James Fenimore Cooper Part 8

It is plain that these calumnious attacks sprang largely from Cooper's personal unpopularity. It is equally plain that his personal unpopularity was mainly due to the censorious tone he had a.s.sumed in the criticism of his country and his countrymen. It may accordingly be said that, in one sense, he deserved all that he received. He had pursued a certain line of conduct. He had no reason to complain that it had been followed by the same results here that would have followed similar conduct anywhere. In fact, while his censure of England had been far lighter than that of America, the language used about him in the former country had been far more vulgar and abusive than that used in the latter. But there were facts in his career which his countrymen were bound to bear in mind, but which, on the contrary, they strove hard to forget, and sometimes to pervert. He had been the uncompromising defender of his native land in places where it cost reputation and regard to appear in that light. He was a.s.sailed largely by the men who had toadied to a hostile feeling which he himself had confronted. His criticism of America was sometimes just, sometimes unjust. It was in a few instances as full of outrageous misrepresentation as any which he had resented in others. Even when right, it was often wrongly delivered.

But in no case did it spring from indifference or dislike. The (p. 237) very loftiness of his aspirations for his country, the very vividness of his conception of what he trusted she was to be, made him far more than ordinarily sensitive to what she was, which fell short of his ideal.

Every indignity offered to her he felt as a personal blow; every stain upon her honor as a personal disgrace. He had no fear as to the material greatness of her future. What he could not bear was that the slightest spot should soil the garments of her civilization. It was for her character, her reputation, that he most cared. It is not necessary to maintain that he was as wise as he was patriotic. Had he been in a position where he wielded political power, his impulsive and fiery temperament might very probably have made him an unsafe adviser. His whole idea of foreign policy, as connected with war, may be summed up in the statement that the nation should be as ready to resent a wrong done to ourselves as to repair a wrong done to others. Nothing could be better doctrine in theory. Unfortunately, the nation in all such cases is itself both party and judge, and the question of right becomes, in consequence, a hard one to decide as a matter of fact. Cooper's intense convictions would therefore have been likely to have led the country into war, had he had the control of events,--and war, too, at a time when under the agencies of peace it was daily gathering strength to meet a coming drain upon its resources in a conflict which but few were then far-sighted enough to see would squander wealth as lavishly as it wasted blood. Had it rested with him, it is quite clear that no Ashburton treaty would have been signed. There is a striking pa.s.sage printed to this day in italics, which he puts into the mouth of Leather-Stocking in the novel of "The Deerslayer." Its point is made specially (p. 238) prominent when it is remembered that this work was written while the controversy was going on between Great Britain and the United States in regard to the Northeastern boundary. "I can see no great difference,"

says Leather-Stocking, "atween givin' up territory afore a war, out of a dread of war, or givin' it up after a war, because we can't help it--onless it be that the last is most manful and honorable."

The features of Cooper's personal character, as well as his prejudices and limitations, are always to be kept in mind because they explain much that is defective in his art, and account for much of his unpopularity.

Some of them became unpleasantly conspicuous in the writings of his later years. In 1840 he entered upon a new period of creative activity which lasted until 1850. Between and including those years he brought out seventeen works of fiction. Eleven of them were written during the first half of this period ending with 1845, and even these did not const.i.tute the whole of what he then wrote. This fertility is made the more remarkable by the fact that during this same time he was engaged in the special controversy about the battle of Lake Erie, not to speak of his standing quarrel with the press and his running fight of libel suits in which he was not only plaintiff, but did the main work of the prosecution.

It is possible that his unpopularity stirred him to unwonted exertion.

There is certainly no question that the years from 1840 to 1845 inclusive, are, as a whole, the supreme creative period of Cooper's career. Its production does not dwarf his early achievement in vigor or interest; but it does often show a far higher mastery of his art. Two of the works then written mark the culmination of his powers. These (p. 239) were the Leather-Stocking tales called "The Pathfinder" and "The Deerslayer." The former appeared on the 14th of March, 1840, the latter on the 27th of August, 1841. They complete the circle of these stories; for others which he contemplated writing he unfortunately never executed.

Still the series was a perfect one as it was left. The life of Leather-Stocking was now a complete drama in five acts, beginning with the first war-path in "The Deerslayer," followed by his career of activity and of love in "The Last of the Mohicans" and "The Pathfinder,"

and his old age and death in "The Pioneers" and "The Prairie."

"The Pathfinder" and "The Deerslayer" stand at the head of Cooper's novels as artistic creations. There are others of his works which contain parts as perfect as are to be found in these, and scenes even more thrilling. Not one can be compared with either of them as a finished whole. For once, whether from greater care or happier inspiration, Cooper discarded those features of his writings in which he had either failed entirely, or achieved, at the most, slight success.

