John Nicholson's unfortunate adventures

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John Nicholson's unfortunate adventure ( Engl. The Misadventures of John Nicholson. A Christmas Story ) is a Christmas story of the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson from 1887.


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The roughly 19-year-old unsightly John Nicholson - his schoolmates called and still call him fat boy - works as a clerk in the Edinburgh office of his father, who was widowed at an early age. The series of accidents begins on a Saturday. John is supposed to carry £ 400 from the office to one of the Edinburgh banks. On the way he visits his friend Alan in a billiard room. When John finally reached the bank, it was closed. Carelessly and recklessly, John keeps the banknotes on his man, goes out in the evening and is promptly robbed on the way home at night. John hastily leaves his father's house and goes to California via Glasgow . At home, the runaway abandons two siblings in addition to his father - Maria, two years younger, and Alexander, eight years younger. Flora Mackenzie, a girl with blue highland eyes, had been his friend in Edinburgh. John's father and Captain Mackenzie would have liked to see the connection. Flora had been superior to the boy. But the huggable girl's many sighs had been made up for by friendly, furtive looks and easy laughter.

After ten years as an accountant for a bank in San Francisco , John is said to have gotten rich in the States and wants to bring his father back the 400 pounds for Christmas. The fugitive had never written home in all these years. The father believes him dead. When John lands in Scotland, he is already wanted by the California police as a bank robber in Edinburgh. The father paid the allegedly stolen money before the prodigal son landed without hesitation and throws the newcomer out of the house on Christmas Day. Where should John spend the holy night? With the heavy suitcase the unfortunate goes to his old friend Alan and finds shelter there in the remote Edinburgh district of Murrayfield, despite initial resistance from the strange bachelor. On the morning of Christmas Day, Alan disappeared without a trace. The corpse of an unknown elderly man with a severe face lies around the apartment. John soils his trousers with the dead man's blood and has to change his pants. On the run from Alan's house, John - who thinks he's threatened with the gallows - can barely pay the cab driver, who recognizes him from earlier times. He left the wallet in his dirty pants next to the body.

John returns to his father's house after wandering around Edinburgh for hours. What else can he do at night? A strange nun is calmly eating her meal at the dining table. The nun is really Flora - now a nurse. The still unmarried woman is taking care of John's sick sister Maria. Alexander does everything he can to help his brother, who is in a bind.

The happy ending announced above borders on slapstick: Flora - objective in every situation - intervenes courageously; reconciles father and son. In return, the young lady becomes John's wife the following April. She has her husband firmly under control - for example, regarding the number of cigars allowed daily - as a seasoned nurse who prefers to work with doctors in Edinburgh for more complicated care cases.

The Californian bank robber accusation had been one of John's many misfortunes not discussed here. He had confidently entrusted funds from the bank he was employed to to a fraudulent Californian colleague. And the dead man in the school friend's house had been one of Alan's unruly tenants. Alan had killed the man in an argument and had been sent to a madhouse for it.

shape

An anonymous first-person narrator noted John's bad luck with a happy ending; speaks of "our poor hero" and his "undeserved misfortunes". He describes his hero as not thrifty, cheerful, orderly and concerned about his health.

reception

  • While Stevenson addressed the tensions between himself and his Puritan father more directly in The Story of a Lie in 1879 , years later they emerge behind an indulgent, cheerful tone of conversation.
  • Poschmann goes into an aspect of the "right life test". On the one hand, the father, who is concerned about “good bourgeois reputation”, intervenes briskly when John has to be pulled off the wrong track, but on the other hand, thanks to his own “natural, self-evident righteousness”, John gets back on track.

German-language literature

expenditure

Secondary literature

Web links

in English

Remarks

  1. ↑ also "The Unfortunate Adventures of John Nicholson", "John Nicholson, the Unlucky One" and "The Strange Adventures of the Unfortunate John Nicholson".
  2. ↑ Edition used.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reinbold, p. 153, 17th Zvu
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 225, 5th Zvu
  3. ↑ Wirzberger in the afterword of the edition used, p. 391
  4. ↑ Poschmann in the afterword of the 1965 edition. P. 189, 17th Zvu