History of Oregon Literature/Chapter 16
CHAPTER 16
Belle W. Cooke
That I shall ever win to them; and yet
I cannot lout the thought, the hope, the lure.
I am not sure
ARTHUR W. RYDER; FROM THE SANSKRIT.
In the fall of 1934, during a literary discussion, an Oregon writer asked with sincere curiosity: "Who was she? Who was Belle W. Cooke?"
Most people in Oregon, except the older pioneers and a few book collectors, will probably receive men- tion of her name with the same inquiry, because of the neglect into which her poetry has fallen during the last 50 years.
It was not long ago that the author of this history first became familiar enough with her verse to realize that she had suffered an unmerited obscurity. His in- terest, which ended in a conviction that she was much too good a poet to be so completely forgotten, was started in an accidental way. He was looking through the early volumes of Bret Harte's Overland Monthly in the Portland Library, when he found in the De- cember number, 1871, the following book review:
Tears and Victory. By Belle W. Cooke Salem, Oregon: E. M. Waite
This is a home production; as such, it is deserving of pleasant mention. The printing, material, and binding of this volume are all good. When we have said this, we have exhausted about all we have to say. There is something of fluency, something of prettiness, in some of the verses; but there is a very little of poetry. It is merely a simulation, a counterfeit, of true poetry. Occasionally there flits a pleasing fancy, a felicitous expression, a pretty poetic effect; but it proves an ignis-fatuus, a meteoric flash; yet who knows but these hints of genius may prove buds of promise? The fair authoress betrays a little secret in the following stanza on "Thoughts".
My wildwood path has oft before been tried.
The Portland Library at that time did not have Mrs. Cooke's poems, but Hyland's Old Book Store was only a few blocks away. Two dollars secured the only copy of Tears and Victory in that extensive col- lection of second-hand volumes. Subsequently, how- ever, it was found on dusty shelves in Birmingham and Los Angeles.
During the reading of the review in the Overland Monthly the name of Belle W. Cooke had been vague- ly reminiscent. At length this uncertain recollection was recognized as having come from something about her in Dr. J. B. Horner's Oregon Literature. This did not prove to be much, when looked up again-a brief paragraph, and two poems, "Seattle" and “I Know Not", badly chosen as representative of her work.
Dr. Horner had written about Joaquin Miller, Ed- win Markham, Ella Higginson, Sam. L. Simpson and Eva Emery Dye, all in high public esteem at the time and all probably interviewed in person, and obviously brought a fatigued pen and scant research to his con- sideration of Belle W. Cooke, then living out of the state, having only this to say about her critically and biographically:
The following poems were written by Mrs. Belle W. Cooke, of Salem, a lady who has obtained considerable distinction. She is the author of an interesting volume of poems, and wherever known is recognized as a woman of culture and high social attainments. Her home at the present time (1902) is in San Francisco, California.
Mrs. Frances Fuller Victor, who was her close friend and who had spent a good deal of time at her home in Salem, likewise gave her only brief mention in Bancroft's History of Oregon:
Mrs. Belle W. Cooke of Salem wrote some graceful poems, and published a small volume under the title of Tears and Victory. Mrs. Cooke was mother of one of Ore- gon's native artists, Clyde Cook, who studied in Europe, and inherited his talent from her.
Mrs. Cooke's maiden name was Belle Walker-in full, Susan Isabella Walker. She was born in 1834 and so was 37 when her book was published. As a baby she permanently lost her sense of smell from scarlet fever. Her father contracted the disease from her and died. Her mother was a teacher for several years in Indiana and Kentucky until she married again.
She was 17 when she arrived in Oregon in the fall of 1851, crossing the plains with her Baptist uncle, Reverend George C. Chandler, who founded and be- came the first president of McMinnville College, now Linfield College. During her first winter in Oregon she taught at the Oregon Institute in Salem, and the following summer was married to Joseph Cooke. The wedding was held at the Portland home of Samuel A. Clarke, later author of Pioneer Days of Oregon History and Sounds by the Western Sea and Other Poems; and the minister was Reverend Horace Lyman.
They settled on a donation claim near Jackson Hill, between Salem and Albany, in Marion County. After the required term of residence they moved to Salem, where, with periods of absence, they lived for more than 30 years.
She had brought with her across the plains a small folding melodeon, and was one of the early music teachers of Salem. In 1861 she had charge of the pri- mary department of Willamette University, later took a country school in Clackamas County, in 1864 taught during the fall term at Astoria, and for several years conducted a private school in her home at Salem. She gave art lessons and later took lessons from her talented son, Clyde Benton Cooke, referred to by Mrs. Victor, after he had studied in Munich from 1880 to 1885.
