Wearing of the Gray, Being Personal Portraits, Scenes and Adventures of the War (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Wearing of the Gray, Being Personal Portraits, Scenes and Adventures oftheWar. ByJohn Esten Cooke. Edited with an introduction and notes by Philip Van Doren Stern. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1959. Pp. xxii, 572. $7.50.) Wearing ofthe Gray, is one of the finest, most charming of Confederate reminiscences . John Esten Cooke's accounts of life in the Army of Northern Virginia ring with the truth of intimate association. That they are strongly prejudiced , deeplypro-Confederate is no hazard but simply the reflection of a genuine aspect of Confederate army life. Cooke, as J. E. B. Stuart's ordnance officer and unofficial aide-de-camp, was in a peculiarly advantageous position to observe life in the Army of Northern Viginia. He was also a professional author of considerable reputation . These qualifications give his wartime sketches a combination of validity and vitality almost unmatched in the literature of the Civil War. As a contemporaneous Confederate publisher wrote of Cooke in connection with his The Life of Stonewall Jackson: "Everybody can tell in the twinkling of an eye, the vast difference between the narrative of a person who has seen what he describes, and that of a person who obtains his knowledge at second hand. Major Cooke, moreover, is a master of a lively style, excels in description, and was in every way the proper person to produce a lively, popular history of the great warrior." The strength of Cooke's book, however, is also its weakness. Most of the sketches in it were written for The Southern Illustrated News of Richmond during the course of the war itself. As published there they are fresh, lively accounts of Confederate soldiering. After the war these sketches were collected , hastily reworked and toned down, and supplemented with additional essays to produce Wearing of the Gray. Although Wearing of the Gray therefore does include considerable material that does not appear in Cooke's contributions to The Southern Illustrated News, the sketches as first printed are a fresher, more honest approach to the war than Cooke ever again achieved. The bitterness and vitriol that were valid expressions of Confederate attitudes are edited out of the postwar publication. As they appear in the Wearing of the Gray the sketches are too heavily romantic, too near the style and manner of the author's romances of the war, Surry of Eagle's Nest, Mohun, Hilt to Hilt. The University of Indiana Press's inclusion of Wearing of the Gray in its 203 204civil war history Civil War Centennial Series can be applauded. The press has performed a genuine service in making this important and relatively scarce book again available. It is arguable, however, that the press might have performed an even better service by republishing Cooke's sketches as they were originally written. In their original vitality and freshness Cooke's "Outlines from the Outpost " (their first title) are available only in scattered files of The Southern Illustrated News. They constitute an interesting and important Civil War text that is more than scarce; it is truly rare. Applause must be withheld too from the press's selection of its editor of Wearing of the Gray. Philip Van Doren Stern writes charmingly, but he apparently wastes little time in research. A little deeper research into the background of Wearing of the Gray would not have been wasted time. The editor would have easily discovered, for example, that the "Confederate scout referred to only as Frank S__________" was Frank Stringfellow, subject of two biographies in his own right. He would, even if the text of Cooke's own work had been read with care, have realized that the fictional "Captain Darrell" and the real William Downs Farley were one and the same person. He would have avoided the insertion of at least two errors in the skimpy notes to Cooke's text. He would have known the proper form of the title of Surry of Eagle'sNest . He would have learned that relevant unpublished material is readily available in at least one major library. And he would have produced a far better book. Richard Harwell Chicago, Illinois. Lincoln Finds a General: A Military Study of the Civil War. Volume...