Wonder Cruise - Ursula Bloom

Ann Clements is 35 years old, single & middle-aged before her time. She works as a typist in an office on Henrietta Street in London, lives in a depressing bedsitter ruled by her unpredictable landlady Mrs Puddock. Ann's routine is rigid & unforgiving. She washes her hair one evening, mends the next, surreptitiously does her ironing the next evening (cooling the forbidden iron by waving it out the window). If money is short, she's reduced to poached eggs & tea for lunch by Friday. On Sundays, Ann goes to Balham to have lunch with her pompous, hypocritical parson brother, Cuthbert, & his family. Her annual holiday is a boring two weeks at Worthing with Cuthbert, his wife, Eleanor, & their daughter, Gloria.

One day, Ann wins a prize in a sweepstake. She didn't even realise she had a ticket as a colleague had bought it for her instead of the raffle ticket that she usually indulged in. Encouraged by her sympathetic boss, Mr Robert, & urged on by the disapproval or indifference of her colleagues, Ann decides to book a cabin for a Mediterranean cruise. Each step seems to take on an inevitability. Mr Robert encourages her to go, even lending her the money for the deposit, Miss Thomas (who bought the ticket & feels entitled to have an opinion on how Ann spends the money) gets her back up so that she finds herself insisting on the holiday & on going alone, which is even more reprehensible. Ann is whirled into the travel agent's office by a group of people as she's gazing into the window & before she knows it, she has a cabin, a passport, instructions about luggage & she finds herself committed.

Ann felt that a new spirit had settled down upon her, the new gay spirit of adventure. She had reserved a cabin for herself on a wonder cruise. For the second time that day she found herself outside Charing Cross, and she knew that she had had no lunch.

The cruise begins badly. Ann is frightened by the thought of the lifeboat drill, scared of the chief steward, realises all her clothes are wrong & gets seasick. Her fellow passengers are unattractive people & she's surprised to meet Oliver Banks, a man she's met before, sitting on a park bench on a sunny day in London. Soon though, the atmosphere & the wonder of the places she visits begins to change Ann. She becomes aware of the special atmosphere of the cruise & recognizes its effect on her fellow passengers,

It was sea-fever. The beginning of a romance at sea; it was the strangely subtle atmosphere of a great liner urging forward, bent on pleasure.

Every day leads to a new departure for Ann. In Gibraltar she has her hair shingled; in Marseilles, she spends far too much money on clothes; in Malta, she bathes in the sea, practically alone, with a man. Ann's conversations with Oliver turn all her ideas about life upside down & she realises how restricted her life has been. He pushes her into new experiences, from dancing to walking through the ruins of Pompeii to bathing in a secluded cove in a bathing costume that Cuthbert would have thought indecent.

Instantly she knew that she had never dared to think for herself, but had allowed her father and Cuthbert to mould her views and set their own opinions in her mind, like little flags pinned to a map to denote the route. She had never formed a single opinion of her own, and it dismayed her.

After being left behind in Venice by the ship, Ann travels to the Dolomites with a new friend, Eva Temple, & the farcical situation that develops there is only resolved by the arrival of her luggage. The ending is very satisfying with almost everyone getting their just desserts.

She had started the cruise as a woman, a woman nearing middle age, who had had nothing out of life, and less out of love, and who expected nothing. She had been awakened vividly in the Alameda by an old hag who had warned her to take what she could. She had taken what she could. And now she had become a pretty girl who tempted strange young men to kiss her. Whatever you might say, the change was a gratifying one to your vanity.

