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He lived to see him the greatest practical engineer of his own time, and to feel that his success was in large measure due to the wider and more accurate scientific training the lad had received from his Edinburgh teachers. In 1819 George married again, his second wife being the daughter of a farmer at Black Callerton.
George had also a stock of tame rabbits, for which he built a little house behind the cottage, and for many years he continued to pride himself upon the superiority of his breed. After he had driven the gin for some time at Dewley and Black Callerton, he was taken on as an assistant to his father in firing the engine at Dewley.
William Fairbairn, who afterwards saw her in her home at Willington Quay, describes her as a very comely woman. But her temper was one of the sweetest; and those who knew her were accustomed to speak of the charming modesty of her demeanour, her kindness of disposition, and withal her sound good sense. Amongst his various mendings of old shoes at Callerton.
Great was the excitement at Black Callerton when it was known that George Stephenson had accepted Nelson’s challenge. Everybody said he would be killed. The villagers, the young men, and especially the boys of the place, with whom George was a great favourite, all wished that he might beat Nelson, but they scarcely dared to say so.
A friend of his, still living, relates that, after he had finished the shoes, he carried them about with him in his pocket on the Sunday afternoon, and that from time to time he would pull them out and hold them up, exclaiming, “what a capital job he had made of them!” Out of his earnings by shoe-mending at Callerton, George contrived to save his first guinea.
In the evenings he improved himself in the arts of reading and writing, and occasionally took a turn at modelling. It was at Callerton, his son Robert informed us, that he began to try his hand at original invention; and for some time he applied his attention to a machine of the nature of an engine-brake, which reversed itself by its own action.
His wages were then advanced to sixpence a day, and afterwards to eightpence when he was set to drive the gin-horse. Shortly after, George went to Black Callerton to drive the gin there; and as that colliery lies about two miles across the fields from Dewley Burn, he walked that distance early in the morning to his work, returning home late in the evening.
But nothing came of the contrivance, and it was eventually thrown aside as useless. Yet not altogether so; for even the highest skill must undergo the inevitable discipline of experiment, and submit to the wholesome correction of occasional failure. After working at Callerton for about two years, he received an offer to take charge of the engine on Willington Ballast Hill at an advanced wage.
When Stephenson had saved this guinea he was not a little elated at the achievement, and expressed the opinion to a friend, who many years after reminded him of it, that he was “now a rich man.” Not long after he began to work at Black Callerton as brakesman, he had a quarrel with a pitman named Ned Nelson, a roistering bully, who was the terror of the village.
Among his first strongly-developed tastes was the love of birds and animals, which he inherited from his father. Blackbirds were his special favourites. The hedges between Dewley and Black Callerton were capital bird-nesting places; and there was not a nest there that he did not know of.
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