Chapter 7

"In Paris Cooper's style of living gave his ideas of the duties and position of an American gentleman. In a part of the handsome Hotel de Jumièges he lived, keeping his carriage and service required by a modest establishment; and his doors were always open to every American who had claims on his society. Meanwhile nothing was allowed to break in upon his literary duties, for which a part of each day was set aside." So wrote one who became a friend staunch and true at this time in Paris. Of their meeting he wrote: "I shall never forget the first day I saw Cooper. He was at good old General Lafayette's, in the little apartment of the rue d'Anjou,--the scene of many hallowed memories." Lafayette's kind heart had granted an interview to some Indians by whom a reckless white man was filling his purse in parading through Europe. With winning smile the great, good man told these visitors to return to their home while yet they could. Mr. G. continued: "As I was gazing at this scene I saw a gentleman enter whose appearance called off the General's attention. He was in the prime of life (thirty-five), and of that vigor which air and manly exercise give. I had seen the heads of great men, and there were some close to me, but none with such a full, expansive forehead, such strong features, a mouth firm without harshness, and an eye whose clear gray seemed to read you at a glance while it fears not to let you read him in turn. 'Who is he?' I whispered to a grand-daughter of the General near me. 'Mr. Cooper; do you not know Mr. Cooper? Let me introduce you to him.' 'Cooper,' said I to myself; 'can it be that I am within five paces, and that there, too, are the feeble of the race around which his genius has shed a halo like that of Homer's own heros?' I was fresh from 'The Mohicans,' and my hand trembled as it met the cordial grasp of the man to whom I owed so many pleasing hours. I asked about the Indians. 'They are poor specimens,' said he; 'fourth-rate at best in their own woods, and ten-times worse for the lives they are leading here.'" Later, Mr. G. met the author in Lafayette's bed-room, and saw how warmly he was welcomed by the great poet Béranger. Still later Mr. G. and Cooper met in Florence, where they had much fine talking and walking "on calm summer evenings." Of the Bard-of-Avon it is noted that Cooper said: "Shakespeare is my traveling library. To a novel-writer he is invaluable. Publishers will have mottoes for every chapter; I never yet turned over Shakespeare without hitting upon just what I wanted I like to take them, whenever I can, from our own poets. It is a compliment they have a right to, and I am glad when I can pay it." Concerning the author's habits, this friend concludes: "When Cooper left his desk he left his pen on it. He came out into the world to hear and see what other men were doing. If they wanted to hear him, there he was, perfectly ready to express opinions of men or things. It was delightful to hear him talk about his own works, he did it with such a frank, fresh, manly feeling."

Among the great again was seen the ever-favored yet not "gai" Talleyrand. Of the incident Cooper noted: "It is etiquette for the kings of France to dine in public on January 14 and on the monarch's fête-day." Wishing to see this ceremony, Mr. and Mrs. Cooper were sent the better of the two permissions granted for the occasion. Cooper describes the ceremony--the _entrée_ of Charles X: _"Le Roi_, tall, decidedly graceful; the Dauphin to his right, the Dauphine to his left, and to her right the Duchess of Berri." Passing Cooper, he continues: "Near a little gate was an old man in strictly court-dress. The long white hair that hung down his face, the _cordon bleu_, the lame foot, and the unearthly aspect made me suspect the truth, it was M. de Talleyrand as grand chamberlin, to officiate at the dinner of his master"; whereby proving his own words: "It is not enough to be some one,--it is needful to do something." A near Abbé whispered of Talleyrand to Cooper: "But, sir, he is a cat, that always falls on its feet." Yet of Talleyrand another's record is: "But if Charles Maurice was lame of leg--his wit was keener and more nimble than that of any man in Europe." Brushing past the gorgeous state-table to Mrs. Cooper, the author adds: "She laughed, and said 'it was all very magnificent and amusing,' but some one had stolen her shawl!"

Cooper was ever a home-lover. Wherever he might be in foreign lands, he contrived to have his own roof-tree when possible. Therefore, the summer of 1827 sent them from rue St. Maur to the village of St. Ouen, on the banks of the Seine and a league from the gates of Paris. The village itself was not attractive, but pleasant was the home, next to a small château where Madame de Staël lived when her father, M. Necker, was in power. Some twenty-two spacious, well-furnished rooms this summer home had, in which once lived the Prince de Soubise when _grand veneur_ of Louis XV, who went there at times to eat his dinner--"in what served us for a drawing-room," Cooper wrote. The beautiful garden of shade-trees, shrubbery, and flowers, within gray walls fourteen feet high, was a blooming paradise; and for it all--horses, cabriolet, grand associations--was paid two hundred dollars per month for the season of five.

