Jemima Morrell
It was not only old Switzerland hands who joined the group; it also included a gifted writer. Thirty-one year old Jemima Morrell wrote an interesting report on the trip, which made a very entertaining read, and revealed its author to be a highly educated person with a good sense of humour and a talent for precise observation. The daughter of a vicar in central England, she was doubtless a typical representative of that class of Victorian society in Britain which in the mid 19th century started to be able to afford to travel and which seized on the opportunity: people who had (recently) become prosperous, like country squires, members of the liberal professions (professors, engineers, manufacturers, artists) and people engaged in trade (merchants, bankers) who travelled either because they were keen on culture or simply for pleasure.
A sharp eye looks at a foreign land
Jemima Morrell's account offers a detailed description of the journey from London via Paris and Geneva to Chamonix, Lucerne and Pontarlier. The writer gives a sparkling picture not only of the means of transport used on the different stages of the trip, but also of the hotels where the group stayed, plus the people providing them with their services – and no insolent porter and no bad innkeeper was safe from her witty pen. Her account is a snapshot of the tourist infrastructure in the summer of 1863.