The Master of Ballantrae Robert Louis Stevenson Arttype Edition

Book by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Master of Ballantrae: A Winter'southward Tale
Painting by Wal Paget in the Cassell edition
Author	Robert Louis Stevenson
Country	Scotland
Language	English
Genre	Historical, Adventure novel
Publisher	Cassell
Publication engagement	1889
Media type	Impress (hardback & paperback)

The Main of Ballantrae: A Winter'due south Tale is an 1889 novel by the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson, focusing upon the conflict between two brothers, Scottish noblemen whose family unit is torn apart by the Jacobite ascension of 1745. He worked on the book in Tautira subsequently his wellness was restored.^[one]

Variant openings [edit]

In the offset edition of 1889 the book began with Chapter One, "Summary of Events During the Master's Wanderings". For the 2nd edition (known as the Edinburgh Edition) Stevenson added a preface in which he pretended to have been given the manuscript past an acquaintance. There is as well an "Fine art-Blazon Edition" which includes a preface and contains an Editorial Note. Stevenson stated in a letter of the alphabet that he fabricated this change because he wanted to describe a portrait of a real-life friend of his upon whom the acquaintance in the preface is based. In the many reprintings since then the preface has sometimes been included and sometimes non. Nada in the preface, however, has whatsoever direct relevance to the story.

Plot summary [edit]

The Rising [edit]

The novel is presented as the memoir of one Ephraim Mackellar, steward of the Durrisdeer manor in Scotland. The novel opens in 1745, the year of the Jacobite rising. When Bonnie Prince Charlie raises the banner of the Stuarts, the Durie family—the Laird of Durrisdeer, his older son James Durie (the Master of Ballantrae) and his younger son Henry Durie—make up one's mind on a common strategy: i son volition bring together the uprising while the other will bring together the loyalists. That mode, whichever side wins, the family unit's noble condition and manor will be preserved. Logically, the younger son should join the rebels, but the Chief insists on beingness the rebel (a more heady option) and contemptuously accuses Henry of trying to usurp his place, comparing him to Jacob. The two sons concord to toss a money to decide who goes. The Master wins and departs to join the Rising, while Henry remains in support of King George Ii.

The Rising fails and the Master is reported dead. Henry becomes the heir to the estate, though he does not assume his blood brother'due south title of Master. At the insistence of the Laird (their father) the Master's heartbroken fiancée marries Henry to repair the Durie fortunes. Some years laissez passer, during which Henry is unfairly vilified by the townspeople for betraying the rising. He is treated with complete indifference past his family, since his wife and his father both spend their time mourning the fallen favourite. The balmy-tempered Henry bears the injustice quietly, even sending money to support his brother's abandoned mistress, who abuses him foully, and her child, who she claims is his blood brother's bounder.

Colonel Shush [edit]

In April 1749, however, a messenger appears, one Colonel Francis Burke, an Irishman who had been out with the Prince. He bears messages from the Master, who is even so alive and living in France. At this signal the narrator, Mackellar, introduces a story within the story: it is the memoir of Colonel Burke, from which Mackellar extracts the sections that deal with the Master. From Burke's memoir information technology appears that the Chief was attached to the Prince solely for the take a chance of money and high station, and was a quarrelsome hindrance, always favouring whatsoever he thought the Prince wanted to hear. He abandoned the Ascension as soon every bit it looked sure to fail and, in company with Burke, took ship for French republic, refusing to expect in case they might be able to rescue the Prince. However, the ship was erstwhile and unseaworthy, and commanded by an incompetent captain. Afterward vii days of being lost in bad weather, it was taken by pirates. The pirate helm, who called himself Teach (not the famous Edward Teach, called Blackbeard, who had died some thirty years previously, but an imitator), took both Burke and the Master aboard to bring together his pirate crew, but had the rest of the ship's visitor killed.

Burke and the Master canvas with the pirates for some time. The Primary eventually succeeds in overthrowing Teach and effectively becoming the new captain. He proves to be brutal and ruthless, seizing several ships and slaughtering all their crews to prevent their identifying him. Eventually he steers the ship to the coast of N Carolina, where he abandons it and its crew, to be taken by the Royal Navy, while he escapes with Shush and ii confederates, carrying all the ship's treasure between them. In the course of their escape through the swamp the Master treacherously kills one of the confederates and leaves another to dice. Burke and the Master obtain passage to Albany on a merchant transport, deserting it in one case information technology makes port. And so they strike out beyond land for Canada, where they promise to observe sanctuary among the French, who supported the Ascent. They take along a guide, an Indian trader named Chew, merely he dies of a fever and the pair became hopelessly lost. For some days the Master navigates his style through the wilderness past tossing a coin, saying, "I can think of no better way to express my contemptuousness of human reason." In the terminate they coffin the treasure. Burke records that the Master blamed his younger brother for all his troubles:

"Have you ever a blood brother?" said he. "By the approval of Sky", said I, "not less than five." "I have the i", said he, with a strange voice; so before long, "He shall pay me for all this", he added. And when I asked him what was his brother'south function in our distress, "What!" he cried, "he sits in my place, he bears my name, he courts my wife; and I am here alone with a damned Irishman in this tooth-chattering desert! Oh, I have been a common dupe!" he cried.