The leading characters belonged to the cla.s.s which he drew best, so far as he was a delineator of character at all. Here were no pasteboard figures like Heywood in "The Last of the Mohicans," or Middleton in "The Prairie." Here were no supernumeraries dragged in, in a vain effort to amuse, as the singing-master in the former of these same stories, or the naturalist in the latter. Humor, Cooper certainly had; but it is the humor that gleams in fitful flashes from the men of earnest purposes and serious lives, and gives a momentary relief to the sternness and melancholy of their natures. The power of producing an entire (p. 240) humorous creation he had not at all, and almost the only thing that mars the perfectness of "The Pathfinder" is the occasional effort to make one out of Muir, the character designed to play the part of a villain. But the defects in both these tales are comparatively slight. The plot in each is simple, but it gives plenty of room for the display of those qualities in which Cooper excelled. The scene of the one was laid on Lake Ontario and its sh.o.r.es; the other, on the little lake near which he had made his home; and the whole atmosphere of both is redolent of the beauty and the wildness of nature.

These works were a revelation to the men who had begun to despair of Cooper's ever accomplis.h.i.+ng again anything worthy of his early renown.

They were pure works of art. No moral was everlastingly perking itself in the reader's face, no labored lecture to prove what was self-evident interrupted the progress of the story. There is scarcely an allusion to any of the events which had checkered the novelist's career. References to contemporary occurrences are so slight that they would pa.s.s unheeded by any one whose attention had not been called beforehand to their existence. These works showed what Cooper was capable of when he gave full play to his powers, and did not fancy he was writing a novel when he was indulging in lectures upon manners and customs. "It is beautiful, it is grand," said Balzac to a friend, speaking of "The Pathfinder."

"Its interest is tremendous. He surely owed us this masterpiece after the last two or three rhapsodies he has been giving us. You must read it. I know no one in the world, save Walter Scott, who has risen to that grandeur and serenity of colors." "Never," he said in another (p. 241) place, "did the art of writing tread closer upon the art of the pencil.

This is the school of study for literary landscape-painters." Cooper himself, if contemporary reports are to be trusted, was at the time in the habit of saying that the palm of merit in his writings lay between this novel and "The Deerslayer." He certainly reckoned them the best of the five stories which have the unity of a common interest by having the same hero, and these five he put at the head of his performances. "If anything from the pen of the writer of these romances," he said, toward the close of his life, "is at all to outlive himself, it is unquestionably the series of 'The Leather-Stocking Tales.' To say this is not to predict a very lasting reputation for the series itself, but simply to express the belief that it will outlast any or all of the works from the same hand."

But at this time no work of his was treated fairly by the American press. His name was rarely mentioned save in censure or derision. Both "The Pathfinder" and "The Deerslayer" on their first appearance were violently a.s.sailed. It is giving praise to a good deal of the contemporary criticism pa.s.sed upon them to call it merely feeble and senseless. Much of it was marked by a malignity which fortunately was as contemptible intellectually as it was morally. Still, neither this hostile criticism nor Cooper's own personal unpopularity hindered the success of the books. He says, to be sure, in the preface to the revised edition of the Leather-Stocking tales which came out towards the end of his life, that probably not one in ten of those who knew all about the three earlier works of the series had any knowledge of the existence of the two last. This a.s.sertion seems exaggerated. It certainly struck many with surprise at the time it was made; for both "The Pathfinder" (p. 242) and "The Deerslayer" had met with a large sale.

Between the publication of these two novels appeared, on the 24th of November, 1840, "Mercedes of Castile." The subject of this was the first voyage of Columbus. It had several very obvious defects. It was marred by that prolixity of introduction which was a fault that ran through the majority of Cooper's tales. The reader meets with as many discouragements and rebuffs and turnings aside in getting under way as did the great navigator the story celebrates. There was, moreover, an excess of that cheap moralizing, that dwelling upon commonplace truths, which was another of Cooper's besetting sins. The only effect these discourses have upon the reader is to make him feel that while virtue may be a very good thing, it is an excessively tedious thing. As a novel, "Mercedes of Castile" must be regarded as a failure. On the other hand, as a story of the first voyage of Columbus, told with the special knowledge of a seaman, the accuracy of an historian, and with something of the fervor of a poet, it will always have a peculiar interest of its own.

Two sea-stories followed "The Deerslayer." The first of these, ent.i.tled "The Two Admirals," was published in April, 1842, and the second in November of the same year. Cooper was at this time engaged in the hottest of his fight with the American press and people. Publicly and privately he was expressing his contempt for nearly everything and everybody. He, in turn, was undergoing a.s.saults from every quarter. It is, therefore, a singular ill.u.s.tration of the love of country which burned in him with an intense, even when hidden, flame, that in (p. 243) in the midst of his greatest unpopularity he was unwilling to desert his own flag for that of the land to which he was forced to go for material.

Yet there was every inducement. He wished to do what had never before been done in fiction. His aim was to describe the evolutions of fleets instead of confining himself to the movements of single vessels. But no American fleet had ever been a.s.sembled, no American admiral had ever trod a quarter-deck. In order, therefore, to describe operations on a grand scale he had to have recourse to the history of the mother-country; but he purposely put the scene in "The Two Admirals" in a period when the states were still colonies. This novel takes a very high place among the sea-stories, so long as the action is confined to the water. But it suffers greatly from the carelessness and the incompleteness with which the details are worked out.

