The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson

My brother the scoundrel

The Master of Ballantrae, published in 1889, is a historical novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. The story begins in Scotland with the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, when Bonnie Prince Charlie rebelled against King George II. At the estate of Durrisdeer in Scotland lives Lord Durie and his two sons. Not knowing which side will triumph in the rebellion, the family decides to cover both bases. It is determined by the toss of a coin that the elder son James, called the Master of Ballantrae and the rightful heir of Durrisdeer, will go off to fight on the side of the rebels, while the younger son Henry will remain at home to support the incumbent king. Little does the family realize that this coin toss will spark a vicious quarrel over the possession of the family estate.

Film adaptations of The Master of Ballantrae seem to emphasize swashbuckling adventure, but there really aren’t a lot of swords clashing or guns blazing in this book. The Master of Ballantrae has more in common with Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights than it does with The Three Musketeers or Rob Roy. Wuthering Heights is a book about a dysfunctional family who live in an isolated estate on the moors of Northern England. Bearing lifelong grudges, the family members devote themselves to making each other’s lives miserable, sometimes in darkly comic ways. Life at Durrisdeer is not far off from that. The plot of The Master of Ballantrae revolves around the bitter rivalry between the two brothers, each obsessed with getting the upper hand over the other. James and Henry each takes pleasure in the misfortune, destitution, or humiliation of his sibling.

Unlike the denizens of Wuthering Heights, however, the characters in The Master of Ballantrae do not stay confined to their manor. This story runs farther afield, with chapters taking place in Paris, India, and the United States—mostly in the woods of upstate New York, home to savage Natives. This globetrotting aspect of the book, coupled with flashbacks of the Master’s wartime escapades, qualify this book as an adventure novel, but by no mean a conventional one.

Stevenson’s books remind me of Joseph Conrad. Both authors write adventure novels that transcend genre fiction to achieve the heights of fine literature, never settling for a formulaic adventure narrative but instead pushing the envelope to defy readers’ expectations. Both tell stories set in exotic locales, or tales of sea travel, painted with loads of vivid local color. The difference between the two is that Conrad’s prose is often confusing, obscure, tedious, and pretentious, whereas Stevenson’s prose is smoothly flowing, clear, lively, and mellifluous. Stevenson is one of the English language’s consummate storytellers. It’s no wonder that he was revered by so many writers of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

About the only thing I don’t like about Stevenson’s writing is that he assumes a good deal of knowledge of Scottish history and politics on the part of the reader. Not having that knowledge myself, I usually feel like I’m not quite getting everything that he’s saying. There are a couple points in The Master of Ballantrae where I wasn’t quite sure of the political or legal ramifications of James or Henry’s strategy. But for those few instances, however, this novel remains remarkably fresh, accessible, and entertaining over a century after it was published. Sir Walter Scott, another author of Scottish historical adventures, wrote prose that reads as if it were written 200 years ago. Stevenson’s writing, on the other hand, reads as if it might have been penned last week. The Master of Ballantrae is a work of classic, timeless storytelling that can still move, amuse, and excite readers of the 21st century.  

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Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes by Robert Louis Stevenson

Backpacking through Protestant France

Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson is best remembered as a novelist of classic books like Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In his own lifetime, however, Stevenson was known and respected as an all-around man of letters who also penned nonfiction, poetry, and travel writing. Among the latter category, one of Stevenson’s earliest works is Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, published in 1879.

In 1878, Stevenson made a 12-day trip through the Cévennes, a mountainous region of South Central France. He purchased a donkey named Modestine to carry his belongings, which included a prototypical sleeping bag in lieu of a tent. “Backpacking” (for lack of a better word, since it’s really the donkey’s back that’s doing the work), for pleasure rather than out of necessity, was practically unheard of at this time, so Stevenson was an eccentric rarity. These days we see all kinds of outdoor travel memoirs, but the genre barely existed in the 1870s, so Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes was a pioneering work of travel literature.

Stevenson and his donkey trek from town to town through rugged rural terrain, stopping to spend the night at inns, monasteries, or campsites in the open air. Stevenson interacts with the locals and provides insight into the regional culture. The Cévennes is (or was, in 1878) a predominantly Protestant stronghold in an overwhelmingly Catholic France. The area has a history of religious warfare. In the early 18th century, Protestant insurgents of the Cévennes, known as Camisards, rebelled against France’s King Louis XIV, who had declared Protestantism illegal. Louis made his point by destroying many of the towns in the region. At the time Stevenson visited the Cévennes, the Catholics and Protestants were living side by side in relative peace and harmony, but he is very familiar with this history and occasionally goes off on extended asides to discuss the past events of the religious conflict. Judging by the number of novels written on the subject, British novelists of the 19th century seem to have been fascinated by Catholic vs. Protestant warfare, but to today’s reader such conflicts often seem less romantic and heroic and more of a foolish waste of human life over theological hair-splitting.

