Nineteenth Century Theatre By-ways

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30413, 11 April 1964, Page 4

Nineteenth Century Theatre By-ways

Nothing Extenuate. The Life of Frederick Fox Cooper. By F. Renad Cooper. Barrie and Rockliff. 259 pp. Index.

Frederick Fox Cooper, great grandfather of the present biographer, was a journalist, theatrical manager and popular dramatist who lived in the first half of the nineteenth century. , A restless, impulsive and ambitious person, Fox Cooper consumed his energies in a variety of literary and dramatic enterprises, most of which met with failure. He possessed a tendency to undertake too many projects at the same time; moreover, he had little business sense, and never managed to accumulate enough capital to keep his scheme going. As a result he was often in financial difficulty, and on several occasions was committed to the debtor’s prison. His optimism, however, appears to have been boundless, and earned him the nickname in dramatic circles of “Never Say Die” Cooper. Fox Cooper began his career in a stockbroker’s office, but soon abandoned this employment for journalism. In 1830, when he was 24, he launched and edited “Paul Pry,” a Sunday newspaper of radical outlook, which was predominantly flippant in tone. Less than a year later he sold it, and began writing farcical comedies and burlesques, producing 25 in 12 years. One of these was entitled “The Spare Bed” or “The Shower-Bath,” in which, according to stage directions, one of the characters, “runs to the shower-bath, pulls the string, which he takes for a bell, and the water rushes upon him.” He also adapted works by Dickens, including “Hard Times.” These bore little resemblance to the originals, and were of little merit.

Fox Cooper also managed a number of theatres, mainly with the prospect of performing his own dramas, but, in spite of strenuous efforts to gain public support for his farces, vaudeville and light entertainment, including on one occasion, the engagement of a troupe of female Ethiopian Serenaders (whose act was described in an advertisement as a “most chaste and truly fascinating performance”) and a mammoth horse

of 25cwt and 20 hands, these ventures were unsuccessful.

In 1841, Fox Cooper became interested in starting a newspaper in Nelson, New Zealand, and began negotiations with the New Zealand Company for financial assistance. This was granted, and he made arrangements to sail. Unfortunately he was arrested for debt on the eve of sailing, and although he corresponded for some time with the New Zealand Company in an effort to recover some of the expenses he had incurred, he received little satisfaction other than the return of his testimonials. In 1879, after a further series of unprofitable speculations, Fox Cooper died leaving no estate.

Readers particularly interested in the period should find much of interest in Mr Cooper’s painstaking researches into the by-ways of the nineteenth century theatrical history, but the general reader may find the detailed cataloguing of minor theatrical events a trifle tedious. It is a pity, too, that Mr Cooper has been able to find little information about the private life of so colourful a forbear. Its absence makes his biography tantalisingly incomplete.