by Marele Day
Jamie brought the news on that cold crestfallen day. He entered the house, and for a moment Elizabeth felt the breath catch in her throat, so like his father was he. ‘Mama,’ he said, his eyes brimming with tears. It was a moment before he could speak the words. Elizabeth gathered Hugh up into her arms, instinctively knowing there would be a need. Jamie took in a deep breath, enough to draw out of him the leaden words. ‘Nat has drowned, Mama. There was a dreadful hurricane in the West Indies. The Thunderer went down. Along with all hands.’
The three remaining members of the Cook family held each other for a long time, the tears of one mingling with the tears of the others.
As it was with Nat, so it was with James. Elizabeth had to keep telling herself he was dead, that he would never be coming back to Mile End, that he was not simply on a long voyage.
Once, in a dream, James did come back. ‘Is it really you?’ Elizabeth whispered.
‘Yes, my dearest.’
Elizabeth marvelled at how beautiful he looked. His seaweed hair rippled across his shoulders, his eyes had the lustre of black pearls, his face a radiance that filled the whole room. Elizabeth was not the least bit surprised at the sight of him. In the dream she had no memory that he’d died.
‘I am exceedingly well,’ he told her.
When his features faded the radiance remained. Elizabeth carried it with her to the moment of waking but when she opened her eyes to the cold empty bed the weight of grief returned. How she wanted to prolong that dreaming state, to sleep for the rest of her life and dream only of radiance. Yet she could not let herself be so seduced. She could not abandon Jamie and Hugh. She must rise from the bed of dreams, rise to the pain of the real, bear the ache in her bones, her heart, her soul.
While Elizabeth carried on daily life as best she could, Captain James Cook, RN passed into history. In the years to come there were medals to commemorate him, crockery bearing his likeness, wallpaper, paintings representing his apotheosis, plays and pantomimes depicting his death, not only in England but also the Continent. He was the hero of the age, a self-made man who brought agricultural arts and tools to the Pacific. He was likened to Ulysses, guiding his men not through Scylla and Charybdis, but through coral shoals and the underworld of Antarctica.
Among the monuments erected to James’s memory was a globe fixed to a square block in the grounds of Sir Hugh Palliser’s estate in Buckinghamshire, with the inscription:
To the memory of Captain James Cook, the ablest and most renowned Navigator this or any country hath produced . . . Traveller! Contemplate, admire, revere, and emulate this great master in his profession; whose skill and labours have enlarged natural philosophy; have extended nautical science; and have disclosed the long concealed and admirable arrangements of the Almighty in the formation of this globe, and, at the same time, the arrogance of mortals, in presuming to account, by their speculations, for the law by which he was pleased to create it.
Nothing would compensate for the loss of James, but Elizabeth wanted to make sure that his family shared in the fruits of his labours, as they would have done had he lived. On 13 June 1781 Elizabeth sat at the Spanish mahogany table and wrote to Lord Sandwich.
I hope your Lordship will pardon my troubling you with this adress, I have avoided all application, as much as possible, that might call for your smallest Attention, but upon the presumption that the History of the Voyage in which my dear Husband lost his Life will soon be laide before the Public by which through your Lordships favour my self and Family may be benifetted, I humble hope from your Lordships usual goodness to us you will be pleased to consider us for compensation as you may deem us deserving of by his merit and for the part he acted in the course of the Voyage, untill his unfortunate Death put a period to his Labours whereby we became great sufferers from his not returning safe home, I therefore most humbly implore Your Lordships favour and protection to myself and Family which will ever be retained in gratefull remembrance.
When the Voyage to the Pacific Ocean . . . for Making Discoveries in the Northern Hemisphere finally appeared in June 1784, it sold out in three days. Elizabeth, Jamie and Hugh received, in the following year, half of the profits—the interest being assigned to Elizabeth, the principal divided equally between Jamie and Hugh.
Also in 1784, Elizabeth received from Sir Joseph Banks, now President of the Royal Society, the society’s gold medal which Lewis Pingo, engraver to the Royal Mint, had struck in commemoration of her husband. She wrote a letter of thanks to Sir Joseph, adding: ‘My greatest pleasure now remaining is in my sons, who, I hope, will ever strive to copy after so good an example, and, animated by the honours bestowed on their father’s memory, be ambitious of attaining by their own merits your notice and approbation.’