Wonder Cruise is a delightful Cinderella story but there's more depth to the characterization & the social commentary than might be expected from a romantic novel. Ursula Bloom has some very sharp & satirical things to say about Ann's fellow passengers, from Mr & Mrs Spinks, who have made their fortune in trade & can't resist telling everyone how much money they have, to Mrs Duncan who's frankly man-hunting for her daughter, Ethel, determined to snap up an Italian Count at least, to the Frenchman who only came on the cruise for the food. Then there's the kind but disappointed ship's doctor, the Assistant Purser who is determined to make a conquest among the passengers & odd little Miss Bright whose idea of a good day out is a tour of crypts & church vaults with a monk. Bloom also makes some spiky, clear eyed observations of the predatory motives of the passengers & crew on board; this is not a fluffy romantic novel by any means.

Ann's delight in the European cities she visits, the gradual relaxation of her inhibitions & blossoming into an attractive woman is subtly done. As each layer of her old habits, old thoughts & the old restrictions that her upbringing & her own timid nature had imposed on her begin to disappear, Ann becomes more confident in her own feelings & decisions. Even when her judgement is wrong about a person or a place, she comes to realise that she has to take responsibility for herself & her life & break away from the old ways that had imprisoned her in deadly routine & the expectations of unpleasant, unworthy people like Cuthbert.

Corazon Books are planning to reprint more of Ursula Bloom's novels & they kindly sent me a review copy of Wonder Cruise.

Shetland - Ann Cleeves

I'm a big fan of Ann Cleeves' Shetland novels. If you click on the link for Ann Cleeves in my labels list on the right >>>, you'll see all my reviews. I also enjoyed the TV series even though Douglas Henshall wasn't initially my idea of Jimmy Perez.  He's grown on me though! The second series is on UK TV at the moment so I hope we see it here in Australia at some stage. Martin Edwards has reviewed it here & he includes a link to an interesting article by Cleeves in The Guardian about violence on TV.

With an interest in the books & a fascination with the Shetlands, this gorgeous coffee table book was irresistible. As well as the most beautiful photography (by a number of photographers), Ann Cleeves writes about her own connection to the Shetlands, her first visit years ago when she took a job as cook at the bird observatory on Fair Isle, meeting her husband & the many trips since then. She also describes the landscape, flora & fauna & the different characteristics of the many small islands that make up the Shetland group of islands. The varied bird life in particular attracts a lot of tourists & the bird observatory was the scene of the murder in Blue Lightning, the first Shetland novel I read (even though it was the last book in the first Quartet).

I love reading about writers' inspiration, how they come up with their ideas & Cleeves describes the moments when the plots of some of her novels were born. She also talks about the filming of the TV series & how she takes the production crew on trips to look at locations & give them a feel for the landscape. Certainly, Shetland itself is one of the stars of the TV series, so she has definitely managed to inspire the producers of the series with her own love of the islands.

Some coffee table books are beautiful to look at but the text is pretty bland. This book is an exception as Ann Cleeves manages to combine the kind of information tourists want to know (she describes the Up Helly Aa fire festival & the midsummer music festivals) with descriptions of wildlife & landscape as well as the history of the islands. She also describes the ways that the locals are looking to the future with tourism taking over from the oil rigs as a source of income with the fishing industry as a constant throughout Shetland's history. Unlike many coffee table books, I read every word of this one. If you're a fan of the books or the TV series, you'll enjoy Shetland.

Mary Gaunt : independent colonial woman - Bronwen Hickman

Just over a year ago I read Kirkham's Find by Mary Gaunt, a book that had sat on my shelves for a very long time before I finally got around to reading it. I loved it & it was one of my Top 10 books last year. So, I was very pleased to discover that a biography of Mary Gaunt was about to be released. She led a very adventurous & unexpected life & I'm so glad I had the chance to find out more about her.

The character of Phoebe Marsden in Kirkham's Find owes quite a lot to her creator. Mary grew up in country Victoria, the daughter of William Gaunt, an Englishman who came out to try his luck in Victoria in the 1850s, & Elizabeth Palmer, an excellent horsewoman who had rather aristocratic views on the right way to live one's life. The Gaunts married in 1860 & Mary was born on the goldfields at Indigo in 1861 where her father was working as a Warden. He was employed by the Government to keep the peace & was later able to study law & became a solicitor.

