English Travellers of the Renaissance — Inside the Classic

26 4

In Category - Places Peoples

Authors: Howard, Clare, 1881-1967 Published By : Project Gutenberg In Year : 2004

Key Word: Travel; Europe -- Description and travel; Renaissance -- England; British -- Europe -- History -- 16th century; Travelers -- Europe -- History -- 16th century Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words: 55,961

Reading time: 244 min

Text sections: 9

Source: Project Gutenberg record #13403

Clare Howard's 1914 study examines Renaissance travel literature, focusing on didactic essays and the Grand Tour's emergence. Using rare sources, she traces tensions between moral instruction and fashion, from early governors' complaints to the first use of 'Grand Tour' in English.

File: pg13403

Editorial Notes

Clare Howard's English Travellers of the Renaissance, first published in 1914, opens with a striking claim: many sixteenth- and seventeenth-century essays on travel 'have never been brought to light since their publication more than three hundred years ago.' The book aims to describe 'one phase of Renaissance travel in clear and sharp outline,' drawing on rare printed works and manuscript sources. Howard, writing as a Fellow of the Society of American Women in London, acknowledges debts to Oxford's Bodleian Library and to scholars including Sir Walter Raleigh and C. H. Firth. The preface signals a methodical approach: material on travel is 'apparently inexhaustible,' yet the study deliberately limits itself to a single phase, with 'sufficient illustration to embellish but not to clog the main ideas.'

The Grand Tour's First English Appearance

Howard identifies Richard Lassels's 1670 book as the first to use the term 'Grand Tour' in English, specifically 'The Grand Tour of France and the Giro of Italy.' She traces the concept back to earlier usage: the Duchess of Newcastle in 1656 wrote of driving 'about the town, or about some of the streets, which we call here a tour, where all the chief of the town go to see and be seen.' Evelyn in 1652 contrasted 'making the Tour' with industrious travel, mocking those who 'like a Goose swimms down the River' merely acquire language and courtly customs. The term 'tour' itself derived from the practice of driving in a coach around a town's principal streets—a social display rather than a scholarly pursuit.

Governors, Parents, and the Perils of Youth

Howard shows that governors accompanied young travellers from the earliest days of Renaissance travel, but their role expanded when boys were sent abroad at fourteen or fifteen to learn languages. She quotes a letter from Mr. Windebanke to Cecil complaining that his son 'has utterly no mind nor disposition in him to apply any learning,' being distracted by 'an inordinate affection towards a young gentlewoman abiding near Paris.' Another governor, Mr. Smythe, begged to be recalled unless his allowance increased, citing 'brabblements' over expenses with his charge Francis Davison. Bacon's 1625 essay 'Of Travel' first advised using a governor, but Howard notes that parents' fears about moral and religious dangers made the governor's responsibility heavy—as illustrated by Lady Lowther's anxious letter.

The Fashionable Defense of Travel

Howard highlights a skeptical voice: Francis Osborn, who 'had not the slightest faith in' travel's good effects but recommended it 'solely because it was the fashion.' Osborn wrote that some 'cry up Travel as the best Accomplisher of Youth and Gentry, tho' detected by Experience in the generality, for the greatest Debaucher.' Yet he conceded that 'Scholars and Travellers being cried up for the highest Graduates in the most universal Judgments,' he would 'give way to Peregrine motion for a time.' This tension between moral danger and social necessity runs through the excerpts. Howard also notes that the object of the Grand Tour was 'to see and be seen,' a phrase she supports with the Duchess of Newcastle's description of coach tours as social display.

Howard's study is built from primary sources—rare books, manuscripts, and letters—rather than secondary narratives. Readers should attend to the voices she recovers: governors complaining, parents worrying, and travellers themselves justifying their tours. The excerpts reveal a consistent pattern: travel was debated as a moral hazard even as it became a social requirement. Howard does not resolve this tension but documents its persistence across a century of advice literature, from early humanist essays to the fully formed Grand Tour.