Touring in 1600

Three things, said Messer Bevigliano, hinder us Italians from doing our best for the community: the licensing system, 'tied-houses,' and labour difficulties. I should be the last to suggest the abolition of our picturesque custom in use when an inn is to be let. At the auction a candle is lighted: the highest bid before the candle goes out wins the business. But the periods of tenancy, one and six years, alternately, in Florentine territory, are inconvenient. Far worse, however, are the prices extorted, especially from those who keep inns outside the gates of towns, the use of which is so necessary to such as are compelled to arrive late, or wish to leave early. Even apart from these, the majority pay 100-150 crowns (£150-£225 present value) for their licenses; some 500 or 600. At Venice wine-shops and inns pay 1000 crowns. The proportion this bears to the rent may be judged from the case of an old widow I know 8 miles from Florence whose rent was 23 crowns and whose license was 56. Another inn, kept by a shoemaker, a freehold house worth 6 crowns a year, pays 20 crowns for license, while the other license, for shoemaking, only costs a Giulio and a half.

What I mean by a 'tied' house is one which belongs to the owner of a large estate who allows nothing to be sold there except the produce of that estate.

Lastly, as to labour, the custom of the country is against the use of women-servants, against even the host's wife and daughter assisting him. What, Messer Bevigliano concluded, apart from ordinary routine-work, would happen to your Fair at Mülhausen if there were no girls to serve the drinks?

Next came Francisco Marques of Alicante, well known to sailors of every nationality. What he laid most stress on has in the main been anticipated by Charles II and Lady Fanshawe, but he supplemented it as follows: In the towns clean and comfortable beds were to be had, with meals ready. Many posadas, he admitted, provided nothing but utensils, table-linen, oil, salt, vinegar; yet travellers were then neither better nor worse off than in Poland, Bohemia, and Picardy, where the custom was likewise. As for the wayside inns which gave nothing but a roof and horse-provender, they barely existed outside Castile and Aragon, and there the wayfarer should prepare accordingly, as the Spaniard did, who journeyed with a bag full of provisions on each side of the saddle and a bottle of wine to each bag. As to the supposed lack of meat, he went on, most Spaniards are vegetarians; and considering the achievements of the Spanish infantry, I do not think any one can find fault with the principle. Neither does this apply to the lower classes only, for we have a rhyme which says: —

Unas Azeytunas, una Salada, y RevanillosSon comida de Caballeros;

and so far from altering our ways, the ancient rule that a gentleman who has partaken of onions shall absent himself from court for eight days has fallen into abeyance. For those who prefer meat, there is plenty. Fowls, I know, are scarce, and you are so used to fowls that you think "no fowls, no meat"; and yet, I remember when I was a small boy and Queen Anne arrived at Santander to marry good King Philip II, she was presented there with two hundred fowls and a calf. As to sheep, ask the eight Germans who recently ate a whole one between them; besides, does not the famous Lazarillo de Tormes tell us that it is the regular thing at Maqueda to eat sheep's heads on Saturdays at three maravedis apiece? and on fast days we have special permission to eat cow-heels and sucking pigs. Now, how can these things be if we have no sheep nor cows nor little pigs? On the contrary, you Germans, who take so well justified a pride in your bacon at home, how is it you say nothing about it after a week or so with us? Why, we have an author, Lope da Vega Carpio, who will soon be recognised as the greatest writer since Seneca, who always takes a rasher of our bacon before starting to write, as a stimulant!

But I can quote something better than your own experience – the words of the King and of St. Michael. Charles V advised the great Alonzo de Guzman against going to Italy, "Better stay at home and kill rabbits on your own hills and eat them than be killed by the sea and be eaten by the fishes": and when the said Alonzo dreamed that he was dead, St. Michael appeared and sentenced him to return to earth for his misdeeds and eat roast meat and be content; and Alonzo found himself able to arrange for roast duck in summertime and an "olla" keeping hot in the chimney in winter. If I say nothing as to wild boar and partridge, it is merely because it is getting late. But I will just add this in confidence, that people, we find, pay more willingly when the bill is accompanied by a cheerful "Y haga les buen provecho."

