From the Times of London Archives: Thomas Cook’s Lost Dispatch

The latest in an ongoing series of “travel classics” from the Times of London’s seemingly bottomless vaults? Thomas Cook‘s six dispatches from a ‘round-the-world trip in the early 1870s. One of the just-published pieces, written from the Red Sea, never appeared in print before. Why? As we learn now from an editor, in those pre-email days, “[I]t did not reach London until the Parliamentary Season, when it was impossible to find room in the paper.” Better late than never, right?

In the others, Cook’s thoughts on American drinking etiquette, from a letter sent in January 1873, caught my eye:

“I saw at the dinner of the Grand Central Hotel, New York, about 200 ladies and gentlemen seated at tables, and I could only see a single glass containing beer, and not a bottle of wine. I asked an intelligent waiter what was thought of such exceptional drinkers. He replied, ‘They are either English or come from the south.’”

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