Lives of the Engineers / The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson

by Samuel Smiles

In describing the completion of the series of great works detailed in the preceding chapter, we have somewhat anticipated the closing years of George Stephenson’s life. He could not fail to take an anxious interest in the success of his son’s designs, and he accordingly paid many visits to Conway and to Menai, during the progress of the works. He was present on the occasion of the floating and raising of the first Conway tube, and there witnessed a clear proof of the soundness of Robert’s judgment as to the efficiency and strength of the tubular bridge, of which he had at first expressed some doubts; but before the like test could be applied at the Britannia Bridge, George Stephenson’s mortal anxieties were at an end, for he had then ceased from all his labours.

Towards the close of his life, George Stephenson almost entirely withdrew from the active pursuit of his profession;

he devoted himself chiefly to his extensive collieries and lime-works, taking a local interest only in such projected railways as were calculated to open up new markets for their products.

At home he lived the life of a country gentleman, enjoying his garden and grounds, and indulging his love of nature, which, through all his busy life, had never left him. It was not until the year 1845 that he took an active interest in horticultural pursuits. Then he began to build new melon-houses, pineries, and vineries, of great extent; and he now seemed as eager to excel all other growers of exotic plants in his neighbourhood, as he had been to surpass the villagers of Killingworth in the production of gigantic cabbages and cauliflowers some thirty years before. He had a pine-house built 68 feet in length and a pinery 140 feet. Workmen were constantly employed in enlarging them, until at length he had no fewer than ten glass forcing-houses, heated with hot water, which he was one of the first in that neighbourhood to make use of for such a purpose. He did not take so much pleasure in flowers as in fruits. At one of the county agricultural meetings, he said that he intended yet to grow pineapples at Tapton as big as pumpkins. The only man to whom he would “knock under” was his friend Paxton, the gardener to the Duke of Devonshire; and he was so old in the service, and so skilful, that he could scarcely hope to beat him. Yet his “Queen” pines did take the first prize at a competition with the Duke,—though this was not until shortly after his death, when the plants had become more fully grown. His grapes also took the first prize at Rotherham, at a competition open to all England. He was extremely successful in producing melons, having invented a method of suspending them in baskets of wire gauze, which, by relieving the stalk from tension, allowed nutrition to proceed more freely, and better enabled the fruit to grow and ripen.

He took much pride also in his growth of cucumbers. He raised them very fine and large, but he could not make

them grow straight. Place them as he would, notwithstanding all his propping of them, and humouring them by modifying the application of heat and the admission of light for the purpose of effecting his object, they would still insist on growing crooked in their own way. At last he had a number of glass cylinders made at Newcastle, for the purpose of an experiment; into these the growing cucumbers were inserted, and then he succeeded in growing them perfectly straight. Carrying one of the new products into his house one day, and exhibiting it to a party of visitors, he told them of the expedient he had adopted, and added gleefully, “I think I have bothered them noo!”

Mr. Stephenson also carried on farming operations with some success. He experimented on manure, and fed cattle after methods of his own. He was very particular as to breed and build in stock-breeding. “You see, sir,” he said to one gentleman, “I like to see the coo’s back at a gradient something like this” (drawing an imaginary line with his hand), “and then the ribs or girders will carry more flesh than if they were so—or so.” When he attended the county agricultural meetings, which he frequently did, he was accustomed to take part in the discussions, and he brought the same vigorous practical mind to bear upon questions of tillage, drainage, and farm economy, which he had been accustomed to exercise on mechanical and engineering matters.

All his early affection for birds and animals revived. He had favourite dogs, and cows, and horses; and again he began to keep rabbits, and to pride himself on the beauty of his breed. There was not a bird’s nest upon the grounds that he did not know of; and from day to day he went round watching the progress which the birds made with their building, carefully guarding them from injury. No one was more minutely acquainted with the habits of British birds, the result of a long, loving, and close observation of nature.

At Tapton he remembered the failure of his early experiment in hatching birds’ eggs by heat, and he now performed it successfully, being able to secure a proper apparatus for maintaining a uniform temperature. He was also curious about the breeding and fattening of fowls; and when his friend Edward Pease of Darlington visited him at Tapton, he explained a method which he had invented for fattening chickens in half the usual time.

Mrs. Stephenson tried to keep bees, but found they would not thrive at Tapton. Many hives perished, and there was no case of success. The cause of failure was a puzzle to the engineer; but one day his acute powers of observation enabled him to unravel it. At the foot of the hill on which Tapton House stands, he saw some bees trying to rise up from amongst the grass, laden with honey and wax. They were already exhausted, as if with long flying; and then it occurred to him that the height at which the house stood above the bees’ feeding-ground rendered it difficult for them to reach their hives when heavy laden, and hence they sank exhausted. He afterwards incidentally mentioned the circumstance to Mr. Jesse the naturalist, who concurred in his view as to the cause of failure, and was much struck by the keen observation which had led to its solution.