followed parties of them from Albany to New York, and several times to
Washington, for the purpose of closely studying their natures and
habits; all authorities in print were consulted. On his return home the
book was begun and rapidly written. "Planned beneath the summer leaves,
on the far shore of picturesque Hell Gate, above smiling fields and
bowering orchards of his Angevine home, those leaves had scarcely fallen
when the story was told--'the most uniformly exciting and powerful of
his fictions'--'The Last of the Mohicans,' and Natty and Chingachgook
were left in the wilderness beside the rude grave of Uncas." Again they
came into the shadow of the unbroken forest, as called for by the _one_
friend he now constantly consulted,--his faithful, loving life-mate. At
the time of its writing Cooper had a serious illness, during which his
mind was filled with ideas for this book. Suddenly rousing himself one
of these autumn afternoons, he called for pen and paper, but too ill to
use them, asked Mrs. Cooper, watching anxiously by his side, to write
for him. Fearing delirium, she wrote, thinking it would relieve him. A
page of notes was rapidly dictated, which seemed to his alarmed nurse
but the wild fancies of a fevered brain. It proved to be a clear account
of a lively struggle between "Magua" and "Chingachgook," and made the
twelfth chapter of the book. Why the author called Lake George by
another name is thus explained: "Looking over an ancient map, he found
that a tribe of Indians the French called _Les Honcans_ lived by this
beautiful sheet of water, and thinking the English name too commonplace
and the Indian name too hard to pronounce, he chose the 'Horican' as
better suiting simple Natty." This book, "The Last of the Mohicans,"
proved, perhaps, to be the most popular of all his works up to 1826.
[Illustration: GLENS FALL.]
[Illustration: LAKE GEORGE, OR "THE HORICAN."]
A present-day man-of-letters writes of Cooper: "He paints Indians and
Indian scenes with a glow of our sunset skies and the crimson of our
autumn maples, and makes them alive with brilliant color. Rifles crack,
tomahawks gleam, and arrows dart like sunbeams through the air. Indians
fleet of foot and full of graceful movement are these dusky Apollo's
Uncas. Cooper's readers never yawn over these tales of the forest or the
sea. He is the swan on the lake, the eagle in the air, the deer in the
wood, and the wind on the sea." So writes Prof. Brander Matthews. That
life-student of the American Indian, Francis Parkman, wrote: "It is easy
to find fault with 'The Last of the Mohicans,' but it is far from easy
to rival or even approach its excellence." It is said that "Magua," of
this book, "is the best-drawn Indian in fiction; from scalp-lock to
moccasin tingling with life" and the tension of the canoe-chase on the
Horican.
During this Lake George excursion a question came up between the Hon.
Mr. Stanley, the Hon. Wortley Montagu, and Mr. Cooper as to who was the
"Premier Baron of England." Cooper named Lord Henry William Fitzgerald
(3rd son of James, 1st Duke of Leinster) 22nd Baron de Ros [b. 1761--d.
1829] as his man; whose title came from Henry I., to Peter, Lord of
Holderness called Ros. Each of his two friends claimed another as the
"Premier Baron of England." All were so confident that a wager was
laid, and later inquiry proved Cooper right. In due time the debt
was paid with a large gold, silver-filled seal. On its stone--a
chrysoprase--appeared a baron's coronet and the old Scottish proverb:
"He that will to Cupar maun to Cupar!" The incident serves to affirm
Cooper's wide information and accurate memory.
[Illustration: THE WAGER SEAL.]
This winter of 1825-26 Cooper and his family made their home at 345
Greenwich Street, not many steps from 92 Hudson Street, where lived the
poet William Cullen Bryant, who often went around the corner for a walk
with his friend.
[Illustration: BRYANT.]
General Wilson wrote: "Soon after Bryant went to New York he met Cooper,
who, a few days later, said: 'Come and dine with me tomorrow; I live at
No. 345 Greenwich Street.' 'Please put that down for me,' said Bryant,
'or I shall forget the place.' 'Can't you remember three-four-five?'
replied Cooper bluntly. Bryant did remember 'three-four-five,' not only
for that day, but ever afterward."
