Catriona (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

By Robert Louis Stevenson and Caroline McCracken-Flesher

"Catriona so reeks and hums with genius that there is no refuge for the desperate reader but in straightforward prostration." - Henry James

Robert Louis Stevenson considered Catriona, the lively sequel to Kidnapped, his best work. At the end of Kidnapped, young David Balfour enters an Edinburgh bank to claim his inheritance., In the opening scene of Catriona, he comes out moneybags in hand. While Balfour entered the bank a somewhat stolid teenager; he exits into young manhood to contend with all the complexities of politics, love, and family

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Sep 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781411430990

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1850, the only son of an engineer, Thomas Stevenson. Despite a lifetime of poor health, Stevenson was a keen traveller, and his first book An Inland Voyage (1878) recounted a canoe tour of France and Belgium. In 1880, he married an American divorcee, Fanny Osbourne, and there followed Stevenson's most productive period, in which he wrote, amongst other books, Treasure Island (1883), The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Kidnapped (both 1886). In 1888, Stevenson left Britain in search of a more salubrious climate, settling in Samoa, where he died in 1894.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

CATRIONA IS THE LIVELY SEQUEL TO KIDNAPPED, ROBERT LOUIS Stevenson’s popular tale of adventure in eighteenth-century Scotland. At the end of Kidnapped, young David Balfour enters an Edinburgh bank to claim his inheritance. Two hours later, in the opening scene of Catriona, he comes out, moneybags in hand. Though the story picks up right where it left off, six years have passed between the publication dates of the novels. In 1886, Stevenson cut short David’s adventures because he felt too ill to complete them. In 1892, he took up the threads of his plot in a different world. David Balfour entered the British Linen Company’s bank a somewhat stolid teenager who had survived the machinations of a wicked uncle, kidnapping, the threat of slavery, being cast away, and falling in among Jacobites; he exits into young manhood and all the complexities of politics, love, and family. Although David’s livelihood and even his life are threatened in Kidnapped (1886), in Catriona (1893) it is his ethics and morals that are at stake. David carries information that may save a man’s life, but his political allies favor national agendas over individual rights. He falls in love and is embroiled in the sexual anxieties of his era. The orphan at last finds parents, only to discover that they will lead him astray. In a tense, stand-alone narrative that stretches from Scotland to Holland by way of (another) kidnapping, and which resonates with Stevenson’s own life as a married man exiled to Samoa, David Balfour becomes a character generations can identify with—the ethical young man challenged by a reality that confuses friends and enemies, tests allegiances, and exposes the mistrusts of adult life. Stevenson considered this his best work, and Henry James declared: Catriona so reeks and hums with genius that there is no refuge for the desperate reader but in straightforward prostration."¹

Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1850, child of Margaret Balfour and Thomas Stevenson (of the lighthouse Stevensons). As Robert Lewis (later Louis) Balfour Stevenson, he never quite fit his circumstances—a problem he may hint toward by adopting a family name for his stumbling hero, David Balfour. A sickly child beloved by his parents, he found himself constrained by their attention, their religion, and his father’s control of the purse strings. Stevenson preferred a wandering lifestyle that he first experienced in search of cures for his various illnesses. Along the way he produced essays, stories, and boys’ books, including Treasure Island (serialized 1881). In 1886, with The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Kidnapped published just months apart, he became famous, and was able to command substantial fees for his work. Perhaps a major factor in this development was his relationship with Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne. Meeting this exotic American in Europe, pursuing her to the United States, supporting her through her divorce, and then marrying her in 1880, marked a turning point in Stevenson’s life. The struggling author, long focused on home and dependent on his father, now was the head of his own family, inhabiting a larger world. While constantly concerned with art and its integrity, it was through Fanny’s interests and the needs of his new family he became more aware of audiences and markets. His father’s death in 1887, together with his literary triumphs of 1886, opened the world to Stevenson—the world knew of him, and he could afford to go where he would. Thus, in the years between Kidnapped and Catriona, he lived first in upstate New York, then set out for the South Seas. For a year and a half he island-hopped before settling at Vailima, on the island of Upolu, Samoa. There, the unpredictable son of the lighthouse engineer lived occasionally hand to mouth, but always engaged with the local community. He wrought unusual conjunctions between Scotland and the South Seas, dressing his employees in Royal Stuart tartan, and joining in Samoa’s international politics. There he produced some of his great works: Catriona, The Ebb Tide (1894), and Weir of Hermiston (published posthumously, 1896). And there, with no return to Scotland, he died in 1894.

Catriona is the testament to how far he had come, not just in miles, but in understanding and in art. The novel, Stevenson wrote to his friend Sidney Colvin, came on him as a sudden passion.² Once started, it went skelping along, [interfering] with my eating and sleeping, and when it was done, Stevenson declared himself very well pleased. It was nearer what I mean than anything I have ever done.³ Some of his contemporary critics, such as Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, assumed that Catriona, with its division into two parts—in Scotland, then in Holland, the one focused on politics, the other on love—made most sense when read alongside Kidnapped.⁴ But others focused on the book’s internal dynamics. T. Watts-Dunton thought the personality of the narrator as an eye-witness of the incidents lends a unity of impression to material that in itself may sometimes be without unity, and sometimes even perhaps without congruity. . . . This very lack of unity, this absence of any sign of a constructed plot, will often lend an organic vitality to a story which nothing else could lend.⁵ In so arguing, Watts-Dunton appreciated the maturation in Stevenson’s themes, but also in their construction. The ordinariness of a David Balfour, with his determination to make sense of an experience that multiplies into the plots of politics and romance, and simultaneously fragments around him, points to the condition of modernity. In this historical novel set in the 1750s, Stevenson was ahead of his time.

David Balfour steps out of the bank, cash in hand, with a clear idea of who he now is: Today I was . . . a landed laird, a bank porter by me carrying my gold, recommendations in my pocket, and . . . the ball directly at my foot. He knows, too, what he has to do: tell the truth about a political murder, and save its scapegoats—one of whom, Alan Breck Stewart, had saved him in the past. But this is a very difficult and deadly business. Moreover, David is already out of step with his world--The throng of citizens . . . abashed me—and he feels the more conspicuous in borrowed clothes that scarce held on me. It was plain I was ill-qualified to strut. David’s problems are compounded when he happens on a beautiful young woman, evidently in trouble. By helping her, he unwittingly draws together the plots of politics, love, and family that will strain against one another to test his briefly established sense of self.

In the South Seas, Stevenson had taken to politics. He wrote in support of Father Damien, a priest who had given his life to care for lepers at Molokai and who had been criticized by Protestant missionaries for his morals and personal hygiene. He experienced the frustrations and corruptions of politics—both local and international—when he supported one chief over another among British, German, and American pretensions to control Samoa as a hub for Pacific trade. So he came to understand how personal relationships are informed or undermined by politics, writing of the unfortunate Swede appointed to mediate between the powers and whose career he himself had served to cut short, The deuce of it is that, personally, I love this rogue. . . . we meet and smile, and—damn it! Like each other.⁶

This complex awareness of political and social order informed Stevenson’s new novel. A more mature David than the one in Kidnapped tries to live by his ethics, carrying his politically inconvenient information to government and opposition alike. Those to whom he offers what should be the authority of truth, however, constantly threaten his purpose. At the center of confusion stands Simon Lovat. An historical figure—son of the infamous Lord Lovat who switched political allegiances, died on the scaffold, and was caricatured by Hogarth—he had switched sides twice. He signals the contingency of truth and the reality of politics. Accordingly, while David’s political friends admire his courage and persistence, they have no intention of letting him give evidence that would upset national agendas; the opposition welcomes his information, but has their own strategy for using it. In no case can David’s truth save the individual it should absolve.

Worse, in the world of Scottish politics, just as in Samoa, politics is personal: no one is simply an enemy or a friend. The Lord Advocate, Prestongrange, is allied to David through politics. To protect the status quo, he colludes to keep David away from the trial that requires his evidence. Thus, to David, he compromises his own principles and David’s character. Further, Prestongrange sets his daughters on David as his minders. David is inveigled at first into polite relations by these knowing females, then kidnapped to Bass Rock. For the gawky, land-bred young man, both are forms of restraint, and Prestongrange a man he cannot trust. Yet Prestongrange confines David to save his life against the more bloodthirsty Lovat. He would help David into adulthood.

