1833-1838.
On the fifth of November, 1833, Cooper landed at New York. For a few
winters that followed he made that city his place of residence. The
summers he spent in Cooperstown. To this village he paid a visit in
June, 1834, after having been away from it entirely for about sixteen
years. The recollections of his early life had always endeared it to his
memory, and in it he now determined to take up his permanent abode.
Accordingly he acquired possession of his father's old place, which for
a long period had remained unoccupied. The house had received from the
inhabitants the name of Templeton Hall, with a direct reference to "The
Pioneers." Everything about it was rapidly hastening to ruin. Cooper at
once began repairs upon it, and after these had been fully completed he
made it his only residence. It was in this little village, upon the
shore of the lake which his pen has made famous, that he spent the
remainder of his life. There he wrote nearly all the works which he
produced after his return to his native land. Its seclusion and quiet
gave him ample opportunities for undisturbed literary exertion; the
beauty of the surroundings ministered constantly to his passion for
scenery; and of the world outside he saw sufficient to satisfy his
wishes in the frequent journeys which business compelled him to make to
the great cities.
Yet, though his latter days were spent in the country, the life (p. 118)
he led henceforward deserves anything but the name of a pastoral. With
the return from Europe begins the epic period of Cooper's career. The
next ten years, in particular, were years of battle and storm. He had
been criticised harshly and unjustly; he came back prepared and disposed
to criticise. His feelings found expression at once. The America to
which he had returned seemed to him much worse than that from which he
had gone. In his opinion nearly everything had deteriorated. Manners,
morals, the whole spirit of the nation, struck him as being on a lower
level. Yet the change was not really in the people; it was in himself.
The country had been moving on in the line of its natural bustling
development; he, on the contrary, had been going back in sentiment. In
one particular there was a certain justification for the dislike
expressed by him for the novel things he saw. The business of the entire
land was in a feverish condition. The Erie Canal, completed the year
before his departure for Europe, had opened an unbroken water way from
the Atlantic sea-board to the farthest shores of the great lakes. To
this stimulus to population and trade was added the expected stimulus of
the railroad system, then in its infancy. Both together were disclosing,
though more to the imagination than to the eye, the wealth that lay hid
in the unsettled regions of the West. They were active agents,
therefore, in creating one of those periods of speculative prosperity
which are sure to recur when any new and unforeseen avenue to sudden
fortune is laid open. The immense field for endeavor revealed by the
prospective establishment of flourishing communities reacted unfavorably
upon the intellectual movement which had begun in a feeble way (p. 119)
to show itself twenty years before. The attraction of mighty enterprises
which held out to the hope promises of the highest temporal triumphs,
was a competition that mere literary and scholastic pursuits, with their
doubtful success and precarious rewards, could not well maintain. The
country certainly went back for a time in higher things in consequence
of that rapid material progress which drew to its further development
the youthful energy and ability of the entire land. To make money and to
make it rapidly seemed to be the one object of life.
Such a fever of speculative prosperity wholly absorbing the thoughts and
activities of men in the acquisition of wealth, would have been viewed
by Cooper at any time with indifference, even if it did not inspire
disgust. But a greater change than he knew had come over him. It is
clear that he had now grown largely out of sympathy with the energy and
enterprise which were doing so much to build up the prosperity and power
of his country. His nature had come into a profound sympathy with the
quiet, the culture, and the polish of the lands he had left behind. His
spirit could no longer be incited by the romance that lay hid in the
fiery energies of trade. In the tumultuousness of the life about him, he
could see little but a restless and vulgar exertion for the creation of
wealth. The perpetual bustle and change were not to his taste. He spoke
of it afterwards, in one of his works, with a certain grim humor
peculiarly his own. America he said, was a country for alibis. The whole
nation was in motion; and everybody was everywhere, and nobody was
anywhere.
