Did the celebrated 19th Century Scottish travel writer, Francophile and toy theatre enthusiast, Robert Louis Stevenson, ever visit Sancerre? 

It’s a hot topic and much debated locally (among local historians, toy theatre enthusiasts and in Stevenson circles). Some say he did – drawn irresistably by what he would have described as the “toy theatre landscape”, and the history of Scottish refugees in the area along with the wars of religion that he wrote about so extensively in Travels with a Donkey down in the Cévennes.  We know that he liked canoeing down rivers.  His first book written before his famous Travels with a Donkey was Inland Journey in which he made his way down the canals and waterways of North East France. He enjoyed staying at the artistic colonies around Fontainebleau where his cousin was part of a distinguished group of painters who included Corot and the Swedish artist Carl Larsson.  On one occasion he tramped down to Châtillon-sur-Loire, a mere half hour North of Sancerre and was arrested by the local gendarmerie (for not having his travel papers on him) and nearly spent the night in a police cell.  No such fate awaited him in Sancerre where he no doubt would have been welcomed by the local Protestant population and sampled the local wines and goats cheese.  Indeed Abraham Malfuson, author of the authoritive text on the siege, was descended from the original Macphersons who made their way to the area following the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie at the Battle of Culloden. By a strange coincidence, the only known tartan associated with Robert Louis Stevenson is the sash he wore as achild, on display in the Writers’ Museum in Edinburgh and was a Macpherson clan tartan.