Children's Stories in American Literature, 1660-1860 Part 2

The little hamlet lay far away from the highways of travel. The nearest villages were miles distant and only to be reached on foot or on horseback through miles of unbroken forest. A visitor was rare, and meant perhaps a warning that the Indians were on the war-path.

Occasionally a new settler drifted into the little valley, and the village grew slowly through the lad's boyhood, Otsego Hall keeping its dignity as the Manor House. Sometimes a visitor of note brought news of the great political troubles in Europe, and thus Cooper met many men of distinction whose visits seemed to bring the great world very close to the little settlement. This glimpse of a broader life, with attendance at the village school and an intimate companionship with nature, made up his early education. It was not bad training for the future novelist. The acquaintanceship of celebrated men widened his horizon and fed his imagination; his daily life kept his mind fresh and active with the spirit that was fast turning the uninhabited regions of the frontier into busy settlements; and the familiar intercourse with nature kept pure the springs of poetry that lie in every child's heart. He learned wood-lore as the young Indian learned it, face to face with the divinities of the forest. He knew the calls of the wild animals far across the gloomy wilderness. He could follow the deer and bear to their secluded haunts. He could retrace the path of the retreating wolf by the broken cobwebs glistening in the early sunlight; and the cry of the panther high overhead in the pines and hemlocks was a speech as familiar as his own tongue. When he was thirsty he made a hunter's cup of leaves and drank in the Indian fashion. When fatigued he lay down to rest with that sense of security that comes only to the forest bred. When thoughtful he could learn from the lap of the waves against the sh.o.r.e, the murmur of leaves, and the rustle of wings, those lessons which nature teaches in her quiet moods.

These experiences and impressions sank into Cooper's heart, and were re-lived again long after in the pages of his romances.

While still a boy Cooper went to Albany to study, and in 1803 entered Yale College, at the age of thirteen.

He played as much and studied as little as he possibly could, and the first year's preparation perhaps accounts for his dismissal from college in his junior year. This in turn led to a life much more to his liking. His father took his part in the trouble at Yale, but was now anxious to see his son embarked on the serious business of life.

Both father and son liked the idea of a naval career for the boy, and it was decided that Cooper should go to sea. He left New York in the autumn of 1806 on a vessel of the merchant marine. There was then no Naval Academy in America, and a boy could fit himself for entering the navy as an officer only by serving before the mast. Cooper was away nearly a year, his ship, the Sterling, visiting London, Portugal, and Spain, carrying cargoes from one port to another in the leisurely manner of the merchant sailing-vessels of that day. It was a time of peculiar interest to all seamen, and his mind was keenly alive to the new life around him. The English were expecting a French invasion, and the Channel was full of ships of war, while every southern port was arming for defence. The Mediterranean was terrorized by the Barbary pirates, who, under cover of night, descended upon any unprotected merchant vessel, stole the cargo, scuttled the ship, and sold the crew into slavery, to Tripolitan and Algerine husbandmen, whose orchards of date and fig were cultivated by many an American or English slave.

Cooper saw all this and remembered it, being even then a student of men and events. His work was hard and dangerous; he was never admitted to the cabin of the ship; in storm or wind his place was on the deck among the rough sailors, who were his only companions. But this training developed the good material that was in him, and when in 1808 he received his commission as midshipman he was well equipped for his duties.

Cooper remained in the navy three years and a half. He spent part of this time at the port of Oswego, Lake Ontario, superintending the building of a war vessel, the Oneida, intended for the defence of the Canadian frontier in case of a war with England. The days pa.s.sed in this wild region were not fruitless, for here in the solitude of the primeval forest Cooper found later the background of a famous story.

It was the land of the red man, and during the long winter months of his residence there Cooper dwelt in spirit with the wild natives, though he little dreamed that he was to be the historian that would give the story of their lives to a succeeding generation. Cooper saw no active service during the time, and resigned his commission on his marriage.

Several succeeding years were pa.s.sed partly in Westchester County, his wife's former home, and partly in Cooperstown. Here he began the erection of a stone dwelling, in Fenimore, a suburb of the old village. While living at Scarsdale, Westchester County, N. Y., he had produced his first book. Already thirty years old, a literary career was far from his thoughts. This first novel was merely the result of a challenge springing from a boast. Reading a dull tale of English life to his wife, he declared that he could write a better story himself, and as a result produced a tale in two volumes, called _Precaution_.

It was founded upon English society life, and it obtained some favorable notices from English papers. But it showed no real talent.

