The Stephenson Women

I am currently engaged in a busy series of of talks and readings from my novel Mr Stephenson’s Regret about the railway pioneers. Next week is the first of a number of talks I’m doing specifically for women’s groups who have shown an interest in hearing about the Stephenson women. George married three times in his lifetime and had two sisters, and son Robert also married, yet the women in these lives have been all but ignored in the histories and biographies. There is not even a single portrait of any of them - the painting I’ve reproduced above is a confused and idealised one of George and his family, purporting to show not only his mother Mabel standing with some vessel improbably balanced on her head but, even more improbably, two of his wives Fanny and Betty (seated) in the scene. I can assure you that George was not a bigamist. This painting was commissioned from the artist John Lucas in 1857, long after all but one of the people in the painting (Robert) had died. I can’t speak for the dog.

One of the pleasurable things about being a novelist is that you can let your imagination fill in the gaps between the known facts. I’ve done this in Mr Stephenson’s Regret and have tried to give more substance to the Stephenson women than the histories do - indeed one of my main reasons for creating this biographical fiction was to explore the relationships more fully than had been attempted before. In this blog posting, however, I have tried to assemble for readers some of the more interesting facts that I gleaned about the women during my research. This was the raw material I drew on for the characters portrayed in the novel.

George’s mother and sisters

George’s mother Mabel (1749-1818) was the daughter of George Carr, a bleacher and dyer from Ovingham, Northumberland, and a farmer’s daughter Eleanor Wilson, who had married beneath her social status. Despite her ‘superior’ roots Mabel was, like her husband, illiterate - they both signed the marriage register with an X.

The one brief description we have of Mabel is an intriguing one from an old Wylam miner who described her as “a delicate body and very flighty”. He goes on to say of the Stephensons: “They were an honest family, but sair hadden doon in the world.” In other words they were impoverished. Mabel, her husband Bob, and eventually six children somehow lived in one tiny room of a labourer’s cottage in Wylam, with unplastered wall, bare rafters and a clay floor. (The cottage is still there - see my earlier posting Back to George’s roots.) Later, Mabel had to deal with the total blindness of Old Bob as a result of an accident with steam in the colliery where he worked. They came to rely on George, a poor man himself at that time, for everything. Mabel died not long after George’s fortunes improved, and well before he achieved his national reputation.

Unusually for the time, all of Mabel’s six children survived and grew up healthy. Two were girls - Eleanor (1784-1847) known as Nelly, and Ann (1792-1860).

While still a young girl, Nelly went to London to work in domestic service, but came back because she received a letter from a sweetheart back in Tyneside offering marriage. It was a difficult return by boat up the North Sea coast, and when Nelly arrived home she found that her intended had married someone else. Nelly was left with no job, no savings and no lover. She turned to the church for comfort. It seemed Nelly would continue a spinster, especially after she took on the upbringing of her brother George's son, Robert. She lived with the widowed father and her nephew in their cottage (one room and a garret then) in West Moor near Killingworth; but in time there was a new romance for Nelly. Through the church, she met and (at the age of 40) married Stephen Liddle.

Despite Nelly’s age on marriage, the couple went on to have three children, Stephenson Liddle (1825-1843), Eleanor Liddle (1826-1826) and Margaret Liddle (1825-1852). Nelly's husband Stephen worked for George at the Forth Street Works where The Rocket was made, and was unfortunately fatally injured there in an accident. (George's brother John also died in an accident at the works.) George subsequently paid for Nelly's keep until her own death a year before his, and after her death made provision for her surviving daughter Margaret, who went to live with a housekeeper, Mrs Willis.

Nelly’s younger sister Ann was much quicker to the altar. She was only 22 when she married local man John Nixon in 1814 and, like many working class couples at the time, they emigrated to America, specifically Pittsburgh which was industrialising rapidly. The couple had six children: Jane (1815-1884), Robert (1818-1900), Mary (1821-1892), Joseph (1824-1892), Ann (1826-??), and Ellen (1831-1900). After her husband's death, Ann remarried and was subsequently known as Mrs Anna York. She died, still in Pittsburgh, in 1860, long after the rest of her brothers and sisters.

