The Making of William Edwards; or, The Story of the Bridge of Beauty

An ordinary smith's bellows worked by Llwyd supplied the blast, a good fire of peat and charcoal being well alight before the coal and broken-up ore were thrown in. It answered fairly for a trial, but once alight could not be allowed to cool night or day. But the furnace being built and in working order, there was no difficulty in finding men to tend and keep it going.

Of course this was an experiment on too small a scale for commercial success. At all events William Edwards had mastered the great problem how to utilise anthracite or stone-coal for the smelting of iron. It was there burning without smoke or flame, and pouring out a thin stream of molten metal into the sandy moulds which shaped it into bars, or pig-iron.

Mr. Morris clapped his hand on William's shoulder, and congratulated him on his achievement.

'Now, Edwards,' said he, 'you must lose no time in putting up another furnace or two on a larger scale. Let us show the world what genius and perseverance can accomplish.'

'Yes, yes, sir; but I should like to improve on that,' pointing to what he had already done. 'And before building a larger furnace, I shall have to consider how the greater blast is to be sustained. It would be too heavy a task for manual labour if we are to keep large quantities of this hard coal at fusing heat for corresponding heaps of ore,' was the proud young fellow's reply.

'No doubt, no doubt,' acquiesced Mr. Morris. 'But you will be certain to manage it in some way or other. And you know you are free to employ any workmen or materials you think best. Oh yes; when you set your foot on a difficulty you are sure to tread it down.'

'Indeed and in truth, sir, I'm not willing to be beaten, and I don't mean to give in till I've conquered the obstacles here, look you,' said he, with set and resolute face.

How he overcame the mechanical difficulty I have no data to determine after this lapse of time; but I incline to think he brought his friend Thomas Williams to construct a wheel, moved either by horse or water power, to supply the leverage required to keep the monster forge-bellows in motion. Twenty years later Smeaton invented the blowing machine for the Carron Foundry, in Scotland; but William Edwards was a mason and architect, not a mechanical engineer; and when he had completed his large furnace, capable of smelting with the hard stone-coal, he had achieved a victory likely to revolutionise the mining and iron-founding industries of South Wales – nay, almost to create them. He had saved its forest trees from utter annihilation. He had paved the way for Smeaton's feet to tread.

Another furnace rose. The ironworks of John Morris extended and found occupation and bread for hundreds of workpeople besides those employed by himself. Fresh mines of coal and iron were opened around Castel Coch and elsewhere. Whole teams of pack-horses, tended by women and boys, were ever on the roads, bringing rough ore and coal to the smelters, the tinkling bell of each leader, or bell-horse, ringing a prophetic note of progression. It was some time before the invention of a low, broad-wheeled waggon, drawn by four or six horses, set these old teams aside; not, indeed, until something had been done to make the roads more practicable. And long before that, fresh shipping sought the old Cardiff quays to transport the pig-iron to final manufacturers alike in England and across the seas. Morris' smelting works seemed to have wakened the stagnant town from the lethargy of ages.

All this was not the growth of a year or two. Eight full years was William Edwards working for Mr. Morris, and, whether consciously or not, for the advancement and prosperity of his country. Not alone was he occupied in erecting furnaces. Fresh workmen and their families required fresh homes, and who but William Edwards had the building? And for the period they were models. His name and fame as a builder travelled farther than his own feet.

Yet it is not to be supposed that he stood still to let the stream of progress pass him by, now that he had opened the floodgates wide.

Relays of men fed and tended the glowing furnaces night and day. The proud young architect and his contingent did their masonry in daylight hours.

That did not mean inert repose or dissipation for him. He made holiday when his trial furnace was complete, to visit his mother and brothers and take part in his sister Jonet's wedding; but his brain was actively at work the whole time, and it was even on that busy occasion he set the bridegroom's mechanical brains at work also for mutual benefit.

And whenever there was an interval between one great piece of work and another, he hired a horse and went home for a day or two, never without some useful or rare gifts for one and all, and never without calling on his old friends Robert Jones and Evan Evans by the way.

Those were his only respites from work. His manual labour – for he worked alongside his men, and allowed no scamping or shirking – was over at dusk. But no sooner had he laid aside his tools, and washed away the tokens of his occupation, than he had a book in his hand – generally an English book, which he was doing his best to decipher unaided at his meals, as a preparation for private lessons, which the blind man gave to him by the household hearth, or in his bakehouse, or along with the adult class assembling twice a week in his upstairs parlour for English reading.

