The American historical novel (on American themes) before 1860

by Ernest Erwin Leisy

For a novitiate like Cooper to follow up at once the career unexpectedly opened up to him by the success of The Spy, required that he draw upon material already in hand. His acquaintance with Westchester county he had used felicitously; there remained his boyhood at Cooperstown, and his years at sea. Affection for the pioneer village among the forest-clad hills surrounding Otsego pressed for utterance and Cooper began “a descriptive tale” which he named The Pioneers; or, the Sources of the Susquehanna (1823). With a few Cooperstown characters and the outlines of a situation in mind, Cooper launched upon the improvisation of his story. He transcribed and generalized[13] for the purposes of fiction his memories of the hunter, Shipman, who came to his father’s, Judge Cooper’s, Hall to present his game; the motley characters and nationalities of the early settlement; the town itself as it was forty years ago, with its raw street of wooden houses; the drunken Indian at the inn; the snowy congregation crowding to the fire at the church; the seasonal sports of the rough people; the virgin lake and wilderness, the forest conflagration, ushering out with grim reality the period of romance. Cooper was too downright to obscure the grossness of the picture. Derelicts and scoundrels he well knew were associated with a new society as much as its idealists, and he brought them in. Representatives of various social units were made to aid in the evolution of the plot. Judge Temple, empire-builder, with his daughter just home from school, and an insurgent young Effingham were given the center of the stage; Natty Bumppo, protagonist of the advancing civilization, his companion Chingachgook, christened John, and various frontier types, were grouped about these.

In this work, Cooper showed a more aggressively American spirit, derived no doubt from the favorable reception accorded The Spy. In both the subject-matter and in his presentation of it he was independent of Scott,—seeking in the picture of American empire-building and American prodigality to set his country honorably before foreign readers. As was fitting in an avowedly “descriptive tale,” he laid aside the “pursuit-rescue” scheme for a set of sportsman’s sketches not unreminiscent of Irving. Life in the American Bracebridge Hall[14] was exhibited, with its Christmas abundance not to be outdone by Irving’s sketch of an English Christmas, and its sports like the turkey-match, the shooting of myriads of wild-pigeons, the seining or spearing of bass, the deer-chase on the lake, maple-sugaring in spring, and sleighing-parties in winter, each carrying its peculiar appeal. But there was also dramatic tension and an interest in a theme suggesting Greek fatalism: the law of nature, embodied in the uncouth old hunter and the Great Serpent, is seen in conflict with the law of man represented by the Judge. In the end the law of nature yields to the stocks and the fire which civilization brought, and the only escape is a reluctant departure toward the setting sun. A conventional plot was introduced by Cooper as a concession to his readers, but it is of secondary importance. A wrong done by Judge Temple to Effingham’s father is righted by the slightly complicated love-match of Miss Temple with young Effingham, in fiction a favorite method of restitution. The girl’s excessive sensibility, the episode of the panther, the appearance of a sybil, and of a gold-digger, the hero’s clouded ancestry cleared up in the penultimate chapter, all are to us dregs in the old wine but gave the story the flavor it needed in order to sell; the new wine that Cooper introduced has ripened to modern taste: it is the “essential wonder of pioneer life” as it is presented in this epic of the wilderness.

The Pioneers has never received consideration as an historical novel. Van Doren speaks of it[15] as Cooper’s first “realistic presentation of American manners.” Yet a novel of manners it is not. That life in the frontier town was not what it had been and never would be again, Cooper realized definitely.[16] Susan Fenimore Cooper says,[17] “The new narrative, like that which preceded it, was, in one sense, to be connected with the history of the country; it should follow the first steps of civilization in its conquests over the wilderness.” The conceivable contention that more than forty years must elapse between the time of the action and the date of composition is invalid: forty years is exactly the length of time by which The Spy, generally acknowledged an historical novel, is separated from its events; and The Antiquary is remote only twenty-one years. In America, moreover, changes in manner, customs and outward appearances are so great in a single generation that the historical romancer need not revert to antiquity.[18] It might, further, be argued that no actual historical character appears in the book. But the contemporary imagination did not heed to be reminded that here was the story of Daniel Boone, for to it the story had become a legend.[19] There is abundant evidence that its readers regarded it as an historical novel. So well did Cooper understand the passing nature of this pioneer life and so effectively did he characterize it here, that with subsequent writers the novel of pioneer community life became the characteristic type of American historical novel.[20]

In The Pilot (1823) Cooper drew upon his experiences at sea. How thoroughly he was at home here his biographers have remarked, but how thoroughly he viewed life from a seaman’s point of view, they have not insisted upon.[21] When it was apparent that Yale would do him no good, Cooper’s father shipped him before the mast, and here on his first voyage, which was long and stormy, occurred an unforgettable chase by pirates and a search by a British man-of-war. Such adventures were ordinarily discussed over a cob-pipe, on a wharf-barrel, or, at most, got into chap books, but no one thought to put them into a novel, for who but landsmen read novels? Smollett, to be sure, had had sailors but the detailed maneuvers of vessels and the tang of the old salt he had not given. Nor was it done, to Cooper’s thinking, in The Pirate, which had just appeared anonymously. When he asserted that it was the work of a landsman and not a of sailor, he was challenged to make good his contention by writing a story from the seaman’s point of view. His pugnacious temper was as ready to take the dare as it had been when it first tripped him into the authorship of Precaution.