Mary grew up as part of a large family & was one of the first women eligible to enrol at Melbourne University. Unfortunately her academic career only lasted one year as she found the course unsuitable & failed her exams. However, she was already writing & had some early success with stories & reviews published in the Melbourne newspapers. Soon she was writing novels to be serialised in the newspapers & planning a trip to England. Most Australian authors were published in England in the late 19th century & Mary set off with a letter of introduction from the Editor of The Australasian & a determination to forge a career for herself. At first, everything she wrote was returned. There seemed to be no market for Australian stories. Then, Mary retold a story she heard from her brother Guy, who was in the merchant navy. It was the exciting story of a trip by torpedo boat across the Atlantic. She signed it M Gaunt, hoping to be taken for a man, & the story was accepted & published in The English Illustrated Magazine. Mary kept writing, found an agent & returned to Australia having made a start on her career.

On a visit to friends in Warrnambool, Mary met Dr Hubert Miller. The original attraction may have been his beehives (she was keen to learn beekeeping) but Hubert pursued Mary & they were married in 1894. The Millers were very happy, although Hubert's mother lived with them & she disliked Mary, disapproving of everything she did. Mary refused to quarrel with her mother-in-law & spent a lot of time biting her tongue to keep the peace. Unfortunately only five years after they were married, Hubert's health failed. His behaviour grew erratic, then frightening as his mental health declined. He ended his life in an asylum, suffering from the effects of tertiary syphilis.

Mary had continued writing during her marriage but, after the sadness of Hubert's last months & his death, Mary wanted a fresh start. She was left with very little as Hubert had been unable to work for some time & she gave what was left to Hubert's mother. In 1901 Mary decided to leave Australia & return to London where she hoped to continue her career. Life in London in those early days was very hard.

Oh, the hopes of the aspirant for literary fame, and oh, the dreariness and the weariness of life for a woman poor and unknown in London! I lodged in two rooms in a dull and stony street. I had no one to speak to from morning to night, and I wrote and wrote and wrote stories that all came back to me... they were poor stuff, but how could anyone do good work who was sick and miserable, cold and lonely, with all the life crushed out of her by the grey skies and the drizzling rain?

Although that first year in London was probably the lowest point in Mary's life, she was about to embark on the most exciting part of her career. Mary always longed to travel & she was always ready for adventure. She had always wanted to see Africa, after reading about it as a child & her fascination with China began when she saw the Chinese miners on the goldfields of Ballarat when she was young. She began by collaborating with a young doctor, Thomas Tonkin, on a series of adventure novels set in Africa, on the Guinea Coast. Tonkin had been on a missionary expedition to Guinea & Mary could supply the plot. The stories were reasonably successful but only made Mary more determined to see the world herself.

Mary eventually financed the trip to Africa by writing a mystery serial for the Chicago Daily News. It was the beginning of years of adventure as Mary traveled to Africa & China, writing articles & stories based on her adventures to pay her way. She was a traveller rather than an explorer, staying with Colonial officials on her journeys rather than hacking her way through the jungle in a tweed skirt. However, she was unafraid by obstacles or dangers & reveled in new sights & meeting new people.

Mary was never a conventional woman & I love this story of her traveling by train near Brighton with two ladies who are determined to snub her attempts at conversation. After seeing a convoy of elephants & camels from a circus by the side of the road, the ladies are determined to ignore both the animals & Mary.

Those two ladies were a credit to the English nation. They bore themselves with the utmost propriety. What they thought of me I can only dimly guess, but they never even raised their eyes from their papers. Of course the train rushed on, the camels and elephants were left behind, and there was nothing to show that they had ever been there. Then I regret to state that I lay back and laughed til I cried, and whenever I felt a little better the sight of those two studious women solemnly reading their papers set me off again. When I got out at Hassocks they ... literally drew their skirts around them so that they should not touch mine and be contaminated as I passed.

