Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 05.djvu/434

* COOPER. 374 COOPER. His father resented the action of the faculty, but readers may l)e glad that the future novelist of the sea should liave been led to choose a naval career. To fit himself for this, there being no Naval Academy at that time. Cooper entered the merchant service as a sailor before the mast (September, 1S06), and after sixteen months" ex- perience on the sea, in London, and at Gibraltar, received a midshipman's commission (January 1, 1808). He served for a time on the Vesuvius, then with a construction party on Lake (Dntario, where he saw a new aspect of frontier life and became familiar with the details of ship-building. He saw also other forms of naval service before his resignation in 181L Meantime he had been married (January 1, 1811) to a daughter of John Peter DeLancey, who came of a conspicuous Tory family. The marriage was happy, but Coop- er's" resignation on the eve of the War of 1812 did not escape criticism, for a Tory connection seemed to imply lack of patriotism. For the next ten years he lived chiefly in Westchester County, his wife's home, devoting himself to farming and becoming the father of six children Ijcfore he conceived the idea of authorship. As it was, he began to write, less in emulation of the success of others than through conviction of their failure. He had been reading an English novel aloud, when he suddenly said to his wife, '"I believe I could write a better story myself," and proceeded to trv it. Cut Precaution (1820), dealing with high 'lite in England, about which Cooper knew- noUiing, ■as naturally a failure, and wholly uncharacteristic of his future work. Then when advised to deal with more local themes, he remem- bered a story that John .lay had told years before about a spy, and his home in Westchester, the scene of niuch fighting during the Revolution, furnished a fit stage for the play of his fancy. The result was The Spij (1821-22), which achieved a success till then unapproached in America, and determined its author to pursue his new-found career. It proved to a very self- conscious generation that it was not impossible for America to produce a novelist almost worthy of being ranked with the great author of Warer- Uy. Even to-day it remains a stirring narrative that deals adequately with important events, and in Harvey Birch, the Spy, it has added to our na- tional fiction one of its few imperishable char- acters. In 1823 Cooper began what is now known as the Leather-stocking Series with The Pioneers, for he did not compose the famous five romances in their natural chronological order. Early in the next vear he published The Pilot, thus prac- tically for the first time joining the ocean to the domam of fiction, juct as he had previously added the backwoods, and as he was soon to add the prairie. He also added to Harvey Birch and Natty Bumppo his third great character. Long Tom'Coffin. He now removed to New York City, and shortly after had a serious illness. His next novel was Lionel Lincoln (1825), a story of Boston during the Bevolution. This was not specially successful, but in 1820 The Last of the Mohicans placed him at the summit of his popu- larity and probably represented his highest achievement. In 1826 he changed his name, in compliance with the wishes of his grandmother, from sini|)le James Cooper to James Fenimore- Cooper, but soon dropped the hyphen. He could not so easily get rid of the misappre- hensions caused by his act in a crude society. Immediately afterwards he went abroad and re- sided there for seven years, during which time he was the recipient in foreign capitals of many at- tentions from distinguished people, but felt called upon, as in The Bravo (18.31), to proclaim vigor- ously the beneficent greatness of republican in- stitutions. His pride in the better features of American government and society did not, how- ever, prevent him from being one of the first Americans to perceive how really crude his fel- low-citizens were, and he told them their faults with a frankness that was not discreet. He exploited his prejudices against New England and in favor of the Episcopal Cliurch, and soon became in his native land a synonym of all that was unpopular and snobbish. His honest, if over-emphatic, strictures outweighed with his comically sensitive critics such fine romances as The Prairie (1827), The Red Rover ( 1828— the dates of Cooper's books are often hard to deter- mine exactly), and the less interesting, but credi- table, Water Witch (1830), But the fault was not entirely on the side of his countrymen, for he took an injudicious part in more or less unnecessary foreign discussions of American political affairs. On his return to America, in 1833, he at first spent his winters in New York City, bxit soon took up his permanent abode at Cooperstown. Here he published several volimies of travels, and still not restraining himself from criticism of his countrymen, especially in his story. Home as Found (1838), he was again embroiled in bitter controversy and exposed to almost incomprehen- sible vituperation, which was increased tlirough the fact that in 1837 a dispute had arisen with regard to the claims of his townspeople upon a certain tract of the Cooper estate. The great author's determination to enforce his plain rights was distorted by the newspapers into a heinous crime. And, ironically enough, just at that time this proud aristocrat was being denounced in England for his obtrusive republicanism. But Cooper still plied his pen and produced his History of the Navi/ of the United States (183!)), his Pathfinder (1840), his Deerslayer (1841), The Two Admirals (1842), and Wing-and Wing (1842). For the admirable English and iledi- terranean setting of the last two stories he was as much indebted to his European stay as he was to his return to the home of his boyhood for his equallj' admirable setting of tlie two novels pre- ceding. Mention should be made here of an 'anti-rent series' of novels, dealing with the well- known demagogic agitation against the proprie- tors of certain large estates in New York. These were Satanstoe, The Chain-Bearer, and The Red- skins (184,5-46), The first of them contains one of the best pictures that we hiive of life in colonial New York, ''et, while Cooper was thus composing novels which have been translated into many languages, and have gained him an undying reputation abroad, esjiecially in France, he was bringing libel suits against many of the Whig editors of his native State, among them Horace Greeley, Tlivirlow Weed, and James Watson Webb. He was Quixotic enough to conduct these suits himself, and he proved able to win verdicts which finally lirought his critics to their senses, although they did little to restore his popularity. A later gen-