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R.M. Ballantyne (1825-1894) - in full Robert Michael - pseudonym: Comus |
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Scottish writer for boys, noted for the adventure story The Coral Island (1858), which Robert Louis Stevenson acknowledged as the formative influence of his own love of the South Seas. The book also inspired J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan (1904) and William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954). It has not been out of print since it first appeared. Several abridged editions have been published for young readers. R.M. Ballantyne's narrative skill, colorful settings, and resourcefulness of his heroes have secured his popularity throughout generations. "One night, soon after we entered the tropics, an awful storm burst upon our ship. The first squall of wind carried away two of our masts, and left only the foremast standing. Even this, however, was more than enough, for we did not dare to hoist a rag of sail on it. For five days the tempest raged in all its fury. Everything was swept off the decks except one small boat. The steersman was lashed to the wheel, lest he should be washed away, and we all gave our selves up for lost. The captain said that he had no idea where we were, as we had been blown far out of our course; and we feared much that we might get among the dangerous coral reefs which are so numerous in the Pacific. At daybreak on the sixth morning of the gale we saw land ahead. It was an island encircled by a reef of coral on which the waves broke in fury. There was calm water within this reef, but we could see only one narrow opening into-it. For this opening we steered, but ere we reached it a tremendous wave broke on our stern, tore the rudder completely off, and left us at the mercy of the winds and waves." (from The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean, illustrated by Henry Austin, Ward, Lock & Co., 1901, p. 19) R.M. Ballantyne was born in Edinburgh, the son of Anne Randall Scott Grant and Alexander Ballantyne, a newspaper editor and the brother of John and James Ballantyne (see below). Walter Scott's financial crisis had triggered in 1813 the collapse of John Ballantyne and Co., the printer of Scott's works, but the company was saved by a new contract of co-parthership. However, at the time of Ballantyne's birth, the financial crisis of 1826 had caused the family's ruin. Ballantyne was educated at Edinburgh Academy (1835-37) and privately. Between the ages of 16 and 22 he was employed in Canada by the Hudson Bay Company, mostly keeping inventories of furs, pelts, and teeth. The work brought him into contact with local Indians and Eskimos. Noteworthy, for the rest of his life he believed in the beneficient effects of the Hudson Bay operation. Due to feelings of homesickness, Ballantyne started to write letters to his mother. "To this long-letter writing I attribute whatever small amount of facility in composition I may have acquired," Ballantyne said in Personal Reminiscences of Book-Making (1893). After returning to Scotland in 1847, Ballantyne worked as a clerk at the North British Railway Company in Edinburgh for two years, and was then employed by the paper-makers Alexander Cowan and Company. From 1849 to 1855 he was junior partner of Thomas Constable and Company, a printing house. Ballantyne's autobiographical work Hudson's Bay: Or Everyday Life in the Wilds of North America (1848)
depicted his youth and adventures in Canada. From 1856 he devoted
himself entirely to free-lance writing and giving lectures. The
first stories depicted his life in Canada, later works dealt with his
adventures in Britain, Africa, and elsewhere. His other early
works include Snowflakes and Sunbeams, or, The Young Fur Traders (1856), Ungava: A Tale of Esquimaux-Land (1857), and The Dog Crusoe
(1860). Several of his books were based on personal experience. During
his career Ballantyne wrote over 80 books. He had a considerable
influence on boys and young men of the time, the future builders of the
British Empire, who could identify themselves with his heroes. A good part of Ballantyne's former popularity can
be attributed to the celebration of British racial, cultural, and moral
superiority. These elements have made his
stories less enjoyable for today's readers, perhaps with the exeption of The Coral Island,
where the British schoolboys, "three jolly young tars" as one of them
remarks, are spiritually changed by their surroundings and the
missionary outreach. The Coral Island tells of three English boys, Ralph
Rover, the 15 years old narrator, three years older Jack, and humorous
14 year old Peterkin, who are shipwrecked on a deserted island in the
south Pacific. It is some thirty miles in circumference and ten in
diameter.The vegetation is rich and varied. There are two mountains on
the island, and an underwater grotto of crystal walls, the Diamond
Cave. The beaches are of pure white sand, ringed by a coral reef, and despite violent
storms, the
climate is warm and constant. In the true Robinson Crusoe fashion Jack, Ralph, and Peterkin
create on the island a paradise of opportunities. They make a fire by rubbing two sticks together and climb
palm trees to gather thin-skinned coconuts – a mistake in detail
