The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles
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Samuel Smiles >> The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles
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Footnotes for Chapter VI.
*[1] 'Observations on Blindness and on the Employment of the other
Senses to supply the Loss of Sight.' By Mr. Bew.--'Memoirs of the
Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester,'
vol.i., pp. 172-174. Paper read 17th April, 1782.
*[2] The pillar was erected by Squire Dashwood in 1751; the lantern
on its summit was regularly lighted till 1788, and occasionally till
1808,, when it was thrown down and never replaced. The Earl of
Buckingham afterwards mounted a statue of George III. on the top.
*[3] Since the appearance of the first edition of this book, a
correspondent has informed us that there is another lighthouse
within 24 miles of London, not unlike that on Lincoln Heath. It is
situated a little to the south-east of the Woking station of the
South-western Railway, and is popularly known as "Woking Monument."
It stands on the verge of Woking Heath, which is a continuation of
the vast tract of heath land which extends in one direction as far
as Bagshot. The tradition among the inhabitants is, that one of the
kings of England was wont to hunt in the neighbourhood, when a fire
was lighted up in the beacon to guide him in case he should be
belated; but the probability is, that it was erected like that on
Lincoln Heath, for the guidance of ordinary wayfarers at night.
*[4] 'Journal of the Agricultural Society of England, 1843.'
LIFE OF THOMAS TELFORD.
CHAPTER I. ESKDALE.
[Image] Valley of "the Unblameable Shepherd", Eskdale
Thomas Telford was born in one of the most Solitary nooks of the
narrow valley of the Esk, in the eastern part of the county of
Dumfries, in Scotland. Eskdale runs north and south, its lower end
having been in former times the western march of the Scottish
border. Near the entrance to the dale is a tall column erected on
Langholm Hill, some twelve miles to the north of the Gretna Green
station of the Caledonian Railway,--which many travellers to and
from Scotland may have observed,--a monument to the late Sir John
Malcolm, Governor of Bombay, one of the distinguished natives of
the district. It looks far over the English border-lands, which
stretch away towards the south, and marks the entrance to the
mountainous parts of the dale, which lie to the north. From that
point upwards the valley gradually contracts, the road winding
along the river's banks, in some places high above the stream,
which rushes swiftly over the rocky bed below.
A few miles upward from the lower end of Eskdale lies the little
capital of the district, the town of Langholm; and there, in the
market-place, stands another monument to the virtues of the Malcolm
family in the statue erected to the memory of Admiral Sir Pulteney
Malcolm, a distinguished naval officer. Above Langholm, the country
becomes more hilly and moorland. In many places only a narrow strip
of land by the river's side is left available for cultivation;
until at length the dale contracts so much that the hills descend
to the very road, and there are only to be seen their steep
heathery sides sloping up towards the sky on either hand, and a
narrow stream plashing and winding along the bottom of the valley
among the rocks at their feet.
[Image] Telford's Native District
From this brief description of the character of Eskdale scenery,
it may readily be supposed that the district is very thinly peopled,
and that it never could have been capable of supporting a large
number of inhabitants. Indeed, previous to the union of the crowns
of England and Scotland, the principal branch of industry that
existed in the Dale was of a lawless kind. The people living on the
two sides of the border looked upon each other's cattle as their
own, provided only they had the strength to "lift" them. They were,
in truth, even during the time of peace, a kind of outcasts,
against whom the united powers of England and Scotland were often
employed. On the Scotch side of the Esk were the Johnstones and
Armstrongs, and on the English the Graemes of Netherby; both clans
being alike wild and lawless. It was a popular border saying that
"Elliots and Armstrongs ride thieves a';" and an old historian says
of the Graemes that "they were all stark moss-troopers and arrant
thieves; to England as well as Scotland outlawed." The neighbouring
chiefs were no better: Scott of Buccleugh, from whom the modern
Duke is descended, and Scott of Harden, the ancestor of the
novelist, being both renowned freebooters.
