|
|
Article: The Lighthouse Stevensons.(Review)
- Article from:
- New Criterion
- Article date:
- November 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Foundation for Cultural Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Bella Bathurst The Lighthouse Stevensons, HarperCollins, 278 pages, $24
There have arisen, over the years, dynasties of finance, politics, racketeering, music, maquillage, fireworks, the flying trapeze, and even jiujitsu, but few family businesses have proven quite so prodigious or beneficial to the commonweal as that of the Stevenson clan, four generations of whom built, between 1790 and 1940, ninety-seven lighthouses around the fearsome Scottish coast. As their most famous scion, Robert Louis, panegyrically put it, "Their works, the salt-encrusted, still survive;/ The sea bombards their founded towers." Just how they managed to leave such a briny vertical ...