Punch (48.1865)

January 26, 18G5.I

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

39

I

IMAGINARY BIOGRAPHY.

COCKER.

It would be a suitable problem for the Statistical Society to solve
the question, how many of the adult population of Great Britain and
her colonial dependencies pass their lives without using the formula,
“ According to Cocker.”

And yet so little is known of the man whose name is on every one’s
lips, and who figures ia books innumerable, that his life, which deserves
to be written in numbers, may be summed.up in a paragraph.

Conscious of the importance of the subject, Mr. Punch directed one
of his private secretaries to apply to a series of distinguished per-
sonages who, by their tastes and pursuits, were thought qualified to be
Mr. Cocker’s Biographer ; but without success.

We epitomise a few of their answers:—

The Chancellor of the Exchequer. (N.B. Figures of speech
omitted.) Busy concocting his annual Easter offering to the nation. Not
a fraction of his time unemployed. Still will do his best, but it would be
a great tax upon him. The “tale of Troy” has nothing to do with
weights and measures. (The notion of taxing Gladstone was almost
irresistible ; but we mastered the temptation, and set his mind at rest
by telegraphing to excuse him.)

Mr. Babbage. Not sufficiently recovered from the organic disease
by which he has long been ground down. Time, he hopes, will put a
stop to it. The Calculating Machine at our service. (The latter part
of the note irrelevant, suggesting, as it does, Bass’s Straits as a proper
settlement for street musicians.)

Bishop Colenso. Total refusal. Deaf as an adder to all our
entreaties. Tired of division. Writes to us on his Natal day.

Mr. Banting (negotiated with on account of what he had done for
figures) Pants to be of use, but not arithmetician enough to undertake
the task. Only cares for reduction and proportion. Signs himself
“Yours through thick and thin.”

Davenport Brothers. Too busy raising the wind to raise T.
Cocker, to be his own accountant.

And so on, not to multiply examples, ad infinitum.

Nothing remained, therefore, but to collect materials for a life of
Cocker from the books of the Bank of England (they would not allow
a single note to be taken), the Accountant-General, the Institute of
Actuaries, &c., that the national debt of gratitude to its great arithme-
tician might be at length discharged.

But the product of these researches was not commensurate with the
labour. The sum total was but little. A letter (in cipher) was dis-
covered in a cupboard in the Bank parlour, giving a few particulars of
Cocker’s early years. It will not surprise his admirers to hear that
he “ lisped in numbers ; ” and that as soon as he could walk, with the
help of the chairs, he showed a remarkable fondness for “ tables.”
The schoolboy is brought distinctly before us. The studious lad
squaring his roots, while his young companions are squaring their
fists; deep in trigonometry and deaf to the pop-guns going off on all
sides of him; preferring alligation to the charms of alley taws j and
giving up hare and hounds for tare and tret. Some lines of his are
mentioned which we are glad to have in their original dress, as they
had become hopelessly corrupted;—

‘1 Multiplication
Brings elation;

Division makes me glad ;

The rule of three.

It comforts me ;

And Practice suits this lad. ”

The letter is from a correspondent at Cockermouth, but the date is
wanting ; and as there was no census at the period when Cocker is
supposed to have been born, and no one is able to insense us as to the
probable year of his birth, it is impossible to say when so important a
unit was added to the population, or whether he was vaccinated, and to
what political party his parents belonged. The same uncertainty
exists as to his calling or profession. Some assert that he was
a factor, others describe him as being a schoolmaster: all agree that he
was a man of singular modesty, too prone to hide his light under a
bushel, and too indifferent to his own interest, though of a calculating
turn, to take care of number one. Give him an inch and he will take
an ell, was the last proverb that could be applied to unobtrusive
Thomas Cocker. Why he led a secluded life for several years is not
apparent, unless we have a key to the mystery in the arithmetic he is
supposed to have been then compiling. There is less obscurity about
his domestic life. It was not a happy one. The truth mu3t be told:
in his own house Cocker was a mere cipher. His first wife was a lady
of good extraction, being the daughter of a dentist, of an old but
decayed family. Somewhat stumpy in figure, she had acerbities of
temper so trying, that her husband did not hesitate to speak of her
(when out of hearing) as a cockatrice Indeed, he confessed that she
would have driven him to drink, but that his scruples would not let
him take a dram. She was succeeded by the widow of a watchmaker,
who had died of tic-douloureux; one of those methodical persons in
whose house everything goes on like clockwork. A plain-featured

woman, she brought Cocker rather a handsome fortune. So much sq
that in his joking way, he would say of her, that if she was ill-favoured,
she had “ a compensating balance ” at the bank. Poor fellow! it was
a balance of power which she used so mercilessly, that he often deplored
bartering his happiness for it.

