CHAPTER III

COOPER

In comparison with other of the early makers of American literature the reputation of James Fenimore Cooper has diminished disproportionately since his death. In the case

of his contemporaries, Irving and Poe, the former has lost nothing during the past fifty years, in critical regard; the latter has immeasurably gained. Cooper, on the other hand, because of the carelessness of his literary methods and the keener appreciation in our day of the defects of technique his work unquestionably shows, has, as was inevitable, come to be regarded largely as a writer for boys, — by some critics at the beginning of the twentieth century he hardly seems to be taken seriously; there is an effect of patronage in references to him. We are speaking, of course, of the critical view of his work, the estimate which endeavors to give him his due place in the bead roll of American letters. His popularity with the general reader is another matter.

Cooper is still secure in a certain popularity; for the breath of life is in some of his stories, and all readers (and surely their name is legion) who like stir and change and excitement in their fiction are likely to swear by him. But, more than this, Cooper has no small significance in our American fiction because he was a stalwart pioneer in a day when such a one had to blaze his own trail; and because, moreover, he

led in the use of distinctively and attractively native material for his books. Certainly praise is due one who had the perception to see the great value of the Indian for the purposes of literary art, and who had the ability to set him picturesquely amidst his native wilds, to show him in his more heroic aspects, whether he be bravely terrible in war-paint, agile for the hunt, or romantic, as he unbends to love beside the far waters of his wood-girdled streams. Cooper is for these reasons still a striking figure in the literary Pantheon. Less perfect in his art than Irving, he is yet in a sense a writer of larger popularity and of more obvious vigor.

He was born in 1789, half a dozen years after Irving, at Burlington, New Jersey, where the Coopers were temporarily residing, while their lands in New York State were being made ready for occupancy. the region which he was again and again to portray in his romances. His mother was of Swedish extraction, and his middle name, Fenimore, which he assumed in maturity, being baptized simply "James," was the name of her family. His father was of Quaker stock, a congressman, a judge, a man of energy and ability who, after the American Revolution, acquired large tracts of land on Otsego Lake (Otsego Lake it is still written) in New York State, and according to the custom of the American pioneer, gradually made the region habitable, so that the town of Cooperstown remains as a monument of the fact. Thither, when the little James was a year old, the family moved. In the preface of his novel "The Pioneers," Cooper tells how "in 1785 the author's father, who had extensive tracts of land in this wilderness, arrived with a party of surveyors. At the commencement of the following year the settlement began.

The

author was brought an infant into this valley, and all his first impressions were here obtained."

Thus the young Cooper had an early environment of much moment to a future romancer. He was reared on the edge of a wilderness, fellow of the sun, the wind, and the open. That great good place, outdoors, was his playground, and the splendid primitive things of Nature were at his very threshold. It seems strange to-day to think of central New York State as an unsettled waste, a region of woodsmen, untilled land, and pathless forests. Yet so it was a hundred and odd years ago, and to the early American a pilgrimage to the Mohawk Valley seemed infinitely more remote and adventurous than would in our time a Wyoming hunting trip. Otsego Hall, as the large house and estate of the Cooper family was called, gave the lad a stately home in which a large and easy manner of living was instituted; while without, all the world between sky and earth was his to roam in, and for the first half of his life, Cooper – in sharp contrast with men of letters who are of the study and the midnight lamp — passed his time outside of confining walls. It seems as if something of the largeness, the liberal gift of Nature, entered into his work because of this good fortune of home and education.

Cooper's schooling was thus far more of Nature than from books. He attended the village academy, to be sure, but he early absorbed the valuable knowledge that is to be derived from contact with men rather than from books, from the rough woodsmen and trappers and guides who frequented this region. Later his education was continued at Albany, where he was admitted into the family of an English clergyman who fitted him for Yale College, which institution he entered in 1802, at the age of thirteen.

His course there was cut short a year before graduation, through inattention to his studies and participation in what is euphoniously described by all his biographers as a "frolic "—whatever that may mean. Professor Lounsbury, who writes the life of Cooper for the "American Men of Letters" series, says that Cooper was fond in college of taking long tramps in the picturesque country about New Haven; and adds, with a touch of humor, "but the study of scenery, however desirable in itself, cannot easily be included in a college curriculum." It is not likely that the young man left Yale with reluctance.

Next, as preliminary to a naval career, for which his father's public position was an aid in the way of influence, we find the collegian shipping before the mast in 18c6; and after a year at sea, he was commissioned midshipman, serving three years. All this experience was of rich value to the future writer of sea romances. But his roving disposition led him to make another change. A furlough of twelve months had been granted him, and before it expired he married in January, 1811, and resigned from the naval service. His wife was Miss De Lancey of an excellent Huguenot family which had settled at Mamaroneck, New York, where the young people were united. Thence he returned to Otsego County to settle down near the residence of his family to the life of a country gentleman, although for many years he vacillated between Cooperstown and Westchester, the home of his wife's family, with occasional residences, also, in other towns of the vicinity. Proud, irascible, high-spirited, and at times dictatorial, Cooper had the virtues which go with that temperament: he was honest, generous, and affectionate; there is no question that his private home life was happy, and the influence of his wife strong upon him

for good throughout his career, from the time he left the navy in order that he might be with her steadily.

It is remarkable that the prospective writer, for a number of years now, and indeed until he had reached the age of thirty, gave his full attention to building, planting, draining, and stock raising, with no thought of turning to literature.

The story of his taking up the pen is interesting. He was reading an English novel of society to his wife, one day, and, not liking it, remarked to her that he could do better himself. She challenged him to prove his word. He wrote "Precaution," which appeared in 1820 in New York City, so badly printed that what merit it had was obscured. It was a failure, and gave no hint of Cooper's real powers; but the next year, when he was urged by his friends to try an American theme, he produced the Revolutionary story "The Spy," with little hope that it would be well received, and consequently with a rather languid interest in its fate. But within a few months its success was assured, and Cooper was fairly launched as a fictionist. Now he did the wisest possible thing; he bethought him of investing the Otsego Lake region he knew so well with a romantic charm by weaving it into a tale of adventure. He wrote "The Pioneers," in which Leatherstocking, the famous Natty Bumpo, who was to be the hero of his finest series of books, first appeared; wrote it to please himself, he declared, but also pleasing the public and confirming his reputation. And that same year he also produced the stirring sea tale “The Pilot," in which again he drew upon his own experiences of the life described. Hereafter followed in rapid succession, and with a marvelous fecundity of invention and quick production, the long series of fiction which has given Cooper's name more than national fame.