NOTE TO "THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAES"

1887

The "Master of Ballantrae" is the only one of Stevenson's novels conceived and largely written in America. It was at Sarenac Lake in the Adirondack Mountains, in December 1887, that Stevenson set forth with a huge amount of enthusiasm upon this romance, and the bronze plaque, set into the wall of the Sarenac cottage, shows not only the author in his heavy coat and fur cap, but the opening words describing the circumstances of the story's inception.

The book was not completed until the following May, when Stevenson was at Honolulu, and it first appeared in print, as the "Author's Edition" in that year of 1888, although the book itself was not issued until 1889. In neither of these issues, nor in the serial publication in Scribner's Magazine, (November, 1881 to October, 1889) did Stevenson's note, recounting the genesis of the tale appear; and it was only after his death that this little paper was included in a volume of Miscellanies in the Edinburgh Edition. There, however, asterisks following the last sentence indicated the fragmentary nature of the paper, whose status is now for the first time at hand.

The hitherto unpublished portions of Stevenson's little article in the "Master of Ballantrae" is, in the following pages, divided into three parts. Part I would possibly have been omitted by Stevenson had he superintended the final publication of his paper, inasmuch as it is given over to generalization. All writers know how prone they are to beginning an essay in this manner, instead of getting right

down to the business of their thought. Then again the
semi-apologetic note of this paragraph is another almost
always unnecessary convention, making tending to
raise rather than satisfy doubts. In any case, the direct
way in which the paper was posthumously published:

"I was walking one night in the verandah of a small house
in which I lived, outside the hamlet of Sarene; it was
winter; the night was very dark; the air extraordinarily
clear and cold and sweet with the purity of forests," is
far more intriguing than a generalizing sentence.

Part I—unquestionably belongs in Stevenson's
manuscript after that paragraph of the already printed
paper where Stevenson states that he had found lying "ready
in his memory the fable and the character required. Here
again it is possible that Stevenson might have omitted this
paragraph from a final version of the paper on the score that
the specific mention of the name of an actual individual and
characters used in the family of a somewhat terrible plot,might
better be left unrecorded. This theory, however, is rather
tenuous, and so decidedly does the here published paragraph
add to the interest of Stevenson's paper that one inclines
to believe that the real explanation for the non-appearance
of this portion of the note was its non-discovery.

Of that portion of the paper printed here as Part
II—there can be no doubt whatever. It is the necessary
conclusion following directly after the already printed
paragraph, where Stevenson expresses surprise that the Irish-
man of his book "reminded some critics of Barré Landon after
all". The present context goes right on from this point
and continues with paragraph that take us right into Stevenson's

mind amid some curious perplexities of authorship. In
telling us why, after the first half of the book was
already in type he had to re-write the "Master of Bellentrae",
Stevenson takes us so far into his confidence as to allude
to the *xxix*th slight regard in which his portrayal of
feminine types was held by his family.

An account of how a story arose in the writer's mind, from and
towards what points the course of invention travelled, what facts were
utilized, what were easy and what were hard, and how the finished work
looks in the eyes of its begetter, has always seemed to me excellent
reading for the curious. Placed in front, I should be inclined to judge
it an impertinence; placed as a rear guard to the volume, it may serve
a useful purpose on such an occasion. The story may be read, and it may
lack yet half an hour of your accustomed bedtime; or you may have bought
the volume to beguile the tedium of a journey, and have come to the last
page some way short of your expected destination; at such time no one
would care to embark on matter entirely new, and yet he might be ready
enough to dwell a little longer from a new standpoint on the same train of
thought which he has been following so long. The magician after he
has prepared his slight of hand will sometimes afford a second and a
fresh pleasure by explaining the method of his dexterity. As some such
afterpiece, for an empty moment, it is hoped this note may be regarded.

It was the case of Marquis of Tallibardine that first struck me; the situation of a younger brother succeeding in this underhand irregular fashion, and under an implied contract of seniority, to his elder's will; place and future, struck me as so full of bitterness, and the mental relations of a family thus circumstanced so fruitful of misjudgment and domestic animosity. It took my fancy then as a drama in a nutshell, to be solved between four persons and six within four walls; with my new incident and with my new aim, I saw myself all at once and again, and rejoiced to be committed to great spaces and voyages, and a long revolution of time. But in the matter of the characters involved, I determined to adhere to the original four actors. With four characters, two brothers, a father, and a heroine (all nameless but in a determined relation) I was to carry the reader to and fro in space over a good half of the world, and sustain his interest in time through the extent of a generation.

Surely, beyond the worsted (f) lace of his gentility, and a tric of celtic boastfulness, my poor chevalier, luminently proud of his degradation, unaffectedly unconscious of his genuine merit, is a creature utterly distinct in the essential part of him from the brute whom Thackery disinterred out of the Newgate Calendar and set weskitting for time of the duration of the English language.