There stands at this day on the banks of the Esk, only a few miles
from the English border, the ruin of an old fortalice, called
Gilnockie Tower, in a situation which in point of natural beauty is
scarcely equalled even in Scotland. It was the stronghold of a
chief popularly known in his day as Johnnie Armstrong.*[1] He was a
mighty freebooter in the time of James V., and the terror of his
name is said to have extended as far as Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
between which town and his castle on the Esk he was accustomed to
levy black-mail, or "protection and forbearance money," as it was
called. The King, however, determining to put down by the strong
hand the depredations of the march men, made a sudden expedition
along the borders; and Johnnie Armstrong having been so ill-advised
as to make his appearance with his followers at a place called
Carlenrig, in Etterick Forest, between Hawick and Langholm, James
ordered him to instant execution. Had Johnnie Armstrong, like the
Scotts and Kers and Johnstones of like calling, been imprisoned
beforehand, he might possibly have lived to found a British
peerage; but as it was, the genius of the Armstrong dynasty was for
a time extinguished, only, however, to reappear, after the lapse
of a few centuries, in the person of the eminent engineer of
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the inventor of the Armstrong gun.
The two centuries and a half which have elapsed since then have
indeed seen extraordinary changes.*[2] The energy which the old
borderers threw into their feuds has not become extinct, but
survives under more benignant aspects, exhibiting itself in efforts
to enlighten, fertilize, and enrich the country which their
wasteful ardour before did so much to disturb and impoverish.
The heads of the Buccleugh and Elliot family now sit in the British
House of Lords. The descendant of Scott of Harden has achieved a
world-wide reputation as a poet and novelist; and the late Sir
James Graham, the representative of the Graemes of Netherby, on the
English side of the border, was one of the most venerable and
respected of British statesmen. The border men, who used to make
such furious raids and forays, have now come to regard each other,
across the imaginary line which divides them, as friends and
neighbours; and they meet as competitors for victory only at
agricultural meetings, where they strive to win prizes for the
biggest turnips or the most effective reaping-machines; while the
men who followed their Johnstone or Armstrong chiefs as prickers or
hobilers to the fray have, like Telford, crossed the border with
powers of road-making and bridge-building which have proved a
source of increased civilization and well-being to the population
of the entire United Kingdom.
The hamlet of Westerkirk, with its parish church and school,
lies in a narrow part of the valley, a few miles above Langholm.
Westerkirk parish is long and narrow, its boundaries being the
hill-tops on either side of the dale. It is about seven miles long
and two broad, with a population of about 600 persons of all ages.
Yet this number is quite as much as the district is able to
support, as is proved by its remaining as nearly as possible
stationary from one generation to another.*[3] But what becomes of
the natural increase of families? "They swarm off!" was the
explanation given to us by a native of the valley. "If they
remained at home," said he, "we should all be sunk in poverty,
scrambling with each other amongst these hills for a bare living.
But our peasantry have a spirit above that: they will not consent
to sink; they look up; and our parish schools give them a power of
making their way in the world, each man for himself. So they swarm
off--some to America, some to Australia, some to India, and some,
like Telford, work their way across the border and up to London."
One would scarcely have expected to find the birthplace of the
builder of the Menai Bridge and other great national works in so
obscure a corner of the kingdom. Possibly it may already have
struck the reader with surprise, that not only were all the early
engineers self-taught in their profession, but they were brought up
mostly in remote country places, far from the active life of great
towns and cities. But genius is of no locality, and springs alike
from the farmhouse, the peasant's hut, or the herd's shieling.
Strange, indeed, it is that the men who have built our bridges,
docks, lighthouses, canals, and railways, should nearly all have
been country-bred boys: Edwards and Brindley, the sons of small
farmers; Smeaton, brought up in his father's country house at
Austhorpe; Rennie, the son of a farmer and freeholder; and
Stephenson, reared in a colliery village, an engine-tenter's son.
