The late 1880s were years of transition for Italy. Important protagonists of the Risorgimento had died and the Left was looking for new leadership. While the Estrema found new guidance in the radical Lombard, Cavallotti, the continuous absence from the parliamentary arena of a republican like Saffi – who, once again elected, refused to take the parliamentary oath in 1887 – created a vacuum which enabled Crispi to take centre stage. Frustration and alienation as a result of Depretis's trasformismo had led many Italians to believe that a ‘strong man’ was needed: Crispi would provide just that. The period between 1887 and 1891 was in fact a time when politicial boundaries were reassessed and redrawn, as the high expectations of the forces of democracy came to measure themselves against the surreptitious changes which would eventually reveal in Crispi a duplicitous character, the ‘turncoat’ of democracy. Speaking in the name of all radicals Cavallotti, while rallying all democrats around an anti-Crispi manifesto for the 1890 elections, would accuse Crispi in parliament of being as deceitful a friend to them, as he had once been to Mazzini.

This chapter explores early forms of Victorian ‘co-operative travel’ in the years of what Fulvio Cammarano defined as the ‘Crispinian euphoria’ of 1887–90. By framing the experience of ‘co-operative travel’ in the context of the buoyant rhetoric which surrounded the new prime minister this chapter creates a deeper understanding of the context in which those first tours took place.