Mary spent the last years of her life in Europe, never returning to Australia. At the age of sixty she made a trip to Jamaica, writing a book about her experiences which upset the expatriate community. For the last twenty years of her life, she lived in Bordighera, an Italian town very near the French border on the Riviera. There was a small community of expatriate Britons living there, including several writers, & Mary continued working on her stories using a lifetime of travel & experiences to furnish plot & incident. In June 1940 as Germany invaded France, the small British community in Bordighera was moved across the French border to Vence, a walled village in the mountains not far from Nice. There she lived until her death in January 1942.

Mary Gaunt lived a remarkable life for a woman of her time. She had a sense of adventure & a determination to live an independent life & she was able to realise her dreams. I loved reading about Mary's life & I can only hope that some of her novels may be reprinted one of these days. A few of her novels & collections of stories are available from Project Gutenberg but I would love to see an Australian publisher like Text Publishing add Mary Gaunt to their wonderful Australian Classics list.

Just arrived

Lots of enticing new books have made their way into my possession in the last couple of weeks, both bought & borrowed. One of the books I'm most excited about is Mrs Griffin Sends Her Love by Miss Read. Miss Read died just last year but had been retired for some years before that so a new collection of previously unpublished pieces is a real treat. There have been a couple of "new" Christmas books published recently but they were actually written by her editor & "inspired" by Miss Read & just didn't have the magic. This book is a collection of short essays & stories written for magazines like Country Life & The Lady. Her subjects will be familiar to anyone who loves Miss Read - rural life, childhood, teaching & the countryside as well as recollections of her collaboration with illustrator John Goodall & an account of how Miss Read was born.

I love Alison Weir's books & I've gobbled this one up already. Elizabeth of York : the first Tudor Queen was an absorbing read & I'll be posting about it soon.

More 15th century history with two books from authors new to me. I've been reading Susan Higginbotham's blog, History Refreshed, for some time now & I'm looking forward to reading her book about the Woodville family. Do I need to read another book about Richard III & the Princes in the Tower? Of course I do! I'm always interested in another view & Josephine Wilkinson's new book on the controversy was very tempting.

Greyladies are one of my favourite publishers & I've just bought their new edition of D E Stevenson's first published novel, Peter West, as well as Susan Pleydell's The Glenvarroch Gathering which was reviewed by The Captive Reader here. I'm always happy to add to my collection of Scottish domestic fiction. Greyladies will be publishing another mystery by Mabel Esther Allan in February & I'm already impatient to read it. Mum would have said my eyes were bigger than my stomach (or whatever the bookish equivalent is).

I haven't just been spending money, I've been borrowing from my library as well. This lovely pile of books have been added to the last lovely pile of books on my desk. If only I could borrow the time to read them as well...

Eat by Nigel Slater - his new cookbook. I'm looking forward to browsing & trying out a few recipes.
Coming Home by Sue Gee - one of my favourite authors. Cornflower was lucky enough to hear Sue Gee speak at the recent Slightly Foxed Readers' Day.
All Change by Elizabeth Jane Howard - the new Cazalet book. I love the Quartet & I've already heard good things about this one.
The Assassination of the Archduke by Greg King & Sue Woolmans. Combines my fascination with royal history & WWI in the story of Archduke Franz Ferdinand & his death at Sarajevo.
Meeting the Enemy by Richard Van Emden - more about WWI. A book about meetings between the combatants from opposing armies. Sounds like a fascinating & different angle to take.
The Poets' Daughters by Katie Waldegrave - a biography of Sara Coleridge & Dora Wordsworth, daughters of famous fathers. I read a wonderful book some years ago about the sisters, wives & daughters of the Lake poets, A Passionate Sisterhood, by Kathleen Jones. I'm looking forward to seeing the effect fame had on these two young women who were great friends.
Hebrides by Peter May - a beautifully illustrated book about the islands by an author who has written a crime series set there (which I still haven't read but definitely want to get to one day).

