Thomas Telford

“ He was buried in Westminster Abbey, and few of the men who sleep within that great national temple more richly deserve the honour than the Westerkirk shepherd-boy. For Thomas Telford's life was not merely one of worldly success; it was still more pre-eminently one of noble ends and public usefulness. Many working men have raised themselves by their own exertions to a position of wealth and dignity far surpassing his; few indeed have conferred so many benefits upon untold thousands of their fellow-men. ”

“ It is a common mistake of near-sighted minds to look only at the immediate results of things, without considering their remoter effects. When Tam Telford, stonemason of Langholm, began at twenty-two years of age to pen poetical epistles to Robert Burns, most of his fellow-workmen doubtless thought he was giving himself up to very foolish and nonsensical practices; but he was really helping to educate Thomas Telford, engineer of the Holyhead Road and the Caledonian Canal, for all his future usefulness and greatness. ”

“ His next engagement was one which raised him for the first time in his life above the rank of a mere journeyman mason. The honest workman had attracted the attention of competent judges. He obtained employment as foreman of works of some important buildings in Portsmouth Dockyard. A proud man indeed was Thomas Telford at this change of fortune, and very proudly he wrote to his old friends in Eskdale, with almost boyish delight, about the trust reposed in him by the commissioners and officers, and the pains he was taking with the task entrusted to him. ”

“ Metcalf was upwards of seventy years old before he left off road-making. He was still hale and hearty, wonderfully active for so old a man, and always full of enterprise. Occupation was absolutely necessary for his comfort, and even to the last day of his life he could not bear to be idle. While engaged on road-making in Cheshire, he brought his wife to Stockport for a time, and there she died, after thirty-nine years of happy married life. ”

“ Telford, on the other hand, looked upon the week as only one of the storeys of a building; and upon the succession of weeks, running on through years, he thought that the complete life structure should be built up. He thus describes one of the best of his fellow-workmen at that time—the only individual he had formed an intimacy with: "He has been six years at Somerset House, and is esteemed the finest workman in London, and consequently in England. He works equally in stone and marble. ”

“ 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 was the warm friend of Thomas Campbell and of Southey. He formed a strong attachment to Campbell after the appearance of the ‘Pleasures of Hope,’ and acted to him as his helpful mentor. Writing to Dr. Currie in 1802, Campbell says: ‘I have become acquainted with Telford the engineer; a fellow of infinite humour and of strong enterprising mind. He has almost made me a bridge-builder already; at least he has inspired me with new sensations of interest in the improvement and ornament of our country. ... Telford is a most useful cicerone in London. ”

“ He says it has been, and will continue to be, his aim to endeavour to unite those "two frequently jarring pursuits, literature and business;" and he does not see why a man should be less efficient in the latter capacity because he has well informed, stored, and humanized his mind by the cultivation of letters. There was both good sense and sound practical wisdom in this view of Telford.
While the gaol was in course of erection, after the improved plans suggested by Howard, a variety of important matters occupied the county surveyor's attention. ”

“ He never dines out, and scarcely takes time to dine at all: he says he is growing old, and has no time to lose. His manner is simplicity itself. Indeed, I have never yet met so noble a being. He is going abroad again shortly on one of his long tours of mercy."* [1] The journey to which Telford here refers was Howard's last. In the following year he left England to return no more; and the great and good man died at Cherson, on the shores of the Black Sea, less than two years after his interview with the young engineer at Shrewsbury. ”

“ On his return to Shrewsbury, Telford proposed to proceed with his favourite study of architecture; but this, said he, "will probably be very slowly, as I must attend to my every day employment," namely, the superintendence of the county road and bridge repairs, and the direction of the convicts' labour. "If I keep my health, however," he added, "and have no unforeseen hindrance, it shall not be forgotten, but will be creeping on by degrees." ”

“ 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. ”

“ He was followed by Telford, whose long and busy life, as we have seen, was occupied in building bridges and making roads in all directions, in districts of the country formerly inaccessible, and therefore comparatively barbarous. At length the wildest districts of the Highlands and the most rugged mountain valleys of North Wales were rendered as easy of access as the comparatively level counties in the immediate neighbourhood of the metropolis.
During all this while, the wealth and industry of the country had been advancing with rapid strides. London had grown in population and importance. ”

“ Thus, while employed by the Government in the improvement of the Highland roads, he persuaded himself that he ought at the same time to promote the similar patriotic objects of the British Fisheries Society, which were carried out by voluntary subscription; and for many years he acted as their engineer, refusing to accept any remuneration whatever for his trouble.* [10]
Telford held the sordid money-grubber in perfect detestation. He was of opinion that the adulation paid to mere money was one of the greatest dangers with which modern society was threatened. ”

“ His greatest difficulty was in getting the stones laid to make the drains, there being no firm footing for a horse in the more boggy places. The Yorkshire clothiers, who passed that way to Huddersfield market —by no means a soft-spoken race—ridiculed Metcalf's proceedings, and declared that he and his men would some day have to be dragged out of the bog by the hair of their heads! Undeterred, however, by sarcasm, he persistently pursued his plan of making the road practicable for laden vehicles ”

“ I have never been anxious overmuch, nor ever taken more thought for the morrow than it is the duty of every one to take who has to earn his livelihood; but to be thus provided for at this time I feel to be an especial blessing.'"* [14] Among the most valuable results of Telford's bequests in his own district, was the establishment of the popular libraries at Langholm and Westerkirk, each of which now contains about 4000 volumes. ”

