Page 34 - Livre Beau Rivage Palace

Fig. 1 Fig. 2
INNS, HOTELS
AND TRAVEL GUIDES:
THE WORLD ON
THE PRINTED PAGE
Ariane DEVANTHÉRY
A HISTORY OF SLEEPING AWAY FROM HOME young aristocrats underwent a sort of rite of passage marking their
Since the beginning of time, people have travelled. Since entry into adulthood. Even though many and very different young
the beginning of time, they have occasionally had to find board men took part in the Grand Tour, this whole learning experience
and lodging away from home. Whether soldiers, merchants or was strictly governed by certain conventions. There were rules
pilgrims, they have always had special places to stay overnight or about which itineraries to follow, which sights to see and which
longer. Fortunately, our task here is not to cover this whole vast people to meet. Travellers were required to keep journals, make
range of possibilities. We shall simply look at cultural and holiday sketches and otherwise record their observations. They were
travel which reached its zenith with the Grand Tour, in other even expected to feel specific emotions. Cultural historian Alain
words in the period between the mid-seventeenth and the late Corbin sees the advantage of having to take a precise route, see
eighteenth century. particular sights, draw certain comparisons and even think certain
The first to embark on this educational journey were young thoughts during their travels. ‘On their return, the similarity of their
British noblemen wishing to see the world, but the fashion soon itinerary enabled tourists to find common ground with each other and to
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spread among the aristocracy in the rest of Europe. The Grand compare impressions.’ Since Lausanne stood on one of the routes
Tour was a tour around Europe lasting from a few months to leading to the Great Saint Bernard and Simplon passes, the town
several years. Its purpose was to develop the traveller’s aesthetic is often mentioned in travel writings of the period. 2
sense and his knowledge and understanding of different people In the days of the Grand Tour, travellers seeking accom-
and places. While the clear aim of the tour was to discover the modation had two choices – an inn or a private home. Each
classical treasures of Italy, the routes taken by the young travellers involved different expectations and social and even religious
took them to many places imbued with symbolic meaning considerations. From the outset, the relationship between
and enabled them to meet other travellers and well-known innkeeper and guest was purely commercial and lasted only for
intellectuals of the period. Clearly, they had much to gain socially the length of the stay. By contrast, staying with acquaintances
and aesthetically from their journeyings, in addition to acquiring (or acquaintances of acquaintances made through letters of
knowledge and practical skills. Accompanied by their tutors, the introduction) involved traditional hospitality, a virtue praised in
Ganter Valley on the road through the Simplon Pass.
Engraving, 1831.
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the Bible. It brought about a situation that committed host and Reichard in the introduction to his 1802 guidebook: ‘It is a long-
established rule that it is preferable to choose better inns rather than small,
guest to something far beyond the mere exchange of money. In the
words of the historian Daniel Roche: ‘It would be wrong to assume mean ones. At inns of repute, everything has a fixed price, whereas a poor
that under such private arrangements, the guest, the traveller, did not pay innkeeper will always seek to take advantage. The first thing to do when
his share. Where the relationship was one of passivity and reliance on others, settling into a room at an inn and preparing to sleep there is to open the
the balance was only restored by respecting certain rules, and the guest paid the tester of the bed is attached by ropes to the ceiling, these ropes may
windows and then perfume it with a fumigation of vinegar and sugar. If
his debt by engaging in conversation, supplying information and bringing
6
news. It was a matter of courtesy and displaying good manners.’ 3 be old, worn or badly tied and the tester may fall – there are a thousand
We see here social interaction based on an exchange of instances of this occurrence – so it is better to pull the bed from under it.
services between equals which, like the Grand Tour itself, helped One of the great scourges of bad inns is bugs. Madame de Genlis’s advice
to establish a Europe-wide network of noble families. Staying is to take four pieces of camphor, each the size of a walnut, and place
in a private house did not always mean that no money changed two on the mattress under the sheet at the head of the bed and the other
hands and some families seem to have decided to charge guests two likewise at the foot of the bed, taking care not to leave the bed up
for their lodgings, thus opening the way to a third type of against the wall. This precautionary measure is somewhat narcotic and can
accommodation, namely bed and breakfast or full board. In his affect the nerves over time, but used occasionally does no harm. I have on
study based on travel writings of the classical era and the Age of occasion guaranteed being bitten by bugs all night by placing my bed in
Enlightenment, Daniel Roche shows how, from the seventeenth the middle of the room and surrounding it with lighted candles. Persons
to the late eighteenth century, in both relatively unexplored unused to travelling cannot accustom themselves to the noise of an inn and
areas and along well-trodden routes, private hospitality gradually frequently lose sleep because of it. The time at which inns are most quiet
gave way to paid-for accommodation. However, for a long time, is from ten o’clock at night until five o’clock in the morning and these are
neither precluded the other since the two did not really overlap. the hours one should spend in bed […] One should never use a bedside
Rather, they were two different systems that complemented table in an inn, nor any other furniture of this nature, however clean it
rather than opposed each other. According to where he might may appear, for nothing is more dangerous to health. At bad inns, never
be, a traveller might have recourse to one or the other, a situation eat stews or sauces, but make do with hot or cold roast meat, eggs, raw food
echoed in contemporary travelogues. Even so, the inn occupies or food prepared for oneself. Those wishing to stay at an inn should pay for
a special place in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century travel one day at a time. This is a method most innkeepers do not like; all the
literature, sometimes as a commonplace, sometimes as a blind spot, more reason to use it.’ 7
inasmuch as some travel writers almost never mention it. In other
accounts, it appears in various guises, and is used by authors as FROM GRAND TOUR TO TOURISM
4
a temporal, spatial or thematic device, perhaps to mark the end In the few decades between the late eighteenth and the early
of a day on the road or progress from one destination to another. nineteenth century, the Grand Tour underwent profound changes,
It may even be the setting for an often well-chosen and striking transforming it gradually from an aristocratic to a middle-class
anecdote concerning safety or hygiene. journey. The Grand Tour gave way to tourism. Many of these
5
To get a feel of what it was like for eighteenth-century changes affected the way people travelled. They involved both the
Grand Tourists to stay at an inn, let us dip into a fairly long extract road network, with the building of new roads and improvements
written by Count Léopold de Berchtold and quoted by Heinrich in road surfaces, and means of transport, and the introduction of
Riviera, the Valais and the Alps. Engraving drawn by J.-S.-H.-L. Carrard
and lithographed by Jacob Sperli, 1830.
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