Touring in 1600

But Rome and its associations have had more than their share of attention. Imagine, then, the traveller started on the invariable excursion to Naples, the equal of Milan as a finishing school, and one of the few cities with underground drainage. Some, but not many, might go on to Sicily; to Syracuse for the feast of Santa Lucia, for choice. But what with robbers and corsair-raids, there was no travelling there without a strong guard, and the towns were so unsafe that Messina seems to have been the first of European towns to evolve a combined bank and safe-deposit under municipal guarantee; established by 1611, when Sandys noticed it. Those who did reach Sicily usually visited Malta as well; small boats with five rowers left about two hours before sunset, and if no Turkish sail was sighted, went on, reaching Malta about dawn.

But the foregoing presupposes the Mont-Cenis route into Italy, and leaves out three towns which must be included: Padua, Verona, and Bergamo. Padua had its university, the most-visited in Europe; Verona, its relics of Roman times, which commanded an attention that they now have to share with the romantic aspects of mediæval history, romance that sixteenth-century people were not inclined to be attracted by, having too first-hand an acquaintance with feuds to look at their picturesque side. Moreover, the visible remains of these feuds, here and in every Italian city, showed a ludicrous side, for in so far as they did not take the form of assassination by the foulest means, they consisted in the two parties of retainers parading the town, armed with an absurd completeness, each one confining itself to certain quarters of the town by tacit agreement in order to render collisions impossible. The habits dramatised in the first scene of "Romeo and Juliet" are those of Londoners, in so far as they are at all contemporary. The third town, Bergamo, thousands pass by now, year by year, within a few miles, never knowing what they miss by not stopping, but then it lay on the north-and-south road as much as any town in Italy, and not even the Frankfort fair surpassed that of Bergamo, August 25 and the following week, when lucky was he who could find sleeping-room in a stable.

Yet however complete was the outfit obtainable across the Alps, there remained other countries which were factors in politics; and which possessed, moreover, histories, courts, universities, and men of learning; fewer temptations, possibly, and more "true religion." Of these France was the one the most easily accessible to a greater number. As to its boundaries, they were somewhat narrower in almost every direction than at present; especially southeastwards; Lyons was a frontier-town. Its attractions lay principally in Paris, the only city north of the Alps comparable to Milan as a centre for the training of a man for a courtly, or an international, life; and in the government, which, in its extreme centralisation and in its idealisation of monarchy, corresponded most closely with the more practicable ideals of the day.

In planning a route through France it was advisable to go straight to Paris, if only for a few days, since to have been in Paris gave one a position in the provinces. As a place to stay at, Orleans was really far more frequently chosen by foreigners than Paris. Its university was as international as any in Europe, and ahead of any other in maintaining a circulating library for students, which lent any book on a receipt being given for it; "an extraordinary custom" says Evelyn. Here, too, began the district reputed best for spoken French, which brought strangers to stay at Blois and Tours and Saumur as well; to Saumur, perhaps, more than to the other two, by reason of the number and quality of its teachers on all subjects; it was a centre for Protestantism and learning in combination. Poictiers for law, Montpellier for medicine; and there is an end of the towns that the student-tourist abided in. For the country in general it should be added that just here, where centralisation and autocracy were developing most rapidly and thoroughly, was reckoned as the most decidedly free region of Europe, "liberty," according to sixteenth-century standards, depending not on administration being either lenient or constitutional, but on the extent to which the individual was not interfered with by social conventions. Political tyranny was not regarded as objectionable on principle, except by authors.

