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Travels with Baedeker
while Cook priced his twenty-one-day Swiss tour at seventeen guineas. 57 Jemima
Morrell paid a total of £19 17s. 6d. for the journey. If one accepts the technical
economic definition of the middle classes as all income-tax payers with annual
incomes above £100, these were still considerable sums – but evidently not too
much to pay for the experience of a lifetime. Anecdotal evidence suggests that two
groups availed themselves disproportionately of the opportunity to travel: teachers
and the clergy. These were not just people with sufficient vacations, but they also
acted as prolific cultural multiplicators. They were the affirming witnesses to the
“majesty” of the Mont Blanc, and the gloomy heroics of the prisoner of Chillon.
If we add to this the readership of the flood of travel journals written for private
and public circulation, which referred to the guidebook with such striking
closeness, then the cultural significance of the guidebook for middle-class
sentiment becomes evident. 58
Through the promotion of foreign, and the facilitation of domestic, travel, the
guidebook assisted in creating a national traveling culture which in turn contributed
to a greater sense of national identity. 59 It is striking how travel in the second
half of the nineteenth century acquired a British, as opposed to “English,” flavor.
Travelers abroad availed themselves of the English Murray in conjunction with
the Scottish Bradshaw’s railway guide. More importantly, the growth of a British
national perspective from the 1840s may have been expressed through the establishment
of Balmoral as a royal residence, and the “Britishness” of Gladstone, 60
but it acquired a popular dimension in that decade not least through the growth of
popular travel. Thomas Cook’s first commercial tour was to the Menai Straits, and
this was followed by the organization of conducted tours in which he carried
thousands of visitors every year to Wales and Scotland. 61 Aided and facilitated as
always by the proliferation of guidebooks to these areas, the Celtic fringe of Great
Britain (with the notable exception of Ireland) became experienced and known to
an unprecedented degree. 62 Travelers to these places did note differences to
England, of course, but these parts were clearly distinct from the European
continent through their closeness to England in religion, government, and landscape.
Without a doubt, the growth of “domestic” travel and the guidebook were
crucial factors in the spread of a middle-class national identity which, in a century
of peace with Britain’s continental neighbors, served to highlight the communion
of England, Scotland, and Wales, and their common distinctiveness vis-à-vis the
continent. 63
One of the most striking phenomena of middle-class travel abroad is that of the
woman traveler. From the start, Thomas Cook advised “unprotected females” to
join his tours, and throughout, more women than men took advantage of his
vacation offers. 64 Travel offered to women the opportunity to escape the confines
of Victorian domesticity and experience new horizons. This encouraged Emily
Lowe, an experienced traveler, to state – not without some exaggeration – that
“The only use of a gentleman in traveling is to look after the luggage.” 65
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