1820-1822.
Cooper had now reached the age of thirty. Up to this time he had
written nothing, nor had he prepared or collected any material for
future use. No thought of taking up authorship as a profession had
entered his mind. Even the physical labor involved in the mere act of
writing was itself distasteful. Unexpectedly, however, he now began a
course of literary production that was to continue without abatement
during the little more than thirty years which constituted the
remainder of his life.
Seldom has a first work been due more entirely to accident than that
which he composed at the outset of his career. In his home at Angevine
he was one day reading to his wife a novel descriptive of English
society. It did not please him, and he suddenly laid down the book and
said, "I believe I could write a better story myself." Challenged to
make good his boast, he sat down to perform the task, and wrote out a
few pages of the tale he had formed in his mind. The encouragement of
his wife determined him to go on and complete it, and when completed
the advice of friends decided him to publish it. Accordingly, on the
10th of November, 1820, a novel in two volumes, entitled "Precaution,"
made its appearance in New York. In this purely haphazard way did the
most prolific of American authors begin his literary life.
The work was brought out in a bad shape, and its typographical (p. 017)
defects were unconsciously exaggerated by Cooper in a revised edition
of it, which was published after his return from Europe. In the
preface to the latter he said that no novel of modern times had ever
been worse printed than was this story as it originally appeared. The
manuscript, he admitted, was bad; but the proof-reading could only be
described as execrable. Periods turned up in the middle of sentences,
while the places where they should have been knew them not. Passages,
in consequence, were rendered obscure, and even entire paragraphs
became unintelligible. A careful reading of the edition of 1820 will
show something to suggest, but little to justify, these sweeping
assertions. But the work has never been much read even by the admirers
of the author; and it is a curious illustration of this fact, that the
personal friend, who delivered the funeral discourse upon his life and
writings, avoided the discussion of it with such care that he was
betrayed into exposing the lack of interest he sought to hide. Bryant
confessed he had not read "Precaution." He had merely dipped into the
first edition of it, and had been puzzled and repelled by the
profusion of commas and other pauses. The non-committalism of cautious
criticism could hardly hope to go farther. Punctuation has had its
terrors and its triumphs; but this victory over the editor of a daily
newspaper must be deemed its proudest recorded achievement. The poet
went on to say that to a casual inspection the revised edition, which
Cooper afterward brought out, seemed almost another work. The
inspection which could come to such a conclusion must have been of
that exceedingly casual kind which contents itself with contemplating
the outside of a book, and disdains to open it. As a matter of (p. 018)
fact the changes made hardly extended beyond the correction of some
points of punctuation and of some grammatical forms; it was in a few
instances only that the construction of the sentences underwent
transformation. Not an incident was altered, not a sentiment modified.
Such ignorance on the part of a contemporary and personal friend, if
it proves nothing else, shows certainly the little hold this novel has
had upon the public taste. Nevertheless, the first work of any
well-known author must always have a certain interest belonging to it,
entirely independent of any value the work may have in itself. In this
case, moreover, the character of the tale and the circumstances
attending its production are of no slight importance, when taken in
connection with the literary history of the times. It was accident
that led to the selection of the subject; but as things then were,
Cooper was not unlikely, in any event, to have chosen it or one very
similar. The intellectual dependence of America upon England at that
period is something that it is now hard to understand. Political
supremacy had been cast off, but the supremacy of opinion remained
absolutely unshaken. Of creative literature there was then very little
of any value produced: and to that little a foreign stamp was
necessary, to give currency outside of the petty circle in which it
originated. There was slight encouragement for the author to write;
there was still less for the publisher to print. It was indeed a
positive injury ordinarily to the commercial credit of a bookseller to
bring out a volume of poetry or of prose fiction which had been
written by an American; for it was almost certain to fail to pay
expenses. A sort of critical literature was struggling, or rather (p. 019)
gasping, for a life that was hardly worth living; for its most marked
characteristic was its servile deference to English judgment and dread
of English censure. It requires a painful and penitential examination
of the reviews of the period to comprehend the utter abasement of mind
with which the men of that day accepted the foreign estimate upon
works written here, which had been read by themselves, but which it
was clear had not been read by the critics whose opinions they echoed.
