English Travellers of the Renaissance Part 4

First, for your garb, it must be grave and serious, Very reserv'd and lock'd; not tell a secret On any terms; not to your father: scarce A fable, but with caution: make sure choice Both of your company, and discourse; beware You never speak a truth-- PEREGRINE. How!

SIR P. Not to strangers, For those be they you must converse with most; Others I would not know, sir, but at distance, So as I still might be a saver in them: You shall have tricks eke pa.s.sed upon you hourly.

And then, for your religion, profess none, But wonder at the diversity of all."[198]

Sir Henry Wotton's letter to Milton must not be left out of account of Jacobean advice to travellers. It is brief, but very characteristic, for it breathes the atmosphere of plots and caution. Admired for his great experience and long sojourn abroad, in his old age, as Provost of Eton, Sir Henry's advice was much sought after by fathers about to send their sons on the Grand Tour. Forty-eight years after he himself set forth beyond seas, he pa.s.sed on to young John Milton "in procinct of his travels," his favourite bit of wisdom, learned from a Roman courtier well versed in the ways of Italy: "I pensieri stretti e il viso sciolto."[199] Milton did not follow this Machiavellian precept to keep his "thoughts close and his countenance loose," as Wotton translates it,[200] and was soon marked by the Inquisition; but he was proud of being advised by Sir Henry Wotton, and boasted of the "elegant letter"

and "exceedingly useful precepts" which the Provost bestowed on him at his departure for Italy.[201]

So much for the admonitory side of instructions for travellers at the opening of the seventeenth century. Italy, we see, was still feared as a training-ground for "green wits." Bishop Hall succeeded Ascham in denouncing the travel of young men who professed "to seek the glory of a perfect breeding, and the perfection of that which we call civility."

Allowed to visit the Continent at an early age, "these lapwings, that go from under the wing of their dam with the sh.e.l.l on their heads, run wild." They hasten southwards, where in Italy they view the "proud majesty of pompous ceremonies, wherewith the hearts of children and fools are easily taken."[202] To the persuasive power of the Jesuits Hall devotes several pages, and makes an impa.s.sioned plea to the authorities to prevent Englishmen from travelling.

Parents could be easily alarmed by any possibility of their sons'

conversion to Romanism. For the penalties of being a Roman Catholic in England were enough to make an ambitious father dread recusancy in his son. Though a gentleman or a n.o.bleman ran no risk of being hanged, quartered, disembowelled and subjected to such punishments as were dealt out to active and dangerous priests, he was regarded as a traitor if he acknowledged himself to be a Romanist. At any moment of anti-Catholic excitement he might be arrested and clapped into prison. Drearier than prison must have been his social isolation. For he was cut off from his generation and had no real part in the life of England. Under the laws of James he was denied any share in the Government, could hold no public office, practise no profession. Neither law nor medicine, nor parliament nor the army, nor the university, was open to him. Banished from London and the Court, shunned by his contemporaries, he lurked in some country house, now miserably lonely, now plagued by officers in search of priests. At last, generally, he went abroad, and wandered out his life, an exile, despised by his countrymen, who met him hanging on at foreign Courts; or else he sought a monastery and was buried there. To be sure, the laws against recusants were not uniformly enforced; papistry in favourites and friends of the king was winked at, and the rich n.o.blemen, who were able to pay fines, did not suffer much. But the fact remains that for the average gentleman to turn Romanist generally meant to drop out of the world. "Mr Lewknor," writes Father Gerard to Father Owen,[203] "growing of late to a full resolution of entering the Society (of Jesus), and being so much known in England and in the Court as he is, so that he could not be concealed in the English College at Rome; and his father, as he considered, being morally sure to lose his place,[204] which is worth unto him 1000 a year, he therefore will come privately to Liege, where I doubt not but to keep him wholly unknown."

