See Horace Walpole,Letters, edited by P. Cunningham (9 vols., London, 1857), many of the letters being addressed to Conway;Memoirs of the Last Ten years of the Reign of George II.(2 vols., London, 1822);Memoirs of the Reign of George III., edited by Sir D. le Marchant (4 vols., London, 1845);Journal of the Reign of George III., 1771-1783 (2 vols., London, 1859). See also the duke of Buckingham and Chandos,Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George III.(4 vols., London, 1853). Much information about Conway will also be found in the biographies of his leading contemporaries, Rockingham, Shelburne, Chatham, Pitt and Fox.
See Horace Walpole,Letters, edited by P. Cunningham (9 vols., London, 1857), many of the letters being addressed to Conway;Memoirs of the Last Ten years of the Reign of George II.(2 vols., London, 1822);Memoirs of the Reign of George III., edited by Sir D. le Marchant (4 vols., London, 1845);Journal of the Reign of George III., 1771-1783 (2 vols., London, 1859). See also the duke of Buckingham and Chandos,Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George III.(4 vols., London, 1853). Much information about Conway will also be found in the biographies of his leading contemporaries, Rockingham, Shelburne, Chatham, Pitt and Fox.
(R. J. M.)
CONWAY, HUGH,the nom-de-plume ofFrederick John Fargus(1847-1885), English novelist, who was born at Bristol on the 26th of December 1847, the son of an auctioneer. He was intended for his father’s business, but at the age of thirteen joined the training-ship “Conway” in the Mersey. In deference to his father’s wishes, however, he gave up the idea of becoming a sailor, and returned to Bristol, where he was articled to a firm of accountants till on his father’s death in 1868 he took over the family business. While a clerk he had written the words for various songs, adopting the nom-de-plume Hugh Conway in memory of his days on the training-ship. Mr Arrowsmith, the Bristol printer and publisher, took an interest in his work, and Fargus’s first short story appeared inArrowsmith’s Miscellany. In 1883 Fargus published through Arrowsmith his first long story,Called Back, of which over 350,000 copies were sold within four years. A dramatic version of this book was produced in London in 1884, and in this year Fargus published another story,Dark Days. Ordered to the Riviera for his health, he caught typhoid fever, and died at Monte Carlo on the 15th of May 1885. Several other books from his pen appeared posthumously, notablyA Family Affair.
CONWAY, MONCURE DANIEL(1832-1907), American clergyman and author, was born of an old Virginia family in Stafford county, Virginia, on the 17th of March 1832. He graduated at Dickinson College in 1849, studied law for a year, and then became a Methodist minister in his native state. In 1852, owing largely to the influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson, his religious and political views underwent a radical change, and he entered the Harvard Divinity School, where he graduated in 1854. Here he fell under the influence of “transcendentalism,” and became an outspoken abolitionist. On his return to Virginia this fact and his rumoured connexion with the attempt to rescue the fugitive slave, Anthony Burns, in Boston aroused the bitter hostility of his old neighbours and friends, and in consequence he left the state. In 1854-1856 he was pastor of a Unitarian church at Washington, D.C., but his anti-slavery views brought about his dismissal. From 1856 to 1861 he was a Unitarian minister in Cincinnati, Ohio, where, also, he edited a short-lived liberal periodical calledThe Dial. Subsequently he was an editor of theCommonwealthin Boston, Mass., and wroteThe Rejected Stone(1861) andThe Golden Hour(1862), both powerful pleas for emancipation. In 1862-1863, during the Civil War, he lectured in England in behalf of the North. From 1863 to 1884 he was the minister of the South Place chapel, Finsbury, London; and during this time wrote frequently for the London press. In 1884 he returned to the United States to devote himself to literary work. In addition to those above mentioned, his publications includeTracts for To-day(1858),The Natural History of the Devil(1859),Testimonies Concerning Slavery(1864),The Earthward Pilgrimage(1870),Republican Superstitions(1872),Idols and Ideals(1871),Demonology and Devil Lore(2 vols., 1878),A Necklace of Stories(1879),Thomas Carlyle(1881),The Wandering Jew(1881),Emerson at Home and Abroad(1882),Pine and Palm(2 vols., 1887),Life and Papers of Edmund Randolph(1888),The Life of Thomas Painewith an unpublished sketch of Paine by William Cobbett (2 vols., 1892),Solomon and Solomonic Literature(1899), hisAutobiography(2 vols., 1900), andMy Pilgrimage to the Wise Men of the East(1906). Conway died on the 15th of November 1907.
CONWAY, SIR WILLIAM MARTIN(1856- ), English art critic and mountaineer, son of the Rev. William Conway, afterwards canon of Westminster, was born at Rochester, and was educated at Repton and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He became interested in early printing and engraving, and in 1880 made a tour of the principal libraries of Europe in pursuit of his studies, the result appearing in 1884 as aHistory of the Woodcutters of the Netherlands in the Fifteenth Century. His later works on art includedEarly Flemish Artists(1887);The Literary Remains of Albrecht Dürer(1889);The Dawn of Art in the Ancient World(1891), dealing with Chaldaean, Assyrian and Egyptian art;Early Tuscan Artists(1902). From 1884 to 1887 he was professor of art at University College, Liverpool; and in1901-1904 he was Slade professor of the fine arts at Cambridge. He was knighted in 1895. Sir Martin Conway early became a member of the Alpine Club, of which he was president from 1902 to 1904. In 1892 he beat the climbing record by ascending to a height of 23,000 ft. in the Himalayas in the course of an exploring and mountaineering expedition undertaken under the auspices of the Royal Society, the Royal Geographical Society and the British Association. In 1896-1897 he explored the interior of Spitsbergen, and in the next year he explored and surveyed the Bolivian Andes, climbing Sorata (21,500 ft.) and Illimani (21,200 ft.). He also ascended Aconcagua (23,080 ft.) and explored Tierra del Fuego. At the Paris exhibition of 1900 he received the gold medal for mountain surveys, and the founder’s medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1905. His expeditions are described in hisClimbing and Exploration in the Kara-Koram Himalayas(1894),The Alps from End to End(1895),The First Crossing of Spitsbergen(1897),The Bolivian Andes(1901), &c.;No Man’s Land, a History of Spitsbergen from ... 1596 ...was published in 1906.
