1840-1850.
No man could go through the conflicts which Cooper had been carrying on
for so many years unharmed or unscarred. For the hostility entertained
and expressed toward him in England he cared but little. But though too
proud to parade his sufferings, the injustice done him in his own land
aroused in his heart an indignation which had in it, however, as much
pain as anger. He could not fail to see that he was in a false position,
that his motives were misunderstood where even they were not
deliberately misrepresented. The generation which had shared in his
early triumphs and had gloried in his early fame had largely passed
away. From some who survived he had been parted by a separation bitterer
than that of death. To the new generation that had come on he appeared
only as the captious and censorious critic of his country. His works
were read in every civilized country. To many men they had brought all
the little knowledge they possessed of America; to certain regions they
could almost be said to have first carried its name. But the land which
he loved with a passionate fervor seemed largely to have disowned him.
It would be vain to deny his sensitiveness to this hostility. Traces of
his secret feeling crop out unexpectedly in his later works. They reveal
phases of his character which would never be inferred from his acts;
they show the existence of sentiments which he would never have (p. 232)
directly avowed. "There are men," says the hero of "Afloat and Ashore,"
"so strong in principle as well as in intellect, I do suppose, that they
can be content with the approbation of their own consciences, and who
can smile at the praise or censure of the world alike: but I confess to
a strong sympathy with the commendation of my fellow-creatures, and a
strong distaste for their disapprobation." Especially marked is the
reference to himself in the words he puts into the mouth of Columbus in
his "Mercedes of Castile." "Genoa," says the navigator, "hath proved but
a stern mother to me: and though nought could induce me to raise a hand
against her, she hath no longer any claim on my services.... One cannot
easily hate the land of his birth, but injustice may lead him to cease
to love it. The tie is mutual, and when the country ceases to protect
person, property, character, and rights, the subject is liberated from
all his duties."
It was the attacks connected with the controversy about the "Naval
History" that more than anything else embittered Cooper's feelings. He
had striven hard to write a full and trustworthy account of the
achievements of his country upon the sea. Because he had refused to
pervert what he deemed the truth to the gratification of private spite,
he had been assailed with a malignity that had hardly stopped short of
any species of misrepresentation. Rarely has devotion to the right met
with a worse return. The reward of untiring industry, of patriotic zeal,
and of conscientious examination of evidence, was little else than
calumny and abuse. He felt so keenly the treatment he had received that
he regretted having ever written the "Naval History" at all. In (p. 233)
a published letter of the early part of 1843 he expressed himself on
the matter in words that come clearly from the depths of a wounded
spirit. "Were the manuscript of what has been printed," he wrote, "now
lying before me unpublished, I certainly should throw it into the fire
as an act of prudence to myself and of justice to my children." In his
triumphant reply to Burges, Duer, and Mackenzie, while he showed the
haughty disdain he felt for the popular clamor which had condemned him
without knowledge, he did not seek to hide the bitterness it had caused.
"This controversy," he said, "was not of my seeking; for years have I
rested under the imputations that these persons have brought against me,
and I now strike a blow in behalf of truth, not from any deference to a
public opinion that in my opinion has not honesty enough to feel much
interest in the exposure of duplicity and artifice, but that my children
may point to the facts with just pride that they had a father who dared
to stem popular prejudice in order to write truth."
It is in these last lines that Cooper unconsciously revealed the
strength which enabled him to go through this roar of hostile criticism
and calumny without having his whole nature soured. One great resource
he possessed, and its influence cannot be overestimated. In the closest
and dearest relations of life with which happiness is connected far more
intimately than with the most prosperous series of outward events, he
was supremely fortunate. In his own home his lot was favored beyond that
of most men. However violent the storm without, there he could always
find peace and trust and affection. The regard, indeed, felt for him by
the female members of his family, may justly be termed devotion. (p. 234)
Towards all women he exhibited deference almost to the point of
chivalry. But in the case of those of his own household there was
mingled with it a tenderness which called forth in return that ardent
attachment which strong natures alone seem capable of inspiring. This
deference and tenderness were the more conspicuous by contrast with his
opinions. These would fill with wrath unspeakable the advocates of
women's rights. Nor was he at all particular about mincing their
expression. He sometimes gave utterance to them in the most extreme
form. He even made his sentiments more emphatic by putting them into the
mouths of his female characters. "There is," says the governess in "The
Red Rover," "no peace for our feeble sex but in submission; no happiness
but in obedience." In his last novel he denounced furiously the law that
gave to the wife control over her own property, and predicted, as a
consequence, all sorts of disasters to the family that have never come
to pass. All this was eminently characteristic. But like many strong men
tenacious of acknowledged superiority he was content with the mere
concession. That granted, he would yield to submission infinitely more
than recognized equality could have a right to expect or could hope to
gain. We may think what we please of his views about women; there can be
but one opinion as to his conduct towards them.
A characteristic instance of the wantonness with which Cooper's acts and
motives were deliberately misrepresented during this period occurred in
1841. In that year came out a work, which had, in its day, some little
notoriety, but has long ago passed to the limbo of forgotten things. It
was called "The Glory and Shame of England." The very title shows that
this production was maliciously calculated to make the British (p. 235)
lion lash his tail with frenzy: and if we can trust its author, Mr. C.
Edwards Lester, it met with fierce opposition from British residents in
this country and their sympathizers. In an introductory letter addressed
to the Reverend J. T. Headley, he told the story of the experiences his
agents had undergone in securing subscriptions. In the course of it he
made the following allusion to Cooper. "Already," he wrote, "have
several educated and highly respectable young men engaged (with
unprecedented success) in procuring subscribers for this work been
rudely driven from the houses of Englishmen for crossing their threshold
with the prospectus. And I blush (but not for myself or my country) to
say that one of our celebrated authors, whose partiality for
Republicanism has been more than doubted, threatened to kick one of
these young men out of his house (castle) if he did not instantly leave
it; exclaiming, 'Why have you the impudence to hand me that prospectus?
