THE INFLUENCE OF THE FRENCH ACADEMIES
The admonitions of their elders did not keep young men from going to
Italy, but as the seventeenth century advanced the conditions they found
there made that country less attractive than France. The fact that the
average Englishman was a Protestant divided him from his compeers in
Italy and damped social intercourse. He was received courteously and
formally by the Italian princes, perhaps, for the sake of his political
uncle or cousin in England, but inner distrust and suspicion blighted
any real friendship. Unless the Englishman was one of those who had a
secret, half-acknowledged allegiance to Romanism, there could not, in
the age of the Puritans, be much comfortable affection between him and
the Italians. The beautiful youth, John Milton, as the author of
excellent Latin verse, was welcomed into the literary life of Florence,
to be sure, and there were other unusual cases, but the typical
traveller of Stuart times was the young gentleman who was sent to France
to learn the graces, with a view to making his fortune at Court, even as
his widowed mother sent George Villiers, afterwards Duke of Buckingham.
The Englishmen who travelled for "the complete polishing of their parts"
continued to visit Italy, to satisfy their curiosity, but it was rather
in the mood of the sight-seer. Only malcontents, at odds with their
native land, like Bothwell, or the Earl of Arundel, or Leicester's
disinherited son, made prolonged residence in Italy. Aspiring youth,
seeking a social education, for the most part hurried to France.
For it was not only a sense of being surrounded by enemies which during
the seventeenth century somewhat weakened the Englishman's allegiance to
Italy, but the increasing attractiveness of another country. By 1616 it
was said of France that "Unto no other countrie, so much as unto this,
doth swarme and flow yearly from all Christian nations, such a
multitude, and concourse of young Gentlemen, Marchants, and other sorts
of men: some, drawen from their Parentes bosoms by desire of learning;
some, rare Science, or new conceites; some by pleasure; and others
allured by lucre and gain.... But among all other Nations, there cometh
not such a great multitude to Fraunce from any Country, as doth yearely
from this Isle (England), both of Gentlemen, Students, Marchants, and
others."[205]
Held in peace by Henry of Navarre, France began to be a happier place
than Italy for the Englishman abroad. Germany was impossible, because of
the Thirty Years' War; and Spain, for reasons which we shall see later
on, was not inviting. Though nominally Roman Catholic, France was in
fact half Protestant. Besides, the French Court was great and gay, far
outshining those of the impoverished Italian princes. It suited the
gallants of the Stuart period, who found the grave courtesy of the
Italians rather slow. Learning, for which men once had travelled into
Italy, was no longer confined there. Nor did the Cavaliers desire exact
classical learning. A knowledge of mythology, culled from French
translations, was sufficient. Accomplishments, such as riding, fencing,
and dancing, were what chiefly helped them, it appeared, to make their
way at Court or at camp. And the best instruction in these
accomplishments had shifted from Italy to France.
A change had come over the ideal of a gentleman--a reaction from the
Tudor enthusiasm for letters. A long time had gone by since Henry VIII.
tried to make his children as learned as Erasmus, and had the most
erudite scholars fetched from Oxford and Cambridge to direct the royal
nursery. The somewhat moderated esteem in which book-learning was held
in the household of Charles I. may be seen in a letter of the Earl of
Newcastle, governor to Prince Charles,[206] who writes to his pupil:
"I would not have you too studious, for too much contemplation spoils
action, and Virtue consists in that." The Prince's model is to be the
Bishop of Chichester, his tutor, who "hath no pedantry in him: his
learning he makes right use of, neither to trouble himself with it or
his friends: ... reades men as well as books: ... is travell'd, which
you shall perceive by his wisdome and fashion more than by his
relations; and in a word strives as much discreetly to hide the scholler
in him, as other men's follies studies to shew it: and is a right
gentleman."[207]
Of pedantry, however, there never seems to have been any danger in Court
circles, either in Tudor or Stuart days. It took constant exhortations
to make the majority of noblemen's sons learn anything at all out of
books. For centuries the marks of a gentleman had been bravery, courtesy
and a good seat in the saddle, and it was not to be supposed that a
sudden fashionable enthusiasm for literature could change all that.
