George Cope Cope was initiated into
the Golden Dawn at its Isis-Urania temple in London on 18 June 1895. He chose the Latin motto ‘Pax nobis ille’. His address while he was a member was 14
Pembridge Square London. He didn’t ever
take his initiation any further.
George Cope was a member of the Irish landed gentry, a member of the
Cope family of county Armagh. His
father, John Alexander Mainley Pinniger had married Georgina Garland in
1848. Georgina’s mother, Anna, was the
daughter of Nicholas Archdall Cope of Drumilly.
When Anna Cope Garland died in May 1867 John and Georgina Pinniger
inherited her estate at Drumilly on condition that they change their surname to
Cope, which they did in August of that year.
John Alexander Mainley Pinniger (later Cope) was a solicitor, originally
working for a firm in Gray’s Inn but later as a partner in Messrs Cope, Rose
and Pearson of 26 St George Street Westminster.
He was the personal legal advisor to the Sackville-West family who owned
Knole House in Kent, and his other clients included members of the Tyzack
banking family. He also acted as
solicitor to the pioneer of international communication by telegraph, John
Watkins Brett - something of an onerous task, it seems, as Brett’s cable-laying
companies seemed to have had more than their share of financial crises. However, through his involvement with Brett,
John Pinniger, later Cope, got to know the directors of the various companies
Brett founded to lay cables across the UK, under the Mediterranean and across
the Atlantic to Canada; the directors included several men whose children
became members of the Golden Dawn. The
Pinniger family also knew John Lettsom Elliot and his family. John Lettsom Elliot managed the Elliot
brewery in Pimlico. Perhaps John
Pinniger was the brewery’s solicitor; or the families may just have been
friendly. John Lettsom Elliot’s grandson,
Hugh Elliot, was a member of the Golden Dawn.
John Pinniger, later Cope, and Georgina had three daughters, and four
sons of whom George was the youngest, baptised as George Cope Pinniger on 29
July 1855 in the church at Parkstone near Bournemouth. I can’t find the family on the 1861 census,
I suppose they were visiting relatives in Ireland. I can’t find George on the 1871 census
either, but his family were in their house at 4 Cambridge Square in the
triangle between Edgeware Road and Hyde Park, in one of the best-served
households of any GD member. John A M
Cope employed a butler, a footman and a lady’s maid; as well as a governess for
George’s sisters, a cook, a nurse, two housemaids and a kitchen maid. Victorian servants may have been badly paid
on the whole, especially the female ones, but this was still serious
expenditure on the part of George’s parents.
I don’t know where the boy now known as George Cope Cope went to school,
but in 1873 he followed his elder brothers Edgar and Frederick to Pembroke
College Cambridge; the fourth brother, Arthur, didn’t go to university but
joined his father’s firm and qualified as a solicitor. George graduated in 1877, and - again like
brother Edgar - qualified as a barrister in 1879, becoming a member of the
Inner Temple. He had offices at 12 King’s
Bench Walk in the Inner Temple precinct and earned his living at the Surrey
court sessions for many years but I do question his commitment to his
profession. He didn’t rise through the
legal hierarchy, never became a King’s Counsel (they earn the highest fees) or
a judge; never took on the kind of case that was reported in the Press; and may
have all but retired while still quite young.
In November 1871 John A M Cope was appointed a JP for the county of Armagh,
so he had to spend some weeks of each year carrying out his duties as a
magistrate there, but the the family home was still in London, at 14 Pembridge
Square, north of Notting Hill Gate, where John Cope died in 1892. Although George Cope gave his mother’s home
as his address when he joined the GD, he wasn’t actually living there by
then. According to a memoir by the
social reformer Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, he was living in a block of flats in
Somerset Terrace Euston Road with a friend, John Greenhalgh, who was on a long
leave from his job as a judge in Burma.
Two of their neighbours in the block of flats were Emmeline Pethick (not
married to Lawrence yet) and her friend Mary Neal. Emmeline and Mary both did voluntary work at
the West London Mission in Marylebone, and after getting to know them, George
Cope started to volunteer there too, at the children’s club they ran. Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence’s memoir is written
with a great deal of hindsight, in the mid-1930s. She describes the George Cope she knew in the
mid-1890s as wanting to “to turn to the simple life as a change” having got
bored, as she had done, with the social round.
