Touring in 1600

Necessities and possibilities are sometimes found considered jointly in general estimates. Sir Philip Sidney considered his brother should have two hundred pounds a year allowed him for travelling. This was in 1578, and he would be reckoning according to the highest standard that a young Englishman would have a use for.

Dallington, a guide-book writer, speaking for Englishmen in France in 1598, estimates eighty pounds a year; if one servant is taken and riding-lessons required, one hundred and fifty pounds; over two hundred pounds is excessive; while another, Cleland, in his "Institution of a Young Nobleman" (1607) considers two hundred pounds a year enough for four persons. Howell (1642) says three hundred pounds for the youngster at Paris, with fifty pounds each in addition for a cook, a valet, and a page; but then Howell had acted as tutor and no doubt hoped to do so again as soon as he could get free from the Fleet Prison, where he lay when his pamphlet was published. Under these circumstances he was likely to be considering his own pocket rather than the father's. Nevertheless, two of the brothers Coligny [Henri II's courtiers], when planning a year's tour through Italy in 1546, were said to have put aside fourteen thousand scudi [£30,000] for expenses; which annoyed their uncle.116 But within a year or two of this estimate, Evelyn was travelling farther afield than Paris, – he stayed seven months in Rome alone, – keeping one servant throughout, sometimes two, learning under several masters, and making costly and extensive purchases, on less than three hundred pounds annually. Of Sir Richard Fanshawe, again, his wife records that "during some years of travel" (less than seven, for certain) "he had spent a considerable part of his stock"; this stock consisted of what his parents had bequeathed him, fifteen hundred pounds, and fifty pounds a year: his travel lay mainly in France and Spain previous to 1630.

Fynes Moryson, too, gives his expenditure as from fifty to sixty pounds a year, which included the cost of two journeys, one in spring, one in autumn. He was accustomed to the best standard of living at home, but his income was hardly adequate to his social position and by temperament he was a temperate and adaptable man; more so, to say the least, than the son of Davison, the Secretary of State whom Queen Elizabeth made the scapegoat for the death of Queen Mary Stewart.

Father Davison had been told that one hundred marks would suffice for his boy abroad each year, and, consequently, in sending the latter to Italy in 1595 with a tutor, and a servant, allowed him treble that amount, one hundred pounds. The tutor writes, "I never endured such slavery in my life to save money"; if Mr. Davison does not see his way to changing his mind about the one hundred pounds a year, will he kindly find another tutor? As to the "frugal travellers" whose travelling costs them no more than the one hundred marks a year, he does not wish to deny it; in fact, he knows such men; and very sorry he is for those who have lent them the rest they have spent.

From all this one may conclude that the equivalent of four hundred pounds a year was the minimum for respectable travelling and that the Average Tourist would certainly need at least half as much again. But this is assuming that all who were respectable, or above the need to be so, paid all their own expenses, which was far from being the case. There were plenty of rich travellers who defrayed all charges for a large following. Landgraf Ludwig II of Hessen-Darmstadt117 even paid a certain knight to accompany him, six hundred florins [£600] down and fifty florins a month, besides expenses and clothes. So when Cardinal Luigi d'Aragona toured Europe, starting May 9, 1517, and arriving home March 16, 1518, and spent about fifteen thousand ducats [£35,000] meantime, in which "eating and drinking were the least costly items," we may conclude that the thirty-five persons he took with him, and the forty-five he brought back, received at least expenses. Another churchman, Johann Gottfried von Aschhausen, bishop of Würzburg, left Strassburg in 1612 with a retinue of one hundred and thirty, twenty-one of whom were young men of high birth. Before he passed out of Germany this number was increased by fifty more. He was away a year in Italy, which cost him thirty-two thousand seven hundred and fifty-four scudi [£40,000].118

