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By Root 767 0

the value of money – and its indispensable possession in this world, I shall think the double postage well bestowed…If you want to live as a gentleman, you must work as a man, for there is no dining without a purse. Now as you have not been born to the purse, you must just look after yourself. I blame myself for not sending you straight from the High School at once to business in some way. I regret my judgement in it with a young man who is perhaps not aware of the ground on which he stands. A young man who is perhaps more taken up with appearances than realities – who wants to be a gentleman without the means – who perhaps thinks of an exterior as the only thing…Consider the absolute necessity of making provision for the time when it will be asked of you, what is this man? Is he doing any good in the world? Has he the means of being ‘one of us’? I beseech you Tom, do not trifle with this until it actually comes upon you. Bethink yourself and bestir yourself as a man.

Robert’s letter only had the effect of making Tom stay on a little longer with Neill. When a chimney pot in the printing works crashed to the ground just beside him, Tom took it as a timely warning that publishing was a deadly profession, and left. Finally, having exhausted all possible idle options, he reappeared on his father’s doorstep and asked him for an apprenticeship. In fact, Robert had little need for an extra apprentice at the time, since both Alan and David were now working full-time and he also had an existing stable of well-trained assistants. Nevertheless, it seemed like a useful settlement to his youngest son’s dilettante habits and Robert accepted him. By spring of 1836, Tom had started classes at Edinburgh University and begun the long slog to full qualification, though he seemed as lacklustre over his new career as he had about his old ones. Meanwhile, sifting through the pockets of an old coat, Robert discovered something that seemed to justify all his darkest fears about Tom. Tucked into a corner out of sight was a small bundle of dog-eared papers. Tom, it seemed, had been secretly preoccupied with fiction.

If Tom had been caught smuggling gunpowder or dealing in wreck, the effect could not have been worse. Robert was so shocked by the discovery that he could scarcely bring himself to mention it. Finally, he wrote to Tom, painfully detailing the ‘seven pages of my good card paper filled in your handwriting with great nonsense…I made an attempt to read it but I could not go on with it. I spoke to David about it. He looked at it and said there was a drawer full of such stuff in your room. I beseech you, Tom, give up such nonsense and mind your business. You are most ignorant of the history of your country and the science of your profession. As I have told you before – to little purpose I fear – this is not the time for you to write but to read lessons in morals and the practical details of your business. I have reminded you that I am 66 years of age and what then? I leave you to consider this and fill up the blank for yourself.’ All Robert’s old terrors returned. All his fears of producing literate but useless children were apparently justified. All the lessons learned by Alan’s example, it seemed, had come to nothing. He need not have worried. Tom, mortified by his father’s reaction, caved in almost immediately. Since it was plain that he would never make an author and that Robert, driven to extremity, was now applying the emotional thumbscrews, he flung away his attempts at writing, and finally applied himself properly to engineering.

For all Robert’s warnings to his sons that he was getting older, he showed little evidence of reducing his usual hectic pace. If he felt the onset of old age, his actions scarcely betrayed it. Where possible, he still embarked on the annual circuits of Scotland for the lighthouse inspection tour, and spent much of the rest of the year darting from place to place, consulting and opining. He was often called down to London to appear in Select Committee proceedings as an expert witness and to appear at