Ascham had declared that the Elizabethan young bloods thought it
shameful to be learned because the "Jentlemen of France" were not
so.[208] When with the general relaxation of high effort which appeared
in so many ways at the Court of James I., the mastery of Greek authors
was no longer an ideal of the courtier, the Jacobean gallant was hardly
more intellectual than the mediæval page. Henry Peacham, in 1623,
described noblemen's flagging faith in a university education. They sent
their sons to Oxford or Cambridge at an early age, and if the striplings
did not immediately lay hold on philosophy, declared that they had no
aptitude for learning, and removed them to a dancing school. "These
young things," as he calls the Oxford students "of twelve, thirteene, or
foureteene, that have no more care than to expect the next Carrier, and
where to sup on Fridayes and Fasting nights" find "such a disproportion
betweene Aristotles Categories, and their childish capacities, that what
together with the sweetnesse of libertie, varietie of companie, and so
many kinds of recreation in towne and fields abroad," they give over any
attempt to understand "the crabbed grounds of Arts." Whereupon, the
parents, "if they perceive any wildnesse or unstayednesse in their
children, are presently in despaire, and out of all hope of them for
ever prooving Schollers, or fit for anything else; neither consider the
nature of youth, nor the effect of time, the Physitian of all. But to
mend the matter, send them either to the Court to serve as Pages, or
into France and Italy to see fashions, and mend their manners, where
they become ten times worse."[209]
The influence of France would not be towards books, certainly. Brave,
gallant, and magnificent were the Gallic gentlemen; but not learned.
Reading made them positively ill: "la tête leur tourne de lire," as
Brézé confessed.[210] Scorning an indoor sedentary life, they left all
civil offices to the bourgeoisie, and devoted themselves exclusively to
war. As the Vicomte D'Avenel has crisply put it:
"It would have seemed as strange to see a person of high rank the
Treasurer of France, the Controller of Finance, or the Rector of a
University, as it would be to see him a cloth-merchant or maker of
crockery.... The poorest younger son of an ancient family, who would not
disdain to engage himself as a page to a nobleman, or as a common
soldier, would have thought himself debased by accepting the post of
secretary to an ambassador."[211]
Brute force was still considered the greatest power in the world, even
when Sully was Conseiller d'Etat, though divining spirits like Eustache
Deschamps had declared that the day would come when serving-men would
rule France by their wits, all because the noblesse would not learn
letters.[212] In vain the wise Bras-de-Fer warned his generation that
glory and strength of limb were of short duration, while knowledge was
the only immortal quality.[213] As long as parents saw that the honours
at Court went to handsome horsemen, they thought it mistaken policy to
waste money on book-learning for their sons. When a boy came from the
university to Court, he found himself eclipsed by young pages, who
scarcely knew how to read, but had killed their man in a duel, and
danced to perfection.[214] A martial training, with physical
accomplishments, was the most effective, apparently.
The martial type which France evolved dazzled other nations, and it is
not surprising that under the Stuarts, who had inherited French ways,
the English Court was particularly open to French ideals. Our directions
for travellers reflect the change from the typical Elizabethan courtier,
"somewhat solemn, coy, big and dangerous of look," to the easy manners
of the cavalier. _A Method for Travell_, written while Elizabeth was
still on the throne, extols Italian conduct. "I would rather," it says
of the traveller, "he should come home Italianate than Frenchified: I
speake of both in the better sense: for the French is stirring, bold,
respectless, inconstant, suddaine: the Italian stayed, demure,
respective, grave, advised."[215] But _Instructions for Forreine
Travell_ in 1642 urges one to imitate the French. "For the Gentry of
France have a kind of loose, becoming boldness, and forward vivacity in
their manners."[216]
The first writer of advice to travellers who assumes that French
accomplishments are to be a large part of the traveller's education, is
Sir Robert Dallington, whom we have already quoted. His _View of
France_[217] to which the _Method for Travel_ is prefixed, deserves a
reprint, for both that and his _Survey of Tuscany_,[218] though built on
the regular model of the Elizabethan traveller's "Relation," being a
conscientious account of the chief geographical, economic,
architectural, and social features of the country traversed, are more
artistic than the usual formal reports. Dallington wrote these Views in
1598, a little before the generation which modelled itself on the French
gallants, and his remarks on Frenchmen may well have served as a warning
to courtiers not to imitate the foibles, along with the admirable
qualities, of their compeers across the Channel. For instance, he is
outraged by the effusiveness of the "violent, busy-headed and impatient
Frenchman," who "showeth his lightness and inconstancie ... in nothing
more than in his familiaritie, with whom a stranger cannot so soone be
off his horse, but he will be acquainted: nor so soone in his Chamber,
but the other like an Ape will bee on his shoulder: and as suddenly and
without cause ye shall love him also. A childish humour, to be wonne
with as little as an Apple and lost with lesse than a Nut."[219] The
King of France himself is censured for his geniality. Dallington deems
Henry of Navarre "more affable and familiar than fits the Majesty of a
great King." He might have found in current gossip worse lapses than the
two he quotes to show Henry's lack of formality, but it is part of
Dallington's worth that he writes of things at first-hand, and gives us
only what he himself saw; how at Orleans, when the Italian commedians
were to play before him, the king himself, "came whiffling with a small
wand to scowre the coast, and make place for the rascall Players,... a
thing, me thought, most derogatory to the Majesty of a King of France."
