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 passed 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," asWotton 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 shell 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 impassioned 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 nobleman 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 noblemen, 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."
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 friendship. 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 widowedmother sent George Villiers, afterwards Duke of Buckingham. The Englishmen who travelled for "the complete polishing 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 multitude, 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 multitude 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 outshining 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 classical 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 shifted 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-learningwas 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 fashion 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]
Illustration: FENCINGFENCING An indispensable part of an Englishman's education abroad.
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 noblemen'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 fashionable enthusiasm for literature could change all that. Ascham had declared that the Elizabethan youngbloods 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 mediæval page. Henry Peacham, in 1623, described noblemen'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 aptitude 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 themfor 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 fashions, 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 tête leur tourne de lire," as Brézé 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 nobleman, or as a common soldier, would have thought himself debased by accepting the post of secretary to an ambassador."[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 noblesse 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 horsemen, 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 thechange 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]ButInstructions for Forreine Travellin 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 assumes that French accomplishments are to be a large part of the traveller's education, is Sir Robert Dallington, whom we have already quoted. HisView of France[217]to which theMethod for Travelis prefixed, deserves a reprint, for both that and hisSurvey of Tuscany,[218]though built on the regular model of the Elizabethan traveller's "Relation," being a conscientiousaccount 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 atfirst-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 generallfood 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 appetite 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 hisMethod for Travell,[224]which, though more practical than the earlier Elizabethan essaysof 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 thenTravell: as well by having a conference with the wiser sort in all sorts of learning, as by the [Greek: Autopsiaêi]. 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 noble 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 speakingwith 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 fashion 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 passion and called the Grand Prieur a liar, a poltroon, and a villain, at a ball, because the Grand Prieur was heard tomutter "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 ofNuove Inventioni di Balli[230]may be seen in the British Museum, with large plates illustrating 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 Ambassador 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 toanother like Jakke and Tom for faulte of better musike."[233]
Illustration: DANCINGDANCINGAn illustration from 'Nuove Inventione di Baili,' an Italian book of instructions in dancing, much prized by James I
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 honourableBal(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 passion for dancing. At least Tallemant des Réaux 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;--nobles, artizans, women, and children. The monks had had to be requested not to play--especially, the edict said, "not in public in their shirts."[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 theMethod for Travell, "of use and necessitie, tohim 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 someadvice about money matters, which we will mention in another connection, and a warning to the traveller that his apparel must be in fashion--for the fashions 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 hisInstructions 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 atmeales, 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 clusters, 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 Fleecetheybring 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 Hell 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 passage 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, thegrand écuyerof Henri IV. Pluvinel, returning from a long apprenticeship 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 basement of the great gallery of the Louvre, and there taught Louis XIII. and other young nobles of the Court--amongst them the Marquis du Chillon, afterwards Cardinal Richelieu--to ride the great horse.[249]Such was the success of his manège that heannexed masters to teach his pupils dancing, vaulting, and swordsmanship, 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 Pré-aux-clercs, says Malingre in 1640, "are several academies where the nobility 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 quantity of other foreign gentlemen."[251]
Englishmen found the academies very useful retreats where a boy could learn French accomplishments without incurring the dangers of foreign travel and make the acquaintance of young nobles of his own age. Mr Thomas Lorkin writing from Paris in 1610, outlines to the tutor of the Prince of Wales the routine of his pupil Mr Puckering[252]at such an establishment. The morningbegan with two hours on horseback, followed by two hours at the French tongue, and one hour in "learning to handle his weapon." Dinner was at twelve o'clock, where the company continued together till two, "either passing the time in discourse or in some honest recreation perteyning to armes." At two the bell rang for dancing, and at three another gong sent the pupil to his own room with his tutor, to study Latin and French for two hours. "After supper a brief survey of all."[253]
It will be seen that there was an exact balance between physical and mental exercise--four hours of each. All in all, academies seemed to be the solution of preparing for life those who were destined to shine at Court. The problem had been felt in England, as well as in France. In 1561, Sir Nicholas Bacon had devised "Articles for the bringing up in virtue and learning of the Queens Majesties Wardes."[254]Lord Burghley is said to have propounded the creation of a school of arms and exercises.[255]In 1570, Sir Humphrey Gilbert drew up an elaborate proposal for an "Academy of philosophy and chivalry,"[256]butnone of these plans was carried out. Nor was that of Prince Henry, who had also wanted to establish a Royal Academy or School of Arms, in which all the king's wards and others should be educated and exercised.[257]A certain Sir Francis Kinaston, esquire of the body to Charles I., "more addicted to the superficiall parts of learning--poetry and oratory (wherein he excell'd)--than to logic and philosophy," Wood says, did get a licence to erect an academy in his house in Covent Garden, "which should be for ever a college for the education of the young nobility and others, sons of gentlemen, and should be styled the Musæum Minervæ."[258]But whatever start was made in that direction ended with the Civil War.
