AMERICAN MEN OF LETTERS.
Edited By
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.
[Illustration: J. Fenimore Cooper]
AMERICAN MEN OF LETTERS.
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER.
By
THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY, Professor Of English In The Sheffield Scientific School, Yale College.
BOSTON: HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street. The Riverside Press, Cambridge. 1884.
Copyright, 1882, By THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY
_All rights reserved._
_The Riverside Press, Cambridge_: Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
PREFATORY NOTE.
When Cooper lay on his death-bed he enjoined his family to permit no authorized account of his life to be prepared. A wish even, that was uttered at such a time, would have had the weight of a command; and from that day to this pious affection has carried out in the spirit as well as to the letter the desire of the dying man. No biography of Cooper has, in consequence, ever appeared. Nor is it unjust to say that the sketches of his career, which are found either in magazines or cyclopaedias, are not only unsatisfactory on account of their incompleteness, but are all in greater or less degree untrustworthy in their details.
It is a necessary result of this dying injunction that the direct and authoritative sources of information contained in family papers are closed to the biographer. Still it is believed that no facts of importance in the record of an eventful and extraordinary career have been omitted or have even been passed over slightingly. A large part of the matter contained in this volume has never been given to the public in any form: and for that reason among others no pains have been spared to make this narrative absolutely accurate, so far as it goes. Correction of any errors, if such are found, will be gratefully welcomed.
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. (p. 001)
Chapter I.
1789-1820.
In one of the interior counties of New York, less than one hundred and fifty miles in a direct line from the commercial capital of the Union, lies the village of Cooperstown. The place is not and probably never will be an important one; but in its situation and surroundings nature has given it much that wealth cannot furnish or art create. It stands on the southeastern shore of Otsego Lake, just at the point where the Susquehanna pours out from it on its long journey to the Chesapeake. The river runs here in a rapid current through a narrow valley, shut in by parallel ranges of lofty hills. The lake, not more than nine miles in length, is twelve hundred feet above tide-water. Low and wooded points of land and sweeping bays give to its shores the attraction of continuous diversity. About it, on every side, stand hills, which slope gradually or rise sharply to heights varying from two to five hundred feet. Lake, forest, and stream unite to form a scene of quiet but picturesque beauty, that hardly needs the additional charm of romantic association which has been imparted to it.
Table of contents (by pages)
- 1: James Fenimore Cooper by Lounsbury
- 2: His mother's maiden name was Elizabeth Fenimore
- 3: That characterize everywhere the American highlands
- 4: Accordingly Cooper was early sent to Albany
- 5: The Sterling sailed with freight in January
- 6: The couple were married at Mamaroneck
- 7: On what was called the Angevine farm
- 8: Punctuation has had its terrors and its triumphs
- 9: Political supremacy had been cast off
- 10: But likewise the expression of English cant
- 11: A keen dislike to the Puritans and their manners and creeds
- 12: Because had he been an open deist
- 13: To hold with her a tete a tete
- 14: But above all the unselfish patriotism
- 15: No such supposition could be made by Cooper
- 16: Had made it supremely fashionable
- 17: Murray gave the novel for examination to Gifford
- 18: By the translator of the Waverley Novels
- 19: Itself the pioneer of the five famous stories
- 20: With which The Pioneers originally opened
- 21: The authorship of the Waverley Novels
- 22: Though bearing the date of 1823
- 23: New England was always to Cooper an ungenial clime
- 24: A severe illness attacked Cooper during its progress
- 25: But in The Last of the Mohicans
- 26: With the publication of The Last of the Mohicans
- 27: Percival was a man of a good deal of ability
- 28: Straggling tales of the novelist disgusted him
- 29: Precisely what was the sale of his books
- 30: The winter of 1829 30 he spent in Rome
- 31: It was eminently characteristic of Cooper
- 32: To whom he invariably gave a grano apiece
- 33: The Prairie was followed by The Red Rover
- 34: Cooper I assert from personal knowledge
- 35: Was the influence which the controversies
- 36: Fenimore Cooper saved me from despair
- 37: He was an aristocrat in feeling
- 38: Because he never despaired of the republic
- 39: Everything and everybody was corrupt
- 40: The frightful effects produced by an unrestrained democracy
- 41: And dislike deepened into hostility
