# The Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century/Chapter 6

CHAPTER VI
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY INNS
I
Once fairly started on his journey from city to city, the tourist's next most important interest, so far as material comfort went, was his food and lodging. Upon the eighteenth-century inns travelers have much to remark. Indeed, many of the older books of travel devote an inordinate amount of space to the various houses of entertainment — not in bestowing words of praise, but in enumerating the shortcomings of the table or the furnishings. When compared with the palaces now at the service of travelers in every part of the world, few of the inns of that day can be seriously considered as rivals: measured by eighteenth-century standards, some were palatial in their accommodations and quite good enough for guests of any rank. But on the road between towns travelers put up with such accommodations as they could get, and those were often miserably inadequate. Matters generally improved somewhat in the course of the eighteenth century, but the remarks of Eustace hold true for the entire period we are considering: "An English traveller must, the very instant he embarks for the Continent, resign many of the comforts and conveniencies which he enjoys at home. … Great will be his disappointment if, on his arrival, he expects a warm room, a newspaper, and a well-stored larder. These advantages are common enough at home, but they are not to be found in any inn on the Continent, not even Dessenes at Calais or the Maison Rouge at Frankfort. But the principal and most offensive defect abroad is the want of cleanliness, a defect in a greater or less degree common to all parts of the Continent."
​Other tourists tell the same story: "Accommodations all over the Continent" are "very indifferent; … it is scarcely possible for an invalid to sleep at any inn out of a great town without suffering." Where the general level was so low no forethought could enable a traveler to make sure of a satisfactory lodging, though he might send a servant ahead to engage the best that was to be had. As might be expected, there was great variety in the character of the accommodations to be found in different parts of the Continent, and an accurate general characterization is therefore almost impossible. Holland, with its dense population, its standards of neatness, and its diffused wealth, is at one extreme, and Italy, with its medieval hill towns affording filthy beds and uneatable food, is at the other.
The information supplied to travelers in eighteenth-century guide-books is often very suggestive, and nowhere more so than in the passages relating to inns. We read:—"Travellers who go post should never permit the postillion to drive them to such houses as he pleases; almost all of them have secret motives to prefer some to others; therefore it would be prudent to inquire of the post-masters, or inn-keepers of the first reputation, for a list of the best houses of accommodation." "A traveller should always lodge in the best inn, because, upon the whole, a good lodging will not cost him much more, than if he had chosen an indifferent one, and he will at least be better served, with an additional secvuity to his property, which is not always the case in inferior inns." "As soon as travellers enter into an inn, they should immediately agree for the price of the room, dinner, supper, firing, etc., and never neglect his useful precaution; otherwise they will often be obliged to pay for their negligence in that respect an extravagant price, especially in Holland and Italy."
Beds were of varied character in the countries usually visited; so varied, indeed, that travelers, up to the end of the eighteenth century, especially in Germany and Italy, were accustomed to carry their own bedding. And even where this might not be required, certain precautions ​were not to be neglected. Berchtold is very specific in his warnings:—
"Travellers being never sure whether the lodgers, who slept in the beds before them, were not affected with the itch, venereal or other disease, they should make use of a preventive of infection: a light coverlet of silk, two pairs of sheets, and two dressed hart's skins put together, six feet six inches in length, three feet six inches in breadth, should be always carried along with them in the box. The hart's skin, which is put upon the mattresses, will hinder the disagreeable contact, and prevent the noxious exhalations." The ordinary sheets were laid upon the hart's skin. "Damp beds are very often found in inns little visited, and in the inns where fire is seldom made: they ought to be carefully avoided. … Those who travel should examine the beds to see whether they are quite dry, and have the bed-clothes in their presence put before the fire. If the mattresses are suspected, it will be preferable to lie down on dry and clean straw." "Feather beds and counterpanes of cotton are very liable to collect noxious exhalations; for this reason those who travel ought to make use of the hart skins, described under the remarks on Inns."
To avoid other risks, "It is of the greatest importance to travellers always to have a room to be in alone, and never allow any person (well-known people excepted) to sleep in the same apartment, unless absolute necessity compels them." All readers of the concluding chapter of Sterne's "Sentimental Journey" will recall the embarrassing episode growing out of the necessity of assigning the same sleeping-apartment to tourists of opposite sex.
The perils of travel are considered in a subsequent Chapter, but we here note: "In lonesome country inns, where safety ought always to be suspected, it will be better to permit the servant to sleep in the same room, and to have a wax candle burning the whole night. … Pocket door-bolts in the form of a cross are applicable to almost all sorts of doors, and may on many occasions save the life of the traveller, where desperate attempts may be made by ​needy assassins. …" Nervous travelers, we learn, may put the table with chairs on it against the door if bolts are lacking. "Such precautions, are, however, less necessary in England, but on the Continent they are much more so."
"It will not be amiss in such lonesome places, where accidents may oblige a traveller to remain the whole night, to show his fire-arms to the landlord in a familiar discourse, without acquainting him of his well-grounded suspicion of insecurity; and to tell him, with a courageous look, that you are not afraid of a far superior number of enemies."
In view of the foregoing warnings we see that not all inns were models of comfort and that they forced travelers to provide somewhat minutely for personal needs. There is, in fact, no more striking commentary on the general lack on the Continent of ordinary articles of comfort, not to say luxury, than the list of necessaries suggested for the use of travelers. As late as 1798 Mariana Starke recommends all sorts of things for every family to be provided with on leaving England; among them sheets, pillows, blankets, towels, pistols, a pocket-knife to eat with, soup, tea, salt, spoons, a tea-and-sugar chest, loaf-sugar, mustard, Cayenne-pepper, ginger, nutmegs, oatmeal, sago, plenty of medicines, etc., etc.
II
French Inns
In cleanliness and comfort English inns were on the whole regarded as superior to the French, though the latter were commonly praised by travelers. Comfort, as elsewhere pointed out, was far less generally diffused throughout Europe in the eighteenth century than now, abounding greatly in one district while strangely lacking in another. But the English were the wealthiest people in Europe, except perhaps the Dutch, and everywhere insisted upon the best that was to be had. No mere chance was it, therefore, that Dessein's Inn at Calais, where swarms of English tourists landed, was one of the most extensive in ​Europe, with "squares, gardens, shops of all kinds, workshops, and a handsome theatre." Entertainment of tourists was, indeed, on a large scale at Calais, though the town was small. Essex counted the Hôtel d'Angleterre one of the best in France. From forty to fifty carriages were always ready for guests.
In large towns good accommodations were usually to be found, and if it were our business to make lists we might enumerate scores of inns that provided everything one could reasonably ask. Some were almost unreasonably good. Such was the inn at Châlons, with rooms "furnished throughout with silk and damask, the very linings of the rooms and bed covers not excepted." Still better was the Hôtel de Henri IV, at Nantes, over which even the sober Young waxes enthusiastic and inclines to think "the finest inn in Europe." "It cost," says he, "400,000 liv. (17,500l) furnished, and is let at 14,000 liv. per ann. (612l. 10s.), with no rent for the first year. It contains 60 beds for masters, and 25 stalls for horses. Some of the apartments of two rooms, very neat, are 6 liv. a day; one good 3 liv., but for merchants 5 liv. per diem for dinner, supper, wine, and chamber, and 35f. for his horse. It is without comparison, the first inn I have seen in France, and very cheap."