However, the idea of setting up in England the sort of academy which was successful in France was such an obvious one that it kept constantly recurring. In 1649 a courtly parasite, Sir Balthazar Gerbier, who used to be a miniature painter, an art-critic, and Master of Ceremonies to Charles I., being sadly thrown out of occupation by the Civil War, opened an academy at Bethnal Green. There are still in existence his elaborate advertisements of its attractions, addressed to "All Fathers of Noble Families and Lovers ofVertue," and proposing his school as "a meanes, whereby to free them of such charges as they are at, when they send their children to foreign academies, and to render them more knowing in those languages, without exposing them to the dangers incident to travellers, and to that of evill companies, or of giving to forrain parts the glory of their education."[259]But Gerbier was a flimsy character, and without a Court to support him, or money, his academy dissolved after a gaseous lecture or two. Faubert, however, another French Protestant refugee, was more successful with an academy he managed to set up in London in 1682, "to lessen the vast expense the nation is at yearly by sending children into France to be taught military exercises."[260]Evelyn, who was a patron of this enterprise, describes how he "went with Lord Cornwallis to see the young gallants do their exercise, Mr Faubert having newly railed in a manège, and fitted it for the academy. There were the Dukes of Norfolk and Northumberland, Lord Newburgh, and a nephew of (Duras) Earl of Feversham.... But the Duke of Norfolk told me he had not been at this exercise these twelve years before."[261]However, Faubert'scould not have been an important institution, since in 1700, a certain Dr Maidwell tried to get the Government to convert a great house of his near Westminster into a public academy of the French sort, as a greatly needed means of rearing gentlemen.[262]
But all these efforts to educate English boys on the lines of French ones came to nothing, because at the close of the seventeenth century Englishmen began to realize that it was not wise for a gentleman to confine himself to a military life. As to riding as a fine art, his practical mind felt that it was all very well to amuse oneself in Paris by learning to make a war-horse caracole, but there was no use in taking such things too seriously; that in war "a ruder way of riding was more in use, without observing the precise rules of riding the great horse."[263]He could not feel that artistic passion for form in horsemanship which breathes from the pages of Pluvinel's bookLe Maneige Royal[264]in which magnificent engravings show Louis XIII. making courbettes, voltes,and "caprioles" around the Louvre, while a circle of grandees gravely discuss the deportment of his charger. Even Sir Philip Sidney made gentle fun of the hippocentric universe of his Italian riding master:
"When the right vertuous Edward Wotton, and I, were at the Emperors Court together, wee gave ourselves to learne horsemanship of John Pietro Pugliano: one that with great commendation had the place of an esquire in his stable. And hee, according to the fertilnes of the Italian wit, did not onely afoord us the demonstration of his practise, but sought to enrich our mindes with the contemplations therein, which hee thought most precious. But with none I remember mine eares were at any time more loden, then when (ether angred with slowe paiment, or mooved with our learner-like admiration,) he exercised his speech in the prayse of his facultie. Hee sayd, Souldiers were the noblest estate of mankinde, and horsemen, the noblest of Souldiours. He sayde, they were the Maistres of warre, and ornaments of peace: speedy goers, and strong abiders, triumphers both in Camps and Courts. Nay, to so unbeleeved a poynt hee proceeded, as that no earthly thing bred such wonder to a Prince, as to be a good horseman. Skill of government, was but a Pedanteria in comparison: then woulde headde certaine prayses, by telling what a peerlesse beast a horse was. The only serviceable Courtier without flattery, the beast of the most beutie, faithfulness, courage, and such more, that if I had not beene a peece of a Logician before I came to him, I think he would have perswaded mee to have wished my selfe a Horse."[265]