Emmeline describes how George’s “Irish wit and irrepressible gaiety” and
his “leadership against all restriction and restraint” made him very popular
with the children; and says that if ever there was trouble at the girls’ club,
George Cope Cope was likely to have caused it.
I’m not sure, from this account, how far Emmeline approved of George
Cope’s anarchic behaviour but she couldn’t help but admire an “innate sense of
harmony and beauty” that she felt that he had.
This sense of beauty must have been challenged by the things George Cope
learned at the West London Mission about the lives of the children who spent
their leisure hours there. Through
Emmeline Pethick and Mary Neal he met other men and women with strong views on
the social issues of the day. In 1897 he
sent his first letters to the Times, querying a recent decision made by
the military hierarchy in India to close its lock hospitals, where prostitutes
had been imprisoned while being treated for venereal diseases given them by
their soldier clients. George was only
asking whether there was any actual evidence for the argument being put forward
by the military, that the lock hospital system didn’t work. However, his letter seems to have hit an
exposed nerve amongst the members of the committee which had taken the
decision, two of whom wrote to the Times vigorously defending the committee’s
choice but in the process making it fairly clear that they had not gathered any
evidence as to whether lock hospitals worked before the decision was made. The correspondence ended with George Cope
pointing out that, without any data on the subject, the opponents of the decision
that had been taken were finding it very difficult to argue their case. In this, George Cope was not just thinking
about the situation in India, I’m sure: the Contagious Diseases Acts, under
which the lock hospital system operated, also applied in the UK, in military
and non-military situations, and were being bitterly attacked by women
campaigners as enshrining the sexual double-standard and treating the ill like
criminals.
George Cope’s initiation into the GD happened around the time he met
Emmeline Pethick and Mary Neal, and was another attempt to break out into new
territory with his life outside his work as a barrister. Hugh Elliot was a member of the same
barristers’ chambers as Cope at 12 King’s Walk in the Inner Temple - he’d
probably joined that chambers because Elliots knew the Copes. He was initiated into the GD a few months
before George Cope Cope and almost certainly was the man who recommended Cope
as a suitable initiate. However, the GD
didn’t work for George Cope Cope; unlike Elliot, he gave it up shortly after
being initiated. With John Greenhalgh,
he continued to try out the simple life.
On the day of the 1901 census, they were sharing a cottage (on holiday,
I think, as both are described as “visitors” and there is no head of household)
at 65 Broadmoor, Wotton, Dorking, surrounded by housholds headed by either a
gardener, an agricultural labourer, or a gamekeeper. And he continued his involvement in social
issues to the extent of dipping a toe in local politics. In 1902 he stood in a bye-election at St
Pancras Board of Guardians, as a Liberal candidate, against Edith Mary
Rendel. Unfortunately his decision to
stand caused consternation and division in his own party. The members had no problem with him declaring
that he would campaign against the interference of central government in local
decision-making. However, a lot of them
really didn’t like his decision to make arguing against compulsory vaccination
an important feature of his campaign speeches.
And a further group would have preferred a woman candidate, if they
could have found one; some even wrote to Miss Rendel saying how much they hoped
she would win. She did win, and I can’t
find any evidence that George Cope stood as a political candidate any other
time. However, his involvement in social
issues continued and he kept the friends he had made in campaigning
circles. When Margaret Macdonald, of the
Women’s Industrial Council, died in 1911 he was on the committee of friends and
colleagues that worked to set up a suitable memorial to her work as a collector
of statistics on women’s employment and working conditions.
John Greenhalgh’s long leave seems to have turned into a decision to
take early retirement and remain in England.
He organised holidays for working people; and acted as advisor to
tenants’ associations. He and George
Cope continued to share flats, probably for nearly a decade - in 1897 they were living at 20 Endsleigh
Terrace, Duke’s Road - but in 1906 George Cope got married, at the age of
51. His bride was a widow of nearly his
own age, Maria Catherine Christian. Born
Maria Catherine Pittar, she was the daughter of Sir Thomas Pittar, a civil
servant in the Board of Customs department.
In 1882 she had married Richard Christian, who was a lawyer and perhaps
known to George Cope from those days, but he had died aged only 41 in 1895;
they had had no children.
