Thomas Cook (13 page)

Much of the vogue for Scotland then emanated from the legend of Ossian, which was related in a lengthy poem of that name and was almost a cult in Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Even Napoleon Bonaparte recited its lines. The poem was either written by an ancient Scottish bard or forged by the Scotsman Macpherson. Its lack of authenticity did not detract from its romantic image and it was sometimes connected with prestigious visitors to Scotland such as Dr Johnson, James Boswell and Felix Mendelssohn.

Thomas made a resolution to get to Scotland the next year or ‘know the reason why’.

T
he vision of the picturesque Highlands remained with Thomas. In 1843 he had followed the dramatic events in Scotland when 470 ministers, wanting independence from government control, had resigned their livings and formed a new denomination, the ‘Wee Free’ church, the free Kirk – it was a battle for the soul of Scotland. During Christmas and New Year 1844/5 Thomas saw the changes for himself, when he made his much-longed-for trip north after a sales tour in Lancashire to promote his new
National Temperance Magazine
. In contrast to Preston, where he had been shown the spot where Dicky Turner had first uttered the word ‘teetotal’ – he arrived in Edinburgh for Hogmanay, which was celebrated with uproarious joviality.
¹

The ecclesiastical reorganisation in Scotland overlapped with the tourist renaissance started by Victoria and Albert, who could be called the first media royals. Victoria’s book
Leaves from a Highland Diary
is full of rapture for the Scottish landscape, the Scots and Scotland itself. Albert shared her affinity. It also reminded him of the mountainous scenery of his native Saxe-Coburg. Memories of ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ and Culloden were still vivid, as was that of the ‘Butcher of Culloden’, Prince William Augustus, Victoria’s great-uncle. But Victoria’s love and understanding won over the hearts of the Scots.

A new awareness about the need to preserve wild scenery had been raised by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who urged readers to appreciate nature and to look in forests, not gardens.
²
These efforts to appreciate unexploited nature were duplicated by William Gilpin, a Hampshire clergyman, schoolmaster and amateur artist who invented the word ‘picturesque’ and helped to open the eyes of the British to the wild areas of Britain. His books,
The Lakes
,
The West of England and the Isle of Wight
and
The Highlands
,
³
made people look more deeply at the beauty of the countryside in its untamed state. The Highlands became a cherished destination for upper-class tourists. Thatched cottages, wild gardens, orchards, enjoyment of the open air, walking in the woods and going on picnics all took on new meaning. Many English people, reared on Sir Walter Scott’s novels and picturesque engravings, turned to Scotland, to salmon leaping in swift rivers, lochs, islands, moors, white Highland cattle, men baring their knees in kilts playing fiddles or bagpipes – and to tartan.
⁴

The popularity of tartans, which had become internationally fashionable during the Napoleonic wars, had been boosted again in 1822 by George IV’s state visit to Scotland, organised by Scott. George’s standing in Scotland had been enhanced by much ‘Highland’ regalia, and at the Caledonian Ball he demanded Scottish reels: ‘None of your foreign dances!’ Vain about his slender legs and an enthusiastic reader of
Waverley
and
Rob Roy
, at the levée at Holyrood House he wore a kilt over flesh-coloured pantaloons and posed for Sir David Wilkie
⁵
in a much-reproduced oil painting. It was as if he tried to compensate for the absence of any reigning British monarch coming north of the Border since Charles I.

Back in Leicester, Thomas was both advertising a trip which was the first of its ‘kind ever made from England to Scotland’ and preparing his
Handbook of a Trip to Scotland
with ‘such information . . . will be found most useful for those who avail themselves of a privilege which no previous generation ever had offered to them – an opportunity of riding from Leicester to Glasgow and back, a distance of about 800 miles, for a guinea!’

