James Fenimore Cooper Part 2

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 coa.r.s.e 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 pa.s.sage written in 1835, Barry Cornwall, not merely content with putting Cooper at the head of all American authors, added that he may "dare compet.i.tion 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 ill.u.s.tration of the generosity of the British character, and as putting the recipient of it under obligations of everlasting grat.i.tude.

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 subst.i.tute. 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 a.s.serted that so far from taking pride in the t.i.tle, 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 t.i.tle 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 a.s.sailed everything and everybody.

The satire was of that dreadful kind which requires notes and commentaries to point out who is. .h.i.t and what is meant; and the annotation, as is usual in such cases, took up much more s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce for several years. It was then a periodical respectable, cla.s.sical, 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 quant.i.ty were the only element to be considered, would have justified him in contracting to produce enough to const.i.tute of itself a national literature. As he invariably proved himself entirely dest.i.tute 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.sociates 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 t.i.tle 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 a.s.sertion 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 a.s.sume 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 pa.s.sage 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 a.s.sume, 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 pa.s.sed 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 Pa.s.s. 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 pa.s.sions 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 pa.s.sed 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 d.a.m.ned 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 a.s.sembled 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 ingrat.i.tude; 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 princ.i.p.al 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 pa.s.sions. 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 t.i.tle-deeds are not registered and sheriffs make no levies; who neither fears G.o.d 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 s.p.a.ce 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 t.i.tle 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 a.s.sertion 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 surpa.s.sed. 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 a.s.serted of the fame of Mr. Cooper I a.s.sert 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, surpa.s.sed 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 dispa.s.sionate account of the circ.u.mstances 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-a.s.sertion 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) cla.s.s 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 un.o.btrusively 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 sanct.i.ty 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 a.s.sertion 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 circ.u.mstance, 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 cla.s.s, 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 G.o.d; 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sion 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 circ.u.mstance 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 cla.s.ses. Yet their ignorance, great as it was, he found not to surpa.s.s 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 inst.i.tutions, he informs us, did not think of denying the fact; they denied merely the inference. The brilliant publicist, Paul Courier, had a.s.serted 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 const.i.tutional 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.