In "Wing-and-Wing," which followed it, the fortune of a French privateer is told. The scene is laid in the Mediterranean, and the time is the end of the last century. Though inferior in power to some of his other sea-stories, it is far from being a poor novel; and it was, in fact, one of the author's favorites. But its greatest interest is in the view it gives of a tendency in Cooper's character which was constantly becoming more p.r.o.nounced. The Puritanic narrowness of the very deep and genuine religious element in his nature was steadily increasing as time went on.

In "Precaution" it has been already observed that the doctrine had been laid down by one of the characters that there should be no marriage between Christians and non-Christians. In "Wing-and-Wing" this doctrine was fully carried out. The heroine is a devout Roman Catholic. She loves devotedly the hero, the captain of the French privateer. She (p. 244) trusts in his honor; she admires his abilities and character; she is profoundly affected by the fervor of the affection he bears to herself.

But he is an infidel. He is too honest and honorable to pretend to believe and think differently from what he really believes and thinks.

As she cannot convert him, she will not marry him: and in the end succeeds indirectly, by her refusal, in bringing about his death. It never seemed to occur to Cooper that the course of conduct he was holding up as praiseworthy, in his novels, could have little other effect in real life than to encourage hypocrisy where it did not produce misery. The man who, for the sake of gaining a great prize, changes his religious views is sure to have his sincerity distrusted by others. That can be borne. But he is equally certain to feel distrust of himself. He cannot have that perfect confidence in his own convictions, or even in his own character, that would be the case had no considerations of personal advantage influenced him in the slightest in the decision he had made, or the conclusions to which he had come. Even he who believes in this course of action as something to be quietly adopted might wisely refuse to proclaim it loudly as a rule for the conduct of life.

The next important work that followed was "Wyandotte; or the Hutted Knoll." It was published on the 5th of September, 1843. The story, as a whole, was a tragic one. In spite of the fact that the events occur in the place and time where some of the author's greatest successes had been achieved, this novel is inferior to all his others that deal with the same scenes. Certain manifestations of his feelings and certain traits of character indicated, rather than expressed, in the tales immediately preceding, were in this one distinctly revealed. His (p. 245) dislike of the newspapers and the critics has been so often referred to that it needs hardly to be said that in all the writings of this period these offenders were soundly castigated. Especially was this true of the preface. It was there, if anywhere, that Cooper was apt to concentrate all the ill-humor he felt--his wrath against the race and his scorn of the individual. But the two feelings that henceforth became conspicuously noticeable in nearly all his writings were his regard for the Episcopal church and his dislike of New England. They manifest themselves sometimes deliciously, sometimes disagreeably. In the midst of a story remote as possible from the occurrences of modern life, suddenly turn up remarks upon the apostolic origin of bishops, or the desirability of written prayers, and the need of a liturgy. The impropriety of their introduction, from a literary point of view, Cooper never had sufficient delicacy of taste to feel. Less excusable were the attacks he made upon those whose religious views differed from his own.

The insults he sometimes offered to possible readers were as needless as they were brutal. In one of his later novels he mentioned "the rowdy religion--half-cant, half-blasphemy, that Cromwell and his a.s.sociates entailed on so many Englishmen." There is little reason to doubt that under proper conditions Cooper could easily have developed into a sincere, narrow-minded, and ferocious bigot.[2]

[Footnote 2: Poe wrote a review of _Wyandotte_ which appeared in _Graham's Magazine_ for November, 1843.

As notices of Cooper's novels then went, this may be regarded as a favorable one, though in it the critic took occasion to divide works of fiction into two cla.s.ses: one of a popular sort which anybody could write, and the other of a kind intrinsically more worthy and artistic, and capable of being produced only by the few. At the head of the former cla.s.s he placed Cooper, but had the grace not to include his own name in the latter cla.s.s which he had created for himself. The reader will be edified to learn from a life of Poe, written by John H. Ingram (2 vols., London, 1880), that the writing of this review was an act of heroic and even desperate hardihood. Poe, it seems, had before valorously depreciated Halleck; but his crowning act of courage is introduced with the statement that "he dared all _published_ opinion, and in the very teeth of Cooper's supreme popularity ventured upon saying" the remarks which have already been referred to, and which are quoted in full by the biographer, to whom is also to be given the credit of the italicized word in the foregoing quotation. No small share of the common belief in regard to Cooper's character and career is based upon a.s.sertions about as trustworthy as this.]

Full as marked and even more persistent were his attacks upon (p. 246) New England. There was little specially characteristic of that portion of the country with which he did not find fault. New England cooking of the first cla.s.s was inferior to that of the second cla.s.s in the Middle States. The New Yorker of humble life, not of Yankee descent, spoke the language better than thousands of educated men in New England. This dislike kept steadily increasing. As late as 1844, if he sent his heroes to college at all, he sent them to Yale; after that year he transferred them to Princeton. With all this there is constantly seen going on a somewhat amusing struggle between his dislike and the thorough honesty of his nature, which forced him to admit in the men of New England certain characteristics of a high order. Their frugality, their enterprise, their readiness of resource, he could not deny. Still, he continued to imply that these qualities were used pretty generally for selfish ends. In his later works, in consequence, his villains were very apt to be New Englanders. They were not villains of a romantic type.

