George Stephenson

by Hunter Davies

  Many distinguished people tried to persuade George to come to them, but he was happiest in his own home or with gatherings of mechanics. Sir Robert Peel, the prime minister, twice invited him to spend weekends at his home at Tamworth. George declined each time but in January 1845, on the third request, graciously agreed. ‘I feel your kindness very much and can no longer refuse. I will come down and join your party.’ The company was very exalted, including titled lawyers and eminent scientists of the day, and George was worried that his lack of the gift of the gab would let him down. According to Smiles, George was assisted by one of the guests, Sir William Follett, a well-known lawyer, who showed him how to arrange his arguments in a coherent order after he’d been soundly beaten in a discussion with another guest, a Dr Buckland.

  One of George’s favourite party pieces, when he himself had guests at Tapton, was to bring out a large microscope, draw blood from the fingers of each guest and analyse their globules, discussing the different blood groups which he’d discovered. (His observations were his own, says Smiles, only later did medical science prove they were right.) He liked to go on from a person’s blood group to reflecting on their characters, no doubt feeling the shapes of their heads, from which he got other clues.

  He took his microscope with him to Tamworth and towards the end of the weekend, his confidence recovered, he invited all the guests to prick their fingers. Everyone except Sir Robert Peel agreed, even though George explained that all he wanted was to see ‘how the blood globules of a great politician would conduct themselves’. Peel, apparently, had great sensitivity to pain and when he, as the host, categorically refused to be pricked, George had to abandon his experiments.

  George fancied himself on most medical matters and he was fond of giving advice. When Longridge in a letter at one time complained of being unwell, George knew at once what was wrong:

  You have been living high by getting the gout into your hand. I dare say you have had some Turtle soup lately? you must have a poultice put on to every nail and you will find it will do you good, but it must be so arranged that it does not come in contact with the adjoining skin –if it does it will prevent the oil having its proper passage to the growth of the nail which I dare say is flat, looks red and inflamed underneath, and cuts brittle, for want of the liquid I have just mentioned.

  There are endless traces in George of a know-all attitude on many subjects. It turned to fury when anyone, such as Brunel, dared to cross him on something where he was irrefutably the master, but his background and early struggles have always to be borne well in mind. He’d won through, despite the prejudices of almost the whole of the scientific world, and naturally thought he had laid down the rules, once and for all.

  He never forgot or forgave those who’d opposed him or whom he considered had done him wrong. It wasn’t a matter of changing as he got older. He’d always been like this, as his early letters show, convinced he was right. He never took on airs and graces with his new wealth and power, but neither did he assume any humility.

  He retained many of his old colliery habits, such as treating his guests to a ‘crowdie night’, pouring boiling water on to the raw oats for everyone to eat. And if they were from the north he would sing them the old songs he’d learned from his parents – his favourite was ‘John Anderson my Joe’ – or wrestle with them for old times’ sake. He even did his wrestling tricks, so Smiles relates, at Robert’s smart Westminster office.

  ‘When my father came about the office,’ said Robert, he sometimes did not well know what to do with himself. So he used to invite Bidder to have a wrestle with him, for old acquaintance sake. And the two wrestled together so often, and had so many “falls” (sometimes I thought they would bring the house down between them), that they broke half the chairs in my outer office. I remember once sending my father in a joiner’s bill of about 21.10s. for mending broken chairs.’

  George always preferred talking to reading and he made it his business when starting on a train journey to go up and down the corridors, searching for an interesting-looking person to talk to. He sat himself beside Lord Denman one day on leaving Euston Station and spent several hours telling him how to mend watches. While waiting in stations, he frequently went over to enginemen and told them how to do their jobs more efficiently, or demonstrated to labourers the correct way to use a shovel and fill a barrow.

  Thomas Summerside, who worked under George for many years in Tyneside and in later life, published a memoir in 1878 which has several stories of George telling people how to conduct themselves. A young hopeful came to Tapton one day wanting George’s help, wearing a gold chain and a fine ring. George, always a modest dresser, despised all finery. ‘Let me advise you never to put on such trinkets as these. I never did and had I done I should not have been the man I am.’ He was equally suspicious of anyone’s fine learning which had been gained from books or universities. ‘Never judge a goose by its stuffing,’ was one of his favourite sayings.

  George was once staying at a hotel when he was engaged in conversation by a gentleman and his wife. Neither of them recognised George and the wife even had the audacity to ask George, no doubt rather dismissively, who he was and what he did for a living.

  Madam, I have in my time dined with a hedger in the hedge bottom off a red herring and also sat at the table of Royalty. I used to be called plain George Stephenson but now my title is George Stephenson, Esq, of Tapton House, Chesterfield, Derbyshire; but the result of my observation is that we are pretty much alike, but for our raiment.

