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]
Perhaps some details from the education of Robert Boyle will serve to
illustrate the manner of taking the Grand Tour. His father, the great
Earl of Cork, was a devoted adherent to this form of education and
launched his numerous sons, two by two, upon the Continent. He was, as
Boyle says, the sort of person "who supplied what he wanted in
scholarship himself, by being both a passionate affecter, and eminent
patron of it."[335] His journal for 1638 records first the return of "My
sones Lewis and Roger from their travailes into foreign kingdomes,...
ffor which their safe retorn, god be ever humbly and heartely thancked
and praised both by me and them."[336] In the same year he recovered the
Lord Viscount of Kynalmeaky and the Lord of Broghill, with Mr Marcombes,
their governor, from their foreign travels into France and Italy. Then
it was the turn of Francis and Robert, just removed from Eton College.
With the governor Marcombes, a French servant, and a French boy, they
departed from London in October 1639, "having his Majestie's license
under his hand and privy signett for to continew abrode 3 yeares: god
guide them abrod and safe back."[337]
Robert, according to his autobiography, was well satisfied to go, but
Francis, aged fifteen, had just been married to one of the Queen's Maids
of Honour, aged fourteen, and after four days of revelry was in no mood
to be thrust back into the estate of childhood.[338] High words passed
between him and his father on the occasion of his enforced departure for
Paris. He was so agitated that he mislaid his sword and pistols - at
least so we hear by the first letter Marcombes writes from Paris. "Mr
Francis att his departure from London was so much troubled because of
your Lordship's anger against him that he could never tell us where he
put his sword and ye kaise of pistoles that your Lordship gave them, so
that I have been forced to buy them here a kaise of pistolles a peece,
because of the danger that is now everywhere in France, and because it
is so much ye mode now for every gentleman of fashion to ride with a
kase of Pistoles, that they Laugh att those that have them not. I bought
also a Sword for mr francis and when Mr Robert saw it he did so
earnestly desire me to buy him one, because his was out of fashion, that
I could not refuse him that small request."[339]
Marcombes did not expose the boys long to the excitement of Paris, but
at once hurried them to Geneva, and settled them to work, where Francis
showed a great deal of resignation and good-humour in accepting his
fate. He was not so sulky as Lord Cranborne, who in a similar situation
fell ill, could not eat, and had to be taken back to England.[340] "And
as for Mr francis," writes Marcombes to Cork, "I protest unto your
Lordship that I did not thinke yt he could frame himselfe to every kind
of good Learning with so great a facilitie and passion as he doth,
having tasted already a little drope of ye Libertinage of ye Court, but
I find him soe disciplinable, and soe desirous to repare ye time Lost,
yt I make no question but your Lordship shall receive a great
ioye."[341] He had not had much of an education at Eton, as his governor
takes pleasure in pointing out: "For Mr Francis I doe assure your
Lordship he had need to aplay himselfe to other things till now, for
except reeding and writting Inglish he was grounded in nothing of ye
wordle (world); and beleeve me, for before God I spake true, when I say
that never any gentleman hath donne lesse profit of his time then he had
done when he went out of England: and besides yt if he had been Longer
at Eatton he had Learned there to drinke with other deboice scholers, as
I have beene in formed by Mr Robert."[342]
Won over by the study of "Fortifications," a branch of mathematics very
pleasing to the seventeenth century boy, the future Viscount Shannon
applied himself to work with energy;[343] and for a time peace reigned
over the process of education. "Every morning," writes their tutor, "I
teach them ye Rhetoricke in Latin, and I expound unto them Justin from
Latin into french, and presently after dinner I doe reade unto them two
chapters of ye old Testament with a brief exposition of those points
that I think that they doe not understand; and before supper I teach
them ye history of ye Romans in french out of florus and of Titus
Livius, and two sections of ye Cateshisme of Caluin with ye most
orthodox exposition of the points that they doe not understand; and
after supper I doe reade unto them two chapters of ye new Testament, and
both morning and evening we say our prayers together, and twice a weeke
we goe to Church."[344]
The boys spoke French always, and had some dancing lessons, but no
riding lessons, for "their lyms are not knitt and strong enough, nor
their bodys hable to endure rough exercises; and besides, although wee
have here as good and skillfull teachers as in many other places, yet
when they shall come to paris or some other place, their teachers will
make them beleeve that they have Lost their time and shall make them
beginn againe:
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