Thomas Cook Read online

  Thomas knew that his life was, and always would be, hard. It could have been worse. Inadequate though his pitiful wage of a penny a day was, labouring made him strong and there was occasionally a surplus of vegetables to take home. But one legacy from this job was a deep wound to his right leg, after falling on broken glass, which would cause him severe pain in old age. The village of Melbourne was on the edge of the coalfields, where injuries were horrific, but his mother always protected him from going down the mines. Some village boys and girls were already part of this grim workforce. At least labouring meant that Thomas worked in the fresh air, not in dark tunnels.

  Factories, hungry for fuel, consumed coal at tons every second, so coal mines were a combination of rabbit warrens and the pits of Hades. The mines caused the tall trees to disappear, felled in the haste to find more and more pit props. In parts of Derbyshire and Leicestershire more wealth now came from what lay beneath the soil than from what sprouted from it. As factory chimneys and dreary rows of red-brick streets increased, fewer fleeces were spun in homes. It is sometimes said that Thomas was employed on the Melbourne estate. This confusion arose because Robey, like the majority of farmers in the area, was a tenant or sub-tenant of the Melbourne family.

  Traditionally many wage-earners and piece-workers in Melbourne had combed and spun wool and pulled threads through stocking-frames, but new machines in factories were forcing them to put away spinning wheels and wooden frames and take3 up the intricate art of blonde lace-making, even though it did not pay as well. These part-machine-made laces, which were finished off by hand, were used for furnishing fabric, long trailing veils and dresses.

  Britain, fast becoming the workshop of the world, improved its trade, but not conditions and wages. As a result, agricultural labourers repeatedly packed up and went off to find jobs in towns or to emigrate to the United States or Australia.4 Others, found guilty of crimes – some serious, others petty or political – were torn from their families and sent as convicts to Australia.

  There was no disappointment when George IV’s coronation was deferred owing to the trial of the ‘vilest wretch on earth’, Princess Caroline, whom he proceeded to divorce on the grounds of alleged adultery on her journey to the Holy Land. The postponed coronation of 1822 coincided with Thomas’s new job. When fourteen years old, he swapped scythes and spades for a hammer, chisel and saw and started a five-year apprenticeship as a carpenter and wood-turner to John Pegg – a prominent name in the annals of the Melbourne Baptist church. Tradition dictated that such trainees lived with their employer, so he moved in with Pegg. It is often said that Pegg was his uncle, married to his mother’s sister, Anne, but Thomas, in his reminiscences, never said that he was a relation. He just states that the John Pegg was married to ‘Mary’. Years later Thomas described Pegg’s drinking in the Temperance Mirror: ‘The turner sought his relaxation and enjoyment night after night in a snug corner in the village public-house, where much of his time was wasted and his means so dissipated that, notwithstanding a good business, he lived and died a poor man.’5

  Again the labour and hours were arduous. One of his challenges was splitting ash planks with a handsaw into pieces to make farm-stool shafts. In this job, as in his last, the man in charge of Thomas was more than partial to a jar or two of strong brew, leaving Thomas with extra burdens when he was drunk or hungover. Thomas’s horror of drink dates from this experience, but there is also the possibility that perhaps he, too, at some early stage of his life may also have been inclined to drinking, and, as said earlier, that it may also have caused his grandfather to fall down the stairs.

  Much traffic passed through Melbourne. Since ancient times its inns – the White Lion, Three Tuns, Sir Frances Burdett, New Inn, Bull’s Head, King’s Head, Lamb, Melbourne Arms, the Swan and the Old Pack-Horse Inn – had been a stopping place for coaches and the pack horses on the ‘miry and almost impassable’6 highway between Derby and Leicester.

  Of all the residents of the Lamb family who lived at Melbourne Hall, Lady Caroline Lamb was the most gossiped about. In 1825 it was the house to which she was banished because she had been causing trouble in London. Her affair with Byron had ended in 1813, but she was still ‘passionately infatuated’ with him and behaved in such a notorious manner that she became the most famous jilted lover of the nineteenth century. The Lamb family wanted William to commit her to a lunatic asylum. Instead, they sent her for a short time to Melbourne Hall. Lady Caroline would be seen walking out of the gates into the village itself.

