The Outlaws of Falkensteig Read online

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  Hidden Knowledge

  www.hidden-knowledge.com

  Copyright ©2003 by Michael J. Ward

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  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

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  THE

  OUTLAWS OF

  FALKENSTEIG

  a collection of stories by

  RAFAEL SABATINI

  HIDDEN KNOWLEDGE

  SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA

  2003

  Introduction copyright © 2003 by Jesse F. Knight

  Layout, corrections, and markup in this edition

  are copyright © 2003 by Michael J. Ward.

  All rights reserved

  This book is an electronic edition of a collection of short stories originally published in English magazines in the early years of the 20th century and unavailable since that time. Several years ago Michael Cummins and Jesse F. Knight published a specialist reprinting, handmade in an edition of 75 copies. The Hidden Knowledge e-book is the first trade edition of these stories.

  The cover design is based on a black and white illustration from the original magazine publication of “The Outlaw of Falkensteig” in 1900, and was hand-colored by Karen Schaffer for this edition.

  You, the buyer of this electronic edition, may make backup copies and/or put a copy on a second or third computer or reading device. You may print out a copy for your own use. You may lend the book, sell it, or give it away, as long as you lend, sell, or give away all copies. You may have the text read aloud by reading machines or computers or people.

  You may not distribute free copies, put it on a network, e-mail it to your friends (or enemies or strangers or anyone else), photocopy your printout for someone else, or do any of the other things that you, as an intelligent being, know would be wrong. Just treat us the way you would like to be treated yourself.

  —THE PUBLISHERS

  Published as a digital book by

  Hidden Knowledge

  1181 Martin Avenue

  San Jose, California 95126-2626

  www.hidden-knowledge.com

  First Trade Edition Release 1.02

  17 May 2005

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  THE OUTLAW OF FALKENSTEIG

  D'AUBEVILLE'S ENTERPRISE

  THE HOSTAGE

  THE NUPTIALS OF LINDENSTEIN

  THE OUTLAW AND THE LADY

  THE JEALOUSY OF DELVENTHAL

  THE SHRIVING OF FELSHEIM

  THE

  OUTLAWS OF

  FALKENSTEIG

  THE OUTLAW AS HERO

  an Introduction

  by Jesse F. Knight

  Rafael Sabatini was a leading writer of stories of adventure and romance, and many of his stories featured an outlaw as the hero of the tale. What is it about the outlaw that we love? It surely isn't the outlawry itself, for aren't most of us reasonably law-abiding? By this I mean that we break the law only when it is socially acceptable to do so—by, say, going five miles an hour over the speed limit or cheating on our taxes. So if it isn't the act itself, then what is it about the outlaw that endears him or her to us? How is it that every country can name (usually with some degree of pride) its local outlaws? There are the Robin Hoods, the Captain Bloods, the Billy the Kids and Jesse Jameses, the gangster-heroes of the 30s, the highwaymen of England, and The Fugitive from television land, not to mention more elevated outlaws such as Jean Valjean in France.

  What I think makes the outlaw so appealing is the quality of individualism that he or she always exhibits. Beyond the pale of the law, the outlaw, even in a gang, is alone. Confronting the world, he is responsible for his own destiny. Here is Man beyond Society, an existentialist if you will, essentially facing life alone and usually victorious.

  Furthermore, a common quality of the outlaw in fiction is that he is frequently clever, more clever certainly than those who doggedly pursue him. Intelligence is highly prized in the stories of outlaws. It is not that he is stronger than his adversaries; quite often the contrary is the case. He is more likely to be the decided underdog. But he is brave, he is bold, he is daring, he is resourceful, he is ingenious, he is cunning, and as such he assumes the mantle of the Hero, just as surely as Homer's Odysseus did ... and all the while laughing gaily. The outlaw image satisfies a most fundamental part of human nature—that desire to see ourselves as successful beings, capable of coping with life and its travails.

  Yes, it is true that sometimes the outlaw is brought to heel—an example would be Jesse James—but as often as not it is through treachery, rather than any superior skill of his adversaries. He is betrayed rather than bested. It is these traits, then, that endear the maverick, the outsider—in a word, the outlaw—to us.

  Rafael Sabatini recognized the importance of this primal symbol. He not only used it early in his illustrious career, but returned to it often. His famous triumvirate, The Sea-Hawk, Scaramouche, and Captain Blood, all feature hero-outlaws.

  Sabatini first used the hero-outlaw motif in the Falkensteig stories, which we have collected in this volume. Except for a specialist reissue in a tiny edition, these stories have been unavailable since they first appeared in fiction magazines a hundred years ago. We take great pleasure in presenting them to you now.

  Despite the fact that Sabatini was a facile writer, these stories did not come together quickly. Indeed, it took over two years for the whole series to be written and published. This was likely due to the fact that at the time Sabatini still held a full-time job and could write only on the side and in the evenings.

  Rafael Sabatini was born in Italy in 1875. His parents were both widely traveling opera singers, and as a youngster he lived in several European countries. Sabatini finally settled in Liverpool, England at the age of 17. He worked during the day, and in the evenings he wrote and wrote and wrote. By the end of the 19th century, Sabatini's work began appearing in national magazines in England.