  The lady turned to her husband and said ‘My dear, this is the great George Stephenson, with whose son ours is employed.’ Mr Stephenson replied ‘And a simpleton he is, just like his mother.’

  George’s attitude to the aristocracy was complex. He could boast of their acquaintance at one time, then despise them the next. ‘It is but a short time ago since I dined with the Earl of Carlisle,’ he said to Summerside on one occasion, ‘and there were brought to meet me a Duke, Earls, Lords and other gentlemen. Fine difference, Summerside, to what there used to be.’

  His Belgian title pleased him, though he never used it in England. But when he was twice offered a knighthood in his own country by Sir Robert Peel he turned it down. He was also offered a safe parliamentary seat at South Shields but his refusal of this was more understandable, never being interested in politics nor a fluent public speaker. In the case of the knighthood, perhaps he felt it would mean that he’d given in and joined the Establishment still knowing, or at least feeling, that he wasn’t really accepted and that they were simply trying to corrupt him. Perhaps if his wife had been alive he might have accepted. Abroad, it was different. He was accepted for what he had done not for what he was and any honours had no strings attached, real or imaginary. Abroad, no one noticed his Geordie accent. Abroad, no one made jokes about ‘coos’ behind his back.

  In a letter he wrote in 1847, in reply to someone asking him how he would like to be described in a dedication, it looks as if he’d become invertedly snobbish about his refusal of honours.

  Dear Sir,

  I have received yours of the 23rd inst. In reply to it I have to state that I have no flourishes to my name, either before it or after, and I think it will be as well if you merely say Geo. Stephenson. It is true that I am a Belgian Knight, but I do not wish to have any use made of it.

  I have had the honour of Knighthood of my own country made to me several times, but would not have it; I have been invited to become a Fellow of the Royal Society; and also of the Civil Engineers Society, but I objected to these empty additions to my name. I have however now consented to become President to I believe a highly respectable mechanics’ Institute at Birmingham.

  I am, Dear Sir,

  Yours very truly,

  GEO. STEPHENSON

  The organisation to which he’d consented to be president was the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, who are very proud to this day that he was their first president. They’d started the year be
fore, 1846, in Birmingham when a group of railway engineers had been watching some trials near Bromsgrove. A shower of rain drove them into a platelayer’s hut, so the story goes, and they fell to talking about how unfair it was that the civil engineers were always lording it over them. As they were a completely new trade, nay a new profession, it was about time they had their own professional body. George, who was always interested in anything mechanical, readily accepted their invitation to be president. One of their first meetings was held at Tapton House. As we well know, he never cared for the lordly Civil Engineers and their haughty Institution.

  In an early edition of his biography, Smiles states that George had applied for membership of the Institution of Civil Engineers but was informed he must supply proof of his professional qualifications and write an essay. George, of course, had no qualifications, never having passed any examination nor having been apprenticed to a qualified engineer. George was so hurt by their attitude that he never forgave them and instead accepted the offer from the Mechanicals.

  It’s the sort of story George might have told to friends at Tapton House, boasting how he was self-taught and unqualified, not good enough for the likes of the Civils, who wouldn’t let him in if he tried, the sort of boasting which self-made people often delight in, once that everyone knows they’re in fact much more successful and rich and powerful than their enemies could ever be. In his young days, he might well have applied, and technically they would have had to turn him down; but by 1846 he wouldn’t have bothered to apply unless out of devilment, and if he had they would no doubt have waived the rules and given him some sort of position. By this time, many members of the Civils’ council, which included his son Robert, had been his former pupils or assistants. And they weren’t all his enemies.

  Smiles dropped the story from later editions, apparently because the Civils denied they’d ever turned him down. George in the letter quoted above says, rather contradictorily, that he’d been offered but turned down a Fellowship of the ‘Civil Engineers’ Society’, which can only refer to the same body. Nonetheless, the story of George, the greatest engineer of his age, not being good enough for the Civils, was one that was often repeated, long after George’s death, and it was one which never ceased to annoy them. George, no doubt would have been very amused.

  In April, 1848, there occurred a minor incident, not mentioned by Smiles, which shows George in not such an amusing light. There appeared in the letters column of the Darlington and Stockton Times a letter signed by someone called ‘Nemo’ which was a fulsome panegyric to the work of Edward Pease, about all the good he had done to Darlington, but how little recognition he’d received. Nemo, just to clear himself, adds that he is not related to Pease and has never met him. He just wants to see him honoured as

  … the man who first conceived the idea, and so successfully carried out the completion of the first railway for the conveyance of goods and passengers. That man is Edward Pease, Esq., and that Railway is the Stockton and Darlington Railway …

  George was absolutely outraged and immediately wrote to Nicholas Wood in Newcastle, instructing him to put the record straight.