She was the first woman clerk in the Oregon Legis- lature, and during several sessions was correspondent for the Oregonian. Although deprived of the sense of smell, she loved the beautiful but odorless flowers and was a student of botany. She took many premiums at the State Fair on her plants, sewing, embroidery, jel- lies and paintings. She was indeed "always a busy wo- man, busy with self-improvement, along with her daily tasks, and continually adding to the family in- come by teaching, writing, sewing and other activi- ties."
This simple recital of her fatigueless and versatile energies, confirms the characterization of her by Col- onel R. A. Miller, who knew her in those active days in Salem:
She kept at a thing until she got what she wanted. She was strong-willed. I think she wrote poetry in that spirit, because she was going to write poetry and nothing could hinder her. She got everything because of her insistent per sistence. Her tactics, however, were different from those of Mrs. Duniway who would fight with a sledge hammer, if need be, and act like a hurricane and a typhoon. In spite of all she did and tried to do against heavy odds, Belle W. Cooke seemed to me to be shadowed by the nemesis of a stunted life— a life that reached no full expression. Her possibilities, like Minnie Myrtle Miller's, were abbreviated and unfulfilled.
She was making all this brave and spirited fight as the mother of six children, a daughter and five sons, the first of whom died in infancy. Clyde Benton Cooke, the artist, died in Berkeley in 1934.
The daughter, Mrs. George H. Lee of Portland, has furnished an account of their home life in Salem:
I recall with intense pleasure the winter evenings in our home, when my father would be making some fancy article with his knife and tools out of some nice piece of wood, and my mother would read aloud to us. I think we heard all of Shakespeare's comedies in that way. Or my mother would be busy with her sewing and my father would read aloud. He enjoyed reading Byron and Spenser's Faerie Queene. I cannot imagine a happier home life and atmosphere than ours was.
My mother's writing was largely done after the family were in bed. Our home was a gathering place for the liter ary people of the state. Joaquin Miller and his wife, Minnie Myrtle Miller, were frequent visitors. We children always enjoyed having Joaquin spend the evening, for when our bed time came he always made a plea for us to stay up. My mother was a great hand to befriend unfortunate and homeless children, and when the Miller home was broken up my mother kept the oldest child Maud, then eight or so years old, for several months. Mrs. Frances Fuller Victor, author of The River of the West, was also a frequent visi tor at our home, and spent some time while writing that book, reading the manuscript to my father and mother for comment.
During the visits mentioned, Joaquin Miller proposed to Belle W. Cooke that they publish their poems together in one volume, but she declined. If she had done so, her name would have been known every where today. At that time, however, fame was ahead as uncertainly for him as for her. The two little volumes printed for him in Portland by George H. Himes in 1868 and 1869, neither of them so beautiful as the volume printed for her in Salem by E. M. Waite in 1871, show now in their relative values the difference between hope and promise, frustrated by whatever duty, and the goal achieved, in forgetfulness of whatever responsibility. One of those two books of his has sold for as much as $450, while hers can still be picked up, scarce as it is, for $2. What did Minnie Myrtle Miller think of his proposal to this Salem poet for a joint volume? Did she identify her husband's side of it as a means of saving money on the printer or a way of getting his own things read by a popular woman's friends, or did she sensitively construe it as a recognition of Belle W. Cooke as a better poet than herself? Did she brood over the fact that Joaquin Miller had never suggested collaboration to her?
Mrs. Lee tells of a second volume of poems by her mother, nearly all the manuscript of which was burned in the San Francisco fire and was never re-written:
My mother had the material almost complete for a second collection of poems, the main feature being based on Indian legends given her by Angus McDonald, an old Hudson's Bay factor of Fort Colville, who was anxious to have them preserved in poetic form. The copy, which was about ready for the printer, was lost in the San Francisco fire. I have about twenty typed pages of the beginning.
Two years after the death of her husband, Mrs. Cooke died at Newberg on January 19, 1919, and was buried in the Chandler lot in Mountain View Cemetery at Forest Grove. She was 85. "Her poetic fancy remained with her until the last."
At the time Mrs. Cooke's volume came out, Abigail Scott Duniway was editing the New Northwest in Portland. Mrs. Duniway, who was befriending Minnie Myrtle Miller the same year, did not wait until she had read Tears and Victory carefully before giving it a favorable review and urging her subscribers to buy it:
This beautiful poetical gem has been laid on our table. We have not as yet had opportunity to give it that thorough perusal which we are satisfied that its ability and interest will amply repay; but the few shorter poems that we have read sparkle all through with originality, good taste, culti vation, and that noblest quality in woman, common sense. The book is elegantly printed and plainly but neatly bound in green and gold. We want Oregonians everywhere to buy it, and encourage home talent, home genius and home litera ture. Mrs. Cooke has reached her present high position through difficulties that would have appalled our most emi nent literary men. She has prepared at great expense this venture and sent it forth upon the sea of public popularity. Encourage her by purchasing her book, dear readers of the struggling New Northwest, and you will not regret having made the investment.