  When Sabatini had moved to Liverpool, on the advice of his father, he found employment working for an importer. He had attained considerable linguistic skills as a result of his travels around Europe as a youngster; he spoke German, French, Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish, and knew Latin. All this was in addition to English, taught him by his English mother and brushed up on when he arrived in Liverpool. So it was a natural fit for Sabatini to go to work translating and writing business correspondence.

  It is one of those ironies of life that he was so good at languages that his skill limited his career; he was kept toiling at correspondence and had no hope of advancement in the importing firm. For the imaginative and romantic young man, this must have been incredibly boring, day after day. We can guess he found escape in reading fiction; by the mid-1890's he was writing it. He liked creating swashbuckling tales even better than reading the work of others. Writing and working in the business world took its toll, there can be no doubt; in a later autobiographical article, he said he probably got less sleep at that time than any other man in London. He also hinted that some of the time when he should have been diligently doing his employer's work, he took to write fiction instead.

  It is interesting to observe, in this volume of early stories, how quickly Sabatini mastered the type of fiction with which he would be identified his entire literary career. It is true that his style would improve considerably in the years ahead, as he learned to make his prose much more fluid and supple. S
ome of the language of these stories is archaic; some of it is stilted. It is, quite frankly, more the language of the 19th century than it is of the 20th or 21st centuries. But beyond that admitted shortcoming, there is much to recommend these stories.

  Sabatini already had a firm grasp of narrative structure. He already knew how to shape and form and mold a story. I hesitate to say he was a natural-born storyteller, for I think storytelling is as much a skill to be developed as the skill of characterization or dialogue. But if there is such a thing as a natural-born storyteller, then Sabatini was surely that writer. His plots are always swift and sure. There is a headlong rush about a Sabatini story; once begun, it seems impossible to put down. I don't believe Sabatini improved that aspect of his writing at all in the decades of creative work ahead of him—I don't believe he could have.

  Despite being known as a novelist in later years, Sabatini began his career primarily as a short story writer; he wrote stories for six or seven years before he turned to novel writing. Even after he found success as a novelist, he continued to write short fiction; short stories formed an important aspect of his literary output throughout his life.

  Another area that Sabatini excelled at from the very beginning of his career was in the clever, surprise endings of his short fiction. These stories were written at a time when O. Henry's ingenious stories held sway over the literary short-story landscape, all around the world. Although Sabatini never mentioned the American storyteller as an influence or even as a market factor, he nonetheless learned quickly enough what editors were looking for, and he was happy to accommodate them. The surprise ending was an element of Sabatini's short stories throughout his career, from his early fiction sales and the stories in his first fiction collection The Justice of the Duke (1912), through his two fine Captain Blood collections in the 1930's, to his last collection, Turbulent Tales. There is a sheer delight in the virtuosic endings of many of the stories we present here in this volume as well.

  This collection represents Sabatini at the beginning of his career, when he was in his mid-20s. The first of these stories appeared in August 1900 in Pearson's Magazine (Pearson's was an early supporter of Sabatini's work) and the last in November 1902. In the first tale Sabatini named his outlaw Kervenheim and at the end returns him to lawful society. However, apparently Pearson's liked the classic hero-outlaw motif so much that they prevailed upon Sabatini to pen further tales. These had Andreas von Felsheim as their hero, and from then on Sabatini was consistent.

  During this time he wasn't just writing only these stories, however; in this same period he also completed his first novel, The Lovers of Yvonne, published in 1902.

  It was also during this period that his mother lived with him. A well-known opera star, she taught singing out of their home. Among her students were the daughters of wealthy paper merchant Lancelot Steele Dixon. One daughter in particular, Ruth Goad Dixon, caught Rafael's eye. She and the dapper young man hit it off, and they were married within a few years.

  By 1905, after the publication of his second novel, Sabatini could leave the business world to devote himself full-time to writing fiction. In the early years, although Sabatini was by no means a poor starving artist, he wasn't in the upper echelon of writers, either. He had a loyal following in England, and his book sales were solid if unspectacular; some of them sold well enough to merit being reprinted. Few of his novels appeared in the U.S. However, some of his short stories were resold to American magazine publishers, or were reprinted in the U.S. editions of English magazines, such as Pearson's.

  Thus Sabatini wrote for two decades, producing a new book every year. Finally, after more than 25 years of writing, Sabatini achieved “overnight success” when Scaramouche, after having been rejected by numerous publishers, became a best-seller in Europe and the United States. Sabatini's popularity skyrocketed. He followed up Scaramouche with another huge seller: Captain Blood. After those two big sellers, Sabatini's publishers reissued several of his earlier works. The Sea-Hawk was among them. It too became a best-seller. From that time on, there came a stream of reprints and reissues of his earlier work, as well as a constant flow of new stories and novels. Over a dozen of his novels, non-fiction works, and short-fiction collections were made available to feed the buying frenzy of the public.

