Men of Invention and Industry Part 15

He was also averse to doing anything to injure the compositors, having once been a member of the craft. At the same time he said to his son George, "If you find this to be a likely machine, let me know. Of course we must go with the age. If I had not started the steam press when I did, where should I have been now?" On the whole, the composing machine, though ingenious, was incomplete, and did not come into use at that time, nor indeed for a long time after. Still, the idea had been born, and, like other inventions, became eventually developed into a useful working machine. Composing machines are now in use in many printing-offices, and the present Clowes' firm possesses several of them. Those in The Times newspaper office are perhaps the most perfect of all.

Mr. Clowes was necessarily a man of great ability, industry, and energy. Whatever could be done in printing, that he would do. He would never admit the force of any difficulty that might be suggested to his plans. When he found a person ready to offer objections, he would say, "Ah! I see you are a difficulty-maker: you will never do for me."

Mr. Clowes died in 1847, at the age of sixty-eight. There still remain a few who can recall to mind the giant figure, the kindly countenance, and the gentle bearing of this "Prince of Printers," as he was styled by the members of his craft. His life was full of hard and useful work; and it will probably be admitted that, as the greatest multiplier of books in his day, and as one of the most effective practical labourers for the diffusion of useful knowledge, his name is ent.i.tled to be permanently a.s.sociated, not only with the industrial, but also with the intellectual development of our time.

CHAPTER IX.

CHARLES BIANCONI: A LESSON OF SELF-HELP IN IRELAND.

"I beg you to occupy yourself in collecting biographical notices respecting the Italians who have honestly enriched themselves in other regions, particularly referring to the obstacles of their previous life, and to the efforts and the means which they employed for vanquishing them, as well as to the advantages which they secured for themselves, for the countries in which they settled, and for the country to which they owed their birth."--GENERAL MENABREA, Circular to Italian Consuls.

When Count Menabrea was Prime Minister of Italy, he caused a despatch to be prepared and issued to Italian Consuls in all parts of the world, inviting them to collect and forward to him "biographical notices respecting the Italians who have honourably advanced themselves in foreign countries."

His object, in issuing the despatch, was to collect information as to the lives of his compatriots living abroad, in order to bring out a book similar to 'Self-help,' the examples cited in which were to be drawn exclusively from the lives of Italian citizens. Such a work, he intimated, "if it were once circulated among the ma.s.ses, could not fail to excite their emulation and encourage them to follow the examples therein set forth," while "in the course of time it might exercise a powerful influence on the increased greatness of our country."

We are informed by Count Menabrea that, although no special work has been published from the biographical notices collected in answer to his despatch, yet that the Volere e Potere ('Will is Power') of Professor Lessona, issued a few years ago, sufficiently answers the purpose which he contemplated, and furnishes many examples of the patient industry and untiring perseverance of Italians in all parts of the world. Many important ill.u.s.trations of life and character are necessarily omitted from Professor Lessona's interesting work. Among these may be mentioned the subject of the following pages,--a distinguished Italian who entirely corresponds to Count Menabrea's description--one who, in the face of the greatest difficulties, raised himself to an eminent public position, at the same time that he conferred the greatest benefits upon the country in which he settled and carried on his industrial operations. We mean Charles Bianconi, and his establishment of the great system of car communication through out Ireland.[1]

Charles Bianconi was born in 1786, at the village of Tregolo, situated in the Lombard Highlands of La Brianza, about ten miles from Como. The last elevations of the Alps disappear in the district; and the great plain of Lombardy extends towards the south. The region is known for its richness and beauty; the inhabitants being celebrated for the cultivation of the mulberry and the rearing of the silkworm, the finest silk in Lombardy being produced in the neighbourhood. Indeed, Bianconi's family, like most of the villagers, maintained themselves by the silk culture.

Charles had three brothers and one sister. When of a sufficient age, he was sent to school. The Abbe Radicali had turned out some good scholars; but with Charles Bianconi his failure was complete. The new pupil proved a tremendous dunce. He was very wild, very bold, and very plucky; but he learned next to nothing.

