1790, when his son was only a year old. James, as the boy was known, was the eleventh of twelve children—another instance of a single swan amid a flock of ducklings.
Cooperstown was at that time a mere outpost of civilization in the wilderness, and it was in this wilderness that Cooper's boyhood was passed. And just as Irving's boyhood left its impress on his work, so did Cooper's in even greater degree. Mighty woods, broken only here and there by tiny clearings, stretched around the little settlement; Indians and frontiersmen, hunters, traders, trappers—all these were a part of the boy's daily life. He grew learned in the lore of the woods, and laid up unconsciously the stores from which he was afterwards to draw.
At the age of eleven, he was sent to a private school at Albany, and three years later entered Yale. But he had the true woodland spirit; he preferred the open air to the lecture-room, and was so careless in his attendance at classes that, in his third year, he was dismissed from college. There is some question whether this was a blessing or the reverse. No doubt a thorough college training would have made Cooper incapable of the loose and turgid style which characterizes all his novels; but, on the other hand, he left college to enter the navy, and there gained that knowledge of seamanship and of the ocean which make his sea stories the best of their kind that have ever been written. His sea career was cut short, just before the opening of the war of 1812, by his marriage into an old Tory family, who insisted that he resign from the service. He did so, and entered upon the quiet life of a well-to-do country gentleman.
For seven or eight years, he showed no desire nor aptitude to be anything else. He had never written anything for publication, had never felt any impulse to do so, and perhaps never would have felt such an impulse but for an odd accident. Tossing aside a dull British novel, one day, he remarked to his wife that he could easily write a better story himself, and she laughingly dared him to try. The result was "Precaution," than which no British novel could be duller. But Cooper, finding the work of writing congenial, kept at it, and the next year saw the publication of "The Spy," the first American novel worthy of the name. By mere accident, Cooper had found his true vein, the story of adventure, and his true field in the scenes with which he was himself familiar. In Harvey Birch, the spy, he added to the world's gallery of fiction the first of his three great characters, the other two being, of course, Long Tom Coffin and Leatherstocking.
The book was an immediate success, and was followed by "The Pioneers" and "The Pilot," both remarkable stories, the former visualizing for the first time the life of the forest, the latter for the first time the life of the sea. Let us not forget that Cooper was himself a pioneer and blazed the trails which so many of his successors have tried to follow. If the trail he made was rough and difficult, it at least possesses the merits of vigor and pristine achievement. "The Spy," "The Pioneers," and "The Pilot" established Cooper's reputation not only in this country, but in England and France. He became a literary lion, with the result that his head, never very firmly set upon his shoulders, was completely turned; he set himself up as a mentor and critic of both continents, and while his successive novels continued to be popular, he himself became involved in numberless personal controversies, which embittered his later years.
The result of these quarrels was apparent in his work, which steadily decreased in merit, so that, of the thirty-three novels that he wrote, not over twelve are, at this day, worth reading. But those twelve paint, as no other novelist has ever painted, life in the forest and on the ocean, and however we may quarrel with his wooden men and women, his faults of taste and dreary wastes of description, there is about them some intangible quality which compels the interest and grips the imagination of school-boy and gray-beard alike. He splashed his paint on a great canvas with a whitewash brush, so to speak; it will not bear minute examination; but at a distance, with the right perspective, it fairly glows with life. No other American novelist has added to fiction three such characters as those we have mentioned; into those he breathed the breath of life—the supreme achievement of the novelist.
For seventeen years after the publication of "The Spy," Cooper had no considerable American rival. Then, in 1837, the publication of a little volume called "Twice-Told Tales" marked the advent of a greater than he. No one to-day seriously questions Nathaniel Hawthorne's right to first place among American novelists, and in the realm of the short story he has only one equal, Edgar Allan Poe.
We shall speak of Poe more at length as a poet; but it is curious and interesting to contrast these two men, contemporaries, and the most significant figures in the literature of their country—Poe, an actor's child, an outcast, fighting in the dark with the balance against him, living a tragic life and dying a tragic death, leaving to America the purest lyrics and most compelling tales ever produced within her borders; Hawthorne, a direct descendant of the Puritans, a recluse and a dreamer, his delicate genius developing gradually, marrying most happily, leading an idyllic family life, winning success and substantial recognition, which grew steadily until the end of his career, and which has, at least, not diminished—could any contrast be more complete?
Nathaniel Hawthorne was a direct descendant of that William Hawthorne who came from England in 1630 with John Winthrop in the "Arabella," and was born at Salem, Massachusetts, the family's ancestral home, in 1804. He was a classmate of Longfellow at Bowdoin College, graduating without especial distinction, and spending the twelve succeeding years at Salem, living a secluded life in accordance with his abnormally shy and sensitive disposition. He was already resolved on the literary life, and spent those years in solitary writing. The result was a morbid novel, "Fanshawe," and a series of short stories, none of which attracted especial attention or gave indication of more than average talent. Not until 1837 did he win any measure of success, but that year saw the publication of the first series of "Twice-Told Tales," which, by their charm and delicacy, won him many readers.
Even at that, he found the profession of letters so unprofitable that he was glad to accept a position as weigher and gauger at the Boston custom-house, but he lost the place two years later by a change in administration; tried, for a while, living with the Transcendentalists at Brook Farm, and finally, taking a leap into the unknown, married and settled down in the old manse at Concord. It was a most fortunate step; his wife proved a real inspiration, and in the months that followed, he wrote the second series of "Twice-Told Tales," and "Mosses from an Old Manse," which mark the culmination of his genius as a teller of tales.
Four years later, the political pendulum swung back again, and Hawthorne was offered the surveyor-ship of the custom-house at Salem, accepted it, and moved his family back to his old home. He held the position for four years, completed his first great romance, and in 1850 gave to the world "The Scarlet Letter," perhaps the most significant and vital novel produced by any American. Hawthorne had, at last, "found himself." A year later came "The House of the Seven Gables," and then, in quick succession, "Grandfather's Chair," "The Wonder Book," "The Snow-Image," "The Blithedale Romance," and "Tanglewood Tales."
A queer product of his pen, at this time, was a life of Franklin Pierce, the Democratic candidate for the Presidency; and when Pierce was elected, he showed his gratitude by offering Hawthorne the consulship at Liverpool, a lucrative position which Hawthorne accepted and which he held for four years. Two years on the continent followed, and in 1860, he returned home, his health breaking and his mind unsettled, largely by the prospect of the Civil War into which the country was drifting. He found himself unable to write, failed rapidly, and the end came in the spring of 1864.
Of American novelists, Hawthorne alone shows that sustained power and high artistry belonging to the masters of fiction; and yet his novels have not that universal appeal which belongs to the few really great ones of the world. Hawthorne was supremely the interpreter of old New England, a subject of comparatively little interest to other peoples, since old New England was distinguished principally by a narrow spiritual conflict which other peoples find difficult to understand. The subject of "The Scarlet Letter" is, indeed, one of universal appeal, and is, in some
