Kidnapped. Robert Louis Stevenson
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as genuinely admirable, impressive in its own way as Alan’s martial skill.
What is courage? David repeatedly learns that whatever it is he must either acquire it or find it within himself. At one point, when Alan is giving him lessons in swordplay, and berating him all the while for his clumsiness, David thinks to himself: “I was often tempted to turn tail, but held my ground for all that, and got some profit of my lessons; if it was but to stand on guard with an assured countenance, which is often all that is required” (p. 183). David naturally enjoys a bit of amusement at this unintended lesson: that self-confidence, perhaps even bluff, goes a long way in this world, and the presence of courage may be nothing more than its absence, albeit with a good face. But true courage cannot be left to pose alone, which is tantamount to leaving it to chance. It is only in the face of mortal danger that one discovers the resources within. Stevenson dramatizes this most brilliantly in the scene in “The Rocks,” when David and Alan are forced to leap from one rock to another across a roaring river. “When I saw where I was, there came on me a deadly sickness of fear, and I put my hand over my eyes” (p. 172). Alan forces brandy on David to calm his fear, but finally there is nothing for him to do but face the jump. “I was now alone upon the rock … if I did not leap at once, I should never leap at all. I bent low on my knees and flung myself forth, with that kind of anger of despair that has sometimes stood me in stead of courage” (p. 173). Unlike Indiana Jones, David does not leap with insouciance or sangfroid, but out of compulsion; he is impelled forward by the brandy, by the example of Alan before him, and by the realization that if he does not jump now, he will never jump at all. Is this courage? Can courage be defined by a behavior not altogether freely chosen? The answer is yes, and Stevenson has Alan provide a classic formulation: “To be feared of a thing and yet to do it, is what makes the prettiest kind of a man” (p. 174). To face down danger and not be paralyzed by fear—that is the test of manhood. It is a test that modern writers following Stevenson have explored in their own terms, not the least being Hemingway’s extensive study of bullfighters in Death in the Afternoon. David is not a sailor, nor a warrior, nor a runner, nor a jumper, but he is called upon to act as if he had all their technical and athletic skills. Consider all the times he faces death: from his first encounter with his uncle Ebenezer to his clubbing and sickness on board the Covenant, the battle in the roundhouse, shipwreck, facing down a Highlander with a dirk, the blind catechist who is ready to shoot him, the redcoats who pursue him through the heather, his leap over the roaring water, and a final illness in Cluny’s “Cage.” Truly a cat’s nine lives. It is not surprising that he sometimes breaks down, that he gets petulant and quarrelsome with Alan, or that the unrelenting stitch in his side, joined with the incessant rain, makes him want to give up the whole flight entirely. Rather what is unusual is that he keeps on going. He does not stop running, he does not abandon Alan, and he never succumbs to the “weariness” that dogs him all along the way. For courage is not just facing down danger but the capacity to endure pain and suffering and not be defeated. For Stevenson, as later for Hemingway and Camus, this is nothing more than a modern version of stoicism.