Even the meekness with which they submitted to the most depreciatory
estimate of themselves was outdone by the anxiety with which they
hurried to assure the world that they, the most cultivated of the
American race, did not presume to have so high an opinion of the
writings of some one of their countrymen as had been expressed by
enthusiasts, whose patriotism had proved too much for their
discernment. Never was any class so eager to free itself from charges
that imputed to it the presumption of holding independent views of its
own. Out of the intellectual character of many of those who at that
day pretended to be the representatives of the highest education in
this country, it almost seemed that the element of manliness had been
wholly eliminated; and that along with its sturdy democracy, whom no
obstacles thwarted and no dangers daunted, the New World was also to
give birth to a race of literary cowards and parasites. With such a
state of feeling prevalent, a work of fiction that concerned America
might seem to have small chance of success with Americans themselves.
It would not, therefore, have been strange, under any circumstances,
that in beginning his career as an author Cooper should have chosen to
write a tale of English social life. The fact that he knew (p. 020)
personally nothing about what he was describing was in itself no
insuperable objection. That ignorance was then and has since been
shared by many novelists on both sides of the water, who have treated
of the same subject. Relying upon English precedent, he might in fact
feel that he was peculiarly fitted for the task. He had cruised a few
times up and down the British channel, he had caught limited views of
British manners and customs by walking on several occasions the length
of Fleet Street and the Strand. Knowledge of America equivalent to
this would then have been regarded in England as an ample equipment
for an accurate treatise upon the social life of this country, and
even upon its existing political condition and probable future.
But much more than the choice of a foreign subject did the pretense of
foreign authorship prove the servility of feeling prevailing at that
time among the educated classes. This was in the first place, to be
sure, the result of the freak that led Cooper originally to begin
writing a novel; but it was a freak that would never have been carried
out, after publication had been decided upon, had he not been fully
aware of the fact that the least recommendation of a book to his
countrymen would be the knowledge that it was composed by one of
themselves. "Precaution" was not merely a tale of English social life,
it purported to be written by an Englishman; and it was so thoroughly
conformed to its imaginary model that it not only reëchoed the cant of
English expression, but likewise the expression of English cant. To
talk about dissenters and the establishment was natural and proper
enough in a work written ostensibly by the citizen of a country in
which there was a state church. But Cooper went much farther than (p. 021)
this in the reflections and moral observations which are scattered up
and down the pages of this novel. These represent fairly views widely
held at the time in America, and may not impossibly express the
personal opinions he himself then entertained. He speaks in one place,
in his assumed character of an Englishman, of the solidity and purity
of our ethics as giving a superior tone to our moral feelings as
contrasted with the French. He goes out of his way to compliment
George III. One of the personages in the novel was tempted to admit
something to his credit that he did not deserve. The love of truth,
however, finally prevailed. But it was not because the man himself had
any innate love of truth, but because "he had been too much round the
person of our beloved monarch not to retain all the impressions of his
youth." Passages such as these are remarkable when we consider the
sentiments in regard to England that Cooper subsequently came to
express. If they do not show with certainty his opinions at that time,
they do show the school in which he had been brought up: they mark
clearly the extent and violence of the reaction which in after years
carried him to the opposite extreme.
In its plan and development "Precaution" was a compromise between the
purely fashionable novel and that collection of moral disquisitions of
which Hannah More's Coelebs was the great exemplar, and still remained
the most popular representative. As in most tales of high life, nobody
of low condition plays a prominent part in the story, save for the
purpose of setting off the dukes, earls, baronets, generals, and
colonels that throng its pages. A novelist in his first production
never limits his creative activity in any respect; and Cooper, (p. 022)
moreover, knew the public well enough to be aware that a fictitious
narrative which aimed to describe aristocratic society might perhaps
succeed without much literary merit, but would be certain to fail
without an abundance of lords. The leading characters, however,
whether of higher or lower degree, are planned upon the moral model.
They either preach or furnish awful examples. It would certainly be
most unfair to an author to judge him, as in this case, by a work
which he had begun without any view to publication, and which he
afterward learned to think and to speak of slightingly. Still, though,
compared with many of his writings, "Precaution" is a novel of little
worth, it is, in some respects, a better guide to the knowledge of the
man than his better productions. The latter give evidence of his
powers; in this are shown certain limitations of his nature and
beliefs. Peculiarities, both of thought and feeling, which in his
other writings are merely suggested, are here clearly revealed. Some
of them will appear strange to those whose conception of his character
is derived from facts connected with his later life, or whose
acquaintance with his works is limited to those most celebrated.
