Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes by Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) Read online

  The Complete Works of

  ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

  VOLUME 35 OF 60

  Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes

  Parts Edition

  By Delphi Classics, 2015

  Version 4

  COPYRIGHT

  ‘Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes’

  Robert Louis Stevenson: Parts Edition (in 60 parts)

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Delphi Classics.

  © Delphi Classics, 2017.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

  ISBN: 978 1 78656 798 7

  Delphi Classics

  is an imprint of

  Delphi Publishing Ltd

  Hastings, East Sussex

  United Kingdom

  Contact: [email protected]

  www.delphiclassics.com

  Robert Louis Stevenson: Parts Edition

  This eBook is Part 35 of the Delphi Classics edition of Robert Louis Stevenson in 60 Parts. It features the unabridged text of Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes from the bestselling edition of the author’s Complete Works. Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. Our Parts Editions feature original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of Robert Louis Stevenson, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

  Visit here to buy the entire Parts Edition of Robert Louis Stevenson or the Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson in a single eBook.

  Learn more about our Parts Edition, with free downloads, via this link or browse our most popular Parts here.

  ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

  IN 60 VOLUMES

  Parts Edition Contents

  The Novels

  1, Treasure Island

  2, The Black Arrow

  3, Prince Otto

  4, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

  5, Kidnapped

  6, The Master of Ballantrae

  7, The Wrong Box

  8, The Wrecker

  9, Catriona

  10, The Ebb-Tide

  11, Weir of Hermiston

  12, St. IVes

  13, Heathercat

  14, The Great North Road

  15, The Young Chevalier

  The Short Story Collections

  16, New Arabian Nights

  17, More New Arabian Nights - the Dynamiter

  18, The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables

  19, Island Nights’ Entertainments

  20, Fables

  21, Tales and Fantasies

  22, Uncollected Stories

  The Plays

  23, The Charity Bazaar

  24, Deacon Brodie

  25, Beau Austin

  26, Admiral Guinea

  27, Macaire

  The Poetry Collections

  28, A Child’s Garden of Verses

  29, Underwoods

  30, Ballads

  31, Songs of Travel and Other Verses

  32, Additional Poems

  33, New Poems and Variant Readings

  The Travel Writing

  34, An Inland Voyage

  35, Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes

  36, Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes

  37, Essays of Travel

  38, Across the Plains

  39, The Silverado Squatters

  40, The Old and New Pacific Capitals

  The Non-Fiction

  41, Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers

  42, Familiar Studies of Men and Books

  43, Memories and Portraits

  44, Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin

  45, Records of a Family of Engineers

  46, Additional Memories and Portraits

  47, Later Essays

  48, Lay Morals and Other Papers

  49, Prayers Written for Family Use at Vailima

  50, A Footnote to History

  51, In the South Seas

  52, Letters from Samoa

  53, Juvenilia and Other Papers

  54, Pierre Jean de Béranger Article

  The Letters

  55, The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson

  56, Vailima Letters

  The Biographies

  57, The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson by Sir Graham Balfour

  58, Robert Louis Stevenson by Alexander H. Japp

  59, The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls by Jacqueline M. Overton

  60, The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson by Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

  www.delphiclassics.com

  Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes

  A classic of travel literature, this pioneering account of the pleasures of the great outdoors was first published in 1879. It describes Stevenson’s 12-day, 120-mile hike across the Cévennes Mountains in southern France (undertaken from September – October 1878). He is accompanied by a donkey, Modestine, who carried his luggage, and whose characterisation as a stubborn, independent-minded travelling companion is a memorable feature of the book. Stevenson’s extensive journal, on which he based this account, also survives and has been published separately as the Cévennes Journal.

  At the time the book was written, recreational hiking and camping were unusual and the book (coupled with Stevenson’s later celebrity) helped to popularise such activities. Ironically, the popularity of Stevenson’s early travelogues also popularised an erroneous image of their author as a healthy, hearty ‘outdoors type’ – a caricature which amused the sickly, frequently bed-ridden Stevenson.

  The descriptions of nights spent under starry skies, of routes amongst the ancient hideaways of eighteenth-century Protestant rebels (known locally as Camisards) and visits to picturesque mountain monasteries make for a vividly imagined landscape, whose history and beauty is brought richly to life. Yet, Stevenson’s motives for taking to the hills at this point were bittersweet. The love of his life, Fanny van de Grift Osbourne, a married American woman whom he had met at an artist’s colony near Paris, had recently begun the return journey to her homeland. Stevenson’s agnosticism and decision to become a writer had also led to a conflicted relationship with his parents. This accounts for the bittersweet flavour that permeates parts of the book.

