The Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century/Chapter 7

by William Edward Mead

CHAPTER VII

THE TOURIST AND THE TUTOR

I

Up to this point the traveler himself has necessarily been crowded into the background, but from now on he must be the center of interest. In order to understand the fondness of Englishmen for travel in the eighteenth century, we must, however, glance for a moment at the growing prosperity of England in the period we are studying and endeavor to realize the conditions that in some sense made touring a social obligation.

The eighteenth century wrought a vast transformation in England, though, owing to the lack of startling events on English soil, the casual reader of English social history too often thinks of the eighteenth century as a time of stagnation. Yet the War of the Spanish Succession, the great religious revival, the Seven Years' War, the conquest of India, the long war with the American colonies, the development of colonies in the four quarters of the globe, and the vast increase in commerce — these, and scores of other things that might be cited, are enough to prove that Englishmen were constantly receiving new impressions from every side.

More than ever before Englishmen were interested in foreign lands and travel, and, particularly after the Seven Years' War, they flocked to the Continent in great numbers. There were, indeed, few places so remote that one could safely count on finding no English tourists there. But in general they tended to follow conventional routes and to flock together in great numbers in a few centers.

First and last, the number of English travelers in Italy was considerable. Baretti, who published his "Manners and Customs of Italy" in 1768, estimates that in the preceding seventeen years "more than ten thousand English (masters and servants) have been running up and down Italy." The aggregate appears large, but when we consider that this means no more than five or six hundred a year we see that out of a population of six or seven millions scarcely one Englishman in ten thousand found his way to Italy.

"But in the latter half of the century the movement towards the Continent was much more general, and foreign travel became the predominating passion of a large portion of the English people. 'Where one Englishman traveled,' wrote an acute observer in 1772, 'in the reigns of the first two Georges, ten now go on a grand tour. Indeed, to such a pitch is the spirit of travelling come in the kingdom, that there is scarce a citizen of large fortune but takes a flying view of France, Italy, and Germany in a summer excursion.'^[1] Gibbon wrote from Lausanne describing the crowd of English who were already thronging the beautiful shores of Lake Leman, and he mentions that he was told — though it seemed to him incredible — that in the summer of 1785 more than 40,000 English — masters and servants — were on the Continent."^[2]

But there was a vast difference between the scholars who poured into Italy to garner the new learning at the time of the Revival of Letters and the young spendthrifts of the eighteenth century who dawdled away their time in the capitals of the Continent. Apart from individual differences, the Englishmen who traveled in the first half of the century had much in common. Most of them belonged to wealthy, and many to titled, families. In the course of the century the increasing wealth of the mercantile and professional classes brought a large increase in the number of young tourists, with a very short pedigree but a very long purse, who wished to gain whatever social distinction travel might confer. It is worth noting that, as had long been the case, a large proportion of the travelers were men. For this many reasons may be given; but, apart from the fact that foreign travel was in a peculiar sense regarded as a necessary finish for a young gentleman's education, a sufficient explanation is found in the conditions under which the Continental tour was made.

As we have elsewhere noted, travel in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was extremely difficult and sometimes dangerous, and most women were physically unfitted to endure the strain of a long journey. With the increase of comfort and the improvement of roads, travel became somewhat easier, and Englishwomen, some of them very notable, ventured as far as Rome or Vienna. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu made the long journey to Constantinople and back, but up to the end of the eighteenth century women were far less numerous than men among Continental tourists. Lady Mary, in one of her letters, refers to the conclave at Rome, and adds, "We expect after it a fresh cargo of English; but, God be praised, I hear of no ladies among them."^[3] Most parties of tourists afforded the same reason for gratitude.

With abundant wealth and leisure and with a more restless disposition than any other people in Europe,^[4] the English were the most active travelers of the eighteenth century.^[5] Men in society were expected to be familiar with the principal sights of the Continental cities, and to acquire in the chief capitals of Europe that knowledge of the world which marked the cosmopolitan. One could not be a member of the exclusive Dilettanti Club without being acquainted with Italy.^[6]

But, obviously, when the grand tour became a conventional affair and merely an evidence of good breeding, it ceased to be primarily educational. In the eighteenth century, as in our own day, hosts of travelers flocked to the Continent from England with no other aim than to while away a few months or years as idly as possible.^[7] Paris or Turin or Florence or Rome or Berlin in turn afforded them entertainment, and they asked for nothing more. Gallic smartness of repartee, a knowing air, an easy grace, counted for more in the circles in which they moved than familiarity with art or history or science or any other serious subject. From the point of view of the wealthy young tourist, under no obligation to earn a living and with no expectation of putting his knowledge of foreign countries to any practical use, there was no pressing need of seeing anything thoroughly.

As might be expected, then, great numbers of travelers were at a loss to know how to spend their time abroad. The hours passed slowly between meals. They soon exhausted what little interest they had in seeing buildings and pictures that they were too ignorant to appreciate. They played cards with one another, took walks or drives into the country, and gathered in crowds to watch the arriving and departing diligences. They missed the familiar English sights, and were as uneasy as cats in a strange garret. Englishmen of this type traveled in order to spend their money and ease a vacant mind, and they were as dull and inane at Versailles or in the Coliseum as they were at St. James's or at Newmarket. In so far as they had any curiosity, it was reserved for "Palaces, gardens, statues, pictures, antiquities, and productions of art,"^[8] which they viewed in a hasty fashion. Insufficiently equipped to appreciate the significance of much that they saw, they drifted from one city to another, and were little the wiser for their trouble.

Our age is commonly described as a time of restless hurry, but we can hardly exceed the haste with which eighteenth-century travelers posted through interesting cities without stopping. The small distance that they covered in a day or week makes their progress as a whole seem leisurely,^[9] but the remoteness of Rome or Vienna compelled them to push onward with little opportunity of seeing on the way many sights that were almost under their eyes. In many cases tourists neglected important sights through sheer indifference. Evelyn cites a typical instance. At Vicenza, says he, "I would fain have visited a Palace, called the Rotunda, which was a mile out of town, belonging to Count Martio Capra; but one of our companions hastening to be gone, and little minding anything save drinking and folly, caused us to take coach sooner than we should have done."^[10]

The unintelligent way in which many English travelers employed their time led moralists to regard much of the touring of the Continent as mere active idleness: "Too many of our young travellers betray the symptoms of this disease. The precipitation with which they hurry from place to place, the shortness of their stay where it ought to be of some duration, and its length where no reasons can justify it; their little notice of things deserving much consideration, and their extraordinary attention to matters of small moment; their neglect of useful or agreeable knowledge and information, and their shameful preference of uninteresting and trivial subjects; these and other instances of gross misconduct have long contributed to make travelling a business of great charge and little profit."^[11]

"To lessen the Trouble which young Dilettanti often meet with Abroad in their Virtuoso Pursuits," says Breval, "has been one of my principal Aims in this Undertaking: So common it is to see them following a Wild Goose Chace under the conduct of some ignorant Tomb-shewer; overlooking Things of the greatest Importance, while their Attention is taken up with Trifles; and posting thro' a Town where they might spend a Week with Pleasure and Profit, to make a Month's Halt perhaps at another, which would be half a Day's Stop to a Man of Taste and Experience."^[12]

To the same purport, but more picturesquely, Cogan remarks: "Should their road lead through Paradise itself; or should they have taken a long and tedious journey expressly to see the garden of Eden, it is a question whether our impetuous gentlemen would not tip the post-boy half a crown extraordinary to mend his pace, as they were driving through it!"^[13]

People of other nationalities did not fail to remark upon the peculiar methods of the English. "The French have an opinion," says a contemporary English writer, "that the English are … in such a violent hurry upon the road, that if some little delay is occasioned, they will rather leave their money behind than stay to recover it."^[14]

Dupaty, in his "Letters on Italy," observes: "In a hundred there are not two that seek to instruct themselves. To cover leagues on land or on water; to take punch and tea at the inns; to speak ill of all the other nations, and to boast without ceasing of their own; that is what the crowd of the English call travelling. The post-book is the only one in which they instruct themselves."^[15] They amply illustrate Babeau's comment on most travelers, that they see only the outsides of things, "monuments rather than men, … inns rather than houses, … routes rather than the country."^[16]

As the sight-seeing was largely a conventional duty, some tourists wasted as little effort upon it as possible. Dr. Moore cites an amusing instance of economy of time in seeing Rome. "One young English gentleman, who happens not to be violently smitten with the charms of virtu and scorns to affect what he does not feel, thought that two or three hours a day for a month or six weeks together was rather too much time to bestow on a pursuit in which he felt no pleasure, and saw very little utility. The only advantage which, in his opinion, the greater part of us reaped from our six weeks' tour was that we could say we had seen a great many fine things which he had not seen. Being fully convinced that the business might be, with a little exertion, despatched in a very short space of time, he prevailed on a proper person to attend him; ordered a post chaise and four horses to be ready early in the morning, and driving through churches, palaces, villas, and ruins, with all possible expedition, he fairly saw, in two days, all that we had beheld during our crawling course of six weeks. I found afterwards, by the list he kept of what he had done, that we had not the advantage of him in a single picture, or the most mutilated remnant of a statue."^[17]

