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RITAS
THE
10
·LIBRARIES ·
66
766
Personal Recollections
OF
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE TRINITY OF ITALY;
OR,
THE POPE, THE BOURBON, AND THE VICTOR:
BEING
HISTORICAL REVELATIONS OF THE PAST, PRESENT,
AND FUTURE OF ITALY.
BY
AN ENGLISH CIVILIAN,
FOR EIGHT YEARS IN OFFICIAL CONNECTION WITH THE COUrt OF NAPLES.
"The book itself is really valuable, and has every mark of being the work of a
candid and dispassionate man who has made the most of his opportunities. Just now,
while the old efforts for the separation of Naples and Sicily from the Italian kingdom
are being renewed more vigorously than ever, no trustworthy sketch of the realities of
life in Southern Italy can fail to be interesting.
Of the more personal sketches
·
in the volume, the portrait of the Neapolitan Ferdinand II. is at once the most
complete and the most curious; and as being to a considerable extent the result
of personal observation, is all the more to be depended on."-Pall Mall Gazette.
The Civilian'
The author calls
"The 'English Civilian' comes with imposing credentials.
is an able, trustworthy, instructive, and entertaining writer.
attention to the curious prediction of St. Malachi, Archbishop of Armagh from 1127
to 1148, which strangely escaped the curiosity-hunting eye of the elder Disraeli, from
which it would appear that there are to be ten more Popes after Pio Nono."-Morning
Post.
"We hasten to what our civilian has to tell us directly about Naples and the rest of
Italy, thanking him on the way for a passage in his first chapter, which it does one
real good to read.
The picture which he gives of King Ferdinand is a
remarkable and an interesting one."-Saturday Review.
•
•
•
'The author is a sensible and a shrewd observer, who lived in Southern Italy from
1856 to 1864, and had some practical knowledge of the extinct court of Naples.
The writer observes shrewdly and pleasantly.”—Examiner.
[ Conder, Francis, Roubillac. ]
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS
OF
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
AND OF
THE INTRODUCTION OF THE RAILWAY
SYSTEM INTO THE UNITED KINGDOM.
BY
A CIVIL ENGINEER,
AUTHOR OF THE TRINITY OF ITALY."
•
LONDON:
HODDER AND STOUGHTON,
27, PATERNOSTER-ROW.
MDCCCLXVIII.
[All rights reserved.]
TE
57
C75
LONDON:
HENJAMIN PARDON AND SON, PRINTERS,
PATERNOSTER ROW.
CONTENTS.
PRELIMINARY CHAPTER.
The original and personal character of the work. Effort
to avoid giving pain to survivors. Origin of the modern
school of fiction. Omission of the field occupied by the
present writer.
PAGE
xi.
CHAPTER I.
A COUNTRY TOWN BEFORE THE RAILWAY ERA.
The town itself. The Vicar. Conflict with his Bishop.
Adroit tenure of position. Rumours of construction of the
London and Birmingham Railway. The surveys. Oppo-
sition of the farmers. Setting out of the line. Mr.
Stephenson's staff
•
CHAPTER 11.
PREPARATIONS FOR A CHANGE.
Preparations of the contractors for work. Tunnel shafts
and driftway. Personal appearance of Robert Stephenson.
Skew bridges. Tunnel brickwork
1
•
17
vi
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER III.
THE FIRST RAILWAY APPROACH TO LONDON.
Untouched state of the country west of St. John's Wood
Chapel. Line from Camden Town to Euston-square.
Invasion of Mornington-crescent. The schoolmaster sends
for the policeman. Bunyan in 1835. Falstaff in 1835.
Creep" of the London clay. Provision for the traffic of
the future.
PAGE
28
CHAPER IV.
DEMAND AND SUPPLY OF ENGINEERS.
Connection of the ports with the metropolis. Engineers
wanted. Their education. Military Engineers and Sur-
veyors. Survey of Eastern Counties. Mode in which
expenditure commenced. Night work and Sunday work. 45
CHAPTER V.
WORK IN 1835.
Preparation for Parliament. Work against time.
deposits for standing orders. Revision of surveys
CHAPTER VI.
THE DUTIES OF THE SUB-ASSISTANT ENGINEER.
The
His station in England compared with that on the Con-
tinent. Use of the Ordnance map. A survey under
difficulties. A scientific Director. A county meeting
CHAPTER VII.
PROPRIETARY AND ENGINEERING DIFFICULTIES.
Seizure of land. Occurrence of Quicksands. Passage
of bog. Road making, from the date of the Via Appia to
Mr. Macadam. History of the introduction of the system
of metalled roads
€3
75
91
CONTENTS.
vii
CHAPTER VIII.
THE TRAVELLING DESTROYED BY THE RAILWAYS.
Coaching on the Shrewsbury road. The charms of "the
road." Test of a good whip. The "Quicksilver” mail.
Taking off the drag. · Posting on the road to Brindisi
CHAPTER IX.
THE REPENTANCE OF THE OPPOSITION.
A conference. Mr. Mayor and the Engineers. Neglect
of the natural lines of traffic. Value of railway communi-
cation in country districts. Mode of securing the support
of landowners
•
PAGE
. 104
. 117
CHAPTER X.
A WEST COUNTRY RAILWAY.
Contest for the district. Check in the progress of the
undertaking. Peculiar mode of backing a friend.
Minimum prices. Contractors and sub-contractors.
Durability or the reverse of material. Bricks and paper. 129
. 146
inan.
CHAPTER XI.
A NEWLY FORMED STAFF.
Description of some of the members. The muscular
The snuff-taker. The Irish glee singer. The
Resident Engineer. The local surveyor. The chief. The
sergeants and servants. An admiral's son in eclipse
CHAPTER XII.
SOME WORKING DETAILS.
Military punctuality. Dramatic justice. Appointment of
Resident Engineer.
A maintainer of permanent way.
An anticipated order. Resolution not to be convinced.
Fortune driven away
•
164
viii
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XIII.
A BIT OF WORK IN WORCESTERSHIRE.
A native genius for work. The tommy shop.
Engineer who objected to profane language
CHAPTER XIV.
A CHAPTER ON CONTRACTORS.
The
Men who became contractors. Mode of estimating work.
Extras and excessive cost. A Wiltshire contractor.
Welsh contractor. Anecdote of a colossal contractor
•
A
•
PAGE
. 180
192
CHAPTER XV.
ENGINEERING WORKS.'
The Black country. The manager. The works. The
foundry. The smithery. The wheel-shop
CHAPTER XVI.
OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.
•
. 211
Personal appearance of a manager of correspondence.
His antecedents, charm of manner, and increase of
influence. His apogee and eclipse
•
CHAPTER XVII.
CONSTRUCTION OF THE BROAD-GAUGE LINES.
Personal energy and grasp of detail of Mr. Brunel.
Character of his works. One of his Residents.
drawings, specifications, and estimates
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE AUTHOR OF THE BROAD-GAUGE.
226
His
242
Fertility of invention and scientific accuracy of Mr.
Brunel. His intercourse with his subordinates. His
CONTENTS.
ix
parcelling out of time. His mode of settling accounts.
A human weakness. Insight into nature. The Great
Eastern. Personal anecdotes
•
CHAPTER XIX.
THE ENGINEER OF THE LONDON AND BIRMINGHAM.
•
PAGE
259
Honourable incident in Mr. Stephenson's practice.
Wager with Brunel. The Dee Bridge. The mechanical
cause of the failure. Major-General Sir C. W. Pasley, R.E. 277
CHAPTER XX.
A CANAL RAILWAY.
Conversion of a canal into a railway. Roman remains.
A typical foreman. A viaduct through a tunnel. A law-
suit. Effect of Thames fog. Grated windows for railway
carriages.
302
CHAPTER XXI.
A GOVERNMENT INSPECTION.
The man of science and the Resident Engineer. Opinion
as to Kyanising. Cannonade of a tunnel roof. An
inspection dinner. Real policy of Government inspection. 320
CHAPTER XXII.
DISPUTES AS TO PAYMENT FOR WORKS.
Difficulties as to cash.
Dispute as to account.
Steps
taken for seizing a line and for retaining possession. The
ejectors discomfited. Close of the dispute
CHAPTER XXIII.
RAILWAY WORK IN IRELAND.
Charm of the Irish manners. Mr. Dargan.
men in Ireland.
Combination and terrorism
•
332
English-
344
•
X
CONTENTS.
{
CHAPTER XXIV.
JUSTICE IN IRELAND.
Paying a footing. Irish juries and justice. Failure
of payment by a sub-contractor. Threatening circum-
stances faced by an Engineer. Case before a board of
county magistrates. Trial of a civil case. Trial of a
criminal case.
Irish views of right and wrong.
CHAPTER XXV.
ENGINEERING IN THE PRINCIPALITY.
PAGE
•
360
Difficulty in reaching Wales. The Holyhead road. The
Carmarthen and Pembroke road. The South Wales
Railway. Its original terminus. Geological character
of the country. Milford Haven
CHAPTER XXVI.
RAILWAY FINANCE.
. 380
Mode of executing work, by day or by piece. Form
of specifications and of schedules. Mr. Brunel's specifi-
cations. Unjust oppression of a contractor, and its con-
sequence. Cost of the railways of the United Kingdom. 397
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE FUTURE OF ENGINEERING.
Character of the work on railways. Causes of over
expenditure. Social change from 1760 to 1868. Com-
munications still requisite to be completed. The province
of the Civil Engineer. The economy of labour. Pro-
duction and transmission of material. The function of
the spade.
•
€ 412
2
PRELIMINARY CHAPTER.
THE AUTHOR TO THE READER.
THE main part of the following pages had been
written before the author had the opportunity
of perusing those very interesting "Lives of
Engineers," which were published during a long
absence on his part from this country. Before
placing the manuscript in the hands of the
publishers, however, it became necessary to read
the volumes of Mr. Smiles, in order to see
whether there had been any unintentional inter-
ference with the manor of a gentleman who had
so ably vindicated his right to be considered
an historian of Engineering.
In addition to the pleasure and advantage of
the perusal of the works in question, the author
xii
PRELIMINARY CHAPTER.
of the following sketches arrived at the con-
viction, that no possible conflict could occur
between publications of such a different cha-
racter. The volumes of Mr. Smiles are literary
and historic. Their author has had recourse to
the elements of narration that lay ready to
the diligent hand, but he has not written
either as an eye-witness, or as an Engineer.
The following recollections, on the contrary,
are almost exclusively original and personal.
They come now, for the first time, before the
public. No incident, so far as the writer is
aware, has been before published, with the ex-
ception of the newspaper reports of some of
the Irish trials. It is certain that the greater
part, if not the whole, of the matter must be
And it is hoped that it will not be
found altogether devoid of interest.
new.
It has been the wish of the writer to avoid
giving pain to anyone. The greater number
of the men of whom mention is made in these
pages, are now beyond the reach of praise
or of attack. In those instances in which a
personal anecdote tends to raise the estimate
already formed of an eminent man, names
have been frankly given. In those cases in
PRELIMINARY CHAPTER.
xiii
which a regard for truth has compelled the
author to draw the unfavourable features of a
portrait, not only has the name been withheld,
but it is the hope, as it has been the effort, of
the writer, that such reticence has been used, that
the feelings of no private friend or relative can
be hurt, and that those only shall recognise the
truth of the narrative, who, having themselves
had professional acquaintance with the subjects,
will fully coincide with what has been said.
Even of those old brother subalterns, alas! the
number now left is very small.
Death has reaped a rich harvest among the
men, who came to the fore when we entered on
the construction of our railway system. Robert
Stephenson and his contemporaries died, full of
honour and not unrewarded by wealth, but barren
as to length of days. The iron frame and noble
intelligence of Isambard Kingdom Brunel suc-
cumbed to his contempt for the laws of health.
He crowded the activity of a long life into a
few short years, and his unresting devotion to
his profession, made him a victim, in middle
manhood, to the infirmity of age. Very few
men are now among us who entered the pro-
fession before the period when the writer was
xiv
PRELIMINARY CHAPTER.
•
an articled pupil on the London and Bir-
mingham Railway.
At that time a new feature was becoming
apparent in English literature. In the columns
of the Morning Chronicle appeared, from time
to time, articles with the signature of "Boz,"
which gave descriptions of scenes and grades
of English society which were new, except for
incidental reference, to the writer of fiction. The
taste of the public welcomed the new essay,
and a light periodical literature has been the
result, which has accustomed the majority of
readers to the admiration of a sort of Dutch
painting in words, and to the preference of
descriptions of what is really actual and life-
like, however humble, to that which was for-
merly thought the nobler province of fiction.
From this newly originated form of chronicle,
the chosen ground of the novelists of the
second portion of the nineteenth century, the
scenes witnessed by those who introduced our
existing railways into the districts once tra-
versed by well-appointed coaches, have hitherto
escaped. Engineers and contractors have made
their appearance in the pages of the novelist,
but they have been, for the most part, the
PRELIMINARY CHAPTER.
XV
offspring of imagination, and not the transcript
of actual life. And as all fiction grasps the
mind only in proportion to its resemblance to
fact, it may chance that, to many readers,
incidents of actual occurrence at a period of
social transition, and records of a state of
society strange to those who have grown up
since England was bound together by the iron
net of railways, will not be without a certain
charm. Nor is the object of the author exclu-
sively to amuse. It is his hope that some infor-
mation, not altogether worthless, and some
results of reflection, not altogether without value,
may be found in the following pages.
The very flattering reception which the re-
viewers, almost without a single exception,
have given to the author's Italian Reminis-
cences, has emboldened him now to offer to the
public his recollections of English Engineers.
It is a grateful task to refer to a first reception,
which has encouraged a second appearance; and
it is the hope of the writer, that anecdotes of
Stephenson and of Brunel, of engineering, and
of railway warfare and advance, and of the
revolution effected by the introduction of rail-
ways into England, Wales, and Ireland, will
xvi
PRELIMINARY CHAPTER.
not be less attractive than tales of Ferdinand
and of Francis of Naples, of Garibaldi and the
English legion, and of the struggle between
civilization and the Papacy.
It is proper to state that the Railway Regu-
lation Act of 1868, which comes into full
operation on 1st April, 1869, empowers the
Board of Trade to authorize the Construction
of Light Railways, on the two sole conditions,
that the maximum weight to be borne on a
pair of wheels shall be eight tons, and the
maximum speed, twenty-five miles per hour.
But this provision, unless attended by a change
in standing orders, does not authorize the appli-
cation to Parliament for power to construct a
railway, originally intended to be "Light." It
is a boon to existing Companies, but it is
only an admission of the fact that such a
boon ought to be extended to the public.
November 16, 1868.
Personal Recollections
OF
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
CHAPTER I.
A COUNTRY TOWN BEFORE THE RAILWAY ERA.
THE nineteenth century had just run one-third
of its course. The reigning county belle was
beginning to think it inconvenient that she had
been born with the century, so that the date
anno domini recalled to all who were in the
secret her exact age; not that she had any good
reason for displeasure, for she had already made
two ventures in the lottery of matrimony, and on
the second occasion had secured a high prize,-
as far at all events as fortune was concerned,-
for incomes of two thousand a year were less
common at that time, and in that part of the
world, than may now be the case. The excite-
B
2
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
ment caused by the debating and by the passing
of the Reform Bill, and by the county elections
connected with the contest had subsided, after
having culminated in an unprecedented exhi-
bition of rustic sports, including jumping in
sacks, climbing a soapy pole, and catching a
pig by the well-soaped tail, and in a display
of fireworks suited to the gravity of the occasion.
The little country town in question had therefore
subsided into its usual state of dull and un-
eventful repose. It was not a spot possessing
in itself any peculiar charms, although it lay
in the neighbourhood of three of the finest parks
that adorn the island. The route of the Bir-
mingham mail, crossing the river and mill course
by two bridges, ascended a long straight street,
the chief peculiarity of which was, that about
every third house seemed to bear the sign of
a tavern, hotel, or ale house. The church
boasted a large shapeless tower, disfigured by
roughcast, from the centre of which arose a ridi-
culously small and disproportionate spire. The
Baptist meeting-house, after the modest fashion
of former days, was hidden amid a group of
poorer houses, at some distance from what was
dignified by the name of the "High Street," and
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
3
was only accessible by three lanes or alleys,
which, in wet and muddy weather, were so
emulous of discomfort as to be about equally
impassable. But the freedom of private judg
ment was evinced by a third edifice, about the
size of a good-sized room, but built in the form
of the Noah's ark of the toy shops, which bore on
its diminutive pediment a designation, implying
that its frequenters were the sole exceptions to
the general immorality and blindness of their
neighbours. The high priest of this self-con-
tented company, at the time to which we refer,
exercised, six days in the week, the art of a shoe-
maker, and announced himself on his signboard
as "Fitall, from London." I hope his sermons
were better than his boots, for I have yet a
painful remembrance of being persuaded by his
eloquence into being measured for a first pair
of Wellingtons, and being further persuaded,
when they turned out to be at the same time
much too large and much too small, to persevere
in wearing them, the result of which was an
injury to the instep, that interfered with comfort
for a considerable time. Passing the Antinomian
ark, passing the large corn mill recently rebuilt,
(out of which two dusty miller's men were con-
B 2
4
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
stantly peering or passing, and around which
gambolled a large flock of tumbler pigeons),
running up by Wheatsheaf, Compasses, Odd
Fellows' Arms, Leathersellers' Arms, Rose and
Crown, George, and innumerable other signs,
passing the long, low market-house, room above,
and open pillared space below, leaving to the
left the shady gardens of the vicarage, and the
adjoining churchyard elms, you came to a few
comfortable houses of respectable proportions,
standing in their own gardens and grounds, all
adorned by fine timber, and then at a cross
road leading from the abbey and town of the
first English martyr, to a noble park where once
stood a succursal of the monastery, the town came
to an end. The inhabitants of the spot troubled
themselves but little with the proceedings of
their neighbours, for then, and even to the
present time, they kept themselves entirely clear
of the perturbation caused by inviting lodgers
from the metropolis. The hours of the single
mail coach, that ran through the town, were so
inconveniently early and late, that it rarely took
a local passenger. A stage coach ran from a
country town a few miles further, and this,
with the horses and vehicles of the resident
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
5
gentry and tradesfolk, fully supplied the require-
ments of the place. Two of the magnates of the
place kept chariots, a gig or tilbury was the
fashion of the generality of those who drove.
The two or three religious communities-for
there were rumours of the existence of a "Metho-
dist interest,” located in a yet more secluded spot
than their Baptist rivals-lived in a peaceful state
of non-intercourse with one another, the wrath of
the honourable and reverend vicar, a parson of
the fast old country stamp, being reserved for
those whom he designated as "devil-dodgers,"
that is, persons who went to church in the
morning, and to chapel in the evening. Under
this discountenance, devil-dodging was a very
rare offence. The vicar was a figure not readily
to be forgotten, not easily to be realized by the
rising generation. A tall, hale, portly man, who
being older than the century, had come into
some trouble through taking the. advice of his
hairdressers. Whether it was, as he said, that
his hair was too red, or whether it was with
a view to obliterate any of the foot-prints of
time, his reverence had made experiments on his
locks, which resulted in his appearance one
Sunday in the reading desk, with hair of a
6
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
brilliant green, and on a subsequent occasion,
of a lovely purple. He rode very straight across
country, but out of a conventional respect for
the cloth, usually hunted in pepper-and-salt.
In fact he discredited the tale,-that on one
occasion a funeral had been for some time
awaiting his ministrations, when he rode up to
the churchyard with the dogs, put the surplice
on over his scarlet coat, committed the brother to
the dust, threw off the surplice, and harkaway
after Reynard, by the remark, that it must be
a lie, as he always wore a mixture. To cards
he was extremely devoted, although with only
ordinary luck. In other respects he had been
wild, but then, as he always observed, every
apparent inconsistency between his habits and
his profession was the fault of his father, who
put him into the church, for which he had no
inclination, merely to fill the family living; and
what else could he do? So he made a point,
during the London season, of returning from his
noble sister-in-law's Saturday evening card table
in good time for the morning service on the
Sunday; and if the coach was late, or he failed
to secure a promised lift, or in any way a little
exceeded the limits of punctuality, the parish
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
7
clerk, a congenial spirit, would aid him by put-
ting back the church clock. The honourable vicar
was generally accompanied by one or two very
large dogs, one of which has been known to pro-
voke irreverent remarks from the congregation by
making his appearance in the pulpit, while his
master was in the reading desk below, and
placing his paws upon the cushion. He occupied
much of the time spent on his cure, as he grew
less fond of hunting, in attending to a fishery,
by means of which he contrived to establish a
feud with most of the mill-owners on the river: ;
and where the curious might admire a minnow
tank ingeniously constructed out of six tomb-
stones, removed, surreptitiously it was thought,
from the churchyard. For the rest, the Honour-
able and Reverend, as he was usually called,
employed an agent to collect his tithes and Easter
dues. He once threatened an importunate
tradesman to get himself made a bankrupt as a
fishmonger. His life was consistent to its close,
and it was always said of him, that he was no
one's enemy but his own.
There had been an exciting conflict between
this honourable vicar and his diocesan. The
bishop, rather a reforming man for those days,
8
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
་
recommended him to keep a curate. The vicar
really could not afford it. The bishop insisted,
with no better result. The bishop nominated
a curate and sent him down to the parish. The
vicar stood siege, stood in the breach on every
occasion, and resolutely kept both bishop and
curate at bay. On one occasion, having trusted
rather too implicitly to the operations of his ally
the clerk, on the face of the church clock, the
vicar was
was so far behind time, on a Sunday
morning, that the intrusive curate entered the
vestry, indued the surplice, and was actually
walking to the reading desk, when the former
arriving in the very nick of time, popped into
the desk unrobed, began the service at once, and
sending an attendant for the surplice, put it on
then and there as he continued his ministration.
With all that was wild and quaint about the
character of this reverend gentleman, he knew
how to assert his own position, on occasions, with
adroitness, as well as with dignity. Unlike as he
may be to the clergy of a later generation, he
was but a remanet of those for which the county
had formerly been notorious. The Evangelical
clergyman who was appointed about this time
to an adjoining rectory, in the gift of one of
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
9
the Oxford colleges, was said to have been the
first sincere and earnest preacher beneath its roof
since the Reformation. So that between the
example of the vicar, and the thick growth of
houses of refreshment, it was not matter of
surprise that the Sunday was rather honoured in
the breach than in the observance in the town.
Some of the graver inhabitants saw room for
much improvement. A well-known literary
character who resided in the neighbourhood, a
man loved by all who knew him, not more
for his facile pen and his ready rhetoric as a
public speaker, than for the blameless purity of
his life, took part in the little reformatory move-
ment; and a public meeting was convened, at
which a neighbouring nobleman, who was also a
Count of the Kingdom of Prussia, and held
the ancient though obsolete dignity of Chief-
Justice in Eyre, consented to preside. The room
was filled, and proceedings were about to com-
mence, when general astonishment was caused by
the unexpected appearance of the vicar. The
conveners of the meeting looked at one another,
expecting some grotesque scene, or some serious
opposition. The audience looked like a flock
of sheep startled by the sudden presence of
10
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
the wolf. The Chief-justice himself looked posed.
All were astray but the vicar, who coolly ad-
vanced to the head of the table, and commenced
an address to his lordship and his parishioners.
"On such an occasion as the present," said he,
"in which I am naturally so deeply interested, I
might have ground to quarrel with my good
friends who have brought you together, for
supposing that I would allow anyone but myself
to take the chair, and to give all the support
of my position to your very laudable object.
The only person to whom I could cede my right,
has, however, most kindly condescended to come
among us; and I have very much pleasure in
moving that the Right Honorable the Earl takes
the chair." The motion was carried by accla-
mation, and the vicar at once held his own,
and put everyone in good humour. It had so
chanced that it had never occurred to the most
sanguine of the reformers to expect anything but
opposition from the Honourable and Reverend,
who thus ably gave a lesson in etiquette to the
excellent nobleman, whom he privately and
irreverently denominated "Old Pickaxe," adding
that he would have been better employed praying
among his cucumber frames with his own gar-
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
11
deners, than interfering in the parish. So the
conveners of the meeting were not inexcusable
in their omission.
Through this tranquil and old-fashioned spot,
at the date above indicated, rumour spread the
intelligence that a railway was about to be
constructed from London to Birmingham. What
a railway was, and by what new and unheard-of
evils it would destroy the repose of the country,
no resident had any distinct idea. Some of the
readers of the two or three copies of the Times
that passed through the post-office were aware,
rather as matter of abstract historic announce-
ment than of local interest, that in the preceding
year a bill for this purpose had been thrown
out by the House of Lords, in consequence of
the opposition of a noble Earl, half-brother to the
vicar, through whose park Robert Stephenson,
following the line selected by Telford for the
Grand Junction Canal, had proposed to lead the
railway. A second bill had been brought for-
ward by which, at the expense of heavy works,
the park and ornamental grounds of the Earl
had been avoided, the line crossing the valley
of the Colne by an embankment of what was, in
those days, unprecedented magnitude, and thus
12
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
boring beneath the woods, at a distance from
the mansion, by an equally unprecedented tunnel
of nearly a mile in length. These matters,
however, only concerned the professional advisers
of his lordship, and the announcement of the
speedy commencement of the railway in the
neighbourhood, was received by most persons
merely with that sort of uninterested curiosity
with which we now regard some unusually
enigmatic placard, by which the art or science
of the bill-sticker endeavours to call the jaded
attention to the announcement that is about to
be made.
At last one or two strange faces appeared in
the town, and men in leathern leggings, dragging
a long chain, and attended by one or two
country labourers armed with bill-hooks, were
remarked as trespassing in the most unwarrant-
able manner over pasture land, standing crops,
copse and cover; actually cutting gaps in the
hedges, through which they climbed and dragged
the land-chain. Then would follow another
intruder, bearing a telescope set on three legs,
which he erected with the most perfect coolness
wherever he thought fit, peering through it at
a long white staff, marked with unintelligible
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
13
hieroglyphics, which was borne
which was borne by another
labourer, and moved or held stationary in accord-
ance with a mysterious code of telegraphic signals
made by the hand.
The farmers, naturally indignant, ordered
these intruders from their fields. The engineers,
for such they were, took but little notice. The
farmers proceeded to threats. The ringleader
of the invaders produced a red book, folded in an
oblong form, from the voluminous pocket of his
velveteen jacket, and offered it to the irate
farmer as a sedative, informing him that it was
the Act of Parliament by authority of which he
was acting, and further specifying that it was
a King's printer's copy of the Act, and therefore
was legal evidence. The farmers, at their wits'
ends, did all in their power to rout and
baffle the intruders, but in vain. One thing
alone remained for them to do, and often they
positively swore that they would have recourse
to that extreme step-they would shoot the
intruders. But the latter calmly replied that
that was no business of theirs, and the farmers
did not draw trigger. The blank look of petri-
fied astonishment which crept over the furious
face of an irate farmer, when his threat of instant
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
death, enforced by the production of a weapon,
was met by the calm rejoinder that the result
was his look-out, and not that of his tormentor,
would have been a fine study for a great come-
dian. It was so ridiculous as to be almost
sublime.
The next step in the invasion proved a yet
further aggravation to the farmers, although it
was one which, for the first time in the course
of the contest, afforded them the pleasure
of retaliation. Loads of oak pegs, accurately
squared, planed, and pointed, were driven to
the fields, and the course of the intended railway
was marked out by driving two of these pegs,
one left standing about four inches above the
surface to indicate position, and a smaller one
driven lower to the ground a few inches off on
which to take the level, at every interval of
twenty-two yards. It is obvious that the opera-
tions of farming afforded many an opportunity
for an unfriendly blow at these pegs. Ploughs
and harrows had a remarkable tendency to be-
come entangled in them; cart wheels ran foul
of them; sometimes they disappeared altogether.
A mute and irregular warfare on the subject of
the pegs was generally protracted until the last
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
15
outrage was perpetrated by the agents of the
company; the land was purchased for the rail-
way.
Flying parties of surveyors were now suc-
ceeded by the regular staff. A tall, very tall
young man, upwards of six feet high, though
losing somewhat from a slight stoop and a low-
crowned hat, was found to have actually rented
one of the few available houses in the town.
He was a man whom no one set eyes on without
wishing to see more of him. A grave face, with
a sweet and yet dignified expression, very dark
eyes, lineaments such as those to be found in
the drawings of Westall, a forehead not high,
but broader than any often met with in por-
traiture, in sculpture, or in life; the dress of a
decent mechanic, the air of an educated and
well-bred man, and no gloves: these were some
of the outward marks of a man who has since
made his mark in the country. He was one of
a family, in a northern English county, distin-
guished for the talent of its members. He was
educated as a surgeon, but on coming of age
declined to follow his paternal profession, and,
after an engagement under Ericson, the inventor
of the Monitors, during which he had a share in
"
16
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
conducting those experiments on the Liverpool
and Manchester Railway in which the speed
attained by the locomotives so much exceeded
the expectations of their constructors, became one
of the earliest subalterns of Robert Stephenson.
The colleague and senior officer of this engineer
was a man considerably older, and rather of
the stamp of the old country surveyor, or the
engineers of the school of Telford, than of a
mechanical turn. His shrewd grey eye, half
inquisitive, half defiant, twinkled with apparent
love of fun. He soon devolved the out-door
work on his assistant, although the office-work
at the station was light, the drawings being
prepared and the principal accounts kept at the
engineer-in-chief's office in St. John's Wood.
These gentlemen had arrived to superintend the
works of the great line of Railway, for which
contracts had been taken. Before long each of
them had added a pupil to Mr. Stephenson's
staff. The younger of these gentlemen lived to
succeed that famous engineer as engineer-in-
chief of the London and North Western Railway;
with the other the reader may become better
acquainted before the close of these pages.
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
CHAPTER II.
PREPARATIONS FOR A CHANGE.
In a country-town where almost everyone knows
as much, or more, about his neighbours' business
as about his own, the arrival and establishment
of two civil engineers was accepted as an outward
and visible sign that, for good or for evil, the
great railway experiment was about actually to
be made. Before long, one or two keen-visaged,
weather-beaten Yorkshire and Northumberland
men, neither graziers nor farmers, nor mechanics,
but seeming to possess some resemblance to each
of these active classes, found means of establishing
themselves in roomy farm-houses, where the rick-
yard soon began to assume the appearance of a
carpenter's yard. Then men set to work in a
field very near the mail coach road, where the
hill dropped rapidly to the valley, in constructing
waggons of a form utterly inconceivable either to
a farmer or to a carrier. Cast iron wheels, formed
C
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
with the flange which is now so familiar to every
loiterer at a railway station, but which was then
an unexplained puzzle to most folk, were firmly
keyed on to solid axles; a ponderous oak frame-
work was fixed on the axles, and a special
provision was introduced, for tilting up the
large shallow tray which rested on that frame-
work. A stout, hale, well-humoured Yorshireman
stood or sat in this field from early morning till
sunset, and inspected the progress of the waggon
with a never-flagging interest. People came to
stare at him as much as at his labourers.
After a while the field in question, and a broad
strip of land reaching away over the country
north and south, were enclosed with a stout and
ponderous frame of oaken posts and pine rails,
a fence admired by agriculturists, and greatly
misliked by sportsmen. Then long trains of
brick-carts and timber-carriages commenced a
service from the nearest canal wharf, and piles of
bricks, and heaps of half-wrought freestone from
Yorkshire quarries, began to accumulate near the
waggon-building field. Then there was a great
field-day of the engineers, a display of lines and
levels and measuring tapes, an arbitrary infringe-
ment on the turnpike road, and the foundations
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
19
of the great new viaduct were commenced.
It
was necessary to press this work as rapidly as
possible, as some million and more cubic yards of
embankment had to be carried over it and tipped
to form the southern portion of the great Colne
Valley Embankment. For seventeen feet the
workmen had to sink, before arriving at a
foundation sufficiently firm to sustain the weight
of the piers. If that was how railways were made,
people thought the work was simple enough.
Some two miles northward of this starting-point,
the Northumbrian had commenced his operations.
A tunnel of a mile long was a serious undertaking
for the engineering practice of that day, and a
costly, and as it proved, an unnecessary, method
was adopted for ensuring the accuracy of the
direction of the human moles. The line through
the tunnel was straight, and had been set out and
pegged over the surface, as in other portions of
the route.
•
At every furlong in length a shaft had been
sunk, with the intention of opening a drift way
(a small heading) from end to end, and thus
running both line and level through under
ground, before commencing the main excavation
and lining of the tunnel, which it was intended to
c 2
20
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
carry on through three of these shafts, properly
enlarged, using the others for ventilation. So far
nothing could be better. But concurrently with
this orderly arrangement of the miners came the
over-careful science of the engineers. Three
small observatories were erected, at equal distances
on the centre line, and a solid brick pillar,
detached from the wooden floor and staircase,
which divided the interior of the observatory into
stages, was built in each. A telegraph was
attached to the roof, and a highly finished and
accurate transit instrument, from the well-known
hands of Troughton and Simms, was sent down to
do duty in the wood pierced by the tunnel, and
to check the lines dropped down the shafts to give
the direction below. While the men of science
rose in the air above, the practised northern
miners bored below; the drift-way, carried on
from eight piers at once, made more rapid
progress than did the
than did the slow pedestal of the
astronomic instrument; and the chief difficulty in
ranging the line, arose from the draught that
rushed through the heading when complete, the
constant ascent and descent of inconsiderate
workmen, or unwelcome visitors, and the knocking
up of the engineers with acute rheumatism. Thus
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
21
it came to pass that the elegant and costly transit
instrument was used once and only once; that its
cross hairs cut exactly on the lines that had been
dropped down the shafts; and that, a week after
the completion of the headway,—which week had
been spent in knocking off elbows here, raising
the roof there, and lowering the floor in another
place, with occasional loss of time and of temper,
as some intruder came blundering through the
long narrow cavern,-the pupil of the sub-engineer,
the only one of the staff left on his legs, had the
extreme satisfaction of viewing the red signal
lamp, fixed at the north end of the head-way, from
the southern extremity, over a regular and exact
line of candles, one close to each shaft. The
question of the direction of the tunnel was thus
solved, and the chief care now requisite was to
ascertain the accurate range of the levels.
In 1833, works which are now regarded
with comparative indifference, engaged the very
anxious care of those who had the responsibility
of designing them. Two or three skew arches
with stone voussoirs, a road and a river viaduct,
one or two road and occupation bridges per mile,
and a mile of tunnel through the chalk, appeared
to be an immense quantity of work, and the
22
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
monthly measurement and estimate of the fencing,
earthwork, and masonry, over twelve or fourteen
miles, involved a great consumption of time.
Robert Stephenson, in those days, almost lived
on the line, and the first occasion on which he
visited the portion, in question after the contracts
were let, accompanied by the Secretary and by
four or five of the Directors, was the twelfth time
that he had walked the whole distance from
London to Birmingham. The personal appearance
of that fortunate engineer is not unfamiliar to
many of those, whose eyes never rested on his
energetic countenance, frank bearing, and falcon-
like glance. It is rarely that a civilian has so free
and almost martial an address; it is still more rare
for such features to be seen in any man who has
not inherited them from a line of gently-nurtured
ancestors. In the earlier days of Robert Stephen-
son, he charmed all who came in contact with him.
Kind and considerate to his subordinates, he was
not without occasional outbursts of fierce northern
passion, nor always superior to prejudice. He knew
how to attach people to him: he knew also how to
be a firm and persistent hater. During the whole
construction of the London and Birmingham line,
his anxiety was so great as to lead him to very
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
23
frequent recourse to the fatal aid of calomel. At
the same time his sacrifice of his own rest, and
indeed of necessary care of his health, was such
as would have soon destroyed a less originally
fine constitution. He has been known to start
on the outside of the mail, from London for
Birmingham, without a great coat, and that
on a cold night; and there can be little doubt
that his early and lamented death was has-
tened by this ill-considered devotion to the
service of his employers, and the establishment
of his own fame.
The elder Stephenson had no share in the
actual direction of the works of the London and
Birmingham, and as his son found himself sit
firmer in the saddle, he showed at times some-
thing of his father's determined and autocratic
temper. He met his people with a frank and
winning smile; his questioning was rapid, pointed
and abrupt, and his eyes seemed to look through
you, as you replied. Very jealous of anything
like opposition or self-assertion, very unjust at
times in suspecting such a disposition, he was
disarmed by submission, and quieted by very
plain speaking. On one occasion he had detected
what he thought, and probably truly thought, to
24
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
be a notorious instance of "scamping" on the
part of one of his contractors. He sent orders to
the man to meet him on the works, and coming
up rapidly as he caught sight of him, burst out,
"So-and-so, you are a most infernal scoundrel!"
"Well, sir," meekly replied the delinquent, "I
know I am." Robert Stephenson's lecture was at
an end, and the man was dismissed with some-
thing like a friendly warning.
The lively interest with which a young man,
on the threshold of his profession, watched every
detail of the work of which he had practical
superintendence, will not be shared by the reader
after a lapse of two or three-and-thirty years. No
great point of professional practice arose on this
portion of our second English line of railway,
unless it were the development and practical
execution of the theory of the skew arch, for
which, at that time, the engineer was referred to
very elementary works. The conception of each
arch-stone, or course of bricks, as forming
portions of the thread of a large screw, the pitch
of which was determined by the angle at which
the centre lines of road and railway intersected,
and by the radius of the cylindrical portion of
the arch, admits of very precise and simple
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
25
determination. In these bridges (then new, as
executed on so large a scale), models were made in
deal of each voussoir, and when put together, and
secured by a strap, the single line of arch stones
stood perfectly firm in its miniature representation.
The working of the stones themselves, costly as
they were, at so long a distance of canal and
common road transport from the quarry, was thus
greatly simplified by the freedom with which any
measurement could be taken from the model.
The lines of the intervening courses of brickwork
were marked on the sheeting of the centering
by the aid of a flexible straight-edge, and the
giant screws twisted themselves into place, without
a check and without an error. Blackened by
smoke they yet remain, as evidence of careful and
sound workmanship, although in the present
state of our experience the space would be spanned
by iron instead of by masonry.
One point, however, of this early practice
demands attention, because it is one that may
often recur, and the dearly-purchased experience
of 1835 should not be lost sight of. It has been
mentioned that three of the shafts of the tunnel
were intended for working shafts. At each of
these, first a horse-gin, and afterwards a small
26
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
steam-engine, was erected, for the purpose of
raising and lowering the skips or buckets. The
head-way, or small central tunnel, some four feet
six in height, by three feet or three feet six in
width, ran off from the bottom of the shaft, which
was nine feet in diameter, and properly lined
with timber framework. A difference of opinion
arose between the resident engineers, as to the
safest method of widening out the tunnel to its
full dimensions immediately under the shaft.
When the excavation was complete, and as the
brickwork lining was keyed in, a cast-iron curb or
frame had to be built into the top of the arch, on
which, in its turn, the permanent brick lining of
the shaft was to be supported. The method
adopted in the first two cases was that suggested by
the younger engineer, namely, to leave the shaft
itself, and some six or eight feet on either side of
it, with as little disturbance as possible; to sink it
to the full depth; and then to run a narrow head-
way on the bottom level, and, at the distance of
two or three lengths of centering (nine feet
each) from the shaft, to open and complete some
thirty or forty feet of tunnel in each direction.
The ground being thus firmly supported, the
miners worked back towards the shaft, and finally
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
27
excavated and lined the shaft length itself, and
fixed the iron curb in perfect safety.
In the third shaft, however, and after a change
in the personnel of the engineering direction at
this spot, a different system was adopted. It
was determined to open the shaft length in the
first instance, and to line it and fix the curb before
opening out any further portion of the tunnel. A
vein of sand showed itself through the chalk in
the side of this shaft, but such faults were not un-
common in the tunnel. It unfortunately happened
that during the operation the side of the shaft
came in with a run, and nine unfortunate men
were buried in the ruins. Besides this lamentable
loss of life, the delay and evil occasioned by the
accident were excessive, further danger was
incurred, and the only resource left was to open
the whole space of some thirty feet by forty
feet square, up to the very surface; to build
in the arch as if it had been a bridge, and
to increase the masonry at this point to a large
amount. The experience was dearly bought, and
as the expense was borne not by the Contractor,
but by the Company, it is evident that Mr.
Stephenson did not consider it to be a case of
ordinary casualty covered by the contract.
•
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
CHAPTER III.
THE FIRST RAILWAY APPROACH TO LONDON.
THE metropolitan terminus of the London and
Birmingham Railway, according to their first Act
of Parliament, was at Camden Town. A second
Act was obtained, authorizing an extension to the
site of the present station near Euston-square.
Although no more than thirty-three years have
elapsed, since this extension line was constructed,
the transformation which has been effected in the
locality is one that it is hard to realize. Since
that date a new city has arisen on the site of
fields and parks.
The Swiss Cottage, now a main starting-point
for omnibuses and cabs, pending the completion
of the railway that runs beneath the Finchley-
road, then stood alone in wide and shaded fields,
a real point of excursion for the Londoners who
sought a few hours of country air. The Eyre
Arms, a building then standing equally solitary,
was occupied by the staff of Robert Stephenson,
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
29
and was the head-quarters of that gentleman as
engineer-in-chief. Green, unbroken country lay
between. The march of building had, in some
places, crossed the Regent's Canal, and the
attempts at villa residences on its bank, far from
presenting their present dingy and depressing
appearance, were not disagreeable places of abode.
St. John's Church, or Chapel, however, marked
the extremity of suburb proper, and one or two
lines of untrodden road, covered with broken
stone, were all the indications presented of a
future extension of the dense mass of dwelling
houses, towards the yet unbroken border of Sir
Thomas Wilson's estate. Unbroken, that is to
say, by actual building, for the piercing of that
property by three lines of railway, has now
pushed the visible suburb closer to Hampstead
than it was, in 1833, to the present termination of
a continuous street. The line from Kilburn to
Camden Town then ran through unbroken
country; and not only so, but the advance of the
Hampstead Road, considered as a street, had been
so limited, that a thin crust of houses, as it were,
only lined its course; and, with the exception of
crossing Park Street and the Hampstead Road
itself, hardly a single house of any respectable
30
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
size was touched by the extension. To Park
Street, the line ran southward through fields of
stiff clay pasture; from Park Street to Hampstead
Road, its site was chiefly occupied by small
and not very well tended market-gardens, and a
little colony of firework makers had their cottages
or rather huts in this intramural desert. South
of the Hampstead Road, the fields and farm
buildings of a great milk purveyor reached
nearly to Seymour Street. The legend of the
spot, and of the day was, that the proprietor of
this establishment had, for a long time, en-
deavoured to maintain on it a thousand cows,
but that, do what he would, he could never
exceed 999, and generally found himself some
ten or twelve short of the round number. The
animals occupied every field, but the main manu-
factory of milk was in the sheds and stables,
where a diet of brewers' grains was thought to
produce the valuable fluid in the largest possible
quantity, although the quality was grievously
inferior to that formed on a grass diet. Indeed
the animals were thought to be so injured by
food resembling, in its effects on their constitution,
that of a constant habit of dram drinking among
their human neighbours, as to be ultimately de-
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
31
canted or distilled into milk, and to yield a copious
supply of unwholesome fluid till they were re-
duced to little more than skin and bone. It is for
agriculturists to decide on the truth of this view;
what is certain is, that a visit to the abode of the
thousand cows was not calculated to give one an
appetite for their milk. It is probable that the
difference between the quantity of milk actually
drawn from the cow, and that daily consumed in
the metropolis, is now supplied by the aid of
inorganic rather than of organic chemistry.
In the two miles of extension from Camden
Town to Euston Square, the engineers had to solve
nearly every problem which has subsequently to
that time been encountered by the projectors of
metropolitan railways. The canal had to be
crossed under heavy penalties for interfering with
its traffic. The alteration of an inch or two of
level in the great highways was a matter of keen
debate in committee, and the execution of the
parliamentary conditions was closely watched by
the courteous vigilance of Sir James Mac Adam.
The sewers had to be avoided or provided for.
Nearly half the bridges that were constructed
were insisted on in order to provide for future
roads, and intended streets and crescents.
The
32
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
gradients were of, what was at that time con-
sidered, unparalleled severity, so much so that
the idea of running trains propelled by loco-
motives from the terminus was laid aside; a
powerful winding engine was erected at Camden
Town, and a cumbrous but well-considered
apparatus of ropes and pullies was laid down, in
order to draw the trains up the inclines of 1 in
75, and 1 in 66. The main difficulty which,
at this stage of our scientific knowledge, was
found to press on the engineers of the line, was
the design and construction of a telegraph, which,
in all states of the weather, and by night as well
as by day, should instantly communicate the
orders of the station-master at Euston, to the
engine-men at Camden Town. Mr. Wheatstone
was then but commencing the experiments, which
have led to the perfect solution of a problem, im-
practicable to science without the aid of electricity.
The first efforts made in the study which has
led to our present Atlantic cables, were directed
to the transmission of musical tones through
wires.
It may readily be supposed that the indignant
astonishment, with which county owners and
occupiers regarded the authorized trespass of the
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
33
railway pioneers, was not greater than that
evinced by metropolitan and suburban residents.
Not rarely has it occurred for a respectable
inhabitant of Mornington Crescent to find the
peace of his family disturbed by the announce-
ment, that strange men were clambering over his
garden wall; and on sallying forth, indignant, to
demand the reason of the intrusion, to find them
coolly engaged, with hammers and cold chisels, in
boring a hole through the wall of his tool-house or
summer-house. One sufferer in particular dis-
charged many torrents of fiery indignation on the
devoted heads of Mr. Stephenson's staff. Public
sympathy, it is to be feared, would even now
rather be on the side of the residents than on that
of the intruders. The gentleman in question was
a schoolmaster, and eminent for that high respect
for his own personal dignity which, from the days
of Dionysius to those of Dr. Parr, all independent
educators and chastisers of youth have been known
to cherish. His school was not large, but it
appeared to be respectable, and his house was
rendered more attractive by the presence of a
sprightly black-eyed daughter. It so chanced
that this house occupied a corner of one of the
great roads crossed by the railway; and that an
D
34
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
annex of one story, a hall or a breakfast room,
with a flat-leaded roof, lay in the very centre
line. To complete the survey on the large
scale of 80 inches to the mile, which was the first
duty of the Staff when the Act for the Euston.
Extension had received the royal assent, it was
necessary repeatedly to invade this gentleman's
premises, to cut holes in his garden-wall, and
to make use of his very convenient "leads "
as a station for the theodolite. For the sake
of convenience and despatch, the surveying party
always carried a short and handy ladder; and
as the Act of Parliament authorized entrance
on all the scheduled property for the purpose
of surveying, the orders were, to take what is
called "French leave," to proceed in the most
straightforward and rapid manner, and to take
no notice of occupiers unless they interfered with
the survey. Whether this was the most courteous
mode of procedure is not the question. It was
legal, and it was a great saving of time. On
a calm retrospect of the pros and cons of the
question, it seems that courtesy for the most part
would have been wasted, and time with it.
However that may be, it could hardly have
been very agreeable for the worthy tutor, while
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
35
perhaps enforcing, with sonorous voice and uplifted
finger, the due sequence of τετυφα, τετυφε, τετύφοιμι,
to find the window of his school-room suddenly
darkened, and, on looking up to ascertain the
cause, to behold on the leaden flat, immedi-
ately outside the room and level with the floor
on which stood his wondering scholars, a pair
of very long legs descending from beneath a blue
macintosh cape.
The back of this figure was
respectfully presented to the inmates of the
house, as a sign that no intrusion was intended
on their privacy, while the owner of the legs and
one or two assistants were carefully fixing a theo-
dolite on the flat, and marking with penknives
the exact spot occupied by each of the three legs
of the instrument, for the sake of exactitude and
of despatch on future occasions. The first scene
of this kind would probably have afforded the
finest study for the observer of human nature,
as, after repeated rehearsals, the eloquence of the
man of learning was apt to partake too much of
the vituperative to be strictly rhetorical,—regard-
ing rhetoric, as Aristotle teaches us to do, as
the art of persuasion.
The window is thrown open; the master, in
flowing dressing-gown, advances majestically
D 2
36
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
66
towards the intruders; the amazed school-boys,
delighted with the "lark," crowd in a semicircle
behind him; the half-scared, half-indignant mis-
tress appears at an adjoining window; the pretty
daughter makes good use of her fine eyes on the
floor above (as is noted by the engineer's pupils);
the giggling servants crowd on tip-toe in the
yard below.
"Who are you, sir, and how dare
you come on my leads ?" Sir, I am an assist-
ant of Mr. Robert Stephenson, and I am engaged
on a survey for the Euston-grove extension of
the London and Birmingham Railway." "And
what business have you on my premises?"
"The centre line of the railway passes exactly
beneath the plumb bob of my instrument-"
-
"Don't talk to me of plumb-bobs, sir; how
dare you to climb up there, and to have the
impertinence to stare in at my windows?" "If
you will have the kindness to look at this book,
sir "
"Don't talk to me of books; I say,
how dare you come here?" "That is just what
I produced the book to explain, sir-" "What on
earth do you mean, sir?" "I mean, sir, that
this is the Act of Parliament in virtue of which
the officers of the company are authorized to
enter on the properties scheduled in the book of
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
37
"Hang
reference for the purposes of survey."
the officers of the company! and the purposes of
survey! and you too, sir! Once for all, will you
leave my premises immediately?" "I regret
that my duty forbids me to do so, sir; but we
will be as rapid in our work and give you as
little annoyance as possible.” "Then, sir, I shall
instantly send for a policeman."
66
Perhaps that
will be the most satisfactory course, sir. The
policeman will, no doubt, convince you that we
are only doing our duty. - Set that pole a little
to the right." Grand tableau! Young people
seem most highly to appreciate the fun. Doctor
retreats to send for the police.
The fire-work colony met the invasion with
less dignity, but with no less hostility. Among
the occupants of the small market gardens was a
man who bore the name of that great master of
the English tongue, the author of the immortal
66
Pilgrim's Progress." The mantle of his name-
sake or ancestor had so far descended on this
modern Bunyan, that he possessed a rare flow of
vernacular English, and was, on any subject
that deeply stirred him, a born orator. And he
was deeply stirred. Leaning with one hand on
his spade, and waving the other to enforce his
38
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
periods, this man
man would
would harangue at
at once
the offending Engineers and the sympathising
audience, with much the same happily-worded
flow of slightly inaccurate invective which would,
no doubt, if heralded by the press, have secured
him a seat for Rochdale, or for Salford, or for
some great centre of reforming indignation.-
"That the mean and sneaking railroaders should
be afraid to venture near gentlemen's fine houses,
and come with their peep-glasses and pick-axes
to bore holes in poor men's cottages, and trample
down the cabbages and lettuces in his poor
little bit of garden, was a fine pass that Old
England had come to. Pretty gentlemen, that
you call yourselves, to come clambering over
folks' walls, with your ladders and your hammers,
and your levels, and your bevels, and
your bevels, and your devils,
taking the very roofs from our heads-why,"
concluded Mr. Bunyan, "look here! now I'm
neither wind-tight nor water-tight!"
Another personage appeared at times on the
scene, taking a lively interest in any symptoms
of a row, of whom it is marvellous that no satirist
or moralist of the day ever caught the portrait.
