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Readers are asked to re- port all cases of books mr.^i.^(j Qr mutilated. SIR RICHARD TANGYE Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028345696 ' 'm^.^a^tU^...Aat*Ua^. JrSfi^ /^^^2^ &mMy^aJA£^:P-K^ SIR RICHARD TANGYE BY STUART J. REID D.C.L. '^ AUTHOR OF " LIFE AKD TIMES OF SYDNEY SMITH "LIFE AND LETTERS OP LORD DURHAM" ETC. ' He loved the truth which reconciled The strong man, Reason ; Faith the child, In him belief and act were one, The homily of duty done." Whittier, LONDON DUCKWORTH AND CO. 3 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C. ^V;i First published igoS Cheaper re-issue tgn TO LADY TANGYE THE DEVOTED WIFE OF ONE OF THE MOST CHIVALROUS MEN WHOM THE WRITER EVER KNEW THIS APPRECIATION IS DEDICATED PREFACE I HAVE written this book in order to show, as far as in me lies, what manner of man was Sir Richard Tangye. I have done so in order that those who come after may know, to such extent as is still pos- sible, the qualities even more than the achievenients which explain the wide appeal of his character. The book is written of set purpose simply, for simplicity, in the most worthy acceptation of the term, was the most conspicuous trait in his nature. He was transparently open and artless.. But simplicity in itself does not carry one far in the interpretation of such a man, so to it, I add other qualities to the great endowment of a sunny, un- spoilt temperament the possession, to a rare degree, of courage, sympathy, and common sense. His moral courage stood revealed at every crisis of his public and private life. His sympathy, it was at once delicate and practical, ran like a golden thread through all his intercourse with other people. His common viii PREFACE sense leaped forth, even in casual talk, as well as dominated all the activities of a strenuous career. The aim of this book is to describe the man exactly as I.knew^ him in the genial leisure of his closing years. We came to know each othe. almost by chance ; but we quickly fqvind that we had many common interests, and mere acquaintance ripened swiftly into a friendship, close and confi- dential, which deepened into tenderness in the las^ anxious months before the end. I have known many men of all ranks and conditions, but I never met any one who possessed a more exquisite genius for friendship. He was not a man who wore his heart upon his sleeve. On the contrary, in spite of his affluent talk, his intensely human temperament, and his power — it was a quite unconscious gift — of draw- ing the best out of every one who met him frankly in hearty speech, he was shy. All who knew him recognised more or less vividly the qualities on which I have just laid stress. But exceedingly few people, for at the heart of him he was reserved^ suspected the depths and heights of a nature which was so finely poised that self-revelation was difficult. In many close talks at Glendorgal, in the Nursing Home in London, after his last critical operation, PREFACE ix and in the final months of his life at Combe Bank, when it was only too clear to us both that recovery was impossible — that knowledge was not denied me, or this book would never have been written. Few things impressed me more than his unfailing vivacity and the almost boyish delight which he took in doing little acts of kindness. One instance of the latter, slight though it is, may perhaps be mentioned. He was my guest in the last year of his life. I had shown him a number of small treasures I prized — medals, autograph letters, political and literary. Civil War Tracts, various books in which former owners had written their names, notably, Oliver Goldsmith and Napoleon Bonaparte ; an armchair which once belonged to Sydney Smith, a quaint mirror which was the property of Charlotte Bronte at Haworth, and other decorative spoil of a bookish man. But, to my amusement, the thing which seemed to attract him most was a little silver-mounted meerschaum pipe given to me by a niece of R. D. Blackmore, in memory of my friend. Sir Richard was both a teetotaler and a non-smoker, but, oddly enough, he seemed fascinated with the pipe and asked for the loan of it. In a few days it came back with a neat little silver plate on it, inscribed " R. D. X PREFACE Blackmore, Lorna Doone." That was a small thing in itself, but it reveals the man. It only remains to add, first, that this book is based on his own letters and papers which were placed at my unfettered discretion. Next, that many of his friends, both in business and private life— one or two of them could go back to his boy- hood — have given me hints and reminiscences, and foremost amongst them his nearest relatives. I wish to add my sense of indebtedness to Dr. Guinness Rogers for his interesting contribution to the final chapter, and also to Mr, Chambers, of Edinburgh, for allowing me to make use of articles on the begging fraternity contributed — by Sir Richard Tangye — to the famous " Journal " which bears his name. STUART J. REID. Blackwell Cliff, East Grinstead, SxresEX. Nov. 5, 1908. CONTENTS CHAPTER I EARLY DAYS Leading traits of character — Humble environment — Wesleyanism in Cornwall — Old Cornish customs — A long-lived race — " Pick your heels up " — Ancestry and parentage — A warning that had effect — Church Rates — The Tangye family — At the British School — Boyish characteristics — A night with Elihu Burritt — Apothegms of old newspapers — Prejudices of youth — Favourite books Pp, 1-14 CHAPTER II AT SIDCOT SCHOOL Leaving home — First experiences at Sidcot — Condition of the School in 1837 — Charles Feinaigle — New system of mne- monics — "Shearing the flock" — Schoolboy gardeners — Counsels of perfection — The School Magazine — Richard Tangye's reminiscences of school-life — An archaeological collection — Experience as pupil teacher — The school news- paper — Franklin's Autobiography — Kicking against school limitations — Free to face the world — William Tallack — A text that shot home — First visit to London — Wonders of the Great Exhibition Pp. 15-31 CHAPTER III HIS START IN LIFE Waiting for an opening — Indebtedness to Sidcot — Bed-rock convictions — The post of stationmaster — " Fit for something xi xii CONTENTS better " — Obtains clerkship in Birmingham — The Midland capital in 1852 — Joseph Sturge befriends Richard — The first and last master — The young clerk's first public service — Life in lodgings — George Tangye comes to Birmingham — Death of Joseph Tangye, senior Pp. 32-4S CHAPTER IV HIS OWN MASTER Leaves the firm of Evans and Worsdell — " R. Tangye, General Merchant " — Working up a business — The first vrorkshop — Joins in partnership with his brothers— Rehtions with Mr. Worsdell — Beginnings of a great industry — Qualities of the five brothers-7— The "driving-belt" of the business — Richard's dilemma in London — A tramp towards Birmingham and notes of the journey — The " inconvenience " of poverty — A struggle that made for success Pp. 46-58 CHAPTER V THE RISING TIDE OF FORTUNE A turning point — Isambard Brunei — Hydraulic jacks for launch- ing the Great Eastern — " She launched us " — " Great events from little causes " — A new workshop — ^At the Friends' Adult School — Masters and men — Anxious moments — Hardening effect of prosperity — A clear view of responsibility — Litigation over the differential pulley block — Building new premises— His marriage, and the charm of his home Pp. 59-71 CHAPTER VI STRESS AND PROGRESS Statesmen after Tangye's own heart — Twenty invitations to enter Parliament — Services to the Liberal Party — Contribution to Cobden's Commercial Treaty with France — Encountering prejudices against new machines — An experience in a bank parlour — Hydraulic shearing-machine — The " Cornubia " — CONTENTS xiii Learning at the feet of public men — " Victory and Sebasto- pool " — ^Tactful management of customers — Not enslaved by business — Quick decisions — Magnanimous judgments of men Pp. 72-85 CHAPTER VII THE CORNWALL WORKS New works at Soho — An effective advertisement — The Special Steam Pump — Results of incivility — Opening of works in Belgium— British and Belgic workmen compared — London warehouse — Branches in the north and the colonies — Richard Tangye's administrative powers — Relations with workpeople — Dr. Dale's testimony — Richard Tangye's humour Pp. 86-99 CHAPTER VIII CONSIDERATION FOR WORKPEOPLE Tyneside struggle between capital and labour — Richard Tangye averts a strike in Birmingham — Nine-hours day granted unasked — Holding wealth as a trust — Conscience and kindness in the workshop — Dining-hall for the workmen — Evening classes — Benefit fund — Dr. Langford's addresses — Lifting Cleopatra's Needle — Rapid progress in methods of weight-raising — Results achieved by the Hydraulic Jack Pp. 100-112 CHAPTER IX EDUCATIONAL REFORM Excuses of the wealthy — Richard Tangye's municipal and social services — Advocacy of technical education — Broadcloth versus Fustian — Language classes at Cornwall Works — A fair start for the children of the people — Results of Board Schools — Science teaching — " Study and work together " — Essentials for skilled labour — Self reliance — No mercy on the loafer — Going forward — " Good advice, and nothing more " Pp. 113-126 xiv CONTENTS CHAPTER X POLITICAL INTERESTS Richard Tangye in society — Family bonds — Recreations and hobbies — L'bve of books — Some of his friends — Refusal to enter Parliament — Wit and power of retort — Fidelity to the Liberal Party — The Daily Argus — Gladstone asks him to stand for Birmingham — Admiration for John Bright — First election of Bright for Birmingham — Hints on public speaking — Bright's defence of the north in the American Civil War — Tangye's shortest speech — Honour to Sir Josiah Mason — Incident in a railway carriage — Relations with Mr. Cham- berlain — Gladstone and Home Rule — Working men in Parliament Pp. 127-148 CHAPTER XI PUBLIC SPIRIT First Art Gallery in Birmingham — A project for technical in- struction deferred — Gifts of Richard and George Tangye to the new Art Gallery and the School of Art and Design — Great value of the School — Ungenerous criticism and a powerful retort — Richard Tangye's resignation of official positions — Changes in the firm — Public honour to Richard and George Tangye — Limitations of " immortality " Pp. 149-164 CHAPTER XII NOTES OF TRAVEL Richard Tangye's visits to Australia — Impressions of places and people — The waters of the Mediterranean — ^Backsheesh in Egypt — The great pyramid — Heliopolis, Memphis, Bulak, and Alexandria — Traffic in the Suez Canal — A mine " twelve miles deep" — Trade and institutions of Melbourne — Colonial affinity to the Tory Party — The great need of Australia — Attractions of Sydney — Drawbacks in Tasmania CONTENTS XV — Possibilities of New Zealand — Honolulu — San Francisco compared with Melbourne — ^English gold at Utah—Com- parison of economic conditions between the United States and England — ^American factories Pp. 165-185 CHAPTER XIII WHY LAUGHTER REIGNED AT GLENDORGAL Richard Tangye in mixed company — Salvation Lass and "soft heads " — " Sweeps " — Unfriendly criticism of Radicals — Attack on John Bright — Limitations of coasting-vessels — Sermons " dearer than life " — A member of the Self-Help Society — A cheat detected — Adventure of a lightning-con- ductor — Ready wit of a negro — Ex-pugilist missionary — A vicar and his dog — " Ten thousand blessings " — " No wages for a fortnight " — Society of the White Rose and a portrait of Cromwell Pp. 186-200 CHAPTER XIV THE CROMWELL COLLECTION Richard Tangye's admiration of Cromwell, and the reasons for it — Begins to collect memorials of the Commonwealth — Acquires the collection of Mr. J. de Kewer Williams — Bids for Benjamin Franklin's letters — Visitors to Glendorgal to view the collection — Its main features — ^Tangye's " Notes " on his Gromwellian Treasures — ^The executioner of Charles I. — Tangye's "Two Protectors" — Cromwell and the "Twelve Apostles " Pp. 201-215 CHAPTER XV AMONGST HIS OWN PEOPLE Cornish traits of character — Glendorgal — Generous hospitality and kindness — Stories of Cornish life — " Vain sports " — Quaker Meeting-Houses — " Tall talkers " — " Divine and Moral songs " — A question of corns — Easy way of cancelling debts — " We've usually sot ! " — A Wesleyan minister's send- xvi CONTENTS off—" You're gooen down 'ill fast "—An extraordinary text — Result of " eddication " — Definition of a vineyard — A sick man and a grave-digger—" In the flesh still " Pp. 216-229 CHAPTER XVI THE OPEN HAND The penalty of kindliness — Varieties of beggars — Fruitless appeals for aid — An unredeemed promise — Unreal poverty — Curious petitions — Requests that went home — " An extraordinarily wonderful discovery" — " Victoria Crown Minstrels" — Pleas of Cornishmen — Beggars of all nationalities — A punster — Gaelic not wanted — Short and to the point — A widower's request — Distressed authors — Helping "lame dogs " — An audacious appeal — Tangye's discrimination in bestowing charity — Money as a trust — Compounding with pensioners Pp. 230-244 CHAPTER XVII "TWILIGHT AND EVENING BELL" Growing old gracefully — At Kingston Vale — " Keep the flag of honour flying " — Lifelong service to others — " Keeping his friendships in repair " — Knighthood — Peaceful days at Glendorgal — Illness — Letter from William Tallack — " Cornish apprentices " at Sidcot — " A trail of sunshine " — A mind broad and generous — Last days and death — Tribute of Dr. Guinness Rogers — " The high breeding of the spiritual life " — A bit of English oak Pp. 245-263 Index Pp. 265-270 SIR RICHARD TANGYE CHAPTER I EARLY DAYS Leading traits of character — Humble environment — Wes- leyanism in Cornwall — Old Cornish customs^— A long-lived race — " Pick your heels up " — Ancestry and parentage — A warning that had eflfect — Church Rates — The Tangye family — ^At the British School — Boyish characteristics — ^A night with Elihu Burritt — ^Apothegms of old newspapers — Prejudices of youth — Favourite books. It is a great mark of quality when, looking back, it can be claimed with truth for any man that, in his character, simplicity was linked with strength, and chivalrous regard for others with a lowly estimate of self. The story of any life great or small can never be perfectly told, since so much that is significant and vital lies in a region with which neither stranger nor friend can inter- meddle. But it is surely possible to trace the ruling motive, as well as to record the words and deeds which were its outward manifestation, and that is the aim of the present volume. 2 SIR RICHARD TANGYE Although Richard Tangye had many gifts, he was the most unassuming of men, and it would be alien to the whole spirit of his life to attempt a portraiture which opened with any words of exaggeration. His career was one of ever broadening success, but its real claim to abiding remembrance has its basis in moral, rather than intellectual, qualities, and, beyond all else, in a certain fe;arless courage of conviction, a high sense of duty, and a sympathy — at once practical and delicate — only possible to an imaginative tempera- ment, loyal to the behests of a sensitive heart. Let it not be supposed, even for a moment, that this estimate, winning and significant though it is, gathers into a few words all that might be advanced in such directionSjbut to say more now would be to anticipate the story, which has yet to be told — a story, so rich in golden deeds, that it may well be left to make its own impression, and all the more, since so much of it can happily be told in the words — eloquent with sincerity — of the man himself. He owed nothing to the gifts of fortune. He was born in lowly surroundings, and at every toU-bar on the road of life he had to make good his claims. But, like thousands of other men who have risen to distinction, he had good, honest blood in his veins. When he grew rich and famous he never dipped his flag, and, far from being ashamed of his humble start in life, was proud, in a right worthy manner, of the home of his childhood, to which he owed nothing in the material sense, but BIRTH IN CORNWALL 3 more than can ever be told in directions which are noble, subtle, and abiding. His home — as a train- ing ground for character — ^gave him, in spite of its austere and modest limitations, as excellent a start as any self-reliant lad could desire. He was born at lUogan, near Redruth in Cornwall, on November 24, 1833, when the echoes of the Reform Bill stiU lingered in the Duchy, then a remote part of the country, where people took politics, as they took religion, seriously. If Corn- wall in those days was severed from much of the life of the nation, its people, because of that circum- stance, led their own life and grew up self-reliarit, and, so far as the best of them were concerned, with a real sense of the dignity of life, and, what is more, with a deep response to the uplifting appeal of the Methodist Revival. Richard Tangye was not associated, either early or late, with this aspect of spiritual enthusiasm. His character was formed and his career developed on other and less emotional lines, but even the Society of Friends, with its widely different worship and its more tranquil outlook on life, could not escape, in Cornwall at least, from that intensity of feeling, which found expression in the genius and self- denying work of Wesleyanism, when it took by storm, in well nigh every parish of the county, the hearts of the people. There was a great deal of lawlessness and super- stition in Cornwall in the last decades of the eigh- teenth century, and both lingered, to some extent. 4 SIR RICHARD TANGYE to a much later period. Richard Tangye could recall many traditions of the countryside, some of which made for righteousness, whUst others betrayed a rough and almost barbarous phase of civilisation. The pixies were supposed to haunt lonely places.* It was still reckoned an evil thing to whistle after nightfall. Bull-baiting and cock- fighting, ending usually in brutal horseplay, were already a tradition. But the old animosity between people of different parishes survived, and the boys of one village indulged in fisticuffs with those of another, as a matter of course, in the days when the little fellow first went to school. Bonfires were always lighted on Midsummer Eve, and the children, joining hands, would dance around them, until, as the fun became fast and furious, the bolder would jump through the flames. Other old customs, some of them quaint and picturesque, were common. He could remember the performance of sacred plays on the village greens, and once saw "Joseph and his Brethren " acted with startling realism on a stage in the open air, on a Sunday. The Tangyes were a long-lived, sturdy race. Richard could recall his great-grandmother, who died at the age of eighty-eight, just after Queen Victoria came to the throne, and was born in the reign of George II. His grandfather lived to ninety- five. He was a tall, active man, over 6 ft. in height, alert almost to the last and nimble on his feet. The old man greatly disliked the lazy habit, which some young people have, of walking carelessly, and shuff- HOME ENVIRONMENT 5 ling their feet along the ground. Richard was guilty of this habit, and many a time he found his grandfather behind him, calling out in sharp tones, " Pick your heels up." Often, in after life, when things went badly and his energies flagged, he used to say that the words came back to him as a spur to fresh exertion. This old worthy, who was his mother's father, led the simple life in the most strenuous fashion. He was in charge of a pumping-engine in one of the mines at night, and he cultivated his little plot of land by day, and for a long term of years worked, not eight hours a day, but seventeen — " wasting," as he put it, the other seven hours in sleep. He lived on his labour, and never needed, until the end, the services of a doctor. He was an old-fashioned Methodist, and cut quite a smart figure on Sundays when he went to chapel, dressed in a blue coat with high collar and gilt buttons. It was Richard's duty in his childhood to read to the old man on Sunday afternoon, and he invariably selected the most depressing of Wesley's hymns, and was par- ticularly fond of those which were commonly sung at funerals. He was not satisfied unless the verses were repeated in what he regarded as becoming accents of solemnity ; but sometimes he apparently fell asleep, and then the young reader would skip along in a much more lively fashion, only to be pulled up sharply by the stern admonition to read seriously. Richard's father, Joseph Tangye, was a native of Redruth, a little town, where William Murdock 6 SIR RICHARD TANGYE lived, long before he became famous as an engineer. It was at Redruth that his inventive genius made its first experiment with gas as an illuminant, and, in the lane in front of the Tangye cottage, he set the first locomotive in motion that ever ran in England. Many years afterwards Richard Tangye and one of his brothers placed a granite slab on the wall of Murdock's house, which bears this inscription: " William Murdock lived in this house 1 78 2-1 789 ; invented the first Locomotive here, and tested it in 1784; invented gas-lighting and used it in this house 1792." When Murdock's clumsy hissing machine first began to move about, even the vicar of the parish recoiled from it, with superstitious dread- Richard Tangye was always proud that his father was the neighbour of one of the pioneers of the Industrial Revolution. In early life old Joseph Tangye had worked in a mine. He was a quiet, thoughtful man, and fond of books, though in those days there were, not many within reach of the poorer classes of the community. At the time of Richard's birth he was a Wesleyan, and a class-leader at the local chapel. He became a total abstainer, his son used to say, long before the word teetotaler was invented. He afterwards joined the Society of Friends, and remained a respected member of that community to the end of his life. The children, in such a home, simple and even straitened as it was, caught glimpses of the meaning HIS MOTHER'S CHARACTER 7 of life in other than a material sense, for they had not merely an upright, seriously-minded father, but a mother who was both quick-witted and deeply religious. Richard Tangye always spoke of his mother in terms of grateful and affectionate reverence. She was a shrewd, tender-hearted, comely woman, ever on the alert to help her children and never more so than when she saw them making efforts to help themselves. During an alarming visi- tation of cholera to the village, she stood at the post of danger, when other people fled. Her religion consisted in looking and lifting up, in meditation in the simple Quaker meeting, and in good deeds to those with whom life went even more hardly than with herself. She died in the summer of 1 851, when her son Richard was eighteen, and she told him just before the end that, if her life had not been an example to him, nothing she said then could be of any avail. He was only a poor young usher at the time, with no prospects of advancement, but he said his mother somehow seemed to believe that he had a career before him, for she said, " Richard, if you ever get money, never let money get you." There were times of prosperity when he felt the need of that warning, and he used to say that at such moments, his mother's white face and earnest accents flashed upon him, and were his salvation. " Make straight paths to thyself " were her last words to him. In Richard's early days his father kept the village shop at lUogan, and it returned the compliment 8 SIR RICHARD TANGYE by keeping him and his large family. He farmed ten acres, moreover, and always followed the plough in Quaker dress and broad-brimmed hat. He possessed an unaccommodating Nonconformist con- science, and steadily refused to pay the Church rates. The family cow used therefore to be dis- trained in summer, and the disappointed children went with scanty milk to their porridge. In winter the flitch of bacon which hung on the rafters of the kitchen was also carried off. It turned one of those children, at least, into a most uncompromising opponent of the State Church. Richard Tangye, looking back, in the mellow light of his closing years, declared that he could never forgive the Established Church for putting people under the harrow who could not, on principle, consent to such payments. It stirred the note of revolt in him, and made him ever a fighter on behalf of religious liberty. Plain Joseph and Anne Tangye gave names of the same sort to their six sons and three daughters. They were called respectively, James, Joseph, John, Edward, Richard, George, Anne, Alice and Sarah ; of the nine, seven grew up to manhood and womanhood and five still survive. The eldest, James, now an octogenarian, and living in retirement in the county of his birth, was from boyhood a clever mechanic, with a marked aptitude, even then, for invention. He was in this respect the genius of the family, and no one was more ready to recognise the fact that his clever HANDICAPPED 9 brain was the foundation of the family fortunes than his brother Richard. At the same time, James Tangye was too timid in practical affairs and , had so little business ability that, like a good many other people, he would have "missed his market," to borrow a homely saying in the great world of engineering activity, if it had not been for the enterprise, prescience, and energy of Richard. The elder boys attended a dame school, but the younger ones were sent to the British School, where one master, with the help of monitors, did his best to instil the rudiments of learning into sixty or seventy scholars. Richard, as a child of eight, was appointed a monitor, and he used to laugh over the incident which led to his promotion. It seems that a five-syllabled word embarrassed the pupils, and when the little fellow spelt it promptly and correctly he was lifted straightway out of the ranks. Class distinctions came into play rather curiously in village schools in those days. Some of the parents at lUogan were in a position to pay extra fees, and the schoolmaster, in consequence, gave special heed to their children — a select coterie in which Richard was not included. He had not been a monitor twelve months before, in the rough play of the place, he broke his arm. It was a bad fracture of the right arm just at the joint. It seemed, not to himself alone but to the whole household, a heavy calamity. What chance in life was there for this little son of the soil if, as the doctor said, he could never earn his living lo SIR RICHARD TANGYE by manual labour. When the doctor gave that verdict he took a good look at the lad, and then, turning to his mother, remarked, " He has a good- sized head ; try what a little extra schooling will do for him." James and his other big brothers were by thk time beginning to earn their living, so the extra schooling for Richard was not out of the question. He always declared that the broken arm was a blessing in disguise, for his father sent him to Redruth for two or