Earlier criticism led Thomas also to include a few swipes against the upper classes: ‘A few years ago a “visit to a watering place” was a luxury beyond the reach of the toiling artisan or mechanic; his lot was to waste the midnight oil and his own vital energies in pandering to the vitiated tastes of the sons of fashion . . .’
⁶

Posing the question, ‘But what does it amount to?’ and quoting critics who said that ‘it neither fills the belly nor clothes the back’, he said that travel ‘provides food for the mind; it contributes to the strength and enjoyment of the intellect; it helps to pull men out of the mire and pollution of old corrupt customs; it promotes a feeling of universal brotherhood; it accelerates the march of peace, and virtue, and love; – it also contributes to the health of the body, by a relaxation from the toil and the invigoration of the physical powers’.
⁷

Tactfully he did not advertise two things: that the trip would take place the very year that potatoes failed in the Highlands;
⁸
that it coincided with the centenary of Culloden, the battle on Drumossie Moor, on 16 April 1746, when 5,000 Scots had died supporting Bonnie Prince Charlie, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, grandson of James II. Lasting less than an hour, Culloden led to the virtual extinction of a way of life and the traditional ways and means of earning an income in the Highlands.

There were no easy connections to Scotland, as no railway line yet crossed the border with England. So the organization of the trip was extremely difficult for Thomas. Newcastle upon Tyne was then the northern limit of the English railways, and there was no through line from Leicester to Newcastle. Approaches to railway managers were met with nothing but rebuffs and he had ‘great difficulty in persuading the companies to accept’ his proposals.

The apathy of the railway managers was unexpected, as railways were competing for trade and most were looking for ways to increase their traffic and returns to shareholders. Thomas found similar resistance with his efforts to get passages on the ships going north. The General Steam Navigation Company’s initial refusal to carry a large number of passengers from Newcastle to Leith caused him to later write despairingly, ‘Failing to make my way into Scotland by the East Coast route, I turned to the West, and after some difficulty succeeded in effecting a railway arrangement to the Port of Fleetwood; a steamboat from there to Ardrossan; and railway from Ardrossan to Glasgow. This trip was advertised for Midsummer, 1846 . . . I offered to guarantee £250 to the General Steam Navigation Company, for the conveyance of passengers from Newcastle to Leith and back, but they would not accept . . . I then arranged to take passengers by that route to Ardrossan, and from thence by Rail to Glasgow.’

The two steamers which regularly plied on the west coast, the
Queen
and
Consort
, did not have adequate cabins for the anticipated 500 to 1,000 passengers, so Thomas tentatively booked a larger boat which had more first-class cabin accommodation. Bookings, though, failed to come in. Unable to guarantee a fixed number of passengers, again he switched to two steamboats which regularly ran between the two ports.

Then, at the eleventh hour, many last minute bookings were made, so there were suddenly 350 passengers. Most believed that their ticket
included
a cabin. But when they boarded they found they had the choice of staying out on the deck, with waves washing over it, or paying a surcharge to the purser for the use of a cabin. Bad weather exacerbated the lack of cabins and a large number of the passengers were forced to stay shivering and crowded outside during the wet and cold night as a result. Complaints and litigation would hound him for months. Remembering the importance of keeping up appearances and putting a good face on things, Thomas hoped the fuss would die down and tried to dismiss the matter, just saying that the sea voyage was ‘disagreeable to some of the party’. Yet the misery and inconvenience suffered by many of the passengers were things that would not go away so lightly. It was written up by a member of the party under the derisive heading ‘The “Pleasure” Trip to Scotland’ in the
Leicester Chronicle
of 4 July 1846. The main grievances were about the lack of provision of tea at Preston station and the extra charge of ten shillings for a cabin:

More than twenty carriages, containing about five hundred passengers, left the Leicester Midland Station on Thursday morning . . . from Fleetwood, where the greater number embarked the same evening for Ardrossan. From the handbill published by Mr Cook, the bookseller (the getter-up of the trip), it was made to appear that the passengers would be allowed the privilege of leaving the train at Manchester, Parkside, or Preston, at any of which places they might re-unite with it on his return on Friday, July 3rd. What authority Mr. Cook had for making this statement, we know not, but the reverse was the fact; for after leaving the Midland Railway at Normanton, where the passengers were certainly afforded both time and opportunity for refreshment, the tourists were rigidly compelled to keep their seats as if they had been prisoners about to leave their country for their ‘country’s good,’ instead of a body of respectable citizens who had paid their fares for a pleasure trip. This was particularly the case at the Victoria Station, Manchester, where policemen were placed to prevent the passengers from leaving the carriages – an injunction which was strictly enforced, and created much dissatisfaction among them. At Parkside, sixteen miles from Manchester, the same command was made, and with few exceptions, enforced. At Preston, where, according to Mr. Cook’s handbill, tea was to be provided in the Exchange, at one shilling each, the train only stopped for a few minutes, to the no small disappointment of all who had anticipated the enjoyment of such a tempting repast.

