CHAPTER 1

TOURING IN 1600

[Illustration: DEPARTURE OF A TOURIST]

TOURING

IN 1600

_A Study in the Development of

Travel as a Means of Education_

By E. S. BATES

With Illustrations from Contemporary Sources

[Illustration]

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

1911

COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY E. S. BATES

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

_Published September 1911_

TO

HED

CONTENTS

I. Some of the Tourists 3

II. Guide-Books and Guides 35

III. On the Water 60

IV. Christian Europe

PART I. EUROPEAN EUROPE 95

PART II. THE UNVISITED NORTH 154

PART III. THE MISUNDERSTOOD WEST 162

V. Mohammedan Europe

PART I. THE GRAND SIGNOR 182

PART II. JERUSALEM AND THE WAY THITHER 205

VI. Inns 240

VII. On the Road 284

VIII. The Purse 313

Special References 381

Bibliography 389

Index 407

ILLUSTRATIONS

DEPARTURE OF A TOURIST _Frontispiece_

(_British Museum MS. Egerton 1222, fol. 44._)

A PILGRIMAGE SCENE 18

_From a woodcut by Michael Ostendorfer (1519-1559) or

perhaps by his master, Albrecht Altdorfer. Both lived

at Regensburg, where the scene of this picture is laid, this

shrine of Our Lady of Regensburg being a regular pilgrimage

centre (British Museum)._

THE CHEAPEST WAY 22

_"Les Bohémiens" (no. 1) by Jacques Callot (1594-1635).

The artist ran away from home to Italy when a

youngster and fell in with company of this kind on the

road. The second state (1633; British Museum) has been

reproduced in preference to the first as being in no way

inferior and having the advantage of the verses appended

to them by another traveller of the time, the Abbé

de Marolles._

A TYPICAL TOWN-PLAN 52

_Map of Venice, illustrating especially the disregard of

scale. From H. de Beauveau's "Relation journalière,"

1615._

A TYPICAL MAP 54

_Part of Flanders, from Matthew Quadt's "Geographisch

Handtbuch," 1600. Illustrates the approximateness of

detail and the absence of roads, especially as contrasted

with the indications of waterways. But it must be noted

that cartography made as great advances during the

period here dealt with as surgery during the nineteenth

century._

A CHANNEL PASSAGE-BOAT 64

_From Münster's "Cosmographie," 1575 (ii. 865—part

of the map of Germany)._

SHIP FOR A LONG-DISTANCE VOYAGE 72

_Dutch vessel, showing the open cabins at the stern in

which Moryson preferred to sleep. From J. Fürtenbach's

"Architectura Navalis," 1629._

LOCK BETWEEN BOLOGNA AND FERRARA 82

_From J. Fürtenbach's "Newes Itinerarium Italiæ,"

1627. There were nine of these in thirty-five miles. Fürtenbach's

sketch shows an oval basin as seen from above,

with lock-gates at the down-stream end only. He gives

its measurements as large enough for three vessels, with

walls twenty ells high._

GATE OF ST. GEORGE, ANTWERP 122

_The gate as it appeared about the middle of the sixteenth

century (Peter Bruegel the elder: Bibl. Royale de Belgique),

showing also the long covered waggon which was

practically the only land conveyance in use, apart from

litters._

VENETIAN MOUNTEBANKS 134

_Painted between 1573 and 1579; from a Stammbuch

(British Museum MS. Egerton 1191). Concerning

these mountebanks the French traveller Villamont writes

in 1588, 'And if it happens that they [i.e. the 'sights'

of Venice] bore you, go and look at the 'charlatans'

in St. Mark's Place, mounted on platforms, enlarging

on the virtues of their wares, with musicians by their

side.'_

PUBLIC EXECUTIONS 136

_The "Supplicium Sceleri Froenum" of Jacques Callot

(1592-1635). The first state of the etching seems to be

unobtainable for reproduction, this being from a photograph

(the only one hitherto reproduced?) of one of the

better copies of the second state, almost equally rare in a

good condition (Dresden Museum)_.

DANGERS OF THE NORTHERN SEAS 156

_According to Münster's "Cosmographie" 1575 (ii.

1724)._

AT MONTSERRAT 164

_Montserrat and its hermitages, with the Madonna and

Child in the foreground and two pilgrims. From British

Museum Harleian MS. 3822, folio 596. The two

pilgrims are obviously the writer of the manuscript,

Diego Cuelbis, of Leipzig, and his companion, Joel

Koris. They visited Montserrat in 1599._

AN IRISH DINNER 178

_Referring more particularly to the MacSweynes, "whose

usages," says the author, John Derricke, in his "Image

of Irelande," 1581, "I beheld after the fashion there set

down." From the copy (the only complete one known)

in the Drummond Collection in the Library of the University

of Edinburgh. The cut also illustrates the contrasts

in Irish life as seen by the foreigner, referred to in

the chapter on Ireland._

AN EXAMPLE OF TURKISH FINE ART 190

_Miniature illustrating some of the characteristics of

Turkish art which Della Valle and other contemporary

travellers prized so highly. The brilliant colouring of

the original throws into relief much detail in the flowers

which is necessarily lost in reproduction. (From Brit.

Mus. Add. MS. 15,153; a copy of the Turkish translation

of the Fables of Bidpai, dated 1589.)_

PILGRIMS LEAVING JAFFA FOR JERUSALEM, 1581 210

_From the MS. of Sébastien Werro, curé of Fribourg

(Bibl. de la Société Economique de Fribourg). Showing

also the fort at Jaffa, the caves in which pilgrims had to

lodge until permission was given to depart, and the peremptory

methods of the Turks when a pilgrim got out of

the line of march_.

AT MOUNT SINAI 222

_From Christopher Fürer's "Itinerarium" (1566)._

ARMS OF A JERUSALEM PILGRIM 238

_Arms of Sébastien Werro, curé of Fribourg, Switzerland,

surmounted by the arms of the Knights of the Holy

Sepulchre, showing that he received that knighthood on

the occasion of his pilgrimage thither, 1581. The title-page

of the account of his journey written by himself

(Bibl. de la Société Economique de Fribourg)._

TWO GERMAN KITCHENS 254

_The 'fat' and the 'lean.' Plates 58 and 63 of J. T. de

Bry's "Proscenium Vitæ Humanæ" ("Emblemata Sæcularia").

From the copy of the first edition (1596) in

the Bodleian Library at Oxford._

GERMAN BATHING-PLACES 268

_From Münster's Cosmography; two of the woodcuts

are from the French edition of 1575 (ii. 1020-21), the

other from the Latin edition of 1550. Visitors to Berlin

will find the subject more artistically illustrated by the

"Jugendbrunnen" of Lucas Cranach the younger, too

large for reproduction here to do it justice._

THE RED GATE, ANTWERP 272

_As it was about the middle of the sixteenth century (plate I

of Peter Breugel the elder's "Prædiorum Villarum ...

Icones"; Bibl. Royale de Belgique), showing also the inn

which, according to the custom so convenient to late arrivals,

was usually to be found outside the gate of a town._

A MAIN ROAD IN ALSACE 284

_Showing ruts and loose stones. From Münster's "Cosmographia"

(1550; p. 455)._

A SIGN-POST 294

_From the 1570 edition of Barclay's translation of

Brandt's "Ship of Fools."_

"_The hande whiche men unto a crosse do nayle

Shewyth the way ofte to a man wandrynge

Which by the same his right way can nat fayle._"

BENIGHTED 'SIGHT'-SEERS 312

_From Josse de Damhouder's "Praxis Rerum Criminalium,"

1554._

A PASSENGER-BOAT FROM PADUA 328

_From the "Stammbuch" (1578-83) of Gregory Amman

in the Landesbibliothek, Cassel._

RABELAIS RECEIVES SOME MONEY 342

_Rabelais' receipt for money received by him against a

bill of exchange such as travellers used. Photographed

(with M. Heulhard's transcription) from the latter's

"Rabelais, ses Voyages, et son Exil."_

LITHGOW IN TROUBLE 348

_From the 1632 edition of his "Rare Adventures."_

TRAVELLERS ATTACKED BY ROBBERS 354

_No. 7 of Jacques Callot's "Misères de la Guerre"; a

photograph of the British Museum copy of the second

impression (1633). The second state has been chosen in

preference to the first, as including the verses of the

Abbé de Marolles, himself a traveller; the clearness of the

etching not having suffered in the second impression._

"WOLVES" 356

_Another wood-cut from Derricke's "Image of Irelande,"

or rather, part of one, the size of the original. It represents

Derricke's best wishes for Rory Oge, the 'rebel,' but

is none the less applicable generally._

A SOUVENIR 360

_A letter which was on the way between Venice and London

in October, 1606, when the bearer was attacked by

robbers in Lorraine, showing the tears and damp-stains

it received in consequence. The letter is from Sir Henry

Wotton, then ambassador in Venice; it was picked up

and forwarded to Henry IV of France, who sent it on to

London. It is now in the Public Records Office, No. 74

in Bundle 3 of the State Papers, Foreign (Venetian).

The bearer, Rowland Woodward, was paid £60 on Feb.

2, 1608, as compensation and for doctor's expenses, but

had not fully recovered from his injuries by 1625. (Cf.

L. P. Smith's "Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton,"

i, 325-8, 365 note, and ii. 481.)_

A SCHOLAR TRAVELLER 390

_François de Maulde (1556-97); portrait by J. Sadeler

(Bibl. Royale de Belgique). He was only about thirty

when this portrait was done, but his sufferings as a traveller

(see Bibliography) would alone account for his weary

look. The inscription belonging to it runs_:—

"_Tristia sive secunda fluant, in utrumque parato

Dulce mihi in libris vivere, dulce mori est._"

TOURING IN 1600

"Che Dio voglia che V. S. abbia pazienza di leggerla tutta."

_Pietro della Valle, "Il Pellegrino."_

TOURING IN 1600

CHAPTER I

SOME OF THE TOURISTS

But thus you see we maintain a trade, not for gold, silver, nor

jewels; nor for silks; nor for spices; nor any other commodity of

matter; but only for God's first creature, which was Light; to have

Light (I say), of the growth of all parts of the world ... we have

twelve that sail into foreign countries, ... who bring us the books,

and abstracts and patterns of experiments of all other parts. These we

call Merchants of Light.

F. BACON (1561-1626), _New Atlantis_.

First, M. de Montaigne.—When Montaigne found himself feeling old and

ill, in 1580, he made up his mind to try the baths of Germany and

Italy. So he set out; and returned in 1581. And sometimes the baths

did him good and sometimes they made no difference; but the journeying

never failed to do what the baths were meant for. He always, he

says, found forgetfulness of his age and infirmities in travelling.

However restless at night, he was alert in the morning, if the morning

meant starting for somewhere fresh. Compared with Montaigne at home,

Montaigne abroad never got tired or fretful; always in good spirits,

always interested in everything, and ready for a talk with the first

man he met. And when his companions suggested that they would like to

get to the journey's end, and that the longest way round, which he

preferred, had its disadvantages, especially when it was a bye-road

leading back to the place they started from, he would say, that he

never set out for anywhere particular; that he had not gone out of the

way, because his way lay through unfamiliar places, and the only place

he wished to avoid was where he had been before or where he had to

stop. And that he felt as one who was reading some delightful tale and

dreaded to come upon the last page.

So, no doubt, felt Fynes Moryson, for much of his life he spent either

in travelling or in writing the record of it. Starting in 1591, when

he was twenty-five, he passed through Germany, the Low Countries,

Denmark, Poland, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy, spending his winters

at Leipzig, Leyden, Padua, and Venice, learning the languages so

thoroughly as to be able to disguise his nationality at will. Returning

through France, he was robbed, and consequently reached home so

disreputable-looking that the servant took him for a burglar. He found

his brother planning a journey to Jerusalem. On the 29th of November,

1595, they set out, and on July 10, 1597, he was back in London, in

appearance again so strange that the Dogberry of Aldersgate Street

wrote him down for a Jesuit. But he returned alone: his brother Henry,

twenty-six years old and not strong, fell ill at Aleppo, how ill no

one knew till too late, and near Iskenderún he died in his brother's

arms, while the Turks stood round, jeering and thieving. Fynes buried

him there with stones above him to keep off the jackals, and an epitaph

which a later traveller by chance has preserved.[1]

To thee, deare Henry Morison,

Thy brother Phines, here left alone,

Hath left this fading memorie.

For monuments and all must die.

Fynes himself hurried home and never crossed the Channel again. But he

extended his knowledge of Great Britain by a visit to Scotland, and

by accompanying Sir Charles Blount during the latter's conquest of

Ireland. Then he settled down to write all he knew and could get to

know about the countries he had seen, and wrote at such length that no

one till quite recently has had the courage to reprint his account,

although what he printed was by no means all that he wrote. For this

reason his work has remained practically unused, even by writers whom

it specially concerns. It must form the basis of any description of

the countries he saw, at any rate, as seen by a foreigner, going, as

he does, more into detail than any one else, and being a thoroughly

fair-minded, level-headed, and well-educated man, whose knowledge

was the result of experience. His day was not the day of the 'Grand

Tourist,' whose habit it was to disguise single facts as general

statements, and others' general statements as his own experiences.

Yet however irreplaceable may be Montaigne's subjectivity and Moryson's

objectivity, it is desirable to find some one who combines both.

Such a one is Pietro della Valle, of Naples and Rome. He is the

impersonation of contemporary Italy at its best; of, to use his own

phrase, "quella civiltà di vivere e quello splendore all' italiana,"

and to read his letters is to realise, as in no other way can be so

readily realised, the reason why Italy held the position she did in

the ideas of sixteenth-century people. If you separate the various

characteristics that account for much of the attractiveness of his

writings; the interest in things small and great, without triviality

or ponderousness; the ability to write, combined with entire freedom

from affectation; the lovableness of his Italian and a charm of phrase

apart from his Italian, which might even, perhaps, survive translation;

learning without arrogance and hand in hand with observation; and

refinement and virility living in him as a single quality—if you

isolate these, there still remains something to distinguish him from

contemporary travellers, the product of gifts and character, it is

true, but only of gifts and character as moulded by contact from birth

with the best of a splendid civilisation, of which all the gentlemen of

Europe were students, but none but natives graduates.

Still, in one respect, contemporary travellers may claim he has

taken an unfair advantage. Not one of them has a romantic love-story

as a background to his journeyings; Della Valle has two. After a

twelve years' courtship at home, his intended bride was given by her

parents to some one else. This was the cause of his wanderings. At

San Marcellino at Naples, a mass was sung and the nuns prayed, the

little golden pilgrim's staff he wore round his neck was blessed, and

a vow made by him never to take it off until he had visited the Holy

Sepulchre.

Thus he became Pietro della Valle, "Il Pellegrino" (the Pilgrim); and

started. Venice, Constantinople, Cairo, Jerusalem, Damascus, was his

route; but his next letter thereafter is "from my tent in the desert":

he has disappeared over the tourist horizon, and become a traveller on

the grand scale. But he returns, and has much to say on the way back.

Meanwhile, in Babylon, he has met another lady-love, Maani Gioerida,

eighteen years old, daughter of an Assyrian father and an Armenian

mother. Marriage with her was soon followed by her death; for the

remaining four years of his wanderings he carried her body with him,

laying it to rest in the end in his family tomb: and married again,

this time the girl who had attended his first wife, alive and dead,

Maria Tinatin di Ziba, a Georgian. And with her he lived happy ever

after, and by her had fourteen sons.

Another type of traveller is the philosopher philosophizing. Sir Henry

Blount set four particular aims before himself when he started for

southeastern Europe with the intention of increasing his knowledge

of things human, choosing the southeast because the west too closely

resembled England. He went to note, first, the characteristics of

"the religion, manners, and policy of the Turks" in so far as these

threw light on the question whether they were, as reputed, barbarous,

or possessed of a different variety of civilisation. Secondly, to

satisfy the interest he felt in the subject-races, especially Jews;

thirdly, to study the Turkish army about to set out for Poland; and

fourthly, Cairo, which being the largest city existing, or on record,

had problems of its own whose solutions he wished to note, much as

foreigners might come to study London County Council doings now. This

was in 1634.

But besides those who were born travellers and those who achieved

travel, there were those who had travel thrust upon them; Thomas

Dallam, for instance. Dallam was the master organ-builder of

Elizabethan England. When, therefore, the Queen wished to send such a

present to the Grand Turk as should assure her outshining all other

sovereigns in his eyes and assist the Levant Company (who probably

paid for it) in securing further privileges, an organ was the

present, and Dallam had to make it and to take it. In 1599 he set out,

and in 1600 praised God for his return. He, too, was an excellent

Englishman: shrewd, interested, and interesting; and with an ability

to express himself just abreast of his thinking faculty. His organ was

a marvellous creation; played chimes, and song-tunes by itself, had

two dummy-men on it who fanfared on silver trumpets, and, above, an

imitation holly-bush filled with mechanical birds which sang and shook

their wings. The Grand Turk sent for Dallam to play on it, which he did

rather nervously, having been warned that it meant death to touch the

Signor, and the latter sat so near behind him that "I touched his knee

with my breeches.... He sat so right behind me that he could not see

what I did, therefore he stood up, but in his rising from his chair,

he gave me a thrust forward, which he could not otherwise do, he sat

so near me: but I thought he had been drawing his sword to cut off my

head."

The organ was so great a success that Dallam became a favoured man.

One attendant even let him look in at a grating through which he saw

thirty of the girls of the harem playing ball, each wearing a chain of

pearls round the neck, a ring of gold round the ankle, velvet slippers,

a small cap of cloth of gold, breeches of the finest muslin, and a

scarlet satin jacket.

Dallam was more in favour than he liked, for he was urged to settle

there. "I answered them that I had a wife and children in England who

did expect my return, though indeed I had neither wife nor children,

yet to excuse myself I made them that answer."

Besides the business man who became a tourist without knowing it, there

were the tourists who became so because home was too hot for them. Of

their number was William Lithgow, whose "Rare Adventures" is the record

of nineteen years' travel, ended in 1620 by the severity of the torture

he endured in Spain through being taken for a spy. Although fifty years

of age when he started writing his account, a fair sample of his style

is,—"Here in Argos I had the ground to be a pillow, and the world-wide

fields to be a chamber, the whirling windy skies to be a roof to my

winter-blasted lodging, the humid vapours of cold Nocturna to accompany

the unwished-for bed of my repose." And this was accompanied by so much

second-hand history and doggerel that the printer rebelled and saved us

from much more of it. The trustworthiness of his facts may be gauged by

his stating as the result of his personal experience that Scotland is

one hundred and twenty miles longer than England. On the other hand,

he visited more places in Europe than any other one tourist, besides

having some experience of Palestine and North Africa; and what he wrote

he wrote after he had seen all that he did see. His comparisons are,

therefore, worth attention, and these and the personal experiences

which his verbiage has not crowded out of his book give it a permanent

value and interest to those who have the patience to find them.

All this while we are forgetting the ladies; very few in number,

but three at least possessing personality,—two princesses and an

ambassador's wife. Princess number one was the eldest daughter of

Philip II of Spain, the Infanta Doña Clara Eugenia, who crossed Europe

with her husband, to take up the government of the Low Countries,

in 1599, and wrote a long letter to her brother about the journey

from Milan to Brussels, bright and pithy, one of the most readable

and sensible letters that remain to us from the sixteenth century.

Princess number two is the daughter of a king of Sweden, who had

trouble in finding a husband for Princess Cecily, inasmuch as she

would marry no one who would not promise to take her to England within

a year from the wedding day; for the great desire of her life was to

see Queen Elizabeth. A marquis of Baden accepted the condition, and

on November 12, 1564, they started, by which time she had spent four

years learning English and could speak it well. The voyage took ten

months, the winter was a severe one, and much of their way lay through

countries whose kings were hostile to her father and the inhabitants

to every stranger. Leaving Stockholm while her relatives expressed

their opinion about her journey by lamentations and fainting-fits,

she crossed to Finland in a storm, in which the pilot lost heart to

the extent of pointing out the rock on which they were going to be

shipwrecked. Finland they left in four days, to escape starvation,

during another storm; crossed to Lithuania; thence by land through

Poland, North Germany, and Flanders, to Calais. Even from here it was

not plain sailing, in any sense of the words; the sea was high when

she started; all were sick ("with the cruel surges of the water and

the rolling of the unsavoury ship"), except herself, standing on the

hatches, looking towards England. But it proved impossible to get into

Dover and they had to turn back. "'Alas!' quoth she, 'now must I needs

be sick, both in body and in mind,' and therewith taking her cabin,

waxed wonderful sick." A second time they tried; and again all were

sick but herself; "she sitting always upon the hatches, passed the

time in singing the English psalms of David after the English note and

ditty." But again they had to turn back and again that made her sick,

so sick that they thought she was going to be confined, for she had

become pregnant about the time of her starting. A third attempt was

successful; and on September 11, 1565, she arrived at Bedford House,

Strand; on the 14th Queen Elizabeth arrived there, too, to see her;

and on the 15th came the baby. This story ought to end like Della

Valle's, that she lived happy ever after; but that cannot truthfully

be said, because of what is recorded about Princess Cecily and certain

unpaid London tradesmen. Much more would there be to say of her as a

tourist, had she written an autobiography; for the rest of her life

she continued travelling, spending all her own money on it and much of

other people's.

The third, the ambassador's wife, is Ann, Lady Fanshawe. Her travels

belong, strictly speaking, to dates just outside the limits (1542-1642)

with which this book is concerned, but for all practical purposes may

be referred to with little reserve. Her experience was great, for her

journeys were even more numerous than her pregnancies, which numbered

eighteen; and being cheerful, clear-headed, and sincere in no ordinary

measure, her "Memoirs" are almost as excellent a record of travel as of

character.

It is a matter for regret that her husband, Sir Richard, has not left

us an account of his own, but in this he resembles practically all his

kind. There is Sir Robert Sherley, who went ambassador to two Emperors,

two Popes, twice to Spain, twice to Poland, once to Russia, twice to

Persia: yet of Sir Robert Sherley as tourist, we know next to nothing.

So also of Sir Paul Pindar, who says in a letter that he has had

eighteen years' experience of Italy; and De Foix, a man greatly gifted,

who wished to serve his country as far as possible distant from its

Valois Kings, and consequently chose a series of embassies as an

honourable, useful form of self-exile. Yet of these last two and others

there remains some record by means of men who accompanied them. Part

of the travels of Peter Mundy, whose name will often recur, happened

in the train of the former; and when De Thou, the historian, paid the

visit to Italy which he recounts in his autobiography, it was with De

Foix that he went.

Among the exceptions, most noticeable is Augier Ghiselin de Busbecq,

a Fleming. After representing the Emperor in England at the wedding

of Philip and Mary, he was sent to Constantinople (1556-1562),

and afterwards to France. His letters from France that have been

preserved are semi-official; of minor interest compared with those

from Constantinople, which, not meant for publication but addressed to

friends who were worthy of them, in time became printed. They belong

to the literature of middle age, that which is written by men of fine

character and fine education when successful issues out of many trials

have made them wise and left them young. A many-sided man: the library

at Vienna is the richer for his presents to the Emperor; many are the

stories he tells of the wild animals he kept to while away the hours

of the imprisonment which he, ambassador as he was, had to endure; the

introducer into Europe of lilac, tulips, and syringa; a collector

of coins when such an occupation was not usual as a hobby. His

opportunities, indeed, were such as occur no more; in Asia Minor coins

one thousand years old were in daily use as weights; and yet Busbecq

missed one chance, for a brazier to whom he was referred regretted he

had not met him a few days earlier, when he had had a vessel full of

old coins which he had just melted down to make kettles.

Turning from the personalities to the causes of travel, we find that

the class to which Busbecq belonged, that of resident ambassador, was

of recent growth, and that it, and the tendencies of which it is one

symptom, are responsible for creating the whole of the motives and the

facilities for travel which characterise journeyings of this time as

something different in kind from those which preceded them. The custom

of maintaining resident representatives was developed in Italy during

the fifteenth century, but it did not spread to the rest of civilised

Europe till near the beginning of the next; German research, indeed,

has even narrowed down the dates within which it established itself

as an international system to 1494-1497.[2] The change was partly due

to the consolidation of sovereignties, which increased the distances

to be traversed between neighbour-princes, partly to the insight of

the three great rulers who achieved the consolidations,—Ferdinand of

Aragon, Louis XI, and Henry VII, who abandoned the idea of force

and isolation as the only possible policies, and attempted to gain

the advantages, and avoid the disadvantages, of both by means of

ambassadors. Henry VII regarded them as in no way differing from spies;

the most efficient kind of spies, from the point of view of the sender;

and unavoidable, from that of the receiver. The latter's only remedy,

Henry VII thought, was to send two for every one received. This alone,

regarded, as it must be, considering who the speaker was, as indicating

what the practice of the future would be, suffices to explain, even

to prove, a great increase in diplomatic movements. But what further

compels the deduction is that the foregoing is reported by Comines, who

was probably, next to Francesco Guicciardini, the most frequently read

historian throughout the sixteenth century.

Side by side with these official spies was the secret service; bound

to grow in proportion to the increase among the former, implying a

certain cosmopolitanism in its members, which, again, implies touring.

This class of tourists is naturally the least communicative of all,

but so far as England alone is concerned, if the history of the growth

of the English spy-system between Thomas and Oliver Cromwell ever

comes to be written, it is bound to reveal an enormous number of men,

continually on the move for such purposes, or qualifying themselves

for secret service by previous travel. And while there is a certain

amount of information concerning tourists and touring to be gathered,

in scraps, among State Papers which concern spies as spies, there is a

great deal available, often first-hand, from them during this period

of probation. Many, also, would be termed spies by their enemies and

news-writers by their friends; persons who are abroad for some other,

more or less genuine, reason, whose information was very welcome to

those at home in the absence of newspapers, and was often paid for by

politicians who could acquire a greater hold on the attention of those

in power by means of knowledge which was exclusive during a period when

the Foreign Office of a government existed in a far less definitely

organised form than at present. It was in the course of such a mission

that Edmund Spenser saw most of Europe and gained that intimate

knowledge of contemporary politics which gives his poems a value which

would have been more generally recognised had not their value as poetry

overshadowed other merits. The traveller, then, still fulfilled what

had been his chief use to humanity in mediæval times, that of a "bearer

of tydynges," as Chaucer insists often enough in his "House of Fame."

It is worth while turning back to Chaucer's time to see how far the

classes of travellers then existing have their counterparts in 1600,

and how far not. Omitting students and artizans, as not varying,

the types to be met on the road then may be collected into those of

commerce, pilgrimage, vagabondage, and knight-errantry.

With regard to commerce, it may safely be guessed that the absence

of the modern inventions for communication at a distance implied, in

1600 as in Chaucer's day, a greater proportional number of journeys in

person than at present: and the enormous extension of commerce involved

in the discoveries of sea-routes must have involved an increase in

commercial traffic within Europe. As for the particular forms of trade

that were responsible for taking men away from their homes, within

the limits of Europe, it would probably be found, if statistics were

possible, that dried fish came first, with wine and corn bracketed

second. The Roman Catholic fast-days had produced a habit of eating

dried fish which was not to be shaken off, in the strictest Protestant

quarters, directly; and it was largely used for provisioning armies.

[Illustration: A PILGRIMAGE SCENE]

The second class of mediæval traveller, the pilgrim, is often in

evidence about 1600, usually indirect evidence; the pilgrim who is

nothing but pilgrim leaves practically no detailed record of himself

except when he goes to Jerusalem. Yet Evelyn was told at Rome that

during the year of Jubilee, 1600, twenty-five thousand five hundred

women visitors were registered at the pilgrims' hospice of the Holy

Trinity there, and four hundred and forty thousand men. Also, one

who was at Montserrat in 1599, was told that six hundred pilgrims

dined there every day, and at high festivals between three thousand

and four thousand; while another (1619) learnt that whereas the monks'

income from their thirty-seven estates stood at nine thousand scudi

(say, thirteen thousand pounds at to-day's values) annually, they

spent seven times that amount, the balance being derived from the

sale of sanctified articles or from gifts.[3] On the whole, however,

a decrease must be presupposed during this period on account of the

cessation of pilgrimage among the Protestant half of Europe. Moreover,

the kind of journeying which is specially characteristic of this

period incidentally tended to further Protestant ideas and discredit

pilgrimage. For pilgrimage was, of course, towards some relic. Now

relics which mutually excluded each other's genuineness, such as two

heads of one saint, were not likely to be met with on the same pilgrim

route: the establishment of one such on a given route would hinder

the establishment of a second for financial, as well as devotional,

reasons. But when a believer travelled for diplomatic or educational

purposes, his direction was quite as likely to lead across pilgrim

routes, as along them. In which case he would be morally certain to

come across these mutually exclusive relics, on one and the same

journey, and the doubts thus started might be cumulative in their

results.[4] On the other hand the very fact of opposition stimulated

pilgrim zeal among the orthodox, as, _e. g._, to the still flourishing

shrine of Notre Dame des Ardilliers near Saumur, as a result of

Saumur itself becoming a headquarters of the "Reformed" creed. There

abided of course the permanent features of life which make pilgrimage

as deep-rooted as the love of children, and one of the epidemics of

pilgrimage that occur periodically burst out in France about 1585, so

Busbecq writes. Whole villages of people clothed themselves in white

linen, took crosses and went off to some shrine two or three days'

journey away. The special cause of this epidemic may perhaps be sought

in the pilgrimage to Our Lady of Chartres by their queen, in 1582, to

beg for relief from her barrenness. One incident of this journey ought

not to be left buried in the Calendar of Foreign State Papers, the only

place where it has hitherto been printed. On being told why the queen

was going thither, a countrywoman said, "Alas! Madame is too late; the

good priest who used to make the children has just died."

An example of the pilgrim we have already met in Della Valle.

Bartholomew Sastrow in his autobiography reveals a man travelling in

search of work, a very unpleasant man, perhaps, but so strikingly

true a picture of the every-day life and every-day thought of a lower

middle-class man of the sixteenth century as not to be surpassed

for any other century, past, present, or future, not even among

autobiographies.

But for the man who is trying to avoid work, the third of the mediæval

types, the vagabond, it would be out of place to select an individual

to stand for the class in Renascence days, seeing that it became a

stock literary type; vagabondage in general being epitomized for the

time in the Spanish picaro. The picaro was one who saw much of the

seamy side of life and remembered it with pleasure—it was all life

and the true picaro was in love with life. The only enemy he had

permanently was civilisation; yet he and it became reconciled in his

old age: a picaro who grew old ceased to be a picaro. Meanwhile he

was always forgiving civilisation, and being forgiven; both had equal

need of forgiveness. Yet there is one picaro characteristic hard to

overlook—his passion for being dull at great length when he drops into

print: Lazarillo de Tormes and Gil Bias being the only ones of whom

it may be said that from a reader's standpoint they were all that

they should have been and nothing that they should not. The rest,

when met between the covers of a book, resemble the parson whom one

of themselves, Quevedo's Pablos, caught up on the way to Madrid and

whom he hardly prevented from reciting his verses on St. Ursula and

her eleven thousand virgins, fifty octavetts to each virgin; even

then he could not escape a comedy containing more scenes than there

were days in a Jerusalem pilgrimage, besides five quires concerning

Noah's Ark. This same Pablos explains incidentally what his kind talked

about to chance companions on the road, for meeting another making for

Segovia they fell into "la conversacion propia de picaros." Whether

the Turk was on the downhill and how strong was the king: how the Holy

Land might be reconquered, and likewise Algiers: party politics were

then discussed and afterwards the management of the rebellious Low

Countries. There were, too, picaros of high degree, but these were all

men of war, whereas nothing but hunger made an ordinary picaro fight.

High and low, however, had this in common, that they preferred living

at others' expense to working, and consequently shifted their lodgings

as often as any other class of tourist, in deference to local opinion.

Of the fourth mediæval type, the knight-errant, it is hard to say

whether it was extinct or not: all depends on the extent to which the

knight-errant is idealised. It is certainly true in this degree, that

contemporary fiction must be reckoned as a cause of travel. Don Quixote

is not to be ignored as a traveller and he was not alone. The first

Earl of Cork's eldest son was so affected by the romances that the

"roving wildness of his thoughts" which they brought about was only

partially cured by continual extraction of square and cube roots.

But perhaps the knight-errant of this date is better identified with

the picaro of high degree, and as such the class may be exemplified by

Don Alonzo de Guzman, the first chapter of whose autobiography gives a

better insight into the psychology, and life on the road, of the picaro

than the whole flood of nineteenth-century comment on the subject. At

the age of eighteen he found himself with no father, no money, and a

mother pious but talkative; after having provided for his needs for a

while by marriage, he left home with a horse, a mule, a bed, and sixty

ducats. And though what follows belongs more to the history of lying

than the history of the world, it throws side-lights. And at any rate,

any excuse is good enough to turn to it, for Don Alonzo has much in

common with Benvenuto Cellini.

[Illustration: THE CHEAPEST WAY]

Now we have passed beyond the mediæval types and come to such as are

somewhat more prominent in this, than in the previous, centuries.

Exiles, for instance. The economic changes that took place during the

sixteenth century made it increasingly difficult for the equivalents

for Chancellors of the Exchequer to meet the yearly deficits. The

legal authorities were therefore called upon to assist, and a working

arrangement was established in practically all European countries

whereby the political ferment of the time was taken advantage of

for the betterment of the finances. Instead of the slow process and

meagre results of waiting for death-duties, a man of wealth suffered

premature civil death, or was harried into civil suicide. He was

exiled, or fled: he had become a tourist.

Inseparable from political is religious self-exile. What happened very

often in England was this. A youngster is seized with that belief in

the likelihood of an ideal life elsewhere and that desire for a change,

which are characteristic of the age of twenty. The theological cast of

the age gives the former a religious bias. He escapes. After a time

it seems to him that human characteristics have the upper hand of the

apostolic, even in Roman Catholics, to a greater extent than he once

believed, and that he would like to go home. He lands, is questioned

by the Mayor, reported on to the Privy Council, in which report his

experiences are to be found summarised.

One class of men, however, which might be expected to provide many

examples, is for the most part absent,—missionaries,—occupied at home

converting each other at this date, or re-converting themselves. The

chief, in fact, the Jesuits, were confined each one to his nation by

order, and only in respect of their early training days do they appear

as foreigners abroad. Acknowledgements are due, on the other hand,

for information received, to captives set free, soldiers, artists,

herbalists, antiquaries, and even to those who, so far as we know, only

looked on, like Shakespeare; and to many others led abroad by special

reasons, such as the Italian Marquis who felt it necessary for him to

have a long holiday after the privations of Lent.

But with all these varieties of tourist, we still have not come to

the Average Tourist. The type is extinct, killed by reference-books,

telegraphy, and democracy. For the Average Tourist left his fatherland

to get information which he could not get at home, and he wanted this

information because he was a junior member of the aristocracy, at that

time the governing class more exclusively than at present. In feudal

days isolation was, comparatively, taken for granted, and the fact of

that voluntary isolation implied many hindrances to touring. The need

of acquiring information of every kind that affected political action

had been therefore less realised and the difficulty of acquiring it

greater. These years near 1600 are the years of transition, transition

to a custom for travellers to

... seek their place through storms,

In passing many seas for many forms

Of foreign government, endure the pain

Of many faces seeing, and the gain

That strangers make of their strange-loving humours:

Learn tongues; keep note-books; all to feed the tumours

Of vain discourse at home, or serve the course

Of state employment....[5]

Herein lies the unity of subject of this book; not in its concern with

a given class of experiences during a given period. Roughly speaking,

in the two half-centuries preceding and succeeding the year 1600, the

practice of the upper classes of sending sons abroad as part of their

education became successively an experiment, a custom, and, finally, a

system. By the middle of the seventeenth century this system had become

a thoroughly set system, and the "Grand Tour" a topic for hack-writers.

Of the latter, James Howell was the first. His "Instructions for

Foreign Travel" (1642) may serve to date the beginning of "Grand

Touring" in the modern sense of the phrase, while the publication of

Andrew Boorde's "Introduction of Knowledge" a century earlier, does the

same for this preceding period, that of the development of travel as a

means of education.

Delimiting the movement by means of English books suggests that it was

a merely English movement, but it was in fact European, though true of

the different countries in varying degrees. The increase of diplomatic

journeys,[6], already mentioned, the core of this development and its

chief instrument, was common to all divisions of Europe in proportion

to the degree of the civilisation attained. In the Empire and Poland

the custom grew up less suddenly; it had begun earlier. In Italy, it

began later, since it was not till later that there was much for an

Italian to learn that he could not learn better at home. Sir Henry

Wotton[7] noted in 1603 that travelling was coming into fashion among

the young nobles of Venice. In France, an early beginning was broken

off by the civil wars, not to start afresh till Henry IV's sovereignty

was established. As for Spaniards and Portuguese, they alone had

dominions over-sea to attend to.

In England, on the other hand, political reversals being at once

frequent, thorough, and peaceable, migrations were very common and

usually short. That touring would result from migration was certain,

because it familiarised English people with the attractions and the

affairs of the continent and with the uses of that familiarity, and

established communications. Other special causes existed, too, truisms

concerning which are so plentiful that there is no need to repeat them

here.

But the certainty of the change did not prevent it being slow. Andrew

Boorde, who knew Europe thoroughly, found hardly any of his countrymen

abroad except students and merchants, and for the following half

century it is the tendency rather than the fact that may be noted, as

indicated, for example, by Sir Philip Sidney, who started in 1572,

writing later to his brother that "a great number of us never thought

in ourselves why we went, but a certain tickling humour to do as

other men had done." In 1578 Florio could still write in one of his

Italian-English dialogues published in London:[8] "'Englishmen, go they

through the world?' 'Yea some, but few.'" Yet in 1592 and again in

1595 the Pope complained about the number of English heretics allowed

at Venice,[9] and in 1615 an Englishman, George Sandys, leaves out of

his travel-book everything relating to places north of Venice, such

being, he says, "daily surveyed and exactly related." Three years

earlier James I's Ambassador at Venice writes[10] to the Doge that

there are more than seventy English in Venice whereas "formerly" there

had been four or five; and when he adds that there are not more than

ten in the rest of Italy it must be remembered that he is making out a

case and even then refers to Protestants only: between 1579 and 1603,

three hundred and fifty Englishmen had been received into the English

College at Rome.[11]

The development, then, of the English tourist may be synchronised with

the rise of the English Drama and the expansion of English Commerce.

In other words, the preparation for it came before the failure of

the Spanish Armada; the actuality directly afterwards. But it could

not have followed the course it did except in conjunction with wider

causes, which emphasise its place as but part of a European movement.

These may be sought in (1) the slight, but definite, advance in

civilisation which made people more accessible to the ideas which peace

fosters; (2) the greater area over which peace prevailed round about

the year 1600: (3) the increase in centralisation in government, which

decreased the obstacles in the way of the traveller, and increased the

attractiveness of particular points, _i.e._, where the courts were held.

At the same time the increase in touring which really took place

would be greatly over-estimated if one considered the evidence of

bibliography as all-sufficient. Almost all that the latter proves is

an increase in writing about it, due to the greatly increased demand

for the written word which was the outcome of printing. Morelli, in

his essay[12] on little-known Venetian travellers, quotes Giosaffate

Barbaro as writing in 1487, "I have experienced and seen much that

would probably be accounted rubbish by those who have, so to speak,

never been outside Venice, by reason that such things are not customary

there. And this has been the chief reason for my never having cared to

write of what I have seen, nor even to speak much thereof." Yet by 1600

there were probably few countries in Europe in which recent accounts

of the regions visited by Barbaro could not be read in the vernacular,

accounts out of which some one expected to see a profit. Indications,

on the contrary, of enormous numbers leaving home may be found in

this one fact; that the names are known of twelve hundred Germans who

passed beyond the limits of civilised Christendom during the sixteenth

century.[13] What must then be the number of Europeans, ascertainable

and otherwise, who were going about Europe then?

As regards the Average Tourist, however, we are not left to our

imagination. He is often to be found in person, young, rich, abroad to

learn. Yet—why should he, rather than his contemporaries of the lower

classes, need teaching? The answer will come of its own accord if we

stop to consider the similarities and divergences existent between the

Jesuits and the Salvation Army. Both are the outcome of the same form

of human energy, that of Christianity militant against present-day

evils; it is circumstances that have caused the divergence. The Jesuits

were as keen at first for social reform as the Salvation Army have

become; the Salvation Army used to be as much preoccupied with theology

as the Jesuits. In details the resemblance is more picturesque without

being any more accidental. The Salvation Army describe themselves

after the fashion of the Papal title of "servus servorum Dei," as

the "servants of all"; and the first thing that Loyola did when his

associates insisted on his adopting the same title that "General" Booth

has assumed, was to go downstairs and do the cooking. The two societies

with one and the same root-idea essentially, have been drawn into

ministering to the lower class in the nineteenth century and the upper

class three hundred years earlier: the identity of spirit consisting

in the class that was ministered to being that which possessed the

greatest potentialities and the greatest needs.[14] And in all the

prescribed occupations of the Average Tourist we shall find this

implied, that the future of his country depended on the use he made of

his tour.

Let us take two specimens; one in the rough, the other in the finished,

state: No. 1 shall be John Lauder of Fountainhall; No. 2, the Duc de

Rohan. The former's diary is not to be equalled for the insight it

gives into the development of the mind of the fledgling-dignitary

abroad; not a pleasant picture always, not the evolution of a mother's

treasure into an omniscient angel, but of a male Scot of nineteen into

the early stages of a man of this wicked world; but—it happened. We

note his language becoming decidedly coarser and an introduction to

Rabelais' works not improving matters. Still, the former would have

happened at home, only in a narrower circle; and for Rabelais, who that

has read him does not know the other side? Then, he did not always

work as a good boy should: he was studying law at Poictiers, and a

German who was there twenty years earlier tells us that at Poictiers

there were so many students that those who wanted to work retired to

the neighbouring St. Jean d'Angely. Lauder stopped at Poictiers and

writes, "I was beginning to make many acquaintances at Poictiers, to

go in and drink with them, as,"—then follow several names, then a note

by the editor that twenty-seven lines have been erased in the MS. It

continues: "I was beginning to fall very idle." Later on: "I took up to

drink with me M. de la Porte, de Gruché, de Gey, de Gaule, Baranton's

brother, etc."; [twenty-two lines erased] "on my wakening in the

morning I found my head sore with the wine I had drunk." Even if one

was wrong-headed enough to agree with what the minister at Fountainhall

would feel obliged to remark about such occurrences, nothing could

counterbalance the advantage to a Scot of learning that the Scottish

opinion of Scots was not universally accepted. Lauder is surprised,

genuinely humiliated, to find his countrymen despised abroad for the

iconoclasm that accompanied their "conversion."

Lauder wrote a diary: the Duc de Rohan a "letter" to his mother,

summarising the valuable information acquired in a virtuous

perambulation through Italy, Hungary, Bohemia, Germany, the Low

Countries, England, including a flying visit to Scotland; an harangue

of flat mediocrity, imitative in character, thoughtful only in so far

as, and in the way, he had been taught to be thoughtful. But, read

between the lines, it is most interesting; better representing the

Average Tourist in his nominal every-day state of mind than any other

book. He embodies the sayings and doings of hundreds of others whose

only memorials are on tombstones or in genealogies; he endures the

inns in silence; never ate nor drank nor saw a coin or a poor man,

for aught he says; passed the country in haste, ignoring the scenery

except where "classical" authors had praised it, considered the Alps

a nuisance, and democratic governments a degraded, albeit successful,

eccentricity; and hastened past the Lago di Garda, in spite of the new

fortress in building there, to Brescia, the latter being "better worth

seeing." It was just 1600 when he travelled, and the ideas of the year

are reflected in his opening lines with an exactitude possible only

to one who has the mind of his contemporaries and none of his own.

"Peace having been made, I saw I could not be any use in France." So

he employed his idleness in attempting to learn something, in noting

the differences in countries and peoples. Yet he would not be the

Average Tourist made perfect that he is if there was not some idea of

the future hovering in him—he is the only traveller, except Sir Henry

Blount, the philosopher, who notes, or even seems to note, that the

chief factor of differences between human being and human being is

geography.

Yet underneath all the special characteristics which distinguish

everyone of these tourists from every other, there remains one that

all share with each other and with us, that expressed with the crude

controversial Elizabethan vigour in some lines which Thomas Nashe

wrote towards the close of the sixteenth century—"'Countryman, tell me

what is the occasion of thy straying so far ... to visit this strange

nation?' ... 'That which was the Israelites' curse we ... count our

chief blessedness: he is nobody that hath not travelled'"—the sense

of the inexhaustible pleasure of travel. Had it been otherwise they

would not have cared to write down their experiences; nor we to read

them. And if at times it is hard to find a reflection of their pleasure

in what they have written, it is certainly there, if only between

the lines, manifesting how this continual variety of human beings is

brought into touch, even if unconsciously, with the infinite change and

range of the ideas and efforts of millions of persons over millions

upon millions of acres, each person and each acre with its own history,

life, fate, and influence. If, too, in the course of summarising

what they experienced, the more trivial details seem to occupy a

larger proportion of the space than is their due, it may be suggested

that that is the proportion in which they appear in the tourists'

reminiscences.

The permanent undercurrent I have tried to suggest where circumstances

bring it to the surface in some one of its more definite forms.

CHAPTER II

GUIDE-BOOKS AND GUIDES

Now resteth in my memory but this point, which indeed is the chief to

you of all others; which is, the choice of what men you are to direct

yourself to; for it is certain no vessel can leave a worse taste in

the liquor it contains, than a wrong teacher infects an unskilful

hearer with that which will hardly ever out.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY'S advice to his brother

(about 1578).

From what has been said already, two conclusions may be drawn: first,

that the Average Tourist was given much advice; secondly, that he did

not take it. Let us too, then, see the theory for one chapter only;

and, in all chapters after, the practice.

It must have amused many a youngster to hear the down-trodden old

gentleman, whom his father had hired, setting forth how the said

youngster must behave in wicked Italy if he was to grow up in favour

with God and man; all the more so if the old gentleman, whose name,

perhaps, was the local equivalent for John Smith, published his advice

in Latin under a Latin pseudonym, say, Gruberus or Plotius. Gruberus

and Plotius suggest themselves because they are the very guidiest of

guide-book writers. They, like all the orthodox of their kind, begin

by a solemn argument for and against travelling. They bring up to

support them a most miscellaneous host: the Prophets, the Apostles,

Daedalus, Ulysses, the Queen of Sheba, Theseus, Anacharsis, the "Church

of Christ," Pythagoras, Plato, Abraham, Aristotle, Apollonius of Tyana,

Euclid, Zamolxis, Lycurgus, Naomi, Cicero, Galen, Dioscorides, him who

travelled from farthest Spain to see Livy ("and immediately," as some

one most unkindly says, "immediately he saw him, went away"); Solon

also and St. Paul, and Mithridates, the Roman Decemviri, Diodorus

Siculus, Strabo, Pausanias, Cluverius, Moses, Orpheus, Draco, Minos,

Rhadamanthus, Æsculapius, Hippocrates, Avicenna, the physicians of

Egypt and the gods of Greece. But there is not a word about Jonah;

perhaps his luck and experiences were considered abnormal; or perhaps

because, as Howell says, "he travelled much, but saw little."

Then there are those who have to be refuted or explained away:

Socrates, Seneca, the Lacedaemonians, Athenians, Chinese, Muscovites,

Psophidius, Elianus, and Pompeius Laetus. Cain, also, the first

traveller, creates a prejudice. Likewise, the argument from experience

has to be met. Some return from travel, they say, using phrases

without meaning, pale, lean, scabby and worm-eaten, burdens on their

consciences, astounding garments on their backs, with the manners of

an actor and superciliously stupid. Yet is this not due to the thing

itself, but to the abuse thereof; peradventure he shall be corrupted

more quickly at home than abroad, and there is less to be feared from

universities and strange lands than from the indulgent mother. Moreover

"non nobiliora quam mobiliora"; the heavens rejoice in motion, and

transplantation yieldeth new life to plants. And shall the little

sparrow travel as he pleases and man, lord of the animals, be confined

to a farm or a hamlet?

Reason, erudition and emotion having thus conquered, instruction

begins. The forethought necessary is as great as if he were choosing

a wife. For tutors and horses, it seems, the most that can be

expected from them is that they shall not imperil his soul and body

respectively. First among requisites is a book of prayers and hymns

effective for salvation without being so pugnacious, doctrinally, as

to cause suspicion. Next, a note-book, a watch, or a pocket sun-dial;

if a watch, not a striker, for that warns the wicked you have cash; a

broad-brimmed hat, gaiters, boots, breeches (as if his friends would

let him start without any!), gloves, shoes, shirts, handkerchiefs,

"which come in useful when you perspire"; and if he cannot take many

shirts, let those he takes be washed, he will find it more comfortable.

Also, a linen overall, to put over his clothes when he gets into bed,

in case the bed is dirty. Let him get to know something of medicine

and, "like Achilles," learn to cook before he leaves home. Travel not

at night, and, in daytime, be guarded by the official guards which

German and Belgian towns provide; or travel in company.

Now, the aim of travelling is the acquisition of knowledge; stay,

therefore, in the more famous places rather than keep on the move.

Enquire, concerning the district, its names, past and present; its

language; its situation; measurements; number of towns, or villages;

its climate, fertility; whether maritime or not, and possessing

forests, mountains, barren or wooded; wild beasts, profitable mines;

animal or vegetable life peculiar to itself; navigable or fish-yielding

rivers; medicinal baths; efficient fortresses. And concerning towns:

the founder, "sights," free or otherwise; what the town has undergone,

famines, plagues, floods, fires, sieges, revolutions, sackings; whether

it has been the scene of councils, conferences, synods, assemblies,

gatherings, or tournaments.

It should be mentioned that in this last paragraph I am paraphrasing

Gruberus only, and presume he is confining himself to what the

young tourist should discover before breakfast; otherwise he is but

a superficial instructor compared to Plotius. The latter draws up

a series of questions, which include enquiries about weights and

measures; about the clergy, how many and what salaries; religion, is

it "reformed"? if so, what has happened to monks and nuns; how often

Communion is administered; and whether strangers are received thereat;

arrangements for burial. This last question would seem more in place at

the end, but it is only number thirty-six, and there are one hundred

and seventeen questions altogether. Then, is there a University?

and, if so, may the rector whack the students? and concerning the

professors, what they teach and what they are paid. As for local

government, the enquiries exhaust possibilities. Also, how many houses;

and what about night-watchmen; legal procedure; "ancient lights," the

right to use water, executors' duties, grounds for divorce, dress,

military training? Furthermore: are the roads clean, and can children

marry without their parents' consent? concerning methods of cookery,

and antiquity of the town; whether the position of an officer of

justice is a respected one or not; concerning notaries public; and

whether the water used in cooking comes from river, fountain, well, or

rain; how many varieties of grain are used in bread-making; and what

means have they for dealing with fires; their sanitary arrangements

and public holidays, with the reasons for the latter; care of paupers,

orphans, and lepers; what punishments for what crimes.

It must not be imagined that Gruberus and Plotius thought of all this

by themselves: they copied others, being but two among many. Where the

copying reached its most uncritical extreme was in the origins ascribed

to towns: Paris, the guide-books say, was founded by a Gaul of that

name who lived two hundred years before his namesake of Troy; Haarlem

is also named after its founder "Herr (_i.e._, Mr.) Lem"; Toulouse

dated from the time of the prophetess Deborah; and so on.

But to consider the foregoing instructions, and even these three

"facts," on their humorous side only, is to miss much of their

interest. Two, for instance, of these etymologies are but examples

of what is not only continually coming into notice in books of this

date, but is especially noticeable in guide-books and tourists'

notes, in which latter the habit of mind of the time is more exactly

mirrored in its daily attitude than in any other class of books. They

exemplify the two sources of knowledge of antiquity, the two standards

of comparison, then available: classical and biblical; of more nearly

equal authority than they were before or have been since; and they

were the only ones. So with the objects of enquiry: they are implied

by that lack of reference books from which not only the tourist, but

governments also, suffered; it is clear, for example, that in 1592

much elementary information was not at hand, even in manuscript, in

England.[15] The Tsar, moreover, about this time addressed a letter to

the "Governor of the High Signiory of Venice," his advisers thinking

that Venice was governed by a nominee of the Pope; and Rivadeneyra,

who was very well-informed about affairs English, says in his "Cisma

de Inglaterra," written thirty years after the reform of the English

currency under Elizabeth: "The gold and silver currency is not so pure

nor so fine as it was before heresy entered into the kingdom, for in

the time of Henry VIII and his children Edward and Elizabeth, it has

been falsified and alloyed with other metals, and so the money is worth

much less than it used to be." Camden again, who wrote his Annals of

Elizabeth's Reign early in the next century to correct misconceptions

to which foreign scholars were liable, thought it necessary, when he

mentioned Dublin, to explain that it was the chief city of Ireland; and

very reasonably, too, considering that one of Henry VIII's officials

in Ireland wrote home: "Because the country called Leinster and the

situation thereof is unknown to the King and his Council, it is to be

understood that Leinster is the fifth part of Ireland."[16] And there

was a certain gentleman at the court of King James I, supposed to

be an authority on things Continental, who answered, when asked for

information about Venice, that he could not give much because he had

ridden post through it—and it was not till the questioner got there

that he became aware that Venice was surrounded by water; just as the

secretary of a Spanish duke in England writes that his master took ship

from "Calais, because, England being an island, it cannot be approached

by land."

