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Everard
Charles Cotes (1862—1944)
Born in the
Rectory of Newington, Wallingford (Berkshire) late in
1862, his father was the Reverend Septimus Cotes, who
was Rector of Newington for 47 years, until his death
in January, 1893. His mother, Ellen, had been born in
Athlone, Ireland. There was a very considerable age
difference between his parents, his father having been
born in about 1810, his mother in 1833 or so. They
married in 1858. Everard was the first-born of two
sons. They also had four daughters. He attended
Clifton College and matriculated at Oxford
University in June 1881 without belonging to a
college. He gained honours in mathematical Mods in
1883. There is no indication that he ever went on to
take an Oxford degree and his books do not attribute
any degree to him on their title pages. He
then
went to India and in April 1884 began working in the
Natural History section at the Indian Museum,
Calcutta, with the position of First Assistant to the
Superintendent. In December 1891 another person took
his position while he served temporarily as Deputy
Superintendent. He returned to his former rank in
March 1892 but in May the same year he was appointed Deputy
Superintendent and retained that position until
he resigned in April 1895. During these years he
published a considerable number of books on Indian
entymology,a subject which had presumably interested
prior to his departure from England.
The dynamic, modern Canadian woman who was to
become his wife, Sara
Jeannette Duncan, was born in Ontario in 1861.
In 1885 she began to write book reviews for the ''Washington
Post', then returned to Canada, writing for
''The Globe'' and the ''Montreal Star.''
Late in 1888, she and a friend, Lily Lewis, began a
journey round the world, which gave her the
inspiration for her first book, published in 1890, ''A Social
Departure '', a
fictionalized account of their experiences. In India
she met Everard Cotes on February 28, 1889, at a
reception at the Calcutta mansion of the Viceroy, Lord
Lansdowne, whom she had previously met in Canada.(”Sara
Jeannette Duncan: A Brief Chronology,” in
Duncan’s ''Set
in Authority'', edited by Germaine Warkentin.
Broadview Press. 1996. p.336.).
A few weeks later, in March, she accepted his proposal
of marriage, made during a visit to the Taj Mahal,
then continued with her journey until May 1889, when
she arrived in England. They were married on December
6, 1890, in St. Thomas’ Church, Calcutta. During
the
spring of 1891 they visited Europe, but were back in
India by June. Little is known of Cotes’s relationship
with his wife. Clearly an independent woman, she made
frequent trips to England and North America, sometimes
accompanied by Cotes but often alone. She was a very
professional writer and is reported to have spent at
least some time writing every day of her life. (Debra Martens. “A
Canadian Author in Chelsea: Sara Jeannette Duncan.”
''The Chelsea
Society Report'' 2013. p37.)
After her marriage, she always published using the
name “Mrs Everard Cotes” in conjunction with her own
name, “Sara Jeannette Duncan.” In April 1894, after he
resigned from the Museum, it seemed that they would go
back to England permanently. They visited Paris on
their way to England, and Cotes began to plan a
completely new career, in journalism, probably
inspired by his wife. Cotes seems to have planned to
stay in England but by January 1895 they were back in
India, where Cotes had been offered the position of
Editor of the ''Indian
Daily News'' (Calcutta), a position he held
until 1897. Duncan assisted him by writing editorials
and articles during those years, while she continued
to write the novels for which she is celebrated. In
March
1897, Cotes resigned from the ''Indian Daily News''
and became a government press correspondent in Simla,
where they had a house. By 1900, after making several
journeys to England and North America, Duncan was
diagnosed with tuberculosis. She was by now back
living with Cotes in Simla. In 1901 they moved to
Calcutta, where Cotes was charged with finding
recruits for the Boer War. After several years
of this kind of living, he moving between Calcutta and
Simla, his wife between India and England or North
America, Cotes set off alone early in 1906 on a visit
with other journalists to the Far East, passing
through China, Manchuria, Korea and Japan, not long
after the end of the Russo-Japanese War. This resulted
