by Diccon Bewes
Two more circular tours were added the following year, designed to be combined with any of the existing ones. Within a few years nearly all of Switzerland was covered by one of Cook’s many circular interconnecting touring routes. Customers would choose which route they wanted to take to Switzerland (by 1905 there were 13 possible permutations between London and Lucerne, for instance, all with different prices) and then which tours to add on, with tour tickets valid for one month and bundled together as a booklet of coupons. Cook was simply a facilitator, who made the trips possible, and his Tourists were, in effect, the first InterRailers. They chose their tickets and off they went, many of them doing their own thing without a Cook conductor to guide them and using regular train services rather than specially chartered ones. Such leeway was immensely popular, as Cook himself recognised:
One great element of success in a system of tours is freedom, without loss on the value of the tickets … it is not necessary that all travel together; holders of the tickets may go alone if they prefer, and they can leave the prescribed line at any point they choose.
People loved the flexibility of tour coupons, and the affordable prices, so it was only a matter of time before Cook introduced the same system for hotels. By 1868 customers could buy hotel coupons in advance at a fixed rate in England and then use them as they toured. This made life much easier: no quibbling over the bill, no fiddling with foreign money, no fretting about quality. And for hoteliers it meant assured business, as the tourists were tied to using specific hotels. For example, Cook’s Tourist’s Handbook to Switzerland of 1874, his first real guidebook, listed 47 hotels across the country that accepted Cook’s coupons, including the Victoria in Interlaken, the Adler in Grindelwald, Giessbach and Rigi Kulm. One coupon cost eight shillings (or £30 today) for one night, including a table d’hôte dinner and a non-meat breakfast, no matter which hotel. Unused coupons could be refunded on return to England. It was as simple as it was successful, as was the “circular note”, introduced in 1874 so that customers didn’t have to carry lots of money around. This was a credit note that enabled tourists to obtain local currency in a safe and easy way, having paid Cook for the note in London. In other words, it was an early form of a traveller’s cheque.
Cook’s first high-street shop opened in London’s Fleet Street in 1865, selling tickets along with anything else a Tourist might need, and offices abroad soon followed. The same year saw the publication of his Guide to Cook’s Tours in France, Switzerland and Italy. Priced at one shilling and sold separately from The Excursionist, it gave practical advice as well as marketing the tours. It distinguished between an Excursion (a special trip at very reduced prices) and a Tour (a wider, more circuitous range using regular public transport). What is fascinating is how quickly the advertisers had seized on this new market. This guide, coming barely two years after the first tour, has a clutch of adverts touting waterproof coats “readily carried in the pocket”, a Tourists’ Telescope “well-adapted for Swiss Tourists” and the Alpine Boot “specially adapted for Mountain Excursions”.
There was also this notice from the Swan Hotel in Lucerne:
The Brothers Haefeli gratefully acknowledge the extensive support which they have received from English Visitors and Tourists, and beg to intimate that, encouraged by past success, they have now added another large establishment, which will enable them to provide accommodation for greatly increased numbers.
All sorts of things were advertised in the Cook guidebooks
As we have seen, this wasn’t the only sign of the Swiss reacting quickly to the sudden influx of visitors (and money). Even Cook himself seemed surprised at both the size and speed of his success: “That which took teens of years in Scotland seems to have been acquired at a single bound in Switzerland.” And it was just the beginning.
On the back of the Swiss success came tours to Italy and Germany, this time more profitably, and then Cook expanded ever further, into Egypt, Palestine, India and North America: the first Cook’s Tour there in 1866 took nine weeks and covered 10,500 miles. The market blossomed into much more than two-week trips to the Alps, and a world tour eventually took place in 1872–73. Thomas Cook became synonymous with tourism all around the globe.