CONWAY(Conwy, orAberconwy), a municipal borough in the Arfon parliamentary division of Carnarvonshire, N. Wales, 14 m. by the London & North-Western railway from Bangor, and 225 m. N.W. from London. Pop. (1901) 4681. The town is enclosed by a high wall, roughly triangular, about 1 m. round, with twenty-one dilapidated round towers, pierced by three principal gateways with two strong towers. The castle in the south-east angle, built in 1284 by Edward I., was inhabited, in 1389, by Richard II., who here agreed to abdicate. Held for Charles I. by Archbishop Williams, it was taken by General Mytton in 1646. Dismantled by the new proprietor, Earl Conway, it remains a ruin. It is oblong, with eight massive towers, and has, within, a hall 130 ft. in length, known as Llewelyn’s. The parliamentary borough of Conway, returning, with five other towns, one member, extends over to the right bank of the stream Conwy (Conway). In 1885 the mayor of Conway was made a constable. Llandudno with Great and Little Orme’s Heads are at some 4 m. distance. Two bridges, a tubular for the railway (40 ft. shorter than that of the Menai) and a suspension, designed by Stephenson (1846-1848) and Telford (1822-1826) respectively, cross the stream. St Mary’s church is Gothic; the Elizabethan Plâs Mawr is thelocaleof the Royal Cambrian Academy of Art. There are still some fragments of the 1185 Cistercian Abbey. There are golf links here and at Llandudno. The Conwy stream, on which a steamboat runs from Deganwy (2 m. below Conway town) to Trefriw, opposite Llanrwst, in summer, has some coasting trade in sulphur and slates. It is about 30 m. long, its valley (a haunt of artists) containing the towns last mentioned and Bettws y coed. Its pearls are mentioned in Drayton’sPolyolbionand Spenser’sFaerie Queene. Pearl fisheries existed at Conway for many centuries, dating back to the Roman occupation. Tacitus,Agricola, 12, says of Britain “gignit et Oceanus margarita, sed subfusca ac liventia,” as are those found to-day. Diganhwy (Dyganwy, Deganwy) is mentioned in theMabinogion(Geraint and Enid), if the reading is sound; it is certainly mentioned in theAnnales Cambriae(years 812-822) and in theBlack Book of Caerfyrddin(Carmarthen), xxiii. 1. Caer-hyn, 4½ m. from Conway, is on the highroad from London to Holyhead, and is theConoviumof the Romans. The site of the camp can still be traced, consisting of a square, strengthened by four parallel walls, extending to a distance from the main work. The camp is on a height, with the Conwy in front and a wood on each flank. At the foot of the hill, near the stream, was a Roman bath, with walls, pavement and pillars. Camden’sBritanniamentions tiles, with marks of the 10th or Antoninus’s legion, as being found here, perhaps mistakenly.Gleini nadroedd(possibly amulets) andvitrumhave been found here. In Bwlch y ddwy faen (“two rock ravine”), on the way to Aber, are the remains of a Roman road and antiquities.
CONYBEARE, WILLIAM DANIEL(1787-1857), dean of Llandaff, one of the most distinguished of English geologists, who was born in London on the 7th of June 1787, was a grandson of John Conybeare, bishop of Bristol (1692-1755), a notable preacher and divine, and son of Dr William Conybeare, rector of Bishopsgate. Educated first at Westminster school, he went in 1805 to Christ Church, Oxford, where in 1808 he took his degree of B.A., with a first in classics and second in mathematics, and proceeded to M.A. three years later. Having entered holy orders he became in 1814 curate of Wardington, near Banbury, and he accepted also a lectureship at Brislington near Bristol. During this period he was one of the founders of the Bristol Philosophical Institution (1822). He was rector of Sully in Glamorganshire from 1823 to 1836, and vicar of Axminster from 1836 to 1844. He was appointed Bampton lecturer in 1839, and was instituted to the deanery of Llandaff in 1845. Attracted to the study of geology by the lectures of Dr John Kidd (q.v.) he pursued the subject with ardour. As soon as he had left college he made extended journeys in Britain and on the continent, and he became one of the early members of the Geological Society. Both Buckland and Sedgwick acknowledged their indebtedness to him for instruction received when they first began to devote attention to geology. To theTransactions of the Geological Societyas well as to theAnnals of PhilosophyandPhilosophical Magazinehe contributed many geological memoirs. In 1821 he distinguished himself by the description of a skeleton of thePlesiosaurus, discovered by Mary Anning, and his account has been confirmed in all main points by subsequent researches. Among his most important memoirs is that on the south-western coal district of England, written in conjunction with Dr Buckland, and published in 1824. He wrote also on the valley of the Thames, on Elie de Beaumont’s theory of mountain-chains, and on the great landslip which occurred near Lyme Regis in 1839 when he was vicar of Axminster. His principal work, however, is theOutlines of the Geology of England and Wales(1822), being a second edition of the small work issued by William Phillips (q.v.) and written in co-operation with that author. The original contributions of Conybeare formed the principal portion of this edition, of which only Part I., dealing with the Carboniferous and newer strata, was published. It affords evidence throughout of the extensive and accurate knowledge possessed by Conybeare; and it exercised a marked influence on the progress of geology in this country. He was a fellow of the Royal Society and a corresponding member of the Institute of France. In 1844 he was awarded the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society of London. The loss of his eldest son, W. J. Conybeare, preyed on his mind and hastened his end. He died at Itchenstoke, near Portsmouth, a few months after his son, on the 12th of August 1857. (Obituary inGent. Mag.Sept. 1857, p. 335.)
