James Fenimore Cooper
by Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury · English · Gutenberg #19463 · 555,070 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: James Fenimore Cooper
Author: Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury
Release date: October 4, 2006 [eBook #19463]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19463
Credits: Produced by Christine P. Travers and the Online Distributed
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JAMES FENIMORE COOPER ***
Produced by Christine P. Travers and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
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[Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected.
The original spelling has been retained.]
AMERICAN MEN OF LETTERS.
Edited By
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.
[Illustration: J. Fenimore Cooper]
AMERICAN MEN OF LETTERS.
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER.
By
THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY,
Professor Of English In The Sheffield Scientific School,
Yale College.
BOSTON:
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY.
New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge.
1884.
Copyright, 1882,
By THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY
_All rights reserved._
_The Riverside Press, Cambridge_:
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
PREFATORY NOTE.
When Cooper lay on his death-bed he enjoined his family to permit no
authorized account of his life to be prepared. A wish even, that was
uttered at such a time, would have had the weight of a command; and
from that day to this pious affection has carried out in the spirit as
well as to the letter the desire of the dying man. No biography of
Cooper has, in consequence, ever appeared. Nor is it unjust to say
that the sketches of his career, which are found either in magazines
or cyclopædias, are not only unsatisfactory on account of their
incompleteness, but are all in greater or less degree untrustworthy in
their details.
It is a necessary result of this dying injunction that the direct and
authoritative sources of information contained in family papers are
closed to the biographer. Still it is believed that no facts of
importance in the record of an eventful and extraordinary career have
been omitted or have even been passed over slightingly. A large part
of the matter contained in this volume has never been given to the
public in any form: and for that reason among others no pains have
been spared to make this narrative absolutely accurate, so far as it
goes. Correction of any errors, if such are found, will be gratefully
welcomed.
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. (p. 001)
Chapter I.
1789-1820.
In one of the interior counties of New York, less than one hundred and
fifty miles in a direct line from the commercial capital of the Union,
lies the village of Cooperstown. The place is not and probably never
will be an important one; but in its situation and surroundings nature
has given it much that wealth cannot furnish or art create. It stands
on the southeastern shore of Otsego Lake, just at the point where the
Susquehanna pours out from it on its long journey to the Chesapeake.
The river runs here in a rapid current through a narrow valley, shut
in by parallel ranges of lofty hills. The lake, not more than nine
miles in length, is twelve hundred feet above tide-water. Low and
wooded points of land and sweeping bays give to its shores the
attraction of continuous diversity. About it, on every side, stand
hills, which slope gradually or rise sharply to heights varying from
two to five hundred feet. Lake, forest, and stream unite to form a
scene of quiet but picturesque beauty, that hardly needs the
additional charm of romantic association which has been imparted to
it.
Though it was here that the days of Cooper's childhood were (p. 002)
passed, it was not here that he was born. When that event took place
the village had hardly even an existence on paper. Cooper's father, a
resident of Burlington, New Jersey, had come, shortly after the close
of the Revolutionary War, into the possession of vast tracts of land,
embracing many thousands of acres, along the head-waters of the
Susquehanna. In 1786 he began the settlement of the spot, and in 1788
laid out the plot of the village which bears his name, and built for
himself a dwelling-house. On the 10th of November, 1790, his whole
family--consisting, with the servants, of fifteen persons--reached the
place. The future novelist was then a little less than thirteen months
old, for he had been born at Burlington on the 15th of September of
the year before. His father had determined to make the new settlement
his permanent home. He accordingly began in 1796, and in 1799
completed, the erection of a mansion which bore the name of Otsego
Hall. It was then and remained for a long time afterward the largest
private residence in that portion of the State. When in 1834 it came
into the hands of the son, it still continued to be the principal
dwelling in the flourishing village that had grown up about it.
On his father's side Cooper was of Quaker descent. The original
emigrant ancestor had come over in 1679, and had made extensive
purchases of land in the province of New Jersey. In that colony or in
Pennsylvania his descendants for a long time remained. Cooper himself
was the first one, of the direct line certainly, that ever even
revisited the mother-country. These facts are of slight importance in
themselves. In the general disbelief, however, which fifty years ago
prevailed in Great Britain, that anything good could come out of (p. 003)
this western Nazareth. Cooper was immediately furnished with an
English nativity as soon as he had won reputation. The same process
that gave to Irving a birthplace in Devonshire, furnished one also to
him in the Isle of Man. When this fiction was exploded, the fact of
emigration was pushed merely a little further back. It was transferred
to the father, who was represented as having gone from Buckinghamshire
to America. This latter assertion is still to be found in authorities
that are generally trustworthy. But the original one served a useful
purpose during its day. This assumed birthplace in the Isle of Man
enabled the English journalists that were offended with Cooper's
strictures upon their country to speak of him, as at one time they
often did, as an English renegade.
His mother's maiden name was Elizabeth Fenimore, and the family to
which she belonged was of Swedish descent. Cooper himself was the
eleventh of twelve children. Most of his brothers and sisters died
long before him, five of them in infancy. His own name was at first
simply James Cooper, and in this way he wrote it until 1826. But in
April of that year the Legislature of New York passed an act changing
the family name to Fenimore-Cooper. This was done in accordance with
the wish of his grandmother, whose descendants in the direct male line
had died out. But he seldom employed the hyphen in writing, and
finally gave up the use of it altogether.
The early childhood of Cooper was mainly passed in the wilderness at
the very time when the first wave of civilization was beginning to
break against its hills. There was everything in what he saw and heard
to impress the mind of the growing boy. He was on the border, if (p. 004)
indeed he could not justly be said to be in the midst of mighty and
seemingly interminable woods which stretched for hundreds of miles to
the westward. Isolated clearings alone broke this vast expanse of
foliage, which, covering the valleys and clinging to the sides and
crowning the summits of the hills, seemed to rise and fall like the
waves of the sea. The settler's axe had as yet scarcely dispelled the
perpetual twilight of the primeval forest. The little lake lay
enclosed in a border of gigantic trees. Over its waters hung the
interlacing branches of mighty oaks and beeches and pines. Its surface
was frequented by flocks of wild, aquatic birds,--the duck, the gull,
and the loon. In this lofty valley among the hills were also to be
found, then as now, in fullest perfection, the clear atmosphere, the
cloudless skies, and the brilliant light of midsummer suns, that
characterize everywhere the American highlands. More even than the
beauty and majesty of nature that lay open to the sight was the
mystery that constantly appealed to the imagination in what might lie
hidden in the depths of a wilderness that swept far beyond glance of
eye or reach of foot. This, indeed, may have affected the feelings of
only a few, but there were numerous interests and anxieties which all
had in common. The little village had early gone through many of the
trials which mark the history of most of the settlements in regions to
which few travelers found their way and commerce seldom came. Remote
from sources of supply, and difficult of access, it had known the time
when its population, scanty as it was, suffered from the scarcity of
food. Sullivan's successful expedition against the Six Nations did not
suffice to keep it from the alarm of savage attack that never came.
The immense forest shutting in the hamlet on every side had (p. 005)
terrors to some as real as were its attractions to others. Its
recesses were still the refuge of the deer; but they were also the
haunt of the wildcat, the wolf, and the bear. All these characteristics
of his early home made deep impression upon a nature fond of
adventure, and keenly susceptible to the charm of scenery. When
afterward in the first flush of his fame Cooper set out to revive the
memory of the days of the pioneers, he said that he might have chosen
for his subject happier periods, more interesting events, and possibly
more beauteous scenes, but he could not have taken any that would lie
so close to his heart. The man, indeed, never forgot what had been
dear to the boy; and to the spot where his earliest years were spent
he returned to pass the latter part of his life.
The original settlement, moreover, was composed of a more than usually
singular mixture of the motley crowd that always throngs to the
American frontier. The shock of convulsions in lands far distant
reached even to the highland valley shut in by the Otsego hills.
Representatives of almost every nationality in Christendom and
believers in almost every creed, found in it an asylum or a home. Into
this secluded haven drifted men whose lives had been wrecked in the
political storms that were then shaking Europe. Frenchmen, Dutchmen,
Germans, and Poles, came and tarried for a longer or shorter time.
Here Talleyrand, then an exile, spent several days with Cooper's
father, and, true to national instinct, wrote, according to local
tradition, complimentary verses, still preserved, on Cooper's sister.
An ex-captain of the British army was one of the original merchants of
the place. An ex-governor of Martinique was for a time the village (p. 006)
grocer. But the prevailing element in the population were the men of
New England, born levelers of the forest, the greatest wielders of the
axe the world has ever known. Over the somewhat wild and turbulent
democracy, made up of materials so diverse, the original proprietor
reigned a sort of feudal lord, rather by moral qualities than by any
conceded right.
Cooper's early instruction was received in the village school, carried
on in a building erected in 1795, and rejoicing in the somewhat
pretentious name of the Academy. The country at that time, however,
furnished few facilities for higher education anywhere; on the
frontier there were necessarily none. Accordingly Cooper was early
sent to Albany. There he entered the family of the rector of St.
Peter's Church, and became, with three or four other boys, one of his
private pupils. This gentleman, the son of an English clergyman, and
himself a graduate of an English university, had made his ways to
these western wilds with a fair amount of classical learning, with
thorough methods of study, and as it afterwards turned out, Cooper
tells us, with another man's wife. This did not, however, prevent him
from insisting upon the immense superiority of the mother-country in
morals as well as manners. A man of ability and marked character, he
clearly exerted over the impressionable mind of his pupil a greater
influence than the latter ever realized. He was in many respects,
indeed, a typical Englishman of the educated class of that time. He
had the profoundest contempt for republics and republican institutions.
The American Revolution he looked upon as only a little less monstrous
than the French, which was the sum of all iniquities. Connection with
any other church than his own was to be shunned, not at all (p. 007)
because it was unchristian, but because it was ungentlemanly and low.
But whatever his opinions and prejudices were, in the almost absolute
dearth then existing in this country of even respectable scholarship,
the opportunity to be under his instruction was a singular advantage.
Unfortunately it did not continue as long as it was desirable. In 1802
he died. It had been the intention to fit Cooper to enter the junior
class of Yale College; that project had now to be abandoned.
Accordingly he became, at the beginning of the second term of its
freshman year, a member of the class which was graduated in 1806. He
was then but a mere boy of thirteen, and with the exception of the
poet Hillhouse, two weeks his junior, was the youngest student in the
college.
Cooper himself informs us that he played all his first year, and
implies that he did little study during those which followed. To a
certain extent the comparative excellence of his preparation turned
out a disadvantage; the rigid training he had received enabled him to
accomplish without effort what his fellow-students found difficult.
Scholarship was at so low an ebb that the ability to scan Latin was
looked upon as a high accomplishment; and he himself asserts that the
class to which he belonged was the first in Yale College that had ever
tried it. This may be questioned; but we need not feel any distrust of
his declaration, that little learning of any kind found its way into
his head. Least of all will he be inclined to doubt it whom extended
experience in the class-room has taught to view with profoundest
respect the infinite capability of the human mind to resist the
introduction of knowledge.
Far better than study, Cooper liked to take solitary walks about (p. 008)
the wooded hills surrounding New Haven, and the shores of the bay upon
which it lies. These nursed the fondness for outdoor life and scenery
which his early associations had inspired. In these communings with
nature, he was unconsciously storing his mind with impressions and
images, in the representation and delineation of which he was afterward
to attain surpassing excellence. But the study of scenery, however
desirable in itself, cannot easily be included in a college
curriculum. No proficiency in it can well compensate for failure in
studies of perhaps less intrinsic importance. The neglect of these
latter had no tendency to recommend him to the regard of those in
authority. Positive faults were in course of time added to negative. A
frolic in which he was engaged during his third year was attended by
consequences more serious than disfavor. It led to his dismissal. The
father took the boy's side, and the usual struggle followed between
the parents and those who, according to a pretty well worn-out
educational theory, stand to the student in place of parents. In this
particular case the latter triumphed, and Cooper left Yale. In spite
of his dismissal he retained pleasant recollections of some of his old
instructors; and with one of them, Professor Silliman, he kept up in
later years friendly personal relations and occasional correspondence.
It had been a misfortune for the future author to lose the severe if
somewhat wooden drill of his preparatory instructor. It was an
additional misfortune to lose the education, scanty and defective as
it then was, which was imparted by the college. It might not and
probably would not have contributed anything to Cooper's intellectual
development in the way of accuracy of thought or of statement. It (p. 009)
would not in all probability have added materially to his stock of
knowledge. But with all its inefficiency and inadequacy, it would very
certainly have had the effect of teaching him to aim far more than he
did at perfection of form. He possibly gained more than he lost by
being transferred at so early an age to other scenes. But the lack of
certain qualities in his writings, which educated men are perhaps the
only ones to notice, can be traced pretty directly to this lack of
preliminary intellectual drill.
His academical career having been thus suddenly cut short, he entered
in a little while upon one better suited to his adventurous nature.
Boys are sent to sea, he tells us in one of his later novels, for the
cure of their ethical ailings. This renovating influence of ocean life
he had at any rate a speedy opportunity to try. It was decided that he
should enter the navy. The position of his father, who had been for
several years a representative in Congress, and was a leading member
of the Federalist party, naturally held out assurances that the son
would receive all the advancement to which he would be legitimately
entitled. At that time no naval school existed. It was the custom, in
consequence, for boys purposing to fit themselves for the position of
officers to serve a sort of apprenticeship in the merchant marine.
Accordingly in the autumn of 1806, Cooper was placed on board a vessel
that was to sail from the port of New York with a freight of flour to
Cowes and a market. The ship was named the Sterling, and was commanded
by Captain John Johnston, of Wiscasset, Maine, who was also part owner.
Cooper's position and prospects were well known; but he was employed
regularly before the mast and was never admitted to the cabin. The (p. 010)
vessel cleared from the port of New York on the 16th of October. The
passage was a long and stormy one; forty days went by before land was
seen after it had once been left behind. The ship reached the other
side just at the time when the British Channel was alive with vessels
of war in consequence of one of the periodical anticipations of
invasions from France. It went to London, and stayed for some time
there discharging its cargo and taking in new. Cooper embraced the
opportunity to see all the sights he could of the great metropolis.
"He had a rum time of it in his sailor rig," said afterward one of his
shipmates, "but hoisted in a wonderful deal of gibberish, according to
his own account of the cruise."
The Sterling sailed with freight in January, 1807, for the Straits of
Gibraltar. It took on board a cargo of barilla at Aguilas and Almeria,
and returned to England, reaching the Thames in May. Both going and
coming the voyage was a stormy one, and during it several of the
incidents occurred that Cooper worked up afterward into powerful
passages in his sea novels. In London the vessel lay several weeks,
discharging its cargo and taking in more, which this time consisted of
dry goods. Towards the end of July, it left London for America, and
reached Philadelphia on the 18th of September, after another long and
stormy passage of fifty-two days.
This was Cooper's introduction to sea life. During the year he had
spent in the merchant vessel he had seen a good deal of hard service.
His preparatory studies having been completed after a fashion, he now
regularly entered the navy. His commission as midshipman bears (p. 011)
date the 1st of January, 1808. On the 24th of the following February
he was ordered to report to the commanding naval officer at New York.
But the records of the government give little information as to the
duties to which he was assigned during the years he remained in its
service. The knowledge we have of his movements comes mainly from what
he himself incidentally discloses in published works or letters of a
later period. The facts we learn from all sources together, are but
few. He served for a while on board the Vesuvius in 1808. During that
year it seemed as if the United States and Great Britain were about to
drift into war. Preparations of various kinds were made; and one of
the things ordered was the dispatch to Lake Ontario of a party, of
which Cooper was one, under the command of Lieutenant Woolsey. The
intention was to build a brig of sixteen guns to command that inland
water; and the port of Oswego, then a mere hamlet of some twenty
houses, was the place selected for its construction. Around it lay a
wilderness, thirty or forty miles in depth. Here the party spent the
following winter, and during it the Oneida, as the brig was called,
was finished. Early in the spring of 1809 it was launched. By that
time, however, the war-cloud had blown over, and the vessel was not
then used for the purpose for which it had been constructed. More
permanent results, however, were accomplished than the building of a
ship. The knowledge and experience which Cooper then gained was
something beyond and above what belonged to his profession. It is to
his residence on the shores of that inland sea that we owe the vivid
picture drawn of Lake Ontario in "The Pathfinder" and of the
wilderness which then surrounded it on every side.
After the completion of the Oneida, Cooper accompanied Lieutenant (p. 012)
Woolsey on a visit to Niagara Falls. The navy records show that on the
10th of June, 1809, he was left by his commander in charge of the
gunboats on Lake Champlain. They further reveal the fact that on the
27th of September of this same year he was granted a furlough to make
a European voyage. This project for some reason was given up, as on
the 13th of November, 1809, he was ordered to the Wasp, then under the
command of Lawrence, who afterwards fell in the engagement between the
Shannon and the Chesapeake. To this officer, like himself a native of
Burlington, he was very warmly attached. The next notice of him
contained in the official records is to the effect that on the 9th of
May, 1810, permission was granted him to go on furlough for twelve
months. Whether he availed himself of it is not known. An event soon
occurred, however, that put an end to his naval career as effectively
as one had previously been put to his collegiate. An attachment had
sprung up some time before between him and a Miss DeLancey. On the 1st
of January, 1811, the couple were married at Mamaroneck, Westchester
County, New York. Cooper was then a little more than twenty-one years
old; the bride lacked very little of being nineteen.
His wife belonged to a Huguenot family, which towards the end of the
seventeenth century had fled from France, and had finally settled in
Westchester. During the Revolutionary War the DeLanceys had taken the
side of the crown against the colonies. Several of them held positions
in the British army. John Peter DeLancey, whose daughter Cooper had
married, had been himself a captain in that service. After the
recognition of American independence he went to England, but, (p. 013)
having resigned his commission, returned in 1789 to this country, and
spent the remainder of his life at his home in Mamaroneck. The fact
that his kinsmen by marriage had belonged to the defeated party in the
Revolutionary struggle led Cooper in his writings to treat the Tories,
as they were called, with a fairness and generosity which in that day
few were disposed to show, at least in print. This tenderness is
plainly to be seen in "The Spy," written at the beginning of his
career; it is still more marked in "Wyandotte," produced in the latter
part of it, when circumstances had made him profoundly dissatisfied
with much that he saw about him. One of the last, though least heated,
of the many controversies in which he was engaged was in regard to the
conduct on a particular occasion of General Oliver DeLancey, a cousin
of his wife's father. This officer was charged unjustly, as Cooper
believed, with the brutal treatment of the American General Woodhull,
who had fallen into his hands. The discussion in regard to this point
was carried on in the "New York Home Journal" in the early part of
1848.
