But Stevenson uses and develops these formulaic elements with imagination and
seriousness. He introduces considerable variety into his heroes’ journeys, describing the
way an apparently loyal crew reveal themselves as mutinous pirates in Treasure Island,
and transforming David Balfour’s role from that of hunter into that of victim in
Kidnapped. Indeed both stories are full of imaginative touches with an enduring
resonance—the Black Spot, Jim’s visit to the apple-barrel, David’s climb up the stair
tower, and his miseries on the isle of Earraid, among many.
Less interested in imperialism than his contemporaries, Stevenson achieved the most
radical variation in the adventure story formula, however, in his treatment of the
faithful companions and the predictable villains. Most strikingly in the relationships
between Jim and Long John Silver in Treasure Island, and David and Allan Breck
Stewart in Kidnapped, Stevenson exploits the familiar elements to portray the
ambiguities of human behaviour. For Silver is the leader of the pirates and ostensibly
the villain of Treasure Island, but he consistently looks after Jim Hawkins, and they
become, in a wonderful stroke of irony, like father and son. Conversely David dislikes
Allan’s flamboyant Jacobite values in Kidnapped, and they bitterly quarrel in the flight
across the heather, but when they draw swords on each other they are forced to
recognise their fundamental brotherhood. Stevenson was preoccupied with the
contradictions and complexities of human behaviour, seeing it constantly changing, and
therefore all the more difficult to make judgements about. He is constantly challenging
the reader’s response and powers of moral assessment. Who is really good or bad, he
asks the reader. Which is better - cool, rigid principles or erratic principles and genuine
love? Stevenson’s work demonstrated how the traditional structure of the adventure
story could be a magnificent instrument for raising serious issues.
So powerful was the tradition created by Captain Marryat and his successors that it
continued through the last years of the nineteenth century into the twentieth century,
with such writers as Captain F.S.Brereton (1872–1957) and ‘Herbert Strang,’ the
pseudonym of the collaborators George Herbert Ely (1866–1958) and James L’Estrange
(1867–1947), who produced such works as With Drake on the Spanish Main (1907).
The only work of this kind which seems to have endured, however, is Moonfleet (1898)
by J.Meade Falkner (1858–1932), a tale of smugglers and treachery in eighteenth-
century England, more reminiscent of Stevenson than the imperialistic writers.
New developments were discernible. Richard Jefferies (1848–1887), with Bevis: The
Story of a Boy (1882), the account of a boy’s exploits exploring and sailing near his
father’s farm, successfully demonstrated how a realistic domestic setting was no
obstacle to a tale of engrossing adventures. Thomas Hardy’s one children’s book, Our
Exploits at West Poley (serialised in America 1892–1893), about some teenage boys’
exploration of a cave in the Mendips, also portrayed realistic adventures combined with
humour at a time when tales of imperial heroics dominated the scene.
British boys’ adventure stories were read throughout the Empire, and known through
translations in most European countries, including Germany, which in Karl May (1842–
1912) had its own highly popular author of Cooper-like adventures. A different kind of
boys’ adventure story had long been popular in North America, however. Even the early
didactic books of Jacob Abbott (1803– 1879) portrayed his young hero Rollo in realistic
situations of danger, for example, when he is caught in a storm while sailing to visit
330 SHAPING BOYHOOD: EMPIRE BUILDERS AND ADVENTURERS