Not merely were palatial establishments of this sort to be found here and there, but many neat and comfortable little hostelries, of small pretensions and "of the second rank in appearance," that were nevertheless "much the most comfortable for travellers of the sober sort."
But it would be a serious error to suppose that every inn in France was a model. We must not forget that France before the Revolution suffered much actual misery, particularly in the provinces. No traveler could fail to see some trace of it, and he was fortunate if he had nothing to suffer himself. Many provincial inns simply continued throughout the eighteenth century the state of things existing in the seventeenth century, when travel was difficult and inns were ill-kept because little patronized. Babeau cites ​Abraham Goelnitz, who in 1631 went through France on foot and on horseback, often going out of the beaten track. He notes : "In certain villages, in certain towns even in the center of France, the inns lack everything. One can hardly find bread and a fire. Beds are wanting."
Particularly defective were "the post-houses," which, as one traveler in 1776 remarks, "are not always places of reception as with us: many of them are ordinary farmhouses; and when they are inns, they are frequently very indifferent." In this matter, as in others, Young may be trusted to tell the truth as it was. At Moulins, in the Loire region, "I went," says he, "to the Belle Image, but found it so bad that I left it and went to the Lyon d'Or, which is worse. This capital of the Bourbonnois, and on the great post road to Italy, has not an inn equal to the little village of Chavanne." What one might encounter off the main routes may be judged from Young's experience at Saint-Girons in the Basses Pyrénées, a town of four or five thousand inhabitants, where he was forced to put up at a public house undeserving the name of inn. "A wretched hag, the demon of beastliness, presides there. I laid [!] not rested, in a chamber over a stable, whose effluviae [!] through the broken floor were the least offensive of the perfumes afforded by this hideous place. It could give me but two stale eggs, for which I paid exclusive of all other charges, 20ƒ. … But the inns all the way from Nismes are wretched, except at Lodeve, Gange, Carcasonne, and Mirepoix."
Of the road near Mayres in Ardèche he says: "It conducts, according to custom, to a miserable inn, but with a large stable." After dining one day at Viviers and passing the Rhone, he remarks: "After the wretched inns of the Vivarais, dirt, filth, bugs, and starving, to arrive at the Hotel de Monsieur, at Montilimart, a great and excellent inn, was something like the arrival in France from Spain."
With Young's comments before us we may be the more inclined to give credence to the peppery Smollett, whose journey antedates Young's by about a quarter of a century, ​and who declares that "Through the whole south of France, except in large cities, the inns are cold, damp, dark, dismal, and dirty; the landlords equally disobliging and rapacious; the servants aukward, sluttish and slothful."
Particularly shocking to travelers of our day would appear the entire lack of sanitary conveniences. In fact, until very recently Gallic ideals in matters of personal cleanliness and sanitation have called forth unfavorable comment from English tourists, but the state of things in the eighteenth century one can hardly venture to describe. Smollett has a fragrant passage on the "temple of Cloacina" connected with the inn at Nimes which cannot be quoted, but which is worthy the attention of the inquiring reader.
Englishmen were inclined also to be critical about French beds. Nugent warns the traveler: "After you have passed Boulogne, you will not find the beds like ours in England; for they raise them very high with several thick mattresses: their linen is ill-washed and worse dried, so that you must take particular care to see the sheets aired."
With more particularity another Englishman comments on the beds in inns: "Two of them are always placed in the same room: they consist of a bed of straw at the bottom, then a large mattrass, then a feather-bed, then another large mattrass, upon which are the blankets, etc., with all which, the bed is so high, that a man with great difficulty climbs into it; and, if he were to tumble out of it by mischance, he would be in danger of breaking his bones upon a brick floor."
But every traveler was tempted to magnify his experience and to regard it as typical. If he found in one city that the "beds seemed stuffed with potatoes rather than feathers," he easily assumed that French beds were usually of the same sort. It is well to remember that Arthur Young distinctly says: "Beds are better in France; in England they are good only at good inns; and we have none of that torment, which is so perplexing in England, to have ​the sheets aired." Beyond question, however, in French beds the lurking devourer was only too common, and made the unseasoned traveler writhe. Sterne went from Paris to Nîmes in 1762 and suffered the usual experiences of the stranger. "Good God! we were toasted, roasted, grill'd, stew'd, and carbonaded on one side or other all the way — and being all done enough (assez cuits) in the day, we were ate up at night by bugs, and other unswept out vermin, the legal inhabitants (if length of possession gives right) of every inn we lay at."
But if French beds evoked occasional criticism, not much was to be urged against the French table — at its best. Then as now French cookery was famous and to most English tourists it came as a revelation. "The common cookery of the French," says Young, "gives great advantage. It is true they roast every thing to a chip, if they are not cautioned, but they give such a number and variety of dishes, that if you do not like some there are others, to please your palate. The desert at a French inn has no rival at an English one."
Yet at the wayside inn in France the tourist not infrequently encountered gastronomic horrors, or what were such to him; and even at well-kept houses more than one English tourist longed for the fleshpots of his island home — the plain boiled greens, the plain boiled mutton, and the unadorned roasts of his native land, guiltless of sauces and naked in their simplicity, in preference to the most ambitious productions of the French chef. Of such was Smollett, who, when complaints were to be made, rarely failed. "I and my family could not well dispense with our toast in the morning, and had no stomach to eat at noon. For my own part, I hate the French cookery, and abominate garlick, with which all their ragouts in this part of the country are highly seasoned." But Smollett stood by no means alone. Horace Walpole writes to West from Paris in 1739: "At dinner they give you three courses; but a third of the dishes is patched up with sallads, butter, puff-paste, or some such miscarriage of a dish."
​In these messes there was a great show of viands, but on the tables of too many inns there was no superabundance of real food, and there was no shadow of doubt as to when the meal had come to a conclusion. An Englishman who had lived long abroad comments sharply in "A Description of Holland" upon the niggardly supply of eatables afforded by many French innkeepers: "They have not heart to provide handsomly for their guests, and are so saving and penurious, the foible and habit of their nation, that they count every bit one puts into one's mouth. They are as well pleased to see their dishes not touched, as a hearty English landlord is displeased, when he thinks his guest does not like his victuals." Another earlier fault-finder observes: "'Tis a great inconvenience to travel in France upon a fish-day; for 'tis a hard matter to get anything to eat but stinking fish or rotten eggs."
A common and weU-grounded complaint was that the drinking-water was often unfit for use, particularly at Paris, where the supply was drawn from the narrow and dirty Seine, and had to be filtered. Those who could afford it drank Eau de Roy from Ville d'Avray.
English tourists were cautioned also not to go to France without a knife and fork, for, says "The Gentleman's Guide," "if you neglect taking [them] with you, you'll often run the risk of losing your dinner."
