all of a shake’ by a visit from this fellow. He was also a great boaster, and used to crow over the robbers whom he had put to flight; mere men in buckram, as everybody knew. We boys,” he continued, “believed him to be a great coward, and determined to play him a trick. Two other boys joined me in waylaying Straker one night at that corner,” pointing to it. “We sprang out and called upon him, in as gruff voices as we could assume, to ‘stand and deliver!’ He dropped down upon his knees in the dirt, declaring he was a poor man, with a sma’ family, asking for ‘mercy,’ and imploring us, as ‘gentlemen, for God’s sake, t’ let him a-be!’ We couldn’t stand this any longer, and set up a shout of laughter. Recognizing our boys’ voices, he sprang to his feet and rattled out a volley of oaths; on which we cut through the hedge, and heard him shortly after swearing his way along the road to the yel-house.”

On another occasion, Robert played a series of tricks of a somewhat different character. Like his father, he was very fond of reducing his scientific reading to practice; and after studying Franklin’s description of the lightning experiment, he proceeded to expend his store of Saturday pennies in purchasing about half a mile of copper wire at a brazier’s shop in Newcastle. Having prepared his kite, he sent it up in the field opposite his father’s door, and bringing the wire, insulated by means of a few feet of silk cord, over the backs of some of Farmer Wigham’s cows, he soon had them skipping about the field in all directions with their tails up. One day he had his kite flying at the cottage-door as his father’s galloway was hanging by the bridle to the paling, waiting for the master to mount. Bringing the end of the wire just over the pony’s crupper, so smart an electric shock was given it, that the brute was almost knocked down. At this juncture the father issued from the door, riding-whip in hand, and was witness to the scientific trick just played off upon his galloway. “Ah! you mischievous scoondrel!” cried he to the boy, who ran off. He inwardly chuckled with pride, nevertheless, at Robert’s successful experiment. [57]

At this time, and for many years after, Stephenson dwelt in a cottage standing by the side of the road leading from the West Moor colliery to Killingworth. The railway from the West Moor Pit crosses this road close by the east end of the cottage. The dwelling originally consisted of but one apartment on the ground-floor, with the garret over-head, to which access was obtained by means of a step-ladder. But with his own hands Stephenson built an oven, and in the course of time he added rooms to the cottage, until it became a comfortable four-roomed dwelling, in which he lived as long as he remained at Killingworth.

He continued as fond of birds and animals as ever, and seemed to have the power of attaching them to him in a remarkable degree. He had a blackbird at Killingworth so fond of him that it would fly about the cottage, and on holding out his finger, would come and perch upon it. A cage was built for “blackie” in the partition between the passage and the room, a square of glass forming its outer wall; and Robert used afterwards to take pleasure in describing the oddity of the bird, imitating the manner in which it would cock its head on his father’s entering the house, and follow him with its eye into the inner apartment.

Neighbours were accustomed to call at the cottage and have their clocks and watches set to rights when they went wrong. One day, after looking at the works of a watch left by a pitman’s wife, George handed it to his son; “Put her in the oven, Robert,” said he, “for a quarter of an hour or so.” It seemed an odd way of repairing a watch; nevertheless, the watch was put into the oven, and at the end of the appointed time it was taken out, going all right. The wheels had merely got clogged by the oil congealed by the cold; which at once explains the rationale of the remedy adopted.

There was a little garden attached to the cottage, in which, while a workman, Stephenson took a pride in growing gigantic leeks and astounding cabbages. There was great competition amongst the villagers in the growth of vegetables, all of whom he excelled, excepting one of his neighbours, whose cabbages sometimes outshone his. In the protection of his garden-crops from the ravages of the birds, he invented a strange sort of “fley-craw,” which moved its arms with the wind; and he fastened his garden-door by means of a piece of ingenious mechanism, so that no one but himself could enter it. His cottage was quite a curiosity-shop of models of engines, self-acting planes, and perpetual-motion machines. The last-named contrivances, however, were only unsuccessful attempts to solve a problem which had effectually baffled hundreds of preceding inventors. His odd and eccentric contrivances often excited great wonder amongst the Killingworth villagers. He won the women’s admiration by connecting their cradles with the smoke-jack, and making them self-acting. Then he astonished the pitmen by attaching an alarum to the clock of the watchman whose duty it was to call them betimes in the morning. He also contrived a wonderful lamp which burned under water, with which he was afterwards wont to amuse the Brandling family at Gosforth—going into the fish-pond at night, lamp in hand, attracting and catching the fish, which rushed wildly towards the flame.

