Most appropriate is it that the first literary centenary which we were
called upon to commemorate one hundred years after the adoption of the
Constitution that knit these States into a nation should be the birthday
of the author who has done the most to make us known to the nations of
Europe. In the first year of Washington's first term as President, on
the fifteenth day of September, 1789, was born James Fenimore Cooper,
the first of American novelists, and the first American author to carry
our flag outside the limits of our language. Franklin was the earliest
American who had fame among foreigners; but his wide popularity was due
rather to his achievements as a philosopher, as a physicist, as a
statesman, than to his labors as an author. Irving was six years older
than Cooper, and his reputation was as high in England as at home; yet
to this day he is little more than a name to those who do not speak our
mother-tongue. But after Cooper had published _The Spy_, _The Last of
the Mohicans_, and _The Pilot_ his popularity was cosmopolitan; he was
almost as widely read in France, in Germany, and in Italy as in Great
Britain and the United States. Only one American book has ever since
attained the international success of these of Cooper's--_Uncle Tom's
Cabin_, and only one American author has since gained a name at all
commensurate with Cooper's abroad--Poe. Here in these United States we
know what Emerson was to us and what he did for us and what our debt is
to him; but the French and the Germans and the Italians do not know
Emerson. When Professor Boyesen visited Hugo some ten years ago he found
that the great French lyrist had never heard of Emerson. I have a copy
of _Evangeline_ annotated in French for the use of French children
learning English at school; but whatever Longfellow's popularity in
England or in Germany, he is really but little known in France or Italy
or Spain. With Goethe and Schiller, with Scott and Byron, Cooper was one
of the foreign forces which brought about the Romanticist revolt in
France, profoundly affecting the literature of all Latin countries.
Dumas owed almost as much to Cooper as he did to Scott; and Balzac said
that if Cooper had only drawn character as well as he painted "the
phenomena of nature, he would have uttered the last word of our art."
In his admirable life of Cooper, one of the best of modern biographies,
Professor Lounsbury shows clearly the extraordinary state of affairs
with which Cooper had to contend. Foremost among the disadvantages
against which he had to labor was the dull, deadening provincialism of
American criticism at the time when _The Spy_ was written; and as we
read Professor Lounsbury's pages we see how bravely Cooper fought for
our intellectual emancipation from the shackles of the British criticism
of that time, more ignorant then and even more insular than it is now.
Abroad Cooper received the attention nearly always given in literature
to those who bring a new thing; and the new thing which Cooper annexed
to literature was America. At home he had to struggle against a belief
that our soil was barren of romance--as though the author who used his
eyes could not find ample material wherever there was humanity. Cooper
was the first who proved the fitness of American life and American
history for the uses of fiction. _The Spy_ is really the first of
American novels, and it remains one of the best. Cooper was the
prospector of that little army of industrious miners now engaged in
working every vein of local color and character, and in sifting out the
golden dust from the sands of local history. The authors of _Oldtown
Folks_, of the _Tales of the Argonauts_, of _Old Creole Days_, and of
_In the Tennessee Mountains_ were but following in Cooper's
footsteps--though they carried more modern tools. And when the desire of
the day is for detail and for finish, it is not without profit to turn
again to stories of a bolder sweep. When the tendency of the times is
perhaps towards an undue elaboration of miniature portraits, there is
gain in going back to the masterpieces of a literary artist who
succeeded best in heroic statues. And not a few of us, whatever our code
of literary esthetics, may find delight, fleeting though it be, in the
free outline drawing of Cooper, after our eyes are tired by the niggling
and cross-hatching of many among our contemporary realists. When our
pleasant duty is done, when our examination is at an end, and when we
seek to sum up our impressions and to set them down plainly, we find
that chief among Cooper's characteristics were, first, a sturdy, hearty,
robust, out-door and open-air wholesomeness, devoid of any trace of
offence and free from all morbid taint; and, secondly, an intense
Americanism--ingrained, abiding, and dominant. Professor Lounsbury
quotes from a British magazine of 1831 the statement that, to an
Englishman, Cooper appeared to be prouder of his birth as an American
than of his genius as an author--an attitude which may seem to some a
little old-fashioned, but which on Cooper's part was both natural and
becoming.
