Grand tour diary, 1780-1781.

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Grand tour diary, 1780-1781.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/702182407

A manuscript diary by an anonymous female traveler (perhaps "Miss Forbes") of a tour of Europe begun on Friday, 27 October 1780, by a party which included the writer and her brother, Robert. The writer also had a sister, news of whose death was brought to the party during their stay in Naples. The writer came of age on 23 April 1781, and so can be assumed to have been born on 23 April 1760. The party crossed from Margate to Ostend, and there is a dramatic account of their near-fatal journey. They then traveled through France, stopping at Lille, Paris and Lyon, crossed the Alps (the writer was "taken over in the chair which was made for the Duke of Gloucester") and traveled down through Italy to Rome and Naples, stopping in Turin (where there is an account of the court of the King and Queen of Sardinia at Moncalieri), Milan ("the cathedral ... is a most amazing building it has been nearly four hundred years erecting and is not yet finished"), Parma, Modena, Bologna, Florence and Siena. From Naples, the party visited, among other places, Pompeii, Herculaneum, Cumae and Pozzuoli. The writer was a close friend of the writer, poet and scholar Ellis Cornelia Knight, who had moved to Rome with her mother Lady Philippa Knight in 1776, and seems to have spent much of her time in Rome with them, visiting famous collections of paintings and antiquities, palaces and ancient sites during the day, and moving in the highest circles of Roman society at night. The return journey includes more detailed descriptions of Florence and Siena, as well as stops in Venice and Verona. Their route then took them through Switzerland, stopping in Geneva, Bern and Basel, finally returning to Ostend by way of Nancy, Luxembourg, Brussels and Ghent. Leaves written in landscape format. Not all leaves bear text. At the back of the volume there is a table of the principal towns they stopped at, the distance between them, the time each leg took and the inns they stopped at.

1 v. (115 leaves, with blanks) ; 13 x 19 cm.

Yale Center for British Art

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SNAC Resource ID: 8026143

Related Entities

There are 2 Entities related to this resource.

Knight, Ellis Cornelia, 1757-1837

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6db8mqw (person)

Ellis Cornelia Knight (1757-1837), writer, governess and protégé of Lady Emma Hamilton, whom she broke with after Lady Hamilton's affair with Lord Nelson became public knowledge in England. Knight's works include Dinarbas: A Tale (1790) and Sir Guy de Lusignan (1833). From the description of Sketchbook of a cruise on the Foudroyant, 1800-1806. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 702201905 Epithet: of Add MS 22976 British Library Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue : ...

Forbes, Miss.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w60299z6 (person)

Kim Sloan, of the British Museum, has attributed the present diary to "Miss Forbes" (see: A dictionary of British and Irish travelers in Italy, 1997, p. 370). The attribution is based in part on a letter from Lady Phillipina Deane Knight of 2 May 1781, in which she refers to visitors (at Rome) who may have included the diarist of this manuscript: "We had this spring at Rome a young gentleman of the name of Fuller, with his sister a Miss Forbes, they were recommended to us by Sukie Knight. We rec...