Thomas Cook (19 page)

Elizabeth had wanted to be buried beside John Cook in the little graveyard behind the Baptist chapel in Melbourne. But the train did not yet go there from Derby, so a hired hearse-carriage, with Thomas guarding the black-draped coffin, made its way in the dull winter light over the hills to the village of her birth. John Mason and Simeon, who had seen much more of her in the past ten years, sat in front of the draped coffin.

This was the first occasion on which Thomas had returned since Lord and Lady Palmerston had inherited Melbourne Hall, but they were then in London, as Palmerston was attempting to limit Britain’s spiralling involvement in the Crimean War. Within days of Elizabeth’s funeral, in an effort to prop up the Turks and prevent the Russians holding Constantinople and the Straits, the first of many British troops set out for the East.

Fighting began on 14 September 1854 when the Russians crossed the Danube and the British and French laid siege to the port of Sebastopol, the great naval port of the Russian Empire in the Black Sea. The initial cause of the war was a long dispute over the holy places in Jerusalem and Bethlehem and resulted in a spiralling quarrel between the French emperor, the Russian tsar and the Turkish sultan over the right to hold the custody of the churches and holy places. Quarrels were heightened by the loss of the star over the grotto in Bethlehem and a tug of war over the keys for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Napoleon III had insisted on confirmation of his role as the patron and defender of Roman Catholics in the Holy Land, and had sent an envoy to Sultan Abdul Medjid in Constantinople. Tsar Nicholas I also sent a series of demands, including the right to protect all Orthodox Christians throughout the Ottoman Empire, a right which had been held for centuries by the Greek Orthodox Church. Jerusalem’s priorities were fought out in a war which soon embraced other issues. For nearly two centuries, the Russians had kept covetous eyes turned towards the Mediterranean, but France and Britain had blocked them.

When Britain had declared war on Russia in March, Britain had to turn to the bond market for finance. Gladstone went to Lionel Rothschild and arranged loans of undisclosed millions over two years. The whole country had been in such a state of patriotic fervour that in some places the Russian Emperor, Nicholas I, was burned in effigy. However, in Leicester, William Biggs, like other Liberals, was an opponent of England’s involvement in the Crimean War and wrote a pamphlet entitled
Never Go to War for Turkey
. He, like John Bright, Richard Cobden and thousands of other Anti-Corn Law campaigners, joined the Peace Society and energetically denounced the war as un-Christian, against the principles of Free Trade and harmful to British interests. Bright said that ‘the Angel of Death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings’. He blamed Palmerston and the aristocracy for deluding the people.

Ignoring the huge backing given to the Peace Society by many of his friends, Temperance supporters and Corn Leaguers, Symington in Market Harborough was pleased to provide the British troops in Crimea with pea flour to make soup.
¹
This was used by Alexis Soyer, the chef at the Reform Club in London, who heroically went to Scutari and devised both a field kitchen and new methods of army cooking. Crimea was also the first war to use railways and telegraphs. Railway manufacturers in England sent track, locomotives and carts to build thirty-nine miles of tracks, the first railway ever used in battle. Seventeen engines pulled urgently needed supplies to the front.

Another innovation from the Crimean war were daily battle bulletins sent by the newly installed telegraph. From the shores of the Black Sea, each day the legendary Irish-born war correspondent, William Howard Russell, sent reports to
The Times
. The graphic and horrific tales of bungling, incompetence and the army’s mismanagement had far-reaching consequences. His reports of the unnecessary deaths and extreme suffering, plus the photographs taken by one of the pioneer war photographers, Robert Fenton, made Crimea the first media war. It also helped bring Lord Aberdeen’s government crashing down, and brought (much to the delight of the villagers in Melbourne) Palmerston in as prime minister. Most importantly, Russell’s articles inspired Florence Nightingale, ‘the lady with the lamp’, a trained nurse whose family came from Nonconformist stock in Derbyshire. Russell also brought to the world press the gory descriptions of the gallant charge of the Light Brigade of Lord Cardigan, in which 673 cavalrymen rode down a valley of death and became immortalised by Alfred Tennyson with the lines, ‘“Forward the Light Brigade! | Charge for the guns!” he said. | Into the valley of Death, | Rode the six hundred.’ A journalist as powerful as Russell had never held such sway before. He would soon cover the Indian Mutiny and the American Civil War, with his story of ‘The Battle of Bull Run’, and in fourteen years’ time he would use the same ferocious passion to mock Thomas and his tourists in Egypt.

