Touring in 1600: A Study in the Development of Travel as a Means of EducationBates, E. S. (Ernest Stuart)
History
Touring in 1600: A Study in the Development of Travel as a Means of Education
Bates, E. S. (Ernest Stuart)
Europe -- Description and travel; Europe -- Social life and customs; Travel -- History
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 Della
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 (1542-1642)
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, clear-headed, 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 distant 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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