Cooke

“ Then he faced the ocean blast, And he strode the cable last Touched by Cooke.
Vainly roared the angry seas; Vainly blew the ocean breeze; But, alas! the walker's knees Had a crook;
And before he reached the rock Did they both together knock, And he stumbled with a shock— Unlike Cooke!
Downward dropping in the dark, Like an arrow to its mark, Or a fish-pole when a shark Bites the hook,
Dropped the pole he could not save, Dropped the walker, and the wave Swift ingulfed the rival brave Of J. Cooke! ”

“ Cooke, who, though assuredly inferior to several of the old stock, and groaning under unexampled intemperance, has in spite of every impediment which artful jealousy and envy of his talents could raise against him, risen so high in public estimation, that even when just reeking from offences which would not have been endured in Garrick or Barry, his return is hailed with shouts, as if it were a national triumph. ”

“ Cooke was then not yet the great banker and financier he became during the Civil War, but he was easily recognized as a man of uncommon ability, energy, and public spirit. The attention of the Cookes was mainly attracted by the beauty, grace, and ingenuous conversation of my wife, in her naïve German-English, and as they were evidently good-hearted people of frank and simple manners, we soon became fast friends and remained so for many years. ”

“ In 1789 Cooke was made captain to the sheriff's troop. "About this time there were commotions by the mobility in London against his Majesty's minister, Mr. Pitt. I went into the pot-houses at Exeter, and treated with mugs round, and gave loyal toasts and sentiments—my own motto, Any income-tax sooner than a French-come-tax; a long pull and a strong pull and a pull altogether—mind how the fox served the chicken, and said the grapes were sour—a speedy necklace to all traitors—Old England for ever, and those who don't like it, leave it. ”

“ Captain Cooke appears to have been rarely fortunate in having in his newly-formed choral body a set of phenomenally gifted boys, and doubtless no small credit is due to the loyal and gallant musician for the skill and care he must have devoted to their training.
Captain Cooke must have been a clever teacher and a still cleverer selector of boys for his choir; and this brilliant little school he gathered round him (including such names as Humfrey, Blow, and Purcell) shines out like a beacon light in our musical world. ”

“ Farquhar Fenelon Cooke, although I had had no previous knowledge that such a person existed. The horses were on a brisk trot, and Mr. Cooke seemed to be getting the best out of them for the benefit of the sprinkling of people on the inn porch. Indeed, I could not but admire the dexterous turn of the wrist which served Mr. Cooke to swing his leaders into the circle and up the hill, while the liveried guard leaned far out in anticipation of a stumble. Mr. Cooke hailed me with a beaming smile and a flourish of the whip as he drew up and descended from the box. ”

“ Cooke was a man of natural ability, and he made the best use of his powers. Opportunity, sooner or later, comes to nearly all who work and wait, and are duly persevering. Shoemaking was not found very productive; and Cooke, being fairly educated as well as self-educated, opened a village school. He succeeded tolerably well. He taught himself geometry and mathematics, and daily application made him more perfect in his studies. In course of time an extraordinary ambition took possession of him: no less than the construction of a reflecting telescope of six inches diameter. ”

“ In ten years more, his English race was done, and while Kemble was beginning the splendid evening of his career, Cooke passed over to America, prematurely ending his course, in disgrace and ruin, and occupying a grave which a civilised Yankee speedily dishonoured. ”

“ At the age of fifteen his mother, then a widow, put John apprentice to Chaster, a saddler in Exeter, and on the death of Chaster, Cooke succeeded to the business at the age of twenty-one, and was highly esteemed in the county for the excellence of his work and his knowledge of how to fit the back of a horse. ”

“ Cooke lived seven years after this, and though he was probably again heavily fined, he left a large amount of landed and other property. In 1483, when the Duke of Buckingham addressed the citizens of London in the Guildhall in favour of the pretensions of Richard III to the throne, he referred at length to the sufferings and losses of Cooke as a notable instance of the tyranny of the late king (Holinshed, ed. 1808, iii. 391) . Cooke died in 1478, and was buried, in compliance with his wish, in the church of the Augustine friars, within the ward of Broad Street in London. ”

