John Esten Cooke
Many of us know about John Esten Cooke, who served on General J.E.B. Stuart's staff and who, after the war, wrote such novels as Mohun and Surry of Eagle's Nest and the seriesConfederate sketches, Wearing of the Gray. But what of John Esten Cooke the man?
John Esten Cooke was born on November 3, 1830 at "Ambler Hill, " Winchester, Virginia (the house still stands). The family came from Hereford, England. Cooke's great-great-grandfather was from Boston, a wealthy shipowner who later moved to Philadelphia. Nathaniel Cooke's son, Stephen, served in the Revolution until he was captured and imprisoned at Bermuda. In Bermuda he met John Esten, falling in love with his daughter, Catharine. After his exchange, he went back to Bernuda to marry her. He settled in Alexandria and he and Catharine had 14 children. The youngest son of that union was Philip St. George Cooke. General Cooke had a lackluster career in the Union amy during the Civil War and a brilliant Indian-fighting career afterwards.
John Esten Cooke's father was born in Bermuda in 1788. John Rogers Cooke married Maria Pendleton of Berkeley County, and began the practice of law in Martinsburg. The couple had 13 children, not only five reached adulthood. Philip Pendleton Cooke was John Esten Cooke's idol. He, too, was a man of letters, contributing to such magazines as the Southern Literary Messenger until his untimely death in 1850.
Cooke's early life was spent on the family plantation, "Glengary." The home burned and the family moved to Charles Town. In 1840 John Rogers Cooke was elected to the state legislature. His duties demanded that he move to Richmond. In Richmond, Cooke amused himself by attending the theatre. He was thrown in with a much more sophisticated group of friends in Richmond than in Charles Town. Perhaps to please his father, Cooke reluctantly planned to become a lawyer, but it was obvious that his heart was with his literary friends.
At the age of 20 Cooke received two shocks with the death of his idolized older brother, Philip Pendleton Cooke, and his mother that same year. In 1848 Cooke had a poem, entitled "Avalon," published in the Messenger. A friend of his, James Rueben Thompson, had bought the Messenger, the South's primary literary magazine, in 1847.
Cooke's first book, The Virginia Comedians, was published in 1854. It is a book seldom read today, but it remains Cooke's best written book. It is the story of Virginia's colonial society in decline before the Revolution. In the later years of his life, Cooke would return to colonial and Revolutionary Virginia themes. Much of what Virginians know of their early history (at least in the popular sense) comes from the writings of John Esten Cooke. He was prolific with his pen, writing numerous articles, poor poetry and other books, so that he could make a decent living from writing alone. His style was grandiose, even for those days, so that another Virginia writer, George W. Bagby, actually complained that he was tired of hearing about "the good old days, " and really did not think that our Revolutionary forebears were much superior to men of the present generation. Cooke always saw history in romantic terms, and while his work had little literary merit, his books were popular and they sold.
Before the war Cooke belonged to the Richmond Howitzers. When war broke out in 1861, he was put on General J .E.B. Stuart's staff. Stuart was married to Cooke's cousin, Flora, daughter of Philip St. George Cooke. In July 1862 Cooke was promoted to Captain of artillery , and then became Stuart's chief of ordnance. He was recommended for promotion to Major, and often he was referred to as ''Major Cooke," but never received the promotion.
Cooke conscientiously performed his duties throughout the war, but found no great joy in warfare. He once wrote that there was nothing intellectual about it; that it was brutal work for brutal men. He saw with dismay that individual courage meant very little with the increasing mechanization of warfare. Yet the war offered new subjects for writing, and Cooke continued to send bad poetry and articles to the Richmond papers. Cooke idolized Stonewall Jackson to the point that he was known as "Jackson's man," at Stuart's headquarters. His relations with his kinsman were generally cordial, but Cooke never knew that Stuart really did not care for him, telling his wife that he reminded him of his father-in-law. As for Cooke, sometimes the "court" atmosphere of Stuart's staff proved stifling to him.
In the war years, Cooke produced three noteworthy pieces. First was ''The Song of the Rebel," published on January 24, 1863 for the Southern Illustrated News. This ode to Contederate heroes, living and dead, only produced one memorable verse:
And men shall tell their children, |
Perhaps Cooke's best war-time poem is "The Band in the Pines." It was not written "after Pelham died" -- indeed, Cooke's diary says it was finished in February 1863. Cooke's most memorable work during the war was his Life of Stonewall Jackson, published by Ayres & Wade in the summer of 1863. Cooke did not know it, but his work raised the ire of Mrs. Jackson. who felt that Rev. Dabney of Jackson's staff should be her husband 's official biographer. Cooke knew little of Jackson's early life and prewar career; also, of course, he did not have the hindsight of Jackson's military reports or the Official Records; despite this, Cooke's biography was a good source on the general for that time.
After the war, Cooke continued to write.,. about the Confederacy and her heroes. Many former Confederate officers urged Cooke to write. Said Fitz Lee, "I send you a document -- and now, damn it, put me on the highest pinnacle of history that my young ones (after I get them) may crawl up and read of their daddy's doings in bygone days."
The first work plblished was Cooke's novel, Surry of Eagle's Nest, put out by Bunce & Huntington of New York in 1866. The plot of Surry has been discussed before by members of JPHA in these pages. Like the plots of most of Cooke's novels, it is scarcely believable. Star-crossed lovers, weak damsels in distress, and an overreliance on that overused method, "coincidence," sloppy editing -- all are weaknesses of Cooke's postwar novels. Other novels with a war theme were Mohun and Hilt to Hilt before Cooke turned back to the colonial and Revolutionary themes.
On September 18, 1867 Cooke married Mary Page, daughter of Dr. Robert Page of "Saratoga" in Clarke County. Three children were born to this happy union. Cooke lived with his wife at an old Page estate called '''Ihe Briars. " At "The Briars," he essentially lived the life of a literary country gentleman. The estate, however, required huge sums of money to operate and this was often why Cooke's later writings show evidence of haste, repetitive nonoriginal plots, and added nothing to his literary reputation.
Cooke's happiness was shattered at the unexpected death of his wife in 1878. Following her death, he led a quiet life, enjoying the company of a few friends and his children. All bitterness fran the war had long ago left his heart. His Christian character and kindness were noted by all who met him. Cooke died from typhoid fever on September 27, 1886, and he is buried near "the Old Chapel, " in Clarke County.
Cooke's writings contain too much fiction to be good history, and too much history to be good fiction. As the only Southern writer of note who served in Lee's army from Manassas to Appomattox, Cooke lost a good opportunity to produce a masterpiece about the war. But he was never the kind to sit down patiently and read official reports. He saw history as romance, and in Cooke's writings he was certainly true to his own nature. He really did see Stuart and Ashby as knights, embodying the romantic tradition of warfare. His writings on Pelham speak for themselves. Despite the criticisms, there is still much to be gleaned from Surry, Mohun, and Wearing of the Gray.
This article first appeared in Volume 7, No. 3 of The Cannoneer.
Sources:
John O. Beaty, John Esten Cooke: Virginian, Kennikat Press, N.Y.,
1965 ed.
Bingham Duncan, ed., Letters of General J.E.B. Stuart to His Wife,
1861, Emory University, Atlanta, 1943.
Jay B. Hubbell , '''The War Diary of John Esten Cooke, " Journal
of Southern History, Vol. VII, pp. 526-540.
John Esten Cooke, Wearing of the Gray.