Robert’s mother and sister

George met Frances (Fanny) Henderson (1768-1806) at the farm house where he lodged when he was a young engine mechanic. Fanny had been a servant at the farm for ten years, described by the owner as “of sober disposition, an honest servant and of good family.” She was not George’s first sweetheart (see my notes below) and indeed was not even the first to attract him in this house, for he had earlier paid court to Fanny’s sister Ann who refused him. Fanny was perhaps a surprising choice for George, being nine years older than him and generally thought of as an old maid since her first fiancee, a school-master from Black Callerton, had died suddenly at the age of 26. Nevertheless George proposed and they were married at Newburn Church on 28 November 1802 when Fanny was 33. She made only her mark in the marriage register, and her name is in her new husband’s unsteady hand, George having just a couple of years earlier taught himself to read and write.

Robert was born a year later, and a year after that the three of them moved to the cottage near Killingworth that housed the Stephenson family until George was on the verge of his greatest fame as pioneer of the public railway. Fanny though, knew nothing but the early years of poverty. She was ill for several months after Robert’s birth, and worse when she delivered a baby sister for Robert when he was two years old. Baby Fanny lived just three weeks, and her mother followed her into the grave a few months later, a victim of what was then called consumption and which we now know as pulmonary tuberculosis, one of the principal diseases associated with poverty. Mother and baby are buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in the grounds of Longbenton Church.

George’s second wife

According to George Stephenson’s first biographer Samuel Smiles, his first sweetheart and the one to whom he first proposed was neither of the Henderson girls but a prosperous farmer’s daughter from Black Callerton, Elizabeth (Betty) Hindmarsh (1777-1845). Smiles’ story is that he was refused, not by Betty but by her father Thomas Hindmarsh, who would not allow his daughter to marry a penniless pitman. This romantic account was corrected by the author himself when he was later assured that George did not meet Betty until he was locally successful, but for the purposes of my novel I have accepted the original Smiles version as true, not because it makes a better story (though it does) but because there is no objective evidence to support the second assertion, and chiefly because it makes logical sense that George should have met Betty when he lived and worked near Black Callerton, not when he was several miles away in Killingworth where Betty had no reason to be anywhere near him territorially, socially or professionally.

In their young days the couple would meet under the trees in the orchard next to the farmhouse. Being a girl, Betty was brought up to be cultivated rather than educated, could play the piano and liked reading - quite different accomplishments to George’s, but she sincerely loved him, and was so devastated by her father’s refusal of George’s hand that she declared she would never marry anyone else, and didn’t, though it was thirteen years after Fanny’s death that George plucked up the courage to ask her again, and was accepted. This time there were no objections from her father to Betty marrying the well-to-do engineer.

They married in Newburn Parish Church, the place of George’s first marriage to Fanny, but Betty needed no help with her signature in the marriage register, while George’s was a much more confident flourish than his earlier effort. By this time George was 39 and his bride even older, 43.

From the scant evidence available, Betty seems to have been a great calming influence on George, who had a reputation for irascibility. She is described in George Parker Bidder’s correspondence as ‘homely, good and kind’. She was a lover of animals; we know for example that late in life she kept two African grey parrots in their Chesterfield home and made a less than successful attempt at bee-keeping. She was a great influence on Robert too. Almost certainly it was she who encouraged him to take up the flute and become a member of the church band (Mrs Stephenson was a dedicated Methodist) and tellingly it was his stepmother who was the recipient of Robert’s most affectionate and personal letters.

Betty died at Tapton House on 3 August 1845 after an untroubled if childless twenty-five year marriage. She is buried in the family vault alongside George in Chesterfield’s Holy Trinity Church. George, though, did not join her there until three years later, by which time he was married again, to his housekeeper.

George’s third wife

Ellen Gregory (1808-1865) was twenty-seven years younger than George and almost five years younger than his son. Her father was Richard Gregory, a farmer from Bakewell in Derbyshire; her mother Ellen (or Elin, nee Stanley). She had one younger brother, Richard. A spinster until her marriage to George, she seems to have been housekeeper at Tapton for a number of years, certainly before Betty’s death. She married George on 11 January 1848, just six months before his death, at St John’s Church in Shrewsbury. (Incidentally, George gave both his and his father’s rank and profession as ‘gentleman’ on the marriage certificate.)

Stephenson’s biographers have even less to say about Ellen than his other two wives (in Smiles’ book she is relegated to a single footnote), almost as if they regard her presence as a smirch on his life, and best forgotten. Robert, too, was highly displeased by his father’s remarriage, and obviously regarded the woman as a gold-digger. He may not have been wrong; despite having been left £1000 as a lump sum and £800 a year as long as she didn’t remarry, plus furniture and sundries, the last Mrs Stephenson applied to executor Robert for a better settlement. This was a woman whom a year before had been earning £40 per annum as housekeeper. It says everything about the coldness of their relationship that Robert referred her to his solicitor.