He would have been a fortune to a romance-
writer, for he was an incredible, unimaginable,
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
39
character; or rather, he was such a character as
we have been wont to consider as the offspring
of the most brilliant of human imaginations. He
was the very double of Falstaff. In his size,
his portly rotundity, his merry twinkling grey
eye, his more than
than questionable jokes, his
rollicking merriment, the sort of mingled awe
and pity which he seemed to inspire in the lady,
much his junior, who usually tended his steps,
and who seemed divided between the appre-
hension of what he might say next, and the
conviction that, after all, it could not be worse
than what he had said before, he was the very
knight that Shakspeare drew. An old soldier,
too, he seemed to be. Are there no records of
the passage of so marvellous a dramatic character
over the early scenes of the nineteenth century?
Step by step the feuds were appeased, or
expired from want of fuel. The survey was
finished. The sections were completed. Then for
rapid weeks of indoor-work-designs, working
drawings, specifications. Then a brief pause,
when the completed engineering work was
remitted to the awful recesses occupied by the
Board of Directors; and then the announcement
that Grissell and Peto had contracted for the
40
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
works, at a price amounting pretty closely to the
value of a double line of sovereigns laid, touch-
ing one another, from Camden Town to Euston
Square.
The magnitude and the scientific interest of the
works of the Euston Extension, great as they
were at the time of their execution, have been so
far exceeded in importance by the more recent
efforts of engineering skill, that the subject has
ceased to possess any great interest, except as a
question of the history, or rather of the chronicles,
of construction. The chief work, as regarded
novelty of structure, and also as combining some
degree of architectural pretension with the mere
requisites for strength, was the bridge over the
Regent's Canal. The later and bolder arrange-
ments adopted by Mr. Brunel at Chepstow and at
Saltash, and by Mr. Stephenson at the Menai
Straits, have taken the lustre off the method by
which Mr. Fox, under Mr. Stephenson's approval,
introduced a very great improvement, in this
case, on the then existing plan, of constructing
bridges of respectable span by a combination of
parallel and transverse girders. The chief his-
toric interest attaching to this bridge arises from
the fact of a deplorable accident, which, some
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
41
years later, fully justified the objections raised by
mechanical men to the method of combining cast
and wrought iron employed on some other
portions of Mr. Stephenson's works.
A curious instance of the behaviour of concrete
deserves, however, to be recorded. A consider-
able part of the Euston Extension was carried
through cutting, protected by curved retaining
walls of brick. The experience of the Primrose-
hill tunnel, and the later experience of the walls
in question, show that it would have been the
best economy to throw an invert over the whole
width of cutting, and to have constructed the
walls of such a form as to throw the thrust, to
which their outer surfaces were exposed from
the "creep" (a slow semi-fluid movement of the
London clay), fairly on the line of resistance of
the inverted arch. It has been found necessary
to remedy this omission by the heavy and
unsightly girders, which now strut the retaining
walls from side to side, as a falling house is
retained in the perpendicular by props or ties.
In the original designs for the tunnels on the
London and Birmingham Railway, all the
sections contained inverts, of rather slighter
depth than the arch. In the Watford tunnel,
42
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
through solid chalk, the invert was found to
be altogether unnecessary, and its place was
supplied by ordinary footings to the side walls.
A similar change, which was not only a saving of
a large expense, but a means of very considerably
increasing the rate of progress of the limiting
works of the line, was accordingly attempted in
the Primrose-hill tunnel; but the hard London
clay, though requiring a pick-axe to cut it, soon
showed such unmistakeable menace of rising from
the floor to fill the whole excavated area, that
the original section was re-established. In the
Extension this was unfortunately neglected, and
the result is very palpable to the traveller.
The whole of the retaining walls were built on
a bed of from three to four feet of Thames ballast
concrete, the best available material for the pur-
pose. To secure uniformity of gradient, an iron
bench-mark was driven into every pilaster, and
the level registered to the hundredth part of a foot.
The gentleman who had charge of the operation
found, on checking his book after the works were
in full swing, that the levels were wrong. It was
only by three or four hundredths of a foot that
they varied, but extreme accuracy was desired.
Some alarm was excited, and day after day the
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
43
levels were revised, and always with discordant
results. The instruments were carefully examined :`
no error could be detected in their adjustment,
and moreover the constant use of even backsets and
foresets-that is, of reading at an equal distance
on each side of the observer,-which alone will
neutralise any error in the instrument that is not
of great magnitude, and easy of detection, had
been scrupulously adhered to. The subject
baffled all explanation for some weeks, after which
it was found, that the differences in question
arose from the swelling of the concrete after the
brickwork had been carried up to the plinth of
the wall, at which height the levels were taken;
and that as the disturbance thus caused ceased,
the bench marks all arrived at a perfectly true
gradient, although the absolute height was some
three-hundredths of a foot above that of the same
spot where the level was taken. The experience
may be valuable to those who have to deal with
concrete under untried circumstances.
A very fortunate error led to an unusual, but
by no means unnecessary provision for the traffic
of 1866 in the year 1833. The construction of
works for four lines of rail, through property so
expensive as that leading from Euston Grove,
44
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
would have been thought by the Directors,
and probably by the Engineers, of the earlier
period, to involve an unwarrantable outlay of the
Company's funds, had it not been from the
expectation that the Great Western Railway
would have joined the London and Birmingham
at Wormwood Scrubs, and availed itself of the
Euston Terminus. The great difference of
gauge, among other causes, led to the abandon-
ment of this intention; but the result is that the
London and North Western Railway is better
adapted to the wants of its enormous traffic, than
could otherwise have been the case. The only
reason for regret on the subject is, that the same
necessity was not thought to attach to the
Primrose-Hill tunnel; which, however, was a part
not of the extension, but of the original line.
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
CHAPTER IV.
DEMAND AND SUPPLY OF ENGINEERS.
Bristol,
ports,-
WITH the steady progress of the works of the
London and Birmingham Railway, stimulated as
it was by the unexpected results of the
earlier experiment of the line from Manchester to
Liverpool, and with the rising expectation of
the shareholders, arose the first great impulse
towards a more general system of railway
communication, between the metropolis and the
great centres of trade and of commerce.
Southampton, Dover, Yarmouth, as
Greenwich and Brighton, as centres of coach
traffic, were among the first applicants for
parliamentary powers for this purpose. A
fermentation rose high in 1835, almost like that
which, ten years later, attained such extraordinary
intensity. Here lay the great good fortune
of Mr. Robert Stephenson, who possessed the
signal advantage of a practical acquaintance, from
childhood, with the details of mechanical work of
46
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
all kinds, together with that of a regular education
expressly intended to qualify him for the pro-
fession of a civil Engineer. He thus stood almost
alone, and owed, no doubt, to this favourable con-
junction of circumstances, even more than to his
practical and his scientific acquirements, or to his
knowledge of the world, the eminence which he
so rapidly attained. In this respect he had the
advantage of his great rival Brunel, who, possessed
alike of hereditary constructive genius, of bold
and courageous originality, and of the results of
the most scientific training then attainable, had
in some measure to make his acquaintance with
the practical details of actual work, and with the
best method of dealing with master workmen, at
the cost of his supporters.
But railways were the cry of the hour, and
Engineers were the want of the day. If they
were not to be found ready made, they had
to be extemporised. And so they accordingly
were. Long before the school, in course of
formation on the works actually in progress,
could turn out men of sufficient age to appear
in public as authorities on expenditure and
construction, Engineers-in-chief were required
by many a group of projectors. So came to
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
47
the front,-military men, accustomed, perhaps,
to rapid and skilful sketching of country, able
with the theodolite and with the sextant, but
unacquainted with other requisites of their im-
provised profession;-cautious martinets, formed
in the old school of the Royal Engineers, at
the time when the Duke of Wellington, as
Commander-in-Chief, found such difficulty in
making use of these dependents on the collateral
authority of the Master-general of the Ordnance,
that he took the step of forming the Royal Staff
Corps, to have Engineers of his own;-mining
surveyors, accustomed to the use of the dial,
and to the intricacies of subterranean work;
mathematical engineers, good, no doubt, to
direct the smithy and the lathe, but unaccus-
tomed to works of magnitude;-architects who
generally limited their claims to the construction
of stations, and who seemed to be regarded as
interlopers by all who, on any of the above
grounds, called themselves engineers. So boldly,
however, did these new commanders take up their
positions in parliamentary warfare, that many of
them established themselves in lucrative berths.
Of one, who spoke with great authority before
a Committee, counsel took the liberty to remark
48
ERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
that, if he was so good an Engineer as he asserted
himself to be, it must be owing to Divine inspir-
ation, as he certainly had not had the ordinary
human means of acquiring the necessary educa-
tion. At a time when the profession of civil engi-
neering is suffering from a cruel sort of "lock
out," it is most tantalising to reflect on the
golden showers, that watered the early growth
of the various grades of railway constructors.
The younger men, unable to front a public
meeting or a board of directors, were in demand
everywhere for field work. Engineers who had
pupils to spare, lent them to one another, or let
them out on terms of hire agreeable to all parties.
Thus the scene of personal recollection may
readily change from the busy hive of workmen,
that filled the great open ditch of the Euston
Extension, to the Derbyshire moors, the Essex
corn-lands, or the Norfolk fens. The ordnance
map was the great guide of the projector of these
days; but few, even of those who called them-
selves engineers, seemed then to be fully aware
of the immense advantage to be drawn from the
careful study of this admirable chart. Surveys
were made at large expense, which were, if not
absolutely worthless, quite unnecessary; and in
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
49
some instances tracings of the enlarged Ordnance
plans were provided for the guidance of the
surveyors and engineers, which, devoid as they
generally were of writing, were far from being
such useful and intelligible guides as the actual,
published, map. Engineers seemed to act like
clergymen who are not gifted with rhetoric,
and who yet seem to think it a duty to provide
their hearers with a very inferior home-made
article, rather than submit to the humiliation
of purchasing an excellent one that happens to
be ready made.
There was one instance in which more than
a twelvemonth was occupied in surveying some
twelve hundred square miles of country, the
whole of which was included in the published
Ordnance map. A very beautiful sketch-survey
was first made, and the fortunate draughtsman
took rank at once, on the strength of it, as
an Engineer-in-chief. He procured from the
Ordnance authorities the calculated lengths of
certain of their triangulated lines, and on these
actually carried out a new triangulation of the
country; fixing long poles on certain con-
spicuous points of the intended line, and in-
cluding every spire and steeple within range
E
50
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
of the observations, which were by made the
box-sextant. A gigantic roll was prepared, on
which the new points, or rather the old points
now, for a second time, and by instruments
of less precision, trigonometrically fixed, with
the addition of the railway poles, were laid
down, the idea being that a railway survey
of inimitable accuracy could be thus produced.
This was after the Act of Parliament had been
obtained, on plans deposited on the usual four-
inch scale. An enlarged survey as usual followed,
but the plan of the line was never laid down on,
or compared with, the trigonometrical sheet.
It is true that occupation was given to a con-
siderable staff, during a time that the completion
of the railway was doubtful, by this introduction
of the military element into the labours of the
surveyor; but the shareholders might have
questioned the advantage of the proceeding
to themselves.
The idea of a grand railway route through
the Eastern Counties of England to the port
of Yarmouth, which, thus linked to the metro-
polis, was to distance even Liverpool in its
fabulous increase of prosperity, was one of the
schemes of 1835. A pupil from Mr. Stephen-
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
51
son's staff was among the subalterns whom the
engineers of this undertaking impressed into
the service of the intended company. After
receiving a decorous lecture, as to the exactitude
requisite, both in the discharge of his scientific
work and in the control of the expenditure he
was about to incur, he set out on the exploration
of a portion of this line, furnished with level, staff,
chain, Ordnance tracings, written instructions,
and a very moderate sum of money.
Desirous
to give full obedience to the excellent advice,
which he had received with some
awe, he
engaged a place on the outside of the mail.
With the advance into Essex the evening mist
thickened into rain, and the journey was not
half accomplished before the wet begun to find
its way through the "warranted water-proof
cap which formed part of the strictly limited
wardrobe with which, as usual with most very
inexperienced travellers, he thought it con-
venient to travel. It may be left to the military
critic to decide how far the famous equipment
of "a sabre, two towels, and a piece of soap,"
are fit to constitute the entire baggage of a
commander-in-chief. For an engineer who
wishes to preserve his own efficiency for a
E 2
52
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
month or six weeks of field-work, two complete
out-door, and one indoor, suit, besides proper
great coat, rug, and cape or dreadnought, are
indispensable. The result of the economy and
rapidity of motion aimed at in this instance
was, that the young traveller arrived at the
ancient cathedral city to which he was first
directed to proceed, about seven o'clock on an
October morning, after a night sedulously
calculated to unfit him for commencing his
labours. The first duty, after a hasty refresh-
ment of the inner and outer man, was to
deliver a letter of introduction from the Engineer-
in-chief, under whom he was acting, to an old
friend resident in the city. He was received
with very quiet kindness; and after delivering
his credentials, and making some local inquiries,
to which he received what seemed rather evasive
answers, rose to take a hasty leave. "What?"
said the host, "your breakfast is just setting in
the next room." "But I have breakfasted at
the inn." "What did you do that for? You
cannot go without tasting some of our famous
Norfolk sausages; and before you have done, a
horse will be put to, and my young man will
be ready to drive you wherever you want to go.
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
53
What inn did you say? Tell me the number of
your room there. I will send for your luggage
directly. You must have no other head-quarters
than my roof while you stay in the country."
66
My young man," the son of the hospitable
merchant, not only accompanied the young
Engineer through all the parliamentary cam-
paign, but returned with him to London, and
became a pupil of the Engineer of the line.
Such was an
an instance of the hospitality of
Norfolk, in the time of mail coaches.
The troubles of the start were not yet over.
On approaching the coast, with the purpose of
identifying the few unintelligible lines by which
the tracing of the Ordnance survey (for the real
map had not been forwarded with the instruc-
tions,) indicated the localities to be traversed
by the parliamentary section, not a single line
of boundary or division was discernible. A
long, perfectly straight road ran from the verge
of the fens proper, to the bridge separating that
district from the sea-port terminus. The line
was to run to this bridge, from a point some
half a mile to the south of the other extremity of
the straight road. The road in question was not
shown in the tracings, and the fens were under
54
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
water. One broad, unbroken sheet of inland
lake was all that was presented to the eye.
The orders of the Engineer-in-chief, when re-
ferred to in this difficulty, were brief. He was
one of those men who made a more than liberal
use of expletives, now happily rarer than was
the case thirty years ago.
"Set so-and-so to
run his level along the road from Yarmouth to
Acle, and
the fens."
The comic incidents of these early parlia-
mentary surveys were many, and were often
irresistible in their fun. The real cause, no doubt,
lay in the fact that so many men found them-
selves suddenly in positions which they had some
obscure doubts of their perfect fitness to occupy.
The want of ease had therefore to be made up
by a certain fullness of self-assertion. Then
again, while some men, not at once at home in
their new duties, were daily learning better to
discharge them; others, in every way less
competent, were seeking to push the real workers
from their seats. So very little ad hoc education
went to make an Engineer, when Engineers were
in demand, but some men, on the score of a
moderate acquaintance with mathematics, or with
chemistry, or gifted with nothing more than a
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
55
facility of utterance, thought that they might at
least come in as Consulting Engineers. Then the
necessity of depositing plans and sections by the
last day in November, gave a stimulus to their
whole course of action which brought out the
salient peculiarities of the actors in full relief.
The stolid amazement of the country people, and
the usual hostility of the farmers, rendered the
actual instrumental work often the least difficult
part of the duty of the day.
It is not, however, the wish of the writer of
these
pages to
to regard the early period of a great
physical change in this country, and indeed in
the civilized world, mainly as yielding the ele-
ments of comedy. The few actors in those busy
scenes who may yet remain, will not be dis-
contented to have their recollections called back
to a time very worthy of the pen of a chronicler,
but which contemporary literature was not led to
seize and to dwell on. As actors we were too
busy to write, except reports, estimates, and
accounts. The Engineer has of late, indeed, made
his appearance in works of fiction. But it is the
Engineer of the novel-not of real life. The truth
was at once better sense and better fun than the
fiction. That education, by which the public
56
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
taste was led first to dwell on Dutch pictures
of humble, and indeed of vulgar, life, to retail
the conversations of nurses, grooms, coachmen,
and the like, had only just commenced in 1833.
Had the present magazine literature been then in
existence, or had sensation writing been at that
time as far developed into a commercial art as is
now the case, very much, at which we may be
content to hint, would no doubt have been fully
described and highly flavoured for a public that
desired only to be amused. But if picturesque
detail, or good-humoured gossip, or appeal in
some form to the appetite for amusement, must
be necessary accomplishments of the writer who
seeks to interest any but a very limited circle of
readers, there may yet be a higher aim than the
production of laughter. We stand at this moment,
physically and mechanically speaking, on the
threshold of a new world. We are pausing after
the accomplishment of the first phase of the
greatest revolution which has ever been effected
in man's relation to the world in which he dwells.
We have given him a speed of transit which he
could not have attained if he had, instead of the
services of the steam-engine, acquired the actual
endowment of wings. We see a great check
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
57
interposed in our course: the men long active
in the service of their fellows, as regards the
development of the means of intercourse, are now
folding their arms in enforced inactivity. The
six hundred millions which we have spent on our
own railways, although, on the average, yielding
a fair return on the par price, have been
lavishly and inconsiderately spent. If the fourth
part of that sum, which we may reckon, without
exaggeration, as having been made into ducks
and drakes, were now forthcoming for the neces-
sary development of the feeders and ramifications
of the great trunk and branch lines, an immense
impulse to our national prosperity would en-
sue. There may be wisdom, then, as well as
relaxation, in looking back to inquire how the
chief industry of the last thirty years came to
start in a wrong groove;-how it was that the
service of the public was injured for the benefit
of private individuals, and that a false direction
was given to an industrial development of such
unparalleled importance. The most sanguine
ideas, of the most sanguine speculators, never
contemplated the enormous traffic developed and
created by the railway system. This gigantic
and unexpected excess over the estimated traffic
58
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
has been claimed by the projectors of railways as
a set-off against the enormous excess over the
estimates of their construction. The balance has
been fortunate, and of course, to some extent,
unexpected traffic has caused unexpected outlay.
But those familiar with the subject know that
comparatively little of the actual waste is thus to
be justified. That our present traffic might have
been conducted as conveniently, and more con-
veniently, than is actually the case, while at the
same time it should have been weighted with
some ten millions sterling per annum less of
interest to be paid out of profits, probably few
persons qualified to form an opinion will doubt.
It may therefore be a service to the conductors of
the public works of the future, to open an un-
recorded chapter of the history of those of the
present, and to point how from small beginnings,
and from natural and neglected causes, arose part
of that present state of suspicion and of hesitation
which is paralysing so much of the energy of the
world. If the attention of the country were still
called to the steady progress of duly considered
remunerative public works, carried on by in-
telligent enterprise, and not by blind gambling,
we should find the public mind less nervously
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
59
discouraged by the armature of a fortress on the
Alps, or by the sudden illness of a Turkish Vizier.
That new men, called to positions for which
they had never been prepared, will err, is a very
evident proposition. That there existed in the
country a mass of practical science, by a careful
use of which technical error might have been so far
circumscribed as to be reduced within small limits,
those whose memory goes back to the time in
question are aware. The evil to the country
arose from the fact, that the best men were not
made the best use of. The unavoidable evil was
aggravated by much that was pure surplusage.
Had the capital of railways been spent by men
taking an enlightened interest in its application,
and controlling that application with the simple
aim of profitable investment, our position at the
present moment would have been something very
far different from the actual fact.
It has been a happy thing for the credit of
the Engineers of Great Britain that they were,
as a rule, paid by salaries, and not by commis-
sion. Had the latter mode of payment, which
in many instances has much to recommend it,
been sanctioned or insisted on by Mr. Stephen-
son and his earliest colleagues and pupils, no
60
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
integrity of private character would have been
enough respected to avoid the reproach of out-
lay without other motives than that of earning
large commissions. Those who remember the
early anxieties of that eminent man — profes-
sional anxiety only is intended, would be
well aware how unfounded such an assertion
would have been in his, and in many other,
cases. In some, however, such a suspicion
would not have been unfounded. It is the de-
sire of the writer to say nothing that can cause
undeserved annoyance to any one. For those
cases which may be referred to as beacons rather
than as examples, instances will be selected in
which the actors are far removed beyond the
verdict of any human tribunal. To select none
but meritorious men for portraiture would be an
attempt to falsify human nature. It is rather
from a contemplation of our past failures, than
from that of our partial successes, that we must
hope to derive lessons for future improvement.
It will no doubt be in accordance with the
sound judgment of all professional men to say,
that the success or failure of their brethren has
mainly depended on their professional industry.
Take one man who was quiet and plodding,
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
61
raised, perhaps, far beyond what his education or
his acquirements gave him a right to expect, but
steadily devoting his time to strict professional
labour, and that man, as a rule, became eminent,
or at least respectable and respected. Take
another man of more varied talents and more
showy acquirements, who turned his energies
into another direction; who was brilliant under
parliamentary examination, quick in throwing
together a prospectus, successful in influencing
directors, or in commanding, the confidence of the
Stock Exchange; and if that man did not himself
get into trouble, his shareholders were pretty sure
to do so. The fable of the hare and the tortoise
had many illustrations in 1835 and in 1845. We
may say so without fear of hurting the feelings of
the hares, for most of the poor animals are dead.
Indeed the havoc that death has made in the
ranks of a profession, which might expect to be
distinguished by unusual longevity, has been most
remarkable. Brunel, in the judgment of those who
remember the iron energy of his youth, should
now be a man in the prime of intellectual vigour.
Robert Stephenson might naturally have looked
forward to many more years of quiet authority.
Locke, Rendel, Moorsom,-how many are the
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names which a greater reticence of labour and
more attention to the requirements of health,
might have kept for many years from the
obituary! In regarding such a mortality it is
difficult not to search for some cause peculiar to
the profession. One sufficient cause may perhaps
be detected in the habitual loss of the usual repose
of the Sunday. For men to turn night into day
is in itself a hard strain. Twelve days' work
per week will try the strongest constitution; but
make the twelve into fourteen and the fatal result
arrives with startling rapidity. And working by
day, and travelling by night, make a constant
and unrepaid demand on the vital energy of the
brain. The cost of the English railways includes
the lives of many eminent men.
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63
WORK IN 1835.
CHAPTER V. .
PREPARATION FOR PARLIAMENT.
THERE were good times for Civil Engineers in
1835. Most persons who could lay any claim
to the designation found their account in so
doing in that year. The form in which the traffic
of the future would be conducted was then
becoming apparent, from the experience obtained
on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway; and
the great centres of commerce became anxious
not to be distanced in the impending race.
Bristol, Southampton, Norwich, Yarmouth, Dover,
and Brighton, demanded to be put in communica-
tion with the metropolis, no less loudly than
Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester.
competent Engineers-in-chief were at a premium,
so also were all the elements of an efficient
engineering staff. Young men who could handle
the level and the land-chain, suddenly found
As
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
themselves persons of importance. At no previous
time, at few subsequent periods, before the great
mania of 1845, was there so much pressure for
work, such good pay, and such good fun.
Engineering, as carried on in those days, involved
both hard work and good fellowship. As the
period for depositing the plans required by the
standing orders approached, the offices of the
busily occupied leaders of the profession became
scenes of toil or of scramble. Night was
economised as the days grew short. An impulse
was given to posting; and chaises and pair, and
chaises and four, were to be seen at not unfrequent
intervals galloping east and west and north, at a
speed rarely to be witnessed, apart from the
impulse of the Engineer, except upon the road
leading to Gretna.
As the fatal 30th of November, the day by the
midnight close of which the plans must be lodged
with the clerks of the peace of the several
counties traversed by the projected lines, (on
penalty of being thrown out of parliament by the
standing orders' committee,) drew closer, the
excitement became more intense. A line which,
in the magnitude of its misfortunes, stands
unrivalled among the original trunk railways, was
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65
brought into Parliament under the joint direction
of two very eminent men; one of these, who has
been more distinguished for some of his noble
foreign works than for his practice in England,
was gradually elbowed into the position of
consulting Engineer. He was chiefly known and
dreaded by the staff, when busily occupied in the
large premises of his colleague, by his method of
evincing displeasure when anything went amiss.
It was a method often witnessed on the banks of
the Seine, but which does not tend to get the
greatest amount of work out of the educated
Englishman. It consisted in gesticulating in the
midst of the room, swearing in a loud scream,
and with singular originality and profusion of
blasphemy, enforcing the volley of startling oaths
by stamping on the floor, and finally plucking
frantically at the hair. The ultima ratio of the
angry Frenchman, trampling upon his own hạt,
was the only point omitted. Somehow or other
this authority swore himself out of power. His
colleague was a man of another order, except in
the matter of swearing, in which it would have
been difficult justly to divide the palm between
them. A hearty, jovial man,-one of those who
are said to be kind-hearted, because they are
F
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
singularly frank, and enemies to no one but
themselves, the latter Engineer was popular
among his staff, and numbered many attached
friends. He had, in early life, run through
his patrimony; he had married, and, it was
said, run through that of his wife. With
admirable gravity and equanimity he was now
preparing to run through as much of that of
his shareholders as they would allow him to
spend for them. In this he proved eminently
successful, and a line which, from the nature of
the country which it traversed, ought to have
been as remarkable for its low cost of construction
and of working, as for its large and reliable traffic,
grew year after year to become a by-word for
unsafe travelling and for invisible dividends.
"Now, boys," cried the chief, coming one day
into the thick of the work, and springing at a
bound on to the mantelpiece, "burn your night-
caps, for the angel a one of them you'll see till
after the 30th. Then you shall have a week
to lie in bed." Accordingly for some ten days
the labour of plotting sections, copying plans,
numbering and copying references, and the like,
went on almost without intermission. At nine in
the evening would appear mighty bowls of oysters,
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67
gallons of ale, and other materials of a rude but
hearty repast. A respite of some three-quarters
of an hour would be filled up by uproarious
hilarity, and then a fierce objurgation from the
chief, the moment before the chief reveller, for so
scandalous a manner of wasting the company's
time, would set all briskly to work again.
It is true that the quality of the work thus
performed was not altogether equal to that which
a more sluggish rate of proceeding might turn
out. If you prick through a dozen sheets of
drawing-paper at once, a very slight deviation
from the perpendicular in the needle is enough to
make the twelfth plan very different from the
first. Inaccuracies of this kind might be very
harmless while you had to do with parish clerks
or county surveyors; but the great feature n the
parliamentary fight was the opposition. Recal-
citrant landowners, hostile corporations, or even
rival companies, set their own engineers to work.
With more time at command for criticism than
for construction, these opponents would sometimes
go to the expense of taking tracings of all the
deposited plans, and then denouncing to the
expectant legislators their want of identity. One
Engineer, on being thus taxed, set down each
F 2
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
difference of detail to the unequal expansion and
contraction of paper under different conditions;
but this admirable practicable defence did not
meet the success to which it was entitled by its
originality.
The crisis came on a Monday. The farthest
distance that could be traversed in a given time,
by the best-paid post-boy, had been carefully
studied. In the outlying counties the deposits
had been sent off by the Saturday. On through
Sunday and Sunday night toiled the diminished
staff. The last post-chaise was in waiting at the
door. The last minute at which it must be off
to reach, let us say Romford, five minutes before
midnight, was at hand. Without his coat, the
engineer-in-chief was with his own hands com-
pleting the last book of plans, by the unsophisti-
cated process of plunging his hands into a large
saucepan of paste, and spreading the cohesive
substance with his fingers; while one or two
assistants turned over the edges of the sheets.
Superfluous paste was removed by a rapid action,
passing each hand between the convenient shirt-
sleeve of the other arm and the side of the
waistcoat. At last the final sheet is pasted in,
the book closed, the expectant messenger tumbled
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69
into the chaise with all his credentials; whirling
off with a shout, and with the proper accompani-
ment of an old shoe flung after the carriage for
luck; and now, if wheels and horseflesh hold, and
no sleepy turnpike man make undue delay, the
deposit for the standing orders is safe. The
wearied may repose, the strain is taken off, and
men begin to fear that they will hardly be able to
sleep if they go to bed in a regular way.
When those offices that had to make distant
deposits had to close during the November
daylight, there were others that prolonged yet an
hour or two more the struggle against time. A
suburban line, which now daily conveys an enor-
mous stream of traffic over its unsightly arches,
was in the hands of an Engineer who had gained
his experience, such as it was, in the military
branch of the profession. The work was carried
on in the comfortably appointed offices of a
surveyor, who afterwards rose to be, for a brief
space, one of the busiest and most noted of
contractors. Abundant light was shed on the
scene of toil by gas and by wax candles. On a
large plate-glass drawing-board the final section
was being traced at one end, while the Engi-
neer-in-chief, with a clumsy old pair of brass
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
dividers, and a steel straight-edge, was attempt-
ing to lay down the balance line on the other.
As the run of the country from London to
Birmingham had enabled Mr. Stephenson to
adopt a maximum gradient of sixteen feet in
a mile, or 1 in 330, this inclination had come
to be regarded with the deference due to a
law of nature. Hence arose sore perplexity
to the worthy Colonel of Engineers. The
substantial black pencil lines that he scored one
after another on his section seemed all equally
to disgust him. "I cannot tell how it is," he ex-
claimed, in bitterness of spirit. "When I reduce
the embankments I get such tremendous cut-
tings, and when I diminish my cuttings I run
into such a devil of an embankment!" He spoke
with justice, if not with propriety; as his attempt
to fit the gradient applicable to one district, to the
actual section of another, was balancing him
between excavations of 300 feet in depth, and
embankments of 100 feet high. How the steel
straight-edge and the glass tracing-board finally
came to terms, in time for a deposit of the
section, cannot be told here, for sleepiness
became more irresistible than curiosity.
With the deposits of 30th November came
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71
rest, but not termination of employment.
Still
was there much to be done in the way of
check and revision; and when
a line was
actually in committee, the stress was at times
very severe, and a surveyor had to be sent down,
as fast as horses could carry him, to verify
some contested statement. Then, too, it might
not be with the elements of time and of distance
alone that he had to contend. Grim human
opposition was raised by sturdy occupants,
wroth to see their fine crops of "turmuts "
decimated by the land-chain; or by yet more
substantial owners, eager in their hostility to
a scheme that would triple the value of their
estates, and pay them, for a small slice, enough
to disencumber the remainder. To whirl out
of town at nightfall, fresh from the heated at-
mosphere of the committee-room, falling asleep
as the rattling post-chaise emerged from the out-
ward zone of the gas-lit streets into the cool calm
of the country; to wake up, after the nightmare
disquiet of a broken sleep, under the golden
hues of sunrise, amid the first leaves of spring,
still speeding on at a rate which, if less rapid,
was so much more enjoyable than that to
which our iron roads have accustomed us, was
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
a pleasure such as rarely occurs to the busy
man of the present day. On arriving at the.
scene of the new and urgent professional task,
it might be that the foe was on the watch,
and all sorts of military manœuvres had to be
practised in order to secure the object of the
excursion. On one occasion, an Engineer who
was running a line through Norfolk, was warned
of the strenuous and decided opposition which a
certain landowner, a famous and unscrupulous
parson, who was also a county magistrate, had
threatened to all railway pioneers. Measures
were taken accordingly. The wearied youth
seemed to himself hardly to have fallen asleep,
before he became dimly conscious that the
moon was tapping at the window of the bed-
room. The tapping was persistent, but it be-
came evident after a time that the agent was
not the planet, which was high and bright in
heaven at the time, but the Boots of the inn;
and to the remorseless knocking were soon added
the unwelcome words, "Half-past four, sir; you
was to be called at half-past four!" The two
or three men, who are necessary for even the
most economical mode of running a section,
had, of course, to be duly warned the night
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
73
before. Evil fortune arose from this necessity,
for on arriving just before the point of -day at
the forbidden boundary, the surveying party
found a garrison on the alert. A stout man in
a round hat and leather leggings was leaning
on a spade behind a hedge, and received the
invaders with the threat, "Mind what you are
at. I am a county magistrate. I warn you off
my land.
Come on at your peril!"
When an Act of Parliament has been ob-
tained, the entrance has been often practised in
spite of opposition. When the Act is as yet
in question, a defendant such as the one last
described has the game more in his own hands.
A parley was called, the urgency of the case
was represented, and the invariable desire of
that invisible benefactress of all neighbours of
the projected line, "the Company," to com-
pensate for all and every inconvenience, was
dwelt on in every form. The Engineer's elo-
quence was fruitless. The parson was as obsti-
nate as if the controversy had been on a theo-
logical point. At last the other was induced
to ask the militant churchman to point out the
limits of his property. "I am not bound to
do that; find it out yourself, and enter it at
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
your peril!”
"Of course you are not bound,'
was the reply; "but there is such a thing as
courtesy. I have a duty to perform in this
part of the world, which I shall do sooner or
later. You are resolved to keep me off your
ground. We may be watching one another for a
fortnight. On the other hand, if I know exactly
the land you are so anxious about, it is possible
that I can do my work without entering it.
In that case I could give you my promise, and
save us both much trouble." The parson was
mollified. "Come," said he, "I cannot let
you enter, for I have pledged my word to the
opponents of the Company. But my boundary
lies there, and there; and if you promise not
to pass it, I will give you no further incon-
venience." Happily, there was a footpath
through the churchyard, which enabled the En-
gineer to turn the little outlying corner of the
reverend gentleman's property; and less time
was consumed in getting round the obstacle than
had been devoted to the conversation.
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
75
CHAPTER VI.
THE DUTIES OF THE SUB-ASSISTANT ENGINEER.
THE Sub-Engineer, in the United Kingdom, is
usually placed in a position at once of higher
responsibility, and of harder service, than is the
officer of the same grade in France or in Italy.
By the want of organization, which is charac-
teristic of the English people, additional stress
is thrown upon individual energy.
The super-
vision of professional labour is rudely and im-
perfectly attempted among us; and the result is
neither greater excellence of work, nor greater
ease in its performance.
For an Engineer of the third class in the
Ponts et Chaussées of France, or the Ponti e Strade
of Italy, the course of operations is very dis-
tinctly traced. Under the general directions
of the Engineer-in-Chief, an Engineer of the
second class, answering to our Resident Engi-
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
neer, minutely divides the several duties of his
subalterns, receives their reports, and inspects
their proceedings. The absolute work, however,
of section or of survey, is carried on, not as
with us, by the hands of the Sub-Engineer, but
by a body of men under his orders, to whom
we have nothing that corresponds in Civil En-
gineering in this country. Able contractors'
foremen, or the private sappers and miners of
the Royal Engineers, represent with us a grade
of civil privates, so to speak, who discharge on
the Continent the duties which our young En-
gineers, perhaps only just out of their articles,
are expected to perform, in addition to those of
supervision of work, and of the preparation of
detailed drawings.
Thus in the early times, when railways were
first brought before Parliament, the duty that
fell on the Sub-Engineer was often very severe.
The politics of the line, so to speak, occupied
the Engineer-in-Chief far more anxiously than
did the actual engineering questions. The filling
up of the share-list, the management of the
directory, and perhaps the checkmating of the
secretary, made imperative demands upon the
time of the Engineer of a projected line. Re-
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77
sident Engineers, as a rule, were only appointed
when works were about to commence. It fol-
lowed that young men were frequently sent to
learn their business by running sections and
surveys over a country, with no other guidance
than that of a line hastily drawn on a sheet
of the Ordnance Survey.
Although the Ordnance Survey was, in perhaps
every instance, the first basis of operations, it
is remarkable how little use was made of the
full and accurate information which is to be
drawn from that excellent map. A careful study
of the features of the ground may in many
cases be made, with more advantage, from the
shaded map, than from a cursory view of the
localities; and in several instances much time
and money was consumed in making a general
plan or sketch of a country, which, when com-
plete, was every way inferior to the engraved
sheets that were to be purchased for a few shil-
lings. It is possible that it is only the careful
examination of country with the map in hand
which can enlighten the Engineer as to the full
merit and utility of the Ordnance survey. The
enlarged Irish survey, indeed, has been found
to supersede almost entirely the necessity for
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
original work in surveying, but much unnecessary
field-work has been carried on in England.
In a line to which the writer has occasion
more than once to refer, as the scene of some
of his own earliest experiences, the instruc-
tions given to the Sub-Engineers, who were sent
out to run the Parliamentary sections, were based
on tracings of the enlarged Ordnance plans,
showing fences and divisions of property. The
line of the proposed railway was laid down on
so narrow a strip of survey, that identification of
the spot was extremely difficult, and the attempt
at accuracy only induced confusion. A clear red
line drawn on the engraved map would have
been far more valuable as a guide on the ground,
particularly as the survey from which the tracings
were made was so old, or the tracings were so
incorrect, that many of the fences were indis-
tinguishable; and one of the most marked features
of the district, a new turnpike-road of nine miles in
length, which ran in an unbroken straight line
across the fens, was not marked on the tracings!
A young man not yet out of his articles as
an Engineering pupil, arriving alone in a
strange country, furnished with such inadequate
plans, and expected to send up a section of some
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
79
twenty miles of country in a limited time, natu-
rally felt somewhat taken aback. Staff-holders,
་
chain-men, and other necessary attendants, had to
be sought, to be hired, and to be instructed,-a
labour in addition to that necessary for the
conduct of a survey, which must be incurred
in order to be appreciated. Then it was neces-
sary to devote a certain number of days to
the exploration of the country, and the identi-
fication of the line-a labour which may be
combined with that of levelling the actual
section by a judicious use of the Ordnance map.
Arriving at nightfall at a provincial town in
the centre of the allotted district, a wide sheet
of water alone met the eye. On the following
morning the scene did not appear to brighten.
The small indications of locality afforded by the
tracings were altogether obliterated. The road
which perforce was to be the basis of operations
had been ignored in the instructions. The wind
rose in fitful gusts, shaking the instrument so as
to make observation almost impossible; but not
having the counterbalancing advantage of keep-
ing within doors the swarms of little boys who
drummed on the legs of the theodolite, or
pressed down the wrong end of the telescope.
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
It was a very dreary and discomforting com-
mencement of a great national work that was
made under these circumstances.
If it was
thought ominous of swamping the shareholders,
the omen was not unfulfilled.
It was necessary, however, to run an actual
section over the intended site of the railway,
after leaving the diverging turnpike-road. The
line was not inviting. When the dead level
of the fens was quitted, swamps and morass
were interspersed with arable land, and village
greens or gardens. The line ran through the
midst of a decoy, where the swamp was SO
elastic, that the mere act of bending the head
from the eye-piece of the level to observe the
state of the spirit-bubble, threw the line of
collimation above the top, or below the shoe, of
the staff. It was only possible to obtain accu-
rate levels across this morass by spreading the
legs of the instrument to their widest possible
extent, and kneeling between them to observe,
a pleasant occupation for a damp autumn day.
Crossing a deep navigable river, and thus
departing from the convenient proximity of the
mail road, the line ran, beyond the decoy, along
the side of a series of gently undulating hills,
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81
and was freed from any further engineering
difficulties, except a swing bridge of some mag-
nitude. The section had scarcely been plotted
inland as far as the provincial capital, before
the Engineer-in-Chief made his appearance on
the spot. Not, that is to say, on the site of
the line, but at a comfortable dinner-table in
the city.
This gentleman was accompanied by another,
whose name became subsequently very well
known in the railway world. He was, in his
own opinion, an eminently scientific man. His
mathematical attainments, whatever they were,
were not called into requisition on this occasion.
His eminence as a chemical discoverer, resting on
the same personal testimony (namely, his own) as
his mathematical acquirements, was then seriously
controverted, by those who declared that the
assertion of the commencement of an important
experiment by boiling mercury in a tin vessel, was
a fact that sufficed to relieve the reader from the
trouble of any further investigation of the reported
process. As to Civil Engineering, it was patent
that the good man's mind was in an altogether
virgin state. Yet, appearing in the first instance
as a director of the railway-a function which
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
financial reasons threatened to terminate -the
endeavour of this notable person was to procure
an appointment as a species of Consulting Engi-
neer, or scientific Director, of the line. As it
became more and more evident that the valuable
character of the services he could render was
not appreciated by the managers and officers of
the undertaking, his tone and temper, with
reference to the scheme, underwent a total and
violent change. A personal hostility sprang up
with the secretary, and the literary amenities
exchanged by these two angry writers are among
the curiosities of journalism.
The status, or scheme, or plan, of the scientific
Director, had not been altogether ascertained or
matured, when he came down to the fen counties
as the self-appointed adlatus of the Engineer-in-
Chief; who, perfectly frank and jovial in his own
manner, was wont to cast queer, sidelong glances
at his neighbour from time to time.
To point out the line over which the section
had been taken, was the duty of the Sub, and it
was performed from the driving-box of a post-
chaise, in the interior of which vehicle the Engi-
neer-in-Chief and the Director were ensconced.
The day was cold and inclement, and the
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83
proposal to walk over the line was peremptorily
declined. So was that to take the nearest route,
diverging down bye-roads to the points of
crossing. The chaise rattled along the mail-
road, the various marked points on the opposite
side of the river being indicated as they came
in sight.
It soon became evident to the Sub that his chief,
whether from an ancient and unforgotten know-
ledge of the country, or from the stores of a very
fertile imagination, was giving to his companion
such accurate details of the country denoted by
the section, that the occasional stoppages of the
vehicle, in order to point out any features of
interest, seemed somewhat to interfere with the
flow of description in which he indulged. Con-
tenting himself, therefore, with the offer to reply
to any further questions that were put, the young
man, to whom a gentleman of the county had
given the valuable assistance of his son as a
companion, arrived very cold and very hungry
at the Port, where the scientific gentleman lost
no time in cross-examining the waiter of the
chief hotel as to the contents of the larder and
the cellar.
The investigation, long and minute, was some-
G 2
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
what of a waste of time, for it concluded with
"Bring up all that you have. Coffee and tea,
and some sherry, and some good cognac, and a
bottle of champagne, cold meat and cold pies,
and a chop or a steak as soon as it can be cooked;
and make haste." A very hearty breakfast was
well earned by the drive, and local friends, drop-
ping in, so consumed the remainder of the day,
that it became too late to return to dinner. Then
our scientific friend showed himself equally
provident in the matter of tea-the magnitude of
the late breakfast having rendered dinner super-
fluous. He gave minute and precise instructions as
to the preparation of the meal; emptying the
canister into the tea-pot, and supplementing the
hot toast, about which he was very particular,
with a broiled fowl and mushrooms. "Waiter-
the bill!" he exclaimed in a lordly tone, when the
horses were put to. It was a long slip of paper.
He examined it cursorily and with a magnificent
air. "It is all right. B-, you had better pay
it," quoth he; "I have no change. It all comes
out of the same pocket, you know." The Engineer
gave a very meaning glance, and paid the bill.
On another occasion the scientific gentleman
distinguished himself in a more memorable
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85
manner. The sections had been long deposited,
and the Bill was in Parliament, when it was
thought fit that a deputation of four pro-
visional Directors should make a sort of progress
through the agricultural district traversed by the
line, in order, as far as possible, to disarm local
opposition. The same Sub-Engineer had been
sent into Essex, to check the levels of a certain
district, in which it had been discovered, in the
course of the fight before the Committee, that a
certain river crossed by the railway pass up-hill to
a height of more than ten feet. These anomalies
did, every now and then, appear in the more
rapidly constructed sections. The Engineer-in-
Chief directed his Sub to attend on the Directors,
if they wished, when they came into the district
which he was examining.
One fine day, therefore, about noon, the young
man reluctantly broke off work, and marched
back to the county town-Colchester, let us call it,
or Chelmsford. Level and staves were glittering
on the shoulders of his men, when a dust and a
rumble came along the highway. A large yellow
carriage, drawn by four post-horses, came
thundering along, and an arm was waved out of
the window.
"We thought you were coming,"
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
said the scientific gentleman, when the other
waited on the deputation at their hotel; "we
saw your tools on the road.” The "tools"
were the level, staves, and chain, in the language
of science, at least of this gentleman's science.
"Mr. B- desired me to offer any services that
the Directors might require, and I have come
here in consequence."
"Yes, yes- quite right. As he could not come
with us himself, we desired him to send you.
Now, there is no time to be lost. We must be
at the Town Hall in less than an hour. I was
just preparing my speech. See these blue books!
Now, just look through them, and select every
passage that you think will be applicable for my
speech. Turn down the leaves, and score them
in pencil, and then write a short abstract of
each quotation, and then put down any remarks
that strike you to connect the quotations. You
have not a minute to lose, for I must go to
luncheon before the public meeting. I can't
afford to trifle with my health.”
The young Sub, of whose hunger no such
account was taken, had not made any very
great progress in this novel part of field-work—
the preparation of a speech for a scientific gentle-
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
87
man-when the four Directors, prepared for
their duties as far as the commissariat department
was concerned, came hurriedly into the room.
"Now, Mr. C-, where is my speech ?-it is time
that we were in the Town Hall. You will be so
good as to keep close to me. If my memory
should fail me for a moment, just whisper in my
ear what I ought to have remembered. I shall
call upon you to make a statement to the meeting,
and you will see from my way of putting any
questions to you what you have to reply. We
all put the highest confidence in you."
It was not fated for all to go off in so simple
and satisfactory a manner. When the Directors
stepped on to the bench in the County Hall, an
awkward silence succeeded. The room was half
or three parts full, but every one looked his
neighbour in the face, and no one seemed to have
anything to say for himself. The Directors looked
sheepish and confused. Something was wanting
-no one knew what.
At length a tall, slender, and very grim
Quaker arose. His distinct, harsh voice sounded
through the hall with unmistakeable emphasis.
"I should like," quoth he, "to know why we are
called together, and who has convened this
88
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
!
meeting."
An awful silence followed. The
Quaker repeated his remark a second and a third
time, with the same result. "Because," he con-
tinued, in a yet harsher tone, "I believe that there
are certain penalties provided in the case of
persons calling together an assembly, and having
no means of regulating or conducting the pro-
ceedings. I came here in consequence of an
advertisement in the county paper; and, once
more, I ask who is responsible for this meeting?"
The scientific gentleman opened his mouth and
gave two or three gulps. That was all his speech.
Then he collapsed, looking pale and extremely
frightened. Then two of his coadjutors poked up
the youngest of the four, who, with extreme confu-
sion and much stuttering, expressed regret that the
county member, who was expected of right to take
the chair, had not honoured the meeting by his
presence. Then the Quaker proposed, in order
that no more time should be lost, that the last
speaker, whom he regarded as the convener of
the meeting, should take the chair, and proceed to
business. This produced the counter-proposal
that the Quaker should take the chair. He
declined, but finally yielded to the general
request. “I cannot say with truth," said he,
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
89
"that I am grateful for the honour of being
called to take this chair, for I consider it a great
dishonour and great disgrace, both to this meeting
and to myself. In the very awkward state of
things, however, which has been brought about,
it seems the only course to take; and I there-
fore call our friend So-and-so to explain the views
of those whom he represents."
The spirit of speechless alarm, which appeared
to have seized upon the unlucky deputation of
Directors, was only partially laid by the con-
stitution of the meeting. One after another
essayed to speak, but the result of their efforts
was not reassuring. One of them, bearing a name
known both in the City and in the House of
Commons, addressed himself to the question that
railways were not joint-stock enterprises. If such
had been the case, he (the City Director) should
not be there to support one. People had objections
to joint-stock enterprises; so had he: there had
been lamentable failures among them. But as the
railway which he had the honour to support was
not a joint-stock enterprise, he thought that
objection would not apply; and therefore he
trusted that the numerous and influential meeting
which he had the honour to address would support
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
the railway of which he had the honour to be
one of the provisional Directors.
The chairman, after a time, summed up the
matter very tersely. The Directors retired with
somewhat drooping crests, and no harm came of
this fiasco.
But if those shrewd and industrious
men whom the deputation sought to win to fill
the share-list, reflected on the proceedings of the
day, they might have readily come to the con-
clusion, that men who could convene a public
meeting which they showed themselves so utterly
unfit to control, or even to confront, were not
exactly persons to whom might be wisely com-
mitted the expenditure of millions of money.
The seed and the promise of years of floundering
mismanagement were but too discernible at the
moment when the plain-spoken Quaker consented
to take the chair.
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
91
CHAPTER VII.
PROPRIETARY AND ENGINEERING DIFFICULTIES.
QUESTIONS as to the occupation of land have often
placed the servants of a railway company in
circumstances of hostility to the county gentry, the
occupiers of farms, or even the Court of Chancery
itself. One instance may be cited which came
before the latter tribunal as a question of contempt,
but which led to the infliction of no penalty on
the man who was unwittingly placed in danger
of a summary chastisement. Negotiation had
long been pending as to a certain estate, and
either to bring matters to a crisis, or from some
inscrutable reason not connected with any urgent
constructive necessity, the Engineer-in-Chief
gave positive written orders to the Sub-Engineer
to enter the property, and to set out the line
across it, in a definite and unmistakeable manner,
by a certain date. The Sub reconnoitred. He
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
found that the farmer was on the watch, with his
own people and some supernumeraries, armed in
various methods, in the full and avowed determi-
nation of resisting vi et armis. The young man
took his measures accordingly. He determined
to carry out his instructions, and at the same time
to avoid a fight. He was soldier enough to
know that this could only be done by a display
of overwhelming force. He applied to the
nearest contractor, who had a body of some
seventy men engaged in the removal into em-
bankment of the contents of a small turfy knoll,
within three or four miles of the contested spot.
The contractor, a stalwart and ponderous navvy
of the old school, on whose rubicund and
weather-beaten visage no amount of strong
potations seemed to be capable of producing any
change, entered into the plan con amore.
At a
fixed and early hour, the whole of the seventy
workmen shouldered their pickaxes, shovels, and
grafting tools, and, headed by their ganger,
moved down the line of railway towards the scene
of operations. The attendants of the Engineer,
with theodolite, flag-staves, and chain, took
another route to the same point. Their master
cantered up on a pony in time for the junction of
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93
his forces.
In the farm-yard, behind the gate
and over the wall, appeared the barrels of some
dozen fowling-pieces, the prongs of hay-forks, and
other signs of the forces of the farmer, which,
however, remained perdu at the sight of so for-
midable an array of invaders, and made no sign
of the threatened opposition. The Engineer dis-
mounted, and quietly ordered a hole to be cut in
the hedge on the centre line of railway; and then
proceeding along the indicated course, rapidly set
out the half-widths with flags. The navigators,
dividing into three bodies, cut a deep nick or
"trig-line" in the centre, and turned off the turf
for a yard and a half in width on either side of
the land required for the railway. In an hour
and a half all was quietly and thoroughly effected;
the Engineer was on horseback again, and the
workmen were on their way back to the cutting.
Some proceedings ensued in London, of which the
Sub was left entirely uninformed; and the only
comment or compliment that he ever received for
the service was, that on his next visit to the spot
he found the sods cut out of the trig-line partially
replaced, while some indignant owner or occupier
had solaced his wounded feelings by cutting on
the turf, in letters about a yard long and a foot
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
wide, the inscription T FOOL. It was fortunate
for the young man that the case was arranged,
before the Lord Chancellor had time to add a
grim Amen to this testimony.