Traveling with haste and inattention as they did, the observations of most tourists were of singularly little value. We have a good number of eighteenth-century accounts of tours in France and Italy, but, although a few give evidence of competence for the task, the majority do little more than repeat the well-worn stock of conventional information. Walpole is a typical and very favorable example. He was in every fiber a man of the world and exceptionally clever; he could not fail to be entertaining if he tried; but many of his comments on things abroad are strikingly superficial. Two of his letters written in 1740, the first in January and the last in October, well illustrate how rapidly he lost his keen interest in the very sights he had gone so far to see. "I see several things that please me calmly, but, a force d'en avoir vu, I have left off screaming Lord! this! and Lord! that! To speak sincerely, Calais surprised me more than any thing I have seen since. I recollect the joy I used to propose if I could but see the Great Duke's gallery; I walk into it now with as little emotion as I should into St. Paul's."^[18] "When I first came abroad every thing struck me, and I wrote its history; but now I am grown so used to be surprised, that I don't perceive any flutter in myself when I meet with any novelties; curiosity and astonishment wear off, and the next thing is, to fancy that other people know as much of places as one's self; or, at least, one does not remember that they do not."^[19] "I have contracted so great an aversion to inns and post-chaises, and have so absolutely lost all curiosity, that, except the towns in the straight road to Great Britain, I shall scarce see a jot more of a foreign land."^[20]

As might be expected, then, the comments in most eighteenth-century books of travel are singularly common-place. When we exclude a few well-known works, those that remain are full of remarks trivial in the extreme.^[21] Were it not laughable, the flippant way in which some travelers dispose of cities like Padua, Verona, Vicenza, Siena, and many others, as containing little or nothing worth seeing, would stir our wrath. At Siena even Dupaty found nothing remarkable except the group of the three graces in the cathedral.^[22]

Another typical instance is Pistoia. Few places of it size in all Europe can boast such a wealth of art and of picturesque architecture. Yet Evelyn, who was far above the average tourist in intelligence, recorded in his Diary merely: "We dined at Pistoia, where, besides one church, there is little observable."^[23] Bromley says of Pistoia: "I had little time for seeing this place, staying only the changing caleshes; it is an old place, and I was assured had very little worthy notice."^[24] Misson, who should have known better, says: "There is nothing in Pistoia that deserves either the trouble or charge of going out of the way to see it."^[25] The usually keen-eyed De Brosses remarks, "This city, ancient and deserted, appeared to me to have nothing remarkable except the baptistery. … Opposite the baptistery is the cathedral, with the air of a village church."^[26] And Northall in 1752 merely observes: "Ruin, desolation, and indolence are seen in all the streets, which are well paved, with large flags."^[27] Even Mariana Starke's accounts of notable places are often vague and entirely lacking in distinctiveness,^[28] or they arbitrarily single out an item or two and ignore everything else.

Yet these travellers were far above the average run. Those who did not venture to put their experiences into print, but who chattered constantly about what they had seen, were more fairly representative. On the utterances of this type of tourists Steele has some interesting comments in the "Spectator," No. 474: "But the most irksome Conversation of all others I have met with in the Neighborhood, has been among two or three of your Travellers, who have overlooked Men and Manners, and have passed through France and Italy with the same observation that the Carriers and Stage-Coachmen do through Great Britain; that is, their Stops and Stages have been regulated according to the Liquor they have met with in their Passages. They indeed remember the Names of abundance of Places, with the particular Fineries of certain Churches. But their distinguishing Mark is certain Prettinesses of Foreign Languages, the Meaning of which they could have better express'd in their own. The Entertainment of these fine Observers, Shakespear has described to consist In talking of the Alps and Apennines, The Pyrenean, and the River Po,^[29] and then concludes with a Sigh, Now this is worshipful Society."

Obviously, the offhand estimates of foreign lands that such tourists made were often grotesquely false. But the more ambitious accounts attempted by travelers who drew sweeping conclusions from limited data were little better. "An author of this cast, after a slight survey of the provinces through which he has had occasion to take a short ramble, returns home, and snatching up his pen in the rage of reformation, fills pages on pages with scurrilous narrations of pretended absurdities, intermixed with the most shocking tales of fancied crimes; very gravely insisting that those crimes and absurdities were not single actions of this or that individual, but general pictures of nature in the countries through which he has travelled."^[30]

Baretti has particularly in mind the "Letters from Italy" of Dr. Sharp, who, as he declares, "was ignorant of the Italian language; was of no high rank; and was afflicted with bodily disorders."^[31] "Sharp," says Baretti, "saw little, inquired less, and reflected not at all; blindly following his travelling predecessors in their invectives against the pope's government."^[32] As a whole, he characterizes Sharp's book as "the production of a mind unjustly exasperated against a people, whose individuals either knew him not, or, if they knew him, treated him with benevolence and civility, as they do all the English, and all other strangers who visit their country."^[33]

The uncompromising attitude of Sharp and of many other English tourists toward Italy was doubtless in part due to their Protestantism. Not that the ordinary traveling Englishman in the eighteenth century was enthusiastic over his religion; but he had an instinctive dislike of popery, and more than a little contempt for the usages of the Roman Church. To some extent his feeling was shared by many intelligent Frenchmen and Italians, who gave only a nominal allegiance to the traditional beliefs, and often not even that. On the Continent the fires of the Reformation and of the counter-Reformation had well-nigh burned out, so that the average Protestant might go where he pleased and do about as he pleased. But English Catholics were rare in the eighteenth century, and English travelers in France and Italy not unnaturally viewed with ill-concealed disdain the ceremonies and pictures and images and relics that they regarded as childish or heathenish. One traveler remarks on the old masters that "almost all their paintings are of the same strain, to promote idolatry and superstition of some kind or other."^[34] And a few pages later he says: "Sometimes a priest or friar of their society gives them a detail of nonsense in praise of that saint, and of the piety of their institution, and such like, which they call a sermon. We have heard some of these fulsome discourses, and have been much surprised at the feigned raptures of the preacher, and the amazing ignorance and simplicity of the hearers."^[35]

Like Sharp, the novelist Smollett embodied his experiences on the Continent in a well-known work. Smollett has the querulous and petulant tone of a nervous invalid, who sees everything through jaundiced eyes and makes sweeping assertions based upon an occasional unpleasant experience. In no case is it safe to allow him the final word in judging any part of the Continent, though his keen eye and marvelous descriptive faculty enable him to picture individual facts and scenes with great accuracy. One might easily gather from his pages a choice collection of vituperative adjectives, usually in the superlative degree, for he taxes the resources of the language to express his disgust at the treatment he received from scoundrels of every sort. Smollett had, indeed, one long series of quarrels with carriage drivers, innkeepers, and servants in his journey through France and Italy. Some of these squabbles were unquestionably due to annoying exactions and petty knavery, but, as he confesses himself, a small additional outlay would have enabled him to avoid most of them.^[36]

II

Absurd as were some of the English estimates of men and things on the Continent, they were due not wholly to personal, temperamental prejudice, but in part to the altogether inadequate preparation for travel that many tourists had. If one may trust Gibbon, eighteenth-century students were only too likely to emerge from an English university almost as ignorant as when they entered. In any case their range of information was singularly narrow. Says a very competent observer: "It is easy to perceive that the English universities are in less repute than they were formerly. The rich and great, who, at one time, would on no account have omitted to send their sons thither, now frequently place them under some private tutor to finish them, as it is called, and then immediately send them on their travels."^[37]

We must admit that exceptional men like Warburton and Blackstone and Mansfield and Wesley and Chesterfield and Johnson and Gibbon, and many others who attended the universities, did, sooner or later, in spite of great laxity in the curriculum and the discipline, attain high scholarship. But in general standards were low. In any case, from a young man in society no great learning was expected. If he had gone through Oxford or Cambridge, he could not avoid picking up the rudiments of Latin and Greek and some bits of information about ancient Rome and a few other cities, but of the topography, the history, the government, the art, the architecture, the social conditions of the countries he intended to visit, he was strangely, and, to our thinking, often disgracefully, ignorant. The lack of adequate preparation for appreciating the sights of the Continent left the ordinary young tourist helpless in the attempt to get more than a casual and unsystematic addition to his stock of knowledge. To one who knew nothing of history or architecture the remains of antiquity meant little: the Forum was a cow pasture, the Circus Maximus a brick heap, the Catacombs ill-smelling holes.