After George’s death Ellen stayed for a time at Tapton House before moving to Shrewsbury to live with her sister and brother-in-law who was minister of the Swan Hill Independent Church there. She did not remarry (perhaps not wishing to lose her annuity) and died at Beauchamp near Shrewsbury in 1865. 

Robert’s wife

The difference between George’s social standing as a young man in his twenties and Robert’s around the same age is revealed by the contrasting backgrounds of the women they courted and brought to the altar. Both brides were called Fanny, but there the resemblance ends. Frances (Fanny) Sanderson (1803-1842) was the daughter of a City of London merchant John Sanderson, who met Robert through incidental business with the emerging railway company. This was shortly before Robert went off for three years to Colombia, but he kept in touch with Fanny and she with him, we assume - Robert's correspondence was lost in a shipwreck he suffered on his way back to England. A couple of years after his return they were married at Bishopgate Parish Church. There wasn’t much time for a honeymoon, the Rainhill Trials only a few months away - they stayed just a few days in Wales en route to Liverpool where Robert had railway business. Like George’s Betty, Robert’s Fanny played second fiddle to work in the life of her man.

The only physical description we have of Fanny is that she was “not beautiful, but she had an elegant figure, a delicate and animated countenance, and a pair of singularly expressive dark eyes.” These were the only clues that artist Peter Fussey had to go on as he imagined the newly married Fanny with her husband at the Rainhill Trials in 1829 for the front cover of Mr Stephenson’s Regret.

Fanny seems to have been like Betty in many ways. Both liked music (when Robert and Fanny set up house in Greenfield Place in Newcastle Fanny insisted on having her piano brought up from London), poetry and the arts. Fanny was by repute an accomplished portrait painter, but none of her work seems to have survived. She was, like Betty, an animal lover, with a Newfoundland dog to keep her company during Robert’s absences. Most significantly like her mother-in-law Fanny’s influence on her husband seems to have been quiet but profound. There is evidence of her adding personal touches to at least one of his letters and we are told by one of Robert’s early biographers she was “an unusually clever woman, and possessed of great tact in influencing others, without letting anyone see her power.”

Perhaps though there was a slight hint of social pretension (typical of the Victorian age) about Fanny. When she got wind of a possible connection between Old Bob Stephenson’s father and the Stephensons (or Stevensons) of Mont Grenan in Ayrshire who boasted a coat of arms, she persuaded her husband to apply to the College of Heralds for use of the devices. Purchasing them cost Robert a substantial fee, and he was never comfortable with the idea - in one conversation with a friend not long before his death he pointed out the crest on the family crockery and remarked, “Ah, I wish I hadn’t adopted that foolish coat of arms! Considering what a little matter it is, you could scarcely believe how often I have been annoyed by that silly picture.”

Fanny was also like Betty in being childless (a great source of sorrow for the Stephensons) and in dying after a painful illness. In Fanny’s case she suffered a form of cancer for two years before her early death. Knowing she was going to die, she urged Robert to remarry for the sake of having children, but he never did, though he survived her by seventeen years. Fanny was buried in Hampstead churchyard where she was visited regularly by her grieving husband.

For the sake of completeness on the story of the Stephenson women I should mention (though I make no use of this in my novel) a rumour that Robert Stephenson had a long-term affair with Henrietta, the wife of his friend Baden-Powell, and fathered a child with her in 1857. Though there is no evidence beyond hearsay for this, it is true that he became godfather to the child who was christened Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell. This infant would grow up to become the hero of Mafeking and founder of the Boy Scout movement.

Back to George's roots

Outside George Stephenson's birthplace, Wylam, Northumberland

Today I went back to George Stephenson's birthplace in Wylam, Northumberland at the invitation of the News Post Leader for a photograph to illustrate their feature on Mr Stephenson's Regret. It was my first return since researching for the book, and I felt a pleasing sense of oneness with the place, even though we couldn't go inside today as the National Trust don't open the cottage until the supposedly warmer days of March.

Don't imagine the Stephensons had all that cottage space behind me to live in. In fact the entire family, Old Bob and Mabel with what were eventually six children, lived in the one tiny room located where you can see the shutter just above my left shoulder. There was only one bed, with some of the children sleeping in a shakedown underneath. I can tell, you it's a very modest space indeed. This picture is taken from the likely position of the bed in the room.

