Part 5

Cooper’s English at best, though fluent and spirited, is without grace; at worst it is clumsy and intractable. This writer of world-wide fame is singularly wanting in literary finish. He is not careless but colorless, not slovenly but neutral. He succeeds almost without the aid of what is commonly called ‘style.’ He is read for what he has to say, not for the way in which he says it. There are surprises in store for the reader, but they are not to be found in the perfect word, the happy phrase, or the balance of a sentence, but always in the unexpected turn of an adventure, in a well-planned episode abounding in incident, in the release of mental tension following the happy issue out of danger. As was said of another copious writer, ‘he weaves a loose web;’ one might add that it is often of coarse fibre. In few writers of eminence is form so subservient to contents. The defect was due to haste, to the natural and lordly contempt of a spontaneous story-teller for the niceties of rhetoric.

IV

ROMANCES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

_THE SPY_, _LIONEL LINCOLN_

Life in that unhappy strip of country known during the Revolution as ‘the neutral ground,’ Westchester County, New York, is the subject of _The Spy_. Here frequent and bloody encounters took place between skirmishers from the opposing armies. Marauding bands, ostensibly ‘loyal’ or ‘patriotic,’ though often composed of banditti, made life a misery and a terror to peaceably inclined householders. Cooper wrote from first-hand traditions. The family of his wife had been loyalists, and the most famous of Westchester County raiders was a DeLancey.

The chief character is Harvey Birch, the Spy. Professing to be in the employ of the British, he is the most trusted of Washington’s secret agents. His devotion to his chief is a passion, almost a religion. Mean of appearance, niggardly in his mode of life, he is capable of the last degree of personal sacrifice. His patriotism is of the most exalted kind, since it can have no proportionate reward. He must live (perchance die) detested by the people for whom he risks his life daily. Cooper makes us deeply interested in this uncouth being, who, persecuted to the point of despair, and even brought to the gallows, finds always a way of escape. Birch gambled with his life in stake. It was a desperate throw when he destroyed the bit of paper signed by Washington.

The romantic hero of the story is Peyton Dunwoodie, a youth whose ‘dark and sparkling glance’ played havoc with the hearts of impressionable ladies. But Peyton was true, and loved but one. More to the modern taste are the humors of Lawton and Sitgreaves, of Sergeant Hollister and Betty Flanagan. ‘Mr. Harper’ is impressive, and the mystery of his character well sustained. The ladies of ‘The Locusts’ have the quaint charm inseparable from other-day manners and costume. To be sure one of them, who seems likely to die of love, is mercifully killed by a random bullet, and another becomes a maniac. Novel-readers wanted a deal for their money in 1821. But Frances Wharton is a likable little creature, though her talk does not in the least resemble that of Miss Clara Middleton.

As an Irish bishop said of _Gulliver’s Travels_, the book contains improbabilities. The device of a masque which converts young Henry Wharton into the counterfeit presentment of an old gray-headed negro is far-fetched. _The Spy_ was not intended to be a realistic novel.

Cooper projected another story on the background of the Revolution. _Lionel Lincoln_, for all the work put on it, was not a success. It had merits among which the merit of spontaneity is not conspicuous. Had the failure been less apparent, the novelist might have been tempted to continue the ‘Legends of the Thirteen Republics.’

V

THE LEATHER-STOCKING TALES AND OTHER INDIAN STORIES

A French critic once remarked that nothing was so like a _chanson de geste_ as another _chanson de geste_. Readers have deplored the fact that nothing was so like a Leather-Stocking tale as another Leather-Stocking tale. But _The Pioneers_, the first of the series in order of composition, bears little resemblance to the others, and as a picture of life in a New York village at the end of the Eighteenth Century has a historical value. The narrative is firm in texture. The characters are thirty in number, and every man in his humor. The Judge, Cousin Richard, Mr. Grant the clergyman, all the town oddities, Monsieur Le Quoi, Major Hartmann, Doolittle, Kirby, and Benjamin are real and humanly interesting. The dialogue is fresh, racy, and appropriate. There is no effort at compression; winter evenings were long in 1824.

