From his earliest years James Watt was of an extremely fragile constitution, requiring the tenderest nurture. Struggling as it were for life all through his childhood, he acquired an almost feminine delicacy and sensitiveness, which made him shrink from the rough play of robust children; and hence, during his early years, his education was entirely conducted at home. His mother taught him reading, and his father a little writing and arithmetic. His mother, to amuse him, encouraged him to draw with a pencil on paper, or with chalk upon the floor; and his father supplied him with a few tools from the carpenter’s shop, which he soon learnt to handle with expertness. In such occupations he found the best resource against ennui. He took his toys to pieces, and out of the parts ingeniously constructed new ones. The mechanical dexterity which he thus cultivated even as a child was probably in a great measure the foundation upon which he built the speculations to which he owes his glory; nor, without his early mechanical training, is there reason to believe that he would afterwards become the improver and almost the creator of the steam-engine.
The invalid thus passed his early years almost entirely in the society of his mother, whose gentle nature, strong good sense, and unobtrusive piety, exercised a most beneficial influence in the formation of his character. Nor were his parents without their reward; for as the boy grew up to manhood he repaid their anxious care with obedience, respect, and affection. Mrs. Watt was in after life accustomed to say that the loss of her only daughter, which she had felt so severely, had been fully made up to her by the dutiful attentions of her son.
Spending his life indoors, without exercise, his nervous system became preternaturally sensitive. He was subject to violent sick headaches, which confined him to his room for weeks together; and it almost seems a marvel that, under such circumstances, he should have survived his boyhood. It is in such cases as his that indications of precocity are generally observed; and parents would be less gratified at their display if they knew that they are usually the symptoms of disease. Several remarkable instances of this precocity are related of Watt. On one occasion, when he was bending over the hearth with a piece of chalk in his hand, a friend of his father said, “You ought to send that boy to a public school, and not allow him to trifle away his time at home.” “Look how my child is occupied,” said the father, “before you condemn him.” Though only six years old, it is said he was found trying to solve a problem in geometry.
On another occasion he was reproved by Mrs. Muirhead, his aunt, for his indolence at the tea-table. “James Watt,” said the worthy lady, “I never saw such an idle boy as you are: take a book or employ yourself usefully; for the last hour you have not spoken one word, but taken off the lid of that kettle and put it on again, holding now a cup and now a silver spoon over the steam, watching how it rises from the spout, catching and counting the drops it falls into.” In the view of M. Arago, the little James before the tea-kettle becomes “the great engineer, preparing the discoveries which were soon to immortalize him.” In our opinion the judgment of the aunt was the truest. There is no reason to suppose that the mind of the boy was occupied with philosophical theories on the condensation of steam, which he compassed with so much difficulty in his maturer years. This is more probably an afterthought borrowed from his subsequent discoveries. Nothing is commoner than for children to be amused with such phenomena, in the same way that they will form air-bubbles in a cup of tea, and watch them sailing over the surface till they burst. The probability is that little James was quite as idle as he seemed.
When he was at length sent to Mr. M‘Adam’s commercial school, the change caused him many trials and much suffering. He found himself completely out of place in the midst of the boisterous juvenile republic. Against the tyranny of the elders he was helpless; their wild play was most distasteful to him; he could not join in their sports, nor roam with them along the beach, nor shy stones into the water, nor take part in their hazardous exploits in the harbour. Accordingly they showered upon him contemptuous epithets; and the school being composed of both sexes, the girls joined in the laugh. He shone as little in the class as in the playground. He did not possess that parrot power of learning and confidence in self necessary to achieve distinction at school; and he was even considered dull and backward for his age.[55] His want of progress may, however, in some measure be accounted for by his almost continual ailments, which sometimes kept him for weeks together at home. It was not until he reached the age of about thirteen or fourteen, when he was put into the mathematical class, that his powers appeared to develop themselves, and from that time he made rapid progress.
When not quite fourteen, he was taken by his mother for change of air to Glasgow, then a quiet place without a single long chimney, somewhat resembling a rural market-town of the present day. He was left in charge of a relation, and his mother returned to Greenock. But he proved so wakeful during the visit, and so disposed to indulge in that habit of storytelling, which even Sir Walter Scott could afterwards admire in him, that Mr. Watt was very soon written to by his friend, and entreated to return to Glasgow and take home his son. “I cannot stand the excitement he keeps me in,” said Mrs. Campbell; “I am worn out for want of sleep. Every evening, before retiring to rest, he contrives to engage me in conversation, then begins some striking tale, and whether humorous or pathetic, the interest is so overpowering, that the family all listen to him with breathless attention, and hour after hour strikes unheeded.” He was taken back to Greenock accordingly, and, when well enough, was sent to the Grammar School of the town, then kept by Mr. Robert Arrol. Under him, Watt made fair progress in the rudiments of Latin and Greek; but he was still more successful in the study of mathematics, which he prosecuted under Mr. John Marr. It was only when he entered on this branch of learning that he discovered his strength, and he very soon took the lead in his class.
