Part 11

_Charles Brockden Brown._--The history of the novel in America, therefore, properly begins with Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810), who has been called “the first professional man of letters and important creative writer of the English-speaking portion of the New World.” He was born in Philadelphia of a good Quaker family; just forty years earlier, his uncle, Charles Brockden, had drawn up the constitution of the old Philadelphia Library Company. From early childhood, books were familiar to the youthful Brown, who became an omnivorous reader, and at Robert Proud’s school undermined his health by excessive devotion to reading and study, so that he was always an invalid. He took up the study of law, but soon abandoned it, despite the protest of his family, for the career of “book-making.” After some writing of verse and of essays, he published in 1798 a successful novel, “Wieland, or The Transformation,” and at once followed this with five others, “Ormond, or The Secret Witness,” (1799), “Arthur Mervyn, or Memoirs of the Year 1793” (1799-1800), in which he gave an account of the ravages of the yellow fever in Philadelphia, “Edgar Huntly, or The Adventures of a Sleep-Walker,” “Clara Howard” (1801), and “Jane Talbot” (published in England in 1804). From 1798 till 1801, Brown lived amid congenial surroundings in New York; in the former year he nearly died of yellow fever, to which his friend Dr. Elihu H. Smith succumbed. Returning to Philadelphia in 1801, he spent the remainder of his life there; marrying happily in 1804, editing _The Literary Magazine_, and writing political pamphlets and works on geography and Roman history, until consumption brought his busy and useful life to a premature end.

Brown’s novels mostly belong with the “tales of terror” so popular in his day. A radical thinker and analyst, he rejects supernatural agencies in his explanation of events, and relies wholly on natural causes; but this does not diminish the number of marvels in his tales. The plots of one or two of his stories will give an idea of the character of all. The scene of “Wieland” is laid on the banks of the Schuylkill, in Pennsylvania. The Wielands are a cultivated German family. Wieland’s father has died mysteriously by what is explained as self- or spontaneous combustion, and the son has inherited a melancholy and superstitious mind, which develops into fanaticism. The family hear strange voices giving commands or warnings or telling of events beyond the reach of human knowledge. A mysterious man, Carwin, appears, with such powers of pleasing that he becomes very intimate with the family. At length Wieland, at the command of what he takes to be a heavenly voice, sacrifices to God his wife and children. Confined in a maniac’s dungeon, he bears his fate with a sense of moral exaltation. Having escaped, he attempts to offer up also his sister, the narrator of the story, when he learns that he has been deceived by the ventriloquism of Carwin, whom malice has thus led to trick the family. In a frenzy, Wieland kills himself; Carwin disappears; and the story ends with the marriage of the sister and Pleyel, a brother of Wieland’s late wife and now a widower. Less powerful than “Wieland,” but still superior to Brown’s other works, is “Ormond.” An artist, Stephen Dudley, engaging in pharmacy to support his family, is brought to beggary through the villainy of his partner. His daughter Constantia bears up bravely through severe trials. Just when life appears brighter, Ormond comes upon the scene, a mysteriously powerful man, much like Falkland in Godwin’s “Caleb Williams,” of great wealth, strong mind, and base morals; he deserts Helena Cleves, who commits suicide, and pursues Constantia. Stephen Dudley is murdered by an unknown hand. Having a legacy from Helena, Constantia is about to sail for Europe with her friend (who narrates the story) when Ormond, finding her invincible, assaults her in a lonely house and meets death by her hand, after he has himself slain Craig, now revealed as the assassin of Dudley at Ormond’s instigation. Constantia afterward lives quietly with her friend in Europe. Brown’s plots are usually disfigured by irrelevant incidents and superfluous characters; he frequently changed his plans and even his heroines, and, writing with great rapidity, often with a greedy printer at his elbow, he utterly failed to weld together the elements of his stories and often to give them proper motivation. His characters are drawn in bold and clear outlines, but are frequently uninteresting--being too sentimental or inconsistent, or given to long and prosy soliloquies. It cannot be affirmed that Brown understood human nature well. Of style he had none; his pages are innocent of epigram or humorous turn; he employs very little dialogue and makes but scanty and awkward use of dialect. Yet in certain passages, in describing great crises, he exhibits considerable vividness and power. Brown’s chief merit consists in the sense of reality with which he contrives to invest his scenes of gloom and terror.

