Auld Author: Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘The Master of Ballantrae’by Michael Bloor

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94) had a short life but was a prolific author. His first work (a history) was published when he was just 16 and he went on to write 13 novels, 6 collections of short stories, and several books of non-fiction. They weren’t all wonderful: a sequel (‘Catriona’) to the brilliant ‘Kidnapped,’ is sometimes cited as a perfect example of an ill-advised sequel; and ‘St Ives,’ incomplete at his death, was then completed by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, mores the pity. But there are quite enough diamonds among his output to justify his global reputation.

He is mainly known today for ‘Treasure Island’ (1883), the adventure story that made him famous, and for ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ (1886), the novella that gave us the Jekyll-and-Hyde character. If those are the only two you’ve read, then in my view as a reader (not a critic), you’re missing out on at least three treats – ‘Kidnapped’ (1893) an adventure story set in the Scottish Highlands in the aftermath of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion; ‘Weir of Hermiston’ (1896) the strikingly different book Stevenson was writing when he died, published posthumously; and, last but not least, ‘The Master of Ballantrae’ (1889).

The Master of Ballantrae is another adventure story, but an adventure story like few others with more twists and turns than a python on speed. The Wikipedia entry for the book makes a gallant and lengthy effort to cover all the plot details and I refer readers to that. Suffice to say here that the book is set initially in Lord Durrisdeer’s house on the coast of the Solway Firth in South West Scotland at the time of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion, home to elderly Lord Durrisdeer, his two sons, James Durie (whose courtesy title is ‘The Master of Ballantrae’), the younger brother Henry Durie, and Durrisdeer’s ward, the heiress Lady Alison. It moves on (via a rebellion, a duel, smugglers, pirates, and Indian Wars) to the High Seas, Paris, India, the swamps of North Carolina, New York, and the wild forests of up-state New York (twice). It’s almost needless to say that the only attempts to film the story (in 1953 and 1984) had to butcher the plot into bits. Indeed, this book is a good proof of the plain fact that a book can make a plot twist and turn and gallop a good deal further than any film. Though, in fairness, the 1953 film was an opportunity for Errol Flynn buckle his swash with great style in the title role.

The two brothers are very different characters: Henry, the younger brother, is a solid, decent dependable sort, slightly awkward in company. James, the Master of Ballantrae, is mercurial – brave to the point of wildness, selfish to the edge of mania, witty, accomplished, and spoiled rotten by his doting father. Clearly, The Master was a gift of a role for Errol Flynn.

Bonnie Prince Charlie’s landing in Scotland, and his objective in raising an army to try and seize back the throne for the Stuarts, is posing a problem for landed families like the Duries of Durrisdeer. They have to play both sides if they are to avoid disaster. Henry believes the responsible course would be for the younger son to join the Prince. But the Master sees a chance to win honour and great fortune by riding at the Prince’s side. The two brothers fiercely disagree: Henry foresees that he will be sneered  at for lurking safe at home.

The upshot was the Master rode away with a dozen sons of the tenantry, and with a white cockade in his hat sown on by Lady Alison and wetted with her tears. That ride set in train a tumult of events and brought tragedy to the house of Durrisdeer.

That’s as much of the plot that I’m going to give away. But the book has another gift to give the reader. That tumult of events is narrated by not one, but two quirky and inadvertently entertaining narrators: the first is Ephraim Mackellar, the estate steward and family confidant, a dry stick of an old-fashioned Presbyterian, timorous but with a strong moral compass, who finds himself drawn into events, despite himself; and the second is Colonel Francis Burke, a boastful but endearing Irish adventurer who had attached himself first to the Stuart cause and then to the Master, and who also finds himself in the thick of the action.

Lastly, there is the matter of the writing itself. Stevenson was prolific, and the plot is fast-moving, but that’s not to say that the text suffers. I’d guess he had a lot of fun mimicking pawky Ephrain Mackellar and faint-hearted Colonel Burke. Fun or not, Stevenson took great care in his work. Graham Balfour, Stevenson’s cousin, and his secretary in Stevenson’s last years in Samoa, wrote the first Stevenson biography. In an appendix, he reproduced the first three different beginnings of Stevenson’s ‘Weir of Hermiston.’ Stevenson revised repeatedly.

Here’s a sample, chosen at random, of Stevenson’s writing. Namely, Mackellar’s pawky judgement of The Master’s continual need for conversation on their shared mid-winter journey across the Atlantic in a leaky and elderly sailing ship: ‘… he loved the note of his own tongue, as, indeed, he entirely loved all the parts and properties of himself; a sort of imbecility which almost necessarily attends on wickedness.’* (remind you of anyone?).

It’s all like that.

* p.264, R. L. Stevenson, The Master of Ballantrae, Cassell & Co,: London.

Michael Bloor