Inside the Stephenson cottage

This eighteenth century cottage (George was born in 1781) has been beautifully preserved, and the fact there is no vehicular access for half a mile along the track where it is located means that you get a real sense of how it must have been over 200 years ago. The track follows the route of the wagon way that used to roll past the house: wagons drawn by horses in those days of course, not the working steam engines introduced around 1815 by George.

Artist's impression

George Stephenson's birthplace is by no means the only destination for visitors on the trail of the Stephensons in the North East. In the period covered by much of my novel, George and Robert lived in West Moor, Killingworth, in what became known as Dial Cottage because of the sundial father and son built above the doorway, and is there yet.

Dial Cottage

Robert's mother Fanny died in that cottage, as did his baby sister. Robert was subsequently brought up there by his Aunt Nelly, and it was only much later that George married again, to his long-time sweetheart Betty Hindmarsh. Again, don't imagine this cottage was then as big as it is now. Though George eventually extended it to four rooms as his position with the collieries improved, in the early years the cottage comprised one room and a garret reached by a ladder.  On the track near to the cottage George worked on his first locomotive Blucher while in the fields the boy Robert tried to emulate Benjamin Franklin's famous kite experiment and almost got himself struck down by lightning.

Dial Cottage is now on a major road called the Great Lime Road, but was once part of the much more romantic-sounding Paradise Row. I think it's a shame that North Tyneside Council have not preserved and furnished the interior of this cottage as the National Trust have George's birthplace, especially as Dial Cottage has the greater claim to importance in the Stephenson history, but there is a plaque, the sundial, and you can peer through the windows into the bare interior - though the last time I did I noticed an empty bottle of cheap sherry, evidence I guess of recent habitation by a down-and-out.

To be fair to North Tyneside Council they are involved, along with Tyne & Wear Museums with the Stephenson Railway Museum in nearby North Shields, which is home to an early Stephenson locomotive Billy. Having just checked the website I note that today is the start of a Half Term Family Festival which is running for the next month, so now's the time to take the kids - there's a train ride to look forward to.

Travel from North Tyneside to nearby Newcastle and you will find plenty of interesting Stephenson stuff, mainly in the vicinity of Newcastle Central Station. In Forth Street behind the station is the building that housed Robert Stephenson and Company, where Locomotion No.1 and The Rocket were built. Until recently, at certain times you could go inside the building and see part of the works restored by the Robert Stephenson Trust, and an excellent display. Unfortunately, private developers have now kicked the Trust out of the building, despite efforts at a reprieve. Ironically, the developers are labelling their commercial opportunity 'The Stephenson Quarter'.

Not far from the front of the Central Station is the Newcastle Assembly Rooms, now an entertainment and function venue, which was the original home of the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society where Robert studied in the library and George demonstrated his miner's safety lamp several months before Sir Humphry Davy came up with his own 'invention'. A few steps across the road is the existing Lit & Phil Building, opened in 1825 and still housing the largest independent library outside London. The adult Robert saved the Lit & Phil from debt, became its President, and left a legacy. Next door is the Mining Institute where I researched parts of the Stephenson story from original documents and records. Right outside the door is a statue of George himself, dressed somewhat incongruously in classical robes.

Stephenson monument in Westgate Road, Newcastle

There are so many other places you can visit. There's Newburn Church (not always open), where George wed first Fanny Henderson, and later Betty Hindmarsh. There's 5 Greenfield Place (now a private home), where Robert and his new wife (also called Fanny) set up home in Newcastle. Later you should visit Darlington, home of the first public railway, and specifically Darlington  Railway Museum, which holds George's Locomotion No. 1, built for the opening of the Stockton and Darlington line. If you are travelling north, take in the fabulous Royal Border Bridge at Berwick, built by Robert to complete the railway from London to Scotland and thus fulfil his father's great dream; also Woodhorn Colliery Museum in Ashington where the Newburn marriage registers are kept. But on no account should you leave Newcastle without walking along the High Level Bridge at road level, or perhaps better still wandering down to the Quayside to appreciate this fine piece of Robert Stephenson industrial architecture in all its glory, and see it in context with the other great bridges that span the River Tyne between Newcastle and Gateshead. Is there a finer sight in England? See the pictures below, and my Writer in the North masthead.