“ During the years immediately following Cooke played with various country companies, studying hard when sober, acquiring much experience, and obtaining a reputation as a brilliant and, except in one respect, a trustworthy actor. On 19 Nov. 1794 Cooke made his appearance at Dublin in ‘Othello.’ He sprang at once to the front rank in public estimation, and was received in a round of characters of importance with augmenting favour. ”

“ Samuel Cooke, a respectable linen draper, of Dudley, Mr. William Insull, and Thomas Hill, who had become pronounced Chartists, and whose advocacy for many years of the Nine Points of the Charter entitled them to the regard and esteem of the whole force of the working classes in this town and district. Mr. Cooke was a well-read gentleman, with a zeal and honesty of purpose which few men can aspire to; there was a purity and singleness of aim in his public deliverances which secured him the respect of all good thinking people ”

“ On census forms, and such things, when asked his religion, he always felt inclined to write: "Grace Cooke." By God, it would have been the truth. She was his religion yet, far though he had fallen away from it--oh, so far--! She stood for everything that was good and beautiful and noble. It wasn't love. It was beyond all love. She was a Madonna, a saint, and he had had the privilege to kneel at her feet--a Caliban of the slums, a tough, a hoodlum, unworthy to touch the hem of her garment. ”

“ Cooke built himself a villa residence, which he dubbed “Waterloo Cottage.” He was a very plain man, with thick, coarse mouth, and a broken nose. A portrait, a profile, is prefixed to his pamphlet, Old England for Ever, but there is one much finer of him, in colour, representing him in uniform. This is in the library of the Institution at Exeter. ”

“ Beyond his play, practically nothing is known of Cooke. It is not even clear whether ‘Jo.’ stands for John, or for Joshua; the latter is suggested by the manuscript ascription on a copy of the anonymous How a Man may Choose a Good Wife from a Bad (q.v.) . Can Cooke be identical with the I. Cocke who contributed to Stephens’s Characters in 1615 (cf. App. C, No. lx) ? Collier, iii. ”

“ If Cooke was an Irishman, it was by accident. He was certainly educated in England; and he early acquired, by reading Otway and seeing Vanbrugh, a taste for the drama. In school theatricals, he made his Horatio outshine the Hamlet of the night; and his Lucia,—though the boy cried at having to play a part in petticoats, [74] —win more applause than his schoolfellow's Cato. School-time over, the wayward boy went to sea, and came back with small liking for the vocation; turned to "business," only to turn from it in disgust ”

“ And, accordingly, Cooke withdrew, all the richer by ten guineas,—for the engraver!
When Cooke's goose ceased to lay golden eggs—when no other was to be found, and managers cruelly refused to have anything to do with his dramas, the reverend gentleman let his beard grow, turned street preacher, and, as the Bearded Priest, railed against sin generally, and those connected with plays and players, in particular. ”

“ Cooke of York, while the latter was still living. I did not present it at the time; but I now proposed to visit, on my return homewards, the establishment which he had founded at York for the manufacture of telescopes and other optical instruments. Indeed, what a man may do for himself as well as for science, cannot be better illustrated than by the life of this remarkable man.
Mr. Nasmyth says that he had an account from Cooke himself of his small beginnings. He was originally a shoemaker in a small country village. Many a man has risen to distinction from a shoemaker's seat. ”

“ With the guinea for subscription in his pocket, Cooke withdrew on that day, to call on the same or some other patron the next, for permission to dedicate his drama to one of whose virtues, talents, magnanimity, divine endowments, and the like, the town was giving hourly assurance. The fish thus tickled generally proved a gold-fish, and with a dedication fee of, at least, five guineas, Cooke disappeared as solemnly as the Ghost in "Hamlet."
Like that shadowy majesty of Denmark, our dramatic [293] author was a "revenant." He always returned. ”

“ Of his first reception in Richard, Cooke speaks, as being flattering, encouraging, indulgent, and warm, throughout the play and at the conclusion. Cooke was not blinded by this triumphant season. Long after he said, when referring to having played with [227] and also against John Kemble: "He is an actor. He is my superior, though they did not think so in London. I acknowledge it!" Having made Black Jack "tremble in his pumps," Cooke honestly acknowledged, in homely phrase, that he could not stand in Kemble's shoes. ”