After the Master's uncharacteristic explosion the two quarrel and separate. They are reunited in a French fort, and travel dorsum to France. Colonel Burke has kept his share of the pirate treasure, while the Master is on "the largest pension on the Scots Fund of whatever refugee in Paris".

The Master in Exile [edit]

Henry Durie and Mackellar learn something of the Master's piratical ventures, but practise not inform the Laird or Mrs Durie, both of whom continue to regard the Primary as a kind of affections lost to them. Henry continues to support the Chief's mistress and their illegitimate child, and too answers the Chief's demands for coin. The Primary is in fact well-supported by a pension assigned past the French monarchy to Scotsmen who lost their estates due to the Rise, but he continues to need money from his brother anyway, accusing him of stealing the inheritance:

"'My dearest Jacob' – This is how he begins!" cries he – "'My dearest Jacob, I once called y'all and then, yous may recollect; and yous have at present washed the business, and flung my heels as loftier as Criffel.' What exercise y'all think of that, Mackellar", says he, "from an only brother? I declare to God I liked him very well; I was always staunch to him; and this is how he writes! Only I volition not sit down downwardly under the imputation" – walking to and fro – "I am as good as he; I am a amend man than he, I call on God to prove it! I cannot give him all the monstrous sum he asks; he knows the estate to be incompetent; merely I will give him what I have, and it is more than he expects. I accept borne all this also long. See what he writes farther on; read it for yourself: 'I know you lot are a niggardly dog.' A niggardly canis familiaris! I niggardly? Is that true, Mackellar? You think it is?" I actually thought he would take struck me at that. "Oh, you all call back so! Well, you shall see, and he shall meet, and God shall see. If I ruin the estate and go barefoot, I shall stuff this bloodsucker. Let him enquire all – all, and he shall have it! It is all his by rights. Ah!" he cried, "and I foresaw all this, and worse, when he would not let me go."

Henry bleeds the manor dry to answer the Primary'due south demands, consequently getting a reputation every bit a miser. He does non tell even his family where the coin is going. This continues for vii years, in the course of which Henry sends the Principal some eight thousand pounds.

Colonel Burke Again [edit]

In July 1756 Mackellar receives a letter from Colonel Burke, who is in Champagne. Burke relates that the Chief's courtroom intrigues have backfired on him, and he has been imprisoned in the Bastille. He has since been released, but has lost his Scots Fund alimony and the regiment he had been commanding, and is now destitute once again. He plans an expedition to India, simply it will crave a good deal of coin to send him on his way. Mackellar exults at this chance to exist rid of the leech, just by an sick fate this letter of the alphabet has crossed with some other letter, in which Henry has told the Primary that the estate is at last exhausted.

The Primary Returns [edit]

In November 1756 the Master returns to Durrisdeer, nether the alias of "Mr Bally". He meets Henry on the road to the business firm, sneeringly comparing the two of them to Jacob and Esau, and ominously says that Henry has chosen his fate by not like-minded to the Principal's plan to go to India. On his return he ingratiates himself with his father and with his blood brother's wife (who was once his ain fiancée). Neither have seen him in eleven years and both are overjoyed at his render. With satanic gifts of deceit and manipulation, the Main turns the family against Henry, ever putting him in the wrong and cruelly insulting him, while making it seem as though Henry is insulting the Master. To the family unit it seems that the Master is a long-suffering and kind-hearted hero and saint, while Henry is a roughshod, unfeeling monster. In private the Primary gloats to Henry over his success, taunting him by pointing out that their father does not love him, that Henry's daughter prefers the Main'southward company and that, despite the Master's falseness and crimes, he is everyone's favourite. He exults that he will destroy Henry's virtue:

"[Y]ou need non wait such impotent malice, my expert fly. Yous can be rid of your spider when you please. How long, O Lord? When are you to be wrought to the bespeak of a denunciation, scrupulous brother? Information technology is one of my interests in this dreary hole. I e'er loved experiment."

Henry suffers all this in stoical silence. Mackellar eventually discovers that the Master betrayed the Jacobites and sold himself out to the Hanoverian government by becoming a paid spy for King George, and that this is the real reason for his rubber return. Nonetheless, fifty-fifty when Henry confronts the Chief with this, correct in the middle of the Master's holding along on the corking risk he is running by returning to be with his family, the Laird and Mrs Durie remain bullheaded to the Main's nature. Fifty-fifty when the Chief demands that the Laird break the entail and sell off a large part of the estate at a disadvantageous price to finance the Principal's trek to India, the Laird remains besotted and rebukes Henry for lack of generosity when he objects.