They were mean rather than vicious; crafty rather than bold; given to degrading but at the same time cheap excesses. The first of these (p. 247) these special representatives of the New England character is the powerful but somewhat unpleasant creation of Ithuel Bolt in "Wing-and-Wing," who finds a fitting sequel to a life pa.s.sed largely in committing acts of doubtful morality in becoming a deacon in a Congregational church. After him follows a succession of personages who represent nearly every conceivable shade of craft, meanness, and dishonesty that is consistent with the respect of the Puritan community about them, and with a high position in the religious society of which they form a part.

There was, it must be admitted, some justification for Cooper's feelings towards New England on the score of retaliation. He had been criticised from the beginning in that part of the country with a severity that often approached virulence. He had been denied there the possession of qualities which the rest of the world agreed in according him.

Cultivated society has always been afflicted with a cla.s.s too superlatively intellectual to enjoy what everybody else likes. Of these unhappy beings New England has had the misfortune to have perhaps more than her proper share. It was hardly in human nature that the disparagement he received from these should not have influenced his feelings towards the region which had given them birth and consideration.

It is pleasant to turn aside from these scenes and sayings which show the least amiable side of a nature essentially n.o.ble, and pa.s.s to one of the little incidents that are strikingly characteristic of the man. On board the Sterling, the merchantman on which Cooper's first voyage was made, was a boy younger than himself. His name was Ned Myers. This person had spent his life on the sea. He had belonged to seventy-two crafts, exclusive of prison-s.h.i.+ps, transports, and vessels in (p. 248) which he had merely made pa.s.sages. According to his own calculation he had been twenty-five years out of sight of land. After this long and varied career he had finally landed in that asylum for worn-out mariners, the "Sailors' Snug Harbor." From here, late in 1842, he wrote to Cooper, asking him if he were the one with whom he had served in the Sterling. Cooper, who never forgot a friend, sent him a reply, beginning: "I am your old s.h.i.+pmate, Ned," and told him when and where he could be found in New York. There in a few months they met after an interval of thirty-seven years. Cooper took the battered old hulk of a seaman up to Cooperstown in June, 1843, and entertained him for several weeks. While the two were knocking about the lake, and the latter was telling his adventures, it occurred to the former to put into print the wandering life the sailor had led. Between them the work was done that summer, and in November, 1843, "Ned Myers; or, Life before the Mast" was published. This work has often been falsely spoken of as a novel. It is, on the contrary, a truthful record, so far as dependence can be placed upon the word or the memory of the narrator. "This is literally," said Myers, "my own story, logged by an old s.h.i.+pmate."

In 1842 Cooper had entered into an engagement to write regularly for "Graham's Magazine." This periodical, which had been formed not long before by the union of two others, had rapidly risen to high reputation, and claimed a circulation of thirty thousand copies. In the first four numbers of 1843 Cooper published the shortest of his stories. It was ent.i.tled "The Autobiography of a Pocket Handkerchief." For some reason not easy to explain, this has never been included in the regular (p. 249) editions of his novels. In it he made in some measure another effort to reproduce the social life of New York city. The previous failure was repeated. An air of ridiculous unreality is given to this part of the story in which the impossible talk of impossible people is paraded as a genuine representation of what takes place in civilized society. The autobiographical form which he had first adopted in this tale he continued in the two series of "Afloat and Ash.o.r.e." These appeared respectively in June and in December, 1844. They are essentially one novel, though the second part goes usually in this country under the t.i.tle of "Miles Wallingford," the name of its hero; and in Europe under that of "Lucy Harding," the name of its heroine.

This work, the first part more particularly, is a delightful story of adventure. As usual there are startling incidents, perilous situations, and hairbreadth escapes enough to furnish sufficient materials for a dozen ordinary fictions. Yet the probabilities are better preserved than in many of Cooper's novels where the events are far fewer, as well as far less striking. But it is interesting, not merely for the incidents it contains, but for the revelation it makes of the man who wrote it.