His elder brotherJohn Josias Conybeare(1779-1824), also educated at Christ Church, Oxford, and an accomplished scholar, became vicar of Batheaston, and was professor of Anglo-Saxon and afterwards of poetry at Oxford. He likewise was an ardent student of geology and communicated several important papers to theAnnals of Philosophyand theTransactions of the Geological Societyof London. (Obituary inAnn. Phil.vol. viii., Sept. 1824, p. 162.)
CONYBEARE, WILLIAM JOHN(1815-1857), English divine, son of Dean W. D. Conybeare, was born on the 1st of August 1815, and was educated at Westminster and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was elected fellow in 1837. From 1842 to 1848 he was principal of the Liverpool Collegiate Institution, which he left for the vicarage of Axminster. He publishedEssays, Ecclesiastical and Social, in 1856, and a novel,Perversion, or the Causes and Consequences of Infidelity, but is best known as the joint author (with J. S. Howson) ofThe Life and Epistles of St Paul(1851). He died at Weybridge in 1857.
COODE, SIR JOHN(1816-1892), English engineer, was born at Bodmin, Cornwall, on the 11th of November 1816, the son of a solicitor. After considerable experience as an engineer in the west of England he came to London, and from 1844-1847 had a consulting practice in Westminster. In the latter year he was appointed resident engineer in charge of the extensive national harbour works at Portland then in progress. In 1856 he was appointed engineer-in-chief of this undertaking, and this post he retained till the completion of the works in 1872. Hisservices at Portland were rewarded with a knighthood. He was now recognized as the leading authority on harbour construction, and his advice was sought by many of the colonial governments, especially by those of South Africa and Australia, and by the Indian government. After the Portland harbour his best-known work is the harbour of Colombo, Ceylon. He was made a K.C.M.G. in 1886. From 1884 till his death he was a member of the Suez Canal Commission, and from 1889-1891 president of the Institution of Civil Engineers. He died at Brighton on the 2nd of March 1892.
COOK, ALBERT STANBURROUGH(1853- ), American scholar, was born on the 6th of March 1853 in Montville, Morris county, New Jersey. He graduated at Rutgers College in 1872, and also studied at Göttingen and Leipzig (1877-1878), and, after spending the years 1879-1881 as associate in English at Johns Hopkins University, in London, and under Sievers at Jena, he became in 1882 professor of English in the University of California, and in 1889 professor of English language and literature in Yale University. He re-organized the teaching of English in the state of California, and edited many texts for reading in secondary schools; but he is best known for his work in Old English and in poetics. He translated, edited, and revised Sievers’Old English Grammar(1885), editedJudith(1888),The Christ of Cynewulf(1900),Asser’s Life of King Alfred(1905), andThe Dream of the Rood(1905), and preparedA First Book in Old English Grammar(1894). He also edited, with annotations,Sidney’s Defense of Poesie(1890);Shelley’s Defense of Poetry(1891);Newman’s Poetry(1891);Addison’s Criticisms on Paradise Lost(1892);The Art of Poetry(1892), being the essays of Horace, Vida and Boileau; andLeigh Hunt’s What is Poetry(1893); and publishedHigher Study of English(1906).
COOK, EDWARD DUTTON(1829-1883), English dramatic critic and author, was born in London on the 30th of January 1829, the son of a solicitor. He was educated at King’s College school, London, and, after four years in his father’s office, obtained a situation in the London office of a railway company, at first utilizing only his spare time in literary work, but eventually devoting himself entirely to literature. He was dramatic critic of thePall Mall Gazettefrom 1867 to 1875, and of theWorldfrom 1875 till his death. He also wrote freely on art topics, and was the author of several novels. He died in London on the 11th of September 1883.
COOK, ELIZA(1818-1889), English author, was born on the 24th of December 1818, in Southwark, being the daughter of a local tradesman. She was self-taught, and began when a girl to write poetry for theWeekly DispatchandNew Monthly. In 1838 she publishedMelaia and other Poems, and from 1849 to 1854 conducted a paper for family reading calledEliza Cook’s Journal. She also publishedJottings from my Journal(1860), andNew Echoes(1864); and in 1863 she was given a civil list pension of £100 a year. As the author of a single poem, “The Old Armchair,” Eliza Cook’s name was for a generation after 1838 a household word both in England and in America, her kindly domestic sentiment making her a great favourite with the working-class and middle-class public. She died at Wimbledon on the 23rd of September 1889.
COOK, JAMES(1728-1779), English naval captain and explorer, was born on the 28th of October 1728, at Marton village, Cleveland, Yorkshire, where his father was first an agricultural labourer and then a farm bailiff. At twelve years of age he was apprenticed to a haberdasher at Staithes, near Whitby, and afterwards to Messrs Walker, shipowners, of Whitby, whom he served for years in the Norway, Baltic and Newcastle trades.
In 1755, having risen to be a mate, Cook joined the royal navy, and after four years’ service was, on the recommendation of Sir Hugh Palliser, his commander, appointed master successively of the sloop “Grampus,” of the “Garland” and of the “Solebay,” in the last of which he served in the St Lawrence. He was employed also in sounding and surveying the river, and he published a chart of the channel from Quebec to the sea. In 1762 he was present at the recapture of Newfoundland, and was employed in surveying portions of this coast (especially Placentia Harbour); in 1763, on Palliser becoming governor of Newfoundland, Cook was appointed “marine surveyor of the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador”; this office he held till 1767; and the volumes of sailing directions he now brought out (1766-1768) showed remarkable abilities. At the same time he began to make his reputation as a mathematician and astronomer by his observation of the solar eclipse of the 5th of August 1766, at one of the Burgeo Islands, near Cape Ray, and by his account of the same in thePhilosophical Transactions(vol. lvii. pp. 215-216).