CHAPTER V

THE INFLUENCE OF THE FRENCH ACADEMIES

The admonitions of their elders did not keep young men from going to Italy, but as the seventeenth century advanced the conditions they found there made that country less attractive than France. The fact that the average Englishman was a Protestant divided him from his compeers in Italy and damped social intercourse. He was received courteously and formally by the Italian princes, perhaps, for the sake of his political uncle or cousin in England, but inner distrust and suspicion blighted any real friends.h.i.+p. Unless the Englishman was one of those who had a secret, half-acknowledged allegiance to Romanism, there could not, in the age of the Puritans, be much comfortable affection between him and the Italians. The beautiful youth, John Milton, as the author of excellent Latin verse, was welcomed into the literary life of Florence, to be sure, and there were other unusual cases, but the typical traveller of Stuart times was the young gentleman who was sent to France to learn the graces, with a view to making his fortune at Court, even as his widowed mother sent George Villiers, afterwards Duke of Buckingham.

The Englishmen who travelled for "the complete polis.h.i.+ng of their parts"

continued to visit Italy, to satisfy their curiosity, but it was rather in the mood of the sight-seer. Only malcontents, at odds with their native land, like Bothwell, or the Earl of Arundel, or Leicester's disinherited son, made prolonged residence in Italy. Aspiring youth, seeking a social education, for the most part hurried to France.

For it was not only a sense of being surrounded by enemies which during the seventeenth century somewhat weakened the Englishman's allegiance to Italy, but the increasing attractiveness of another country. By 1616 it was said of France that "Unto no other countrie, so much as unto this, doth swarme and flow yearly from all Christian nations, such a mult.i.tude, and concourse of young Gentlemen, Marchants, and other sorts of men: some, drawen from their Parentes bosoms by desire of learning; some, rare Science, or new conceites; some by pleasure; and others allured by lucre and gain.... But among all other Nations, there cometh not such a great mult.i.tude to Fraunce from any Country, as doth yearely from this Isle (England), both of Gentlemen, Students, Marchants, and others."[205]

Held in peace by Henry of Navarre, France began to be a happier place than Italy for the Englishman abroad. Germany was impossible, because of the Thirty Years' War; and Spain, for reasons which we shall see later on, was not inviting. Though nominally Roman Catholic, France was in fact half Protestant. Besides, the French Court was great and gay, far outs.h.i.+ning those of the impoverished Italian princes. It suited the gallants of the Stuart period, who found the grave courtesy of the Italians rather slow. Learning, for which men once had travelled into Italy, was no longer confined there. Nor did the Cavaliers desire exact cla.s.sical learning. A knowledge of mythology, culled from French translations, was sufficient. Accomplishments, such as riding, fencing, and dancing, were what chiefly helped them, it appeared, to make their way at Court or at camp. And the best instruction in these accomplishments had s.h.i.+fted from Italy to France.

A change had come over the ideal of a gentleman--a reaction from the Tudor enthusiasm for letters. A long time had gone by since Henry VIII.

tried to make his children as learned as Erasmus, and had the most erudite scholars fetched from Oxford and Cambridge to direct the royal nursery. The somewhat moderated esteem in which book-learning was held in the household of Charles I. may be seen in a letter of the Earl of Newcastle, governor to Prince Charles,[206] who writes to his pupil:

"I would not have you too studious, for too much contemplation spoils action, and Virtue consists in that." The Prince's model is to be the Bishop of Chichester, his tutor, who "hath no pedantry in him: his learning he makes right use of, neither to trouble himself with it or his friends: ... reades men as well as books: ... is travell'd, which you shall perceive by his wisdome and fas.h.i.+on more than by his relations; and in a word strives as much discreetly to hide the scholler in him, as other men's follies studies to shew it: and is a right gentleman."[207]

Of pedantry, however, there never seems to have been any danger in Court circles, either in Tudor or Stuart days. It took constant exhortations to make the majority of n.o.blemen's sons learn anything at all out of books. For centuries the marks of a gentleman had been bravery, courtesy and a good seat in the saddle, and it was not to be supposed that a sudden fas.h.i.+onable enthusiasm for literature could change all that.