The book holds one by the scenes and characters rather than by the ‘fable.’ The mystery of ‘Edwards,’ and the coming to life of old Major Effingham, are well enough; but the strength of the story is in the episodes, such as that where Hiram Doolittle, supported by Jotham and Kirby, tries to serve the warrant on Natty Bumppo, in the trial of the old hunter, or the capital scene where Natty is put into the stocks, and the chivalrous major-domo, Benjamin, insists on sharing his punishment, and cheering the heart-broken old man with comfortable and picturesque words. Presently Doolittle came to enjoy the fruit of his victory. Venturing too near, he found himself in the tenacious grasp of the irate major-domo. Benjamin’s legs were stationary, but his fists were free, and he proceeded to work away with ‘great industry’ on Mr. Doolittle’s face, ‘using one hand to raise up his antagonist, while he knocked him over with the other;’ he scorned to strike a fallen adversary.

_The Pioneers_ would merit a high place in American fiction were it only on account of that original character, Natty Bumppo, or ‘Leather-Stocking.’ He is natural, easy, attractive. In the other books (always excepting _The Prairie_), there is more of invention. Putting it in another way, the first Natty Bumppo is like a study from life, while the others often leave the impression of being studies from the first study.

By changing the background, the costume, the accessories, and making his hero younger or older, Cooper found him available for more exciting dramas than that played in Templeton.

Leather-Stocking next appears as ‘Hawkeye,’ the scout, in _The Last of the Mohicans_, a narrative based on the massacre of Fort William Henry in 1757, and, all things considered, the most famous of Cooper’s novels. It is an out-and-out Indian story, good for boys and not bad for men, being vigorous, brilliant, and packed with adventure. The capture, by a band of Montcalm’s marauding Iroquois, of the two daughters of the old Scottish general, their rescue by Hawkeye, Chingachgook, and Uncas, their recapture, the pursuit and the thrilling events in the Indian villages, form the staple of a book which without exaggeration may be called world-renowned.

If _The Last of the Mohicans_ suffers from one fault more than another, it is from a superabundance of hair-breadth escapes. The novelist heaps difficulties on difficulties, all of which appear insurmountable, and are presently surmounted with an ease that makes the reader half angry with himself for having worried.

As might have been expected, in growing younger Natty has grown theatrical; he appears too exactly at the critical moment to perform the deed of cool bravery expected of him. It could hardly be otherwise; _The Last of the Mohicans_ is a romance, and in romances such things must be. Chingachgook, that engaging savage, has for so many years met the romantic ideal of the American Indian that it is unlikely he will ever be disturbed in his place in the reader’s esteem. His rôle of white man’s friend was played in _The Prairie_ by Hard-Heart, the young Pawnee chief.

_The Prairie_ has an originality all its own. This strange and sombre tale brings together an oddly assorted group of people, some of whom--the squatter and his family in particular--are drawn with rude strength. There are weak points in the plot. The carefully guarded tent with its hidden occupant is a poor device for compelling attention. Dr. Battius, endlessly talkative about genus and species, is a tiresome personage. The justification of the story as a work of art is to be sought in the descriptions of the ‘desert,’ in the impressions given of immeasurable distance and illimitable space, the abode of mystery and terror. The passages describing the stampede of a herd of buffalo, the night surprise of the trapper and his friends by the Sioux, the escape of Hard-Heart from the torture-stake, are all done with a masterly stroke.

Natty Bumppo figures in _The Prairie_ as an old man of eighty-seven. His eye has lost its keenness of vision and his hand its steadiness. But the heart is undaunted (‘Lord, what a strange thing is fear!’) and the mind fertile in expedients. At times the trapper appears in almost superhuman proportions; he is mythical, like a hero of antiquity. The attachment between the ancient hunter and his dog is exquisitely described. In the beautiful account of Leather-Stocking’s last hour no touch is more poetic than that where the dying man discovers that the faithful Hector is dead. He will not say that a Christian can hope to meet his hound again; but he asks that Hector be buried beside him; no harm, he thinks, can come of that.

