An Academy Would Seem To Have Been
A Cheaper Means Of Learning Accomplishments.
For about L110 one might
have lodging and diet for himselfe and a man and be taught to ride,
fence, ply mathematics, and so forth.[331] Lassels very wisely refrains
from telling those not already persuaded, what the cost will be for the
magnificent Grand Tour he outlines.
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.
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