Somewhen the Main goads Henry one fourth dimension also many. On the dark of 27 February 1757 he tells Henry that Mrs Durie has never loved him and has ever loved the Chief instead. Henry strikes him in the mouth with his fist and the brothers resort to a duel with swords. Henry runs the Master through and he falls to the footing, seemingly expressionless. Mackellar takes Henry indoors and and so rouses the house, but when he and Henry'due south wife render to the duelling ground the body is gone. Past the tracks they tin can see that the torso has been dragged away by smugglers ("gratis traders"), who carried information technology to a boat, but whether alive or dead they do not know.

The Master in India [edit]

The Primary miraculously survives the sword wound and, with the coin extorted from his father, goes to India to make his fortune. Back at the Durrisdeer manor the quondam Laird declines and dies, and Henry becomes Laird in his place. Mackellar, on his ain authority, shows Mrs Durie all the correspondence between Henry and the Main, as well as papers that prove that the Master was a paid spy. Her eyes are opened and she becomes reconciled with Henry, though she also burns the papers, not to protect the Master, but to prevent a scandal for the family. She and Henry have a son, whom they name Alexander (The novel states the boy was born "17th July 1757; since the Primary did non return to Durrisdeer until 7 Nov 1756, Alexander is probably Henry'south son rather than the Master'south). However, subsequently the duel Henry gradually becomes mentally unstable. His personality changes, and he becomes careless about business organization and the estate. When Mackellar tells him that the Main is probably withal live he responds strangely:

"Ah!" says Mr Henry; and of a sudden ascent from his seat with more alacrity than he had all the same discovered, set one finger on my breast, and cried at me in a kind of screaming whisper, "Mackellar" – these were his words – "nothing tin impale that homo. He is not mortal. He is jump upon my back to all eternity – to all eternity!" says he, and, sitting down again, fell upon a stubborn silence.

When Alexander is nearly viii years former Mackellar comes across Henry showing Alexander the duelling ground and telling him that this was where a man fought with the Devil.

A 2d excerpt from Colonel Burke'southward memoir details a brief encounter he had with the Principal while they were both in Republic of india. Caught in a "mellay", Burke and his cipaye flee and climb into a garden, where Shush sees the Chief sitting with an Indian servant named Secundra Dass. Burke requests assistance from the Master, only the Primary does not admit him, while Secundra Dass tells the two of them (in English) to exit and threatens them with a pistol. Burke leaves and the story within a story ends.

The 2d Return [edit]

In the Jump of 1764 Mackellar comes downstairs one day to find the Master in the house, accompanied by Secundra Dass. The new Laird receives him coldly and Mackellar warns him that there volition be no money forthcoming. The Chief sneers and answers him: "[Southward]peech is very easy, and sometimes very deceptive. I warn you fairly: you will find me vitriol in the house. You would do wiser to pay money down and see my dorsum."

The Laird takes his married woman and children and leaves Scotland for New York, where Mrs Durie has a family unit estate. Mackellar remains backside, and tells the Chief that he may take room and board at Durrisdeer, only he will not be permitted to contact the family or given any money. The Master furiously answers:

"Inside of a week, without leaving Durrisdeer, I will observe out where these fools are fled to. I will follow; and when I take run my quarry downwardly, I will drive a wedge into that family unit that shall over again burst it into shivers. I shall run into and so whether my Lord Durrisdeer" (said with indescribable contemptuousness and rage) "will choose to buy my absence; and yous will all come across whether, by that time, I decide for turn a profit or revenge."

New York [edit]

Eventually the Chief discovers where the Duries have gone and takes ship for New York. Mackellar follows, to get ahead of the Master and warn the Laird. The Master finds the family prepared against him and sets up shop in the town, pretending to piece of work as a tailor, just really only working to poisonous substance the boondocks against his brother. Henry, who has grown more unstable as the years have passed, takes pleasure in rubbing the Master's face in his failure. Eventually the Master makes his demand. The pirate treasure he buried years ago is still in the wilderness of New York: if Henry volition requite him the money to set up out and call up it, he will leave Henry lone forever. Henry, however, refuses, on the basis of on his brother's record of failed promises and extortion. Mackellar remonstrates that it would be worth the money to exist rid of the Master, but Henry volition not be moved. Desperate, Mackellar goes to the Master and offers to pay for the trek himself. The Master refuses and rants that he cares merely about ruining his blood brother:

"Three times I have had my paw upon the highest station: and I am not nevertheless three-and-40. I know the world as few men know it when they come to die – Court and military camp, the Due east and the Due west; I know where to go, I meet a one thousand openings. I am at present at the height of my resources, sound of wellness, of inordinate ambition. Well, all this I resign; I care not if I die, and the globe never hear of me; I intendance only for one thing, and that I volition have."

