George Stephenson

by Hunter Davies

  Only one person dared to refuse when they saw their names in the papers – and that was George Stephenson. He threatened to insert his refusal in the same papers, but so many Hudson directors pleaded with him that such an exposure from Stephenson, of all people, would result in a catastrophic fall in the shares of all Hudson’s railway companies, that he desisted. However it seems apparent from then on that he had grown wise to Hudson and his methods, long before anyone else realised the truth. Hudson had earlier become one of Stephenson’s partners in a new coal mine and occasionally Stephenson agreed to join the board of a Hudson company, if it looked interesting, or was in his native Tyneside, though basically he was against the amalgamation methods of Hudson, preferring small, privately operated companies all competing against each other, rather than one big national company, which was Hudson’s ultimate plan. George always refused resolutely to speculate in any of Hudson’s schemes, however much Hudson entreated, even at the height of their friendship.

  Not long after the testimonial row, George made clear his new opinion in a letter written to his old friend Michael Longridge. It’s dated 22 November 1845, and was addressed from Tapton House. (It belongs to the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, bought by them in 1970.)

  Hudson has become too great a man for me now. I am not at all satisfied at the way the Newcastle and Berwick line has been carried on and I do not intend to take any more active part in it. I have made Hudson a rich man but he will very soon care for nobody except he can get money by them. I make these observations in confidence to you.

  It shows Stephenson’s tact, not exposing or criticising him publicly, or perhaps he was ashamed at having been taken in by him for so long. At any rate, it looks as if Hudson never knew what Stephenson really thought of him. In public he was still boasting of their friendship, endlessly proposing his health at banquets.

  At this stage, in 1845, Hudson was still publicly a rising star, still on the crest of a wave with the best yet to come. The money from his well-publicised testimonial was modestly received by Hudson – and went straight into his own bank account, without a murmur from any of the other eminent subscribers who’d been tricked.

  In 1845, a good year for George Hudson, he was elected MP for Sunderland, became Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Durham and finally astounded the nobility by paying the Duke of Devonshire half a million pounds for a 12,000-acre estate and stately home at Londesborough. He built his own private railway station, laying down two miles of track, so that his special train could roll right up to his own front door.

  The railway fever which George Stephenson had set going in 1830 came to its height in 1846. For three successive years the nation had been continuously astounded by the amount of money flowing into railways, with everyone convinced each year that it couldn’t go on. In 1844 800 new miles of railway had been sanctioned by parliament at a cost of 20 million pounds. In 1845 the total was 2,800 miles at a cost of around 50 million. Then in 1846 permission for 4,600 new miles was granted which would require the astronomical sum of £132 million.

  In those three years the number of journals devoted solely to railway matters rose from three to twenty. Journalists were falling over themselves to publicise and tip new shares and people from literally every walk of life scrambled to buy them. Thackeray as a young man, lost all his savings on railways. Emily and Anne Brontë contributed £1 each to Hudson’s testimonial, two of the tens of thousands of little shareholders throughout the country who’d made money from Hudson in the past and felt grateful enough to send a little something when they read about his testimonial in the papers. In three months, £30,000 rolled into Hudson’s account. But the third Brontë sister, Charlotte, was against subscribing to Hudson’s testimonial. She tried in vain to get her sisters to sell out their holdings in Hudson’s York and North Midland stock, convinced a slump was bound to come. (Branwell, their brother, was caught up in railway fever to the extent of getting a job in railways, as a clerk on the Leeds and Manchester. He was sacked in 1842 for ‘culpable negligence’.)

  Having established himself as a country gent, living in the style of a duke of the realm, Hudson decided next to establish himself in London. He bought what was then considered to be the largest private house in London, Albert House, just on the north side of Knightsbridge, where Albert Gate leads into Hyde Park. It cost him £15,000, plus the same again in furnishings and decoration.

