The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works

by Thomas Nashe

  Upon this was I laid in prison, should have been hanged, was brought to the ladder, had made a ballad for my farewell in a readiness, called Wilton’s Wantonness, and yet, for all that, scaped dancing in a hempen circle. He that hath gone through many perils and returned safe from them makes but a merriment to dilate them. I had the knot under my ear. There was fair play; the hangman had one halter, another about my neck was fastened to the gallows, the riding device290 was almost thrust home, and his foot on my shoulder to press me down, when I made my saint-like confession as you have heard before, that such and such men at such an hour brake into the house, slew the zany, took my courtesan, locked me into my chamber, ravished Heraclide, and finally how she slew herself.

  Present at the execution was there a banished English earl who, hearing that a countryman of his was to suffer for such a notable murder, came to hear his confession and see if he knew him. He had not heard me tell half of that I have recited but he craved audience and desired the execution might be stayed.

  ‘Not two days since it is, gentlemen and noble Romans,’ said he, ‘since, going to be let blood in a barber’s shop against the infection, all on sudden in a great tumult and uproar was there brought in one Bartol, an Italian, grievously wounded and bloody. I, seeming to commiserate his harms, courteously questioned him with what ill debtors he had met, or how or by what casualty he came to be so arrayed. “Oh,” quoth he, “long have I lived sworn brothers in sensuality with one Esdras of Granado: five hundred rapes and murders have we committed betwixt us. When our iniquities were grown to the height, and God had determined to countercheck our amity, we came to the house of Johannes de Imola” (whom this young gentleman hath named). There did he justify all those rapes in manner and form as the prisoner here hath confessed. But lo, an accident after, which neither he nor this audience is privy to. Esdras of Granado, not content to have ravished the matron Heraclide and robbed her, after he had betook him from thence to his heels, lighted on his companion Bartol with his courtesan, whose pleasing face he had scarce winkingly glanced on, but he picked a quarrel with Bartol to have her from him. On this quarrel they fought. Bartol was wounded to the death, Esdras fled, and the fair dame left to go whither she would. This, Bartol in the barber’s shop freely acknowleged, as both the barber and his man and other here present can amply depose.’

  Deposed they were. Their oaths went for current. I was quit by proclamation. To the banished earl I came to render thanks, when thus he examined and schooled me:

  ‘Countryman, tell me, what is the occasion of thy straying so far out of England to visit this strange nation? If it be languages, thou may’st learn them at home; nought but lasciviousness is to be learned here. Perhaps, to be better accounted of than other of thy condition, thou ambitiously undertakest this voyage: these insolent fancies are but Icarus’ feathers, whose wanton wax, melted against the sun, will betray thee into a sea of confusion.

  ‘The first traveller was Cain, and he was called a vagabond runagate on the face of the earth. Travel (like the travail wherein smiths put wild horses when they shoe them) is good for nothing but to tame and bring men under.

  ‘God had no greater curse to lay upon the Israelites, than by leading them out of their own country to live as slaves in a strange land. That which was their curse, we Englishmen count our chief blessedness. He is nobody, that hath not travelled: we had rather live as slaves in another land, crouch and cap and be servile to every jealous Italian’s and proud Spaniard’s humour, where we may neither speak, look, nor do anything but what pleaseth them, than live as freemen and lords in our country.

  ‘He that is a traveller must have the back of an ass to bear all, a tongue like the tail of a dog to flatter all, the mouth of a hog to eat what is set before him, the ear of a merchant to hear all and say nothing. And if this be not the highest step of thraldom, there is no liberty or freedom.

  ‘It is but a mild kind of subjection to be the servant of one master at once; but when thou hast a thousand thousand masters, as the veriest botcher, tinker, or cobbler freeborn will domineer over a foreigner and think to be his better or master in company, then shalt thou find there is no such hell as to leave thy father’s house, thy natural habitation, to live in the land of bondage.

  ‘If thou dost but lend half a look to a Roman’s or Italian’s wife, thy porridge shall be prepared for thee, and cost thee nothing but thy life. Chance some of them break a bitter jest on thee and thou retort’st it severely or seemest discontented, go to thy chamber and provide a great banquet, for thou shalt be sure to be visited with guests in a mask the next night, when in kindness and courtship thy throat shall be cut, and the doers return undiscovered. Nothing so long of memory as a dog; these Italians are old dogs and will carry an injury a whole age in memory. I have heard of a box on the ear that hath been revenged thirty year after. The Neapolitan carrieth the bloodiest mind, and is the most secret fleering291 murderer; whereupon it is grown to a common proverb, “I’ll give him the Neapolitan shrug,” when one intends to play the villain and make no boast of it.