It seldom falls to the lot of the biographer to record a home life
more serene and happy than that which fell to the share of the man
whose literary life is the stormiest to be found in the history of
American men of letters. Cooper, like many persons of fiery temperament
and strong will, was very easily managed through his affections. In
theory he maintained the headship of man in the household in the
extremest form. He gives in several of his works no uncertain
indication of his views on that point. This only serves to make more
conspicuous the fact, which forces itself repeatedly upon the
attention, that his movements were largely, if not mainly, (p. 014)
by his wife. This becomes noticeable at the very beginning of their
union. She was unwilling to undergo the long and frequent separations
from her husband that the profession of a naval officer would demand.
Accordingly, he abandoned the idea of continuing in it. The acceptance
of his resignation bears date the 6th of May, 1811. He had then been
regularly in the service a little less than three years and a half.
After quitting the navy Cooper led for a long time a somewhat unsettled
life. For about a year and a half he resided at Heathcote Hall,
Mamaroneck, the residence of his wife's father. He then rented a small
cottage in the neighborhood, and in this remained about a year. His
early home, however, was the spot to which his heart turned. To
Cooperstown, in consequence, he went back in 1814, taking up his
residence at a place outside the village limits, called Fenimore. He
purposed to devote his attention to agriculture, and accordingly began
at this spot the building of a large stone farm house. While it was in
process of construction his wife, anxious to be near her own family,
persuaded him to go back to Westchester. Thither in 1817 he went,
leaving his dwelling at Fenimore unfinished, and in 1823 it was
completely destroyed by fire. In Westchester, a few months after his
return, he took up his residence, in the town of Scarsdale, on what
was called the Angevine farm, from the name of a French family that
had occupied it for several generations. The site of his dwelling was
a commanding one, and gave from the south front an extensive view of
the country about it and of Long Island Sound. It remained his home
until the literary profession, upon which he unexpectedly entered, (p. 015)
forced him to leave it for New York city.
Great changes had occurred during these years, or were occurring, in
his personal surroundings. His father had died in 1809, and his mother
in 1817. Before 1820 five daughters had been born to him. The first of
these did not live to the age of two years; but the others all reached
maturity. The second, Susan Augusta, herself an authoress, became in
his later years his secretary and amanuensis, and would naturally have
written his life, had not his unfortunate dying injunction stood in
the way. A son, Fenimore, born at Angevine, in 1821, died early, and
his youngest child, Paul, now a lawyer at Albany, was not born until
after his removal to New York city. Surrounded by his growing family,
he led for the two or three years following 1817 a life that gave no
indication of what was to be his career. His thoughts were principally
directed to improving the little estate that had come into his
possession. He planted trees, he built fences, he drained swamps, he
planned a lawn. The one thing which he did not do was to write.
CHAPTER II. (p. 016)
1820-1822.
Cooper had now reached the age of thirty. Up to this time he had
written nothing, nor had he prepared or collected any material for
future use. No thought of taking up authorship as a profession had
entered his mind. Even the physical labor involved in the mere act of
writing was itself distasteful. Unexpectedly, however, he now began a
course of literary production that was to continue without abatement
during the little more than thirty years which constituted the
remainder of his life.
Seldom has a first work been due more entirely to accident than that
which he composed at the outset of his career. In his home at Angevine
he was one day reading to his wife a novel descriptive of English
society. It did not please him, and he suddenly laid down the book and
said, "I believe I could write a better story myself." Challenged to
make good his boast, he sat down to perform the task, and wrote out a
few pages of the tale he had formed in his mind. The encouragement of
his wife determined him to go on and complete it, and when completed
the advice of friends decided him to publish it. Accordingly, on the
10th of November, 1820, a novel in two volumes, entitled "Precaution,"
made its appearance in New York. In this purely haphazard way did the
most prolific of American authors begin his literary life.
The work was brought out in a bad shape, and its typographical (p. 017)
defects were unconsciously exaggerated by Cooper in a revised edition
of it, which was published after his return from Europe. In the
preface to the latter he said that no novel of modern times had ever
been worse printed than was this story as it originally appeared. The
manuscript, he admitted, was bad; but the proof-reading could only be
described as execrable. Periods turned up in the middle of sentences,
while the places where they should have been knew them not. Passages,
in consequence, were rendered obscure, and even entire paragraphs
became unintelligible. A careful reading of the edition of 1820 will
show something to suggest, but little to justify, these sweeping
assertions. But the work has never been much read even by the admirers
of the author; and it is a curious illustration of this fact, that the
personal friend, who delivered the funeral discourse upon his life and
writings, avoided the discussion of it with such care that he was
betrayed into exposing the lack of interest he sought to hide. Bryant
confessed he had not read "Precaution." He had merely dipped into the
first edition of it, and had been puzzled and repelled by the
profusion of commas and other pauses. The non-committalism of cautious
criticism could hardly hope to go farther. Punctuation has had its
terrors and its triumphs; but this victory over the editor of a daily
newspaper must be deemed its proudest recorded achievement. The poet
went on to say that to a casual inspection the revised edition, which
Cooper afterward brought out, seemed almost another work. The
inspection which could come to such a conclusion must have been of
that exceedingly casual kind which contents itself with contemplating
the outside of a book, and disdains to open it. As a matter of (p. 018)
fact the changes made hardly extended beyond the correction of some
points of punctuation and of some grammatical forms; it was in a few
instances only that the construction of the sentences underwent
transformation. Not an incident was altered, not a sentiment modified.
Such ignorance on the part of a contemporary and personal friend, if
it proves nothing else, shows certainly the little hold this novel has
had upon the public taste. Nevertheless, the first work of any
well-known author must always have a certain interest belonging to it,
entirely independent of any value the work may have in itself. In this
case, moreover, the character of the tale and the circumstances
attending its production are of no slight importance, when taken in
connection with the literary history of the times. It was accident
that led to the selection of the subject; but as things then were,
Cooper was not unlikely, in any event, to have chosen it or one very
similar. The intellectual dependence of America upon England at that
period is something that it is now hard to understand. Political
supremacy had been cast off, but the supremacy of opinion remained
absolutely unshaken. Of creative literature there was then very little
of any value produced: and to that little a foreign stamp was
necessary, to give currency outside of the petty circle in which it
originated. There was slight encouragement for the author to write;
there was still less for the publisher to print. It was indeed a
positive injury ordinarily to the commercial credit of a bookseller to
bring out a volume of poetry or of prose fiction which had been
written by an American; for it was almost certain to fail to pay
expenses. A sort of critical literature was struggling, or rather (p. 019)
gasping, for a life that was hardly worth living; for its most marked
characteristic was its servile deference to English judgment and dread
of English censure. It requires a painful and penitential examination
of the reviews of the period to comprehend the utter abasement of mind
with which the men of that day accepted the foreign estimate upon
works written here, which had been read by themselves, but which it
was clear had not been read by the critics whose opinions they echoed.
Even the meekness with which they submitted to the most depreciatory
estimate of themselves was outdone by the anxiety with which they
hurried to assure the world that they, the most cultivated of the
American race, did not presume to have so high an opinion of the
writings of some one of their countrymen as had been expressed by
enthusiasts, whose patriotism had proved too much for their
discernment. Never was any class so eager to free itself from charges
that imputed to it the presumption of holding independent views of its
own. Out of the intellectual character of many of those who at that
day pretended to be the representatives of the highest education in
this country, it almost seemed that the element of manliness had been
wholly eliminated; and that along with its sturdy democracy, whom no
obstacles thwarted and no dangers daunted, the New World was also to
give birth to a race of literary cowards and parasites. With such a
state of feeling prevalent, a work of fiction that concerned America
might seem to have small chance of success with Americans themselves.
It would not, therefore, have been strange, under any circumstances,
that in beginning his career as an author Cooper should have chosen to
write a tale of English social life. The fact that he knew (p. 020)
personally nothing about what he was describing was in itself no
insuperable objection. That ignorance was then and has since been
shared by many novelists on both sides of the water, who have treated
of the same subject. Relying upon English precedent, he might in fact
feel that he was peculiarly fitted for the task. He had cruised a few
times up and down the British channel, he had caught limited views of
British manners and customs by walking on several occasions the length
of Fleet Street and the Strand. Knowledge of America equivalent to
this would then have been regarded in England as an ample equipment
for an accurate treatise upon the social life of this country, and
even upon its existing political condition and probable future.
But much more than the choice of a foreign subject did the pretense of
foreign authorship prove the servility of feeling prevailing at that
time among the educated classes. This was in the first place, to be
sure, the result of the freak that led Cooper originally to begin
writing a novel; but it was a freak that would never have been carried
out, after publication had been decided upon, had he not been fully
aware of the fact that the least recommendation of a book to his
countrymen would be the knowledge that it was composed by one of
themselves. "Precaution" was not merely a tale of English social life,
it purported to be written by an Englishman; and it was so thoroughly
conformed to its imaginary model that it not only reëchoed the cant of
English expression, but likewise the expression of English cant. To
talk about dissenters and the establishment was natural and proper
enough in a work written ostensibly by the citizen of a country in
which there was a state church. But Cooper went much farther than (p. 021)
this in the reflections and moral observations which are scattered up
and down the pages of this novel. These represent fairly views widely
held at the time in America, and may not impossibly express the
personal opinions he himself then entertained. He speaks in one place,
in his assumed character of an Englishman, of the solidity and purity
of our ethics as giving a superior tone to our moral feelings as
contrasted with the French. He goes out of his way to compliment
George III. One of the personages in the novel was tempted to admit
something to his credit that he did not deserve. The love of truth,
however, finally prevailed. But it was not because the man himself had
any innate love of truth, but because "he had been too much round the
person of our beloved monarch not to retain all the impressions of his
youth." Passages such as these are remarkable when we consider the
sentiments in regard to England that Cooper subsequently came to
express. If they do not show with certainty his opinions at that time,
they do show the school in which he had been brought up: they mark
clearly the extent and violence of the reaction which in after years
carried him to the opposite extreme.
In its plan and development "Precaution" was a compromise between the
purely fashionable novel and that collection of moral disquisitions of
which Hannah More's Coelebs was the great exemplar, and still remained
the most popular representative. As in most tales of high life, nobody
of low condition plays a prominent part in the story, save for the
purpose of setting off the dukes, earls, baronets, generals, and
colonels that throng its pages. A novelist in his first production
never limits his creative activity in any respect; and Cooper, (p. 022)
moreover, knew the public well enough to be aware that a fictitious
narrative which aimed to describe aristocratic society might perhaps
succeed without much literary merit, but would be certain to fail
without an abundance of lords. The leading characters, however,
whether of higher or lower degree, are planned upon the moral model.
They either preach or furnish awful examples. It would certainly be
most unfair to an author to judge him, as in this case, by a work
which he had begun without any view to publication, and which he
afterward learned to think and to speak of slightingly. Still, though,
compared with many of his writings, "Precaution" is a novel of little
worth, it is, in some respects, a better guide to the knowledge of the
man than his better productions. The latter give evidence of his
powers; in this are shown certain limitations of his nature and
beliefs. Peculiarities, both of thought and feeling, which in his
other writings are merely suggested, are here clearly revealed. Some
of them will appear strange to those whose conception of his character
is derived from facts connected with his later life, or whose
acquaintance with his works is limited to those most celebrated.
Cooper was, by nature, a man of deep religious feeling. This disposition
had been strengthened by his training. But there is something more
than deep religious feeling exhibited in his first novel. There runs
through it a vein of pietistic narrowness, which seems particularly
unsuited to the man whom popular imagination, investing him somewhat
with the characteristics of his own creations, has depicted as a
ranger of the forests and a rover of the seas. Yet the existence of
this vein is plainly apparent, though all his surroundings would (p. 023)
seem to have been unfavorable to its birth and development. He shared,
to its fullest extent, in the jealousy which at that time, far more
than now, prevailed between the Middle States and New England. He was
strongly attached to the Episcopal Church, and he had, or fancied he
had, a keen dislike to the Puritans and their manners and creeds. To
these "religionists," as he was wont to call them, he attributed a
great deal that was ungraceful in American life, and a good deal that
was disgraceful. But the Puritan element is an irrepressible and
undying one in English character. It can be found centuries before it
became the designation of a religious body. It can be traced, under
various and varying appellations, through every period of English
history. It is not the name of a sect, it is not the mark of a creed;
it is the characteristic of a race. It is, therefore, never long put
under ban before it comes back, and takes its turn in ruling manners
and society. The revolt against it in the eighteenth century had
stripped from religion everything in the shape of sentiment, and left
it merely a business. The reaction which brought the Puritan element
again to the front was so intensified by hostility to what were called
French principles that the minor literature of the latter half of the
reign of George III. exhibits a cant of intolerance from which many of
its greatest writers were rarely great enough to be wholly free. This
influence is clearly visible in the earliest work of Cooper. There is
no charge, probably, he would have denied sooner or disliked more, but
in his nature he was essentially a Puritan of the Puritans. Their
faults and their virtues, their inconsistencies and their contradictions,
were his. Their earnestness, their intensity, their narrowness, their
intolerance, their pugnacity, their serious way of looking at (p. 024)
human duties and responsibilities, all these elements corresponded
with elements in his own character. His, also, were their lofty ideas
of personal purity and of personal obligation, extending not merely to
the acts of the life, but to the thoughts of the heart. Like them,
moreover, he was always disposed to appeal directly to the authority
of the Supreme Being. Like them, he had perfect confidence in the
absolute knowledge he possessed of what that Being thought and wished.
Like them, he considered any controverted question as settled, if he
could once bring to bear upon the point in dispute a text beginning,
"Thus saith the Lord." No rational creature, certainly, would think of
contesting a view of the Creator, or acting contrary to a command
coming unmistakably from Him. But at this very point the difficulty
begins; and in nothing did Cooper more resemble the Puritans than in
his incapacity to see that there was any difficulty at all. It never
occurred to him that there might possibly be a vast difference between
what the Lord actually said and what James Fenimore Cooper thought the
Lord said. It is hardly necessary to add, however, that this
characteristic of mind has its advantages as well as disadvantages.
It was not unnatural, accordingly, that "Precaution" should exemplify
in many cases that narrowness of view which seeks to shape narrow
rules for the conduct of life. For its sympathy with this, one of the
most distinguishing and disagreeable features of Puritanism, the novel
has an interest which could never be aroused by it as a work of art.
Extreme sentiments are often expressed by the author in his own
person, though they are usually put into the mouths of various actors
in the story. Their especial representative is a certain Mrs. (p. 025)
Wilson, who was clearly a great favorite of her creator, though to the
immense majority of men she would seem as disagreeably strong-minded
as most of Cooper's female characters are disagreeably weak-minded.
This lady is the widow of a general officer, who, the reader comes
heartily to feel, has, most fortunately for himself, fallen in the
Peninsular war. From her supreme height of morality she sweeps the
whole horizon of human frailties and faults, and looks down with a
relentless eye upon the misguided creatures who are struggling with
temptations to which she is superior, or are under the sway of beliefs
whose folly or falsity she has long since penetrated. In her, indeed,
there is no weak compromise with human feelings. The lesson meant to
be taught by the novel is the necessity of taking precaution in regard
to marriage. One point insisted upon again and again is the requirement
of piety in the husband. It is the duty of a Christian mother to guard
against a connection with any one but a Christian for her daughters:
for throughout the whole work the sovereign right of the parent over
the child is not merely implied, it is directly asserted. "No really
pious woman," says Mrs. Wilson, "can be happy unless her husband is in
what she deems the road to future happiness herself." When she is met
by the remark that the carrying out of this idea would give a deadly
blow to matrimony, she rises to the occasion by replying that "no man
who dispassionately examines the subject will be other than a Christian,
and rather than remain bachelors they would take even that trouble."
Nor in this was the author apparently expressing an opinion which he
did not himself hold in theory, however little he might have regarded
it in practice. He takes up the same subject in another place, (p. 026)
when speaking in his own person. "Would our daughters," he says,
"admire a handsome deist, if properly impressed with the horror of his
doctrines, sooner than they would now admire a handsome Mohammedan?"
On the matter of Sunday observance the narrowest tenets of Puritanism
were preached, and the usual ignorance was manifested that there were
two sides to the question. Some of the incidents connected with this
subject are curious. One of the better characters in the novel asks
his wife to ride out on that day, and she reluctantly consents. This
brings at once upon the stage the inevitable Mrs. Wilson, who always
stands ready to point a moral, though she can hardly be said to adorn
the tale. She draws from the transaction the lesson that it is a
warning against marrying a person with a difference of views. In this
particular instance the respect of the man for religion had been
injurious to his wife, because "had he been an open deist, she would
have shrunk from the act in his company on suspicion of its
sinfulness." It is justice to add that many of these extreme opinions,
at least in the extreme form stated in this work, the author came
finally to outgrow if in fact he held them seriously then.
There are certain other peculiarities of Cooper's beliefs that
"Precaution" exemplifies. He has been constantly criticised for the
unvarying and uninteresting uniformity of his female characters. This
is hardly just; but it is just in the sense that there was only one
type which he ever held up to admiration. Others were introduced, but
they were never the kind of women whom he delighted to honor. Of
female purity he had the highest ideal. Deference for the female sex
as a sex he felt sincerely and expressed strongly. Along with (p. 027)
this he seemed to have the most contemptible opinion of the ability of
the female individual to take care of herself. On the other hand, if
she had the requisite ability, the greater became his contempt; for
helplessness, in his eyes, was apparently her chiefest charm. The
Emily Moseley of his first novel is the prototype of a long line of
heroines, whose combination of propriety and incapacity places them at
the farthest possible remove from the heroic. She is worthy of special
mention here, only because in this novel he describes in detail the
desirable qualities, which in the others are simply implied. He
furnishes us, moreover, with the precise training to which she had
been subjected by her aunt, Mrs. Wilson. Accordingly, we learn both
what, in Cooper's eyes, it was incumbent for a woman to be, and what
she ought to go through in order to be that woman. A few sentences
taken at random will show the character of this heroine. She was
artless, but intelligent; she was cheerful, but pious; she was familiar
with all the attainments suitable to her sex and years. Her time was
dedicated to work which had a tendency to qualify her for the duties
of this life and fit her for the life hereafter. She seldom opened a
book unless in search of information. She never read one that
contained a sentiment dangerous to her morals, or inculcated an
opinion improper for her sex. She never permitted a gentleman to ride
with her, to walk with her, to hold with her a tête-à-tête. Nor was
this result achieved with difficulty. Though she was natural and
unaffected, the simple dignity about her was sufficient to forbid any
such request, or even any such thought in the men who had the
pleasure, or, as the reader may think, the grief, of her (p. 028)
acquaintance. In short, she was not merely propriety personified; she
was propriety magnified and intensified. This particular heroine, who
could not consistently have read the book in which her own conduct is
described, finally disappears as the wife of an equally remarkable
earl. Her story, as it is told, however, strikingly exemplifies the
carelessness in working up details which is one of Cooper's marked
defects. The novel received its name, as has already been implied,
because it aimed to set forth the desirability of precaution in the
choice of husband or wife. What it actually taught, however, was its
undesirability. The misunderstandings, the crosses, the distresses, to
which the lovers were subjected in the tale all sprang from excess of
care, and not from lack of it; from exercising precaution where
precaution did nothing but harm.
