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 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 organ-builder 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 holly-bush 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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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