The Lighthouse Stevensons

But for all the predictable and unpredictable human difficulties, Smith’s early efforts with the Scottish lighthouses provided a useful guide for all his professional successors. He was, after all, not a trained engineer in the modern sense, but an imaginative man who did his best with the materials available. The Commissioners had only a vague idea of what the work would entail, and expected Smith to complete most of the supervision on his own and unpaid. For almost ten years, Thomas took no salary at all from the NLB (who were, in any case, broke) and relied entirely on his income from the Edinburgh work. There was some method in his madness.

Thomas worked for the Commissioners because he believed implicitly in the need for guidance at sea, not because he thought it might profit him. He had been reared with a strong notion of public duty, and was quite prepared, despite the lack of money and the spartan conditions, to live up to his promises. Despite the improvised nature of the work, his reports show a good-natured stoicism for the endless hardships he put up with. He noted everything, from the supply of window putty to the problems the keepers had with grazing for their cows. Where routine could be imposed, Thomas tried; he wrote reports, revised instructions, built relationships and imposed discipline. Once it became evident that lighthouse work would demand an ever-increasing amount of time and attention, Thomas resigned himself to regular annual voyages around the coast inspecting existing lights and assessing the necessity for new ones. The voyages were usually hard and often frustrating; Thomas settled into a familiar pattern of remaining storm-stayed in port or being delayed by the unwelcome attention of press gangs.

When back in Edinburgh, Thomas spent much of his time planning improvements to the lights. There were also the demands of Edinburgh society; Thomas, as entrepreneur and public servant, slid happily into the comforts of the New Town bourgeoisie. He trusted implicitly in the Edinburgh virtues of thrift, hard work, humanity and humbug. In middle age, he grew a little stout, but never idle. He worked hard for his business, looked after his family, and took to holding dinner parties. His make-do background had some influence on his later character; once the business was healthy enough, he became the most conservative of men, joined the Edinburgh Spearmen (a volunteer regiment ostensibly called up to fight the revolutionary French but actually dedicated to suppressing domestic riots) and became a captain. The discipline of his public life coincided nicely with his professional existence. He did well from the New Town, which provided an almost inexhaustible demand for brassware, grates and fittings of all kinds, and fitted into the new middle-class world of salons and afternoon teas with ease.

Thomas had been able both to exploit the new, hubristic mood of the city, and to appropriate many of its values. And, having earned his place in society, he was a contented man. He had overcome great insecurity to establish himself in a role which demanded exceptional effort, but rewarded him with both position and respect. His marriage to Jean Lillie had given him a warm and stable family life, and the lighthouses provided the means to keep it. By 1803, he had been confident enough to buy himself a patch of land in Baxter’s Place in the lee of Calton Hill, and to build on it a grand new family house in delightfully fashionable style. It was large enough, indeed, to allow both for a warehouse in which he could experiment with designs, and for a separate flat in which the older children would later be installed. Inside its newfangled elegances, the Smith and Stevenson children lived in disciplined harmony, apparently quite content with the splicing together of the two families. And, it was rapidly becoming evident, his marriage had also gained him an apprentice who seemed to have every intention of continuing his connection with the Northern Lights.

By the age of sixteen, Robert Stevenson had already become an adult. In youth, he appeared a sturdy, rounded young man, with a complexion ruddied by outdoor work and with a deceptive spark of humour in his eyes. He remained uneasy with books and culture, but was completely at home with the practicalities of stone, iron, brass and wood. While at home, he became the model of a conscientious gentleman, attentive to his mother and devoted to his stepbrothers and sisters. He was also becoming a plausible successor to Thomas as head of the family. Even then, he had already shouldered all the adult responsibilities of his future life and was busily developing an ambition to move on in the world. He, like the rest of the Smith-Stevenson brood, felt the need ‘to gather wealth, to rise in society, to leave their descendants higher themselves, to be (in some sense) among the founders of families’, as his grandson Louis later put it. Above all, Robert wanted to be useful.

