Dr James Henry Bennet, in his health-seekers’ guidebook to benign climates, Winter and Spring on the Shores of the Mediterranean, 1875, gives a rather idealized version of travelling by carriage, asking us to remember that ‘the driver for the time is your servant, and must do your bidding, and everything should be arranged in conformity with previous habits and laws of hygiene, provided the written agreement be not infringed. Thus the journey becomes a pleasure, and a source of health instead of a trial of strength, as often occurs.’
His plan called for the traveller to get up at six or seven, ‘to take a cup of tea or coffee, and to start at seven or eight, the carriage being closed at the top as a protection against the sun, open at the sides, and prepared for the day’s campaign by a comfortable arrangement of umbrellas, books, maps, and provisions. The latter usually consisted of a basket of bread, meat, biscuits, wine, and fruit, provided before starting, with Liebig’s extract of meat, a little of which makes bad soup good, and a bottle of Dunn’s extract of coffee which transforms any kind of milk, cow’s, sheep’s, goat’s, or camel’s, into good coffee. At nine or ten we stopped for breakfast, which can be obtained anywhere, if the traveller is contended with milk, bread, butter, eggs, and honey. Then the journey is resumed, and at twelve or one the principal stoppage of the day takes place for the dinner of the driver and his horses.’
After the traveller has eaten a solid lunch, ‘the mid-day rest becomes a period of liberty, during which he can survey all around, analyse the habits and customs of the peasantry, study the architecture of their houses, farms, out-buildings, their agricultural operations, and the local botany. Finally, if agreeable, and weather permits, he can take a good hygienic walk in advance of three, four, or more miles. When tired he has only to sit down by the roadside in some picturesque nook until the carriage overtakes him. If the driver, as is usually the case, rests for a couple of hours, and four or five miles have been got over, it is nearly three before the carriage is again resumed. To me these midday strolls in advance were the pleasantest part of the day’s journey. After that, progress is steadily made until six, when the final stoppage takes place. Then comes dinner, a walk, or a chat with your companions or some new acquaintances, a cup of tea, and an early retirement for the night.’
A favourable view of Italy and the Italians is found in the eight-volume series of guidebooks by Augustus J. C. Hare, who regrets the coming of the railways as the means of locomotion. In The Cities of Northern Italy, 1883, he says, in defence of horse-drawn transport: ‘The slow approach to each long-heard of but unseen city, gradually leading up, as the surroundings of all cities do, to its own peculiar characteristics, gave a very different feeling towards it to that which is produced by rushing into a railway station — with an impending struggle for luggage and places in an omnibus — which, in fact, is probably no feeling at all. While, in the many hours spent in plodding over the weary surface of a featureless country, we had time for so studying the marvellous story of the place we were about to visit, that when we saw it, it was engraved for ever on the brain, with its past associations and its present beauties combined.’
He almost regrets that: ‘The journey to Italy is now absolutely without difficulties, but the most desirable approach is that by the Corniche road along the Riviera. Then, after the dreary wind-stricken plains of Central France, and the stony arid hills of Provence, one enters Italy at Mentone by a portal like the gates of Paradise, and is plunged at once into the land of the citron and myrtle, of palms and aloes and cyclamen. Of course one must not expect that all Italy will be like these Riviera roads, and one is, as far as scenery goes, receiving the best first, but it is charming to feel the whole of one’s ideal realised at the very outset.’
In order to avoid disappointment in Italy, Hare tells us that it is necessary not to expect too much, ‘for it is in the beauty of her details that Italy surpasses all other countries, and details take time to find out and appreciate. Compare most of her buildings in their entirety with similar buildings in England, much more in France and Germany, and they will be found very inferior.’
Another thing to remember, so as to get the best out of travel in Italy,
is not to go forth in a spirit of antagonism to the inhabitants, and with the impression that life in Italy is to be a prolonged struggle against extortion and incivility. A traveller will be cheated oftener in a week’s tour in England than in a year’s residence in Italy. During eight whole winters spent at Rome, and years of travel in all the other parts of Italy, the author cannot recall a single act or word of an Italian of which he can justly complain; but, on the contrary, has an overflowing recollection of the disinterested courtesy, and the unselfish and often most undeserved kindness, with which he has universally been treated. There is scarcely an Italian nobleman, whose house, with all it contains, would not be placed at the disposition of a wayfarer who found himself in an out-of-the-way place or where the inn was unbearable; there is scarcely a shopkeeper, who would not send his boy to show you the way to a church, one, two, or even three streets distant; there is scarcely a carriage which would not be stopped to offer you a lift, if they saw you looked tired by the wayside; scarcely a woman who would not give you a chair (expecting nothing) if you were standing drawing near her house …
I find Hare by far the best writer on Italy and of things Italian, being able to back him up on his encomiums of general honesty. On two occasions during one of my motor trips through the country money was put back into my hand with a smile when I had inadvertently given too much. Neither can I but agree when he writes that ‘nothing can be obtained from an Italian by compulsion. A friendly look and cheery word will win almost anything, but Italians will not be driven, and the browbeating manner, which is so common with English and Americans, even the commonest facchino regards and speaks of as mere vulgar insolence, and treats accordingly … Unfortunately the bad impression one set of travellers leaves, another pays the penalty for.’
Hare gives one instance of the heartless behaviour of tourists: ‘The horrible ill-breeding of our countrymen never struck me more than one day at Porlezza. A clean, pleasing Italian woman had arranged a pretty little caffe near the landing place. The Venetian blinds kept out the burning sun; the deal tables were laid with snowy linen; the brick floor was scoured till not a speck of dust remained. The diligence arrived, and a crowd of English and American women rushed in while waiting for the boat, thought they would have some lemonade, then thought they would not, shook out the dust from their clothes, brushed themselves with the padrona’s brushes, laid down their dirty travelling bags on all the clean table-cloths, chattered and scolded for half an hour, declaimed upon the miseries of Italian travel, ordered nothing and paid for nothing; and, when the steamer arrived, flounced out without even a syllable of thanks or recognition. No wonder that the woman said her own pigs would have behaved better.’
Hare is also sympathetic to the Italians on the matter of accommodation. ‘In regard to hotel life, it cannot be too much urged, for the real comfort of travellers as well as for their credit with the natives, that the vulgar habits of bargaining, inculcated by several English handbooks, are greatly to be deprecated, and only lead to suspicion and resentment. Italians are not a nation of cheats, and cases of overcharge at inns are most unusual, except at great Anglicised hotels, where they have been gradually brought about through the perquisite money demanded by couriers.’