Travels With a Donkey in the Cevennes: A Journey Across France

by Robert Louis Stevenson

Release Date: September, 2001

Edition: Paperback

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Fresh, Delightful

In the late 1870s, Robert Louis Stevenson needed cash to break dependence on his parents so he could go to the woman he loved (and they did not). A chronic invalid, he also needed adventure. He decided to do some travel writing and one such trip is recounted in TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY. He headed off to the remote Cevennes mountain range of south central France and got himself kitted out nicely, so nicely, he needed assistance in carrying everything. Enter Modestine, a donkey. He might as well have attempted to harness and pack up a cat. Thus, to a deft narrative that works in powerful landscape description, sketches of country folk met along the way, and a revisiting of the region's dramatic history, he adds the self-deprecating wit that would become a model for his 20th century counterparts like Peter Fleming, Eric Newby, and Bill Bryson. Though his commentary moves along at a swift but casual gait, it builds a tension on the upside, beginning with the age-old legend of the murderous Beast of Gevaudan that haunts a neighborhood where he finds the peasantry by turns hostile and friendly and accommodations primitive. Near the summit, a visit to a monastery introduces the religious theme that will attend his descent into the beautiful land of the Camisards, the friction between Protestants and Catholics that erupted into a tragic civil war in the first decade of the 18th century. Stevenson does a fine job of sorting out the history and evoking the awe that comes with visiting the deceptively bucolic scene. No wonder this book has continued to inspire: it often appears on recommended lists and it prompted Romantic biographer Richard Holmes to retrace the journey early in his career, a century later, complete with a donkey of his own (see his book FOOTSTEPS). The critical introduction to this edition is worthwhile.

Looking for the Camisards in the Loz�re Mountains

R.L. Stevenson writes here the first account of a touristic journey in France. He is the first modern tourist. He penetrates and discovers the country and the people of what he calls the Loz�re, this mountain range in the south of The Central mountains in France, a range of mountains that was the locale of a protestant rebellion at the very beginning of the eighteenth century, severely repressed by Louis XIV. These protestant insurgers are known as the Camisards. Stevenson tries to discover the landscape, the natural setting of this insurrection and tries to show how the insurrection was connected to the very nature of these mountains. He also shows how no repression can change a person or a population. These old Camisards are still alive in the memory and the customs and ways of the protestant population of this region. It is the survival of this faith that interests and fascinates Stevenson. He also notices that the catholics and the protestants, at the time of his travels, lived in harmony but with an absolute divide between the two communities. A young catholic man who married a protestant girl and changed his faith in the process was unanimously condemned for this breach of loyalty. This book is also a perfect example of what tourism can and must be : the discovery of the visited people's mentality, culture, way of life, and the connection of these with the surrounding nature, and not only a quick look at monuments and other (un)perishable. One has to live with the people, no matter how little, to eat the people's food and to be in contact with the people in order to discuss general and particular subjects and to understand their way of thinking and behaving. Thus tourism becomes an adventure even in the heart of the most civilized country and only a couple of miles away from a railroad.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU