These, And Many Comments Of The Same Sort From Other Observers, Made For
The Disintegration Of The Grand Tour, And Cast Discredit Upon It As A
Mode Of Education.
Locke was not the only person who exposed the
ineffectiveness of governors.
They became a favourite subject of satire
in the eighteenth century. Though even the best sort of "maitre d'ours"
or "bear-master," as the French called him, robbed travel of its proper
effect, the best were seldom available for the hosts of boyish
travellers. Generally the family chaplain was chosen, because of his
cheapness, and this unfortunate was expected to restrain the boisterous
devilment of the Peregrine Pickle committed to his care.[390] A booklet
called The Bear-Leaders; or, Modern Travelling Stated in a Proper
Light, sums up a biting condemnation of "our rugged unsocial
Telemachuses and their unpolished Mentors," describing how someone in
orders, perhaps a family dependent, is chosen as the Governor of the
crude unprepared mortal embarking for a tour of Europe. "The Oddities,
when introduced to each other, start back with mutual Astonishment, but
after some time from a frequency of seeing, grow into a Coarse Fondness
one for the other, expressed by Horse Laughs, or intimated by alternate
Thumps on the Back, with all such other gentle insinuations of our
uncivilized Male Hoydens."[391]
Small wonder, therefore, that a youth, who returned from driving by
post-chaise through the principal towns of Europe in the company of a
meek chaplain,[392] returned from his tour about as much refined,
according to Congreve, "as a Dutch skipper from a whale-fishing."[393]
The whole idea of the Grand Tour was thrown into disrepute after its
adoption by crude and low-bred people, who thought it necessary to
inform all their acquaintance where they had been, by a very unbecoming
dress and a very awkward address: "not knowing that an Englishman's
beef-and-pudding face will not agree with a hat no bigger than a
trencher; and that a man who never learned to make a bow performs it
worse in a head of hair dressed a L'aille Pidgeon, than in a scratch
wig."[394]
In many other ways, also, travel lost its dignity in the eighteenth
century. It was no longer necessary to live in foreign countries to
understand them. With the foundation of the chairs of modern history at
Oxford and Cambridge by King George the First in 1724, one great reason
for travel was lost. Information about contemporary politics on the
Continent could be had through the increasing number of news-journals
and gazettes. As for learning the French language, there had been no
lack of competent teachers since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes
in 1685 sent French Protestant refugees swarming across the channel to
find some sort of living in England. Therefore the spirit of
acquisitiveness dwindled and died down, in the absence of any strong
need to study abroad, and an idle, frivolous, darting, capricious spirit
controlled the aristocratic tourist.
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