In 1768 Cook was appointed to conduct an expedition, suggested by the revival of geographical interest now noticeable, and resolved on by the English admiralty at the instance of the Royal Society, for observing the impending transit of Venus, and prosecuting geographical researches in the South Pacific Ocean. For these purposes he received a commission as lieutenant (May 25th), and set sail in the “Endeavour,” of 370 tons, accompanied by several men of science, including Sir Joseph Banks (August 25th). On the 13th of April 1769, he reached Tahiti, where he observed the transit on the 3rd of June. From Tahiti he sailed in quest of the great continent then supposed to exist in the South Pacific, explored the Society Islands, and thence struck to New Zealand, whose coasts he circumnavigated and examined with great care for six months, charting them for the first time with fair accuracy, and especially observing the channel (“Cook Strait”) which divided the North and South Islands. His attempts to penetrate to the interior, however, were thwarted by native hostility. From New Zealand he proceeded to “New Holland” or Australia, and surveyed with the same minuteness and accuracy the whole east coast. New South Wales he named after a supposed resemblance to Glamorganshire; Botany Bay, sighted on the 28th of April 1770, was so called by the naturalists of the expedition. On account of the hostility of the natives his discoveries here also were confined to the coast, of which he took possession for Great Britain. From Australia Cook sailed to Batavia, satisfying himself upon the way that (as Torres had first shown in 1607) New Guinea was in no way an outlying part of the greater land mass to the south.
Arriving in England, by way of the Cape of Good Hope, on the 12th of June, Cook was made a commander, and soon after was appointed to command another expedition for examining and determining once for all the question of the supposed great southern continent. With the “Resolution” of 462 tons, the “Adventure” (Captain Furneaux) of 330 tons, and 193 men, he sailed from Plymouth on the 13th of July 1772; he touched at the Cape of Good Hope, and striking thence south-east (November 22nd) passed the Antarctic Circle (January 16th, 1773), repassed the same, and made his way to New Zealand (March 26th) without discovering land. From New Zealand he resumed his “search for a continent,” working up and down across the South Pacific, and penetrating to 67° 31′ and again to 71° 10′ S., with imminent risk of destruction from floating ice, but with the satisfaction of disproving the possibility of the disputed continent in the seas south-eastward of New Zealand. He then made for Easter Island, whose exact position he determined, for the first time, with accuracy; noticing and describing the gigantic statues which Roggewein, the first discoverer of the island, had made known. In the same manner he accomplished a better determination and examination of the Marquesas, as well as of the Tonga or Friendly Islands, than had yet been made; and after a stay at Tahiti to rest and refit, crossed the central Pacific to the “New Hebrides,” as he renamed Quiros’s “Southern Land of the Holy Spirit” (a name preserved in the modern island ofEspiritu Santo), called by Bougainville the “Great Cyclades” (Grandes Cyclades), whose position, extent, divisions and character were now verified as never before. Next followed the wholly new discoveries of New Caledonia, Norfolk Island, and the Isle of Pines. Another visit to New Zealand, and yet another examination of the far southern Pacific, which was crossed from west to east through the whole of its extent, from south Australia to Tierra del Fuego, were now undertaken byCook before he finally closed his work in refutation of the Antarctic continent, as previously understood, on this side of the world. The voyage closed with a rapid survey of the “Land of Fire,” the rounding of Cape Horn, the rediscovery of the island now named Southern Georgia, the discovery of Sandwich Land, the crossing of the South Atlantic (here also exploding the greatTerra Australisdelusion), and visits to the Cape of Good Hope, St Helena, Ascension, Fernando Noronha and the Azores. The voyage (reckoning only from the Cape of Good Hope and back to the same) had covered considerably more than 20,000 leagues, nearly three times the equatorial circumference of the earth; it left the main outlines of the southern portions of the globe substantially as they are known to-day; and it showed a possibility of keeping a number of men for years at sea without a heavy toll of lives. Cook only lost one man out of 118 in more than 1000 days; he had conquered scurvy.
The discoverer reached Plymouth on the 25th of July 1775, and his achievements were promptly, if meanly, rewarded. He was immediately raised to the rank of post-captain, appointed a captain in Greenwich hospital, and soon afterwards unanimously elected a member of the Royal Society, from which he received the Copley gold medal for the best experimental paper which had appeared during the year.
Cook’s third and last voyage was primarily to settle the question of the north-west passage, practically abandoned since before the middle of the 17th century, but now taken up again, as a matter of scientific interest, by the British government. The explorer, who had volunteered for this service, was instructed to sail first into the Pacific through the chain of the newly discovered islands which he had recently visited, and on reaching New Albion to proceed northward as far as latitude 65° and endeavour to find a passage to the Atlantic. Several ships were at the same time fitted out to attempt a passage on the other side from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Sailing from the Nore on the 25th of June 1776 (Plymouth, July 12), with the “Resolution” and “Discovery,” and touching at the Cape of Good Hope, which he left on the 30th of November, Cook next made Tasmania and thence passed on to New Zealand and the Tonga and Society Islands, discovering on his way several of the larger members of the Hervey or Cook Archipelago, especially Mangaia and Aitutaki (March 30th-April 4th, 1777); some smaller isles of this group he had already sighted on his second voyage, September 23rd, 1773. From Tahiti, as he moved north towards the main object of his expedition, he made a far more important discovery, or rather rediscovery, that of the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands, the greatest and most remarkable of the Polynesian archipelagos (early February 1778). These had perhaps first been seen by the Spanish navigator Gaetano in 1555; but their existence had been kept a close secret by Spain at the time, and had long been forgotten. Striking the west American coast in 44° 55′ N. on the 7th of March following, he made an almost continuous survey of the same up to Bering Straits and beyond, as far as 70° 41′, where he found the passage barred by a wall, or rather continent, of ice, rising 12 ft. above water, and stretching as far as the eye could reach. The farthest point visible on the American shore (in the extreme north-west of Alaska) he called Icy Cape. On his way towards Bering Straits he discovered and named King George’s (“Nootka”) and Prince William’s Sound, as well as Cape Prince of Wales, the westernmost extremity of North America, never yet seen by English navigators, but well known to Russian explorers, who probably first sighted it in 1648; he also penetrated into the bay afterwards known as Cook’s Inlet or River, which at first seemed to promise a passage to the Arctic Seas, to the south-east of the Alaska peninsula. Cook next visited the Asiatic shores of Bering Straits (the extreme north-east of Siberia); returning to America, he explored Norton Sound, north of the Yukon; touched at (Aleutian) Unalaska, where he met with some Russian-American settlers; and thence made his way back to the Hawaiian group, which he had christened after his friend and patron Lord Sandwich, then head of the British admiralty (January 17th, 1779). Here he visited Maui and Hawaii itself, whose size and importance he now first realized, and in one of whose bays (Kealakekua) he met his death early in the morning of the 14th of February 1779. During the night of the 13th, one of the “Discovery’s” boats was stolen by the natives; and Cook, in order to recover it, made trial of his favourite expedient of seizing the king’s person until reparation should be made. Having landed on the following day with some marines, a scuffle ensued which compelled the party to retreat to their boats. Cook was the last to retire; and as he was nearing the shore he received a blow from behind which felled him to the ground. He rose immediately, and vigorously resisted the crowds that pressed upon him, but was soon overpowered.
