Travel with an ass in the Cevennes

Voyage with an ass in the Cevennes or sometimes Voyage in the Cevennes with an ass ( Travels with has Donkey in the Cevennes ) is an account of voyage of Robert Louis Stevenson published in June 1879. The Scottish writer reports there his Randonnée undertaken in autumn 1878: the crossing of the the Cevennes to foot. Left the Monastier in Haute-Loire and walking on towards the south, it crosses all the Lozere to reach twelve days after Saint-Jean-of-Gard in the Gard, at the end of a tour of 120 [[mile (unit of length) mile]] S (approximately 195 [[Meter km]]). Its single company is the ass going its Bât, Modestine, with which, in spite of difficult beginnings, it ends up weaving throughout the voyage of the strong emotional ties. With the liking of the meetings and crossed villages, it evokes some outstanding episodes of the Guerre of Camisards, period tormented in the history of this Protestant area .

Reasons of the voyage

The motivations which pushed the Stevenson young person - it was not yet 28 years old - to carry out only this tour through the Cevennes, are multiple, but the principal release was a great sorrow of heart. Two years earlier, in summer 1876, it had gone to Grez to find there his/her friends around a small artistic community painters, a little Bohème S, which sought to make revive the hours of glory, from now on last, of Barbizon. There, he had discovered newcomers: Fanny Osbourne, beautiful a American ten years its elder, Artist-painter accompanied by his two Isobel children and Lloyd. Arriving straight of California, it had left to in July 1875 her husband Samuel Osbourne there, wearied by his inaccuracies and its inconstancy, to try to be allowed with the royal Académie of the Art schools of Antwerp. With her three children - Isobel, Lloyd and very young Hervey - it had gone to Antwerp to discover there that the Academy did not accept the women. It had then been folded back on the courses of a workshop Paris IEN, but the death of small Hervey in atrocious sufferings, all upset and shook it deeply. When the health of Lloyd started in its turn to decline, she did not hesitate and, on the councils of one of her friends, she left then for Grez with her children.

The legend wants that they knew an immediate love at first sight, but actually, after an assiduous court of Stevenson, it is probably the summer according to whether the love affair between Fanny is established and him. But many are the obstacles with their love: Stevenson, on its side, is still not autonomous financially. It depends on the revenue which his/her father Thomas pays to him, which claims his return to Edinburgh. Difficult under these conditions of imagining to be able to provide for the needs for this small family. Fanny, as for it, is summoned by her Sam husband to return in California, under penalty of seeing itself cutting the vivres. In June 1878, it ends up yielding to the injunctions of Sam and begins the preparations for its return in America. The life is on the point of separating them, written Stevenson with Charles Baxter that he saw there the last 20 days of its passion . In a letter dated June 26th, 1878 always intended for Baxter, the questions which it raises with lawyer of the family, show that its concerns are clear:


And then: 1) Can a man, a subject British, major, marry American (major, if it is necessary to specify his age ) in Scotland? If so, within which time and in which conditions? 2) Would the thing be easier in England, with special permit?

It would be a good thing to have quickly the answer to these questions.

The Obligation demain.

The day of the departure arrives and when the train carrying Fanny, Isobel and Lloyd, leaves the station platform , it leaves behind him broken Stevenson.

After a short return to Paris, it makes the decision rather quickly to leave: it feels the need to take some distances with his friends, to insulate itself to give a progress report on its life, its future, and over all, to forget Fanny. Accordingly, its choice is made on the South of France because it would be for him the occasion to discover the theater of the Guerre of Camisards. They are rather familiar for him, the Camisard S, these Covenantaires of the South as it calls them, since they are only the counterpart in the the Cevennes of the Covenanter S in the Highlands: these Protestant Scottish whose history and persecution during the Killing Time populated its childhood and ignited its imagination, by the exciting accounts that its nurse Alison “Cummy” Cunningham could make of it him, like by the texts of writers like Wodrow or Peden that it read to him.

Another reason, although more anecdotic, as for the choice of its destination, it finds it in its knowledge of the novelist George Sand and more precisely in one of its works, the Marquis de Villemer , published in 1861, whose intrigue proceeds in the Velay. This novel belongs to its trilogy auvergnate - with Jean of the Rock (1859) and the black City (1861) - for the writing of which the author had gone itself in the area in 1859 in order to document himself. There as an admiror of the novelist, Stevenson sees an opportunity there of going on its traces. Its pilgrimage thus leads it until the Monastier, small village on the Gazeille, where it settles in a pension which applies moderate tariffs. Determined to make economies, it remains there during nearly one month, multiplying the excursions in the neighborhoods (Puy, Lantriac, Laussonne, Goudet, etc) and carrying out many sketches of landscape, always guided by this discussion thread which is the work of Sand.

