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Kidnapped

Robert Louis Stevenson

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Kidnapped

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

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

WITH A PREFACE BY MRS. STEVENSON

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PREFACE TO THE

BIOGRAPHICAL EDITION

While my husband and Mr. Henley were engaged in

writing plays in Bournemouth they made a number of

titles, hoping to use them in the future. Dramatic

composition was not what my husband preferred, but the

torrent of Mr. Henley’s enthusiasm swept him off his feet.

However, after several plays had been finished, and his

health seriously impaired by his endeavours to keep up

with Mr. Henley, play writing was abandoned forever,

and my husband returned to his legitimate vocation.

Having added one of the titles, The Hanging Judge, to the

list of projected plays, now thrown aside, and emboldened

by my husband’s offer to give me any help needed, I

concluded to try and write it myself.

As I wanted a trial scene in the Old Bailey, I chose the

period of 1700 for my purpose; but being shamefully

ignorant of my subject, and my husband confessing to

little more knowledge than I possessed, a London

bookseller was commissioned to send us everything he

could procure bearing on Old Bailey trials. A great

package came in response to our order, and very soon we

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were both absorbed, not so much in the trials as in

following the brilliant career of a Mr. Garrow, who

appeared as counsel in many of the cases. We sent for

more books, and yet more, still intent on Mr. Garrow,

whose subtle cross-examination of witnesses and masterly,

if sometimes startling, methods of arriving at the truth

seemed more thrilling to us than any novel.

Occasionally other trials than those of the Old Bailey

would be included in the package of books we received

from London; among these my husband found and read

with avidity:—

THE

TRIAL

JAMES STEWART

in Aucharn in Duror of Appin

FOR THE

Murder of COLIN CAMPBELL of Glenure, Efq;

Factor for His Majefty on the forfeited

Estate of Ardfhiel.

My husband was always interested in this period of his

country’s history, and had already the intention of writing

a story that should turn on the Appin murder. The tale

was to be of a boy, David Balfour, supposed to belong to

my husband’s own family, who should travel in Scotland

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as though it were a foreign country, meeting with various

adventures and misadventures by the way. From the trial

of James Stewart my husband gleaned much valuable

material for his novel, the most important being the

character of Alan Breck. Aside from having described him

as ‘smallish in stature,’ my husband seems to have taken

Alan Breck’s personal appearance, even to his clothing,

from the book.

A letter from James Stewart to Mr. John Macfarlane,

introduced as evidence in the trial, says: ‘There is one Alan

Stewart, a distant friend of the late Ardshiel’s, who is in

the French service, and came over in March last, as he said

to some, in order to settle at home; to others, that he was

to go soon back; and was, as I hear, the day that the

murder was committed, seen not far from the place where

it happened, and is not now to be seen; by which it is

believed he was the actor. He is a desperate foolish fellow;

and if he is guilty, came to the country for that very

purpose. He is a tall, pock-pitted lad, very black hair, and

wore a blue coat and metal buttons, an old red vest, and

breeches of the same colour.’ A second witness testified to

having seen him wearing ‘a blue coat with silver buttons, a

red waistcoat, black shag breeches, tartan hose, and a

feathered hat, with a big coat, dun coloured,’ a costume

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referred to by one of the counsel as ‘French cloathes

which were remarkable.’

There are many incidents given in the trial that point to

Alan’s fiery spirit and Highland quickness to take offence.

One witness ‘declared also That the said Alan Breck

threatened that he would challenge Ballieveolan and his

sons to fight because of his removing the declarant last

year from Glenduror.’ On another page: ‘Duncan

Campbell, change-keeper at Annat, aged thirty-five years,

married, witness cited, sworn, purged and examined ut

supra, depones, That, in the month of April last, the

deponent met with Alan Breck Stewart, with whom he

was not acquainted, and John Stewart, in Auchnacoan, in

the house of the walk miller of Auchofragan, and went on

with them to the house: Alan Breck Stewart said, that he

hated all the name of Campbell; and the deponent said, he

had no reason for doing so: But Alan said, he had very

good reason for it: that thereafter they left that house; and,

after drinking a dram at another house, came to the

deponent’s house, where they went in, and drunk some

drams, and Alan Breck renewed the former Conversation;

and the deponent, making the same answer, Alan said,

that, if the deponent had any respect for his friends, he

would tell them, that if they offered to turn out the

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possessors of Ardshiel’s estate, he would make black cocks

of them, before they entered into possession by which the

deponent understood shooting them, it being a common

phrase in the country.’