Soon after the emotional blow of his mother’s death, Thomas took a brave step. He gave up his printing business so he could become a full-time tourist operator, having already been in travel commercially for ten years. Liverpool and Wales were augmented by more destinations and more trips to seaside resorts like Scarborough, with its steamboat trips, the town near Melbourne, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, with its baths, castle and pleasure grounds, the Lake District, the Isle of Man and Ireland.

Next, in 1855, with some trepidation Thomas decided to extend his business to non-English-speaking countries and he went off to France and Belgium to make advance preliminary arrangements. The highlight of the trip was to take visitors to the Universal Exhibition in the Champs Elysées. Napoleon III, not to be outdone by the English, was putting on an equivalent show to the great exhibition on a site of twenty-four acres with 20,000 exhibitors. Much to the surprise of many critics, Victoria and Albert accepted the invitation from the self-styled emperor and would make the first visit of a British monarch to France since 1431. This contrasted with the government of Victoria’s grandfather, George III, who had ignored post-revolutionary French titles, and referred to the emperor as ‘General Bonaparte’. So, as with his second Scottish trip, Thomas yet again followed the route of the Queen.

The
Excursionist
carried a proposal that ‘on or about 7 August we will start an excursion to the Continent for a fortnight, on condition that we have guaranteed by a deposit of 20s each person before the 9th of July, not less than 50 passengers’. Thomas was again in an only too familiar role, fighting reluctant companies for group concessions. This time his struggle was with the controllers of the cross-Channel traffic. Eventually, unable to make bookings on direct trains from England, he planned a circuitous route on the Great Eastern Railway.

His first party set off on 4 July with much gaiety and expectation, not on the Calais to Dover route, but via Antwerp, Brussels, Aix-la-Chapelle, Cologne, up the Rhine to Mayence, Mannheim, Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Baden-Baden, Strasbourg, Paris, Le Havre, Southampton, London and back to the Midland district. Apart from education and enjoyment, one of the aims of the trip was to cement a new era of peace. Travel, said Thomas, made people more tolerant of foreigners, and reduced the hatred and narrow-minded attitudes that led to wars.

Unfamiliar with either the languages or customs, he wrote:

the difficulties . . . were neither few nor small. In making arrangements we had a hard fight with Continental Companies; and it required unceasing vigilance to keep on the good side of hotel keepers, money changers, booking clerks, and others with whom we had pecuniary transactions. The fluctuating rates of currencies; the wretched and uneven appearance of coins and notes; the conglomeration of francs, centimes, thalers, gold and silver groschen, pfennigs, florin and kreutzers; the loss inevitable on every transaction; and the still more vexatious loss occasioned by the advantage taken of John Bull’s ignorance of the amounts and comparative value of ‘small change;’ – all these monetary perplexities caused continued annoyance to most of the Parties. . . .

Thomas warned his men of the temptations of Paris: ‘The can-can is danced by paid performers, and is altogether an unnatural and forced abandon.’ The women in the party were cautioned not to ‘enter the cafes on the north side of the Boulevards, between the Grand Opera and the Rue St. Denis’. Meanwhile the French came from far and wide to welcome Queen Victoria, who caused a stir by going to Napoleon’s marble tomb.
²

After doing everything from exploring the Louvre to floating on a barge down the Seine, for two days Thomas’s tourists became part of the excited throng jostling the exhibition hall in Paris to see the latest in inventions, design and art – even a collection of watercolours by the Scottish artist David Roberts, who had visited Egypt, Syria and Palestine in February 1839. With some new friends Roberts had trudged across the Sinai to the legendary ruins of Petra, arriving in Jerusalem for Easter. On his return, a publisher had paid him 3,000 pounds sterling
³
for the lithographs, which became the three volumes of
The Holy Land
,
Syria
,
Idumea
,
Egypt
,
Nubia
, published in 1842 and 1849 and did much to stimulate interest in the Holy Land.