"And lately at Paris (as they tell us) when the Spanish Hostages were to
be entertayned, he did Usher it in the great Chamber, as he had done
here before; and espying the Chayre not to stand well under the State,
mended it handsomely himselfe, and then set him downe to give them
audience."[220]
Nor can Dallington conceal his disapproval of foreign food. The sorrows
of the beef-eating Englishman among the continentals were always
poignant. Dallington is only one of the many travellers who, unable to
grasp the fact that warmer climes called for light diet, reproached the
Italians especially for their "parsimony and thin feeding." In Henry the
Eighth's time there was already a saying among the Italians, "Give the
Englishman his beef and mustard,"[221] while the English in turn jibed at
the Italians for being "like Nebuchadnezzar,--always picking of
sallets." "Herbage," says Dallington scornfully "is the most generall
food of the Tuscan ... for every horse-load of flesh eaten, there is ten
cart loades of hearbes and rootes, which also their open Markets and
private tables doe witnesse, and whereof if one talke with them fasting,
he shall have sencible feeling."[222] The whole subject of diet he
dismisses in his advice to a traveller as follows: "As for his viands I
feare not his surfetting; his provision is never so great, but ye may
let him loose to his allowance.... I shall not need to tell him before
what his dyet shall be, his appetite will make it better than it is: for
he shall be still kept sharpe: only of the difference of dyets, he shall
observe thus much: that of Germanie is full or rather fulsome; that of
France allowable; that of Italie tolerable; with the Dutch he shall have
much meat ill-dressed: with the French lesse, but well handled; with the
Italian neither the one nor the other."[223]
Though there is much in Dallington's description of Italy and France to
repay attention, our concern is with his _Method for Travell_,[224]
which, though more practical than the earlier Elizabethan essays of the
same sort, opens in the usual style of exhortation:
"Plato, one of the day-starres of that knowledge, which then but dawning
hath since shone out in clearer brightness, thought nothing better for
the bettering our understanding then _Travell_: as well by having a
conference with the wiser sort in all sorts of learning, as by the
[Greek: Autopsiaêi]. The eye-sight of those things, which otherwise a
man cannot have but by Tradition; A Sandy foundation either in matter of
Science, or Conscience. So that a purpose to Travell, if it be not ad
voluptatem Solum, sed ad utilitatem, argueth an industrious and generous
minde. Base and vulgar spirits hover still about home: those are more
noble and divine, that imitate the Heavens, and joy in motion."
After a warning against Jesuits, which we have quoted, he comes at once
to definite directions for studying modern languages[225]--advice which
though sound is hardly novel. Continual speaking with all sorts of
people, insisting that his teacher shall not do all the talking, and
avoiding his countrymen are unchangeable rules for him who shall travel
for language.[226] But this is the first treatise for travellers which
makes note of dancing as an important accomplishment. "There's another
exercise to be learned in France, because there are better teachers, and
the French fashion is in most request with us, that is, of dancing. This
I meane to my Traveller that is young and meanes to follow the Court:
otherwise I hold it needelesse, and in some ridiculous."[227] This art
was indeed essential to courtiers, and a matter of great earnestness.
Chamberlain reports that Sir Henry Bowyer died of the violent exercise
he underwent while practising dancing.[228] Henri III. fell into a
tearful passion and called the Grand Prieur a liar, a poltroon, and a
villain, at a ball, because the Grand Prieur was heard to mutter "Unless
you dance better, I would you had your money again that your dancing has
cost you." [229] James I. was particularly anxious to have his "Babies"
excel in complicated boundings. His copy of _Nuove Inventioni di
Balli_[230] may be seen in the British Museum, with large plates
illustrating how to "gettare la gamba," that is, in the words of
Chaucer, "with his legges casten to and fro."[231] Prince Henry was
skilful in these matters. The Spanish Ambassador reports how "The Prince
of Wales was desired by his royal parents to open the ball with a
Spanish gallarda: he acquitted himself with much grace and delicacy,
introducing some occasional leaps."[232] Prince Charles and Buckingham,
during their stay in Spain, are earnestly implored by their "deare Dad
and Gossip" not to forget their dancing. "I praye you, my babie, take
heade of being hurt if ye runne at tilte, ... I praye you in the
meantyme keep your selfis in use of dawncing privatlie, thogh ye showlde
quhissell and sing one to another like Jakke and Tom for faulte of
better musike." [233]
However, Dallington is very much against the saltations of elderly
persons. "I remember a countriman of ours, well seene in artes and
language, well stricken in yeares, a mourner for his second wife, a
father of mariageable children, who with his other booke studies
abroade, joyned also the exercise of dancing: it was his hap in an
honourable _Bal_ (as they call it) to take a fall, which in mine opinion
was not so disgracefull as the dancing it selfe, to a man of his
stuffe."[234]
Dallington would have criticized Frenchmen more severely than ever had
he known that even Sully gave way in private to a passion for dancing.
