CHAPTER III
SOME CYNICAL ASPERSIONS UPON THE BENEFITS OF TRAVEL
The traveller newly returned from foreign lands was a great butt for the satirists. In Elizabethan times his bows and tremendous politeness, his close-fitting black clothes from Venice, his French accent, his finicky refinements, such as perfumes and pick-tooths, were highly offensive to the plain Englishman. One was always sure of an appreciative audience if he railed at the "disguised garments and desperate hats" of the "affectate traveller" how; his attire spoke French or Italian, and his gait cried "behold me!" how he spoke his own language with shame and loathing.[100] "You shall see a dapper Jacke, that hath beene but over at Deepe,[101] wring his face round about, as a man would stir up a mustard-pot, and talke English through the teeth, like ... Monsieur Mingo de Moustrap."[102] Nash was one of the best at describing some who had lived in France for half-a-dozen years, "and when they came home, they have hyd a little wéerish leane face under a broad French hat, kept a terrible coyle with the dust in the stréete in their long cloaks of gray paper, and spoke English strangely. Naught else have they profited by their travell, save learnt to distinguish of the true Burdeaux Grape, and know a cup of neate Gascoygne wine from wine of Orleance; yea, and peradventure this also, to esteeme of the poxe as a pimple, to weare a velvet patch on their face, and walke melancholy with their armes folded."[103]
The Frenchified traveller came in for a good share of satire, but darker things were said of the Italianate Englishman. He was an atheist--a creature hitherto unknown in England--who boldly laughed to scorn both Protestant and Papist. He mocked the Pope, railed on Luther, and liked none, but only himself.[104] "I care not," he said, "what you talk to me of God, so as I may have the prince and the laws of the realm on my side."[105] In politics he allied himself with the Papists, they being more of his way of living than the Puritans, but he was faithless to all parties.[106] In private life he was vicious, and practised "such villainy as is abominable to declare," for in Italy he had served Circes, who turns men into beasts.[107] "But I am afraid," says Ascham, "that over many of our travellers unto Italy do not eschew the way to Circe's Court: but go and ryde and runne and flie thether, they make great hast to cum to her; they make great sute to serve her: yea, I could point out some with my finger that never had gone out of England, but onlie to serve Circes in Italie. Vanitie and vice and any licence to ill living in England was counted stale and rude unto them."[108]
It is likely that some of these accusations were true. Italy more than any other country charmed the Elizabethan Englishman, partly because the climate and the people and the look of things were so unlike his own grey home. Particularly Venice enchanted him. The sun, the sea, the comely streets, "so clean that you can walk in a Silk Stockin and Sattin Slippes,"[109] the tall palaces with marble balconies, and golden-haired women, the flagellants flogging themselves, the mountebanks, the Turks, the stately black-gowned gentlemen, were new and strange, and satisfied his sense of romance. Besides, the University of Padua was still one of the greatest universities in Europe. Students from all nations crowded to it. William Thomas describes the "infinite resorte of all nacions that continually is seen there. And I thinke verilie, that in one region of all the worlde againe, are not halfe so many straungers as in Italie; specially of gentilmen, whose resorte thither is principallie under pretence of studie ... all kyndes of vertue maie there be learned: and therfore are those places accordyngly furnisshed: not of suche students alone, as moste commonly are brought up in our universitees (meane mens children set to schole in hope to live upon hyred learnyng) but for the more parte of noble mens sonnes, and of the best gentilmen: that studie more for knowledge and pleasure than for curiositee or luker: ... This last wynter living in Padoa, with diligent serche I learned, that the noumbre of scholers there was little lesse than fiftene hundreth; whereof I dare saie, a thousande at the lest were gentilmen."[110]
The life of a student at Padua was much livelier than the monastic seclusion of an English university. He need not attend many lectures, for, as Thomas Hoby explains, after a scholar has been elected by the rectors, "He is by his scholarship bound to no lectures, nor nothing elles but what he lyst himselfe to go to."[111] So being a gentleman and not a clerk, he was more likely to apply himself to fencing or riding: For at Padua "there passeth no shrof-tide without rennyng at the tilte, tourneiyng, fighting at the barriers and other like feates of armes, handled and furnisshed after the best sort: the greatest dooers wherof are scholers."[112]
Then, too, the scholar diversified his labours by excursions to Venice, in one of those passenger boats which plied daily from Padua, of which was said "that the boat shall bee drowned, when it carries neither Monke, nor Student, nor Curtesan.... the passengers being for the most part of these kinds"[113] and, as Moryson points out, if he did not, by giving offence, receive a dagger in his ribs from a fellow-student, he was likely to have pleasant discourse on the way.[114] Hoby took several trips from Padua to Venice to see such things as the "lustie yong Duke of Ferrandin, well accompanied with noble menn and gentlemen ... running at the ring with faire Turks and cowrsars, being in a maskerie after the Turkishe maner, and on foote casting of eggs into the wyndowes among the ladies full of sweete waters and damaske Poulders," or like the Latin Quarter students who frequent "La Morgue," went to view the body of a gentleman slain in a feud, laid out in state in his house--"to be seen of all men."[115] In the outlandish mixture of nations swarming at Venice, a student could spend all day watching mountebanks, and bloody street fights, and processions. In the renowned freedom of that city where "no man marketh anothers dooynges, or meddleth with another mans livyng,"[116] it was no wonder if a young man fresh from an English university and away from those who knew him, was sometimes "enticed by lewd persons:" and, once having lost his innocence, outdid even the students of Padua. For, as Greene says, "as our wits be as ripe as any, so our willes are more ready than they all, to put into effect any of their licentious abuses."[117] Thus arose the famous proverb, "An Englishman Italianate is a devil incarnate."
Hence the warnings against Circes by even those authors most loud in praise of travel. Lipsius bids his noble pupil beware of Italian women: " ... inter fæminas, formæ conspicuæ, sed lascivæ et procaces."[118] Turler must acknowledge "an auntient complaint made by many that our countrymen usually bring three thinges with them out of Italye: a naughty conscience, an empty purse, and a weak stomache: and many times it chaunceth so indeede." For since "youth and flourishing yeeres are most commonly employed in traveill, which of their owne course and condicion are inclined unto vice, and much more earnestly imbrace the same if it be enticed thereto," ... "many a time pleasures make a man not thinke on his returne," ... but he is caught by the songs of Mermaids, "so to returne home with shame and shame enough."[119]
It was necessary also to warn the traveller against those more harmless sins which we have already mentioned: against an arrogant bearing on his return to his native land, or a vanity which prompted him at all times to show that he had been abroad, and was not like the common herd. Perhaps it was an intellectual affectation of atheism or a cultivated taste for Machiavelli with which he was inclined to startle his old-fashioned countrymen. Almost the only book Sir Edward Unton seems to have brought back with him from Venice was the Historie of Nicolo Machiavelli, Venice, 1537. On the title page he has written: "Macchavelli Maxima / Qui nescit dissimulare / nescit vivere / Vive et vivas / Edw. Unton. /"[120] Perhaps it was only his display of Italian clothes--"civil, because black, and comely because fitted to the body,"[121] or daintier table manners than Englishmen used which called down upon him the ridicule of his enemies. No doubt there was in the returned traveller a certain degree of condescension which made him disagreeable--especially if he happened to be a proud and insolent courtier, who attracted the Queen's notice by his sharpened wits and novelties of discourse, or if he were a vain boy of the sort that cumbered the streets of London with their rufflings and struttings.