three years, where he received an education which, though not wonder- ful, was quite beyond the power of the village master at lUogan to impart. This school was kept by William Bellows, the father of John Bellows, of Gloucester, a life-long friend of Richard Tangye, and the author of a pocket French Dictionary which is still widely known. George Tangye was also a pupil at Redruth. Unlike his brothers, Richard was little and delicate, a dreamy, imaginative boy, though with plenty of pluck and no lack of ambition, and beginning, moreover, to realise, in the intellectual sense, that he was alive, and must beat his music out. Sensitive he was then and always ; inquisitive too, mischievous, perhaps a little moody, for he did not relish having to stand aside when play grew boisterous. Still less did he like to be regarded as the undersized, ailing member of a robust brotherhood, and being independent, even then, pity over the limitations imposed by a broken arm was not at all to his mind. He seems to have AS A CHILD II been rather a solitary^ little chap, standing aloof, of necessity, from a great deal of what other boys enjoyed, and, in consequence, thrown much upon himself and the companionship of books. The truth was, his mind was growing more quickly than his body, and if he had not possessed modesty and humour, which never left him, he might have developed at Redruth in the direction of conceit. But he thought soberly of himself as he ought to think, and, keeping an open mind, was sensible enough soon to discover his own limitations. Cornwall in those days was strangely isolated from the rest of the kingdom. Its warm-hearted, out-spoken people saw so little of the great world that they were delightfully confident about their own dpinions, and were apt to cherish a sleepy disdain of new ideas. One of the best things that can happen to an alert, impressionable boy is to come into contact, even for an hour or two, with a man able to lift him out of the rut of his usual environment. One memorable night Elihu Burritt, a philosopher in homespun as well as an American blacksmith, appeared at the Friends' Meeting House at Redruth, two miles from lUogan, and Richard Tangye felt for the first time that strange thrill which is the response to the magic of oratory. Elihu Burritt's theme that night was the necessity of linking together the Old World and the New by a system of Ocean Penny Postage. The enthusiasm of humanity was in that speech as weU as the vision of concord and peace between two nations of one 12 SIR RICHARD TANGYE blood. The lad in the little Meeting House caught his first glimpse of a great public question, which stirred his imagination and made his heart beat fast. The orator went his way, rich, doubtless, with local congratulations. He did not know until nearly thirty years afterwards, when United States Consul at Birmingham, that he had helped to shape the aspirations of an unknown lad. It was then that Richard Tangye, at the height of distinction, as a leader of public opinion in the capital of the midlands, grasped his hand and told him of the incident. The whole family went to this Meeting House, Sunday by Sunday, two and two, and hand in hand, with the father and mother coming last — a prim little procession. All the children were dressed in primitive Quaker fashion. At Redruth Richard began to look out on the world through its windows, in the shape of the Press. The first newspaper which he ever read was a halfpenny jou'rnal, published in Bristol. In those days provincial papers, though vastly less sensational than at present, had a quaint turn for moral reflection. In one corner of them, side by side with the effusions of modern poets, there was usually to be found a few homely apothegms. One which stuck to the boy's memory was a little bit of advice — " Every one can do something for the public if it is only to pick a piece of orange-peel off the pavement." It set him thinking, and led him to see that, after all, self-help was not the A FINE TRAIT 13 only thing in life, and that, in fact, if any one was to be worth his salt he must learn to help other people. It was a little thing, of course, in itself, but the great doors of life often turn on small hinges. It was not a little thing in its outcome, since it turned that boy's mind to the duty of consideration for those who had to tread the same path after him. Looked at broadly, in its entire length and breadth, nothing was more winning in Richard Tangye's life than its consideration for others, and, since it began with a chance word in a forgotten newspaper, it is just as well, for the encouragement of scribes everywhere, that it should not be forgotten. It must not be supposed that, either at lUogan or Redruth, Richard was ever that odious sort of young person, better known in fiction than in fact, a model boy. On his own showing, he was inclined to be lazy in spite of his quick mind — perhaps because of it — and if there were any mischief in the wind he was eager to have a share in it. He de- tested George Washington, because that great man was supposed never to have told a lie, a statement which he asserted was a lie on the face of it. In those days young people were taught writing by the compulsory transcribing of some text or moral reflection. " To be good is to be happy " was one of these counsels of perfection, which proved to him a dark saying. But, " Necessity is the mother of invention " was a statement which he declared, young as he was, he had proved up to the hilt. His weakness for taking things easy led his parents 14 SIR RICHARD TANGYE to present him with a little book called " Idle Dick," a homethrust which led him, on his own confession, not to amend his ways, but to try and live up to the title. Late in life he used to say that few books fell into his hands af that time, but those that came were of the best. Before he was ten years of age he knew his Bible, or at least those parts of it to which the heart of childhood makes a swift response. He (had mastered Bunyan's immortal allegory, and the " Pilgrim's Progress " fired his imagination and set him dreaming of noble deeds. He had read the romantic pages of " Robinson Crusoe," and had caught boylike the love of adventure. He knew almost by heart " The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin," and that homely philosopher had in- stilled into his opening mind the lessons of thrift, diligence and self-help. Sensational trash happily did not come his way, and he had good reason to be glad in after years not only for the uplifting spell of the books which he had read on the threshold of life, but also for his unconscious escape from less worthy appeals. CHAPTER II AT SIDCOT SCHOOL Leaving home — First experiences at Sidcot — Condition of the School in 1837 — Charles FeLnaigle — New system of mnemonics — " Shearing the flock " — Schoolboy gardeners - — Counsels of perfection — The School Magazine — Richard Tangye's reminiscences of school-life— An archseological collection — Experience as pupil- teacher — The School newspaper — Franklin's Autobiography — Kicking against school limitations — William Tallack — ^A text that shot home — First visit to London — ^Wonders of the Great Exhibition — Free to face the world. Richard was more fortunate than his elder brothers. He was not put to work too soon. His weak health and his injured arm forbade rough manual labour. His quick mind and his eager zest for learning led his parents, with whom the sharp pressure of life was beginning somewhat to relax, to think that the boy was worth a more extended schooling than they had been able to give their other children. So it came about that, early in 1847, he quitted his father's roof in search of knowledge. He left lUogan one chill morning in February of that year, wjien in his twelfth year, for the Friends' School at Sidcot, in Somersetshire, where John had IS i6 SIR RICHARD TANGYE already been a pupil, and where George, in due course, followed him. He had never been ten miles from home before, so it was a great experience. He was a timid, shy lad, and he never forgot how depressed he felt when the last good-bye had been said and he was alone on the wet deck of the steamer, in which he sailed from Hayle to Bristol. That little voyage, though uneventful in itself, had for the boy all the charm of novelty. He used to say that it stirred his curiosity, and made him wish to see more of the world that lay beyond the heaving waters. Once, on shore at Bristol, piloted through the busy, unfamiliar streets by one of the seamen, he was quickly at the house of a worthy Quaker, to whose safe keeping he had been consigned. It chanced that another Friend who lived at Sidcot was in the city just then, and, hearing that the boy was on his way to school, he took him all the way to its door in his own carriage. So the last stage of the journey seemed quite a state procession. Sidcot school stands in the Cheddar Valley, amid the Mendip Hills, and possesses a well kept and extensive garden. The whole place, when Richard bashfully made his bow to the Headmaster, was locked in, what Whittier calls, a " tumultuous privacy of snow." The winter of 1846-7 was exceptionally hard all over England, and the boys of the school had made huts and snow-men, and were prepared to pelt all comers. Snow seldom lies long enough in Cornwall to give the lads of the Delectable Duchy much opportunity for this merry diversion, and SIDCOT SCHOOL 17 Richard quickly discovered that he was no match for the older boys of Sidcot at snow-balling. But, when he was getting the worst of it, a big lad came along who had been befriended by Richard's brother, and who took him, there and then, under his protection. But snow-balling was a mere incident. There was the master to face, and he, with praiseworthy alacrity, put the new pupil through his facings, in order to settle his place in the school. Richard was on his mettle with the great man. He answered the questions put to him so well that he got into, what he modestly called, a " false position " at the start. In other words, the place assigned to him was in an advanced class, where he felt like a pretender. Probably the master was not as mistaken as his new scholar, at the moment, supposed. Anyhow, the boy felt he must bestir himself, and he did so to such good purpose that in a few months the distance was bridged, and he was abreast of his class. Sidcot opened the door of opportunity to him. It gave him new interests. It taught him to use his brains. Alike at work and at play, its daily round called forth all his powers. He began to acquire confidence in himself, and not all the lessons which he learnt were given by the masters. The boys at his side had their share in the process of development ; they rubbed off his corners, and made him realise his limitations. There is nothing like the discipline of a school, where the boys live 1 8 SIR RICHARD TANGYE under the same roof and are thrown continually together, not merely in lessons, but in leisure, to take the nonsense out of a little chap who has just escaped from his mother's apron-strings. Few things are more dangerous to a boy than the trick of self-pityc Richard Tangye, at th^t stage of his life, was somewhat given to that weakness, but Sidcot knocked it out of him. Sidcot school, in those days, though full of life, had a hard struggle for existence. It had been practically rebuilt in 1837-8, and there was a con- siderable debt on the new buildings, and constant appeals had to be made for funds, for the Quakers in the west of England at that period, though frugal, were not rich. Up to the year 1847 the advantages of the school were exclusively appro- priated by members of the Society. The teaching staff was also safeguarded in the same way, but in that year, to the considerable dismay of some old supporters of the school, a new head-teacher, who was not a Friend, was appointed. His name was Charles Feinaigle, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and the son of a well-known German edu- cational expert, Baron Feinaigle, author of a book which once had a considerable vogue, called " The New Art of Memory." The Baron lectured on this subject in England and Scotland at the beginning of last century, and was afterwards placed in charge of a school at Dublin, which was founded on his own principles. His " Art of Memory " attracted the attention of Byron, who, in his description of AN ABSENT-MINDED TEACHER 19 Donna Inez, alludes to the old professor in the line : — " For her, Feinaigle's was a useless art." The son of this old worthy, with his German manners and outlook, and his fresh alert mind, must have presented a contrast to the other teachers of more sober speech and aspect, who had seen less of the world and been trained in a narrower school. Richard Tangye always held Mr. Feinaigle in high regard, and all the more because there was between them the common bond of humour. He used to recall the manner in which the German master, who was an ardent disciple of his father, introduced the new system of mnemonics amongst the elder boys. He laid great stress on accuracy, and took infinite pains to fix the dates of great historical events in his pupil's minds. His plan was certainly ingenious, for he seized upon anything in the room to illustrate his teaching. ,. Punctuation, when the lads took down on their slates a long passage from his lips, was not always easy. One boy hit upon the expedient of a lavish use of commas and was promptly asked if he kept a " comma caster." Sometimes the teacher would enliven the proceedings with a conundrum. Like most absent-minded men, he had odd little tricks. One morning, having lathered his face before leaving his bedroom, he continued to shave himself while actually descending the stair, a risky operation, performed with such celerity as to elicit the ad- miration of his astonished pupils. He broadened 20 SIR RICHARD TANGYE the curriculum in the direction of science, and made the study of astronomy fascinating to the lads. The local barber from Axbridge used to come over once a month to " shear the flock." His name was Tuthill, and he took himself seriously. He used to tell the astonished boys that he was descended from Roger de Tuthill, whom he declared was knighted at Cheddar Cliffs because he saved a certain royal personage from falling into a chasm there. The old man used to vigorously handle his scissors at the lower end of the schoolroom when the work of education was in full progress. He would call out abruptly, in a deep nasal tone, " Next Boy," and the distraction of the lesson was considerable. On the barber's appearance, after Mr. Feinaigle was in authority, just as his operations were about to begin, the new master startled him by the peremp- tory order, " Get out of the room." Taken aback, he meekly inquired, " Where am I to go ? " and was promptly told, " Go under the stairs in the passage." It was a dark corner but that did not matter, except perhaps to risky and adventurous touches of the scissors ; henceforth it became known, in school-boy jargon, as " The Shearing Yard." When Richard Tangye was at Sidcot it was the custom of the boys to work in the grounds half a day every week under the direction of the head gardener, and sometimes one of the teachers would read to them whilst they were so engaged. This SERVING TWO PURPOSES 21 little bit of manual labour was a great relief to the ordinary routine of the school. It gave the lads, moreover, a love of nature, as well as a practical knowledge of plants. Occasionally, when local Friends were assembled, each pupil was expected to cover a large sheet of paper with specimens of his writing. They were all given the same maxim — a couplet — to write out. Richard Tangye used to recall two of the quaint counsels of perfection, which, in the 'Forties, he indited for the inspection of the grave Friends. One was : " Pilgrims who journey in the narrow way Should go as little cumbered as they may." The other ran : " Persevere ye perfect men, And ever keep the precepts ten." Sidcot school is a very different place to-day, and the education which it now gives is much more advanced. Indeed, the training it offers at present is abreast, in the best sense, of modern demands. It even boasts of a School Magazine, and to the pages of that journal Richard Tangye contributed, in 1890, some recollections of his life there, on which this chapter is in part based. Here it may be well to fall back on his own words, especially as they give a realistic and amusing picture of his life at the school in far-off days. " On examination day, our dinner consisted of 22 SIR RICHARD TANGYE cake, which was eaten in the playground while the Friends occupied out dining-room, and I remember being very much astonished at hearing that each person had to pay half a crown for his dinner ; I had not previously heard of such costly entertain- ments. During one General Meeting there was a great discussion upon the question of victualling the school, some Friends holding that too much animal food was consumed, while others took the opposite view, and asked for a larger supply. It was observed with some amusement that a Friend named Pease advocated a greater use of vegetables, while another John Veale urged the advisability of a ' more liberal meat diet.' " We used greatly to enjoy our walks to Cheddar, Axbridge, Crook's Peak, Blackdown, and other places, and the memory of these excursions still remains a great pleasure. One excursion, which was a source of unfailing interest, was to the bone caverns at Banwell. The custodian, the venerable Mr. Beard, was a great character, and used to boast of having puzzled Professor Sedgwick with his old-world bones. The venerable Beard had a wonderful collection of curiosities, amongst which was a relic of Marie Antoinette. The collection was catalogued in verse, and this relic was thus described, ' The Queen of France her teapot, which died by the guillotine.' " Old Sidcotians will remember Bob MiUer, who used to perform postman's duties for the school. Many a time has he asked me for a ' few PUPIL TEACHER AT -SIDCOT 33 old broken down steel pens, what were no good/ in order that he might learn to write. " Most of the villagers around the school were very friendly with the boys ; but the people of Shipham still retained somewhat of the evil reputa- tion that belonged to them when Haiinah More tried to civilise them. It was said, with I know not what truth, that they sometimes made raids upon the Woodborough gardens, and John Nye, the village mason, with the then recent Sikh War fresh in his memory, used to say, ' They came down like spikes from the hilltops ! ' Then who doesn't remember Joseph Ham, the Axbridge shoemaker, who examined our boots every Monday evening, often dismissing us with the remark that ' They would run another week.' Joseph Ham was an old soldier, who served in the American War of 181 2, and I well rejnember his description of a Yankee attack upon a mill which his regiment held, and how they often had a shot at General Jackson, as he rode along on his white horse, but keeping well out of range of the Brown Bess of that day." Richard Tangye was only fifteen when, in 1848, he became a pupil teacher at Sidcot. He used to say that he quickly discovered that his new position was not altogether easy. His presence at that time was not commanding. It is not a wise plan to put a lad in even partial authority over those who have known him as fellow pupils, and Richard Tangye, at the start, had his troubles. Sometimes 24 SIR RICHARD TANGYE the boys led him a dance, especially when he took them out for a long walk. On one occasion they proved so frolicsome that the young usher had to leave them to their own devices. Even in those days he possessed some of the family cleverness ia mechanical directions. He once took to pieces a working model of a locomotive steam- engine, and then put together the parts to the minu- test detail. Very amusing, too, were the inquiries of old Friends after each other's health ; ' How art thou to-day, Thomas ? ' ' Thank, thee, not very well ; I've a touch of the liver complaint.' ' Oh, never mind the liver, so long as the heart is aU right,' was the solemn rejoinder. Literary ambitions were stirring in the school. When Richard was sixteen, the boys determined to start a newspaper, and he was appointed Editor. In this capacity he wrote occasional articles himself, sat in judgment on the efforts of the pupils, and then, in spite of his newly found dignity, was expected, in order to give an air of uniformity and neatness to the new venture, to copy out the whole of each number himself. This journalistic enterprise, like a good many more im- portant ones, ran uneasily and was short-lived. The immediate cause of its abrupt termination was the exercise of Richard's editorial rights in rejecting a communication which he considered too homely and realistic for any responsible journal. Young writers are apt to be thin-skinned, and the refusal of the story killed the paper. A BIT OF ADVICE 25 The Friends, when they paid their official visits to the school, took the opportunity in their own fashion to test the progress of the work. One old Friend was examining Richard Tangye's class when he put a question that the pupil teacher thought was too advanced for the boys. Before the embarrassed scholars could reveal their ignorance the young teacher interrupted with the remark, " They have not got so far as that, please." Some- times the questions which were put were a little startling, especially from such grave lips. The boys one day were both amused and taken aback, when one old visitor seriously asked, " Which was the good king and which was the bad — Henry the VIII. or George IV.? " There lives no record of reply. One of the visitors gave the young master a bit of advice which he never forgot. " Always keep a lesson in advance of thy class." That was all very well, but to follow it literally was apt to prove disconcerting, if there was a clever boy in the form. It was not, however, the quick-witted, alert scholars who embarrassed him, but mischievous lads, scarcely younger than himself, who were inclined to challenge his authority. Still, though the position was difficult, it had its advantages. It kept him learning. It brought him into contact with culti- vated people. There was a good library, even in those days, at Sidcot, and Richard turned it to admirable account. The strict discipline of the place, and his own modest share in enforcing it, was 26 SIR RICHARD TANGYE salutary. He used to say that it was at Sidcot that he learned how to command by first learning how to obey. Still, he did not relish the position of an usher ; he had dreams of his own, which could not be fulfilled if he sta|^d within the walls of a school- room. He was reading over again at this time Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, and it fired his ambition. Quite early in his career as a pupil teacher, Richard Tangye realised that he had made a mistake in yielding to the persuasions of his schoolmaster to remain at Sidcot in that capacity. He wanted to get out into the world himself, rather than to pre- pare others for its battles. He thought, even then, that he was better qualified for a commercial life. But he was poor, friendless, and inexperienced, so he yielded, and took up the work that, at the moment, lay nearest. His duties were heavy ; they began, winter and summer, at half-past five in the morning, and continued, with little interval, till nine at night. Even when the boys went up to bed, he could not drop off to sleep until all was quiet, for he was held responsible for good order in the dormitory. " I felt," was his own confession, " I was unfitted for the work, and time did not reconcile me to it." In return for his services, he received board, lodging, clothing and five shillings a quarter as pocket money, besides his travelling expenses. Again and again he petitioned the school committee to cancel his indentures. It seemed to those in authority that he would PRUDENTIAL COUNSELS 27 make an excellent teacher, but he was convinced that, as his heart was not in the work, he was only courting failure to stay. He was warned about the pitfalls of the city, and assured that it§ streets were not paved with gold. Nay, he was told that thousands of young fellows as good as himself were finding it very hard to make their way in the fierce rivalry of commerce. Talk of that kind was of no avail ; it only made him more determined. Three years, to an ardent and restless youth of eighteen, seemed an intolerable time to be under the yoke, and that was the unexpired period which his inden- tures represented, when, at last taking his courage in his hands, though not knowing what he would do with his liberty if he won it, he made so energetic an appeal, that in response they were reluctantly cancelled. Richard Tangye, whilst at Sidcot, according to a tradition which still lingers, was a bright, kindly lad, with more humour than most of his companions, and considerable cleverness in making puns. One story that is told of him, when he had been advanced to the position of junior master and acted as librarian, throws into relief his sense of fun. A certain boy was continually demanding a fresh book, when it was well known to everybody that he had not troubled himself to master the contents of those he returned. Richard, nettled at these constant, and careless, requests, at length brought matters to a crisis by offering the importunate boy Locke " On the Human Understanding." That 28 SIR RICHARD TANGYE was rather forbidding reading, and the proffered volume was declined. The young librarian, how- ever, was obdurate, and refused in turn to part with any more of the books in his charge until that parti- cular volume had been mastered. One of Richard's closest friends at Sidcot was William Tallack, who afterwards became widely and honourably known in connection with the work of the Howard Society. When Richard grew restless over his work as an usher, William Tallack did everything in his power to encourage him to persevere, pointing out how valuable the training was likely to prove, whatever career his friend might eventually determine to follow. Shortly before Richard left Sidcot, William Tallack said to him one day, " Richard, I shall see thee riding in thy carriage, when I shall be walking on the pavement." Nothing at the moment seemed more unlikely, and his friend jocularly replied, " Well, William, when that happens, I will give thee a lift." Many years afterwards it did happen. Richard Tangye was driving along a country road, and there, trudging in front of him, was his old schoolfellow. The carriage was pulled up, the old prediction was laughingly recalled, and the two friends went on together. This friendship endured all the changes of sixty years, and one of the last persons he ever saw when his life was ending at Coombe Bank in the autumn of 1906 was his old schoolfellow. Richard Tangye used to say that what finally FIRST GLIMPSE OF LONDON 29 decided him to leave the teaching profession was the text of