"The Red Rover" was written in these three or four summer months in St. Ouen on the Seine, whence the author's letters tell of watching the moving life on the river, the merry washerwomen as they chatter, joke, and splash beneath his terrace; how he tried punting, and left it to "honest Pierre," who never failed to charge him double fare, and of whom he tells a pretty story; how they all enjoyed the village _fêtes_, with whirligigs and flying-horses, whereby the French contrive to make and spend a few _sous_ pleasantly. "I enjoy all this greatly," wrote Cooper. Excursions were made,--one to Montmorenci, in plain view of Paris; and the author explains that the Montmorenci claim to being "the first Christian baron" is of the Crusade War-Cry date and origin. His wife and he took all the pretty drives in their cabriolet, but later he took to the saddle for the out-of-field paths, where pleasant salutations were exchanged with kindly-hearted peasants. Of these rambles Cooper wrote: "One of my rides is ascending Montmartre by its rear, to the windmills that night and day are whirling their rugged arms over the capital of France." Montmartre, he said, gave him a view "like a glimpse into the pages of history." He often met royalty dashing to and from Paris. The king with his carriage-and-eight, attended by a dozen mounted men, made a royal progress truly magnificent.

Overhanging the river at the garden side was a broad terrace which ended in a pleasant summer-house, and here many pages of the author's next book--"The Red Rover"--were written. After he left the navy, and while he was living in Angevine, Cooper became part owner in a whaling-ship,--_The Union_, of Sag Harbor. She made trips to different parts of the coast, and several times, for the pleasure of it, Cooper played skipper. Under his direction she once carried him to Newport, with which he was greatly pleased. He explored the old ruin there, but no fancy could ever persuade him to see more than a windmill in it; but the charm of Newport's situation, harbor, and shore lines lingered in his mind and served him for the opening and closing scenes of this work. After its publication he received from some Newport gentlemen the gift of a little box made from the keel of the _Endeavor_, Cook's famous exploring ship, which wound up its world-circling voyage in Newport harbor. On the lid of the box was a silver-plate engraving. In Cooper's story the "Red Rover" appears on this Newport scene in the height of his career,--an outlaw in spirit, a corsair in deed. In early life he was of quick mind, strong will, with culture and social position, but wildly passionate and wayward; and smarting under official injustice, in an evil hour he casts his lawlessness loose on the storm-tide of life. The voice of an elder sister, who had given something of a mother's deep love and tenderness to the wayward youth, falls upon his ear. Old memories are awakened; home feeling revives; conscience is aroused, and in the very hour of its greatest triumph the proud spirit bows in penitence,--the Rover surrenders his captives. A like change of heart came, through a mutual love of the birds of heaven, to a real pirate who chanced upon a cabin in the forest's solitude and here confessed his life to its inmate, Audubon, who left this "striking incident" a record in his works. However, "Dick Fid, that arrant old foretop man, and his comrade, Negro Sip, are the true lovers of the narrative;--the last, indeed, is a noble creature, a hero under the skin of Congo." "The Red Rover" is all a book of the sea. In Sir Walter Scott's journal, January, 1828, appears: "I have read Cooper's new novel, 'The Red Rover.' The current of it rolls entirely on the ocean. Something too much of nautical language. It is very clever, though." Its author "has often been idly compared to the author of 'Waverley,' but to no such heritage as Scott's was ever Cooper born. Alone he penetrated the literary wilderness, blazing paths for those who should come after him there";--and a Columbus of letters for others to follow on the sea's highway was he.

A misprint in Lockhart's "Life of Scott" made his comment on Cooper most unfortunate by an "s" added to the word manner. Sir Walter's journal reads: "This man who has shown so much genius has a good deal of manner, or want of manner, peculiar to his countrymen." Cooper, hurt to the quick for himself and his country at being rated "a rude boor from the bookless wilds," by one he had called his "sovereign" in past cordial relations, resented this expression in his review of Lockhart's work for the _Knickerbocker Magazine_, 1838, and for so doing he was harshly criticised in England. October, 1864, the literary editor of _The Illustrated London News_ wrote: "I am almost inclined to agree with Thackeray in liking Hawkeye 'better than any of Scott's lot.' What noble stories those five are in which the hero is described from youth to age!" From "Thackeray in the United States," by General James Grant Wilson, comes: "At an American dinner table" (the talk was of Cooper and his writings) "Thackeray pronounced Leatherstocking the greatest character created in fiction since the Don Quixote of Cervantes"; and he thought the death scene in "The Prairie," where the old trapper said "Here!" surpassing anything he had "met in English literature."

