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Notes of a Journey from Cornhill to Great Cairo
William Makepeace Thackeray

Info

• Basis
  • 1846 from a 1844 journey from a company that began to offer packages in 1842, the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (the P & O)
  • “a land and sea tour” of Malta, Athens, Smyrna, Constantinople, Beirut, Jaffa, Alexandria
  • Thackeray invited so they could get publicity
  • would take a few months
• Cruises
  • Very expensive until the 1930s; only the rich could afford them
  • Middle class would make do with fake ones: smaller ships go to only a few near places and aren’t well-appointed
  • ship as “floating hotel”
  • 1833: prearranged itinerary takes 80 passengers from Naples to Istanbul…people were constantly fighting.
    • http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O225-cruiseship.html “two duels are yet to be fought, when the voyage terminates” says one diarist
• Definitions
  • cruise ship: where you have destinations that are prearranged, although the timing might be off
    • you spend more time on these and so they are luxurious
    • passenger cruise ships begin to be made purpose-built between the wars
  • the same ship could be used for both, as ocean liner and as cruise ship
  • cruising more invested in by shipping companies when airlines are popularized b/c the experience of journeying itself could be an excuse to keep them in business

Stuff from Writers, Readers, and Reputations by Philip Waller

• Hall Caine (writer) popularized Isle of Man around turn of century, just as Thackeray had done
  • also ocean liners that are scheduled to arrive somewhere at certain times. Excursionist begin landing on the isle just to meet him, he’s a celeb.
  • Wrote guide book for the steamship company serving the Isle.
• Carlyle’s reaction to Thackeray: compares is “to the practice of a blind fiddler going to and fro on a penny-boat to Scotland, and playing tunes for the passengers for halfpence.” b/c he accepted a free passage in return for his book (or more specifically the laudatory preface)
• Douglas Sladen writes On the Cars and Off for the president of the railway in return for free fares for him and his children 1895
  • And his Sicily, the New Winter Resort 1904
  • White Star Steamship Company bought copies of his Italian guidebook for their passengers going from America to Italy
• Not all artists were happy about such publicity: Tennyson says when visitors pitch camp opposite his house, “It’s horrible the way they stare” 1884
• The Iberia, autumn 1844

Content

• Preface
  • The company is noble, the captain affable and courageous
  • Neat: he says that for authors “bullion is more rare a commodity than paper” so asks for him to accept this book rather than the more traditional tankard or bullion or piece of metal that passengers give captains at the end of the voyage.
  • Would he go? worries about being able to afford it, but he’s at a dinner and they keep drinking wine and soon enough he’s enthusiastic, and they say I bet you can get your passage as a present
  • Says that they would see as much as Ulysses did but it wouldn’t take ten years. What a self-conscious literary one-upsmanship. “back in London by Lord Mayor’s Day” thank god.
  • “easy…charming…profitable”
  • especially recommends it to young men fresh from college: that is, he is recommending it as a replacement for the grand tour!
• Rest of book
  • Mostly a regular book of travel
  • One chapter for each leg of the trip: Smyrna, Jerusalem, etc; with commentaries on religion, descriptions of characters, sightseeing, storytelling, tales of rulers and kings, entertainment descriptions, songs, scene-painting; all interpreted within recognizable European literary heritage (Homer, Keats, and a host of contemporary writers forgotten today), shy local beauties, English and French outposts, variety, yet a consistent training of the land to its ancient history rather than its current history, a harem, Jewish history taking a comfortable three pages
  • Constantly interpreting it as a picture, which ends in opportunities for ejaculation ! !!
  • He asks the reader DIRECTLY, wouldn’t you like to be lolling around doing nothing like these Greeks? trading your tophat for a crown of roses?
  • Beirut has civilization along the English embassy: first he mentions its commodities, then its politeness and fashions
  • “A Ball on Board” when a Turk comes in ask what was the meaning of their fireworks, they seize him and make him join the dance, which he joins in “wonder” and ends up drinking champagne