Dr. Bruce tells of a competition which Stephenson had with the joiner at Killingworth, as to which of them could make the best shoe-last; and when the former had done his work, either for the humour of the thing, or to secure fair play from the appointed judge, he took it to the Morrisons in Newcastle, and got them to put their stamp upon it. So that it is possible the Killingworth brakesman, afterwards the inventor of the safety lamp and the originator of the railway system, and John Morrison, the last-maker, afterwards the translator of the Scriptures into the Chinese language, may have confronted each other in solemn contemplation over the successful last, which won the verdict coveted by its maker.

Sometimes he would endeavour to impart to his fellow-workmen the results of his scientific reading. Everything that he learnt from books was so new and so wonderful to him, that he regarded the facts he drew from them in the light of discoveries, as if they had been made but yesterday. Once he tried to explain to some of the pitmen how the earth was round, and kept turning round. But his auditors flatly declared the thing to be impossible, as it was clear that “at the bottom side they must fall off!” “Ah!” said George, “you don’t quite understand it yet.” His son Robert also early endeavoured to communicate to others the information which he had gathered at school; and Dr. Bruce has related that, when visiting Killingworth on one occasion, he found him engaged in teaching algebra to such of the pitmen’s boys as would become his pupils.

While Robert was still at school, his father proposed to him during the holidays that he should construct a sun-dial, to be placed over their cottage-door at West Moor. “I expostulated with him at first,” said Robert, “that I had not learnt sufficient astronomy and mathematics to enable me to make the necessary calculations. But he would have no denial. ‘The thing is to be done,’ said he; ‘so just set about it at once.’ Well; we got a ‘Ferguson’s Astronomy,’ and studied the subject together. Many a sore head I had while making the necessary calculations to adapt the dial to the latitude of Killingworth. But at length it was fairly drawn out on paper, and then my father got a stone, and we hewed, and carved, and polished it, until we made a very respectable dial of it; and there it is, you see,” pointing to it over the cottage-door, “still quietly numbering the hours when the sun is shining. I assure you, not a little was thought of that piece of work by the pitmen when it was put up, and began to tell its tale of time.” The date carved upon the dial is “August 11th, MDCCCXVI.” Both father and son were in after-life very proud of the joint production. Many years after, George took a party of savans, when attending the meeting of the British Association at Newcastle, over to Killingworth to see the pits, and he did not fail to direct their attention to the sun-dial; and Robert, on the last visit which he made to the place, a short time before his death, took a friend into the cottage, and pointed out to him the very desk, still there, at which he had sat while making his calculations of the latitude of Killingworth.

From the time of his appointment as engineer at the Killingworth Pit, George Stephenson was in a measure relieved from the daily routine of manual labour, having, as we have seen, advanced himself to the grade of a higher class workman. But he had not ceased to be a worker, though he employed his industry in a different way. It might, indeed, be inferred that he had now the command of greater leisure; but his spare hours were as much as ever given to work, either necessary or self-imposed. So far as regarded his social position, he had already reached the summit of his ambition; and when he had got his hundred a year, and his dun galloway to ride on, he said he never wanted to be any higher. When Robert Whetherly offered to give him an old gig, his travelling having so much increased of late, he accepted it with great reluctance, observing, that he should be ashamed to get into it, “people would think him so proud.”

When the High Pit had been sunk, and the coal was ready for working, Stephenson erected his first winding-engine to draw the coals out of the pit, and also a pumping-engine for Long Benton Colliery, both of which proved quite successful. Amongst other works of this time, he projected and laid down a self-acting incline along the declivity which fell towards the coal-loading place near Willington, where he had officiated as brakesman; and he so arranged it, that the full waggons descending drew the empty waggons up the railroad. This was one of the first self-acting inclines laid down in the district.

Stephenson had now much better opportunities than hitherto for improving himself in mechanics. His familiar acquaintance with the steam-engine proved of great value to him. His shrewd insight, and his intimate practical acquaintance with its mechanism, enabled him to apprehend, as if by intuition, its most abstruse and difficult combinations. The practical study which he had given to it when a workman, and the patient manner in which he had groped his way through all the details of the machine, gave him the power of a master in dealing with it as applied to colliery purposes.

Sir Thomas Liddell was frequently about the works, and took pleasure in giving every encouragement to the engine-wright in his efforts after improvement. The subject of the locomotive engine was already closely occupying Stephenson’s attention; although it was still regarded as a curious and costly toy, of comparatively little real use. But he had at an early period detected its practical value, and formed an adequate conception of the might which as yet slumbered within it; and he now bent his entire faculties to the development of its extraordinary powers.