Slow Train to Switzerland Read online

  This is the tale of how Thomas Cook changed the world that summer of 1863 with his winning concept of quality travel at an affordable price: “We make no provision for Third Class travelling. Our object has been to give Second Class comforts at Third Class rates.” It is also the story of one man’s dream – my own. Thanks to an old diary, I am able to follow in the footsteps of Mr Cook and his rail-blazers. Almost 150 summers later, I’m about to discover how much today’s travellers – and the Swiss – owe to the tourists of yesterday. And in the process, I’m about to get a surprise of my own.

  This is one tour, two trips, 150 years – and a world of change apart.

  Title page from Miss Jemima’s original diary

  ONE

  THE JUNIOR UNITED ALPINE CLUB

  It is our intention to accompany a party to Geneva, Lucerne and other principal places in the Alpine and Lake Districts.

  —Thomas Cook, The Excursionist, June 1863

  Junior United Alpine Club group photo:

  Miss Jemima is third from left

  Her name was Jemima, or Miss Jemima, to be more precise. For decades little more than that was known about her, not even her surname. But she was real, that much was sure, because she wrote a diary. Hers isn’t as historical as Anne Frank’s or as hysterical as Bridget Jones’s, and it doesn’t even cover a whole year, but this diary marks an important moment in the history of travel. For Miss Jemima was one of the participants in Thomas Cook’s First Conducted Tour of Switzerland in 1863. She was present at the birth of modern international tourism, and she recorded every detail.

  Since it was written, Miss Jemima’s Swiss Journal has been lost, found, reprinted and forgotten again, so many people have never heard of it. I hadn’t, until I started researching Swiss history and tourism back in 2009. A small aside in the Rough Guide to Switzerland was all that was needed for me to go online in search of this unique account of a nineteenth-century tour and it only took a few clicks to find a copy of the 100th anniversary edition. Even once I’d read it, I had no idea who Miss Jemima really was or that her diary would become so significant for me – but I wanted to find out.

  And that’s how I ended up in Newhaven two years later with her book in my bag, along with A Handbook for Travellers in Switzerland, and the Alps of Savoy and Piedmont (1861 edition), the guidebook she used. I was ready to follow Mr Cook and his extended party of 130 or so tourists who crossed the Channel with him to see what was on the other side. Half of them would only go as far as Paris, others would leave after Geneva or Mont Blanc, so that by the time the whole tour was complete barely a handful remained: the Junior United Alpine Club, as they christened themselves. Here’s how they are introduced in the front of the journal:

  “Miss Eliza

  ‘Guide, Philosopher, Friend’, Hon. Physician to the Expedition (Allopathic)

  Miss Mary

  French Interpreter

  Miss Jemima

  Artist

  Miss Sarah

  Continental Traveller

  Mr William

  Paymaster

  Mr Tom

  Professeur (aetat 28), Complete Letter Writer,

  Interpreter in the German Cantons, Hon.

  Physician to the Expedition (Homeopathic)

  Mr James

  French Interpreter and Poet Laureate”

  While the journal describes the journey in detail, it reveals nothing about its author. Miss Jemima was a complete mystery for many years. Her diary was written solely as “a record of the wanderings” of the Club and was never really intended for mass public consumption, so it effectively disappeared as soon as it was written. No one remembered its existence and things would have remained that way without Herr Hitler and Herr Göring: it was one of their raids on London that led to the two books later being found in a blitzed warehouse. However, the author was known only as Miss Jemima until 1963, when the journal was published for the centenary celebrations of the tour. Then the connection was finally made, thanks to the ensuing publicity and to author Anne Vernon, who was researching a book about a prominent Yorkshire family. Among the many papers were some letters written in the summer of 1863 during a trip to Switzerland, and a quick visit to Thomas Cook’s archives clarified that it was the same trip as in the diary. Miss Jemima gained a surname – and a life.

