Since the undersigned has wholly lifted from Nabokov's lecture on Bleak House and Dickens and applied his divine ecstasies in toto to The Pioneers and Cooper it seems only fair play to ascertain greatness with the categories Nabokov employed on the former, viz, storyteller, moralist (the undersigned suggests "social commentator" as the near equivalent to and more clearly understood than "moralist"), and enchanter.
Fenimore Cooper was first and foremost a social commentator. He was an ardent, aggressive champion of American republicanism and the same as opponent of aristocracy and monarchy. A European interregnum between his lives in America converted him from part-time romancer, part-time social commentator to full-time social commentator.
The Pioneers, the earliest of The Leatherstocking Tales, sub-sub-titled "A Descriptive Tale" is briefly descriptive of the new America generally: It is a "happy country" where "...under the dominion of mild laws...every man feels a direct interest in the prosperity of a commonwealth of which he knows himself to form a part." The overt social commentary in The Pioneers is how those "mild laws" are nonetheless encroaching on the liberty and the way of life of older residents, both white and red, restricting their hunting grounds and pushing them ever further away into the wilderness. Cooper had success with his second novel The Spy, a book about the Revolutionary War, and the undersigned assumes that The Spy was read in Great Britain as well as in America. There is a sense in which this commentary may have been intended as contrast for his British readership. Certainly this was: "Any of our readers who has occasion to cross the Niagara may easily observe not only the self-importance, but the real estimation enjoyed by the humblest representative of the crown...Such, and at no very distant period, was the respect paid to the military in these states, where now, happily, no symbol of war is ever seen, unless at the free and fearless voice of their people." (The War of 1812 was just eleven years distant at the time of publication.)
Cooper also provides a window onto the differences among two of the new states of the New Republic, formerly colonies of Great Britain, New York and Pennsylvania, with a word or two on New Jersey. "The habits and language" of Marmaduke/William "were somewhat marked by [the] peculiarities" of his Quaker upbringing and to his death "when much interested or agitated" he would "speak in the language of his youth." We know of course that there is a Southern idiom, a Massachusetts idiom, a "Lon Gisland" idiom; some of us know that there is also a western Pennsylvania idiom. The undersigned does not know however what the Quaker idiom may have been and the only instances that he can recall in the speech pattern of Marmaduke/William as recorded by Fenimore Cooper are an old-fashioned use of "thy" and "thou" and so forth.
Be that as it may, we must here pause. Before continuing with Cooper's illuminating commentary on the states after which we shall begin the cudgel phase of of our Cooper treatment, we must briefly interrupt these proceedings to reach back and give added vigorous whack to a former subject of "Picking Bones," James McPherson. Perhaps the most striking, certainly one of the most-quoted, oft-cited statements by McPherson in Battle Cry of Freedom is this: "Before 1861 the two words 'United States' were generally rendered as a plural noun: 'the United States are a republic.' The war marked a transition of the United States to a singular noun." McPherson offers no authority for this "general" statement. In re-reading The Pioneers (pub. 1823) for the instant posts the undersigned experienced acute exasperation at the use of the United States as a singular noun four times by the nation's first novelist cum social commentator. On the first page of the the first chapter he writes that "the numerous sources of the Susquehanna [Sources of the Susquehanna is the sub-title] meander through the valleys until, uniting their streams, they form one of the proudest rivers of the United States." On the third page (Signet Classic page 15) in a footnote Cooper writes "Sleigh is the word used in every part of the United States to denote a traineau." In Chapter VII, page 85: "Ten years later still, when England and the United States were again engaged in war..." And on page 128 in a footnote: "The divines of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States..." In each instance Cooper uses the singular as if it were second nature for him to so do; as if it were not the first time he had used it as such, nor the first time he had heard it used as such by others; as if, that is, the United States were generally NOT rendered as a plural noun prior to 1861. For this, James McPherson:
We now resume. "An ancestor of Marmaduke Temple [i.e. of Fenimore Cooper's father] had...come to the colony of Pennsylvania, a friend and co-religionist of its great patron." He had been a Quaker and friend of William Penn. The ancestor had been of great wealth and so unaccustomed to the rigors of the frontier. His wealth diminished as he supported his dependents and that of more ambitious settlers accustomed to hard work increased. This was "very common" in "the middle colonies" "but it was peculiarly [so] in the peaceful and unenterprising colonies of Pennsylvania and New Jersey." The Quakers were peaceful. The position of the family decreased. Fenimore Cooper's grandfather began the revival of the family, aided by marriage to a woman of means, which enabled him to send his son, William Cooper away from "the low state of the common schools in Pennsylvania" which "had been the practice in the family for the two or three preceding generations" for his education.