It is towards mid-September that the idea to carry out an excursion towards the south is essential to him ressourcer, meditating while discovering the country of Camisards. The walking, it practiced it always much during its youth, mainly in the Pentland Hills in the south of Edinburgh, and it knows all the virtues of them; so much so that it even devoted a test on “the direction of walk”, Walking Tours published in June 1876. Nothing astonishing thus, so that in perfect application of its Philosophy, it plans to achieve such a tour. Starting from the September 17th, its resolution is taken to undertake this voyage, for which it must acquire of an ass, thus travels of which it hopes well to draw a worthy account to be published and likely to bring back some money to him. The acquisition of Modestine is carried out little time afterwards for 65 francs and glass of brandy . In its ultimate letter sent of Monastier, Saturday September 21st with the address of his friend William Henley, he announces his departure for the day-even and mentions the provisional title of the account which he intends to write: Voyage with an ass in Highlands Frenchwomen ( Travels with has Donkey in the French Highlands ). Its effective departure takes place only the following day, probably due to the difficulties encountered with the harnessing of Modestine.

The route

Note: The communes appearing in fat mark the stages of Stevenson

The writing of the Voyage with an ass

The newspaper

Except for some parts written subsequently to its excursion - mainly those historical requiring the consultation of sources - Stevenson was compelled progressively to write its stages in a newspaper. Each morning, it thus wrote the account of its previous day before taking the road for a new stage, which sometimes, when the inspiration was lacking to him, was worth some late departures to him (Langogne, Florac), in the honor of this cursed newspaper . This newspaper opens on a chapter devoted to its month spent to Monastier, in which it details the city, its inhabitants and their daily life. Initially, Voyage with an ass should have opened on this chapter, but Stevenson renonça with this idea in order not to break the balance of the Voyage whose natural rate/rhythm is based over the day. This rejected chapter of the book was however published in a way isolated under the title a town of mountain in France ( has Mountain Town in France ).

Historical sources of Stevenson

In Voyage with an ass , all the passages having milked to the history of the Cevennes and the war of Camisards, were written by Stevenson a posteriori . For that it mainly referred to the work Histoires of the pastors of the Desert of Napoleon Peyrat (1842), of which it is established with certainty that he was holder, since it mentions volume explicitly second book, run up against foot during its first night spent against open air and that it acted in addition of the French edition of the work, although there were some at the time a translation in English language. It is of him that it begins again, for example, the tragic account of the assassination by Camisards of the Abbé of Chayla to the Bridge-with-Montvert comparing it with that of the archbishop Sharp by Covenanters, or the capture and the interrogation of Esprit Séguier.

On its return to Edinburgh, thanks to its statute of lawyer, it has access moreover to the works available to the Advocates' Library:

  • History of fanaticism of Brueys (1692),
  • the English edition of the Memories on the war of the Cevennes of Riding Jean (ED. 1727),
  • History of the disorders of the Cevennes of Antoine Court (1760),
  • has Cry from the Desart , translation by John Lacy of the Théâtre crowned of the Cevennes , collection of testimonys collected by Maximilien Misson (1707).
Except Cry from the Desart , the influence of these works on Stevenson remains however very limited compared to that of the Pasteurs of the Desert of Peyrat.

Publication

To spring 1879, Stevenson entrusts to his/her cousin Bob that the book contains good number of declarations of love intended for Fanny of which it should be capable to seize the majority: it is besides, “for the principal directing wire”. With this lighting, one includes/understands the partner best that he hopes during his night in the pine eraie, this woman with whom he dreams to live with open air.

Travels with has Donkey thus appears in June 1879 in the editor Kegan Paul, which had already published An Inland Voyage the previous year. According to its contract, painfully negotiated with the editor because Inland Voyage had not been very well sold, Stevenson must receive 30 books with the publication and 4 Shilling S by specimen sold beyond the 700e. The book is sold better: the first pulling of 750 specimens is exhausted as of the autumn what requires the second pulling of 500 specimens. But especially, Travels with has Donkey receives very good critical even straightforwardly eulogistic, thus consolidating the growing place of Stevenson in the literary circle. It is of his/her parents, to which it had probably made read part of its manuscript before its publication, that the most severe remarks come. His/her mother reproaches him, in a letter of July 1879, to have left in her book this horrible passage had so extremely criticized . As for his/her father, in spite of an affectionate tone, its criticism had to appear in Stevenson even more shingling:

