a baubee herrin!’ The poor woman was usually set ‘all of a shake’ by a visit from this fellow. He was also a great boaster, and used to crow over the robbers whom he had put to flight; mere men in buckram, as everybody knew. We boys,” he continued, “believed him to be a great coward, and determined to play him a trick. Two other boys joined me in waylaying Straker one night at that corner,” pointing to it. “We sprang out and called upon him, in as gruff voices as we could assume, to ‘stand and deliver!’ He dropped down upon his knees in the dirt, declaring he was a poor man, with a sma’ family, asking for ‘mercy,’ and imploring us, as ‘gentlemen, for God’s sake, t’ let him a-be!’ We couldn’t stand this any longer, and set up a shout of laughter. Recognizing our boys’ voices, he sprang to his feet and rattled out a volley of oaths; on which we cut through the hedge, and heard him shortly after swearing his way along the road to the yel-house.”
On another occasion, Robert played a series of tricks of a somewhat different character. Like his father, he was very fond of reducing his scientific reading to practice; and after studying Franklin’s description of the lightning experiment, he proceeded to expend his store of Saturday pennies in purchasing about half a mile of copper wire at a brazier’s shop in Newcastle. Having prepared his kite, he sent it up in the field opposite his father’s door, and bringing the wire, insulated by means of a few feet of silk cord, over the backs of some of Farmer Wigham’s cows, he soon had them skipping about the field in all directions with their tails up. One day he had his kite flying at the cottage-door as his father’s galloway was hanging by the bridle to the paling, waiting for the master to mount. Bringing the end of the wire just over the pony’s crupper, so smart an electric shock was given it, that the brute was almost knocked down. At this juncture the father issued from the door, riding-whip in hand, and was witness to the scientific trick just played off upon his galloway. “Ah! you mischievous scoondrel!” cried he to the boy, who ran off. He inwardly chuckled with pride, nevertheless, at Robert’s successful experiment. [57]
At this time, and for many years after, Stephenson dwelt in a cottage standing by the side of the road leading from the West Moor colliery to Killingworth. The railway from the West Moor Pit crosses this road close by the east end of the cottage. The dwelling originally consisted of but one apartment on the ground-floor, with the garret over-head, to which access was obtained by means of a step-ladder. But with his own hands Stephenson built an oven, and in the course of time he added rooms to the cottage, until it became a comfortable four-roomed dwelling, in which he lived as long as he remained at Killingworth.
He continued as fond of birds and animals as ever, and seemed to have the power of attaching them to him in a remarkable degree. He had a blackbird at Killingworth so fond of him that it would fly about the cottage, and on holding out his finger, would come and perch upon it. A cage was built for “blackie” in the partition between the passage and the room, a square of glass forming its outer wall; and Robert used afterwards to take pleasure in describing the oddity of the bird, imitating the manner in which it would cock its head on his father’s entering the house, and follow him with its eye into the inner apartment.
Neighbours were accustomed to call at the cottage and have their clocks and watches set to rights when they went wrong. One day, after looking at the works of a watch left by a pitman’s wife, George handed it to his son; “Put her in the oven, Robert,” said he, “for a quarter of an hour or so.” It seemed an odd way of repairing a watch; nevertheless, the watch was put into the oven, and at the end of the appointed time it was taken out, going all right. The wheels had merely got clogged by the oil congealed by the cold; which at once explains the rationale of the remedy adopted.
There was a little garden attached to the cottage, in which, while a workman, Stephenson took a pride in growing gigantic leeks and astounding cabbages. There was great competition amongst the villagers in the growth of vegetables, all of whom he excelled, excepting one of his neighbours, whose cabbages sometimes outshone his. In the protection of his garden-crops from the ravages of the birds, he invented a strange sort of “fley-craw,” which moved its arms with the wind; and he fastened his garden-door by means of a piece of ingenious mechanism, so that no one but himself could enter it. His cottage was quite a curiosity-shop of models of engines, self-acting planes, and perpetual-motion machines. The last-named contrivances, however, were only unsuccessful attempts to solve a problem which had effectually baffled hundreds of preceding inventors. His odd and eccentric contrivances often excited great wonder amongst the Killingworth villagers. He won the women’s admiration by connecting their cradles with the smoke-jack, and making them self-acting. Then he astonished the pitmen by attaching an alarum to the clock of the watchman whose duty it was to call them betimes in the morning. He also contrived a wonderful lamp which burned under water, with which he was afterwards wont to amuse the Brandling family at Gosforth—going into the fish-pond at night, lamp in hand, attracting and catching the fish, which rushed wildly towards the flame.
Dr. Bruce tells of a competition which Stephenson had with the joiner at Killingworth, as to which of them could make the best shoe-last; and when the former had done his work, either for the humour of the thing, or to secure fair play from the appointed judge, he took it to the Morrisons in Newcastle, and got them to put their stamp upon it. So that it is possible the Killingworth brakesman, afterwards the inventor of the safety lamp and the originator of the railway system, and John Morrison, the last-maker, afterwards the translator of the Scriptures into the Chinese language, may have confronted each other in solemn contemplation over the successful last, which won the verdict coveted by its maker.
Sometimes he would endeavour to impart to his fellow-workmen the results of his scientific reading. Everything that he learnt from books was so new and so wonderful to him, that he regarded the facts he drew from them in the light of discoveries, as if they had been made but yesterday. Once he tried to explain to some of the pitmen how the earth was round, and kept turning round. But his auditors flatly declared the thing to be impossible, as it was clear that “at the bottom side they must fall off!” “Ah!” said George, “you don’t quite understand it yet.” His son Robert also early endeavoured to communicate to others the information which he had gathered at school; and Dr. Bruce has related that, when visiting Killingworth on one occasion, he found him engaged in teaching algebra to such of the pitmen’s boys as would become his pupils.
While Robert was still at school, his father proposed to him during the holidays that he should construct a sun-dial, to be placed over their cottage-door at West Moor. “I expostulated with him at first,” said Robert, “that I had not learnt sufficient astronomy and mathematics to enable me to make the necessary calculations. But he would have no denial. ‘The thing is to be done,’ said he; ‘so just set about it at once.’ Well; we got a ‘Ferguson’s Astronomy,’ and studied the subject together. Many a sore head I had while making the necessary calculations to adapt the dial to the latitude of Killingworth. But at length it was fairly drawn out on paper, and then my father got a stone, and we hewed, and carved, and polished it, until we made a very respectable dial of it; and there it is, you see,” pointing to it over the cottage-door, “still quietly numbering the hours when the sun is shining. I assure you, not a little was thought of that piece of work by the pitmen when it was put up, and began to tell its tale of time.” The date carved upon the dial is “August 11th, MDCCCXVI.” Both father and son were in after-life very proud of the joint production. Many years after, George took a party of savans, when attending the meeting of the British Association at Newcastle, over to Killingworth to see the pits, and he did not fail to direct their attention to the sun-dial; and Robert, on the last visit which he made to the place, a short time before his death, took a friend into the cottage, and pointed out to him the very desk, still there, at which he had sat while making his calculations of the latitude of Killingworth.
From the time of his appointment as engineer at the Killingworth Pit, George Stephenson was in a measure relieved from the daily routine of manual labour, having, as we have seen, advanced himself to the grade of a higher class workman. But he had not ceased to be a worker, though