This was of surpassing interest to the undersigned for like William Cooper who lived in only two states, Pennsylvania and New York, the undersigned had until 1982 lived in only two states, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, and he too saw a vast difference in the state of the schools he attended in those two original thirteen colonies. The contrast was so striking that he became intensely curious how the two settlements, starting from the same original position, came to diverge so markedly. Pennsylvania: one president, the worst, James Buchanan, until the present usurper. Massachusetts: five (counting George H.W. Bush who merely was born there), the two Adamses, Coolidge and Kennedy, four in the top half of all presidents. Pennsylvania: the University of Pennsylvania, Carnegie Tech, now Carnegie Mellon. Massachusetts: My God--Harvard, MIT, Amherst, Williams, Tufts, Brandeis. The divergence is accounted for by the book whose title supplies the answer: Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia (Philadelphia is doubly handicapped by being right across the river from unenterprising New Jersey. The Puritans, wrote one reviewer "celebrated civic power and class authority. Philadelphia was built by Quakers, who championed equality and deference." Equality and deference: leveling and unenterprising as described by Fenimore Cooper.
And what of New York? No peaceful and unenterprising there, hoooo doggie! We know not where William Cooper was educated, only that it was "in a rather better manner" away from Pennsylvania but Fenimore Cooper tells us that the father of "Edward Effingham," William's school friend, and later benefactor, was a native of New York. New York has produced five presidents including the very best, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt, and the very worst, Donald J. Trump. No deference there. New York's best colleges and universities, Columbia, Cornell, are among the very best in the nation.
"Major Effingham," Edward's father, was a British colonial military officer. Fenimore Cooper:
On one occasion, while in command on the western frontier of Pennsylvania against a league of the French and Indians, not only his glory, but the safety of himself and his troops were jeoparded by the peaceful policy of that colony. To the soldier, this was an unpardonable offense. He was fighting in their defense...[He] succeeded, after a desperate conflict, in extricating himself, with a handful of his men, from their murderous enemy; but he never forgave the people who had exposed him to a danger which they left him to combat alone.
So embittered was the Major of the Quakers that his son had to conceal from him his friendship and commercial intercourse with Marmaduke Temple/William Cooper.
I see that this post has already become quite long, what with the sideswipe at McPherson and all the rest. It seems prudent therefore to leave until the next, and the last, post on this subject the rise and fall of the cudgel on James Fenimore Cooper.
Fenimore Cooper was first and foremost a social commentator. He was an ardent, aggressive champion of American republicanism and the same as opponent of aristocracy and monarchy. A European interregnum between his lives in America converted him from part-time romancer, part-time social commentator to full-time social commentator.
The Pioneers, the earliest of The Leatherstocking Tales, sub-sub-titled "A Descriptive Tale" is briefly descriptive of the new America generally: It is a "happy country" where "...under the dominion of mild laws...every man feels a direct interest in the prosperity of a commonwealth of which he knows himself to form a part." The overt social commentary in The Pioneers is how those "mild laws" are nonetheless encroaching on the liberty and the way of life of older residents, both white and red, restricting their hunting grounds and pushing them ever further away into the wilderness. Cooper had success with his second novel The Spy, a book about the Revolutionary War, and the undersigned assumes that The Spy was read in Great Britain as well as in America. There is a sense in which this commentary may have been intended as contrast for his British readership. Certainly this was: "Any of our readers who has occasion to cross the Niagara may easily observe not only the self-importance, but the real estimation enjoyed by the humblest representative of the crown...Such, and at no very distant period, was the respect paid to the military in these states, where now, happily, no symbol of war is ever seen, unless at the free and fearless voice of their people." (The War of 1812 was just eleven years distant at the time of publication.)
Cooper also provides a window onto the differences among two of the new states of the New Republic, formerly colonies of Great Britain, New York and Pennsylvania, with a word or two on New Jersey. "The habits and language" of Marmaduke/William "were somewhat marked by [the] peculiarities" of his Quaker upbringing and to his death "when much interested or agitated" he would "speak in the language of his youth." We know of course that there is a Southern idiom, a Massachusetts idiom, a "Lon Gisland" idiom; some of us know that there is also a western Pennsylvania idiom. The undersigned does not know however what the Quaker idiom may have been and the only instances that he can recall in the speech pattern of Marmaduke/William as recorded by Fenimore Cooper are an old-fashioned use of "thy" and "thou" and so forth.
