George Stephen, 1st Baron Mount Stephen bare-footed stable boy, he became the richest man in Canada and closely associated with George V, whose wife, Queen Mary, was a lifelong friend and confidante of the second Lady Mount Stephen. In 1829, Stephen was born at Dufftown, Banffshire, in a cottage built by his grandfather. He was the son of William Stephen (b. 1801), a carpenter, and Elspet, daughter of John Smith, a crofter at Knockando, Moray. His mother was a first cousin of the philanthropic Grant brothers of Manchester, immortalised as the "Cheeryble Brothers" in Charles Dickens' book, Nicholas Nickleby. Stephen began life as a boy running
The Pickwick Papers of interest, and the illustrations merely of secondary importance. By this reversal of interest, Dickens transformed, at a stroke, a current type of fiction, consisting mostly of pictures, into a novel of contemporary London life. Simple as the process may appear, others who had tried the plan had all failed. Pierce Egan partially succeeded in his "Tom and Jerry", a novel in which the pictures and the letterpress are held in even balance. Dickens won a complete triumph. In future years, however, Dickens was suspiciously eager to distance himself from suggestions that Pierce Egan's "Life in London" had been a