The work excited but little attention in this country. In the following
year it was printed in England by Colburn, and was there noticed
without the slightest suspicion of its American authorship. In some
quarters it received fairly favorable mention. It could not be hid,
however, that the novel, as regarded the general public, had been a
failure. Still, it was not so much a failure that the author's friends
did not think well of it and see promise in it. They urged him to
renewed exertions. He had tried the experiment of depicting scenes he
had never witnessed, and a life he had never led. He had, in their
opinion, succeeded fairly well in describing what he knew nothing
about; they were anxious that he should try his hand at the representation
of manners and men of which and whom he knew something. Especially was
it made a matter of reproach that he, in heart and soul an (p. 029)
American of the Americans, should have gone to a foreign land to fill
the imagination of his countrymen with pictures of a social state
alien both in feeling and fact to their own. This was an appeal of a
kind that was certain to touch Cooper sensibly; for with him love of
country was not a sentiment, it was a passion. As a sort of atonement,
therefore, for his first work, he determined to inflict, as he phrased
it, a second one upon the world. Against this there should be no
objection on the score of patriotism. He naturally turned for his
subject to the Revolution, with the details of which he was familiar
by his acquaintance with the men who had shared prominently in its
conduct, and had felt all the keenness of a personal triumph in its
success. The very county, moreover, in which he had made his home was
full of recollections. Westchester had been the neutral ground between
the English forces stationed in New York and the American army encamped
in the highlands of the Hudson. Upon it more, perhaps, than upon any
other portion of the soil of the revolted colonies had fallen the
curse of war in its heaviest form. Back and forth over a large part of
it had perpetually ebbed and flowed the tide of battle. Not a road was
there which had not been swept again and again by columns of infantry
or squadrons of horse. Every thicket had been the hiding-place of
refugees or spies; every wood or meadow had been the scene of a
skirmish; and every house that had survived the struggle had its tale
to tell of thrilling scenes that had taken place within its walls.
These circumstances determined Cooper's choice of the place and
period. Years before, while at the residence of John Jay, his host had
given him, one summer afternoon, the account of a spy that had (p. 030)
been in his service during the war. The coolness, shrewdness,
fearlessness, but above all the unselfish patriotism, of the man had
profoundly impressed the Revolutionary leader who had employed him.
The story made an equally deep impression upon Cooper at the time. He
now resolved to take it as the foundation of the tale he had been
persuaded to write. The result was that on the 22d of December, 1821,
the novel of "The Spy" was quietly advertised in the New York papers
as on that day published.
The reader, however, would receive a very wrong idea of the feelings
with which the author began and ended this work of fiction, should he
stop short with the account that has just been given. The circumstances
attending its composition and publication are, as a matter of fact,
almost as remarkable as the story itself. They certainly present a
most suggestive picture of the literary state of America at that time.
Cooper, for his part, had not the slightest anticipation of the effect
that it was going to have upon his future. In writing it he was
carrying out the wishes of his friends full as much as his own. Nor,
apparently, did they urge the course upon him because they conceived
him capable of accomplishing anything very great or even very good.
They felt that he could produce something that was not discreditable,
and that was all that could reasonably be expected of an American.
There was no other novelist in the field. Charles Brockden Brown had
been dead several years. Irving and Paulding were writing only short
sketches. John Neal, indeed, in addition to the poems, tragedies,
reviews, newspaper articles, indexes, and histories he was turning out
by wholesale, had likewise perpetrated a novel; but it was never known
enough to justify the mention of it as having been forgotten. (p. 031)
Here, consequently, was a vacant place that ought to be filled. Cooper
was never the man who would be eager to take a place because there was
no one else to occupy it; and the way he went at the task he had
undertaken gives indirectly a clear insight into an American author's
feelings sixty years ago. He entered upon the work not merely without
the expectation of success, but almost without the hope of it. The
novel was written very hastily; the sheets passed into the hands of
the type-setter with scarcely a correction; and so little heart had he
in the task that the first volume was printed several months before he
felt any inducement to write a line of the second. The propriety of
abandoning it entirely, under the apprehension of its proving a serious
loss, was debated. "Should chance," he said, in a later introduction
to the book, "throw a copy of this prefatory notice into the hands of
an American twenty years hence, he will smile to think that a
countryman hesitated to complete a work so far advanced, merely
because the disposition of the country to read a book that treated of
its own familiar interests was distrusted." In this respect the
difficulty of his position was made more prominent by its contrast
with that of the great novelist who was then occupying the attention
of the English-speaking world. Scott, in writing "Waverley," could
take for granted that there lay behind him an intense feeling of
nationality, which would show itself not in noisy boastfulness, but in
genuine appreciation; that with the matter of his work his countrymen
would sympathize, whatever might be their opinion as to its execution.
No such supposition could be made by Cooper; no such belief inspired
him to exertion. He might hope to create interest; he could not (p. 032)
venture to assume its existence. One other incident connected with
the composition of this work marks even more plainly the almost
despairing attitude of his mind. While the second volume was slowly
printing, he received an intimation from his publisher that the work
might grow to a length that would endanger the profits. The author
hereupon adopted a course which is itself a proof of how much stranger
is fact than fiction. To placate the publisher and set his mind at
rest, the last chapter was written, printed, and paged, not merely
before the intervening chapters had been composed, but before they had
been fully conceived. It was fair to expect failure for a work which
no bookseller had been found willing to undertake at his own risk, and
which the author himself set about in a manner so perfunctory. The
indifference and carelessness displayed, he said afterward, were
disrespectful to the public and unjust to himself; yet they give, as
nothing else could, a vivid picture of the literary situation in
America at that time.
The reluctance and half-heartedness with which Cooper began and completed
this work stand, indeed, in sharpest contrast to the existing state of
feeling, when it is only the prayers of friends and the tears of
relatives that can prevent most of us from publishing some novel we
have already written. But almost as it were by accident he had struck
into the vein best fitted for the display of his natural powers. In it
he succeeded with little effort, where other men with the greatest
effort might have failed. The delicate distinctions that underlie
character where social pressure has given to all the same outside, it
was not his to depict. Still less could he unfold the subtle (p. 033)
workings of motives that often elude the observation of the very
persons whom they most influence. Such a power is essential to the
success of him who seeks to delineate men as seen in conventional
society; and largely for the lack of it his first novel had been a
failure. It was only at rare intervals, also, that he showed that
precision of style and pointed method of statement which, independent
of the subject, interest the reader in men and things that are not in
themselves interesting. It was the story of adventure, using adventure
in its broadest sense, that he was fitted to tell: and fortunately for
him Walter Scott, then in the very height of his popularity, had made
it supremely fashionable. In this it is only needful to draw character
in bold outlines; to represent men not under the influence of motives
that hold sway in artificial and complex society, but as breathed upon
by those common airs of reflection and swept hither and thither by
those common gales of passion that operate upon us all as members of
the race. It is not the personality of the actors to which the
attention is supremely drawn, though even in that there is ample field
for the exhibition of striking characterization. It is the events that
carry us along; it is the catastrophe to which they are hurrying that
excites the feelings and absorbs the thoughts. There can be no greater
absurdity than to speak of this kind of story, as is sometimes done,
as being inferior in itself to those devoted exclusively to the
delineation of manners or character, or even of the subtler motives
which act upon the heart and life. As well might one say that the
"Iliad" is a poem of inferior type to the "Excursion." Again, it is
only those who think it must be easy to write what it is easy to read
who will fall into the mistake of fancying that a novel of (p. 034)
adventure which has vitality enough to live does not owe its existence
to the arduous, though it may be largely unconscious, exercise of high
creative power. No better correction for this error can be found than
in looking over the names of the countless imitators of Scott, some of
them distinguished in other fields, who have made so signal a failure
that even the very fact that they attempted to imitate him at all has
been wholly forgotten.
"The Spy" appeared almost at the very close of 1821. It was not long
before its success was assured. Early in 1822 the newspapers were able
to assert that it had met with a sale unprecedented in the annals of
American literature. What that phrase meant is partly indicated by the
fact that it had then been found necessary to publish a second edition.
In March a third edition was put to the press; and in the same month
the story was dramatized and acted with the greatest success. Still in
the abject dependence upon foreign estimate which was the preëminent
characteristic of a large portion of the educated class of that day,
many felt constrained to wait for the judgment that would come back
from Europe before they could venture to express an opinion which they
had the presumption to call their own. Contemporary newspapers more
than once mention the relief that was afforded to many when Cooper was
spoken of in several of the English journals as "a distinguished
American novelist." This, it has been implied, was then a condition of
the public mind that no writer could dare wholly to disregard. When
the project of abandoning this novel, already half printed, was under
discussion, the principal reason that finally decided the author (p. 035)
to persevere was the fact that his previous work had received a respectful
notice in a few English periodicals. It was thought, in consequence,
that in his new venture he would be secure from loss. Still, it is due
to his countrymen to say that it was to them alone he owed his first
success. In later years the declaration was often made that he would
never have been held in honor at home, had it not been for foreign
approbation. The assertion he himself indignantly denied. "This work,"
he said afterward, in speaking of "The Spy," "most of you received
with a generous welcome that might have satisfied any one that the
heart of this great community is sound." Certain it is that the
success of the novel was assured in America some time before the
character of its reception in Europe was known.
The printed volume was offered to the London publisher Murray, and for
terms he was referred to Irving, who was then in England. Murray gave
the novel for examination to Gifford, the editor of the "Quarterly."
By his advice it was declined,--a result that might easily have been
foretold from the hostility of the man to this country. He had made
his review an organ of the most persistent depreciation and abuse of
America and everything American. A new writer from this side of the
ocean was little likely to meet with any favor in his sight, especially
when his subject was one that from its very nature could not be
flattering to British prejudices. Murray having refused, another
publisher was found in Miller, who had also been the first to bring
out Irving's "Sketch Book." Early in 1822 the work appeared in England.
There its success was full as great as it had been in America. This novel,
in fact, made Cooper's reputation both at home and abroad. It is (p. 036)
important to bear this in mind, because it is a common notion that it
was his delineations of Indian life that brought him his European
fame. They established it, but they did not originate it. "The Spy"
was a tale of a war, which in character was not essentially different
from any other war. So far as the story painted the incidents of a
struggle in which the English had been unsuccessful, it could have no
right to expect favor from the English public unless there was merit
in the execution of the work independent of the subject. The interest
with which it was read by a people who could not fail to find portions
of it disagreeable, who were moreover accustomed to look with contempt
upon everything of American origin, was the best proof that a novelist
had arisen whose reputation would stretch beyond the narrow limits of
nationality. This was even more strikingly seen, when it came to be
translated. If the English opinion was favorable, the French might
fairly be called enthusiastic. A version was made into that tongue in
the summer of 1822, by the translator of the Waverley Novels. In the
absolute ignorance that existed as to its authorship, the work was
ascribed by several of the Parisian papers to Fanny Wright, who
subsequently achieved a fame of her own as a champion of woman's
privileges and denouncer of woman's wrongs. In spite of its anonymous
character and of some extraordinary blunders in translation, it was
warmly received in France. From that country its reputation in no long
space of time spread in every direction; translations followed one
after another into all the cultivated tongues of modern Europe; and in
all it met the same degree of favor. Nor has lapse of time shaken
seriously its popularity. The career of success, which began sixty (p. 037)
years ago, has suffered vicissitudes, but never suspension; and to
this hour, whatever fault may be found with the work as a whole, the
name of Harvey Birch is still one of the best known in fiction. No
tale produced during the present century has probably had so extensive
a circulation; and the leading character in it has found admirers
everywhere and at times imitators. Of this latter statement a striking
illustration is given in the memoirs of Gisquet, a prefect of the French
police under Louis Philippe. In his chapter on the secret agents
employed by him during his administration, he tells the story of one
who by the information he imparted rendered important services in
preventing the outbreak of civil war. He thus describes the motives
which led the man to pursue the course he did. "Struck with the reading,"
he writes, "of one of Cooper's novels called 'The Spy,' he aspired to
the sort of ambition which distinguished the hero of that work, and
was desirous of playing in France the part which Cooper has assigned
to Harvey Birch during the American war of independence.... Harvey
Birch--for he adopted this name in all his reports--never belied his
professions of fidelity. He rendered services which would have merited
a competent fortune; but when the term of them ended, he contented
himself with asking for a humble employment, barely enough to supply
his daily necessities." The belief in the reality of the hero has,
indeed, been part of the singular fortune of the book. In his account
of Nicaragua, published in 1852, Mr. E. G. Squier furnished incidentally
interesting testimony to the truth of this statement as well as to the
wide circulation of the tale itself. At La Union, the port of San Miguel,
he stayed at the house of the commandant of the place. His (p. 038)
apartments he found well stocked with books, and among them was this
particular novel. "The 'Espy,'" he went on to say, "of the lamented
Cooper, I may mention, seems to be better known in Spanish America
than any other work in the English language. I found it everywhere;
and when I subsequently visited the Indian pueblo of Conchagua, the
first alcalde produced it from an obscure corner of the cahildo, as a
very great treasure. He regarded it as veritable history, and thought
'Señor Birch' a most extraordinary personage and a model guerillero."
CHAPTER III. (p. 039)
1822-1826.
Cooper would have been more or less than mortal if the unexpected
success achieved by "The Spy" had not incited him to renewed effort.
It definitely determined his career, though at the time he did not
know it. As yet he was not sure in his own mind whether the favor his
book had met was the result of a lucky hit or was due to the display
of actual power. There can be no question as to the honesty of his
assertion when he published his third novel, that it depended upon
certain contingencies whether it would not be the last. But from this
time on he wrote incessantly. From 1820 to 1830, including both years,
he brought out eleven works. In many respects this was the happiest
period of his literary life as well as the most successful. During it
he produced many of his greatest creations. One decided failure he
made; but with this exception if each new story did not seem to exhibit
any new power, it at least gave no sign of weakness, or misdirection
of energy. This period is in fact so supremely the creative one of
Cooper's life as regards the conception of character and scene that
nearly all he did demands careful examination.
He first set about a task that lay near his heart. This was to describe
the scenes, the manners and customs of his native land, especially of
the frontier life in which he had been trained. In 1823, (p. 040)
accordingly, appeared "The Pioneers," itself the pioneer of the five
famous stories, which now go collectively under the name of the
"Leather-Stocking Tales." It was a vivid and faithful picture of the
sights he had seen and the men he had met in the home of his childhood,
where as a boy he had witnessed the struggles which attend the conquest
of man over nature. In it appear in comparatively rude outlines the
personages whose names and exploits his pen was afterwards to make
famous throughout the civilized world. They are in this work of a far
less lofty type than in those which followed. "The Pioneers," in
truth, though not a poor story, is much the poorest of the series of
which it forms a part. The almost loving interest he took in the
matter about which he was writing tempted the author to indulge his
recollections at the expense of his judgment. His first novel, he said
in the prefatory address to the publisher which appeared in this one,
had been written to show that he could write a grave tale, and it was
so grave that no one would read it; the second was written to overcome
if possible the neglect of the public; but the third was written
exclusively to please himself. The story as a story suffered in
consequence from the very fascination which the subject had for his
mind. So subordinate was it made, especially in the first half, to the
description of the scenes, that the details at times become wearisome
and the interest often flags.
The expectation with which the appearance of this work was awaited is
a striking proof of the impression that the previous novel had made.
It was to have been brought out as early as the autumn of 1822. But
during the summer of that year the yellow fever ravaged New York (p. 041)
and largely broke up for a time all kinds of business, including
printing. Causes beyond control still further delayed the publication,
and it was not until the first of February, 1823, that the book appeared.
The public curiosity, however, had been fully excited. Extracts from
it--according to a custom then prevalent in England--had been
furnished in advance to some of the newspapers, and though these were
not the most striking passages, they served to direct attention and
awaken expectation. At the close of January, announcement of the
precise date of publication was made. Success was certain from the
start; but the degree of it outran all anticipation. The evening
papers of the first of February were able to state that up to twelve
o'clock that day there had been sold three thousand five hundred
copies. Even at this period, with a population more than five times as
numerous, such a half day's sale, under similar circumstances, would
be remarkable. It is little wonder, therefore, that the newspapers of
that period felt that only largeness of type and profusion of
exclamation points could suitably record such a success.
"The Pioneers" was the first work to display a peculiarity of the author's
character, which came afterwards into marked prominence. Cooper in a
sense belonged to the school of Scott; and he was so far from denying
it that in one place he speaks of himself as being nothing more than a
chip from the former's block. But his life would have been far happier
and his success much greater had he followed in one respect the example
of him he called his master. Scott ordinarily did not read criticisms
upon his own writings; and when he did, he was careful not to let his
equanimity be seriously disturbed even by the severest attacks. (p. 042)
of this was no doubt due to prudence; but a good deal of it to contempt.
For of all the rubbish that time shoots into the wallet of oblivion,
contemporary criticism runs about the least chance of being rescued
from the forgetfulness into which it has been thrust. This is a result
entirely independent of its goodness or badness. If the criticism is
both destructive and just, the very death of the subject against which
it is directed causes it to perish in the ruin it has brought about.
If it is unjust, it is certain to be speedily forgotten, unless he who
suffers from it takes the pains to perpetuate its memory, or some later
investigator drags it from its obscurity for the sake of pointing out
its absurdity. The creative literature of the past is the utmost the
present can be expected to read. Its critical literature, however
celebrated in its day, is looked upon with contempt, or at best with a
patronizing approval, by the following age, which is always confident
that it at least has reached the supreme standard of correct taste,
and asks no aid in making up its judgments from those who have gone
before. But the philosophy which shows this to be true never lessened
one iota the pain which the man of sensitive nature suffers. The
extent to which Cooper was affected by hostile criticism is something
remarkable, even in the irritable race of authors. He manifested under
it the irascibility of a man not simply thin-skinned, but of one whose
skin was raw. Meekness was never a distinguishing characteristic of
his nature; and attack invariably stung him into defiance or
counter-attack. Unfriendly insinuations contained in obscure journals
could goad him into remarks upon them, or into a reply to them, which
at this date is the only means of preserving the original charge. (p. 043)
It was in his prefaces that he was apt to express his resentment most
warmly, for he well knew that this was the one part of a book which
the reviewer is absolutely certain to read. In these he frequently
took occasion to point out to the generation of critical vipers the
various offenses of which they were guilty, the stupidities that
seemed to belong to their very nature, and that utter lack of literary
skill which prevented them from giving a look of sense to the most
plausible nonsense they concocted. By Cooper, indeed, the preface was
looked upon not as a place to conciliate the reader, but to hurl scorn
at the reviewer. In his hands it became a trumpet from which he blew
from time to time critic-defying strains, which more than made up in
vigor for all they lacked in prudence. This characteristic was early
manifested. In the short preface to the second edition of "The Spy,"
he could not refrain from referring to the friends who had given him
good advice, and who had favored him with numberless valuable hints,
by the help of which the work might be made excellent. But it is the
letter to the publisher, with which "The Pioneers" originally opened,
that was the first of his regular warlike manifestoes. Though not very
long, two thirds of it was devoted to the men who had publicly found
fault with his previous works. He pointed out their discrepancies in
taste and the metaphysical obscurity of their opinions. At the
conclusion he wrote a sentence which some of them never forgot. He
told his publisher that to him alone he should look for the only true
account of the reception of his book. "The critics," said he in
continuation, "may write as obscurely as they please, and look much
wiser than they are; the papers may puff and abuse as their (p. 044)
changeful humors dictate; but if you meet me with a smiling face I
shall at once know that all is essentially well."