a sermon which he heard delivered in the little Meeting House. It was on the words " What shall the end thereof be." He certainly applied the solemn words in a way the preacher did not intend, for this is his confession. " I knew if I stayed on I should miss my chance of congenial occupation, and should ' end ' in failure — so I went ! " Nearly a year before Richard's indentures were cancelled by the school committee at Sidcot, the duU monotony of his life there was broken by his first visit to London. He was at home during the holiday of the summer of i85i,and one day his elder brother James, — suddenly enriched by the present of a five pound note from his employer — announced that he meant to go and see the Great Exhibition, about which aU the world just then was talking, and, what was more, that he intended to take Richard with him. They reached London late on a summer night, but, tired as they were with the long journey, for there were no swift expresses in those days, with the chance of meals by the way, they could not rest until they had made a pilgrimage to Hyde Park to look at the glittering Palace. That which attracted them beyond all else was the machinery, and getting close up to the vast building they peered, in the gathering twilight, through the glass wall and feasted their eyes on the great locomotive, " The Lord of the Isles." During the next few days the brothers not only explored the Exhibition from end to end, 30 SIR RICHARD TANGYE but, as Richard put it, saw all the sights of London that could be seen without payment, for the pur- chasing power of two or three sovereigns had steadily to be kept in mind, since that spelt the whole of their resources. There were exceptions, how- ever, to this rule, for one or two show places proved resistless, notably Madame Tussaud's Wax Works, where James Tangye accidentally trod on Cobbett's toe and stopped to beg the old man's pardon. Richard was forced to leave London before his brother, because school duties summoned him back to Sidcot, and, as money by this time was running out, he only accepted enough for the journey to Bristol, saying that he knew the Captain of the Cornish steamer, which sailed from that port, and could get credit for the rest of the way. He never forgot that first glimpse of the great city in that wonderful year, when it was filled with crowds of sightseers from all parts of the world, and probably it quickened his determination at all hazards,, to escape from the dull round of life in a small pro- vincial school. So it came to pass that, in search of a living, he quitted the school at Sidcot in 1852, with a plain but sound education. His ambition did not soar so high as to lead him to dream of making his fortune. He was only a boy eager to see the world, and eager in consequence to get out of bounds. The love of machinery was already beginning to cast its spell over him, and just then the post which he coveted THE OPEN ROAD 31 beyond all else was to get employment on a railway, and, if possible, to become, in due course, a station- master. Meanwhile, as he said farewell to his com- panions, and the gates of the old school closed behind him, he was content with the knowledge that he was alive, young, free, and that the road lay open before him. CHAPTER III HIS START IN LIFE Waiting for an opening — Indebtedness to Sidcot — ^Bed-rock convictions — ^The post of stationmaster — " Fit for some- thing better " — Obtains clerkship in Birmingham — The Midland capital in 1852 — Joseph Sturge befriends Richard — The first and last master — The young clerk's first public service — ^Life in lodgings — George Tangye comes to Bir- mingham — ^Death of Joseph Tangye, senior. It was one thing to strike out into the open, but another to know which way to turn. High spirits, evoked by the sense of freedom from uncongenial drudgery, were quickly succeeded in Richard's mind by a dull sense of depression. He was always peculiarly sensitive, and, in spite of his alert and resolute nature, was in those early days curiously at the mercy of his surroundings. Long afterwards he confessed that when he left Sidcot he was filled with what he called a great terror. He knew next to nothing of the world, for his life so far had been passed in the simple and ordered quietness of his home, or in the routine of a school where those princlplei were scarcely less recognised. " I suddenly realised," were his own words, " that I was face to 32 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 33 face with the world, with but few friends who eould help me, and with no business experience." The Bible, then and always, was a very real book to him, and he found himself at that moment, as he himself put it, in fuU sympathy with the Israelites " when they looked back upon the flesh-pots of Egypt." He even asserts that it was in his mind to retrace his steps, and to go back to his old desk in the school. Then it was that his knowledge of Benjamin Franklin's early struggles stood him in good stead. If one young fellow had succeeded, why should not another ? So he took courage, and, in the simple faith of his boyhood, went forward. But he never forgot his old school, and when life went well with him, to an extent far beyond the most sanguine dreams of his youth, both he and his brother George came to its help with substantial assistance. One of the early benefactors of Sidcot was the Quaker philanthropist and merchant prince of Bristol, George Thomas. One day Richard Tangye, when he was just beginning to prosper in life, happened to travel in the same train with this fine old man. Presently the latter said, " Richard, I understand thou art getting on well in business. I shall not live always, and Sidcot will want a friend some day." On this hint Richard and his brother built new class-rooms and bedrooms, and in other ways helped to increase the efficiency of the old place, which had equipped thefn for their start in life. 34 SIR RICHARD TANGYE Meanwhile, in the summer of 1852, Richard had to face the problem of what to make of the liberty for which he had craved so hard, and had at last won. The prospect was not reassuring. The world had offered nothing better to his brother James, although his inventive abilities claimed worthier recognition, than a post with a country- wheelwright, whilst Joseph, in spite of his re- luctance, had been apprenticed to a blacksmith. But once at work, both of them had set Richard a good example, by hammering cheerfully away at wheels and horse-shoes till the way opened to something better. They both mastered their trades, and then, following their natural bent, they became, in the modest sense of the term, engineers, and in due time were the pioneers of the fortunes of the family. Unlike his brothers, Richard was a bookish boy, but the ambition to push on in life was in the blood of them all, and, with it, the wholesome recognition that, if this was to be the case, they must depend on their own exertions. All of them stood on the bed-rock of necessity ; they had nothing to lose, and everything to gain. They had the good sense to see clearly at the start that, if they were to succeed, they must paddle their own canoe. Richard ought to have been called Joseph, for he was the youngest but one of the tribe, and he dreamed dreams and saw visions. That broken arm had thrown him, to a large extent, out of touch with the rough play of other youths. He had THE THRESHOLD OF LIFE 35 plenty of time for thinking when, as a shy young usher, he tried to keep order at Sidcot, and, to do him credit, he had thought to some purpose. He came out of the school brimful of wise saws and good resolutions, to say nothing of a number of clear-cut convictions about right and wrong, the need of frugality, temperance, moral courage, and self-control in every direction, if the battle of life was to be fought right worthily. In those days lads of eighteen were somehow older in character than they are now, and they took a more serious, some people would say a more sombre, view of life. Richard had been brought up in an atmosphere where gravity was habitual, in which conscience was enthroned, and duty was supreme. If it made him, to some extent, introspective, it at least sent him forth into the world with an overpowering sense of the reality of life, and of the need of circum- spection. Out of it grew a certain simple dignity of bearing, a recoil from exaggerated sentiment, especially in matters of religion, a noble sense of truth, alike in word and in deed. These may sound homespun virtues, but, when they con- stitute the driving belt of a human life, all things that are lovely and of good report become possible. On leaving Sidcot, Richard had joined the un- employed. He envied the clever hands of his brothers, who had a knack of doing things which he did not possess — mere manual labour as yet, though shot through with the prophecy of something better. 36 SIR RICHARD TANGYE What was he to do ? He was neither wheelwright nor blacksmith, nor even master, in any real sense, of the tasks of a pedagogue. He went home to think the problem out, rather abashed at his own audacity in, breaking away from the school, and somewhat disposed to imagine that the straight-cut homely friends of the small community in which his father figured were inclined to think him a failure. But, if his hands were idle, his brain was busy, thrashing out old problems and new, during that time, not of rest, but uncertainty. One thing was plain, he had not the mechanical sMU, much less the inventive faculty, of his elder brothers. But he could express himself well, he had plenty of energy, and he was sanguine enough to believe that, given the chance, his business aptitude would emerge to some purpose. He tried, first of all, to see if there was anything in the plan he had cherished whilst at school of obtaining work on the railway. The iron road by his time had come close to his father's door. The chairman of the Company had been nothing more important in his youth than a workman in the mines of Cornwall. If Dr. Smith, for such was his title now, had risen on the principle of promotion by merit, why should not Richard Tangye do the same, at least as far as the responsibility of a stationmaster was concerned ? Dr. Smith had toiled in the old days side by side with the lad's father, and he was one of those men who are not accustomed} to forget SEARCH FOR WORK 37 their friends. He was therefore not difficult of approach, and Richard's first interview was with him. The conversation was disappointing in one sense, for, to borrow a railway phrase, it shunted the lad on to another line. " Take my advice, try for something else ; you are fit for something better than to be a stationmaster." It was the word fitly spoken. It did not give him work, but it gave him courage. Dr. Smith thought him worthy of something better, and so, to fall back on his own words, " I determined to adhere to my resolution to obtain employment in some business house." His old schoolmaster had shaken his head about his chances in that direction. Clerks were even then cheap. They were miserably paid, and their prospects, for the most part, were uncertain. He would have to start — 'SO he had been assured at Sidcot, if he turned his feet in that direction — on something less than a pound a week, and without food and shelter, to say nothing of the clothing and pocket money which the school provided. Richard kept a sharp eye at lUogan on such newspapers as fell into his hands, and especially that part of them which contained a list of situations vacant. One day an advertisement caught his attention. It offered the position of clerk in a small engineering establishment in Birmingham. He applied for this post, and obtained it. In that lowly way began the association of the Tangyes with the great capital of the Midlands, It was a happy circumstance which led Richard 38 SIR RICHARD TANGYE Tangye to Birmingliam. There were few places in England more fuU of stir and life, religious, political, social, and industrial. Twenty years earlier Birmingham had played a memorable part in the great ^ruggle over the Reform Bill, and it was then, and long afterwards, what it assuredly is not to-day, a Radical stronghold. Like Manchester, it was one of the chief centres of the Industrial Revolution. Many notable men were amongst its inhabitants, and the public spirit and business push of the whole community were vigorous. It pos- sessed even then, to some small extent, institutions for the betterment of the people — notably the Mechanics' Institute ; but there were no public libraries or free reading rooms. Surely any lad might have counted himself happy to start life in a place which possessed so many advantages. This particular lad was exceptionally fortunate in finding his way thither, since the Society of Friends held an honourable and important position in the community, whilst one of their number, Joseph Sturge, was a philanthropist of widespread renown, who had done much for the emancipation of the slave, and was one of the earliest advocates of Peace and International Arbitration. Joseph Sturge was as much esteemed by the inhabitants in those days as was John Bright twenty years later. The youth from Cornwall, who first set foot in Birmingham on December 28, 1852, was destined to have relations with both of these eminent men, and also with John Cadbury, father of Mr. George JOSEPH STURGE 39 Cadbury, with whom he was closely associated in public work in Birmingham, and who remained to the last his intimate friend. Richard Tangye was only one of many young men who came under the influence of Joseph Sturge, then at the height of his career as a philan- thropist. The good man never lost an oppor- tunity of enlisting the help of young people of his own persuasion who came to the meeting-house, as Richard Tangye did, with letters of introduction from Friends in other parts of the country, and presently the young stranger was enlisted as a teacher in the Severn Street Sunday School, of which Joseph Sturge was the founder. It was the best thing that could have happened to him, for it brought him at once into good company, and identified him at the start with Christian work. Just before he left his home for Birmingham an old Friend said to him, " Richard, thou art going into a large town, where there are many temptations. Thy father has left thee a good name. See that thou keep it bright. Begin to give as soon as thou begins to get." Who can say how far those wise and simple words helped to shape to fine issues the career of the young Cornish lad ? He was fortunate in another respect. His master, Thomas Worsdell — his first and only employer — was himself a Friend, and long afterwards Richard Tangye publicly expressed his gratitude for the forbearance with which he was treated at the outset of his business career. Thomas Worsdell lived long 40 SIR RICHARD TANGYE enough to see his young clerk grow famous, and for forty years the friendship between them was un- broken. The prophecy about his wages as a clerk which had been made at Sidcot was fulfilled to the letter, for hi| salary was ^^50 a year. It was a great change to pass from the beauty of the Mendip Hills to dreary interminable streets, " ankle-deep in mud," and to find that Mr. Worsdell's modest " works " lay in a narrow lane in the most dismal part of Birmingham. The office which was the scene of his own duties was in a loft, and the only approach to it was up a step-ladder. When the shy young fellow stumbled into the place, he found his new master writing at a desk in hat and overcoat. He looked round and said briskly, " I am glad you have turned up. Will you copy these invoices," and so, without more ado, his business life began there and then. Blood is thicker than water, and Richard did not forget his brothers, still toiling away in obscurity in Cornwall. He was the path-finder of the family, and through him, they all found employment in a town which was peculiarly fitted to give fuU play to their mechanical skiU. There were plenty of theatres and music-halls, but in those days there were no well-lighted rooms where the news of the world was accessible to all comers. Richard Tangye kept aloof from theatres and music-halls ; he had been brought up to regard them with old-fashioned aversion. He became a subscriber to a dingy news-room of a kind now HIS BIRMINGHAM MASTER 41 happily well-nigh extinct, and in his free hours kept himself in touch with the tidings of the day, or rather of the week, for the only journals provided then in a provincial town appeared at that interval. He read in one of these journals, in the spring of 1853, a s,eries of articles on the relations of masters and men, which greatly interested him. The writer laid stress on the duty of employers to pay wages on Friday nights, and to close their works at one o'clock on Saturdays. Mr. Worsdell's men dropped work at half-past four on the last day of the week, and then they had to wait, sometimes for a couple of hours, whilst the amount of their earnings was calculated in the loft, and this, in the words of the young clerk, was " a fruitful cause of ill- humour." One day he ventured to suggest to his master, whether it were possible for him to try the new method recommended by the newspaper. He hinted, that if the men's earnings were calculated each day, much time would be saved at the end of the week, and he urged all that he could on behalf of payment on Fridays. Mr. Worsdell determined to give the plan a trial, and to let the men free on Saturdays at one o'clock, on condition that they worked an extra half -hour on other days of the week, and also pay them their wages on Fridays. The system answered exceptionally well. Other em- ployers fell in with it, and, before very long, payment of wages on Friday night, and a half-day's work on Saturday, became the rule in Birmingham and 42 SIR RICHARD TANGYE the district. That was the first public service Richard Tangye rendered to the great community, which he afterwards so largely benefited. It was a bold stroke for a young clerk, who had not been six months in the place to make, and it was the first awakening in him of a finer spirit than that of self- help — the desire to help others, and those who were, at that time at least, in a very real sense, conscripts of toil. A young fellow with less than a pound a week, all told, must of necessity live sparingly. Life in lodgings in a great town on such a sum, which had to cover everything in the way of expenditure, was rather dreary. Richard, with his sociable instincts, found it to be a bit of experience which called for all his pluck. His landlady was of the hard, forbidding type, and there was little comfort under her roof. Her life, poor soul, was doubtless cloaked in gloom, for to exist by letting apartments in a mean street to badly-paid clerks is not exactly an exhilarating occupation. Although the pathos of such a position made its unspoken appeal to her quick-eyed, sympathetic lodger, it did not tend to raise his own spirits. But he took short views. It was nothing new to him to endure hardness. He was full of the eager zest of life. He was not unduly anxious about his prospects ; he knew the " way would open," as Friends say, if he kept up his heart, did his duty, and persevered. Long afterwards he said, " Many men make ship- wreck of their lives, because they despise the day ■ STRAITENED CONDITIONS 43 of small things." He was determined not to make that mistake. His business chances just then seemed to promise very little ; the temptation was to let things drift, and to obey the cynical maxim — " Do as little as you can, and slur that." But it was resisted ; he followed a more excellent way, and found, what all brave men find, that drudgery is not merely disarmed, but becomes itself the road to self-victory if not material success, when it is accepted as inevitable. " There is no such thing in life," he used to say, when years had brought the philosophic mood, " as a ' trifle,' the performance of a small duty is quite as impor- tant as doing of great things." So, in spite of long hours and hard work in the loft, and loneliness, under straitened conditions, in spare time, his character was shaped in simple loyalty to the task which was nearest. Richard Tangye, in those days in Birmingham was, in fact, at school again, learning lessons even more valuable than the geography, history, arithmetic, and what else, which he had acquired in the half -cloistral life of Sidcot. Presently the cloud lifted j he saw a chance in Birmingham for his younger brother George. The latter had some training in book-keeping, and, when the opportunity of following Richard to Birmingham came, he was a young clerk earning ten shillings a week in an estate office. The new situa- tion which his brother found for him was that of clerk of the works with an engineer and iron-founder 44 SIR RICHARD TANGYE in a modest way. George Tangye arrived in Bir- mingham at Lawley Street station, which was the Midland terminus at that time, one September night in 1853. Richard was on the platform, and the small trunk was soon on a wheelbarrow, and presently the two — so far as their means went, they represented Tangye Brothers, Limited, in a very literal sense — were comparing notes over a frugal meal in what was henceforth their joint lodging. Richard, in view of the approaching winter, had purchased a stock of coals, and he needed thirty shillings to settle the bill. George handed him the money, and began work next day at six o'clock in the morning with eighteen pence in his pocket. His salary was ;£so a year, but, since union is strength, the wages which the two received enabled them to keep their heads above water. Both were reso- lutely determined that, whatever happened, they would not run into debt. In the spring of the following year their good old father in Cornwall died, after a short illness. Richard went down to the funeral at the end of March, and his heart was gladdened by the wide and deep respect which was shown to his father's memory. The gentle, kindly old man had children who rose up to call him blessed. He was not given to many words ; he was content to let his life speak instead. It spoke of faith, courage, duty, for his character was like a bit of granite, with flowers growing in the crevices of the rock. He was always poor, but he contrived somehow to help other people in WORDS WHICH LIVE 45 their time of need, for he held all that he had, as a trust, and he taught his children to do the same, and to redeem whatever opportunities came to them, as life broadened out before their ad- vancing steps. The words which such a man speaks to his children on the threshold of life in the magic circle of home, are not heard by the world. But, to the heart of a loyal and trustful son, no words possess more vitality. They sink deep, and like seed sown in good ground, they bear fruit, to all men's knowledge, after many days. CHAPTER IV HIS OWN MASTER Leaves the firm of Evans and Worsdell — " R. Tangye, General Merchant " — Working up a business — The first workshop — ^Joins in partnership with his brothers — Relations with Mr. Worsdell — Beginnings of a great industry — Quali- ties of the five brothers — The " driving-belt " of the busi- ness — Richard's dilemma in London — ^A tramp towards Birmingham and notes of the journey — The " incon- venience " of poverty — ^A struggle that made for success. The year 1855 was marked by steady growth in the business of Mr. Worsdell, whom Richard Tangye always used to describe as his first and only master. This prosperity was due, in part, to Richard's energy, and, perhaps still more, because James Tangye was now foreman of the works, and Joseph, who was also a clever mechanician, had already justified his existence in the concern by adding a new department to its activities, in the shape of hydraulic apparatus. George Tangye, by this time, had also joined the concern as clerk of the works, and so all the four brothers were now in the service of the firm. The growth of the business meant the need of 46 A CHALLENGE TO SELF-RESPECT 47 more capital. A new partner was accordingly introduced, and the name of the firm became Worsdell and Evans. Richard's relations with Mr. WorsdeU, who was a Quaker of the old school, exact, considerate, if firm and sparing of words, had always been cordial ; but new men often mean new methods, and in this case they apparently meant little else. In consequence, the position became intolerable not so much to James, Joseph, and George as to Richard, who was not, like them, in the workshop, but in the office, and therefore at the elbow of the new partner. Richard was a spirited, independent, and perhaps at this time not only an outspoken, but an angular, young fellow. He had always been absolutely trusted by Mr. Worsdell, and when the new partner insisted that a window should be placed in the partition which divided the office of the clerk from that of the master, and announced that he intended to place a curtain on his side of the glass, the indignity was resented. He told Mr. Evans that Mr. Worsdell had never found it necessary to keep a watch upon him, and that he was sorry he could not submit to it now without loss of self-respect. The new partner, however, proved obdurate, and so Richard, without more ado, resigned his position. He had been in this situation between three and four years, and his salary when he left it had been advanced to ^^80 a year. Most young men of twenty-two, with no endow- ments beyond character and capacity, would have 48 SIR RICHARD TANGYE set about at once^ with more or less anxiety, to sect a new situation ; but Richard Tangye was not built that way. He decided he could do better, and young as he was, felt convinced that he had been long enough in leading-strings. Anyhow, for better or worse, he resolved, there and then, to start business on his own account. He had no capital, but he had no debts. He had no in- fluential friends either in the trade or outside it, but he had plenty of energy, and no lack of self- reliance. So he made the plunge, and, with a business card inscribed " R. Tangye, General Merchant," and a bag of samples of steel-bolts, nuts, nails, and the like, he found his way back to Cornwall, in search of such modest orders as he could pick up. Doors open to people who trust in themselves, at least when there is reason for the faith that is in them. Manufacturers, who had known the young Cornish clerk when he stood at his desk at Mr. Worsdell's, showed their confidence in him by offering him their goods on credit. That, of course, is not uncommon, or young merchants making a start for themselves in the world would be hard pressed. Credit is usually sharply con- ditioned by a time-limit of three or six months. In Richard Tangye's case the only stipulation made was that he was to pay just as soon, and no sooner, than he could. This cheered him not a little, and all the more as the men who came to his help declared that they knew he would not order their « GENERAL MERCHANT " 49 goods on speculation. It was a hard fight, never- theless, to get orders