Chapter 13

She also records that first lake party to Point Judith, given by her grandfather, Judge Cooper, in August, 1799, but leaves the description of her father's lake parties to Mr. Keese: "He was fond of picnic excursions on the lake, generally to the _Three Mile Point_, and often with a party of gentlemen to Gravelly, where the main treat was a chowder, which their host made up with great gusto. He could also brew a bowl of punch for festive occasions, though he himself rarely indulged beyond a glass of wine for dinner." Concerning these festivities Mr. Keese adds: "Lake excursions until 1840 were made by a few private boats or the heavy, flat-bottomed skiff which worthy Dick Case kept moored at the foot of Fair Street. But Dick's joints were too stiff to row more than an easy reach from the village; to the Fairy Spring was the usual measure of his strength. The Three Mile Point was the goal of the best oarsmen. Dick's successor in the thirties was an ugly horse-boat that in 1840 gave place to the famous scow of Joe Tom and his men, which for twenty years took picnic parties to the Point. A president of our country, several governors of the State, and Supreme Court judges were among these distinguished passengers. Doing such duty the scow is seen in the 1840 pictures of Cooperstown. No picnic of his day was complete without famous 'Joe Tom,' who had men to row the scow, clean the fish, stew potatoes, make coffee, and announce the meal. Rowing back in the gloaming of a summer's night, he would awake the echoes of Natty Bumppo's Cave for the pleasure of the company." At times a second echo would return from Hannah's Hill, and a third from Mt. Vision.

Between the lines can be read the hearty and cheery author's pleasure in all this merriment, yet, none the less, life's shadows exacted full attention, as the following shows: "Cooper took a generous and active part in sending relief to the starving people of Ireland; for, March 8, 1847, James Fenimore Cooper heads his town committee, and, 'in the name of charity and in obedience to the commands of God,' he urges an appeal 'from house to house, for _Food_ is wanting that we possess in abundance.'"

"Cooper would admit of no denial of principle but could be lenient to offenders. One day he caught a man stealing fruit from his garden. Instead of flying into a passion, he told him how wrong it was to make the neighbors think there was no way of getting his fruit but by stealing it, and bid him the next time to come in at the gate and ask for it like a true man. Cooper then helped him to fill his basket and let him go." The author's fine fruit trees must have been tempting!

One day while walking in the garden with some ladies, Mr. Cooper led the way to a tree well laden with fine apples. Unable to reach them, he called to a boy in the street, and presenting him to his friends as one of the best boys in the village,--one who never disturbed his fruit,--he lifted the little fellow up to the branches to pick apples for the guests, and then filled his pockets as a reward for his honesty, and promised him more when he came again. The delighted boy waited for a few days and then repeated his visit to the tree, but forgetting to ask permission. Not knowing him from frequent intruders, Mr. Cooper's high voice from a distance, added to the savage barking of his watch-dog, frightened the well-meaning forager into a resolve that he would not forget the easier way next time of first asking before picking.

The author's genuine interest in his hometown folk never waned. Among the many and sincere expressions of his good-will were the free lectures he gave to the villagers. His descriptions of naval actions were full of vigor. On the blackboard he presented fleets, changing their positions, moving ship after ship as the contest went on, at the same time stating the facts in history and using his cane as a pointer.

It is of note that Mr. Cooper's personal appearance in 1850 was remarkable. He seemed in perfect health and highest energy and activity of faculties, but the autumn of this year found him in New York City under mild ailments. His friend, Mr. George Washington Green, regretted not noting better his last talk with the author about this time, of which he says: "He excused himself that morning at Putnam's for not rising to shake hands. 'My feet,' said he, 'are so tender that I do not like to stand longer than I can help.' Yet when we walked together into Broadway, I could not help turning now and then to admire his commanding figure and firm bearing. Sixty years seemed to sit lightly on him. After a short stroll we went to his room at the _Globe_ and sat down to talk. I never found him so free upon his own works and literary habits. He confessed his partiality for Leather stocking. Said he: 'I meant to have added one more scene and introduced him in the Revolution, but I thought the public had had enough of him, and never ventured it.'"