Indeed, to the orphan, Prestongrange stands in the position of substitute father. In Kidnapped, David loses a good father, finds a wicked uncle, and the uncle is displaced by Alan Breck Stewart and Mr. Rankeillor, each efficient in their own warlike and legal ways at establishing truth and putting things to rights. With the canny Alan temporarily offstage, and Mr. Rankeillor left behind, Prestongrange could be a paternal guide to the perplexed David. Contemporary historian Frank McLynn has noted that in his political relationships Stevenson replayed the psychic drama he had acted out with his father.⁷ In Catriona, the drama is informed by the vagaries of politics. The progression of the text replaces Prestongrange’s benevolent if politically interested paternalism with the self-interest of David’s potential father-in-law, James More Macgregor. Neglectful and thinking only of himself, Macgregor abandons his daughter and plots to betray Alan for his own safety and monetary gain. Family offers no barrier to politics; rather, it intensifies it and brings it close, even as politics threatens identity.

Consequently, the biggest threat to David’s identity may be Macgregor’s daughter, Catriona. While writing, Stevenson found her a blooming maiden that costs anxiety, but many critics considered her a triumph.⁸ T. Watts-Dunton enthused that she was beyond all praise. . . . she throws a halo of heroism as well as of beauty over the book.⁹ Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones concluded: [Stevenson] has made a woman at last.¹⁰ Catriona is a new sort of woman, demonstrating daring independence: she bravely kisses David’s hand for his ethical heroism, as she had kissed that of rebel Bonnie Prince Charlie; she sets out for a foreign country with only pennies in her pocket; she leaps from a boat in a rough sea upon men admiring her charms from below. Yet at times she seems a creature of Victorian romance, a view confirmed when David refers to this adventurous highlander’s little shoes. The key is perhaps the first person narrative remarked upon by Watts-Dunton. Catriona fascinates until she becomes dependent upon David, when she quickly resolves into a site for Victorian desires. But the change is not in her; it is in her relationships. Newly cast as brother and in loco parentis, David reduces her to the frail sex and not so much beyond a child. Seen in this way, the character of Catriona is a delusion that David, and some of Stevenson’s contemporary readers, wished upon her.

In fact, Stevenson works against the codes of Victorian representation, depicting Catriona as a modern woman. We receive constant hints that David sentimentalizes and underestimates her; and there are hints, too, that narrating from a distance of years, he has grown into a fuller understanding of gender relationships and married roles. Going with David to see her disowned but dying father, Catriona agrees, If it is your pleasure. The older David sardonically remarks: These were early days. So Catriona matters for the ways in which she challenges convention, and because she reveals how David subjects them both to Victorian mores, almost ruining a relationship tainted but also enlivened by the politics of nations and parents.

Stevenson had long been sympathetic to and knowledgeable about the realities of womanhood. Frank McLynn credits him with a deep sympathy for women which it is not anachronistic to call feminist, and cites Stevenson’s stepson’s remembrance that Women seemed to him the victims alike of man and nature.¹¹ Stevenson’s essays in Virginibus Puerisque (1881) reveal a modern view of gender and marriage.¹² In terms that lead to George Bernard Shaw, echo through Oscar Wilde and Noel Coward, and point to modern feminism, he revealed men’s inability to understand women and detailed the painful loss of independence for women in traditional relationships. Devastatingly, he recognizes the politics of marriage: Once you are married, there is nothing left for you, not even suicide, but to be good.¹³ And he understands the inevitability of misunderstanding in our closest of relationships. "Do you understand me? he mimics. God knows, is the answer; I should think it highly improbable."¹⁴ Indeed Catriona sparkles with believable depictions of women far beyond David Balfour’s ability to understand them.

From the old wife who would tell David’s fortune, to Catriona’s hostess, through Prestongrange’s eldest daughter Barbara Grant, to Catriona herself, women are constantly jumping at David Balfour, taking him by surprise, testing him, and showing him his worth as well as their own. Most important, Barbara, whom David never quite trusts, pushes him toward proper behavior and makes a young man of him, but not simply by teaching him how to dress or behave. Repeatedly, Prestongrange’s eldest daughter shows David a view of womanhood that literally taunts him into manhood.