on his own account from mine-owners and railway officials ; but it was a happy thought to go down to Cornwall in search of them, for there, if anywhere south of the Tweed, folks are clannish, and more ready to trust a son of the soil than a stranger, however fair- spoken. Still the result of his first year's trading was not exactly exhilarating, though it paved the way for more important transactions, which presently turned to the advantage of the whole family. He had already made, by his energy and address, a favourable impression in business circles in Birmingham, and this was itself an important asset when the new firm of Tangye Brothers was started. Richard Tangye, in his capacity of " General Merchant," began operations in the summer of 1856, and ended them in the autumn of the following year. His place of business during that time was, of course, Birmingham, though he was far too poor a:t the outset to rent an office. But he had made friends before this, through his bookish tastes, with the late William White, who afterwards became first an alderman, and then mayor of the capital of the Midlands. Mr. White, who was a bookseller, with a generosity not too common, gave Richard a desk in his shop free of charge, at which to write his business letters. Many years afterwards when Alderman White through no fault of his own, was in financial difficulties, Richard Tangye, not so SIR RICHARD TANGYE unmindful of his old kindness, came to some purpose to his help. Meanwhile he stayed there until, to quote his own words, " One day my friend's partner said to me, * Your letters are more than ours, sc\ I think one of us must move.' " This brought matters to a crisis, and here it is necessary to turn for a moment to what James and Joseph Tangye had been about in the spring of 1857. They were both exceedingly clever and ingenious workmen, and by this time had scraped together a little capital, and seeing their chance, they promptly took it. Joseph was exceptionally skiUed with the lathe. The one he worked was the Holtzapffel, and he made it himself before ever he settled in Birmingham, and with it he was able to turn out remarkably good work, of a kind which was rare. Like the rest of his brothers, Joseph did not relish the new partner at WorsdeU's ; but there is no reason to suppose that this was the moving cause of his departure. He was merely anxious to get on ; he probably saw little chance of quick and steady promotion, and so, encouraged by his elder brother James, he quitted his bench, and hired a small workshop, with machine-power attached, at 40 Mount Street. It was quite a little place down an entry and behind a baker's shop, but it was the cradle out of which sprang the Cornwall Works which have made the name of Tangye Brothers familiar and honoured all over the globe. Joseph's dull little workshop was long after- wards described by Richard as merely a " portion HIS BROTHERS ^ 51 of a manufacturer's packing-room, into which, a revolving shaft projected," which drove his brother's lathe. The whole cost of the premises — rents ruled low in those days — ^was only four shillings a week. Here for a few months Richard, who was still carrying on his business as a " Merchant," found shelter, when his letters became too many to be any longer addressed to the bookseller's shop. He says that he partitioned off a corner of the place four feet square and that the dividing walls were not even of lath and plaster, but of stout brown paper on a wooden framework. It was a lowly beginning, but he made the best of it, and with results which in due course will appear. Joseph knew how to make tools, and tools were wanted just then in Birmingham, and, for the matter of that, elsewhere, for the Industrial Revolution, which has altered all the conditions of work, was in progress. He toiled early and late, and with both hands earnestly, and did not miss his reward, making sometimes twenty and even forty shillings a day. Presently James joined him, and ultimately, George, but before the latter arrived on the scene the other three had joined forces, and started as manufacturers on their own account. James Tangye had mechani- cal genius, Joseph was a practical master of his craft, quick to carry out the ideas of his elder brother, Richard had the commercial instinct in a superlative sense, without which Tangye Brothers would never have emerged from a back street, whilst George — who is now at the head of the concern — from the first 52 SIR RICHARD TANGYE took his full share in many practical directions in the building up of the business. His training in accountancy, combined with aptness for engineer- ing, brought him into closer sympathetic relation with Richard than those with mere mechanical skill. To their credit let it be said, they never sought orders from any of the customers of the shop which they had left, even in the hardest days of their struggle. They all kept up their kindly rela- tions with Mr. Worsdell until his death, which happened long after he had retired from business, and they themselves had become rich and famous. Mr. Wor-sdell used to say with pride — at a time, when to borrow his own expression to his old gardener from Ulverston whom he brought to see the Corn- wall Works, " Tangyes make steam-engines as fast as you can grow daisies " — that at least he could take the credit of having brought them all to Birming- ham ! There is a letter in existence, which Richard Tangye greatly prized, since it told him that his own portrait held a place of honour in the room in which his old master died. Edward, by this time, was in America ; but he came back at the call of the others, and joined the new firm, which began business as " James Tangye and Brothers, Machinists." They went cautiously to work. , They had their vicissitudes at the outset, and they possessed the defects of their qualities. If Richard was too sanguine, some of his brothers were too despondent, but, whether hope fiUed their sails or depression reigned on the quarter POWER OF VISION 53 deck, the stout little ship held on its Way, making progress, in calm and storm alike, towards the haven of assured prosperity. Richard took large views. He believed with all his heart, and with good reason, in the inventive powers of his brother James, in the practical skill of Joseph, and in the loyalty and ability in which both of the elder brothers were seconded by Edward and George. Richard was the driving-belt of the concern, the man who secured the markets, and he never claimed to be anything else. " No man," said one who worked by his side for thirty years, " ever saw further through a brick wall than Richard Tangye." It was this power of vision, this tireless and resourceful energy, this audacity of enterprise, which eventually lifted James Tangye and Brothers, Machinists, into their unrivalled position in the engineering world. When James Tangye and Brothers was fairly started Richard, having won his spurs by his early business journeys to Cornwall, on his own account, became traveller for the new concern. He went far and wide in search of orders, and his happy humour and powers of address stood him in good stead. Here is a story which deserves to be recorded, and all the more since it is possible to tell it in his own words : " In one of my earliest business visits to London, when money was scarce, I was detained a day or two longer than I expected by a procrastina- ting customer — Mr. Vardon, ironmonger, Grace- church Street, the direct successor of the father of Dicken's ' Dolly Vardon ' — the result being that I 54 SIR RICHARD TANGYE found myself without sufficient money to buy a ticket for Birmingham. Remembering what another ' poor Richard ' said, that ' they who go a-borrowing go a-sorrowing,' I decided to walk on towards Bir- mingham until my stock of money would pay for riding the rest of the way. My pocket was light, and so was my heart, for I had Mr. Vardon's order in my pocket ; so, at a quarter past two o'clock, I started from the General Post Office, and walking over High- gate Hill, like another Richard — ^Whittington by name — I soon found myself in the neighbourhood of Barnet. It was the evening before the great annual horse fair, held in that town, and the roads were very lively with a motley crowd of the regular attendants of such places. Negro minstrels aiid others had settled down for the night in the shelter of the hedgerows, some with their legs across the footpath, the more easily to trip up the unwary pedestrian, and rendering the middle of the road a safer route. Passing through Barnet, I reached St. Albans (iwenty-one miles) before the shops had been closed, and as I wanted an inexpensive but decent lodging I wondered how I should set about it. Looking into a stationer's shop-window, I saw a kindly-looking man behind the counter, and so ven- tured in and bought a sheet of paper and envelope. I then told him what I wanted, and why I was walk- ing to my destination. ' I can send you to the very place you want,' said he, and then proceeded to direct me to a little inn just outside the town, on my route homewards, telling me that before he was TAKES THE ROAD 55 married he lodged at that place for years. ' You will find the landlady a good old soul,' he continued ; ' tell her I sent you. You wiU get a bed for sixpence, and a very nice one, too.' So on I went, and duly presented myself. The old lady, a motherly body, wearing an old-fashioned cap, like Betsy Prig's, eyed me closely, but kindly, and showed me my room ; it was a small one, but very neat and clean, with what we used to call an ' elliptical ' bedstead, having blue-and-white dimity curtains. Before going to my room, I spent twopence in bread and cheese, which I took up with me, intending a part for supper and the remainder for an early breakfast. I asked my landlady at what hour in the morning they were stirring, and she said some of them would be up soon after four ; so, asking her to be sure to have me called then, I retired, and was soon in a dead sleep. When I awoke, the sun was stream- ing into the room. I got up with a start, and, to my dismay, found that it was very nearly seven o'clock ! I had thought of being miles on my way at that time, and encountering the landlady, told her so. ' You were looking so tired,' she said, ' that I thought the rest would do you good.' So on I trudged, with my small belongings over my shoulder, passing through Dunstable, where I saw the cottagers sitting at their doors plaiting straw for the famous * Dunstable Straw Hats ' ; and so on towards Leighton Buzzard. On the roadside I came to a little public-house, and feeling very hungry, I over- came my remaining stock of prejudice against such $6 SIR RICHARD TANGYE houses, and, walking in, asked for a basin of toead and milk. I had an excellent meal for threepence, and went on my way refreshed. " At a small railway station I saw a first-class carriage on a siding, and, seeing ho one about, ventured to get in it, and had a fine sleep ; but hearing a bell ring, I hastily got out of the carriage only half awake, and going up to the ticket office, amazed the clerk by asking if the ' teachers had gone to suffer ? ' Before I had finished the question I was very much awake, for I discovered I was in a sort of nightmare, and was fancying I was still a junior pupil-teacher at Sidcot School, and that the bell I had heard was the nine o'clock signal for the senior teachers going to their supper and for my retirement to my bed ! Leaving the ticket office, I resumed my journey, expecting every moment to feel a hand on my shoulder, and to be detained as an irresponsible wanderer, or a trespasser on the company's property. Never in all my life, before or since, have I so clearly realised how very near I was to being a ' tramp.' Soon after this adventure I found I had enough money with which to complete my journey by rail. " I thoroughly enjoyed my long walk and have always looked back upon it with much pleasure. I was certainly very hungry before I had finished it, having had only one really good meal on my way. That meal was made from a dish that I will never again partake of. The first slice was most satisfactory, causing me, like the renowned BUSINESS CARES 57 Oliver Twist, to ask for more, the result being that, when I rose from the table, I registered a vow that never again would I be induced to partake of cold bullock's heart. In walking; along the great high- roads, that used to be full of stirring life before the era of railways, I was struck with the prevailing solitude ; great inns closed, with their windows boarded up, the broad roadway grass-grown in the middle. * Ichabod ' was written upon everything, for the glory had departed. Since then, however, the unknown inventor of the bicycle has wrought a wonderful revolution, and the highroads and remote villages have again become instinct with life." He used to say that in the early days of the busi- ness, when the capital was but small, it was impera- tive to obtain prompt payment for goods supplied to their customers, and that as a matter of fact they were usually paid every week. " One of our cus- tomers, who was not considered to be very ' strong ' financially, used to resent my weekly calls. He was a somewhat choleric man, short and podgy, with red hair, and a retreating forehead. On Saturday, on making my appearance as usual, Mr. V. said, ' Mr. Tangye, you are like death ; you are sure to come ! ' I pleaded our young and fast- growing business and want of capital. ' Oh, well,' he exclaimed, ' poverty is no crime, Mr. Tangye.' ' No,' I replied, ' but it is very inconvenient.' Our caution was justified, for not long afterwards that particular customer failed in business." All the 58 SIR RICHARD TANGYE brothers were teetotalers, as their parents had been before them, and, from the first, they resolutely- refused to adopt what was then the customary habit of discussing business to the clink of glasses, though they were tqjd that they would come to grief, unless they fell into line in this direction. It was a hard struggle, and it needed the whole five at the ropes ; but brains and pluck and skill, linked, as they were, to integrity, are sure to tell, and presently the good ship got into deep water, and, though storms had still to be confronted, as we shall presently see, it rose above them, and the rest was plain sailing in the sunlit sea of success. CHAPTER V THE RISING TIDE OF FORTUNE A turning-point — Isambard Brunei — ^Hydraulic jacks for launching the Great Eastern — " She launched us " — " Great events from little causes " — ^A new workshop — ^At the Friends' Adult School — ^Masters and men — ^Anxious moments — ^Hardening effect of prosperity — ^A clear view of responsibility — Litigation over the differential pulley block — Building new premises — His marriage, and the charm of his home. There is a tide in the affairs of men — ^whether it leads on to fortune depends upon themselves. It came suddenly one dark winter's night to " James Tangye and Brothers, Machinists." Richard was bending over his desk when some one stumbled up the ill-lighted lane, and rung the bell of the little workshop off Mount Street. When the door was opened the stranger looked in at the place and seemed disconcerted and, apologising for having made a mistake, turned abruptly away. Perhaps the visit meant business, and there was not too much of it about just then to miss any possible chance. " Whose place are you looking for, sir ? " said Richard. " Tangyes'," was the response, and he 59 6o I 1 ; SIR RICHARD TANGYE was quickly ushered into the office four feet square. If he had gone away that night in the dark a great opportunity might have been lost ; as it was, his visit meant the turning-point in the fortunes of the new firrn. But this statement requires explana- tion. James and Joseph Tangye, in the days when they were still working in uncongenial surroundings in Cornwall, had attracted the notice of no less re- markable a man than Isambard Brunei, one of the most brilliant engineers of modern times. He was the first to apply the screw to large ships, though Robert Fulton, an American engineer, was the pioneer of the movement for propelling vessels by steam. Brunei had seen and admired an ingenious hydraulic press, which the Tangyes had made when they were both workmen in a safety fuse factory in their native county. Brunei was now at the height of his career as engineer to the Great Western Railway. He had a keen eye for capacity wherever he found it, and hearing that James Tangye had patented an important improvement in the hydraulic lifting jack, which Joseph Bramah invented, had sent the stranger, who was his agent, to inquire about it. Science and speed were already beginning to work together in a manner which had led people to say that distance was annihilated, and Isambard Brunei's name was on every one's lips as the path-finder of quick, victorious travel across the wide Atlantic. He was the first to apply the screw-propeUer to steamships, and the first also to suggest a line of THE GREAT EASTERN 6i steamers making regular trips from our shores to those of the United States. When Richard Tangye was still a child, Brunei had launched the Great Western, which had a tonnage twice that of any ship afloat. He followed that success in 1845 hy constructing the first large iron ship, which made the long voyage with the screw-propeller instead of the paddle-wheel. But even this, and the construction of docks, bridges, and broad-gauge railways, did not exhaust the boundless energy of this extraordinary man. Like other men of inventive genius, Brunei was not satis- fied ; he longed for more worlds to conquer, and therefore turned his undivided energies, between the years 1852-8, to the construction of the largest piece of marine architecture ever put together, the famous but ill-fated ship, which became a new wonder of the world and was called the Great Eastern. There was of course no Suez Canal in those days, and therefore no quick route to the Antipodes. The Eastern Steam Navigation Company wanted a vessel for the trade with Australia, which could make the voyage round the Cape of Good Hope, and carry more passengers and goods than any ship had ever borne before, and at the same time with a hold big enough for all the coal required on the double journey, out and home. It was to meet this demand that Brunei constructed the Great Eastern. Its length was nearly seven hundred feet, its breadth more than eighty, the height of the hull 62 SIR RICHARD TANGYB sixty, whilst its five funnels were a hundred feet high and six feet in diameter. This was the original plan, but it was somewhat modified in the building of the ship which was intended to carry four thou- sand passengers, besides a crew of four hundred, and a mighty cargo. The enterprise had reached its final stage when the great engineer, perplexed by the difficulty of launching so gigantic a ship, bethought himself of the Tangyes and the hydraulic jack. The ship was so long that it was impossible to launch her, prow first, at Millwall. There was nothing for it but to get her into the water broadside, with the help of timber cradles sliding on rails, built on a massive wooden erection which was supported by piles driven into the bed of the river. The owners having failed to launch the ship with the ordinary type of jack then in use, turned to the Tangyes, and with the help of James's improved appliance the great task was accomplished. The huge ship moved three feet, and then stuck fast, to the chagrin of everybody concerned. Various attempts were made during the next month or two to get the Great Eastern into the water ; sometimes the vessel moved several feet, and quite as often only a few inches. The Tangyes were right — more hydraulic jacks were needed. Brunei at last realised his mistake, and finally, with the aid of from twenty to twenty-four jacks, the great ship glided into the Thames on January 31, 1858. Richard Tangye used to say that Brunei's order THE RETORT COURTEOUS 63 for hydraulic jacks proved to be the real foundation of their business : " We launched the Great Eastern, and she launched us." The ship cost more than ^800,000 and it took upwards of ^70,000 to get her from the dockyard to the water. Shortly after the Great Eastern was launched, when everybody was talking about it, Richard Tangye met on the streets of London a tall and rather consequential Birmingham merchant, who was walking with another gentleman. He was stopped by his fellow townsman, and introduced to the stranger with the words, " This is the man who launched the Great Eastern." He certainly seemed very small for such an exploit, and, nettled at the decidedly sarcastic tone used by the man, who, in the literal sense, looked down upon him, he replied, " Yes, great events from little causes spring," a happy retort, which did not pass unheeded. Business was now beginning to come rapidly to James Tangye and Brothers, and, in consequence, they were emboldened to take a larger workshop. It was not a spacious place, though an improvement on the one which they had left. The rent, too, was modest ; it sounds absurdly so to-day, for it was only ten shillings a week. They also engaged their first workman. They did not want to stand com- mitted to too much, and therefore he was told at the start that all that they could pledge themselves to was a three months' engagement. With that stipulation, the honest fellow was put to work, and he remained with them for nearly half a century. 64 SIR RICHARD TANGYE Presently other men joined him to the number of five or six, and the wheels ran merrily, for orders from far and wide kept the workshop busy. Whilst Richard scoured the country in search of orders for Jiydraulic jacks, rope blocks, and rigging screws, and contrived to keep the books when he was not on the road — " My brothers," was his testimony, " often worked sixteen hours out of the twenty-fotjr." They were all determined to get on, and, with such energy, it is not surprising that they succeeded. Richard did not rest even on Sundays in those days. He was a teacher, with William White, in the Friends' Adult Sunday School in Severn Street — one of the earliest and most remarkable efforts to lay hold, in the religious sense, of the working classes of Birmingham. Mr. White was one of the founders of this movement, and for more than half a century was its life and soul. Richard Tangye used to say towards the close of his life that Mr. White's scholars, past and present, could be numbered by the thousands, and all of them belonged to the artisan class. Yet out of their ranks came from time to time town-councillors, magistrates, and members of Parliament, as well as many of the foremost citizens of Birmingham. Whilst the Tangyes were still in a small way of business, they continued to enlist the respect and goodwill of their workpeople. There was no nonsense about them, and they were far too manly to forget that they themselves had begun with no THE MOST DIFFICULT YEAR 65 capital, beyond brains and energy. So the sense of comradeship was kept to the front ; the work- man's confidence was evoked, and yet, with all this, the authority, which they did not parade, was duly respected. "My brother George and I," said Richard long afterwards, " being the younger of the five brothers, were always addressed as ' Master George ' and ' Master Richard ' by the senior work- men." Nearly forty years later, when Richard Tangye was chairman of the Cornwall Works and had been knighted for his public services, nothing pleased him better than to be greeted with the familiar " Good morning. Master Richard," by one of the old workmen, who had been in their em- ployment when the servants of the firm were not more in number than five or six, instead of several thousands. Richard Tangye was five-and-twenty when the Great Eastern was launched, and from that year may be said to date his vision of the wide possi- bilities of life to him. He had still some anxious moments in business to face ; indeed, he used to say that 1862 was the most difiicult year in his life, so far as his fortunes went. The truth was that James Tangye and Brothers grew so rapidly, when once the tide turned, that there was not capital enough in the concern to cope with its ever increas- ing responsibilities. The strain of all this fell chiefly on Richard, since he represented the department of ways and means. That, however, is to anticipate a story which, it must be borne in mind, is only E 66 SIR RICHARD TANGYE indirectly concerned with the growth of a gre industry. No estimate of Richard Tangye, as man, should be made without laying stress on all th he was in the world of commerce, and, much moi all that he did in building up, to assured prosperit the Cornwall Works. This will leap to light, outline at any rate, as the present narrative proceec but this memoir will have missed its mark should fail to keep foremost the winning and many-sid( personality of one who was tried alike by adversi and prosperity, and proved equal to either fortim and remained unspoilt by both. Perhaps it is a hard saying, but experience coi firms it, that whilst many a man can possess h soul with fortitude in adversity, and even find : such an ordeal a bracing influence — an incentr to courage, as weU as a tax on endurance — con paratively few grow mellow and kindly in pro perity. Wealth seems to make them suspiciou hard, vainglorious. It is a great mark of qualil when any one sits lightly to it, and holds it as a trus something to be shared with others, a talent, i short, for which account must be given. Richai Tangye had his failings ; they were of a kind whic seem inseparable from self-made men, but the were nothing in the light of the sweetness an strength of his character, and the instinct which le him, as wealth accumulated, to use it to fine issue He was reading and thinking in those strenuoi years of early manhood ; he was looking at the worl with his own alert eyes and beginning, in tentati^ HIS LIFE MaTTO e^ fashion, to take a firm grasp of public questions. He scorned the man who was too busy with his own affairs to take a lively practical interest in the common welfare. He had no patience, then or afterwards, with the selfish mood of those who stand aloof from public demands, and are content to let other people bear the burden of work which has no reward, except the sense of duty done. Birmingham, with its progressive ideas, its full and ordered life, its fine sense of the claims of public duty, called forth all his powers, and he brought to its manifold activities, as the years went on, the blunt honesty which calls a spade a spade, unfaltering moral courage, and the passion for civic righteousness which was in his blood. He had clean- cut convictions, even in those early days — the un- compromising convictions of a man who was of the people, and for the people, in all that makes for liberty and progress. When comparative leisure and wide social influence came to him in mid- career, he turned them to noble public ends, in a manner which would not have been possible if, in the days of struggle through