Feelings of this kind had begun to come over him long before his (p. 120)
return from abroad. He had been affected by his surroundings to an
extent of which he was only vaguely conscious. While in Europe he
admitted that he found growing in his nature a strong distaste for the
common appliances of common life. He had not been long in Florence
before these sentiments found utterance. "I begin to feel," he wrote, "I
could be well content to vegetate here for one half of my life, to say
nothing of the remainder." He drew sharp distinctions between commercial
towns and capitals. Even in Italy, Leghorn with its growing trade, its
bales of merchandise, its atmosphere filled with the breath of the salt
sea mixed with the smell of pitch and tar, seemed mean and vulgar after
the refinement and world-old beauty of Florence. He acknowledged that
the languor and repose of towns which glory simply in their collections
and recollections, were far more suited to his feelings than the
activity and tumult of towns whose glory lies in their commercial
enterprises. This preference is not uncommon among cultivated men. But
it is too much to ask of a nation that it shall exist for the sake of
gratifying the æsthetic emotions of travelers. The process of achieving
greatness can never be so agreeable to the looker-on as the sight of
greatness achieved; but it is unhappily often the case that many things,
which the visitor regards as a charm, the native feels to be a reproach.
Besides the change of view in himself, there were some actual changes in
the country that were not temporary in their nature. The constitution of
society had altered at home during his residence abroad, or was rapidly
altering. The influence of the old colonial aristocracy was fast dying
out. New men were pushing to the wall the descendants of the (p. 121)
families that had flourished before the Revolution, and had sought after
it to keep up distinctions and exclusiveness which the very success of
the struggle in which they had been concerned doomed to an early decay.
This was especially noticeable in New York. In such a city social rank
must tend, in the long run, to wait upon wealth. The result may be
delayed, it cannot be averted. Wealth, too, in most cases, will find its
way to the hands of those carrying on great commercial undertakings.
That this class would eventually become a controlling one in society, if
not the controlling one, was inevitable. It was not likely that men, who
were bent on the conquest of the continent, who revolved even in their
dreams all forms of the adventurous and the perilous, whose enterprise
stopped short only with the impossible, would be content long to submit
to a fictitious superiority on the part of those whose thoughts were so
taken up with the consideration of what their fathers had been or had
done that they forgot to be or to do anything themselves. Yet the latter
composed no small share of the class with which Cooper's early
associations had lain. He naturally sympathized with them rather than
with those who were displacing them. Trade began to seem to him vulgar,
and it was doubtless true that many engaged in it, who had become
rapidly rich, were vulgar enough. But he made no distinction. He longed
for the restoration of a state of things that had gone forever by. He
was disposed to feel dissatisfaction with much that was taking place,
not because it came into conflict with his judgment, but because it
jarred upon his tastes and prejudices.
A residence in Europe for a few years had, indeed, done for him (p. 122)
what the coming-on of old age does for most. He had become the eulogist
of times past. The views which he expressed in private and in public,
during the decade that followed his return to America, were not of the
kind to make him popular with his countrymen. The manners of the people
were, according to him, decidedly worse than they were twenty or thirty
years before. The elegant deportment of women had been largely
supplanted by the rattle of hoydens and the giggling of the nursery. The
class of superior men of the quiet old school were fast disappearing
before the "wine-discussing, trade-talking, dollar-dollar set" of the
day. Under the blight of this bustling, fussy, money-getting race of
social Vandals, simplicity of manners had died out, or was dying out.
The architecture of the houses, like the character of the society, was
more ambitious than of old, but in far worse taste; in a taste, in fact,
which had been corrupted by uninstructed pretension. The towns were
larger, but they were tawdrier than ever. The spirit of traffic was
gradually enveloping everything in its sordid grasp. There had taken
place a vast expansion of mediocrity, well enough in itself, but so
overwhelming as nearly to overshadow everything that once stood out as
excellent.
In most of these remarks I am giving Cooper's sentiments, as far as
possible, in his own words. They stung the national vanity to the quick.
The bitter resentment they evoked at the time could hardly be understood
now; and a great deal of wrath was then kindled at what would meet with
assent, at the present day, on account of its justice, or excite
amusement on account of its exaggeration. Thurlow Weed, in 1841,
expressed a general sentiment about Cooper, with much affluence of
capital letter and solemnity of exclamatory punctuation. "He has (p. 123)
disparaged, American Lakes," wrote that editor, "ridiculed American
Scenery, burlesqued American Coin, and even satirized the American
Flag!" Cooper could hardly have expected his strictures to be received
with applause, but he was clearly surprised at the outcry they awoke.