Ascham had declared that the Elizabethan young bloods thought it shameful to be learned because the "Jentlemen of France" were not so.[208] When with the general relaxation of high effort which appeared in so many ways at the Court of James I., the mastery of Greek authors was no longer an ideal of the courtier, the Jacobean gallant was hardly more intellectual than the mediaeval page. Henry Peacham, in 1623, described n.o.blemen's flagging faith in a university education. They sent their sons to Oxford or Cambridge at an early age, and if the striplings did not immediately lay hold on philosophy, declared that they had no apt.i.tude for learning, and removed them to a dancing school. "These young things," as he calls the Oxford students "of twelve, thirteene, or foureteene, that have no more care than to expect the next Carrier, and where to sup on Fridayes and Fasting nights" find "such a disproportion betweene Aristotles Categories, and their childish capacities, that what together with the sweetnesse of libertie, varietie of companie, and so many kinds of recreation in towne and fields abroad," they give over any attempt to understand "the crabbed grounds of Arts." Whereupon, the parents, "if they perceive any wildnesse or unstayednesse in their children, are presently in despaire, and out of all hope of them for ever prooving Schollers, or fit for anything else; neither consider the nature of youth, nor the effect of time, the Physitian of all. But to mend the matter, send them either to the Court to serve as Pages, or into France and Italy to see fas.h.i.+ons, and mend their manners, where they become ten times worse."[209]

The influence of France would not be towards books, certainly. Brave, gallant, and magnificent were the Gallic gentlemen; but not learned.

Reading made them positively ill: "la tete leur tourne de lire," as Breze confessed.[210] Scorning an indoor sedentary life, they left all civil offices to the bourgeoisie, and devoted themselves exclusively to war. As the Vicomte D'Avenel has crisply put it:

"It would have seemed as strange to see a person of high rank the Treasurer of France, the Controller of Finance, or the Rector of a University, as it would be to see him a cloth-merchant or maker of crockery.... The poorest younger son of an ancient family, who would not disdain to engage himself as a page to a n.o.bleman, or as a common soldier, would have thought himself debased by accepting the post of secretary to an amba.s.sador."[211]

Brute force was still considered the greatest power in the world, even when Sully was Conseiller d'Etat, though divining spirits like Eustache Deschamps had declared that the day would come when serving-men would rule France by their wits, all because the n.o.blesse would not learn letters.[212] In vain the wise Bras-de-Fer warned his generation that glory and strength of limb were of short duration, while knowledge was the only immortal quality.[213] As long as parents saw that the honours at Court went to handsome hors.e.m.e.n, they thought it mistaken policy to waste money on book-learning for their sons. When a boy came from the university to Court, he found himself eclipsed by young pages, who scarcely knew how to read, but had killed their man in a duel, and danced to perfection.[214] A martial training, with physical accomplishments, was the most effective, apparently.

The martial type which France evolved dazzled other nations, and it is not surprising that under the Stuarts, who had inherited French ways, the English Court was particularly open to French ideals. Our directions for travellers reflect the change from the typical Elizabethan courtier, "somewhat solemn, coy, big and dangerous of look," to the easy manners of the cavalier. _A Method for Travell_, written while Elizabeth was still on the throne, extols Italian conduct. "I would rather," it says of the traveller, "he should come home Italianate than Frenchified: I speake of both in the better sense: for the French is stirring, bold, respectless, inconstant, suddaine: the Italian stayed, demure, respective, grave, advised."[215] But _Instructions for Forreine Travell_ in 1642 urges one to imitate the French. "For the Gentry of France have a kind of loose, becoming boldness, and forward vivacity in their manners."[216]

The first writer of advice to travellers who a.s.sumes that French accomplishments are to be a large part of the traveller's education, is Sir Robert Dallington, whom we have already quoted. His _View of France_[217] to which the _Method for Travel_ is prefixed, deserves a reprint, for both that and his _Survey of Tuscany_,[218] though built on the regular model of the Elizabethan traveller's "Relation," being a conscientious account of the chief geographical, economic, architectural, and social features of the country traversed, are more artistic than the usual formal reports. Dallington wrote these Views in 1598, a little before the generation which modelled itself on the French gallants, and his remarks on Frenchmen may well have served as a warning to courtiers not to imitate the foibles, along with the admirable qualities, of their compeers across the Channel. For instance, he is outraged by the effusiveness of the "violent, busy-headed and impatient Frenchman," who "showeth his lightness and inconstancie ... in nothing more than in his familiaritie, with whom a stranger cannot so soone be off his horse, but he will be acquainted: nor so soone in his Chamber, but the other like an Ape will bee on his shoulder: and as suddenly and without cause ye shall love him also. A childish humour, to be wonne with as little as an Apple and lost with lesse than a Nut."[219] The King of France himself is censured for his geniality. Dallington deems Henry of Navarre "more affable and familiar than fits the Majesty of a great King." He might have found in current gossip worse lapses than the two he quotes to show Henry's lack of formality, but it is part of Dallington's worth that he writes of things at first-hand, and gives us only what he himself saw; how at Orleans, when the Italian commedians were to play before him, the king himself, "came whiffling with a small wand to scowre the coast, and make place for the rascall Players,... a thing, me thought, most derogatory to the Majesty of a King of France."

