Homeward Bound and Home as Found form two parts of a single novel. The satire of the first part is forgotten in the movement of the narrative, the sea-chase, the wreck off the African coast, the fight with the Arabs. The second part is a diatribe on New York and Cooperstown in particular, and America in general. The chief characters, the Effinghams, mean well, but ‘they have an unfortunate manner,’ and their disagreeable traits are not so piquant as to be entertaining. Steadfast Dodge, the editor, is almost as unreal as the Effinghams. Captain Truck is a genuine brother man, resourceful as master of the ‘Montauk,’ and not helpless when figuring (without his connivance) as a great English author, at Mrs. Legend’s literary soirée.
Horatio Greenough had the ‘Effingham’ books in mind when he wrote to Cooper: ‘I think you lose hold on the American public by rubbing down their shins with brickbats as you do.’
VIII
TRAVELS, HISTORY, POLITICAL WRITINGS AND LATEST NOVELS
Cooper was a giant of productivity. Some brief comment has been made on twenty-three of his novels. It is impossible in the limits of this study to do much beyond giving the titles of his remaining books.
The History of the Navy of the United States of America begins with ‘the earliest American sea-fight’ (May, 1636), when John Gallop in a sloop of twenty tons captured a pinnace manned by thieving Indians, and closes with the War of 1812. The noteworthy features of the book are accuracy, independence, severity of style, and freedom from spread-eagleism. The brief Chronicles of Cooperstown, written in a plain way, has the natural interest attaching to the subject and the author.
A Letter to his Countrymen, partly autobiographical, is absorbing in its bitter earnestness. The Travelling Bachelor purports to be the letters of a cosmopolite, a man of fifty, to various members of his club, recounting his travels in the United States. The book is historical, statistical, argumentative. It treats of government, manners, art, literature, of fashions in dress and of peculiarities of speech. As an attempt on the part of a man of strong prejudices to take an objective view of his own country, it is singularly interesting. Were its seven hundred closely printed pages lightened with humor or relieved by any grace of expression, The Travelling Bachelor would be a vastly entertaining work.
The American Democrat is a collection of short essays, forty-five in number, on the American republic, liberty, parties, public opinion, property, the press, demagogues, the decay of manners, individuality, aristocrat and democrat, pronunciation, slavery, etc., etc. The tone of the comments is intentionally censorious, and often proves exasperating. Having been long absent from America, Cooper found himself to a certain degree ‘in the situation of a foreigner in his own country.’ On this account he was prepared to note peculiarities. Praise and blame are mingled. The American Democrat sets forth high ideals, as may be seen, for example, in the suggestive essay on party. The book is courageous but wanting in suavity.
Sketches of Switzerland and Gleanings in Europe, comprising ten volumes in the original editions, are studies of Continental and English life. They contain a multitude of spirited, pungent, and true observations. Lacking the ‘antiseptic of style,’ the books are no longer read.
Between 1845 and 1850 Cooper published eight novels. Three of the eight, Satanstoe, The Chainbearer, and The Redskins, are narratives supposed to be drawn from the ‘Littlepage Manuscripts.’ The first is not only the best, but is also one of the most genial of all Cooper’s novels. Corny Littlepage had attractive friends, such as the mettlesome youth Guert Ten Eyck, a splendid specimen of the free-handed, royally generous Dutch-American. Jason Newcome, on the other hand, embodies Cooper’s never latent hostility to New England. The pictures of old days in New York and Albany are brilliant and highly finished, and the encounter with the Indians in Cooper’s most spirited vein.
The Crater is a history of the adventures of Mark Woolston of Bristol, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, who was shipwrecked on a volcanic island in the Pacific, and with the able seaman Bob Betts set himself to solve the problem of existence. What with gardening, poultry-raising, boat-building, tempests, earthquakes, exploration of neighboring islands, colonization, savages, and pirates, the book resolves itself into one of the infinite variations of Robinson Crusoe. After twenty-nine chapters of this sort of thing comes an absurd and irrelevant conclusion.