George Stephenson (41 page)

His grand funeral was doubtless seen as the end of an era, coming as it did so quickly after the death of Brunel, but in comparing it with George's more modest final rites it has to be emphasised that Robert was a national figure and was genuinely loved by all his contemporaries. A public testimonial had been raised for Robert as early as 1839, £1,250 being subscribed in a matter of days. (And George Hudson wasn't even on the committee.) George Stephenson's own testimonial came much later.

Jeaffreson explains the difference in popularity between them as being a matter of north and south.

The fine old man, whose kindest teacher had been adversity, was not duly appreciated in the metropolis. His manners were rugged and far from prepossessing and his personal connections were for the most part in his ‘old country'. For one inhabitant of London who visited the Liverpool and Manchester line, ninety nine were familiar with the works of the London and Birmingham Railways. It is therefore easy to account for the fact that the Father of the Railways system saw his son publicly honoured whilst he himself had been comparatively unnoticed.

Robert had complete universal acclaim in his lifetime, though he would no doubt have preferred a more humble domestic happiness. His acclaim was justified, but it is an acclaim which is now almost totally forgotten. George, however, came into his own not long after his son's death.

It took about ten years, after Robert himself had died, before the George Stephenson industry moved into full force, and it was probably Samuel Smiles who gave it the first big push. His 1857 biography was an instant success with the public. It came out eventually as part of his series on the lives of the great engineers, The Life of George Stephenson being volume 3. (The first two volumes included the lives of Sir Cornelius Vermuyden and Sir Hugh Middleton who presumably must have been known to at least some Victorians.) Smiles travelled extensively for his Stephenson book, going back to Wylam to interview old school friends, old associates like Edward Pease and old friends like John Dixon. He didn't interview Nicholas Wood because Wood demanded a present worth £3,000. (Wood's information, says Smiles in his own autobiography, ‘was not worth 3,000 farthings'.) Robert Stephenson had been surprised at the idea of a biography, saying that nobody in the literary world would be interested, but he gave every assistance, read the manuscript and added a weighty and lengthy appendix on the state of the railway system in 1857.

The book was obviously greatly influenced by Robert, unwittingly or not. When he sent a bundle of letters about William James to Smiles he added a covering note.

There is a bundle of James's which characterise the man very clearly as a ready, dashing writer but no thinker at all on the practical part of the subject he had taken up. It was the same with everything he touched. He never succeeded in anything and yet possessed a great deal of taking talent. His fluency of conversation I never heard equalled, and so you would judge from his letters.

Smiles produced a comprehensive piece of journalism, over five hundred tightly packed pages, and it was immediately attacked by some of George's old rivals for being a white wash, painting a glowing account of his character and giving the Stephenson side on almost every technical issue. The public, however, loved it and it was reprinted many times and sold one hundred thousand copies by the end of the century. It appeared in several guises including an abridged version called
The Story of the Life of George Stephenson
. The facts of George's rise to fame, his perseverance and self-help were irrefutable but Smiles made the most of them to prove his own philosophy of life which he outlined in his even more successful book
Self Help
. This had been turned down before he wrote the Stephenson book but his publisher now jumped at it and it sold 250,000 copies, becoming a moral bible for the Victorian age.

The Band of Hope was one of the first organisations to see the moral appeal of George's life and they were issuing potted histories of his life and hard times at a penny a sheet from 1859. One of the most popular paintings in Victorian times shows George as part of a beautiful family group. It still sells well today – the Science Museum has post cards of it – but it is a completely false picture as hardly any of the people were alive together at the same time in real life. Little Fanny, who died at three weeks, is shown looking about five years old, standing with her mother, who also died young, with George's next wife, his mother, his father and Robert as an adult, all of them striking suitably lyrical but impossible poses.

So great was George's new-found popularity, now that everyone knew the full and wonderful story, that there was a movement to have his remains removed from the little church in Chesterfield to Westminster Abbey. This so incensed William James' daughter that it appears to have been the main reason why she published her vitriolic attack on him in 1861. His body, however, was not removed.

