A gossip has no home.
Vol. II.--39.
[Illustration: ~The noted John Cooke of Exeter.~
“DRAWN FROM NATURE.”]
_To the Editor._
Corporations in old times kept fools, and there are still traces of the
custom. The antiquary admires the carving of a fool, “a motley fool,”
at the porchway of the King John tavern at Exeter, and contemplates it
as probably the faithful representation of an obsolete servant of that
ancient city; while the traveller endeavours to obtain a sight of the
“noted Captain Cooke, all alive! alive!”--the most public, and not the
least important officer of its lively corporation.
A tract, published without a title-page, yet symbolically, as it were,
bearing a sort of half-head, whereby it is denominated “A Pamphlet
called Old England for Ever!” is the production of captain Cooke
himself; and a lithographed print represents that “noted” personage
“drawn from _nature_,” in his full costume, as “Captain of the Sheriffs
troop at 74 assizes for the county of Devon.” An engraving from the
print is at the head of this article; the original is “published by
George Rowe, 38, Paris-street, Exeter,” price only a shilling. The
present representation is merely to give the reader some notion of the
person of the captain, previously to introducing so much of his
“particular confession, life, character, and behaviour,” as can be
extracted from his aforesaid printed narrative.
The tract referred to, though denominated “Old England for Ever,” seems
intended to memorialize “_Captain Cooke_--for ever.” Aspiring to eclipse
the celebrated autobiography of “P. P. Clerk of this Parish,” the
captain calls his literary production “a pamphlet of patriotic home
achievements during the late direful war from 1793 to 1815;” and,
accordingly, it is a series, to adopt his own words, of “twenty-two
years multifarious but abridged memoirs, novelties, anecdotes,
genealogy, and bulletins, by the author’s natural instinct.”
The first most important information resulting from the captain’s
“natural instinct,” is this:--that “the duke of Wellington, marshal
Blucher, the allied officers, and armies, defeated the atheist, the
enemy of the Sabbath and of peace to the world, on Sunday, 18th of June
1815, at half after eight o’clock in the evening:” which day the
captain, therefore, calls “an indelible day;” and says, “I built a
cottage that year, and have a tablet over my door--_Waterloo Cottage, in
memory of Europe’s victory, Sunday, 18th June, 1815_; and I went to
Wellington-hill to see the foundation-stone laid for a Wellington
column, in honour of the duke. So much for Buonaparte’s fanfaronade!--At
daybreak of the 15th of July, he (Buonaparte) surrendered himself to the
English captain Maitland, of the Bellerophon--an appropo name to the
refugee.--I was called up the next morning at one o’clock; I wrote
twenty letters to country gentlemen of the O!-be-joyful news, by the
same morning’ post. I have been often called up on express news.”
From hence may be deduced the value of the captain and his opinions in
the city of Exeter; and, no doubt, due importance will be attached to
his proposition, that “parliament should always meet of a Friday or
Saturday, and prorogue of a Monday, to prevent sabbath-breaking as
_little_ as possible;” and that “the mails should be prohibited from
blowing their horns in the dead of the night or morning, in towns or
villages.” It was contemplated to carry these measures into effect by
joint stock companies, wherein all the captain’s friends were
shareholders, when the “panic” came down from London by an opposition
coach, and destroyed public confidence in the captain’s plans. They are
noticed here in the order wherein he states them himself; and, pursuing
the like order, it is proper to state, in the first place, something of
the house wherein this self-eminent person was born; then, something
respecting “Ashburton Pop;” and, lastly, something respecting his
apprenticeship, and his services as a loyal man and a saddler to “the
city of Exeter, and the corporation and trade thereof.”
“I was born,” says the captain, “at the Rose and Crown public-house on
the old bridge, in the borough town of Ashburton, 1765; where a good
woollen-manufactory has been carried on; and it has produced a great
character, or so, for learning:” and “has been as famous for a beverage,
called _Ashburton Pop_, as London is for porter. I recollect its sharp
feeding good taste, far richer than the best small beer, more of the
champaign taste, and what was termed a good sharp bottle. When you
untied and hand-drew the cork, it gave a report louder than a pop-gun,
to which I attribute its name; its contents would fly up to the ceiling;
if you did not mind to keep the mouth of the stone bottle into the white
quart cup, it filled it with froth, but not over a pint of clear liquor.
