 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are on the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Gazina. If any more Coopers, literary offences. By Mark Twain. Quote The Pathfinder and The Deer Slayer stand at the head of Cooper's novels as artistic creations. There are others of his works which contain parts as perfect as are to be found in these and scenes even more thrilling. Not one can be compared with either of them as a finished whole. The defects in both of these tales are comparatively slight. They were pure works of art. Unquote Professor Lownsbury Quote The five tales reveal an extraordinary fullness of invention. One of the very greatest characters in fiction, Natty Bumpo, The Craft of the Woodsmen, The Tricks of the Trapper or The Delicate Art of the Forest were familiar to Cooper from his youth up. Unquote Professor Matthews Quote Cooper is the greatest artist in the domain of romantic fiction in America. Unquote Wilkie Collins It seems to me that it was far from right for the Professor of English Literature at Yale, the Professor of English Literature in Columbia and Wilkie Collins to deliver opinions on Cooper's literature without having read some of it. It would have been much more decorous to keep silent and let persons talk who have read Cooper. Cooper's art has some defects. In one place in Dearslayer and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record. There are 19 rules governing literary art in domain of romantic fiction. Some say 22. In Dearslayer, Cooper violated 18 of them. These 18 require 1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the Dearslayer tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in air. 2. They require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale and shall help to develop it. But as the Dearslayer tale is not a tale and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes have no rightful place in the work since there was nothing for them to develop. 3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive except in the case of corpses and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in the Dearslayer tale. 4. They require that the personages in a tale both dead and alive shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. But this detail also has been overlooked in the Dearslayer tale. 5. They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation the talk shall sound like human talk and be-talk such as human beings would likely to talk in the given circumstances and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose and a show of relevancy and remain in the neighbourhood of the subject at hand and be interesting to the reader and help out the tale and stop when people cannot think of anything more to say. But this requirement has been ignored from the beginning of the Dearslayer tale to the end of it. 6. They require that when the author describes the character of a personage in the tale the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description. But this law gets little or no attention in the Dearslayer tale as Natty Bumper's case will amply prove. 7. They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged tree-carve hand-tooled $7 friendship's offering in the beginning of a paragraph he shall not talk like a negro minstrel in the end of it. But this rule is flung down and danced upon in the Dearslayer tale. 8. They require that crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader as, quote, the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the forest, unquote, by either the author or the people in the tale. But this rule is persistently violated in the Dearslayer tale. 9. They require that the personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities that miracles alone, or if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable. But these rules are not respected in the Dearslayer tale. 10. They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the Dearslayer tale dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others and wishes they would all get drowned together. 11. They require that the characters in a tale shall be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency. But in the Dearslayer tale, this rule is vacated. In addition to these large rules, there are some little ones. These require that the author shall 12. Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it. 13. Use the right word, not its second cousin. 14. Esuse surplusage. 15. Not omit necessary details. 16. Avoid slovenliness of form. 17. Use good grammar. 18. Employ a simple and straightforward style. Even these seven are coldly and persistently violated in the Dearslayer tale. Cooper's gift in the way of invention was not a rich endowment, but such as it was he liked to work it. He was pleased with the effects and indeed he did some quite sweet things with it. In his little box of stage properties he kept six or eight cunning devices, tricks. Artifices for his savages and woodsmen to deceive and circumvent each other with. And he was never so happy as when he was working these innocent things and seeing them go. A favourite one was to make a moccasin'd person tread in the tracks of a moccasin'd enemy, and thus hide his own trail. Cooper wore out barrels and barrels of moccasins in working that trick. Another stage property that he pulled out of his box pretty frequently was the broken twig. He prized his broken twig above all the rest of his effects and worked it the hardest. It is a restful chapter in any book of his when somebody doesn't step on a dry twig and alarm all the reds and whites for two hundred yards around. Every time a Cooper person is in peril and absolute silence is worth four dollars a minute he is sure to step on a dry twig. There may be a hundred other handier things to step on but that wouldn't satisfy Cooper. Cooper requires him to turn out and find a dry twig and if he can't do it go and borrow one. In fact the Leatherstocking series ought to have been called the broken twig series. I am sorry there is not room to put in a few dozen instances of the delicate art of the forest as practised by Nutty Bumpo and some of the other Cooperian experts. Perhaps we may venture two or three samples. Cooper was a sailor and naval officer yet he gravely tells us how a vessel driving towards a lee shore in a gale is steered for a particular spot by her skipper because he knows of an undertow there which will hold her back against the gale and save her. For just pure woodcraft or sailorcraft or whatever it is isn't that neat? For several years Cooper was daily in the Society of