The Virginia Comedians by John Esten Cooke

First published: 1854

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Sentimental romance

Time of work: 1763-1765

Locale: Colonial Virginia

Principal Characters:

• Champ Effingham, foppish scion of a wealthy planter
• Beatrice Hallam, a young actress with whom Effingham falls in love
• Clare Lee, Effingham’s cousin and fiancee
• Charles Waters, Effingham’s rival for Beatrice Hallam
• Captain Ralph Waters, Charles Waters’ brother
• Jack Hamilton, a friend of Effingham and his sister’s fiance

The Story

In the spring of 1763, Williamsburg, the colonial capital of Virginia, was treated to its first professional dramatic presentation by an English company called The Virginia Comedians. The colony, rich and poor, was highly excited in anticipation of the event. The day the company was to arrive in Williamsburg, young Champ Effingham, son of a wealthy planter, rode to town for a holiday. Young Effingham, educated at Oxford, had taken up the ways of the London fops while in England. His dress was extraordinary; his manners were artificial.

On the way to Williamsburg, he met a beautiful young woman on horseback who asked him the way. When questioned by him, she refused to give her name, stating only that she was unknown to him because she was not a lady. The mystery was solved the next day at the play, when Effingham discovered that the girl was an actress with the traveling company. Despite the fact that he was engaged to marry one of the most beautiful and wealthy of the Virginia girls, Effingham became infatuated with the actress, whose name was Beatrice Hallam. She was the daughter of the manager of the company.

There was scandal in the neighborhood when it became known that Champ Effingham was paying court to the actress. Everyone among the gentry was perturbed, for actresses were considered low in the social scale. When word came to Effingham’s father, the old gentleman ordered his son to desist. The son’s answer was to leave the house and take up residence at the inn in Williamsburg where the players were lodging. Effingham had little success with Beatrice Hallam, however; she despised him because of his artificial manners and his condescending attitude. She was really in love with a commoner, a young man named Charles Waters, who had rescued her from the James River on a stormy day when she had fallen overboard while boating.

Beatrice’s father, on the other hand, wanted his daughter to encourage young Effingham. Mr. Hallam saw in Effingham a chance for his daughter to marry into a wealthy family, thus gaining an honest reputation for herself and a comfortable life for him.

At the opening of the session of the House of Burgesses, the governor gave a ball for the gentry of the colony. When an invitation was sent to Effingham, he resolved to take Beatrice to the ball, but his friends warned him not to do so because of the scandal. Although Beatrice did not want to go with him to the ball, her father finally browbeat her into agreeing. Effingham, daring his friends to prevent his appearance with an actress, vowed to fight duels with all who tried to hinder him or who insulted the girl.

At the ball, everything went smoothly, because the Virginians, too well-mannered to make a disturbance over Effingham’s actions, were all coolly polite to the actress. Their coolness only made the girl miserable, however, particularly when she knew how she was hurting Clare Lee, to whom Effingham had been engaged.

After the ball, Effingham resolved to turn actor and join the company under the direction of Mr. Hallam. The manager was happy to have the young Virginian. In trying to find a costume for himself, Effingham inadvertently uncovered a little girl’s dress and a letter, both of which he dropped in Beatrice’s room. The dress and letter proved to her that she was not Hallam’s daughter, and that her name was really Beatrice Waters. After some investigation, she learned that she was the cousin of the Charles Waters who had rescued her from the river and death by drowning.

Effingham was furious when he discovered the relationship between Beatrice and Charles Waters. Rather than fight a duel with the girl’s cousin, he kidnaped her and took her away on his boat. Charles and a friend followed, however, and boarded Effingham’s craft. In the fight to rescue Beatrice, Effingham wounded his rival. Thinking he had killed him, Effingham, in his extremity, went home to his father, who arranged for his son’s escape to Europe.

After Effingham left for Europe, Beatrice nursed her cousin and restored him to health. Before long, they were married and moved to a home in the uplands of the Piedmont region of Virginia. They left behind Captain Ralph Waters, Charles’s brother, who had vowed to fight a duel with Champ Effingham on his brother’s behalf. The planters were glad to see Charles Waters leave for another area; he had been heard to speak against the British government and to advocate a revolution.

