Thomas Cook

by Jill Hamilton

  Thomas would also have been pleased to witness another milestone in the long struggle of the Nonconformists. In 1900 Joseph Chamberlain, the Unitarian MP from Birmingham, became the first chancellor of a university27 in England not to have been a member of the established church. Chamberlain was also the first commoner in 240 years to hold such a post. With the election of the first Nonconformist prime minister in Britain, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, in 1905, the long struggle for the Nonconformists was over. The sharply defined religious beliefs that had so divided the nation were disappearing. But even though people now accepted that social and economic inequalities were not really part of a divine plan, they still existed. The earlier persecution of the Nonconformists, which had made so many of them champion wider freedoms, was gone.

  Epilogue

  It is difficult to visualise how Thomas would have responded to his obituary in The Times. It praised his ability to ‘organize travel as it was never organized before’, but revamped the old snobbish refrain. Out came the clichés that there were too many of his uncultured tourists filling up destinations which, until recently, had been exclusively for the upper and middle classes. They complained that they were being forced to mix with sight-seeing compatriots they considered to be less congenial: ‘The world is not altogether reformed by cheap tours, nor is the inherent vulgarity of the British Philistine going to be eradicated by sending him with a through ticket and a bundle of hotel coupons to Egypt and the Holy Land . . . If only Messrs Cook could guarantee a benefit to mind and manners as easily as they can guarantee a comfortable journey!’1

  Cook’s had a monopoly of the boats on the Nile, and, during the first twenty years of conducting passenger traffic on it, ‘from three to four millions Sterling (pounds) had been circulated in Egypt by travellers’.2 In 1894 the Egyptian side of Cook’s business was shifted into a company registered as Thos. Cook & Son (Egypt) Limited, with nominal capital of £200,000 divided into 20,000 shares of £10 each, John Mason holding nearly two-thirds. Anxious to reassure old customers, the Excursionist explained that management was still in the hands of Thomas Cook and everything was the same as before. Cook’s had already made Egypt’s share of the global tourist market significant. By the end of the century the firm had annual net profits of about £82,000 in Egypt with almost half of the enterprise’s revenue coming from their Nile fleet. An adjunct of empire though they now were, nowhere was their ‘presence more conspicuous and welcome than on the tawny bosom of old Father Nile.’3 In 1896–8, Cook’s Nile steamers were again used as military transport, this time to move General Kitchener and his troops south to the Sudan, to defeat the Mahdi’s successors.

  Thomas would have been pleased that his special low-price excursions to the Holy Land continued. Tours to the Middle East were booming. Clients now ranged from most of the British royal family and the Kaiser Wilhelm II to the new Tsar, Nicholas II, who became the Emperor of Russia in 1894. One advertisement promoted £60 trips from Liverpool: ‘Once in two weeks, a special boat will leave Liverpool bringing tourists to visit Italy, Egypt and Syria, Asia Minor and Greece, and returning home sixty days after their departure. The journey will cost £60, one pound per day . . . reduced the price almost by half, in the hope of bringing many more tourists . . .’4 The following year, in 1898, when John Mason escorted the German Kaiser, more than 3,000 tourists flocked to Jerusalem with Thos. Cook. But just after this trip, seven years after Cook was buried, the year after Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, John Mason died of a disease. He had, as on his earlier trips, drunk the local water instead of wine. Two of his three sons, Frank and Ernest, took over the business until 1928, when they sold it to the International Sleeping Car Company, Wagons-Lits of Belgium.5 Ernest, who had presided over the banking and foreign exchange business of the firm, died a bachelor in 1931 and left £1,054,769 6s 4d, most of which, along with his 21,000 acres of estate, went into the Ernest Cook Trust. Money from the Trust supports educational and research projects relating to the countryside, the environment and architectural conservation. He also left his collection of paintings to the National Arts Collection Fund for provincial galleries.

  In 1975 Thomas Cook’s grave had a marble table in the shape of an open book6 placed on it, with a commemorative inscription, finishing with the epitaph ‘He brought travel to the millions’.

