Overview

"Travel for pleasure developed greatly in the 18th century, and here Jeremy Black examines travel on the Continent, the so-called ""Grand Tour"". He considers not only the standard destinations of France and Italy, but also the Low Countries, Germany, Switzerland and the Balkans. The modes of transport are described in detail, along with the range of accommodation, the food and drink, the pleasures and the hazards of travel, ranging from sex and sensibility to debt and dysentery, as well as the effects of the French Revolution on the British tourist. Jeremy Black includes extensive quotations from eighteenth-century tourist correspondence, including neglected manuscript collections, to build up a vivid and frequently amusing picture of travel experiences of British aristocrats on the continent."

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Reviews

Lager louts are nothing new, as even a glance at this classic book shows. When British aristocrats began taking their holidays overseas in the 18th century they quickly acquired a reputation for boorishness and arrogance. 'Johnny Foreigner' was regarded as a lower species, and by golly didn't the Brits let him know it. One aristocrat who visited Venice in 1785 informed its residents that he had never seen 'a rougher, more unpolished people both in countenance and manners in my life'. Having thus endeared himself to them he then assured the Venetians they had 'a vulgarity and ignorance which is particularly disgusting'. But he liked the scenery, apparently. It was the same in Rome and Paris. The Earl of Crawford threw an insolent French marquis into a pond, while an 11-year-old boy travelling with the 8th Duke of Hamilton was encouraged to beat up foreign youngsters to show them who was boss. Jeremy Black details these and other unsavoury events in this book, which was first published in 1992 and quickly became a favourite with scholars for its wealth of first-person accounts. Most of the information is taken from private journals and letters. The travellers wrote home about the magnificent architecture and artworks they had seen, but moaned about everything from people who spoke to them in 'foreign' languages to their chances of catching dysentery. A particular bugbear was the difficulty in getting to and from the Continent. One poor chap set off from Holland at the end of his tour and ended up three weeks later in Norway, his ship's captain having no idea how to navigate through a gale. Though a vivid and often amusing account, the book is written in a scholarly way and is heavily annotated. It will appeal more to serious students of the 18th century than to the casual reader. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Jeremy Black is professor of history at the University of Exeter. His other books include Walpole in Power, The making of modern Britain and War, past, Present and Future,

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