Yet, although few knew anything thoroughly, every one in society was expected to have at least a superficial acquaintance with a multitude of things. Hasty and inattentive tourists were doubtless far too common, but besides the mob of dissipated young spendthrifts who flocked to the fashionable centers for mere diversion there were a good number of Englishmen who regarded the Continental tour as a valuable means of culture and profited by it as they best could. They mapped out an ambitious programme and were keenly curious about everything. There were tourist manuals that prescribed an astonishing range of topics on which the traveler was supposed to inform himself in advance and to accumulate information as he journeyed. But herein lay the danger that the relative value of facts would be hardly considered. "It is indispensably necessary," says Berchtold, "for a young gentleman who desires to travel, either for his own improvement, the welfare of mankind in general, or for the happiness of his country in particular, to lay in a certain stock of fundamental knowledge, before he undertakes the difficult task of travelling to real advantage."^[38]

"A mere connoisseur and virtuoso," says Andrews, "is a character by no means to be coveted by a gentleman. They who aim at no more misunderstand the only justifiable purpose for which men of rank, education, and fortune ought to travel; which is to adorn their minds with proper ideas, of men and things, and not to learn the trade of a collector of curiosities."^[39]

Intending travelers were advised to read the best histories and accounts of each country, and to get the best maps and have them "properly fitted up on linen, in order to render them convenient for the pocket."^[40] There is, indeed, no end to the well-meant advice tendered the tourist.

Had the plan of such books been actually followed to the letter, the tourist would unquestionably have learned something. But more than one conscientious young fellow gathered unrelated facts which were of no special importance to him, but which he industriously assembled because he was making a grand tour according to rule and thus conforming in one more particular to well-ordered conventions.^[41]

In any case, it was of prime importance that, unless the tourist was to associate wholly with his fellow countrymen, he should pick up some acquaintance with the languages of the Continent. In fact, one main reason for making the long tour was that he might get at least a smattering of one or two of them. The two most in favor were French and Italian. French, in particular, was an essential part of the preparation of any young man of the upper classes for a social career or for public life. With French the tourist could go through France, Holland, Germany, Italy, Russia, Sweden, and be at home in all cultured society.^[42] But the stolid Englishman often hesitated to use his French or Italian for fear of committing some blunder in accent or grammar. Not too communicative in his own tongue, he might well ask himself why he should go out of his way to exchange commonplaces in bad French or Italian with people he had never seen before and was unlikely ever to meet again. Instinctively, therefore, he sought out his countrymen in preference to the natives of the country he visited.

How serious a hindrance the imperfect mastery of foreign tongues was to anything beyond a merely superficial social intercourse, and how greatly it contributed to mutual misunderstandings, we need hardly remark. The poet Gray's experience at Paris was typical of any place on the Continent where there were many English. "We had," writes he,^[43] "at first arrival an inundation of visits pouring in upon us, for all the English are acquainted and herd much together, and it is no easy matter to disengage oneself from them, so that one sees but little of the French themselves. To be introduced to the People of high quality, it is absolutely necessary to be Master of the Language, for it is not to be imagined that they will take pains to understand anybody, or to correct a stranger's blunders. Another thing is, there is not a House where they don't play, nor is any one at all acceptable, unless they do so too, a professed Gamester being the most advantageous character a Man can have at Paris. The Abbés indeed and men of learning are a People of easy access enough, but few English that travel have knowledge enough to take any great pleasure in this Company, at least our present lot of travellers have not."^[44]

In our day many English travelers speak French and German, and sometimes Italian and Spanish, with fluency and tolerable accuracy, but even yet the average Englishman's lack of facility in any foreign tongue is proverbial. He can with difficulty forget himself, and he unwillingly submits to the humiliation attendant upon learning a new language. In the eighteenth century many young English tourists intended to learn no language but their own — and they succeeded admirably. Proud-spirited and unwilling to put themselves at a disadvantage before strangers, they ignored as far as they could the fact that they were living amidst the users of a language not their own. On the other hand, well-educated tourists commonly spoke a tolerable imitation of French, and a polished man of society like George Selwyn was as much at home in French as in English. "Voltaire declares," says Leslie Stephen, "that Bolingbroke — one of whose early essays was published in French — spoke French with unsurpassed energy and precision. The young nobleman on his grand tour was easily admitted with his tutor to French society, and it is enough to mention the names of Horace Walpole, Hume, and Adam Smith, to suggest the importance of the relations which sometimes sprang up."^[45]

The popularity of the Italian tour induced many Englishmen to pick up some knowledge of the Italian language and literature. The young Earl of Carlisle, writing to Selwyn from Turin in 1765, says:^[46] "I am learning Spanish and Italian, and read a great deal."^[47] And three years later, writing from Rome, he says: "I read Italian pretty well: speaking I have little occasion for. I think I am a good deal improved in my French."^[48]

Of Charles James Fox we are told: He "was an excellent Italian scholar, and wrote and conversed in the French language almost with as much ease as he wrote and conversed in his own."^[49] Here and there an Englishman, like Chute, who spent seven years in Italy, mastered the language.^[50] But few had either the time or the inclination to do so much. Horace Walpole had a tolerable familiarity with Italian, and a quarter of a century after his Italian trip he congratulates himself in a letter to Mann: "I was pleased the other night at the Italian comedy to find I had lost so little of my Italian as to understand it better than the French scenes."^[51] But he had no great mastery of it. He tried in 1750 to write a letter to Dr. Cocchi, acknowledging the gift of his Baths of Pisa, but finally gave up the attempt and asked Mann to express thanks for him.^[52] Limited also was Walpole's mastery of French,^[53] although he had enough for all practical purposes.

All things considered, the acquaintance of the most intelligent English tourists with French and Italian was very respectable. But with the rarest exceptions, one of whom was Carteret, who had traveled widely in Germany, Englishmen in the eighteenth century were entirely ignorant of German. English tourists seldom knew more than a phrase or two of the language. Even a reading knowledge of German was a very rare accomplishment among Englishmen. Trained scholars like Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, and Parr were unable to use German books. Horace Walpole's acquaintance with German enabled him as late as 1788 to say no more than "I am told it is a fine language."^[54] "But even in German courts," says Leslie Stephen, "the travellers knew no German, and the home-staying British author remained in absolute and contented ignorance."^[55] We have, then, the surprising fact that, although England during the greater part of the eighteenth century was ruled by the House of Hanover and thus brought into the closest political relations with Germany, Englishmen were almost untouched by German culture until after the French Revolution. Indeed, long after German had won a fixed place in English education it presented peculiar difficulties to the ordinary English intelligence. Even Lord Houghton, whose advantages were exceptional, wrote as late as 1871 to his son: "It is as well that you should begin that crack-jaw German at school, as I suspect the difficulty I have had in mastering it (though I went to the University of Bonn after leaving Cambridge) comes from my never having been well grounded in its detestable grammar and absurd constructions."^[56] And Lord Houghton's experience was typical. Making the largest allowance we can for individual mastery of foreign tongues by eighteenth-century Englishmen, we may suspect that, as is yet the case, multitudes returned home from their travels with hardly enough of any language besides their own to enable them to order a dinner or to pay for it without being fleeced.

 

III

As already observed, the ostensible purpose of much of the travel on the Continent was educational. And this purpose played so large a part in shaping most of the tours that we must consider in some detail the favorite eighteenth-century plan of sending out a young man to travel for a few years with a tutor from whom he was supposed to receive instruction. This practice was not new, nor was it peculiar to England, but had long been in vogue among wealthy families on the Continent. A description of the system as it should be at its best appears in Francesco Soave's moral tale, "Il conte d'Orenge." In this the author recounts how a nobleman's son, who had been reared in an exemplary way, set out on his travels at the age of twenty, under the direction of a wise governor. He was provided with all the recommendations that were necessary, and his tour included Italy and the then chief countries of Europe. Accompanied by his instructor he journeyed from one point to another, became familiar with various places, with their position and appearance, with the natural products of each country, with the most precious works of art, with the most renowned men of letters and artists of every country, and with the constitutions, the laws, the usages, and the morals of the various nations. In this improving fashion he spent two years.