I haven’t been able to find out very much about George Cope Cope after
his marriage. I presume he continued to
work as a barrister, but the Probate Registry records for him and his wife show
that they were comfortably off and he may have retired from legal work. He and Maria Catherine set up house as a
married couple at 2 Harley Gardens London SW10, in the district between the
Brompton and Fulham Roads. They also
kept the house called Darnhills, at Radlett in Hertfordshire, where Maria
Catherine had lived before they had married, although on the day of the 1911
census, they were visiting Maria Catherine’s in-laws from her first
marriage.
Maria Catherine died in February 1921 leaving George Cope a childless
widower.
In 1927 a new series of letters from George Cope to the Times began to
appear, one or two a year, beginning with a set on the Oxford v Cambridge
university match, hying back to the 1870s when he had been a Cambridge
undergraduate. There’s no evidence that
he played in the Cambridge team so he must have watched, noting down the
batting and bowling statistics, which he had kept ever since. In 1928 he sent in letters about the Jesus College
rowing team of 1877, and in 1929 he commented on a recent article in the Times
which had listed some members of that team who were now judges in the High
Court. In 1929 he changed subjects from
sport to politics, commenting rather dourly on the poor arithmetical sense
displayed by those who had panicked when early counting in the General Election
which had taken place on 30 May 1929 had showed the Labour Party in the
lead. The final result was a hung
parliament.
According to Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, George Cope pursued the harmony
and beauty she saw in him by writing poetry.
I’m sorry to say I haven’t been able to find any published poetry by
him; perhaps he just showed his verses to his friends. However, in his last ever letter to the
Times, he contributed his own theory as to the meaning of the enigmatic last
two lines of Keats’ Ode to a Grecian Urn:
Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'
I took the text of Ode from Oxford Book of English Verse, 1919
edition, edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch, which is now on the web.
The letter on Keat’s Ode appeared in the Times on 29 August 1930. George Cope Cope died on 28 February 1931 and
was buried at Radlett.
BASIC SOURCES I USED for all Golden Dawn members.
Membership of the Golden Dawn: The Golden Dawn Companion by R A
Gilbert. Northampton: The Aquarian Press
1986. Between pages 125 and 175, Gilbert
lists the names, initiation dates and addresses of all those people who became
members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn or its many daughter Orders
between 1888 and 1914. The list is based
on the Golden Dawn’s administrative records and its Members’ Roll - the large
piece of parchment on which all new members signed their name at their
initiation. All this information had
been inherited by Gilbert but it’s now in the Freemasons’ Library at the United
Grand Lodge of England building on Great Queen Street Covent Garden.
Family history: freebmd; ancestry.co.uk (census and probate);
findmypast.co.uk; familysearch; Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage; Burke’s Landed
Gentry; Armorial Families; thepeerage.com; and a wide variety of family trees
on the web.
Famous-people sources: mostly about men, of course, but very useful even
for the female members of GD. Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography. Who
Was Who. Times Digital Archive.
Catalogues: British Library; Freemasons’ Library.
Wikipedia; Google; Google Books - my three best resources. I also used other web pages, but with some
caution, as - from the historian’s point of view - they vary in quality a great
deal.
Sources for George Cope Cope:
The Pinniger/Cope connection:
Website www.igp-web.com/igparchives/ire/armagh/cemeteries/loughgall.txt,
part of the Ireland Genealogy Project for details of Anna Garland Cope.
London Gazette 16 Aug 1867 p4548 and Edinburgh Gazette 20 Aug
1867 p956 for the change of surname from Pinniger to Cope and also details of
the descent of Georgina Pinniger from Anna Garland Cope.
Armagh, City of Light and Learning by Joe Hynes and Maureen
Campbell, published 1997 by Cottage Publications of Donaghadee Northern
Ireland. P38 says that the association
of the Cope family with the city of Armagh goes back to Anthony Cope of Hanwell
Oxfordshire who was created 1st baronet in 1611. He had bought the two manors of Derrycreevy
and Drumilly, which were inherited by his sons Richard and Anthony.
Armorial Families: A Directory of Gentlemen of Coat-Armour Volume 1,
published 1929, edited by Arthur C Fox-Davies.
P428: George Cope Cope, born 1855; married 1906 Maria Catherine,
daughter of Thomas John Pittar and widow of Richard Christian of Radlett
Hertfordshire. Currently (that is, 1929)
living at 2 Harley Gardens SW10.
At //henlyfamilytreeguide.com is a note of the baptism of John Alexander
Mainley Pinniger, on 20 Sep 1824 in Chippenham Wiltshire; his parents are
Broome Pinniger and wife Martha.
