CLARKE, SIR ANDREW (1824-1902), British soldier and administrator, son of Colonel Andrew Clarke, of Co. Donegal, Ireland, governor of West Australia, was born at Southsea, England, on the 27th of July 1824, and educated at King’s school, Canterbury. He entered the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and obtained his commission in the army in 1844 as second lieutenant in the Royal Engineers. He was appointed to his father’s staff in West Australia, but was transferred to be A.D.C. and military secretary to the governor of Tasmania; and in 1847 he went to New Zealand to take part in the Maori War, and for some years served on Sir George Grey’s staff. He was then made surveyor-general in Victoria, took a prominent part in framing its new constitution, and held the office of minister of public lands during the first administration (1855-1857). He returned to England in 1857, and in 1863 was sent on a special mission to the West Coast of Africa. In 1864 he was appointed director of works for the navy, and held this post for nine years, being responsible for great improvements in the naval arsenals at Chatham, Portsmouth and Plymouth, and for fortifications at Malta, Cork, Bermuda and elsewhere. In 1873 he was made K.C.M.G., and became governor of the Straits Settlements, where he did most valuable work in consolidating British rule and ameliorating the condition of the people. From 1875 to 1880 he was minister of public works in India; and on his return to England in 1881, holding then the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the army, he was first appointed commandant at Chatham and then inspector-general of fortifications (1882-1886). Having attained the rank of lieutenant-general and been created G.C.M.G., he retired from official life, and in 1886 and 1893 unsuccessfully stood for parliament as a supporter of Mr Gladstone. During his last years he was agent-general for Victoria. He died on the 29th of March 1902. Both as a technical and strategical engineer and as an Imperial administrator Sir Andrew Clarke was one of the ablest and most useful public servants of his time; and his contributions to periodical literature, as well as his official memoranda, contained valuable suggestions on the subjects of imperial defence and imperial consolidation which received too little consideration at a period when the home governments were not properly alive to their importance. He is entitled to remembrance as one of those who first inculcated, from a wide practical experience, the views of imperial administration and its responsibilities, which in his last years he saw accepted by the bulk of his countrymen.
CLARKE, CHARLES COWDEN (1787-1877), English author and Shakespearian scholar, was born at Enfield, Middlesex, on the 15th of December 1787. His father, John Clarke, was a schoolmaster, among whose pupils was John Keats. Charles Clarke taught Keats his letters, and encouraged his love of poetry. He knew Charles and Mary Lamb, and afterwards became acquainted with Shelley, Leigh Hunt, Coleridge and Hazlitt. Clarke became a music publisher in partnership with Alfred Novello, and married in 1828 his partner’s sister, Mary Victoria (1809-1898), the eldest daughter of Vincent Novello. In the year after her marriage Mrs Cowden Clarke began her valuable Shakespeare concordance, which was eventually issued in eighteen monthly parts (1844-1845), and in volume form in 1845 as The Complete Concordance to Shakespeare, being a Verbal Index to all the Passages in the Dramatic Works of the Poet. This work superseded the Copious Index to ... Shakespeare (1790) of Samuel Ayscough, and the Complete Verbal Index ... (1805-1807) of Francis Twiss. Charles Cowden Clarke published many useful books, and edited the text for John Nichol’s edition of the British poets; but his most important work consisted of lectures delivered between 1834 and 1856 on Shakespeare and other literary subjects. Some of the more notable series were published, among them being Shakespeare’s Characters, chiefly those subordinate (1863), and Molière’s Characters (1865). In 1859 he published a volume of original poems, Carmina Minima. For some years after their marriage the Cowden Clarkes lived with the Novellos in London. In 1849 Vincent Novello with his wife removed to Nice, where he was joined by the Clarkes in 1856. After his death they lived at Genoa at the “Villa Novello.” They collaborated in The Shakespeare Key, unlocking the Treasures of his Style ... (1879), and in an edition of Shakespeare for Messrs Cassell, which was issued in weekly parts, and completed in 1868. It was reissued in 1886 as Cassell’s Illustrated Shakespeare. Charles Clarke died on the 13th of March 1877 at Genoa, and his wife survived him until the 12th of January 1898. Among Mrs Cowden Clarke’s other works may be mentioned The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines (3 vols., 1850-1852), and a translation of Berlioz’s Treatise upon Modern Instrumentation and Orchestration (1856).
See Recollections of Writers (1898), a joint work by the Clarkes containing letters and reminiscences of their many literary friends; and Mary Cowden Clarke’s autobiography, My Long Life (1896). A charming series of letters (1850-1861), addressed by her to an American admirer of her work, Robert Balmanno, was edited by Anne Upton Nettleton as Letters to an Enthusiast (Chicago, 1902).
