The Life of Captain James Cook Part 21

I received your exceeding kind letter of the 12th instant, and want words to express in any adequate degree my feelings on the very singular honour which you, Sir, and the honourable and learned Society over which you so worthily preside, have been pleased to confer on my late husband, and through him on me and his children who are left to lament the loss of him, and to be the receivers of those most n.o.ble marks of approbations which, if Providence had been pleased to permit him to receive, would have rendered me very happy indeed.

Be a.s.sured, Sir, that however unequal I may be to the task of expressing it, I feel as I ought the high honour which the Royal Society has been pleased to do me. 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. Let me entreat you to add to the many acts of friendship which I have already received at your hands, that of expressing my grat.i.tude and thanks to that learned body in such a manner as may be acceptable to them.

I am, Sir, etc., etc.,

Elizabeth Cook.

The medal actually presented to Mrs. Cook is now in the British Museum.

DEATHS OF THE SONS.

It is greatly to be regretted that so little can be ascertained about Cook's private life that would be of service in forming an intimate knowledge of his character, but this is accounted for by the fact that after he had joined the Navy his time was so fully occupied by that service that he had but little opportunity to form private friendships such as fall to the lot of most men. The intimacies that he did form were mostly connected very closely with his naval duties, and his opportunities of correspondence were necessarily limited by absence from all ordinary means of communication. For a man of his marked celebrity it is very curious that there should be such a dearth of anecdote that it is difficult to find anything that is unconnected with his profession. Of his own family relations there is also little known, as Mrs. Cook, probably esteeming the few letters she had from him as too sacred to be seen by any other eye than her own, as the late Canon Bennett suggests, destroyed them before her death. Still some idea of their life together, short as it really was, notwithstanding it lasted, in name, for over sixteen years, may be gained from the manner in which his widow always spoke of him after his death. She always wore a ring containing a lock of his hair, and measured everything by his standard of morality and honour.

The greatest disapprobation she could express was "Mr. Cook would never have done so." He was always Mr. Cook to her. She kept four days each year as solemn fasts, remaining in her own room. The days were those on which she lost her husband and three sons, pa.s.sing them in reading her husband's Bible, prayer and meditation, and during bad weather she could not sleep for thinking of those at sea. For her husband's sake she befriended her nephews and nieces whom she never saw. Of her three sons, two entered the Navy. One, Nathaniel, was lost with his ship, the Thunderer, in a hurricane off Jamaica in 1780. The eldest, James, rose to the rank of Commander, and in January 1794 was appointed to H.M. sloop Spitfire. He was at Poole when he received his orders to join his ship at Portsmouth without delay. Finding an open boat with sailors returning from leave about to start, he joined them. It was blowing rather hard, and nothing was ever heard of the pa.s.sengers or crew, except that the broken boat and the dead body of the unfortunate young officer, stripped of all money and valuables, with a wound in the head, was found ash.o.r.e on the Isle of Wight. The third son, Hugh, was entered at Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1793, but contracting scarlet fever he died on 21st December of that year, and was buried in the church of St. Andrew the Great, being joined by his brother James a few weeks afterwards, when the mother was left indeed alone. She survived her husband for the long period of fifty-six years, living at Clapham with her cousin, Admiral Isaac Smith, and at length joined her two sons at Cambridge at the advanced age of ninety-three.

Cook's character as given by those with whom he worked, men who day after day were by his side, was a fine one. His greatest fault seems to have been his hasty temper, which he admitted himself, often most regretfully; but Captain King says it was "disarmed by a disposition the most benevolent and humane," and it never was displayed in such a manner as to cause the loss of respect and affection of his people. He was healthy and vigorous in mind and body, clear-headed and cool in times of danger, broad minded and temperate, and plain and unaffected in manner. His powers of observation were of the first rank, his knowledge of Naval mathematics far surpa.s.sed the ordinary level and amounted to genius, but, above all, his devotion to duty was the commanding feature of his character. Nothing was allowed to interfere when he saw his course before him; personal convenience was not allowed to weigh for one moment, but at the same time he never lost sight of the interests of those under him and spared them when possible. He was somewhat silent and reserved in manner, but when questioned on any subject on which he felt he was an authority, his answers were clearly and distinctly given, and his reasons disclosed his powers of observation to the full. He was kindly, generous, and hospitable, and by no means the stern character that has been painted, for even in such a matter-of-fact doc.u.ment as his official Journal, a spirit of fun occasionally gleams out.

Such was the man whose name will ever stand in the very first ranks of the British Empire Builders; honest, kindly, generous, a faithful servant and a n.o.ble leader.