THE TOURIST AND THE TUTOR
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."[1] 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,[2] the English were the most active travelers of the eighteenth century.[3] 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.[4]
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.[5] 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
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- ↑ Letters, ii, 30.
- ↑ Such, at least, was the opinion of foreigners. See Moore, View of Society and Manners in France, etc., p. 372.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Traill, Social England, v, 345.
- ↑ "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.