  A more stately tribute is in Norfolk. Four generations of Thomas’s descendants have lived the life of country gentlemen at Sennowe Park, near Fakenham in Norfolk. More a palace than a country house, Sennowe is surrounded by an eight-acre lake, clock tower and a garden with elaborate terraces. Inside, the grand, oak-panelled dining room, a portrait of Thomas, painted forty years after his death, surveys the opulence.

  Appendix: Three Cook Letters

  FIRST LETTER

  WRITTEN AT SAN FRANCISCO

  A ‘CIRCULAR TOUR’

  We have been favoured by Mr. Thomas Cook, the enterprising organizer of Tours, with the following interesting letter, the first, we hope of a series. The letter is dated ‘San Francisco, Oct. 31, 1872’: –

  Before leaving England on this greatest tour of my travelling life, I was pressed by many friends and by many inquiring correspondents to furnish particulars en route of my observations and experience of countries through which we passed, and the various travelling and other accommodation essential to the comfort and convenience of a journey of over 25,000 miles. I promised to adopt the best medium of communicating with friends and the British public on these topics, in the hope that I might be able, from certain points of greatest interest, to write letters which might, by your courtesy, find access to The Times, and thus obviate the necessity of writing many letters to individuals or to papers of local and limited circulation. On these grounds I ask your indulgence, under a conviction that tours round the world will soon become a popular and instructive recreation to those who can command the necessary time and money.

  The season selected for this pioneering trip is, I believe, the very best that could have been chosen. Had we started one week earlier, we might have visited from this point the wonderful Yosemite Valley and the big trees – one of the greatest of American attractions; but for all other points and countries we seem to be just right. We have crossed the great American Continent under the genial climate of the Indian summer; we are at San Francisco at the commencement of the winter season, under the genial rays of a lovely and brilliant sun, the thermometer ranging at about 70 degrees; earth, air, sea, and sky alike attractive; the forests presenting their richest and most varied hues; the plains, prairies, and mountain slopes glowing with auriferous tints, and the markets of this ‘golden gate of the West’ teeming with the richest and most delicious fruits, including fine strawberries, grapes, apples, pears, plums, &c., in endless variety. In the vegetable markets are green peas, French beans, and other productions of British summers, and it is hard to realize that we are entering upon a Californian winter. Looking ahead, over that sea which seems worthy of the name of Pacific, we are anticipating a good time in Japan and on its famed inland sea; in Hongkong and one or two other places in China; in India in the very best month of the year (January); and then we shall be just right at Suez and Cairo for the Nile, and afterwards for Palestine, Turkey, Greece, Italy, &c.; all to be completed before the middle of May, when a detour may be made to the Vienna Exhibition before returning to London.

  My pioneering party is not large – eight to-day, and may be eleven when we sail hence to-morrow; but we represent, in pleasing harmony, England, Scotland, Russia, America, and Greece, and it has been our pleasure to fall in with several English and American ladies and gentlemen who bid fair to be pleasant companions. We also sail across the Pacific with a party of Japanese, who have spent five years in England, one of whom is a Prince of close relation to the ruling Mikado, and second in succession to the throne of Japan. In a splendid and powerful steamer, and with such variety of companions, we anticipate a pleasant voyage of about 22 days across the Pacific.