When at home the boy continued to spend much of his time in drawing, or in cutting or carving with his penknife, or in watching the carpenters at work in his father’s shop, sometimes trying his own hand at making little articles with the tools which lay about. In this he displayed a degree of dexterity which seemed so remarkable that the journeymen were accustomed to say of him that “little Jamie had gotten a fortune at his fingers’ ends.” Even when he had grown old he would recall to mind the pleasure as well as the profit which he had derived from working in his shirt-sleeves in his father’s shop. He was, in fact, educating himself in the most effectual manner in his own way; learning to use his hands dexterously; familiarising himself with the art of handling tools; and acquiring a degree of expertness in working with them in wood and metal, which eventually proved of the greatest value to him. At the same time he was training himself in habits of application, industry, and invention. Most of his spare time was thus devoted to mechanical adaptations of his own contrivance. A small forge was erected for him, and a bench fitted up for his special use; and there he constructed many ingenious little objects, such as miniature cranes, pulleys, pumps, and capstans. Out of a large silver coin he fabricated a punch-ladle, which is still preserved. But the kind of work which most attracted him was the repairing of ships’ compasses, quadrants, and nautical instruments, in executing which he exhibited so much neatness, dexterity, and accuracy, that it eventually led to his selection of the business he determined to follow,—that of a mathematical instrument maker.
The boy at the same time prosecuted his education at school; his improving health enabling him to derive more advantage from the instructions of his masters than in the earlier part of his career. Not the least influential part of his training, as regarded the formation of his character, consisted, as already observed, in the example and conversation of his parents at home. His frequent illnesses brought him more directly and continuously under their influence than is the case with most boys of his age; and reading became one of his chief sources of recreation and enjoyment. His fathers library-shelf contained well-thumbed volumes of Boston, Bunyan, and ‘The Cloud of Witnesses,’ with Henry the Rymer’s ‘Life of Wallace,’ and other old ballads, tattered by frequent use. These he devoured greedily, and re-read until he had most of them by heart. His father would also recount to him the sufferings of the Covenanters,—the moors and mosses which lay towards the south of Greenock having been among their retreats during the times of the persecution. Then there were the local and traditionary stories of the neighbourhood,—such as the exploits of the Greenock men under Sir John Shaw, at Worcester, in 1651,[56]—together with much of that unwritten history, heard only around firesides, which kindles the Scotchman’s nationality, and influences his future life.
We may here mention, in passing, that one of the most vividly-remembered incidents of James Watt’s boyhood was the Stuart rebellion of the “Forty-five,” which occurred when he was about ten years old. Watt himself is so intimately identified with the material progress of the nineteenth century, that it strikes one almost with surprise that he should have been a spectator, in however remote a degree, of incidents belonging to an altogether different age. The Stuart Rebellion may be said to have been the end of one epoch and the beginning of another; for certain it is that the progress of Scotland as an integral part of the British empire, and the growth of its skilled industry—which the inventions of Watt did so much to develop—appeared as if to spring from the very ashes of the rebellion. Like other lowland towns, Greenock was greatly alarmed at the startling news from the Highlands of the threatened descent of the clans. Sir John Shaw had the trades mustered for drill on the green in front of his mansion, and held them in readiness for defence of the town, in case of attack. Greenock was otherwise secure, being protected against the Highlands by the Clyde; besides, the western clans were either neutral or adhered to the house of Hanover. The Pretender with his followers passed southward by Stirling, and only approached Greenock on their return from England,—a half-starved and ill-clad, though still unbroken army. They halted at Glasgow, where they levied a heavy contribution on the inhabitants, and sent out roving parties to try their fortunes in the neighbouring towns. A small detachment one day approached Greenock, and came as near as the Clune Brae; but the townspeople were afoot, and on guard; signal was given to the ships of war moored near the old battery, and a few well-directed shots speedily sent the Highlanders to the right-about. The alarm was over for the present; but it was renewed in the following year, when the rumour reached Edinburgh that Prince Charles, hunted from the Highlands, had landed at Greenock, and lay concealed there. The consequence was that a strict search was made throughout the town, and Mr. Watt’s premises were searched like the others; but the Pretender had contrived to escape in another direction. Such was one of the most memorable incidents in the boy-life of James Watt, so strangely in contrast with the later events of his industrial career.
During holiday times, the boy sometimes indulged in rambles along the Clyde, occasionally crossing to the north shore, and strolling up the Gare Loch and Holy Loch, and even as far as Ben Lomond. He was of a solitary disposition, and loved to wander by himself at night amidst the wooded pleasure-grounds which surrounded the old mansion-house overlooking the town, watching through the trees the mysterious movements of the stars. He became fascinated by the wonders of astronomy, and was stimulated to inquire into the science by the examination of the nautical instruments which he found amongst his father’s shop-stores. For it was a peculiarity which characterised him through life, that he could not look upon any instrument or machine without being seized with a desire to understand its meaning, to unravel its mystery, and master the rationale of its uses. Before he was fifteen he had twice gone through with great attention S’Gravande’s ‘Elements of Natural Philosophy,’ a book belonging to his father. He performed many little experiments in chemistry, and even contrived to make an electrical machine, much to the marvel of those who felt its shocks. Like most invalids, he read eagerly such books on medicine and surgery as came in his way. He went so far as to practise dissection; and on one occasion he was found carrying off for this purpose the head of a child who had died of some uncommon disease. “He told his son,” says Mr. Muirhead, “that, had he been able to bear the sight of the sufferings of patients, he would have been a surgeon.”