“ I used to sigh for her,” he would cast up his eyes, and say, “ but
now I sigh for myself.” The exchange to freedom came at last, and
Cocker never risked his liberty again, convinced that the rule of
three would be more than he could bear. Ahead of the times in which
he lived, he held that a decimal coinage would be a sovereign remedy
for many of our monetary perplexities, but that it was ten to one
against its adoption. After carefully weighing and balancing the argu-
ments advanced by the wiseacres who were in league against all
change, and could see neither rhyme nor reason in the metrical system,
he laughed to scorn their prediction that if applied to weights ana
measures, it must lead to an insurrection, or at least involve a strike.

Pond as he was of book-keeping, he does not seem to have amassed
a library, and the only indication of any sporting tastes to be traced in
his life is the interest he took in Le(d)ger entries. A lover of Shak-
speare, he preferred Measure for Measure to all the other plays.

Cocker was a social being: “ Homo sum, &c.,” he would say, and
even when in a peck of troubles, he never lost sight of what he con-
sidered was the Summum bonum—to be able to affirm that he had made
an addition to the happiness of others. He died of an over-dose of digit-
alis. The business of his life, and the sterling worth of his character,
are well summed up in the two words which may still be deciphered
on his tombstone in Nine Elms Churchyard, “Integer VitcsP

(Advektisement. )

NO MORE TAXES NOR ANY OTHER MEDICINE.

IYR. JOHN BRIGHT, Eellow of Birmingham University, feels that
^ it would be injustice to the public, and false delicacy in himself, if
he did not by all means in his power invite the attention of the Public
to his patent

FRANCHISE PILL.

This inestimable medicament, which has been discovered by Dr.
Bright after twenty years of researches in America, is unhesitatingly
announced by him as a Certain Cure for all Disorders, physical, mental,
moral, social, and political. It is perfectly safe, and the most childish
person may use it without difficulty, and it is warranted to abolish
(among thousands of other ailments) the following afflictions :—

Taxes,

Corns,

Law-suits,

Inundations,

Disaffection,

Poverty,

Poaching,

Tooth-ache,

Whiggism,

Dyspepsia,

Parochial Rates,
Gunpowder Explo-
sions,

Strikes,

Gumboils,

Gallowses,

'turnpikes,

Street Organs,

Smoky Chimneys,
Armies,

Navies,

Circumlocution,

War,

Pimples,

Puseyism,

Christmas-boxes,

Class Legislation,
Small Pox,

Pees to Box-keepers.
The Irish Church,
Drinking,

Diplomacy,

Davenport Brothers,
Agricultural Distress,
One Legged Dancers,
Two Legged Donkeys,
Three Legged Stools,
Sensation Novels,
Protestant Ascen-
dency,

Orange Peel on Pave-
ments,

Bishops,

Bunions,

Bad Eggs,
Primogeniture,

Gout,

Earthquakes,

Agnails,

Blank Verse Plays,
Heresy,

Hare-lips,

Homicide,

Hay market Scandals,
Ministerial Explana-
tions,

Mumps,

Dwarfs,

Crossing Sweepers,
Tories,

Classic Quotations,

East Winds,

Black-balling,

Snow-balling,

Eancy-balling,

Stomach-ache,

With numerous other misfortunes. Testimonials may be seen at the
office of the New York Herald, the Birmingham Bellower, the Fitisburp
Firebrand, the Rochdale Roarer, the Marylebone Maunderer, and other
leading journals. Neatly done up in Ballot-Boxes, and shortly, it is
hoped, to be sold under the Government Stamp.—Price, a whole Hog.

HOW TO UTILISE THE IRISH.

Says Mr. Wendell Phillips, in a lecture at New York:—

“ When we would map the Continent with 30,000 miles of railroad, we buried
five millions of Irishmen under the sleepers."

So the sleepers in America have had Irish wakes attached to them !
“ Sleepers, Wake ! ”—as they sing at Exeter Hall. And how many
more Irishmen, eh, Mr. Wendell Phillips, will you bury in your
Continent before you have mapped it out anew by the extinction of the
Southerner ? You sow a pretty crop of them in every field of battle.
In fact, your fields of battle may be looked upon as Paddy-fields.