Cooper was, by nature, a man of deep religious feeling. This disposition
had been strengthened by his training. But there is something more
than deep religious feeling exhibited in his first novel. There runs
through it a vein of pietistic narrowness, which seems particularly
unsuited to the man whom popular imagination, investing him somewhat
with the characteristics of his own creations, has depicted as a
ranger of the forests and a rover of the seas. Yet the existence of
this vein is plainly apparent, though all his surroundings would (p. 023)
seem to have been unfavorable to its birth and development. He shared,
to its fullest extent, in the jealousy which at that time, far more
than now, prevailed between the Middle States and New England. He was
strongly attached to the Episcopal Church, and he had, or fancied he
had, a keen dislike to the Puritans and their manners and creeds. To
these "religionists," as he was wont to call them, he attributed a
great deal that was ungraceful in American life, and a good deal that
was disgraceful. But the Puritan element is an irrepressible and
undying one in English character. It can be found centuries before it
became the designation of a religious body. It can be traced, under
various and varying appellations, through every period of English
history. It is not the name of a sect, it is not the mark of a creed;
it is the characteristic of a race. It is, therefore, never long put
under ban before it comes back, and takes its turn in ruling manners
and society. The revolt against it in the eighteenth century had
stripped from religion everything in the shape of sentiment, and left
it merely a business. The reaction which brought the Puritan element
again to the front was so intensified by hostility to what were called
French principles that the minor literature of the latter half of the
reign of George III. exhibits a cant of intolerance from which many of
its greatest writers were rarely great enough to be wholly free. This
influence is clearly visible in the earliest work of Cooper. There is
no charge, probably, he would have denied sooner or disliked more, but
in his nature he was essentially a Puritan of the Puritans. Their
faults and their virtues, their inconsistencies and their contradictions,
were his. Their earnestness, their intensity, their narrowness, their
intolerance, their pugnacity, their serious way of looking at (p. 024)
human duties and responsibilities, all these elements corresponded
with elements in his own character. His, also, were their lofty ideas
of personal purity and of personal obligation, extending not merely to
the acts of the life, but to the thoughts of the heart. Like them,
moreover, he was always disposed to appeal directly to the authority
of the Supreme Being. Like them, he had perfect confidence in the
absolute knowledge he possessed of what that Being thought and wished.
Like them, he considered any controverted question as settled, if he
could once bring to bear upon the point in dispute a text beginning,
"Thus saith the Lord." No rational creature, certainly, would think of
contesting a view of the Creator, or acting contrary to a command
coming unmistakably from Him. But at this very point the difficulty
begins; and in nothing did Cooper more resemble the Puritans than in
his incapacity to see that there was any difficulty at all. It never
occurred to him that there might possibly be a vast difference between
what the Lord actually said and what James Fenimore Cooper thought the
Lord said. It is hardly necessary to add, however, that this
characteristic of mind has its advantages as well as disadvantages.
It was not unnatural, accordingly, that "Precaution" should exemplify
in many cases that narrowness of view which seeks to shape narrow
rules for the conduct of life. For its sympathy with this, one of the
most distinguishing and disagreeable features of Puritanism, the novel
has an interest which could never be aroused by it as a work of art.
Extreme sentiments are often expressed by the author in his own
person, though they are usually put into the mouths of various actors
in the story. Their especial representative is a certain Mrs. (p. 025)
Wilson, who was clearly a great favorite of her creator, though to the
immense majority of men she would seem as disagreeably strong-minded
as most of Cooper's female characters are disagreeably weak-minded.
This lady is the widow of a general officer, who, the reader comes
heartily to feel, has, most fortunately for himself, fallen in the
Peninsular war. From her supreme height of morality she sweeps the
whole horizon of human frailties and faults, and looks down with a
relentless eye upon the misguided creatures who are struggling with
temptations to which she is superior, or are under the sway of beliefs
whose folly or falsity she has long since penetrated. In her, indeed,
there is no weak compromise with human feelings. The lesson meant to
be taught by the novel is the necessity of taking precaution in regard
to marriage. One point insisted upon again and again is the requirement
of piety in the husband. It is the duty of a Christian mother to guard
against a connection with any one but a Christian for her daughters:
for throughout the whole work the sovereign right of the parent over
the child is not merely implied, it is directly asserted. "No really
pious woman," says Mrs. Wilson, "can be happy unless her husband is in
what she deems the road to future happiness herself." When she is met
by the remark that the carrying out of this idea would give a deadly
blow to matrimony, she rises to the occasion by replying that "no man
who dispassionately examines the subject will be other than a Christian,
and rather than remain bachelors they would take even that trouble."
