An 1817 Manuscript Journal of A Young Man Commencing A Grand (ish) Tour of post-Napoleonic Wars Europe in Post-Revolutionary Bourbon Restoration France

"let us thank Providence for our present state of universal peace" Approximately 35,000 words, written across 127 pages out of a total of 180 hand-numbered pages. Contained within a roughly 25.5 by 19.5cm notebook of 1815 watermarked paper, bound in worn and chipped black half-leather over stained and marked blueish grey paper covered boards. The account of the tour begins in Manchester on August 16th 1817 and peters out without explanation on the road from Paris to Geneva on the night of September 11th 1817. Mr Ramsden would appear to be between 21 & 24 as he makes reference to being an infant during the rise of Napoleon & having known nothing but Europe in turmoil. He is travelling with his friend Mr Hyde, and they are seemingly wealthy Northern merchants, or more likely sons of wealthy merchants finishing their education with a little travel prior to settling down to the family business. In typical fashion he aspires to be a man of sensibility and cultivated tastes, making great and successful efforts to convey a sense of the art, scenery and architecture he observes, and imbuing his descriptions with a sense of history and context. However, despite best intentions, he seems inevitably drawn to low and vulgar haunts, indulging in gossip, and enjoying the sight of pretty women and dancing with them whenever possible, though usually professing disgust and hurrying away from such places with many a lingering backward glance, and these parts of his journal are the livelier and more engaging. There are also philosophical reflections upon the nature and effect of travel and leisure. We can be certain that this was intended to be a full tour as he refers to it as such on page 1, and this is confirmed towards the end as they are preparing to leave Paris, making an agreement: "for the loan of a carriage for four months [] with liberty to leave it either at Geneva, Dieppe, Calais, Brussels or Paris" and arranging passports to travel into Italy. There is a sense of Europe re-opening and France at the beginning of a new era, though still with British soldiers prominent, demands for papers and passports frequent, a need to be within city or town walls by nightfall, and Paris bearing the scars and impact of both the revolution and Napoleon, with faded or substantially erased daubs of "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" on buildings, the famous Elephant of the Bastille still fresh and hopeful of becoming a permanent resident, and gaps in libraries and museums where looted treasures had only lately been returned to their rightful owners. Unsurprisingly, their relations with the upper classes are cordial and they dine with a wealthy French family in Paris, however their interactions with the peasantry are more varied, ranging from being flattered and fleeced on the road with many repeated: "Oh how I like the English [] I like the English so much" as they are overcharged for a mediocre pigeon pie, to outright abuse of themselves and England in general on the outskirts of Paris. There is a good description of the melee of ship owners touting for business at Dover: "From the moment you get out of the coach at Dover you are solicited on all sides by master of packets or their agents for your patronage or rather to cross the channel in their vessels French as well as English packets". On the road from Calais to Boulogne they pass a Frenchman playing Scotch bagpipes, and exchange raillery with a stray British soldier: "are the ladies kind to you in France, yes said the poor fellow smiling but I had rather be in England". At Boulogne they are keen to see the might of the French navy but are informed that all ships are: "either broken up sunk sold or destroyed", and have to obtain a new carriage, which proves difficult, forcing them to settle for: "an old fashioned grotesque kind of nondescript one would have imagined first formed about the year 1712". Arriving in Paris there is a long digression upon the refusal of British bank notes in France, and.…