Kidnapped (novel)
Kidnapped is a historical
fiction adventure
novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, written as a boys' novel and first published in the
magazine Young Folks from May to July 1886. The novel has attracted the praise
and admiration of writers as diverse as Henry
James, Jorge
Luis Borges, and Hilary
Mantel.[1] A sequel, Catriona,
was published in 1893.
Kidnapped is set around real 18th-century Scottish events, notably
the "Appin murder", which occurred in the
aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1745. Many of the characters are real people, including one of
the principals, Alan Breck Stewart.
The political situation of the time is portrayed from multiple viewpoints, and
the Scottish Highlanders are treated sympathetically.
The
full title of the book is Kidnapped: Being Memoirs of the Adventures of
David Balfour in the Year 1751: How he was Kidnapped and Cast away; his
Sufferings in a Desert Isle; his Journey in the Wild Highlands; his
acquaintance with Alan Breck Stewart and other notorious Highland Jacobites;
with all that he Suffered at the hands of his Uncle, Ebenezer Balfour of Shaws,
falsely so-called: Written by Himself and now set forth by Robert Louis
Stevenson.
Biographical background and publication
Kidnapped was first published in the magazine Young Folks from May to July 1886, and as a novel in the same year.
Plot
The
central character and narrator is 17-year-old David Balfour. (Balfour is
Stevenson's mother's maiden name.) His parents have recently died, and he is
out to make his way in the world. He is given a letter by the minister of
Essendean, Mr. Campbell, to be delivered to the House of Shaws in Cramond, where David's uncle, Ebenezer Balfour, lives.
David
arrives at the ominous House of Shaws and is confronted by his paranoid Uncle
Ebenezer, who is armed with a blunderbuss. His uncle is also miserly, living on "parritch"
and small
ale, and the House of Shaws itself is
partially unfinished and somewhat ruinous. David is allowed to stay and soon
discovers evidence that his father may have been older than his uncle, thus
making David the rightful heir to the estate. Ebenezer asks David to get a
chest from the top of a tower in the house but refuses to provide a lamp or
candle. David is forced to scale the stairs in the dark and realises that not
only is the tower unfinished in some places, but the steps simply end abruptly
and fall into an abyss. David concludes that his uncle intended for him to have
an "accident" so as not to have to give over his nephew's
inheritance.
David
confronts his uncle, who promises to tell David the whole story of his father
the next morning. A ship's cabin
boy, Ransome, arrives the next day and
tells Ebenezer that Captain Hoseason of the brig Covenant needs to meet him to discuss business.
Ebenezer takes David to a pier on the Firth
of Forth, where Hoseason awaits, and David
makes the mistake of leaving his uncle alone with the captain while he visits
the shore with Ransome. Hoseason later offers to take them on board the brig
briefly, and David complies, only to see his uncle returning to shore alone in
a skiff. David is then immediately struck senseless.
David
awakens, bound hand and foot, in the hold of the ship, and learns that the
captain plans to sell him into slavery in the
Carolinas. But the ship encounters contrary
winds, which drive her back toward Scotland. Fog-bound near the Hebrides, they strike a small boat. All of the small boat's crew are
killed except one man, Alan Breck Stewart,
who is brought on board and offers Hoseason a large sum of money to drop him
off on the mainland. David later overhears the crew plotting to kill Alan and
take all his money. David and Alan barricade themselves in the round house,
where Alan kills the murderous Shuan, and David wounds Hoseason. Five of the
crew members are killed outright, and the rest refuse to continue fighting.
Hoseason
has no choice but to give Alan and David passage back to the mainland. David
tells his tale to Alan, who in turn states that his birthplace, Appin, is under
the tyrannical administration of Colin Roy of Glenure, the King's factor and a Campbell. Alan, who is a Jacobite agent and wears a
French uniform, vows that should he find the "Red Fox" he will kill
him.
The
Covenant tries to negotiate a difficult channel without a proper chart
or pilot, and is soon driven aground on the notorious Torran
Rocks. David and Alan are separated in
the confusion, with David being washed ashore on the isle of Erraid, near Mull, while Alan and the surviving crew row to safety on that
same island. David spends a few days alone in the wild before getting his
bearings.
David
learns that his new friend has survived, and David has two encounters with
beggarly guides: one who attempts to stab him with a knife, and another who is
blind but an excellent shot with a pistol. David soon reaches Torosay, where he
is ferried across the river, receives further instructions from Alan's friend
Neil Roy McRob, and later meets a catechist who takes the lad to the mainland.
As
he continues his journey, David encounters none other than the Red Fox (Colin
Roy) himself, who is accompanied by a lawyer, a servant, and a sheriff's
officer. When David stops the Campbell man to ask him for directions, a hidden
sniper kills
the King's hated agent.
David
is denounced as a conspirator and flees for his life, but by chance reunites
with Alan. The youth believes Alan is the assassin, but Alan denies
responsibility. Alan and David then begin their flight through the heather, hiding from government soldiers by day. As the trek drains
David's strength, his health rapidly deteriorates; by the time they are set
upon by wild Highlanders who are sentries for Cluny Macpherson, an outlawed chief in hiding, the lad is barely conscious.
Alan convinces Cluny to give them shelter, and David is tended by a Highland
doctor. He soon recovers, though in the meantime Alan loses all of their money
at cards with Cluny, only for Cluny to give it back when David practically begs
for it.
When
David and Alan resume their flight in cold and rainy weather, David becomes ill
again, and Alan carries him on his back down the burn to reach the nearest house, fortuitously that of a Maclaren, Duncan Dhu, who is both an ally of the Stewarts and a
skilled piper. David is bedridden and given a doctor's care, while Alan
hides nearby, visiting after dark.