Expressions of personal feeling and opinion turn up unexpectedly everywhere, and make slight but constantly recurring eddies in the stream of the story. Everything is to be found here which he had ever discussed before. The inferiority of the bay of New York to that of Naples; the miserable cooking and gross feeding of New England; the absolute necessity of a liturgy in religious wors.h.i.+p; the contempt he felt for the misguided beings who presume to deny the existence of (p. 250) bishops in the primitive church; his aversion to paper money; his disdain for the s.h.i.+ngle palaces of the Grecian temple school; his scorn of the idea that one man is as good as another; these and scores of similar utterances arrest constantly the reader's attention. But they do not jar upon his feelings as in many other of his writings. They are essentially different in tone. There runs through this series a vein of ill-natured amiability or amiable ill-nature--it is hard to say which phrase is more appropriate--which gives to the whole what horticulturists call a delicate sub-acid flavor. The roar of contempt found in previous writings subsided in these into a sort of prolonged but subdued growl. But it is a case in which the reader feels that it is eminently proper that the writer should growl. It is the old man of sixty-five telling the tale of his early years. His preferences for the past do not irritate us, they entertain us. It is right that the world about him should seem meaner and more commonplace than it did in the fever-fit of youth and love, when it was joy merely to live. The work, moreover, has another characteristic that gives it a whimsical attractiveness. It is a tale of the good old times when New York had still some New York feeling left; when her old historic names still carried weight and found universal respect, and her old families still ruled society with a despotic sway; and especially before the whole state had been overrun by the lank, angular, loose-jointed, slouching, shrewd, money-wors.h.i.+ping sons of the Puritans, whose restless activity had triumphed over the slow and steady respectability of the original settlers. The scene of this story, so far as it is laid on land, is mainly in the river counties; but in spite of that fact it is difficult not to think that some recollections of the writer's own youth (p. 251) were not mingled in certain portions of it. Especially is it a hard task not to fancy that in the heroine, Lucy Harding, he was drawing, in some slight particulars at least, the picture of his own wife, and telling the story of his early love.

The delineation of the New York life of the past which he had in some measure accomplished in these volumes, he now continued more fully in certain works which took up successive periods in the history of the state. The idea of writing them was suggested by events that were taking place at the time. The troubles which arose in certain counties of New York after the death, in 1839, of Stephen Van Rensselaer, the patroon, were now culminating in a series of acts of violence and bloodshed, perpetrated usually by men disguised as Indians. The questions involved had likewise become subjects of fierce political controversy. Cooper, who saw in the conduct of the tenants and their supporters a dangerous invasion of the rights of property, plunged into the discussion of the matter with all the ardor of his fiery temperament. He worked himself into the highest state of excitement over the proceedings. It was his interest in this matter that led him to compose the three works which are collectively called the Anti-rent novels. These purport to be the successive records of the Littlepage family, and each is in the form of an autobiography. They cover a period extending from the first half of the eighteenth century down to the very year in which he was writing.

It was about this time that Cooper's reputation touched the lowest point to which it has ever fallen, so far, at least, as it depends upon the opinion of critics and of men of letters. He was now (p. 252) reaping the fruits of the various controversies in which he had been engaged, and of all the hostility which he had succeeded in inspiring.

The two anti-rent novels which appeared in 1845 were "Satanstoe,"

published in June, and "The Chainbearer," published in November. They may have had a large sale. But there is scarcely a review of the period in which they are even mentioned. Even the newspapers contain merely the barest reference to their existence. It is perhaps partly due to this contemporary silence that these two stories are among the least known and least read of Cooper's productions. Moreover, they are constantly misjudged. The tone which pervades the concluding novel of the series is taken as the tone which pervades the two which preceded it. This is an injustice as well as a mistake. In no sense is "Satanstoe," in particular, a political novel. There is no reference to anti-rentism in it save in the preface. Its only connection with the subject is the account it gives of the manner in which the great estates were originally settled. On the other hand it is a picture of colonial life and manners in New York during the middle of the eighteenth century, such as can be found drawn nowhere else so truthfully and so vividly. It takes rank among the very best of Cooper's stories. The characters are, to a certain extent, the same as in "Afloat and Ash.o.r.e;" the main difference being, that in the one the events take place princ.i.p.ally on land, and in the other on water. Even those majestic first families, whom he had celebrated before, loom up in these pages with renewed and increasing grandeur. But the story is throughout told in a graphic and spirited manner, and as it approaches the end and details the scenes that follow Abercrombie's repulse at Lake George in 1758, it (p. 253) becomes intensely exciting. The villain of the tale is, of course, a New Englander, in this instance a long, ungainly pedagogue from Danbury, Connecticut. He does not, however, blossom out into the full perfection of his rascality until he makes his appearance in "The Chainbearer," the next novel of the series. This tale, though decidedly inferior to "Satanstoe," contains pa.s.sages of great interest. The description, especially, of the squatter family and the life led by it, is one of Cooper's most powerfully drawn pictures.

It has been the misfortune of this series that the member of it which has attracted most attention is "The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin,"

which came out in July, 1846. This is one of three or four books which, in a certain way, give one a high idea of Cooper's power in the fact that his reputation has been able to survive them. If he had been anxious to help the anti-renters and hurt the patroon, he could hardly have done better than to write this book. As a story it has no merit.