Had Cook returned from his third voyage, there is ground for believing King George would have made him a baronet. Distinguished honours were paid to his memory, both at home and by foreign courts, and a pension was settled upon his widow. But in his life a very inadequate share of official reward was dealt out to the man who not only may be placed first among British maritime discoverers, but also gave his country her title, and so her colonies, in Australasia. As a commander, an observer and a practical physician, his merits were equally great. Reference has been made to his survey work and to his victory over scurvy; it must not be forgotten that along with a commanding personal presence, and with sagacity, decision and perseverance quite extraordinary, went other qualities not less useful to his work. He won the affection of those who served under him by sympathy, kindness and unselfish care of others as noteworthy as his gifts of intellect.
See theAccount of a Voyage round the World in 1769-1771, by Lieut. James Cook, in vols. ii. and iii. of Hawkesworth’s Voyages (1773); theVoyage towards the South Pole and round the World ... in ... 1772-1775, written by James Cook... (1777); aVoyage to the Pacific Ocean ... in 1776-1780, vols. i. and ii. written by Cook (1784); also theNarrative of the Voyages round the World performed by Captain James Cook, by A. Kippis, D.D., F.R.S. (1788), long the standard life of the navigator, but now superseded by Arthur Kitson’sCaptain James Cook, the Circumnavigator(1907).
See theAccount of a Voyage round the World in 1769-1771, by Lieut. James Cook, in vols. ii. and iii. of Hawkesworth’s Voyages (1773); theVoyage towards the South Pole and round the World ... in ... 1772-1775, written by James Cook... (1777); aVoyage to the Pacific Ocean ... in 1776-1780, vols. i. and ii. written by Cook (1784); also theNarrative of the Voyages round the World performed by Captain James Cook, by A. Kippis, D.D., F.R.S. (1788), long the standard life of the navigator, but now superseded by Arthur Kitson’sCaptain James Cook, the Circumnavigator(1907).
(C. R. B.)
COOK, THOMAS(1808-1892), English travelling agent, was born at Melbourne in Derbyshire on the 22nd of November 1808. Beginning work at the age of ten, he was successively a gardener’s help and a wood-turner at Melbourne, and a printer at Loughborough. At the age of twenty he became a Bible-reader and village missionary for the county of Rutland; but in 1832, on his marriage, combined his wood-turning business with that occupation. In 1836 he became a total abstainer, and subsequently became actively associated with the temperance movement, and printed at his own expense various publications in its interest, notably theChildren’s Temperance Magazine(1840), the first of its kind to appear in England. In June 1841 a large meeting was to be held at Loughborough in connexion with this movement, and Cook was struck with the idea of getting the Midland Counties Railway Company to run a special train from Leicester to the meeting. The company consented, and on the 5th of July there were carried 570 passengers from Leicester to Loughborough and back at a shilling a head. This is believed to be the first publicly-advertised excursion train ever run in England—private “specials,” reserved for members of institutes and similar bodies, were already in use. The event caused great excitement, and Cook received so many applications to organize similar parties that he henceforward deserted wood-turning, while continuing his printing and publishing. The summers of the next three years were occupied with excursions like the first; but in 1845 Cook advertised a pleasure-trip on a more extensive scale, from Leicester to Liverpool and back, with opportunities for visiting the Isle of Man, Dublin and Welsh coast. AHandbook of the Trip to Liverpoolwas supplied for the use of travellers. In the previous year Cook had entered into a permanent arrangement with the Midland Railway Company to place trains at his disposal, for which he should provide the passengers. A trip to Scotland followed, and the excursionists were received in Glasgow with music and salute of guns.
The next great impetus to popular travel was given by the Great Exhibition of 1851, which Cook helped 165,000 visitors to attend. On the occasion of the Paris exhibition of 1855 therewas a Cook’s excursion from Leicester to Calais and back for £1:10s. The following year saw the first grand circular tour in Europe. This part of Cook’s activity largely increased after 1863, when the Scottish railway managers broke off their engagements with him, and left him free for more distant enterprise. Switzerland was opened up in 1863, and Italy in 1864. Up to this time “Cook’s tourists” had been personally conducted, but now he began to be an agent for the sale of English and foreign tickets, the holders of which travelled independently. Switzerland was the first foreign country accessible under these conditions, and in 1865 nearly the whole of Europe was included in the scheme. Its extension to the United States followed in 1866. For the benefit of visitors to the Paris exhibition, Cook made a fresh departure and leased a hotel there. In the same year began his system of “hotel-coupons,” providing accommodation at a fixed charge. The year 1869 was marked by an extension of Cook’s tours to Palestine, followed by further developments of travel in the East, his son, John Mason Cook, (1834-1899), being appointed in 1870 agent of the khedivial government for passenger traffic on the Nile. The Franco-German War of 1870-1871 was expected to damage the tourist system, but, as a matter of fact, encouraged it, through the demand for combination, international tickets enabling travellers to reach the south of Europe without crossing the belligerent countries. At the termination of the war a party of American freemasons visited Paris under J. M. Cook’s guidance, and became the precursors of the present vast American tourist traffic. At the beginning of 1872 J. M. Cook entered into formal partnership with his father, and the firm first took the name of Thomas Cook & Son. In 1882, on the outbreak of Arabi Pasha’s rebellion, Thomas Cook & Son were commissioned to convey Sir Garnet Wolseley and his suite to Egypt, and to transport the wounded and sick up the Nile by water, for which they received the thanks of the war office. The firm was again employed in 1884 to convey General Gordon to the Sudan, and the whole of the men (18,000) and stores necessary for the expedition afterwards sent to relieve him. In 1889 Thomas Cook & Son acquired the exclusive right of carrying the mails, specie, soldiers and officials of the Egyptian government along the Nile. In 1891 the firm celebrated its jubilee, and on the 19th of July of the following year Thomas Cook died. He had been afflicted with blindness in his declining years. His son, J. M. Cook, died in 1899, leaving three sons, all actively engaged in the business.
