James Fenimore Cooper / American Men of Letters

by Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury

He was not a man to remain on the defensive. He at once began hostilities. His first attempt was unfortunate enough. This was the satirical novel called "The Monikins," which was published on the 9th of July, 1835. Of all the works written by Cooper this is most justly subject to the criticism conveyed in the German idiom, that "it does not let itself be read." To the immense majority of even the author's admirers, it has been from the very beginning a sealed book. It is invariably dangerous to assert a negative. But if a personal reference may be pardoned, I am disposed to say, that of the generation that has come upon the stage of active life since Cooper's death, I am the only person who has read this work through. The knowledge of it possessed by his contemporaries did not, in many cases, approach to the dignity of being even second-hand. The accounts of it that have come under my own notice, seem often to have been gathered from reviews of it which had themselves been written by men who had never read the original. It is no difficult matter to explain the neglect into which it immediately sank. The work was a satire mainly upon certain of the social and political features to be found in England and America, designated respectively as Leaphigh and Leaplow; though one or two things characteristic of France were transferred to the former country. But satire Cooper could not write. The power of vigorous invective he had in a marked degree. But the wit which plays while it wounds, which while saying one thing means another, which deals in far-off suggestion and remote allusion, this was something entirely unsuited to the directness and energy of his intellect. Moreover, some of his most marked literary defects were seen here exaggerated and unrelieved. In many of his novels there is prolixity in the introduction. Still in these it is often compensated by descriptions of natural scenery so life-like and so enthusiastic that even the most blasé of novel readers is carried along in a state of what may be called endurable tediousness. But in "The Monikins" the introductory tediousness is unendurable. It is not until we are nearly half-way into the work and have actually entered upon the voyage to the land of the monkeys, that the dullness at all disappears. After the country of Leaphigh is reached the story is far less absurd and more entertaining; though Cooper's descriptions are of the nature of caricature rather than of satire. There are, however, many shrewd and caustic remarks scattered up and down the pages of the latter part of the work, but they will never be known to anybody, for nobody will read the book through.

The work fell perfectly dead from the press. But its failure had not the least effect in deterring Cooper from continuing in the course upon which he had started. During the years 1836, 1837, and 1838, he published ten volumes of travels. In these he repeated, with emphasis, everything that he had uttered privately or had implied in his previous publications. The first of these works was entitled "Sketches of Switzerland." It was divided into two parts. The first, which was published on May 21, 1836, gave an account of his residence and excursions in that country during the summer and autumn of 1828. The second part, which appeared October 8, 1836, was largely taken up with accounts of matters and things in Paris during the winter of 1831-32, a journey up the Rhine, and a second visit to Switzerland. These two parts made four volumes. The remaining six had the general title of "Gleanings in Europe," and two each were devoted to France, England, and Italy. The first of these was published March 4, 1837; the second September 2 of the same year; and the third, May 26, 1838. They were written in the form of letters, and were pretty certainly made up from letters actually written or memoranda taken at the time. But they were likewise largely interspersed with the expression of views and feelings that he had learned to adopt and cherish since his return to his native land.

In the case of England and America, in particular, his remarks may have been full of light, but they did not exhibit sweetness. Probably no set of travels was ever more elaborately contrived to arouse the wrath of readers in both countries, nor one that more successfully fulfilled its mission. His keen observation let no striking traits escape notice. The individual Englishmen he meets and describes could furnish entertainment only to men that were not themselves Englishmen. There is, for instance, the sea-captain who endeavors to compensate for his lack of energy by giving his passenger an account of the marvelous riches of the nobility and gentry. Even more graphically drawn is the islander he met in the Bernese Oberland, who appeared to regard the peak of the Jungfrau with contempt, as if it did very well for Switzerland; and who, when his attention was called to a singularly beautiful effect upon a mountain top, began to tell how cheap mutton was in Herefordshire. Nor were many of his general remarks flattering. As one descended in the social scale he thought the English the most artificial people on earth. Large numbers of them mistook a labored, feigned, heartless manner for high-breeding. The mass of them acted in society like children who have had their hair combed and faces washed, to be shown up in the drawing-room. They were conventional everywhere. The very men whom he met after his arrival in the streets of Southampton, all looked as if they had been born with hat-brushes and clothes-brushes in their hands. As a race, moreover, they had special defects. They lacked delicacy and taste in conferring obligations or paying compliments. They were utterly indifferent to the feelings of others. There was a national propensity to blackguardism; and the English press, in particular, calumniated its enemies, both political and personal, with the coarsest vituperation.