The need of a confidant for Mr. Henry led to the introduction of Mackellar, for it was only to a servant that a man such as I conceived Mr. Henry could unblossom; and no sooner had he begun to take on lineament, than I perceived the uses of the character, and was at once tempted to intrust to him the part of spokesman. Nothing more pleases me then for one of my puppets to display himself in his own language; in no other way, than this of the dramatic monologue, are humorous and incongruous traits/ so persuasively presented. The narration, put in the mouth of the land steward, would supply, as if by the way and accidentally, a certain sub-dued element of comedy, much to be desired, and scarce otherwise, except by violence, to be introduced. Besides which, the device enabled me to view my heroine from the outside, which was doubtly desirable. First, and generally, because I am always afraid of my women, which are not admired

in my home circle: second, and particularly, because I should be thus
enabled to pass over without realization an ugly and delicate business:
the Master's courtship of his brother's wife. Accordingly, and perfectly
satisfied with myself, I hastily wrote and rewrote the first half of my
story, down to the end of the dual, through the eyes and in the words of
the good Ephraim. Cowardice is always punished; I had no sooner got this
length, I had no sooner learned to appreciate the advantages of my method,
than I was brought face to face with its defects and fell into a panic
fear of the conclusion. Now, with a narrator like Mackellar, should I
transact the melodrama in the wilderness? How with his style, so full
of disabilities, attack a passage which must be either altogether seizing
or altogether silly, silly and absurd? The first half was already in type,
when I made up my mind to have it thus done, and recommence the tale in
the third person; friends advised, one this way, one that: my
publishers were afraid of the delay: indolence had doubtless a voice: I
had besides a natural love for the documentary method in narration:
and I ended by committing myself to the impersonation of Mackellar, and
suffering the publication to proceed.

I was doubtless right and wrong; the book has suffered and has
gained in consequence: gained in relief and verisimilitude, suffered in
fire, force and (as one of my critics has well said) in "large dramatic
rythm." The same astute and kindly judge complains of "the dredging
machine of Mr. Mackellar's memory, shooting out the facts bucketful by
bucketful;" and I understand the ground of his complaint, although my
sense is otherwise. The realism I love is that of method; not only that
all in a story may possibly have come to pass, but that all might naturall
be recorded - a realism that justifies the book itself as well as the
fable it commemorates.

How could anybody have

PREFACE FOR "THE MERRY MEN"

Stevenson loved to write prefaces and dedications. The dedications in his books are to friends and relatives, to artists and authors, to classmates, to his nurse, to old and young, to Englishmen and Scots, to Americans and French, and even so there were unpublished dedications to the manuscripts that he left behind him. As regards prefaces some XXXXX have been allowed; the liberty of placing in print, and the present paper is one of a number that do not precede the writings for which they were intended. The following pages show Stevenson aware of the prejudice against prefaces thirty or forty years ago, a prejudice that no longer exists, now when everyone seems to be writing prefaces either for himself, or for some other author. Yet how decidedly worth while it is not to published Stevenson's introductory remarks for the finest of his volumes of tales. Always the keen critic, even of his own works, he does not hesitate to express admiration for "Will o' the Mill", "Markheim" and "Thrawn Janet". For the first two, his admiration seems to be unqualified, as well it may be, for those they are both little masterpieces. Markheim, one of the most subtle dramatic studies of psychology, in the record of fiction having murder as its theme, is a tale of rarer if less powerful symbolism than "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde".

One is not quite sure that Stevenson is entirely ingenuous in positing that an author is shut off from the pleasure of reading his own works because he has passed through the weary business of revising the proofs. That, of course, is his reaction; but one questions, whether after the passage of time, Stevenson did not turn with enjoyment to "Treasure Island", and George Meredith to "Rhode Fleming".

The Merry Men -- #2

taste finding it pizzicato and affected to the last degree; others finding
in it much geniality and good nature. The reader

This island Eilean Amos, who first under that name, and more
recently under its true name, Eilean Banaid, has done me yeoman's service
and is going to First it was the backbone of The Merry Men; the it made
a tolerable figure in Kidnapped; and now (its last appearance) it is to
supply the present volume with a preface.

These tales here reprinted (if they interest the reader at all,
will do so by what I may be allowed to refer to as their merit. In this
private place)

The author sees in his work something very different from the
reader; the two parts are incompatible; the unhappy man who has written
and rewritten every word with inky fingers, and then passed through the
prolonged disgust of proof sheets, can never hope to find in the volume
any of that has lost all human touch with his own literature. They are
presumably the books he would like to read, since they are those he has
been pleased to write; yet he can never read them. The gloss is off,
To him only
they show the web, they speak to him of disappointment and defeat, and are
the monuments of failure, slimy cocoons where he had aspired to find a
pity is not felt for
butterfly. Enough justice has not been done writers in this genuine
have long had a desire
privation. I would give a good deal to read Treasure Island which cannot
be gratified; I might read the Rig Veda in the original; never Treasure
Island; and think of the sad case of Mr. Meredith who cannot read
Roda Fleming, Mr. Anstey who can never read A Fallen Idol, or Mr. Lang
who is debarred from the Letters to Dead Authors!

an
Yet there is a certain intimate pleasure, hard to describe, and
quite peculiar to the writer of imagination's work. It is in some sense the
fulfilment of his life; here old childish day dreams here have taken shape,
the poignant and vague aspirations.