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Claude Delaval Cobham before Cyprus: the making of a scholar

Nicholas Stanley-Price
p. 133-146

Résumé

C.D. Cobham a rédigé la plupart de son œuvre scientifique quand il était Commissaire à Larnaca, un poste important dans l’administration britannique de l’île. Contrairement à de nombreux cadres supérieurs employés en 1878 par Sir Garnet Wolseley, il n’avait aucun grade militaire, ni aucune expérience diplomatique. Une enquête sur les antécédents de Cobham en Angleterre montre qu’à l’été 1878 il menait une vie paisible d’érudit dans le comté du Devon, où il résidait. Les sources de l’époque font connaître son aptitude à apprendre les langues, ses visites occasionnelles en Italie et en Grèce, ainsi que des publications qui n’ont guère retenu l’attention jusqu’à maintenant. L’une d’entre elles, un récit d’une visite de Corfou et d’Athènes en 1874, contient des jugements sur le gouvernement britannique dans le monde classique, qui sont à l’origine de son profond intérêt pour Chypre quand l’île est occupée quatre ans plus tard par les Britanniques. Il semble qu’il ait voyagé à Chypre de sa propre initiative et que ses antécédents, sa formation et sa connaissance des langues lui aient permis d’occuper une situation dans des services de l’État qui, en 1878, manquaient d’un personnel britannique possédant des qualifications comparables aux siennes, et alors tout à fait nécessaires.

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Notes de l’auteur

I am indebted to Anne Bligh of Ashburton, Devon, for the references to Cobham’s life in England posted on her website and for the extensive research she made in answer to my questions; also for photographing his gravestone. My thanks too to Robin Darwall-Smith, archivist, and Elizabeth Adams, librarian, at University College, Oxford, for information about Cobham’s ephemera collection. A reviewer of the manuscript (Robert Merrillees) made a number of helpful comments which I gratefully acknowledge.

Texte intégral

  • 1 Cobham 1908; Hutchinson and Cobham 1907. For a list of his publications about Cyprus, see http://w (...)

1The name of Claude Delaval Cobham will always be associated with the study of the history of Cyprus. His Excerpta Cypria (1908) and the successive editions (the first in 1886) of his Attempt at a bibliography of Cyprus have placed many scholars in his debt. These and his other publications about aspects of the island’s history reveal an impressive mastery of the languages, ancient, medieval and modern, in which the relevant sources were written and which he translated. The series of issues of A Handbook of Cyprus, written with J.T. Hutchinson and first published in 1901, contained enormous amounts of information, carefully checked for accuracy.1 Remarkably, he produced his written work while also holding, for twenty-eight years, the distinguished post of Commissioner of Larnaca as part of the British administration of Cyprus (Fig. 1).

Figure 1. Claude Delaval Cobham, Maull & Fox, circa 1907.

Figure 1. Claude Delaval Cobham, Maull & Fox, circa 1907.

Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library, RCI 2_1_2_101.

  • 2 Hook 2009, p. 108‑10; Stanley-Price 2018, p. 308.
  • 3 The Wolseley Papers: CYP 1. Cyprus Letter Book, p. 41‑45 at Hove Central Library, UK; Cyprus Gazet (...)
  • 4 His successor, C.F.B. Woodhouse, was appointed from 1 November 1907, although Luke (1953, p. 141) (...)

2He was appointed Assistant Commissioner of Larnaca on 23 September 1878. During the first few months after his arrival in late July, the British High Commissioner, Sir Garnet Wolseley, found that he had to review some of the high-level appointments that he had made for governing the island. One of these was Mr V. Bury whom he had appointed Commissioner for Limassol. Most of Wolseley’s senior appointees were military officers, several of them members of the ‘Wolseley Ring’ who had served with him on previous military campaigns and who enjoyed his trust.2 In mid-September he asked Bury, who appears not to have held a military rank, to resign on grounds of “ill‑health” since he was unfit for the job. A week later Bury gave notice. Lieutenant-Colonel Falkland Warren who was the Assistant Commissioner of Larnaca was transferred to Limassol as Bury’s replacement, and Cobham, like Bury a civilian, was appointed in Warren’s place.3 The next year his superior, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry G. White, was reluctantly transferred to Nicosia, whereupon Cobham, after only six months in office, found himself promoted to Commissioner, a post that he then retained until his retirement in 1907.4

  • 5 Stanley-Price 2018, p. 302, citing Correspondence relating to the island of Cyprus 1878–79. Confid (...)
  • 6 Kiely 2010, p. 245, Kiely and Fourrier 2012, p. 274‑80. Cobham took the visiting orientalist schol (...)
  • 7 Ulbrich and Kiely 2012, p. 333, n. 152; Kiely 2010.

3Cobham soon demonstrated his interest in matters other than administration, and specifically in the study of history and antiquities. Within two weeks of his starting work as Assistant Commissioner, he was involved in the arrest and trial of Alessandro Palma di Cesnola for illicit excavation – the first deposition that he prepared for the court hearing is dated 7 October.5 Immediately on taking up his post, he assumed responsibility for investigating accidental archaeological discoveries, such as those made during the demolition of a large part of the Bamboula mound in Larnaca. By late 1880 he was supervising the excavations entrusted to Ohnefalsch-Richter on several sites.6 The finds from these and from Palma di Cesnola’s illicit excavations were stored in the Commissioner’s house where visitors could inspect them. Cobham was therefore a natural choice to be a founding member of the Cyprus Museum Committee established in 1882. The committee’s Minutes record few interventions by this keen antiquarian, however, and it seems that in reality his loyalties were divided. The suggestion that the Commissioner was acting principally as an informal agent for the Keeper of Greek and Roman antiquities at the British Museum, C.T. Newton (who visited the island in April 1879), is strengthened by Cobham’s indiscreet remark, when writing to him in 1886, that “the local museum is as much a failure as we might have expected or wished”.7

  • 8 Anglo-Cyprus 6 May 1908, quoted in Morgan 2010, p. 68.

