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HOOD OF AVALON—HOOFT

to become editor of Fun, the comic paper, which became very popular under his direction. In 1867 he first issued Tom Hood’s Comic Annual. In 1861 had appeared The Daughters of King Daker, and other Poems, after which he published in conjunction with his sister, Frances Freeling Broderip, a number of amusing books for children. His serious novels, of which Captain Masters’s Children (1865) is the best, were not so successful. Hood drew with considerable facility, among his illustrations being those of several of his father’s comic verses. In private life his geniality and sincere friendliness secured him the affection and esteem of a wide circle of acquaintance. He died on the 20th of November 1874.

A memoir by his sister, F. F. Broderip, is prefixed to the edition of his poems published in 1877.


HOOD OF AVALON, ARTHUR WILLIAM ACLAND HOOD, Baron (1824–1901), English admiral, born on the 14th of July 1824, was the younger son of Sir Alexander Hood of St Andries, Somerset, 2nd baronet, and grandson of Captain Alexander Hood, R.N., who, when in command of the “Mars,” fell in action with the French 74-gun ship “Hercule,” 21st of April 1798. At the age of twelve Hood entered the navy, and whilst still a boy saw active service on the north coast of Spain, and afterwards on the coast of Syria. After passing through the established course of gunnery on board the “Excellent” in 1844–1845, he went out to the Cape of Good Hope as gunnery mate of the “President,” the flagship of Rear-Admiral Dacres, by whom, on the 9th of January 1846, he was promoted to be lieutenant. As gunnery lieutenant he continued in the “President” till 1849; and in the following year he was appointed to the “Arethusa” frigate, then commissioned for the Mediterranean by Captain Symonds, afterwards the well-known admiral of the fleet. The outbreak of the Russian war made the commission a very long one; and on the 27th of November 1854 Hood was promoted to be commander in recognition of his service with the naval brigade before Sebastopol. In 1855 he married Fanny Henrietta, daughter of Sir C. F. Maclean. In 1856 he commissioned the “Acorn” brig for the China station, and arrived in time to take part in the destruction of the junks in Fatshan creek on the 1st of June 1857, and in the capture of Canton in the following December, for which, in February 1858, he received a post-captain’s commission. From 1862 to 1866 he commanded, the “Pylades” on the North American station, and was then appointed to the command of the “Excellent” and the government of the Royal Naval College at Portsmouth. This was essentially a gunnery appointment, and on the expiration of three years Hood was made Director of Naval Ordnance. He was thoroughly acquainted with the routine work of the office and the established armament of the navy, but he had not the power of adapting himself to the changes which were being called for, and still less of initiating them; so that during his period of office the armament of the ships remained sadly behind the general advance. In June 1874 he was appointed to the command of the “Monarch” in the Channel Fleet, from which he was relieved in March 1876 by his promotion to flag rank. From 1877 to 1879 he was a junior lord of the Admiralty, and from 1880 to 1882 he commanded the Channel Fleet, becoming vice-admiral on 23rd July 1880. In June 1885 he was appointed first sea lord of the Admiralty. The intense conservatism of his character, however, and his antagonistic attitude towards every change, regardless of whether it was necessary or not, had much to do with the alarming state of the navy towards 1889. In that year, on attaining the age of sixty-five, he was placed on the retired list and resigned his post at the Admiralty. After two years of continued ill-health, he died on the 15th of November 1901, and was buried at Butleigh on the 23rd. He had been promoted to the rank of admiral on the 18th of January 1886; was made K.C.B, in December 1885; G.C.B. in September 1889; and in February 1892 was raised to the peerage as Lord Hood of Avalon, but on his death the title became extinct.  (J. K. L.) 


HOOD, a covering for the head. The word is in O. Eng. hod, cognate with Dutch hoed and Ger. Hut, hat, both masculine; “hood” and “hat” are distantly related; they may be connected with the feminine hoed or Hut, meaning charge, care, Eng. “heed.” Some form of hood as a loose covering easily drawn on or off the head has formed a natural part of outdoor costume both for men and women at all times and in all quarters of the globe where climatic conditions called for it. In the middle ages and later both men and women are found wearing it, but with men it tended to be superseded by the hat before it became merely an occasional and additional head-covering in time of bad weather or in particularly rigorous climates. For illustrations and examples of the hood as worn by men and women in medieval and later times see the article Costume; for the hood or cowl as part of the dress of a religious see Cowl, and as forming a distinctive mark of degree in academic costume see Robes. The word is applied to many objects resembling a hood in function or shape, such as a folding cover for a carriage to protect the occupants from rain or wind, the belled covering for the head of a hawk trained for falconry, the endmost planks in a ship’s bottom at bow or stern, and, in botany and zoology, certain parts of a flower or of the neck of an animal which in arrangement of structure or of colour recall this article of dress.

In architecture a “hood-mould” is a projecting moulding carried outside the arch of a door or window; it is weathered underneath, and when continued horizontally is better known as a dripstone. The ends of the hood-mould are generally stopped on a corbel, plain or carved with heads in European churches, but in those of central Syria terminating in scrolls. Although in its origin the object of the projecting and weathered hood-mould was to protect the face of the wall below from rain, it gives more importance to, and emphasizes, the arch-moulds, so that it is often employed decoratively inside churches.

The suffix “-hood,” like the cognate “-head,” was originally a substantive meaning rank, status or quality, and was constantly used in combination with other substantives; cf. in O. Eng. cild-hod, child-hood; later it ceased to be used separately and became a mere suffix denoting condition added to adjectives; cf. “falsehood,” as well as to substantives.


HOOFT, PIETER CORNELISSEN (1581–1647), Dutch poet and historian, was born at Amsterdam on the 16th of March 1581. His father was one of the leading citizens of Holland, both in politics and in the patronage of letters, and for some time burgomaster of Amsterdam. As early as 1598 the young man was made a member of the chamber of rhetoric In Liefde bloeiende, and produced before that body his tragedy of Achilles and Polyxena, not printed until 1614. In June 1598 he left Holland and proceeded to Paris, where on the 10th of April 1599 he saw the body of Gabrielle d’Estrées lying in state. He went a few months later to Venice, Florence and Rome, and in 1600 to Naples. During his Italian sojourn he made a deep and fruitful study of the best literature of Italy. In July 1600 he sent home to the In Liefde bloeiende a very fine letter in verse, expressing his aspirations for the development of Dutch poetry. He returned through Germany, and after an absence of three years and a half found himself in Amsterdam again on the 8th of May 1601. In 1602 he brought out his second tragedy, Theseus and Ariadne, printed at Amsterdam in 1614. In 1605 he completed his beautiful pastoral drama Granida, not published until 1615. He studied law and history at Leiden from 1606 to 1609, and in June of the latter year received from Prince Maurice of Orange the appointment of steward of Muiden, bailiff of Gooiland, and lord of Weesp, a joint office of great emolument. He occupied himself with repairing and adorning the decayed castle of Muiden, which was his residence during the remainder of his life. There he entertained the poet Vondel, the scholar Barlaeus,[1] Constantin Huygens, Vossius, Laurens Reael and others. Hooft had been a suitor for the hand of Anna Roemer Visscher, and after the death of Roemer Visscher both the sisters visited Muiden. Anna’s sympathies were in time diverted to the school of Jacob Cats, but Marie Tesselschade maintained close ties with Hooft, who revised her translation of Tasso. In August 1610 he married Christina van Erp, an

  1. Kaspar van Baerle (1584–1648), professor of rhetoric at Amsterdam, and famous as a Latin poet.