A Maine Point Of
The Travellers Care." He Reached France When The Rage For Tennis Was At
Its Height, - When
There were two hundred and fifty tennis courts in
Paris,[236] - and "two tennis courts for every one Church through
France," according to his computation.[237] Everyone was at it; - nobles,
artizans, women, and children. The monks had had to be requested not to
play - especially, the edict said, "not in public in their shirts."[238]
Our Englishman, of course, thought this enthusiasm was beyond bounds.
"Ye have seene them play Sets at Tennise in the heat of Summer and
height of the day, when others were scarcely able to stirre out of
doors." Betting on the game was the ruin of the working-man, who
"spendeth that on the Holyday, at Tennis, which hee got the whole weeke,
for the keeping of his poore family. A thing more hurtfull then our
Ale-houses in England."[239]
"There remains two other exercises," says the Method for Travell, "of
use and necessitie, to him that will returne ably quallified for his
countries service in warre, and his owne defence in private quarrell.
These are Riding and Fencing. His best place for the first (excepting
Naples) is in Florence under il Signor Rustico, the great Dukes
Cavallerizzo, and for the second (excepting Rome) is in Padua, under il
Sordo."[240] Italy, it may be observed, was still the best school for
these accomplishments. Pluvinel was soon to make a world-renowned riding
academy in Paris, but the art of fencing was more slowly disseminated.
One was still obliged, like Captain Bobadil, to make "long travel for
knowledge, in that mystery only."[241] Brantome says the fencing masters
of Italy kept their secrets in their own hands, giving their services
only on the condition that you should never reveal what you had learnt
even to your dearest friends. Some instructors would never allow a
living soul in the room where they were giving lessons to a pupil. And
even then they used to keek everywhere, under the beds, and examine the
wall to see if it had any crack or hole through which a person could
peer.[242] Dallington makes no further remark on the subject, however,
than the above, and after some advice about money matters, which we will
mention in another connection, and a warning to the traveller that his
apparel must be in fashion - for the fashions change with trying
rapidity, and the French were very scornful of anyone who appeared in a
last year's suit[243] - he brings to a close one of the pithiest essays
in our collection.
When the influence of France over the ideals of a gentleman was well
established, James Howell wrote his Instructions for Forreine
Travell,[244] and in this book for the first time the traveller is
advised to stay at one of the French academies - or riding schools, as
they really were.
His is the best known, probably, of all our treatises, partly because it
was reprinted a little while ago by Mr Gosse, and partly because of its
own merits. Howell had an easier, more indulgent outlook upon the world
than Dallington, and could see all nations with equal humour - his own
included. Take his comparison of the Frenchman and the Spaniard.
The Frenchman "will dispatch the weightiest affairs as hee walke along
in the streets, or at meales, the other upon the least occasion of
businesse will retire solemnly to a room, and if a fly chance to hum
about him, it will discompose his thoughts and puzzle him: It is a kind
of sicknesse for a Frenchman to keep a secret long, and all the drugs of
Egypt cannot get it out of a Spaniard.... The Frenchman walks fast, (as
if he had a Sergeant always at his heels,) the Spaniard slowly, as if
hee were newly come out of some quartan Ague; the French go up and down
the streets confusedly in clusters, the Spaniards if they be above
three, they go two by two, as if they were going a Procession; etc.
etc."[245]
With the same humorous eye he observes the Englishmen returned to London
from Paris, "whom their gate and strouting, their bending in the hammes,
and shoulders, and looking upon their legs, with frisking and singing do
speake them Travellers.... Some make their return in huge monstrous
Periwigs, which is the Golden Fleece they bring over with them. Such,
I say, are a shame to their Country abroad, and their kinred at home,
and to their parents, Benonies, the sons of sorrow: and as Jonas in the
Whales belly, travelled much, but saw little."[246]
These are some of the advantages an Englishman will reap from foreign
travel:
"One shall learne besides there not to interrupt one in the relation of
his tale, or to feed it with odde interlocutions: One shall learne also
not to laugh at his own jest, as too many used to do, like a Hen, which
cannot lay an egge but she must cackle.
"Moreover, one shall learne not to ride so furiously as they do
ordinarily in England, when there is no necessity at all for it; for the
Italians have a Proverb, that a galloping horse is an open sepulcher.
And the English generally are observed by all other Nations, to ride
commonly with that speed as if they rid for a midwife, or a Physitian,
or to get a pardon to save one's life as he goeth to execution, when
there is no such thing, or any other occasion at all, which makes them
call England the Hell of Horses.
"In these hot Countreyes also, one shall learne to give over the habit
of an odde custome, peculiar to the English alone, and whereby they are
distinguished from other Nations, which is, to make still towards the
chimney, though it bee in the Dog-dayes."[247]
We need not comment in detail upon Howell's book since it is so
accessible.
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