Thirteen years after the publication of _The Prairie_ appeared _The Pathfinder_, and one year after that _The Deerslayer_. The series was now complete, forming ‘something like a drama in five acts.’ _The Pathfinder_ shows Natty in mature manhood, and (for the comfort of all who require this test of their heroes of fiction) a victim of unrequited love. Exposed to the wiles of the most treacherous of all Mingos, Cupid, the quondam hunter, hunted in turn, takes defeat like the man he is. In _The Deerslayer_ the chronicle is completed with a group of scenes from Natty’s youth. On the shores of Otsego Lake, while defending old Hutter’s aquatic home, the young man learns the first lessons in the art of war.

Cooper wrote yet other Indian stories. Two may be taken note of in this section: _The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish_, a narrative of the Connecticut settlements in ‘King Philip’s’ time, and _Wyandotté_, an episode of frontier life in 1775. The latter is realistic. Cooper was on his own ground and knew the Willoughby Patent and the Hutted Knoll much as he knew ‘Templeton’ and Otsego Lake. _The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish_ is pure romance. In spite of the labored speech of the Puritan settlers and the metaphorical flights of Metacom and Conanchet, the story is enthralling. That is a genuinely pathetic scene where Ruth Heathcote seeks to awaken in the mind of Narramattah, her lost daughter, now the wife of the Narragansett chief, some faint memory of her childhood, and the account of Conanchet’s death at the hands of the Mohicans is a strong and dramatic piece of writing.

VI

THE SEA STORIES

FROM _THE PILOT_ TO _MILES WALLINGFORD_

_The Pilot_ is an imaginary episode in the life of John Paul Jones. Cooper has given his hero a poetic character. ‘Mr. Gray’ applies science to the problem before him up to the critical moment, and then trusts to intuition, to his genius, and finds wind and wave owning him their master. The new note is in the vivid descriptive passages, couched in terms of practical seamanship, but so graphically put that the most ignorant of lubbers can be depended on to read with a quickened pulse. Notable among these are the rescue of the frigate from the shoals, and the fight between the ‘Alacrity’ and ‘Ariel.’

There is much human nature in the speech of the men if not of the women. The dialogue between Borroughcliffe and Manual would not shame books more celebrated for humor than _The Pilot_. Vast refreshment can be found in the racy and picturesque talk of Long Tom Coffin, the most original character in Cooper’s gallery of seamen; also in that of Boltrope, who from an early ‘prejudyce’ against knee-breeches (he somehow always imagined Satan as wearing them) never became fully reconciled to the ship’s chaplain until that worthy left off ‘scudding under bare poles’ and garbed himself like other men. Dillon, the lawyer, is too obviously the scoundrel. As the ‘Cacique of Pedee,’ however, he serves a good end. His kinsman, Colonel Howard, walks the stage with dignity, a worthy specimen of the loyalist of the American Revolution, and typical of the class for whom Cooper had much sympathy.

The young women are far from being lay figures. They have beauty, intelligence, courage, even audacity. That they are too perfect in feature, form, manner, was a defect common to all fiction of the time; the art of making a heroine of a plain woman was in its infancy. Cooper, who could describe a girl, had always a deal of trouble to make her talk. Did he never listen to the conversation of those interesting creatures known, in the parlance of his day, as ‘females’? Would Alice Dunscombe, meeting her lover after a separation of six years, have used the phrases Cooper put into her lips? All these young women might with justice have complained that the speaking parts assigned them were not representative. But they were at the author’s mercy and did as they were told.

Cooper’s principal biographer, to whom we are all vastly indebted, says that ‘the female characters of his earlier novels are never able to do anything successfully but faint.’ This is unfair. Katherine Plowden, a brunette beauty, whom Professor Lounsbury has allowed himself to forget, goes habited _en garçon_ to seek her lover, and does not faint when she finds him, only laughs like the gay Rosalind she is.