"And lately at Paris (as they tell us) when the Spanish Hostages were to be entertayned, he did Usher it in the great Chamber, as he had done here before; and espying the Chayre not to stand well under the State, mended it handsomely himselfe, and then set him downe to give them audience."[220]

Nor can Dallington conceal his disapproval of foreign food. The sorrows of the beef-eating Englishman among the continentals were always poignant. Dallington is only one of the many travellers who, unable to grasp the fact that warmer climes called for light diet, reproached the Italians especially for their "parsimony and thin feeding." In Henry the Eighth's time there was already a saying among the Italians, "Give the Englishman his beef and mustard,"[221] while the English in turn jibed at the Italians for being "like Nebuchadnezzar,--always picking of sallets." "Herbage," says Dallington scornfully "is the most generall food of the Tuscan ... for every horse-load of flesh eaten, there is ten cart loades of hearbes and rootes, which also their open Markets and private tables doe witnesse, and whereof if one talke with them fasting, he shall have sencible feeling."[222] The whole subject of diet he dismisses in his advice to a traveller as follows: "As for his viands I feare not his surfetting; his provision is never so great, but ye may let him loose to his allowance.... I shall not need to tell him before what his dyet shall be, his appet.i.te will make it better than it is: for he shall be still kept sharpe: only of the difference of dyets, he shall observe thus much: that of Germanie is full or rather fulsome; that of France allowable; that of Italie tolerable; with the Dutch he shall have much meat ill-dressed: with the French lesse, but well handled; with the Italian neither the one nor the other."[223]

Though there is much in Dallington's description of Italy and France to repay attention, our concern is with his _Method for Travell_,[224]

which, though more practical than the earlier Elizabethan essays of the same sort, opens in the usual style of exhortation:

"Plato, one of the day-starres of that knowledge, which then but dawning hath since shone out in clearer brightness, thought nothing better for the bettering our understanding then _Travell_: as well by having a conference with the wiser sort in all sorts of learning, as by the [Greek: Autopsiaei]. The eye-sight of those things, which otherwise a man cannot have but by Tradition; A Sandy foundation either in matter of Science, or Conscience. So that a purpose to Travell, if it be not ad voluptatem Solum, sed ad utilitatem, argueth an industrious and generous minde. Base and vulgar spirits hover still about home: those are more n.o.ble and divine, that imitate the Heavens, and joy in motion."

After a warning against Jesuits, which we have quoted, he comes at once to definite directions for studying modern languages[225]--advice which though sound is hardly novel. Continual speaking with all sorts of people, insisting that his teacher shall not do all the talking, and avoiding his countrymen are unchangeable rules for him who shall travel for language.[226] But this is the first treatise for travellers which makes note of dancing as an important accomplishment. "There's another exercise to be learned in France, because there are better teachers, and the French fas.h.i.+on is in most request with us, that is, of dancing. This I meane to my Traveller that is young and meanes to follow the Court: otherwise I hold it needelesse, and in some ridiculous."[227] This art was indeed essential to courtiers, and a matter of great earnestness.

