“No. 5 Branch Line: The Engineer” was written by Amelia B. Edwards and first appeared in All The Year Round (Christmas Number, 1866). Edwards (1831-1892) was an author who became notable in her lifetime as an Egyptologist. During a trip to Egypt she became horrified at the destruction wrought to monuments by looters, and so founded the Egypt Exploration Fund, one of the first major archeological societies. “The Engineer” is entertaining, if not among Edwards’ best work.

Benjamin Hardy and Matthew Price are best friends, and have been since childhood. They grew up in Chadleigh, a tiny English hamlet, and did all the things best friends do together. Even when Benjamin gets a job as an engineer in Birmingham and leaves Chadleigh behind, he contrives to bring Matthew (a farmer’s son) with him, and they both rise in the company. When they are contracted to supply locomotives to an Italian firm, the pair leave for Italy together and enjoy the new country. But a woman comes between them: Gianetta, a strikingly beautiful woman who is a heartless flirt and who toys carelessly with her lovers. Both Matthew and Benjamin fall for her, and she plays with both of them, alternatively encouraging and discouraging both men. The knowledge that the other is in love with Gianetta weighs on both Matthew and Benjamin and strains their friendship, and when Matt tells Ben that Gianetta agreed to marry him, only to sell herself to a rich Neapolitan, Ben feels angry with Matt rather than Gianetta. The pair fight, and Ben ends up stabbing Matt. The remorseful Ben nurses Matt through what follows, and Matt forgives Ben, but Matt’s lungs are permanently damaged, and he soon dies. Ben is heartbroken and spends the next several years wandering Europe. He eventually returns to Italy and becomes an engine driver on a line between Mantua and Venice. When Gianetta and her husband, a Duke, board the train, someone tries to pay Ben to crash the train (“For Italy’s sake...for liberty’s sake...this Loredano is one of his country’s bitterest enemies”¹), but Ben decides to do it “neither for Italy nor for money; but for vengeance.” But before he carries out his plan he sees Matthew Price standing next to him by the engine. Ben gives a cry and passes out. He ends the story grateful that Matthew stopped him from killing the innocent.

As with “The Four-Fifteen Express,” “The Engineer” contains nothing extraordinary. It is readable and entertaining, and Gianetta is a convincingly awful person, but as a story it is nothing beyond what the modern reader has seen many times before. The story is worth recommending for its competent execution rather than for its ordinary ideas.

Edwards was a lesbian, being out and proud in her lifetime. This has led critics to look for and find hints or themes of homosexuality in her work. “The Engineer” is no different in this regard: “‘An Engineer’s Story’ carries homoerotic undercurrents, but it can also be read as a rejection of a marriage system that objectifies women. Edwards explores the grim possibility of a loveless union made for material advantage and seems to choose the bond between same-sex friends, however perilous the path.”²

Print: Amelia B. Edwards, The Phantom Coach: Collected Ghost Stories. Ashcroft, BC: Ash-Tree Press, 2012.

¹ Amelia B. Edwards, “An Engineer’s Story,” in Monsieur Maurice, a New Novelette (Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz, 1873), 178.

² Lynn Paramore, Reading the Sphinx: Ancient Egypt in Nineteenth-Century Literary Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 138.