JAMES FENIMORE COOPER

1789-1851

Almost since his very first appearance as an author James Fenimore Cooper has been called "The American Scott,' but as Lowell long ago intimated, the comparison is much to the American author's disadvantage. It is true that Scott was the inspiration of some of the best of Cooper's creative work, and it is also true that there is a certain similarity between these authors in their love of outdoor life, adventure, and exciting action; in largeness and sweep rather than delicacy and finish of style; and in the final effects of their romances on the imagination of their readers. But in his power of reproducing past ages of history, in his wonderful array of original character creations, and in the architectural completeness and final artistic charm of his romances, Scott far and away surpasses his American follower.

Cooper is undoubtedly the most uneven of our greater writers. He has done some things wonderfully well, but he has also produced some books of exceedingly little worth. Along with his excellences he displays so many conspicuous faults as a stylist that there are some modern critics who feel inclined even to deny him a place among the major writers of America. It is true that his grammar is not always correct, that his diction is sometimes turgid and bombastic, and that there are many evidences of weakness in the architectonics, or structural elements, in his stories. It is also true that there is a lack of consistency, probability, and realism in his plots, and no one will deny that the majority of his characters, particularly his faultless "females," are more wooden and artificial than real flesh-andblood men and women. Still, when we consider the richness of Cooper's invention, the beauty, sweep, and power of his natural backgrounds, the energy displayed in his few great character creations, the originality and intense Americanism of his major conceptions, and the interest-gripping power of his most successful tales, we must inevitably accept

him not only as one of our pioneer writers but as one of our largest creative geniuses.

The eleventh of the twelve children of William Cooper and Elizabeth Fenimore was born at Burlington, New Jersey, September 15, 1789, and christened James. After he had reached maturity, by an act of the New York legislature he assumed his mother's maiden name and has ever since been known as James Fenimore Cooper. Judge William Cooper owned a large estate on the shores of Otsego Lake in central New York, and when James was about a year old, he moved into a large manor which he had built in the dense forests of his estate and named it “The Hall." Here at what has since become Cooperstown the boy grew up and became familiarly acquainted with those wild, free scenes of the primeval wilderness which he was later to people with its aboriginal denizens, the creations of his own imagination it is true, but based on actual observation of Indian and pioneer life as it was impressed on his childhood's memory. There was but little opportunity for formal education in this undeveloped territory, and so Judge Cooper sent his children to the more thickly populated settlements for their schooling. James was sent to Albany for a year to be tutored for college. With a very inadequate preparation he entered Yale at the early age of thirteen. He apparently paid little attention to his academic duties, and in his third year he was dismissed from the college. It is unfortunate that Cooper did not complete his education, for his style might have been greatly chastened and refined if he had submitted to the discipline of a careful literary training in his youth. Even after he left college he might have improved his style by practice and self-criticism if he had begun early enough; but he was past thirty when he began to write, and so he was never able to overcome fully the handicap of his youthful neglect of educational opportunities.

Judge Cooper, now a congressman, looked upon the navy as offering a promising career and certainly a good disciplinary training for his independent, self-willed, and adventurous son. Accordingly, at the time of the boy's dismissal from Yale he secured a post for him on a merchantman and sent him to sea. This was the method of preliminary training for officers of the navy in the days before the founding of the naval academy at Annapolis. For nearly a year the young sailor stood the tests before the mast, traveling through the

Straits of Gibraltar to Spain, returning by way of London, and crossing the Atlantic with all the experiences of storms, hardships, and excitements of those early days of pirates and freebooters. He then became a midshipman in the United States Navy, and for three years passed his life on board various ships, mostly on the Great Lakes, but also crossing the Atlantic in a visit to foreign ports. Of these early sea experiences we learn more from Cooper's sea tales than from any authentic records of his life during this period. In 1810 Cooper secured a year's leave of absence from the navy with the privilege of retiring permanently if he so desired. In 1811, having in the meantime married Miss Susan De Lancey, he resigned his commission and for the next ten years lived the life of a farmer, or country gentleman, on his father's and his father-in-law's estates. It was about 1820 that the interesting episode occurred which turned Cooper's life into literary channels. While reading a novel of English society life to his wife, he suddenly threw down the book in disgust, exclaiming that he could write a better novel himself. His wife challenged him to make good his boast, and under her encouragement Cooper produced within a short time a two-volume novel, Precaution, a book which was a failure in everything except that it showed Cooper he really had a gift for writing. He knew little or nothing of English society, and so, as might have been foreseen, he did not succeed in portraying it. But when his friends encouraged him to try again, he turned in his next venture to an American subject and American scenery, and produced The Spy, the first widely successful American novel.

Cooper's stories may be conveniently treated in three classes: (1) his historical tales, best represented by The Spy; (2) his sea tales, best represented by The Pilot; and (3) the stories of Indian and pioneer life in the colonial days, best represented by the Leatherstocking Tales.

It was in 1821 that, with some hesitancy and at his own financial risk, Cooper published his first important novel, The Spy. It is a tale of the Revolution, based upon the romantic exploits of the spy, Harvey Birch, a secret agent in the confidence of Washington, but a man thoroughly hated and distrusted by the American patriots. His marvelous adventures in the war, his intrepid and sometimes reckless unconcern for his own safety, his astuteness and agility in extricating himself from perilous situations and