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The Grand Tour (1871 - 1872) After Joannes had completed his secondary education, and following the death of his mother in April 1871, his father took him on a Grand Tour through western Europe.[4] The two first visited Paris, in the company of German dragoons who had fought in the Franco-German War. The war had just been decided in favour of the Prussians and the German League. [5] In Paris they witnessed the events of the Commune, before French troops destroyed all resistance in the working-class districts. The Schuvers then went on to Spain by way of Bayonne. [7] Somewhere in Spain, Joannes' father abandoned the journey, but the younger Schuver travelled on to Switzerland and northern Italy. He then went on to the Balkans, Rumania and Bulgaria, then back to central Italy, finishing in Naples. In 1872 Schuver visited Sicily, and from there went to Cairo. In thirty days he travelled on horseback through Sinai to Palestine, then continued via the Lebanon (where he visited the ruins of Ba'albek) to Syria. He probably took the boat from Alexandretta to Istanbul. After a long journey through Russia, Scandinavia, Germany and Belgium, Schuver crossed the Channel to London. He first lost all his luggage in a collision between boats on the Thames, and then his virginity with a prostitute named Hannah Grey. [8] At the end of November 1872 the young traveller, now twenty years old, arrived home. Contrary to what one might traditionally have expected of a young man from his social background, that of the Schuver and Roothaan families, Joannes had no further education after his spectacular Grand Tour. [9] | |
