From the Nightstand: Some Classics

It is the year of Our Lord 1751. Five years have passed since ‘Butcher’ Cumberland smashed Jacobite hopes at the battle of Culloden. Charles Edward Stuart – ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ – has fled Scotland for exile in France. The chiefs of the Highland clans that rose against the reigning House of Hanover, bearers of ancient and proud names such as Cameron, Stewart, Fraser, MacDonalds and MacLachlans, have followed the Young Pretender into exile. Others remain in ragged hiding in remote parts of the Highlands; still others have gone to the headsman’s block. The feudal system of the Highland clans is scattered to the winds and those clansmen that survived the rebellion with their lives and property intact are now forbidden to wear the tartan or carry the claymore.

Yet hope lingers. Bonnie Prince Charlie remains alive in France, still a threat and a rallying symbol. Clandestine agents risk great danger, crossing the Channel to Scotland in the face of vigilant warships and patrolling redcoats, to make contact with the many who still sympathize with the Stuart cause. Into this morass comes David Balfour, newly adrift in the world, and ship wrecked on a barren coast of Scotland…

This folks, is the background to Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson. Despite being read and praised by such contemporaries as Henry James, Kidnapped, along with Treasure Island, has long been relegated to the literary ghetto of ‘kid’s books’ – books that people read as children, then leave behind as they move into adulthood.

The description above doesn’t to me like anything aimed primarily at children. Stevenson wrote what could more accurately be termed as historical fiction, or more simply, thrillers. And judging from the best seller lists, thrillers are very popular indeed with adults. Books by Tom Clancy and the like fly off the shelves, and even Robert Ludlum manages generate sales from that land-of-the-dead-who-publish that he shares with V.C. Andrews.

“He was born with the gift of laughter, and a sense that the world was mad.”

And so begins, with that immortal first line, the novel Scaramouche, by Rafael Sabatini. Sabatini, who died in 1950, also wrote what we would call thrillers. Well-known in his day – he wrote more than 30 novels – his legacy today largely lives in through the screen adaptations of his most popular works, making him in that sense a predecessor of Clancy, Crichton and others whose thrillers wind up in the cinemas.

But you would be better served by first meeting Sabatini’s rogues and heroes in print: Scaramouche – bastard son of a noble, actor, playwright, revolutionary, and swordsman; Captain Blood – mercenary, doctor, convict and pirate. Last night I cracked the pages of The Sea Hawk, to make the acquaintance of Oliver Tressilian, Cornish gentleman and veteran of the defeat of the Spanish Armada.

Kidnapped, Scaramouche, Captain Blood, and The Sea Hawk are all in print and readily available. All of them make excellent companions for cold winter evenings.