COOKorHerveyISLANDS,an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, lying mainly between 155° and 160° E., and about 20° S.; a dependency of the British colony of New Zealand. It comprises nine partly volcanic, partly coralline, islands, the more important of which are Rarotonga, hilly, fertile and well watered, with several cones 300 to 400 ft. high, above which towers the majestic Rarotonga volcano (2920 ft.), the culminating point of the archipelago; Mangaia (Mangia); Aitutaki, with luxuriant cocoa-nut palm groves; Atui (Vatui); Mitiero; Mauki; Fenuaiti; and the two Hervey Islets, which give an alternative name to the group. The total land area is 111 sq. m. Owing to its healthy, equable climate, the archipelago is well suited for European settlement; but the dangerous fringing coral reefs render it difficult of access, and it suffers also from the absence of good harbours. The natives, who are of Polynesian stock and speech, have legends of their emigration from Samoa. They say their ancestors found black people on the islands, and the strongly Melanesian type which is found, especially on Mangaia, supports the statement. The Cook Islanders were formerly man-hunters and cannibals, but they now are nearly all Protestants, wear European dress and live in stone houses. The total population is about 6200. Since 1890 the islands have enjoyed a general legislature and an executive council of which theArikis(“kings” and “queens”) are members. But all enactments are subject to the approval of the British resident at Rarotonga, and a British protectorate, proclaimed in 1888, was followed by the annexation of the whole archipelago by the governor of New Zealand, by proclamation of June 10th, 1901. The archipelago was discovered by Captain Cook in 1777, and in 1823 became the scene of the remarkable missionary labours of John Williams, of the London Missionary Society. The chief products of the group are cocoanuts, fruits, coffee and copra. Lime-juice and hats are made.
COOKE, GEORGE FREDERICK(1756-1811), English actor, was born in London, and made his first appearance on the stage in Brentford at the age of twenty as Dumont inJane Shore. His first London appearance was at the Haymarket in 1778, but it was not until 1794 in Dublin, as Othello, that he attained high rank in his profession. In 1801 he appeared in London as Richard III., Iago, Shylock and Sir Giles Overreach, and became the rival of Kemble, with whom, however, and with Mrs Siddons, he acted from 1803. His intemperate habits unfortunately grew more and more notorious, and on at least one occasion the curtain had to be rung down owing to the audience hissing his drunken condition. He visited the United States in 1810, and died in New York on the 26th of September 1811. A monument to his memory was erected in St Paul’s churchyard there by Edmund Kean.
COOKE, JAY(1821-1905), American financier, was born at Sandusky, Ohio, on the 10th of August 1821, the son of Eleutheros Cooke (1787-1864), a pioneer Ohio lawyer, and Whig member of Congress from that state in 1831-1833. Being destined for a commercial career, Jay Cooke received a preliminary training in a trading house in St Louis, and in the booking office of a transportation company in Philadelphia, and at the age of eighteen entered the Philadelphia house of E.W. Clark & Company, one of the largest private banking firms in the country. He showed such aptitude for business that three years later he was admitted to membership in the firm, and before he was thirty he was also a partner in the New York and St Louis branches of the Clarks. In 1858 he retired from the firm, and for the next three years he devoted himself to reorganizing some of the abandoned Pennsylvania railways and canals and placing them again in operation. On the 1st of January 1861 he opened in Philadelphia the private banking house of Jay Cooke & Company, and soon achieved signal success in floating at par a war loan of $3,000,000 for the state of Pennsylvania, whose credit had become notoriously bad. In the early months of the Civil War Cooke co-operated with the secretary of the treasury, Salmon P. Chase, in securing loans from the leading bankers in the Northern cities, and his own firm was so successful in distributing treasury notes that Chase engaged him as special agent for the sale of the $500,000,000 of so-called “five-twenty” bonds authorized by the act of the 25th of February 1862. To dispose of these bonds the treasury department had already tried every regular means at its command and had failed. Cooke secured the influence of the American press, appointed 2500 sub-agents, and before the machinery he set in motion could be stopped he had sold $11,000,000 more of bonds than had been authorized, an excess which Congress immediately sanctioned. At the same time he used all his influence in favour of the establishment of national banks, and organized a national bank at Washington and another at Philadelphia almost as soon as such institutions were authorized by Congress. In the early months of 1865, when the needs of the government were pressing, and the sale of the new “seven-thirty” notes by the national banks had been very disappointing, Cooke’s services were again secured. He sent agents into the remotest villages and hamlets, and even into the isolated mining camps of the West, and caused the rural newspapers to praise the loan. As a result, between February and July 1865 he had disposed of three series of the notes, reaching a total of $830,000,000. Through these efforts the Union soldiers were well supplied and well paid while dealing the final blows of the war; and, later, with money in their pockets, they were disbanded without difficulty.