Little notice, however, was taken at the time of Cooper's preference
of the public opinion which showed itself in buying his books, to that
which made it its chief aim to teach him how they ought to be written.
The country was too pleased with him and too proud of him to pay any
special attention to these momentary ebullitions of dissatisfaction.
On his part so great had now become his literary activity, that before
"The Pioneers" was published he had set to work upon a new novel, of a
kind of which he can justly be described as the creator, and in which
he was to be followed by a host of imitators.
At a dinner party in New York in 1822, at which Cooper was present,
the authorship of the Waverley Novels, still a matter of some
uncertainty, came up for discussion. In December of the preceding year
"The Pirate" had been published. The incidents in this story were
brought forward as a proof of the thorough familiarity with sea-life
of him, whoever he was, that had written it. Such familiarity Scott
had never had the opportunity to gain in the only way it could be
gained. It followed, therefore, that the tale was not of his composition.
Cooper, who had never doubted the authorship of these novels, did not
at all share in this view. The very reasons that made others feel
uncertain led him to be confident. To one like him whose early life
had been spent on top-gallant yards and in becketing royals, it was
perfectly clear that "The Pirate" was the work of a landsman and not
of a sailor. Not that he denied the accuracy of the descriptions so
far as they went. The point that he made was that with the same (p. 045)
materials far greater effects could and would have been produced,
had the author possessed that intimate familiarity with ocean-life
which can be his alone whose home for years has been upon the waves.
He could not convince his opponents by argument. He consequently
determined to convince them by writing a sea-story.
We who are familiar with the countless hosts of novels of this nature
that have swarmed and are still swarming from the press, cannot realize
the apparent peril which at that time existed in this undertaking. No
work of the kind, such as he now projected, had ever yet been
published. Sailors, indeed, had been introduced into fiction, notably
by Smollett, but in no case had there been exhibited the handling and
movements of vessels, and the details of naval operations. During the
last half-century we have been so surfeited with the sea-story in
every form, that most of us have forgotten the fact of its late
origin, and that it is to Cooper that it owes its creation. That he
created it was not due to any encouragement from others. He had plenty
of judicious friends to warn him from the undertaking. Sailors, he was
told, might understand and appreciate it, but no one else would.
Minute detail, moreover, was necessary to render it intelligible to
seamen, and to landsmen it would be both unintelligible and
uninteresting on account of the technicalities which must inevitably
be found in minute detail. A reputation already well established would
be sunk in the treacherous element he was purposing to describe.
Cooper persisted in his purpose, but he could not fail to be disturbed
by the unfavorable auguries that met him on every side. These naturally
had the more weight, as they came from men who were attached to (p. 046)
him personally, and who were honestly solicitous for his fame. He was at
one time almost inclined to give up the project. But a critical English
friend to whom he submitted a portion of the manuscript was delighted
with it. In this man's judgment and taste Cooper felt so great confidence
that he was induced to persevere. Moreover, to try the effect upon the
more peculiar public of seamen, he read an extract to one of his old
shipmates, who was also a relative. This was the account of the
war-vessel working off shore in a gale. The selection was certainly a
happy one. The literature of the sea presents no more thrilling chapter
than that which, describing the passage of the great frigate through
the narrow channel, gives every detail with such vividness and power
that the most unimaginative cannot merely see ship, shore, and foaming
water, but almost hear the roaring of the wind, the creaking of the
cordage, and the dashing of the waves against the breakers. As he read
on the listener's interest kept growing until he was no longer able to
remain quiet. Rising from his seat he paced up and down the room
furiously until the chapter was finished. Then half ashamed of the
excitement into which he had been betrayed, he avenged himself just as
if he were a professional reviewer by indulging in a bit of special
criticism: "It's all very well," he burst out, "but you have let your
jib stand too long, my fine fellow." For once Cooper heeded advice. "I
blew it out of the bolt-rope," said he, "in pure spite;" and blown out
of the bolt-rope the jib appears in the tale.
He now felt reasonably confident of success, and any doubt that might
have lingered in his mind was at once swept away by the favorable
reception the work met when it came out. Its publication was for (p. 047)
a while delayed. Early in the summer of 1823 the first volume had been
finished and a portion of the second, but any further progress was checked
for the time by an affliction that then befell the author. On the 5th of
August his youngest child, Fenimore, then little less than two years old,
died at the family residence in Beach Street, New York, and this calamity
was followed by illness of his own. "The Pilot," in consequence, though
bearing the date of 1823, was not actually furnished to the trade until
the 7th of January, 1824. Its success, both in this country and in
Europe, was instantaneous. Far-sighted men saw at once that a new
realm had been added to the domain of fiction. "The Pilot" is indeed
not only the first of Cooper's sea-stories in point of time, but if we
regard exclusively the excellence of detached scenes, it may perhaps
be justly styled the best of them all. At any rate its place in the
highest rank of this species of fiction cannot be disputed, and in
spite of the multitude of similar works that have followed in its wake
and which have had their seasons of temporary popularity, its hold
upon the public has never been lost.
Cooper was without question exceptionally fortunate in the materials
with which he had to deal. He was never under the necessity of getting
up with infinite toil what the modern novelist terms his local coloring.
This existed for him ready made. He had only to call to mind the men he
had himself met, the hazards he had run, the life he had lived, to be
furnished with all the incidents and scenes and characters that were
capable of being wrought into romance. His descriptions both of forest
and of sea have all that vividness and reality which cannot well be given
save by him who has threaded at will every maze of the one and (p. 048)
tossed for week after week upon the billows of the other. Moreover, in
this particular case, while he satisfied his patriotic feeling in the
choice of the time, he displayed great judgment in the selection of
the hero. The pilot, though never named, we know to be the extraordinary
and daring adventurer, John Paul Jones, and the period is of course
the American Revolution. In his literary art, likewise, Cooper has never
been equaled by his imitators. Provided he could create the desired
effect, he dared to let the reader remain in ignorance of the details
he introduced. Enough of technicality was brought in to satisfy the
professional seaman, but not so much as to distract the attention of
the landsman from the main movement of the story. Contented with this
the author did not seek to explain to the latter what he could not
well understand without having served personally before the mast. From
this rule he never varied, save in the few cases where the interest of
the tale could be better served by imparting information than by
withholding it. He had a full artistic appreciation of the impressiveness
of the unknown. For, in stories of this kind, the vagueness of the
reader's knowledge adds to the effect upon his mind, because, while he
sees that mighty agencies are at work in perilous situations, his very
ignorance of their exact nature deepens the feeling of awe they are of
themselves calculated to produce. The wise reticence of Cooper in this
respect can be seen by contrasting it with the prodigality of information,
contained in more than one modern sea-novel, in which the whole action
of the story is arrested to explain a technical operation with the result
that the ordinary reader finds the explanation more unintelligible than
the technical operation itself.
Still, in spite of the excellence of the tales which had followed (p. 049)
it, "The Spy" continued with the majority of readers to be the most popular
of his works. This fact, coupled with his intense love of country, led
him to turn once more for a subject to his native land and to the period
in the description of which he had won his first fame. He formed, in
fact, a plan of writing a series of works of fiction, the scenes of
which should be laid in the various colonies that had shared in the
Revolutionary struggle. In pursuance of this scheme, his next work was
projected. In February, 1825, appeared "Lionel Lincoln, or the Leaguer
of Boston." The first edition had a preliminary title-page, which
contained the inscription, "Legends of the Thirteen Republics,"
followed by this quotation from Hamlet--
"I will fight with him upon this theme
Until my eyelids will no longer wag."
When the plan he had conceived was given up, this addition naturally
disappeared with it. Nothing that industry could do was spared by Cooper
to make this work a success. On this account as well as for its
reception by the public it stands in marked contrast to "The Spy." In
the preparation of it he studied historical authorities, he read state
papers, he pored over official documents of all kinds and degrees of
dreariness. To have his slightest assertions in accordance with fact,
he examined almanacs, and searched for all the contemporary reports as
to the condition of the weather. He visited Boston in order to go over
in person the ground he was to make the scene of his story. As a result
of all this labor he has furnished us an admirable description of the
engagement at Concord Bridge, of the running fight of Lexington, (p. 050)
and of the battle of Bunker's Hill. Of the last, it is, according to
the sufficient authority of Bancroft, the best account ever given. At
this point praise must stop. New England was always to Cooper an
ungenial clime, both as regards his creative activity and his critical
appreciation. The moment he touched its soil, his strength seemed to
abandon him. Whatever excellencies this particular work displayed,
they were not the excellencies of a novel. Accuracy of detail, even in
historical romance, is only a minor virtue. The modern reader is,
indeed, often inclined to doubt whether it is a virtue at all now that
modern research is constantly showing that so much we have been wont
to look upon as fact is nothing more than fable. So superior is the
imagination of man turning out to his memory that one is tempted to
fancy that instead of going to history for our fiction we shall yet
have to turn about and go to fiction for our history.
"Lionel Lincoln" is certainly one of Cooper's most signal failures. In
writing it he had attempted to do what it did not lie in the peculiar
nature of his powers to accomplish. It is the story of crime long hidden
from the knowledge of men, but dogging with unceasing activity the
memories of those concerned in it. But the secret chambers of the soul
into which the guilty man never looks willingly, Cooper could neither
enter himself nor lay bare to others. Remorse that gnaws incessantly at
every activity of the spirit, the consciousness of sin that haunts the
heart and hangs like a burden upon the life, can never well be depicted
save by him whose words suggest more than they reveal. Cooper was not
a writer of this kind. He belonged to that class of literary artists
who convey their precise meaning by exactness and fullness of (p. 051)
detail. The vagueness and indefiniteness with which this story abounds
is not, therefore, that impressive obscurity which springs from the
mysterious; it is, on the contrary, the obscurity of the unintelligible
and absurd. In all of Cooper's novels, it is a fault that the
characters are often represented as acting without sufficient motive.
In the story of adventure this can be pardoned, or at least overlooked;
for freak plays an important part in determining the movements of many
of us. It is not so, however, in tales containing a plot similar to
that of "Lionel Lincoln." The mind revolts at finding the actors in
the drama represented as having committed monstrous crimes, without
any reason that is worth mentioning. This radical defect in the plan
is not counterbalanced by any felicity in the execution. Many of the
incidents are more than improbable, they are impossible. The style,
likewise, is labored, and the conversations combine the two undesirable
peculiarities of being both stilted and dull. The characters, female
or male, are in no case successfully drawn. The inferior ones, introduced
to amuse, serve only to depress the reader. The hero in the course of
the tale does several absurd things; but he finally surpasses himself
by hurrying away from the woman he loves, without her knowledge,
immediately after he has been joined to her in marriage. The
representation of the half-witted Job--a character upon which the
author clearly labored hard--neither arouses interest nor touches the
heart. It is, indeed, impossible to feel much sympathy with one
particular imbecile, no matter how patriotic, in a story where most of
the actors are represented as acting like idiots.
Nevertheless, his reputation and the real excellence of the battle (p. 052)
battle scenes, saved this work from seeming at the time so much of a
failure as it actually was. Certainly whatever loss of credit he may
have sustained as the result of writing "Lionel Lincoln," was much
more than made up by the success of the tale that followed. In 1824 he
had gone on an excursion to Saratoga, Lake George, and Lake Champlain,
with a small party of English gentlemen. One of these was Mr. Stanley,
the future Lord Derby. As they reached Glens Falls and were examining
the caverns made by the river at that spot, Mr. Stanley told Cooper
that here ought to be laid the scene of a romance. In reply, the
novelist assured him that a book should be written in which these
caverns should have a place. The promise was fulfilled. On the 4th of
February, 1826, "The Last of the Mohicans" made its appearance. It was
composed the previous year in a little cottage then situated in a
quiet, open country, on which now stands the suburban village of
Astoria. A severe illness attacked Cooper during its progress; but
whatever effect it had upon his physical frame, it certainly did not
impair in the slightest his intellectual force. The success of the
work was both instantaneous and prodigious. Owing, perhaps, to the
novelty of the scenes and characters, it was even greater in Europe
than in America. But there was no lack of appreciation in his own
land. In the estimation of his countrymen, the novel at once took its
place at the head of his productions. An incidental fact will not only
make clear its success, but the state of the book trade at that time.
The demand for the work soon became so great and so persistent, that
in April it was decided to stereotype it.
It deserved fully the success it gained. Of all the novels written (p. 053)
by Cooper, "The Last of the Mohicans" is the one in which the interest
not only never halts, but never sinks. It is, indeed, an open question,
whether a higher art would not have given more breathing-places in this
exciting tale, in which the mind is hurried without pause from
sensation to sensation. But this is a fault, if it be a fault, which
the reader will always forgive, whatever the critic may say. The
latter, indeed, can see much to blame if he look at the work purely as
an artistic creation. He can find improbability of action,
insufficiency of motive, and feebleness of outline in many of the
leading characters. But these are minor drawbacks. They sink into
absolute insignificance when compared with the wealth of power
displayed. As they are unable to retard the unflagging interest with
which the story is read, so they do not essentially modify the
estimation of it after it has been read.
In this work two great achievements were accomplished by Cooper. The
first was the idealization of the white hunter whom he had described
in "The Pioneers." No one can read the two novels in succession without
seeing at once how much Leather-Stocking has gained in dignity. In
thought and feeling and habits he is essentially the same; but there
was given to his character a poetic elevation which raised it at once
to the front rank of the creations of the imagination, and will make
it imperishable with English literature. As he appears in "The Pioneers"
he is merely an old man who has made his home in the hills in advance
of the tide of settlement. He is the solitary hunter who views with
dislike clearings and improvements, who cannot breathe freely in streets,
who hates the sight of masses of men, who looks with especial loathing
upon the civilization whose first work is to fell the trees he has (p. 054)
learned to love, whose first exercise of power is to draw the network
of the law around the freedom and irresponsibility of forest life.
Though full of a simple and somewhat sententious morality, he is
querulous, irritable, ignorant. But in "The Last of the Mohicans,"
while the man continues the same, the aspect he presents is wholly
different. All that is weak in his character is in the background; all
that is best and strongest comes to the front. He is in the prime of
life. Ignorant he still remains of the ways of the world as found in
the settlements; but there is no trace of discontent or fretfulness.
He has full room for the exercise of his native virtues, and in the
character of the acute and daring scout he finds no superior. To him
forest and sky are an open book. Knowledge is conveyed to his ears in
every sound that breaks the stillness of the summer woods; and to his
eyes scarred rock and riven pine and the deserted nest of the eagle
have made the paths of the wilderness as plain as the broadest highway.
Nor are his moral qualities inferior to his purely professional. His
coolness never deserts him, his resources never fail him, and along
with the versatility that is never at a loss in the presence of the
unexpected is the resolution that never flinches at the approach of
the perilous.
This delineation has always met with unqualified praise. But the
idealization of the Indian character as seen in Chingachcook and Uncas
has been the subject of much controversy. This is not the place to
express an opinion upon the truth of the representation. It is enough
to say here that the view Cooper took was not hastily formed, nor was
it the result of accidental prejudices. He studied all the sources of
information accessible at that time which threw light upon the (p. 055)
Indian character. He visited the deputations from the various tribes
that passed through the state of New York on their way to the national
capital. In some instances he followed them to Washington. It is
obvious that to a man of his poetic temperament they may have appeared
in a different light from what they did to the ordinary government
agent. Certainly he never found reason to modify his views, though he
was familiar with the criticism made upon them. Toward the close of
his life he took occasion to reaffirm them. It is also to be added
that if he gave especial prominence to certain virtues, real or
imaginary, of the Indian race, he was equally careful not to pass over
their vices. Most of the warriors he introduces are depicted as
crafty, bloodthirsty, and merciless. But whether his representation be
true or false, it has from that time to this profoundly affected
opinion. Throughout the whole civilized world the conception of the
Indian character, as Cooper drew it in "The Last of the Mohicans" and
still further elaborated it in the later "Leather-Stocking Tales," has
taken permanent hold of the imaginations of men. Individuals may cast
it off; but in the case of the great mass it stands undisturbed by
doubt or unshaken by denial. This much can be said in its favor
irrespective of the question of its accuracy. If Cooper has given to
Indian conversation more poetry than it is thought to possess, or to
Indian character more virtue, the addition has been a gain to
literature, whatever it may have been to truth.
CHAPTER IV. (p. 056)
1826-1830.
With the publication of "The Last of the Mohicans," Cooper's popularity
was at its height. His countrymen were proud of him, proud that he had
chosen his native land as the scene of his stories, proud that he had in
consequence extended among all cultivated peoples its fame as well as his
own. His works were more than read. They were in most cases dramatized
and acted as soon as published. Artists vied in making incidents depicted
in them the subjects of their paintings. Poems, founded upon them or
connected in some way with them, made their appearance in the newspapers.
If in many cases these things were in themselves of no value, they at
least served to show the widespread popular interest which his writings
had aroused. Moreover, his reputation was far from being limited to his
own land. No other American, before or since, has enjoyed so wide a
contemporary popularity. Irving may have been on the whole a greater
favorite in England; but if so, it was largely due to the fact that the
subjects upon which he was employed were of special interest to English
readers, and his manner of treating them was flattering to English
prejudices. But the Continental fame of Cooper was unrivaled, and
indeed could fairly be said to hold its own with that of Walter Scott.
Long before he went to Europe himself, his works appeared (p. 057)
simultaneously in America, England, and France. They were speedily
translated into German and Italian, and in most instances soon found
their way into the other cultivated tongues of Europe. Everywhere his
ability had been recognized by those whose approbation, if it could
not confer immortality, was certain to bring with it temporary applause.
The admiration expressed for him was far less marked in England than
upon the Continent; but even there it could often be termed cordial.
It came, too, from those who, whatever estimation we may give to their
praise, did not praise lightly. From Miss Edgeworth he received
personally a tribute to his success in delineating the characters in
which her own reputation had been largely won. On reading "The Spy,"
she sent him a message, that she liked Betty Flanigan particularly,
and that no Irish pen could have drawn her better. Scott had been much
struck by the scenes and personages depicted in "The Pilot," the novel
he first read, and predicted at once the success of the sea-story and
of its creator. Many there were, even in England, who looked upon
Cooper as being equal to the great master of historical romance. "Have
you read the American novels?" wrote in November, 1824, Mary Russell
Mitford to a friend. "In my mind they are as good as anything Sir Walter
ever wrote. He has opened fresh ground, too (if one may say so of the sea).
