CEVENNES: Deep France.

French scholars love to talk about something called "la France profonde"--deep France, rather like Americans who insist that New York is not the real America. Christopher Jones explains what be understands by it, with an allusion to my mention of Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes (1879):"Obviously nobody in the US press decided to take a donkey across the Cevennes and attend a service in a temple.

As usual, Americans have a problem -a terrible ressentiment: they just don't want to accept that there is another France outside Paris; la France, eternelle et profonde of small villages and cornfields, of streams and paths. If you travel these byways, you will discover that some Frenchman have more real faith than all your Christian fundamentalists put together. I can personally attest to the piety of the Cevenols because I spent a lot of time in the area, getting to know its enchanting and remarkable people. It is a wild place, filled with gypsies and witches, subsisting on chestnuts (which of course have been expertly converted into culinary masterpieces by the inhabitants) and wild mushrooms -- boletus In the village where we lived, not far from Anduze which is known as the gateway into the Cevennes, my wife and I were immediately invited for dinner by the local pastor who acted as a sort of headman. Sunday services were strictly observed and each family buried its dead either on the grounds or in the cellar in a sort of catacomb, just in case the King's troops appeared to commit sacrilege".

RH:
I would call the Cevennes "remote France", not "deep France" Eure department, where I once lived, is more typical of "deep France". Christopher's account does not appeal to me since I have no affection for gypsies and witches, or should I say Roma and wiggans. My dislike of gypsies is based on my experiences in Spain. I do not share the affection for them of George Borrow, who described them in The Zincali (1841). He was slightly mad, and a bible-thumper, which should displease Christopher. A crisis in Romania is tarnishing the romance of gypsies. The king of the Roma has tried to marry off his daughter, according to Roma customs. She revolted, saying she wanted to live the life of an ordinary girl. The case has shocked Europe, which has said that Romania must abolish these marriages if it wishes to enter the European Union. The gypsies really come from India, where child marriage was common until the British Raj banned it. The King of the Roma is protesting angrily at the lack of respect for Roma customs by the young girl. I am strongly on her side.