  ‘The only precept that a traveller hath most use of and shall find most ease in is that of Epicharchus,292 Vigila, et memor sis ne quid credos: “Believe nothing, trust no man yet seem thou as thou swallowedst all, suspectedst none, but wert easy to be gulled by everyone.” Multi fallere docuerunt (as Seneca saith) dum timent falli: “Many by showing their jealous suspect of deceit have made men seek more subtle means to deceive them.”

  ‘Alas, our Englishmen are the plainest-dealing souls that ever God put life in. They are greedy of news, and love to be fed in their humours293 and hear themselves flattered the best that may be. Even as Philemon, a comic poet, died with extreme laughter at the conceit of seeing an ass eat figs, so have the Italians no such sport as to see poor English asses, how soberly they swallow Spanish figs,294 devour any hook bated for them. He is not fit to travel that cannot, with the Candians, live on serpents, make nourishing food even of poison. Rats and mice engender by licking one another; he must lick, he must crouch, he must cog, lie and prate, that either in the Court or a foreign country will engender and come to preferment. Be his feature what it will, if he be fair spoken he winneth friends. Non formosus erat, sed erat facundus Ulysses:295 “Ulysses, the long traveller, was not amiable, but eloquent” Some allege they travel to learn wit, but I am of this opinion: that, as it is not possible for any man to learn the art of memory, whereof Tully, Quintilian, Seneca and Hermannus Buschius have written so many books, except he have a natural memory before, so it is not possible for any man to attain any great wit by travel except he have the grounds of it rooted in him before. That wit which is thereby to be perfected or made staid is nothing but Experientia longa malorum, 296 ‘the experience of many evils’, the experience that such a man lost his life by this folly, another by that; such a young gallant consumed his substance on such a courtesan; these courses of revenge a merchant of Venice took against a merchant of Ferrara; and this point of justice was showed by the duke upon the murtherer. What is here but we may read in books, and a great deal more too, without stirring our feet out of a warm study?

  Vobis alii ventorum praelia narrent (said Ovid)

  Quasque Scilla infestet, quasve Charybdis aquas.

  “Let others tell you wonders of the wind,

  How Scylla or Charybdis is inclined.”

  — vos quod quisque loquetur

  Credite. “Believe you what they say, but never try.”

  So let others tell you strange accidents, treasons, poisonings, close packings in France, Spain and Italy; it is no harm for you to hear of them, but come not near them.

  ‘What is there in France to be learned more than in England, but falsehood in fellowship, perfect slovenry, to love no man but for my pleasure, to swear Ah par la mort Dieu when a man’s hams are scabbed? For the idle traveller, I mean not for the soldier, I have known some that have continued there by the space of half-a-dozen years, and when they come home they have hid
a little wearish297 lean face under a broad French hat, kept a terrible coil298 with the dust in the street in their long cloaks of grey paper, and spoke English strangely. Nought else have they profited by their travel, save learnt to distinguish of the true Bordeaux grape, and know a cup of neat Gascoigne wine from wine of Orleance. Yea, and peradventure this also, to esteem of the pox as a pimple, to wear a velvet patch on their face, and walk melancholy with their arms folded.

  ‘From Spain what bringeth our traveller? A skull-crowned hat of the fashion of an old deep porringer, a diminutive alderman’s ruff with short strings like the droppings of a man’s nose, a close-bellied doublet coming down like a peak behind as far as the crupper, and cut off before by the breastbone like a partlet or neckercher, a wide pair of gaskins which ungathered would make a couple of women’s riding kirtles, huge hangers299 that have half a cow-hide in them, a rapier that is lineally descended from half-a-dozen dukes at the least. Let his cloak be as long or as short as you will; if long, it is facéd with Turkey grogeran300 ravelled; if short, it hath a cape like a calf s tongue and is not so deep in his whole length, nor hath so much cloth in it, I will justify, as only the standing cape of a Dutchman’s cloak. I have not yet touched all, for he hath in either shoe as much taffatie for his tyings as would serve for an ancient; which serveth him (if you will have the mystery of it) of the own accord for a shoe-rag. A soldier and a braggart he is (that’s concluded). He jetteth strouting,301 dancing on his toes with his hands under his sides. If you talk with him, he makes a dishcloth of his own country in comparison of Spain, but if you urge him more particularly wherein it exceeds, he can give no instance but ‘in Spain they have better bread than any we have’; when, poor hungry slaves, they may crumble it into water well enough and make misers302 with it, for they have not a good morsel of meat except it be salt piltchers to eat with it all the year long, and, which is more, they are poor beggars and lie in foul straw every night.

  ‘Italy, the paradise of the earth and the epicure’s heaven, how doth it form our young master? It makes him to kiss his hand like an ape, cringe his neck like a starveling, and play at heypass, repass come aloft,303 when he salutes a man. From thence he brings the art of atheism, the art of epicurising, the art of whoring, the art of poisoning, the art of sodomitry. The only probable good thing they have to keep us from utterly condemning it is that it maketh a man an excellent courtier, a curious carpet knight; which is, by interpretation, a fine close lecher, a glorious hypocrite. It is now a privy note amongst the better sort of men, when they would set a singular mark or brand on a notorious villain, to say he hath been in Italy.

  ‘With the Dane and the Dutchman I will not encounter, for they are simple honest men, that, with Danaus’ daughters,304 do nothing but fill bottomless tubs and will be drunk and snort in the midst of dinner. He hurts himself only that goes thither; he cannot lightly be damned, for the vintners, the brewers, the malt-men, the alewives pray for him. ‘Pitch and pay,305 they will pray all day; score and borrow, they will wish him much sorrow.’ But lightly a man is ne’er the better for their prayers, for they commit all deadly sin for the most part of them in mingling their drink, the vintners in the highest degree.

  ‘Why jest I in such a necessary persuasive discourse? I am a banished exile from my country, though near linked in consanguinity to the best: an earl born by birth, but a beggar now as thou seest. These many years in Italy have I lived an outlaw. Awhile I had a liberal pension of the Pope, but that lasted not, for he continued not; one succeeded him in his chair that cared neither for Englishmen nor his own countrymen. Then was I driven to pick up my crumbs among the cardinals, to implore the benevolence and charity of all the dukes of Italy, whereby I have since made a poor shift to live, but so live as I wish myself a thousand times dead.

  Cum patriam amisi, tunc me periisse putato306

  “When I was banished, think I caught my bane.”

  The sea is the native soil to fishes; take fishes from the sea, they take no joy, nor thrive, but perish straight. So likewise the birds removed from the air, the abode whereto they were born, the beasts from the earth, and I from England. Can a lamb take delight to be suckled at the breasts of a she-wolf? I am a lamb nourished with the milk of wolves, one that, with the Ethiopians inhabiting over against Meroe, feed on nothing but scorpions. Use is another nature, yet ten times more contentive were nature, restored to her kingdom from whence she is excluded. Believe me, no air, no bread, no fire, no water doth a man any good out of his own country. Cold fruits never prosper in a hot soil, nor hot in a cold. Let no man for any transitory pleasure sell away the inheritance he hath of breathing in the place where he was born. Get thee home, my young lad; lay thy bones peaceably in the sepulchre of thy fathers; wax old in overlooking thy grounds; be at hand to close the eyes of thy kindred. The devil and I am desperate, he of being restored to heaven, I of being recalled home.’

  Here he held his peace and wept I, glad of any opportunity of a full point to part from him, told him I took his counsel in worth; what lay in me to requite in love should not be lacking. Some business that concerned me highly called me away very hastily, but another time I hoped we should meet. Very hardly he let me go, but I earnestly overpleading my occasions, at length he dismissed me, told me where his lodging was, and charged me to visit him without excuse very often.

  Here’s a stir, thought I to myself, after I was set at liberty, that is worse than an upbraiding lesson after a breeching. Certainly if I had bethought me like a rascal as I was, he should have had an Ave Marie of me for his cynic exhortation. God plagued me for deriding such a grave fatherly advertiser. List the worst throw of ill lucks. Tracing up and down the city to seek my courtesan till the evening began to grow very well in age, it thus fortuned. The element, as if it had drunk too much in the afternoon, poured down so profoundly that I was forced to creep like one afraid of the watch close under the pentices,307 where the cellar door of a Jew’s house called Zadoch, over which in my direct way I did pass, being unbarred on the inside, over head and ears I fell into it, as a man falls in a ship from the orlop into the hold, or as in an earthquake the ground should open and a blind man come feeling pad pad over the open gulf with his staff, should tumble on a sudden into hell. Having worn out the anguish of my fall a little with wallowing up and down, I cast up mine eyes to see under what continent I was, and lo, oh destiny, I saw my courtesan kissing very lovingly with a prentice.

  My back and my sides I had hurt with my fall, but now my head swelled and ached worse than both. I was even gathering wind to come upon her with a full blast of contumely, when the Jew, awaked with the noise of my fall, came hastily bustling down the stairs, and, raising his other tenants, attached308 both the courtesan and me for breaking his house and conspiring with his prentice to rob him.

  It was then the law in Rome that if any man had a felon fallen into his hands, either by breaking into his house or robbing him by the highway, he might choose whether he would make him his bondman or hang him. Zadoch, as all Jews are covetous, casting with himself he should have no benefit by casting me off the ladder, had another policy in his head. He went to one Doctor Zacherie, the Pope’s physician, that was a Jew and his countryman likewise, and told him he had the finest bargain for him that might be. ‘It is not concealed from me,’ saith he, ‘that the time of your accustomed yearly anatomy is at hand, which it behoves you under forfeiture of the foundation of your college very carefully to provide for. The infection is great and hardly will you get a sound body to deal upon: you are my countryman, therefore I come to you first. Be it known unto you, I have a young man at home fallen to me for my bondman, of the age of eighteen, of stature tall, straight-limbed, of as clear a complexion as any painter’s fancy can imagine. Go to, you are an honest man and one of the scattered children of Abraham. You shall have him for five hundred crowns.’ ‘Let me see him,’ quoth Doctor Zacharie, ‘and I will give you as much as another.’ Home he sent for me; pinioned and shackled, I was tra
nsported alongst the street, where, passing under Juliana’s (the Marquis of Mantua’s wife’s) window, that was a lusty bona roba, one of the Pope’s concubines, as she had her casement half open, she looked out and spied me. At the first sight she was enamoured with my age and beardless face, that had in it no ill sign of physiognomy fatal to fetters. After me she sent to know what I was, wherein I had offended, and whither I was going. My conducts resolved them all She having received this answer, with a lustful collachrimation lamenting my Jewish pre-munire,309 that body and goods I should light into the hands of such a cursed generation, invented the means of my release.

  But first I’ll tell you what bedded me after I was brought to Doctor Zacharie’s. The purblind Doctor put on his spectacles and looked upon me; and when he had throughly viewed my face, he caused me to be stripped naked, to feel and grope whether each limb were sound and my skin not infected. Then he pierced my arm to see how my blood ran; which essays and searchings ended, he gave Zadoch his full price and sent him away, then locked me up in a dark chamber till the day of anatomy.

  Oh, the cold sweating cares which I conceived after I knew I should be cut like a French summer doublet! Me-thought already the blood began to gush out at my nose. If a flea on the arm had but bit me, I deemed the instrument had pricked me. Well, well, I may scoff at a shrewd turn, but there’s no such ready way to make a man a true Christian as to persuade himself he is taken up for an anatomy. I’ll depose I prayed then more than I did in seven year before. Not a drop of sweat trickled down my breast and my sides, but I dreamt it was a smooth-edged razor tenderly slicing down my breast and sides. If any knocked at door, I supposed it was the beadle of Surgeons’ Hall come for me. In the night I dreamed of nothing but phlebotomy,310 bloody fluxes, incarnatives,311 running ulcers. I durst not let out a wheal312 for fear through it I should bleed to death. For meat in this distance I had plumporridge of purgations ministered me one after another to clarify my blood, that it should not lie doddered in the flesh. Nor did he it so much for clarifying physic as to save charges. Miserable is that mouse that lives in a physician’s house. Tantalus lives not so hunger-starved in hell as she doth there. Not the very crumbs that fall from his table, but Zacharie sweeps together and of them moulds up a manna. Of the ashy parings of his bread, he would make conserve of chippings. Out of bones, after the meat was eaten off, he would alchemize an oil that he sold for a shilling a dram. His snot and spittle a hundred times he hath put over to his apothecary for snow–water. Any spider he would temper to perfect Mithridate.313 His rheumatic eyes when he went in the wind, or rose early in a morning, dropped as cool alum water as you would request. He was Dame Niggardize’ sole heir and executor. A number of old books had he, eaten with the moths and worms. Now all day would not he study a dodkin,314 but pick those worms and moths out of his library and of their mixture make a preservative against the plague. The liquor out of his shoes he would wring, to make a sacred balsamum against barrenness.