In September of the following year, the Cook family was granted a coat of arms. Elizabeth did not have a carriage on which to display it but she was grateful that the family should be honoured in this way. On the shield were two polar stars, and between them, a map of the Pacific with longitude and latitude marked. The red track of James’s voyage ended at Hawaii. The crest was an arm, in the uniform of a captain of the Royal Navy.
Elizabeth also had her own commemorations, notably a memorial ring decorated with her husband’s hair in the shape of a vase surrounded by a sprig of leaves. The ring box bore the seal of the coat of arms, but the ring remained constantly on Elizabeth’s finger.
A doctor had once told Elizabeth that the human heart was roughly the size of a clenched fist. Elizabeth felt that instead of a heart in her ribcage she had such a clenched fist. She prayed for the breath of God to uncurl and relax it but relief never came. She went through the motions of daily life, attending to the chores, instructing Gates, nodding a curt greeting to neighbours in the street. Gates made her mistress little sugar cakes and other treats, but Elizabeth seemed to find delight in none of these things. Only Jamie and Hugh brought a smile to her face.
Elizabeth took Hugh to see the hot air balloon which lifted off from Stepney Green. A big crowd stood gasping at the size of it, and the impossible thought that it would rise into the air, but rise it did, and all eyes followed, accompanied by ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’ and applause. Hugh was ten years old when he saw the balloon and said that he would like to fly away in such a machine.
‘Then we might never see you again.’
‘I could fly to the stars and see Papa and Nat. I could be the first man on the moon.’
Though he was growing tall, almost as high as his mother’s shoulder, Elizabeth held him closer to her skirts, and thought of James. If such a contraption had been invented ten years earlier, James would probably propose voyaging in it. Back when James had set out on his first voyage, the idea that a balloon could float from one country to another would have been considered laughably impossible. But the preceding year, 1785, the first hot air balloon crossed the Channel.
Elizabeth watched the balloon rise higher and higher into the summer sky. She felt as if everything in her life was pulling away from her, stretched so hard that she would rupture.
She brought her attention back to the ground. The fashionable women in the crowd were wearing huge flounced hats—Lunardis after balloonistVincenzo Lunardi and his daring exploits. Elizabeth looked up to the brim of her own hat, outmoded despite the new ruffles sewn into it. She did not mind, she did not mind anything. She wished, above all, for the flow of life to continue without her, to be as still as a rock in the midst of it, instead of being dragged along against her will. These were not thoughts that she put into prayers. They were somehow sinful, yet they stayed with her as surely as her own shadow.
A LETTER FROM ELIZABETH
COOK TO FRANCES MCALLISTER
(NEE WARDALE)
Jamie had finally persuaded Elizabeth to leave 8 Assembly Row. It had become such a dark little house, full of the cobwebs of death hanging everywhere no matter how much Elizabeth dusted and polished.
Clapham was a pleasant respectable village, with hand
some villas and mansions surrounding the Common, the whole planted with trees and shrubs, and crisscrossed with carriage drives. Some days the breeze blew the scent of lavender from the fields on nearby Lavender Hill to the village. At four miles south it was far enough away from London for the air to have health-restoring properties, yet it was very well connected to the metropolis by road. The post arrived four times a day from London and could be received at Mr Batten’s, Clapham Common; Mr Taylor’s, Park Road; or from Mr Oldie’s, Clapham Rise.
She had chosen Clapham because of its convenience for Jamie when he returned from Portsmouth. The large three-storeyed redbrick house she bought in 1788 was on the section of the London road which would later be known as Clapham High Street. As well as several bedrooms the house had a parlour front and back, dining room, scullery, laundry and cellar. The ceilings were intricately decorated with soft pastel plasterwork in the style of Robert Adams. In the dining room Elizabeth put up heavy velvet curtains, and in the study the folding mahogany table.