It may perhaps seem that the absence of knowledge which is ordinary

now, indicated by the above illustrations, was extraordinary rather

than ordinary even then. But the fact was that, besides the available

books being practically always too much behind the times for any but

antiquaries' purposes, the writers themselves had so little information

at hand that it was only here and there their writings were anything

but hopelessly superficial, even when obtained; and to obtain them was

no easy matter. There were at least three men who published practical

handbooks in English for Continental travelling later than Andrew

Boorde and earlier than Howell; yet they, and Howell also, each claim

that theirs is the first book of its kind in English. Whether the

statement is made in good faith, or for business purposes, it proves

equally well that even if a book was written, it was not easy to find.

Or again, take a book which was so often republished as to be easy

to obtain, the "Viaggio da Venetia al Santo Sepolcro," for instance,

the authorship of the later editions of which is ascribed to one

Father Noë, a Franciscan. The first edition seems to be that of 1500,

and it continued to be reprinted down to 1781; at least thirty-four

editions came out before 1640, when the period under consideration

ends. It was not, however, an Italian book originally, having been

translated from a German source which was in existence as early as

1465, if not earlier.[17] Since, therefore, its information was never

thoroughly revised, at any rate, not before 1640, sixteenth-century

and seventeenth-century pilgrims went on buying mid-fifteenth-century

information. They were recommended, for instance, to go by the pilgrim

galley, which ceased to run about 1586; and also to take part in a

festival held yearly on the banks of the Jordan at Epiphany, which must

have been abandoned far earlier even than that.

Still, books about what there was to notice in given places did exist

just as there were treatises of the Gruberus and Plotius kind unfolding

what should be noticed in general, and why. Best known of the earlier

kind was Münster's gigantic "Cosmography," which Montaigne regretted he

had not brought with him; and by the middle of the seventeenth century

several other first-rate geographers, besides minor men, had compiled

books of the kind. But the bearing of such books on our subject is

only in so far as they reflect the thoughts, and ministered to the

needs, of the tourist; and they may therefore be best considered in

the works of those who wrote "Itineraries," which not only recorded

journeys but were meant to serve as examples of how a journey might be

made the most of. Such a book was Hentzner's, a sort of link between

Gruberus and Fynes Moryson. Hentzner was a Silesian who acted as guide

and tutor to a young nobleman from 1596 to 1600. They began, and

ended, their journey at Breslau, and toured through Germany, France,

Switzerland, Italy, and England; the "Itineraria" being based on notes

made by the way. His account of England does him rather more than

justice, for there is some first-hand experience there, which is just

what is lacking in the rest of his book. Practically everything he says

is second-hand, and the fact of his being at a place is merely a peg

to hang quotations on. When he is not quoting from books he seems to

be quoting from people; and half of what we expect from a guide-book

is absent: means of conveyance, for instance. This is an omission,

however, which can be explained: he was only concerned with the most

respectable form of travelling, and that meant, on horseback. And

the rest of his omissions, taken all together, throw into relief the

academic character of the book, due, not to himself individually so

much as to the period. His preface cannot, naturally, differ much from

Plotius, nor add much, except in recommending Psalms 91, 126, 127, and

139 as suitable for use by those about to travel, forgetting, it would

seem, the one beginning, "When Israel went forth out of Egypt," which

Pantagruel had sung by his crew before they set out to find the "Holy

Bottle"; and being a Protestant he cannot recommend the invocation of

St. Joseph and St. Anthony of Padua, the patron saints of travellers;

all he can do is to pray at the beginning for good angels to guard

his footsteps, and, at the end, to acknowledge assistance from one,

although it does not appear that he ever went to the length of Uhland's

traveller:—

Take, O boatman, thrice thy fee,—

Take, I give it willingly;

For, invisible to thee,

Spirits twain have crossed with me,

and paid a fare for the good angel. On the way, having reached, say

Rome, he does not, in Baedeker's merciful fashion, tell you the hotels

first, in order of merit, but begins straightway: "ROME. Mistress and

Queen of Cities, in times past the head of well-nigh all the world,

which she had subjected to her rule by virtue of the sublime deeds of

the most stout-hearted of men. Concerning the first founders thereof

there are as many opinions, and as different, as there are writers.

Some there are who think that Evander, in his flight from Arcadia,"

etc. Yet no one could write over six hundred pages about a four years'

tour in sixteenth-century Europe without being valuable at times;

partly in relation to ideas, partly to experiences into which those

ideas led him and his pupils.

It was less than twenty years after Hentzner that another German

published a record of travel which was also meant as a guide. But time

had worked wonders; it was not only a personal difference between

the former and Zinzerling that accounts for the difference in their

books; it was the increase in the number of tourists. The latter

sketches out a plan by means of which all France can be seen at the

most convenient times and most thoroughly without waste of time, with

excursions to England, the Low Countries, and Spain. Routes are his

first consideration; other hints abound. At St. Nicholas is a host who

is a terror to strangers; and remember that at Saint-Savin, thirty

leagues from Bourges, is the shanty of "Philemon and Baucis" where you

can live for next to nothing; and that outside the gate at Poictiers is

a chemist who speaks German, and so on. Frequently, indeed, he notes

where you may find your German understood; and also where you should

learn, and where avoid learning, French.

Advice of this last-mentioned kind calls to mind a third class of

guide-books, intended to assist those who, without them, would realise

how vain is the help of man when he can't understand what you say. The

need for such became more and more evident as time went on and Latin

became less and less the living and international language it had been

but recently. The use of vernaculars was everywhere coming to the front

as nationalities developed further, and in many districts where it had

been best known its disuse in Church hastened its disuse outside.

The extent to which Latin was current about 1600 varied in almost every

country. Poland and Ireland came first, Germany second, where many

of all classes spoke it fluently, and less corruptly than in Poland.

Yet an Englishman[18] passing through Germany in 1655 found but one

innkeeper who could speak it. The date suggests that the Thirty Years'

War was responsible for the change. It is certainly true that France

in the previous half century was far behind Germany in the matter of

speaking Latin, as a result of the civil wars there. Possibly the

characters of its rulers had something to do with this too, just as

in England, where Latin was ordinarily spoken by the upper classes,

according to Moryson, with ease and correctness, the accomplishments of

Queen Elizabeth as a linguist had doubtless set a fashion. This much,

at least, is certain: that in 1597 when an ambassador from Poland was

unexpectedly insolent in his oration, the Queen dumbfounded him by

replying on the spot with as excellent Latinity as spirit, whereas at

Paris once, when a Latin oration was expected from another ambassador,

not only could not the King reply, but not even any one at court. With

Montaigne the case was certainly different, but then his father had had

him taught Latin before French, and consequently, on his travels, so

soon as he reached a stopping-place, he introduced himself to the local

priest, and though neither knew the other's native language, they

passed their evening conversing without difficulty.

Very many were the interesting interviews that many a tourist had which

he owed to a knowledge of Latin; the extent to which knowledge was

acquired orally having led to its being an ordinary incident in the

life of the tourist to pay a call on the learned man of the district;

a duty with the Average Tourist, a pleasure for the others. And Latin

was the invariable medium, part of the respectability of the occasion.

At least, not quite invariable: when the historian De Thou visited the

great Sigonius, they talked Italian, because the latter, in spite of a

lifetime spent in becoming the chief authority on Roman Italy, spoke

Latin with difficulty.

It seems curious that Latin should have been less generally understood

south, than north, of the Alps, but such was the fact. Italy was,

however, ahead of Spain, where even an acquaintance with Latin was

rare. In the first quarter of the sixteenth century Navagero found

Alcalá the only university where lectures were delivered in Latin,

and, according to the best of the guide-book writers on Spain, Zeiler,

the doctorate at Salamanca could be obtained, early in the seventeenth

century, without any knowledge of Latin at all; while it has been shown

by M. Cirot, the biographer of Mariana, that the latter's great history

of Spain, published in Latin at this time, and as successful as a book

of the kind ever is in its own day, was unsaleable until translated

into Spanish.

Among those, too, who did know Latin there was the barrier of differing

pronunciation. Lauder of Fountainhall was very much at sea to begin

with, in spite of his Scotch pronunciation being much nearer to the

French than an Englishman's would have been, and there is an anecdote

in Vicente Espinel's "Marcos de Obregon" which is to the point here.

The latter is a novel, it is true, but the tradition that it is

semi-autobiographical is borne out by many of its tales reading as if

they were actual experiences, of which the following is one. One day,

the hero, a Spaniard, found himself in a boat on the river Po, with a

German, an Italian, and a Frenchman, and to pass the time they tried

to talk Latin so that all could understand each one; but they soon

abandoned the plan, as the pronunciations varied too greatly.

Nevertheless, the passing of Latin out of European conversation is to

be attributed rather to the growth of Italian, and later of French,

as international tongues. Gaspar Ens, who wrote a series of guides

to nearly every part of Europe, says in his preface to the volume on

France, "At this day their language is so much used in almost every

part of the world that whosoever is unskilled therein is deemed a

yokel." This was in 1609, at which date, or soon after, it was as true

as a general statement can be expected to be; just as much so as the

assertion in the preface to an English book in 1578: "Once every one

knew Latin ... now the Italian is as widely spread."[19]

It was only in the north that French came to rival Italian during this

period, for the "lingua franca," also known as "franco piccolo," the

hybrid tongue in which commerce was conducted along the shores of the

Mediterranean, was so largely Italian that to the average Britisher,

from whom Hakluyt drew his narratives, the two were indistinguishable;

but an Italian would notice, as Della Valle did, that no form of a verb

but the infinitive was used. If any one was met who knew more than two

languages, he would oftenest be a Jew, who usually knew Spanish and

Portuguese; the latter because the tribe of Judah, from which their

deliverer was to come, was supposed to be domiciled in Portugal.

Another hybrid language, as well established in its own area as the

"lingua franca," was Scot-French, so constantly in use as to have an

existence as a literary dialect as well as in French burlesque. These

mixed languages have no place in the ordinary book-guide to languages,

but were left to personal tuition; yet in the lists of the most common

phrases which Andrew Boorde appends to each of his descriptions of

countries may be noted a curious instance from this borderland of

philology. In both the Italian and the Spanish lists he renders "How do

you fare?" by "Quo modo stat cum vostro corps?"

While we are on this subject we may stop to sympathise with awkward

misunderstandings like that of the Jesuit Possevino at Moscow, when

invited to (Orthodox) Mass ("obednia") with intent to compromise him;

he went, thinking it was dinner ("obed") to which he had been asked.

Then there are those, too, whose efforts were hopelessly below even

this standard, such as Alonzo de Guzman, who suffered hunger in Germany

because he only knew Spanish, and was put on the road to Bologna when

he wanted to get to Cologne; or the Englishman who was trying to

find that same road and went along staggering the peasantry with the

question, "Her ist das der raight stroze auf balnea?" the peasantry

replying by signs that he interpreted as directions, but the road led

him further than ever from Baden. To which class belonged a certain

friend of Josias Bodley, younger brother of the founder of the Bodleian

library and author of by far the liveliest account of a tour at this

period,[20] will never be known, but that is no reason why the tale

should not be re-told. "Not long ago I was in company with some boon

companions who were drinking healths in usquebagh, when one was present

who wished to appear more abstemious than the rest and would not drink

with them, to whom one of them, who could not speak Latin as well as

I do, said these words, 'Si tu es plus sapientis quam nos sumus, tu es

plus beholden to God Almighty quam nos sumus.'" And finally there are

those who find themselves reduced to sign-language, such as the Roman

Catholics who found a sumptuous dinner awaiting them at a Protestant

inn on a fast-day, when, to add to the trial of refusing it, was the

apparent impossibility of making their wants understood, until one of

their number, a priest, by the way, imitated a hen's cackle and "laid"

a piece of white paper the shape and size of an egg!

While conversation-dictionaries existed which claimed to be useful

their claim has no other basis than that of their own prefaces;

the tourists do not own to indebtedness to them. But taking it for

granted that primary needs must be served by persons, not books, for

further acquirements Moryson recommends the romance of "Amadis de

Gaule" which was being read by every one in his own tongue. Probably

the conversation-books are of more use now than at the time of their

publication, from the light they occasionally throw on customs, and,

through their phoneticism, on pronunciation. Yet the tourists' own

evidence as to this is more valuable, as being more authentic, when an

Englishman writes "Landtaye" for "Landtage" and "Bawre" for "Bauer."

As for sixteenth-century maps, they seem meant for gifts rather to

an enemy than to a friend. In every department, then, the tourist had

recourse to persons.

[Illustration: A TYPICAL TOWN-PLAN]

The qualifications for a first-rate guide, then and now, differ in one

respect only,—that a "religious test" should be applied was taken for

granted on both sides. In fact, in Scotland in 1609 an edict was issued

forbidding young noblemen to leave the country without a Protestant

tutor: the reason being that the great danger of a tour abroad lay in

a possible change in the youngster's religion, or inclinations towards

tolerance developing, with the result that his political career on his

return might be dangerous to his country and himself through his being

more than the just one step ahead of his fellow-countrymen which is

necessary to political salvation.

The prevailing state of mind may be illustrated by one or two

anecdotes. The following one Lauder tells of himself is characteristic

of his kind. He had entered a church where all were on their knees: "a

woman observing that I neither had gone to the font for holy water,

neither kneeled, in a great heat of zeal she told me 'ne venez icy

pour prophaner ce sainct lieu.' I suddenly replied: 'Vous estez bien

devotieuse, madame, mais peut estre vostre ignorance prophane ce sainct

lieu d'avantage que ma présence.'" William Lithgow is proud to say

he quarrelled with companions simply because they were Papists, and

had often seized opportunities to tear in pieces the rich garments

on images rather than "with indifferent forbearance wink at the

wickedness of idolaters." And an Englishman of good education and

breeding and character, says that being at Malaga cathedral during High

Mass "so long as we were bare-headed and behaved ourselves civilly

and gravely, we might walk up and down and see everything without the

least molestation." One extreme was naturally accompanied by another

extreme. Sometimes the tourist's return never took place. This was the

more likely when the Papacy was in a militant mood, at which times the

Inquisition developed a taste for tutors; whose arrest served a double

purpose, a hot antagonist was secured, unimportant enough to create

no serious trouble, and the young nobleman was left undefended on his

sectarian side, probably a vulnerable one. One case of many is that of

John Mole,[21] who died in the prison of the Inquisition at Rome in

1638 at the age of eighty, after thirty years' imprisonment; his ward,

Lord Roos, having been credited with no particular desire to get him

out.

A visit to Rome, however, and to other places, such as St. Omer,

where "seminaries" existed for English Roman Catholics, was usually

forbidden in the licence to go abroad which every Englishman had to

obtain unless he was a merchant, and which was not granted without

good reason shown. This contained ordinarily a time limit also, one

year's leave, or three; and prohibition of communication with disloyal

countrymen or entry into a State at war with England: supervision of a

kind which was exercised by practically every European ruler. A Roman

Catholic, for instance, incurred excommunication if he passed into a

country at war with the Pope.

[Illustration: A TYPICAL MAP]

The precautions of Protestant sovereigns were against Roman Catholicism

inasmuch as there lay political dangers, but so far as religion was

concerned, as much precaution might reasonably have been taken against

Mohammedanism. In no European country did ability bring a man to the

top so readily as in Turkey, and being a foreigner was in a man's

favour; not even at Venice was there such a mixture of nations as at

Constantinople; the majority of the Grand Signor's eminent subjects

were renegade foreigners. Dallam might refuse the invitation; many

accepted it; and a Turk considered it only humane to give an unbeliever

at least one definite invitation to salvation. An occasion which many

would make use of to turn Turk was during the fortnight preceding

the circumcision of the Sultan's heir. One traveller saw two hundred

circumcised at such a time, many of them adult, one said to be as old

as fifty-three. As a particular instance of an English "Turk" there

is the case of the English Consul at Cairo in 1601. He was "taking

care" of much belonging to English merchants at the time, in the

possession of which the Turks no doubt confirmed him. At the same time

there was an exactly similar case of a Venetian, for the same purpose.

But besides the causes of the chance to rise in the world, or the

attractions of others' property, there was another reason for apostacy,

the chief one—mitigating the sufferings of captivity.

But the renegades came mostly from the lower or the commercial class,

and did not come home, so that the fact that a guide was required to be

a sectarian, in contradistinction to a Christian, is another comment on

the characteristics of the Average Tourist. Sir Walter Ralegh, however,

did not make that a qualification, for he chose Ben Jonson to chaperon

his son. There is only one anecdote about Ben Jonson in that capacity,

the one he told Drummond himself. "This youth" [_i.e._, Ralegh's son]

"being knavishly inclined, caused him to be drunken, and dead drunk,

so that he knew not where he was; thereafter laid him on a car, which

he made to be drawn through the streets, at every corner showing his

governor stretched out and telling them that was a more lively image

of the Crucifix than any they had: at which young Ralegh's mother

delighted much (saying his father when young was so inclined), though

the father abhorred it."

Another sixteenth-century guide immortalised by another's pen is Jean

Bouchet, "Traverseur de Voies Perilleuses" as he called himself. Not

that Rabelais, to whom the pen belonged, names him, only he applies

this nickname to the guide of Pantagruel and company, Xenomanes (_i.

e._, "mad on foreigners"). No easy task to be an orthodox guide with

Friar John at one's elbow; for guide-book etymologies Friar John

had no taste; only asked, "What's that to do with me? I wasn't in

the country when it was baptised!" A guide to suit Friar John would

have been some disciple of Montaigne, who while agreeing with the

others that travelling was one of the best forms of education thought

that it was not "pour en rapporter seulement, à la mode de nostre

noblesse françoise, combien de pas a 'Santa Rotonda,' ou la richesse

des calessons de la signora Livia; ou, comme d'aultres, combien le

visage de Neron, de quelque vieille ruyne de là, est plus long ou plus

large que celuy de quelque pareille medaille, mais pour rapporter

principalement les humeurs de ces nations et leur façons, et pour

frotter et limer nostre cervelle contre celle d'aultruy."

Others, too, like Montaigne, without setting out to write guide-books,

have guidance to offer as a result of experience of life and travel;

sometimes in letters, sometimes in chance remarks. Letters of this

kind which have survived are many, but so much alike are they as to

suggest that the fathers shrunk from explaining to the sons how

they themselves had made the most of their time and fell back on

unacknowledged quotations from a Gruberus. Of the few frank ones the

two best are by Sir Philip Sidney to his brother, and by the ninth

Earl of Northumberland to his son Algernon.[22] Although the latter

is nearly as encyclopædic as Plotius, it is so merely in the way of

suggestion, discussing only motives and ideas and insisting on his

son's freedom of choice, in general as well as in detail; with one or

two remarks added that would have scandalised the guide-book writer,

but leaven the whole of the letter. It is especially interesting as

showing how the idea of travel as a factor in life brought out the best

of a man who was a failure at home from a day-by-day point of view.

As for chance remarks: one likens travelling to death in so far as it

means separation from friends, letters, moreover, yielding as little

satisfaction as prayers; and whereas the wise say that death is the

entrance to a happier life, there is the opposite prospect with travel,

so that it has all the disadvantages of hell as well as of death. And

here may follow a few more remarks of theirs, chosen as suggestive of

the characteristics of sixteenth-century travel in so far as it differs

from our own, not neglecting proverbs:—

A traveller has need of a falcon's eye, an ass's ears, a monkey's face,

a merchant's words, a camel's back, a hog's mouth, a deer's feet. And

the traveller to Rome—the back of an ass, the belly of a hog, and a

conscience as broad as the king's highway.

Line your doublet with taffetie; taffetie is lice-proof.

Never journey without something to eat in your pocket, if only to throw

to dogs when attacked by them.

Carry a note-book and red crayon (_i. e._, lead pencils were not in

regular use).

When going by coach, avoid women, especially old women; they always

want the best places.

At sea, remove your spurs; sailors make a point of stealing them from

those who are being sea-sick. Keep your distance from them in any case;

they are covered with vermin.

In an inn-bedroom which contains big pictures, look behind the latter

to see they do not conceal a secret door, or a window.

Women should not travel at all and married men not much.

CHAPTER III

ON THE WATER

Chi può venire per mare non è lontano.

Paolo Sarpi, 1608.[23]

Hentzner, in his preface, acknowledges that the troubles of a traveller

are great and finds only two arguments to countervail them: that man is

born unto trouble, and that Abraham had orders to travel direct from

God. Abraham, however, did not have to cross the Channel. Otherwise,

perhaps, the prospect of sacrificing himself as well as his only son

Isaac, would have brought to light a flaw in his obedience. There

was, it is true, the chance of crossing from Dover to Calais in four

hours, but the experiences of Princess Cecilia, already related, were

no less likely. In 1610 two Ambassadors waited at Calais fourteen

days before they could make a start, and making a start by no means

implied arriving—at least, not at Dover; one gentleman, after a most

unhappy night, found himself at Nieuport next morning and had to wait

three days before another try could be made. Yet another, who had

already sailed from Boulogne after having waited six hours for the

tide, accomplished two leagues, been becalmed for nine or ten hours,

returned to Boulogne by rowing-boat, and posted to Calais, found no

wind to take him across there and had to charter another rowing-boat

at sunset on Friday, reaching Dover on Monday between four and five

A. M. It was naturally a rare occurrence to go the whole distance by

small boat, because of the risk. Lord Herbert of Cherbury was the most

noteworthy exception; after he had made three attempts from Brill

and covered distances which varied from just outside the harbour to

half-way, arriving at Brill again, however, each time, he went by land

to Calais, where the sea was so dangerous that no one would venture,

no one except one old fisherman, whose boat, he himself owned, was one

of the worst in the harbour, but, on the other hand, he did not mind

whether he lived or died.

But finishing the crossing by rowing-boat was a very ordinary

experience because of the state of the harbours. Calais was the better

of the two, yet it sometimes happened that passengers had to be carried

ashore one hundred yards or more because not even boats could approach.

In 1576 an ambassador to France complains that Dover harbour is in such

utter ruin that he will cross elsewhere in future; in 1580 Sir Walter

Ralegh procured reform, which was perpetually in need of renewal. In

time a stone pier was built, small, and dry at low water, as indeed the

whole harbour was; the entrance was narrow and kept from being choked

up only by means of a gate which let out the water with a rush at low

tide. The ancient, quicker route to Wissant, more or less the route

which "Channel-swimmers" make for now, had begun to be abandoned when

the English obtained a port of their own on the opposite coast, and had

been completely dropped by this time. Boulogne had no cross-channel

passenger traffic worth mentioning. Dieppe, on the contrary, was as

much used as Calais, the corresponding harbour being, not Newhaven,

but Rye, which was also the objective on the rarer occasions when the

starting-place was Havre. So unusual was the Havre-Southampton passage

that among the suspicious circumstances alleged against a Genoese who

landed in 1599, one was his choice of this way across.[24]

Going by the North Sea the usual havens were Gravesend, and Flushing

or Brill, in spite of Brill's shallow harbour-bar, passed on one

occasion with only two feet of water under the keel when "Mr. Thatcher,

a merchant of London, who had goods therein, was so apprehensive that

he changed colours and said he was undone, 'Oh Lord,' and such-like

passionate expressions." Harwich was reputed so dangerous a harbour

that when Charles I's mother-in-law came to visit her daughter in 1638

and put in there, she found no one to receive her; it not being thought

within possibility to expect her to land there. The fact that she did

was probably due to her having been seven days at sea in a storm; not

that the courtier-chronicler of her voyage allows she was any the worse

for it, although he owns of her ladies that "they touched the hearts

of the beholders more with pity than with love." A forty-eight-hour

passage was nothing to grumble at: Arthur Wilson, the historian of

James I's reign, left Brill in an old twenty-five-ton mussel-boat, at

the bottom of which he lay, sea-sick and expecting drowning, for three

days and three nights until he came ashore at—the Hague.

Among many other experiences of the kind, that[25] of John Chamberlain,

the letter-writer, may be chosen. Setting out from Rotterdam, after

twenty-four hours' sailing, he had been within sight of Ostend and was

back again at Rotterdam. There he stayed a fortnight, putting to sea

at intervals and coming back. Then the wind came fair for Calais, but

veered round rather too soon and the first haven they could reach was

that of Yarmouth, after two days' running before the storm. It was low

tide; they went aground while entering, and for some time it looked

like being lost with all hands, but getting off again, the waves took

the ship against the piles at the head of the breakwater. Some thought

it worth while trying to jump ashore, three of whom the others saw

drowned and one crushed to death against the piles. But in the end

the rest landed safely in boats, and buried the dead; and Chamberlain

himself, after a winter evening spent wandering about Newmarket heath

in the rain and wind through the guide losing his way, arrived in town

at 11 P. M. on the twentieth day after first leaving Rotterdam.

On this route the ownership of the vessel might be guessed by the

amount of swearing that went on. Dutch ships had no prayers said,

rarely carried a chaplain even on the longest voyages, but swearers

were fined, even if it was no more than naming the devil. Psalm-singing

would go on on any vessel manned by Protestants on account of the

popularity of the music written for the Reformers, but if a vessel had

a garland of flowers hanging from its mainmast that again would show it

a Dutchman; it meant that the captain was engaged to be married.

[Illustration: A CHANNEL PASSAGE-BOAT]

The passage-boats were about sixty feet long, which then meant a

tonnage of about the same figure, and had a single deck, beneath

which the passengers might find shelter if the merchandise left them

room. The complement of passengers may be taken as seventy. The

highest total of passengers I have found mentioned for one ship is two

thousand, of whom Della Valle was one, but that was when he sailed from

Constantinople to Cairo, the vessels employed on official business

between those two places exclusively being the largest in the world

at that date. Apart from these, the maximum tonnage was about twelve

hundred, and a 500-ton ship was reckoned a large one; an average

Venetian merchantman measured about 90 feet × 20 × 16, a tonnage, that

is, of about 166, according to English sixteenth-century reckoning.[26]

The French traveller Villamont says the ship in which he left Venice in

1589 and which he was told cost fifty thousand crowns (say eighty-five

thousand pounds of our money) to build and equip, had for its greatest

length 188 feet and greatest breadth 59 feet.

As for accommodation in the larger boats, neither Dallam nor Moryson

changed their clothes or slept in a bed while at sea, and there is no

reason to suppose that any one else did who travelled under ordinary

conditions. Cabins were to be had in the high-built sterns; even

in Villamont's moderate-sized ship there were eight decks astern,

the fourth from the keel, the captain's dining-room, accommodating

thirty-nine persons at meal-times, all of whom, it is clear enough,

slept in cabins above or below. Moryson, however, refused a cabin,

preferring to sleep in a place where there was cover overhead but none

at the sides.

The chief exception to ordinary conditions was the pilgrim-ship for

Jerusalem in the days, which ceased during this period, when special

galleys ran from Venice to Jaffa and back, in the summer. Here alone

could the passenger have the upper hand, since these galleys alone

were passenger-boats primarily. The captain would be willing, if

asked, to bind himself in writing before the authorities at Venice,

to take the pilgrim to Jaffa, wait there and bring him back, call at

certain places to take in fresh water, meat, and bread, carry live

hens, a barber-surgeon, and a physician, avoid unhealthy ports such

as Famagosta, stay nowhere longer than three days without the consent

of the pilgrim, receive no merchandise which might inconvenience or

delay him, provide two hot meals a day and good wine, and guarantee

the safety of any belongings he might leave in the galley during his

absence at Jerusalem. No agreements, however, seem to have insured the

pilgrim against starvation diet, and therefore it was prudent to store

a chest with victuals, especially delicacies, and lay in wine; for,

Venice once left behind, wine might be dearer or even unobtainable.

Taking victuals implied buying a frying-pan, dishes, big and little,

of earthenware or wood, a stew-pot, and a twig-basket to carry when he

landed and went shopping. Likewise a lantern and candles and bedding,

which might be purchased near St. Mark's; a feather-bed, mattress, two

pillows, two pairs of sheets, a small quilt, for three ducats; and all

of these will be bought back at the end of the voyage at half price.

Medicines he must on no account forget. Care had to be taken, too, in

choosing a position, not below deck, which is "smouldering hot and

stinking," but above, where both shelter, light, and air were to be

had; this, of course, for the benefit of such as were unable to secure

a place in the stern-cabins.

If the passenger did not find himself in a position to get these

counsels of perfection carried out, this is what he would experience:

"In the galley all sorts of discomfort are met with: to each of us was

allotted a space three spans broad, and so we lay one upon another,

suffering greatly from the heat in summer and much troubled by vermin.

Huge rats came running over our faces at nights, and a sharp eye had to

be kept on the torches, for some people go about carelessly and there's

no putting them out in case of fire, being, as they are, all pitch. And

when it is time to go to sleep and one has great desire thereto, others

near him talk or sing or yell and generally please themselves, so that

one's rest is broken. Those near us who fell ill mostly died. God have

mercy on them! In day-time too when we were all in our places busy

eating and the galley bore down on the side to which the sail shifted,

all the sailors called out 'pando,' that is, 'to the other side,' and

over we must go; and if the sea was rough and the galley lurched, our

heads turned all giddy and some toppled over and the rest on top of

them, falling about like so many drunken yokels. The meals the captain

gave us were not exactly inviting; the meat had been hanging in the

sun, the bread hard as a stone with many weevils in it, the water at

times stank, the wine warm, or hot enough for the steam to rise, with a

beastly taste to it; and at times, too, we had to do our eating under

a blazing sun....[27] Bugs, etc., crept about over everything."[28]

Another, after many similar complaints, of cold food and warm drink,

and of sailors who walked about on top of him when he wanted to sleep,

and so on, adds a fresh one, quite unmentionable, and then goes on that

he passes over the more disgusting features so as not to discourage

intending pilgrims.

The disappearance of the pilgrim galley was more gain than loss, but

it had the advantage of more variety in the company and the voyage,

and probably, of a bigger ship; Moryson's ship was 900-tons and Della

Valle's Gran Delfino was a great war galleon, with forty-five cannon

and five hundred passengers,—too many, it proved; in the end twenty or

thirty fell ill every day and some died. And the mixture that there

was! Men and women, soldiers, traders, Greeks, Armenians, Turks,

Persians, Jews, Italians from almost every state, French, Spanish,

Portuguese, English, Germans, Flemings. In Moryson's boat there were

Indian sun-worshippers as well. In another, Moors and Muscovites.

Every day in the Gran Delfino a bell was rung for prayer, when each man

prayed in his own way; prayer over, the sailors, all Greeks, turned

bareheaded to the East and cried three times, "Buon' Viaggio!!!" and

the captain preached a non-sectarian sermon. With the Gran Delfino,

moreover, the start was an impressive function; the vessel, belonging

as it did to the State, being towed beyond the lagoons by thirty-three

eight-oared boats, directed by a venerable signor deputed by the

authorities. Once outside, however, and left to itself, it was less

impressive, at the mercy of a wind so uncertain that it crossed the

Adriatic from shore to shore twenty-five times.

In reckoning the length of voyages it would not be sufficient to

multiply the delay by bad weather that took place in the Channel

crossings by the extra mileage of a given distance; there was the

additional delay due to the difficulty of obtaining a ship at all, even

in the best of weathers, a difficulty proportionate to the length of

the voyage. The first-mentioned difficulty must not be minimised; it

was reasonable caricature for Sir John Harington, Queen Elizabeth's

godson, to represent his Rabelaisian hero as returning from "Japana

near China" in a "24-hours sail with some two or three odd years

beside." And by way of illustration it may be added that one and the

same voyage—from Messina to Smyrna—took one man thirteen weeks and

another thirty-five days; and that whereas the usual length of the

pilgrim voyage from Jaffa to Venice was under five weeks, one band of

pilgrims whose return journey was delayed till the winter storms caught

them, were continuously at sea, or continuously trying to be at sea,

from September 19th till January 25th. Yet another cause of delay,

in the Mediterranean, at least, was the Italian custom of paying the

sailors by the day; English ships, payment on which was at so much a

voyage, were by far the quicker.

To return to difficulty number two, that of obtaining any ship,

instances of it are continually occurring. Consider the complaint that

one Greenhalgh writes to his friend[29]—how he wished to go by sea to

Naples or elsewhere in Italy, went to the Exchange at London almost

daily for a month to read the ships' bills hanging there; could find

none to take him; took passage at Blackwall on one that was bound

for Dunkirk, but which the wind carried along the coast of Norfolk;

reached Dunkirk in four days and four nights; no ship to be found there

Italy-bound; nor at Gravelines; nor at Calais; so came back: seven

weeks wasted.

But it may reasonably be asked, why didn't he go by land? Well, that

is a question without an answer; but for any journey where the mileage

by sea was near the mileage by land, men of experience of these days

reckoned it safer and quicker and consequently cheaper to go by sea.

Once when Sir Henry Wotton, who exhaled sixteenth-century wisdom

whenever he spoke, was at his favourite occupation of holding forth to

the Venetian Signory on things in general, we find him taking it for

granted that Poland and Hungary were far from Venice as compared with

England and Holland; an exaggeration, no doubt; but an exaggeration

that stood no chance of being believed would not have served his

purpose. And it would be just plain fact to say, with regard to Danzig

and Paris, and every other similar journey, the sea for choice; even

from Genoa to Rome, amid all the danger of captivity for life by

Barbary pirates, there was a daily service of boats in 1588 according

to Villamont; it was the more usual route. Howell, indeed, leaving

Paris for Spain, went to St. Malo to find a ship, but the ordinary

route was to go down the Loire to Nantes, and by sea thence.

In the same way, from Rome to Barcelona was usually made a sea-trip,

although the sailors coasted instead of going direct. All voyages in

fact were coasting voyages whenever possible; no landsman was more

scared of the open sea than the average sailor during this period, the

greatest for the exploration of oceans that the world has ever seen,

except, perhaps, that unknown age when the islands of the Pacific were

colonised. The fear was based on an accurate knowledge of their own

incapacity, revealed to us by one or two travellers who were interested

in the science of navigation. A certain Frenchman embarked at Vannes

for Portugal; no bearings were taken, and the pilot had no chart;

trusted to his eye for his knowledge; which resulted in his coasting

along Galicia under the impression it was Asturias. So with the master

of the Venetian ship that Lithgow sailed in; he had no compass, cast

anchor at night and guessed his whereabouts in daytime by the hills

he recognised; on his way back from Alexandria a storm drove them out

of their course and he describes, in his doggrel verse, the sailors

spending hours identifying headlands, only to find themselves mistaken.

Indeed, there was no satisfactory method of ascertaining longitude at

sea; although European rulers were offering rewards to the inventor of

a method, no one was successful in trying to solve the problem, not

even Galileo.[30] So habitual a practice was coasting that if a ship

was intent on avoiding a pirate the surest plan was to keep to the open

sea.

[Illustration: SHIP FOR A LONG-DISTANCE VOYAGE]

But for the most part they seem to have trusted to luck with regard to

piracy, knowing pirates to be as likely to be met with as storms. The

two chief centres were Dunkirk and Algiers, and as the Dunkirkers and

Algerines met in the Atlantic, the Baltic was the only European sea

free from them, during the latter half of this period at least. In

the earlier, war was so continual as to provide employment, or pretext,

for the bulk of the scoundrels and unfortunates of the continent whom

the comparative peace that succeeded turned loose on commerce, and

consequently on tourists.

It was bad enough in the Channel before this. In 1573 the Earl of

Worcester crossed with a gold salver as a christening present for

Charles IX's daughter; the ship was attacked by pirates; eleven of his

suite were killed or wounded and property worth five hundred pounds

stolen. In 1584, Mr. Oppenheim states, the French ambassador complained

that in the two preceding years English pirates had plundered Frenchmen

of merchandise to the value of two hundred thousand crowns: the answer

was that the English had lost more than that through French pirates. So

in 1600 we find the Mayor of Exeter writing up about the Dunkirkers,

"scarce one bark in five escapeth these cormorants."[31] Repression

that was exercised by the governments on both sides of the Channel had

the effect of making the Mediterranean worse than it had been, for the

pirates, especially English, not only followed their occupation there

themselves but taught the Turks and Algerines far more about navigation

than the latter would have discovered by themselves. Which, by the way,

had a further result adverse to English tourists, for the Italian

states that had previously been favourably inclined to England, Venice

and Tuscany, both of European importance, grew unfriendly; Tuscany

becoming definitely hostile.

But the state of the Mediterranean for men of all nationalities was

such that it would probably be difficult to find a detailed account

of a voyage during the first half of the seventeenth century which

does not mention meeting an enemy. What might happen then is best

illustrated in the experience of a Russian monk of rather earlier date:

"half-way, a ship full of pirates attacked us. When their cannon had

shattered our boat, they leapt on board like savage beasts and cut the

ship's master to pieces and threw him into the sea, and took all they

found. As for me, they gave me a blow in the stomach with the butt-end

of a lance, saying 'Monk, give us a ducat or a gold piece.' I swore by

the living God, by God Almighty, that I had none such. They bereft me

of my all, leaving me nought but my frock and took to running all about

the ship like wild beasts waving glittering lances, swords and axes...."

Storms also were accompanied by incidents out of a present-day

tourist's experience, to a greater extent than would readily be

imagined; and this especially in the Mediterranean, where a large

proportion of the sailors were Greeks with vivid superstitions, and

courage but one day a year, that of St. Catherine, the patroness of

sailors, when nobody ever got drowned. Other days it required very

little danger to make them abandon themselves to despair and to all

the signs of it which were most likely to distract and demoralise

the more level-headed; one by one their relics would go overboard in

attempted propitiation, and the tourist was in danger of following in

person if he was suspected of being no good Christian and therefore the

probable cause of the storm. Such is the recorded experience of more

than one; and a priest who had been in the habit of reading a Bible

was threatened with ejection as a sorcerer, and his books with him;

fortunately the storm abated when the sailors had reached that point.

It may safely be said that control of the weather by sorcerers was

altogether disbelieved in by very few persons then, but if the belief

was held more strongly along one coast-line than another, it was round

the Baltic rather than elsewhere. As late as 1670[32] a traveller tells

us how being becalmed off Finland, the captain sent ashore to buy a

wind from a wizard; the fee was ten kroner (say thirty-six shillings)

and a pound of tobacco. The wizard tied a woollen rag to the mast, with

three knots in it. Untying the first knot produces just the wind they

want; S. W.; that slackening, untying knot number two revives it for

a time; but knot number three brings up a fearful northeaster which

nearly sank them. "Qui nescit orare, discat navigare" was a much-quoted

phrase; truly enough of one traveller, it would appear, seeing he is

reported to have prayed during a storm; "O Lord, I am no common beggar;

I do not trouble thee every day; for I never prayed to thee before; and

if it please thee to deliver me this once, I will never pray to thee

again as long as I live."

Shipwreck had an additional danger when it happened to a galley

rowed by forced labour. Cardinal De Retz gives a vivid picture of

what happened when the one he was in ran aground. The whole bank of

galley-slaves rose; in fear, or to escape by swimming, or to master

the vessel amidst the confusion. The commander and other officers took

double-edged swords and struck down all whom they found standing. Even

a mere landing was not without risk, for the custom in force almost

universally of asking every new-comer officially his business, home,

destination, was still more the rule at the coast; this same cardinal,

when a fugitive landing in shabby clothes at St. Sebastian, was told by

the soldiers he would probably be hanged in the morning, inasmuch as

the ship's captain had mislaid his "charte-partie," in the absence of

which every one in the ship could legally be hanged without trial.

And if they had their special sea-troubles of pirates and Greek

sailors and small boats in high seas, how much more certain was

sea-sickness and the length of its enduring. Lauder remembered leaving

Dover at 2 A. M.—"What a distressed broker I was upon the sea needs not

here be told since it's not to be feared that I'll forget it, yet I

cannot but tell how Mr. John Kincead and I had a bucket betwixt us and

strove who should have the bucket first, both equally ready; and how at

every vomit and gasp he gave he cried 'God's mercy' as if he had been

about to expire immediately." For preventives nobody has anything to

suggest except, appropriately enough, one Father Noah, a Franciscan,

who prescribes pomegranates and mint; and Rabelais, who says that

Pantagruel and company departed with full stomachs and for that reason

were not sea-sick; a better precaution, he goes on, than drinking

water some days beforehand, salt or fresh, with wine or meat, or than

taking pulp of quinces, or lemon-peel, or pomegranate juice; or fasting

previously, or covering their stomachs with paper.

Yet Panurge, who was always full or filling, became sea-sick when the

storm came. As a picture of sea-sickness, Rabelais' account of Panurge

sea-sick is probably unsurpassed. "He remained all of a heap on Deck,

utterly cast down and metagrobolised. 'What ho, Steward, my Friend,

my Father, my Uncle; ... O, three and four times happy are those who

plant Cabbages ... they have always one Foot on Land and the other

is not far from it.... This Wave will sweep us away, blessed Saviour.

O my Friend, a little Vinegar; I sweat again with sheer Agony.... I

am drowning, I am drowning, I am dying. Good people, I drown.... Ah,

my Father, my Uncle, my All, the water has got into my Shoes, by my

Shirt-collar. Bous, bous, bous; paisch; hu, hu, hu, ha, ha, ha, I drown

... eighteen hundred thousand Crowns a year to the man who will put me

ashore.... Holos, good People, I drown, I die. Consummatum est; it is

all over with me.... My good man, couldn't you throw me ashore?'"[33]

Sea-sickness was probably more common then than now because the

discomforts were so much farther from being minimised. Moryson

recommends passengers to take rose leaves, lemons or oranges, or the

roots or the leaves of angelica, cloves, or rosemary, to counteract the

evil smells of the boat; he might have added, of the company too, more

particularly with reference to river traffic, because there the company

was specially liable to be mixed by reason of the cheapness of that way

of travelling as compared with horseback; and because the contact with

each other was close.

It is not without signification that practically all district-maps of

this date mark the courses of rivers, but not of roads. Probably few

records could be found of any touring of this period worth calling a

tour which was not partly conducted by river. One advantage of river

travel was that that way was more regularly practicable than the roads,

which bad weather soon rendered barely passable. Moreover, it was the

pleasantest mode of journeying, especially if the boat was towed;

for travelling in a sixteenth-century waggon produced something like

sea-sickness in those unaccustomed to it. On the other hand, to get

the benefit of the cheapness of river travelling, as compared with

riding, one had to wait, at times, for fellow-travellers to fill the

boat; also, the choice of route was, of course, more limited; and on

the swifter rivers it was not usual, or worth while, to attempt an

up-stream journey.

On the Loire, for instance, at Roanne, where it began to be navigable,

boats were all built for sale, not for hire, as they were not expected

to come back; and the same practice was in use elsewhere. But this must

be taken as a rule with many exceptions. On the lower Loire towing was

in regular use and Lady Fanshawe, who tried it, right from Nantes to

Orleans, says, "of all my travels none were, for travel sake, as I may

call it, so pleasant as this." They went on shore to sleep, but kept

to the boat all daytime, for it possessed a "hearth," a charcoal fire

on which they did the cooking. Where towing was most frequently used

was probably Russia, all by hand; sometimes as many as three hundred

men were being employed at once by Charles II's ambassador for the six

barges and one boat between Archangel and Vologda.

When rowing was to be done, the tourist found himself expected,

practically compelled, to take his share on the Elbe and the Rhine, and

often on other rivers too. The diarist Evelyn reckoned that he rowed

twenty leagues of the distance between Roanne and Orleans, and no doubt

Edmund Waller, the poet, did the same, as he was one of the party. If

any exemptions were made, it was the boatman who exempted himself.

Another poet, or, at least, verse-writer, was deserted altogether by

his boatman. This was John Taylor, on his way back from Prague. He had

taken to the river at Leitmeritz, with his two companions and some

one else's widow and her four small children, they having jointly

bought a boat forty-eight feet by three. It was at the Saxony boundary

that the man ran away, whence there were six hundred miles to cover,

past one thousand "shelves and sands," eight hundred islands, and

numberless tree-stumps and rocks, two hundred and forty of the islands

having a mill on one side, but which side was not visible beforehand.

His figures, however, need not be taken too literally as he went

"gathering," to use his own words, "like a busy bee, all these honied

observations; some by sight, some by hearing, some by both, some by

neither, and some by bare supposition."

Equally exciting was Busbecq's passage down the Danube in a boat roped

to a 24-oar pinnace. He was behind time, so they rowed night and day,

pulling hard against a violent wind. The bed of the river was uncared

for, and collisions with tree-stumps were frequent; once it was with

the bank, so hard that a few planks came away. But the ambassador got

no further answer to his remonstrances than "God will help" from the

Turkish rowers. The Danube was mainly a Turkish river then.

On the lakes there were, of course, storms to contend with, two of

which nearly drowned two of the most gifted men of the century, De Thou

the historian, and the artist Cellini. It is fairly clear, too, that

their almost identical experiences took place on the same lake; that

of Wallenstadt, although neither of them gives the name. The boat De

Thou crossed in was made of fir-trunks, neither sound, nor tarred, nor

nailed; a German was in it, too, with his horse, which fell about; the

helmsman left his post, called out to all to save themselves if they

could; nothing was to be seen but rain and lake and perpendicular rock,

until a cave was sighted towards which all joined in an effort to row.

A way up the rock was found, at the top, an inn, just where Cellini had

found one nearly half a century earlier.

On the rivers themselves there were two further disadvantages to

meet; delay through running aground and danger in shooting the

bridges. The latter was very great: the bridge which gave its name to

Pont-St.-Esprit on the Rhone was as notorious a place for shipwrecks

as any headland, and no doubt it happened then, as it used to happen

later, at Beaugency, on the Loire, that all card-playing and talking

ceased from the moment the boatmen began to prepare for the passage

underneath till the passage was safely over. As for running aground, it

did not happen so often as might have been expected, to judge by what

is left unsaid by the travellers: one must not strike any average from

Peter Mundy's feat of doing it forty times in two days.

[Illustration: LOCK BETWEEN BOLOGNA AND FERRARA]

Both these drawbacks were present, nevertheless, to a serious extent,

and for the same reason; the total absence of regulation of the flow

of water. Locks, or "sluices" as they were termed then, were being

introduced exceedingly slowly; how slowly is evident from a Frenchman

explaining[34] the working in detail in his journal (without the use of

any specialised terms) of one on the Reno, between Bologna and Ferrara.

Considering that he must have had much experience of France and had

by that time traversed all the waterways generally used for passenger

traffic in Italy, it may be concluded that locks were at least very

rare in both countries. Some such deduction may also be made for

England and France from an Englishman doing the same when at Montargis

on the Loire, nearly seventy years later.[35] Even in Holland, the

nursery of the lock-system, its development was slow. In 1605 a

Venetian ambassador mentions that the lock-gates between Brussels and

Antwerp were only opened once a week, when the weekly trade-barge went

along; at other times every one had to change boats at every lock; just

as was done on the series of canals formed out of the marshes between

the Reno and the Po, according to the Frenchman just quoted. In the

middle of the seventeenth century, the same arrangement was in force

between Antwerp and Brussels, so Evelyn says, whereas, he implies that

between Bologna and Ferrara a lock system was fully in use.

In canals, the great achievement of the period was the cutting of one

for nine miles between Amsterdam and Haarlem in six months at a cost

of £20,000, finished not long before Sir W. Brereton passed through

it in 1634; the previous route had been by a canal in the direction

of Haarlem Meer, the boat having to be lugged by hand past the dam

which separated the canal from the Meer. Here, in Holland, too, was

by far the best passenger service in Europe; in many cases boats were

towed, or sailed, between town and town every hour with fares fixed

by the local authorities, and the only complaint that is to be heard

concerns the drunkenness of the boatmen, who frequently landed the

passengers in the water. But there is an isolated complaint, by an

Italian chaplain, which shows what the others accepted as no more than

reasonable. Nearing Amsterdam, he and his passed the night in the open

barge, unable to sit up, much less stand, because of the lowness of the

bridges, but forced to lie, in pouring rain, on foul straw, as if they

were "gentlemen from Reggio," a phrase that is still used in Venice as

a synonym for pigs.

Practicability, comfort, cheapness, and speed—for all these qualities

the water could more than hold its own against the land under even

conditions; and a traveller from Italy to Munich finishes his journey

by raft down the Iser and reckons himself a gainer in time by using

that means in preference to horseback.

It is in France, however, that the importance of waterways reaches its

maximum. Almost every tourist's way from Paris, except that by Picardy,

lay along a line which a river traversed; the windings of the Seine did

not prevent it being quite as convenient as the road; while the Loire

and the Rhone were far more so; and for approaching Paris, the Garonne

was very frequently part of one route, even up to its mouth; the upper

Loire of another. An even clearer idea of the importance and amount of

usage of riverways in France is gained by considering how Lyons has

maintained a high and steady degree of prosperity before, during, and

since the rise and fall of Venice and of Amsterdam, and how at this

period the only neglected parts of France were those which lay between

the chief rivers, which have, in fact, so far dictated the course to be

followed by the main road routes that the neglected parts of France are

the same now as then. To Lyons the Rhone gave access to Italy, Spain,

and Africa; twelve leagues away the Loire becomes navigable, and from

Gien on the Loire was one day's journey to a tributary of the Seine,

the Loing: which three rivers put Lyons in touch with North Spain, most

of France and all northern Europe. Neither was Lyons very far from the

Rhine and the Danube.

In Spain alone were the rivers unused by the traveller. In southern

Italy they were less used than in Roman times, when passenger traffic

was customary on the Tiber and smaller rivers,[36] which certainly was

not the case three hundred years ago; the disuse of the lower reaches

of the Tiber is accounted for by the fear of the Turks, to prevent an

attack on Rome by whom the mouth of the river was closed. In North

Italy on the other hand, the Adige, Brenta, and Po are frequently

mentioned; the Po, indeed, from Turin must have been as constantly in

use as any river in Europe in proportion to its length. From Mantua to

Ferrara in 1574[37] a boat sailed every night as a matter of course;

between Mantua and Venice communication by water was regular in 1591,

and even from Milan to Venice it was quite an ordinary thing to travel

by the Po, finishing the journey along the Adige to Chioggia by means

of a canal which linked up the two rivers. As for the Brenta, it had

its own proverb, that the passenger boat (between Padua and Venice)

would sink when it contained neither monk, student, nor courtesan,

which is as much as to say that the tourist would always find company,

as well as a boat, ready.

It is in connection with the waterways of North Italy that one of the

debated questions of Shakespeare's life has arisen: as to how much, or

how little, he knew of Italy first hand. But hitherto the commentators

have been contented with so little evidence that his references to them

have been misinterpreted and the accuracy of the impression that they

give, and would give still more distinctly had his editors done him

justice, has been denied. A recent writer[38] has set out the facts and

some evidence so clearly that there is no need to add to the latter

further than has already been done by the few instances just mentioned:

a few out of an almost indefinite number which are to be found in the

writings of these tourists contemporary with Shakespeare, who are

surely the most satisfactory witnesses in a case like this, wholly

concerned with what he, if a tourist, would have seen. What they show

is that in practically every North Italian town passenger traffic by

water formed part of the daily life, and that is the impression clearly

shared by Shakespeare. When he represents the passenger traffic in an

Italian river being dependent on the tide, it must be remembered that

he lived near old London Bridge, where the tidal rush was tremendous;

and that for his purpose in writing accuracy did not matter in the very

least. Neither is any mistake of his over routes to be compared with

one of the careful Villamont, who asserts that he reached Este from

Padua by the Brenta and that the Brenta is navigable no farther than

Este. Now Este is southwest of Padua and the Brenta reaches the latter

from northwest and never gets within seventeen miles of Este; but what

is more particularly to be noted is that Villamont's "Voyages" was the

book of European travel most frequently reprinted in Shakespeare's

lifetime and that the error was never corrected. At the same time, it

is, perhaps, worth while laying stress on the fact that no deduction

can be made from all this as to whether Shakespeare ever left England

or the reverse, because his capacity for using second-hand knowledge

was so unique that it may be said of him as can be said of probably no

other writer, that it is impossible to make a reasonable guess as to

when his knowledge is first-hand and when it is not.

