Thomas Cook (28 page)

Thomas certainly admired John Mason’s abilities, but he could never go along with his priorities, his intolerance or his temper. They had seen each other often in Leicester, but nothing healed their differences. Now they saw each other in Egypt and it was no better. John Mason, his face flushed with rage and frustration, would raise his voice and tell Thomas that his preoccupation with religion was a handicap to the company. John Mason’s temper was illustrated by the story of how he once threw a dragoman off a steamer into the Nile for being impertinent. Neither father nor son would compromise. It had again been agreed that John Mason would take over the entire business, but Thomas continued to meddle. Some of the quarrels demonstrated that he was unable to relinquish his position. Both men would fly into a rage, saying and writing harsh things which neither man seems to have regretted. Even so, Thomas repeatedly staked everything on reconciliation, while John Mason distanced himself.

In Egypt a letter, written by John Mason from his portable writing desk, was opened by Thomas. On the eve of his departure, Thomas wrote telling Marianne about the continuing row: ‘I am not going to distress myself. I know my heart is right towards him and towards yourself, and my dear girl [Annie] also, and I shall not be moved from the path of Duty to either Division of my family. He does not like my mixing Missions with business; but he cannot deprive me of the pleasure I have had in the combination; it has sweetened my journey and I hope improved my heart without prejudice to the mercenary object of my tour. I shall neither be expelled from the office nor stifled in my spirit’s utterance, and I have told him so very plainly . . .’

Pushing the bickering and wrangling aside, on his return Thomas enjoyed the interest in his trip. In late February he spoke to a packed audience in the Corn Exchange about his world travels; the
Leicester Journal
reported that ‘the large audience was held spellbound’.

The row between father and son went on. John Mason insisted that all business arrangements without profit cease. Neither would yield. Thomas could not stop being a Bible-loving Evangelist and a vocal Temperance campaigner, especially when in the previous year there had been a victory for the Temperance movement with legislation that showed the influence of the Temperance movement. The new Licensing Act curbed the drink trade and imposed opening hours on public houses. While the brewers, the whisky and gin distillers, and wine and spirit importers were up in arms, those who believed in Temperance did not think the new laws went far enough.
⁵

T
homas, writing regularly in the
Excursionist
, frequently stated that Cook’s offered ‘to all classes and to everybody the cheapest Tourist tickets ever presented to the English public’. Long and flowery though his descriptive pieces often were, he used restraint when writing about either religion or Temperance in the magazine. It was the same on his tours. Although Thomas himself seldom missed a chance to visit a mission or church and often invited members of his tours to accompany him, he did not pressure them. Whether in New York or Alexandria, he was involved with missions, and the clergy took up not just his time but his money – money which John Mason claimed belonged to the firm. For instance, in Jaffa, Thomas purchased the building for Miss Arnott’s mission school; and he also helped other Protestant church establishments in Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Apart from giving financial aid, he tried to visit these missions at least once or twice a year. On one visit in 1874, the harsh winter caused endless problems for tourists, when storms blew up from Egypt, as it could be bitterly cold in the winter months in the hills of Judea and Mount Lebanon. In Hermon, tourists
¹
were held up for three days in an Arab village because of unexpected snowstorms. One member of the party told the story of a minister, who, though ill, recovered enough to baptise a fellow traveller in the Jordan, but died in Jerusalem soon afterwards:

November 20: Poor Dr Gale succumbed, entirely losing his mind, and had to be left at a wayside place until a doctor could be sent to him. November 21: Dr Gale brought in by wagon and carried in. He is quite childish – mind gone. November 25: Poor Dr Gale died about 5 this morning. Not been able to speak. Saw him last night and was recognized by him. His effects and burial left to Dr DeAss [De Haas] American consul. Melancholy thought to leave our friend dead and unburied. Got on steamer all right. All thankful to leave Holy Land.