Nor in this was the author apparently expressing an opinion which he
did not himself hold in theory, however little he might have regarded
it in practice. He takes up the same subject in another place, (p. 026)
when speaking in his own person. "Would our daughters," he says,
"admire a handsome deist, if properly impressed with the horror of his
doctrines, sooner than they would now admire a handsome Mohammedan?"
On the matter of Sunday observance the narrowest tenets of Puritanism
were preached, and the usual ignorance was manifested that there were
two sides to the question. Some of the incidents connected with this
subject are curious. One of the better characters in the novel asks
his wife to ride out on that day, and she reluctantly consents. This
brings at once upon the stage the inevitable Mrs. Wilson, who always
stands ready to point a moral, though she can hardly be said to adorn
the tale. She draws from the transaction the lesson that it is a
warning against marrying a person with a difference of views. In this
particular instance the respect of the man for religion had been
injurious to his wife, because "had he been an open deist, she would
have shrunk from the act in his company on suspicion of its
sinfulness." It is justice to add that many of these extreme opinions,
at least in the extreme form stated in this work, the author came
finally to outgrow if in fact he held them seriously then.
There are certain other peculiarities of Cooper's beliefs that
"Precaution" exemplifies. He has been constantly criticised for the
unvarying and uninteresting uniformity of his female characters. This
is hardly just; but it is just in the sense that there was only one
type which he ever held up to admiration. Others were introduced, but
they were never the kind of women whom he delighted to honor. Of
female purity he had the highest ideal. Deference for the female sex
as a sex he felt sincerely and expressed strongly. Along with (p. 027)
this he seemed to have the most contemptible opinion of the ability of
the female individual to take care of herself. On the other hand, if
she had the requisite ability, the greater became his contempt; for
helplessness, in his eyes, was apparently her chiefest charm. The
Emily Moseley of his first novel is the prototype of a long line of
heroines, whose combination of propriety and incapacity places them at
the farthest possible remove from the heroic. She is worthy of special
mention here, only because in this novel he describes in detail the
desirable qualities, which in the others are simply implied. He
furnishes us, moreover, with the precise training to which she had
been subjected by her aunt, Mrs. Wilson. Accordingly, we learn both
what, in Cooper's eyes, it was incumbent for a woman to be, and what
she ought to go through in order to be that woman. A few sentences
taken at random will show the character of this heroine. She was
artless, but intelligent; she was cheerful, but pious; she was familiar
with all the attainments suitable to her sex and years. Her time was
dedicated to work which had a tendency to qualify her for the duties
of this life and fit her for the life hereafter. She seldom opened a
book unless in search of information. She never read one that
contained a sentiment dangerous to her morals, or inculcated an
opinion improper for her sex. She never permitted a gentleman to ride
with her, to walk with her, to hold with her a tête-à-tête. Nor was
this result achieved with difficulty. Though she was natural and
unaffected, the simple dignity about her was sufficient to forbid any
such request, or even any such thought in the men who had the
pleasure, or, as the reader may think, the grief, of her (p. 028)
acquaintance. In short, she was not merely propriety personified; she
was propriety magnified and intensified. This particular heroine, who
could not consistently have read the book in which her own conduct is
described, finally disappears as the wife of an equally remarkable
earl. Her story, as it is told, however, strikingly exemplifies the
carelessness in working up details which is one of Cooper's marked
defects. The novel received its name, as has already been implied,
because it aimed to set forth the desirability of precaution in the
choice of husband or wife. What it actually taught, however, was its
undesirability. The misunderstandings, the crosses, the distresses, to
which the lovers were subjected in the tale all sprang from excess of
care, and not from lack of it; from exercising precaution where
precaution did nothing but harm.