This boost, though not based on a "thorough perusal," must have pleased the author. She was pleased even more with what John Greenleaf Whittier, to whom she had sent a copy, said about it-so pleased, indeed, that she had to tell the readers of the New Northwest. Portions of Whittier's letter were printed in the same month that the patronizing review ap- peared in Overland Monthly, in the issue of the New Northwest for December, 1871, under the heading "Letter from Belle W. Cooke."
Dear Friend:-I received a sweet, kind letter from John G. Whittier the other day, so quaint and Quakerish, in which he says:
I have recently re-read thy book, and find much in it to assure me that its author has a gift of song and that her heart is in the right place, full of sweet home loves. I like particularly "The Dirge" in the long poem, and I like "My Friend", "Autumn Birds", "VWind of the Sea", "Violets", "Patience" and "Forbidden Fruit". I only wish I had seen thy book before making up a collection of "Children's Poems", which is in press. There are two or three nice bits of rhyme which would have found a place there.. . . I like thee for thinking of thy mother in publishing thy book. I am sure she will be proud of her distant child's verses.
Fame is of small comfort to any one. If our writings give pleasure to our dear friends-the select few-we need not care for the great world outside.
How true is this! And yet it must be something great to be loved and read with delight all over one's country as he is. Dear old man! May he live long to bless the world with his ripe, mature thoughts and writings! I need not tell you I prize his letter very highly. I feel as though I could stand two or three more such criticisms as those of the Golden Era and Salem Mercury after receiving this from Whittier.
I have sold all my books that I have here, and am obliged to send to San Francisco for fifteen of those left there to fill out my orders. So you see my book has proved a success -though perhaps a small one. "Small crafts should not trust themselves far from shore," you know. I had a very fair notice of my book in the Independent.
Yours very truly, BELLE W. COOKE.
Of the two criticisms referred to, the Golden Era, in which one of them appeared, could not be located. The one in the Salem Mercury, which after all was not very caustic except at one point, was printed in the issue of June 10, 1871, and was as follows:
"Tears and Victory," a very suggestive title, has been assigned to a collection of poems which have been printed in a book of 250 pages. Mrs. Belle W. Cooke, of this city, is the author and E. M. Waite, printer. If it was the ambi- tion of the authoress simply to see her various productions in print, in the form of a book, why, perhaps it were well to admit into its pages all the thoughts suggested by the late unhappy strife and penned for the partisan press during the years when not to be "loil" was to be hunted down and cast out as unfit to breathe the air where "Patriots!" had the sway. But, if it was intended that the book should find a welcome to the household or a place on the center table, it had been better to have left out of it the following and many other passages fit only to be read at the time they were penned and by those they were penned for:
He was the eldest son of Slavery,
And though his form all patriot hearts abhor,
He was the boasted flower of chivalry.
Such literature is out of date; its day is not the present nor yet the future.
Aside from the partisan passages and allusions the book contains, we take pleasure in pronouncing it a work of no ordinary merit. Mrs. Cooke may justly be ranked a poetess of no mean talents. If we cannot commend her judgment we must at least grant that she is not without poetic genius, and that her integrity evinces culture and literary ability.
The following selection was not among those espe- cially liked by John Greenleaf Whittier. It deals with a theme with which she was familiar from first-hand experience, and is a sort of John Gilpin chronicle of the immigrations:
Where they wear the hickory shirt,
Where the eyes get used to smoke,
And the face begrimmed with dirt?
Did you cross the muddy river,
More noted than the Styx,
And begin your journey Westward,
"All in a cart and six"?
Up the famous river Platte,
Where the bluffs are so romantic,
And the water tastes so flat!
Have you camped out in a hail-storm
When the wind was blowing high,
Upsetting tents and wagons,
And making children cry?
Feeling somewhat water-soaked,
And finding cattle missing,
Did you never get provoked?
And while you hunted cattle,
Did the little muddy creek
Rise like a second deluge
And keep you there a week?
Rolling like the mighty main!"
Or was it but a couple
Five miles across the plain?
Did you tread on rattlesnakes,
And on fields of prickly-pear,
Till you wished yourself at home again,
Or any place but there?
And never see a spring,
Till just at night you came to one
You fancied "just the thing"?
Did you seize a cup in haste
And think to drink it dry,
When, lo! 'twas almost boiling hot,
Or strong with alkali!
Spread out before the eye,
As you climbed the rocky ridges,
Or stood on mountains high?
Did your wagons tip up end-wise,
As you rattled down the hill;
Or did you let them down with ropes
In places steeper, still?
Did you cross the Cascade range
And see the noted "elephant"
The world would think so strange?
Did you slide down "Laurel Hill",
When the rain was falling fast,
And with one yoke of "cows"
Did you reach the goal at last?
With a thousand items more,
I think it can't be doubted
You are wiser than before;
Though your home's a leaky cabin,
When the Winter rain comes on,
No wonder you are well content
To live in Oregon.
OCTOBER 25, 1858.