Yet he had had plenty of opportunities to learn that other countries
were as sensitive to criticism as his own. One singular illustration of
this feeling had been exhibited at Rome. He had completed his novel of
"The Water Witch" and wished to print and publish it in that city. The
manuscript was accordingly sent to the censor. It was kept for days,
which grew to weeks. It was at last returned with refusal, unless it
were subjected to thorough revision. Almost on the opening page occurred
a highly objectionable paragraph. "It would seem," Cooper had written,
"that as nature has given its periods to the stages of animal life, it
has also set limits to all moral and political ascendency. While the
city of the Medici is receding from its crumbling walls, like the human
form shrinking into 'the lean and slippered pantaloon,' the Queen of the
Adriatic sleeping on her muddy isles, and Rome itself is only to be
traced by fallen temples and buried columns, the youthful vigor of
America is fast covering the wilds of the West with the happiest fruits
of human industry." This passage, the censor quietly but severely
pointed out, laid down a principle that was unsound, and supported it by
facts that were false. A rigid pruning could alone make the work worthy
of a license. The consequence was that Cooper carried the manuscript
with him to Germany, and it was first published in Dresden, in a land
where men were not sensitive to anything that might be said, at any rate
about Italy.
But the personal unpopularity he brought upon himself by his (p. 124)
censorious remarks will not wholly account for the unpopularity as a
writer, which it was his fortune, in no short time, to acquire. There
were other agencies at work besides those which affected the feeling
towards him as a man. Throughout the English-speaking world there had
been a literary reaction. Men had begun to tire of the novel of
adventure. It was not that it had lost its hold upon the public; it had
lost the supreme hold which for twenty years it had maintained. The
mighty master was dead; to some extent his influence had died before
him. The later work he did, had in several instances detracted from,
rather than added to the fame he had won by the earlier. Cooper's own
ventures in the field of foreign fiction, whatever their absolute merit,
could not be compared with those in which he had drawn the life of the
ocean, or the streams and forests of his native land. But outside of any
effect produced by poorer production, there could be no doubt of the
fact of a change in the public taste. The hero of action had gone by. In
his place had come the hero of observation and reflection, who did not
do great things, but who said good things. The exquisite and the
sentimentalist were the fashion, to be speedily followed, according to
the law of reaction, by the boor and the satirist. At the time when
Cooper returned from Europe, Bulwer was the popular favorite. Both in
England and America he was styled the prince of living novelists; and
nowhere was enthusiasm, in his behalf, crazier than in this country. The
revolution in taste, moreover, worked directly in his favor in more ways
than one. Scott and Cooper's heroes, whether intelligent or not, were
invariably moral. But of this sort of men readers were tired. No (p. 125)
character could please highly the popular palate in which there was
not a distinct flavor of iniquity. More ability and less morality was
the opinion generally entertained, though probably not often expressed.
Hence it was not unnatural that the sentimental dandies and high-toned
villains of Bulwer's earlier novels should have been the heroes to
captivate all hearts.
The comparatively low estimate into which the novel of adventure had
sunk, undoubtedly had a marked effect upon Cooper's reputation. Some of
his later work is superior to his earlier from the artistic point of
view. Yet it was never received with the same praise, at least in
English-speaking countries. More than that, the criticism it received
was often excessively depreciatory; nor was this all due to personal
unpopularity, though a good deal of it certainly was. He simply wrote in
a style which the age had temporarily left behind, and fancied it had
outgrown. All that Cooper had to do, all that under any circumstances he
could do, was to keep on producing the best that lay in his power; sure
to find a certain body of readers in sympathy with him; sure also that
some time in the future the revolution of taste would bring him into
fashion if he had written anything that really deserved to live.