The work excited but little attention in this country. In the following
year it was printed in England by Colburn, and was there noticed
without the slightest suspicion of its American authorship. In some
quarters it received fairly favorable mention. It could not be hid,
however, that the novel, as regarded the general public, had been a
failure. Still, it was not so much a failure that the author's friends
did not think well of it and see promise in it. They urged him to
renewed exertions. He had tried the experiment of depicting scenes he
had never witnessed, and a life he had never led. He had, in their
opinion, succeeded fairly well in describing what he knew nothing
about; they were anxious that he should try his hand at the representation
of manners and men of which and whom he knew something. Especially was
it made a matter of reproach that he, in heart and soul an (p. 029)
American of the Americans, should have gone to a foreign land to fill
the imagination of his countrymen with pictures of a social state
alien both in feeling and fact to their own. This was an appeal of a
kind that was certain to touch Cooper sensibly; for with him love of
country was not a sentiment, it was a passion. As a sort of atonement,
therefore, for his first work, he determined to inflict, as he phrased
it, a second one upon the world. Against this there should be no
objection on the score of patriotism. He naturally turned for his
subject to the Revolution, with the details of which he was familiar
by his acquaintance with the men who had shared prominently in its
conduct, and had felt all the keenness of a personal triumph in its
success. The very county, moreover, in which he had made his home was
full of recollections. Westchester had been the neutral ground between
the English forces stationed in New York and the American army encamped
in the highlands of the Hudson. Upon it more, perhaps, than upon any
other portion of the soil of the revolted colonies had fallen the
curse of war in its heaviest form. Back and forth over a large part of
it had perpetually ebbed and flowed the tide of battle. Not a road was
there which had not been swept again and again by columns of infantry
or squadrons of horse. Every thicket had been the hiding-place of
refugees or spies; every wood or meadow had been the scene of a
skirmish; and every house that had survived the struggle had its tale
to tell of thrilling scenes that had taken place within its walls.
These circumstances determined Cooper's choice of the place and
period. Years before, while at the residence of John Jay, his host had
given him, one summer afternoon, the account of a spy that had (p. 030)
been in his service during the war. The coolness, shrewdness,
fearlessness, but above all the unselfish patriotism, of the man had
profoundly impressed the Revolutionary leader who had employed him.
The story made an equally deep impression upon Cooper at the time. He
now resolved to take it as the foundation of the tale he had been
persuaded to write. The result was that on the 22d of December, 1821,
the novel of "The Spy" was quietly advertised in the New York papers
as on that day published.
The reader, however, would receive a very wrong idea of the feelings
with which the author began and ended this work of fiction, should he
stop short with the account that has just been given. The circumstances
attending its composition and publication are, as a matter of fact,
almost as remarkable as the story itself. They certainly present a
most suggestive picture of the literary state of America at that time.
Cooper, for his part, had not the slightest anticipation of the effect
that it was going to have upon his future. In writing it he was
carrying out the wishes of his friends full as much as his own. Nor,
apparently, did they urge the course upon him because they conceived
him capable of accomplishing anything very great or even very good.
They felt that he could produce something that was not discreditable,
and that was all that could reasonably be expected of an American.
There was no other novelist in the field. Charles Brockden Brown had
been dead several years. Irving and Paulding were writing only short
sketches. John Neal, indeed, in addition to the poems, tragedies,
reviews, newspaper articles, indexes, and histories he was turning out
by wholesale, had likewise perpetrated a novel; but it was never known
enough to justify the mention of it as having been forgotten. (p. 031)
Here, consequently, was a vacant place that ought to be filled. Cooper
was never the man who would be eager to take a place because there was
no one else to occupy it; and the way he went at the task he had
undertaken gives indirectly a clear insight into an American author's
feelings sixty years ago. He entered upon the work not merely without
the expectation of success, but almost without the hope of it. The
novel was written very hastily; the sheets passed into the hands of
the type-setter with scarcely a correction; and so little heart had he
in the task that the first volume was printed several months before he
felt any inducement to write a line of the second. The propriety of
abandoning it entirely, under the apprehension of its proving a serious
loss, was debated. "Should chance," he said, in a later introduction
to the book, "throw a copy of this prefatory notice into the hands of
an American twenty years hence, he will smile to think that a
countryman hesitated to complete a work so far advanced, merely
because the disposition of the country to read a book that treated of
its own familiar interests was distrusted." In this respect the
difficulty of his position was made more prominent by its contrast
with that of the great novelist who was then occupying the attention
of the English-speaking world. Scott, in writing "Waverley," could
take for granted that there lay behind him an intense feeling of
nationality, which would show itself not in noisy boastfulness, but in
genuine appreciation; that with the matter of his work his countrymen
would sympathize, whatever might be their opinion as to its execution.
