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"The book has the same fault as the Inland Voyage for there are some three or four irreverent uses of the name of God which offend me and must offend many others. They might have been omitted without the slightest damage to the interest or the merit of the book. So much for your absurdity in not letting me see your proof sheets. The only other fault in the book is, I think, a superfluity in the way of description of scenery. Had there been a great variety of scenery the objection would not have been justifiable but when the scenery is so generally the same I think some of it might have been spared. On the whole however I think it is a very successful volume of travel and I believe that your two volumes are unique in point of style"
(Thomas Stevenson in a letter to RLS 8 June 1879, discussing Travels with a Donkey. From Robert Louis Stevenson: The Critical Heritage, ed. by Paul Maixner [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995], p. 64)
Thomas Stevenson (1818-1887) was RLS’s father. Thomas followed in his father Robert Stevenson’s (1772-1850) footsteps, becoming a lighthouse engineer in the family firm. He designed more than thirty lighthouses.
Thomas was a Scottish Calvinist, and a firm believer in the importance of the Christian faith. He married Margaret Isabella Balfour in 1848, and two years later, RLS was born.
Thomas had a strong bond with his son, despite quarrels over religion, RLS’s refusal to become an engineer or to continue law professionally, and RLS’s decision to marry Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne. Despite his initial unhappiness, Thomas developed a good relationship with his daughter-in-law and he and Stevenson remained close throughout his life.
RLS wrote about his father in the essay "Thomas Stevenson, Civil Engineer" for The Contemporary Review in 1887. The essay was later included in Memories and Portaits (1887).
Further Reading:
Bathurst, Bella, The Lighthouse Stevensons (London: Harper Collins, 1999)
Leslie, Jean and Paxton Roland, eds, Bright Lights: the Stevenson Engineers 1752-1971 (Edinburgh: Jean Leslie and Roland Paxton, 1999)
- 126 illustrations (black and white and colour). Produced on the occasion of the “Stevenson Family of Engineers Symposium” held at the Royal Museum of Scotland in 1994. Family recollections by Jean Leslie, grand-daughter of Charles Stevenson, and professional comment on engineering aspects of the Stevenson lighthouses by Professor Roland Paxton. Includes a chapter on Robert Louis Stevenson’s life as a reluctant trainee engineer together with his own account of the night-time stagecoach journey south after working at Wick breakwater. Now out of print, but copies usually available through AbeBooks.com
Villa, Luisa, “Quarreling with the Father”, in Robert Louis Stevenson: Writer of Boundaries, ed by Richard Ambrosini and Richard Dury (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), pp. 109-20
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