Poetry and reality, Byron and buffalo

12 Pounder Mountain Howitzer / Wikimedia Commons

Philip St George Cooke's plain speaking on Our Army and Navy offers among other things a way of understanding his alleged romanticism. Alongside the eminently pragmatic character revealed in Cooke's actual army diaries and letters, his reputed romantic streak seems illusory, a fiction perhaps attributable to the exaggerated romanticism of the material in one book, Scenes and Adventures in the Army (subtitled Romance of Military Life). As Bernard De Voto rightly noted, the "literary pathos" of Scenes and Adventures is "hard to associate with as hard-bitten an officer as the army had."

Speaking in April 1886 before the Michigan Commandery of the Loyal Legion, General Cooke quoted from the famous fourth canto of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Yes, the General's comments show how familiar he is with Byron's poetry, but they also reveal how impervious he remains to its romantic claims:

But almost incredible results of human genius and mechanical resource have been reached; monster ships, with steel sheathing twenty-two inches thick, of 12,000 tons displacement; some guns weigh a hundred tons, carrying steel-pointed thunder-bolts of about a ton in weight, five or ten miles!

This sounds more like poetry than reality, and Byron must have had the spirit of prophesy when he wrote of "the oak leviathans" of his day, with armament of what now would be called pop-guns:

"The armaments which thunder strike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding Nations quake
And Monarchs tremble in their capitals."

But nothing makes us quake and tremble; we soon managed, in 1862, to destroy the most formidable iron-clad that had ever been met in battle.  
--Our Army and Navy

Guns and steel. Now that's poetry! By "poetry" General Cooke means a kind of pleasing fantasy. Translation: with modern advances in military technology, warships and armaments have become so marvelously massive as to make them seem "almost incredible." Unbelievable, like poetry.

Poetry is the opposite of reality. Poetry = Fiction.

The virtue of Byron's verse for Cooke lies in its usefulness as a prophecy of modern engineering miracles. And the real point of the quotation from Childe Harold is to debunk Byron, to point out with satisfaction the triumphs of ever-improving technology. Nowadays, and quite the contrary to what Byron claimed, "nothing makes us quake and tremble."

In this same speech, steam and railroads receive due credit for promoting civilization.

Let me say here that the combined discoveries, steam and railways, I think far the greatest achieved by man; arming civilization with a thousand-fold of its old powers in the rapid extension of all manner of benefits, comforts and happiness. It alone made possible, and easy, our ocean boundaries. --Our Army and Navy

Fair enough, but goodness! how far is this optimistic spirit of General Cooke's paean to steam from the heartfelt tribute to Byron in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border":

Strange, indeed, that of ten young officers, not one brought a Don Juan into the wilderness. Is it possible that already the torrent of steam literature has cast Byron into the drift?  How many verses of the sublime, of the beautiful,— of love, of hate, of joy and grief, of pathos and most comic bathos, does that name bring crowding on my memory. 

--Southern Literary Messenger 17 (September 1851): 569; and  

Scenes and Adventures in the Army, 251.

General Cooke's scientific bent was always in evidence. His delight over the latest advances in weapons technology must not be regarded merely as a late indulgence or whim of retirement. To comprehend the 1886 reference to Byron it helps to recall his experiment of hunting buffalo with a mountain howitzer on the Santa Fe Trail, back in 1843. Cooke was proud of his written description of the event in his army journal. Hoping for a wider audience, General Cooke quoted his lively account of the episode in a letter to the editor of the Army and Navy Journal, published in the April 8, 1882 issue as "An American 'Bull Fight.'"

Evidently he regretted or forgot the humorous summary of the scene in the September 1851 installment of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border," presented in the form of a prairie dialogue between the narrator and I. F. his Imaginary Friend. Later this installment was duly incorporated with the rest of Scenes Beyond the Western Border into Part II of his book, Scenes and Adventures in the Army.

Below, the Letter to the Editor by Philip St George Cooke, as published in the United States Army and Navy Journal (April 8, 1882): 819.

AN AMERICAN “BULL FIGHT."

To the Editor of the Army and Navy Journal: 

Sir: I have been delving into the MS. of an old official journal and have found verbal daguerrotypes of some scenes which your readers may find racy, despite their age. Of course they might receive more polished expression, but it would be almost a pity to alter a hue of a picture freshly drawn from nature.

We all have read, ad nauseum, of Spanish bull fights, when the poor beast is cornered and nearly every thing prearranged, but here you find a tolerably fair fight between a valiant buffalo and some two hundred “horse, foot, and"—artillery. Place, Upper Arkansas; time, June, 1843. 

“For six miles we marched through one village of 'prairie dogs,' whose shrill barking was incessantly sounding in our ears ; but their strange antics scarcely attracted attention when thousands of buffalo, dotting the visible world far and near, were the whole day seen around us; each moment shifting views of chases by officers or traders, fixing the attention with a new interest. In the afternoon from the brow of a small hill we suddenly came in view of hundreds of the huge savage looking animals, grazing and lying about in the most natural manner, only three hundred paces from us. I instantly determined to give the artillerists some desired practice, and to get some experience of the range and effects of the mountain howitzer shells. I directed one myself at a group; the shell passed over it, but in ricochet upset one animal. Another was discharged which passed in their midst in three or four rebounds, and then exploded, creating a wonderful confusion. Still another was directed at a dense group, full five hundred paces off, and on higher ground; it struck rather beyond, exploding beautifully at the same instant, but none were prostrated. I then marched on (rather disgusted in truth with mountain howitzers). In a few minutes, as we approached the bull which had been struck, he raised himself up on his chest; the command was halted. Being mounted on a very wild horse I dismounted and approached him afoot to twenty-five paces, aimed and snapped my carbine. Then the bull rose and rushed at me. After passing the spot I had stood on, his attention was diverted to a horseman and his pistol shot; a moment after, as he was charging past me, I fired and struck him in his side; again he turned and pursued me until his course was changed to a new enemy. The bull seemed set to break through the column; and the baggage train mules, which had come close up, were turning short and trying to run. He was assailed now by many horsemen with a free discharge of pistol shots from riders of prancing horses; it was like a confused and doubtful melee. 

“After falling with a great shock, the bull rose and charged a mounted corporal, tossed his horse like a plaything, goring him in two places; the corporal fell headlong, his pistol at the same instant going off, and the ball passing through his horse‘s neck, which then ran off; but the corporal was caught on a horn, only by his clothes, fortunately, and was thus borne by the bull for several leaps; but a new actor appeared, a bulldog: and he caught the buffalo by his under lip, and then all fell in a confused heap. Next from out the cloud of dust the corporal was seen, desperately scrambling on hands and knees. The deathless animal again rose, and shock at us his shaggy front in defiance. Then many deliberate carbine shots were fired into him, and he fell and rose repeatedly; some were fired close by while he lay, but seemed to have no effect. Finally, I sent a ball through an eye to his brain. The shell had broken a shoulder blade. 

“ The poor bull died, and has been eaten—in defiance of nightmare!” 

P. St. G. Cooke, U. S. A.  --1882 Army and Navy Journal

For Cooke's 1843 journal in manuscript, see National Archives Letters Received by the Office of the Adjutant General 1822-1860 / 1843 / C / Cooke, P St G / C252;  available online via fold3.