But Telford, even more than any of these, was a purely country-bred
boy, and was born and brought up in a valley so secluded that it
could not even boast of a cluster of houses of the dimensions of a
village.
Telford's father was a herd on the sheep-farm of Glendinning.
The farm consists of green hills, lying along the valley of the Meggat,
a little burn, which descends from the moorlands on the east, and
falls into the Esk near the hamlet of Westerkirk. John Telford's
cottage was little better than a shieling, consisting of four mud
walls, spanned by a thatched roof. It stood upon a knoll near the
lower end of a gully worn in the hillside by the torrents of many
winters.
The ground stretches away from it in a long sweeping slope up to
the sky, and is green to the top, except where the bare grey rocks
in some places crop out to the day. From the knoll may be seen
miles on miles of hills up and down the valley, winding in and out,
sometimes branching off into smaller glens, each with its gurgling
rivulet of peaty-brown water flowing down from the mosses above.
Only a narrow strip of arable land is here and there visible along
the bottom of the dale, all above being sheep-pasture, moors, and
rocks. At Glendinning you seem to have got almost to the world's end.
There the road ceases, and above it stretch trackless moors,
the solitude of which is broken only by the whimpling sound of the
burns on their way to the valley below, the hum of bees gathering
honey among the heather, the whirr of a blackcock on the wing, the
plaintive cry of the ewes at lambing-time, or the sharp bark of the
shepherd's dog gathering the flock together for the fauld.
[Image] Telford's Birthplace
In this cottage on the knoll Thomas Telford was born on the 9th of
August, 1757, and before the year was out he was already an orphan.
The shepherd, his father, died in the month of November, and was
buried in Westerkirk churchyard, leaving behind him his widow and
her only child altogether unprovided for. We may here mention that
one of the first things which that child did, when he had grown up
to manhood and could "cut a headstone," was to erect one with the
following inscription, hewn and lettered by himself, over his
father's grave: "IN MEMORY OF
JOHN TELFORD,
WHO AFTER LIVING 33 YEARS
AN UNBLAMEABLE SHEPHERD,
DIED AT GLENDINNING,
NOVEMBER, 1757,"
a simple but poetical epitaph, which Wordsworth himself might have
written.
The widow had a long and hard struggle with the world before her;
but she encountered it bravely. She had her boy to work for, and,
destitute though she was, she had him to educate. She was helped,
as the poor so often are, by those of her own condition, and there
is no sense of degradation in receiving such help. One of the
risks of benevolence is its tendency to lower the recipient to the
condition of an alms-taker. Doles from poor's-boxes have this
enfeebling effect; but a poor neighbour giving a destitute widow a
help in her time of need is felt to be a friendly act, and is alike
elevating to the character of both. Though misery such as is
witnessed in large towns was quite unknown in the valley, there was
poverty; but it was honest as well as hopeful, and none felt
ashamed of it. The farmers of the dale were very primitive*[4]
in their manners and habits, and being a warm-hearted, though by no
means a demonstrative race, they were kind to the widow and her
fatherless boy. They took him by turns to live with them at their
houses, and gave his mother occasional employment. In summer she
milked the ewes and made hay, and in harvest she went a-shearing;
contriving not only to live, but to be cheerful.
The house to which the widow and her son removed at the Whitsuntide
following the death of her husband was at a place called The Crooks,
about midway between Glendinning and Westerkirk. It was a thatched
cot-house, with two ends; in one of which lived Janet Telford
(more commonly known by her own name of Janet Jackson) and her son
Tom, and in the other her neighbour Elliot; one door being common to
both.
[Image] Cottage at the Crooks.
Young Telford grew up a healthy boy, and he was so full of fun and
humour that he became known in the valley by the name of "Laughing
Tam." When he was old enough to herd sheep he went to live with a
relative, a shepherd like his father, and he spent most of his time
with him in summer on the hill-side amidst the silence of nature.
