The Times Great Victorian Lives. Ian Brunskill

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       ROBERT STEPHENSON

       Engineer: ‘His heart was worthy of his head.’

      12 OCTOBER 1859

      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, СКАЧАТЬ