RECORDS OF A FAMILY OF ENGINEERS(一个工程师的家庭)

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RECORDS OF A FAMILY OF ENGINEERS

RECORDS OF A

FAMILY OF ENGINEERS

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

RECORDS OF A FAMILY OF ENGINEERS

INTRODUCTION

THE SURNAME OF STEVENSON

FROM the thirteenth century onwards, the name, under the various

disguises of Stevinstoun, Stevensoun, Stevensonne, Stenesone, and

Stewinsoune, spread across Scotland from the mouth of the Firth of Forth

to the mouth of the Firth of Clyde. Four times at least it occurs as a

place-name. There is a parish of Stevenston in Cunningham; a second

place of the name in the Barony of Bothwell in Lanark; a third on Lyne,

above Drochil Castle; the fourth on the Tyne, near Traprain Law.

Stevenson of Stevenson (co. Lanark) swore fealty to Edward I in 1296,

and the last of that family died after the Restoration. Stevensons of

Hirdmanshiels, in Midlothian, rode in the Bishops' Raid of Aberlady,

served as jurors, stood bail for neighbours - Hunter of Polwood, for

instance - and became extinct about the same period, or possibly earlier.

A Stevenson of Luthrie and another of Pitroddie make their bows, give

their names, and vanish. And by the year 1700 it does not appear that

any acre of Scots land was vested in any Stevenson. (1)

(1) An error: Stevensons owned at this date the barony of

Dolphingston in Haddingtonshire, Montgrennan in Ayrshire, and several

other lesser places.

Here is, so far, a melancholy picture of backward progress, and a

family posting towards extinction. But the law (however administered,

and I am bound to aver that, in Scotland, `it couldna weel be waur') acts as

a kind of dredge, and with dispassionate impartiality brings up into the

light of day, and shows us for a moment, in the jury-box or on the gallows,

the creeping things of the past. By these broken glimpses we are able to

trace the existence of many other and more inglorious Stevensons, picking

a private way through the brawl that makes Scots history. They were

members of Parliament for Peebles, Stirling, Pittenweem, Kilrenny, and

Inverurie. We find them burgesses of Edinburgh; indwellers in Biggar,

Perth, and Dalkeith. Thomas was the forester of Newbattle Park, Gavin

was a baker, John a maltman, Francis a chirurgeon, and `Schir William' a

RECORDS OF A FAMILY OF ENGINEERS

priest. In the feuds of Humes and Heatleys, Cunninghams,

Montgomeries, Mures, Ogilvies, and Turnbulls, we find them

inconspicuously involved, and apparently getting rather better than they

gave. Schir William (reverend gentleman) was cruellie slaughtered on the

Links of Kincraig in 1582; James ('in the mill-town of Roberton'),

murdered in 1590; Archibald ('in Gallowfarren'), killed with shots of

pistols and hagbuts in 1608. Three violent deaths in about seventy years,

against which we can only put the case of Thomas, servant to Hume of

Cowden Knowes, who was arraigned with his two young masters for the

death of the Bastard of Mellerstanes in 1569. John ('in Dalkeith') stood

sentry without Holyrood while the banded lords were despatching Rizzio

within. William, at the ringing of Perth bell, ran before Gowrie House

`with ane sword, and, entering to the yearde, saw George Craiggingilt with

ane twa-handit sword and utheris nychtbouris; at quilk time James Boig

cryit ower ane wynds, "Awa hame! ye will all be hangit" ' - a piece of

advice which William took, and immediately 'depairtit.' John got a maid

with child to him in Biggar, and seemingly deserted her; she was hanged

on the Castle Hill for infanticide, June 1614; and Martin, elder in Dalkeith,

eternally disgraced the name by signing witness in a witch trial, 1661.