Another subject which needs to be treated here, although at first

sight it also seems out of place, is that of the characteristics of

the islands of Europe as seen by foreigners; for among the advantages

of choosing the sea must be reckoned acquaintance with those places

which one would never get a glimpse of without a voyage; that is,

those which ships touched at but which did not form parts of the

tourist's objective. Far and away the chief of these were the islands

of the Levant. The opinion that the tourists have of them is probably

rose-coloured by the fact that these broke the monotony of a longer

voyage than they had need of otherwise; but the fact remains that

all agree in depicting them as the spots where human life was at its

pleasantest. Of Chios, in particular, might be used the childlike

phrase which the Italians used to express the height of happiness,—it

was like touching heaven with one's fingers. Nowhere was there greater

freedom or greater pleasure. Such was Della Valle's opinion, who calls

it "the pleasure-place of the Archipelago and the garden of Greece";

nothing but singing, dancing, and talking with the ladies of the isle,

not only in daytime but up to four or five in the morning. Their

costume was the only thing in Chios that could have been improved and

this seems to refer to the style only, for Lithgow says that they

were so sumptuously apparelled that workmen's wives went in satin

and taffety, and cloth of gold, and silver, with jewelled rings

and bracelets; and when he goes on to say that they were the most

beautiful women he ever saw, it is worth remembering that he not only

covered more ground in Europe, but visited a greater number of the

islands of the Mediterranean than any of the others. Besides, there

are so many to confirm it; and although three hundred years ago there

was little of what we call appreciation of nature, or rather, of the

modern custom of definitely expressing such appreciation, there was no

lack of appreciation, and expression of appreciation, of nature when

taking a human and feminine form. Singing, too, seems to have been

part of living hereabouts: in Crete, for instance, the men, women, and

children of a household would usually sing together for an hour after

dinner. When there was a seamy side to their life it was associated

with politics; in this same Crete Lithgow stayed for fifty-eight days

and never saw a Greek leave his house unarmed: generally it was with a

steel cap, a long sword, a bow, dagger, and target-shield. In Zante,

too, labourers went to the fields armed; but then it must be taken

into account that the men of Zante were peculiarly murderous; if a

merchant refused to buy from them his life would be in danger: and

also, it was under Venetian rule, a double evil; first, because it had

no other object than that of benefitting Venetians, and secondly, it

implied opposition to the Turks, which was worse, much worse, than the

rule of the Turks. Chios was under Turkish rule; so was Coos, the next

happiest place, very rarely visited, but well worth it, partly for what

Della Valle calls the "Amorevolezza" of that generation, partly because

there were still to be seen the houses of Hippocrates, Hercules, and

Peleus, Achilles' father. At Corfu was the house of Judas; also his

descendants, however much the latter denied their ancestry; and near

Lesbos, the islet called Monte Sancto because it was thither that the

Devil had borne Christ to show him all the kingdoms of the earth. Then

there were all the natural curiosities which the tourist might see

in the Levant and nowhere else; asbestos at Cyprus, likewise ladanum

"generated by the dew," and at Lemnos the "terra sigillata" famed

throughout Europe for its healing properties, an interesting example of

an ancient superstition taken over by Christianity; for the priestess

of Artemis who had the charge of the sacred earth in Pliny's time had

been succeeded by the Christian priest whom the Turkish officials

watched at work without interfering, in case there might be some rite

which they did not know of and on the use of which the efficacy of the

earth depended.

So also, with volcanoes; it was only he who went by sea who saw any

other than Vesuvius; and in addition to their scientific, they had

also a theological, attraction, being generally considered as mouths

of hell, Stromboli, in particular, more continually active than the

rest. Concerning Stromboli there is a curious tale which is worth

borrowing from Sandys, how one Gresham, a London merchant, ascended the

volcano one day, at noon, when the flames were wont to slacken, and

heard a voice call out that the rich Antonio was coming. On returning

to Palermo where there was a rich Antonio, well known, he learnt that

the latter had died at the hour the voice had been heard, and the fact

and hour were confirmed by the sailors who had accompanied Gresham, to

Henry VIII, who questioned them. Gresham himself retired from business

and gave away his property.

Another Levant incident, characteristic, mysterious, and one of

Sandys' telling, moreover, is this. He was at Malta one day, alone

on the seashore, and what he saw seemed like a part of a masque. A

boat arrived; in it, two old women. Out they stepped with grotesque

gestures, and spread a Turkey carpet, on that a table-cloth, and on

that victuals of the best. Then came another boat which set "a Gallant

ashore with his two Amorosaes, attired like nymphs, with Lutes in their

hands." But the "gallant" turned out to be a French captain and the

nymphs far from spiritual.

Or again; once, on the way to Constantinople, they were near land and

he made a day's excursion. Returning at evening, he found the captain

lying dripping wet, struggling, it seemed, with death. The crew were

all quarrelling, some on board, some on shore. "Amongst the rest there

was a blind man who had married a young wife that would not let him

lie with her and thereupon had undertaken this journey to complain

unto the Patriarch. He, hearing his brother cry out at the receipt of

a blow, guided to the place by the noise and thinking with his staff

to have struck the striker, laid it on with such force that, meeting

with nothing but air, he fell into the sea, and was with difficulty

preserved from drowning. The clamour increased; and anon the captain,

starting up as if of a sudden restored to life, like a madman skips

into the boat, and drawing a Turkish scimitar, beginneth to lay about

him (thinking that his vessel had been surprised by pirates): whereupon

they all leaped into the sea, and diving under the water ascended

outside the reach of his fury. Leaping ashore, he pursues my Greek

guide, whom fear made too nimble for him, mounting a steep cliff which

at another time he could have hardly ascended. Then turning upon me

(who was only armed with stones) as God would have it, he stumbled,

and there lay like a stone for two hours, that which had made them so

quarrelsome being now the peace-maker. For it being proclaimed death

to bring wine into Constantinople and they loath to pour such good

liquor into the sea, had made their bellies their overcharged vessels."

But it would be doing the Levant injustice to let the last word on

it be an explained miracle, and therefore you may be informed on the

testimony of John Newberie, citizen and merchant of London, who, "being

desirous to see the world," has become enrolled in the band of Purchas,

His Pilgrims, that there was a small isle near Melos, to wit, the Isola

de' Diavoli, uninhabited but by devils; and if any vessels are moored

thereto, as may be done, the water being deep by the shore, the ropes

loose their hold unless the sailors make a cross with every two cables.

And once upon a time, when a Florentine galley was moored there without

a cross, a loud voice was heard warning the sailors to row away.

And lastly, this is what happened when a funeral had to take place at

sea; an inventory of the deceased's goods was made, the ship's bell

was rung twice, a fire-brand thrown into the sea, and the announcement

made: "Gentlemen mariners, pray for the soul of poor —— whereby,

through God's mercy, he may rest with the souls of the faithful." But

it is pleasant to say that on the only occasion this form of burial is

recorded the deceased was alive, if not kicking; he was at his post,

the "look out," curled up asleep, as he had been for forty-eight hours

previously, sleeping off the effects of Greek wine.

The amount of attention given to the other islands of the

Mediterranean, Sicily, which may be considered part of Italy, excepted,

might well be represented by saying nothing about them, but Cardinal

de Retz's remark about Port Mahon, Minorca, is too characteristic of

his age to be passed over; he praises it as the most beautiful haven of

the Mediterranean, so beautiful that its scenery surpassed even that

employed at Paris for the opera!

CHAPTER IV

CHRISTIAN EUROPE

PART I

EUROPEAN EUROPE

From the report of divers curious and experienced persons I had

been assured there was little more to be seen in the rest of the

civil world after Italy, France and the Low Countries, but plain and

prodigious barbarism.

Evelyn, _Diary_ (1645).

The route of the Average Tourist being determined by the considerations

above-mentioned, he was naturally directed to those countries whose

situation enabled them to influence the course of events in his

fatherland, whose development and conditions contained the most

pertinent lessons for him as a man and as a statesman, and whose

climate, accessibility, and inhabitants were such as hindered

travellers least. These countries were: Italy, France, the United

Provinces (_i. e._, Holland), the Empire, the Spanish Netherlands

(corresponding to Belgium), England, Poland. This order is that in

which they would probably have appeared to arrange themselves according

to their importance for the purposes under consideration. The omission

of England in the chapter heading is due, of course, to Evelyn having

started thence; of the Empire and Poland, to the date at which he is

writing, near the close of the Thirty Years' War; a date which, while

within the period with which this book has to deal, is later by nearly

half a century than the central date, 1600, to which all its undated

statements should be taken as referring.

Whatever criticism might have been passed on this order of importance

by this or that adviser, not one would have been found to dispute the

preëminence of Italy. Whereas now there is no form of human effort in

which the inhabitants of Italy have not been equalled or surpassed,

it seemed then as if there had never been any in which they had been

surpassed and very few in which they had been equalled. So far as Art

and antiquities go, there will be no need to persuade anybody of the

likelihood of that; nor probably, with regard to venerableness of

religion or romance of history. But the very easiness of imagining the

supremacy which would have been conceded Italy on these points tends

to close the enquiry into the causes of its hold on men in times gone

by, and consequently to obscure the fact that Italy then not only stood

for all that Italy stands for now, but also in the place, or rather,

places, now occupied by the most advanced States in their most advanced

aspects; for everything, in fact, that made for progress on the lines

considered most feasible or probable at the moment; for progress, not

only in culture, but in commerce and commercial methods, in politics,

in the science of war, in up-to-date handicraft, and, especially, in

worldly wisdom. Even a baby-food was assured of greater respect if

made from an Italian recipe, such as the paste made of bread-crumbs,

wheat-meal, and olive-oil, of which De Thou nearly died. In short,

if the value of Italy as the colonizer of Europe in regard to mental

development belonged by this time to the past rather than to the

present, its reputation as such must not be ante-dated, as is generally

done, and ascribed to the age when it most thoroughly deserved that

reputation. Here, on the contrary, as usually, merit and credit are not

contemporary.

And there was plenty to deceive those who did not look far below

the surface. In discussing politics the newest set-phrases would

be those brought into use by Italian writers; "balance of power,"

"reason of state," etc.; the word "status" itself, as a substitute

for "Respublica," was both a sign of the times and of Italian

influence.[39] So with commercial terms, we find, for instance, the

word "provvisione" (commission) being used as late as 1648,[40] by an

Englishman who had never been to Italy, while the control of Italy

over one of the later forms of the Renascence, that of the art of

gardening, is indicated by the introduction of the word "florist" from

the Italian during the seventeenth century. The only modern author,

moreover, whose acquaintance a European schoolboy was certain to

make, was the Italian versifier whom Shakespeare calls "good old

Mantuan," and even if we look at things from to-day's standpoint the

most remarkable professorship of the period would surely be accounted

that of Galileo at Padua, 1592-1610. In another respect, too, connected

with education, the relative maturity and crudeness of civilisation

south and north of the Alps is even more apparent to-day than it was

then. The "Trans-alpine" shared more or less Erasmus' belief in the

power of words as a means of education, whereas in Italy, and in Italy

alone, was it insisted that the influence of environment, personal and

physical, is the factor compared to which all else is of but little

account. The first theory is abandoned now by all who can afford to do

so, the second is that of the best effort of to-day.[41]

As for the technique of war, more than half-way through the seventeenth

century, when Louis XIV wanted the very best available talent to design

the completion of the Louvre, it was to Rome that he sent, and the

artist, Bernini, is recorded[42] as saying, to allay jealousy, that

there was no need for Frenchmen to be ashamed of an Italian being

called in for this purpose, seeing that in the kind of knowledge in

which they excelled all Europe, that of war, their teachers were still

Italians. And the modernity of the latter's reputation for supremacy in

military knowledge is thrown into relief by a remark of Bertrandon de

la Brocquière, writing in 1433, taken in conjunction with the above.

The latter was a clear-headed Fleming of wide experience who, when

drawing up a plan for the right composition of an army which should

suffice to drive the Turks back, only mentions French, English, and

German soldiers.

As regards applied science, again, we find Evelyn writing of the

harbour-works at Genoa, "of all the wonders of Italy, for the art

and nature of the design, nothing parallels this." Now Evelyn was

certainly not a man to underrate the rest of the wonders of Italy. As

for comparisons outside of Italy, all Europe had by his time settled

down to compete in the application of science to every-day life. And

as to the products of the soil, is it not probable that if, nowadays,

Europeans left the soil to take care of itself, and the day-labourer to

take care of the seed and the preparation of the product, Italy would

regain the first place as a producer of luxuries?

Such points as these, just a few that have chanced to suggest

themselves in the course of reading for other purposes, are merely put

forward as typical of the relations existing between Italy and the rest

of Europe; the Italians themselves admitted their own superiority by

the slightly contemptuous meaning that attached itself to their word

"Transalpini," and very rare is it to find one of these "Transalpini"

taking the view that Sir Philip Sidney and Fynes Moryson did, that the

first characteristic of Italy was pretentiousness. On the contrary,

it was assumed that little but experience could be so easily, or so

satisfactorily, acquired elsewhere. Diverse forms of government, at

least, could not be met with elsewhere in the same variety within such

narrow limits. The south was what they termed a "province," _i. e._, a

dependency held down by force, belonging to Spain; so, too, was Milan,

with its surroundings. In the centre was a monarch, the Pope, who was

both elected and "absolute," a term which had a specialised meaning,

that of power unlimited except by the extent to which the holder made

himself disliked. Further north were free cities, Lucca, Genoa; six

hereditary principalities, Tuscany, Mantua, Urbino, Savoy, Modena,

Parma; and lastly, the Republic of Venice with its miniature empire in

Lombardy. And concerning Venice, there is this to be noted, that it

was exhibiting solidity combined with elasticity to a degree all the

more astonishing in "an impossible city in an impossible place"; which

gave it a position not unlike that of England to-day, namely, that

peculiarities of its "constitution" received an even greater degree

of respect than they were entitled to and tended to be imitated by

constitution-formulators of the period who expected to reproduce what

had been achieved by geography and a national temperament, by means of

reproducing some of the formulas that the latter had adopted. All of

which was of great interest to the Average Tourist; and in consequence,

if you happen to be reading one of his accounts of a tour, at the first

mention of the word "Doge," skip twelve pages.

What remains to be seen concerning Italy is—what were the details that

mainly occupied the foreigner as student there. In which connection

the chief fact to be noted is that his stopping-places were invariably

towns; and this not in Italy only, but throughout Europe. As regards

the Average Tourist, this is fully accounted for by the objects he

set before himself, but it is equally true of all. Bathing-places

excepted, the only holiday resorts lay in the very last places where

we should think of looking for them—in the suburbs. The Riviera,

for instance, was no spot to delay in when Mohammedan pirates were

forever coasting along in search of Christian slaves; and so on. But

the essential explanation is to be sought in a census of Europe. The

population of London exceeds that of most sixteenth-century States,

and there are London suburbs which house more than any but the biggest

sixteenth-century cities. Many villages consisted of no more than three

or four houses; and even near Paris, of six or seven or eight; in

Spain one might journey eight leagues without seeing a house at all.

Whereas, therefore, the difficulty, and the pleasure, of a modern tour

consists in escaping from people, the difficulty, and the safety, of

all tourists in 1600 lay in reaching them.

Crossing the Alps, then, and making for the towns, one came, say, upon

Turin; not a town that would detain one, but a point of the parting of

the ways. Hence to Rome, the direct way lay through Genoa; a second viâ

Milan and Bologna, a day's journey longer but yielding the advantage

of seeing those two cities; while the third way, the longest but most

comfortable and no more expensive, lay down the Po to Ferrara, thence

to Venice, thence by sea to Ancona, by land to Loreto, and so to Rome.

The two former routes converged at Florence. Of these two the longer

would be chosen either going or returning. Milan must no more be

missed than Rome. It was the city of all Europe on which the question

of peace and war permanently depended; being the key to the most

debateable district. And as such, it may be imagined what the castle

was then from what it is even in its present state as a sort of museum

of military architecture. Then it was alive with the finest soldiers

of the age, Spaniards; a small town, complete in itself, with rows of

shops and five market-places. And the city itself was recognised as

unsurpassed as a school both for the accomplishments that befitted a

gentleman and for craftsmanship; for everything, in fact, that made

life possible or pleasant. Yet Bologna had the advantage of it in one

respect, in possessing a University; to matriculate in an Italian

university continued an inexpressible honour to the "Transalpini,"

evident though it was that the merest smattering of book-knowledge was

sufficient to pass; and even though the Italian said openly, "We take

the fees, and send back an ass in a doctor's gown." Florence again, had

its own supremacy; the most attractive town in the district where the

best Italian was supposed to be spoken. Siena was preferred by purists

for language, but the slight distinction was outweighed by just those

charms which have not been impaired by age. One more has indeed been

added that might be expected to have existed then, but did not; what

Ben Jonson wrote in "Volpone" in summing up the qualities of the poets

of Italy and eulogising Guarini.

Dante is hard and few can understand him

was but an echo of the Italians' own opinion. "Like Dante's 'Inferno'

which no man understandeth" was a Venetian Senator's description of

Henry IV's policy in 1606.[43]

Assuming the third route to be the one chosen, there was Ferrara to

pass, but not to stay at when Venice was almost in sight—Venice in

1600! to have been a witness of that would make it well worth while to

have been dead for the past three hundred years. The essence of the

change is best expressed in the words of Mr. L. P. Smith in his "Life

and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton," when he speaks of it as "a shell on

the shores of the Adriatic deserted by the wonderful organism that

once inhabited it." Outward and visible signs of the vividness and

breadth of its life were two in particular; the infinite variety and

number of persons and nationalities that filled its streets with colour

and contrast and a sense of new worlds and of mystery in the midst of

commerce; and secondly, the Arsenal. In all Europe there was not such

another organisation as the Arsenal; not one so completely prepared

with everything that went to the fitting out of a fleet, and very few

so well able to fit out an army. Villamont was shown twenty-five great

galleasses and eighty-five galleys, all of them so new that they had

not been out to sea. Probably, also, its managers were the greatest

direct employers of labour in Christendom; 2880 is one of the more

moderate estimates of those permanently at work, including the 200

old women always mending sails, a number increased to 700 at times;

and all these employees were assured of a pension from the State when

past work, an otherwise unheard-of custom then, in practice, at least.

It had its place, too, in the tourist's mythology; one after another

repeating the tale how when Henry III of France visited Venice, a

galley was built and three cannon turned out while he was at dinner.

Yet Montaigne has something to say about Venice that cancels all the

intervening years and changes, and brings him into touch with us. He

went his way towards it with the highest expectations, explored it

eagerly, recollected it with the keenest pleasure: yet at the end of

his second day there his feeling was one of disappointment. It may

be taken as characteristic that he alone should experience then what

seems more appropriate to the present; more probably, other visitors

shared it but were too much subject to convention to say so; or,

perhaps, re-writing their experiences later at home, as they generally

did, they record their later thought only, whereas Montaigne left his

unrevised and unashamed. This explanation seems the more reasonable

inasmuch as the causes of the feeling had already come into being. On

the surface the sight rested satisfied, while the imagination remained

as hungry as ever. In a country, France, for instance, the tourist

always had a consciousness of towns and districts unseen, all of which

had contributed to the past, for evidence of the existence of which

the imagination looks, however unconsciously; but after two days in

Venice, all that is important and visible may seem to have been seen;

no suggestion of anything beyond, not even the ruins of a half-buried

city, as at Rome. It is true it was clear then that the word "Venice"

meant an Empire as well as a city, though by the time the tourist

had reached the city, he had passed through the conquests, barring

an island or two in the Levant which the Turks were in course of

subtracting. Yet the third meaning of the name was as dim to him as

both the second and the third are to most of us, that of the source of

an Empire, the whole collection of islands in the lagoons, whose larger

life had already been drained away into the central settlement, but

where Venice and its history were equally discoverable—but not in two

days.

Another similarity between Venice of old and of to-day lies in the

fact that the gondoliers knew much better than the visitors whither

the latter wanted to go and took them there, with, or against, orders;

only with this difference, that then it was always to the house of the

courtesan in whose pay he was.

When the tourist had released himself and was proceeding on his way

to Rome there were the beacons dotted along the coast for him to

notice, beacons for signalling the sighting of a Turk or corsair vessel

from south to north in a few hours. Ravenna received little notice,

Rimini less, but Ancona was kept in the memory by one of those rhymes

characteristic of the contemporary guide-book.

Unus Deus, Una Roma,

Unus turris, in Cremona,

Una portus, in Ancona.

And then Loreto. Here it must be remembered, first of all, that it was

unpardonable to ask for a meal before visiting the "Santa Casa." The

town was little more than one long street, well fortified by reason

of the treasure that the offerings represented. Bassompierre relates

in his memoirs how he was invited to be one of the witnesses at the

quarterly offering of the poor-box one Christmas; the contents amounted

to 6000 crowns (in our money about £7500); this for one quarter only.

Many men, and towns too, were represented by models of themselves

in solid silver. As to which votive offerings Montaigne makes an

assertion, unconfirmed by any one else but with this in its favour,

that no tourist but himself gives any details concerning a valuable

offering from himself made at Loreto. He says that the craftsmen refuse

to take any payment for such articles beyond the cost of the materials.

It seems incredible that a town which had been the resort of pilgrims

for more than two centuries should not have become demoralised, but

Montaigne adds that the officials refused tips, or received them

unwillingly; and certainly no one complains of extortion.

If the tourist was lucky enough to see a shipload of pilgrims arriving

from the farther coast of the Adriatic, it would be worth while to stay

and watch, for as soon as Loreto came in sight they rose and cried

out without ceasing from that moment until they reached the "Santa

Casa," beseeching the Madonna to return to Fiume, where, once upon

a time, so the tale ran, her house had stood. Leaving Loreto, not

forgetting, of course, to wear the pilgrim's badge peculiar to the

shrine—a leaden image of Our Lady surmounted by three porcupine quills

fastened together with a silk thread, a tiny flag on each quill—leaving

Loreto, then, a détour was often made to visit Assisi, joining the main

road again at Spoleto. And so to Rome, where the new arrival, if a

Roman Catholic, should first make his way to the Scale Sante to return

thanks for his preservation during the past journey; where, too, at his

departure, he should pray for assistance on the one to come.

It made considerable difference to his recollections of Rome what date

it was within this period that he arrived. If at the beginning, he

would have found St. Peter's half-finished and the interior in a state

better suited to a pig-sty; and the rest of the city to match; the most

confident Protestant would be gratified to find himself scandalised

beyond expectation. By 1601 St. Peter's was practically in all its

glory, the city unsurpassed in its care for the needy and sick, and

of average morality. In the interval, too, the catacombs had been

discovered, and though Bosio, the explorer of them, did not publish

the results of his explorations till 1632 they became more accessible

meanwhile; continuing, however, to be regarded as isolated "crypts."

It was his book "Roma Sotterranea" that first caused them to be

considered collectively; and it was under that name that Evelyn paid

his visit to them in 1645, the first of these tourists to make anything

that can be called an excursion among them. He entered through a burrow

in a cornfield two miles from the city, so small that he had to crawl

on his stomach for the first twenty paces. But the main feature of the

Rome of 1600 was still its power. Not simply influence in the present

as a result of power in the past, but the strength of age, middle-age,

and youth existing in unison. To begin with, their reverence for

Ancient Rome was greater than ours; an effect partly of their theory

of history, partly of the narrower limits of their acquaintance with

the materials of history. For the former cause, it was bound to be

an axiom of history as long as the Bible remained authoritative as a

statement of historical fact, that mankind had proceeded from good to

bad, and from bad to worse, as time had advanced. And whatever, in

the thought of the age, tended to shake this view, was held in check

by the discoveries, in different, previously unexplored, parts of the

world, of communities which seemed to be possessed at once of a higher

morality and also of a more primitive civilisation, than the European.

It is probably impossible for us to realise the alteration that the

theory of evolution has introduced into current ideas about history.

For the second cause, the greatness of the Roman Empire appeared the

greater for their having so little with which to compare it. The empire

of the Ottomans had, it is true, by now eclipsed it; but Spain's was

a vague wilderness, inhabited by savages; the Persian of old they

only knew through the doctored accounts of the Latin writers; and of

the overwhelming antiquity and extent of the Chinese they had no real

knowledge at all. All, the Turkish excepted, that were not shadowy

to them, were what Rome had obliterated, the moral effect of which,

associated, as it must needs be, with the name of the city, endured

as the chief asset of the Papal power. If any one then had taken

Gibbon's view, that the remains of the Roman Empire were approaching

dissolution, it would only have been because he thought that the end of

the world was equally near. And this unbroken continuity of power did

not merely exist, but was alive with fresh life. Nothing had replaced

Rome; there was nothing to replace it; there was no need to replace

it, since there was nothing effete nor slack about it, however much

corruption was patent to the "Reformed."

The relations between visitors who were "Reformed" and Rome is another

interesting feature of the tourist-life of the time when both were

militant and a large proportion of tourists anti-Catholic. Much

depended on the reigning Pope. In the time of Sixtus V (1585-90)

Protestants came in fear, lived in disguise, and sought protection;

Englishmen from Cardinal Allen, who readily granted it for a few days,

to enable them to see the antiquities. Clement VIII (1592-1605) was

much more lenient, yet Moryson thought it advisable even then to pass

for a Frenchman, and to safeguard himself through Cardinal Allen, as

well; also to leave before Easter, when there was a house-to-house

visitation to enquire if all were communicants. Precautions, on the

other hand, might be overdone. It was all very well to make a practice,

as one did, of going through a church on the way to his morning drink,

in case spies were about, but to tell one's host, as a certain German

did, on returning home from an afternoon walk, that he had just been

to mass, when all the masses were said in the morning, was going too

far! And conforming to custom had its own dangers, too, when it formed

a habit, as Moryson found, who, on entering a church at Geneva, reached

out his hand towards the poor-box in mistake for the holy-water stoop

to which he had accustomed himself; all the more embarrassing a mistake

for his being in the company of Theodore Beza.

Gregory XV (1621-3)—to return to the Popes—forbade even the other

princes of Italy to admit any but Roman Catholics to their dominions;

and there were, besides, the already-mentioned prohibitions from the

authorities at home. The state of affairs in general may be taken as

that suggested by the localisation of Shakespeare's plays. Two-thirds

of his scenes are laid abroad, in Italy more frequently than elsewhere

outside England: yet his contemporary Italy is practically always

the North, the South being reserved for the "classical" period.

Nevertheless, it may safely be assumed that the danger was not quite so

great as the fear, and that where the former was incurred, the sufferer

had only himself to blame. Whether or no the high officials at Rome

were faulty in dogma or in virtue, they were usually both men of the

world and gentlemen. Montaigne's belongings, for example, provided the

searchers with plenty of material for a charge of heresy, but a short

conversation overcame all difficulties. And one William Davis, an

English sailor[44] who fell ill at Rome in 1598, found by experience

that a Protestant who was civil would be cared for in a hospital free

and given food and money on leaving. The more usual kind of behaviour

has already been illustrated; only it must not be imagined that the

incautiousness and incivility which turned the Protestant into a

martyr were less conspicuous among other sects. By the law of Geneva

a three-days stay was permitted to travellers of every creed. The

poet-philosopher, Giordano Bruno, and the Jesuit missionary, Parsons,

both rested there; their zeal prescribed the extremes of controversial

outrage in return for tolerance and courtesy.

But Rome and its associations have had more than their share of

attention. Imagine, then, the traveller started on the invariable

excursion to Naples, the equal of Milan as a finishing school, and one

of the few cities with underground drainage. Some, but not many, might

go on to Sicily; to Syracuse for the feast of Santa Lucia, for choice.

But what with robbers and corsair-raids, there was no travelling there

without a strong guard, and the towns were so unsafe that Messina seems

to have been the first of European towns to evolve a combined bank

and safe-deposit under municipal guarantee; established by 1611, when

Sandys noticed it. Those who did reach Sicily usually visited Malta as

well; small boats with five rowers left about two hours before sunset,

and if no Turkish sail was sighted, went on, reaching Malta about dawn.

But the foregoing presupposes the Mont-Cenis route into Italy, and

leaves out three towns which must be included: Padua, Verona, and

Bergamo. Padua had its university, the most-visited in Europe; Verona,

its relics of Roman times, which commanded an attention that they now

have to share with the romantic aspects of mediæval history, romance

that sixteenth-century people were not inclined to be attracted by,

having too first-hand an acquaintance with feuds to look at their

picturesque side. Moreover, the visible remains of these feuds,

here and in every Italian city, showed a ludicrous side, for in so

far as they did not take the form of assassination by the foulest

means, they consisted in the two parties of retainers parading the

town, armed with an absurd completeness, each one confining itself to

certain quarters of the town by tacit agreement in order to render

collisions impossible. The habits dramatised in the first scene of

"Romeo and Juliet" are those of Londoners, in so far as they are at all

contemporary. The third town, Bergamo, thousands pass by now, year by

year, within a few miles, never knowing what they miss by not stopping,

but then it lay on the north-and-south road as much as any town in

Italy, and not even the Frankfort fair surpassed that of Bergamo,

August 25 and the following week, when lucky was he who could find

sleeping-room in a stable.

Yet however complete was the outfit obtainable across the Alps,

there remained other countries which were factors in politics; and

which possessed, moreover, histories, courts, universities, and men

of learning; fewer temptations, possibly, and more "true religion."

Of these France was the one the most easily accessible to a greater

number. As to its boundaries, they were somewhat narrower in almost

every direction than at present; especially southeastwards; Lyons

was a frontier-town. Its attractions lay principally in Paris, the

only city north of the Alps comparable to Milan as a centre for the

training of a man for a courtly, or an international, life; and in

the government, which, in its extreme centralisation and in its

idealisation of monarchy, corresponded most closely with the more

practicable ideals of the day.

In planning a route through France it was advisable to go straight

to Paris, if only for a few days, since to have been in Paris gave

one a position in the provinces. As a place to stay at, Orleans was

really far more frequently chosen by foreigners than Paris. Its

university was as international as any in Europe, and ahead of any

other in maintaining a circulating library for students, which lent

any book on a receipt being given for it; "an extraordinary custom"

says Evelyn. Here, too, began the district reputed best for spoken

French, which brought strangers to stay at Blois and Tours and Saumur

as well; to Saumur, perhaps, more than to the other two, by reason

of the number and quality of its teachers on all subjects; it was

a centre for Protestantism and learning in combination. Poictiers

for law, Montpellier for medicine; and there is an end of the towns

that the student-tourist abided in. For the country in general it

should be added that just here, where centralisation and autocracy

were developing most rapidly and thoroughly, was reckoned as the

most decidedly free region of Europe, "liberty," according to

sixteenth-century standards, depending not on administration being

either lenient or constitutional, but on the extent to which the

individual was not interfered with by social conventions. Political

tyranny was not regarded as objectionable on principle, except by

authors.

The United Provinces differed in no noteworthy respect from Holland

of to-day, so far as territory goes, and during the earlier part of

this period attracted but little attention; but as time went on and

from imminent destruction they escaped into independence, they drew

the tourist, first out of curiosity and subsequently as a State which

compelled the study of every one who needed to observe the present and

foresee the future. Many minor interests, too, brought individuals

thither, as a result of Dutch enterprise. We find, for example, Sir

William Brereton surveying the country in order to understand their

methods of decoying wild-fowl; and Sir Richard Weston, who introduced

locks into English rivers and the rotation of crops into English

agriculture, learning both these novelties there. And though no one as

yet went abroad to study the possibilities of practical philanthropy,

there were many who noted, with an admiration that doubtless bore

fruit, their charitable institutions of all kinds, unequalled then

outside Rome. In one respect they were ahead of Italy: the suddenness

of their prosperity resulted in the latest improvements in laying out

towns—wider streets and greater regularity being more in evidence

there than elsewhere. So uniform was the appearance of the houses,

says one, that they seemed to have been all built by the same workmen

at the same time; whereas the Italian towns, even in re-building,

made no such experiments, because the old narrow streets formed the

best safeguard against the surprise-attack of which they lived in

constant dread, especially from the Turks' corsairs. No one town could

claim precedence, though Amsterdam, even as early as 1600, struck

De Rohan as equalled by few in Europe for wealth and beauty; it was

rather the excellence and frequency of the towns that occasioned

remark—twenty-nine fine ones within sixty leagues of boundary; together

with the number of storks which the municipalities cherished, as

animals known to harbour a preference for places where representative

government flourished.

As for the Empire, it meant many different things to different

visitors. The variety of territory and government was absolutely

bewildering, yet certain marked cross-divisions presented themselves,

such as the triple division of it into upper Germany, Hansa League

(with Saxony), and frontier; the frontier being those districts

which were forever either meeting, or fearing, a Turkish invasion.

Then there was division according to politics, Catholic, Reformed,

Protestant, to be studied by the Average Tourist for purposes of

alliance, and a third classification according to form of government,

the imperial authority, venerable and increasingly vague; princes;

"free" towns. The first system of division has, however, most in common

with the greater number of foreigners' interests, and of its three

sub-divisions upper Germany was paid the greatest attention, partly

because it lay across so many routes, partly because there was so much

to see. It gives the dominant note to references to German-speaking

countries in the travel-literature of the day, a note of peaceful

energy and hopeful prosperity. While not recommended to these

travellers' notice by a well-known past such as the greater coherence

of France and Italy had enabled historians to evolve for them, those

who lingered there, as most did, saw that its possessions, human and

non-human, gave it a present interest and a promise not surpassed

elsewhere. The Germany of the last fifty years of the sixteenth

century is practically ignored by modern English historians: the

story of its continual activity and of its continuous relations with

England contain none of those sensational hindrances to the advance of

civilisation with which historians concern themselves, but the frequent

references to those relations by the contemporary historian of Queen

Elizabeth's reign, William Camden, bear witness to the current opinion

and knowledge which found expression in the number of visitors from

all quarters and the attention they devote to it in relation to that

accorded to other countries.

Among the towns of the Empire Augsburg was easily first; its finest

street was the finest street in Europe, with roofs of copper; Nuremburg

ran it close in many ways but had nothing to show in comparison with

that one street. The cause of Augsburg's preëminence was its being

the home of the Fuggers, the greatest financiers of Europe, but with

their decline one function of the town that meant much in the way

of attracting wayfarers, that of being the General-Post-Office for

correspondence between Italy and Central Europe, passed to Frankfurt.

The frequency of the use of stone as house-building material in these

towns of Upper Germany and the show of burnished pewter and brass

that was the pride of each inhabitant of standing, who let his huge

hall-door lie open all day to exhibit it, were details which the

Average Tourist would not overlook if he was observing as he ought

where the wealth and security prevailed that were valuable in an

ally. Thus did Strassburg fix itself in De Rohan's recollections.

Democracy, to him, was a barely credible superstition; yet nowhere was

he more courteously treated, nowhere did he see completer preparations

against a long siege, nor any better arsenal, a model of cleanliness,

orderliness, and efficiency. Neither was it lost on him that amongst

all their collection of cannon there was not one for siege purposes;

their aim was defence, not offence. As little to be ignored as the

others was Ulm. A feature of the age was the development of the methods

of water-supply in towns; Ulm was the centre for this industry; even

Augsburg's water-supply had been planned there. And it was equally the

leader in woodwork.

Similar characteristics would be found repeated on a somewhat less

striking scale among the Hansa towns, with Lübeck ranking first in

pleasantness by general consent. A specially charming feature lay in

the number of swans swimming in the moats, though no Englishman so much

as mentions them; doubtless because the one town that excelled it in

this respect was London. Going east, the various capitals would provide

each its own object-lesson, and, collectively, would illustrate the

absence of avarice among German rulers as contrasted with the princes

of Italy. Saxony formed the only exception and Dresden showed it. In

spite of it being the last big town that Hentzner visited, its armoury

aroused more enthusiasm in him than anything except the gardens of

Naples and the all-sufficiency of Milan; and Moryson confirms this,

adding also that the stable was the finest he had seen, with its

136 horses, all foreigners (the German horses had another stable to

themselves), each with a glazed window and a green curtain in front

of his nose, a red cloth, an iron rack, a copper manger, a brass

shower-bath, and a separate cupboard for his trappings.

No Protestant who reached Dresden would miss Wittenberg, but the

contrast must have been painful; poor and very dirty; the dwellers

therein mainly students, prostitutes, and pigs, recalling the verses in

use concerning Angers—

Basse ville, hauts clochers,

Riches putaines, pauvres escoliers.

Leipzig was in favour for the purity of its German and Munich for

pleasure, but Prague was another disappointment in spite of the Emperor

living there; few stone houses and the wooden ones rough, and so filthy

that the saying ran that the Turks would never take it despite the

feebleness of its fortifications, because it was so well-guarded by its

stenches; much as a Frenchman remarked at this time of Massa, between

Genoa and Pisa, that it had a castle, but its chief defence was its

fleas. Vienna was likewise far too well defended to attract visitors; a

frontier-town against the Turks, always garrisoned by mercenaries and

its streets unsafe in consequence.

To go on to the Spanish Netherlands, they were bound to be passed

and re-passed in the course of the work of Europe, for geographical

reasons, but still more so as a storm-centre of European politics.

Nevertheless, the tourist, however serious, did not stay there long.

The viceroy's business was generalship, and consequently there was no

settled court: little to note, in fact, but the Spanish infantry at

work and the effects of that; towns in ruins, dwindling trade. Yet the

localisation of the war was intermittent enough not to interfere with

the travellers from Upper Germany making a practice of reaching France

through this district, according to Zinzerling, rather than direct, a

habit resulting not only from the attractions that remained to Flemish

towns, but still more from the direct route through Burgundy having

become a highway of German mercenaries into France.

[Illustration: GATE OF ST. GEORGE, ANTWERP]

Moreover, no one who knew his business as a sight-seer omitted Antwerp.

Trade and political importance had for some time been deserting it

until it suggested to Howell in 1619 "a disconsolate Widow, or a

superannuated Virgin that hath lost her Lover," but in 1600 it had

not passed a state of mellowness without stagnation, with traces of

its greatness fresh. Every visitor repeats the same idea—"the most

beautiful town in Europe"; and not in the same formula, as would result

from the idea being a guide's commonplace, but in words drawn from his

own experience: "as seen from the cathedral tower the most beautiful

town after Constantinople," says one; or Lithgow, extolling

Damascus, "the most beautiful city in Asia," compares it, for every

respect save style of architecture, to "that matchless pattern and

mirror of beauty, Antwerp." It would seem to have been the first town

to turn its fortifications into promenades, laid out in walks and

planted with trees.[45] The citadel, too, was the finest out of Italy,

on the word of a Venetian ambassador.

Elizabethan England, on the other hand, was rendered still more

remarkable by possessing no fortresses at all. Two exceptions, Berwick

and the Tower of London, served but to call attention to the rule,

the Tower in particular, whose out-of-date character in the matter of

defences greatly amused connoisseurs. One Venetian ambassador, indeed,

with this fact in his mind, together with the miscellaneous character

of its contents, describes it as not so much a fortress as a "sicuro

deposito"—a safe-deposit.[46] The peacefulness which brought about this

state of things is still borne witness to by the large glazed windows

on the ground floors of Elizabethan country-houses, but no foreigner

remarks on that in the presence of the other more striking points that

testified to it then. Foscarini, the successor of the ambassador just

referred to, had occasion to traverse the length of England in 1613.

Writing home[47] he remarks on five facts concerning the country he

passes through which seemed particularly noteworthy: (1) No unfruitful

land throughout; (2) Every eight or ten miles a town comparable to a

good Italian town (this was on the post-road to Scotland); (3) Number

of navigable rivers; (4) and of beautiful churches; (5) No mercenary

soldiers.

To make it clear why the visitor should be so specially struck by these

features, it is necessary to recall how differently matters stood

abroad.

During this period two thirty-year civil wars broke out in Europe, one

in each half of the period, the first in France while the Empire was

at peace, the second in the Empire while France was at peace. Between

these two came twenty years of comparative quiet, but never a year

when war was not to be seen in progress, or its effects still horribly

new, in the course of a Continental tour. Incidentally, it may be

pointed out that this peculiarly even distribution of peace and war

gives the writings of travellers in Europe at this time striking value

in relation to the effects of war and peace, not only in themselves

but also as to their special characteristics in the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries. No tourist came into contact with both wars;

almost every tourist saw something of one district under the influence

of war or of peace, while some other is seeing another district in

an opposite state. There remains, therefore, in their writings, a

continuous comment on each other; so continuous and so unconscious as

to leave no room for this or that man's bias to influence the general

impression.

Yet striking as the peacefulness of England was, it probably lessened

rather than heightened what degree of attraction England possessed;

since with war so normal a condition, war and its incidentals became a

primary object of study even to those who did not profess soldiership.

Neither did any but the Dutch need to learn the language of the

country, which was what induced so many to make a lengthy stay in

Tuscany and in Touraine. Neither was England a thoroughfare. Nor, even,

were the recent achievements of Englishmen more than a minor cause of

the considerable influx of visitors; not, at least, apart from the

idea which is best expressed, perhaps, in the private letter of an

Englishman writing from Aleppo: "Your last letter made me exceeding

sorrowful, for therein you acquainted me with the death of blessed

Queen Elizabeth, at the hearing whereof not only I and our English

nation [_i. e._, the residents] mourned, but many other Christians

who were never in Christendom, but born and brought up in heathen

countries, wept to hear of her death, and said that she was the most

famous queen that ever they heard or read of since the world began."[48]

For the "Virgin Queen" was a far greater marvel to contemporaries than

to posterity. Except for her namesake of Spain, a century earlier,

who throughout her political life had been the ally and wife of one

of the cleverest statesmen of the age, there was no instance since the

mistiest past of a queen-regnant a leader of men. At her accession

civil war or conquest seemed inevitable and insolvency was a fact:

yet before her death the bond of London "is," writes one of the chief

financiers of the time,[49] "the first to-day [1595] in Europe," and

she had added victory abroad to peace at home. To say "she had added"

suggests nowadays the phraseology of the lady's paper, but it does

really express not only the convention which the tourist may be taken

as accepting but also the belief of reasonable men of the time.

It is true that many denied her right to the title of "Queen," or,

indeed, to that of "Virgin"; but no one had the opportunity of doubting

that both claims belonged to that secondary order of facts known as

"historical." And just as her position as sovereign, and a strikingly

successful one, was more wonderful then than it seems to-day, so

too did her celibacy assure her of more reverence than we should

instinctively concede. The mediæval idealisation of virginity, one of

the most beneficial, perhaps, of all the ideas of the past that the

Reformation killed, ensured a place in the life of the world, and the

self-respect contingent on that, for all the unmarried women whose

counterparts since have had no assistance socially from any convention,

from nothing but their own individuality. But this idea, though dying,

was not dead; and, as is the way with ideas, challenged attention all

the more definitely for ceasing to be taken for granted.

These two facts, then, glorified Elizabeth in the eyes of foreigners;

first, that she was a queen and a great ruler when effective

queenship was half a myth; secondly, that she remained unmarried when

virginity, considered as a virtue, was, so to speak, due to have its

last flicker before finally dying down. The reign of James I was a

sort of after-glow, except in so far as he had a reputation as a

philosopher-king.

These ideas have a marked effect on the visitor's itinerary. He

hurried, as a rule, to London, and thence, if the court was away, to

that one of the palaces which was in use for the time being. The other

country palaces, none far from London, would receive a visit, at any

rate Windsor and Hampton Court; Oxford probably, Cambridge possibly,

and there an end. Of Scotland and Wales it can only be said that the

former was practically ignored except by a few Frenchmen, as a result

of the ancient alliance; while to Wales they paid as little attention

as the semi-Welsh queen did—none at all.

Among the foreigners who have given us their impressions of England are

several who have much that is of interest to say and yet who seem to

have been entirely overlooked. Nevertheless, these pages are already

more numerous than the relative importance of England warrants. Let us

therefore take but one, and that one the briefest; the more so since

he is the likeliest to continue to be overlooked, writing as he did in

Polish, from which hitherto no translation seems to have been made, not

even in paraphrase.

Jakób Sobieski, the only man who was ever four times Marshal of the

Polish Diet, travelled all over Europe in his youth. Henry IV of France

made a personal friend of him, and it was at Paris that he spent more

time than elsewhere, where, eventually, he witnessed the assassination

of the king and was nearly lynched himself on the spot by the mob who

took it into their heads to regard him as the murderer. However, he

not only escaped, but after justice had been done on Ravaillac by his

being torn asunder by horses, Sobieski had an invitation to dinner

from a bootmaker who had collected certain pieces of Ravaillac and was

arranging a loyal dinner-party at which they were to form the chief

dish.

It was in the previous year (1609) that he visited England in the train

of Myszkowski, the Marshal, negotiations being then in progress for

the marriage of James I's daughter Elizabeth to Wladislas, son of the

King of Poland. Sobieski, very young and very Catholic, was easily

enough taken in by appearances to speak of James I as a model king, and

to accept without question the declaration of the English Catholics

that things had improved greatly since the death of the "severe and

overbearing Queen Elizabeth." But it must be borne in mind that the

King had not yet come to the bottom of the Treasury. One of Sobieski's

remarks—that the Palace at Westminster is finer inside than outside—is

an interesting comment on the impoverishment of the Crown that set in,

if taken in conjunction with the remark of Gölnitz of Danzig, less

than ten years later, who says exactly the opposite. In comparing the

palaces around Paris with those of the English king, he says that

the former are fine externally, but contain many rooms in which a

respectable German would not care to receive an acquaintance; cobwebs,

unpolished woodwork, walls in disrepair. One thing that scandalised

Sobieski greatly was that in St. Paul's he found buying and selling

going on, a statement confirmed by a Venetian ambassador here in 1607,

who says that London possesses many fine churches but that these are

mostly used for nothing but driving bargains in.[50]

Sobieski's business, however, lay at the court, and the court was

out of town: the King at one palace, the Queen at another, Princess

Elizabeth at a third. On paying their respects to the last-named a

curiously characteristic thing happened; her chamberlain met them and

asked in what language they would speak with the Princess, French,

Italian, or Latin; she was equally at home in all three. Myszkowski

chose Italian. The occasion, of course, was not a decisive one, but

the conversation turned on Wladislas, the most anxious enquirer being

an elderly lady-in-waiting who wanted to know if he was tall; the

Princess, she would have them know, was tall, really tall, not made

so artificially, with high heels, etc., to prove which she raised her

mistress's skirt until they saw not merely blue stockings, but also

saffron garters and white lace.

The last country of "European Europe" is Sobieski's own country, but

only the last because, like England, it led nowhere. If omitted from a

tour it was omitted with regret and consciousness of loss, being the

largest monarchy in Christendom, 600 miles by 800, with a frontier

reaching to within 150 miles of Moscow and 100 of the Black Sea; always

on the verge of war, moreover, and a paradise of aristocracy, three

good reasons for claiming the Average Tourist's attention, especially

as among this aristocracy was always to be found a welcome and as high

an average of attainments and qualities as anywhere north of the Alps.

The statement, too, that it was not a thoroughfare must not be taken as

absolute. Negotiations between the Tsars and the Papacy were frequent

and these of course implied journeys through Poland by the friars whom

the Papacy was wont to use as emissaries for long distances, as being

more accustomed to endure privation and fatigue than bishops.

Besides, from southeast to northwest stretched the high road from the

Black Sea through Kamienietz to Danzig, which one of these travellers

assures us was the most thickly-populated highroad in Europe.[51]

Danzig itself was one of the great centres of world-commerce; so great

that its citizens were well justified in one detail of their daily life

that Moryson records, that of taking off their hats as they passed the

town hall. The commerce was very varied, but its main export seems to

have been grain and its main import, Scotchmen. Of these latter there

were certainly thousands;[52] in fact, from some date in the reign of

Stephen Bathory (1575-86) till 1697, perhaps later, a "brotherhood" of

Scots existed, recognised officially; and boys of fifteen to seventeen

came over in such quantities and so often with such disastrous results,

that in 1625 an edict was issued in Scotland prohibiting skippers

taking over any who had not been sent for or had not 500 marks. But

these can hardly be reckoned as tourists, travelling, as they did,

Scot-fashion, on the "ubi panis, ibi patria" principle, with the object

of sharing the retail-trade with Jews, so successfully that there has

long lingered in Eastern Prussia the proverb, "Warte bis der Schotte

kommt," alluding to the annual visits of these pedlars. Many, too, can

be traced as becoming burgesses of Danzig, or of Posen.

Of visitors of the type with which this chapter is more specially

concerned, the reign of the Henry who afterwards became Henry III

of France marks a starting-point, judging partly from the evidence

available before and after that date, partly from the statement in

the report of the first resident Venetian ambassador there, Girolamo

Lippomano, who came in that reign, that Poland was at that time an

unknown land to Venetians.

So much for the Average Tourist at work. Let us now see how he spent

his spare time. It goes without saying that the degree to which the

foreigner enjoyed himself was more or less dependent on the behaviour

of natives. Let us see, first, then, what reception he might expect.

Small boys, of course, are the same yesterday, to-day and forever, but

they were, if possible, somewhat more outspoken then. An ambassador's

wife went to the Hague once, never again, "by reason of the boys and

wenches who much wondered at her huge farthingales and fine gowns, and

saluted her at every turn of the street with their usual caresses of

'Hoore! hoore!'" Concealing herself from view was impossible, no cart

would hold her farthingale. And although with all the detail that is

poured forth concerning the Venetian constitution, the feature in it

which, though informal, has outlasted all the others, that of the

limited despotism of the small boys, is ignored, yet in practice it

was felt; Sastrow, for one, did not forget being pursued with "Tu sei

tedesco, perciò Luterano."

As regards the adults, Frenchmen, or any one dressed in French

fashions, had to beware of the Italian towns where the French had been

masters for a time, and although Strassburg had a gate on the west,

any one coming from the French side had to enter by the east gate.

Commercial quarrels were even more bitter than political. When, for

instance, the English removed their "staple" from Hamburg to Stade,

nearer the mouth of the Elbe, it was not safe for an Englishman to be

seen at Hamburg after the citizens had reached their mid-day stage of

drunkenness. As for theological enmity, a Roman Catholic was saying

his prayers one evening in Frisia with the windows open; an old woman

marked it and came across the street to spit at his inn; the next

morning she came again, to spit at him, and he had to put up with it

for fear of worse happening.

With such exceptions as these there was not much to be feared from

the upper classes; nor even, on the main routes, from the lower; in

Dauphiné, for instance, all classes were pleasant enough, whereas at

Rochelle strangers were liable to be pulled off their horses if they

did not remove their hats when passing the guard at the gates. The two

worst towns for brutality towards foreigners were, by general consent,

London and Toulouse. In the former, according to Giordano Bruno, whose

account only differs from every one else's in being more picturesque,

the shop-people and artizans, on seeing a stranger, make faces, grin,

laugh, hoot, call him dog, traitor, foreigner, the last name being

the rudest they can think of, qualifying him for any other insult.

Should he take the offensive, or put his hand to his weapon, an army

of ruffians seems to spring out of the ground, flourishing a forest of

sticks, poles, halberds, and partizans. In a more playful humour, one

will pretend to run away behind a booth and come out charging on the

stranger like an angry bull; if an arm gets broken, as happened to one

Italian, the bystanders shout with laughter and the magistrate sees

nothing reprehensible in the affair.[53] Oxford was a change for the

better, for there it was only the students who behaved like brigands;

as they did at Carcassonne, too, where the law-students insisted on

tribute from visitors,—they called it a "bienvenu,"—or if it was not

forthcoming, the contents of the visitor's trunks were shaken out. Yet

among those of Oxford, Zinzerling makes an exception in the case of

Queen's College, where as soon as a foreigner is recognised as such, he

is brought an ox-horn full of beer.

[Illustration: VENETIAN MOUNTEBANKS]

Such presents were customary on a very large scale on the continent;

in France they generally consisted of wine and were presented to

persons of high rank only, but in Germany every gentleman received

gifts of drink and food which usually cost more than their value in

tips and dinners. The higher the rank of the visitor, the greater

the quantity; the Infanta Clara Eugenia writes home that at the

stopping-places in her passage through Switzerland the gifts require

thirty or forty men to carry them, who lay them at her feet until

she is surrounded by barrels and has the greatest difficulty in

preserving her gravity. At Lucerne she received barley as well as

wine, and two oxen, both too fat to move. Many other local customs

had to be submitted to which have died out since; such as ceremonies

of initiation into the freedom of Hansa League towns, which were

accompanied by practical joking; the obligation on Protestants staying

at Geneva to attend service at 7 A. M. whenever there was a sermon; and

so on.

Among these exceptional customs and regulations should be mentioned

those concerning weapons in Italy. At Lucca no knife might be carried

unless blunted at the point; in the Papal States, a sword was allowed,

but no short, easily hidden, weapon; in Venetian territory fire-arms

only were forbidden; elsewhere a license from the local authorities

had ordinarily to be obtained for wearing a sword, and in Florence the

license only referred to day-time. This is Moryson's account of the

regulations; before his time the regulations were laxer, and later they

became stricter, which gave a great impetus to the poisoning trade; in

fact, the bakers in Lombardy were mostly Germans, and those of Rome,

Jews, the Italians being unwilling to trust their fellow countrymen.

Such subjects naturally suggest executions, which formed one of the

commonest and principal "sights" throughout Europe. Lithgow landed at

the Piazzetta at Venice just when a friar was being burnt alive there

for getting fifteen nuns with child in a year. It was in Venice, too,

that Moryson saw two young senators' sons, who had had too uproarious

a night, have their hands cut off at the places where they had done

the mischief, their tongues cut out where they had sung blasphemous

songs, and finally beheaded by a sort of guillotine in the Piazza. And

when he was staying at Leipzig, where, as was the custom in Germany,

adultery was punishable by death, a case had recently occurred of

a girl giving birth to an illegitimate child in a church, during

service. It was under consideration when he left whether an ancient

precedent should not be revived to meet her case, that she should be

tied up in a sack with a cat, a cock, a snake, and a dog, all alive,

and so drowned. To quote one more as a sample of many, there is the

detailed description of a man being broken on the wheel at Hamburg,

by Taylor the "water-poet." The place of execution was on a mound,

so that the enormous crowd could see well; moated, to keep the people

at a distance, and approached by a drawbridge which was raised during

the execution; the criminal was drunk, according to custom. In Germany

exceptional criminals were on view for some days before execution,

nailed by the ears to posts. Torture accompanying execution was common,

and branding and mutilation things that no traveller could well avoid

seeing. But none seemed to want to avoid them: Evelyn went to the

Châtelet prison at Paris to look on while a prisoner underwent legal

torture. The only occasions that seem to have struck them as too

horrible was when the headsman bungled matters: a Dutchman at Paris

saw one try sixteen times and then have to be assisted. And as in the

towns, so by the wayside. Gallows and wheels bearing the bodies of men

and sometimes of women, dying, dead, or decaying, were continually

to be seen: Taylor says he counted seven score between Hamburg and

Prague, and Moryson mentions a criminal hanging in chains near Lindau,

starving to death, with a mastiff at each heel, in order that he might

be partially eaten before death.

