The diamond of the rajah
The diamond of the Rajah ( Engl. The Rajah's Diamond ) is a narrative of the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson , in the summer of 1878 in London Magazine has been pre-printed, and in 1882 the first volume of the collection New Arabian Nights at Chatto & Windus published in London.
This parody of the detective novel haunts His Highness Prince Florizel of Bohemia; a well-known from the suicide club of the London high society.
content
The text consists of the four stories listed below.
- The story of the hat box
Harry Hartley, orphaned at the age of eighteen, did not invent hard work. Fortunately, Major General Sir Thomas Vandeleur takes him as private secretary. The general is not just anyone. A poor colonial officer, Sir Thomas had grown rich in his younger years. The Rajah of Kashgar had given him the sixth largest diamond in the world. After the general, who tends to be irascible in old age, roughly dismissed his secretary Harry, Lady Clara Vandeleur, the wife of the military, is allowed to take over the work-shy young man as secretary. At the tailor and the milliner Lady Clara summa has summarum ninety thousand pounds debt. Sir Thomas no longer wants to tolerate his wife's chronic addiction to cleaning.
The Vandeleurs live on Eaton Place . When Harry, on secret orders from his mistress, brings a hatbox to Notting Hill on foot , the disaster takes its course. In Kensington Gardens the messenger is placed by the always suspicious Sir Thomas. Harry manages to escape towards Notting Hill with his hatbox because Mr. Charlie Pendragon, the general's brother-in-law, also comes by and the two warring relatives are fighting in the beautiful London park. Once at the destination, Harry does not find the recipient. The young Prudence, the pretty maid, befriends the boy and holds the position against the vehemently charging general. Harry can escape with the hatbox again. However, Harry throws the box over a wall in the hasty escape. The contents of the box - jewelry - ends up on a rose bed . More than half of the various pieces of jewelry fall into the hands of the greedy art gardener Mr. Raeburn of Stockdove Lane. On the way back to his mistress, Harry is robbed a second time by a nimble rascal. The host, the lady and her brother wring their hands at home. Impoverished as ever, the veteran drags the unfortunate Harry to the nearest police station for embezzlement .
Despite all the misfortune, the boy remains lucky in the end. He inherits and can marry Prudence. The narrator is not sure - is the young couple embarking for Bendigo or Trincomalee ?
- The story of the young clergyman
The aforementioned art gardener Mr. Raeburn rents out several apartments in his house. One of the tenants, the young, jobless assistant preacher Simon Rolles, had taken a walk in the garden and had partly noticed Harry's misfortune. Having become curious, Referend Rolles later pays attention to the rose bed without annoying witnesses, but actually finds the raja's diamond and secretly takes the gemstone and the associated leather case. Immediately afterwards, a policeman searches in vain for the precious piece and willingly gives the young assistant preacher who is underhandedly investigating: The general will never see the raja's diamond again, because the crafty thief is guaranteed to sell the gem in pieces. Referend Rolles, strong in biblical exegesis but weak in cutting a diamond the size of a chicken, visits his club. Unfortunately, he does not find a specialist in diamond cutting there, but Prince Florizel of Bohemia, asked about literature of a more practical nature, wants to confront the bookworm with "real life" by reading Gaboriau .
The art gardener has now ruefully and completely surrendered all of his robbery to the police. Since the rajah's diamond remains untraceable, the officials seal Mr. Raeburn's property - the right opportunity for referend rolls to venture off towards Edinburgh via Flying Scotsman . On the way, the young assistant preacher made the acquaintance of old John Vandeleur, who lived in Paris. This brother of the general - exdictator of Paraguay - has in his luggage all the treasures that the rascal - the mugger mentioned above - had stolen from young Harry Hartley. The amazement, however, is entirely on the part of the former dictator. He has never run into such a cunning criminal as the referend with “his” rajah diamond. The final judgment of John Vandeleur: Mr. Rolles has arrived in the right profession. He invites the assistant preacher to Paris.
