Theodore Andrea Cook

Artist Info

Theodore Andrea CookExmouth, Devon, 1867 - 1928, London

http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79067913

Cook, Sir Theodore Andrea (1867–1928), journalist and sportsman, was born on 28 March 1867 at Exmouth, Devon, the second son of Henry Cook (d. 1884), an assistant master at a preparatory school in Exmouth, and his second wife, Jane Elizabeth Robins, an artist who had exhibited at the Royal Academy. When his father was appointed headmaster of King Alfred's Grammar School, Wantage, Cook followed as a pupil but was then sent to the preparatory school in Exmouth where his father had taught. There he was strongly influenced by the muscular Christianity of the headmaster, Charles Ridley Carr. In 1881 he won a scholarship to Radley College, where he met with many scholastic and athletic successes: he was head of the school, captain of football, and captain of boats. As a classical scholar from 1886 at Wadham College, Oxford, he won a rowing blue (1889) and took second-class honours in classical moderations (1888) and literae humaniores (1890).

On completing his studies Cook remained in Oxford as a private tutor. Ralph Pulitzer, son of Joseph Pulitzer, proprietor of the New York World, was one of his pupils, which gave him the opportunity to travel widely in America and on the continent. This led to a career in journalism. In 1897 he was given a staff appointment on the St James' Gazette and on 9 July the following year married Elizabeth Wilhelmina (b. 1866/7), fourth daughter of Pastor Link of Stuttgart. He was appointed editor in January 1900 in succession to Hugh Chisholm but resigned five months later after a dispute with the owner. He then joined the staff of the Daily Telegraph, writing columns on rowing and fencing under the pseudonym Old Blue. In 1910, on the retirement of William Senior, he was appointed editor-in-chief of The Field, predominantly a sporting paper for country gentlemen, and held the editorship until his death.

Cook was a well-known figure in the sporting world. At Oxford he had founded the university fencing club in 1891 and later became a leading figure in the administration of the sport. He joined the committee of the Amateur Fencing Association in 1904 and served as vice-president of the association from 1923 until his death. In 1903 he went to Paris as the non-playing captain of the first British fencing team to compete abroad, and in 1906 he filled a similar role at the intercalated Olympic games in Athens. While in Athens the Italians announced that they were withdrawing as hosts of the 1908 Olympic games, and Cook was one of the small group who met aboard Lord Howard de Walden's private yacht and decided to offer to hold the games in London. As a member of the council of the British Olympic Association, chaired by Lord Desborough, he played a major part in organizing the London games. He wrote a preface to the code of rules for the event, claimed to be the first such code for international competition, and was particularly involved in the attempt to codify the regulation regarding amateurism whereby each Olympic sport was governed by the same set of rules. As editor of the official report of the 1908 London games, he was given the task of refuting American claims of cheating by British officials. Elected a member of the International Olympic Committee in 1909, he resigned in 1915, when he failed to find sufficient support for his proposal that Germany, as an aggressor nation, should be excluded from the Olympic movement.

During the First World War Cook turned The Field in a propagandist direction, publicizing German war atrocities in Belgium and crusading against Prussian militarism. A collection of leading articles on such themes was published as The Mark of the Beast (1917). He also worked to support the British ambulance committee and was knighted in June 1916. A dominant theme of his wartime writings was his crusade for ‘the preservation of true sportsmanship’ (Cook, 284). After the war he urged Britain to withdraw from the Olympic games because of the lack of interest shown by the British sporting public (though he entered for the arts competition at the 1920 games in Antwerp, where he won a silver medal for literature). He was much concerned to maintain good relations between sportsmen in England and the USA. The necessity of preserving the amateur ethos in sport was one of his favourite themes. His views were elaborated in Character and Sportsmanship (1927), published in the wake of the general strike. He attributed the failure in Britain of extreme political movements of the left and right to the permeation of the gentlemanly code of honour and responsibility, and celebrated the prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, as the embodiment of the virtues of the English squire.

Cook was himself something of a scholar-gentleman. He wrote learned accounts of Old Provence (1905) and Old Touraine (1906). His The Curves of Life (1914; repr. 1979) was a significant scientific study of spiral forms in nature and art, based on a wide knowledge of botany, conchology, anatomy, and art and architecture. He also wrote on such diverse subjects as tobogganing at St Moritz (1894), J. M. W. Turner's watercolours (1904), the history of English horse-racing (1905), and rowing at Henley (1919). His autobiography, The Sunlit Hours, appeared in 1925. He died suddenly of heart failure at his home, 54 Oakley Street, Chelsea, London, on 16 September 1928. His wife survived him.

Ian Buchanan

Sources

T. A. Cook, The sunlit hours: a record of sport and life (1925) · The Times (18 Sept 1928) · WWW · Walford, County families (1919) · The Field (20 Sept 1928), 463–4 · m. cert.