The young Englishmen who made the grand tour doubtless occasionally measured up to this high ideal, though in general the net result was not so much a thorough training in any one thing as a smattering of many, and a merely superficial polish. But in any case, this system of training was well established.^[57]

In wealthy English families of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the education of young men was largely in the hands of private tutors. A few great public schools, like Eton and Winchester and Westminster, were famous, but for a variety of reasons many parents preferred to keep their sons under their own eyes and engaged private teachers for home training. And even after a youth had gone through a public school and the university, the tutor was felt to be the most suitable companion for the Continental tour, the importance of which was taken for granted. But, evidently, much would depend upon the character of the tutor. A high-minded, well-balanced scholar might be of inestimable service to a youth eager to improve his opportunities. But the number of well-equipped tutors must have been relatively small. The low ebb to which education had sunk at Cambridge and Oxford had brought it about that only an occasional scholar was even moderately competent to direct the work of his pupil, to say nothing of serving as a guide on the Continent. "Intelligent foreigners are not a little surprised, when they behold our young gentlemen sent abroad in the company of persons doubtless of good character, but not unfrequently as new to the scenes they experience as the very pupils entrusted to their care. I will make no comment upon such a text."^[58] But the tutor was expected to be, not merely a preceptor, but a guide, counselor, and friend. "He should be," says Vicesimus Knox, "a grave, respectable man of a mature age. A very young man, or a man of levity, however great his merit, learning, or ingenuity, will not be proper, because he will not have that natural authority and that personal dignity, which command attention and obedience. A grave and good man will watch over the morals and the religion of his pupil; both which, according to the present modes of conducting travel, are commonly shaken from the basis, and levelled with the dust, before the end of the peregrination. In their place succeed universal scepticism and unbounded libertinism."^[59] Now and then, in view of the steady demand for tutors of high character and ability, the ideal was realized. Some men of real eminence and many of respectable attainments were secured as traveling tutors. Scholars of this sort were far from being the shallow dolts often satirized by critics of the grand tour. No less a man than John Locke spent a year in Paris with an English pupil, and even set out with him for Rome, though the prudent philosopher did not venture to cross the Alps in the late autumn. Only a few years earlier the eminent naturalist John Ray had "declined, owing to poor health, an offer to travel abroad with three young noblemen."^[60] The well-known Francis Misson, whose guide-book served two generations of travelers in Italy, journeyed in 1687 and 1688 across Europe to Italy with the grandson of the first Duke of Ormonde. John Breval, who had more than one tilt with Pope and was not altogether above criticism, traveled on the Continent with George, Lord Viscount Malpas. Whatever may be said of Breval on other grounds, he was a thoroughly competent traveling tutor. More famous is Home Tooke, who made two educational tours on the Continent, each time in charge of a pupil. He represented a type of instructor not seldom to be met at Paris and other great centers, and in his gay suits of blue and silver and scarlet and silver, to say nothing of other colors, he was as unclerical in appearance as clothing could make him.

The average tutor was, indeed, a dull-witted, mediocre scholar, with little influence over his pupil. He was commonly not over-ambitious, or if he was, he did not continue as tutor. Wretchedly paid, as was too often the case, and hourly humiliated by the insubordination of the young cub in his charge, he found his lot the reverse of enviable, and he rarely had the ability to rise above it. Naturally enough, the average tutor, like the average tourist, has vanished without leaving a trace, even in that great necrology, the "Dictionary of National Biography."

In most cases the tutors of English birth were of respectable families, though rarely, if ever, of the social standing of their protégés. As already pointed out, the tourists of the first half of the century belonged mainly to the ranks of the gentry or the nobility. As the century progressed there was an increasing proportion of sons of wealthy tradesmen who made the grand tour, eagerly copying the follies and the vices of young noblemen and striving by their insolent ostentation of riches to pass for gentlemen to the manner born. Young masters of this type, uneasily adjusting themselves to their social position, were the least tractable of pupils. With no family traditions of culture, they commonly treated with contempt the well-meant efforts of the tutor to perform the obligations of his contract. If he was a man of refinement and of conscientious character, he was placed in a position of peculiar embarrassment. If, on the other hand, he was not too scrupulous, and connived at the follies of his pupil, or even abetted them, the young fellow was often in a worse state than if he had ventured abroad alone. Theoretically, nothing could be better than to put the entire time of a competent teacher at the service of a pupil. Men like Leibnitz, Locke, and Rousseau recommended education under a private instructor rather than that obtained in the schools. If all tutors had measured up to the standards set by these great thinkers, there could have been little room for criticism. But not seldom the English tutor was selected because of his familiarity, real or supposed, with the languages of the Continent, though of these he had perhaps only the superficial knowledge possessed by a modern hotel waiter — a few phrases, and nothing more. If he was a Frenchman or a Swiss, he was too often unacquainted with English character and social usages, and entirely unable to control the active young animal of whom he had rashly assumed the charge. We rarely hear complaints that a tutor deliberately led his pupil astray, but he commonly drove with a very loose rein. Horace Walpole had no high opinion of tutors as a class, nor, for that matter, of the troops of traveling boys who invaded the galleries of Florence and flung their money about the streets of Rome. Writing to Horace Mann he says: "The absurdities which English travelling boys are capable of, and likely to act or conceive, always gave me apprehension of your meeting with disagreeable scenes — and then there is another animal still more absurd than Florentine men or English boys, and that is, travelling governors, who are mischievous into the bargain, and whose pride is always hurt because they are sure of its never being indulged. They will not leave the world, because they are sent to teach it, and as they come far the more ignorant of it than their pupils, take care to return with more prejudices, and as much care to instill all theirs into their pupils."^[61] Similar flings abound in his later letters. In 1754 he writes to Mann: "I am glad you have got my Lord of Cork. He is, I know, a very worthy man, and though not a bright man, nor a man of the world, much less a good author, yet it must be comfortable to you now and then to see something besides travelling children, booby governors, and abandoned women of quality."^[62] Before going to Paris, in 1765, he wrote to George Montagu: "Though they (the Richmonds) are in a manner my children, I do not intend to adopt the rest of my countrymen; nor, when I quit the best company here, to live in the worst there; such are young travelling boys, and, what is still worse, old travelling boys, governors."^[63] And again in 1768 he remarks in a letter to Mann: "We expect our cousin and brother of Denmark next week; — since he will travel, I hope he will improve: I doubt there is room for it. He is much, I believe, of the stamp of many youths we have sent you; but with so much a better chance, that he has not a travelling tutor to make him more absurd than he would be of himself."^[64]

Nominally, the tutor was responsible for regular hours of teaching, when his pupils were making a stay of any length in a place, but how difficult or impossible instruction other than mere passing comment must have been while on the road the modern traveler can appreciate. At best, the restraints of parental discipline were lacking.

Among the swarms of English tourists in France and Italy, young men of character and ability were not lacking, but far too many of those who passed three years on the Continent returned little wiser than when they first crossed the Channel. With a pupil of the latter type, inclined to be headstrong and wayward, a conscientious tutor of some parts must at times have found his position the reverse of agreeable.^[65] He was bound to participate to some extent in the amusements of his charge or see the young fellow pass out of his control. But if the pupil's interests were mainly centered in drinking and gaming and association with loose women, the situation was difficult indeed. A more attractive position was that held by the witty Dr. John Moore, who for six years went up and down the Continent as medical attendant and companion to the wealthy young Duke of Hamilton. But such opportunities were necessarily exceptional.

Gentlemen who could afford the expense seldom ventured abroad without a carefully selected traveling servant, who stood, of course, lower in the social scale than the tutor. Such a servant was nevertheless expected to be tolerably educated and to make himself useful in all possible ways. Berchtold's enumeration of the accomplishments that he should possess and his suggestion of a suitable reward for faithful service throw some light on the conditions of eighteenth-century travel: "A servant selected to accompany a gentleman on his travels should be conversant with the French language;^[66] write a legible and quick hand, in order to be able to copy whatever is laid before him: know a little of surgery, and to bleed well in case his master should meet with an accident where no chirurgical assistance is to be expected. Gentlemen should endeavour to attach such useful servants to their persons, by showing the same care as a father has for a child, and promise him a settlement for life on their return."^[67]

 

IV

Generalization on national characteristics is tempting, but commonly somewhat hazardous. Yet perhaps without great risk of error we may put together a few features that mark most of the English travelers of the eighteenth century in their attitude toward the Continent. Beyond all question the average English tourist was in every sense incompetent to pass judgment upon the people of the Continent. He seldom knew them well enough to be entitled to an independent opinion, and he was compelled to piece out his scanty experience by hearsay and by reading. Too commonly he made the mistake of grouping the people of an entire country under one sweeping category. And rarely did he realize the significance of the things that he saw. The sturdy belief of the average low-class Englishman that any foreigner was immeasurably his inferior was widespread throughout the eighteenth century. English laborers often took delight in hooting and stoning a foreigner, merely because he was foreign.^[68] The upper classes were, at least in the greater centers of population, to some extent free from this prejudice and brutality. Yet dislike of foreigners and contempt for their ways were firmly rooted in the minds of most English tradesmen and of ordinary country squires. Some types of English travelers, indeed, were in the habit of admiring everything foreign above anything English. But, all in all, perhaps the most striking characteristic of the ordinary run of English travelers was their insularity and their unreadiness to admit the excellence of anything that was unfamiliar.^[69] Even in our time the discriminating Walter Bagehot has observed that there is nothing that the average Englishman dreads so much as the pain of a new idea. This trait was far more marked a century and a half ago and appeared at every turn. The English carried their nationality everywhere with them; and their habits and standards were in sharp contrast with those of the Continent. The Englishman could not be induced to forgo the pleasure of his tour, which would give him opportunity to see famous buildings and statues and pictures, but he was forever vaunting the superiority of his native land and displaying his contempt for the people who had the misfortune to be born elsewhere.

