The life of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Civil Engineer Part 8

The owners of the land through which this part of the line would pa.s.s were influential members of the Upper House, and therefore the directors thought it useless to brave their opposition; accordingly, on the thirteenth day of the hearing, they abandoned the last two miles of the viaduct, and proposed to stop at the 'Hoop and Toy,' a public-house near the site of the South Kensington Station of the Metropolitan Railway.

But although the opposition of some of the landowners was conciliated by this concession, that portion of the line through Brompton which had not been abandoned was attacked with unabated energy. The residents in Brompton opposed the Bill from the apprehension that the railway would interfere with their quiet and seclusion; Brompton being at that time considered, at any rate by one of the counsel for the opposition, 'the most famous of any place in the neighbourhood of London for the salubrity of its air, and calculated for retired residences.' They could not, indeed, be blamed for indulging in these apprehensions, if they really believed in their counsel's statement that 'streams of fire would proceed from the locomotive engines.'

Others objected to the viaduct itself as being an undertaking of so colossal a nature as hardly to be practicable; and the supposed increase of traffic and consequent obstruction in Piccadilly and other leading thoroughfares brought down upon the promoters the opposition of the Commissioners of Metropolitan Roads.

All these objections were made the ground of much argument in committee, and doubtless had great influence over the minds of those who voted against the Bill.

The engineering evidence occupied, as might be expected, the greater part of the forty-two days during which witnesses were examined before the committee, and of these forty-two days no less than eleven were taken up by the cross-examination of Mr. Brunel. So protracted a cross-examination has probably never been heard in any court or committee-room. One of those present thus describes it:--

'The committee-room was crowded with landowners and others interested in the success or defeat of the Bill, and eager to hear Brunel's evidence. His knowledge of the country surveyed by him was marvellously great, and the explanations he gave of his plans, and the answers he returned to questions suggested by Dr. Lardner, showed a profound acquaintance with the principles of mechanics. He was rapid in thought, clear in his language, and never said too much, or lost his presence of mind. I do not remember ever having enjoyed so great an intellectual treat as that of listening to Brunel's examination, and I was told at the time that George Stephenson and many others were much struck by the ability and knowledge shown by him.'

In his evidence, Mr. George Stephenson stated that he did not know any existing line so good as that proposed by Mr. Brunel. 'I can imagine (he said) a better line, but I do not know of one so good.'[42]

At length, on the fifty-fourth day of the sittings of the committee, Mr.

Harrison, K.C., rose to reply on behalf of the promoters, and on the conclusion of his address the Bill was pa.s.sed.

In the House of Lords the second reading was moved by Lord Wharncliffe.

It was opposed, and on a division being taken, the motion was lost by a majority of seventeen (30 content and 47 non-content). The Bill was therefore thrown out.

The directors, undaunted by their defeat, lost no time in making preparations for bringing a Bill before Parliament in the session of 1835, with such improvements as the experience of the past campaign suggested to them. Taking into consideration the various grounds on which opposition had been raised to the plans they had proposed for entering London through the Brompton district, they opened negotiations with the London and Birmingham Railway Company, and arrangements were concluded by which the traffic of the Great Western Railway was to be carried upon the London and Birmingham line for the first four miles out of London, the junction being made a little to the west of the Kensal Green Cemetery.

They had also during the autumn raised money enough to enable them to apply to Parliament for powers to construct the whole of the line from London to Bristol. They thus escaped all the sarcastic observations which had been made upon the scheme of 1834, of which it had been said, that it would be a head and a tail without a body, and neither 'Great'

nor 'Western,' nor even a 'railway' at all, but 'a gross deception, a trick, and a fraud upon the public, in name, in t.i.tle, and in substance!'

On March 9, the earliest day allowed by the standing orders, the Bill was read a second time and committed. A division being taken on the motion for committal, there appeared in favour of the motion 160, and against it none but the tellers.

Shortly after its first meeting, the committee, of which Mr. Charles Russell, then member for Reading, was chairman, came to the resolution that, inasmuch as the evidence given in the previous year as to the public advantages of a Bristol railway had been referred to them by order of the House, they needed no further evidence on that subject.

Counsel were therefore directed to confine their case as much as possible to the merits of the line proposed.

