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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