Three old cronies would sit an afternoon six hours, smoke and drink a
dozen bottles, their reckoning but eight-pence each, and a penny for
tobacco. The pop was but twopence a bottle. It is a great novel loss to
the town; because its recipe died with its brewer about 1785.”
From the never-enough-sufficiently to be lamented and for-ever-departed
“Pop,” the captain returns to himself. “My mother,” says he, “put me
apprentice at fifteen to the head saddler in Exeter, the late Mr.
Charter, whom I succeeded when I came of age, and have lived in the same
house thirty-seven years, up to 1817, where my son now lives, under the
firm of Cooke and Son.” He evidently takes great pleasure in setting
forth the names of his customers; and he especially relates, “I got to
be saddler, through the late Charles Fanshawe, recorder of Exeter, to
the late lord Elliott Heathfield, colonel of dragoons. His lordship was
allowed to be one of the first judges of horses and definer of saddlery
in the kingdom; his lordship’s saddle-house consisted from the full
bristed to the demy pick, shafto, Hanoverian, to the Dutch pad-saddles;
and from the snaffle, Pelham, Weymouth, Pembroke, Elliott, Mameluke, and
Chifney bridles. Chifney was groom to the prince regent. Besides all
this, the vast manage horse-tackling, tomies, dumb-jockies, hobbles,
lunging, lifting, and side reins. His lordship’s saddle and riding-house
was a school for a saddler and dragoon. And I had the honour of being
saddler to other colonels of dragoons, connoisseurs of saddlery, when
they were at Exeter quarters.”
Here the captain’s enthusiasm increases: “I could write,” says he, “a
treatise on all the parts of the bearings and the utility of all the
kinds of saddles, bridles, stirrups, and harness-collars, made for the
last thirty years, for the benefit of horse or rider; from the
bullock-back horse to the finest withered.” With just judgment, while on
the saddle, the captain expatiates on the mode of riding to the best
advantage. “As is said, keep your head cool, feet warm, and live
temperate, and you won’t need the doctor, without something is amiss; so
let your saddle clear your finger with all your weight in the stirrups
going down hill; the same on the hind part with all your weight on the
seat going up hill; you won’t need the saddler without something is
amiss.” A miss is as good as a mile, and the captain diverges to a
“great mystery,” which must be related in his own words:--
“The great mystery to know a horse’s age is between five and eight years
old. A horse may live to thirty; but not one out of a thousand but what
are worked out of their lives at fifteen. From their sucking first
teeth, they loose, and get their permanent teeth at five years old; at
six they have a small pit-hole, a bean’s eye, a cavity in two of their
outer lower teeth; at seven they have this mark but in one, the outside
tooth; at eight years old the teeth are all filled up; then the mark is
out of the mouth. But dealers and judges look to the upper teeth; there
is a mark to twelve years old, but no vestige afterward. An old horse
has long large teeth, worn off on the top edge. The prime of a horse is
between six and twelve years of age. He is weak and faint before six,
and stiff and dull after twelve. Some say a horse is out of mark at
seven; but it is at eight. The average age of horses is at twelve
years--the average of man not at the half of his time appointed on
earth!”
To a posey of poesy, occupying nearly a page in this part of the
pamphlet, it is impossible to do justice with equal satisfaction to the
reader and the captain; yet, in courtesy, it is proper to cull
----------------- a twig,
Or two, to stick about his wig.
As a specimen of the materials whereon he relies for a laurel crown, the
following lines are drawn out from his “snarl” of versifyings:--
As few began the world, so I multiplied.
Plain, at twenty-one, I did begin
Which in my manuscript was seen.
Tho’ I did not know the use of grammar,
I was well supported by my hammer.
I sticked to my King, leather, and tools;
And, for order, wrote a set of shop rules.
Working with the hands only is but part,
The head’s the essential to make the work smart.
After this poetical effusion the captain rises to “the height of his
great argument,” his undying doings. “Now,” says the captain, “now for
my _sixty home achievements_ during the late war for my king and
country.” Alas! the captain seems to have disdained the “_use_ of
numbers,” except when inspired by the muses, or the “sweet voices” of
the people of Exeter, when they honoured him with a “Skimmington,” which
he passes over with a modesty equal to that of the Roman general who
never mentioned his great ovation. The captain’s “sixty achievements”
are doubtless in his pamphlet; but they in “_wrong_ order go,” and are
past the arithmetician’s art to enumerate. The chief of them must be
gathered from his own account. Foremost stands “the labour I took in
pleasing and accommodating my customers;” and almost next, “the many
hours I have knocked my head, as it were, against Samuel Johnson, to
find words for handbills and advertisements all at my own expense, to
avoid inflammatory pamphlets. I gloried in the name of ‘John Bull,’ and
shall to my life’s end. I went into the pot-houses at Exeter, and
treated with mugs round, and gave loyal toasts and sentiments. I became
a volunteer in the infantry, before the cavalry were equipped by my
brother tradesmen, that they should not say my loyalty was for trade.
After this, I joined the second troop of the first Devon Royal Cavalry.
One of my advertisements in the difficult times, at a guinea each, in
the Exeter, Sherborne, and Sun, which was then the ministerial paper,
was reprinted for its loyalty and novelty in Philadelphia, and in two
miscellaneous volumes of Literary Leisure, by Solomon Sumpter, Esq.; and
from the attention I paid to the nobility, gentry, dragoon and militia
officers, &c. when they tarried at Exeter or its neighbourhood, it was a
pleasure and an honour mixed with fatigue. Besides my own business, I
procured for them, gratis, manors, estates, houses, lodgings, carriages,
horses, servants, fish, fowl, hunting, shooting, and trout fishing. I
may say John Cooke, the saddler of Exeter, is known from England to the
Indies; on the Continent, Ireland, in Scotland, by the lord chief baron
Dundas, from Berwick-upon-Tweed to Penzance. I had two direction-posts
at my door during the war, that no one had in the kingdom beside; one to
the various places and distances, from Exeter to London 170 miles, &c.
&c.; the other a large sheet of paper written as a daily monitor gratis,
a bulletin of news, to cheer people in the worst of times, to guide them
in the constitutional road. _I even made myself a direction-post_, and
wore a conspicuous breastplate painted with this motto, ‘Fear God,
honour the king, and revere his ministers;’ which made not only the
auditory, but the judges, sheriff, and counsel stare at me. I went from
Exeter to London, to the funeral of lord Nelson, the late hero of the
Nile, in 1805.” The truth of the latter of the captain’s achievements
“nobody can deny.” He _did_ go to the funeral, and sat on a wall in
solemn silence, fast asleep, while it passed, and then returned to
Exeter, great as the great Bourbon, who
------------------- with forty thousand men,
Went up the hill, and then came down again.
From hence the captain diverges to other of his achievements. “I used to
rise, before we had firemen, at the dead of night or morning with my
apprentices at any alarm of fire, desiring all women, children, and
lookers on, if they did not help they were of harm, being in the way. I
put in my bulletins, you are to take the left of all you meet in
riding, and the right in walking. I was the means of the watering cart
to lay the dust of the streets in summer. I have subscribed to all the
institutions at Exeter, and at rejoicings of news I was not behindhand.
When I saw the allied sovereigns in London, I compared colonel Hain of
the North Devon, if he wore mustachios, to marshal Blucher, who came
forward to his window at signals; Mr. Chubb, of St. Thomas, Exeter, and
Mr. Gribble, attornies, of Newton Bushel, to the emperor Alexander in
face; the king of Prussia and his sons like healthy English country
esquires in their best clothes. I saw the duke of Wellington, who looked
thinner than his picture. I saw Buonaparte at Torbay, exact like his
picture; a huge stiff broad back, strong neck, big calf to his legs, he
looked about fifty, and about five feet eight, resembling a country
master builder, a sturdy one, full of thought as about a building.--I
end this pamphlet. Four words: thought is the quickest; time the wisest;
the laws of necessity the strongest; truth the most durable.
“This from a Devonshire Jog-trot, who has done enough to be termed a
public character in his way; a John Bull tradesman.
“JOHN COOKE.”
“_Waterloo Cottage,_
_18th Feb. 1819._”
So end the achievements of the chief of the javelin-men of Exeter,
written by himself, concerning whom, give me leave, Mr. Editor, to
inquire, if there be any thing more to be told than is set down in his
book. I think that captain Cooke’s “Skimmington” took place after he
favoured the public with appearing in print; and I remember to have
heard that the procession was highly ludicrous, and honoured by every
shop in the High-street of Exeter being closed, and every window above
being filled. I may venture to affirm in behalf of your readers, that an
account of it would be highly amusing; and if it be agreeable to your
inclination, as I think it may, that such a narrative of the recent
celebration of a very ancient custom should be permanently recorded, do
me the favour to let me express an earnest hope that some of your Exeter
readers will enable you to give particulars in the _Table Book_.