No such supposition could be made by Cooper; no such belief inspired
him to exertion. He might hope to create interest; he could not (p. 032)
venture to assume its existence. One other incident connected with
the composition of this work marks even more plainly the almost
despairing attitude of his mind. While the second volume was slowly
printing, he received an intimation from his publisher that the work
might grow to a length that would endanger the profits. The author
hereupon adopted a course which is itself a proof of how much stranger
is fact than fiction. To placate the publisher and set his mind at
rest, the last chapter was written, printed, and paged, not merely
before the intervening chapters had been composed, but before they had
been fully conceived. It was fair to expect failure for a work which
no bookseller had been found willing to undertake at his own risk, and
which the author himself set about in a manner so perfunctory. The
indifference and carelessness displayed, he said afterward, were
disrespectful to the public and unjust to himself; yet they give, as
nothing else could, a vivid picture of the literary situation in
America at that time.
The reluctance and half-heartedness with which Cooper began and completed
this work stand, indeed, in sharpest contrast to the existing state of
feeling, when it is only the prayers of friends and the tears of
relatives that can prevent most of us from publishing some novel we
have already written. But almost as it were by accident he had struck
into the vein best fitted for the display of his natural powers. In it
he succeeded with little effort, where other men with the greatest
effort might have failed. The delicate distinctions that underlie
character where social pressure has given to all the same outside, it
was not his to depict. Still less could he unfold the subtle (p. 033)
workings of motives that often elude the observation of the very
persons whom they most influence. Such a power is essential to the
success of him who seeks to delineate men as seen in conventional
society; and largely for the lack of it his first novel had been a
failure. It was only at rare intervals, also, that he showed that
precision of style and pointed method of statement which, independent
of the subject, interest the reader in men and things that are not in
themselves interesting. It was the story of adventure, using adventure
in its broadest sense, that he was fitted to tell: and fortunately for
him Walter Scott, then in the very height of his popularity, had made
it supremely fashionable. In this it is only needful to draw character
in bold outlines; to represent men not under the influence of motives
that hold sway in artificial and complex society, but as breathed upon
by those common airs of reflection and swept hither and thither by
those common gales of passion that operate upon us all as members of
the race. It is not the personality of the actors to which the
attention is supremely drawn, though even in that there is ample field
for the exhibition of striking characterization. It is the events that
carry us along; it is the catastrophe to which they are hurrying that
excites the feelings and absorbs the thoughts. There can be no greater
absurdity than to speak of this kind of story, as is sometimes done,
as being inferior in itself to those devoted exclusively to the
delineation of manners or character, or even of the subtler motives
which act upon the heart and life. As well might one say that the
"Iliad" is a poem of inferior type to the "Excursion." Again, it is
only those who think it must be easy to write what it is easy to read
who will fall into the mistake of fancying that a novel of (p. 034)
adventure which has vitality enough to live does not owe its existence
to the arduous, though it may be largely unconscious, exercise of high
creative power. No better correction for this error can be found than
in looking over the names of the countless imitators of Scott, some of
them distinguished in other fields, who have made so signal a failure
that even the very fact that they attempted to imitate him at all has
been wholly forgotten.
"The Spy" appeared almost at the very close of 1821. It was not long
before its success was assured. Early in 1822 the newspapers were able
to assert that it had met with a sale unprecedented in the annals of
American literature. What that phrase meant is partly indicated by the
fact that it had then been found necessary to publish a second edition.
In March a third edition was put to the press; and in the same month
the story was dramatized and acted with the greatest success. Still in
the abject dependence upon foreign estimate which was the preëminent
characteristic of a large portion of the educated class of that day,
many felt constrained to wait for the judgment that would come back
from Europe before they could venture to express an opinion which they
had the presumption to call their own. Contemporary newspapers more
than once mention the relief that was afforded to many when Cooper was
spoken of in several of the English journals as "a distinguished
American novelist." This, it has been implied, was then a condition of
the public mind that no writer could dare wholly to disregard. When
the project of abandoning this novel, already half printed, was under
discussion, the principal reason that finally decided the author (p. 035)
to persevere was the fact that his previous work had received a respectful
notice in a few English periodicals. It was thought, in consequence,
that in his new venture he would be secure from loss. Still, it is due
to his countrymen to say that it was to them alone he owed his first
success. In later years the declaration was often made that he would
never have been held in honor at home, had it not been for foreign
approbation. The assertion he himself indignantly denied. "This work,"
he said afterward, in speaking of "The Spy," "most of you received
with a generous welcome that might have satisfied any one that the
heart of this great community is sound." Certain it is that the
success of the novel was assured in America some time before the
character of its reception in Europe was known.