At least Tallemant des Réaux says that "every evening a valet de chambre
of the King played on the lute the dances of the day, and M. de Sully
danced all alone, in some sort of extraordinary hat--such as he always
wore in his cabinet--while his cronies applauded him, although he was
the most awkward man in the world."[235]
Tennis is another courtly exercise in which Dallington urges moderation.
"This is dangerous, (if used with too much violence) for the body; and
(if followed with too much diligence,) for the purse. A maine point of
the Travellers care." He reached France when the rage for tennis was at
its height,--when there were two hundred and fifty tennis courts in
Paris,[236]--and "two tennis courts for every one Church through
France," according to his computation.[237] Everyone was at it;--nobles,
artizans, women, and children. The monks had had to be requested not to
play--especially, the edict said, "not in public in their shirts."[238]
Our Englishman, of course, thought this enthusiasm was beyond bounds.
"Ye have seene them play Sets at Tennise in the heat of Summer and
height of the day, when others were scarcely able to stirre out of
doors." Betting on the game was the ruin of the working-man, who
"spendeth that on the Holyday, at Tennis, which hee got the whole weeke,
for the keeping of his poore family. A thing more hurtfull then our
Ale-houses in England."[239]
"There remains two other exercises," says the _Method for Travell_, "of
use and necessitie, to him that will returne ably quallified for his
countries service in warre, and his owne defence in private quarrell.
These are Riding and Fencing. His best place for the first (excepting
Naples) is in Florence under il Signor Rustico, the great Dukes
Cavallerizzo, and for the second (excepting Rome) is in Padua, under il
Sordo."[240] Italy, it may be observed, was still the best school for
these accomplishments. Pluvinel was soon to make a world-renowned riding
academy in Paris, but the art of fencing was more slowly disseminated.
One was still obliged, like Captain Bobadil, to make "long travel for
knowledge, in that mystery only."[241] Brantome says the fencing masters
of Italy kept their secrets in their own hands, giving their services
only on the condition that you should never reveal what you had learnt
even to your dearest friends. Some instructors would never allow a
living soul in the room where they were giving lessons to a pupil. And
even then they used to keek everywhere, under the beds, and examine the
wall to see if it had any crack or hole through which a person could
peer.[242] Dallington makes no further remark on the subject, however,
than the above, and after some advice about money matters, which we will
mention in another connection, and a warning to the traveller that his
apparel must be in fashion--for the fashions change with trying
rapidity, and the French were very scornful of anyone who appeared in a
last year's suit[243]--he brings to a close one of the pithiest essays
in our collection.
When the influence of France over the ideals of a gentleman was well
established, James Howell wrote his _Instructions for Forreine
Travell_,[244] and in this book for the first time the traveller is
advised to stay at one of the French academies--or riding schools, as
they really were.
His is the best known, probably, of all our treatises, partly because it
was reprinted a little while ago by Mr Gosse, and partly because of its
own merits. Howell had an easier, more indulgent outlook upon the world
than Dallington, and could see all nations with equal humour--his own
included. Take his comparison of the Frenchman and the Spaniard.
The Frenchman "will dispatch the weightiest affairs as hee walke along
in the streets, or at meales, the other upon the least occasion of
businesse will retire solemnly to a room, and if a fly chance to hum
about him, it will discompose his thoughts and puzzle him: It is a kind
of sicknesse for a Frenchman to keep a secret long, and all the drugs of
Egypt cannot get it out of a Spaniard.... The Frenchman walks fast, (as
if he had a Sergeant always at his heels,) the Spaniard slowly, as if
hee were newly come out of some quartan Ague; the French go up and down
the streets confusedly in clusters, the Spaniards if they be above
three, they go two by two, as if they were going a Procession; etc.
etc."[245]
With the same humorous eye he observes the Englishmen returned to London
from Paris, "whom their gate and strouting, their bending in the hammes,
and shoulders, and looking upon their legs, with frisking and singing do
speake them Travellers.... Some make their return in huge monstrous
Periwigs, which is the Golden Fleece _they_ bring over with them. Such,
I say, are a shame to their Country abroad, and their kinred at home,
and to their parents, Benonies, the sons of sorrow: and as Jonas in the
Whales belly, travelled much, but saw little."[246]
These are some of the advantages an Englishman will reap from foreign
travel:
"One shall learne besides there not to interrupt one in the relation of
his tale, or to feed it with odde interlocutions: One shall learne also
not to laugh at his own jest, as too many used to do, like a Hen, which
cannot lay an egge but she must cackle.
"Moreover, one shall learne not to ride so furiously as they do
ordinarily in England, when there is no necessity at all for it; for the
Italians have a Proverb, that a galloping horse is an open sepulcher.
And the English generally are observed by all other Nations, to ride
commonly with that speed as if they rid for a midwife, or a Physitian,
or to get a pardon to save one's life as he goeth to execution, when
there is no such thing, or any other occasion at all, which makes them
call England the Hell of Horses.
