"In the first place, endeavour to settle him in his religion, as the basis of all our other hopes, and the more to be considered in regard of the looseness of the place where you are. I doubt not but you have well considered of the resolve to travel to Italy, yet I have this to say for my fond fears (besides the imbecility of my sex) my affections are all contracted into one head: also I know the hotness of his temper, apt to feverishness. Yet I submit him to your total management, only praying the God of Heaven to direct you for the best, and to make him tractable to you, and laborious for his own advancement."[313]
A governor became increasingly necessary as the arbiter of what was modish for families whose connection with the fashionable world was slight. He assumed airs of authority, and took to writing books on how the Grand Tour should be made. Such is The Voyage of Italy, with Instructions concerning Travel, by Richard Lassels, Gent., who "travelled through Italy Five times, as Tutor to several of the English Nobility and Gentry."[314] Lassels, in reciting the benefits of travel, plays upon that growing sensitiveness of the country gentleman about his innocent peculiarities: "The Country Lord that never saw anybody but his Father's Tenants and M. Parson, and never read anything but John Stow, and Speed; thinks the Land's-end to be the World's-end; and that all solid greatness, next unto a great Pasty, consists in a great Fire, and a great estate;" or, "My Country gentleman that never travelled, can scarce go to London without making his Will, at least without wetting his hand-kerchief."[315]
The Grand Tour, of course, is the remedy for these weaknesses--especially under the direction of a wise governor. More care should go to choosing that governor than to any other retainer. For lacqueys and footmen "are like his Galoshooes, which he leaves at the doors of those he visits," but his governor is like his shirt, always next him, and should therefore be of the best material. The revelation of bad governors in Lassels' instructions are enough to make one recoil from the Grand Tour altogether. These "needy bold men" led pupils to Geneva, where the pupils lost all their true English allegiance and respect for monarchy; they kept them in dull provincial cities where the governor's wife or mistress happened to live. "Others have been observed to sell their pupils to Masters of exercises, and to have made them believe that the worst Academies were the best, because they were the best to the cunning Governour, who had ten pound a man for every one he could draw thither: Others I have known who would have married their Pupils in France without their Parents' knowledge";[316] ... and so forth, with other more lurid examples.
The difficulties of procuring the right sort of governor were hardly exaggerated by Lassels. The Duke of Ormond's grandson had just such a dishonest tutor as described--one who instead of showing the Earl of Ossory the world, carried him among his own relations, and "buried" him at Orange.[317] It seems odd, at first sight, that the Earl of Salisbury's son should be entrusted to Sir John Finet, who endeared himself to James the First by his remarkable skill in composing "bawdy songs."[318] It astonishes us to read that Lord Clifford's governor, Mr Beecher, lost his temper at play, and called Sir Walter Chute into the field,[319] or that Sir Walter Raleigh's son was able to exhibit his governor, Ben Jonson, dead-drunk upon a car, "which he made to be drawn by pioneers through the streets, at every corner showing his governor stretched out, and telling them that was a more lively image of a crucifix than any they had."[320] But it took a manly man to be a governor at all. It was not safe to select a merely intelligent and virtuous tutor; witness the case of the Earl of Derby sent abroad in 1673, with Mr James Forbes, "a gentleman of parts, virtue and prudence, but of too mild a nature to manage his pupil." The adventures of these two, as narrated by Carte in his life of Ormond, are doubtless typical.
"They had not been three months at Paris, before a misunderstanding happened between them that could not be made up, so that both wrote over to the duke (of Ormond) complaining of one another. His grace immediately dispatched over Mr Muleys to inquire into the ground of the quarrel, in order to reconcile them.... The earl had forgot the advice which the duke had given him, to make himself acquainted with the people of quality in France, and to keep as little correspondence with his own countrymen, whilst he was abroad, as was consistent with good manners; and had formed an intimate acquaintance with a lewd, debauched young fellow whom he found at Paris, and who was the son of Dr Merrit, a physician. The governor had cautioned his young nobleman against creating a friendship with so worthless a person, who would draw him into all manner of vice and expense, and lead him into numberless inconveniences. Merrit, being told of this, took Mr Forbes one day at an advantage in an house, and wounded him dangerously. The earl, instead of manifesting his resentment as he ought in such a case, seemed rather pleased with the affair, and still kept on his intimacy with Merrit. The duke finding that Merrit had as ill a character from all that knew him in London, as Mr Forbes had given him, easily suspected the earl was in the wrong, and charged Muleys to represent to him the ill fame of the man, and how unworthy he was of his lordship's acquaintance and conversation....
