Chapter I: His Life

James Cooper was the eleventh of the twelve children of William and Elizabeth (Fenimore) Cooper, of Burlington, New Jersey. He was born in that picturesque town by the Delaware on September 15, 1789. The name James, given him in honor of his grandfather, had also been borne by his first American ancestor, who is said to have come from Stratford-on-Avon, in 1679. In fulfilment of a promise to his mother (whose family had become extinct in the male line), the novelist, in 1826, changed his name to Fenimore-Cooper.

At the close of the Revolutionary War, William Cooper acquired large tracts of land on Otsego Lake in New York, settled there in 1790, founded the village still known as Cooperstown, and built for himself a stately home to which he gave the name of Otsego Hall. He was the first judge of the county and a member of Congress, a man of strong character and agreeable address.[7]

Cooper’s boyhood was passed amid picturesque natural surroundings, on the edge of civilization, the scene of _The Deerslayer_ and _The Pioneers_. He attended the village school, prepared for college with the rector of St. Peter’s Church, Albany, entered Yale in the second term of the Freshman year (Class of 1806), and was dismissed in the Junior year for some boyish escapade the nature of which is unexplained.

It was decided that he should enter the navy. There was then no training school, and boys took the first lessons in seamanship in the merchant marine. Cooper spent a year before the mast in the ‘Sterling,’ sailing from New York to London, thence to Gibraltar, back to London, and from London to Philadelphia. His experiences are set forth in the early chapters of _Ned Myers_. The ‘Sterling’ lost two of her best hands by impressment as soon as she reached English waters. Cooper’s indignation at these outrages afterwards found voice through the lips of Ithuel Bolt in the story entitled _Wing-and-Wing_.

He was commissioned midshipman on January 1, 1808, and served awhile on the ‘Vesuvius.’ In the following winter he was one of the party sent to Oswego to build a brig for the defence of the lake, and became acquainted with the regions described in _The Pathfinder_. In the summer of 1809 he had charge of the gun-boats on Lake Champlain, and in the autumn was ordered to the sloop of war ‘Wasp.’

He left the service on his betrothal with Miss Susan DeLancey of Mamaroneck, New York, whom he married on January 1, 1811. For a few years he lived the life of a landed proprietor, dividing his time between Cooperstown, Scarsdale, and Mamaroneck. The dulness of a novel he was reading aloud to his wife provoked him to say that he could write a better one himself. Challenged to prove it, he produced _Precaution_ (1820), a story of English life, following conventional lines. It was apprentice work. The effort of composition taught Cooper that he could write, but not that he could write well. He had no conceit of the book, and refused it a place in his collected writings.

In 1821 _The Spy, a Tale of the Neutral Ground_, was published; its unqualified good fortune made Cooper a professed man of letters. From that time on until his death, twenty-nine years later, he produced books with uninterrupted regularity.

_The Spy_ was followed by _The Pioneers, or the Sources of the Susquehanna_, 1823; _The Pilot, a Tale of the Sea_, 1824; _Lionel Lincoln, or the Leaguer of Boston_, 1825; _The Last of the Mohicans, a Narrative of 1757_, 1826. But one of this group of four can be pronounced a failure and two have had a success almost phenomenal in the history of letters.

Cooper shared the American passion for seeing foreign lands. The proceeds of authorship enabled him to carry out a plan he had formed of spending some time abroad. With his family and servants (a party of ten in all), he set sail from New York on June 1, 1826. He proposed to be gone five years. He overstayed that time by two years and five months. From May, 1826, to about January, 1829, he held the ‘nominal position’ of American consul at Lyons. His journeyings were made in a leisurely way after the fashion of the time. Eighteen months were spent in Paris and the vicinity, four months in London, and a few weeks in Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland. The winter of 1828–29 was passed in Florence, and was followed by a voyage to Naples. After spending some months at Sorrento and Naples, he settled in Rome for the winter of 1829–30. Thence to Venice, Munich, Dresden, and finally back to Paris.

He published while abroad _The Prairie_, 1827; _The Red Rover_, 1828; _Notions of the Americans, Picked up by a Travelling Bachelor_, 1828; _The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish_, 1829; _The Water-Witch, or the Skimmer of the Seas_, 1830; _The Bravo_, 1831; _The Heidenmauer, or the Benedictines_, 1832; _The Headsman, or the Abbaye des Vignerons_, 1833.