In
one of the most humorous passages in the book, Alan convinces an innkeeper's
daughter from Limekilns
(unnamed in Kidnapped but called "Alison Hastie" in its
sequel) that David is a dying young Jacobite nobleman, despite David's
objections, and she ferries them across the Firth of Forth. There, they meet a
lawyer of David's uncle's, Mr. Rankeillor, who agrees to help David receive his
inheritance. Rankeillor explains that David's father and uncle had once
quarrelled over a woman, David's mother, and the older Balfour had married her,
informally giving the estate to his brother while living as an impoverished
schoolteacher with his wife. This agreement had lapsed with his death.
David
and the lawyer hide in bushes outside Ebenezer's house while Alan speaks to
him, claiming to be a man who found David nearly dead after the wreck of the Covenant
and says he is representing folk holding him captive in the Hebrides. He asks
David's uncle whether Alan should kill David or keep him. The uncle flatly
denies Alan's statement that David had been kidnapped but eventually admits
that he paid Hoseason "twenty pound" to take David to "Caroliny".
David and Rankeillor then emerge from their hiding places, and speak with
Ebenezer in the kitchen, eventually agreeing that David will be provided
two-thirds of the estate's income for as long as his uncle lives.
The
novel ends with David and Alan parting ways on Corstorphine
Hill; Alan returns to France, and David
goes to a bank to settle his money.
Genre
Kidnapped is a historical romance,
but the time it was written attitudes towards the genre had evolved from the
earlier insistence on historical accuracy to one of faithfulness to the spirit
of a bygone age. In the words of a critic writing in Bentley's Miscellany, the historical novelist "must follow rather the
poetry of history than its chronology: his business is not to be the slave of
dates; he ought to be faithful to the character of the epoch".[3] Indeed, in the preface to Kidnapped Stevenson warns
the reader that historical accuracy was not primarily his aim, remarking
"how little I am touched by the desire of accuracy".[4]
Stevenson
presents the Jacobite version of the Appin
murder in the novel,[5]
but sets the events in 1751, whereas in reality the murder occurred in 1752.[6]
Characters
David
Balfour is accused of being an accomplice in the Appin
murder, a real life event. The characters
of Alan Breck Stewart,
Colin Roy Campbell,
James Stewart,
Cluny MacPherson and Rob
Roy MacGregor were real people.[5]
Major themes
A
central theme of the novel is the concept of justice, the imperfections of the
justice system and the lack of a universal definition of justice. To David
justice means the restoration of his inheritance, whereas for Alan it means the
death of his enemy Colin Roy of Glenure.
Literary
critic Leslie Fiedler has suggested that a unifying "mythic concept"
in several of Stevenson's books, including Kidnapped, is what might be
called the "Beloved Scoundrel", or the "Devil as Angel",
"the beauty of evil".[7] The Rogue in this instance is of course Alan, "a
rebel, a deserter, perhaps a murderer ... without a shred of Christian
morality".[8] Good nevertheless triumphs over evil, as in David Balfour's
situation.
Literary significance and criticism
Kidnapped was well received and sold well while Stevenson was alive.
After his death many viewed it with scepticism, seeing it as simply a boys'
novel, but by the mid-20th century it had regained critical approval and study.
While it is basically an adventure novel, it raises various moral issues, such as
the nature of justice and the fact that friends may have different political
viewpoints.
Adaptations
The
novel has been adapted a number of times, and in multiple media.
Marvel Illustrated
published a comic book
version in 2007–2008, by Roy
Thomas and Mario
Gully, who had previously adapted Treasure
Island.[9]
A
four-part adaptation written by Catherine Czerkawska and starring David
Rintoul as David Balfour and Paul Young as
Alan Breck Stewart was broadcast on BBC
Radio 4 in 1985. A more recent two-part
adaptation written by Chris Dolan and starring Owen Whitelaw as David Balfour
and Michael Nardone as Alan Breck was broadcast also on BBC Radio 4 in 2016.[10]
James Annesley case
Beginning
with some of the earliest reviews of Kidnapped in 1886,[11] it has been thought the novel was structured after the true
story of James Annesley,
a presumptive heir to five aristocratic titles who was kidnapped at the age of
12 by his uncle Richard and shipped from Dublin to America in 1728.[12] He managed to escape after 13 years and return to reclaim
his birthright from his uncle in one of the longest courtroom dramas of its
time.[12]
Annesley
biographer Ekirch stated: "It is inconceivable that Stevenson, a voracious
reader of legal history, was unfamiliar with the saga of James Annesley, which
by the time of Kidnapped's publication in 1886 had already influenced
four other 19th-century novels, most famously Sir
Walter Scott's Guy
Mannering (1815) and Charles
Reade's The Wandering Heir
(1873)."[11][12]
Edinburgh: City of Literature
As
part of the events to celebrate Edinburgh becoming the first UNESCO City of Literature,[13] three versions of Kidnapped were made freely
available by being left in public places around the city;[14] throughout February 2007, 25,000 copies of the novel were
distributed in that way.[15]
- A new printing of Barry Menikoff's edition of the novel.[15]
- A retelling of the tale for children.[14]
- A 2007 graphic novel version created by Alan Grant and Cam Kennedy. Translations of the graphic novel were also published in Lowland Scots and Scots Gaelic.[14]
References
Citations
· Mantel, Hilary Mantel. "The
Art of Fiction No. 226 – Hilary Mantel". The Paris Review. Retrieved 6 June 2015.
· · Kidnapped,
Chapter IX: "[Breck] was smallish in stature" and Chapter XXIV:
""O, Alan," says [Balfour], "and me a good twelve inches
taller?""
· · Cramb, Auslan (14
November 2008). "18th
Century murder conviction 'should be quashed'". The Daily Telegraph.
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