page_title: Thomas Edward Wilkinson
section_title: Travel writing
hierarchical_section_title: Thomas Edward Wilkinson / Travel writing
caption_attribution_description: Thun seen from the Laseberg
context_page_description: Thomas Edward Wilkinson was an Anglican bishop, legionnaire and travel writer in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The sixth child of a gentleman farmer, he was born at Walsham Hall, Walsham le Willows, Suffolk. Before he was ordained, he joined the French Foreign Legion and travelled around Europe.
  As a priest he had the curacies of two consecutive parishes, then spent six years with his wife and children in South Africa as the inaugural Bishop of Zululand. Following a Cornwall incumbency, he was concurrently the rector of St Katherine Coleman, London, and coadjutor bishop of London for north and central Europe. Within this diocese he had the oversight of missions across ten nations. To reach all of his European chaplaincies meant a journey of over 14,000 miles; he made 82 of these episcopal tours.
  He published several books, including a Zulu hymn book, an edition of his wife's Zululand journals, and his own travel book relating to his years in Europe. In his Who's Who entry, Wilkinson listed his recreation as "work."
context_section_description: A stuffy, desk-bound bishop, Wilkinson was not. The following extracts show something of the personality of the man. Here he recounts part of a journey between Bern and Lausanne in 1886: 
  From Geneva I went to Thun, Interlaken, and Grindelwald, at each of which places we have season chaplaincies ; in fact, all Switzerland is studded - mountains, lake-sides, and valleys - with what I call my button mushroom churches, for they spring up all over that country, and sometimes almost in a night! On my way I ascended the Schynige Platte, from which a fine view of the Oberland is obtained. A farmer's son at Grindelwald told me that corn and apple trees will grow now in that district, whereas in his father's day, when the glaciers came much further down into the valley, neither could be cultivated. His father, who died this spring at the age of seventy-six, told him that this would take place again when the glaciers come down, as they are sure to do, in course of time. Sleeping at the Männlichen, then a rough hut far above the Wengen Alp Hotel, a grand panorama of the Jungfrau and the Oberland giants was obtained. The whole range, from the Titlis to Diablerets, lay in view. When in that neighbourhood I saw several rare birds, ring ousels, snow buntings, and, much to my delight, several Cornish choughs.
  
  Wilkinson may have spent years in Africa, but he apparently liked snow sports. Here he is in 1895: 
  I ran down to Thun one day from Berne and found it completely snowed up. Judging from appearances, all the inhabitants, save a few enterprising boys who were tobogganing down the deserted streets, in bed and asleep. As the boys did not invite me to join their sport, I returned to Berne by the next train.
  
  This first bishop of Zululand was a sharer of stories. Here is one story that he heard from Frederick Robert St John, the chargé d'affaires at Berne, in 1895. It is not known whether either man embellished it: 
  His most remarkable journey was from Pekin to England by land, long before the Trans–Siberian Railway was dreamed of - a wonderful feat for that day. It took him six weeks to reach the Siberian frontier, thence by sledge, with a young Russian officer carrying dispatches through Siberia to Nizhny Novgorod. They were eighteen days and nights in a sledge, travelling as hard as relays of three horses could lay their legs to the ground - and Russian horses can lay them to the ground. I remember Mr. J. Hubbard, of Petersburg, accustomed to Russian sledge travelling, telling me that upon a journey of only three or four days over the Ural Mountains he had to tie up his jaw tight to prevent his teeth being broken by the shocks over what are called roads! I was not surprised when Mr. St. John told me that he did not sleep for six months afterwards, and had never been altogether the same man since. The young Russian officer became delirious at the end of the first week, which terribly aggravated the difficulties and hardships of the journey.
  
  Here is Wilkinson in the same winter of 1895.
  After a reception I endeavoured to walk out upon the Thun Road, where I found Mr.St John in almost as great a plight as in his journey from Pekin to London. He had got into a deep snowdrift returning from the reception to his house, and would have probably remained there till a thaw set in had I not come along and delivered him out of his distress ... An hotel somewhere up in the Jura was reported as buried fifteen feet deep. From many farm-houses tunnels had to be made to cow-houses, stables, and outbuildings to feed the cattle. Whole chalets were completely buried. In one, a man and his wife were found dead; their little child was alive under a table, warmed by a big dog which had curled itself round its young friend.
caption: Snow on Thun, seen from the Laseberg
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