Adventure was easy to come by in the 17th century.Laura Davis reports
AWAY from the comfort of their lavish drawing rooms, the women set off into the unknown in carriages loaded with crockery sets and small items of furniture.
Their ears ringing with the newly penned tune to Rule Britannia, these adventurous souls, unable to imagine a journey without their best china, prepared themselves for the startling scenes they would witness.
The destination – not the darkest jungles of Africa or the frozen Canadian wastelands, but the savage lands of the provinces where, they imagined, barefoot peasants skulked like primitives.
In the 17th and 18th centuries you didn’t have to travel far to seek adventure. Road conditions were poor, long journeys rare and travelling to the North from their country homes and London townhouses was a voyage into the exotic.
“These women didn’t have to travel very far to realise that actually there were people who were very different from them,” explains Zoe Kinsley, author of the new academic text Women Writing the Home Tour, 1682-1812.
“These days we don’t consider any part of Britain as being really foreign but then to travel into the Highlands of Scotland was genuinely quite a new thing to do. You could travel 50 miles and experience something that was completely unfamiliar to you.”
Until 1707, Scotland and England (already joined with Wales) were ruled separately. The Act of Union, combined with Great Britain’s growing status as one of the most powerful empires in history, sparked a revived sense of patriotism that was reflected in the writing and painting of the period.
People were suddenly keen to explore their own country, and women, who were not encouraged to follow the Grand Tour of Europe, seen as crucial to a young gentleman’s education, saw an opportunity.
So off they went in their carriages, usually accompanied by a family group but occasionally with just a servant or two for company, armed with Samuel Johnson’s account of his tour to Scotland as if it were a Lonely Planet travel guide.
There was plenty for them to record in their journals.
Dorothy Richardson, who ventured across the border from her home in Yorkshire, was alarmed by the “uncivilised” Lancashire natives.