The incidents told in it are absurd. It is full, moreover, of the arguments that irritate but do not convince; and is liberally supplied, in addition, with prophecies that have never been realized. Everything that was disagreeable in Cooper's manner and bungling in his art, was conspicuous in this work. His dislikes were not uttered pleasantly, as in "Afloat and Ash.o.r.e," but with an ill-nature that often bordered upon ferocity. A tone of pretension ran through the whole, a constant reference to what men think who had seen the world, with the implied inference that those who disagreed with the author in opinion had not seen the world. The feeling of the reader is, that if this extravagance and over-statement be the result of travel, men had better stay (p. 254) at home. Nor did Cooper refrain from dragging in everything with which he had found fault before. We are not even spared the everlasting reference to the bays of New York and of Naples. The work is what he himself would have called provincial in the worst sense of that word.

Even more than its spirit was its matter extraordinary for a work of fiction. Part of it is little else than a controversial tract on the superiority of Episcopacy; and the temper in which it is written could hardly have been grateful to any but an opponent of that church.

"Satanstoe" is full of many of Cooper's likes and dislikes, but there can be no greater contrast conceived than between the tone which pervades that delightful creation, and the boisterous brawling of "The Redskins".

With the publication of this series Cooper's career as a creator of works of imagination practically closed. He wrote several novels afterward, but not one of them did anything to advance his reputation.

Some of them tended to lower it. This was not due to failure of power, but to its misdirection. The didactic element in his nature had now gained complete mastery over the artistic. The interest, such as it is, which belongs to his later stories, is rarely a literary interest. Not one of them has the slightest pretension to be termed a work of art.

There are, at times, pa.s.sages in them that thrill us, and scenes that display something of his old skill in description. But these are recollections rather than new creations. Cooper's fame would not have been a whit lessened, if every line he wrote after "The Chainbearer" had never seen the light.

The works that came out during the remaining years of his life (p. 255) were "The Crater," published October 12, 1847; "Jack Tier," published March 21, 1848; "The Oak Openings," published August 24 of the same year; "The Sea Lions," published April 10, 1849, and "The Ways of the Hour," published April 10, 1850. Of these "Jack Tier" originally made its appearance in "Graham's Magazine" during the years 1845-1847, under the t.i.tle of "The Islets of the Gulf," and strictly stands first in the order of time. It shares with "The Crater" the distinction of being one of the two best of these later stories. It may be fair to mention that Bryant saw in it as much spirit, energy, invention, and life-like presentation of objects and events as in anything the author ever wrote.

This will seem exaggerated praise when one reads it in connection with "The Red Rover," of which it is in some respects a feeble reflection. It was hard for Cooper to be uninteresting when once fairly launched upon the waves. Without denying the existence in "Jack Tier" of pa.s.sages of marked power, no small share of it was merely a reproduction of what had been done and better done before. The old woman who is constantly misusing nautical terms is the most palpable imitation of the admiral's widow in "The Red Rover." It is a cheap expedient at best, and must at any time be used with extreme moderation. Above all, it is a device which is abused the very moment it is repeated. As displayed in "Jack Tier," it is simply unendurable. Cooper's silly people, in facts are apt to be silly not only beyond human experience but almost beyond human conception. The tragedy, moreover, with which this novel ends is intended to be terrible, while as a matter of fact it is merely grotesque and absurd. The tale reaches a sudden but necessary conclusion because nearly all the characters are disposed of at once by (p. 256) drowning or killing. There is scarcely any one left to carry on the action of the story.

"The Crater," which in one sense followed and in another preceded "Jack Tier," has a very special interest to the student of Cooper's character.

He had now lived for so long a time a life remote from the real clash of conflicting views that he had finally reached that satisfied state of opinion which thinks the little circle in which it moves is the proper orbit for the revolution of thought of the whole race. As he advanced in years he narrowed instead of broadening. The intensity of his faith coupled with his energy of expression makes this fact very conspicuous; and in "The Crater" the reader is alternately attracted by the shrewd and keen remarks of the writer, and repelled by his illiberality. The novel tells the tale of a s.h.i.+pwrecked mariner cast away on a reef not laid down in any chart and unknown to navigators. This barren spot he makes bud and blossom as the rose. To the new Utopia he has created in the bosom of the Pacific he brings a body of emigrants. Their proceedings are entertainingly told. But the history of the decline of the colony from its primitive state of happiness and perfection, which is designed to furnish a warning, tends instead to fill the irreverent with amus.e.m.e.nt. While under the control of its founder and governor, who combined all the virtues, it is represented as enjoying peace and prosperity. Demagogism had no control. The reign of gossip had not begun. The great discovery had not been made that men were merely incidents of newspapers. Care was taken that the children should not imbibe any false principles, that is, any principles which the (p. 257) ruling powers thought false. The schools did not furnish much instruction, but owing to this considerate watchfulness they were innocent if they were inefficient. Still this ingenious arrangement for stopping the progress of the human mind could not work forever. From the start there was a dangerous element, though in this case the colonists had not come from New England but from the Middle States. Very speedily that innate depravity of the human heart which does not like to hear a clergyman read prayers, which looks with suspicion upon a liturgy, began to manifest itself. This, however, was kept under control until the arrival of new colonists. This Eden was then invaded not by one serpent only, but by several. Four of them were clergymen; one a Presbyterian, one a Methodist, one a Baptist, and one a Quaker. This was too much for the solitary Episcopalian who had previously been on the ground, and who is represented as combining a weak physical const.i.tution with a very strong conception of his apostolic authority as a divine. It must be conceded that for a population of about five hundred souls the supply of spiritual teachers was ample. With them came also a lawyer and an editor. The seeds of dissolution were at once sown. The colonists became ungrateful, and began to inquire not only into the conduct of their governor, but even into the t.i.tle by which he held some of his lands. He finally left the spot in disgust, and having first taken the precaution to dispose of his property at a good price, returned to his native country. A natural yearning to see the community he had established led the discoverer to revisit, after a few months, the scene of his trials.