Cooper's enjoyment of the marvelous voice of "The Swedish Nightingale," as Jenny Lind was called, the publication of his daughter's "Rural Hours," and the active progress of his own book sales are noted in his letter to his beloved wife.

BROADWAY HOTEL, Friday, Nov. 15, 1850.

MY DEAREST W.,--Julia and Miss Thomas came down with me to hear Jenny Lind. "Have you heard Jenny Lind?" "How do you like Jenny Lind?" are the questions which supplant "Fine weather to-day" and other similar comprehensive remarks. I am patiently waiting for the "Lake Gun" [a magazine article]. I am well and shall commence in earnest next week. Tell Sue [his daughter] I have seen Putnam, who will be delighted to publish her new book. "Naval History" is a little slack for the moment. There are less than a hundred copies of second edition on hand and the third must be shortly prepared. The fine edition will be published to-morrow. About two hundred copies have been sent to the trade and with that issue he will start. He has had five and twenty copies done up in papier machia at $9.00. N---- is well. D.Z. is still here. Old Peter is not yet married, but the affair is postponed until Spring, when the bride and groom will return to America. They wish to prolong the delightful delusion of courtship. I hope they may be as happy as we have been and love each other as much forty--days after their union as we do forty years.... Yours J.F.C.

At No. 1 Bond Street stood the old-time mansion of Dr. John W. Francis, where were welcomed many eminent in arts and letters at home and abroad, and where their host wrote his "Reminiscences of Sixty Years." Here it was that Cooper, on his last visit to New York, came seeking aid for his failing health. But with December the author returned to Cooperstown, whence he wrote a friend: "I have gone into dock with my old hulk, to be overhauled. Francis says I have congestion, and I must live low, deplete, and take pills. While I am frozen, my wife tells me my hands, feet, and body are absolutely warm. The treatment is doing good. You cannot imagine the old lady's delight at getting me under, in the way of food. I get no meat, or next to none, and no great matter in substitutes. This morning being Christmas, I had a blow-out of oysters, and at dinner it will go hard if I do not get a cut into the turkey. I have lost pounds, yet I feel strong and clearheaded. I have had a narrow escape, if I have escaped."

The following spring Cooper again went to New York City, whence he dates a letter to his wife:

Saturday, March 29, 1851

COLLEGE HOTEL, NEW YORK

Your letter of Thursday has just reached me. I am decidedly better.--Last night I was actually dissipated. L.---- came for me in a carriage and carried me off almost by force to Doctor Bellows, where I met the Sketch Club, some forty people, many of whom I knew. I stayed until past ten, ate a water ice, talked a great deal, returned, went to bed fatigued and slept it off.--My friends are very attentive to me, they all seem glad to see me and think I am improving, as I certainly am.... I shall come home shortly--I want to be in my garden and I wish to be in your dear hands, love, for though you know nothing you do a great deal that is right. Last evening I passed with Charlotte M.--who wanted to take me home to nurse me. There is no chance of seeing S.----.

Adieu, my love.... My blessing on the girls--all four of them.

J.F.C.

In April, 1851, the poet Bryant wrote of him "Cooper is in town, in ill health. When I saw him last he was in high health and excellent spirits." These spirits were not dashed by the progressing malady that took him home to Cooperstown. Not realizing what illness meant, he bravely accepted what it brought,--the need to dictate the later parts of his "History of the United States Navy," and the "Towns of Manhattan," when he himself could no longer write. The latter was planned, partly written, and in press at the time of his death. That which was printed was burnt, the manuscript in part rescued, and finished by the pen of one of the family.