- The story of the house with the green blinds
The ambitious young Edinburgh bank clerk Francis Scrymgeour is happy to please his dear father. The respect turns into its opposite after Francis learns the truth about his origins. The young man follows the call of his biological father to Paris and meets an acquaintance of the reader there: Mr. John Vandeleur. Francis follows the supposed father to his house with the green blinds in the Rue Lepic and settles in the neighboring house. The days of spying on the young Scotsman reveal that the ex-dictator's household is taken care of by his pretty young daughter. The fortress-like house houses a diamond collection. Major General Sir Thomas Vandeleur, the man "who lost the great Indian diamond", visits the dictator, his brother John Vandeleur. One falls apart and gets along. The next visitor to the house with the green blinds - assistant preacher Simon Rolles is his name - is stunned by the dictator and steals the rajah's diamond from the unconscious. The daughter of the house is very fond of Francis Scrymgeour, gives him the treasure and urges the young man, who has illegally entered the dictator's fortress, to flee. That is also necessary, because the dictator has nothing left for his nephew Francis, who is the son of the major general and a fishwife. The banker's escape ends at the table of the prince, who is omnipresent in the story, in the Parisian Café Américain. Everything will be fine, because the dictator will obey the Bohemian heir to the throne at every word. First, however, Francis hands over the diamond to his counterpart at his behest. Then at a late hour it goes into the house with the green blinds. On the orders of the prince, the dictator has to marry Francis "as soon as possible".
- The prince's adventures with the detective
The prince is reported by the Vandeleur brothers as the thief of the rajah diamond. A detective knocks in the prince's small Paris villa and asks for a walk to the prefect. Said and done. From a bridge the prince throws the diamond into the Seine . The brothers let us dive for the gem, unsuccessfully and to the mockery of the idlers.
A revolution sweeps away the bohemian throne. The prince now sells tobacco in Sohoer Rupert Street. Francis Scrymgeour marries Miss Vandeleur.
Quote
- "Nothing is so bad that it couldn't get worse."
- "Important decisions are often made in a single instant and without any participation of rational thinking."
reception
- Gentsch looks beyond the parodic text elements and discovers social criticism. Perhaps Gentsch is thinking of the passage in which the prince says that the rajah of Kashgar took revenge on the Europeans by giving away the diamond. The story the Prince tells the Parisian detective is even more direct. This gives the answer to the question: How did a European get the precious gift? Answer: The English officer served the Indian prince. "He falsified borders, hushed up murders, passed unjust judgments, had ... a comrade ... executed, betrayed ... a division of his soldiers ...".
- Dölvers goes into more detail on the text (see under The Suicide Club ).
Media adaptation
- Movie
- July 1921, USA: The Tame Cat by Will H. Bradley with Marion Harding and Ray Irwin.
- Musical theater
- 1979, UK: Opera by Alun Hoddinott performed with Geraint Evans and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Robin Stapleton.
German-language literature
expenditure
- Robert Louis Stevenson: The Diamond of the Rajah . Pp. 98-193. (Translator: Elfriede Mund) in Robert Louis Stevenson: The Suicide Club. New stories from the Arabian Nights. With wood engravings by Karl Georg Hirsch . ( The suicide club. The diamond of the rajah ) Afterword by Günter Gentsch. Insel-Verlag, Leipzig 1968, 200 pages
Secondary literature
- Horst Dölvers: The narrator Robert Louis Stevenson. Interpretations. Francke Verlag, Bern 1969, OCLC 864281711 . 200 pages
Web links
in English
- New York 1895: online , page 89 in the Internet Archive
Remarks
- ↑ Kashgar is not in India , but in northwest China .
- ↑ Edition used.
Individual evidence
- ↑ engl. The London Magazine
- ↑ engl. New Arabian Nights
- ^ French rue Lepic
- ↑ Edition used, p. 165, 13. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 125, 4. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 131, 7. Zvo
- ^ Gentsch in the afterword of the edition used, p. 199, 8. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 138, 9. Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 190, 14. Zvu
- ↑ Dölvers, pp. 33-53
- ↑ The Tame Cat in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- ↑ engl. Geraint Evans
- ↑ engl. BBC National Orchestra of Wales
- ↑ engl. The Rajah's Diamond and entry BFI