The Sun.
London, England, 1864-04-07 00:00:00

A Tribute to T. P. Cooke.

_
The following delightful tribute to T. P. Cooke
we find in the Standard of this morning :

•
A great popular favourite is gone. The Dibdin
of the English theatre is dead. T. P. Cooke—
Thomas Potter Cooke—is no more. The son of the
surgeon of Titchfield-street, the midshipman at the
blockade of Toulon and the battle of St. Vincent,
the hero of the wrecked Raven, who leaped from
the deck to the stage, is to be buried in peace,
beneath the sod of Highgate Cemetery. There was
an attraction about this " old man agile" which
marked him out amid the common multitude of
players. Everybody liked him. No one—not even
Miss Lydia Thompson—can compete with him its
the sailor's hornpipe. Sixty years ago, almost
exactly, a delighted crowd enjoyed his Jack Tar
impersonations at the Royalty Theatre. Then he
went to Astley'e, flourishing under the regime of
" real water." We—or our grandfathers, if you
please—saw him at the Lyceum, subject to that
despotic manager Laurent, who afterwards humbled
himself so deeply as to become a Clown. Very grey-
headed people recollect him as Obi, or Three-fingered
Jack ; very hoary ramblers through the reminis-
cences of bygone evenings can recall him as the
Poor Soldier. They bring back his ghost, by that
complicated spectral apparatus which we style
memory, upon the boards of Covent Garden, the
Coburg, and the Adelphi; they talk of his Frank-
enstein, his Long Tom Coffin, his Dirk Hatterick,
and his Duke of Argyle, Perhaps, however, one
of T. P. Cooke's most rich performances has not been
universally appreciated, because the joke was en-
joyed in secret. He was, year after year—so an
atrocious babbler tells us—one of the Lord Mayor's
Men in Armour on the 9th day of November. What,
after this, were the characters of Varney the Vam-
pire, Gordon the Gipsy, Epaulette of Fontaine-
bleau, Orson in the "Iron Chest," Rinaldo in "Gil
Bias," or "the best Frenchman on the stage ?"
His Frankenstein alarmed the Parisians. They
vilified him as" walking corpse ;" but the dear tra-
dition of the English public is the William in
" Black-eyed Sue"—the William of the white unut-
terables, the blue jacket, the black Byronic neck-tie,
the whirling cutlass, the splendid hitch, the grand
" avast," the chivalry of courage in defence of une
protected females—" Al in the Dawns." T. P.
Cooke was inimitable. There was no trickery in
him. He had studied the old-fashioned part of the
old salt, and it became him honestly. The straw
hat and the broad-collared shirt, the blue jacket
and the bold song, the immaculate ducks and the
light shoes, the contempt of foreign courage and,
beyond all, the inevitable dance, which as a matter
of course ensues when a Britis a seaman has been
married, hanged, murdered, or betrayed, made him
the delight of boys, the wonder of girls, the mystery
of those play-goers who asked whether Douglas
Jerrold had been created for T. P. Cooke or T. P.
Cooke had lived only for Douglas Jerrold. "Black-
eyed Susan" was a resurrection for the Old House
in Surrey : it made the actor famous; it saved the
manager from bankruptcy ; it allured half London
over the water ; it humbled Covent Garden into a
plagiarism from transpontine vulgarity. In fact,
T. P. Cooke was regarded as a living symbol of the
British sailor, and he hornpiped it so long that, at
length, when a great critic saw him flying through
the dance in his seventieth year, he said " It is
marvellous ; but I wish he wouldn't do it." How •
ever, until this veteran of the drama sustained his
supreme loss in the death of his wife he walked
lightly and erect, and his burden of seventy-eight
years seemed no of liction ; but when she died, he
told his friends, " I am mortally wounded now,"
and he broke down and has passed away.
With deep regret we heard of this estimable
artist's death. We knew him to be earnestly
anxious that his life might be prolonged until
after the celebration of the Shakespearian tercen-
tenary. We heard of him labouring indefatigably
with that best friend of the actor, ;.r. W. Anson,
on the Council of the Royal Dramatic College
for the humbler and less prosperous belonging to