Be that as it may, we must here pause. Before continuing with Cooper's illuminating commentary on the states after which we shall begin the cudgel phase of of our Cooper treatment, we must briefly interrupt these proceedings to reach back and give added vigorous whack to a former subject of "Picking Bones," James McPherson. Perhaps the most striking, certainly one of the most-quoted, oft-cited statements by McPherson in Battle Cry of Freedom is this: "Before 1861 the two words 'United States' were generally rendered as a plural noun: 'the United States are a republic.' The war marked a transition of the United States to a singular noun." McPherson offers no authority for this "general" statement. In re-reading The Pioneers (pub. 1823) for the instant posts the undersigned experienced acute exasperation at the use of the United States as a singular noun four times by the nation's first novelist cum social commentator. On the first page of the the first chapter he writes that "the numerous sources of the Susquehanna [Sources of the Susquehanna is the sub-title] meander through the valleys until, uniting their streams, they form one of the proudest rivers of the United States." On the third page (Signet Classic page 15) in a footnote Cooper writes "Sleigh is the word used in every part of the United States to denote a traineau." In Chapter VII, page 85: "Ten years later still, when England and the United States were again engaged in war..." And on page 128 in a footnote: "The divines of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States..." In each instance Cooper uses the singular as if it were second nature for him to so do; as if it were not the first time he had used it as such, nor the first time he had heard it used as such by others; as if, that is, the United States were generally NOT rendered as a plural noun prior to 1861. For this, James McPherson:
We now resume. "An ancestor of Marmaduke Temple [i.e. of Fenimore Cooper's father] had...come to the colony of Pennsylvania, a friend and co-religionist of its great patron." He had been a Quaker and friend of William Penn. The ancestor had been of great wealth and so unaccustomed to the rigors of the frontier. His wealth diminished as he supported his dependents and that of more ambitious settlers accustomed to hard work increased. This was "very common" in "the middle colonies" "but it was peculiarly [so] in the peaceful and unenterprising colonies of Pennsylvania and New Jersey." The Quakers were peaceful. The position of the family decreased. Fenimore Cooper's grandfather began the revival of the family, aided by marriage to a woman of means, which enabled him to send his son, William Cooper away from "the low state of the common schools in Pennsylvania" which "had been the practice in the family for the two or three preceding generations" for his education.
This was of surpassing interest to the undersigned for like William Cooper who lived in only two states, Pennsylvania and New York, the undersigned had until 1982 lived in only two states, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, and he too saw a vast difference in the state of the schools he attended in those two original thirteen colonies. The contrast was so striking that he became intensely curious how the two settlements, starting from the same original position, came to diverge so markedly. Pennsylvania: one president, the worst, James Buchanan, until the present usurper. Massachusetts: five (counting George H.W. Bush who merely was born there), the two Adamses, Coolidge and Kennedy, four in the top half of all presidents. Pennsylvania: the University of Pennsylvania, Carnegie Tech, now Carnegie Mellon. Massachusetts: My God--Harvard, MIT, Amherst, Williams, Tufts, Brandeis. The divergence is accounted for by the book whose title supplies the answer: Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia (Philadelphia is doubly handicapped by being right across the river from unenterprising New Jersey. The Puritans, wrote one reviewer "celebrated civic power and class authority. Philadelphia was built by Quakers, who championed equality and deference." Equality and deference: leveling and unenterprising as described by Fenimore Cooper.
And what of New York? No peaceful and unenterprising there, hoooo doggie! We know not where William Cooper was educated, only that it was "in a rather better manner" away from Pennsylvania but Fenimore Cooper tells us that the father of "Edward Effingham," William's school friend, and later benefactor, was a native of New York. New York has produced five presidents including the very best, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt, and the very worst, Donald J. Trump. No deference there. New York's best colleges and universities, Columbia, Cornell, are among the very best in the nation.
"Major Effingham," Edward's father, was a British colonial military officer. Fenimore Cooper:
On one occasion, while in command on the western frontier of Pennsylvania against a league of the French and Indians, not only his glory, but the safety of himself and his troops were jeoparded by the peaceful policy of that colony. To the soldier, this was an unpardonable offense. He was fighting in their defense...[He] succeeded, after a desperate conflict, in extricating himself, with a handful of his men, from their murderous enemy; but he never forgave the people who had exposed him to a danger which they left him to combat alone.
So embittered was the Major of the Quakers that his son had to conceal from him his friendship and commercial intercourse with Marmaduke Temple/William Cooper.
I see that this post has already become quite long, what with the sideswipe at McPherson and all the rest. It seems prudent therefore to leave until the next, and the last, post on this subject the rise and fall of the cudgel on James Fenimore Cooper.
