I remember in particular one Saturday afternoon in late October. It was almost the last walk I had with Tom in Derby. The day was perfect; as clear and bright, as mellow and crisp, as rich in colour, as only an October day in England can be. We reached the Maypole between five and six o’clock. No young Joe Willet or gipsy Hugh was there to welcome us, but we were soon by our two selves in a homely little room, beside a cheerful fire, at a table spread with tea and ham and eggs and buttered toast and cakes—our weekly treat.
When this delightful meal was over, a stroll as far as the church and the stately Hall of the Curzons, back to the inn, an hour or so in the snug bar with the village worthies, who welcomed our almost weekly visits and the yarns we brought from Derby town; then back home by the broad highway, under the star-lit sky—an afternoon and an evening to be ever remembered.
The Kedleston Inn, I am told, no longer exists; no longer greets the eye of the wayfarer, no longer welcomes him to its pleasant bar. Now it is a farmhouse. No youthful enthusiast can now be beguiled into calling it The Maypole; and, indeed, in these unromantic days, though it had remained unchanged, there would be little danger of this I think.
Soon after this memorable day Tom left the service of the Midland for a
more lucrative situation with a mercantile firm in Glasgow, and I was left widowed and alone. For six months or more we had been living together in the country, some four miles from Derby, in the house of the village blacksmith. It was a pretty house, stood a little apart from the forge, and was called Rock Villa. I wonder if the present Engineer-in-Chief of the Midland Railway recollects a little incident connected with it. He (now Chief Engineer then a well grown youth of eighteen or nineteen) was younger than I, and was preparing for the engineering profession in which he has succeeded so well. He lived with his parents very near to Rock Villa, and one day, for some reason or other, we said we would each of us make a sketch of Rock Villa, afterwards compare them, and let his sister decide which was the better, so we set to work and did our best. In the matter of correct drawing his, I am sure, far surpassed mine, but the young lady decided in my favour, perhaps because my production looked more picturesque and romantic than his!
When Tom had gone I became dissatisfied with my work, and a disappointment which I suffered at being passed over in some office promotions increased that dissatisfaction. I was an expert shorthand writer and this seemed to be the only reason for keeping me back from better work, so at least I thought, and I think so still. My sense of injustice was touched; and I determined I would, like Tom, if the opportunity served, seek my fortune elsewhere. The chance I longed for came. I paid a short visit to Tom, and whilst in Glasgow, obtained the post of private clerk to the Stores Superintendent of the Caledonian Railway, and on the last day of the year 1872, I left the Midland Railway, to the service of which I had been as it were born, in which my father and uncles and cousins served, against the wish of my father, and to the surprise of my relatives. But I had reached man’s estate, and felt a pride in going my own way, and in seeking, unassisted, my fortune, whatever it might be.
What had I learned in my first five years of railway work? Not very much; the next few years were to be far more fruitful; but I had acquired some business habits; a practical acquaintance with shorthand, which was yet to stand me in good stead; some knowledge of rates and fares, their nature and composition, which was also to be useful to me in after life; some
familiarity with the compilation of time-tables and the working of trains; but of practical knowledge of work at stations I was quite ignorant.
Thus equipped, without the parental blessing, with little money in my purse, with health somewhat improved but still delicate, I bade good-bye to Derby, light-hearted enough, and hopeful enough, and journeyed north to join my friend Tom, and to make my way as best I could in the commercial capital of “bonnie Scotland.”