Robert went on with his lessons in the evenings, his father was usually occupied with his watch and clock cleaning; or in contriving models of pumping-engines; or endeavouring to embody in a tangible shape the mechanical inventions which he found described in the odd volumes on Mechanics which fell in his way. This daily and unceasing example of industry and application, in the person of a loving and beloved father, imprinted itself deeply upon the boy’s heart in characters never to be effaced. A spirit of self-improvement was thus early and carefully planted and fostered in Robert’s mind, which continued to influence him through life; and to the close of his career, he was proud to confess that if his professional success had been great, it was mainly to the example and training of his father that he owed it.
Robert was not, however, exclusively devoted to study, but, like most boys full of animal spirits, he was very fond of fun and play, and sometimes of mischief. Dr. Bruce relates that an old Killingworth labourer, when asked by Robert, on one of his last visits to Newcastle, if he remembered him, replied with emotion, “Ay, indeed! Haven’t I paid your head many a time when you came with your father’s bait, for you were always a sad hempy?”
The author had the pleasure, in the year 1854, of accompanying Robert Stephenson on a visit to his old home and haunts at Killingworth. He had so often travelled the road upon his donkey to and from school, that every foot of it was familiar to him; and each turn in it served to recall to mind some incident of his boyish days. His eyes glistened when he came in sight of Killingworth pit-head. Pointing to a humble red-tiled house by the road-side at Benton, he said, “You see that house—that was Rutter’s, where I learnt my A B C, and made a beginning of my school learning. And there,” pointing to a colliery chimney on the left, “there is Long Benton, where my father put up his first pumping-engine; and a great success it was. And this humble clay-floored cottage you see here, is where my grandfather lived till the close of his life. Many a time have I ridden straight into the house, mounted on my cuddy, and called upon grandfather to admire his points. I remember the old man feeling the animal all over—he was then quite blind—after which he would dilate upon the shape of his ears, fetlocks, and quarters, and usually end by pronouncing him to be a ‘real blood.’ I was a great favourite with the old man, who continued very fond of animals, and cheerful to the last; and I believe nothing gave him greater pleasure than a visit from me and my cuddy.”
On the way from Benton to High Killingworth, Mr. Stephenson pointed to a corner of the road where he had once played a boyish trick upon a Killingworth collier. “Straker,” said he, “was a great bully, a coarse, swearing fellow, and a perfect tyrant amongst the women and children. He would go tearing into old Nanny the huxter’s shop in the village, and demand in a savage voice, ‘What’s ye’r best ham the pund?’ ‘What’s floor the hunder?’ ‘What d’ye ax for prime bacon?’—his questions often ending with the miserable order, accompanied with a tremendous oath, of ‘Gie’s a penny rrow (roll) an’ 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
