EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY INNS
is perhaps sufficient to enable us to realize its main features. But we must remember that as a usual thing the inn was for the accommodation of the transient guest. Strangers making a considerable stay abroad commonly found quarters in a private house. As we shall see later, Rheims, Tours, Montpellier, Toulouse, Dijon, and other provincial cities attracted many English tourists for weeks and even months at a time and afforded comfortable living at prices that Englishmen could hardly imagine possible. Most English tourists spent as much time as they could afford in Paris, and if they had an eye to economy they set up a modest establishment of their own in hired lodgings. From Nugent's handbook on the grand tour they could learn precisely what they might expect and what they would have to furnish: "You will hardly get an apartment to please you up two pair of stairs for less than 15 or 20 livres a week. … Your servant, for about fifteen shillings, English, will immediately set you up for a housekeeper, by buying you a tin tea-kettle, some charcoal, and a dish, some tea-cups, saucers, milk-pot, a decanter, and about half a dozen glasses; he will also buy you French rolls and sugar, and good hyson tea for about 17 livres a pound; and so much for breakfast. With regard to your dinners and suppers, if you choose to live in a family way, you had best have them drest and sent in by a cook, or from a tavern to your lodgings, at your own hour, and he will find you linen and knives. For eight livres a day, you may have for dinner two good dishes and a soop, which will serve four in company, and servants."[1]
III
Italian Inns
In the low quality of the inns the greater part of Italy was a close rival to the most neglected regions of Europe. The comments in books of travel on the shortcomings of Italian inns, particularly those of country towns, present
84
- ↑ Grand Tour, iv, 34, 35.
