English Travellers of the Renaissance. Clare Howard
how the Jesuits won travellers to their religion, how France became the model of deportment, what were the origins of the Grand Tour, and so forth.
That these directions for travel were not isolated oddities of literature, but were the expression of a widespread ideal of the English gentry, I have tried to show in the following study. The essays can hardly be appreciated without support from biography and history, and for that reason I have introduced some concrete illustrations of the sort of traveller to whom the books were addressed. If I have not always quoted the "Instructions" fully, it is because they repeat one another on some points. My plan has been to comment on whatever in each book was new, or showed the evolution of travel for study's sake.
The result, I hope, will serve to show something of the cosmopolitanism of English society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; of the closer contact which held between England and the Continent, while England was not yet great and self-sufficient; of times when her soldiers of low and high degree went to seek their fortunes in the Low Countries, and her merchants journeyed in person to conduct business with Italy; when a steady stream of Roman Catholics and exiles for political reasons trooped to France or Flanders for years together.
These discussions of the art of travel are relics of an age when Englishmen, next to the Germans, were known for the greatest travellers among all nations. In the same boat-load with merchants, spies, exiles, and diplomats from England sailed the young gentleman fresh from his university, to complete his education by a look at the most civilized countries of the world. He approached the Continent with an inquiring, open mind, eager to learn, quick to imitate the refinements and ideas of countries older than his own. For the same purpose that now takes American students to England, or Japanese students to America, the English striplings once journeyed to France, comparing governments and manners, watching everything, noting everything, and coming home to benefit their country by new ideas.
I hope, also, that a review of these forgotten volumes may lend an added pleasure to the reading of books greater than themselves in Elizabethan literature. One cannot fully appreciate the satire of Amorphus's claim to be "so sublimated and refined by travel," and to have "drunk in the spirit of beauty in some eight score and eighteen princes' courts where I have resided,"[1] unless one has read of the benefits of travel as expounded by the current Instructions for Travellers; nor the dialogues between Sir Politick-Would-be and Peregrine in Volpone, or the Fox. Shakespeare, too, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, has taken bodily the arguments of the Elizabethan orations in praise of travel:
"Some to the warres, to try their fortune there;
Some, to discover Islands farre away;
Some, to the studious Universities;
For any, or for all these exercises,
He said, thou Proteus, your sonne was meet;
And did request me, to importune you
To let him spend his time no more at home;
Which would be great impeachment to his age,
In having knowne no travaile in his youth.
(Antonio) Nor need'st thou much importune me to that
Whereon, this month I have been hamering,
I have considered well, his losse of time,
And how he cannot be a perfect man,
Not being tryed, and tutored in the world;
Experience is by industry atchiev'd,
And perfected by the swift course of time."
(Act I. Sc. iii.)
CHAPTER I
THE BEGINNINGS OF TRAVEL FOR CULTURE
Of the many social impulses that were influenced by the Renaissance, by that "new lernynge which runnythe all the world over now-a-days," the love of travel received a notable modification. This very old instinct to go far, far away had in the Middle Ages found sanction, dignity and justification in the performance of pilgrimages. It is open to doubt whether the number of the truly pious would ever have filled so many ships to Port Jaffa had not their ranks been swelled by the restless, the adventurous, the wanderers of all classes.
Towards the sixteenth century, when curiosity about things human was an ever stronger undercurrent in England, pilgrimages were particularly popular. In 1434, Henry VI. granted licences to 2433 pilgrims to the shrine of St. James of Compostella alone.[2] The numbers were so large that the control of their transportation became a coveted business enterprise. "Pilgrims at this time were really an article of exportation," says Sir Henry Ellis, in commenting on a letter of the Earl of Oxford to Henry VI., asking for a licence for a ship of which he was owner, to carry pilgrims. "Ships were every year loaded from different ports with cargoes of these deluded wanderers, who carried with them large sums of money to defray the expenses of their journey."[3]
Among the earliest books printed in England was Informacon for Pylgrymes unto the Holy Londe, by Wynkin de Worde, one which ran to three editions,[4] an almost exact copy of William Wey's "prevysyoun" (provision) for a journey eastwards.[5] The tone and content of this Informacon differ very little from the later Directions for Travellers which are the subject of our study. The advice given shows that the ordinary pilgrim thought, not of the ascetic advantages of the voyage, or of simply arriving in safety at his holy destination, but of making the trip in the highest possible degree of personal comfort and pleasure. He is advised to take with him two barrels of wine ("For yf ye wolde geve xx dukates for a barrel ye shall none have after that ye passe moche Venyse"); to buy orange-ginger, almonds, rice, figs, cloves, maces and loaf sugar also, to eke out the fare the ship will provide. And this although he is to make the patron swear, before the pilgrim sets foot in the galley, that he will serve "hote meete twice at two meals a day." He whom we are wont to think of as a poor wanderer, with no possessions but his grey cloak and his staff, is warned not to embark for the Holy Land without carrying with him "a lytell cawdron, a fryenge panne, dysshes, platers, cuppes of glasse … a fether bed, a matrasse, a pylawe, two payre sheets and a quylte" … a cage for half a dozen of hens or chickens to have with you in the ship, and finally, half a bushel of "myle sede" to feed the chickens. Far from being encouraged to exercise a humble and abnegatory spirit on the voyage, he is to be at pains to secure a berth in the middle of the ship, and not to mind paying fifty ducats for to be in a good honest place, "to have your ease in the galey and also to be cherysshed." Still more unchristian are the injunctions to run ahead of one's fellows, on landing, in order to get the best quarters at the inn, and first turn at the dinner provided; and above all, at Port Jaffa, to secure the best ass, "for ye shall paye no more for the best than for the worste."
But while this book was being published, new forces were at hand which were to strip the thin disguise of piety from pilgrims of this sort. The Colloquies of Erasmus appeared before the third edition of Informacon for Pylgrymes, and exploded the idea that it was the height of piety to have seen Jerusalem. It was nothing but the love of change, Erasmus declared, that made old bishops run over huge spaces of sea and land to reach Jerusalem. The noblemen who flocked thither had better be looking after their estates, and married men after their wives. Young men and women travelled "non sine gravi discrimine morum et integritatis." Pilgrimages were a dissipation. Some people went again and again and did nothing else all their lives long.[6] The only satisfaction they looked for or received was entertainment to themselves and their friends by their remarkable adventures, and ability to shine at dinner-tables by recounting their travels.[7] There was no harm in going sometimes, but it was not pious. And people could spend their time, money and pains on something which was truly pious.[8]
It was only a few years after this that that pupil of Erasmus and his friends,