![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Master Of Ballantrae
May. 26th, 2022 10:13 amRobert Louis Stevenson is the man to go to for pirates so I went- not to the obvious book- but to the Master of Ballantrae which has a piratical episode that gets as near to the actuality as I suppose anyone ever has. The Sarah, captained by a psychotic loon who blacks his face, chews broken glass and calls himself the Devil and his ship Hell- drifts around the north Atlantic with most of her crew in a drunken stupor, capturing piddling little merchant ships who put up no resistance, committing atrocities- and running from the Royal Navy- except on the one occasion when they are all so out of it they don't notice that the ship they're bearing down on is flying the royal ensign. There is no romance about them and the captain- who commands by terror not competence- backs down and becomes malleable when confronted by the Master- who is a smarter and badder man. Oh, it's a terrific story, and Stevenson has great fun narrating it in the voice of Francis Burke- an ersatz Boswell, charmingly Irish, utterly amoral but overflowing with 18th century sentiment.
I first encountered The Master as a BBC "classic" serial that was broadcast in the late 1950s. I don't remember s great deal about it- just the image of a man drowning in quicksand and- above all- the theme music- which was one of the folky, tunes from Dvojak's New World Symphony. I looked to see if it still exists- and found that- like so much of British TV of that period- it is missing presumed wiped.
There's also a 1953 movie which stars Erroll Flynn- and turns the Master- Erroll's role, of course- into a lovable rogue- which he absolutely ain't. Charismatic, yes, charming, yes, but lovable? Not in a month of Sundays. Stevenson was fascinated by evil- and the Master follows John Silver and precedes Michael from the Wrong Box and Atwatter from the Ebb Tide in his gallery of fascinating psychopaths. The Master's brother, Henry, is the Jeckyll to his Hyde- a dutiful, dull fellow. Did Stevenson think virtue boring? I'm rather afraid he did. It's what a Calvinist upbringing will do to you...
I first encountered The Master as a BBC "classic" serial that was broadcast in the late 1950s. I don't remember s great deal about it- just the image of a man drowning in quicksand and- above all- the theme music- which was one of the folky, tunes from Dvojak's New World Symphony. I looked to see if it still exists- and found that- like so much of British TV of that period- it is missing presumed wiped.
There's also a 1953 movie which stars Erroll Flynn- and turns the Master- Erroll's role, of course- into a lovable rogue- which he absolutely ain't. Charismatic, yes, charming, yes, but lovable? Not in a month of Sundays. Stevenson was fascinated by evil- and the Master follows John Silver and precedes Michael from the Wrong Box and Atwatter from the Ebb Tide in his gallery of fascinating psychopaths. The Master's brother, Henry, is the Jeckyll to his Hyde- a dutiful, dull fellow. Did Stevenson think virtue boring? I'm rather afraid he did. It's what a Calvinist upbringing will do to you...
