Mrs. Cook

by Marele Day

  After several cups of tea, and much voyaging, Mr Boswell departed, and James brought the book upstairs to show Elizabeth the dedication. On the frontispiece, in a clear, sloped, smallish hand, with the crossbars of the ‘t’s joined if there happened to be more than one in a word, Mr Boswell had written: ‘Presented to Captain Cooke by the Authour, as a small memorial of his admiration of that Gentleman’s most renowned merit as a Navigator, of the esteem of the Captain’s good sense and worth, and of the grateful sense which he shall ever entertain of the civil and communicative manner in which the Captain was pleased to treat him. James Boswell’.

  It had been a pleasant afternoon in the garden for James, a pause in the busy round in which he found himself, and it more than made up for the remark Mr Boswell had made at the Mitre a few days earlier. Upstairs in Assembly Row, James relayed the witticism to Elizabeth. ‘I have had a feast,’ Boswell had told Sir John, Banks, Solander and other members of the Royal Society as they rose from dinner to take coffee at Brown’s before proceeding to the meeting rooms for presentation of papers. ‘I have had a good dinner,’ he said, pointing to James, ‘for I have had a good Cook.’

  THE PORTRAIT OF CAPTAIN

  COOK BY NATHANIEL DANCE

  ‘An excellent likeness,’ Elizabeth pronounced after she’d studied Nathaniel Dance’s portrait of her husband.

  In the painting James was seated at a table, holding a map, his right hand resting on it, index finger outstretched, pointing. To what, it was difficult to tell. Perhaps to the hoped-for entrance to the north-west passage. In any case James was looking away from it, his gaze fixed on something beyond the picture frame. He was wearing navy dress uniform, appropriate for the rank of post-captain. White breeches, white waistcoat with brass buttons, a few of which were undone, white neck-cloth; a dark blue jacket with gold braid trim around the collar, down the edges and along the length of the cuffs, which finished with a modest display of lace from the shirt beneath. The squaring of the pose, the upright torso, everything about him suggested a man of strength and determination. The concentrated focus of the furrowed brow, the intent look in the eyes, the straight nose over the curve of mouth and the set of the chin. A master of men and, it would appear, of his own destiny.

  There were other portraits but Elizabeth deemed Dance’s to be the truest. When her husband passed into history, it would become the definitive one.

  It was a wonder James had even found time to sit for the portrait commissioned by Banks. When he sat down at all, which, it appeared to Elizabeth, was not very often these days, it was to put finishing touches on the voyage narrative. But it was the new voyage that sucked everything into its vortex. James was writing letters of requisition to the various boards, other letters to associates and friends, studying the details of his proposed route. He was often out—at the Admiralty, discussing matters with his officers, seeking news of Clerke, who was still in prison, meeting with the supernumeraries—astronomers, botanists, artists. Elizabeth had resigned herself to waiting one more time. In a way the voyage had already started, but at least this leg of it, the preparations, she could share with him.

  Omai would be going of course, to be returned to his home. Just as voyagers to the South Seas had brought back curios, so Omai was taking home his—gunpowder, wine, a globe of the world, tin soldiers, a hand organ, crockery, fancy goods and, heavens know why, a complete suit of armour were going on board the Resolution as Omai’s luggage.

  With slightly less paraphernalia was John Webber, the young artist whose work in the recent Royal Academy exhibition had been noticed by Solander. Mr Bayly, the astronomer who had sailed on the second voyage, was this time to go aboard the Discovery, and Banks had sent David Nelson, gardener at Kew, to collect botanical specimens. Then there was the crew—ignorant, drunken, blockheaded English tars who had such a bad reputation abroad for fighting and creating a disturbance that ports such as Cape Town would not let them ashore unless accompanied by an officer. The men were distrustful of innovation, but they knew the reputation of the captain, some of them having sailed with him before, and were prepared to eat sauerkraut, wash their clothing, swab the decks, fumigate and do whatever else the captain deemed necessary to keep them alive and healthy.

