For everyone who has heard of ‘Lighthouse Stevensons’ a thousand or more will recognise the name [Robert] Louis Stevenson. Yet he wrote of his father, and it might have been of his grandfather and uncles too, that: ‘I might write books till 1900 and not serve humanity so well; and it moves me to a certain impatience, to see the little, frothy bubble that attends the author, his son, and compare it with the obscurity in which that better man finds his reward.’ Louis was the tantony pig of the family, who, as Bella Bathurst says, with only small exaggeration, ‘stole all the fame that posterity has to give’. Now she has set herself the task of giving the engineer Stevensons their due, and ha done so admirably. It is ironic that she has far more in common with Louis than with his engineer relations. For one thing, like him, she writes with unusual grace and charm, and that makes what might have been a dry book (despite the lashing waves on almost every page) a great pleasure to read.

Subscribe or Sign In to read the full article