Grant Allen - Biographies of Working Men

My acknowledgments are due to Dr. Smiles's "Lives of the Engineers,""Life of the Stephensons," and "Life of a Scotch Naturalist;" to LadyEastlake's "Life of Gibson;" to Mr. Holden's "Life of Sir WilliamHerschel;" to M. Seusier's "J. F. Millet, Sa Vie et Ses Oeuvres;" andto Mr. Thayer's "Life of President Garfield;" from which most of thefacts here narrated have been derived.

G.A.

High up among the heather-clad hills which form the broad dividingbarrier between England and Scotland, the little river Esk brawls andbickers over its stony bed through a wild land of barren braesides andbrown peat mosses, forming altogether some of the gloomiest and mostforbidding scenery in the whole expanse of northern Britain. Almostthe entire bulk of the counties of Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, and Ayr iscomposed of just such solemn desolate upland wolds, with only a fewstray farms or solitary cottages sprinkled at wide distances over theirbare bleak surface, and with scarcely any sign of life in any part savethe little villages which cluster here and there at long intervalsaround some stern and simple Scottish church. Yet the hardy people whoinhabit this wild and chilly moorland country may well be considered torank among the best raw material of society in the whole of Britain;for from the peasant homes of these southern Scotch Highlands have comeforth, among a host of scarcely less distinguished natives, three men,at least, who deserve to take their place in the very front line ofBritish thinkers or workersThomas Telford, Robert Burns, and ThomasCarlyle. By origin, all three alike belonged in the very strictestsense to the working classes; and the story of each is full of lessonsor of warnings for every one of us: but that of Telford is perhaps themost encouraging and the most remarkable of all, as showing how muchmay be accomplished by energy and perseverance, even under the mostabsolutely adverse and difficult circumstances.

Near the upper end of Eskdale, in the tiny village of Westerkirk, ayoung shepherd's wife gave birth to a son on the 9th of August, 1757.Her husband, John Telford, was employed in tending sheep on aneighbouring farm, and he and his Janet occupied a small cottage closeby, with mud walls and rudely thatched roof, such as in southernEngland even the humblest agricultural labourer would scarcely consentwillingly to inhabit. Before the child was three months old, hisfather died; and Janet Telford was left alone in the world with herunweaned baby. But in remote country districts, neighbours are oftenmore neighbourly than in great towns; and a poor widow can manage toeke out a livelihood for herself with an occasional lift from thehelping hands of friendly fellow-villagers. Janet Telford had nothingto live upon save her own ten fingers; but they were handy enough,after the sturdy Scotch fashion, and they earned some sort oflivelihood in a humble way for herself and her fatherless boy. Thefarmers about found her work on their farms at haymaking or milking,and their wives took the child home with them while its mother was busylabouring in the harvest fields. Amid such small beginnings did thegreatest of English engineers before the railway era receive his firsthard lessons in the art of life.

After her husband's death, the poor widow removed from her old cottageto a still more tiny hut, which she shared with a neighboura verysmall hut, with a single door for both families; and here young TamTelford spent most of his boyhood in the quiet honourable poverty ofthe uncomplaining rural poor. As soon as he was big enough to herdsheep, he was turned out upon the hillside in summer like any otherragged country laddie, and in winter he tended cows, receiving forwages only his food and money enough to cover the cost of his scantyclothing. He went to school, too; how, nobody now knows: but he DIDgo, to the parish school of Westerkirk, and there he learnt with awill, in the winter months, though he had to spend the summer on themore profitable task of working in the fields. To a steady earnest boylike young Tam Telford, however, it makes all the difference in theworld that he should have been to school, no matter how simply. Thosetwenty-six letters of the alphabet, once fairly learnt, are the key,after all, to all the book-learning in the whole world. Without them,the shepherd-boy might remain an ignorant, unprogressive shepherd allhis life long, even his undeniable native energy using itself up onnothing better than a wattled hurdle or a thatched roof; with them, thepath is open before him which led Tam Telford at last to the MenaiBridge And Westminster Abbey.

When Tam had gradually eaten his way through enough thin oatmealporridge (with very little milk, we fear) to make him into a hearty ladof fifteen, it began to be high time for him to choose himself a finalprofession in life, such as he was able. And here already the borntastes of the boy began to show themselves: for he had no liking forthe homely shepherd's trade; he felt a natural desire for a chisel anda hammerthe engineer was there already in the grainand he wasaccordingly apprenticed to a stonemason in the little town ofLochmaben, beyond the purple hills to eastward. But his master was ahard man; he had small mercy for the raw lad; and after trying tomanage with him for a few months, Tam gave it up, took the law into hisown hands, and ran away. Probably the provocation was severe, for inafter-life Telford always showed himself duly respectful to constitutedauthority; and we know that petty self-made master-workmen are oftenapt to be excessively severe to their own hired helpers, and especiallyto helpless lads or young apprentices. At any rate, Tam wouldn't goback; and in the end, a well-to-do cousin, who had risen to the proudposition of steward at the great hall of the parish, succeeded ingetting another mason at Langholm, the little capital of Eskdale, totake over the runaway for the remainder of the term of his indentures.

At Langholm, a Scotch country town of the quietest and sleepiestdescription, Tam Telford passed the next eight years of his uneventfulearly life, first as an apprentice, and afterwards as a journeymanmason of the humblest type. He had a good mother, and he was a goodson. On Saturday nights he generally managed to walk over to thecottage at Westerkirk, and accompany the poor widow to the Sundayservices at the parish kirk. As long as she lived, indeed, he neverforgot her; and one of the first tasks he set himself when he was outof his indentures was to cut a neat headstone with a simple butbeautiful inscription for the grave of that shepherd father whom he hadpractically never seen. At Langholm, an old maiden lady, Miss Pasley,interested herself kindly in Janet Telford's rising boy. She lent himwhat of all things the eager lad most neededbooks; and the youngmason applied himself to them in all his spare moments with thevigorous ardour and perseverance of healthy youth. The books he readwere not merely those which bore directly or indirectly upon his owncraft: if they had been, Tam Telford might have remained nothing morethan a journeyman mason all the days of his life. It is a greatmistake, even from the point of view of mere worldly success, for ayoung man to read or learn only what "pays" in his particular calling;the more he reads and learns, the more will he find that seeminglyuseless things "pay" in the end, and that what apparently pays least,often really pays most in the long run. This is not the only or thebest reason why every man should aim at the highest possiblecultivation of his own talents, be they what they may; but it is initself a very good reason, and it is a sufficient answer for those whowould deter us from study of any high kind on the ground that it "doesno good." Telford found in after-life that his early acquaintance withsound English literature did do him a great deal of good: it opened andexpanded his mind; it trained his intelligence; it stored his brainwith images and ideas which were ever after to him a source ofunmitigated delight and unalloyed pleasure. He read whenever he hadnothing else to do. He read Milton with especial delight; and he alsoread the verses that his fellow-countryman, Rob Burns, the Ayrshireploughman, was then just beginning to speak straight to the heart ofevery aspiring Scotch peasant lad. With these things Tam Telfordfilled the upper stories of his brain quite as much as with the tradedetails of his own particular useful handicraft; and the result soonshowed that therein Tam Telford had not acted uncannily or unwisely.