The effect produced by the construction of a
railway, especially when it passes the vicinity or
the streets of a town in cutting, is by no means
limited to the abstraction of a strip of land. The
value of property adjoining the spot selected for
a station is generally very largely increased. But
residential damages are sometimes considerable.
The Birmingham and Gloucester railway ran
through some fifteen feet of cutting to the west of
the town of Cheltenham. Trial shafts were sunk,
which were stopped at some eight feet depth
by quicksand. The meaning of this term,
however, when used with reference to inland
works, differs very much from the application of
the same word to dangerous portions of the sea-
shore. On the banks of the Solway, on the sands
of the Pembrokeshire coast, and on many similar
situations, are to be found banks of mingled mud
and sand, often undistinguishable at the first
glance from the hard and solid sands among
which they are interposed, on which, if man or
beast unwarily step, they go down without remedy,
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
95
and the treacherous surface re-closes over their
remains. But when quicksands are met with
inland, often as a source of immense expense and
no small danger in tunnels, they are simply fine
sharp sands, full of water. A natural basin or pit-
hole has been formed in some impervious stratum,
that has been filled by a fine silicious deposit,
which, in the absence of natural drainage, is full
of water. As you dip into the sand, the water
replaces what you remove, and running from
every side, brings fresh sand with it. There
is but one safe and certain method of dealing with
these subterranean quicksands, and that requires
patience. This plan is to tap them. The dyke
which heads up the underground pond must be
pierced. The best method is to lower a channel
a few inches at a time, so as to drain the whole
area with as little rush and disturbance as possible.
By sinking two or three inches a day, the unstable
sand is gradually dried, and becomes as sound a
substratum for building as can be desired. It was
in this manner that the Alstone cutting before
described was attacked. A constant stream of
pure water issued from the outlet, which was carried
in advance of the face of the cutting; and the drain
being gradually sunk to a depth of some two feet
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
below the balance line of the railway, which ran
up a gradient of 1 in 200, all the difficulty
vanished in a few months. But with this tapping
of a large pit-hole of oolitic sand, dammed up by
a dyke of lias clay, came a shower of complaints.
All the wells in the village had been dried. It was
necessary to sink every one, from three to six or
eight feet, as the case might be, steaning the
additional depth by stone laid in moss, and
reaching again the reduced level of the water-line
of the undrained quicksand.
Long before this time a still more unexpected
interference with ancient wells occurred in
Kent. The canal which joins the Medway at
Rochester to the Thames at Gravesend, passed
through a lofty ridge of chalk by means of a
tunnel of more than a mile in length; part of
this hill consists of solid, compact chalk, but
the lower portion of the duct nearest to Rochester
was chalk with flints. When the canal was
completed, the salt water of the Medway was
admitted to fill it. But what was not anti-
cipated by the Engineer was, that the wells
for a considerable distance from the canal be-
came brackish. The proprietors of the under-
taking of course denied their liability. The
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97
case was tried at length, and it became evident
that a sort of endosmose had occurred along
the lines of flint, the salt water of the Medway
thus gradually but irresistibly making its way
into the wells. The cost to the canal company
was heavy.
North of the hill containing the quicksand,
and alongside of the little stream of the Chelt,
once a bright brook, but now the only sewer
of the gay and populous watering-place, ran a
belt of bog, a swampy, shaking morass. To
drain this obstacle to the formation of the road
exceeded the parliamentary powers of the Com-
pany; as it would have been necessary to lower
the bed of the Chelt for a considerable distance
beyond the limits of deviation. A plan was
adopted which succeeded perfectly, although
extremely simple. The whole surface of the
field within the railway fences was levelled to
the surface of the water, and covered with
wattled hurdles. Turf was spread over them,
and a couple of feet of sand was laid over the
turf. The surface thus produced bore the rail-
way without any difficulty, and no incon-
venience resulted from an obstacle which would
have proved a source of great expense if other-
H
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
wise dealt with. The wattled bog was only
another instance of the application of the
theory which gave birth to the macadamised
roads of Great Britain.
The simple axiom that the soil will bear any
weight, if it be protected from injury in detail,
is what the French would call the mother idea
of the Macadam system of road-making. To
those who are acquainted with the noble
breccia roads of Italy, it seems marvellous that
the rate of travelling in England, the home
and paradise of the horse as far as Europe is
considered, should have been due to the dilet-
tantism of a Scotch gentleman two generations
back. Yet such is the simple truth. It deserves
to be placed on record, in the very words that
fell from the lips of that amiable and accom-
plished Engineer, Sir James Macadam, during
a night's tête-à-tête in the Manchester mail.
Mr. Macadam, the father of Sir James, on
retiring from commercial life, took up his abode
in the vicinity of Bristol. He was soon placed
on the list of county magistrates. During his
former residence in Scotland he had indulged
in a hobby as to road-making. The highways
of the country at that time were in a state
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
99
which can only be termed infamous. In some
rare cases the mail route was paved, but as a
rule the roads were in the condition of those
country tracks or drives which have never been
metalled, as it is now termed—that is, which
consist of bare earth. With every shower the
wheels cut deep into the unprotected subsoil.
The roads became a series of miry ruts, crossing
one another in every form of tangle. The
guard of the Royal Mail, on seeing a waggon
ahead, used to blow his horn to warn the
waggoner to draw aside out of his rut.
In some particularly bad places large stones
might be flung in to give a bottom to the
artificial bog, but here, as everywhere else, the
weather and the traffic were too much for the
surveyor; and it was regarded to be as im-
possible to make good travelling in the winter
as to sail against wind and tide. In fact, the
theory of a perfect road was one which, from
the expense which it involved, would have
confined serious road-making to metropolitan
districts. It was, that the road must be built.
It was to be a species of arch, resting on skew-
backs or abutments, and thus relieving the
underlying ground from the weight of the
H 2
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
traffic. Thus, old English paved roads will be
found particularly strong at the sides, the
attempt being made to throw the thrust down
into the earth by a series of wedges close by
the lateral drains. In the old Roman paved
road we find no indication of this unmechanical
idea; the Via Appia, still to be found uninjured
in some spots in the neighbourhood of Pozzuoli,
being paved like the streets of Pompeii of the
same date, and those of Naples at this day, with
large quadrangular blocks of volcanic stone, laid
as a simple pavement, but not at all as an
arch.
It was against this theory, false in itself, and
having the infallible result of rendering country
road-making impossible, that Macadam waged
war.
"What do you want with an arch?" he
said. "Keep the earth dry, and it will bear any
weight that you can put upon four wheels!"
And the simplest mode of keeping the earth
dry, and preventing the formation of ruts, in
which water invariably lodges, is to use small
broken stone. A long series of experiments led
the reformer constantly to diminish the size of
the stone he recommended for metal. Flint or
lime-stone, still better serpentine, granite, or
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101
hard trap-rock, broken into small cubes that
would pass through a ring of three inches in
diameter, was the material preferred by Mr.
Macadam. Not that a cube of this dimension
was in the state in which it formed the road.
A further process of comminution had to be
gone through, and, theoretically, the hammer
of the road-maker should have continued the
work. But in practice it was more easy to
leave this final work to be performed by the
wheels of the carriages using the road; the
crushing into fragments, and the binding of
those fragments together by rolling weight over
the surface, being thus conducted at the expense
not of the constructors of, but of the travellers
over, the road.
By degrees Mr. Macadam so far satisfied his
fellow-magistrates and road trustees of the ex-
cellence of his plan, that the London road out
of Bristol, as far as their authority extended,
was repaired altogether under his direction.
The success corresponded to the anticipation.
Thus it chanced that one day the Postmaster-
General, on looking over the winter programme
for the timing of the mail, which differed
materially from that arranged for the summer,
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
saw that there was a stage for which no extra
allowance was made. "How is this?" said his
66
lordship; you have allowed no further time
for the stage into Bristol?" "No, my lord,"
was the reply; "the mail always goes as fast
over that stage in winter as in summer." The
Postmaster-General asked no further questions,
none at least that elicited any explanation of
so anomalous a fact
a fact; but he ordered his
carriage, and made the best of his way to
Bristol. Stopping at the post-house which
bounded the trust administered by Mr. Mac-
adam, he walked over the ground, and then,
without saying anything further, drove back
again to town. Then he wrote for the
amateur commissioner to come up to him.
"I want you to take the superintendence of
all the mail roads of the kingdom," said the
Postmaster-General. Mr. Macadam hesitated,
and wrote to his sons, then making inde-
pendent starts in life, to come to his assist-
ance. The young men, who had generally
their good-humoured jokes ready to pass on
their father's hobby, now thought that the old
gentleman was out of his senses. What! give
up the actual business of life, and set to work
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
103
at carrying out their father's road-making
fancies all over England! Reflection, however,
and consultation, brought the younger men
over to the views of the elder. The offer of
the Postmaster-General was accepted, and when
this account was given by Sir James, the
income of that gentleman from the various
trusts, which paid him £50 per annum each,
was about £10,000 a year.
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
CHAPTER VIII.
THE TRAVELLING DESTROYED BY THE RAILWAYS.
As the altogether unexpected results of the
opening of the first sections of the Lancashire
and Staffordshire railways became known to
the public, the cities and towns that had
driven the Engineers from their suburbs began
to reconsider the matter. A line which now
forms a part of the Midland system had been
driven by local opposition into a course that
was parallel with, although at some three to
five miles distant from, the mail route. The
coaches on this line were numerous and well
appointed. Over certain stages, the most rapid
travelling in the world was daily carried on. A
distance of nine posting miles, or considerably
more than eight measured miles, was traversed by
several coaches within the half hour. The
Hirondelle (called in the language of the locality
the Iron Devil) and the Hibernia started at the
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
105
same second from the rival coach offices.
The
frantic racing on the road which they had once
carried on had been discontinued at the time of
which we speak. No attempt was made by one
to pass the other, unless a stoppage took place to
pick up a passenger, in which place the second
team rapidly took the lead. But in changing
horses there was a stirring emulation. So close
were the two parties to each other in their
aptitude for this service, that as a rule the coach
which changed at the last house got away before
its opponent, so that the Hibernia would cross the
Hirondelle at the changing station in the morning,
and the reverse would occur on the return trip.
The reason was supposed to be the infinitesimal
loss of time caused by the attention given by the
ostlers and stablemen to the proceedings of their
rivals. In the case of the coach which stood
behind, all their eager glances were directed
forward, and did not sensibly interfere with the
tightening of straps and buckles; but in the
coach which stood first, the men were constantly
glancing backwards or over their shoulders,
and two or three seconds were thus lost; for it
was an affair of seconds; twenty-eight was the
average. Within half a minute of pulling up
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
at the inn-door, each coach was again on its
way.
All sorts of contrivances were resorted to in
order to expedite the change. The Shrewsbury
Wonder, one of the fastest and most regular
coaches in the kingdom, or in the world, by the
passage of which, men were in the habit of setting
their watches, had the horses in some cases ready
harnessed to the pole, and by the removal of a
pin, and the loosening of the four trace-ends, the
four incoming horses were removed altogether,
and the four fresh ones slipped in with the new
pole. In the arrangement finally adhered to by
the Hirondelle, the new leaders awaited the coach
with their faces towards it, and the wheelers were
stationed on either side of the road, with their
faces towards the leaders. The coachman un-
buckled his reins as he came in sight of the inn.
Pulling up with a sharp and steady check at the
same spot daily, he threw the reins to either side,
and walked straight down from the coach-box as
steadily as if he were descending a staircase, and
straight up to the new leaders. By the time that
he had hold of their bridles, his own horses were
unbuckled. Steadily holding their bits, he turned
the two horses with their backs to the end of the
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
107
pole, and then leaving them, ascended the coach-
box with the same aplomb with which he had
quitted it. By the time that he was seated all
the attachments were completed. The reins
were thrown up to him, a pair on either side, and
in hardly more time than it takes to read the
description, the Hirondelle was again in motion,
Benton, the famous and steady whip, deliberately
buckling the reins as he got up his speed to
sixteen miles per hour.
The coachmen heard the tidings of the
approach of their ruthless iron rivals with
feelings that passed through the stages of incre-
dulous contempt, of uneasy curiosity, and of
alarmed enmity. When the Hertfordshire
Vicar, before mentioned, threatened the pro-
prietor of "the coach" which so often brought
him from his Saturday night's whist parties to his
Sunday morning's duties, with iron roads and
steam coaches, Mr. Wyatt coolly replied, "And
do you know what I hears people a talking of?
They means to send down here a patent cast-iron
parson, to go by steam, and then they says they
shall allas know where to find him." The
retort seemed, in those days, as probable as the
threat.
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
This confidence slowly deserted the Jehus. It
may be supposed that the Engineers of a railway
in construction near their route were not their
favourite passengers.
"I suppose you'll set us
up as mile-stones along your new steam road,"
said one. "What do people want?" said another;
"they will never be satisfied. First, they wanted
ten miles an hour, then we gave 'em that; then
they wanted to go faster, and we got up to
sixteen miles an hour. 'I find horses,' says Mr.
Dangerfield, 'you find whips,—that is your time
to keep.' Now, they are not satisfied with that;
they must go by steam at twenty miles an hour.
By-and-by they won't be satisfied without they
go in less than no time at all. They will want
to leave London at nine o'clock and get to Oxford
at five minutes before nine.' The honest coach-
22
man little thought that he was a prophet. We
do not yet travel at that imaginary rate, but
our electric messages do.
When the range of the twenty-five to thirty
miles that are within the limit of the comfort-
able daily work of a pair of well-kept horses
is once passed, no mode of getting over the
ground has yet been discovered to equal in the
physical enjoyment it conveyed, that of the old
7
ENGLISH ENGINEERS,
109
first-class coaches. For riding, a distance of that
amount is enough for exercise and for pleasure.
If exceeded, relays are required; and riding
strange horses is not generally agreeable. In
making use of the now almost extinct post-chaise,
the speed is comparatively low, unless four horses
are put to. Even then the rattle and the swing of
the chaise is not comparable to the steady roll of
the coach, and the chaise has no coach-box. Then
the change of vehicle at each stage is a nuisance;
the turnpikes are a nuisance; the fees to post-boys
and ostlers and helpers are nuisances, each of
which you avoided on the coach, when the dues
of coachman and of guard were according to an
exact tariff. If you endeavoured to avoid the
change of chaise by taking your own carriage,
fresh anxiety replaced that which you avoided.
The weight would be more than that of a post-
chaise; or you would fear for your springs with
reckless driving; or your movements would be
fettered by waiting for your own horses to follow ;
or you would have to wait so long at some
change-house while horses were not forthcoming,
as altogether to defeat your object, if that
depended upon speed. In fact, without the
additional expense of a courier sent in advance,
110
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
much time was lost by any method of posting,
except on some of the most frequented roads.
But on the box of a well-appointed coach,
on a fine day, over a good road, seated by a
crack whip, or with the occasional charge of
the ribbons, with four well-conditioned horses
that knew their work, and their coachmen's
mode of getting through it, travelling was a
positive enjoyment. So fond were men of the
road, that noblemen and gentlemen used to
drive stages on the Oxford, the Brighton, and
other lines. In one place a baronet regularly
touched his hat for the coachman's shilling.
In another, a gentleman who had not yet quite
run through a fine property, used to drive his
own four-in-hand some twenty miles to the
scene of action, to drive the stage for a given
distance, to return in charge of the up-coach,
and finally to drive his own horses home. A
major in the army, the near relative and pre-
sumptive heir of a noble duke, was a well-
known and highly respected coachman on one
of the Oxford coaches.
The stage between Cheltenham and Tewkes-
bury was one of the most rapid and agreeable
run over by any of the fast coaches. As the
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
111
hand of the town clock reached the quarter
before six, the two opposition coaches, on each
of which its coachman had been seated for four
or five minutes, with elbows squared and whip
advanced, while the guard stood behind with
one foot on the step, would begin to move,
rather with the gentle motion of machinery
than with the ordinary jerk of starting horses.
Steadily and rapidly the pace quickened to a
flight, without a touch, with scarcely a sound
to the horses. Then the bugle began to ring
out a cheery tune, not the classical double note
of the mail horn, but the merry strains of
"Jim Crow." The bugle of the opposition
coach, at some fifty yards distance, would re-
echo. The fresh morning air, the fragrance
of the wide hedgeless bean-fields, the distant
rugged outline of the great Malvern range, clear
in the early morn before you; the purple glory
of the sunshine bursting over the Cotswolds
behind; the steady, unswerving, rapid motion,
combined to give a sense of exhilarating power
for which the greater speed of the dusty, noisy,
uninteresting train can afford no substitute.
The Shrewsbury, the Oxford, and the
Brighton roads were among the most famous
112
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
for their whips. There was a spot some four
and a half miles from Cheltenham, on the
Shrewsbury road, that served as a great test
of the accomplishments of the coachman. Just
where the red marl crops out from beneath
the lias clay, a low hill rises, and runs parallel to
the Severn. On the crest of this hill ran the
direct road from Worcester to Gloucester, and the
road from Cheltenham, running up this short hill
at an incline of perhaps one in thirty, fell into the
former route at right angles, at a spot named
Coomb Hill. To drive up this ascent, and then
along the crest of the hill, was easy enough. But
to get gracefully down was the test. Most of the
coachmen made use of the drag. Some would put
on the drag and run into the hedge notwith-
standing; but the steady and silent Benton, one
of the best whips that ever handled the ribbons,
seemed to take no further notice of the difficulty
than was evinced by rather a firmer seat on the
box, and a little more squareness of the elbows.
Without a check, without an apparent effort,
he brought his team round the square turn, and
down the centre of the road, without the slightest
change of pace, the coach rolling as firm and as
steadily as over a straight bit of level ground.
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
113
Another style of driving, splendid in its pecu-
liarity, was that of the Quicksilver mail. Over
the undulating road from Plymouth to Falmouth
two mails ran daily each way. One performed the
distance at the rate of ten miles an hour, including
stoppages; the other made the rate eleven miles,
with the same allowance. The undulations might
more fairly be called serious hills-Dutchmen
would call them mountains. Great part of the
road was got over at a three-quarter gallop. But
the peculiarity of the Quicksilver mail was the
method of managing the skid. On dipping from
the crest of a hill, the guard would lean forward
over the coach, and, by means of a second chain
adapted for the purpose, drop the skid before the
wheel. Here and there he would have to try
once or twice, but the sharp jolt of the off hind
wheel, followed by a steady swing of the coach,
generally told that his hand and eye were exact.
In this operation there was little or no danger. But
to take off the skid without stopping the coach
required more nerve. Patent skids had long been
in use, which the coachmen who travelled without
a guard could raise and lower by means of a
handle, and even without moving from the box.
But to take off a patent skid it is necessary to
I
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back the coach. The number of stoppages that
would have been necessary for this purpose on
the Falmouth line would have seriously interfered
with the speed required by the Postmaster-
General.
The loose skid, with a light chain for lowering
as before mentioned, was therefore made use of.
To take off this shoe, the guard descended from
his seat, ran to the off side of the coach, grasped
the handle of the coach-door with the right hand,
and thus accompanying the vehicle, seized the
drag-chain with the left. Taking advantage of
the first irregularity in the road that gave a
swing to the coach, he snatched the skid from
under the wheel as the weight reeled to the near
side, and swung the link of the chain on its hook.
Until you became accustomed to the perfect sang-
froid and ease with which this service was per-
formed, by a man whose ordinary function seemed
to be to sit on a triangular stool behind the mail,
and sound two notes on a long tin horn, the sense
of danger and excitement was almost painful.
In the old French diligence travelling there
was a greater number of horses, a greater amount
of arbitrary power assumed by the conductor,
more discomfort, less speed, and an infinitely
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115
greater noise, than on our English roads. Over
some of the long heavy hills between Havre and
Paris, or between Calais and Amiens, eight, ten,
or even more horses would be attached,—you could
hardly call it harnessed, -to the ponderous and
top-heavy vehicle, which after all would toil slowly
up the hills, and come down them amid shouting
and swearing, cracking of whips like the constant
explosion of crackers, swaying from side to side,
and the smell of the charred break on the wheel,
which took the place of the skid. Travelling by
a French diligence was a clumsy imitation of the
English mail.
Probably the finest public travelling in the
world out of England was, or is, if it be not yet
displaced by the never completed Italian railways,
that on the highway from Naples to Foggia, Bari,
and Brindisi. The post-masters on this road are
exacting and authoritative. You have no voice
as to the number of horses to be supplied to you.
According to the class and estimated weight of
your carriage, they are furnished at each stage,
in a ratio ealculated for the distance to the next
change, and for the inclination or running facility
of the road. Up one lofty hill, where the subsoil
is clay, and road metal seems to be scarce, a
I 2
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
carriage containing three persons is drawn by a
couple of oxen. Four horses are generally the
allowance for a rather lumbering barouche, but
sometimes five, sometimes six are substituted.
Over the rolling plains of Apulia, where the gravel
affords a surface to the road equal to that of the
finest English highways, a very good speed is
attained. But the one point in which the Italian
post-boys far distance their English brothers is
the start. Clad in ponderous jack-boots, and
cracking whips with only a less offensive fuss than
the French (who are not born to deal with horses,
while the Italians are) the postilions start on foot.
They encourage and scold their horses into a
gallop; and, when they have attained their full
speed, vault into the saddle, and continue their
course in triumph. The Apulian post-boy and
the Quicksilver guard would mutually have
astonished one another.
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CHAPTER IX.
THE REPENTANCE OF THE OPPOSITION.
THE Country towns, which were enlivened and
supported by the brisk and cheerful traffic of
the road, began to look aghast at the menace
of its decay. Where railways ran, it became
more and more evident that "long" coach
traffic would disappear. Local opposition, which
had been unavailing to prevent the construction
of the iron road, had only succeeded in diverting
the new traffic from the towns. The coaches
would be killed by the railway, and the stream
of travellers would no longer pass through the
ancient centres of business. The towns began
to think they had made a mess of it.
A slumbrous old town, famous for the
noble Norman windows of its massive abbey,
and nestling in the frequent fogs of the
rich meadows amid which the Avon joins the
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
Severn, had succeeded in keeping the railway,
which had been intended to pass through
it, at a couple of miles distance. To feed
their own traffic, or, as they said, to accommo-
date the town, the directors of the railway
sought to obtain parliamentary power for the
construction of a branch. The mayor and
burgesses, now as anxious to attract, as they
formerly were to repel, the accommodation of
the locomotive line, thought, that by opposing
the branch, they might induce the company
to make a deviation, and, at the expense of
a slight additional distance, carry their main
line close to the originally projected site. A
conference was at last arranged between the
railway authorities and the corporation; and a
local Director, a tall, gaunt, harsh-visaged
Quaker, the Engineer-in-Chief, and one of
his Subs, met the mayor, and two or three
of his burgesses, to discuss the case.
Mr. Mayor was a character. A man of middle
height, light-haired, red-whiskered, slightly bald,
slightly inclining to corpulence, with a ready
and extremely benevolent smile, and a quick,
searching glance. Mr. Mayor was a solici-
tor, and no one knew whose title deeds were
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119
in his strong box. He exerted much con-
trol over a bank, and every one who might
need banking facilities held him in respect—
or at least in some awe. As an electioneer
he was unsurpassed. He has been known to
poll the exact number of votes set down in
his final estimate, as made up at four o'clock
on the morning of the election, -a very un-
usual amount of accuracy. His eloquence was
highly popular. His accurate knowledge of
the ins and outs of every one gave him
great local power.
Careful to avoid commit-
ting himself or his principal, he was yet fully
aware that a fine Severn salmon, caught
about the time of an election, deserved a
price that was
that was not to be reckoned at per
pound. When one of the "Orange" public-
houses sent in a bill for £180, and Mr. Mayor
took the trouble to ascertain, that all the
excisable commodity that had been on the
premises during the election saturnalia had not
amounted to the value of five pounds, he did
not allow the bill to be discharged without
a mild remonstrance to the publican
as to
the propriety of being less prosperous in
future. The house occupied by his worship
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
་་་
was one of those comfortable, modest, sub-
stantial dwellings which we
lost the art of constructing.
seem to have
Facing one of
the principal streets, it was enclosed behind
by a trim and lovely garden, rich with mossy
lawns, and surrounding the apse and chancel
of the abbey, so that the solemn strains of
the organ, which had been used in the chapel
of the Lord Protector, and which still bears
the mace of the Commonwealth in lieu of
the Royal Arms, fell softly on the ear as you
walked beneath the larches and laurels. The
house, as was fitting, possessed a haunted
room; and the only thing which seemed
wanting, as far as external appearances went,
to the inmates, was that there should be daily
service in the abbey. But Mr. Mayor was
a dissenter, so that he passed
that he passed lightly over
this deficiency.
The mayor opened the conference with his
frankest electioneering manner. The town
much regretted the opposition it had given
to the first bill of the company. In common
with the cities and large towns of the counties
traversed by the line, their own corporation
had been ignorant of the real benefits of
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121
railway communication.
They regretted that
the traffic of the railway would suffer in con-
sequence, and they were anxious to do what
they could to support the line. Therefore
they proposed, that the pending application to
Parliament should be for power to deviate
the main line and bring it through the out-
skirts of the town. To this the corporate
support should be formally given. Of course
the Directors would gladly avail themselves of
the boon. For what would a branch be?
A cost to the company, and a source of no
emolument. An engine must be in waiting
to meet every train, and perhaps not more
than a couple of passengers would come over
the branch in the course of the day. The
mayor, therefore, hoped that all present would
take the same practical view of the matter.
The Quaker Director replied. He fully
agreed with the mayor as to the extrava-
gant character of a branch. No one could
have put the case
the case better. But he thought
the wants of the town could be better pro-
vided for. The most convenient omnibuses
had been recently invented to meet exactly such
cases. Instead of having to make their way
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
to a station, which must be at some distance
from the greater part of the town, the om-
nibus would pick up every traveller at his
own door. In little more than half an hour it
would take him to an actual station on the
main line, to the course of the through traffic.
He was therefore so glad to find that the towns-
folk did not wish for a branch!
The argument of the Quaker was a little too
strong for the corporate authorities. "What!"
said one of them, "We come to see if you
would agree to give us a deviation, and you
now propose not even to give us a branch, but
to put us off with a 'bus!" So the conference
came to an end, like more important conferences,
without either party having been gainers by it,
and the upshot was that the branch was made.
Greater silence and stupor seem to have fallen
upon the ancient town, now that the streets no
longer echo the pleasant rattle of the coaches,
and the main traffic rolls through the wide
bean-fields at a distance of two or three miles
from the Abbey.
The instance above cited is but one of the
many illustrations of the injury that was caused
to the traffic of the country by the hot and im-
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123
provident haste with which projectors planned,
and Parliament sanctioned, lines of railway
that were often extremely ill-adapted to the
wants of the district. It is true that the idea
at first prevailed among the promoters of new
railways, that if a line once obtained the
sanction of the legislature, its absorption of
the traffic of the district was sure to follow;
so that if it did happen to take a somewhat
circuitous course, the profit on the mileage of
the traffic would be so much the more. A self-
ish view of this nature is always short-sighted.
Much of the ruinous loss incurred by parlia-
mentary contests would have been avoided, if
the natural course of the traffic had been
studied in the first instance, and the railways
had been designed with a wise forethought and
a true adaptation to the actual requirements of
the country. Such lines, as in the case of the
London and North-Western, have a command
of their respective districts, which is founded
on the power of supplying their requirements
in the shortest, and, therefore, the cheapest
method. We have had serious lessons as to
the relative value of short, direct, and well-
planned lines, as compared with that of more
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
ambitious and grasping systems, which de-
pended for their traffic on that which they
could divert from their neighbours. The un-
necessary cost of loop-lines was an occasional
result of bad selection of line. Thus the city
of Worcester, a most important feeder of the
Birmingham and Gloucester railway, was left at
a considerable distance from the original main line
of that route. It was necessary to construct a
branch. Engineering considerations made this
branch diverge at an angle, far from a right
angle, from the trunk. A second branch formed
the first into a portion of a loop, or deviation;
and then the main line between the junctions
became useless. Thus a double expense, and a
permanent addition to the mileage of every
train, ensued from the neglect shown in the
first instance to the just requirements of the
city of Worcester. It is impossible for the
most ingenious speculators to control the force
of physical laws.
It is true that, in the first attempts which were
made to inaugurate a new system, the persons
who would be the most extensively benefited by
its operation were often to be found among its
most active opponents. The authorities of Oxford
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125
thought that sound and religious learning could
no more be expected to adorn their famous
university, if the means were afforded to the
undergraduates of running up to London in a
couple of hours. Bristol and Southampton long
carried on a ruinous struggle for the traffic of
the West, each opposing the project of its rival,
not on its demerits, but with the greedy and
short-sighted design of monopolising the right of
carriage. How very little the most sanguine
projectors of the day could foresee the very
proximate future, is abundantly shown by these
and similar facts!
But if the true line was opposed, and the Act
for authorising it was threatened, by either an
ignorant or an interested opposition, it was an
ill-advised course to evade such an opposition by
taking a bad line. To wait for another session of
Parliament, or for the result of that experience
which was of necessity so novel both to engineers
and to commercial men, was the only wise course.
It is difficult to name instances in which that
course was adopted, unless in cases where the
original termini of lines in the suburbs of great
towns were, at a subsequent period, replaced by
central stations, as at Birmingham.
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
That very large sums of money, which were
lavished on defeating the opposition of land-
owners, or on purchasing not only their land but
their good-will, might have been saved by the
exercise of ordinary prudence, was shown by the
experience, at a date considerably later than those
to which we have hitherto referred, of the
projectors of a Welsh line of railway. It was
thought possible to connect the broad gauge and
the narrow gauge systems of railway by a line
which should open a district very sparse in popula-
tion, but rich in mineral wealth. A direct commu-
nication between the commercial centres of Lan-
cashire and the unrivalled natural port of Milford
promised a through traffic of a magnitude that
would render the line remunerative, even in the
absence of any large amount of local business.
But it was not, on that account, thought proper
to neglect the local proprietors. One or two of
the leading county magnates were called on in
the first instance, and the advantages promised by
giving such means of access to their estates were
clearly shown, and, almost in every instance,
pretty fully appreciated by these gentlemen.
With their support county meetings were called
at each of the principal towns on the route,
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127
:
before any serious expense had been incurred in
the surveys of the line. The Engineer and the
Solicitor attended, and explained in detail the local
advantages that were promised to each vicinity.
In one, the only manure used for the fields was
lime. Even this had to be carted for a long
distance. The farmers were not slow to appre-
ciate the advantage of a depôt in the middle of
their district, where they might have not only
lime, at a far lower cost than that which they
actually bore, but stable manure, bone dust,
or guano, each of which was simply inaccessible
by road carriage. In another town it was shown
that the residents would receive five per cent.
on a £20 share, or at least would effect
a saving equal to that amount, for every ton
of coal which they consumed in the year.
A man who burnt five tons of coal in the year
would save more than £5 on this consumption, if
the railway were constructed; and would thus
receive a dividend on the £100 which he was
invited to subscribe to that end, independently
of any profit accruing to the company. In a third
case ironstone, limestone, and lead ores would
become productive sources of wealth from the
mere circumstance of being rendered accessible.
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
66
The
These plain statements of undeniable facts
went straight home to the county. Squires and
farmers, tradesmen and shop-keepers, all saw that
their interests were at stake. The pride of the
county magnates was not affronted by
a lot
of Engineer chaps" marching over their pre-
mises without warning, or dragging unauthorised
chains over their lawns and shrubberies. Human
nature, in a word, was enlisted on the side of
the enterprise, instead of being, as in most cases,
thoughtlessly hustled into opposition.
result of each of the four meetings was identical,
with the natural difference that the more in-
accessible the spot, the better were the terms
offered by the proprietors to the projectors of
the railway. In each case the large majority of
owners of land to be traversed by the railway
pledged themselves not only to offer no opposi-
tion to the bill, but to sell their land to the
company at a fixed number of years' purchase
on the rent; and to take payment in shares, or
rather to subscribe for shares to an amount equal
to that of the purchase money.
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
129
CHAPTER X.
A WEST COUNTRY RAILWAY.
A BRIEF sketch of the history of a well-known
English line of railway may be given as an
illustration of the manner in which enterprises,
in themselves most legitimate, were wrecked by
their pilots at the very mouth of the harbour
of departure. The principal actors in the
scene are long since dead; and while the few
survivors of a large staff will at once recognise
both the persons and the scene of the drama,
it is not likely that the recognition should be
so general as to cause injury or annoyance
to any one.
During the mania of 1835, an Act of Parlia-
ment was obtained for a railway from an in-
land town of great importance and activity, to
a port with which it had much traffic. The
attention of the Engineer to whom such a
K
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
service was entrusted might have been natu-
rally divided between two routes, one of which,
taking the most direct line, which was also
that of the existing road traffic, passed through
three considerable towns, one of them being a
cathedral city, and followed the natural indi-
cations of the physical and the social state of
the country. An alternative line, however, was
practicable, taking some distant but respectable
towns in the route, and opening an agricultural
country; not the thoroughfare of any important
traffic, but passing an inland watering-place of
even more importance for passenger traffic than
was the terminal port which lay beyond it.
An alternative of this nature gives to the
Engineer the rare advantage of being, able to
make a preliminary bargain with the land-
owners; by informing them that the decision
of the route may mainly, or altogether, de-
pend, on the manner in which they will pledge
themselves to the support of the railway through
their own district, by entering into provisional
agreements for the sale of the requisite land at
fair agricultural prices, and for a proportionate
subscription of shares. This precaution was in
this instance, as in most others, entirely neglected.
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131
The
On the other hand, the ill-will of all the local
interests was most ingeniously excited.
line was laid down on neither of the natural
routes, but over an intermediate space of open
country, far from any centre of population,
requiring branches or other means of expensive
and inconvenient communication with its natural
feeders, and finally terminating at the watering-
place, though bearing the name of the port as
its outward terminus. An amended Act of
Parliament was designed, and applied for sub-
sequently, for an extension; but the district in
question was disputed and seized on by a hostile
company, working on a different gauge. The
commercial line, therefore, ended in a watering-
place, to which it ran through a country so
destitute even of ordinary roads, that wooden
bridges were erected for the crossings over the
railway, owing to the inaccessible nature of
their sites for carting down stone or brick for
masonry.
The want of judgment evinced in the selection
of the route may have been one main cause why
some of the shareholders, when the cold fit
first began to supervene on the enthusiasm of
1835, sought to abandon the undertaking.
The
K 2
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
Engineer, a man without practical experience
of public works, endeavoured to strengthen his
position by the aid of another Engineer of
somewhat successful practice, who was then,
greatly to the wrath of his own former leaders,
rising to the commanding position which he
afterwards long maintained, and in which he
accumulated a large fortune. The staff of the
line was therefore ordered to prepare a revised
estimate. The part of this estimate which it was
considered most important to arrange was the
sum-total, and for this end certain details of
prices and quantities were decided on as normal;
on which one of the Subs, who had seen both
estimates and works before, thought it his duty
to make a representation to the second in
command as to their total inadequacy. That,
however, he was informed, was no business of
his, or of any one but the Chief, whose orders
they were to fulfil. A staff thus converted into a
mere class of arithmeticians entrusted with the
working out of selected sums, of course produced
the preliminary work required for the prede-
termined estimate. When all was ready, the
Chief took charge of the consultation with his
brother Engineer on the basis thus prepared.
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
133
A period of some suspense followed, some of the
young men, who had been invited from situations
where promotion was certain, to take charge of
actual works, feeling by no means pleased at
having their situations perilled on work carried
on blindfold. At last the report of the Consulting
Engineer appeared, which was of a nature as
little creditable to the profession as was the
original—or rather, the revised-estimate. He,
too, began at the end. "The round sum stated
by So-and-so," he reported, "is no doubt, under
proper management, sufficient to complete the
line designed. But all the details are untrust-
worthy. This cannot be done for the price, and
that is deficient in design. I can undertake
myself to revise the whole plan, and to put
it in the hands of contractors who will execute
the line for the sum named, but I cannot, in
any other way, support the opinion of your
Engineer." It is a matter greatly to the credit
of the savoir faire of the latter, that he continued
to extract the honey of this damaging "backing
of one's friends," leaving the venom behind;
and actually carried the day, and had orders to
commence the works through the bean-fields.
•
But he was not content with this triumph, or
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
with making the best of the services of the very
respectable staff formed into the service of the
Company. This included all the elements then
available-a cautious officer of Royal Engineers,
a working miner and mechanical Engineer,
several boná-fide engineering pupils just out of
their articles, a very accurate and beautiful
surveyor and draughtsman, and other elements of
a military but very appropriate origin. But a
hint from a subaltern, especially if the subaltern
happened to know anything on the subject,
(which involved his knowing more than his com-
mander,) always caused the latter to lose his
temper; the consequence of which was, that he
usually started on his own way, and only sought
for advice when it was too late. As the details
of the estimate had been adjusted to the total,
the next and more difficult task was to adjust
the execution of the work to the details of the
estimate. Even this, however, was to be effected,
to a certain extent, by ingenuity. No man could
he responsible for the future, and as to what
might occur a few years later,-sufficient for
the day was the evil thereof. It would, however,
make things pleasant for all parties for the
Engineer to be able to announce to the Directors
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
135
that the works of the line had been set within
his estimate.
How far this gentleman did or did not deceive
himself in the matter is one of those points on
which it is neither easy nor necessary to arrive
at a conclusion. The line of argument adopted,
and the line of conduct based upon it, was cer-
tainly eminently calculated to deceive any who
might put their trust in its rectitude. "Great
works," argued the reformer, "are executed by
great contractors, who make great profits by
their execution. The great contractors sub-let
the work to little contractors, who execute them
for smaller prices, and the difference between the
letting and the sub-letting prices constitutes the
profit of the first contractor. I propose to secure
this profit to the company, by sub-letting the
works in the first instance. I shall
prepare small
sub-contracts for each individual work, and fur-
ther divide the labour among different groups of
tradesmen. I will contract with the quarryman
for stone, and with the carriers for bringing it to
the works. I will then sub-let each culvert and
bridge to a competing master mason, who may,
or may not, as the case will turn out, find lime,
sand, and carting, as well as labour. Another
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
contractor will erect a post and rail-fence;
another will excavate the ditches; a third fencing
contractor will set and weed the quicks. Earth-
work I will let a cutting at a time; and
to encourage the small earthwork man, the
Company will advance him 90 per cent. of
the value of his plant, to be deducted from
subsequent fortnightly payments. Over all this
vast and economical system the Engineers of
the Company will keep watch. What else are
they paid for? Idleness is the worst of dangers
for young men."
Among the practical disadvantages of this
novel scheme, (apart from any consideration of
the impossibility that such a complex system of
bargains, each, of course, subject to its own pecu-
liar leak, could be brought into harmonious
co-operation by any less active energy than the
eye of the master, sharpened by the goad of self-
interest,) might or might not be ranked the fact,
that the earliest portions of all heavy works are
almost invariably the least expensive. This fact
is self-evident to the workman. It might therefore
happen that works should be bond-fide let over a
large district at very low prices, without afford-
ing any criterion as to the ultimate cost of the
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137
whole bulk of labour to be executed.
Thus, a
prima facie justification of an estimate might be
secured, at a cost which there might be better
means of ascertaining by-and-by than in the
first instance. Meantime, however, advance
would have taken place over the whole line,
and then-why then the completion of works
at almost any price is generally preferred to
their abandonment.' So it fell out in the case
referred to.
The first, or one of the first, of the new order
of primary sub-contractors, a little man engaged
to make small beginnings of great works at low
prices, might have been photographed in the
character of the genius of the system. A very
little, sandy-haired, dusty man, with a customary
air of feverish anxiety, which not unfrequently
deepened into an expression of intense anguish
or profound and hopeless despair. He was a
man of many trades-a bit of a manufacturer, a
tradesman in a small way, a tentative constructor
of sewers, an occasional burner of bricks, a
collector and salesman of geological specimens,
and an eccentric and fervent preacher. The mode
in which he sought for solace when in difficulty,
by the aid of a peculiar method of scratching
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
himself, in a manner altogether unusual in
public, recurs to the memory when the name
of the worthy is mentioned. Heart and soul
66
he entered into the new sub-contract system,
taking half-a-dozen of these engagements at a
time; and when asked how he arranged his time
so as to get through his multifarious engage-
ments, he replied, Why, the first thing as I
does every morning is, I takes and eats no
breakfastes." So he promptly verified the Engi-
neer's estimates by taking numerous contracts
considerably below their very moderate prices.
As time elapsed, however, this serenity be-
came troubled. Sub-contract 70a was let at
a rather higher price than the sub-contract 70,
but for sub-contract 70c a much more con-
siderable advance was demanded by the operator.
The earthwork men, too, who for the first month
or so went on swimmingly on the strength of
the advances made on their plant, considered
the instalments of repayment to the company to
be altogether intolerable deductions from the
amount of the certificates, and found themselves
in prison, or in the Gazette, if they did not take
the precaution of disappearing with their conver-
tible means, leaving the mortgaged plant in the
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139
hands of the resident Engineer. In the course of
a few months great part of the works in progress
was actually, if not always nominally, carried
on as day-work under the inspection of the
officers of the Company. The experience which
these gentlemen thus acquired was no doubt
valuable and extensive. It is questionable,
however, how far the shareholders would have
been content, could a statement as candid as
the above have been laid before them, to concur
in this mode of educating the rising generation
of Engineers.
The natural consequences soon ensued. The
works were either scamped, or carried on at
an altogether disproportionate expense, or both.
In some instances it was necessary, as time
became pressing, to apply to real contractors,
and to give them their own prices. Thus a
cutting originally let at ninepence or tenpence
per cube yard, was finished at the price of three-
and-sixpence per cube yard. In such of the
masonry works as had been advertised for com-
petition, the lowest tenders were usually sent in
by men belonging to the then newly-organised
Trades' Unions. Protests on the part of Sub-
Engineers were vain. Large bridges were let
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
to these men, and the allowance necessary to
keep a foreman or inspector on behalf of the
Company, on each such work, was refused from
motives of economy. The consequences were,
that the daily rounds of the Sub-Engineer were
watched, and that as soon as his back was turned,
the scamping baffled description. The Engineer-
in-Chief on one occasion unexpectedly visited
one of these Union bridges, about an hour after
his Sub had paid his morning visit of inspection.
He saw enough to cause him to order half the
work to be pulled down, but he did not see
enough to lead him to change his system.
stone.
The southern portion of the railway lay through
a district of lias clay, and a lofty neighbouring
range of downs was composed of oolite lime-
Men familiar with masonry know that in
many geological formations, the durability and
building qualities of the stone of a given stratum
are not questions to be decided by a reference to
a geological map, or even by a casual inspection
of the face of the country. Even the view of a
working quarry will be far from satisfying either
the Engineer or the Architect who is fit for his
post. He will require to examine samples of
the stone, from such quarries as may strike him
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
141
1
as appropriate on careful examination; and will
not be contented till he is fully aware how the
stone in question has behaved in actual use, how
it has stood the effects of frost, and how far it has
been tested by lapse of time.
In the restoration of St. David's Cathedral, the
well-known architect Nash availed himself of
some beautiful sandstone from the vicinity, but
such was the difference in the durability of
different contiguous beds in the same locality,
that a part of Nash's restoration is in as dila-
pidated a state as any portion of the ancient
building; while the Irish oak roof, of great
antiquity, looks clear and fresh, as if new from
the hands of the joiner. In the range of oolitic
hills to the west of Oxford, stone of every quality
is to be found, from building stone-which, if
quarried at the proper time of year, and duly
seasoned before use, may be equal to Bath or to
Portland-to an oolitic mass, composed of separate
granules about the size of peas, and with no more
coherence than a heap of sand. It is, in fact, a
sort of fine oolitic gravel. It may well be
supposed that proper care in the selection of
stone was altogether incompatible with the sub-
contract system, and frost and thaw left their
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
visible autographs on many of the unsightly
bridges.
The line lying through a clay country in the
part where the works were lightest, and where
the heavy unmetalled roads rendered the carting
of stone for masonry a heavy expense, the
simplest forethought would have prescribed the
making of bricks, in situ, for some of the heavier
works. This precaution was in no instance
taken. It is possible that the Engineer-in-Chief
may have derived a dislike to any intermeddling
with brick-making from a little incident which
took place in the early days of his experience.
A local landowner, who kept his
eyes well
open to the advantages which his own large
estate would derive from the erection of a station,
and the construction of a road leading directly to
that station from the most fashionable part of the
adjacent town, arranged for the sale of the
minimum quantity of land requisite, at not very
exorbitant prices; and fixed by agreement, the
position of the station, and that of a first-class
road. Then he made, to the Engineer-in-Chief,
representations as to the necessity of providing
bricks for the station buildings. Bricks were
going to increase in price. It is a singular fact,
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143
-
confirmed by long experience, that bricks are
always going up when one wants to buy, and
going down when one wants to sell. If purchase
were put off till the drawings were got out, the
season would be lost, the price would be raised,
the Engineer would be at the mercy of the
brick-makers. A friendly interest, therefore, in
the welfare of the railway company induced the
landowner to counsel the Engineer to order of
him, (the landowner,) the requisite number of
bricks for the station buildings, which should be
at once put in hand. The Engineer admitted
the force of the argument, and the friendly nature
of the adviser. He was a man of promptitude,
and also a man of great accuracy,—that kind of
accuracy which will work out a result to the
third decimal of an inch, but which omits to
check the painful calculation by the rougher
measurement of the tape. It was fortunate that
on this occasion the Engineer did not foresee
the need of any large quantity of bricks for his
stations, because a large quantity multiplied by
ten becomes a very large quantity; and while
running out the estimate to the odd brick, the
calculator unfortunately mistook the position of
the decimal point. A fixed quantity, however,
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
was bargained for, and the landowner commenced
brick-making.
Two or three months after the contractor had
another interview with the Chief. "About those
bricks," he said. "Well, the order is now in
hand; more than half are made; a good many
are in the kiln; I am ready to
to commence
deliveries." "But I do not want any yet."
"That is of course your affair; they were
commenced for your convenience. The con-
tract is quite regular; if you are not ready to
take them, let me have something on account."
66
Well, that seems reasonable. The matter must
be put in due course. You had better call on
Mr. Blank, the Sub-Engineer, to measure up the
work; he will send his certificate in the usual
way to the office of the Resident Assistant; he
will sign it and forward it to me. I shall
countersign it and send it to the Secretary.
He-" "But, my dear Sir, all that is very
nice; you can arrange all these matters with
your usual military precision. I do not under-
stand your system, and have no wish to inter-
fere with it. You will meet my wishes in the same
manner. I have drawn on you for the value of a
million and a half of bricks at three months. Just
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
145
be kind enough to write 'accepted,' and my
bankers will spare me any further trouble in the
matter, just as your Subs will save you."
What could be fairer? The brick-maker was
more au courant at Bills of Exchange than the
Engineer, who duly accepted the draft, and
left the matter to take its regular course. The
brick-maker took no further trouble. The Sub-
Engineer heard nothing of the matter, and sent
in no certificate. The Secretary made no
payment, and the Bill of Exchange, at due
maturity, came back protested, to the immense
disgust of all parties to the bargain. Of course
it was paid in time, according to the proper
machinery, but explanations are disagreeable
when they have to be made over dishonoured
promises, even when written on stamped paper.
L
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
CHAPTER XI.
A NEWLY-FORMED STAFF.
"ONE thing more," said the Chief, at the close
of his first address to a newly-formed staff,
"and that I have some delicacy in saying;
but I think you will understand me, and I
hope I shall not appeal to any of you in vain.
I wish you to remember your position as
gentlemen, as the officers of a great Company;
and that your moral conduct and influence
should be such as befits our relation to one
another." It was good advice-advice, indeed,
far better than was the example set by the
giver; but it may be hoped that it was not
thrown away.
The staff thus formed contained elements of
both an effective and a very agreeable service.
One or two marked characters, as often occurs,
seemed to give a stamp to the whole of the
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147
body; for a regular mess was organised, served
by a highly respectable sergeant and his wife.
Three or four of the Subs and Draughtsmen
lived in the house, in which certain rooms were
retained as offices, and many dined or took
other meals in common. An airy, convenient
situation, on what were then the outskirts of
a gay and fashionable watering-place, had been
selected, and from the windows of the drawing-
office a glorious prospect of fertile and varied
country was bounded by one of the most pic-
turesque mountain outlines to be found in any
English landscape.
One of the eldest and sedatest of the men,
a man who had been educated as an architect,
represented what in the present time would be
called the muscular element. He was a great
advocate of training; he induced one and
another of his companions to attempt their
mile's run before breakfast; he had the gloves
always perdu under the drawing-board.
pleasant companion, with some of the impul-
siveness of the Creole, he was by no means
averse to the relaxations offered by the gay
neighbourhood, and prevented his companions
from falling into mere mechanical routine.
A
L 2
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
This might have ensued from the undis-
turbed predominance of a man of
of a very
different stamp, who had been educated as a
surveyor, and whose precision of voice and
manners, and extreme prolixity of work, had
established his reputation for infallible accu-
racy. A quiet and amiable companion, his
great desire was, first, not to be hurried; and
next, not to be questioned.
Thus a vague
idea was established of his stupendous in-
dustry; and for a long time any computation
from his pen was looked upon as twice checked,
and absolutely correct. By degrees, however,
it came out that accuracy and rapidity of work
were not in inverse ratio. Those who had
often thrown aside their own results, because
they differed from those of the model com-
puter, learned by-and-by the greater truths of
the discarded calculations.
But it was years
after this time that, on hearing a discussion as
to the reliability of the method used by this
steady man in taking parliamentary levels, in
which he never booked a reading nearer than
the tenth of a foot, the Chief suddenly ex-
claimed, "Why, that accounts for several very
odd things that I could never make out in his
1
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
149
sections." So it came to be understood that
slow does not always mean sure.
Another man was a great contrast to the last:
a tall, handsome Irishman, of College education,
and whose abilities as a calculator or as an in-
cipient draughtsman, had been rather generally,
than specially, cultivated. He would have been
decidedly ornamental, and increasingly useful,
but for a weakness which had previously plunged
him from a good station in society into one
of the most anomalous conditions in which a
gentleman could be expected to be found. A
fair opening for restoration of his prospects was
now offered him; but, unfortunately, ultimately
thrown away. If he had possessed the power
of self-control, and the virtue of keeping good
resolutions, he would not have succumbed in
the battle of life. One of the bad habits which
he resolved and re-resolved to give up was
that of snuff-taking. A certain stupidity of
aspect, irritation of the eyes and nose, and
imperfection in the intellectual operations which
not unfrequently attended his morning appear-
ance in the office, were attributed by himself to
this unluckly use of snuff; so he boldly laid
aside his snuff-boxes. There is a phase in the
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
abandonment of any tyrannical habit, beyond
which the reforming votaries seem slowly, or
never, to proceed. In the case of snuff-takers,
this stage is indicated by the abandonment of
the snuff-box. But, as it is hard to break too
suddenly with a use that has become a second
nature, the discarded convenience is replaced,
in this stage of the case, by a screw of whity-
brown paper, usually kept in the waistcoat
pocket.
