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We calculate that it would be over £500, for the Earl of Cork paid £1000 a year for his two sons, their governor, only two servants and only saddle-horses: whereas Lassels hints that no one with much pretension to fashion could go through Paris without a coach followed by three lacqueys and a page.
In 1670, Richard Lassels uses the term "Grand Tour" for the first time in an English book for travellers: "The Grand Tour of France and the Giro of Italy." Of course this is only specialized usage of the idea "round" which had long been current, and which still survives in our phrase, "make the round trip."
Such is The Voyage of Italy, with Instructions concerning Travel, by Richard Lassels, Gent., who "travelled through Italy Five times, as Tutor to several of the English Nobility and Gentry."
Robert, who was too frail for soldiering, he kept with him in Geneva for two years. Francis, free at last, took horse, was off to Ireland, and joined in the fighting beside his brothers Dungarvan, Kynalmeaky, and Broghill, who rallied around their father. There are several other seventeenth-century books on the theory of travel besides Lassels', which would repay reading.
The revelation of bad governors in Lassels' instructions are enough to make one recoil from the Grand Tour altogether. These "needy bold men" led pupils to Geneva, where the pupils lost all their true English allegiance and respect for monarchy; they kept them in dull provincial cities where the governor's wife or mistress happened to live.
Edward Leigh's Three Diatribes appeared in 1671, a year after Lassels' book, and in 1678 Gailhard, another professional governor, in his "Directions for the Education of youth as to their Breeding at Home and Travelling Abroad," imitated Lassels' attention to the particular needs of the country gentleman.
The difficulties of procuring the right sort of governor were hardly exaggerated by Lassels. The Duke of Ormond's grandson had just such a dishonest tutor as described one who instead of showing the Earl of Ossory the world, carried him among his own relations, and "buried" him at Orange.
The Voyage of Italy by Lassels, published in Paris in 1670, marks the beginning of guide-books in English. Still, in succeeding vade-mecums there are some occasional echoes of the old injunctions to improve one's time. Misson's A New Voyage to Italy, maps out some intellectual duties.
France, as the centre of travel, produced the greatest number of handy manuals, and it was from these, doubtless, that Richard Lassels drew the idea of composing a similar work in the English language, which would comprise the exhortation to travel, in the manner of Turler, with a continental guide to objects of art.
Lassels very wisely refrains from telling those not already persuaded, what the cost will be for the magnificent Grand Tour he outlines.
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