"In these hot Countreyes also, one shall learne to give over the habit
of an odde custome, peculiar to the English alone, and whereby they are
distinguished from other Nations, which is, to make still towards the
chimney, though it bee in the Dog-dayes."[247]
We need not comment in detail upon Howell's book since it is so
accessible. The passage which chiefly marks the progress of travel for
study's sake is this:
"For private Gentlemen and Cadets, there be divers Academies in Paris,
Colledge-like, where for 150 pistols a Yeare, which come to about £150
sterling per annum of our money, one may be very well accomodated, with
lodging and diet for himself and man, and be taught to Ride, to Fence,
to manage Armes, to Dance, Vault, and ply the Mathematiques."[248]
These academies were one of the chief attractions which France had for
the gentry of England in the seventeenth century. The first one was
founded by Pluvinel, the _grand écuyer_ of Henri IV. Pluvinel, returning
from a long apprenticeship to Pignatelli in Naples, made his own
riding-school the best in the world, so that the French no longer had to
journey to Italian masters. He obtained from the king the basement of
the great gallery of the Louvre, and there taught Louis XIII. and other
young nobles of the Court--amongst them the Marquis du Chillon,
afterwards Cardinal Richelieu--to ride the great horse.[249] Such was
the success of his manège that he annexed masters to teach his pupils
dancing, vaulting, and swordsmanship, as well as drawing and
mathematics, till he had rounded out what was considered a complete
education for a chevalier. In imitation of his establishment, many other
riding-masters, such as Benjamin, Potrincourt, and Nesmond, set up
others of the same sort, which drew pupils from other nations during all
the seventeenth century.[250] In the suburb of Pré-aux-clercs, says
Malingre in 1640, "are several academies where the nobility learn to
ride. The most frequented is that of M. de Mesmon, where there is a
prince of Denmark and one of the princes palatine of the Rhine, and a
quantity of other foreign gentlemen."[251]
Englishmen found the academies very useful retreats where a boy could
learn French accomplishments without incurring the dangers of foreign
travel and make the acquaintance of young nobles of his own age. Mr
Thomas Lorkin writing from Paris in 1610, outlines to the tutor of the
Prince of Wales the routine of his pupil Mr Puckering[252] at such an
establishment. The morning began with two hours on horseback, followed
by two hours at the French tongue, and one hour in "learning to handle
his weapon." Dinner was at twelve o'clock, where the company continued
together till two, "either passing the time in discourse or in some
honest recreation perteyning to armes." At two the bell rang for
dancing, and at three another gong sent the pupil to his own room with
his tutor, to study Latin and French for two hours. "After supper a
brief survey of all."[253]
It will be seen that there was an exact balance between physical and
mental exercise--four hours of each. All in all, academies seemed to be
the solution of preparing for life those who were destined to shine at
Court. The problem had been felt in England, as well as in France. In
1561, Sir Nicholas Bacon had devised "Articles for the bringing up in
virtue and learning of the Queens Majesties Wardes."[254] Lord Burghley
is said to have propounded the creation of a school of arms and
exercises.[255] In 1570, Sir Humphrey Gilbert drew up an elaborate
proposal for an "Academy of philosophy and chivalry,"[256] but none of
these plans was carried out. Nor was that of Prince Henry, who had also
wanted to establish a Royal Academy or School of Arms, in which all the
king's wards and others should be educated and exercised.[257] A certain
Sir Francis Kinaston, esquire of the body to Charles I., "more addicted
to the superficiall parts of learning--poetry and oratory (wherein he
excell'd)--than to logic and philosophy," Wood says, did get a licence
to erect an academy in his house in Covent Garden, "which should be for
ever a college for the education of the young nobility and others, sons
of gentlemen, and should be styled the Musæum Minervæ."[258] But
whatever start was made in that direction ended with the Civil War.