Every work of travel writing is a mix of first-person memoir and third-person geography lesson. In this case, I would have preferred less personal reminiscences of Stevenson and his donkey and more revealing insight into the Cévennes and its people. Stevenson does include a fair amount of local color in his encounters with the people, but since this is an outdoor adventure narrative one would expect more attention paid to the natural landscape, which comes across a bit generic here. In his discussions of the local inhabitants, Stevenson gets so wrapped up in the Catholic/Protestant distinction that other aspects of Cévennes life get neglected. It’s almost as if nobody has jobs because they’re too busy practicing their religions. Even so, the most interesting portion of the book is Stevenson’s stay at the Trappist monastery of Our Lady of the Snows, because one really does get some insight into the lifestyle of the monks who live there.

For those who have ever dreamt of wandering the French countryside, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes is a pleasant journey but not one overwhelmingly memorable. This book may have been cutting-edge for its time, but travel writing has come along way since the 1870s, and this could have used a touch more National Geographic-style secular investigation into the environment and culture of its setting.
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The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson

Standard medieval coming-of-age adventure

Robert Louis Stevenson is mostly thought of today as a writer of adventure novels for boys, such as Treasure Island and Kidnapped. In his lifetime and shortly after his death, however, he was practically worshipped as a literary god by writers of the Victorian and Edwardian eras like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Jack London, Joseph Conrad, and Ernest Hemingway. As a fan of classic literature, including some of the aforementioned writers, I keep hoping to discover some hidden Stevenson gem that merits such praise, but with the exception of Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde his appeal has thus far eluded me. The Black Arrow, published in 1888, is another coming-of-age adventure for young male readers. Much like Kidnapped, I found The Black Arrow to be rather mediocre fare with nary a hint of genius in sight. Even Stevenson himself didn’t have a very favorable opinion of this book.

The Black Arrow takes place during the War of the Roses, the 15th century conflict between the houses of Lancaster and York, two branches of the English royal family fighting for the throne. As the novel opens, the forces of both parties are gathering for the Battle of Risingham (a fictional battle, I believe?). Young squire Richard “Dick” Shelton doesn’t have an opinion either way, but his guardian, Sir Daniel Brackley, is for Lancaster, so Dick takes up arms for that side. Before the battle begins, one of Dick’s colleagues is killed by an arrow from an unseen archer. The arrow, colored black, bears a note pronouncing a sentence of death on Sir Daniel and three of his closest cohorts. The note also hints that Sir Daniel may be responsible for the death of Dick’s father, which causes the young man to suspect his benefactor and wonder if he is fighting on the right side of this war.

Soon Dick befriends a young man who is really a girl in disguise, in fact the young woman to whom Dick is arranged to be married. Dick is unaware of his companion’s feminine gender, but it is revealed to the reader in the first chapter or two when it would have been better kept as a surprise. The same can be said for the details of Dick’s father’s death, which would have made a good murder mystery had the villains not been revealed early on. Although punctuated occasionally by brief bloody combat, the plot meanders, and many of its turns are predictable. Unlike Jim Hawkins of Treasure Island, Dick never really emerges as an interesting character, so the reader doesn’t care much about what happens to him. Dick also performs some bad acts over the course of the book, and afterwards expresses remorse, but he never satisfactorily atones for his transgressions enough to impart a sincere moral lesson.

The most interesting aspect of the novel is the appearance of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who would later become King Richard III. This book will mostly appeal to history buffs interested in the War of the Roses, but everyone else will find it quite confusing to keep track of who’s fighting on which side and why it makes a difference. The characters themselves seem to choose their sides arbitrarily, with little knowledge of what they’re fighting for. After indulging in the romantic glorification of chivalrous carnage for most of the book, even Stevenson briefly points out the pointlessness of a war in which men sought reputation and material gain by fighting for a cause they didn’t even believe in. As a depiction of the Middle Ages, The Black Arrow falls far short of the gold standard set by Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, and even Conan Doyle’s potboiler novels of medieval times (The White Company, Sir Nigel) make for far more compelling reads.
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The Mad Scientist Megapack, edited by John Gregory Betancourt

