Robert Louis Stevenson: Writer of Boundaries

The Master of Ballantrae, or The Writing of Frost and Stone

The Master of Ballantrae, or the Writing of Frost and Stone     -                Stevenson began The Master of Ballantrae during the winter of – while staying with his family at Saranac, “a hill and forest country on the Canadian border of New York state” (Ltrs : ). While Fanny was chronically out of health and soon preferred to leave and visit family and friends, Stevenson found the below zero temperatures “delightful” and even “healthful ” to him, a kind of American Davos in the wilderness. This climate also spurred his literary inspiration. In the “Genesis of The Master of Ballantrae ” written as a preface to the novel, he connects the “stringent cold of the Canadian border” and the process of writing: “It was winter; the night was very dark; the air extraordinary clear and cold, and sweet with the purity of forests. From a good way below, the river was to be heard contending with ice and boulders. . . . For the making of a story here were fine conditions. . . . On such a fine frosty night, with no wind and the thermometer below zero, the brain works with much vivacity” (Stevenson : xxiii).1 Such words as “cold,” “ice” and “frosty” related to weather conditions are here associated with “clear” and “fine,” adjectives that also apply to Stevenson’s own prose. It will be argued here that the correlation between landscape and fictional representation is not merely a matter of represented setting, like the Adirondacks and the Canadian border present in the last two chapters of the novel. What is eventually at stake is the process of writing itself as exempli fied by Mackellar’s narrative, at the end of which the narrator emerges as a writer of epitaphs: from cold to stone, a Stevensonian image of writing.  Winter’s Tale and Winterreise The novel is aptly subtitled A Winter’s Tale, and it is true that winter, with its recurrent climatic correlatives like “frost,” “cold,” “ice” and “snow,” is so present in the text that the other seasons seem written off. The key events take place indeed during winter: Mackellar’s arrival in Durrisdeer in , “in the cold end of December, in a mighty dry day of frost” (), is fully described and thus overshadows the brief reference to the marriage between Henry and Alison that took place a few months earlier on June —an event which, by definition, Mackellar was unable to attend. The scene of the duel between the two brothers, “on the night of February th, ,” is preceded by a weather report: “It was unseasonable weather, a cast back into winter: windless, bitter cold, the world all white with rime, the sky low and grey: the sea black and silent like a quarry-hole” (). The duel is thus set against a “very pretty, wintry, frosty landscape”: “there was no breath stirring; a windless stricture of frost had bound the air” (, ). The return of the Master after his reported death takes place in late March or early April, : “It was a cold, sunny morning, with a thick white frost” (). Secundra Dass is first introduced into the novel as already complaining of cold (). In the last chapters set in the American wilderness, Mackellar complains of being bitten by the “stringency of frost” (). The final scene where Dass tries to resurrect the Master is dominated by “the extremity of frost”, hence his failure: “‘Too cold,’ said he, ‘good way in India, no good here.’” (, ) This prevailing climatic mood endows the novel with an overall tone of sadness and melancholy. This is the most obvious relevance of the Shakespearian subtitle and intertext, echoed by Mackellar’s opening words about the Master, which write the title of the play into Stevenson’s text: “I sailed with him on his last voyage almost alone; I made one upon that winter’s journey of which so many tales have gone abroad” (). If, according to Mamillius in the play, “A sad tale’s best for winter” (..) then the novel is a sad tale indeed, the overwhelming cold being quite naturally an image of death (Amalric : ). As Winterreise, this “winter’s journey” also sheds a more romantic light on Mackellar’s narration and character. His underlying melancholy strain  Scotland and the South Seas or “humor” is best expressed at the end of chapter , where he describes his forthcoming journey with the Master as “ill-omened”: while “hearkening to the turmoil of the gale,” he imagines a dire “perspective of consequences ” () that will...