Thus the penitent satisfied at once
his conscience and his craving. He ceased to
consider himself as a snuff-taker on abandoning
the outward badge of the fraternity. He pro-
cured the excitement, which he could not bear
to miss, by exceptional pennyworths, which did
not, after all, help to the desired result. After
a time, people began to think that an honest
box was preferable to a constant succession of
dirty and untrustworthy wisps of paper. Later,
however, it became evident that the cause of
the irregularity in our poor friend's cerebral
functions was not so dry as he maintained to
be the case. When, in the course of profes-
sional business, he was, for a time, quartered
alone in a country district, he sank into an
unconcealed devotion to the least excusable
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
151
form of drinking-that of endless and unlimited
Under that cloud he sunk below the
beer.
horizon.
A fellow-countryman, however, joined rather
later, who would drink beer only in default
of wine, and wine only in default of whiskey.
He was the genuine, dashing, rattling Irish-
man of the novel; and if he had not passed
through all the romantic adventures and hair-
breadth escapes of one of Lever's heroes, at
all events he said that he had, and that, for a
time, answered almost as well. He was a very
good colourist, in every sense of the term; a
fine, free-hand draughtsman, well able to get
through a large quantity of creditable work,
if he would be chained to the oar; a little
man, with well-cut, handsome features, curling
hair, growing back from his forehead, and that
power of throwing his whole energy into the
pursuit of the moment, which often gives men
great influence over their companions. He
could talk well, like most of his compatriots,
tell a good story, sing a good song, mix a
good tumbler of punch, make himself agreeable
to either sex, and to almost any companion.
The story never flagged for want of a personal
152
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
link. Quorum pars magna fui might have been
taken for a current motto. The remotest
"When me
with the Dook
authority would be such as,
fawther was dining one day
in th' Peninsuler Warr," or, "It was the way
of all the gentry of County Clare in me grand-
fawther's time." Those who became acquainted
with the adventures recorded in a certain kind
of literature, came, after a time, to wonder at
frequent coincidences, or to think it strange
that the same individual should have been the
hero of so many adventures.
comer.
One of the staff, the son of a man eminent
in literature, and not unknown as a poet, took
a dislike to the licence claimed by the new-
It suited the latter to remove this
obstacle to his popularity. He softened his
tone, he made some apologies; and taking a
moment when the two were alone,-"Ah, Mr.
So-and-so," said he, "many's the time I have
heerd Mrs. Hemens reçating your fawther's,
poetry. Little I thought, last time I dined
with her, to meet yourself." The well-aimed
shot told—the singer triumphed; so far that the
latter introduced him to one or two houses
where he was intimate. The Irishman was
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
153
asked to dinner at one of them, where he
emulated at a modest distance the subsequently
sketched character of "The Mulligan." A day
or two after, he caused the mess-sergeant to
buff up a large pair of steel dragoon spurs;
adorned with which, and with a light riding
cane, he walked forth to pay his visit of com-
pliment, and to complete the conquest he thought
he had made on the preceding evening.
The last that was heard of this gifted but
erratic man, one of those whose life proves
that novelists do not either invent or excel
the dramatis persona of actual life, was, that
he had obtained some civil employment under
Government a survey was mentioned in
which he had opportunities of airing his spurs,
to which he was said-it was, perhaps, a
calumny-to have appended the further orna-
ments of a sword and a cocked hat. Let us
hope that the "fond memory," of which he
sung so melodiously, yet "brings the light of
other days" around him.
It was at a later period that a portion of
this pleasant group of associates was placed
under the orders of a Resident, who had the
reputation of being a practical man; a me-
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
chanical and mining Engineer, whose chief
intercourse with his command consisted in
making appointments, which he never kept,
for the precise time of his next appearance.
His main principle of business appeared to
be the idea that any statement made to him
was necessarily false, and that, as such, it
furnished an indication of some fault which it
was intended to cover. The poor man rattled
vaguely from point to
point over a large
sank at last beneath
district of country, and
the duties of a post for which he was in no
degree fitted. He once asked several of the
staff to dinner. During the half-hour which it
is sometimes difficult to pass on these occasions,
one of his guests contemplated a well-known
engraving that hung on the wall. "Yes," said
the Resident; "yes, yes; very fine picture. It
is Beelzebub's-Beelzebub's Supper; that's what
it is-Beelzebub's Supper." Dinner came, to the
relief of all present, and a due gravity was
happily maintained. A year or two later, two
of the guests came upon a new delineation of
the same scene in an Exhibition in London.
"Ha," said one of them, "Beelzebub's Supper."
A spruce, stout, oily gentleman stood by, in
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155
a suit of lustrous black and irreproachable
white tie. "Belshazzar's,” he interposed, in an
authoritative and didactic tone of voice. His
remark being welcomed with a hearty and
irrepressible laugh, he seemed to collect him-
self, and to recall, with some hesitation, his
Scripture history, fading from the dogmatic
into a deprecatory and somewhat dubious tone,
"Belshazzar's, rather."
On occasion of unusual pressure of parlia-
mentary work, a local surveyor was called to
aid the permanent staff. A man of mature
age and quiet manner, he was at once one
of the most industrious, and one of the best
draughtsmen of his day. He had published
one or two local maps, of great precision and
beauty. He worked in spectacles-a very un-
usual phenomenon in an Engineer's office in
1836-and all his work resembled copper-plate
engraving. He was
ments, his case containing not a few of his
own invention ; bisectors-a very useful and
simple instrument; trisectors-proportional com-
passes, constructed on the same simple prin-
ciple, but giving the instant division of a line
into three, and thus often saving much time
curious in his instru-
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
in construction; double pens, connected by an
adjusting screw, for drawing, at the same
operation, the two sides of a road or river,
and thus at once saving time and improving
the neatness of a survey; and dotting-wheels
of various patterns. But the most memorable
part of this surveyor's character was the
manner in which, for three or four weeks at
a stretch, he seemed able to dispense with
rest, and almost with food. The regular office
hours were from nine till five, with from half
an hour to an hour for lunch. Working on
there, day and night, this indefatigable man
charged seven hours' steady toil as a day.
Never eating a regular meal, only taking a
sandwich and a cup of tea, or a glass of ale,
while bending over the drawing-board, he
thus contrived to cram three hours' sleep, in
his clothes, and three days' work, into twenty-
four hours. Out of the twenty-one days which
a week can thus be made to contain, he made
a charge, on one occasion, for seventeen or
eighteen; and they were well-filled and well-
earned days into the bargain.
The Chief under whom this industry was
acquired was a man too full of contradictions
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
157
to be dismissed in a line; perhaps difficult to
be judged with fairness. A man of perfectly
temperate habit, he had the physiognomy of
intemperance. A very early riser, in his office
at times soon after four in the morning, when,
of course, he had no one to assist him, and
thus worked at a disadvantage, he was SO
fatigued by the natural length of the day, as
to be known to fall asleep over his own dinner-
table at a party. His professional knowledge
was limited, to use the most favourable term ;
but his chief hostility was evinced towards
those who, in perfect good faith, would have
enabled him to supply the defect. He desired
to originate everything, but his inventions all
proved lamentable failures. He was minute in
calculation to an excess, but never took a
broad view of his subject, or checked his
prolonged decimals by a rough and truthful
appeal to common sense. He soon involved
himself in warfare with the Secretary of the
Company-not an unusual mishap for an En-
gineer-but he managed to teach all his staff
that they would meet fairer dealing from any
one than from himself. He would occasionally,
as became his position, blame any one of his
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
staff for an error. But unless he did this on
the spur of the moment-that is to say, with
the loss of his temper--he was more likely to
say nothing to the defaulter, but much of the
default where it might most turn to his dis-
advantage. He professed to be an eminently
religious man; it is to be hoped that he was
satisfied on this point in his own conscience.
It is very likely that he was, for the nature
of that faculty in him was so exclusively
peculiar, that those who, professionally, knew
him best, were unable to decide where it lay.
With finer prospects than almost any Engineer
of his time, with a lucky leap into a good
business, and with a competent staff to carry
out his duties, if he would only have allowed
them to do so and gone to sleep, he contrived
to drive away his clients, and to disgust his
subalterns; to produce on every man who ever
served under his orders the sense of injustice
and of injury; and to inflict the most irre-
parable of these evils on himself.
The sketch of a service on which, with all
its drawbacks, the three or four survivors may
still look back with pleasant memories, should
include, in order to be complete, some of the
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159
privates. The servants or chain-men of the
Engineers were for the most part old soldiers,
most of them sergeants or corporals; and from
their habit of punctual obedience they gave
great regularity and precision to the execution
of all sorts of duty. Of these, one, almost the
only private, was an Irishman of the name of
Dempsey. Very deaf, very stupid, very ugly,
and indomitably conceited, he preserved his
place only by the sheer weight of his character
-he had been so long known for a sober,
honest, trustworthy man. According to his
own account, he had seen much of the best
service, and had been servant to Colonel Sir
John Colburn, to whose experience he always
appealed as conclusive. He would fling open
the bedroom door in the morning, perhaps
half an hour before the proper time, and enter
with hot water and brushed clothes, and a din
and clatter that would have waked the seven
sleepers. No injunctions would break him of
the habit, and if you bolted the door, the
battering of the injured and affronted orderly
without, was such as to raise the whole house.
He was afflicted with a mysterious and appa-
rently incurable "intarnal disase," for which
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
the faculty recommended rest and quiet, and
that on no account should he touch anything
stronger than milk and water. Consequently
he never did-at least, so he said. He would
at times appear to be stupified, with flushed
face, staggering gait, thickness of articulation,
and increased hardness of perception. This
was the effect of the "disase." But never
would he be induced to take a glass of any-
thing. On one occasion, a bitter day's survey
in a frost, his master found a mug of warm
ale, with a little gin in it, such a good antidote
to the cold, that he pressed a glass upon
Dempsey. The worthy consistently refused the
tempting cordial.
But, after long groaning under a tyranny
hard to endure, and harder to terminate, the
Engineer to whose service the pattern Irishman
had been attached, found that worthy at last so
undeniably and helplessly drunk, that the true
nature of that "intarnal disase" became clear;
and with that discovery the private had to retire
into still more private life.
His successor, or predecessor, was a man of
a very different stamp-a tall, handsome man,
between fifty and sixty, brought up at a public
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
161
school. He was the son of a gentleman who at
the time in question was an Admiral in Her
Majesty's Service, and a Knight of the Bath.
Quarrelling, as a lad, with his parents, the boy
ran off from home or from school and enlisted
as a private in a cavalry regiment. He never
could be induced to retract the false step; the
family breach was never healed. Thus with the
honourable feelings of a gentleman he grew up
with the language and manners of a trooper. He
did not rise in the English service above the rank
of sergeant. As a trooper he often formed one
of the escort of George the Fourth, in that
monarch's journeys between Windsor and London,
and used to recount how the four bays that
drew the claret-coloured chariot, never breaking
their trot, and never seeming to hurry their
pace, kept all the horses of the escort at a three-
quarter gallop, and kept the men up nearly all
night in cleaning their bespattered accoutre-
ments.
The sergeant had, however, been in the
service of the Queen of Spain, and had been
lieutenant and adjutant in the Spanish Legion.
In discharging his duties as a chain-man the
sergeant was annoyed by rheumatism. Without
saying anything to his master, he consulted a
M
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
medical man, whom many people denominated a
quack, and who was at that time becoming noto-
rious by his attacks on what he called the "fallacies
of the faculty;" that is, the regular practice of
all the neighbouring physicians and apothecaries.
One day, in walking over a large ploughed field,
the Engineer found himself alone. He shouted
in some displeasure, and after some time returned
to look after the men bearing his instruments—--
level and staff, and chain. A field or two back
he met the sergeant's son, who was also in his
employ. "Where is your father?”
"I cannot
find him, Sir," said the lad. "I stepped aside
into the next field, and I have been looking
for him since." Anger gave way to alarm.
After a short search the poor sergeant was found
on his back in a furrow, insensible. He was
conveyed to the nearest farmhouse, and on
recovering there, confessed that, for some six
weeks, the doctor had kept increasing his doses,
while the pain which he called rheumatism
rather increased than diminished with them.
On the last visit, on the preceding day, the
exposer of the "fallacies of the faculty" gave
him a fresh medicament. "There," said he,
"if you can stand that I shall be surprised:
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163
it is enough to kill a horse." It did produce
that effect on a hale and sturdy man.
He was
conveyed home, but never again left his room,
rarely his bed. Two Spanish books, his legacy
to the Engineer on his death-bed, were the
only memorials of a soldier of gentle birth and
honourable feeling, who deserved a better fate.
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
CHAPTER XII.
SOME WORKING DETAILS.
IN the construction of a railway, under the
direction of an Engineer of such original and
uncontrollable genius as was he, whose softened
portrait will be immediately recognised by the
few survivors of his once numerous staff, it was
impossible but that incidents should occur of
almost irresistible comedy. The one main
feature of real business-like tact that kept the
whole machinery at work, was the military
punctuality which characterised the old soldier.
This was precise and unfailing, and the acqui-
sition of such a habit, as a second nature, was
a counterpoise to much that was disadvanta-
geous in the service. On one occasion the
Chief directed one of his sub-assistants to meet
him at the crossing of a certain road, with two
men, at noon on a certain day, about a fort-
night from the date of the note.
date of the note. A day or
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
165
two after, the Engineer left the neighbourhood,
having been suddenly summoned, it was said,
by unexpected business to Ireland. The day
fixed for the meeting arrived, without the
appearance of the absentee, or any intimation
of his return. "Of course he has forgotten
his appointment," said the Sub to himself ;
"but as it is down in black and white, I
shall just go to the spot, wait half an hour,
and give myself a holiday for the rest of the
day." He arrived accordingly to the minute.
"I shall wait here for half an hour," he said
to his men; "the Captain has made an appoint-
ment, but he is not likely to keep it." Likely
it did not seem, but long before the half-hour
had expired a dust was seen in the distance, a
gig drove up at full gallop, and the Engineer,
with his watch in his hand, sprang out with a
brief apology for being ten minutes behind his
time. He had not come in the gig all the
way from Ireland, but he had sped in some
incredible space of time across the country
from Holyhead, perhaps inspired to some ex-
tent by the hope of dropping down on his
Sub, for failure to keep an apparently forgotten
appointment.
166
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
The personal punctuality of the Chief was
seconded and fully equalled by the efforts of
an assistant, to whom, as the real business of
construction began to throw upon the Engi-
neers the labour usually performed by the
agents of the contractors, the former very
wisely turned for aid. This latter was a man
of system and a man of merit, and, more
than either, actually an Engineer. The fag of
his chief at school, his subaltern in military
service, it was not now for the first time that
he did the main part of the work, while the
other obtained the lion's share of the credit
and the pay. Without the exertions of this
assistant, the whole work of the Engineer's
office would have been involved in a whirl-
pool of irremediable confusion. Even as it
was, the opening of the line was announced
for a certain day, before a rod of roof or a
yard of platform had been provided for at the
terminus; and the Directors, at the eleventh
hour, put the stations in the hands of an
able and energetic architect, who very soon
wrought a revolution in their condition. The
exclusion of the Engineer-in-Chief from this
natural portion of his functions seemed to be
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
167
។
*
a just retribution, to those who were aware of
an incident which had occurred some twelve-
months before. An architect in practice at the
terminal town,-the adviser, in fact, of our
formerly-mentioned friend, the brick-making
landowner-had been named architect to the
railway. He naturally expected to have to
prepare the façade and elevation of the termi-
nal buildings, and to have a voice in the
general arrangements, irrespective of those for
the permanent way, which happened to be
in cutting, at the spot. One day the Engineer
addressed him, "Jerome" (let us call him)
66 you are the architect to the railway?"
"Yes," said the other. "Well," said the
first, "we want to put the stations in hand.
The Directors asked me at the last Board if I
did not consider myself competent to design
them. Of course I could not deny that I did.
'Very well,' they said, 'we look to you as
our Engineer, and we do not see what need
we have of an architect.' You are our
architect, and so, my dear Jerome, I fear
that they will hardly call upon you for assist-
ance."
The adroit exclusion of a man who
would have been content with a modest share
168
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
in the architectural work, thus led, by a sort
of poetical justice, to the introduction of a
real and successful competitor.
It would have been well if equal justice had
rewarded the persistent and effectual exertions
of the Resident before referred to. He had
been stimulated by the hope of being ap-
pointed Resident in permanence. When the
time came for the Board to decide on the
appointment, the Engineer-in-Chief was equal
to the occasion. "I have thought it right,"
he said, "to give you my advice as to the
candidates before you. The first is, I have
no doubt, fully equal to the duties of the
position. If you had no one else you could
rely upon him. You would not want a Con-
sulting Engineer; but of course you would
have to pay a proportionate salary. The
second would take a lower amount. For all
ordinary emergencies he would suffice. But
he has no parliamentary experience, no habit
of dealing with men of business; he would de-
pend very much on the advice of the Con-
sulting Engineer. The third is, it is true, a
very young man "-(he was just out of his
short articles of pupilage to his supporter)-
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169
"but his salary would be very low; he is
fully at home in my method of doing business,
and as there are so very many questions con-
nected with the line, which can be settled by
no one but myself, whether I act as your
consulting Engineer, or whether I have to be
consulted separately as an independent pro-
fessional man on each point, that you will
probably find it the cheapest and best method
to employ this gentleman." The Board took
the advice, and their relations with their
original Engineer enjoyed a protracted and
vigorous longevity.
Originality of diction, charming as it may
be when met with in society, has yet its dis-
advantages when it is incautiously made to
displace the tedious and formal phraseology
which is common to that borderland, disputed
by the Engineer and the Solicitor-the specifi-
cation of a contract. Among the numerous
small contracts, or sub-contracts, the superin-
tendence of which left so little rest to the
staff of the line we are describing, was one,
or rather
rather was a group, which placed the
laying, ballasting, and maintenance of the per-
manent way in the hands of a man who, in
170
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
a civil sense, was an extremely old soldier.
Eminently respectable in his appearance, he
managed to obtain credit for an unusual
amount of ugliness as a token of moral worth
and reliability. An impediment in his speech,
which always became obvious at the critical
part of the sentence, gave him time for reflec-
tion, and opportunity for swooping down upon
his adversaries with unexpected, and often irre-
sistible, force. He knew, by long and never-
tiring experience, how to spell the word "scamp"
in every possible manner, in Italian hand, in
running hand, and in black letter. If he had
been a few years younger he would have been
a millionaire. The confidence which he would
have inspired in a Board of Directors, or in a
public meeting, if he had once attained so
high a level as to be produced as an authority
or a witness, would have been absolute. His
fertility of resource was unfailing. Even when,
giving way to the weakness of his nature, he
became undeniably and intolerably drunk, he
was never outrageous. He would gravely com-
plain, at such times, of the terrible cold in the
head, which had been brought on by staying
on the works the whole of the previous night,
2
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
171
A
or of over-fatigue caused by taking a patient
to the hospital. He simplified the details of a
very perplexed and ill-designed permanent way,
by the original process of cutting the long
holding-down bolts in two, sharpening the
ends, and driving them into the sleepers with
a sledge-hammer, instead of drilling holes and
screwing on the nuts as per specification. As
his extreme industry led him to carry on this
bit of blacksmith's work by night, it was a
considerable time before his improvement came
to the knowledge of the Engineers. With the
mean jealousy which is so frequent a feature
even of the scientific mind, they did not give
the reformer credit for his simplification. They
even drove him from his contract.
But long before this occurred, the Engineer-
in-Chief paid a visit of inspection to the
ballasting in charge of this worthy. The
specification stated, with a naïve and original
simplicity, that no bit of broken stone, to be
used as ballast, should be larger than a man
could put in his mouth. In the absence of
either riddle, ring-gauge, or two-foot rule, the
author of the specification flattered himself that
he had thus secured a means of testing the
172
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
faithfulness of the work. All was smooth and
fair for the visit, all questions were duly
answered, all faults seemed carefully avoided.
But an extremely ugly man dogged every step
of the Engineer. He crossed the line, the ob-
jectionable attendant did the same. He quick-
ened his pace, he stood still, he spoke aside to
the contractor, still the persecution continued.
At last he could bear it no longer. "Amwick,"
he exclaimed, "what does that ugly fellow
want?—is it you or me that he is dogging in
this way?" "Oh, him?" said the layer of
permanent way, with a grave designation of
the obnoxious attendant with his thumb; "you
mean him? You see, Captain Transom, that is
my B–B–B–Ballast Gauge." He had drily
selected the man of most capacious mouth to
be found on the works, in case of any question
as to the size of the broken stone.
If the chief set an example to his staff in
precision, punctuality, and military prompti-
tude, he might be thought to set an over-good
example in another respect. There is no man
who more deservedly earns, or more thoroughly
needs, the rest of one day out of seven, than
does the Civil Engineer. In his varied toil
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
173
4
and responsibility, the demand made on both
intellectual and physical energy, he finds
within the limit of his profession the exercise
of every faculty, and is thus deprived, to a
great extent, of the solace of a hobby. If he
works seven days out of the week, he soon
finds it tell on him cruelly. The unusual
harvest which the scythe of death has reaped
in the profession within thirty years, the un-
timely death of Brunel, Stephenson, Locke,
Rendall, and so many others, can only be ex-
plained on the score of over-work. Night and
day is all very well, if you get the Sunday;
but fourteen days' work per week is certain,
and not very tardy, suicide. At the same time,
in all great public works, certain matters of
necessity must be attended to on the Sunday.
In tunnels, for instance, abandonment of work-
at least as far as pumping, ventilation, watching
of shoreing, and the like is concerned-would
be in the highest degree dangerous and im-
proper. In hydraulic work the same rule often
obtains. It is then quite consistent that a man
should strenuously discountenance work on
Sunday, and at the same time frankly attend
to such particulars as involve the safety of
174
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
But our friend carried
workmen or of works.
out his views on the subject in a manner
peculiar to himself. He professed to touch no
work on Sunday. He did his duty by attend-
ing to what was indispensable; but he satisfied
that species of ingenuity, which took with him
the place of conscience, by always dating such
exceptional Sunday work on the preceding or
on the following day. His Resident assistant,
before described, once sent a mounted express
to his Chief on a Sunday, to ask for orders in
a case of sudden emergency. The messenger
waited for the reply. In due time he returned
with it at a gallop. The Resident opened the
dispatch. His questions were replied to; the
orders were precise, and they were dated—
Saturday night!
The eyes of few men regard virtue without
some degree of parallax. If it be true that one
man's meat is another man's poison, it is no
less true that about one man may linger a virtue
which his neighbour may stigmatise as a vice.
Thus what A may call a praiseworthy firmness
of purpose, B may describe as a pernicious and
intolerable obstinacy. Of this many instances
could be given. One will be enough. The
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
175
width of the bridges over the railway, to which
so much reference has been made, were designed
of the unusually narrow dimension of twenty-
two feet. It was represented that this was
an unwise economy; that the three-feet space
between the inner rail and the centre of the
railway was, in fact, a four or five-feet space
on all occasions but that of a train moving
with its doors open, and that for the sake of
the permanent workmen on the
on the line, the
opening of the bridges should be wider. The
Engineer was unconvinced. He built his
twenty-two feet bridges. Not only so, but when
one of them, a girder bridge, gave premonitory
symptoms of falling, he inserted narrow cross
columns in the centre line to prop the faulty
girder. There was no room to splay the lines
apart, as this was prevented by the position of
the abutments. The parasitic columns were
thus allowed to encroach on the centre space,
while, from their narrow dimension, they failed
to catch the attention of any one approaching
at speed. So it unfortunately came to pass,
soon after the reparation of the bridge had
been effected, that a respectable and valued
servant of the company, in passing under the
1
176
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
bridge on a passenger train, while moving
along the foot-board, came in contact with the
column and was killed on the spot.
A year or so after, an Engineer, who knew
all the facts of the case, was looking over some
designs for a railway in the south of England,
for which the same Engineer had made the
designs. Among them was an exact reproduc-
tion of the homicidal bridge. "I wonder," he
said, with some warmth, "that experience
should give so little wisdom. Here is a dupli-
cate of the very bridge which killed poor So-
and-so. How could Transom have forgotten
such a lesson?" "Do you know him no better
by this time?" replied an older man. "Do
you say he did it in spite of the accident?
Not at all; he did it because of the accident.”
"How do you mean?" said the other; "he is
not a man to take a pleasure in killing the
company's servants, even if he could do so
with impunity." " "No," was the reply, "but
he wants to build this bridge, to prove that the
other was right, and that the guard had no
business to be killed."
If any man ever chased Fortune from his
roof, it was the Engineer in question. To
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
177
a
many she comes once, to return no more if
slighted; to him she paid visit after visit. It
would have been so easy to secure her stay.
She would have tarried with any man less
obstinately bent on disgusting her; for he of
whom we speak had many good qualities;
frank military manner, open speech, punctu-
ality, and love of order; domestic virtues,
quick intelligence. For the scientific know-
ledge which he had not, there were those about
him on whom he might rely. Nothing was
needful, when the tide of success set in, but to
keep quiet and modest, to increase his staff, to
rely on his assistants, to pay them fairly, and
to trust them with a faith that might have been
reciprocal. It was from the lack of the latter
quality, that shipwreck of a very fine profes-
sional position ensued. Borne well forward on
the flow of the first railway mania, the same
man was on the very crest of the wave in the
second. He took in one year into Parliament
more railway bills than almost any other En-
gineer. He lost them all but one, and that one
was secured by the exertions of the experienced
contractor who intended to make the line. All
these lamentable failures might be traced to
N
178
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
one source. It was a useless and blind perfidy.
The principle of dating the Sunday letter on
the Saturday, seemed to vex and distort the
whole man.
He would be unnecessarily and
offensively mean to those on whose exertions,
he learned too late, or perhaps never distinctly
recognised, that his position actually depended.
Very free in all his own professional charges,
he was apt to economise in the remuneration of
all those about him, nor could his promises, in
respect of position and emolument, be ever relied
upon. There are many men who will betray
their neighbours for a consideration; this man
seemed to take a pleasure in selling them gratis.
Whether he did so merely to keep his hand in,
whether it was a species of moral insanity, or
whatever was the principle of his conduct, the
natural result followed; he became disliked,
feared, and avoided. It is not wished to say
anything that would give pain to any, if such
there are, who loved this man. The portrait
can only be recognised by those who regard
it from the business side. With them there can
be no hesitation as to recognising it, no doubt
as to the justice of the delineation. On the
grave of a
man whose reputation had been
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
179
lost more hardly than it had been won, might
have been written the epitaph, that its occupant
lay there because he neither could nor would
either learn or practise, the words "shoulder to
shoulder."
N 2
180
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
CHAPTER XIII.
A BIT OF WORK IN WORCESTERSHIRE.
THE casual visitor, or even the professional
man, who observes the systematic manner in
which the works of our great public enterprises
are now carried on by experienced and com-
petent contractors, can
form little idea of
what was the life of the Engineer, in those
early days when all seemed to depend upon
his exertions. The greater the detail into
which the work was primarily divided, the
greater the toil, and the more instructive the
experience of the Sub. The men, too, who first
rose from the ranks of labour to the position of
master workmen or contractors, though far from
dreaming in those days of princely estates in
Norfolk, ducal palaces in Kensington, knight-
hoods, baronetcies, or Westminster Abbey, were
yet of a stuff more durable than some of their
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
181
successors. Nothing was more remarkable than
the instinct some of these men had for esti-
mating. A man who could barely read, whose
education in the matter of writing was merely
such as to enable him to make a scrawl repre-
senting his name, or to prefix to this hieroglyphic
the significant word " acep.," which did duty
for "accepted," would walk quietly over a mile
or two of country, and would then, by some
mental process entirely unintelligible to the
educated Engineer, name a sum for which he
would execute the works comprised in the dis-
tance-a sum, moreover, that would come very
close to the actual estimate of the man of science.
One of these native Engineers took a contract
in this manner in Worcestershire. The site of
the heaviest works was in a sparsely inhabited
district. The provident contractor raised a little
city of turf huts, and accommodated his work-
men on the spot. Their daily wants were met
by the ticket system, or what was better known
as the "tommy-shop." Near the labourers' shan-
ties was provided an emporium, furnished with
all that their habits led them to procure. Ale
in abundance, spirits, bread, meat, fat bacon,
tobacco, shovels, jackets, gay crimson and purple
182
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
waistcoats, boots, hats, and night-caps, were all
to be obtained of the convenient "tommy-shop"
keeper, who, though apparently an independent
tradesman, was in fact a mere nominee and
dependent of the contractor. Political economists.
would have been delighted at the ease with
which the wants of the labourers were supplied
without the need of money. Credit was always
at their command. Even the newly-arrived and
penniless "navvy," provided that his boots were
sound, could obtain a shovel on credit-that
necessary implement of toil being all, except
stout thews and muscles, that he was called upon
to furnish. With a liberal credit, on the basis
of still more liberal price, was combined a system
of check, by way of tickets, which varied in
different cases. Sometimes the whole onus of
the account would be thrown upon the time-
keeper. Sometimes tickets, say for five shillings
each, would be issued to the workmen on
account of wages, and the expenditure at the
shop would be arranged, so as to exhaust these
tickets by two or three settlements in a week.
The pay was, generally, monthly. On a large
sheet, the detail and the total of every man's
time, calculated in quarter days, was entered by
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
183
the contractor's time-keeper or chief accountant.
The rate of wages, varying for earth workmen
from 2s. 6d. to 4s. 9d. per day, was added.
The total earnings of the month thus arrived at
were entered in the next column. In the follow-
ing one, came the amount drawn on tickets, or
shop credit. The final column contained the
cash balance due to the workman. It was extra-
ordinary to see with how small an amount of
actual specie the monthly pay was discharged.
How much of that specie was to be melted into
liquor within the next three days, was matter
of very safe estimate. In fact, an argument by
which the contractors met the desire of the
Engineer, that the workmen should be paid
weekly, or at the farthest fortnightly, was, that
as they never resumed work till they had drunk
out the balance of their earnings, it saved time
and expedited the progress of the works to
render these seasons of interruption as few as
possible.
The profit of these tommy-shops was very
large-often the main part of the gain of the
contractor. It will be seen that, even in the
country villages, small tradesmen manage to earn
a living on the legitimate, or at least the cus-
184
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
tomary, profits of their trade.
If a sudden access
of custom occurred, such a small tradesman would
be in luck's way. If he was the general. shop-
keeper of the place, supplied every rural want,
and found the demand for all his miscellaneous
wares to increase in the same ratio, he would
begin to make money. But if not only these
advantages could be secured, but the actual
amount of custom could be fixed beforehand,
and competition altogether excluded, so that
all check, either as to inferiority of quality
or exorbitance of price should be remitted to
the conscience of the shopkeeper, it is clear that
something very considerable would stick to his
fingers. If eight to twelve per cent. was the
profit which a contractor, who was his own fore-
man, could secure on the nominal cost of his
work, the profit made by the shop out of the
nominal cost price might amount to from thirty
to forty per cent. In fact, in some instances,
the poor men were shamefully ground down.
Even unlimited beer at times palls on the
taste. Men with a few shillings in their pockets
are often disposed to seek amusements for the
most part only readily to be found in great
towns. While not given to dancing, like his
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
185
Continental neighbours, the well-paid English
labourer is not proof at all times against a weak-
ness for female society, even if not of the most
unexceptionable decorum. Thus, after a pay,
some of the most hard-working, and, therefore,
pro tempore richest, navvies might wander off to
the nearest cities. They might not return, and
then their places would have to be supplied
from the ever-circulating stream of inquirers
for employment, that always fringes the course
of large public works. Gangers (that is fore-
men) always like to keep their best hands-
and will prefer receiving a repentant and penni-
less "navvy," on his return from what they
call being "off on the randy," to taking on a
stranger. With the ticket system another objec-
tion arises to the loss of a recently-paid work-
man-he spends his balance somewhere else.
The shop, which has only made its profit on
seventeen shillings and sixpence out of the
pound which he has earned, being the amount
represented by his tickets, loses the further profit
on the remaining half-crown, and loses, more-
over, the convenience of the return of that
individual coin to the till. The contractor now
referred to, bent his attention to remedy this
186
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
evil. He did so in a manner
manner that was at
once simple, original, and effective. To prevent
Mahomet from wandering in search of the load-
stone in the mountain, he brought the loadstone
to his bivouac. He arranged for the presence
of some of the objects of Jack's admiration—
lodged them, clothed them, fed them, made
them as comfortable and respectable as the cir-
cumstances of the case admitted, and set down
a charge for their blandishments in the pay-
sheet. It came under the head of "tommy-
shop," and reduced, pro tanto, the monthly
balance of coin coming to the pay-table. It
will be clear to all those who think dealing
with mankind is a mere matter of figures, that
this contractor must have long since paid the
debt of nature, for his name is not to be found
among the members of the House of Commons.
He never received the accolade. Nothing but
a premature death could have prevented such
a financial genius from arriving at the very
summit of his calling.
The social economy of the contractor in
question was, to a great extent, sanctioned by
the example of the Resident Engineer. This
was a man somewhat advanced in years; of
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
187
1
good family and connexions, and not only
endowed with a professional education, but a
captain in one of the scientific corps of Her
Majesty's service. He was a man of amiable
disposition, a charming companion, precise in
his military honour, but evincing the habits
of an old campaigner, chiefly in his constant
flow of original and terrible imprecations.
Perhaps he had picked up the bad habit in
Spain; but, certainly, every sixth word he
uttered was an expletive;-ill-natured people
said every third word. He seemed so un-
conscious of this peculiarity, that he was often
known to reprove profane language in others.
Whether he considered it a privilege of his rank
is obscure. Even for the sake of illustration,
one cannot venture to put on paper, in these
more decorous days, a specimen of his con-
versation. It can only be delicately hinted at.
One Sunday, his nearest colleague paid him a
call. "Been to Church?" said the Captain;
66 'I've such a headache, that I said I'll be
if I go to the
morning. So I took a little
church this
of a walk,
and what the
do you
think I met?
Why, three of your
men.
I never heard
188
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
fellows swear in such a
life. I was
you
from a
1
way in my
shocked. I said, 'Hallo,
is this the way you go on, coming
church?' I — "But here the moral
reproof which he administered veiled itself in
such a perfect cloud of imprecation, that the
modest dashes which have heretofore supplied
the adjectives, altogether fail to indicate the
fury of the storm. It was merely his way of
saying that he thought it inconsistent for men
to swear when coming from church. We must
all agree with what he meant, however inap-
propriate was his unconscious method of easing
his sense of propriety.
The peculiar originality of English expletive
is a puzzling subject. The theological denun-
ciations which, early in the present century,
were thought no evidence of low breeding, at
least, if ladies were absent, seem so foreign to
the practical gravity of the English character.
It may be, that they were an inheritance left by
the Puritans, and that the marked phraseology
of the religious reformers who protested against
the Cavalier licence of the Stuarts, has thus
come down, in an inverted position, to our
times. The idea and theory of evil language
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
189
abroad differs much from our own.
An angry
Frenchman or Italian will have recourse
to
detailed impiety, to a purposed casting of offence
at the invisible powers, that would make an
English navvy shudder. In fact, those who
utter such terrible words, with such constant
tautology, seem to attach almost as little real
meaning to them as do those who use them
in the pulpit. It is a form, and a very un-
pleasant form, of speech; but the man who has
just imprecated evil on his neighbour for a
chance trip on his corns, would be the first to
plunge into the water to rescue him if in danger
of drowning.
This harmlessness of intent in using very
harmful language was curiously illustrated by
our last-named acquaintance. He took up his
quarters, at one time, at a farm-house, situated
in an angle where a lane debouched on the
high mail-road. A pet magpie was one of the
establishment, a bird gifted with the abnormal
intellectual activity and moral obliquity that
characterise its elfin race. The magpie was
hopping about the garden in front of the
house, when, down comes a tramp along the
road. "Mag, mag, mag," cried the tramp.
190
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
"Let the bird alone, you unblest thief," cried
the Captain, looking unexpectedly out of the
open window.
“I aint a unblest thief," replies
the tramp. "Yes you are," reiterates the other,
66
6
an unblest thief; and you are worse, for you
are a little, mean, sneaking, dirty thief, trying
to steal the poor bird, with your unblest mag,
mag, mag." The man collapsed under the
explanation.
999
There was a tunnel under the charge of this
very particular Engineer. An irruption of water
took place, and, as usually happens in such
cases, the pumping arrangements were inade-
quate. Very frequently, the iron skips, which
should have raised the solid contents exca-
vated from the area of the tunnel, came up
full of water. By some refinement of ingenuity,
the contractor had managed to throw this par-
ticular risk on the Company, so that the Resident
was in great request. Expense becoming beyond
all bounds, in his fortnightly returns, he applied
for orders, and was told to make a regular return
of so many cubic yards of water removed from
the works of the tunnel, at so much a yard. In
all wet tunnels (and most tunnels are wet), the
great desideratum is to tap the spring, and
to run a drift-way or heading into the lowest
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
191
portion of the tunnel, so as to let it drain itself.
If this is unattainable, ample steam power,
calculated for double the duty that the most
liberal estimate of the supply of water demands,
is the first and least expense. The great cost
of so many tunnels has generally arisen from
inadequate provision for keeping the works dry.
In this case, the worthy Captain thought it
necessary to bivouac, or to hut, for a few days
on the spot. With the internal arrangements
of his household his professional colleagues were
not supposed to be necessarily acquainted. But
the old soldier, though never shrinking from duty,.
did not like to lose his little comforts. So, after
a day or two spent in solitude, his buxom young
housekeeper was to be seen making his tea,
morning and evening, and fastening comforter
and cap for his evening excursion to the shafts.
It raised a considerable amount of irreverent
remark among the navvies. It was a union
of self-abnegation and self-indulgence that told
rather of foreign than of English habits. Brave
old soldier, pupil of the Iron Duke! Those
who could not avoid a smile at your pecu-
liarities, never failed heartily to wring your
hand. A noble old English name is on your
tombstone.
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
CHAPTER XIV.
A CHAPTER ON CONTRACTORS.
WHILE the persons and the experiences of the
Engineers who constructed the first English
railways, and therefore the first railways in
the world, may form the subject of many an
interesting sketch, an attempt may perhaps be
made, without need of much apology, to de-
scribe a few prominent characteristics of a very
distinct body of men, by whose aid and energy
the designs of the Engineers were for the
most part wrought out. Novelists have indeed
attempted one or two delineations of members
of this class-but the imaginary contractor of
the novelist is far from possessing the full
flavour, the very pungency, of the representative
contractors of actual life.
When it was first decided that the most
feasible method of executing the heavy works
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
193
necessary for the construction of locomotive
lines, was by contract, a school or group of
contractors had to be formed in almost the
same impromptu manner as a School of Engi-
neers. There were materials ready to hand.
Special education, at least the education given
by the schoolmaster, was less requisite in the
case of those who thus represented the hand,
than in that of those who might be regarded
as the head, destined to create the new enter-
prises. The sturdy self-reliance of the English
character, its practical, hand-to-mouth, mode of
meeting difficulties, a keen eye to the main
chance, and a readiness to carry a small amount
of available experience to the best market, were
the main qualifications that went to form a con-
tractor for public works. Accordingly, the list
of competitors was daily lengthened. London
builders-keen, quick men, who had reduced
their own branch of business to system, men,
very often, brought up to the joiner's bench (by
no means a contemptible school of handicraft),
men who were familiar with the finance of the
pay-table, who knew how far bankers would, or
would not, consent to provide for the recurrent
wants of the Saturday night-men who knew
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
what could be done with bricks and mortar,
who were well up in the matter of stone
quarries, learned in lime and cement, ingenious
in scaffolding-above all, able to put on the
appearance of thorough mastery of the art of
building, took the first rank. Nor were these
men metropolitan alone-Yorkshire masons,
Birmingham bricklayers, miners, lime-burners,
and quarry owners, often united the business of
a builder with their own. Then there were the
relics of the "navigators," who had dug our
canals, who had gained experience in the con-
struction of docks- the road surveyors and
contractors called into existence by Macadam
and by Telford. Sometimes a land surveyor
would quit land-chain and jacobstaff, to take
charge of a body of workmen--later in the day
a Civil Engineer would prefer the profit to be
secured by a good contract, to the smaller
certainty of salary or of fee.
It was not until the Engineer became prac-
tically acquainted with the actual cost of the
execution of works on a large scale, whether
by the failure of the original contractors, which
often threw the execution of every detail of
work on the officers of the Companies, or by
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195
stepping in to undertake the entire responsi-
bility of large contracts, when contractors did
not happen to be forthcoming, that the estimates
which he formed could become precise. Over
and above the prices to be collected from the
cost of small works, or from the price lists of
various trades, a considerable amount had to be
allowed for contingencies. Five per cent. was
usually set down under this head. Thus, although
the original estimates, according to which the
Parliamentary capitals of the various lines were
computed, proved, as a general rule, altogether
inadequate, it was not because the prices were
too low, nor was it because the designers wil
fully shut their eyes to that which lay before
them, but experience was defective. An
Engineer who had to make a line between two
given towns, might select his termini so as to
avoid what he thought unnecessary interference
with house property; the carefully-measured
section from point to point would give a total
quantity of earthwork and masonry, of fencing,
ballasting, and laying permanent way, which
could be duly estimated, and carried to account.
Land, permanent way materials, a lump allow-
ance for stations, and a percentage for engineer-
o 2
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
ing charges, would complete the estimate. Now,
as far as these original estimates went, they
were generally good. The contracts formed on
the same data were generally let below the
Engineer's estimates, but then came in the
question of extras. The astute experience of
the old "navvy" would often swell the list
of these items, much to the amazement of the
Engineer. "I will tell you a
secret worth
knowing," said one of the old Telford school of
road-makers to a young Sub; "we've a maxim
as puts a deal of money in our pockets-'The
more you dissects it, the better it cuts up.'"
Now, the principle of lump contracts was in-
tended to check this constant "dissection" of
work, and consequent multiplication of extras
to the benefit of the contractor; and the thirty
years of contest between Macintosh and the
Great Western Railway is the most striking
instance of the difference between the statement
of a final account drawn up by the Engineer,
and that claimed by the contractor.
Exclusive, however, of imaginary or exagge-
rated extras, which thus formed part of the price
which the railway companies had to pay for the
practical education of their Engineers, the items
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
197
not contemplated in the Parliamentary estimates
assumed a formidable magnitude. The heaviest
measured item in an estimate (with the excep-
tion of tunnels or large viaducts), is the per-
manent way—a structure which costs £5,000 to
£6,000 per mile. A railway of 100 miles in
length might therefore be estimated to cost
£600,000 for permanent way. But by the time
that all the crossings, sidings, stations, goods
stations, carriage sheds, engine sheds, and other
accommodations for the traffic, each of which
required to be laid with the same description
of rails as the main road, were complete, from
125 to 130 miles of way, or even more, had to
be provided. Then, as the traffic augmented in
a ratio entirely unexpected, the inadequate pro-
vision made for the stations became evident.
Furlongs of platform and acres of roof had
not only to be provided, but designed. Some
Engineers saved first outlay, and gained
time and experience, by erecting temporary
wooden stations, as was the case on the Great
Western. Others attempted at once to provide
for the wants of the future, and that in a
manner which cannot be thought inadequate,
although it looks poor and paltry by the side
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
of our present lofty roofs. Thus the passenger
station at Euston-square, with comparatively
slight additions, has served for the enormous
traffic of the North-western line. The station
at Paddington-perhaps the most admirable
station in the world, if beauty, convenience, and
moderation be equally studied-is an instance of
what was done by the Engineer who deferred the
design of his terminus till he knew what was
really requisite. The enormous waggon roofs
of Charing Cross and Cannon-street probably
err as much in unnecessary and costly magni-
tude, as the Euston roof does in over-economy.
Besides way and stations, landowners and
local interests swelled the amount of the bill.
All kinds of unnecessary communications were
demanded in sequel of the intersection of pro-
perty by a railway, and each of these had to
be provided for by bridge or other crossing,
or commuted in cash. In the latter case the
landowner invariably made the subsequent dis-
covery that he could go round. Thus approaches
to road-bridges, difficulties in crossing navigable
waters, unsparing insistence by the Admiralty,
the Ordnance, every Government department,
every municipal body, every trustee, every turn-
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
199
pike trust, every one who had any locus standi
for demanding outlay, on their pound of flesh,
followed in endless succession. No wonder that
the railways of England have cost £42,000 per
mile.
Of the five hundred millions which have been
expended on the railways of the United King-
dom since 1830, it is certain that more than
the half must have passed through the hands
of contractors for construction. If, therefore,
we allow that a profit of from twenty to thirty
millions must have been cleared, by a body of
men who have come into recognised existence
within little more than the third of a century,
we shall be within the mark. If to the actual
benefits secured (however they may afterwards
have been wasted) we add the power and
influence natural to those who had the almost
uncontrolled expenditure (so far as the pay-
table and the bill-book goes) of three hundred
millions sterling, it will not be matter of sur-
prise that lordly estates should have been pur-
chased, and noble palaces erected, by men who
had known what it was to have to work very
hard to make both ends meet.
The rich fund of comic incident which, if
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
the tale of any great public work was fully
told, would be found in the chapter that spoke
of the contractors, is as yet almost virgin. But
it is better worthy a place in literature, than
are those Teniers-like portraits of the lower
orders, that have succeeded to the popularity
of Waverley, and that dispute the ground with
such a writer as Bulwer, at once graphic and
philosophic; for, in the gallery which the
Engineer would collect, the pictures would not
have the sole merit of similitude. In sudden
elevation of unprepared men to stations of con-
sideration, or of power, the comic element is
always mingled with a striking didactic moral.
When tragedy supervenes, humour rarely is
wanting. To hear a groom or a pot-boy talk,
is an engagement only acceptable to the empty,
or the innately congenial, mind. Set the
beggar on horseback, and Shakespeare would not
think it a waste of time to note his evolutions.
A grand feature of the mushroom growth of
contractors, which has unfortunately disappeared
in the unsatisfactory haze of "limited liability
companies," was their loud and fearless self-
assumption. A man who put a thousand pounds,
in gold, silver, and copper, well counted, on
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
201
his pay-table every Saturday night, was, in his
own estimation at least, an important man. He
would resolve to enjoy this achieved greatness
without stint, and without loss of time. If
other people failed to recognise it, he would
show them their error. He would swear very
loud, and fiercely regard his dependents; he
would (behind their backs, be it understood)
always call the Engineers by name, and express
his contempt of their "theories." He would
explain how he would manage the finance of
the Company. Indeed, had it not happened
that the money, often readily earned by railway
contracts, had a most unusual propensity to
make to itself wings and fly away, generally
under the idea of rapidly doubling, trebling, or
centupling its amount, the contractor's interest
would, by this time, have held in its hand the
fate of ministries, and filled Westminster with
the din of an "Erie War."
Look at one group; a large family, well
known before the panic of 1848. The head
was an elderly man, of large bulk, keen glance,
and benevolent and confidential address. His
education had been that of a joiner. He could
read, even a paragraph from a newspaper,
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
without much difficulty, could write his name,
and, in case of extreme necessity, a line or
two of hieroglyphics, to say, for instance, that
he could accomplish some urgent and difficult
undertaking "with grate E s." Finding him-
self in the present command of apparently
unlimited resources, he saw no reason why
his boys should waste their time in the acqui-
sition of more "school-larning," than the very
moderate amount which had sufficed him in
his ascent to so proud a position. "Instead
of bothering their brains with books, I sets 'em
to look arter the men. Them's my hideers of
headicashun." The eldest son, probably by
that constant and unconscious tuition which
clever men pick up by rubbing against their
neighbours, had advanced far beyond the
family level. A very tall, well-proportioned
man, his light hair SO receded from his
temples as to show quite a Shakesperian fore-
head, which a pair of small blue eyes tended
to magnify by contrast. A pleasant aspect, and
an air which seemed invariably to inspire con-
fidence, was only disturbed when he spoke;
not that the extreme point and good sense of
anything he said did not fully compensate for
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
203
any originalities of grammatical construction, or
discords of provincial tone; but the neglected
state of his teeth betrayed, at once, want of
culture and incompleteness of character. The
next brother, a handsome, dark-eyed savage,
with the stare of a Red Indian, or of a wild
deer, would have been an able and successful
man, had he been carefully educated. Beneath
him, in various stages of hobble-de-hoyism, came
two or three young giants, who seemed always
outgrowing their simple garments. They only
possessed the normal complement of limbs, yet,
from the difficulty which they encountered in
disposing of now an arm, now a leg, now a
foot beating time against some one else's chair,
now a large hand striking tattoo on the table,
they recalled the structure of an Indian god,
only they never sat straightly and compact,
like those many-armed personages, but strode
over chairs placed hindways before, or occupied
two or three seats at a time, or in some other
manner always contrived to fill a portion of
space large enough to contain two or three
meeker individuals.
The mainspring of the family fortune was
the eldest son. He was essentially an able
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
man. He was not unaware either of his own
defective education, or of his own natural
powers. His great weapon was a well-sus-
tained secrecy ;
he never spoke till the right
moment, and then he spoke to the point. He
has been heard to say, that if he thought his
hat knew what was passing in his head, he
should burn the hat. He was a man who
would take broad averages, and form large and
usually safe inductions. How it was that
he failed to establish a permanent position is
even now a puzzle. He had large contracts at
excellent prices; he was a good master, and
knew how to select, and to attach to his service,
good servants; he was modest in his personal
expenditure, and steady in his habits. His
activity as a contractor was in the golden age,
when Companies paid the certificates of their
Engineers in cash, and when Lloyd's bonds
were unknown; and all the semi-savage clan,
up early and out in all weathers, formed a
very good set of foremen. Then the way in
which this man would command confidence was
surprising. One cause might be, that he seemed
never to ask for it, and rarely and sparingly
to show it. But as his operations became more
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
205
extensive, the credit placed at his disposal by
the county banker, who became gradually im-
plicated in his proceedings, was more than
a respectable old firm could afford to lose,
or even to have known. Both parties thought
it better to widen the base of operations. Four
or five banks within the sphere of action, would
have been glad to share the amount, but the
astute man of business went straight to the
most impracticable banker of them all, the
man of the most forbidding appearance, the
most brutal to cross-question, the most keen, in
his own opinion, to detect a "kite" by the
smell. The aid of this very self-asserting
manager was not sought, it subsequently ap-
peared, until a time when no prudent banker,
with the means (which
means (which a prudent banker
should have possessed) of learning how matters
really stood, would have advanced a hundred
pounds to the contractor. Yet the man, who
was the terror of the speculator, and thus
applied to at the eleventh hour, figured as a
large creditor in the balance-sheet.
A very different and very inferior man rose
to temporary importance on the strength of a
lucrative contract in Wales. What had been
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
his special training was not evident; it could
have been only of the most primary descrip-
tion, although he shared with the elder man,
of whom we last spoke, a predilection for
preaching on convenient occasions, or for
taking the chair at some of those meetings
for benevolent and religious ends, the con-
veners of which are apt to regard rather the
subscriptions, than the orthography, of their
president. The money which he pretty freely
made he even more rapidly invested in a coal
mine, from which the only combustible that
he ever succeeded in raising was water. Now,
it is true that water, if resolved into its ele-
ments, is the best of all combustibles; but that
scientific fact does not prove the economy of
spending thousand after thousand in nothing
but extracting water from great depths in the
bowels of the earth. This contractor was more
than usually ignorant, and, consequently, more
than usually self-confident. "If So-and-so" (the
Secretary of the Company) "can count on thirty
thousand towards that 'ere 'undred thousand,
he must be a pretty fool if he can't see his
way clear to pilot the company through their
difficulty," he said on
on one occasion. "He'd
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
207
better ask me to do it for him. I shouldn't
have no happrehension under them circum-
stances myself."