CLARKE, EDWARD DANIEL (1769-1822), English mineralogist and traveller, was born at Willingdon, Sussex, on the 5th of June 1769, and educated first at Tonbridge. In 1786 he obtained the office of chapel clerk at Jesus College, Cambridge, but the loss of his father at this time involved him in difficulties. In 1790 he took his degree, and soon after became private tutor to Henry Tufton, nephew of the duke of Dorset. In 1792 he obtained an engagement to travel with Lord Berwick through Germany, Switzerland and Italy. After crossing the Alps, and visiting a few of the principal cities of Italy, including Rome, he went to Naples, where he remained nearly two years. Having returned to England in the summer of 1794, he became tutor in several distinguished families. In 1799 he set out with a Mr Cripps on a tour through the continent of Europe, beginning with Norway and Sweden, whence they proceeded through Russia and the Crimea to Constantinople, Rhodes, and afterwards to Egypt and Palestine. After the capitulation of Alexandria, Clarke was of considerable use in securing for England the statues, sarcophagi, maps, manuscripts, &c., which had been collected by the French savants. Greece was the country next visited. From Athens the travellers proceeded by land to Constantinople, and after a short stay in that city directed their course homewards through Rumelia, Austria, Germany and France. Clarke, who had now obtained considerable reputation, took up his residence at Cambridge. He received the degree of LL.D. shortly after his return in 1803, on account of the valuable donations, including a colossal statue of the Eleusinian Ceres, which he had made to the university. He was also presented to the college living of Harlton, near Cambridge, in 1805, to which, four years later, his father-in-law added that of Yeldham. Towards the end of 1808 Dr Clarke was appointed to the professorship of mineralogy in Cambridge, then first instituted. Nor was his perseverance as a traveller otherwise unrewarded. The MSS. which he had collected in the course of his travels were sold to the Bodleian library for £1000; and by the publication of his travels he realized altogether a clear profit of £6595. Besides lecturing on mineralogy and discharging his clerical duties, Dr Clarke eagerly prosecuted the study of chemistry, and made several discoveries, principally by means of the gas blow-pipe, which he had brought to a high degree of perfection. He was also appointed university librarian in 1817, and was one of the founders of the Cambridge Philosophical Society in 1819. He died in London on the 9th of March 1822. The following is a list of his principal works:—Testimony of Authors respecting the Colossal Statue of Ceres in the Public Library, Cambridge (8vo, 1801-1803); The Tomb of Alexander, a Dissertation on the Sarcophagus brought from Alexandria, and now in the British Museum (4to, 1805); A Methodical Distribution of the Mineral Kingdom (fol., Lewes, 1807); A Description of the Greek Marbles brought from the Shores of the Euxine, Archipelago and Mediterranean, and deposited in the University Library, Cambridge (8vo, 1809); Travels in various Countries of Europe, Asia and Africa (4to, 1810-1819; 2nd ed., 1811-1823).
See Life and Remains, by Rev. W. Otter (1824).
CLARKE, SIR EDWARD GEORGE (1841- ), English lawyer and politician, son of J.G. Clarke of Moorgate Street, London, was born on the 15th of February 1841. In 1859 he became a writer in the India office, but resigned in the next year, and became a law reporter. He obtained a Tancred law scholarship in 1861, and was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1864. He joined the home circuit, became Q.C. in 1880, and a bencher of Lincoln’s Inn in 1882. In November 1877 he was successful in securing the acquittal of Chief-Inspector Clarke from the charge brought against certain Scotland Yard officials of conspiracy to defeat justice, and his reputation was assured by his defence of Patrick Staunton in the Penge murder case (1877), and of Mrs Bartlett against the charge of poisoning her husband (1886). Among other notable cases he was counsel for the plaintiff in the libel action brought by Sir William Gordon-Cumming (1890) against Mr and Mrs Lycett Green and others for slander, charging him with cheating in the game of baccarat (in this case the prince of Wales, afterwards Edward VII., gave evidence), and he appeared for Dr Jameson, Sir John Willoughby and others when they were tried (1896) under the Foreign Enlistment Act. He was knighted in 1886. He was returned as Conservative member for Southwark at a by-election early in 1880, but failed to retain his seat at the general election which followed a month or two later; he found a seat at Plymouth, however, which he retained until 1900. He was solicitor-general in the Conservative administration of 1886-1892, but declined office under the Unionist government of 1895 when the law officers of the crown were debarred from private practice. The most remarkable, perhaps, of his speeches in the House of Commons was his reply to Mr Gladstone on the second reading of the Home Rule Bill in 1893. In 1899 differences which arose between Sir Edward Clarke and his party on the subject of the government’s South African policy led to his resigning his seat. At the general election of 1906 he was returned at the head of the poll for the city of London, but he offended a large section of his constituents by a speech against tariff reform in the House of Commons on the 12th of March, and shortly afterwards he resigned his seat on grounds of health. He published a Treatise on the Law of Extradition (4th ed., 1903), and also three volumes of his political and forensic speeches.