John Claudius Loudon’s Grand Tour

‘Most men who embark on a Grand Tour dream of adventure, high living, heavy drinking and romance. Mr Loudon had different ideas. He wanted to finish his first encyclopaedia and he wanted to earn a second fortune. € This is a quote from The Claudians: gardens, landscapes, reason and faith: John Claudius Loudon and Claudius Buchanan, Tom Turner (Kindle, 2024). 

John Claudius Loudon’s enthusiasms during his Grand Tour

Though the aim of Loudon's grand tour was to obtain material for his projected Encyclopaedia of Gardening he also had keen interests in architecture, urban design and anything else that caught his ever-observant eye. We know this from the comments on other matters Jane Loudon mentioned in her Life of her husband and from a host of miscellaneous comments that are almost hidden among the 50 million words he published in his 40 years of literary activity. Since he was so much more diligent in making detailed than general comments, here are some accounts of more conventional grand tours:

‘Italy...the land of the olive and the vine, where the sky is blue and the sun shines bright, where the ruins of a mighty past stand side by side with the beauties of the present, and where the people are as laughter-loving and easy-going as the climate.’ - Charles Dickens (1853) Dickens paints a romanticised picture of Italy and its enchanting qualities.

‘It is the fashion to go up the Rhine, and to visit Switzerland, and the south of France; but all these are inferior to Italy - decidedly inferior.’ - Jane Austen (1798) - Austen represents the common sentiment favouring Italy as the pinnacle of the Grand Tour experience.

‘Venice... a fairy city of the East, dropped here in marble solitude...The Rialto still stretches its grand arch across the narrow throat of the Grand Canal, and palaces continue to cluster, with their long lines of fretted balconies, rusting cornices, and carved escutcheons, along its watery avenues.’ - Lord Byron (1818)

'Rome is a vast museum, a city of palaces, and a wilderness of ruins. There is a grandeur in its desolation which surpasses all that art or nature has ever produced.' Percy Bysshe Shelley (1818)

Beyond Romance and Revelry: A Passion for Knowledge

The traditional Grand Tour itinerary often focused on Italy, with travellers extolling its beauty, art, and cultural legacy. Writers like Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and Lord Byron captured the romanticism and grandeur associated with Italian exploration. However, Loudon's Grand Tour, with its emphasis on scholarship, suggests that the journey could be a source of intellectual enrichment beyond the traditional cultural focus. It is valuable to explore these contrasting perspectives, offering a more nuanced understanding of the diverse motivations behind the Grand Tour phenomenon. 

Other figures, like William Kent, also learned from Grand Tours. But they travelled with their patrons and went where their patrons went. John Claudius was in the unique position of being able to fund his tours from the the money he earned in a professional capacity. This let him choose where to go and what to see. He also travelled more extensively and diligently than anyone in the same line of business. Robert Adam's Grand tour was financed by his father, William Adam, who was also an architect.