which he was now passing, he had not been true to the words which he chose as his motto in life — Industry and Uprightness. There is no need to tell over again the story of the Chancery suit, in which the Tangyes w?re involved over their purchase of the Weston Differen- tial Pulley Block. It has been told once for all, in realistic and even dramatic detail, by Sir Richard himself in one of the most fascinating chapters of a 68 SIR RICHARD TANGYE book, in which he traces the Rise of a Great Indust: Mr. Westoa was a Birmingham man, and had w nessed, whilst living in the United States, the v: attempts to raise a ship which had foundered of quay at Buffalo. His Differential Pulley, an i genious apparatus for raising great weights witji minimum expenditure of power, was suggested him by the primitive Chinese windlass. James a George Tangye, the latter in particular, perfect the idea, and the invention was patented, proved a great success, and the demand for it hecai a solid source of revenue. Presently the pate was infringed by a man who professed that Westoi invention had been anticipated thirty years earlii and declared that he himself had been manufj turiiQg the same apparatus for several years befc the patent was granted. There was no alternative to the Tangyes except commence an action in the High Court, and t case came before Vice-Chancellor Wood. T trial lasted eight days, and the cost of it strained t resources of the plaintiffs not a little. Before came on, Richard Tangye received an anonymc letter, telling him that the writer could prove ti the defendant's case rested on falsehood and forgei He followed up the hint which his unknown con spondent had given him, and the man, who had be in the employment of the defendants, confessed he knew, with the result that the rights of the West Pulley were upheld, and the Tangyes, at a cost some thousands of pounds and a year's anxiety, w( A TROUBLESOME LAWSUIT 69 vindicated. Richard Tangye never forgot the strain of that ordeal, or the nervous tension of the long legal proceedings. Always sensitive and highly strung, he nearly collapsed before the trial ended, for the whole responsibility of it rested on him, and he felt that the success or failure of the business itself depended on the verdict. One hard part of the affair was an attack on the firm's integrity. One witness had the effrontery to state in court that the Tangyes had attempted to bribe him not to appear for the defendant. This slander wounded Richard Tangye to the quick, though short work was made of it in the witness box, and not merely its falsehood but the forgery itself stood exposed. It was a rough experience for a young man, just starting in life, though it all came out well in the end, and the Weston Pulley itself developed into one of the most important assets of the firm. The business during that anxious time was rapidly extending, so much so, indeed, that the new workshop at ten shillings a week became impossible. It was necessary, therefore, to make a new departure and, for the first time, this spelt bricks and mortar, James Tangye and Brothers, greatly daring, resolved, though not without misgivings, to build new premises in Clement Street, Birmingham. They were all of the same mind about one thing — the new building would be equal to "all future requirements." But they were mistaken. Whilst this project was still in process of accom- 70 SIR RICHARD TANGYE plishment, Richard was in a romantic mood. He had fallen in love, and right worthily. But he had to wait for his young bride. His courtship ran smoothly ; it was the question of ways and means, that had t© be considered. But, such considerations could not be discarded, especially by young people much in love with each other. He accordingly married Miss Caroline Jesper on January 24, 1859. She was the daughter of Mr. Thomas Jesper, at that time a corn merchant in Birmingham. His fair young bride was a Quakeress, and the young people had hoped to be married at the Friends' Meeting House, Birmingham, but Richard Tangye was not by birth a member of the Society, and had never formally enrolled himself in its ranks, and therefore the old Friends were opposed to the marriage taking place in Quaker fashion. They were accordingly married by the registrar, and Lady Tangye stiU recalls the solemn little homily which he gave them, for in those days such officials did not adhere rigidly to what the law demands on such occasions. Few men ever made a more happy marriage, or won a bride better qualified in every respect to prove a true helpmeet in all that makes for happiness and honour in such a relation. Men of his sort, diligent in business, fervent in spirit, sympathetic and sensitive, surely need more than others the sanctuary of home. It is enough to say — more cannot indeed well be said — that Richard Tangye gained in such a wife, a new inspiration to all [that was best in life, and the home which HIS WIFE 71 she made him remained, through the long years that succeeded, a place of peace, brightened hy love and courage, and the scene, when prosperity- was fully assured, of ever widening and gracious hospitality. Glimpses of that home-life, and all that it meant for Richard Tangye, his children, and the friends within his gates, will stand artlessly disclosed in subsequent chapters of this book. It is enough at the moment merely to chronicle an event, which added, far more than any amount of gathered gold could have done, to the happiness and welfare, in every sense, of a man, who was becoming more and more conscious, as the responsibilities of life gathered about him, that he did not live for him- self alone. No guest ever visited his home without being impressed by its tranquillity, its wholesome sense of liberty, its cheerful serenity, and it was not difficult to discover where lay the secret of its charm. CHAPTER VI STRESS AND PROGRESS Statesmen after Tangye's own heart — Twenty invitations to enter Parliament — Sendees to the Liberal Party — Con- tribution to Gibden's Commercial Treaty with France — Encountering prejudices against new machines — An experi- ence in a bank parlour — Hydraulic shearing machine — ^The " Cornubia " — Learning at the feet of public men — " Vic- tory and Sebastopol" — Tactful management of customers — ^Not enslaved by business — Quick decisions — ^Magnanimous judgments of men. Richard Tangye, from youth to age, was an ardent politician — a Radical of the old school, having neither part nor lot with the more modern band which coquet ostentatiously with Socialism. The statesmen whom he admired and trusted were Lord John Russell, Gladstone, Cobden, Bright, W. E. Forster, and, across the Atlantic, Abraham Lincoln, after whom he named his eldest son, who was born when all the world was denouncing the cowardly assassination of the great-hearted President of the United States, who abolished the slave trade. These were the men whom he regarded as the true friends of the democracy, and, for the rest, he pinned 73 HIS POLITICAL LEADERS 73 his faith to the old watchword of the Liberal Party, — Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform. It is well that so much should be stated at this point of the story, since it defines his position on public questions. Lord John represented in his eyes the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, and that great land- mark in modern progress — the Reform BiU. Glad- stone stirred his enthusiasm as the hero of a hundred fights for liberty and progress. Cobden claimed his allegiance, because, more than any one else, he was the champion of Free Trade. Bright was one of his own people, a man whose splendid eloquence was always enlisted on the side of peace and good- will among the nations. Forster, like Bright, and like himself, had been trained in the Society of Friends, and no one in England rejoiced more than Richard Tangye over at least the main pro- visions of the Education Act, which will always be linked with his name. Abraham Lincoln, who was cradled in obscurity and rose, self-taught, to be President of the United States, represented, in his eyes, more than the triumph of self-help, since at the height of his power, braving all opposition, he let the oppressed go free. It needs no effort of imagination to understand how such men conquered the life-long devotion of one, who was not merely the architect of his own fortunes, but had struggled with many disadvantages in life, and was, both by conviction and training, opposed, on the one hand, to political and social injustice, 74 SIR RICHARD TANGYE and, on the other, eager to have a share, however modest, in the redress of acknowledged wrongs, whether at home or abroad. Here it may be as well to state that Richard Tangye, in^ the maturity of his powers, had so im- pressed the public mind that again and again he was asked to stand for Parliament, though he had no ambition of that kind in 1859. Few men ever had more opportunities in that direction, for he declined such an honour on no less than twenty occasions. Why, it may be asked, did he decline such over- tures ? Partly from the tremendous and unre- mitting strain of the business of which he was the driving-belt, and still more, perhaps, because his health was never robust. He was, moreover, diffident and even self-distrustful to a degree, which those who knew him only slightly never realised. But he never shirked the battle in Birmingham, and John Bright, in many a critical struggle, had good reason for the implicit confidence with which he honoured him. For the rest, he did yeoman service for the Liberal Party, with voice, pen, and purse, and also bore his full share in the municipal work of a great community, which, in due time, came to regard him as one of its most generous, consistent and fearless public men. ; Quite at the outset of his career, in the year 1859, when, as has just been stated, he married, at the age of twenty-six, there occurred an instance of his public spirit. Richard Cobden just then was negotiating a commercial treaty with France, which took effect RELATIONS WITH COBDEN 75 in the following year, and was everywhere regarded as one of the first and most memorable triumphs of the policy of Free Trade. Cobden, who was him- self a business man, caused it to be made known that he would welcome any practical suggestions, from merchants and manufacturers in England, likely to be of use in shaping the provisions of this great scheme. The old tariff, so far as it related to tools and machinery, abounded in stipulations which handicapped the trade of England. Elaborate drawings, for instance, were demanded, which, apart from their cost, were calmly handed over by the Frei^ch Customs authorities to the Ecole des Arts et Metiers in Paris, so that young French engineers might pick up ideas and exploit them, to the loss of foreign competitors. Richard Tangye accordingly wrote to Cobden, explaining exactly the manner in which this enact- ment worked out to the disadvantage of the British market. He received in reply a long letter in the statesman's own handwriting, in which he was thanked for the information, and told that it should receive full attention. When the Commercial Treaty was published in i860, he had the satisfac- tion of finding that Cobden had accepted the hint, for one of its articles was as follows : — " The impor- ter of machines or mechanical instruments, complete or in detached pieces, of British origin or manufac- ture, shall be exempt from the obligation of pro- ducing at the French Customs any model or draw- ing of the imported article." That was Richard 76 SIR RICHARD TANGYE Tangye's first contribution — of not inconsiderable importance, as all manufacturers are aware — to the cause of Free Trade. Between 1859 and 1862 the business of James Tangye and Brothers grew rapidly, so rapidly indeed that the modest capital of the firm was at times unequal to the strain imposed by work on hand. The inventive genius of James and Joseph was employed in making continual improvements in machinery, but there was a good deal of prejudice to encounter before the new machines could find a place in the market. Sometimes the opposition came from artisans, who imagined that the labour of working men was threatened by such inventions as a machine which cut half a dozen screws at the cost of cutting one by old-fashioned methods. Sometimes the ironmasters of Staffordshire proved incredulous, when a machine was offered to them which one man could work, and which lifted from three to sixty tons, and for a time they would have nothing to do with the Tangye hydraulic jack, preferring to stick to the clumsy old rack-jack, which required four men to work it, and could lift only, at the most, twenty tons. Richard Tangye's powers of persuasion were taxed to the utmost in dealing with such prejudices, even when he was able to give an object-lesson which ought surely to have spoken for itself. Presently, however, the tide turned, and orders flocked in for the new machinery, and did so to such an extent that it was hard to keep pace with the work. " Our order book," is his own THE BANK PARLOUR n statement, " was full of profitable contracts ; but although we worked almost all night and all day, and never had a holiday, we could not get them out with sufficient despatch." The workshop in Clement Street which they thought, when first built, was big enough for all possible developments of the business, was already inadequate. More room and more machinery were imperative, if the firm was to cope with the demands which were now made upon it. It was at this juncture that Richard Tangye had his first experience of the bank parlour. He wanted an advance, on behalf of the firm, of £500 ; but the manager was a suspicious, hard old Scotsman. He demanded security for the loan ; it was not enough for him that the Tangyes' account, of two or three years' standing, had never been overdrawn. Richard Tangye told him frankly that all their capital was in the business, and hinted that their character for integrity would bear investigation. The workshop was within a few hundred yards of the bank, and the manager was asked to send some- one to look at the books, which were full of orders. But all was in vain ; the manager absolutely de- clined to entertain the proposal. Richard Tangye used to say that, before the interview was over, he came to the conclusion that nether mill-stones were softer than some men's natures. He came out disappointed, but the firm contrived to jog along without seeking help in any other quarter. He called that period the " darkest part of the 78 SIR RICHARD TANGYE night," and was naturally sore to think that the firm could not be trusted for so modest an amount, at a moment when they were embarrassed only by their own success. It is a Igng road that has no turning, and pre- sently things began to improve, slowly at first, and then to a marked degree. The sequel of their relations with that bank deserves to be recorded. Before very long the firm had money to invest and they bought shares in the bank which had refused them accommodation, which investment, to say the least, was rather surprising. Twelve months after this purchase they had good reason to regret the transaction, for the bank came down with a crash, and the shares were waste paper. Still they kept pegging away, and the business kept growing. James Russell Lowell once declared that the two sources of literary inspiration were a fuU head and an empty pocket. Perhaps the same thing is true with regard to mechanical inventions. Anyhow, under the spur of necessity, the brains of the Tangyes kept moving. There was little that they did not attempt in the way of improved machinery, and there was much in which they succeeded, in some cases far beyond their own anti- cipations. One of their greatest successes was their hydraulic shearing machine, which proved its utility by cutting a piece of cold iron nine inches by six inches. It weighed twenty-four tons, and the pressure which it brought into play was equal to a thousand. It was made, in the first instance, for BEFORE HIS TIMES 79 the Russian Government, and attracted wide attention both at home and abroad. Road locomotives and traction engines are common enough to-day — too common indeed for the peace of the pedestrian — but in the early sixties they were un- known, and when the Tangyes turned their atten- tion in that direction they quickly found themselves in sharp conflict with public opinion. They con- structed a road locomotive, and, as they were loyal Cornishmen, called it the " Cornubia." It could travel twenty miles an hour, and could carry ten people, and was intended to link up outlying country places to the railways. The machinery was simple, the engine was easily managed, and they had good reason to believe, from the public interest in the invention, that they had, as the Americans say, struck oil. But the landed gentry took alarm ; they were afraid their horses would kick the traces, and the matter was brought before the attention of Parliament. The result was that an act was passed forbidding any machine to proceed along the high roads at more than four miles an hour ; even then it was not to proceed unless a man walked in front, armed with a red flag, for the delectation of ap- proaching cattle. The upshot of all this was that the new method of quick transit was, for thirty years, " strangled in its cradle," as Richard Tangye put it, though he lived to see a new order of things, with motor-cars flying about the country in all directions in pursuit of trade or pleasure. All things come round to eo SIK RICHARD TANGYE those who will but wait. The pity, so far as the Tangyes were concerned, was that the " Cornubia " was many years in advance of its times. Birmingham was just the place for a young man of the quick and eager mind of Richard Tangye. There was plenty of stir in its streets, and on its platforms. All the great questions at issue, political, social, and economic, came up for discussion in its crowded, strenuous life. If a man was not in the movement of public affairs in that busy com- munity, the fault surely lay at his own door. Bir- mingham, like Manchester, took itself seriously, and no challenge to the public spirit of the com- munity, passed unheeded. It had come to its heritage of power with the great upheaval in trade which mechanical progress had brought about. Its keen, hard-headed merchants and artisans thought for themselves, and, what is more, they had the courage of their convictions. Richard Tangye, in due time, took his full share in all this activity, for men of character and capacity have responsibilities thrust upon them, whether they are ambitious or not of public life. In the years when the business was in the making, and he, too, was in the making, in the public sense, he dipped impulsively, here and there, into the discussion of public questions. But he did so ten- tatively, desiring to be quite sure of himself — feeling his way, as it were, in directions which had nothing to do with the work in hand, except in that large and honourable sense, which sooner or later makes its SIMS REEVES 81 own resistless appeal to all men who care, in any real sense, for the general good of the community. Great speakers came to Birmingham occasionally on one public errand or another, and perhaps the best part of their success was not the passing of some resolution, amid tumultuous applause, in crowded gatherings, but the liberal education which their presence gave to younger men, who listened to their arguments, and were fired by their oratory. Richard Tangye, like many another man who did excel- lent service in after years to Birmingham, was not yet on the platform on these occasions, but in the back of the hall, or in some distant gallery. An eager learner, as well as listener, he gained new ideas and an incentive to public work, which were to bear fruit to some purpose when he came to the full maturity of his powers. There were concerts too, and some of them were memorable. Here is a reminiscence of one of them which it is possible to give in his own Words : — " It was on the evening when the news of the cap- ture of Sebastopol came to Birmingham that Sims Reeves was singing at a concert at the Town Hall, at which I was present. The first intimation of the great news came from the vocalist himself. He was singing a song, the name of which I have for- gotten ; but the last words of the final line contained the same number of syllables as the word Sebastopol, so he substituted it for them, and when he sang the line ' Victory and Sebastopol,' which he did with marvellous effect, the enthusiasm with which it 82 SIR RICHARD TANGYE was received can easily be imagined. Needless to say he was encored over and over again, the vast audience upstanding while he sang." The developments of the firm at this period were so numerous, and Richard Tangye was so much on the road, travelling from place to place in its interests, that his old task as book-keeper passed into other hands. It was more important to secure orders than to cast up accounts, and, in spite of his constitutional shyness, his kindliness, tact, and ready wit opened doors that might otherwise have been closed. He learned that there were two kinds of customers — ^the people who like to do all the talking themselves, and those who scarcely utter a word, but listen attentively to all that is said to them. He always allowed loquacious people to have the first word, even if they followed it up with a multitude. Then when they had at last come to an end, he tried adroitly to bring them to business. Taciturn people, on. the other hand, naturally drew forth all his powers of persuasion, and, since the machinery which he had to sell spoke for itself, as a rule he succeeded in obtaining good orders. All this experience in dealing with people taught him self-reliance, and stood him in good stead as the business grew to proportions which were enough to try to the utmost the natural resources of any man. He determined from the start that, whether the firm succeeded or failed, he would never allow the claims of business to grind the soul out of him. KEEPING HIS SOUL ALIVE 83 Young as he was, he had seen men succeed at the cost of all that was best in themselves. They had sunk, not only all their capital, but all their in- terests in life, in the effort to get on, in the material sense. They had succeeded in amassing wealth, but their own characters had grown warped and un- lovely in the process. Outward prosperity had been won, but at the cost of a hard, restless, suspicious old age. He was resolved to follow a more excellent way. Business success was aU very well, but, if the price to be paid for it was the surrender of a man's ideals, he declined to entertain it. He determined therefore to keep his soul alive, and not to become a mere slave of the machine, even if the slave drove to it in a carriage and pair. So he warmed both hands at the fire of life, and, whilst diligent in business, was fervent in spirit, cultivating the best part of himself in such scanty leisure as lay outside the daily round. It is a great thing for a man to come to such a resolution, and to have the grace to keep it, through all the strain of exacting cares and widening respoii- sibilities ; it spells salvation. \ In a very real sense he was immersed in business ; nothing escaped him, down to the minutest detail of the workshop ; but he had interests apart from it, political and philanthropic, modest enough as yet, but equally real. This it was that saved the situation. Without such interests he would prob- ably have grown rich, for there was money in the Tangye brains, his own, and, perhaps still more, those of his elder brothers. As it was he 84 SIR RICHARD TANGYE succeeded without the grim tragedy of leanness of soul. His judgment, even at that time, was a valuable asset to the firm. He had a remarkable power of coming to a quick decision on any matter of busi- ness, however complicated^ which was put before him. He would listen attentively to all that was said, and then, saying " stop a minute," would take a few quick, nervous strides up and down the room, and come to a decision, which he had the faculty of expressing in pithy, incisive terms. He would balance the evidence that was put before him, sum it all up on both sides, and draw from it a conclu- sion which, when once stated, seemed inevitable. " There is only one course to pursue," was his method of beginning, when he had mastered the facts, and the method which he suggested, in nine cases out of ten,^ proved to be correct. He would himself have been at a loss, not unfrequently, to explain the process by which he arrived at his de- cision. But he had no reason to revise his conclu- sions. There were times when he was somewhat too sanguine, for he was always an optimist, though with shrewd limitations, and, occasionally, his mag- nanimous judgments of men were not justified, but that was the fault of his quality, and, to the credit of human nature, iet it be said, it was only seldom that he had reason to regret the trust which he placed in it. When he believed a man to be both capable and reliable ift business, Richard Tangye TRUST IN MEN 85 always gave him his chance of responsibility and authority. He might be young and comparatively untried ; but if his record was good as far as he went, he was quickly given an opportunity for showing what was in him, on a broader scale. That was the secret that attached men to Richard Tangye — the sense that he respected their manhood and relied on them to do their best. CHAPTER VII THE CORNWALL WORKS New works at Soho — A bold advertisement — The Special Steam Pump— Results of incivility — Opening of works in Belgium — ^British and Belgian workmen compared — London warehouse — Branches in the north and the colonies — ^Richard Tangye's administrative powers — ^Relations vnth. workpeople — Dr Dale's testimony — ^Richard Tangye's humour. Year by year the business of Tangye Brothers increased in magnitude. In the early sixties the partners felt compelled to provide larger premises, little dreaming that their business, though so flourishing, was a very modest undertaking com- pared with the position it afterwards assumed, for, twenty years later, it was destined to take rank with the greatest manufacturing firms of the United Kingdom. In 1862 the Clement Street workshops were clearly inadequate, and a new departure became imperative. Land at Soho, three mUes from Birmingham, in close proximity to the historic foundry of Boulton and Watt, was therefore acquired, and in the course of the following year the Cornwall Works came into existence. 