These are two of our black sheep. (1) Under the Restoration, one

Stevenson was a bailie in Edinburgh, and another the lessee of the

Canonmills. There were at the same period two physicians of the name

in Edinburgh, one of whom, Dr. Archibald, appears to have been a famous

man in his day and generation. The Court had continual need of him; it

was he who reported, for instance, on the state of Rumbold; and he was for

some time in the enjoyment of a pension of a thousand pounds Scots

(about eighty pounds sterling) at a time when five hundred pounds is

described as 'an opulent future.' I do not know if I should be glad or

sorry that he failed to keep favour; but on 6th January 1682 (rather a

cheerless New Year's present) his pension was expunged. (2) There need

be no doubt, at least, of my exultation at the fact that he was knighted and

recorded arms. Not quite so genteel, but still in public life, Hugh was

Under-Clerk to the Privy Council, and liked being so extremely. I gather

this from his conduct in September 1681, when, with all the lords and their

RECORDS OF A FAMILY OF ENGINEERS

servants, he took the woful and soul-destroying Test, swearing it 'word by

word upon his knees.' And, behold! it was in vain, for Hugh was turned

out of his small post in 1684. (3) Sir Archibald and Hugh were both

plainly inclined to be trimmers; but there was one witness of the name of

Stevenson who held high the banner of the Covenant - John, 'Land-

Labourer, (4) in the parish of Daily, in Carrick,' that `eminently pious

man.' He seems to have been a poor sickly soul, and shows himself

disabled with scrofula, and prostrate and groaning aloud with fever; but

the enthusiasm of the martyr burned high within him.

(1) Pitcairn's CRIMINAL TRIALS, at large. - [R. L. S.] (2)

Fountainhall's DECISIONS, vol. i. pp. 56, 132, 186, 204, 368.- [R. L. S.]

(3) IBID. pp. 158, 299. - [R. L. S.] (4) Working farmer: Fr.

LABOUREUR.

`I was made to take joyfully the spoiling of my goods, and with

pleasure for His name's sake wandered in deserts and in mountains, in

dens and caves of the earth. I lay four months in the coldest season of

the year in a haystack in my father's garden, and a whole February in the

open fields not far from Camragen, and this I did without the least

prejudice from the night air; one night, when lying in the fields near to the

Carrick-Miln, I was all covered with snow in the morning. Many nights

have I lain with pleasure in the churchyard of Old Daily, and made a grave

my pillow; frequently have I resorted to the old walls about the glen, near

to Camragen, and there sweetly rested.' The visible band of God

protected and directed him. Dragoons were turned aside from the

bramble-bush where he lay hidden. Miracles were performed for his

behoof. `I got a horse and a woman to carry the child, and came to the

same mountain, where I wandered by the mist before; it is commonly

known by the name of Kellsrhins: when we came to go up the mountain,

there came on a great rain, which we thought was the occasion of the

child's weeping, and she wept so bitterly, that all we could do could not

divert her from it, so that she was ready to burst. When we got to the top

of the mountain, where the Lord had been formerly kind to my soul in

prayer, I looked round me for a stone, and espying one, I went and brought

it. When the woman with me saw me set down the stone, she smiled, and

RECORDS OF A FAMILY OF ENGINEERS

asked what I was going to do with it. I told her I was going to set it up as

my Ebenezer, because hitherto, and in that place, the Lord had formerly

helped, and I hoped would yet help. The rain still continuing, the child

weeping bitterly, I went to prayer, and no sooner did I cry to God, but the

child gave over weeping, and when we got up from prayer, the rain was

pouring down on every side, but in the way where we were to go there fell

not one drop; the place not rained on was as big as an ordinary avenue.'

And so great a saint was the natural butt of Satan's persecutions. `I

retired to the fields for secret prayer about mid-night. When I went to

pray I was much straitened, and could not get one request, but "Lord pity,"

"Lord help"; this I came over frequently; at length the terror of Satan fell

on me in a high degree, and all I could say even then was - "Lord help."

I continued in the duty for some time, notwithstanding of this terror. At

length I got up to my feet, and the terror still increased; then the enemy

took me by the arm-pits, and seemed to lift me up by my arms. I saw a

loch just before me, and I concluded he designed to throw me there by

force; and had he got leave to do so, it might have brought a great

reproach upon religion. (1) But it was otherwise ordered, and the cause

of piety escaped that danger. (2)

(1) This John Stevenson was not the only `witness' of the name; other

Stevensons were actually killed during the persecutions, in the Glen of

Trool, on Pentland, etc.; and it is very possible that the author's own

ancestor was one of the mounted party embodied by Muir of Caldwell,

only a day too late for Pentland. (2) Wodrow Society's SELECT

BIOGRAPHIES, vol. ii.- [R. L. S.]

