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John Esten Cooke on Publishing,
1865
by
I. B. Cauthen, Jr.
It has become almost axiomatic that Southern writers, particularly just after the Civil War, found it difficult to place their writings with Northern publishers.[1] The reasons for such a belief are not hard to find: the latest literary history of the South is filled with references to the difficulties of "placing" an article with journals above the Mason-Dixon line.[2] Indeed, the Southerners themselves may be guilty of refusing to acknowledge the temper of the times, a movement away from the chivalric ideals, the golden glow of the past, towards the new day of business and realism.[3]
Among those few writers who turned northward for publication[4] should be included John Esten Cooke, the Virginia novelist, who less than three months after Lee's surrender at Appomattox declared his intention of sending his "wares," as he called them, to New York editors. A letter of his, previously unpublished, makes his reasons clear.[5] the letter is dated June 23, 1865, and was written at "The Bower," the home of Cooke's old friend, "Ned" Dandridge; it is addressed to "Overton."
I write to ask another favour in addition to the numerous ones performed for the late Captain Cooke of the so called C. S. Army. I have "nothing to wear" this sweltering weather but a tremendously hot suit of Confed. cloth, and want you to get from Mammy's and send me by Express, my broadcloth coat and pantaloons. I am obliged to ask you to pay the dollar more or less, it will require, which I will repay, the
Care Garland Butler P. M.
Kerneysville
Jefferson Co. Va".
It will then come straight. Please do this for me, as early as may be, as I want to go over to the Vineyard [his brother Philip's home] soon, and really require the clothes. Tell Mammy I am well, and send my love: and that I don't want anything else.
[overleaf] Now for a "few remarks" as to matters and things in general. I am like thousands of others, afloat, and my plans are rather unsettled; but I do not take a blue view of affairs by any means. I believe that a "better time is coming" and that the professions will soon begin to be more lucrative than ever. My resource for the present, will be literature—for the New York market, not the Richmond, where I can see nothing but a cowardly sett [sic] of time servers, whom I for one don't intend to harbour with. I have already sent to N. Y.—to the News,—sketches of Jackson and Stuart which will bring me, I think, about $50—and I have little doubt of finding a market there for all my wares. For the present I am following my ordinary programme of spending the summer with the clan hereabouts—only I came up a little earlier than usual.
[Five paragraphs pertaining to family matters follow.]
Send along the clothes, and tell me what they cost. Please do this at once
The sketches of Jackson and Stuart duly appeared in the New York Daily News under the title "Southern Generals in Outline / Personal Sketches and Anecdotes"; a footnote to the first, the sketch of Jackson, which appeared on Tuesday, October 24, 1865, established the spirit in which they should be read:
The second sketch, that of General J. E. B. Stuart, appeared in the News for Wednesday, November 22, 1865, and was signed "J. E. C." It was "puffed," as Poe might have remarked, by this notice on the editorial page, headed "General J. E. B. Stuart":
For these sketches, John O. Beaty tells us,[8] Cooke "received ten dollars a column and the cash in hand was a godsend." The two sketches cover about seven columns and Cooke's pay for them must have been approximately $70, a little more than he expected. Without any doubt the newspaper thought that this was worthwhile for them: in the issue of October 25, 1865, they boasted that "The News has a larger circulation in the Southern States than all other New York daily papers together." The boast was addressed to the advertisers, for certainly a newspaper that carried articles on two of the South's heroes would appeal both to the Southerners and to the advertisers' sense of a potential market.
Along with the fortunate John R. Thompson and George Cary Eggleston, who both secured literary positions in New York, can be counted John Esten Cooke. He turned away from Richmond and Baltimore and dispatched his articles to the North where he was a bit more certain of a favorable reception. Indeed, of the thirty-one titles listed in the Cooke bibliography (Beaty, pp. 164-165), all but two of them were published outside the South: only Ellie, an early novel, and the 1863 biography of Jackson appeared under Richmond imprints. The other novels and biographies were issued from presses in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and even Toronto. Perhaps Cooke's letter to a friend concerning the forwarding of clothes suitable for the Virginia summer will allow us to modify an axiom too long automatically accepted.
Notes
The most recent statement of this generally accepted belief that I have seen occurs in Professor Jay B. Hubbell's excellent study, "Charles Chauncey Burr: Friend of Poe," PMLA, LXIX (1954), 833-840. He points out that both William Gilmore Simms and John Esten Cooke "were finding great difficulty in inducing Northern editors and publishers to print any of their writings" (p. 834).
See Professor Hubbell's statements on "Authorship in the New South," The South in American Literature 1607-1900 (1954), p. 710, where he writes that "the lot of the Southern writer had never been a happy one, but in the lean years of the late sixties it was pitiable indeed."
For an analysis of the antagonism between Northern and Southern ideals, see Henry Nash Smith, "Minority Report: The Tradition of the Old South," in the Literary History of the United States, ed. Spiller, Thorp, Johnson, and Canby, I, 607-617.
Professor Hubbell points out in his history of Southern literature (p. 711) that whereas Simms, Bagby, and Hayne failed to establish connections with Northern publishers, John R. Thompson and George Cary Eggleston both served as editors of Bryant's Evening Post.
For a reprint of these articles, see Stonewall Jackson and the Old Stonewall Brigade, ed. R. B. Harwell (Charlottesville: The Tracy W. McGregor Library, 1954).
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