No one but Smollett has ever attempted to delineate the naval character;
and then his are so coarse and hard. Now this has the same truth and power
with a deep, grand feeling.... Imagine the author's boldness in taking
Paul Jones for a hero, and his power in making one care for him! I envy
the Americans their Mr. Cooper.... There is a certain Long Tom who (p. 058)
appears to me the finest thing since Parson Adams." Subsequently, in
July, 1826, she spoke thus of "The Last of the Mohicans," in a letter
to Haydon: "I like it," she wrote, "better than any of Scott's, except
the three first and 'The Heart of Mid-Lothian.'" The praise, indeed,
given both then and at a later period, may often seem extravagant. In
a passage written in 1835, Barry Cornwall, not merely content with
putting Cooper at the head of all American authors, added that he may
"dare competition with almost any writer whatever."
It need hardly be said that opinions such as these were not to be found
generally in the English literary periodicals. Cooper's name was not
even mentioned in the great reviews until his fame had been secured
without their aid. The success which he won in Great Britain was not
due in the slightest to the professional critics. These men fancied
they had exhausted the power of panegyric when they went so far as to
term him the American Scott. This fact was triumphantly paraded at a
later period by a writer in Blackwood, presumably Wilson, as one of
the convincing proofs of the untruthfulness of the charge made by
Barry Cornwall, that authors from this country were treated with
systematic unfairness in English reviews. "Were we ever unjust to
Cooper?" he asked. "Why, people call him the American Scott." This
sort of patting on the back was thought a proud illustration of the
generosity of the British character, and as putting the recipient of
it under obligations of everlasting gratitude.
There is no doubt, indeed, that the reputation of Cooper suffered all
his life by the constant comparison that was made between him and (p. 059)
the great Scotch writer. It was to a certain extent inevitable; but it
was none the less unfortunate. He could never be judged by what he did;
it was always by the fanciful test of how some one else would have done
it. This was even more true of his own country than of England. Scott's
popularity was greater here than it was anywhere else. There was a
feeling akin almost to moral reprobation expressed against any one who
should presume to fancy that the best work of any native author could
equal the poorest that Scott put forth. The Continental opinion which
at that time often reckoned the American novelist as equal, if not
superior to his British contemporary, seemed to men here like a
profanation. It was, indeed, so said in direct terms.
Comparison with Scott, therefore, always put the one compared at a great
disadvantage. This, however, is a method of judging that is necessary
to some and easy to all. Genuine appreciation demands study and thought.
For these comparison is a cheap substitute. To call Cooper the American
Scott in compliment in the days of his popularity, and in derision in the
days of his unpopularity, was a method of criticism which enabled men to
praise or undervalue without taking the trouble to think. Stories were
invented and set in circulation of how he himself rejoiced in being so
designated. Great, accordingly, was the indignation felt and expressed
by these gentry at the presumption of the American author, when at a
later period he asserted that so far from taking pride in the title,
it merely gave him just as much gratification as any nickname could
give a gentleman.
It would be, moreover, far from truth to say that in this most (p. 060)
prosperous portion of his career his popularity was unmixed in his own
country. Even then his success had aroused a good deal of envy. In 1823
he was attacked, in common with many prominent citizens of New York,
in a satire called "Gotham and the Gothamites." This was the work of a
man of the name of Judah, who, in 1822, had published a dramatic poem
styled "Odofried the Outcast." The title was ominous of the fate which
the production met. The author naturally felt that the age was
unappreciative. To relieve his mind he wrote eleven or twelve hundred
lines of fresh drivel, in which he assailed everything and everybody.
The satire was of that dreadful kind which requires notes and commentaries
to point out who is hit and what is meant; and the annotation, as is
usual in such cases, took up much more space than the text. This
work--for which the author was sent to jail, though a lunatic asylum
would have been a far fitter place--is only of interest here because
it bears direct and positive evidence to the fact that at this time
Cooper was the most widely read of American authors.
But jealousy of his fame could be found among men of much higher
pretensions than this wretched poetaster. "The North American Review"
had at that time been ponderously revolving through space for several
years. It was then a periodical respectable, classical, and dull, all
three in an eminent degree. Towards Cooper it struggled in a feeble
way to be just, but for all that it was the exponent of a distinctly
unfriendly feeling. Among individuals a conspicuous representative of
this hostility was the poet Percival. He could not endure the reputation
which the novelist had acquired. Percival was a man of a good deal of
ability, of a great deal of knowledge, and of an inexhaustible (p. 061)
capacity of spinning out verse, never rising much above, nor falling
much below mediocrity, which, if mere quantity were the only element
to be considered, would have justified him in contracting to produce
enough to constitute of itself a national literature. As he invariably
proved himself entirely destitute of common sense in his ordinary
conduct, he was led to fancy that he was not merely a man of ability,
but a man of genius; and during the whole of his life he perpetually
posed as that most intolerable of literary nuisances, a man of
unappreciated genius. In spite of the fact that he had been hospitably
entertained and befriended by Cooper, he could not be satisfied, because
their common publisher looked upon the latter as the "greatest literary
genius in America." The reception given by the public to the "long, dirty,
straggling tales" of the novelist disgusted him. "I ask nothing," he wrote
in April, 1823, "of a people who will lavish their patronage on such a
vulgar book as "The Pioneers." They and I are well quit. They neglect me,
and I despise them." In a later letter he returned to this work. "It might
do," he said, "to amuse the select society of a barber's shop or a
porter-house. But to have the author step forward on such stilts and claim
to be the lion of our national literature, and fall to roaring himself and
set all his jackals howling (S. C. & Co.) to put better folks out of
countenance--why 'tis pitiful, 'tis wondrous pitiful at least for the
country that not only suffers it but encourages it." Percival, indeed, his
biographer tells us, was subsequently urged to contribute to "The North
American Review" a critical article on "The Prairie," in which simple
justice was to be done to Cooper--which phrase had, of course, its (p. 062)
usual meaning, that injustice was to be done him. The poet's customary
indecision prevailed, however; the country was spared this exhibition
of spiteful incapacity, and the novelist was left to stumble along in
uncertainty as to his precise position among men of letters.
Not but there were plenty of men anxious to show it. Especially was this
true of that class which looked upon it as the supreme effort of critical
judgment to exaggerate the value of everything written in Europe and
depreciate everything of native origin. There was a prevailing belief
among those who mistook their own individual impotence for the incapacity
of a whole people, that nothing good could come out of America. Many
showed their faith by their conduct. In 1834, Cooper himself said that
he knew of several instances in which persons had not read anything he
had written for the avowed reason that nothing worth reading could be
written by one of their countrymen. To all of these it was a subject of
some perplexity and of more annoyance that his works should be, if
anything, more popular in Europe than they were in his native land. To
account for this fact various sage reasons were early suggested and are
still occasionally heard. One of these has always been particularly
common. This was that it was the novelty of the scenes and characters
depicted that attracted attention and not the ability shown in depicting
them. At any rate, they wished it understood that if he satisfied the
European, he did not satisfy the native world: for if creative power had
been denied us, we could at least show that as a compensation we had
been supplied with a double portion of refined taste. Speaking in behalf
of the American people, these critics expressed anxiety that (p. 063)
neither at home nor abroad should Cooper be regarded as obtaining the
unqualified admiration or attaining the lofty ideal of "all of us."
Against any such impression they entered their humble protest. All that
lay in their power should be done to counteract it. This is no one-sided
statement of opinions then expressed. These very sentiments in almost
these very words can be found in reviews of that period.
Cooper at the time of writing his first novel was dwelling at Angevine.
When the success of the second made it probable that he would continue
for a while his career as an author, and possibly devote his life to it,
the necessity arose of changing his residence. His country home was
about five and twenty miles from the city, but twenty-five miles in
those days of limited mail facilities and limited means of communication
was a distance not to be tolerated. Accordingly, in 1822 he moved into
New York. Either there or in its suburbs he dwelt until his departure
for Europe. Here his youngest child, Paul, was born in 1824, and here,
as has already been mentioned, his infant son Fenimore died. His talents
and his reputation gave him at once a leading position in society. Nor
were his associates inferior men. He founded a club which included on
its rolls the residents of New York then best known in literature and
law, science and art. The names of many will be even more familiar to
our ears than they were to those of their contemporaries. All forms of
intellectual activity were represented. To this club belonged, among
others, Chancellor Kent the jurist; Verplanck, the editor of Shakespeare;
Jarvis the painter; Durand the engraver; DeKay the naturalist; Wiley the
publisher; Morse the inventor of the electric telegraph; Halleck and
Bryant, the poets. It was sometimes called after the name of its (p. 064)
founder; but it more commonly bore the title of the "Bread and Cheese
Lunch." It met weekly, and Cooper, whenever he was in the city, was
invariably present. More than that, he was the life and soul of it.
Though kept up for a while after his departure from the country, it was
only a languishing existence it maintained, and even this speedily ended
in death.
His pecuniary situation had been largely improved by his literary
success. The pressure upon his means had in fact been one of the main
reasons, if not the main reason, that had led him to contemplate
pursuing a literary life. The property left by his father had gradually
dwindled in value, partly through lack of careful uninterrupted
management. His elder brothers, on whom the administration of the estate
had successively devolved, had died. The result was, that he found
himself without the means which in his childhood he might justly have
looked forward to possessing. So far from being a man of wealth he was
in the earlier part of his literary career a poor man. From any
difficulties, however, into which he may have fallen he was more than
retrieved by the success of what he wrote. Precisely what was the sale
of his books, or how much he received for their sale, it would be hard
and perhaps impossible now to tell. He was careless himself about
preserving any records of such facts. But, besides this natural
indifference, he seemed to resent any public reference to the price paid
him for his writings as an unauthorized intrusion into his personal
affairs. Allusions even to the amount of his receipts he apparently
regarded as springing not so much from a feeling of pride in his
success, as from a desire to represent him as being under great (p. 065)
obligations to his countrymen. In some instances he was certainly correct
in so regarding it. On one occasion after his return from Europe, he
denied the truth of an assertion made in a newspaper, as to the amount
he derived from the sale of each of his novels. "It remains for the
public to decide," said he, "whether it will tolerate or not this
meddling with private interests by any one who can get the command of a
little ink and a few types." In the prefatory address to the publisher
which appeared in the first edition of "The Pioneers," he made the
statement, that the success of "The Spy," should always remain a secret
between themselves. This reticence and dislike of publicity continued
throughout the whole of his career. It extended to everything connected
with his writings. Our knowledge on these points is, therefore, both
scanty and uncertain. The size of the editions has never been given to
the public. The sale of "The Pioneers" on the morning of its publication
has already been noticed; and there are contemporary newspaper
statements to the effect that the first edition of "The Red Rover"
consisted of five thousand copies, and that this was exhausted in a few
days. But it is only from incidental references of this kind, which can
rarely be relied upon absolutely, that we at this late day are able to
gain any specific information whatever.
He was unquestionably helped in the end, however, by what in the
beginning threatened to be a serious if not insuperable obstacle. He was
unable to get any one concerned in the book trade to assume the risk of
bringing out "The Spy." That had to be taken by the author himself. In
the case of this novel, we know positively that Cooper was not only the
owner of the copyright, but of all the edition; that he gave (p. 066)
directions as to the terms on which the work was to be furnished to the
booksellers, while the publishers, Wiley & Halsted, had no direct
interest in it, and received their reward by a commission. It is evident
that under this arrangement his profits on the sale were far larger than
would usually be the case. Whether he followed the same method in any of
his later productions, there seems to be no means of ascertaining. Wiley,
however, until his death, continued to be his publisher. "The Last of
the Mohicans" went into the hands of Carey & Lea of Philadelphia; and
this firm, under various changes of name, continued to bring out the
American edition of his novels until the year 1844. It was from the
sales in this country that most of the income from his books was derived.
England, indeed, brought him a large sum, at least up to the passage of
the copyright law of 1838; but he gained little pecuniary benefit from
the wide circulation of his works on the European continent, whatever
may have been the renown. In regard to France, he said in 1834 after his
return, that he had paid in taxes to the government of that country,
during his different residences in it, considerably more money than was
obtained from the sales of the sheets of fourteen books. In Germany,
where his writings had an immense circulation, his receipts were still
less.
But whatever may have been the precise amount acquired by the sale of
his works, it was sufficient to pay off heavy debts incurred by others,
but which he was compelled to assume, to put him in an independent
position and justify him in determining to fulfill a long-cherished
desire of spending some time in Europe. Accordingly on the 1st (p. 067)
of June, 1826, he sailed with his family--consisting, with the servants,
of ten persons--from the port of New York. On the 5th of November, 1833,
he landed there on his return. His original intention was to be gone for
but five years. To the fixing of this particular time he was apparently
influenced by a remark of Jefferson, that no American should remain away
for a longer period from the country, because if he did, so rapid were
the changes, its facts would have got wholly beyond his knowledge. His
absence actually extended to a little less than seven years and a half.
Most of this time was spent in France. From Henry Clay, then Secretary
of State, he had received the appointment of consul at Lyons. He had
asked for it, because he did not wish to have the appearance of
expatriating himself; for as the service was then conducted, such a post
involved no duties and brought in no returns. His commission bears date
the 10th of May, 1826. Even this nominal position he gave up after
holding it between two and three years. No resignation of his is on file
in the State Department; but a successor was appointed on the 15th of
January, 1829. He threw up the place because he had come to entertain
the conviction that gross abuses existed in the system of foreign
appointments, and it became him to set an example of the principles he
professed.
It may be well at this point to furnish an outline sketch of his various
residences in Europe. The voyage from America lasted about a month; and
after staying a few days in England he passed over to France, on the
soil of which he first set foot on the 18th of July, 1826. Either in
Paris or its immediate neighborhood he remained until February, 1828,
when he crossed over to England. Leaving London early in June, (p. 068)
he went back to France by the way of Holland and Belgium. In July, 1828,
he left Paris for Switzerland, and took up his residence near Berne.
After spending some weeks in making excursions from that point, he
crossed the Alps in October by the Simplon Pass. The following winter
and spring he spent in Florence and its vicinity. In the summer of 1829
he sailed down the Italian coast to Naples, and after staying a few
weeks in that city, made a home for himself and his family at Sorrento
for nearly three months. The winter of 1829-30 he spent in Rome. In the
spring of 1830 he went to Venice. From that place he journeyed to Munich
by the Tyrol, and finally settled down in Dresden. From his temporary
home in Saxony, however, the July revolution speedily drew him to Paris,
and that city he made mainly his residence from that time until his
return to America in 1833. There he was, and there he stood his ground
during the terrible cholera ravages of 1832. Occasional expeditions he
made, and of one in particular, up the Rhine and in Switzerland, he has
published a full account.
It was eminently characteristic of Cooper, that though he brought with
him letters of introduction, he found himself unwilling to deliver a
single one of them. Yet, certainly, if any American could be pardoned
the use of a custom that has been so much abused, he was the man. But
after he had resided quietly in France for a few weeks, he happened to
attend a diplomatic dinner given by the United States minister to
Canning, then on a visit to Paris. This was the occasion of making his
presence known to those who had long before made the acquaintance of his
writings. He was at once sought out and welcomed by the most (p. 069)
distinguished men of the most brilliant capital in the world. The
polish, the grace, the elegance, and the wit of French social life made
upon him an impression which he not only never forgot, but which he was
afterwards in the habit of contrasting with the social life of England
and America, to the manifest disadvantage of both, and with the certain
result of provoking the hostility of each. He himself says very little
of the reception he met; but we know from other sources how cordial and
even deferential it was. He was not a man, indeed, to enjoy being
lionized, to be set up, as he expressed it, at a dinner-table as a piece
of luxury, like strawberries in February or peaches in April. But he was
in a capital where attention is always paid to ability, though rarely
with noisy demonstration. He received his full share of it. Without
mentioning numerous other evidences, the conspicuous position he held is
evident from the way Scott speaks of him in his diary. He mentions
meeting him one evening at the Princess Galitzin's in November, 1826.
"Cooper was there," said he, "so the Scotch and American lions took the
field together."
But of all the countries in which he resided he grew to be fondest of
Italy. This was partly due to the fact that there he could indulge to
the full extent two passions that had come to be a part of his
nature--the love of fine skies, and of beautiful scenery. His feelings
in regard to this country and to France he expressed on one occasion
with a courtliness that was wholly free from the insincerity of the
courtier's art. In November, 1830, shortly after his return to Paris
from Germany, he was presented to the royal family. The Queen of Louis
Philippe, who was the daughter of Ferdinand I., of the Two (p. 070)
Sicilies, asked him of all the lands visited by him which he most
preferred. "That in which your majesty was born," was the reply, "for
its nature, and that in which your majesty reigns for its society."
There was not in this the slightest compliment, if by compliment
anything is meant inconsistent with the severest truth. "Switzerland,"
he said afterward, "is the country to astonish and sometimes to delight;
but Italy is the land to love." During the nearly two years he remained
there, its scenery, its climate, its recollections, and also its people,
were constantly gaining a hold upon his heart. No country did he ever
leave with so much regret; and when he came to take his final departure,
his feelings were such as are experienced by him who is on the point of
bidding farewell to a much-loved home. When he passed into the valley of
the Adige on his journey to the Tyrol, in 1830, he reversed the usual
practice of the traveler who has his eyes fixed only on what is to come.
He turned around to cast a last lingering glance at the land he was
about to leave behind. Italy was the only country, his wife told him,
that she had ever known him to quit looking over the shoulder. His
regard for the people was, perhaps, intensified by the reaction against
the estimation in which he had been wont to hold them. "The
vulgar-minded English,"--he said in one of those deliciously irritating
and double-acting sentences he was afterward in the habit of frequently
uttering--"talk of the damned Italians, and the vulgar-minded American,
quite in rule, imitates his great model." Certainly his prejudices
against the inhabitants of that country were soon swept away. He
contrasted them favorably with all their neighbors. They were (p. 071)
more gracious than the English, more sincere than the French, and
infinitely more refined than the Germans. In grace of mind, and in love,
and even knowledge of the arts, a large portion of the common Italians
were, in his opinion, as much superior to the Anglo-Saxons as
civilization is to barbarism. He came in time to have a sort of fondness
even for the professional mendicants. He furnishes us a curious picture
of the beggars who assembled about his residence daily in Sorrento, to
whom he invariably gave a grano apiece. The company, starting out from
one or two, had been steadily reinforced by recruits from far and near,
till it ran up to the neighborhood of a hundred men, who regularly
presented themselves for their pittance. There is no more graphic
description in his writings than his account of the scene which took
place when a new-comer among the beggars had the indiscretion, on
receiving his grano, to wish the giver only a hundred years of life; the
indignation of the king of the gang at this exhibition of black
ingratitude; the tumult with which the blunder was corrected, and the
shouts and outcries with which the pitiful hundred was changed into a
thousand years, and long ones at that.