  James was taking marines aboard as well. Elizabeth remembered the name of one of them—Corporal Ledyard, an American, who was so determined to make the voyage that he walked from Portsmouth to London. She would later hear how the former missionary from Groton, Connecticut, had walked across Siberia, and, later, that he died in Africa looking for the source of the Niger. Sailing towards their places in history were midshipman George Vancouver, and ship’s master William Bligh, a talented navigator and surveyor, but known to be an ‘awkward fellow’. Clerke, captain of the Discovery, was to eventually meet up with the Resolution in Cape Town, having either escaped from prison or bribed his way out.

  James dined with Banks and Solander, frequented Will’s and other coffee houses to read the newspapers and catch up with the talk when he could. Mostly it was of the war in America.

  In the midst of all this came the birth of another son. On that bright day in May, James avowed he was the happiest man alive, and held the wee thing with such tenderness Elizabeth thought she would melt at the sight of it. ‘We shall call you Hugh,’ James whispered over the newborn’s head, ‘and Sir Hugh shall be your godfather.’ Elizabeth smiled and nodded, remembering the morning Mr Palliser, as Sir Hugh was then, had come to the door with news of James, how he had lent her his handkerchief and lifted her spirits out of the ashes.

  This new little Hugh lifted her spirits every time she looked at him. He was the most beautiful child of all. At first Elizabeth fretted at his fragility. He had the transparency of an angel. Soft-eyed, cherub-lipped. But there was a light in him that had been lacking in baby Joseph and even baby George. This child would survive. The Almighty had already taken more than His tithe from Elizabeth. God willing, this one would be spared.

  The birth of Hugh was a short respite in the bosom of the family, and soon James was once more dashing hither and thither. One piece of business, and a vital one at that, to which he was not giving enough attention was overseeing the work being done at the Deptford yards on the Resolution. The river from Wapping, through Limehouse Reach to Deptford where the city wharves tailed out and the ship-building facilities began, was always crowded, and thick with odours, miasmas, curses, shrieks and cries, but this spring and summer of 1776, it was worse than Bedlam.

  First there were the prison hulks, pensioned-off navy vessels no longer fit for service, their wings clipped, their sails dismantled, where prisoners passed the night in fetters, to be awoken at dawn and rowed to labour in the dockyards. If the smell of the river itself wasn’t enough, there was effluent and refuse from the hulks, the stench of rotting ropes, of rotting hulks, rotting lives. A visitor to the yards had to row through all of this, past the hulks festooned with clothing and bedding hung out to air, like a sad parody of fairground pennants. With the American colonies no longer accepting English convicts, the prisoners’ lives were in limbo. The American revolt was also responsible for the sheer volume of work in the dockyards. For thirteen years England had been at peace, the dockyards at an ebb, and now they were suddenly a hive of activity. So much so that often a lick and a polish replaced actual structural work.

  At the best of times the dockyard workers had to be watched, and these were not the best of times. The mission of the Resolution and her sister ship, the aptly named Discovery, was above and beyond war and politics, yet was dragged down into it. No ship had priority in the Deptford yards unless someone made it so. James Cook was not shying away from the stench of the hulls, the chaos in the yards, it was simply that he was already stretched to the limit.

  James had sailed to the extremes of heat and cold, and Elizabeth imagined that he had no boundaries, that he could perform whatever task was set before him. Several tasks. He was a big strong man but a man nevertheless. He had per
sonally supervised preparations for the first and second voyages, every detail of the refitting and overhauling of his vessels, but then he had not been stretched in so many different directions. Now he was. Visiting the dockyards was but one of many tasks, instead of being the overriding one. He simply did not have time.

  Elizabeth remembered when the boys were young, how excitable they were for adventure, for staying up late, for fireworks, for special occasions, and how they would say no, they did not want to go to bed, even though Elizabeth could see their eyelids drooping with fatigue. In those months before departure, James was like that. Eager, wanting to do everything, unaware of his own fatigue. Sometimes he winced and put his hand on his stomach. When Elizabeth asked he would say: ‘Nothing, my dear.’ And in these summer months of 1776 she would remember Cousin Isaac saying that the bilious colic returned in the warmer latitudes. The hottest day of an English summer was nothing compared to the tropical heat of the low latitudes.

