(d. 1779), soldier and dramatist; s. of Francis Ayscough, Dean of Bristol; Dilettanti 1770; army officer; KB 1772.
- 1770 Genoa, Lerici, Pisa, Leghorn, Florence (five weeks), Rome, Loreto, Ancona, Rimini, Ravenna, Venice, Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Brescia, Milan, Turin
Ayscough travelled before 1770 for the sake of his health. His Letters from an Officer in the Guards to his friends in England: containing some accounts of France and Italy, was published in 1778; the letters have Roman numerals (as cited) and an address, but are undated (the last is signed G. L. Ayscough).
"He arrived in Genoa in the company of 'Mrs B - - d and her husband', as his travelling companions are always described (x). They travelled by felucca to Lerici and on to Pisa which he thought melancholy, a sad memory of its earlier glorious republican state; although the Court was there, he found no diversions (xii). After five weeks in Florence, he endured a snowy journey to Rome during which he was forced to walk, carrying his trunk for two miles. 'I felt a kind of enthusiastic delight at the first sight of Rome, but this was dampened by the recollection that this city, which was once inhabited by a nation of heroes and patriots, was now in the hands of the most effeminate and most superstitious people in the universe' (xvi). He described ciceroni as 'a set of scurvy abbati's to whom foreigners pay a settled salary, and give a constant place at their table, to be led about like bears by these learned gentlemen ... whose interest it is never to let him leave Rome while he can show him a broken pillar, a mutilated statue, or a single classical vestige of any kind whatever' (xvii). He was in Rome during the Carnival, but did not go on to Naples, as he had received orders to rejoin his regiment (xxiii). Ayscough, who was still travelling with Mrs B - d and her husband, went to Venice via Loreto, and then on to Milan where he was presented to the Duke of Modena (xxix). He returned to England from Turin.