4His antiquarian pursuits soon expanded into a much more ambitious study of the multilingual sources for the island’s whole history. He had no interest in the riding and field sports that were enjoyed by his military colleagues and were considered an essential element in one’s social standing. When he eventually retired, there were complaints about the “long inactivity and dull existence” that Larnaca had endured under the Commissioner’s rule and hopes that his successor would arrange dances and horse-racing.8

  • 9 Vizetelly 1901, p. 26.
  • 10 Pilides 2009, vol. 1, p. 85‑87. His obituary notice in The Times of London, unsigned and possibly (...)
  • 11 Luke 1957, p. 19; Luke in Simpson 1957, reproduced at https://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=E (...)
  • 12 Hackett 1901, p. viii. For an insight into the scholar at home, see Rider Haggard 1904, p. 68‑69.
  • 13 Now at the Cambridge University Library. https://archivesearch.lib.cam.ac.uk/repositories/2/resour (...)

5His contemporaries in Cyprus depicted him as an austere, scholarly gentleman of the old school. The journalist Edward Vizetelly, dispatched to the island soon after the British occupation, came to bear a grudge against him, and wrote years later: “Although a very clever man, and a hardworking painstaking public servant, he was not popular.” He understood that Cobham, who walked with a limp, had previously been a clergyman.9 George Jeffery reminisced that Cobham had been one of his earliest acquaintances in Cyprus: “A remarkable scholar of the old-fashioned university type – and, as a consequence, perhaps a very characteristic example of the true old-fashioned gentleman – he impressed everyone with a sense of a well-merited importance, and of being the most distinguished personage of the whole British community in the island.” Nicknamed ‘The Pasha of Larnaca’, his profound knowledge of the Levant, and its languages, history, and politics, gave him an unequalled authority.10 Sir Harry Luke acknowledged that he devoted to Cyprus almost a lifetime of service, learning and devotion. “Cobham was a ‘scholar and a gentleman’ whose love for Cyprus and private means enabled him to regard his appointment to the new British Government set up in Cyprus in 1878 not as the first stage of a career but as a life-long vocation.”11 Combining the best aspects of the scholar and the gentleman, he shared unreservedly his knowledge and his own notes on a topic with others, for example with Hackett researching the Orthodox Church in Cyprus.12 On returning to England in 1913, he donated his unparalleled collection of books, pamphlets, etchings and photographs of Cyprus to the Royal Colonial Institute, an extraordinary resource for scholars.13

6How did this civilian with no previous record of military or diplomatic service (as I shall show) become a district Commissioner, not starting at a lower level in a remote district such as Paphos or Kyrenia but in Larnaca, the principal port and residence of the foreign consuls in Cyprus? Why was he appointed? Was it sufficient qualification to be a ‘scholar and a gentleman’ and to have (according to Luke) a private income? Who was Cobham?

Claude Delaval Cobham: family and education

  • 14 United Kingdom Census for the years 1841, 1851 and 1861. For his date of birth, Withycombe Rawleig (...)

7Cobham’s roots were firmly in the county of Devon in the west of England. His birth, early education, residence before moving to Cyprus, and his death and burial after returning to England all took place within thirty kilometres of the town of Exeter. He was born on 30 June 1842, the fifth child of Thomas and Maryann (née Disney Roebuck) Cobham. The third and fourth children died young, leaving an age‑gap of almost ten years between Claude and his older brother George and sister Susannah. Two younger sisters and a brother completed the family.14 His maternal grandmother was from the Delaval family that had been settled for centuries in Northumberland in the north of England. His parents’ choice of the other forename, Claude, was unusual, a name at the time more popular in French than in English. Its Latin origin in ‘Claudius’, meaning ‘lame’ or ‘limping’, brings to mind Vizetelly’s comment that in Cyprus Cobham walked with a limp. Vizetelly attributed it vaguely to an accident earlier in Cobham’s life; but conceivably it stemmed from a congenital hip dislocation that was already evident at his birth and that then influenced his naming.

  • 15 Census data; also The Route Book of Devon: a guide for the stranger and the tourist to the towns, (...)
  • 16 Chudleigh and Rugby in Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 29 March 1861, p. 6, col. 4; Rugby in Rugby Sc (...)

8The occupation of his father, Thomas Cobham, is given in the 1861 census as ‘Fund Holder’. These were people, not necessarily very wealthy, whose main income derived from investments in government stocks and funds. The Cobham children grew up in their father’s house, Marley Lodge, in the parish of Withycombe Rawleigh a few miles outside the port of Exmouth.15 The number of household servants recorded in the censuses (declining from eleven in 1851 to six in 1871) tends to confirm the family’s financial security. Inheriting a share of the investments after his father’s death in 1865, Cobham would have enjoyed some private income, as Luke later wrote of him. He attended, probably as a boarder, the old and well-regarded Grammar School at Chudleigh to the west of Exmouth, and from there in 1858, at the age of 16, he transferred to the independent Rugby School in Warwickshire. From Rugby he won an open scholarship for five years at University College, Oxford.16

  • 17 Brock and Curthoys 1997, p. 13‑14.
  • 18 Brock and Curthoys, 1997, p. 352‑353; 513‑514.
  • 19 Vizetelly 1901, p. 26: “a very clever man”; Augustus J.C. Hare to Sir Garnet Wolseley, 21 August 1 (...)

