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Travels with Baedeker
in the Victorian cultural and social context were not difficult to disentangle. 45 If,
then, descriptions of Renaissance art and architecture connoted to Victorians the
decline of Roman Catholic exuberance and the moral superiority of Protestant
asceticism, the guidebook was not the major culprit, but an unwitting accomplice
to the establishment of national, cultural middle-class norms.
As a mediator between “high” and popular middle-class culture, the guidebook
(and the Murray in particular) offers an important key to understanding John
Ruskin’s popularity. Through the veneration of Rousseau’s Nouvelle Héloise,
Byron and Wilhelm Tell, Ruskin and the guidebooks appreciated the Alps in very
similar ways, even though in practice they followed very different agendas. 46 For
an audience increasingly familiar with the glories of Switzerland and northern
Italy, the author of The Stones of Venice and Modern Painters simply expressed
better than anybody else what scores of travelers experienced, and what they ought
to experience, themselves. Ruskin, middle-class travel, and the guidebook are thus
related, albeit indirectly. Many travel journals point to the importance of Ruskin
in their vision of Switzerland, which Murray in turn enabled them to verify and
deepen. 47 Jemima Morrell was alerted to a particular recognition of the landscape
by Ruskin’s descriptions, but at the same time she had no problem disagreeing with
Ruskin if Murray’s guidebook directed her appreciation in different ways. 48 By
contrast, Sophia Holworthy’s journal is a good example of how Ruskin appealed
to the middle-class traveler simply through the tone and the sentiment of his
writings. As a mark of her self-reliance, she chose to rely on the Baedeker, not the
more prescriptive Murray. In her effort to encounter Italy and Switzerland free
from preconceived notions, she did not even look at her objects of interest with
noticeably Ruskinian eyes. And yet, Ruskin appealed to her deep sense of
Christianity, which had propelled her to undertake the journey in the first place.
And it was in Ruskin’s words that she ended her book, admonishing the traveler
to simplicity and spirituality along the journey. 49 It is impossible to understand the
impact Ruskin had on the Victorian middle classes without their experience of
travel, as mediated through the guidebook.
One of the participants of Thomas Cook’s first tour to northern Italy in 1864,
George Heard, was no exception in appreciating his Murray – indeed, he and a
group of female travelers he met on the excursion spent much of the fifteen-hour
trip from Switzerland to Italy comparing their guidebooks. When Heard arrived
in Venice after parting with the group, he saw the city not only through Byron’s,
but also through Ruskin’s, eyes. His day there was spent admiring much Titian
and Tintoret, and everywhere he noted with sadness the city’s decline. Heard’s
account of his day in Venice ended in a Ruskinian climax. He ventured to note
with conviction that it would be impossible for the city to shake off its Austrian
oppressors through force; what was needed instead was a moral regeneration of
the city. 50 Only months later, Austria was defeated and Venice incorporated into
the Kingdom of Italy.
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