“ In an equally small room at the Camden Town station, where the wires terminated, sat Mr. Cooke, his co-patentee, and among others, two witnesses well known to fame, Mr. Charles Fox and Mr. Stephenson. These gentlemen listened to the first word spelt by that trembling tongue of steel which will only cease to discourse with the extinction of man himself. Mr. Cooke in his turn touched the keys and returned the answer. ”

“ The sense of knowing real people, whose daily occupations were so novel and interesting, touched him afresh with delight. These men said much in few words. The taciturnity of Cooke, the conductor, in particular, struck Ardmore as very fine, and it occurred to him that very likely men who have had the fun of doing things never talk of their performances afterward. One of the detectives chaffed Cooke covertly about some adventure in which they had been jointly associated. ”

“ Its recommencement is always a sign of attempted reformation. In his drunken moments Cooke boasted of having been the son of an officer, born in Dublin barracks, and having himself served as an ensign in the American war. ”

“ Like Shakespeare, Mr. Cooke was judged by his works, and from these he was generally conceded to be an illiterate and indifferent person of barbarous tastes and a mania for horses. He was further described as ungentlemanly by a brace of spinsters who had been within earshot on the veranda the morning he had abused the Asquith roads, but their evidence was not looked upon as damning. That Mr. Cooke would appear at the cotillon never entered any one's head. ”

“ Aside from the partisan passages and allusions the book contains, we take pleasure in pronouncing it a work of no ordinary merit. Mrs. Cooke may justly be ranked a poetess of no mean talents. If we cannot commend her judgment we must at least grant that she is not without poetic genius, and that her integrity evinces culture and literary ability. ”

“ Redbud and Verty entered; and then the young man held out his hand.
"Are you going?" said the girl.
"Yes," he said, smiling, "unless you will sing me something. Oh, yes! let me go away with music in my ears. Sing 'Dulce Domum' for me, Redbud."
The young girl assented, with a smile; and sitting down at the harpsichord, sang the fine old ditty in her soft, tender voice, which was the very echo of joy and kindness. The gentle carol floated on the evening air, and seemed to make the autumn twilight brighter, everything more lovely—and Verty listened with a look more dreamy than before. ”

“ Cooke, who is, as to the mechanic part, not ignorant in mathematics, and pretends to astrology. There is an excellent collection of the choicest fruit.
As for my Lord, he is a sober, wise, judicious, and pondering person, not illiterate beyond the rate of most noblemen in this age, very well versed in English history and affairs, industrious, frugal, methodical, and every way accomplished. His Lady (being sister of the late Earl of Northumberland) is a wise, yet somewhat melancholy woman, setting her heart too much on the little lady, her daughter, of whom she is over fond. ”

“ Your husband has left his mark upon his age. No optician of modern times has gained a higher reputation; and I for one do not hesitate to call his loss national; for he cannot be replaced at present by any one else in his own peculiar line. I shall carry the recollection of the affectionate esteem in which I held Thomas Cooke with me to my grave. ”

“ Cooke died at York Place, Kingsland Road, on 25 March 1810, aged 79. His son Charles succeeded to the business at the Shakspeare's Head, Paternoster Row, but only survived him six years, dying 16 April 1816, aged 56. ”

“ In 1741 Cooke produced an edition of Virgil with English notes and a Latin paraphrase, and in 1754 appeared the first and only volume—a translation of the ‘Amphitruo’—of a long-promised edition of Plautus. Dr. Johnson said that Cooke was soliciting subscriptions for this book for twenty years, and that the proceeds of his canvass formed his main source of income.
Cooke also wrote for the stage. In 1728 he helped his friend John Mottley with ‘Penelope, a dramatic opera.’ The ‘Triumphs of Love and Honour,’ by Cooke, was acted at Drury Lane 18 Aug. ”

“ In 1830 Cooke went to Normandy, Havre, Rouen, &c., and in 1832 he executed a series of pencil drawings for Earl de Grey. Between 1832 and 1844 he travelled in Belgium, Holland (which he visited sixteen times) , France, Scotland, Ireland, and other places. The years 1845 and 1846 he spent in Italy, and subsequently visited Spain, Morocco, Barbary, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. He was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1851, and a full member in 1864.
Cooke became a widower early in life, and died at his residence, Glen Andred, Groombridge, near Tunbridge Wells, on 4 Jan. ”