9It was at Oxford that Cobham’s familiarity with the classics, already central to his education at Chudleigh and Rugby, was given a systematic basis. The university that he entered in 1861 had long considered the classics “the only effective mind-sharpener, there being no study which could combine, to any considerable extent, mind-sharpening with the acquisition of useful knowledge.”17 Whatever their intended area of specialisation, all undergraduates (until 1864) had to follow a first-year course in Literae Humaniores. Those who eventually took their degree in the subject, as Cobham did, had studied Greek and Latin literary texts followed by ancient history and philosophy along with theology, logic, moral philosophy and political science.18 In view of his status as a scholar and his later reputation for cleverness, surprisingly he achieved in 1866 only a Third Class B.A. degree.19 One possible reason could have been a setback in his personal life, either at Oxford (see below) or at home – his father died six months later and may already have been ill. But this is speculation.

  • 20 Brock and Curthoys 2000, p. 18.
  • 21 Augustus Hare (1834-1903), inveterate traveller and guidebook author, in Hare 1896, vol. 3, p. 152 (...)
  • 22 Ordained as deacon by the Lord Bishop of Oxford, Oxford Chronicle and Reading Gazette, 14 March 18 (...)

10The degree in Literae Humaniores being recognised as training the mind but not preparing the holder for a profession, Cobham stayed at Oxford to complete a one-year Bachelor of Civil Law – his B.A. entitled him to undertake this without further examination. In the following year, 1867, still uncertain where his future lay and opting for a path well-trodden by his contemporaries, Cobham studied at the Cuddesdon theological college near Oxford with the aim of being ordained. His B.A. degree from Oxford again satisfied the entrance requirements. The emphasis on theology and Oxford’s role in training men for the Church had come in for criticism during Cobham’s years there, prompted by the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) and the debates that it engendered. Many became sceptical about religious belief.20 In any event Augustus Hare, who had been at University College ten years earlier, noted that Cobham, with whom he talked at length at Cuddesdon, had decided that he was unsuited for holy orders.21 Cobham proceeded to be ordained as a deacon, the diaconal year normally serving as probationary for ordination for the priesthood, but he appears not to have proceeded with this step. He gave an evening sermon at a village church in Devon the following year but this was exceptional, and the option of a career in the Anglican church was not taken up.22

11A collection of miscellaneous pamphlets and ephemera that Cobham put together while at Oxford concerns mainly internal college and university matters, documents that are now of considerable historical interest, together with a few items referring to political or educational issues.23 These ephemera only hint at his non-academic interests. But without doubt his years at Oxford were fundamental for developing that mastery of languages which so impressed his contemporaries. To the Greek and Latin studied since his early school days, the Cuddesdon theological course added Hebrew. But Hare must have been alluding to other languages when he wrote of their meeting at Cuddesdon in 1868: “In some respects, he is one of the cleverest men I have met, especially from his unusual linguistic acquirements, combined with extreme correctness.” By now Cobham had also taught himself Italian, to the extent of giving others Italian lessons in his rooms at Oxford.24 One of his pupils for Italian was John Addington Symonds, at the time a brilliant Fellow at Magdalen College and later a noted author and critic who lived for part of the year in Venice. His ‘Memoirs’, finally published in an unexpurgated edition, throw some light on Cobham’s social life at Oxford.25 Symonds, always ambivalent about what he later termed his ‘sexual inversion’ tendencies, described how two very different characters, Roden Noel and Claude Cobham, influenced his life at Oxford. “They had done and were in the habit of doing what I had now begun to desire. Cobham had no poetry, no religion, no philosophy. He disliked women. When I first knew him at Oxford in 1861, he professed himself an “anderastes”; and this he consistently remained through life.” In all other respects, Symonds continued, “he was what the world calls an excellent fellow – sympathetic, warm-hearted, ready to serve his friends, successful in society, cheerful and not devoid of remarkable intellectual gifts. I have only met with one linguist more versatile in the acquirement of ancient and modern languages.”26

Cobham and the Mediterranean

  • 27 Index to Register of Passport Applications 1851-1903.
  • 28 Hare 1875, p. 31‑2, 37‑8. In his memoirs, Hare (1896, vol. 3, p. 152) acknowledged how helpful Cob (...)
  • 29 Giuseppe Gioachino Belli, I sonetti romaneschi, Rome, 1978.

12Cobham evidently improved his Italian by travelling in Italy. As a classics student who could afford it, he travelled abroad, submitting an application for a passport in 1862.27 His knowledge of Italy and its language finds a place in Augustus Hare’s Days near Rome. In an introduction which cites such eminent writers as Chateaubriand, Massimo d’Azeglio and Gregorovius, Hare included two passages written by his friend Cobham.28 The first concerns common superstitions found among Romans, and is credited to Cobham’s “Essay on Belli”. This work is unknown but was presumably a study of Giuseppe Gioachino Belli (1791-1863), the popular and prolific Roman poet. To have done him justice, Cobham would have had to master the strong Roman dialect in which Belli composed his sonnets.29 The second passage Hare attributes simply to Cobham, without reference to any publication:

“Anyone who has been at the pains to seek a friendship, and has been lucky enough to find one, among the sons of modern Rome, will not be slow in doing justice to their charms; the faithfulness, warmth, tact, good humour, the grace of manner, the courage and tenderness, the dignity of manhood which is so well reflected in the long straight limbs, bright skin, rippling hair, and sunny faces, so well known to the loungers in the Corso, or on the Pincian hill. Let us not judge the Roman harshly. His history has been strangely chequered, and his energies may have varied with his fortunes. Sometimes, like Rienzi, he may still mistake memories for hopes, idle visions of past greatness for that inspiration that is the earnest of future glory: ‘At non omnia perdidit, neque omnes’.”
Claude Delaval Cobham

  • 30 Oxfordshire Weekly News 22 June 1870, p. 2 cols 2 and 3.
  • 31 Morning Post 9 May 1864, p. 5 col. 6 and p. 6 col. 1; Reading Mercury 14 May 1864, p. 5 col. 3.
  • 32 Exeter and Plymouth Gazette 17 October 1873, p. 8 (a ball); 8 August 1874, p. 2 col. 3 and 5 May 1 (...)
  • 33 Exeter Flying Post 26 November 1873, p. 5 col. 5 (Shakespeare); Exeter and Plymouth Gazette 17 Mar (...)

13This extract, with the classicist’s trademark Latin tag to close it, shows that he knew Rome and Romans well, but when and how often he travelled to Italy is unknown. In fact, between his ordination as a deacon in 1868 and his appearance at Larnaca in September 1878, ten years passed in which there are only glimpses of his life. He maintained contact with his old college, attending a levée held by the university’s Chancellor in 1870.30 This followed an earlier levée when, still at university, he was presented to the Prince of Wales, representing the Queen. The Captain Disney Roebuck who presented him was an uncle (his mother’s brother) whose grandson (1876-1947) was given the names Claude Delaval Spencer.31 In the 1871 census Cobham was recorded as living with his mother and his two younger sisters, Emily and Blanche, at Buckerell, near Honiton, a little to the east of Exeter. In these years, when not in attendance at the occasional ball or wedding, or on holiday in the Isle of Wight,32 Cobham was in demand as a lecturer. He gave several series of talks on topics that ranged from Shakespeare, the city of Rome, to “Literature”, an eight-week course that spanned from Greece and Rome through the Renaissance to modern France, Spain, Portugal and Italy. The venues also varied, being respectively the Paul Street School-Room in Exeter, adjacent to the new Royal Exeter Museum, opened in 1869; in Honiton, an event in aid of the medical Dispensary; and the Torquay School of Art.33

  • 34 Cobham 1871.
  • 35 See note 13 above.

14His antiquarian interests in this period are reflected in his edition of a seventeenth-century chronicle about Christ’s Hospital at Abingdon in Berkshire.34 His own copy of this volume is among the books on Cyprus that he donated to the Royal Colonial Institute shortly before his death.35 Cobham transcribed the manuscript of 1671, made minor editorial emendations, and provided an introduction (Fig. 2). This project was suggested to him by H.T. Riley of the Royal Historic Manuscripts Commission which had been set up two years earlier. Cobham’s introduction was written from “DEER PARK, St Luke”. Deer Park refers to the house at Buckerell in Devon where he was living; “St Luke” suggests an affiliation with one of the local churches dedicated to St Luke or possibly the Exeter Diocesan Training College, later re‑named St Luke’s College.

Figure 2. Title page of “A monument of Christian munificence”.

Figure 2. Title page of “A monument of Christian munificence”.
  • 36 Cobham 1875. There are probably other articles published by Cobham in the extensive Victorian peri (...)

15The courses he taught near home and his edition of the Christ’s Hospital manuscript convey the impression of a quiet life in England as an antiquarian. But it was the Mediterranean world that stimulated more animated writing. The brief passages quoted earlier from Hare’s volume hint at his enthusiasm for Italy but equally revealing is an article that he wrote following a visit to Greece. He published it in Good Words and Sunday Magazine, a monthly periodical designed to be appropriate Sunday reading for a mass audience of evangelicals and non-conformists.36

16Cobham wrote how, while in Rome in the spring of 1874, he decided to make a “pilgrimage to Athens”. His route took him by train to Brindisi, by boat to Corfu and then on via Zante to Patras, completing the journey via the isthmus of Corinth to Athens. A reference to a previous experience of rounding Cape Malea by ship suggests that this was not his first visit to Greece. The article was planned as a comparison of Rome and Athens, the ancient and modern cities, but most of it is devoted to describing the journey, the Greek way of life, its church services and festivals and, in a rather dutiful and prosaic manner, the classical monuments of Athens. It demonstrates a keen familiarity with the classical literature and history of Greece and Rome and with modern Greek history. The overall tone of the article is characteristic of much Victorian travel literature, passages of colourful description juxtaposed with condescending accounts of the native inhabitants and the poverty and filth of their surroundings. But for those who know only the image of the austere scholar in Cyprus, Cobham’s prose can sometimes surprise. The Easter ceremonies in Athens particularly fascinated him:

  • 37 Cobham 1875, p. 410. The description continues in this vein.

“Presently the Archbishop and his attendant clergy, one of whom bore before him his pastoral staff, a silver crutch, with a handle of twisted snakes, proceeded to a platform outside the western doors to await the king and queen. The tramp of cavalry, the blare of trumpets and thunder of cannon announced their arrival with royal punctuality. The archbishop announced to their Majesties the tidings of the Resurrection, and gave them tapers lighted from the holy fire. Then the procession entered the church.”37

17He also wrote at some length about the varieties of dress of his fellow-passengers, not least the traditional fustanella costume. In view of his future career, however, the most significant passage in this article conveys his thoughts about Corfu. When Cobham’s ship called there on its way to Zante and Patras, it had been only ten years since British rule had ended in the Ionian islands. The future colonial administrator wrote:

  • 38 Cobham 1875, p. 335‑336.