But since he went as the Emperor's ambassador, this is rather a fresh example of how travelling was facilitated by embassies. For among the advantages of various kinds that rendered accompanying the journeyings of diplomatists the best means of seeing the world, the economical advantages were as important as any. It by no means followed, however, that anything but board and lodging were provided by him; in the detailed accounts of Sir G. Chaworth regarding his special embassy to Brussels is no mention of outlay on anything but necessaries. On the other hand, we find another English ambassador giving one hundred pounds apiece to the gentlemen who were to accompany him, to provide their outfit.119 In any case, this expedient extended only as far as the ambassador went, a specially important limitation for Englishmen of Queen Elizabeth's day, since she had no ambassador at Venice throughout her reign; and even when James I sent one thither he was, during his first term of office, the only English ambassador in Italy. Bearing this in mind, and turning to other methods whereby the Average Tourist from England might reduce his expenditure, we come upon what is, perhaps, the most remarkable fact of the time in regard to the kind, and the extent, of the usefulness with which travel was credited, namely, that Queen Elizabeth subsidised it. It is obvious from the life-stories of all those who served her that they were treated with extreme stinginess and that employment by the government meant heavy expense instead of salaries; and yet, as to travel, these are the words of Bacon, who had excellent means of knowing the facts: "There was a constant course held, that by the advice of the secretaries, or some principal councillor, there was always sent forth into the parts beyond the seas some young men of whom good hopes were conceived of their towardliness, to be trained up and made fit for such public employments and to learn the languages. This was at the charge of the Queen, which was not much, for they travelled but as private gentlemen."120

Ecclesiastics, it goes almost without saying, received special terms, mainly in the shape of free lodging at religious houses, although the opinion of one abbé ought not to go unrecorded, – "avoid monasteries," because the charities expected amounted to more than inn-charges. This certainly did not apply to Muscovy, where, if a monastery could be found, it undoubtedly did mean free board and lodging for the three days, the usual limit of time, universally, for claimers of charity. But what with monasteries and special foundations there must have been far more really free accommodation than is apparent from tourist-books, written as the latter almost entirely are by the class that paid its way. Even apart from the above there were incidents such as one recorded in 1650, of eight thousand pilgrims to Rome from Spain being fed and housed for three days at Naples at the expense of the Spanish viceroy there. At Compostella, too, for two reals [7s. 6d.] could be obtained a parchment document with a cardinal's seal attached, recommending the bearer for alms as one who was on his way to other places of pilgrimage; and in Italy not even that much was needed, inasmuch as the natives were then so averse to begging that foreigners who had no such scruples found little difficulty in traversing it at next to no cost.

Where a begging-license was necessary, that could easily be obtained also by being, or pretending to be, a student. Loyola lived in term-time at Paris on what he gained by begging at fairs in Flanders and England during holidays. Another useful option open to students, of whatever social position, was the exemption from local tolls, frequently a privilege belonging to all who had matriculated at the university of the district; the graduate of Padua, for instance, was exempt throughout Venetian territory. It so happened that one of these tourists121 was elected rector of Bologna University during his stay there in 1575, and that during his term of office some students were forced to pay taxes. He and the managing body at once appealed to the Pope, who not only confirmed, but extended, the immunities. In Italy the tolls were so oppressive that the matriculation fees, twenty lire [£5] at Padua, twelve at Bologna, were soon made good, even supposing them to have been paid; at Bologna, at least, matriculation could be obtained for nothing by applying in formâ pauperis. The examination was no bar worth mentioning. In Germany, moreover, according to Moryson, the tenancy of a house often carried with it the obligation to board and lodge a student free. Another traveller who economised thoroughly was Sastrow, who, on reaching Rome, took service at the hospital of Santa Brigitta, cooked, washed-up, made the beds, and received the equivalent of 2s. 6d. a month, while Jacques Callot, the artist, when he ran away from home, took the way to Italy in the company of those gypsies who appear in those sketches of his which form one of the most vivid memorials of the travelling life of the time. Yet with all these opportunities which presented themselves to the needy, we are told that Turkey was the only country of Europe where poverty was no bar to travel.

