“A graphic story here, you’ll find, by R.L. Stevenson.

“It beats the ‘Treasure Island’ — or any he has done!

“From opening unto finish, your attention’s kept alive —

“The scene is laid in Scotland, just after ‘Forty-five’ —

“‘Tis a tale of wild adventure, most marvelously told,

“And cunningly the writer does his clever plot unfold:

“Throughout the narrative we find the author at his best,

“‘Tis full of fight and bustle and thrilling interest.

“The characters are drawn, you’ll find, with most consummate skill —

“A book you ought at once to read, and read at once you will!”

That is a sample of hundreds of contemporary reviews and articles that Mrs. Margaret Stevenson, the mother of Robert Louis Stevenson, pasted into several scrapbooks to make a record of her son’s literary achievements, of which she was very proud — though, like her husband Thomas, she fell short of ever comprehending why their only child would have chosen such a strange and unpromising career to chase. The quote above is from one of three scrapbooks that found a home at Baker’s on Stevenson Lane over a century ago.

These scrapbooks hold interest for scholarly types, which is one of the reasons the Stevenson Society of America gave permission to Yale University Press to have them microfilmed in 1974. Yale is the home of the famous Beinecke collection of Stevenson manuscripts. Their namesake, Edwin Beinecke, was a member of the Stevenson Society in its heyday and attended the annual meetings on the museum grounds. Each thick volume of his six-volume catalogue, now in the very bookcase once used by RLS at Baker’s, was signed by Beinecke as he personally mailed them, one by one, as they came into print, to Saranac Lake as a gift to the Stevenson Society. The scrapbooks themselves were donated by Mrs. Isobel Field, Stevenson’s stepdaughter, who, going by her nickname “Belle,” is conspicuous in several segments of this series, “The Hunter’s Home, RLS and the Stevenson Connection.”

Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson was the name given to the newborn son of Thomas and Margaret Stevenson on Nov. 13, 1850, after the two grandfathers, Robert Stevenson and Lewis Balfour. As a young man and confirmed Francophile, Lewis changed two letters in his middle name to become French Louis, and Balfour was dropped, presumably, to lighten the load of syllables. Louis had no reason to be ashamed of his mother’s side of the family. The Balfours have been prominent in Britain’s affairs since Alexander Balfour become cupbearer to King James IV in the 16th century. One of them, Arthur James, rose to prime minister but attained everlasting recognition as a foreign secretary, with his World War I statement of the Balfour Declaration expressing official British approval of Zionism. Francis Maitland Balfour was a scientist and father of modern embryology. Dr. John Balfour, uncle of RLS, was high in the medical service of the East India Company and could brag that he was last man out of Delhi when the mutiny broke. His stories about his Far East adventures supplied his nephew with material to further the plot of “The Master of Ballantrae” here in the winter of 1887-88. The list could go on.

Possibly to make up for the removal of grandfather Balfour from his name, RLS invented David Balfour to be his next hero in fiction, making his debut in “Kidnapped,” his creator’s third adventure novel. Lewis Balfour had 13 children, and thanks to “Kidnapped,” it became fashionable among his descendants to have little Davids here and there. One of them came to the Stevenson Cottage in 1994. He was doing well, by all appearances, as a general manager of a swank hotel in Paris, France. Why was he here? He was attending a hotel convention at Paul Smith’s College. Another David Balfour came to a violent end, and the cause and moment of his death can be witnessed to this day in documentaries. He was an officer on a British warship when a camera caught an Exocet missile broadsiding it in a huge fireball. David was among the dead. On his gravestone at Colinton kirk in Scotland:

“In memory of Lt. Cdr. David Ian Balfour RN, killed in action in HMS Sheffield, The Falklands, 1982.”

David Balfour, the fictional narrator in “Kidnapped,” is widely viewed to be the most endearing projection and portrait of Stevenson himself. The title page gives a hint of things to come starting with the title: “Kidnapped, being memoirs of the adventures of David Balfour in the year MDCCLI. (1751) How he was kidnapped and cast away; his sufferings in a desert isle; his journey in the wild Highlands; his acquaintance with Alan Breck Stewart and other notorious Highland Jacobites; with all that he suffered at the hands of his uncle, Ebeneazer Balfour of Shaws, Falsely so-called; written by himself and now set forth by Robert Louis Stevenson.”

“Kidnapped,” the story, takes place in the mid-18th century, just like “The Master of Ballantrae,” the novel RLS began in Saranac Lake. Both have their roots in the failed Jacobite rebellion in 1745, still called to this day the “Forty-five.” In an essay he wrote here, “A Chapter on Dreams,” Louis admits to “an odd taste that he had for the Georgian costume and for stories laid in that period of English history.”

The germ of “Kidnapped” was discovered by accident. While researching another subject in records from the Old Bailey courthouse in London, Louis came across the record called “The Trial of James Stewart in Aucharn in Duror of Appin for the Murder of Colin Campbell of Glenure, Esq., Factor for His Majesty on the forfeited Estate of Ardshiel,” which was reduced to the Appin murder for convenience of discourse. He may not have been looking for one, but the Appin murder provided Louis with a good excuse to let his imagination run wild through his favorite historical setting, and it resulted in his fourth hit.

“Kidnapped” is filled with the cinema-like action (before movies) unique to the style of RLS, including a six-chapter chase scene across the moors. Called “the Flight in the Heather,” this episode depicts for the first time in English literature the feeling of total exhaustion, say the experts. Like “Treasure Island” and “The Black Arrow” before it, “Kidnapped” first appeared in Young Folks magazine as a serial. It was a success that nudged the author’s growing reputation up another notch. Upon leaving Saranac Lake in the spring of 1888, RLS provided his Adirondack physician, Dr. Trudeau, with a signed copy of “Kidnapped.” Says the inscription: “Here is the one sound page of all my writing, the one I’m proud of and that I delight in.”