It was Fenimore Cooper's happiness to be blessed with a family whose greatest pleasure was to supply his every needed comfort; and one of his daughters was ever a companion in his pursuits, the wise and willing writer of his letters and dictations, and the most loving, never-tiring nurse of his latter days. Of these last months there is a pretty child-record by a friend who, "entering without notice," one day saw Mr. Cooper "lying at full length on the parlor floor, with a basket of cherries by his side. Upon his chest, vainly trying to bestride the portly form, sat his little grandson, to whom he passed cherries, and who, in turn, with childish glee, was dropping them, one by one, into his grandfather's mouth. The smiles that played over the features of child and man during this sweet and gentle dalliance were something not easily forgotten. A few months after this both child and man had passed beyond 'the smiling'; aye, and 'the weeping,' too."

Letters from Cooperstown led Dr. Francis to go there August 27, 1851, to see his esteemed friend in his own home. And of Cooper the Doctor wrote: "I explained to him the nature of his malady--frankly assured him that within the limits of a week a change was indispensable to lessen our forebodings of its ungovernable nature. He listened with fixed attention.--Not a murmur escaped his lips. Never was information of so grave a cast received by any individual in a calmer spirit."

So passed the summer days of 1851 with the author, near his little lake, the Glimmerglass, and its Mt. Vision, when one mid-September Sunday afternoon, with his soul's high standard of right and truth undimmed, James Fenimore Cooper crossed the bar.

While from youth Cooper was a reverent follower of the Christian faith, his religious nature deepened with added years. Eternal truth grew in his heart and mind as he, in time, learned to look above and beyond this world's sorrows and failures. In July, 1851, he was confirmed in Christ's Church,--the little parish church just over the way from the old-Hall home, whose interests he had faithfully and generously served as sometime warden and as vestryman since 1834.

Of one such service Mr. Keese writes that in 1840 the original Christ's Church of Cooperstown underwent important alterations. Its entire interior was removed and replaced by native oak. As vestryman Mr. Cooper was prime mover and chairman of the committee of change, and hearing of the chancel screen in the old Johnstown church, first built by Sir William Johnson, he took a carpenter and went there to have drawings made of this white-painted pine screen, which at his own expense he had reproduced with fine, ornamental effect in oak, and made it a gift to Christ's Church. It was removed from Christ's Church about 1891, badly broken and abandoned. This so disturbed Cooper's daughters that his grandson, James Fenimore Cooper of Albany, New York, had the pieces collected, and stored them for using in his Cooperstown home; but he--by request of the Reverend Mr. Birdsall--had them made into two screens for the aisles of the church, where they were erected as a memorial to his father, Paul Fenimore, and his great-grandfather, Judge William Cooper.

Mr. Keese's words, dating January, 1910, are: "And now comes in a rather singular discovery made by the writer a few days ago: In looking over a book in my library, published about ninety years ago, there is an article on Newstead Abbey, Nottinghamshire, England, with a steel engraving of the front of the Abbey, which is almost identical with the design of the original screen in Christ Church. Who was responsible for transplanting the same to this country appears to be unknown, but the fact is interesting in that Newstead Abbey was the home of the Byron family and that of Lord Byron."

In a letter of April 22, 1840, to H. Bleeker, Esq., Cooper wrote of this screen: "I have just been revolutionizing Christ's Church, Cooperstown, not turning out a vestry but converting its pine interior into oak--_bona fide_ oak, and erecting a screen that I trust, though it may have no influence on my soul, will carry my name down to posterity. It is really a pretty thing--pure Gothic, and is the wonder of the country round."

Of Cooper himself was said: "Thus step by step his feet were guided into the ways of peace." It was of the Protestant Episcopal church that his wife's brother, William Heathcote de Lancey--a genius of goodness--was bishop.

A beautiful, tender, and touching tribute to the love of his life was Fenimore Cooper's will. In part it reads: "I, James Fenimore Cooper, give and bequeath to my wife, Susan Augusta, all my property, whether personal or mixed, to be enjoyed by her and her heirs forever. I make my said wife the executrix of my will."