Evidence was called by the opponents chiefly with a view to show the advantages of a proposed line from Basing to Bath, and the inexpediency of granting an entirely new line of 115 miles in length to the Great Western Railway Company, which involved the construction of a 'monstrous and extraordinary,' 'most dangerous and impracticable, tunnel' at Box, and this, when 44 miles of railway in a western direction--viz. as far as Basingstoke, had already been sanctioned by the legislature in the Southampton Railway Act, pa.s.sed in the previous session. The promoters of the Bill contended that the levels of the Basing and Bath line were not so good as those proposed for their own, and that the Great Western Railway would approach almost every town of importance situated on the proposed Basing and Bath line, by means of short branches; whilst at the same time it presented the great advantage of being capable of easy extension to Gloucester and Wales, and to Oxford, an object wholly unattainable by the other line. In reply to these a.s.sertions, the opponents maintained that although the levels of the Basing and Bath Railway presented greater inclinations than those of the Great Western, yet that they were so balanced as that the rises and falls compensated one for another, so as to render the line practically level. The enunciation of this theory called forth a remark by the chairman that according to this principle the Highlands of Scotland would be as good as any other place for the construction of a railway.

The preamble was voted proved, and the Bill pa.s.sed the House of Commons without further opposition, and on May 27 was read a first time in the Lords. On June 10, the second reading was carried after a sharp debate, the numbers being 46 contents, and 34 non-contents.

Lord Wharncliffe was chairman of the committee.[43] The proceedings began by an opposition on the standing orders, which, after much skirmishing, were voted to have been complied with. The promoters, however, judged from the nature of the first day's proceedings, that they had to expect a contest of no inconsiderable duration; and the result proved their antic.i.p.ations to have been correct. For forty days the battle was fought with a degree of earnestness and vigour on both sides, almost unequalled in any similar proceedings.

The committee soon came to the same decision as the House of Commons, that, with regard to the advisability of a Bristol railway, they were satisfied, and needed no further evidence. The case became then one of mere comparison between the relative merits of the two lines proposed.

The case in support of the Bill occupied eighteen days, and was closed with a speech by the Hon. John Talbot.

Mr. Serjeant Merewether, whom the opponents had chosen as their leader in the House of Lords, was then heard on their behalf, and occupied no less than four days in the delivery of his speech, in which certainly no argument that ingenuity could devise was omitted to strengthen his case.

There was hardly any conceivable injury which, according to the learned serjeant's notions, the Great Western Railway would not inflict. It was said that the Thames would be choked up for want of traffic, the drainage of the country destroyed, and Windsor Castle left unsupplied with water. As for Eton College it would be absolutely and entirely ruined: London would pour forth the most abandoned of its inhabitants to come down by the railway and pollute the minds of the scholars, whilst the boys themselves would take advantage of the short interval of their play hours to run up to town, mix in all the dissipation of London life, and return before their absence could be discovered. Moreover, while the beauty of the country and the retirement of private dwellings would be destroyed, the interests of the public would be far more effectually served by the adoption of the Basing and Bath line, and a line from the London and Birmingham Railway to Gloucester. This was in fact the point at issue, and on this the result of the contest depended. The promoters of the Bill had called, in support of their line, in addition to Mr.

Brunel, who being engineer to the company might be considered an interested witness, Mr. Locke, Mr. Palmer, Mr. Price, Mr. George Stephenson, and Mr. Vignoles. They expressed their unqualified approbation of the line chosen by Mr. Brunel, and of the estimates he had prepared.

The preamble was proved, and after an unsuccessful opposition the Bill was read a third time, on August 27. The Royal a.s.sent was given on the last day of that month.[44]

During this contest Mr. Brunel made among his fellow-labourers many deep and lasting friendships. One of the most intimate of these friends, Mr.

St. George Burke, Q.C., has, in compliance with a request made to him, furnished the following reminiscences of his intercourse with Mr.

Brunel during the progress of the Bill through Parliament.

March 9, 1869.

'My dear Isambard,--You wish me to supply you with reminiscences of my old a.s.sociations with your father, in order that, in your biography of him, you may present a true picture of those features of his character which so endeared him to his most intimate friends.

'For many years it was my good fortune to enjoy his friendship, and many of the pleasantest hours of my life were due to it.

'For a period of nearly three years, viz. during the contest for the Great Western Railway Bill, I think that seldom a day pa.s.sed without our meeting, whether for purposes of business or pleasure, both of which his buoyant spirits enabled him to combine in a manner which I have seldom seen equalled.

'It would be wearisome to detail the many incidents which occurred ill.u.s.trative of the singularly facile manner in which, in the midst of the heaviest and most responsible labours, he could enter into the most boyish pranks and fun, without in the least distracting his attention from the matter of business in which he was engaged; but all who knew him as I did could bear testimony to this characteristic of his disposition.