The power possessed by this rare genius, says Mr. James H. Morse,[4] of throwing gloomy characteristics into his theme, was equalled by no other American writer. In the matter of morbid analysis, Poe, in comparison with Brown, was superficial, Hawthorne was cheerful, and the modern school of French writers are feeble. With Poe, we can see that the gloom came by an effort of a spurred imagination; with Hawthorne, that it was the work of an artistic sense; but with Brown, it seems to have been constitutional--the gift at once of temperament and circumstances.

Brown was an admirer of William Godwin and obviously imitated not only his method of developing characters but also his style. It may be added that Brown in turn found many readers in England, where several of his novels were republished and where, as we have seen, “Jane Talbot” was first published. Professor Dowden quotes Peacock as saying that of all the works with which Shelley was familiar, those which took the deepest root in his mind were Brown’s four novels, Schiller’s “Robbers,” and Goethe’s “Faust.” Brown’s influence upon subsequent American writers, moreover, was not inconsiderable, and his place in our literature, if not high, is at least honourable.

_John Davis_, an Englishman about whom little is known, wrote several novels of American life, most of which were published here, and became somewhat popular. He lived in the United States from 1798 till 1802, and travelled over a large part of the country. His first novel, “The Original Letters of Ferdinand and Elizabeth” (1798), was a conventional story of seduction and suicide. It was followed by “The Farmer of New Jersey” (1800), “The First Settlers of Virginia” (1805), a pioneer historical novel, crude and ill managed, “Walter Kennedy, an American Tale” (London, 1805), and “The Post Captain” (1813). The most that can be said of these stories is that their author was shrewd and observant, and had some journalistic skill.

_Mrs. Sally Keating Wood_ (1760-1855), wife of General Abiel Wood, of Maine, may be mentioned as the author of “Julia and the Illuminated Baron” (1800), which recalls the mysterious evil power and atheistic tendencies attributed to the Bavarian order of the Illuminati, established in 1775, which, though suppressed in 1780 by the Elector, was supposed to have secretly persisted and spread over Europe. Mrs. Wood wrote also “Dorval, or The Speculator” (1801), “Amelia, or The Influence of Virtue” (1802), “Ferdinand and Elmira, a Russian Story” (1804), and “Tales of the Night” (1827), besides several novels that were never published. Mrs. Wood placed many of her scenes in Europe.

_Isaac Mitchell._--At Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1811, was published in two volumes “The Asylum, or Alonzo and Melissa, an American Tale, Founded on Fact.” Of the author of this Gothic romance, Isaac Mitchell,[5] little is known save that he was successively the editor of _The Farmer’s Journal_, _The Political Barometer_, and _The Republican Crisis_, all of Albany, New York, and that after losing his position through political changes, he moved to Poughkeepsie. The story was later abridged and compressed into one volume by Daniel Jackson, Jr. (Mitchell’s name disappearing from the title-page), and in this form was long popular throughout America; Mr. Reed thinks that for nearly a quarter of a century a new edition appeared practically every year. The narrative is full of elaborate descriptions of nature.

