THE TOURIST AND THE TUTOR
Nominally, the tutor was responsible for regular hours of teaching, when his pupils were making a stay of any length in a place, but how difficult or impossible instruction other than mere passing comment must have been while on the road the modern traveler can appreciate. At best, the restraints of parental discipline were lacking.
Among the swarms of English tourists in France and Italy, young men of character and ability were not lacking, but far too many of those who passed three years on the Continent returned little wiser than when they first crossed the Channel. With a pupil of the latter type, inclined to be headstrong and wayward, a conscientious tutor of some parts must at times have found his position the reverse of agreeable.[1] He was bound to participate to some extent in the amusements of his charge or see the young fellow pass out of his control. But if the pupil's interests were mainly centered in drinking and gaming and association with loose women, the situation was difficult indeed. A more attractive position was that held by the witty Dr. John Moore, who for six years went up and down the Continent as medical attendant and companion to the wealthy young Duke of Hamilton. But such opportunities were necessarily exceptional.
Gentlemen who could afford the expense seldom ventured abroad without a carefully selected traveling servant, who stood, of course, lower in the social scale than the tutor. Such a servant was nevertheless expected to be tolerably educated and to make himself useful in all possible ways. Berchtold's enumeration of the accomplishments that he should possess and his suggestion of a suitable reward for faithful service throw some light on the conditions of eighteenth-century travel: "A servant selected to accompany a gentleman on his travels should be conversant with the French language;[2] write a legible and quick hand, in order to be able to copy whatever is laid before him: know a little of surgery, and to bleed well in case his master should meet with an accident where no chirurgical assistance is to be expected. Gentlemen should endeavour to attach such
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- ↑ "A young man, born with the certainty of succeeding to an opulent fortune, is commonly too much indulged during infancy for submitting to the authority of a governor." Chesterfield, On the Passions and Vices of Boys.
- ↑ "My travelling servant babbles all languages, but speaks none."Earl of Cork and Orrery, Letters from Italy, p. 20.