On the whole, the Stevensons may be described as decent, reputable

folk, following honest trades - millers, maltsters, and doctors, playing the

character parts in the Waverley Novels with propriety, if without

distinction; and to an orphan looking about him in the world for a potential

ancestry, offering a plain and quite unadorned refuge, equally free from

shame and glory. John, the land-labourer, is the one living and

memorable figure, and he, alas! cannot possibly be more near than a

collateral. It was on August 12, 1678, that he heard Mr. John Welsh on

the Craigdowhill, and `took the heavens, earth, and sun in the firmament

RECORDS OF A FAMILY OF ENGINEERS

that was shining on us, as also the ambassador who made the offer, and

THE CLERK WHO RAISED THE PSALMS, to witness that I did give

myself away to the Lord in a personal and perpetual covenant never to be

forgotten'; and already, in 1675, the birth of my direct ascendant was

registered in Glasgow. So that I have been pursuing ancestors too far

down; and John the land-labourer is debarred me, and I must relinquish

from the trophies of my house his RARE SOUL-STRENGTHENING

AND COMFORTING CORDIAL. It is the same case with the

Edinburgh bailie and the miller of the Canonmills, worthy man! and with

that public character, Hugh the Under-Clerk, and, more than all, with Sir

Archibald, the physician, who recorded arms. And I am reduced to a

family of inconspicuous maltsters in what was then the clean and

handsome little city on the Clyde.

The name has a certain air of being Norse. But the story of Scottish

nomenclature is confounded by a continual process of translation and half-

translation from the Gaelic which in olden days may have been sometimes

reversed. Roy becomes Reid; Gow, Smith. A great Highland clan uses

the name of Robertson; a sept in Appin that of Livingstone; Maclean in

Glencoe answers to Johnstone at Lockerby. And we find such hybrids as

Macalexander for Macallister. There is but one rule to be deduced: that

however uncompromisingly Saxon a name may appear, you can never be

sure it does not designate a Celt. My great-grandfather wrote the name

STEVENSON but pronounced it STEENSON, after the fashion of the

immortal minstrel in REDGAUNTLET; and this elision of a medial

consonant appears a Gaelic process; and, curiously enough, I have come

across no less than two Gaelic forms: JOHN MACSTOPHANE

CORDINERIUS IN CROSSRAGUEL, 1573, and WILLIAM M'STEEN

in Dunskeith (co. Ross), 1605. Stevenson, Steenson, Macstophane,

M'Steen: which is the original? which the translation? Or were these

separate creations of the patronymic, some English, some Gaelic? The

curiously compact territory in which we find them seated - Ayr, Lanark,

Peebles, Stirling, Perth, Fife, and the Lothians - would seem to forbid the

supposition. (1)

(1) Though the districts here named are those in which the name of

RECORDS OF A FAMILY OF ENGINEERS

Stevenson is most common, it is in point of fact far more wide-spread than

the text indicates, and occurs from Dumfries and Berwickshire to

Aberdeen and Orkney.

`STEVENSON - or according to tradition of one of the proscribed of

the clan MacGregor, who was born among the willows or in a hill-side

sheep-pen - "Son of my love," a heraldic bar sinister, but history reveals a

reason for the birth among the willows far other than the sinister aspect of

the name': these are the dark words of Mr. Cosmo Innes; but history or

tradition, being interrogated, tells a somewhat tangled tale. The heir of

Macgregor of Glenorchy, murdered about 1858 by the Argyll Campbells,

appears to have been the original 'Son of my love'; and his more loyal

clansmen took the name to fight under. It may be supposed the story of

their resistance became popular, and the name in some sort identified with

the idea of opposition to the Campbells. Twice afterwards, on some

renewed aggression, in 1502 and 1552, we find the Macgregors again

banding themselves into a sept of 'Sons of my love'; and when the great

disaster fell on them in 1603, the whole original legend reappears, and we

have the heir of Alaster of Glenstrae born 'among the willows' of a fugitive

mother, and the more loyal clansmen again rallying under the name of

Stevenson. A story would not be told so often unless it had some base in

fact; nor (if there were no bond at all between the Red Macgregors and the

Stevensons) would that extraneous and somewhat uncouth name be so

much repeated in the legends of the Children of the Mist.

But I am enabled, by my very lively and obliging correspondent, Mr.

George A. Macgregor Stevenson of New York, to give an actual instance.

His grandfather, great- grandfather, great-great-grandfather, and great-

great-great- grandfather, all used the names of Macgregor and Stevenson

as occasion served; being perhaps Macgregor by night and Stevenson by

day. The great-great-great-grandfather was a mighty man of his hands,

marched with the clan in the 'Forty- five, and returned with SPOLIA

OPIMA in the shape of a sword, which he had wrested from an officer in

the retreat, and which is in the possession of my correspondent to this day.

