"If He Travell Without
A Servant Fourscore Pounds Sterling Is A Competent Proportion, Except He
Learne To Ride:
If he maintaine both these charges, he can be allowed no
lesse than one hundred and fiftie poundes:
And to allowe above two
hundred, were superfluous, and to his hurte. And thus rateably,
according to the number he keepeth.
"The ordinarie rate of his expence, is this: ten gold crownes a moneth
his owne dyet, eight for his man, (at the most) two crownes a moneth his
fencing, as much dancing, no lesse his reading, and fiftene crownes
monethly his ridings: but this exercise he shall discontinue all the
heate of the yeare. The remainder of his 150 pound I allow him for
apparell, bookes, Travelling charges, tennis play, and other
extraordinaire expences."[330] A few years later Howell fixes annual
expense at L300 - (L50 extra for every servant.) These three hundred
pounds are to pay for riding, dancing, fencing, tennis, clothes, and
coach hire - a new item of necessity. An academy would seem to have been
a cheaper means of learning accomplishments. For about L110 one might
have lodging and diet for himselfe and a man and be taught to ride,
fence, ply mathematics, and so forth.[331] Lassels very wisely refrains
from telling those not already persuaded, what the cost will be for the
magnificent Grand Tour he outlines. We calculate that it would be over
L500, for the Earl of Cork paid L1000 a year for his two sons, their
governor, only two servants and only saddle-horses:[332] whereas Lassels
hints that no one with much pretension to fashion could go through Paris
without a coach followed by three lacqueys and a page.[333] Evelyn, at
any rate, thought the expenses of a traveller were "vast": "And believe
it Sir, if he reap some contentment extraordinary, from what he hath
observed abroad, the pains, sollicitations, watchings, perills,
journeys, ill entertainment, absence from friends, and innumerable like
inconveniences, joyned to his vast expences, do very dearly, and by a
strange kind of extortion, purchase that smal experience and reputation
which he can vaunt to have acquired from abroad."[334]
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