Surry of Eagle's-Nest by John Esten Cooke

First published: 1866

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Historical romance

Time of work: 1861-1863

Locale: Virginia

Principal Characters:

• Lieutenant Colonel Surry, the narrator
• May Beverley, later his wife
• Colonel Mordaunt, an embittered, melancholy planter
• Fenwick, his enemy
• Mrs. Parkins, Fenwick’s confederate
• Harry Saltoun, a young officer and Mordaunt’s son
• Violet Grafton, an orphan
• Achmed, Mordaunt’s Arab companion
• General Stonewall Jackson
• General J. E. B. Stuart
• General Turner Ashby
• Major John Pelham
• Captain William D. Farley, a Confederate scout

The Story

Cavalier Philip Surry, who rode and fought under Prince Rupert in the English Civil War, escaped to Virginia when King Charles I was beheaded. Establishing a home, which he named Eagle’s-Nest, on the Rappahannock River below Port Royal, he enjoined in his will that the oldest son of the family in each generation should sign himself “Surry of Eagle’s-Nest.”

The present Surry, who had attended the Virginia Military Institute for one session and had studied law at the University of Virginia, was in Richmond in April, 1861, when the State Convention passed its ordinance of secession. One evening at the Capitol Square, he saw with rapture a beautiful girl, whose dropped handkerchief contained the initials, M.B. On another day, in Hollywood Cemetery, he witnessed by chance a duel between a tall, bronzed stranger named Mordaunt and Fenwick, the encounter ending when Mordaunt put a pistol bullet through Fenwick’s lungs. Surry left Richmond the proud recipient of a captain’s commission in the Provisional Army of Virginia, and in his new gray uniform, he rode toward Harper’s Ferry for duty under Colonel Jackson.

Losing his way in the Wilderness, which bordered the Rapidan River, he spent a night in a house where dwelt an insane woman in white, still possessing traces of youthful beauty, who was attended by her lovely young cousin, Violet Grafton, and by a harridan, Mrs. Parkins. Surprisingly there appeared at this house Fenwick, whose duel wound had not been fatal. In the night, the “White Lady,” tiptoeing into Surry’s room, slipped into his coat pocket a package bearing the words, “Read these when I am dead—and remember ... Your own Frances.”

Further, while en route to Harper’s Ferry, Surry was overtaken by a hurricane in a forest and was knocked from his horse by a large limb. He was stunned and his arm was broken. A female equestrian, whom the flying branches had spared, ordered her servant to take the injured man to her father’s home, “The Oaks.” There he convalesced under the eyes of Colonel Beverley and his daughter May, his rescuer and the owner of the handkerchief which he had picked up in Richmond. Surry’s heart was fully captivated, but May was already bound by a between-fathers contract and a young-girl engagement to Frederick Baskerville. The fact that her new lover knew Baskerville to be a scoundrel made Surry’s plight doubly bitter.

Fairly near “The Oaks” was the home of Mordaunt, which Surry visited. Its owner, who lived hermitlike with Achmed, a faithful Arab, was destined to become one of Surry’s best friends. Mordaunt’s air of melancholy indicated the gentleman’s deeply tragic past.

After long delays, Captain Surry finally reported for duty to Colonel Thomas J. Jackson, who made him an aide-de-camp. Shortly afterward, the young staff officer met Colonel J. E. B. Stuart. The two colonels, soon to become generals, would be Surry’s idols to the end of his days.

Before their first battle, Surry and Mordaunt, now a Confederate colonel, saw an eerie night burial in the garden of a stone house at Manassas. They observed on the scene Fenwick, the Parkins woman, and Violet Grafton. The dead person was the insane White Lady of the Wilderness. Again Mordaunt tried to kill Fenwick, but without success. Soon afterward, Surry delivered to Violet Grafton the package which her cousin had put in his pocket.

Wounded in the Battle of First Manassas, Surry was taken to the Fitzhugh home, “Elm Cottage,” where he was well nursed. Mrs. Fitzhugh, charmed by Violet Grafton, gave the orphan girl a home.

In 1862, having recovered from his wound, Surry was with Jackson throughout his spectacular Valley Campaign and held General Turner Ashby in his arms when that “Knight of the Valley” expired on the battlefield. Briefly a prisoner, he met Sir Percy Wyndham, an Englishman wearing Federal blue. He also met and admired Captain Farley of Stuart’s staff, an extraordinary scout. When Jackson joined General Lee near Richmond to defeat McClellan, Surry shared in that campaign; then he was back near Fredericksburg, in the Wilderness area.