[Illustration: PUBLIC EXECUTIONS]

No less awful a sight, and no less frequent in certain places, such as

Marseilles, was the galley-slave, naked except for a pair of breeches,

shaven, dragging behind him when ashore the chain fixed to his feet,

treated worse than a beast, and yet not necessarily criminal: at

Leghorn was a tent, at Naples a certain stone, where a man might stake

his liberty against a few shillings on a throw of the dice. Among the

few who obtained their release by being bought out were those who, on

that condition, acted as deputies in the processions of flagellants

which tourists often mention: Montaigne witnessed one at Rome with five

hundred persons in it. He, like others, was astonished to note their

unconcern; the scourging was genuine: their backs were raw and bloody,

the thongs of the scourges adhering to each other with the blood; yet

so far from showing signs of pain, they marched along, careless and

talkative, in an every-day mood.

Other forms of slavery were ordinarily met with: at Naples an open

slave-market was held; at Lisbon, too, where men and monkeys were sold

side by side. And here and there one might come across settlements

of those who could not claim all the benefits of the law. Zinzerling

picked up a cagot servant near Toulouse, a young man, well-informed,

who told him how his brother-outcasts had just petitioned for

permission to marry whom they chose, offering to have their blood

tested to prove it no different from other men's. Those who did not act

as servants, lived by handicraft, carpentering mostly; they were forced

to dwell in the suburbs, and nothing they owned was heritable except

furniture, which was looked on as sharing their taint.

But he does not mention the goose-foot badge which distinguished

them from "clean" persons. The badge of the Jew, on the other hand,

often seen, is often mentioned, varying according to the extent they

had acquired influence and used it. In Poland, thanks to the Jewish

mistress of one of their kings, they had almost equal rights with

Christians. Elsewhere, except in those places, such as England, which

they were nominally forbidden to enter, a badge was compulsory;

lightest in Mantua, merely a bit of yellow lace tacked on inside

their cloaks, but generally a red hat for the men and a red garment

for the women: red as betokening their guiltiness of Christ's blood.

An alternative colour was yellow, as in Rome, where a short-sighted

cardinal once mistook a red-hatted Jew for a brother cardinal and

obtained a change of colour in order to safeguard himself against being

so polite again.

But the tourist's leisure, so far, has been too much occupied with

blood and social damnation; let us look for a lighter mood: let us see

him at the Zoo. Florence seems to have been the best stocked. Rabelais

saw two Zoos there, and this was not an optical illusion of a credible

kind, for he localises them differently; one at the Palazzo Strozzi

with porcupines and ostriches as the "stars"; one near the Belfry,

boasting lions and tigers. Moryson mentions one only, the Duke's,

containing five lions, five wolves, three eagles, three tigers, one

wild cat, bears, leopards, an Indian mouse which could kill a cat,

and wild boars. After another fifty-year interval comes Evelyn, who

looks down upon all the animals housed together in a deep court, a

pleasanter confinement, he thinks, than the narrow cages of the Tower

at London. But I have forgotten Audebert, who should have come between

(1576) Rabelais and Moryson, and who found a Zoo near the "Annunziata,"

possessing fourteen lions, a tiger, an eagle, and a vulture therein.

In 1592 at Prague there were twelve camels in the Emperor's Zoo, very

probably the sons and daughters of those whom Busbecq brought back from

Constantinople in the hope of naturalising them in Europe as beasts of

burden,—not the only attempt of the kind, for Sir Wm. Brereton saw some

so used in Holland, and a German others near Aranjuez. The leopards,

moreover, in this same Imperial Zoo, were taken to assist in hunting.

Experiments and novelties such as these, of course, provided a larger

part of the interest of a journey then than is the case now, when

such news is communicated immediately through the newspapers. We find

Tommaso Contarini, ambassador to Flanders, greatly struck by the value

of peat as fuel, and bringing back some to Venice to assist him in

ascertaining if anything of the kind is obtainable near. Then there

was "Der Einlasse," the complicated night-entrance to Augsburg, worked

by mechanism which allowed a person to be admitted without seeing any

one,—such a mystery that many allowed themselves to be locked out

on purpose to see it work, and Queen Elizabeth sent a special agent

to acquire the secret; in vain. But in Augsburg front doors were

habitually opened by pulleys from some room, and shut automatically; it

was at Augsburg, too, that a coach was to be seen "driven by engines"

within it by the occupant so that it seemed to go of itself; it had

been driven about the city.[54] This occurs in the year 1655; three

years later fountain pens[55] were on sale at Paris for ten francs

each, twelve to those whom the inventor knew to be eager to have one;

that is, £5 to £6 in our money. Even an Italian might learn: like the

Florentine who discovered in England what garden-rollers were, in their

early solid-stone-cylinder form. But Tasso had the chance to learn

something important and not only passed it by but places it first among

the three customs in France which he strongly condemns. It is that in

some districts the people nourished the children with cow's milk. How,

he asks, can any good come of feeding infants with the produce of an

animal that is a beast of burden and has to endure blows daily? An

Englishman in Italy noted the method of stripping hemp with wooden

instruments instead of with the fingers, the laborious English way;

and fans, forks, and umbrellas would be new to every one who crossed

the Alps; but a learned physician warned Moryson against using the

last-mentioned, "things like a little canopy," as concentrating the

heat of the sun on the head.

In Flanders, again, every one might learn what kind of a thing a

door-mat was, and a Dutch barber had only to cross the Channel to find

that he was behind the times in using dregs of beer as a lather. And

if it was possible for a twentieth-century Englishwoman to cross into

sixteenth-century Germany she would find out what a convenience it was

for an invalid to have a towel attached to a wheel running along the

head of the bed, to assist him or her in changing position. Where, too,

except from travel, his own or some one else's, did Sir John Harington

get his ideas concerning the introduction of real water-closets, with

gold-fish visible swimming about in the cisterns, just as they are to

be seen at railway stations to-day?

A greater discovery than all these put together lay in the differences

in the position of women in the above countries. Take the United

Provinces and Italy, as the two where the contrast was greatest. In the

former, girls of good birth and looks might not only settle down in the

common-room of an inn instead of hiring a private room for meals, but

would sit round the fire and share the after-dinner drink of the men

as a matter of course. All-night skating-parties were so common that

the liberty was not misused; whereas in Italy the strictness was as

extreme as the Dutch freedom, and its result, too; only, in Italy, the

result was the demoralisation of both sexes. Chioggia was an exception,

where Villamont was surprised to see the women and girls sitting at

their doors, needle-working; and where French influence had made itself

felt some relaxation had taken place, especially at Genoa, where one

foreigner even notes that the women walked with a longer stride than

most Italian women. But the unmixed Italian convention gave most girls

no choice between becoming either prisoners or prostitutes, that is, of

course, like everything else in this book, from the foreigner's point

of view. Of the former class the tourist saw next to nothing; the men

of the household did even the marketing themselves; while the latter

formed one of the best-known features of Italian life. The numbers may

seem at first sight incredible—30,000 is the figure always quoted for

Naples; but there was some check on such statements inasmuch as every

government licensed each one for a fixed sum and therefore could reckon

the total. Moreover, Sir Henry Wotton writes in 1592 that a census

just taken in Rome counted 40,000, and he had it on good authority;

and in 1617, that the Espousal of the Sea at Venice had been spoilt

as a sight because the courtesans, offended at an edict directed at

them, had abstained from taking part in it. Those at the head of the

profession lived "like princesses," not only so far as expenditure

went, but also in their command of marks of respect in public, except

that every now and then some sumptuary edict would create, and perhaps

enforce, some distinction between those who populated and those who

depopulated Italy. It is pleasanter to turn back to Holland again, to

the homely arrangements of Thursday in Delft fair week, when the women

who had had enough of waiting for husbands sat in the church and the

men who had waited long enough for wives came to look at them. A few

questions, a pot of beer, a few details to be settled; and then the

wedding.

There were plenty of these fairs, Lyons had four a year, so had Rouen;

but the attraction they possessed for the sixteenth-century human being

lay rather in the amount of wholesale and financiers business done than

in homely picturesqueness; sentimentality is the last vice he can be

charged with. Who, for instance, nowadays, would dare to say he saw

nothing charming in a Breton festival? but Brittany was left to itself

in those days, and a travelling doctor who chanced on one leaves it

with the remark that the Breton girls singing their folk-songs reminded

him of "the croaking of frogs when they are in love." Yet St. John's

Eve was a festival that gave plenty of pleasure to lookers-on as well

as those who took part in it; at Paris, in particular, where there was

hardly a citizen named after the saint who did not light a fire at his

door that night. And it is perhaps worth mentioning how they kept that

feast at Naples, according to Audebert, in 1577; how the custom was to

bathe in the sea previous to paying one's devotions at "S. Giovan' a'

Mare," seeing that he adds that the custom was dying out, the younger

people scorning it as a pagan survival.

A larger proportion of the public pleasures of Europe were bound up

with religious ceremony than is the case at present; and as regards

pilgrimage, the reference above to the subject in general needs to

be supplemented by some details concerning the relics, since there

is no room for doubt as to whether or not they held their ground as

"sights," the more so inasmuch as a sceptical attitude did not become

a conventional habit of mind until, to judge by tourists' books,

about the third quarter of the seventeenth century. At the abbey of

Marmoutier, near Tours, for example, was shown a vessel which had been

sent from Heaven filled with oil for the healing of St. Martin's leg,

a breakage of which the devil had caused by taking away the stairs.

They also showed a vast barrel wherein St. Martin kept his wine; but

not till 1675 does any one remark that that was probably the fiend

who stole away the stairs. Disbelief finds expression in plenty, it

is true, but it is always that of the Protestant who disbelieves,

not because his reason tells him the tale must be false, but because

Roman Catholicism affirms it to be true. When there was no suspicion

of a friar at the back of the story, there was nothing they would

not swallow: even Evelyn accepts Mettius Curtius and his chasm as if

all four evangelists had guaranteed both; or, to take a still better

example, that of the monument near Leyden to the lady who had 365

children at one birth—(she had laughed at a poor woman's tale that the

latter's two babies were twins, and the woman had expressed a hope that

the lady might give birth to as many children at one confinement as

there were days in the year)—Münster, the great Protestant geographer,

repeats the story without throwing doubt, and consequently one tourist

after another has no hesitation about it.

So happy a frame of mind must have increased the interest of many a

resting-place. Breaking one's journey at Angers, for instance, there

was a porphyry vase to be seen, one of those used at the wedding feast

at Cana in Galilee; others were preserved at Famagosta, Magdeburg, and

the Charterhouse at Florence. At Angers, also, at St. Julian's, was

a copy of the portrait of Our Lady which St. Luke had painted; at

Arras, manna which had fallen in the days of St. Jerome, looking like

white wool; at Milan, the brazen serpent which Moses set up in the

wilderness; at Vienna, one of the stones wherewith St. Stephen had been

stoned, another at Toulouse; and at the monastery of the Celestines at

Louvain, one of the thirty silver pennies for which Christ had been

sold, bearing the head of Tiberius on one side, a lily on the other.

It is well known how Mary Magdalen came to Provence to live after the

Crucifixion, but less known that at Maximilien near Marseilles the tip

of her nose used to be on view: no more than that because she had been

cremated, but the tip of her nose remained imperishable because there

Christ had kissed her. Pontius Pilate also ended his life in Europe: in

exile at Vienne, where the tower in which he had been imprisoned was

pointed out to the visitor, likewise the lake wherein he had committed

suicide, although it was on the shores of another lake, one in the

territory of Lucerne, that he was to be seen walking once a year in

his official robes. But this every one was content to take on hearsay,

since he who saw him then died within the year.

The monastery of St. Nicholas at Catania, in Sicily, had an excellent

collection: a nail from the Cross, one of St. Sebastian's arrows, and

pieces of St. George's coat of mail, of St. Peter's beard, and of the

beard of Zachary, father of John the Baptist. This, and the places

previously mentioned, serve to show what treasures would surely be

met with on the road; great relic-centres like Venice and Rome would

require pages to catalogue their wealth; even a secondary centre

like Trier held as many bodies of saints as there are days in the

year, besides the well by which Athanasius sat when he composed the

"Quicunque Vult" and the knife wherewith St. Peter cut off Malchus' ear.

As for their belief in relics, it is only fair to point out what may

not occur to every reader, that they had the same reason, neither more

nor less, for believing so, as we for believing that the earth moves

round the sun: it is common knowledge. 'Common knowledge'—is not all

of it, whether scientific or theological, equally an act of faith? and

is it more reasonable for us to quote Baedeker to ourselves than for

pilgrim Nicholas to put his trust in friar John? "Howbeit (if we will

truly consider it), more worthy is it to believe, than to know as we

now know"—that is not a quotation from a theologian but from Bacon's

"Advancement of Learning." Of two things we may be sure, that the true

history of a relic would probably be far stranger than its legend,

and that whatever marvels the southerner saw or heard, he came across

nothing more novel or more miraculous than the ebb and flow of the

northern tides.

In speaking of relics, the secular ones must be remembered, too:

foremost among them the original Ephesus statue of Diana, which

Hentzner saw at Fontainebleau and Evelyn at the Louvre. Most frequently

mentioned is the buck's head at Amboise. It bore antlers of enormous

size, and for that reason had enjoyed Francis I's special protection

while alive. By Sir John Reresby's time (1654) it had been ascertained

that the buck was of English birth, having reached France by swimming

the Channel; while thirty-three years later it had been dead for three

hundred years and at the date of its death was nine hundred years old.

These details need no explanation; any caretaker can equal them under

pressure. The writer once asked the sextoness of the church where

Spinoza lies buried how he came to be laid there considering he was not

exactly orthodox: the answer was, without hesitation, that he became a

Protestant before he died!

These secular relics cannot possibly be left without a digression

concerning unicorn's horns, which were more prized than any other

kind of exhibit. St. Mark's Treasury at Venice seems to have been the

only museum that possessed more than one; it contained three. Dresden

owned one, which hung by a golden chain; that at Fontainebleau,

three yards high, was valued at one hundred thousand crowns. It was,

however, a wise unicorn that knew its own horn: the Danish sailors

kept their secrets quiet and prices high, the more easily since,

owing to disasters, there were temporary cessations in the Greenland

whale-fishery, of which unicorns' horns were a by-product, thus

rendering the supply small and fluctuating. It was an open secret by

this time that sea-unicorns existed, but the heraldic animal had the

overwhelming advantage of support from Pliny, Aristotle, and the Bible

and therefore fought for the "crowns" so to speak, with every success.

It was not till this time, in 1603, that the unicorn was introduced

into the arms of the King of England; and its horn was in the greater

request because of its supposed quality of an antidote to poison. To

the lore of this part of the subject Zinzerling makes an addition.

At Tours lived a lawyer who had travelled in Spain and India, and

had brought back three great rarities: "Rolandi gladium, Librum in

pergameno Geographiæ et Hydrographiæ, membrum masculum Monocerotis

majoris contra toxica efficaciæ quam cornu."

He did not see these personally, but mentions them because it would be

a pity for any one to miss them for lack of a word or two from him. For

himself, he could not find the lawyer, a kind of trouble from which

these tourists ordinarily suffered, for it was part of their experience

to make acquaintance with private collections. Not that there were any

public ones to the extent we are accustomed to, except the churches,

which, as picture galleries, had this advantage, that the pictures

were seen in the setting for which they were designed. Practically

all the official "treasuries" were only public to the extent that a

remarkable country house like Compton Winyates is so now; yet on the

other hand, and for that very reason, it was somewhat more customary

for private collections to be accessible to strangers than is the case,

probably, at present. What attracted the greatest number of visitors,

however, was water-mechanisms.

Up till the beginning of the seventeenth century these were found at

their best only in Italy; and of the Italian, those at Pratolino ranked

first, belonging to the Duke of Florence, who was reputed to spend more

on his water than on his wine. The invariable custom of secret devices

for soaking the visitor as he sat down or walked about was there

carried further, and with greater variety, than elsewhere. Besides,

there was Fame blowing a trumpet; a peasant offering a drink to a tiger

who swallows it and then looks all round; Syrinx beckons to Pan to

pipe, whereupon Pan gets up from his seat, puts it aside, pipes, pulls

his seat towards him and sits down again with a melancholy look because

Syrinx has not rewarded him with a kiss. And so on, with a multitude

of devices for making music and attracting attention, only equalled by

those at the Villa d' Este at Tivoli.

It is noteworthy how long it took to introduce them into France, where

everything Italian was fashionable. Marguerite de Valois speaks of

those she saw in Flanders in 1577 in a way that implies no previous

acquaintance with anything of the kind, but when peace was restored, we

find St. Germain-en-Laye stocked with a poet who plays on a lyre, and

with various animals which gather round him, and trees which bend down,

as he plays; and the king passes by with his suite. On the other side

of the Rhine ingenuity seems to have been devoted rather to clock-work.

The clock at Strassburg, one of the chief marvels of Europe, was

outdone by one in a private house at Augsburg: for besides displaying

all the clever puerilities which the seventeenth century rejoiced in,

it reproduced the movements and stations of the planets and the advent

and effect of eclipses, all in their due time. Somewhat later, at

Lübeck, the striking of the hour by the town clock was accompanied by

the Virgin kissing her Baby, and St. Peter dropping his key and picking

it up again, while at Hamburg could be seen a marvellous Annunciation,

with a most gorgeous Gabriel and five attendant cherubim who flapped

gilded wings, and a Blessed Virgin dressed in the French fashion who

was discovered reading a book and ended by dropping a curtsey.

Of amusements which required people to take part in them, card games

were rarely seen in Germany, and in Italy were banned as much by

public opinion as by law, whereas in England they were an occupation

rather than an amusement. So also with hawking and hunting. In six

years abroad Moryson saw hawking but twice, once in Bohemia and once

in Poland, and implies that in England it was common; while of hunting

he definitely says, "England lacks not Actæons, eaten up by their own

dogs." The same contrast he observes with regard to itinerant musicians

and plays, of which latter he is sure that more are performed in London

than in all the other parts of the world that he had visited put

together. A variety of angling, on the other hand, he notes as peculiar

to Italy: that with bait and hooks fastened to corks and held out of

window for birds; while golf was only played in Scotland, Holland, and

Naples; and the most frequently played game in Europe, pallone, was as

unknown in Britain then as now. The piazza S. Stefano at Venice was

reserved for pallone every Sunday evening, and in the disused papal

palace at Avignon one room was given up to pallone and another to

tennis, which came next in popularity, the chief centre being Paris.

In 1577 it was credited with 1800 courts, but the Dutch ambassador

resident there eighty years later had them counted and only discovered

118.

And so the list might go on and on and on—in all its seeming

irrelevancy! And yet, when it is borne in mind that every detail is

one that some tourist or other noticed, to the point of thinking it

worth recording, a certain, at least symbolic, relevancy comes into

view, even though it be nothing more vital than that of a 16th-century

variety of subjective imbecility under the stimulus of a jog-trot. On

the other hand, all this comes under the heading of

... things

Which cannot in their huge and proper life

Be here presented.

So the scenery must be shifted.

PART II

THE UNVISITED NORTH

" ... a few days earlier I had read certain News-Sheets printed here

in Venice by these good fathers [the Jesuits], relating their progress

in Muscovy, the conversion of a King in Africa, and so on. I said to

myself, all right about Muscovy, it's a cold Country, far away, few go

there—and few return...."

Sir Henry Wotton,[56] 1606.

Andrew Boorde has something to say about Iceland in his guide to

Europe. He puts into the mouth of a native the words,—

"I am an Icelander, as brute as a beast,

When I eat candle ends, I am at a feast."

And that is all they knew about Iceland. As a country with a political

history and a literature it was no more present in their minds than

as a holiday resort. Nor were any of the countries that bordered the

Baltic, except on the South. But Danzig alone was enough to keep the

Baltic a busy sea, and consequently Denmark was not as much ignored as

would otherwise have happened; for both sides of the entrance to the

Baltic belonged to the King of Denmark, whose extortions in the way of

tolls kept his name before the public.

Norway was thus practically isolated from Europe. Sweden, however,

during the Thirty Years' War, attracted some attention, partly on

account of its share in the war, partly on account of the development

of its silver mines. There is an interesting account of a visit to

those at "Sylfbergen," twenty leagues from Stockholm, in 1667, which

may serve as an indication of experiences that might have been met

with at an earlier date. The visitor, a Frenchman,[57] descended,

half-naked, in half a cask, which was attached to a cable by three

iron chains, accompanied by two workers whose grimness, flavour, and

unpleasant personalities, gave him an attack of nerves. Among the

miners he found French, Germans, English, Italians and Russians, all,

as he says, digging their own graves, for the conditions of mining in

those days was terrible. A traveller through Hungary in 1615[58] notes

that the miners there could not work more than four hours at a stretch,

and that few reached middle age, what with the number of casualties

and the conditions of the mines. One result of this was that they

usually married at fifteen. Yet weekly wages, after making allowance

for the cheapness of living in Hungary, were equivalent to no more than

twelve to fourteen shillings at present values. It was a most natural

question at the time to ask whether, working as they did in the bowels

of the earth, they ever came across demons. To which question a miner

answered that sometimes they did, and on those occasions they appeared

in the shape of little black boys, chattering, but doing no harm beyond

blowing the lamps out.

Returning northwards and continuing the journey to the other side of

the Baltic, the dominions of the Grand Duke of Muscovy would not be

reached immediately. Riga, the port most usually aimed at, belonged to

Poland; the alternative harbour of Revel to Sweden. The choice of Riga

is another instance of the contemporary preference for travelling by

water rather than by land. However far out of the straight line between

Danzig and Moscow, it was both the nearest coast town to the latter and

also at the mouth of the river, the Dwina, which is navigable for the

longest distance west of Moscow. One other route remains, discovered

by the English, left wholly to them and to the Dutch, and only used by

them because of commercial quarrels with the rulers of the Baltic.

This was the sea-voyage of about two months from London to Archangel,

then up the Dwina and Suchona to Vologda, and thence by land to Moscow.

[Illustration: DANGERS OF THE NORTHERN SEAS]

Moscow then possessed about forty thousand houses. It may be doubted

if any town in Europe surpassed that number. Yet it was not size

that caused going to Muscovy to be practically identical with going

to Moscow, but the fact that the latter was the residence of a ruler

whose despotism was so unlimited that every other settlement became

insignificant compared with that where he dwelt. This is typified by

the prominence given by all foreigners to the banquet they generally

attended as the guests of the Tsar, a display of barbaric magnificence

that must evidently have been one of the most striking sights of

Europe. Unfortunately the magnificence was apt to stop short at the

door of the banquet-hall. One Italian[59] in particular could not

forget leaving after three hours, picking his way through the outer

rooms, pitch dark and strewn with courtiers in the weeping-stage of

drunkenness, down the stairs. About twenty yards away from the foot

of the stairs a crowd of servants were waiting with horses to take

their masters home. Towards these they had to wade, knee-deep in mud,

still in pitch-darkness, and so continue a good part of the way home,

since no one was allowed to ride till he had passed out of the palace

precincts.

Nowhere was this despotism more felt than in relation to travel: every

foreigner was half a prisoner from the day he entered the kingdom to

the day he left, even though he were an ambassador. The very Jesuits

sent by the Pope, in 1581, at the Tsar's own request, to negotiate a

peace between himself and the King of Poland were under surveillance to

such an extent that they were not allowed to water their own horses.

Neither was any subject allowed to leave the land: the penalty for

unlicensed travel being death. It is clear that leave must have been

more freely granted than one might imagine from the general statements

of visitors, since Russian pilgrims and merchants are by no means

uncommon, and indeed, at this period, Peter Mogila, Metropolitan of

Kiev, and Boris Godunov, ruler at Moscow, endeavoured to encourage

travel by Russians as a means of education.

Godunov's efforts, in fact, beginning as they did with his accession

in 1586, synchronised with the growth of the same idea in England. But

his efforts failed through being too far ahead of public opinion; those

whom he sent stayed away permanently, those who stayed at home remained

unconverted.[60] Two instances of public opinion as regards foreigners

may be quoted, both occurring on the direct road to Moscow at the very

end of this period, during the whole of which the number of visitors

goes on increasing. The first is the experience of some Dutchmen

who came by invitation of the Tsar and consequently had a house

commandeered for them. The wife of the owner, seeing no help was to be

had from the local authorities, rushed to St. Nicholas and would, she

believed, have obtained a miraculous expulsion of the visitors had not

her husband tired of the length of her prayer and stopped it by force.

The second is that of a Danish gentleman who, with his companions,

was prevented from entering a village by bees which the peasants had

irritated for that purpose.

So, too, with the Muscovites and travel on their own account. Whereas

other Europeans only thought of dying when they travelled, the

Muscovite only thought of travelling when he died. Then his friends

shod him with a new pair of shoes for the long journey that he had to

go, and put a letter in his hand to St. Nicholas, by way of passport,

testifying that the bearer died a Russian of the Russians in the one

true faith.

The distinctive characteristics of the people as seen by strangers

were drunkenness, endurance of heat, cold, and torture, and slavish

obedience to the Tsar. Drunkenness in particular. As the English

verse-writer, Turberville, who went there, puts it,—

Drink is their whole desire, the pot is all their pride,

The soberest head doth once a day stand needful of a guide.

The habit went the farther since it was encouraged by the government,

for the recent taking-over of the drink-traffic by the State was but

a reversion to the state of affairs in 1600, though then it was an

offence against the State to urge a man to leave one of the State-owned

taverns, even though he was pledging the clothes off his back: a

common custom. At every season of public rejoicing in winter two or

three hundred died in the streets of Moscow as they lay there naked

and dead-drunk, and the stranger might see the bodies brought home by

tens and twelves, half-eaten by dogs. One traveller tells a tale of a

Muscovite whom he saw come out of a tavern in shirt and breeches only,

meet a friend, return, and come out again with no shirt. The traveller,

who knew Russian, expressed sympathy with him as if he had been robbed,

but was answered, "No, it's the man at the bar and his wine that have

brought me to this, but as my shirt's there my breeches may as well

keep it company." And accordingly, a few minutes afterwards, he came

out once more with nothing to cover him but a handful of flowers picked

at the tavern-door!

There had been a Tsar who tried to repress drunkenness, but he became

a dead failure in every sense of the phrase shortly before the above

incident happened, and even during his lifetime achieved nothing more

than preventing people going about the streets naked. Neither was it

just the average man who could not endure life sober, but the priest

frequently needed a lay-helper on either side of him in order to get

through the marriage service, a result of the festivities preceding the

wedding. And the women were no better than the men. When a Russian lady

entertained her friends, it was etiquette to send round afterwards to

know if they all got home safely. Yet one traveller unconsciously gives

the Muscovite's own point of view: there was a quarter of Moscow known

as the "drunken" quarter: that was where the foreign soldiers lodged.

The excessive misuse of tobacco was also bound to be noticed,

considering that smoking became general more quickly there than

anywhere else outside England and Turkey. But the Tsar who failed to

check drunkenness succeeded against smoking, which he prohibited, under

penalty of slitting the nostrils, in 1634, on the ground of it being a

frequent cause of fires among the houses, all wooden ones, and of the

unholy state of the Muscovite's breath when he addressed the saints.

Along with other accusations which the travellers have to lodge,

such as that of a grossness of indecency without parallel in their

experience, is hardly to be found one note of pleasure, except with

regard to the charm of the Russian spring. It may be doubted if

foreigners' opinions underwent much change until such writers as

Turgenev compelled attention to the point of creating sympathy. But

yet, if their tales be few and their enjoyment scanty, their records

possess all the greater comparative value from the very fact of their

fewness. That the pre-Christian Slav religion still remained in memory,

if not in use, at Pskov as late as 1590 would probably never even have

been guessed but for the remark of one Johann David Wunderer, who was

there at that date, that he saw two stone statues there, one holding a

cross, the other standing on a snake with a sword in one hand and fire

in the other, idols, he was told, who were still known as "Ussladt" and

"Corsa."[61]

PART III

THE MISUNDERSTOOD WEST

Et si pur effecti quasi miraculosi vi trovasse, come ja vi sono, V. S.

non l'imputi al scriptore, ma a la variatione et deità de la natura.

Antonio da Beatis, 1518.

It will have been noticed that the tourist was nothing if not

unsympathetic. Yet nowhere does this stand out so sharply as in regard

to the two countries farthest west. So far as the Spanish peninsula was

concerned, a reason may be sought in the route usually chosen, a route

which treated the peninsula as part of "European Europe" and implied

seeing a little of it, seeing that little in a one-sided way, and

mistaking it for an epitome of the whole.

Starting from the southwest corner of France, the most direct way

was taken for the Escorial and Madrid, whence the return journey led

past Barcelona to Montserrat and so over the Pyrenees again to the

southeast corner of France. The objective, of course, was the capital

and the court. And it was taken for granted, here as elsewhere, that

the other chief objects of interest were the towns, which claimed an

even greater proportion of attention than in other countries, inasmuch

as the hardships of travel in Spain were more trying to a foreigner

than those experienced elsewhere, and his mental energies were often,

in consequence, the less free for observation in Spain as long as he

kept on the move. Now it unfortunately happened that the seamy side

of Spanish life thrust itself to the front in undue proportion in the

towns. Moreover, the French districts which lay nearest to Spain were

those whose characteristics contrasted most favourably as against those

of the Spanish districts that lay nearest to France. The liveliness

and gaiety of the Bayonnais, playing bowls all day on the carefully

levelled, sanded court between his house and the street, was thrown

into relief by the sternness of the Pyrenees and the poverty and gloom

of the Vizcaino.

The injustice done by these first impressions was deepened by

almost all that caught the attention on a journey like that just

outlined, whatever the momentary point of view, whether historical,

geographical, social, superficial, or political,—especially political.

The Spanish king was looked on as the most powerful Christian monarch

of the time, in prestige, in financial resources, and as the head of an

empire whose limits were the more impressive for being mathematicians'

lines imagined in the midst of the Unexplored. It was natural, then,

to consider his capital the centre of each, as well as of all, of his

dominions, and as the Holy of Holies of European kingship; and this,

too, at a date when monarchical ideals were so strong that a highly

respectable middle-class man like William Camden could allude to Simon

de Montfort, who figures in modern school-books as the ever-glorious

founder of "representative" government, as—"our Catiline."[62] In

addition, the annexation of Portugal in 1580, and its revolt in 1640,

accentuate such ideas more in this period than in any other as the only

one during which the whole peninsula was under one king.

Neither was this illusion of solidarity merely a traveller's mirage

which those on the spot would rectify. Philip II's people loved to have

it so; witness one of Sancho Panza's favourite proverbs: "Un rey, Una

fe, Una ley"; and how was the tourist to know that the Spaniard did not

appreciate his differentiation between ideals and facts? The voice of

Sancho Panza is, of course, the voice of Castile, but then Castile has

always the monopoly of forming foreign, and leading Spanish, opinion

on things Spanish.

[Illustration: AT MONTSERRAT

Ave Maria stirps castitatis. Ave profunda viola valis humilitatis.

Ave lata rosa campi divine charitatis. Ave abyßalis omnis gratiæ et

misericordiæ coeli ros fructifer omnis divine suavitatis er devotionis.

Intercede pro nobis gloriosa dei genitrix virgo Maria ad dominum deum

nostrumvt ipse misereatur nostri. Pater noster Ave Maria]

The choice of route, then, predetermined by the usual considerations,

applicable only to other countries, failed to do justice to Spain. Yet

it was accompanied by these special assumptions, as regards political

supremacy, at the back of the tourist's mind, no evidence in favour of

which was forthcoming; at least, no evidence of a kind which he came

prepared to recognise as such. On the contrary, he could not avoid

being struck by the insignificance of Spanish buildings, especially,

curiously enough, at Madrid itself, where the houses were mostly of

one story; a result of it being necessary to obtain a license from the

King for anything higher, the conditions imposed by which license,

such as that of housing ambassadors in the second story, would prove

too burdensome. This particular impression was deepened in the latter

half of the period by the linen window-panes, which made the interiors

seem gloomy at a date when the use of glass in windows was spreading in

the countries which the visitor had come from and had passed through.

And so with many other matters, until one Dutchman who had travelled

viâ Italy, after being taken to see a water-mill as something quite

out of the common, makes the general deduction: "What is very common

elsewhere, here often passes for miraculous."

Furthermore, as has been said, there were the historical illusions,

too, which would be shaken. What Montaigne experienced at Venice took

place on a larger scale in the minds of all who visited Spain. The

deeper the previous study, the deeper the disappointment; but the

latter was felt nevertheless by him in whom it was unconscious; and

in both cases the recovery was slower than at Venice where all that

was visible was so near. In fact, it is clear enough that with most a

recovery never happened.

The histories they depended on were a variety of heroic fiction

whose theory of causation consisted of immediate causes and God.

National limitations only appeared, therefore, in so far as they

had contributed to national achievements. But to the tourist these

limitations, and even the qualities which were simply strange to him,

stood out as defects, and the necessary minutiæ of daily life as the

unworthy preoccupations of degenerate descendants; while the people,

accordingly, whose ancestors were represented as having done nothing

but conquer for centuries, showed up as ordinary human beings, muddling

along in the way customary among one's own countrymen. Yet successes of

Spanish diplomacy were so recent, and the supremacy of Spanish infantry

so terribly obvious, that strangers could not account for all this

disillusion by assuming degeneration to be the sole reason; while it

was likewise too sudden for them to see in it nothing but an example

of the falsification of proportions inherent in all knowledge drawn

from books or other second-hand sources. Their attitude to Spain when

they revised their journals was thus mystification rather than contempt

or disgust, though both the latter are usually present.

This same unpreparedness to take a totally fresh point of view is

even more marked in relation to religion. However greatly at odds

the matter-of-fact foreigner and the matter-of-faith Castilian might

be over details, both were equally unwilling to accept the illusions

of to-morrow on that subject in place of the illusions of yesterday.

The tendency to accept the face values of things theological was then

as strong as to-day it is weak; but, with the possible exception of

seventeenth-century Ireland, it was nowhere so strong as in Spain. The

latter's place in Europe was bound up with leadership of the cause of

Roman Catholicism; foreigners took this for granted, and the Spaniards

unconsciously set a value on their creed apart from its relation to

theological logic or religious experience—it had so long been the only

rallying cry which could bring about a sinking of differences and

achieve the temporary unity which was essential to success in war. But

to the contemporary stranger, the varnish of the water of baptism was

opaque, and the Celt, the Moor, the Pre-historic, the Outrageous-Pagan,

and the all-pervading Jew, seemed all one thing, ultra-Holy-Roman.

Another source of mystification—except to the Protestant, who knew

exactly what it all meant and so went further astray than the rest, in

the same direction.

Socially, the unintelligible contradictoriness was as great. Witness

one whom a Burgos gentleman invited to dinner. The dining-room was that

in which the hostess lay ill in bed with a fever; and he remembered

afterwards that he had behaved with grossly bad manners inasmuch as he

had taken off his hat at meal-time.

To go on to the means whereby geography also contributed to strain the

sixteenth-century tourist's easily ruptured sympathy, there was the

climate. The majority started in fear of the heat and suffered only

from cold, expecting to find an Andalusian spring perpetually reigning

at, say Burgos, instead of its "ten months of winter and two of hell"

(or, to retain the pun, "diez mezes de invierno y dos de infierno");

whereas the visit to the South which was so rarely paid would have

restored beliefs which had foundation enough. Besides, through this

fear of the heat they traversed what they did traverse at the seasons

when what fascination it possessed was least in evidence.

Among other conditions, the economic seem to have scandalised

observers most. Perhaps the student will have noticed that whatever

year during the last three hundred he may chance to be reading about

in the history of Spain, the country will always at that moment have

reached the last stage of economic exhaustion. Another quarter of a

century or so, and, curiously enough, a lower stage will have been

reached; yet another twenty-five years and one still lower; and so

on until one would think the most hypothetical zero of bankruptcy

must belong to a happier past and the population can consist of no

more than a few emaciated grandees licking the rocks for sustenance.

The natural attempt will be to go farther and farther back to trace

the steps of the decline; and in time one will come upon these whose

accounts are under consideration; but it will be without satisfaction.

There is nothing for it but to go right back to the golden age.

But in Guicciardini (1513) there is just the same tale, scarcity

of inhabitants; poverty; mean aspects of daily life; stagnation in

commerce owing entirely to Spanish aversion from work; industries under

foreign control. It suggests that possibly the same phenomena have been

in existence early and late, and that what earlier writers describe

as an undeveloped country is the same as the "exhausted" one of later

days; the difference, if this is the case, lying not in the conditions

seen but in the extent of the stranger's expectations, moderate when

the power of Spain had just become of international account; too high,

later, when it was assumed that political power of long standing could

not have grown up except in association with economic strength of equal

greatness. To travellers of this period any unsoundness or "exhaustion"

seemed the more incomprehensible in that Spain was by far the chief

importer of bullion, the universal value of which they were accustomed

to overrate.

Guicciardini, however, says nothing about the misbehaviour of Spanish

women by which the next three or four generations of travellers are

invariably shocked, with one exception, that of Lady Fanshawe, who saw

much to admire in them and nothing to condemn, and had she seen what

the men saw there is no doubt whatever her scorn would have been very

pronounced. According to the men, neither the Italian fashion of the

men restraining the women, nor the transalpine fashion of the women

restraining themselves, was used in Spain. But it must be remembered

that the male tourist tends to see the womenfolk of the country he

visits nearer their worst than their best.

Too warm a welcome was not a fault into which the males fell. In Madrid

a Protestant might feel safe, and in centres of international trade,

such as Medina del Campo, free from insult; at Burgos there was even

courtesy, and at Barcelona civility, although it went hand in hand with

robbery. But for the most part, it was needful to be both callous and

plucky. In particular, the traveller must take care to get his hair cut

short at Vittoria at the latest. French and many Germans as well as

English wore their hair long, and nothing laid them open to insult, and

even injury, so much as that; if they were clean-shaven as well, it was

taken as certain that they carried effeminacy to extremes; neither were

they the last to hear of it. "Rogue" and "thief" were ordinary terms,

even after a hair-cut, and when the queen was a German, one of her

countrymen, a man who could be trusted not to give offence, had to buy

a new hat at Toledo because the one he was wearing bore too many traces

of cow-dung; at Seville he was stoned.

Yet considering the average elsewhere, the individual Spaniard stood

to gain by comparison; one of the most prejudiced and illiterate of

the tourists admits being treated with great courtesy, and there is a

general agreement that the standard of honesty was remarkably high. It

is amusing, too, to notice what disconcerting answers were sometimes

received by the gentlemen from abroad who thought that the peasantry

of a Roman Catholic and poverty-stricken country only needed to be

questioned in order that the pitiable state of their mind should become

apparent, even to themselves.

To one question, why extreme severity should be reserved for heretics,

the reply was that heresy was the only crime which had not the excuse

of giving pleasure; while another who was asked why a saint's day

should be honoured so highly and Sunday practically ignored, pointed

out that the saint's day came but once a year and Sunday every week.

So, too, it came as a surprise to the Protestant to find Spanish nuns

neither neurotic, depressed, nor prim, but bright and attractive, and

their education "infinitely beyond all our English schools."[63]

Nevertheless, what with the above experiences, together with others

which will be more in place farther on, it is not surprising if Spain

was considered a country of especial danger and difficulties, where

there was nothing to be learnt that had not better remain unlearnt, nor

anything worth seeing.

The best guide, in answering this last objection, urges that the court

at Madrid and the church of San Lorenzo at the Escorial are alone worth

the journey, and names fifty-eight towns to complete the answer. It

would be superfluous to enter into details; it is more difficult for us

to doubt it than for them to believe it. But Seville must not be passed

over altogether, the Seville of Cervantes' "Novelas Ejemplares," the

Seville which was what Madrid pretended to be, the Spanish capital of

Spanish Spain. Half the buildings that the modern visitor goes to see

there were new in 1600, but the great sight, as great a sight as any in

Europe both in itself and for its associations, was the arrival of the

silver fleet from the "Indies."

Of the two chief places of pilgrimage, Montserrat, being on a main road

from France and not far from Barcelona, is very frequently mentioned,

but an account of a journey to Compostella is far rarer. Concerning

the former, one account contains a particular of which there is

perhaps no other record. The occupant of the highest of the almost

inaccessible hermitages around the monastery, that of St. Jerome, in

1599, could bring the wild birds flocking round him when he called

them, in such numbers that the writer, who had been throughout the

peninsula, mentions the sight as the most wonderful in all Spain. Two

ravens lived with the hermit in his cell.[64] As for Compostella,

Andrew Boorde tells how he met nine men leaving Orleans on the way

thither, and how he tried to dissuade them, saying he would rather go

from England to Rome five times than once to Compostella, and that the

government might well set in the stocks persons who proposed going

thither without special leave, as being a waste of valuable lives. They

persisted, and he accompanied them. Not one of the ten survived the

journey except himself; and he was a doctor. Only one account preserves

much detail of a stay at Compostella, that of a German soldier,[65]

in 1581, who confessed to an Italian priest, nicknamed Linguarius for

knowing Italian, Spanish, French, German, Latin and other languages;

and saw all that a good pilgrim should see, including the two great

bells whose sound was so terrific as to frighten lady pilgrims into

miscarriages. At Santo Domingo de la Calzada on the road, according to

a Pole,[66] there remained a curious survival of divination by birds.

In the church porch white capons were reared in a copper-wire cage, to

which the pilgrim used to offer bread on the end of his staff; if the

bird refused the bread, it was held an omen that the pilgrim would die

on the journey.

Among the other things that Spain had in common with "European Europe"

may be mentioned the royal Zoos: one at Madrid, where a crocodile was

to be seen, also the first rhinoceros that had been brought to Europe;

the other at Valladolid, containing four lions, an eagle, four seals,

and canary-birds. In water-works Aranjuez could hold its own against

Italy, with its brazen statue of Priapus, casting forth water from

every extremity, a cave with two dragons and many birds, the birds

being made to sing by the movements of the water; with satyrs and

savages, and artificial cypresses and white roses which soaked the

visitor who touched them. Neither were the horribles kept out of sight:

at Seville some one speaks of seeing a thief shot to death with arrows,

and two other criminals beheaded with swords, the bodies being laid up

against a church-wall to attract alms to pay for their burial.

The coupling of Ireland with Spain does not result from the mere

chance of westernmost position, nor even from the political needs

that they shared, or from the supposed kinship of the peoples. While

other countries aroused curiosity and then gratified it, these two

occasioned, successively, illusion, disillusion, mystification.

Which often led to abuse, but not so often, as regards Ireland, by

Englishmen, as is represented by experienced controversialists who well

know the effect of sixteenth-century phrases torn from their context

and set up on a background of journalese, where the flavour of the

original spelling fixes their seeming harshness in the memory of those

controversialists cater for.

There can be no more effective counterblast to this than a study of the

books of the time recording journeys from everywhere to everywhere, for

from these it will be evident that what the Englishmen say of Ireland

and the Irish is more favourable than what contemporary foreigners

usually say of the countries and nations that they visit; and also

that where the English are unfavourable they are borne out by other

foreigners. All adverse comment may be included under the charge of

barbarism. Now Captain Cuellar, as unprejudiced a witness as could be

required, being a Spaniard wrecked there from the Armada and a man who

took everything as it came, invariably speaks of each Irishman as "el

selvaje," which cannot be translated as anything but "the savage."

But here lies the fact which supplies the contrast between Spaniards

and Irish, a contrast within the similarity which classed the two

together, as countries seen by foreigners. The latter's disillusion

was produced by the barbarism interwoven with the civilisation of

Spain, but, in Ireland, by the civilisation co-existent with the known

barbarism. It was a perpetual surprise to all visitors to find many of

the individuals of a society that persisted in the crudest and rudest

way of living, showing a force of intelligence and character, and in

certain ways a refinement and a degree of education, which seemed to

presuppose all the advantages that the best of European surroundings

and training had to give.

Most are content just to note these and other contrasts; the sum

of their opinion as regarded the people being: "If they be bad you

shall nowhere meet with worse; if they be good you shall hardly find

better."[67] Of experience of this, Captain Cuellar's narrative stands

out as a quintessential example. It is equally handy for those who wish

to prove the Irish the most charming, or the most abominable, nation

that ever existed. He found them equally ready to strip him and to

feed him, to wound and to heal, to betray and to shelter, to make him

at home and to make him work. Compare with this the conclusions of an

impartial Italian[68] seventy years earlier. The women he found very

beautiful and white, but dirty; the people generally, very religious,

yet do not consider stealing a sin. He was given to understand that

Irish people looked down on such as were averse to share and share

alike as regards the blessings of fortune, and certainly came across

many on the road anxious to give effect to communistic theories; these

he terms robbers.

Aliens of a philosophic turn of mind, after passing through the state

of surprise, not so much, even, at their being this or that, as at

their being content or able to continue to be both at once, turned to

looking for reasons. The foreigner who brought to bear on this question

as great an amount of knowledge, experience, and fair-mindedness as

any was Sir John Davies, who, in his "Discovery," after referring to

the Irishman's "contempt and scorn of all things necessary for the

civil life of man," goes on, "for though the Irishry be a nation of

great antiquity and wanted neither art nor valour and ... were lovers

of music and poetry, and all kinds of learning, and possessed a land

abounding with all things necessary; yet ... I dare say boldly that

never any person did build any stone or brick house for his private

habitation, but such as have lately obtained estates according to the

course of the law of England. Neither did any of them in all this time

plant any gardens or orchards, enclose or improve their lands, live

together in settled villages or towns, nor make any provision for

posterity; which being against all common sense and reason, must needs

be imputed to those unreasonable customs which made their estates so

uncertain and transitory in their possessions."

If Sir John Davies thought thus, it is not surprising that hastier

foreigners who had less knowledge of the ancient Irish civilisation,

thought so too. We have just seen how, with regard to Spain, a history

made up of the imaginary glories of an imaginary past helped to give

the foreigner so high an idea of the individuals of the nation that

the reality came as a shock. Here in Ireland, in this matter as in

others, was a similarity with a difference. However true it may be

that the Irish suffered from a radical lack of adaptability to modern

conditions, the defects of it were undoubtedly heightened in the eyes

of strangers by the latter's ignorance of the conditions that the Irish

could accept, the Brehon laws, for instance, and all that they imply,

especially the check on their misuse by means of public opinion.

[Illustration: AN IRISH DINNER]

Two features, however, were almost invariably commended: Irish harping

and Irish girls. And the latter were at no disadvantage among the

foreigners, since even in the far west which Captain Cuellar visited,

they spoke Latin fluently, although content with one garment, often

with less. The only fault that could be found with them was that of

growing older as years went on, for to see an old Irishwoman before

breakfast was, says Moryson, enough to turn a man's stomach. The

country, too, received unlimited praise, with one abatement here also:

in respect of its wetness; greater then than now, it may be said with

some certainty.[69] Lithgow, in particular, when he visited "this

sequestrate and most auspicuous monarchy," in 1619, discovered there

"more Rivers, Lakes, Brooks, Strands, Quagmires, Bogs, and Marshes than

in all Christendom besides." In five months he ruined six horses and

was himself more tired than any of them.

Great, however, were the fetiches, and they prevailed. The essentials

of life, as they appeared to the Irishman, and as they appeared to

most Europeans, differed so utterly, and the reasons underlying

the differences were so unrealisable to each other, that Ireland

remained comparatively unvisited on account of its lack of the kind

of interest for which travellers felt themselves bound to look. So,

at least, the balance of the evidence seems to show, but the evidence

is as conflicting here as in relation to everything else to do with

Ireland. While the Bollandist fathers affirm that fifteen hundred

foreigners made the pilgrimage to St. Patrick's Purgatory during the

"Counter-Reformation,"[70] the native contemporary Catholic, Phillip

O'Sullivan, living at Madrid, had to go back beyond the memory of

living man for the written account of such a pilgrimage with which

he wished to preface his history of the struggle against England. Or

again, the excellent knowledge the Irish leaders in this struggle

received of foreign affairs presupposes a great deal of going to and

fro; yet De Thou, in a letter dated 1605,[71] by which date he had been

working at his history of his own times for many years and was well

known as a man worth helping to correspondents all over Europe, writes

that he has not hitherto come across any one who has personal knowledge

of Ireland nor even any one who has talked with some one who has been

there.

Neither are there nearly so many casual references to visitors as one

chances on with regard to other countries. Two exceptions which suggest

the likelihood of others are, however, to be found mentioned in the

correspondence between the English Privy Council and the Deputy at

Dublin.[72] In 1572 the latter announces the arrival of three German

earls with one Mr. Rogers, their guide, adding, to Lord Burghley,

"according to your directions, they shall travel as little way into the

country as I can manage." This is explained by the second reference,

seven years later, when three more Germans come across with letters

of introduction from the Privy Council, who half suspect them, young

though they are, of being spies. But after the close of this period,

in 1666, we find a Frenchman[73] noting that the Provost of Trinity

College "seemed astonished that out of mere curiosity I should come

to see Ireland, which is a country so retired and almost unknown to

foreign travellers."

CHAPTER V

MOHAMMEDAN EUROPE

PART I

THE GRAND SIGNOR

"He who would behold these Times in their greatest glory, could not

find a better scene than Turkey."

Sir Henry Blount, 1635.

From an historical point of view, a continent consists not only of land

but also of the seas from which attacks on the land can be made at

short notice. For this reason Mohammedan Europe used to be far wider

in extent than the Turkish territory, although the latter, indeed,

bordered the Adriatic and stopped but a few miles short of Vienna. The

Mediterranean was under Mohammedan, rather than Christian, control.

Independent, too, in varying degrees, as were the rulers of North

Africa, a bond of union existed among them owing to the peoples of

the opposite coasts professing a creed different from theirs; a bond

which was not interfered with by jealousies, inasmuch as the Sultan,

or as he was usually termed then, the "Grand Signor" (or the "Grand

Turk"), was so infinitely superior that there was never any question

as to who should take the lead. His fleet, in fact, resembled that of

Queen Elizabeth, being made up of crews who pursued the same course

of life in peace and in war—that of attacking wherever attacks seem

likely to pay—with no more difference than this, that their behaviour

was official in the second case and unofficial in the first. These

corsairs, then, were all part of Mohammedan Europe, carrying out the

foreign policy of the "Grand Signor" whether they had been previously

adopted or were subsequently to be disowned.

For the tourist, it has already become evident that he was almost

certain to be confronted with the subjects, or the agents, of the

Ottoman Empire, sooner or later; and then was to be made aware that,

if one of the two existed on sufferance, that one was himself. Here

is the beginning of a prayer introduced into the English liturgy in

1565;[74]—"O Almighty and Everlasting God, our Heavenly Father, we

thy disobedient and rebellious children, now by thy just judgment

sore afflicted, and in great danger to be oppressed, by thine and our

sworn and most deadly enemies, the Turks...." Historians agree that

it was in the third quarter of the sixteenth century that the Turks'

power reached its height. Rarely, later than that, are they mentioned

otherwise than incidentally in the books from which modern Christendom

draws its information, and their earlier appearances are rather on

account of sensational events and minor indirect influence than as one

of the Powers of Europe. Yet throughout this period, that is, for

three-quarters of a century after decline, according to historians, had

begun, the Turks were not only one of the Powers, but the chief one,

equal with any in diplomacy, superior to any by land and by sea.

At a date when our text-books represent England as wresting the

supremacy on the water from Spain, contemporary opinion regarded

Turkey as the first naval power. The chief of the sensational events

just referred to, the battle of Lepanto, is made to stand out, as that

of Agincourt in English history, not because it typifies the course

of events, but because it is a bright spot for the Christian pupil's

eye to rest on. Within one year afterwards the Turks were ready to

meet the Christians again: within two years they had the biggest

fleet in the world: within three the Venetians agreed to pay 300,000

ducats (worth now about £500,000) as indemnity; and the fifth year

afterwards the Venetian Lippomano takes it for granted, in speaking

before the Signory—in other words, a man representing the pick of the

diplomatists of the day speaking, after full consideration, to the most

critical of audiences—that without the joint help of the Muscovites and

Poles Christendom can never hope really to get the upper hand of the

Turks.[75]

It must be remembered, too, that the Atlantic then was what the Pacific

is now, the ocean of the future; "command of the sea" meant, to the

average sixteenth-century man, command of the Mediterranean, from the

basin of which had risen all the civilisations of which he had any

knowledge, through which lay the most used trade-route, and round which

lay the biggest cities known to him: Cairo, Constantinople, Aleppo, and

Fez (all Mohammedan).

But when this period of their supposed decline had set in, the

Mohammedans, for the first time, ceased to be content with the

Mediterranean and began to practise—

Keeping in awe the bay of Portingale

And all the ocean by the British shore,

as Marlowe phrases it on behalf of Tamburlane. In 1616 Sir G.

Carew writes to Sir T. Roe that the Turks are passing out of the

Mediterranean now, had just carried off all the inhabitants of St.