The Muscovy delegate, "Cologne Jimmy" of Nerva, had drawn the third place; but being temporarily bereft of his faculties by the number of drinks new to him, a discussion was substituted at the instance of M. Petit, who enjoyed most of the French custom at Rome, on the evil of free board and lodging which various institutions provided, a most demoralising custom and very hard on those who wished to gain an honest living. At Seville and Montserrat, he had heard, things had come to well-to-do people being given fish as well as bread, and at Amsterdam foundations were even being instituted on a secular basis. That they might be in a better position to take action, it was proposed to form an Innkeepers' Association, but when an Irish waiter from Madrid suggested as a motto, "Pediculus pro comite jucundo," recriminations ensued which soon rendered adjournment necessary.

Nevertheless, at the banquet in the evening all passed off happily in the traditional way.

In principio est silentium,In medio stridor dentium,Et in fine rumor gentium.

The next day began well too, with the speech of Jean Busson ("Le Fardeau" Dieppe), who excused the faults of the French host as attributable to the civil wars, and said that whether or no religion was "reformed," cookery certainly was, and that in future the traditions of Guillot's of Amiens would be upheld. At the same time he felt he would be next door to a traitor if he owned to any serious faults, for supposing that such were imagined, French chambermaids could be trusted to keep the visitors happy (great applause). But he had a proposal to bring forward. He found they had a custom in Germany, which was also used at Bourges, which deserved extension. He referred to the watchmen who lived at the top of the town belfry and signalled the approach of travellers to those below by means of flags; at Ferrara and Bruges and elsewhere, the signalling was done with bells. Now this ought to be customary everywhere, and whereas here in Germany the watchmen descended at meal-times and made a collection at the inns, surely the municipal authorities ought to pay them. A resolution to this effect was passed unanimously.

The Low Country delegates caused considerable dissatisfaction by their memorial insisting that nobody had complaints to make of their inns, nor would there be any anywhere if pains were taken to be up-to-date and, above all things, clean. But their brethren were grateful for the warning that it was becoming the custom with travellers to slip leaden bullets into the cheese, where they found the custom in vogue of charging for it according to the difference in weight before and after it was set on the table; and agreed with them when they pointed out that the system of putting up a list of things customers might not do and fining them when these rules were transgressed, was breaking down. An innkeeper from Augsburg gave an instance; his request, he said, not to foul the walls was so far from being heeded that he kept one man at work cleaning them.

It was this member from Augsburg who brought about the unhappy ending of the Congress, for, in commenting on the Low Countrymen's strictures, he tactlessly quoted the Italian proverb "Dal hoste nuovo e dalla putana vecchia, Dio ci guarda," and then went on to lay it down as irrefutable that nobody grumbled unless he thought he had been done. This was easily avoided, he said; treat all alike; no man ever grumbled in Germany except new-comers and unreasonable people. Why? because Germans had fixed prices; the only system which was conformable with God's law. By this time the interpreters fairly trembled as they translated, but when, speaking as he did in Latin, he went on to apply to the system of variable charges the adjectives that were in daily use in theological controversy, the others understood without help and a battle ensued. First in words, beginning with shouts of "Pese al diablo," "Voto á Dios," and other Spanish expressions, of which, together with all the Italian, not even the initial letters could be printed, answered with "Bey Gott den Herrn," "Meine Seele," "Der Teufel hole dich," "Gottes Kranckheit," without, curiously enough, the use of a single one of those employed by historical novelists. To words succeeded blows; and there the Congress ended.

CHAPTER VII

ON THE ROAD

A journey is a fragment of hell.Awliyái Efendi (1611-1679).

What M. Babeau, in his charming "Les Voyageurs en France," says of the history of France since the eleventh century, that it may be divided into three periods, of the horse, the carriage, and the railway, is true of most of Europe. He goes on to point out that the first period synchronises with the feudal system, the second with uncontrolled monarchy. And this was not a matter of chance, for the improvement in the state of the roads implied by the substitution of driving for riding directly resulted from the centralisation of authority. A feudal system tended to keep the roads bad, partly because no one authority received such exclusive and overwhelming benefits from the roads as to be ready to bear the cost of their upkeep; partly because the constant petty warfare which feudalism gave rise to often made neighbours desire that approaches should be difficult rather than easy.

