Correspondence of James Fenimore-Cooper
Edited by his grandson, New Haven: Yale University Press. 1922. Two volumes. 8vo. 776 pp. Regular edition with frontispieces $7.50. Limited edition, with extra illustrations in color, $30.00.
BECAUSE of his long and bitter controversy with the press, including a series of libel suits that began with a Whig weekly in Cooperstown and ended with several metropolitan dailies, James Fenimore Cooper, in a rash moment, requested his children to authorize no biography. His eldest daughter, possibly his favorite child, took his request literally, destroyed much biographical material, and directed that other material, possibly even more valuable, be buried with her. But the grandson has unquestionably done the wise thing in publishing as election from the Cooper correspondence now in the possession of the family. The novelist himself, after seeing the autobiographies and biographies of the editors involved in the contest, would have wished the public to see his side just as it was presented in the original suits.
These two volumes, though not overlooking the libel suits, introduce the reader to another Cooper, the Cooper of the family circle, for most of the letters are to members of the family while he was away from the old home on the shores of Otsego Lake. The years at Yale are represented by one letter,—a request for money, — but doubtless there were more of the same sort. Letters to a brother request that the ebullitions of youth be forgotten. Most delightful of all, however, are the letters to his wife, ‘My dearest Checkmate,’for she often had the better of the novelist at chess. Next in importance comes the correspondence with other men of letters— Irving, Bryant, Longfellow, Poe, Halleck, to mention but a few. But the correspondence contains also numerous letters to and from men prominent in painting, sculpture, and science. Because the family has so carefully avoided releasing even scraps relating to Cooper, the volumes present, with a new background, a full-length portrait of a man who had many admirable qualities, even though he was too pugnacious at times.
Two elements, not strictly correspondence, should receive passing mention. Volume I opens with ‘Some Family Memories’ which the daughter to whom reference has been made recorded for the grandchildren to read and, if they chose, to copy. The publication of these pages admits the reader intimately to the family circle. Volume II ends with Cooper’s journal for 1848, kept in a daily memorandum book. This autobiographic record leaves a picturesque glimpse of the charming village which took its name from his father and which inspired several of his own best tales.
To one who has followed carefully the many libel suits already mentioned, who has interviewed the descendants of several of the editors, and talked with many who know Cooper personally, this collection of letters shows another Cooper, not so well known, the Cooper who was thoughtful of others, interested in civic and social life of the community, and every morning before breakfast read a hundred verses in the Bible and, together with his wife, repeated ‘Direct us, O Lord . . .’ as they knelt together.
JAMES MELVIN LEE.
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