Chamberlain reports that Sir Henry Bowyer died of the violent exercise he underwent while practising dancing.[228] Henri III. fell into a tearful pa.s.sion and called the Grand Prieur a liar, a poltroon, and a villain, at a ball, because the Grand Prieur was heard to mutter "Unless you dance better, I would you had your money again that your dancing has cost you." [229] James I. was particularly anxious to have his "Babies"

excel in complicated boundings. His copy of _Nuove Inventioni di Balli_[230] may be seen in the British Museum, with large plates ill.u.s.trating how to "gettare la gamba," that is, in the words of Chaucer, "with his legges casten to and fro."[231] Prince Henry was skilful in these matters. The Spanish Amba.s.sador reports how "The Prince of Wales was desired by his royal parents to open the ball with a Spanish gallarda: he acquitted himself with much grace and delicacy, introducing some occasional leaps."[232] Prince Charles and Buckingham, during their stay in Spain, are earnestly implored by their "deare Dad and Gossip" not to forget their dancing. "I praye you, my babie, take heade of being hurt if ye runne at tilte, ... I praye you in the meantyme keep your selfis in use of dawncing privatlie, thogh ye showlde quhissell and sing one to another like Jakke and Tom for faulte of better musike." [233]

However, Dallington is very much against the saltations of elderly persons. "I remember a countriman of ours, well seene in artes and language, well stricken in yeares, a mourner for his second wife, a father of mariageable children, who with his other booke studies abroade, joyned also the exercise of dancing: it was his hap in an honourable _Bal_ (as they call it) to take a fall, which in mine opinion was not so disgracefull as the dancing it selfe, to a man of his stuffe."[234]

Dallington would have criticized Frenchmen more severely than ever had he known that even Sully gave way in private to a pa.s.sion for dancing.

At least Tallemant des Reaux says that "every evening a valet de chambre of the King played on the lute the dances of the day, and M. de Sully danced all alone, in some sort of extraordinary hat--such as he always wore in his cabinet--while his cronies applauded him, although he was the most awkward man in the world."[235]

Tennis is another courtly exercise in which Dallington urges moderation.

"This is dangerous, (if used with too much violence) for the body; and (if followed with too much diligence,) for the purse. A maine point of the Travellers care." He reached France when the rage for tennis was at its height,--when there were two hundred and fifty tennis courts in Paris,[236]--and "two tennis courts for every one Church through France," according to his computation.[237] Everyone was at it;--n.o.bles, artizans, women, and children. The monks had had to be requested not to play--especially, the edict said, "not in public in their s.h.i.+rts."[238]

Our Englishman, of course, thought this enthusiasm was beyond bounds.

"Ye have seene them play Sets at Tennise in the heat of Summer and height of the day, when others were scarcely able to stirre out of doors." Betting on the game was the ruin of the working-man, who "spendeth that on the Holyday, at Tennis, which hee got the whole weeke, for the keeping of his poore family. A thing more hurtfull then our Ale-houses in England."[239]

"There remains two other exercises," says the _Method for Travell_, "of use and necessitie, to him that will returne ably quallified for his countries service in warre, and his owne defence in private quarrell.

These are Riding and Fencing. His best place for the first (excepting Naples) is in Florence under il Signor Rustico, the great Dukes Cavallerizzo, and for the second (excepting Rome) is in Padua, under il Sordo."[240] Italy, it may be observed, was still the best school for these accomplishments. Pluvinel was soon to make a world-renowned riding academy in Paris, but the art of fencing was more slowly disseminated.

One was still obliged, like Captain Bobadil, to make "long travel for knowledge, in that mystery only."[241] Brantome says the fencing masters of Italy kept their secrets in their own hands, giving their services only on the condition that you should never reveal what you had learnt even to your dearest friends. Some instructors would never allow a living soul in the room where they were giving lessons to a pupil. And even then they used to keek everywhere, under the beds, and examine the wall to see if it had any crack or hole through which a person could peer.[242] Dallington makes no further remark on the subject, however, than the above, and after some advice about money matters, which we will mention in another connection, and a warning to the traveller that his apparel must be in fas.h.i.+on--for the fas.h.i.+ons change with trying rapidity, and the French were very scornful of anyone who appeared in a last year's suit[243]--he brings to a close one of the pithiest essays in our collection.

When the influence of France over the ideals of a gentleman was well established, James Howell wrote his _Instructions for Forreine Travell_,[244] and in this book for the first time the traveller is advised to stay at one of the French academies--or riding schools, as they really were.

