He believed in accomplishments and personal elegance as a
means of advancing oneself in the world, long after the Court had ceased
to care for such qualities, or to be of much account in the destinies of
leading Englishmen. Republicanism was in the air. Chesterfield was
thinking of the France of his youth; but France had changed. In 1765,
Horace Walpole was depressed by the solemnity and austerity of French
society. Their style of conversation was serious, pedantic, and seldom
animated except by a dispute on some philosophic subject.[375] In fact,
Chesterfield was admiring the France of Louis the Fourteenth long after
"Le Soleil" had set, and the country was sombre. It was the eve of the
day when France was to imitate the democratic ideals of England.
England, at last, instead of being on the outskirts of civilization, was
coming to be the most powerful, respected, and enlightened country in
Europe. When that day dawned, Englishmen no longer sought the Continent
in the spirit of the Elizabethans - the spirit which aimed at being "A
citizen of the whole world."
* * * * *
CHAPTER VII
THE DECADENCE OF THE GRAND TOUR.
During the several generations when the Stuarts communicated their love
of France to the aristocracy of England, there was, as we might suppose,
a steady undercurrent of protest against this Gallic influence. A
returning traveller would be pursued by the rabble of London, who,
sighting his French periwig and foreign gestures, would pelt his coach
with gutter-dirt, squibs, roots and rams-horns, and run after it
shouting "French Dogs! French Dogs! A Mounser! A Mounser!"[376] Between
the courtiers and the true-born Englishman there was no great sympathy
in the matter of foreign culture. The courtiers too often took towards
deep-seated English customs the irreverent attitude of their master,
Charles II. - known to remark that it was the roast beef and reading of
the holy Scriptures that caused the noted sadness of the English.[377]
The true-born Englishman retorted with many a jibe at the "gay, giddy,
brisk, insipid fool," who thought of nothing but clothes and garnitures,
despised roast beef, and called his old friends ruffians and rustics; or
at the rake who "has not been come from France above three months and
here he has debauch'd four women and fought five duels." The playwrights
could always secure an audience by a skilful portrait of an "English
Mounsieur" such as Sir Fopling Flutter, who "went to Paris a plain
bashful English Blockhead and returned a fine undertaking French
Fop."[378]
There had always been a protest against foreign influence, but in the
eighteenth century one cannot fail to notice a stronger and more
contemptuous attitude than ever before. England was feeling her power.
War with France sharpened the shafts of satire, and every victory over
the French increased a strong insular patriotism in all classes. Foote
declared residence in Paris a necessary part of every man of fashion's
education, because it "Gives 'em a relish for their own domestic
happiness and a proper veneration for their own national
liberties."[379] His Epilogue to The Englishman in Paris commends the
prudence of British forefathers who
"Scorned to truck for base unmanly arts,
Their native plainness and their honest hearts."[380]
It was not the populace alone, or those who appealed directly to the
populace, who sneered at Popish countries, and pitied them for not being
British.[381] As time went on Whigs of all classes boasted of the
superiority of England, especially when they travelled in Europe.
"We envy not the warmer clime that lies
In ten degrees of more indulgent skies ...
'Tis Liberty that crowns Britannia's Isle
And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile."[382]
Addison's travels are full of reflections of this sort. The destitution
of the Campagna of Rome demonstrates triumphantly what an aversion
mankind has to arbitrary government, while the well-populated mountain
of St Marino shows what a natural love they have for liberty. Whigs
abroad were well caricatured by Smollett in Peregrine Pickle in the
figures of the Painter and the Doctor. They observed that even the
horses and dogs in France were starved; whereupon the Governor of
Peregrine, an Oxonian and a Jacobite, sneered that they talked like true
Englishmen. The Doctor, affronted by the insinuation, told him with some
warmth that he was wrong in his conjecture, "his affections and ideas
being confined to no particular country; for he considered himself as a
citizen of the world. He owned himself more attached to England than to
any other kingdom, but this preference was the effect of reflection and
not of prejudice."
This growing conviction of England's superiority helped to bring about
the decadence of travel for education. Travel continued, and the
eighteenth century was as noticeable as any other for the "mal du pays"
which attacked young men, but travel became the tour of curiosity and
diversion with which we are familiar, and not an earnest endeavour to
become "a compleat person." Many changes helped this decadence. The
"policy" of Italy and France, which once attracted the embryo statesmen
of Elizabeth, was now well known and needed no further study. With the
passing of the Stuarts, when the king's favour ceased to be the means of
making one's fortune, a courtly education was no longer profitable. High
offices under the Georges were as often as not filled by unpolished
Englishmen extolled for their native flavour of bluntness and bluffness.
Foreign graces were a superfluous ornament, more or less ridiculous. The
majority of Englishmen were wont to prize, as Sam Johnson did, "their
rustic grandeur and their surly grace," and to join in his lament:
"Lost in thoughtless ease and empty show,
Behold the warrior dwindled to a beau;
Sense, freedom, piety refined away,
Of France the mimick and of Spain the prey."[383]