In a little over four months his wife followed him to the far country. Of his children, Elizabeth, the first-born, died in infancy; Susan Augusta, the author, was the second; the third, Caroline Martha, became Mrs. Henry Frederick Phinney; next came Anne Charlotte, then Maria Frances, who married Richard Cooper; Fenimore, the first son, they lost in babyhood, and Paul Fenimore, the youngest, became a member of the bar in Albany, New York.

Cooper left his family a competency, but the Hall home soon passed into other hands; later it was burnt. From rescued brick an attractive house was built on the west bank of the Susquehanna for his daughters Susan Augusta and Anne Charlotte, both now resting near father and mother in Christ's Church yard. Their niece, Miss Susan Augusta Cooper, daughter of their sister, Maria Frances, Mrs. Richard Cooper, now lives in this picturesque house, and there she reverently treasures many personal belongings of her famous grandfather, and also those of her author-aunt, Susan Augusta Cooper, whose best memorial, however, is the noble orphanage on the river-bank some ways below. The oaken doors saved from the flames of the burning Hall served for this new home, which overlooked the grounds of their old home. The site of the latter is marked by Ward's "Indian Hunter." Aptly placed, peering through mists of green toward the author's church-yard grave, he is a most fitting guardian of the one-time garden of Fenimore Cooper.

By the generosity of the late Mrs. Henry Codman Potter, this hunter's domain has been transformed into beautiful "Cooper Grounds"; and here the red-man of bronze keeps ward and watch over memories that enshrine the genius of a noble soul whose records of this vanishing race are for all time.

A gentleman just from continental Europe in 1851 said of people there: "They are all reading Cooper." A traveler, returned from Italy about that time, wrote: "I found all they knew of America--and that was not a little--they had learned from Cooper's novels." When an eminent physician who was called to attend some German immigrants asked how they knew so much of their new-home country, they replied: "We learned it all from Cooper. We have four translations of his works in German, and we all read them." February 22, 1852, Charles G. Leland of Philadelphia wrote of Cooper's works: "There were several translations issued at Frankfort, Germany, in 1824, in two hundred and fifty parts, a second large edition in 1834, and a third in 1851. All his works, more than Scott and Shakespeare, are household words to the German people." Library records of to-day show no waning of this early popularity of the "Leatherstocking Tales" and "Sea Stories" of Fenimore Cooper. In 1883 Victor Hugo told General Wilson that excepting the authors of France, "Cooper was the greatest novelist of the century." It was Balzac who said: "If Cooper had succeeded in the painting of character to the same extent that he did in the painting the phenomena of nature, he would have uttered the last word of our art."

From Hanau-on-Main, Germany, January, 1912, Herr Rudolf Drescher writes: "Within two years two new translations of Cooper's complete works have been issued. One at Berlin, the other at Leipsic. 180 pictures by the artist Max Slevogt held one edition at $192, the other with less pictures was $60, and both were sold. Cheaper editions without pictures also met with large sales. I possess an 1826, German copy of 'The Pioneers.'" Another record is, Cooper's works have been seen "in thirty different countries, in the languages of Finland, Turkey and Persia, in Constantinople, in Egypt, at Jerusalem, at Ispahan."

The author's literary cruise, dating back three years before the launching of "The Pilot" in 1823, was a long one. And no admiral of mortal fame ever led so sturdy and motley a fleet--from the proud man-of-war to the light felucca, gondola, and bark-canoe--over ocean and inland waters. With visions of forests, its moving spirit and skilful pilot still stands at the helm, the full light of the ages upon "eye, arm, sail, spar, and flag." Thus is Fenimore Cooper firmly anchored in the mind and heart of posterity as the creator of American romance.

August, 1907, "Historic Cooperstown" held her Memorial Celebration. Her founder, Judge William Cooper, his hardy pioneers, and the "memory of one whose genius had given her Glimmerglass country world-wide fame," were honored with world-wide tributes. Among these were addresses, heartfelt, and able, from the late Bishop Henry Codman Potter, on "The Religious Future"; Francis Whiting Halsey, on "The Headwaters of the Susquehanna"; George Pomeroy Keese, on "Early Days of Cooperstown," and James Fenimore Cooper of Albany, New York, on his great-grandfather "William Cooper."