Here the Stevenson who disliked Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles as untrue to all I know of life, found himself, in literary contexts at least, no more in any fear of [women].¹⁵ The complexities of marriage to a woman he termed a violent friend—a description with which he also complimented Barbara Grant—had made Stevenson a leader in the questioning of the gendered construction of identities.¹⁶ It is no wonder that David Balfour is constantly in a state of embarrassment, radiating the hot sweats evoked by proximity to the persons of Catriona, Barbara, and even two old ladies who suggest a world of sex and life beyond his experience. Indeed, it’s no wonder that he obsessively invokes his youth as a strategy for engagement with, or a mantra for protection from the invasions of politics, parents, and lively females.

In Catriona, Stevenson not only tested the bounds of proper society, but also the bounds of the novel. David’s coherent narrative, strained by political, familial, and gendered plots, made contemporary critics look to character as the reason for the novel’s power. But those who looked more closely found other matters for debate. Critics Vernon Lee (pen name of Violet Paget [1856-1935]) and Henry James fell into opposition about Stevenson’s technique. Lee praises the novel’s descriptive passages, calling them adjective[s] on a large scale. By contrast, James, who enthused about the text in general, complained "[Catriona] subjects my visual sense, my seeing imagination, to an almost painful under-feeding."¹⁷ Stevenson joked in reply, War to the adjective, and Death to the optic nerve.¹⁸ In a sense, Stevenson’s technique marked the onset of imagism in British prose; James lacked the eye for it, and Lee lacked the terms to describe it.

Catriona’s images spring off the page. When David has successfully seen Alan off to France, yet knows he is about to be attacked, he finds himself alone on the sand hills: There was no sight or sound of man; the sun shone on the wet sand and the dry, the wind blew in the bents, the gulls made a dreary piping. As I passed higher up the beach, the sand-lice were hopping nimbly about the stranded tangles. In this passage, Pathetic fallacy yields to the power of the image. Similarly, Stevenson describes David’s depression about his relationship with Catriona through a series of images that belie David’s evolving emotional state. [There] stood out over a brae the two sails of a windmill, like an ass’s ears. Later, the sails of the windmill, as they came up and went down over the hill, were like persons spying. And then, reconciled, David rejoices: the windmill sails, as they bobbed over the knowe, were like a tune of music. Here Stevenson’s use of imagery, as with his creative use of competing plotlines and ambiguous characterizations, seems to predict twentieth-century writing.

In Catriona, Stevenson at last managed to produce a novel both as romantic and as modern as his own life. Quiller-Couch ended his review: "Mr. Stevenson twice, at least, introduces the word ‘damned’ with surprising effect. I know no better . . . test of a classic than the manner of his ‘damns.’ [Catriona] is a very big feat."¹⁹ In Catriona, Stevenson damns numerous proprieties—political, familial, sexual, and even formal. Even so, we may conclude that it remains a damn fine tale.

Barnes & Noble Edition

Stevenson wrote this novel under the title David Balfour, and it was published as such in serial and its American book form. In Britain, however, it appeared as Catriona at the publisher’s behest. This change might be seen as forcing a division between two related novels, or marking the progression from teenage to adult concerns. But it is a symptom of the book’s complex publishing history between magazine (Atalanta, beginning in November 1892) and book (New York: Scribner’s; London: Cassell, 1893). In the article Toward the Production of a Text: Time, Space, and David Balfour, Barry Menikoff details the personal and financial negotiations and the publishing confusions that surround the novel.²⁰ This Barnes and Noble reprint derives from the Cassell 1893 edition, by the kind advice of Roger Swearingen, known for his book The Prose Writings of Robert Louis Stevenson: A Guide (1980).

Further Reading

The precursors to Catriona lie in Walter Scott’s Waverley (1814), with its wandering hero; Guy Mannering (1815), where the hero is kidnapped to Holland; and Redgauntlet (1824), whose hero stumbles across borders and into perilous, incestuous romance. Charles Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39) and David Copperfield (1849-50) also prefigure the career of the putative hero misled by his elders and negotiating the minefields of romance. The heirs of Stevenson’s uncertain young man and feisty heroines haunt many a George Bernard Shaw play. Consider Pygmalion (1913) or Arms and the Man (1894). Indeed, we can track the influence of Catriona all the way to Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole (1981), and Adrian’s assertive girlfriend. Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary (1999), for Bridget’s unfortunate propensity to fall into trouble but her ability to talk her way through it, stands heir to David Balfour and Barbara Grant together. To grasp the standards that Stevenson held himself against, particularly with regard to gender, readers might turn to Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891), Thomas Hardy’s innovation that he appreciated but disliked. Most of all, readers anxious to know more of David Balfour should turn to Stevenson’s own Kidnapped (1886).

Caroline McCracken-Flesher is a Professor of English at the University of Wyoming. Her most recent publications include Possible Scotlands: Walter Scott and the Story of Tomorrow (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

PART I

THE LORD ADVOCATE

CHAPTER ONE

A BEGGAR ON HORSEBACK

THE 25TH DAY OF AUGUST, 1751, ABOUT TWO IN THE AFTERNOON, I, David Balfour, came forth of the British Linen Company, a porter attending me with a bag of money, and some of the chief of these merchants bowing me from their doors. Two days before, and even so late as yestermorning, I was like a beggarman by the wayside, clad in rags, brought down to my last shillings, my companion a condemned traitor, a price set on my own head for a crime with the news of which the country rang. Today I was served heir to my position in life, a landed laird, a bank porter by me carrying my gold, recommendations in my pocket, and (in the words of the saying) the ball directly at my foot.

There were two circumstances that served me as ballast to so much sail. The first was the very difficult and deadly business I had still to handle; the second, the place that I was in. The tall, black city, and the numbers and movement and noise of so many folk, made a new world for me, after the moorland braes, the sea-sands, and the still country-sides that I had frequented up to then. The throng of the citizens in particular abashed me. Rankeillor’s son was short and small in the girth; his clothes scarce held on me; and it was plain I was ill qualified to strut in the front of a bank-porter. It was plain, if I did so, I should but set folk laughing, and (what was worse in my case) set them asking questions. So that I behooved to come by some clothes of my own, and in the meanwhile to walk by the porter’s side, and put my hand on his arm as though we were a pair of friends.

At a merchant’s in the Luckenbooths, I had myself fitted out: none too fine, for I had no idea to appear like a beggar on horseback; but comely and responsible, so that servants should respect me. Thence to an armourer’s, where I got a plain sword, to suit with my degree in life. I felt safer with the weapon, though (for one so ignorant of defence) it might be called an added danger. The porter, who was naturally a man of some experience, judged my accoutrement to be well chosen.

Naething kenspeckle,¹ said he; plain, dacent claes. As for the rapier, nae doubt it sits wi’ your degree; but an I had been you, I would hae waired my siller better-gates than that. And he proposed I should buy winter-hosen from a wife in the Cowgate-back, that was a cousin of his own, and made them extraordinar endurable.

But I had other matters on my hand more pressing. Here I was in this old, black city, which was for all the world like a rabbit-warren, not only by the number of its indwellers, but the complication of its passages and holes. It was indeed a place where no stranger had a chance to find a friend, let be another stranger. Suppose him even to hit on the right close, people dwelt so thronged in these tall houses, he might very well seek a day before he chanced on the right door. The ordinary course was to hire a lad they called a caddie, who was like a guide or pilot, led you where you had occasion, and (your errands being done) brought you again where you were lodging. But these caddies, being always employed in the same sort of services, and having it for obligation to be well informed of every house and person in the city, had grown to form a brotherhood of spies; and I knew from tales of Mr. Campbell’s how they communicated one with another, what a rage of curiosity they conceived as to their employer’s business, and how they were like eyes and fingers to the police. It would be a piece of little wisdom, the way I was now placed, to tack such a ferret to my tails. I had three visits to make, all immediately needful: to my kinsman Mr. Balfour of Pilrig, to Stewart the Writer that was Appin’s agent, and to William Grant Esquire of Prestongrange, Lord Advocate of Scotland. Mr. Balfour’s was a non-committal visit; and besides (Pilrig being in the country) I made bold to find the way to it myself, with the help of my two legs and a Scots tongue. But the rest were in a different case. Not only was the visit to Appin’s agent, in the midst of the cry about the Appin murder, dangerous in itself, but it was highly inconsistent with the other. I was like to have a bad enough time of it with my Lord Advocate Grant, the best of ways; but to go to him hot-foot from Appin’s agent, was little likely to mend my own affairs, and might prove the mere ruin of friend Alan’s. The whole thing, besides, gave me a look of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds that was little to my fancy. I determined, therefore, to be done at once with Mr. Stewart and the whole Jacobitical side of my business, and to profit for that purpose by the guidance of the porter at my side. But it chanced I had scarce given him the address, when there came a sprinkle of rain—nothing to hurt, only for my new clothes—and we took shelter under a pend at the head of a close or alley.

