19th century, but timely
Stevenson's adventure classic Kidnapped spins eternal tale of politics and dissent
Kidnapped
Robert Louis Stevenson Modern Library
Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped appeared in 1886, the same year as The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and just three years after Treasure Island. The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature calls it “one of the most brilliant adventure stories of all times”— and that's no exaggeration.
Yet Kidnapped is also more than just exciting and more than just a kids' book. It's a thoughtful novel about politics and dissent, rich in moral complexity and, for a reader in 2021, weirdly contemporary at times. It's also beautifully written.
At its centre is David Balfour, who at 17, after the death of his father in 1751, hikes to a small town near Edinburgh with a letter for an uncle he never knew he had. Old Ebenezer Balfour turns out to be miserly and widely hated and moreover conspires to have the lad tricked onto a brig sailing for the Carolinas, where he will be sold into indentured slavery.
Though frequently brutal, the captain and officers of the Covenant aren't stock villains. When not drunk or tempted by the prospect of easy wealth, they can even be almost admirable. Human beings, as Stevenson's work repeatedly shows us, are consistently inconsistent. Think of the multi-faceted Long John Silver and Dr. Jekyll. Or consider Alan Breck Stewart.
One foggy night the Covenant, still in Scotland's coastal waters, inadvertently runs down a rowboat. Everyone on board drowns, except for one man who rescues himself by leaping up and grabbing the ship's bowsprit:
“He was smallish in stature,” recalls David, “but well set up and as nimble as a goat ... Altogether I thought of him, at the first sight, that here was a man I would rather call my friend than my enemy.”
Alan, it turns out, is a Jacobite, one of the highlanders who, defeated at the Battle of Culloden five years previous, nonetheless continue to support the “restoration” of the Stuarts to the throne of England. Despite a price on his head, he secretly travels back and forth between Scotland and France, collecting money for the exiles and relying on members of his clan to help him dodge the government's forces. In particular, Alan hates with a passion all the Campbells, whose chief — known as the Red Fox — functions as the crown's agent of oppression and exploitation.
David — apolitical, law-abiding and a lowlander to boot — quickly succumbs to Alan's glamour, swagger and almost whimsical egotism. This highlander with a taste for French finery is, in fact, one of those charismatic rogues we simply can't resist, like that foppish Caribbean pirate, Captain Jack Sparrow, or the cocky galactic mercenary Han Solo.
From the moment this coolly self-possessed outlaw swings aboard the Covenant, Kidnapped begins to speed up, to move faster and faster, like the quicksilver thrusts of Alan's sword, and only slows occasionally so the reader and our heroes can catch their breath.
Given that Kidnapped returns again and again to the theme of loyalty, in all its forms, and does so against a backdrop of violence and civic turmoil, it now seems unexpectedly, even upsettingly relevant. Divided 17th-century Scotland can't help bringing to mind the divided 21st-century United States. Just as the “wild highlanders” supported Bonnie Prince Charlie, so fanatical Trumpians today swear faithful allegiance to The Donald. Some of the more deluded, I suspect, even picture themselves as daring swashbucklers, fighting for their clan chieftain's “restoration.”
Viewed through this lens of current politics, Kidnapped grows into what Henry James called it — “a novel of extreme psychological truth.”