The Spy | Page 2

May, 1811, he had married, and for several years thereafter he lived along in a pleasant, leisurely fashion, part of the time in Cooperstown and part of the time in Westchester County, until almost accidentally he broke into the writing of his first novel. Aside from the publication of his books, Cooper's later life was essentially uneventful. He died at Cooperstown, on September 14, 1851.
The connection of Cooper's best writing with the life he knew at first hand is thus perfectly plain. In his novels dealing with the wilderness, popularly known as the Leatherstocking Tales, he drew directly on his knowledge of the backwoods and backwoodsmen as he gained it about Cooperstown. In The Pioneers (1823) he dealt with the scenes of his boyhood, scenes which lay very close to his heart; and in the other volumes of this series, The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), The Pathfinder (1840), and _The Deerslayer (1841), he continued to write of the trappers and frontiersmen and outpost garrisons and Indians who made up the forest life he knew so well. Similarly, in the sea tales, which began with 'The Pilot'(1823) and included 'The Red Rover'(1828), 'The Two Admirals' (1842) and 'The Wing-and-Wing'(1842), he made full use of his experiences before the mast and in the navy. The nautical accuracy of these tales of the sea could scarcely have been attained by a "landlubber". It has much practical significance, then, that Cooper chose material which he knew intimately and which gripped his own interest. His success came like Thackeray's and Stevenson's and Mark Twain's--without his having to reach to the other side of the world after his material.
In considering Cooper's work as a novelist, nothing is more marked than his originality. In these days we take novels based on American history and novels of the sea for granted, but at the time when Cooper published 'The Spy' and 'The Pilot' neither an American novel nor a salt-water novel had ever been written. So far as Americans before Cooper had written fiction at all, Washington Irving had been the only one to cease from a timid imitation of British models. But Irving's material was local, rather than national. It was Cooper who first told the story of the conquest of the American continent. He caught the poetry and the romantic thrill of both the American forest and the sea; he dared to break away from literary conventions. His reward was an immediate and widespread success, together with a secure place in the history of his country's literature.
There was probably a two-fold reason for the success which Cooper's novels won at home and abroad. In the first place, Cooper could invent a good story and tell it well. He was a master of rapid, stirring narrative, and his tales were elemental, not deep or subtle. Secondly, he created interesting characters who had the restless energy, the passion for adventure, the rugged confidence, of our American pioneers. First among these great characters came Harvey Birch in 'The Spy', but Cooper's real triumph was Natty Bumppo, who appears in all five of the Leatherstocking Tales. This skilled trapper, faithful guide, brave fighter, and homely philosopher was "the first real American in fiction," an important contribution to the world's literature. In addition, Cooper created the Indian of literature--perhaps a little too noble to be entirely true to life--and various simple, strong seamen. His Chingachgook and Uncas and Long Tom Coffin justly brought him added fame. In these narrative gifts, as well as in the robustness of his own character, Cooper was not unlike Sir Walter Scott. He once modestly referred to himself as "a chip from Scott's block" and has frequently been called "the American Scott."
But, of course, Cooper had limitations and faults. When he stepped outside the definite boundaries of the life he knew, he was unable to handle character effectively. His women are practically failures, and like his military officers essentially interchangeable. His humor is almost invariably labored and tedious. He occasionally allowed long passages of description or long speeches by some minor character to clog the progress of his action. Now and then, in inventing his plots, he strained his readers' credulity somewhat. Finally, as a result of his rapid writing, his work is uneven and without style in the sense that a careful craftsman or a sensitive artist achieves it. He is even guilty of an occasional error in grammar or word use which the young pupil in the schools can detect. Yet his literary powers easily outweigh all these weaknesses. He is unquestionably one of America's great novelists and one of the world's great romancers.
There is abundant reason, therefore, why Americans of the present day should know James Fenimore Cooper. He has many a good story of the wilderness and the