Brief Book Review: The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson (1889)
Robert Louis Stevenson suffered ill health throughout most of his short life.
Not
that alone: but the more deeply Mr Henry floundered in his brother’s toils, the
more clownish he grew; and the more the Master enjoyed his spiteful
entertainment, the more engagingly, the more smilingly, he went!
Henry Durie is dour, honest and
straight, he also lives deep within the shadows of his charming older brother,
Master James Durie. When James leaves for adventure by joining the Scottish
rebellion, Henry inherits the ancestral mansion and lands along with the title
of Lord Durrisdeer, as well as Miss Alison (who was initially smitten with
James).
After a life of
piracy and mutiny and some savage deeds, Master James returns, seeking to usurp Lord Henry.
What entails is the story of the devilish adventurer in battle with the domestic
gentleman.
The novel is a heterogeneous mix of
Stevenson. The brothers are polar opposites as in the hybrid Dr Jekyll and Mr
Hyde, and when James is on the high seas a reader may be reminded more of Treasure
Island. Stevenson includes a dash of
everything: history, tragedy and romance; buried treasure and pirates, the
mystical and the unknown. Perhaps it spreads itself too thinly, not everything
comes to fruition apart from observing the brothers’ descent: the masterful fake, James, dueling with the steadfast, Henry. Both are obsessed with one another and Henry
ultimately changes in the process.
Makellar, the chief narrator and
largely Lord Henry’s man, is truthful with his emotions yet incapable of
action during critical moments of the story. Although not an unreliable
narrator, it feels as if he is almost one, and this fuels and compels the
underlying tension within the text. He both loathes and admires the Master for
his performance and ability to cast a ‘glamour’ over others around him.
The Master of Ballantrae explores contrasting notions and ideas: the duty-bound
family man versus the manipulative adventurer in perpetual motion; the old
world versus the new world; the natural man versus the mystic. Despite the
ever-present conflict, the novel is subtler than most of
Stevenson’s works and tends not to have a tight narrative thread but meanders
about, sometimes deliciously and sometimes unsure of itself.
While The Master of Ballantrae is not the superb and much tighter The
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, it is
an absorbing read in its own unique way. It successfully displays Stevenson’s
mastery in terms of political and psychological intrigue, as well as his
literary genius.