He also realised that not everyone wanted to tour around; some people simply wanted a holiday abroad. So by 1900 “Popular Holiday Tours” were on sale, less luxurious than conducted tours and, in effect, what we now think of as a package holiday. For example, the five guinea tour to Lucerne offered second-class travel from London and a week in “good comfortable hotels”, including a table d’hôte dinner and meat breakfast every day. All for £5 5s, or about £300 today, and “the only advertised five guinea tour to Lucerne on which no booking fee or extra charge of any kind whatever is made”. Also on offer was a week in Interlaken for seven guineas, with the chance to buy all your tickets for the mountain trains of the Bernese Oberland in advance. No wonder they were “popular” with every class of passenger.
Thomas Cook (the man) died on 18 July 1892, but the company carried on under the steady hand of his son, John Mason Cook, who had long been a partner in the business. When he died in 1899, it went to his sons and all seemed well for a while. Thomas Cook & Son was the travel agent of the British Empire and even war didn’t stop things at first. In December 1914, The Traveller’s Gazette advertised Christmas in the South of France or along the Swiss Riviera: 18 days in Nice or Montreux for £21 15s in first class. Escorted tours to Paris were running as late as September 1915, which seems incredible: the world was at war but it was business as usual for holidays abroad, although that didn’t last. And then in 1928 the grandsons simply sold the whole company.
Every last part of the Cook empire was sold to the Companie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, operators of the Orient Express, before being nationalised in 1948 to become a government-owned travel agency. By 2001 Thomas Cook had been re-privatised and bought by the Germans, who very sensibly kept the brand name the same. A merger with MyTravel and flotation on the Stock Exchange made the company British again, trading as the Thomas Cook Group. It is the second-largest travel company in Europe, but faces an uncertain future competing with online booking, budget airlines and DIY packages. Nevertheless, amid the falling share prices and job losses there is Thomas Cook Signature, a programme that can be seen as the direct descendant of the conducted tours. Perhaps that’s where the future lies – in tailored holidays from the world’s oldest – and most trusted? – tour operator. That was how it all started, with personal service and reliable products from a trusted source.
Before Switzerland, Thomas Cook had spent ten years trying to find the winning formula for overseas tours; after Switzerland, it only took him ten years to conquer the whole world. Or, as he put it, “Now-a-days, everybody may travel, everybody ought to travel – in fact, everybody does travel.” The Swiss conducted tour wasn’t the first step, or in the end the biggest, but it was the one that worked, the one that truly started mass tourism – and the one that made Cook into a brand that is still recognised around the world. So much of what we take for granted about modern tourism can be traced back to Thomas Cook and his conducted tours. If Switzerland had not been a success for him, maybe we would not have the tourist industry as we know it, from city breaks to fly-drives. Or perhaps it would all have developed eventually in some form, one way or another.
Is the world a better place for mass tourism? Who knows? Environmental cost against economic benefit, pleasure for the masses versus luxury for the few, development or depopulation. Switzerland has seen both sides of every argument, and maybe managed to come out with a positive balance overall – maybe.
It wasn’t only Thomas Cook that enjoyed an explosion in customers, it was the guidebooks as well. For the likes of Murray, Baedeker and Cook’s own guides, the 50 years after that tour were to be golden ones, with more and more destinations coming under their scrutiny. No one left home without a guidebook in their bag. After the First World War, it would take
another 50 years for the guides to recover the lost ground and discover a new market of package tours and backpackers. However, 50 years after that, their future is not so rosy.
The Murray Handbooks carried on being a British travel institution long after Miss Jemima had used hers. But in 1901 the rights were sold and they were later reincarnated as the Blue Guides, with a Switzerland edition appearing in 1923. These are still going today. As for John Murray Publishing itself, that stayed in the family until 2002 when John Murray VII sold the company to Hodder Headline, now part of Hachette UK.
Thomas Cook’s guidebooks continued in various guises until the summer of 2013 when the company pulled the plug on publishing. It could no longer compete with rivals such as Lonely Planet and Baedeker, itself still going strong after all this time, or the new threat: the mountain of online information. That could eventually kill off paper formats completely, and not just Cook’s guidebooks.