In 1600 the transition was in its infancy; and even during the subsequent half-century is only noticeable in a marked degree in France. Even there, the change was not from bad roads to good, but from very bad to a state of uncertainty. One road, it is true, is mentioned as paved, at any date during these two centuries, that from Paris to Orleans, but by Evelyn's time there were many such in France; while, on the other hand, on the king's highway between Bourges and Lyons the horses of Gölnitz and his companions fell into a marsh, whence they were rescued with difficulty; and on another highway (Paris-Bordeaux) Claude Perrault, the architect of the Louvre, speaks of one occasion when night overtook him before he had reached his stopping-place; and the holes in the road being so deep as to render it almost impassable for his carriage, a quarter of a league took him four hours to cover.

Elsewhere in Europe, things seem to be remaining much as they had been. Here and there in Italy sections of Roman road which had been maintained in fair condition continued to be patched in imitation of Roman methods until they appeared excellent in contrast with the others; what the others were made of travellers do not say, but it may be guessed that they were paved like hell in the proverb. Montaigne might note with sadness how the Via Flaminia had shrunk from forty feet broad to four between Loreto and Lucca, although one may query where he found that it was ever more than fifteen feet across; but no one else had recourse to archæology to make himself grieve. The following is a tale that Rivadeneyra, Loyola's boy-friend and biographer, tells of some of the other early associates during a walk from Venice to Rome. Being Lent, they fasted except for what they received in alms. "And one Sunday it befell that, having tasted no more than a few mouthfuls of bread that morning, they trudge twenty-eight miles of that land on their bare feet; and all the day the rain comes down pitilessly, whereby they find the roads turned into lakes, and that so truly that there are times when the water reaches their chests." He continues, "None the less they feel within them a marvellous contentment and joyousness; and being mindful that they were enduring these troubles of the flesh for love of God, gave thanks to Him without ceasing, singing David's psalms in metre; and even Master Juan Codurí, who was suffering with the itch in both of his legs, was no whit the worse for the trials of this day."

It was always the rain that caused the trouble, although the state of the roads when dry must have been fearful for ordinary wet weather to effect so rapid a deterioration. From Ferrara to Bologna was reckoned a half-day's journey in summer, a whole day in winter. And in 1606 an Italian says of the roads near Strassburg that the mud, stones, and holes compelled the horses to go single file, each one stepping in the tracks of the leader; near Ypres they found the road often indistinguishable from the fields, and the mud came up to the horses' girths.

In dry weather the only complaint is against loose stones on steep gradients, which latter naturally occur far more frequently on the old roads than on modern ones, keeping, as the former do, to high ground for choice. The fact that by this means traffic was less at the mercy of floods seems to be considered reason enough for the habit, but perhaps it was also found to give greater protection against highwaymen, who were thereby afforded fewer opportunities for attacking from higher ground, and for concealment. One place in particular where these loose stones formed a serious hindrance was Scaricalasino, between Bologna and Florence, so named (scarica l'asino means "unload the ass") because what with the badness of the road and the sharpness of the stones the asses had to be relieved of their burdens at intervals. So, too, the secretary of a Venetian embassy writes that between Terni and Assisi the way was so rough as well as muddy that it cost the party of forty fourteen hours and the deaths of four horses to do twenty miles.102

Another difficulty, sometimes a peril, to be faced were the fords. On the main road, for example, from Rome to France, through Florence, there was the river Paglia to cross, which bounded Papal territory in that direction. The passage still remained a ford, although after rain it would be impassable for a week at a time. And where, on the map, north of Venice, you see the Tagliamento divide into seven branches, there, through them, lay the road which joined Italy with Germany. Yet only one branch had a bridge over it, and the fords through the others were dangerous enough to keep guides at work. It is not surprising, then, to find Sir Thomas Browne's son having to engage two men to walk beside his horse up-stream to break the force of the current lest it should carry the horse off his feet, since the river was the Var, in the Riviera, and across a less important road.