As she sat arranging the ink and pen on the honey-coloured surface of the table she remembered how she had lovingly polished it before the Endeavour voyage. Though this was a new house, a new beginning, she had brought everything of her husband with her, maps and charts, journals, the unfinished vest, the ditty box, James’s South Sea relics, the medals and the coat of arms. His letters, of course, which she read till the pain in her heart got too much to bear.
Elizabeth took a fresh sheet of paper from the drawer and dipped the pen into the ink. She continued her weekly letters to James, even after Sir Hugh had brought the news and Jem the ditty box. She wrote to him of the new house in Clapham, how she had started a garden in the back, how there was a place for Jamie’s horse, that Jamie had been made lieutenant on 4 May 1782, and that Hugh was doing well at the Merchant Taylors’ school in Charterhouse Square.
The letter for which she was now preparing was not to James, but Cousin Frances in Philadelphia. Mr Lieber had died, and Frances was remarried. Elizabeth could not imagine herself being married to anyone but James.
Clapham, April, 1792
Dear Cousin,
I receiv’d yours by Col Oswald, was glad to hear you was well and settled so comfortably indeed you must have had a deal of trouble. I often thought of you in the American War.
Elizabeth looked up from the page. Hardly had that war ended than troubles had started brewing in France. To begin with, in 1789, the reforms across the Channel—the cries of liberty, equality, fraternity—had been greeted with approval in London, but by 1792 the reforms had turned to terror. King George had already issued a royal proclamation against seditious activity and Elizabeth felt sure that England would once more go to war with France. She prayed it would not come to that. Jamie would have to fight on the seas and the French would not grant him the same immunity they had bestowed on his father.
Elizabeth looked at the few lines she had written and took up the pen once again.
I beg leave to congratulate you upon your marriage with so good a man. Col Oswald gives him the highest character. I am very glad to hear you have such fine children. My sons are oblig’d to you for your present.
Elizabeth knew that cousin Frances corresponded with the old neighbours in Mile End, but she wondered if Frances had had news of her Cook relatives, if she knew that James senior had died, a few months after James himself.
She dipped the pen into the ink once more.
Your Uncle died about thirteen years ago. Mrs Fleck lives at Redcar. She has got six children. They were all well when I heard last.
Elizabeth remembered the good times she and the boys had had with Frances, how fond they were of her, and she of them. Hugh of course knew cousin Frances only through letters, but Jamie remembered her well.
My son will take another opportunity to write to you, he joins with me in love to you and family.
It was all she could manage. Elizabeth put the pen down, folded the letter and sealed it. She looked at the clock. ‘Gates,’ she called. Gates appeared. ‘Will you take this letter to Mr Batten’s? If you hurry you shall make the post.’
In the spring of 1793 Hugh was entered into Christ’s College at Cambridge, destined to become a clergyman. Elizabeth arranged with Reverend Kaye, the King’s chaplain, that Hugh be considered for a favourable position on completion of his studies. She’d not yet told her son of the arrangement, did not want him to consider his time at Cambridge an easy ride.
Elizabeth and Gates waited that fine spring day while Hugh’s luggage was loaded onto the coach. What a fine tall youth Hugh was, and how calm. Nothing ever ruffled him. He seemed to take his departure to Cambridge in his stride, as if he’d been destined for it all his life. Elizabeth remembered seeing Jamie off all those years ago.Howanxious she was for him, how much she had fussed, or so it seemed in her memory. Now her youngest was leaving home. She still felt the knot in her chest but Elizabeth worried less for Hugh’s safety than she had for young Jamie’s. Hugh was entering into the service of the Lord, he would be protected.
He embraced first Gates then Elizabeth. She felt the warmth of his cheek against hers. ‘I’ll be home for Christmas,’ he said, kissing his mother gently on the forehead.
The two women watched and waved till the coach was a small speck on the London Road.
‘For heaven’s sake, Gates,’ said Elizabeth as they walked back to the house. ‘Stop blubbering or you’ll have me doing it too. It’s not as if he’s going to the South Seas or America,’ she said, trying to assure herself as well as Gates. ‘Cambridge is only a coach journey away.’ And not nearly as fraught with risk as being at sea, war or no.