Of Natty's answer to the Spirit Land call Cooper's own words are: "The trapper was placed on a rude seat, which had been made, with studied care, to support his frame in an upright and easy attitude--so as to let the light of the setting sun fall full upon the solemn features. His head was bare, the long, thin locks of gray fluttering lightly in the evening breeze. The first glance of the eye told his former friends that the old man was at length called upon to pay the last tribute of nature. The trapper had remained nearly motionless for an hour. His eyes alone had occasionally opened and shut. When opened, his gaze seemed fastened on the clouds which hung around the western horizon, reflecting the bright colors, and giving form and loveliness to the glorious tints of an American sunset. The hour--the calm beauty of the season--the occasion, all conspired to fill the spectators with solemn awe. Suddenly, while musing on the remarkable position in which he was placed, Middleton felt the hand which he held grasp his own with incredible power, and the old man, supported on either side by his friends, rose upright to his feet. For a moment he looked about him, as if to invite all in presence to listen (the lingering remnant of human frailty), and then, with a fine military elevation of the head, and with a voice that might be heard in every part of that numerous assembly, he pronounced the word--'Here!'

"When Middleton and Hard Heart, each of whom had involuntarily extended a hand to support the form of the old man, turned to him again, they found that the subject of their interest was removed forever beyond the necessity of their care."

Concerning social life Cooper wrote: "Taking into consideration our tastes and my health, the question has been, not how to get into, but how to keep out of, the great world." But for the happy chance of inquiry at the gate of a friend, the author would "have dined with the French Lord-High-Chancellor, without the smallest suspicion of who he was!" Of French women Cooper adds: "The highest style of French beauty is classical. I cannot recall a more lovely picture than the Duchess de----[this title and blank are said to veil the identity of the Princess Galitzin] in full dress at a carnival ball, where she shone peerless among hundreds of the _élite_ of Europe. And yet this woman was a grandmother!"

In a letter dated Paris, November 28, 1826, written by Mrs. Cooper to her sister, appears of Mr. Cooper:--"They make quite a Lion of him and Princesses write to him and he has invitations from Lords and Ladies. He has so many notes from the Princess Galitzin I should be absolutely jealous were it not that she is a Grandmother. We were at a Soirée there the other evening among Dutchesses, Princesses, Countesses, etc."

Once with and twice without Mrs. Cooper, the author visited La Grange, the country home of General Lafayette, some twenty-seven miles from Paris and near Rosay. He tells us that La Grange means barn, granary, or farm, and that the château came to Lafayette through his wife; that it had some five hundred acres of wood, pasture, meadow, and cultivated land; that the house is of hewn stone, good grayish color, with its five plain, round towers and their high, pyramidal slate roofs making a part of the walls; that the end towers are buried in ivy planted by Charles Fox. He tells how small, irregular windows open beautifully through the thick foliage for the blooming faces of children, in their home-part of La Grange. He gives rare pictures of the great stairway, the General's bed-room, cabinet, and library in the tower-angle overlooking the willow-shaded moat. Beneath this library was the author's own bed-room. Then came the array of drawing-rooms and innumerable other rooms, where hospitality seemed to know no limit. Lafayette's cabinet contained many portraits,--one of Madame de Staël, and one of his own father. Of this room, and the library, and his grand old host Cooper wrote: "I passed much of our visit alone with him in these two rooms. No one can be pleasanter in private, and he is full of historical anecdotes that he tells with great simplicity and frequently with great humor." The château stands on three sides of an irregular square, and is one of the most picturesque structures in the country. The winding road enters a thicket of evergreens, crosses a bridge, and passes beneath an arch to the paved court. Together, Cooper and his host had many walks and drives thereabouts, and, all in all, the author fell under the spell of Lafayette's personal charm and his simple integrity of character. Between Lafayette's richness of years and Talleyrand's old age there was a gulf,--one had attained nearly everything worth striving for; the other had lost the same.

Cooper and his family entered France July, 1826, and February, 1828, they thought the time had come to change the scene, and proceeded to England. "I drove around to the rue d'Anjou to take my leave of General Lafayette," wrote Cooper. To Calais they had rain and chill and darkness most of the way. Passing through the gate, they drove to the inn immortalized by Lawrence Sterne and Beau Brummel, where they found English comfort with French cooking and French taste. One of February's fine days they left the Hotel Dessein to embark for England. After a two-hours' run the cliffs of Dover appeared on each side of that port,--the nearest to the continent,--making these chalk cliffs seem, Cooper says, "a magnificent gateway to a great nation." Leaving the fishing-boats of the French coast, "the lofty canvas of countless ships and several Indiamen rose from the sea," as they shot towards the English shore, many "bound to that focus of coal-smoke, London." Quietly landing at Dover-haven, they went to Wright's tavern, where they missed the French manner, mirrors, and table-service, but "got in their place a good deal of solid, unpretending comfort." In due time Mr. Wright put them and their luggage into a comfortable post-coach, and on the road he called "quite rotten, sir," to London. To Americans, at that date, the road proved good, and also the horses that made the sixteen miles to Canterbury in an hour and a half, where they drove to another Mr. Wright's; going to four of the name between Dover and London, Cooper concluded with an apology that "it was literally all Wright on this road." The visit to Canterbury cathedral was made during "morning vespers in the choir. It sounded odd to hear our own beautiful service in our own tongue, in such a place, after the _Latin_ chants of canons; and we stood listening with reverence without the screen." London met them "several miles in the suburbs down the river," but they suddenly burst out onto Waterloo bridge, over which they were whirled into the Strand and set down at Wright's hotel, Adam Street, Adelphi; "and," wrote Cooper, "we were soon refreshing ourselves with some of worthy Mrs. Wright's excellent tea."