What Englishmen commonly thought of themselves and what foreigners thought of them were two very different things, though nothing is more surprising than the popularity on the Continent of almost everything English in the last third of the century. The self-satisfaction of the English is admirably illustrated in the reflections of the genial Earl of Cork and Orrery, which might add to an Englishman's peace of mind but would hardly be equally pleasing to strangers: "The English are a happy people, if they were truly conscious, or could in any degree convince themselves, of their own felicity. They are the fortunati nimium. Let them travel abroad, not to see fashions, but states, not to taste different wines, but different governments; not to compare laces and velvets, but laws and politics. They will then return home perfectly convinced that England is possessed of more freedom, justice, and happiness, than any other nation under heaven."^[70]

In the same vein Eustace remarks a generation later: "The English nation, much to its credit, differs in this respect [i. e., in vilifying human nature] as indeed in many others, very widely from its rival neighbors, and is united with the wise, the good, the great of all ages and countries in a glorious confederacy to support the dignity and the grandeur of our common nature."^[71]

The Englishman's attitude toward the Continent was often strangely contradictory. "There are instances," says Dr. Moore, "of Englishmen, who, while on their travels, shock foreigners by an ostentatious preference of England to all the rest of the world, and ridicule the manners, customs, and opinions of every other nation; yet on their return to their own country, immediately assume foreign manners, and continue during the remainder of their lives to express the highest contempt for everything that is English."^[72] Nor was this result altogether surprising. Trained from his earliest youth to regard everything English as best, the untraveled Englishman on going abroad found to his surprise people who counted their own ways as good as his, who ate palatable food unlike his own, and in dress, manners, customs, and ideals were of a different type. And in the end he was converted in spite of himself.

Fortunately, an occasional Englishman was sufficiently open-minded to confess that his countrymen were not entirely above criticism.^[73] "English are generally the most extraordinary persons that we meet with, even out of England," writes Horace Walpole to Conway.^[74] And years later, in a letter to Mann, he remarks, "What must Europe think of us from our travellers, and from our own accounts of ourselves?"^[75] Lady Mary Montagu had lived enough abroad to judge her countrymen from the Continental point of view, and she regarded a good proportion of the English tourists as no great credit to their native land. Writing from Venice to Lady Pomfret,^[76] she says that she is impatient to hear good sense pronounced in her native tongue; "having only heard my language out of the mouths of boys and governors for these five months. Here are inundations of them broke in upon us this carnival, and my apartment must be their refuge; the greater part of them having kept an inviolable fidelity to the languages their nurses taught them. Their whole business abroad (as far as I can perceive) being to buy new cloaths, in which they shine in some obscure coffee-house, where they are sure of meeting only one another; and after the important conquest of some waiting gentlewoman of an opera Queen, who perhaps they remember as long as they live, return to England excellent judges of men and manners. I find the spirit of patriotism so strong in me every time I see them, that I look on them as the greatest blockheads in nature; and, to say truth, the compound of booby and petit-maitre makes up a very odd sort of animal."^[77]

Extraordinary as English tourists often appeared to their own countrymen, they seemed still more so to foreigners, to whom they were a perpetual puzzle. England was notable all over Europe for producing odd types of travelers — men who were counted peculiar even at home, and whose strongly marked idiosyncrasies naturally made a lasting impression upon the Continent. The composite portrait often drawn as representing the typical Englishman is doubtless inaccurate as picturing any individual traveler, but it is, on the whole, more true than false, and would never have been suggested by the representatives of any other nation.

As might have been expected, the Englishman was in general not an easy traveler. To difficulties that no one could escape he added others by his lack of adaptability to unfamiliar conditions. Notwithstanding the ostentatious profusion of most wealthy tourists, there were many tourists of the type of Dr. Smollett, exacting and yet penurious, who were in hot water from the day they landed on the Continent until they were safely back in England. Such travelers, wherever they went, loudly voiced their discontent with the country and the people, and commonly found no lack of material for criticism. The Englishman at home was so accustomed to speak plainly that he could not be expected to bridle his tongue while abroad. Fortunately for him, most of his criticism of governments and of restrictive regulations of various sorts was imparted to his fellow countrymen in their native tongue and was unintelligible to any one besides them. "You English," remarks Cogan, "are supposed to think, but you are universally accused of keeping all your thoughts to yourselves! — A Frenchman will touch upon all the affairs of every court in Europe, and all the fashions in each court, before an Englishman can resolve to enquire what is the news of the day."^[78] In general an English traveler presented his least attractive side to strangers. He felt it hardly worth while to exert himself for people he might never meet again, and with whom he would not concern himself if he were to meet them. It is not surprising, therefore, that foreigners who saw only the most unlovely sides of English character should have been rather repelled than attracted. But not infrequently the very man who is chilly toward strangers is the truest of friends. He prefers a few trusted confidants to any number of casual acquaintances. He has never admitted any one to his inner circle without the most careful scrutiny, and for this he lacks opportunity when he casually meets a stranger. Getting on easily with people that one chances to meet is an art that the French have carried to perfection. The Englishman of the eighteenth century commonly lacked the flexibility and the self-forgetfulness necessary for such casual intercourse, particularly if he had to use a language not his own and thus ran the risk of making himself ridiculous. In general intelligence, or at least in hard common sense, and particularly in self-possession, Englishmen compared favorably with any travelers on the Continent. But as a rule they could enter but superficially into the spirit of foreign life.

Bearing all this in mind we may consider for a moment Englishmen's interest in society abroad and the extent to which they mingled with it. We must remember that the ordinary traveler was under a good deal of disadvantage in attempting to make more than a passing acquaintance with the people of the Continent. Commonly remaining in one place for only a limited time, he could not easily escape the hurried feeling that most travelers have in a country full of interesting sights. In so far as he troubled himself with society he naturally consorted with the upper classes,^[79] for whom were reserved most of the pleasures that made life before the Revolution worth living.

Polite society throughout Europe a century and a half ago was in a sense a great international social club. Any one of recognized rank in one country had no difficulty in being admitted to society in another. France set the standard of manners for all Europe, and Versailles served as a model for scores of little German and Italian courts. To a crowded French salon he could find entrance, along with everybody else of unquestioned social standing, and also to a Roman conversazione.^[80] But at a time when rank counted for much in Europe, letters of introduction were almost a necessity for the traveler. Without such help he might see the main sights, and by the richness of his dress and his equipage he could be sure of deference in many quarters, but for admission to society he must have credentials. Then all was easy. "A single letter of introduction," says Nugent, "is sufficient to procure a person an agreeable reception among the Germans, which can hardly be said of the inhabitants of any other country. Their civility goes so far as to introduce a stranger directly into their societies or assemblies."^[81] And as for Italy, Baretti advises the tourist: "On your reaching the first town in Italy, whether it be Turin, Genoa, or any other, endeavor to obtain as many letters of recommendation from the natives as you can, to take along with you as you advance further into the cotmtry. The nobility of every place, and, above all, the learned, will be pleased to give you such letters; and the people to whom you will be thus recommended, will still direct you to others. … [They may perhaps] procure you a good lodging where the inn is not to your liking, … tell you the true price of things that you may not be cheated," etc.^[82]

Walpole repeatedly sends to Horace Mann the names of English tourists who expect to visit Florence, recommending now "Mr. Hobart," who "proposes passing a little time at Florence, which I am sure you will endeavour to make as agreeable to him as possible";^[83] now "Mr. Stanley, one of the Lords of the Admiralty";^[84] now "the Duke of Newcastle's eldest son. Lord Lincoln," who "is going to Rome";^[85] now "a young painter who is going to study at Rome."^[86] To these might be added numerous others.^[87] Much of the time of an ambassador during the tourist season must have been consumed in attending to the interests of young men of rank who were traveling abroad and needed advice or entertainment or letters of introduction.

