The Wrong Box

'The Wrong Box' (1889) was a collaborative work (on broadly equal terms) between Robert Louis Stevenson and his step son Lloyd Osbourne. It is a rather wicked little book. It may be quite surprising to modern readers that its dark comedy could become a Victorian best seller.

It divided opinion at the time with shock and disapproval on one side and appreciation on the other, reactions that almost certainly come down to that classic division of personality types between the authoritarian and the libertarian. RLS was definitely in the more libertarian camp.

The basic story line is a complex farce centred on three cousins who are the last possible beneficiaries of a tontine which is an arrangement whereby its members put the same funds in a show more pool to be granted to the last survivor.

This is one where we have to try and avoid spoilers. We were slightly irritated by David Pascoe offering too many in his somewhat dull Introduction in this edition. On the other hand, he does a useful job in positioning the tale as a part satire on the railway stand fiction of the time.

Is it funny today? Not uproariously but it remains very amusing. I laughed perhaps once, maybe almost twice, but that is not the point ... it would have been laugh out loud in 1889. We can see why and we can still appreciate the brisk pace, farcical plot and satirical characterisation.

Given modern tastes, the average modern reader will probably be less shocked at the content, involving a disfigured body being callously carted around in a case of mistaken identity, than surprised that it was even published at that time, let alone appreciated by many if not a majority.

Worse, the characters in the novel have, to say the least, little moral character to speak of. They are prepared to do pretty immoral things, are manipulative and self-deluding, adopt an attitude that the only real crime is getting caught or consider their adventures to be little more than a jape.

The satire is sometimes cruelly to the point and certainly cynical as one of the cousins (Morris) gets into ever deeper water because of his stupidity, greed and paranoia without ever being truly a bad man, dragging his hapless brother (John) along with him as disaster follows disaster.

The other cousin (Michael), a disreputable and rascally but intelligent lawyer, has much fun running rings round his less bright relative until finally he fixes everything to a 'happy end' (except for the poor corpse, of course, which is not really a spoiler) in his own interest.

Where the skill lies is not so much in the plot (this constantly keeps the attention) but in the witty characterisation where we find all sorts of human weakness and, to be fair, very little real malice. These are greedy, weak and manipulative people but not cruel or entirely without conscience.

An oddity in the history of popular fiction, perhaps an oddity from RLS too, but worth reading as a remarkable insight into what it must really have been like to have been a Victorian and a rare burst of literary honesty about the human condition. show less

Robert Louis Stevenson is a household name, whose works include Treasure Island, Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. He only lived from 1850 to 1894 and this little number was published in 1889, so represents one of his final achievements delivered at the height of his powers. There’s a co-writer, Lloyd Osbourne, but he must have been reasonably good too because I can’t tell which passages are Stevenson’s and which are not. The story feels as if it was written by one mind, holding it in the hollow of a single hand with no hint of committee input.

RLS is generally thought of as an author of dramatic adventures, but this is a departure because it’s a macabre comedy, a farce if you like. He must have been a show more serious man with a sarcastic sense of humour that was dying to tunnel its way out of the starched shirt. Excuse the quotation from memory, as the book is no longer to hand, but some of the lines are just as applicable today, things like “Julia often made acquaintances in Bournemouth… and would have greatly preferred more allowance and less uncle.” There’s also “an incident at the railway ticket office which bordered on brigandage”, which sounds familiar and still topical to me. Then, after a supposed murder, failure to declare the death followed by desecration of the corpse and forgery of its signature, “the legal profession can be so petty”. There’s also a massive double train wreck, metal and mutilation, where one of the shell-shocked survivors declares “I think there may have been some sort of accident.”

Despite dozens of excellent moments, I marked it down from a four to a three star rating not because I didn’t think it was great stuff but because the language can be stilted, there are slow sections that could have been cut down to keep the action rolling, then it goes a bit wrong near the end and reads like a rush for the finish post. That aside, the core idea is terrific so I’m not underselling this.

The tontine idea this is based on is such a wonderfully, exquisitely pointless venture that even though it originated in Italy, I can easily imagine the Victorian English seizing on it and making it their own. It’s brilliant of course, brilliant, but pointless. I think I need that in my life. In brief, imagine the parents of thirty children putting in a block of money for investment. The last surviving child after ninety or so years wins all of the capital and the interest, which has accumulated over the course of their long lifetime. Naturally, they will be as good as dead when they get it and too much of an invalid to enjoy spending anything, so the whole scheme becomes ridiculous, just a way to put wealth out of circulation for up to a century. It’s a good excuse for the author to show the size of the group depleting in different entertaining ways, but this wasn’t explored as well as it might have been.

I can see themes in this book that have been re-used in popular culture, such as the body in the piano turning up again fifty years later in The Green Man (Alistair Sim) and I’d say it had some influence on Death of a Salesman and permeated into the roots of detective theatre.

The people for whom a tontine contract is not ridiculous are the children/nephews/nieces of the last two survivors as it’s the grandchildren of the original funders who are the true beneficiaries, not the original children at all, there’s the rub, and they have every incentive to prod the oldies to a premature demise.

The Wrong Box is black humour, it’s vicious, insulting, full of greed, cruel and utterly immoral, just like money itself. There can only be one winner in this story – and that’s the reader. I hope you like it as much as I did. show less

I know RL Stevenson had been dead before PG Wodehouse even published his first book, but this novel still felt like the former was trying to imitate the latter - and not quite succeeding.

Andy Minter does an excellent narration in the LibriVox audiobook. This dark comedy is quite different from Stevenson's adventure stories but very enjoyable.

A farce co-written by R.L. Stevenson and his stepson Lloyd Osbourne, this comedy of a concealed body is hectic, improbable, dated, and intermittently funny.

I chose this because of a reference to it in The Island of Sheep. I got off to a bad start with it and gave up fairly quickly. However, after reading some blurbs, I went back, after reading Miss Pym Disposes to see if things improved. Nope, this book stinks. It's supposed to be humorous, but it's stuffy and boring.

From vintage scholastic cover: WHERE IS THE CORPSE?...Is it in the barrel?...Is it in the piano?...Is it in the packing crate? Wherever it is, it's in the wrong box...and two fumblind villains are chasing it all over England! A mystery spoof by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne, adapted by Josephine Ohayon.