The Seven Railway Virgins and Supermac's Golden Seal
PAUL JOHNSON
Ihave recently sampled long-distance rail travel in New Labour Britain. It is not as horrible as some claim, but it is crowded, slow, dirty and tedious. All the way to Euston my neighbour from Wigan talked on his mobile in a strong mid-Lancs accent. 'Is that Stanley? Neville here. I'm on train, lad. Aye. . . . Neville on the line. Can I speak to Clifford? 'Oo's that then? Oh, it's Howard, is it? Well. I never. Oh aye? Where's Percy then? It's Neville here. Can't 'ear, we're going through tunnel. I've just been talking to Stanley. Aye. Well, he would, wouldn't 'ee? That's what Clifford said. 'As t'seen Percy, then. . . ?'
Most of the passengers just sit, eating, drinking, occasionally roaring at children: noisy zombies. No one looks out of the window. Rail travel now lacks any vestige of glamour. What Kenneth Grahame called 'the poetry of motion' is leaden prose. The stations, monuments to Victorian high technology, are no longer, as EM. Forster put it, 'our gates to the glorious and unknown', but mere punctuations — characterless, ashamed of themselves. Even Crewe, that tearful junction of my schooldays, final proof that the holidays were over, the nemesis of the conscript soldier's leave, has lost its sinister romance. Aged ten, I listened in terror to its stentorian voice proclaiming with deadly pride, 'This is Crewe. Crewe Station. Crewe.' Rather as the great Sean Connery announced at a critical point, 'My name is Bond. James Bond.' Now there are no such proclamations. Crewe itself is dingy, populous but silent, anonymous.
Strange to think that this rusty relic was once the Silicon Valley of Britain, the strongly beating heart of the second grand phase of the Industrial Revolution, when railways swarmed all over the land, irresistible and relentless, bringing fundamental changes such as have never been equalled for the shocking disturbance of ancient ways and their terrifying acceleration of life. Crewe was the spaghetti junction of the age, holding the system together with its spidery mesh of rails. It was more. It was the workshop of the largest railway company, the LNWR, and home of the most advanced engineering plant on earth. From 1 January 1848, its 1,600 artificers, the highest-paid group of men in the world (outside New York), delivered every Monday morning at 8 a.m. precisely a brand-new engine and tender, built to the highest specifications. It went into immediate service or chuffed to Liverpool for export to the Americas, the Continent, the burgeoning Indian railway system, or Australia. Crewe was an immaculate railway town of 8,000 souls living in new all-mod-con houses built by the company, with indoor closets and running water. It was a prototype democracy, governed by a 15-man council, two-thirds elected by the workmen, one-third by the LNWR directors. No wonder Marx, penning his Communist Manifesto that year, complained bitterly that England seemed determined to create what he called 'a bourgeois proletariat'.
The railways certainly raised the average level of wages, perhaps by as much as 20 per cent. They did the aristocracy proud, too. One has only to read the diaries of the 14th Earl of Derby to see how often, and how greatly, he sold the Iron Monster low-value land at gentlemanly prices. The Crewes, hitherto low in the pecking order, became millionaires. The notion of old-fashioned service was built into the origins of this transport system, conceived 'in the white heat of modern technology' (H. Wilson). Of the 10,266 people employed by the LNWR, nearly one-third (3,054) were porters, so there was never an occasion when a tired traveller could not get his luggage swept on to the train in return for a sterling silver threepenny bit (a sixpence was 'going if).
The apotheosis of this system of traditional service was the splendid refreshment room at Wolverton, where hungry railgoers were tanked up and refuelled before dining-cars came into use. This was run like a large country house, the chief difference being that the housekeeper was called a matron. She was assisted by what are described as 'seven very young ladies to wait upon the passengers'. The other staff were listed as 'One man-cook, his kitchen-maid and two scullerymaids. Two housemaids. One still-room maid employed solely in the liquid duty of making tea and coffee. Two laundry-maids. One baker and one baker's boy. One gardener and his boy. An Odd Man. Plus 85 pigs and piglings.' I suspect the seven 'very young ladies' who served across the counter were picked for their looks as well as their swift skills and energy. We are told that, 'Notwithstanding the everlasting hurry at this establishment, four of the young attendants have managed to make excellent marriages and are now very well off in the world.' They were the air-hostesses of the 20th century yesterday, the supermodels of today, climbing fiercely up the social ladder to grace and affluence. The heroine of Francesca Martin's fashionable Victorian novel Attic and Area was one of these girls of fortune.
I owe this account of Wolverton to a remarkable book, Stokers and Pokers: or, the London and North Western Railway, the Electric Telegraph and the Railway Clearing House (1849). This is perhaps the best account ever written of railways in Britain, describing in startling detail and in ebullient style exactly how the railways were built, run and maintained. It went into five editions in the 1850s, then disappeared as out-of-date, until resurrected and reprinted in 1969 by Kelley Publishing, New York — a rare treat to treasure if you are lucky enough to find it. The author, F.B. Head, or Sir Francis Bond Head, PC, Ban (1793-1875), was a wild adventurer-turnedeminent-Victorian, who still awaits an enterprising biographer. Originally from the ancient Portuguese family of Mendez, Head became an officer in the Royal Engineers, served in the Med with the famous Captain Pasley (whose book Jane Austen loved), fought at Waterloo, suffered shipwreck off the notorious pirate base of Tripoli, managed Latin-American mining concessions which involved travelling all over the Andes on horseback (he was known as 'Galloping Head') and defeated various desperadoes. He was made lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, put down an uprising, and frustrated an embryonic Yankee invasion by setting fire to their warship and pushing it over Niagara Falls. He made himself a terror of the Horse Guards by trying to introduce the lariat into the cavalry, and he rode to hounds until just before his death, aged 82.
The railway age specialised in such heroic figures, with their highly efficient but romantic zest for life. Last of the breed was old Harold Macmillan, who in his heyday had been a director of the Great Western Railway, oldest and grandest of the Big Four, founded and built by Brunel himself. Directors were provided with a solid gold seal which allowed them to travel free, first-class, on any railway in Britain, and for life. Macmillan, a canny Scot, used it to his death, the last person to do so, often to the bewilderment of Indian ticket-collectors. Now, I wonder what happened to that seal, with its rich patina of the gilded age of steam?
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