Newcastle High Level Bridge, with the Swing Bridge in the foreground

Tyne Bridge in foreground, Swing, High Level and railway bridges behind

Newcastle bridges at night

Preparing for publication

I have been 'off-post' for a couple of weeks as I have been busy preparing my historical novel Mr Stephenson's Regret for publication by Wild Wolf in the Spring. Final preparations like this are by turns interesting, tedious and worrisome as one labours to ensure the book is ship-shape and ready for the voyage, for there's no turning back after the launch. There are quite a few tasks involved.

Final edit

The book has already been through half a dozen drafts; this is my last chance to get it really tight, coherent and smoothly readable. At this stage I feel as if I'm working with a magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers. I'm looking closely to see (even though I've done this in earlier redrafting) if I can spot redundant words and phrases that I could pluck out: especially I'm hunting for 'he saids', 'she saids' that I don't really need; a few 'thats'; subordinate clauses that might be getting in the way of clarity; sentences, made too long by conjunctions, that might read better as separate shorter, simpler sentences; any 'ing' words, adverbs or adjectives that even now I can banish from the text.

This novel is set in the first half of the 19th century. I'm not looking to be 'faux-historical' in the diction, but I've been pretty strict about linguistic anachronism and have made good use of the etymological dictionaries (one of my favourite reference sites deserves a plug here Online Etymology Dictionary). In general, though, I've made the language a little less confined for today's reader compared to early drafts. My final edit gives me a chance to double-check I am being both accurate and plain.

Pulling further out to a wider focus, I'm checking that my characters are appropriately and clearly introduced so there is no confusion (especially tricky when you're dealing, as I am here, with several characters who share the same name that history forbids you to change - so I have to be distinct about my four Georges, three Roberts and two, er, Fannys, and at least four Mrs Stephensons). I'm doing some final checking too over what I might call my signature writing - ie words or phrases I tend to use a lot if I'm not careful; I need to avoid repetition, aim for 'elegant variation' without too much recourse to the thesaurus, which can tempt you into choices that do not fit your overall style.

Wider still, I'm giving my book a final medical once-over - approving its shape, monitoring changes of pace and rhythm, attending to the beat, throb and hum of the whole in motion.

Penultimate proof-reading

I say penultimate because there will be a last-chance proof-reading of what we used to call the galleys - ie the final typeset text immediately before printing. I really don't want to be making changes then, so this is the time for a forensic examination of the text that sits on the page, not for meaning or aesthetics this time (that can distract your attention from technical faults) but for accurate layout on the page.

To help me, I have two magnificent tools. The first is human - my son Joe, who is a superb proof-reader, and one unlikely to be fooled, as the author can be, into thinking what is typed onto the page is actually what one meant to type. Joe normally reads three drafts at various stages; he provides valuable editorial advice earlier in the process. The second tool is Microsoft Word. Used alongside the little tool for showing formatting marks, the Find function in Word is great for detecting those tiny errors (of spacing for example) that can so easily creep into the typed text, and which can be so hard to spot with the naked eye. I use it to check for double spaces that shouldn't be there, and for the odd space that can mysteriously insert itself in front of a punctuation mark or at the start of a paragraph.

Proof-reading is also about checking for consistency. I will already have carefully spell-checked the manuscript several times, but one of the many things an automatic spell-check will not pick up is possible inconsistency in optional spellings of the same word. For example, the use of s or z in certain words, such as realise/realize, organise/organize. It's very easy to find yourself spelling words like that in one way on page 53 and another on page 231. Here again, the Find function comes in very useful; in my final proof-reading, whenever I come across a word with an optional spelling I type it into the Find box and set it to look out for each occurrence of the word in the book so that I can check that choice is consistent throughout. We should be consistent across spelling conventions too - if I use the z option for the world realize, I should use it for organize and so forth.

Consistency of format is also essential. At proof-reading stage I display all formatting marks and look carefully to check I've used the same vertical spacing, indenting etc and, if not, amend them for complete consistency. It's damned tedious, but necessary for a professional finish. And let's be clear, it's the writer's job. We must not just blithely expect the publisher to pick up on errors we have made, however small.

Between the covers and the story

As well as the blank flyleaves you might find at either end of a book, there is the title page and often some printed matter, which the publisher prosaically calls front matter and back matter. In preparing for publication, the author will usually have some part to play in what goes on these printed pages. Some books include a foreword, preface or introduction from the author. In this case I have written a short note reminding the reader that Mr Stephenson's Regret is a novel not a history, and explaining in a paragraph how I've dealt with the question of historical accuracy. I've also included in my short introduction a few acknowledgements, and ended the note with a dedication. As my contribution to the back matter, I have updated my profile as Wild Wolf like to include a little biographical information about the author inside the back cover.

