In The Age Of The Grand Tour The Governor Becomes An Important Figure.
There Had Always Been Governors, To Be Sure, From The Very Beginnings Of
Travel To Become A Complete Person.
Their arguments with fathers as to
the expenses of the tour, and their laments at the disagreeable conduct
of their charges echo from generation to generation.
Now it is Mr
Windebanke complaining to Cecil that his son "has utterly no mind nor
disposition in him to apply any learning, according to the end you sent
him for hither," being carried away by an "inordinate affection towards
a young gentlewoman abiding near Paris."[310] Now it is Mr Smythe
desiring to be called home unless the allowance for himself and Francis
Davison can be increased. "For Mr Francis is now a man, and your son,
and not so easily ruled touching expenses, about which we have had more
brabblements than I will speak of."[311] Bacon's essay "Of Travel" in
1625 is the first to advise the use of a governor;[312] but governors
rose to their full authority only in the middle of the century, when it
was the custom to send boys abroad very young, at fourteen or fifteen,
because at that age they were more malleable for instruction in foreign
languages. At that age they could not generally be trusted by
themselves, especially after the protests of a century against the moral
and religious dangers of foreign travel. How fearful parents were of the
hazards of travel, and what a responsibility it was for a governor to
undertake one of these precious charges, may be gathered from this
letter by Lady Lowther to Joseph Williamson, he who afterwards rose to
be Secretary of State:
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