86 THE CORNWALL WORKS 87 The Tangyes were proud to associate the name of their native county with their own success. It is not too much to say in this connection that the Cornwall Works, where the fortune of the family was made, became in process of time, what it remains to-day, renowned in engineering circles all over the world. The Tangyes were already so well estab- lished that they were in a position to retain the Clement Street workshop as a centre of their operations iff Birmingham. In a comparatively short time the Cornwall Works, Soho, were com- pleted. They covered three acres of land, and were provided with all the machinery and plant necessary — for the time at least — to carry on the business without strain. The new workshops were insigni- ficant compared with those which exist to-day, but the Tangyes had the business foresight to secure enough additional land for subsequent develop- ments. As soon as these new engineering sheds had been erected work was found for four hundred men — the forerunners of a great industrial army which was destined on that spot to find no lack of employment in the years to come. The Cornwall Works are near two great lines of railway which converge on Birmingham — the Great Western and the London and North-Western — and it was a proud day for Richard Tangye when the long, external walls of the new property were duly labelled, in letters six feet high, " Cornwall Works, Tangye Brothers, Hydraulic Engineers." He used to tell a good story of the manner in 88 SIR RICHARD TANGYE which he was chaflFed, shortly afterwards, in a chance encounter with the leading engineer of the town, who, meeting him in New Street said, " I see you are in full swing in your new works, Mr. Tangye " ; and then added, with just a touch of sarcasm, " By the wjiy, what very tall letters you have put your name up in. I should say they are taller than yourself." " Yes," was the reply, " they are almost double my height ! " Some time later he met the same gentleman again, who exclaimed, " I say ! I hear you have got that Yankee pump to manu- facture, and that you are making a good thing out of it." Then he added, " It was offered to us, but we could not see anything in it. How did you get it ? " " Well," was the response, " we got it by those same letters which you thought were so ab- surdly tall." How this came about deserves to be recorded. The pump in question was the invention of Mr. A. S. Cameron, of New York, and nothing of the kind was known at that time in this country, though it has since made its own welcome all over the world as the " Special " Steam-Pump. Its merit lay in its simplicity, its strength and small compass, and the manner in which it did away with the necessity for a fly-wheel, and the extraneous gearing which was then in vogue. There was wealth for himself and others under Mr. Cameron's hat, when the train, in which he was travelling from Manchester, came to a halt to collect tickets just outside Birmingham. During the lull in the journey, his eye caught the AN AMERICAN INVENTOR 89 big letters, about which Richard Tangye had been bantered, and, like Captain Cuttle, he made a note of them. Presently he stood in the streets of Bir- mingham a disappointed man, though in his pocket there was still a packet of letters as yet undelivered, which contained introductions to nearly all the leading engineers throughout the country. The reason he was disappointed was not a substantial one, except perhaps to a sensitive man of brains. When Mr. Cameron landed at Liverpool he made his way at once to Manchester in order to call at, let us say, the works of Messrs. A. and B., that he might give them the first offer for England for his patent. It chanced that a pert, consequential young clerk was the first person he encountered when he went into the office. This youth was in no hurry to attend to him, but, after a while, condescended to turn round on his stool to greet the stranger with the single word, " Well ! " "I guess I want Mr. A.," said the inventor. " Mr. A. ? " said the clerk with a sneer. " I guess Mr. A. has been dead these ten years." The American, quick as a flash, came to his own conclusions. Whether they were correct or not is a point that need not be here discussed ; it is enough to state that they were at least sufficient for him. He said to himself, " No sensible firm would tolerate such a boor as that," and, arguing from the less to the greater, without more ado, turned on his heel. 9° SIR RICHARD TANGYE He had not been long in Birmingham before he remembered the mental note which he had made when the train stopped for the collection of tickets. Though he had no letter in his pocket to Tangye Brothers — for they at that time were little known across the Atlantic — ^he determined to make his way to the Cornwall Works. There he met James Tangye, who was at once impressed by the extreme ingenuity and utility of the invention. The visitor himself was also impressed by the quickness with which his idea was grasped, and the keen knowledge of mechanical methods which came to light, even in a short con- versation. Presently, taking out of his pocket a packet of letters of introduction to other firms, he tore them all up where he stood, exclaiming, " I guess I'll go no further. This pump is the identical thing for you, and I guess you are the very people for the pump, and take my word for it there's lots of money in it." It did not take long to draw up an agreement, for that was the sort of man with whom the Tangyes liked to do business. They had no reason to regret their prompt decision, for Richard afterwards declared that they made a big harvest out of the English rights for the invention, and, whilst the patent lasted, the man who made them that impulsive offer was paid by them no less a sum than j^35,ooo in royalties. " Young men," he used to say in recounting the incident, " you can talk very glibly about how much the master makes out of your labour, but only rarely do you take into A NEW VENTURE 91 account how much he sometimes loses, and — all for the want of a little civility." That clerk in Manchester, on the other hand, did a very good bit of business that day, though not for the people who paid his wages, but for the newly-established Cornwall Works. The six-foot letters on the exterior wall, Richard Tangye always said, had justified their existence as the best advertisement which the firm had ever drawn up. Orders for machinery were now coming in from various parts of Europe, not to the Tangyes alone, but more or less to all the engineering firms in the country. This led, in 1863, to a visit to the Con- tinent of some prominent English ironmasters, who went thither to find out for themselves exactly what was most wanted, and were a little surprised to discover to what an extent their foreign rivals were beginning to develop engineering activities on their own account. They came back in rather a depressed mood, making no secret of their fears that the Belgians in particular were going to forestall British goods in continental markets. Alarm was expressed on every hand at the prospect of a diminished demand, and the Tangyes, yielding to these apprehensions, determined to take time by the forelock by opening works in Belgium. Edward Tangye accordingly took charge of this new venture. The necessary machinery was des- patched, and with it went a few picked workmen, sufficiently skilled to direct the labour of the rank and file. " My son," said a shrewd old Quaker 92 SIR RICHARD TANGYE to a friend of Richard Tangye's, who told him of the new works, " never put salt water between thee and thy money." If that counsel of perfection were followed, there would, of course, be an end to all great ventures in business ; but it is one which beginners-*often impulsive and not a little san- guine — might with advantage bear in mind. Any- how, the Tangyes proved the wisdom of it up to the hilt. The Belgian Works did not prosper ; perhaps it was just as well there should have been a momentary ebb in the tide of success, for a slight check, even if it does bring disappointment, calls out the quality of people and braces their powers. It is not easy for English manufacturers, especially when, like the Tangyes, they have had no previous experience of the widely different economic and social conditions which prevail on the Continent, to be masters in their own house, when they sud- denly elect to establish one abroad. They quickly found that though the scale of wages demanded was much less, the foreign artisan did not possess the stamina of the working men employed in Birming- ham. He might be content with smaller wages, but, even when that was taken fully into account, his power of manual skill was so inferior that the outcome of his toil was inadequate, though, it is only fair to add, there has been much improvement in later years. Richard Tangye used to say that, however it may be now, in those days three Belgians, busy all day in the workshop, did not get through more work than one Englishman. The Tangyes " POWER " TO SELL 93 were not the men to relinquish the experiment without due trial, so they took over more of their Birmingham workpeople, and did not break up the establishment until the hard logic of figures had proved to them that the cost of production was unremunerative. Then, like sensible men, they cut the loss, and abandoned Belgium once for all, so far as the actual work of manufacture was concerned. It taught them one thing, and that was not to be afraid of foreign rivalry. Soon after this the Tangyes came to the conclusion that it would be much better to have a warehouse in London, than workshops in Belgium. It is the laudable and sensible ambition of every thriving business, which makes more than a local appeal, to be represented in the capital. London, apart from its own myriad enterprises and all the opportunities which they oflEer to energy and capacity, is a place of call for aU the buyers of the world, and to have no foothold in its crowded streets is therefore a disadvantage too obvibus to need pointing out to people who had " power " to sell, to borrow the simile of a great engineer. Accordingly to London, in 1868, Richard Tangye went to open a warehouse in one of its crowded thoroughfares, in the interests of the Cornwall Works. This new departure was rendered imperative by like forward movements on the part of rivals in the trade, and not less by the growing disinclination of customers, on the small and great scale, to do business with mere agents, not always too well informed about the 94 SIR RICHARD TANGYE merits of the wares, in the shape of machinery, which they had to offer. He remained in London — flying down to the Cornwall Works continually when anything important was on hand — for five strenuous years, and when he went back to Birming- ham in 1872 the business was not only firmly established, but had been quadrupled in that period. Here it may be well to state that, gradually, at other centres of trade, first in England, and then across the sea, other houses were established in the interests of the Cornwall Works. One of them was at Newcastle on-Tyne, another at Manchester, then Scotland was invaded, with Glasgow as the centre of operations, and in later years, Sydney, Melbourne, New York and Johannesburg were annexed. By this time the elder brothers had retired from the business, and responsibility for the Cornwall Works rested on the shoulders of Richard and George, and their relations became more intimate, if possible, than at any previous stage of their lives. There are, in existence, many letters which passed between them, and they show that Richard's return to headquarters was eagerly desired by his younger brother, and he himself also felt that this was the best course to pursue. When Richard Tangye came back to Birmingham, with all the strings of the London connection in his quick, eager hands, there were problems to be con- fronted. The Cornwall Works had not in any sense stood still in the interval. It was already a great hive of industry, with an army of workpeople THE FREE HAND 95 and far-reaching activities, with knotty questions to solve, moreover, the outcome of the complex organisation which had inevitably arisen with the growth of the concern. Richard Tangye had grown in business aptitude, in social vision, and, not least, in the determination to order the affairs of the busi- ness, so far as in him lay, on broad and progressive lines. He had seen more of the world than his partners, had less of the provincial note, and though, on his own confession, not worthy, then or after- wards, to hold a candle to his elder brothers on the mechanical side, was able not merely to grasp, but to settle, complicated matters of administration, with which the rest were powerless to deal. He knew his limitations — a great thing for any one to know — and being, then and always, a perfectly frank as well as sincere man, he never attempted to hide them. But one thing else he knew, and that supported, as he was, by the loyalty of his younger brother, was that he could order the affairs of the Cornwall Works with discretion, and with a generous regard of the workpeople. Happily, the free hand he needed was not disallowed. He had his chance, and he took it, and, let it be said, he builded better than he knew. He never forgot his own hard struggle, and because the workpeople knew that he kept it in mind, and was never in the least ashamed of it into whatever company he might be thrown, he had their implicit confidence. His triumph — it was a real and worthy one — ^was, in short, the triumph of personality. The men 96 SIR RICHARD TANGYE felt instinctively that he had struggled from the ranks and understood them, and that, under the broad-cloth of the master, there beat a heart quite as manly, independent, and kindly as any man in fustian could claim. In all this he had the co- operation of his younger brother, who also possessed the goodwill of the workpeople and a wide grasp of mechanical operations — as all who know him are aware. It was this union of forces that made the aflEairs of the Cornwall Works advance steadily and with ever-widening success. Sympathetic imagination, and the delicacy and consideration for others to which it leads, when not untram- melled by hard worldly maxims, is itself an unusual quality. There is so little of it about, as a ruling force in the relations of capital and labour, that when it does not appear spasmodically, but is the ruling principle of a man's life, it seldom fails, to the credit of humanity, to pass unrecognised. Richard Tangye knew the artisans at the Corn- wall Works in a very real sense, and they knew him too. He could be imperative, stern, and, on occasion, autocratic, but he was just, considerate, and gene- rous. There was friction, of course, now and then, for men are but human, but, broadly speaking, the relations of the firm with those who served it, from the most responsible capacity down to the lowest, ran almost as smoothly as any of the countless wheels in the Works. Dr. R. W. Dale, of Carr's Lane Chapel, was one of Richard Tangye's intimate friends, and a man to DR. R. W. DALE ^ whom he owed not a little, first and last, in the direc- tion both of moral and civic inspiration. This preacher and platform speaker, and valiant, righteous man — ^who was a sort of incarnate conscience in Bir- mingham — once made a remark which deserves here to be regarded. He said in a letter to Richard Tangye, on the latter leaving Birmingham once for all, when the long strain of his active life was over — " I regret your removal on personal as well as public grounds. You have done great things for Birming- ham. Your gifts have been distinguished by a princely generosity — if, indeed, princes in these days have any right to furnish an epithet for gen- erosity — ^like yours," Then he added, and this is the reason why that kindly letter is here anticipated : " But I appreciate not less highly your administra- tion of the great works at Soho. I have not yet been able to unlearn my old economics, and to attri- bute all the glory of our industrial triumphs to the workmen. That seems as unreasonable as it would be to attribute the glory of Waterloo — ^if your friendly instincts will forgive the illustration — to Tommy Atkins, and to deny any share of it to the Duke of Wellington. You have given a great example of what a man can do for the prosperity and happiness of his people." That was a high tribute from such lips, and no wonder the letter was treasured by the man who received it, and yet it would not be difficult to add much else to the same purpose. Its value lies in the fact that Dr. Dale was not given to compliments, but he had a unique G 98 SIR RICHARD TANGYE knowledge both of masters and men in Birmingham. He had, moreover, a thousand opportunities of gauging accurately public opinion in the great community, which turned to him instinctively as a trusted and courageous leader on all matters which were bound up with the prosperity of the Midlands, or with the honour of England itself. Half the charm of Richard Tangye, honesty and courage apart, sprang out of his modesty and humour. The first was sometimes challenged but never by any one who really knew the man. When it was questioned, that arose from the fact that he had nothing to conceal. In letters to the papers and in speeches on the platform, he was outspoken, expansive, and occasionally, let it be admitted, oracular, to a degree that took people, of more sophisticated and calculating minds, aback. But at the heart of him he was perfectly unassuming, frank and natural, to an extent which in these days is rare. No one ever challenged his humour ; it was perennial and kindly. He had quick eyes for the ludicrous aspect of things, and few men excelled him in the power to bring out at the right moment, in public speech or fireside talk, a racy story. He not only knew when to bring it out, but how, if the need arose, to point its moral. He was one of those people who, go where they will, instinctively heighten the gaiety of mankind.- He was quick and witty in retort, and, when at his ease in congenial Qompany, there seemed no end to the amusing Stories which he had to tell. Many of them were IN SOCIAL INTERCOURSE 99 told in the vernacular, for he was a capital mimic, and those which delighted him most threw into relief the shrewd kindliness and outspoken, if disconcert- ing, candour of Cornish folk. Sometimes he seemed tongue-tied and embarrassed, and then he grew silent. That only happened, however, when the people, into whose company he was at the moment thrown, were formal, self-conscious, unimaginative. The wells of fancy and recollection were frozen when those about him did not relish laughter, and were impervious to a joke. If a good man cannot laugh in this dull world, who else, in the name of all that is sacred, has a right to do so ? CHAPTER VIII CONSIDERATION FOR WORKPEOPLE Tyneside straggle between capital and labour — ^Richard Tangye averts a strike in Birmingham — ^Nine-hours day granted unasked — Holding wealth as a trust — Conscience and kindness in the workshop — Dining-haU for workmen — Evening classes — ^Benefit Fund — ^Dr. Langford's addresses — Lifting Cleopatra's Needle — ^Rapid progress in methods of weight-raising — ^Results achieved by the HydrauUc Jack. The year 1872, in which Richard Tangye returned to Birmingham, was, in many respects, a memorable one, and not least in regard to the relations of capital and labour. It witnessed a great strike on Tyneside for the nine-hours day, a movement which, it was predicted, meant the beginning of a new era in the mechanical workshops of England. Opinions ran high on both sides during the protracted struggle, and great loss was incurred through idle machinery before the question at issue was settled. Richard Tangye felt from the outset that the claim of the men was just. The success that had followed the concession of a half-day's holiday at the end of the week, which the Tangyes, at his suggestion, had been the first to adopt, convinced him that this CAPITAL AND LABOUR loi further boon to the workpeople might well be con- ceded. He had seen for himself how the energies of the men flagged towards the close of the day, with the result, as he put it, that comparatively little work was done in the last hour. Moreover, there was the cost of gas and coals, and the wear and tear of the machinery, to very little purpose, to consider, and all this led him to think that the proper course to pursue was to forestall an agitation on the subject by granting, unasked, in the work- shops of Birmingham, what the artisans of Newcastle had won at the cost of a ruinous dislocation of business. During the critical months when the struggle in the north was proceeding, he was powerless to act in the matter, in consequence of a severe illness of several months. But, during these long weeks of enforced idleness, he was turning the matter over in his mind, and becoming more and more restive at the apathy which existed in the Midlands, He saw that the Newcastle artisans were fighting a battle, not for themselves alone, but for the rights of labour in all the workshops of the nation. He sympathised with them, and knew perfectly well that the tide of battle would quickly turn on Birmingham. As soon as he was sufficiently well, he placed himself in communication with his brothers, and, to his great satisfaction, found that they were in complete agreement with him as to the necessity of prompt and generous action. There was no time to be lost, for the agitation, 102 SIR RICHARD TANGYE though it had not reached the Cornwall Works, was already beginning elsewhere in the district. So he met some of the chief manufacturers of the neighbourhood, and explained to them his views of the situatien, with the hope of securing concerted action. He was at once confronted with all sorts of objections, the gist of which was that the trade of the district would be ruined. His reply was charac- teristic. He said that when whirlwinds were about, it was better to ride and direct them, than to stand still and be overwhelmed by them, and added that, at the Cornwall Works, it was proposed to take occasion by the hand by granting the concession before it was asked. The men had not solicited the firm in any way, but the Tangyes were determined to be in the van of the nine-hours movement in the Mid- lands, Richard Tangye tried to persuade the assembled manufacturers that it would be unpolitic and unfortunate to take up an attitude of stubborn resistance, for the tide of public opinion, whether they realised it or not, was running strongly, and was not to be set aside by mere authority. Richard Tangye was the last man to attach much credit to such a decision. He knew the change was inevitable. He believed that justice lay on the side of the workmen, that there would be no real loss to the masters, and, therefore, in view of all this, he came to the conclusion that it was not merely just, but expedient, to give way gracefully before any angry clamour began. He told the masters that, as they were not prepared to do any- MASTERS AND MEN 103 thing at the moment, his own firm now felt perfectly free to follow its own judgment. Next day the gates were locked on the assembled workpeople, without their knowledge, and presently, to their surprise, some little time before the usual shrill whistle of the factory sounded, which set them free in the middle of the day, they heard the call to cease work. The message ran -round the benches that they were to assemble in the largest of the workshops. Without any waste of words, though with a happy allusion to the good relations which had always existed between masters and men at the Cornwall Works, the gathering of between seven and eight hundred men had the following scheme submitted to them. " We propose the present system to continue until the expiration of this year. From January i, until June 30, the hours of labour to be fifty- six ; from July I, to be fifty- four hours per week — made up as under : — ^The fifty-six hours to be as follows, from January i to June 30, commencing at 6 A.M., and leaving off at 5.30 p.m. ; on Saturdays from 6 A.M. to 12.30 P.M. The fifty-four hours to be as follows : — From July i, from six a.m. to 5 p.m. ; on Saturdays from 6 a.m. to i p.m. ; the breakfast- time to be half an hour, and dinner time to be one hour in each case. Starting-time allowances to be done away with ; the whistle to blow five minutes before, and at the hour for commencing work, when the gates will be closed. Morning late arrivals : The gates to be closed between 7.15 and 104 SIR RICHARD TANGYE breakfast time ; instead of being checked by the half-hour as at present, the quarter-of-an-hour checking to come into force." There was a short and cordial discussion, and then, on behalf of the workmen, was carried, with accla- mation, the* following resolution : — " We accept the terms offered to us by our employers with right goodwill, seeing they were made without any pressure being exerted." A few days later a second meeting was held, and a further concession was voluntarily granted. That night the workmen paraded the streets, with a band of music, headed by a banner, on which was boldly printed the words, " Nine hours given, without asking, by Tangye Brothers." After that the opposition of the other masters collapsed like a house of cards, and there was no strike at Birmingham. It was said in the local press at the time that the only pressure to which the Tangyes had yielded was the noble pressure of the sense of right. The workmen, too, let it be added, came forward on their side in response to the pressure of right. Richard Tangye used to relate with pride that, though the majority of the men were piece-workers, they " immediately and spontaneously offered to con- tinue at the same prices as before ; " and he added that this generous response was in itself a guarantee against practical loss to the firm. It was an admirable thing to act promptly, and by doing so to prevent, what might easily have proved, a dead-lock in production. It bore ex- Consideration for workpeople 105 cellent fiuit, moreover, by the manner in which it was done^ and strengthened the goodwill and co- operation which had always existed between the Tangyes and their workpeople. Looking back many years later, Richard Tangye saw no reason to regret that decision. He felt that, even if such a course were possib^, it would be disastrous to go back to the old system. Since then much has happened, of course, in the world of labour, for the growth of Trade Unions and direct representation in Parliament has strengthened the workmen's position ; amongst other improvements of their lot, another hour a day has been struck off the limits of their toil. But that does not lessen the claims of men who were amongst the first to recognise, in so practical a way, the justice of such demands. Here it may be as well to describe, once for all, the practical consideration for their workpeople which first made the name of Tangye an honoured household word with the artisans of Birmingham. There is no merit attached to the mere provision of work, for that is only an application of the law of supply and demand. The merit comes into view when workpeople are not regarded as mere hands, to which tasks are allotted and wages paid for value received, but as men with claims of another sort on those who employ them — claims which are not to be reckoned by pounds, shillings and pence. Richard Tangye always realised that he was sailing in the same