These facts and considerations must, however, be borne in mind in order
to understand the gradual growth of the ill-feeling that sprang up
between Cooper and his countrymen. To the change of view in himself and
to the change of taste in the public, were soon added special
circumstances that tended to bring about or increase alienation. But
there did not exist toward him, when he came back from Europe, any
hostility on the part of his countrymen. Circumstances had led him (p. 126)
to suspect such a feeling; but it was mainly the creation of a nature
that was morbidly sensitive to criticism. He was not, to be sure, the
popular idol at his return that he had been at his departure. But this
decline, outside of the causes already mentioned, was due to ignorance
rather than dislike. A new generation had, during his absence, come on
the scene of active life. To it the influence of his personal presence
was unknown. He had been away so long that many looked upon him with the
indifference with which foreigners are regarded by the majority; on the
other hand, the fact of his being a native prevented others from feeling
that interest in him which a foreigner has to some. Whatever hostility
actually existed sprang mainly from causes creditable to himself. If
Cooper disliked England for its depreciation of America, he hated with a
hatred akin to loathing, the recreant Americans who mistook the relation
they bore to their native land, and apologized for its character and
existence, instead of apologizing for their own. For these men he made
no effort to hide the contempt he felt. This class, far larger then in
numbers than now, came mainly from the great cities. Many of them had
wealth and social position to make up for their lack of ability; some of
them were attached to the legations. They naturally resented the low
opinion entertained and expressed of them by their countryman, and had
doubtless done him some harm, though far less than he supposed. Besides
these, however, there were certainly a pretty large number by whom his
aggressive patriotism was felt to be a positive bore. To this feeling
there had been a good deal of expression given in the newspaper press.
Cooper, who never could learn how little effect of itself hostile (p. 127)
criticism has upon the reputation of a popular writer, gave to these
attacks far more weight than they deserved.
It was, therefore, with exaggerated and unnecessary feelings of distrust
that he had returned to his native land. He looked for indifference and
aversion. Men seldom fail to find in such cases what they expect. He was
present at a reception given, a few days after his return, to Commodore
Chauncey. Men whom he knew, but had not seen for years, did not come up
to speak with him; those who did, addressed him as if he had been gone
from the city a few weeks. So much was he chilled by this apparent
coldness that he left the room before the dinner was half over. He did
not appreciate his own reserve of manner. The indifference which he
found was, in many cases, due not to any lack of cordiality in others,
but to hesitation at the way in which advances would be received by
himself. There was a brusqueness in his address, an apparent assumption
in his manner, which had nothing consonant to them in his feelings. But
it was only those who knew him intimately that could venture, after long
separation, to break in upon this seeming unsociableness and hauteur.
On Monday, May 29 1826, just before his departure for Europe, a dinner
had been given to Cooper at the City Hotel by the club which he had
founded. It partook almost of the nature of an ovation. Chancellor Kent
had presided. De Witt Clinton, the governor of the state, General Scott,
and many others conspicuous in public life, had honored it with their
presence. Charles King, the editor of the "New York American," and
subsequently president of Columbia College, had addressed him in a
speech full of the heartiest interest in his future and of pride (p. 128)
in his past. The Chancellor had voiced the general feeling by toasting
him as the "genius which has rendered our native soil classic ground,
and given to our early history the enchantment of fiction." No one, in
fact, had ever left the country with warmer wishes or more enthusiastic
expressions of admiration and regard. It was but little more than a week
after his return when another invitation to a public dinner was offered
him by some of the most prominent citizens of New York. In this they
expressly asserted that he had won their esteem and affection, not
merely by his talents, but by his manly defense, while abroad, of the
institutions of his country. The invitation seemed to surprise Cooper as
well as the language in which it was couched. He thanked the proposers
warmly, but he declined it. The refusal was perhaps unavoidable. If so,
it was unfortunate; if not, it was a mistake. Had the dinner taken
place, it would have shown him the estimation in which he was really
held, and would have modified or destroyed any prejudices entertained
towards him by others, if any such existed.
Up to this period in his public career, Cooper had certainly not done
anything to undermine his popularity. He now entered upon a line of
conduct which it is charity to call blundering. He began, or at any rate
pursued, a controversy, in which nothing was to be gained and everything
to be risked, if not actually lost. He not only set himself to defend a
course that needed no defense, he replied to attacks, real or imaginary,
which could only be raised into importance by receiving from him notice.
These attacks were a criticism on "The Bravo" which had appeared in the
"New York American;" a criticism on his later writings which was found
in the columns of the "New York Commercial Advertiser;" and an (p. 129)
editorial article in the "New York Courier and Enquirer." He could not
have done a more foolish thing. He knew perfectly well that no writer
could be written down save by himself. He has quoted the very remark.