In the bakehouse Rosser kept an alphabet, the separate letters of which were shaped and baked out of ordinary dough. And when the eager student had mastered the English pronunciation of these, which the blind man could distinguish by the touch, he traced syllables and words in his plastic medium, until ere long a well-known and well-thumbed book was put into the learner's hands to be spelt out, or read aloud, as he progressed.

The blind baker was proud of his pupil.

'You are the most promising scholar I ever took in hand,' said he; 'but your diligence is unremitting, and failure is impossible.'

Yes, so diligent was he that in consequence of his absorption in his new study, Elaine Parry's shyness in his presence gradually wore away, and when she heard him stumbling over a word, she would pronounce it for him involuntarily, without so much as looking up from her sewing or knitting.

Nay, the bashfulness became rather on his side at the betrayal of his own ignorance to a young girl, capable, through superior education, of correcting his slips and errors. But very soon he accepted her verbal hints as a matter of course.

Later, when in a difficulty, he did not scruple to rise from his seat and cross the hearth to point out a phrase or passage he was unable to translate. And she, perchance, would lay down her work, glance at his book, and look calmly up in his face as she gave the true reading in a clear, firm voice.

After a time, for easier reference, he brought his own seat near to hers, so that he might have her assistance without rising. And, although his dark-brown head and her light one were thus frequently drawn close together, his one idea had such thorough possession of him, that his single-minded desire for knowledge disarmed the seeming familiarity of all obtrusiveness.

Certainly, neither he nor Elaine had the slightest conception that anything was being taught or learned other than the King's English.

She was too retiring and well behaved to thrust herself into the prominent notice of a stranger, so that after that first general impression that the baker's niece was a pretty and tidy young woman, he scarcely bestowed a second thought upon her.

Mrs. Rosser's astounding intimation that her husband taught Welshmen to read English had swallowed up all minor considerations, just as the River Taff swallowed up all sorts of tributary streams in its course to the sea.

Then, apart from his lingual studies, his furnace-building was ever on his mind. It was a very great and novel undertaking, and the whole force of his intelligence was brought to bear upon it.

So that, although she moved before him in her daily occupations, and ministered to his necessities at meal-times, it was just as if a sister had been before his eyes continually. Certainly, she always wore shoes and stockings, and, on Sundays, the very set of her cloak and tall hat, and the border of white linen cap, had a grace and fitness most becoming. And she carried her English prayer-book to church so unobtrusively, and found her places so readily, he was bound to notice that; but there some envy blunted the edge of admiration.

Her influence was that of summer dew on vegetation. It refreshes insensibly and imperceptibly. Had she bustled about noisily, had there been any discord between her and her aunt, it would have arrested his attention with the jarring effect of a thunderstorm.

As it was, she became part and parcel of his daily life, and it was not until he had been about three years in Cardiff that a slight illness which kept her in her own room for a week or ten days roused him to the consciousness how much he was indebted to her for the comfort and brightness of his surroundings.

However intelligent a companion Walter Rosser might be – and he could talk both of the world and of books, having known both before blindness set in – he lacked just the touch of kindly appreciation so gratifying to the self-esteem of the rising young builder after years of home-snubbing; the word or two of discriminating opinion his niece gave so thoughtfully whenever doubts and difficulties beset him in the execution of his plans; for all was not fair sailing, clever as he might be, and there were times when he was glad of a sympathetic ear.

He was restless and uneasy the whole time she lay ill upstairs, and was ready to ransack the town for tea, oranges, or any other over-sea luxury she might fancy. And he was never the same to her, or she to him, after she was back by the household fire, paler, but oh! how infinitely dearer!

The touch of his horny hand, and the softened tones of his voice, said more than his commonplace words of greeting: ''Deed, Elaine, it's right glad we are to have you downstairs again. We have been missing you so terribly.'

And there was more than the tremulousness of physical weakness in her low reply: 'Yes, and I am glad to be here. It is miserable to be shut up away from you all, giving aunt and you so much trouble; but we may bear with illness when friends are so kind.'

CHAPTER XXIII.

BRIDGE-BUILDING

It so happened that when William Edwards had taken his first holiday, in 1741, to be groomsman at the marriage of his sister Jonet with his friend Thomas Williams, that he had found Caerphilly – nay, all Eglwysilan – in a state of ferment, owing to the exciting presence in their midst of the noted preacher, the Rev. George Whitfield, for many years the colleague of the Rev. John Wesley, and only recently separated from him through doctrinal difference.

They had alike left their pulpits in the Church to go preaching and teaching throughout the land, in the high-ways and by-ways, denouncing the vice and folly and sin then rampant, calling sinners to repentance, admonishing their hearers to lead simple, pure, and Christ-like lives, and preaching the acceptable year of the Lord, at the same time holding, as it were, the flaming sword of God's wrath over the impenitent.