Edwin Hodder, author of
On Holy Ground
(London, 1874) wrote dismissively:

If the traveller told the plain truth and spoke naturally, he would say the first thing that struck him on entering Jerusalem was the number of costermongers selling pistachio and peanuts, the quantities of sherbert consumed at street stalls, the low row of cafés and cigar shops, and the knot of Englishmen (distinguishable anywhere by their hideous costumes) lounging outside the Mediterranean Hotel.

Nothing, though, would discourage either Thomas or the growing number of tourists. Russian pilgrims also increased in number. Prussia, too, made her mark with a Lutheran church built in Jerusalem. A group from southern Germany established new Knights Templar colonies, and archaeologists started searching, among other things, for the lost tomb of the German Crusader, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. Crates of newly unearthed antiquities found their way to Berlin and other cities. The widening stream of travellers and archaeologists exporting biblical antiquities to European and American museums would later be accused of plundering. In October 1873 Thomas was writing that he hoped to transfer a house in Bethlehem to a religious society. This had been made over in part payment of the money stolen from a tent on his first visit.

Later Cook’s set up an office in King David Street
²
in the Old City near the Jaffa Gate, only a few alleyways up from the Holy Sepulchre. Before modern hotels were built, tents were erected just outside the Jaffa Gate. Visitors often wrote of how ‘Cook’s Tours’ supplied them with tents and riding horses for further journeys. Because the area around the Jaffa Gate was a jumping off place for tours and expeditions, it became known as the ‘station’, and other tourist agencies set up their headquarters too. Nearby, the family boarding house of Mr E.L. Kaminitz grew into a big hotel in Jaffa Road. Various crafts connected with the new transport industry, such as coach building and repairs, harness and blacksmithing,
³
also sprang up. Similar expansion was taking place at other tourist destinations worldwide.

To cater for the huge increase in international tourism Thomas Cook & Son offices were opened up in many places, including Rome. In 1873, the London office was moved down Fleet Street to Ludgate Circus, where John Mason supervised the building of purpose-built offices, with a goods receiving depot, a branch post and telegraph office, reading room, waiting room and a daily bulletin of weather in Europe and the Middle East. As Thomas explained, ‘Our business was growing to such a magnitude, that we were not only justified but bound, to give our patrons and ourselves the best accommodation . . .’

Within a year of the opening of the grand headquarters, Thomas was contemplating a country seat. At the height of the disputes with John Mason, Thomas decided that, if he was to retire from the firm, Melbourne Hall, which was advertised for lease, could be his base. This was quite out of character. Most of his life he remained uninterested in the acquisition of land or trophy houses filled with antique furniture set in rolling acres. Nor did he seek entry to London clubs or gilded salons. Perhaps this was because he knew he would never have been fully accepted into the class that frequented them. Anyway, this one deviation from his usually modest ambitions was rejected. The then owner of Melbourne Hall, Earl Cowper, thought it more appropriate if a true ‘gentleman’ and member of the Anglican Church was the occupant. This rejection sheds light on both the heightened sense of privilege of the British upper classes in the nineteenth century and the ongoing intolerance against Nonconformists. Relations between the Church of England and the chapels were still, in 1874, when this letter was written, often embittered:

Mr. Cook has applied to lease Melbourne Hall. He would like to make it a shew place with special trains &c and would no doubt make it answer so that the place would cost him little or nothing – They are a great nuisance in grounds of that size & to the place generally & Mrs. Gooch [previous tenant] was obliged to put a stop to them. I have seen Mr. Cook once & he seems to be a highly respectable and intelligent man but he would be sadly out of place at Melbourne Hall – He is a Baptist and here they do great mischief I consider to the place by the narrowness of their views in matters of Education &c. They will not even support the Infants School on which Churchmen and Dissenters join – it is most desirable if possible to have a gentleman and a Churchman in so leading a position – He will be here on Monday & if your Lordship will sanction it I should throw cold water on his application at any rate, but if he would like to take a suitable site on lease for building a good house it would I think be desirable to offer facilities for this . . .