The correspondent included a scathing attack in which he said that ‘rather than subject myself to such rough and unceremonious treatment!’ in future he would travel alone. He added:

Mr Cook is a
Temperance man
, an advocate for the principle of
Total Abstinence
, and it would seem as if he wished those whom he has so shamefully duped to practise
total abstinence
too . . . a toss overboard into the projector’s
favourite element
would have been almost his due. Let us beware how he again attempts to gull the public in the matter of an Excursion Train.
⁹

However, others forgot about the boat trip and enjoyed the journey through Scotland in a special train that took them to Glasgow. To celebrate their arrival, guns were fired as the train drew up, then a band escorted the travellers to the City Hall, to a large soirée. A similar ovation awaited them at Edinburgh, where they were met by a band of music and escorted through the principal streets, and the publisher William Chambers, another passionate advocate of Temperance, laid on a special musical evening. They did not get to the Highlands, but made various side trips instead, travelling on a steamer on the river Forth to Stirling, sailing on Loch Lomond and Loch Long and making a slow journey on the Ayrshire Railway to ‘the Land of Robbie Burns’ and the shrine to Lord Bute’s former ploughman who had become Scotland’s most quoted poet.

B
ack in Leicester, Thomas was caught up in a wild, tumultuous movement, the Anti-Corn Law League, becoming one of a large number of socially aware Nonconformists playing an active and prominent part. The Anti-Corn Law League, a vehicle for Free Trade and many forms of political agitation, took on the character of two of its founders, John Bright and Richard Cobden, both fiery orators and propagandists
¹
who denounced the privileged position of landlords.

Every Monday and Friday evening Thomas stood behind the middle window on the first floor at Granby Street using the skills in oratory he had learnt as a preacher. Shouting at the top of his voice, he would call out the prices of wheat and other cereals, then he would pause, waiting for the thunderous clapping, and call out through the roar, shouting even louder, to announce ‘the state of the markets and other matters connected with Corn Law Repeal’. Thomas was such a vocal campaigner that, if MPs had then been paid, he could well have taken up politics as a career.

The crowds were constant. Over a thousand people thronged, sending up loud cheers as Thomas described graphic examples of the false claims of certain bakers. He enjoyed the applause. Appreciative crowds, especially those following him, were mesmerised as if he were the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Thomas and a new committee were formed to arrange meetings against the Corn Laws, to bring regularity to the price of bread and to keep it in line with the price of flour. It aimed to shame bakers to sell bread by weight. If that did not have any results, the committee threatened to resort to the law.

Among the immense multitude in Granby Street, throngs of shabbily dressed men took off their hats, waving them in the air as they cheered him. Thomas, eloquent and pragmatic, adopted theatrical-type cue boards to reinforce what he was saying. Brightly coloured placards announced the prices of corn, wheat and other cereals and their correlation with the price of bread. Some of the placards bore ‘Down Again’ as prices fell, or ‘Up Again’ if prices rose. His outbursts brought him nothing but adulation from the crowds, who from time to time shouted ‘Hurrah!’

Apart from the deleterious effects of alcohol, Temperance supporters blamed the manufacture of spirits for an unnecessary demand on corn and other cereal crops, which should be used as food. Wheat, barley and corn prices were spiralling; agricultural protectionists were accused by the Free Traders of inflating the price of wheat. They said that it was the demand on cereals by the liquor industry, together with the duties on imported corn, that sent the price of bread to ridiculous heights.