“ I admire everything that gives it free scope:, as, wherever it goes, activity, energy, intelligence— all that we call civilization—accompany it; but I hold that the aim and end of all ought not to be a mere bag, of money, but something far higher and far better."
Writing once to his Langholm correspondent about an old schoolfellow, who had grown rich by scraping, Telford said: "Poor Bob L—— His industry and sagacity were more than counterbalanced by his childish vanity and silly avarice, which rendered his friendship dangerous, and his conversation tiresome. ”

“ Telford acquired considerable general experience about the same time as a house-builder, though the structures on which he was engaged were of a humble order, being chiefly small farm-houses on the Duke of Buccleugh's estate, with the usual out-buildings. Perhaps the most important of the jobs on which he was employed was the manse of Westerkirk, where he was comparatively at home. The hamlet stands on a green hill-side, a little below the entrance to the valley of the Meggat. ”

“ However, plenty of employment is what every professional man is seeking after, and my various occupations now require of me great exertions, which they certainly shall have so long as life and health are spared to me."* [16] Amidst all his engagements, Telford found time to make particular inquiry about many poor families formerly known to him in Eskdale, for some of whom he paid house-rent, while he transmitted the means of supplying others with coals, meal, and necessaries, during the severe winter months,—a practice which he continued to the close of his life. ”

“ If he detected a man who gave evidences of unsteadiness, inaccuracy, or carelessness, he would reprimand the overseer for employing such a person, and order him to be removed to some other part of the undertaking where his negligence could do no harm. And thus it was that Telford put his own character, through those whom he employed, into the various buildings which he was employed to construct. ”

“ He found one of his old fellow workmen, Frank Beattie, become the principal innkeeper of the place. "What have you made of your mell and chisels?" asked Telford. "Oh!" replied Beattie, "they are all dispersed—perhaps lost." "I have taken better care of mine," said Telford; "I have them all locked up in a room at Shrewsbury, as well as my old working clothes and leather apron: you know one can never tell what may happen."
He was surprised, as most people are who visit the scenes of their youth after a long absence, to see into what small dimensions Langholm had shrunk. ”

“ It seems singular that with Telford's great natural powers of pleasing, his warm social temperament, and his capability of forming ardent attachments for friends, many of them women, he should never have formed an attachment of the heart. ”

“ CHAPTER IV. BECOMES SURVEYOR FOR THE COUNTY OF SALOP. Mr. Pulteney, member for Shrewsbury, was the owner of extensive estates in that neighbourhood by virtue of his marriage with the niece of the last Earl of Bath. Having resolved to fit up the Castle there as a residence, he bethought him of the young Eskdale mason, who had, some years before, advised him as to the repairs of the Johnstone mansion at Wester Hall. Telford was soon found, and engaged to go down to Shrewsbury to superintend the necessary alterations. ”

“ Among the numerous books which he read, he expressed the highest admiration for Sheridan's 'Life of Swift.' But his Langholm friend, who was a great politician, having invited his attention to politics, Telford's reading gradually extended in that direction. Indeed the exciting events of the French Revolution then tended to make all men more or less politicians. ”

“ London, 1726.
* [2] The treatment the stranger received was often very rude. When William Hutton, of Birmingham, accompanied by another gentleman, went to view the field of Bosworth, in 1770, "the inhabitants," he says, "set their dogs at us in the street, merely because we were strangers. Human figures not their own are seldom seen in these inhospitable regions. Surrounded with impassable roads, no intercourse with man to humanise the mind. nor commerce to smooth their rugged manners, they continue the boors of Nature." ”

“ The Harrogate season being at hand, he prepared to proceed thither,—Colonel Liddell, who was also about setting out for Harrogate, offering him a seat behind his coach. Metcalf thanked him, but declined the offer, observing that he could, with great ease, walk as, far in a day as he, the Colonel, was likely to travel in his carriage; besides, he preferred the walking. That a blind man should undertake to walk a distance of two hundred miles over an unknown road, in the same time that it took a gentleman to perform the same distance in his coach, dragged by post-horses, seems almost incredible ”

“ After this, Metcalf began a new line of business, that of common carrier between York and Knaresborough, plying the first stage-waggon on that road. He made the journey twice a week in summer and once a week in winter. He also undertook the conveyance of army baggage, most other owners of carts at that time being afraid of soldiers, regarding them as a wild rough set, with whom it was dangerous to have any dealings. But the blind man knew them better, and while he drove a profitable trade in carrying their baggage from town to town, they never did him any harm. ”

“ The primitive features of this secluded district are perhaps best represented by the interesting little town of Chagford, situated in the valley of the North Teign, an ancient stannary and market town backed by a wide stretch of moor. The houses of the place are built of moor stone—grey, venerable-looking, and substantial—some with projecting porch and parvise room over, and granite-mullioned windows ”

“ The prospect from the summit was almost unlimited. In the valley beneath, the city they had just left, its more prominent buildings showing as in an isometric drawing—among them the broad Cathedral tower, with its Norman windows and immense length of aisle and nave; the spires of St. Thomas’s; the pinnacled tower of the College; and more to the right the tower and gables of the ancient hospice, where to this day the pilgrim may receive his dole of bread and ale.... ”