James Fenimore Cooper / American Men of Letters

by Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury

But the personal unpopularity he brought upon himself by his censorious remarks will not wholly account for the unpopularity as a writer, which it was his fortune, in no short time, to acquire. There were other agencies at work besides those which affected the feeling towards him as a man. Throughout the English-speaking world there had been a literary reaction. Men had begun to tire of the novel of adventure. It was not that it had lost its hold upon the public; it had lost the supreme hold which for twenty years it had maintained. The mighty master was dead; to some extent his influence had died before him. The later work he did, had in several instances detracted from, rather than added to the fame he had won by the earlier. Cooper's own ventures in the field of foreign fiction, whatever their absolute merit, could not be compared with those in which he had drawn the life of the ocean, or the streams and forests of his native land. But outside of any effect produced by poorer production, there could be no doubt of the fact of a change in the public taste. The hero of action had gone by. In his place had come the hero of observation and reflection, who did not do great things, but who said good things. The exquisite and the sentimentalist were the fashion, to be speedily followed, according to the law of reaction, by the boor and the satirist. At the time when Cooper returned from Europe, Bulwer was the popular favorite. Both in England and America he was styled the prince of living novelists; and nowhere was enthusiasm, in his behalf, crazier than in this country. The revolution in taste, moreover, worked directly in his favor in more ways than one. Scott and Cooper's heroes, whether intelligent or not, were invariably moral. But of this sort of men readers were tired. No character could please highly the popular palate in which there was not a distinct flavor of iniquity. More ability and less morality was the opinion generally entertained, though probably not often expressed. Hence it was not unnatural that the sentimental dandies and high-toned villains of Bulwer's earlier novels should have been the heroes to captivate all hearts.

The comparatively low estimate into which the novel of adventure had sunk, undoubtedly had a marked effect upon Cooper's reputation. Some of his later work is superior to his earlier from the artistic point of view. Yet it was never received with the same praise, at least in English-speaking countries. More than that, the criticism it received was often excessively depreciatory; nor was this all due to personal unpopularity, though a good deal of it certainly was. He simply wrote in a style which the age had temporarily left behind, and fancied it had outgrown. All that Cooper had to do, all that under any circumstances he could do, was to keep on producing the best that lay in his power; sure to find a certain body of readers in sympathy with him; sure also that some time in the future the revolution of taste would bring him into fashion if he had written anything that really deserved to live.

These facts and considerations must, however, be borne in mind in order to understand the gradual growth of the ill-feeling that sprang up between Cooper and his countrymen. To the change of view in himself and to the change of taste in the public, were soon added special circumstances that tended to bring about or increase alienation. But there did not exist toward him, when he came back from Europe, any hostility on the part of his countrymen. Circumstances had led him to suspect such a feeling; but it was mainly the creation of a nature that was morbidly sensitive to criticism. He was not, to be sure, the popular idol at his return that he had been at his departure. But this decline, outside of the causes already mentioned, was due to ignorance rather than dislike. A new generation had, during his absence, come on the scene of active life. To it the influence of his personal presence was unknown. He had been away so long that many looked upon him with the indifference with which foreigners are regarded by the majority; on the other hand, the fact of his being a native prevented others from feeling that interest in him which a foreigner has to some. Whatever hostility actually existed sprang mainly from causes creditable to himself. If Cooper disliked England for its depreciation of America, he hated with a hatred akin to loathing, the recreant Americans who mistook the relation they bore to their native land, and apologized for its character and existence, instead of apologizing for their own. For these men he made no effort to hide the contempt he felt. This class, far larger then in numbers than now, came mainly from the great cities. Many of them had wealth and social position to make up for their lack of ability; some of them were attached to the legations. They naturally resented the low opinion entertained and expressed of them by their countryman, and had doubtless done him some harm, though far less than he supposed. Besides these, however, there were certainly a pretty large number by whom his aggressive patriotism was felt to be a positive bore. To this feeling there had been a good deal of expression given in the newspaper press. Cooper, who never could learn how little effect of itself hostile criticism has upon the reputation of a popular writer, gave to these attacks far more weight than they deserved.