In winter he lived with one or other of the neighbouring farmers.
He herded their cows or ran errands, receiving for recompense his
meat, a pair of stockings, and five shillings a year for clogs.
These were his first wages, and as he grew older they were
gradually increased.
But Tom must now be put to school, and, happily, small though the
parish of Westerkirk was, it possessed the advantage of that
admirable institution, the parish school. The legal provision made
at an early period for the education of the people in Scotland,
proved one of their greatest boons. By imparting the rudiments of
knowledge to all, the parish schools of the country placed the
children of the peasantry on a more equal footing with the children
of the rich; and to that extent redressed the inequalities of
fortune. To start a poor boy on the road of life without
instruction, is like starting one on a race with his eyes bandaged
or his leg tied up. Compared with the educated son of the rich man,
the former has but little chance of sighting the winning post.
To our orphan boy the merely elementary teaching provided at the
parish school of Westerkirk was an immense boon. To master this was
the first step of the ladder he was afterwards to mount: his own
industry, energy, and ability must do the rest. To school
accordingly he went, still working a-field or herding cattle during
the summer months. Perhaps his own "penny fee" helped to pay the
teacher's hire; but it is supposed that his cousin Jackson defrayed
the principal part of the expense of his instruction. It was not
much that he learnt; but in acquiring the arts of reading, writing,
and figures, he learnt the beginnings of a great deal. Apart from
the question of learning, there was another manifest advantage to
the poor boy in mixing freely at the parish school with the sons of
the neighbouring farmers and proprietors. Such intercourse has an
influence upon a youth's temper, manners, and tastes, which is
quite as important in the education of character as the lessons of
the master himself; and Telford often, in after life, referred with
pleasure to the benefits which he had derived from his early school
friendships. Among those to whom he was accustomed to look back
with most pride, were the two elder brothers of the Malcolm family,
both of whom rose to high rank in the service of their country;
William Telford, a youth of great promise, a naval surgeon,
who died young; and the brothers William and Andrew Little, the former
of whom settled down as a farmer in Eskdale, and the latter,
a surgeon, lost his eyesight when on service off the coast of Africa.
Andrew Little afterwards established himself as a teacher at
Langholm, where he educated, amongst others, General Sir Charles
Pasley, Dr. Irving, the Custodier of the Advocate's Library at
Edinburgh; and others known to fame beyond the bounds of their
native valley. Well might Telford say, when an old man, full of
years and honours, on sitting down to write his autobiography,
"I still recollect with pride and pleasure my native parish of
Westerkirk, on the banks of the Esk, where I was born."
[Image] Westerkirk Church and School.
Footnotes for Chapter I.
*[1] Sir Waiter Scott, in his notes to the 'Minstrelsy of the
Scottish Border,' says that the common people of the high parts of
Liddlesdale and the country adjacent to this day hold the memory of
Johnnie Armstrong in very high respect.
*[2] It was long before the Reformation flowed into the secluded
valley of the Esk; but when it did, the energy of the Borderers
displayed itself in the extreme form of their opposition to the old
religion. The Eskdale people became as resolute in their
covenanting as they had before been in their free-booting; the
moorland fastnesses of the moss-troopers becoming the haunts of the
persecuted ministers in the reign of the second James. A little
above Langholm is a hill known as "Peden's View," and the well in
the green hollow at its foot is still called "Peden's Well"--that
place having been the haunt of Alexander Peden, the "prophet." His
hiding-place was among the alder-bushes in the hollow, while from
the hill-top he could look up the valley, and see whether the
Johnstones of Wester Hall were coming. Quite at the head of the
same valley, at a place called Craighaugh, on Eskdale Muir, one
Hislop, a young covenanter, was shot by Johnstone's men, and buried
where he fell; a gray slabstone still marking the place of his rest.