Outside Europe fresh estimates have to be quoted. The fare to Jaffa and back by the pilgrim-galley varied from fifty to sixty ducats [say £100]: this included food. Additional expenses brought the ordinary cost of a visit to Jerusalem from Venice under these earlier conditions up to three or four hundred pounds in present-day values. This, of course, omits the expenses of the pilgrim between his home and Venice. The minimum recorded cost for this period is represented by the two hundred and twenty crowns [£350] spent by one Switzer in thirty weeks, and two hundred and twenty-eight crowns spent by another, a barber, in eleven months (1583-84),122 of which times only about three months, in each case, was taken up by the voyage from Venice to Jerusalem and back, the remainder being devoted to Italy. The pilgrimage may be considered as accounting for but little more than two hundred pounds of the expenditure of each. Many went, moreover, who never possessed this much, since it was common for one man to go as deputy for several, who jointly defrayed his expenses; and it was also a common form of charity for rich pilgrims to pay for poor ones. Later, in fact, they were often forced to do so by the Turks when the latter had reduced to beggary those who had come away with too little, which led to there arising a custom among pilgrims of showing each other their money; if one refused, the others avoided his company to escape the possibility of being compelled to pay for him.

With the cessation of the pilgrim-galley the cost of the pilgrimage doubled itself, what with the increased length of the journey due to a roundabout way having to be taken, and, still more, to its increased duration, owing to the uncertainty; especially as every day additional brought its own additional risks and extortions. Moryson and his brother spent four hundred and eighty pounds [nearly, if not quite, £3000].

Certain circumstances raised the cost to him above the average, and he was away more than a year and a half, whereas the journey would be done within the year ordinarily. On the other hand, as his brother died near Aleppo, the return-journey represents the expenditure of one man instead of two. How a thrifty man who was used to roughing it would be forced to spend the equivalent of one thousand pounds or more on a journey that would nowadays cost him about sixty-five pounds is partly explained by the exactions of the Turks. When Sandys was at Jerusalem the monks of S. Salvatore had just been compelled to pay eight hundred dollars [£900] for an imaginary offence. When Lithgow arrived late one night after the gates had been shut, the friars let down food to him over the wall; the Turks, being informed of this, insisted they must have been importing weapons, and inflicted another fine, one hundred piasters [£125]. It is not surprising, then, that with expenses like these, and ordinary expenses to match, the monks expected sums from the pilgrims that seem at first sight outrageous. To Lithgow they made a definite charge of a piaster [£1 10s.] a day for board and lodging alone; but their general custom was to throw themselves on the traveller's generosity and grumble at the result.

Neither did the Franks suffer from indirect exactions only. The price for entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre went on increasing, from nothing at all in the fourteenth century to four zecchini [£10] in 1606. Some mention fees of four times that amount, but this higher sum included the toll at the city gate, the two being collected simultaneously and so mistaken for one charge: the Turks farmed the revenue from the Holy Sepulchre for eight thousand sultanons [over £19,000], says Sandys. Extras were almost endless, yet very few of them left any change out of a gold coin; the fee for the certificate of visitation, without which the poorest pilgrim would not think of departing, was three zecchini [seven guineas], while the knighthood, nominally thirty zecchini, does not seem to have been granted for less than ten. The monastery servants were liable to excommunication if they accepted a tip, but they gladly risked damnation for a zecchino, and, indeed, insisted on doing so.

By spending not more than a week at Jerusalem and that at a time which may profanely be termed out of the season, it was possible to see the sights of the city itself for the equivalent of £50; at any rate, that happened in 1676;123 do as most Franks did, spend Easter there, and ten days or a fortnight, and accompany the excursions, cost nearly double that. On the journey, the tributes may be imagined from the fact that Sandys thought it worth while to pay four shariffs [£10] for a passport which saved a few of them; nothing availed against an Arab chief who sent to demand seven zecchini [sixteen guineas] a head, and then came in person to demand five more. Moreover, besides the special outfit to be bought, the charges themselves were always reckoned on the basis that a Frank must have heaps of money; from Rama to Jerusalem alone, one day's journey, another seven zecchini had to be paid to the dragoman, and the same amount coming back.

A considerable saving might be effected by hiring a Janizary at seven aspers [2s.] a day: his services more than paid for his keep; and there were times when even a Frank found himself living at an easy rate. This happened when he stayed at a "fondaco," or depôt of Christian traders, or so it may be inferred from casual remarks backed up by two definite instances in years far apart. The German Fürer lived so at Alexandria and Cairo for the equivalent of five shillings a day in 1565, and in 1625 two Germans124 were received for two months free of all charges at the Venetian "fondaco" at Cairo.