But in the next year, 1821, he published a story foreshadowing his fame and striking a new note in American literature. At that time Americans still cherished stirring memories of the Revolution. Men and women could still recall the victories of Bunker Hill and Trenton, and the disasters of Monmouth and Long Island.

Cooper's own first impressions of life were vivid with the patriotism that beat at fever heat during his youth, when the birth of American independence was within the recollection of many. In choosing a subject for fiction Cooper therefore naturally turned to the late struggle, and American literature owes him a large debt for thus throwing into literary form the spirit of those thrilling times. This novel, _The Spy_, was founded upon the story of a veritable spy who had been employed by the Revolutionary officer who related to Cooper some of his daring adventures. Taking this scout for a hero Cooper kept the scene in Westchester and wove from a few facts the most thrilling piece of fiction that had yet appeared in the United States.

The novel appeared in December, 1821, and in a few months it had made Cooper famous both in America and Europe. It was published in England by the firm which had brought out Irving's _Sketch Book_, and it met with a success that spoke highly for its merit, since the story described English defeat and American triumphs. The translator of the Waverley novels made a French version, and before long the book appeared in several other European tongues, while its hero, Harvey Birch, won and has kept for himself an honorable place in literature.

Cooper had now found his work, and he continued to ill.u.s.trate American life in fiction. His most popular books are the _Leather Stocking Tales_ and his novels of the sea. The _Leather Stocking Tales_ consist of five stories, _The Deerslayer_, _The Last of the Mohicans_, _The Pathfinder_, _The Pioneers_, and _The Prairie_, concerning the same hero, Leatherstocking.

In _The Deerslayer_ the hero of the series makes his appearance as a youth of German descent whose parents had settled near a clan of the Mohegans on the Schoharie River. At a great Indian feast he receives the name Deerslayer from the father of Chingachgook, his Indian boy friend, and the story is an account of his first war-path. The tale was suggested to the author one afternoon as he paused for a moment while riding to gaze over the lake he so loved, and whose sh.o.r.es, as he looked, seemed suddenly to be peopled with the figures of a vanished race. As the vision faded he turned to his daughter and said that he must write a story about the little lake, and thus the idea of Deerslayer was born. In a few days the story was begun. The scene is laid on Otsego Lake, and in the tale are incorporated many tender memories of Cooper's own boyhood. It portrays Leatherstocking as a young scout just entering manhood, and embodies some of the author's best work. Perhaps no one was so well-fitted to ill.u.s.trate the ideal friendship between Deerslayer and Chingachgook as he, who in his boyhood stood many a time beside the lakeside as the shadows fell over the forest, not knowing whether the faint crackling of the bushes meant the approach of the thirsty deer, or signalled the presence of some Indian hunter watching with jealous eye the white intruder.

In _The Last of the Mohicans_, Leatherstocking, under the name Hawkeye, is represented in the prime of manhood, his adventures forming some of the most exciting events of the series. Here his old friend Chingachgook and the latter's son Uncas follow Deerslayer hand in hand, and make, next to the hero, the princ.i.p.al characters of the story, the scene of which is laid near Lake Champlain during the trouble between the French and English for the possession of Canada.

In _The Pathfinder_ the famous scout, under the name which gives the t.i.tle to the book, is carried still further in his adventurous career.

The scene is laid near Lake Ontario where Cooper spent some months while in the navy. These three tales are not only the finest of the series from a literary standpoint, but they ill.u.s.trate as well the life of those white men of the forest who lived as near to nature as the Indian himself and whose deeds helped make the history of the country in its beginnings.

_The Pioneers_ finds Leatherstocking an old hunter living on Otsego Lake at the time of its first settlement by the whites. The character was suggested by an old hunter of the regions who in Cooper's boyhood came frequently to the door of his father's house to sell the game he had killed. The hero is in this book called Natty b.u.mppo and the story is one of the primitive life of the frontiersmen of that period.

Their occupations, interests and ambitions form the background to the picture of Leatherstocking, the rustic philosopher, who has finished the most active part of his career, and who has gathered from nature some of her sweetest lessons. Many of the scenes in the book are transcriptions from the actual life of those hardy pioneers who joined Cooper's father in the settlement of Cooperstown, while the whole is tinged with that tender reminiscence of the author's youth which sets it apart from the rest though it is, perhaps, the least perfect story of the series.

Leatherstocking closes his career in _The Prairie_, a novel of the plains of the great West, whither he had gone to spend his last days.