I understand what the GLORY of England means; but as for the SHAME of
England, there is no such thing. The shame is all in that base
Democracy, which makes you presume to enter a gentleman's house to ask
him to subscribe for such a work.'"
This statement was widely copied in the newspapers. But the falsity of
the fabrication soon became too apparent for even the journals most
hostile to Cooper to endure. They made a vain effort to get from the
author a confirmation of his story: but though he did not venture to
repeat the lie manfully, he equivocated about it in a sneaking way. The
newspapers, feeling, perhaps, that it was undesirable to arm the book
agent with new terrors, credited at once the denial the story had
received, and took back all imputations based upon it,--a (p. 236)
proceeding which ought to have shown Cooper that they were not so
utterly given over to the father of all evil as he fancied them. But the
author of this impudent falsehood never withdrew it, nor did the
publishers of the volume, in which it was contained, disavow it. The
extract given above is taken from an edition which bears the date of
1845.
It is plain that these calumnious attacks sprang largely from Cooper's
personal unpopularity. It is equally plain that his personal
unpopularity was mainly due to the censorious tone he had assumed in the
criticism of his country and his countrymen. It may accordingly be said
that, in one sense, he deserved all that he received. He had pursued a
certain line of conduct. He had no reason to complain that it had been
followed by the same results here that would have followed similar
conduct anywhere. In fact, while his censure of England had been far
lighter than that of America, the language used about him in the former
country had been far more vulgar and abusive than that used in the
latter. But there were facts in his career which his countrymen were
bound to bear in mind, but which, on the contrary, they strove hard to
forget, and sometimes to pervert. He had been the uncompromising
defender of his native land in places where it cost reputation and
regard to appear in that light. He was assailed largely by the men who
had toadied to a hostile feeling which he himself had confronted. His
criticism of America was sometimes just, sometimes unjust. It was in a
few instances as full of outrageous misrepresentation as any which he
had resented in others. Even when right, it was often wrongly delivered.
But in no case did it spring from indifference or dislike. The (p. 237)
very loftiness of his aspirations for his country, the very vividness of
his conception of what he trusted she was to be, made him far more than
ordinarily sensitive to what she was, which fell short of his ideal.
Every indignity offered to her he felt as a personal blow; every stain
upon her honor as a personal disgrace. He had no fear as to the material
greatness of her future. What he could not bear was that the slightest
spot should soil the garments of her civilization. It was for her
character, her reputation, that he most cared. It is not necessary to
maintain that he was as wise as he was patriotic. Had he been in a
position where he wielded political power, his impulsive and fiery
temperament might very probably have made him an unsafe adviser. His
whole idea of foreign policy, as connected with war, may be summed up in
the statement that the nation should be as ready to resent a wrong done
to ourselves as to repair a wrong done to others. Nothing could be
better doctrine in theory. Unfortunately, the nation in all such cases
is itself both party and judge, and the question of right becomes, in
consequence, a hard one to decide as a matter of fact. Cooper's intense
convictions would therefore have been likely to have led the country
into war, had he had the control of events,--and war, too, at a time
when under the agencies of peace it was daily gathering strength to meet
a coming drain upon its resources in a conflict which but few were then
far-sighted enough to see would squander wealth as lavishly as it wasted
blood. Had it rested with him, it is quite clear that no Ashburton
treaty would have been signed. There is a striking passage printed to
this day in italics, which he puts into the mouth of Leather-Stocking in
the novel of "The Deerslayer." Its point is made specially (p. 238)
prominent when it is remembered that this work was written while the
controversy was going on between Great Britain and the United States in
regard to the Northeastern boundary. "I can see no great difference,"
says Leather-Stocking, "atween givin' up territory afore a war, out of a
dread of war, or givin' it up after a war, because we can't help
it--onless it be that the last is most manful and honorable."
The features of Cooper's personal character, as well as his prejudices
and limitations, are always to be kept in mind because they explain much
that is defective in his art, and account for much of his unpopularity.
Some of them became unpleasantly conspicuous in the writings of his
later years. In 1840 he entered upon a new period of creative activity
which lasted until 1850. Between and including those years he brought
out seventeen works of fiction. Eleven of them were written during the
first half of this period ending with 1845, and even these did not
constitute the whole of what he then wrote. This fertility is made the
more remarkable by the fact that during this same time he was engaged in
the special controversy about the battle of Lake Erie, not to speak of
his standing quarrel with the press and his running fight of libel suits
in which he was not only plaintiff, but did the main work of the
prosecution.
It is possible that his unpopularity stirred him to unwonted exertion.
There is certainly no question that the years from 1840 to 1845
inclusive, are, as a whole, the supreme creative period of Cooper's
career. Its production does not dwarf his early achievement in vigor or
interest; but it does often show a far higher mastery of his art. Two of
the works then written mark the culmination of his powers. These (p. 239)
were the Leather-Stocking tales called "The Pathfinder" and "The
Deerslayer." The former appeared on the 14th of March, 1840, the latter
on the 27th of August, 1841. They complete the circle of these stories;
for others which he contemplated writing he unfortunately never executed.
Still the series was a perfect one as it was left. The life of
Leather-Stocking was now a complete drama in five acts, beginning with
the first war-path in "The Deerslayer," followed by his career of
activity and of love in "The Last of the Mohicans" and "The Pathfinder,"
and his old age and death in "The Pioneers" and "The Prairie."
"The Pathfinder" and "The Deerslayer" stand at the head of Cooper's
novels as artistic creations. There are others of his works which
contain parts as perfect as are to be found in these, and scenes even
more thrilling. Not one can be compared with either of them as a
finished whole. For once, whether from greater care or happier
inspiration, Cooper discarded those features of his writings in which he
had either failed entirely, or achieved, at the most, slight success.