boat as the workpeople, and all through his business relations, without any loss of the only io6 SIR RICHARD TANGYE dignity which is worth having, he culti^rated the sense of comradeship. When his life was ending, he said that he had always tried to hold his wealth as a trust, for which he would have to give an ac- count, andj^when it began to grow, the first to bene- fit by it were his own people. They had the first claims, he felt, since they had helped to make it. He busied himself therefore — ^loyally supported, need- less to say, by his brothers — in all sorts of schemes for the welfare and advancement of the workpeople. This was aU the more creditable, since the direct claims of the work itself were constant and exacting ; but he found time, notwithstanding, to carry his conscience, and with it his kindliness, into the workshop. One or two instances may be cited as typical instances of such consideratioii. They are broad examples, it is true, which concerned the mass of men employed, since, to cite personal instances, especially where accident or misfortune made an individual appeal, is impossible, for they were countless. When the Cornwall Works were first established the artisans followed the practice, which was almost universal at that time, of taking their meals in the workshop. The chief drawback to this custom was that it hindered the ventilation of the place, especially when, as was the casein 1876, the number of men employed had grown in the course of a few years from eight hundred to fifteen hundred. It was therefore resolved to build a dining-hall, in CLASS-DISTINCTIONS 107 which breakfasts and dinners for those who brought them could be cooked for a penny a week, and a good mid-day meal could be had for sixpence. But here class-distinctions came into play, for they exist not merely amongst those who neither toil nor spin, but also in the ranks of labour. Some of the men did fine work, over which they scarcely soiled their fingers, and they raised objections to the presence of operatives who were begrimed by their honest toil. This difficulty was surmounted by a little tact ; but still the British working man did not altogether relish being catered for, so eventually the control of the culinary operations was handed over to the men themselves, they paying rent for the hall, and managing it themselves. After that, matters went on smoothly, and the workshop, in the latter hours of the day, was provided with better atmospheric conditions. No intoxicating drink, then or now, was allowed, but smoking was permitted, provided no one struck a match until half an hour was passed. Comfortable dining-rooms were also provided for clerks, who found it impossible to get to and fro from their lodgings in the allotted time. Classes in mathematics, machine-drawing, English litera- ture, history, and singing were established, and a good library was opened for the men and boys. Concerts and lectures were occasionally given, a savings' bank was founded, and twice a weekpialf- hour addresses were delivered during the dinner hour on subjects which the men themselves selected. io8 SIR RICHARD TANGYE Apart from all this, a sick visitor was appointed, and a dispensary, with an able doctor attached, for the exclusive use of the men employed at the works and their families. The half-hour addresses were delivered at this time by the late Dr. Langford, usually to an audience of about a thousand men. They were given on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and, beginning punctually at half-past one, occupied from twenty to twenty- five minutes. The men gave him his text, of course beforehand, and, in nine cases out of ten it was upon some question of the day. Occasionally this was varied by an address on some great man in history or literature. Dr. Langford possessed the happy art of speaking to the point in a pithy and pic- turesque manner. Sometimes he would discuss measures which were before Parliament, or a great Imperial question, like that involved in the purchase of the Suez Canal, or he would seize upon the presence of a great gathering of Foresters in Bir- mingham to interest his audience in Friendly Societies, and the thrift which lay at their basis. He spoke in easy, conversational terms, without talking down to the gathering, which was shrewd- headed enough, and quick, therefore, to detect any fallacy in the speaker's argument. Richard Tangye always held that these addresses were a great advantage to the workpeople ; they went away to read their newspapers more in- telligently, and to look at questions at issue in national affairs from a larger point of view. The CLEOPATRA'S NEEDLE 109 workmen themselves greatly appreciated this inno- vation, for one day they surprised Dr. Langford by giving him an illuminated address and a purse of twenty guineas, in recognition of his services. About one matter in connection with the Corn- wall Works, Richard Tangye was always proud — that the prosperity of the business, increasing by leaps and bounds, was not achieved at the expense of other manufacturers. " I believe," were his words, " that four-fifths of the business, including pumping machinery, hydraulic machinery generally, lifting tackle, and, to a large extent, steam engines, was not only new to Birmingham, but was also the result of new inventions, or adaptations previously unknown." Machinery was already beginning to do wonderful things, and was adding to the resources of civilisation, in every direction. The allusion, in the words just quoted, to " lift- ing tackle " recalls not the least wonderful achieve- ment of modern engineering skill. Every one who has ever walked along the Victoria Embankment in London knows the majestic ancient obelisk, which is called Cleopatra's Needle, but not every one knows how the great monolith was raised to its commanding pedestal on the banks of the Thames. It stood in far-oflE centuries before the Temple of Heliopolis, where it was placed by Thothmes III., perhaps, as Richard Tangye liked to think, in the presence of the patriarch Joseph. It was after- ward re-erected by Rameses II. at Alexandria, but it had long been lying prostrate when Mehemet 1 10 SIR RICHARD TANGYE Ali, early in the last century, oflEered to present it to the English Government. But the great granite column, covered with hieroglyphics, was more than sixty-eight feet in height, and weighed no less than one hundred and eighty-six tons, and in those days there was no machinery equal to the task of its re- moval. It was brought, however, to London in 1878 through private munificence, in a specially con- structed cigar-shaped cylinder, which, by the way, had an adventurous voyage and was actually lost during a storm in the Bay of Biscay. The cylinder had been towed successfully through the Medi- terranean, but was lost in the hurricane afterwards encountered. It was quickly recovered, however, when the storm abated, and then new difficulties arose, for it was no easy task to place the huge obelisk in position on the Embankment. The Tangye hydraulic jacks had worked so admirably when the Great Eastern was launched, that they were again called into operation to raise Cleopatra's Needle from a horizontal to a perpen- dicular position, and, without any hitch, in Septem- ber 1878, the great monolith was placed in the position where it now stands, and where it is likely to stand, for centuries to come. The task was accomplished with a rapidity and ease which astonished scientific experts, as well as the crowd, which cheered loudly when Cleopatra's Needle slowly rose to an upright position, with the English flag fluttering on its summit. Beneath it in a recess in the socket was placed a map of London, RAISING THE OBELISK in the newspapers of the day, the book of Genesis in Arabic and Hebrew, and copies of the Bible in other languages, besides standard weights and measures, presented by the Board of Trade. There was also placed under the obelisk, to Richard Tangye's gratification, one of the hydraulic jacks, which he thought might prove a puzzle to some remote archaeologist, engaged in making researches amid the ruins of London. He thought that the progress of engineering science, in raising great weights, was thrown into relief by the methods employed in erecting obelisks between the sixteenth century and the Victorian era. Domenico Fontana, the great Italian archi- tect, at the instance of Pope Sixtus V., placed in position, in the year 1856, the obelisk which now stands in front of St. Peter's at Rome. He did so with forty capstans, which were worked by nine hundred and sixty men and seventy-five horses. Las Bas, in the reign of Louis-Philippe, raised the Luxor obelisk at Paris, in 1836, with ten capstans and the labour of four hundred and eighty men. But, in little more than half a century later, Cleopatra's Needle was placed in position on the Thames Embankment with four of Tangye's hydraulic jacks, which were worked by four men. It was something to be proud of, and the success of such an achievement did not a little to advance the reputation of the firm. All sorts of engineering difficulties, some of which had long taxed the wit of man before the invention of 112 SIR RICHARD TANGYE the hydraulic jack, became possible with its help. A lofty chimney in the Midlands, for instance, which had become a menace by the partial subsidence of the ground on which it was built, was lifted by the aid of this machine, and placed in a new foundation, and many fef the old wooden railway viaducts, in a dangerous condition through the wear and tear of years of railway traffic, were put to rights without any interruption of the trains. It could raise buildings in Cheshire which had subsided through the pumping of brine, and hold them at a sufficient height until new foundations were made. In other directions, scarcely less remarkable, the Tangye jacks gave an equally good account of themselves, and by doing so — since in this world nothing suc- ceeds like success — brought no little grist to the Cornwall Works. CHAPTER IX EDUCATIONAL REFORM Excuses of the wealthy — ^Richard Tangye's municipal and social services — Advocacy of Technical Education — ^Broad- cloth versus Fustian — Language classes at CornvsraU Works — A fair start for the cliildren of the people — Results of Board Schools — Science teaching — " Study and vyork together " — Essentials for skilled labour — Self-reliance — No mercy on the loafer — Going forward — " Good advice, and nothing more." A GREAT test of character in a man is the use to which he puts freedom from financial strain. It is so easy, with an increasing balance at the bank, to grow hard, self-satisfied, ignobly content. The tragedy of ten thousand lives, which are outwardly prosperous, consists in the refusal, open or unex- pressed, to cherish ideals. Such people are too apt to batten down in inglorious ease, and to hold wealth, not as a trust, but merely as a means of personal gratification. That way lies one of the chief menaces of modern England — the practical though unavowed cynical indifference of so many wealthy and leisured people to the claims of the community. It needs some strong controlling "3 H 114 SIR RICHARD TANGYE principle to enable men, hitherto poor and strug- gling, when they come to an assured position and ample means — not in old age, but in mid-career — -to resist the subtle appeal to follow the easy road of careless enjoyment. When a man grows pros- perous aftir twenty years of strenuous toil, which has taxed every fibre of his nature, he is apt to rest and be thankful, and to meet demands on his personal service with the too familiar plea, " I pray thee have me excused " — surely one of the most convenient, and, in the moral sense, one of the most disastrous phrases on human lips. Richard Tangye was forty-five, and therefore in the full heyday of life, when he watched the obelisk rise slowly into position in the autumn of 1878. It stood there like a golden milestone in the story of his life, and had for him a significance, which the crowd who cheered the completion of the great task little knew. That buried hydraulic jack at its base was only a passing incident to other people, but it meant to him and the house he represented a new and substantial achievement — a milestone, in short, on the road to renown. His hands were full enough of work just then — the complicated and insistent tasks inseparable from a business which was beginning to establish itself, in tentative fashion, in various quarters of the world. His health, moreover, was uncertain, and his tempera- ment was highly strung, and, since he was also sympathetic in^no ordinary degree, private demands SENSE OF PUBLIC DUTY 115 of all kinds, not easy to resist, were knocking at his door. He had no ambition for public life, and, though the common opinion was that he was admirably- fitted for it, those who knew him best were of different mind, and felt that he had enough in hand already, without taking upon himself the additional strain of public work. But he had, what so many men lack, the sense of public duty. He had made his money in Birmingham, and he felt that he ought to throw himself heart and soul into its municipal life. He became, in consequence, a member of the Smethwick School Board, for in the work of education he was keenly interested, and also a mem- ber of the Town Council, where his wide commercial knowledge, and his intimate acquaintance with the habits and aspirations of the working classes, made his presence valuable. He wanted, he said, to help to " open up the dark and insanitary part of the town " to the blessings of light and fresh air, and in other directions to assist in the social betterment of the people. Both in the Town Council and on the School Board he quickly made his mark by a happy union of courage and common sense. He was nothing if not practical, and there was nothing that was practical in the way of improvement which did not appeal to him. He took up all sorts of questions which related to the progress of the community, and helped to Carry them to a successful issue by his tenacity and humour. The same qualities carried ii6 SIR RICHARD TANGYE him far in the work of the School Board, He was a whole-hearted believer in the wisdom of Forster's great system of Primary Education. But he quickly perceived that, in a community like Birmingham, the kind of education that it was imperative to give ought to be technical rather than literary. He recognised, long before most people, that if we were to compete on equal terms with our foreign rivals, we must abandon purely bookish ideals for the training of the hands and eyes. This he saw was imperative, if our ambition was not to turn out clerks on a market that was already overstocked in that direc- tion, but skUled mechanics, who might start in life with a thorough grasp of the rudiments of their calling. Birmingham took the lead in this direction, and Richard Tangye was a pioneer of the movement. He always held that public money, or even private, could not be better spent than in giving the children of the poor a chance in life, and, in season and out, he advocated a generous and enlightened policy in all that concerned the work of education. He had the courage to state unpopular truths. He never concealed his opinion, for instance, that artisans made a great mistake when they sought, by means of free education, to train their sons for the position of clerks. The market in that direction was already overcrowded, and it was a pity to con- demn a bright lad to a black coat, which in reality meant genteel poverty. The root of the mischief lay in the vulgar notion that manual labour was something to be ashamed PROMOTION FROM THE RANKS 117 of ; but he knew too well how this fallacy crippled, at the start, many a promising young life, not to protest against it. Promotion from the ranks was another matter, and in his dealings with the work- people he gave it full play ; but he held stoutly to the old-fashioned maxim that a man should abide in his own calling, since, if he possessed diligence and capacity, there was no limit to the position which he might attain in it. It is better to begin in fustian and rise to broadcloth, than to begin in broadcloth and wear it threadbare — that, in a word, was often his theme — one which he drove home with many racy, telling, and picturesque examples. If further illustration is needed, it is enough to point to the men who hold responsible positions in the Cornwall Works, and to ask them where they started. Many a workman, who rose to a more or less important position in the firm, obtained his first knowledge, not only of machine drawing and construction, but even of reading and writing, long before the Education Act became law, through classes which were established at the Tangye Works. When Forster's great measure began to turn out lads for the battle of life, who could read and write, this part of instruction was, of course, abandoned. The Tangyes might have rested on their oars at such a point, but, to their credit, they did not do so> for they established classes for the teaching of French, Spanish, German, and shorthand, and, as a spur to progress in such directions, offered sub- stantial advantages to those who showed proficiency ii8 SIR RICHARD TANGYE in such subjects. They were able, after a while, to dispense with the services of foreign clerks, who, as Richard Tangye said, were usually birds of passage, coming to this country, not merely to earn a liveli- hood, but to pick up information in English business houses, which, in due course, was placed at the service of foreign manufacturers. These classes were eventually relinquished, because, as education broadened, they were no longer required, but they were steadily maintained at the Cornwall Works, until various evening schools and institutions for technical training were available in Birmingham to all who cared for such knowledge. Richard Tangye held stoutly to the view that the children of the poor should be properly equipped for the practical tasks of life, and no man, in the great community where he lived and laboured, did more to throw open wide to them the doors of knowledge. He ridiculed the notion that it was possible to go too fast or too far in such directions, and was indig- nant with those who urged, as a great many people did a generation ago, that if the masses were given the best possible education, they would grow discontented, and quarrel with their lot. He always held that hundreds and thousands of poverty- stricken children, up and down the land, were placed at a cruel disadvantage through the improvidence, to use no harsher term, of their parents. No one could, of course, deny that many of these parents, hard-driven themselves, no doubt, in the struggle for existence, crippled, in many instances, by their _ GIVING LADS A CHANCE 119 own carelessness and vicious habits, had neglected their duty. But that was no reason why the rising generation— ritself the most valuable asset of the State — should be allowed to drift along without any real chance in life. He never forgot his own hard struggle, and the recollection of it made, him eager, and enthusiastic as well, that the children of the people should have a fair start in life. He held strongly that the poor lad of exceptional ability, should have every opportunity given him, in the interests of the nation itself. '"_^Those who began with no capital, except their industry and intelligence, surely, on all grounds, ought to be adequately equipped for toil, and have their feet firmly set on the first steps of the ladder of success. Hence, as a manager of the Smethwick Board School, and in the Town Council of Bir- mingham, in the Press, and on public platforms as well, he proved himself a true friend of the working classes years before he was in a position to give substantial financial aid to such a movement. When the Education Act had been in operation only a few years, he summed up, in a speech made at the opening of the new Board School, close to the Cornwall Works, his impressions of the movement. He declared, speaking as a member of the School Board and also as an employer of labour, that the result had been to make a more intelligent class of workpeople. The fears that had been expressed in many quarters had not been justified ; on the contrary, from every point of view, whether social 120 SIR RICHARD TANGYE or economic, the outcome of the working of the Education Act had proved advantageous to the community. " What has been my own experience ? Since the passing of the Education Act, more than one thousand Bdard School boys have found employment in the Cornwall Works, and the universal testimony concerning them is that, as compared with those of the era previous to the existence of the Board Schools, there is a marked improvement in every way." He went on to show that the lads were more amenable to discipline, more orderly in their habits, and better able to meet the demands of the work they had to do. They were not so sluggish ; they evinced far more desire to learn the business of their lives, and therefore they gained a practical mastery of it in much less time. But this was not all. The best of them were not inclined to be con- tent with the routine of their daily toil. They had come into possession of new tastes, and were begin- ning — a voluntary movement of the utmost impor- tance — to take full advantage of the chances of culture, provided by such institutions as the Mason Science College, the School of Art, and the Midland Institute, and all this told surely and steadily in the creation of a more capable and alert class in the ranks of labour. He wished to see, so far as elementary education was concerned, absolute equality for every child in the land, and he thought that the special needs of each community ought to be studied, so that the TECHNICAL TRAINING 121 lad, who of necessity begins the practical work of his life under his father's roof, might find himself able to meet its demands where he stood. " I am of opinion that it would be impossible to over- estimate the importance and advantage of teaching science in the elementary schools of a manufacturing town like Birmingham." When he spoke it had already been introduced,- and, as a practical man, he claimed that the system he advocated was thoroughly sound. He predicted, what has since come to pass, that every industry in that great centre would, in the course of a few years, benefit perceptibly by the new departure. " But something more than science-teaching in our elementary schools is needed if our artisans are to keep their boasted, but well- merited, pre-eminence in the industrial world. The training of the hand and the eye, by the teaching of drawing and by technical instruction, is absolutely essential if the country is to hold its own. The motto of the Royal Agricultural Society of England is an admirable one and should be adopted by the technical schools of the future — ' Practice with Science.' " One day Richard Tangye's quick eyes saw some words in an American newspaper, which he thought so excellent that he had them printed, and circulated amongst the younger men at the works. They were written by Horace Greeley, who, in an address to the artisans of the United States, said : " Above all, to be a successful mechanic, you must be a mathe- matician. Unless you can conquer the mathe- 122 SIR RICHARD TANGYE matics of this trade, you will always have to drudge at the hardest work done. With a thorough practical knowledge of the work, and of the principles iinderlying it, you wiU soon rise above the lathe and the file. Study and work together." It was characteristic *of Richard Tangye not merely to endorse that shrewd bit of advice, but to scatter it broadcast. He knew what it meant to those who had the sense to follow it. He adopted the final words himself, as well as gave them to others, for, to the end of his days, in one direction or another, he was ever a worker, and always a student. He used to say that there was a right way and a wrong way of going about a thijig — the scientific method and the rule of thumb, and that it was the former which he wished to advance. He wanted to see schools established to teach every man, whatever his trade might be, the right way of setting about it. This was the secret of his enthusiasm for technical training- — the man who possessed skilled hands was in possession of the first conditions of success, and was already on the road to advance- ment. " I have often heard it said that there are not so many chances for a young man to rise nowa- days as formerly. I do not agree with this view, I believe there are greater chances now than ever there were. But these greater opportunities demand greater qualities — qualities that can only be acquired by an increased devotion to study, greater self- discipline, and an unconquerable determination to master the principles that underlie the profession SELF-RELIANCE 123 or business concerned. Less opportunity for getting on ! Why one of the greatest difficulties of large employers is to find thoroughly capable men to manage the various departments of their concerns ; there are many who think themselves capable, but few who can stand the test." Even in the ranks of foremen, the last words were true within his own experience, for it happened, not once or twice at the Cornwall Works," that posts of that kind were found difficult to fiU with properly qualified persons, even though the wages offered were equal to the income of many a struggling professional man. Few people ever placed greater stress than Richard Tangye on the virtue of self-reliance. He had proved at every turn of his life what such a quality was worth, and, if he had not himself possessed it in a marked degree, half the things which he accomplished would never have been achieved. Life turns on the redemption of its opportunities, and it is the work of a strong man to find them, even in the midst of passing discouragements. But he knew also that a man, who enters the battle of life armed with the kind of knowledge which he needs for the practical work of his life, is at an advan- tage in the struggle, and is not likely to beat the air. It was this conviction, gathered in the hard school of experience, which made him determine, so far as in him lay, that others should be better equipped than he was when he took up the practical tasks of his calling. Hence he strove persistently, in 124 SIR RICHARD TANGYE those strenuous years in Birmingham when the turn in his own fortunes had taken place, to spur others onward, to advance the interests of the working classes, and to raise the quality of manual labour. He believed in recreation so long as it was kept in its proper place, but he had been trained to think that, after all, the conquest of work was the finest thing to which a man could set his hand. If there was a man he despised, it was the man who did as little as he could, and slurred that. The loafer, wherever he was found, was his mortal antipathy, and if he appeared in the Cornwall Works scant mercy was shown him. He always called a spade a spade, and when