After the war Cooke became interested in the development of the North-west, and in 1870 his firm undertook to finance the construction of the Northern Pacific railway. In advancing the money for the work, the firm over-estimated the possibilities of its capital, and at the approach of the financial crisis of 1873 it was forced to suspend. By 1880 Cooke had discharged all hisobligations, and through an investment in a silver mine in Utah had again become wealthy. He died at Ogontz, Pennsylvania, on the 18th of February 1905. Cooke was noted for his piety, and gave regularly a tenth of his income for religious and charitable purposes. His handsome estate at Ogontz, which he had been compelled to give up during his bankruptcy, he later repurchased and converted into a school for girls.
See E. P. Oberholtzer,Jay Cooke, Financier of the Civil War(Philadelphia, 1907).
See E. P. Oberholtzer,Jay Cooke, Financier of the Civil War(Philadelphia, 1907).
COOKE, ROSE TERRY(1827-1892), American writer,néeTerry, was born at West Hartford, Connecticut, on the 17th of February 1827. She published in 1860 a volume ofPoems, but after her marriage in 1873 to Rollin H. Cooke she was best known for her fresh and humorous stories, though in 1888 she published more verse in herComplete Poems. The chief volumes of fiction dealing mainly with New England country life, produced by Rose Terry Cooke, wereHappy Dodd(1878),Somebody’s Neighbors(1881),Root-bound(1885),The Sphinx’s Children(1886),Steadfast(1889) andHuckleberries(1891). She died at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on the 18th of July 1892.
COOKERY(Lat.coquus, a cook), the art of preparing and dressing food of all sorts for human consumption, of converting the raw materials, by the application of heat or otherwise, into a digestible and pleasing condition, and generally ministering to the satisfaction of the appetite and the delight of the palate. We may take it that some form of cookery has existed from the earliest times, and its progress has been from the simple to the elaborate, dominated partly by the foods accessible to man, partly by the stage of civilization he has attained, and partly by the appliances at his command for the purpose either of treating the food, or of consuming it when served.
The developed art of cookery is necessarily a late addition—if it may be considered to be included at all—to the list of “fine arts.” Originally it is a purely industrial and useful art. Man, says a French writer, was born a roaster, and “pour être cuisinier, il a besoin de le devenir.” The ancients were great eaters, but strangers to the subtler refinements of the palate. The gods were supposed to love the smell of fried meat, while their nectar and ambrosia represented an ideal, which, though preserved as a phrase, would hardly satisfy a modern epicure. The ancients were poorly provided with pots and pans, except of a simple order, or with the appurtenances of a kitchen, and they were sadly to seek in the requisites of a modern table. So long as men ate with their hands no dainty confection was suitable; the viands were set forth in a straightforward style fit for their requirements. “Plain cooking,” which, after all, can never become obsolete, was the only sort. Oddities, no doubt, were the luxuries; and we can see to-day in the ethnological accounts of contemporary savages and backward civilizations, a fair representation of the cookeries of the ancients. The luxuries of the Chinese are, in their way, a survival of long ages of a cookery which to western civilization is grotesque. Even if it is an historic impertinence, it is impossible for the countries of western civilization to regard the fine flower of their own evolution as other than the highest pitch of progress.Autres temps, autres mœurs.To the Chinaman French cooking may possibly be as grotesque as to an Englishman the Chinaman’s hundred-year-old buried egg, black and tasteless. The history of comparative cookery is bound up with the physical possibilities of each country and its products; and if we attempt to mark out stages in the evolution of cookery as a fine art, it is necessarily as understood by the so-called civilized peoples of the West in their culmination at the present day.
It is obvious that opportunity has dominated its history, for the art of cookery is to some extent the product of an increased refinement of taste, consequent on culture and increase of wealth. To this extent it is a decadent art, ministering to the luxury of man, and to his progressive inclination to be pampered and have his appetite tickled. It is thus only remotely connected with the mere necessities of nutrition (q.v.), or the science of dietetics (q.v.). Mere hunger, though the best sauce, will not produce cookery, which is the art of sauces. For centuries its elaboration consisted mainly of a progressive variety of foods, the richest and rarest being sought out; and their nature depended on what was most difficult to obtain. The Greeks learnt by contact with Asia to increase the sumptuous character of their banquets, but we know little enough of their ideas of gastronomy. Athens was the centre of luxury. According to our chief authority Athenaeus, Archestratus of Gela, the friend of the son of Pericles, the guide of Epicurus, and author of theHeduphagetica, was a great traveller, and took pains to get information as to how the delicacies of the table were prepared in different parts. His lost work was versified by Ennius. Other connoisseurs seem to have been Numenius of Heraclea, Hegemon of Thasos, Philogenes of Leucas, Simonaclides of Chios, and Tyndarides of Sicyon. The Romans, emerging from their pristine simplicity, borrowed from the Greeks their achievements in gastronomic pleasure. We read of this or that Roman gourmet, such as Lucullus, his extravagances and his luxury. The name of the connoisseur Apicius, after whom a work of the time of Heliogabalus is called, comes down to us in association with a manual of cookery. And from Macrobius and Petronius we can gather very interesting glimpses of the Roman idea of a menu. In the later empire, tradition still centred round the Roman cookery favoured by the geographical position of Italy; while the customs and natural products of the remoter parts of Europe gradually begin to assert themselves as the middle ages progress.
It is, however, not till the Renaissance, and then too with Italy as the starting-point, that the history of modern cookery really begins. Meanwhile cookery may be studied rather in the architecture of kitchens, and the development of their appurtenances and personnel, than in any increase in the subtleties of the art; the ideal was inevitably gross; the end was feeding—inextricably associated in all ages with cooking, but as distinct from itsfine fleuras gluttony from gastronomy.