These were not the sort of remarks to draw favorable notices from British periodicals. Cooper soon had an opportunity to verify, in his own experience, the truth of the last of his observations that have been cited. Harsh, however, as was his language about England, it bore little comparison to the severity with which he expressed himself about America. The attacks on the newspaper press belong not here, but to the account of the war he waged with it. The omission, however, will hardly be noticed in the multitude of other matters he found to criticise. Manners, customs, society, were touched throughout with an unsparing hand. Common crimes, he admitted, were not so general with us as in Europe, though mainly because we were exempt from temptation, but uncommon meannesses did abound in a large circle of our population. Our two besetting sins were canting and hypocrisy. We had far less publicity in our pleasures than other nations; yet we had scarcely any domestic privacy on account of the neighborhood. The whole country was full of a village-like gossip which caused every man to think that he was a judge of character, when he was not even a judge of facts. In most matters we were humble imitators of the English. All their mistakes and misjudgments we adopted except such as impaired our good opinion of ourselves. It was a consequence that all their errors about foreign countries had become our errors also. In a few cases, indeed, we were compelled to be American; but whenever there was a tolerable chance we endeavored to become second-class English. Wherever making money was in view, we had but one soul and that was inventive enough; but when it came to spending it we did not know how to set about it except by routine. No people traveled as much as we; none traveled with so little enjoyment or so few comforts. Taste and knowledge and tone were too little concentrated anywhere, too much diffused everywhere, to make head against the advances of an overwhelming mediocrity. Of society there was but little; for what it suited the caprice of certain people to call such was little more than the noisy, screeching, hoydenish romping of both sexes. The taint of provincialism was diffused over all feelings and beliefs. Of arts and letters the country possessed none or next to none. Moreover, there was no genuine sympathy with either. To all this dismal prospect there was slight hope of improvement, because there was a disposition to resent any intimation that we could be better than we were at present.

It would be a gross error to infer the general character of Cooper's travels from these extracts. They are gathered together from ten volumes, without any of the attendant statements by which they are there in many cases modified. Equally erroneous would it be to suppose that he did not find much to praise as well as to condemn in both England and America. These extracts, however, explain the almost savage vituperation with which Cooper was thenceforth followed in the press of the two countries. The works themselves met with a very slight sale: none of them ever passed into a second edition. Men were not likely to read with alacrity, however much they might with profit, unfavorable opinions entertained of themselves. Cooper himself could not have hoped for much success for his strictures. In fact, he expressly declared the contrary. The most he should expect, he said, would be the secret assent of the wise and good, the expressed censure of the numerous class of the vapid and ignorant, the surprise of the mercenary and the demagogue, and the secret satisfaction of the few who should come after him who would take an interest in his name.