However, the idea of setting up in England the sort of academy which was
successful in France was such an obvious one that it kept constantly
recurring. In 1649 a courtly parasite, Sir Balthazar Gerbier, who used
to be a miniature painter, an art-critic, and Master of Ceremonies to
Charles I., being sadly thrown out of occupation by the Civil War,
opened an academy at Bethnal Green. There are still in existence his
elaborate advertisements of its attractions, addressed to "All Fathers
of Noble Families and Lovers of Vertue," and proposing his school as "a
meanes, whereby to free them of such charges as they are at, when they
send their children to foreign academies, and to render them more
knowing in those languages, without exposing them to the dangers
incident to travellers, and to that of evill companies, or of giving to
forrain parts the glory of their education."[259] But Gerbier was a
flimsy character, and without a Court to support him, or money, his
academy dissolved after a gaseous lecture or two. Faubert, however,
another French Protestant refugee, was more successful with an academy
he managed to set up in London in 1682, "to lessen the vast expense the
nation is at yearly by sending children into France to be taught
military exercises."[260] Evelyn, who was a patron of this enterprise,
describes how he "went with Lord Cornwallis to see the young gallants do
their exercise, Mr Faubert having newly railed in a manège, and fitted
it for the academy. There were the Dukes of Norfolk and Northumberland,
Lord Newburgh, and a nephew of (Duras) Earl of Feversham.... But the
Duke of Norfolk told me he had not been at this exercise these twelve
years before."[261] However, Faubert's could not have been an important
institution, since in 1700, a certain Dr Maidwell tried to get the
Government to convert a great house of his near Westminster into a
public academy of the French sort, as a greatly needed means of rearing
gentlemen.[262]
But all these efforts to educate English boys on the lines of French
ones came to nothing, because at the close of the seventeenth century
Englishmen began to realize that it was not wise for a gentleman to
confine himself to a military life. As to riding as a fine art, his
practical mind felt that it was all very well to amuse oneself in Paris
by learning to make a war-horse caracole, but there was no use in taking
such things too seriously; that in war "a ruder way of riding was more
in use, without observing the precise rules of riding the great
horse."[263] He could not feel that artistic passion for form in
horsemanship which breathes from the pages of Pluvinel's book _Le
Maneige Royal_[264] in which magnificent engravings show Louis XIII.
making courbettes, voltes, and "caprioles" around the Louvre, while a
circle of grandees gravely discuss the deportment of his charger. Even
Sir Philip Sidney made gentle fun of the hippocentric universe of his
Italian riding master:
"When the right vertuous Edward Wotton, and I, were at the Emperors
Court together, wee gave ourselves to learne horsemanship of John Pietro
Pugliano: one that with great commendation had the place of an esquire
in his stable. And hee, according to the fertilnes of the Italian wit,
did not onely afoord us the demonstration of his practise, but sought to
enrich our mindes with the contemplations therein, which hee thought
most precious. But with none I remember mine eares were at any time more
loden, then when (ether angred with slowe paiment, or mooved with our
learner-like admiration,) he exercised his speech in the prayse of his
facultie. Hee sayd, Souldiers were the noblest estate of mankinde, and
horsemen, the noblest of Souldiours. He sayde, they were the Maistres of
warre, and ornaments of peace: speedy goers, and strong abiders,
triumphers both in Camps and Courts. Nay, to so unbeleeved a poynt hee
proceeded, as that no earthly thing bred such wonder to a Prince, as to
be a good horseman. Skill of government, was but a Pedanteria in
comparison: then woulde he adde certaine prayses, by telling what a
peerlesse beast a horse was. The only serviceable Courtier without
flattery, the beast of the most beutie, faithfulness, courage, and such
more, that if I had not beene a peece of a Logician before I came to
him, I think he would have perswaded mee to have wished my selfe a
Horse."[265]
That this was somewhat the spirit of the French academies there seems no
doubt. Though they claimed to give an equal amount of physical and
mental exercise, they tended to the muscular side of the programme.
Pluvinel, says Tallemant des Réaux, "was hardly more intelligent than
his horses,"[266] and the academies are supposed to have declined after
his death.[267] "All that is to be learned in these Academies," says
Clarendon, "is Riding, Dancing, and Fencing, besides some Wickednesses
they do not profess to teach. It is true they have men there who teach
Arithmetick, which they call Philosophy, and the Art of Fortification,
which they call the Mathematicks; but what Learning they had there, I
might easily imagine, when he assured me, that in Three years which he
had spent in the Academy, he never saw a Latin book nor any Master that
taught anything there, who would not have taken it very ill to be
suspected to speake or understand Latin."[268] This sort of aspersion
was continued by Dr Wallis, the Savilian Professor of Mathematics at
Oxford in 1700, who was roused to a fine pitch of indignation by
Maidwell's efforts to start an academy in London:[269]
"Of teachers in the academie, scarce any of a higher character than a
valet-de-chambre. And, if such an one, who (for instance) hath waited on
his master in one or two campagnes, and is able perhaps to copy the
draught of a fortification from another paper; this is called
mathematicks; and, beyond this (if so much) you are not to expect."
A certain Mr P. Chester finishes the English condemnation of a school,
such as Benjamin's, by declaring that its pretensions to fit men for
life was "like the shearing of Hoggs, much Noyse and little Wooll,
nothing considerable taught that I know, butt only to fitt a man to be a
French chevalier, that is in plain English a Trooper."[270]
These comments are what one expects from Oxford, to be sure, but even M.
Jusserand acknowledges that the academies were not centres of
intellectual light, and quotes to prove it certain questions asked of a
pupil put into the Bastille, at the demand of his father:
"Was it not true that the Sieur Varin, his father, seeing that he had no
inclination to study, had put him into the Académie Royale to there
learn all sorts of exercises, and had there supported him with much
expense?
"He admitted that his father, while his mother was living, had put him
into the Académie Royale and had given him for that the necessary means,
and paid the ordinary pension, 1600 livres a year.
