Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 70, No. 434, December, 1851

And now, it only remains for us to bid our entertaining fellow-traveller heartily farewell. Although, especially in the first volume, we have felt disposed to quarrel with his style occasionally, we have found his good-humour, his thoughtful sentiment, and his reckless wit, at last irresistible. His very imperfections often prove his fidelity, and his apparent contradictions his innate truthfulness. We commend to him a little more study of the art of composition, and a good deal more care; but we shall consider ourselves fortunate when we meet with another author of as many faults, if they are atoned for by as many merits.

THE CHAMPIONS OF THE RAIL

A History of the English Railway: its Social Relations and Revelations. By John Francis. 2 vols. London.

A good many years ago, a late correspondent and writer in this Magazine, Dr M'Nish of Glasgow, published a work entitled The Anatomy of Drunkenness. The book was an excellent one: most perfect in its portraiture of the different phenomena which accompany and succeed a debauch; and in the hands of a regular tee-totaller, it was undeniably worth some reams of vapid sermons. The preacher, who never, we are bound to believe, had experienced the vinous or spirituous excitement in his own person, was enabled from it to hold forth, with all the unction of reality, to his terrified audience, upon the awful effects of intemperance. Old ladies, who rarely in their lives had transgressed beyond a second glass of weak negus at some belated party, when whist or commerce had been suggested to while away the weary hours, listened to the warnings of the gifted apostle of temperance, and hied them home in the tremendous conviction that they had only escaped, by the merest miracle, the horrors of delirium tremens. Dyspeptic gentlemen were rendered wretched, as they reflected that, for years past, they had been accustomed to wash down their evening Finnan haddock, or moderate board of oysters, with a pint of Younger's prime ale, or, mayhap, a screeching tumbler. The enormity of their offence became visible to their eyes, and they incontinently conceived amendment.

But we doubt very much whether the Anatomy would have been pleasant reading to a gentleman who overnight had imbibed "not wisely but too well." How could he bear to be told, not only of the sensations of the previous evening, minutely traced through the gradations of each consecutive decanter, but of the state of thirst and unnatural discomfort to which he was presently a victim? Would it relieve his headach to assure him that, after swallowing three bottles of claret, most men are apt to be out of sorts? Could he, the sufferer, derive any assuagement of his pains by knowing – if he did not know it already – that unlimited brandy and water, however agreeable during consumption, was clearly prejudicial to the nerves? Sermons may come too soon. The sufferer ought to be allowed at least a day or two to recover, before his offence is laid before him in all its huge deformity. Give him time to be ashamed of himself. A man's own conscience is his best accuser; and, unless the vice be absolutely inherent, or totally beyond the hope of remedy, his own misery will be more likely to effect a cure than any amount of philosophical dissertations upon its nature.

These thoughts have been irresistibly suggested to us by a perusal of the two ponderous tomes of Mr Francis, entitled, A History of the English Railway: its Social Relations and Revelations. A more unfortunate kind of apocalypse could hardly have been hazarded at the present time. Most people are tolerably well aware, without the aid of Mr Francis, of the changes in social relations which have been worked by the British railway; and as for revelations, a good many would give a trifle to have these entirely suppressed. We have not yet arrived at the time when the history of the "'45" of this century can be calmly or dispassionately written. Too many of us, still remanent here, have burned our fingers, and too many of our kith and kin have been sent to exile, in consequence of that notable enterprise. Since the standard was last unfurled in the vale of Glenmutchkin, a considerable number of the population have been bitten by the sod, if they did not literally bite it. That system of turning over turfs, by the aid of silver spades and mahogany wheelbarrows, was more fatal to the peace of families than the accumulation of any number of Celtic bagpipers whatever. It was a grand interment of capital. Who has forgotten the misery of those times, when letters of railway calls arrived punctually once a quarter? Two pound ten per share might be a moderate instalment; but if you were the unfortunate holder of a hundred shares, you had better have been boarded with a vampire. Repudiation, though a clear Christian duty to yourself and your family, was utterly impossible. It mattered not that the majority of the original committeemen and directors had bolted; you, the subscriber, were tied to the stake. The work was begun, the contracts opened, and money must be had at all hazards and sacrifices. You found yourself in the pitiable situation of an involuntary philanthropist. Threescore hulking Irish navvies were daily fed, liquored, and lodged at your expense. Your dwindling resources were torn from you, to make the fortunes of engineers and contractors. So long as you had a penny, or a convertible equivalent, you were forced to surrender it. Your case was precisely similar to that of the Jew incarcerated in the vaults beneath the royal treasury of King John. One by one all your teeth were drawn. If you managed to survive the extraction of the last grinder, and to behold the opening of the line, your position was not one whit improved. Dividend of course there was none. That awful and mysterious item of charge, "working expenses," engulfed nearly the whole revenue. What was over went to pay interest on preference debentures. That gallant body of men, the directors, laid before you, with the utmost candour, a state of the affairs of the company; from which it appeared that they had exceeded their borrowing powers by perhaps a brace of millions, and had raised the money by interposing their own individual security. These obligations you were, of course, expected to redeem; and an appeal was made to your finer feelings, urging you to consent to a further issue of stock!