The helpmeet of this self-reliant miner wast
a woman who showed the superior tact of the
better sex, in circumstances of sudden elevation,
as compared to that evinced by men. Very
portly, very fresh-coloured, rather pretty, she
never aspired beyond a smart bonnet and a
pony-chaise, and thus set a notable example to
many not better fitted than herself to indulge
in more brilliant luxuries. She would take her
turn in seeing that the pot was kept boiling,
look round the stable-yard at odd, but useful,
moments, or descend upon her lord and master,
if his visit to a public-house was too prolonged,
and bear him off to conclude his discourse in
domestic privacy. Matters would have gone
better if the grey mare had been always the
leader of the team, or rather of the tandem.
A speciality of many of these people was
their intense and inexplicable angularity. Their
elbows seemed always de trop. An Engineer
had been sent into Cornwall to report on some
granite quarries. On the line of the "Quick-
silver" mail he saw a post-chaise advancing to
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
meet him. From the window of the chaise
protruded something, which on nearer approach
proved to be a man's elbow. Why that feature
should have at once seemed to announce its
owner, may seem inexplicable, but it did recall
to mind the worthy miner, who was thought to
have been hundreds of miles distant. But as
the vehicles crossed, the elbow disappeared, or
rather was replaced by an arm, terminated by
a large and unwashed hand, which gave a
patronising wave of recognition, accompanied
by a nod from the unmistakable physiognomy
of the enterprising contractor.
The reader may, not unnaturally, look for
anecdotes regarding a member of this active
fraternity who, subsequently, during his passage
to a disastrous collapse, assumed the prominent
renown of a national benefactor, a religious
founder and philanthropist, and a not untitled
legislator. Many instances might be given
of keen practice and prompt resource
on the
part of this well-known personage, but they
are, as yet, too recent to be unobjectionable
in print, at all events, in pages which,
while containing none but hitherto unpublished
personal recollections, have endeavoured so to
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
209
refer to all matters of a depreciatory character
as to avoid creating any painful feeling in
survivors. Those whose memory is hardly,
although justly, dealt with, have been spoken
of in their professional relations alone. The
few survivors who have borne a part in those
relations, will at once recognise the truth of
the tableau. But no relative or representative,
who was familiar merely with the private life
of the subjects of these reminiscences, will be
likely to know to whom they refer.
A Civil Engineer had been invited to take a
large contract, in a part of the country very
remote from the centres of population, at highly
remunerative prices. On his way to inspect
the locality, he happened to meet, in the
coffee-room of one of the railway hotels, with
a contractor of large experience and heavy
engagements. "I shall be glad of your
advice," said the Engineer; "I have such
an offer, which seems to me to deserve much
consideration. There is certainly ten thousand
pounds to be made by the acceptance of it,
possibly more. And the reliance that is placed
on my character by the Engineer, who says
he wishes for a man whom he can fully trust
P
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
at such a distance, weighs for very much in the
scale." The contractor heard all, put one or two
questions as to leading prices, and then repaid
the young man's confidence. "I should never
recommend any one to take a contract," said
he. "But example is better than precept; and
I do not mind mentioning to you in confidence,
that my object in being here is, to make
arrangements to get out of all my contracts.
I shall have enough to live upon, in a quiet
way. I am not fond of speculation; and I
shall prefer a modest certainty to the prospect
of very large profits, with all the trouble and
anxiety that are involved."
If this advice was candid, the giver must
have changed his mind with unexampled
promptitude; for it soon after became known
that, so far from retiring himself, he had just
bought out his own partner, and that, as a
preliminary to taking a larger contract than
had been, up to that time, confided to the
exertions of any single contractor.
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
211
CHAPTER XV.
66
ENGINEERING WORKS.'
99
THE traveller who, for the first time, enters
what is emphatically and appropriately called
the Black Country, may be excused for the
fancy that he has, by some mistake, actually
entered on the gloomy regions which have
been described by the verse of Dante. In
the days of the old coach traffic, the slow
approach to the district of smoke and of flame
gave warning to the passenger of his arrival
in these gloomy regions, and produced an
impression of wonder and of dismay. But by
the rapid course of the locomotive, a sudden
change of scene is now effected which is even
more striking to the imagination. A traveller
engaged in conversation, or in reading, lifts
his eyes, as a glare falls suddenly on his page,
and beholds a pair of lofty cupolas vomiting
P 2
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
flame. All around, the earth is black; the
hideous, unarchitectural buildings are black ;
the half-stripped men, toiling to fill the ever-
devouring furnaces, are black; the sky is a
dense canopy of smoke, glowing and angry
with the reflected light of the undying fur-
naces. The blast, urged by the steam fan,
emits a constant and penetrating hum. The
cranks and wheels of the gaunt, skeleton-like,
steam-engines, working without shelter and
without rest, raise a dismal clatter. It requires
a strong admiration for the principles of political
economy, to enable an observer to enter the
manufacturing district without an extreme feel-
ing of repulsion.
Under these gloomy skies, and amid this
carbonised landscape, is to be found much of
the backbone of the English character. Habits
of skilful enterprise, of energetic toil, of helpful
self-reliance, characterise the inhabitants of the
manufacturing districts. But the good is not
unbalanced by the evil. Thriftless waste,
profligate destruction of the precious fuel, of
which, after all, the quantity has a definite
limit; rough, rule of thumb, mode of work ;
brutal ignorance;
ignorance; savage disregard of the
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
213
decencies of life; drunkenness, elevated into
a species of hebdomadal worship; can hardly
be said to divide class from class in these
districts; for the masters, in most instances,
are but richer or cleverer workmen.
This is not always the case. In the York-
shire and Lancashire valleys there is much
more education, much more refinement, than
in the Staffordshire pandemonium. You may
accompany a rough man, in a home-spun coat,
to his home; music, flowers, books, a neat
conservatory, a choice piano, French journals.
on the table, prepare you to be introduced to
well-educated, or even to well-bred women,
and to a peculiar mode of life that unites, in
a high degree, utility and civilization.
In the great Welsh coal-field, where the
centres of population attest the natural abhor-
rence of the steam-engine for the picturesque
in scenery, the hand of man has not so far
obliterated the features of nature as in the
central coal-basin of the Midland Counties.
The vapours poured forth from the smelting
furnaces of Swansea, poison the vegetation
for many miles around; but the Welsh hills
are imposing, even in their nakedness.
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
As you ascend the busy valley leading inland
from Cardiff, wood and pasture, noble seats
and picturesque steeples, are interspersed with
the discoloured patches that mark the imme-
diate vicinity of mines or iron works. But
the beauty of the Belgian coal-fields, the neat-
ness of their industrial villages, the economical
consumption of fuel, leaving the sky as pure
as in the agricultural districts, will be vainly
sought in any seat of English mining or
metallurgic industry.
If you enter one of the great works, you
become impressed with a sense of the energy
of self-taught labour. You find before you a
large quadrangle of low brick buildings, with
roofs of slate on iron principals, or covered
with corrugated iron. In the centre of this
quadrangle is the boiler-house, the lofty chimney
giving sign at once of the activity of the esta-
blishment, and of the neglect of a wise economy
of fuel. Turning to the right after you enter
the great front gates, you see at the end of a
corridor, into which small rooms used as offices
open on either side, an apartment with glass
folding-doors, and containing, almost filled by,
an enormous desk. Standing behind this pon-
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
215
derous piece of furniture, or perched upon a
horse-hair stool, is a short, stout man, with a
fresh colour, a quick black eye, a bullet head,
and dressed in a suit of black, with swallow-
tailed coat, low shoes, and white neck-tie. If
your business be with this active and energetic
controller of the works, you soon learn to
understand the genius of the place. You may
find him a self-educated Scotchman, shrewd,
keen, not unkindly, but of an essentially com-
bative disposition. He will oppose everything
you say, from sheer force of habit, oppose you if
you say nothing, and break off in the middle
of the conversation to roar out a paragraph
of a letter, to be written by one of two or
three clerks, who, perched on stools or boxes,
wait always in anxious readiness
anxious readiness to note
down the efforts of the inspiration of the
moment. When you become accustomed to all
this sort of thing, you understand how the native
energy of the man, developing itself in every
movement, makes itself felt throughout the entire
establishment, and while often producing confu-
sion, often causing loss of time, waste of material,
blunders of all sorts, yet keeps up a vigorous
life and motion. Unfortunately, the worthy
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
manager, during the intervals of his occupation
in early life at the carpenter's bench, heard
some account of the number of secretaries for
whom Julius Cæsar found occupation. He thus
came to the conclusion that the grand test of
the capacity of a man of business was, to be
able to dictate four letters at a time. It is
true that, in the daily attempt to rival Cæsar
in this respect, a paragraph intended for A
would sometimes find its place in the letter
dispatched to B. The lengthy and verbose
productions of the four clerks were generally
about four times as long, twice as confused,
and three times as unsatisfactory as would be
the correspondence of a single able writer.
But the correspondence went
went on,
on, after its
fashion, amid orders to small tradesmen, fierce
bullying of foremen, civilities to visitors, atten-
tion to many real demands on charitable kind-
ness, an unsystematic, never satisfying rush of
occupation, only kept together by the one bond
of the personal energy of the manufacturer.
He did his work loosely, unsystematically,
wastefully; but with all that, he did it. Rail-
way wheels and fittings, trucks and horse-
boxes, lofty slip roofs for government dock-
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
217
yards, working stock for foreign railways,
bridges, and fittings for fire-proof buildings,
columns and girders, rafters and ties for a vast
structure of iron and of glass, all found their
place in the never-ending correspondence; all
found their way, in time or out of time, from
the wharf at the corner of the works, by canal
or by railway, to their various destinations.
You may like to take a glance round the
works. The boiler-house, as before mentioned,
stands alone in the centre of the quadrangle,
but the engine which it supplies with steam,
and which provides the whole driving power
of the establishment (apart from the driving
power of the manager), will be found in the
central building, opposite to the main entrance
gate. Here it sets in motion polished steel
shafts, which run the whole length of this side
of the quadrangle; from drums, keyed upon
which, bands
carried to the numerous
are
planing, drilling, punching, shearing, and screw-
cutting machines, which, each attended by a
careful fitter, and one or two labourers, fill a
large central hall in two storeys. To the ex-
treme right is a lofty building with towered
roof, under which are to be seen a couple of
218
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
cupolas, and outside of which is the open grate
of an air furnace. The loud, steady hum of
the steam fan is most audible in this part of
the works, which the floor of black, fine sand
at once points out to you as the foundry.
Here you come in contact with a set of the
wildest, the most grimy, the most indepen-
dent, and, unfortunately, the most drunken
and troublesome of any English workmen who
have any claim to the title of "skilled." They
are the moulders. Some excuse must be made
for the exhausting nature of their occupation;
but, after all, the labour of the moulders is far
less severe than that of the smiths, while the
latter form by far the most respectable, as well
as the highest paid, of the teeming population
of the works.
If you enter
enter the foundry in time to see
some large casting run from the cupola, you
will witness a scene which seems ever attrac-
tive, even to those who are familiar with the
fierce energy of molten iron. The outline
illustrations of " Fridolin," or of the "Song
of the Bell," although drawn from German
workmen, are yet the best representations of
the labour of an English foundry, with which
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
219
we are familiar. The foreman of the foundry
removes, with a long pole, the plug of clay
which closes the orifice of the cupola, and a
steady, limpid stream of dazzling white metal
pours out, shedding a clear light through the
gloomy shop, and every now and then ex-
ploding in little fountains of sparks, blue,
white, and red. The stream is received in
an iron pot, lined with clay, and either sup-
ported by two long handles, composed of wood
and iron, or slung by a chain from the arm
of a lofty crane; two or three of which so
communicate with each other as to enable the
heavy vessel of molten metal to be slung to
any part of the foundry. When brought, by
crane or by hand, to the spot where a sort
of funnel has been carefully formed in the
sanded floor, the iron ladle is slowly inclined,
till the contents, which assume a redder hue
as they begin to cool, flow into the funnel,
and gradually disappear under the floor. That
the iron is not lost, and that some plastic
operation is going on beneath your feet, is
soon apparent. A slight explosion, a mere pop,
is heard, and the floor of the foundry, for some
distance, is suddenly covered by an illumina-
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
tion of fairy blue flames. The heat of the
metal has resolved into its elements the water
mingled with the sand. The oxygen has
attacked the iron, the liberated hydrogen,
making its way through the sand, burns, so
soon as it comes in contact with an inflam-
matory substance, with a steady flame of low
illuminating power, but intense heat.
Corresponding to the foundry, at the left
angle of the inner row of buildings, is the
smithery. The labours of this department are
now much reduced, as far as human exhaustion
is concerned, by the introduction of the steam-
hammer, that wonderful application of me-
chanical skill, with which the inventor, Mr.
Nasmyth, could crack a nut without injuring
the kernel, or could forge the heaviest anchor.
Before the introduction of this admirable tool,
one of the finest sights in an engineer's
factory, was the forging of a large piece of
iron. In a large smithery there might be as
many as sixty-four forges, grouped together in
nests of four, each around a central chimney.
In the Government smithery at Pembroke
dockyard, no chimneys were apparent. Low,
wide, open forges were set against the wall
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
221
of the building, the tuyeres, hollow, and kept
cool by a circulating flow of water, were
urged by a blast from the steam-fan ; and
high above the workmen's heads, a projecting
canopy of iron
of iron was the only guide for the
smoke, which was absorbed, as if by magic,
in an opening in the wall close below the
canopy. The anvils stood opposite the forges,
and around one of these, seven stalwart smiths
might be seen standing in a ring, the heavy
sledge-hammer wielded by each, descending
with perfect accuracy and in rythmical time
on the anchor-shaft guided by the foreman.
The foundry and the smithery are the two
most interesting departments of a large factory.
A separate shop is set apart for the brass-
founder, and is often recognisable by the
presence of dense white fumes. Fitters of
every sort, rivetters of plates and boilers,
joiners and carpenters, coach and waggon
builders, painters and plumbers, have each
their appropriate scenes of labour, or may be
seen, as the press of work overflows the
large area of building, pursuing their labours
in the yard of the quadrangle, or even on a
spare strip of land outside the gates.
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
The construction of railway wheels was one
of the most interesting details of the work of
an establishment such as we have attempted
to describe. Flat, wide-mouthed furnaces, in
the shop set apart for this purpose, were closed
by iron doors, suspended by chains that bore
a counterbalancing weight. so that, at the
touch of a hammer or of a pair of pincers, the
door rose like a portcullis, and showed a brick
hearth, covered by a sheet of flame, on which
lay the pieces of iron already formed into
the requisite shape, and glowing with more
than a cherry-red heat, which were to form
the spokes, or rather the framework that
replaced that earlier contrivance. One by one,
each piece of iron was removed by pincers,
one end inserted in a prepared jaw, the other
bent round by main force, and immediately
squeezed into exact form by a lever, which
compressed it between an internal and an
external iron template. The triangular pieces
thus formed were borne to another part of the
shop, and arranged in a circle, the inner points
meeting in a cast-iron box, which, when closed
upon them, formed a hollow mould, corre-
sponding to the nave of the wheel. Molten
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
223
1
iron was then poured into this mould, and,
when cool enough to be removed, a skeleton
wheel, with cast nave and wrought spokes,
was produced. The tires, duly formed and
welded, were roasting at the same time in a
separate furnace, which, instead of being closed
by a door, was covered by a large iron lid,
like that of a gigantic pill-box. This lid,
rising at a touch like the door of the spoke-
oven, allowed the tires to be lifted out by a
couple of men, while the uniform temperature
was undisturbed, and partial cooling and con-
sequent loss of shape was avoided. Such was
the proportion of the parts, that the tire, with
scarcely a touch, fitted over the outside of
the skeleton prepared for its reception. The
gradual cooling of the iron shrunk the whole
wheel together with a uniform tension ; and
the bolts or rivets, that were subsequently
inserted into holes drilled for the purpose,
were hardly requisite to the perfection of the
wheel.
The chief practical evil of the management
of a large establishment of this nature, by a
person who is only a magnified or glorified
workman, seems to be the fact, that to persons
224
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
of this description, that which is present to
their senses invariably assumes disproportionate
importance. It requires the discipline of mind
produced by a careful and well-directed educa-
tion, to give adequate care to those small and
trifling details, which seem to have no voice
of their own to demand attention, and yet
upon which the utility of the heavier parts of
the work absolutely depends. Thus a man
may be strenuous in his exertions to cast a
certain number of columns, or to ship a
certain number of girders, by a given day.
If the finance, as well as the engineering, of
the establishment is under his control, the
magnitude of the invoices, and the amount of
the bills to be drawn on the consignees, form
additional elements of stimulus. But the hold-
ing down bolts, which have to be built into
a foundation long before it can be prepared
to receive the iron superstructure, the nuts or
the washers, which may amount in value to
only a few pounds, but without which no co-
ordination of the heavy work can be effected,
the girder of special form, for an exceptional
case, which may be required before the whole
work can be got into play,-these small but
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
225
vital matters are generally neglected by the
bustling, bullying manager.
It is thus that
punctuality becomes impossible, and that con-
tracts are made only to be broken.
226
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
CHAPTER XVI.
OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.
THE customers and correspondents of an estab-
lishment such as has been described in the last
chapter were, at one time, surprised by an
inexplicable and sudden change in the character
of the letters emanating from the "Works."
Instead of four or five pages of that scrambling
chirography which generally betrays a discon-
nected dictation,-pages full of unnecessary
verbiage, and obscure as to definite information,
would appear half a page in the neat hand.
writing of an educated man, containing not a
word too much, but with not a point blinked.
The new correspondent, it became apparent after
a time, was not an Engineer; neither did he
pretend to be one. But engineering questions,
by whatsoever process, were solved when put to
the new writer, and the solution was always
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
227
1
clear, and generally satisfactory. The general
grumbling, preaching, bullying, tone of the
"Works' letter" had evaporated, and corre-
spondence ceased to be a daily blister.
The author of this improvement seemed to
be able to effect as much personally as by
letter. A tall, slightly top-heavy, man, with
an expression of countenance that was, at
times, charming, generally, impenetrable, on
rare occasions, flashing with sudden spite, bent
over the large desk. A forehead of unusual
capacity was marked by full, projecting brows,
not angular or penthouse-like, but swelling
with prominent curves. The manner of the
new-comer was ordinarily extremely quiet; a
little chuckling, almost feminine, laugh inter-
spersing itself with easy, yet pointed, remarks.
He rarely seemed to be at work, but the
work contrived to do itself; at all events, it was
never in arrear. For the constant scramble
and drive after lost time, was substituted an
air of agreeable leisure. Instead of a constant
denunciation of everything and everybody,
you became conscious that everything was
just as it should be, or at all events, was
about to be made so. The fiery manager
Q 2
228
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
ceased to bully, when under the fixed eye
of the new conductor of the correspondence.
After a while a new element appeared. Charm-
ing in society, faultless in manner, giving to
the lightest anecdote a point and a pungency
peculiar to his own version, this highly educated
man would at times vie with Balzac himself in
the colour of his stories. But, while this was
the case in the society of some companions, in
that of others he appeared in the character of
an eminently pious man. To one associate, who
soon experienced the fascination of the power
of a man of the world, educated at an English
university, polished by years of residence at
Paris, free of all societies, and evincing at times
evidence of some systematic wisdom, or peculiar
style of education of thought, which could not
have been acquired either at Cambridge, or in
the Pays Latin, the aspect displayed by his new
friend was that of an anxious and perplexed
inquirer after truth. Tract No. 90, then in
the zenith of its notoriety, was to be seen
on the desk. Pulling off one's hat, on coming
in sight of a church, was spoken of as an essen-
tial mark of the breeding of a gentleman. Little
by little many points of ecclesiastical mannerism,
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
229
1
now known as ritualism, came to be mentioned
with approval. The great desirability of a
return to a Catholic unity, however this could
be effected, was next brought on the tapis. At
last, hints were given of the unusual advantages
that might be secured from acquaintance, and
something more than casual acquaintance, with
the Directors of a silent but powerful association,
who had their supporters and their friends
wherever man could wish to travel.
"As to your
religious views," said the perplexed inquirer,
you need be under no concern.
Where they
66
are as yet unfixed or incorrect, they are sure
to become clear. All that would be asked of
you would be to write a letter once or twice
a week, and to reply to any inquiries put in
confidence; and you would thus secure the
support of the most powerful organization in
the world, for your future path in life.
It happened that about the time when the
veil had thus far been lifted, the two men we
have referred to met at dinner, together with
one or two other
two other persons of less ingenuous
confidence in human nature than the relator.
The conversation was turned upon the subject
of the Jesuits. "Ah!" said the correspondent,
230
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
((
66
a very much misunderstood body of well-
meaning priests,-very humble, but trying to
be useful in their own way,-especially in
educating those who have no other teachers."
"You speak of the priests," said one of the
party; “but what about the lay Jesuits?" Lay
Jesuits!" said the other; "are there such people?
What may they be? I do not remember to have
heard the term before." This little instance
of serpentine wisdom, after the foregoing recom-
mendation to make use of the support of these
same lay brothers, nomine proprio, led to the
close of the intimacy; and neither that close, nor
the recollection of a coup manqué, was ever
forgotten by the innocent admirer of the poor
priests. He had one or two subsequent occasions
of showing that forgetfulness of injuries, even
if inflicted, or only attempted to be inflicted, by
himself, was not a portion of the wisdom which
he had gained from a study of the Institutes
of Loyola.
The exertions of this able and wily man
were not all equally fruitless. One after another
young men from the "Works" became at-
tendants at a Popish cathedral newly rising in
decent splendour in the neighbourhood. The
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
231
actual amount of proselytism that took place
within a few years was considerable, but the
point of chief interest in the story, is the sly
and subtle character of the approaches, and the
perfect adaptation of each attack to the character
of the subject.
In time, this quiet and silent man seemed to
grasp the control of the entire establishment.
The partners might order what they like,-
nothing was done without his fiat. The
course of business, or some other inducement,
led him, after a time, to remove to Paris, where
he acted first for the firm, and subsequently
for himself. He came out as a banker. His
private sources of information, the implements
by which he rose to power and to the possession
of the means of a luxury in which he rather
too openly indulged, led to a downfall from
which he would no doubt have recovered, had
he maintained the original simplicity of his
habits. He had sure and private intelligence
of the resolution of the Emperor Alexander to
conclude a peace, towards the close of the
Crimean war. He purchased rente largely in
consequence. In all political events, time, the
main point for the speculator, is the least certain
232
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
element. The event on which our friend had
speculated was delayed. After a time it became
necessary to " carry on" his speculations. To
do so for another month required eight thousand
pounds he found the money, and obtained the
delay. The month expired-renewal of delay
was beyond his reach. His airy castle collapsed
as the fatal hour struck, and he fled incognito
from Paris, some three or four days only before
the arrival of the anticipated intelligence which,
so short a time before, would have enriched him
by a hundred thousand pounds.
The true moral of this rapid, brilliant, and
gloomily closed career is, no doubt, the illustra-
tion of the failure of brilliant talent to ensure
success, unless it be chastened and directed by
the presence of high and settled principle. But
the observation which was most obvious to those
who watched the progress of this able and un-
scrupulous man, step by step, was surprise that
so astute a player in the game of human life
should at times throw up his cards for so small
an inducement, that the voyage of so well-armed
a vessel should so often be imperilled for "a
ha'p'orth of tar." A certain
A certain amount of self-
indulgence seemed at times to be an irresistible
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
233
1
temptation. Calmly confident in his own ability,
conducting a well-planned and systematic course,
bent to certain definite ends, and trained in the
management of unusual intellectual powers by
the subtlest of educations, the utterance of a
sharp bon mot, however inconsistent with the
professed character and design of the man,
seemed at times irresistible. A degree of honest,
unexpected, malevolence would flash out on
occasions, the effect of which, weeks of demure
and cat-like caresses would fail to obliterate.
With those who in any way put themselves
in the power of the corresponding manager, too
freely accepted his ready. kindness, or confided
to him if they got into a scrape, this occasional
spite would be rarely apparent. Its display was,
perhaps, chiefly due to the sense of being foiled
in an attempt which had to be carried on
under a mask.
Self-indulgence, in the ordinary sense of the
term, appeared to be altogether foreign to the
habits of the scholarly man of business. Late
and early his pen was ever ready, his attention
to any call of duty prompt, his resource unfailing.
But perhaps the strongest claim to the admiration
of a cultivated mind, which he tacitly urged,
234
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
was that of a heroic and elegant poverty. He
seemed to do without money-to require none,
to care for none. All that he had avowedly to
live upon, was a salary less than the weekly
wages of a foreman of smiths. His house was,
undisguisedly, a labourer's cottage. Yet in that
cottage was to be found a spare bedroom, if
little more than a closet, for a friend, and a
simple and graceful hospitality, which converted
the transformed hovel into the house of a well-
bred gentleman. Under the cloudy canopy of
eternal smoke, that little home was clean and
bright. Articles of furniture were few, but a
special elegance, or a special history, distin-
guished each; and, besides, there was little
room to spare. The chief ornament of the
cottage was its mistress, an extremely pretty
little woman, with a glorious coronet of hair.
Very young (she made her own mother a
grandmother at the age of thirty-two), she
looked rather an elegant adornment to her
husband's home, than a housewife bearing the
load that presses on a poor man's wife. None
of the toil, none of the detail, of housekeeping
seemed to fall upon her. Everything was
thought of, arranged, executed, by her husband,
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
235
and that in such a way, that there seemed to
be no thought, no care, no exertion. Everthing,
at the right moment, seemed to have provided
for itself.
The difficulty was, to leave the man's society,
when he had made up his mind to be agreeable.
Nothing seemed to arrest his flow of chat, of
anecdote, of fun. Night brought no fatigue-
the same quiet readiness, the same sparkling
reply was always forthcoming. If good company
passed the bounds of good fellowship, it appeared
neither to quicken his pulse, nor to flush his
cheek. Night or day, toil or chat, abstinence
or full conviviality, seemed all alike to him.
"How is it," said an acquaintance, "that wine
affects you no more than water? Would no
quantity overcome you?" "I suppose," was
the reply, "that.something unreasonable-drink-
ing off a bottle of brandy, for instance—would
produce a sudden collapse-that I should become
suddenly insensible, and sleep off the effect.
But I do not think my brain can be affected
in any other way."
other way." It would have been well
if this grand state of physical discipline had
been constantly maintained. It did not last
for more than a year or two.
As his power
236
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
became established, and his services indispen-
sable, this rare sobriety of character evaporated.
Not only so, but it was replaced by rather too
strong a dose of the opposite quality. Habits
are not thought to be inconsistent with the
conduct of business in Paris, that would be
scandalous in London, and simply impossible
in a country manufacturing district. What
would an English Engineer say, to having a
rendezvous given him at 11 or 12 A.M. in a
coffee-house, and then finding his correspondent
finishing a champagne breakfast with a game
of dominoes. Nothing is more common in Paris
than such an appointment. Englishmen who
adopt foreign habits very often go far beyond
the foreigners whom they imitate, but the worst
of the French hours of business is the frittering
away of time which it causes. On the other
hand, many of these late breakfast-eaters have
been steadily at work for four or five hours,
commencing in the early morning. But, in
the case of our friend, the debauch was more
serious, and the effect soon became visible.
Champagne and turtle lunch, dinners at the
Hotel Bristol, the distraction of more than one
domestic establishment, interfered with the
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
237
I
steady working of the intellectual machinery.
The tall and slender form, graceful in its
aspect (except for a certain effect produced
when walking, which gave the impression
that the legs were tied together at the
knees), became corpulent and heavy, without
losing the last-named peculiarity. The fine
lines of the face filled up, the cheeks grew fat
and puffy, the balanced manner and calm,
measured speech gave way to frequent expres-
sions of irritation. You saw before you a man,
who seemed to feel that he could, very often,
and for a long time together, lay aside a mask
which he had long worn with pain. He kept
it still at hand, but only to put on when
necessary. Nay, those who surprised him
without it, were no longer deceived when it
was assumed.
A man a few years older than himself, his
inferior every way in education and in ability,
his equal in integrity of principle, but his supe-
rior, to some extent, in the power of keeping
up an acted part, came at one time into close
business relations with the firm, which was still,
to a great extent, controlled and manipulated by
the subject of our sketch. The two became
$
238
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
natural enemies, yet the points they had in com-
mon formed a sort of masonic bond between
them. The elder, not aware of what was the
hold of the younger on those whose nominal
servant he was, laid a pleasant little trap, into
which the other fell with the greater readiness,
inasmuch as he was careless as to the result. A
gay and lively dinner, with abundance of excel-
lent wine, was carried on with such hearty
good fellowship, that our hero, whose nerve was
already shaken, became palpably inebriated. The
other kindly put him into a cab, and drove him
to the residence and office of one of the partners,
where business of some importance had involved
an evening sederunt. The air and the brisk drive
supplemented the generous liquor, so that the
assistance which the host ostentatiously volun-
teered, in order to guide the other from the cab,
and into the presence of his principals, was
actually necessary for steadying his gyratory
movements. He looked round with an angry
glare, made one or two efforts to discourse, and
then, with an important abruptness, "Cantshtay
-musrite letto Roschild 'twonce," made off to
his own premises. The well-intended malice
produced no apparent effect.
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
239
How far this gentleman was, or was not, con-
nected with any organized operations of the
Society of Jesus, the relator might have been
better able to judge but for the contretemps before
described. Probably those who could answer the
question would anticipate inconvenience from so
doing. The French novelist who tells us of the
proceedings of the Père d'Aigrigni, and the more
terrible Rodin, is for the most part, in this
country, regarded as a romancer. It is, of course,
possible that the affiliation of the letter-writer to
his mysterious association was imaginary or ficti-
tious-a claim invented to surround his character
with an effective mystery. On the other hand, a
subsequent study of all that can be learned by the
uninitiated of the "Constitutions" of Loyola, led
to the conclusion that the peculiar ability of the
man had been formed, or greatly aided, by a
mode of study unknown in any Protestant college,
or establishment for education. The intimate
relation that existed between him and the higher
Romish clergy of the neighbourhood, was as well
known as was his success in making proselytes.
These relations, and this success, followed too
close upon the time when he represented himself
as an Anglican in doubt, to allow of the possibility
240
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
of that statement having any foundation in truth.
The gradual approach made to the question of
affiliation, and the sudden dropping of the subject
when success became improbable, were remark-
able. Again, there were little circumstances
which, from time to time, excited curiosity.
When the account commences, the letter-writer
was receiving only the small salary of £150 per
annum, on which he was supportiug his wife,
with an annually increasing number of olive
branches. His private resources had, according
to his own account, been dissipated. But every
morning saw the Times, then a costly luxury,
laid on his desk, from the office of publication.
Occasionally, these papers would remain un-
opened for days together; but that the best
means of information, and that at a sensible
cost, disproportioned to his apparent position,
were placed at our friend's disposal, there can
be no doubt.
A classical and mathematical scholar, a master
of modern languages, a man possessed of that
steady glance which seems to have power over
violent and hasty men-something like that of a
keeper over a maniac-but who rarely attempted
to use this power, as he usually turned his glance
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
241
aside when you looked him in the face, though
his eye was rivetted on you at other times-this
man resembled a costly and highly-finished
instrument in which there was some lurking
imperfection. His power to read and to control
the minds of others, was wasted for the sake of
worthless and momentary triumphs. His elegant
frugality, his sober self-control, his perfect readi-
ness for efficient action at a moment's notice,
were discarded for a Sybaritic luxury, which
might have been natural in a mere vulgar man,
when raised to the command of wealth, but
which surprised those who knew the earlier
part of his business career. His unquestionable
abilities led to a disastrous fiasco. His very
sources of power proved the causes of his
downfall. His character, or at all events his
ecclesiastical relations, were enigmatic, and the
enigma is one, of which the full solution could
not fail to be eminently instructive.
Ꭱ
R
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
}
CHAPTER XVII.
CONSTRUCTION OF THE BROAD-GAUGE LINES.
WHEN the broad-gauge lines first began to push
forth their feelers, beyond the limits of the dis-
trict traversed by the original trunk, the sentries
and out-skirmishers of the narrow-gauge system
became aware of the presence of a school of con-
struction very widely differing from their own.
Some of the unnecessarily original peculiarities of
the Great Western Engineer were abandoned as
his experience increased; but the impression
which was produced upon the Engineers and
contractors who had been formed under the com-
mand of Robert Stephenson, was not at first
favourable to the very different method according
to which things were managed by Mr. Brunel.
The first peculiarity, and that which underlay
and augmented every other, was the personal
share which the untiring energy of the latter
Engineer led him to take in every detail for
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
243
which he was ultimately responsible. The staff
of Mr. Stephenson, although it cannot be said to
have had a military organization, yet to some
extent resembled an army corps in division and
subordination of duty. Each officer was the ser-
vant of the Company. Each had his own limit
of function and responsibility; and although
Mr. Stephenson well knew how to show, from
time to time, that not the smallest detail would
escape his attention, if it involved what was
wrong, the order of his office was not such as to
overburden the Engineer-in-Chief with details
that fell properly within the competence of the
Residents, or even of the Subs. But the Engi-
neers on the broad-gauge lines appeared to regard
themselves less as the officers of the Company
than as the channel of the will of Mr. Brunel.
His Residents no more ventured to act without his
direct authorization, ad hoc, than did any inspector
on the line. Of course there would be differences
due to the greater or less distance from town, or
the greater or less personal acquaintance with
the Chief, possessed by his former pupils, or
by any others who held office under him; but, to
a very late period, the personal knowledge and
direction of the Engineer-in-Chief was the secret
R 2
244
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
of the pervading energy that directed all his
great and costly works.
With this method of administration, resem-
bling that of the Spanish monarchy rather than
that of a constitutional government, were blended
two other peculiarities that at first assumed an
extreme rigidity of character. One was the
scientific knowledge of a pupil of the "École
Polytechnique," which contrasted rather sharply
with the general and time-honoured English
system of the "rule of thumb." The other was
an extreme and unprecedented insistence on
excellence of work. These two features of Mr.
Brunel's system were indeed intimately con-
nected with one another. A smaller quantity,
for instance, of accurately bedded and highly-
finished masonry, might afford as much security
to a structure, as a larger quantity of rougher
work. The cohesive force of the best hydraulic
lime was an element
an element in the calculation by
which the quantities of Mr. Brunel's bridges
were kept below those of his rivals and con-
temporaries. To persons familiar with French
engineering, this was easily intelligible; but
to English contractors it was not so.
A man
made a tender for what was called a rubble
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
245
bridge. He saw, if he gave proper attention,
that the specification was unusually strict. But
he did not, until taught by experience, anti-
cipate that there would be an inspector on the
ground, who was only an embodied and very
quick-sighted specification. He found, before
he had done, that Mr. Brunel's "rubble work”
meant, unusually good ashlar in small courses.
He found that he had given prices per yard,
when he ought to have estimated them per
foot. At the present distance of more than
thirty years, a sum of £120,000 has been
charged against the expenditure of the Great
Western Railway, between December 1865 and
June 1867, which represents the difference of
opinion between the Contractor Macintosh and
the Engineer Brunel, as to the powers of the
latter, and the legal force of his specification.
Contractors took the alarm. Here one was
told of an order to remove instantly from the
works a large number of bricks, as being in-
ferior to specification; the apparent cause being
that, for the sake of his own credit, the builder
in question had made use of a very superior
quality of bricks for the face of the work.
The Sub-Engineer inexorably pointed to the
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
clause, that all the bricks used on the work
should be of the same quality, and demanded
that abutments, and even footings, should be
constructed throughout of the best malm face
bricks. In another case, a contractor who had
built a river bridge of highly ornamental rustic-
work, under the daily inspection and constant
approval of one of Mr. Brunel's residents, was
ordered to smooth-tool all the faces of the two
piers, because there was less than the specified
width of water-way at high tide, between the
extreme projections left within the channels of
the rustic-work.
Sometimes the Residents would exceed their
power or misread their brief, and come to
grief in consequence. There was an amusing
instance of this in the case of one of those
who was always in a state of incipient trembling
under the eye of the Engineer-in-Chief, but
who solaced himself for the discomfort by more
than necessary harshness to those under his own
orders. As he was, moreover, a man of hesi-
tating and uncertain manner, of a memory so
unreliable as to throw much doubt on his state-
ments, and of an education which, whatever
it had been, had not produced the virtues either
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
217
of military exactitude, or of very evident ac-
quaintance with mechanical principles, he was
not a favourite either with his staff, or with his
natural enemies, the contractors. One of the
latter, a man of ample means, had taken several
large contracts under the idea of readily increas-
ing his income. The crafty and experienced
foreman who had induced him to enter into
this new speculation, and on whose knowledge
and ability the capitalist had altogether relied,
became so much elated with his own exaltation
to the command of a large number of men,
that he considered sobriety to be thenceforth
superfluous. When he had spent some weeks
in continuous intoxication, it became necessary
to put him aside-not an easy operation. The
arrangements of the contractor naturally fell
into extreme confusion, a state which was aug-
mented to the utmost by an almost constant
downfall of rain for some ten months, with
hardly a day's intermission. To understand
the full force of the latter misfortune, it must
be told, that the county, where the works were
situated, had a soil of very tenacious clay.
The contractor was obliged to have recourse
to a young Civil Engineer to help him out of
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
his sorrow, to finish the works, to draw up the
accounts, and to settle them finally with the
dreaded Engineer-in-Chief. The state of active
and acrid hostility, into which the Resident En-
gineer's office had been lashed by the numerous
shortcomings of the inexperienced amateur,
was not one of the least formidable difficulties
of the situation.
On one occasion, this Resident Engineer re-
quested the younger man to call early at the
office on a matter of emergency. The other duly
appeared. "Are you aware," said the official,
"that your slopes are wrong?" "No," was the
reply. They are indeed; I have been measur-
66
ing myself. I have measured the battering rules
by which they are set out, and they are quite
wrong." The other was taken aback.
"But,"
said he, "the line is right." (For it had been just
prepared for the permanent way). "I find no
fault with the line," said the Resident, "but
the slopes are all wrong-I mean those that
have just been turfed and sown.”
"It is a pity
that you did not point it out before that ex-
pense was incurred," said the other. "That
was not my business," replied the Resident;
"the contractor is responsible."
Well, but-"
66
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
249
said his opponent, beginning to recollect himself
"the top of the slope is regulated by the fenc-
ing, and the fencing was set out by your own
pegs."
"But you know that the specification
especially states that the contractor is respon-
sible for setting out the works. If we have
been considerate enough to save you
you that
trouble, you cannot turn round on us and say
that we did it wrong," said the Resident.
"Then what do you wish me to do?" "You
must remove all the soil, reduce the slopes to
the proper inclination, and soil and sow them
over again." Why, that will cost four or five
hundred pounds!" "I have nothing to do
with that." "Well," said the other, "it is
rather too bad to have to do, over again, work
carried on and completed under your eyes, and
to your pegs. The schedule price for it is high;
suppose we split the difference, and I charge you
half-price for doing it. The moral responsibility
lies at your own door at all events." "You
will find nothing about moral responsibility in
the specification," quoth the Resident.
!
66
Gal-
The Engineer of the contract made a rapid
retreat, in order to control his temper.
lopping to the site of the principal cutting, he
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
called out for the production of the batter rules,
or bevels, to which the slopes had been ordered.
On their appearance, a fact which had escaped
his memory became at once apparent. On each
of these implements, branded in by his own
hands with a hot iron, was the ratio of the
slope, and the number of the cutting to which
it was applicable. To apply the two-foot
rule to the sides, was the work of half a
minute. They were accurately true. The
bevels being then applied to the surface of the
condemned slope, the same
slope, the same result followed.
Everything was correct. The sole revenge which
the Engineer took, was to write to the Com-
pany's Resident: "Dear Sir,-Referring to our
conversation of this morning's date, you will
find, on further examination, that you must
have measured one containing side, and the
hypothenuse, of the batter rule, instead of the
two containing sides, as both the rules and the
slopes are perfectly accurate."
The subject was
not again referred to by the Resident Engineer.
The inspectors on the broad-gauge lines were
frequently men whose method of discharging
their duties would not have recommended them
to the confidence of the Engineer-in-Chief, had
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
251
he known all. Their general rôle was to ex-
aggerate as far as possible the minute requisitions
of the specification, and to render the operations
of the contractor as expensive, as difficult, and
as unsatisfactory as possible. The ingenuity
devoted to this end was extreme. But some
of the sternest and severest of these men had
a certain elasticity of conscience. It became
obvious that, under certain conditions, their
opinions were liable to change. In a word,
and not to speak jestingly of a subject of great
importance in connection with public works,
it is certain that an attempt to enforce an
altogether unusual degree of strictness, in the
execution of large undertakings, offers great
temptations to bribery. The contractor, who
sees that more is continually demanded of him
than he ever contemplated, and more than he
believes to be of any practical advantage, is
induced to wink at methods of removing a
source of costly and unreasonable vexation, as
it appears to him, by incurring an expense
which is, no doubt, unjustifiable, but which
he may be easily led to regard as the only
way of avoiding ruin. Over-strictness is some-
times as demoralising as over-laxity.
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
Again, the reputation which the earliest con-
tracts on the Great Western acquired for the
Engineering management, must have raised very
materially the schedules of prices of a large pro-
portion of Mr. Brunel's contracts. Contractors
declined to compete. In large districts of country
the broad-gauge contracts at one time actually
went a-begging.
Some fell into incompetent
hands; some were put into the hands of very
competent persons at extravagant prices. No
small proportion of the heavy cost of the works
executed by Mr. Brunel, has been owing to the
fears entertained, and justly entertained, by
contractors, of the power entrusted to the in-
spectors to render the work ruinously expensive.
While great attention was given, from the
very first, to the specifications of Mr. Brunel's
contracts, there was a marked indisposition, by
no means peculiar to this Engineer, to supply
to the contractors that detailed scientific infor-
mation, at which they have so much less facility
of arriving by their own calculations, than has
the designer of the works to be let. In all
the early railway contracts, a responsibility as
to quantities was thrown upon the contractors,
which it would have been more economical, as
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
253
well as more dignified, for the Engineer-in-
Chief to have frankly assumed. The idea at
first entertained of the best method of letting
a contract was this:-The line was accurately
surveyed and mapped, levelled and sectioned,
having been carefully set out with pegs;
coloured drawings were made of every in
dividual work of any magnitude, together with
sheets of general drawings of fencing, culverts,
gates and crossings, and permanent way. A
complete, signed, set of these drawings was
left for an advertised time at the office of the
Engineer, for the inspection of contractors,
who were allowed to make tracings and copies.
A specification was prepared, in accordance with
the drawings, and the contractor was expected
to tender to execute the whole of the works
comprised in the length of the section, as detailed
in the drawings and specification, for a lump
sum. He was also to fill up two schedules of
prices, one according to which the work, mea-
sured up from month to month, was to be paid
for on account, and one according to which any
additions or deductions ordered by the Engineer-
in-Chief in writing were to be allowed for.
Later in the day a single schedule was used for
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
both purposes. It was customary to mention
the quantity of earthwork which the section was
estimated to show, but this was done with the
express provision that the Engineer was not
responsible for the accuracy of the estimate,
but that the contractor was to take the entire
risk in consideration of the stipulated sum.
Practice soon made it apparent that increased
responsibility meant increased cost. A detailed
estimate was necessary for the guidance of the
Engineer-in-Chief, and to enable him to advise
the Board as to the merit of competing tenders.
A minute and accurate calculation of the contents
of this section, distribution of the quantities,
arrangement of the leads, and admeasurement of
various masonry works, was essential, sooner or
later, to the Engineer-in-Chief. It was far better,
in all respects, for this to be done in the first
instance. Where this was the case, there could
be no good reason to deny to the various persons
about to tender, the facility of a communication
of the results of a purely scientific work. Much
time was thus gained to the Company, expense was
saved to the contractors, blunders were avoided,
and the reduction of unnecessary risk was such,
as to lessen the average amount of tenders by
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
255
at least five per cent., and often by much more.
It is hard to see that any undue or disadvan-
tageous responsibility could be thrown on the
Engineer, by having all his work fairly placed
on the table, instead of calling on comparatively
uneducated men to make guesses more or less
in the dark. Still, it was but slowly that so
obvious a reform was effected. The plan which
has been adopted so recently as during the
construction of the London, Chatham, and Dover
Railway is the opposite of the original lump-
sum form of contract, consisting merely in a
schedule of prices, without any stipulation of
quantities, the latter being left to the deter-
mination of actual measurement. The objections
to this course, which possesses the prima facie
advantage that no charge can be made except
as payment for a definite quantity of work
actually done, are, that it leads both company
and contractor to bind themselves to arrange-
ments with the actual magnitude of which they
are unacquainted, and that it presents the con-
stant temptation to the latter, to swell his account
by the performance of an unnecessary quantity of
work, an evil of which there is abundant proof
on the Kentish line to which we have referred.
256
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
In providing for letting the contracts on the
Manchester and Birmingham Railway, a line
very ably constructed by Mr. Buck, one of the
earliest Residents of Mr. Robert Stephenson, the
just mean was very happily attained. Draw-
ings and specifications were prepared in the
usual detail. In addition to this, printed lists
of quantities, giving earthwork, turfing of slopes,
fencing, lead and distribution of materials,
contents of each bridge or work in masonry,
number of gates and level crossings, length of
line to be laid and maintained, and any other
items which the contractor was to include in
his lump sum, were
were furnished to all those
who were invited to tender. The result was,
that the contracts were freely competed for by
respectable men, and were taken under the
estimate of the Engineer.
The manner in which the attention of Mr.
Brunel's staff was concentrated on the technical
minuteness of the specification, and the un-
exampled finish of the work, produced an un-
desirable effect on the estimates. Very many
of the details of the work were left to the
discretion of the Engineer, and thus came under
the schedule of prices for extra work. Thus
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
257
on the settlement of some contract accounts
which had to pass through the office of the
Resident Engineer above quoted, he was heard
to remark that the amount of extras, which was
fifty per cent. on the contract sum, was "about
the regular thing." Alterations of design entered
largely into the sources of cost, compensation
having often to be made for abandoned work.
But experience was never thrown away on Mr.
Brunel, and while his earliest works left the
question of ultimate cost very much to come
out as it would, nothing could exceed the
accuracy and the detail of the scientific infor-
mation which was prepared before the putting
in hand of his later contracts. In country of
at all a sidelong and hilly description, cross
sections were taken and plotted at every chain,
or even more frequently, so that the direction
of the line might, if necessary, be modified in
the office, with perfect certainty as to the effect
of such alteration in increasing or diminishing
the quantities of excavation and embankment.
In fact the contract bill, as it would ultimately
have to be rendered, unless any written orders
from the Engineer-in-Chief should modify any
of the provisions of the specification, was pre-
S
Մ
258
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
pared in Duke Street, and served as the basis
of the whole execution, and fortnightly ad-
measurement of the works. The regularity
and comfort thus introduced was also an element
of economy to the companies that had to pay
the contractor.
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
259
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE AUTHOR OF THE BROAD GAUGE.
THE preceding references to some of the dis-
advantages which attended the earlier contract
work of Isambard Kingdom Brunel must not be
held, either directly or indirectly, to detract from
the well-established fame of a man who, in the
opinion of every competent judge, was second to
none in the profession of which he was so distin-
guished an ornament, and who possessed many
rare and noble qualities in which very few could
claim to rank even as second to him. The speed
and luxury of English travelling, both by land
and by sea, is probably due even more directly to
the genius of Mr. Brunel, than to the labours of
any other man. It was the rapidity attained by
the giant engines on the broad gauge, that drove
the engineers of the rival lines to substitute
long six-wheeled engines for the jumping four-
1
$ 2
260
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
wheelers that were first placed on the London
and Birmingham. The Engineer of the Great
Western Railway was also the designer of the
Great Western steamer; as well as of that later
and fatal triumph of science, the Great Eastern.
Those who had the privilege of a sufficiently
close access to Mr. Brunel to enable them to trace
and watch the workings of his mind, must have
been very incompetent judges if they did not
become aware of the presence of a genius of the
highest order. Modern times have seen no more
striking proof of the theory of Aristotle, that
virtues may fail by excess as much as by defect,
or, in other words, that the excess of any virtue
is a vice. The imperfections in the character
of Mr. Brunel were of the heroic order. He
would have been, commercially speaking, a
more successful Engineer, had he possessed a less
original and fertile genius. His untiring and
insatiable industry wore out his iron frame pre-
maturely, as to years, though late, if measured
by accomplished work. His conscientious resolve
to see with his own eyes, and to order with his
own lips, every item of detail entrusted to his
responsibility, brought on him an enormous
amount of labour, which, on another and a more
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
261
easy system, would have been borne by sub-
ordinates, perhaps with equal advantage to the
public. His exquisite taste, his perfect know-
ledge what good work should be, and his resolve
that his works should be no way short of the
best, led rather to the increased cost, than to the
augmented durability, of much that he designed
and carried out. His boundless fertility of inven-
tion, and his refusal to be content with what was
good, if he saw beyond it what was better, led
often to disproportionate outlay. Devoting to
the scientific mastery of his profession the years
during which some of his most successful rivals
and friends had become acquainted with the
details of actual work, and with the habits of the
workmen, he stood at a disadvantage when he
first assumed, at an early age, the unchecked
control of large public works. It was not peculiar
to Mr. Brunel to be educated at the expense of
the shareholder, and by the progress and the
difficulties of his undertaking. But the differ-
ence between him and those who were nearest
to him in ability lay here, that he saw always
clearly before him the THING to be done, and the
way to do it, although he might be deficient in
the experience to direct him in the choice and
262
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
the management of the human agency, which
was necessary to effect his designs. Mr. Stephen-
son, on the other hand, knew how to derive from
his staff and his friends a support and an aid
that carried him, at times, over real engineering
difficulties, with a flowing sheet. Both wrought
for fame; both wrought for the benefit of their
clients. It may be, that the perfection and
success of each individual work was more the
study and aim of Mr. Brunel; the return of
benefit to the shareholder the more present idea
of Mr. Stephenson. Mr. Brunel, when asked if
he would build a steam-vessel a thousand feet
long, said, nothing would please him better, but
that, to meet ignorant prejudice, he would recom-
mend building a little one of 750 feet long to
begin with. Mr. Stephenson said he looked
forward to the time when no poor man should
be able to afford to walk from his home to his
occupation. The former prepared the luxurious
cabins of the Atlantic steamers, and the com-
modious sofas of the broad-gauge carriages; the
latter opened the way for parliamentary and
workmen's trains.
