Truly, European decadence was anticipated in America; and American influence passed over to Europe, was assimilated there, and then returned to this land of innocence as something purplish in its modernity and a little wicked. So absurd things are.
Cooper quotes a Frenchman, who says, "L'Amérique est pourrie avant d'être mûre." And there is a great deal in it. America was not taught by France—by Baudelaire, for example. Baudelaire learned his lesson from America.
Cooper's novels fall into two classes: his white novels, such as Homeward Bound, Eve Effingham, The Spy, The Pilot, and then the Leatherstocking Series. Let us look at the white novels first.
The Effinghams are three extremely refined, genteel Americans who are "Homeward Bound" from England to the States. Their party consists of father, daughter, and uncle, and faithful nurse. The daughter has just finished her education in Europe. She has, indeed, skimmed the cream off Europe. England, France, Italy, and Germany have nothing more to teach her. She is bright and charming, admirable creature; a real modern heroine; intrepid, calm, and self-collected, yet admirably impulsive, always in perfectly good taste; clever and assured in her speech, like a man, but withal charmingly deferential and modest before the stronger sex. It is the perfection of the ideal female. We have learned to shudder at her, but Cooper still admired.
On board is the other type of American, the parvenu, the demagogue, who has "done" Europe and put it in his breeches pocket, in a month. Oh, Septimus Dodge, if a European had drawn you, that European would never have been forgiven by America. But an American drew you, so Americans wisely ignore you.
Septimus is the American self-made man. God had no hand in his make-up. He made himself. He has been to Europe, no doubt seen everything, including the Venus de Milo. "What, is that the Venus de Milo?" And he turns his back on the lady. He's seen her. He's got her. She's a fish he has hooked, and he's off to America with her, leaving the scum of a statue standing in the Louvre.
That is one American wav of Vandalism. The original Vandals would have given the complacent dame a knock with a battle-axe, and ended her. The insatiable American looks at her. "Is that the Venus de Milo?—come on!" And the Venus de Milo stands there like a naked slave in a market-place, whom someone has spat on. Spat on!
I have often thought, hearing American tourists in Europe—in the Bargello in Florence, for example, or in the Piazza di San Marco in Venice—exclaiming, "Isn't that just too cunning!" or else "Aren't you perfectly crazy about Saint Mark's! Don't you think those cupolas are like the loveliest turnips upside down, you know"—as if the beautiful things of Europe were just having their guts pulled out by these American admirers. They admire so wholesale. Sometimes they even seem to grovel. But the golden cupolas of St. Mark's in Venice are turnips upside-down in a stale stew, after enough American tourists have looked at them. Turnips upside down in a stale stew. Poor Europe!
And there you are. When a few German bombs fell upon Rheims Cathedral up went a howl of execration. But there are more ways than one, of vandalism. I should think the American admiration of five-minutes' tourists has done more to kill the sacredness of old European beauty and aspiration than multitudes of bombs would have done.
But there you are. Europe has got to fall, and peace hath her victories.