"Was it not true that after having been some time at the Académie
Royale, he was expelled, having disguised girls in boys' clothes to
bring them there?
"He denied it. He had never introduced into the school any académiste
féminine: he had departed at the summons of his father, having taken
proper leave of M. and Mme. de Poix."[271]
However, something of an education had to be provided for Royalist boys
at the time of the Civil War, when Oxford was demoralized. Parents
wandering homeless on the Continent were glad enough of the academies.
Even the Stuarts tried them, though the Duke of Gloucester had to be
weaned from the company of some young French gallants, "who, being
educated in the same academy, were more familiar with him than was
thought convenient."[272] It was a choice between academies or such an
education as Edmund Verney endured in a dull provincial city as the sole
pupil of an exiled Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge. But the
effects of being reared in France, and too early thrown into the
dissolute Courts of Europe, were evident at the Restoration, when
Charles the Second and his friends returned to startle England with
their "exceeding wildness." What else could be the effect of a youth
spent as the Earl of Chesterfield records:[273] at thirteen years old a
courtier at St Germaine: at fourteen, rid of any governor or tutor: at
sixteen, at the academy of M. de Veau, he "chanced to have a quarrel
with M. Morvay, since Captaine of the French King's Guards, who I hurt
and disarmed in a duel." Thereupon he left the academy and took up his
abode at the Court of Turin. It was from Italy, De Gramont said, that
Chesterfield brought those elaborate manners, and that jealousy about
women, for which he was so notorious among the rakes of the
Restoration.[274]
Henry Peacham's chapter "Of Travaile"[275] is for the most part built
out of Dallington's advice, but it is worthy of note that in _The
Compleat Gentleman_, Spain is pressed upon the traveller's attention for
the first time. This is, of course, the natural reflection of an
interest in Spain due to the romantic adventures of Prince Charles and
Buckingham in that country. James Howell, who was of their train, gives
even more space to it in his _Instructions for Forreine Travell_.
Notwithstanding, and though Spain was, after 1605, fairly safe for
Englishmen, as a pleasure ground it was not popular. It was a
particularly uncomfortable and expensive country; hardly improved from
the time--(1537)--when Clenardus, weary with traversing deserts on his
way to the University of Salamanca, after a sparse meal of rabbit, sans
wine, sans water, composed himself to sleep on the floor of a little
hut, with nothing to pillow his head on except his three negro grooms,
and exclaimed, "O misera Lusitania, beati qui non viderunt."[276] All
civilization was confined to the few large cities, to reach which one
was obliged to traverse tedious, hot, barren, and unprofitable wastes,
in imminent danger of robbers, and in certainty of the customs officers,
who taxed people for everything, even the clothes they had on. None
escaped. Henry the Eighth's Ambassador complained loudly and frantically
of the outrage to a person in his office.[277] So did Elizabeth's
Ambassador. But the officers said grimly "that if Christ or Sanct
Fraunces came with all their flock they should not escape."[278] If the
preliminary discomforts from customs-officers put travellers into an ill
mood at once against Spain, the inns confirmed them in it. "In some
places there is but the cask of a House, with a little napery, but
sometimes no beds at all for Passengers in the Ventas--or Lodgings on
the King's highway, where if passengers meet, they must carry their
Knapsacks well provided of what is necessary: otherwise they may go to
bed supperless."[279] The Comtesse d'Aunoy grumbles that it was
impossible to warm oneself at the kitchen-fire without being choked, for
there was no chimney. Besides the room was full of men and women,
"blacker than Devils and clad like Beggars ... always some of 'em
impudently grating on a sorry Guitar."[280] Even the large cities were
not diverting, for though they were handsome enough and could show
"certain massie and solid Braveries," yet they had few of the
attractions of urban life. The streets were so ill-paved that the horses
splashed water into one's carriage at every step.[281] A friend warned
Tobie Matthew that "In the Cities you shall find so little of the
Italian delicacie for the manner of their buildings, the cleannesse and
sweetnesse of their streets, their way of living, their entertainments
for recreations by Villas, Gardens, Walks, Fountains, Academies, Arts of
Painting, Architecture and the like, that you would rather suspect that
they did but live together for fear of wolves."[282]
How little the solemnity of the Spanish nobles pleased English courtiers
used to the boisterous ways of James I. and his "Steenie," may be
gathered from _The Perambulation of Spain._[283] "You must know," says
the first character in that dialogue, "that there is a great deal of
gravity and state in the Catholic Court, but little noise, and few
people; so that it may be call'd a Monastery, rather than a Royal
Court." The economy in such a place was a great source of grievance. "By
this means the King of Spain spends not much," says the second
character. "So little," is the reply, "that I dare wager the French King
spends more in Pages and Laquays, than he of Spain among all his Court
Attendants." Buckingham's train jeered at the abstemious fare they
received.[284] It was in such irritating contrast to the lofty airs of
those who provided it. "We are still extream poor," writes the English
Ambassador about the Court of Madrid, "yet as proud as Divells, yea even
as rich Divells."[285] Not only at Court, but everywhere, Spaniards were
indifferent to strangers, and not at all interested in pleasing them.