Some time after the publication of Kidnapped we

stopped for a short while in the Appin country, where we

were surprised and interested to discover that the feeling

concerning the murder of Glenure (the ‘Red Fox,’ also

called ‘Colin Roy’) was almost as keen as though the

tragedy had taken place the day before. For several years

my husband received letters of expostulation or

commendation from members of the Campbell and

Stewart clans. I have in my possession a paper, yellow with

age, that was sent soon after the novel appeared,

containing ‘The Pedigree of the Family of Appine,’

wherein it is said that ‘Alan 3rd Baron of Appine was not

killed at Flowdoun, tho there, but lived to a great old age.

He married Cameron Daughter to Ewen Cameron of

Lochiel.’ Following this is a paragraph stating that ‘John

Stewart 1st of Ardsheall of his descendants Alan Breck had

better be omitted. Duncan Baan Stewart in Achindarroch

his father was a Bastard.’

One day, while my husband was busily at work, I sat

beside him reading an old cookery book called The

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Compleat Housewife: or Accomplish’d Gentlewoman’s

Companion. In the midst of receipts for ‘Rabbits, and

Chickens mumbled, Pickled Samphire, Skirret Pye, Baked

Tansy,’ and other forgotten delicacies, there were

directions for the preparation of several lotions for the

preservation of beauty. One of these was so charming that

I interrupted my husband to read it aloud. ‘Just what I

wanted!’ he exclaimed; and the receipt for the ‘Lily of the

Valley Water’ was instantly incorporated into Kidnapped.

F. V. DE G. S.

DEDICATION

MY DEAR CHARLES BAXTER:

If you ever read this tale, you will likely ask yourself

more questions than I should care to answer: as for

instance how the Appin murder has come to fall in the

year 1751, how the Torran rocks have crept so near to

Earraid, or why the printed trial is silent as to all that

touches David Balfour. These are nuts beyond my ability

to crack. But if you tried me on the point of Alan’s guilt

or innocence, I think I could defend the reading of the

text. To this day you will find the tradition of Appin clear

in Alan’s favour. If you inquire, you may even hear that

the descendants of ‘the other man’ who fired the shot are

in the country to this day. But that other man’s name,

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inquire as you please, you shall not hear; for the

Highlander values a secret for itself and for the congenial

exercise of keeping it I might go on for long to justify one

point and own another indefensible; it is more honest to

confess at once how little I am touched by the desire of

accuracy. This is no furniture for the scholar’s library, but

a book for the winter evening school-room when the tasks

are over and the hour for bed draws near; and honest

Alan, who was a grim old fire-eater in his day has in this

new avatar no more desperate purpose than to steal some

young gentleman’s attention from his Ovid, carry him

awhile into the Highlands and the last century, and pack

him to bed with some engaging images to mingle with his

dreams.

As for you, my dear Charles, I do not even ask you to

like this tale. But perhaps when he is older, your son will;

he may then be pleased to find his father’s name on the

fly-leaf; and in the meanwhile it pleases me to set it there,

in memory of many days that were happy and some (now

perhaps as pleasant to remember) that were sad. If it is

strange for me to look back from a distance both in time

and space on these bygone adventures of our youth, it

must be stranger for you who tread the same streets—who

may to-morrow open the door of the old Speculative,

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where we begin to rank with Scott and Robert Emmet

and the beloved and inglorious Macbean—or may pass the

corner of the close where that great society, the L. J. R.,

held its meetings and drank its beer, sitting in the seats of

Burns and his companions. I think I see you, moving there

by plain daylight, beholding with your natural eyes those

places that have now become for your companion a part

of the scenery of dreams. How, in the intervals of present

business, the past must echo in your memory! Let it not

echo often without some kind thoughts of your friend,

R.L.S. SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH.

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