But there was no place safe from the hand of the Almighty. In December Elizabeth received news, by the post that was delivered four times a day, that Hugh had contracted scarlet fever. He was in mortal danger. She packed her bag, donned her hat and set forth on the second coach journey of her life.
‘Not Hugh, do not take my youngest,’ she prayed silently through the cold bumpy countryside. This child was dedicated to the church, surely the Almighty would spare him. Huddled in a corner of the coach, Elizabeth prayed so hard that her fingernails dug into her hands.
Elizabeth stayed inside the coach when it made its stop in London, barely aware of new passengers coming aboard, their luggage being loaded. She kept her eyes closed, wanting to see nothing but the face of her beloved Hugh. She shut them tightly to keep out the panic threatening to engulf her. He would survive, he had to. The Lord would not take the child already dedicated to Him. Elizabeth saw nothing of the snow-covered fields and brown brick buildings as the coach came into the winding streets of Cambridge.
The coach dropped her at the grooved timber doors, the Great Gate of Christ’s College, where she was escorted to Hugh’s room.
At the top of the stairs a black-coated gentleman, a physician, said: ‘Mrs Cook?’ Perhaps he introduced himself, told her his name, Elizabeth no longer recollected. ‘The young gentleman died but an hour ago.’
Elizabeth flew into the room, her skirts black and shiny as ravens’ wings. One hour. Perhaps he had not yet begun the journey, perhaps his soul was still here. Her son was as still as a portrait. His face was an oval above the covers of the narrow bed, his hair damp on the pillow, his hands placed one on top of the other on his breast.
There was another young man in the room, the same age as Hugh, a fellow student. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said gravely.
Elizabeth nodded an acknowledgment, then knelt beside her son, touched his cheek. It was still warm. ‘Hugh,’ she breathed his name like a sigh. The warm breath of his mother travelled into Hugh’s ear but he did not hear. The fellow student, tears in his eyes, turned away and gazed out of the window. Elizabeth stroked her son’s forehead, trying to coax a response, any sign of life at all, but there was nothing. He was seventeen. It was 21 December, Elizabeth and James’s thirty-second wedding anniversary, and their youngest son was dead.
Hugh was buried in Gre
at St Andrew’s Church, across the road from the college. In a dull dream Elizabeth received the condolences of her son’s friends, of his masters. She remembered nothing of the journey back to London, nothing of Christmas or New Year, except the cold suffocation of snow and ice.
Of six children, there remained only Jamie. A bare month later, a day or two after Elizabeth’s fifty-second birthday, she received news that Jamie had drowned in a fierce storm off the Isle of Wight while attempting to join the man of war Spitfire, of which he was commander.
The letter shook like a wind-blown leaf in her hand. There was darkness all around and Elizabeth was falling.
A LETTER FROM
MRS HONEYCHURCH TO
FRANCES MCALLISTER
London, Sept. 12th, 1794
Mrs McAllister,
I received yrs dated June, 25th, and am very glad to hear that you and your family escaped the dreadful calamity [yellow fever] that threatened you, indeed the newspapers gave very terrible accounts of it and I was afraid that you or yours might have fallen victims to it, and you have great reason to be thankful to the Almighty that the dreadful scourge passed over you. I saw Mrs Cook a short time since, she has been very ill ever since the death of her oldest son which was a month and a day after the death of her youngest, who was a very promising youth who, designed for the Church, had been at the University of Cambridge a few months, where he died of a violent fever. She had not been out but once after his decease when she heard of her eldest son’s being drowned, which quite overcame her, and she has not been able to come downstairs or eat a bit of bread since, within these few weeks she has eat a small bit of veal or lamb or a little fish, since which she has thought herself better tho she has two fits every day, night and morning and they hold her an hour, and I am afraid they will never leave her, it is a long time to be in such a state as James was drowned about Christmas as he was going aboard his ship, it was a very stormy night and his friends with whom he had spent the day would have persuaded him not to have gone, but he said it was his duty to be on board his ship and nothing should hinder him, seven men share the same fate with him. His body was found at the Isle of Wight and taken to Cambridge to be buried with his brother.