During this time his literary activity was unceasing. Before the close
of 1830 he had completed four novels: "The Prairie," "The Red Rover,"
"The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish," and "The Water Witch,"--all of which were
devoted to the delineation of scenes and characters belonging to his
native land. Before he started for Europe he had begun a new Indian
story. This was finished during his early residence in Paris. He had
felt it to be a hazardous venture to bring into "The Last of the
Mohicans" the personages who had been previously drawn in "The (p. 072)
Pioneers." But so great had been his success, and so strongly had the
characters taken hold of him, that he determined to renew the experiment
for a third time. Leather-Stocking, accordingly, was introduced as
living in extreme old age on the Western prairies, and the book ends
with his death. The idea of transferring the home of the worn-out hunter
to these vast solitudes was suggested, it is fair to infer from Cooper's
own words, by the actual career of Daniel Boone, the Kentucky pioneer.
The simple story of this man's life was sufficiently remarkable; but in
the exaggerated accounts of it that were then current, he was
represented as having emigrated, in his ninety-second year, to an estate
three hundred miles west of the Mississippi, because he found a
population of ten to the square mile inconveniently crowded.
On the 17th of May, 1827, "The Prairie" was published. It did not meet
with the extraordinary success of "The Last of the Mohicans," nor has it
ever been as great a favorite with the general public. It was written in
a far more quiet and subdued vein. It never keeps up that prolonged
strain upon the feelings which characterizes the work that preceded it,
and which while a defect in the eyes of some is to most readers its
special charm. There are, indeed, in many of Cooper's stories,
situations more thrilling and scenes more stirring than can be found in
"The Prairie," though in it there is no lack of these. But of all his
tales it is much the most poetical. Man sinks into insignificance in the
presence of these mighty solitudes; for throughout the whole book the
immensity of nature hangs over the spirit like a pall. Nor were the
characters of the principal personages out of harmony with the atmosphere
that envelopes the scenes described. In the lonely hunter, now (p. 073)
nearing his grave, there is a pathetic grandeur, which is a natural
development, and not an artificial addition. Though he has hurried as
far away as possible from the din of the settlements, he is no longer
querulous and irritable as in his old age in the Otsego hills. He has
learned to recognize the inevitable. While he does not cease to regret,
he has ceased to denounce. He knows that the majestic solitude of nature
will not long remain undisturbed, nor its more majestic silence unbroken;
for in every wind that blows from the East he hears the sound of axes and
the crash of falling trees that herald the march of civilization across
the continent. He sorrows at the ruin impending on all that is dearest to
his heart; but he awaits it in dignified submission. In fine contrast to
him stands the man who has likewise sought the solitude of the wilderness,
not because he loves the beauty and the majesty of primeval nature, but
because he hates the restraints that human society has thrown about the
indulgence of human passions. Criticism has rarely done justice to the
skill and power with which Cooper has drawn the squatter of the prairies,
who holds that land should be as free as air; who has traveled hundreds of
miles beyond the Mississippi to reach a place where title-deeds are not
registered and sheriffs make no levies; who neither fears God nor regards
man; to whom the rule of the rifle is the supremest law; and yet who, with
all his detestation of the safeguards which society has erected for its
security, has a moral code and a rough wild justice of his own.
"The Prairie" was followed by "The Red Rover," which came out on the 9th
of January, 1828. During the years that followed the publication (p. 074)
of "The Pilot," the reputation of that work had been steadily increasing.
Time had more than confirmed the first favorable impression. Not only
had any lingering prejudice against the sea-story as a story been
entirely swept away, but tales of this kind were beginning to be the
fashion. Imitators were springing up everywhere. It was natural, therefore,
for Cooper to turn his attention once more to a kind of fiction to the
composition of which he himself had originally opened the way. After
leaving the navy he had become one of the owners of a whaling vessel,
and in it had made one or two voyages to Newport. In the harbor of that
place he fixed the introduction of his new story of the sea. He had
taken up his residence during the summer of 1827 in the little hamlet of
St. Ouen on the Seine, not far from Paris. There, in the space of three
or four months, "The Red Rover" was written. From the date of its
appearance to the present time it has always been justly one of the most
popular of his productions, and perhaps, considered as a whole, stands
at the head of his sea-tales.
On the 6th of November, 1829, succeeded an Indian story of King Philip's
war, under the name of "The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish." The fanciful title
puzzled, and did not altogether please, the public. As a matter of fact
it was used only in this country. In England the novel was called "The
Borderers;" in France "The Puritans of America, or the Valley of
Wish-ton-Wish." This work was begun during his residence in Switzerland
in 1828, and was completed at Florence. It has never been popular,
particularly in America. The tale is a tragic one throughout, and the
prevailing air of sombreness is rarely lightened by any success in the
management of minor incidents. The introduction too was marked by (p. 075)
one of Cooper's besetting faults, intolerable prolixity. But the main
cause of his failure lay in his inability to delineate the Puritan
character. It was not knowledge that was wanting, it was sympathy; or
perhaps it is better to say that it was his lack of sympathy which
prevented his having any genuine knowledge. He tried in all honesty to
depict the men who had founded New England, the men of hard heads and
iron hearts, in whom piety and pugnacity were, as in himself, so
intimately blended that the transition from the one to the other is a
vanishing line whose discovery defies the closest scrutiny. Paradoxical
as the assertion may seem, he was too much like the Puritans to do them
justice. His character was essentially the same as their own; but the
influences under which he had been trained were altogether different.
Upon their manners, their ideas, and even their appearance he had early
learned to look with aversion; and he had not the power to project his
mind out of the circle of notions and prejudices in which he had been
brought up. The very name of the Reverend Meek Wolf which he bestowed in
this story upon his clergyman, revealed of itself the existence of
feelings which put him at once out of that pale of sympathetic thought,
which enables the novelist or historian to look with the insight of the
spirit upon men and motives which his intellect acting by itself would
prompt him to distrust and dislike.
To this tale succeeded "The Water Witch." This was begun at Sorrento and
finished at Rome, a city which he subsequently used often to speak of as
the precise moral antipodes of the capital of the New World, in the
harbor of which he had laid much of the scene of this story. It (p. 076)
was not till he reached Dresden, however, that he was enabled to have
it put in print. On the 11th of December, 1830, it made its appearance
in this country. With it ended for a time his fictions that dealt with
American life and manners. He now turned to new fields and wrote with
different aims.
* * * * *
During all these years his popularity had continued unabated, though his
last two novels could hardly be said to have met with the favor which
had been accorded to most of those which had preceded them. It is
certainly a convincing proof of the wide reputation he had gained before
he went to Europe, that five editions of "The Prairie," the first work
he wrote after his arrival, were arranged to be published at the same
time. Two were to come out in Paris, one in French and one in English;
one in London; one in Berlin; and one in Philadelphia. But even this
success was soon surpassed. It is hard to credit the accounts that are
given on unimpeachable testimony. One statement, however, is too
important to be overlooked, coming from the source it does. In the
controversy going on in this country in 1833, in regard to the part
Cooper had taken in the finance discussion, which will be mentioned in
its proper place, Morse, the inventor of the electric telegraph,
published a letter in defense of his absent friend. In it he bore
witness in the following words to the popularity of the novelist in the
Old World: "I have visited, in Europe, many countries," said he, "and
what I have asserted of the fame of Mr. Cooper I assert from personal
knowledge. In every city of Europe that I visited the works of Cooper
were conspicuously placed in the windows of every bookshop. They (p. 077)
are published as soon as he produces them in thirty-four different
places in Europe. They have been seen by American travelers in the
languages of Turkey and Persia, in Constantinople, in Egypt, at
Jerusalem, at Ispahan."
CHAPTER V. (p. 078)
1830.
The month of December, 1830, which saw the publication of "The Water
Witch," closed the first and far the most fortunate decade of Cooper's
literary life. In the decade which followed began that career of
controversy which lasted, with little intermission, until his death. By
it his reputation and his fortunes were profoundly affected. It worked a
complete revolution both in the sentiments with which he regarded others,
and in the sentiments with which others regarded him. The most intense
lover of his country, he became the most unpopular man of letters to
whom it has ever given birth. For years a storm of abuse fell upon him,
which for violence, for virulence, and even for malignity, surpassed
anything in the history of American literature, if not in the history of
literature itself. Nor did the effect of this disappear with his life.
The misrepresentations and calumnies, which were then set in motion,
have not ceased to operate even at this day. Full as marked, still, was
the influence which the controversies, in which he was engaged, had upon
his literary reputation. A direct result of them at the time was not
only to impair the estimation in which his previous writings had been
held, but to cause the later productions of his pen to be treated with
systematic injustice. Both in England and America the effect of this
hostile criticism has not yet died away.
On the other hand, it was no one-sided contest that took place. (p. 079)
If Cooper was attacked, he, in turn, did his part in attacking. No man
has ever criticised his own country more unsparingly, and in some
instances more unjustly, than did he, who, in foreign lands, had been
its stoutest and most pronounced defender. Nor, in the controversies
that followed his return from Europe, did one side conduct itself with
perfect righteousness, and the other with deliberate villainy. Had the
parties but seen fit to act in this manner, the duties of a biographer
would have been sensibly lightened. A fair and dispassionate account of
the circumstances that led to the unpopularity which clouded, though it
could hardly be said to darken, Cooper's later life, demands a full and
careful examination of many facts which, in some instances, seem to have
no relation to the subject. Especially is a knowledge of the European
estimate of America during the period that the novelist resided abroad a
matter of first importance. But even of as great importance is a
knowledge of certain traits of his character and of certain sentiments
which he strongly felt, and of certain beliefs which he earnestly held.
To bring out these points clearly, it is necessary for a while to arrest
the progress of the narrative.
It is to be remarked at the outset that the first impression which Cooper
made upon strangers was rarely in his favor. To this we have the
concurrent testimony of those who knew him slightly, and of those who
knew him well. It was due to a variety of causes. He had infinite pride,
and there was in his manner a self-assertion that often bordered, or seemed
to border, upon arrogance. His earnestness, moreover, was often mistaken
for brusqueness and violence; for he was, in some measure, of that (p. 080)
class of men who appear to be excited when they are only interested. The
result was that at first he was apt to repel rather than attract. Without
referring to other evidence, we need here only to quote the guarded
statement of one of his warmest friends in describing the beginning of
their acquaintance. "I remember," says Bryant, "being somewhat startled,
coming, as I did, from the seclusion of a country life, with a certain
emphatic frankness in his manner which, however, I came at last to like
and to admire." But besides this he had other characteristics which, to
the majority of men, could not be agreeable. Thoroughly grounded in his
own convictions, positive and uncompromising in the expression of them,
he had no patience with those--and the number is far from being a small
one--who embrace their views loosely, hold them halfheartedly, or defend
them ignorantly. The opinions of such he was not content, like most men of
ability, with quietly and unobtrusively despising. The contempt he felt he
did not pay sufficient deference to human nature to hide. It was inevitable
that the self-love of many should be offended by the arbitrariness and
imperiousness with which he overrode their opinions, and still more by
the unequivocal disdain manifested for them. It must be conceded, also,
that to those for whom he felt indifference or dislike, he had in no
slight degree that capacity of making himself disagreeable which
reaches, and then only in rare instances, the ripened perfection of
offensiveness in him who has breathed from earliest youth the social air
of England. These were traits that were sure to make him enemies in
private life. In public life, moreover, the ardor of his temperament was
such as to hurry him into controversy; and the number of those (p. 081)
hostile to him on personal grounds, was always liable to receive
accessions from men who had never seen him face to face. No gage of
battle could be thrown down which he did not stand ready to take up.
Opposition only inflamed him; it never daunted him. He had not the
slightest particle of that prudence which teaches a man to keep out of
contests in which he can gain no advantage, or in which success will be
only a little less disastrous than defeat. It hardly needs to be said
that a politic line of conduct is usually the very last which a person
of such a temperament follows. But when to all these characteristics is
added a peculiar sensitiveness to criticism, it is evident that if
proper opportunities are offered, personal unpopularity will be certain
to result from the ample materials existing for its development.
Against this view of his character, it is fair to add here that he had
many qualities which would tend to bring about an entirely opposite
result. He was more than ordinarily generous; and gave with a liberality
that went at times beyond what most men would look upon as prudence. He
was prompt to relieve merit that stood in need of help. Many cases of
this kind there are unpublished and unknown out of a very small circle;
for Cooper was not one to let his left hand know what his right hand was
doing. One fact, however, has been so often mentioned, that it is
violating no sanctity of private life to repeat it here. He was the
first to discover the excellence of Greenough and to make that sculptor
known to his countrymen. "Fenimore Cooper saved me from despair," wrote
the latter in 1833, "after my second return to Italy. He employed me as
I wished to be employed; and has up to this moment been a (p. 082)
father to me in kindness." To this generosity, it is to be added that
his sense of personal honor was of the loftiest kind. It was sometimes,
indeed, carried to an extreme almost Quixotic; so that men morally
fat-witted could not even comprehend his principles of action, and men
who contented themselves with conventional morality resented his
assertion of them as a reflection upon themselves. His loyalty to those
who had become dear to him was, moreover, just as conspicuous as his
loyalty to what he deemed right. It withstood every chance of change,
every accident of time and circumstance, and only gave way on absolute
proof of unworthiness. Intimate acquaintance was sure to bring to Cooper
respect, admiration, and finally affection. Few men have stood better
than he that final test of excellence which rests upon the fact that
those who knew him best loved him most. Yet even these were often forced
to admit, that it was necessary to know him well to appreciate how
generous, how true, and how lofty-minded he was.
Besides these traits of character, it is important to understand some of
Cooper's political and social opinions. He was an aristocrat in feeling,
and a democrat by conviction. To some this seems a combination so
unnatural that they find it hard to comprehend it. That a man whose
tastes and sympathies and station connect him with the highest class,
and to whom contact with the uneducated and unrefined brings with it a
sense of personal discomfort and often of disgust, should avow his
belief in the political rights of those socially inferior, should be
unwilling to deny them privileges which he claims for himself, is
something so appalling to many that their minds strive vainly to grasp
it. But this feeling was so thoroughly wrought into Cooper's (p. 083)
nature that he almost disliked those of his countrymen whom he found not
to share in it. "I confess," he wrote at the time when he was generally
denounced as an aristocrat, "that I now feel mortified and grieved when
I meet with an American gentleman who professes anything but liberal
opinions as respects the rights of his fellow-creatures." He went on to
explain that by liberal opinions he meant "the generous, manly
determination to let all enjoy equal political rights, and to bring
those to whom authority is necessarily confided under the control of the
community they serve." He despised the cant that the people were their
own worst enemies. So far from it, he believed in widening the
foundations of society by making representation as real as possible, and
thereby giving to every interest in the state its fair measure of power;
for no government, in his eyes, could ever be just or pure in which the
governors have interests distinct from those of the governed. These
opinions he put sometimes in an extreme form. "I have never yet been in
a country," he said, "in which what are called the lower orders have not
clearer and sounder views than their betters, of the great principles
which ought to predominate in the control of human affairs." At the same
time his belief in democracy was not in the least one of unmixed
admiration. He was far from looking upon it as a perfect form of
government. It was only the one that, taking all things into
consideration, was attended with fewer evils and greater advantages than
any other. It had faults and dangers peculiar to itself. His liberal
opinions, he took frequent care to say, had nothing in common with the
devices of demagogues who teach the doctrine, that the voice of (p. 084)
the people is the voice of God; that the aggregation of fallible parts,
acting, too, with diminished responsibilities, forms an infallible whole.
Along with this clear understanding of the advantages and disadvantages
of democracy there was mingled, however, a weakness of feeling on the
subject of position, which occasionally degenerated into an almost
ridiculous pettiness. This was especially true of his later life. His
utterances were sometimes so apparently contradictory, however, that it
is hard to tell whether justice has been done to his real meaning on
account of the difficulty of ascertaining what his real meaning was. But
he spoke often of "the gentry of America," as if there were or could be
here a class of gentlemen outside and independent of those engaged in
professions or occupations. He seemed at times to attach that supreme
importance to descent which we are usually accustomed to see exhibited
in this country only by those who have little or nothing else to boast
of. His contempt of trade and of those employed in it had frequently
about its expression a spice of affectation. Moreover, he subjected
himself to much misrepresentation and ill-will by the manner in which he
lectured his countrymen on the distinctions that must prevail in
society. There are certain things which are everywhere recognized and
quietly accepted: they only become offensive when proclaimed. A man may
unhesitatingly acquiesce in his inferiority, socially, to one who is
politically only his equal; but he will very naturally resent a
reference, by the latter, to the fact of his social inferiority. A good
deal of Cooper's later writings was deformed by solemn commonplaces on
the inevitable necessity of the existence of class distinctions. This
drew upon him the condemnation of many who did not look upon the (p. 085)
expression of such views as an offense against truth, but as an offense
against good manners. To correct the folly of fools was itself folly; and
wise men, no matter what their station in life, did not thank him for
the instruction, the very giving of which implied an insult to their
intelligence. His remarks on the subject were never heeded, if indeed
they were ever read, by those for whom they were specially designed. But
to his enemies they furnished ample opportunities for misrepresentation
and abuse.
But any account of Cooper would be of slight value that failed to take
notice of his love of country. No other man of letters has there been in
America, or perhaps in any other land, to whom this has been a passion
so absorbing. It entered into the very deepest feelings of his heart.
Even in the storm of calumny, which fell upon him in his later years, if
the flame of his patriotism seemed at times to die away, any little
circumstance was sure to revive it at once. No proclaimer of "manifest
destiny" ever had more faith than he in the imperial greatness and
grandeur to which the republic was to attain. All that in vulgar minds
took the shape of braggart boasting, was in his idealized and glorified
by his lofty conception of the majestic part which his country was to
play in deciding the destinies of mankind. In spite of short-comings he
deplored, of perils that he feared, firm in his heart was the conviction
that here was to be the home of the great new race that was to rule the
world. Other lands might look to the future with hope or doubt; his own
was as sure of it as if it lay already in its grasp. This was a
confidence that survived all changes, and despised all forebodings. The
question of slavery certainly disturbed him, but it did not shake (p. 086)
his trust. The prophecies of the dissolution of the Union, current
in Europe, he laughed to scorn. Even in the days of nullification his
faith never wavered one jot. To no one, more justly than to him, could
perpetual thanks have been voted, because he never despaired of the
republic.
