Book Review: Stevenson's Travels With a Donkey

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While perusing the shelves at our Friends of the Library store, I chanced upon two little volumes in the "classics" section. They were so adorable, I hoped they were something wonderful. When I picked them up, I realized they were by Robert Louis Stevenson so I paid the exorbitant price of $1 a piece and brought them home, wondering what type of tales they contained.


The first one I read was Stevenson's Travels With a Donkey. Just the title was intriguing enough to justify the purchase. And I was not disappointed. This little volume was a journal of sorts of a trip he decided to make on foot through the countryside of Cevennes' in France. It is one of his very earliest published works and came to print in 1879. My little red, cloth bound copy is from 1910. It is also one of the very earliest books to describe camping as a recreational activity.


In his preparation to be out of doors for almost two weeks, he commissioned the sewing of a giant sleeping bag and then had to have a donkey to carry the thing because it was so huge and heavy. The donkey is like another character in the telling of the tale because she was so obstinate and opinionated. It was quite amusing.


As Stevenson set out on his odyssey, having no previous experience to serve as preparation, he really didn't know what to expect. His craving for adventure was strong and the wanderlust in his soul sent him on his way.

"I have been after an adventure all my life, a pure dispassionate adventure, such as befell early and heroic voyagers; and thus to be found by morning in a random woodside nook in Gevaudan--not knowing north from south, as strange to my surroundings as the first man upon the earth, an inland castaway--was to find a fraction of my day-dreams realised."

Some nights, he slept in his bag under the stars:

"The wind among the trees was my lullaby. Sometimes it sounded for minutes together with a steady even rush, not rising nor abating; and again it would swell and burst like a great crashing breaker, and the trees would patter me all over with big drops from the rain of the afternoon."

And then this:

"I have not often enjoyed a more serene possession of myself, nor felt more independent of material aids. The outer world, from which we cower into our houses seemed after all a gentle habitable place; and night after night a man's bed, it seemed, was laid and waiting for him in the fields, where God keeps an open house."  

Other nights he spent in makeshift inns or villager's homes along the way. Many of the locals thought him quite odd and could not understand his purpose in making this journey.

"For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilisation, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints. Alas, as we get up in life, and are more preoccupied with our affairs, even a holiday is a thing that must be worked for. To hold a pack upon a pack-saddle against a gale out of the freezing north is no high industry, but it is one that serves to occupy and compose the mind.  And when the present is so exacting, who can annoy himself about the future?"

The region in which he traveled was one rich with the history of a brutal war that had been waged in 1702 between Catholics and Protestants, and so the area was still sharply divided in most communities between these two camps. He encountered members of both camps and was asked multiple times which "side he was on." He was a Protestant but instead of trying to engage in religious debate, tried merely to get along with everyone he encountered. 


At the end of the little volume is a brief biographical sketch of Stevenson's life.  Having never read one before, it was quite interesting to learn about his younger years spent as an invalid, his pursuit of the woman he loved, and their life together, eventually settling in Apia among the Samoan Islands. The sheer volume of his work is quite impressive and his literary success provided a very comfortable living for his family. His death at the young age of 45 came quite suddenly after dinner one evening. He grabbed his head in pain and asked if he looked strange, then fell to his knees, losing consciousness. He died that evening. 


I think I got my money's worth many times over with this little gem. :)


This is #37 out of 52.

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