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his children preyed on Robert’s mind at the time. His letters home became more and more solicitous, enquiring often about Jean’s health and the state of the remaining children. He hoped Jean was getting out enough, that she was taking plenty of exercise, that she saw her friends often, that she went regularly to market. In 1816, after yet another death, he advised her not to become too depressed. ‘If that kind of sympathy and pleasing melancholy, which is familiar to us under distress, be much indulged, it becomes habitual, and takes such a hold of the mind as to absorb all the other affections, and unfit us for the duties and proper enjoyments of life. Resignation sinks into a kind of peevish discontent.’ His concern for her was also transmitted to the children. They were to attend to their studies, get plenty of fresh air and not to dwell on morbid thoughts. ‘Let them,’ he wrote to Jean, ‘have strawberries on Saturdays.’ He also chivvied the children about their education. Jane, his eldest child, was instructed to ‘read Wotherspoon, or some other suitable and instructive book’, Bob to ‘learn his Latin lessons daily; he may however, read English in company’. While in Fraserburgh, he suggested that ‘it will be a good exercise in geography for the young folks to trace my course’. Above all, as he wrote in one communal letter from London, ‘the way to get money is, become clever men and men of education by being good scholars.’

The Smiths also remained close. Jean’s sister Mary Anne (always known as Mary) remained at Baxter’s Place long after Robert had taken over from Thomas as patriarch. She played an active part in bringing up Robert’s children and, since she remained unmarried, became almost a second mother to them. James, meanwhile, moved away from Baxter’s Place to found his own ironmongery business and establish a family. Mary and Robert got on well, though in later years Robert tended to take the tone of overbearing elder brother with her, and became peevish about the burden she placed on the household expenses.

Poor Mary, amiable and sheltered, spent much of her time shuttling between Robert and Jean, caught in the unenviable trap of Victorian spinsterhood. Later, she was to try taking a position as a governess in London; her letters from Islington show a bewildered innocence about life beyond Edinburgh and a terror of displeasing her stepbrother. She wrote to Robert in 1818, informing him with wary cheerfulness that she had been sightseeing at the Missionary Museum for Heathen Idols and the Houses of Parliament where she ‘had the misfortune to trip over the Wool Sack’. She had also been on a trip to Hampstead, which had left her most disappointed at the dullness of English scenery. English prices were terrible; the boarding house she was staying in had already cost fifty guineas. ‘Should it be found necessary that I should do something for myself, I will prefer a situation in England for some time,’ she added disconsolately, evidently aware of Robert’s ferocious attitude to laggards. ‘Your letters contain both instruction and amusement…I shall also obey your injunctions to attend the Established Church.’

Thomas, meanwhile, was becoming exhausted by the annual circuits of Scotland. He spent more time concentrating on his lamp-making business, finding it less demanding than the lighthouse work. By 1800, having reached something of the status of a Grand Old Man, Thomas handed all the lighthouse business on to Robert and retired to a respectable dotage. Robert still referred to him on details, and kept up regular reports of his progress while away, but by 1808 had separated both his lighthouse and private business from Thomas’s old company. The two remained close in business and private, and Robert found it reassuring to have his stepfather’s guidance for his schemes. But by 1800, Robert had already outstripped Thomas’s experience, and was becoming a recognised expert in his own right. By 1789, the NLB had been given a free hand to build lights when and where they felt they were necessary, and between 1793 and 1806,