StiU another opportunity for criticism was afforded by the usual hour for dinner. To gentlemen who felt bound to conform to French conventions in order to be admitted to society, the noon dinner, "customary all over France, except by persons of considerable fashion at Paris," appeared a serious waste of time. "We dress for dinner in England with propriety," says Young, "as the rest of the day is dedicated to ease, to converse, and relaxation; but by doing it at noon too much time is lost. What is a man good for after his silk breeches and stockings are on, his hat under his arm, and his head bien poudré?" And we must grant that Young is right.
This rapid glance at the eighteenth-century French inn ​is perhaps sufficient to enable us to realize its main features. But we must remember that as a usual thing the inn was for the accommodation of the transient guest. Strangers making a considerable stay abroad commonly found quarters in a private house. As we shall see later, Rheims, Tours, Montpellier, Toulouse, Dijon, and other provincial cities attracted many English tourists for weeks and even months at a time and afforded comfortable living at prices that Englishmen could hardly imagine possible. Most English tourists spent as much time as they could afford in Paris, and if they had an eye to economy they set up a modest establishment of their own in hired lodgings. From Nugent's handbook on the grand tour they could learn precisely what they might expect and what they would have to furnish: "You will hardly get an apartment to please you up two pair of stairs for less than 15 or 20 livres a week. … Your servant, for about fifteen shillings, English, will immediately set you up for a housekeeper, by buying you a tin tea-kettle, some charcoal, and a dish, some tea-cups, saucers, milk-pot, a decanter, and about half a dozen glasses; he will also buy you French rolls and sugar, and good hyson tea for about 17 livres a pound; and so much for breakfast. With regard to your dinners and suppers, if you choose to live in a family way, you had best have them drest and sent in by a cook, or from a tavern to your lodgings, at your own hour, and he will find you linen and knives. For eight livres a day, you may have for dinner two good dishes and a soop, which will serve four in company, and servants."
III
Italian Inns
In the low quality of the inns the greater part of Italy was a close rival to the most neglected regions of Europe. The comments in books of travel on the shortcomings of Italian inns, particularly those of country towns, present ​no very inviting picture. Some criticism doubtless means little more than that the ways of the inns were Italian rather than English. But at best the average hostelry left much to be desired. Eustace had an extended experience throughout the peninsula, and he remarks: "In Italy … the little country inns are dirty, but the greater inns, particularly in Rome, Naples, Florence, and Venice, are good, and in general the linen is clean, and the beds are excellent. As for diet, in country towns, the traveller will find plenty of provisions, though seldom prepared according to his taste." Even the fastidious De Brosses is moved to protest against indiscriminate condemnation of the accommodations provided for travelers in Italy. "Everybody says that the inns of Italy are detestable. That is not true. One is very well entertained in the better towns. In the villages, to be sure, one is badly off; but that is no marvel, it is the same in France."
But the comments of Dr. Moore probably express the actual effect of Italian hotels upon the average, inexperienced English tourist. "Strangers … whose senses are far more powerful than their fancy, when they are so ill-advised as to come so far from home, generally make this journey in very ill humour, fretting at Italian beds, fuming against Italian cooks, and execrating every poor little Italian flea that they meet with on the road." Dr. Moore possibly had in mind the English tourist Sharp, who certainly expresses no great delight over his experiences: "We arrived at this place [Rome], after a journey of seven days, with accommodations uncomfortable enough. Give what scope you please to your fancy, you will never imagine half the disagreeableness that Italian beds, Italian cooks, Italian post-horses, Italian postilions, and Italian nastiness offer to an Englishman in an Italian journey; much more to an English woman. At Turin, Milan, Venice, Rome, and, perhaps, two or three other towns, you meet with good accommodation; but no words can express the wretchedness of the other inns. No other bed but one of straw, and next to that a dirty sheet, sprinkled with water, ​and, consequently, damp; for a covering you have another sheet, as coarse as the first, and as coarse as one of our kitchen jack-towels, with a dirty coverlet. The bedsted consists of four wooden forms, or benches; An English Peer and Peeress must lye in this manner, unless they carry an upholsterer's shop with them, which is very troublesome. There are, by the bye, no such things as curtains, and hardly, from Venice to Rome, that cleanly and most useful invention, a privy; so that what should be collected and buried in oblivion, is for ever under your nose and eyes."
Sharp goes on to damn the dirtiness of the pewter plates and dishes, as well as the tablecloths and napkins. The food is vile. "The bread all the way is exceedingly bad, and the butter so rancid, it cannot be touch'd, or even borne within the reach of our smell." But what is a greater evil to travelers than any of the above recited, though not peculiar to the Loretto road, is the infinite number of gnats, bugs, fleas, and lice, which infest us by night and by day. You will grant, after this description of the horrors of an Italian journey, that one ought to take no small pleasure in treading on classic ground: yet, believe me, I have not caricatured; every article of it is literally true."
Sharp certainly appears to speak from a full heart, and his Italian critic Baretti practically admits that the charges are in part true. But he points out that Sharp went by an "unfrequent road to Rome," and that he might easily have obtained from Italians of good social position letters of introduction to their friends along the road "who would have occasionally accommodated him better than he was at the inns, where his Vetturino thought proper to carry him; to which inns few Italians of any note resort." They stay, says Baretti, with their friends, or put up at convents.
Baretti's defense of his compatriots, in this as in some other cases, does not squarely meet the criticism of fair-minded tourists, who had already anticipated in the seventeenth century about all that was said against the inns of the eighteenth century. "The inns are wretched and ​ill-furnished," says Burnet, "both for lodging and diet; this is the plague of all Italy, when once one hath pass'd the Appennines; for except in the great towns, one really suffers so much that way, that the pleasure of travelling is much abated by the inconveniences that one meets in every stage through which he passes."
Misson's general estimate agrees with Burnet's: "'Tis by no means convenient to travel in companies in Italy; the inns are so miserable that oftentimes they can neither accommodate their guests with meat nor beds, when they are too numerous."
Nugent improves upon Misson, whose phrasing he slightly varies but without acknowledging his source: "But 'tis very improper to travel in large companies in Italy, for the inns are generally so very miserable that oftentimes they can find neither beds nor provisions when the company is too numerous. To prevent therefore the inconveniences of a bad lodging, those that do not carry a complete bed with them ought at least to make a provision of a light quilt, a pillow, a coverlet, and two very fine bed-cloths, that they may make but a small bundle." One may travel very easily with these conveniences rolled up in a sack, lined with waxed cloth, three and a half feet high, and less; than two in diameter, when full; which, being light, is easily carried with the portmanteau and is of no charge. "However, if this should appear troublesome, 'tis advisable at least to travel with sheets, and upon coming to an indifferent inn you may call for fresh straw and lay a clean sheet over it."
On this matter the English tourist Sharp remarks: "It is curious to observe how careless they are of damp sheets all through Italy, and the people at inns are so little apprised of an objection to damp sheets that when you begin to beg they would hang them before the fire, they desire you will feel how wet they are, being prepossessed that you mean they have not been washed." Sharp was an inveterate fault-finder, whom Baretti rightly took to task for misrepresentation, but even Baretti admits: "The ​beds indeed you will find bad enough in many places; and you must have a care never to sleep but in your own sheets, because the inn-keepers, when they are poor, are generally ill-provided, and are even rogues into the bargain, that will swear no body has slept in the sheets they offer, though the contrary is very apparent; nor will it be amiss to have a thin mattress of your own, stuffed with feathers or Spanish wool, to throw over the mattresses of the inn."