He sailed to the spot but he could not find it. A convulsion of nature similar to that which had raised the reef above the level of the (p. 258) waves had sunk it again out of sight. Ungrateful colonists, clergymen, editor, and lawyer, had all perished.

In June, 1847, Cooper made a trip to the West, and went as far as Detroit. One result of this journey was the novel of "The Oak Openings; or, the Bee-Hunter." This must be looked upon as a decided failure. The desire to lecture his fellow-men on manners had now given place to a desire to edify them; and he was no more successful in the one than he had been in the other. In this instance the issue of the story depends on the course of an Indian who is converted to Christianity by witnessing the way in which a self-denying Methodist missionary meets his death. The whole winding-up is unnatural, and the process of turning the organizing chief of a great warlike confederacy into a Sunday-school hero is only saved from being commonplace by being absurd. Far more singular, however, was the central idea of "The Sea Lions," the story that followed. This is certainly one of the most remarkable conceptions that it ever entered into the mind of a novelist to create. It shows the intense hold religious convictions were taking of Cooper's feelings, and to what extremes of opinion they were carrying him. In "Wing-and-Wing"

the hero had been discarded because he was a thorough infidel. But Cooper's sentiments had now moved a long distance beyond this milk-and-water way of dealing with religious differences. In "The Sea Lions" the hero merely denied the divinity of Christ, while he professed to hold him in reverence as the purest and most exalted of men. But if there was any one point on which the heroine was sound and likewise inflexible, it was the doctrine of the Trinity. Whatever else she (p. 259) doubted, she was absolutely sure of the incarnation. She would not unite herself with one who presumed to "set up his own feeble understanding of the nature of the mediation between G.o.d and man in opposition to the plainest language of revelation as well as to the prevalent belief of the Church." In this case the hero is converted, apparently by spending a winter in the Antarctic seas. An important agent in effecting this change of belief is a common seaman who improves every occasion to drop into the conversation going on, some unexpected Trinitarian remark. When the master has almost against hope saved his vessel, and in the thankfulness of his heart invokes blessing on the name of G.o.d, Stimson is on hand at his elbow to add, "and that of his only and _true_ Son." This novel is, indeed, a further but unneeded proof of how little Cooper was able to project himself out of the circle of his own feelings, or to aid any cause which he had near to his heart.

He had had much to say about New England cant. Yet in this work he can find no words sufficiently strong to praise what he calls the zealous freedom and Christian earnestness of one of the most offensive canters that the whole range of fiction presents. It would be unjust to deny that when in "The Sea Lions" Cooper abandons his metaphysics and turns to his real business, that he creates a powerful story. One may almost be said at times to feel the cold, the desolation, the darkness, and the gloom of an Antarctic winter confronting and overshadowing the spirit.

But there can be little that is more tedious than the dry chaff of theological discussion which is here threshed for us over and over again. Believers in the Trinity had as little reason as believers in Episcopacy to rejoice in Cooper's advocacy of their faith. There (p. 260) was nothing original in his views; there was nothing pointed or forcible in his statement of them. He meant to inculcate a lesson, and the only lesson that can possibly be drawn is the sufficiently absurd one that dwellers in the chilly spiritual clime of Unitarianism can be cured of their faith in that icy creed by being subjected to the horrors of a polar winter. Far more clearly does the novel show the falling-off in his artistic conceptions and the narrowing process his opinions were undergoing. At the rate this latter was taking place it seems probable that had he lived to write another novel on a theme similar to this, his hero would have been compelled to abandon his belief in Presbyterianism, Congregationalism, Methodism, or some other ism before he would be found worthy of being joined in the marriage relation to his Episcopalian bride.

The "Ways of the Hour" was the last work that Cooper published.

Everything he now wrote was written with a special object. The design of this was to attack trial by jury; but he was not prevented by that fact from discussing several other matters that were uppermost in his mind.

The incidents of the story utterly destroyed the effectiveness of the lesson that it was intended to convey. It would be dignifying too much many of the events related in it to say that they are improbabilities: they are simply impossibilities. The "Ways of the Hour" was, however, like the preceding novels, often full of suggestive remarks, on many other points than trial by jury. It showed in numerous instances the working of an acute, vigorous, and aggressive intellect. The good qualities it has need not be denied: only they are not the good qualities that belong to fiction.

The pecuniary profits that his works brought him during this (p. 261) latter period of his life there are, perhaps, no means of ascertaining.

