Robert took the opportunity to make for Sienna
to enjoy “the daily divertisements of musicke,
horsriding, ballone, and others, courting our
palates with ye curious fruits and delicate
Muscatella wine”. Then all went on to
Florence to see “all that is chiefly notable in and
about the city—rarities rather to be named yn
described—5l1ch in number and quality as the
whole world canscatcc equal, muchless exceed".
Bargrave’s travels can be reconstmcted
from comments in his Ram. If any place was a
starting point it was Leyden, where he was
“living retired" in 1650 when he was asked by
the Countess of Chesterfield, then in The
Hague, to be travelling tutor to her son Lord
Stanhope.
Bargrave was buyin prints ill Paris,
collecting odd mussel shells in La Rochelle,
adding Roman periwinklcs to his collection
fiom the Loire at Douc, near Sauniur, and from
Toulouse revelling in desiccated corpses, ill
particular describing how he played with the
corpse ofa French soldier who had been stabbed
ill the chest: “I pulled the hand away several
tirnes, and the nerves and tendons were so
strong that the hand returned with a lusty clap
upon the wound." He declined the offer of a
dried baby, but took instead a finger. O tical
mstruinents were his quest in Nurcrnlierg,
Augsburg and Vienna, and in Venice he bought
“of a High Dutch Turner” a “very artificial
anatomy of a human eye, with all its films or
turnicles, by way ofturnery ill ivory or horn;
together with the optick nerve which runneth
into the brain".
I11 September 1656 he was in Prague to see
the coronation of the Emperor Leopold, King
Qf Bohemia, and in November in Iunsbrucl-1 to
Tness the reception of Christina of Sweden
into the Roman Church: “but her carriage in the
church was very scandalous——laughin al1d
gigling, and curling and trimming her loclts and
motion of her hands and body was so odd that
l heard some Italians that were near me say I:'
mania per Die, ‘By God she is mad’”, He spent
“several sun11rlers” ill Lyon in a pension on the
“Pal l\/lal“, attracted, one suspects, by a “very
handsome” and Wanton lady abbess, who in
l658 was read -' to “leap through the grates for
joy" at seeing liim.
Bargrave’s most memorable voyage, and
his only entry into international politics, was
made in 1662 at the command of Charles ll, or
the archdioceses of Canterbury and York, to
carrv to Algiers £10,000 ransom money raised
by the Church to bargain for the release of300
British slaves captured on the sea by North
African pirates. l-le was forced to bid for them
slave by slave “as one buyeth horses in
Smitlifield", and succeeded in saving 162- at
great danger to himself and his companion-1 Dr
Selleck.
In Canterbury this etilous voyage is
ren"1_el1'1bered in the cathedjral accounts when
Bargrave was treasurer, ibr under l(:(=9-70 is;
“To a poore man that had his toung cut out at
Argiers. . . 1.0." In the display eases is “Tlic
picture in little of Sliabari Agaa. . . the King of
Argeers. . . [by a] poor aintcr, and Italian
slave“, al1d the dried chanieleon “ erfunied and
Stuffed“ that was “given me Aiih-'e in Africa
[but] for want ofilies it died" o11 the Way home.
There is more than this, for not only has the
North I/Xfrican footware survived, but also the
rare lndian ceremonial heady»-‘ear of a member
of the Cree tribe from Hudson Bay, given to
Bargrave by Timothy Conley, one of the
merchants he rescued, as a mark oFgratitude.
The rnuscuin that Bargrave must have
assembled in his house in the 'l660s cannot be
isolated from what he saw in the rest ofEurope
during his travels—and this must also be said
of Tradescant’s collections. ln ltaly alone there
were more than 250 mruei nafurali by the end of
the l7th century; but even so, Bargrave
collection is surely an epitome of the all/fir
Trrxdescanrinrmm. lrr. our modern ag
specialisation and classification, with mus
given over to special subjects, it is easy to I
that, before 'l.700, paintings, drawings, 5
ture, bronzes, medals, coins, gems, n
history and anatomical specimens, optics
astro1"1o1nical instruments, were kept one
the other.
llad the Bargrave collection not
bequeathed to Canterbury in 1680, anti hr
over in 1685, and so consigiicrl to oblivi»
would most. likely have bccn dispersed. l
sadness that the optical instruments have
lost, and serious thought must be given
wliether the cathedral is iiliiniatel y the rigl:
proper custodian of this precious mus
unless the present vitrines are a perm
display. The 1101111111 tables languish ur:
The collection cannot be e><.t0llcd as Yreat.
ifjudged by i1"idi\-idual items, only Elilfi R:
gems stand out as 1‘emarkablt‘_ Orhcrwis
collection is intensely personal and curious
its full elllcct ill Bargras-'e’s ralninrrr in his Ca
l-louse in. the Cathedral Close mils
reconstructed in the inind.
Today We can smile at the odditir
picked up: the drunk and urinating Iler
Mingcns, a bronze “dugg out ofhis tCI1'1}I>.lL
the 'l'yber”; and his “Two Priapism, in l"
being votes or offerings to that absurd he:
deity“—:1b€-llrd, perhaps, but Bargrave
several. There is the “(_:OI1‘FE‘.lZl'l ti Ti
containing Tiber gravel, “so like sugar p
that they will deceive any man”; and a
large to-adstall or mushroom of sto1"|C,
weighty, which is not a mushroom petr
but grew always a stone. . . I bought it I
Armenian at Venice“.
A visit to see most of these at Canter
is worth whilc, and if the eve does not t
upon the Frenchman's dried finger, the arti
eye, or the dried chameleon, let it rest upo"
trays of medals or gold coins, anti fine lead
of medals made in Lyon. Then ponder
“pretty kind of‘ man's work purse, mad
greenish silk, and carved work n1otht‘r—oF~_
shell, resented me lilicwise by a nun".

The Gentle Traveller