>   Our journey to this extreme point of the American Continent has been all that could be reasonably desired. True, we had to contend against hard gales and strong head winds in crossing the ‘Atlantic ferry,’ but our voyage was made agreeable by the mutual accord and pleasant arrangements of the cabin passengers, and the uniform kindness and courtesy of the commander and officers of the Oceanic, of the White Star Line. The excitement in the English Press just before we sailed from Liverpool about the accommodation for steerage passengers led me to examine rather closely the ship’s arrangements for the 778 of this class that we had on board. I was permitted to go through the various departments of the ship, and I conversed with many of the most intelligent and rational-looking of the passengers, and I was almost surprised to find how few were their complaints, notwithstanding the close contact of 367 English men, women, and children; 124 from Ireland, 184 Germans, 54 Swedes, 44 French, and 3 Italians. With the exception of the beef being too salt and too hard, I scarcely heard a complaint, and the sleeping arrangements separated men from women, and married women and children from single women. When the whole ‘marched past’ the examining medical officers at the New York quarantine station, I thought I never saw a more healthy or pleasant crowd of mixed nationalities; and, considering the price paid for the 13 days’ passage and food (six guineas), I could not but congratulate them on the facilities afforded to them for crossing the Atlantic. In the cabin there were 117 passengers – two-thirds Americans – and the officers and crew numbered 146; thus making a total of 1,039 souls.

  Our stay at New York was limited to five days, quite sufficient for the general purposes of sight-seeing. The great railway trip from New York to San Francisco can be accomplished without difficulty in seven days and nights, but we broke the journey at the Falls of Niagara, at Detroit, at Chicago, and at Salt Lake City, and only required sleeping-berths for five nights. We selected the Erie Railway from half-a-dozen or more routes to Niagara and Chicago, and our ride in one of Pullman’s drawing–room cars, by the course of the Delaware river, was extremely interesting. After visiting all the points of interest at Niagara, we took the Great Western Line of Canada to Detroit, and thence to Chicago by the Michigan Central Line. Our stay at Chicago for three days gave us ample time to see the phoenix-like restoration of this astonishing city, where there remain but faint traces of the devastation of twelve months previous. Every public building, every church, every hotel, and every mercantile establishment is completed, or in course of completion, on a larger scale than before the fire. As we happened to be there a few days after the anniversary of the fire, which had been celebrated, or commemorated, in churches and by public papers and associations, we heard and read much of the destruction and the recovery of the city; but among the strange and thrilling recitals of suffering and heroism, I neither heard nor read of any more touching incident than was recorded in the Chicago Tribune in reference to the proprietors of the Sherman-house, where we were located. I copy from the anniversary double number of the Tribune the following paragraph: –

  The ruins of the Sherman-house were still smoking on Monday morning, and the three dispossessed proprietors – Messrs. David A. Gage, John A. Rice, and George W. Gage – were sitting together on a rescued trunk in the doorway of the residence of the latter, on Michigan avenue. The city was in horrible confusion, and the red tide of the fire was still sweeping on its course in the northern division. The question these gentlemen was asking was the question of the hour, asked by 70,000 business men in Chicago, ‘What shall we do?’ Now, W. P. Gates had built a large brick hotel on West Madison-street, near the canal, just furnished before the fire – commodious, well-constructed, ready. ‘We must buy the Eagle Hotel.’ Out came the carriage and horses of George W., and away went the partners south to Eighth-street, thence west over the bridge. They had energy, capital, and a purpose. But as they turned into Canal-street, George W. burst out, ‘This won’t do. These people on the north side are starving. I have oceans of milk on my Brighton farm. You go buy this hotel, David and John; I’ll slip down and get a waggon load of milk.’ On he went, and while the partners were closing the instant purchase of the Eagle Hotel, at 175,000 dollars, George W. Gage, without a licence, except from Him who said, ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it to the least of these ye did it unto Me,’ was peddling Brighton milk, without money or price, among the suffering, hunted, and distressed pilgrims of the north side, to which purpose he gave up a day of vast importance to his firm’s interests. The Sherman was furnished in ten days and opened at the old rates. It has made thousands of its old patrons happy, and has since been forced at times to turn away nearly as many as it accommodated.