But a hundred similar sayings, condensing in a line the wisdom of ages,
could never have kept him quiet when an attack was made upon himself. A
popular writer has always immense odds in his favor in any controversy
he may have with inferior men. He is ordinarily sure of the verdict of
posterity, for his is likely to be the only side that will reach its
ears. Even during his own time there will always be a large body of
admirers who will defend him with more fervor, and advocate his cause
with more effect than he has it in his own power to do. But it can and
will be done only in the case that he does little or nothing himself. If
Cooper had lost any ground in the estimation of the public, all he had
to do, in order to regain it, was to remain quiet. The one thing that
Cooper could not do was to remain quiet. He determined to set himself
right before his countrymen. He speedily had full opportunity to
ascertain the results that are pretty sure to follow experiments of this
kind.
In June, 1834, appeared Cooper's "Letter to His Countrymen." Its
publication was no sudden freak, for the year before he had announced
the preparation of it. The work is a thin octavo of a little more than
one hundred pages; but the damage it wrought him was out of all
proportion to its size. The first half of it was taken up with a reply
to the comments and criticisms made in the New York journals already
mentioned. This was of itself sufficiently absurd, for it revived what
had already been forgotten, and gave importance to some things (p. 130)
had not been worth reading, let alone remembering. But to this
blundering was added a wrongheadedness, of which Cooper's later life was
to afford numerous illustrations. The article from the "Courier and
Enquirer" is quoted in full in the book. Some of its statements are
inaccurate; but no one can read it now without seeing at once that it
was written in a spirit that was the very reverse of hostile. To attack
a powerful journal for comments clearly dictated by friendly feeling,
betrayed more than a lack of prudence; it betrayed a lack of common
sense. Moreover, there were other serious defects in the Letter. He
criticised at some length certain forms of expression used by one of his
assailants. Cooper's remarks on language are almost invariably marked by
the pretension and positiveness that characterize the writers on usage
who are ignorant of their ignorance; but in this case they are in
addition frequently puerile. His personal references were not especially
objectionable. But the best that can be asserted of them is, that he
said with good taste what it would have been better taste not to say at
all. He, however, so contrived to state his position that he laid
himself open to the charge that he looked upon the unfavorable opinion
expressed of "The Bravo" as being instigated by the French government,
and that, in consequence, the ill reception here accorded to his book
was not due necessarily to any inferiority in the work itself, but to
the machinations of foreign political enemies. He did not so mean it. He
meant to imply that there was no limit to the volunteer baseness of men
who stand ready to gratify power by doing for it what it would gladly
have done, but would never ask to have done. But the other was a (p. 131)
natural inference, and it was used against him with marked effect.
Worse even than all this, he succeeded in accomplishing in the latter
half of his Letter. A most exciting controversy was going on at the time
between the President and the Senate of the United States. The
bitterness had been aggravated into fury by the removal of the deposits.
The Senate had passed a resolution declaring the conduct of the
President unconstitutional. Against this resolution Jackson had
published a protest. The whole country was in a flame. Into the purely
personal controversy in which he was engaged, Cooper lugged in a
discussion of the political question that was agitating the nation. He
remarked, in the course of it, that if the Union were ever destroyed by
errors or faults of an internal origin, it would not be by executive but
by legislative usurpation. In order apparently to have neither of the
two parties in full sympathy with him, he criticised the appointing
power of the President, and his action in filling embassies. It is by
the most strained interpretation of the danger to our institutions from
imitation of those found in foreign countries, that the political
discussion was dragged into this production. The force of folly could
hardly go farther.
