Tom Coryat : A Jacobean Backpacker

 

Tom Coryat 

In 1577, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, a Rector in Somerset had a son named Tom. Connections got him an education at Oxford and, later, a position as a wit and joker at the court of the teenage Prince Henry, the son of Elizabeth’s successor, James 1st.

Prince Henry 

In 1608, he decided to leave this and become England's first backpacker, travelling around Western Europe, driven by curiosity and the possibility of enhancing his reputation by publishing a book about his journey. Western Europe was well known, not least because the English had popped over the water for a recreational invasion. Later, he added to that by embarking on a much longer trudge across Asia to India, which was remote and mysterious.  

Tom's contribution was the descriptions of his trip, which introduced the civilisations of the east to the English public. By all accounts, he was a short, skinny and unprepossessing man, an affable but long-winded oddball. He was a devout protestant, which he actively promoted, with varying degrees of caution. That would have really annoyed me, so it speaks well of those who endured it. He was quite vain and took himself seriously, but others didn’t, probably because he was relatively impecunious compared with his peers. Maybe this rankled.  

Odcombe Church. Parts will be
as Tom would remember them. 

Fynes Moryson had done a similar tour a decade earlier, but his early accounts were in Latin. Tom was sniffy in his assessment of them, and even Moryson’s own biographer rated him as prejudiced and unreliable! Both anticipated the ‘Grand Tours’, which followed a similar route around Europe, only becoming fashionable among the wealthy around a century or more later. And we only have a record of one person who had crossed Asia overland, a charlatan merchant named John Mildenhall, who seems to have had better legs than Tom, but left history little more than a bad smell. 

John Mildenhall

It is hard to do justice to the challenges of such trips. In Tom's day, even the wealthy would find overland travel uncomfortable. The roads were, at best, rough tracks, and such carriages as existed had no suspension. Horseback was the preferred means of travel.

He had some advantages. He was poor, but his limited resources were augmented by a small annuity from Prince Henry, and he was blessed with a talent for languages. Importantly, his timing was fortuitous. Western Europe was enjoying a lull in many conflicts, so it was relatively safe. So, in the best bohemian fashion, he skimped and wheedled freebies along the way, eating when he could and drinking in moderation.

Usefully, he was not a materialist and mostly accepted his lot and the hardships of the road with good grace. He travelled without guides and was unarmed, excepting only a small, practical knife. The only time he thought to use it in self-defence, the supposed robber turned out to be simply annoyed by Tom’s scrumping in his orchard. 

Jacobean Pocket Knife 

His first tour started in France, then headed to Italy and Venice, crossed the Alps, and returned up the Rhine to Holland and back to London. Altogether, this was some 2000 miles, mostly on foot but with the odd boat and horse thrown in. 

On his return in 1609, he published an account of his trip as ‘Coryat’s Crudities’. It sold well, being informative, entertaining and, unlike Moryson’s early efforts, written in English. I have added a link to a free copy as a footnote, so you can see what an early Jacobean era best-seller looked like. 

Coryat's Crudities 1609 

My intention here is not to recycle the detail and give you a blow-by-blow account of the places he visited, but rather, to try to see the world as he experienced it, while salting the story with things that surprised me and a few curiosities. Like any tourist, on his travels, Tom looked out for famous and interesting sights. I am afraid that the illustrations I have gathered are not the best; Tom didn't carry a camera. 

What impressed him is clear from his Introduction:

“Of all the pleasures in the world travell is (in my opinion) the sweetest and most delightfull. For what can be more pleasant then (sic) to see passing variety of beautifull Cities, Kings and Princes Courts, gorgeous Palaces, impregnable Castles and Fortresses, Towers piercing in a manner up to the cloudes, fertill territories replenished with a very Cornucopia of all manner of commodities as it were with the horn of Amalthea, tending both to pleasure and profit, that the heart of man can wish for”. 

(NB. This was quoted in ‘Odd Tom Coryate' by R E Pritchard. I couldn’t find it in the main text, so I assume it was in the associated writings, which he judiciously researched and I didn’t)

In the text itself, he also frequently expressed appreciation for ‘faire gallows’.

1600s English Gallows

Notice that these were mostly the product of wealth and human endeavour. The natural world didn’t engage his attention, and the idea that dramatic and threatening landscapes could be beautiful, an idea later embodied in ‘sublime’ art, had not yet permeated high aesthetic culture.  Even the Alps mainly registered as being no more than an even harder slog. In France, where he witnessed a violent current tearing rock formations apart, he simply complained of the noise. His greatest joy was in getting above cloud level!  