Sometimes travellers preferred the ford even where a bridge existed, as did one103 at St. Jean de Maurienne on the post-route from France to Italy because the bridge was in such disrepair as to be unsafe. The same traveller crossed by boat at Otricoli beside the ruins of a Roman bridge which had once been a link in the Via Flaminia. On the bridges the same political reasons that kept the roads difficult had set their mark, accounting as they do for the number of wooden bridges, easier to dismantle in case of a raid. The bridges of Strassburg and Vienna were particularly striking examples of this; the planks were not even fastened down; if one end tipped up, a plank was as likely as not to fall into the river. Neither were there any rails at the sides. That was not exceptional, either, in spite of a bridge being worthy of remark if broad enough for two carts to pass each other. But whether it was the initial cheapness, or the habit of precaution, there they were, in spite of the cost of their upkeep, thirty thousand thalers yearly in the case of the one at Yarunov on the Vistula in the middle of the seventeenth century, when a thaler was nearly equal to one pound at present value. Yet the traveller104 who reports this says his horse trod a hole in it. And in Hungary, when Busbecq returned from Turkey by road, the bridges offered so many traps for horses that robbers laid in wait under bridges for their best opportunities.

As for stone bridges, Spain seems to have been the best off before 1600, but subsequently the improvement in bridges became very marked, especially in France. When Zinzerling knew Paris (1612-16), of its five bridges, only two were of stone, whereas of the six that Evelyn saw in 1643, but one was of wood. The only stone bridges in the empire that are mentioned are those of Schaffhausen, of Ratisbon, and, over the Moselle, of Coblentz; while two of the finest west of the Rhine, those of Avignon and Rouen, were impassable owing to gaps which no authority saw its way to repair. But the test of a first-rate bridge in 1600 was not how much traffic, but how many houses, it carried. Judged by this standard, it was agreed that London Bridge was the finest, with that of Nôtre Dame at Paris second, considering the latter's houses numbered sixty-eight. Still, it was with the number of bridges that the tourist was mainly concerned, in which matter he would find the Loire the only river across which passage was fairly easy; the Rhine had no bridge below Strassburg; the Seine had to be crossed five times by boat in the first four leagues of road northwards from Paris; and below Turin there existed no bridge over the Po except a wooden one at Ferrara.

Means of conveyance consisted of riding, subdivided into post-horses and other beasts; by cart, either the long, heavy waggon employed by carriers, or those with two big wheels and no more, which occasioned the traveller fewest shocks; and lastly, by litter. Coaches, in the sense of vehicles which are supposed to be comfortable, can hardly be said to have existed except among private owners, and even these preferred the litter, especially in winter. The acme of luxury when on the road may be represented by Marguerite de Valois' litter used on her journey to the Netherlands. The lining was of Spanish velvet, the hangings of silk, the sides glazed with one hundred and forty panes of glass, each of which bore a different design.

As for carts, though everywhere one comes across occasional instances of their use by tourists, this was far more customary in Germany than elsewhere; even a knight-errant going to seek his fortune, Sir Anthony Sherley, mentions covering distances in them there without apology. The German "rollwagen" carried six or eight passengers; those of the Low Countries as many as ten, sitting on boards laid across the cart so close behind one another that they resembled geese going to the pond. The chief centre for carrier-arrangements was Augsburg; thence to Venice and back a waggon went each week; between Augsburg and Nuremberg daily. In France conveyances started running more freely as the civil wars slackened, as, e. g. between Troyes and Paris in 1598; a reversion to what had been in force earlier. But in 1584 between Amiens and Paris, and in 1586 between Rouen and Paris, was running what was called the "coche royale," which took passengers.105 By Zinzerling's time communications of this kind existed between Paris and Orleans, and Paris and Rouen, daily; between Rouen and Dieppe thrice weekly; and between Rouen and Antwerp.

The disadvantages of waggons were more obvious in the Low Countries than elsewhere, since there they never entered towns, depositing the passenger, heavy luggage and all, outside the gate; often, too, a change of waggons was obligatory during the day, whereas an English carter drove straight on, too long, in fact, for his custom was to keep on the move from dawn till sunset. The Dutchman, in addition, was usually drunk and drove his mares (always mares) like a madman, and passengers found it advisable, besides, to wear spectacles to protect their eyes against the sand thrown up by the road-menders. All waggons were provided with awnings, of cloth or leather.