The inevitable result followed. The work pleased nobody, and irritated
nearly everybody. Three influential journals were at once made open and
active enemies, and in their wake followed a long train of minor
newspapers. More than that was effected. The Letter called down upon him
the wrath of a great political party, which in the North embraced a
large majority of the educated class; and its hostility followed him
relentlessly to the grave. Unwise as the work was, however, there (p. 132)
was nothing in it to justify the abuse that in consequence fell upon its
author. To his statement of the danger of legislative usurpation Caleb
Cushing made a dignified, though somewhat rhetorical reply; but while
controverting his opinions, he spoke of Cooper personally with great
respect. But such was not the treatment he generally received. The
language with which he was assailed was of the most insulting and
grossly abusive kind. In those days it was called appalling severity. It
reads now like very dreary and very vulgar billingsgate. One example
will suffice. The "New York Mirror" was then supposed to be the leading
literary paper in New York. It was nominally edited by Morris, Willis,
and Fay, though the two last were at that time in Europe. Morris is
still remembered by two or three songs he wrote. Besides being an
editor, he held the position of general of militia; accordingly he was
often styled by his admirers, "he of the sword and pen," which was just
and appropriate to this extent, that he did as much execution with the
one as with the other. His paper intimated that Cooper was willing to
transform himself into a baboon for the sake of abusing America, and
that his inordinate ambition prompted him to distance all competitors,
whether the race were fame or shame. It is proper to add that the tone
of the "Mirror" in regard to Cooper was radically changed after the
return of Willis from Europe.
In his Letter Cooper announced publicly, what he had long before said to
his friends, that he had made up his mind to abandon authorship. Such
resolutions are mainly remarkable for the fact that they are never kept.
But the howl of denunciation that immediately arose would never have
suffered him to keep still. From this time dates the beginning of (p. 133)
the long and gallant fight he carried on with the American people.
Gallant it certainly was, whatever may be thought of its wisdom; for it
was essentially the fight of one man against a nation. In politics he
had joined the Democratic party, but with some of their tenets he was
not in the slightest sympathy. He was, for example, a fierce
protectionist, and neglected no opportunity to cover with ridicule the
doctrine of free trade. But though practically standing alone, his
courage never faltered. The storm of obloquy that fell upon him made him
in his turn bitter and unjust in many things he said; but it never once
daunted his spirit or shook his resolution. On the contrary, it almost
seems as if he were aiming at unpopularity; at any rate he could not be
accused of seeking the favor of the public. Its acts he criticised, its
opinions he defied. His literary reputation and the sale of his works
were seriously affected by the course of conduct he pursued and the
hostility it provoked. But he was of that nature that if the certain
result of following the path he had marked out for himself had been the
hatred of the world, he would never have once deviated from it the
breadth of a hair.
He was not a man to remain on the defensive. He at once began
hostilities. His first attempt was unfortunate enough. This was the
satirical novel called "The Monikins," which was published on the 9th of
July, 1835. Of all the works written by Cooper this is most justly
subject to the criticism conveyed in the German idiom, that "it does not
let itself be read." To the immense majority of even the author's
admirers, it has been from the very beginning a sealed book. It is
invariably dangerous to assert a negative. But if a personal reference
may be pardoned, I am disposed to say, that of the generation that (p. 134)
has come upon the stage of active life since Cooper's death, I am
the only person who has read this work through. The knowledge of it
possessed by his contemporaries did not, in many cases, approach to the
dignity of being even second-hand. The accounts of it that have come
under my own notice, seem often to have been gathered from reviews of it
which had themselves been written by men who had never read the
original. It is no difficult matter to explain the neglect into which it
immediately sank. The work was a satire mainly upon certain of the
social and political features to be found in England and America,
designated respectively as Leaphigh and Leaplow; though one or two
things characteristic of France were transferred to the former country.
But satire Cooper could not write. The power of vigorous invective he
had in a marked degree. But the wit which plays while it wounds, which
while saying one thing means another, which deals in far-off suggestion
and remote allusion, this was something entirely unsuited to the
directness and energy of his intellect. Moreover, some of his most
marked literary defects were seen here exaggerated and unrelieved. In
many of his novels there is prolixity in the introduction. Still in
these it is often compensated by descriptions of natural scenery so
life-like and so enthusiastic that even the most _blasé_ of novel
readers is carried along in a state of what may be called endurable
tediousness. But in "The Monikins" the introductory tediousness is
unendurable. It is not until we are nearly half-way into the work and
have actually entered upon the voyage to the land of the monkeys, that
the dullness at all disappears. After the country of Leaphigh is reached
the story is far less absurd and more entertaining; though (p. 135)
Cooper's descriptions are of the nature of caricature rather than of
satire. There are, however, many shrewd and caustic remarks scattered up
and down the pages of the latter part of the work, but they will never
be known to anybody, for nobody will read the book through.