Marie, one of the Azores, and might be looked for round England

soon.[76] In 1630 they took six ships near Bristol and had about forty

of their vessels in British seas.[77] In the following year they sacked

Baltimore in Ireland; but so far was the English government from

being able to assert itself that Robert Boyle writes of his passage

from Youghal to Bristol past Ilfracombe and Minehead in 1635, that he

passed safely "though the Irish coasts were then sufficiently infested

with Turkish galleys,"[78] while in 1645 they called at Fowey and

carried off into slavery two hundred and forty persons, including some

ladies.[79]

Where the English were fortunate was in the raiders having made so

late a start. Throughout the previous century the inhabitants of

south-Europe coasts were always expecting the Turks. Philip II kept

sixteen hundred coast-guardsmen always patrolling on the lookout

for them: but then he was their chief enemy. More remarkable is the

league[80] of the south of France maritime towns in 1585 to take steps

to prevent their ruin from this cause; seeing that France had been

the ally of the "Grand Turk" for half a century. In 1601 the Duke of

Mantua and his sister, the Duchess of Ferrara, were captured close to

the shore near Loreto by a Turkish galley.[81] As for the tourists

themselves, Moryson passed a village near Genoa destroyed by Turks just

before his arrival, when the belle of the district had been carried

off the day after her wedding; and had Montaigne been but a few miles

nearer to the coast than he actually was on a certain date we should

perhaps never have had the "Essais"—thanks to the Turks. This would

have been no more than a parallel case to that of Padre Jeronimo

Gracián, St. Teresa's confessor, who was captured between Messina and

Rome in 1592, stripped naked, and made to row on the benches of a

galley. He had with him his book "Armonía mistica," which he had just

finished, and had to look on while the pirates cleaned their firearms

with leaves from it.[82]

Some preface of this kind is necessary to explain the view tourists

habitually take of the Ottoman power, because the naval strength is

less often alluded to than its achievements by land and its position as

an Eastern conqueror. But even these latter call for a word or two to

complete the picture.

While it is true that the phrase concerning "the empire on which the

sun never sets" had been invented by this time, in reference to that

of Spain, the Turkish was regarded as, to quote a traveller of 1612,

"the greatest that is, or perhaps ever was from the beginning," just

as the phrase "the sick man of Europe" had also been employed, but in

reference not to Turkey, but to England (in 1558).[83] To these words

may be added those of another level-headed, well-educated Englishman,

Sir Henry Blount, "the only modern people great in action and whose

empire hath so suddenly invaded the world and fixed itself on such

firm foundations as no other ever did." Whereas, late as Blount's

visit to Constantinople was, he found the wiser Turks considering the

Christians not so strong as they used to be; not so strong as the

Persians. Busbecq, too, in his earlier days, sums up the outlook in

despair, concluding that the worst feature of it all is that the Turks

are used to conquering, the Christians to being conquered; and confirms

it later (when he was sixty-three and had had thirty-eight years'

experience of European politics, mostly official, including eight

years at Constantinople), by writing that the object of the Turks' war

(1585) with the Persians is to leave themselves freer to extinguish

Christendom, and that, the former war over, "they will fight us for

existence and empire; and the chances are greatly in their favour." As

late as a century after this the Turks were besieging Vienna with an

army 200,000 strong.

But the test of the hold of a given idea on the minds of ordinary men,

such as these tourists mostly were, is the frequency with which it

recurs in the works of their favourite writers. Now, badly off indeed

would the seventeenth-century novelist have been without the Turkish

corsair to defer the wedding-day for a respectable number of pages;

and the echo of the convention has attained immortality in the stock

quotation from Molière, "Mais que diable allait-il dans cette galère?"

There is a passage, too, in "Othello" which illustrates the above

beliefs still better—Othello's last words:—

Set you down this—

And say besides, that in Aleppo once,

Where a malignant and a turban'd Turk

Beat a Venetian and traduced the State

I took by the throat the circumcised dog

And smote him, thus—

There are an infinite number of passages in Shakespeare, whose meaning

in relation to the plot seems so obvious and so sufficient, that the

further half-unconscious sub-meaning is never enquired into, and is,

in fact, passed by until some special knowledge, like that of the

author of the "Diary of Master William Silence," throws light on it.

In this case, an acqaintance with sixteenth-century Christian travel

in Mohammedan lands compels the idea that Othello's mind turns at the

last to what he knows his hearers would unhesitatingly recognise as his

greatest deed, the killing a Turk in Turkish territory; as the greatest

possible claim to forgiveness and to fame. Moryson left his sword

behind him at Venice, as a thing which it would be madness to use.

The state of mind, then, of the Christian of this period in face of the

Turks may be compared to that of a Chinaman towards Europeans between

the fall of Pekin and the victories of Japan. As for the reasons of the

Turks' success, as noted by tourists, they refer primarily to the army,

since it was on the army that the Turks were, and had been, dependent

for their greatness. First, in regard to the soldiers' behaviour to

their own people, discipline was so severe that the country people took

no precautions against robbery, "whereas," says one (an Englishman),

"we cannot raise two or three companies but they pilfer and rifle

wheresoever they pass." Teetotalism, again, was prescribed by their

religion, and although the prohibition was losing its force, the

infractions were secret and not practicable in camp. The benefit of

this lay not merely in the freedom from disorderly behaviour but in the

fact that the carriage of wine was a serious item in the expenses of a

Christian army. Then besides orderliness and sobriety and the absence

from the camp of gambling and women, there was personal cleanliness and

sanitation. On these two last points the "Franks," as Europeans were

generally known in the East, had much said to them to which there was

no effective reply, even on their own showing. It was common knowledge

among Europeans who stayed at home that they were despised in the East

for their carelessness about drainage, and a typical case concerning

cleanliness is that recorded of one Englishman. One day he fell

overboard: "Now God has washed you," said the Turks.

Another characteristic that rendered the army more efficient was the

extent to which autocracy was in favour among them, a principle which,

applied throughout all grades, caused discipline to be a matter of

course. Among European armies there was nothing that could be termed

discipline, only personal influence. In this respect, both the cause

and the effect, the striking resemblance, in relation to the Europeans

contemporary with them, of the sixteenth-century Turk with the

modern Japanese, stands out. Other respects were courtesy, frugality,

cleverness in handicraft and the fine arts, and, on the other side,

lower ideas about women. It was only, likewise, where the copying

of the human form was concerned that the Turk technique fell below

Western achievement; Della Valle, who was used to the best that Europe

could produce, further notes their relative excellence in cooking,

bookbinding, tailoring, gardening, and, especially, all leather work.

[Illustration: AN EXAMPLE OF TURKISH FINE ART]

From our point of view the Franks had also much to learn from the Turks

as to kindness to animals, but that did not even appear a superfluous

virtue to the former, who only mention it as a curiosity, except

Busbecq, who remarks that Turks' horses lived the longer for it, were

more useful, and were companions as well as useful.

It may be noted, further, that the Turks had acquired the use

of pyjamas ("linen breeches and quilted waistcoats," says Fynes

Moryson), while Western Europe was in process of being converted to

night-dresses. Says the contemporary playwright, Middleton, in his

"Mayor of Queenborough," "Books in women's hands are as much against

the hair (_i. e._ against the grain), methinks, as to see men wear

stomachers, or night-rails" (_i. e._ night-shirts). Even with ladies

the process was not a short one. N. Brooke, in Southern Italy, late in

the eighteenth century, discussed night-wear with a lady there; it was

not the custom to wear anything, she explained, in the warmer months;

for one thing, it was cooler so; and for another, so much easier to

catch the fleas.

It would be strange if among all these visitors some were not found

noting signs of demoralisation. The chief of these is Moryson, who,

without explaining what means he has of comparing past and present,

finds the Emperors less warlike, their whole forces not available

through fear of internal rebellion, the pick of the troops not equal

to the pick of times gone by; a shortage of firearms; a decrease in

religious zeal; an increase in extortion and oppression. This latter

Della Valle notes, too, on his return-journey, when, at Cyprus, a

governor had left, and while a successor was on the way out, orders

came reinstating the former; which implied bribery and outbidding.

More general are the references to the increase of wine-drinking in

defiance of the prohibition of it by their religion; a habit which

was bound to be noticed by the traveller, since the ambassadors'

houses were used for the purpose principally, at first solely. One

old gentleman in Busbecq's time tried to evade his conscience, too;

he gave a great shout before each drink, to warn his soul to stow

itself away in some far corner of his body lest it should be defiled

by the wine he was about to enjoy and have hereafter to answer for his

sin. Towards the end of the next century concealment was abandoned,

and at a Greek village outside Adrianople, whither an Englishman went

during plague-time, he found the population living by the sale of wine

to Turks, who came in troops to get drunk: the parson did the biggest

trade because he had the biggest warehouse—his church.

It was frequently noticed, moreover, that their most capable workmen

were mostly foreigners, and that two inventions which attracted

everyone's notice—carrier-pigeons and incubation, both practised

exclusively in Turkish territory and the latter on a scale which would

qualify the proprietor for knighthood to-day—were not of Turkish

origin. Nevertheless, the fact remained that many of the products of

civilisation existed mainly, or at their best, in Turkish dominion

alone; and this, and the prestige it implies, have to be recognised and

remembered as two of the main facts in sixteenth-century history. It

may be added that in no way can this be so satisfactorily ascertained

as through travellers' narratives.

Yet the Turks were deemed barbarians by the Frank; he and they

practically never spoke each other's language, which put out of the

question those casual conversations which pave the way to mutual

understanding. Their faith remained to him a "filthy error"; and to

the Christians, whose chief bond of unity had just been riven by the

Reformation, the remaining one, that of a common literature, was all

the more to be prized. No Turk, as one observer remarks, would write

history because no Turk would believe it; it being unsafe to record the

truth, and impracticable to ascertain it. Accordingly, the complete

Livy which the Grand Signor was reputed to have inherited from the

Byzantine Emperors had only its selling value to Christians for him.

He had refused one offer of 5000 piastres (about £6500 now) for it,

thinking that the offer proved it was worth more. But Della Valle knew

better than to make offers to the Grand Signor: the way to buy his

books was to bribe his librarian, and he only missed securing it for

10,000 crowns (say £12,500) through the librarian at Constantinople not

being able to trace it.

Constantinople—the change from Byzantine Emperors' days was striking.

But the gloriousness of the position was unchangeable, and the sight of

it from the sea was more glorious than ever, the finest city to see,

then, that earth held. With its various levels, each one descending as

it was the nearer to the shore, a marvellous proportion of the roofs,

and even windows, came in view; and the waywardness of the designs, and

the balconies with their lattice-work, were thrown into relief by the

brilliance and the variety of the colouring; while the colouring itself

stood out against the white of the walls, the green of innumerable

cypresses, and the darkness of the leaden domes.

But once inside, and all was spoilt. The streets were very narrow and

ill-kept; a raised foot-path each side took up two-thirds of the way,

and the other third was barely practicable for asses; carcasses of

animals, and even of men, were left lying there till they rotted. The

only street which was a pleasure to pass was the long straight one

which led from the gate of Adrianople to the Palace, and was used for

all occasions of state, such as the entrances of ambassadors. Dignity

was a thing that the Turks understood; it was characteristic that

the most impressive procession to be seen ordinarily in Europe was

that to the Grand Signor's Privy Council, more impressive even than

the Cardinals going to Consistory at Rome. Yet the private houses,

as seen from the streets, were no more attractive than the streets

themselves: of wood mostly, or wood and mud. Some fine houses remained

from pre-Mohammedan days, but besides those, only the mosques, and some

other public buildings, were other than repulsive. The palace that was

called Constantine's was already in ruins, abandoned but for one great

room used as a tent-factory. Even the baths were not in all respects

superior to those of dirty Christendom, but that was because the rich

men had private ones. In Turkey none but the poor used the public

baths; in Christendom few but Germans and the ailing rich used any. The

reason the houses were so wretched was "that they might not be worth

taking from the child when the father died"; for the property of a dead

man was the Sultan's; the latter's palace was free from restrictions;

only, few there were who saw it.

This happened sometimes when the court was away and the tourist could

bribe the right man. Then, besides all that might be expected, he saw

the best Zoo in Europe; and, in the middle of a wood, a certain pond,

all lined with porphyry, wherein it was one "Grand Signor's" diversion

to send the girls of the harem and shoot at them with bullets that

stuck to their skins without doing harm; and he could regulate the

depth of the water till they had to keep afloat to breathe; tiring

of that, he let the water down and sent the eunuchs in to fetch them

out—if alive.

The only recognised means, however, of seeing the inside was to

accompany an ambassador on one of the two occasions when he saw the

Grand Turk; when he came and when he left. This happened on a Sunday or

a Tuesday, and could be but hurried glimpses while going to and from

the audience chamber to kiss the robe of the great sovereign whose

position was such that the ambassador was taken off his horse at the

gate and searched and led to the audience by two men, each one holding

a hand. When the English ambassador, in 1647, at his first audience,

did not bow low enough, the men on either side of him thrust his head

down to the required level.[84] He was further obliged to be lavish

with his presents and content that they should be received as tribute,

and that no present should be given in return but a garment. In the

estimate for the cost of the embassy which the above-mentioned French

league proposed to send to Constantinople 2000 écus d'or au soleil

(over £4000), one twelfth of the total cost, is allotted for presents

and tips. Neither did the Grand Signor ever speak to a Christian.

The interest of life in Constantinople was largely discounted by

the ways of the natives, for courteous as the Turk was as a man, as

a Mohammedan things were very different. While, on the one hand,

incredible as it may sound, a Turkish sailor was always civil even if

you got in his way on board ship, a Christian his nation "regard no

more than a dog," and if the Christian wore green, which was reserved

for Mohammed's kindred, he was lucky to escape injury. One stranger

with a pair of green breeches had them taken away from him in the

street. In any case, there was a likelihood of ill-usage. No one dared

to refuse, or even hesitate, when a Turk commanded, without regretting

it, except Della Valle, who carried a passport from the Grand Turk

himself, and even then, upon his refusal to pay his respects to a

certain governor in the customary way, which was both undignified and

costly, the whole company were so proud of him that the Greek nuns

could not refrain from kissing him in public. Typical experiences were

those of Moryson, whose hat struck a Turk one day as so quaint that

he borrowed it for a few minutes for his own use—not as a hat—and

returned it to Moryson's head; and of one Manwaring[85] in Aleppo;—"we

could not walk in the streets but they would buffet us and use us very

vilely: ... one day I met with a Turk ... saluting me in this manner:

... took me fast by one of the ears and so did lead me up and down the

street; and if I did chance to look sour upon him he would give me such

a wring that I did verily think he would have pulled off my ear and

this he continued with me for the space of one hour, with much company

following me, some throwing stones at me, and some spitting on me; and

because I would not laugh at my departure from him, gave me such a blow

with a staff that did strike me to the ground."

But that is not the end of the story. Manwaring went home and

complained to the Janizary who acted as guardian to his party. The

latter took a stick, found the Turk, who was of high enough position to

go about in cloth of gold and crimson velvet, and thrashed him till he

could not stand.

This was a form of protection open to all. The payment was low; the

Janizary's standard of honour and honesty very high, their power

practically unlimited. Moryson was one of a band of a hundred, who

accidentally set fire to the grass while cooking their supper. Out came

a Janizary from the local governor and compelled them to use their

clothes to quench the flames; which done, he drove them all, priests

and armed men included, before him to the governor, with no weapon but

a stick, and whoever lagged behind he cried, "Wohowe Rooe," and hit him.

But with regard to insults, it must be remembered that certain

characteristics of the Frank the Turks never ceased to despise. They

wished their enemies "no more rest than a Christian's hat." Four things

especially puzzled them, why (1) the latter walked about when he might

sit down, (2) wore his hair long when he might get it cut short, (3)

shaved instead of growing a beard, refusing sometimes to do business

with beardless Christians, believing such to be under age, (4) bought

material for clothes and then cut bits out; themselves wearing their

garments plain.

Barring the results of misunderstanding and contempt, there was plenty

of interest in life in Constantinople. The Greeks, at any rate, whom

Della Valle visited, were not grievously oppressed, considering that

while among the Turks to be reputed rich was more dangerous than any

crime; he found the ladies at a wedding dressed in stuff that cost

twelve zecchini a "picco" (at least £20 a yard) and, as their custom

was, they frequently retired to change their dresses, of which they

brought eight or ten. There were the market places to see, which were

used as a promenade, especially by the ladies, who in this respect

had a decidedly better opportunity to make acquaintances than was

generally supposed; their veils did not prevent them making themselves

recognised, and the press of people was sufficiently great to allow of

an "unintentional" dig in the ribs as a means of introduction to an

attractive foreigner. Tommasetto, Della Valle's servant, was even more

favoured because he conformed to Turkish standards by growing a beard,

and accordingly, in passing the streets, the ladies frequently touched

his cheeks, saying always the same word, which he found meant "handsome

man!" If, in the market or elsewhere, a Christian wanted to buy food,

there was no such thing for him as a fixed price or a bargain; he gave

the Turk money and the Turk gave what he chose to give. Every Friday

was a slave market, where the tourist might see his countrywomen for

sale; a virgin would fetch about £25, and an average widow £9, as money

is now, and if the tourist was not careful of his company, he would

find himself sold as he walked through the streets; Fynes Moryson,

when very ill, was told by the Janizary who was his guide that an old

woman had just offered 100 aspers (thirty shillings) for him.

For the population of Constantinople and what the population consisted

of, nothing more can be stated than the beliefs on the subject, of

which this one may be mentioned, that in less than three months in 1615

there died of plague 120,000 Turks, 2000 Jews, and 18,000 Christians.

Plague was always present in Constantinople; no precautions were taken

against it; when a man died from plague, his clothes were put up for

auction immediately, and bought, and worn. But the fatalism which

decided the Turks' attitude towards plague did not manifest itself

in all directions; their behaviour in danger at sea was the reverse

of what might be expected on Christian-manned ships. After they had

taken Cyprus, moreover, which suffered greatly from locusts, it was

prescribed that every farmer should bring a fixed quantity of locusts'

eggs yearly to a stated official, who was to see the eggs ground to

powder and the powder thrown into the sea. They had their medicines

too, and were the only people in Europe who had hitherto managed

to make medicine-taking pleasant, because they alone had sherbets

and took medicines in their sherbet. Moreover, what may be said of

drinks applies equally to games. For swings, they were part of every

Turkish festivity; likewise roundabouts and "great wheels"; how well

acquainted Christians were with all these may be judged by the fact

that both an Englishman and an Italian describe them all in detail. Yet

with all that we have imported, there still remains one hint to take.

A Mohammedan crowd kept itself in order for the most part then; George

Sandys, in nine months' stay in Constantinople, never saw a Mohammedan

quarrel with one of his own creed; but to restrain the excitability

that might occur in a crowd, they had policemen in leathern jackets,

bearing bladders, both bladders and jackets being smeared with oil and

tar, which commanded the respect of the cleanly Turks in their most

youthful moments.

The relations between Turks and Christians being what they were, it

is not surprising that one feature of life in the sixteenth century

as seen by travellers should be more often under notice in Turkish

dominion than elsewhere, at any rate to the traveller who was a

Christian—examples of human misery. Many such there are scattered about

the pages under notice, such and such a name comes up, probably for

the only time in any writing that remains, just an incident connected

with it, or a life-history in a few lines; nothing else known of the

man or ever likely to be, oblivion before and oblivion after; just

that one glimpse of utter misery. There is the merchant of Ragusa in

Blount's caravan who was defiant towards some Turks; beaten with axes

and iron maces, two ribs broken; left behind helpless; of him it is

very unlikely there was anything further to tell beyond what the wolves

knew. Then there was another whom Blount came across by the side of

the Danube, formerly a man and a Christian, now castrated and a Turk;

enduring degradation and remorse only so as to be able to revenge

himself by throwing Turkish children into the river at night; every

week had its victim. One John Smith, again, became a Venetian soldier

and was sent to Crete, where he borrowed forty-eight shillings (say

twelve guineas) from his officer. Being unable to pay it when the five

years' term of service was up, he was turned over to the officer's

successor with his debt; so again at the end of the tenth year. There

Lithgow found him at the end of fifteen years, no nearer release, and

paid his debt and obtained a passage back for him. Then there was the

sailor-traveller who was made a galley slave by the Turks and was

placed beside an old Russian. Twenty-four years had the latter been

there; attempts to escape had been without result beyond the loss of

ears and nose, and he was under threat of burning for the next attempt;

yet he was only waiting for a man who was ready to be his companion.

The sailor-traveller was ready; and they succeeded, after swimming two

miles with a three-headed arrow right through the old Russian's thigh.

But, indeed, these individual Turks and Christians were no more than

carrying out in person the general relations that existed between the

races. That the former's navy reached the Atlantic, their army to

Vienna, and their shadow over all Europe, has already been illustrated;

and also that they were setting an example in many of the directions

which imply being ahead in civilisation, summed up in verse which

Gruberus-of-the-guide-book quotes as an aid to remembering the

notabilia of Turkey.

Meschita, maratium, charavansaraja, lavacra,

Fontes et pontes fluviorum, et strata viarum.

More than all these, in sixteenth-century eyes, was the fact that they

possessed Constantinople, recognised as the city whose possession

necessarily carried with it the political headship of the world

by reason of its situation taken in conjunction with its imperial

associations. They dominated Greece, also, the source of intellectual

light, and Egypt, the home of science. More than all these, they ruled

at Jerusalem.

PART II

JERUSALEM AND THE WAY THITHER

[Illustration:PILGRIM-SONG IN 16th-CENTURY SETTING[86]]

From all points of view except that of geography Jerusalem was forming

part of Europe; the spot where was localised what was recognised as the

prime factor in their mental and spiritual ancestry, life, and future.

What it is now to a convinced Zionist, it was then to the average

Christian. But the idea of securing Jerusalem as an axiom, almost an

incidental axiom, of practical politics requires, perhaps, a word or

two of explanation, considering how far the modern habit of weeding out

theology from all politics but party-politics has gone; and this the

more so since little help is to be had from histories, written, as they

naturally are, to defend, attack, or explain the present rather than

the past, and dealing, consequently, with the past, only in so far as

it throws light, not on itself, but on things current.

History having become specialised into accounts of the political events

of the past in relation to to-day and to-morrow, the interest of the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has come to be concentrated on the

development of national and centralised governments. It is therefore

left out of account that the ideas at the back of the average sixteenth

century man's mind were such as assumed that the world, and Europe in

particular, was under theocratic government; and consequently that what

seem to us independent sovereigns developing national monarchies seemed

to him so many deputies of the Almighty—"many," because of the sins of

the world—ruling by permission until the appointed time should come for

the unification of Europe under the one true head, the completion of

whose work would be a final gigantic Crusade which would pulverise the

Turk and secure Jerusalem for Christianity, world without end. In fact,

the conquest of Jerusalem held much the same place in international

politics as "disarmament" with us; just so far ideal as to make

discussion of it interesting, and sufficiently impracticable to be

common ground. If these ideas seem too mediæval to be attributed to the

sixteenth century, it is because their more "modern" ideas have been

disproportionately insisted on since; seven-eighths of their life was

mediæval—and a large part of the remaining eighth the majority would

have wished to disown.

Where the leaven of new ideas was showing itself was not in a

cessation, but in a decrease, of pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The state of

transition is definitely marked by the diversity of the preoccupations

which men carried thither; the change itself by the discontinuance of

the pilgrim galleys. This took place between 1581 and 1586. It had been

usual for two galleys to sail to Jaffa and back each year specially for

pilgrims, from Venice, starting on different dates between Ascension

Day and early in July; the latter date being dictated by the weather,

the former doubtless by everybody's desire to wait to witness the

Espousal of the Sea. In 1581 a boat[87] started on May 7 or 8 with

fifty-six on board, all told; this was wrecked in the Adriatic, thirty

persons only being saved. On July 14, another left, but the pilgrims by

this had to change into a smaller vessel at Cyprus. In 1587, however,

a guide-book writer,[88] advising on the basis of his experiences the

previous year, tells the pilgrim to take the first boat to Tripoli in

the spring, before Easter if possible, otherwise there may be none

towards Palestine till August, since the pilgrim-galleys have ceased

sailing, although the procession is still kept up at Venice in which

every intending pilgrim had the honour of walking on the right hand of

a noble, bearing a lighted wax candle. That this discontinuance was

sudden and recent may be assumed from the fact that a priest who was

visiting the shrines of Christendom as the deputy of Philip II, who had

vowed such a pilgrimage when his son was ill, hurried[89] on his way to

Italy in 1587, expecting to find a pilgrim-galley ready to start. But

that this discontinuance was not merely temporary is clear enough from

all subsequent writers.

The complement of a pilgrim-galley may be taken as about one hundred,

although in 1561 one carried four hundred. After 1581 nobody mentions

finding more than twenty-three "Franks" at Jerusalem together, not

even at Easter, when "indulgences" were doubled. Possibly the attack

on "indulgences" which prefaced the best-known schism of the century

suggested, or testifies to, an incredulity concerning them which

might be felt far outside the districts which persisted in schism. If

felt, this would re-act on pilgrimages, the nominal object whereof

was to secure "indulgences." On the other hand, there is no reason

for assuming a decline in devotion; the non-Catholic point of view

is well expressed by Moryson:—"I had no thought to expiate any least

sin of mine; much less did I hope to merit any grace from God—yet I

confess that through the grace of God the very places struck me with a

religious horror and filled my mind with holy motions." One reason for

the decrease is certain, however, and sufficient to account for it

alone; the increase in the dangers and the cost of the journey through

the stopping-places on the route falling into the hands of the Turks,

and, still more, the changed attitude of the Turks towards Western

Christians as a result of these victories.

Yet this abolition of the direct and speedy route was not all loss to

him who was as much tourist as pilgrim. He saw the more. There was a

pleasant choice of routes, too; for, of course, thenceforth each one

had to make his own arrangements. The main routes numbered three; on

each of them further choice was possible. The three were viâ (1) Jaffa,

(2) Damascus, (3) Cairo.

The starting-point was sometimes Marseilles, but rarely; almost

invariably it would be Venice. Here, too, information was obtainable

better than elsewhere. At the Franciscan monastery "Della Vigna" was

a travel-bureau in charge of the "Padre Provisore di Gierusalemme"

who survived the galleys: in 1609 he was a Venetian noble. The post

had a semi-official character, since its holder was charged to view

the permit to visit Jerusalem, the "Placet" as it was called, lacking

which a Roman Catholic would incur excommunication; and also to assure

himself that the pilgrim had one hundred zecchini to spend, in the

absence of which the permit was cancelled. The respect in which this

"Placet," which required eleven signatures, was held was immense;

one soldier, even, who had touched at Tripoli and Jaffa in the course

of serving Ferdinand de' Medici, came back to Leghorn to get leave

before visiting Jerusalem. But the warden of the friars at Jerusalem

had authority to absolve from the excommunication such as did not pass

through Italy. No "Placets" were granted to women.

These preliminaries over, a start for Jaffa would be made by taking

ship for one of the islands in the Levant on the chance of finding

another ship thence to Jaffa itself, which extended the four-five

weeks' voyage of earlier days into one of unknown duration. Arriving at

Jaffa, past the rock from which St. Peter had his fishing-lesson, no

city was to be seen; little but two towers.

[Illustration: PILGRIMS LEAVING JAFFA FOR JERUSALEM, 1581]

In times gone by when the pilgrims arrived in bulk, word was sent to

the warden of the monastery of San Salvatore at Jerusalem, and they did

not start the land journey till he came to supervise it. But now the

traveller had to arrange as best he could with Turk or Arab and reach

Rama somehow or other; probably on an ass without saddle, bridle, or

stirrups. At Rama he would find Sion House, built by Philip the Good on

the site of the house of Nicodemus, and nominally a monastery; all the

monks had gone, but it remained a lodging for pilgrims. At Rama dwelt

the official Christian guide to Jerusalem, into whose charge you had

no choice but to commit yourself; if any one tried to evade his control

and charges, the dragoman could send word to the Arabs, and life passed

the limit of barely endurable, which was the pilgrim's ordinary lot.

The dragoman dwelt at Rama for the reason that the routes to Jerusalem,

west, north, and south, converged there; and for that same reason we

will go on to consider route No. 2, viâ Damascus.

There was at times the chance of approaching by the Damascus road,

and yet going mainly by sea; that was when there was a ship bound for

Acre or some port on the coast of the Holy Land other than Jaffa.

But in practically all cases the Damascus route meant getting to

Constantinople first, and this is equally true of route No. 3.

From Europe to Constantinople there were several main routes. Two

tourists took the trade route from Danzig through Lemberg to Kamenetz,

the frontier town of Poland, then down the river Pruth to Reni, a

centre of the caviare trade, and so down the Danube to its mouth and

by sea to Constantinople, which last part coincided with the route of

the Russian pilgrims who sailed down the Dnieper or the Don and coasted

along the Black Sea shore. A weird crew on a weird journey, in boats

which, big or little, were used to being mounted on wheels, through

country where nothing living was to be seen but wild beasts and nothing

to mark distances save the mouths of tributary streams. Then there was

Busbecq's way, who used the Danube, but not to the mouth; leaving it

soon after Belgrade had been passed and travelling by the great road

through Sofia and Adrianople along which the Grand Signor marched to

bring war and Christian ambassadors came to buy peace. From this road,

going westward, diverged the roads to Spalato and to Ragusa, the two

most direct ways to Venice. Yet but few tourists travelled by these two

roads. It was not that they were little used. Besides the ambassadors

to Constantinople from Ragusa itself, which meant at least two journeys

each year on account of the tribute, Della Valle speaks of the

ordinary post taking that direction and the Venetian representative at

Constantinople keeping forty Schiavonians for post work, who travelled

on foot. The mountain passes were terrible, and the danger from wolves

and dogs in Servia considerable; also from robbers. At certain points

on Mount Rhodope, for instance, men were stationed to beat drums

when the road was supposed to be clear of them, and a feature of the

district was the "Palangha," a roughly fortified enclosure large

enough for sixty or seventy Turks to live within and to serve as a

temporary shelter to those who lived roundabout; for the robber bands

sometimes numbered three hundred. Except at the regular stopping places

few people were seen, for the Christians established their villages

off the main road for fear of the Turks, who were so far uncertain

of their control over them as to use continual severities. A French

ambassador, whose guide led him astray near one of these villages,

saw all the inhabitants making off to the mountains, mistaking him

for a Turkish official. And their houses he says were no better than

"gabions couverts." But with these, as with all people who live under

a despotism, especially a foreign military one, their chief protection

consisted in appearing more miserable than they were; there was no part

of Europe where food was better or cheaper; neither did the people

treat strangers with the ferocity produced by extreme wretchedness, and

at Sofia, in fact, Blount found the opposite extreme—"nor hath it yet

lost the old Grecian civility, for of all the cities I ever passed,

either in Christendom or without, I never saw anywhere where a stranger

is less troubled either with affronts or with gaping."

Still, it was borderland, and mainly Mohammedan; the sea route was

common ground and frequented by Christians. But there was a compromise

which was often in use—to travel by sea to Zante and thence through

Greece, finishing the journey either by sea or land. It might seem that

this direction would appeal to a considerable proportion of tourists

during the period that is called "Renascence," but the extent to which

the acquaintance with, and interest in, Greek thought, first-hand,

at this time has been exaggerated may be accurately estimated by the

fact that not a single one of these travellers visited Athens except by

accident. It must be admitted, however, that things were not made easy

for them; one of those who traversed Greece was Dallam, in company with

seven others; part of the journey they were stalked by natives trying

to arrange with their guide to cut their throats: and every time they

slept but once it was in their clothes, either on the ground or on the

floor. One of the most interesting places that might be visited on this

route was Salonica, a Jew republic under the suzerainty of the Grand

Signor, with a training-school for priests; here and Safed near Galilee

were the only places where Hebrew was supposed to be spoken.

All these ways to Constantinople have been mentioned in the order

into which they fall according to the extent to which they were used

by European tourists, the least frequented first. Last comes the most

usual, by sea all the way from Venice. And here, however different

might be the experiences of this one and that one, two points of

interest were invariable. First, they passed Abydos and Sestos, where

out must come the note-book, and Leander must be dragged into it.

Secondly, Troy. The learned say that these tourists located Troy on

the south, instead of on the north, bank of the river, but the more

important point is that what they did see stirred their feelings: it

was no mere mild interest. The Trojan heroes were as real to them as

Barbarossa and Don Juan, not only because no doubts had blurred their

individuality, much less darkened their existence, but because there

was less competition for the position of hero owing to the narrower

range of their knowledge. Another characteristic of theirs, was that

Virgil was clearer in their association of ideas, Homer dimmer, at the

moment of seeing Troy's ruins, than would be the case with a modern

tourist: the quotation that arises most naturally in the mind of the

finest scholar of them all was

Hic Dolopum manus, hic sævus tendebat Achilles;

Classibus hic locus; hic acies certare solebant.

And so to Constantinople. But not the pilgrims' Constantinople of

former days, as marvellous a centre, perhaps, of ecclesiastical

civilisation and dignity, and of relics, as has been seen. St. Sophia

was still there and its doors still of the wood of Noah's ark, but it

was a mosque where the inquisitive Christian was allowed to look round

on sufferance. Only two churches in the city were allowed to remain in

Western Christian hands, St. Nicholas and Our Lady of Constantinople,

the latter still a place of pilgrimage though served by one solitary

Dominican friar. Gone was Moses' rod; gone from the neighbouring

village of Is Pigas was the fresco of St. John from whose head, in the

first week of each Lent, had blossomed a milk-white rose; gone was the

trumpet that sounded at the fall of Jericho and the horn of Abraham's

ram. But the last two must be safe somewhere, for they are to be used

by the summoning angel on Judgment Day.

As a pilgrim, then, the tourist reached Constantinople only by the

way. And setting out thence for Jerusalem, viâ Damascus, he might go

by land in one of three ways, either by trading caravan, in which

case he should contract with some one in it for all expenses and

necessaries by the way, besides engaging a Janizary, necessary under

every possible condition, who is to report his passenger's safe arrival

to an ambassador or some merchant residing at the point of departure;

or he might accompany a governor on his way to take up his duties (and

changes were very frequent), in which case the governor had better be

required to swear by his head to see the pilgrim safely through; or

for the third, and quickest way, on the return journey, accompany the

carriers of revenue to Constantinople. But it was far commoner to make

a sea-journey of it, which meant taking ship to "Scanderoon" and thence

by land, viâ Aleppo, to Damascus. Nobody ever went to Scanderoon except

to get to Aleppo; sometimes not even then, for during this period the

port of Aleppo was as often as not Tripoli. The objection to Scanderoon

was its unhealthiness, lying, as it did, as Peter Mundy says, "in a

great marsh full of boggs, foggs, and froggs"; of the English who went

there as apprentices scarcely five per cent lived to go into business

for themselves. Aleppo was worth seeing: a pleasant town with its

approaches all gardens, like Damascus, and the medley of nations must

have been marvellous to watch; a sign of its cosmopolitanism was that

Christians were allowed to ride horses there, an unusual privilege in

Mohammedan dominion; probably nowhere outside Venice were so many sects

represented, whose churches were in what was called the new suburb;

two Armenian, a Greek, and a Catholic Maronite were actually side by

side, with a Syrian Jacobite church just near. It is not out of place

to add that at the Jews' synagogue there was not the usual division of

sexes, but that the only separation was that one side was reserved for

the families who had been long resident there, the other for strangers:

because although the repulsion felt for the Jews was greater at this

time than at present, the interest in them was likewise greater, and

any information concerning their customs was regarded by the tourist

as matter for his readers—a surprising number of these tourists give

eye-witness accounts of circumcisions of Jewish babies.

To return to Aleppo; it was equally remarkable for its trade. Dealings

to the extent of 40,000 to 100,000 crowns were ordinary, and this

implied frequency of caravans to take the pilgrim on to Damascus. On

the way he would pass the district in which Job was supposed to have

lived, which may well have been so, says Moryson, for no spot possessed

such conveniences for getting robbed, even of 100,000 head of cattle,

nor any better suited to develop patience.

It was here the pilgrim became acquainted with the Arabs. How far the

latter were independent of the Turks was left an unsettled question,

but it is fairly certain that on many, perhaps most, of the occasions

when a European traveller of the time relates an encounter with the

Arabs, the latter were not the robbers he thought them but keepers of

the roads demanding not more than treble what they were entitled to.

But it is equally clear that hostilities were perpetual. In 1601 a

caravan guide told an Englishman at one defile that he had never passed

by there without seeing bodies of murdered men; and from Damascus to

Jacob's bridge—so called because just by was the spot where Jacob

wrestled with the Angel—the caravan travelled by night for fear of

the Arabs and no talking was allowed without the captain's special

permission. But there was much to divert the attention of the faithful

from their trials. At Damascus was Ananias' house, and soon after

starting an ill-informed tourist would be surprised to see all his

fellow travellers fall on their knees for prayers: it would be the

spot where the conversion of St. Paul took place. Before reaching

the Sea of Galilee they came upon a field with a little well in it,

at which all dismounted for worship as well as for a drink; there had

Joseph been hidden by his brethren. Between Cana and Mt. Tabor was a

little chapel to call at, built on the spot where Christ had multiplied

the loaves and fishes, and after this the road turned westwards to

Nazareth and the church on the site where the Virgin Mary's house

had stood before it had been spirited away to Loreto; two porphyry

columns were standing on the places occupied respectively by the

Archangel and by the Virgin at the moment of the Annunciation. For

those who were not Roman Catholics there was the actual house there

to be identified on its original site, so far as it had been left

intact by previous pilgrims; Lithgow, the only Western Christian in

the caravan he travelled with, asserts that his companies carried away

above five thousand pounds' weight of the house in remembrance. Then

southward, joining the road from Tripoli, more frequented, but not by

pilgrims, who chose this Damascus road as passing through Galilee.

And so to Rama, where they may await such as journey by route 3 from

Constantinople viâ Cairo.

Reaching Alexandria it was found to be about the size of Paris; besides

the ruins, the greatness of which was attested by the intolerable dust

which was all that remained of much of the building materials of the

past.

Leaving Alexandria for Cairo, it was a matter of course to go by river,

passing an attractive town every four miles or so, a very pleasant

journey except when the Nile was low, which made it more practicable

for the Arabs to attack. On landing at Bulak, the port, there would

be asses ready, the wonderful asses of the East celebrated of old in

Western Europe, as the canticle witnesses which used to be sung at

Beauvais cathedral at the feast of the Circumcision when the ass enters

in the procession.[90]

Orientis partibus

Adventavit asinus

Pulcher et fortissimus

Sarcinis aptissimus

Hez, Hez, sire asne, Hez!!

The asses of Bulak fortified tradition by carrying passengers into the

city, unattended by any boy, and taking their way back as soon as the

ride was over.

The characteristics of Cairo which impressed themselves most on the

seventeenth-century traveller were its size, and, notwithstanding its

size, its populousness, so great that it was difficult to move for the

press of people. Allowances must be made, however, for their standard

regarding streets; a large proportion of the ten thousand streets

were in reality passages built over, dark and dangerous to an extent

which probably exists in few European slums nowadays. The number ten

thousand sounds suspicious as a statement of fact, but there was a

certain check on it, inasmuch as each "street" was shut at each end

by a gate at night and each gate had a guardian as well as a lantern

burning; and the number of guardians was twenty thousand besides the

four thousand soldiers who patrolled inside the city at night. For the

antiquities, there were still to be seen many houses bearing a chalice

and two lighted candles, witnesses of Louis IX's captivity in Egypt and

the tale of his leaving the sacrament as security for the payment of

his ransom on his release; for the rest, knowledge was not in a very

advanced state; everything that was not credited to "Pharaoh" was put

down to Joseph.

The interest to the tourist centred equally in the excursions. It was

but a few miles to Matarea—to use the Italian spelling, preferable with

many of the names that occur, especially in this chapter, as a sign of

the times—and no Roman Catholic omitted it, seeing that there stood

the house where Our Lady dwelt for some years after her flight from

Palestine; at Cairo itself was preserved some of the water in which she

washed her baby-clothes. Neither, naturally, was any one inclined to

pass on without a visit to the Pyramids; no doubt Della Valle's name is

still to be found cut on the top of the Great Pyramid on the facet that

looks towards Italy. He entered the Great Pyramid, the only one into

which entrance was effected at this date; but had no opportunity of

saying anything regarding it out of the ordinary; it is when he moved

on to what were known as the "Pyramids of the Mummies" that his account

of his doings again becomes one of the most remarkable, as well as one

of the best written, of research in Egypt. He made a halt at "Abusir,"

and then after entering one of these minor Pyramids, moved on to

"Saccara," the centre for mummy-hunting, which formed the occupation of

the boys of the village. On Della Valle's arrival they had a stand-up

fight for the privilege of taking him home, and the next morning about

fifty were at his door. A procession having been formed, all were set

to work in different places probing for tombs, for Della Valle was bent

on examining such as had never been opened hitherto. His trouble and

expense were well rewarded, for the two mummies he brought away intact

were pronounced at Cairo to be the most remarkable that any one there

remembered seeing. They cost him three piastri—less than five pounds

in our money at present values—each, and are now in Dresden Museum. It

was rare for any to be seen intact, for hunting for mummies was not

carried on for museums, but because of their supposed medicinal value,

greatest, it was thought, in virgin-mummies; one of the rare qualities

of Othello's handkerchief consisted in its having been

... dyed in mummy which the skilful

Conserved of maiden's hearts ...

Mummies were therefore broken up as soon as found, and sold piecemeal;

sometimes also to painters, who by means of them obtained certain

shades of brown otherwise unattainable. There was, nevertheless, an

Englishman, named John Sanderson, who brought one away intact, besides

six hundred pounds of fragments to sell to London apothecaries, in

spite of mummy being contraband export from Egypt.

[Illustration: AT MOUNT SINAI]

A third, and the chief, excursion was to Sinai and the Red Sea. It is

no exaggeration to say that for most it was a terrible experience;

there were many who visited Mohammedan lands often and some who saw

Jerusalem more than once, but not one went a second time to Sinai. No

big caravans travelled that way, few were the merchants who traded to

Suez; it meant, then, being subject to the pleasure of the Arabs. There

privation was the best that could be looked for, they were dependent

for their lives and the endurance of life on their own enforced

liberality and the chance of forbearance from others; and very thankful

must they have been when they caught sight of the two great towers,

since pulled down, which stood in the suburbs of Cairo for landmarks

to those coming from Suez, although they might expect to receive a

welcome, as they had probably had a send-off, from the boys of Cairo in

the shape of dirt, bricks, and bad lemons. Two Germans were reduced to

such a state as to become subject to hallucinations.

Especially strange did the journey seem to a Russian who passed by the

Cairo route to Jerusalem. So totally different a desert from those he

knew,—neither forests nor vegetation, no people, no water; nothing but

sand and stones, except for the Red Sea. And it happens that here, in

particular, does he show how far more second-hand was his knowledge

of the Bible stories than was that of other Europeans. The function

of the cloud which is said to have accompanied the Israelites by day

on their flight was, to him, to hide them from pursuers, and at the

Red Sea there were still visible to him the twelve ways that Moses had

opened up for his people, one for each tribe, marked on the surface of

the water by a deeper tint, and the prints of Pharaoh's chariot-wheels

were as indelible as ever for him, whereas Christians from farther west

ceased to see them soon after the beginning of the sixteenth century.

Some facts were even more exclusively his own, as that Pharaoh's

soldiers were changed into fish after their drowning; and were to be

known when caught by having human heads, men's teeth and noses, though

their ears had grown to fins; nobody eats them. Pharaoh's horses were

likewise fishified; hairy fish with skins as thick as your finger.

It goes without saying that every scene from Hebrew history was

localised to a square foot; but there was, besides, a rock to be seen

written over in characters that none could decipher, yet identified

by tradition as the writing of Jeremiah the prophet done with his

finger. This rock was near the monastery. Hither came the pilgrim, to

find the gate barred, whether he had sent word of his approach or not;

the monastery was surrounded as a rule by two or three hundred Arabs,

howling day and night, and sometimes threatening, for food; let down

every now and then from a window high up. Once inside, there was the

monks' well to see, the very same one at which Moses watered Jethro's

sheep, and a chapel behind the choir built over the spot where had

stood the burning bush that Moses saw; with Our Lady and her Baby

standing in the middle thereof unharmed, say the Russian pilgrims.

Then to bed; and in the morning, after being wakened, maybe, by a monk

calling his brethren to "offices" by striking spears of wood and iron

with a stick, for bell they had none, a start would be made up what

was assumed to be Mt. Horeb, at the foot of which, on the side nearest

Cairo, lay the monastery. Not far from the top were four chapels, one

dedicated to St. Elijah, at the back of which was the grotto where he

hid from Jezebel, forty days, fasting. At the top was the rock behind

which Moses lay while God passed, and, hard by, the church of the Holy

Summit and a mosque—it was a pilgrimage place for Mohammedans, too.

Then down again the farther side to the valley between Mts. Horeb and

Sinai, to the hospice where pilgrims stayed the night.

Before reaching Sinai, and after leaving it, these travellers are in

the habit of making assertions so flatly contradictory that some of

them will be hardly put to it on Judgment Day; but when at Sinai, there

is only one opinion—to get to the top thereof was the most terrific

struggle they had ever gone through. Only one account has the least

suggestion of enjoyment in it, Della Valle's; and yet his ascent was

made under worse conditions than any other's.

It was one Christmas. In the night snow had fallen; the morning

promised more snow. Only one monk was found to act as guide; but Della

Valle was ready, and his servants would go wherever he chose to lead

them; two Arabs were bribed into carrying food. So a start was made;

Della Valle in the pilgrim's tunic which he always wore in holy places,

but tucked up high this time; and all with sticks cut from the tree

whence Moses cut his rod. First went the monk, taking the rocks like a

young deer; and he must have known his way well, for the stones which

marked the way could not have been visible for snow. At first it was

just wet; then they met the snow; higher up it came to mid-thigh; still

higher, still deeper. Farther still, where in the best of weathers it

was a place for hands and knees, it was all frozen; more snow was

falling and the wind terrific. The interpreter gave himself up for

dead, cursed the monk who encouraged the ascent, commended himself to

God and St. Catherine, remembered his sins, and forswore meat on every

Monday that he might live to see. However, they did reach the top,

where, once upon a time, the angels laid St. Catherine's body for a

while; and saw the hard stone which retained the imprint of her body

where she had lain and of the angels' posteriors where they sat, one

at each side of her head, and one at her feet. They prayed, eat, and

forthwith started to descend, to reach the hospice that night. What

with snow and mist they could often see but a foot or two before them,

and their idea of descending under the conditions was to toboggan on

their backs; the only risk being, he says, that of getting buried in

snowdrifts, which was no real risk, because they never all got buried

at the same time. However, once he found himself sitting on the edge of

a precipice with his legs dangling; and yet, in the end, no casualties

occurred except to one of Della Valle's shoes, and he and his servants,

after buying some of the little rings the monks provided by way of

souvenirs, made of gold, of silver, and of bone, went back to Cairo to

prepare for the other journey across the desert, to Gaza and Rama.

Cairo to Gaza was twelve days' journey by caravan, but an Arab could

do it in four days. A merchant-pilgrim who had to rejoin his ship at

Alexandria by a certain date in 1601 could find no way of return except

under the escort of the Arabs to whom a friendly Moor introduced him.

They travelled on dromedaries at first, but he changed to horseback

towards the end to save his life from death by jolting. One evening

his dromedary ran away, and the two Arabs pursued it out of sight,

and there were the Moor and the merchant alone in the desert with

night descending on them, not to mention other Arabs who had taken no

oaths to respect their lives and pockets, but who eventually postponed

beheading them till their guides returned.

An Arab guide meant safety from the chief danger of the desert, that

of the Arab bands who laid in wait for every caravan and attacked

small ones; in 1611 a caravan of three hundred camels was carried

off bodily. The average number of persons in a caravan seems to have

been about one thousand and the number of camels three for every four

persons, besides the extra ones that would be required for merchandise;

a camel carried two persons, and one camel luggage for four,—no small

load, for each one had to provide for himself as if he was about to

set up housekeeping. The camel had this advantage over the horse,

that the latter and his fodder were more coveted by the Arab than the

former; and it was all one whether the Arab took horse and fodder

or fodder only, for there was none to be bought and the horse would

starve if left with the owner. The camels used for caravan purposes

were not the small ones the Arabs were accustomed to, but the large

ones, on which alone, at that time, at any rate, was it customary to

travel in cradles, one cradle slung each side of the camel. They were

comfortable, these cradles; comfortable enough to sleep in, hooded

and lined to defend the traveller from sun and weather, with a secret

pocket in the seat for valuables. The camels themselves were protected

against the evil eye by charms written by dervishes slung round their

necks in leathern bags; and on special occasions they were painted

orange from head to foot, like the Polish horses.

Three of the halts were beside castles maintained by the Turks;

elsewhere there was always the chance of an Arab chief enquiring if

there were Franks in the caravan and then inviting himself to dinner;

after dinner he would want a present, would probably name his needs,

and lucky was one particular tourist whose guest only asked for some

sugar and a pair of shoes. That the Arab was born to command and the

Frank to obey, was an axiom with Franks and caravan-leaders, except to

Della Valle, who always showed fight and always won; it is to be hoped

that none of the other tourist-pilgrims came to know later how much

money they would have saved had they known the effect of gunpowder,

even minus the bullet, on an Arab.

At Gaza the caravan would split. The tourist would accompany those

who were for Damascus, whose way lay through Rama, where, as already

mentioned, all pilgrim ways met. Then to Jerusalem. At the gate the

pilgrim's weapons were taken from him and his name registered in a

book, to assure that his tribute should not be overlooked. Then the

resident representative of his sect took charge of him; if he was

a Frank he went to the Roman Catholic monastery of San Salvatore,

whether Protestant or not. There was one Calvinist at this time who

preferred to deal direct with the Turks rather than endanger his soul;

but this meant money to the monks and he found himself in prison, from

which he was only released by influence. The fact was that none of

the Protestant rulers contributed to the upkeep of any foundation at

Jerusalem and all Western Europeans were consequently classed together

as in days gone by. At the monastery he would be fairly certain to make

the acquaintance of Giovanni Battista, the monastery guide, for by

1612 he had filled that post for twenty-five years; and he it was from

whom pilgrims derived most of their information during their stay—in

Italian; if their knowledge of Italian was hazy, it probably added one

or two marvels to those he meant to tell them. And, indeed, this may be

said of most of these tourists on most of their journeys; much of the

information they retail, in their own books and in this, they acquired

by word of mouth in a language they only half understood.

Of Jerusalem as a town they say that the walls were the best part of

the building; that there were three Christians living there to every

Turk; that the Christians dwelled there for devotion and the Turks for

the income derived from the Christians, and that otherwise it would

have been wholly deserted. Partially deserted it actually was, since

for the scarcity of human beings in its streets it is compared to

Padua, the emptiest city in Europe, by one Englishman. All the trades

driven there were elementary ones, shoemakers, cooks, smiths, tailors;

and Moryson, on being seen walking about with gloves and a shirt, was

taken for a prince in spite of his being poorly dressed otherwise;

although that did not prevent the natives egging on their children to

leap on to his back from upper stories and snatch things from him.

But just consider the sights in these streets! Passing over the

localisations of New Testament incidents (such as where the Apostles

composed the Creed and Christ the Lord's prayer) so exact and frequent

that one must have had to walk slowly to avoid missing them when

the guide pointed them out, there were besides the houses of Annas,

Zebedee, Caiaphas, Veronica, Dives, Mary Magdalen, Uriah the Hittite,

Pilate, where nightly were heard noises and whippings and sighs, and

of the school which Our Lady attended; the orchard where Bathsheba

bathed and the terrace from which David beheld her; the fountain where

Our Lady used to wash her baby-clothes; the stone on which the cock

stood to crow at St. Peter's downfall, and another which had been the

seat of the angel who told the Marys of Christ's resurrection, etc.,

etc.

These were every-day matters. To see Jerusalem at its best one had

to go at Easter, when the concourse of pilgrims was greatest for two

reasons: first, the only excursion to Jordan took place; secondly,

the descent of the Holy Fire from heaven into the church of the

Holy Sepulchre. The incidents of the season are described in detail

by George Sandys, Lithgow, Coryat and Della Valle, who were there

at Easter in the years 1611, 1612, 1614, and 1616 respectively. On

Palm Sunday the warden of the monastery set out for Bethphage in the

afternoon and returned riding on an ass, the people shouting "Hosanna,

etc.," and strewing the way with boughs and garments. When Lithgow

was there they made too much noise to please the Turks and therefore

returned black with bruises and somewhat bloody, the warden not

excepted. In the evening the warden had recovered far enough to give an

address to the Frank pilgrims, entreating the Protestants to refrain

from reviling what they did not agree with, and concluding with the

advice that three things were preëminently needful for a Jerusalem

pilgrim; Faith (to believe what was told him), Patience (with the

Turks), and Money.

On Maundy Thursday came the ceremony of washing the pilgrims' feet by

the warden, and great was his disgust if he found that he had washed

and kissed the feet of a Protestant. Some spent the next three nights

in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, some only Easter Eve; a survival

of the pre-Christian idea of the healing influence of passing a night

in a temple.[91] Those who could not afford, or borrow, the heavy

entrance-fee, never entered but stood outside and wept, or looked

through the round hole in the door through which food was passed.

Inside, it made all the difference whether or no the Oriental Palm

Sunday or Easter Day fell on the Frank Easter. If so, the Frank would

find the number in the church of the Holy Sepulchre anything between

one and two thousand, many belonging to nations he had never heard

of, all frantic with excitement, dancing, leaping, and lamenting by

torchlight, in garments that he had never dreamt of, to the sound of

kettle-drums and horns and other instruments as strange to him as their

languages and manner of singing; all combining, with their flags and

banners, in a general cumulative effect of inexpressible weirdness,

without a single touch to bring it into relation with ordinary life,

except the Turks bringing to reason with sticks those who were really

too outrageous even for the occasion. And so the pilgrims spent the

three nights, on the floor, in as utter disregard of decency and

sanitation, and sometimes of morality, as of silence.