His is the best known, probably, of all our treatises, partly because it was reprinted a little while ago by Mr Gosse, and partly because of its own merits. Howell had an easier, more indulgent outlook upon the world than Dallington, and could see all nations with equal humour--his own included. Take his comparison of the Frenchman and the Spaniard.

The Frenchman "will dispatch the weightiest affairs as hee walke along in the streets, or at meales, the other upon the least occasion of businesse will retire solemnly to a room, and if a fly chance to hum about him, it will discompose his thoughts and puzzle him: It is a kind of sicknesse for a Frenchman to keep a secret long, and all the drugs of Egypt cannot get it out of a Spaniard.... The Frenchman walks fast, (as if he had a Sergeant always at his heels,) the Spaniard slowly, as if hee were newly come out of some quartan Ague; the French go up and down the streets confusedly in cl.u.s.ters, the Spaniards if they be above three, they go two by two, as if they were going a Procession; etc.

etc."[245]

With the same humorous eye he observes the Englishmen returned to London from Paris, "whom their gate and strouting, their bending in the hammes, and shoulders, and looking upon their legs, with frisking and singing do speake them Travellers.... Some make their return in huge monstrous Periwigs, which is the Golden Fleece _they_ bring over with them. Such, I say, are a shame to their Country abroad, and their kinred at home, and to their parents, Benonies, the sons of sorrow: and as Jonas in the Whales belly, travelled much, but saw little."[246]

These are some of the advantages an Englishman will reap from foreign travel:

"One shall learne besides there not to interrupt one in the relation of his tale, or to feed it with odde interlocutions: One shall learne also not to laugh at his own jest, as too many used to do, like a Hen, which cannot lay an egge but she must cackle.

"Moreover, one shall learne not to ride so furiously as they do ordinarily in England, when there is no necessity at all for it; for the Italians have a Proverb, that a galloping horse is an open sepulcher.

And the English generally are observed by all other Nations, to ride commonly with that speed as if they rid for a midwife, or a Physitian, or to get a pardon to save one's life as he goeth to execution, when there is no such thing, or any other occasion at all, which makes them call England the h.e.l.l of Horses.

"In these hot Countreyes also, one shall learne to give over the habit of an odde custome, peculiar to the English alone, and whereby they are distinguished from other Nations, which is, to make still towards the chimney, though it bee in the Dog-dayes."[247]

We need not comment in detail upon Howell's book since it is so accessible. The pa.s.sage which chiefly marks the progress of travel for study's sake is this:

"For private Gentlemen and Cadets, there be divers Academies in Paris, Colledge-like, where for 150 pistols a Yeare, which come to about 150 sterling per annum of our money, one may be very well accomodated, with lodging and diet for himself and man, and be taught to Ride, to Fence, to manage Armes, to Dance, Vault, and ply the Mathematiques."[248]

These academies were one of the chief attractions which France had for the gentry of England in the seventeenth century. The first one was founded by Pluvinel, the _grand ecuyer_ of Henri IV. Pluvinel, returning from a long apprentices.h.i.+p to Pignatelli in Naples, made his own riding-school the best in the world, so that the French no longer had to journey to Italian masters. He obtained from the king the bas.e.m.e.nt of the great gallery of the Louvre, and there taught Louis XIII. and other young n.o.bles of the Court--amongst them the Marquis du Chillon, afterwards Cardinal Richelieu--to ride the great horse.[249] Such was the success of his manege that he annexed masters to teach his pupils dancing, vaulting, and swordsmans.h.i.+p, as well as drawing and mathematics, till he had rounded out what was considered a complete education for a chevalier. In imitation of his establishment, many other riding-masters, such as Benjamin, Potrincourt, and Nesmond, set up others of the same sort, which drew pupils from other nations during all the seventeenth century.[250] In the suburb of Pre-aux-clercs, says Malingre in 1640, "are several academies where the n.o.bility learn to ride. The most frequented is that of M. de Mesmon, where there is a prince of Denmark and one of the princes palatine of the Rhine, and a quant.i.ty of other foreign gentlemen."[251]