The 'Sublime' 
Deluge. Francis Danby. 1840. 

Neither did he waste many words on the lives and living conditions of the lesser folk, beyond passing reference to the comforts or lack of them in the inns and homes he stayed in.

In his passage over the high Alpine ‘Passo di San Marco ’, Tom stopped at a small border Inn where he translated into Latin a small sign marking the opening of the road some 15 years earlier. That faded translation into Latin by ‘Tomaso Coryate’ was more recently restored and honoured by the local Italian authorities. Here is a link to the Italian view of Tom’s tour. LINK

He was a collector of good yarns. I liked the tale of the friar in Venice who fathered children with 99 nuns. He was beheaded, complaining that if he could have achieved one more, his life might have been spared. Famously, in Switzerland, he heard the tale of William Tell, then unknown in England. I have cycled the Rhine Valley on Tom’s route, and some of the stories he heard are still being fed to tourists. The Mouse Tower at Bingen is an example.  Link 

Bingen : The Mouse Tower

Tom's own gags were, at best, wry. He talked of a robber who might have made him ‘a prey for worms before he ever set foot in… Worms’. Maybe he did better as a stand-up in the court or the Taverns? He also noted things unknown in England and which he deemed useful, such as forks, umbrellas and duvets, or edibles which delighted him, such as ‘frogges’ with the ‘head and forepart cut off’. (Later, in Asia, he remarks on the use of ‘masticke’ or chewing gum.) 

Umbrella. Late 1500s.

Original Chewing Gum! 

He liked listing things. Ever impressed by signs of wealth and plenty, his frequent references give us a good idea of the provenance of merchandise traded over the continent. There was a lot. An earlier account by Henri Estienne made Frankfurt Fare sound like the John Lewis of middle Europe. It ‘sold nearly everything – horses and hams; swords and guns; gold, silver, bronze and iron work; paintings, prints and pottery; Bohemian and Venetian glass, Saxony silver, Strasbourg clocks; Rhenish and Alsace wines; Italian wines, olive oil and Eastern spices; sausages and tarts (of all varieties) and books’. And he rated the town’s Booksellers Street as better than St Paul’s churchyard and the Merceria in Venice. 

Frankfurt Book Fair

One of Tom’s own earlier lists had been based on a church near Zurich which had an armoury of weapons including various cannons such as ‘colverins, demiculverins, demicannons and basiliskes’ in addition to the usual sharp-edged paraphernalia. This is prefaced by the revelation that the Swiss Churches habitually sent the priest out first in battles, like single-use drones, to give them a stake in the outcome. That’s an idea we might want to revisit, perhaps substituting belligerent politicians for the clerics? 

1600s Handgun

Being a religious man, he wanted to see relics. Things he sought to see ranged from Mary Magdalen’s arm to the skulls of St Ursula and John the Baptist. A standout was his visit to the Virgin Mary’s house in Nazareth. This must have come as a shock, because he had already been shown her house in Loreto in Italy, where it had been flown from Palestine by four angels. Many items he couldn’t see because ‘they were reserved for special occasions’. This stoked his protestant scepticism, and to his credit, he saw most of this for the shameless money-raking that it was. 

Mary's House. Loreto. 

He returned to London in 1609. It was a smaller place then, and educated society was limited, so he quickly reacquainted himself with The Fraternity of Sirenaichal Gentlemen (or Mermaid Club). Members included John Donne, Ben Jonson, Inigo Jones, Sir Robert Cotton (whose collections kick-started the British Library, where I am writing this) and William Strachey, whose shipwreck inspired ‘The Tempest’. 

The Old Mitre 

It is hard to believe that Mr Shakespeare wouldn’t have popped in for the occasional pint when they met at the eponymous pub off Cheapside or the Mitre Tavern in Ely Court in Holborn. The latter survives and is worth a visit. 

Shakespeare at the Mermaid. 
A fanciful Victorian view. 

Perhaps presuming on his acquaintance with Price Henry, he visited the King, hoping that his book, ‘swimming in the liquid ocean of his brain ', would find more favour with him than the offerings of the merchants. It didn’t; perhaps James wasn’t interested in travel for its own sake. 