The descent of the Holy Fire was no more than an interesting sight to

the European tourist; Roman Catholic and Protestant alike expressed

disbelief in its actuality as openly as the Turk.

On Easter Monday the monks journeyed to Emmaus, passing the house of

Simeon and the spot where David slew Goliath, returning by another

road past the valley where Joshua commanded the staying still of the

sun, and the house of Samuel. It was on the Tuesday preceding the

Oriental Easter that the great excursion of the year took place, to

Jordan; the only one in the year because the danger from the Arabs was

considered prohibitive unless an escort of Turkish soldiers accompanied

the pilgrims, so strong that only the Easter concourse could pay

them. It was more than a day's journey, so Tuesday night was spent in

the open, starting again however before dawn at the pace set by the

escort's horses; of the poorer pilgrims who could not afford a mount,

many died either from exhaustion or from fear. So says Della Valle,

and it is confirmed by Lithgow; the latter, who walked, sometimes

was up to his middle in sand, and "true it is, in all my travels, I

was never so sore fatigued, nor more fearfully endangered than that

night." At dawn they arrived where Christ had been baptised, to see the

medley of nationalities, all distinct from each other in some striking

detail or other, once more in the highest state of excitement; some

drinking, some being baptised by friends, some dipping their clothes,

some renouncing clothes altogether, scores, perhaps hundreds, of men

and women stark naked, there in the chilly spring morning, douching

themselves till their teeth chattered and their bodies turned blue,

while others who came to pray remained to laugh.

On the way back some diverged to visit Mt. Quarantana, the scene of

the forty days' fast; very few ascended it. The way up was a narrow

path along precipices; broken by forty-five steps, each from five to

ten feet high, where there was little foothold and slipping meant

death. This ended at the little cave where Christ was tempted by the

Devil; the way thence to the summit, from which Christ had surveyed the

kingdoms of the world, was not attempted by any one: Lithgow says he

reached the top but proves that he did not; and Della Valle says that

the only means of reaching it was that used by Christ, being carried up

by the Devil.

Easter, too, gave a good opportunity for a visit to Hebron, for the

largest caravan went thither at that time also. But this was as much a

Mohammedan pilgrimage as Christian, and Abraham's house, another of

the remarkably well-preserved buildings of Palestine, was shut against

Christians and Jews. Of these latter there were many who journeyed

to the Holy Land; how many cannot be guessed, but they certainly

outnumbered the Christians of the West, and equally certainly were too

many to be omitted from a record of Europeans then, though the only

piece of direct evidence at hand is from the itinerary of one Samuel

Jemsel[92] with whom, in 1641, one hundred sailed in one ship of the

regular fleet from Constantinople to Egypt, some bound for Jerusalem,

some for Safed. They come into notice chiefly when a caravan is on the

move on their Sabbath, when they remain behind and make up the lost

ground as best they can.

From other pilgrims they differed in this; the Christian was leaving

home, the Jew was going home. When they reached Palestine, besides,

some of the spots they visited were famous among Christians; but mostly

they were not. In the best Jewish guide-book in use in 1600, are

mentioned one hundred and sixty-eight of their famous ancestors whose

tombs were localised. If a Christian visited Abraham's, his duty to the

Old Testament was done with; and even then he invariably omitted to

observe the stone on which the patriarch sat when he was circumcised.

And as for the tomb of Adam and Eve, and of Jacob and Leah, and the

prophet Hosea (may his memory be blessed), and of Isaiah (may Salvation

be his), and of Rachel (with whom be peace), and of the Rabbi Jeremiah

who was buried upright, and, at Ras-ben-Amis, of the wife of Moses our

master, and of the wife of the high-priest Aaron, and, on Mt. Ephraim,

of Joshua the son of Nun and of Caleb the son of Jephunneh (may God, in

his mercy, be mindful of them and of all other righteous men)—why, of

all these the Ishmaelites knew nothing, nor even that at Rama was to be

seen the spot where the Messiah shall appear, nor that there should be

rending of garments when Jerusalem is first seen and again on reaching

the place where once stood the Temple, now, for our sins, destroyed.

Outside Palestine, too, was much that the uncircumcised knew not of. He

passed through Cairo without hearing of the copy of the law of Moses,

written by the hand of Esdras the scribe; though, indeed, no man might

see it, not even, incredible as it may sound, if he offered the keeper

thereof silver (partly because the holy volume had by now been stolen,

and lost, with the thief, at sea). And Damascus Hebrew and Frank might

equally remember as the city where fresh fruit was never lacking, but

only the former remembered that hard by Esdras himself lay buried, any

more than the merchant who reached Baghdad heard that there rested

Ananias, Mizael, and Azarias, and also, with the river flowing over

his head, Daniel, of glorious memory,—unless the merchant wished to

catch some of the great fish which swam thereabouts, for fishing was

prohibited at that spot lest harm might befall the greatest fish of

all, Zelach by name, who had abided there since Daniel's own time and

was fed from the royal table.

And if any of the twentieth-century uncircumcised hesitate to believe

that so much could be satisfactorily identified, the twentieth-century

Hebrew may answer that there are other tests of identification

than those of the "research" that has achieved such wonders at

Stratford-on-Avon and that tradition can be traced back, unvarying even

in trifles, for centuries.

He might go on to point out that Christian tradition might well be more

stable. It is curious how much that is mentioned by fifteenth-century

Christians is habitually omitted by those who came after. That the

taking of Rhodes by the Turks should cause the disappearance of the

basin in which Christ washed his apostles' feet is intelligible; but

why, e. g., should the table disappear from Bethany at which the

disciples were sitting when the Holy Ghost descended? And why should

it have dropped out of remembrance that the torrent of Cedron had

been bridged with stone by St. Helen to replace the wooden one from

which the wood for the Cross had been taken and over which the Queen

of Sheba had refused to walk, saying in a spirit of prophecy, that

the Saviour of the world was to die on it? It seems as though there

had occurred a diminishment of devotion resulting in the concentration

of what devotion remained on fewer objects; or else a widening of

interests diverting the attention from minor objects. Sometimes, of

course, transference took place; which may, or may not, account for one

traveller being shown the pillar of salt which had once been Lot's wife

at a monastery near Trapani in Sicily in 1639, whereas in 1613 Coryat

was told that she existed on the farther side of "Lake Asphaltitis

with her child in her arms and a pretty dog, also in salt, by her."

Still, no doubt Giovanni Battista and the warden did their best, and

the latter was willing, in addition, to confer knighthood of the Holy

Sepulchre on all and sundry, with no questions asked as to lineage, not

even of a Dutchman in the grocery business; and at least there was the

certificate of the pilgrim's visit to Jerusalem to be received—and paid

for.

[Illustration: ARMS OF A JERUSALEM PILGRIM]

And now the tourist's last and longest journey has been told; he is at

home safe, leaving us with nothing fresh to tell except the incidentals

of his journeyings, and leaving us, one tourist, at least, with his

blessing: "In the meantime I leave thee, gentle reader, travelling

towards the heavenly Jerusalem, where God grant at length we may

all arrive, Jesus Christ being our pilot and Janizary to conduct us

thereunto."

CHAPTER VI

INNS

_Servus._ ... Però con licentia, quando

quierese ir vuessa merced?

Sed bona venia,

quando vult recedere

T. D.?

_Viator._ Mañana, plaziendo à Dios, en

caso que pueda madrugar

Cras, si Deo placet,

si possim diluculo

surgere.

_Servus._ Paraque no se queda aqui aun

algunos dias?

Quare non manet

hic adhuc per

aliquot dies?

_Viator._ El huesped y el pesce en tres

dias hiede

Hospes et piscis

post triduum foetent.

Müller, "Linguæ Hispanicæ Institutio," 1630.

It is a most unsatisfactory thing—reading about what you would like to

see; but if seeing sixteenth-century Europe implied spending the nights

in sixteenth-century inns there is much to be said for preferring the

experience in print only. Luxury of a kind certainly was to be had.

At the "Vasa d'Oro" at Rome were gorgeous beds, hung with silk and

cloth of gold, worth four to five hundred crowns each; at the "Ecu" at

Châlons silken bedding, too; and Germany occasionally provided sheets

trimmed with lace four-fingers'-breadth wide in panelled rooms, while

by 1652 Amsterdam possessed a hotel reckoned the best in Europe, every

room in which was floored with black and white marble and hung with

pictures, with one room containing an organ and decorated with gilded

leather in place of tapestries. But these superfluities did not imply

that a comfortable medium was easily found. In any case, accommodation

divided itself into bedroom and dining-room; of anything approaching

a sitting-room there is rarely a word. The chief exception to this is

the five or six halls, decorated and furnished like those of a rich

gentleman, at the inn outside Sinigaglia. This was the finest hotel

in Italy when built, shortly before 1578, by the Duke of Urbino, who

allowed no other there. Its forty bedrooms, with no more than two beds

in each, all opened on to one long gallery by separate doors.[93]

The Italian host the traveller would often see before the inn came in

sight; sometimes the latter would have touts as far away as seven or

eight leagues to buttonhole foreigners, carry their luggage, promise

anything and behave with the utmost servility—till the morning of

departure. But with all this to expect them to provide clean sheets was

expecting too much, and as the nation was grievously afflicted with

the itch, it was desirable for the visitor to carry his own bedding.

In many cases, too, we find the tourist sleeping on a table in his

clothes to avoid the dirtiness of the bed, or the vermin. Still, in

Italy, you shared your bed with these permanent occupants only, as a

rule; in Spain you were sure to do so; one man, one bed, was the custom

there—a result of the enforcement of the penalty of burning alive for

sodomy. In Germany the custom was just the reverse; in fact, if the

tourist did not find a companion for himself, the host chose for him,

and his bedfellow might be a gentleman, or he might be a carter; all

that could safely be prophesied about him was that he would be drunk

when he came to bed. The bed would be one of several in a room; the

covering a quilt, warm enough to be too warm for summer, and narrow

enough to leave one side of each person exposed in winter. This is

supposing there were beds: in northern Germany rest for the night

would be on a bench in a "stove," as they called the room, because the

stove was so invariably part of the furniture that the words "room"

and "stove" became synonymous. Windows were never opened at night,

to retain the heat in the room; all the travellers lay there, men

and women, gentlemen and "rammish clowns," as near the stove as they

could manage. The heat was such that the effect on one unaccustomed

to it was "as if a snake was twining about his legs." Further, if

several met together, says a Frenchman, one might as well try to sleep

in a market-place on market-day. In upper Germany, the bedrooms were

separate, without fires or the means of making one, and the change from

the one temperature to the other was very trying. As many beds were

put in a room as the room would hold; fairly clean ones, however, as

the Germans treated them with some disinfectant. In Saxony there were

no beds, no benches, no stove, even. All lay in the straw among the

cows, the chief disadvantage of which was that your pillow was liable

to be eaten in the night. So in Poland, too, where it meant a cold and

dangerous night, in the country parts, at least, for any one who did

not adapt himself to the custom of the country by using the long coat

lined with wolfskins which served the Pole as cloak by day and bedding

by night.

As a relief from the general statements, a particular instance may be

quoted to exemplify a night by the way in Poland. The sleeping-room

struck the writer as something between a stable and a subterranean

furnace. Six soldiers lay on the ground as if dead; the peasant-tenant,

his wife, children, and servants, lay on benches round the walls, with

coverings of straw and feathers; in one corner slept a Calvinist,

a baron's secretary; in another, on the peasant's straw pallet, an

ambassador's chaplain, a Roman Catholic; and between the two, to save

each, it seemed, from the heels of the other, was lying a huge Tartar,

a captain in the Polish army, who had made up a bed of hay for himself.

About the room were dogs, geese, pigs, fowls; while the corner by the

oven was conceded to a woman who had just given birth to a child. The

baby cried, the mother moaned, the tired servants and soldiers snored;

and early in the morning the writer rose from the shelf he was sharing

with some leggings, spurs, and muskets, and escaped.[94]

Speaking generally, there were no beds to be found in the North.

In Muscovy everything had to be carried along; without a hatchet,

tinder-box, and kettle there was no hot food for the wayfarer till he

reached a monastery or a town, much less shelter; unless by chance

he came across somebody's one-story cabin which would have no outlet

for the smoke except the door, and accommodation below the level of

the average stable, one room shared between the family, visitors, and

live-stock. When Sir Jerome Horsey was at Arensberg, in the island of

Oesel, near the gulf of Riga, in 1580, snakes crept about bed and table

and the hens came and pecked at them in the flour and the milk.

Crossing over to Sweden the absence of inns was equally noticeable,

but no disadvantage, for one of the conditions on which the parson

held his living was that of showing hospitality to those in need of

it. In Denmark, too, while taverns existed for supplying victuals,

the wayfarer was dependent on the citizen for lodging, again not to

his loss; he was sure of decent food, a clean bed, and a welcome.

Foreigners in England are singularly reticent about the inns, except

for reviling Gravesend for swindling; which may, perhaps, be taken

as confirming Moryson's opinion that the English inn was the best

in Europe. As to Ireland, there is the usual diversity of opinion;

the absence of inns is accounted for by the traditional idea that

the possession of an inn was a disgrace to a town, a slur on the

hospitality of its inhabitants; yet the hospitality itself was most

uncertain, since the natives were not in a position to believe in the

neutrality of a visitor.

The _personnel_ question, of course, is one that has to be allowed

for throughout. It was in France that this method of discounting

dissatisfaction was most in use, but it is in a dialogue printed in

the Low Countries, a conversational guide for travellers in seven

languages, that the following (an excerpt from the English version)

occurs:[95]

"My she-friend, is the bed made? is it good?"

"Yea, sir; it is a good feather-bed; the sheets be very clean."

"Pull off my hosen and warm my bed; draw the curtains and pin them with

a pin. My she-friend, kiss me once and I shall sleep the better.... I

thank you, fair maiden."

The German host was too apt to think that a heavy meal and honesty were

all that could be expected from him. The honesty was indeed remarkable;

more than one stranger was astonished by the recovery of property

mislaid; sent after him, sometimes, before he had discovered his loss

and no reward taken; but it was paid for dearly indirectly through

the insolence born of virtue in a class that is naturally below the

Ten-Commandment standard. The customer was made to feel that the favour

was to, not from, him. An exception to this is the experience of Van

Buchell, who found German hosts sending hot water up to a traveller's

bedroom, if it was noticed he was tired, with herbs in the water, such

as camomile, for strengthening the feet; and this even at Frankfurt

a/M. in Fair-time as well as elsewhere. But there was no such thing as

hastening on, or delaying, a meal-time, or dissatisfaction with the

food; the bill must be paid without question, not a farthing abated.

And generally, indeed, the help of the law did not seem to avail

against the innkeeper. Tourists speak of successful appeals to the law

on other points and curse the inns without ceasing, but a successful

tourist's lawsuit against his host remains to be found. In Tyrol,

in fact, the plaintiff would find the defendant not only on, but

controlling, the bench; and in Spain most innkeepers were officers

of the "Santa Hermandad," a "Holy Brotherhood" whose forgotten ideal

and raison d'être was that of acting as country police, with the

result that the complainant would probably be arrested at the next

stopping-place on some trumped-up charge. Neither was the local

authority of assistance so far as prices were concerned in spite of

the latter being fixed by it and posted up; because the local authority

was open to bribery, and the innkeeper had known that as long as he had

been in business. In short, when the bill came to one hundred per cent

too much in Spain, the cheapest way was to pay it.

Of all the ill-feeling that the tourists harboured against Spain, the

bitterest was on account of the inns; from the earliest, Andrew Boorde,

who says "hogs shall be under your feet at the table, and lice in your

beds," and another who relates how he preferred to hire three Moors to

hold him in their arms while he slept. Those who come midway through

the period tell the same tale; at Galleretta, on the border of Castile,

a German finds the stable, the bedroom, the kitchen, the dining-room,

the pigsty, one and the same room, and a Papal envoy sleeps on straw

one snowy night without a fire. The latest writes that the sight of the

inns was more than enough. There was but one way to reconcile one's

self to the wayside inn of Spain; and that was—trying those of Portugal.

Over all these inns the Turkish "khan" had this advantage, that there

was no host. A "khan" was a building which some compare to a barn,

and one to a tennis-court, with a platform running round inside the

walls about four feet broad and usually three to four feet high, but

sometimes ten. At intervals of about eight feet were chimneys. The

platform was for the travellers; the inner space for their beasts;

the chimneys for each party to cook food at. That was the normal form,

seeming to an uninstructed traveller just a stable, in which idea he

would be confirmed by the scents in the early morning. The average

Christian found that the noises and the lights prevented sleep, but

the Turk carried a rug to sleep on, used his saddle as a pillow and

his great rain-cloak as a covering and found it comfortable enough

till daybreak, when he thought it suitable to get up, greatly to the

disgust of the Christians present. Or if the moon was very bright, he

might arise earlier by mistake; for he carried no watch, nor believed

one when he saw it. Even in the ordinary "khan" there was often a room

over the door to which the traveller might retire if he chose, but the

Turk seldom used this, preferring to keep an eye on his beasts; and the

Frank consequently might remain unaware that there existed any escape

from the camels. Most "khans," built of hewn stone roofed with lead,

would accommodate from eighty beasts to one hundred and fifty; and

practically always had their fountains for the washings prescribed by

the Turks' religion: but as time went on, far more magnificent places

arose, with covered ways leading to mosques across the road, and many

rooms, capable of holding nearly one thousand travellers and their

belongings. The finest lay along the road leading from Constantinople

to Christendom. The fact that "khan" is indiscriminately applied to

all by most Franks is evidence that they were not on speaking terms

with the natives, to whom many were known as "Imaret," those, that

is, which provided food free. All lodgings were a form of good works

among the richer Turks, a practical attempt to disarm the customary

suspicions of the Grand Signor or the well-justified wrath of Allah;

and free food was an extension of this appeal. The food was barley

porridge mostly, or of some other grain, with meat in it; and bread,

and sometimes honey; nor was there any idea of poverty associated with

taking it; Jew and viceroy alike were recipients. Of all the marvellous

provision for travellers, and even for the care of stray animals,

in Constantinople, free food, free lodging, free medical attendance

for men of all creeds, as unfolded in detail by the Turk traveller,

Awliyáí Efendí, there is no need to dwell on, since the Frank knew of

its existence but rarely and dimly, by hearsay only, for he would be

lodging over the water at Pera with his nation's ambassador.

The Turk himself never travelled alone. Had he done so, he would

have found the non-existence of the innkeeper troublesome. Near

Constantinople there was a "khan" for every stage of every journey; but

not so farther away; from Aleppo to Damascus was nine days' journey

and only five "khans" on the way. But accompanying the caravan, he was

taken care of; a quadrangle was formed, the travellers inside, among

the waggons; the lines of the square formed by the beasts, their heads

tethered inward; and at night-time was an outer line of fires; by the

side of the fires, the watch; outside the fires, the patrol, until the

three loud strokes on the drum which gave the signal for starting.

For out-of-door lodging, "at the sign of the Moon," as their phrase

ran, there was much to be said; but then, how about food? Their guns

were short in range; inaccurate within their range; and how much ran

about that they might not touch on pain of death. The deer in Germany

knew their immunity so well that they would lie in the road and have to

be persuaded to leave room for the waggon; and to keep your hand from

picking and stealing was an effective commandment where an economical

duke of Florence lived who had planted those mulberry trees by the

wayside and looked for profits. And so we return to the inns, leaving

the bedroom to consider the fare.

But first—how to find them? By the sign when there was one; but

supposing there was none? In most parts of Germany inns were

distinguished solely by the coats of arms which visitors had put up to

commemorate their progresses. The best inns could show, inside and out,

as many as three hundred or more. For the signs themselves, it may be

interesting to know what were the commonest signs and what were the

exceptions. Out of a total of three hundred and fifty-eight different

inns which these travellers mention by their signs, the "Crown" occurs

most frequently (thirty-two times), mainly as a result of "Ecu de

France" being so favourite a name in France. "White Horses" and "Golden

Lions" seem to have been about as popular then as now; where changes

have taken place is rather in connection with ecclesiastical signs.

The "Cross" occurs twenty-two times, eleven of which are "White"; the

"Three Kings" (fourteen) and the "Red Hat" or its equivalents, the

"Cardinal's Hat" or the "Cardinal" (seven), are other examples; but of

saints there are no more than twenty-five altogether, including five of

"Our Lady." Barbara (three), Magdalen, Christopher, and John are the

only other names that are used more than once. Among those who have but

one of the three hundred and fifty-eight inns dedicated to him or her,

is St. Martha, the patroness of those who stay at inns. The only form

that is found coming into fashion is that of "Town of ——" a fashion

set, apparently, by Paris during the first quarter of the seventeenth

century, to establish a special clientèle: the "Ville de Brissac,"

there, for instance, catered for Protestants, the "Ville de Hambourg"

for Germans. But there existed at many towns inns which specialized in

this way under ordinary names. At Lübeck were English inns; at Calais

the "Petit St. Jean" was a meeting-place for Scotchmen; and Germans in

Italy were directed to the "White Lion" and "Black Eagle" at Venice,

the "Two Swords" at Rome, and the "Black Eagle" at Naples. Signs which

occur but once and have something picturesque about them are the

"Scarlet Siren" ("Serena Ostriata") at Venice, the "Mille Moyens" at

Antwerp, the "Good Friend" at Leghorn, the "Fish Cart" of Cologne, the

"Bacchus" at Cracow, the "Nereids" at Noyon; Paris had a "Four Winds"

and a "Pineapple," Boulogne a "Tin Pot." Neither should "St. François

de la Grande Barbe" at Agen be forgotten, if only on account of the

host, who never slept there; every night he was taken away to prison

for debt, says the Pole Gölnitz. It is curious, too, that in only one

case out of so many should a name come up with any reference to the

heroes of romance ("Les Quatre Fils d'Aymon"), which suggests that the

acquaintance with them was less common among the lower classes than is

generally supposed.

Next, since in nine cases out of ten a sign-board spells a drink,

consider drinks. Spaniards and Turks drank water; the rest of Europe

thought it unhealthy; in fact, as often as not cleaned their teeth with

wine. Still drinking-fountains were not unknown; at Paris Zinzerling

sampled sixteen. The consumption of cider, wines, and light beer, and

heavy beer seems to have been localized with no material difference

from to-day. The Turks alone had coffee and sherbet; and only the

Spaniards chocolate, drinking which, however, was no more than a

recently introduced fashion for its supposed medicinal qualities; it

was only to be had where the most expensive kind of business was done.

Among spirits, Irish was reckoned the best whiskey, but was seldom

found outside Ireland, where it was known as the "King of Spain's

Daughter." In Muscovy aqua-vitæ was the favourite drink; every meal

began and ended with it; but for quantity consumed hydromel came first,

with mead second. Besides being prepared plain, hydromel was often to

be had made with water in which cherries, strawberries, mulberries or

raspberries had been soaked for twenty-four hours or more; if aqua-vitæ

had been substituted for water with the raspberries, the taste is

recommended as marvellous.

For wines, each one was practically confined to the district that grew

it. The export trade seems to have been for private buyers, little

to inns with the exceptions of Muscovy, where Spanish wine was well

known, of Poland (Spanish and Levant) and of Venetian territory, in the

various parts of which a considerable variety of wines were grown and

between which there had grown up the habit of interchange of products

which extended to inn-custom. To be deducted from this is the fact that

Greek wine was the name of a kind cultivated as much, perhaps more,

outside Greece than within it.

As to the relative quality of sixteenth-century wines there are many

independent opinions to be had, and they all agree—Italy was first in

that, too. Among Italian wines, preëminent was the Lagrime di Christo

("tears of Christ"), concerning which a Dutchman was heard to lament

greatly that Christ had not wept in his country; what has just been

said concerning the localization of wines should be modified with

regard to this kind which was to be found in many Italian inns outside

its native Liguria. Second may be counted Montefiascone, with the

help, maybe, of its own particular anecdote, which illustrates the

second-hand character of travellers' information, since no two versions

of the epitaph agree, and yet most accounts read as if the traveller

had read the original. The tale is of a bishop who loved wine, was

going to Rome, and had a servant whose taste was to be trusted. The

bishop sent him in advance to test the wine at each inn and chalk the

door-post with "Est" where the wine was good. When the servant arrived

at Montefiascone he chalked "Est, Est, Est"; and so thought the bishop,

for he drank till he died. And the servant wrote his epitaph.

"'Est, Est, Est;' propter nimium Est

Dominus meus mortuus est."

Drunkenness was infinitely more common than to-day, especially in

Germany. Laws had, it is true, been passed, more stringent, during

the past century, a result of the victories of the teetotal Turks;

but there was no one to enforce them. Every German's conversation was

punctuated with "I drink to you" "as regularly as every psalm ends in

a 'Gloria,'" says Moryson, and among a number of princes whom he saw

at a funeral feast, not one was sober. He queries—what would they have

done at a wedding? adding that during the year and a half he spent

there, attending churches regularly, he never heard a clergyman say a

word against intemperance. The national reputation abroad was to match;

even, when once some Germans halted at a village in Spain, there was a

riot; the peasants were really afraid, beforehand, that the price of

wine would go up!

[Illustration: A FAT GERMAN KITCHEN]

[Illustration: A LEAN GERMAN KITCHEN]

Turning to meals, we find breakfast less of an established custom

than it is at present. In France it was more, in Germany less, usual

than elsewhere. In fact, in Germany it was not taken at the inn, but

bought in the shape of "brannt-wein" and gingerbread at shops, existing

partly for that purpose, at the town gates. French customs generally

were more considerate towards the new-comer; something to go on with

would often be brought him as he dismounted and water for a wash, just

as in Flanders a bright-faced girl would frequently be ready at the

door with beer or wine, very ready, too, to drink at his expense and

to start first; whereas elsewhere he would be expected to wait till

dinner as dusty, inside and outside, as he came in. A French breakfast

consisted of a glass of wine and just a mouthful of bread; sometimes,

as in Normandy, buttered toast, sometimes even meat was kept ready;

but the sole instance of a traveller finding himself expected to eat

a substantial meal first thing in the morning was at the inn of St.

Sebastian, "the best inn," says Gölnitz, "on the Paris-Lyons road,"

kept by a mother and two daughters. The English custom of its being

taken for granted that the guest saved some of his supper to serve

as breakfast next morning, does not seem to have been in use abroad.

In Italy it was ordinary to begin the day at a wine-tavern, where

boys waited to serve cakes as well as wine, on which foundation the

economical Italian would many days last till supper.

Practically, eating resolved itself into two meals a day, just what

they were used to at home, and very fortunate it was they were used

to it; to us it seems like alternately starving and over-eating.

In Germany the latter extreme was the more common; in fact, it is

not easy to see how the second meal was fitted in, considering the

time one took, three to four hours. At Berne there was a law against

sitting at table more than five hours; at Bâle 10 A. M. to 6 P. M. was

the maximum, but the town council were unable to practise their own

counsels of perfection and on great occasions finished in private. In

Saxony the innkeeper was forbidden to serve more than four dishes at a

meal; and there public opinion was perhaps some check, inasmuch as the

common saying was to compare the Saxon dishes, served as they were, one

by one, to the tyrants of Sicily, each one of whom was a more fearful

monster than his predecessor.

Their neighbours, on the contrary, set all on the table at once in a

two-decker on three iron feet; in the top story was the inevitable

sauerkraut and beneath, roast meat, poultry, puddings, and whatever

else was to be had; so that an Englishman likened this two-decker to

Noah's ark, as containing all kinds of creatures. As to these German

"puddings" there is no hard-and-fast rule to be drawn between them

and sausages; and accordingly one cannot say for sure whether it was

pudding or sausage which was the food Moryson had for supper one

night near Erfurt; but the description is of no importance compared

with the size, for it was as big as a man's leg, conforming to the

phrase in which the German expressed his idea of happiness, "Lange

Würsten, Kurz Predigen" (long sausages, short sermons). One who

journeyed through Hessen describes his diet as "mostly coleworts,"

but a Saxony dinner ordinarily began with stewed cherries or prunes,

continued with poultry or meat, the pot for which was set on the fire

but once a week; and concluded with bacon to fill up the corners, as

important a consideration for the host as any one, for there was no

greater reproach to hurl at the host than "Ich hab' mich da nicht satt

gefressen" ("I didn't eat my belly-full there").

Bacon was of great account in Germany, so great that the owners were

wont to bless their pigs when the latter trotted out of a morning, to

ensure their safe return; and told off a servant to wash them as they

passed the fountain on their way back, which they took of their own

accord. But while a well-fattened sow commanded a fancy price—as much

as the equivalent of fifty pounds was paid at Heidelberg in 1593 for

one who had become unable to eat a whole raw egg at a meal—sucking pigs

were unknown as eatables; an Englishman who bought one for food was

forced to kill and prepare it himself on account of the unwillingness

of the servants to touch it. What Saxony did lack was everything that

was dependent on the yield of a cow; throughout Germany there was

little cheese except that made from goat's milk.

A common hors d'œuvre was what were called "Neun Augen"—little lampreys

that had nine eyes. Birds other than poultry were unusual: of veal and

beef there was a moderate supply, of dried venison rather too much, as

was the case at Hamburg with salmon. Dried fish you might expect, with

many sauces, all designed to create thirst; fresh fish was expected

to be on view alive beforehand in the kitchen; no German inn lacked

a wooden fish-tank, kept under lock and key and supplied with running

water. Supposing, however, that the sauces failed of their effect, the

thirst was sure to come at the end of the meal with the help of little

bits of bread, sprinkled with pepper and salt. Fruits were preserved

habitually; especially apples and pears, which they halved, dried in

the oven, and served up with cinnamon and butter. Black cherries they

put in a brass pot, mixed with the best pears cut into small pieces

and boiled and stirred till the contents were thick; then pressure was

applied which sent the juice through holes in the bottom of the pot;

it cooled solid, kept well, and was in every-day use as sauce for meat

after it had been liquefied again.

Italians had a sauce of their own, according to Moryson (who has also

supplied all the above German recipes), made of bread steeped in broth,

walnuts, some leaves of marjoram pounded in a mortar, and gooseberry

juice. Much need they had of a sauce, too, for by the "lex Foscarini"

it was forbidden to kill an ox until he was unfit for work in the

fields. It may be suggested that it is time the "lex Foscarini" was

repealed. In the north was plenty of mutton and veal; variety of fish

and poultry, mushrooms, snails, and frogs; in Tuscany, kid and boar.

First and last everywhere came butter and cheese; everywhere, that

is, where any pretence was made of catering for tourists; at Carrara

Moryson found the inns only fit for labourers, and dined on herbs,

eggs, and chestnuts, while Peter Mundy, near Turin, had to pay the

equivalent of six shillings for "an egg and a frog and bad wine." De

Thou, moreover, using a main road, that from Naples to Rome, became so

done up through the badness of the inns as to seem to have completed a

long and troublesome illness rather than a journey. But something might

be said for the average Italian inn as seen from the street. Through

the great open windows—really open, for there was rarely glass in

Italian windows except at Venice—the tables were in view, always spread

with white cloths, strewn with flowers and fig-leaves and fruits, with

glasses set filled with different coloured wines; during summer, the

glasses would be floating in an earthen vessel, for coolness.

In France, for some reason, Normandy seems to have made foreigners

more comfortable than elsewhere, yet Picardy, so little distant, was

just the opposite. Picardy, however, at this time was stamped with the

character of border-country more disastrously than any other district

of France. Nothing remained, indeed, to the country as a whole, as

regards cooking, but a reputation for entrées, or, as they were called

then, "quelques-choses." "A hard bed and an empty kitchen" was a common

experience in different districts; one party arrived at Antibes, on the

Riviera, in 1606, to find one melon constituting all the provisions of

the only inn.

Comparison of the fare in the various countries of Europe shows no

more striking inequalities of supply than is the case with butter: in

Poland so plentiful as to be used for greasing cart-wheels; in France

so scarce and so bad that English ambassadors used to import theirs

from home; in Spain still scarcer, except in cow-breeding Estremadura.

A German, when he wanted to buy butter, was directed to an apothecary,

who produced a little, and that much rancid, preserved in a she-goat's

bladder for use as an ingredient in salves, telling him there was not

such another quantity in all Castile.

It was not merely on account of the sleeping accommodation that those

who had been to Spain thanked God for their return and wondered at it.

The wine, they said, was undrinkable, owing to the flavour imparted

to it by the skins that held it; and as for eatables, all had to be

bought separately by the traveller and cooked by him when he was tired.

A still greater trouble was to find any to buy. One complains that

his stomach roared for want of victuals and had to be answered with

nothing but roast onions; and so on. But here again can be traced the

effects of their buying their experience in the north: what the south

thought of the north may be guessed from the Andalusian hero of a

picaresque tale recollecting how the food of a Catalan acquaintance

of his consisted of hard bread once every three days. The force of

prejudice may be exemplified by a note or two from the journal of a

courtier[96] who followed after Prince Charles when the latter went

incognito to Madrid. His chief complaints as to food are: At the first

stopping-place past Santander, whither notice of their coming had been

sent a fortnight earlier, they had a plank instead of a table, a few

eggs, half a kid burnt black, and no table linen. At a tavern in a

wood, the woman laid a cloth on a stool by way of a table, and placed

two loaves on it while she fried eggs and bacon for them: enter, from

the wood, two black swine who knock the stool over and depart with a

loaf each. And yet, although he has noted having enjoyed a good fat

turkey at one place and very good hens at another, when he lands at

Weymouth he says that there was more meat on the table than he had seen

in two hundred miles riding in Spain.

But even in the north different tales are told sometimes. Charles II,

when in exile, writes from Saragossa,[97] "But I am very much deceived

in the travelling in Spain, for, by all reports, I did expect ill

cheer and worse living, and hitherto we have found both the beds, and

especially the meat very good.... God keep you, and send you to eat as

good mutton as we have every meal." Lady Fanshawe is more detailed. "I

find it a received opinion that Spain affords not food either good

or plentiful; true it is that strangers who have neither skill to

choose, nor money to buy, will find themselves at a loss: but there is

not in the Christian world better wines than their midland wines are

especially, besides sherry and canary. Their water tastes like milk;

their corn white to a miracle, and their wheat makes the sweetest and

best bread in the world; bacon beyond belief good; the Segovia veal

much larger and fatter than ours; mutton most excellent; capons much

better than ours.... They have the best partridges I ever eat, and the

best sausages; and salmons, pikes, and sea-breams which they send up in

pickle to Madrid, and dolphins, which are excellent meat and carps, and

many other sorts of fish. The cream, called 'nata,' is much sweeter and

thicker than any I ever saw in England; their eggs much exceed ours;

and so all sorts of salads and roots and fruits. What I most admired

are melons, peaches, burgamot pears, grapes, oranges, lemons, citrons,

figs, pomegranates; besides that I have eaten many sorts of biscuits,

cakes, cheese, and excellent sweetmeats I have not here mentioned."

Both these quotations, it is true, refer to the middle of the

seventeenth century.

England was a land of plenty in these days; Poland no less so. The

sum of the experience of those who had first-hand means of comparison

suggests that Poland was as great an importer of luxuries as

any country in Europe. Muscovy did not import, but was well off,

nevertheless; plenty of beef, mutton, pork, and veal, and all the more

of them for foreigners seeing that, with fast-days so numerous as they

were, the natives had become so used to salt fish that they ate little

meat, although the salt fish, insufficiently salted, was often in a

state like that of the fish which the good angel provided for Tobit to

protect him from a demon, the scent whereof was so terrible that it

drove the fiend into the uttermost parts of Egypt. In Lent butter was

replaced by caviare. An ambassador's secretary has a pleasant picture

to draw of wayside fare; when they reached a village, the local priest

would appear with gooseberries, or fish, or a hen, or some eggs, as a

present; was rewarded with aqua-vitæ, and generally went home drunk.

As for food at sea, on small boats no fires were allowed. Then you

were limited, in the Mediterranean, to biscuit, onions, garlic, and

dried fish. On the bigger ships there was garlic again, to roast which

and call it "pigeon" was a stock joke with the Greek sailors. On an

Italian ship of nine hundred tons one traveller fared well: there were

two table-d'hôte rates; he chose the higher one: knife, spoon, fork,

and a glass to himself were provided, fresh bread for three days after

leaving a harbour, fresh meat at first and afterwards salt meat, and

on fast days, eggs, fish, vegetables, and fruit. An English idea[98]

of victualling a ship included wheat, rice, currants, sugar, prunes,

cinnamon, ginger, pepper, cloves, oil, old cheese, wine, vinegar,

canary sack, aqua-vitæ, water, lemon juice, biscuit, oatmeal, bacon,

dried neats' tongues, roast beef preserved in vinegar, and legs of

mutton minced and stewed and packed in butter in earthen pots; together

with a few luxuries, such as marmalade and almonds.

Finally, there is the food to be met with in Ireland, concerning

which it is enough to quote:[99] "Your diet shall be more welcome and

plentiful than cleanly and handsome; for although they did never see

you before, they will make you the best cheer their country yieldeth

for two or three days and take not anything therefor."

Except in Italy, fingers invariably did the work of forks; and often

of knives, too. The French were the only people who were in the habit

of washing before they sat down to table; but this is by no means

so much to their credit as it seems at first sight, for it was the

result of their getting into such a state previously as to render them

intolerable even to themselves. Except for the effects of drunkenness,

the Germans appear to have been the pleasantest table companions, in

spite of all sitting at one round table; or rather, because of it, for

men were the more careful of behaving in a way to which they would have

no objection if their neighbours imitated it. Moreover Germans made a

practice of having a bath every Saturday night. From this common table

no one was excluded in Germany except the hangman, for whose exclusive

use a separate table was reserved. The rest of the dining-room

furniture consisted of a leather-covered couch for those who were too

drunk to do anything but lie down.

As to plates and vessels, no general statement would serve, not even

for one country, owing to the rapidity with which the supply of silver

increased during these centuries. In 1517 an Italian[100] notes of

Flanders that all their vessels, of the church, the kitchen, and the

bedroom, were of English brass, but that statement no one confirms

later. Wood was common in proportion to the unpretentiousness of the

inn; except in Muscovy, where it was almost invariable through the

frequency and thoroughness of destruction by fires which caused the

use of the most easily replaceable material; the few silver tankards

they possessed were rendered unattractive by their custom of cleaning

drinking vessels but once a year.

The transition from pewter to silver is most clearly marked in France.

The former was in general use as late as Montaigne's time; even he,

who owns to making himself in a horrid mess at meal-times, was glad

to escape from its greasiness. By the middle of the next century an

Italian priest notes that the inn-utensils were mostly of silver,

although the chalices which he was given for mass were mostly tin; and

De Gourville, in his autobiography, mentions that, on being asked by

the government for an estimate of the total amount of silver in France,

gave a higher estimate than the other experts because he based his on

what he had noticed in the course of his frequent journeys about the

provinces, in the middle of the seventeenth century, how every tavern

had spoons and forks of silver and some a basin and ewer. And as silver

drinking-vessels were common among the English middle-classes earlier

than this, it may be assumed that inns were so provided, too; in fact,

in England silver was considered somewhat vulgar for drinking purposes,

gentlemen preferring Venetian glass. The Venetians themselves used

glass, as did other Italians; likewise the French; Germans drank from

pewter or stone, and their plates were often of wood, when they had

any; it would give an altogether too high idea of sixteenth-century

luxury to imagine that every one was given a plate. Certainly no one

had more than one at a meal, though there is nothing to show that he

might not turn it over to use the clean side—unless he was at sea, in

which case he would risk being thrown overboard, because every sailor

knew that a plate upside down signified shipwreck.

Inseparable from the inns are the bathing-places; in most cases the

baths formed part of the inn premises. At Abano, near Padua, the chief

bathing resort of Italy, were private rooms with a "guarderobbe"[101]

adjoining, through which latter a stream of the water could be turned

on. Baden in Switzerland was exceptional in having baths under public

control, for poor as well as for rich, besides those in private hands.

The inn Montaigne stayed at had eleven kitchens, three hundred persons

were catered for each day, one hundred and seventy-seven beds made,

and every one could reach his room without passing through any one

else's. His party engaged four rooms, containing no more than nine

beds; two of the rooms had stoves; and a private bath adjoined. Swiss

Baden possessed sixty baths, German Baden three hundred. Spa was

much visited, but most of the watering-places have been practically

forgotten, so far as the water is concerned, Pougues-les-Eaux, the

chief centre in France, for instance, and Aachen, where there existed

forty baths outside the town, although the chief ones were within.

[Illustration: GERMAN BATHING-PLACES]

The object of the visitors was as much medicinal nominally and as

little so really, as might be expected. "Many come thither with no

disease but that of love: and many times find remedy."[102] The

conditions seem somewhat free and easy: in Rome it was customary to

go accompanied by a lady friend in spite of the masseurs being male;

of Plombières Montaigne says that it was reckoned indecent for men to

bathe naked or for women to wear less than a chemise; from which it

may be gathered what ordinary conditions were. The bathing there was

"mixed," as at the German baths where these restrictions were not

in force and where, consequently, the sight of scores of young couples

and parties, some family parties, some not, in a state of nature,

or very nearly so, amusing themselves with games played at floating

tables, or without any help at all, excited the shame, the interest,

and the participation of foreigners from all quarters. Ladies, however,

who needed baths and preferred decency, were provided for at Swiss

Baden, where private baths were for hire, well lighted by glazed

windows, painted, panelled, and clean, with conveniences for reading.

The building of Turkish baths seemed to Della Valle to afford more

likelihood of a chill than the Italian; but it was, he says, all one

could expect for the price, which was much lower. How much lower is not

clear, but evidently considerably so, the result of a difference of

habit; in Italy the poor did not bathe, in Turkey the rich bathed at

home.

Quite apart from bathing customs, however, the position of the lady

traveller must frequently have been embarrassing. Many a nephew,

perhaps, may disbelieve that they ever did travel in the days when

no hot-water bottles existed; but that would be a mistake; there is

record of at least two substitutes: (1) a bag of semolina, or millet,

heated, (2) a dog. A more serious objection is that the privacy of

the bedroom was not respected. Even in France, a murderer was lodged

in Gölnitz's room for the night together with the six guardians who

were escorting him to the place of trial, and in Picardy bedrooms were

merely partitioned off; doors and windows lying open all night with

no means of fastening them. But a permanently open window would have

been welcome on occasions; as when in 1652 Mademoiselle de Montpensier

lodged at an inn in Franche-Comté with no window at all in her room,

and consequently had to do her hair at the door.

Again, respectable women would not be travelling alone, and as bedrooms

were so few they would always have to be prepared to share the room

with their escort, even if with no other man, a condition which

persisted up to far more recent times. In 1762, writes M. Babeau, a

lawyer, travelling through Périgord with a lady client, her son, and

a girl, had to put up at an inn which owned but two beds and those

both in one room. This room, by the way, possessed two doors, one

opening on a meadow, and with joinery so imperfect that a dog could

have crept in underneath it; no dog took the chance, it is true, but

the wind did. In the previous century was often reprinted a "Traité de

la civilité qui se pratique parmi les honnêtes gens" which established

the procedure to be followed in these embarrassing circumstances. The

escort must allow the lady to undress and get into bed first, and, for

himself, take care to undress at a distance from her bed and remain

"tranquille et paisible" through the night. In the morning he ought to

be well advanced with his dressing before she awoke. But this book was

evidently unknown to Sterne when he pursued his "Sentimental Journey,"

for when he had to share his room with a lady who was a total stranger,

they drew up a special treaty which both promised to observe and which

each accused the other of breaking.

Of lodgings and "pensions" and houses for hire, it is unnecessary to

speak, because apart from the conditions of living that have already

been indicated there is nothing to distinguish them from those of

to-day; "pensions" are doubtless still to be found in the same variety

now as two hundred and fifty years ago at Blois—"dainty, magnificent,

dirty, pretty fair, and stinking."

Supervision over the inns was far stricter than at present, especially

in Italy. At Lucca and Florence all the inns were in a single street;

and in many towns the new arrival was taken before the authorities

by the guard at the gates previous to choosing his inn, to which he

would be conducted by a soldier. At Lucca, too, was a department of

the judiciary, called "della loggia," which was specially concerned

with strangers, and to this the innkeepers had to send a daily report

on each guest. Yet to judge by the tourists' accounts, the supervision

might well have been carried further and reports on the innkeepers

required from the tourists. Such a system of double reports would

have been a check on the murdering innkeeper, to whom there are

occasional references; one had been detected at Poictiers shortly

before Lauder's arrival, and at Stralesund, another's tale runs, eight

hundred (!) persons had disappeared at one inn. They had reappeared, it

is true—pickled. Another kind of innkeeper who ran less risk but was

equally dangerous was he who was in league with robbers; it was common

enough, if travellers may be believed, for robbers to have spies in the

inns. At Acciaruolo, near Naples, another device was practised by the

keeper of an atrocious inn. He had an understanding with the captains

of coasting-vessels, the result of which was that the latter found it

impossible to get any further that night or to let the passengers sleep

in the boat.

It must have occurred to the reader that this is a most one-sided

chapter: the tourist has been having his say so uninterruptedly that

even a clergyman in the pulpit might envy him. What of the innkeepers'

side of the question? Fortunately that can be presented, too, with the

help of a manuscript so unique that it must be described now instead of

being buried in the bibliography. It is nothing less than an account

of an Innkeepers' Congress in 1610, written by a delegate. At least,

an expert palæographer (whose name I am not permitted to give for

fear of another expert palæographer) affirms it to be in a fairly

recent commercial script; and it certainly is in English. Nevertheless,

there can be no doubt as to its genuineness. There is no inn, for

example, of the three hundred and fifty-eight referred to above which

is not mentioned in it; neither is there any inn that is so mentioned

that is not to be found among the said three hundred and fifty-eight.

Subjective tests, moreover, however dangerous, have their value, and

it will appear that the wealth, and, so far as it can be checked,

the accuracy of detail, the turns of phrase and of mind, equally

characteristic of the innkeeper and the sixteenth century, leave no

more room for doubt here than, to take a report of a meeting, in the

case of the account of the sayings and doings of the agriculturists in

session of which Flaubert made such instructive use in his biography of

the late Madame Bovary.

[Illustration: THE RED GATE, ANTWERP]

The congress was held at Rothenburg on the Tauber, not so very far

from Nuremberg, that town being chosen because no tourist was ever

known to go there, any more then than now; and consequently none was

better adapted to prevent more than one side of the question being

heard,—which, as every one knows, means life or death to a congress.

London was represented by Paolo Lucchese, and four Englishmen were also

present, the four who saw most of foreigners who had been to England

and of Englishmen who had been abroad: namely, William Cooke of Douay,

the host of the "Golden Head" at Calais, another of Dieppe whose name

and whose sign are alike illegible, and lastly the notorious Zacharias

of Genoa, who told how he had been wrecked in West Indian seas and

had swum twenty-two leagues with the ship's carpenter, pushing the

latter's tool-chest before him, and how the tinder-box which he put in

his hair did not even get wet; all just as he told it to Evelyn years

afterwards, until every one got tired of him. The only Scot was Miltoun

of the "Croix de Fer" at Paris (Rue St. Martin).

From France the delegates were Robert Buquet of Rouen, Du Peyrat of

Loudun, Parracan of Arles, whose inn had no sign because his wine was

so good that it needed none, Christopher Prezel of the "Lion d'Or de la

Lanterne" of Lyons—but a full list is, after all, of no great interest.

It is sufficient to say, to give some idea of the value that attaches

to the report of the proceedings, that almost every delegate was a

host in himself. For the rest, genealogists in the employ of American

millionaires can have access direct to the manuscript; such things are

best left in private hands.

The ladies, however, must not be omitted. Old Donna Justina of Venice

was there, in spite of its being as much as thirty years earlier that

De Thou had been recommended to her as the only innkeeper of the city

in whose house none but respectable women were to be found. Berenguela

de Rebolledo likewise attended, lady-in-waiting at an inn at Madrid,

cheerful, inquisitive, and a flirt, just as Pablos de Segovia knew

her, with a bit of a lisp, scared of mice, vain of her hands, and

a blush-rose and gloire-de-Dijon complexion. Then there was Marie

Beltram, who ran the "venta" the other side of Yrun, and the girl

harpist who played at the inns at Brussels, of whom the appropriate

remark to make was to quote,—

Haec habiles agili praetentat pollice chordas:

Tam doctas quis non possit amare manus?

Two elderly parties were likewise present who, thirty years earlier,

had been the two pretty daughters of the one-eyed host of the "Red

Lion" at Dordrecht, the same host who warned Van Buchell, the

antiquary, when a youngster, against French girls. They were given,

he said, to making advances; once one kissed him, and for a long time

afterwards he did not think he could live without her.

But the belle of the congress seems to have been the daughter of the

innkeeper at Bourgoin, the second post-house this side of Chambéry,

since there is a marginal note against her name, evidently retained

from the original, "Ista capit biscottum." This confirms the account

given of her by Lord Herbert of Cherbury in his autobiography; his

friends had told him she was the most beautiful girl they had ever

seen, so he rode over from Lyons to see her, "and after about an

hour's stay departed thence without offering so much as the least

incivility." Finally there was a widow from Tours; the one from the

"Three Kings," known as "La Gogueline"; the other widow of Tours, of

the "Three Moors," stayed at home, fearing to endanger her reputation

as the "mother of the Germans" by so long an absence. Widow Gogueline,

however, told the writer that the other was better known as their

stepmother and that there was a rhyme which ran:—

Quand vostre bourse est trop pleine

Allez aux 'Mores' en Touraine:

Je vous jure que vous serez

En peu de temps en deschargez.

It was taken for granted that the president must be an Italian; and

Francisco Marco of Venice was chosen for that geniality of his that in

years to come was to charm James Howell. He opened the proceedings with

some graceful presidential irrelevancies, commenting on the antiquity

and fame of Rothenburg and so forth, and then explained the purposes

of this Innkeepers' Congress as twofold. Its primary object, he said,

was the advancement of God's glory; secondly, the furtherance of the

interests of innkeepers and their customers, which, he added, were at

bottom identical. The committee had invited certain of the delegates

who were especially well acquainted with foreigners to explain, or

refute, what visitors found objectionable. The assembled innkeepers

could then return able to inform, each one his own countrymen, before

the latter's departure, what must be looked for in the parts he was

travelling towards, and how unavoidable, and even desirable, those

characteristics were. The president therefore called upon Messer

Bevigliano ("Chiavi d'Oro," Florence) to speak for Italy.

Three things, said Messer Bevigliano, hinder us Italians from doing

our best for the community: the licensing system, 'tied-houses,' and

labour difficulties. I should be the last to suggest the abolition

of our picturesque custom in use when an inn is to be let. At the

auction a candle is lighted: the highest bid before the candle goes

out wins the business. But the periods of tenancy, one and six years,

alternately, in Florentine territory, are inconvenient. Far worse,

however, are the prices extorted, especially from those who keep inns

outside the gates of towns, the use of which is so necessary to such

as are compelled to arrive late, or wish to leave early. Even apart

from these, the majority pay 100-150 crowns (£150-£225 present value)

for their licenses; some 500 or 600. At Venice wine-shops and inns pay

1000 crowns. The proportion this bears to the rent may be judged from

the case of an old widow I know 8 miles from Florence whose rent was 23

crowns and whose license was 56. Another inn, kept by a shoemaker, a

freehold house worth 6 crowns a year, pays 20 crowns for license, while

the other license, for shoemaking, only costs a Giulio and a half.

What I mean by a 'tied' house is one which belongs to the owner of a

large estate who allows nothing to be sold there except the produce of

that estate.

Lastly, as to labour, the custom of the country is against the

use of women-servants, against even the host's wife and daughter

assisting him. What, Messer Bevigliano concluded, apart from ordinary

routine-work, would happen to your Fair at Mülhausen if there were no

girls to serve the drinks?

Next came Francisco Marques of Alicante, well known to sailors of

every nationality. What he laid most stress on has in the main been

anticipated by Charles II and Lady Fanshawe, but he supplemented it

as follows: In the towns clean and comfortable beds were to be had,

with meals ready. Many _posadas_, he admitted, provided nothing but

utensils, table-linen, oil, salt, vinegar; yet travellers were then

neither better nor worse off than in Poland, Bohemia, and Picardy,

where the custom was likewise. As for the wayside inns which gave

nothing but a roof and horse-provender, they barely existed outside

Castile and Aragon, and there the wayfarer should prepare accordingly,

as the Spaniard did, who journeyed with a bag full of provisions on

each side of the saddle and a bottle of wine to each bag. As to the

supposed lack of meat, he went on, most Spaniards are vegetarians; and

considering the achievements of the Spanish infantry, I do not think

any one can find fault with the principle. Neither does this apply to

the lower classes only, for we have a rhyme which says:—

Unas Azeytunas, una Salada, y Revanillos

Son comida de Caballeros;

and so far from altering our ways, the ancient rule that a gentleman

who has partaken of onions shall absent himself from court for eight

days has fallen into abeyance. For those who prefer meat, there is

plenty. Fowls, I know, are scarce, and you are so used to fowls that

you think "no fowls, no meat"; and yet, I remember when I was a small

boy and Queen Anne arrived at Santander to marry good King Philip

II, she was presented there with two hundred fowls and a calf. As to

sheep, ask the eight Germans who recently ate a whole one between them;

besides, does not the famous Lazarillo de Tormes tell us that it is the

regular thing at Maqueda to eat sheep's heads on Saturdays at three

maravedis apiece? and on fast days we have special permission to eat

cow-heels and sucking pigs. Now, how can these things be if we have no

sheep nor cows nor little pigs? On the contrary, you Germans, who take

so well justified a pride in your bacon at home, how is it you say

nothing about it after a week or so with us? Why, we have an author,

Lope da Vega Carpio, who will soon be recognised as the greatest writer

since Seneca, who always takes a rasher of our bacon before starting to

write, as a stimulant!