The leading characters belonged to the class which he drew best, so far
as he was a delineator of character at all. Here were no pasteboard
figures like Heywood in "The Last of the Mohicans," or Middleton in "The
Prairie." Here were no supernumeraries dragged in, in a vain effort to
amuse, as the singing-master in the former of these same stories, or the
naturalist in the latter. Humor, Cooper certainly had; but it is the
humor that gleams in fitful flashes from the men of earnest purposes and
serious lives, and gives a momentary relief to the sternness and
melancholy of their natures. The power of producing an entire (p. 240)
humorous creation he had not at all, and almost the only thing that mars
the perfectness of "The Pathfinder" is the occasional effort to make one
out of Muir, the character designed to play the part of a villain. But
the defects in both these tales are comparatively slight. The plot in
each is simple, but it gives plenty of room for the display of those
qualities in which Cooper excelled. The scene of the one was laid on
Lake Ontario and its shores; the other, on the little lake near which he
had made his home; and the whole atmosphere of both is redolent of the
beauty and the wildness of nature.
These works were a revelation to the men who had begun to despair of
Cooper's ever accomplishing again anything worthy of his early renown.
They were pure works of art. No moral was everlastingly perking itself
in the reader's face, no labored lecture to prove what was self-evident
interrupted the progress of the story. There is scarcely an allusion to
any of the events which had checkered the novelist's career. References
to contemporary occurrences are so slight that they would pass unheeded
by any one whose attention had not been called beforehand to their
existence. These works showed what Cooper was capable of when he gave
full play to his powers, and did not fancy he was writing a novel when
he was indulging in lectures upon manners and customs. "It is beautiful,
it is grand," said Balzac to a friend, speaking of "The Pathfinder."
"Its interest is tremendous. He surely owed us this masterpiece after
the last two or three rhapsodies he has been giving us. You must read
it. I know no one in the world, save Walter Scott, who has risen to that
grandeur and serenity of colors." "Never," he said in another (p. 241)
place, "did the art of writing tread closer upon the art of the pencil.
This is the school of study for literary landscape-painters." Cooper
himself, if contemporary reports are to be trusted, was at the time in
the habit of saying that the palm of merit in his writings lay between
this novel and "The Deerslayer." He certainly reckoned them the best of
the five stories which have the unity of a common interest by having the
same hero, and these five he put at the head of his performances. "If
anything from the pen of the writer of these romances," he said, toward
the close of his life, "is at all to outlive himself, it is
unquestionably the series of 'The Leather-Stocking Tales.' To say this
is not to predict a very lasting reputation for the series itself, but
simply to express the belief that it will outlast any or all of the
works from the same hand."
But at this time no work of his was treated fairly by the American
press. His name was rarely mentioned save in censure or derision. Both
"The Pathfinder" and "The Deerslayer" on their first appearance were
violently assailed. It is giving praise to a good deal of the
contemporary criticism passed upon them to call it merely feeble and
senseless. Much of it was marked by a malignity which fortunately was as
contemptible intellectually as it was morally. Still, neither this
hostile criticism nor Cooper's own personal unpopularity hindered the
success of the books. He says, to be sure, in the preface to the revised
edition of the Leather-Stocking tales which came out towards the end of
his life, that probably not one in ten of those who knew all about the
three earlier works of the series had any knowledge of the existence of
the two last. This assertion seems exaggerated. It certainly struck many
with surprise at the time it was made; for both "The Pathfinder" (p. 242)
and "The Deerslayer" had met with a large sale.
Between the publication of these two novels appeared, on the 24th of
November, 1840, "Mercedes of Castile." The subject of this was the first
voyage of Columbus. It had several very obvious defects. It was marred
by that prolixity of introduction which was a fault that ran through the
majority of Cooper's tales. The reader meets with as many
discouragements and rebuffs and turnings aside in getting under way as
did the great navigator the story celebrates. There was, moreover, an
excess of that cheap moralizing, that dwelling upon commonplace truths,
which was another of Cooper's besetting sins. The only effect these
discourses have upon the reader is to make him feel that while virtue
may be a very good thing, it is an excessively tedious thing. As a
novel, "Mercedes of Castile" must be regarded as a failure. On the other
hand, as a story of the first voyage of Columbus, told with the special
knowledge of a seaman, the accuracy of an historian, and with something
of the fervor of a poet, it will always have a peculiar interest of its
own.
Two sea-stories followed "The Deerslayer." The first of these, entitled
"The Two Admirals," was published in April, 1842, and the second in
November of the same year. Cooper was at this time engaged in the
hottest of his fight with the American press and people. Publicly and
privately he was expressing his contempt for nearly everything and
everybody. He, in turn, was undergoing assaults from every quarter. It
is, therefore, a singular illustration of the love of country which
burned in him with an intense, even when hidden, flame, that in (p. 243)
in the midst of his greatest unpopularity he was unwilling to desert his
own flag for that of the land to which he was forced to go for material.
Yet there was every inducement. He wished to do what had never before
been done in fiction. His aim was to describe the evolutions of fleets
instead of confining himself to the movements of single vessels. But no
American fleet had ever been assembled, no American admiral had ever
trod a quarter-deck. In order, therefore, to describe operations on a
grand scale he had to have recourse to the history of the
mother-country; but he purposely put the scene in "The Two Admirals" in
a period when the states were still colonies. This novel takes a very
high place among the sea-stories, so long as the action is confined to
the water. But it suffers greatly from the carelessness and the
incompleteness with which the details are worked out.
In "Wing-and-Wing," which followed it, the fortune of a French privateer
is told. The scene is laid in the Mediterranean, and the time is the end
of the last century. Though inferior in power to some of his other
sea-stories, it is far from being a poor novel; and it was, in fact, one
of the author's favorites. But its greatest interest is in the view it
gives of a tendency in Cooper's character which was constantly becoming
more pronounced. The Puritanic narrowness of the very deep and genuine
religious element in his nature was steadily increasing as time went on.
In "Precaution" it has been already observed that the doctrine had been
laid down by one of the characters that there should be no marriage
between Christians and non-Christians. In "Wing-and-Wing" this doctrine
was fully carried out. The heroine is a devout Roman Catholic. She loves
devotedly the hero, the captain of the French privateer. She (p. 244)
trusts in his honor; she admires his abilities and character; she is
profoundly affected by the fervor of the affection he bears to herself.
