Touring in 1600: A Study in the Development of Travel as a Means of Education — John Shaqi
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
But the renegades came mostly from the lower or the commercial class,
and did not come home, so that the fact that a guide was required to be
a sectarian, in contradistinction to a Christian, is another comment on
the characteristics of the Average Tourist. Sir Walter Ralegh, however,
did not make that a qualification, for he chose Ben Jonson to chaperon
his son. There is only one anecdote about Ben Jonson in that capacity,
the one he told Drummond himself. "This youth" [_i.e._, Ralegh's son]
"being knavishly inclined, caused him to be drunken, and dead drunk,
so that he knew not where he was; thereafter laid him on a car, which
he made to be drawn through the streets, at every corner showing his
governor stretched out and telling them that was a more lively image
of the Crucifix than any they had: at which young Ralegh's mother
delighted much (saying his father when young was so inclined), though
the father abhorred it."
Another sixteenth-century guide immortalised by another's pen is Jean
Bouchet, "Traverseur de Voies Perilleuses" as he called himself. Not
that Rabelais, to whom the pen belonged, names him, only he applies
this nickname to the guide of Pantagruel and company, Xenomanes (_i.
e._, "mad on foreigners"). No easy task to be an orthodox guide with
Friar John at one's elbow; for guide-book etymologies Friar John
had no taste; only asked, "What's that to do with me? I wasn't in
the country when it was baptised!" A guide to suit Friar John would
have been some disciple of Montaigne, who while agreeing with the
others that travelling was one of the best forms of education thought
that it was not "pour en rapporter seulement, à la mode de nostre
noblesse françoise, combien de pas a 'Santa Rotonda,' ou la richesse
des calessons de la signora Livia; ou, comme d'aultres, combien le
visage de Neron, de quelque vieille ruyne de là, est plus long ou plus
large que celuy de quelque pareille medaille, mais pour rapporter
principalement les humeurs de ces nations et leur façons, et pour
frotter et limer nostre cervelle contre celle d'aultruy."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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