It is the story of the lonely life of the trapper of those days, whose love of solitude has led him far from the frontier, and whose dignified death fitly closes his courageous life. It is supposed that the actual experiences of Daniel Boone suggested this ending to the series.

The story of the war of the frontiersmen with nature, with circ.u.mstances and with the red man is told in these books. It is the romance of real history and Leatherstocking was but the picture of many a brave settler whose deeds were unrecorded and whose name remains unknown. Side by side with Leatherstocking stand those Indian characters which the genius of Cooper immortalized and which have pa.s.sed into history as typical.

Cooper began the tales without any thought of making a series, but the overwhelming success of _The Pioneers_, the first which appeared, led him to produce book after book until the whole life of the hero was ill.u.s.trated.

Cooper's series of sea novels began with _The Pilot_, published in 1824. It followed _The Pioneers_, and showed the novelist to be equally at home on sea and land. In his stories of frontier life, Cooper followed the great Scott, whose thrilling tales of Border life and of early English history had opened a new domain to the novelist.

Cooper always acknowledged his debt to the great _Wizard of the North_, and, indeed, spoke of himself as a chip of Scott's block. But in his sea stories Cooper was a creator. He was the first novelist to bring into fiction the ordinary, every-day life of the sailor afloat, whether employed on a peaceful merchant vessel or fighting hand to hand in a naval battle. And it is interesting to know that the creation of the sea story was another debt that he owed to Scott, though in a far different way. Scott's novel, _The Pirate_, had been criticised by Cooper as the work of a man who had never been at sea.

And to prove it the work of a landsman he began his own story, _The Pilot_. The time chosen is that of the Revolution, and the hero is the famous adventurer John Paul Jones, introduced under another name.

It was so new a thing to use the technicalities of ship life, and to describe the details of an evolution in a naval battle, that, familiar as he was with ocean life, Cooper felt some doubts of his success.

To test his power he read one day to an old shipmate that now famous account of the pa.s.sage of the ship through the narrow channel. The effect was all that Cooper hoped. The old sailor fell into a fury of excitement, paced up and down the room, and in his eagerness for a moment lived over again a stormy scene in his own life. Satisfied with this experiment Cooper finished the novel in content.

_The Pilot_ met with an instant success both in America and Europe.

As it was his first, so it is, perhaps, his best sea story. Into it he put all the freshness of reminiscence, all the haunting memories of ocean life that had followed him since his boyhood. It was biographical in the same sense as _The Pioneers_. A part of the romance of childhood drafted into the reality of after life.

_The Red Rover_, the next sea story, came out in 1828. By that time other novelists were writing tales of the sea, but they were mere imitations of _The Pilot_. In _The Red Rover_ the genuine adventures of the sailor cla.s.s were again embodied in the thrilling narrative that Cooper alone knew how to write, and this book has always been one of the most popular of novels.

The Red Rover, so called because of his red beard, and whose name gives the t.i.tle to the book, is a well born Englishman who has turned pirate, and whose daring adventures have made him famous along the coasts of America, Europe and Africa. The scene opens in the harbor of Newport in the days when that town was the most important port of the Atlantic coast, and from there is carried to the high seas, whereon is fought that famous last sea fight of the Red Rover, the description of which forms one of Cooper's best efforts.

_Wing and Wing_ is a tale of the Mediterranean during the exciting days of privateers and pirates in the latter part of the eighteenth century. The great admiral, Nelson, is introduced in this book, which abounds with incidents of the tropical seas and reflects much of Cooper's experience during his apprenticeship on the Sterling. The story is one of Cooper's masterpieces, and, like so much of his work, has preserved in literature a phase of life that has forever pa.s.sed away.

In _The Two Admirals_ is introduced, for the first time in fiction, a description of the evolution of great fleets in action. The scene is taken from English history, and in many instances the story shows Cooper at his best.

_The Water Witch_, and _Ned Myers, or Life Before the Mast_, a biography almost of Cooper's own early life at sea, must be included among the tales which ill.u.s.trate the author's genius as a writer of tales of the sea.

Nothing can be more different than the picture of Leatherstocking and his Indian friends in the forest retreats of nature and that of the reckless sailor race which found piracy and murder the only outcome for their fierce ambitions. Yet both are touched with the art of a master, and both ill.u.s.trate Cooper's claim as one of the greatest masters of fiction.

Besides his _Leather Stocking Tales_ and the sea stories Cooper wrote novels, sketches of travel, essays on the social and political condition of America, and innumerable pamphlets in answer to attacks made upon him by adverse critics. But his rank in American literature will ever be determined by the _Leather Stocking Tales_ and his best sea stories. His place is similar to that of Scott in English literature, while he enjoys also the reputation of having opened a new and enchanted realm of fiction.