But he is an infidel. He is too honest and honorable to pretend to
believe and think differently from what he really believes and thinks.
As she cannot convert him, she will not marry him: and in the end
succeeds indirectly, by her refusal, in bringing about his death. It
never seemed to occur to Cooper that the course of conduct he was
holding up as praiseworthy, in his novels, could have little other
effect in real life than to encourage hypocrisy where it did not produce
misery. The man who, for the sake of gaining a great prize, changes his
religious views is sure to have his sincerity distrusted by others. That
can be borne. But he is equally certain to feel distrust of himself. He
cannot have that perfect confidence in his own convictions, or even in
his own character, that would be the case had no considerations of
personal advantage influenced him in the slightest in the decision he
had made, or the conclusions to which he had come. Even he who believes
in this course of action as something to be quietly adopted might wisely
refuse to proclaim it loudly as a rule for the conduct of life.
The next important work that followed was "Wyandotte; or the Hutted
Knoll." It was published on the 5th of September, 1843. The story, as a
whole, was a tragic one. In spite of the fact that the events occur in
the place and time where some of the author's greatest successes had
been achieved, this novel is inferior to all his others that deal with
the same scenes. Certain manifestations of his feelings and certain
traits of character indicated, rather than expressed, in the tales
immediately preceding, were in this one distinctly revealed. His (p. 245)
dislike of the newspapers and the critics has been so often referred
to that it needs hardly to be said that in all the writings of this
period these offenders were soundly castigated. Especially was this true
of the preface. It was there, if anywhere, that Cooper was apt to
concentrate all the ill-humor he felt--his wrath against the race and
his scorn of the individual. But the two feelings that henceforth became
conspicuously noticeable in nearly all his writings were his regard for
the Episcopal church and his dislike of New England. They manifest
themselves sometimes deliciously, sometimes disagreeably. In the midst
of a story remote as possible from the occurrences of modern life,
suddenly turn up remarks upon the apostolic origin of bishops, or the
desirability of written prayers, and the need of a liturgy. The
impropriety of their introduction, from a literary point of view, Cooper
never had sufficient delicacy of taste to feel. Less excusable were the
attacks he made upon those whose religious views differed from his own.
The insults he sometimes offered to possible readers were as needless as
they were brutal. In one of his later novels he mentioned "the rowdy
religion--half-cant, half-blasphemy, that Cromwell and his associates
entailed on so many Englishmen." There is little reason to doubt that
under proper conditions Cooper could easily have developed into a
sincere, narrow-minded, and ferocious bigot.[2]
[Footnote 2: Poe wrote a review of _Wyandotte_ which
appeared in _Graham's Magazine_ for November, 1843.
As notices of Cooper's novels then went, this may be
regarded as a favorable one, though in it the critic
took occasion to divide works of fiction into two
classes: one of a popular sort which anybody could
write, and the other of a kind intrinsically more
worthy and artistic, and capable of being produced
only by the few. At the head of the former class he
placed Cooper, but had the grace not to include his
own name in the latter class which he had created for
himself. The reader will be edified to learn from a
life of Poe, written by John H. Ingram (2 vols.,
London, 1880), that the writing of this review was an
act of heroic and even desperate hardihood. Poe, it
seems, had before valorously depreciated Halleck; but
his crowning act of courage is introduced with the
statement that "he dared all _published_ opinion, and
in the very teeth of Cooper's supreme popularity
ventured upon saying" the remarks which have already
been referred to, and which are quoted in full by the
biographer, to whom is also to be given the credit of
the italicized word in the foregoing quotation. No
small share of the common belief in regard to
Cooper's character and career is based upon
assertions about as trustworthy as this.]
Full as marked and even more persistent were his attacks upon (p. 246)
New England. There was little specially characteristic of that portion
of the country with which he did not find fault. New England cooking of
the first class was inferior to that of the second class in the Middle
States. The New Yorker of humble life, not of Yankee descent, spoke the
language better than thousands of educated men in New England. This
dislike kept steadily increasing. As late as 1844, if he sent his heroes
to college at all, he sent them to Yale; after that year he transferred
them to Princeton. With all this there is constantly seen going on a
somewhat amusing struggle between his dislike and the thorough honesty
of his nature, which forced him to admit in the men of New England
certain characteristics of a high order. Their frugality, their
enterprise, their readiness of resource, he could not deny. Still, he
continued to imply that these qualities were used pretty generally for
selfish ends. In his later works, in consequence, his villains were very
apt to be New Englanders. They were not villains of a romantic type.
They were mean rather than vicious; crafty rather than bold; given to
degrading but at the same time cheap excesses. The first of these (p. 247)
these special representatives of the New England character is the
powerful but somewhat unpleasant creation of Ithuel Bolt in
"Wing-and-Wing," who finds a fitting sequel to a life passed largely in
committing acts of doubtful morality in becoming a deacon in a
Congregational church. After him follows a succession of personages who
represent nearly every conceivable shade of craft, meanness, and
dishonesty that is consistent with the respect of the Puritan community
about them, and with a high position in the religious society of which
they form a part.
There was, it must be admitted, some justification for Cooper's feelings
towards New England on the score of retaliation. He had been criticised
from the beginning in that part of the country with a severity that
often approached virulence. He had been denied there the possession of
qualities which the rest of the world agreed in according him.
Cultivated society has always been afflicted with a class too
superlatively intellectual to enjoy what everybody else likes. Of these
unhappy beings New England has had the misfortune to have perhaps more
than her proper share. It was hardly in human nature that the
disparagement he received from these should not have influenced his
feelings towards the region which had given them birth and
consideration.