Learning took as little effect upon him as pouring water upon a duck's back. Accordingly, when he left school at the age of sixteen, he was almost as ignorant as when he had entered it; and a great deal more wilful.

Young Bianconi had now arrived at the age at which he was expected to do something for his own maintenance. His father wished to throw him upon his own resources; and as he would soon be subject to the conscription, he thought of sending him to some foreign country in order to avoid the forced service. Young fellows, who had any love of labour or promptings of independence in them, were then accustomed to leave home and carry on their occupations abroad. It was a common practice for workmen in the neighbourhood of Como to emigrate to England and carry on various trades; more particularly the manufacture and sale of barometers, looking-gla.s.ses, images, prints, pictures, and other articles.

Accordingly, Bianconi's father arranged with one Andrea Faroni to take the young man to England and instruct him in the trade of print-selling. Bianconi was to be Faroni's apprentice for eighteen months; and in the event of his not liking the occupation, he was to be placed under the care of Colnaghi, a friend of his father's, who was then making considerable progress as a print-seller in London; and who afterwards succeeded in achieving a considerable fortune and reputation.

Bianconi made his preparations for leaving home. A little festive entertainment was given at a little inn in Como, at which the whole family were present. It was a sad thing for Bianconi's mother to take leave of her boy, wild though he was. On the occasion of this parting ceremony, she fainted outright, at which the young fellow thought that things were a.s.suming a rather serious aspect. As he finally left the family home at Tregolo, the last words his mother said to him were these--words which he never forgot: "When you remember me, think of me as waiting at this window, watching for your return."

Besides Charles Bianconi, Faroni took three other boys under his charge. One was the son of a small village innkeeper, another the son of a tailor, and the third the son of a flax-dealer. This party, under charge of the Padre, ascended the Alps by the Val San Giacomo road.

From the summit of the pa.s.s they saw the plains of Lombardy stretching away in the blue distance. They soon crossed the Swiss frontier, and then Bianconi found himself finally separated from home. He now felt, that without further help from friends or relatives, he had his own way to make in the world.

The party of travellers duly reached England; but Faroni, without stopping in London, took them over to Ireland at once. They reached Dublin in the summer of 1802, and lodged in Temple Bar, near Ess.e.x Bridge. It was some little time before Faroni could send out the boys to sell pictures. First he had the leaden frames to cast; then they had to be trimmed and coloured; and then the pictures--mostly of sacred subjects, or of public characters--had to be mounted. The flowers; which were of wax, had also to be prepared and finished, ready for sale to the pa.s.sers-by.

When Bianconi went into the streets of Dublin to sell his mounted prints, he could not speak a word of English. He could only say, "Buy, buy!" Everybody spoke to him an unknown tongue. When asked the price, he could only indicate by his fingers the number of pence he wanted for his goods. At length he learned a little English,--at least sufficient "for the road;" and then he was sent into the country to sell his merchandize. He was despatched every Monday morning with about forty shillings' worth of stock, and ordered to return home on Sat.u.r.days, or as much sooner as he liked, if he had sold all the pictures. The only money his master allowed him at starting was fourpence. When Bianconi remonstrated at the smallness of the amount, Faroni answered, "While you have goods you have money; make haste to sell your goods!"

During his apprenticeship, Bianconi learnt much of the country through which he travelled. He was constantly making acquaintances with new people, and visiting new places. At Waterford he did a good trade in small prints. Besides the Scripture pieces, he sold portraits of the Royal Family, as well as of Bonaparte and his most distinguished generals. "Bony" was the dread of all magistrates, especially in Ireland. At Pa.s.sage, near Waterford, Bianconi was arrested for having sold a leaden framed picture of the famous French Emperor. He was thrown into a cold guard-room, and spent the night there without bed, or fire, or food. Next morning he was discharged by the magistrate, but cautioned that he must not sell any more of such pictures.

