Much Less
Makes An Acquaintance With Such From Whose Conversation He May Learn
What Is Good Breeding In That Country And What Is Worth Observation In
It....
Nor indeed is it to be wondered.
For men of worth and parts will
not easily admit the familiarity of boys who yet need the care of a
tutor: though a young gentleman and stranger, appearing like a man, and
shewing a desire to inform himself in the customs, laws, and government
of the country he is in, will find welcome, assistance and entertainment
everywhere."[389]
These, and many comments of the same sort from other observers, made for
the disintegration of the Grand Tour, and cast discredit upon it as a
mode of education. Locke was not the only person who exposed the
ineffectiveness of governors. They became a favourite subject of satire
in the eighteenth century. Though even the best sort of "maitre d'ours"
or "bear-master," as the French called him, robbed travel of its proper
effect, the best were seldom available for the hosts of boyish
travellers. Generally the family chaplain was chosen, because of his
cheapness, and this unfortunate was expected to restrain the boisterous
devilment of the Peregrine Pickle committed to his care.[390] A booklet
called The Bear-Leaders; or, Modern Travelling Stated in a Proper
Light, sums up a biting condemnation of "our rugged unsocial
Telemachuses and their unpolished Mentors," describing how someone in
orders, perhaps a family dependent, is chosen as the Governor of the
crude unprepared mortal embarking for a tour of Europe. "The Oddities,
when introduced to each other, start back with mutual Astonishment, but
after some time from a frequency of seeing, grow into a Coarse Fondness
one for the other, expressed by Horse Laughs, or intimated by alternate
Thumps on the Back, with all such other gentle insinuations of our
uncivilized Male Hoydens."[391]
Small wonder, therefore, that a youth, who returned from driving by
post-chaise through the principal towns of Europe in the company of a
meek chaplain,[392] returned from his tour about as much refined,
according to Congreve, "as a Dutch skipper from a whale-fishing."[393]
The whole idea of the Grand Tour was thrown into disrepute after its
adoption by crude and low-bred people, who thought it necessary to
inform all their acquaintance where they had been, by a very unbecoming
dress and a very awkward address: "not knowing that an Englishman's
beef-and-pudding face will not agree with a hat no bigger than a
trencher; and that a man who never learned to make a bow performs it
worse in a head of hair dressed a L'aille Pidgeon, than in a scratch
wig."[394]
In many other ways, also, travel lost its dignity in the eighteenth
century. It was no longer necessary to live in foreign countries to
understand them. With the foundation of the chairs of modern history at
Oxford and Cambridge by King George the First in 1724, one great reason
for travel was lost. Information about contemporary politics on the
Continent could be had through the increasing number of news-journals
and gazettes. As for learning the French language, there had been no
lack of competent teachers since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes
in 1685 sent French Protestant refugees swarming across the channel to
find some sort of living in England. Therefore the spirit of
acquisitiveness dwindled and died down, in the absence of any strong
need to study abroad, and an idle, frivolous, darting, capricious spirit
controlled the aristocratic tourist. Horace Walpole on his travels spent
his time in a way that would have been censured by the Elizabethans. He
rushed everywhere, played cards, danced through the streets of Rheims
before the ladies' coaches, and hailed with delight every acquaintance
from England. What would Sir Philip Sidney have thought of the mode of
life Walpole draws in this letter:
"About two days ago, about four o'clock in the afternoon ... as we were
picking our teeth round a littered table and in a crumby room, Gray[395]
in an undress, Mr Conway in a morning-grey coat and I in a trim white
night-gown and slippers, very much out of order, with a very little
cold, a message discomposed us all of a sudden, with a service to Mr
Walpole from Mr More, and that, if he pleased, he would wait on Mr
Walpole. We scuttle upstairs in great confusion, but with no other
damage than the flinging down two or three glasses and the dropping a
slipper by the way. Having ordered the room to be cleaned out, and sent
a very civil response to Mr More, we began to consider who Mr More might
be."[396]
In the tour of Walpole and Gray one may see a change in the interest of
travel; how the romantic spirit had already ousted the humanistic love
of men and cities. As he drifted through Europe Gray took little
interest in history or in the intricacies of human character. He would
not be bothered by going to Courts with Walpole, or if he did he stood
in the corner of the ballroom and looked on while Walpole danced. What
he cared for was La Grande Chartreuse, with its cliffs and pines and
torrents and hanging woods.[397] He is the forerunner of the Byronic
traveller who delighted in the terrific aspects of nature and disdained
mankind. Different indeed was the genial heart of Howell, who was at
pains to hire lodgings in Paris with windows opening on the street, that
he might study every passerby,[398] but who spoke of mountains in Spain
in a casual way as "not so high and hideous as the Alps," or as
"uncouth, huge, monstrous Excrescences of Nature, bearing nothing but
craggy stones."[399]
With the decline of enthusiasm over the serious advantages of travel,
there was not much demand for those essays on the duties of the student
abroad which we have tried to describe.
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