The Grand Tour Cost More Than Travel In
Elizabethan Days, When Young Men Quietly Settled Down For Hard Study In
Some German Or Italian Town.
Robert Sidney, for instance, had only L100
a year when he was living with Sturm.
"Tearm yt as you wyll, it ys all I
owe you," said his father. "Harry Whyte ... shall have his L20 yearly,
and you your L100; and so be as mery as you may."[325] Secretary Davison
expected his son, his tutor, and their servant to live on this amount at
Venice. "Mr. Wo." had said this would suffice.[326] If "Mr Wo." means Mr
Wotton, as it probably does, since Wotton had just returned from abroad
in 1594, and Francis Davison set out in 1595, he was an authority on
economical travel, for he used to live in Germany at the rate of one
shilling, four pence halfpenny a day for board and lodging.[327] But he
did not carry with him a governor and an English servant. Moryson,
Howell, and Dallington all say that expenses for a servant amounted to
L50 yearly. Therefore Davison's tutor quite rightly protested that L200
would not suffice for three people. Although they spent "not near so
much as other gentlemen of their nation at Venice, and though he went to
market himself and was as frugal as could be, the expenses would mount
up to forty shillings a week, not counting apparel and books." "I
protest I never endured so much slavery in my life to save money," he
laments.[328] When learning accomplishments in France took the place of
student-life in Italy, expenses naturally rose. Moryson, who travelled
as a humanist, for "knowledge of State affaires, Histories, Cosmography,
and the like," found that fifty or sixty pounds were enough to "beare
the charge of a Traveller's diet, necessary apparrell, and two Journies
yeerely, in the Spring and Autumne, and also to serve him for moderate
expences of pleasure."[329] But Dallington found that an education of
the French sort would come to just twice as much. "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.
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