Plenty to be going on with, then, you'd be right in thinking. However, too many new books are really never enough so there'll probably be another new arrivals post in a few weeks because I also have the Emily books by L M Montgomery (newly reprinted by Virago) on the way as well as two more Angela Thirkells (also Virago), a new biography of Queen Victoria's daughter Louise by Lucinda Hawksley & an anthology of Christmas stories from Vintage. Watch this space!

A Lighthearted Quest - Ann Bridge

I'm glad that A Lighthearted Quest is the first of a series because I'm looking forward to spending more time with Julia Probyn. Julia is a freelance journalist with private means who agrees to go out to Morocco to look for her cousin, Colin Monro. Colin is the son of a rather flustery widow. She owns an estate in Scotland that, until recently, was run by her brother-in-law. His recent death has brought Colin's sister, Edina, home to look after things but she has a well-paid job in advertising in London, & doesn't want to live at Glentoran indefinitely. Her salary also pays some of the bills. Colin hasn't been in touch for months & all their letters & newspaper advertisements have met with silence. He was last heard of sailing a yacht around Casablanca & Gibraltar, buying & selling oranges. Julia agrees to go out to look for Colin, planning to supplement the meagre currency allowance with some articles for her newspaper clients.

Julia is practical & very determined. She's also beautiful & has admirers in some very advantageous places such as the Foreign Office & various banks. Julia's good looks lead some people to underestimate her, see her as a "dumb blonde" but they're wrong. She's the kind of no nonsense Englishwoman who asks questions & just expects to receive answers. This sometimes leads to over-confidence & gets her into trouble more than once on her adventures but I found her an endearing character. She also reads Nancy Mitford & Edith Wharton so I could approve of her literary taste as well. Published in 1956, the book is full of the details of travel & politics of the era. Some of the attitudes to women & colonialism are dated but they're of their time & I enjoy books of this period & earlier without worrying too much about the sometimes questionable attitudes of the characters.

Julia goes out to Morocco on a freight ship &, after an unexpected stopover in Casablanca that allows her to meet up with her banking friend, she moves on to Tangier. No one she speaks to believes that Colin is selling oranges, they all assume he's smuggling as everyone does along the coast. Tracking him down becomes complicated &, as money is running out, Julia gets a job as secretary to an eccentric Belgian archaeologist, Mme La Besse. Mme is excavating a Phoenician settlement with oil presses, wine vats &, hopefully, some undisturbed tombs.

Julia also makes contact with the mysterious Purcell, the owner of a bar where a lot of English expats congregate. Purcell is able to give Julia a few clues & she soon decides that whatever it is that Colin is smuggling, it's something more important than a few luxuries for the beauty-starved English. He could even be involved with British Intelligence. She catches a glimpse of Colin & his red-bearded companion on the roof of a house in Tangier but loses him in the crowd. Julia's search takes her to Fez & Marrakesh, into the souks & bazaars as well as the cocktail parties & hotels of the wealthy. She pieces together the story after adventures including a bomb blast & a night spent in an empty tomb to deter grave robbers. There's even a hint of romance for Julia by the end of the book.

I loved the atmosphere of this book. I was reminded of Mary Stewart's books with their resourceful heroines in exotic locations. Also of M M Kaye, who wrote a series of murder mysteries called Death in Zanzibar, Death in Kashmir etc. Although M M Kaye is better known for her big Indian Raj historical novels like The Far Pavilions & Shadow of the Moon (both just reprinted by Penguin), I enjoyed this series which I think was influenced by the author's life as an Army wife being posted all over the world. I'd love to read them again. Ann Bridge's husband was in the diplomatic service & you can feel her personal knowledge of North Africa in her evocative descriptions of the cities Julia visits,