There one night, peering through a window shutter at the house where he had first seen the White Lady and Violet Grafton, Surry heard Fenwick, while intoxicated, acknowledge himself to be a Yankee spy. Moreover, Fenwick reviewed to Mrs. Parkins the story of his and Mordaunt’s enmity. Years before, Mordaunt and Fenwick, youthful friends, had become rivals for the love of Frances Carleton. When she married Mordaunt, Fenwick planned revenge. Still posing as a devoted friend, he utilized a trip of Mordaunt’s to London to forge a letter which made Frances believe that her husband had landed in New York and was requesting her to let Fenwick escort her there to meet him. Aided by the easily bribed Mrs. Parkins, Fenwick abducted his friend’s wife to Maryland, where she gave birth to a son, who was afterward reported dead, and where she contracted a fever which permanently affected her brain. Imitating Frances Carleton Mordaunt’s handwriting, Fenwick perpetrated another forgery which duped Mordaunt into believing that his wife had forsaken him. Embittered, the young husband left Virginia for a long sojourn in Arabian lands. After drunken Fenwick’s remarkable disclosure, Surry captured him, but the prisoner escaped after bribing a guard. At a later date, however, in a face-to-face combat, Mordaunt pinned his enemy to a tree with a thrust of his sword.

Surry, who, as the war continued, rose to be major and later lieutenant colonel, saw old Stonewall Jackson, Longstreet, and Lee defeat Pope at Second Manassas. In the Maryland campaign that followed, he was captured, interviewed by McClellan, and placed aboard a prison train headed for Baltimore; but he escaped by jumping through a window while the train was in motion. In December, 1862, he was present when Lee’s two corps under Longstreet and Jackson repulsed Burnside at Fredericksburg. There he saw the youthful artillery genius, Major John Pelham, master-maneuver his guns. An ardent friendship between Surry and Pelham continued until the gallant young Alabaman was killed in battle.

The spring of 1863 brought Surry abundant joy. When Colonel Beverley’s wealth at “The Oaks” was destroyed by invading armies, Frederick Baskerville lost interest in May so completely that he released her from her engagement. Consequently she married Surry, with her father’s sanction.

Among Surry’s friends was Harry Saltoun, a young Confederate lieutenant from Maryland. Fenwick, who repeatedly recovered from seemingly mortal wounds, by means of a lying anonymous letter, provoked Saltoun to challenge Colonel Mordaunt to a duel. Tragedy was averted, however, when Violet Grafton sent Mordaunt the paper in which the White Lady, Mrs. Frances Carleton Mordaunt, had recorded the whole truth about Fenwick and his evil deceptions. Also, through an affidavit of a Maryland woman, Harry Saltoun was proved to be Mordaunt’s own son.

Fenwick’s ultimate villainy was the abduction of Violet Grafton, but Mordaunt’s devoted Arab companion, Achmed, trailed the knave to his hiding place. There Mordaunt and Fenwick had their final fight, but it was Achmed, not Mordaunt, who killed Fenwick with a gleaming dagger. Sadly, however, a ball from the dying villain’s pistol wounded Achmed, who died in the presence of the two persons whom he loved, Mordaunt and Violet Grafton.

“Fighting Joe” Hooker, who had succeeded Burnside as commander of the Federal army of invasion, thrust at Lee in the Wilderness, on the south side of the Rapidan and Rappahannock rivers. In a brilliantly conceived surprise movement, Stonewall Jackson struck Hooker’s right flank at Chancellorsville, to win a thrilling victory. This Southern triumph was dearly bought, for in the woods, on the night of May 2, 1863, Jackson was wounded by his own men, and on Sunday, May 10, that irreplaceable hero breathed his last.

Surry of Eagle’s-Nest survived to tell his story and that of the war years. For him, only the ghosts of the past remained.

Critical Evaluation:

SURRY OF EAGLE’S-NEST remains of interest primarily as a romanticized version of John Esten Cooke’s firsthand experiences as a Confederate officer during the Civil War—an ordeal that ranged from participation in the First Manassas to the final surrender at Appomattox Court House. While Cooke served primarily as a staff officer with J. E. B. Stuart’s cavalry, he numbered Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and other high-ranking Confederates among his personal acquaintances. Cooke published military biographies of Jackson (1863 and 1866) and of Lee (1871).

On the whole, SURRY OF EAGLE’S-NEST, a product of six weeks’ work, is an uneven attempt to blend historical fact and fiction. The novel climaxes with a romanticized account of Stonewall Jackson’s death in 1863, and, in its historical aspects, the novel draws upon the author’s earlier military biographies of Jackson (just as MOHUN, 1869, the sequel to SURRY OF EAGLE’S-NEST, parallels Cooke’s later biography of Robert E. Lee). In SURRY OF EAGLE’S-NEST, Cooke merely combined the fictional trappings of conventional historical romance with real wartime events and experiences. The highly melodramatic aspects of the novel, particularly the purely Gothic subplot of the antagonists Mordaunt and Fenwick and the often confusing integration of historical and fictional characters, render the work less satisfactory than The Virginia Comedians (1854), Cooke’s most successful historical romance. Cooke’s idealization of antebellum Southern society and his acceptance of the myth of Cavalier origins of the Virginia aristocracy are also more prevalent in SURRY OF EAGLE’S-NEST than in his previous work. The novel was one of the earliest and most important contributions to the myth of the “Lost Cause” in the postwar South.

The novel, first published in 1866, found a receptive audience among celebrants of the “Lost Cause,” and it has remained one of the most popular of Cooke’s historical romances. Along with MOHUN, SURRY OF EAGLE’S-NEST ranks as the best of Cooke’s war novels, but neither possesses the unity or literary quality earlier achieved in THE VIRGINIA COMEDIANS.