Much of Robert’s later attitude to life was marked by the experience of his childhood. His early years had shown him first the impoverishment caused by his father’s early death, and then, through the move to Edinburgh and his mother’s marriage to Thomas, the evidence that merit and enterprise earned their rewards. Above all, they had taught him to trust in himself. He also remained mindful of the sacrifices Jean Lillie had made for him, acknowledging many years later that ‘My mother’s ingenuous and gentle spirit amidst all her difficulties never failed her. She still relied on the providence of God, though sometimes, in the recollection of her father’s house and her younger days, she remarked that the ways of Providence were often dark to us.’ The move to Edinburgh and the uniting of the two households had also proved helpful. Thomas’s example in ironmongery and lighthouses had not only settled Robert in his chosen vocation but allowed him to repay what he felt were some of his early debts in life. He was also lucky in his choice. Engineering suited him, drawing out both his fondness for adventure and his talent for mathematical abstractions. It allowed him to be creative, and to contribute something of worth to posterity. Above all, it was a useful, manly sort of trade, requiring both solidity and self-confidence.

For the moment, however, Robert was still preoccupied with the slow climb up the foothills of his profession. During the 1790s, he was despatched to Glasgow University to learn civil engineering under the supervision of Professor John Anderson. ‘Jolly Jack Phosphorous’, as Anderson was known, was rare among eighteenth-century tutors for being as enthusiastic about the practical applications of engineering as he was about its theory. It was said that Anderson had first interested James Watt in steam power, and, scandalously, that his university classes were based as much on fieldwork as they were on black-board studies. He later bequeathed money to a separate technical college in Glasgow staffed with tutors who would not ‘be permitted, as in some other Colleges, to be Drones or Triflers, Drunkards or negligent in any manner of way’. The college flourished, and was eventually to become Strathclyde University.

In addition to his classes in mathematics, natural philosophy (physics), drawing, and mechanics, Robert learned much of direct value to Thomas’s business, and in later years became an ardent supporter of Anderson’s methods. ‘It was the practice of Professor Anderson kindly to befriend and forward the views of his pupils,’ he wrote later, ‘and his attention to me during the few years I had the pleasure of being known to him was of a very marked kind, for he directed my attention to various pursuits with the view to my coming forward as an engineer.’ Having discovered the attractions of a subject he wanted to learn, Robert had also become a keen preacher for the benefits of a sound education. The first fees he earned for his engineering work were passed on almost instantly to his old school, and his letters home are peppered with references to the usefulness of his university classes. Once converted to anything, Robert was always the most fanatic of believers.

Robert also showed an enthusiastic interest in the lighthouses. The mutable quality of the work suited him and after accompanying Thomas on a couple of his regular inspection tours, Robert began to appropriate small patches of lighthouse territory for himself. Thomas introduced him to the Commissioners, allowed him to fit lenses or supervise building work and encouraged him to develop his interest as warmly as possible. By the mid 1790s, Robert appears often in the NLB’s Minute books, first as understudy, and then in more significant roles. He already had a sound grasp of all aspects of the business from the sizing of lamps to the sculpting of reflectors. His chief fault, if any, was a forcefulness in his dealings that did not always endear him to potential customers. Within six years of joining Thomas’s workshop he was regarded as an equal in almost all aspects of the work, and by 1800 had been made a full partner in the firm.

And so, in the pattern that was to become settled for the next three Stevenson generations, Robert spent his winters at home in the south studying and his summers in the north supervising the details of work on the lights. Much of his education was also completed in Thomas’s workshops first at Bristo Street and then at Baxter’s Place, making grates for the gentry and lamplights for the Corporation. As master and pupil, Thomas and he were well suited to each other. It was in some ways an odd partnership; Thomas was, after all, not only Robert’s employer, but also his stepfather. Stretched too far, the relationship could have become awkward or imbalanced, but as it was, the two made ideal accomplices. Thomas, though a milder character, was a generous teacher. The two men were alike in many respects. Both had been reared the hard way; both believed in the benefits of a stern apprenticeship, and neither took anything for granted. Before he died, Thomas was to realise that Robert’s talents would one day far eclipse his own. It is a measure of Thomas’s generosity that, far from resenting his stepson’s advancement, he was delighted.