His great-grandson (the grandfather of my correspondent), being

converted to Methodism by some wayside preacher, discarded in a

RECORDS OF A FAMILY OF ENGINEERS

moment his name, his old nature, and his political principles, and with the

zeal of a proselyte sealed his adherence to the Protestant Succession by

baptising his next son George. This George became the publisher and

editor of the WESLEYAN TIMES. His children were brought up in

ignorance of their Highland pedigree; and my correspondent was puzzled

to overhear his father speak of him as a true Macgregor, and amazed to

find, in rummaging about that peaceful and pious house, the sword of the

Hanoverian officer. After he was grown up and was better informed of

his descent, `I frequently asked my father,' he writes, `why he did not use

the name of Macgregor; his replies were significant, and give a picture of

the man: "It isn't a good METHODIST name. You can use it, but it will

do you no GOOD." Yet the old gentleman, by way of pleasantry, used to

announce himself to friends as "Colonel Macgregor." '

Here, then, are certain Macgregors habitually using the name of

Stevenson, and at last, under the influence of Methodism, adopting it

entirely. Doubtless a proscribed clan could not be particular; they took a

name as a man takes an umbrella against a shower; as Rob Roy took

Campbell, and his son took Drummond. But this case is different;

Stevenson was not taken and left - it was consistently adhered to. It does

not in the least follow that all Stevensons are of the clan Alpin; but it does

follow that some may be. And I cannot conceal from myself the

possibility that James Stevenson in Glasgow, my first authentic ancestor,

may have had a Highland ALIAS upon his conscience and a claymore in

his back parlour.

To one more tradition I may allude, that we are somehow descended

from a French barber-surgeon who came to St. Andrews in the service of

one of the Cardinal Beatons. No details were added. But the very name

of France was so detested in my family for three generations, that I am

tempted to suppose there may be something in it. (1)

(1) Mr. J. H. Stevenson is satisfied that these speculations as to a

possible Norse, Highland, or French origin are vain. All we know about

the engineer family is that it was sprung from a stock of Westland Whigs

settled in the latter part of the seventeenth century in the parish of Neilston,

as mentioned at the beginning of the next chapter. It may be noted that the

RECORDS OF A FAMILY OF ENGINEERS

Ayrshire parish of Stevenston, the lands of which are said to have received

the name in the twelfth century, lies within thirteen miles south-west of

this place. The lands of Stevenson in Lanarkshire first mentioned in the

next century, in the Ragman Roll, lie within twenty miles east.

RECORDS OF A FAMILY OF ENGINEERS

CHAPTER I DOMESTIC

ANNALS

IT is believed that in 1665, James Stevenson in Nether Carsewell,

parish of Neilston, county of Renfrew, and presumably a tenant farmer,

married one Jean Keir; and in 1675, without doubt, there was born to these

two a son Robert, possibly a maltster in Glasgow. In 1710, Robert

married, for a second time, Elizabeth Cumming, and there was born to

them, in 1720, another Robert, certainly a maltster in Glasgow. In 1742,

Robert the second married Margaret Fulton (Margret, she called herself),

by whom he had ten children, among whom were Hugh, born February

1749, and Alan, born June 1752.

With these two brothers my story begins. Their deaths were

simultaneous; their lives unusually brief and full. Tradition whispered me

in childhood they were the owners of an islet near St. Kitts; and it is

certain they had risen to be at the head of considerable interests in the

West Indies, which Hugh managed abroad and Alan at home, at an age

when others are still curveting a clerk's stool. My kinsman, Mr.

Stevenson of Stirling, has heard his father mention that there had been

`something romantic' about Alan's marriage: and, alas! he has forgotten

what. It was early at least. His wife was Jean, daughter of David Lillie,

a builder in Glasgow, and several times `Deacon of the Wrights': the date

of the marriage has not reached me; but on 8th June 1772, when Robert,

the only child of the union, was born, the husband and father had scarce

passed, or had not yet attained, his twentieth year. Here was a youth

making haste to give hostages to fortune. But this early scene of

prosperity in love and business was on the point of closing.

There hung in the house of this young family, and successively in

those of my grandfather and father, an oil painting of a ship of many tons

burthen. Doubtless the brothers had an interest in the vessel; I was told

she had belonged to them outright; and the picture was preserved through

years of hardship, and remains to this day in the possession of the family,

the only memorial of my great- grandsire Alan. It was on this ship that

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RECORDSOFAFAMILYOFENGINEERS1RECORDSOFAFAMILYOFENGINEERSROBERTLOUISSTEVENSONRECORDSOFAFAMILYOFENGINEERS2INTRODUCTIONTHESURNAMEOFSTEVENSONFROMthethirteenthcenturyonwards,thename,underthevariousdisguisesofStevinstoun,Stevensoun,Stevensonne,Stenesone,andStewinsoune,spreadacrossScotlandfromthemouthoftheF...

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