"When Muleys came to Paris, he found the matters very bad on Lord Derby's side, who had not only countenanced Merrit's assault, but, at the instigation of some young French rakes, had consented to his governor's being tossed in a blanket. The earl was wild, full of spirits, and impatient of restraint: Forbes was a grave, sober, mild man, and his sage remonstrances had no manner of effect on his pupil. The duke, seeing what the young gentleman would be at, resolved to send over one that should govern him. For this purpose he pitched upon Colonel Thomas Fairfax, a younger son of the first lord Fairfax, a gallant and brave man (as all the Fairfaxes were), and roughly honest. Lord Derby was restless at first: but the colonel told him sharply, that he was sent to govern him, and would govern him: that his lordship must submit, and should do it; so that the best method he had to take, was to do it with decorum and good humour. He soon discharged the vicious and scandalous part of the earl's acquaintance, and signified to the rest, that he had the charge of the young nobleman, who was under his government: and therefore if any of them should ever have a quarrel with his pupil, who was young and inexperienced, he himself was their man, and would give them satisfaction. His courage was too well known to tempt anybody make a trial of it; the nobleness of his family, and his own personal merit, procured him respect from all the world, as well as from his pupil. No quarrel happened: the earl was reclaimed, being always very observant of his governor. He left Paris, and passing down the Loire went to the south of France, received in all places by the governors of towns and provinces with great respect and uncommon marks of honour and distinction. From thence he went into Italy, making a handsome figure in all places, and travelling with as much dignity as any nobleman whatever at little more than one thousand two hundred pounds a year expense; so easy is it to make a figure in those countries with virtue, decorum, and good management."[321]
This concluding remark of Carte's gives us the point of view of certain families; that it was more economical to live abroad. It certainly was--for courtiers who had to pay eighty pounds for a suit of clothes--without trimming[322]--and spent two thousand pounds on a supper to the king.[323] Francis Osborn considered one of the chief benefits of travel to be the training in economy which it afforded: "Frugality being of none so perfectly learned as of the Italian and the Scot; Natural to the first, and as necessary to the latter."[324] Notwithstanding, the cost of travel had in the extravagant days of the Stuarts much increased. The Grand Tour cost more than travel in Elizabethan days, when young men quietly settled down for hard study in some German or Italian town. Robert Sidney, for instance, had only £100 a year when he was living with Sturm. "Tearm yt as you wyll, it ys all I owe you," said his father. "Harry Whyte ... shall have his £20 yearly, and you your £100; and so be as mery as you may."[325] Secretary Davison expected his son, his tutor, and their servant to live on this amount at Venice. "Mr. Wo." had said this would suffice.[326] If "Mr Wo." means Mr Wotton, as it probably does, since Wotton had just returned from abroad in 1594, and Francis Davison set out in 1595, he was an authority on economical travel, for he used to live in Germany at the rate of one shilling, four pence halfpenny a day for board and lodging.[327] But he did not carry with him a governor and an English servant. Moryson, Howell, and Dallington all say that expenses for a servant amounted to £50 yearly. Therefore Davison's tutor quite rightly protested that £200 would not suffice for three people. Although they spent "not near so much as other gentlemen of their nation at Venice, and though he went to market himself and was as frugal as could be, the expenses would mount up to forty shillings a week, not counting apparel and books." "I protest I never endured so much slavery in my life to save money," he laments.[328] When learning accomplishments in France took the place of student-life in Italy, expenses naturally rose. Moryson, who travelled as a humanist, for "knowledge of State affaires, Histories, Cosmography, and the like," found that fifty or sixty pounds were enough to "beare the charge of a Traveller's diet, necessary apparrell, and two Journies yeerely, in the Spring and Autumne, and also to serve him for moderate expences of pleasure."[329] But Dallington found that an education of the French sort would come to just twice as much. "If he Travell without a servant fourscore pounds sterling is a competent proportion, except he learne to ride: if he maintaine both these charges, he can be allowed no lesse than one hundred and fiftie poundes: and to allowe above two hundred, were superfluous, and to his hurte. And thus rateably, according to the number he keepeth.