The story of ‘Mr. Gray the pilot’ is good, but _The Red Rover_ is better. Cooper gave the public something new in pirates. The old-fashioned corsair, in theatrical phrase, looked his part. He swore horribly, was awful to behold, black-whiskered, visibly blood-stained, a walking stand of arms, like the monsters described in Esquemeling’s _Buccaneers of America_. Unlike L’Olonnois, of evil memory, the captain of the ‘Dolphin’ is almost a Brummell; his cabin is a boudoir, and he has the wit to eschew the old-fashioned device of skull and cross-bones. One is inclined, however, to laugh when the pirate ‘throws his form on a divan’ and bids music discourse. The Rover was somewhat given to posing, and in moments of deep thought wore a ‘look of faded marble.’

There is nothing fantastic in Wilder, the young captain, and nothing to be desired in his handling of the ‘Royal Caroline.’ The description of the flight before the strange cruiser is a splendidly nervous piece of writing. From the moment when the Bristol trader disentangles herself from the slaver’s side in the harbor of Newport until she becomes a wreck on the high seas and the diabolical pursuer passes like a hurricane, the interest is cumulative.

The book has its quota of garrulous old salts, some of whom talk too much, others not enough. ‘Mister Nightingale’ promises well, but has little of value to say after his discourse anent the quantity of sail a ship may carry in a white squall off the coast of Guinea. The reader will find amusement in the other characters, notably Fid and that strange being, Scipio Africanus.

_The Water-Witch_ concerns a mysterious and beautiful smuggling brigantine with a wonderful gift for eluding Her Majesty’s revenue cruiser under command of Captain Ludlow. The time is the close of Lord Cornbury’s administration, the scene, New York harbor and the adjacent estuaries. The story is fantastic and melodramatic, and the dialogue stilted, even for Cooper. Compared with _The Red Rover_, a romance like _The Water-Witch_ is hard reading. With such characters as Alderman Van Beverout, Alida de Barbérie, and ‘Seadrift’ with her epicene beauty, it is not surprising that _The Water-Witch_ should have been dramatized.

_The Two Admirals_ is an engaging picture of manly affection. He who has made the acquaintance of Sir Gervaise Oakes and his friend Richard Bluewater is to be congratulated, for a more sterling-hearted pair of worthies is seldom to be found. Other pleasant company may be had for the asking; the aged baronet Sir Wycherly Wychecombe, hospitable to excess, bemoaning the inconvenience of not having a satisfactory heir, and wondering why his brother never married, though he had never given himself the trouble to undergo the discipline of wedlock. Agreeable in their several ways are Mildred Dutton, Wycherly Wychecombe the young Virginian, and Galleygo the top man turned steward, he of the picturesque language. The story has a conventional plot, and one is supposed to be eager to know the validity of the Virginian’s claim to the ancient estate of the Wychecombes. The plot is in danger of being forgotten when Cooper carries his people to sea, and describes the

## action between French and English fleets off Cape la Hogue.

_Wing-and-Wing_ relates the adventures of a French privateer in the Mediterranean in 1798. One has not to read far before becoming enamoured of the diabolical little lugger and her audacious captain. As creatures of romance go, the good-humored and handsome Raoul Yvard (alias ‘Sir Smees’) is real and attractive. His arguments with Ghita (they talk theology not at all after the manner of Mrs. Humphry Ward’s characters) move one to turn the pages hurriedly. Raoul may be forgiven; Ghita drove him to it, being orthodox and fond of proselyting. One can always take refuge with the vice-governatore and the podestà. These worthies are long-winded, but it were unfair to call them dull.

Ithuel Bolt, that long-legged, loose-jointed son of the Granite State, is new in Cooper’s gallery of seamen. He makes an interesting figure in the wine-shop at Porto Ferrajo, his chair, creaking under his weight, tipped back on two legs against the wall, the uprights digging into the plaster, his knees apart, ‘you fancy how,’ and his long arms over the backs of neighboring chairs, giving him a resemblance to a spread eagle. Next to the wine of the country, which he abuses while succumbing to its influence, he detests the saints. Filippo, the Genoese sailor, undertakes a feeble defence. Says the Yankee: ‘A saint is but a human--a man like you and me, after all the fuss you make about ’em. Saints abound in my country, if you’d believe people’s account of themselves.’ Cooper says that Bolt, after his return to America, became a deacon. This is no more incredible than the statement that he also became a teetotaler.