_Washington Irving._--In general Irving will be discussed rather with the essayists than with the novelists; but his stories and tales must be considered here. They have contributed largely if not chiefly to his enduring reputation. His first book, “Knickerbocker’s History of New York” (1809), in which he works out a grotesquely humorous drama of the Dutch fathers wrestling with the weighty problems of statecraft, is of course in the main fictitious. No doubt it is at times pretentious or overdone, and the humour is occasionally a little too broad for the decorum of to-day; but the irrepressible spirit of comedy, the delightfully burlesqued descriptions of stolid Dutch character, the vivid though leisurely narrative, give it a supreme place in our humorous literature. “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” are doubtless the most read parts of “The Sketch Book” and have long since become classics; no more faithful narratives of quaint old Dutch life have ever been written. In them the boisterous exuberance of the “History” gives way to a more graceful, refined, and mature style, which invests the homely simplicity and contentment of colonial Dutch life with a kind of idyllic charm. Only a little less successful were Irving’s other stories of early New Amsterdam life--notably “The Money-Diggers” in “Tales of a Traveller,” and “Dolph Heyliger” in “Bracebridge Hall.” Inferior because more conventional and less spontaneous are the first three parts of the “Tales”; yet even here, in dealing with the sentimental and the terrible, Irving compares favourably with other story-tellers of his day. In the stories scattered through “The Alhambra,” Irving showed clearly that he had found another source of inspiration in the romantic legends of Spain and the Moors--legends full of Oriental mystery and of the splendid glories of old Spain, so charmingly and truthfully set forth that the Spaniards themselves spoke of him as “the poet Irving.” And “poet” he is in the large sense that he has created imperishable scenes and characters in that realm of romance in which we delight to wander, far from the prosaic world and the madding crowd.

_James Kirke Paulding._--A contrast with Irving in more than one respect is afforded by James K. Paulding (1778-1860), the friend and collaborator of Washington Irving and the brother-in-law of William Irving. The author of “The Sketch Book” gave his whole life to the profession of letters; for Paulding, on the other hand, literary composition was only an avocation. The genial humour of Irving, too, differs from the satirical and ironical vein too often indulged in by his friend. Born in Dutchess County, New York, Paulding went to New York City while a young man and became associated with the Irvings in writing _Salmagundi_, the success of which gave Paulding confidence in himself and led him to further literary efforts. “The Diverting History of John Bull and Brother Jonathan” (1812), a loosely constructed and amateurish satire in the style of Arbuthnot, became very popular both in America and in England. “Koningsmarke, the Long Finne” (1823), now remembered only for the familiar assertion that “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,” was a burlesque on Cooper’s “Pioneers.” Paulding’s most successful work, which deserves to live, was “The Dutchman’s Fireside” (1831), in which are charming descriptions of quaint Dutch customs and personages, of the picturesque scenery of the Hudson, and of the vast expanse of wilderness that stretched to the westward. In general, however, Paulding’s work was characterised by a too harsh and obstreperous Americanism, an immoderate and amusing hostility to foreigners, and a carelessness of workmanship which prevented it from enduring long.

_Samuel Woodworth._--As a curiosity must here be mentioned the long-forgotten “Champions of Freedom” (1816) of Samuel Woodworth (1785-1842). It was his one essay in fiction; a history of the War of 1812 in the style of a romance. It must be described as a chaotic miscellany, blending wild romance with commonplace realism, and conducting the reader from ballroom to battlefield and back again with the least possible suspicion of method or motive.

_John Neal._--Born in Portland, Maine, and beginning life as a shop-boy in Boston, John Neal (1793-1876) became in turn a wholesale dry-goods merchant, a lawyer, and a voluminous critic, poet, and novelist. He boasted that in thirty-six years he had written enough altogether to fill a hundred octavo volumes; yet to-day he is little more than a name. His first novel, “Keep Cool,” which he afterward spoke of with justice as a “paltry, contemptible affair,” appeared in 1817. His best novels are “Seventy-Six” (1823), a lively story of the Revolution, “Rachel Dyer” (1828), a story of the Salem Witchcraft, and “The Down-Easters” (1833), an extravagant tale which deals with the ways of steamboat passengers, and into which he manages to introduce plenty of horrors. Neal has been well styled “the universal Yankee, whittling his way through creation, with a half-genius for everything, a robust genius for nothing.” He is said to have been the originator of the woman’s suffrage movement, the first person to establish a gymnasium in America, and the first to encourage Edgar A. Poe.[6]