But I can quote something better than your own experience—the words

of the King and of St. Michael. Charles V advised the great Alonzo de

Guzman against going to Italy, "Better stay at home and kill rabbits

on your own hills and eat them than be killed by the sea and be eaten

by the fishes": and when the said Alonzo dreamed that he was dead, St.

Michael appeared and sentenced him to return to earth for his misdeeds

and eat roast meat and be content; and Alonzo found himself able to

arrange for roast duck in summertime and an "olla" keeping hot in the

chimney in winter. If I say nothing as to wild boar and partridge,

it is merely because it is getting late. But I will just add this in

confidence, that people, we find, pay more willingly when the bill is

accompanied by a cheerful "Y haga les buen provecho."

The Muscovy delegate, "Cologne Jimmy" of Nerva, had drawn the third

place; but being temporarily bereft of his faculties by the number of

drinks new to him, a discussion was substituted at the instance of M.

Petit, who enjoyed most of the French custom at Rome, on the evil of

free board and lodging which various institutions provided, a most

demoralising custom and very hard on those who wished to gain an honest

living. At Seville and Montserrat, he had heard, things had come to

well-to-do people being given fish as well as bread, and at Amsterdam

foundations were even being instituted on a secular basis. That they

might be in a better position to take action, it was proposed to form

an Innkeepers' Association, but when an Irish waiter from Madrid

suggested as a motto, "Pediculus pro comite jucundo," recriminations

ensued which soon rendered adjournment necessary.

Nevertheless, at the banquet in the evening all passed off happily in

the traditional way.

In principio est silentium,

In medio stridor dentium,

Et in fine rumor gentium.

The next day began well too, with the speech of Jean Busson ("Le

Fardeau" Dieppe), who excused the faults of the French host as

attributable to the civil wars, and said that whether or no religion

was "reformed," cookery certainly was, and that in future the

traditions of Guillot's of Amiens would be upheld. At the same time

he felt he would be next door to a traitor if he owned to any serious

faults, for supposing that such were imagined, French chambermaids

could be trusted to keep the visitors happy (great applause). But

he had a proposal to bring forward. He found they had a custom in

Germany, which was also used at Bourges, which deserved extension.

He referred to the watchmen who lived at the top of the town belfry

and signalled the approach of travellers to those below by means of

flags; at Ferrara and Bruges and elsewhere, the signalling was done

with bells. Now this ought to be customary everywhere, and whereas here

in Germany the watchmen descended at meal-times and made a collection

at the inns, surely the municipal authorities ought to pay them. A

resolution to this effect was passed unanimously.

The Low Country delegates caused considerable dissatisfaction by their

memorial insisting that nobody had complaints to make of their inns,

nor would there be any anywhere if pains were taken to be up-to-date

and, above all things, clean. But their brethren were grateful for

the warning that it was becoming the custom with travellers to slip

leaden bullets into the cheese, where they found the custom in vogue of

charging for it according to the difference in weight before and after

it was set on the table; and agreed with them when they pointed out

that the system of putting up a list of things customers might not do

and fining them when these rules were transgressed, was breaking down.

An innkeeper from Augsburg gave an instance; his request, he said, not

to foul the walls was so far from being heeded that he kept one man at

work cleaning them.

It was this member from Augsburg who brought about the unhappy ending

of the Congress, for, in commenting on the Low Countrymen's strictures,

he tactlessly quoted the Italian proverb "Dal hoste nuovo e dalla

putana vecchia, Dio ci guarda," and then went on to lay it down as

irrefutable that nobody grumbled unless he thought he had been done.

This was easily avoided, he said; treat all alike; no man ever grumbled

in Germany except new-comers and unreasonable people. Why? because

Germans had fixed prices; the only system which was conformable with

God's law. By this time the interpreters fairly trembled as they

translated, but when, speaking as he did in Latin, he went on to apply

to the system of variable charges the adjectives that were in daily

use in theological controversy, the others understood without help

and a battle ensued. First in words, beginning with shouts of "Pese

al diablo," "Voto á Dios," and other Spanish expressions, of which,

together with all the Italian, not even the initial letters could be

printed, answered with "Bey Gott den Herrn," "Meine Seele," "Der Teufel

hole dich," "Gottes Kranckheit," without, curiously enough, the use

of a single one of those employed by historical novelists. To words

succeeded blows; and there the Congress ended.

CHAPTER VII

ON THE ROAD

A journey is a fragment of hell.

Awliyái Efendi (1611-1679).

What M. Babeau, in his charming "Les Voyageurs en France," says of the

history of France since the eleventh century, that it may be divided

into three periods, of the horse, the carriage, and the railway, is

true of most of Europe. He goes on to point out that the first period

synchronises with the feudal system, the second with uncontrolled

monarchy. And this was not a matter of chance, for the improvement

in the state of the roads implied by the substitution of driving for

riding directly resulted from the centralisation of authority. A feudal

system tended to keep the roads bad, partly because no one authority

received such exclusive and overwhelming benefits from the roads as to

be ready to bear the cost of their upkeep; partly because the constant

petty warfare which feudalism gave rise to often made neighbours desire

that approaches should be difficult rather than easy.

[Illustration: A MAIN ROAD IN ALSACE]

In 1600 the transition was in its infancy; and even during the

subsequent half-century is only noticeable in a marked degree in

France. Even there, the change was not from bad roads to good, but from

very bad to a state of uncertainty. One road, it is true, is mentioned

as paved, at any date during these two centuries, that from Paris to

Orleans, but by Evelyn's time there were many such in France; while,

on the other hand, on the king's highway between Bourges and Lyons the

horses of Gölnitz and his companions fell into a marsh, whence they

were rescued with difficulty; and on another highway (Paris-Bordeaux)

Claude Perrault, the architect of the Louvre, speaks of one occasion

when night overtook him before he had reached his stopping-place; and

the holes in the road being so deep as to render it almost impassable

for his carriage, a quarter of a league took him four hours to cover.

Elsewhere in Europe, things seem to be remaining much as they had

been. Here and there in Italy sections of Roman road which had been

maintained in fair condition continued to be patched in imitation

of Roman methods until they appeared excellent in contrast with the

others; what the others were made of travellers do not say, but it may

be guessed that they were paved like hell in the proverb. Montaigne

might note with sadness how the Via Flaminia had shrunk from forty feet

broad to four between Loreto and Lucca, although one may query where he

found that it was ever more than fifteen feet across; but no one else

had recourse to archæology to make himself grieve. The following is a

tale that Rivadeneyra, Loyola's boy-friend and biographer, tells of

some of the other early associates during a walk from Venice to Rome.

Being Lent, they fasted except for what they received in alms. "And

one Sunday it befell that, having tasted no more than a few mouthfuls

of bread that morning, they trudge twenty-eight miles of that land

on their bare feet; and all the day the rain comes down pitilessly,

whereby they find the roads turned into lakes, and that so truly that

there are times when the water reaches their chests." He continues,

"None the less they feel within them a marvellous contentment and

joyousness; and being mindful that they were enduring these troubles of

the flesh for love of God, gave thanks to Him without ceasing, singing

David's psalms in metre; and even Master Juan Codurí, who was suffering

with the itch in both of his legs, was no whit the worse for the trials

of this day."

It was always the rain that caused the trouble, although the state of

the roads when dry must have been fearful for ordinary wet weather to

effect so rapid a deterioration. From Ferrara to Bologna was reckoned

a half-day's journey in summer, a whole day in winter. And in 1606

an Italian says of the roads near Strassburg that the mud, stones,

and holes compelled the horses to go single file, each one stepping

in the tracks of the leader; near Ypres they found the road often

indistinguishable from the fields, and the mud came up to the horses'

girths.

In dry weather the only complaint is against loose stones on steep

gradients, which latter naturally occur far more frequently on the

old roads than on modern ones, keeping, as the former do, to high

ground for choice. The fact that by this means traffic was less at the

mercy of floods seems to be considered reason enough for the habit,

but perhaps it was also found to give greater protection against

highwaymen, who were thereby afforded fewer opportunities for attacking

from higher ground, and for concealment. One place in particular where

these loose stones formed a serious hindrance was Scaricalasino,

between Bologna and Florence, so named (scarica l'asino means "unload

the ass") because what with the badness of the road and the sharpness

of the stones the asses had to be relieved of their burdens at

intervals. So, too, the secretary of a Venetian embassy writes that

between Terni and Assisi the way was so rough as well as muddy that it

cost the party of forty fourteen hours and the deaths of four horses to

do twenty miles.[103]

Another difficulty, sometimes a peril, to be faced were the fords. On

the main road, for example, from Rome to France, through Florence,

there was the river Paglia to cross, which bounded Papal territory in

that direction. The passage still remained a ford, although after rain

it would be impassable for a week at a time. And where, on the map,

north of Venice, you see the Tagliamento divide into seven branches,

there, through them, lay the road which joined Italy with Germany. Yet

only one branch had a bridge over it, and the fords through the others

were dangerous enough to keep guides at work. It is not surprising,

then, to find Sir Thomas Browne's son having to engage two men to walk

beside his horse up-stream to break the force of the current lest it

should carry the horse off his feet, since the river was the Var, in

the Riviera, and across a less important road.

Sometimes travellers preferred the ford even where a bridge existed,

as did one[104] at St. Jean de Maurienne on the post-route from France

to Italy because the bridge was in such disrepair as to be unsafe. The

same traveller crossed by boat at Otricoli beside the ruins of a Roman

bridge which had once been a link in the Via Flaminia. On the bridges

the same political reasons that kept the roads difficult had set their

mark, accounting as they do for the number of wooden bridges, easier

to dismantle in case of a raid. The bridges of Strassburg and Vienna

were particularly striking examples of this; the planks were not even

fastened down; if one end tipped up, a plank was as likely as not to

fall into the river. Neither were there any rails at the sides. That

was not exceptional, either, in spite of a bridge being worthy of

remark if broad enough for two carts to pass each other. But whether it

was the initial cheapness, or the habit of precaution, there they were,

in spite of the cost of their upkeep, thirty thousand thalers yearly

in the case of the one at Yarunov on the Vistula in the middle of the

seventeenth century, when a thaler was nearly equal to one pound at

present value. Yet the traveller[105] who reports this says his horse

trod a hole in it. And in Hungary, when Busbecq returned from Turkey by

road, the bridges offered so many traps for horses that robbers laid in

wait under bridges for their best opportunities.

As for stone bridges, Spain seems to have been the best off before

1600, but subsequently the improvement in bridges became very marked,

especially in France. When Zinzerling knew Paris (1612-16), of its five

bridges, only two were of stone, whereas of the six that Evelyn saw in

1643, but one was of wood. The only stone bridges in the empire that

are mentioned are those of Schaffhausen, of Ratisbon, and, over the

Moselle, of Coblentz; while two of the finest west of the Rhine, those

of Avignon and Rouen, were impassable owing to gaps which no authority

saw its way to repair. But the test of a first-rate bridge in 1600 was

not how much traffic, but how many houses, it carried. Judged by this

standard, it was agreed that London Bridge was the finest, with that

of Nôtre Dame at Paris second, considering the latter's houses numbered

sixty-eight. Still, it was with the number of bridges that the tourist

was mainly concerned, in which matter he would find the Loire the only

river across which passage was fairly easy; the Rhine had no bridge

below Strassburg; the Seine had to be crossed five times by boat in the

first four leagues of road northwards from Paris; and below Turin there

existed no bridge over the Po except a wooden one at Ferrara.

Means of conveyance consisted of riding, subdivided into post-horses

and other beasts; by cart, either the long, heavy waggon employed by

carriers, or those with two big wheels and no more, which occasioned

the traveller fewest shocks; and lastly, by litter. Coaches, in the

sense of vehicles which are supposed to be comfortable, can hardly

be said to have existed except among private owners, and even these

preferred the litter, especially in winter. The acme of luxury when on

the road may be represented by Marguerite de Valois' litter used on

her journey to the Netherlands. The lining was of Spanish velvet, the

hangings of silk, the sides glazed with one hundred and forty panes of

glass, each of which bore a different design.

As for carts, though everywhere one comes across occasional instances

of their use by tourists, this was far more customary in Germany than

elsewhere; even a knight-errant going to seek his fortune, Sir Anthony

Sherley, mentions covering distances in them there without apology.

The German "rollwagen" carried six or eight passengers; those of the

Low Countries as many as ten, sitting on boards laid across the cart

so close behind one another that they resembled geese going to the

pond. The chief centre for carrier-arrangements was Augsburg; thence

to Venice and back a waggon went each week; between Augsburg and

Nuremberg daily. In France conveyances started running more freely as

the civil wars slackened, as, e. g. between Troyes and Paris in 1598; a

reversion to what had been in force earlier. But in 1584 between Amiens

and Paris, and in 1586 between Rouen and Paris, was running what was

called the "coche royale," which took passengers.[106] By Zinzerling's

time communications of this kind existed between Paris and Orleans, and

Paris and Rouen, daily; between Rouen and Dieppe thrice weekly; and

between Rouen and Antwerp.

The disadvantages of waggons were more obvious in the Low Countries

than elsewhere, since there they never entered towns, depositing the

passenger, heavy luggage and all, outside the gate; often, too, a

change of waggons was obligatory during the day, whereas an English

carter drove straight on, too long, in fact, for his custom was to

keep on the move from dawn till sunset. The Dutchman, in addition, was

usually drunk and drove his mares (always mares) like a madman, and

passengers found it advisable, besides, to wear spectacles to protect

their eyes against the sand thrown up by the road-menders. All waggons

were provided with awnings, of cloth or leather.

In Italy and Spain practically all traffic was four-footed. Post-horses

were always for hire in Italy, with a bit of fur attached to their

bridles to mark their status. The owner gave the hirer a ticket to

show his host at the end of the day's journey, who would then take

care of the horse until a return fare was forthcoming; no security

was asked. It was a novel experience for most foreigners to ride one

post-horse all day: in England the stages were ten miles; in France,

in the seventeenth century, four or five, so that a traveller in a

hurry would change horses as many as eighteen to twenty-two times a

day. The reason for the difference lay in the pace, the standard for

which was much lower in a country like Italy, where mules and asses

were habitually used. In fact, when the pace was set by the mules, as,

for instance, in the Rome-Naples caravans, all who accompanied which

had to keep together for fear of robbers, a man might be in the saddle

all day and cover no more than twenty miles. As for wheeled traffic, it

may be imagined from the state of the roads that the pace often sank

to nothing at all. After several breakdowns, one traveller writes:

"Advanced that day as far as the cursed carriages would give us leave,

and the rest of the day practised Christian patience.... Carts ought to

be put in the Litany."

The above must be understood as leaving Muscovy out of account,

for that was the one country where the journey itself could, under

favourable circumstances, be continued with comfort. Once the ground

was hard enough for sledges, the traveller could travel night and day

and yet sleep as long as he felt inclined. Nor did the gain end with

positive comfort and double the available time, since the diminished

strain on the horses enabled them to go at a greater pace for a longer

period. Twelve leagues without a change of horses and a hundred leagues

in three days represent what was practicable in the ordinary way amid a

Russian winter; treble what would be reckoned good for any conveyance

elsewhere.

In Dante's "Purgatorio" (II, 11-12) is a comparison well commented on,

unconsciously, in these travel-books. It is when he speaks of himself

wandering

Come gente che pensa a suo cammino,

Che va col core, e col corpo dimora.

Three hundred years later, sign-posts were still as rare as

unicorn-horns. One mile north of Rimini, where the road forked, stood a

chapel between the two turnings, on one side of it written, "La Strada

di Ravenna," on the other, "La Strada di Bologna"; and the roads round

Freiburg were planted with trees to mark the way, for the benefit of

citizens, however, rather than of strangers, because of the mouths of

the silver mines which would otherwise have been man-traps. Something

of the kind, too, was put up in Holland when snow hid the roads. More

to the point will it be to quote John Smith's account of his escape

from Tartary, and how he found pictorial sign-posts at cross-roads,

the way to Christian Muscovy being indicated by the sign of the Cross;

to Crim Tartary by a half-moon; while a black man with white spots

meant Persia; a sun, China; and minor princes' territories were pointed

out by the emblems they had adopted. But these were really out of

Europe and those of Freiburg and Holland outlined the road rather than

indicated directions, as did the poles erected on the Col di Tenda

Alpine-pass for a mile together, each pole a spear's length from the

next. The Simplon and Mt. Cenis passes were thus marked out also—when

the poles had not been blown flat by the wind.

[Illustration: A SIGN-POST]

But then, crossing the Alps alone was practically unknown, although

only on the Mt. Cenis route were professional guides employed as a

matter of course. These guides had their own special name, "marrons"

and a special function, to "ramasser" the traveller on his way

to France, down the slope between the summit of the pass and

Lanslebourg, when it was covered with frozen snow. The traveller took

his seat in a rush-seated chair on runners; one "marron" in front and

one behind. The one in front had a strap round his chest fastened to

the chair; he took a few steps, and the chair did the rest; if the

direction became amiss or the pace too furious, the "marron" behind

the chair guided or checked it with an alpenstock. The distance was a

league; the time fifteen minutes. Going towards Italy you would have

found fifty or sixty persons coming to meet you at Lanslebourg, hat

in hand, offering their services as "marrons" or as horse-owners.

Dismounting, one would have held the bridle, one the stirrup, one

yourself. Two or three struggle for the privilege of taking your horse

to the stable and your trunk to your room, but the latter privilege is

not one to be granted lightly; it was not in sound only that "marron"

resembled "larron." The traveller's own horse was sent on after being

shod with calkins, and he himself followed in one of the sledges, used

in ascents, litter-fashion, by four "marrons," who carried it, two

at a time, turn and turn about; glasses to protect the eyes from the

snow-light formed part of the stock-in-trade of the local pedlars.

At the top would be found "La Chapelle des Transis," the wayfarers'

mortuary, not empty probably; in March 1578 it contained fifteen

bodies.[107] After heavy snowfalls the monks of the neighbouring

hospice of St. Nicolas used to send out search parties; corpses

discovered were examined for proofs of orthodoxy, beads, for instance,

failing which the bodies were left to the beasts of prey.

During this period the Mt. Cenis route came to be used more exclusively

for passing between France and Italy than had previously been the case,

doubtless as a result of the transference of the capital of Savoy from

Chambéry to Turin in 1559, between which towns this route was the most

direct. Yet notwithstanding that travellers note here, and here alone,

that the population on either side of the pass had no other means of

livelihood than by ministering to travellers, the most frequented route

must be considered the Brenner. It was the only one which wheeled

traffic could pass, though even there the waggon had to be kept from

falling off the road "by force of men's shoulders," according to

Moryson.

Of the experiences to be met with in crossing an Alpine pass other

than the Brenner, there is no better account than that which the

Infanta Clara Eugenia wrote home concerning the St. Gothard. Even

before reaching Bellinzona the luggage carts had to be exchanged for

mules. And at Bellinzona, too, she notes that there was not a woman

without an enormous goitre; and, indeed, the frequency with which

travellers remark on the number of those afflicted in this way leaves

no doubt but that the disease was far more prevalent then than now.

It was generally accepted that the cause lay in the water, but one

old resident, at least, disbelieved this, since he had one himself,

although, as he told a tourist, he had never drunk water in his life.

The worst of the Infanta's journey occupied the four days after leaving

Bellinzona; the way so narrow that a horse could scarcely walk and the

litters had continually to be taken off the mules and transferred to

men. This narrow path, of course, lay always with the mountain-side

high above it and a precipice and a river below. The ladies' litters

were by no means according to royal standards; just four poles and a

linen seat, from which the royal legs dangled; but she rode most of

the way, feeling no fear of anything but the "snow-bridges," two of

which had to be crossed. On the farther side there was the "Devil's

Bridge" to pass also, or, as she names it, "Hell Bridge"; which now

does not even exist; twenty paces long above the Reuss, so far above

that the river was out of sight, although the rush of it resounded so

loudly that she could not hear herself speak. The whole road had been

specially prepared for her passage, and among the preparations was the

erecting of railings along "Hell Bridge"; in the ordinary way there

were none, the wind being so strong in the narrow gorge as always to

sweep them away very soon. He who passed by the St. Gothard under

ordinary conditions, and the Furka, too, wore gloves and boots studded

with nails to preserve his hold; and the average Alpine bridge answered

to the description which Cellini gives of those he found on the Simplon

route, a few tree-trunks laid down. Another Italian going home that way

says the last bridge was thirty feet by two and bent in the middle; he

crossed it at night, coming as it did among the "last four leagues"(?)

between the summit and Domodossola, all of which he and his traversed

in pitch-darkness among precipices, the foremost calling at intervals

"Ave Maria" and the hindmost answering "Gratiâ plena."

Most travellers rode horses or mules where they could, and led, or

crawled with them, the rest of the way; but sledges were also in use,

in which case, Moryson was told, "it sometimes happens the sledge

whereon the passenger sits is cast out of the way and hangs down in a

most deep valley with the passenger's head downward. Woe be to him,

then, if he let his hold go, or the harness tying the sledge to the

horse should break." Moryson himself had only passed by the Bernina and

the Brenner, the former of which seems to have ranked third in order

of popularity in spite of the track being no more than a yard wide in

places. The Splügen was used as often, perhaps, but when the two St.

Bernards and the Gemmi have been added to the list, there is an end of

those frequented by tourists. One used the San Marco and Sir Henry

Wotton another, which cannot now be identified, when the ordinary

ones were shut against him by plague. But for an instance of some one

keeping to the coast between France and Italy, it seems necessary

to go back to Beatis in 1518, a man whose narrative is obviously

trustworthy; yet, after mentioning that it was so dangerous that few

rode, he adds what may sound incredible except in his own words. "Ben

vero che questo Camino è di sorte Che in tale giornata di XV miglia

solamente le bestie se besognarno ferrare quactro et cinque volte." For

all practical purposes, moreover, the mountains near Grenoble must be

considered as part of the Alps, lying, as they did, across the route of

all who crossed Mt. Cenis, and being no less fearful than any of the

Alpine passes themselves. At one point, nearest Aiguebelette, horses

and mules were specially trained for the ascent and descent, holes

having been cut in the rock which made the way more practicable for

animals accustomed to them, but almost impossible to any others, unless

riderless.

Elsewhere, wherever mountains have to be traversed, similar conditions

prevailed. Near Spalato, it is true, the path was railed in some

distance, the only railings of the kind in Europe, apparently; but

near Mt. Olympus one looked over the edge of the precipice he had

to ride along and saw carcasses of horses, caught as they fell, or

fallen, to warn him to be careful. Says one who knew both, the road

over Pen-maen-mawr in these days was more fearful than any Alpine way.

As for Spain, there were quite a number of main roads which allowed

nothing more than single file here and there: the pass into Castile on

the road from Bayonne, for instance, and another between Granada and

Cartagena, on entering which it was customary for travellers to tighten

their belts and say an "Ave Maria" for those who had lost their lives

thereabouts. Above San Sebastian ten men might hold the road against an

army and no beasts but mules could be trusted on it, nor on the pass

from France into Aragon, so steep that no man was safe there; while

south of Santander, according to Sir Richard Wynn, for two leagues the

road was two feet broad and one hundred perpendicular fathoms above the

river.

Neither were the efforts thus entailed brightened by the idea of

mountaineering as a form of pleasure. Probably the only recorded climb

undertaken during this period with no other object than that of getting

to the top is the ascent of "Les Jumelles," the highest peak near

Pau, an ascent known to us through De Thou. One M. de Candale started

at four o'clock one May morning in the first half of the sixteenth

century. Before half-way was reached, his younger companions were on

the way down; they had come in their shirts and found the cold too

much for them; M. de Candale was wearing a fur coat. At half-way the

last trace of a human being was left behind, but he and some peasants

reached the top with the help of ladders and grappling-irons and took

measurements. It is characteristic enough of the age that De Thou's

comments on the calculated height are a comparison with the reckonings

of Apuleius and Plutarch concerning Olympus, which they considered the

highest mountain in the world. Mediæval opinion put Mt. Sinai first,

probably because that was the only mountain a mediæval Christian ever

tried to get to the top of, a process of reasoning which may be traced

in the guesses of these travellers, and in local opinion, as to which

was the highest of the Alps; it is always one of those past which they

endeavoured to make their way, St. Gothard or St. Bernard, for which

they claim preëminence. Another fashion of reckoning is to calculate,

not perpendicularly, but according to the apparent length of the way,

which makes Mt. Quarantana "six miles high"; while one traveller has a

unit of measurement entirely his own, a mountain being to him so many

"towers" high, the tower in question being the belfry of Malines, his

native place.

There was, nevertheless, one piece of mountaineering that was

continually being done under the guise of a pilgrimage, the ascent of

the Roche Melon, near Mt. Cenis, or, as it is termed in full as late

as 1574,[108] Roche Rommelon; the Latin name had been Mons Romuleus.

Of the origin of this pilgrimage and the reason for building a chapel

to Our Lady on the summit, nothing has been ascertained beyond what

may be read to-day in the cathedral at Susa, where is still to be

seen,[109] though unmentioned by Baedeker, a triptych representing

a Madonna and Child, St. George, St. James, and a kneeling warrior,

with an inscription to the effect that one Bonifacio Rotario of Asti

"brought me [_i. e._ the triptych] hither in honour of our Blessed

Lord and our Lady on September 1, 1358." The word "hither" refers to

the summit of this Roche Melon, to which the picture is still carried

up every year.[110] In 1588 Villamont made the ascent, which was only

practicable in August, with spikes on his feet and hooks fastened to

his hands, and rather more assistance than a modern mountaineer would

consider dignified. The feat is the more remarkable inasmuch as the

height (11,605 feet) is more than half as high again as the highest

point of any pass that was used then.

On reaching the top, Villamont forgot all his terror and fatigue in

the glorious view, glorious not for the grandeur of the scenery to

him, but because it was his first sight of Italy, "the paradise to

gain which they willingly," as another phrases it, "passed through

the purgatory of the Alps." Such was their opinion of Switzerland.

They spoke of the Alps just as we do of the Channel—they had

had a "good crossing," or the reverse. More definitely, to quote

Howell's words, "the high and hideous Alps ... those uncouth, huge,

monstrous, Excrescences of Nature," productive of nothing useful.

Few were those who were free-spirited enough to enjoy themselves. Of

the exceptions most notable are Tasso and the Infanta. The former

mentions the existence of a common preference for scenes characterised

by unbroken spaciousness, but for himself, he likes a varied view

with much to catch the eye, hills, dales, and trees, and even, he

goes on, "E, che più, la sterilità e rigidezza dell' Alpi, facendone

paragone alla vaghezza degli altri spettacoli, suole molte fiate

riuscire piacevolissima."[111] The Infanta's own words are still more

remarkable: "Yo dudo que se pudiera ver mejor cosa en el mundo ni màs

para ver." Even she, however, when going into detail, gives first

places to the plants that were new to her and to the waterfalls. When,

indeed, somebody else expresses any degree of pleasure in connection

with the Alps, it is generally the waterfalls that occasion it. But

there is a further exception even to this, and he, curiously enough,

is a popular Parisian poet, St. Amant. Although he writes, in his

"Polonaise," concerning Poland,

On n'y voit nulle eminence

Comme on voit en d'autres lieux;

Cela me charme, et je pense

Qu'on ne peut dire tant mieux,

he finds the characteristics of the Alps, even in winter, such that they

Sont si doux à mes yeux que d'aise ils en pétillent,

and is even modern enough to speak of

Et cet air net et sain, propre à l'esprit vital.[112]

These three have been entirely overlooked hitherto; the only person

of this period whom the modern mountaineer is told to claim as his

spiritual brother is the botanist Conrad Gesner; but in claiming

him they claim too much—for themselves. It is true that Gesner does

write[113] that he never lets a year go by without climbing one or more

of the Alps for exercise and pleasure as well as for botany; and that

"whoever does not consider towering mountains preëminently worthy of

more than ordinary attention is, to my mind, an enemy of Nature." But

he goes on to show that the Alps meant far more to him than this much

would prove. He looked on them as an epitome of all Nature's habits and

experiments, the key to all Nature's secrets, to geology in the fullest

sense of the word, structural, historical, dynamical; and that to a

greater extent than is apparent at first sight, inasmuch as problems

now treated as solved then belonged to dreamland and problems which

seemed soluble there if anywhere are now known to be better studied

elsewhere; the internal temperature of the earth, for instance, since

it was not recognized in Gesner's day that there was any difference in

kind between mountains and volcanoes.

The attitude of the average man of Gesner's time towards the Alps,

however, is but the most striking instance of a general attitude

towards Nature which circumstances at that time enforced and which

different circumstances have since abolished. Further, of all

classes of men, it was the tourists who were most oppressed by the

circumstances of the past, and it is the tourists who get the greatest

benefits from the changed circumstances of to-day. Further still,

the difference was, and is, most noticeable by the tourist when on

the road. In other words, the absence of enjoyment of the sterner

aspects of Nature was the result of their having far more of Nature

than an average man can stand. The growth of the size of towns has,

so to speak, set a premium on Nature, just as it has, during the past

century, created the custom of taking annual holidays; while the

successive minimising of the dangers, the discomforts, and of so many

of the lesser difficulties of travel has provided the traveller with

contrast where once upon a time was none, and leaves him free to find

pleasure (sometimes, perhaps, forces him to look for it to avoid being

bored), where in 1600 all spelt pain and foreboding. This difference of

sentiment culminated then, as it culminates now, when the tourist found

himself among the Alps. There, above other places, were his faculties

narrowed by fear and what remained of them wholly concentrated on

self-preservation, until enjoyment was out of the question.

As to the change of attitude, it is usually credited to Rousseau, but

was in progress before his influence began to be felt;[114] and if

the subsequent development of the idea is considered, the credit must

surely be shared by Napoleon, as to whose greatness there is no more

conclusive evidence than that of his Alpine roads. Before these were

carried out, men considered themselves at the mercy of the Alps; he

first, and he alone, put the Alps at the service of men, and in so

doing set free men's sense of beauty when in their midst.

But here, as always when writing about the prevalence or absence of

a point of view, some reminder should be added as to the effect of

literary conventions in exaggerating both the one and the other; that

is to say, that in the former case it will frequently be expressed when

it is little felt, and in the latter it will frequently be felt when

not expressed. Even as to that binding of the faculties just alluded

to, there is the very definite exception of the Infanta, who was not

too preoccupied to ask questions, thereby learning that that peak had

not been bare of snow for four hundred years and that this pinnacle

was solid emerald; being considered inaccessible, cannon had not long

before been brought up to shoot bits off, but without success.

Nevertheless, their turn of mind as regards Nature in general needs

some other illustration than from negative evidence alone, or, among

positive evidence, from so exceptional a feature as mountain scenery.

This may be best taken from their use of the word "desert." A typical

instance is in a sentence from Peter Mundy, "the way being faire and

plaine, though desert and full of woods." Six times in "As You Like It"

is the forest of Arden termed a desert:—

... this desert inaccessible

Under the shade of melancholy boughs.

"Desert" to them meant deserted by men, and through forests they

passed, as often as not, sword in hand. To quote St. Amant's

"Polonaise" again:—

Une taciturne horreur

En augmente le terreur,

Et la noire solitude

Qui dort en ces bois espais

Fait qu'avec inquiétude

On y voit leur triste paix.

Là le maistre et le valet

Roulent, main au pistolet;

On regarde si le glaive

S'offre à quitter le fourreau,

Et dès qu'un zephir se lève

On frémit sur le carreau.

And yet, if a journey was a "fragment of hell," it is comforting to

meet some very merry devils by the way. Quevedo,[115] for one, took

his troubles lightly. Getting out of a bed in which his legs had been

hanging over the end, he and three others left Linares for Condado in a

conveyance drawn by ten mules. The road, he says, might have been the

road to salvation, so narrow was it, so full of troubles, a purgatory

in little. One hill seemed to be reserved for mule-hunting when the

carriage had stuck in the mud.

It was February, too; February at its worst. On smaller provocation

men have retired to madhouses. It seemed like sleeping in the coach;

those who tried to walk pulled their legs out from where they had

planted them without hose or shoes; one called out, "You down there,

who's pulling off my boots?" After playing at dying for four hours, men

arrived to release them from imprisonment, except one whose litter had

given way and who was too full of bruises to move, and a clergyman who

was missing altogether, the latest news of whom is that men were going

round about the marshes calling out his name.

Dallam, too, has a tale to tell. His companions and himself, passing

through Thrace, took a house to spend the night in, a two-roomed house,

one room above the other. The lower was used as a cellar; a ladder

outside led up to a balcony, the balcony to a door, the door to their

sleeping room, which was lighted by one small hole. Now, that evening

they had gone for a walk and seen "divers sorts of vermin of which we

have not the like in England," and, remembering that they had nothing

but boards to lie on, gathered plenty of a thick soft moss for pillows.

But half an hour after laying their heads down, they discovered that

these pillows harboured one more sort of vermin "the which did bite

far worse than fleas," with the result that even when the pillows had

been thrown away and the room swept, still they couldn't go to sleep.

So Mr. Glover (afterwards Sir Thomas Glover), who had dwelt long in the

country, told them stories about the native vermin, "snakes, adders,

and sarpentes." Gradually some dropped off to sleep; the others ceased

talking. But one Mr. Baylye had occasion to leave the room; the door

was narrow, the wind strong; "so that when he came into the gallery,

the wind blew the garter round about his leg; it was a great silk

garter and by the force of the wind it fettered his legs both fast

together. Our talk a little before of adders, snakes, and sarpentes

was yet in his remembrance and the place near where much vermin was.

He thought they swarmed about him, but about his legs he thought he

was sure of a sarpente, so that, suddenly, he cried out with all the

voice he had, 'A sarpente, a sarpente, a sarpente,' and was so frighted

he could not find the door to get in, but made a great bustling and

noise in the gallery. We that were in the house did think that he

said, 'Assaulted, assaulted,' for before night we doubted that some

treachery would happen unto us in that town. There was fifteen of us

in the room—and it was but a little room. Every man took his sword in

his hand, one ready to spoil another, not any one knowing the cause.

One that could not find his sword, got to the chimney and trying to

climb up, down fell a part of the chimney on his head; another that was

suddenly awakened, struck about him with his sword and beat down the

shelf and broke the pitchers and platters which stood thereon, the room

being very dark, for it was about midnight. Our Janizary, who should

have been our guard and have protected us from all dangers, took up a

loose board whereon he lay, and slipped down into the vault. As we were

all thus amazed, at the last Mr. Baylye found the way in at the door.

When Mr. Glover saw him, he said, 'How now, man, what is the matter,

who do you see?' Mr. Baylye was even breathless with fear, crying out

and struggling to get in at the door; at last he said, 'A sarpente, a

sarpente,' troubled him. When Mr. Glover heard him say so, he went to

the door, and there he found Mr. Baylye's garter ready to be carried

away with the wind."

Another who was more frightened than hurt was the Jesuit Possevino,

on his way to Muscovy. Tired out with a day on the main road thither

from Poland, spent handling the axe to clear the road of vegetation,

dragging the waggons by hand, sometimes carrying them on their

shoulders, he and his lay down to sleep (in the rain) and were kept

awake by Cossacks in among the trees imitating the sounds of wild

beasts to terrify them. Pleasanter was it for those in Hungary, where

the custom was, when strangers came in sight, to bake some bread fresh

in the cinders that served as ovens, and send it to their lodgings by

the youngest and prettiest girls, who gathered themselves into a ring

and danced round the visitors singing.

Yet another picture is of a Frenchman whose way lay through the

Ardennes in time of war; he was journeying on business. Tales were

plentiful of bands of peasants in the forests, killing passers-by

without distinction. One evening he makes his escape from four men,

takes a by-road where the highroad was in particularly bad repute; snow

begins to fall, the wind is dead against him; his by-road leads him

cross-country, which founders his horse; he sits down on a tree-trunk,

back to the wind, and thinks how his brother and four sisters are

providing him with nephews and nieces who will never give a guess at

the troubles he has gone through in making a fortune, but will take

it for granted that they are to have a share of it. The nephews,

perhaps, would have told him that it was lucky for him he was in the

Ardennes and not outside St. Malo at so late an hour, with the twelve

or twenty-four, whichever it was,[116] savage English dogs waiting for

him, who were sent out every night with their keeper to guard the town,

"killing and tearing any living creature they encounter withal." In

1627 a man did die so. Even without the dogs, at St. Malo or anywhere

else, it was troublesome, or worse, to arrive late. Gates were closed,

and kept closed, and this applied, of course, to seafarers as well;

one tourist making for Monaco, another for Genoa, had for that reason

to sleep out in an open boat. In towns where a strict "Reformed" sect

had the upper hand, this waiting might have to be done in daytime

also; gates as well as shops being shut during sermon-time. But even

supposing he found means to enter at night, it might be wiser not to

take the offer, seeing that he would find himself wandering about

in a pitch-dark maze of dirty alleys during the hours when it was

permissible for the inhabitants to throw "slops" out of window.

[Illustration: BENIGHTED 'SIGHT'-SEERS]

CHAPTER VIII

THE PURSE

A traveller! by my faith, you have great reason to be sad: I fear you

have sold your own lands to see other men's.

_As You Like It_ (about 1599).

The cost of travelling divides itself into two kinds; direct and

indirect: that is, into the outlay which the traveller must reckon on

and that which he has to reckon with. The first kind, the necessities,

consists of fares, food, lodging, passports, tolls, etc., together

with loss by exchange of money or by charges on remittances. The

second kind, the possibilities, includes loss by robbery, by war, by

disease, lack of legal privileges, ignorance of local custom, and such

like eventualities in so far as any one was liable to suffer from them

through being a stranger in a strange land.

But before considering the most elementary necessaries, some working

arrangement must be established about translating payments into terms

of English money of the present day. In the first place, between

1542 and 1642 money fell from about nine times its present value to

about five times. Dates must therefore be found within which the

multiplication figure must become successively nine, eight, seven, six.

Suppose the first figure be taken up to 1556, when the States General

met at Brussels to deal with Philip II's debt; the second figure thence

to 1589, the year when the failure of the Spanish Armada began to tell

on economics; seven from 1589 to 1612, at which date the bankruptcy of

the Welser firm affected all Europe; and six thenceforward. If these

are reasonable fictions, it is the utmost that can be achieved; in so

far as they are not, the definiteness of the system makes correction

of it easier. Amounts arrived at by these reckonings are given in

square brackets. Usually, however, the original amounts have first to

be translated out of continental coinage into contemporary English, a

process which involves a series of comparisons too long to be tabulated

here, and often, even then, needing modification as a result of the

context in which the particular statement occurs. This is mentioned

only as indicating a fresh source of uncertainty, and possibly of

error. A third factor in these amounts as here given is as reliable as

the two former factors are unreliable; every original amount represents

an actual transaction by a traveller between 1542 and 1642, except

where otherwise stated.

Necessities and possibilities are sometimes found considered jointly

in general estimates. Sir Philip Sidney considered his brother should

have two hundred pounds a year allowed him for travelling. This was in

1578, and he would be reckoning according to the highest standard that

a young Englishman would have a use for.

Dallington, a guide-book writer, speaking for Englishmen in France

in 1598, estimates eighty pounds a year; if one servant is taken and

riding-lessons required, one hundred and fifty pounds; over two hundred

pounds is excessive; while another, Cleland, in his "Institution of a

Young Nobleman" (1607) considers two hundred pounds a year enough for

four persons. Howell (1642) says three hundred pounds for the youngster

at Paris, with fifty pounds each in addition for a cook, a valet, and

a page; but then Howell had acted as tutor and no doubt hoped to do

so again as soon as he could get free from the Fleet Prison, where

he lay when his pamphlet was published. Under these circumstances he

was likely to be considering his own pocket rather than the father's.

Nevertheless, two of the brothers Coligny [Henri II's courtiers], when

planning a year's tour through Italy in 1546, were said to have put

aside fourteen thousand scudi [£30,000] for expenses; which annoyed

their uncle.[117] But within a year or two of this estimate, Evelyn was

travelling farther afield than Paris,—he stayed seven months in Rome

alone,—keeping one servant throughout, sometimes two, learning under

several masters, and making costly and extensive purchases, on less

than three hundred pounds annually. Of Sir Richard Fanshawe, again,

his wife records that "during some years of travel" (less than seven,

for certain) "he had spent a considerable part of his stock"; this

stock consisted of what his parents had bequeathed him, fifteen hundred

pounds, and fifty pounds a year: his travel lay mainly in France and

Spain previous to 1630.

Fynes Moryson, too, gives his expenditure as from fifty to sixty

pounds a year, which included the cost of two journeys, one in spring,

one in autumn. He was accustomed to the best standard of living at

home, but his income was hardly adequate to his social position and

by temperament he was a temperate and adaptable man; more so, to say

the least, than the son of Davison, the Secretary of State whom Queen

Elizabeth made the scapegoat for the death of Queen Mary Stewart.

Father Davison had been told that one hundred marks would suffice for

his boy abroad each year, and, consequently, in sending the latter to

Italy in 1595 with a tutor, and a servant, allowed him treble that

amount, one hundred pounds. The tutor writes, "I never endured such

slavery in my life to save money"; if Mr. Davison does not see his

way to changing his mind about the one hundred pounds a year, will

he kindly find another tutor? As to the "frugal travellers" whose

travelling costs them no more than the one hundred marks a year, he

does not wish to deny it; in fact, he knows such men; and very sorry

he is for those who have lent them the rest they have spent.

From all this one may conclude that the equivalent of four hundred

pounds a year was the minimum for respectable travelling and that the

Average Tourist would certainly need at least half as much again. But

this is assuming that all who were respectable, or above the need to

be so, paid all their own expenses, which was far from being the case.

There were plenty of rich travellers who defrayed all charges for a

large following. Landgraf Ludwig II of Hessen-Darmstadt[118] even paid

a certain knight to accompany him, six hundred florins [£600] down and

fifty florins a month, besides expenses and clothes. So when Cardinal

Luigi d'Aragona toured Europe, starting May 9, 1517, and arriving home

March 16, 1518, and spent about fifteen thousand ducats [£35,000]

meantime, in which "eating and drinking were the least costly items,"

we may conclude that the thirty-five persons he took with him, and

the forty-five he brought back, received at least expenses. Another

churchman, Johann Gottfried von Aschhausen, bishop of Würzburg, left

Strassburg in 1612 with a retinue of one hundred and thirty, twenty-one

of whom were young men of high birth. Before he passed out of Germany

this number was increased by fifty more. He was away a year in Italy,

which cost him thirty-two thousand seven hundred and fifty-four scudi

[£40,000].[119]

But since he went as the Emperor's ambassador, this is rather a fresh

example of how travelling was facilitated by embassies. For among the

advantages of various kinds that rendered accompanying the journeyings

of diplomatists the best means of seeing the world, the economical

advantages were as important as any. It by no means followed, however,

that anything but board and lodging were provided by him; in the

detailed accounts of Sir G. Chaworth regarding his special embassy

to Brussels is no mention of outlay on anything but necessaries. On

the other hand, we find another English ambassador giving one hundred

pounds apiece to the gentlemen who were to accompany him, to provide

their outfit.[120] In any case, this expedient extended only as far as

the ambassador went, a specially important limitation for Englishmen

of Queen Elizabeth's day, since she had no ambassador at Venice

throughout her reign; and even when James I sent one thither he was,

during his first term of office, the only English ambassador in Italy.

Bearing this in mind, and turning to other methods whereby the Average

Tourist from England might reduce his expenditure, we come upon what

is, perhaps, the most remarkable fact of the time in regard to the

kind, and the extent, of the usefulness with which travel was credited,

namely, that Queen Elizabeth subsidised it. It is obvious from the

life-stories of all those who served her that they were treated with

extreme stinginess and that employment by the government meant heavy

expense instead of salaries; and yet, as to travel, these are the words

of Bacon, who had excellent means of knowing the facts: "There was a

constant course held, that by the advice of the secretaries, or some

principal councillor, there was always sent forth into the parts beyond

the seas some young men of whom good hopes were conceived of their

towardliness, to be trained up and made fit for such public employments

and to learn the languages. This was at the charge of the Queen, which

was not much, for they travelled but as private gentlemen."[121]

Ecclesiastics, it goes almost without saying, received special terms,

mainly in the shape of free lodging at religious houses, although the

opinion of one abbé ought not to go unrecorded,—"avoid monasteries,"

because the charities expected amounted to more than inn-charges. This

certainly did not apply to Muscovy, where, if a monastery could be

found, it undoubtedly did mean free board and lodging for the three

days, the usual limit of time, universally, for claimers of charity.

But what with monasteries and special foundations there must have been

far more really free accommodation than is apparent from tourist-books,

written as the latter almost entirely are by the class that paid its

way. Even apart from the above there were incidents such as one

recorded in 1650, of eight thousand pilgrims to Rome from Spain being

fed and housed for three days at Naples at the expense of the Spanish

viceroy there. At Compostella, too, for two reals [7s. 6d.] could

be obtained a parchment document with a cardinal's seal attached,

recommending the bearer for alms as one who was on his way to other

places of pilgrimage; and in Italy not even that much was needed,

inasmuch as the natives were then so averse to begging that foreigners

who had no such scruples found little difficulty in traversing it at

next to no cost.

Where a begging-license was necessary, that could easily be obtained

also by being, or pretending to be, a student. Loyola lived in

term-time at Paris on what he gained by begging at fairs in Flanders

and England during holidays. Another useful option open to students,

of whatever social position, was the exemption from local tolls,

frequently a privilege belonging to all who had matriculated at the

university of the district; the graduate of Padua, for instance, was

exempt throughout Venetian territory. It so happened that one of these

tourists[122] was elected rector of Bologna University during his stay

there in 1575, and that during his term of office some students were

forced to pay taxes. He and the managing body at once appealed to the

Pope, who not only confirmed, but extended, the immunities. In Italy

the tolls were so oppressive that the matriculation fees, twenty lire

[£5] at Padua, twelve at Bologna, were soon made good, even supposing

them to have been paid; at Bologna, at least, matriculation could be

obtained for nothing by applying in formâ pauperis. The examination was

no bar worth mentioning. In Germany, moreover, according to Moryson,

the tenancy of a house often carried with it the obligation to board

and lodge a student free. Another traveller who economised thoroughly

was Sastrow, who, on reaching Rome, took service at the hospital of

Santa Brigitta, cooked, washed-up, made the beds, and received the

equivalent of 2s. 6d. a month, while Jacques Callot, the artist, when

he ran away from home, took the way to Italy in the company of those

gypsies who appear in those sketches of his which form one of the most

vivid memorials of the travelling life of the time. Yet with all these

opportunities which presented themselves to the needy, we are told

that Turkey was the only country of Europe where poverty was no bar to

travel.

Outside Europe fresh estimates have to be quoted. The fare to Jaffa

and back by the pilgrim-galley varied from fifty to sixty ducats [say

£100]: this included food. Additional expenses brought the ordinary

cost of a visit to Jerusalem from Venice under these earlier conditions

up to three or four hundred pounds in present-day values. This, of

course, omits the expenses of the pilgrim between his home and Venice.

The minimum recorded cost for this period is represented by the two

hundred and twenty crowns [£350] spent by one Switzer in thirty weeks,

and two hundred and twenty-eight crowns spent by another, a barber, in

eleven months (1583-84),[123] of which times only about three months,

in each case, was taken up by the voyage from Venice to Jerusalem and

back, the remainder being devoted to Italy. The pilgrimage may be

considered as accounting for but little more than two hundred pounds

of the expenditure of each. Many went, moreover, who never possessed

this much, since it was common for one man to go as deputy for several,

who jointly defrayed his expenses; and it was also a common form of

charity for rich pilgrims to pay for poor ones. Later, in fact, they

were often forced to do so by the Turks when the latter had reduced to

beggary those who had come away with too little, which led to there

arising a custom among pilgrims of showing each other their money; if

one refused, the others avoided his company to escape the possibility

of being compelled to pay for him.

With the cessation of the pilgrim-galley the cost of the pilgrimage

doubled itself, what with the increased length of the journey due to a

roundabout way having to be taken, and, still more, to its increased

duration, owing to the uncertainty; especially as every day additional

brought its own additional risks and extortions. Moryson and his

brother spent four hundred and eighty pounds [nearly, if not quite,

£3000].

Certain circumstances raised the cost to him above the average, and

he was away more than a year and a half, whereas the journey would be

done within the year ordinarily. On the other hand, as his brother died

near Aleppo, the return-journey represents the expenditure of one man

instead of two. How a thrifty man who was used to roughing it would

be forced to spend the equivalent of one thousand pounds or more on a

journey that would nowadays cost him about sixty-five pounds is partly

explained by the exactions of the Turks. When Sandys was at Jerusalem

the monks of S. Salvatore had just been compelled to pay eight hundred

dollars [£900] for an imaginary offence. When Lithgow arrived late one

night after the gates had been shut, the friars let down food to him

over the wall; the Turks, being informed of this, insisted they must

have been importing weapons, and inflicted another fine, one hundred

piasters [£125]. It is not surprising, then, that with expenses like

these, and ordinary expenses to match, the monks expected sums from

the pilgrims that seem at first sight outrageous. To Lithgow they

made a definite charge of a piaster [£1 10s.] a day for board and

lodging alone; but their general custom was to throw themselves on the

traveller's generosity and grumble at the result.

Neither did the Franks suffer from indirect exactions only. The price

for entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre went on increasing,

from nothing at all in the fourteenth century to four zecchini [£10]

in 1606. Some mention fees of four times that amount, but this higher

sum included the toll at the city gate, the two being collected

simultaneously and so mistaken for one charge: the Turks farmed the

revenue from the Holy Sepulchre for eight thousand sultanons [over

£19,000], says Sandys. Extras were almost endless, yet very few of

them left any change out of a gold coin; the fee for the certificate

of visitation, without which the poorest pilgrim would not think of

departing, was three zecchini [seven guineas], while the knighthood,

nominally thirty zecchini, does not seem to have been granted for less

than ten. The monastery servants were liable to excommunication if they

accepted a tip, but they gladly risked damnation for a zecchino, and,

indeed, insisted on doing so.

By spending not more than a week at Jerusalem and that at a time which

may profanely be termed out of the season, it was possible to see the

sights of the city itself for the equivalent of £50; at any rate, that

happened in 1676;[124] do as most Franks did, spend Easter there, and

ten days or a fortnight, and accompany the excursions, cost nearly

double that. On the journey, the tributes may be imagined from the

fact that Sandys thought it worth while to pay four shariffs [£10] for

a passport which saved a few of them; nothing availed against an Arab

chief who sent to demand seven zecchini [sixteen guineas] a head, and

then came in person to demand five more. Moreover, besides the special

outfit to be bought, the charges themselves were always reckoned on the

basis that a Frank _must_ have heaps of money; from Rama to Jerusalem

alone, one day's journey, another seven zecchini had to be paid to the

dragoman, and the same amount coming back.

A considerable saving might be effected by hiring a Janizary at seven

aspers [2s.] a day: his services more than paid for his keep; and there

were times when even a Frank found himself living at an easy rate. This

happened when he stayed at a "fondaco," or depôt of Christian traders,

or so it may be inferred from casual remarks backed up by two definite

instances in years far apart. The German Fürer lived so at Alexandria

and Cairo for the equivalent of five shillings a day in 1565, and in

1625 two Germans[125] were received for two months free of all charges

at the Venetian "fondaco" at Cairo.

Far above all economies, however, was the system known as "putting-out"

money—and this applied to travel inside, as well as outside,

Christendom. The mediæval custom of presenting offerings before

starting had died out; sixteenth-century tourists only offered prayers,

and, for the rest, often expected to take up, at their homecoming,

all they had left behind them with additions, or even multiplication.

They deposited, or "put out," money before their departure on

that condition. The custom is said to have been developed in the

Netherlands[126] during the first half of the sixteenth century out

of a pilgrims' practice of leaving a will behind them in favour of a

friend on the understanding that the pilgrim was to receive double

the bequest if he came back. It would seem from what Moryson says

that the custom was barely known in England till the last decade of

the sixteenth century, and then spread so rapidly that it fell into

disrepute, bankrupts employing it to reinstate themselves, and actors,

then the scum of the populace, to gain notoriety. He apologises for his

brother Henry doing it, who put out four hundred pounds to be repaid

twelve hundred pounds if he came back from Jerusalem. If allusions to

the practice in contemporary English literature[127] can be trusted,

he drove a bad bargain; according to them he might have arranged for

his hypothetical profit to be five hundred instead of three hundred

per cent, the latter rate being granted against journeys to Italy. The

only other instance known of an actual transaction of this kind was

calculated to yield two thousand per cent [£10 to be repaid £200]; but

this was against a voyage to Russia, near the middle of the century,

from London, whence only one ship was known to have sailed thither and

returned.