It is no great consolation to the men who have suffered more woes from the railways, than fell to the lot of the much-enduring Ulysses from the relentless anger of the deities, to know that they have rendered perfect a vast chain of internal communication throughout the country. We doubt whether the Israelites, who built them, took any especial pride in surveying the pile of the pyramids. The gentleman in embarrassed circumstances, who is pondering over the memory of his perished capital, is not likely to feel his heart expand with enthusiasm at the thought that through his agency, and that of his fellows, thousands of bagmen are daily being whirled along the rails with the velocity of lightning. He may even be pardoned if, in the sadness and despondency of his soul, he should seriously ask himself what, after all, is the use of this confounded hurry? Is a man's life prolonged because he can get along at the rate of forty or fifty miles an hour? Is existence to be measured by locomotion? In that case Chifney, who passed the best part of his life in the saddle, ought to have been considered as a rival to Methuselah, and a stoker on the Great Western lives in one week far longer than the venerable Parr! Is enjoyment multiplied? That, too, will admit of a serious doubt. In a railway carriage you have no fair view of the fresh aspect of nature: you dash through the landscape – supposing that there is one – before its leading features are impressed upon your mind. There is no time for details, or even for reflection. You must accommodate your thought to your pace, otherwise you are left behind, and see nothing whatever for at least a couple of stations. But for the most part your way lies between embankments and cuttings, representing either sections of whinstone, or bare banks of turf, dotted over with brown patches, where the engine has effected arson. Even furze will not willingly flourish in such an uncomfortable locality. Then you roar through tunnels, the passage of which makes your flesh creep – for you cannot divest yourself of a horrid idea that you may possibly be encountered in the centre of the darkness by an opposing engine, and be pounded into paste by the shock of that terrific tilt; or that a keystone of the arch may give way, and the whole train be buried in the centre of the excavated mountain. Sensual gratification there is none. If you do not condescend to the iniquity of carrying sandwiches along with you – in which case your habiliments are certain to be grievously defiled with buttered crumbs – you are driven by the pangs of sheer hunger into the refreshment-room at some station, and find yourself at the bar of an inferior gin-palace. Very bad is the pork-pie, for which you are charged an exorbitant ransom. Call ye this sherry, my masters? If it be so, commend us for the future to Bucellas. The oranges look well outside, but the moment you have penetrated the rind, you find that they have been boiled and are fozy. Do not indulge in the vain hope that you may venture on a glass of anything hot. Hot enough you will find it with a vengeance; for, the instant that you receive the rummer, the bell is sure to ring, and you must either scald your throat by gulping down two mouthfuls of mahogany-water raised to a temperature which would melt solder, or consign the prepaid potion to the leisure of the attendant Hebe. Smoking is strictly prohibited. Even if you are alone in a carriage, you cannot indulge in that luxury without rendering yourself liable to a fine; and, if your appetite should overcome your prudence, and you should venture to set the law at defiance, before you have inhaled two whiffs, a railway guard appears as if by magic at the window – for those fellows have the scent of the vulture, and can race along the foot-boards as nimbly as a cat along a gutter – and you are ordered to abandon your Havanna. Under such circumstances, literature is a poor resource. You read the Times twice over, advertisements and all, and then sink into a feverish slumber, from which you are awakened by a demand from a ruffian in blue livery, with a glazed leather belt across his shoulder, for the exhibition of your ticket. Talk of the inconvenience of passports abroad! The Continental system is paradisaical compared with ours. At length, after fingering your watch with an insane desire to accelerate its movement, you run into the ribs of something, which resembles the skeleton of a whale – the train stops – and you know that your journey is at an end. You select your luggage, after having undergone the scrutiny of a member of the police force, who evidently thinks that he has seen you before under circumstances of considerable peculiarity, ensconce yourself in a cab, and drive off, being favoured at the gate of the station by a shower of diminutive pamphlets, purporting to be poetical tributes to the merits of Messrs Moses and Hyams. You have done the distance in twelve hours, but pleasure you have had none.