I find very your book shining, but I am close thinking that Inland Voyage is better, although it has the advantage on this one of resting on facts. Without any doubt “the night under the pines” is what there is the best. Then the scene with the brother comes from Plymouth. The book offers the same defect as An Inland Voyage , because he meets there three or four disrespectful mentions of the name of God which shock to me and must shock others well of them. They could be omitted without the least damage as for the interest or the merit of the book. Here is for your stupidity not to have let me see the tests. The other defect is the abuse, in my opinion, of descriptions. If there had been a great diversity of landscape, the objection would not have been justified, but owing to the fact that the landscape is the same one generally everywhere, I believe that one could have omitted a good part of it. As a whole, however, I believe that it is a book of very successful voyage, and I estimate that your two volumes are single as regards style. I hope that you will again not make the ass while sleeping in the open air…

the Voyage of the pilgrim

In Voyage with an ass , Stevenson makes several times reference to a work, resulting again straight of its childhood and readings given by its nurse: the Voyage of the pilgrim ( The Pilgrim' S Progress , 1678) of the calvinist John Bunyan. Extremely popular at the time, this allegorical novel describes the voyage of its hero, Christian (or Christian), of the “City of the destruction” until the “celestial City” (of the Earth to the Paradis), sown course of meetings and obstacles it putting, him and its Foi, with the test. As of the dedication, Stevenson quotes already Bunyan: But we all are of the travellers in what John Bunyan names the desert of this world . Thereafter, in reference to its difficulties encountered with its parcelling: As Christian ( Sic ) it is of my luggage that I had to suffer in way . And finally, new quotation extracted the Voyage of forward the pilgrim from the part “High Gévaudan”. The bringing together between two works is then all the more obvious if one considers the illustration of the first edition of the Voyage with an ass : a Frontispiece realized by Walter Cranium in the purest style of the illustrations of the Voyage of the pilgrim .

These are the elements which suggest the existence of another voyage in parallel of that carried out physically by Stevenson, a voyage of a spiritual nature and initiatory. One of the French editions chose besides to dissociate others by restoring the original plural of “ travels ” to give “voyage' ” in order to reflect the various reading levels of work.

Extracts

As for me, I travel not to go some share, but to walk. I travel for the pleasure of travelling. The important thing is to move, more closely test the needs and the embarrassments of the life, to leave the nest soft of civilization, to feel under my feet the terrestrial granite and scattered flints with their cutting.

And yet, while at the same time I exaltais myself in my loneliness, I become aware of a singular lack. I wished a partner who would lie close to me with the light of stars, quiet and motionless, but whose hand would not cease touching mine. Because there exists a friendship more resting even as the loneliness and which, included/understood well, is the loneliness carried at its point of perfection. And food with open air with the woman whom one loves is of all the lives most total and freest.

The “way of Stevenson”

After its recognition as a writer, then its death in 1894, this excursion carried out during its youth through the Cevennes took forms of pilgrimage and quickly became a must impossible to circumvent for any follower of Stevenson which was respected. Many were forwardings which went on its traces the years which followed, whose pioneer was Sir J.A. Hammerton in 1903. But most interesting for its documentary contribution remains the following one, that of Robert T. Skinner which twice achieves the way of Stevenson in the Années 1920: he endeavoured to find the people met by Stevenson during his voyage, to learn what they had become and a work illustrated by their Photographie S. constituted some. After the Second world war, it is rather the sporting aspect of the way of Stevenson which preceded.

The association of the Cevennes Club, anxious to promote in the Cevennes respectful tourism of nature and inheritance, found these values in the step of Stevenson hiker. Perceiving very early the potential positive impact of the Voyage with an ass , it thus supported the diffusion of it, by providing as of 1901 the first translation of the book in French. Other sides of the coin, with the passion growing of the general public for the way, of the undesirable effects were not long in appearing in particular concerning the safety of the excursionists. Indeed, certain ways borrowed at the time by Stevenson had become meanwhile of important road axes, more really adapted to the practice of the walking under good conditions. To control this increased circulation hikers, the Sentier of great excursion GR70 was created in 1978 - at the time of the commemoration of the centenary of the voyage of Stevenson - by the French federation of hiking which realized for this purpose 180 km of beaconing with the assistance of the National park of the Cevennes. More known under the name of “Way of Stevenson”, the GR. is the subject of a topo-guide and henceforth constitutes a way of 250 km, considerably longer than the original of an about sixty kilometers because of the addition of two additional stages Puy-en-Velay - Monastier and Saint-Jean-of-Gard - Alès, as of skirtings of roads which proved to be necessary. A whole tourist activity developed around the “way of Stevenson” (lodgings of stages, hirers out of asses, guides,…), whose main actors are brought together and form since 1994, association “On the way of Robert Louis Stevenson” with an aim of ensuring the promotion of the GR. while working the maintenance of its quality.

Sources

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