_James Fenimore Cooper._--The first American to win universal recognition as a powerful novelist was James Fenimore Cooper. Born at Burlington, New Jersey, on September 15, 1789, of English Quaker and Swedish parentage, he was taken, when a year old, to the Central New York wilderness, where his father, having become the owner of large tracts of land, had laid out the village of Cooperstown. Here, on the shores of the beautiful Otsego Lake, in a motley frontier settlement, the boy Cooper passed his earliest years. In due time entering the family of an Albany clergyman as a private pupil, Cooper proceeded in 1803 to Yale College, where he became a member of the class of 1806. An escapade in his third year led to his dismissal; after which he served a marine apprenticeship of a year and then entered the navy, serving as midshipman for nearly four years. In 1811, he married Susan A. De Lancey, a lady of Huguenot and Tory family, and a sister of Bishop De Lancey of Western New York; and at her request resigned his commission, to become an amateur farmer, successively at Mamaroneck, on Long Island Sound, at Cooperstown, and at Scarsdale, Westchester County, all in New York State. Thus he arrived at the age of thirty without having even dreamed of a career of authorship. One day, reading a novel descriptive of English society, he impatiently threw down the book and exclaimed that he could write a better story himself. Challenged by his wife to do so, he wrote and published “Precaution” (1820), a dull and conventional story of English social life, purporting to be the work of an Englishman. Although the novel was not very successful, his friends urged Cooper to try again, and this time to write of scenes of which he had some personal knowledge. The publication of “The Spy, a Tale of the Neutral Ground,” in December, 1821, marks the beginning of a long series of successes. “The Spy” met with a large sale both in America and in England. It was soon translated into most of the cultivated languages of Europe; and its popularity has never greatly waned. It is a story of the American Revolution, in which the patriotic hero, Harvey Birch, signally aids the American cause and exhibits a rare combination of the spy and the gentleman.

During the twenty-nine years remaining to Cooper, he produced thirty-two further volumes, chiefly romances. Of these, many are now rarely read, but the following have retained their popularity for successive generations:

“The Spy,” already referred to.

“The Leatherstocking Tales,” comprising (in the chronological order not of their production, but of the narrative):

“The Deerslayer, or The First War Path,” 1841.

“The Last of the Mohicans, a Narrative of 1757,” 1826.

“The Pathfinder, or The Inland Sea,” 1840.

“The Pioneers,” 1823, and “The Prairie,” 1827; and ten volumes of the “Sea Tales”:

“The Pilot,” 1823.

“The Red Rover,” 1828.

“The Two Admirals,” 1842.

“Homeward Bound, or The Chase,” 1838.

“The Water-Witch, or The Skimmer of the Seas,” 1830.

“The Wing-and-Wing, or Le Feu-Follet,” 1842.

“Afloat and Ashore,” 1844.

“Miles Wallingford,” 1844, published in England as “Lucy Hardinge.” A sequel to “Afloat and Ashore.”

“Jack Tier, or The Florida Reefs,” 1848.

“The Sea Lions, or The Lost Sealers,” 1849.

The popularity which Cooper achieved, and which reached its height with the publication of “The Last of the Mohicans,” was most remarkable; no other American has ever enjoyed anything like it. Not only were his stories read in well-nigh every household, but they were promptly dramatised, and furnished subjects for numerous paintings and poetical effusions. In Europe, his fame fairly rivalled that of Scott. In 1833, Samuel F. B. Morse, the inventor of the electric telegraph, wrote: “In every city of Europe that I visited the works of Cooper were conspicuously placed in the windows of every bookshop. They are published, as soon as he produces them, in thirty-four different places in Europe. They have been seen by American travellers in the languages of Turkey and Persia, in Constantinople, in Egypt, at Jerusalem, at Ispahan.”

In 1822 Cooper removed with his family to New York, in order to be near his publisher and to put his daughters into school. There he founded a club, commonly known as the Bread and Cheese, to which many of the noted men of the time belonged. The years 1826-33 he spent in Europe, being for a part of this time United States consul at Lyons. On his return, he lived a few winters in New York; he then took up his permanent residence at Otsego Hall, Cooperstown, where he died in September, 1851.

