Every day was a busy one with Siemens. His secretary was with him in his residence by nine o'clock nearly every morning, except on Sundays, assisting him in work for one society or another, the correction of proofs, or the dictation of letters giving official or scientific advice, and the preparation of lectures or patent specifications. Later on, he hurried across the Park 'almost at racing speed,' to his offices at Westminster, where the business of the Landore-Siemens Steel Company and the Electrical Works of Messrs. Siemens Brothers and Company was transacted. As chairman of these large undertakings, and principal inventor of the processes and systems carried out by them, he had a hundred things to attend to in connection with them, visitors to see, and inquiries to answer. In the afternoon and evenings he was generally engaged at council meetings of the learned societies, or directory meetings of the companies in which he was interested. He was a man who took little or no leisure, and though he never appeared to over-exert himself, few men could have withstood the strain so long.
Siemens was buried on Monday, November 26, in Kensal Green Cemetery.
The interment was preceded by a funeral service held in Westminster Abbey, and attended by representatives of the numerous learned societies of which he had been a conspicuous member, by many leading men in all branches of science, and also by a large body of other friends and admirers, who thus united in doing honour to his memory, and showing their sense of the loss which all classes had sustained by his death.
Siemens was above all things a 'labourer.' Unhasting, unresting labour was the rule of his life; and the only relaxation, not to say recreation, which he seems to have allowed himself was a change of task or the calls of sleep. This natural activity was partly due to the spur of his genius, and partly to his energetic spirit. For a man of his temperament science is always holding out new problems to solve and fresh promises of triumph. All he did only revealed more work to be done; and many a scheme lies buried in his grave.
Though Siemens was a man of varied powers, and occasionally gave himself to pure speculation in matters of science, his mind was essentially practical; and it was rather as an engineer than a discoverer that he was great. Inventions are associated with his name, not laws or new phenomena. Standing on the borderland between pure and applied science, his sympathies were yet with the latter; and as the outgoing President of the British Association at Southport, in 1882, he expressed the opinion that 'in the great workshop of nature there are no lines of demarcation to be drawn between the most exalted speculation and common-place practice.' The truth of this is not to be gain-said, but it is the utterance of an engineer who judges the merit of a thing by its utility. He objected to the pursuit of science apart from its application, and held that the man of science does most for his kind who shows the world how to make use of scientific results. Such a view was natural on the part of Siemens, who was himself a living representative of the type in question; but it was not the view of such a man as Faraday or Newton, whose pure aim was to discover truth, well knowing that it would be turned to use thereafter. In Faraday's eyes the new principle was a higher boon than the appliance which was founded upon it.
Tried by his own standard, however, Siemens was a conspicuous benefactor of his fellow-men; and at the time of his decease he had become our leading authority upon applied science. In electricity he was a pioneer of the new advances, and happily lived to obtain at least a Pisgah view of the great future which evidently lies before that pregnant force.
If we look for the secret of Siemens's remarkable success, we shall assuredly find it in an inventive mind, coupled with a strong commercial instinct, and supported by a physical energy which enabled him to labour long and incessantly. It is told that when a mechanical problem was brought to him for solution, he would suggest six ways of overcoming the difficulty, three of which would be impracticable, the others feasible, and one at least successful. From this we gather that his mind was fertile in expedients. The large works which he established are also a proof that, unlike most inventors, he did not lose his interest in an invention, or forsake it for another before it had been brought into the market. On the contrary, he was never satisfied with an invention until it was put into practical operation.
To the ordinary observer, Siemens did not betray any signs of the untiring energy that possessed him. His countenance was usually serene and tranquil, as that of a thinker rather than a man of action; his demeanour was cool and collected; his words few and well-chosen. In his manner, as well as in his works, there was no useless waste of power.
To the young he was kind and sympathetic, hearing, encouraging, advising; a good master, a firm friend. His very presence had a calm and orderly influence on those about him, which when he presided at a Public meeting insensibly introduced a gracious tone. The diffident took heart before him, and the presumptuous were checked. The virtues which accompanied him into public life did not desert him in private. In losing him, we have lost not only a powerful intellect, but a bright example, and an amiable man.