Mr Francis, who is gifted with no more imagination than an ordinary tortoise, though he asserts the superiority of the hare, begins his book with an exceedingly stupid dissertation upon the difficulties of ancient travel. Broken bridges, impassable quagmires, and ferocious highwaymen constitute leading features in his picture; and, as you read him, you marvel, between your fits of yawning, what manner of men our ancestors must have been to brave so many dangers. Sheer drivel all of it! The old roads were uncommonly good, and the bridges kept in splendid repair from the time they were built by the Romans. Who ever heard of a quagmire on a turnpike? As for a casual encounter with Turpin, Duval, or any other of the minions of the moon, we are decidedly of opinion that such incidents must have added much to the excitement of the journey. A stout fellow, well mounted, usually carried about him both pops and a cutlass, and, if he was cool and collected, might very easily square accounts with the most ardent clerk of St Nicholas. Does Mr Francis really suppose that the author of Jack Sheppard likes railway travelling? Not he. Dearer to his soul is a prancing prad upon Hounslow Heath than all the engines that ever whistled along a line. Mount him upon Black Bess, arm him with a brace of barkers, and in the twinkling of an eye there would be daylight through the carcase of the Golden Farmer. Is adventure nothing? Had the road no joys? Are we to consider the whole universe worthless, except those black dots which in the maps represent cities? Was nature made in vain, in order that men might hasten from town to town, at the tail of a shrieking engine, regardless of all the glorious scenery which intervenes? To our taste, the old mode of travelling – nay, the oldest – was infinitely superior to the present sickening system. You rose by times in the morning; took a substantial breakfast of beef and ale – none of your miserable slops – and mounted your horse between your saddle-bags, in time to hear the lark carolling on his earliest flight to heaven. Your way ran through dingle and thicket, along the banks of rivers, skirting magnificent parks, rich in the possession of primeval oaks, under which the deer lay tranquilly and still. You entered a village, stopped at the door of the public-house, and cooled your brow in the foam of the wholesome home-brewed. You dined at mid-day, in some town where the execrable inventions of Arkwright and Watt were unknown; where you encountered only honest, healthy, rosy-cheeked Christians, who went regularly once a-week to church, and identified the devil with the first dissenter – instead of meeting gangs of hollow-eyed lean mechanics, talking radicalism, and discussing the fundamental points of the Charter. You moved through merry England as a man ought to do, who is both content with his own lot and can enjoy the happiness of others. As you saw the sun rising, so you saw him set. The clouds reddened in the west – you heard the sweet carol of the thrush from the coppice, and lingered to catch the melody. The shades of evening grew deeper. The glow-worms lit their tiny lanterns on the bank, the owl flitted past with noiseless wing, the village candles began to appear in the distance; and as you dismounted at the door of your humble inn, and surrendered your weary beast to the hands of the careful hostler, you felt that you were the richer by a day spent in the fresh air and gladsome sunshine, and made happy by all the sounds and sights which are dear to the heart of man.