Next to Hawthorne, he will long be held, probably, the greatest novelist that America has produced. With the exception of seven years abroad, Cooper spent his life in his native land. While in Europe he wrote some of his best novels, and though he grew to love the old world he never wavered in his devotion to America.

Cooper's popularity abroad was equalled only by that of Scott. His works were translated and sold even in Turkey, Persia, Egypt and Jerusalem in the language of those countries. It was said by a traveller that the middle cla.s.ses of Europe had gathered all their knowledge of American history from Cooper's works and that they had never understood the character of American independence until revealed by this novelist. In spite of defects of style and the poor quality of some of his stories, Cooper has given to fiction many creations that must live as long as literature endures.

He died in his sixty-second year at Cooperstown.

CHAPTER V

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

1794-1878

William Cullen Bryant was born in 1794 in a log farmhouse in the beautiful Berkshire Hills of Western Ma.s.sachusetts. His father was the country doctor and the child was named after a celebrated physician.

He began his school days in a log school-house beside a little brook that crept down from the hills and went singing on its way to the valley.

All around stood the great forest-covered hills, haunted by wolves, bears, deer and wild-cats, which occasionally crept down even to the settlements carrying terror to the hearts of the women and children.

Wherever the slopes were cleared, the farm lands had taken possession, the forest often creeping up close to the little homes.

From the door-yard of the Bryant homestead the whole world seemed to be made up of hills and forest, and fertile fields, while in the woods grew the exquisite New England wild flowers, the laurel and azalea, the violet, the tiger lily, and the fringed gentian. Here also lived the summer birds of New England, the robins, the blue bird and the thrush, haunting the woods from early spring until late autumn.

All these sights and sounds sunk into the boy's heart and made themselves into a poem which he wrote down in words many years after, and which is as clear and fresh as the voice of the little brook itself after which it was named. This poem is called _The Rivulet_ and it shows the poet-child standing upon the banks of the little stream listening to the song of the birds or gathering wild flowers.

It was his first lesson in that wonder-book of nature from which he translated so much that was beautiful that he became the distinctive poet of the woods and streams.

Lessons from books he learned in the little log school-house, preparing himself for ordeals when the minister came to visit the school. At these times the pupils were dressed in their best and sat in solemn anxiety while the minister asked them questions out of the catechism and made them a long speech on morals and good behavior. On one of these occasions the ten-year-old poet declaimed some of his own verses descriptive of the school.

In Bryant's boyhood New England farm life was very simple. The farmers lived in log or slab houses, whose kitchens formed the living room, where the meals were generally taken. Heat was supplied by the great fireplaces that sometimes filled one whole side of the kitchen and were furnished with cranes, spits, and pothooks. Behind the kitchen door hung a bundle of birch rods with which mischievous boys were kept in order, and in the recess of the chimney stood the wooden settle where the children sat before bed-time to watch the fire or glance up through the wide chimney at the stars.

Here, when three years old, Bryant often stood book in hand and with painful attention to gesture repeated one of Watts's hymns, while his mother listened and corrected. Here he prepared his lessons, and wrote those first childish poems so carefully criticised by his father, who was his teacher in the art of composition. In the poem called _A Lifetime_ Bryant long afterward described many incidents of his childhood and the influence of his father and mother upon his art, one developing his talent for composition, and the other directing his imagination to and enlisting his sympathies with humanity. This poem shows the boy by his mother's knee, reading the story of Pharaoh and the Israelites, of David and Goliath, and of the life of Christ. As he grew older Bryant shared the usual amus.e.m.e.nts of country life. In the spring he took his turn in the maple-sugar camp; in the autumn he attended the huskings when the young people met to husk the corn in each neighborhood barn successively, until all was done. He helped at the cider-making bees, and the apple parings, when the cider and apple sauce were prepared for the year's need; and at the house raisings, when men and boys raised the frame of a neighbor's house or barn. In those times the farmers depended upon each other for such friendly aid, and the community seemed like one great family.

On Sunday everyone went three times to meeting, listened to long sermons, and sang out of the old Bay Psalm Book. If any unlucky child fell asleep he was speedily waked up by the t.i.thingman, who would tickle his nose with a hare's-foot attached to a long pole. Once in a while a boy might be restless or noisy, and then he was led out of the meeting-house and punished with the t.i.thingman's rod, a terrible disgrace.