  The Great Pacific Hotel, now re-erected, the largest hotel in the world, is to be opened by those brave citizens on the 1st of March next. They will have their reward. From Chicago we took the Burlington route to Omaha, traversing the rich prairies of Illinois, crossing the Mississippi and the Missouri; from Omaha, still running over the prairies, and gradually ascending the long eastern slope towards the Rocky Mountains, until we reached the highest point of the road at Sherman, 8,242 feet above the sea level. But it was difficult to realize the fact of this great elevation, the ascent from Omaha being gradual most of the way. Prairie fires on all sides, antelopes, wolves, and Indians kept us in a state of almost constant excitement. The Sioux tribe were evidently on the move to southern quarters, as they were mounted, in great force, on both sides of the line. They were supposed to be 500 at least, all mounted on very fine horses, gaudily dressed, and armed to the teeth. Had they been hostile, they might have troubled us by closing in their extended lines; but they gave evidence of friendship by cheers and actions, waving of caps and other signs of mirth. The Union Pacific line extends from Omaha to Ogden, a distance of 1,032 miles; and the Central Pacific, which meets with the Union at Ogden, extends to San Francisco, 881 miles. The total distance from New York the way we took was about 3,300 miles, and the detour from Ogden to Salt Lake City is about 37 miles. That detour we made, and spent two days among the Mormons, besides passing several of their settlements in the Rocky Mountains, all of which had a very clean and thrifty appearance. All of my party were surprised at the magnitude and business characteristics of Salt Lake City, which is rapidly filling with a smart Gentile population. The recently-discovered silver mines in the locality are attracting speculators and miners, and it will be difficult for Brigham Young and all his apostles and bishops to maintain the former exclusiveness of the city. But, apart from all religious considerations, the Mormons have done a great work in cultivating the plain and its tributaries, and it would be a sad day if this colony of early and industrious settlers should be depopulated, or their homesteads be forcibly taken from them. Every one feels that there are great changes, and the question will soon be tested as to the existence of such a peculiar organization in the midst of a mixed population of traders, adventurers, and speculators of all classes. My party visited Brigham Young, and most of them also visited the military camp which is located within a short distance of the city. We went through and on to the roof of the great Mormon Tabernacle, which is capable of seating 14,000 people, and is frequently filled. We also saw the commencing work of the great Temple which is slowly rising from its basement; and several Mormon families were visited. I called to see one of my once near neighbours at Leicester, who left his home and friends 19 years since, as a journeyman carpenter. At my request he showed the produce of his farm, which was perfectly astounding. A plot of five acres had yielded 100 bushels of wheat, three waggon-loads of squash for feeding cattle, 150 bushels of potatoes, and 20 waggon-loads of Indian corn. A two acres and a half plot had yielded 30 bushels of wheat and six loads of hay, and he was able to keep one cow, one heifer, a ‘span’ of horses, five pigs, a score of chickens and other poultry. His homestead of over an acre yielded great quantities of fruit and vegetables; and being ‘the husband of one wife,’ he really appeared to be in circumstances of strong attachment to the place; and thus
it is with great numbers of industrious settlers, and it is earnestly hoped that they will never be disturbed in the possession of such honourably-acquired wealth, for wealth it really is of the very best kind. It is not my purpose to discuss at all the vexed questions of ‘celestial marriages,’ or any of the peculiarities of the Latter Day Saints. It is unquestionable that Brigham Young and his adherents have raised a city, cultivated the greater part of the territory of Utah, constructed railways, and executed other public works, and have pioneered the way to the formation of another State of the Union.

  We stayed at the Walker-house, a very large and beautiful hotel, which is doing a flourishing business. The brothers Walker, who built the hotel, have made a large fortune in the city, and are proprietors of an immense store of goods of almost every description. I could add very many interesting particulars, but shall run a serious risk of having this letter rejected for its length.

  The last stage of our journey was intensely interesting. The Rocky Mountains disappointed us, but the Sierra Nevada was ‘no mistake,’ only that many of its great features were hidden by about 45 miles of most elaborately constructed snowsheds. The glimpses we got were grand beyond description, surpassing in some respects the greatest of our Alpine roads on the Continent of Europe. We had fine views of the important gold mines and works between the summit of the Sierra Nevada and Sacramento, and the recollections of the reports of the last 20 or 30 years added greatly to our travelling interest.