But this was solitary travelling, and might not suit every one. Well – if you were a little fellow, deficient in pluck, and sorely afraid of robbers, you might have company for the asking. At every large inn on the road there were at least a dozen travellers who, for the sake of security, agreed to journey in company. Was that no fun? Have you anything like it in your modern railways? Just compare your own experiences of a rocket-flight along the Great Western with Chaucer's delineation of his Canterbury pilgrimage, and you will see what you have lost. Nice sort of tales you would elicit either from that beetle-browed Bradford Free-Trader, evidently a dealer in devil's-dust, who is your vis-à-vis in the railway carriage; or from that singular specimen of a nun who is ogling you deliberately on the left! Can you associate the story of Palamon and Arcite – can you connect anything which is noble, lofty, inspiriting, humane, or gentle, with a journey made in an express train? If not, so much the worse for the present times. Doubtless you may hear something about Thompson or Bright, but we may be excused if we prefer the mention of the earlier heroes. Also, you may pick up information touching the price of calicoes, or the value of stocks, or the amount of exports of cotton twist – and we wish you much good of all that you get. But, O dear, is that travelling? Would you like to go from London to Ispahan in such company? How long do you think you could stand it? And yet this is the improved system of locomotion for which we are told to be thankful, and in honour of which such weariful volumes as those of Mr Francis are written.

"But, mercy on us!" we hear Mr Francis or some of his backers exclaim – "is it nothing that commercial gentlemen can now make four trips a-day between Manchester and Liverpool, and do a stroke of business on each occasion?" We reply, that it would be better for the said commercial gentlemen, both here and hereafter, if they would content themselves with a more moderate pursuit of Mammon. Happiness in this life does not depend upon the amount of sales effected. The assistant in the London grocer's shop, who daily ties up a thousand packages of tea and sugar, is not greatly to be envied beyond his brother in the country, who twists the twine around fifty. We have an intense respect for work while kept within wholesome limits; but we cannot regard the man whose sole pursuit is grubbing after gold as otherwise than an ignominious slave. The railways are in one sense excellent things. You can get from point to point, if necessity requires it, much sooner than before, at less cost, and perhaps with less inconvenience. But there the advantage ends. There is no pleasure in them; and, compared with former methods of locomotion, they are decidedly less healthy and less instructive. We decry them not. We only wish to stop the babbling of the blockheads who would have us to believe that, until the steam-engine was invented, this earth was an unendurable waste, a wilderness of barbarians, and an unfit residence for civilised and enlightened man. Would the genius either of Shakspeare or Newton have been greater had they known of the rails? Would the splendour of the reign of Elizabeth have been heightened had Stephenson then existed?