If the rumour be correct will Mr Cook, who has ‘personal’ experience of trippers, close his portals against the fraternity, or will he nobly disregard the broken bottles and sandwich papers and empty fusee-boxes [match-boxes] and create a rival Alton Towers with its special trains to Melbourne?
⁴

Earl Cowper continued in his objections, saying that he did not ‘wish by any means that Melbourne Hall should be turned into a show place. If I had understood that this was Mr. Cook’s intention I should have written at once to state my decided objection.’

As always when Thomas received snubs and setbacks, he could divert himself with other activities, such as the mission in Rome, which he frequently visited. Here, as seen in his correspondence, he too was capable of religious bigotry. After one visit in the winter of 1875–6 he wrote on his return in February a letter which was published in the
Missionary Observer
in the edition of March 1876:

After twelve days of confinement to my room in Rome, I have managed to work my way back to London by short stages, and rests by the way. My bronchial trouble, which had culminated so fearfully on my arrival in Rome has now left me without articulative power, so that I cannot even dictate the words of a letter, and my only way of communication is to write a few notes, and get them copied by a plainer hand . . .

On my arrival in Rome, I soon found that we were to be the victims of Jesuitial trickery or of ordinary Italian duplicity. The property for which we had engaged to pay, with legal expenses added, about £1,000 sterling, I was told we could not have unless we would take an adjoining café and other property amounting to nearly £4,000 sterling. I would not for one moment entertain this proposal, but placed the matter in the hands of a lawyer to secure for us the one thousand francs fine, which was agreed to be paid by either side that should fail to complete the transaction. Hearing of other properties in the locality that were on sale, Mr. Wall, Grassi, self, and [an] estate agent, started on a tour of inspection; several properties were examined, and on the following day we got an offer of a choice of three lots, which were in liquidation, the bankrupt stock of a society which had speculated in land and houses . . . The report was highly satisfactory . . .

Finally, a property in via Pudenziana (now via Urbana) was purchased for £1,009 5
s
2
d
and Thomas added that ‘our freehold was secured before the Jesuits had time to open their eyes or rub their spectacles. I was afterwards assured that the property was worth double. This was a bright spot amidst the gloom of ten days of physical suffering and darkness.’ He then went on to describe the locality: ‘The via San Pudenziana, with its very old and grotesque little church, and a large convent, take their names from the generally believed site of the house or palace of Pudens, a Roman senator of the time of Paul’s residence in Rome. History or tradition tells us that Pudens was a friend of Paul. He is said to have visited Britain in the time of her many kings; that he married a daughter of Caractacus, who became a Christian, and afterwards was known by the name of Claudia . . .’.

Marianne and Annie were also drawn up in the excitement of the new chapel and prior to its opening spent three weeks preparing it for worship and helping the wife of the minister, the Revd N.H. Shaw, to start mothers’ meetings and other social events – and to distribute Bibles in Italian and English. One Baptist philanthropist in Manchester had given 50,000 copies of the New Testament to the Roman mission alone.

B
ritain had turned down the offer of shares in the Suez Canal and snubbed the opening, but much to France’s fury Britain was the country which prospered the most from the speedier routes it offered. Then, almost overnight, six years after it had opened, the British government became the largest shareholder in the Suez Canal Company.

In 1875, political circles were buzzing with rumours about the extravagances of the Khedive forcing him to sell the majority of his Suez Canal shares. In London, Lionel de Rothschild, then an MP, went to Disraeli and confirmed the rumour. Before France had a minute to beat them, Britain, with a loan of £4 million from Rothschild’s bank, purchased the Khedive’s 177,000 shares, making Britain the controlling shareholder. Disraeli’s and Rothschild’s swift purchase left the French reeling. Until then France had been the most active European nation in North Africa and revelled in the Suez Canal increasing her economic base. She was encouraged from behind the scenes by Bismarck. Britain’s share deal was such a triumph and such a blow against France that, even when Gladstone’s Liberals in the Commons attacked Rothschild for charging 5 per cent interest and a 2.5 commission,
¹
there was no further outcry.