Of Italian beds the English tourist James Edward Smith is one of the few defenders: "In justice to the poor traduced inns of Italy, I think it right to mention here that for the first time," in a little village twenty-two miles from Viterbo, "we met with damp sheets, and were obliged to have them dried. I do not think I ever discovered dirty sheets in Italy, though always very scrupulous in my examinations on that head. England is certainly the most indelicate of all civilized nations with respect to bed and table linen. Our great inns are less to be trusted about sheets than any abroad."
In many other ways the inns were sadly lacking in the most elementary comfort. Smollett and his party went to the inn at San Remo, said to be the best in the place: "We ascended by a dark, narrow, steep stair, into a kind of public room, with a long table and benches, so dirty and miserable that it would disgrace the worst hedge ale-house in England. Not a soul appeared to receive us. This is a ceremony one must not expect to meet with in France, far less in Italy." At last they got some poor rooms, very badly furnished; and bad food. He adds: "You must not expect cleanliness or conveniency of any kind in this country. For this accommodation I payed as much as if I had been elegantly entertained in the best auberge of France or Italy."
The food was commonly of wretched quality, except in the large towns, and one was advised to pick up food for luncheons on the way. Even the large cities could not uniformly be depended upon to make the passing tourist comfortable. Genoa was styled "the superb," but "the ​inns of Genoa," we are told, "afford but indifferent accommodations. The wine is not very excellent, though they have it in sealed bottles from the vaults of the republic."
The main roads to Rome were more traveled than, perhaps, any others in Italy, but we have numberless complaints that the inns were abominable. Travelers going on the main road to Rome from Siena had at least to halt at Acquapendente. Here, says one tourist: "We were told that the man who kept the hostry where we inn'd was the most wealthy person in the place. He had only two or three ragged servants, and waited at table himself." All the way, in fact, "from Sienna to Aquapendente," says Keysler, "… the post-houses stand single, and afford but very indifferent entertainment."
Even worse, if possible, was the condition of affairs on the central route from Rome to Florence through Terni and Perugia. As we might expect, that chronic grumbler Smollett on this route quite outdoes himself in describing some of his places of entertainment: "Great part of this way lies over steep mountains, or along the side of precipices, which render travelling in a carriage exceeding tedious, dreadful, and dangerous; and as for the public houses, they are in all respects the most execrable that ever I entered. I will venture to say that a common prisoner in the Marshalsea or King's-Bench is more cleanly and commodiously lodged than we were in many places on this road. The houses are abominably nasty, and generally destitute of provision; when eatables were found we were almost poisoned by their cookery: their beds were without curtains or bedstead, and their windows without glass; and for this sort of entertainment we payed as much as if we had been genteelly lodged and sumptuously treated. I repeat again; of all the people I ever knew, the Italians are the most villainously rapacious."
In going from Perugia to Florence, over the mountains, he put up at "a small village, the name of which," he says, "I do not remember. The house was dismal and dirty beyond all description; the bed-cloaths filthy enough to ​turn the stomach of a muleteer; and the victuals cooked in such a manner that even a Hottentot could not have beheld them without loathing."
All this is moving enough. But to some extent the experience of the traveler was shaped by chance. Unfamiliar with the country or the language he was often as likely to get the worst accommodations as the best. The irascible Sharp was as ready to complain as Smollett, but even Sharp, on returning from Rome to Florence, finds endurable inns along the road. He writes from Florence, "We arrived here last night, after a journey of four days from Rome, and found much more agreeable accommodations than we experienced either on the road to Rome from Venice, or to Naples from Rome; indeed, to do justice to the inns, we met with so much cleanliness, and such good beds, that we found ourselves most agreeably disappointed in these articles." And again: "The country from Bologna to this place [Alexandria] is a delightful, fertile plain, and the accommodations so much, better than those we meet with on the road to Rome by the way of Loretto, that I desire you will make the distinction betwixt my journey thither and my return, whenever you give a character of Italy from my letters."
Bad as were the majority of the country inns north of Rome, those between Rome and Naples were worse, and they called forth endless complaints. In general, observes Gorani, "the inns of these kingdoms" — Naples and Sicily — "do not deserve to bear the name. Nothing is to be found there but water, bad wine, and bread still worse." On the road between Rome and Naples "they gave us for supper," says Misson, "cheese made with the milk of buffles; and we were forced to lie upon mattresses, which, I think, were made with stones of peaches." "All the way to Naples," says the querulous Sharp, "we never once crept within the sheets, not daring to encounter the vermin and nastiness of those beds." He elsewhere observes: "Some of the inns on this road exceed in filth and bad accommodations all that I have ever written on that subject ​before; I do sincerely believe, that they no more think of wiping down a cobweb in a bed-chamber, than our farmers do of sweeping them away in an old barn." He speaks of whole ceilings covered with spiders.
The ill-kept inns merely reflected the sluttishness of the inhabitants, which must have been notable to call forth the following outburst from the usually genial Burnet: "It amazes a stranger to see in their little towns the whole men of the town walking in the market-places in their torn cloaks, and doing nothing. And tho' in some big towns, such as Capua, there is but one inn, yet even that is so miserable that the best room and bed in it is so bad that our footmen in England would make a grievous outcry if they were no better lodged. Nor is there any thing to be had in them; the wine is intolerable, the bread ill-baked, no victuals, except pigeons, and the oil is rotten. In short, except one carries his whole provision from Rome or Naples, he must resolve to endure a good deal of misery in the four days' journey that is between those two places." What was true of the inns along the great road between Rome and Naples was tenfold worse in the extreme South, where tourists never ventured.
With these facts before us we may be led to do injustice to the inns in the larger towns and cities where tourists made their longer stay. There were some well-known hotels at Venice, at Florence, at Bologna, and elsewhere. But De Brosses tells us that at Rome the Auberge du Mont d'Or, in the Piazza di Spagna, was perhaps the only good inn for strangers in the city. He adds in explanation that it was not customary to live at a hotel except just long enough to enable one to find a furnished room elsewhere. In Rome travelers generally lodged in or near the Piazza di Spagna, which has to this day remained a popular quarter with foreigners. Nugent names some of the best inns at Rome. "But," he adds, "those who intend to make any stay had better hire furnished apartments, which are very reasonable; for you may be accommodated with a palazzo, as they call it, or a handsome furnished house for ​about six guineas a month." The tourist who went to Naples was informed that "the Cardinal's Hat and the Three Kings are reckoned the best inns in Naples, at which houses the English gentlemen commonly lodge. The apartments are indifferent, but the accommodations extremely good, and the cooks generally excellent. The following are some precautions that may be of service to travellers. If any gentleman intends to make a considerable stay here, the best way will be to take a ready-furnished lodging in or near the Piazzo de Castello, from whence there is a beautiful prospect of the sea. It is a fine open place, with several good inns near it, from whence provisions may be had well dressed, and sent hot at any time. As to wine, there are many eminent merchants who have noble cellars, and very cool, where variety of wines may be had exceedingly cheap: for three shillings and three-pence a barrel of excellent wine, containing nine gallons, may be bought. This hint will be of service to those who chuse a private apartment of their own, rather than a public inn. Strangers should be very careful in their transactions with the lower class of people, who have the art of deceiving in a superlative degree. Here are also a parcel of fellows who speak a little broken English, and will offer their services as guides, or valets; but the Neapolitans of this class exceed their fraternity in all other places in knavery."