John A M Pinniger as a solicitor:
Via www.nationalarchives.gov.uk to document lists for the
East Sussex Record Office and the London Metropolitan Archive. For the life of John Watkins Brett go to
//atlantic-cable/com, the website of the History of the Atlantic Cable and
Undersea Communications; a very detailed biography by Steven Roberts.
His involvement in a firm proposing to lay a cable from New South Wales
to London: Sydney Morning Herald of 22 May 1857 p2 and 30 Oct 1857 p4.
The Spectator volume 45 1872 on p831, a group of legal notices
includes one issued by J A Mainley Cope on behalf of Messrs Cope, Rose and
Pearson, solicitors, of 26 St George Street Westminster.
The Economist 1874 p150, a page of legal notices has one issued by
J A Mainley Cope on behalf of Messrs Cope, Rose and Pearson solicitors of 26 St
George Street Westminster.
The Pinniger/Cope family’s connection with the Elliots
Lettsom: His Life, Times, Friends and Descendants by James Johnston
Abraham. Published London: William
Heinemann Medical Books Ltd 1933. On
p475 reference to a letter from George Cope Cope to the Times on 16 October
1926 in which he mentioned knowing John Lettsom Elliot very well when he was
younger. John Lettsom Elliot was Hugh
Elliot’s grandfather. I have to say that
on 9 November 2013 I looked for Cope’s letter in the Times Digital Archive and
couldn’t find it; a bit puzzled about that.
George Cope’s professional life:
Alumni Cantabrigiensis 1752-1900 Part 2 Volume 2 p132 George Cope Cope who
went to Pembroke College in 1873. Born
12 July 1855 at Parkstone Dorset.
Graduated with a BA 1877. Began
study at the Inner Temple May 1876; called to the bar 1879. Barrister on the Surrey sessions “for some
years”.
Times Saturday 14 June 1879 p5c Legal Education: a list of men who had
recently passed the bar exams included George Cope Cope of the Inner Temple.
Times 18 Nov 1879 p11f a list of men called to the bar (that is, qualifying
to practice law) included George Cope Cope BA Cambridge, of the Inner Temple.
Men at the Bar: A Biographical Hand-List of the Members of the Various
Inns of Court by Joseph Foster, published 1885.
P99 has Edgar Broome Cope, called to bar January 1875 eldest son of John
Alexander Mainley Cope of Drummilly (sic), Loughall. Now (1885) at the high court in Lahore. Also p99 George Cope BA Pembroke College
Cambridge, called to the bar 17 November 1879, fourth son of J A M Cope; born
12 July 1855.
I only looked at one Law List: 1895 p52 in the list of Counsel
(that is, barristers): George Cope Cope Inner Temple, working on the Surrey
sessions and with offices at 12 King’s Bench Walk.
George Cope’s obituary in Times 3 March 1931 speaks also of his
brother Frederick L Cope p132, also a graduate of Pembroke College. Frederick Cope was ordained a Church of
England priest and held various livings in the Durham area before being sent to
the Falkland Islands in 1906, dying on the islands in 1910. The Times obituary drew on Burke’s Landed
Gentry’s Irish Supplement for its information on George Cope Cope’s family:
his father John Alexander M Pinniger married Georgina Cope of Drummilly county
Armagh and took the surname Cope, by royal licence, on 10 August 1857. There was no mention in the obituary of
George Cope’s involvement with the West London Mission or of his having any
knowledge of the Contagious Diseases Acts and their effects.
My Part in a Changing World by Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence though if you
want to look at this book at the British Library, be aware that the BL has got
her surname wrong, spelling it PethWick.
Published London: Victor Gollancz 1938 pp112-113.
The lock hospital dispute:
Times 17 Aug 1897 p6, letter dated 16 Aug 1897 from George C Cope: The Health
of the Army in India, though it wasn’t the start of the correspondence on this
subject, Cope himself was replying to a letter published in Times on 12 Aug
[1897] written by someone calling himself only
Two replies both Times Sat 21 Aug 1897 p13, from Major General
Richard Dashwood; and a man calling himself ‘Senior’, though he does describe
himself as an Indian Army officer.
Cope replied to Dashwood and ‘Senior’; in Times Tue 24 Aug 1897
p6. And also on that day the Times
published a letter from Colonel A G Wymen querying something alleged by ‘Senior’
is his letter.