There was another part of the character of
Mr. Brunel that endeared him to those who knew
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
263
him, and that should be no less commemorated,
to his honour, than the design of those noble
works by which his genius reared an imperish-
able monument to his memory. It was this,
that with advancing years and increasing power
his character mellowed. With most of his con-
temporaries, youth was the happiest time, at
least as far as regarded their intercourse with
their subordinates. With Brunel it was, until
his health began to fail, more pleasant to have
relations the older he grew. It is probable that
the high sense which he entertained of responsi-
bility, and the eager and noble thirst for renown,
impressed on his earliest dealings with English
contractors a harsh and arbitrary character,
which he was able to lay aside when he found
his power to be unquestioned. He was highly
impatient of insubordination, or of contradiction.
Very much more was to be done with him by
following his course, than by attempting to take
one's own.
The final settlement of the account of the
contracts on which the little difficulty as to
slopes, previously mentioned, occurred, may be
described, as illustrating very fairly the character
of Mr. Brunel, at a period when he had attained
264
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
that unquestioned authority in his profession to
which, for so many years, the Directors of his
various enterprises were tolerably submissive.
After a considerable amount of labour, the
amounts in question had to be made up, and
were duly presented to the Resident Engineer.
That gentleman, looking, not at the items, but
at the total, rejected them in block, and was so far
from possessing either the patience, or perhaps
the
power, to discuss them, that the whole matter
was referred to the personal decision of the
Engineer-in-Chief. He made an appointment
with the framer of the accounts to meet him
after a half-yearly public meeting at Gloucester.
He had left London by the mail on the preceding
evening, and from that time to about five o'clock
on the day appointed, a continued round of
appointments had left him no time for sleep,
except such as he might snatch in his carriage
between the several points of rendezvous. He
was rapidly disposing of a mutton chop, when
the younger man entered with an enormous
bundle of papers. "I hope, So-and-So," said
Mr. Brunel, "you are not going to ask me to
look at all these papers." "I hope not, Sir,"
was the reply. "I hope that you will be
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
265
L
satisfied with two or three that I have drawn
up expressly for your approval; but if any
difficulties arise, I am provided with my proofs
and vouchers, and I am sure you will rather
read them every one than fail to do my client
justice."
Happily it was not necessary to inflict this
labour on the Chief. The bearing of the
specification on one or two points, as contended
for on the part of the contractor, and as opposed
by the Resident Engineer, was admitted by the
framer of the document. This point settled, the
extra charges, following one by one, were
successively admitted. At length came one
which elicited the remark, "I do not see your
ground for that." "No," said the other, "it is
a weak point, and one which I should hardly
have brought forward if I had anticipated the
very impartial way in which all the preceding
items have been dealt with. I withdraw it."
Out of the seven or eight thousand pounds which
had been summarily disallowed by the Resident
Engineer, there now only remained one item,
of about £800, which arose thus. The bridges
on the contract were specified to be of stone,
but power was reserved by the Engineer to order
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
them of brick, at an increased price. In the
unusually wet season which supervened, it became
all but physically impossible to convey stone from
the quarries to the site of some of the bridges, to
which no roads were to be found, for a tangle
of ruts full of tenacious wet clay, on which the
bottoms of the carts rested, while they were
pushed forward like sledges, with their wheels
cleaving through, not revolving in, the mud,
had occupied the site of the former roads. The
Engineer's office had been applied to, for per-
mission to substitute brickwork, on the ground
of expedition; and the substitution had been
duly ordered, the question of price having been
mooted by neither party. On behalf of the
contractor, it was therefore urged, that the plain
terms of the contract entitled him to the price
for brickwork, the Company having the value
in a more durable material than oolite rubble.
The Resident Engineer replied, that the per-
mission to use brick had been given at the
request of the contractor, to save expense in
carting stone, and that he was entitled to no
extra charge on that account. Mr. Brunel held
to the view of the Resident. The other, finding
that the opinion was tolerably firm, and un-
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
267
willing to give up an item for which there was
much to be urged, proposed to refer the point
to a third Engineer, quoting a clause in the
specification to the effect, that in case of a dispute
as to accounts the contractor should be at liberty
to call in an Engineer, who should confer with
the Engineer-in-Chief; and that, if they did
not agree, they should appoint an umpire, whose
decision should be final. "I think we are
quite within the corners of the contract," said
the claimant. "On this point the Engineer
consulted by the contractor, cannot agree with
the Engineer of the line, and I must ask you
to name an umpire." Mr. Brunel drew himself
up. "In that case we must consider this con-
versation as not having taken place. I have
met you as a gentleman, and, I think, liberally;
but if you talk of putting an umpire over me,
you must make out your whole case as against
That of course was conclusive.
thought it right to make the best fight I could
for my client," was the reply; "but if you put
it in that way, I have no more to say. I really
think there is a fair claim, but I must leave
it altogether to your sense of justice. I am
much obliged to you for the patience and kind-
me!"
66 I
268
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
ness with which you have met me." He put
up his papers, and as he was taking leave:
"I'll tell you what, So-and-so," said Mr. Brunel,
"if you think you really ought to have that
eight hundred pounds, I will not object to giving
it to you, if you will obtain the assent of your
old friend Captain Moorsom, who may possibly
have to take over this part of the line for his
Company." The sum was paid.
It is impossible to avoid taking comfort at
times from the admitted weaknesses of great
men. Some two years after the date of the
last conversation, the relator was accompanying
Mr. Brunel over a portion of the South Wales
Railway. They passed through the little town
of Kidwelly, where the sturdy round tower of
the castle still recalls the aspect of feudal
times. "Do you know," said the great Engineer,
"I always feel very sneaking when I pass this
place. When we first obtained the Bill for the
line, the good people here were overjoyed. They
held a public meeting, and resolved to present
me with the freedom of the town.
It was
drawn out in form, and sent me with a letter
from the mayor, and, in fact, in a gold-plate
box. Of course I felt gratified, and I waited
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
269
a day or two before acknowledging the letter,
as I was extremely busy, and I wished to do so
in suitable terms. So a week or two slipped by,
and I thought that I must make my apologies in
person. But from that time to this the oppor-
tunity has not presented itself. I am ashamed
to say that I have never even thanked them, and
I feel as if I must rush through the town
whenever I have to pass it, from being unable to
excuse my neglect."
It has been always regarded as a subject of
the utmost interest, to ascertain the method of
thought natural to those who have left their
marks deeply scored in the history of mankind.
Thus it is recorded that the method of Sir
Isaac Newton was, to keep the subject he had
under investigation continually before his mind.
After a time a bright light seemed to dawn on
it, as if from some source of illumination. It
was on the occasion of this Kidwelly conversa-
tion, or at all events about the same period,
that a slip had taken place in some marine
works at Neyland, which Mr. Brunel had been
down to examine. After looking at the spot
with minute attention, waiting for the ebb of
the tide, probing the sand, and taking every
270
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
possible means to ascertain the actual facts, Mr.
Brunel left the spot, and maintained silence for
a considerable time. At last he spoke like a man
waking out of sleep, gave a few plain and precise
directions, and ordered a minute report to be
preserved of the mode in which they were
carried out. He was asked, not as a matter of
professional direction, but as a question of
intellectual interest, how he had come to the
conclusion. "All the time that we have been
travelling," he replied, "I have been trying
to fancy myself under the sand, and at the
foundation of that wall. I have been trying
to realize the scene, and to make up my mind
as to what was actually taking place down there.
At last I seemed to see it plain; it was easy
then to order what to do, and now you will see
whether I am right or wrong." It will not be
doubted that the insight thus obtained was
mechanically true, and that the method employed
was successful.
With this constant absorption in his profes-
sion, and with the clear insight obtained, alike
into those physical relations which are the pro-
vince of the Engineer, and those outlines of
human conduct and human action, the appre-
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
271
ciation of which has so much to do with the
success of parliamentary practice, or the upshot
of an examination before a Committee, Mr.
Brunel allowed himself the relaxation of quaint
and original speculation on matters discon-
nected with his duty. He was almost the only
man of taste, and of practical ingenuity, who
was ever heard to defend the claims of the
chimney-pot hat on the submission of the En-
glishman. In his own office, when the inroads
made on his health by his constant disregard
of the claims of nature to repose, began to
manifest themselves by cruel neuralgic pain in
his over-wrought brain, he wore a black velvet
cap; but on all other occasions, in the works,
in the train, even in his own convenient tra-
velling carriage, he wore the chimney-pot hat.
One of his reasons for approving it was, it
gives warning in cases of danger, as it must
be smashed before the head can be
be struck.
"Then," he said, "it is at once.
"it is at once warm and
airy; and you cannot improve upon it.' Ques-
tions which excited much popular attention, as
the origin of mankind, and the earlier state,
geologically and paleontologically speaking, of
the world, were dismissed by him with an
و,
272
}
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
66
unexpected, and summary question, "Why
should not everything always have gone on as
it does now," said he. "That is the simplest
way of looking at it; and I am rather of that
opinion. I do not see why there ever should
have been a beginning."
For the construction of the Great Eastern
steamer, England paid the highest price possible
to be demanded in one instalment. Coming as it
did after a long course of unsparing overwork,
the anxiety attending that gigantic vessel, which
in some of its details almost attained the quality
of organic structure, no doubt led him to the
grave. He pondered over every detail of the
young giant, with the affection of a parent.
He had been requested to build it in Milford
Haven, where a commodious creek, acting as a
perfect natural dock, would have enabled him
to construct it afloat, and thus to avoid the
peril and evil of the launch. He pondered over
the proposal long, and only declined it on
account of the distance from London, which
would interfere with the personal attention
which he intended to devote to every item of
detail. For himself, for his profession, and for
the country, the decision was highly to be
•
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
273
regretted. It is, perhaps, not sufficiently borne
in mind, that the great misfortune of the launch,
an engineering misfortune such as was without
parallel in the career of Mr. Brunel, was due
entirely to his anxious care for human life and
safety. Had his arrangements been carried
out, the giant structure would have floated in
the Thames, within a few minutes from his giving
the signal. But the needless presence of the
crowds of spectators invaded the space which
he had desired to be reserved for the sway,
not only of the moving monster, but of the
wave which it would drive across the Thames.
Boats full of foolhardy trespassers were tempting
submergence. It was to protect the occupants
of these boats from the effects of their own
contempt of danger, that the movement of the
launch, when well under way, was suddenly
checked by Mr. Brunel. No substructure could
resist such a strain. The whole weight of the
leviathan acted as a sledge-hammer to drive
down the ways and supports, and the long,
tedious, and costly work of the launch, was
the unavoidable result of that act of kindly
commiseration.
Those who never saw Mr. Brunel under exa-
T
274
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
mination, or rather under cross-examination,
neither knew the powers of the man, nor knew
how the ablest Counsel may be foiled, with their
own weapons, by one who knows both what
they mean, and what he means himself. On one
occasion the Examination-in-Chief had not pro-
duced a very satisfactory impression on a Com-
mittee of the House of Commons, as regarded
the scheme supported by Mr. Brunel. The
opposing Counsel girded on his armour for the
cross-examination. The witness sat quietly—
a stranger would have said stupidly-awaiting
his attack. It came in earnest- the keen
attack of an able advocate. Question after
question did he produce from his repertory of
offence. Very brief, dry, direct, answers were
given to each question. At last the Counsel
found that he had so proved the case of his
opponents, by the evidence which he had thus
unintentionally elicited, that he sat down with
a much less triumphant air than had marked
the commencement of the struggle. The de-
cision of the Committee was easily to be
foreseen. "I say, Browbeat!" said Brunel,
as they cleared the room, "I should recom-
mend your Directors to retain you to cross-
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
275
examine me again next time we go before
Committee."
One other anecdote of the dry fun and
prompt resource, of the man. The Quaker
Director, who was referred to in an earlier
chapter, gave a great breakfast to celebrate
the opening of one of the lines with which
Mr. Brunel was connected. Everything was
there that could be wished for, or thought of,
with the sole but important exception of wine.
Champagne was an abomination to the Friend.
He was a severe teetotaller. He was not even
content to throw the onus on the conscience
of his guests, as was once done by the no
less plain-spoken lady, who presided over a
dinner table at Birmingham, at which a person
who has supplied much of the anecdote of these
"There is wine on the
pages was a guest.
sideboard," she remarked during an ugly pause;
66 we think it sinful to drink it; but it is here
for those who have not thought it essential to
abstain." But Brunel could not make a break-
fast on pines, grapes, and coffee. He asked
for a pint of beer. The host was inexorable.
"I cannot breakfast at this hour without some-
thing of the kind," said the guest.
"I must
T 2
276
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
.
help myself, and return to finish your good
things." Followed by two or three of the party,
he left the Quaker's banquet, and, entering a
public-house hard by, enjoyed a good draught
of ale, returning contented and in perfect good
temper to his intolerant entertainer.
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
277
CHAPTER XIX.
THE ENGINEER OF THE LONDON AND BIRMINGHAM.
THE personal acquaintance with Mr. Robert
Stephenson possessed by the writer of these
pages, although earlier in its commencement,
was far less intimate than that enjoyed with his
great rival. It is not within the scope of the
present work to give anything at second-hand,
or to relate characteristic anecdotes that may be
found elsewhere. Mr. Stephenson is worthily
entombed in Westminster Abbey. His fame is a
part of the public property of the English people.
On his faults, there is no occasion now to turn
the bull's-eye light of criticism. But one in-
stance of gentlemanly and honourable feeling
may be recorded, which is unknown to his
biographers.
A gentleman, who had been a pupil on the
London and Birmingham Railway, had occasion
278
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
to visit Hâvre-de-Grace shortly after the com-
mencement of the Paris and Rouen Railway.
The Syndic and principal merchants of Hâvre
had become aware of the importance of con-
necting their port with the capital, and regarded
the junction of Paris with Rouen, rather as the
cstablishment of the latter city as a rival port,
than as a necessary link in their own future chain
of communication. It is true that the difficult
navigation of the Seine is such as to give, to a
great extent, a monopoly of commerce to the
port, as the embouchure of that sand-encumbered
stream. The lower portion of the course of the
Seine is the scene of one of the most remarkable
physical phenomena of European hydrography-
a phenomenon which, on a reduced scale, occurs
in the Severn. The mouth of the great Norman
river presents, on the chart, the outline of
a gigantic funnel. The spring-tides, rushing
up the Channel, enter an opening of some eight
miles' width, the steadily contracting banks of
which squeeze together and pile upon one another
the waves, in their upward course, till a crest or
bore, of from twelve to sixteen feet in height,
according to the direction or force of the wind,
is formed, which surges up the river in a single
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
279
step. At the equinoctial spring-tides this flot is
regarded with considerable apprehension; and
a vessel unprovided with a Quillebœuf pilot,
especially if stranded (which would, under these
circumstances, be pretty surely the case), would
probably founder with the shock. The slight
differences in the tidal force, and in the action
of the wind, that distinguish each successive
spring-tide, cause the sand, which is disturbed
and whirled about by the force of the flot, to be
formed into fresh and unexpected shoals, month
after month. Such, at least, was invariably the
case at the time in question. During the mortes-
eaux, or the two or three days of neap-tide, navi-
gation is almost suspended; the sluggish rise of
the waters being insufficient to bear the sailing
traders over the sandbanks, and the services of
a steam-tug being indispensable, while the chan-
nels are often too narrow for the advantageous
application of steam towing-power to more than
a single vessel at a time. During these dead
neaps, the pilots are usually engaged in sounding
the banks and channels formed by the preceding
springs. With full spring-tide, and with favour-
able wind, the crest of the flot is followed within
half an hour by a numerous fleet of vessels of all
280
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
sizes, propelled by steam and by sail, which
anchor at the spot where they lose the advan-
tage of the tide, and rarely make an uninter-
rupted way to Rouen. This famous city, joined
to the ocean by so capricious a link, could not
compete with Hâvre as a port, even in times
when inland water carriage was the great deside-
ratum of commerce. With the revolution in the
celerity and the cost of inland traffic, effected by
the railway system, the most seaward points of
departure resumed the importance which they had
possessed during the period of the timid naviga-
tion of the Italian rulers of the world, and serious
competition between Rouen and Hâvre became
out of the question. This clear appreciation,
however, was not evident to the Hâvre merchants
in the year 1842.
It was thus a very natural circumstance, that
those residents of Hâvre who were most inte-
rested in the maintenance of the commercial
importance of their port and docks, should avail
themselves of the advice of an Engineer, fresh
from the construction of the only railways then
actually in operation, as to a steam communica-
tion with Paris. And so serious a form did
the negotiations assume, that the Engineer in
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
281
question was authorised to rely on the formal
support of the town of Hâvre, if a certain amount
of aid could be depended on from England.
It was generally understood in the profession
at this time, that Mr. Robert Stephenson did not
view without some displeasure the rapid rise of
Mr. Locke, and especially the establishment of
that Engineer in France, where he had intro-
duced, on the Paris and Rouen Railway, the
method of construction by preliminary bargain
with a single large contractor. It had, in conse-
quence, been anticipated at the Hâvre meeting,
that Mr. Stephenson would readily act either
as Engineer-in-Chief; or as Consulting Engineer,
to the proposed line. The younger Engineer,
therefore, on returning to London, went imme-
diately to Great George-street, where he was
received by Mr. Stephenson with the frank
cordiality with which that gentleman, in those
days, always met the younger members of his
profession. The whole scheme was produced and
discussed, the names of the termini being only
reserved until it was seen how Mr. Stephenson
would treat the proposal. "It looks very fair,"
said he; "the traffic must be ample to warrant
the construction of such a line as you describe.
282
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
I am very fully occupied, and could not devote
much time to works in France. But I should
rather like to open a connection there; and if, on
further examination, your statements are verified,
and if you can undertake the responsibility of
discharging the duties of Engineer-in-Chief, I
shall be very happy to give you my support and
advice as Consulting Engineer. You can easily
understand how far I shall be able to go into the
details of the affair." "Nothing could be more
gratifying," said the other; "it is more than I
could have asked. The line is from Hâvre to
Rouen."
66
"I am
Mr. Stephenson's countenance fell.
very sorry to hear it," said he ; sorry, I
confess, on my own account, and still more sorry,
after what I have just said, to disappoint you.
It is the only spot on the Continent in which
I cannot do what I proposed. You are, very.
likely, aware that there is an unfriendly feeling
between ourselves and Mr. Locke. We think he
has used us ill: whether we are right or wrong
is not to the point. But, under that impression,
I feel it due to myself to avoid giving him any
possible ground of complaint against me. I
know that this is not like running an opposing
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
283
line. Mr. Locke has no right to monopolise
French practice. Still, the line to Hâvre is so
necessary a prolongation of the line to Rouen
that he might say I was interfering with his
district, if I went there, while all the Continent
was open to me. I must decline. I am the
more sorry because I cannot recommend you to
go to any one, who can do what I could do for
you in the matter, but I see no alternative."
It was impossible, even under so great a
disappointment, not to honour the feeling which
prompted Mr. Stephenson to decline such an in-
troduction to the French practice of which he was
confessedly desirous. After a little more con-
versation, the project was taken to another
Engineer, who had before this time made much
out of the overflow of Mr. Stephenson's business.
This gentleman welcomed the idea with alacrity,
instantly proceeded to demand the fullest details,
and within a few days gave such unmistakable
proof of his readiness to fill the post, not only
of Consulting Engineer, but of Engineer-in-
Chief, Resident, Sub-Surveyor, and everything
else (by himself or his staff), that the promoter,
determined not to act as a mere cat's-paw,
declined further interference in the matter,
284
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
and the line, in the following year, fell
ripely and naturally into the hands of Mr.
Locke.
son.
The unpleasant feeling between the Engineer
of the London and Birmingham, and the Engineer
of the Grand Junction Railway (lines quite as
much functions of one another as were the Paris
and Rouen, and Rouen and Hâvre), was sub-
sequently removed. Mr. Locke came down to
Chester, on the occasion of the inquest into the
Dee Bridge accident, to support Mr. Stephen-
A little incident at a somewhat later date
showed the pleasant relations of the two men,
both with each other, and with their frequent
opponent, Brunel. The three were travelling
together in a railway carriage; Stephenson
wrapped in a dark plaid, on the exact disposition
of the folds of which, he somewhat prided himself.
He saw Brunel regarding him with curious
eye. 'You are looking at my plaid," said he.
"I'll bet you ten pounds that you cannot put it
66
,,
66
on properly at the first time.' Very well,"
said the other; "I have no objection to bet ten
pounds. But I won't take your money. I bet
ten pounds against the plaid. If I put it on
right when we get out on the first platform, it
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
285
is mine. If I miss, I pay you ten pounds."
"Done," said Stephenson, and resumed conver-
sation with Locke. But Brunel sat in a brown
study, and said not a word till they arrived at
the next station. "Now then, Stephenson, give
me the plaid to try," said he, as he stepped on
the platform. Robert Stephenson slowly un-
wound the garment. Brunel promptly wound
it around his own shoulders, with as much
composure as if he had pulled on a great coat.
"It is a first attempt," said he, "but I think
the plaid is mine." For many a day did he
rejoice in its comfort.
"But had you never tried before?" said a
friend. "No," said Brunel; "but when Stephen-
son challenged me, I was not going to give up;
so I began immediately to study the folds, and
to make out how he had put it on.
I got the
thing pretty clear in my head before we got to
the station, and when I saw him get out of it
I knew that I was right, so I put it on at once."
A playful instance of the concentrated medita-
tion which Mr. Brunel gave to any subject on
which he fixed his thoughts.
The Dee Bridge accident, before referred to,
was almost the sole blot on the safe and brilliant
286
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
course of Mr. Stephenson's career. The subject
excited great interest at the time, and a scene
in which the skill of a practised advocate, and
the whole tact and authority of Stephenson
and Locke united, were bent to disprove actual
fact, was one which hardly needed the additional
novelty of the appearance in court of one of
the bravest and coolest men in the world, trem-
bling like an aspen, to fix it indelibly on the
recollection.
The bridge constructed to carry the Chester
and Holyhead Railway over the river Dee, close
to the city of Chester, consisted of twelve cast-iron
girders, of a span of 98 feet each in the clear,
between the piers. Each girder consisted of
three pieces, bolted together at the joints, making
a length of 109 feet, of the depth of 3 ft. 9 in. The
width of the top flange was 7½ inches, that of the
bottom flange 2 ft. 4 inches, the thicknesses being
from 1 to 2 inches, and the total sectional
area 160 square inches. On the 24th of May,
1847, five inches of broken stone ballast were laid
on the bridge, which had been for some time
used for public traffic. On the passage of the
next train, one of the girders broke under the
weight, precipitating the train into the bed of
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
287
the Dee, killing four persons, and so injuring a
fifth, that he died on the second day after the
fall. An inquest was held which lasted several
days, and which assumed the form of a scientific
inquiry into the cause of the calamity. The
most clear and indubitable result of this inves-
tigation was, to demonstrate the entire unfit-
ness of the ancient machinery of the coroner's
court, presided over by a country doctor or
lawyer, in which solicitors appeal to the con-
victions of an incompetent jury, unchecked
by the presence of a bar, to deal with questions
involving such important issues.
The scene, in fact, at one time degenerated
almost into a personal contest between Sir E.
Walker, the foreman of the jury, (who seemed re-
solved on the return of a verdict of manslaughter,
or, if possible, of murder, against the Engineer,
or some other unfortunate servant or repre-
sentative of the Company,) and Mr. Stephenson
himself, who betrayed, by his appearance and
manner, the most intense vexation and inquietude.
It was evident that the sympathy of the man
with the loss and pain caused by this occurrence
was the emotion most present to his mind, but
the disquiet, as is so often the case, betrayed
288
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
itself by an unfortunate disturbance of the usual
manner of the great Engineer. Pale and haggard,
he looked more like a culprit than like a man of
science, assisting in a painful investigation.
His manner was abrupt and dictatorial, betraying
extreme irritation at the remarks of the jurors;
and on more than one occasion he attempted,
on the score of professional knowledge, to put
down with some contempt the questions and
remarks of Sir E. Walker, who, nettled in his
turn, affected to treat Mr. Stephenson as a
culprit on his defence.
The case for the Company was conducted by
their solicitor, a man well known in the City
of London, in which he held a high legal office,
being the adviser of successive Lord Mayors,
and an authority of great weight in the Guild-
hall. A compact man, somewhat below the
middle size, with close, grizzled locks, and a
settled courtly smile, who received the reply of
a witness with equal urbanity, whether it went
to establish or to demolish his case. His dress
was of extreme neatness, though even at that
date tending to be old-fashioned: a full suit
of black; dress coat buttoned tightly across a
broad chest; no shirt-collar, but a white muslin
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
289
handkerchief bound tightly, and in innumerable
folds, around the neck. With a self-possession
which nothing seemed able to disturb, an eye
that pierced the recesses of the jury-box, the
tiers behind the bench, the thoughts of each
witness successively under interrogation, the
lawyer presented the aspect of a man at peace
with his own conscience, and in loving charity
towards all the world, especially the jurymen.
He brought forward the bridge-master of Chester,
the
superintendent of the iron works where
the girders were manufactured, Mr. Kennedy,
the locomotive manufacturer, Mr. Locke, Mr.
Vignolles, and Mr. Gooch, to support the report
and evidence of Mr. Stephenson. The line
which he selected for defence may be best
described by the account of a conversation held
with him, on his return to London after the
conclusion of the inquiry. "It was most in-
teresting, Mr. Solicitor, to watch the manner
in which you conducted the case. I should
like to take the liberty of putting one question
to you, now it is over." "I shall hear it with
great pleasure." "It seemed to me that there
was one point rather unaccountably overlooked.
Were you disappointed of a witness, or is it
U
290
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
my stupidity?" "I do not see to what you
refer!" 66
Why, up to a certain point, your
defence was perfect. You proved, by scientific
evidence, first, that the bridge ought not to have
broken; and, secondly, that, at least from any
assignable cause, it could not have broken.
You only wanted the witness to prove that it
did not break, and the case was your own."
Mr. Solicitor did not quite like it. "Jesting
apart," said the other, "it was impossible not
to admire the mode in which you carried out
your line of defence; but I should like to know
why you selected that line?" "What other was
open to us?" was the reply. "It would have
struck me in this way," said his interlocutor. "If
you had come forward and said, 'Here has been
a great calamity; the bridge which has broken
was constructed according to the best scientific
information of the day. You have in evidence
that a hundred bridges are constructed, or in
course of construction, on the same principle;
and you have heard some of the most eminent
Engineers of the day state that they approved
the principle. The Government Inspector-
General of Railways has told you that he
sanctioned the opening of the line, and con-
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
291
sidered the bridge to be safe, from his expe-
rience of similar bridges on a smaller scale.
The failure of the girder of this great span has
been the first intimation, to scientific men, that
the formula required revision under altered cir-
cumstances. No human wisdom could have
foreseen such a result. We are in the
We are in the presence
of a most unhappy, but a most instructive,
experiment, which will be a safeguard for the
future; and the Company will make every com-
pensation in their power to the families of the
sufferers. It must be regarded in the light of
a casualty in war.' Now, if you had taken this
line, I do not see how you could have been
defeated; and I should like to know why
you rather preferred to fight against the facts."
"Because," said the Solicitor, "
you should
never admit anything, especially with a jury.
Between men like you and me, yours would
have been, no doubt, the best course, but with
a jury never admit anything. You do not
know how it may be turned upon you."
Mr. Solicitor's defence, however, was unfortu-
nate in its results. The verdict did not find
any one guilty of manslaughter, but it stated
the unanimous opinion of the jury, that the
U 2
292
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
girder did not break down from any lateral
blow, or from any defect in the masonry, as
urged by the defence, "but from its being made
of a strength insufficient to bear the pressure of
quick trains passing over it." And the jury
called on the Government to institute an in-
quiry into the strength of all similar bridges.
The mechanical law which was illustrated by
the serious catastrophe was not at the time of
the inquest, nor perhaps at any subsequent time,
succinctly and clearly stated. It was no other
than that which defines the respective provinces
of Statics and Dynamics.
In attempting the construction of iron beams
adapted to support weights, rarely dealt with
within the limits of modern experience, when
moved at great speed, over openings of unpre-
cedented span, the calculations of the Civil En-
gineer were necessarily based upon experiment.
The formula on which reliance was placed had
been deduced from a series of experiments on
beams of different dimensions and proportions,
which had been supported on fixed bearings, and
gradually weighted until broken. It was clear
that guidance might be obtained, by calculation
based on the formule thus arrived at, as to the
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
293
construction of girders calculated to bear a given
pressure, and to span a given interval. But,
with the rapid motion of the locomotive, it
became necessary to provide, to some extent,
against the more formidable force of IMPACT.
A deflection which might be unimportant when
caused by a gradually imposed pressure, assumed
quite another phase when caused by sudden
pressure, accompanied by great vibration. Nor
was vibration the only force by which the new
element of motion tended to strain the structure
of the beam. In the movement of the loco-
motive, even over the best adjusted line of rails,
there is much greater force exerted on the surface
of the rail, when the cranks are in a certain
position, than during the remainder of the revo-
lution of the driving wheels. When to this
recurrent variation in stress, there is added the
consideration of the inequalities that tend to
give something of a jumping motion to a train,
including the play of the springs, it is clear
that a certain amount of hammering is caused
by the passage of the great weight which is
whirled over a railway bridge. This hammering
is distinctly sensible to the observer who stands
on such a structure at such a moment.
To
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
provide, therefore, for safety, it is necessary to
consider, not only the capability of the structure
to bear the maximum weight of a train, but
its capacity to resist, at the same moment,
the utmost dynamical force which the moving
parts exert under any possible circumstances.
It became evident, from the failure of the Dee
bridge, that this had not been done in the case
of the girder in question.
The breaking weight of the pair of girders,
of which one failed in the present instance, was
120 tons, acording to one formula, and 150 tons
according to another. The weight of the plat-
form, exclusive of that of the girders them-
selves, was about 20 tons. To this 25 tons
of ballast had been added immediately before
the fracture. Half of this weight according to
the formula, was to be considered as concen-
trated on the centre of the girders. To this
was suddenly added 32 tons of dead weight
of locomotive and tender, a proportion of the
weight of the rest of the train, the vibration
caused by the passage, and the successive blows
of the revolving wheels. The statical resistance ·
of 120 calculated tons of pressure was thus
shown to be unable to withstand the sudden
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
295
shock of the train, when the girder was
already weighted with platform and ballast.
The practical rule, up to that time, had been to
reckon a third or a fourth of the breaking weight
as the maximum weight to which the girder
should be exposed. In this case the actual
stress was as 52 to 120, according to the lowest
formula, and the result was not one that was
in itself calculated to surprise a student of
Dynamics.
But in addition to insufficiency of section,
there was a grave mechanical error in the con-
struction of the girder in question, to which,
although designed by an assistant who was
famous for his powers of calculation, it is un-
accountable that the practical eye of Mr.
Stephenson should have been for a moment
blind. The cast girders were complicated with
wrought iron tie-bars, attached to castings
bolted to the top flange, which descended ob-
liquely for a third of the
length of the girder
on each side, and were secured close to the
bottom flange for the central third of the beam.
Now, if these tie-bars had no tension put upon
them, they were not only useless, but by their
weight, and in consequence of the weakening of
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
the girder by the holes bored for their attach-
ment, were injurious to the strength of the
structure. On the other hand, if tension were
applied, either by keying up, or by deflexion of
the girder, the direct effect would be to break
the beam which the bars were supposed to
strengthen; for the resistance of a double T
girder to fracture from weight, is calculated on
the united power of the top tables to resist com-
pression, and of the bottom tables to withstand
tension, or tearing apart. Now, every pound of
tension put upon the tie-bars represented a pro-
portionate crushing power applied to the top
tables, and thus aided, not the resisting power of
the girder, but the destructive power of the load.
The veteran James Walker, together with
Captain Symonds, R.E., who were employed by
Government to examine the case, referred in a
dubious manner to the probable want of joint
action between the tension-bars and the girders.
They failed to see the possibility of a contrary
action. Mr. Robertson, the Engineer of the
Chester and Shrewsbury Railway, had the
courage to express the opinion that the tension
rods weakened the girder, and to oppose the
theory of Mr. Stephenson and his supporters,
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
297
that the fracture had resulted from a blow given
to the girder by the tender of the engine,
assumed to have been previously thrown off the
rails by some unknown cause. Major-General
-
Sir Charles William Pasley, R.E., the Govern-
ment Inspector General of Railways, gave
original and curious reasons for disapproval of
the tension bars.
General Pasley was a man of whom any ser-
vice might have been justly proud. The Royal
Engineers owe much to his laborious study of his
profession. Perhaps no officer or man of science
ever put the result of experimental labour in
language so clear and precise. It was impossible
to misunderstand General Pasley's instructions.
In speaking, for instance, of the planks to be
prepared to form a gangway for wheeling over,
he was not content with recommending that the
ends should be bound with hoop-iron (in itself
a useful, practical suggestion); he specified the
length, width, and gauge of the iron, the number
and position of the holes to be punched, and the
size of the nails with which the guard was to be
fixed to the plank. Probably no such vade mecum
has ever been constructed as the specifications of
General Pasley.
་
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
To patient, constant, conscientious toil at the
practical details of his profession, Sir Charles
Pasley added a courage that was heroic and
romantic. This courage was not exclusively
military. It was not shown under fire alone,
but he has been known to look at death, appa-
rently imminent, under circumstances that might
dismay a brave man, with an unconcern that
scorned even to smile. It is recorded of him that
once, while labouring himself in the trenches, a
French assailant pierced him with a bayonet.
Pasley, severely wounded, turned on his enemy,
and killed him with his spade. During the
experiments which he was conducting on the
strength of cements, a large stone of more than
a ton in weight had been cemented to another,
and the two had been suspended in the air, by
a lewis inserted in the latter. Pasley went to
inspect the joint with his usual scrupulous and
minute care. He looked above, around, from
below, walked round and under the suspended
mass, peering and scrutinising in every direction.
Just as he stepped from beneath, the cement
gave way without warning, and down fell the
heavy block. A second or two earlier, and it
would have crushed Pasley flat. Without the
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
299
,,
slightest change of colour, of tone, or of step,
he turned to his assistant: "Do you know,'
said he, "I call that an extremely unpleasant
occurrence. I was just beginning to feel such
confidence in the cement; it seemed to behave
so admirably: but you see I had no great ground
for satisfaction.'
""
Short and compact of stature, with a keen eye,
a resolute nose, a complexion bronzed by the sun
and storms of many a campaign, General Pasley
possessed all the courage of Ney, with much
more of the aspect of a Captain. His utter dis-
regard, or apparent non-perception, of danger
while prosecuting any scientific investigation,
recalls the biography of Maurice of Nassau, who,
like the English officer, so well knew the im-
portance of the spade as a military weapon.
But an instance of his perfect sang-froid, when
exposed to the danger of another element, to
which a soldier may be supposed less accustomed
than to perils of fire, or of earth, may perhaps
give a more vivid impression of his impertur-
bable courage and self-command.
Pasley had descended with a junior Engineer
officer in a diving-bell, at a time when he was
giving attention to submarine experiment.
By
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
some misfortune, the apparatus became deranged,
the chain was entangled with the air-tubes and
signal-line, the supply of air became strangled,
and the water slowly and steadily rose in the
bell. It was impossible to creep beneath its
edge in order to dive out and float to the surface,
for the bell rested on the bottom of the sea, and
that was an inclined plane, so that the close
dome was tilted considerably to one side. Death
appeared inevitable; a question of moments or of
inches, as the water slowly crept up the limbs of
the two officers, who were thus utterly unable to
make any effort for escape.
effort for escape. "I confess," said the
junior, "that I felt a very considerable alarm. But
Pasley never changed a muscle; he continued
talking in the quietest manner on indifferent
subjects, and watching the rise of the water, as
if it were an experiment he was superintending
in the ordinary routine of duty. The water had
risen to our breasts, when the people above,
receiving no signals, became alarmed, and drew
up the bell. I cannot describe my feelings, but
Pasley took it all as the merest matter of course."
Yet this brave veteran, cool in the storm, in
civil danger, in the face of drowning, trembled
like an aspen leaf before the great dread of
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301
the official in England-Responsibility. This is
no mere figure of speech. In October, 1846,
General Pasley had inspected the Chester and
Holyhead Railway, and had reported the Dee
bridge as safe. It had proved to be otherwise.
In giving his evidence on the inquest, stating
with the most precise detail, and the most
unswerving accuracy, what he had reported, and
the reasons of his opinion, the agitation of the
old soldier was so great, that he was for a time
almost inaudible, and it was only the slow,
deliberate, manner, in which he brought out
every syllable of his evidence, that enabled the
bystanders to comprehend what he said. The
rough military reason, that as a similar bridge
over the Tees, at Stockton, with a span of
83 feet 4 inches (which Mr. Stephenson corrected
to 87 feet), and a depth of girder of 3 feet, had
proved trustworthy, a bridge of 98 feet span,
with a depth of girder of 3 feet 9 inches, might
be thought safe, might certainly have served to
shield the Inspector-General from any charge
of carelessness, in a matter which had just
been illustrated by so novel and so fatal an
experiment.
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
CHAPTER XX.
A CANAL RAILWAY.
"I AM sure of one thing," said Robert Stephen-
son to a party of the Directors of the London
and Birmingham Railway, who were accom-
panying their Engineer in his twelfth walk
from end to end of the line. "I am quite
sure of one thing; we have taken the right
district." That opinion had the sanction of an
earlier authority. The Grand Junction Canal
had been laid out through the same line of
country, with the exception of a few miles of
deviation caused by the opposition of the Earl
of Essex to the piercing of Cassiobury Park by
a railway. But the line in question was not
the only one in which the surveys of canal
Engineers had indicated the best lines of in-
ternal communication. Throughout England
the canal was the pioneer of the railway.
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
303
The essential difference between the works
suited for the successive ponds, or hydraulic
steps, of a canal, and the regular gradients
of a railway, as well as the greater licence
occasionally taken by the constructors of the
former class of works for sudden bends, pre-
vented the promise of much economy from a
scheme for converting a canal into a railway.
The proprietors of the means of internal navi-
gation, moreover, while naturally .doing their
best to impede their new rivals, were not
prepared for such a brilliant success on the
part of the latter as to induce them to give
up the struggle, and to offer their land and
their powers as contributions towards a com-
mon capital, to be divided between themselves
and the incoming subscribers. Conversions,
however, did take place, and it may be in-
teresting to refer to a case in which a canal,
which was subsequently thus replaced, was, in
the first instance, bordered by a railway, with-
out destroying the actual water communication.
To form and consolidate the towing-path
over two long, straight reaches, without a
single lock, to cover the surface with Thames
ballast readily brought to the spot in barges,
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
and to lay a strong sleeper railway on the
same, was a labour remarkable only for the
extreme facility afforded by the convenient
water carriage. Amicable arrangements with
a great landowner allowed a sharp bend to be
cut off by a diversion, memorable for only
two reasons. The first was the soapy cha-
racter of the soil, which refused to stand in
excavation at a less slope than three to one,
though the depth was only a few feet. The
other was the discovery of Roman pottery in
a very perfect condition, cinerary urns, of a
brown colour, some of large size, and contain-
ing ashes, and small saucers of the size, and
almost of the shape, of those used for garden
pots, of a fresh glaze and brilliant red, some
of which bore, sharply stamped, the word
GRACISCAE.
Two or three iron swing bridges over the
canal were replaced by wooden substitutes,
giving the additional height requisite for
crossing the rails on a level. A brick bridge
of one arch, through the only instance of deep
cutting, was replaced by a handsome iron
skew bridge, the erection of which, or rather
the preliminary process of demolition, afforded
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
305
a triumph of ingenuity, in the reduction of
scaffolding to a minimum.
A
The work had been entrusted to a foreman,
who was so typical an English workman, that
his memory
memory deserves to be rescued from
oblivion. A tall, strong, active man, with a
face such as that which Shakspeare attributes
to Bardolph, fertile in resource, untiring in
activity, and with the courage of a lion.
carpenter by trade, and engaged as a foreman
and sub-contractor on the works of the Canal
Railway, nothing came amiss to him. He
had a natural facility for the organization of
workmen, and for getting the most work done,
in the shortest time, by the smallest number
of hands. With nothing but a punching-
machine and a portable forge, and apparatus
of his own construction, he would convert a
quantity of iron bars into a light and sub-
stantial roof; working in the open air until
protected from the weather by his own growing
edifice. In dealing with weight he showed
true mechanical genius. "People only care,"
he used to say,
not to see what is under
them. Give them a platform that they cannot
look down through, and they are
content.
X
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
They never look at its legs. I like to see
what I stand on. When one is certain on
this point, one can go to work with a will.'
The consequence of this mode of regarding the
practical problems which he had to solve was,
that he rarely had any accidents.
His rapid
once
The man was ever on the alert.
eye and vigorous elasticity more than
saved his life. On one occasion a load of
timber fell over him, knocking him into the
water, from which he emerged, to the surprise
of all, unhurt, except a few bruises, having
made his arms act as a wedge, at the critical
moment, between two threatening beams, from
under which he shot forth like a projectile.
On another occasion a Sub-Engineer was cross-
ing a very rapid but shallow stream, on a
temporary plank bridge. He missed his
footing, and fell into the stream, alighting on
his feet, in water but a little way above his
knees, but swaying with the shock and with the
force of the current. In less time than it takes
to tell, the carpenter had rushed from the
bank into the middle of the stream, charging
like a wild bull, and had seized the tottering
Engineer round the waist. In the same vicinity
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
307
adders were abundant. The foreman was being
driven rapidly in a dog-cart by his master,
who espied one of these venomous creatures,
fat and yellow, standing erect in a copse
within a few yards of the road, and hissing at
the vehicle. Almost before the driver could
turn his face, his companion had started up
from his seat, swung a heavy sledge-hammer
round his head, and whirled it with true aim
and deadly force at the adder. But the snake,
lither in its movements than the projectile,
threw itself in a coil round the stale of the
sledge, as the iron head buried itself in the
ground, and shot off into the underwood.
An occasional, perhaps more than an occa-
sional, over-fondness for the ale-can, was, as
might be expected, one of the weaknesses of
a very energetic character. It is to be hoped
that he was a good Christian. But in some
respects he would have been perhaps more
at home in a Mohammedan country, than in
one where certain prejudices still linger on
the subject of monogamy; for his matrimonial
relations were perplexed; and if he had occu-
pations in different parts of the country, he
thought a placens uxor
plucens uxor a proper part of the
x 2
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
arrangement for each.
Sometimes the different
claimants to the title would meet on the same
spot, and discord would ensue. Flight was
generally the best policy on such occasions.
In the case of the bridge which this very
useful man had undertaken to demolish, the
proceeding was simple. He offered to take it
down safely for a certain sum. This agreed, he
explained his plan. He jumped a hole through
the crown of the arch with a crowbar, and
passed a strong iron eye-bolt through the hole,
securing it with a good washer and a balk
of timber above. He thus had a means of
attachment below the arch, perfectly secure.
To this he appended a light platform, and set
a bricklayer upon it, to take down the arch
by one ring of bricks at a time, beginning at
the face. When he had thus safely taken
down nearly half of the arch, he began at the
other face, and reduced the bridge, brick by
brick, to a single rib, just sufficient to bear
the weight of the workman. Then he with-
drew his man, and pushed the narrow rib
It fell into the canal, and the work
accomplished. Nothing had to be done
but fish up a few bricks.
over.
was
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
309
A more serious, and probably an unique,
undertaking was the construction of a timber
viaduct through the entire length of a
tunnel of more than a mile long. The towing-
path, which continued through this large and
important gallery, was not wide enough to
support the railway, the usual ovoid section
of the tunnel being such, as to require more
space for the chimneys of the locomotive, and
for the corners of the horse-boxes, the two
most salient points in the section occupied by
a running train that could be obtained with-
out trenching on the canal. It was therefore
necessary to lower the towing-path to the
water level; to drive a line of piles, fourteen
inches square, and fifteen feet apart, from end
to end of the tunnel; to drive a corresponding
line of shorter and smaller piles on the inner
edge of the towing-path; to connect the whole
by sills and transoms; and to lay half-balk
timber, and bridge rails, on the frame-work.
The chief difficulty of the work, was the speed
at which it was required to be done, and the
necessity of carrying it all on by torch-light.
The great facility of water communication and
carriage was also partially lost, as it was
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
arranged to draw off the water for thirty days,
in order to bore for the reception of the main
piles-a solid bedding in the chalk being pre-
ferred to the ordinary method of driving by a
pile-engine.
The first step was to remove the superfluous
chalk from the towing-path. When the En-
gineer who had charge of the construction was
preparing to commence this operation, he was
applied to by the Secretary of the Company
to allow the work to be executed by the
Company's servants. "We have a sale for
the material," said the Secretary.
66 "We are
accustomed to the work. You may as well
save yourself the expense, and let me lower the
path and make use of the contents." The
Engineer said the only objection was in point
of time. The timber work would be ready
for fixing by a given date, on the arrival of
which the water was to be let off; and it was
necessary that the towing-path should be com-
pleted by that time.
The Secretary promised
punctuality, and the
agreement was duly con-
cluded and put in black and white.
But when some third or more of the time
had expired, without perhaps more than a
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
311
tenth part of the work being performed, both
parties began to be in a fidget. The Con-
structor, though relieved from penalties as to
delay, by the fact that the cause of obstruction
was due to the Company, was anxious to
preserve his well-earned reputation for punc-
tuality. The Secretary found that he had
made a bad bargain, and that work in the
dark, under pressure for time, was something
very different from what his former leisurely
experience had led him to anticipate. Under
these circumstances, the Constructor sent for
a Sub-Contractor, who was executing the cutting
before referred to. "The Secretary has got
-into a mess," said he. "I think he will be
glad for you to help him out of it. The
matter is out of my hands, and I will do
nothing to resume the responsibility. But I
do not want time to be lost. Go to the
Secretary, and see if you can make a bargain
with him to finish the work. You will be sure
to have to do so, sooner or later."
The
Secretary accepted the offer, made some
arrangement—of the details of which only him-
self and the Sub-Contractor were cognisant-
and the work was knocked out of hand.
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
But when the Sub-Contractor sent in his bill
of £300 odd, matters went less smoothly, and
so much difficulty was made as to payment,
that the claimant went to the Engineer.
"I've come to
to ask you about that towing-
path job," said he.
"The Secretary says it
is your affair, and not his;" and with that,
he began to fumble in his pocket.
"Stop a
minute," said the other. "Listen to me. Do
not attempt to show me any paper on the
subject. I will hear all you have to say, and
give you my best advice; but if you show
me anything that I do not ask for, you may
put it out of my power to serve you. The
whole proceeding has been perfectly regular
hitherto, and nothing must be done to put any
one in a false position." For the manner in
which a man who wants money will run to
the nearest available source, without too care-
fully considering whether that source be legiti-
mate, is a portion of the daily experience of
the conductors of large works.
The upshot was, that the Contractor had to
sue the Secretary for his bill, and that the
case came on for hearing before the Lord
Chief Justice. The principal witness was the
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
313
Engineer in charge of the construction, who
was examined and cross-examined at great
66
-
length. "Do you tell us," said the Judge,
"that the Contractor never brought you in a
bill for the work?" 66
Never," was the reply.
"I should not have received it if he had done
so, as I had relinquished the undertaking to
the defendant, at his own request; but I never
was shown anything of the kind." On this,
his Lordship, who shared the defect possessed
by some long-experienced judges of thinking
that he could see what did not come out in
evidence, charged the jury. "The trial,"
said the Judge, "though nominally between the
plaintiff and the defendant, is really between
the Constructor of the Railway and the Canal
Company." In this charge, his Lordship made
a statement that was not only unsupported, but
inaccurate. So the jury thought, for they
found a verdict for the full amount claimed
by the plaintiff. When the case was over, the
witness asked the plaintiff "You have done
as I told you," said he, "and you see that it
was right. Now, tell me, when you came to
me that day, in such a state because the
Secretary would not pay you, had
you not
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
made out some claim against us?" "Here it
"I had made out a
is," said the other.
regular bill to you."
"If I had
ever set eyes
"
on this before," said the other,
have lost your suit to-day."
you would
The settlement of this little dispute, how-
ever, was preceded by the completion of the
tunnel viaduct, the whole of the erection and
framing together of which was finished within
the prescribed thirty days. The sides for the
main piles were bored by a well-sinker's ap-
paratus; a heavy iron auger, of the diameter
of the hole, working through a tube of wrought
iron, of the same diameter, and suspended
from a frame, was jumped down into the solid
material by a lever worked by two or three
men, and the debris was removed by an iron
ladle. The smaller holes on the towing-path
were jumped by crow-bars, guided by iron
tubes. The whole frame-work had been pre-
viously prepared in the yard at the mouth of
the tunnel, and the only part on which a
chisel had to be placed in situ was the
notching of the piles for the reception of the
bevelled sills. The viaduct answered its pur-
pose admirably.
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
315
-
The execution of this viaduct gave a proof
of the manner in which depressing and
unwholesome physical influences can be thrown
off by excitement and exertion. The atmo-
sphere, in this long water, tunnel, was heavy
and depressing, merely to walk through. To
pass through in a boat drawn by a pony,
produced a sense of fatigue and discomfort,
often sharp head-ache. It was, therefore, always
preferable to encounter, the additional length of
path, and amount of climbing involved in a
walk over the surface, rather than to take the
shorter cut. But with the atmosphere rendered
far denser by the smoke of torches and the
exhalations from a large body of workmen, the
Engineer in charge of the work, under the
pressure necessary for its punctual accomplish-
ment, found himself able to remain for four,
six, or eight hours, without sensible distress, in
the very spot which he shunned even to pass
under ordinary circumstances.
The density of a London fog is well
known. With the increased consumption of
coal that is taking place in Paris, the in-
habitants of that stately capital are beginning
to learn that fog is not absolutely peculiar to
316
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
the valley of the Thames. In Sheffield, in
Leeds, in other of our large manufacturing
towns, fogs of extreme density at times appear,
and the passenger throngh a hilly Yorkshire
town has known what it was suddenly to
emerge from perfect obscurity into laughing
sunshine. On looking back, a dense vapour
was seen rapidly rolling southward-a dark
cloud, rising like a wall from the ground, and
perfectly obscuring all that lay beyond its
rapidly receding edge.
No darkness is so intense as that which is
subterranean. From the interior of a tunnel in
course of construction, all atmospheric light,
even such as is diffused in the darkest night,
is excluded; and if artificial light be also
absent, the pressure of the gloom on the optic
nerve is almost appalling. When the mouth of
the structure is open to the day, the case is
different, as a pencil of rays is then apparent.
But a river fog in a canal tunnel has been
known to blend the rayless gloom of sub-
terranean darkness, with the palpable thickness
which loads the lungs in a London fog.
Mechanical obscurity is added to absence of
light. So heavy was the veil of fog on one
ENGLISH ENGINEERS
317
occasion, in the tunnel now referred to, that
the bearer of a lantern, containing a wax moon,
such as those burned in carriage-lamps, was
unable, by its light, to see either hand or foot,
without almost touching the member with the
lantern. As each step was taken along the
tow-path, encumbered with timber and with
tools, and skirting the deep and perpendicular
edge of the canal, the lantern had to be held
within six inches of the ground at each step,
before it could be ascertained where the foot
could be safely planted. The effect was not
altogether unlike that produced by a thick fall
of volcanic ashes-it was darkness that could
-be felt.