It is pleasant to turn aside from these scenes and sayings which show
the least amiable side of a nature essentially noble, and pass to one of
the little incidents that are strikingly characteristic of the man. On
board the Sterling, the merchantman on which Cooper's first voyage was
made, was a boy younger than himself. His name was Ned Myers. This
person had spent his life on the sea. He had belonged to seventy-two
crafts, exclusive of prison-ships, transports, and vessels in (p. 248)
which he had merely made passages. According to his own calculation he
had been twenty-five years out of sight of land. After this long and
varied career he had finally landed in that asylum for worn-out
mariners, the "Sailors' Snug Harbor." From here, late in 1842, he wrote
to Cooper, asking him if he were the one with whom he had served in the
Sterling. Cooper, who never forgot a friend, sent him a reply,
beginning: "I am your old shipmate, Ned," and told him when and where he
could be found in New York. There in a few months they met after an
interval of thirty-seven years. Cooper took the battered old hulk of a
seaman up to Cooperstown in June, 1843, and entertained him for several
weeks. While the two were knocking about the lake, and the latter was
telling his adventures, it occurred to the former to put into print the
wandering life the sailor had led. Between them the work was done that
summer, and in November, 1843, "Ned Myers; or, Life before the Mast" was
published. This work has often been falsely spoken of as a novel. It is,
on the contrary, a truthful record, so far as dependence can be placed
upon the word or the memory of the narrator. "This is literally," said
Myers, "my own story, logged by an old shipmate."
In 1842 Cooper had entered into an engagement to write regularly for
"Graham's Magazine." This periodical, which had been formed not long
before by the union of two others, had rapidly risen to high reputation,
and claimed a circulation of thirty thousand copies. In the first four
numbers of 1843 Cooper published the shortest of his stories. It was
entitled "The Autobiography of a Pocket Handkerchief." For some reason
not easy to explain, this has never been included in the regular (p. 249)
editions of his novels. In it he made in some measure another effort to
reproduce the social life of New York city. The previous failure was
repeated. An air of ridiculous unreality is given to this part of the
story in which the impossible talk of impossible people is paraded as a
genuine representation of what takes place in civilized society. The
autobiographical form which he had first adopted in this tale he
continued in the two series of "Afloat and Ashore." These appeared
respectively in June and in December, 1844. They are essentially one
novel, though the second part goes usually in this country under the
title of "Miles Wallingford," the name of its hero; and in Europe under
that of "Lucy Harding," the name of its heroine.
This work, the first part more particularly, is a delightful story of
adventure. As usual there are startling incidents, perilous situations,
and hairbreadth escapes enough to furnish sufficient materials for a
dozen ordinary fictions. Yet the probabilities are better preserved than
in many of Cooper's novels where the events are far fewer, as well as
far less striking. But it is interesting, not merely for the incidents
it contains, but for the revelation it makes of the man who wrote it.
Expressions of personal feeling and opinion turn up unexpectedly
everywhere, and make slight but constantly recurring eddies in the
stream of the story. Everything is to be found here which he had ever
discussed before. The inferiority of the bay of New York to that of
Naples; the miserable cooking and gross feeding of New England; the
absolute necessity of a liturgy in religious worship; the contempt he
felt for the misguided beings who presume to deny the existence of (p. 250)
bishops in the primitive church; his aversion to paper money; his
disdain for the shingle palaces of the Grecian temple school; his scorn
of the idea that one man is as good as another; these and scores of
similar utterances arrest constantly the reader's attention. But they do
not jar upon his feelings as in many other of his writings. They are
essentially different in tone. There runs through this series a vein of
ill-natured amiability or amiable ill-nature--it is hard to say which
phrase is more appropriate--which gives to the whole what
horticulturists call a delicate sub-acid flavor. The roar of contempt
found in previous writings subsided in these into a sort of prolonged
but subdued growl. But it is a case in which the reader feels that it is
eminently proper that the writer should growl. It is the old man of
sixty-five telling the tale of his early years. His preferences for the
past do not irritate us, they entertain us. It is right that the world
about him should seem meaner and more commonplace than it did in the
fever-fit of youth and love, when it was joy merely to live. The work,
moreover, has another characteristic that gives it a whimsical
attractiveness. It is a tale of the good old times when New York had
still some New York feeling left; when her old historic names still
carried weight and found universal respect, and her old families still
ruled society with a despotic sway; and especially before the whole
state had been overrun by the lank, angular, loose-jointed, slouching,
shrewd, money-worshiping sons of the Puritans, whose restless activity
had triumphed over the slow and steady respectability of the original
settlers. The scene of this story, so far as it is laid on land, is
mainly in the river counties; but in spite of that fact it is difficult
not to think that some recollections of the writer's own youth (p. 251)
were not mingled in certain portions of it. Especially is it a hard task
not to fancy that in the heroine, Lucy Harding, he was drawing, in some
slight particulars at least, the picture of his own wife, and telling
the story of his early love.
The delineation of the New York life of the past which he had in some
measure accomplished in these volumes, he now continued more fully in
certain works which took up successive periods in the history of the
state. The idea of writing them was suggested by events that were taking
place at the time. The troubles which arose in certain counties of New
York after the death, in 1839, of Stephen Van Rensselaer, the patroon,
were now culminating in a series of acts of violence and bloodshed,
perpetrated usually by men disguised as Indians. The questions involved
had likewise become subjects of fierce political controversy. Cooper,
who saw in the conduct of the tenants and their supporters a dangerous
invasion of the rights of property, plunged into the discussion of the
matter with all the ardor of his fiery temperament. He worked himself
into the highest state of excitement over the proceedings. It was his
interest in this matter that led him to compose the three works which
are collectively called the Anti-rent novels. These purport to be the
successive records of the Littlepage family, and each is in the form of
an autobiography. They cover a period extending from the first half of
the eighteenth century down to the very year in which he was writing.
It was about this time that Cooper's reputation touched the lowest
point to which it has ever fallen, so far, at least, as it depends
upon the opinion of critics and of men of letters. He was now (p. 252)
reaping the fruits of the various controversies in which he had been
engaged, and of all the hostility which he had succeeded in inspiring.