Another letter from Cope in Times Tue 31 Aug 1897 p8
And a reply from Dashwood, now not bothering to conceal his annoyance;
published in Times Wed 1 Sep 1897 p2
The correspondence ended with a final letter form Cope published Times
Tue 7 Sep 1897 p9 saying that Dashwood had ignored his two requests for details
of any research that had been done on the efficiency of voluntary lock
hospitals. Cope therefore concludes that
no such research has been done. IF any
such research has been done, Dashwood and those who agree with his point of
view are not aware of it.
George Cope’s foray into politics:
Times Monday 10 March 1902 p14 The Vaccination Question in St Pancras: a
report on the bye-election campaign in No 7 Ward, Borough of St Pancras Board
of Guardians, caused by the death of Edith Gresham. George Cope of 20 Endsleigh Terrace,
described as a barrister, was standing as a Liberal, with an endorsement from
the South St Pancras Liberal and Radical Association. However, the Times noted that not all
Liberals were that enthusiastic about him as he was making it plain he was
standing on a platform of being against compulsory vaccination. The was also taking a stand against the “undue”
interference by central government in local government affairs. A lot of local Liberals had said since his
candidacy was agreed, that if they’d known he was against compuls vaccination,
they wldn’t have supported him as a candidate.
Standing against him was Edith Mary Rendel. Some Liberals had come out as preferring a
woman Poor Law Board representative, because if Cope was elected, the number of
women on the Board would be reduced (the Times noted that it was already at a
pretty low level). One Liberal had
written to Rendel apologising that he had promised be to vote for Cope when he
would actually rather she won, as he believed that much Poor Law work was best
carried out by women.
NB there was no further comment on the bye-election in the Times, and
searching on ‘George Cope’ I didn’t find an article on the result of the
bye-election, either. However, the
sources below make it clear that Rendel won it:
Report of Proceedings of the International Congress for the Welfare and
Protection...of Children; held at the Guildhall (City of London) May 1906. Via googlebooks, saw the copy now in the
Reese Library, University of California.
A list of those who attended included “Miss E Rendel (St Pancras)”.
Report of Proceedings of the National Conference on Infantile (sic)
Mortality held Caxton Hall Westminster, March 1908. Miss E M “Rendell” represented St Pancras
Board of Guardians at the conference.
Via its epage to the Univeristy of Birmingham Research Archive. Rendel’s name had come up in a PhD thesis
1991 by Kenneth H Brill, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, which
referred to Rendel running a day nursery in St Pancras. I couldn’t see any dates connection with this,
but I think that she must have been doing it before she stood as a Poor Law
Board candidate, and that it was what her reputation was based on in the
bye-election.
George Cope’s friend John Greenhalgh:
Saturday Review volume 97; I couldn’t see the year from googlebooks’
snippet. On p277 a letter from John H
Greenhalgh: A Seaside Hotel for Working People.
Practical Housing published 1908 by Garden City Press. On pvii a list, not in alphabetical order,
all male, all either MP’s or representatives of housing groups; perhaps
subscribers, or attenders at a conference? The list includes John H Greenhalgh
as representative of Hampstead Tenants Ltd.
On pxxi his name comes up again, again in a list, probably of committee
members this time, as ta secretary is named.
Town Planning Conference held in London 10-15 October 1910, its Transactions
volume 1, published 1911 by the Royal Institute of British Architects. I couldn’t see the page number on google’s
snippet but th list was very similar to that in Practical Housing and
again Greenhalgh is representing Hampstead Tenants Ltd.
Margaret Macdonald:
Times Mon 18 Dec 1911 p10 The Margaret Macdonald Memorial. A report of a meeting of her friends and
acquaintances, held on 13 November [1911], at which they tried to decide on a
suitable memorial to her. Three ideas
were considered:
Option One was a sculpture
But a lot of people at the meeting felt that a practical project would
be a more fitting way to commemorate her.
Option Two was donating more money to the Baby Clinic already set up and
working as a memorial to Margaret’s friend Mary Middleton.
Option Three was particularly preferred by people who knew her in
Leicester. They suggested raising money
to pay for a new ward at Leicester Children’s Hospital.
At the end of the meeting, the issue was still undecided but while
everyone was still making up their minds, the Appeal had been launched. George C Cope was on the Memorial Executive
Committee; his name was 6th on the list of signatures to the Appeal
letter. Another member of it was T
Fisher Unwin, founder of Stanley Unwin the publishing firm.
Some further information on Margaret MacDonald:
Home Industries of Women in London, Report of an Inquiry by the
Investigation Committee of the Women’s Industrial Council (Great Britain) 1908
and published by the Council. The
authors were Margaret MacDonald and B L Hutchins.
On the Women’s Industrial Council from Women’s Library website at
//calmarchive.londonmet.ac.uk, which begins by saying that as at 2006, no
archive of the WIC’s papers is known to them.
The website manages a small paragraph on the WIC just the same: it was
founded in 1894 and still operative in 1917.
Its function was collecting data to argue for lessening women’s working
hours; improving their working conditions; and recruiting more inspectors for
factories where they worked. Members of
the WIC gave evidence to Parliamentary committees several times. Leading members of the WIC were: Clementine
Black; Margaret Bondfield; Margaret MacDonald; B L Hutchins; Catherine
Webb. It had a jnl: The Women’s Indl
News.
George Cope’s father-in-law:
Re Thomas Pittar: Chemist and Druggist volume 101 1924 p123 has
an obituary of Sir Thomas J Pittar KCB CMG, who had died on 20 July. He was a former chairman of the Board of
Customs, having worked in that department all his career, working his way up
from a clerk.
George Cope’s sporting letters to the Times. There are none before 1927.
Times Friday 1 July 1927 p17 letter from George C Cope at 2 Harley Gardens
SW10, referring to the Time’s coverage of the recent Oxford v Cambridge
university cricket match (which now had quite a long tradition behind it). Cope remembered a match in 1877 in which F M
Buckland’s performance was particularly notable. His reminiscences received a reply, published
in Times Thursday 7 July 1927 p12 from F M Buckland’s son, F E Buckland,
making a small correction to Cope’s figures f the 1877 match, by saying his
father had been 117 not out, not 114 not out as Cope’s letter had said.
Times Monday 23 July 1928 p10 letter from George C Cope, 2 Harley Gardens;
with more statistics on Oxford v Cambridge university cricket.
Times Sat 29 December 1928 p4 letter from George C Cope at 2 Harley Gardens,
again about the Cambridge University cricket team of the late 1870s, linking
the prominence of men from Jesus College in it, to the brilliance of the
College’s contemporary rowing team. This
got a response published in the Times on Thursday 31 January 1929 p5
from a Steve Fairbairn, who was an undergraduate at Jesus College in the early
1880s; written from the Golf Hotel, St Jean de Luz.
Times Saturday 16 March 1929 p13 letter dated 14 March [1929] from George
Cope Cope at 2 Harley Gardens, referring to a recent Times article on
the Boat Race; in which Times had noted the number of team members from
70 years before who were now gracing the High Court. George Cope Cope added some more names.
Times Monday 3 June 1929 p12 letter from George Cope Cope, undated but same
address, in which he criticises the number of people panicking at the amount of
votes the Labour Party had got in early counting. Cope says that the arithmetic of the
panickers “is not apparently that taught in schools”.
Times Tuesday 3 March 1931 p1 death notices include one for George Cope Cope
of 2 Harley Gardens SW10. He’d died on
28 February [1931]. The only family
details are that he was the 4th son of J A M Cope of Drummilly
county Armagh. The funeral would be at
Aldenham Church Radlett.
Probate Registry: George Cope Cope of 2 Harley Gardens Middlesex had
died on 28 February 1931 at 5 Collingham Gardens Middlesex. Probate granted London 14 April 1931 to
Harold Burn Hopgood, solicitor; and Arthur Vere Rolleston Woods. Personal effects: £20593/9/1.
Sources I checked for any poetry published by George Cope:
Mid-Victorian Poety 1860-79: An Annotated Biobibliography by Catherine W
Reilly p108.
Late Victorian Poetry 1880-99: An Annotated Biobibliography by Catherine W
Reilly; no entry p106 for Cope.
And Oxford Companion to 20th Century Poetry in England
ed Ian Hamilton. Oxford: OUP 1994 p99
the only Cope is Wendy.
His letter on Keats’ Ode to a Grecian Urn appeared in the Times
Fri 29 Aug 1930 p8 and was the last letter by him to appear in the paper.
--
Copyright SALLY DAVIS
9 November 2013