A similar, although a more transient, dark-
ness, was produced by the first passage of a
locomotive through the same tunnel. On the
completion of the viaduct, one of the patent
six-wheel, long boiler, locomotives, constructed
by Robert Stephenson and Co., which had
been sent by sea to the spot, and put together
on the line, was slowly driven over the novel
structure. The passage was a new kind of
exploration. The accuracy and finish of the
•
timber-work and plate-laying was thus, for the
318
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
first time, tested, and the section of the tunnel,
which varied from length to length, was ex-
amined by means of the passage of a wooden
frame, which gave a clearance of six inches
beyond the most prominent angles of any of
the carriages, the top of the horse-boxes being
one of the most awkward projections. The
slow passage that was dictated by prudence
was enveloped in a cloud of steam, which from
time to time blinded driver, stoker, and En-
gineer. At other times the glare from the
open fire-box, on the reflecting surface of the
vapour, gave a strangely infernal lustre to the
exploring party. It was well that they went
slowly. Half-way through the tunnel, the
funnel of the locomotive came in contact with
a piece of brick-work. It was necessary to
unscrew the funnel, to lean it to one side
until the obstacle was passed, and to make the
necessary corrections in all parts before the
return trip. It was to ensure the safety of the
passengers through this Stygian pass, where a
head too curiously thrust out of a carriage
window might have come into fatal collision
with the wall of the tunnel, that the expedient
was adopted of fixing brass bars outside the
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
319
windows, a provision intended to be temporary,
but which has been adopted to the permanent
discomfort of the passengers, on certain Kentish
lines of railway.
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
CHAPTER XXI.
A GOVERNMENT INSPECTION.
THAT visit of the Government Inspector, which
was a preliminary to the opening of railways
in England twenty years ago, was regarded
by the Civil Engineers engaged in their con-
struction, as something between business and
frolic. Men, educated in the military habits of
the old school of Royal Engineers, had little
means of obtaining any practical acquaintance
with the railway system, except such as were
afforded by these visits, made for the purpose
of inspection. It would have been unreason-
able to expect any great amount of instruc-
tion from these opportunities. The time was
limited, and a day, or a portion of a day, was
all that the engagements of the Inspector could
allow him to afford in each instance. The
Engineer-in-Chief of the line would make a
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
321
point of attending in person, with those of his
staff who were most familiar with the scene of
operations. If
If any weak points should occur,
interesting conversation
wont to assume
particular brilliancy at the moment; and a
question of speed of travelling, or of some new
modification of locomotive detail, might come
on the tapis, just as the party approached
any imperfectly finished portion of the line.
Shortly after the first locomotives were placed
on the London and Birmingham Railway, a
scientific civilian, who had given very positive
evidence before Parliament, as to the injury to
health and other intolerable evils that must
arise from the construction of tunnels, paid a
visit to the line. The resident Engineer
accompanied him, in a first-class carriage, over
the newly-finished portion of the works.
they drew near Chalk Farm, the Engineer
attracted the attention of his visitor to the
lamp, at the top of the carriage. "I should
like to have your opinion on this," he said.
"The matter seems simple, but it requires a
deal of thought. You see it is essential to
keep the oil from dropping on the passengers.
The cup shape effectually prevents this. Then
Y
As
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
the lamps would not burn. We had to arrange
an up-cast and down-cast chimney, in order
to ensure the circulation of air in the lamp.
Then there was the question of shadow; "-and
so he continued, to the great edification of his
listener, for five or six minutes. When a
satisfactory conclusion as to the lamp had been
arrived at, the learned man looked out of the
window. "What place is this?" said he.
"Kensal Green." "But," said the other,
"how is that? I thought there was one of
your great tunnels to pass before we came to
Kensal Green." "Oh," replied the Resident,
carelessly, "did you not observe? We came
through Chalk Farm Tunnel very steadily."
The man of science felt himself caught. He
made no more reports upon tunnels.
The officer who inspected the Canal Railway
is described in another page. Conscientiously
minute in his inquiries, he was still rather
new to his civil duties. The Engineer-in-Chief
was a man who came to the front rank of
his profession, rather in virtue of parliamentary
tactics, than of any other form of introduction; a
white-haired man, of unusual plainness of speech,
and singular determination of will.
He was
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323
66
wont to do his own work in his own way, and
to show little deference to any one else. On
one occasion, a meeting of some of his Directors
was held at his office. He told them his
opinion on the matter in discussion, and, as
they seemed disposed to linger and to talk, he
looked up from his desk. Now," said he,
"that is all I have got to say-I am very
busy-and I wish to God you would go!"
On another occasion, he called upon a Con-
tractor (he used strong expletives), "Here, you
sir, what do you mean by putting that timber
on the work?—it is not Kyanised." "I beg your
pardon sir, it is." "I tell you it is not. Can't
I believe my eyes
eyes ?" "If you will be good
enough to step here, sir, I can
brand of the Kyanising people.
and here, and here!" "Ah!
care a single rap whether it is
show you the
There it is—
well, I do not
pickled or not-
it's all rubbish in my opinion; but it is down
in the specification, and I am not going to let
you do me."
The attention of the Government Inspectors
had been specially called to the tunnel, not
only on account of the novelty of the wooden
viaduct, but by reason of the fact, that it was
Y 2
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
only lined with masonry for a short distance
from either end, and through a few inter-
mediate lengths, where the material was appa-
rently less firm than for the greater part of the
bore. It was cut through solid chalk, which
for the most part showed a fair and regular
section. But in some places, slips had occurred
during the original construction, and lofty domes
or galleries ran far above the ordinary level
of the crown of the arch. To test the stability
of these portions, General Pasley adopted the
original, and strictly military, expedient, of
firing wooden plugs at the roof. A corporal
and small party of sappers and miners, with a
mortar and ammunition, awaited the inspecting
party at the mouth of the tunnel.
A large
barge had been prepared, on which a sort of
pulpit had been constructed for the inspector,
by standing on which he could, with a small
mahogany-handled pick, also provided for the
occasion, tap the crown of the tunnel as he
advanced. The barge was towed by a party of
men, furnished with torches. The battery was
placed in the fore part of the barge, and Bengal
lights were fired from time to time, which
brought out into strong shadow each irregu-
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
325
larity of the masonry or excavation. On arriving
at the first dome-like cavern, the General began
to shout, and then in a moment to swear. "Stop,
stop! How can I tell what is going on here?
Stop, I say
say!" The Engineer in charge was
prepared for the emergency. He had con-
structed the platform on which the General was
stationed so as to slide upwards when necessary.
"Now, boys," he shouted, "hoist up the General."
Up shot the platform, with the officer still in
the height of his wrath. But finding himself
thus unexpectedly in motion, and brought up
to the lofty top of the rift, while the whole
was suddenly illumined by a Bengal
light, the old soldier laughed so heartily as
to shake the barge itself. He was greatly
delighted with the joke, or rather with the
well-adapted nature of the expedient, and
specially referred to it in his report to Govern-
ment. He satisfied himself by firing three
discharges in different parts of the tunnel, and
arrived in high glee at the eastern terminus,
no results
results except a deafening roar having
attended his military test.
scene was
"How shall I go back, General?" said the
Engineer in charge of the works, after the
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
last station had been walked over. The
Inspector, who had made his way down partly
on foot, and partly on the footboard of the
locomotive, stepped quietly into a first-class
carriage for the return.
"How? Go like the devil!"
"Go?" said he.
It was a rude test
none too rude. A
for the tunnel viaduct, but
snug parti carré at a fish dinner concluded the
inspection, to the satisfaction of all parties.
The Engineer-in-Chief of the line came out in
the fullest force. Anecdote succeeded anecdote,
and some of them were of such a nature as to
leave, even at this distance of time, a doubt
as to how far they were faithful accounts of
real occurrence, or how far the good wine
might have lent them a brighter colouring.
"I remember," said Mr. Rastrick, his face
and eyes glowing under his snowy hair, "when
we were making the Brighton Railway, that
we were in great want of water at Red Hill;
so I sank a well there. We had to go to
some depth-hundred and fifty feet I think-
then we came on a very fine spring. The
water was abundant and rose to the surface.
It was perfectly clear, and unusually sparkling.
I was very much pleased with the result of
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
327
the well. But by it turned out something
When we put it
like a well of soda-water.
into the engines, it would not stay in the boiler.
It all fizzed out as soon as it was heated.
It was impossible to work the engines with
it-it was all br-r-r'."
6
"Was there any sul-
phuretted hydrogen in it?" was asked." "No;
nothing could be detected in it but oxygen
and hydrogen; but I always had a notion that
it was not water, that there was an over-dose
of one of the constituent gases, and that it
decomposed into gas, and not into steam. I
dare say the well is to be seen now. I had
to bring water from another source at some
expense."
So novel and unprecedented was the growth
and development of the English railway system,
that the inspection which the Government
thought it incumbent on them to make, was a very
vague and tentative affair. It was a curious
duty in which to employ officers, who were ac-
customed to receive orders of the utmost precision.
For the most serious question of the time, the
strength of girder bridges, the only available
information was to be found in the tables and
formulæ prepared by the very men whose work
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
was to be investigated. Slow processes of test,
such as are possible in the foundry and fitting-
shop, were inapplicable to bridges in situ.
Careful daily watching, or the rude test of actual
experience, could alone give certainty as to the
faithful execution of any portion of the works
of a long line of communication, in accordance
with the drawings. For a Government inspec-
tion to have been reliable, it should have been con-
tinuous; or, at at all events, it should have been
occasional and unexpected. To give notice that
a line was ready for inspection on a given day,
to put everything in the best order for the visit,
to exhibit works and workmen in Sunday
clothes, was an agreeable homage to propriety.
But as
to the amount of public safety thus
ensured, the case of the Dee Bridge is conclusive.
All that General Pasley had there, in point of
fact, to say, was, that as somewhat similar works
had not failed, he thought the viaduct in question
was safe. It was a good military reason.
the time and means at his command, the Royal
Engineer was not able to enter further into the
subject. He was the man to do so, had it been
fairly put into his hands. As it was, he could
only obey orders. The futility of those orders
was not his fault.
With
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
329
When a Government has decided that it is its
duty to apply a test as to the stability of public
works, it is clear that the first thing requisite is,
to provide its officers with the means of forming
a rational opinion. Experiments and calculations
should be made, in the first instance, under
efficient direction. Imperial safety is not to
be compromised by cheese-paring economy. If
each Company were made responsible for the
solidity of its works, and the adequacy of its
working arrangements, in its own pocket and
in the reputation of its Engineer-in-Chief, the
dread of the possible consequence of failure
would probably suffice to keep both up to a
fair degree of efficiency. On the other hand, if
a real investigation, at once scientific and prac-
tical, were conducted under the orders of the
Government, the public would know where to
look for assurance, and any effort of the Com-
panies or their servants and employés to scamp
their work, would be efficiently repressed. But
to pass Acts of Parliament, containing certain
scientific statements unintelligible to most of the
legislators; to profess to inspect, in the interest of
the public safety; and then to send an Engineer
officer, practically unacquainted with the sub-
ject, to take a walk, or a drive over the line,
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
was a method which combined several evils.
It lessened the sense of responsibility, where
alone that sense was available for public security;
it took the onus from the Companies, while it
assumed no responsibility on the part of the
Government; it placed the officers of a scientific
corps in a false position, and tended to break
down their high sense of duty by ordering them
to take part in a sham. It was but a feature
of that unprincipled and uninformed meddling,
that failure to grasp leading outlines, that want
of faith to either the constructors or the users of
railways, to either the shareholders or the public,
which has characterised our railway legislation.
It is hard to point to the name of a single
member of either house, with the honoured
exception of that of Lord Redesdale, who has
appeared to watch the national interest. That
interest is, in the long run, identical with the
welfare of the shareholders ;-but it is in the long
run alone. The present state of the railway share
market shows to what misfortune the unchecked
competition of rival Companies may drive their
proprietors. A capital of eight millions, in one
instance alone, has been doubled with the sole
result of halving the returns.
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
331
Legislation was necessary for the introduction
of the new mode of travelling.
So much being
admitted, the first thing that any statesman
would have thought necessary was, to lay down
the principles of that legislation. But this was
not done. It was thought fit to deal with each
case on its merits, that is to
say, to
to open the
door as wide as possible to every description of
intrigue, of rivalry, and of juggle. The result is
to be seen in the present price of what might
have been, by this time, a national property
of the utmost value. And certainly, whoever
else may be to blame, the chief responsibility
for profligacy of expenditure rests on the legis-
lature, which not only sanctioned, but encouraged,
a frantic and unmeasured rivalry.
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
CHAPTER XXII.
DISPUTES AS TO PAYMENT FOR WORKS.
WHEN the works of a railway have been
completed, the working stock provided, the staff
appointed, and the approval of the Government
inspectors signified, it might seem that nothing
else was requisite before the opening. One other
item, however, has to be borne in mind-pay-
ment for the work done.
With the larger and wealthier Companies,
where the capital was duly provided by calls
from the shareholders, and by the issue of deben-
tures, questions of this nature were rare. Pay-
ment on account was made, on Mr. Stephenson's
works, by monthly certificates, and on those
of Mr. Brunel according to fortnightly recom-
mendations. The latter system had the advantage
of requiring only half the amount of floating
capital, (in money, that is to say, and exclusive
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
333
of the outlay for plant and stock,) on the part of
the contractors, as compared with the former;
and to that extent was an economical arrange-
ment for the Companies. But as the character of
railway enterprise altered, as speculation became
dependent, rather on the discounting of future
hopes, than
than on the provision of anticipatory
means, Directors came more and more to
lean upon their contractors. Certificates were
not met, debentures were offered in place of
cash, and, in many instances, works were under-
taken, (at proportionably augmented prices,)
which were to be paid for, not in cash, but in
the shares, or bonds, or promises, of the Company
by which they were constructed.
It is natural for the Engineer, to whom
application may be made for assistance in the
conduct of an enterprise, to render any aid he
can to the Directors, even if not exclusively
of an Engineering nature. The one sole,
great, Engineering difficulty, want of cash,
naturally comes before him very frequently.
Thus it became not unusual for an Engineer to
seek for, or to introduce to, his employers, wealthy
contractors, who would be able to execute works
on credit. It is clear that this must always be
334
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
a costly plan for a Company. It is also true
that it is one which is unfavourable to the
independence and proper position of an Engi-
neer.
Still, when the choice lies between the
abandonment, or the postponement, of works,
and the services of a leviathan contractor
who, on his own terms, will do what the
Company have not the means of doing, eco-
nomy and independence are apt to go by
the Board. To keep the agreed schedule of
prices as low as possible, and to assume, on
parchment, and even on the ground, as much
power as the weight of personal character can
command, is all that is left to an Engineer,
who thus places his clients in the hands of a
contractor.
A railway, to which we have before referred,
was constructed by a well-known Engineering
firm, at a schedule of prices, payments being
made in the bonds, or preference shares, of the
Company. The work was completed, the stations
were built, the locomotive and carriage stock was
provided and put on the line. The final measure-
ments were all agreed, the final certificate was
given by the Engineer-in-Chief, the report of
the Board of Trade was favourable, the Secre-
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
335
tary of the Company issued his notification of
the running of the trains, and the Directors and
contractors met, at the offices of the Company, to
settle the question of final payment.
These matters are often regarded from very
different points of view. That Engineer alone
is entirely independent, who carries out the
stipulations of the contract, as to measurement,
and certifying for work done, without reference to
the pecuniary arrangements of the Company.
Such an independence may be rare; but economy
and excellence of work, to say nothing of private
self-respect, are endangered, when it is infringed.
In the present case the Engineer, who had been
called in simply to preside over the execution of
the works, and had no permanent connection
with the Company, did his plain and exact duty,
neither more nor less. But the Secretary was
less able to deal with the requirements of
the contractors, than the Engineer had shown
himself ready to certify their propriety.
Companies, somehow or other, are always
exceeding their powers. It sometimes happens
that the contractor, with more or less justice,
may expect that the whole available capital,
or power to raise capital, should be applied to
336
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
the satisfaction of his claims, and that Chairman
or Secretary have certain other objects for which
they seek to establish a lien on the paper capital.
In the present instance the certificate of the
Engineer was to a larger amount than had been
anticipated, not by the contractors, but by the
Secretary; and difficulties arose as to the mode of
payment, or even as to the immediate recognition
of the certificate. Patience and good temper
might have set all straight, but one of the
contractors, a man of violent and imperious
spirit-who, though able to win, when he chose
to make himself agreeable, generally chose to
drive, and thus succeeded in becoming almost
universally detested-rose from the table with
harsh threats to prevent the opening of the line.
Discussion for the day was at an end, and
the Engineer who had taken the entire charge
of the construction of the line instantly took
post-horses, and made for the spot. He selected
the terminus farthest from London, as that
which promptitude would enable him to reach
without any companions despatched by the
Secretary, or the Solicitor of the Directors.
He arrived in the evening, cautioned all the
people to avoid violence, in the event of an
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
337
attempt of the Company to seize the works, and
took certain steps of a simple, but perfectly
effective character. He then ordered dinner,
and quietly awaited the event.
Some hour or two afterwards, post-horses
arrived at a gallop, and the Secretary and
Solicitor of the Company, one or two of the
Directors, and the new Superintendent of traffic,
arrived in hot haste and much dignity. They
had taken the public conveyance to the terminus
of the line nearest London, had proceeded to
seize the station, to put their own policemen and
officers on the line, and to announce the opening
and regular service of the trains, for the following
morning. They then posted to the further ter-
minus, where the principal station was erected,
and in their turn ordered a triumphant dinner.
Their hilarity was disturbed by the entrance
of the Superintendent, with scared looks. He
had been to the station in order to see to the
decoration of the Directors' train, for the following
morning, with a proper supply of laurels and
of flags. But none of the locomotive engineers
(men in the service of the contractors) were to
be found. By some unfortunate coincidence
they had all gone for a holiday, and had omitted
Ꮓ
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
to leave word where they might be found.
The telegraph in those days was not available,
and it seemed doubtful whether, by any
exertion, new enginemen could be found in
time for the early opening. An express, how-
ever, was sent off to borrow an engineer or
two, and the toasts were resumed, with the
comforting assurance, that the delay of the
Directors' train for a couple of hours was the
worst contretemps to be dreaded.
Later came worse news, however. The
Superintendent had returned to his labours at
the station; and when just about to depart in
comfort, had his attention called to the cir-
cumstance, that all the engines were drawn
up in single file in the tunnel. He desired
a fire to be lighted under one of them, and then
made the further discovery that the ends of
the steam cylinders were absent. One of
these essential portions had been removed
from each engine, and not only was steam-
locomotion thus rendered impossible, but the
line was so blocked, that the carriages could
not even pass if propelled by horses.
The intelligence had a disconcerting, not to
say a sobering, effect on the triumphant seizers
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
339
of the line. The evening had been, it is
possible, too convivial for them to appreciate
with exactitude the ridiculous position which
they occupied; and there was little to be done,
except go to bed.
By early daylight on the following morning,
the hostile Engineer, who occupied rooms in
the same
same hotel with the Directors, having
learned that the police were engaged in an
active search for the missing cylinder-ends,
thought that they might possibly look under
his bed. He had a post-chaise quietly made
ready in the yard; and then sending half a
dozen strong men privately to his room, de-
posited the iron-plates snugly in the bottom of
the vehicle, and sent off a resolute foreman, in
charge to convey them to London. But the
Solicitor had taken the precaution to establish
a vedette outside the town, and the post-
chaise thus stationed, seeing another pass at
speed, gave chase. The pursuer came up
with the fugitive in the river, where he was
about to board a steamer, handcuffed him, on
charge of theft, and brought him and the pro-
perty back in triumph to the Cathedral City,
where the Directors were still in perplexity.
z 2
340
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
•
By this time, news of the squabble had
spread far and wide. The hotel was surrounded
by a mob; the railway station was surrounded
by a much larger one. The city Magistrates
met in session; and when a couple of scarlet
jackets came up at a gallop, and the stern
features, (which resembled
resembled those of Lord
Brougham almost as faithfully as a portrait,)
of the man who had struck the lucifer that
had kindled all this flame, looked out, it was
rumoured that the troops had been sent for to
prevent, or to quell, a riot.
The unfortunate foreman who had
had been
arrested with the cylinder-ends in his posses-
sion, was at once brought before the Magistrates
on a charge of felony. The contractors, on
the other hand, appeared to claim the por-
tions of the locomotives as their property,
and to justify their servant as acting under
their orders. The lawyers, now quite in
their element, exaggerated the strife. The
Magistrates looked on with a droll aspect of
unusual importance, as the guardians of the
public peace, and the dispensers of justice
between two parties, of much higher importance
than the offenders against the quiet of the
·
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
341
streets, or the safety of the neighbouring
orchards, as to whom their jurisdiction was
chiefly invoked. "Mr. So-and-so," said the
thorough-paced man with the stern visage,
"couldn't you contrive to slip out and regain
possession of the station, while I keep the
Magistrates in play? They are quite at their
wits-ends."
Not only the wits, but the session of the
worshipful Bench was, however, overturned by
the next hot-footed messenger. Seventy navvies,
armed with crowbars, picks, and shovels, had
just issued from the tunnel; and, taking the
Companies' men, who were in possession of the
station, unexpectedly in the rear, had secured
the traditional nine points of the law to the
contractors. The Magistrates broke up the
Court, and proceeded to the spot, sending fresh
and urgent applications for support to the
neighbouring barracks. Danger, however,
existed only in the imagination of their
Worships. On arriving at the ground, and
seeing the actual position of the case, the
shrewd common-sense of the Solicitor of the
Company decided that there was but one fea-
sible issue from the false position into which
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
the belligerent propensities of the Secretary
had carried the Board. A word or two was
exchanged between the Solicitors, the result of
which was that the Magistrates were requested,
by both parties, to assume the possession, and
the responsibility of the safe-guard, of the line
and stations until all disputes were arranged.
The chief elements of strife were thus diminished
by mutual concession; the basis of a fair
arrangement was agreed on; and all parties
finished the day by a dinner, which was not
only well spread, but well earned. Peace was
definitively concluded; and an hour or two of
calm discussion in London, on the following
day, resulted in the settlement of the account,
and the handing over of the line to the
Company. The Secretary and Superintendent,
on opening the line to traffic, nearly celebrated
the event by a human sacrifice, running the
first passenger train with such impetus into,
and through, the terminus, that the leading
wheels of the engine actually left the rails, and
hung over the deep basin of the canal, into
which a pound or two more of momentum in
the train would have precipitated the loco-
motive, and probably dragged the passenger
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
343
carriages. The inexperienced officers
consoled by the reflection that a somewhat
similar accident had attended the opening of
the Euston-square Station, where not only
contusions and alarm, but the loss of several
teeth, convinced the Engineers that they had
not altogether appreciated the force of gravita-
tion, on the sharp gradients falling from the
Regent's Canal.
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
CHAPTER XXIII.
RAILWAY WORK IN IRELAND.
IT has not been unusual to speak of Irish
jobbery. The repeal of the Union is referred
to as a successful treaty between the English
minister of the day, and those M.P.'s who
thanked God that they had a country to sell.
People who live in glass-houses have been long
warned of the danger of throwing stones. How
is it that English railways have cost exactly
three times as much per mile as those of Ireland?
It certainly is not because they contain three
times the quantity of work. The earthwork and
masonry executed between London and Bristol
are very light as compared with those executed
between Dublin and Cork. The cuttings through
solid rock on this line find few to parallel them
in England. The Boyne Bridge will compare
respectably with most of our railway viaducts, if
we except the giant strides taken at the Menai,
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
345
1
at Chepstow, and at Saltash. And certainly, how-
soever much it may be thought that the estimates
of the Engineer should be reduced, if the price
of agricultural labour in the district he has to
traverse is low, no experience in high-priced
England can lead any one to anticipate the
difficulty that seems inseparable from the employ-
ment of Irish labour. The English employer
has to provide for one indispensable requisite
alone-if the pay is regular, all, for the most
part, goes well. Let the same man go to work
in Ireland, and he will do well to provide him-
self with a fire-proof house, and with a bullet-
proof skin.
Not that any one who dwells for a time in
the Green Island can fail to be attracted by the
charm of the Irish character. Where can we
find such ready hospitality? Where such genuine
courtesy? Neither at Paris, nor at Brussels, nor
at Naples, nor at Turin, nor at Lisbon, (much
more not at London,) does the visitant of the
city, or the temporary occupant of an hotel,
find the tone of constant and unobtrusive good
breeding that meets you at Dublin. A man
enters Ireland for the first time with his antici-
pations formed from Lever's novels, or from some
slight personal knowledge of "The Mulligan."
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
He descends to breakfast with the idea that he
must look to his pockets, and be particular where
else he looks, lest he should affront Sir Lucius
O'Trigger. He finds himself among a set
of strangers, whose manners make him think
Frenchmen theatrical, and Englishmen vulgar.
The
All this, however, does not prevent a certain
sense of insecurity, which rather increases than
diminishes with a lengthened residence.
true blot has not yet been hit. We have heard
much political eloquence on the subject of Ireland.
The worst of political eloquence is that it is
true rhetoric-it seeks not truth but persuasion.
Residence in Ireland is like residence in Portici,
charming while it lasts, but liable to the out-
break, at any moment, of an uncomprehended
element of danger.
"Ye need be under no alarm in coming among
us," said the manager of a branch of the Bank of
England to an English Engineer, on his arrival
to commence some considerable works in the
South of Ireland. "" If
66 ye don't meddle with
land, and don't interfere with labour, no one
will shoot ye, unless it's quite be mistake." "As
we cannot make railways without taking pos-
session of land, and the employment of labour,
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
347
your's is a particularly reassuring welcome," was
the reply. It may be mentioned by the way,
that the bank in question had the advantage of
keeping its own beggar, a tall lame man with
a big stick, who always stood inside the outer
door of the establishment, and begged regularly
of the customers.
It is rarely the case that a country owes more
to an individual than Ireland owes to the memory
of Mr. Dargan. He was the true father of Irish
railways. No contractor, no dozen contractors,
in England ever filled such a position as he did
in his own country. No doubt he built his own
fortune, although even that proved to be of not
much more enduring reality than much of the
fair gold that was heaped up in tens and in
hundreds of thousands by so many English
contractors, only to prove, in the hour of trial,
to consist of withered leaves. But he was a
man fair in his dealings with all,-just to the
Companies that employed him, just to the men
whom he employed. His enterprise and energy
taught Irishmen to labour at home as they are
wont to labour out of Ireland, and formed the
mainspring of the Irish railways.
He was singularly modest and quiet, in abode,
348
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
in dress, in manners; and not only so, but in
his estimate of himself. An English Engineer
who had undertaken, somewhat too rashly,
engagements in Ireland that threatened to prove
too heavy for his strength, called on Dargan
with reference to some interference which was
desired on the part of the Lord-Lieutenant.
The Irish contractor saw the point, saw what
might be done, but confessed himself ignorant
as to whether his Lordship could, or would, do
what was requisite. "I came to ask you," said
the Englishman, "if you cannot spare the time
to go to Dublin with me, to write a letter to
the Lord-Lieutenant, to say
that you
have
talked over this matter with me, and that you
strenuously recommend him to do what I ask,
as it is of great importance to the prosperity, and
even to the peace, of the country." "What!"
said Dargan, opening his eyes in unaffected sur-
prise. "Me! me write to the Lord-Lieutenant,
me dear Sir! I daur not. I never took such
a liberty in me life.'
""
The lovers of Ireland would have done well
to present to Mr. Dargan a butt or two of that
pure Amontillado sherry, the habitual use of
which is the best protection against the undue
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
349
use of inferior wine. He was killed by Irish
sherry. He would stop, in his rapid drives across
the country, to change the horse in his gig, and
would drink a bottle out of the neck for refresh-
ment. Human nature has its limits, and the
well-knit frame, and well-organized brain, of
the active man, were unable to withstand this
method of keeping up the steam.
It is melancholy to reflect that, even since
these lines were penned, an appeal has appeared
in the English journals, on behalf of the destitute
widow of Mr. Dargan. Under every possible
aspect the matter is one for regret. Englishmen
in any way connected with the profession of the
Civil Engineer, with the business of the railway
contractor, or even with the proprietorship of
railway stock, cannot see the names, and the
appended sums, that made a feeble response to
the appeal, without a blush. That any Irish-
man, who is not by profession a mendicant,
should not have felt called on, in the name of
patriotism and of self-respect, to do his utmost
to prevent such an appeal from being made to
the sister country, above all at a moment when
Irish politics have been made the engine for
bringing public business to a dead lock, is
350
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
something neither to be explained, nor to be
comprehended.
The experience of Irish work which was
acquired by the writer of the present pages, was
of a nature that may be considered as typical of
the difficulties with which the physical reformer
has to contend in that beautiful country. The
long struggle of the famine was drawing to a
close; the public and the private aid of England
had enabled her poorer sister to tide over the
worst of her sorrows. Men were no longer
to be found starved to death on the roadside
in the West of Ireland, or at least the instances
had become comparatively rare. The attempt
to employ pauper labour on a large scale in
public or private works had broken down with
the most signal non-success. The proverb, "Help
yourself, and your friends will help you,” had been
replaced by the practical lesson, "Show your-
self to be perfectly helpless, and then some one
will help you, for God's sake." At no time, and
under no circumstances, could the prosecution of
a large public work, such as a railway, by the
stimulus given to the employment of labour and
to the circulation of money, have appeared more
indisputably in the light of a local benefit and
of a national service.
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
351
It was not so regarded in the West of Ire-
land. At least, if there were any who did
so regard it, they were few. The Lord-Lieu-
tenant of the country and his accomplished son;
the county Magistrate, who thought it not
unbecoming the lustre of an old historic name
to enter the service of his country as the chair-
man of a railway company; one or two military
men; one or two country gentlemen;-seemed
to exhaust the list of those who regarded the
opening up of the country by railway commu-
nication, in any other light than as a possible
occasion for the gratification of individual
greediness; and the mode in which this feel-
ing was evinced was after the fashion of the
rustic, who killed the goose that laid the golden
egg.
No small degree of resolution, of persever-
ance, and of courage, was required in order
to carry on the works. One by one the best
English foremen became disheartened, disgusted,
or terrified. The inherent tendency of the
Celtic race to conspire was shown in a weekly
combination against the hand that was feeding
them by hundreds. That a man should spend
a thousand pounds a week in wages was a
proof that he was a fit object for attack.
352
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
There was something to be got out of him,
and if the choice was between getting much
by patient industry, or little by idle conspiracy,
by menace, or even by robbery, the latter
method seemed the most natural and congenial
to the habits of the people. All the hope of
permanently serving the country, the expecta-
tion of establishing that feeling of mutual re-
spect and reliance that at times exists between
the English owner or employer, and his sub-
ordinates, faded before the daily experience of
actual life. To complete, creditably to com-
plete, what was actually undertaken, to under-
take no more, and to retreat from the country,
if not with the honours of war, yet with a skin
uninjured by the bullet, the knife, or the club,
became the great objects contemplated by those
who entered the West of Ireland with the
sanguine expectation, that good usage, good
pay, and good work, would be appreciated by
those to whom they were offered.
It is not so much of the owners and occupiers
of the land required for the purposes of the
railway that there is room to make any special
complaint. It is true that every form of ex-
tortion and of petty annoyance was to be met
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
353
with, but this is not peculiar to Ireland. As a
rule, the land arrangements of the railway
companies of the United Kingdom have been
made, on principles which enlist the instincts
of human nature against, instead of on the
side of, the purchasing corporation. Instead of
interesting landowners to court the approach of
a means of communication that must double, or
treble, the value of their property, the method
usually adopted has been, first, to ignore the
local interests altogether, and then to pay two
or three times the value of every purchase in
consequence. The difference, in this respect,
of experience in Middlesex, in Hertfordshire, in
Essex, in Norfolk, in Gloucestershire, Worces-
tershire, Warwickshire, Caermarthenshire, Pem-
brokeshire, and in the county of Cork, has not
been very marked. If Irish tenants have
threatened to shoot an invading Engineer, so
have Gloucestershire farmers, Essex graziers,
and Norfolk parsons. It is true, that in the
neighbourhood of Tipperary, the threat seemed
to assume a more ugly verisimilitude, but it
proved in each case alike a mere brutum fulmen.
It is not the man who threatens to shoot him
whom the Engineer need fear, but the wretch
A A
354
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
who takes aim from behind a hedge without
any preliminary menace.
But the point where the real difference was
found to exist was in the state of the labourers
themselves. The English navvy has his bad
points. Very bad points they are, no doubt,
but as a rule they all have a common origin.
The fountain of all, or almost all, the troubles
of an English employer of this description of
labour, is the ale-can. But with these bad
points there are many elements of the true
pith and ring of the English character. In-
dustry like that of the hive bee, sturdy toil
such as that which was commanded by the
builders of the pyramids, or the brick-building
kings of Nineveh, firm fellowship and good
feeling, evinced in subscriptions to sick funds
and doctors' bills, clear-headed application of
labour to produce a definite result; above all,
a sense of the right that man and master alike
have to fair play and honest dealing, all these
virtues are to be found in the kit of the navvy.
He is a man with whom there is some satisfac-
tion in working, and a man as to whom you
can attribute any failure in the attempt to
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
355
elevate him into a position of permanent com-
fort and respectability, not to any inherent
infirmity of nature, but to want of early train-
ing, and to the potent influence of strong drink.
It is otherwise with the Irish labourer, when
in his own country. In England or in America
he becomes a hard-working and reliable opera-
tive. His natural ability, far above that of the
average Englishman, when directed in the
right channel, enables him to take a high rank
in the republic of labour. At home this is not
the case. His thoughts are bent, not to dis-
cover how to become a good workman, but to
discover how to obtain the most money for the
least labour. What may be the case when
Irishmen work for Irishmen, it is not attempted
to say.
Let the Irish owners of land and em-
ployers of labour bear their own witness of their
own experience. All that is here recorded is
the result of an effort made by English En-
gineers to do in Ireland as they had done on
this side of St. George's Channel: to benefit
themselves, certainly, by the execution of im-
portant public works; but to benefit, at the
same time, the districts in which they were
A A 2
356
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
laid out, and the labourers who were employed
on them, by the fair and liberal method of
remunerating labour.
The first point of trouble that arose, was one
from which there was no subsequent escape.
The Irish labourer, as the soil produces him,
is totally and utterly untaught. A man who
has in him the making of an excellent workman,
but who has never handled a pick or a shovel,
never wheeled a barrow, and never made a
nearer approach to work than to turn over a
potato-field with a clumsy hoe, is in no position
to make a dock or a railway. He has to be
taught, and be set to work. He can only be
educated for a remunerative toil, by being
organized by a competent foreman, and set,
for a time, to work alongside of a steady
workman. For this purpose a nucleus of
English workmen is indispensable.
It is not
asserted that Northern Irish, or Scottish,
labourers might not be substituted for English;
but the question is out of the bounds of the
writer's experience, and if it were otherwise,
the result would be the same. The Irish
labourer ranks himself by counties and by
divisions of counties. The West Cork man
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
357
would have more enmity against his fellow-
countryman from Tipperary, or from another
division of his own county, than against the
unmitigated Englishman. Then, no sooner is
work set out, gangs organized, foremen or
small sub-contractors set to work, than the
strong enmity of the mass of the local labourers
is kindled. For a time it will smoulder, till
a week or two's pay is drawn, and then it will
be sure to break out, (at least it always has
done so,) in the form of strike, of menace, or
of actual outrage.
Those men who are the life of any public
works, men who will both toil with their own
hands, and direct those who toil with them, by
advice, as well as by example, are the first to
catch the drops of the threatening storm. The
manner in which it may break is as various
as are the diversities of the atmospheric tempest.
One time it is a letter addressed to the em-
ployer, and forwarded to him by that postal
service which is native to Ireland-that is to
say, by being nailed by a knife to the door of
his office or his residence-that unless such
and such men are removed from the works,
steps will be taken to remove them. Some-
358
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
times the lives of the men are threatened;
sometimes that of the employer; sometimes the
milder course is adopted of a threat to leave
the works without hands, and to prevent,
forcibly, the arrival of men from any other
district. Sometimes the evil consequences of
maintaining the honest workmen are left vague,
but none the less menacing from their shadowy
nature.
Thus the first difficulty with which the
English Engineer has to contend, is the oppo-
sition made by the organization of idleness to
the organization of labour. It is one which
alone must prove fatal, unless it is encountered
not only by resolute and unflinching courage
on the part of the master, but by the exercise
of the same virtue on the part of a staff
sufficiently numerous to carry out his orders.
It is a case, as before stated, of the goose with
the golden egg; for the men who join in a
common cry against every successive foreman
or sub-contractor, are themselves totally in-
capable of carrying on any skilled work.
Employment must cease with the flight of the
minor chiefs of labour. With employment,
Hundreds of men
pay must come.
must
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
359
return from the enjoyment of the grateful
and unwonted luxuries of meat, and of beer,
to potatoes and butter-milk. Yet conspire they
always did, and, as far as the lesson of dis-
agreeable experience goes, they always will.
360
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
CHAPTER XXIV.
IN
JUSTICE IN IRELAND.
those times when the use of armour
made a very palpable difference between the
security of the life of the knight and that of
the peasant, a noble who unadvisedly strayed
on the land of his feudal enemy, or even of a
strange and unknown proprietor, was likely to
be made to pay heavily for his folly. English
history has this truth written in pretty legible
character on its pages. The seizure of Richard
Cœur de Lion by the Duke of Austria, cost
the subjects of the Crusading King no trifling
ransom; and the capture of the Saxon Harold
by the Comte de Ponthieu led to the establish-
ment of that Norman dynasty, which showed
its title-deeds on the field of Hastings.
A similar act of folly, it may be thought by
some
persons, is committed by the English
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
361
employer of labour, who finds himself, in the
exercise of his vocation, on the soil of Ireland.
He is fair game.
It is the lex loci.
He has to pay his ransom.
Gentle and simple alike see
the justice of the
lution that the thoughtless invader shall not
escape scot-free.
case, and unite in the reso-
•
The permanent, persistent, conspiracy of
idleness against industry, which has been one
main feature of much of the trade unionism of
this country, has been already referred to as
springing native from the Irish soil.
It is,
no doubt, one of the most formidable influences
with which the real friend of the labourer,
-the large employer of labour--has to contend.
Its fatal influence can be but feebly realized,
except by those who have experienced its
effects. But in speaking of the manner in
which the less educated classes greet the
efforts of the Engineer, it may be more in-
structive, and less invidious, to give instances
of actual occurrence, than to indulge in general
remarks.
When a man refuses to be terrified, and
when it is difficult or inexpedient to murder
him, there is a grand resource in Ireland
362
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
66
an
to bring him to reason. England herself
has furnished her ever-complaining sister with
the means. England, in her simplicity, has
offered her own cherished panacea-trial by
jury. In her own case, this institution has
proved a deterrent from a too ready resource
to legal hostilities. A solemn appeal, as of old,
to lot, or even the more modern substitute for
that ordeal, known as tossing up," might
perhaps render as substantial justice as
English common jury, and answer the same
useful purpose of composing strife.
But, in
the hands of the Celtic population, the jury
becomes altogether a different institution. It is
no longer a matter of chance. Justice returns
to preside over a trial, only it is not a justice
dependent on the right or wrong of the case,
but a justice depending on the local opinion of
the district from which the jurymen are taken.
When an Irish jury is empannelled, it is very
often a sheer waste of time to enter into the
question of evidence.
Three instances may be selected of the
manner in which the Civil Engineer is brought,
in the sister country, into a relationship with
the dispensers and the guardians of the law,
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
363
A
which is unusual in English experience.
proceeding before a bench of Magistrates—a
civil, and a criminal trial-are calculated to
give more information by a simple recital than
could be drawn from many an elaborate report.
One of the principal works on the railway,
from the prosecution of which most of the
incidents here described are taken, was a
tunnel through a grauwacke hill, at some dis-
tance from any centre of habitation. The trial
shafts, according to the local Engineer, had
been sunk without any difficulty from water.
The fact that they resembled very excellent
wells, when they were inspected by his English
brother professional, the former attributed ex-
clusively to the rain. On the principle that
all springs are fed by rain, the Irish optimist
was, no doubt, correct; but when serious work
on these shafts was commenced, it became
evident that the rain had percolated the whole
hill, and that until powerful steam-pumping
machinery was introduced, water was the chief
material that filled the skips or buckets of
the miners.
Around the shafts of this tunnel, as being
the representative stations of the chief diffi-
364
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
"
culties to be encountered by the constructors
of the line, the elements of opposition collected
with instinctive readiness. The division of
the workmen into separate gangs for each shaft
afforded the readiest method of indicating
the whereabouts of any obnoxious ganger, or
English navvy, against whose presence the
patriotic feeling of the natives was excited.
On one occasion a hardy sub-contractor en-
gaged to perform the whole of the work for
a definite measured price. He worked briskly
for some weeks. Matters went on with
unusual smoothness-progress was slow, but it
was peaceful-and order seemed for once to
reign above and under ground. One Friday
afternoon, however, the sub-contractor having
received and cashed the cheque for the balance
of his fortnight's pay, took some other road
than that which led to his expectant workmen.
Whither he went is immaterial, even if it were
ascertainable; but whither he did not go was
clear. It was not to the pay-table. The night
passed in a scene to which it would require
the pen of Lever to do justice; and early on
the Saturday morning, a breathless messenger
reached the bed-side of the Engineer in charge
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
365
of the construction. This gentleman, who had
suffered much in health, not only from the
anxiety of his post, but from the dampness of
the climate, had been ordered by his physician
to refrain from any attention to business for a
day or two. "They will burn the house over
your head," said the pleasant messenger.
"For God's sake run away, and let no one
know where ye go, till the men are quiet
again." But the other ordered his horse, and
as soon as he could dress, galloped off to meet
the three hundred men, who were on
were on their
march with hostile demonstrations.
The broadest street of a well-known Western
city, where the offices of the Engineer were
stationed, was full of these men. Robbed
they certainly were. Angry, it was natural
that they should be. The only thing wrong
was, that they were
bent on demanding
redress from the wrong source. Giving up
any effort to trace their own missing employer,
they came to demand their wages of the
Engineer who had set, not them, but him, to
work.
The arrival of a blood horse in full gallop
in their midst, the instinctive care of the noble
366
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
animal on one side, and of the surging mass
of labourers on the other, alone preventing
a collision, was unexpected. Irishmen, too,
like a display of pluck; and the idea of the
man they sought, coming alone and, apparently,
unarmed to meet them, was so unusual a
phenomenon, that they met it with a stifled
cheer. Improving the opportunity, the Engineer
sent the crowd to a builder's yard in the
suburbs of the city, where he promised to
meet them in half an hour. The city Magis-
trates, meantime, met to express their fear of
the consequence of the possession of one of the
main thoroughfares of the city by so formidable
a mob.
But when once out of the streets,
the worthy Magistrates left the parties to settle
their own difficulties as best they could.
From about eleven in the morning, until the
close of the short daylight of winter, the
Engineer sat his horse in the midst of that
extremely unpleasant circle. First, he heard
all that they had to say, making them appoint
two or three delegates to represent their
views. Then he occupied them, by taking
down the name and designation of every one
present, a procedure which is usually regarded
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
367
with alarm by a mob, and which often terrifies
men who are disposed to lawless acts. At
last matters
matters came to a point. The men
demanded payment. The Engineer admitted
that they ought to be paid, but not by him;
for it was not the mere amount of the two or
three hundred pounds, to which the men were
entitled from their employer: it was rather
the question whether the Railway could or
could not be made, that was in dispute. Had
it once been established that, on the failure
or flight of their immediate employer, the
labourers could demand arrears of wages of the
constructors of the line, the principle of small
contracts would have been destroyed, and
the unlimited liability incurred by the chief
contractors would have been so great, that no
prices could have covered it.
The upshot of the long day, at any moment
in which it was not clear that blood would not
flow in the next, was, that the men returned
to their homes, or their huts on the tunnel,
unpaid and grumbling, indeed, but beaten in
their attempt to fix the responsibility on the
Engineer. Another sub-contractor promised
immediate employment, and some advance of
368
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
pay on account, to all who would at once
return to work. The defaulter was to be
pursued, and the men ultimately received
their arrears. The fight was a hard one, but
the result was not lost sight of.
Vengeance was attempted on an English
foreman, who was assiduous and unremitting in
his duty, a skilled man, who set out the time
for the workmen, and measured off the work
executed by the sub-contractors. The matter
came to blows-several men were
were injured,
and the life of the foreman was distinctly
menaced. The matter was brought before
the Magistrates. The Chairman of the Railway
Company was the Chairman of the Board.
The offenders were defended by an attorney,
a functionary never wanting in Ireland when a
dispute is in the wind.
The whole matter was deliberately investi-
gated, and the mán who had threatened
the Englishman, was ordered for trial at the
next assizes. The defence, so far, had been
almost hopeless. Now came the tug of war.
The attorney demanded that he should be
bailed. The contractors strongly opposed this
application. They felt that if the offender
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
369
was allowed to leave the Court in the honour-
able position of a man under recognizances
(as the labourers would regard it), that the
life of no English workman would be worth a
day's purchase. After a very long struggle, the
Chairman of the Magistrates gravely announced
that the Bench would admit the prisoner to
bail. "I'll be
the works again,"
throwing down an
if I ever set a foot on
said the English foreman,
unloaded revolver on the
floor of the Court, and making the best of
his way in retreat.
"Mr. Engineer, will you favour me with
one word?" said the Chairman of the Magis-
trates, leaving his chair for a minute. "Don't
let
your man be in such a hurry;"-added he
in a whisper, "I didn't see that I could refuse
to take bail, as a matter of principle, don't
ye see, but divil take me
take me if I don't reject
any bail they offer. Make yerself asy; we'll
not let him out of prison." No more they
did. So it came to pass that the works were
ultimately completed. But it was not to be
expected that Englishmen should wish for a
another experience of this nature.
A second trial arose out of the same trouble-
BB
370
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
some turmoil, earlier in its origin, but later in
its settlement, than the case just mentioned.
A foreman who had been employed, by the
Engineer of the line, in sinking the shafts, and
who was a witness as to their dry nature, was
strongly recommended by that officer to the
constructors, as a competent sub-contractor, to
whom the execution of the tunnel might be
safely entrusted. An agreement was accordingly
entered into, by which the man, whom we may
call by the name of Davy, undertook the ex-
cavation of the driftway, and the subsequent
completion of the tunnel, at a given price per
yard.
At first, as usual in such cases, all went on well;
but as difficulties increased, and the only stable
element in the case proved to be an ample and
unfailing supply of water, Mr. Davy got into
trouble, got into debt, and finally broke down.
The constructors had to make new arrange-
ments with fresh sub-contractors, a proceeding
which, in such cases, always involves a loss.
But when all was again in activity, Davy
made the discovery that he had not been a sub-
contractor at all, but an agent or foreman; and
that, instead of having overdrawn his account,
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
371
an
his masters were in debt to him, for his time
and outlay, to the extent of three hundred
pounds! This difference of opinion was referred
to the lawyers to decide; and the case came on
for trial at the autumn assizes for the county
of Cork. Davy was his own witness. The
principal evidence for the defence was that of
agent of the constructors, who spoke
directly to the fact of the contract with Davy,
and read extracts from his memorandum-book
which, if they were not forgeries, could leave
no doubt as to the trumped-up character of the
claim. So clear was the case made by the
summing-up of the judge, that on the conclusion
of his Lordship's remarks, the attorney for the
plaintiff said, half aloud, to the representative of
the defendants, "'Deed, Mr. So-and-so, don't ye
think ye were a fool for throwing away yer
money to fee Counsel, when his Lordship has
been your Counsel for nothing?" But the upshot
of the case showed that the plaintiff had not
misjudged the sympathy of an Irish jury. The
verdict was for the plaintiff, with a special
addition, to the effect that the jury attached full
credit to the evidence of the witness for the
defence. The attempt at effecting a compromise
BB 2
372
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
between the financial, and the moral, result of
the deliberations of the jury, would have been
ludicrous, but for the light that it threw on
the manner in which that Saxon institution
works among a Celtic people.
A third instance of legal warfare over the
corpse of this unlucky railway was yet more
memorable, inasmuch as it engaged all the bar
of the Western Circuit, and filled the newspapers
with the details of a three days' trial. It was
remarkable, also, as an instance of an able and
unscrupulous resort to the criminal law, for the
sake of obtaining possession of a property, not
only without payment, but even without agree-
ment as to price.
The English Engineers who had undertaken
the completion of this Irish railway, received no
money from the Company. The payment for
works and plant was to be made in shares and
debentures, and the Irish Engineer had given to
his Directors a low estimate of the amount that
would be required. As it became evident, in the
course of construction, that this estimate was alto-
gether inadequate, and as the financial powers of
the Company appeared likely to be exhausted,
the Engineer-in-Chief tried to put off the evil day
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
373
of reckoning, by omitting, to make the stipulated
monthly measurement of the works, and declared
that he would give no further certificates until
the work was done. An unpleasant feeling was
thus produced; but the constructors, instead of
stopping the works, took the better course
of pressing their conclusion with the utmost
rapidity. So far had the line advanced towards
completion, that the Engineer-in-Chief fixed a
day for the opening, and advertised that trains
would run from that date; and he placed police
and inspectors on the line, and patrolled it by
a locomotive, which he kept constantly moving
over the rails.
The Engineer who had charge of the works
on behalf of the constructors of the line, was at
this juncture in England. But his staff thought
proper to act in the emergency, with something
of the vigour which their master was accustomed
to show. They gave notice to the Directors that
they should not allow them to take possession
of the works, until they had been measured up
and certified for; and as the preparations for the
public opening were carried on without any
attention being paid to this reasonable stipulation,
they effectually blockaded a deep rock-cutting
374
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
close to the terminus, by the simultaneous ex-
plosion of several mines in the slopes. On this
the railway officials instantly took criminal
proceedings, under Lord Campbell's Act for
punishing obstructions to railways. The Assizes
were close at hand; and as every member of the
staff and establishment of the constructors was
included in the indictment, not a single witness
was forthcoming to rebut the evidence of the
Engineers of the line.
The grand jury found a true bill without
hesitation; and when the Engineer in charge
of the construction, hastily summoned from
London, arrived in Cork on the eve of the
trial, he found all his people under detention as
accused criminals, and the lawyers on his side
looking very grave. The animus and moral
character of the proceeding were plain; but the
blow had been so rapidly and so ably delivered
that it seemed likely to succeed. A condemnation
of the defendants would have handed over the
line to the Company without conditions.
The men
now most eminent on the Irish
bench and bar, were all engaged on the trial,
either for the Crown, the Railway Company, or
the defence-the hereditary legal celebrity of
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
375
Plunkett and Sir Colman O'Loghlen; the fervid
eloquence of Butt, that gifted but erratic genius
who was a Doctor of Laws before he was out of
his terms; the acumen, legal knowledge, and
gentle bearing of Fitzgerald and of Deasy, now
honoured members of the Irish bench. The
first day was occupied by the case of the Railway
Company, and at its close it seemed certain that
they would win. They represented that, on the
eve of opening the line to the public, when
the trains had been arranged to run on the
following morning, and when the officers of the
Company were actually making use of an express
train, a wanton and spiteful outrage on the part
of the defendants had broken up the line, and
endangered the lives of the officers in question.