The various subscriptions, and talks of subscriptions, which had occurred just after his death, all came to life again in the 1860s, having either fizzled out or disappeared. A handsome statue of George, which had been talked about immediately after his death, was finally erected in Newcastle in 1862, almost outside the Literary and Philosophical Society, not far from the High Level Bridge. In Chesterfield, they didn't get their memorial completed until 1879 but it too was suitably handsome – a large red brick building in the centre of the town, the Stephenson Memorial Hall. An appeal had been launched for some sort of memorial twenty years previously, to build a home for miners, but had failed. This time the subscription list was terribly impressive, headed by the Duke of Devonshire (£500) and the Duke of Rutland (£100). It included George's former secretary, F. Swanwick (£100), who still lived in the area.

Combined with the sudden rush of national affection for George was an increasing awareness that the railway, which many people still alive had first seen appearing with some trepidation, was a great British invention, just one more sign that Victorian England ruled the waves. When railway anniversaries started cropping up, they were seen as great excuses for national celebrations, for steam and for George, Father of it all.

The first railway anniversary was in 1875, the Jubilee of the Stockton and Darlington. The North Eastern Railway, which had taken over the Stockton and Darlington in 1863 (the S & D being worth at that time £4 million) contributed £5,000 towards the celebrations and Darlington Corporation a further £1,000. As Jeans said in his 1875 history of the Stockton and Darlington, which came out to mark the jubilee, it was a problem knowing exactly what to do. ‘A railway jubilee is an event of character so unique that there is no precedent to guide those who are concerned in its celebration.'

The problem was solved by unveiling a statue to Joseph Pease, and presenting a portrait of the said Joseph Pease. Mr Henry Pease, whose idea it was to have a jubilee celebration, served on a committee which contained Mr W. R. Pease, Mr J. W. Pease, Mr A. Pease and Mr H. F. Pease. There wasn't a Stephenson in sight. Pride of place in an exhibition of old engines was
Locomotion
number one which had continued running strong from the opening day in 1825 until 1850, when it went into Mr Joseph Pease's collieries for seven years before ending up on a pedestal opposite Darlington Railway Station.

Over a thousand VIP visitors were invited, including bishops, lords and members of the cabinet and on Monday 27 September 1875, they were fêted in a large tent erected specially in a cricket field, there being no hall in Darlington big enough for such an assembly. ‘The banquet will be purveyed,' so the announcements said, ‘by King and Brymes (late Birch and Birch) who purvey the Lord Mayor's banquets at the Guildhall.'

For the ordinary populace there were fireworks, processions, displays, and for the children of the town a tea party in the marquee, two days after the VIPs. Special trains ran from King's Cross and there were specials to Darlington from all over the north east. Thousands of handbills about the jubilee celebrations were printed which can still be bought at most railway enthusiasts shops for only a pound or two.

The Peases and their Quaker friends had always dominated the town of Darlington so it wasn't surprising that they should still be so prominent. Edward came from a large family, had eight children himself and Joseph, his eldest son, in turn had eight children. They were everywhere and they seemed to live for ever. Old Edward Pease, who'd come to George's funeral despite his years, had many more years to go. He was fit and well when Samuel Smiles came to interview him in 1854, at the age of eighty-eight. He'd had a few qualms over the years, wondering what sort of monster he'd brought into the world, but Smiles must have convinced him he'd done a great job, according to what he wrote in his diary.

Fri., Oct. 20
– S. Smiles was with me to obtain particulars for a memoir of the life of George Stephenson. It appears to me that Railways will be a favour to the world, and I do not regret, but far otherwise, that my time, care and attention was so closely occupied for many months. Except with the help of a faithful secretary, R. Oxley, the care and charge of providing all materials and all the costs for the waymen's wages rested on me. If I have been in any way made a humble instrument of use in the creation, all the praise, and I render it, is due to my God.

Three days later, Robert Stephenson came to see him:

Mon, Oct. 23
– My friend, Robert Stephenson the engineer, to spend two or three days with me – a man of most highly gifted and talented power of mind, of benevolent, liberal, kindly, just, generous dispositions, in company most interesting. My dear Sons John and Henry dined with me. At tea at my son Joseph's, a considerable and interesting company. At home to sup, and after it some social interesting subject occupied us to near eleven.

