A ménage à trois that worked: Ivan Turgenev and the Viardots

If we still bemoan a world of mass tourism, the mid 19th century, Orlando Figes reminds us, is where it began. Aristocrats were accustomed in youth to prolonged, libidinous grand tours through the Continent (the gap years of their day). For the masses, though, this was the start. ‘During the autumn months,’ grumbled one British newspaper, ‘the whole of Europe seems to be in a state of perpetual motion.’ Not only rich people were involved; so, heaven forfend, were the ‘lower classes’.

The English were particularly at fault. Lonely on their island, enjoying surplus income and time, they ‘swarmed’ everywhere. ‘There is no lemon tree,’ one continental objected, ‘without an English lady nearby smelling its perfume; no picture gallery without at least 60 Englishmen, each with a guidebook in their hands.’ They were superior without justification, defiantly monoglot and lived on a gruesome, unvarying diet of overcooked vegetables and bad coffee. No wonder they sought to escape.

Nowadays, cheap flights mean it is Angkor Wat, Machu Picchu and Mount Everest whose beauties and remote splendour are tarnished by litter and excessive footfall. In the 19th century it was Paris, Venice, Florence and Dresden; and once remote Swiss mountainsides were soon being ‘strewn with broken bottles and fragments of theDaily Telegraph’.

As Europe was cross-hatched by railways, passengers travelled at once unimaginable speeds (30 mph), and larger numbers could travel further in a shorter time. Brighton and Margate ceased to be exotic destinations for Londoners. The older generation was bewildered. ‘We who lived before the railways and survive the ancient world,’ Thackeray commented (as many might feel now about the pre-internet age), ‘are like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark.’

Orlando Figes’s The Europeans is both a general study and a particular one.