During this spring Cooper followed a deputation of Pawnee and Sioux
Indians from New York to Washington, in order to make a close study of
them for future use. He was much interested in the chiefs' stories of
their wild powers, dignity, endurance, grace, cunning wiles, and fierce
passions. The great buffalo hunts across the prairies he had never seen;
the fights of mounted tribes and the sweeping fires over those boundless
plains all claimed his eager interest and sympathy, with the resulting
desire to place "these mounted tribes" and their desert plains beyond
the Mississippi in another Indian story. One of the chiefs of this
party--a very fine specimen of a warrior, a remarkable man in every
way--is credited with being the original of "Hard-Heart" of "The
Prairie," which an authority gives as Cooper's favorite book. On a
knoll, and within the glory of a western sunset, stood Natty, born of
the author's mind and heart, as he first appeared in this book. "The
aged trapper--a nobly pathetic figure contrasted with the
squatter"--looms up, colossal, against the gleaming radiance of
departing day; and full well he knows his own leaving for the long-home
is not far off--for the remarkable life of wondrous Leatherstocking
closes within these pages. Of other characters and the author Prof.
Matthews says: "He was above all things a creator of character.--He can
draw women.--The wife of Ishmael Bush, the squatter, mother of seven
stalwart sons and sister of a murderous rascal, is an unforgotten
portrait, solidly painted by a master." "The Prairie" was begun in the
winter of 1826, in the New York, Greenwich-Street home, while Cooper was
under the weather from the old fever effects. The closing of his
father's estate, and debts contracted against him by those whom he had
helped, emptied his purse and left him a poor man. To meet these calls
of honor and his own needs, he wrote when not able to do so, and for a
short and only time in his life called in the aid of coffee for his
work. Wine he drank daily at dinner only, and he never smoked.
[Illustration: "NATTY, THE TRAPPER."]
[Illustration: HENRY CLAY.]
[Illustration: CHANCELLOR KENT.]
When Cooper followed the Sioux and Pawnee Indians to Washington, in
1826, Henry Clay, Secretary of State, offered him the appointment of
United States Minister to Sweden. It was declined in favor of the
consulship to Lyons, France, which latter would allow him more freedom
and protect his family in case of foreign troubles. With this trip to
Europe in view his family busily studied French and Spanish. Returning
to New York, Cooper's club gave him a farewell dinner, at which the
author said he intended to write a history of the United States Navy. At
this dinner he was toasted by Chancellor Kent as "the genius which has
rendered our native soil classic ground, and given to our early history
the enchantment of fiction."
[Illustration: THE U.S.S. "HUDSON."]
May 1 the town house was given up for a month of hotel life, and on June
1, at eleven o'clock, Mr. and Mrs. Cooper and their children boarded the
_Hudson_ at Whitehall Wharf for Europe. They left a land-squall--their
maid Abigail--ashore and found some rough weather ahead before June 30.
"A fine clear day brought in plain sight ninety-seven sail, which had
come into the Channel, like ourselves, during the thick weather. The
blue waters were glittering with canvas." A little later Cooper wrote:
"There is a cry of 'Land!' and I must hasten on deck to revel in the
cheerful sight." The _Hudson_ brought up at Cowes, Isle of Wight, July
2, 1826; "after a passage of thirty-one days we first put foot in
Europe," wrote Cooper. In this "toy-town" they found rooms at the
"Fountain," where the windows gave them pretty vistas, and evening
brought the first old-country meal, also the first taste of the famous
Isle-of-Wight butter, which, however, without salt they thought
"tasteless." As eager newcomers to strange lands, they made several
sight-seeing ventures, among which was enjoyed the ivy-clad ruin of
Carisbrook, the one-time prison of Charles I. A few days later they
landed on the pier at Southampton, which town is recorded as being
"noted for long passages, bow-windows, and old maids." Here they found
pleasant lodgings, friends, and a sister of Mrs. Cooper's whereby time
was pleasantly passed by the family while Cooper went up to London to
see his publishers. On his return they were soon aboard the _Camilla_,
"shorn of one wing" (one of her two boilers was out of order), and on
their way to France. At midnight they were on deck for their first sight
of France; "Land!--of ghostly hue in the bright moonlight, and other
lights glittering from the two towers on the headlands near by." Landing
at the small port of Havre, they had some weary hours of search before
finding shelter in _Hotel d'Angleterre_. By a "skirted wonder" of the
port their luggage soon passed the customs next morning and they were
started for Paris. They were charmed with the dark old sombre,
mysterious towers and fantastic roofs of Rouen, where Cooper bought a
large traveling carriage, in which they safely passed the "ugly dragons"
that "thrust out their grinning heads from the Normandy towns" on the
way to the heart of France. From the windmills of Montmartre they took
in the whole vast capital at a glance. A short stay was made at a small
hotel, where soon after their arrival they engaged "a governess for the
girls." She proved to be "a furious royalist," teaching the children
that "Washington was a rebel, Lafayette a monster, and Louis XVI a
martyr." Under the rule of returned royalists was attempted the
exclusion of even the _name_ of Bonaparte from French history. "My
girls," Cooper wrote, "have shown me the history of France--officially
prepared for schools, in which there is no sort of allusion to him."
