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Updated: May 18, 2025
Cunningham, speaking of the fog-bells at Bell Rock and Skerryvore lighthouses, says he doubts if either bell has been the means of saving a single vessel from wreck during fog, and he does not recall an instance of a vessel reporting that she was warned to put about in the fog, or that she ascertained her position in any respect by hearing the sound of the bell in either place. Gen.
The first thing was to change the name of the place to Skerryvore, in honour of the best known of the lighthouses built by the Stevenson family, the name being partly suggested by the fact that a distant view of the sea was to be had from the upper windows.
Thomas Stevenson, the father of Robert Louis, like the others of his family, contributed largely to lighthouse building and harbor improvement, serving under his older brother, Allen, in building the Skerryvore, one of the most famous deep-sea lights erected on a treacherous reef off the west coast where, for more than forty years, one wreck after another had occurred.
In later years, when he had gone to the other world, and the days grew long and lonely, this game of solitaire, so strangely acquired from the bearded Russian, became a solace. But of all the guests that came to Skerryvore, the best loved and most welcome was Mrs. Stevenson's fellow countryman, Henry James, who often ran down to see them.
The Highland country where the scenes were laid, he had traversed many times, and the Island of Earraid, where David was shipwrecked, was the spot where he had spent some of his engineering days. Stevenson had often said the "brownies" in his dreams gave him ideas for his tales. At Skerryvore they came to him with a story that among all his others is counted the greatest.
An ugly reef is this of the Dhu Heartach; no pleasant assemblage of shelves, and pools, and creeks, about which a child might play for a whole summer without weariness, like the Bell Rock or the Skerryvore, but one oval nodule of black-trap, sparsely bedabbled with an inconspicuous fucus, and alive in every crevice with a dingy insect between a slater and a bug.
She makes the whole garden her special charge and delight, but this particular corner of it is as a kingdom conquered, where to reign. Mrs. Stevenson, the tutelary genius of Skerryvore, is a woman of small physical stature but surely of heroic mould.
Skerryvore was a pleasant, ivy-covered brick cottage, surrounded by a half-acre of garden, which has been so delightfully described by William Archer in the Critic of November 5, 1887, that one can do no better than quote his words: "Though only a few paces from the public road, it is thoroughly secluded. 'Linnet haunted garden ground, Where still the esculents abound.
"The man, ye should ken, was cast upon a rock in the sea, where it appears the Good People were in use to come and rest as they went through to Ireland. The name of this rock is called the Skerryvore, and it's not far from where we suffered shipwreck.
They named the cottage "Skerryvore," after the famous lighthouse he had helped to build in his young days, and it was their home for the next three years busy ones for R.L.S. It was a real joy to have his father and mother and Bob Stevenson with them again and his friends in London frequently drop in for a visit. His health was never worse than during the Bournemouth days.
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