The Rocket: The Story of the Stephensons, Father and Son Read online

  CHAPTER X.

  THE STEPHENSON CENTENARY—HONOUR TO WHOM HONOUR IS DUE.

  George Stephenson was born on the 9th of June 1781.

  The year 1881 was therefore the hundredth since his birth,—completed"the centenary;" and it occurred to many thoughtful and influentialpersons as a right thing to do that it should be marked by some specialmode of public celebration. For the man born just one hundred yearsbefore had done a great work in his day; a work the full benefit ofwhich we are only now beginning to enjoy.

  England is not ungrateful to the memory of her distinguished sons, andkeeps many anniversaries with a good deal of pomp and circumstance. Shedoes not forget a Shakespeare and a Burns, or a Wellington and a Nelson;she loves to remember the establishment of the first printing-press, andthe victories at Trafalgar and Waterloo. Such being the case, it cannotbe denied that there was a peculiar fitness in her doing honour to "theFather of Railways,"—to the man whose successful patience, energy, andcourage have so largely added to the national wealth and developed thenational resources.

  A century ago, when Stephenson was born, no one had dreamed of orimagined such a thing as railway traffic. That great idea was reservedfor the brain of the son of a colliery engine tenter; and we have seenin the foregoing pages under what discouragement, and in the face ofwhat colossal difficulties, he conceived and carried it out. Thesteam-engine in use in his youth and manhood was a crude, awkward, anddisjointed affair, always coming to grief, and incapable of anyimportant work. The locomotive, as Stephenson found it, was nothing morethan a clumsy stationary engine put on a clumsy truck, which rattled andshook as it crept along at the rate of four miles an hour, so that everymoment it seemed about to tumble to pieces. And the railway on which itran was not less imperfect; it was nothing more than a system of lightthin rails, which rested, or at least were intended to rest, upon blocksof stone or rough wooden sleepers.

  Stephenson, as we have seen, resolved upon reforming all this. He soonimproved the track, giving it greater solidity and firmness; and then heturned to the engine, which he continued to perfect almost to the day ofhis death. There was much in the circumstances of the time to stimulatehis activity. The coal trade was increasing largely, and those engagedin it were anxious to send their "black diamonds" over the country withall possible speed. They could no longer tolerate engines that rattledand jolted to and fro at the rate of only four miles an hour! They wereambitious, and wanted a speed of ten miles. Well, we know whatStephenson did: he invented an engine that attained fifteen miles anhour; and then, unresting and unhasting, he addressed himself to thetask of extending—or, rather, creating—our railway system.

  He succeeded: and now there are eighteen thousand miles of railway inEngland;[1] and our ordinary trains make thirty miles, our expresstrains fifty and sixty miles an hour; and millions of men and womentravel where formerly only hundreds went; and journeys that occupied aday and a night, like the journey from London to Exeter, areaccomplished in half-a-dozen hours. Why, we leave London at ten, andreach Edinburgh at seven the same evening; a journey which, whenStephenson was born, could not be performed under a couple of days andnights!

  Footnote 1:

  At the close of 1880 there were 17,700 miles, employing 300,000 persons, and 13,174 locomotives. In this vast net-work of iron roads a capital of not less than £70,000,000 is sunk, yielding an annual return of £30,000,000. Upwards of 600,000,000 journeys are made on the average every year.

  So marvellous a tale reads like a romance from some Eastern fairy-book.Yet it is literally true, and the work has been done in the sight andmemory of thousands of living men. Was it not a work which deserved "acentenary"?