  Hudson was by now comfortably a millionaire. Along with Crockford, the gambler, he was the first self-made provincial millionaire to move into Victorian London. He’d done it in well under ten years – since that day in 1834 when by chance he’d met Stephenson at Whitby. In 1846 his landed properties were worth £700,000; his industrial interests in such things as Sunderland Docks, Clay Cross collieries and other factories and a bank in York were worth at least a quarter of a million; and then, of course, there were his railway interests which at the end of 1846, judged by the total amount of shares which in that year were held in his name, came to £320,000. ‘Get rich quick’ was the phrase the Victorians used for Hudson – and all the Hudsons that were to follow.

  Once in London he led his life, public and social, in the full glare of publicity with the newspapers reporting his every move. There was a queue of ducal crested coaches forever outside Albert House when he was in town, waiting for his favours. The aristocracy vied with each other in toadying to him, though their ladies weren’t so keen when it came to having him back. Their husbands might fawn on Mr Hudson but they certainly didn’t approve of Mrs Hudson. Several years later Lady Dorothy Nevill recollected: ‘There were rumours of Hudson, the Railway King, and his wife, but they were never in Society, which, however, was amused by the reports of their doings which reached it.’

  Almost every leading diarist of the forties, writing about London affairs of the day, has tales of the Hudsons and their flamboyant style, especially of the vulgarity of Mrs Hudson. Society loved it when Mrs Hudson tried to ape the current fashion for all things French, trying in vain to drag French bon mots into her conversation, and best of all when she persuaded George to spend the Easter recess in Paris. Back came the stories of Mrs Hudson sending her maid to buy some shoes from M. Droit and M. Gauche because she’d seen their names on every pair. In a restaurant she was reported as asking the ‘gassoon’ for ‘tire-bottes’ for dinner, meaning turbot, only to be given a boot jack.

  When Mrs Hudson, back in London, realised that certain ladies were holding out on her, sniggering even, she persuaded several titled if rather impecunious ladies of fashion, such as Lady Parke, to serve as her society bait. Lady Parke sent out invitations in her own name for a grand ball to be held at Albert House. She was there at the door to greet the fine visitors – then introduced them to Mrs Hudson, the real hostess. Mrs Hudson could be just as shrewd as her husband.

  When dressing for a banquet, so the story went, Mrs Hudson would tell her maid to ‘dress me for ten, dress me for twenty,’ depending on the size of the party. But stories about her struggles with French were the best loved. Going to a French confectioner one day to order a gâteau she was asked ‘De quel grandeur le voulezvous?’ Her reply was ‘Aussi grand que mon derri re.’

  Despite the jokes the Hudsons had certainly arrived. On 21 March 1846, George Hudson was invited by the Marquis of Northampton, president of the Royal Society, to a conversazione at his private mansion for Fellows of the Society. Also present was Prince Albert and the buzz went round ‘The Prince has asked to be introduced to Mr Hudson!’ The introductions took place and George had a long chat with His Highness about railways, dismissing atmospheric railways, then the talk of the hour, as ‘humbug’. The next day the cartoonists had a field day with everyone using the same angle – the meeting of two crowned heads, King Hudson and the Prince Consort.

  It wasn’t until the following year that Hudson met Queen Victoria herself, when he had the honour of welcoming her at Cambridge on one of his trains. He’d fitted it out regally for her, with great lavishnes
s, lining the walls and ceilings with satin, putting in French furniture. The young queen took his arm along the platform and was reported to have exclaimed, ‘Really, this is beautiful. Is it not most gratifying.’ After the return journey Prince Albert conveyed Her Majesty’s ‘entire satisfaction’ at the arrangements. Hudson was obviously well satisfied. He ordered a week’s banqueting and entertaining at York Mansion House, where he’d become lord mayor for his third session.

  It’s impossible to imagine George Stephenson getting involved with such capers and kowtowing to royalty and the aristocracy. He had his chances, as we shall see, but he almost always did the opposite, refusing their offers and their friendship to the point of rudeness.