“The Corfiotes can talk as glibly as the Greeks of the continent of Hellenic nationality and self-government; but in their heart of hearts they deeply regret the withdrawal of England from the protectorate of the seven islands. The presence of the Lord High Commissioner and his little court, of English regiments and men-of-war, gave an immense impulse to the trade of Corfu; and they find it difficult to forget how much good roads, an efficient police, and English justice added to the well-being of the islands. Now the town wears that hungry, deserted look which recalls Ferrara, Parma, Modena, towns decayed or decaying, which the presence of a sovereign and court of their own used to keep in holiday trim.”38

The move to Cyprus

  • 39 Torquay Times and South Devon Advertiser 25 May 1878, p. 4 col. 5 and 1 June 1878, p. 2 col. 5. In (...)

18In late May 1878, Cobham together with his mother and other family members moved into a house in the pleasant coastal town of Torquay, southwest of Exeter.39 From Torquay, a town popular for its mild winter climate, he could continue his antiquarian pursuits while living with his family. Only a few days later Britain and Turkey signed the Convention of Defensive Alliance under which Britain provisionally took over from Turkey the occupation and administration of the island of Cyprus.

  • 40 Demetriou 1997, p. 5‑7.

19Britain’s assuming responsibility for the island led immediately to a thirst for knowledge about it among the educated members of British society. Cyprus was familiar to them from the references to it in classical sources and in the Bible, for instance the missionary visit there of the apostles Paul and Barnabas. Now, it had come to be viewed as of strategic value to Britain’s overseas interests. The desire for further information stemmed chiefly from the commercial opportunities that it might offer, but others were interested in its sporting prospects or as a potential posting for promising young clergymen.40 Reading of the new developments, Cobham could not fail to have been reminded of his experience when visiting Corfu and his conclusions about the benefits of British rule there.

  • 41 Hare to Wolseley (note 19 above). Cardinal Mezzofanti (1774-1849) was said to have spoken at least (...)
  • 42 Cobham 1971, p. vii.
  • 43 Contemporary sources quoted in Stanley-Price 2018, p. 308.

20He had already left for Cyprus by the time (21 August) that Augustus Hare wrote a glowing recommendation to its High Commissioner: “He is quite marvellously clever, in languages almost a Mezzofanti and acquires a new language in a few weeks like the great Cardinal. He has great knowledge of history and is infallibly accurate on all subjects – a rare virtue. He has the birth and character of a gentleman, and is most unselfish and kind-hearted.”41 Wolseley was unhappy and frustrated in Cyprus and left the island after less than ten months as High Commissioner. But Cobham always felt his indebtedness to him, and wished to dedicate his translation of Mariti’s travels to Wolseley, “under whose wise and spirited rule Cyprus entered on a new era of peace and prosperity.”42 By late September 1878 Wolseley had had two months in which to appoint his senior staff and to create a functioning administration. Whatever strengths his military colleagues brought to the conduct of civilian affairs, they also had undeniable deficiencies, notably no knowledge and understanding of the Cypriot society that they were entrusted to govern nor of the languages that were in common use in the island.43 The arrival of Cobham must have appeared as a godsend to the High Commissioner: a native anglophone familiar with Classical Greek civilisation and modern Greece, an Oxford graduate with degrees also in law and theology, and, even more crucially, a speaker of modern Greek in addition to Italian and French, the principal languages of the foreign consuls resident in Larnaca.

  • 44 Cobham 1875, p. 411.
  • 45 Quoted in Varnava 2012, p. 157.
  • 46 Mediterranean No. 10, Cyprus. Memorandum on Financial Questions, CO 883/2, quoted in Hook 2009, p. (...)

21Cobham’s modern Greek was good enough to have translated and published a Greek love-song.44 Once in Cyprus, within two weeks of starting work, he rendered into English the villagers’ depositions about Palma di Cesnola’s excavations. The workmen had presumably spoken in Kipriaka dialect, their words then transcribed into a Greek sufficiently close to the dhimotiki that Cobham had learned in Greece for him to translate them into English. Oral communication in Kipriaka gave him difficulties, however, and Cobham admitted in 1881 that one of his Greek-speaking Muslim workers ‘translated’ his own Greek when talking with peasants.45 In the same year an emissary from the Colonial Office in London, E. Fairfield, who was sent to Cyprus to review issues of finance and administration, reported on the value to Her Majesty’s Government of Cobham’s linguistic abilities. They were such that he had to a great extent represented the government in its dealings with the foreign consuls at Larnaca “who are people of much more importance in Cyprus than consuls in an ordinary colony.” If the Commissioner at Larnaca did not speak French, Fairfield pointed out, the government would be in trouble for matters of trade since more foreigners visited Larnaca than any other port in the island. Consequently “[t] he salary for the Larnaca Commissioner was set at a generous 500l”.46

22Cobham’s ‘generous’ salary of £500 (equivalent to £33,000 today) had in fact been established in 1873 as the minimum salary, with regular increments, for a secretary of legation.47 His good pay puts into perspective Luke’s comment about the commissioner enjoying a private income. The statement may have been true; but any impression of Cobham drawing on a personal fortune to live comfortably and to purchase the rare volumes making up his library may be misleading. Luke himself, appointed in 1912 as a Junior Assistant Secretary to the government in Cyprus, a permanent and pensionable position, considered derisory his annual salary of only £230, i.e. less than half that of Cobham’s thirty years earlier. Even so, Luke conceded that the very low cost of living allowed him, on this derisory salary, to rent a fine house in the old town, have servants, entertain and own a pony.48 So Cobham may not have had to draw upon a private income. At his death Cobham had ‘effects’ of £4844.0.10d. (equivalent today to c. £285,000).49 His twenty-eight years of service as a bachelor on a good government salary, supplemented by eight years of a government pension, would have contributed substantially to the value of his estate.

