On comparing these instructions with those of the sixteenth century, one is struck with the emphasis they lay upon drawing and "limning." This is what we would expect in the seventeenth century, when an interest in pictures, statues, and architecture was a distinguishing feature of a gentleman. The Marquis de Seignelay, sent on a tour in 1617 by his father Colbert, was accompanied by a painter and an architect charged to make him understand the beauties of Italian art.[359] Antoine Delahaute, making the Grand Tour with an Abbé for a governor, carried with him an artist as well, so that when he came upon a fine site, he ordered the chaise to be stopped, and the view to be drawn by the obedient draughtsman.[360] Not only did gentlemen study to appreciate pictures, but they strove themselves to draw and paint. In the travels of George Sandys[361] (edition 1615), may be seen a woodcut of travellers, in the costume of Henry of Navarre, sketching at the side of Lake Avernus. To take out one's memorandum-book and make a sketch of a charming prospect, was the usual thing before the camera was invented. "Before I went to bed I took a landscape of this pleasant terrace," says Evelyn in Roane.[362] At Tournon, where he saw a very strong castle under a high precipice, "The prospect was so tempting that I could not forbear designing it with my crayon."[363] Consequently, we find instructions for travellers reflecting the tastes of the time: Gerbier's Subsidium Peregrinantibus, for instance, insisting on a knowledge of "Perspective, Sculpture, Architecture and Pictures," as among the requisites of a polite education, lays great stress on the identification and survey of works of art as one of the main duties of a traveller.[364]
Significant as are the instructions of Gerbier, Lassels, and others of this period, there are some directions for an education abroad which are more interesting than these products of professional tutors--instructions written by one who was himself the perfect gentleman of his day. The Earl of Chesterfield's letters to his son define the purpose of a foreign education with a freedom which is lacking in the book of a governor who writes for the public eye. Though the contents of the letters are familiar to everyone, their connection with travel for "cultum animi" has hitherto, I think, been overlooked.
It will be remembered that the earl sent his son abroad at the age of fourteen to study for five years on the Continent, and to acquire a better preparation for life than Oxford or Cambridge could offer. Of these universities Chesterfield had a low opinion. He could not sufficiently scorn an education which did not prevent a man from being flurried at his Presentation to the King. He remembered that he himself, when he was first introduced into good company, with all the awkwardness and rust of Cambridge about him, was frightened out of his wits. At Cambridge he "had acquired among the pedants of an illiberal seminary a turn for satire and contempt, and a strong tendency to argumentation and contradiction," which was a hindrance to his progress in the polite world. Only after a continental education did he see the follies of Englishmen who knew nothing of modern Europe, who were always talking of the Ancients as something more than men, and of the Moderns as something less. "They are never without a classic or two in their pockets; they stick to the old good sense; they read none of modern trash; and will show you plainly that no improvement has been made, in any one art or science, these last seventeen hundred years."[365]
His son, therefore, was to waste no time in the society of pedants, but accompanied by a travelling tutor, was to begin studying life first-hand at the Courts. His book-learning was to go side by side with the study of manners:
"Courts and Camps are the only places to learn the world in. There alone all kinds of characters resort, and human nature is seen in all the various shapes and modes ... whereas, in all other places, one local mode generally prevails."[366]
Moreover, the earl did not think that a company wholly composed of men of learning could be called good company. "They cannot have the easy manners and tournure of the world, as they do not live in it." And an engaging address, "an insinuating behaviour," was to be sought for early in life, and, at the same time, with the solid parts of learning. "The Scholar, without good breeding, is a Pedant: the Philosopher, a Cynic: the Soldier, a Brute: and every man disagreeable."[367]
The five years of young Stanhope's travel were carefully distributed as follows: a year in Lausanne,[368] for the rudiments of languages; a year in Leipsic, for a thorough grounding in history and jurisprudence; a year spent in visits to such cities as Berlin, Dresden, and Vienna, for a view of the different Courts; one in Italy, to get rid of the manners of Germany; and one in Paris, to give him the final polish, the supreme touch, of gentlemanly complaisance, politeness, and ease.
We may pass over the years in Germany, as the earl did, without much comment. Young Stanhope was quite satisfactory in the more solid parts of learning, and it was not until he reached Italy, there to begin his courtly training, that Chesterfield's interest was fully aroused.
"The manners of Leipsig must be shook off," he says emphatically. "No scramblings at your meals as at a German ordinary: no awkward overturns of glasses, plates, and salt-cellers."[369]
He is to mind the decent mirth of the courtiers--their discreet frankness, their natural, careless, but genteel air; in short, to acquire the Graces. Chesterfield sent letters of introduction to the best company in Venice, forwarded his own diamond shoe buckles for his son, and began to pour forth advice on the possible social problems confronting a young Englishman in Rome. With a contemptuous tolerance for Papists, Protestants, and all religious quarrels as obstructions to the art of pleasing, he bade Stanhope be civil to the Pope, and to kneel down while the Host was being carried through the streets. His tutor, though, had better not. With wonderful artistic insight, the earl perceives that the fitting attitude for Mr Harte is simple, ungracious honesty.[370]