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Kidnapped

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Title: Kidnapped

Author: Robert Louis Stevenson

 
Release date: January 16, 2006 [eBook #421]
 Most recently updated: September 23, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/421

Credits: Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 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 BY
 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
 WITH A PREFACE BY MRS. STEVENSON

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 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
 OF
 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 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 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 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

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