Volume 42, Number 3 · February 16, 1995
Over the Dark River
By Anne Barton
Dr. Johnson & Mr. Savage
by Richard Holmes
Pantheon, 260 pp., $23.00
In Footsteps (1985), Richard Holmes records his first, salutary, disillusionment as a self-styled 'Romantic Biographer.' In 1964, when only eighteen, he undertook to duplicate Robert Louis Stevenson's journey through the Massif Central of France in the autumn of 1878, the trek subsequently described in Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes. Wisely, remembering Stevenson's struggles with the recalcitrant Modestine, the young Holmes declined all offers of a donkey. Otherwise, he was scrupulous about reliving Stevenson's experience, journeying alone, along exactly the same demanding route, eager to see what his predecessor had seen, comparing his own thoughts and impressions at every step with those of the man who had walked this road almost a century before. It was at Langogne, not far along the way, that he was pulled up short.
Review, 4291 words
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