(1736 - 1809), e. s. of 1st E. Harcourt; sty. Vct. Nuneham 1749 - 77 when suc. fa. as 2nd E.; educ. Westminster; MP 1761 - 8; m. 1765 Hon. Elizabeth Venables-Vernon, dau. of 1st B. Vernon; FSA 1766.
1755 - 6 [dep. London 3 Jun. 1754] Venice (6 - 19 Nov. 1755), Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Mantua, Modena (28 Nov.), Bologna (29 Nov. - 10 Dec.), Rimini, Ancona, Loreto ( - 14 Dec.), Foligno, Rome (18 Dec. 1755 - 14 Mar. 1756), Naples (16 Mar. - 5 Apr.), Rome (7 - 19 Apr.), Viterbo, Siena, Florence ( - 7 May), Lucca, Pisa, Leghorn, Florence ( - 16 May), Bologna, Modena, Reggio (19 - 24 May), Parma, Piacenza, Milan ( - 1 Jun.), Genoa, Turin, Mont Cenis (Jun.) [England Sep.]
Lord Nuneham made his grand tour at the age of nineteen with his contemporary, George, Viscount Villiers, whose tutor, William Whitehead (the future poet laureate) attended them both.1 Having spent 'twelve horrid months' in Germany2 they came to Venice in November 1755. They went on to Bologna and Rome, where they arrived in the third week of December. Their apartment in the Casa Guarnieri was below that of Robert Adam, whom they asked to recommend a drawing master. Adam, who dismissed them as 'very young boys', may have suggested Laurent P?cheux.3 Nuneham and Villiers left Rome on 14 March 1756 for Naples, where they were presented at Court that month.4 They returned to Rome on 7 April and after Holy Week went to Florence, where Horace Mann was exceptionally obliging, although, as Nuneham confided to his sister, 'he is not quite of the turn I like'. They continued their homeward journey through Milan and Turin crossing Mont Cenis in June. In September they were back in England.
Beyond the essences, seeds and artificial flowers which he sent to his family, Nuneham appears to have bought little. 'The only thing in the way of virtu of any consequence, that I have bought for myself', he told his sister (10 Feb. 1756), 'is a studio of the antient and modern Marbles; they are in small square pieces, & are to be had of different sizes, mine cost 3 guineas, they make the prettiest tables in the world, for they put them into stone, with an edge of black or white marble round each, & a border of any antique marble you please round the whole so that you may with the list, at once see either the modern or antique marbles of all countreys that Rome was ornamented with'. While his travels in Italy may have developed his taste for the fine arts, it was his time in France which influenced his dress and manner so far 'as almost to disguise the exterior of an Englishman'.5
1. Itinerary from Villiers jnl.MSS. 2. Harcourt Papers, 3:162 (15 Dec. 1755); further letters 161 - 5, and Harcourt letters MSS (dates given in brackets). 3. Fleming, Adam, 195 - 6. 4. SP 93/14 (Gray, 30 Mar. 1756). 5. Quoted by Fleming, Adam, 358.