The printed volume was offered to the London publisher Murray, and for
terms he was referred to Irving, who was then in England. Murray gave
the novel for examination to Gifford, the editor of the "Quarterly."
By his advice it was declined,--a result that might easily have been
foretold from the hostility of the man to this country. He had made
his review an organ of the most persistent depreciation and abuse of
America and everything American. A new writer from this side of the
ocean was little likely to meet with any favor in his sight, especially
when his subject was one that from its very nature could not be
flattering to British prejudices. Murray having refused, another
publisher was found in Miller, who had also been the first to bring
out Irving's "Sketch Book." Early in 1822 the work appeared in England.
There its success was full as great as it had been in America. This novel,
in fact, made Cooper's reputation both at home and abroad. It is (p. 036)
important to bear this in mind, because it is a common notion that it
was his delineations of Indian life that brought him his European
fame. They established it, but they did not originate it. "The Spy"
was a tale of a war, which in character was not essentially different
from any other war. So far as the story painted the incidents of a
struggle in which the English had been unsuccessful, it could have no
right to expect favor from the English public unless there was merit
in the execution of the work independent of the subject. The interest
with which it was read by a people who could not fail to find portions
of it disagreeable, who were moreover accustomed to look with contempt
upon everything of American origin, was the best proof that a novelist
had arisen whose reputation would stretch beyond the narrow limits of
nationality. This was even more strikingly seen, when it came to be
translated. If the English opinion was favorable, the French might
fairly be called enthusiastic. A version was made into that tongue in
the summer of 1822, by the translator of the Waverley Novels. In the
absolute ignorance that existed as to its authorship, the work was
ascribed by several of the Parisian papers to Fanny Wright, who
subsequently achieved a fame of her own as a champion of woman's
privileges and denouncer of woman's wrongs. In spite of its anonymous
character and of some extraordinary blunders in translation, it was
warmly received in France. From that country its reputation in no long
space of time spread in every direction; translations followed one
after another into all the cultivated tongues of modern Europe; and in
all it met the same degree of favor. Nor has lapse of time shaken
seriously its popularity. The career of success, which began sixty (p. 037)
years ago, has suffered vicissitudes, but never suspension; and to
this hour, whatever fault may be found with the work as a whole, the
name of Harvey Birch is still one of the best known in fiction. No
tale produced during the present century has probably had so extensive
a circulation; and the leading character in it has found admirers
everywhere and at times imitators. Of this latter statement a striking
illustration is given in the memoirs of Gisquet, a prefect of the French
police under Louis Philippe. In his chapter on the secret agents
employed by him during his administration, he tells the story of one
who by the information he imparted rendered important services in
preventing the outbreak of civil war. He thus describes the motives
which led the man to pursue the course he did. "Struck with the reading,"
he writes, "of one of Cooper's novels called 'The Spy,' he aspired to
the sort of ambition which distinguished the hero of that work, and
was desirous of playing in France the part which Cooper has assigned
to Harvey Birch during the American war of independence.... Harvey
Birch--for he adopted this name in all his reports--never belied his
professions of fidelity. He rendered services which would have merited
a competent fortune; but when the term of them ended, he contented
himself with asking for a humble employment, barely enough to supply
his daily necessities." The belief in the reality of the hero has,
indeed, been part of the singular fortune of the book. In his account
of Nicaragua, published in 1852, Mr. E. G. Squier furnished incidentally
interesting testimony to the truth of this statement as well as to the
wide circulation of the tale itself. At La Union, the port of San Miguel,
he stayed at the house of the commandant of the place. His (p. 038)
apartments he found well stocked with books, and among them was this
particular novel. "The 'Espy,'" he went on to say, "of the lamented
Cooper, I may mention, seems to be better known in Spanish America
than any other work in the English language. I found it everywhere;
and when I subsequently visited the Indian pueblo of Conchagua, the
first alcalde produced it from an obscure corner of the cahildo, as a
very great treasure. He regarded it as veritable history, and thought
'Señor Birch' a most extraordinary personage and a model guerillero."