Their next venture was Hotel de Jumièges in a small garden, far from
the Faubourg St. Germain, where they had an apartment of six rooms.
Cooper wrote: "The two lower floors were occupied as a girls'
boarding-school;--the reason for dwelling in it, our own daughters were
in the school; on the second floor there was nothing but our own
apartment." And here, next door to their nun-neighbors of the convent
St. Maur, Cooper wrote the last pages of "The Prairie." It was published
in the autumn of 1826, by Lea and Carey, of Philadelphia.
[Illustration: WHITEWALL WHARF, 1826.]
[Illustration: KEEP OF CARISBROOK.]
[Illustration: HAVRE, BY NIGHT.]
[Illustration: WINDMILLS OF MONTMARTRE.]
[Illustration: THE CONVENT ST. MAUR.]
[Illustration: HOTEL DE JUMIÈGES.]
Cooper was very fond of walking, and to get a general idea of Paris he
and Captain Chauncey--an old messmate and officer in the navy--made the
circuit of the city walls, a distance of nineteen miles, in four hours.
For two hours the captain had Cooper "a little on his quarter." "By this
time," Cooper wrote, "I ranged up abeam,"--to find a pinching boot on
his friend's foot. Near the finish the mate of this "pinching boot"
became "too large," and the captain "fell fairly astern." But without
stopping, eating, or drinking, they made the distance in four hours to a
minute.
Washington Irving wrote from Madrid the following spring: "I left Paris
before the arrival of Cooper, and regret extremely that I missed him. I
have a great desire to make his acquaintance, for I am delighted with
his novels. His naval scenes and characters in 'The Pilot' are
admirable." Cooper soon became known in France by his presence at a
dinner given by the U.S. Minister to Canning then in Paris.
In "Bryant and His Friends" General James Grant Wilson says: "Scott and
Cooper met at the Princess Galitzin's, in Paris, November, 1826; and,
says Scott's diary, 'so the Scotch and American Lions took the field
together.'" In Miss Cooper's "Pages and Pictures" appears her father's
first interview with the author of "Waverley," of which Cooper wrote in
part: "Ten days after the arrival of Sir Walter Scott I ordered a
carriage one morning. I had got as far as the lower flight to the door
when another carriage-steps rattled, and presently a large, heavy man
appeared in the door of the hotel. He was gray, limped a little, walking
with a cane. We passed on the stairs, bowing. I was about to enter the
carriage when I fancied the face and form were known to me, and it
flashed on my mind that the visit might be to myself. The stranger went
up the large stone steps, with one hand on the railing and the other on
his cane. He was on the first landing as I stopped, and, turning, our
eyes met. He asked in French, 'Is it Mr. Cooper that I have the honor to
see?' 'I am, sir.' 'Oh, well then, I am Walter Scott.' I ran up, shook
the hand he stood holding out to me cordially, and expressed my sense of
the honor he was conferring. He told me the Princess Galitzin had been
as good as her word and given him my address,--and cutting short
ceremony he had driven from his hotel to my lodgings." Realizing all at
once that he was speaking French to Cooper's English, he said: "Well, I
have been _parlez-vousing_ in a way to surprise you. These Frenchmen
have my tongue so set to their lingo I have half forgotten my own
language,' he continued in English, and accepted my arm up the next
flight of stairs." They had some copyright and other talk, and Sir
Walter "spoke of his works with frankness and simplicity"; and as to
proof-reading, he said he "would as soon see his dinner after a hearty
meal" as to read one of his own tales--"when fairly rid of it." When he
rose to go Cooper begged he might have the gratification of presenting
his wife. Sir Walter good-naturedly assented. When Mrs. Cooper and their
nephew William Cooper were introduced, he sat some little time relating
in Scotch dialect some anecdotes. Then his hostess remarked that the
chair he sat in had been twice honored that day, as General Lafayette
had not left it more than an hour before. Sir Walter was surprised,
thinking Lafayette had gone to America to live, and observed, "He is a
great man." Two days later Sir Walter had Cooper to breakfast, where the
Scotch bard appeared in a newly-bought silk gown, trying "as hard as he
could to make a Frenchman of himself." Among others present was Miss
Anne Scott, who was her father's traveling companion. "She was in half
mourning, and with her black eyes and jet-black hair might very well
have passed for a French woman." Of Scott Cooper wrote: "During the time
the conversation was not led down to business, he manifested a strong
propensity to humor." In naming their common publisher in Paris "he
quaintly termed him, with a sort of malicious fun, 'our gosling' (his
name was Goselin), adding that he hoped at least he 'laid golden eggs.'"
Mr. Cooper was warmly interested in aiding Sir Walter's "Waverley"
copyrights in America, and concerning their author he later wrote: "In
Auld Reekie, and among the right set, warmed, perhaps, by a glass of
'mountain dew,' Sir Walter Scott, in his peculiar way, is one of the
pleasantest companions the world holds." About 1830, when Cooper was
sitting for his portrait by Madame de Mirbel, that artist--for its
pose--asked him to look at the picture of a distinguished statesman.
Cooper said: "No, if I must look at any, it shall be at my master," and
lifting his eyes higher they rested on a portrait of Sir Walter Scott.
[Illustration: SIR WALTER SCOTT.]
[Illustration: MISS ANNE SCOTT.]
[Illustration: JAMES FENIMORE COOPER.]
[Illustration: PIERRE JEAN DAVID D'ANGERS.]
One of Cooper's steadfast friends exclaimed of him:--"What a love he
cherished for superior talents in every ennobling pursuit in life!" This
characteristic no doubt led him into that day life of Pierre Jean David
d'Angers, whose brave soul had battled its way to artistic recognition.
In M. Henry Jouin's "David d'Angers et ses Relations Littéraires,"
Paris, 1890, appear two letter records of this master-sculptor as to
Cooper. In that of David to Victor Pavie, November, 1826, is: "Next week
I am to dine with Cooper; I shall make his bust. If you have not yet
read his works, read them, you will find the characters vigorously
traced." A note adds that the sculptor kept his word, and this bust of
Cooper appeared in the "Salon of 1827." Paris, March 30, 1828, David
again writes of Cooper to Victor Pavie:--"Dear friend, in speaking of
the sea, I think of 'The Red Rover' of my good friend Cooper. Have you
read it? It interests me much." A note adds: "Without doubt the author
had presented his new book to the sculptor," who gave to Cooper this
bust, modeled in 1826. Mrs. Cooper thought the bust and the Jarvis
portrait of her husband were "perfect likenesses." Later on David's
genius again found expression in a bronze medallion of his "good friend
Cooper." David has given the striking intellectual of Cooper's head of
which an authority of that time wrote: "Nature moulded it in majesty,
yet denied it not the gentler graces that should ever adorn greatness."
[Illustration: JAMES FENIMORE COOPER.]
[Illustration: MRS. JAMES FENIMORE COOPER.]
[Illustration: JAMES FENIMORE COOPER.]
"In Paris Cooper's style of living gave his ideas of the duties and
position of an American gentleman. In a part of the handsome Hotel de
Jumièges he lived, keeping his carriage and service required by a modest
establishment; and his doors were always open to every American who had
claims on his society. Meanwhile nothing was allowed to break in upon
his literary duties, for which a part of each day was set aside." So
wrote one who became a friend staunch and true at this time in Paris. Of
their meeting he wrote: "I shall never forget the first day I saw
Cooper. He was at good old General Lafayette's, in the little apartment
of the rue d'Anjou,--the scene of many hallowed memories." Lafayette's
kind heart had granted an interview to some Indians by whom a reckless
white man was filling his purse in parading through Europe. With winning
smile the great, good man told these visitors to return to their home
while yet they could. Mr. G. continued: "As I was gazing at this scene I
saw a gentleman enter whose appearance called off the General's
attention. He was in the prime of life (thirty-five), and of that vigor
which air and manly exercise give. I had seen the heads of great men,
and there were some close to me, but none with such a full, expansive
forehead, such strong features, a mouth firm without harshness, and an
eye whose clear gray seemed to read you at a glance while it fears not
to let you read him in turn. 'Who is he?' I whispered to a
grand-daughter of the General near me. 'Mr. Cooper; do you not know Mr.
Cooper? Let me introduce you to him.' 'Cooper,' said I to myself; 'can
it be that I am within five paces, and that there, too, are the feeble
of the race around which his genius has shed a halo like that of Homer's
own heros?' I was fresh from 'The Mohicans,' and my hand trembled as it
met the cordial grasp of the man to whom I owed so many pleasing hours.