That this was somewhat the spirit of the French academies there seems no doubt. Though they claimed to give an equal amount of physical and mental exercise, they tended to the muscular side of the programme. Pluvinel, says Tallemant des Réaux, "was hardly more intelligent than his horses,"[266]and the academies are supposed to have declined after his death.[267]"All that is to be learned in these Academies," says Clarendon, "is Riding, Dancing, and Fencing, besides some Wickednesses they do not profess to teach. It is true they have men there who teach Arithmetick, which they call Philosophy, and the Art of Fortification, which they call the Mathematicks; but what Learning they had there, I might easily imagine, when he assured me, that in Threeyears which he had spent in the Academy, he never saw a Latin book nor any Master that taught anything there, who would not have taken it very ill to be suspected to speake or understand Latin."[268]This sort of aspersion was continued by Dr Wallis, the Savilian Professor of Mathematics at Oxford in 1700, who was roused to a fine pitch of indignation by Maidwell's efforts to start an academy in London:[269]
"Of teachers in the academie, scarce any of a higher character than a valet-de-chambre. And, if such an one, who (for instance) hath waited on his master in one or two campagnes, and is able perhaps to copy the draught of a fortification from another paper; this is called mathematicks; and, beyond this (if so much) you are not to expect."
A certain Mr P. Chester finishes the English condemnation of a school, such as Benjamin's, by declaring that its pretensions to fit men for life was "like the shearing of Hoggs, much Noyse and little Wooll, nothing considerable taught that I know, butt only to fitt a man tobe a French chevalier, that is in plain English a Trooper."[270]
These comments are what one expects from Oxford, to be sure, but even M. Jusserand acknowledges that the academies were not centres of intellectual light, and quotes to prove it certain questions asked of a pupil put into the Bastille, at the demand of his father:
"Was it not true that the Sieur Varin, his father, seeing that he had no inclination to study, had put him into the Académie Royale to there learn all sorts of exercises, and had there supported him with much expense?
"He admitted that his father, while his mother was living, had put him into the Académie Royale and had given him for that the necessary means, and paid the ordinary pension, 1600 livres a year.
"Was it not true that after having been some time at the Académie Royale, he was expelled, having disguised girls in boys' clothes to bring them there?
"He denied it. He had never introduced into the school any académiste féminine: he had departed at the summons of his father, having taken proper leave of M. and Mme. de Poix."[271]
However, something of an education had to be provided for Royalist boys at the time of the Civil War, when Oxford was demoralized. Parents wandering homeless on the Continent were glad enough of the academies. Even the Stuarts tried them, though the Duke of Gloucester had to be weaned from the company of some young French gallants, "who, being educated in the same academy, were more familiar with him than was thought convenient."[272]It was a choice between academies or such an education as Edmund Verney endured in a dull provincial city as the sole pupil of an exiled Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge. But the effects of being reared in France, and too early thrown into the dissolute Courts of Europe, were evident at the Restoration, when Charles the Second and his friends returned to startle England with their "exceeding wildness." What else could be the effect of a youth spent as the Earl of Chesterfield records:[273]at thirteen years old a courtier at St Germaine: at fourteen, rid of any governor or tutor: at sixteen, at the academy of M. de Veau, he "chanced to have a quarrel with M. Morvay, since Captaine of the French King's Guards, who I hurt and disarmed in a duel."Thereupon he left the academy and took up his abode at the Court of Turin. It was from Italy, De Gramont said, that Chesterfield brought those elaborate manners, and that jealousy about women, for which he was so notorious among the rakes of the Restoration.[274]