Being strange to what I saw, I stepped a little farther in. The narrow paved way descended swiftly. Prodigious tall houses sprang upon each side and bulged out, one storey beyond another, as they rose. At the top only a ribbon of sky showed in. By what I could spy in the windows, and by the respectable persons that passed out and in, I saw the houses to be very well occupied; and the whole appearance of the place interested me like a tale.

I was still gazing, when there came a sudden brisk tramp of feet in time and clash of steel behind me. Turning quickly, I was aware of a party of armed soldiers, and, in their midst, a tall man in a great-coat. He walked with a stoop that was like a piece of courtesy, genteel and insinuating: he waved his hands plausibly as he went, and his face was sly and handsome. I thought his eye took me in, but could not meet it. This procession went by to a door in the close, which a serving-man in a fine livery set open; and two of the soldier-lads carried the prisoner within, the rest lingering with their firelocks by the door.

There can nothing pass in the streets of a city without some following of idle folk and children. It was so now; but the more part melted away incontinent until but three were left. One was a girl; she was dressed like a lady, and had a screen of the Drummond colours on her head; but her comrades or (I should say) followers were ragged gillies, such as I had seen the matches of by the dozen in my Highland journey. They all spoke together earnestly in Gaelic, the sound of which was pleasant in my ears for the sake of Alan; and though the rain was by again, and my porter plucked at me to be going, I even drew nearer where they were, to listen. The lady scolded sharply, the others making apologies and cringeing before her, so that I made sure she was come of a chiefs house. All the while the three of them sought in their pockets, and by what I could make out, they had the matter of half a farthing among the party; which made me smile a little to see all Highland folk alike for fine obeisances and empty sporrans.

It chanced the girl turned suddenly about, so that I saw her face for the first time. There is no greater wonder than the way the face of a young woman fits in a man’s mind, and stays there, and he could never tell you why; it just seems it was the thing he wanted. She had wonderful bright eyes like stars, and I daresay the eyes had a part in it; but what I remember the most clearly was the way her lips were a trifle open as she turned. And whatever was the cause, I stood there staring like a fool. On her side, as she had not known there was anyone so near, she looked at me a little longer, and perhaps with more surprise, than was entirely civil.

It went through my country head she might be wondering at my new clothes; with that, I blushed to my hair, and at the sight of my colouring it is to be supposed she drew her own conclusions, for she moved her gillies farther down the close, and they fell again to this dispute where I could hear no more of it.

I had often admired a lassie before then, if scarce so sudden and strong; and it was rather my disposition to withdraw than to come forward, for I was much in fear of mockery from the womenkind. You would have thought I had now all the more reason to pursue my common practice, since I had met this young lady in the city street, seemingly following a prisoner, and accompanied with two very ragged indecent-like Highlandmen. But there was here a different ingredient; it was plain the girl thought I had been prying in her secrets; and with my new clothes and sword, and at the top of my new fortunes, this was more than I could swallow. The beggar on horseback could not bear to be thrust down so low, or at the least of it, not by this young lady.

I followed, accordingly, and took off my new hat to her, the best that I was able.

Madam, said I, I think it only fair to myself to let you understand I have no Gaelic. It is true I was listening, for I have friends of my own across the Highland line, and the sound of that tongue comes friendly; but for your private affairs, if you had spoken Greek, I might have had more guess at them.