  Though Elizabeth could not help but be swept along, uplifted in the zephyr that surrounded her husband’s voyage, she was also grounded by the presence of baby Hugh. She would rise in the night, glancing at her sleeping husband, and tend to the baby. Hugh’s eyes were bright with the candlelight, his cherub lips already searching for her nipple. The milk of love poured out of her, and as she fed the newborn, she tried not to think about her husband’s hazardous journey. She was feeding succour, nourishment into baby Hugh, she did not wish to brew anxiety into it.

  THE WILL OF JAMES COOK

  To my dear father, Mr James Cook—one annuity or clear yearly sum of ten pounds ten shillings. I give to my dear and loving wife Elizabeth Cook all my leasehold messuage tenement and premises with the appurtenances wherein I now dwell—Mile End old Town. Sisters Christiana Cocker and Margaret Fleck £10. Good friends Thomas Dyall of Mile End old Town aforesaid gentleman, and Richard Wise of Rumford, Essex gentleman £10 a piece as a mark of the great regard I have of them. Rest of estate 1/3 to Elizabeth Cook, 2/3 to Elizabeth Cook, Thomas Dyall and Richard Wise in trust for the children (all and every).

  Witnessed by Mr Bussett, Nath Austen, Joseph Neeld, 14 June, 1776

  Elizabeth rubbed Hugh’s little back and when he produced a burp, put the milk-drowsy baby in the crib. James had a few more formal occasions to attend, then he would close the door and spend the remaining days, and precious nights, with Elizabeth. The Resolution was ready and would soon set sail.

  On Saturday 8 June, to a seventeen-gun salute and three cheers from the yard workers, Sandwich, Palliser and other notables came aboard for a farewell dinner of turbot, trout, lobsters, shrimps, chickens, raggove mellie, stewed mushrooms, peas, beans, spinage toasts, cauliflowers, petit patties, venison, a tart, sweetbreads, biscuits, currant jelly, sauces and twenty-four French rolls, all of it victualled by Messrs Birch, Birch and Co of Cornhill near Wapping, for a cost of £12 2s.

  By evening of the following Monday, the sounds of oinking, clucking, mooing and baaing filled the ship. Not only did the animals provide a living larder for the people, but also the king was intent on making Tahiti an antipodean English pastoral, with rabbits, sheep, horses, hogs, cows, bulls and chickens. To top it all was a pair of peacocks. James frowned as he told Elizabeth about it, thinking of the space King George’s ‘gifts’ were taking up, and the discomfort that would result. ‘Ah well,’ he said, ‘it is only till Tahiti,’ as if Tahiti was a few stops down the river instead of the other side of the world.

  When Elizabeth went to put her accounts book back in the drawer of the Chippendale chest in which they kept their marriage certificate, deeds to the house and other important documents, she discovered a new addition.

  ‘A will, James?’

  ‘It is a matter of course,’ he tried to assure her. ‘Amere formality.’

  He may have written wills before his previous voyages but Elizabeth was unaware of it. Thus, on finding it in the place where he knew she would look should that dreadful need arise, of course Elizabeth asked. She would have liked to dismiss her anxiety and unease about the impending voyage as merely the concerns of her sex, but when she saw those ephemeralities transformed into masculine substance, into his last will and testament, as if James wasn’t long for this world, she could not help but give voice to them.

  The will was the least of it. Never before had James prepared so thoroughly for the prospect of his not returning. When Elizabeth urged her husband to add her best respects to the letter he was writing to Commodore Wilson on 22 June, she noticed he described his imminent journey as ‘hazardous, and must be made with great caution’.

  Elizabeth was not to know till later that in Plymouth, while waiting for the tide and the wind, James wrote other letters dealing with arrangements he had made for Elizabeth and the boys. To Lord Sandwich:

  I cannot leave England without taking some method to thank your Lordship for the many favors confered upon me, and in particular for the very liberal allowance made to Mrs Cook during my absence. This, by enabling my family to live at ease and removing from them every fear of indigency, has set my heart at rest and filled it with gratitude to my Noble benefactor. If a faithfull discharge of that duty which your Lordship has intrusted to my care, be any return, it shall be my first and principal object.