Far above all economies, however, was the system known as "putting-out" money – and this applied to travel inside, as well as outside, Christendom. The mediæval custom of presenting offerings before starting had died out; sixteenth-century tourists only offered prayers, and, for the rest, often expected to take up, at their homecoming, all they had left behind them with additions, or even multiplication. They deposited, or "put out," money before their departure on that condition. The custom is said to have been developed in the Netherlands125 during the first half of the sixteenth century out of a pilgrims' practice of leaving a will behind them in favour of a friend on the understanding that the pilgrim was to receive double the bequest if he came back. It would seem from what Moryson says that the custom was barely known in England till the last decade of the sixteenth century, and then spread so rapidly that it fell into disrepute, bankrupts employing it to reinstate themselves, and actors, then the scum of the populace, to gain notoriety. He apologises for his brother Henry doing it, who put out four hundred pounds to be repaid twelve hundred pounds if he came back from Jerusalem. If allusions to the practice in contemporary English literature126 can be trusted, he drove a bad bargain; according to them he might have arranged for his hypothetical profit to be five hundred instead of three hundred per cent, the latter rate being granted against journeys to Italy. The only other instance known of an actual transaction of this kind was calculated to yield two thousand per cent [£10 to be repaid £200]; but this was against a voyage to Russia, near the middle of the century, from London, whence only one ship was known to have sailed thither and returned.

Life insurance in its present form was also adopted by some persons before starting for abroad; but public opinion condemned every form of life insurance equally as immoral, and in the Netherlands, France, and Genoa it was forbidden by law, "travel-wagers" being specially mentioned in the proclamations. The rate, however, is the point which specially concerns us here, as indicative of the risks of travel. At the present day, for all the parts of the world touched upon in this book, the safest insurance company will not only lay fifty to one that the traveller will return, in place of the rate then of three to five to one that he would not, but will further insure him against accidents at a lower rate than if he became a London butcher. The system is of interest, too, as marking the transition from mediæval to modern methods of insurance; from "protections" granted by the stronger to the weaker for a premium which took the form of personal service, to the capitalist's bond; the guarantee of redress by force being superseded by guarantee of reimbursement by a business man, because the latter had become both more feasible and more satisfactory.

It is clear, then, that, given the most favourable circumstances, the traveller might not only make his journeys pay their own expenses, but might clear a handsome profit. Yet how far these circumstances were made the most of is a question that has at present to be decided on negative evidence alone, the verdict on which must be that no case is made out. In leaving, therefore, the general estimates for details, both have to be put forward as net, subject to the mitigations already referred to.

The fare from Dover to Calais was five shillings throughout this period. So invariable was this charge that when a certain boatman was suspected of being in league with the Roman Catholic seminarists in France because he conveyed across some ladies who were religious fugitives, he was considered not guilty on its being ascertained that he had charged them one pound each for the passage.127 This five-shilling charge did not include the cost of boarding and landing when that required, as so often happened, the use of small boats, or of porters wading out. Between Flushing and Gravesend 6s. 8d. seems to have been the fare.128

Among the reasons for the preference of travel by water rather than by land, one was economy. In the case of tolls, for example, the case has been exactly reversed. As locks did not exist there were no river-dues; but of highway-tolls plenty; moreover, it often cost something to cross a bridge but never a sou to pass under it. As for ferries, the ferryman occasionally made the passengers pay what he pleased by collecting fares in the middle of the river. Yet another reason which raised the cost of road-travel as against river-travel lay in the latter affording far fewer chances to robbers, which also told on the direct expense by eliminating payments to escorts.

The contrast, of course, between horse and boat was much greater than between waggon and boat. In fact, the choice between the latter pair was many times a matter of comfort rather than of cost; the fares for both, in all normal cases but one where they can be exactly determined, varying from three farthings to a penny ha'penny a mile. To compare this with existing railway fares we may strike an average and say sixpence a mile; but the charges will be found to approach the minimum more often on the river than in the waggon. A typical instance is the five stivers [2s. 6d.] on the nine-mile canal between Haarlem and Amsterdam, and the lowest, the exception just spoken of, is the sixteen soldi [3s. 6d.] for the twenty-four miles by river and lagoon between Venice and Padua, recorded by Villamont in 1591, and by Van Buchell in 1587. One disadvantage common to both cart and boat must not be forgotten – that, to profit by this relative cheapness, the traveller had to form one of a party; if no party was ready he had to wait till one collected. Sir Henry Wotton, to take one example out of many, once wanted to go by waggon from Brunswick to Frankfort, about one hundred and fifty miles; had he started on the spot he would have started alone and paid at the rate of 4s. 6d. a mile of our money. He waited a week before two disreputable specimens turned up to share the expense.