The two anti-rent novels which appeared in 1845 were "Satanstoe,"
published in June, and "The Chainbearer," published in November. They
may have had a large sale. But there is scarcely a review of the period
in which they are even mentioned. Even the newspapers contain merely the
barest reference to their existence. It is perhaps partly due to this
contemporary silence that these two stories are among the least known
and least read of Cooper's productions. Moreover, they are constantly
misjudged. The tone which pervades the concluding novel of the series is
taken as the tone which pervades the two which preceded it. This is an
injustice as well as a mistake. In no sense is "Satanstoe," in
particular, a political novel. There is no reference to anti-rentism in
it save in the preface. Its only connection with the subject is the
account it gives of the manner in which the great estates were
originally settled. On the other hand it is a picture of colonial life
and manners in New York during the middle of the eighteenth century,
such as can be found drawn nowhere else so truthfully and so vividly. It
takes rank among the very best of Cooper's stories. The characters are,
to a certain extent, the same as in "Afloat and Ashore;" the main
difference being, that in the one the events take place principally on
land, and in the other on water. Even those majestic first families,
whom he had celebrated before, loom up in these pages with renewed and
increasing grandeur. But the story is throughout told in a graphic and
spirited manner, and as it approaches the end and details the scenes
that follow Abercrombie's repulse at Lake George in 1758, it (p. 253)
becomes intensely exciting. The villain of the tale is, of course, a New
Englander, in this instance a long, ungainly pedagogue from Danbury,
Connecticut. He does not, however, blossom out into the full perfection
of his rascality until he makes his appearance in "The Chainbearer," the
next novel of the series. This tale, though decidedly inferior to
"Satanstoe," contains passages of great interest. The description,
especially, of the squatter family and the life led by it, is one of
Cooper's most powerfully drawn pictures.
It has been the misfortune of this series that the member of it which
has attracted most attention is "The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin,"
which came out in July, 1846. This is one of three or four books which,
in a certain way, give one a high idea of Cooper's power in the fact
that his reputation has been able to survive them. If he had been
anxious to help the anti-renters and hurt the patroon, he could hardly
have done better than to write this book. As a story it has no merit.
The incidents told in it are absurd. It is full, moreover, of the
arguments that irritate but do not convince; and is liberally supplied,
in addition, with prophecies that have never been realized. Everything
that was disagreeable in Cooper's manner and bungling in his art, was
conspicuous in this work. His dislikes were not uttered pleasantly, as
in "Afloat and Ashore," but with an ill-nature that often bordered upon
ferocity. A tone of pretension ran through the whole, a constant
reference to what men think who had seen the world, with the implied
inference that those who disagreed with the author in opinion had not
seen the world. The feeling of the reader is, that if this extravagance
and over-statement be the result of travel, men had better stay (p. 254)
at home. Nor did Cooper refrain from dragging in everything with which
he had found fault before. We are not even spared the everlasting
reference to the bays of New York and of Naples. The work is what he
himself would have called provincial in the worst sense of that word.
Even more than its spirit was its matter extraordinary for a work of
fiction. Part of it is little else than a controversial tract on the
superiority of Episcopacy; and the temper in which it is written could
hardly have been grateful to any but an opponent of that church.
"Satanstoe" is full of many of Cooper's likes and dislikes, but there
can be no greater contrast conceived than between the tone which
pervades that delightful creation, and the boisterous brawling of "The
Redskins".
With the publication of this series Cooper's career as a creator of
works of imagination practically closed. He wrote several novels
afterward, but not one of them did anything to advance his reputation.
Some of them tended to lower it. This was not due to failure of power,
but to its misdirection. The didactic element in his nature had now
gained complete mastery over the artistic. The interest, such as it is,
which belongs to his later stories, is rarely a literary interest. Not
one of them has the slightest pretension to be termed a work of art.
There are, at times, passages in them that thrill us, and scenes that
display something of his old skill in description. But these are
recollections rather than new creations. Cooper's fame would not have
been a whit lessened, if every line he wrote after "The Chainbearer" had
never seen the light.
The works that came out during the remaining years of his life (p. 255)
were "The Crater," published October 12, 1847; "Jack Tier," published
March 21, 1848; "The Oak Openings," published August 24 of the same
year; "The Sea Lions," published April 10, 1849, and "The Ways of the
Hour," published April 10, 1850. Of these "Jack Tier" originally made
its appearance in "Graham's Magazine" during the years 1845-1847, under
the title of "The Islets of the Gulf," and strictly stands first in the
order of time. It shares with "The Crater" the distinction of being one
of the two best of these later stories. It may be fair to mention that
Bryant saw in it as much spirit, energy, invention, and life-like
presentation of objects and events as in anything the author ever wrote.
This will seem exaggerated praise when one reads it in connection with
"The Red Rover," of which it is in some respects a feeble reflection. It
was hard for Cooper to be uninteresting when once fairly launched upon
the waves. Without denying the existence in "Jack Tier" of passages of
marked power, no small share of it was merely a reproduction of what had
been done and better done before. The old woman who is constantly
misusing nautical terms is the most palpable imitation of the admiral's
widow in "The Red Rover." It is a cheap expedient at best, and must at
any time be used with extreme moderation. Above all, it is a device
which is abused the very moment it is repeated. As displayed in "Jack
Tier," it is simply unendurable. Cooper's silly people, in facts are apt
to be silly not only beyond human experience but almost beyond human
conception. The tragedy, moreover, with which this novel ends is
intended to be terrible, while as a matter of fact it is merely
grotesque and absurd. The tale reaches a sudden but necessary conclusion
because nearly all the characters are disposed of at once by (p. 256)
drowning or killing. There is scarcely any one left to carry on the
action of the story.
"The Crater," which in one sense followed and in another preceded "Jack
Tier," has a very special interest to the student of Cooper's character.