  With this new affluence, Sabatini, now married with a son, moved to Hampstead Heath in the suburbs of London. Although his standard of living was elevated, Sabatini was remarkably untouched by the change in his literary status. Modest and unassuming, he shied away from the limelight except when his publisher insisted on some biographical details for the press. He continued to create a steady stream of books, and even dabbled in the theater and in films, producing a number of scripts.

  Sabatini was working so hard that in 1927 his doctor recommended a lengthy vacation. Sabatini, an avid fisherman, took the opportunity to rent a country home in the west of England, near Tintern Abbey. A trout stream flowed beside the house; there, Sabatini relaxed.

  Their son, an avid sportsman like his dad, was taking a break from crammers and joined them. With his brand new automobile, a gift from his doting parents, the boy was doubtless the envy of the neighborhood. At the height of Sabatini's fame, when he should have been happiest, tragedy struck. His son was killed, and his wife injured, in an auto accident; the cause of the accident was never determined. Their marriage disintegrated after the death of their son, and the Sabatinis divorced.

  As if his personal problems weren't enough, Sabatini was faced with financial troubles as well. The Depression struck across the globe, affecting book sales. The grim times, perhaps, did not lend themselves well to the vivid, dramatic, but essentially light-hearted fare of Sabatini. It only made things worse when Sabatini's accountant got the writer into trouble with the U. S. Internal Revenue Service over a claim for unpaid taxes on royalties. The case dragged on in the courts for years, and Sabatini had to pay enormous fines and penalties.

  Thus at the time when Sabatini should have been his happiest he was his most miserable. For a time Sabatini wrote little, so much did he despair over the death of his son, whom he called his best friend. But eventually he did resume his regular routine, producing a book a year. He remarried in the mid-30s and moved far away from London, into the green countryside of Shropshire. He renovated a cottage called Clockmill on the River Wye, even creating a trout stream so he could indulge in his favorite pastime. Sabatini settled down on the Welsh-English border for the remainder of his life.

  The approach of World War II depressed the writer, whose outlook was more European than English. Still, the Sabatinis were far from the front and far from the bombings that London had to endure on a daily basis.

  However, even in the bucolic countryside, Sabatini was not immune to the tragedies of war. Sabatini and his second wife saw the death of her son, an RAF pilot, in another senseless accident when the boy crashed his plane in front of Clockmill, before their horrified eyes.

  The decade of the 40s saw a slowing of Sabatini's output. He was ill, suffering from a stomach ailment; and anxious about the war and depressed about the boy's death. Nonetheless, he still managed to write several books.

  The Sabatinis were avid skiers, and after the war they made annual pilgrimages to Switzerland. In 1950, despite being extremely ill, Sabatini insisted on going to the Alps again. He died in Adelboden, Switzerland in February of that year, and is buried beneath a sculpture created by his wife. On his gravesite are the opening lines from Scaramouche, “He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.” It is a fitting tribute for the last of the great romantics.

  That quote aptly sums up these early stories as well. Throughout these tales of adventure and derring-do you can hear the echo of delighted laughter. In the artificial, often insane world of the court and monarchy, we have a glimpse of a non-rational world, where a King can arbitrarily decide marriages, titles, land, and life and death; where a bad temper and drunkenness are elevated to the level of
statecraft. Such was the life Sabatini was portraying for readers at the turn of the 20th century. That a rational man—an outlaw—might succeed in such a world was Sabatini's glowing vision. It might be too much to argue that Sabatini was a democrat (and I use the term its original meaning—not in today's current political party sense); but I don't think it would be incorrect to say that he believed in an aristocracy of ability, not an aristocracy of birth. It is his ability that sets Andreas von Felsheim, the hero-outlaw, above his would-be captors. I suspect Sabatini felt something of an outsider himself, despite his love for his adopted country, and in that sense he may have identified with the outsider-hero of these stories. So in that way, these are, perhaps, Sabatini's own story.

  However, I don't think it wise to read too much philosophy into these yarns of a fairy-tale Germany. Sabatini set for himself the not-unworthy goal of writing a series of rollicking adventures. In this he succeeded admirably. So let the Reader sit back and enjoy; that, as far as Sabatini was concerned, was his goal as a writer, and his ultimate reward, too.

  Jesse F. Knight

  March 2003

  THE OUTLAW OF FALKENSTEIG

  When a man chances to love two women, and yet cannot determine which of them he loves best, then truly is he in a sorry quandary.

  Thus was it with me, Otto von Ronshausen, the favourite of Ludwig IV, of Sachsenberg. On the one hand was the Lady Freda von Horst, with her fair hair and soft brown eyes, which seemed to arouse what little good there was within me; on the other, stood the Countess of Barnabatt, dark-eyed, proud, and queenly of carriage—albeit, but slight of form—whose laugh had ever a disdainful ring, whose glances stirred the warrior soul that was the patrimony of those who bore my name, and inspired me to deeds of valour.

  And I—I loved them both; each after a different fashion and at different seasons. In times of sorrow—and there are many sorrows in a favourite's life, although some think it not—I would turn me to my fair-haired maid for consolation; whilst in my hours of gaiety and recklessness, I would seek out my swarthy queen, who could not brook my duller moods.