Henry Peacham's chapter "Of Travaile"[275]is for the most part built out of Dallington's advice, but it is worthy of note that inThe Compleat Gentleman, Spain is pressed upon the traveller's attention for the first time. This is, of course, the natural reflection of an interest in Spain due to the romantic adventures of Prince Charles and Buckingham in that country. James Howell, who was of their train, gives even more space to it in hisInstructions for Forreine Travell. Notwithstanding, and though Spain was, after 1605, fairly safe for Englishmen, as a pleasure ground it was not popular. It was a particularly uncomfortable and expensive country; hardly improved from the time--(1537)--when Clenardus, weary with traversing deserts on his way to the University of Salamanca, after a sparse meal of rabbit, sans wine, sans water, composed himself to sleep on the floor of a little hut, with nothing to pillow his head on except his three negrogrooms, and exclaimed, "O misera Lusitania, beati qui non viderunt."[276]All civilization was confined to the few large cities, to reach which one was obliged to traverse tedious, hot, barren, and unprofitable wastes, in imminent danger of robbers, and in certainty of the customs officers, who taxed people for everything, even the clothes they had on. None escaped. Henry the Eighth's Ambassador complained loudly and frantically of the outrage to a person in his office.[277]So did Elizabeth's Ambassador. But the officers said grimly "that if Christ or Sanct Fraunces came with all their flock they should not escape."[278]If the preliminary discomforts from customs-officers put travellers into an ill mood at once against Spain, the inns confirmed them in it. "In some places there is but the cask of a House, with a little napery, but sometimes no beds at all for Passengers in the Ventas--or Lodgings on the King's highway, where if passengers meet, they must carry their Knapsacks well provided of what is necessary: otherwise they may go to bedsupperless."[279]The Comtesse d'Aunoy grumbles that it was impossible to warm oneself at the kitchen-fire without being choked, for there was no chimney. Besides the room was full of men and women, "blacker than Devils and clad like Beggars ... always some of 'em impudently grating on a sorry Guitar."[280]Even the large cities were not diverting, for though they were handsome enough and could show "certain massie and solid Braveries," yet they had few of the attractions of urban life. The streets were so ill-paved that the horses splashed water into one's carriage at every step.[281]A friend warned Tobie Matthew that "In the Cities you shall find so little of the Italian delicacie for the manner of their buildings, the cleannesse and sweetnesse of their streets, their way of living, their entertainments for recreations by Villas, Gardens, Walks, Fountains, Academies, Arts of Painting, Architecture and the like, that you would rather suspect that they did but live together for fear of wolves."[282]
Illustration: SKETCHING ON THE SHORES OF LAKE AVERNUS IN 1610SKETCHING ON THE SHORES OF LAKE AVERNUS IN 1610
How little the solemnity of the Spanish nobles pleased English courtiers used to the boisterous ways of James I. and his "Steenie," may be gathered fromThe Perambulation of Spain.[283]"You must know," says the first character in that dialogue, "that there is a great deal of gravity and state in the Catholic Court, but little noise, and few people; so that it may be call'd a Monastery, rather than a Royal Court." The economy in such a place was a great source of grievance. "By this means the King of Spain spends not much," says the second character. "So little," is the reply, "that I dare wager the French King spends more in Pages and Laquays, than he of Spain among all his Court Attendants." Buckingham's train jeered at the abstemious fare they received.[284]It was in such irritating contrast to the lofty airs of those who provided it. "We are still extream poor," writes the English Ambassador about the Court of Madrid, "yet as proud as Divells, yea even as rich Divells."[285]Not only at Court, but everywhere, Spaniards were indifferent to strangers, and not at all interested in pleasing them. Lord Clarendon remarks that in Madrid travellers "will find less delight to reside than in any other Place towhich we have before commended them: for that Nation having less Reverence for meer Travellers, who go Abroad, without Business, are not at all solicitous to provide for their Accomodation: and when they complain of the want of many Conveniences, as they have reason to do, they wonder men will come from Home, who will be troubled for those Incommodities."[286]