This freedom to choose one's company was a decided advantage for the traveller who rode, considering that murdering was far less exclusively a lower-class habit than it has since become. But he had to pay dearly for the increased respectability and pace. Horse-hire varied from a penny ha'penny to fivepence a mile, the maximum charge representing the cost of post-horses in France in the seventeenth century, the minimum the charge in Italy for a horse that was waiting for a return fare, an opportunity that might frequently be met with. The average was far nearer the maximum than the minimum rate, since it was often a case of post-horse or no horse, and post rates did not sink so very far below the French standard. According to Moryson, the English charged two shillings a day in London, one shilling a day in the provinces, for other than post-horses, but he was a native and the charges to foreigners probably exceeded the charges to natives throughout Europe in a greater degree then than now; an Englishman on the way from Calais to Paris complains that he had to pay £2 15s. where a Frenchman paid but three pistoles at sixteen shillings and eightpence each;129 and that is not an isolated grievance. In fact, as a comment on Moryson's remark about England, when Lionello, a secretary of the Venetian ambassador, went post to Edinburgh and back in June, 1617, besides paying threepence a mile for each horse, he includes in his accounts as usual tips fourpence to the woman and sixpence to the horse-boy, at each stage.130 In Italy, where several foreigners found the cost of riding less than the average, Villamont reckons that an écu [two guineas] a day per horse covered all horse-charges, while in passing from Germany to Italy the best plan was to buy a horse in Germany, where three pounds would be a fair price, and sell it in Italy, which could be done at double that price.

Travellers' evidence, however, as to horse-charges is less plentiful than might be expected, owing to what may be called the 'vetturino' system. The term 'vetturino' came to be applied, even outside Italy, to the horse-owner or carrier who contracted for the whole cost of a journey, food, lodging, transport, tolls. Their reputation is best illustrated by the tale of an abbé at Loreto about this time, who, in confessing, included among his transgressions a beating inflicted on a 'vetturino.' "Go on," said the confessor, "that doesn't count; they're the worst scoundrels in the world." Nevertheless, the method spread all over Europe during this period with striking rapidity, though far more readily on the road than on the water. The advantages to the stranger were recognised at once, the saving of the trouble and the expense which accompanied repeated bargaining in a state of ignorance as to where and how to do it, what inns to go to, what extras to put up with, what the legal dues really were, etc. However dishonest the 'vetturino' might prove, his victim probably paid no more to him in unintentional commission than his accomplices would have extorted on their own account otherwise. For the Lyons-Turin journey, at least, there soon came into use a regular formula for a written contract, a formula which has been preserved.131 The system has its value for us, too, in enabling us to compare prices. While there are multitudes of figures apparently available for the purpose of reckoning cost, a large majority turn out to be, to use one of their own phrases, no more use than a wooden poker, the writer omitting one or more of the necessary data. If, for instance, he mentions the hire of four horses, it leaves us in the dark in reckoning personal expenses, inasmuch as four horses may equally well imply two, or three, or four persons. So likewise, to complete an account of a waggon-fare, it needs to be stated whether or no it was what the Germans called "maul frei," that is, whether the coachman paid for his own food or not. Or again, riding was so much the rule that the charge which the wayfarer gives for bed and breakfast often includes, probably more often than not, the "stabulum et pabulum" for his horse; it is only on the rare occasions when specific statement is made, or when a pedestrian gives prices, that there is any certainty about it. Now the vetturino's charge does away with all this uncertainty. Also as to whether a guide accompanied the party or not – another necessary which cost money; especially a satisfactory one, obtainable only, writes Sir Philip Sidney, "by much expense or much humbleness."