Afterwards they all strolled again on the Djema el F'na. There was a full moon, and the great Koutoubia minaret - to eyes familiar with the minarets of Turkey, slender as knitting-needles, so much more like a tower - stood up almost transparent in the moonlight, in all its immense dignity and beauty. At night, under the naphtha flares, the tempo of pleasure and entertainment on the great square - the "place folle" as the French call it - is heightened: the circles around the dancers are more dense, the grey-bearded performers leap more wildly, while the metal clappers, the original castanets, rattle like machine-gun fire; the gestures of the story-tellers are more dramatic, the serpents of the snake-charmers writhe like souls in torment. Public enjoyment for its own sake here achieves an expression unparalleled elsewhere on earth - it is indescribably stimulating. But it is also exhausting, and presently Julia declared for bed.

All the Ann Bridge series (the list of titles is here) are available from Bloomsbury Reader as Print on Demand paperbacks or as e-books, which is how I'll be reading them. I bought my e-book copy from The Book Depository where it was on sale for 40% off.

Rambles Beyond Railways - Wilkie Collins

Rambles Beyond Railways is Wilkie Collins’s account of a walking tour through Cornwall in 1850. He just made it before the railways though because a note written for the second edition refuses to apologise for his title, now out of date. This is a very good humoured book. Wilkie & his artist companion, Henry Brandling, want to see everything of note in the county. They are objects of pity & amusement to the locals who can’t understand why gentlemen who can afford to travel by coach or horseback, choose to walk. Nevertheless, they are cheered by the kindness & hospitality of the people they meet on their travels. They visit all the well-known towns & villages, St Ives, Liskeard, the pilchard fisheries along the coast, Loo Pool & the Lizard Head.

One of their most fascinating expeditions is their visit to Botallack Mine, a copper mine on the coast where most of the workings & shafts are hundreds of feet  beneath the sea. The excursion begins amusingly with Wilkie being fitted out by a gigantic miner in the appropriate clothing for a trip down a hot, dirty mine. When the miner has obligingly hoisted Wilkie’s trousers up under his armpits & folded over his sleeves several times, he’s ready at last to descend into the mine. They descend ladders until they reach a depth of 420 feet but this isn’t the bottom of the mine. The shafts descend for hundreds more feet & spread out beneath the ocean for hundreds more. They decide that they’ve gone far enough, trying to imagine the miners working for 8 hour shifts in such hot, moist, dirty conditions, and thankfully ascend to the surface.

They are amazed by famous natural phenomena like the Cheese Wring (photo above from http://ontheroad.buy.co.uk), a pile of stones that seems to defy gravity as it balances precariously with the smallest stones at the bottom of the pile & huge stones on top. I could sympathise with Wilkie as he gingerly stood under the overhanging stones fearing they might topple over & crush him at any minute. Kynance Cove is famous for the water spout known as the Devil’s Bellows & the Devil’s Throat emits an eerie groan as the water rushes into it. The history of St Michael’s Mount (photo below from j-m-w-turner.co.uk)  is told through a series of “dissolving pictures” that take the reader from the earliest Stone Age people of the area through medieval times when the monastery was built to modern times.

I read this book on my e-reader & I can see I’m going to have to take a lot more notes to review an e-book than a printed book where I can flick back & forth & leave post-it notes on pages I want to quote or remember. It’s been quite tedious trying to remember placenames & find details again. Still, I couldn’t have easily read this book without the e-reader. Finding pictures to illustrate the post will also be more challenging without the cover of the book to photograph. Still, as a first test of the e-reader, it was very successful. I think I’ve been converted!

* Thank you to everyone who told me that the picture of St Michael's Mount in the original post was actually Mont St Michel in France! I've replaced it with the Cornish Mount by Turner.