The work fell perfectly dead from the press. But its failure had not the
least effect in deterring Cooper from continuing in the course upon
which he had started. During the years 1836, 1837, and 1838, he
published ten volumes of travels. In these he repeated, with emphasis,
everything that he had uttered privately or had implied in his previous
publications. The first of these works was entitled "Sketches of
Switzerland." It was divided into two parts. The first, which was
published on May 21, 1836, gave an account of his residence and
excursions in that country during the summer and autumn of 1828. The
second part, which appeared October 8, 1836, was largely taken up with
accounts of matters and things in Paris during the winter of 1831-32, a
journey up the Rhine, and a second visit to Switzerland. These two parts
made four volumes. The remaining six had the general title of "Gleanings
in Europe," and two each were devoted to France, England, and Italy. The
first of these was published March 4, 1837; the second September 2 of
the same year; and the third, May 26, 1838. They were written in the
form of letters, and were pretty certainly made up from letters actually
written or memoranda taken at the time. But they were likewise largely
interspersed with the expression of views and feelings that he had
learned to adopt and cherish since his return to his native land.
In the case of England and America, in particular, his remarks (p. 136)
may have been full of light, but they did not exhibit sweetness.
Probably no set of travels was ever more elaborately contrived to arouse
the wrath of readers in both countries, nor one that more successfully
fulfilled its mission. His keen observation let no striking traits
escape notice. The individual Englishmen he meets and describes could
furnish entertainment only to men that were not themselves Englishmen.
There is, for instance, the sea-captain who endeavors to compensate for
his lack of energy by giving his passenger an account of the marvelous
riches of the nobility and gentry. Even more graphically drawn is the
islander he met in the Bernese Oberland, who appeared to regard the peak
of the Jungfrau with contempt, as if it did very well for Switzerland;
and who, when his attention was called to a singularly beautiful effect
upon a mountain top, began to tell how cheap mutton was in
Herefordshire. Nor were many of his general remarks flattering. As one
descended in the social scale he thought the English the most artificial
people on earth. Large numbers of them mistook a labored, feigned,
heartless manner for high-breeding. The mass of them acted in society
like children who have had their hair combed and faces washed, to be
shown up in the drawing-room. They were conventional everywhere. The
very men whom he met after his arrival in the streets of Southampton,
all looked as if they had been born with hat-brushes and clothes-brushes
in their hands. As a race, moreover, they had special defects. They
lacked delicacy and taste in conferring obligations or paying
compliments. They were utterly indifferent to the feelings of others.
There was a national propensity to blackguardism; and the English press,
in particular, calumniated its enemies, both political and (p. 137)
personal, with the coarsest vituperation.
These were not the sort of remarks to draw favorable notices from
British periodicals. Cooper soon had an opportunity to verify, in his
own experience, the truth of the last of his observations that have been
cited. Harsh, however, as was his language about England, it bore little
comparison to the severity with which he expressed himself about
America. The attacks on the newspaper press belong not here, but to the
account of the war he waged with it. The omission, however, will hardly
be noticed in the multitude of other matters he found to criticise.
Manners, customs, society, were touched throughout with an unsparing
hand. Common crimes, he admitted, were not so general with us as in
Europe, though mainly because we were exempt from temptation, but
uncommon meannesses did abound in a large circle of our population. Our
two besetting sins were canting and hypocrisy. We had far less publicity
in our pleasures than other nations; yet we had scarcely any domestic
privacy on account of the neighborhood. The whole country was full of a
village-like gossip which caused every man to think that he was a judge
of character, when he was not even a judge of facts. In most matters we
were humble imitators of the English. All their mistakes and
misjudgments we adopted except such as impaired our good opinion of
ourselves. It was a consequence that all their errors about foreign
countries had become our errors also. In a few cases, indeed, we were
compelled to be American; but whenever there was a tolerable chance we
endeavored to become second-class English. Wherever making money was in
view, we had but one soul and that was inventive enough; but when (p. 138)
it came to spending it we did not know how to set about it except
by routine. No people traveled as much as we; none traveled with so
little enjoyment or so few comforts. Taste and knowledge and tone were
too little concentrated anywhere, too much diffused everywhere, to make
head against the advances of an overwhelming mediocrity. Of society
there was but little; for what it suited the caprice of certain people
to call such was little more than the noisy, screeching, hoydenish
romping of both sexes. The taint of provincialism was diffused over all
feelings and beliefs. Of arts and letters the country possessed none or
next to none. Moreover, there was no genuine sympathy with either. To
all this dismal prospect there was slight hope of improvement, because
there was a disposition to resent any intimation that we could be better
than we were at present.