Much of the literary activity of his last years was due to necessity rather than to inspiration. He had been concerned for a long time in company with a number of men of business in a series of cotton speculations, and in others connected with Western lands. In both cases the ventures were unprofitable, and the desire of retrieving his losses was one of the causes that led to this constant literary production.

There were other circ.u.mstances, too, besides his mere unpopularity that had tended to reduce the amount gained from what he wrote. After 1838, the income received from England naturally fell off, in consequence of the change in the law of copyright. The act of Parliament pa.s.sed in that year provided that no foreign author outside of British dominions should have copyright in those dominions unless the country to which he belonged gave copyright to the English author. No fault can be found with this legislation on the score of justice. The value of anything produced by a citizen of the United States fell at once as a necessary consequence of the want of protection against piracy. The British publisher, not from any motive of mere personal gain, but from an unselfish desire by retaliatory proceedings to bring about a better state of things, went speedily to work to plunder the American author who favored international copyright in order to show his disgust at the conduct of the American publisher who opposed it. As a matter of fact Cooper's novels were from that time published in Great Britain, in cheap form, and sold at a cheap price. Such reprints could not but lower the amount which could be offered for his work. Newspaper reports, the (p. 262) correctness of which can neither be affirmed nor denied, frequently mention that for the copyright of each of his earlier novels he was in the habit of receiving a thousand guineas. We know positively that for his later tales, as fast as they were written, Bentley, his London publisher, usually paid him three hundred pounds each.

In America circ.u.mstances of another kind contributed to reduce the profits from his works. Most of them were published at a price that would have required an immense sale to make them remunerative at all. It was about 1840 that two weekly newspapers in New York, "The New World,"

and "The Brother Jonathan," had begun the practice of reprinting in their columns the writings of the most popular novelists which were then coming out in England. As soon as these were finished they were brought out in parts and sold at a small price. This piracy was so successful that imitators sprang up everywhere. The large publis.h.i.+ng houses were soon obliged to follow in the wake of the newspaper establishments. The reign of the so-called "cheap and nasty" literature began. The productions of the greatest foreign novelists were sold for a song. The native writer was subjected to a compet.i.tion which forced him at once to lower his price or to go unread. Beginning with "Wing-and-Wing," the rate at which Cooper's works were published furnishes a striking commentary upon the cheap professions of sympathy with letters current in this country, indicates suggestively the inspiriting inducements held out by the law-making power to enter upon the career of authors.h.i.+p, and shows with disgraceful clearness how utterly the interests of the men engaged in the creation of literature had been subordinated to the (p. 263) greed of those who traded in it. The barest recital of the facts makes evident the nature of the encouragement given. "Wing-and-Wing" was published at twenty-five cents a volume. So were "Wyandotte," "The Redskins," "The Crater," "Jack Tier," "The Oak Openings," and "The Sea Lions." The four volumes of the series "Afloat and Ash.o.r.e" were published at thirty-seven and a half cents each; and at the same rate "Satanstoe" came out, and also "Ned Myers." It was not till Cooper's last work appeared that the price went up as high as a dollar and twenty-five cents. This was in one volume; but it is to be kept in mind, in considering these prices, that in America his novels regularly appeared in two.

One further experiment Cooper made in a new field; and with it the record of his literary life closes. In the year 1850 he tried the stage.

On the 18th of June a comedy written by him was brought out at Burton's Theatre, New York. It was ent.i.tled, "Upside Down; or, Philosophy in Petticoats." For the three nights following the 18th it was acted, and was then withdrawn. It has never been played since, nor has it been published.

All these years he spent his time mainly in his home at Cooperstown.

There, besides the pleasure he found in the improvement of the extensive grounds about his house, he gave full vent to that latent pa.s.sion for wasting money in agricultural operations, which seems to be one of the most widely-extended peculiarities of the English race. On the eastern sh.o.r.e of the lake, about a mile from the village, he bought a farm of about two hundred acres which he called the "Chalet." The view from it was exceedingly beautiful, looking as it did down the Valley of (p. 264) the Susquehanna. The farm, too, had its picturesque and poetical features; but unhappily it was little adapted to practical agriculture.

It stood on a hill-side, the abruptness of which was only occasionally relieved by a few acres of level land. Much of it was still covered with the original forest; and a good deal of the cleared land was full of stumps. To superintend the removal of these latter was one of Cooper's chief relaxations from mental labor. It is a desirable thing to do, but it has never been found pecuniarily profitable in itself. To this place Cooper daily drove in the summer season, and spent two or three hours directing the operations that were going on, finding constantly new ways to spend money, and doubtless pleasing himself occasionally with the fancy that the farm would at some time pay expenses. And in the best sense it did pay expenses. It gave regular diversion to his life; it ministered constantly to his enjoyment of the beautiful in scenery; and it occupied his thoughts with perpetual projects of improvement for which its character furnished unlimited opportunities. He had bought it for pleasure and not for profit; and in that it yielded him a full return for the money invested.