I asked about the Indians. 'They are poor specimens,' said he;
'fourth-rate at best in their own woods, and ten-times worse for the
lives they are leading here.'" Later, Mr. G. met the author in
Lafayette's bed-room, and saw how warmly he was welcomed by the great
poet Béranger. Still later Mr. G. and Cooper met in Florence, where they
had much fine talking and walking "on calm summer evenings." Of the
Bard-of-Avon it is noted that Cooper said: "Shakespeare is my traveling
library. To a novel-writer he is invaluable. Publishers will have
mottoes for every chapter; I never yet turned over Shakespeare without
hitting upon just what I wanted I like to take them, whenever I can,
from our own poets. It is a compliment they have a right to, and I am
glad when I can pay it." Concerning the author's habits, this friend
concludes: "When Cooper left his desk he left his pen on it. He came out
into the world to hear and see what other men were doing. If they wanted
to hear him, there he was, perfectly ready to express opinions of men or
things. It was delightful to hear him talk about his own works, he did
it with such a frank, fresh, manly feeling."
[Illustration: PROF. GEORGE WASHINGTON GREEN ("MR. G.")]
[Illustration: P.T. DE BÉRANGER.]
[Illustration: TALLEYRAND.]
[Illustration: DUCHESSE DE BERRI.]
[Illustration: CHARLES X of FRANCE.]
Among the great again was seen the ever-favored yet not "gai"
Talleyrand. Of the incident Cooper noted: "It is etiquette for the kings
of France to dine in public on January 14 and on the monarch's
fête-day." Wishing to see this ceremony, Mr. and Mrs. Cooper were sent
the better of the two permissions granted for the occasion. Cooper
describes the ceremony--the _entrée_ of Charles X: _"Le Roi_, tall,
decidedly graceful; the Dauphin to his right, the Dauphine to his left,
and to her right the Duchess of Berri." Passing Cooper, he continues:
"Near a little gate was an old man in strictly court-dress. The long
white hair that hung down his face, the _cordon bleu_, the lame foot,
and the unearthly aspect made me suspect the truth, it was M. de
Talleyrand as grand chamberlin, to officiate at the dinner of his
master"; whereby proving his own words: "It is not enough to be some
one,--it is needful to do something." A near Abbé whispered of
Talleyrand to Cooper: "But, sir, he is a cat, that always falls on its
feet." Yet of Talleyrand another's record is: "But if Charles Maurice
was lame of leg--his wit was keener and more nimble than that of any man
in Europe." Brushing past the gorgeous state-table to Mrs. Cooper, the
author adds: "She laughed, and said 'it was all very magnificent and
amusing,' but some one had stolen her shawl!"
[Illustration: COOPER'S SUMMER HOME, ST. OUEN, 1827.]
Cooper was ever a home-lover. Wherever he might be in foreign lands, he
contrived to have his own roof-tree when possible. Therefore, the summer
of 1827 sent them from rue St. Maur to the village of St. Ouen, on the
banks of the Seine and a league from the gates of Paris. The village
itself was not attractive, but pleasant was the home, next to a small
château where Madame de Staël lived when her father, M. Necker, was in
power. Some twenty-two spacious, well-furnished rooms this summer home
had, in which once lived the Prince de Soubise when _grand veneur_ of
Louis XV, who went there at times to eat his dinner--"in what served us
for a drawing-room," Cooper wrote. The beautiful garden of shade-trees,
shrubbery, and flowers, within gray walls fourteen feet high, was a
blooming paradise; and for it all--horses, cabriolet, grand
associations--was paid two hundred dollars per month for the season of
five.
"The Red Rover" was written in these three or four summer months in St.
Ouen on the Seine, whence the author's letters tell of watching the
moving life on the river, the merry washerwomen as they chatter, joke,
and splash beneath his terrace; how he tried punting, and left it to
"honest Pierre," who never failed to charge him double fare, and of whom
he tells a pretty story; how they all enjoyed the village _fêtes_, with
whirligigs and flying-horses, whereby the French contrive to make and
spend a few _sous_ pleasantly. "I enjoy all this greatly," wrote Cooper.
Excursions were made,--one to Montmorenci, in plain view of Paris; and
the author explains that the Montmorenci claim to being "the first
Christian baron" is of the Crusade War-Cry date and origin. His wife
and he took all the pretty drives in their cabriolet, but later he took
to the saddle for the out-of-field paths, where pleasant salutations
were exchanged with kindly-hearted peasants. Of these rambles Cooper
wrote: "One of my rides is ascending Montmartre by its rear, to the
windmills that night and day are whirling their rugged arms over the
capital of France." Montmartre, he said, gave him a view "like a glimpse
into the pages of history." He often met royalty dashing to and from
Paris. The king with his carriage-and-eight, attended by a dozen mounted
men, made a royal progress truly magnificent.
[Illustration: COOPER'S TERRACE STUDY, ST. OUEN.]
[Illustration: OLD MILL AT NEWPORT.]
[Illustration: THE STRUGGLE.]