_The Spy_ was the earliest of Cooper's American novels (and its
predecessor, _Precaution_, a mere stencil imitation of the minor British
novel of that day, need not be held in remembrance against him). _The
Spy_, published in 1821, was followed in 1823 by _The Pioneers_, the
first of the _Leatherstocking Tales_ to appear, and by far the poorest;
indeed it is the only one of the five for which any apology need be
made. The narrative drags under the burden of overabundant detail; and
the story may deserve to be called dull at times. Leatherstocking even
is but a faint outline of himself, as the author afterwards with loving
care elaborated the character. _The Last of the Mohicans came_ out in
1826, and its success was instantaneous and enduring. In 1827 appeared
_The Prairie_, the third tale in which Leatherstocking is the chief
character. It is rare that an author is ever able to write a successful
sequel to a successful story, yet Cooper did more; _The Prairie_ is a
sequel to _The Pioneers_, and _The Last of the Mohicans_ is a prologue
to it. Eighteen years after the first of the _Leatherstocking Tales_ had
been published, Cooper issued the last of them, amplifying his single
sketch into a drama in five acts by the addition of _The Pathfinder_,
printed in 1840, and of _The Deerslayer_, printed in 1841. In the
sequence of events _The Deerslayer_, the latest written, is the earliest
to be read; then comes _The Last of the Mohicans_, followed by _The
Pathfinder_ and _The Pioneers_; while in _The Prairie_ the series ends.
Of the incomparable variety of scene in these five related tales, or of
the extraordinary fertility of invention which they reveal, it would not
be easy to say too much. In their kind they have never been surpassed.
The earliest to appear, _The Pioneers_, is the least meritorious--as
though Cooper had not yet seen the value of his material, and had not
yet acquired the art of handling it to advantage. _The Pathfinder_,
dignified as it is and pathetic in its portrayal of Leatherstocking's
lovemaking, lacks the absorbing interest of _The Last of the Mohicans_;
it is perhaps inferior in art to _The Deerslayer_, which was written the
year after, and it has not the noble simplicity of _The Prairie_, in
which we see the end of the old hunter.
There are, no doubt, irregularities in the _Leatherstocking Tales_, and
the incongruities and lesser errors inevitable in a mode of composition
at once desultory and protracted; but there they stand, a solid monument
of American literature, and not the least enduring. "If anything from
the pen of the writer of these romances is at all to outlive himself, it
is, unquestionably, the series of the _Leatherstocking Tales_"--so
wrote the author when he sent forth the first collected and revised
edition of the narrative of Natty Bumppo's adventures. That Cooper was
right seems to-day indisputable. An author may fairly claim to be judged
by his best, to be measured by his highest; and the _Leatherstocking
Tales_ are Cooper's highest and best in more ways than one, but chiefly
because of the lofty figure of Leatherstocking. Lowell, when fabling for
critics, said that Cooper had drawn but one new character, explaining
afterwards that
The men who have given to _one_ character life
And objective existence, are not very rife;
You may number them all, both prose-writers and singers,
Without overruning the bounds of your fingers;
And Natty won't go to oblivion quicker
Than Adams the parson or Primrose the vicar.
And Thackeray--perhaps recalling the final scene in _The Prairie_, where
the dying Leatherstocking drew himself up and said "Here!" and that
other scene in _The Newcomes_, where the dying Colonel drew himself up
and said "Adsum!"--was frequent in praise of Cooper; and in one of the
_Roundabout Papers_, after expressing his fondness for Scott's modest
and honorable heroes, he adds: "Much as I like these most unassuming,
manly, unpretentious gentlemen, I have to own that I think the heroes of
another writer--viz., Leatherstocking, Uncas, Hardheart, Tom Coffin--are
quite the equals of Scott's men; perhaps Leatherstocking is better than
any one in 'Scott's lot.' _La Longue Carabine_ is one of the great
prize-men of fiction. He ranks with your Uncle Toby, Sir Roger de
Coverley, Falstaff--heroic figures all, American or British, and the
artist has deserved well of his country who devised them."
It is to be noticed that Thackeray singled out for praise two of
Cooper's Indians to pair with the hunter and the sailor; and it seems to
me that Thackeray is fairer towards him who conceived Uncas and
Hardheart than are the authors of _A Fable for Critics_ and of
_Condensed Novels_. _Muck-a-Muck_ I should set aside among the parodies
which are unfair--so far as the red man is concerned, at least; for I
hold as quite fair Mr. Harte's raillery of the wooden maidens and
polysyllabic old men who stalk through Cooper's pages. Cooper's Indian
has been disputed and he has been laughed at, but he still lives.
