The Lighthouse Stevensons - Bella Bathurst [65]
I have little to say of ill habits, for Mr Pettingal has advised to wear gloves in the house to prevent me from biting my nails and scratching my fingers…I am going on with Leshe’s Analysis and you may tell Mr Noble that I write out and repeat two Propositions every day which takes me little less than two hours. I think I shall be able to get through the end of the Analysis by the end of September or so; (Books studied include Wood’s Algebra, Wallace’s Elements of Plain Trigonometry and Doctrine of Proportion, and Brown’s Logarithms)…I am getting on with Hume’s History and finishing Henry VII. You may tell Mr McGregor that I shall attend to the difference between ‘shall’ and ‘will’.
Alan’s main comfort during his crash course in deportment and syntax was his cousin by marriage, Thomas Smith, the grandson of Robert’s old lighthouse mentor. He had also been sent by Robert to Twickenham to be finished, and evidently found a strong dose of absurdity in their studies. ‘Alan gives me books and newspapers to read,’ he wrote in a letter to Robert in December 1823, ‘and sometimes when Mrs P and Charles have gone to their rooms sends for me from the study to come and play at draughts or backgammon.’ Thomas went on to Pembroke College in Oxford the following year, and thus remained for most of his time in England. Alan, his finishing finished, returned obediently to Scotland and to the next phase of apprenticeship to Robert.
Robert’s plans for educating all his sons followed the same formula as his own apprenticeship with Thomas. Summers would be spent learning practical engineering at various sites around the country, winters were spent picking over theory both at home and at further university classes. Much of Alan’s time was passed in Robert’s office, copying reports, transcribing letters, writing out invoices or checking specifications. As Robert’s workload had increased, so too had the accompanying bureaucracy. The older trainees and Alan’s sister, Jane, helped with some of the snowfalls of print, but much of it still had to be dealt with by Robert. Once Alan arrived, however, Robert handed on much of the mundane work to him. Given that Robert’s letter-writing habits had not diminished in the slightest – he still regularly filled 600-page letter books in less than six months – the sheer weight of material to be processed and recorded would have been enough to employ Alan for the rest of his life. But Robert wanted his son to become a complete engineer, not just someone capable of attending to office bureaucracy.
Alan also spent a great deal of time outside Edinburgh, inspecting the lights and learning the various disciplines of civil and marine engineering. Bridges, harbours, drainage, breakwaters, roads and railways each had to be individually studied. During 1824 he was despatched to bridgeworks at Annan, harbourworks at Crail and to the lighthouse under construction out on the Rinns of Islay. For a while he studied under Thomas Telford, examining riverworks down on the Wirral. Alan’s introduction to Telford had, as usual, been organised by Robert, who felt it would benefit his son’s future career to have studied under such an illustrious name.
Alan’s submission to his father’s chosen profession was almost complete; having made his decision, albeit under pressure, he learned swiftly. Only occasionally, after an unusually brusque instruction from Robert, did he show signs of chafing against his fate. At one stage, while in Hull supervising bridge works, he hinted that he might be able to find further work there, and seemed reluctant to return to Edinburgh. ‘I should wish you to observe,’ wrote Alan nervously to his father a little later while in Annan, ‘that Edinburgh university classes start on the 25th October so that if I am to attend I should require to leave this on the 24th at latest.’ Robert, who had already planned Alan’s life for the next six years, seemed entirely deaf to the possibility that any of his children might need to