One big bad apple spoils the bunch
The Mad Scientist Megapack, published in 2014, is one of many inexpensive ebook fiction collections compiled by Wildside Press. Like many of the books in Wildside’s Megapack series, this one is a mixed bag of classic literature, vintage pulp fiction, and more recent contributions from contemporary science fiction writers. The Megapacks often mix short stories and novellas with full-length novels, a strategy which doesn’t always pay off. This volume, for example, consists of a single novel that takes up a whopping 35% of the ebook file, followed by 22 pieces of short fiction. If you’re going to devote so much space to one work, the novel in question better be a pretty good one, but unfortunately David V. Reed’s Myshkin is not. This 1953 book is about an inventor who creates a device strikingly similar to today’s 3D printers, but then uses it for unethical purposes, the results of which ultimately come back to haunt him. While the premise is interesting, the book is a tedious and nonsensical string of poorly written dialogue and bad jokes, and I greatly regret the time I spent reading it. By contrast, Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a classic mad scientist tale well worth reading, is the second-longest selection in the book but still less than a third the length of the interminable Myshkin.

These megapacks are so cheap there’s hardly any point asking whether they’re worth the money, but is this one worth your time? For most of the stories here, the answer is probably no. This is not one of Wildside’s better compilations. About a third of the selections, however, are good enough to make this collection worth checking out. “Food for Thought” by Jack Dolphin, for example, is an excellent story told in the form of transcripts from an inquiry investigating the disappearance of an oceanological expedition. It delivers great sci-fi suspense that calls to mind the ‘80s horror movie The Thing. Matthew Johnson’s “Public Safety” is a delighfully innovative murder mystery that takes place in New Orleans. This New Orleans, however, exists in an alternate world where the French Revolutionary government of 1793 never ended and apparently the U.S. never bought the Louisiana Purchase. What a fascinating concept and a pleasant surprise!

Of the older authors, H.P. Lovecraft’s novella “Herbert West—Reanimator” is a great horror story that really pushes the boundaries of creepiness for 1922. Hugh B. Cave’s “The Corpse on the Grating” is another fine horror tale similar in style and subject matter to Lovecraft’s entry. Clark Ashton Smith also delivers a diabolical yarn, “Devotee of Evil,” about a mysterious modern-day alchemist attempting to distill the pure essence of evil. In Edmond Hamilton’s “The Man Who Evolved,” a mad doctor discovers how to accelarate human evolution. Meanwhile, on the kitschy side, “Dr. Varsag’s Experiment” by Craig Ellis is exactly the kind of enjoyably dumb, corny weirdness one might expect to encounter in a volume of this title.

Another selection worth mentioning is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1843 story “The Birthmark,” but despite the author’s reputation it’s a pretty mediocre and predictable affair. All in all, there’s a fair amount of drivel in this anthology, but if you like pulpy sci-fi the selections mentioned above are sure to satisfy. As for the rest, you might be thinking, well, as long as I’ve bought the thing I might as well read it all. While that’s an admirable attitude, for god’s sake skip Myshkin.

Stories in this collection
(Some novel-length works have been reviewed individually. Click on titles below.)

Myshkin by David V. Reed

A Light That Shamed the Sun by C.J. Henderson 

Incomplete Data by H.B. Fyfe

The Corpse on the Grating by Hugh B. Cave 

The Cosmic Teletype by Carl Jacobi 

Monster Kidnaps Girl at Mad Scientist’s Command by Lawrence Wyatt-Evans 

Great Minds by Edward M. Lerner 

The Man Who Evolved by Edmond Hamilton 

No Guts, No Glory by Edward M. Lerner 

The Devotee of Evil by Clark Ashton Smith 

Song of Death by Ed Earl Repp 

Status: Complete by Leslie J. Furlong 

Food for Thought by Jack Dolphin 

Dr. Varsag’s Experiment by Craig Ellis 

Public Safety by Matthew Johnson 

The World in a Box by Carl Jacobi 

Machine Record by Theodore Cogswell

The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne 

Herbert West—Reanimator by H.P. Lovecraft

Zapt’s Repulsive Paste by J.U. Giesy 

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Man Who Stopped the Earth by Henry J. Kostkos 

Sympathy for Mad Scientists by John Gregory Betancourt
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Stories by English Authors: France by Robert Louis Stevenson, et al.

Oui to Ouida, but otherwise ennui

Ouida

This book is part of the Stories by English Authors series published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1896. The ten volumes in the series don’t appear to have any particular order, and each is simply subtitled according to the setting of the stories included. This book of five short stories set in France is the eighth volume I’ve reviewed in the series, after having previously read the collections on England, London, Scotland, Ireland, Germany and Northern Europe, Africa, and The Sea. So far I haven’t been terribly impressed by the series overall. This France volume is middle-of-the-road for the series, and of mediocre quality compared to literature in general.

