Follow the Man from Cook's
The Thomas Cook Story. By John Pudney. (Michael Joseph. 15s.) THOMAS COOK was one of my boyhood's heroes—almost taking rank with George Henty, Charles Kingsley because of The Water Babies and a few other deities—for did he not transport me, in imagination at least, to all parts of the globe with which my stamp- collection had made me familiar ? Cook first became a reality to me at the age of eight when my favourite uncle returned from Palestine and Egypt where the Cook hierachy had conducted him in comfort up the Nile and on a camping expedition through the Holy Land.
The author of the Cook story has succeeded in conjuring from my storehouse of memories of early travels in the 'nineties a succession of pictures which have made me yearn for those happy times when travel was a comparatively easy affair ; with the exception of Russia, Turkey and Asia Minor no passports were required in that en- lightened era. Indulgent parents permitted a boy in his early teens to indulge his Wanderlust and carry out all the necessary negotiations on their behalf with the local branch of Cook's in Dublin. There it was that we obtained tickets that took us, across Russia from the banks of the Neva to Batum on the Black Sea and the Bosphorus. In addition to issuing travel tickets Cook's did much more. For the daily sum of ten shillings per person they supplied " magic " coupons—printed on green paper, I think— which provided hotel-accommodation, including bath and the three principal meals, for each twenty-four hours at a chain of hostelries across Europe. Everything was included except the tips.
Before the turn of the century Cook's were all-powerful, and the representatives of the firm were ever at hand to make easy the traveller's progress. I recall our arrival by sea in the waters of the Golden Horn at Constantinople from Tsarist Russia—the year was 1899—and great was the joy in our hearts at the red ensign on the Cook launch. Where Messrs. Cook found their team of drago- men and interpreters I do not know ; but for two or three weeks Monsieur Ferdinand de Paruta, courteous and unruffled, speaking with ease every known Levantine language, escorted us safely through parts of Asia Minor never before visited by Englishwomen— our party consisted of my parents and my sister—and we felt very forlorn when we bade him farewell on the quay at Smyrna.
Travel in 1895 was a pleasant experience for the gregarious ; in most hotels the tourists sat down at long tables with the other guests for table d'hi5te meals. I well recall a first meeting with Americans, much travelled school-girls at the Hague with their parents ; and the envy they excited in me when nonchalantly they discusSed the attractions of the dozen or so capital cities they had visited on their European tour. To the first dozen years of the twentieth century belong a whole series of further memories of travel in America, Australasia and Africa, also uncle; the auspices of Thomas Cook. I defy the elderly former globe-trotter, now chained to his native land, to lay aside Mr. John Pudney's book, once begun, till he has finished it. He will certainly long for " the good old times " when Cook's magic carpet was able to cone' you to " anywhere you wish,' ' and, with a good supply of golden sovereigns—a currency that opened most doors—happy indeed was your 10t.
EVELYN WRENCH.
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