James 1st

He set off again in 1612, ever keen to know what lay beyond the next hill and certainly aiming to publish another book. The goal this time was India, and still travelling mostly on foot. A long time ago, at roughly Tom’s age, I used to go backpacking solo, on foot and in remote places. But I had decent footwear, a map, medical insurance and a return ticket. It makes it hard to empathise with Tom’s experience.

One thing surprised me but shouldn’t have. The tentacles of trade always seem to have moved earlier and further than we might expect. English travellers, diplomats, and merchants such as the Levant Company had already permeated the Middle East and India. Most travelled by sea, which was quicker. Seeing the world was not their aim, and there don’t appear to have been many other impecunious loners, motivated by simple curiosity.

The first leg of the journey was across the Mediterranean to what is now Turkey, on a small merchant ship. It was a rough ride but more convenient, if you could avoid the many pirates and slavers. He then had an extended stay in Constantinople before following the Rough Guide to Antiquity through three Islamic empires, the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal. In the Holy Land, he seems to have agreed with earlier travellers that Jerusalem was a reduced and God-forsaken place. At other times, he claimed to have visited Mount Ararat, Troy and (later) ancient Ur of the Chaldees. 

Mt Ararat today 

In fact, it is doubtful that he saw any of them, but drew the wrong conclusions from the names and stories he heard locally. Have mistakes of this sort persisted? When it comes to ancient annals, people investigating these things nowadays suggest that if you want to get nearer the truth, rather than starting with the story and then looking for the archaeology to back it up, you should start with the archaeology before embarking on an interpretation. 

Ur. Maybe. 

From Constantinople, he reported that the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet III had 3000 concubines and many more slaves. Eunuchs were needed to avoid any possibility of tainting the bloodline. Usually, they were gelded, which could leave the poor wretches infertile, but didn’t always leave the older ones incapable of an erection, so many were entirely castrated.

Mehmed III

While Islam forbade enslaving the people of the book, a close reading of the small print revealed no ban on buying the previously enslaved. Fair enough, I bet the English slavers of the time didn't do a faith check first. You get the feeling from the book that Tom, who cast few aspersions, struggled to avoid being judgmental. Maybe that was tactful. He might have been aware that the rulers of the empires had all reached the heights by specialising in regicide, patricide, fratricide and indeed most other ‘icides. 

At this point, knowing my readers to be a culturally sophisticated lot, I could go on at greater length about the riches and wonders that Tom encountered. But instead, having hinted at family struggles that made the Murdochs’ and Roys’ disputes look like playground tiffs, I will pander to your worst inclinations and talk about torture. 

The fractious Roys 

Perhaps because he believed in righteous justice, he observes but doesn’t condemn the various means of punishment and execution that he encounters. In Constantinople, anyone found drunk during Ramadan might have hot lead poured into his mouth and ears, which seems a tad excessive. For robbers, they used a ‘sledge’ (presumably a sledgehammer) to drive a sharp pole up their backside and through their guts. They then set this on end and, again, left the victim to enjoy a slow and painful death. 

It is not that Europe was much kinder. The Inquisition was a real danger, and protestants were known to have been tortured. Regular criminals also got little mercy. In Germany in particular, he saw many gallows but also ‘wheels’ used at a local level for executions. These were used to secure a prisoner before his bones were systematically broken. He was then threaded through the spokes and, in the Ottoman fashion, left to die. That could take days. 

Breaking on a wheel. 

Later, in India, a member of a harem who had an affair with a eunuch was buried up to the armpits and left in the burning heat to dehydrate for three days. If she survived, she was forgiven, so maybe she was still better off than her lover, who was torn apart by elephants? And thieves were torn apart by wild dogs. Is that better or worse?

The Harem. (Victorian porn?) 

A standout detail for me was his description of travelling eastwards in the caravans. He tells us that: ‘A Caravan is a word much used in all Asia: by which is understood a great multitude of people travelling together upon the way with Camels, Horses, Mules, Asses, &c. on which they carry Merchandizes from one country to another, and Tents and Pavillions; under which instead of houses they shelter themselves in open fields, being furnished with all necessary provision, and convenient implements to dresse the same: in which Caravans I have ever most securely passed between Jerusalem and this (Indian) Towne, a journey of fifteene months 

Caravan 

It took several caravans to complete his journey, and sometimes he had to wait for the next one to come along. I like to think he stood by the side of the road with his thumb out. They could be huge. He estimated that the caravan from Isfahan to India included 6,000 people accompanied by 2,000 camels, 1,500 horses, 1,000 mules and 800 asses. In a ‘Dear Mum’ letter which reached London, he tactfully played down the problems, but they are not difficult to guess. How did this small army find fuel, feed and water for itself in parched country? And how does a lone traveller like Tom compete for the necessities against larger and better-endowed groups? I compare it with my struggle to find cold beer in the Congo and am in awe. 