his own long-misunderstood and maligned profes-
sion. We saw in him an example of family
probity and homely providence that obliterated
many a reproach from the character of the class to
which he belonged. And it was an iniication of his
faithful, hearty, cordial nature that, having once
been borne on the books of the Royal Navy, he in-
variably at the annual dinners of the General Thea-
trical Fund, returned thanks on behalf of that ser-
vice. Who more proud than he, in fact, of the St.
Vincent medal? But who, again, more z actions
when a friend stood in need of help ? Who, remem-
bering how he had profited by " Black-eyed Susan,"
came from his sick-room, unsolicited, to play at
the Adelplai Theatre, gratuitously and eagerly, for
" The Douglas Jerrold Fund ?" That was T. P.
Cooke, the player, now dead, who was born in 1786,
who by untiring industry, accumulated a fortune,
who was unwearied and unstinting in his sympathy
with the less victorious adepts of his profession, and
who perhaps went successfully through a wider
range of characters than any other actor of his time.
His William, admittedly, was unequalled, and is
the model which all future actors in nautical parts
must regard, whether they earn £5O a night at
Drury Lane, or 50s. a night at the Royal Standard.
His Duke Dorgan, in Mr. Bucketone's drams, was a
masterpiece. His Harry Halyard, in Haine's " Poll
and my Partner Joe," was an impersonation which,
by all old-fashioned playgoers, will long be a plea •
sant tradition ; while his Ban frenaut, in Mr.
Thompson Townsend's piece "The Lost Snip," was
precisely the sort of thing which, as Lord Dun-
dreary would put it,"cuts a fellah to pieces." Bright,
jovial, active, and hearty, this veteran of the toot-
lights could have played anything that smelt of the
sea, from the Ancient Mariner to " Post Meridian,
half-past four," or from Tom Tough to Peter Wil-
kins, the Flying Woman, and " famous Admiral
Jervis." But nothing ever came up to William and
the Hornpipe, to William who would " never stand
by and see a female assaulted," to William who
rattled through, and rattled through it more blithe-
somely than ever did other mortal man, the glory
of the British sailor, the triumphant stampedo of the
deck, the dancing upon the Ark, the able seaman's
" joy for ever," the original, genuine, indisputable
double hornpipe. %V tio cares whence that pleasant
jumping came ? Hawkins tells us that the dance
was invented in England. No matter; it was
danced by T. P. Cooke. The Tattler avers that
we should say " pipe horn," and not " hornpipe.'
The innovation is not to be endured. The seven-
teenth edition of the "Dancing Master," published
in the seventeenth century, declares that this espe-
cial jig "must be in triple time, six crotchets in a
bar, although the well known tune, "The College
Hornpipe,' is in duple measure." Does not this
surpass all patience ? Who thinks of duple mea-
sures, or six crotchets in a bar, when carrying back
his memory to the pleasant days when "All in the
Downs, T. P. Cooke, the veteran of another century,
cuts down his captain, rescues his Sue, stands in
readiness for execution at the yard-arm, is saved,
and appropriately betakes himself to the light fan-
tastic toe ? But, above this, there is a reason why
we should give a kindly thought to the memory of
the old man by whom we and our children have so
often been amused, and who has now followed his
wife, and the mother of an only daughter, to her
rest. The dramatic profession, of late years, has
risen higher than ever in the public estimation. It
is acknowledged and supported by every class. It
has assumed an independence never previously
attempted. Its morals are, we may scrupulously
affirm, from a general point of view, pure and
exemplary. It is making every possible effort to
destroy the old traditions of profligacy, mendicancy,
and insolvent toadyism. No man worked more
genially towards these ends than did the late T. P.
Cooke. We pay him this tribute, we dedicate to
his name these reminiscences and regrets, because
we sincerely feel that his passing away—although
in the fulness of time, and in the course of nature,