JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
1789-1851
The region of Otsego Lake, New York, was at the last of the eighteenth
century a wilderness. Here and there rose a little clearing, the
birthplace of a future village, but westward the primeval forest
extended for miles around the little lake, which reflected the shadows
of wooded hills on every side. Here roved deer, wolves, panthers, and
bears unmolested in the green depths and following the same runways
which their species had trodden for centuries. Here also lurked the
red man, suspicious and cautious and ever ready to revenge on the
white man the wrongs of his race.
In this beautiful spot lived the boy, James Fenimore Cooper, in the
family mansion built by his father and named Otsego Hall, the starting
point of the now famous village of Cooperstown. It was a fitting home
for the boy who was hereafter to immortalize the Indian race in the
pages of fiction. His life was almost as simple as that of the Indian
lads who roamed through the forest fishing and hunting and knowing no
ambition beyond.
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 shore, 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 passed 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 passed 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 illustrate 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 shores,
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 illustrate 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 principal 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
title 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 illustrate 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 Bumppo 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
circumstances 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
passed 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
illustrated.
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 passage 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 class 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 title 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 passed
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 illustrate 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 illustrate 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 classes 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.