The next destination on Thomas’s itinerary, Waterloo, was unexpected. Like many Baptists and followers of the Anti-Corn Law movement, he promoted pacifism and opposed the annual celebrations of the anniversary of Wellington’s victory. But he could not hide his fascination for battles and battlefields. By charging tourists a supplement to accompany him to Waterloo, he again showed that he was compromising. It was already a place of pilgrimage. The frequently described relics of the battlefield – the bones of horses, hats, rags and scraps of leather and uniforms, account books, prayer books and papers – had long gone, but tourists were given graphic re-enactments. Sir Walter Scott had been followed by Victor Hugo, who also came there, immortalising the place in
Les Misérables
.

Already a competitor, Henry Gaze, who had escorted tours to Boulogne and Paris seven years before Thomas, had beaten Thomas to Waterloo. Gaze never conducted such large numbers as Thomas, but he accused him of copying his ideas and produced a pamphlet claiming that certain companies were apt to monopolise powers which are the property of all tourist agents. Rivalry between them persisted until the end of the century when Gaze and his business vanished.

Thomas’s second party to Paris which set off on 16 August was easier to organise. ‘In the former trip we had to keep re-booking the passengers at every stopping place but we have now provided a ticket which will take the tourist upwards of 1,000 miles without further trouble.’ He added that by the close of the second excursion ‘we had gained a pretty ready acquaintance with these varieties in currencies, coins, prices, &c; and this knowledge, though dearly purchased, we felt to be very essential’. The second trip also had the option of a trip which included Aix-la-Chapelle, Cologne, where they sailed on the Rhine to Coblenz, Mayence, Frankfurt and Heidelberg.
⁴

Although these trips were a financial loss, Thomas stored up knowledge from them for later years, when he would send clients abroad with bilingual nanny-like tour leaders. Reluctantly he admitted that these ‘were charming Tours, but denuded of much of their enjoyment by pecuniary losses’. A third trip failed to materialise, as did any further excursions to the continent for the following year. With resignation he wrote that ‘we have abandoned all thoughts of invading France on a Tourist Campaign’.

Other parts of England were determined not to be outdone by the Great Exhibition. On 5 May 1856, the Exhibition of Art Treasures at Manchester was opened by the Prince Consort. Everything was ready except the crowds. When the desperate organisers heard that Thomas was in Oban escorting a tour to Scotland they sent ‘Mr. Deane, as Chief Commissioner of the Manchester Fine Arts Exhibition, especially to ask my assistance in promoting excursions to that exhibition . . . I completed arrangements with the Scottish Companies for a number of trains on their lines . . .’ The more he was told by pessimistic railway managers that all efforts to move Scottish people would be futile, the more determined he became and, as Thomas said, ‘to the astonishment of those gentlemen, the trains were thoroughly successful, and were patronized by many of the most influential citizens of the chief places in the country’. In a few days he set up tours from all parts of Scotland, from the Lancaster and Carlisle District, Maryport, Newhaven, Broughton, Furness and Ulverston.

Later, he wrote:

I instantly went to work, submitted my plans to the Scotch companies, to the Lancaster and Carlisle, and to the North-Eastern. The canny Scot who commanded the chief route told me it was all in vain. I could not move the Scotch people, as it was evident they cared but little about the Manchester Exhibition. They . . . only got thirty passengers for a special train. I pleaded hard for a few concessions in fares and travelling arrangements, but they were only granted on condition that I gave a guarantee of £250 per train. That condition I accepted for each of four weekly excursions, the first of which yielded an aggregate of £500, and for each of the other three I covered my guarantee, exclusive of large additions from other contributory lines, such as the Glasgow and South-Western, the Lancaster and Carlisle, the Maryport and Carlisle, the Furness, and other lines of the Lake district.

In six weeks Thomas took 26,000 visitors to the exhibition. As he said, ‘it was a singular coincidence that the last 26,000 shillings saved the exhibition from loss’. When the exhibition closed on 5 October, it had clocked up 1,335,000 visitors and taken £100,000 at the gate. The organisers, recognising that Thomas had saved the exhibition ‘from pecuniary loss’, presented him with a silver snuffbox. Little did they know of his horror of smoking. It was kept and remained ‘as bright and unpolluted to-day as it was twenty-one years ago’.