ABSTRACT
In his study of Victorian tourism, The Mediterranean Passion (1987), John Pemble claims that the establishment of the British protectorate in 1882 and an improved railway system made Egypt one of the favourite winter resorts for British tourists in the 1880s and 1890s. Cairo, where Doyle had taken Touie for her health in 1895, had become established as ‘a meeting-place of the British Empire and the British metropolis’ and was described by a Thomas Cook brochure as ‘no more than a winter suburb of London’.1 Its popularity derived in part from the beneficial therapeutic effects which its climate and calm dry air appeared to offer sufferers from pulmonary tuberculosis. The Doyles stayed at one of the newly opened health resorts, the Mena House Hotel near the Great Pyramid. As Touie began to feel well enough to enjoy a social life in the company of her sister-in-law, Lottie, Doyle ‘joined in male society ... a good deal and learned to know many of the great men who were shaping the new destinies of Egypt’.2