The second night in London Cooper, stretched out on a sofa, was reading, when some street musicians began to play beneath his window several tunes without success; "finally," he wrote, "the rogues contrived, after all, to abstract half a crown from my pocket by suddenly striking up 'Yankee Doodle!'" After some hunting they took a small house in St. James Place, which gave them "a tiny drawing-room, a dining-room, three bed-rooms, offices, and house-service for a guinea per day." A guinea more weekly was added for their three fires, and their own maid and man gave personal service during this London season. Of his man-servant Cooper wrote: "The English footman I engaged is a steady, little, old man, with a red face and a powdered poll, who appears in black breeches and coat, but who says himself that his size has marred his fortune. He is cockney born, about fifty; quality and splendor act forcibly on his imagination, and he is much condemned in the houses where I visit on account of his dwarfish stature"; and we are told that the English favor pretty faces for their maids and fine figures for their footmen.

To a Mr. Spencer whom Cooper met in France was due the visit soon paid him by his near neighbor, the author of the "Pleasures of Memory." Of Samuel Rogers Cooper wrote: "He very kindly sought me out"; and, "few men have a more pleasant way of saying pleasant things." His visit was followed by an invitation to breakfast the next morning. Cooper continues: "It was but a step from my door, and you may be certain I was punctual." He found the poet's home perfection for a bachelor's needs; only eighteen feet front, but the drawing-room and dining-room were lined with old masters. And in the bow-window stood the "Chantrey Vase," placed by its maker when artist workman in the room where he later dined as Chantrey the sculptor and Rogers' honored guest. The library was filled with valuable books and curiosities in history, literature, and art. Of this poet's dream-home Cooper wrote: "Neither he nor any one else has a right to live in so exquisite a house and expect everybody to hold their tongues about it. Taking the house, the host, the mental treats he dispenses, the company, and the tone, it is not easy to conceive of anything better in their way. Commend me in every respect to the delicious breakfasts of St. James Place!" On one occasion, "Rogers, talking of Washington Irving's 'Columbus,' said, 'in his airy, significant way,' as Moore called it, 'It's rather long.' Cooper turned round on him and said sharply, 'That's a short criticism.'" This banker-poet could be severe on his English friends too, as it appears "Lady Holland was always lamenting that she had nothing to do. One day, complaining worse than ever that she did not know 'what to be at,'" said Rogers, "I could not resist recommending her to try a novelty--try and do a little good."

Through Samuel Rogers Cooper was soon dining at Holland House, in the much-carved and gilded room where Sully and embassy supped in 1603. By a word to the porter, Sir James Mackintosh had planned a pleasant half-hour for his American friend in the gardens, where was Rogers' seat, and then in the library on the second floor, where he saw its each-end tables. The generous space between is said to have been paced by "Addison when composing," and his inspiration quickened by kindly "bottles placed on them for that purpose." The artist Charles Robert Leslie caught a rare glimpse on canvas of this library, in which appear his friends Lord and Lady Holland, who were also the host and hostess of Fenimore Cooper. We are told by him that the dining-table was square; that the host had one corner and the hostess the centre; and the American author, "as the stranger, had the honor of a seat next to Lady Holland." When talking, he was offered by her a plate of herring, of which he frankly avowed he "ought to have eaten one, even to the fins and tail"; but little dreaming of their international worth just then, the herring were declined. With good humor his hostess said: "You do not know what you say; they are _Dutch_." With some vigor of look and tone Cooper repeated--"Dutch!" The reply was: "Yes, Dutch; we can only get them _through an ambassador_." Then Cooper rose to the occasion by replying: "There are too many good things of native production to require a voyage to Holland on my account." Of their host Rogers' record was: "Lord Holland always comes down to breakfast like a man upon whom sudden good fortune had just fallen--his was the smile that spoke the mind at ease." And after his death were found on Lord Holland's dressing-table, and in his handwriting, these lines on himself:

Nephew of Fox and friend of Gay, Enough my meed of fame If those who deighn'd to observe me say I injured neither name.

"Here Rogers sat, and here forever dwell With me, those Pleasures that he sang so well."