  Tapton House,

  April 10th 1848.

  My Dear Sir,

  I am going to give you a little work to do if you like to, but if you don’t then send back the enclosed observations.

  I am disgusted with a letter which has been published in the Stockton & Darlington Times of April 8th which I enclose you.

  You are the only man living except myself who knows the origin of Locomotive engines on the Stockton & Darlington Railway. I shall be obliged if you will take the matter up and shew that Edward Pease is not the man of Science who has done so much for the country.

  I am My Dear Sir

  Yours faithfully,

  GEO. STEPHENSON

  P.S. When are you going to bring Mrs Wood and your daughter here? I have grapes now ripe and the Duke of Devonshire has not.

  The Northumberland Record Office, who have kindly allowed this letter to be published, have also a copy of the full letter as written by Nemo but nothing from Nicholas Wood in reply. Whether a reply from him was ever published, it is George’s reaction which is significant. (His PS is also very much in character.) There must have been many people in the north east who were genuinely disgusted when George gave his self-made speech at places like Newcastle, all of them fully reported in the papers of the day, without ever mentioning the work of the engineers who had gone before or the help he’d had from people like Losh or the Grand Allies, or the work done by Pease or William James and many others. Unlike his son Robert, there was never a murmur of contradiction from George whenever the purple passages started flowing at the Hudson inspired banquets in honour of the Inventor of Railways.

  Smiles reports several of George’s speeches in his biography, speeches he personally listened to, presumably during Smiles’ period as editor at the Leeds Times, from 1838 to 1842.

  On more than one occasion, the author had the pleasure of listening to George Stephenson’s homely but forcible addresses at the annual soirées of the Leeds Mechanics’ Institute. He was always an immense favourite with his audiences there. His personal appearance was greatly in favour. A handsome, ruddy, expressive face, lit up by bright dark-blue eyes, prepared one for his earnest words when he stood up to speak and the cheers had subsided which invariably hailed his rising. He was not glib, but he was very impressive. And who, so well as he, could serve as a guide to the working man in his endeavours after higher knowledge? His early life had been all struggle – encounter with difficulty – groping in the dark after greater light, but always earnestly and perseveringly. His words were therefore all the more weighty, since he spoke from the fulness of his own experience. His grand text was – persevere; and there was manhood in the very word.

  If there had been examples in George’s speeches of his magnaminity, Smiles would surely have been quick to quote them. Many people did note George’s lack of generosity towards other engineers, whether ex-pupils who’d moved on, rivals who dared to contradict him or offer different solutions, or engineers in the same field whose inventions he’d definitely followed. It was this lack which particularly upset the professional engineers of the day who so studiously stuck to the gentleman’s code of crediting everyone first, putting oneself last. As far as George was concerned, he had done everything by himself. Looking back, he probably could not remember anyone whom he considered had really helped him. All he no doubt remembered was that they’d all been agin him. Given the man, his manners are more understandable. In our present age, unnecessary humility is often viewed with suspicion as being insincere. The ‘I am the greatest’ syndrome is much more accepted. In George’s day, humility was a virtue.

  Despite the ill-feeling George attracted, it didn’t worry him too much or give him sleepless nights. There is every evidence that he was exceedingly happy in his old age, content with himself and with life. He had certainly more than fulfilled all his ambitions, proved everyone wrong, and received more than sufficient worldly recognition of his greatness. He achieved wealth and power and fame and lived long enough to enjoy all three, which can’t alas, be said for every great man.

  Summerside, in his little book of memoirs, has suggested by one oft-repeated anecdote that George Stephenson was mean – and Rolt appears in his book to accept this. George often gave Summerside and other members of his staff a box of grapes or peaches from his greenhouses, always adding: ‘Mind! Fetch the box back.’ The boxes, as Rolt notes significantly, were worth only a few coppers. It sounds more like common sense, not meanness. Replacing humdrum objects can be a bother for both rich and poor. George was no doubt canny. His instances of financial generosity revolved mainly round the families of his brothers and sisters, all of whom he provided for till the end of his life. His generosity didn’t extend to the world at large but he was certainly not greedy. Hudson, at the height of his powers, was continually rolling up at Tapton in his private tra
in, trying but failing to induce George to invest money in railway shares which he guaranteed were going to double overnight. George often took shares in a railway if he was building it, though more often than not he would waive his fees until the line was paying, but he never speculated in other shares.

  He kept completely out of Railway Mania, even while the rest of the world was going wild. In April 1846, before the signs of any crash, he advised a friend: ‘I hope you have kept clear of the mania of wild Railway schemes – thousands of people will be ruined as I have learned that many have mortgaged their little properties to get money; of course their property will be lost up to the amount of money they have got.’