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- Herausgeber: iOnlineShopping.com
- Kategorie: Lebensstil
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
An Inland Voyage (1878) is a travelogue by Robert Louis Stevenson about a canoeing trip through France and Belgium in 1876. It is Stevenson's earliest book and a pioneering work of outdoor literature. As a young man, Stevenson desired to be financially independent so that he might pursue the woman he loved, and set about funding his freedom from parental support by writing travelogues, the three most prominent being An Inland Voyage, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879) and The Silverado Squatters (1883). Voyage was undertaken with Stevenson's Scottish friend Sir Walter Grindlay Simpson, mostly along the Oise River from Belgium through France, in the Fall of 1876 when Stevenson was 26 years old. The first part, in Belgium, passed through heavily industrial areas and many canal locks, proving to be not much of a vacation. They then went by rail to France, starting downriver at Maubeuge and ending at Pontoise, close to the Seine. The route itinerary has become a popular route for modern travelers to re-enact with guidebooks and maps available. Stevenson (named "Arethusa" in the book after his canoe) and Simpson (called "Cigarette" along with his canoe) each had a wooden canoe rigged with a sail, comparable in style to a modern kayak, known as a "Rob Roy". They were narrow, decked, and paddled with double-bladed paddles, a style that had recently become popular in England, France, and neighboring countries, inspired by Scottish explorer John MacGregor's book A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe (1866). Outdoor travel for leisure was unusual for the time, and the two Scotsmen were often mistaken for lowly traveling salesman (a status that more than once kept them from a room for the night), but the novelty of their canoes would occasion entire villages to come out and wave along the banks with cheers of "come back soon!" A fundamentally Romantic work in style and tone, the book paints a delightful atmosphere of Europe in a more innocent time, with quirky innkeepers, traveling entertainers and puppeteers, old men who had never left their villages, ramshackle military units parading with drums and swords, and gypsy-like families who lived on canal barges.
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Table of contents
AN INLAND VOYAGE
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
CONTENTS
TO SIR WALTER GRINDLAY SIMPSON, BART.
ANTWERP TO BOOM
ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL
THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE
AT MAUBEUGE
ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED: TO QUARTES
THE TRAVELLING MERCHANT
ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED: TO LANDRECIES
AT LANDRECIES
SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL: CANAL BOATS
THE OISE IN FLOOD
THE COMPANY AT TABLE
DOWN THE OISE: TO MOY
LA FÈRE OF CURSED MEMORY
DOWN THE OISE: THROUGH THE GOLDEN VALLEY
NOYON CATHEDRAL
DOWN THE OISE: TO COMPIÈGNE
AT COMPIÈGNE
CHANGED TIMES
DOWN THE OISE: CHURCH INTERIORS
PRÉCY AND THE MARIONNETTES
BACK TO THE WORLD
AN INLAND VOYAGE
BY
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
A NEW EDITION
WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY WALTER CRANE
LONDON CHATTO & WINDUS 1904
‘Thus sang they in the English boat.’
Marvell.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
To equip so small a book with a preface is, I am half afraid, to sin against proportion. But a preface is more than an author can resist, for it is the reward of his labours. When the foundation stone is laid, the architect appears with his plans, and struts for an hour before the public eye. So with the writer in his preface: he may have never a word to say, but he must show himself for a moment in the portico, hat in hand, and with an urbane demeanour.
It is best, in such circumstances, to represent a delicate shade of manner between humility and superiority: as if the book had been written by some one else, and you had merely run over it and inserted what was good. But for my part I have not yet learned the trick to that perfection; I am not yet able to dissemble the warmth of my sentiments towards a reader; and if I meet him on the threshold, it is to invite him in with country cordiality.
To say truth, I had no sooner finished reading this little book in proof, than I was seized upon by a distressing apprehension. It occurred to me that I might not only be the first to read these pages, but the last as well; that I might have pioneered this very smiling tract of country all in vain, and find not a soul to follow in my steps. The more I thought, the more I disliked the notion; until the distaste grew into a sort of panic terror, and I rushed into this Preface, which is no more than an advertisement for readers.
What am I to say for my book? Caleb and Joshua brought back from Palestine a formidable bunch of grapes; alas! my book produces naught so nourishing; and for the matter of that, we live in an age when people prefer a definition to any quantity of fruit.
I wonder, would a negative be found enticing? for, from the negative point of view, I flatter myself this volume has a certain stamp. Although it runs to considerably upwards of two hundred pages, it contains not a single reference to the imbecility of God’s universe, nor so much as a single hint that I could have made a better one myself.—I really do not know where my head can have been. I seem to have forgotten all that makes it glorious to be man.—’Tis an omission that renders the book philosophically unimportant; but I am in hopes the eccentricity may please in frivolous circles.
To the friend who accompanied me I owe many thanks already, indeed I wish I owed him nothing else; but at this moment I feel towards him an almost exaggerated tenderness. He, at least, will become my reader:—if it were only to follow his own travels alongside of mine.
R.L.S.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Antwerp to Boom
1
On the Willebroek Canal
8
The Royal Sport Nautique
16
At Maubeuge
25
On the Sambre Canalised: to Quartes
33
Pont-sur-Sambre:
We are Pedlars
42
The Travelling Merchant
51
On the Sambre Canalised: to Landrecies
59
At Landrecies
67
Sambre and Oise Canal: Canal boats
75
The Oise in Flood
83
Origny Sainte-Benoîte
A By-day
95
The Company at Table
105
Down the Oise: to Moy
116
La Fère of Cursed Memory
124
Down the Oise: Through the Golden Valley
133
Noyon Cathedral
137
Down the Oise: to Compiègne
145
Changed Times
157
Down the Oise: Church interiors
167
Précy and the Marionnettes
177
Back to the world
194
TO SIR WALTER GRINDLAY SIMPSON, BART.
TOSIR WALTER GRINDLAY SIMPSON, BART.
My dear Cigarette,
It was enough that you should have shared so liberally in the rains and portages of our voyage; that you should have had so hard a paddle to recover the derelict ‘ Arethusa’ on the flooded Oise; and that you should thenceforth have piloted a mere wreck of mankind to Origny Sainte-Benoîte and a supper so eagerly desired. It was perhaps more than enough, as you once somewhat piteously complained, that I should have set down all the strong language to you, and kept the appropriate reflexions for myself. I could not in decency expose you to share the disgrace of another and more public shipwreck. But now that this voyage of ours is going into a cheap edition, that peril, we shall hope, is at an end, and I may put your name on the burgee.
But I cannot pause till I have lamented the fate of our two ships. That, sir, was not a fortunate day when we projected the possession of a canal barge; it was not a fortunate day when we shared our day-dream with the most hopeful of day-dreamers. For a while, indeed, the world looked smilingly. The barge was procured and christened, and as the ‘ Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne,’ lay for some months, the admired of all admirers, in a pleasant river and under the walls of an ancient town. M. Mattras, the accomplished carpenter of Moret, had made her a centre of emulous labour; and you will not have forgotten the amount of sweet champagne consumed in the inn at the bridge end, to give zeal to the workmen and speed to the work. On the financial aspect, I would not willingly dwell. The ‘ Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne’ rotted in the stream where she was beautified. She felt not the impulse of the breeze; she was never harnessed to the patient track-horse. And when at length she was sold, by the indignant carpenter of Moret, there were sold along with her the ‘ Arethusa’ and the ‘ Cigarette,’ she of cedar, she, as we knew so keenly on a portage, of solid-hearted English oak. Now these historic vessels fly the tricolor and are known by new and alien names.
R. L. S.