It was, therefore, with exaggerated and unnecessary feelings of distrust that he had returned to his native land. He looked for indifference and aversion. Men seldom fail to find in such cases what they expect. He was present at a reception given, a few days after his return, to Commodore Chauncey. Men whom he knew, but had not seen for years, did not come up to speak with him; those who did, addressed him as if he had been gone from the city a few weeks. So much was he chilled by this apparent coldness that he left the room before the dinner was half over. He did not appreciate his own reserve of manner. The indifference which he found was, in many cases, due not to any lack of cordiality in others, but to hesitation at the way in which advances would be received by himself. There was a brusqueness in his address, an apparent assumption in his manner, which had nothing consonant to them in his feelings. But it was only those who knew him intimately that could venture, after long separation, to break in upon this seeming unsociableness and hauteur.

On Monday, May 29 1826, just before his departure for Europe, a dinner had been given to Cooper at the City Hotel by the club which he had founded. It partook almost of the nature of an ovation. Chancellor Kent had presided. De Witt Clinton, the governor of the state, General Scott, and many others conspicuous in public life, had honored it with their presence. Charles King, the editor of the "New York American," and subsequently president of Columbia College, had addressed him in a speech full of the heartiest interest in his future and of pride in his past. The Chancellor had voiced the general feeling by toasting him as the "genius which has rendered our native soil classic ground, and given to our early history the enchantment of fiction." No one, in fact, had ever left the country with warmer wishes or more enthusiastic expressions of admiration and regard. It was but little more than a week after his return when another invitation to a public dinner was offered him by some of the most prominent citizens of New York. In this they expressly asserted that he had won their esteem and affection, not merely by his talents, but by his manly defense, while abroad, of the institutions of his country. The invitation seemed to surprise Cooper as well as the language in which it was couched. He thanked the proposers warmly, but he declined it. The refusal was perhaps unavoidable. If so, it was unfortunate; if not, it was a mistake. Had the dinner taken place, it would have shown him the estimation in which he was really held, and would have modified or destroyed any prejudices entertained towards him by others, if any such existed.

Up to this period in his public career, Cooper had certainly not done anything to undermine his popularity. He now entered upon a line of conduct which it is charity to call blundering. He began, or at any rate pursued, a controversy, in which nothing was to be gained and everything to be risked, if not actually lost. He not only set himself to defend a course that needed no defense, he replied to attacks, real or imaginary, which could only be raised into importance by receiving from him notice. These attacks were a criticism on "The Bravo" which had appeared in the "New York American;" a criticism on his later writings which was found in the columns of the "New York Commercial Advertiser;" and an editorial article in the "New York Courier and Enquirer." He could not have done a more foolish thing. He knew perfectly well that no writer could be written down save by himself. He has quoted the very remark. But a hundred similar sayings, condensing in a line the wisdom of ages, could never have kept him quiet when an attack was made upon himself. A popular writer has always immense odds in his favor in any controversy he may have with inferior men. He is ordinarily sure of the verdict of posterity, for his is likely to be the only side that will reach its ears. Even during his own time there will always be a large body of admirers who will defend him with more fervor, and advocate his cause with more effect than he has it in his own power to do. But it can and will be done only in the case that he does little or nothing himself. If Cooper had lost any ground in the estimation of the public, all he had to do, in order to regain it, was to remain quiet. The one thing that Cooper could not do was to remain quiet. He determined to set himself right before his countrymen. He speedily had full opportunity to ascertain the results that are pretty sure to follow experiments of this kind.

In June, 1834, appeared Cooper's "Letter to His Countrymen." Its publication was no sudden freak, for the year before he had announced the preparation of it. The work is a thin octavo of a little more than one hundred pages; but the damage it wrought him was out of all proportion to its size. The first half of it was taken up with a reply to the comments and criticisms made in the New York journals already mentioned. This was of itself sufficiently absurd, for it revived what had already been forgotten, and gave importance to some things that had not been worth reading, let alone remembering. But to this blundering was added a wrongheadedness, of which Cooper's later life was to afford numerous illustrations. The article from the "Courier and Enquirer" is quoted in full in the book. Some of its statements are inaccurate; but no one can read it now without seeing at once that it was written in a spirit that was the very reverse of hostile. To attack a powerful journal for comments clearly dictated by friendly feeling, betrayed more than a lack of prudence; it betrayed a lack of common sense. Moreover, there were other serious defects in the Letter. He criticised at some length certain forms of expression used by one of his assailants. Cooper's remarks on language are almost invariably marked by the pretension and positiveness that characterize the writers on usage who are ignorant of their ignorance; but in this case they are in addition frequently puerile. His personal references were not especially objectionable. But the best that can be asserted of them is, that he said with good taste what it would have been better taste not to say at all. He, however, so contrived to state his position that he laid himself open to the charge that he looked upon the unfavorable opinion expressed of "The Bravo" as being instigated by the French government, and that, in consequence, the ill reception here accorded to his book was not due necessarily to any inferiority in the work itself, but to the machinations of foreign political enemies. He did not so mean it. He meant to imply that there was no limit to the volunteer baseness of men who stand ready to gratify power by doing for it what it would gladly have done, but would never ask to have done. But the other was a natural inference, and it was used against him with marked effect.