It should here be told that, finding his dear mother made light of by Cate, and set aside on the farm so very recently her own, William had himself taken the first opportunity that presented itself to remove her and Jonet to a farm he had acquired in the Aber Valley – not far from his friend Thomas Williams – a farm for his mother and Davy to manage between them.

His road hither, of course, lay through Caerphilly; and after having left the town behind him nearly two miles, he was surprised to find a concourse of people in a field by the wayside, not far from his own home, listening to a man in a clerical gown and bands, who stood on a pile of stones, and, with impassioned voice and gesture, besought his hearers to 'flee from the wrath to come.' His text had evidently been: 'To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your heart;'[15 - Psalm xcv. 7, 8.] and he hammered at the 'to-day' until he drove it into the hearts of many around him. Women wept, men fell on their knees and called out aloud as emotion swayed them, and William sat like a statue until the last word was spoken and the preacher, worn out with his own fervour, turned to depart along with some friends of his own.

William, like scores beside him, had gone to church and read his Bible as a duty; had learned the catechism the good vicar drilled into the youth of his flock; but beyond that his religion did not go very deep.

George Whitfield's sermon, on which he had come so suddenly, was like the bow drawn at a venture, the sharp arrow from which smote the King of Israel between the joints of his armour; for so it pierced the heart of the young man, whose very thought of late had been of furnace-building and of English study.

The face, the voice, the manner of the earnest preacher haunted him no less than his awakening words. And when Davy, who had been also a listener, laid his hand upon the horse's bridle, and spoke to him, he started like one aroused from a dream.

To suit general convenience – the old vicar's included – it had been arranged that Jonet and Thomas Williams should be married at St. Martin's, Caerphilly – then only a chapel-of-ease to Eglwysilan; and there a fresh surprise awaited William Edwards, for when, the following day, the united wedding party from Brookside and Aber dashed helter-skelter along the road to the church, in their race to catch the bride, he beheld a gravely-attired procession on foot, somewhat ahead of them, proceeding calmly in the same direction. And, when their own panting steeds had been left behind at a convenient inn, he observed that, of the more decorous bridal party entering the church porch, the bridegroom, a man of some twenty-seven years, was no other than that same Rev. George Whitfield, whose words had burnt themselves into his breast, never to be effaced, and his bride, Elizabeth James, whom he knew by sight.

He could scarcely keep his eyes off the man, or his attention on the business before him. Yet he could not fail to notice that the aged vicar, who was growing feeble and tremulous, was apparently conscious he had no ordinary couple before him to unite in holy matrimony, and performed the ceremony for both parties with unusual impressiveness, undisturbed by the sounds of giggling and tittering in the rear.

Such giggling and tittering were of common occurrence, as was the rough struggle for the first kiss of the newly-made bride, and the Rev. John Smith raised no voice in rebuke or protest when such a rush was made towards Jonet.

Not so the evangelistic bridegroom. No sooner were their names signed in the register, than with his bride upon his arm, he quitted the church. Then, surrendering her to the care of the sedate groomsman, he mounted a tombstone, and with uplifted hand and voice demanded attention.

So unwonted was the proceeding, that even the most hilarious paused and drew near out of mere curiosity; but when they left the chapelyard they had received such a lecture on the reverence due to the sacred place, on the solemnity of the ceremony they were present to witness, and on the import for time and eternity of the vows there made in the sight of God – such a lecture as few of those there assembled were likely to forget.

At its close, William, withdrawing from his companions, walked up to Mr. Whitfield and thanked him heartily for his discourses, both there and the previous afternoon. 'You have roused me from spiritual apathy and carelessness into which I never shall sink again,' he said, with characteristic decision. 'And should you come to Cardiff before you leave South Wales, you may count on me as an awakened hearer.'

The preacher's influence did not soon die away. William had other opportunities for joining in the services led by the enthusiastic preacher, and in his zeal prevailed on the blind baker and his niece to bear him company. Rosser's infirmity threw him much within himself. Elaine was naturally of a serious cast, and the eloquence of the powerful revivalist moved them both greatly.

This was long before the girl's illness to which I have already referred. But as William and her uncle conversed together on the great truths they had heard so powerfully expounded, or joined in household prayer, there can be no doubt a link was forged and strengthened to draw the young people closer together, however insensibly, than if they had spent their leisure in light chatter and frivolous fooling. Yet nothing had been said in the course of years of either love or marriage.