  The first edition

  Map of Stevenson’s journey

  CONTENTS

  VELAY

  THE DONKEY, THE PACK, AND THE PACK-SADDLE

  THE GREEN DONKEY-DRIVER

  I HAVE A GOAD

  UPPER GÉVAUDAN

  A CAMP IN THE DARK

  CHEYLARD AND LUC

  OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS

  FATHER APOLLINARIS

  THE MONKS

  THE BOARDERS

  UPPER GÉVAUDAN (continued)

  ACROSS THE GOULET

  A NIGHT AMONG THE PINES

  THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS

  ACROSS THE LOZÈRE

  PONT DE MONTVERT

  IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN

  FLORAC

  IN THE VALLEY OF THE MIMENTE

  THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY

  THE LAST DAY

  FAREWELL, MODESTINE!

  The
dramatic countryside of the Cévennes

  My Dear Sidney Colvin,

  The journey which this little book is to describe was very agreeable and fortunate for me. After an uncouth beginning, I had the best of luck to the end. But we are all travellers in what John Bunyan calls the wilderness of this world — all, too, travellers with a donkey: and the best that we find in our travels is an honest friend. He is a fortunate voyager who finds many. We travel, indeed, to find them. They are the end and the reward of life. They keep us worthy of ourselves; and when we are alone, we are only nearer to the absent.

  Every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular letter to the friends of him who writes it. They alone take his meaning; they find private messages, assurances of love, and expressions of gratitude, dropped for them in every corner. The public is but a generous patron who defrays the postage. Yet though the letter is directed to all, we have an old and kindly custom of addressing it on the outside to one. Of what shall a man be proud, if he is not proud of his friends? And so, my dear Sidney Colvin, it is with pride that I sign myself affectionately yours,

  R. L. S.

  VELAY

  Many are the mighty things, and nought is more mighty than man. . . . He masters by his devices the tenant of the fields.

  SOPHOCLES.

  Who hath loosed the bands of the wild ass?

  JOB.

  THE DONKEY, THE PACK, AND THE PACK-SADDLE

  In a little place called Le Monastier, in a pleasant highland valley fifteen miles from Le Puy, I spent about a month of fine days. Monastier is notable for the making of lace, for drunkenness, for freedom of language, and for unparalleled political dissension. There are adherents of each of the four French parties — Legitimists, Orleanists, Imperialists, and Republicans — in this little mountain-town; and they all hate, loathe, decry, and calumniate each other. Except for business purposes, or to give each other the lie in a tavern brawl, they have laid aside even the civility of speech. ’Tis a mere mountain Poland. In the midst of this Babylon I found myself a rallying-point; every one was anxious to be kind and helpful to the stranger. This was not merely from the natural hospitality of mountain people, nor even from the surprise with which I was regarded as a man living of his own free will in Le Monastier, when he might just as well have lived anywhere else in this big world; it arose a good deal from my projected excursion southward through the Cevennes. A traveller of my sort was a thing hitherto unheard of in that district. I was looked upon with contempt, like a man who should project a journey to the moon, but yet with a respectful interest, like one setting forth for the inclement Pole. All were ready to help in my preparations; a crowd of sympathisers supported me at the critical moment of a bargain; not a step was taken but was heralded by glasses round and celebrated by a dinner or a breakfast.

  It was already hard upon October before I was ready to set forth, and at the high altitudes over which my road lay there was no Indian summer to be looked for. I was determined, if not to camp out, at least to have the means of camping out in my possession; for there is nothing more harassing to an easy mind than the necessity of reaching shelter by dusk, and the hospitality of a village inn is not always to be reckoned sure by those who trudge on foot. A tent, above all for a solitary traveller, is troublesome to pitch, and troublesome to strike again; and even on the march it forms a conspicuous feature in your baggage. A sleeping-sack, on the other hand, is always ready — you have only to get into it; it serves a double purpose — a bed by night, a portmanteau by day; and it does not advertise your intention of camping out to every curious passer-by. This is a huge point. If a camp is not secret, it is but a troubled resting-place; you become a public character; the convivial rustic visits your bedside after an early supper; and you must sleep with one eye open, and be up before the day. I decided on a sleeping-sack; and after repeated visits to Le Puy, and a deal of high living for myself and my advisers, a sleeping-sack was designed, constructed, and triumphantly brought home.

  This child of my invention was nearly six feet square, exclusive of two triangular flaps to serve as a pillow by night and as the top and bottom of the sack by day. I call it ‘the sack,’ but it was never a sack by more than courtesy: only a sort of long roll or sausage, green waterproof cart-cloth without and blue sheep’s fur within. It was commodious as a valise, warm and dry for a bed. There was luxurious turning room for one; and at a pinch the thing might serve for two. I could bury myself in it up to the neck; for my head I trusted to a fur cap, with a hood to fold down over my ears and a band to pass under my nose like a respirator; and in case of heavy rain I proposed to make myself a little tent, or tentlet, with my waterproof coat, three stones, and a bent branch.

  It will readily be conceived that I could not carry this huge package on my own, merely human, shoulders. It remained to choose a beast of burden. Now, a horse is a fine lady among animals, flighty, timid, delicate in eating, of tender health; he is too valuable and too restive to be left alone, so that you are chained to your brute as to a fellow galley-slave; a dangerous road puts him out of his wits; in short, he’s an uncertain and exacting ally, and adds thirty-fold to the troubles of the voyager. What I required was something cheap and small and hardy, and of a stolid and peaceful temper; and all these requisites pointed to a donkey.