Not unmindful of the experimental character of the venture, and wise through the unexpected success of The Spy, Cooper determined to blend nautical fiction and history. “It was conceived necessary,” says his daughter,[22] “to connect with the narrative some historical name which should give it importance, and for the same reason, the period of the Revolution was chosen as the date of the tale. The nautical annals of that time were brief, and a rapid glance was sufficient to show that among the historical figures that of the bold adventurer, Paul Jones, stood prominent as one of the few adapted to a work of fiction. His cruise in The Ranger suggested the plot of The Pilot.”

The historical facts in brief were these. Jones, after receiving a lieutenant’s commission in the navy, suggested that the American vessels, which were few and inferior in comparison with those of the enemy, should be used as privateers. In the “Ranger” he captured several trading vessels in the Irish channel; he attacked his home town of Whitehaven on the coast of Cumberland, and burned one vessel; he sacked Lord Selkirk’s castle, and defeated and captured the “Drake,” an English sloop-of-war, with the loss of only eight men.

Cooper chose the northeastern coast of England as the setting for his story. This gave him the two-fold advantage of exploiting sea maneuvers which The Pirate lacked, and of complicating these with a love story in the castle, which readers of Abbey romances cherished. In their eagerness to point out its novelty as a sea tale, students of Cooper have overlooked the Gothic tradition which The Pilot continued. In the management of the story there was not so much that was new as might be supposed, for in its general outlines it was The Spy done in terms of the sea. The skirmishes of the Neutral Ground became chases between frigates and men of war, the devotion of Harvey Birch was supplanted by Long Tom Coffin’s love for the sea, and an incognito Paul Jones replaced an incognito Washington. But such economy of creative effort was justifiable and perhaps necessary for Cooper if he should lavish upon the details the interpretative sympathy that he was fitted to give. It was the sailor in him that led the frigate through the channel in masterful manner and that made his seamen such likeable fellows. He knew how good sea-dogs would itch for a fight or boast of their prowess. “Their ships were handled,” says Captain Mahan, “as ships then were and act as ships still would under the circumstances.”[23] Joseph Conrad has been glad to acknowledge[24] that Cooper taught him profound sympathy and artistic insight into the sublimity and mystery of the sea.

Cooper’s choice of the “Father of the American Navy” as the historical figure with which to connect his sea tale was peculiarly happy in view of public enthusiasm following the success of the navy in the War of 1812.[25] But in portraying this character he has been considered no more successful than he had been with Washington. The statuesque pose of Mr. Gray becomes, through reiteration, an affectation which it is hard to reconcile with the fiery Scotchman of history. Cooper himself at a later date expressed dissatisfaction with the unreality of the portrait.[26] It becomes clear in the course of this story that Cooper regards Paul Jones as a free-lance whose devotion to America proceeded from his desire of personal distinction. “A large part of his behavior might be called Byronic,” Erskine has suggested, “since it appears to be learned in the general school of the Giaour and the Corsair.”[27] As an historical document The Pilot has worth because it faithfully portrays the sea life of the time of the Revolution and because it has called attention to a phase of the war historians have been inclined to neglect.

The favor with which Cooper’s three historical novels had been received convinced him that here lay his field. How seriously Cooper considered himself an historical novelist and how auspicious were the times for a national romancer has not been understood. The fiftieth anniversary of the battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill was at hand. The spirit of nationalism was intense. President Monroe had promulgated his Doctrine, General LaFayette (a personal friend of Cooper’s) had come to tour the country he had helped to save, and Daniel Webster in his Bunker Hill oration was trying to put into pleasing phrase the popular mood. Cooper, in the blush of popularity, conceived a plan for a series of historical romances, on a national scale, to be called “Legends of the Thirteen Republics,” the scenes of which should be laid in the various colonies that had shared in the Revolution. The first of this series was devoted to Massachusetts, and was entitled, Lionel Lincoln, or the Leaguer of Boston (1825).[28]

“Nothing that industry could do,” says Lounsbury,[29] “was spared by Cooper to make this work a success. In the preparation of it he studied historical authorities, he read state papers, he pored over official documents of all kinds and degrees of dreariness. To have his slightest assertions in accordance with facts, he examined almanacs, and searched for all the contemporary reports as to the condition of the weather. He visited Boston in order to go over in person the ground he was to make the scene of his story.” He built his story around the battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill. The entrance of a vessel through the patrolled part of Boston, carrying young Lincoln, an officer in the British service; the journey past old North Church, the Province House, and Faneuil Hall to the heart of the city; the state of unrest among the citizenry, along with the doubt among the British whether the rabble will fight; the organization of the Sons of Liberty and the news of the coming of Clinton, Burgoyne, and Howe; a spirited account of the running fight from Lexington to Concord; the uprising of a hundred thousand men under leaders like Warren, Putnam, and Gage; and at length an account of the Battle of Bunker Hill, in which the hero is wounded, were put into the first volume. In the second, history was practically cast to the winds, and the private fortunes of the hero were related,—his recovery under the tender ministrations of a girl, his marriage to her, amid ominous portents, and the disclosure through the spectacular machinery of Gothic romance of what had been clouded regarding his ancestry.