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ECLECTIC ENGLISH CLASSICS
THE SPY
A TALE OF THE NEUTRAL GROUND
BY JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
EDITED BY
NATHANIEL WARING BARNES
PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH COMPOSITIONIN DE PAUW UNIVERSITYGREENCASTLE, INDIANA
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
"I believe I could write a better story myself!" With these words, sincebecome famous, James Fenimore Cooper laid aside the English novel whichhe was reading aloud to his wife. A few days later he submitted severalpages of manuscript for her approval, and then settled down to the taskof making good his boast. In November, 1820, he gave the public a novelin two volumes, entitled _Precaution_. But it was published anonymously,and dealt with English society in so much the same way as the averageBritish novel of the time that its author was thought by many to be anEnglishman. It had no originality and no real merit of any kind. Yet itwas the means of inciting Cooper to another attempt. And this secondnovel made him famous.
When _Precaution_ appeared, some of Cooper's friends protested againsthis weak dependence on British models. Their arguments stirred hispatriotism, and he determined to write another novel, using thoroughlyAmerican material. Accordingly he turned to Westchester County, where hewas then living, a county which had been the scene of much stirringaction during a good part of the Revolutionary War, and composed _TheSpy--A Tale of the Neutral Ground_. This novel was published in 1821,and was immediately popular, both in this country and in England. Soonit was translated into French, then into other foreign languages, untilit was read more widely than any other tale of the century. Cooper hadwritten the first American novel. He had also struck an originalliterary vein, and he had gained confidence in himself as a writer.
Following this pronounced success in authorship, Cooper set to work on athird book and continued for the remainder of his life to devote most ofhis time to writing. Altogether he wrote over thirty novels and as manymore works of a miscellaneous character. But much of this writing has nointerest for us at the present time, especially that which wasoccasioned by the many controversies in which the rather belligerentCooper involved himself. His work of permanent value after _The Spy_falls into two groups, the tales of wilderness life and the sea tales.Both these groups grew directly out of his experiences in early life.
Cooper was born on September 15, 1789, in Burlington, New Jersey, butwhile still very young he was taken to Cooperstown, on the shores ofOtsego Lake, in central New York. His father owned many thousand acresof primeval forest about this village, and so through the years of afree boyhood the young Cooper came to love the wilderness and to knowthe characters of border life. When the village school was no longeradequate, he went to study privately in Albany and later entered YaleCollege. But he was not interested in the study of books. When, as ajunior, he was expelled from college, he turned to a career in the navy.Accordingly in the fall of 1806 he sailed on a merchant ship, the_Sterling_, and for the next eleven months saw hard service before themast. Soon after this apprenticeship he received a commission as amidshipman in the United States navy. Although it was a time of peace,and he saw no actual fighting, he gained considerable knowledge from hisservice on Lake Ontario and Lake Champlain that he put to good uselater. Shortly before his resignation in May, 1811, he had married, andfor several years thereafter he lived along in a pleasant, leisurelyfashion, part of the time in Cooperstown and part of the time inWestchester County, until almost accidentally he broke into the writingof his first novel. Aside from the publication of his books, Cooper'slater life was essentially uneventful. He died at Cooperstown, onSeptember 14, 1851.
The connection of Cooper's best writing with the life he knew at firsthand is thus perfectly plain. In his novels dealing with the wilderness,popularly known as the Leatherstocking Tales, he drew directly on hisknowledge of the backwoods and backwoodsmen as he gained it aboutCooperstown. In _The Pioneers_ (1823) he dealt with the scenes of hisboyhood, scenes which lay very close to his heart; and in the othervolumes of this series, _The Last of the Mohicans_ (1826), _The Prairie_(1827), _The Pathfinder_ (1840), and _The Deerslayer (1841), hecontinued to write of the trappers and frontiersmen and outpostgarrisons and Indians who made up the forest life he knew so well.Similarly, in the sea tales, which began with 'The Pilot'(1823) andincluded 'The Red Rover'(1828), 'The Two Admirals' (1842) and 'TheWing-and-Wing'(1842), he made full use of his experiences before themast and in the navy. The nautical accuracy of these tales of the seacould scarcely have been attained by a "landlubber". It has muchpractical significance, then, that Cooper chose material which he knewintimately and which gripped his own interest. His success came likeThackeray's and Stevenson's and Mark Twain's--without his having toreach to the other side of the world after his material.
In considering Cooper's work as a novelist, nothing is more marked thanhis originality. In these days we take novels based on American historyand 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-waternovel had ever been written. So far as Americans before Cooper hadwritten fiction at all, Washington Irving had been the only one to ceasefrom a timid imitation of British models. But Irving's material waslocal, rather than national. It was Cooper who first told the story ofthe conquest of the American continent. He caught the poetry and theromantic thrill of both the American forest and the sea; he dared tobreak away from literary conventions. His reward was an immediate andwidespread success, together with a secure place in the history of hiscountry's literature.
There was probably a two-fold reason for the success which Cooper'snovels won at home and abroad. In the first place, Cooper could invent agood story and tell it well. He was a master of rapid, stirringnarrative, and his tales were elemental, not deep or subtle. Secondly,he created interesting characters who had the restless energy, thepassion for adventure, the rugged confidence, of our American pioneers.First among these great characters came Harvey Birch in 'The Spy', butCooper's real triumph was Natty Bumppo, who appears in all five of theLeatherstocking Tales. This skilled trapper, faithful guide, bravefighter, and homely philosopher was "the first real American infiction," an important contribution to the world's literature. Inaddition, Cooper created the Indian of literature--perhaps a little toonoble to be entirely true to life--and various simple, strong seamen.His Chingachgook and Uncas and Long Tom Coffin justly brought him addedfame. In these narrative gifts, as well as in the robustness of his owncharacter, Cooper was not unlike Sir Walter Scott. He once modestlyreferred to himself as "a chip from Scott's block" and has frequentlybeen called "the American Scott."
But, of course, Cooper had limitations and faults. When he steppedoutside the definite boundaries of the life he knew, he was unable tohandle character effectively. His women are practically failures, andlike his military officers essentially interchangeable. His humor isalmost invariably labored and tedious. He occasionally allowed longpassages of description or long speeches by some minor character to clogthe progress of his action. Now and then, in inventing his plots, hestrained his readers' credulity somewhat. Finally, as a result of hisrapid writing, his work is uneven and without style in the sense that acareful craftsman or a sensitive artist achieves it. He is even guiltyof an occasional error in grammar or word use which the young pupil inthe schools can detect. Yet his literary powers easily outweigh allthese weaknesses. He is unquestionably one of America's great novelistsand one of the world's great romancers.
There is abundant reason, therefore, why Americans of the present dayshould know James Fenimore Cooper. He has many a good story of thewilderness and the sea to tell to those who enjoy tales of adventure. Hegives a vivid, but faithful picture of American frontier life for
thosewho can know its stirring events and its hardy characters only at secondhand. He holds a peculiarly important place in the history of Americanliterature, and has done much to extend the reputation of Americanfiction among foreigners.