The Lighthouse Stevensons - Bella Bathurst [54]
The trip was, for both author and engineer, a success. After visiting the Isle of May, where Scott suggested the old lighthouse should be ‘ruined à la picturesque’, they reached the Bell Rock. Scott found it ‘well worthy attention…no description can give the idea of this slight, solitary, round tower, trembling amid the billows, and fifteen miles [sic] from Arbroath, the nearest shore.’ Evidently entranced by the fable of Sir Ralph the Rover, he suggested that a mural should be painted on the keepers’ apartments, complete with clanging bell and grim piratical drowning. Before leaving the light, one of the Commissioners asked him to inscribe their visitors’ album. Scott took up his pen, mused for a while and then, to Robert’s intense gratification, dashed off the following poem:
Far in the bosom of the deep,
O’er these wild shelves my watch I keep:
A ruddy gem of changeful light,
Bound on the dusky brow of night.
The seaman bids my lustre hail,
And scorns to strike his timorous sail.
Once back on the boat, a gale blew up and they hove-to for the night. According to Scott, everyone on board was sick, ‘even Mr Stevenson’.
The party sailed up the east coast, anchoring occasionally to allow Robert to dash off and make his inspections. Scott spent his time eating, drinking and pondering the curious habits of the islanders. He also tried and failed to shoot a golden eagle, and was much impressed by the legends of the wreckers in Shetland. The diary Scott kept of the voyage was later to be expanded into a novel, The Pirate, and he seemed happy to discuss his literary inspirations with Robert and the crew. Many years later, Robert wrote his own account of the trip, berating himself for having taken so desultory an interest in Scott at the time. ‘Had I been more fully alive to the eminence and ultimate celebrity of this “great and good man”,’ he apologised, ‘I should have taken notes at the time.’ As Robert lay on what was to be his deathbed, he felt the warm glow of mutual approval come over him again. Scott, he wrote, ‘was the most industrious occupier of time…he wrote much upon deck – often when his seat on the camp stool was by no means steady. He sometimes introduced Rob Roy’s exploits in conversation so fully that when I read the Book many parts of it were like a second reading to me.’
Scott’s interest in lighthouses soon paled. He left the more troublesome work to Robert and became preoccupied with the genealogies of neighbouring lords. His only quickening of curiosity came in August, when they were sailing round the Hebrides. He recorded that
Having crept upon deck about four in the morning, I find we are beating to windward off the Isle of Tyree, with the determination on the part of Mr Stevenson that his constituents should visit a reef of rocks called Skerry Vhor, where he thought it would be essential to have a lighthouse. Loud remonstrances on the part of the Commissioners, who one and all declare they will subscribe to his opinion, whatever it may be, rather than continue this infernal buffeting. Quiet perseverance on the part of Mr S, and great kicking, bouncing, and squabbling upon that of the Yacht, who seems to like the idea of Skerry Vhor as little as the Commissioners. At length, by dint of exertion, come in sight of this long ridge of rocks (chiefly under water) on which the tide breaks in a most tremendous style. There appear a few low broad rocks at one end of the reef, which is