Lord Clarendon remarks that in Madrid travellers "will find less delight
to reside than in any other Place to which we have before commended
them: for that Nation having less Reverence for meer Travellers, who go
Abroad, without Business, are not at all solicitous to provide for their
Accomodation: and when they complain of the want of many Conveniences,
as they have reason to do, they wonder men will come from Home, who will
be troubled for those Incommodities."[286]
It is no wonder, therefore, that Spain was considered a rather tedious
country for strangers, and that Howell "met more Passengers 'twixt Paris
and Orleans, than I found well neer in all the Journey through
Spain."[287] Curiosity and a desire to learn the language might carry a
man to Madrid for a time, but Englishmen could find little to commend
there. Holland, on the other hand, provoked their admiration more and
more. Travellers were never done exclaiming at its municipal
governments, its reformatories and workhouses, its industry, frugality,
and social economy. The neat buildings, elegant streets, and quiet inns,
were the subject of many encomiums.[288]
Descartes, who chose Amsterdam as the place in which to think out his
philosophy, praised it as the ideal retreat for students, contending
that it was far better for them than Italy, with its plagues, heat,
unwholesome evenings, murder and robbery.[289] Locke, when he went into
voluntary exile in 1684, enjoyed himself with the doctors and men of
letters in Amsterdam, attending by special invitation of the principal
physician of the city the dissection of a lioness, or discussing knotty
problems of theology with the wealthy Quaker merchants.[290] Courtiers
were charmed with the sea-shore at Scheveningen, where on the hard sand,
admirably contrived by nature for the divertisement of persons of
quality, the foreign ambassadors and their ladies, and the society of
the Hague, drove in their coaches and six horses.[291] However, Sir
William Temple, after some years spent as Ambassador to the Netherlands,
decided that Holland was a place where a man would choose rather to
travel than to live, because it was a country where there was more sense
than wit, more wealth than pleasure, and where one would find more
persons to esteem than to love.[292]
Holland was of peculiar delight to the traveller of the seventeenth
century because it contained so many curiosities and rareties. To ferret
out objects of vertu the Jacobean gentleman would take any journey.
People with cabinets of butterflies, miniatures, shells, ivory, or
Indian beads, were pestered by tourists asking to see their
treasures.[293] No garden was so entrancing to them as one that had "a
rupellary nidary"[294] or an aviary with eagles, cranes, storks,
bustards, ducks with four wings, or with rabbits of an almost perfect
yellow colour.[295] Holland, therefore, where ships brought precious
curiosities from all over the world, was a heaven for the virtuoso.
Evelyn in Rotterdam hovered between his delight in the brass statue of
Erasmus and a pelican, which he carefully describes. The great charm of
Dutch inns for Sam Paterson was their hoards of China and Japan ware and
the probability you had of meeting a purring marmot, a squeaking
guinea-pig, or a tame rabbit with a collar of bells, hopping through the
house.[296]
But we have dwelt too long, perhaps, on those who voyaged to see
knick-knacks, and to gain accomplishments at French academies. Though
the academies were characteristic of the seventeenth century, there were
other centres of education sought by Englishmen abroad. The study of
medicine, particularly, took many students to Padua or Paris, for the
Continent was far ahead of England in scientific work.[297] Sir Thomas
Browne's son studied anatomy at Padua with Sir John Finch, who had
settled there and was afterwards chosen syndic of the university.[298]
At Paris Martin Lister, though in the train of the English Ambassador,
principally enjoyed "Mr Bennis in the dissecting-room working by himself
upon a dead body," and "took more pleasure to see Monsieur Breman in his
white waistcoat digging in the royal physic-garden and sowing his
couches, than Mounsieur de Saintot making room for an ambassador": and
found himself better disposed and more apt to learn the names and
physiognomy of a hundred plants, than of five or six princes.[299]
It was medicine that chiefly interested Nicholas Ferrar, than whom no
traveller for study's sake was ever more devoted to the task of
self-improvement. At about the same time that the second Earl of
Chesterfield was fighting duels at the academy of Monsieur de Veau,
Nicholas Ferrar, a grave boy, came from Cambridge to Leipsic and "set
himself laboriously to study the originals of the city, the nature of
the government, the humors and inclinations of the people." Finding the
university too distracting, he retired to a neighbouring village to read
the choicest writers on German affairs. He served an apprenticeship of a
fortnight at every German trade. He could maintain a dialogue with an
architect in his own phrases; he could talk with mariners in their sea
terms. Removing to Padua, he attained in a very short time a marvellous
proficiency in physic, while his conversation and his charm ennobled the
evil students of Padua.[300]
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