  There dwelt an old man in Monastier, of rather unsound intellect according to some, much followed by street-boys, and known to fame as Father Adam. Father Adam had a cart, and to draw the cart a diminutive she-ass, not much bigger than a dog, the colour of a mouse, with a kindly eye and a determined under-jaw. There was something neat and high-bred, a quakerish elegance, about the rogue that hit my fancy on the spot. Our first interview was in Monastier market-place. To prove her good temper, one child after another was set upon her back to ride, and one after another went head over heels into the air; until a want of confidence began to reign in youthful bosoms, and the experiment was discontinued from a dearth of subjects. I was already backed by a deputation of my friends; but as if this were not enough, all the buyers and sellers came round and helped me in the bargain; and the ass and I and Father Adam were the centre of a hubbub for near half an hour. At length she passed into my service for the consideration of sixty-five francs and a glass of brandy. The sack had already cost eighty francs and two glasses of beer; so that Modestine, as I instantly baptized her, was upon all accounts the cheaper article. Indeed, that was as it should be; for she was only an appurtenance of my mattress, or self-acting bedstead on four castors.

  I had a last interview with Father Adam in a billiard-room at the witching hour of dawn, when I administered the brandy. He professed himself greatly touched by the separation, and declared he had often bought white bread for the donkey when he had been content with black bread for himself; but this, according to the best authorities, must have been a flight of fancy. He had a name in the village for brutally misusing the ass; yet it is certain that he shed a tear, and the tear made a clean mark down one cheek.

  By the advice of a fallacious local saddler, a leather pad was made for me with rings to fasten on my bundle; and I thoughtfully completed my kit and arranged my toilette. By way of armoury and utensils, I took a revolver, a little spirit-lamp and pan, a lantern and some halfpenny candles, a jack-knife and a large leather flask. The main cargo consisted of two entire changes of warm clothing — besides my travelling wear of country velveteen, pilot-coat, and knitted spencer — some books, and my railway-rug, which, being also in the form of a bag, made me a double castle for cold nights. The permanent larder was represented by cakes of chocolate and tins of Bologna sausage. All this, except what I carried about my person, was easily stowed into the sheepskin bag; and by good fortune I threw in my empty knapsack, rather for convenience of carriage than from any thought that I should want it on my journey. For more immediate needs I took a leg of cold mutton, a bottle of Beaujolais, an empty bottle to carry milk, an egg-beater, and a considerable quantity of black bread and white, like Father Ada
m, for myself and donkey, only in my scheme of things the destinations were reversed.

  Monastrians, of all shades of thought in politics, had agreed in threatening me with many ludicrous misadventures, and with sudden death in many surprising forms. Cold, wolves, robbers, above all the nocturnal practical joker, were daily and eloquently forced on my attention. Yet in these vaticinations, the true, patent danger was left out. Like Christian, it was from my pack I suffered by the way. Before telling my own mishaps, let me in two words relate the lesson of my experience. If the pack is well strapped at the ends, and hung at full length — not doubled, for your life — across the pack-saddle, the traveller is safe. The saddle will certainly not fit, such is the imperfection of our transitory life; it will assuredly topple and tend to overset; but there are stones on every roadside, and a man soon learns the art of correcting any tendency to overbalance with a well-adjusted stone.

  On the day of my departure I was up a little after five; by six, we began to load the donkey; and ten minutes after, my hopes were in the dust. The pad would not stay on Modestine’s back for half a moment. I returned it to its maker, with whom I had so contumelious a passage that the street outside was crowded from wall to wall with gossips looking on and listening. The pad changed hands with much vivacity; perhaps it would be more descriptive to say that we threw it at each other’s heads; and, at any rate, we were very warm and unfriendly, and spoke with a deal of freedom.

  I had a common donkey pack-saddle — a barde, as they call it — fitted upon Modestine; and once more loaded her with my effects. The doubled sack, my pilot-coat (for it was warm, and I was to walk in my waistcoat), a great bar of black bread, and an open basket containing the white bread, the mutton, and the bottles, were all corded together in a very elaborate system of knots, and I looked on the result with fatuous content. In such a monstrous deck-cargo, all poised above the donkey’s shoulders, with nothing below to balance, on a brand-new pack-saddle that had not yet been worn to fit the animal, and fastened with brand-new girths that might be expected to stretch and slacken by the way, even a very careless traveller should have seen disaster brewing. That elaborate system of knots, again, was the work of too many sympathisers to be very artfully designed. It is true they tightened the cords with a will; as many as three at a time would have a foot against Modestine’s quarters, and be hauling with clenched teeth; but I learned afterwards that one thoughtful person, without any exercise of force, can make a more solid job than half-a-dozen heated and enthusiastic grooms. I was then but a novice; even after the misadventure of the pad nothing could disturb my security, and I went forth from the stable door as an ox goeth to the slaughter.