  To Reverend Dr Richard Kaye, chaplain to the King, who had supplied James with Maundy money to be put in bottles on newly discovered islands, he wrote:

  I cannot leave England without answering your very obliging favor of the 12th of last Month, and thanking you for the kind tender of your service to Mrs Cook in my absence. I shall most certainly make an acknowledgment in the way you wish, if it please God to spare me till I reach the place for Discoveries.

  Having written his last letter from Mile End, the one to Commodore Wilson, James put away his pen and papers. He and Elizabeth played with baby Hugh in the blossoming garden, laughed as they watched him watching the movement of hens amongst the greenery.

  On Sunday 23 June they went to church. It was the first time Elizabeth had left the house since the birthing. The vicar of St Dunstan’s led the congregation in prayer for the voyage and the safe return of those aboard the Resolution and the Discovery. Elizabeth’s head remained bowed, her heart full of fervent prayer even after the hymn was announced and the choir members lifted their voices to the rafters.

  ‘You must sleep,’ James whispered to his wife that short summer night.

  ‘I will sleep in the coming years.’ Elizabeth felt the same urgency James had when he returned from the previous voyage. She initiated the intimacies, pleasuring him with her lips, her hands, till he was ready for her. Again and again. She wanted to hold him inside her forever, for this union to be seared into his soul so that when he was in the embrace of his ocean he would hunger for his wife and know that this was the greater love.

  They were still awake at first light. Elizabeth felt a pang in her heart as she caught sight of James’s valise waiting by the chair. The bulk of his luggage was already aboard. Gates knocked softly at the door, with tea and toast.

  After breakfast James rose and attended to his toiletries. Elizabeth must rise too and get dressed because soon Sandwich’s carriage, with Omai aboard, would be here. A short ride to the river then a boat to the Nore where the Resolution waited. But Elizabeth did not want to leave the bed which held her husband’s warmth, his smell, the indentation of his body. She watched him button his waistcoat, tie his neck-cloth, arrange his cuffs so that the gold braid was parallel to the line of his arm and just the right amount of lace was visible.

  When everything was ready he turned to her. ‘Elizabeth?’ He was presenting himself to her, the celebrated navigator in the prime of his life. Every step he had taken had led him to this very place, to this very moment. They had been husband and wife for almost fourteen years, yet behind the splendid uniform, behind the lines of maturity, the lines that sea and wind had etched on his face, Elizabeth saw the young seaman who had just joined the navy, to whom she ha
d opened her door. ‘Yes, my dearest,’ she said. ‘Yes.’

  A carriage pulled up. An exchange of greetings, a quick kiss, and James was gone.

  THE COPLEY MEDAL

  ‘Such a crowd at Plymouth to see the Resolution off,’ Jamie and Nat wrote. ‘You would have loved it, Mama, it was like a fair, so many people, vendors selling sausages and oysters, oranges, pots and pans, and whatever else they could think of. Everyone craning their necks to catch a glimpse of Omai, as if all of London hadn’t already seen him. He remembered me,’ Nat went on, ‘and said if ever I go to Otaheite we shall play backgammon. Sailors danced, musicians played, and Papa and Omai were piped aboard by the highlanders in their kilts, accompanied by cheers, and men throwing their hats up into the air. So many marines going on board in their splendid red coats, and so many warships in Plymouth Sound.’

  Bound for North America, thought Elizabeth, the same as her husband on a more peaceable mission. Elizabeth read her sons’ words while rocking their baby brother. Except for Hugh, she was alone again. She did not know which was worse—having said goodbye to her husband, yet knowing he was still in England and not seeing him, or the long years after he had sailed over the rim of the horizon and there was no news at all.

  She had tried to quell feelings of bitterness and resentment in front of her husband but now that he was gone, those thoughts batted their black wings at her. Perhaps if she pinned them down they would not flap about so. She placed sleeping Hugh in the cradle and took out pen and paper. So often when she did this it was to write a letter to James, and this time also she found herself addressing him.

  Mostly her letters to him were buoyant with hope and encouragement, telling him how much she looked forward to seeing him again, her feelings of love for him, as well as news of what was happening at 8 Assembly Row, always glossing over anything that might give him cause to worry. What was the use when he was so far away and could do nought about it? She never wrote when she was feeling low, or of her anxieties for him, the devastation of the children’s deaths.