Since that time, however, quiet has reigned in Eskdale, and its
small population have gone about their daily industry from one
generation to another in peace. Yet though secluded and apparently
shut out by the surrounding hills from the outer world, there is
not a throb of the nation's heart but pulsates along the valley;
and when the author visited it some years since, he found that a
wave of the great Volunteer movement had flowed into Eskdale;
and the "lads of Langholm" were drilling and marching under their
chief, young Mr. Malcolm of the Burnfoot, with even more zeal than
in the populous towns and cities of the south.
*[3] The names of the families in the valley remain very nearly the
same as they were three hundred years ago--the Johnstones, Littles,
Scotts, and Beatties prevailing above Langholm; and the Armstrongs,
Bells, Irwins, and Graemes lower down towards Canobie and Netherby.
It is interesting to find that Sir David Lindesay, in his curious
drama published in 'Pinkerton's Scottish Poems' vol. ii., p. 156,
gives these as among the names of the borderers some three hundred
years since. One Common Thift, when sentenced to condign
punishment, thus remembers his Border friends in his dying speech:
"Adew! my bruther Annan thieves,
That holpit me in my mischeivis;
Adew! Grosaws, Niksonis, and Bells,
Oft have we fairne owrthreuch the fells:
Adew! Robsons, Howis, and Pylis,
That in our craft hes mony wilis:
Littlis, Trumbells, and Armestranges;
Baileowes, Erewynis, and Elwandis,
Speedy of flicht, and slicht of handis;
The Scotts of Eisdale, and the Gramis,
I haf na time to tell your nameis."
Telford, or Telfer, is an old name in the same neighbourhood,
commemorated in the well known border ballad of 'Jamie Telfer of
the fair Dodhead.' Sir W. Scott says, in the 'Minstrelsy,' that
"there is still a family of Telfers. residing near Langholm , who
pretend to derive their descent from the Telfers of the Dodhead."
A member of the family of "Pylis" above mentioned, is said to have
migrated from Ecclefechan southward to Blackburn, and there founded
the celebrated Peel family.
*[4] We were informed in the valley that about the time of Telford's
birth there were only two tea-kettles in the whole parish of
Westerkirk, one of which was in the house of Sir James Johnstone
of Wester Hall, and the other at "The Burn," the residence of
Mr. Pasley, grandfather of General Sir Charles Pasley.
CHAPTER II.
LANGHOLM--TELFORD LEARNS THE TRADE OF A STONEMASON.
The time arrived when young Telford must be put to some regular
calling. Was he to be a shepherd like his father and his uncle,
or was he to be a farm-labourer, or put apprentice to a trade?
There was not much choice; but at length it was determined to bind
him to a stonemason. In Eskdale that trade was for the most part
confined to the building of drystone walls, and there was very
little more art employed in it than an ordinarily neat-handed
labourer could manage. It was eventually decided to send the
youth--and he was now a strong lad of about fifteen--to a mason at
Lochmaben, a small town across the hills to the westward, where a
little more building and of a better sort--such as of farm-houses,
barns, and road-bridges--was carried on than in his own immediate
neighbourhood. There he remained only a few months; for his master
using him badly, the high-spirited youth would not brook it, and
ran away, taking refuge with his mother at The Crooks, very much to
her dismay.
What was now to be done with Tom? He was willing to do anything or
go anywhere rather than back to his Lochmaben master. In this
emergency his cousin Thomas Jackson, the factor or land-steward at
Wester Hall, offered to do what he could to induce Andrew Thomson,
a small mason at Langholm, to take Telford for the remainder of his
apprenticeship; and to him he went accordingly. The business
carried on by his new master was of a very humble sort. Telford,
in his autobiography, states that most of the farmers' houses in the
district then consisted of "one storey of mud walls, or rubble
stones bedded in clay, and thatched with straw, rushes, or heather;
the floors being of earth, and the fire in the middle, having a
plastered creel chimney for the escape of the smoke; while, instead
of windows, small openings in the thick mud walls admitted a scanty
light." The farm-buildings were of a similarly wretched
description.