He had now lived for so long a time a life remote from the real clash of
conflicting views that he had finally reached that satisfied state of
opinion which thinks the little circle in which it moves is the proper
orbit for the revolution of thought of the whole race. As he advanced in
years he narrowed instead of broadening. The intensity of his faith
coupled with his energy of expression makes this fact very conspicuous;
and in "The Crater" the reader is alternately attracted by the shrewd
and keen remarks of the writer, and repelled by his illiberality. The
novel tells the tale of a shipwrecked mariner cast away on a reef not
laid down in any chart and unknown to navigators. This barren spot he
makes bud and blossom as the rose. To the new Utopia he has created in
the bosom of the Pacific he brings a body of emigrants. Their
proceedings are entertainingly told. But the history of the decline of
the colony from its primitive state of happiness and perfection, which
is designed to furnish a warning, tends instead to fill the irreverent
with amusement. While under the control of its founder and governor, who
combined all the virtues, it is represented as enjoying peace and
prosperity. Demagogism had no control. The reign of gossip had not
begun. The great discovery had not been made that men were merely
incidents of newspapers. Care was taken that the children should not
imbibe any false principles, that is, any principles which the (p. 257)
ruling powers thought false. The schools did not furnish much instruction,
but owing to this considerate watchfulness they were innocent if they
were inefficient. Still this ingenious arrangement for stopping the
progress of the human mind could not work forever. From the start there
was a dangerous element, though in this case the colonists had not come
from New England but from the Middle States. Very speedily that innate
depravity of the human heart which does not like to hear a clergyman
read prayers, which looks with suspicion upon a liturgy, began to
manifest itself. This, however, was kept under control until the arrival
of new colonists. This Eden was then invaded not by one serpent only,
but by several. Four of them were clergymen; one a Presbyterian, one a
Methodist, one a Baptist, and one a Quaker. This was too much for the
solitary Episcopalian who had previously been on the ground, and who is
represented as combining a weak physical constitution with a very strong
conception of his apostolic authority as a divine. It must be conceded
that for a population of about five hundred souls the supply of
spiritual teachers was ample. With them came also a lawyer and an
editor. The seeds of dissolution were at once sown. The colonists became
ungrateful, and began to inquire not only into the conduct of their
governor, but even into the title by which he held some of his lands. He
finally left the spot in disgust, and having first taken the precaution
to dispose of his property at a good price, returned to his native
country. A natural yearning to see the community he had established led
the discoverer to revisit, after a few months, the scene of his trials.
He sailed to the spot but he could not find it. A convulsion of nature
similar to that which had raised the reef above the level of the (p. 258)
waves had sunk it again out of sight. Ungrateful colonists,
clergymen, editor, and lawyer, had all perished.
In June, 1847, Cooper made a trip to the West, and went as far as
Detroit. One result of this journey was the novel of "The Oak Openings;
or, the Bee-Hunter." This must be looked upon as a decided failure. The
desire to lecture his fellow-men on manners had now given place to a
desire to edify them; and he was no more successful in the one than he
had been in the other. In this instance the issue of the story depends
on the course of an Indian who is converted to Christianity by
witnessing the way in which a self-denying Methodist missionary meets
his death. The whole winding-up is unnatural, and the process of turning
the organizing chief of a great warlike confederacy into a Sunday-school
hero is only saved from being commonplace by being absurd. Far more
singular, however, was the central idea of "The Sea Lions," the story
that followed. This is certainly one of the most remarkable conceptions
that it ever entered into the mind of a novelist to create. It shows the
intense hold religious convictions were taking of Cooper's feelings, and
to what extremes of opinion they were carrying him. In "Wing-and-Wing"
the hero had been discarded because he was a thorough infidel. But
Cooper's sentiments had now moved a long distance beyond this
milk-and-water way of dealing with religious differences. In "The Sea
Lions" the hero merely denied the divinity of Christ, while he professed
to hold him in reverence as the purest and most exalted of men. But if
there was any one point on which the heroine was sound and likewise
inflexible, it was the doctrine of the Trinity. Whatever else she (p. 259)
doubted, she was absolutely sure of the incarnation. She would not
unite herself with one who presumed to "set up his own feeble
understanding of the nature of the mediation between God and man in
opposition to the plainest language of revelation as well as to the
prevalent belief of the Church." In this case the hero is converted,
apparently by spending a winter in the Antarctic seas. An important
agent in effecting this change of belief is a common seaman who improves
every occasion to drop into the conversation going on, some unexpected
Trinitarian remark. When the master has almost against hope saved his
vessel, and in the thankfulness of his heart invokes blessing on the
name of God, Stimson is on hand at his elbow to add, "and that of his
only and _true_ Son." This novel is, indeed, a further but unneeded
proof of how little Cooper was able to project himself out of the circle
of his own feelings, or to aid any cause which he had near to his heart.
He had had much to say about New England cant. Yet in this work he can
find no words sufficiently strong to praise what he calls the zealous
freedom and Christian earnestness of one of the most offensive canters
that the whole range of fiction presents. It would be unjust to deny
that when in "The Sea Lions" Cooper abandons his metaphysics and turns
to his real business, that he creates a powerful story. One may almost
be said at times to feel the cold, the desolation, the darkness, and the
gloom of an Antarctic winter confronting and overshadowing the spirit.
But there can be little that is more tedious than the dry chaff of
theological discussion which is here threshed for us over and over
again. Believers in the Trinity had as little reason as believers in
Episcopacy to rejoice in Cooper's advocacy of their faith. There (p. 260)
was nothing original in his views; there was nothing pointed or
forcible in his statement of them. He meant to inculcate a lesson, and
the only lesson that can possibly be drawn is the sufficiently absurd
one that dwellers in the chilly spiritual clime of Unitarianism can be
cured of their faith in that icy creed by being subjected to the horrors
of a polar winter. Far more clearly does the novel show the falling-off
in his artistic conceptions and the narrowing process his opinions were
undergoing. At the rate this latter was taking place it seems probable
that had he lived to write another novel on a theme similar to this, his
hero would have been compelled to abandon his belief in Presbyterianism,
Congregationalism, Methodism, or some other ism before he would be found
worthy of being joined in the marriage relation to his Episcopalian
bride.