Worse even than all this, he succeeded in accomplishing in the latter half of his Letter. A most exciting controversy was going on at the time between the President and the Senate of the United States. The bitterness had been aggravated into fury by the removal of the deposits. The Senate had passed a resolution declaring the conduct of the President unconstitutional. Against this resolution Jackson had published a protest. The whole country was in a flame. Into the purely personal controversy in which he was engaged, Cooper lugged in a discussion of the political question that was agitating the nation. He remarked, in the course of it, that if the Union were ever destroyed by errors or faults of an internal origin, it would not be by executive but by legislative usurpation. In order apparently to have neither of the two parties in full sympathy with him, he criticised the appointing power of the President, and his action in filling embassies. It is by the most strained interpretation of the danger to our institutions from imitation of those found in foreign countries, that the political discussion was dragged into this production. The force of folly could hardly go farther.

The inevitable result followed. The work pleased nobody, and irritated nearly everybody. Three influential journals were at once made open and active enemies, and in their wake followed a long train of minor newspapers. More than that was effected. The Letter called down upon him the wrath of a great political party, which in the North embraced a large majority of the educated class; and its hostility followed him relentlessly to the grave. Unwise as the work was, however, there was nothing in it to justify the abuse that in consequence fell upon its author. To his statement of the danger of legislative usurpation Caleb Cushing made a dignified, though somewhat rhetorical reply; but while controverting his opinions, he spoke of Cooper personally with great respect. But such was not the treatment he generally received. The language with which he was assailed was of the most insulting and grossly abusive kind. In those days it was called appalling severity. It reads now like very dreary and very vulgar billingsgate. One example will suffice. The "New York Mirror" was then supposed to be the leading literary paper in New York. It was nominally edited by Morris, Willis, and Fay, though the two last were at that time in Europe. Morris is still remembered by two or three songs he wrote. Besides being an editor, he held the position of general of militia; accordingly he was often styled by his admirers, "he of the sword and pen," which was just and appropriate to this extent, that he did as much execution with the one as with the other. His paper intimated that Cooper was willing to transform himself into a baboon for the sake of abusing America, and that his inordinate ambition prompted him to distance all competitors, whether the race were fame or shame. It is proper to add that the tone of the "Mirror" in regard to Cooper was radically changed after the return of Willis from Europe.

In his Letter Cooper announced publicly, what he had long before said to his friends, that he had made up his mind to abandon authorship. Such resolutions are mainly remarkable for the fact that they are never kept. But the howl of denunciation that immediately arose would never have suffered him to keep still. From this time dates the beginning of the long and gallant fight he carried on with the American people. Gallant it certainly was, whatever may be thought of its wisdom; for it was essentially the fight of one man against a nation. In politics he had joined the Democratic party, but with some of their tenets he was not in the slightest sympathy. He was, for example, a fierce protectionist, and neglected no opportunity to cover with ridicule the doctrine of free trade. But though practically standing alone, his courage never faltered. The storm of obloquy that fell upon him made him in his turn bitter and unjust in many things he said; but it never once daunted his spirit or shook his resolution. On the contrary, it almost seems as if he were aiming at unpopularity; at any rate he could not be accused of seeking the favor of the public. Its acts he criticised, its opinions he defied. His literary reputation and the sale of his works were seriously affected by the course of conduct he pursued and the hostility it provoked. But he was of that nature that if the certain result of following the path he had marked out for himself had been the hatred of the world, he would never have once deviated from it the breadth of a hair.