To Any Reader (#PoemForAThursday)

 

To Any Reader

As from the house your mother sees
You playing round the garden trees,
So you may see, if you will look
Through the windows of this book,
Another child, far, far away,
And in another garden, play.
But do not think you can at all,
By knocking on the window, call
That child to hear you. He intent
Is all on his play-business bent.
He does not hear; he will not look,
Nor yet be lured out of this book.
For, long ago, the truth to say,
He has grown up and gone away,
And it is but a child of air
That lingers in the garden there. 

-R. L. Stevenson

Since it seems to be Stevenson week around here...

This is the final poem, after several other dedications, in A Child's Garden of Verses. Even if you've read it before, it's probably been a while. 😉

Poem for a Thursday is a meme originated by Jennifer at Holds Upon Happiness. Brona also has a poem this week. 

The Black Arrow

I had four blak arrows under my belt,
Four for the griefs that I have felt,
Four for the number of ill menne
That have oppressid me now and then.

It seems to be Stevenson week here at Typings.

The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses is a boys' adventure set during the War of the Roses. It was serialized in Young Folks in 1883, after Stevenson's Treasure Island and before Kidnapped, a good period for Stevenson. This one was a great success as a serial, but since then has never been as popular. Is it less good than those? Hmm, maybe, but still it's an awful lot of fun.

Young Dick Shelton is the ward of Sir Daniel Brackley. Henry VI is king--for now--just recovered from one of his periodic fits of madness. A black arrow fells Dick Appleyard, an archer in the service of Sir Daniel and the threatening poem I quoted above is attached. Sir Daniel is named as another of the oppressors; one of the griefs is the death of Henry Shelton, Dick's father. What does all this mean for young Shelton?

At first he's loyal enough to Sir Daniel, who does look after him. Sir Daniel's a competent military leader, good with his troops and decisive in battle, but he's also intemperate--well, who isn't in 1460?--greedy and more attentive to his own interests than those of England.

A battle is brewing between Lancastrians and Yorkists. The partisans of the Black Arrow are stalking the countryside. Sir Daniel has captured John Matcham--well, we quickly learn that John is really Joanna, a rich heiress. She escapes, runs into young Shelton traveling cross-country with a message. He still sees her as John. They fight, become friends; he saves her; she saves him (he can't swim). It's not giving much away to say you know how this one goes.

That's all in the first fifty pages. But I think I'll stop there with plot summary. To carry on would be put me in competition with Stevenson in telling a story, not a good place to be. It is a rollicking good yarn, with lots of adventure.

Historical fiction requires a few famous individuals to show up: this one has Richard Crookback, that is, Richard of Gloucester, Richard III to be. Stevenson admits to fudging his dates; Richard should be about eight when the novel takes place, but here he's a young, but effective, soldier-captain. It's a good portrait, and well, dates, shmates. Catesby also makes an appearance. I know him less from the actual historical record than from his turn in Shakespeare. I suspect that's probably true of Stevenson, too, though Wikipedia says Stevenson did read the Paston Letters for background.

Anyway, like I said, rollicking. Perhaps the occasional archaizing in the language has put people off? 

"Ye be mortal small made, master," said Hugh, with a wide grin; "something o' the wrong model, belike."

Hugh is talking to John/Joanna. He clearly sees through her disguise, even if young Shelton doesn't. Anyway, there are passages like that. This sort of thing doesn't bother me, maybe even sets the mood. But this was the first book in my complete Stevenson--which I have read about half of--that I had to cut the pages.

The novel is dedicated to his wife, which they both thought a great joke, since it was the one she wouldn't read. She had no tolerance, it seems, for tales of knights in armor.

The Other Reader's knight is a bit grizzled for young Shelton, but since Shelton fights with a crossbow for half the novel, there he is on top of the volume. 

The first of my books of summer, and one actually from the list! 

Travels With A Donkey in the Cévennes (#CCSpin)

 "I travel not to go anywhere, but to go."

These days: if only!

R. L. Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes is about a twelve-day trip he took through the mountains of southern France in September and October of 1878. 

That's already late in the year for the mountains, and Stevenson is told to expect cold weather, if not wolves and bandits. He takes a revolver. He designs a sleeping bag that will double as a sack to carry what he needs. And he acquires a donkey, Modestine, "a diminutive she-ass, not much bigger than a dog, the color of a mouse, with a kindly eye and a determined under-jaw."

The book is early in Stevenson's career, but not his first; he had previously written a book of travels The Inland Voyage and he identifies himself as a writer to people he meets. But he's more generally assumed to be a pedlar, though maybe of the higher sort: at one point he's taken for a dealer in brandy.

"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." The four factions of French politics in the 1800s are Bourbonists, Orleanists, partisans of the Napoleons, and Republicans. Le Monastier had them all. This is the start of his trip, where he commissions the sleeping bag of his own design and purchases Modestine. "At length she passed into my service for sixty-five francs and a glass of brandy."

Stevenson is raised a Scots Presbyterian of a moderately severe stripe, but has by this time lost his faith. He's discreet but honest about this loss with the people he meets and even with us readers in the text, but clear enough. Still religion interests him. Though he camps out as needed, he doesn't every night. One of his stops (the 26th of September) is the Trappist monastery Lady of the Snows: "I have rarely approached anything with more unaffected terror than the monastery of our Lady of the Snows. This it is to have a Protestant education." Nevertheless he quickly makes friends. "I was troubled besides in my mind as to etiquette. Durst I address a person who was under a vow of silence? Clearly not. But drawing near, I doffed my cap to him with a faraway superstitious reverence. He nodded back, and cheerfully addressed me. Was I going to the monastery?" An Irish deacon living at the monastery is thrilled to be delegated as Stevenson's guide: he's released from his vow of silence to play host and had had no occasion to speak English. (Though it would seem Stevenson's French is quite good.) 

But a couple of retreatants at the monastery try to convert him until he's finally forced to say they're being impolite, a little too pushy, when they immediately back off. 

Stevenson has done some reading in preparation for traveling the area. There's a legendary wolf of the area whose stories he's learned; of even more interest to him, the second half of his journey is in an area that's quite Protestant, and he's studied up on the history. The Camisards were French Huguenots whom Louis the XIVth tried to suppress in the early 1700s, and who took up armed rebellion with some success. Stevenson is full of their stories. (One of them involved a group of Protestants all stabbing a murderous Catholic Inquisitor, such that no one of them was responsible for the death, which reminded me of a certain Agatha Christie novel.) 

Phylloxera is destroying the grapevines of southern France at this time:

    "I could not at first make out what they were after, and asked one of the fellows to explain.

    'Making cider,' he said. 'Oui, c'est comme ça. Comme dans le nord!'"

The book has considerable charm; he's mildly ironic but forgiving about the people he meets. (Except for one man in Fouzilhac, who won't even give him directions; but that's OK, because these bad manners appal the people he meets in Fouzilhic. These would appear to be actual village names, now spelled slightly differently.) He's mildly ironic but forgiving as well about himself, about his inability to manage a donkey, or to load Modestine with the sleeping sack he commissioned.

I should say, I suppose, that while he's not cruel to Modestine by the standards of the time, he's certainly not enlightened by ours. In the end he sells her for thirty-five francs: "The pecuniary gain is not obvious, but I had bought freedom into the bargain." And even though he remembers her liking to eat out of his hand, Modestine's fate is no further to be thought of.

"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 the world,--all, too, travellers with a donkey;..."

A French hiking club now maintains the route for walkers. 

The book is also available from Gutenberg.