  The villagers were accustomed to seeing her in the muddy lanes wearing thin shoes, strange dresses and weird feathered hats, leftovers from the days when she had been part of the haut monde. She did not mind walking in the rain, getting wet in thin clothes or being splashed with mud. When children made fun of her, jeering and laughing, she snapped at them and lost her temper. One of the visitors during her banishment to Melbourne was the Duke of Devonshire. When his magnificent coach passed through the village, little did Thomas foresee that in just over twenty years this kindly man would impinge on his life.

  An entry in the Minute Book of the Melbourne Baptist church for 18 December 1825 states that Thomas and three others ‘were proposed for baptism and fellowship’.7 The minister at the time was the Revd H. Joseph Foulkes Winks. An articulate pulpit man and prolific printer who enjoyed chewing on his pipe, he became a father figure to Thomas. Indeed, it is difficult to overestimate his influence.

  Thomas looked up to this articulate minister, who opened up books and ideas to him. As the overriding ambition of Winks was to spread ‘the word’, he had set up a press in a room over a granary owned by John Earp’s family.8 Magazines and books were now the vehicles in which to disseminate religious news and views. Winks earnestly wanted to supply Baptist Sunday schools and churches with cheap literature, Christian magazines and books for children.

  It seems that Thomas picked up the rudiments of printing – the key to his success – from Winks. There is no other time when he could have studied the complicated trade9 and learnt to proof-read, something helped by his diligence at spelling. Trainees, ‘printers’ devils’, were given the most unpalatable tasks. Their duties included placing each metal letter of every line either with their fingers or instruments similar to tweezers. In contrast to the delicate job of setting up the type was the pulling and heaving of the mighty presses, returning foundry type to their cases, cleaning up the mess and carrying huge stacks of printed paper.

  Winks’s kindness then extended in many directions. Horrified at the sight of beaten horses straining and slipping, often in vain, to pull loads along icy roads or up steep hills, he championed animal rights. Already, in 1824, what was to become the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (the ‘Royal’ was bestowed by Victoria in 1840) was backed by both Wilberforce and later by Lord Ashley, better known by his later title, the Earl of Shaftesbury, and for campaigning for legislation to prohibit the worst forms of child labour and cruelty to animals. Winks was particularly active in helping to abolish cock fighting (banned in 1849), bull running (banned in 1835), dog fighting and badger baiting. He earned the nickname ‘Gibbet Parson Winks’, as he campaigned against the use of the gibbet – the wooden structure from which criminals were hung. Yet, despite all his good works, he was a bit of a dandy. Ten years later, when he had his best coat stolen, the ultra-Tory Leicester Herald remarked that it had been made in Birmingham for fashion but that his waistcoat had been made in Leicester for cheapness. Another newspaper in Leicester, the Herald, was equally critical, commenting that, after Winks had been elected to the council, he ‘struts past his old acquaintances with his beak pointing upwards, like a bantam cock’.

  FIVE

  A Long Way from the River Jordan

  It was a long way from the Jordan. In the iron-cold stillness of that February morning in Lent 1826, clusters of friends and relations waited in groups outside the Baptist chapel in Melbourne. Three months earlier, just after his seventeenth
birthday, Thomas had made the decision to go through the ritual of total immersion.

  Thomas was small. His most arresting features were his serene but dreamy expression, ready smile, bushy eyebrows and dark brown eyes that were once described as ‘black and piercing’. His thick dark hair showed no signs of its future balding, nor were there indications of his becoming ‘that fussy little bald man’,1 as he was described by a detractor when in his sixties. His physical stamina and will to persevere, which would later enable him to escort tourists up hills and mountains with ease, were not yet obvious. Despite his restless and fidgety nature, he cultivated a talent for listening – but never for too long. This, together with an ability to remember minute details, would keep him in good stead all his life. Constantly on the go, he was continually doing something.

