A Maine Point Of
The Travellers Care." He Reached France When The Rage For Tennis Was At
Its Height, - When
There were two hundred and fifty tennis courts in
Paris,[236] - and "two tennis courts for every one Church through
France," according to his computation.[237] Everyone was at it; - nobles,
artizans, women, and children. The monks had had to be requested not to
play - especially, the edict said, "not in public in their shirts."[238]
Our Englishman, of course, thought this enthusiasm was beyond bounds.
"Ye have seene them play Sets at Tennise in the heat of Summer and
height of the day, when others were scarcely able to stirre out of
doors." Betting on the game was the ruin of the working-man, who
"spendeth that on the Holyday, at Tennis, which hee got the whole weeke,
for the keeping of his poore family. A thing more hurtfull then our
Ale-houses in England."[239]
"There remains two other exercises," says the Method for Travell, "of
use and necessitie, to him that will returne ably quallified for his
countries service in warre, and his owne defence in private quarrell.
These are Riding and Fencing. His best place for the first (excepting
Naples) is in Florence under il Signor Rustico, the great Dukes
Cavallerizzo, and for the second (excepting Rome) is in Padua, under il
Sordo."[240] Italy, it may be observed, was still the best school for
these accomplishments. Pluvinel was soon to make a world-renowned riding
academy in Paris, but the art of fencing was more slowly disseminated.
One was still obliged, like Captain Bobadil, to make "long travel for
knowledge, in that mystery only."[241] Brantome says the fencing masters
of Italy kept their secrets in their own hands, giving their services
only on the condition that you should never reveal what you had learnt
even to your dearest friends. Some instructors would never allow a
living soul in the room where they were giving lessons to a pupil. And
even then they used to keek everywhere, under the beds, and examine the
wall to see if it had any crack or hole through which a person could
peer.[242] Dallington makes no further remark on the subject, however,
than the above, and after some advice about money matters, which we will
mention in another connection, and a warning to the traveller that his
apparel must be in fashion - for the fashions change with trying
rapidity, and the French were very scornful of anyone who appeared in a
last year's suit[243] - he brings to a close one of the pithiest essays
in our collection.
When the influence of France over the ideals of a gentleman was well
established, James Howell wrote his Instructions for Forreine
Travell,[244] and in this book for the first time the traveller is
advised to stay at one of the French academies - or riding schools, as
they really were.
His is the best known, probably, of all our treatises, partly because it
was reprinted a little while ago by Mr Gosse, and partly because of its
own merits.
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