in his first book, ''Signs and
Portents in the Far East'', published
early in 1907 in London and New York. In
1907
the Indian News Agency was established by Cotes, who
had previously also been serving as the Indian
correspondent of the London ''Daily Mail''
In 1910 the INA was taken over by Reuters with the
formation of the Eastern News Agency. Reuters owned
one half, Cotes the other half. Everard Cotes became
the managing director of the Eastern News Agency,
which included Associated Press of India and Indian
News Agency, an important position that he held from
1910 until 1919. (Jonathan Silberstein-loeb: ''The
International Distribution of News: the Associated
Press, Press Association, and Reuters'',
1848-1947 - Cambridge Studies in the Emergence
of Global Enterprise. Cambridge UP. 2014. p.175) In 1912, Cotes’s wife brought
her niece, Nellie Masterman, back to India with her
and she stayed there with Cotes until his final
departure from India in 1919. In November 1912 they
moved to Delhi in order to be closer to the source of
news. However, apart from a period of life in Simla in
1915, Cotes’s wife was absent from India throughout
the War. She was writing plays, which were produced in
Canada and London with limited success. Cotes
finally
sold his share in the Eastern News Agency in 1919, and
joined his wife in London, where they leased a house,
17 Paultons Square in Chelsea. He retained the
connection with Reuters, serving as a Reuters
correspondent. Duncan visited Canada for the last time
in the autumn of 1919, together with her husband, who
was reporting for Reuters on the tour of the Prince of
Wales. In 1920, Cotes spent seven months touring
Australia with the Prince of Wales and the following
year he published ''Down Under with
the Prince'', his account of the tour. In
May
1922 they moved to a house in Ashtead, Surrey, but
Duncan’s health was failing and she died on July 22,
1922. She was buried in the churchyard of St Giles
Church in Ashtead, with the inscription “This leaf was
blown far.” Cotes, who was her beneficiary, worked as
parliamentary correspondent for the ''Christian Science
Monitor in the following years. In 1923, already
aged 61, he married Phoebe Violet Delaforce. His
second wife had been born in 1900 in Portugal, the
daughter of Henry
John Delaforce, of a notable port-wine shipping
family. They had two children, John and Mary. Everard
Charles Cotes died at their home, Birdshill
Cottage, Oxshott, Surrey, on October 4, 1944. Rupert Gude
writes: "Everard Charles Cotes's son went on to be
a chest
physician in South Wales and a leading expert on
pneumoconiosis (miner's lung
disease). He later moved his research to Newcastle where
he is retired. His daughter was a medical
biochemist and doctor
who worked for the Medical Research Council in Millhill,
London on
erythropoeitin, a blood hormone and is retired in
London."
==Publications== ''A
Catalogue of the Moths of India'', compiled by
E. C. Cotes, First Assistant to the Superintendent,
Indian Museum, Calcutta and Colonel [[Charles
Swinhoe]] F.L.S, F.Z.S.. Calcutta : Printed by order
of the Trustees of the Indian Museum (1887) Volume 1-7 Shorter papers: The Experimental
Introduction of Insecticides into India. With a short
account of modern insecticides and methods of applying
them. (1888)
A Preliminary
Account of the Wheat and Rice Weevil in India (Notes
on Economic Entomology. no. 1.) (1888) Notes On
Economic Entomology. (1889) Silkworms in
India (1890) The Locusts of
Bengal, Madras, Assam, and Bombay, etc (1891) White Insect Wax
in India, etc (1891)
The Wild Silk
Insects of India (1891) ''Silk''. Office
of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India,
1893 ''An Elementary
Manual of Zoology'' Designed for the Use of Forest
Officers in India. Prepared for the Forest Department
of India by E. C. Cotes, Deputy Superintendent of the
Indian Museum, Calcutta, and Lecturer on Zoology at
the Imperial Forest School, Dehra Dun. Calcutta:
Office Of The Superintendent, Government Printing,
India. 1893. (Cover title:
Indian Forest Zoology) “The
Poisonous Snakes of India” by E.C. Cotes in McClure's
Magazine, April 1894, pp. 466-474 ''An account of
the insects and mites which attack the tea plant in
India''. Calcutta : Superintendent of government
printing, India, 1895 Everard Cotes.
''Signs
and Portents in the Far East''. London:
Methuen.1907. Everard Cotes.
''Down
Under with the Prince''. London: Methuen. 1921. |