[1] Alderman Cooper thus spelt his name and all the family from that
day to this, including the poet, have so pronounced it.
COWRY, the popular name of the shells of the _Cypraeida_, a family of
mollusks. Upwards of 100 species are recognized, and they are widely
distributed over the world--their habitat being the shallow water along
the sea-shore. The best known is the money cowry or _Cypraea moneta_, a
small shell about half an inch in length, white and straw-coloured
without and blue within, which derives its distinctive name from the
fact that in various countries it has been employed as a kind of
currency. (See SHELL-MONEY.) In Africa among those tribes, such as the
Niam-Niam, who do not recognize their monetary value, the shells are in
demand as fashionable decorations, just as in Germany they were in use
as an ornament for horses' harness, and were popular enough to acquire
several native names, such as _Brustharnisch_ or breastplates, and
_Otterkopfchen_ or little adders' heads. Besides the _Cypraea moneta_
various species are employed in this decorative use. The _Cypraea
aurora_ is a mark of chieftainship among the natives of the Friendly
Islands; the _Cypraea annulus_ is a favourite with the Asiatic
islanders; and several of the larger kinds have been used in Europe for
the carving of cameos. The tiger cowry, _Cypraea tigris_, so well known
as a mantelpiece ornament in England and America, is commonly used by
the natives of the Sandwich Islands to sink their nets; and they have
also an ingenious plan of cementing portions of several shells into a
smooth oval ball which they then employ as a bait to catch the
cuttle-fish. While the species already mentioned occur in myriads in
their respective habitats, the _Cypraea princeps_ and the _Cypraea
umbilicata_ are extremely rare.
COW-TREE, or MILK-TREE, _Brosimum Galactodendron_ (natural order
Moraceae), a native of Venezuela. As in other members of the order, the
stem contains a milky latex, which flows out in considerable quantities
when a notch is cut in it. The "milk" is sweet and pleasant tasting.
Another species, _B. Alicastrum_, the bread-nut tree, a native of
central America and Jamaica, bears a fruit which is cooked and eaten.
The bread-fruit (_Artocarpus_) is an allied genus of the same natural
order.
COX, DAVID (1783-1859), English painter, was born on the 29th of April
1783, in a small house attached to the forge of his father, a
hardworking master smith, in a mean suburb of Birmingham. Turning his
hand to what he could get to do, Joseph Cox, the father, was both
blacksmith and whitesmith, and when the war with France began took to
the making of bayonets and horse shoes, on wholesale commission, and
immediately the boy David was thought able to assist he was taken from
the poor elementary school in the neighbourhood, and set to the anvil.
The attempt to turn the boy to this kind of labour had, however, been
made too early; it was too heavy for his strength, and he was sent to
what was called by the cyclops of Birmingham a "toy trade," making
lacquered buckles, painted lockets, tin snuff-boxes and other "fancy"
articles. Here David very soon acquired some power of painting
miniatures, and his talents might have been misdirected had his master,
Fieldler by name, not released him from his apprenticeship by dying by
his own hand; and David found an opening as colour-grinder and
scene-painter's fag in the theatre then leased, with several others, by
the father of Macready, the tragedian.
This obscure step, not one of promotion at the time, was really the most
important incident in the uneventful career of Cox. The boy, who had
inherited a rather weakly body, and had been trained with care by a
pious mother, while intellectually negative and unable to cope with any
kind of learning whatever, had endless perseverance, great strength of
application, and all through life remained genial, gentle, simple-minded
and modest, his penetration and self-reliance being wholly professional,
inspired by his love of nature and his knowledge of his subject. Not
very quick, and with little versatility, he went step by step in one
line of study from the time he began to get the smallest remuneration
for his pictures to the age of seventy-five, when he painted large in
oil very much the same class of subjects he had of old produced small in
water-colours, with the same impressive and unaffectedly noble
sentiment, only increased by the mastery of almost infinite practice. He
was never led astray by fictitious splendour of any kind, except once
indeed in 1825, when he imitated Turner, and produced a classic subject
he called "Carthage, Aeneas, and Achates." He never visited Venice or
Egypt, or crossed the Channel except for a week or two in Belgium and
Paris, and never even went to Scotland for painting purposes.
Bettws-y-Coed and its neighbourhood was everything to him, and
characteristics most truly English were beloved by him with a sort of
filial instinct. So completely did he love the country, that even
London, where it was his interest to live, had few attractions, and did
not retain him long.
This residence in the metropolis which began in 1804 was, however, of
the most essential educational advantage to him. The Water-Colour
Society was established the year after he arrived, and was mainly
supported by landscape-painters. He was not, of course, admitted at
first into membership, not till 1813, before which time an attempt to
establish a rival exhibition had been made. In this Cox joined, the
result being very serious to him, an entire failure entailing the
seizure and forced sale of all the pictures. At that time the tightest
economy was the rule with him, and to save the trifling cost of new
strainers or stretching boards, he covered up one picture by another.
When these works were prepared for re-sale, fifty years afterwards, some
of them yielded picture after picture, peeled off the boards like the
waistcoats from the body of the gravedigger in Hamlet!
While lodging near Astley's Circus he married his landlady's daughter,
and then took a modest cottage at Dulwich, where he gradually left off
scene-painting and became teacher, giving lessons at ten shillings a
lesson. This entailed walking to the pupils' homes, and the gift of the
paintings done before the pupils. These have since been frequently sold
for large sums, but his own price, when lucky enough to sell his best
works, was never over a few pounds, and more frequently about fifteen
shillings. Sometimes, indeed, he sold them in quantities at two pounds a
dozen to be resold to country teachers. By and by he resisted the
leaving of the work done to the pupil, but with little advantage to
himself, as he saw no end to the accumulation of his own productions,
and actually tore them up, and threw them into areas, or pushed them
into drains during his trudge homeward. A number of years after he
pointed out a particular drain to a friend, and said, "Many a work of
mine has gone down that way to the Thames!"
Shortly after he had turned thirty, his stay in London suddenly ended.
He was offered the enormous sum of L100 per annum, by a ladies' college
in Hereford, and thither he went. This sum he supplemented by teaching
in the Hereford grammar school for many years, at six guineas a year,
and in other schools at better pay, but still, and up to his fortieth
year, we find his prices for pictures from eight to twenty-five
shillings. Cox has no history apart from his productions, and these
particulars as to his remuneration possess an interest almost dramatic
when we contrast them with the enormous sums realized by his later
works, and with the "honours and observance, troops of friends," that
accompanied old age with him, when settled down in his own home at
Harborne, near his native town, where he died on the 7th of June 1859.
Cox's second short residence in London, dating from 1835 to 1840, marks
the period of his highest powers. During those years, and for twelve
years after, his productiveness kept pace with his mastery, and it would
be difficult to overrate the impressiveness of effect, and high feeling,
within the narrow range of subject displayed by many of these works. He
was now surrounded by dealers, and wealth flowed in upon him. Still he
remained the same, a man with few wants and scarcely any enjoyments
except those furnished by his brush and his colours. The home at
Harborne was a pleasant one, but the approach to the front was useless
as the door was kept fastened up, the only entrance being through the
garden at the back, and the principal room appropriated as his studio he
was content to reach by a narrow stair from the kitchen. Neither in it
nor elsewhere was there any luxury or even taste visible:--no
_bric-a-brac_, no objects of interest, few or no books, no pictures
except landscapes by his friends. When in winter, after his wife's
death, the fire went out, and the cold at last surprised him, he lifted
his easel into the little dining-room and began again. A union of his
friends was formed in 1855 to procure a portrait of him, which was
painted by Sir J. Watson Gordon; and an exhibition of his works was
opened in London in 1858 and again another in 1859. This was actually
open when the news of his death arrived.
The number of David Cox's works, great and small, is enormous. He
produced hundreds annually for perhaps forty-five years. Before his
death and for ten years thereafter, their prices were remarkable, as
witness the following obtained at auction--"Going to the Mill," L1575;
"Old Mill at Bettws-y-Coed," L1575; "Outskirts of a Wood, with Gipsies,"
L2305; "Peace and War," L3430.