But, however well introduced, Englishmen in Italy who really wished to know the Italian people were hampered by the conditions under which Italian society lived, and rarely saw Italian life from the Italian point of view. In some communities, notably Rome, the barriers that excluded strangers were not rigidly maintained, but even in favorable cases the tourist was treated as a tourist and not as an Italian. Moreover, tourists who carried abroad a fixed prejudice against foreigners were unlikely to go out of their way to seek society or to welcome it when thrust upon them. Hence, the English tourist, as a rule, gave his main attention to the things he could see, and regarded the inhabitants as a negligible quantity. People he could see anywhere, even at home. In fact, an Englishman often hesitated to take notice of his own countrymen that he casually met abroad, either for fear of being embarrassed by their company later or merely because of constitutional indifference. Smollett cites two striking instances. An Englishman had hired a felucca and a servant to go from Antibes to Leghorn. "This evening [March 20, 1765] he came ashore to stretch his legs, and took a solitary walk on the beach, avoiding us with great care, although he knew we were English: his valet, who was abundantly communicative, told my servant that in coming through France his master had travelled three days in company with two other English gentlemen, whom he met upon the road, and in all that time he never spoke a word to either: yet in other respects he was a good man, mild, charitable, and humane. This is a character truly British."^[88] In another case, "There was an English gentleman laid up at Auxerre with a broken arm, to whom I sent my compliments, with offers of service ; but his servant told my man that he did not choose to see any company, and had no occasion for my service. This sort of reserve seems peculiar to the English disposition. When two natives of any other country chance to meet abroad, they run into each other's arms and embrace like old friends, even though they have never heard of one another till that moment; whereas two Englishmen in the same situation, maintain a mutual reserve and diffidence, and keep without the sphere of each other's attraction, like two bodies endowed with a repulsive power."^[89]

Hazlitt remarks upon the icy reserve of an English gentleman with whom he traveled for a time in France, and adds: "I know few things more delightful than for two Englishmen to loll in a post-chaise in this manner, taking no notice of each other, preserving an obstinate silence, and determined to send their country to Coventry. We pretended not to recognise each other, and yet our saying nothing proved every instant that we were not French. At length, about half way, my companion opened his lips, and asked in thick, broken French, 'How far it was to Evreux?' I looked at him and said in English, 'I did not know.' Not another word passed."^[90] Naturally, tourists of this type baffled even the most determined attempts of foreigners to make their acquaintance.

In varying degrees this excessive reserve was the accepted national trait. Dr. Moore tells a very good story of Lord M. and a French marquis at Paris, who "was uncommonly lively." The genial Frenchman "addressed much of his conversation to his Lordship; tried him upon every subject, wine, women, horses, politics, and religion. He then sung Chansons à boire, and endeavoured in vain to get my Lord to join in the chorus. Nothing would do. — He admired his clothes, praised his dog, and said a thousand obliging things of the English nation. To no purpose; his Lordship kept up his silence and reserve to the last, and then drove away to the opera. 'Ma foi,' said the Marquis, as soon as he went out of the room, 'il a de grands talen(t)s pour le silence, ce Milord là.'"^[91]

The English attitude was, indeed, peculiarly exasperating. Dr. Moore cites another instance: "Though B—— understands French, and speaks it better than most Englishmen, he had no relish for the conversation, soon left the company, and has refused all invitations to dinner ever since. He generally finds some of our countrymen who dine and pass the evening with him at the Parc Royal." On one occasion Moore dined with his friend B—— "at the public ordinary of the Hôtel de Bourbon. … Our entertainment turned out different, however, from my expectations and his wishes. A marked attention was paid us from the moment we entered; every body seemed inclined to accommodate us with the best places. They helped us first, and all the company seemed ready to sacrifice every little conveniency and distinction to the strangers: For next to that of a lady, the most respected character at Paris is that of a stranger. All this, however, was thrown away on B——. 'There was nothing real in all the fuss those people made about us,' says he. 'Curse their courtesies,' said he, — 'they are the greatest bore in nature. — I hate the French. — They are the enemies of England, and a false, deceitful, perfidious —' 'But as we did not come over,' interrupted I, 'to fight them at present, we shall suspend hostilities till a more convenient season.'"^[92]

How absurd was this dislike of other nations many Englishmen clearly perceived: "The English aversion to foreigners is in opposition to reason, judgment, and politeness. Because we are islanders, the happiest circumstances in some respects belonging to us; are our manners more refined, or are our customs nearer perfection, than the customs and manners of other people? I fear the contrary. Our separation from the Continent gives us peculiarities which other nations have not. It gives us that shyness, `that obstinate, silent, rude reserve, which we practise towards ourselves and all the rest of the world. The sneer, that proud, vain, cowardly sneer, which supplies the want of wit, and discovers the abundance of ill-nature, is entirely and shamefully our own; so that, if we find faults in others, how many faults may others find in us?"^[93]

In the endeavor to remedy in some measure this state of things and to fit their countrymen for social life abroad, enlightened Englishmen offered such advice as appears in Andrews's "Letters to a Young Gentleman":^[94] "In order to render yourself acceptable to French companies, you must assume something of their manners and endeavor to put on some appearance of their vivacity. Their chief complaint respecting us is a defect of liveliness and a taciturnity which they suspect sometimes of being rather affected. … In the mean time, that you may fill your place with propriety in French companies, furnish your memory with as many anecdotes as you can procure concerning the people of high rank and fashion in England."

In the thirty years just preceding the French Revolution, Englishmen of high birth or distinguished for achievement of some sort had as a rule only to decide which social invitations to refuse. In Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's day, however, — if we may trust her sweeping generalization, — the English had won no marked social recognition in Italy, though perhaps they had had as much as they cared for. She says: "To say truth, they (Mr. Mackenzie and Lord Bristol) are the only young men I have seen abroad, that have found the secret of introducing themselves into the best company. All the others now living here (however dignified and distinguished) by herding together and throwing away their money on worthless objects, have only acquired the glorious title of Golden Asses; and since the birth of the Italian drama, Goldoni has adorned his scenes with gli Milordi Inglesi, in the same manner as Molière represented his Parisian marquises."^[95]

Dr. Moore sums up the whole case in some very sensible remarks, which without much question contain a large amount of truth:—

"Of all travellers, the young English nobility and gentry have the least right to find fault with their entertainment, while on their tours abroad; for such of them as show a desire of forming a connexion with the inhabitants, by even a moderate degree of attention, are received upon easier terms than the travellers from any other country. But a very considerable number of our countrymen have not the smallest desire of that nature: They seem rather to avoid their society, and accept with reluctance every offer of hospitality. This happens partly from a prejudice against foreigners of every kind; partly from timidity or natural reserve; and in a great measure from indolence, and an absolute detestation of ceremony and restraint. Besides, they hate to be obliged to speak a language of which they seldom acquire a perfect command.

"They frequently, therefore, form societies or clubs of their own, where all ceremony is dismissed, and the greatest ease and latitude allowed in behaviour, dress, and conversation. There they confirm each other in all their prejudices, and with united voices condemn and ridicule the customs and manners of every country but their own.

"By this conduct the true purpose of travelling is lost or perverted; and many English travellers remain four or five years abroad, and have seldom, during all this space, been in any company but that of their own countrymen.

"To go to France and Italy, and there converse with none but English people, and merely that you may have it to say that you have been in those countries, is certainly absurd. Nothing can be more so, except to adopt with enthusiasm the fashions, fopperies, taste, and manners of those countries, and transplant them to England, where they never will thrive, and where they always appear awkward and unnatural. For after all his efforts of imitation, a travelled Englishman is as different from a Frenchman or an Italian as an English mastiff is from a monkey or a fox. And if ever that sedate and plain-meaning dog should pretend to the gay friskiness of the one, or to the subtility of the other, we should certainly value him much less than we do.

"But I do not imagine that this extreme is by any means so common as the former. It is much more natural to the English character to despise foreigners than to imitate them. A few tawdry examples to the contrary, who return every winter from the Continent, are hardly worth mentioning as exceptions."^[96]

With reference to the English habit of herding together, he observes also: "It would be arrogance in anybody to dispute the right which every free-born Englishman has to follow his own inclination in this particular: Yet when people wish to avoid the company of strangers, it strikes me that they might indulge their fancy as completely at home as abroad; and while they continue in that humour, I cannot help thinking that they might save themselves the inconveniency and expense of travelling."^[97]

Defects of temperament and education, the Englishman undoubtedly had. He too readily assumed that what he had been taught to approve was the sole standard of truth. But foreigners of discernment were bound to recognize the sterling character of the better English travelers. Englishmen as a class had a reputation for fair dealing, and for keeping their promises. Rightly enough, as Trevelyan says, was the British name venerated on the Continent.^[98]

 

V

We have still one important matter to consider, and that is the eighteenth-century tourist's estimate of medieval architecture. As every one knows, the eighteenth century passed through a revolution in taste as well as in systems of government. The man who had come to maturity before 1760 continued in the main to apply the old standards, even in the last third of the century. And even the younger men began only here and there to see merit in buildings that had for generations been despised.