It would be a gross error to infer the general character of Cooper's
travels from these extracts. They are gathered together from ten
volumes, without any of the attendant statements by which they are there
in many cases modified. Equally erroneous would it be to suppose that he
did not find much to praise as well as to condemn in both England and
America. These extracts, however, explain the almost savage vituperation
with which Cooper was thenceforth followed in the press of the two
countries. The works themselves met with a very slight sale: none of
them ever passed into a second edition. Men were not likely to read with
alacrity, however much they might with profit, unfavorable opinions
entertained of themselves. Cooper himself could not have hoped for much
success for his strictures. In fact, he expressly declared the contrary.
The most he should expect, he said, would be the secret assent of (p. 139)
the wise and good, the expressed censure of the numerous class of the
vapid and ignorant, the surprise of the mercenary and the demagogue, and
the secret satisfaction of the few who should come after him who would
take an interest in his name.
Notwithstanding the ferocious criticism with which they were assailed at
the time and the forgetfulness into which they have now fallen, Cooper's
accounts of the countries in which he lived are among the best of their
kind. Books of travel are from their very nature of temporary interest.
It requires peculiar felicity of manner to make up long for the fresher
matter about foreign lands which newer books contain. Striking
descriptions and acute observations will still, however, reward the
reader of Cooper's sketches. There are often displayed in them a vigor
and a political sagacity which of themselves would justify his being
styled the most robust of American authors. Pointed assertions are
scattered up and down his pages. Could, for instance, one of the dangers
of a democracy be more clearly and ill-naturedly put than by his
statement, that the whole science of government in what are called free
states, is getting to be a strife in mystification, in which the great
secret is to persuade the governed that he is in fact the governor? His
books, moreover, while they reflect his prejudices, show an honest
desire to be just. He undoubtedly preferred the Continent to England.
But in his account of that country, while he had the unfairness of
dislike, he never had the unfairness of intentional misrepresentation.
There is nothing of that exulting yell with which the British traveler
of those days fell foul of some specimen of American ill-breeding or
American bumptiousness. Nor did he fail to pay a high tribute to (p. 140)
what was best in English society or English character. The gentlemen
of that country, in appearance, in attainments, in manliness, and he was
inclined to add in principles, he placed at the head of their class in
Christendom. His censure of America and the Americans was not at all in
the nature of indiscriminate abuse. The fault he found with his
countrymen was based mainly upon their mistaken opinion of themselves
and of their advantages and disadvantages. You boast, he practically
said to them, of the superiority of your scenery, in which you are not
to be compared with Europe; but you constantly abuse your climate which
is equal to, if not finer, than that of any region in the Old World. You
stand up manfully for your manners and tastes, which you ought to
correct; but you are incessantly apologizing for your institutions of
which you ought to be proud. The defects imputed in Europe to the
inhabitants of the United States, such as the want of morals, honesty,
order, decency, liberality, and religion, were not at all our defects.
These, in fact were, as the world goes, the strong points of American
character. On the other hand, those on which we prided ourselves,
intelligence, taste, manners, education as applied to all beyond the
base of society, were the very points upon which we should do well to be
silent. This is certainly not an extreme position. But men are far more
affected by the blame bestowed upon their foibles than by the praise
given to their virtues; and both in England and America the censures
were remembered and the commendations forgotten. Other circumstances
also came in now to add to his unpopularity in his own country. A local
quarrel in which he accidently became concerned, was followed by (p. 141)
consequences which affected his estimation throughout the whole land;
but the details of this will require a separate chapter.