  Jemima Anne Morrell was born in Selby, Yorkshire, on 7 March 1832, the daughter of Robert and Anna Morrell. Her father was a bank manager in the town and they were a well-to-do middle-class family with enough money for a cook, a housemaid and private schools for the children. The 1841 census shows that Jemima had three siblings: Robert (aged 11), Anna (6) and the youngest William (then aged 4); by the 1861 census, Anna had died and Jemima was the only one still living with her parents. So at the time of her great adventure, she was 31, single and an aspiring artist – and, clearly, an adventurous spirit.

  Although Jemima’s father could have afforded to pay for the Swiss trip, the journal makes it clear that it was in fact her brother William, a banker like his father, who did so, “having to his surprise come into possession of a very small fortune through a literary venture on the delightful subject of Income Tax”. And it’s that brother, William Wilberforce Morrell, who is the Mr William listed above as the Paymaster of the Junior United Alpine Club. It was his letters back to “My dear father” during the trip that helped solve the mystery of the journal’s author, and they provide a second eyewitness account, albeit much briefer, of that trip. Some of his comments are deliciously dry, such as the one from Geneva: “The highest mountain we have climbed is to the top of the hotel, fourth landing.” Others are interestingly mundane: “Will Mother enquire of Mrs Mark-Hutchinson the size of her gloves she wishes me to get her?” And they are all signed in style: “with dear love from us both, I remain your affectionate son, W.W.M.”

  William Morrell and Jemima Morrell

  Of the other Club members little is known, except that “Miss Sarah” was the Morrells’ cousin, Sarah Ayres. It is interesting to note that women outnumbered men by four to three, and Miss Jemima herself wrote that she only “consented to join, if suitably accompanied”. That was one factor in the early success of Cook’s Tours: single women could travel as part of a group, without any fear for their safety or damage to their honour. It was both practical and proper. The days of chaperones and restrictions were over.

  Jemima Morrell and her parents in their garden

  The Junior United Alpine Club set off on their great adventure with over 120 others on Friday, 26 June 1863, having got up at 4am in London to catch a train south. I set off at 7.30am but 148 years and 28 days later, with only four people joining me, three of them dead: Miss Jemima, Mr Cook, Mr John Murray, publisher of travel guidebooks, and my mother, Jenny. Both trips started with a train journey to Newhaven, although theirs was considerably longer and harder than mine.

  Train travel in 1863 was popular but not particularly pleasant. Carriages were wooden and divided into small compartments, with no corridor running between them and no connecting doors. Each compartment had its own external door, meaning that the guard had to use outdoor footboards to move down the train. There was no heating and the dim lighting came from a single oil lamp per compartment; the windows did open, although that usually let in all the steam, soot, grit and sparks bellowing out of the engine. First class was relatively luxurious, with plushly upholstered seats, foot warmers for hire and only six people to a compartment. Third class was more squashed, with more compartments per carriage and more people per compartment, which were fitted with hard wooden bench seats and a roof; early third-class carriages were open, and even in 1863 Thomas Cook was still at pains to advertise that his British trips were in “covered carriages”. Second class was usually better, with upholstery as a minimum. Of course prices reflected the level of comfort: in 1863 Cook advertised a return trip from Lincoln to London for 18 shillings (or about £70 today) in first but only 9 shillings in the “covered car”; the 120-mile jou
rney took six hours each way no matter which class you travelled in.

  The padding in first class also helped absorb the shocks and jolts of rail travel. Carriages typically only had four wheels, were badly sprung, travelled on imperfect tracks, had handbrakes and were linked by chains rather than buffers. None of that made for a seamless, bumpless ride. In effect, the carriages were like a few stagecoaches jammed together and clattering along as one unit. No wonder some passengers behaved as they had done in a coach: riding on the roof, sticking their head out the window and trying to disembark while still moving.