You would think that leading off with a heavy hitter like Robert Louis Stevenson would start the book on a high note, but “A Lodging for the Night” is not one of his better stories. The narrative takes place in Paris in 1456. A poet passes a cold winter’s evening in a seedy tavern with his gang of friends, all thieves and murderers. Stevenson devotes much of the story’s length to its medieval atmosphere and the witty verbal repartee among the brigands; so much so that the plot is almost an afterthought. That’s a shame because it does get rather interesting toward the end, but by then it’s a little too little, a little too late.

The second entry by Ouida, the pseudonym of Maria Louis Ramé, is far more successful. She has been one of the bright spots in this series, having also provided the great story “A Dog of Flanders” to the Germany and Northern Europe volume. In this France collection, her story “A Leaf in the Storm” is set in a picturesque village on the banks of the Seine, where a 92-year-old woman and her grandson enjoy their simple lives, until the peace of their sleepy hamlet is interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War. Here Ouida’s writing calls to mind the war narratives of Emile Zola in both its brutal pessimism and its compelling emotional power.

Next up, another well-known British author, Wilkie Collins, offers a story of an Englishman traveling in Paris. This one ventures into the territory of horror and mystery. It builds suspense based on a premise that is quite clever but unrealistic. The narrative has an extended prologue, almost as long as the story itself, narrated by an itinerant portrait painter who explains how this tale was related to him during a portrait sitting. The story doesn’t benefit from this protracted setup.

The last two entries, by lesser-known authors, are the worst selections in the book. “Michel Lorio’s Cross,” by Hesba Stretton, is set in the stunning seaside city of Mont St-Michel in Normandy. The hero, one of the town’s native sons, is shunned by his neighbors for having converted to Protestantism. Though ostensibly a religious fable, Stretton uses the schmaltzy tale to portray French Catholics as intolerant and illiterate. The book’s final selection, S. J. Weyman’s “A Perilous Amour,” is set around 1600 and involves a plot to assassinate King Henry IV of France. The story is such a confusing mess, however, little joy is derived from the political intrigue.

This book serves its purpose in the Stories by English Authors series, but France has such a rich literature of its own, why bother reading a bunch of Brits’ takes on the country? In fact, another Scribner’s series, Stories by Foreign Authors, published in 1898, has three volumes of French short stories that are all far superior to this collection.

Stories in this collection

A Lodging for the Night by Robert Louis Stevenson 

A Leaf in the Storm by Ouida

The Traveller’s Story of a Terribly Strange Bed by Wilkie Collins 

Michel Lorio’s Cross by Hesba Stretton

A Perilous Amour by S. J. Weyman 

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Stories by English Authors: Germany, and Northern Europe by Beatrice Harraden, et al.

One of the better volumes in this series

Robert Louis Stevenson

This is the fifth book I’ve read in the Stories by English Authors series, which was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1896. Each of the ten volumes in the series presents a collection of five or six works of short fiction by British (not necessarily English) authors. Each book highlights stories set in a particular location. In this volume, subtitled Germany, and Northern Europe, the narratives take place in Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and of course, Germany. Up to now I haven’t been too impressed with the Stories by English Authors books, but this installment in the series is clearly a cut above the others that I’ve come across so far.

The book opens with Beatrice Harraden’s “The Bird on Its Journey.” A young woman shows up alone at a Swiss resort. Her profession is apparently piano tuner, and she is looked down upon by the high class English tourists. It all leads up to a surprise ending that is no surprise. The story benefits from its likeable female lead, but of course in 19th-century literature she must have a suitor, and the one provided is annoyingly inane. Next up is “Koosje: A Study of Dutch Life,” by John Strange Winter. A Dutch girl in Utrecht finds a starving woman in the street and invites her into her father’s home, a decision that leads to unforeseen consequences. The writing is a bit awkward at times, but the story has warmth, and it’s not entirely predictable. The book closes with “Queen Tita’s Wager,” by William Black, a comic romance about British tourists vacationing in the Black Forest of Germany. A young Brit tries to win the heart of the innkeeper’s daughter. There’s some good humor in this one, but it would have been a lot better if the Romeo you’re supposed to be rooting for weren’t such a snobbish jerk.

While those three stories are all fair to good in quality, it’s the remaining two selections that really make this collection worthwhile. The novella “A Dog of Flanders” by Ouida (pseudonym of Marie Louise de la Ramée) is a touching tale of love between a boy and his dog. Nello, a young orphan, lives in a village outside of Antwerp with his grandfather. The two are as poor as beggars, but when they find an injured dog left for dead by his master, he becomes a loyal member of the family and brings happiness to their lives. While melodramatic at times, it’s very well done as far as melodramas go.