The principal owner of the landed property in the neighbourhood was
the Duke of Buccleugh. Shortly after the young Duke Henry succeeded
to the title and estates, in 1767, he introduced considerable
improvements in the farmers' houses and farm-steadings, and the
peasants' dwellings, as well as in the roads throughout Eskdale.
Thus a demand sprang up for masons' labour, and Telford's master
had no want of regular employment for his hands. Telford profited
by the experience which this increase in the building operations of
the neighbourhood gave him; being employed in raising rough walls
and farm enclosures, as well as in erecting bridges across rivers
wherever regular roads for wheel carriages were substituted for the
horse-tracks formerly in use.
During the greater part of his apprenticeship Telford lived in the
little town of Langholm, taking frequent opportunities of visiting
his mother at The Crooks on Saturday evenings, and accompanying her
to the parish church of Westerkirk on Sundays. Langholm was then a
very poor place, being no better in that respect than the district
that surrounded it. It consisted chiefly of mud hovels, covered
with thatch--the principal building in it being the Tolbooth,
a stone and lime structure, the upper part of which was used as a
justice-hall and the lower part as a gaol. There were, however,
a few good houses in the little town, occupied by people of the
better class, and in one of these lived an elderly lady, Miss Pasley,
one of the family of the Pasleys of Craig. As the town was so
small that everybody in it knew everybody else, the ruddyy-cheeked,
laughing mason's apprentice soon became generally known to all the
townspeople, and amongst others to Miss Pasley. When she heard that
he was the poor orphan boy from up the valley, the son of the
hard-working widow woman, Janet Jackson, so "eident" and so
industrious, her heart warmed to the mason's apprentice, and she
sent for him to her house. That was a proud day for Tom; and when
he called upon her, he was not more pleased with Miss Pasley's
kindness than delighted at the sight of her little library of
books, which contained more volumes than he had ever seen before.
Having by this time acquired a strong taste for reading, and
exhausted all the little book stores of his friends, the joy of the
young mason may be imagined when Miss Pasley volunteered to lend
him some books from her own library. Of course, he eagerly and
thankfully availed himself of the privilege; and thus, while
working as an apprentice and afterwards as a journeyman, Telford
gathered his first knowledge of British literature, in which he was
accustomed to the close of his life to take such pleasure.
He almost always had some book with him, which he would snatch a
few minutes to read in the intervals of his work; and on winter
evenings he occupied his spare time in poring over such volumes as
came in his way, usually with no better light than the cottage
fire. On one occasion Miss Pasley lent him 'Paradise Lost,' and he
took the book with him to the hill-side to read. His delight was
such that it fairly taxed his powers of expression to describe it.
He could only say; "I read, and read, and glowred; then read, and
read again." He was also a great admirer of Burns, whose writings
so inflamed his mind that at the age of twenty-two, when barely out
of his apprenticeship, we find the young mason actually breaking
out in verse.*[1] By diligently reading all the books that he could
borrow from friends and neighbours, Telford made considerable
progress in his learning; and, what with his scribbling of "poetry"
and various attempts at composition, he had become so good and
legible a writer that he was often called upon by his less-educated
acquaintances to pen letters for them to their distant friends.
He was always willing to help them in this way; and, the other working
people of the town making use of his services in the same manner,
all the little domestic and family histories of the place soon
became familiar to him. One evening a Langholm man asked Tom to
write a letter for him to his son in England; and when the young
scribe read over what had been written to the old man's dictation,
the latter, at the end of almost every sentence, exclaimed,
"Capital! capital!" and at the close he said, "Well! I declare,
Tom! Werricht himsel' couldna ha' written a better!"--Wright being
a well-known lawyer or "writer" in Langholm.
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