  And the man: did _he_ not deserve it? If ever indomitable perseverancemerited public applause, it was that of George Stephenson. We will saynothing more of the trials and labours of his early years; but evenafter he had made his engine, and undertaken to construct the firstEnglish railway, what obstacles he had to conquer, what difficulties tosurmount! Both Houses of Parliament were against him; the world wasagainst him. People were horrified at the thought of "turning thelocomotive loose on the country." They drew dreadful pictures of theevil it would do. Families sitting by their own firesides, it was said,would not be safe. A runaway engine, twenty tons in weight, would dashthrough a whole line of houses, toppling them down one after the otherlike houses built of cards. How was such a monster to be controlled? Ascrew loose, or a wrong turn of the handle, and it would bound out ofthe control of its driver. Then, again, others would ask, who wanted totravel more than ten miles an hour? Who wanted to rush through thecountry at a rate which would take away the breath? Was it not "flyingin the face of Providence"? Moreover, these new "trains" were to startexactly to the minute, and what could be more inconvenient? "It was theregular thing in those days to keep the carriage and four a whole hourwaiting at the door, till every room of the house had been gone throughseveral times to see that nothing was left behind."

  But Stephenson was not to be daunted. Possessed with one great thought,he kept to it manfully, and laboured day by day and night by night withunsurpassable energy. Such a man—the author of so great a work—surelydeserved a centenary.

  And a noble centenary it was. Both at Newcastle and at Chesterfield—thetwo towns with which Stephenson was most closely connected—the day wasobserved as a holiday, and thousands took part in the differentceremonies.

  At Newcastle, the streets of which were gaily decorated with tallVenetian masts covered with red cloth, and each surmounted by a trophyof flags,—with ornamental mottoes, wreaths and festoons of glossyfoliage, and a brave show of banners and garlands, there was a grandprocession of modern railway engines, which started from the CentralRailway Station, and proceeded, amidst the cheers of thousands, toWylam, George Stephenson's birth-place, eight miles distant. Theseengines, sixteen in number, were the finest modern science couldconstruct: some of them had driving-wheels six feet in diameter, andoutside cylinders which measured in diameter nearly a foot and a half.How bright they were with their shining copper and polished steel, andhow the sunlight flashed from them as, linked together, they rolledalong the iron way! On reaching Wylam they were placed for exhibitionalong with the five old original locomotives—namely, the Killingworth(the first that Stephenson ever made), the Hatton Colliery engine, theold Darlington engine, No. 1 Locomotive from Darlington, andStephenson's old "Victor" from the North-Eastern Railway.

  A special train followed, carrying the Mayors of Newcastle and othertowns, with many persons of local celebrity. Opposite GeorgeStephenson's birth-place it stopped; the Mayor of Newcastle alightedwith his friends, and in honour of the day planted an oak-tree. Thereturn journey was then made, and the engines we have named were thrownopen to public inspection.

  The next event was a procession of members of the corporations, publicbodies, trade societies, and workmen of Newcastle, Gateshead, Jarrow,and South Shields, together with the miners of Northumberland andDurham—some 40,000 altogether—who, through the garlanded and banneredstreets, marched to the town moor. There three platforms had beenerected, from which the various trade representatives deliveredappropriate addresses.

  In the evening a grand banquet took place, at which the Mayor ofNewcastle presided; and the day's festivities concluded with a brilliantdisplay of fireworks.

  At Chesterfield the public rejoicings, if necessarily on a lessextensive scale, were not less cordial. Of course, there was aprocession; there was also a special choral service in the parishchurch; and we read of a banquet, a concert, and a fireworks finale.

  But all this was temporary,—belonged only to the day, and with the daypassed away. So it was resolved to raise funds for the establishment ofa permanent memorial, which, it is to be hoped, may be in existence,active and prosperous, when a bi-centenary and a tri-centenary in theirturn come round. This will be a "Stephenson College of PhysicalScience," to be erected at Newcas
tle, at a cost of £20,000. And aStephenson Scholarship Fund is also being raised, which will place thehigher education within the reach of youths of Stephenson's social rankimitating Stephenson in his perseverance, energy, love of knowledge, andpatient industry.

  Transcribers note.

  Spelling, Punctuation and Hyphenation have been kept as the original.