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replied to Assoc for Scottish Literature's status

“The Bell Rock stands monument for my grandfather; the Skerry Vohr for my Uncle Alan; and when the lights come out at sundown along the shores of Scotland, I am proud to think they burn more brightly for the genius of my father.”

—From Robert Louis Stevenson’s unfinished autobiography MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF (Philadelphia 1912), online via the Hathi Trust

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https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=loc.ark:/13960/t7mp5z00p&view=1up&seq=9

My father and Uncle David made the third generation, one Smith and two Stevenson, of direct descendants who had been engineers to the Board of Northern Lights; there is scarce a deep sea light from the Isle of Man north about to Berwick, but one of my blood designed it; and I have often thought that to find a family to compare with ours in the promise of immortal memory, we must go back to the Egyptian Pharaohs: upon so many reefs and forelands that not very elegant name of Stevenson is engraved with a pen of iron upon granite. My name is well known as that of the Duke of Argyle among the fishers, the skippers, the seamen and the masons of my native land. Whenever I smell salt water, I know I am not far from one of the works of my ancestors. The Bell Rock stands monument for my grandfather; the Skerry Vohr for my Uncle Alan; and when the lights come out at sundown along the shores of Scotland, I am proud to think they burn more brightly for the genius of my father.

replied to Assoc for Scottish Literature's status

I send to you, commissioners,
A paper that may please ye, sirs
(For troth they say it might be worse‍‍
An’ I believe’t)
And on your business lay my curse‍‍
Before I leav’t.

“To the Commissioners of Northern Lights”, a poem accompanying one of Stevenson’s lesser-known works, “On a New Form of Intermittent Light for Lighthouses”, submitted to the Commissioners of Northern Lights in 1870

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https://digital.nls.uk/rlstevenson/browse/archive/99383648

To the Commissioners of Northern Lights, with a Paper Robert Louis Stevenson I send to you, commissioners, A paper that may please ye, sirs (For troth they say it might be worse‍‍ An’ I believe’t) And on your business lay my curse‍‍ Before I leav’t. I thocht I’d serve wi’ you, sirs, yince, But I’ve thocht better of it since; The matter I will nowise mince,‍‍ But tell ye true: I’ll service wi’ some ither prince,‍‍ An’ no wi’ you. I’ve no been very deep, ye’ll think, Cam’ delicately to the brink An’ when the water gart me shrink‍‍ Straucht took the rue, An’ didna stoop my fill to drink—‍‍ I own it true. I kent on cape and isle, a light Burnt fair an’ clearly ilka night; But at the service I took fright,‍‍ As sune’s I saw, An’ being still a neophite‍‍ Gaed straucht awa’. Anither course I now begin, The weeg I’Il cairry for my Sin, The court my voice shall echo in,‍‍ An’—wha can tell?— Some ither day I may be yin‍‍ O’ you mysel’.