The covers

Peter Fussey is the Wild Wolf artist who was responsible for the outstanding cover of my first novel 11:59 and it's Peter who has been given the task again for Mr Stephenson's Regret. Peter is more accustomed to the thriller and horror genres which are Wild Wolf's stock in trade, but I'm confident he will come up with another excellent cover for my work of historical/literary fiction. My job is to brief him properly. I think our challenge is to get the subject across effectively without making the book look either like a history or a work of romantic historical fiction. I've sent him a few suggestions and one fairly detailed brief for my preferred option which focuses on the young Robert and his new wife Fanny, with the iconic Rocket engine in the background. I'm looking forward to seeing what Peter can come up with.

For the back cover I have written a 'blurb' that I hope will attract the interest of the browsing book-buyer. One of the difficulties of a first edition is that before publication there are normally no reviews to quote from. In this case, however, we have an excellent pre-publication review from the influential Publisher's Weekly. An extract from the review is going on the back cover under the blurb. For your interest, this is what it says:

"This richly detailed and meticulously researched storyline breathes life and a palpable sense of intimacy into these historical figures and immerses readers in an England embroiled in political and social upheaval as it teeters on the cusp of the industrial revolution."

Marketing

Mr Stephenson's Regret is not due out until nearly the end of February, but already I am collaborating with the publisher on a marketing plan. The lead times for magazines, in particular, require us to make contact early if we are not to miss the boat on some publicity. I've also been talking to my contacts who organise readings, and though I've managed to put quite a few things in place as a result, one or two festivals I'd hoped to be involved with in the first weeks of publication already have their programmes finalised. For the most part, though, things are set fair for the launch. 

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award 2011

After some consideration I have decided once again to enter the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award with my recently-completed historical novel Mr Stephenson's Regret. I entered last year with 11:59 and managed to get to the semi-final stage. The book was subsequently published by Wild Wolf.

I have a feeling it will be more difficult to get so far with an historical novel, but it will be interesting to find out. There are several stages to the competition, or should I say hurdles. From a  possible 10,000 entries that start out as runners in the two categories (General Fiction and Young Adult Fiction) only two will cross the finish line - one in each category - while bodies pile up at the fences behind them. The first fence is The Pitch - a maximum of 300 words to interest the judges enough to put you through to the next round. There is much massacre here; a maximum of 1,000 entrants in each category will be allowed to progress to the Second Round, so most poor souls won't be given the opportunity to have one word of their manuscript read before they are unceremoniously culled. It's a hard world.

I've copied my pitch below for anyone interested. There are a few days of edit time before the deadline (6 Feb) so if anyone has some valuable advice to give me about the pitch, please do not hesitate. It might save me falling flat on my face.

Mr Stephenson's Regret - The Pitch

This incident-packed novel brings to dramatic life the pioneers of the railway age. Central to the narrative is the complex, often tense, relationship between George and Robert Stephenson. Father and son have ambitions and desires that provide the engine for their achievements but create a crisis that threatens to derail their journey at a crucial stage. Theirs is a generational conflict, universal and as valid today as it was two hundred years ago.

In following the challenges the Stephensons face, personally and as a partnership, much is revealed about nineteenth century mores – about class division, self-interest and greed, indulgence and sexuality, repression and guilt – that may taint even the sweet taste of success. Through their association with some major figures of the day – the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, Charles Dickens, Queen Victoria – we discover how they are viewed by the establishment.

Then there are the women in their lives. George marries three times: Fanny, Robert’s mother who died when he was small, remains a haunting presence; Betty, George’s first love, whose father rejected the impoverished suitor, waits years for his return; and Ellen, his young housekeeper whom he weds just six months before his own death, shocking his son. Robert’s marriage to Frances has a slow-burning complication. Each of these inter-relationships provides a depth of human and romantic interest, and crucially influences the character and development of both principals.

This is at once human story and big canvas drama. Nothing was more important in the development of Victorian Britain, and consequently the world, than the coming of the railway age. Literature, reflecting the interest of its readers, has had a long love affair with trains. Mr Stephenson’s Regret shows the kindling of the affair from a place within the hearts of the key participants.