  Furthermore, crossing the Channel has never been easier than it is today. You can go under it by train, over it by plane (if you must) or still do it the old-fashioned way, by boat. While Thomas Cook had only that last option in terms of transport, there was more than one port on offer. He chose the one that was closest to London and also served by railway companies with which he could negotiate favourable terms. The direct train connections on both sides of the sea made the Newhaven–Dieppe route a feasible option, but the overall journey was not short. Although the 4½-hour boat trip was only 30 minutes longer than today, it had to be endured as part of an 18-hour journey from London to Paris – a tiring day in any century. Newhaven might have been less than attractive, but in economic terms it was convenient and cost-effective; aesthetics would have to wait until France.

  Miss Jemima wasn’t the only one to be less than charitable about the Sussex port. Eleven years of ever-increasing traffic seemingly did little to improve Newhaven, given that an 1874 Thomas Cook guidebook described it as “A place where there is nothing to see and nobody to see it.” That description could still apply today; in fact, as I walk along the straggling High Street I begin to think it’s a bit on the generous side. Between the pound shops and bookies are empty windows and To Let signs. It’s a depressing place that clings on to existence thanks to the harbour, which itself needs a bit of TLC. It’s hard to imagine a less appealing port in Britain or a less inspiring spot to start a holiday. No wonder Newhaven’s biggest claim to fame is that it’s where Lord Lucan’s car was found when he disappeared without trace in 1974.

  Newhaven no longer has a direct train service from London, so to be at the docks for the morning ferry we have to stay the night before. It is surprisingly hard to find a room for a Saturday night in July, so perhaps everyone else is also staying just long enough to catch the ferry to France. With no room at the Premier Inn, which was booked out weeks ahead, we have to decamp a few miles along the coast to Newhaven’s alter ego, Seaford. This is Beauty to Newhaven’s Beast, with some of the charm that its nearby ugly sister lacks; most impressively, it sits beside the finest coastal landscape in southern England, the Seven Sisters. Forget Dover, these white cliffs are the ones worthy of a song, looking like they’re brushed every day with Colgate.

  There’s not enough time for the beautiful walk up onto the cliffs and along to Britain’s No. 1 suicide spot, Beachy Head, so we make do with a bracing stroll along the shingly seafront, past the painted beach huts and a solitary angler, then retire to the B&B.

  Before we set off in earnest, this is a good time to introduce my other travelling companions properly, in chronological order. First, Thomas Cook. Born on 22 November 1808, he was many things before becoming a travel agent extraordinaire. He started as an apprentice cabinet maker, then was an itinerant Baptist preacher, became a husband and father, and was finally a determined advocate of temperance (not drinking alcohol, to you and me). It was his opposition to drinking that led him to organise temperance tours by train, the first being for 500 people along the 11 miles from Leicester to Loughborough in July 1841. Cook’s road after that trip wasn’t always easy, not just because Loughborough isn’t exactly the dream destination with which to start a travel agency. He went bankrupt in 1846, though the cause of the collapse remains unclear, but bounced back quickly with tours to Scotland, the Lake District and Wales. He followed that with immensely popular excursions to see the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London: 150,000 people travelled with him to view the gigantic Crystal Palace with its 300,000 panes of glass.

  That success coincided with the launch of The Excursionist, the company newspaper that sold for a penny and was Cook’s primary form of sales and marketing. In modern terms, it was part travel brochure (but without the glossy photos), part travel blog. The size of a broadsheet newspaper, its pages were crammed with details of forthcoming trips, reports of previous ones, readers’ letters, train timetables and adverts for anything and everything a traveller might need. The stage was set for Cook to go overseas.

  In August 1855, Thomas Cook thought that the British public couldn’t wait to explore Belgium and the Rhine, so he organised four routes in an ambitious first foray onto the Continent. In his engrossing biography of Cook, Piers Brendon remarks that for the customers the trip was a success. They were charmed by Brussels and enjoyed the romance of the Rhine, though they were less impressed with the inferior German trains and open gutters in Cologne (one participant claimed to have identified 73 different smells, presumably none of them pleasant). While a second tour followed, both “involved much cost of labour, time and money and both were attended with a loss”, as Cook himself wrote. Even so, he proposed more trips the following year, with the proviso that a minimum of 50 passengers paid a deposit. In the event the tours never took place, and it was back to square one, and Blighty, for Cook.

