Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson

When I was young I read quite a bit. At some point, probably because of the well-meaning comments and encouragement of adults, I took on reading and books as a kind of identity. Because of that, I made an unwise jump; concieving literature as a two dimensional progression from works for children to works for adults (lets say that's the vertical dimension) and also from early works to modernism to post-modernism (obviously that's horizontal), I wanted to go up and to the right as far and fast as I could. I went quickly from Harry Potter to Nabokov, House of Leaves, and William Burroughs (Naked Lunch, not Tarzan) and intentionally avoided the classics and especially things I saw as pastoral or "Victorian". I hope you can imagine what I was missing. I think I could feel it at the time, the feeling of being a bit lost and having all of the landmarks around you gesturing toward something you don't know, like Marco Polo wandering through Beijing and seeing monuments to he-didn't-know-what. On top of that, I had a confused disdain for the stuff I didn't know.

One of the most re-occuring monuments I found, especially when I started reading Umberto Eco and Borges, was to Robert Louis Stevenson. By the time I went to college I dropped a lot of my hangups and started filling in the gaps in my reading. I read and re-read Treasure Island, then Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. In one of his documented lectures, Nabokov said Jekyll and Hyde was like wine with its overtones and sourness, but also its hidden threat and depth of implication. Kidnapped sits between the swashbuckling, bald-faced menace of Treasure Island and the wet alleys and psyche-plumbing of Jekyll and Hyde. Structurally, its more straight-forward than either of those works but the themes end up being more complex because of the tension between the dual genres whose conventions it must fit - a book for boys and a historical novel - and the ambiguity of the events and characters morally and politically.

The protagonist must and does, by genre convention, fit the same mold as the protagonist of Treasure Island. They are both young man with relatively average means whose fathers die and, in the course of their socially acceptable and dignified progression from boy to man that this precipitates, and even helped on by similarly civil and above-board citizens, get sidetracked by adventure. The fulfillment of the adventure doesn't only assure their place in the world, but also solidifies their character. The differences between David (Kidnapped) and Jim (Treasure Island) are representative of many of the differences of the novels themselves. David's adventure is almost entirely out of his control and he is forced to get his hands dirty a lot more than Jim does. They both serve as cabin-boys for a time, but David comes into the role because one of the mates kills the old one. The society that David inhabits is less black-and-white than Jim's; the adults are flawed and David has to reconcile them as complete beings even when they do him harm or are outright villains. The book carries the ambiguity to the end, with David implicated in murder and helping his dearest friend - a rebel and wanted man - escape to France, even though it fulfills its duty to restore the protagonist to his rightful social position after having put him through so many ordeals.

One part that sticks out to me, since it caused a memory itch that I still haven't scratched: at the beginning of the story, David is being sent off by Mr. Campbell, a friend of his father's and a minister. Mr. Campbell is one of the only morally un-ambiguous characters in the characters, but in a way one of the strangest. He tells David about his so-far-unknown aristocratic lineage and kicks off his journey, but gives him three gifts: a little bit of cash, a recipe for a healing tonic, and a Bible. The way that Mr. Campbell describes the gifts is one of the poetic highlights of the book, so I'll set it here as a temptation to read the whole thing:

The first, which is round, will likely please ye best at the first off-go;
but, O Davie, laddie, it’s but a drop of water in the sea; it’ll help you
but a step, and vanish like the morning. The second, which is flat and
square and written upon, will stand by you through life, like a good staff
for the road, and a good pillow to your head in sickness. And as for the
last, which is cubical, that’ll see you, it’s my prayerful wish, into a better land.”

This sticks with me because its beautiful (man! I have to go on about this parenthetically for a second: first the set of three always works like a spell, but the sort of mystical association of each item with shapes, like its a riddle or something, makes the items feel so much more important than they are. The mixture of the actions and metaphorical traits that he ascribes to each thing sets up this ramp of importance, faithfulness, and activity of each thing - the money will vanish, the recipe will stand by, and the Bible will guide you), but also because nothing is ever to my recollection mentioned again in the entire story. David gets sick multiple times and never uses the recipe nor does he ever consult his Bible. They might be implied to be stolen when he gets Kidnapped, but the crew of the brig onto which he is taken eventually give him back his money so why not also his other things? It might also be an intentional inversion of Mr. Campbell's hierarchy of the things' importances. Finally, the recipe gave me a little memory spasm. We're given the text of the recipe and, I can't put my finger on it, but I feel like its an homage to something, maybe even a trope in itself? D'Artagnan recieves a similar recipe from his mother when he leaves home for Paris, but I feel like there is something else that I'm forgetting to remember. Did Don Quixote have a nearly magic health potion recipe? In any case, David never makes the recipe and certainly never benefits from it.

Aesthetically, the book paints the Highland world in cold grey and reserves its color for the dialogue and music of the Highland people who David meets. If pushed, I prefer Treasure Island but there is something wilder, weirder, and ghostly about Kidnapped that sets it apart.