IV
Stevenson had a wonderful sense of humor, as all who knew him attested. He was a marvelous raconteur, could be outrageously playful (as shown by the elaborate pranks carried out in his young Edinburgh days with his cousin Bob), and had a tongue that alternated between jest and bite. The range of his comedy and satire can be found in all the volumes of his Letters and in the mordancy of New Arabian Nights and the farce of The Wrong Box. If these last two texts are well known, there are others that are barely so, like St. Ives, with its extravagant parody of popular romances. The simple truth is that traces of humor can be found in most of Stevenson’s writing, and Kidnapped is no exception. In this case it is so pervasive, however sparely remarked, as to warrant discussion in its own right.13
One of the most quotable lines from Kidnapped appears just after Colin Campbell has been shot, and David discovers Alan at the scene. Having satisfied himself that his friend did not pull the trigger, he then asks him if he can “swear” that he does not know the man who was seen fleeing: “‘No yet … but I’ve a grand memory for forgetting, David’” (p. 155). Of course the humor here is fairly obvious. In the immediate aftermath of a terrible scene, a murder “in cold blood” (to use David’s phrase), Alan provides a momentary relief from the tragedy. He has already been sparring with David by his denial of any complicity in the murder: “‘I swear upon the Holy Iron I had neither art nor part, act nor thought in it’” (p. 155). The sword is of course exactly what Alan would swear upon, since it is what defines him, in one sense, and what he may well hold most sacred. The fact that he throws in a Scots legal phrase, “art nor part,” which means he was not an accomplice in the act, and hence is not culpable, is a nice touch that Stevenson provides for the benefit of historical accuracy. But the “grand memory for forgetting” is strictly Alan, his way of saying “I am as great at the forgetting as I am at the fighting,” and it is amusing not just as an oxymoron but because it reveals a bit of Alan’s character, the way he juxtaposes and tries to reconcile opposites, a habit that David sees as the contradiction between courage and vanity, as in Alan’s hiding his hat under his greatcoat lest it be destroyed by water, or in his calling Mr. Riach a “small” man: “It was droll how Alan dwelt on Mr Riach’s stature, for to say the truth, the one was no smaller than the other” (p. 161).
Stevenson takes a single word like grand and invests it with the speaker’s irony. So when David has failed at his task of watching for the redcoats Alan says to him: “man! but ye’re a grand hand at the sleeping!” (p. 176). By this time the word assumes a mocking note (it was used first by Ebenezer Balfour in describing the stairs—“They’re grand”—and then by David after his near fall—“This was the grand stair!” (p. 38), just as Hemingway uses the word fine in “Hills Like White Elephants” to imply ironic meanings. Still it is not just irony that Alan’s talk carries but good humor, even a kind of self-mockery—“I’ve a grand memory for forgetting”—as if the word itself is a sign of the speaker’s awareness of his own boastfulness. David of course does not know whether to laugh or get angry at Alan, a condition he finds himself in repeatedly. During the quarrel chapter Alan cannot accept the fact that David is nearly a foot taller than he: “‘Ye’re no such a thing! … There may be a trifling maitter of an inch or two; I’m no saying I’m just exactly what ye would call a tall man, whatever” (p. 223). The amusingly tentative way Alan goes about denying the obvious, as if to dismiss all argument, helps to defuse the tension and begin the work of repairing their relationship. So when Alan finally admits the difference in height, lest a new quarrel ensue, David says, “I could have laughed, had not my stitch caught me so hard; but if I had laughed, I think I must have wept too” (p. 223). As elsewhere, the space between tragedy and comedy is very close, and it is not always clear whether one is enjoying the fun of a ridiculous incident or sorrowing at the near escape of a painful one.
Stevenson’s humor covers a range of ironic tones, from genial comedy to sarcasm to dry wit, with even a touch of the gallows. In each case the humor is calibrated to the context. David and Alan are trying to get help from a Highlander during their flight. The convoluted process of communicating by means of physical signs demonstrates Alan’s inventive survival skills and gives them both an opportunity for resting and “drolling” a while: “‘it would certainly be much simpler for me to write to him, but it would be a sore job for John Breck to read it. He would have to go to the school for two-three years; and it’s possible we might be wearied waiting on him’” (pp. 185–86). Later, by contrast, the two are almost at sword’s point, each gibing the other, until Alan throws out his now-famous tag, “‘I am a Stewart …’” Unable to bear it any longer, David cuts him off with a marvelous insult: “‘I ken ye bear a King’s name. But … I have seen a good many of those that bear it; and the best I can say of them is this, that they would be none the worse of washing’” (p. 220). And an example from the islet chapter, where David is so disheartened by his miserable situation that when he sees a proud and powerful stag looking for all the world like a lord astride his demesne, all he can do is admit the animal’s superior ability to adapt to the conditions of life: “I saw a red