The United Provinces differed in no noteworthy respect from Holland of to-day, so far as territory goes, and during the earlier part of this period attracted but little attention; but as time went on and from imminent destruction they escaped into independence, they drew the tourist, first out of curiosity and subsequently as a State which compelled the study of every one who needed to observe the present and foresee the future. Many minor interests, too, brought individuals thither, as a result of Dutch enterprise. We find, for example, Sir William Brereton surveying the country in order to understand their methods of decoying wild-fowl; and Sir Richard Weston, who introduced locks into English rivers and the rotation of crops into English agriculture, learning both these novelties there. And though no one as yet went abroad to study the possibilities of practical philanthropy, there were many who noted, with an admiration that doubtless bore fruit, their charitable institutions of all kinds, unequalled then outside Rome. In one respect they were ahead of Italy: the suddenness of their prosperity resulted in the latest improvements in laying out towns – wider streets and greater regularity being more in evidence there than elsewhere. So uniform was the appearance of the houses, says one, that they seemed to have been all built by the same workmen at the same time; whereas the Italian towns, even in re-building, made no such experiments, because the old narrow streets formed the best safeguard against the surprise-attack of which they lived in constant dread, especially from the Turks' corsairs. No one town could claim precedence, though Amsterdam, even as early as 1600, struck De Rohan as equalled by few in Europe for wealth and beauty; it was rather the excellence and frequency of the towns that occasioned remark – twenty-nine fine ones within sixty leagues of boundary; together with the number of storks which the municipalities cherished, as animals known to harbour a preference for places where representative government flourished.

As for the Empire, it meant many different things to different visitors. The variety of territory and government was absolutely bewildering, yet certain marked cross-divisions presented themselves, such as the triple division of it into upper Germany, Hansa League (with Saxony), and frontier; the frontier being those districts which were forever either meeting, or fearing, a Turkish invasion. Then there was division according to politics, Catholic, Reformed, Protestant, to be studied by the Average Tourist for purposes of alliance, and a third classification according to form of government, the imperial authority, venerable and increasingly vague; princes; "free" towns. The first system of division has, however, most in common with the greater number of foreigners' interests, and of its three sub-divisions upper Germany was paid the greatest attention, partly because it lay across so many routes, partly because there was so much to see. It gives the dominant note to references to German-speaking countries in the travel-literature of the day, a note of peaceful energy and hopeful prosperity. While not recommended to these travellers' notice by a well-known past such as the greater coherence of France and Italy had enabled historians to evolve for them, those who lingered there, as most did, saw that its possessions, human and non-human, gave it a present interest and a promise not surpassed elsewhere. The Germany of the last fifty years of the sixteenth century is practically ignored by modern English historians: the story of its continual activity and of its continuous relations with England contain none of those sensational hindrances to the advance of civilisation with which historians concern themselves, but the frequent references to those relations by the contemporary historian of Queen Elizabeth's reign, William Camden, bear witness to the current opinion and knowledge which found expression in the number of visitors from all quarters and the attention they devote to it in relation to that accorded to other countries.

Among the towns of the Empire Augsburg was easily first; its finest street was the finest street in Europe, with roofs of copper; Nuremburg ran it close in many ways but had nothing to show in comparison with that one street. The cause of Augsburg's preëminence was its being the home of the Fuggers, the greatest financiers of Europe, but with their decline one function of the town that meant much in the way of attracting wayfarers, that of being the General-Post-Office for correspondence between Italy and Central Europe, passed to Frankfurt. The frequency of the use of stone as house-building material in these towns of Upper Germany and the show of burnished pewter and brass that was the pride of each inhabitant of standing, who let his huge hall-door lie open all day to exhibit it, were details which the Average Tourist would not overlook if he was observing as he ought where the wealth and security prevailed that were valuable in an ally. Thus did Strassburg fix itself in De Rohan's recollections. Democracy, to him, was a barely credible superstition; yet nowhere was he more courteously treated, nowhere did he see completer preparations against a long siege, nor any better arsenal, a model of cleanliness, orderliness, and efficiency. Neither was it lost on him that amongst all their collection of cannon there was not one for siege purposes; their aim was defence, not offence. As little to be ignored as the others was Ulm. A feature of the age was the development of the methods of water-supply in towns; Ulm was the centre for this industry; even Augsburg's water-supply had been planned there. And it was equally the leader in woodwork.