Even better, however, is Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Markheim.” (There’s nothing to indicate that this one takes place in Northern Europe, other than the German flavor of the titular surname.) On Christmas evening, a lone customer enters an antique dealer’s shop. After a brief exchange of words, the customer kills the shopkeeper and proceeds to rob the place. Like Edgar Allen Poe might have done, Stevenson focuses less on the actual crime than he does on the psychological state of the murderer after the deed is done. The story then takes a very unexpected turn and morphs into a riveting philosophical thriller.

The ten volumes in the Stories by English Authors series are not numbered, so you don’t have to read them in any particular order. I would suggest starting with this one, since it’s clearly one of the better books in the bunch. If you’re interested in 19th-century literature, you might also want to check out two other Scribner’s series: Stories by American Authors, from 1884, and Stories by Foreign Authors, from 1898. The former ten-volume collection is rather disappointing, but the latter is particularly good.

Stories in this collection

The Bird on Its Journey by Beatrice Harraden 

Koosje: A Study of Dutch Life by John Strange Winter 

A Dog of Flanders by Ouida 

Markheim by Robert Louis Stevenson 

Queen Tita’s Wager by William Black

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Stories by English Authors: Scotland by J. M. Barrie, et al.

Nae muckle tae gie excited abit

Sir Walter Scott

This is the fourth book I’ve reviewed from the ten-volume Stories by English Authors series published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1896. Each book in the series is titled after the location in which its stories are set—Scotland in this case, of course. The title is misleading, however, in that the series apparently uses the word “English” to mean “British.” The six authors represented in this collection of short fiction are in fact Scottish, not English. Some of Britain’s greatest literature has come from Scotland, but this isn’t it. Despite the presence of luminaries like Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson, this volume doesn’t admirably represent the state of Scottish literature in the late 19th century.

One problem with Scottish tales, if those included here are any indication, is that authors often feel compelled to dress up their stories in uniquely Scottish local color, starting with the requisite Scottish accent, and apparently the thicker the better. Thus, all the dialogue in these six stories has been transcribed into the Scottish brogue, with varying degrees of success. “No” becomes “nae,” “know” becomes “ken,” “much” becomes “muckle,” and so on. This presents two problems. First and foremost, it can be a pain to read, and sometimes you can’t even figure out what’s being said, so the very story that’s being told is obscured. The second and more vexing problem is when the story itself is rather inconsequential. The author’s primary intention in writing the piece is to demonstrate his prowess in transcribing the highland dialect. In such cases, you end up with formulaic, run-of-the-mill stories dressed up in the trappings of picturesque Scottishness. At least a few of the entries here are guilty of this greater sin.

Perhaps only because I approached this book with optimism, its first entry is its best. In “The Courting of T’nowhead’s Bell” by J. M. Barrie, a young weaver courts his sweetheart, but he’s not the only young man in this rural village who aspires to be the girl’s husband. The competition between the two suitors is quite funny, but you have to wade through the thick accent to get at the humor beneath. Another humorous tale, “The Glenmutchkin Railway” by “Professor Aytoun” has the potential to be funny, but it goes on way too long. It’s about two con artists building a pyramid scheme around an imaginary railroad, but it gets bogged down in stock market minutiae.

The two entries by Scott and Stevenson are worth mentioning because of the authors’ illustrious careers, but the stories included here are far from their best work. Both stories touch on the horror genre and might have been truly scary if not for the painstaking decipherment required to read the text. Scott’s “Wandering Willie’s Tale” concerns a tenant farmer who is denied a receipt for payment of his rent, and has to go to hell to get one. In Stevenson’s “Thrawn Janet,” a fearsome preacher takes as his housekeeper a woman accused of dabbling in deviltry. There are a lot of spooky goings-on, but in the end they don’t add up to anything that makes sense.

Rounding out the collection are “A Doctor of the Old School” by Ian Maclaren and “The Heather Lintie” by S. R. Crockett, probably the least interesting works in the book. Scotland deserves better. How about some Arthur Conan Doyle? It seems these six stories were chosen for their diligent efforts to render the charming national accent into text, with less thought given to their literary merit.

Stories in this collection

The Courting of T’nowhead’s Bell by J. M. Barrie 

“The Heather Lintie” by S. R. Crockett

A Doctor of the Old School by Ian Maclaren 

Wandering Willie’s Tale by Sir Walter Scott 

The Glenmutchkin Railway by Professor Aytoun 

Thrawn Janet by Robert Louis Stevenson

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