Murray, Baedeker and Cook – all these guidebooks played an integral role in the development of tourism, giving people the courage to go it alone and explore a wider world. They were criticised from the start for creating a herd mentality, for damaging the local economy by making tourists less reliant on local knowledge and for ruining the very places they sought to extol. These were all true, perhaps, but not everyone was rich enough for a personal courier or brave enough to set off alone. Many were quite content to be part of a group, see the main sights and send some postcards. It is clear that Miss Jemima loved every minute of her tour, even if she barely interacted with the locals. Who knows, without the much-disparaged guidebooks and tour groups, all those people might simply have stayed at home. Would that have made the world a better place or them better people? I doubt it.
Mass tourism, via either groups or guidebooks, has been blamed for everything from overdevelopment to undermining the locals. Such criticism is nothing new. In 1870 the Reverend Francis Kilvert wrote, “Of all noxious animals, too, the most noxious is a tourist. And of all tourists the most vulgar, ill-bred, offensive and loathsome is the British tourist.” He was most likely talking about people on a Cook’s Tour, people like Miss Jemima. However, would she qualify as a tourist today? I’m not so sure.
She travelled as part of a group, mainly because it was the only affordable choice for her, and she consulted her guidebook, much as backpackers use Lonely Planet or internet forums today. She saw the Lion of Lucerne, but she also rode a donkey over an Alpine pass; she wanted a nice cup of tea, but she drank the local water (which she pronounced to be “delicious”); she walked up Rigi, but she hiked across glaciers. And while it wasn’t quite Stanley going down the Congo, it was still an adventure, a pioneering new form of intrepid travel with no set itinerary, no pre-booked hotels and no real plan other than to see Switzerland in a fortnight. To modern sensibilities Miss Jemima was, in effect, more a self-sufficient traveller than a mollycoddled tourist. She was an independent, indefatigable lady with a dry sense of humour, boundless energy and an eye for detail, as well as the desire to go home after three weeks away.
That said, travel snobs today would probably dismiss her as a tourist who went around in her own bubble, not a real traveller at all. Worse than that, she created a template for all who came after her. And following in her footsteps, it’s difficult to avoid doing the same, thanks to the relentless schedule of constantly moving. You get so caught up with seeing the sights, finding hotels and enjoying everything that you end up in a world of your own. So neither Jemima nor I sat and chewed the fat with the old men of the village; nor did we hike up to a remote hut to see cheese being made. However, that didn’t spoil her evident delight in everything Swiss, or make her trip any less worthwhile. Is being moved by a much-visited stone sculpture any less valid an experience than going off to meet a mountain woodcarver? As for watching the sunrise from Rigi, that was once such a touristy thing to do but has become almost the opposite. It’s so out of fashion that only the dedicated few do it any more, so it could now be considered an authentic Swiss experience.
Tourists and travellers are two sides of the same coin living in a symbiotic relationship of mutual contempt but actually dependent on each other. Without the infrastructure of tourism, being a traveller would be much harder work and much more expensive; without the frontier spirit of travellers, tourists would be trapped in the same old places, not knowing where the next new destination is. In the end there’s no big difference. Tourist, traveller – many people are both, even on the same trip. Miss Jemima certainly was – Tourist by name, traveller by nature. What is important is that she had the chance to travel, thanks to Thomas Cook. That perhaps is the legacy of her trip and his work: the world became more accessible so that everyone could see it, not only a privileged few. And to the locals every visitor is a tourist, no matter how long they stay, how they arrived, what they see or how they view themselves. We are all tourists once we start to travel.
One tour, two trips, 150 years apart, but how great was the change in between? Some things are very different now – we travelled at a faster pace, we had our own bathrooms and showered every day, we could enjoy milk chocolate for elevenses – but when you look at the two trips together, in fact not much has changed. Miss Jemima would still recognise her tour, even with the improvements in transportation and sanitation, and still be familiar with most of the places along the route, not merely the never-changing mountains, but also the view across Lake Thun or Lucerne’s old town. Despite ugly blemishes, such as the radio mast on Rigi or the concrete blocks in Grindelwald, the twentieth century was kind to Switzerland. Interlaken has grown, but it’s still a small country town that happens to have a lot of hotels, while the Swiss love of tradition has helped preserve many local customs. For sure, events like bringing the cows down the mountain or Swiss wrestling matches have become tourist attractions, but they are still cherished as part of the national culture, supported not forgotten. Having tourists there too is an added financial bonus.