In November, 1833, Cooper returned to America. That and several ensuing winters were passed in New York, the summers in Cooperstown. Later he made Otsego Hall his permanent home.

He soon became embroiled in quarrels with the press. While in Paris his defence of Lafayette’s position in what is known as the ‘Expenses Controversy’ had provoked from his native land criticism which Cooper resented. He angered a part of the inhabitants of Cooperstown by making clear to them that Three Mile Point (a wooded tract on the lake, long used by the villagers as a picnic ground) was not theirs, as they maintained, but a part of the Cooper estate. With no thought of robbing them of their pleasure park, he insisted on their understanding that they enjoyed its use by favor and not by right.

For this the country papers assailed him. Combative by nature, Cooper brought suits for libel and recovered damages. The novel spectacle of an author baiting the newspapers ‘caused remark.’ The city press joined in the attack, the ‘Courier and Enquirer,’ the ‘New York Tribune,’ the ‘Albany Evening Journal,’ edited by Thurlow Weed, who once said apropos of his skill in stirring up litigation: ‘There is something in my manner of writing that makes the galled jades wince.’ Verdicts were given in Cooper’s favor. More libels followed, more suits were brought, more damages recovered. A cry arose that the liberty of the press was endangered. Cooper did not think so. He was a bulldog; when he had once fastened his teeth in a Whig editor, nothing could make him let go. He continued his prosecutions until he made his detractors respect him. It took about six years to do it. Bryant has described with grim humor the novelist’s warfare with that leviathan the Press: ‘He put a hook into the nose of this huge monster,’ said Bryant admiringly.[8]

This warfare disturbed Cooper’s peace of mind, but in no wise interrupted his literary activity. The following list records by no means all that he wrote after 1834, but will suffice to show his right copious and often happy industry. Besides ten volumes of travels, Cooper published: _A Letter to his Countrymen_, 1834; _The Monikins_, 1835; _The American Democrat_, 1838; _Homeward Bound, or the Chase_, 1838; _Home as Found_, 1838; _The History of the Navy of the United States of America_, 1839; _The Pathfinder, or the Inland Sea_, 1840; _Mercedes of Castile, or the Voyage to Cathay_, 1840; _The Deerslayer, or the First War Path_, 1841; The _Two Admirals_, 1842; _The Wing-and-Wing, or Le Feu-Follet_, 1842; _Wyandotté, or the Hutted Knoll_, 1843; _Ned Meyers, or a Life before the Mast_, 1843; _Afloat and Ashore, or the Adventures of Miles Wallingford_, 1844; _Miles Wallingford_ (the second part of _Afloat and Ashore_), 1844; _Satanstoe, or the Littlepage Manuscripts_, 1845; _The Chainbearer, or the Littlepage Manuscripts_, 1846; _Lives of Distinguished American Naval Officers_, 1846; _The Redskins, or Indian and Injin_, 1846; _The Crater, or Vulcan’s Peak_, 1847; _Jack Tier, or the Florida Reefs_, 1848; _The Oak Openings, or the Bee Hunter_, 1848; _The Sea Lions, or the Lost Sealers_, 1849; _The Ways of the Hour_, 1850.

_The Spy_ was dramatized and played successfully.[9] Dramatizations were also made of _The Pilot_, _The Red Rover_, _The Water-Witch_, _The Pioneers_ (‘The Wigwam, or Templeton Manor’), and _The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish_ (‘Miantonomah and Narrahmattah’). An original comedy, ‘Upside Down, or Philosophy in Petticoats,’[10] was withdrawn after four performances. No satisfactory account exists of Cooper’s earnings by literature. It is believed that in the later years he was obliged to write, if not for the necessities of life, at least for the comforts and luxuries.

The hostility provoked by his energetic criticisms subsided in time. There was even a project on foot in New York to pay him the compliment of a public dinner as a proof of returning confidence. His untimely illness put to one side the question of honors of this poor sort.

Cooper died at Otsego Hall on September 14, 1851.