Touring in 1600 : a study in the development of travel as a means of education

Front matter

FROM THE

PERSONAL LIBRARY OF

JAMES BUELL MUNN

Part I. The Grand Signor 1 82 Part II. Jerusalem And The Way Thither 205

VI. Inns 240

VII. On the Road 284

VIII. The Purse 313

Index 407

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 Bohemiens" {no. 1) by Jacques Callot {1594— 163$). 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 Abbe de Marolles.

A Typical Town-Plan 52

Map of Venice, illustrating especially the disregard of scale. From H. de Beauveau's " Relation journaliere," 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 Miinster'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. Fiirtenbach's "Architectura Navalis," 1629.

Lock between Bologna and Ferrara 82

From J. Fiirtenbach's "Newes Itinerarium Italia" 1627. There were nine of these in thirty-five miles. Fiirtenbach'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 eovered 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 6n the virtues of their wares, with musicians by their side.'

Public Executions 136

The "Supplicium Sceleri Froenum" of Jacques Callot {1592-163$). The first state of the etching seems to be unobtainable for reproduction, this being from a photo-

XI graph {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 Minster' s " Cosmographie," 1575 (it. 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 Delia 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 S'ebastien Werro, cure of Fribourg {Bibl. de la Societe Economique de Fribourg). Showing also the fort at Jaffa, the caves in which pilgrims had to

Xll 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 Fiirer's " Itinerarium" (1566).

Arms of a Jerusalem Pilgrim 238

Arms of Sebastien Werro, cure 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 Soci'et'e Economique de Fribourg).

Two German Kitchens 254

The 'fat' and the 'lean.' Plates 58 and 63 of J. T. de Bry's" Proscenium Vita Humana" ("Emblemata Sacularia"). From the copy of the first edition {1506) in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

German Bathing-Places 268

From Miinster's Cosmography ; two of the woodcuts are from the French edition of i$75 {H- 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 1 of Peter Br eugel the elder's " Pr&diorum Villarum . . . Icones"; Bibl. Roy ale 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 Miinster's Cosmographia" {1550; p. 45s).

Xlll

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

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 " Miser es 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 Abbe 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.

XIV

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 IVotton," i, 325-8, 363 note, and ii. 481.)

A Scholar Traveller 390

Francois de Maulde (1556-97); portrait by J. Sadeler (Bibl. Roy ale 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: —

TOURING IN l600

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

tutta."

Pietro della Valle, " II Pellegrini)."

TOURING IN l6oo

Chapter I

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 Iskenderun 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 civilta 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; Delia 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, "II 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 organbuilder 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 hollybush 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 winterblasted 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 ; veryfew 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 Dona 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 i2 Touring in 1600

stranger. Leaving Stockholm while her relatives expressed their opinion about her journey bylamentations 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 Delia 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 (i 542-1642) 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, clearheaded, 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 disi4 "Touring in 1600

tant 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 neighbourprinces, 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 mediaeval times, that of a "bearer of tydynges," as Chaucer insists often enough in his "House of Fame."