Similar characteristics would be found repeated on a somewhat less striking scale among the Hansa towns, with Lübeck ranking first in pleasantness by general consent. A specially charming feature lay in the number of swans swimming in the moats, though no Englishman so much as mentions them; doubtless because the one town that excelled it in this respect was London. Going east, the various capitals would provide each its own object-lesson, and, collectively, would illustrate the absence of avarice among German rulers as contrasted with the princes of Italy. Saxony formed the only exception and Dresden showed it. In spite of it being the last big town that Hentzner visited, its armoury aroused more enthusiasm in him than anything except the gardens of Naples and the all-sufficiency of Milan; and Moryson confirms this, adding also that the stable was the finest he had seen, with its 136 horses, all foreigners (the German horses had another stable to themselves), each with a glazed window and a green curtain in front of his nose, a red cloth, an iron rack, a copper manger, a brass shower-bath, and a separate cupboard for his trappings.

No Protestant who reached Dresden would miss Wittenberg, but the contrast must have been painful; poor and very dirty; the dwellers therein mainly students, prostitutes, and pigs, recalling the verses in use concerning Angers —

Basse ville, hauts clochers,Riches putaines, pauvres escoliers.

Leipzig was in favour for the purity of its German and Munich for pleasure, but Prague was another disappointment in spite of the Emperor living there; few stone houses and the wooden ones rough, and so filthy that the saying ran that the Turks would never take it despite the feebleness of its fortifications, because it was so well-guarded by its stenches; much as a Frenchman remarked at this time of Massa, between Genoa and Pisa, that it had a castle, but its chief defence was its fleas. Vienna was likewise far too well defended to attract visitors; a frontier-town against the Turks, always garrisoned by mercenaries and its streets unsafe in consequence.

To go on to the Spanish Netherlands, they were bound to be passed and re-passed in the course of the work of Europe, for geographical reasons, but still more so as a storm-centre of European politics. Nevertheless, the tourist, however serious, did not stay there long. The viceroy's business was generalship, and consequently there was no settled court: little to note, in fact, but the Spanish infantry at work and the effects of that; towns in ruins, dwindling trade. Yet the localisation of the war was intermittent enough not to interfere with the travellers from Upper Germany making a practice of reaching France through this district, according to Zinzerling, rather than direct, a habit resulting not only from the attractions that remained to Flemish towns, but still more from the direct route through Burgundy having become a highway of German mercenaries into France.

Moreover, no one who knew his business as a sight-seer omitted Antwerp. Trade and political importance had for some time been deserting it until it suggested to Howell in 1619 "a disconsolate Widow, or a superannuated Virgin that hath lost her Lover," but in 1600 it had not passed a state of mellowness without stagnation, with traces of its greatness fresh. Every visitor repeats the same idea – "the most beautiful town in Europe"; and not in the same formula, as would result from the idea being a guide's commonplace, but in words drawn from his own experience: "as seen from the cathedral tower the most beautiful town after Constantinople," says one; or Lithgow, extolling Damascus, "the most beautiful city in Asia," compares it, for every respect save style of architecture, to "that matchless pattern and mirror of beauty, Antwerp." It would seem to have been the first town to turn its fortifications into promenades, laid out in walks and planted with trees.45 The citadel, too, was the finest out of Italy, on the word of a Venetian ambassador.

Elizabethan England, on the other hand, was rendered still more remarkable by possessing no fortresses at all. Two exceptions, Berwick and the Tower of London, served but to call attention to the rule, the Tower in particular, whose out-of-date character in the matter of defences greatly amused connoisseurs. One Venetian ambassador, indeed, with this fact in his mind, together with the miscellaneous character of its contents, describes it as not so much a fortress as a "sicuro deposito" – a safe-deposit.46 The peacefulness which brought about this state of things is still borne witness to by the large glazed windows on the ground floors of Elizabethan country-houses, but no foreigner remarks on that in the presence of the other more striking points that testified to it then. Foscarini, the successor of the ambassador just referred to, had occasion to traverse the length of England in 1613. Writing home47 he remarks on five facts concerning the country he passes through which seemed particularly noteworthy: (1) No unfruitful land throughout; (2) Every eight or ten miles a town comparable to a good Italian town (this was on the post-road to Scotland); (3) Number of navigable rivers; (4) and of beautiful churches; (5) No mercenary soldiers.