At Venice, too, Nugent advises "those who intend to spend some months" there "to hire a furnished house. There are always some apartments to be let in the Procuratie, which indeed is the dearest, but at the same time the finest, part of the town." In general, he recommends taking furnished apartments in "most other places."
As already observed, the food to be obtained at wayside inns was, to English travelers, almost uneatable. Generally the kitchen was the least inviting part of the inn — dirty, ill-kept, and ill-supplied. Burnet's remarks late in the seventeenth century, held true in many districts until the end of the eighteenth: "A traveller in many places finds almost nothing, and is so ill furnished that if he does not ​buy provisions in the great towns, he will be obliged to a very severe diet, in a country that he should think flow'd with milk and honey."
At all events, tourists who consulted their own comfort did not trust the larder of the wayside inn or even that of the more pretentious hostelry in towns of considerable size. Mariana Starke's party, when going to Palestrina, took provisions with them, though, as she says, the inn was "not very bad." The inn at Frascati was "tolerably good," but it was "advisable … for travellers to carry cold meat with them." And this was late in the eighteenth century.
But in the days of slow and costly transportation, the traveler who could not carry a kitchen and a storehouse with him was usually compelled to accept the unmodified fare of each district, and this naturally varied with every posting-station. In any case, the wealthy Englishman, accustomed to a generous table with abundance of meat, found the usual Italian fare very meager, and he was not reconciled to the lack of roast beef and mutton by the abundance of salad and macaroni. The difference in English and Italian temperament and habits was fundamental. "Few Italians," says Baretti, "can endure beef at their tables. Many English ministers residing at our courts and many English gentlemen habituated in the country, finding the beef to their taste in several parts of Italy, have kindly endeavoured to bring it into fashion, and would persuade us to eat it roasted." The place of beef was supplied by "kid, dressed in various manners, the staple food of the Italian travellers, and which is often so various in quality, that some have thought its place is occasionally supplied by a canine representative."
In the middle of the nineteenth century, we are told, "Butter was nearly unknown in Rome forty years since. There is now, however, a large dairy near the tomb to Cecilia Metella, where it may be had very good. This progress is owing to the arrival at Rome of numerous English travellers. As the Roman dairies, however, do not ​provide sufficient during the winter, a certain quantity is received from Lombardy. The price is then thirty bajocchi per pound, but in the summer it is only fourteen."
Another notable fact is cited by Baretti in 1766: "We have not yet the use of potatoes. An English consul in Venice cultivates them with good success in his fine garden not far from Mestre, a place about five miles from Venice: but few of his Italian guests will touch them."
As a striking hint of what might be lacking in really remote parts of the country we may note that at the very end of the eighteenth century the suggestion is made that: "Families who remove from Naples to the neighborhood of Sorrento during the summer season would do well to take with them wine, vinegar, candles, soap, sugar, tea, coffee, and medicines." Yet Sorrento is only across the bay from Naples. At Naples itself tea and sugar were very dear.
Even at Tivoli, four or five hours' drive from Rome, and very much frequented, one fared badly. "Persons who care much about eating should take meat, bread, and wine, with them, as fish and eggs are the only provision likely to be found at Tivoli." In our own day the entertainment set before the transient guest at Tivoli is far from ideal.
Beyond all question, the English tourist who wished to be even moderately satisfied with his daily food was well advised to keep close to the main centers of supply. And in cities like Turin and Milan and Venice and Padua and Florence and Rome he had small ground for complaint. The bread of Padua, the wine of Vicenza, the tripe of Treviso were proverbially good. Moreover, we may well believe, that under favorable conditions an eighteenth-century tourist who gave himself the necessary trouble could, in most of the larger Italian cities, secure quarters that were reasonably satisfactory, except perhaps in winter. But what average comfort in winter meant in Italy we may judge from the fact that Goethe's room in Naples had no fireplace and no chimney, though he was there in February. Walpole suffered greatly from the cold in ​Florence, and that, too, in the house of an ambassador. In any case, if the tourist chose to play the part of an explorer off the beaten track, he found himself compelled to live like a half-starved peasant and to submit to hardships for which he was entirely unprepared.
IV
Inns in Germany
Many of the inns of Germany put a severe strain upon the patience of the tourist. In the larger towns he could find tolerable accommodations, and in a few cities he fared as well as anywhere in Europe. At Frankfort, for example, he could go to the Emperor or the Red House, which, "for cleanliness, conveniency, and number of apartments," vied "with the most magnificent inns in England." Possibly one reason for the prosperity of the Frankfort inns was that they claimed as a guest every stranger who arrived in the city. "The innkeepers," we are told, "will not allow a stranger to take up his quarters at a private house, even though he eats at his inn." Among the cities having inns of high reputation we may note Halberstadt, which in our day is merely a small city with an interesting cathedral and quaint, half-timbered houses. But a century and a half ago it boasted an inn which was in the same class with the Three Kings at Augsburg, and one of the largest in Europe. As for Augsburg, "there are," says Nugent, "several good inns in the city, as the Imperial Court, the Crown, the King of the Romans; but the Three Kings is one of the best houses in Germany, and by some reckoned the most magnificent inn in Europe. Here the nobility assemble commonly every evening in a fine hall well lighted, where they game, sup and dance." Nuremberg, too, afforded already in the time of Misson comfortable entertainment for the passing stranger, and so did Munich and Dresden and Berlin.
The inns of Vienna were variously judged, according to ​the tourist's experience, but they had a reputation for overcharging, which is fairly maintained in our day. The tourist was advised: "There are a great many very good inns at Vienna, as the Court of Bavaria, the Golden Crown, the Black Eagle, the Black Elephant, etc., but in general they are very dear. Those who have occasion to be careful in their expenses should therefore board in private houses if they intend to make any stay in this capital." Mariana Starke, at the end of the century, is less complimentary: "The inns of this City are bad and dear; Wolf's is deemed the best, and The White Bull once was tolerable; but the present master is so notorious a Cheat as not to scruple, after making a clear bargain, to deviate from it in every particular; besides which, his dinners are so bad that it is scarcely possible to eat them. Indeed, the only way of living comfortably at Vienna is to take a private lodging." At Hamburg, says the same writer, the inns were "neither good nor cheap." … Private lodgings could be obtained; though, like the inns, they were "bad and dear."
But the worst accommodations in the cities were luxurious in comparison with what was to be found in some of the country districts. Says a tourist in the latter part of the century, "Nothing can be more wretched than the country you pass through in travelling through Westphalia; the wretched inhabitants uniting poverty with pride, live with their hogs in mud-walled cottages, a dozen of which is called, by courtesy, a village, surrounded by black heaths, and wild uncultivated plains, over which the unresisted winds sweep with a velocity scarce to be conceived." This picture is highly colored and not so flattering as some contemporary German estimates of Westphalia, but conditions in that region were, at all events, not arranged primarily for the tourist. "In the small villages," says Riesbeck, "there are no inns, and a man is forced to put up with the small farmers, who have nothing to set before him but brandy or potatoes, or some salted bacon and brown bread made of bran." The bacon, it may be remarked, was cured in the house, which had "no outlet ​for smoke but the door." "In regard to bed, [the traveller] must tumble pell-mell in a large kind of barn, where the landlord and landlady, men and maidservants, and passengers of both sexes, cows, sheep, and horses pig all together on the ground; and happy he that's accommodated with comfortable clean straw. … In cities or large towns one is somewhat better entertained; though there is little occasion to commend their very best accommodations."
Lady Mary Montagu traveled through Germany in 1716, and, writing from Cologne, says: "We hired horses from Nimeguen hither, not having the conveniency of the post, and found but very indifferent accommodations at Reinberg, our first stage; but that was nothing to what I suffered yesterday. We were in hopes to reach Cologn; our horses tired at Stamel, three hours from it, where I was forced to pass the night in my clothes, in a room not at all better than a hovel; for though I have my own bed with me, I had no mind to undress, where the wind came from a thousand places."
When she reached Bohemia in November she pronounced it "the most desert of any I have seen in Germany. The villages are so poor, and the post-houses so miserable, that clean straw and fair water are blessings not always to be met with, and better accommodation not to be hoped for. Though I carried my own bed with me, I could not sometimes find a place to set it up in; and I rather chose to travel all night, as cold as it is, wrapped up in my furs, than to go into the common stoves, which are filled with a mixture of all sorts of ill scents."
What was true of these regions applied equally to the south side of the Erzgebirge, where the inns were "not a jot better than the Spanish ones."
In traveling through Friuli, in the extreme northeast of Italy, and the Austrian Duchy of Carniola, Dr. Moore declares, "The inns are as bad as the roads are good; for which reason we chose to sleep on the latter rather than in the former, and actually travelled five days and nights ​without stopping any longer than was necessary to change horses."
As for the neighboring Poland, "The duke of York, bishop of Osnabruck, and uncle to his present Majesty King George, said a very pertinent thing. … 'That he did not know a country where travellers were more at home than in Poland, because they were always making use of their own furniture.'" One hardly found a chair to sit down upon.
The comments of most tourists in Germany are amply confirmed by Nugent. Of travel in Germany he says that it "is cheaper than in most parts of Europe." But, he adds, "The accommodations in general are very indifferent upon the road, as well in respect to provisions as lodging; very few public houses (except in some provinces, as Saxony and Austria) being provided with regular entertainment for passengers. … In their houses one seldom sees a fire, except in the kitchen; but their rooms are heated by a stove or oven to what degree they desire. There is one thing very particular to them, that they do not cover themselves with bed-clothes, but lay one feather-bed over, and another under. This is comfortable enough in winter, but how they can bear the feather-beds over them in summer, as is generally practised, I cannot conceive."
The German feather bed occasionally puzzled foreign tourists. "Some poor Frenchmen being conducted to their bedchamber, one of them espying a feather-bed over, and another under, imagined that there was a design to make them lie one upon another for want of room. Upon which he addressed himself to the servant, and desired him to choose one of his lightest companions to put over him, alledging that he was not accustomed to lie in this manner."
Nor did Englishmen take kindly to the German type of bed. All readers of Hood's "Up the Rhine" will recall the picture of the "worthy uncle" of one of the party found in the morning "lying broad awake, on his back, in a true German bedstead — a sort of wooden box or trough, so much too short for him, that his legs extended half-a​yard beyond it on either side of the foot-board. Above him, on his chest and stomach, from his chin to his knees, lay a huge squab or cushion, covered with a gay-patterned chintz, and ornamented at each comer with a fine tassel,—looking equally handsome, glossy, cold, and uncomfortable. For fear of deranging this article, he could only turn his eyes towards me as I entered, and when he spoke, it was with a voice that seemed weak and broken from exhaustion. 'Frank, I've passed a miserable night. … I have n't—slept—a wink. … Did you ever see such a thing as that?' with a slight nod and roll of his eyes towards the cushion. I shook my head. 'If I moved—it fell off; and if I did n't, I got—the cramp.'"
In general, the German conception of comfort was not English. "The Germans seldom have a wash-hand basin in any of their country inns; and even at Villach, a large town, we could not find one: the inn we slept at, however, (its sign The Crown,) is clean and good, though tall people cannot sleep comfortably either here or in any part of Germany: the beds, which are very narrow, being placed in wooden frames, or boxes, so short that any body who happens to be above five feet high must absolutely sit up all night supported by pillows; and this is, in fact, the way in which the Germans sleep."
As for food, travelers were advised to carry provisions between towns, for there was no certainty of finding much that was good along the road but wine. A hundred and fifty years ago, to a far greater degree than is now the case, inns throughout Europe were dependent upon the supplies from the immediate neighborhood, and where this was unproductive the inn table provided starvation fare. Particularly was this the case in Westphalia, where in the towns the traveler fared ill, and "in the public inns along the road and in small places" he was entertained with "miserable pompernickel, with bacon half raw, and wretched beer."
In more favored regions the guest had an embarrassment of choice; and it is needless to specify more than one or two ​typical cities. Cogan gives particulars of an elaborate dinner, handsomely served, that he got at Düsseldorf, with "soups, fish, roast and boiled meats, game, poultry, vegetables, and fruits of various kinds …" for which he paid tenpence. Excellent fare also was to be had at Prague; "the poultry is peculiarly good; there is a plenty of game that is astonishing; no inn so wretched but you have a pheasant for your supper, and often partridge soup." But this same writer warns travelers going from Vienna to Prague that the fare along the road is indifferent, and that "it would be perhaps more prudent to carry some cold provisions with you in your chaise."
Nor were provisions the only necessaries of the table that the fastidious traveler might carry. In journeying through Austria, says Mariana Starke, "We were actually obliged to purchase a couple of tablecloths and six napkins on our journey, so terribly were we annoyed by the dirty linen which was produced everywhere but in the very large towns."
Balancing the good with the bad we may easily see that, to one bent upon pleasure, travel in Germany a century and a half ago seemed to offer rather more annoyance than satisfaction. At all events, comfort was hardly to be found outside a few large towns.
V
The Inns of the Low Countries
On some of the inns of the Low Countries much praise was bestowed by eighteenth-century travelers. The inns of The Hague were declared by one writer to be undoubtedly the best in the world. Nugent says of the inns or eating-houses at Brussels that they "are equal to any in Europe; and a stranger has this advantage, that for less than twenty-pence English, he knows where to dine at any time betwixt twelve and three on seven or eight dishes. The wines are very good and cheap; and for six-pence English by the hour, ​you have a coach that carries you wherever you have a mind."
As a capital city Brussels, which even then aspired in a small way to rival Paris, had the most luxurious inns in the Austrian Low Countries, but one could be very comfortable at Ghent, at Bruges, at Liège, at Ypres, and in many other places. Young pronounces the Concierge at Dunkirk "a good inn, as indeed I have found in all Flanders."
Owing to the frequent intercourse between England and Holland there were in more than one Dutch city English houses for the entertainment of strangers. Of such houses in Amsterdam there were usually two or three. At The Hague there was "a good house" whither English travelers "who speak no language but their own may resort," and similar accommodation was to be had at Leyden and especially at Rotterdam. Special advantages of these English houses were that not only were they as cheap as the Dutch inns, but they provided "victuals dressed after the English way" and were less likely to impose upon unwary tourists. The names and character of the houses could be learned from the captain of the vessel one crossed on or from the merchant to whom one was recommended.
Inns that were thoroughly Dutch were as a rule impregnated with the smell of tobacco, and on the tea-tables had spitting-pots placed "often much too like the cream pot in shape." But to the general neatness of the Dutch inns all travelers bear witness. The floors were daily scoured and sanded, and the silver and pewter and copper platters shone like mirrors. Clean linen and soft beds might be safely counted on at the inns and public houses throughout the country.
Yet there were some drawbacks. "Their bedsteads, or rather cabins in the sides of the wall, are placed so high, that a man may break his neck, if he happens to fall out of them. Besides, a traveller must be content to lie with half a dozen people, or more, in the same room, and be disturbed all night long by somebody or other, if the churl ​of a landlord chooses to have it so. It is true; in the cities you are accommodated in a genteeler way. There is no disputing with a Dutch innkeeper, either about the reckoning or any other particular; if you find fault with his bill (tho' properly speaking they make no bills, but bring in the reckoning by word of mouth) he will immediately raise it, and procure a magistrate to levy his demands by force."
Strangers making a longer stay than the ordinary transient guest found their advantage in taking private lodgings, which at The Hague cost about the same as in London, and commonly permitted the lodger to board in the same house at a moderate expense.
* ↑ English-French for Dessein's.
* ↑ Eustace, Classical Tour in Italy, i, 46, 47.
* ↑ Starke, Letters from Italy, ii, 257.
* ↑ Young speaks of "the bad accommodations even in the high road from London to Rome. On the contrary, go in England to towns that contain 1500, 2000, or 3000 people, in situations absolutely cut off from all dependence, or almost the expectation of what are properly called travellers, yet you will meet with neat inns, well dressed and clean people keeping them,
* ↑ Berchtold, An Essay to Direct and Extend the Inquiries of Patriotic Travellers, p. 66.
* ↑ Ibid., p. 66.
* ↑ Ibid., pp. 68–69.
* ↑ "It being necessary, on the Continent, to carry your own sheets, pillows and blankets, when you travel, I would advise the doubling them up daily of a convenient size, and then placing them in the carriage by way of cushions, making a leather sheet of the envellope." Starke, Letters from Italy, ii, 265, 266.
* ↑ An Essay to Direct and Extend the Inquiries of Patriotic Travellers, p. 70.
* ↑ Ibid., p. 59.
* ↑ Ibid., p. 56.
* ↑ Ibid., p. 67.
* ↑ Ibid., pp. 66–69.
* ↑ Letters from Italy, ii, 263, 264.
* ↑ English tourists did not hesitate to call the kitchens of French inns filthy. See Carr, The Stranger in France, pp. 263, 272.
* ↑ Babeau, Les Voyageurs en France, p. 278.
* ↑ Fitzgerald, Life of Sterne, ii, 132.
* ↑ Journal of a Tour through Flanders and France, p. 4.
* ↑ Nugent, Grand Tour, iv, 33, 34, says: "There are a great many very good inns at Paris, where you are sure of being extremely well accommodated, according to the figure and expence you wish to make." Then follows a long list.
* ↑ In 1761 the thrifty traveler Willebrandt jotted down the names of the best hotels in Paris, the streets where were found the most desirable furnished rooms, and showed how to get déjeûner and supper cheaply. Babeau, Les Voyageurs en France, p. 258.
* ↑ The Gentleman's Guide, p. 139.
* ↑ Travels in France, p. 133.
* ↑ Smith, Tour on the Continent, iii, 240.
* ↑ Les Voyageurs en France, p. 80.
* ↑ (Jones) Journey to Paris, i, 68, 69.
* ↑ Travels in France, p. 229.
* ↑ "St. Geronds," as Young writes it.
* ↑ Travels in France, p. 57.
* ↑ Ibid., p. 242.
* ↑ Ibid., p. 249.
* ↑ Travels, ii, 256.
* ↑ "Provence is a pleasant country, well cultivated; but the inns are not so good here as in Languedoc, and few of them are provided with a certain convenience which an English traveller can very ill dispense with. Those you find are generally on tops of the houses, exceedingly nasty; and so much exposed to the weather, that a valetudinarian cannot use them without hazard of his life." Ibid., i, 197.
* ↑ Ibid., i, 198.
* ↑ Grand Tour, iv, 22.
* ↑ (Jones) Journey to France, i, 90.
* ↑ Smith, Tour on the Continent, i, 143.
* ↑ Travels in France, p. 35.
* ↑ Cross, Life of Sterne, p. 301.
* ↑ Travels in France, p. 35.
* ↑ One critical Englishman in particular found the French "wines in good quantity, but without any flavor, and most of them tart and crabbed; provisions of no kind excellent, their poultrey lean, little or no fish, scarce any beef, mutton, nor veal that's good." Clenche, A Tour in France and Italy, p. 21.
* ↑ Travels, i, 129, 130.
* ↑ Letters, i, 17.
* ↑ Page 208.
* ↑ A View of Paris (1701), by a Gentleman, p. 71.
* ↑ Keysler, Travels, ii, 133; Carr, The Stranger in France, p. 113.
* ↑ Thierry, Almanach du Voyageur (1785), pp. 206, 207.
* ↑ Page 10.
* ↑ Young, Travels in France, p. 39.
* ↑ Grand Tour, iv, 34, 35.
* ↑ Classical Tour in Italy, i, 46, 47.
* ↑ Lettres sur l'Italie, i, 299.
* ↑ Moore, View of Society and Manners in Italy, ii, 196.
* ↑ Letters from Italy, pp. 43, 44.
* ↑ Ibid., pp. 45, 46.
* ↑ Ibid., p. 46. Coryate, Crudities, i, 58, 59, had already complained of the cimices in Italian beds. Cf. also Ray's Travels, in Harris's Collection of Voyages and Travels, ii, 688.
* ↑ Manners and Customs of Italy, i, 25. The Italians appear, indeed, to have been exceptionally hospitable to strangers. "An Italian nobleman, hearing an Englishman complain of the accommodation at country inns, expressed his surprise that he frequented such places, and observed, that with a few recommendatory letters he might traverse Italy from one extremity to the other, without being once under the necessity of entering an inn."Eustace, Classical Tour in Italy, iii, 153.
* ↑ Travels, pp. 146, 147.
* ↑ New Voyage to Italy, i$^2$, 585. Cf. also Duclos, Voyage en Italie, Œuvres Completes, ix, 167, 168. Duclos says that the inn at Viareggio was the only one in Italy, outside the cities, where his party found a good supper and clean beds.
* ↑ Grand Tour, iii, 37.
* ↑ Letters from Italy, p. 17.
* ↑ Manners and Customs of Italy, ii, 321, 322.
* ↑ Tour on the Continent, i, 353, 354.
* ↑ Travels, ii, 12. Smollett was certainly the most unfortunate of travelers. "At the post-house in Lerici," says he, "the accommodation is intolerable. We were almost poisoned at supper." Ibid., ii, 36.
* ↑ De La Lande, Voyage en Italie, i, 266.
* ↑ Wyndham, Travels through Europe, i, 136.
* ↑ A Late Journey to Tuscany, Rome, etc. (1741), p. 16.
* ↑ Travels, ii, 89.
* ↑ Travels, ii, 165.
* ↑ Ibid., ii, 174.
* ↑ Letters from Italy, p. 223.
* ↑ Ibid., p. 265.
* ↑ That conditions throughout Italy had not greatly improved as late as 1847 we may learn from the following passage in a widely used guide-book. The testimony is the more significant as the makers of guide-books are likely to understate the difficulty of travel in the country they are exploiting:— "On the road between Florence and Naples I have seldom mentioned the inns, for really they are scarcely deserving the name: besides, each vetturini [!] has his own favourite house to stop at, and it is always better to let him go there.Italian Beds Will astonish, and no doubt please, married people who have been screwed up in small German and Swiss beds; the first sample, after passing the Alps by the Simplon, is seen at the ancient poste, Domo d'Ossola; and generally throughout Italy they are large enough for a man and his wife and four juveniles — but, notwithstanding their convenient size, they are not particularly soft; one thin mattress of wool is generally placed on the top of a palliasse, composed of dried leaves of Indian com; a really comfortable bed should have two wool mattresses at least; this, by giving a little notice to the chambermaid (i. e., man) will be readily effected. Madame Starke recommended travellers to carry their own sheets: had she also advised people to carry their own pillows, it would have been a wise suggestion; they are even now precious hard and flat, they must have been bullets in her time. Mosquito curtains are made of a fine muslin, which should be drawn tightly down; curtains with openings at the sides are literally of no use, the insinuating tormentors would creep through the eye of a needle." Coghlan, Hand-Book for Italy (1847), p. xx.
* ↑ Tivaroni, Storia del Risorgimento Italiano, i, 340, 341.
* ↑ Misson, New Voyage to Italy, i$^2$, 382.
* ↑ Letters from Italy, p. 63.
* ↑ Ibid., p. 187.
* ↑ Travels, pp. 157, 158.
* ↑ "St. Marco and II Pelegrino [at Bologna] have for some years past been famous for being the best inns in Italy." Keysler, Travels, iii, 249.
* ↑ Lettres sur l'Italie, ii, 255.
* ↑ Grand Tour, iii, 291.
* ↑ Nugent counts the best inns at Naples Li tre Re, La Croce d'Oro, and Alle Colombe. "You may board and lodge in these inns for ten carlini a day, and for twelve carlini a day you may have a coach." Grand Tour, iii, 401. (A carlin was a silver coin worth about eight cents.)
* ↑ English-Italian for Piazza.
* ↑ Northall, Travels through Italy, pp. 196, 197.
* ↑ Grand Tour, iii, 92.
* ↑ But even Sharp admits that not every district was hopelessly bad. "In Savoy, amongst the Alps, we were often astonished at the excellence of their diet; so great is the disparity betwixt French and Italian cooks, on the Savoy and the Loretto roads." Letters from Italy, p. 46.
* ↑ Burnet, Travels, p. 85.
* ↑ Misson agrees with Burnet: "The inns in the little towns, especially on certain roads, are very ill furnish'd with provisions. The first course, which they call the Antipasto, is a dish of giblets boil'd with salt and pepper, and mix'd with whites of eggs. After which course, come one after another of different ragous. Between Rome and Naples the traveller is sometimes regal'd with buffalos and crows; and he's a happy man that can meet with such dainties." New Voyage to Italy, ii$^2$, 392.
* ↑ Letters from Italy, ii, 58, 59.
* ↑ Manners and Customs of Italy, ii, 199.
* ↑ Smith, Tour on the Continent, ii, 318.
* ↑ To this day the butter for Sicilian hotels is mainly imported from northern Italy.
* ↑ Two bajocchi were equal to an English penny.
* ↑ Coghlan, Hand-Book for Italy (1847), p. 309.
* ↑ Manners and Customs of Italy, ii, 202.
* ↑ Starke, Letters from Italy, ii, 344.
* ↑ Ibid., ii, 336.
* ↑ Ibid., ii, 53.
* ↑ Ray, Travels, in Harris's Collection of Voyages and Travels, ii, 661.
* ↑ Autobiography, ii, 411.
* ↑ Moore, View of Society and Manners in France, etc., p. 225.
* ↑ Tour through Germany, (1792), p. 82.
* ↑ Nugent, Grand Tour, ii, 246.
* ↑ Ibid., ii, 337.
* ↑ Ibid., ii, 211.
* ↑ Letters from Italy, ii, 217.
* ↑ Ibid., ii, 253.
* ↑ Tour through Germany, p. 370.
* ↑ Travels through Germany, p. 225.
* ↑ Nugent, Grand Tour, ii, 80, 81.
* ↑ Letters, i, 200.
* ↑ Ibid., i, 222.
* ↑ Riesbeck, Travels through Germany, p. 209.
* ↑ View of Society and Manners in Italy, i, 3.
* ↑ Nugent, Grand Tour, ii, 419.
* ↑ All the road from Heidelberg to Nuremberg "straw was commonly our bed." Misson, New Voyage to Italy, i$^1$, 126.
* ↑ "Invalids who travel through Germany should take a small warming-pan with them." Starke, Letters from Italy, ii, 188.
* ↑ Nugent, Grand Tour, ii, 67.
* ↑ Ibid., ii, 67.
* ↑ Starke, Letters from Italy, ii, 209.
* ↑ Nugent, Grand Tour, ii, 68.
* ↑ Ibid., ii, 80.
* ↑ The Rhine, i, 140, 141.
* ↑ Tour through Germany (1792), p. 276.
* ↑ Ibid., p. 268.
* ↑ Letters from Italy, ii, 210.
* ↑ A Description of Holland, p. 207.
* ↑ Grand Tour, i, 222.
* ↑ Travels in France, p. 109.
* ↑ Nugent, Grand Tour, i, 90.
* ↑ A Description of Holland, p. 200.
* ↑ Cf. Nugent, Grand Tour, i, 50.
* ↑ Smith, Tour on the Continent, i, 46.
* ↑ Grand Tour, i, 222.
* ↑ Travels in France, p. 109.