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By Root 752 0

about a mile in length. These are never entirely under water, though the surf dashes over them. To go through all the forms, Hamilton, Duff, [two of the Commissioners] and I, resolve to land upon these bare rocks in company with Mr Stevenson. Pull through a very heavy swell with great difficulty, and approach a tremendous surf dashing over black pointed rocks. Our rowers, however, get the boat into a quiet creek between two rocks, where we contrive to land well wetted. I saw nothing remarkable in my way, excepting several seals, which we might have shot, but, in the doubtful circumstances of the landing, we did not care to bring guns. We took possession of the rock in name of the Commissioners, and generously bestowed our own great names on its crags and creeks. The rock was carefully measured by Mr S. It will be a most desolate position for a lighthouse – the Bell Rock and Eddystone a joke to it, for the nearest land is the wild island of Tyree, at fourteen miles’ distance.

Scott’s distaste for the place was one day to prove prophetic. But for the moment, Robert, having proved his point to the Commissioners, was content to sail on.

Robert’s opportunity to show Scott the lighthouse work was the seal of the Bell Rock’s glory. Scott’s interest was proof of Robert’s success. He had achieved something that many had considered impossible, and he was reaping his reward. As an engineer and as an enterprising man at the centre of Edinburgh society, he had arrived. Though far too pragmatic to rest or gloat, he was well aware of the significance of his victory. The Northern Lighthouse Commissioners now treated him with respect and he was consulted by lords and politicians. At home, his family was flourishing, and his children were starting to show the rewards of their education. And, after years of patient waiting, he had made his masterpiece. For a while at least, he was a satisfied man.

FIVE

Edinburgh

Robert adjusted to his new status as grand young man of engineering with predictable ease. He was a man of standing now; a recognised figure with a position to maintain and a lifestyle to pay for. His reputation was made and his contribution to Scottish history assured. If he had wanted to, he could have retired then at the age of forty-two and lived the rest of his life in the knowledge that the Bell Rock alone would stand as his lasting testament. But Robert had no intention of retiring. He had completed one phase of his life but remained as restless as ever. As soon as he returned from the Bell Rock, he began his education again, still chasing the elusive degree and still convinced that he needed more science and more refinements to become his own vision of a ‘man o’ pairts’.

Given his faith in the practical sciences, it was unfortunate that Robert’s first task was to finish off his account of the Bell Rock as commissioned by the board of the Northern Lights. Robert had accepted the commission but found when he came to it that he could not begin writing. True, he had plenty of material, including the records and Minutes of the Northern Lights, as well as his own copious journals, but he balked at turning them into print. In part, his shyness was a symptom of his old Achilles heel, his lack of ‘book-learning’, and his wariness of intellectual men. For all his new status, he still found book-ishness uncomfortable; his life was one of doing not thinking, and the idea of proving himself all over again in print was almost distasteful. The more time passed the more squeamish he grew. He tinkered with his journals, dictated a few pages to his daughter Jane, now acting as his secretary, and sent sections off to Sir Walter Scott for comment. He commissioned J. M. Turner to provide an illustration for the book. Turner, without having actually seen the Bell Rock, produced an epic, storm-swept illustration which delighted Robert. He commissioned further engravings, and fussed over the records, but still could not begin writing. At Baxter’s Place, he fell into long silences and moments of unexplained melancholia. After a couple of