Many things struck Bianconi in making his first journeys through Ireland. He was astonished at the dram-drinking of the men, and the pipe-smoking of the women. The violent faction-fights which took place at the fairs which he frequented, were of a kind which he had never before observed among the pacific people of North Italy. These faction-fights were the result, partly of dram-drinking, and partly of the fighting mania which then prevailed in Ireland. There were also numbers of crippled and deformed beggars in every town,--quarrelling and fighting in the streets,--rows and drinkings at wakes,--gambling, duelling, and riotous living amongst all cla.s.ses of the people,--things which could not but strike any ordinary observer at the time, but which have now, for the most part, happily pa.s.sed away.

At the end of eighteen months, Bianconi's apprenticeship was out; and Faroni then offered to take him back to his father, in compliance with the original understanding. But Bianconi had no wish to return to Italy. Faroni then made over to him the money he had retained on his account, and Bianconi set up business for himself. He was now about eighteen years old; he was strong and healthy, and able to walk with a heavy load on his back from twenty to thirty miles a day. He bought a large case, filled it with coloured prints and other articles, and started from Dublin on a tour through the south of Ireland. He succeeded, like most persons who labour diligently. The curly-haired Italian lad became a general favourite. He took his native politeness with him everywhere; and made many friends among his various customers throughout the country.

Bianconi used to say that it was about this time when he was carrying his heavy case upon his back, weighing at least a hundred pounds--that the idea began to strike him, of some cheap method of conveyance being established for the accommodation of the poorer cla.s.ses in Ireland. As he dismantled himself of his case of pictures, and sat wearied and resting on the milestones along the road, he puzzled his mind with the thought, "Why should poor people walk and toil, and rich people ride and take their ease? Could not some method be devised by which poor people also might have the opportunity of travelling comfortably?"

It will thus be seen that Bianconi was already beginning to think about the matter. When asked, not long before his death, how it was that he had first thought of starting his extensive Car establishment, he answered, "It grew out of my back!" It was the hundred weight of pictures on his dorsal muscles that stimulated his thinking faculties.

But the time for starting his great experiment had not yet arrived.

Bianconi wandered about from town to town for nearly two years. The picture-case became heavier than ever. For a time he replaced it with a portfolio of unframed prints. Then he became tired of the wandering life, and in 1806 settled down at Carrick-on-Suir as a print-seller and carver and gilder. He supplied himself with gold-leaf from Waterford, to which town he used to proceed by Tom Morrissey's boat. Although the distance by road between the towns was only twelve miles, it was about twenty-four by water, in consequence of the windings of the river Suir.

Besides, the boat could only go when the state of the tide permitted.

Time was of little consequence; and it often took half a day to make the journey. In the course of one of his voyages, Bianconi got himself so thoroughly soaked by rain and mud that he caught a severe cold, which ran into pleurisy, and laid him up for about two months. He was carefully attended to by a good, kind physician, Dr. White, who would not take a penny for his medicine and nursing.

Business did not prove very prosperous at Carrick-on-suir; the town was small, and the trade was not very brisk. Accordingly, Bianconi resolved, after a year's ineffectual trial, to remove to Waterford, a more thriving centre of operations. He was now twenty-one years old.

He began again as a carver and gilder; and as business flowed in upon him, he worked very hard, sometimes from six in the morning until two hours after midnight. As usual, he made many friends. Among the best of them was Edward Rice, the founder of the "Christian Brothers" in Ireland. Edward Rice was a true benefactor to his country. He devoted himself to the work of education, long before the National Schools were established; investing the whole of his means in the foundation and management of this n.o.ble inst.i.tution.

Mr. Rice's advice and instruction set and kept Bianconi in the right road. He helped the young foreigner to learn English. Bianconi was no longer a dunce, as he had been at school; but a keen, active, enterprising fellow, eager to make his way in the world. Mr. Rice encouraged him to be sedulous and industrious, urged him to carefulness and sobriety, and strengthened his religions impressions. The help and friendship of this good man, operating upon the mind and soul of a young man, whose habits of conduct and whose moral and religious character were only in course of formation, could not fail to exercise, as Bianconi always acknowledged they did, a most powerful influence upon the whole of his after life.