  Perhaps Hudson’s greatest social coup was his friendship with the Duke of Wellington. One day his ducal carriage arrived at Albert House and the duke, in great agitation, asked Mr Hudson for his help. His sister, so the duke said, had invested all her savings in a new railway venture. The shares had dropped alarmingly and his poor sister was on the verge of losing every sixpence. (This story is well attested though one wonders if the duke was perhaps relating his own plight, or perhaps a mistress’s, rather than his sister’s.) George calmed him down, said not to worry, and told him to come back on a certain day.

  Hudson started buying a few shares in the company in question and when he’d been doing so for several days the news, not surprisingly, started to come out. The public naturally thought something was afoot. King Hudson must be on the move again, and the shares began to shoot up. When the duke came back on the appointed day he was absolutely delighted. Hudson said his sister must sell all her shares at once. They were bound to go down again. The duke thanked him profusely for saving his sister’s fortune and asked if by chance there was anything he could do in return? Hudson said ‘Naw, thank you.’ As the duke was going out of the door, Hudson said well, there was just one little thing. His daughter had been sent to a very exclusive finishing school in Hampstead but unfortunately the other girls were being rather hurtful to her, cutting her because of her origins, daughter of a jumped-up draper’s assistant. It would be very nice if the duke just happened to call in on her at school.

  Next day, the duke set off in his coach with a large bouquet of flowers. At the school he inquired for Miss Hudson. ‘Tell her the Duke of Wellington wishes to see her.’ They had a long chat, the flowers were passed over, the duke said what a good friend her father was, and off he rode back to London, leaving Miss Hudson the most desirable girl in the school.

  All the same, the wits of the day were still making capital out of Hudson and all the other speculators who’d jumped out of the lower orders and made a killing on railways and then attempted to ape their betters. At the end of 1845 Thackeray started a weekly diary in Punch which consisted of the adventures of a footman called James Plush who borrows £20 from a parlour maid and almost overnight makes himself £30,000 from railway speculation. He gives up his job, hires his own valet and other servants, takes a flat in the Albany, dresses like a dandy, becomes a director of thirty-three railroads and decides to stand for parliament. He changes his name to Jeames de la Pluche, Esq., throws over the kitchen maid and says he’s going to marry into the ‘Harrystoxy’.

  The serial, all written in the first person, as if by L. Pluche himself, complete with atrocious spellings, topical jokes and references, was a huge success. Pluche names all his new possessions after the railway lines where he’d made killings, lines that featured high in Hudson’s real life, and in the real life of many readers, big and small.

  For igsample, the first pair of hosses I bought, [says Pluche in an early episode] I crisn’d Hull and Selby in grateful elusion to my transackshns in that railroad. I have now a confidenshel servant, a vally de shamber. He curls my air, inspex my accounts and hansers my hinvitations to dinner. I call this Vally my Trent Vally for it was the prophit I got from that extent line which injuiced me to ingage him. ‘When I ave a great party, Trent’ I say to my man, ‘we will have the London and Birmingham plate today (the goold) or else the Manchester and Leeds (the silver).’ I bought them after realising on the abuf lines and if people suppose that the companys made me a present of the plate, how can I help it?

  There are references to Hudson himself in the serial as Pluche goes on about his famous new friends. ‘Last Sunday was a grand Fate. The company was reshershy. I had a Countess on my right and my friend George H.… the Railway King.’

  It was obvious to everyone that Pluche was a parody of Hudson. Pluche gets himself made a deputy lieutenant, just like Hudson, and makes an offer for a house at ‘Halberd Gate’. He decorates his chambers with ‘potricks of my favourite great man’, namely the Duke of Wellington.

  There’s four of his Grace. I have a valluble one lickwise of my Queen and 2 of Prince Halbert – has a Field Marshcall and halso as a privat Gent. I despise the vulgar sneers that are daily hullered against that Igsolted Pottentat. Betwigxt the Prins and the Duke hangs me, in the Unifirm of the Cinqbar Malitiia, of which the Cinqbars has made me Capting.