To make it clear why the visitor should be so specially struck by these features, it is necessary to recall how differently matters stood abroad.

During this period two thirty-year civil wars broke out in Europe, one in each half of the period, the first in France while the Empire was at peace, the second in the Empire while France was at peace. Between these two came twenty years of comparative quiet, but never a year when war was not to be seen in progress, or its effects still horribly new, in the course of a Continental tour. Incidentally, it may be pointed out that this peculiarly even distribution of peace and war gives the writings of travellers in Europe at this time striking value in relation to the effects of war and peace, not only in themselves but also as to their special characteristics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. No tourist came into contact with both wars; almost every tourist saw something of one district under the influence of war or of peace, while some other is seeing another district in an opposite state. There remains, therefore, in their writings, a continuous comment on each other; so continuous and so unconscious as to leave no room for this or that man's bias to influence the general impression.

Yet striking as the peacefulness of England was, it probably lessened rather than heightened what degree of attraction England possessed; since with war so normal a condition, war and its incidentals became a primary object of study even to those who did not profess soldiership. Neither did any but the Dutch need to learn the language of the country, which was what induced so many to make a lengthy stay in Tuscany and in Touraine. Neither was England a thoroughfare. Nor, even, were the recent achievements of Englishmen more than a minor cause of the considerable influx of visitors; not, at least, apart from the idea which is best expressed, perhaps, in the private letter of an Englishman writing from Aleppo: "Your last letter made me exceeding sorrowful, for therein you acquainted me with the death of blessed Queen Elizabeth, at the hearing whereof not only I and our English nation [i. e., the residents] mourned, but many other Christians who were never in Christendom, but born and brought up in heathen countries, wept to hear of her death, and said that she was the most famous queen that ever they heard or read of since the world began."48

For the "Virgin Queen" was a far greater marvel to contemporaries than to posterity. Except for her namesake of Spain, a century earlier, who throughout her political life had been the ally and wife of one of the cleverest statesmen of the age, there was no instance since the mistiest past of a queen-regnant a leader of men. At her accession civil war or conquest seemed inevitable and insolvency was a fact: yet before her death the bond of London "is," writes one of the chief financiers of the time,49 "the first to-day [1595] in Europe," and she had added victory abroad to peace at home. To say "she had added" suggests nowadays the phraseology of the lady's paper, but it does really express not only the convention which the tourist may be taken as accepting but also the belief of reasonable men of the time.

It is true that many denied her right to the title of "Queen," or, indeed, to that of "Virgin"; but no one had the opportunity of doubting that both claims belonged to that secondary order of facts known as "historical." And just as her position as sovereign, and a strikingly successful one, was more wonderful then than it seems to-day, so too did her celibacy assure her of more reverence than we should instinctively concede. The mediæval idealisation of virginity, one of the most beneficial, perhaps, of all the ideas of the past that the Reformation killed, ensured a place in the life of the world, and the self-respect contingent on that, for all the unmarried women whose counterparts since have had no assistance socially from any convention, from nothing but their own individuality. But this idea, though dying, was not dead; and, as is the way with ideas, challenged attention all the more definitely for ceasing to be taken for granted.

These two facts, then, glorified Elizabeth in the eyes of foreigners; first, that she was a queen and a great ruler when effective queenship was half a myth; secondly, that she remained unmarried when virginity, considered as a virtue, was, so to speak, due to have its last flicker before finally dying down. The reign of James I was a sort of after-glow, except in so far as he had a reputation as a philosopher-king.