Naturally enough, to us of the twentieth century the judgments of most eighteenth-century travelers in matters of art and architecture seem strangely narrow and conventional. They commonly admire uncritically, or if they find fault, they judge by standards that to our time appear absurdly false.^[99] A multitude of things that the modern traveler counts of the highest value are to earlier tourists matters of supreme indifference. In place of an intelligent description of the buildings of a town, they often give a mere catalogue, betraying no personal knowledge and no critical judgment. The whole might have been taken from the guide-book, without the trouble of a visit. Note what Northall says of Vicenza, which boasts in its town hall the greatest achievement of Palladio. The entire account is as follows: "On the 3d of June (1752) we came to Vicenza; a small town, but very populous; the manufacture of silk being very considerable here. The townhouse was built by Palladio; and here is a beautiful piece of architecture by the same, a theatre built after the antique manner. Near this town is a famous country seat belonging to the Marquis of Capra, built by Palladio."^[100]

Especially marked was the general failure to appreciate the works of the Middle Ages. To most tourists before the French Revolution the Middle Ages were a sealed book, and to the average man the great cathedrals and castles, though surpassing almost anything of a later day, made slight appeal. Prepossessed with the notion that medieval art and architecture could be naught but barbarous, tourists in France and Italy bestowed only a passing glance upon delightful medieval cities and hastened on to Rome. Naturally, then, we must not expect to find many tourists visiting for mere sight-seeing old hill towns like Assisi or Perugia or Orvieto or Urbino or San Gimignano or Volterra. To many an Englishman Italy was interesting chiefly as a vast museum of antiquity which enabled him to vivify his recollections of the classics. On a lower plane, but nevertheless not to be despised, he placed the work of the Renaissance, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Bramante, Guido Reni. The great ancient world and the great Renaissance he could fairly well understand, for their life was expressed in terms with which he was familiar. But to the thousand years preceding the fifteenth century he gave httle thought.^[101] For the buildings and pictures and mosaics of that age he sometimes had a word of condescending praise, but of insight into the medieval temper he had very little. The rhapsodies of Ruskin over Gothic art or things medieval would have seemed to him little better than raving. Up to the middle of the eighteenth century travelers seldom let slip an opportunity to show contempt for Gothic architecture as unworthy the attention of a man of cultivated taste.^[102] Already in the time of the Renaissance, Tasso, as Babeau points out, had found Gothic^[103] architecture barbarous.^[104] Montaigne "troubled himself in no way with Gothic buildings. For him the cathedral of Châlons seems not even to exist."^[105] When later travelers approve a minor detail of a Gothic building, they usually qualify their commendation with an added slur. In Evelyn's opinion St. John Lateran is "for outward form, not comparable to St. Peter's, being of Gothic ordonnance."^[106] Santa Croce of Jerusalem "without is Gothic, but very glorious within."^[107] Of Monreale, with its glorious array of ancient mosaics and its unrivaled cloisters, which Spanish soldiers had enjoyed hacking and mutilating, one tourist can say only that "the cathedral exhibits a very disagreeable specimen of the Gothic taste,"^[108] and Breval observes that "The Isles are filled with historical Representations in a barbarous Mosaic, out of the old and new Testament."^[109] Northall (1752) patronizingly says of "the old churches of Florence" that they "are built in the Gothic taste, and fine in their way; but the more modem churches are built in a good taste."^[110] Of Siena, he apologetically remarks, "There is nothing in this city so extraordinary as the cathedral, which a man may view with pleasure after he has seen St. Peter's; though it is quite of another make, and can only be looked upon as one of the masterpieces of Gothic architecture."^[111] De La Lande is full of the same prejudice. Of Colleoni's tomb at Bergamo, one of the most notable works of the early Renaissance, he says: "It is very bad. It is of a time that had not yet emerged from the Gothic."^[112] The author of an anonymous "Tour through Germany" (1792) remarks of the exquisite cathedral of Regensburg: "The cathedral is not admired for its beauty, or any other excellency; but the monastery of St. Emeran is well worth seeing."^[113]

It is not true that the eighteenth century was entirely indifferent to Gothic architecture, for an occasional word of praise for Gothic is already heard in the first half of the century, and after the middle of the century Gothic architecture has no lack of defenders. Even Misson admired the cathedral of Siena. "The cathedral is of a fine Gothic structure, and its beauty is so much the more remarkable, that the building is finished, which is scarcely to be seen in great churches."^[114] Representative guide-books like Nugent's "Grand Tour" and De la Force's "Nouvelle Description de la France" devote considerable space to Gothic cathedrals. But there is in general no intelligent understanding of the principles of Gothic art, even among those who are most interested. The comment on Gothic buildings is vague, and where it is specific, it often mingles impartially praise and blame, as in the following on the cathedral of Rheims: "The front of this stupendous church consists of a vast number of statues: Saints in miniature, placed in little niches, and in exact spaces; so that the eye is pleased and shocked at the same time. Magnificence is mixed with littleness, grandeur with meanness, proportipn with disproportion; consequently it creates in our thoughts an uneasy mixture of admiration and contempt. The painted windows are all perfect, and the sun has a glorious effect upon the variety of their colours."^[115]

Nugent's "Grand Tour" admirably illustrates the growing admiration for Gothic, though he has hazy ideas of the development of medieval architecture. The exquisite Romanesque church of "S. Trophimus" at Aries he calls "a vast Gothic structure."^[116] "The cathedral" at Vienne, "dedicated to S. Maurice is a magnificent Gothic structure."^[117] He has also a good word for the cathedrals of Strassburg, Orléans, and Chartres. It is notable that he says nothing of the exquisite stained glass at Chartres.^[118] Even more than Nugent, Dr. John Moore is in hearty accord with the spirit of the Gothic builders. After praising the cathedral of Strassburg as "a very fine building," he goes on to say: "Our Gothic ancestors, like the Greeks and Romans, built for posterity. Their ideas in architecture, though different from those of the Grecian artists, were vast, sublime, and generous, far superior to the selfish smugness of modern taste, which is generally confined to one or two generations; the plans of our ancestors with a more extensive benevolence embrace distant ages."^[119]

In 1787, St. John, in his "Letters from France," shows himself a passionate admirer of the Gothic. "Though there are," says he, "absurdities in the Gothic architecture, yet I think the moderns are wrong totally to exclude it."^[120] He dwells upon "the lofty majesty and beauty of the inside" of Nôtre Dame^[121] and declares: "I would rather spend my life even in an old Gothic castle in a romantic situation, with rocks and woods and cataracts around me, than in all the formal grandeur and stupid regtilarity of Versailles."^[122] Of Chantilly he says with enthusiasm: "The castle is a great pile of Gothic building, with huge round towers at the angles to serve as bastions. The venerable aspect of this groupe of Gothic castles, dark and solemn, in the middle of a fine sheet of water, impresses the beholder with awe and admiration. … It appears antique, solemn and romantic; and the noblest piece of Corinthian architecture does not appear so awful and majestic as the antique walls and ramparts of Chantilly."^[123]

But it is unnecessary to multiply examples. Henceforth one needed not to apologize for admiring the most fascinating architecture in Europe, though two or three generations had yet to pass before one could judge Gothic buildings with thoroughly intelligent understanding of their development.