Two years passed before Champ Effingham returned to Virginia, after learning that his sword thrust had not killed Charles Waters. Young Effingham, thoroughly cured of his infatuation for Beatrice, had also lost his foppishness of dress and manner. Although he returned a changed and acceptable young man, he was given to periods of moodiness, and nothing his family could do restored him to mental health. Then his boyhood friend, Jack Hamilton, secretly engaged to Effingham’s sister, resolved to try to restore the young man. He encouraged and even forced Effingham to ride out to hounds and to visit other houses. He brought Captain Ralph Waters and Effingham together and made them friends. Still, young Effingham remained moody and gloomy.

At last, Hamilton resolved to try the power of jealousy, for he knew that Effingham was still very much in love with Clare Lee, whom he had thrown aside in his infatuation for Beatrice. In addition, Hamilton knew that Clare still loved Effingham and would accept him as her husband, in spite of all that had happened. Hamilton pretended to be in love with Clare; he even talked to Effingham about his suit for her hand. Such talk was too much for Effingham, who stirred himself to threaten Hamilton until he learned that Hamilton was really engaged to his sister. His sister and Hamilton finally persuaded him to go see Clare, who readily accepted his suit and promised to become Mrs. Champ Effingham.

Happiness reigned in the colony. Hamilton and Effingham’s sister were married a few days after the wedding of Effingham and Clare. Captain Ralph Waters and Clare’s sister were also married. The marriages seemed to mark the end of an era, however, for at the time of their celebration, news came to the colony of the passage of the Stamp Act, which everyone hated. Before long, many began to speak of revolt against the British Crown. A leader of the agitators was Charles Waters, who returned to Williamsburg after the death of his wife, Beatrice.

Critical Evaluation:

John Esten Cooke was one of the last of the historical romanticists who followed the footsteps of James Fenimore Cooper. He was also the first of a long line of authors who continued to idealize the pre-Civil War South. Unlike some of the imitators of Cooper, Cooke wrote books which are well grounded in the history of Virginia, especially that of the James River section, in which most of them are laid.

By his own account, Cooke conceived and wrote THE VIRGINIA COMEDIANS in a few weeks during the winter of 1853-1854. Its publication by D. Appleton and Company in two volumes in 1854 brought immediate recognition to the twenty-four-year-old author. In the opinion of John O. Beaty, his biographer, the novel was “by far the finest” of his more than thirty published volumes.

The enduring value of the novel lies beyond its maze of intricate subplots, melodramatic intrigues, multiple love affairs, and diffusive colloquies—the conventional trappings of popular nineteenth century historical romances. Cooke’s avowed intention was to present “some view, however slight, of the various classes of individuals who formed that Virginia of 1765.” Critics agree that the novel remains important for its realistic portrayal of the various elements in Virginia society on the eve of the American Revolution. The lifestyle, and the manners and morals of the aristocratic Effinghams, the middle-class Waters, and the itinerant Hallams are particularly well delineated. Less satisfactory are Cooke’s descriptions of the characters on the lower rungs of society, and, to a degree, he perpetuates the myth of the Cavalier origins of Southern aristocracy, but this fault is more pronounced in his post-Civil War works.

By choosing a transitional period for the novel’s setting, Cooke, through the character of the revolution-fomenting Charles Waters, also injects an element of historical drama and a foreboding sense of coming change into the work. The novel climaxes with Waters whipping a crowd of disgruntled citizens into a frenzy with his denunciation of the recent Stamp Act. Watching approvingly is Waters’ mentor, the mysterious “man in the red cloak,” whose identity is finally revealed as Patrick Henry.

Cooke never again matched the overall quality attained in THE VIRGINIA COMEDIANS, although he attempted to exploit its successful formula in several additional novels before his death in 1886. The novel remains credible social history, and for this, and his subsequent work, Cooke became one of the most popular Southern novelists in the nineteenth century.