In his later years, Cooper presented the singular spectacle of a popular novelist who was the most cordially hated man of his time. The fact is significant and helps to account for the failure of many of Cooper’s later stories. An ardent lover of his country and its republican institutions, he boldly rebuked the ignorance and supercilious condescension of European critics; he wrote “The Bravo” (1831), “The Heidenmauer” (1832), and “The Headsman” (1833), for the avowed purpose of assailing monarchical and praising democratic institutions, and kept this purpose in mind much too constantly to produce artistic work. On his return to America, contrasting the restless exertion and bustle, the material progress which obscured higher ideals than money-making, with the leisure and dignified culture of European lands, he did not hesitate to speak plainly of the defects in the American character. This naturally brought him much abuse from the press; and an unfortunate dispute with the citizens of Cooperstown over the ownership of Three-Mile Point on Otsego Lake, though the right was wholly on his side, only made him more intensely disliked.

In the early ’40’s, certain issues arose in New York State between the tenants of the old Patroons who held their large estates under original grants, and their landlords, the tenants attempting to secure under State legislation a title in fee to their rented lands. Cooper, whose family interests were themselves likely to be affected by these claims, threw himself with full force and bitterness into the contest. In addition to a number of magazine articles and speeches, he devoted three volumes to the presentation of the claims of the landlords, volumes which are now read but little, excepting by special students of the subject. They are entitled respectively:

“Satanstoe, or The Littlepage Manuscripts,” 1845;

“The Chainbearer,” 1846; and

“The Redskins, or Indian and Injin,” 1846.

“The Ways of the Hour” (1850) was also a novel with a purpose, which overweighted its interest as a story; the purpose was the reform of court procedure in the State of New York.

In “Homeward Bound” and its sequel, “Home as Found” (1838), the latter being one of his worst stories, Cooper lashed the petty vices of his countrymen and sought to show them what ought to be. As he might have expected, he only confirmed the public in its hatred of him, while he materially impaired his reputation as a story-teller. Had he been more tactful, philosophical, and far-seeing, he would have saved himself years of stormy conflict.

In Lakewood Cemetery at Cooperstown, on the hill overlooking Otsego Lake, is a majestic monument to Fenimore Cooper, twenty-five feet in height, and surmounted by a statue of the hunter Leatherstocking and his dog. As enduring as bronze is this character in our American fiction; the hero that will live longest of Cooper’s creations. In him Lowell found “the protagonist of our New World epic, a figure as poetic as that of Achilles, as ideally representative as that of Don Quixote, as romantic in his relation to our homespun and plebeian myths as Arthur in his to the mailed and plumed cycle of chivalry.” The series in which he appears, “The Deerslayer,” “The Pathfinder,” “The Last of the Mohicans,” “The Pioneers,” and “The Prairie,” the group which Cooper himself preferred to his other stories, is now (excepting always “The Spy”) more read than all Cooper’s other works put together. Drawn at first from life, Natty Bumppo becomes an idealised character, the perfect type of the bold frontiersman and scout, who read nature as an open book, and who was most at home when farthest from the haunts of the civilised world. Worthy to stand by his side is the noble Indian Chingachgook, “grave, silent, acute, self-contained,” as Mr. James H. Morse says of him; “sufficiently lofty-minded to take in the greatness of the Indian’s past, and sufficiently farsighted to see the hopelessness of his future,--with nobility of soul enough to grasp the white man’s virtues, and with inherited wildness enough to keep him true to the instincts of his own race.” Famous among Cooper’s sailor folk is Long Tom Coffin, of “The Pilot”--type of the rough but honest seaman, superstitious like all seamen but devoutly religious, faithful to the last and capable of the most heroic self-sacrifice. Other characters scarcely less well drawn, if less famous, move through Cooper’s pages--rough, uncouth waifs and strays of border life, grizzled old sea-dogs, soldiers’ and sailors’ wives and sweethearts, such as the wife of Ishmael Bush, Hetty and Judith Hutter, and Dew-of-June.