"The ordinarie rate of his expence, is this: ten gold crownes a moneth his owne dyet, eight for his man, (at the most) two crownes a moneth his fencing, as much dancing, no lesse his reading, and fiftene crownes monethly his ridings: but this exercise he shall discontinue all the heate of the yeare. The remainder of his 150 pound I allow him for apparell, bookes, Travelling charges, tennis play, and other extraordinaire expences."[330] A few years later Howell fixes annual expense at £300--(£50 extra for every servant.) These three hundred pounds are to pay for riding, dancing, fencing, tennis, clothes, and coach hire--a new item of necessity. An academy would seem to have been a cheaper means of learning accomplishments. For about £110 one might have lodging and diet for himselfe and a man and be taught to ride, fence, ply mathematics, and so forth.[331] Lassels very wisely refrains from telling those not already persuaded, what the cost will be for the magnificent Grand Tour he outlines. We calculate that it would be over £500, for the Earl of Cork paid £1000 a year for his two sons, their governor, only two servants and only saddle-horses:[332] whereas Lassels hints that no one with much pretension to fashion could go through Paris without a coach followed by three lacqueys and a page.[333] Evelyn, at any rate, thought the expenses of a traveller were "vast": "And believe it Sir, if he reap some contentment extraordinary, from what he hath observed abroad, the pains, sollicitations, watchings, perills, journeys, ill entertainment, absence from friends, and innumerable like inconveniences, joyned to his vast expences, do very dearly, and by a strange kind of extortion, purchase that smal experience and reputation which he can vaunt to have acquired from abroad."[334]
Perhaps some details from the education of Robert Boyle will serve to illustrate the manner of taking the Grand Tour. His father, the great Earl of Cork, was a devoted adherent to this form of education and launched his numerous sons, two by two, upon the Continent. He was, as Boyle says, the sort of person "who supplied what he wanted in scholarship himself, by being both a passionate affecter, and eminent patron of it."[335] His journal for 1638 records first the return of "My sones Lewis and Roger from their travailes into foreign kingdomes,... ffor which their safe retorn, god be ever humbly and heartely thancked and praised both by me and them."[336] In the same year he recovered the Lord Viscount of Kynalmeaky and the Lord of Broghill, with Mr Marcombes, their governor, from their foreign travels into France and Italy. Then it was the turn of Francis and Robert, just removed from Eton College. With the governor Marcombes, a French servant, and a French boy, they departed from London in October 1639, "having his Majestie's license under his hand and privy signett for to continew abrode 3 yeares: god guide them abrod and safe back."[337]
Robert, according to his autobiography, was well satisfied to go, but Francis, aged fifteen, had just been married to one of the Queen's Maids of Honour, aged fourteen, and after four days of revelry was in no mood to be thrust back into the estate of childhood.[338] High words passed between him and his father on the occasion of his enforced departure for Paris. He was so agitated that he mislaid his sword and pistols--at least so we hear by the first letter Marcombes writes from Paris. "Mr Francis att his departure from London was so much troubled because of your Lordship's anger against him that he could never tell us where he put his sword and ye kaise of pistoles that your Lordship gave them, so that I have been forced to buy them here a kaise of pistolles a peece, because of the danger that is now everywhere in France, and because it is so much ye mode now for every gentleman of fashion to ride with a kase of Pistoles, that they Laugh att those that have them not. I bought also a Sword for mr francis and when Mr Robert saw it he did so earnestly desire me to buy him one, because his was out of fashion, that I could not refuse him that small request."[339]