'I believe that a more joyous nature, combined with the highest intellectual faculties, was never created, and I love to think of him in the character of the ever gay and kind-hearted friend of my early years, rather than in the more serious professional aspect under which your pages will, no doubt, rightly depict him.

'In 1833 your father and I occupied chambers facing each other in Parliament Street, and as my duties involved the superintendence, as Parliamentary agent, of the compliance with all the Standing Orders of Parliament, and very frequent interviews and negotiations with the landowners on the line, we were of necessity constantly thrown together. To facilitate our intercourse, it occurred to your father to carry a string across Parliament Street, from his chambers to mine, to be there connected with a bell, by which he could either call me to the window to receive his telegraphic signals, or, more frequently, to wake me up in the morning when we had occasion to go into the country together, which, it is needless to observe, was of frequent occurrence; and great was the astonishment of the neighbours at this device, the object of which they were unable to comprehend.

'I believe that at that time he scarcely ever went to bed, though I never remember to have seen him tired or out of spirits. He was a very constant smoker, and would take his nap in an arm-chair, very frequently with a cigar in his mouth; and if we were to start out of town at five or six o'clock in the morning, it was his frequent practice to rouse me out of bed about three, by means of the bell, when I would invariably find him up and dressed, and in great glee at the fun of having curtailed my slumbers by two or three hours more than necessary.

'No one would have supposed that during the night he had been poring over plans and estimates, and engrossed in serious labours, which to most men would have proved destructive of their energies during the following day; but I never saw him otherwise than full of gaiety, and apparently as ready for work as though he had been sleeping through the night.

'In those days we had not the advantage of railways, and were obliged to adopt the slower, though perhaps not less agreeable, mode of travelling with post-horses. Your father had a britzska, so arranged as to carry his plans and engineering instruments, besides some creature comforts, never forgetting the inevitable cigar-case among them; and we would start by daybreak, or sometimes earlier, on our country excursions, which still live in my remembrance as some of the pleasantest I have ever enjoyed; though I think I may safely say that, pleasurable as they were, we never lost sight of the business in which we were engaged, and for which our excursions were undertaken.

'I have never known a man who, possessing courage which to many would appear almost like rashness, was less disposed to trust to chance or to throw away any opportunity of attaining his object than was your father. I doubt not that this quality will be fully exemplified in the details which you will have received of his engineering experiments; but I speak of him also in the character of a diplomatist, in which he was as wary and cautious as any man I ever knew.

'We canva.s.sed many landowners together, and I had plenty of opportunities of judging of his skill and caution in our discussions with them, though we had many a good laugh afterwards at the arguments which had been addressed to us as to the inutility and impolicy of the scheme in which we were engaged, and the utter ruin it would be sure to entail on its promoters, as well as on the country affected by it.

'I frequently accompanied him to the west of England, and into Gloucestershire and South Wales, when public meetings were held in support of the measures in which he was engaged, and I had occasion to observe the enormous popularity which he everywhere enjoyed. The moment he rose to address a meeting he was received with loud cheers, and he never failed to elicit applause at the end of his address, which was distinguished as much by simplicity of language and modesty of pretension as by accurate knowledge of his subject.

Yours very truly,

ST. GEORGE BURKE.

Isambard Brunel, Esq.'

The following is an extract from Mr. Brunel's diary, written at the end of the year 1835:--

53 Parliament Street, December 26.

What a blank in my journal [_the last entry is dated January 1834_], and during the most eventful part of my life. When last I wrote in this book I was just emerging from obscurity. I had been toiling most unprofitably at numerous things, unprofitably, at least, at the moment. The railway was certainly being thought of, but still very uncertain. What a change. The railway now is in progress. I am thus engineer to the finest work in England. A handsome salary, on excellent terms with my directors, and all going smoothly. But what a fight we have had, and how near defeat, and what a ruinous defeat it would have been. It is like looking back upon a fearful pa.s.s; but we have succeeded.

And it is not this alone, but everything I have been engaged in has been successful. Clifton bridge--my first child, my darling, is actually going on: recommenced work last Monday--glorious!! [_Here follows a list of the undertakings on which he was then engaged._]

I think this forms a pretty list of real sound professional work, unsought for on my part, that is, given to me fairly by the respective parties--all, except the Wear Docks, resulting from the Clifton bridge, which I fought hard for, and gained only by persevering struggles.... And this at the age of twenty-nine. I really can hardly believe it, when I think of it. I am just leaving 53 Parliament Street, where I may say I have made my fortune, or, rather, the foundation of it, and I have taken 18 Duke Street.

CHAPTER IV.