1. Letters concerning the Present State of England, p. 240.
2. Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vii, 230–31.
3. Letters, ii, 30.
4. Such, at least, was the opinion of foreigners. See Moore, View of Society and Manners in France, etc., p. 372.
5. The Gentleman's Guide (1770), p. 1, introduces the book with the remark: "A fondness for travel being the characteristic of the English, more than of any other nation," etc.
6. Traill, Social England, v, 345.
7. "It is much to be regretted," says Andrews, "that the majority of our travellers run over to France from no other motives than those which lead them to Bath, Tunbridge, or Scarborough. Amusement and dissipation are their principal, and often their only, views." Letters to a Young Gentleman, p. 2.
8. Ibid., p. 13.
9. As illustrating the slowness of travel we may note that when George III was taken ill in 1788 a messenger was dispatched by the Duke of Portland to summon Charles James Fox, who was then at Bologna. "He at once set out on his return, and, after nine days' incessant travelling, arrived in London on November 24." Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century, v, 381.
10. Diary, i, 228.
11. Andrews, Letters to a Young Gentleman, pp. 574–75.
12. Remarks on Several Parts of Europe, ii, Preface, pp. v, vi.
13. Cogan, The Rhine, ii, 46.
14. (Jones) Journey to France (1776), ii, 117.
15. Lettres sur l'Italie, p. 87.
16. Les Voyageurs en France, p. 3.
17. Moore, View of Society and Manners in Italy, ii, 106, 107.
18. Letters, i, 35. (Florence, January 24, 1740, N.S.)
19. Letters, i, 42.
20. Letters, i, 59. (Walpole to West, Florence, October 2, 1740, N.S.)
21. Hazlitt hits off the wild generalizations common in his day: "Because the French are animated and full of gesticulation, they are a theatrical people; i£ they smile and are polite, they are like monkeys — an idea an Englishman never has out of his head, and it is well if he can keep it between his lips." Journey, Works, ix, 139. "If we meet with anything odd or absurd in France, it is immediately set down as French and characteristic of the country, though we meet with a thousand odd and disagreeable things every day in England (that we never met before) without taking any notice of them." Ibid., ix, 141.
22. Lettres sur l'Italie, p. 147.
23. Diary, i, 192.
24. Several Years' Travels, etc., p. 116.
25. Misson, New Voyage to Italy, i², 555.
26. Lettres critiques et historiques sur l'Italie, ii, 67.
27. Travels through Italy, p. 33.
28. Note, for example, her remarks on Arezzo, Letters from Italy, ii, 179.
29. Faulconbridge, in King John, Act i, Sc. i.
30. Baretti, Manners and Customs of Italy, i, 2.
31. Ibid., i, 4.
32. Ibid., i, 28.
33. Ibid., i, 100.
34. A Short Account of a Late Journey to Tuscany, Rome, etc., p. 37.
35. Ibid., p. 53.
36. See Travels, i, 211.
37. V. Knox, Liberal Education, ii, 98.
38. An Essay to Direct and Extend the Inquiries of Patriotic Travellers, i, 1.
39. Letters to a Young Gentleman, p. 556.
40. Berchtold, An Essay, etc., i, 16.
41. A tourist was advised always to carry paper, pen, and ink in his pocket and jot down comments upon the most remarkable things that he saw. Says Berchtold, "The daily remarks ought to be copied from the pocket book into the journal before the traveller goes to rest." (An Essay, etc., i, 43.) He adds (p. 45) that it is "imprudent and often very dangerous, for a traveller to lend his journal."
42. But Bourgoanne, Travels in Spain, p. 314, speaks of the ignorance of French among Spaniards in the eighteenth century.
43. Paris, April 21, N.S., 1739.
44. Tovey, Gray and his Friends, p. 40.
45. Studies of a Biographer, ii, 40, 41.
46. Jesse, George Selwyn and his Contemporaries, ii, 236.
47. Ibid., ii, 277.
48. Ibid., ii, 307 (1768).
49. Ibid., ii, 218.
50. Walpole, Letters, v, 487.
51. Ibid., iv, 410.
52. Ibid., ii, 228.
53. Ibid., iv, 412.
54. Ibid., ix, 161.
55. "The Importation of German," in Studies of a Biographer, ii, 38–75.
56. Reid, Life of Lord Houghton, ii, 254.
57. "Whenever the circumstances of the parent will permit, a private tutor of character must be engaged … to inspect his pupil not only in the hours of study, but also of amusement; and I would give particular directions, that the pupil should associate with none but the private tutor and those whom he may approve." V. Knox, Liberal Education, ii, 112.
58. Andrews, Letters to a Young Gentleman, p. 52.
59. "On Foreign Travel," in Liberal Education, ii, 305.
60. Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. Ray.
61. Letters, ii, 219, 220.
62. Ibid., ii, 409.
63. Ibid., iv, 397.
64. Ibid., v, 115.
65. "A young man, born with the certainty of succeeding to an opulent fortune, is commonly too much indulged during infancy for submitting to the authority of a governor." Chesterfield, On the Passions and Vices of Boys.
66. "My travelling servant babbles all languages, but speaks none."Earl of Cork and Orrery, Letters from Italy, p. 20.
67. Berchtold, An Essay to Direct and Extend the Inquiries of Patriotic Travellers, i, 47.
68. "The characteristic hatred of foreigners was shown by a furious disturbance in 1738 because French actors were employed at the Haymarket and some years afterwards by the sacking of Drury Lane Theatre because Garrick had employed in a spectacle some French dancers." Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century, ii, 113.
69. "One of the complaints," says Andrews, "urged against the English by the French, and indeed by most foreigners,, is a superciliousness of disposition that inclines them to undervalue whatever they meet with abroad. More enmity has accrued to us from this than from any other cause."Letters to a Young Gentleman, p. 8.Cf. ibid., p. 63.
70. Letters from Italy, p. 246.
71. Classical Tour in Italy, iii, 40.
72. View of Society and Manners in France, etc., p. 429.
73. But note the English point of view in the following remarks by Dr. Thomas Arnold: "It will not do to contemplate ourselves only, or, contenting ourselves with saying that we are better than others, scorn to amend our institutions by comparing them with those of other nations. Our travellers and our exquisites imitate the outside of foreign customs without discrimination, just as in the absurd fashion of not eating fish with a knife,borrowed from the French, who do it because they have no knives fit for use. But monkeyish imitation will do no good." Stanley's Life of Dr. Arnold, ii, 343.
74. Letters, iv, 402.
75. Ibid., ix, 35.
76. It is interesting to compare with the comments of Lady Mary those of Dr. Thomas Arnold, about a century later (July 17, 1830)."I was struck, too, with the total isolation of England from the European world. We are considered like the inhabitants of another planet, feared perhaps, and respected in many points, and in no respect understood or sympathized with. And how much is our state the same with regard to the Continent. How little do we seem to know, or to value their feelings, — how little do we appreciate or imitate their intellectual progress." Stanley's Life of Dr. Arnold, ii, 333, 334.
77. Letters, ii, 29.
78. Cogan, The Rhine, i, 134.
79. Andrews strongly advises young Englishmen who go to Paris to frequent the coffee-houses: "You will, if you are wise, often repair to these houses; and lay aside that pernicious pride, which prompts so many of our countrymen abroad to disdain all company, but that of persons of the highest rank." Letters to a Young Gentleman, p. 44.
80. "The memoirs of last century swarm with proofs that young Englishmen of family were only too well received in Continental, and most of all in Italian, drawing-rooms." Trevelyan, Early Life of Charles James Fox, p. 55.
81. Grand Tour, ii, 45.
82. Baretti, Manners and Customs of Italy, ii, 317, 318.
83. Letters, i, 365.
84. Ibid., iv, 352.
85. Ibid., v, 252.
86. Ibid., vi, 281.
87. Cf. ibid., ii, 261; v, 135; vi, 269, 359; vii, 259, 267; v, 414.
88. Travels, ii, 188.
89. Ibid., ii, 261.
90. Journey, Works, ix, 102.
91. Moore, View of Society and Manners in France, etc., p. 18.
92. Ibid., pp. 39–41.
93. Earl of Cork and Orrery, Letters from Italy, pp. 142–43.
94. Page 76.
95. Letters, ii, 233.
96. Moore, View of Society and Manners in France, etc., pp. 36, 37.
97. Ibid., p. 226.
98. Early History of Charles James Fox, p. 274.
99. For example, when in Paris, Horace Walpole goes into raptures over Lesueur's pictures illustrating the life of St. Bruno. "But sure they are amazing! I don't know what Raphael may be in Rome, but these pictures excel all I have seen in Paris and England." Letters, i, 19.
100. Travels through Italy, p. 447.
101. Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire appeared between 1776 and 1788.
102. See the remarks on Gothic architecture in a paper in the World, No. 26 (1753).Chalmers, British Essayists, xxii, 143, 144.
103. It is hardly necessary to point out that the term "Gothic" is very loosely used in the eighteenth century and applied to "every ancient building which is not in the Grecian mode." See citation from Langley's Ancient Architecture Restored (1742), in the Oxford Dictionary, s.v. "Gothic" was a common synonym for "barbarous."
104. Les Voyageurs en France, p. 43.
105. Ibid., p. 62.
106. Diary, i, 130.
107. Ibid., i, 179. Cf. his remarks on "St. Stephen's" (St. Étienne) in Paris, ibid., i, 265, which he thinks beautiful, "though Gothic."
108. Wyndham, Travels, i, 398.
109. Remarks on Several Parts of Europe, i, 48.
110. Travels through Italy, p. 39.
111. Ibid., p. 108.
112. Voyage en Italie, viii, 423.
113. Page 147.
114. New Voyage to Italy, ii², 239. Addison had no feeling for, or understanding of, Gothic architecture. See his remarks on the cathedral of Siena, Remarks on Italy, pp. 313, 314.
115. Earl of Cork and Orrery, Letters from Italy, p. 5.
116. Grand Tour, iv, 195.
117. Ibid., iv, 180.
118. Ibid., iv, 270. Some of Nugent's estimates of other French Gothic buildings are found in his Grand Tour, iv: Paris (Sainte-Chapelle), p. 55; Sens, pp. 167, 168; Metz, p. 205; Strassburg, p. 207; Troyes, p. 213; Bourges, p. 257 (this he pronounces "one of the finest Gothic structures in France," but he makes no mention of the superb old glass or of the great carved doorways); Le Mans, p. 271; Rouen, p. 282; Caen, p. 285; Rheims, p. 297, etc.
119. View of Society and Manners in France, etc., p. 177.
120. Vol. i, p. 20.
121. Vol. i, p. 15.
122. Vol. i, 101.
123. Vol. ii, 109.