  It is not difficult to imagine the scene there in the middle of England that chilly February morning. Thomas, like the orator and the audience, was transported far away to a sunny New Testament scene beside the Jordan, below Jerusalem, where Jesus was baptised. Inside the chapel, many of the congregation found that it reminded them of the ritual of immersion. In the silence they imagined the same sandy stretch where John the Baptist had baptised Jesus Christ. After Jesus’ resurrection he commanded his disciples to baptise in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28: 19–20). Because there is no life without water, water is central in the customs of many religions. The Jordan is mentioned on 170 occasions in the Old Testament, but only about fifteen times in the New Testament, where it refers to the activities of John the Baptist, Jesus and the disciples.

  The Jordan is distinct from any other river on earth. There are many rivers which are more impressive, but the Jordan was the place of the spiritual awakening of Jesus, which led to Christianity. At the baptism of Jesus, John the Baptist had said, ‘Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’ (John 1: 29).

  The uniqueness of the Jordan for geographers is due to it being one of the few major waterways which do not mingle with the vast sheets of water which spread tentacles of liquid around the earth. It is unlike the waters of the Trent, which like all British rivers empty into the sea. Rising from many headstreams and mountains of melting snows in Syria and Lebanon, it flows through the oval-shaped blue Sea of Galilee (Lake Tiberias), then narrows through a funnel, squeezing its water in a valley flanked by two clay banks. It then meanders south for 200 miles. Just before its waters reach the Dead Sea, the plains turn into grotesquely shaped hills of desolation, then the waters flow through Qasir al-Yahud, a West Bank area just north of the Dead Sea where John the Baptist urged his followers to turn away from their sins.

  The next dramatic landmark is below the Wadi Qelt, the Wilderness of Jesus’ temptation. This rocky valley, five miles long and 100 yards wide at the bottom, is hemmed in by walls of rock rising 700 sheer feet. One side is broken by a raised area, fertile and green, with a Roman aqueduct flowing along it. The other side is now dominated by the Greek Orthodox monastery of St George of Koziba and St John, founded in 420, which clings dramatically to a rock face. Outside, the monastery is alive with rock doves and Mediterranean swifts hurling themselves out of the numerous eaves, filled with festoons of hanging bats. The monastery houses many relics, including part of John the Baptist’s skull. Lastly, the river empties into the Dead Sea, the lowest spot on earth. The water goes nowhere. Nor does it ever flood. In the torrid heat and weird geological mysteries of the Jordan Valley, 1,286 feet below sea level, the water evaporates, leaving salt behind.

  There in Melbourne’s Baptist chapel, which exhibited the best proportions of Georgian architecture, Thomas and his fellow worshippers stared at the Baptistery in front of the pulpit, a deep bath sunk below the surface and usually hidden by the hinged covering boards.2 It had been filled with water. In front of him was the vision of the Jordan’s crystal-clear waters 4,000 miles away. Thomas, steeped in the old ‘hell-fire’ school of the Nonconformist faith, readied himself to plunge, fully clothed, into the icy water.

  All eyes were on Winks. His slight build, fine features and posture made him appear taller and more important than an ambitious former draper’s assistant. Born in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, in 1792, after the French Revolution, he had somehow managed to get some extra education and become a Baptist lay preacher at Killingholme. Then aged thirty-one, he made his mark on Melbourne. His acquired learning did not veil his lowly childhood. Reciting from the Letters of St Paul, he3 delivered his message with a fierce eloquence: ‘As Christ died and was buried, and rose again the third day . . . the rising again out of the water declares us to be risen to a new life . . .’.

  Winks’s message was full of hope. Minute by minute Thomas’s faith was becoming more intense with the approach of the act of immersion. Slowly, he took off his coat and velvet cap and readied himself to become ‘newly risen to a new life’. Lowering himself, he entered the depths. The day was icy. It had snowed only a few weeks earlier. Already outside there were a few snowdrops, violets and wood anemones to herald the end of winter. Soon the cowslips would follow.

  As though inducted into some infinite scheme, with his head submerged, holding his nose and mouth closed, Thomas was at one with the water. This was the moment when, for a few seconds, by re-enacting a ritual, Baptists shared a precise experience with Jesus and John. By going through the ceremony he was keeping alive a tradition which had not stopped for eighteen centuries. On that Sunday morning Thomas was immersed three times as Winks recited, ‘I baptise you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.’ Then the words of Mark 1: 4–12 came booming, filling the chapel.

  Shivering and gasping for air, Thomas scrambled dripping from the bath. ‘Glory be to thee, O God! Glory to thee!’ He had been saved.