Cooper's lofty views of his country he soon found were essentially
different from those entertained abroad. The knowledge of America even
now possessed in Europe is not burdensomely great. But in 1830 its
ignorance was prodigious; and the nearest approach to interest was
usually the result of something of that same vague fear which haunted
the citizens of the Roman Empire at the possible perils to civilization
that might lie hid in the boundless depths of the German forests. On the
Continent the ignorance was greater than it was in England, and Cooper
had plenty of opportunities of witnessing the exhibition of it. In the
case of the common people he was amused by it. That the whites who had
emigrated to America had not yet become entirely black; that it was
reasonable to expect that time, while it could not restore their original
hue to these deteriorated Europeans tanned to ebony, might in the
revolution of the suns elevate them to a fair degree of civilization;
these, and similar sage opinions, did not disturb him when uttered by the
philosophers of the lower classes. Yet their ignorance, great as it was,
he found not to surpass materially that of men who ought to have known
better, so long as they pretended to know at all. That the colonies had
been settled by convicts, was a common impression among the best educated.
While residing in Paris Cooper had the gratification of having his country
quoted in the French Chamber of Deputies as an example of the (p. 087)
possibility of forming respectable communities by the transportation of
criminals. Even men who sympathized with republican institutions, he
informs us, did not think of denying the fact; they denied merely the
inference. The brilliant publicist, Paul Courier, had asserted it would
be as unjust to reproach the modern Romans with being descendants of
ravishers and robbers, as it would be to reproach the Americans with
being descendants of convicts. All could not be expected, however, to be
so liberal as this constitutional reformer. The gross vices which in
foreign opinion distinguished the inhabitants of the United States, were
held to be the natural consequences of their settlement by felons.
Cooper subsequently took care to furnish the sons of the Puritans with
all needful information as to the light in which their fathers were
viewed in Europe. At the time, however, it was far different. Keenly
sensitive to his country's honor, and knowing the morals of his
countrymen to be far higher than those of the men of any other land,
derogatory statements of this kind were galling in the extreme.
But it was the English opinion that Cooper resented most bitterly. This
was partly because he believed from the community of origin and speech
it ought to be better informed, and partly because he looked upon it as
responsible for many of the absurd and erroneous impressions that
prevailed in the rest of Europe. His feelings were rendered still keener
by the direct contact with English prejudice which he had personally
during his residence abroad. The attitude of the Continent towards
America was that of supreme ignorance and indifference. But there was at
the time something besides that in the attitude of England, so far (p. 088)
certainly as it was represented by its periodical literature. In the
most favorable cases it was supercilious and patronizing, an attitude
which never permits the nation criticising to understand the nation
criticised. There was never any effort to penetrate into the real nature
of the social and political movements that were taking place on this
side of the water. Men were contented with the examination of mere
external phenomena, which, whether good or bad in themselves, belonged
to a period of growth and were certain to pass away. Not the slightest
sympathy existed with the feelings and aspirations of a people closely
allied in blood and speech, and the lack of desire involved the lack of
ability to enter into the spirit of their institutions. There was no
idea that there could be other types of character than those found on
British soil, or any room or reason for the play of other social and
political forces than were at work in British communities.
At the time, however, that Cooper took up his residence in Europe there
was more than supercilious indifference in the character of English
criticism. There was steady misrepresentation and abuse, due in a few
cases to design, in more to ignorance, in most to that disposition on
the part of all men to believe readily what they wish ardently. It made
little difference whether the writer were Whig or Tory. If anything the
open dislike of the latter was preferable to the patronizing regard of
the former. In 1804 the poet Moore visited America. He wrote home a
number of poetical epistles, in which he told his friends that he had
found us old in our youth and blasted in our prime. The demon gold was
running loose; everything and everybody was corrupt; truth, (p. 089)
conscience, and virtue were regularly made matters of barter and sale. A
succession of English travelers repeated from year to year the same
dismal story, and their statements were caught up and paraded and dwelt
upon in the English periodical press. In "The Quarterly Review," in
particular, our condition was constantly held up as an awful example of
the results of democratic institutions and universal suffrage. Certain
facts and predictions had been repeated so often that they came to be
accepted and believed by all. We spoke a dialect of the English tongue;
our manners were bad, if we could be said to have any at all; loyalty we
could know nothing about, because we had no king; religion we were
entirely devoid of, because there was no established church; the
federation was steadily tending towards monarchy; the wealthy were
longing to be nobles; and the Union could not last above a quarter of a
century. Worse than all, intrigue and bribery were sapping the national
life; or to use a still favorite phrase of the newspapers, though the
repetition of a hundred years has now made it somewhat stale, corruption
was preying upon the vitals of the republic.
There is not the slightest exaggeration in these statements. Their truth
any one familiar with the periodical literature of that period will
least of all doubt. There was a perfect agreement between those who
visited us and described us and those who drew their description from
their imaginations. Nothing distinguished the English traveler or the
English reviewer so much as his piety, and his profound conviction that
religion could not exist where it was not carefully watched over by an
established church. Besides this inevitable moral destitution, we (p. 090)
were irreclaimably given over to vulgarity. Manners there could not be
in a land abandoned to an unbridled democracy. In the most praiseworthy
instances even, men lacked that repose, that fine tact, which were found
universally in the higher orders in the mother country. The defect was
ineradicable, according to most; for it had its baleful origin in
popular institutions themselves. In justice it must be added that there
were some who, in consequence of the American passion for traveling,
entertained a mild hope that in time this rudeness would wear away, and
this total ignorance of good breeding would be enlightened by the polish
and refinement that would be picked up from the quantity to be found
scattered about foreign courts. The published correspondence of that
period is delicious in its frankness. The Englishman, writing to his
American friend, never descends from his lofty position of censor both
of great and petty morals. The inferiority of manners in this country is
a point insisted upon by the former with an assiduity and assurance that
are sufficient of themselves to make clear how high was the breeding to
which he himself had attained. It makes little difference who write the
letters. They all express the same sentiments. They all offer advice as
to the best method America can take to retrieve the good opinion of
Europe which it has lost. They are careful to say that they entertain
the kindest of feelings to the United States; that they neglect no
occasion of doing justice to the good and wise that had found there a
home. Unfortunately these are few in number; and with a lofty sense of
justice they never fail to express disapprobation in strong terms of the
vast amount to be condemned in a land which had fallen under the sway
of a reckless democracy and a godless church. One English (p. 091)
gentleman in the British military service, after being some time in this
country, writes, after his return, to an American friend, and thus
cheerfully records his impressions. "The frightful effects produced by
an unrestrained democracy," he says, "the demoralizing effects produced
by universal suffrage never appeared to me so odious as they do now by
contrast with the good breeding, the order and mutual support which all
give to each other in this country, from the highest to the lowest."
This letter belongs to the year 1839, and it only continues a line of
remark common for the half-century previous. Everything that came from
America, if praised at all, was praised with a qualification. Not a
compliment could be uttered of an individual without an implied
disparagement of the land that gave him birth. The record of every man
who was well received in English society will bear out this assertion.
Scott wrote to Southey in 1819, that Ticknor was "a wondrous fellow for
romantic lore and antiquarian research, _considering his country_." Even
words of genuine affection were often accompanied with an impertinence
which has a delightfulness of its own from the utter unconsciousness on
the part of the writer or speaker of having said anything out of the
way. They were compliments of the kind which intimated that the person
addressed was a sort of redeeming feature in a wild waste of desert.
"You have taught us," writes in 1840 Mrs. Basil Montagu to Charles
Sumner, "to think much more highly of your country--from whom we have
hitherto seen no such men."
There is nothing to be gained in raking over at this day the ashes of
dead controversies and revilings. Americans no longer read the (p. 092)
writings of the kind described, and Englishmen have largely forgotten
that they were ever written. The new commentators on our habits and
customs have taken up a new line of remark, and the new prophets of woe
foresee an entirely new class of calamities. But it has been necessary
to revive here the memory of the old charges and forebodings, in order
to show the state of feeling that would be developed by them in a man of
a peculiarly sensitive and proud nature, such as was the subject of this
biography. Rubbish as they may seem now, they were to the men of that
time a grievous sore. Whatever may have been Cooper's feelings previously,
it was not until after he had resided for a while in Europe that any
hostility towards England is seen in his works. But there it soon began
to manifest itself, though at first rather in the way of defense than
attack. As time went on it increased rather than diminished. It largely
affected his own fortunes by the personal hostility it provoked in
return. To some extent, without doubt, his oft-repeated declaration was
true, that in the dependence then existing here upon foreign opinion,
every American author held his reputation at the mercy of the British
reviewer. It would be unjust to say that it seemed at one period almost
as if Cooper had sworn towards England undying hate. But it is certainly
a fact that he gave utterance to his inmost feelings when he described
it as a country that cast a chill over his affections, a country that
all men respected but that few men loved. Yet he had been brought up in
the school of the Federalist party, in which admiration for the
literature, policy, and morals of the motherland was taught as a duty;
in which every door was thrown open to visitors from England as an act
of hospitality due to kinsmen separated merely by the accident of (p. 093)
position. He himself tells us how, an ardent boy of seventeen, he leaped
for the first time upon the soil of Great Britain, feeling for it a love
almost as devoted as that which he bore the land of his birth, and
looking upon every native of it in the light of a brother. It did not
take him long to find out that the fancied tie of kinship was not
recognized, that it was even despised; and that if he made friends, it
must be in spite of his country, and not because of it. His connection
with the navy had also led him to be keenly sensitive to the injustice
and indignities connected with the impressment of seamen. In his first
voyage in a merchant ship he had seen two native Americans taken from
the vessel and forced into the British service. His own captain even had
on one occasion been seized, though speedily liberated. There had also
been an attempt to press a Swede belonging to the crew, on the ground
that his country and England were in alliance, and the latter had
therefore a right to his help. These were not the acts to inspire
devotion towards the people who committed or who authorized them. The
keen resentment Cooper felt for the wrongs then perpetrated upon the
American marine he afterward expressed in his novels of "Wing-and-Wing"
and "Miles Wallingford." He never forgot those early experiences. When
he came to reside in Europe he was as little disposed to forgive the
depreciation of his country which he imputed, whether justly or
unjustly, to English influence. Distrust became dislike, and dislike
deepened into hostility.
There is little doubt that with a man of Cooper's nature the revulsion
from his original feelings would tend to swing him to the opposite
extreme; that, as a consequence of that, he would often fancy (p. 094)
insult where none was intended, and impute to design conduct that was
the result of chance or even of personal timidity. But making full
allowance for this inevitable source of error, there was plenty of
reason furnished for offense to a man whose personal pride was equal to
that of the whole British aristocracy, and whose pride in his country
exceeded even his personal pride. The ignorant criticism which amused
most Americans was apt to make him indignant. No compliment, in
particular, could be paid with safety to him individually at the expense
of his country. This was a practice, however, which the Englishmen of
that day seemed to regard as the consummate crown of adulation.
Depreciation of America of any sort he resented at once. If conversation
touched upon matters discreditable to the United States--which was far
from being an uncommon topic--it was very much his practice, instead of
listening to it patiently, to bring up matters discreditable to Great
Britain. There was unquestionably ample material on both sides with
which each could blacken the other. But while this tended to make the
conversation less monotonous, it likewise tended to make the converser
less popular. Cooper lost early by his bearing in English society much
of the favor which he had won from his writings. To this we have
positive evidence. It is specifically mentioned in the sketch of his
life, which along with his portrait appeared in 1831 in Colburn's "New
Monthly Magazine." The article went on, after mentioning this fact, to
pay a tribute to his somewhat aggressive patriotism. "Yet he seems," it
said, "to claim little consideration on the score of intellectual
greatness; he is evidently prouder of his birth than of his genius; and
looks, speaks, and walks as if he exulted more in being recognized (p. 095)
as an American citizen than as the author of 'The Pilot' and 'The Prairie.'"
To a man whose heart was thus full of the future glories of the
republic, the indifference and neglect with which it was regarded could
not but be galling. Still this was nothing to the positive contempt
which often manifested itself in social slights that could be felt but
could not well be resented. This was especially noticeable in the case
of the legations, the conduct of which was largely under the control of
the home government. The English policy was here in marked contrast to
that of Russia, which, even at that early day, cultivated almost
ostentatiously friendship with America. Between the legations of these
two countries there was always the best of understandings. The direct
contrary often prevailed between the ministers of Great Britain and of
the United States. The influence of the former was frequently thought to
be exerted to the social injury of the latter. Whether true or false,
this was generally believed. Cooper certainly credited it and looked
forward to the time when the whole attitude of England would be altered.
We were then less than twelve millions in population; but the day would
come when we should be fifty millions. The existing state of things
would then be changed. You and I may not live to see it, he wrote
substantially to his friends, but our sons and grandsons will. They may
not like us any better, but they will take care to hide their feelings.
Strong resentment sometimes drove him into taking up positions he would
not in his cooler moments have maintained. "As one citizen of the
republic," he wrote, "however insignificant, I have no notion of being
blackguarded and vituperated half a century and then cajoled (p. 096)
into forgetfulness at the suggestion of fear and expediency, as
circumstances render our good-will of importance." Not one of these
slights and insults would he have the fifty millions forget. He did not
bear in mind that fifty millions could not afford to remember. It was
like asking the man of middle life to revenge upon the sons the
indignities which the boy had received from the fathers.
Cooper's residence in England was only for a few months during the first
half of the year 1828. With his feelings towards that country and with
the feeling entertained in it toward his own, nothing could have made
his stay highly pleasant. But it is one of the numerous minor falsehoods
that came to be connected with his life, that it was unpleasant. On the
contrary, his company was sought by many of the most distinguished men,
though in accordance with his usual custom he carried no letters of
introduction. At a later period he said that in no country had he been
personally so well treated as in England; he was as strongly convinced
as his worst enemy, that as an author he had been extolled there beyond
his merits; nor had he failed to receive quite as much substantial
remuneration as he could properly lay claim to. But the social
atmosphere there prevailing was not the atmosphere he loved. The poet
Moore relates in his diary a story told him by Sydney Smith of the
"touchiness" of "the Republican"--so the American novelist is styled--as
evinced by the indignation of the latter at the conduct of Lord Nugent.
This nobleman, it appears, invited Cooper to take a walk with him to a
certain street. Arriving there he unceremoniously entered the (p. 097)
house of a friend and left his companion to make his way back alone.
Cooper's resentment of the treatment may have been unwisely shown; for
though often termed an aristocrat, he never exhibited in the slightest
degree that reticence which is or is supposed to be the peculiar
characteristic of aristocracy. But few would now be found to deny that
his indignation was both natural and just, and that the act of Lord
Nugent was the act of a boor and not of a gentleman. It was certainly
unreasonable to expect that a society which could rejoice in this method
of rebuking republican pretension could itself be agreeable to a
republican. Cooper could not but be offended by the prejudices he found
existing against his country and the dislike usually felt and sometimes
expressed for it. The only man he met whom he thought well informed
about America was Sir James Mackintosh. The ignorance of some of his
friends was so great that even to him it caused amusement rather than
anger. Many readers will have heard of the practice of "gouging," with
which, according to the veracious English traveler of early days, the
native American gave the charm of diversity and diversion to a life
whose serious thoughts were wholly absorbed in the acquisition of pelf.
Some will remember the definition given of it in Grose's "Dictionary of
the Vulgar Tongue:" "to squeeze out a man's eye with the thumb; a cruel
practice used by the Bostonians in America." A curious illustration of
the belief in this myth occurred to Cooper. One of his friends in
England was an amiable and pleasant man of letters, named William
Sotheby, little heard of in these days; and even in his own days he had
to endure the double degradation of being called a small poet by the
small poets themselves. He was at this time an old gentleman of (p. 098)
over seventy, and was preparing to make a creditable close to his
career by performing the task, which seems to assume the shape of a duty
to every literary Englishman of leisure, of translating the Iliad and
the Odyssey. Not unnaturally he was more familiar with the way the wrath
of Achilles manifested itself than with the shape taken by the wrath of
the men of his race beyond the sea. On one occasion he condoled with
Cooper because of the quarrelsomeness and fighting prevalent in America,
making during this expression of his sympathy an obvious allusion to
gouging. It was useless to attempt setting him right. His interest in
ancient fiction had not been so absorbing as to close his mind to the
acquisition of modern fact; and to Cooper's denial of what he had
implied he listened with a polite but incredulous smile.
CHAPTER VI. (p. 099)
1828-1833.
Misrepresentation and abuse of his native land it was not in Cooper's
nature to bear in silence. His resentment for the imputations cast upon
his country began to show itself soon after he had taken up his
residence abroad. In "The Red Rover," which appeared in 1827, there are
satirical references to the benevolence and piety of the moral
missionaries which England had sent among us, and to the correctness and
wisdom of current foreign opinion. In the next novel, "The Wept of
Wish-ton-Wish," his feelings are still more fully expressed. In this
work he puts into the mouth of one of the characters, a physician, an
elaborate disquisition upon the degeneracy of man in America. In the
course of it the leech informs his opponent that the science and wisdom
and philosophy of Europe had been exceedingly active in the
investigation of this matter of colonial inferiority, that they had
proved to their own perfect satisfaction, which was the same thing as
disposing of the question without appeal, that man and beast, plant and
tree, hill and dale, lake, pond, sun, air, fire, and water were all
wanting in some of the perfectness of the old regions. It was plain we
could never hope to reach the exalted excellence they enjoy; and while
he respected the patriotism that held the contrary view, he could not,
out of deference to it, afford to doubt what had been demonstrated (p. 100)
by science and collected by learning.
It was not in this indirect way, however, that he could content himself
with defending his country. No sooner had he lived in Europe long enough
to become acquainted with the erroneous impressions there prevalent, in
regard to America, than he set out to prepare a work which should expose
their falsity. In it he determined to lay the precise facts before a
public which was indisposed to believe anything to the credit, and
disposed to believe everything to the discredit of democratic institutions.
On the face of it, this was a futile undertaking, no matter how
praiseworthy its motive. Nations, no more than individuals, are
convinced by what other nations say of themselves; it is only by what
they do. In this particular case the difficulty was rendered more
insurmountable by the fact that these erroneous impressions prevailed
among those who did not care enough about the matter to investigate it
seriously, and who would be certain in most cases to refrain from
investigating it at all, had they a suspicion that their preconceived
beliefs would be overthrown or even shaken, as a result of their
examination. The question naturally arises, whether such men could be
convinced by facts and arguments, and if so, whether they were worth the
trouble of convincing. Why grudge the adherents of a dying cause the
dismal enjoyment they receive from contemplating the ruin that is always
being wrought, or is always to be wrought, by Democracy to Democracy?
Experience led Cooper subsequently to see the uselessness of the
experiment he, in this instance, tried. When asked at a later period why
some efforts were not made to correct the false notions prevalent (p. 101)
in Europe in regard to America, he answered with perfect truth then,
that no favorable account would be acceptable; that it would not be
enough to confess our real faults, but we should be required to confess
the precise faults that, according to the opinions of that quarter of
the world, we were morally, logically, and politically bound to possess.
By the wide circulation of his fictions he, in truth, did more to remove
wrong impressions, dissipate prejudices, and open the eyes of Europe to
a knowledge of American life and manners, than could have been
accomplished by the longest and most ponderous array of indisputable
facts.