One thing that has certainly changed is my own view of Switzerland. Seeing it through Miss Jemima’s eyes meant looking beyond the modern image of stability and prosperity, where millionaire bank accounts and punctual trains are the norm. That Switzerland is a recent incarnation. She showed me the Switzerland that was around for far longer, the one with beggars in the villages, goitres in the mountains and a ramshackle infrastructure. So while the magnificent Swiss landscape is much the same, the people living in and around those mountains definitely are not. Maybe that’s why the Swiss are so careful with money; it wasn’t so long ago that many of them had none. Tourism played an integral part in the Swiss success story, helping change rural poverty into national prosperity. Uncovering Switzerland’s life before it won the economic lottery made me see the country differently. And I appreciate it even more – not something I anticipated from retracing a 150-year-old journey.
I also didn’t expect the revelation of how adventurous those normal Victorians were. Miss Jemima put up with things that few people today would contemplate on a European holiday: 18-hour journeys in cramped trains without toilets, no running water in the hotels but sewage in the streets, an average of about four to five hours’ sleep a night. As for the clothes, that just makes it all the more impressive: walking 25 miles in one day over a mountain pass while wearing hot and heavy layers of petticoats, crinoline, corset and jacket. Even with all that, the members of the Junior United Alpine Club had the time of their lives: in Mr William’s words “We work very hard but are enjoying it amazingly”. It was indeed hard work, both then and now, but it was a labour of love. They left full of excitement and went home full of memories; I left full of curiosity and came home full of admiration – for what they had achieved and for everything that they, and the tourists who came after them, made possible.
A PERSONAL POSTSCRIPT
Having spent so long in Miss Jemima’s company, the urge to find out what became of the heroine of our story is overpowering. It’s not as if she was a household name after
her journal was published – that was simply for private consumption among the Junior United Alpine Club, and it’s only by chance that it was found again in the ruins of a bombed building. Those two big red volumes now sit in the Thomas Cook company archives in Peterborough, safe and dry. The mystery of how and why they ended up in a blitzed warehouse in London has never been solved, but we can at least discover what happened to their author after she wrote them. It’s time for some genealogical investigating.
Luckily, I have two sources who can do the digging for me. My father’s greatest hobby, other than watching rugby, is genealogy and he has spent many hours tracing our family tree back through the centuries. So who better to ask when I need help with finding out about Miss Jemima and her family? And it doesn’t take him long, thanks to her unusual surname and his detailed knowledge of where to look.
At last I have a picture of Miss Jemima’s life, but alas no actual picture of the lady in question. That I get from my second source, Peter Williamson at Inntravel, a specialist tour operator based in North Yorkshire. The company now offers a self-guided 12-night tour following in Miss Jemima’s Swiss footsteps, hence his research into her story. And here it is.
Four years after her epic exploration of Switzerland, in 1867, Jemima married John Greenwood, a widower ten years her senior who apparently had no need of a job to earn an income; he was listed simply as a “landowner” in the next census.
John brought three children from his first marriage but had one more with Jemima, a son named Robert Morrell Greenwood, born on 21 January 1868. The family was not short of money and moved to Lytham in Lancashire, then to Somerset, then finally back to Yorkshire, where John died in 1906. Jemima followed on 13 October 1909, and was buried in a small country churchyard in East Morton, near Bradford. She did live long enough to see Robert get married to Margaret Leir, and left him an estate worth £14,261, or about £800,000 in today’s money. He was awarded a CBE in 1918, and died in 1947 without having had any children. There Miss Jemima’s line ended, as did that of her elder brother, whose children also died without heirs.