These ideas have a marked effect on the visitor's itinerary. He hurried, as a rule, to London, and thence, if the court was away, to that one of the palaces which was in use for the time being. The other country palaces, none far from London, would receive a visit, at any rate Windsor and Hampton Court; Oxford probably, Cambridge possibly, and there an end. Of Scotland and Wales it can only be said that the former was practically ignored except by a few Frenchmen, as a result of the ancient alliance; while to Wales they paid as little attention as the semi-Welsh queen did – none at all.

Among the foreigners who have given us their impressions of England are several who have much that is of interest to say and yet who seem to have been entirely overlooked. Nevertheless, these pages are already more numerous than the relative importance of England warrants. Let us therefore take but one, and that one the briefest; the more so since he is the likeliest to continue to be overlooked, writing as he did in Polish, from which hitherto no translation seems to have been made, not even in paraphrase.

Jakób Sobieski, the only man who was ever four times Marshal of the Polish Diet, travelled all over Europe in his youth. Henry IV of France made a personal friend of him, and it was at Paris that he spent more time than elsewhere, where, eventually, he witnessed the assassination of the king and was nearly lynched himself on the spot by the mob who took it into their heads to regard him as the murderer. However, he not only escaped, but after justice had been done on Ravaillac by his being torn asunder by horses, Sobieski had an invitation to dinner from a bootmaker who had collected certain pieces of Ravaillac and was arranging a loyal dinner-party at which they were to form the chief dish.

It was in the previous year (1609) that he visited England in the train of Myszkowski, the Marshal, negotiations being then in progress for the marriage of James I's daughter Elizabeth to Wladislas, son of the King of Poland. Sobieski, very young and very Catholic, was easily enough taken in by appearances to speak of James I as a model king, and to accept without question the declaration of the English Catholics that things had improved greatly since the death of the "severe and overbearing Queen Elizabeth." But it must be borne in mind that the King had not yet come to the bottom of the Treasury. One of Sobieski's remarks – that the Palace at Westminster is finer inside than outside – is an interesting comment on the impoverishment of the Crown that set in, if taken in conjunction with the remark of Gölnitz of Danzig, less than ten years later, who says exactly the opposite. In comparing the palaces around Paris with those of the English king, he says that the former are fine externally, but contain many rooms in which a respectable German would not care to receive an acquaintance; cobwebs, unpolished woodwork, walls in disrepair. One thing that scandalised Sobieski greatly was that in St. Paul's he found buying and selling going on, a statement confirmed by a Venetian ambassador here in 1607, who says that London possesses many fine churches but that these are mostly used for nothing but driving bargains in.50

Sobieski's business, however, lay at the court, and the court was out of town: the King at one palace, the Queen at another, Princess Elizabeth at a third. On paying their respects to the last-named a curiously characteristic thing happened; her chamberlain met them and asked in what language they would speak with the Princess, French, Italian, or Latin; she was equally at home in all three. Myszkowski chose Italian. The occasion, of course, was not a decisive one, but the conversation turned on Wladislas, the most anxious enquirer being an elderly lady-in-waiting who wanted to know if he was tall; the Princess, she would have them know, was tall, really tall, not made so artificially, with high heels, etc., to prove which she raised her mistress's skirt until they saw not merely blue stockings, but also saffron garters and white lace.

The last country of "European Europe" is Sobieski's own country, but only the last because, like England, it led nowhere. If omitted from a tour it was omitted with regret and consciousness of loss, being the largest monarchy in Christendom, 600 miles by 800, with a frontier reaching to within 150 miles of Moscow and 100 of the Black Sea; always on the verge of war, moreover, and a paradise of aristocracy, three good reasons for claiming the Average Tourist's attention, especially as among this aristocracy was always to be found a welcome and as high an average of attainments and qualities as anywhere north of the Alps. The statement, too, that it was not a thoroughfare must not be taken as absolute. Negotiations between the Tsars and the Papacy were frequent and these of course implied journeys through Poland by the friars whom the Papacy was wont to use as emissaries for long distances, as being more accustomed to endure privation and fatigue than bishops.