  • 50 Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 3 May 1915, p. 5 col. 6; parish records, St. Andrew’s church, Ashburt (...)

23In 1913, his health failing, he returned to Devon to live at the house “Waverley” in the town of Ashburton. He died there aged 72 two years later, on 29 April 1915. On 4 May he was buried in the churchyard of the village church, St Andrew’s.50 The inscription on his gravestone (Fig. 3) reads:

“TO THE MEMORY OF / CLAUDE DELAVAL COBHAM / C.M.G. M.A. B.C.L. OXON / FOR MANY YEARS H.M. COMMISSIONER / OF LARNACA – CYPRUS / BORN 30 JUNE 1842, DIED 29 APRIL 1915”.

24Cobham’s choice of Ashburton, in that area of Devon in which he had grown up, was due to the presence at Hele, a house a little outside the town, of his nephew, Horace Walter Cobham (c. 1867-1958).51 It was this nephew, son of Cobham’s elder brother George, who after the end of the war, as Brigadier-General Cobham, donated Cobham’s collection of Cypriot antiquities to the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter.52

  • 53 One connection should be mentioned if only to be discounted: Henry Brassey (1840-1891) overlapped (...)
  • 54 Tatton-Brown 2001.

25What inspired Cobham, then aged thirty‑six, to leave his quiet antiquarian life in Devon and set off, in the heat of the summer, for Britain’s newly acquired island? A strong incentive must have been the chance to visit a land of classical civilisation that now, fortuitously, had been occupied by Britain. Recalling his visit to Corfu a few years before, he may have been intrigued by the prospect of British rule once again in classical lands. His familiarity with Greek culture and language, and the certainty of finding other British gentlemen on arrival in Cyprus, would have diminished any hesitation about embarking on this long journey. There is no evidence that he had been offered a post there before he set out.53 He was already en route when Augustus Hare wrote his letter of recommendation to Wolseley. His acting in Cyprus as an agent for Newton of the British Museum might suggest that he had gone there in this role (his private income being a boon to a museum that lacked funds for work in Cyprus). But the rich archive of correspondence in the British Museum has yielded nothing that would support this idea.54 Moreover, Cobham seems to have led a quiet life in Devonshire; while known in local society and to others of similar interests to his own, he does not appear to have maintained contact with leading London institutions such as the British Museum. Until new evidence comes to light that proves otherwise, it was on his own initiative that Claude Delaval Cobham set out for Cyprus and, only after his arrival, proved able to offer exactly what the new British administration patently lacked.

Figure 3. The gravestone of Claude Cobham, Ashburton, Devon.

Figure 3. The gravestone of Claude Cobham, Ashburton, Devon.

A. Bligh, 2018.

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Bibliographie

Brady (S.), 2016, Masculinity and male homosexuality in Britain, 1861-1913, London.

Brassey (A.), 1880, Sunshine and storm in the East, or cruises to Constantinople and Cyprus, London.

Brock (M.G.), Curthoys (M.C.) eds, 1997, The history of the University of Oxford, vol VI. Nineteenth Century Oxford, Part 1, Oxford.

Brock (M.G.), Curthoys (M.C.) eds, 2000, The history of the University of Oxford, vol VI. Nineteenth Century Oxford, Part 2, Oxford.

Cobham (C.D.) ed., 1871, “A monument of Christian munificence”; or, An account of the Brotherhood of the Holy Cross, and of the hospital of Christ of Abingdon, by Francis Little (1671), Oxford.

Cobham (C.D.), 1875, “Rome to Greece”, Good Words and Sunday Magazine 16, p. 334‑340 and 407‑413.

Cobham (C.D.), 1908, Excerpta Cypria. Materials for a history of Cyprus, Cambridge.

Cobham (C.D.), 1971, Preface to Mariti (G.), Travels in the island of Cyprus, transl. C.D. Cobham, repr. of 2nd ed. (1909), Londres.

Demetriou (K.), 1997, “Victorian Cyprus: society and institutions in the aftermath of the Anglo-Turkish Convention, 1878-1891”, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 21, p. 1‑29.

Hackett (J.), 1901, A history of the Orthodox church of Cyprus, London.

Hare (A.J.C.), 1875, Days near Rome, London.

Hare (A.J.C.), 1896, Story of my life, London.

Hook (G.R.), 2009, Britons in Cyprus, 1878-1914, unpublished Ph.D diss., University of Texas at Austin, <https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/bitstream/handle/2152/8381/HOOK-DISSERTATION.pdf>

Hutchinson (J.T.), Cobham (C.D.) comp., 1907, A handbook of Cyprus, 5th issue, London.

Jones (R.), 1983, The British diplomatic service 1815-1914, Waterloo, Ontario.

Kiely (T.), 2010, “Charles Newton and the archaeology of Cyprus”, CCEC 40, p. 231‑251.

Kiely (T.), Fourrier (S.), 2012, “Excavations at Kition-Bamboula 1879. Finds in the British Museum”, CCEC 42, p. 273‑304.

Luke (H.), 1953, Cities and men. An autobiography. The first thirty years, 1884-1914, London.