Islamic Empires of the late 1500s

 His journey east took him through the Safavid Empire in Persia and to Agra, the capital of the Mughal Empire. There he met the Emperor Jahangir, an English ambassador (Sir Thomas Roe) and ‘a Cape Merchant of our English men, with nine more of my Countrimen, resident there upon termes of Negotiations, for the right worshipfull Company of Merchants in London that trade for East India’. Tom happily boasted that he could speak the language, while they could not. His linguistic talents had frequently come in useful, but it made you wonder how much use those diplomats were!  

Jahangir 

The extent of early English trade with India is covered in Wikipedia. Link  I find it hard to comprehend the economics of this trade in small ships over that distance, so the number of merchants seems amazing. But it is useful to remember that William Adams was ensconced in the Shogun’s Court in Japan by that time, having earlier survived an even longer voyage with Dutch merchants. (A great story! He has a statue in Hirado) .

William Adams 

Coryat claimed that his expenditure on this trip amounted to two pence a day, but at this juncture, the Coryat treasury, which was probably sewn into the lining of his coat, was even more depleted than usual. Prince Henry had died shortly after he left, and King James wasn’t as well disposed. Once, when Tom’s progress was mentioned, he replied, ‘Is that fool still living?

 So the pension annuity would have been terminated, and funds would have been short. To add to his problems, Tom had been robbed on the route. He doesn’t labour the issue. You get the impression that he simply tightened his belt and made the most of local hospitality among cultures which prided themselves on it. Many thereabouts still do, but in particular he enjoyed the company and living gratis among the English at Jahangir’s court. 

Old Lahore

Travelling on, he admired Lahore, which ‘exceedeth Constantinople itself in greatness’ and was ‘16 miles around’. It was also relatively cool, which must have been a treat after miles of trudging dirt tracks through villages, probably often made of mud and wattle as they are in many places today.

Tom’s story ends in Gujarat, where he dies of dysentery after walking to Surat. It rather amazes me that his guts hadn’t complained too much before! A large monument has his name on it, but it bears little resemblance to his grave as originally described, so the inscription might have been added later, thus becoming one of the misattributed relics he scorned. Most likely, he lies unmarked in the nearby foreigners' graveyard, which is still there. 

Probably Not the Tomb! 

It seems a sad ending, and I can't find a more elegant way of doing it than quoting Charles Nicholl's excellent essay in the London Review of Books, Field of Bones: 

"He disappears from view in the plains below Mandu; he turns up later on the riverfront at Surat. One glimpses him out of dusty bus windows: a ragged man walking alone down a road".

His death meant that there was no second book, but many of his letters found their way back to London along with some of his notes. These were published in 1616 as ‘Greetings from the Court of the Great Mogul’ and in one of the compendiums published shortly afterwards by Samuel Purchas. One letter was addressed to the Mermaid Club from ‘the Hierosolymitan Syrian Mesopotamian Armenian Median Parthian Persian Indian Legge stretcher of Odcomb in Somerset, Thomas Coryate.’ Prolix to the end.

Tom left us with a unique view of a world increasingly interconnected by trade but where people, diverse in so many other ways, often treated travellers with courtesy, but where autocratic rulers treated their subjects as disposable. It sounds rather familiar.

I wish he could have returned to the Fraternity of Sirenaichal Gentlemen, some of whom had added unhelpful encomiums to his book, to deliver the words of the android from Blade Runner.'I have seen things you people wouldn't believe' 

He also left us the shoes he used in Europe. Like so much else, they got lost, but there is a facsimile in a case in the small church in Odcombe. 

Tom's Shoes

If you want diary-level detail, here is a link to the original text as republished a century later. Link: Warning. His ‘hodoeporicall lucubrations’ are a tough read.

https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_coryats-crudities-repr_coryate-thomas_1776_2