Montaigne’s references to the revival of cookery in France by Catherine de’ Medici indicate that the new attention paid to the art was really novel. She brought Italian cooks to Paris and introduced there a cultured simplicity which was unknown in France before. It is to the Italians apparently that later developments are originally due. It is clearly established, for instance (says Abraham Hayward in hisArt of Dining), that the Italians introduced ices into France. Fricandeaus were invented by thechefof Leo X. And Coryate in hisCrudities, writing in the time of James I., says that he was called “furcifer” (evidently in contemptuous jest) by his friends, from his using those “Italian neatnesses called forks.” The use of the fork and spoon marked an epoch in the progress of dining, and consequently of cookery.
Under Louis XIV. further advances were made. Hismaître d’hôtel, Béchamel, is famous for his sauce; and Vatel, the great Condé’s cook, was a celebrated artist, of whose suicide in despair at the tardy arrival of the fish which he had ordered, Madame de Sévigné relates a moving story. The prince de Soubise, immortalized by his onion sauce, also had a famous chef.
In England the names of certain cookery-books may be noted, such as Sir J. Elliott’s (1539), Abraham Veale’s (1575), and theWiddowe’s Treasure(1625). TheAccomplisht Cook, by Robert May, appeared in 1665, and from its preface we learn that the author (who speaks disparagingly of French cookery, but more gratefully of Italian and Spanish) was the son of a cook, and had studied abroad and under his father (c. 1610) at Lady Dormer’s, and he speaks of that time as “the days wherein were produced the triumphs and trophies of cookery.” From his description they consisted of most fantastic and elaborately built up dishes, intended to amuse and startle, no less than to satisfy the appetite and palate.
Louis XV. was a great gourmet; and his reign saw many developments in the culinary art. The mayonnaise (originallymahonnaise) is ascribed to the duc de Richelieu. Such dishes as “potage à la Xavier,” “cailles à la Mirepoix,” “chartreuses à la Mauconseil,” “poulets à la Villeroy,” “potage à la Condé,” “gigot à la Mailly,” owe their titles to celebrities of the day, and the Pompadour gave her name to various others. TheJesuits Brunoy and Bougeant, who wrote a preface to a contemporary treatise on cookery (1739), described the modern art as “more simple, more appropriate, and more cunning, than that of old days,” giving the ingredients the same union as painters give to colours, and harmonizing all the tastes. The very phrase “cordon bleu” (strictly applied only to a woman cook) arose from an enthusiastic recognition of female merit by the king himself. Madame du Barry, piqued at his opinion that only a man could cook to perfection, had a dinner prepared for him by acuisinièrewith such success that the delighted monarch demanded that the artist should be named, in order that so precious acuisiniermight be engaged for the royal household. “Allons donc, la France!” retorted the ex-grisette, “have I caught you at last? It is nocuisinierat all, but acuisinière, and I demand a recompense for her worthy both of her and of your majesty. Your royal bounty has made my negro, Zamore, governor of Luciennes, and I cannot accept less than acordon bleu” (the Royal Order of theSaint Esprit) “for mycuisinière.”
The French Revolution was temporarily a blow to Parisian cookery, as to everything else of theancien régime. “Not a single turbot in the market,” was the lament of Grimod de la Reynière, the great gourmet, and author of theManuel des amphitryons(1808). But while it fell heavily on the class of noble amphitryons it had one remarkable effect on the art which was epoch-making. It is from that time that we notice the rise of the Parisian restaurants. To 1770 is ascribed the first of these, theChamp d’oiseauin the rue des Poulies. In 1789 there were a hundred. In 1804 (when theAlmanach des gourmands, the first sustained effort at investing gastronomy with the dignity of an art, was started) there were between 500 and 600. And in 1814, to such an extent had the restaurants attracted the culinary talent of Paris, that the allied monarchs, on arriving there, had to contract with the two brothers Véry for the supply of their table. Among the great gastronomic names of Napoleon’s day was that of his chancellor Cambacérès, of whose dinners many stories are told. Robert (the eponym of thesauce Robert), Rechaud and Mérillion were at this period esteemed the Raphael, Michelangelo and Rubens of cookery; while A. Beauvilliers (author ofArt des cuisines) and Carême (author of theMaître d’hôtel français, and chef at different times to the Tsar Alexander I., Talleyrand, George IV. and Baron Rothschild) were no less celebrated.1Perhaps the greatest name of all in the history of the literature of cookery is that of Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826), the French judge and author of thePhysiologie du goût(1825), the classic of gastronomy.
In England Louis Eustache Ude, Charles Elmé Francatelli, and Alexis Soyer carried on the tradition, all being not only cooks but authors of treatises on the art. TheOriginal(1835) of Thomas Walker, the Lambeth police magistrate, is another work which has inspired later pens. Like thePhysiologie du goût, it is no mere cookery-book, but a compound of observation and philosophy. Among simple hand-books, Mrs Glasse’s, Dr Kitchener’s and Mrs Rundell’s were standard English works in the 18th and early 19th centuries; and in France theCuisinière de la campagne(1818) went through edition after edition. An interesting old English work is Dr Pegge’sForme of Cury(1780), which includes some historical reflections on the subject. “We have some good families in England,” he says, “of the name of Cook or Coke.... Depend upon it, they all originally sprang from real professional cooks, and they need not be ashamed of their extraction any more than Porters, Butlers, &c.” He points out that cooks in early days were of some importance; William the Conqueror bestowed land on hiscoquorum praepositusandcoquus regius; and Domesday Book records the bestowal of a manor on Robert Argyllon, by the service of a dish called “de la Groute” on the king’s coronation day.
At the present time, whatever the local varieties of cooking, and the difference of national custom, French cooking is admittedly the ideal of the culinary art, directly we leave the plain roast and boiled. And the spread of cosmopolitan hotels and restaurants over England, America and the European continent, has largely accustomed the whole civilized world to the Parisian type. The improvements in the appliances and appurtenances of the kitchen have made the whole world kin in the arts of dining, but the French chef remains the typical master of his craft. Schools of cookery have been added to the educational machine. The literature of the subject has passed beyond enumeration.
It is unnecessary here to pursue so vast a practical subject into detail; but the following notes on broiling, roasting, baking, boiling, stewing and frying may be useful.