The admiration of Mr Francis for the railway system is so intense as to be purely ludicrous. He considers every man connected with its development – whether as engineer, contractor, or director – as a positive public hero; and this work of his seems intended as a kind of Iliad, to chronicle their several achievements. Since we last met, Mr Francis has been hard at work upon his style. Formerly he went along, pleasantly enough, without any great effort: now he is not satisfied unless he can eclipse Mr Macaulay. He has read the History of England to some purpose. Fascinated by the brilliancy of the sketches which the accomplished historian has drawn of the statesmen of the age of William of Orange, Mr Francis thinks he will not do justice to his subject unless he adopts a similar mode of handling. Unfortunately he has no statesmen to celebrate. But he can do quite as well. There are surveyors and contractors by the score, whose portraits in his eyes are just as interesting. Accordingly, we have a repetition of the old scene in the play. A voice without is heard calling, "Francis!" To which summons Francis incontinently replieth, "Anon, anon, sir!" and then – "Enter Poins, Peto, Gadshill, and the rest." No loftier apparition ever comes upon the stage; but we are warned that, in surveying these, we look upon individuals destined in all coming time to occupy a lofty niche in British history. Thus, to quote at random from the index, we have the following entries – "Richard Creed … his services and character." "Who may this Mr Richard Creed be?" says the unconscious reader; "we never heard of him before!" "Fool!" quoth Francis, "he was the Secretary of the London and Birmingham line! 'On his honesty and integrity,' said Mr Glyn on one occasion emphatically, 'I pin my faith, and you may pin yours also!'" And he adds, referring to an occasion which must have been exceedingly gratifying to the feelings of the recipient – "The testimonial to this gentleman, in 1844, was worthy the munificence of the givers. It is not often that a cheque for two thousand one hundred guineas accompanies an expression of opinion, or that the rich man's praise fructifies into a service of plate." As we contemplate our unadorned sideboard, we acknowledge the truth of this remark; still, we hesitate to exalt Mr Creed to the rank of a hero. Then we light on "Undertakings of Thomas Brassey… Anecdote concerning him." Mr Brassey is a contractor, eminent no doubt; but so, in his own age, must have been the Roman gentleman who undertook the construction of the Cloaca Maxima, though his name has unfortunately perished. Then appears "Henry Booth… His services." We trust they were properly acknowledged. Then, "Personal sketches of Mr Locke and Mr Chaplin." We are greatly edified by the silhouettes. "Personal sketch of Samuel Morton Peto." We shall try, if possible, not to forget him. Much as Mr Francis has done to perpetuate the memory of these great men, it is plain that his powers have been cramped with the space of two thick octavo volumes. In order to make his Iliad perfect, we ought to have had a catalogue of the chiefs of the navvies. But we must rest satisfied with the acute remark of Herder, that "the burden of the song is infinite, but the powers of the human voice are finite." Mr Francis has done what he can. Creed and Brassey – Brunel and Locke – Chaplin, Peto, and Vignolles, live within his inspired volumes; and we beg to congratulate them on account of that assured immortalisation. They are the salt of the earth. The compilers of traffic-tables have disappeared – the old standing witnesses before committees of the House of Commons are dumb – the young engineering gentlemen, who could do anything they pleased in the way of levelling mountains, are amusing themselves in California or elsewhere – even the mighty counsel, the holders of a hundred briefs, for which, for the most part, they rendered but indifferent service, are unsung. But the others live. In the British Valhalla they are assured of an adequate niche, thanks to Mr Francis, who, as Captain Dangerfield says, is ready to stake his reputation that they are the only men worthy of record in such an enlightened age as our own.

No – we are wrong. The man of all others to be deeply venerated is "George Carr Glyn, Esq., Chairman of the London and North-Western Railway," to whom these volumes are respectfully dedicated. Of Mr Glyn's career as a statesman we know absolutely nothing. We are not even aware to what section of politicians he belongs, so utter is our ignorance of his fame. As we read the pages of Francis, and encountered the continual eulogiums heaped upon this gentleman, we felt remarkably uncomfortable. We could not divest ourselves of the notion that we had been asleep for some quarter of a century, and had therefore missed the opportunity of witnessing the appearance of a new and most brilliant star in the political horizon. About Mr Glyn, Francis has no manner of doubt. He is not only the most sagacious, but the most clever personage extant, for every purpose which can smooth railway difficulties. He is the Ulysses of his line, and can rap Thersites on the sconce, if that cynical fiend should insist upon an awkward question. We really and unaffectedly ask pardon of Mr Glyn, if we mistake him through his eulogist. We have no other means of knowing him; and therefore he must settle the correctness of the following sketch with Mr Francis, who appears as the voluntary artist. If the drawing is to the mind of Mr Glyn, and if it meets his ideas of ethics, we have nothing in the world to say against it, having no interest whatever in the line over which he presides. Hear Francis: "The proper place to see Mr Glyn is as chairman in that noble room, where, with an earnest multitude around him, with the representative of every class and caste before him – with Jew and Gentile ready to carp at and criticise his statements – he yet moves them at his pleasure, and leads them at his will. And perhaps the ascendency of one man over many is seldom more agreeably seen than when, standing before a huge expectant audience, he enlivens the platitudes of one with some light epigrammatic touch, answers another with a clear tabular statement, or replies to a third with some fallacy so like a fact that the recipient sits contentedly down, about as wise as he was before." This is, to say the least of it, an equivocal sort of panegyric. We all know what is implied by the term "fallacies" in railway matters, and some of us have suffered in consequence. According to our view, this interchange of fallacies between directors and shareholders is a custom by no means laudable, or to be held in especial repute. In pure matters of business, the less frequently fallacies are resorted to, the better. They are apt, in the long run, to find their way into the balance-sheet – until, as we have seen in some notorious instances, the assumed fact of a clear balance, to be applied by way of dividend, turns out also to be a fallacy. In the case before us, we are willing to believe that Mr Francis is altogether mistaken, and that the statements of Mr Glyn, made in his official capacity, which appeared to the blundering reporter to be fallacies, were in reality stern truths. But what sort of estimate must we form of Mr Francis' moral perception, when we find him selecting such a trait as the subject of especial commendation? He has, however, like most other great men, large sympathies. He does battle in behalf of Mr Hudson with considerable energy; though, after all, taking his conclusions as legitimate, his defence simply resolves itself into this – that Mr Hudson's conduct was not more blamable than that of others. So be it. We never joined in the wholesale censure directed against the quondam railway monarch, because we knew that the whole tone of the morals of society had been poisoned by the villanous system engendered by railway speculation; and because we saw that many of his accusers, if their own conduct had been sifted, might have been arraigned equally with him at the bar of public opinion. Therefore we have no desire to interfere with the operations of Mr Francis, when he appears with his pot of whitewash. Nay, we wish that the implement were more roomy than it is, and the contents of less questionable purity – for assuredly he has a large surface of wall to cover, if he sets himself seriously to the task of obliterating the traces of past iniquity.

