Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes: An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson (GT48)

Circa 1950: Hardcover / Very Good Condition

Original red cloth with gilt titles on the spine and original pictorial dust jacket. 294 + very clean and bright pages. Slight shelf wear on dust jacket consistent with age. (GT48)

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Travels with a Donkey describes Stevenson’s hiking trip in the Cevennes, in South-Central France.

The narrative largely focuses on Stevenson’s humorous descriptions of his stubborn travel companion, Modestine the donkey. Stevenson bought Modestine to carry his belongings for the journey. However, Modestine walks so slowly that Stevenson is

“kept [. . . ] hanging on each foot for an incredible length of time; in five minutes it exhausted the spirit and set up a fever in all the muscles of the leg. And yet I had to keep close at hand and measure my advance exactly upon hers; for if I dropped a few yards into the rear, or went a few yards ahead, Modestine came instantly to a halt and began to browse” (pp. 149-50).

As in An Inland Voyage, Stevenson is mistaken several times for a pedlar. During his travels he often sleeps under the stars, in a special sleeping-sack made for him in Le Puy.

Possibly thinking of his blossoming romance with the woman who would later become his wife, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, he writes that “to live out of doors with the woman a man loves is of all lives the most complete and free”.

In his travels, Stevenson visits the monastery Lady of the Snows where a country parish priest and an old soldier are horrified to find that Stevenson is a heretic. He also makes observations about French life, religion and politics throughout the work.

When he discovers that Modestine is unfit for further travel, he decides to sell her, but suddenly realizes how much he will miss her:

https://robert-louis-stevenson.org/works/travels-with-a-donkey-in-the-cevennes-1879/