“Let me but do my work from day to day
In field or forest, at the desk or loom,
In roaring market-place, or tranquil room;
Let me but find it in my heart to say,
When vagrant wishes beckon me astray,
This is my work, my blessing, not my doom;
Of all who live, I am the one by whom
This work can best be done in my own way.
Then shall I see it not too great nor small,
To suit my spirit and to prove my powers;
Then shall I cheerfully greet the labouring hours,
And cheerful turn, when the long shadows fall
At eventide, to play, and love, and rest,
Because I know for me my work is best.”
“This is my work, my blessing, not my doom ... because I know for me my work is best”: can it be said that the man who worked in the spirit of those words, having them before him like a prayer each morning and each night, was not fulfilling destiny in a noble way? No mean thought of self, no small striving after worldly success, but always the endeavour to work in his own way to suit his spirit and to prove his powers. If that way be narrow—well, so is the way narrow that leads to eternal life.
But, it might be said, Andrews had such opportunity and the rare good fortune also to have his spirit suited with work that proved his powers. It was so. Yet one knows certainly that had his opportunity been different he would still have seized it; have been the best engine driver in Ulster or have greased wheels contentedly and with all diligence. One remembers the sentence from Ruskin which he had printed on his Christmas card for 1910: “What we think, or what we know, or what we believe, is in the end of little consequence. The only thing of consequence is what we do.”
The best doing, always and every way, one knows how that aspiration would appeal to Andrews, good Unitarian that he was; just as one knows how Ruskin, he who made roads and had such burning sympathy always with honest workers, would have appreciated Andrews and agreed that the name of such a man should not perish as have the names of most other of the world’s great Architects and Builders. “To-day I commence my twenty-first year at the works, all interesting and happy days. I would go right back over them again if I could”: one feels that the spirit of those words, written by Andrews to his wife on May 1st, 1909, would have appealed to Ruskin; and had he known the man would he not have noted, as did another observer—Professor W. G. S. Adams,[2] of Oxford—“how it was to the human question the man’s mind always turned,” and been eager to judge, “that here was one who had in him the true stuff of the best kind of captain of industry”?
A captain of industry: the phrase is happy, and convincing too is the passage wherein Mr. Erskine Childers gives his impression of Andrews as, towards the close of 1911, he saw him one day working in the Island Yard.
“It was bracing to be near him,” writes Mr. Childers, and then goes on: “His mind seemed to revel in its mastery, both of the details and of the ensemble, both of the technical and the human side of a great science, while restlessly seeking to enlarge its outlook, conquer new problems, and achieve an ever fresh perfection. Whether it was about the pitch of a propeller or the higher problems of design, speed, and mercantile competition, one felt the same grip and enthusiasm and, above all perhaps, the same delight in frank self-revelation.”
V.
We come back, then, to Andrews as Mr. Childers saw him on that day in the Yard—big, strong, inspiriting, full of enthusiasm and mastery—a genuine captain of industry there on the scene of his triumphs, yet revealing himself as modestly, we know, as any of the great army of workers under his direction.
Before attempting to give some further and completer account of the relations which existed between him and the Islanders, it may be well to give a letter written by Andrews in 1905 to a young relative then beginning work as an engineer:—
“I am sorry I did not get a shake of your fist, old chap, before leaving, just to wish you good luck at your business and a good time at ——