The "Ways of the Hour" was the last work that Cooper published.
Everything he now wrote was written with a special object. The design of
this was to attack trial by jury; but he was not prevented by that fact
from discussing several other matters that were uppermost in his mind.
The incidents of the story utterly destroyed the effectiveness of the
lesson that it was intended to convey. It would be dignifying too much
many of the events related in it to say that they are improbabilities:
they are simply impossibilities. The "Ways of the Hour" was, however,
like the preceding novels, often full of suggestive remarks, on many
other points than trial by jury. It showed in numerous instances the
working of an acute, vigorous, and aggressive intellect. The good
qualities it has need not be denied: only they are not the good
qualities that belong to fiction.
The pecuniary profits that his works brought him during this (p. 261)
latter period of his life there are, perhaps, no means of ascertaining.
Much of the literary activity of his last years was due to necessity
rather than to inspiration. He had been concerned for a long time in
company with a number of men of business in a series of cotton
speculations, and in others connected with Western lands. In both cases
the ventures were unprofitable, and the desire of retrieving his losses
was one of the causes that led to this constant literary production.
There were other circumstances, too, besides his mere unpopularity that
had tended to reduce the amount gained from what he wrote. After 1838,
the income received from England naturally fell off, in consequence of
the change in the law of copyright. The act of Parliament passed in that
year provided that no foreign author outside of British dominions should
have copyright in those dominions unless the country to which he
belonged gave copyright to the English author. No fault can be found
with this legislation on the score of justice. The value of anything
produced by a citizen of the United States fell at once as a necessary
consequence of the want of protection against piracy. The British
publisher, not from any motive of mere personal gain, but from an
unselfish desire by retaliatory proceedings to bring about a better
state of things, went speedily to work to plunder the American author
who favored international copyright in order to show his disgust at the
conduct of the American publisher who opposed it. As a matter of fact
Cooper's novels were from that time published in Great Britain, in cheap
form, and sold at a cheap price. Such reprints could not but lower the
amount which could be offered for his work. Newspaper reports, the (p. 262)
correctness of which can neither be affirmed nor denied, frequently
mention that for the copyright of each of his earlier novels he was in
the habit of receiving a thousand guineas. We know positively that for
his later tales, as fast as they were written, Bentley, his London
publisher, usually paid him three hundred pounds each.
In America circumstances of another kind contributed to reduce the
profits from his works. Most of them were published at a price that
would have required an immense sale to make them remunerative at all. It
was about 1840 that two weekly newspapers in New York, "The New World,"
and "The Brother Jonathan," had begun the practice of reprinting in
their columns the writings of the most popular novelists which were then
coming out in England. As soon as these were finished they were brought
out in parts and sold at a small price. This piracy was so successful
that imitators sprang up everywhere. The large publishing houses were
soon obliged to follow in the wake of the newspaper establishments. The
reign of the so-called "cheap and nasty" literature began. The
productions of the greatest foreign novelists were sold for a song. The
native writer was subjected to a competition which forced him at once to
lower his price or to go unread. Beginning with "Wing-and-Wing," the
rate at which Cooper's works were published furnishes a striking
commentary upon the cheap professions of sympathy with letters current
in this country, indicates suggestively the inspiriting inducements held
out by the law-making power to enter upon the career of authorship, and
shows with disgraceful clearness how utterly the interests of the men
engaged in the creation of literature had been subordinated to the (p. 263)
greed of those who traded in it. The barest recital of the facts
makes evident the nature of the encouragement given. "Wing-and-Wing" was
published at twenty-five cents a volume. So were "Wyandotte," "The
Redskins," "The Crater," "Jack Tier," "The Oak Openings," and "The Sea
Lions." The four volumes of the series "Afloat and Ashore" were
published at thirty-seven and a half cents each; and at the same rate
"Satanstoe" came out, and also "Ned Myers." It was not till Cooper's
last work appeared that the price went up as high as a dollar and
twenty-five cents. This was in one volume; but it is to be kept in mind,
in considering these prices, that in America his novels regularly
appeared in two.
One further experiment Cooper made in a new field; and with it the
record of his literary life closes. In the year 1850 he tried the stage.
On the 18th of June a comedy written by him was brought out at Burton's
Theatre, New York. It was entitled, "Upside Down; or, Philosophy in
Petticoats." For the three nights following the 18th it was acted, and
was then withdrawn. It has never been played since, nor has it been
published.
All these years he spent his time mainly in his home at Cooperstown.
There, besides the pleasure he found in the improvement of the extensive
grounds about his house, he gave full vent to that latent passion for
wasting money in agricultural operations, which seems to be one of the
most widely-extended peculiarities of the English race. On the eastern
shore of the lake, about a mile from the village, he bought a farm of
about two hundred acres which he called the "Châlet." The view from it
was exceedingly beautiful, looking as it did down the Valley of (p. 264)
the Susquehanna. The farm, too, had its picturesque and poetical
features; but unhappily it was little adapted to practical agriculture.
It stood on a hill-side, the abruptness of which was only occasionally
relieved by a few acres of level land. Much of it was still covered with
the original forest; and a good deal of the cleared land was full of
stumps. To superintend the removal of these latter was one of Cooper's
chief relaxations from mental labor. It is a desirable thing to do, but
it has never been found pecuniarily profitable in itself. To this place
Cooper daily drove in the summer season, and spent two or three hours
directing the operations that were going on, finding constantly new ways
to spend money, and doubtless pleasing himself occasionally with the
fancy that the farm would at some time pay expenses. And in the best
sense it did pay expenses. It gave regular diversion to his life; it
ministered constantly to his enjoyment of the beautiful in scenery; and
it occupied his thoughts with perpetual projects of improvement for
which its character furnished unlimited opportunities. He had bought it
for pleasure and not for profit; and in that it yielded him a full
return for the money invested.