It is no wonder, therefore, that Spain was considered a rather tedious country for strangers, and that Howell "met more Passengers 'twixt Paris and Orleans, than I found well neer in all the Journey through Spain."[287]Curiosity and a desire to learn the language might carry a man to Madrid for a time, but Englishmen could find little to commend there. Holland, on the other hand, provoked their admiration more and more. Travellers were never done exclaiming at its municipal governments, its reformatories and workhouses, its industry, frugality, and social economy. The neat buildings, elegant streets, and quiet inns, were the subject of many encomiums.[288]
Descartes, who chose Amsterdam as the place in which to think out his philosophy, praised it as the ideal retreat for students, contending that it was far better for them than Italy, with its plagues, heat, unwholesome evenings, murder and robbery.[289]Locke, when he went into voluntary exile in 1684, enjoyed himself with the doctors and men of letters in Amsterdam, attending by special invitation of the principal physician of the city the dissection of a lioness, or discussing knotty problems of theology with the wealthy Quaker merchants.[290]Courtiers were charmed with the sea-shore at Scheveningen, where on the hard sand, admirably contrived by nature for the divertisement of persons of quality, the foreign ambassadors and their ladies, and the society of the Hague, drove in their coaches and six horses.[291]However, Sir William Temple, after some years spent as Ambassador to the Netherlands, decided that Holland was a place where a man would choose rather to travel than to live, because it was a country where there was more sense than wit, more wealth than pleasure, and where onewould find more persons to esteem than to love.[292]
Holland was of peculiar delight to the traveller of the seventeenth century because it contained so many curiosities and rareties. To ferret out objects of vertu the Jacobean gentleman would take any journey. People with cabinets of butterflies, miniatures, shells, ivory, or Indian beads, were pestered by tourists asking to see their treasures.[293]No garden was so entrancing to them as one that had "a rupellary nidary"[294]or an aviary with eagles, cranes, storks, bustards, ducks with four wings, or with rabbits of an almost perfect yellow colour.[295]Holland, therefore, where ships brought precious curiosities from all over the world, was a heaven for the virtuoso. Evelyn in Rotterdam hovered between his delight in the brass statue of Erasmus and a pelican, which he carefully describes. The great charm of Dutch inns for Sam Paterson was their hoards of China and Japan ware and the probability you had of meeting a purring marmot, a squeaking guinea-pig, or atame rabbit with a collar of bells, hopping through the house.[296]
But we have dwelt too long, perhaps, on those who voyaged to see knick-knacks, and to gain accomplishments at French academies. Though the academies were characteristic of the seventeenth century, there were other centres of education sought by Englishmen abroad. The study of medicine, particularly, took many students to Padua or Paris, for the Continent was far ahead of England in scientific work.[297]Sir Thomas Browne's son studied anatomy at Padua with Sir John Finch, who had settled there and was afterwards chosen syndic of the university.[298]At Paris Martin Lister, though in the train of the English Ambassador, principally enjoyed "Mr Bennis in the dissecting-room working by himself upon a dead body," and "took more pleasure to see Monsieur Breman in his white waistcoat digging in the royal physic-garden and sowing his couches, than Mounsieur de Saintot making room for an ambassador": and found himself better disposed and more apt to learn the namesand physiognomy of a hundred plants, than of five or six princes.[299]
It was medicine that chiefly interested Nicholas Ferrar, than whom no traveller for study's sake was ever more devoted to the task of self-improvement. At about the same time that the second Earl of Chesterfield was fighting duels at the academy of Monsieur de Veau, Nicholas Ferrar, a grave boy, came from Cambridge to Leipsic and "set himself laboriously to study the originals of the city, the nature of the government, the humors and inclinations of the people." Finding the university too distracting, he retired to a neighbouring village to read the choicest writers on German affairs. He served an apprenticeship of a fortnight at every German trade. He could maintain a dialogue with an architect in his own phrases; he could talk with mariners in their sea terms. Removing to Padua, he attained in a very short time a marvellous proficiency in physic, while his conversation and his charm ennobled the evil students of Padua.[300]