To Drive Through Europe
In A Coach Suited Them Very Well.
It was a form of travel which likewise
suited country squires' sons; for with the spread of the fashion
From
Court to country not only great noblemen and "utter gallants" but plain
country gentlemen aspired to send their sons on a quest for the "bel
air." Their idea of how this was to be done being rather vague, the
services of a governor were hired, who found that the easiest way of
dealing with Tony Lumpkin was to convey him over an impressive number of
miles and keep him interested with staring at buildings. The whole aim
of travel was sadly degenerated from Elizabethan times. Cynical parents
like Francis Osborn had not the slightest faith in its good effects, but
recommended it solely because it was the fashion. "Some to starch a more
serious face upon wanton, impertinent, and dear bought Vanity, cry up
'Travel' as 'the best Accomplisher of Youth and Gentry,' tho' detected
by Experience in the generality, for 'the greatest Debaucher' ... yet
since it advanceth Opinion in the World, without which Desert is useful
to none but itself (Scholars and Travellers being cried up for the
highest Graduates in the most universal Judgments) I am not much
unwilling to give way to Peregrine motion for a time."[304]
In short, the object of the Grand Tour was to see and be seen. The very
term seems to be an extension of usage from the word employed to
describe driving in one's coach about the principal streets of a town.
The Duchess of Newcastle, in 1656, wrote from Antwerp:
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