James Fenimore Cooper / American Men of Letters

by Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury

Nevertheless, his reputation and the real excellence of the battle scenes, saved this work from seeming at the time so much of a failure as it actually was. Certainly whatever loss of credit he may have sustained as the result of writing "Lionel Lincoln," was much more than made up by the success of the tale that followed. In 1824 he had gone on an excursion to Saratoga, Lake George, and Lake Champlain, with a small party of English gentlemen. One of these was Mr. Stanley, the future Lord Derby. As they reached Glens Falls and were examining the caverns made by the river at that spot, Mr. Stanley told Cooper that here ought to be laid the scene of a romance. In reply, the novelist assured him that a book should be written in which these caverns should have a place. The promise was fulfilled. On the 4th of February, 1826, "The Last of the Mohicans" made its appearance. It was composed the previous year in a little cottage then situated in a quiet, open country, on which now stands the suburban village of Astoria. A severe illness attacked Cooper during its progress; but whatever effect it had upon his physical frame, it certainly did not impair in the slightest his intellectual force. The success of the work was both instantaneous and prodigious. Owing, perhaps, to the novelty of the scenes and characters, it was even greater in Europe than in America. But there was no lack of appreciation in his own land. In the estimation of his countrymen, the novel at once took its place at the head of his productions. An incidental fact will not only make clear its success, but the state of the book trade at that time. The demand for the work soon became so great and so persistent, that in April it was decided to stereotype it.

It deserved fully the success it gained. Of all the novels written by Cooper, "The Last of the Mohicans" is the one in which the interest not only never halts, but never sinks. It is, indeed, an open question, whether a higher art would not have given more breathing-places in this exciting tale, in which the mind is hurried without pause from sensation to sensation. But this is a fault, if it be a fault, which the reader will always forgive, whatever the critic may say. The latter, indeed, can see much to blame if he look at the work purely as an artistic creation. He can find improbability of action, insufficiency of motive, and feebleness of outline in many of the leading characters. But these are minor drawbacks. They sink into absolute insignificance when compared with the wealth of power displayed. As they are unable to retard the unflagging interest with which the story is read, so they do not essentially modify the estimation of it after it has been read.

In this work two great achievements were accomplished by Cooper. The first was the idealization of the white hunter whom he had described in "The Pioneers." No one can read the two novels in succession without seeing at once how much Leather-Stocking has gained in dignity. In thought and feeling and habits he is essentially the same; but there was given to his character a poetic elevation which raised it at once to the front rank of the creations of the imagination, and will make it imperishable with English literature. As he appears in "The Pioneers" he is merely an old man who has made his home in the hills in advance of the tide of settlement. He is the solitary hunter who views with dislike clearings and improvements, who cannot breathe freely in streets, who hates the sight of masses of men, who looks with especial loathing upon the civilization whose first work is to fell the trees he has learned to love, whose first exercise of power is to draw the network of the law around the freedom and irresponsibility of forest life. Though full of a simple and somewhat sententious morality, he is querulous, irritable, ignorant. But in "The Last of the Mohicans," while the man continues the same, the aspect he presents is wholly different. All that is weak in his character is in the background; all that is best and strongest comes to the front. He is in the prime of life. Ignorant he still remains of the ways of the world as found in the settlements; but there is no trace of discontent or fretfulness. He has full room for the exercise of his native virtues, and in the character of the acute and daring scout he finds no superior. To him forest and sky are an open book. Knowledge is conveyed to his ears in every sound that breaks the stillness of the summer woods; and to his eyes scarred rock and riven pine and the deserted nest of the eagle have made the paths of the wilderness as plain as the broadest highway. Nor are his moral qualities inferior to his purely professional. His coolness never deserts him, his resources never fail him, and along with the versatility that is never at a loss in the presence of the unexpected is the resolution that never flinches at the approach of the perilous.

This delineation has always met with unqualified praise. But the idealization of the Indian character as seen in Chingachcook and Uncas has been the subject of much controversy. This is not the place to express an opinion upon the truth of the representation. It is enough to say here that the view Cooper took was not hastily formed, nor was it the result of accidental prejudices. He studied all the sources of information accessible at that time which threw light upon the Indian character. He visited the deputations from the various tribes that passed through the state of New York on their way to the national capital. In some instances he followed them to Washington. It is obvious that to a man of his poetic temperament they may have appeared in a different light from what they did to the ordinary government agent. Certainly he never found reason to modify his views, though he was familiar with the criticism made upon them. Toward the close of his life he took occasion to reaffirm them. It is also to be added that if he gave especial prominence to certain virtues, real or imaginary, of the Indian race, he was equally careful not to pass over their vices. Most of the warriors he introduces are depicted as crafty, bloodthirsty, and merciless. But whether his representation be true or false, it has from that time to this profoundly affected opinion. Throughout the whole civilized world the conception of the Indian character, as Cooper drew it in "The Last of the Mohicans" and still further elaborated it in the later "Leather-Stocking Tales," has taken permanent hold of the imaginations of men. Individuals may cast it off; but in the case of the great mass it stands undisturbed by doubt or unshaken by denial. This much can be said in its favor irrespective of the question of its accuracy. If Cooper has given to Indian conversation more poetry than it is thought to possess, or to Indian character more virtue, the addition has been a gain to literature, whatever it may have been to truth.