Notwithstanding the ferocious criticism with which they were assailed at the time and the forgetfulness into which they have now fallen, Cooper's accounts of the countries in which he lived are among the best of their kind. Books of travel are from their very nature of temporary interest. It requires peculiar felicity of manner to make up long for the fresher matter about foreign lands which newer books contain. Striking descriptions and acute observations will still, however, reward the reader of Cooper's sketches. There are often displayed in them a vigor and a political sagacity which of themselves would justify his being styled the most robust of American authors. Pointed assertions are scattered up and down his pages. Could, for instance, one of the dangers of a democracy be more clearly and ill-naturedly put than by his statement, that the whole science of government in what are called free states, is getting to be a strife in mystification, in which the great secret is to persuade the governed that he is in fact the governor? His books, moreover, while they reflect his prejudices, show an honest desire to be just. He undoubtedly preferred the Continent to England. But in his account of that country, while he had the unfairness of dislike, he never had the unfairness of intentional misrepresentation. There is nothing of that exulting yell with which the British traveler of those days fell foul of some specimen of American ill-breeding or American bumptiousness. Nor did he fail to pay a high tribute to what was best in English society or English character. The gentlemen of that country, in appearance, in attainments, in manliness, and he was inclined to add in principles, he placed at the head of their class in Christendom. His censure of America and the Americans was not at all in the nature of indiscriminate abuse. The fault he found with his countrymen was based mainly upon their mistaken opinion of themselves and of their advantages and disadvantages. You boast, he practically said to them, of the superiority of your scenery, in which you are not to be compared with Europe; but you constantly abuse your climate which is equal to, if not finer, than that of any region in the Old World. You stand up manfully for your manners and tastes, which you ought to correct; but you are incessantly apologizing for your institutions of which you ought to be proud. The defects imputed in Europe to the inhabitants of the United States, such as the want of morals, honesty, order, decency, liberality, and religion, were not at all our defects. These, in fact were, as the world goes, the strong points of American character. On the other hand, those on which we prided ourselves, intelligence, taste, manners, education as applied to all beyond the base of society, were the very points upon which we should do well to be silent. This is certainly not an extreme position. But men are far more affected by the blame bestowed upon their foibles than by the praise given to their virtues; and both in England and America the censures were remembered and the commendations forgotten. Other circumstances also came in now to add to his unpopularity in his own country. A local quarrel in which he accidently became concerned, was followed by consequences which affected his estimation throughout the whole land; but the details of this will require a separate chapter.

CHAPTER VIII.

1837-1838.

Three miles from Cooperstown, on the western side of Otsego Lake, a low, wooded point of land projects for some distance into the water. It combines two characteristics of an attractive resort: beauty of scenery and easiness of access. On these accounts Cooper's father had refused to sell it when he disposed of his other lands. He had, in fact, specially reserved it for his own use, and for that of his descendants. In 1808, a year before his death, he drew up his will. In it he made a particular devise of this spot. "I give and bequeath," ran the words of the document, "my place, called Myrtle Grove, on the west side of the Lake Otsego, to all my descendants in common until the year 1850; then to be inherited by the youngest thereof bearing my name." Two small buildings had been successively erected by him on the spot. The first he tore down himself, but the second was set on fire after his death, by the carelessness of trespassers using it, and burned to the ground. Shortly after 1821, the only representative of the family living in Cooperstown who was of proper age to be consulted, gave his consent, so far as he was concerned, to the erection of a new building by the community. From that time the Point came to be a place of general resort. To it fishing and picnic parties were in the habit of repairing. An impression sprang up, moreover, that the spot was public property. This impression in the course of years advanced to the dignity of positive assertion. It became in time a universally accepted belief in the minds of the citizens that the place belonged to them. It then only remained to furnish the explanation of how it had happened to come into their possession. This was no difficult achievement. The story was soon generally received that Cooper's father, instead of permitting the public to use the Point, had actually made a gift of it to the public.

When Cooper took up his summer residence in the village, after his return from Europe, he found the notion prevalent that the place in question belonged to the community. As executor of his father's will he took pains to correct the error. He informed his fellow-citizens that the Point was private property, and not public; and that while he had no desire to prevent them from resorting to it, he was determined to insist upon the recognition of the real ownership. He might as well have talked to the winds. The community did not bother itself about examining the question of title. It had been in the habit of using the Point without asking any one's consent, and the Point it purposed to keep on using in the same way.