Cross-examination produced little or no result.
The Engineer of the line, availing himself of
the legal ignorance in which his refusal to
measure the works had left him, denied
any
claim on the part of the constructors of the line.
In fact the story, as told by one side without
contradiction, was very black indeed.
When the case for the prosecution had been
thus triumphantly concluded, some dismay was
caused to the advocates of the Railway Company
376
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
by the appearance on the table of the sole witness
for the defence: -the Engineer whom, from the
fact of his having been on the other side of the
Channel, it had been impossible to include in the
indictment, that had shut the mouths of all other
opponents of the Company's plaint. Objection
was raised to the admission of this witness. It
was natural that every effort should be made
to exclude him, for his first reply produced a
marked effect. "Are there any questions of
account in dispute between you and the Com-
pany?" asked Mr. Deasy. "The Company are
in debt to us, on an account which they have
refused to examine as they are bound to do by
the contract, to the amount of more than thirty
thousand pounds," was the reply; "and out of
that sum, there is not more than four or five
thousand pounds, as to which any possible
question can arise." One of those little shudders,
which evince the surprise of a crowded audience
at some unexpected statement, ran through the
Court. The keen Irish intelligence arrived in a
moment at the real meaning of the trial. After
a few more replies, the Judge directed four or
five of the accused persons to be immediately
discharged. They were consequently available
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
377
as witnesses as to the details urged by the pro-
secution. The case for the defence was complete ;
and the Judge, after entirely disposing of the
question of any moral offence on the part of the
remaining defendants, addressed himself with
great care to the legal construction and purport
of the Act of Parliament, under which this was
the first prosecution. His Lordship concluded
his charge by saying that, in cases where works
were being carried on at a time that locomotives
were being run, it had been shown in evidence
that certain precautions were proper. In the
present case these precautions had been taken,
and they had been fully successful. No one had
been injured or endangered in life or limb.
With that he left it to the jury.
It should be mentioned that, while it was
admitted that the rock in question had been
blown down with a view to obstruct the seizure
of the line by the Directors, it came out in
evidence, that the excavation thus effected had
been ordered by the Engineer-in-Chief, and that,
although effected in a summary and wholesale
manner, it must have been completed sooner
or later.
During the long deliberation of the jury, the
378
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
solicitor for the defence accused himself of
neglecting the interest of his clients. "There
are two men from the other terminus of the
66
line on the jury!" said he. They will think it
will hasten the opening of the line if they
convict the prisoners. I ought to have challenged
every man from that district, whoever he was.
""
The opposition, however, of these two local
adherents of the prosecution was, after a time,
overborne, and the verdict of "Not Guilty" was
given in a crowded and breathless Court. The
chief legal interest of the scene hinged on the
attempt that was made to enlarge the scope of the
operations of a new Act of Parliament. But the
moral spectacle presented, by the appearance in
Court of a public body, endeavouring to twist the
criminal law into a means of ejecting the unpaid
constructors from works which had been carried
on at their own expense, and to brand, as convicts,
respectable men, in order to avoid the settlement
of an account, is one not easily to be forgotten.
It showed that it was not the poor and the
uneducated alone who were ready to have
recourse to violence and to extortion. It showed
that, if the cotter or the labourer thought that
by strikes and by menaces he might secure pay
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
379
without giving equivalent labour, men who ought
to have set him a better example showed the
same moral obliquity. It showed, in fact, that
whatever temptations, in the way of promised
gain, there might be for the investment of
English capital in Irish works, there was a more
than counterpoising disadvantage, arising from
the totally different manner in which it is the
English and the Irish habit to regard the
question of right and wrong.
380
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
CHAPTER XXV.
ENGINEERING IN THE PRINCIPALITY.
WE have heard a good deal, at one time
or another, of representative men. Whatever
truth, or whatever nonsense, may be uttered
on the subject, it is certain that much interest
attaches to what may be called representative
facts. Circumstances may occur in which the
influence of powerful causes, ordinarily evinced
as working for a long time over a large area,
may be concentrated, as it were, within a
narrow space and in a brief period. Thus the
results of a change, similar to that wrought
in the more central parts of England by the
operations inaugurated by MacAdam and by
Stephenson, as they were carried on for more
than the third part of a century, were dis-
cernible, within three or four years, by those
who had the opportunity of watching the
introduction of the railway system into Wales.
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
381
Political, military, and commercial, communi-
cation between the capitals of the United
Kingdom and of Ireland, led to the estab-
lishment of a postal communication through
North Wales, which rendered the state of the
country immediately served by the Holyhead
Road an exception to the general condition
of the Principality. The Suspension Bridge
over the Menai Straits was one of the
noblest public works of which England could
boast. When St. George's Channel was bridged
by steam, and when passengers were no longer
liable to lie at the mercy of the wind in the
barbarous little hamlet of Holyhead, the stream
of traffic, if feeble, became constant. The
influence exerted by the establishment of a
mail route through a distant country district,
can be but faintly imagined by those who
have had no experience of the result, or at
least have not been able to compare the state
of opened, and unopened, regions of country,
at some considerable distance from the busy
centres of commerce and of intelligence.
North Wales had a second link which bound
it to the activity of English civilization in
the beauty of its scenery. While the regular
382
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
service of the Holyhead mail enabled the
tourist to count on a certain communication
with Chester and the district of the East, the
romantic landscapes found in the mountain
systems of Snowdon, Plinlimmon, and Cader
Idris, attracted numerous summer tourists. Thus
North Wales, before it was traversed by the
locomotive, stood in pretty close relation
the more densely peopled portions of the Island.
In Central and Southern Wales this was not
the case. The once archiepiscopal city of
St. David, formerly the seat of learning and
the home of a University, was, and is at this
moment, a miserable hamlet, with one small
change house, unworthy to be dignified by the
name of inn, or even of tavern. The roads were
nominally macadamized, but for the most part
they were either formed of that clay shale,
blue or brown, which makes excellent foot-
paths, but which, beneath horse-shoes and
wheels, returns, in wet weather, (and it is
mostly wet weather in Wales,) into simple
clay mud; or were covered with unbroken
pebbles, over which the horseman passed with
care, and often with curses. The large un-
dulations due to the geological character of
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
383
the district, the constant climbing of toilsome
and unshaded hills, the slow descent over the
dangerous pebbly road, made travelling in
many parts of Wales, even with the best
appointed private carriage, a toil and a disgust.
Much of the country presented no attraction,
to overcome the force of this natural barrier
to intercouse with England. In some districts
the Welsh language alone is spoken, and Saxon-
tongued strangers are not regarded with favour.
Language and roads, race and habits, the
natives, the climate, and much of the scenery,
were anything but tempting to the tourist.
The Government service alone prevented the
total isolation of the Southern Principality.
At the extremity of South Wales lies one of
the most superb harbours to be found on the
coast of our Island, one in which the united
navies of the world might, safely and con-
veniently, ride at anchor. Our national litera-
ture carries back the fame of Milford Haven
to the period of the Roman occupation of
Britain; and Shakespeare was not unaware of
the natural grandeur of the unbuilt dock, to
which he conducted the forlorn wanderings
of Imogen. A small but active dockyard,
384
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
famous for the excellence of its workmanship,
had been established at Pater, the eastern horn
or angle of Milford Haven, within a couple
of miles of the county town of Pembroke.
And as Dublin and the North of Ireland were
reached from the Anglesea promontory, a postal
steam service was established between Milford
Haven and Waterford. A direct mail route was
thus kept up, running over a fairly maintained
turnpike-road from Gloucester to Carmarthen.
The traveller had to climb to a considerable
height, in order to pass the mountainous
locality of Brecon, then skirted the romantic
valley of the Usk, famous in the romances of
King Arthur, and finally toiled, over barren
wilds and steep hills, from Carmarthen to the
point of embarkation.
This point was neither the town of Pembroke,
which lies on a river at some distance from the
harbour; the healthy and well-situated town
of Milford, where the Government dockyard
was in the first instance situated, and whence
it was driven, by the unwise rapacity of the
landowners; nor even the newly-settled huts of
Pater, or Pembroke Dock, the abode of the
labourers in the dockyard. The ocean terminus
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
385
of the Waterford mail was a single house of
twelve or fourteen rooms, at once an hotel
and a post-office. Close to this building, a
fine limestone pier had been erected, by the
aid of the diving-bell, in water so deep close
in shore, that vessels could snugly lay along-
side to take in coal, or to receive the diminu-
tive mail-bag, and possibly the single passenger,
brought down by the Carmarthen mail.
The River Cleddw, the union of the northern
and southern branches of which forms the head
of the Haven, is imperfectly navigable up to
Haverfordwest, the county town of Pembroke-
shire, where it is crossed by two limestone
bridges. The sixteen miles of mountainous
road, over which a branch mail, diverging
from the track of the Waterford postal route,
ran from a little hovel called the Roses,
rendered this smart little town, which boasted
four churches and the remains of a fine old
castle, even more inaccessible than Pembroke,
inasmuch as the roads were ill laid out and
worse kept up.
About Haverfordwest, however, and on
towards Milford, where a rich sandstone soil
replaced the barren and impervious shale, or
СС
386
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
But
"rab," which renders the greater part of Pem-
brokeshire both unproductive to the farmers,
and unwholesome to those who are unfavourably
influenced by a damp atmosphere, is to be
observed a singular ethnological phenomenon.
You have passed for a long time through a
Celtic population, and remarked wiry hair,
snub noses, and prognathous jaws, which
remind you of the county Kerry. English
speech has stood you in but little stead.
you are surprised to find that, after a long
passage, you have arrived at what the inha-
bitants call little England beyond Wales.
A tall, well-formed, handsome, English-speak-
ing, race,
race, civil, cleanly, and industrious,
keeping themselves entirely clear from the
Welsh, whom, sad to say, they are apt
somewhat to hate and despise, and with whom
they never intermarry, and but, rarely hold
intercourse,-claim to be the descendants
district.
any
of Flemish settlers in this remote
There is, perhaps, no part of the British
Islands so productive of female beauty. The
famous Nell Gwynn was a native of Langharne,
a little fishing village on the Cleddw between
Haverfordwest and Milford Haven; and repre-
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
387
sentations of the large eyes, long deep lashes,
and pure complexions, of many of the women
who attend the weekly market at Haverford-
west, would be treasures in the portfolio of the
painter.
The formation of the South Wales Railway
brought this remote district into a relation
with the busier parts of England, in a manner
that was astonishing to the inhabitants. We
have remarked that there existed a macadamized
road; and the daily service of a mail was kept
up summer and winter. But, in the latter
season, it was not uncommon for the coach to be
so delayed by the state of the roads as to have
to start on its return journey to "the Roses,"
before the few letters which it brought down
could be distributed, or, of course, answered.
With the opening of the Great Western Railway
to Gloucester, London became less inaccessible.
The later and successive completion of the South
Wales Railway, to Chepstow, to Swansea, and
to Carmarthen, added so many links to the
chain that bound Milford to the Metropolis.
But during the time thus occupied, in which
works were commenced, suspended, and recom-
menced, in Pembrokeshire, the peculiar and pic-
cc-2
388
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
turesque character of the people was com-
paratively undisturbed by the great revolution
which the locomotive was rapidly effecting,
wherever the scream of the steam whistle, and
the puff of the blast, ceased to be unfamiliar
sounds.
The county magnates looked with disfavour
on the railway. The main occupation of the
Pembrokeshire landlords was fox-hunting. How
could the hounds be expected to keep the scent,-
if people were allowed to make great ditches
of twenty feet deep, and corresponding banks,
across the country? The invasion was in-
tolerable. Then as to wages. It was actually
stated that the railway contractors had the
extravagance to pay half-a-crown a day!
(This was before the four-and-ninepenny pay
to the navvy had been heard of so far west).
Eightpence a day was fair agricultural re-
muneration. The Welsh labourer did not ask
more, and if he should do so, he would not get
it. It was immoral in the highest degree that
English Engineers should come down to disturb
this satisfactory state of things, and to make the
country people discontented! So the county
folk ensconced themselves in their dignity, and
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
389
shot evil glances at the invading Engineers, if
they chanced to meet them at church or at market.
The original idea of Mr. Brunel was to fix
the terminus of the South Wales Railway at
Fishgard, a little Welsh town on the shore of a
bay of the same name, where the last debarka-
tion of a hostile foot on British soil took place
in 1795. On that occasion, the alarmed Welsh-
women, attired in red cloaks and tall beaver
hats, flocked together in such numbers, that the
French invaders took them for the English army,
and surrendered at discretion. A wilder spot for
a terminus, as far as the surrounding country
was concerned, could not have been selected;
and the hydraulic works that would have been
necessary to form an appropriate harbour in the
exposed bay, would have involved a large outlay.
The object, however, was to compete with the
London and North Western, and the Chester
and Holyhead, Railways, for the Dublin traffic.
It was thought that the superior speed attainable
by the broad-gauge engines would be as marked
over the sharp gradients of the South Wales,
as over the level district of the valley of the
Thames. From London to Reading a speed
of 70 miles an hour was attained without diffi-
390
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
to
culty. But when the curves became sharper,
and the gradients rose to one in 200, or even
one in 100, the case was reversed. The
establishment of a second gauge must be con-
sidered as,
in some respects, an engineering
mistake. On the other hand, it must be re-
membered that the original Liverpool and
Manchester gauge of 4 ft. 8 in., was arrived at
by mere accident, and that it was unfavourably
narrow. A six-feet gauge, or something a little
under, would unite most of the elements of
mechanical advantage. The additional foot
claimed by the bold originality of Brunel, added
more to the cost, than to the available working
advantages, of so broad a gauge. The idea of
the speed to be attained by ten-feet driving
wheels, on the seven-feet gauge, was modified
by subsequent experience. Yet there can be
little doubt that the improvements in the narrow-
gauge locomotives, and in the speed maintained
on
narrow-gauge lines, are due in no small
degree to the imperious rivalry of the broad
gauge. It can hardly be doubted that the
broad gauge will ultimately disappear. It is
unquestionable that a large sum of money will
have been wasted by the temporary adoption of
ENGLISH ENGINEERS
391
a second gauge; but it is possible that, in com-
pensation, the nation at large owes much to the
emulation between the advocates of the two
systems.
•
Through a country like South Wales, however,
it is manifestly desirable that a narrow gauge
should have been adopted in the first instance.
The natural features of the district are large,
the gradients are consequently severe, and
economy both in the works, and in the useless
weight of the trains, was imperative. The minute
care given by Mr. Brunel to the correction of
the survey of the line, the careful cross-sectioning
of all side-long ground; the shifting of the centre
line so as to secure the minimum earthwork,
failed to produce an economy equal to that which
might have been effected by the use of the 4 ft.
8 in. gauge. It was probably the tacit influence
of similar considerations that led Mr. Brunel, on
the occurrence of the check to railway enterprise
that followed the political disturbances of the
commencement of the year 1848, to abandon the
idea of reaching Ireland by the Fishgard route.
The Pembrokeshire works were for a time sus-
pended; and on their resumption, in March 1851,
the Cardiganshire terminus was definitely aban-
392
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
doned; and the line of the South Wales Railway
was carried, first to Haverfordwest, to which a
branch from the Fishgard line had been autho-
rized, and then, under new Parliamentary powers,
to Neyland, a point on the northern angle of Mil-
ford Haven, opposite to the Government dock-
yard; and on the other side of the deep gut or
channel, the southern shore of which was lined by
the pier erected for the embarkation of the mails.
A more admirable point for an ocean terminus it
would not be easy to find. Shelter, and deep
water, close in shore presented themselves at a
minimum of expense. The works through the
valley of the Cleddw, and indeed the whole forty
miles from Carmarthen, were of considerable
magnitude. Swing, or rather slide, bridges were
erected over the Towy and the Cleddw, and the
cuttings through the undulating surface of the
"rab," or clay slate rocks, and through the solid
red sandstone near Neyland, were heavy.
A feature unusual to be met with in public works
was characteristic of Pembrokeshire. Plenty of
stone offered itself at first sight to the Engineer,
and the hard resistance offered by the soil to
the pickaxe was a source of considerable expense.
But when it was sought to extract stone fitted
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
393
for building purposes, the case was different.
Not only in the different railway cuttings, but
in many promising localities, quarries were
opened in search of building stone. The upper
courses of the stone reached were of such grit and
texture as to justify further outlay, the result
of which was, however, in almost every instance,
the abandonment of the quarry. The entire
mass of stone had been so shaken, or fractured,
by geological action, that it was impossible to
extract sound pieces of a sufficient size for any
but the most paltry description of masonry.
The practical importance of a scientific ac-
quaintance with geology was illustrated by the
expensive failures met with in seeking to open
quarries in Pembrokeshire. In the arrangement
of mountain systems suggested by the French
geologist, D'Orbigny, which are for the most
part mainly characterized by their direction in
Azimuth, the peculiarity of shattered structure
is attributed to a single set of elevations. It is
that of the Pembrokeshire district.
One fine bed of blue limestone, in solid,
unbroken courses of from 12 to 24 inches, or
even more, in depth, runs across the county.
It is susceptible of the polish of marble; and
394
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
admirable
its dark fossiliferous surface is an
material for chimney-pieces or table slabs. In
the absence of ordinary stone, some of the
Pembrokeshire bridges were constructed of this
costly material. It was a remarkable contrast
which some of these walls, of a rusticated.
masonry, almost cyclopean in its character, pre-
sented to others of the bridges near Carmarthen.
The careful specifications, and the rigorous in-
spections, of Mr. Brunel, were overborne by the
contractors in this district through the sheer
weight of the imperfection of all material that
was not fetched from a distance; and some of
the finest, and some of the shabbiest, bridges,
for which the Engineer of the Great Western
ever certified, may be seen, within a mile or two
of each other, erected at the same cost to the
Company. The difference between working for
profit and working for character is written, in
large hand, amid the wilds of Carmarthenshire
and of Pembrokeshire.
The future importance of Milford Haven
may be safely prognosticated. It is a curious
circumstance that if the globe be divided into
two hemispheres, so that one contains the
maximum, and the other the minimum, of habit-
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
395
able land, the central point of the former, or,
allowing for the imperfection of chartography,
at all events the central port of the former, is
Milford Haven. Before the invention of the
steam vessel the importance of this station, in a
military point of view, was very great; as a fleet
might put to sea from its shelter during the
prevalence of winds which would close most
other ports. Now that the introduction of the
iron road has restored the old predominating
importance of the most seaward points of de-
parture, it seems certain that Milford Haven
will become the great point of embarkation
for the New World. Steamers, that would fear
the sandbanks of the Mersey, may anchor or
moor in safety in its sheltered water. It was pro-
posed to Mr. Brunel that the Great Eastern should
be built, and built afloat, at Neyland, a village
being constructed for the abode of the necessary
staff of workmen. After mature consideration
Mr. Brunel declined the offer. He admitted
its advantages in all respects but one, that of
proximity to his office in Duke Street. It was
his intention to give so much of his personal
attention to the details of this favourite offspring
of his genius, that he determined, for that reason
396
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
alone, on its construction on the Thames. Had
he otherwise decided, not only would the great
expense of the launch have been entirely avoided,
and the whole cost of the giant steamer been
greatly reduced, but a far greater, national, loss
might have been averted. The Great Eastern,
if built at Neyland, might have been completed
at a less expenditure than that of the life of
our greatest Engineer.
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
397
CHAPTER XXVI.
RAILWAY FINANCE.
So large a capital has been invested in the
construction of railways, and so widely different
has been the cost of that construction, reckoned
per mile, in different instances, that a few
words on estimate and account may not be
without value.
The railways of Great Britain have been
executed under almost every variety of con-
dition. The two opposite and extreme cases of
the conduct of public works may be thus
regarded. The Projectors, or the executive
officers of the Company, may execute them
themselves by day labour; that is, the manager
will engage all the workmen that he thinks
fit, paying to each man his daily wages, and
appointing competent inspectors to see that
each man does his duty. In this case the
398
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
check against the idleness or
the idleness or waste of the
workman, lies entirely in the efficiency of the
inspector. The individuals employed, unless
they are inspired by a high and unusal sense
of duty, have no inducement to exert them-
selves, but the fear of discharge, if they are
too slack in their work. No wholesome
emulation, either as regards quantity or quality
of work, is encouraged in the mass of workmen.
On the contrary, those who work hardest will
often be reproached by their fellows for so
doing, inasmuch as they thus furnish a gauge
or standard by which the inspector can detect
the insufficient quantity of the work of other
men. Thus a large employer of labour, who
pays exclusively by the day, enlists, to a great
extent, human nature against himself.
This direct method of payment for time,
which alone is available, or rather which alone
has hitherto been employed, for military and
naval purposes, is also that made use of in our
dockyards, and generally in the employment
of labour by the Government.
In the case of large works, the opposite plan
has been not unfrequently adopted.
A person
comes forward, who undertakes, or contracts,
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
399
to perform the entire work for a fixed and
definite sum. All questions of employment of
labour are therefore made over to this con-
tractor. The employer makes a certain bargain.
For so much money he is to have what he
requires. Whether the actual cost be more or
less is nothing to him. His opinion as to the
adequacy of the price of the lump sum, as
it is called—may be formed either from pro-
fessional knowledge or from the result of
competition. He may invite a certain number
of persons to tender, or he may call on any
one who chooses to come forward, to do so.
If he then accepts the lowest tender, and
takes due security for the fulfilment of its terms,
all care, trouble, and responsibility may be
thought to be over.
In
Clear and simple as this may appear to be
in theory, it is far otherwise in practice.
fact, a lump sum is a selling price. As such
it is perfectly applicable to a simple commercial
operation. So many tons of rails can be
delivered, at a fixed place and date, at so much
But even then it will be necessary,
per ton.
for those who want to have good rails, to have
the manufacture inspected. But when the
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
large variety
variety of requirements needed for
railway construction is considered, it becomes
evident that a margin is requisite in every
instance. The price of labour is only one
item of cost. Land, timber, stone, bricks,
iron, glass, every material used by the work-
man; the rent of lodging, the price of food,
the state of the floating balance of the labour
market, the total number of unemployed work-
men available from time to time;-all these
things have to be taken into consideration.
Each item of work undertaken by a contractor
bears its own risk. Every risk must be
covered by a contingent profit.
Nor is this all. A railway cannot be made.
as a yard of tape can be cut off. It is
requisite in the first instance to know exactly
what is to be done. No doubt many a con-
tractor will give a price per mile from a
cursory inspection of a line of country; but
prices thus roughly quoted imply either enormous
profits, or the risk of the contractor's failure,
-a circumstance always highly detrimental to
his employers. Very careful plans, sections,
and estimates have to be prepared, and it is
further evident that it is only by a strict
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
401
adherence to these details, on the part both of
the contractor and of the Engineer, that this
lump sum contract can be carried out in its
integrity.
It is not in accordance either with human
nature, or with the character of public works,
that any such accurate adherence to plan should
be maintained. Time is generally a material
object; and the Engineer is, for the most part,
too much pressed for time to have all his
professional labour completed before the con-
tracts are let. There is much that he will
learn later. Even when the provision of boring
to ascertain the nature of soil has been made,
it often happens that the opening out of a
large cutting, or tunnel, displays features in
the contents, that were not indicated by the
trial shafts. In every instance, as accuracy of
information enables the Engineer to determine
price with the smallest possible margin, vague-
ness and uncertainty cause an increase of
estimate. Certitude of price is thus attained
at the cost of increase of amount.
This is not all. Alterations will be often
required in the original design. Circumstances
beyond the control of the Engineer may lead
D D
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
to a wide modification of his intentions.
Im-
proved means of carrying out his object may
be discovered. The hands of the Engineer of
a public work must be unfettered if he is to
do his duty to his employers. Power to
modify the contract must therefore be entrusted
to the Engineer, and in case of any serious
modification, the guarantee of the lump sum is
at an end.
66
""
To meet, as far as possible, this difficulty, it
is customary to append schedules to the con-
tract. In the earliest contracts of Mr. Robert
Stephenson for the London and Birmingham
Railway, these schedules were three-one for the
payment, on account, of contract work; one of
additional prices for additional or extra
works; and one of prices according to which
deductions were to be made from the total
amount of the contract, for any items con-
templated in the tender, which the Engineer
might direct to be omitted in execution. It
became customary, later, to append a single
schedule, applicable in each of the three
described cases.
In either instance, however, it is impossible,
by any provision, to replace or to supersede
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
403
an honest and upright confidence between the
Engineer and the contractor. When this
subsists, each unexpected question will be
arranged on its own merits. When it is absent,
it is impossible to provide for unforeseen events
which may place one or other of the con-
tracting parties at the disposal of his opponent.
The constant attention of Mr. Brunel was
given for many years to the perfection of the
contract specifications. The result of each
successive new edition of the printed form was
to place the contractor more and more at the
absolute mercy of the Engineer. Bilateral
rights were, as far as careful language could
go, extinguished. The right to be paid, at a
certain stipulated rate, for work ordered by the
Engineer, was all that these documents were
intended to leave to the contractor. If the
former ordered nine-tenths of the work to be
abandoned, the latter, who had prepared for
the execution of the whole, had no redress. It
was provided-and it was a wise and eco-
nomical provision-that the contractor should
be paid fortnightly, on the measurement of
the Engineer, from 80 to 90 per cent. of
the schedule value of the work executed. But
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
""
So
even for this payment, on the regularity of
which all his arrangements would depend,
the contractor had no legal security.
It was
stated to be the intention of the Engineer to
recommend a payment, instead of its being
acknowledged to be his duty to certify the
execution of a certain amount of work.
" tight
did these specifications ultimately
become, that nothing but implicit personal
confidence in Mr. Brunel on the one hand, or
the belief that the Court of Chancery. would
set aside any unfair provisions, in case of
dispute, on the other, could justify any thought-
ful man in entering into a Great Western,
or a South Wales, contract. During the latter
part of the professional career of Mr. Brunel,
after he had established that personal weight
and prestige for which, at the commencement
of the Great Western Railway, he had to
make so determined a struggle, and before
failing health and loss of nerve caused him to
lose that absolute independence of action which,
in his best days, he maintained with reference
to the Directors of his various undertakings, it
was neither unsafe nor unpleasant thus to
execute his orders. Admit him to be absolute,
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
405
and he was not only reasonable, but kind.
Hint to him that you had rights, and he was
inexorable. But this was an extreme case. It
was tolerable only so long as the Engineer was
uncontrolled, not only by the contract, but by
the Directors. More than one man attributed,
and rightly attributed, very heavy losses, to
the fact of his having signed a rigid and
unilateral contract, on the final settlement of
which, Mr. Brunel found himself unable to
make the allowances on which he had given
the contractor the right to count. Equality
before the law, entire submission to the Engineer
on questions of science and of practical execu-
tion, with mutual confidence in skill, energy,
and good intention, from the relation in which
the contractor should stand to his employer,
and which the contracts and specifications of
the latter should be directed to establish.
The extreme
extreme cases of departure from the
golden mean are, those in which the contractor
attempts to rob the Company, and those in
which the Engineer attempts to ruin the
contractor. Instances of each extreme are, un-
fortunately, within the experience of most men
acquainted with the progress of public works.
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
On one occasion, a contractor brought in his
bill to Mr. Robert Stephenson in so grossly
exaggerated a form, that when, on his thank-
fully accepting some 80 or 90 per cent. of his
claim as a settlement in full, the latter inquired,
"And how could you have the face to send
me in such an account?" he replied, "Well,
sir, I must own that I put on a topper for
luck."
An instance, on the other hand, of the
manner in which the tables were turned on
an Engineer who, either from incompetence
or from ill-feeling, had cruelly scourged his
contractors, is far from uninstructive. The
work in question was a bridge, a portion of
which was supported on heavy piles. The
specification provided for a price per foot to
cover all expenses of pile-driving up to, let
us say, fifty feet—a ten-foot pile being at so
much per foot, a twenty-foot at so much,
and so on. At from forty to fifty feet, a solid
bed of gravel was attained, the superincumbent
material being soft alluvial soil, so that by
the entrance of the pile-shoe to its own depth
into this solid stratum, which rested in its turn
on bog, the greatest possible amount of stability
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
407
was attained.
But the Engineer in question
was not contented with this result. He had
got into very hot water with the contractors
and their agents, and he insisted on the use of
sixty-foot piles, which could be provided only
at a very great expense; and he ordered these
piles to be driven ten feet into the ground. The
result was, that many of the piles were shivered
in driving, and had to be withdrawn, and
that those which were sent through the gravel,
offered less resistance than would have been
the case if they had only entered it. Months
were consumed instead of days, the work
was, at least, far less satisfactory than might
have been the case, and the certificate of the
Engineer was for an amount less than a
fourth of the total cost.
The contractors, annoyed at such a pro-
ceeding, and injured by a permanent weekly
expenditure without return, consulted an
Engineer familiar with contract accounts.
He visited the spot, and carefully examined
the contract. Then he called for the whole
of the accounts from the commencement of
the work. Observing that the schedule only
gave a price per foot for piles driven up to
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
fifty feet, and that it also included prices
for timber, and for day labour, he charged
for the whole of the sixty-foot piling as
timber, and as day work, a mode of
drawing up the account which was in exact
accordance with the schedule, and which added
three thousand pounds in one item to the
contractor's bill. The right to make the
charge in this form was indisputable, for it
was the only way in which sixty-foot piles
could be carried to account in the exact
terms of the schedule. The Engineer of the
bridge had outwitted himself, and his employers
had to pay handsomely for his malevolent, or
ignorant, caprice.
There can be no doubt of the enormous
waste which has been incurred in the con-
struction of the English Railways. For much
of the outlay, the Engineers are scarcely
responsible. Parliamentary and legal expenses
represent a price per mile quite adequate to
the construction of those light railways
which we are now so much in want. Land-
owners have thriven largely at the cost of
shareholders, first by exacting high prices
and enormous residential and occupational
of
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
409
damages, and then by finding the value of
their whole property so much increased, that
in most instances it would have paid them
well to make a gratuitous cession of the land
required, as an inducement to the Engineers
to lay out the works through their property.
Duplicates and opposition lines have been
another source of profligate outlay. Mr. H. E.
Bird, in a careful tabulated statement of the
expenditure on 258 Railways, up to the close
of June, 1867, gives a total of £487,905,167
expended on 14,000 miles of line. It is
highly instructive to remark the different
prices of English, Scotch, and Irish Railways
as set forth in this statement: 9,634 miles
in England have cost £405,331,055, or £42,000
per mile, very nearly the price of the
London and Birmingham Railway, -notwith-
standing the immense economies introduced
by subsequent experience; 2,466
2,466 miles in
Scotland have cost £55,921,649, or £22,700
per mile; 1,898 miles in Ireland have cost
£26,652,463, or £14,000 per mile. To say
nothing of the low cost of the Railways in
the United States, which are far less solidly
constructed than our own, but which have
<
410
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
served for the development of a large and
increasing traffic, at an aggregate cost, at the
close of 1867, of 1,654,050,799 dols. for 38,605
completed miles out of a total of 54,325 miles
undertaken, it is evident, from the comparison
of work and cost in England and in Ireland,
that our own waste has been enormous.
Had the English Railways been kept down
to the cost of twice the Irish lines, a condition
of which the neglect is due principally, or even
exclusively to Parliament, our 9,634 miles, at a
cost of £270,000,000, would be earning a gross
revenue of £33,000,000 per annum, yielding a
net return of from 6 to 7 per cent. on
the capital. To speak of the difference of
£135,000,000 as sheer waste will appear, to
persons familiar with the subject, as an under
statement.
That wasted outlay would have sufficed, to
supplement our 9,634 miles of principal line
with 45,000 miles of light branch railway,
such as is now in full operation in Norway.
The whole mileage of such a system would
have nearly doubled that of the macadamized
public roads. Great as is the impulse given
to production and to commerce in England
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
411
by the costly provision which we have made
for the thorough traffic, the gain thus secured
sinks into insignificance, in comparison to that
which may be fairly estimated as likely to
result from the application, to the iron roads, of
that system of proportioning expense to duty,
which regulates the outlay of the surveyor of
the turnpike and the highway.
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE FUTURE OF ENGINEERING.
THE profession of the Civil Engineer is under
a cloud. Offices are closed, public works are
discontinued, draughtsmen and pupils are un-
employed. So great a depression in the condition
of a liberal occupation, which, a few years ago,
was only in want of men competent to follow
it, is almost, or altogether, without precedent.
It is a question of no slight importance, both
to the Civil Engineer and to the public, whether
this lack of employment result from a permanent,
or from a temporary, cause. Have the Engineers
of Great Britain sprung up like a mushroom
growth, to disappear, having produced the fruit
of the railway system, as rapidly as they were
called into activity, or have they yet a social
function to discharge, of which such men as
Watt, and Bradley, and Stephenson, have been
only the pioneers?
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
413
To answer this question, it is necessary to
examine the cause of the present state of affairs :
causes, rather than cause, it may be said; for
political reasons, and influences beyond the
bounds of Great Britain, are not foreign to the
subject. But as far as the Engineer himself
is concerned, there can be no question that the
main cause of his present inactivity is over-
production. He has done too much. He has
crowded the work of half a century into a few
years. There is little blame to be attached to
him on the score of the quality of his work. He
has covered the island with noble viaducts and
lofty embankments, furrowed it with excavations,
and pierced it with tunnels. He has found the
means of supporting the passage of enormous
weights, at high velocities, over lofty and wide
openings, and has bound England firmly together
by an iron network. But he has too often done
this in anticipation of the wants of the day. He
has provided, by a large present outlay, for a
traffic that is undeveloped, and, what is worse,
has provided often in duplicate. He has lent
his aid to the litigant and to the speculator. He
has produced much, which, if good in itself, is
not good in its conditions. He has not re-
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
membered that a sum, laid out in public works
which produce no remunerative return, is, within
a certain number of years, not only actually
wasted, but more than wasted, inasmuch as it
has reduced the productive area of the country,
and entailed annual loss as well as annual
expense. He has, to some extent, furnished
the arms, by which overgrown speculation has
robbed the public, without even permanently
enriching the speculators.
But, while this is undeniable, too much of the
blame must not be laid upon the Engineer. We
must not overlook the tendency of the ever-
present instincts of human nature. Where is
the barrister who will at once advise his client
that he has not a leg to stand on, and had better
do anything than go to law? How numerous
are the physicians who will tell their patient,
that temperance in diet, in labour, and in
relaxation, and careful attention to the laws of
health, will do far more for them than pre-
scription or than drug? Where are the clergy
who hint that it is possible to over-build in
church, or in chapel, accommodation? Each man
looks with a natural favour to his own employ-
ment, and the esprit de corps, or de metier, joins
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
415
with the honest desire for a full employment
of individual industry, to lead him to do so,
more or less, whenever he is consulted.
Then it should be borne in mind that the
Engineer, like the lawyer or the doctor, is
generally consulted on a special case. He is
not called on to advise generally. He may be
asked to estimate the cost of a certain work, or
even to aid in the comparison of estimated profit,
with probable outlay. He can hardly be expected
to decline a service of this kind; it is not at all
clear that he ought to do so, for the reason
that another set of persons are proposing a rival
scheme. He may be of opinion that his own
is the best, or that either of them is practicable
or advantageous. He cannot hold that both
are susceptible of contemporaneous execution.
His duty to his clients will lead him to do his
best for their scheme, and if a duplicate project
is improperly sanctioned, the onus lies, not on
the advocates of either competing plan, but on
the legislature, on which the duty of protecting
the public theoretically devolves.
While, then, it is possible that, in many in-
stances, an improvident and reckless expenditure
has been not only unopposed, but, to some
416
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
extent, carried on, by the Civil Engineer, it is
not fair to lay at his door the laches of the
House of Commons. The entire want of any
statesmanlike principle applied to the regulation
of railway enterprise-nay more, the entire
want of any moral principle so applied-is not
the disgrace of the Engineer. He has not
unfrequently been placed in the position of
an advocate for an unworthy client, and it has
been, moreover, for the most part, before an
unjust, an interested, or a capricious tribunal,
that he has had to plead.
The speculators who have made use of the
talents of the Engineer, to the present injury
of his profession, and to the misfortune of the
country, have been chiefly of three classes.
There have been the Directors of existing rail-
ways, who have entered into a reckless contest
for custom, which they might have commanded
by a careful and provident use of means within
their grasp. There have been the builders and
contractors of railways, who asked for more of
these works in order that they might have the
profit of making them. And there have been the
speculators, pure and simple"-the gamblers
in scrip and shares-who sought for an Act of
66
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
417
Parliament, not that they might earn a fair
return from the execution of a public work,
but that they might make a profit on the sale
of shares at a premium. This last class of
gamblers has done more to injure public en-
terprise, than both the others put together.
Without their ready aid, no questionable and
unremunerative undertaking could ever have
been launched. To their eager greediness, the
inflation of such periods as 1845 was chiefly due.
And when they had done the utmost mischief
as bulls, on the turn of the tide they became
equally formidable as bears. The depreciation
of an undertaking can be organized even more
surely than its launch. Its intrinsic value is
equally lost sight of in either case. It is not
railways alone, or even chiefly, that have ex-
perienced this dishonest usage; bank after bank,
in the great crash of 1866, was brought down,
not by its inherent weakness, but by the con-
spiracy of those who thrive on the ruin of
unsuspecting victims.
The other misleaders of the Engineers have,
for the most part, paid the penalty. The
plutocracy of contractors has, to a great extent,
vanished. Princely dwellings, purchased by the
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
toil of the navvy, have again become tenantless.
Great names have swelled the columns of the
"Gazette." And the lesson that that honesty
which looks not only at individual accumulation,
but at the permanent benefit of the country, is
the best policy, has been written in the very
largest text - hand over the doors of Great
George-street.
As for the Directors, they have escaped, for
the most part, with that modified contrition
which attends those who make ducks and
drakes of the property of other people. The
sorrow, no doubt, is intense, but somehow it
does not turn the hair grey. It does not lay
hold on the imagination with the same force
that a much smaller personal loss invariably
excites. So that the real penalty of the over-
production is divided between the shareholders
without dividends, and the Engineers without
work.
Yet Great Britain owes no trifling debt to the
Civil Engineer. If we compare the map of the
island in 1760, with that issued by Bradshaw
in 1868, and if we compare the description of
the social state of the inhabitants at the former
time, with the present activity of life, we shall
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
419
be struck by the magnitude of the revolution
to which the century has given birth. Political
causes in France led to that memorable and
terrible revolution with which modern history
rings, but the difference in the physical and
social condition of the remote provinces of
France, that has followed the fall of the old
régime, is less marked than that which has
attended the opening of the means of inter-
communication throughout England. For the
packhorse, and for the slow and cumbrous
waggon, Brindley taught us to substitute the
canal-boat; and Macadam enabled us to attain
a speed of ten, of eleven, and of sixteen
miles an hour, by the "Quicksilver" mail, and
the Shrewsbury "Hirondelle." Three thou-
sand miles of canal, at a cost of fifty millions
sterling, Mr. Smiles tells us, brought water
communication to within fifteen miles of any
part of England. That was the service rendered
to the country by the Duke of Bridgewater
and Mr. Brindley. The importance of Mr.
Macadam's invention was even greater. The
state of our roads in 1745 is now almost in-
credible. The march of the Pretender on
London, seems just to have directed the attention
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
of the Government to the exigencies of military
roads.
But the point which is most surprising is
that of the decadence of the country in this
vital element of national welfare, since the time
of the Roman occupation. We find traces of
the handiwork of that great Engineering race,
who were accustomed to fortify their camp even
for the bivouac of a night, and to connect
their more permanent points of occupation by
roads drawn as the crow flies. It was not
the habit of ancient writers to record, except
incidentally, those features of social importance
of which we are now accustomed to write such
detailed descriptions; and it may be hard to
discover, with absolute certainty, the exact an-
tiquity of the excellent Breccia roads of Italy.
It is certain, however, that they are not attribu-
table to English examples. With regard to
that more expensive and more permanent form
of road-making, which we have as yet been
unable to dispense with in our great city
thoroughfares, the pitched roads, the fragments
of the Via Appia that exist in the neighbour-
hood of Puteoli and other places, and the long
buried streets of Pompeii, show that Italian
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
421
road engineering has been identical in its cha-
racter for two thousand years. A mile-stone
of Trajan, from which our English mile-stones
might have been copied, still stands on the
route which Horace took from Rome to Brun-
dusium, and it seems rather to have been the
want of that important invention which we
owe to the steel-workers of Sheffield the
application of springs to wheel carriages -
than to the state of the roads, that travelling
in Italy, in the Augustine age, was not more
distinctly in advance of travelling in England,
in the time of the accession of the House of
Hanover. A level, metalled road is of com-
paratively little use for speedy traffic, without
springed vehicles. On the other hand, springs
would have been useless for vehicles plying on
the savage tracks, that afforded our internal
means of communication before the time of
Macadam.
What our fathers and our grandfathers have
seen to be effected in the way of national pro-
gress, by the introduction of canals and of turn-
pike roads, our own eyes have seen exceeded by
the invention of iron railways. In actual speed,
the locomotive has not so far distanced the best
422
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
appointed four-in-hand coach, as that vehicle
outstripped its predecessors-the waggon, the
packhorse, or the riding poster. But when
cheapness, speed, facility for the carriage of
weight, and punctuality, independent of weather
or seasons of the year, are considered, it may
well be thought that we have not yet realized
the full advantages of the use of steam as a
tractive power. Ten times the capital expended
in canals has been employed in the construction
of a network of railways of not quite five times
the mileage: an outlay, in round numbers, of
£500,000,000 on 14,000 miles of line. It is at
the close of this outlay that the Engineer, and
his great employer, the public, have paused to
take breath.
If we compare the development now attained
by the railway system, with that of our earlier
means of land and water communication, if we
bear in mind that the price which we have
paid for the construction of each mile of railway
in England, would have paid for nearly two
miles in Scotland, for exactly three miles in
Ireland, and for five miles in America; if we
remember that during the period of railway
construction, from 1833 to 1863, our imports
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
423
and exports, which had been almost stationary,
had quintupled-we are led to the conclusion
that there is yet much, very much, work await-
ing the skill of the Engineer in the construction
of iron trackways alone. It is very clear that
many of the 9,700 miles of English railways
must have been made at an unnecessarily ex-
travagant cost. The wise provision of propor-
tioning outlay to requirement has been lost
sight of. Not only so, but the prudence of the
Engineer is frustrated by the standing orders
of Parliament, and he is forbidden to construct
branch lines of that light description, and for
that moderate price, that would enable him to
carry into the more remote rural districts, the
immeasurable benefit of direct communication
with the centres of consumption by unbroken
railway communication. Our English railways
have cost £42,000 per mile. Branch lines may
be grafted on the system at a cost, taking
foreign experience as a basis, of £3,000 per
mile, or a fourteenth of our actual mean out-
lay. That the country would find so large an
economy in the use of railway branches, con-
structed at anything approaching to such a
minimum price, as to demand the prompt com-
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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
pletion of such a supplement to the more costly
trunks and arteries, there can be little doubt, if
the injudicious and detrimental exactions of
Parliament were set aside. When we compare
the free scope given to unnecessary and unwar-
ranted competition which, by encouraging rival
lines, has made the service of certain districts
involve an outlay of from £80,000 to £130,000
per useful mile, with the prohibition to use a
light railway for the service of a country dis-
trict, or for the extension of the convenience
of railway omnibuses to cities and towns, it
must seem that the legislators of 1868 are as
actively hostile to the true welfare of the
country, as have been the ignorant obstructors
who, ever since we began to drain and embank
our fens, have endeavoured to stifle every im-
provement in the cradle. Opposition to scientific
engineering is not less disgraceful when it takes
the form of the resolution of a Parliamentary
Committee, than when it attacks turnpike gates
under the name of Rebecca, or designates the
cutter of a canal as the enemy of the agricul-
ture of the country.
But while it is, at the present moment, `
chiefly the barbarous state of legislation that
·
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
425
interferes with the natural and beneficial pro-
gress and completion of the railway system, it
is not as
a road-maker alone that the Civil
Engineer should regard himself, or seek to be
regarded. We must remember that in this
country, and in this century, the most eminent
Engineers have taken up an entirely new posi-
tion. They have taken the command of the
forlorn hope of human progress. Our earliest
road-makers, canal-makers, bridge-builders, have
been, no doubt, original, but their's has, for the
most part, been the originality of ignorance.
All honour to the men-we owe them no less;
and their names may stand deservedly higher in
the roll of fame, from the fact that they had to
invent, and did invent, what more highly edu-
cated and better informed men would only have
had occasion to copy. Our canal-makers might
have served an apprenticeship in Holland to
the craft in which they were self-taught. Mac-
adam's invention would have been long antici-
pated by any surveyor, who had been sent to
report on certain Italian roads.
inventors and benefactors as they were, by their
own strong original sense, carried out the indi-
cations which nature herself afforded, with no
These men,
426
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
unstinting hand. It was otherwise with Watt,
with Stephenson, with Brunel. New powers
were brought into energy; Nature, wrestled with
hand to hand and year after year, yielded
deeper secrets to these men than lay on the
surface of her dominions. In all the mighty
progress due to the discovery of the expansive
force of heat, educated invention and well-
informed thought have been brought to bear.
Without ceasing to be practical, the Engineer
has become scientific. Still triumphing over
physical difficulty, he has done so by mastering
the laws on which that difficulty depends. He
has substituted for the rule of thumb, the
organized application of principle.
Regarded in this light, it is to the Civil
Engineer that the care of the physical advance
of the human race will be naturally committed.
The economy of labour will be his charge; a
political economy more true and more beneficent
than that of the lecture-table, the pamphlet, or
the hustings. Certain great questions, which
have been neglected until their neglect involves
not only cruel waste but imminent peril, are
now demanding solution. The increasing pres-
sure of a population that doubles itself in a
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
427
century, the increasing difficulty of maintaining
health, or even life, in cities that double their
population within forty years, calls for the
thorough organization of that service which
may be compared to the circulating and the
digestive systems of. animal life. The water
supply of cities and towns, pure, ample, and
efficient in case of fire; the removal and dispo-
sition of sewage; the redemption of our rivers
and brooks from a neglect that is rapidly con-
verting them into pestilent sewers; the appli-
cation to agriculture of that mass of chemical
fertilising power with which we now poison
rivers and estuaries; the drainage of land, both
main and subsidiary; the storing-up of that
precious water, of which we are either anxious
hastily to get rid, or helplessly destitute; and
the production of fertile and certain crops by
irrigation; all these are but so many features
of one department of the duty of the Engineer:
-the proper distribution and utilisation of the
rainfall.
The application of Engineering to agriculture
is another department of the profession which
is yet in its infancy. The steam plough has
already established its claim to rank as the
428
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
best servant of the farmer. Portable and con-
venient steam-engines are fast superseding the
more costly labour both of man and of
beast. Our fields, when prepared for seed,
are more like the beds of a well-tended garden,
in many instances, than the rough, though
picturesque, grounds into which our fathers
cast their corn, or their turnip-seed. But the
farmer is still, to a most unnecessary extent,
dependent on the chances of a very variable
climate. When his crops are ready to house,
the obedient service of the steam-engine is not
as well adapted as might readily be the case.
Hay grows mouldy; wheat shoots in the
stack, if an unseasonable set of showers inter-
vene at the time of housing or of reaping.
The Engineer is aware that this is entirely
unnecessary. He can readily find the means,
if consulted, of ingathering crops, independently
of the weather, and of drying hay and corn
independently of the sun. By the application
before referred to, of scientific forethought and
practical ability to the due distribution of the
rain-fall, whether it be normal, in excess,
or in
defect, by the mechanical culture of the soil,
by the use of the steam-engine in harvesting,
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
429
in storing, and, when needful, in drying his
crops, the greater number of the evil chances
that beset the farmer will be provided against,
and the food of man and beast will be no
longer left at the mercy of the elements in a
climate of proverbial uncertainty.
These are not mere imaginations or theories.
They are nothing but the application of the
teaching of experience. What can be done by
improved means of communication, by drain-
ing, by irrigation, by the application of sewage
manure, by steam culture, and by steam har-
vesting and drying, has been shown in indi-
vidual instances. What will be the result, on
the national welfare, of the general application
of these known improvements, it is not easy to
state with exactitude, although some idea may
be formed by any one who can work a rule-
of-three sum. There is a busy and a useful
future for the Engineer who takes this view of
his duties, and who finds himself engaged by
those who do the same. That the vegetable
produce of England might be doubled by the
services of the Engineer, is a proposition not
very hazardous to maintain.
Nor is the productive capacity of our own
430
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
island alone, the limit of this part of the duty
and service of the Engineer. The connection
between production and distribution is of the
most intimate nature. Production must, of
course, precede, but the stimulus to that pro-
duction on the one hand, and its available
results on the other, depend closely on the
means of distribution. The land occupied by
roads is as necessary to the feeding of man-
kind, as is the land which nourishes corn, or
supports cattle on its pasture. This land is to
be found, more or less available, wherever the
foot of man can tread. The perpendicular
limestone cliff, where a basketful of soil is
painfully lodged in a crevice, becomes rich
with the fruit of the olive. The wide plains
of the Antipodes pasture sheep, the flesh of
which is actually thrown to waste, while it
would be worth from nine to fourteen pence a
pound in London. In the mechanical and
chemical preparation of the food which is now
lost, and in its economical transmission to the
centres of consumption, is to be sought a
method of lightening the burden of life, for the
artizans of the crowded districts of civilization.
The general problem of producing, in the most
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
431
appropriate and ready spot, the great requisites
of human consumption, of ingathering, storing,
protecting, and transmitting them to the proper
market, is one which will not always be left
to private enterprise, or to uninstructed com-
mercial speculation. The superintendence of
the most economical production and trans-
mission of the raw material of human food,
and human clothing, is a part of the economy
of labour, the field
field and function
and function of the
Engineer.
It is, therefore, not as undervaluing the result
of the labours of the other working bees of
humanity,—the security afforded by a competent
military organization, the humanising influence
of the teacher, the comprehensive prevision
of the statesman (if a statesman should again
arise in England), the self-devoted toil of the
medical man, that we consider the profession of
the Civil Engineer to be that on which, if it
is rightly considered and followed out, the pro-
gress of humanity and of civilization, at least
for the remainder of the present century, must
principally depend. The sword, and the pen,
and the lancet will be needed so long as war,
and ignorance, and disease prevail on earth.
432
ENGLISH ENGINEERS.
The instrument by which these evils can be
most efficiently checked the instrument that
would be held in honour, if the earlier weapons
of violence and of oppression were superseded,
is the spade. When we first hear of the intro-
duction of man upon earth, when earth was
described as a garden, the occupation of the
noblest terrestrial form was to dress it and to
keep it.
LONDON: BENJAMIN PARDON AND SON, PRINTERS, PATERNOSTER ROW.
Sinking im Aimmyllay
yayds @day
ds a day Cost 9
6. Muze
//
38
Art 9/- 1.3 pan
Cost 13/- 2.2
1 Shaft 2014 Deep 7.6
gastheading
6.6
7
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