Biographies of Working Men | Page 4

tangle of narrow alleys and close courtyards,
surrounded by tall houses with endless tiers of floors, was just being
deserted by the rich and fashionable world for the New Town, which
lies beyond a broad valley on the opposite hillside, and contains
numerous streets of solid and handsome stone houses, such as are
hardly to be found in any other town in Britain, except perhaps Bath
and Aberdeen. Edinburgh is always, indeed, an interesting place for an
enthusiastic lover of building, be he architect or stonemason; for
instead of being built of brick like London and so many other English
centres, it is built partly of a fine hard local sandstone and partly of
basaltic greenstone; and besides its old churches and palaces, many of
the public buildings are particularly striking and beautiful architectural
works. But just at the moment when young Telford walked wearily into
Edinburgh at the end of his long tramp, there was plenty for a stout

strong mason to do in the long straight stone fronts of the rising New
Town. For two years, he worked away patiently at his trade in "the grey
metropolis of the North;" and he took advantage of the special
opportunities the place afforded him to learn drawing, and to make
minute sketches in detail of Holyrood Palace, Heriot's Hospital, Roslyn
Chapel, and all the other principal old buildings in which the
neighbourhood of the capital is particularly rich. So anxious, indeed,
was the young mason to perfect himself by the study of the very best
models in his own craft, that when at the end of two years he walked
back to revisit his good mother in Eskdale, he took the opportunity of
making drawings of Melrose Abbey, the most exquisite and graceful
building that the artistic stone-cutters of the Middle Ages have handed
down to our time in all Scotland.
This visit to Eskdale was really Telford's last farewell to his old home,
before setting out on a journey which was to form the turning- point in
his own history, and in the history of British engineering as well. In
Scotch phrase, he was going south. And after taking leave of his mother
(not quite for the last time) he went south in good earnest, doing this
journey on horseback; for his cousin the steward had lent him a horse
to make his way southward like a gentleman. Telford turned where all
enterprising young Scotchmen of his time always turned: towards the
unknown world of London--that world teeming with so many
possibilities of brilliant success or of miserable squalid failure. It was
the year 1782, and the young man was just twenty-five. No sooner had
he reached the great city than he began looking about him for suitable
work. He had a letter of introduction to the architect of Somerset House,
whose ornamental fronts were just then being erected, facing the Strand
and the river; and Telford was able to get a place at once on the job as a
hewer of the finer architectural details, for which both his taste and
experience well fitted him. He spent some two years in London at this
humble post as a stone-cutter; but already he began to aspire to
something better. He earned first-class mason's wages now, and saved
whatever he did not need for daily expenses. In this respect, the
improvidence of his English fellow-workmen struck the cautious young
Scotchman very greatly. They lived, he said, from week to week
entirely; any time beyond a week seemed unfortunately to lie altogether
outside the range of their limited comprehension.

At the end of two years in London, Telford's skill and study began to
bear good fruit. 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. For he was above all things a good workman, and
like all good workmen he felt a pride and an interest in all the jobs he
took in hand. His sense of responsibility and his sensitiveness, indeed,
were almost too great at times for his own personal comfort. Things
will go wrong now and then, even with the greatest care; well- planned
undertakings will not always pay, and the best engineering does not
necessarily succeed in earning a dividend; but whenever such mishaps
occurred to his employers, Telford felt the