a man had either that, or some other tool, in his hand, he expected him to use it to some purpose. His judgments of men were, as a rule, kindly, and he could make large and generous allowances for those who failed through incompetency, but none to those who came to grief for no other reason than that they were incurably lazy. People, who were living epistles of much cry and no wool, were not long in finding out that in Richard Tangye's company they were scarcely in congenial society. " Every man's future, to a great extent, is in his own keeping," was one of his sayings, and he was never tired of telling the British workman to take courage, and to rest assured that in the battle of life there are as many prizes to be won to-day as GOOD ADVICE 125 was ever the case. He had a happy knack of tuf ning his own reminiscences of early life to admirable account, especially when speaking to an eager group of lads. Here is an instance — one of many examples which might be cited — of his method of driving home good advice : " When I was a boy, I had a companion who often accompanied me to school — or rather he kept twenty yards behind me ; and in response to the call to ' come on,' would reply, ' wait a bit.' That characteristic has stuck to him all through life. Now to ' wait a bit ' to reflect is very good occasionally ; but great difficulties have been overcome by going forward, not by waiting a bit. And so, to sum up the whole matter I would say, ' Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might,' and do it at once." In spite of such a counsel of perfection, there were times in his life when Richard Tangye would have done better, in the business sense, if he had been less eager, and had been content to follow the Quaker maxim that it is good " to sleep over " a matter. The story is told of a distinguished and wealthy nobleman, the bearer of an historic title, who died not many years ago, and played a great part in politics in the Victorian Era, that he was always ready, in response to public appeals from the vast city which lay close to his ancestral home, to give good advice, and — nothing more. Richard Tangye followed a more excellent way. He gave good advice, for he had the faculty of speech and the instinct of 126 SIR RICHARD TANGYE sympathy ; but if he had given nothing more, men would have shrugged their shoulders in this case also, and let it pass unheeded. It was because he did good with both hands earnestly, that men took knowledge of him in Birmingham as a true lover of humanity^ who, both by precept and example, was intent on the advancement of the people. He lived in the spirit of one who said, " Go forth into the busy world and love it, interest yourself in its life ; mingle kindly with its joys and sorrows Try what you can do for men rather than what you can make them do for you." So he came, not all at once, but by a process of quiet and unconscious growth, into what, after all, is the most beautiful thing on earth — a heart set free from self, alive and sensitive to the needs of others. CHAPTER X POLITICAL INTERESTS Richard Tangye in society — ^Family bonds — ^RecreationJ and hobbies — ^Love of books — Some of his friends — ^Refusal to enter Parliament — Wit and power of retort — ^Fidelity to the Liberal Party — The Daily Argus — Gladstone asks him to stand for Birmingham — ^Admiration for John Bright — First election of Bright for Birmingham — ^Hints on public speaking — Bright's defence of the North in the American Civil War — Tangye's shortest speech — ^Honour to Sir Josiah Mason — Incident in a railway carriage — Relations with Mr. Chamberlain — Gladstone and Home Rule- Working-men in Parliament, Richard Tangye's friendships grew naturally out of his business relations with men, his travels, his bookish tastes, his philanthropic and political activities. He went very little into society, even in the comparative leisure of his later years. One who knew him well states that when he was in a room full of strangers, he seemed ill at ease, and would sit quietly until something was said which aroused his interest or caught his fancy. Suddenly he would lose his shyness and begin to speak so admirably well, that the whole company gathered around him, charmed by his picturesque and witty 127 128 SIR RICHARD TANGYE talk, until a story, which he had intended for one listener, led every one captive. This proved a little embarrassing to him at times, and brought him to a halt, but more frequently it drew forth his powers, and made people regret that he could not more frequently be inveigled into a drawing-room. He was, in truth, seen at his best by his own fire- side, for he was, beyond all else, a home-loving man, who, though given to hospitality, was of simple tastes. His early life had been so strenuous, and so broken by travel in the interests of business, that he had little opportunity for social intercourse in the ordinary acceptation of the term. His brothers in those years were his closest friends, and they were knit together by old memories and practical interests, and to a certain extent by common tastes. They were all loyal to the home of their childhood, and the beautiful memory of their father and mother, in their case, as in that of thousands of other men and women, drew them closely together long after their parents had passed away. But they all had other interests, of course, of one kind and another, and this was especially true of Richard. He never forgot the past — its tender constraint lay over all his life — ^but he lived, in the fullest sense, in the present, and had the capacity to see and to seize the opportunities which came to him, as life broadened out, with the advance of his fortunes, and gave him more and more the oppor- tunity of following his own bent, whether as book- worm, politician, or philanthropist. THE REDEMPTION OF LEISURE 129 Some men think when they succeed in life, that they are entitled to a yacht, or shooting-box in the Highlands, or to an endless round of amusements, especially if wealth, as in his case, is won with the full zest of life undiminished. He did not blame such men, for he recognised in that, as in everything else, the right of private judgment. He did not even claim that he followed a more excellent way. He merely took the road that he thought was best for himself, but his choice revealed his character. He was not a scholar in the ordinary sense of the word, for in early life he had, at best, a scanty education, but he possessed a reverence for learning, and, in his own fashion, he pursued it all his days. He read widely on all sorts of topics, but chiefly works of history and biography and concentrated, at last, all his energies around the dramatic period of the Commonwealth, and especially the masterful career of Oliver Cromwell. In this direction his knowledge was exact, intimate, and curious, for he was not content with the standard historical books on the subject, but made himself acquainted with contemporary evidence, in the shape of political tracts and pamphlets, and other more or less obscure clues to interpretation. He did not want a yacht ; he had seen enough of the sea. He had no ambition for a shooting-box, for he was as much afraid of wounding an animal as a friend. But he had a passion for books, and so he accumulated a library. There is a good story told of a certain man who did the same, and who vain- 130 SIR RICHARD TANGYE gloriously ushered a guest into his library with the words, " These are my friends," as he pointed to the books. The visitor walked rapidly to the shelves and took down a Tolume at random, opened it abruptly, put it back in its place, and then bowing with fine irony to his host exclaimed, " Ah, I see you never cut your friends ! " That remark could never have been made to Richard Tangye, for, in spite of his defective eyesight, he read his books, made copious extracts from them, and lived in their company, content with the thoughts which they inspired. The extent of his reading again and again leaped to light, not merely in apt citations in letters and speeches, but in casual conversation. He had a retentive memory, and his talk was often enriched with felicitous literary allusions, which bore directly on the subject under discussion. Books apart, his intimate friendships were not many, and ^nearly all the men who knew hiin at close quarters died, to his infinite regret, before his own end came. Some of them, like Mr. Sam Timmins, a well-known Shakespearean scholar, and Mr. Henwood Thomas, were constant visitors at his house at Glendorgal, and it is a pity that the conversations that took place on books and politics, enlivened as they were by many a racy story, cannot now be recalled. Dr. R. W. Dale, of Bir- mingham, whose power on the platform was scarcely less great than in the pulpit, and whose ministry at Carr's Lane Chapel Richard Taftgye attended, was another man who had his confidence. He also knew HIS FRIENDSHIPS 131 Dawson well, and admired his exceptional gifts as a lecturer and as a conversationalist, and he knew, of course, nearly everybody else who was worth knowing in the capital of the Midlands. He had trusted friends also in the Cornwall Works. It would be invidious to single out names, men to whom he had given their first start in life — and who had rewarded his implicit confidence by unswerving loyalty. His letters show that he had warm-hearted correspondents in all parts of the world, and in all ranks of life, from peers and profes- sors, to artisans and peasants. Yet it still remains true, that, with all his expansive sympathies and genial cordiality, to only a few people did he reveal himself in the sense which makes friendship almost the niost sacred and beautiful thing on earth. To the two or three who did know him in that manner, conversation with him was, to borrow Lynch's words, " often a picnic of fancy, sometimes a sacra- ment of souls." Perhaps they only knew the depth of his humility, and the sharp self-question- ings which lay at the back of his life. Surprise was often expressed, not merely in Birmingham, but in other parts of the country as well, that Richard Tangye never tried to enter the House of Commons. If he had had any ambition in that direction he certainly could have realised it, for, long before he was pressed to stand for the Central Division of Birmingham, he had again and again been approached by other constituencies which were anxious to secure his services. He wrote i^i SIR RICHARD TANGYE to one of his friends in the spring of 1885 — ^who thought that he was standing in his own light by- declining such overtures — in the following terms : " For five years I have known for a certainty that I could not stand the wear and tear of Parlia- mentary li^, and, although many people in Bir- mingham have made up their minds long since that all my public actions have been carefully planned with the sole view of obtaining a seat in Parliament, it is none the less a fact that they have misjudged me all the while, and utterly so. I have endeavoured to serve the town in my own way, and can truly say that my motives have been as pure as human motives are capable of being, and so I have been content to bear the unkind remarks and suspicions which have been made, until time should prove how unfounded they were. Perhaps now these people will do me justice." He may have been right in declining such over- tures, for his health was uncertain and never robust, and his temperament was always sensitive. But those who knew him best, though they had their misgivings about his ability to stand such a strain, felt that he had qualities which would have been appreciated in such an assembly, even though the cut and thrust of party politics might have ruffled his composure. His mastery of practical affairs, his power 6f compressing into a few pithy, incisive sentences the gist of the question at issue, the accent of sincerity with which he always spoke, his quick and witty retorts, and, above all, the frank and SERVICES TO LIBERAL PARTY 133 winning sincerity of the man, and his capacity, on occasion, for moral indignation, are qualities not too common in public life to be ignored. Yet he was a shy man, diffident of his own powers, and, up to the period when his strength began to flag, he was immersed in business, and so he felt that, health apart, he was better out of the fray, and that, perhaps more than anything else, explains why he stood aside. Still it remains true that, from youth to age, there were few men in the country who evinced a more keen and practical interest in the fortunes of the Liberal Party than Richard Tangye, and not many who made greater financial sacrifices on its behalf. One instance of this occurred when he founded the Daily Argus in Birmingham, at a period when the tide ran strongly against the Liberal Party, after Mr, Chamberlain had gone over to the oppo- site camp in consequence of Gladstone's adoption of Home Rule. In this public-spirited enterprise, he was associated with his old friend Sir Hugh Gilzean Reid, who brought to the project, what Richard Tangye did not claim to possess, wide and exceptional knowledge of journalism and newspaper management. There was at that time no journal in Birmingham which represented Liberal views, and the Daily Argus was started in order to keep the old flag flying in a great centre of public opinion, which till then had been not only loyal but enthusiastic and advanced in the Liberal cause. It was an important venture, and Richard Tangye, obtaining 134 SIR RICHARD TANGYE sole proprietorship, turned it over to his sons, Lincoln and the late Arthur Tangye, the former of whom took the active control and carried the enterprise on for a number of years. In other directions be rendered important services to the Liberal Party in his own locality, from the days when John Bright, fresh from his defeat in Man- chester in 1857, was elected for Birmingham, down to Gladstone's last tenure of power. There is no need to dwell on Richard Tangye's admiration for Gladstone. The great Liberal leader had qualities which appealed directly to him, quite apart from questions of the hour, and through good report and ill, he gave him his steady, unflinching, and enthusiastic support. In July 1890, Gladstone wrote a letter urging him to stand for the Hands- worth Division of Birmingham. In that letter he laid stress on Tangye's remarkable history, his position and reputation in Birmingham, and his peculiar fitness to represent a great industrial constituency "with more than ordinary distinc- tion," because of his knowledge, ability and charac- ter. In his reply to this request, Richard Tangye, whilst acknowledging the honour done him, clearly stated the reasons which compelled him to decline the strenuous responsibility of Parliamentary life. " I need not say," he wrote, " how highly I esteem your kindly references to the record of my past career, and the desire which you are so good to express, that I should take a more prominent part in political work. Coming from one who, sacri- REPLY TO GLADSTONE 135 ficing every consideration of personal comfort, has so long and so nobly served his country, the expressions of such a wish would, under ordinary circumstances, be accepted by me as a command ; but I am sure you will pardon me if I venture to point out some difficulties under which I labour in considering the generally expressed desire that I should stand for the Handsworth Parliamentary Division. " About four years ago my health completely broke down, after thirty-five years of very hard work, during the last ten years of which time I not only had the principal part in the management of a vast business, but took a full share of public work in the Town Cbuncil and School Board of my district, and in political work in Birmingham and the neighbourhood. This long period of hard work has told upon my constitution, enfeebled as it was by the hardships of my early years, and at the present moment I am quite unaljle to undertake the responsibility and excitement necessarily attend- ing the candidature for a seat in Parliament. " I assure you that it is no small disappointment to me that I am compelled to come to this con- clusion now that I have the means and the time needful for undertaking such a position ; but my doctors absolutely forbid it. But, Sif^, I feel that there are other ways in which I can serve the good cause, and you may confidently rely on my doing so to the best of my ability." Richard Tangye's respect for John Bright, — tried 136 SIR RICHARD TANGYE though it was when that statesman parted company with Gladstone over Home Rule, — was deep and abiding. At many a stormy political crisis during the long term of years, when the great orator repre- sented Birmingham, Tangye by voice and pen, and in other directions, let it be said, as'well, did aU that in him lay to strengthen Bright's hold on the consti- tuency. The two men had much in common, apart from the fact that both of them had been trained in the Society of Friends, and, as time went on, political association ripened into personal friendship. No man was more welcome under Tangye's roof than the silvered-tongued champion of Free Trade. Many letters passed between them, and many were the stories that Richard Tangye had to tell of a man who, more than once in his career, confronted the nation like an incarnate conscience. One of the last messages which John Bright sent from his death-bed at Rochdale were some tender words of gratitude to Richard Tangye. Here are a few typical examples of his recollections of the great Tribune of the people : — " The only occasion on which John Bright made a public appearance in Birmingham between the stirring Corn Law days, and when elected member for the town, was when he came to a Town Hall meeting, called to protest against the renewal of the East India Company's Charter. It was the first time I had seen the great orator ; he was attired in the Quaker costume, but looked every inch a fight- ing man. Bright described the constitution of the JOHN BRIGHT I37 Couiitil that ruled the great Indian Empire from their easy chairs in Leadenhall Street, and caused much amusement by saying that if you closed Temple Bar and took the first hundred people who pressed through it when it was opened again, you would get Just as good a Council. " When John Bright's name was first mentioned as a candidate for the representation of Birmingham the town was dominated by the gunmaking in- dustry, and the bellicose feelings roused by the recent Russian War had by no means subsided. How came it, then, that the great apostle of peace, so recently dismissed from Manchester with shame- ful ingratitude, because of those principles, was received with such magnificent enthusiasm in the gun-making town f There is no doubt about the cause. The virile Radicalism that actuated the men of Birmingham, when they assembled in their thousands on Newhall Hill, was still the prevailing political force there, and some of the principal gunmakers were amongst the leading members of the party. The late member, George Frederick Muntz, was a militant Radical, whom no one would accuse of possessing extreme peace principles. How astonished he would have been had he known that he would be succeeded in the representation of the town by John Bright, the guiding spirit of the Manchester school. " How well I remember the time ! The first name brought before the constituency by the Liberals was that of A. H. Layard, of Nineveh 138 SIR RICHARD TANGYE fame. One night the town was placarded with ' Layard for Birmingham ; ' before the next day the name was obliterated, for every available space was covered with huge placards, ' Bright for Birming- ham,' and from that moment the election of the rejected of Manchester was assured. Bright was too ill to come to Birmingham to take part in his first election ; he stopped short at Tamworth, where my old friend Aid. Manton visited him, and brought away his election address, which he had written there. At the first meeting after the elec- tion, if my memory serves me, Mr. Duncan Maclaren, of Edinburgh, Mr. Bright's brother-in-law, repre- sented the new member, who was still too ill to attend." " It has been my good fortune to hear John Bright deliver more than fifty speeches in the Bir- mingham Town Hall. No one willingly missed an opportunity of hearing him ; his splendid diction, and its unrivalled mastery of strong Saxon English, his transparent sincerity and depth of conviction, irresistibly attracted thoughtful men. His Friends' School training, where, reading from that pure well of English undefiled — the Authorised Version of the Bible — ^was the daily practice, gave style and tone to all his public utterances. This, in the early years of manhood, was supplemented by wide reading of the masterpieces of his mother tongue, notably the classic pages of the great Puritan poet, John Milton, whose lofty imagination, majestic BRIGHT'S SPEECHES 139 imagery, and moral vision appealed resistlessly to him. I have often tested Bright's speeches, and have found that two-thirds of them were com- posed of words of one syllable ; little wonder that they were easily " understanded " of the people ! " John Bright once gave me these hints on public speaking : — ' Never speak unless you have some- thing to say. Don't be tempted to go on after you have said it. Use the simplest words, bring out the consonants well (the vowels will take care of them- selves), and let every sentence, as far as possible, b? complete in itself.' Bright's point as to stopping when you have said what you intended to say reminds me of the criticism of a village carpenter on a certain divine, who evidently had thumped the cushion too persistently. This worthy declared that the preacher struck the nail on the head at the first go off, but kept on hammering until he split the board." " It is hardly too much to say that John Bright's speeches in favour of the North during the Civil War were a more potential factor in keeping the peace between this country and the United States than anything els?. Mr. W. Scholefield was Bright's colleague in the representation of the borough at the time, and did not share his views on the question. I well remember the difficult position in which Bright found himself on one occasion when the two members were addressing their constituents in the Town Hall. Mr. Schole- i+o SIR RICHARD TANGYE field, being the senior member, spoke first, and was decidedly apologetic when speaking of the action of the South. His address was received with respect- ful coolness ; it was the first occasion on which the members h»d spoken to their constituents on the subject, and it was not quite certain what view they would take of it. But all doubt soon vanished before Bright had got far in his splendid defence of the North, and Birmingham remained true to the cause of freedom to the end." " It is not always the longest speeches that are the most effective. I think the first I ever delivered in the Birmingham Town Hall was my most success- ful effort ; it consisted of three words. It was during one of John Bright's early contests, and the Town Hall was filled with a surging, excited mass of people. The audience was overwhelmingly in favour of Bright, when even the most moderate opposition orator had little chance of being heard. It was tinder these conditions that a man who had only recently compounded with his creditors — not for the first time, it was understood — ^got up and began a virulent diatribe against the candidate. The meeting became indignant, and did its utmost to howl the speaker down, but without success. Pre" sently there was a lull, and seizing my opportunity, in stentorian tones I cried out, ' Pay your debts ! ' The effect was electrical. Every one recognised the appositeness of the cry, and no one better than the obnoxious speaker, who immediately collapsed. BRIGHT AT BIRMINGHAM 141 Curiously enough, in after years he became one of Bright's warmest admirers." " I once heard John Bright make these observa- tions on the subject of platform deliverances : ' Do not get up unless you have something useful to say, but, having decided to speak, think your subject well over. Then frame a mental picture of it, and choose your words carefully, always using the simplest words by preference, so as to be " understood of the people" of all ranks and conditions. Speak de- liberately, finish every word before beginning another, be careful of your punctuation, and let every sentence have something definite in it, — an egg in every shell. When you have said your " say," sit down and don't be tempted by the apparent interest of your audience to prolong your observations.' " " When John Bright had completed his twenty- fifth year as representative of the town in Parlia- ment, the event was celebrated by a series of demon- strations. In his speech, acknowledging the warm congratulations conveyed to him by various speakers. Bright told an amusing story of the late Sir Josiah Mason, the founder of the Birmingham University. At a meeting called to do honom: to Sir Josiah, he said he sat next that gentleman, and as the speakers excelled one another in the praises they lavished upon him. Bright looked upon his face with wonder, the look of pleasure and gratifi- cation was so intense. ' How can he stand it I ' 142 SIR RICHARD TANGYE Bright asked of some one near him. 'Because he is stone deaf,' was the reply. Bright said that he at least could not plead that excuse." It would be easy to cite many recollections of the same sort, Isut perhaps it is well only to add one other story, not less significant, though in a different vein : — " Two Lancashire manufacturers were one day sitting in a railway carriage chatting over their newspapers. A third gentleman sat in a corner hidden by the Times, in whjch he was deeply interested. One of the manufacturers suddenly exclaimed, ' Why, old So-and-so is dead. I wonder how much he was worth ! ' His companion sug- gested ;^6o,ooo. The other thought that too small a sum. Finally, after a little debate, marked by small feeling for the dead man, they settled the point, to their own satisfaction, at ^100,000. The stranger in the corner crumpled up his paper, and looking quietly across the carriage exclaimed : ' I wonder what sort of start that has given him in the life to which he has gone ? ' The man who put that unexpected question was John Bright." With Mr. Chamberlain, Richard Tangye's rela- tions were much less intimate, though for years he worked side by side with him in the municipal life of Birmingham, and afterwards worked for him when he was returned as Bright's colleague. He always admired the strenuous manner in which he entered into the public life of the community, and, to the last day of his life, was prepared to admit, without any ATTITUDE ON HOME RULE 143 reserve, the greatness of his services to Birmingham. But when the Irish Home Rule question led Mr. Chamberlain to head the revolt against Gladstone, and eventually to sever his association with the Liberal Party, Richard Tangye was one of the few prominent men in the Midlands who refused to f