Ballantyne was bitterly to regret. To sail to other islands they build
a boat and make a sail out of the coconut cloth. After a fight Jack
wins the native chief, Taroro. Then evil pirates kidnap Ralph whose
adventures continue among the South Sea Islands. He manages to escape
with one of the members of the crew, Bloody Bill, and with the pirates'
schooner. Bill dies and Ralph and returns to his friends. When they try
to help Avatea, a Samoan girl, to go to Christian natives, Tararo
seizes them. However, an English missionary appears on the scene and
Tararo becomes a Christian. Finally the young heroes return to
civilization, matured and much wiser. "To part is the lot of all
mankind. The world is a scene of constant leave-making, and the hands
that grasp in cordial greeting to-day are doomed ere long to unite for
the last time, when the quivering lips pronounce the word—"Farewell."" (Ibid., p. 369) The boys made a comeback in The Gorilla Hunters (1861), a less popular sequel. Annoyed by a mistake he made in The Coral Island, Ballantyne traveled widely to gain first-hand knowledge and to research the backgrounds of his stories. He spent three weeks on Bell Rock to write The Lighthouse (1865), and was for a short time a London fireman (Fighting the Flames, 1867), for Deep Down (1868) he lived with the tinminers of St. Just for over three months. Experiences as a fireman on board the tender of the London-to Edinburgh express and weeks on the Gull Lightship also gave material for his subsequent novels. Ballantyne was especially careful with the details of local flora and fauna, giving believable settings for his dramatic adventures, shipwrecks and other colorful events. In 1866 Ballantyne married Jane Dickson Grant; they had four sons and two daughters. After 1883 he lived in Harrow, Middlesex. Ballantyne died on February 8, 1894, in Rome, Italy. He had been suffering from a mysterious ailment, which was later diagnosed as Ménière's disease. Ballantyne was buried in the Protestant Cemetery of Rome. Upon his death, thousands of schoolboys raised £600 to commemorate him. On the advice on R.L. Stevenson, £40 was devoted to purchasing the tombstone and the rest of the money went to Ballantyne's widow and his children. Ballantyne opened views into the world, that just waited for brave explorers, for the sons of the rapidly expanding literati of
middle- and working-class families. He became the hero of Victorian
youth. Ballantyne's straitjacketed Puritanism did not rouse any
questions, and the lighthearted descriptions of the slaughter of fauna
and natives of the islands were then passed without comment. With his
intriguing stories Ballantyne made his contribution to the success of
missionaries,
soldiers, sailors, trail-blazers, and adventurers of the age of
Imperialism. He was less sympathetic to Africans than to Indians. The
African could not be trusted, he argued, for "the whole Kaffir nation,
root and branch, is a huge thief, an inveterate liar, and a wholesale
murderer," and they have no "claim whatever to this unused, negleted,
umimproved, umpossessed land." ('Hunting and the natural world in juvenile literature' by John M. MacKenzie, in Imperialism and Juvenile Literature, edited by Jeffrey Richards, 1989, p. 157) James Ballantyne (1772-1833), brother of John Ballantyne, at first a solicitor, then a printer in Kelso and later in Edinburgh. Although his printing business with his brother and Walter Scott was highly successful, he was bankrupted by the crash of Constable and Co. in 1826. Scott named him Aldiborontiphoscophoria after a character in H. Carey's burlesque Chrononhotonthologos. John Ballantyne (1774-1821), brother of James Ballantyne, became in 1809 manager of the publishing firm started by himself and Sir Walter Scott, who named him 'Rigdum-Funnidos' after a character in Henry Carey's (1687?-1743) burlesque Chrononhotonthologos. For further reading: The Young Fur Trader; the Story of R. M. Ballantyne by L. C. Rodd (1966); Ballantyne the Brave: A Victorian Writer and His Family by Eric Quayle (1967); R.M. Ballantyne: A Bibliography of First Editions by Eric Quayle (1968); Literature and Imperialism, edited by Robert Giddings (1991); The Robinsonade Tradition in Robert Michael Ballantyne's the Choral Island and William Golding's the Lord of the Flies by Karin Siegl (1996); St James Guide to Children's Writers, ed. by Sara Pendergast and Tom Pendergast (1999); 'Separate Accounts: Class and Colonization in the Early Stories of R.M. Ballantyne' by Robert P. Irvine, in Journal of Victoria Culture, Volume 12, Number 2 Autumn (2007); 'R.M. Ballantyne,' in The Book of Forgotten Authors by Christopher Fowler (2018); Victorian Coral Islands of Empire, Mission, and the Boys' Adventure Novel by Michelle Elleray (2020) - Note: Suomeksi on käännetty myös mm. Pikku Ailin matka maailman merillä. Kirjailijan tunnetuin teos, Korallisaari, ilmestyi suomeksi ensimmäisen kerran 1918. Kariston julkaisemana. Crusoe-koirasta ja Gorillanmetsästäjistä otettiin uusintapainokset vuonna 1989. See also: William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954), a reverse version of The Coral Island. "Jolly good show. Like the Coral Island," says a naval officer at the end of Golding's novel. Selected works:
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