Luke (H.), 1957, Cyprus. A portrait and an appreciation, London.

Morgan (T.), 2010, Sweet and bitter island: a history of the British in Cyprus, London.

Pilides (D.), 2009, George Jeffery, his diaries and the ancient monuments of Cyprus, Nicosia.

Regis (A.K.) ed., 2016, The Memoirs of John Addington Symonds: a critical edition, London.

Rider HAGGARD (H.), 1904, A winter pilgrimage in Palestine, Italy and Cyprus, new ed. (1st ed. 1901), London.

Sayce (A.H.), 1923, Reminiscences, London.

Simpson (D.) ed., 1957, “The Cobham Cyprus Collection”, The Royal Empire Society Library Notes with list of accessions, n.s. 12, p. 1‑2.

Stanley-Price (N.), 2018, “Illicit excavation: the trial of Alessandro Palma di Cesnola in Cyprus in 1878”, Antiquaries Journal 98, p. 297‑317.

Tatton-Brown (V.), 2001, “Excavations in ancient Cyprus: original manuscripts and correspondence in the British Museum”, in Tatton-Brown (V.) ed., Cyprus in the 19th century A.D. Fact, fancy and fiction, London, p. 168‑183.

Taylor (L.), 2001, “Lady Brassey, 1870-1886: traveller, writer, collector, educator, woman of means and the fate of her Cypriot artifacts”, in Tatton-Brown (V.) ed., Cyprus in the 19th century A.D. Fact, fancy and fiction, London, p. 239‑247.

Ulbrich (A.), Kiely (T.), 2012, “Britain and the archaeology of Cyprus”, CCEC 42, p. 305‑356.

Varnava (A.), 2012, British imperialism in Cyprus, 1878-1915. The inconsequential possession, Manchester.

Vizetelly (E.H.), 1901, From Cyprus to Zanzibar by the Egyptian Delta, London.

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Notes

1 Cobham 1908; Hutchinson and Cobham 1907. For a list of his publications about Cyprus, see http://www.wsacy.com/DigitalCobham_5.0/index.html-person=20804 (accessed 10.11.18), and for subsequent editions of them, http://www.worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n81047852/ (accessed 9.10.18). See also https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/term_details.aspx?bioId=93615 (accessed 9.10.18).

2 Hook 2009, p. 108‑10; Stanley-Price 2018, p. 308.

3 The Wolseley Papers: CYP 1. Cyprus Letter Book, p. 41‑45 at Hove Central Library, UK; Cyprus Gazette, 1 October 1878.

4 His successor, C.F.B. Woodhouse, was appointed from 1 November 1907, although Luke (1953, p. 141) describes Cobham (“our learned and witty host”) as still being in office when he arrived in late January 1908.

5 Stanley-Price 2018, p. 302, citing Correspondence relating to the island of Cyprus 1878–79. Confidential. Printed for the use of the Foreign Office, October 1879, p. 184.

6 Kiely 2010, p. 245, Kiely and Fourrier 2012, p. 274‑80. Cobham took the visiting orientalist scholar A.H. Sayce to see these excavations in December 1880; Sayce 1923, p. 182‑183.

7 Ulbrich and Kiely 2012, p. 333, n. 152; Kiely 2010.

8 Anglo-Cyprus 6 May 1908, quoted in Morgan 2010, p. 68.

9 Vizetelly 1901, p. 26.

10 Pilides 2009, vol. 1, p. 85‑87. His obituary notice in The Times of London, unsigned and possibly written by Jeffery who pasted it into his Diaries, states that Cobham’s education was at Rugby and University College, Oxford, and that “When the English occupied Cyprus, he took ship to Larnaca.”; Pilides 2009, vol. 1, p. 105.

11 Luke 1957, p. 19; Luke in Simpson 1957, reproduced at https://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F0115%2FCobham (accessed 9.10.18).

12 Hackett 1901, p. viii. For an insight into the scholar at home, see Rider Haggard 1904, p. 68‑69.

13 Now at the Cambridge University Library. https://archivesearch.lib.cam.ac.uk/repositories/2/resources/96 (accessed 9.10.18).

14 United Kingdom Census for the years 1841, 1851 and 1861. For his date of birth, Withycombe Rawleigh parish records, consulted by Anne Bligh, and his gravestone. See https://www.oldashburton.co.uk/remarkable-and-interesting-people.php (accessed 9.10.18).

15 Census data; also The Route Book of Devon: a guide for the stranger and the tourist to the towns, watering places, and other interesting localities of this county, Exeter 1846, p. 162‑163.

16 Chudleigh and Rugby in Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 29 March 1861, p. 6, col. 4; Rugby in Rugby School Register, from 1675 to 1867 inclusive, Rugby 1867, p. 204.

17 Brock and Curthoys 1997, p. 13‑14.

18 Brock and Curthoys, 1997, p. 352‑353; 513‑514.

19 Vizetelly 1901, p. 26: “a very clever man”; Augustus J.C. Hare to Sir Garnet Wolseley, 21 August 1878, The Wolseley Papers, W 920 WOL, p. 69, at Hove Central Library, Sussex, UK: “quite marvellously clever”; Alumni oxonienses: the members of the University of Oxford, 1715-1886, Oxford 1888, p. 268.

20 Brock and Curthoys 2000, p. 18.

21 Augustus Hare (1834-1903), inveterate traveller and guidebook author, in Hare 1896, vol. 3, p. 152‑153.

22 Ordained as deacon by the Lord Bishop of Oxford, Oxford Chronicle and Reading Gazette, 14 March 1868, p. 5 col. 5; gave an evening sermon for the Parish Schools at Honiton; Western Times 3 August 1869 p. 7 col. 4.