  The bystanders broke into a rousing hymn. Whether the organ had at that time been installed is not known. Many chapels were then austere and more often than not devoid of musical instruments. Silence and a brief eerie gloom descended. The ritual allowed Thomas to feel that he was an integral part of an ancient tradition. He belonged. The nullity, the void, were gone. From that very moment he never ceased to be an ‘earnest, active, devoted young Christian’.4

  Thomas would have to stay in wet clothes until the congregation broke bread and mouthed more prayers.

  A journey from Derbyshire to the Jordan would be roughly 3,000 miles as a crow flies, but 4,000 miles by boat via the Atlantic and Mediterranean to the nearest port, Jaffa. No ships went directly to the Holy Land, as passengers had to transfer from liners to smaller boats at Alexandria or Constantinople. A further two or three days by donkey or horse would then have to be endured on unpaved roads that were impassable when the winter rains came. High costs, too, not to mention the discomfort of such an expedition, added to the feeling of distance. In any case, there was no longer the slightest need for Christians to make pilgrimages, as people were told to look for the Heavenly Jerusalem and not seek its rival, the Earthly Jerusalem. Salvation could be found within.

  Thomas’s visits to the Trent increased. When he could sneak away, well before dawn, he would tiptoe from his warm bed and go either to its banks, or to its brook, which meanders through Melbourne. He would sit for hours under the low branches of the mighty alders with their black fissured trunks, which leaned over the deep waters of the river. The muddy banks usually smelled swampy. Fishing, though, was a sport of the rich. Fishing rights were the prerogative of landowners, who frequently leased out the rights, so most stretches of the river were out of bounds. Poaching laws limited the lower classes to hunting rabbit, hare, wildfowl and, in some places, fish. Frequently, Thomas would start work at two or three in the morning, so he could have a few hours to go fishing late in the afternoon.

  The fast-moving currents pulled the water in wondrous patterns. In the summer, Thomas would sometimes join the local boys and swans drifting in the water, as he enjoyed bathing, but he was not a powerful swimmer. Luckily, there were the rope-like stems of the ivy above
the protruding roots of the gnarled old alders offering their branches as life-savers to help them ashore.

  SIX

  Lay Preacher

  These years in Melbourne of self-education moulded Thomas’s personality. Elizabeth opened an enterprising ‘village shop’ at Quick Close selling books, probably religious ones, and earthenware. She had been illiterate when married, so becoming a bookseller was a surprise. Either she had acquired the ability to read herself since Thomas’s birth, or, more likely, Thomas was the force behind this enterprise. It may have been an outlet for some of the pamphlets printed by Winks, who left shortly before the shop opened.

  Winks moved to Loughborough, a picturesque town in the heart of England, renowned for hosiery, shoes, church bells, bell-ringing and the world’s largest bell foundry. Lower-priced machines allowed him to start an up-to-date printing works and become an official printer to the General Baptist Association. Large sections of the public were becoming literate, and a new era of information was born, together with popular romances, magazines, newspapers, religious tracts and Bible stories. The question of whether Thomas followed his mentor to Loughborough remains unanswered. The Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911 edition), and Fraser Rae’s book on the Cook firm published in 1891, both say that Thomas was a printer at Loughborough, but this is not mentioned elsewhere.

  Having cast his grandfather Thomas Perkins as hero, Thomas was keen to perpetuate his work by spreading the Word. The vision of this proselytising preacher had been reinforced by Winks and Elizabeth. But Thomas lacked the qualifications to be ordained. Criticisms about the lowly status and illiteracy of preachers and their unedifying noises in the pulpit had led to higher standards for the education of Baptist ministers. Despite improvements during the Evangelical Revival, in 1811 Lord Sidmouth had complained of dissenting ministers who had not been able to read and write. He tried to put through a bill requiring Nonconformists to produce a ‘certificate of fitness’ from six reputable householders recommending a man as fit to preach. The outcry was so loud that Sidmouth was forced to withdraw his bill, but it had drawn attention to the need to raise standards. Despite this, in 1828, when the Midland General Baptist Church wanted to put fresh efforts into home missions, Thomas’s lack of schooling was overlooked.