During the time Robert attended school at Newcastle, his father made the boy’s education instrumental to his own. Robert was accustomed to spend some of his spare time at the rooms of the Literary and Philosophical Institute; and when he went home in the evening, he would recount to his father the results of his reading. Sometimes
he was allowed to take with him to Killingworth a volume of the ‘Repertory of Arts and Sciences,’ which father and son studied together. But many of the most valuable works belonging to the Newcastle Library were not lent out; these Robert was instructed to read and study, and bring away with him descriptions and sketches for his father’s information. His father also practised him in reading plans and drawings without reference to the written descriptions. He used to observe that “A good plan should always explain itself;” and, placing a drawing of an engine or machine before the youth, would say, “There, now, describe that to me—the arrangement and the action.” Thus he taught him to read a drawing as easily as he would read a page of a book. Both father and son profited by this excellent practice, which enabled them to apprehend with the greatest facility the details of even the most difficult and complicated mechanical drawing.
While 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]