23 https://www.univ.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Cobham.pdf (accessed 3.10.18).

24 Regis 2016, p. 211.

25 J.A. Symonds (1840-1893) ended his academic career at the university as a result of ‘the Shorting affair’, referring to an undergraduate of that name. Cobham was indirectly involved, having known Shorting at Rugby School (Regis 2016, p. 211‑212; also Brady 2016, p. 172).

26 Regis 2016, p. 371‑372; also p. 484. “Anderastes”, meaning man-loving, was a term invented by the classicist Cobham (the word ‘homosexual’ was not yet in common use). Both Roden Noel (1834-1894), later a respected poet, and Symonds married soon after, in 1863 and 1864 respectively, but Cobham never.

27 Index to Register of Passport Applications 1851-1903.

28 Hare 1875, p. 31‑2, 37‑8. In his memoirs, Hare (1896, vol. 3, p. 152) acknowledged how helpful Cobham’s advice had been for his literary work.

29 Giuseppe Gioachino Belli, I sonetti romaneschi, Rome, 1978.

30 Oxfordshire Weekly News 22 June 1870, p. 2 cols 2 and 3.

31 Morning Post 9 May 1864, p. 5 col. 6 and p. 6 col. 1; Reading Mercury 14 May 1864, p. 5 col. 3.

32 Exeter and Plymouth Gazette 17 October 1873, p. 8 (a ball); 8 August 1874, p. 2 col. 3 and 5 May 1876, p. 7 (weddings); Isle of Wight Observer 21 August 1875, p. 4 col. 6 (Cobham on family holiday).

33 Exeter Flying Post 26 November 1873, p. 5 col. 5 (Shakespeare); Exeter and Plymouth Gazette 17 March 1874 p. 4 col. 2 (Rome); Torquay Times and South Devon Advertiser 13 January 1877, p. 4 col. 3 (literature).

34 Cobham 1871.

35 See note 13 above.

36 Cobham 1875. There are probably other articles published by Cobham in the extensive Victorian periodical literature that are yet to be retrieved.

37 Cobham 1875, p. 410. The description continues in this vein.

38 Cobham 1875, p. 335‑336.

39 Torquay Times and South Devon Advertiser 25 May 1878, p. 4 col. 5 and 1 June 1878, p. 2 col. 5. In 1899 Cobham and his unmarried sister Blanche (their mother had died in 1880) sold this house for use as a rectory (Torquay Times and South Devon Advertiser 22 December 1899, p. 5 col 4.) The conveyance, dated 10 November 1899, is held by Devon Archives and Local Studies Service (South West Heritage Trust), ref. 3001 A/PB 8.

40 Demetriou 1997, p. 5‑7.

41 Hare to Wolseley (note 19 above). Cardinal Mezzofanti (1774-1849) was said to have spoken at least thirty languages.

42 Cobham 1971, p. vii.

43 Contemporary sources quoted in Stanley-Price 2018, p. 308.

44 Cobham 1875, p. 411.

45 Quoted in Varnava 2012, p. 157.

46 Mediterranean No. 10, Cyprus. Memorandum on Financial Questions, CO 883/2, quoted in Hook 2009, p. 214.

47 Jones 1983, p. 163. Currency conversions through http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter/ (accessed 9.10.18).

48 Luke 1953, p. 217.

49 https://probatesearch.service.gov.uk/Calendar#calendar (accessed 9.10.18).

50 Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 3 May 1915, p. 5 col. 6; parish records, St. Andrew’s church, Ashburton, consulted by Anne Bligh. See https://www.oldashburton.co.uk/remarkable-and-interesting-people.php (accessed 9.10.18).

51 1911 United Kingdom census and information from Anne Bligh.

52 https://www.rammuseum.org.uk/collections/overseas-archaeology/classical-archaeology/ (accessed 9.10.18).

53 One connection should be mentioned if only to be discounted: Henry Brassey (1840-1891) overlapped with Cobham at University College, Oxford. In September 1878 his elder brother Thomas with his wife Annie set sail from Portsmouth in the Sunbeam for a cruise in the Mediterranean that brought them to Cyprus for twenty days in October-November 1878 (Brassey 1880, p. 178, 260‑306; cf. Taylor 2001). But their departure from Portsmouth and their time in Cyprus post‑date Cobham’s arrival on the island. If Cobham and Henry Brassey were indeed friends, the visit of the Sunbeam may have been in part a result of Cobham’s presence there, not the reason for it.

54 Tatton-Brown 2001.

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Table des illustrations

Titre Figure 1. Claude Delaval Cobham, Maull & Fox, circa 1907.
Crédits Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library, RCI 2_1_2_101.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/cchyp/docannexe/image/373/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 174k
Titre Figure 2. Title page of “A monument of Christian munificence”.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/cchyp/docannexe/image/373/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 422k
Titre Figure 3. The gravestone of Claude Cobham, Ashburton, Devon.
Crédits A. Bligh, 2018.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/cchyp/docannexe/image/373/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 561k
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Nicholas Stanley-Price, « Claude Delaval Cobham before Cyprus: the making of a scholar »Cahiers du Centre d’Études Chypriotes, 48 | 2018, 133-146.

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Nicholas Stanley-Price, « Claude Delaval Cobham before Cyprus: the making of a scholar »Cahiers du Centre d’Études Chypriotes [En ligne], 48 | 2018, mis en ligne le 01 mai 2022, consulté le 14 juin 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/cchyp/373 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/cchyp.373

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