- 42: To bring up matters discreditable to Great Britain
- 43: Many readers will have heard of the practice of gouging
- 44: 101 in Europe in regard to America
- 45: Nor was it intended to mislead any one
- 46: Yet no one knew better than Cooper
- 47: Thither Cooper hastened from his home in Dresden
- 48: Between The Bravo and The Headsman p
- 49: A little while before The Bravo appeared
- 50: One of the editors of the Revue Britannique
- 51: And taxation for various objects
- 52: He had been criticised harshly and unjustly
- 53: The perpetual bustle and change were not to his taste
- 54: Trade began to seem to him vulgar
- 55: The censor quietly but severely pointed out
- 56: At the time when Cooper returned from Europe
- 57: If Cooper disliked England for its depreciation of America
- 58: 129 editorial article in the New York Courier and Enquirer
- 59: In his Letter Cooper announced publicly
- 60: Designated respectively as Leaphigh and Leaplow
- 61: They were conventional everywhere
- 62: While he had the unfairness of dislike
- 63: On the western side of Otsego Lake
- 64: Matters reached a crisis in 1837
- 65: That the language and conduct of Cooper
- 66: A controversy in which one party attacks a man
- 67: Whom he had brought over from Europe in Homeward Bound
- 68: And essentially vulgar character
- 69: And to some extent in that of John Effingham
- 70: 158 respect Cooper had the advantage
- 71: 161 Cooper in the Knickerbocker
- 72: Could impute his disclaimer either to malice or to envy
- 73: Provincial enough we certainly were then
- 74: 166 refusal of Congress to pass a copyright law
- 75: They were the more disagreeable when met with in Cooper
- 76: Are utterly out of place where they are
- 77: But who did not themselves ennoble it
- 78: Was really devoted to personal vituperation of the novelist
- 79: It was asserted to be a declaration
- 80: 181 But outside of what Greeley has written
- 81: But he was engaged in an unpopular cause
- 82: A paper published in the neighboring county of Chenango
- 83: Cooper prosecuted the Oneida Whig
- 84: Webb praised the father at the expense of the son
- 85: Weed arrived at Fonda the evening of that day
- 86: As fast as the articles were republished
- 87: Were the words of the retraction
- 88: Greeley assumed the conduct of the defense
- 89: Appeared Cooper's History of the United States Navy
- 90: He had contributed to the Naval Magazine
- 91: Weighed upon his mind lest Cooper
- 92: For James and his history Cooper had unbounded contempt
- 93: Perry did not sanction this view at first
- 94: Elliott did more than defend himself
- 95: But the notoriety never rose to reputation
- 96: For the referees were to decide
- 97: The taking of oral testimony began
- 98: Foot dissented on the same point
- 99: For Cooper the result was a great personal triumph
- 100: This controversy brought in its train another libel suit
- 101: Which they request me to transmit to Commodore Elliott
- 102: In the preface to The Red Rover
- 103: With so partisan a performance
- 104: But injustice may lead him to cease to love it
- 105: 'Why have you the impudence to hand me that prospectus
- 106: This statement was widely copied in the newspapers
- 107: Beginning with the first war path in The Deerslayer
- 108: 242 and The Deerslayer had met with a large sale
- 109: But he is equally certain to feel distrust of himself
- 110: Work that followed was Wyandotte
- 111: Beginning I am your old shipmate
- 112: They are essentially one novel
- 113: Though decidedly inferior to Satanstoe
- 114: And the boisterous brawling of The Redskins
- 115: The colonists became ungrateful
- 116: Apparently by spending a winter in the Antarctic seas
- 117: In consequence of the change in the law of copyright
- 118: For the three nights following the 18th it was acted
- 119: In 1851 he carried out a plan long before determined upon
- 120: Daniel Webster was selected to preside
- 121: Must prevail over that of the uncultivated many
- 122: The sentence time is precious
- 123: He rarely attained to beauty of style
- 124: Nor is improbability always confined to details
- 125: His heroines naturally conformed to his belief
- 126: The material framework of the fiction
- 127: The more uniform excellence of Cooper
- 128: I have not sought to hide his foibles and his faults
- 129: From all the petty tricks to which literary vanity resorts
- 130: And the titles given have in several cases
- 131: The first edition bears the imprint of 1823
- 132: Letter to the Editors of the Knickerbocker
- 133: By the Author of The Last of the Mohicans
- 134: Or the Adventures of Miles Wallingford
- 135: Edited by the Author of Satanstoe
- 136: Of this novel Cooper was the nominal editor
- 137: Naval History of Great Britain
- 138: Has a controversy with citizens of Cooperstown
- 139: Diary of James Fenimore Cooper
- 140: Impressment of American seamen
- 141: Naval History of Great Britain
- 142: New York Commercial Advertiser
- 143: Price of Cooper's later novels
- 144: Talleyrand visits Cooper's father