The evening pleasantly spent nearly alone, expressing to Robert Stephenson my anxious desire that smoking and taking wine might be carefully limited. Oh my soul, be upon the watch.

One of the aspects that worried Edward about railways was how much he himself had made, even though he could console himself by remembering that he'd simply been trying to help young Robert.

Dec 28, 1848
– … Pecuniarily, I have cause to admire how an effort to serve a worthy youth, Robert, the son of George Stephenson, by a loan of £500, at first without expectation of much remuneration, has turned to my great advantage. During the course of the year I have received £7,000 from the concern at Forth Street.

It will be remembered that Edward Pease put £1,600 into Robert Stephenson and Company in 1823 (apart from helping Robert with his own stake). Receiving £7,000 annually after twenty-five years for an investment of £1,600 is certainly pecuniary.

In 1857 there was a movement in Darlington to have a testimonial to Edward Pease and to erect a statue in his name but he categorically refused to allow it. He died the next year, aged ninety-one. Joseph Pease, his son, had long since been the controlling influence in the Pease railway, colliery and banking concerns which had by now grown to an enormous size, mainly thanks to Joseph himself who wasn't as guilt ridden about money as his father. In 1830 Joseph had bought up enough local collieries to be known as the largest colliery owner in the whole of the South Durham coalfield. The S & D had similarly expanded, though it soon had competition from Hudson to face, but perhaps Joseph's most inspired investment was to buy five hundred acres of swamp land lower down the Tees in 1829. He saw this as a better site for a port than Stockton and also as an ideal site for new iron smelting works, using the recently discovered Cleveland iron mines. This swamp, which he got for a few pounds an acre, is now Middlesbrough, still one of the most important iron and steel towns in the country.

In 1832, Joseph Pease entered parliament, becoming the first Quaker MP. MPs previously had to take an oath to the Established Church but Joseph was now allowed to affirm. He still retained other Quaker ways, never taking his hat off when entering the House of Commons (instead an alert door-keeper always took it off for him, thus solving the problem). His son Joseph Whitwell Pease (later Sir Joseph) was also an MP for many years. There is a story told in the Pease family of the time in the Commons cloakroom when he put his hand in his coat pocket and found a gun. The Quakers, of course, were against all firearms. The mystery was solved when he discovered he'd picked up the wrong coat. The House of Commons coat pegs were in alphabetical order and next to him was Parnell.

Joseph Pease died in 1872 and Henry, his younger brother, became the leading Pease and the inspiration of the jubilee celebrations. He too became an MP and carried on his father's tradition of beseeching world leaders to give up war. In 1853 he went to Russia and had a long interview with the tzar and then to Paris where he saw the emperor.

The Peases kept up their expansion in business, helped by their relations the Barclays and other bankers, and in politics. By the end of the century there had been ten MPs in the family and not long afterwards their total in the Lords went up to three – Lord Gainford, Lord Daryngton, Lord Wardington. They also managed three baronets. The family is going strong to this day, many of them still in the City, though few of them are now Quakers.

The Stephensons, by comparison, have almost disappeared. They had no more distinguished members after Robert, the last and only member of his father's line. There were many cousins and they were active in Robert Stephenson and Company for many years but none became public figures. Robert Stephenson and Company eventually moved their works to Darlington and were finally taken over by larger combines. Today they are lost in GEC.

George Stephenson, meanwhile, kept marching on, in fact and in fiction. For the centenary of his birth in 1881 over fifteen thousand people turned up at a festival in his honour at the Crystal Palace. Belgium sent a large deputation and in every foreign country where George or Robert had sent locomotives or built a railway some form of commemoration took place. In Rome, the station was bedecked with flowers and the Italian papers contained potted histories of George, most of them based on Smiles. In Germany there were long editorials, One of them likening his deeds to those of Napoleon and Bismarck. In England there were fireworks and processions in all the main towns and railway commercialisation, which had first raised its tentative head at Liverpool in 1830, erupted in a flood of sheets, posters, books, poems, mugs, plates and other suitable or unsuitable objects. Many books came out to mark the event and there was even a book brought out in 1886, edited by William Duncan, which contained reports of all the 1881 George Stephenson celebrations up and down the country.