  Hudson, like Pluche, was a great one for picking up and getting himself decorated with fancy honours. The satire at Hudson’s expense was funny but pretty sharp all the same. It showed how Thackeray was to develop later as a novelist – at the time he was writing stories and articles for magazines, Vanity Fair was to come two years later. It also shows the freedom and power of the press at the time. It would be difficult for a present day journalist, outside Private Eye, to get away with such grotesque caricatures without the Hudsons of today getting it stopped or simply sending in a writ. Such was the success of Pluche’s adventures that a pirate version of the story, used without Thackeray’s permission, was turned into a play and was performed with great success in the West End. Almost overnight, the railway speculator had become a stock figure which the whole country could appreciate.

  Hudson could take the jokes in Punch and other magazines but there was one publication who didn’t make jokes and, most important of all, didn’t engage in the current mania for share tipping. That was The Times. They began to thunder, as Gladstone had tried in vain a few years earlier, that railway speculation would finally bankrupt the country. It pointed out that the capital to be invested in railways in 1846, £132 million, was equal to the total value of Britain’s annual exports and was greater than the whole public revenue. Other industries were being starved of capital because of the railway mania, not to mention education, health and other areas where money was so urgently needed. While other papers fanned rumours of speculation, The Times alone warned of the outcome. Worried by the power of The Times and its invective against him, Hudson became one of the backers of a new newspaper, the Daily News, which appeared first in January 1846, with Charles Dickens as its editor. Support for a rival made The Times even more against him. It was that newspaper which finally did more than anyone to unseat King Hudson from his throne.

  The powerful railway lobby based on Liverpool, which George Stephenson had helped to create, was determined to cut Hudson down to size, so were the Peases in Darlington, worried about his encroachments in the north east. They made the most of the fact that the Midland Railway, the mainstay of Hudson’s operations, had suffered a temporary fall in shares. But Hudson still had many important friends. The Standard, for example, printed a glowing report of a banquet Hudson gave in York, having been given the freedom of the city. The Archbishop of York was there, the Duke of Leeds, eight mayors; George Stephenson surprisingly was also there, and hundreds of other Victorian notables. The Standard said Mr Hudson was entitled to give such a grand dinner because after all, he’d provided for the dinners of so many citizens throughout the country.

  Two hundred thousand well paid labourers, representing as heads of families, nearly one million men, women and children, all feast through the bold enterprise of one man, and not feasting for one day or one week but enjoying abundance from year’s end to year’s end. Let us hear what man or class of men ever before did so mu
ch for the population of a country?

  In 1847, realising that opposition to him was growing and that several of his companies, bought far too expensively, were now almost bankrupting his profitable lines, he looked round for a new scheme to bring in fresh capital. His whole success had always depended on raising fresh money. This was difficult as railway shares had become unsteady and the public, overwhelmed by three years of railway madness, were being careful, not to say sceptical. Hudson came up with a brilliant idea. He proposed to the government, backed by his colleagues on the Tory front bench, that he should head a commission to set up railways in Ireland, with the government lending two-thirds of the necessary capital. (Having soaked the public he was now trying it on the government.) The arguments sounded good with Hudson maintaining he was doing it all for the public good, a social reform, purely to help Ireland.

  ‘Ireland,’ so said Hudson in the House of Commons, ‘has been to this country a constant source of anxiety – Government after Government has declared it to be their great difficulty. We have been cobbling and peddling with Ireland, but we have attempted ineffectually to develop its resources.’ The arguments sound very familiar.

  Hudson declared that railways would make Irish agriculture flourish, would stimulate industry and would employ 130 men on every mile of railway constructed. But the government was against it. It said that the additional employment would be small, only thirty men per mile. Hudson’s scheme would cost £16 million, a sum which the country couldn’t afford, now that trade generally was receding. (The Times’ warning that the lopsided investment in railways would affect other industries was beginning to come true.) If the Irish wanted railways, their gentry should put up the money themselves, as had been done in England.