Cooper's Indian is very like Mr. Parkman's Indian--and who knows the red
man better than the author of _The Oregon Trail_? Uncas and Chingachgook
and Hardheart are all good men and true, and June, the wife of
Arrowhead, the Tuscarora, is a good wife and a true woman. They are
Indians, all of them; heroic figures, no doubt, and yet taken from life,
with no more idealization than may serve the maker of romance. They
remind us that when West first saw the Apollo Belvedere he thought at
once of a Mohawk brave. They were the result of knowledge and of much
patient investigation under conditions forever passed away. We see
Cooper's Indians nowadays through mists of prejudice due to those who
have imitated them from the outside. _The Last of the Mohicans_ has
suffered the degradation of a trail of dime novels, written by those
apparently more familiar with the Five Points than with the Five
Nations; Cooper begat Mayne Reid, and Mayne Reid begat Ned Buntline and
_Buffalo Bill's First Scalp for Custer_ and similar abominations. But
none the less are Uncas and Hardheart noble figures, worthily drawn,
and never to be mentioned without praise.
In 1821 Cooper published _The Spy_, the first American historical novel;
in 1823 he published _The Pioneers_, in which the backwoodsman and the
red man were first introduced into literature; and in 1824 he published
_The Pilot_, and for the first time the scene of a story was laid on the
sea rather than on the land, and the interest turned wholly on marine
adventure. In four years Cooper had put forth three novels, each in its
way road-breaking and epoch-making: only the great men of letters have a
record like this. With the recollection before us of some of Smollett's
highly colored naval characters, we cannot say that Cooper sketched the
first real sailor in fiction, but he invented the sea tale just as Poe
invented the detective story--and in neither case has any disciple
surpassed the master. The supremacy of the _The Pilot_ and _The Red
Rover_ is quite as evident as the supremacy of the _The Gold Bug_ and
_The Murders in the Rue Morgue_. We have been used to the novel of the
ocean, and it is hard for us now to understand why Cooper's friends
thought his attempt to write one perilous and why they sought to
dissuade him. It was believed that readers could not be interested in
the contingencies and emergencies of life on the ocean wave. Nowadays it
seems to us that if any part of _The Pilot_ lags and stumbles it is that
which passes ashore: Cooper's landscapes, or at least his views of a
ruined abbey, may be affected at times, but his marines are always true
and always captivating.
Cooper, like Thackeray, forbade his family to authorize or aid any
biographer--although the American novelist had as little to conceal as
the English. No doubt Cooper had his faults, both as a man and as an
author. He was thin-skinned and hot-headed. He let himself become
involved in a great many foolish quarrels. He had a plentiful lack of
tact. But the man was straightforward and high-minded, and so was the
author. We can readily pardon his petty pedantries and the little vices
of expression he persisted in. We can confess that his "females," as he
would term them, are indubitably wooden. We may acknowledge that even
among his men there is no wide range of character; Richard Jones (in
_The Pioneers_) is first cousin to Cap (in _The Pathfinder_), just as
Long Tom Coffin is a half-brother of Natty Bumppo. We must admit that
Cooper's lighter characters are not touched with the humor that Scott
could command at will; the Naturalist (in _The Prairie_), for example,
is not alive and delightful like the Antiquary of Scott.
In the main, indeed, Cooper's humor is not of the purest. When he
attempted it of malice prepense it was often laboriously unfunny. But
sometimes, as it fell accidentally from the lips of Leatherstocking, it
was unforced and delicious (see, for instance, at the end of chapter
xxvii. of _The Pathfinder_, the account of Natty's sparing the sleeping
Mingos and of the fate which thereafter befell them at the hands of
Chingachgook). On the other hand, Cooper's best work abounds in fine
romantic touches--Long Tom pinning the British captain to the mast with
the harpoon, the wretched Abiram (in _The Prairie_) tied hand and foot
and left on a ledge with a rope around his neck so that he can move only
to hang himself, the death-grip of the brave (in _The Last of the
Mohicans_) hanging wounded and without hope over the watery
abyss--these are pictures fixed in the memory and now unforgettable.
Time is unerring in its selection. Cooper has now been dead nearly
two-score years. What survives of his work are the _Sea Tales_ and the
_Leatherstocking Tales_. From these I have found myself forced to cite
characters and episodes. These are the stories which hold their own in
the libraries. Public and critics are at one here. The wind of the lakes
and the prairies has not lost its balsam, and the salt of the sea keeps
its savor. For the free movement of his figures and for the proper
expansion of his story Cooper needed a broad region and a widening
vista. He excelled in conveying the suggestion of vastness and limitless
space, and of depicting the human beings proper to these great reaches
of land and water--the two elements he ruled; and he was equally at home
on the rolling waves of the prairie and on the green and irregular
hillocks of the ocean.
1889