A ship arrives from Britain, conveying news that, in return for his loyalty to the rebels the Main of Ballantrae is to be given the title of Lord (or Laird) of Durrisdeer, and young Alexander, Henry's son and the rightful heir to the estate and championship, is to exist disinherited. The news is plainly false, merely the already unhinged Henry believes it to be true and is driven to full-diddled madness. Unknown to Mackellar, Henry secretly arranges with a smuggler to gather a coiffure of riff-raff and nowadays themselves to the Master as being willing to set out with him to discover the buried treasure. Their existent purpose, unknown to the Master, will be to murder him and steal the treasure.

In the Wilderness [edit]

The Principal is at first deceived, just in the course of the expedition he discovers their programme. He tries to escape, merely fails; he tries to set them against one another, only fails; and at last he announces that he has fallen ill. He wastes abroad and on his deathbed he tells them where the treasure is subconscious. Secundra Dass wraps upwards his body and buries it, and the political party sets out to observe the treasure, but they fall foul of hostile Indians, and all only Secundra Dass and ane man named Mount are killed.

Mountain encounters the diplomat Sir William Johnson, who is on his fashion to negotiate with the hostile Indians. With him are Henry Durie and Mackellar. Mountain tells them about the Master'south decease and burial, and says that Secundra Dass has gone back to where it happened. Mountain thinks that Dass is after the treasure. Henry, however, is convinced that the Primary is not actually expressionless:

"He's non of this world", whispered my lord, "neither him nor the black de'il that serves him. I have struck my sword throughout his vitals", he cried; "I have felt the hilt dirl on his breastbone, and the hot blood spirt in my very face, time and over again, time and again!" he repeated, with a gesture indescribable. "Just he was never dead for that", said he, and sighed aloud. "Why should I think he was dead now? No, non till I encounter him rotting", says he.

The party finds Dass digging up the Main's trunk. Caught in the act, he tells them that the Principal faked his illness, and Dass showed him how to consume his tongue and fake death. They unearth the Main's body and he opens his eyes briefly. Henry faints, falls to the ground and dies. The Master's resurrection is only momentary, as he as well dies almost immediately. Mackellar buries the two of them nether the aforementioned rock, with the inscription:

J. D.,
HEIR TO A SCOTTISH Title,
A MASTER OF THE ARTS AND GRACES,
ADMIRED IN EUROPE, ASIA, AMERICA,
IN WAR AND PEACE,
IN THE TENTS OF SAVAGE HUNTERS AND THE
CITADELS OF KINGS, Afterwards SO MUCH
Caused, ACCOMPLISHED, AND
ENDURED, LIES HERE FORGOTTEN.
* * * * *
H. D.,
HIS BROTHER,
Afterward A LIFE OF UNMERITED DISTRESS,
BRAVELY SUPPORTED,
DIED ALMOST IN THE SAME Hour,
AND SLEEPS IN THE Aforementioned GRAVE
WITH HIS Congenial ENEMY.
* * * * *
THE PIETY OF HIS WIFE AND 1 OLD
SERVANT RAISED THIS STONE

TO BOTH.

Adaptations [edit]

The novel was made into a 1953 film with Errol Flynn as the Main. At that place have been several Goggle box adaptations, including a 1984 presentation in the Hallmark Hall of Fame, with John Gielgud as the Laird. A radio version was circulate by BBC Radio 4 in 2004 and on BBC Radio four Actress in 2020.^[two]

The Robert Louis Stevenson website maintains a complete list of derivative works.^[3]

Original manuscript [edit]

Half of Stevenson's original manuscripts are lost, including those of Treasure Island, The Black Arrow and The Master of Ballantrae. Stevenson'due south heirs sold Stevenson's papers during World State of war I; many Stevenson documents were auctioned off in 1918.^[4]

See likewise [edit]

Evil twin

References [edit]

^ Stevenson, Robert Louis (31 October 1998). In the South Seas. Penguin. pp. thirteen–. ISBN978-0-14-043436-1 . Retrieved one July 2011.
^ The Master of Ballantrae .
^ "Derivative Works", Robert Louis Stevenson .
^ "Bid to trace lost Robert Louis Stevenson manuscripts", News, Great britain: BBC, 9 July 2010 .

External links [edit]

The principal of Ballantrae: a winter's tale at Projection Gutenberg
Digitised re-create of The chief of Ballantrae: a winter's tale from the Cassell and Visitor, Ltd edition (1880) from National Library of Scotland. JPEG, PDF, XML versions.
The Master of Ballantrae public domain audiobook at LibriVox

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_of_Ballantrae