Travel Broadens the mind

Travel Broadens the Mind (1883-1885)

Between 1883 and 1885, Sam travelled widely as a tutor. These journeys broadened his horizons and shaped his imagination.

Letters, Art & Early Criticism

A letter to E.A. Hornell from 15 July 1883 shows Sam engaged in art criticism and 'geologic rambles'. Several of Sam's boyhood friends became artists—William MacGeorge and John Copland—but Hornell was the most famous of these. Archives at Broughton House contain a series of letters by and relating to Crockett as part of the National Archive.

While critiquing art and poems, Sam was also writing them. Some poems in his 1886 collection Dulce Cor are dated from December 1883 onwards, written whilst abroad and addressed to Ruth Mary Milner, whom we may suppose he had met through her father George Milner during his reviewing work. We don't know when they first met but it was likely during 1882 or 1883.

Travelling Tutor: Europe as Education

We cannot know if Sam completed his 1883 academic studies or when his extended travel across Europe started. It may not have been until spring 1884—we just don't have enough evidence at present to make firm conclusions. What we do know is that for a prolonged period during 1884 and 1885 Sam was travelling across Europe as a tutor.

It is possible Sam started travelling abroad in the summers as a tutor as early as 1879. It may not have been until 1881. The only student charge we know something about was John Bertram Marsden-Smedley, then aged about sixteen. Together they travelled through Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, the classic Grand Tour route for wealthy young men. It's most likely during this time, in Switzerland in 1884, that Sam met Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor of Germany.

A Wider World, A Growing Imagination

These journeys were far more than employment. They were intensive research for a future novelist. While Sam absorbed architecture, politics and European culture, he seems to have been most attuned to life in the natural world beyond capitals. These experiences later shaped his historical novels, imbuing them with adventure and romance.

For a young man from Galloway farm country, this was an extraordinary expansion of horizons which would form the backbone of many of his later European historical adventure novels.

In 1884, whilst Sam was abroad, his maternal grandmother Mary Crocket died at Castle Douglas. It was another significant personal loss, breaking another tie with his Galloway upbringing.