Although "three removes" are said to be "as bad as a fire," Bianconi, after remaining about two years at Waterford, made a third removal in 1809, to Clonmel, in the county of Tipperary. Clonmel is the centre of a large corn trade, and is in water communication, by the Suir, with Carrick and Waterford. Bianconi, therefore, merely extended his connection; and still continued his dealings with his customers in the other towns. He made himself more proficient in the mechanical part of his business; and aimed at being the first carver and gilder in the trade. Besides, he had always an eye open for new business. At that time, when the war was raging with France, gold was at a premium. The guinea was worth about twenty-six or twenty-seven shillings. Bianconi therefore began to buy up the h.o.a.rded-up guineas of the peasantry. The loyalists became alarmed at his proceedings, and began to circulate the report that Bianconi, the foreigner, was buying up bullion to send secretly to Bonaparte! The country people, however, parted with their guineas readily; for they had no particular hatred of "Bony," but rather admired him.

Bianconi's conduct was of course quite loyal in the matter; he merely bought the guineas as a matter of business, and sold them at a profit to the bankers.

The country people had a difficulty in p.r.o.nouncing his name. His shop was at the corner of Johnson Street, and instead of Bianconi, he came to be called "Bian of the Corner." He was afterwards known as "Bian."

Bianconi soon became well known after his business was established. He became a proficient in the carving and gilding line, and was looked upon as a thriving man. He began to employ a.s.sistants in his trade, and had three German gilders at work. While they were working in the shop he would travel about the country, taking orders and delivering goods--sometimes walking and sometimes driving.

He still retained a little of his old friskiness and spirit of mischief. He was once driving a car from Clonmel to Thurles; he had with him a large looking-gla.s.s with a gilt frame, on which about a fortnight's labour had been bestowed. In a fit of exuberant humour he began to tickle the horse under his tail with a straw! In an instant the animal reared and plunged, and then set off at a gallop down hill.

The result was, that the car was dashed to bits and the looking-gla.s.s broken into a thousand atoms!

On another occasion, a man was carrying to Cashel on his back one of Bianconi's large looking-gla.s.ses. An old woman by the wayside, seeing the odd-looking, unwieldy package, asked what it was; on which Bianconi, who was close behind the man carrying the gla.s.s, answered that it was "the Repeal of the Union!" The old woman's delight was unbounded! She knelt down on her knees in the middle of the road, as if it had been a picture of the Madonna, and thanked G.o.d for having preserved her in her old age to see the Repeal of the Union!

But this little waywardness did not last long. Bianconi's wild oats were soon all sown. He was careful and frugal. As he afterwards used to say, "When I was earning a shilling a day at Clonmel, I lived upon eightpence." He even took lodgers, to relieve him of the charge of his household expenses. But as his means grew, he was soon able to have a conveyance of his own. He first started a yellow gig, in which he drove about from place to place, and was everywhere treated with kindness and hospitality. He was now regarded as "respectable," and as a person worthy to hold some local office. He was elected to a Society for visiting the Sick Poor, and became a Member of the House of Industry. He might have gone on in the same business, winning his way to the Mayoralty of Clonmel, which he afterwards held; but that the old idea, which had first sprung up in his mind while resting wearily on the milestones along the road, with his heavy case of pictures by his side, again laid hold of him, and he determined now to try whether his plan could not be carried into effect.

He had often lamented the fatigue that poor people had to undergo in travelling with burdens from place to place upon foot, and wondered whether some means might not be devised for alleviating their sufferings. Other people would have suggested "the Government!" Why should not the Government give us this, that, and the other,--give us roads, harbours, carriages, boats, nets, and so on. This, of course, would have been a mistaken idea; for where people are too much helped, they invariably lose the beneficent practice of helping themselves.

Charles Bianconi had never been helped, except by advice and friendship. He had helped himself throughout; and now he would try to help others.

The facts were patent to everybody. There was not an Irishman who did not know the difficulty of getting from one town to another. There were roads between them, but no conveyances. There was an abundance of horses in the country, for at the close of the war an unusual number of horses, bred for the army, were thrown upon the market. Then a tax had been levied upon carriages, which sent a large number of jaunting-cars out of employment.