She made me a little, distant curtsey. There is no harm done, said she, with a pretty accent, most like the English (but more agreeable). A cat may look at a king.

I do not mean to offend, said I. I have no skill of city manners; I never before this day set foot inside the doors of Edinburgh. Take me for a country lad—it’s what I am; and I would rather I told you than you found it out.

Indeed, it will be a very unusual thing for strangers to be speaking to each other on the causeway, she replied. "But if you are landward² bred it will be different. I am as landward as yourself; I am Highland as you see, and think myself the farther from my home."

It is not yet a week since I passed the line, said I. Less than a week ago I was on the braes of Balwhidder.

Balwhither? she cries. Come ye from Balwhither? The name of it makes all there is of me rejoice. You will not have been long there, and not known some of our friends or family?

I lived with a very honest, kind man called Duncan Dhu Maclaren, I replied.

Well I know Duncan, and you give him the true name! she said; and if he is an honest man, his wife is honest indeed.

Ay, said I, they are fine people, and the place is a bonny place.

Where in the great world is such another? she cries; "I am loving the smell of

Reviews for Catriona (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

[soylentgreen23 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

'Catriona' is the lesser-known sequel to the classic 'Kidnapped', and follows the protagonist David Balfour's adventures. Here he seeks to right a wrong perpetuated in the first book, which plot closely follows reality; he also falls in love with Catriona, a highland girl whose father, James More, has landed in prison because of his connection to the murder at the heart of 'Kidnapped.' Spurred by a sense of honour and wishing to do the same thing, Balfour becomes involved in the intrigue, only to find himself kidnapped once again.'Catriona' is a curious book, and well worth reading - especially be would-be writers like myself - because it represents an honest attempt by a great author to make much out of very little. There were enough loose ends in 'Kidnapped' to justify a sequel, but not enough left over to account for quite so long a book, and it is glaring by their absences what precisely is missing from this volume compared to the first. All of those landmark events and fantastic characters in 'Kidnapped' have their shadows here, but none exceed the triumph of the first. For those concerned with what might happen next to David Balfour, the book is worth a read, but for those who had not read the original, this is one sequel where the tale only works for those already fans.

[hhornblower_3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A surprisingly well done sequel/continuation of a very famous story. I never knew it existed until I saw it at the Huntington gift shop. Having just finish Kidnapped, I figured I'd give it a shot and was pleasantly surprised. Well worth a read.

[leslie398 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

thoughts and comments to come

[themulhern · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The immediate sequel to Kidnapped. This is not an adventure or travel tale, but a tale of politics, love, propriety, and misunderstanding. David must think through his position constantly, and ultimately accomplishes very little, though he works at it very hard. James Mor MacGregor-Drummond is so exasperating as to be quite entertaining. David has a very refreshing hard-headedness or cold-bloodedness when those whom he has truly disliked die, but his affection for his friends is unaffected and very strong.

[schmerguls · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is a sequel to Kidnapped, which I read in 1970. I read a synopsis of it to prepeare to read this volume, which was first published in 1893, the year before Stevenson died. The first 265 pages tell of David traipsing around Scotland, and the things he was trying to do and that others were preventing him from doing are a mite obscure. And there is much Scot dialect, which is a real pain to read and to try to make sense of. But the second part beginning on page 267, tells of David's trip to Europe, accompanied by the love of his life. This part has little Scot dialect, and tells a good story, even poignant at times. The morals of David and his love are exemplary and people wearied by modern fiction characters who have no morals at all will enjoy the contrast which David displays. Ths book is an illustration of the wisdom of not giving up on a book just because the first 265 pages are a chore at times to read.

[parelle · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

No, this isn't as good at Kidnapped. I fully admit to being a sap in saying that I enjoyed it, for it isn't the high-flying adventure story that the first book is - at all. No, here we have Davie in loooooooove. I do think though that this book is still best for the connections it has to Kidnapped - whether it be David doing right by the people who helped him before, or the rare and wonderful appearances of Alan Breck. And yet, even in this somewhat strained circumstances, I still liked him - and her, as well.