Facts, however, he at this time purposed to furnish. Accordingly, on the
13th of August, 1828, appeared a work entitled, "Notions of the
Americans, Picked up by a Traveling Bachelor." Whatever its actual
success, it was a relative failure. Cooper himself tells us that it
occasioned him a heavy pecuniary loss. Manner and matter, both
foredoomed it to the fate which it met. The plan of it was an unfortunate
one as well as a purely artificial one. The views and observations and
statements of fact are put into the mouth of a European traveling
bachelor, a member of a club of cosmopolites, who, in consequence of
meeting an American, named Cadwallader, is persuaded to visit and see
for himself the new world. Arriving there he writes letters to his
friends, giving an account of his impressions. The fiction of foreign
authorship was the first mistake. It could not mislead any one, nor was
it intended to mislead any one. But a grave didactic treatise which was
designed to convey a truthful impression, lost something and gained
nothing by being connected with any artifice, even though not meant to
impose upon the reader. Nor was the work interesting to one not (p. 102)
specially interested in the subject. To the American it gave the
strongest assurances of loyalty to republican institutions on the part
of her most widely-known man of letters; but it added little or nothing
to the information of which he was already in possession. On the other
hand, the laudatory style in which this country was invariably spoken of
was certain to be offensive to those whom it was the design of the work
to enlighten. The weight of matter, moreover, was not rendered any more
endurable by lightness of treatment. At the present day the work is
chiefly interesting for the keen observations that are found in it, and
for its remarks upon the future of the country rather than upon its then
existing state. Cooper's predictions were concerned with the minutest,
as well as the greatest subjects. They ranged all the way from the
indefinite assurance, that New York must eventually become the
gastronomic capital of the globe, to the precise statement, as to the
exact number of the population there would be in the United States fifty
years from the time in which he was writing. This last prophecy, it is
to be said, has turned out singularly true. He fixed the number at fifty
millions. That this was no chance guess, but a carefully worked out
computation, is evident from the fact that he repeats it several times
in this work and occasionally in later ones. He, moreover, assigned
definitely forty-three millions to the whites and seven millions to the
blacks.
It is not for an American to find fault with the laudatory tone of a
work which reflects the ardent love of country felt by the writer. Yet
in many respects it is a singular production. In manner it is calm,
grave, almost philosophical; there is not the slightest effort at (p. 103)
fine writing; the tone can never be said to be even fervid. Yet it
must be confessed that not in the most exalted of Fourth of July
orations does the national eagle scream with a shriller note, or wing
his way with a more unflagging flight. Any one who formed his notions of
this country exclusively from this book, would be sure to fancy that
here at last paradise was reopening to the children of a fallen race.
After this remark, it may seem ridiculous, and yet it is perfectly just
to say, that Cooper, so far from giving way to exaggeration in his
assertions, kept himself well within the bounds of the truth. In the
exercise of that duty which presses heavily upon every reviewer, to
seem, if not to be wiser than his author, many of the English
periodicals, even those most favorable to America, undertook to doubt
his statements of fact, to sneer at his prophecies of the future as
ludicrous exaggerations, and to term them striking and whimsical
instances of Yankee braggadocio, and of the love of building castles in
the air. Cooper could not well overstate the material prosperity and
progress of the country, nor the inability of men trained under
different conditions either to believe it or to comprehend it. Reality
soon outran some of his most daring anticipations. His most extravagant
statements were speedily more than confirmed by the operation of
agencies whose mighty results he could not foresee, because, when he
wrote, the agencies themselves did not exist. He had carefully guarded
himself in one instance, by saying that he did not expect that the
Northwest would be settled within an early period. The precaution was
unnecessary. He had been brought up in a town, founded in the
wilderness, at a distance of less than one hundred and fifty miles (p. 104)
from the commercial capital of the republic. He lived long enough to see
the frontiers of civilization pushed one thousand miles west of the line
it had held in his boyhood's home.
Any wrong impression, therefore, which the work conveyed was not due to
the spirit of braggadocio pervading it, as asserted and commented upon
by the English reviewers. No false statement was made intentionally;
there were very few that were made mistakenly. But though Cooper
purposed to tell nothing but truth about his country, he did not feel
himself under obligation to tell all the truth. The attention was almost
exclusively directed to that side of the national character which lent
itself most readily to favorable treatment. What was unfavorable was
either omitted altogether, or was very lightly passed over. One letter
alone, and that not a long one, was devoted to slavery. It is plain that
he was annoyed by it; to some extent, in spite of his confidence,
disquieted by it, though the dangers he feared were not the dangers that
actually came. Even at that early day there was enough to trouble the
lover of his country in the criticism it encountered, for the glaring
contrast between its professions of liberty and its practice; but far
more in the dimly-seen shape of that gigantic struggle which, though
itself vague and undefined, was already beginning to cast its lowering
shadow over the future of the republic. So in a similar manner the
literature, architecture, and art of America were passed over in a few
pages, while letter after letter was given up to a description of its
progress in wealth and comfort. Yet no one knew better than Cooper,--at
a later period he took care his countrymen should not forget it,--that
of all standards by which to test national glory, the material (p. 105)
standard is in itself the lowest and most vulgar; and that the
difference in real greatness between two places can never be measured by
the comparative amount of sugar, or salt, or flour sold in each. Yet he
remembered then, what later he seemed to forget, that the necessity of
conquering the continent, of making it inhabitable for man, was at the
time and must continue long to remain a very positive hindrance to the
development of literary and artistic ability, because by the immense
rewards it offered it attracted to the development of material resources
the intellect and vigor of the entire land.
Cooper tells us, as has been said, that he lost money on this work. But
there was something more than pecuniary failure that attended it. There
were in it statements which met with disfavor at home. More important
than these, however, were remarks that aroused personal hostility
abroad. He made several references, in particular, to the people of
England, and they were not of a kind to conciliate regard for himself
and his work. In one place he spoke of the society of that country as
being more repulsive, artificial, and cumbered, and, in short, more
absurd and frequently less graceful than that of any other European
nation. Theoretically, the English care nothing for foreign opinion.
They have said it so often among themselves that most of them look upon
it as a point which has been settled by the consent of mankind. But like
many other beliefs it has become an article of faith without having
become an article of practice. To this extent it is true that they care
nothing for the remarks of obscure men of which they never hear. On the
other hand, no nation is more sensitive to contemporary foreign opinion,
coming from writers of distinction. There will be plenty of (p. 106)
instances furnished in this one biography to prove fully this assertion.
Cooper's attack was never forgotten or forgiven. From this time there
was a distinctly hostile feeling manifested toward him in many of the
English periodicals. Even before his next work appeared, London
correspondents of American newspapers announced that it was going to be
severely criticised, inasmuch as the novelist had made himself unpopular
in England by the comments made and the views put forth in the "Notions
of the Americans." If this were not true, it was at least believed to be
true. Certainly the fact of hostility steadily increasing from this
period, on the part of the British press, cannot be denied, whatever we
may think of the causes that brought it about. Nor did it stop short
with depreciation of his works. Literary criticism, even if based merely
upon personal dislike, can always resort with safety to the cheap
defense that it is honest. But there were reviewers who went farther,
who framed for Cooper imaginary feelings and then proceeded to assail
him for having them. He was accused, especially, of pluming himself
highly upon the title of the "American Scott." Hazlitt, for instance,
seeing him strutting, as he terms it, in the streets of Paris, was
enabled to detect by the way the novelist walked the way he felt upon
this special matter, and afterward to state the conclusion at which he
had arrived as a positive fact. Similar specimens of fine critical
insight into Cooper's motives and sentiments can be found scattered up
and down the pages of English journals.
At the time he was bringing out "The Water Witch" in Germany, the
revolution in France took place that resulted in the expulsion of (p. 107)
the Bourbons and the calling of Louis Philippe to the throne. Paris
became at once the Mecca to which the lovers of liberty throughout
Europe resorted. Thither Cooper hastened from his home in Dresden. He
reached the city in August, 1830. There he watched with the profoundest
interest the political movements that were going on about him. The
reactionary tendencies that early began to manifest themselves in the
rule of the Citizen King, brought to him the same disappointment and the
same disgust that it did to all the ardent republicans of the Old World.
There is much in what he says to remind the reader of the feelings
expressed by Heine, who had likewise hurried to Paris after the July
revolution, and who was venting his indignation and contempt in the
columns of the Augsburg "Allgemeine Zeitung." Occasional passages bear
even a close similarity. Cooper on one occasion describes Louis Philippe
walking about among his subjects wearing a white hat, carrying a red
umbrella, and evidently laboring to act in an easy and affable manner.
"In short," he said in a phrase that might have been written by the
great German, "he was condescending with all his might."
Close upon the revolution in France followed the revolt of Poland. The
insurrection lasted about ten months, and during its progress the
feelings of Cooper were profoundly stirred in behalf of that people.
With this his personal friendship with the Polish poet, Mickiewicz, had
probably a great deal to do; for at Rome a close intimacy had sprung up
between him and that author. At a meeting, held in Paris on the 4th of
July, 1831, at which Cooper presided, a sum of money was contributed to
aid the revolters in their struggle. He presided also at other (p. 108)
meetings to advance the same cause, and acted as chairman of a committee
to raise funds to assist the Polish soldiers who were fighting for
independence, and when this failed, to relieve the exiles in their
distress. Two addresses to the American people signed by him in his
official capacity--one written in July, 1831, and the other in June,
1832--appeared in the American papers of those years; and the fervor
that characterizes them both leaves little doubt as to their authorship.
Into the great struggle going on in Europe, either openly or silently
between aristocracy and democracy, he now, indeed, threw himself with
his whole heart. In certain respects this was a disadvantage. Whenever
Cooper's feelings on political subjects were aroused, his literary work
betrayed the obtrusion of interests more dominating than those which
belong to it legitimately. This was manifested in the three tales which
followed. In them the scene of action was not only transferred to
European soil, but a direct attempt was avowedly made to apply American
principles to European facts. These novels were "The Bravo," which
appeared November 29, 1831; "The Heidenmauer," which appeared September
25, 1832; and "The Headsman," which appeared October 18, 1833. The
purpose of all these was the direct exaltation of republican
institutions, and likewise the exposure of those which paraded in the
garb of liberty without possessing its reality. The scenes of two were
accordingly laid in the aristocratic cities of Venice and of Berne. The
first of the three is generally spoken of as the best, especially by
those who have read none of them at all. Little difference will be
found, as a matter of fact, between "The Bravo" and "The Headsman" (p. 109)
as regards literary merit. "The Heidenmauer" is, however, distinctly
inferior, and is in truth one of the most tedious novels that Cooper
ever wrote. All were, however, animated by the same spirit. They all
assailed oligarchical, and lauded democratic institutions. They were
full of denunciations of the accommodating stupidity of patricians who
were never able to see anything beneficial to the interests of the state
in what was injurious to the interests of their own order. In
particular, the doctrine was held up to derision, that while to the
ignorant and the low there was ample power given to suffer, there was no
power given to understand; and that consequently it was their duty
always to obey and never to criticise.
In writing this series Cooper was undertaking what was on the face of it
a hazardous experiment. The peril was not, as thoughtless criticism has
had it, in transferring his scenes and characters to a foreign soil.
Human nature suffers no material change in passing from America to
Europe. The danger lay in the fact that these were novels written with a
purpose. The story was not told for its own sake, but for the sake of
enforcing certain political opinions. It required, therefore, unusual
skill in its construction and in the management of its details. For
whatever may be the exact truth contained in the doctrine of art for
art's sake, this is certainly clear, that in a work of fiction designed
to advance successfully any cause, or support any theory, the didactic
element must be made entirely subordinate to the purely creative
element. Otherwise we impart to the novel the tediousness of a homily
without its accepted authority. Art must be wooed as a mistress; she can
never be commanded as a slave. He, therefore, who seeks to press (p. 110)
fiction into a work so foreign to its nature as the inculcation of
political opinions, must, if he hopes to succeed, make the story suggest
the lesson without conveying it obtrusively. Above all is there need of
delicate touch and skillful handling, if the aim be to affect those who
are prejudiced against the views expressed, or whose interests are
involved in the fate of those attacked. But Cooper's was never a
delicate touch. What he thought he never insinuated; what he believed
himself he never allowed to make its way indirectly into the minds of
others. He always uttered it boldly, and sometimes offensively.
Effective this assuredly is in compositions of a certain class; but it
is entirely out of place in a work of fiction. In the case of these
particular novels the purpose is avowed openly and repeatedly. Cooper,
indeed, takes care never to let it escape the reader's attention. He may
almost be said to stand by his shoulder to jog him if he once happens to
forget that the story has a moral. American institutions, especially,
were constantly held up as models in which the best results were seen,
and which it was the policy of all other countries to imitate. The
course taken was a mark of patriotism; but it was not the way to gain
converts. It is, in truth, the misfortune of the novelist, burdened with
a moral purpose, that the reader usually feels the burden and is not
affected by the moral. It was not by methods like these that Scott threw
about chivalry and aristocracy that glamour which outlasts the most
minute acquaintance with the reality, and influences the imagination in
spite of the protest of the judgment.
But another result that followed from writing novels with a purpose, had
a more direct influence upon his reputation. It made it impossible (p. 111)
that his work should any longer be criticised fairly. This was
immediately seen in the case of "The Bravo." This novel had far more
success in Europe than in America. But the success was not of a
legitimate kind. Parties were at once arrayed for it or against it, not
because it was a good or bad production from a literary point of view,
but according as men sympathized with or were hostile to the political
principles it advocated. It was not the merit of the work that came
under consideration, but the merit of the cause. This at once destroyed
almost entirely the value of any criticism which the story received.
A little while before "The Bravo" appeared, Cooper was unwillingly led
to take part in a controversy which, according to his own view, was the
remote cause of the hostility he afterwards encountered in his own land.
It was at the time that the movement began on the part of Louis Philippe
to separate himself from the liberals, of whom Lafayette was the chief
representative. A discussion had arisen, in the French Chamber of
Deputies, on the desirability of a reduction in the expenses of
government. It gave rise to a controversy which extended much beyond the
body in which it originated. Lafayette had advocated greater economy. In
the course of the debate mentioned, he had referred to the United States
as being a country which was cheaply governed, and at the same time well
governed. The periodical press at once took up the question. M. Saulnier,
one of the editors of the "Revue Britannique," came out with an article,
the direct object of which was to prove that a government of three
powers, such as was the limited monarchy recently established, was not
so expensive as that of a republic. In particular, he claimed that (p. 112)
the tax levied per head on the citizens of France was less than that
similarly levied on the citizens of the United States. This was a direct
attack upon Lafayette, who had for forty years been maintaining that the
government of this country was the cheapest known. The attention of
Cooper was called to this article, and he was asked to reply. He
declined. A little later it was made clear to him that the object with
which it was written was to injure Lafayette. The matter then assumed
another aspect. To that statesman Cooper was bound by ties of intimate
personal friendship and by a common love of this country. At a public
dinner, which had been given to Lafayette on the 8th of December, 1830,
by the Americans in Paris, Cooper had presided, and in a speech of
marked fervor and ability, he had dwelt upon the debt due from the
United States to the gallant Frenchman, who had ventured fortune and
life to aid a nation struggling against great odds to be free. It was
not in his nature to have his deeds give the lie to his words. The fact
above mentioned at once overcame his reluctance to engage in the
controversy. Accordingly in December, 1831, appeared a "Letter to
General Lafayette," preceded by a letter from Lafayette to himself,
dated the 22d of November. This was a pamphlet of fifty pages, in which
he went into the subject of the cost of the United States government. It
produced an immediate reply from M. Saulnier, who went over the ground
again, and with a fine air of candor affected to revise his previous
statements. As a result he made the cost of the American government a
little larger than he had done before. To this Cooper replied in a series
of letters published in the "National." The controversy would (p. 113)
have ended sooner than it did, had it not been for the appearance
of a fresh actor on the scene. This was a certain Mr. Leavitt Harris. He
nominally belonged to New Jersey, but a large share of his life had been
spent in Russia, and his political notions had apparently become
acclimated to that region. He wrote an article on the subject in the
shape of a letter to M. Francois Delassert, the vice-president of the
Chamber of Deputies. In it he took ground opposite to that taken by
Cooper, controverted his facts, and denied his inferences. So great
weight was attached to it by the French government party that it was
published as a supplementary number of the "Revue Britannique." Mr.
Harris had once been left as _chargé d'affaires_ at St. Petersburg
during the absence of John Adams at the peace negotiations at Ghent. His
letter was accordingly dwelt upon as the production of an American who
had been intrusted by his government with high diplomatic position. We
who know out of what stuff our foreign agents are sometimes made, would
not be likely to attach much weight to the mere fact. But to a foreign
nation the opinion of an official seemed naturally more trustworthy than
that of a private citizen.
To the letter of Mr. Harris, Cooper replied on the 3d of May, 1832. This
closed the discussion, at least so far as he was concerned.[1] But the
controversy was followed by circumstances of a mortifying character. After
the return to America of the United States minister, William (p. 114)
C. Rives, Mr. Harris was nominated by the President, and confirmed by
the Senate early in March, 1833, as _chargé d'affaires_; and this office
he held until the arrival of Edward Livingston, who was appointed
minister on the 3d of May of the same year. Previously to this
discreditable act, the Department of State had committed one of
imbecility. It had issued a circular to the different local authorities
of the Union with avowed reference to the finance controversy. Its
purport was a request for them to furnish information in regard to the
amount of public expenditures over which they had control. Against this
course Cooper protested at once in a long and vigorous letter to the
American people, written on the 10th of December, 1832, from Vevay,
Switzerland, and first printed in the Philadelphia "National Gazette."
He took the ground that in such a discussion local burdens ought not to
be included. It was, in fact, by confusing various kinds of taxation,
and taxation for various objects, that the French government party had
been able to make any showing for their own side. The letter was widely
circulated, and seems to have served its purpose in suppressing the
information that had been asked.
[Footnote 1: I express no opinion on the merits of
this controversy, for I have seen very slight
summaries only of the articles that appeared in the
_Revue Britannique_. But it is proper to say that it
was the opinion of the French liberals, that Cooper
utterly demolished his antagonists in the
controversy.]
Unfortunately it was not the administration alone that displayed a lack
of proper sentiment in this controversy. It is far from being a
creditable thing in the history of the country that Cooper was subjected
to constant attack, and even abuse, in the American newspapers, for his
conduct in this finance discussion. He had been particularly careful to
confine his remarks to the cost of government in the United States. He
had not touched at all upon the cost of government in France. Yet he
was charged with having overstepped the reserve imposed upon (p. 115)
foreigners, and of having attacked the administration of a friendly
country. The accusation was constantly made against him that he went
about "flouting his Americanism throughout Europe," and in this
particular case that he had overrated the importance of the controversy,
and also the importance of the part he had taken in it. He had, in fact,
aroused the hostility of that section of Americans, insignificant in
number and ability, but sometimes having social position, who prefer the
conveniences of despotism to the inconveniences of liberty. To such men
Cooper's intense nationality was a standing reproach. His reputation,
moreover, made their
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