The roads of Ireland were on the whole good, being at that time quite equal, if not superior, to most of those in England. The facts of the abundant horses, the good roads, the number of unemployed outside cars, were generally known; but until Bianconi took the enterprise in hand, there was no person of thought, or spirit, or capital in the country, who put these three things together horses, roads, and cars and dreamt of remedying the great public inconvenience.

It was left for our young Italian carver and gilder, a struggling man of small capital, to take up the enterprise, and show what could be done by prudent action and persevering energy. Though the car system originally "grew out of his back," Bianconi had long been turning the subject over in his mind. His idea was, that we should never despise small interests, nor neglect the wants of poor people. He saw the mail-coaches supplying the requirements of the rich, and enabling them to travel rapidly from place to place. "Then," said he to himself, "would it not be possible for me to make an ordinary two-wheeled car pay, by running as regularly for the accommodation of poor districts and poor people?"

When Mr. Wallace, chairman of the Select Committee on Postage, in 1838, asked Mr. Bianconi, "What induced you to commence the car establishment?" his answer was, "I did so from what I saw, after coming to this country, of the necessity for such cars, inasmuch as there was no middle mode of conveyance, nothing to fill up the vacuum that existed between those who were obliged to walk and those who posted or rode. My want of knowledge of the language gave me plenty of time for deliberation, and in proportion as I grew up with the knowledge of the language and the localities, this vacuum pressed very heavily upon my mind, till at last I hit upon the idea of running jaunting-cars, and for that purpose I commenced running one between Clonmel and Cahir."[2]

What a happy thing it was for Bianconi and Ireland that he could not speak with facility,--that he did not know the language or the manners of the country! In his case silence was "golden." Had he been able to talk like the people about him, he might have said much and done little,--attempted nothing and consequently achieved nothing. He might have got up a meeting and pet.i.tioned Parliament to provide the cars, and subvention the car system; or he might have gone amongst his personal friends, asked them to help him, and failing their help, given up his idea in despair, and sat down grumbling at the people and the Government.

But instead of talking, he proceeded to doing, thereby ill.u.s.trating Lessona's maxim of Volere e potere. After thinking the subject fully over, he trusted to self-help. He found that with his own means, carefully saved, he could make a beginning; and the beginning once made, included the successful ending.

The beginning, it is true, was very small. It was only an ordinary jaunting-car, drawn by a single horse, capable of accommodating six persons. The first car ran between Clonmel and Cahir, a distance of about twelve miles, on the 5th of July, 1815--a memorable day for Bianconi and Ireland. Up to that time the public accommodation for pa.s.sengers was confined to a few mail and day coaches on the great lines of road, the fares by which were very high, and quite beyond the reach of the poorer or middle-cla.s.s people.

People did not know what to make of Bianconi's car when it first started. There were, of course, the usual prophets of disaster, who decided that it "would never do." Many thought that no one would pay eighteen-pence for going to Cahir by car when they could walk there for nothing? There were others who thought that Bianconi should have stuck to his shop, as there was no connection whatever between picture-gilding and car-driving!

The truth is, the enterprise at first threatened to be a failure!

Scarcely anybody would go by the car. People preferred trudging on foot, and saved their money, which was more valuable to them than their time. The car sometimes ran for weeks without a pa.s.senger. Another man would have given up the enterprise in despair. But this was not the way with Bianconi. He was a man of tenacity and perseverance.

What should he do but start an opposition car? n.o.body knew of it but himself; not even the driver of the opposition car. However, the rival car was started. The races between the car-drivers, the free lifts occasionally given to pa.s.sengers, the cheapness of the fare, and the excitement of the contest, attracted the attention of the public. The people took sides, and before long both cars came in full. Fortunately the "great big yallah horse" of the opposition car broke down, and Bianconi had all the trade to himself.

The people became accustomed to travelling. They might still walk to Cahir; but going by car saved their legs, saved their brains, and saved their time. They might go to Cahir market, do their business there, and be comfortably back within the day. Bianconi then thought of extending the car to Tipperary and Limerick. In the course of the same year, 1815, he started another car between Clonmel, Cashel, and Thurles. Thus all the princ.i.p.al towns of Tipperary were, in the first year of the undertaking, connected together by car, besides being also connected with Limerick.