(This is a reproduction of a classic text optimised for ki...)
This is a reproduction of a classic text optimised for kindle devices. We have endeavoured to create this version as close to the original artefact as possible. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we believe they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.
Philip Pendleton Cooke was an American writer and lawyer. During his literary career, he was associated with the Southern Literary Messenger under the pseudonym Larry Lyle.
Background
Philip Pendleton Cooke was the eldest child of John Rogers Cooke, a distinguished Virginia lawyer, another of whose sons was John Esten Cooke, the novelist. His mother was Maria Pendleton. Philip was born on October 26, 1816, at Martinsburg, Virginia, United States. In his boyhood the family lived at and near Winchester (“Glengary”) and at Charles Town; his later years were passed in the adjoining county of Clarke, near Millwood, at his home “The Vineyard, ” in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley.
Education
At fifteen Cooke entered Princeton College, where he devoted more time to reading poetry than to the prescribed studies. Chaucer and Spenser were favorites. After his graduation in 1834 at Princeton, he read law with his father. He was admitted to the bar in 1837.
Career
Law was his profession but literature and hunting were his master passions. His frequent letters to his father show that he was intermittently reading Blackstone and writing verse and prose romances, frequently hunting, and daily enjoying the noble scenery of mountain and stream with a poet’s fine sense for the beauty of landscape and legend. The region was lovely, society was merry, and the lawyer-poet was handsome and popular. Above the average height, with “deep hazel eyes, dark chestnut curling hair, ” and a musical voice, he must have looked the poet far more than the sport-loving country gentleman and village barrister. His manly and affectionate nature is reflected in his letters to his father, upon whom he relied for counsel and often for money. He was singularly happy in his own family life.
For writing, however, he had little encouragement. Literature was looked upon as only an elegant pastime. Toward the law he had good intentions and for literary production he had a positive urge, but he showed no sustained diligence in the pursuit of either. If one takes into account his social nature, the demands of an uncongenial profession, his struggle to support a growing family on an uncertain income, and the lack of incentive to literary effort in the old leisurely plantation life, the slenderness of Cooke’s achievement is not to be attributed mainly to lack of ambition. Under all the circumstances his accomplishment in letters is not inconsiderable for his brief span of thirty-three years. There is evidence, indeed, that he was turning more and more to literature and that, had he lived another score of years, he might have been one of the major poets and romancers of the older South.
His earliest poems, written at Princeton, were published in the Knickerbocker Magazine in 1833. From 1835 to his death in 1850 he occasionally wrote for the Southern Literary Messenger of Richmond, beginning with a series of essays on English poetry. A famous poem, “Florence Vane, ” which appears in most anthologies of American verse, was first published in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, Philadelphia, for March 1840, and was soon translated into several languages.
In 1847, at the suggestion of his cousin, John Pendleton Kennedy of Baltimore, Cooke collected some of his magazine verses into a volume, Froissart Ballads and Other Poems, which was published by Carey and Hart, Philadelphia. He called the ballads “versified transcripts from Froissart, ” but only three are directly from the old chronicler. The poems in this volume show a delicate sense for form and rhythm and a rare freshness of imagery in descriptions of nature. Cook’s four short prose romances, “The Gregories of Ilackwood, ” “The Two Country Houses, ” “John Carper the Hunter of Lost River, ” and “The Crime of Andrew Blair, and his satirical story of whimsical humor, “Erisicthon, ” appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger during 1848-1849.
His one novel, or historical romance, “The Chevalier Merlin” (unfinished), highly praised by Poe, was running in the Messenger at the time of his death. His stories have rapid movement, vivid delineation, and the usual romantic coloring of our earlier fiction. Both his poetry and prose reflect his acute interest in nature and outdoor sport, which he always depicts with sureness and sincerity.