Travels with a Donkey - Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson set out for a fortnight’s travelling through the Cevennes region of France. The book he wrote about the journey is called Travels with a Donkey because the donkey, Modestine, is a source of exasperation & companionship during his journey. Stevenson began his journey in Velay, where he has a “sleeping sack” of his own design made up,

This child of my invention was nearly six feet square, exclusive of two triangular flaps to serve as a pillow by night & as the top & 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 & blue sheep’s fur within. It was commodious as a valise, warm & dry as a bed... 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 & a band to pass under my nose as a respirator; & in case of heavy rain I proposed to make myself a little tent, or tentlet, with my waterproof coat, three stones & a bent branch.

He then needs a beast of burden to carry his bed & few possessions & meets Father Adam, an old man willing to sell his donkey. In the market place at Monastier, negotiations begin,

I was already backed by a deputation of my friends; but as if this were not enough, all the buyers & sellers came round & helped me in the bargain; & the ass & I & Father Adam were the centre of a hubbub for nearly half an hour. At length she passed into my service for the consideration of 65 francs & a glass of brandy. The sack had already cost 80 francs & two glasses of beer; so that Modestine, as I instantly baptized her, was on all accounts the cheaper article.

They set off, & after some very comical experiments in keeping the sack on Modestine’s back & encouraging her to keep moving faster than a snail’s pace, Stevenson sets out on his exploration of the Cevennes. The heart of the book is his sojourn at the Trappist monastery of Our Lady of the Snows. Stevenson’s Protestant heart quails a little at the thought of entering a Catholic monastery but he finds interesting companion there among his fellow travellers & the monks. Although many of them are bound by a vow of silence, the monks who serve visitors are allowed to speak & he learns a little more about the Trappist’s austerely beautiful way of life,

I took my place in the gallery to hear Compline & Salve Regina, with which the Cistercians bring every day to a conclusion. There were none of those circumstances which strike the Protestant as childish or as tawdry in the public offices of Rome. A stern simplicity, heightened by the romance of the surroundings, spoke directly to the heart. I recall the whitewashed chapel, the hooded figures in the choir, the lights alternately occluded & revealed, the strong manly singing, the silence that ensued, the sight of cowled heads bowed in prayer, & then the clear trenchant beating of the bell, breaking in to show that the last office was over & the hour of sleep had come; & when I remember, I am not surprised that I made my escape into the court with somewhat whirling fancies, & stood like a man bewildered in the windy starry night.

As he journeys through the Languedoc region, he hears stories of the Protestant enclave that stood out against the Catholic majority during bloody civil wars centuries before. He meets helpful peasants & obtuse peasants. He describes the mountainous countryside & the more or less comfortable inns he stays in on the journey (when he's not camping out in his sleeping sack). Near the end of his travels, at St Jean du Gard, poor Modestine is sore & in need of rest. Stevenson is eager to push on to Alais where his letters await him &, rather unfeelingly, sells Modestine without a moment’s thought & jumps on a coach to complete his journey. But,

It was not until I was fairly seated by the driver, & rattling through a rocky valley with dwarf olives, that I became aware of my bereavement. I had lost Modestine. Up to that moment I had thought I hated her; but now she was gone, “And oh! The difference to me!” For twelve days we had been fast companions; we had travelled upwards of a hundred & twenty miles, crossed several respectable ridges, & jogged along with our six legs by many a rocky & many a boggy by-road. After the first day, although sometimes I was hurt & distant in manner, I still kept my patience; & as for her, poor soul! She had come to regard me as a god. She loved to eat out of my hand. She was patient, elegant in form, the colour of an ideal mouse, & inimitably small. Her faults were those of her race & sex; her virtues were her own.

My copy of Travels with a Donkey is a beautiful Folio Society edition with illustrations by Edward Ardizzone. There are no notes or introduction so I don’t know why Stevenson was in France or what prompted him to take his journey. I’ve read quite a bit of Stevenson in the last year or so & it’s probably time I read a good biography of him. I know Claire Harman has written one & I’ve loved her books on Jane Austen, Fanny Burney & Sylvia Townsend Warner so I think that’s the one I need.