The pages of old reviews would probably show how Cooper’s delineation of Englishmen affected English readers. Our cousins over the water must have been difficult if they quarrelled with the spirit in which the portraits of Cuffe, Griffin, Winchester, and Clinch were painted, all being good men and true in their various capacities. In describing Nelson and the ‘Lady Admiraless’ the novelist undertook a difficult task. He was adroit enough to avoid bringing the famous beauty too often on the stage.

_Afloat and Ashore_ and _Miles Wallingford_ form a continuous story of almost a thousand pages. There is a mixture of love and adventure, the love being depicted as Cooper usually does it, neither better nor worse, and the sea-episodes as only Cooper could do them.

A capital passage in _Afloat and Ashore_ is that describing the encounter with the savages off the coast of South America. Even more spirited are those chapters of _Miles Wallingford_ in which the young captain of the ‘Dawn’ relates how he was overhauled successively by a British man-of-war, a French privateer, and a piratical lugger, and how he escaped them all only to be wrecked at last in the Irish Sea. Among a dozen or so of characters Marble is a typical Cooper seaman, a man of many resources, as witness how he outwitted Sennit. He was patriotic too, and on his first visit to London was chagrined at being obliged to admit that St. Paul’s was better than anything they had in Kennebunk.

VII

OLD-WORLD ROMANCE AND NEW-WORLD SATIRE

_THE BRAVO_, _THE HEIDENMAUER_, _THE HEADSMAN_, _HOMEWARD BOUND_, _HOME AS FOUND_

_The Bravo_ was the first of a group of stories on themes suggested to their author during his stay on the Continent. It deals with Venetian life during the decline of the Republic. Jacopo Frontoni, the reputed bravo, becomes party to the iniquitous system which conceals crimes committed in the interest of the oligarchy, by throwing the suspicion on himself, all to the end that he may save his aged father, unjustly imprisoned by the state. Under this odium Jacopo lives until life becomes unendurable. At the moment he is meditating flight he is himself enmeshed in the toils and dies by the hand of the public executioner. A power which holds that it can do no wrong has a short way with servants who might betray its tortuous policy.

Jacopo comes too near to being a saint. He would have been more lifelike had he been guilty of one at least of the twenty-five murders laid at his door. Even a hired assassin of the Fifteenth Century might show filial piety.

His fate more or less involves that of the old fisherman of the lagoons, Antonio, a representative of that helpless, oppressed class which is without rights save the right of being punished if it does not obey. Antonio is a nobly pathetic character, one of the finest to which Cooper’s imagination has given being. His patience, his love for the grandchild taken from him by the state to serve in the galleys, his courage in pleading before the Doge and even in the dread presence of the Council of Three that the boy may be given back to him until he has been formed in habits of virtue, are strong and beautiful traits.

Violetta and Don Camillo furnish the love motive, without which a romance of Venice were barren. We sympathize with them and rejoice in their escape. More than this the author could not ask.

That the story contains anachronisms admits of no doubt. It may be that the arraignment of the oligarchy is too unrelieved. On the other hand, the virtues of the narrative are many. The movement is rapid, the sentences clear, the various strands of interest artfully woven, and the conclusion inevitable and dramatic.

_The Heidenmauer_ deals with the manners and the antagonisms of the time when the schism of Luther was undermining the Church. Far less engrossing than its predecessor and weighted with a cumbrous style, the book has its right valiant warriors and militant churchmen, its burghers, peasants, and other dramatis personæ of German romance. There are characters like Gottlob and old Ilse whose speech is always fresh and agreeable. The French abbé is voluble and might have been wittier. That one does not sit down to a table spread with an intellectual feast like that served in _The Monastery_ or _The Abbot_, is no reason for disdaining the fare served in _The Heidenmauer_.