The reader, however, must not suppose that Mr Francis sees nothing to condemn, or that he has not at command thunderbolts of wrath to launch at the heads of offenders. According to him, the most painful feature of the railway system was the rapacity of the owners of the soil in driving hard bargains for their land. As this is a charge which has often been made by men more competent to form an opinion upon any subject than the gentleman whose work we are now reviewing, we shall condescend to notice it. Let us premise however, that, in this matter, the howl is distinctly traceable to the harpies who inveigled the public to join their nefarious schemes, and to advance their capital on the assurance of enormous dividends.

After referring to the negotiations made with landowners by the promoters of the London and Birmingham line, Mr Francis comments as follows: —

"These things are written with pain, for they display a low tone of moral feeling in that class which, by virtue of inheritance, of birth, and blood, should possess a high and chivalrous sense of honour. The writer is far from wishing to blame those who honestly opposed the rail. The conscientious feeling which prompts a man, even in an unwise action, if mistaken, is at least respectable. There is much to palliate the honest opposition of the landowner. Scenes and spots which are replete with associations of great men and great deeds cannot be pecuniarily paid for. Sites which bear memories more selfish, yet not less real, have no market value. Homes in which boyhood, manhood, and age have been passed, carry recollections which are almost hallowed. Such places cannot be bought and sold; nor are the various prejudices which cling to the country to be overlooked. If the nobleman disliked the destruction of his fine old English park, the yeoman deplored the desecration of his homestead. The one bore its splendid remembrances, the other its affectionate recollections. If the peer hallowed the former for the sake of its royal visits, the farmer cherished the latter for the sake of those who had tilled the land before him. There are fancy spots in this our beautiful England which it would pain the most indifferent to destroy; what then must be the feelings of those who have lived, and only wish to die there?

"It is the trafficker in sympathies, it is the dealer in haunts and homes, at whom the finger of scorn should be pointed. It is the trader in touching recollections, only to be soothed by gold, that should be denounced. It is the peer who made the historic memories of his mansion a plea for replenishing an impoverished estate; it is the farmer who made the sacred associations of home an excuse for receiving treble its value; it is the country gentleman who made his opposition the lever by which he procured the money from the proprietors' pockets, who should be shamed. And a double portion of ignominy must rest upon these, when it is remembered that the money thus immorally obtained is a constant tax on the pleasures of the artisan, on the work of the manufacturer, and on the wages of the railway official."

Mr Francis, it is evident, is fighting hard for his service of plate; but we doubt much whether he will get it. He evidently considers the foregoing passage as a specimen of splendid writing. He is mistaken. It is nothing better than unadulterated drivel. Let us try to extricate, if we can, his argument from this heap of verbiage.