Life insurance in its present form was also adopted by some persons

before starting for abroad; but public opinion condemned every form

of life insurance equally as immoral, and in the Netherlands, France,

and Genoa it was forbidden by law, "travel-wagers" being specially

mentioned in the proclamations. The rate, however, is the point which

specially concerns us here, as indicative of the risks of travel. At

the present day, for all the parts of the world touched upon in this

book, the safest insurance company will not only lay fifty to one that

the traveller _will_ return, in place of the rate then of three to

five to one that he would _not_, but will further insure him against

accidents at a lower rate than if he became a London butcher. The

system is of interest, too, as marking the transition from mediæval to

modern methods of insurance; from "protections" granted by the stronger

to the weaker for a premium which took the form of personal service,

to the capitalist's bond; the guarantee of redress by force being

superseded by guarantee of reimbursement by a business man, because the

latter had become both more feasible and more satisfactory.

It is clear, then, that, given the most favourable circumstances, the

traveller might not only make his journeys pay their own expenses,

but might clear a handsome profit. Yet how far these circumstances

were made the most of is a question that has at present to be decided

on negative evidence alone, the verdict on which must be that no case

is made out. In leaving, therefore, the general estimates for details,

both have to be put forward as net, subject to the mitigations already

referred to.

The fare from Dover to Calais was five shillings throughout this

period. So invariable was this charge that when a certain boatman

was suspected of being in league with the Roman Catholic seminarists

in France because he conveyed across some ladies who were religious

fugitives, he was considered not guilty on its being ascertained

that he had charged them one pound each for the passage.[128] This

five-shilling charge did not include the cost of boarding and landing

when that required, as so often happened, the use of small boats, or

of porters wading out. Between Flushing and Gravesend 6s. 8d. seems to

have been the fare.[129]

[Illustration: A PASSENGER-BOAT FROM PADUA]

Among the reasons for the preference of travel by water rather than by

land, one was economy. In the case of tolls, for example, the case has

been exactly reversed. As locks did not exist there were no river-dues;

but of highway-tolls plenty; moreover, it often cost something to

cross a bridge but never a sou to pass under it. As for ferries, the

ferryman occasionally made the passengers pay what he pleased by

collecting fares in the middle of the river. Yet another reason which

raised the cost of road-travel as against river-travel lay in the

latter affording far fewer chances to robbers, which also told on the

direct expense by eliminating payments to escorts.

The contrast, of course, between horse and boat was much greater than

between waggon and boat. In fact, the choice between the latter pair

was many times a matter of comfort rather than of cost; the fares for

both, in all normal cases but one where they can be exactly determined,

varying from three farthings to a penny ha'penny a mile. To compare

this with existing railway fares we may strike an average and say

sixpence a mile; but the charges will be found to approach the minimum

more often on the river than in the waggon. A typical instance is the

five stivers [2s. 6d.] on the nine-mile canal between Haarlem and

Amsterdam, and the lowest, the exception just spoken of, is the sixteen

soldi [3s. 6d.] for the twenty-four miles by river and lagoon between

Venice and Padua, recorded by Villamont in 1591, and by Van Buchell

in 1587. One disadvantage common to both cart and boat must not be

forgotten—that, to profit by this relative cheapness, the traveller had

to form one of a party; if no party was ready he had to wait till one

collected. Sir Henry Wotton, to take one example out of many, once

wanted to go by waggon from Brunswick to Frankfort, about one hundred

and fifty miles; had he started on the spot he would have started alone

and paid at the rate of 4s. 6d. a mile of our money. He waited a week

before two disreputable specimens turned up to share the expense.

This freedom to choose one's company was a decided advantage for the

traveller who rode, considering that murdering was far less exclusively

a lower-class habit than it has since become. But he had to pay dearly

for the increased respectability and pace. Horse-hire varied from a

penny ha'penny to fivepence a mile, the maximum charge representing the

cost of post-horses in France in the seventeenth century, the minimum

the charge in Italy for a horse that was waiting for a return fare,

an opportunity that might frequently be met with. The average was far

nearer the maximum than the minimum rate, since it was often a case

of post-horse or no horse, and post rates did not sink so very far

below the French standard. According to Moryson, the English charged

two shillings a day in London, one shilling a day in the provinces,

for other than post-horses, but he was a native and the charges to

foreigners probably exceeded the charges to natives throughout Europe

in a greater degree then than now; an Englishman on the way from Calais

to Paris complains that he had to pay £2 15s. where a Frenchman paid

but three pistoles at sixteen shillings and eightpence each;[130] and

that is not an isolated grievance. In fact, as a comment on Moryson's

remark about England, when Lionello, a secretary of the Venetian

ambassador, went post to Edinburgh and back in June, 1617, besides

paying threepence a mile for each horse, he includes in his accounts

as usual tips fourpence to the woman and sixpence to the horse-boy,

at each stage.[131] In Italy, where several foreigners found the cost

of riding less than the average, Villamont reckons that an écu [two

guineas] a day per horse covered all horse-charges, while in passing

from Germany to Italy the best plan was to buy a horse in Germany,

where three pounds would be a fair price, and sell it in Italy, which

could be done at double that price.

Travellers' evidence, however, as to horse-charges is less plentiful

than might be expected, owing to what may be called the 'vetturino'

system. The term 'vetturino' came to be applied, even outside Italy,

to the horse-owner or carrier who contracted for the whole cost of a

journey, food, lodging, transport, tolls. Their reputation is best

illustrated by the tale of an abbé at Loreto about this time, who, in

confessing, included among his transgressions a beating inflicted on a

'vetturino.' "Go on," said the confessor, "that doesn't count; they're

the worst scoundrels in the world." Nevertheless, the method spread

all over Europe during this period with striking rapidity, though

far more readily on the road than on the water. The advantages to the

stranger were recognised at once, the saving of the trouble and the

expense which accompanied repeated bargaining in a state of ignorance

as to where and how to do it, what inns to go to, what extras to put

up with, what the legal dues really were, etc. However dishonest the

'vetturino' might prove, his victim probably paid no more to him in

unintentional commission than his accomplices would have extorted on

their own account otherwise. For the Lyons-Turin journey, at least,

there soon came into use a regular formula for a written contract, a

formula which has been preserved.[132] The system has its value for us,

too, in enabling us to compare prices. While there are multitudes of

figures apparently available for the purpose of reckoning cost, a large

majority turn out to be, to use one of their own phrases, no more use

than a wooden poker, the writer omitting one or more of the necessary

data. If, for instance, he mentions the hire of four horses, it leaves

us in the dark in reckoning personal expenses, inasmuch as four horses

may equally well imply two, or three, or four persons. So likewise, to

complete an account of a waggon-fare, it needs to be stated whether or

no it was what the Germans called "maul frei," that is, whether the

coachman paid for his own food or not. Or again, riding was so much the

rule that the charge which the wayfarer gives for bed and breakfast

often includes, probably more often than not, the "stabulum et

pabulum" for his horse; it is only on the rare occasions when specific

statement is made, or when a pedestrian gives prices, that there is

any certainty about it. Now the vetturino's charge does away with all

this uncertainty. Also as to whether a guide accompanied the party or

not—another necessary which cost money; especially a satisfactory one,

obtainable only, writes Sir Philip Sidney, "by much expense or much

humbleness."

Here again the traveller by waggon went more cheaply than the horseman.

What with the absence of sign-posts, the scarcity of persons to ask,

the frequent indistinguishableness of the road from its margin and its

surroundings, a stranger was practically forced to be guided. In 1648

this brought the cost of a journey from London to Dover to £1 15s.

10d.[133] [say, £8]. In a town this applied to every one who had no

friends there. Every single feature on which one depends nowadays was

absent, or, if present, present only in embryo,—visible street-names,

printed suggestions other than historical, detailed plans, the wide,

straight streets which allow the mystified to discover his whereabouts

without climbing a church-tower. In short, what was worth seeing was

mostly heard of only by word of mouth, and to find it one needed to be

led there. Expenditure on guides reached its highest point when the

Alps were snowbound; after a heavy fall he who wished to pass must

wait till others had made fresh tracks or pay anything up to fifty

crowns [£75] to have it done for him.

To pass Mont Cenis cost in the ordinary way the equivalent of about

£4 10s.; that is, about half what the 'vetturino' would want to take

each one of several from Lyons to Turin—six crowns, which latter sum is

about ten times as much as the second-class fare to-day. But then the

journey takes twelve hours now and took seven days then, with food all

the while at travellers' prices.

The length of journeys stands out as the chief factor in the

comparative costliness. Take a typical case, that of the five

middle-class men[134] who left Venice on February 20, 1655, who wasted

no time on the way, reached England on March 29, and spent one hundred

and twenty-five pounds. Reckoning this as equalling £625, this works

out as the equivalent of £125 each for thirty-seven days, or £3 7s.

7d. a day. If a man left Venice now on February 20, he might break

the journey at Bâle, to do things comfortably, and arrive in London

at 5.38 A. M. on February 22. Second-class fare would be £5 10s. 7d.;

add £2 for meals and incidentals, £7 10s. 7d. in all, an average of £3

3s. a day. The other thirty-four and a half days of the thirty-seven

his food would be paid for at home rates, say 2s. 6d. a day, £4 6s.

3d., which, added to the £7 10s. 7d., gives £11 16s. 10d. Now the

daily average of about 7s. higher in the cost of travel apart from

food, as above represented,—mainly accounted for by the relative cost

of horses and guides as against railway fares,—only comes to £13 in

thirty-seven days. On this basis the journey from Venice to London two

hundred and fifty years ago cost between nine and ten times as much as

it would to-day, solely on account of the difference in speed. That

the expenditure of these five middle-class men was very reasonable is

easily verifiable, as, for example, by the accounts of Muscorno,[135]

another Venetian secretary, whose bill for coming to England, for

himself and a servant, comes to three hundred and two ducats [£385].

If there was one place where travelling ought to have worked out

relatively cheaply, it was Muscovy, seeing that on the sledges a

peasant would take a passenger fifty leagues for three or four crowns;

but it does not seem to have lowered the expenses of one Dr. Willes,

whose overland journey thither in 1600 cost eighty pounds, including

payments to guides. His own share may be reckoned as equivalent to two

hundred and forty pounds as compared with the fifteen pounds the same

route would cost to-day.

Luggage would frequently entail the same fare as the owner, since an

extra horse would be needed to carry a box. Leather trunks were to

be purchased which might be carried in front of the rider, but these

did not protect the contents against rain. As to what carriers took

as free luggage and what as "excess," there is no evidence but that

of one Englishman[136] who found he was entitled to five pounds free

on the Calais-Paris road and paid ten shillings surcharge on the rest

without comment. Any advice the experienced have to offer as regards

reduction of luggage for economy is in view far less of carriage than

of customs-duties. In Italy the exactions were severest; almost every

day's journey would take one over some boundary and at every bridge

there were two or three quattrini [twopence] to pay; at every gate

six or eight soldi [one shilling], besides baggage dues. Any article

carried through Italy would cost its price over again in dues; a sword,

for instance, you had to give up at the gate, pay a man to carry it

to the inn, where the host took care of it till your departure, when

you had to pay again for its carriage to the gate. The Papal states

had the lowest scale of charges, yet on crossing their boundary,

there was a giulio [3s. 6d.] to pay for the smallest hand-bag; and at

Florence even your corpse would be taxed a crown [£1 10s.] if it went

in or out of the city for burial. In Germany, where the burden was

lighter, Sir Thomas Hoby, coming down the Rhine in 1555, paid toll at

twenty-one custom-houses between Mainz and Herzogensbosch to fourteen

authorities. As a rule, too, the taxes were farmed, which increased

the tourists' sufferings from them, inasmuch as they were exacted

with greater rigour and it was the harder to get redress in cases of

extortion, especially when, as in Poland and Spain, the 'farmers' were

Jews or of Jewish blood. Bribery, however, was often practicable, and

where practicable, economical; one of the best guides to Spain repeats

concerning every custom-house that the traveller should say he has

nothing to declare and tip the officials only if they take his word,

that is, if they do not do their duty. It is true there were passes to

be obtained from a central authority, overriding the right of search,

such as the imperial pass in Germany, and the indefinite rights of

ambassadors, but how far these were respected seems to have been mainly

a matter of bluff. Navagero, in Spain early in the sixteenth century,

ambassador though he was, had to pay duties even on the rings on his

fingers.

Passports, for one purpose or another, may be said to have been as much

the rule then as they have since become the exception; an Englishman

must pay five shillings for leave to travel and another five shillings

if he wished to take his horse with him. A Frenchman at Milan speaks

of getting a passport, stating his destination and the colour of his

hair; and so on. But few mention such expenses being entailed as does

one Italian,[137] leaving Dover in 1606. Apparently he had to pay

for separate passports for each of his suite as well as himself, as

these cost forty reals. The "real of eight" was nearly equal to five

shillings English. The captain of the vessel demanded copies which

"cost very dear" and the harbour-keeper, furthermore, who had exacted

two giuli [six shillings], (each person?) on arrival, required double

at departure.

Guide-books seem to have been from two to four times the price of

Baedekers, a minor item, but considerable, like food and lodging. It

may seem, at first sight, as if food and lodging were far from minor

items, and that truly, of course, if only the total expenditure is

considered. But in considering, as is being done here, relative cost

only, that is, the cost of travel in so far as it has altered since

three centuries ago, it has to be borne in mind that the average cost

of food and shelter never alters; it is only standards of living that

alter. If any one took the average price of meals, say, in Europe then

and average prices now, and showed a difference of net cost between

them, his calculations must either be based on misleading information,

or else would prove that the figure he was multiplying with to equate

values was a wrong one. This, of course, refers to necessaries;

luxuries must be ruled out for two reasons: first, all attempts to

fix a standard or strike an average breaks down for lack of a basis;

second, they do not test what any one is called upon to spend but only

how much he can spend if he is fool enough to try. Thus, for example,

when Montaigne tells us that the charges at the "Vaso d'Oro" at Rome

would be about twenty crowns [£35] a month, we may conclude that if we

ascertain what the average charges would be for the same accommodation

at a first-rate hotel to-day, it is a more reasonable plan to take

the difference as the difference between their money-values and ours

than to accept a surplus in either, according to the usually accepted

multiplying figure, as defining an increase or decrease in hotel

charges.

Yet for all this, something remains to be said. A modern tourist often

finds himself in the position of drawing his income from a locality

where money is cheaper or dearer than in the districts where he is

making his payments. Now, three hundred years ago, he would have met

with these fluctuations more frequently and more suddenly than would

be the case to-day; and when met with, they would often have been more

violent. In so far as this was the case, so far is the relative cost

affected. The causes of these fluctuations may be divided into (1)

local custom, (2) insufficient linking-up of supply and demand. Hungary

may be taken as an example of the latter, Germany of the former, cause;

Poland and Spain of districts where social and economic forces jib

at separate classification. In Hungary and the districts southeast

of it the most seasoned traveller never failed to be astonished at

the ideal natural conditions; "wheat," as Sir Thomas Browne's son

said of Transylvania in particular a little later, "had no value in

relation to the subsistence of a human being." There was no outlet

for its products; the continual state of war kept commerce paralysed;

Vienna had little need of it, Constantinople none at all; what the

fertility of the soil produced so abundantly was thus available for

local consumption only. Especially was this the case with products that

needed no human tending; the man who ate a whole penn'orth of fish

risked bursting. In Germany prices ruled low, yet so excessive was the

drunkenness, and so general, that it was a moral impossibility to live

cheaply without cutting one's self off from human society. Supper over,

for instance, the "schlafftrinke" was set on the table, and whoever

touched a drop of it had, by custom, to pay an even share with those

who drank till morning.

The Spanish diet, which was such a trial to the inside if the stranger

did conform to it, was equally a trial to his pocket if he did not.

One tried both ways on one day in 1670.[138] At noon he shared the

landlord's dinner, paying a real [2s. 6d.] for vegetables, dried fish,

fruit; but when in the evening he was one of six who dined on four

fowls and neck of mutton, his bill came to the equivalent of £1 5s. not

including wine. Poland, on the contrary, being the granary of Europe

and exporting much else besides grain, rich in serf labour, and with

its retail trade in the hands of denationalised aliens who were well

under control, could afford to import plenty of luxuries and enjoyed

abundance of necessaries: a goose or a pig for the equivalent of 1s.

6d., a loin of mutton for 1s.—such were prices in Poland.

A good test of relative cheapness is the value of the coin most

generally useful; in Poland these were the brass 'banns,' worth about

a penny farthing in to-day's values. Of Italy a similar statement may

be made; of England just the contrary. And this presence, or absence,

of plenty of small coins affects the tourist in two ways; partly in

relation to his food, because the more common small change is, the more

commonly customary is it to sell food in quantities suited to a single

meal for one; secondly, the smaller the change, the smaller the tips.

Before leaving the subject of food, an example may be quoted of the

violence of the fluctuations in prices at that date when the means of

carriage and of making wants known in time were so crude. Sir Henry

Wotton writes, of his own knowledge, that the price of victuals at

Venice was three times as high in 1608 as it had been in 1604.

Lastly, as regards necessary expenditure, what did their money itself

cost them?

To begin with, the far greater length of time usually necessary then to

prove identity, or to confirm references, must not be lost sight of,

seeing how much it added to the seriousness of the hope deferred that

maketh the pocket empty.

Next, to deal with the ways of remedying this—there were three ways,

(1) Carrying cash; (2) depositing money with a merchant, or a friend,

who either remits coins or advises an amount; (3) letters of credit.

Carrying cash meant carrying coins. At any rate, not one of these

travellers mentions using the bank-notes of the day, the 'segni

reppresentativi' just introduced by the Italian bankers, nor even the

ancient semi-currency of jewels, unless one includes Henri III, who,

when escaping from the throne of Poland to that of France, carried

off three hundred thousand crowns' worth. Carrying coins for future

use meant, in the ordinary way, sewing them up in one's clothes. The

favourite place was inside a waistband of the breeches, a double one

designed for that purpose, made of leather or canvas, forming a series

of little pockets, all closed by pulling one string. It was so that

Lithgow was carrying one hundred and thirty-seven double pieces of gold

[probably double pistoles, equal to £500], when he and the gold were

seized by the Inquisition at Malaga. Next to the waistband, under the

arm-pits was the most usual spot; but it is given as advisable to use

one's shabbiest garments in any case for this purpose, as the least

likely to be searched thoroughly by robbers. In Muscovy the boots were

more often used than other articles. A small reserve might be wrapped

round with mending-material, with needles sticking into it to add to

the innocence of its appearance; or it might be hidden at the bottom

of a pot of ointment. By this latter means Moryson saved himself from

utter destitution when robbed, having chosen ointment which smelt,

apparently, like the Muscovite's fish. Equally ingenious and successful

was another who smuggled all his money past the Mohammedan customs by

hiding it in pork. Mohammedans themselves used their turbans.

[Illustration: QUITTANCE DU 18 JUIN 1548

_Je moy Francoys Rabeles medecin de monseigneur reverendissime du

Bellay confesse avoir receu de M. Benvenuto Olivier et comp(agnie) de

Rome la somme de trente deulx escuz d'or en or lesquelz 32 escus il

m'ont payez en vertu d'une lettre de change du XVIII^e de may dernier

passé de Thomas Delbenne et comp(agnie) de Paris et eulx à l'instance

de M^e Arnauld Combraglia. Et en foy de ce j'ay faict faire la presente

tierze quittance laquel sera soubscripte de ma propre main. Ce XVIII^e

de juing 1548 en Rome._

_Ita est. F. Rabelais, manu propriâ._

RABELAIS RECEIVES SOME MONEY]

The advantages of carrying money in this way—that of having it at hand

for certain—was outweighed by the chances of robbery or confiscation;

the latter by reason of there being legal limits to the amounts that

might be taken away from countries and towns. Lyons was the most

liberal, allowing sometimes eighty, sometimes one hundred "crowns of

the sun" [£144 to £180]. Turin allowed fifty silver crowns [£75],

Naples twenty-five; Rome, according to an edict in 1592, no more than

five gold crowns [£8]. The rule in Spain was that no gold was to leave

the country, and Spanish towns often enforced this against each other;

from Murcia in 1617 no more than ten "reals of eight" [£11 5s.] might

be taken free, but gold was not confiscated, duty being levied instead.

As for England, Hentzner found the limit of £10 in 1599, as did Gölnitz

in some year soon after 1618, although Moryson, writing between these

dates, gives £20. Still earlier, the Frenchman Perlin, who was here at

the beginning of Queen Mary's reign, says that a pedestrian may take

no more than ten crowns [£27], a horseman twenty, out of the realm;

adding, however, that a man may convert the rest of his cash into goods

and so, by realising these goods later, prevent confiscation; and also,

that by accompanying an ambassador one is exempt from search. When

it is remembered, further, that Francis Davison got inserted in his

license to travel a clause enabling him to carry fifty pounds across

with him (for three persons), that there were trustworthy merchants who

would authorise correspondents abroad to pay the traveller whatever

the latter might have deposited with them, and that these customs

concerning the export of gold and silver were in use throughout Europe,

it will be seen that if a traveller suffered loss by confiscation, he

deserved his losses.

By far the greater number had their money advised at a cost of five to

fifteen per cent, usually ten per cent, as against the three-quarters

per cent which would probably represent a maximum of loss by exchange

to-day to tourists. An unknown quantity lay in the differences of

values, which might yield a profit, or might involve heavy loss.

Bimetallism prevailed all over Europe, and the values of gold and

silver both relative to each other and positive, fluctuated far more

violently than is the case to-day. When Cavendish returned to England

after his first circumnavigation of the world, the plunder depreciated

gold in London by one twelfth; in 1603 the exchange from Venice to

London was twenty-eight per cent in favour of Venice; in 1606 it was

six per cent higher London to Venice than Venice to London.

But with all its disadvantages, remitting by advice was the most

generally satisfactory and used method. The tenour of an average bill,

however, has changed somewhat, "at sight" being the only one of the

variable terms equally customary both then and now. Bills not drawn

"at sight" were drawn at "usance," "half usance," or "double usance";

"usance" signifying a month as a rule. Exceptions were, of course, for

longer distances, such as London and Venice, when "usance" meant three

months; and how completely "usance" is a term of the past is shown by

the fact that the periods implied by "usance," in the rare cases in

which it is still found in use, have not altered since the sixteenth

century, in spite of the advance in the quickness of communications.

"Thirds of exchange," now nearly as extinct as "usances," were then

kept in regular use by the uncertainty of the posts; and in view of

the difficulties in the way of identification and the advantage that

money-changers were likely to take of them, advices often contained a

description of the payee.[139]

Method No. 3, letters of credit, was a more expensive one than

remittance by advice, but for places for which no "usance" was

established, was obligatory; under favourable circumstances it might

cost no more than ten per cent. There is evidence enough to justify

conjecture that the English government allowed their credit to be used

sometimes for the convenience of tourists in order to facilitate a

watch being kept on their movements.[140]

Barter also ought not to be wholly left out of sight. In Norway dried

fish was more serviceable than coin, as was tobacco among Turks, the

only people prompt to copy the English in the use of it for pleasure;

but by the middle of the seventeenth century the same might be said of

Western Russia. And there is the case of one Thomas Douglas in 1600

who could not make arrangements for four hundred crowns to be advised

for him at Algiers, applying to the English government for leave to

take with him duty-free the broadcloth he had bought with the money

and meant to realise there, to discharge the ransom which the money

represented.[141]

Supposing, however, that all these means failed? The tourist became

a beggar till he found friends. He might try, of course, to raise a

loan, but only on terms which would possibly induce him to prefer

beggary. The "German Ulysses," Karl Nützel of Nuremberg, was robbed at

Alexandria of his capital; at Cairo he persuaded a ship's captain to

lend him four hundred ducats, undertaking to pay him six hundred at

Constantinople. They arrived thither in two months; the interest was

therefore at the rate of three hundred per cent.[142] Sir Henry Wotton,

when an ambassador, paid twenty per cent for a loan at Venice.

In considering loans we have passed away from necessities into the

second half of the subject of cost,—its reasonable possibilities.

These consist of the risks and difficulties to which the traveller was

liable, nowhere summarised so well as in the English Litany, which was

written at this period:—

"From lightning and tempest; from plague, pestilence and famine; from

battle and murder; and from sudden death,

"Good Lord, deliver us."

Of the eight risks here mentioned, to most of which an Englishman

at least was more liable abroad than at home, all but two have been

minimised since. And if we note how in all other clauses of the Litany,

only those troubles or desires which have affinity with each other are

grouped together, it becomes significant in what company travellers are

prayed for;—

"That it may please thee to preserve all that travel by land or water,

all women labouring of child, all sick persons, and young children;

and to shew thy pity upon all prisoners and captives.

We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord."

To take the risk of violence first, and, among the forms of violence,

war, it has to be remembered that the United Provinces was the only

State whose soldiers were paid punctually. An effect of this laxness

may be traced in the experience of a tourist in Picardy when the

latter had been reduced to such a state of destitution by war that the

commandants could not wring anything further out of the inhabitants

and therefore forced contributions from travellers who passed through.

In 1594 Moryson wished to remit from Venice to Paris, but no one had

any correspondence farther than Geneva on account of the civil wars,

in spite of these being nominally at an end. And they assured him it

was twenty to one he would be robbed by the disbanded soldiers (which

came true), and, if robbed, would be killed, because if they took him

for an enemy they would think him well killed; if a friend, they would

kill him to avoid making restitution; and the marshals were so strictly

looked after that they would kill anyone who seemed likely to make

complaints. The effect on prices receives illustration by comparing

Andrew Boorde's experience of Aquitaine after a long period of peace

and prosperity,—that one pennyworth [say 10d.] of bread will feed a man

a week, and they sell nine cakes a penny, each cake being enough

to last a man a day, "except he be a ravener,"—with a letter from a

Venetian gentleman,[143] fifty-four years later, by which time civil

war had become chronic. He writes from England, where he found that a

good meal could be had for ten soldi [2s. 6d.], comparing this with

France, which he had just traversed, where the same could not be bought

for less than sixty soldi, or even a whole gold crown [£1 13s.]. As to

Germany, in 1623, only five years after the Thirty Years' War broke

out, Wotton writes that prices have risen enormously, "insomuch as I am

almost quite out of hope to find Conscience any more, since there is

none among the very hills and deserts, whither I thought she had fled."

[Illustration: LITHGOW IN TROUBLE]

The effect on communications goes without saying. Even worse

than that was the danger from those whom the horrible cruelty of

sixteenth-century warfare drove half-mad with grief and loss, who shook

off civilisation and robbed and murdered recklessly. According to

Aubigné, who witnessed the horrors which he dwells on at length in his

"Les Tragiques," war demoralised even the dogs in a way that endangered

every passer-by. Speaking of those around Moncontour, where was fought

one of the battles which left most bodies on the field,

Vous en voyez l'espreuve au champ de Moncontour;

Héréditairement ils ont, depuis ce jour,

La rage naturelle, et leur race enyvrée

Du sang des vrais François, se sent de la curée.

But it may be objected that the evidence of a sectarian historian is

not admissible on any question of fact. Take, then, what a sober

correspondent writes from the scene of the Thirty Years' War in 1639,

not of dogs, but of men: "It is an ordinary thing in Brandenburg

country to eat man's flesh,"[144] and he goes on to tell how a judge

has just met his death that way.

Again, De Thou, approaching Mérindol, finds not a soul to be seen; all

had retired to caves at the sight of armed men. Elsewhere he saw all

the peasants at work armed, and of one town nothing remained intact

but a fountain and one street; the work of a commander, in the king's

name, for the gratification of his private revenge. The state produced

is well described by Sir Thomas Overbury in 1609 as one in which there

was "no man but had an enemy within three miles, and so the country

became frontier all over." What "frontier" meant is well defined by an

Italian of this time as country to which a few could do no harm and in

which many could not live. The prosperity of the Empire while this was

the state of France has been already outlined; what it became, as a

result of the civil war, while France was becoming the best organised

and most civilised country in Europe, may be guessed from Reresby's

description of the district which in 1600 had been the most comfortable

in Christendom, that between Augsburg and Frankfurt; villages and

towns uninhabited, much ground untilled, no meat to be had, no

sheets, sometimes no beds; for drink, milk and water, little wine and

that sour and very dear; people so boorish as to resemble beasts.

Significant, too, is it that while Sir Philip Sidney, defining the

qualities of the dominions of Europe for his brother, writes, "Germany

doth excel in good laws and well administering of justice," and while

all subsequent travellers for forty years confirm this, a German,

Zeiler, compiled his guide to Spain shortly before the date when the

correspondent just quoted wrote his letter, and in this guide, in

maintaining the claims of Spain on the attention of the student, puts

among the characteristics in which Spain excels the rest of Europe, the

inflexibility of justice there.

Yet civil war was less detrimental to touring than international war,

inasmuch as no nation was barred the country for the time being.

Besides, fewer mercenaries were employed. Now, however bad the

native soldier may have been—and how bad that was may be judged from

Shakespeare's picture of him in "Henry V" (Act III, sc. 2),—mercenaries

were far worse, seeing that they behaved in the country they were

defending as the others did only in that which they attacked. Sastrow

followed in the wake of the mercenaries whom Charles V imported;

wherever they had passed the way was strewn with corpses. In one house

he found the body of a man who had been suspended by the genitals, a

usual custom, while they tortured him to make him reveal his valuables,

and released by a sword-stroke, not on the cord he hung by, but "flush

with the abdomen." From Bamberg they carried off four hundred women

as far as Nuremberg, while Hungarians cut off the feet and hands of

children and stuck them in their hats instead of feathers. And it is

perhaps worth while quoting the effect on Sastrow himself. On his

horse being stolen, he "chose the best nag at hand"; and finding a

gentleman's house temporarily abandoned, he and his companions stole

wholesale, not only to satisfy present wants, but also in order to

realise money later.

The effect of all this so far as it concerned tourists may be

exemplified by the state of the highroad between Danzig and Hamburg,

along which, in 1600, the only corpses in evidence were those of

criminals. By 1652, in one day's journey, a traveller[145] could

count thirty-four piles of faggots, each pile marking the spot where

a wayfarer had been murdered. Each passer-by was expected to add a

faggot. Another result was that soldiers continued to exercise during

peace the habits they had contracted in war. When Lady Fanshawe passed

through Abbeville in 1659, the governor warned her against local

robbers, advising an escort of garrison soldiers at a pistole [£3,

6s. 8d.] each. She engaged ten, and met a band of fifty 'robbers.' The

ten parleyed with the fifty, and the fifty retired; they, too, were

soldiers of the garrison.

Between the soldier and the robber, in fact, the difference was merely

that of official, and unofficial, employment. It was in the latter

capacity, of course, that they oftenest had dealings with the tourist;

or were supposed to do so. One cannot help being struck by the idea

that these travellers were far more frightened than hurt, so far as

robbery was concerned. A lady, for instance, between Turin and Genoa,

saw the road stained with blood where wayfarers had lately been robbed

and murdered, yet passed in safety.[146] One traveller, it is true,

was stopped four times between St. Malo and Havre, but more normal

experiences were those of Moryson, who suffered so but once in more

than four years' travel, and of Hentzner, who encountered robbers once

in three years and then escaped. He had warning and hired an escort;

but it has to be noted that this escort, for one day, cost more than

fifty crowns [£90]. Very similar was the experience of the Venetian

ambassador Lippomano on his way to Paris in 1577.[147] A rumour got

about that he was conveying a loan of eight hundred thousand francs

to the French government, and a Venetian ambassador was easy to get

information about because of the red trappings of his mules. He was

warned, and so were the towns on the route; with the result that his

own company were refused admission on suspicion that they were the

highwaymen in disguise; and watched, as they passed, by garrisons on

the walls. For six days they marched in continual fear; swords drawn,

arquebus-matches lighted. Once they thought the "volori" really were

upon them, but out of the cloud of dust galloped nothing but the escort

from Troyes to relieve the escort from Bar-sur-Seine. And in the end

they were fleeced by none but the escorts themselves.

These escorts were part of the life of the time; important towns kept

them as a matter of course, in default of a system of country-police

such as existed in Spain, the "Santa Hermandad," who first suppressed

the thieves and then took over, and extended, their business. In

France, however, towards the end of this period, the highways began to

be patrolled regularly by police, in couples, none but whom might carry

firearms. Yet this arrangement was in force when of the travellers

who followed just behind Evelyn on the Paris-Orleans road, four were

killed. And within a few years of this some one tells us how he heard

cries issuing from the inside of a dead horse, cut open by robbers in

order to give themselves more time to escape by fastening their victim

inside it, a dirty trick, literally, for he was pulled out in as untidy

a state as it was possible for a stark-naked man to be.

[Illustration: TRAVELLERS ATTACKED BY ROBBERS]

To meet, when alone, with two ruffians, to pretend, being on foot and

decidedly shabby, to be a beggar; and to pass them thus, not only

without loss, but with 1s. 2d. towards his next meal—such was the

experience of one Englishman abroad. But what could he have done had

the beasts been four-legged ones? Here was another risk to run; and,

perhaps, to pay for. There were plenty to meet. It is not surprising

to read of them breaking into stables and ransacking cemeteries in

Muscovy, where, by the way, protection against them was supposed to

be secured by the noise of a big stick dragging at the back of the

sledge by a rope; but things were little better near Paris. Readers

of Rabelais may recollect a second narrow escape that befell the six

pilgrims whom Gargantua ate in a salad in consequence of their hiding

among the lettuces to avoid being eaten by him as meat. After their

miraculous escape out of his mouth, they barely saved themselves from

falling into a snare for wolves. It was no exaggeration to write so

about Touraine; in the winter of 1653 a pack entered Blois and ate a

child. And just before Evelyn visited Fontainebleau, "a lynx or ounce"

had killed some one passing thither by the highroad from Paris. The

country between Geneva and Lyons, again, writes one who passed through

it, was "mainly inhabited by wolves and bears."

[Illustration: "WOLVES"]

But we have not finished with people. Slavery had to be reckoned with,

and therefore ransoms. More than one refers to the "malcontents" of

the Low Countries, unpaid Spanish garrison-soldiers who wandered about

on the look-out for Englishmen in particular, and esteeming a younger

brother's ransom at twenty thousand crowns of the sun [£35,000], says

Wotton. But the risk of capture, in the ordinary way, was confined

to Mohammedan territory and the neighbouring seashores, with Algiers

as headquarters. Many men who were slaves there at this period have

left record of their adventures; of whom Gramaye is perhaps the best

to quote from, inasmuch as no one was a more acute, thorough, and

trustworthy observer. He lived at Algiers in 1619, one of twenty

thousand Christian slaves. According to the statistics he gives of the

previous twelve years, two hundred and fifty-one ships had brought

in twelve thousand, two hundred and forty prisoners, of whom eight

hundred and fifty-seven Germans had apostatised, three hundred English,

one hundred and thirty-eight from Hamburg, "Danes and Easterlings"

one hundred and sixty; Poles, Hungarians, and Muscovites two hundred

and fifty, Low Countrymen one hundred and thirty; besides French and

others. Fewest renegades came from Spain and Italy, because in those

two countries alone were permanent systematic collectors of money for

ransoms; the two orders of the Trinity and of Our Lady of Pity paid out

sixty-three thousand ducats [over £70,000], in this way yearly, a

drain of gold which does not seem to have been taken into account by

economists, although not counteracted, but on the contrary increased,

by trade transactions with Mohammedan centres like Constantinople and

Aleppo, and added to by all the privately paid ransoms. Sir Anthony

Sherley ransomed two Portuguese gentlemen for ten thousand pounds, who

had been enslaved sixteen years, and for one of whom three ransoms had

been sent, each of which had been captured by pirates. The statement

already made about all forms of life insurance being censured as

gambling must be modified in connection with slavery, for both the law

and public opinion approved of a man paying premiums to assure a ransom

being paid, and that promptly, in the event of his capture; and the

system seems to have been in frequent use,[148] although it must be

admitted that not one of these travellers seems so much as aware of its

existence.

The expenses of protection against pirates may be imagined from

the estimate for the outfit of the galley intended to carry the

Provençal deputation to Constantinople in 1585, referred to earlier.

The galley-slaves numbered two hundred; the deputation fifty. Sixty

soldiers were to be taken for defence, whose wages for the eight months

were to be nineteen hundred and twenty crowns of the sun; in addition

to which was their keep, nine thousand and forty crowns, and arms and

gunpowder, five hundred crowns, the total equalling about twenty-seven

thousand pounds of our money.

Of Turkey Sir Henry Blount says that in assuring himself against

loss of liberty lay "the most expense and trouble of my voyage." And

Blount's opinion is the better worth having, seeing that he would

have been the last to fail in the exercise of courtesy and tact, the

absence of which is the commonest cause of martyrdom. Several times he

had to use his knife to avoid being pushed into a house, and hardly

a day passed without his Janizary being offered a price for him. His

defences against it in general were to cultivate or buy friends and to

make a practice of pretending he had no friends and little money, and

that all that remained to him was wagered against his return, because

enslavement would be more in hope of ransom than service.

The enslavement of the Jerusalem pilgrim seems to have been

comparatively rare before the end of the sixteenth century; yet two

of the most striking narratives belong to the year 1565. The first

adventure, however, happened during an excursion to Jordan without

escort, a risk that none dreamt of running later. A German, named

Fürer, set out in February, with a friend, a eunuch-interpreter, and

a monk-guide. Sitting down to a meal on the way back, four Arabs

appeared, whom they treated as guests; yet, the meal over, the Arabs

enquired whether their hosts had any money or garments worth stealing.

Doubting their negatives, they undressed them, and beneath the monkish

outer-garment which each one was wearing discovered on the two

travellers underclothing which suggested riches. The Arabs forthwith

led all four away into the desert to sell them at Medina, but were

induced before long to despatch the monk with two of themselves to the

nearest monastery, that of S. Saba, some hours' journey from Jerusalem,

for ransom. The remaining three Franks, unarmed, chose their time to

attack the two armed Arabs, and after a desperate fight and a fearful

journey, wounded, parched, and famished, Fürer climbed up a rope-ladder

into the monastery through one of the back-windows, while the two other

Arabs were being kept waiting in the front.

The other tale concerns sixty-two pilgrims who sailed from Jaffa in

the August of that same year.[149] On October 16 they were shipwrecked

off the coast of Asia Minor, one being drowned. On landing six were

killed, the rest taken prisoners, a proportion of whom go to Rhodes.

These are urged to apostatise—in vain. They offer ransoms; Frau Johanna

of Antwerp three hundred ducats [£540], Pastor Peter Villingen three

hundred and twelve kronen [which may mean anything from £200 to £800;

probably the former]: the total came to three thousand, two hundred and

sixty kronen. This does not seem enough to their owners; the Venetian

and some sailors get free somehow; the others are sent to the galleys.

During 1566 Frau Johanna and six others die. By May 1, 1568, seven more

are dead; two have been redeemed for six hundred kronen; two others for

four hundred and eighty kronen. Soon after, an Italian was ransomed by

the Venetian "bailo." This is all that is known of the sixty-two.

[Illustration: A SOUVENIR]

Another risk that was greater on the Jerusalem journey was that of

disease, or enfeeblement through hardship. The state of things normal

in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre must alone have told on health; one

German on his return to Jaffa counted two hundred and thirty lice in

his clothes. But, throughout, disease lay in wait for all in a deadlier

form than any we meet with. Just as instead of "nerves" they suffered

from "inflammation of the conscience," so, instead of influenza,

they had plague, infectious in the highest degree and fatal in a few

days, or quicker. In Constantinople it was looked on as inevitable

and raged unhindered. Yet, says Blount, the Turks' carelessness was

less of a hindrance to trade than the Christians' precautions. In

Venice, over the doors of the inn-bedrooms was written "Ricordati

della bolletta"—"Remember your bill of health." This "bolletta," or

"bolletina," also known as "fede" or "patente," had to be obtained,

before entering Venice, from the "commissari" or "soprastanti

della sanità," certifying freedom from plague; failing which, or if

a "fede" obtained elsewhere was not "clean," _i. e._ not bearing the

official counter-signatures guaranteeing freedom from plague at the

last stopping-places, the new-comer had to "far la contumacia," go

into quarantine for forty days. The disinfectants consisted of sun,

air, and vinegar, and the confinement, if not on board ship, was in

a spot chosen for its pleasant healthiness, under shelter which was

clean, roomy, and well furnished, with a broad verandah on which

one's belongings were to be laid out. This practice was constant at

Venice, where ships were always arriving from plague-stricken ports;

in the rest of Italy it was frequent but intermittent. Outside Italy

a plague-scare occurred more rarely. When it did the healthy but

tired wayfarers might find themselves shut out of the town where they

looked to find food and rest; perhaps would find the highway itself

barricaded[150] by the authorities of a town which was plague-free

and determined to remain so, and forced to ride all night by dark and

dangerous by-ways[151]—unless they pretended to be an ambassador and

his retinue, as some English merchants once did.

Too much stress must not be laid on the troubles of a stranger who

fell ill of a less deadly illness. Perhaps, even, a German with the

toothache might still have the same experience in Spain as did a

countryman of his three hundred years ago. Having tried a cupping-glass

himself in vain, he went to the local barber-surgeon; the latter

dug the tooth out with a bread-knife! Yet in hospitals a change for

the better can be easily proved. The chief hospital at Paris, the

Hôtel-Dieu, was visited by an Italian[152] in the middle of the

seventeenth century. Three or four men lay in each bed, or two women;

and the stench was terrible, even to a seventeenth-century nose. At

the galley-slaves' hospital at Marseilles, a boy went in front of

visitors with a "pan of perfume." Still more to the point, regarding

this particular period, was the predicament of a man at the point of

death in a district with a different theological stamp from his own,

say, a Protestant in a Roman Catholic country. He would then have the

choice of accepting the sacrament in the locally orthodox form or

confessing himself a Protestant. In the latter case the priest might

cut the heretic off from the help, not only of the doctor, but of the

cook also, and if he recovered in spite of this, the Inquisition might

be awaiting him. And yet a man of average morality would be far less of

an adiaphorist in the sixteenth century than to-day. Some Protestants

at Venice resigned themselves at death to the only cemetery-burial—that

with Roman Catholic rites; but most chose to be buried at sea off

Malamocco, trusting in the phrase, "And the sea shall give up its

dead."

As to the "sudden death" of which the Litany speaks, if one regards

direct evidence only, there may well be a tendency to think the risk of

it somewhat exaggerated, but the balance will recover itself if, to the

number of travellers who have left us record of their doings, is added

that of the dead men who would have told tales if they could. Mile

after mile of loneliest road had to be slowly traversed, many a mile

through forest where now is open ground, at a time when existed far

less force in conventions to restrain those, perhaps even more numerous

then than now, like the murderers of Banquo:—

... I am one

Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world

Have so incensed that I am reckless what

I do to spite the world.

... And I another

So weary with disasters, tugged with fortune

That I would set my life on any chance

To mend it or to be rid on't.

In the towns, the narrow dark streets gave the assassin his

opportunity, whether a mistaken one or not. Readers of Cellini's

autobiography will recall his remark that he trained himself to turn

corners wide and may have noted it as merely characteristic; but before

Cellini's book was in print, we find the French tourist, Payen of

Meaux, writing of the Venetians, "Quand ils marchent la nuit, ils ne

tournent jamais court pour entrer dans une Rue; mais ils tiennent le

milieu, afin d'éviter la rencontre de ceux qui voudroient les attendre."

Supposing, however, that a foreigner died in peace, what happened to

the money and chattels with him at the moment? According to Zeiler, in

Aragon the practice was to notify the authorities at his native place

and hold the goods at the disposal of the legal heirs for a year, after

which limit unclaimed property was handed to the Brotherhood of Our

Lady of Pity to be employed in the redemption of captives. In Rome the

custom was for the servant to take the dead master's clothes. In France

the State took absolutely everything by the "droit d'aubaine," which

was the law wherever feudalism had established itself, though sometimes

in abeyance; in Poland it seems to have been completely so.[153] The

strictness, on the contrary, with which it was enforced in France is

well illustrated by the fate of the library of Sir Kenelm Digby, who

died at Paris in 1665. It was forfeited to Louis XIV by the "droit

d'aubaine"; he gave it away; the new owner sold it to a relative of the

late owner for ten thousand crowns.

This right, based as it was on the same "right to pillage" under which

the Jews suffered in the Middle Ages,[154] brings out very clearly one

fact which was always liable to affect a traveller's finances, namely,

that in so far as he was a traveller, he had no legal privileges. Two

Dutch gentlemen,[155] for instance, were at Paris at a time when war

between Holland and France suddenly became imminent. They found the

financial agents forbidden to pay them on bills of exchange or letters

of credit, and their goods were temporarily confiscated. It was the

ordinary procedure of the time. Here again is obvious the advantage

of going in the train of an ambassador; the latter's rights were the

fullest protection that an alien could acquire, except mercantile ones

at their best. Yet even these ambassadorial rights lacked so much of

the fullness and the clearness that they possess to-day that they

were not put forward in a modern form, not even in theory, until the

treatise of Grotius on the subject published in 1625.[156]

These Dutch gentlemen just mentioned found themselves in difficulties

on their arrival in Paris in another way also. They had introductions

to good society; fashions had changed while they were en route; they

must stay in their lodgings till the tailor had done his worst. Even

if they had been going to Jerusalem they would still have felt the

relationship between cost and clothes, a relationship decidedly closer

then than at present. Only in going to Jerusalem it took this form,

that the shabbier you went the less the journey cost. As to kind,

preferably such as were worn by Greeks, friars, merchants, or Syrian

Christians. The pilgrim's ordinary dress, described in one of those

picturesque snatches of verse with which Shakespeare's contemporary,

Robert Greene, lightened his tales,—

Down the valley 'gan he track

Bag and bottle at his back.

In a surcoat all of grey,

Such wear palmers on the way

When with scrip and staff they see

Jesus' grave on Calvary,—

was no protection against suspicion of riches. Yet it was supposed to

lessen the risk of being kidnapped into slavery at Algiers on the road

to Montserrat if one carried the white pilgrim's staff.

Crossing the Alps, for a northerner who did not wish to be

conspicuously alien, meant a complete change into black silk; for the

brilliant attire which we see in productions of "Romeo and Juliet"

reflects Elizabethan England, not Italy. Italy manufactured those

multi-coloured materials, it is true, but for export or official use

only, except for the ash colour that betokened a vow not perfected.

Typical minor incidents were the purchasing of a new handkerchief in

Germany, of light-coloured silk, and, as to size, somewhat resembling a

saddle-cloth, with initials of some motto worked in a corner thereof,

say D. H. I. M. T. ("Der Herr ist Mein Trost") or W.H.I.B. ("Wie

heilig ist Bruderschaft"), and secondly, the story of a sugar-loaf hat.

An Italian priest wore it in Italy—but not in France. Before leaving

Lyons he had grown tired of a crowd of children following him about. So

far from being able to sell it, it was impossible to find any one who

would take it as a gift until he met a man whose business was partly

selling a powder which killed mice. The rest of his business was the

profession of town-fool. That being so, he could accept the hat; he

cut it into the shape of an imperial crown and gave himself out as the

Emperor of the Moluccas.

A complete change into French clothes cost this priest two pistoles

[£8], and he adds the detail that nowhere was waterproof material to be

bought. The waxed cloth which was sold as such cracked wherever it had

been folded.

On occasion, too, changes of clothes might be a legal obligation. The

sumptuary laws might step in and forbid the new-comer to wear what was

perhaps his one respectable garment. Or again, in Muscovy, foreigners

used to dress as natives to avoid the jeers of the crowd; but at some

date early in the seventeenth century the Patriarch noticed Germans

behaving irreverently at a festival and complained that foreigners

ought not to seem included in the benediction that was given to the

faithful. Foreigners were therefore ordered to revert to their national

dress, which produced most ludicrous results until the tailors could

finish new garments; inasmuch as the merchants had to fall back on

those that had belonged to their predecessors, leaving sometimes

a whole generation between the fashions of their upper and nether

garments.

All these things might fall on the tourist: each one cost money; some

one, at least, of them he would hardly escape. One more source of

possible loss existed, one that he was certain to have to face—the

money itself. The variety of coins was just as great as the variety of

clothes, though with this difference that the clothes were as local

as the coins were international—just the opposite of the case to-day.

This is not equally true, of course, of all denominations, and the

majority may not have circulated so freely as in preceding centuries,

but the higher ones seem to have passed about from hand to hand with

little more hesitation than Australian sovereigns do in England. When

exceptions occurred, they generally had political causes: French gold,

for example, being more willingly taken by the Swiss than other foreign

gold because they had become so used to it in the course of serving as

French mercenaries.

Of the uncertainties of the tourist, however, in relation to coins,

that caused by their international character would be the first to

disappear. There remained a trinity of diversities to bewilder him

permanently and to deliver him over, defenceless, to the dishonest:

diversity of value, diversity of kind, diversity of inscription.

To take the last first; it might seem that absence was a more

appropriate term than diversity, seeing that the nominal value of a

coin in circulation about 1600 was only in the smallest percentage of

cases stated on its face; and when one comes to think of it, it is only

the tourist who ever reads a coin for business purposes. Where the

diversity comes in lies in the fact of certain names becoming popular,

such as "paolo" in Italy, which meant that many different types would

be struck, all "paoli" but none alike. As to variations in value these

may be illustrated from the Venetian zecchino, the Hungarian ducat,

the sultanon of Constantinople and the sheriff of Cairo. All of these

are reckoned as equal in one year or other between 1592 and 1620 by

one or other trustworthy traveller, yet the differences of value of

one coin or other of the four vary from 6s. 8d. to 9s.; and this was

not a steady rise. In fact, the difference between the 1592 and 1620

valuations is but fourpence. Moreover, the settlement of values was far

less a commercial affair merely than it has become; governments were

forever tinkering at it by means of proclamations, all telling against

the tourist, since their object was to attract, or to retain, bullion,

which either depreciated the value of the coin he wished to change or

appreciated that of the coin he had to acquire. Lady Fanshawe mentions

a proclamation of October 14, 1664, at Madrid which cost her husband,

ambassador there, eight hundred pounds. Since then, paper money has

come to absorb all the political dishonesty that used to be exercised

on coins, and the far less abrupt modern methods minimise the loss to

the tourist. The French government went bankrupt fifty-six times during

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.[157]

As to the other diversity, that of kind, Lauder saw a proclamation

which assessed the values of five hundred coins then current in France.

The whole of the above refers mainly to gold and the higher

denominations of silver. Yet these more important coins were a simple

matter compared with small change, especially in Italy; for when the

tourist had been confronted with soldi, grossi, giuli, paoli, reali,

quattrini, susine, denari, cavallotti, cavallucci, carlini, bagatini,

bolignei, baocchi, baelli, etc., he could not but feel relieved when,

crossing the Alps, he had only to face Swiss plapparts and finfers and

the German batz, kreutzer, stiver, copstück, sesling, pfennig, and not

many more. The grosch perhaps ought to be mentioned as well if only for

the fact that Taylor, the "water-poet," when at Hamburg, noticed that

among twenty-three groschen he had in his pocket there were thirteen

varieties, owing to the number of local mints. He valued all these at

twopence each, but as a matter of fact groschen varied so greatly that

to give one away might be either extravagance or an insult. There were,

of course, many multiples of these denominations, and besides coins,

tokens innumerable, all having but this in common that when one had

gone a few miles further they would not be taken in payment. They might

be made of base metal, like that of the famous "Mermaid" tavern which

is preserved at the "birthplace" at Stratford-on-Avon, or of leather,

or almost anything else solid.

In Muscovy were no native coins but silver, and those so small that the

Muscovites used to keep dozens in their mouths because they slipped

through their fingers—and that without incommoding their speech. In

Spain,[158] so far as there was any standard, it was the Castilian

real, which you might exchange for thirty-four Castilian maravedis,

forty Portuguese rais, thirty-six Valencian dineros, twenty-four

Aragonese, and thirty-eight Catalonian dineros. But these Portuguese

coins would not be taken in Castile, nor the Castilian in Valencia, nor

Valencian anywhere out of Valencia. Along the chief merchants' road

in Spain, from Barcelona, you might go one hundred miles, as far as

Lerida, and find every place with a different minor coinage, current

there only, and in Barcelona one was especially liable to receive coins

which no one, not even in Barcelona, would accept.

On the Jerusalem journey the higher payments were reckoned in foreign

money usually, the Italian gold zecchini and silver piastri most

frequently; smaller ones in brass meidines of Tripoli or of Cairo,

equal to about a penny farthing and twopence respectively, or in

aspers, about three farthings.

Just as, further, the tourist could examine a coin without being able

to find out its nominal value, could ascertain the latter and still

be ignorant of its real value, so, too, he was continually having to

pay reckonings in coins which did not exist. The Venetian and Spanish

ducat, the German gulden, the French livre tournois, the Muscovite

rouble, and, later, their altine also, were coins of account only.

All these coins were as commonly used in daily business in their own

localities as guineas are in English charities; and the ducat and the

gulden far outside them. In the seventeenth century the Spanish pistole

was actual coin in its own country and coin of account in France;

board and lodging on "pension" terms would be reckoned in pistoles in

Paris. In fact, the French equivalent for "rolling in riches," "cousu

de pistoles," is equally evidence of the international character of

seventeenth-century gold and of the method of carrying it.

The tourist in 1600 has done his touring. His money is spent; his

pleasure is buried; his wisdom gathered; and the fruit is ours.

And now; was the pleasure worth the money? was the wisdom worth the

gathering?

The answer is, most emphatically, Yes!—Yes for them, and Yes for us.