From "The Cooperstown Centennial" one learns that at five o'clock on Wednesday afternoon of August 7 many people were reverently taking part in solemn services around the grave of James Fenimore Cooper and beneath the glinting tree-shadows of Christ's Church yard. The service began with a procession of young girls in white surrounding the author's last resting-place, where verses on Cooper were recited by Miss Wilkinson; then the little folk sang the lyric tribute of Mr. Saxton:

0, great magician, may the life We lead be such a one as thine-- A simple life, transcending art, A spirit close to Nature's heart, A soul as strong and clear, and fine.

After singing, the children, gathering around, covered the marble slab with their tributes--the flowers of the season. Some poetic pictures in blank verse were given of Cooper's works, by the Reverend Dr. W.W. Battershall of St. Peter's Church in Albany, New York, the present rector, and successor of Doctor Ellison, Cooper's boyhood instructor. Then the Rev. Ralph Birdsall, rector of the author's "little parish church," spoke of Fenimore Cooper's church-yard home: "A marble slab that bears no praise for fame or virtue; only a simple cross, symbol of the faith in which he lived and died, and upon which he based his hopes of immortality." The soldier lying near, brought from the field of honor; the author's old neighbors, who exchanged with him in life the friendly nod; hands that were calloused with the axe and shovel, and Judge Temple's aged slave in narrow home--all sleeping beneath the same sward and glancing shadows are not less honored now than is the plain, unpolished slab of stone, bearing two dates,--of birth and entrance into the life eternal of James Fenimore Cooper.

On his airy height of the "Cooper Memorial," gleaming white through the lakewood slope of Mt. Vision, wondrous Leatherstocking stands, a rare tribute to simple, uplifting goodness. Clad in his hunting-shirt, deerskin cap, and leggings, his powder-horn and bullet-pouch swung over his shoulder, his dog Hector at his feet, looking up with speaking expression into the fine, wise, honest face of his master, stands Natty, gazing over all the lake he loved so well.

---- o'er no sweeter lake Shall morning break or noon-cloud sail; No fairer face than thine shall take The sunset's golden veil.

J.G. WHITTIER.

"Cooper had no predecessor and no successor in his own field of fiction; he stood alone,--he was a creator, and his 'Natty' will stand forever as the most original of pioneer characters," wrote Henry M. Alden.

With Rev. Mr. Birdsall, many think the time has come when the fame of Fenimore Cooper demands a world-given memorial in Cooperstown. A lifelike statue from an _artist's_ chisel should show the "'prose poet of the silent woods and stormy seas' seated, pen in hand, gazing dreamily for inspiration over the Glimmerglass, where the phantom creatures of his genius brood." Let it stand, a new-world literary shrine, in the square fronting the Old-Hall home site, which northward commands a sweeping view of his "little lake" and a side glimpse of lofty Leatherstocking of the tree-tops--not far away.

And strewn the flowers of memory here. For one whose fingers, years ago, Their work well finished, dropped the pen; Whose master mind from land to sea Drew forms heroic, long to be The living types of vanished men. A.B. SAXTON.

IN MEMORIAM

GEORGE POMEROY KEESE

On April 22, 1910, and at the home of his son, Theodore Keese, in New York City, came the Spirit-Land call to the late George Pomeroy Keese. It was also in New York City that he was born, on January 14, 1828. His parents were Theodore Keese and Georgiann Pomeroy, niece of James Fenimore Cooper. This grand-nephew of the author enjoyed four score and more of full, active years, mostly spent in Cooperstown, N.Y., and he gave of them generously in serving the welfare and interests of that village. There Edgewater, Mr. Keese's attractive home, overlooks, from the south, the entire length and beauty of Lake Otsego, whose waters and banks are haunted by Cooper's creations.

From Mr. Keese is quoted: