While many English archaeological travelers visited Avebury, Stonehenge, and other monuments at home, the more affluent traveled the classical lands. By the eighteenth century, the so-called “grand tour,” a leisurely journey through Europe, became an essential part of a gentleman’s education. Typically, the oldest son of a well-off family went abroad to complete his education, often with a tutor both to instruct and to keep an eye on his charge: “If a young man is wild, and must run after women and bad company, it is better he should do so abroad.” At first these tours were a form of education for courtiers and career diplomats, meant to train a young gentleman to take his place in a world where mere patriotism was not enough. But they soon became a kind of finishing school for the aristocracy. “Sir,” pronounced Dr. Samuel Johnson, “a man who has not been to Italy is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having seen what it is expected a man should see. The grand object of travelling is to see the shores of the Mediterranean.” Until the late sixteenth century, the journey through Europe was both dangerous and uncomfortable, thanks to bandits, smallpox epidemics, robbers, and appalling conditions on the road. There was also a danger of being seized by the Inquisition as a Protestant, especially at Easter, when the authorities watched for those who failed to take the sacrament. In 1592 and 1595, the pope complained at the number of English heretics who traveled to Venice. Travel for pleasure was by this time fashionable. By 1700, the grand tour had become the ideal way of imparting taste and knowledge into the minds of ignorant youths who would otherwise indulge in unbridled debauchery. There were bound to be numerous hazards and mishaps along the way for the long sightseer. Guidebooks provided (usually inaccurate) maps and directions to hotels along the post routes. The Gentleman’s Pocket Companion for Travelling into Foreign Parts, first published in 1722, laid out a delicious, if hazardous, scenario of what could happen at an inn.