  An official portrait of Thomas Cook, taken in 1863

  Despite the financial failure, he had learned from his European misadventures: the need for bilingual guides, the unpredictability of hotel standards, the problems of transporting people and luggage abroad en masse. He was amassing knowledge and experience that would be useful in the future, not least, as Brendon so neatly puts it, “He could advise English tourists to equip themselves with soap and tea.” Such advice is still followed today by many Brits abroad, although the soap has probably been replaced by Marmite in many cases.

  Undaunted, Cook carried on with domestic tours while waiting for the next opportunity to dazzle the masses with dreams of travelling overseas. That came in May 1861 with his £1 return ticket to Paris, in third-class carriages. What is incredible is not that he made a loss, again, but that 1673 people went with him on that sixday trip. Imagine the extraordinary challenge of organising a tour for so many people at the same time, not least because many of them would never have left their own county, let alone the country. It was another milestone along Cook’s bumpy road to becoming a household name with a clear aim of affordable quality.

  Nevertheless, it wasn’t all plain sailing. An editorial in The Times foamed against “excursion mania” while, most damaging of all, Cook’s successful tours to Scotland came to an abrupt end when the Scottish train companies declined to renew his cheap tickets. By 1863, he needed to find the Big New Thing if he were to survive. And it came in the shape of a small notice in The Excursionist on 6 June, the one quoted at the beginning of this chapter. Switzerland was to be the new Scotland, although with bigger mountains and better cheese. Cook took a chance on the Alps being a big enough draw to entice the British off their island, and he was right. That first announcement brought a “deluge of letters of enquiry”. Less than three weeks later, the journey began.

  The first Murray Handbook came into the world four years after Miss Jemima, with the alarmingly general title of A Handbook for Travellers on the Continent, although in fact it only covered “Holland, Belgium, Prussia, and Northern Germany, and Along the Rhine from Holland to Switzerland”. Individual countries had to wait a bit longer, so the first edition of Switzerland (with the Alps of Piedmont and Savoy lumped in with it) appeared in 1838. The series was the brainchild of John Murray III, grandson of the original John Murray who had started the publishing house in 1768. The company also published Jane Austen, Charles Darwin and Lord Byron, but it was for the trademark red guidebooks that Murray became famous. It was the English Baedeker (or maybe Baedeker was the
German Murray; the two men were once collaborators rather than competitors).

  Whereas Baedeker’s guide to Switzerland first appeared in English only in 1863, by the time Miss Jemima took Murray’s Swiss guide with her it was in its ninth edition and was full of advice on the strong sun – “Most travellers in the upper regions lose the skin from every exposed part of the face and neck” – travel – “[By railway] is now the quickest mode of reaching Berne from Lucerne, and takes about 5 hours” – and drinks – “Swiss wine is generally condemned”. There were practical tips, too – “The Englishman should present his name printed or very legibly written, as our pronunciation is frequently unintelligible to foreigners” – and words of caution – “The luggage arrangements on the Swiss railways are if possible more inconvenient than on the French or German railways; and there is a system of extortion for conveyance to and from the stations which the traveller should be on his guard against.” In essence, such guides were a cheaper replacement for the courier, who up until then had been an essential part of a foreign trip; he found hotels, organised carriages and was generally useful, if expensive.

  Miss Jemima went with her brother; I am going with my mother. It was mostly down to her that our family holidays were spent driving across Europe, usually in search of the perfect picnic spot. No matter which route we took, the goal was always the same, which isn’t a surprise given that her mother, my grandmother, was Italian. My memories of childhood revolve around that annual dose of organised chaos known as Italy. As for my father, he always seemed happy to be there, although I suspect that, given the choice, he might at some point have been content to settle for two weeks in Cornwall. But by bundling their three kids into the car every Easter and setting off across the Channel, both my parents sowed the seeds of my love of travel and dislike of cars.