In Italy and Spain practically all traffic was four-footed. Post-horses were always for hire in Italy, with a bit of fur attached to their bridles to mark their status. The owner gave the hirer a ticket to show his host at the end of the day's journey, who would then take care of the horse until a return fare was forthcoming; no security was asked. It was a novel experience for most foreigners to ride one post-horse all day: in England the stages were ten miles; in France, in the seventeenth century, four or five, so that a traveller in a hurry would change horses as many as eighteen to twenty-two times a day. The reason for the difference lay in the pace, the standard for which was much lower in a country like Italy, where mules and asses were habitually used. In fact, when the pace was set by the mules, as, for instance, in the Rome-Naples caravans, all who accompanied which had to keep together for fear of robbers, a man might be in the saddle all day and cover no more than twenty miles. As for wheeled traffic, it may be imagined from the state of the roads that the pace often sank to nothing at all. After several breakdowns, one traveller writes: "Advanced that day as far as the cursed carriages would give us leave, and the rest of the day practised Christian patience… Carts ought to be put in the Litany."

The above must be understood as leaving Muscovy out of account, for that was the one country where the journey itself could, under favourable circumstances, be continued with comfort. Once the ground was hard enough for sledges, the traveller could travel night and day and yet sleep as long as he felt inclined. Nor did the gain end with positive comfort and double the available time, since the diminished strain on the horses enabled them to go at a greater pace for a longer period. Twelve leagues without a change of horses and a hundred leagues in three days represent what was practicable in the ordinary way amid a Russian winter; treble what would be reckoned good for any conveyance elsewhere.

In Dante's "Purgatorio" (II, 11-12) is a comparison well commented on, unconsciously, in these travel-books. It is when he speaks of himself wandering

Come gente che pensa a suo cammino,Che va col core, e col corpo dimora.

Three hundred years later, sign-posts were still as rare as unicorn-horns. One mile north of Rimini, where the road forked, stood a chapel between the two turnings, on one side of it written, "La Strada di Ravenna," on the other, "La Strada di Bologna"; and the roads round Freiburg were planted with trees to mark the way, for the benefit of citizens, however, rather than of strangers, because of the mouths of the silver mines which would otherwise have been man-traps. Something of the kind, too, was put up in Holland when snow hid the roads. More to the point will it be to quote John Smith's account of his escape from Tartary, and how he found pictorial sign-posts at cross-roads, the way to Christian Muscovy being indicated by the sign of the Cross; to Crim Tartary by a half-moon; while a black man with white spots meant Persia; a sun, China; and minor princes' territories were pointed out by the emblems they had adopted. But these were really out of Europe and those of Freiburg and Holland outlined the road rather than indicated directions, as did the poles erected on the Col di Tenda Alpine-pass for a mile together, each pole a spear's length from the next. The Simplon and Mt. Cenis passes were thus marked out also – when the poles had not been blown flat by the wind.

But then, crossing the Alps alone was practically unknown, although only on the Mt. Cenis route were professional guides employed as a matter of course. These guides had their own special name, "marrons" and a special function, to "ramasser" the traveller on his way to France, down the slope between the summit of the pass and Lanslebourg, when it was covered with frozen snow. The traveller took his seat in a rush-seated chair on runners; one "marron" in front and one behind. The one in front had a strap round his chest fastened to the chair; he took a few steps, and the chair did the rest; if the direction became amiss or the pace too furious, the "marron" behind the chair guided or checked it with an alpenstock. The distance was a league; the time fifteen minutes. Going towards Italy you would have found fifty or sixty persons coming to meet you at Lanslebourg, hat in hand, offering their services as "marrons" or as horse-owners. Dismounting, one would have held the bridle, one the stirrup, one yourself. Two or three struggle for the privilege of taking your horse to the stable and your trunk to your room, but the latter privilege is not one to be granted lightly; it was not in sound only that "marron" resembled "larron." The traveller's own horse was sent on after being shod with calkins, and he himself followed in one of the sledges, used in ascents, litter-fashion, by four "marrons," who carried it, two at a time, turn and turn about; glasses to protect the eyes from the snow-light formed part of the stock-in-trade of the local pedlars.