The romantic hero of the story is Peyton Dunwoodie, a youth whose ‘dark and sparkling glance’ played havoc with the hearts of impressionable ladies. But Peyton was true, and loved but one. More to the modern taste are the humors of Lawton and Sitgreaves, of Sergeant Hollister and Betty Flanagan. ‘Mr. Harper’ is impressive, and the mystery of his character well sustained. The ladies of ‘The Locusts’ have the quaint charm inseparable from other-day manners and costume. To be sure one of them, who seems likely to die of love, is mercifully killed by a random bullet, and another becomes a maniac. Novel-readers wanted a deal for their money in 1821. But Frances Wharton is a likable little creature, though her talk does not in the least resemble that of Miss Clara Middleton.
As an Irish bishop said of Gulliver’s Travels, the book contains improbabilities. The device of a masque which converts young Henry Wharton into the counterfeit presentment of an old gray-headed negro is far-fetched. The Spy was not intended to be a realistic novel.
Cooper projected another story on the background of the Revolution. Lionel Lincoln, for all the work put on it, was not a success. It had merits among which the merit of spontaneity is not conspicuous. Had the failure been less apparent, the novelist might have been tempted to continue the ‘Legends of the Thirteen Republics.’
V
THE LEATHER-STOCKING TALES AND OTHER INDIAN STORIES
A French critic once remarked that nothing was so like a chanson de geste as another chanson de geste. Readers have deplored the fact that nothing was so like a Leather-Stocking tale as another Leather-Stocking tale. But The Pioneers, the first of the series in order of composition, bears little resemblance to the others, and as a picture of life in a New York village at the end of the Eighteenth Century has a historical value. The narrative is firm in texture. The characters are thirty in number, and every man in his humor. The Judge, Cousin Richard, Mr. Grant the clergyman, all the town oddities, Monsieur Le Quoi, Major Hartmann, Doolittle, Kirby, and Benjamin are real and humanly interesting. The dialogue is fresh, racy, and appropriate. There is no effort at compression; winter evenings were long in 1824.
The book holds one by the scenes and characters rather than by the ‘fable.’ The mystery of ‘Edwards,’ and the coming to life of old Major Effingham, are well enough; but the strength of the story is in the episodes, such as that where Hiram Doolittle, supported by Jotham and Kirby, tries to serve the warrant on Natty Bumppo, in the trial of the old hunter, or the capital scene where Natty is put into the stocks, and the chivalrous major-domo, Benjamin, insists on sharing his punishment, and cheering the heart-broken old man with comfortable and picturesque words. Presently Doolittle came to enjoy the fruit of his victory. Venturing too near, he found himself in the tenacious grasp of the irate major-domo. Benjamin’s legs were stationary, but his fists were free, and he proceeded to work away with ‘great industry’ on Mr. Doolittle’s face, ‘using one hand to raise up his antagonist, while he knocked him over with the other;’ he scorned to strike a fallen adversary.
The Pioneers would merit a high place in American fiction were it only on account of that original character, Natty Bumppo, or ‘Leather-Stocking.’ He is natural, easy, attractive. In the other books (always excepting The Prairie), there is more of invention. Putting it in another way, the first Natty Bumppo is like a study from life, while the others often leave the impression of being studies from the first study.
By changing the background, the costume, the accessories, and making his hero younger or older, Cooper found him available for more exciting dramas than that played in Templeton.
Leather-Stocking next appears as ‘Hawkeye,’ the scout, in The Last of the Mohicans, a narrative based on the massacre of Fort William Henry in 1757, and, all things considered, the most famous of Cooper’s novels. It is an out-and-out Indian story, good for boys and not bad for men, being vigorous, brilliant, and packed with adventure. The capture, by a band of Montcalm’s marauding Iroquois, of the two daughters of the old Scottish general, their rescue by Hawkeye, Chingachgook, and Uncas, their recapture, the pursuit and the thrilling events in the Indian villages, form the staple of a book which without exaggeration may be called world-renowned.
If The Last of the Mohicans suffers from one fault more than another, it is from a superabundance of hair-breadth escapes. The novelist heaps difficulties on difficulties, all of which appear insurmountable, and are presently surmounted with an ease that makes the reader half angry with himself for having worried.