CHAPTER IV.

1826-1830.

With the publication of "The Last of the Mohicans," Cooper's popularity was at its height. His countrymen were proud of him, proud that he had chosen his native land as the scene of his stories, proud that he had in consequence extended among all cultivated peoples its fame as well as his own. His works were more than read. They were in most cases dramatized and acted as soon as published. Artists vied in making incidents depicted in them the subjects of their paintings. Poems, founded upon them or connected in some way with them, made their appearance in the newspapers. If in many cases these things were in themselves of no value, they at least served to show the widespread popular interest which his writings had aroused. Moreover, his reputation was far from being limited to his own land. No other American, before or since, has enjoyed so wide a contemporary popularity. Irving may have been on the whole a greater favorite in England; but if so, it was largely due to the fact that the subjects upon which he was employed were of special interest to English readers, and his manner of treating them was flattering to English prejudices. But the Continental fame of Cooper was unrivaled, and indeed could fairly be said to hold its own with that of Walter Scott. Long before he went to Europe himself, his works appeared simultaneously in America, England, and France. They were speedily translated into German and Italian, and in most instances soon found their way into the other cultivated tongues of Europe. Everywhere his ability had been recognized by those whose approbation, if it could not confer immortality, was certain to bring with it temporary applause. The admiration expressed for him was far less marked in England than upon the Continent; but even there it could often be termed cordial. It came, too, from those who, whatever estimation we may give to their praise, did not praise lightly. From Miss Edgeworth he received personally a tribute to his success in delineating the characters in which her own reputation had been largely won. On reading "The Spy," she sent him a message, that she liked Betty Flanigan particularly, and that no Irish pen could have drawn her better. Scott had been much struck by the scenes and personages depicted in "The Pilot," the novel he first read, and predicted at once the success of the sea-story and of its creator. Many there were, even in England, who looked upon Cooper as being equal to the great master of historical romance. "Have you read the American novels?" wrote in November, 1824, Mary Russell Mitford to a friend. "In my mind they are as good as anything Sir Walter ever wrote. He has opened fresh ground, too (if one may say so of the sea). No one but Smollett has ever attempted to delineate the naval character; and then his are so coarse and hard. Now this has the same truth and power with a deep, grand feeling.... Imagine the author's boldness in taking Paul Jones for a hero, and his power in making one care for him! I envy the Americans their Mr. Cooper.... There is a certain Long Tom who appears to me the finest thing since Parson Adams." Subsequently, in July, 1826, she spoke thus of "The Last of the Mohicans," in a letter to Haydon: "I like it," she wrote, "better than any of Scott's, except the three first and 'The Heart of Mid-Lothian.'" The praise, indeed, given both then and at a later period, may often seem extravagant. In a passage written in 1835, Barry Cornwall, not merely content with putting Cooper at the head of all American authors, added that he may "dare competition with almost any writer whatever."

It need hardly be said that opinions such as these were not to be found generally in the English literary periodicals. Cooper's name was not even mentioned in the great reviews until his fame had been secured without their aid. The success which he won in Great Britain was not due in the slightest to the professional critics. These men fancied they had exhausted the power of panegyric when they went so far as to term him the American Scott. This fact was triumphantly paraded at a later period by a writer in Blackwood, presumably Wilson, as one of the convincing proofs of the untruthfulness of the charge made by Barry Cornwall, that authors from this country were treated with systematic unfairness in English reviews. "Were we ever unjust to Cooper?" he asked. "Why, people call him the American Scott." This sort of patting on the back was thought a proud illustration of the generosity of the British character, and as putting the recipient of it under obligations of everlasting gratitude.

There is no doubt, indeed, that the reputation of Cooper suffered all his life by the constant comparison that was made between him and the great Scotch writer. It was to a certain extent inevitable; but it was none the less unfortunate. He could never be judged by what he did; it was always by the fanciful test of how some one else would have done it. This was even more true of his own country than of England. Scott's popularity was greater here than it was anywhere else. There was a feeling akin almost to moral reprobation expressed against any one who should presume to fancy that the best work of any native author could equal the poorest that Scott put forth. The Continental opinion which at that time often reckoned the American novelist as equal, if not superior to his British contemporary, seemed to men here like a profanation. It was, indeed, so said in direct terms.

Comparison with Scott, therefore, always put the one compared at a great disadvantage. This, however, is a method of judging that is necessary to some and easy to all. Genuine appreciation demands study and thought. For these comparison is a cheap substitute. To call Cooper the American Scott in compliment in the days of his popularity, and in derision in the days of his unpopularity, was a method of criticism which enabled men to praise or undervalue without taking the trouble to think. Stories were invented and set in circulation of how he himself rejoiced in being so designated. Great, accordingly, was the indignation felt and expressed by these gentry at the presumption of the American author, when at a later period he asserted that so far from taking pride in the title, it merely gave him just as much gratification as any nickname could give a gentleman.