Artillery and you ought to have noticed when a cannon ball strikes the ground it either buries itself or skips a hundred feet or so skips again a hundred feet or so and so on till it finally gets tired and rolls. Now in one place he loses some females as he always calls women in the edge of a wood near a plane at night in a fog on purpose to give Bumpo a chance to show off the delicate art of the forest before the reader. These mislaid people are hunting for a fort. They hear a cannon blast and a cannon ball presently comes rolling into the wood and stops at their feet. To the females this suggests nothing. The case is very different with the admirable Bumpo. I wish I may never know peace again if he doesn't strike out promptly and follow the track of that cannon ball across the plane in the dense fog and find the fort. Isn't it a daisy? If Cooper had any real knowledge of his ways of doing things he had a most delicate art in concealing the fact. For instance one of his acute Indian experts Chingad Shkoog, pronounced Chicago I think has lost the trail of a person he is tracking through the forest. Apparently that trail is hopelessly lost. Neither you nor I could ever have guessed the way to find it. It was very different with Chicago. Chicago was not stumped for long. He turned a running stream out of its course and there, in the slush in its old bed were that person's moccasin tracks. The current did not wash them away as it would have done in all other like cases. No, even the eternal laws of nature have to vacate when Cooper wants to put up a delicate job of woodcraft on the reader. We must be a little wary when Branda Matthews tells us that Cooper's books quote, reveal an extraordinary fullness of invention, unquote. As a rule I am quite willing to accept Branda Matthews literary judgments and applaud his lucid and graceful phrasings of them. But that particular statement needs to be taken with a few tons of salt. Bless your heart, Cooper hadn't any more invention than a horse and don't mean a high-class horse either. I mean a clothes horse. It would be very difficult to find a really clever situation in Cooper's books and still more difficult to find one of any kind which has failed to render absurd by his handling of it. Look at the episodes of The Caves and at the celebrated scuffle between Magwa and those others on the table land a few days later and at Harry Harry's queer water transit from the castle to the ark and at Dearslayer's half hour with his first corpse and at the crawl between Harry Harry and Dearslayer later and at but choose for yourself you can't go amiss. If Cooper had been an observer his inventive faculty would have worked better not more interestingly but more rationally more plausibly. Cooper's proudest creations in the way of situations suffer noticeably from the absence of the observer's protecting gift. Cooper's eye was splendidly inaccurate. Cooper seldom saw anything correctly. He saw nearly all things as through a glass eye darkly. Of course a man who cannot see the commonest little everyday matters accurately is working at a disadvantage when he is constructing a situation. In the Dearslayer tale Cooper has a stream which is 50 feet wide where it flows out of a lake. It presently narrows to 20 as it meanders along for no given reason and yet when a stream acts like that it ought to be required to explain itself. Fourteen pages later the width of the brooks outlet from the lake has suddenly shrunk 30 feet and become the narrowest part of the stream. This shrinkage is not accounted for. The stream has bends in it a sure indication that it has alluvial banks and cuts them yet these bends are only 30 and 50 feet long. If Cooper had been a nice and punctilious observer he would have noticed that the bends were often 900 feet long than short of it. Cooper made the exit of that stream 50 feet wide in the first place for no particular reason. In the second place he narrowed it to less than 20 to accommodate some Indians. He bends a sapling to form an arch over this narrow passage and conceals six Indians in its foliage. They are laying for a settler's scow or arch which is coming up the stream in its way to the lake. It is being hauled against the stiff current by a rope whose stationary end is anchored in the lake. Its rate of progress cannot be more than a mile an hour. Cooper describes the arch but pretty obscurely. In the matter of dimensions it was little more than a modern canal boat. Let us guess then that it was about 140 feet long. It was of, quote, greater brets than common, unquote. Let us guess then that it was about 16 feet wide. This leviathan had been prowling down bends which were but a third as long as itself and scraping between banks where it had only two feet of space to spare on each side. We cannot too much admire this miracle. A low-roofed dwelling occupies, quote, two-thirds of the arch's length, unquote. A dwelling 90 feet long and 16 feet wide, let us say, a kind of vestibule train. The dwelling has two rooms, each 45 feet long and 16 feet wide. Let us guess. One of them is the bedroom of the Hutter girls, Judas and Hetty. The other is the parlor in the daytime. At night it is for past bed-chamber. The arch is arriving at the stream's exit now whose width has been reduced to less than 20 feet to accommodate the Indians, say to 18. There is a foot to spare on each side of the boat. Did the Indians notice that there was going to be a tight squeeze there? Did they notice that they could make money by climbing down on the arched sapling and just stepping aboard when the arch scraped by? No, other Indians would have noticed these things, but Cooper's Indians never notice anything. Cooper thinks they are marvellous creatures for noticing, but he was almost always in error about his Indians. There was seldom a sane one among them. The arch is 140 feet long. The dwelling is 90 feet long. The idea of the Indians is to drop softly and secretly from the arched sapling to the dwelling as the arch creeps along under it at the rate of a mile an hour and butcher the family. It will take the arch a minute and a half to pass under. It will take the 90 foot dwelling a minute to pass under. Now then, what did the six Indians do? It would take you 30 years to guess and even then you would have to give it up, I believe. Therefore I will tell you what the Indians did. Their chief, a person of quite extraordinary intellect for a Cooper Indian, where really watched the canal boat as it squeezed along under him and when he had got his calculations find down to exactly the right shade, as he judged. He let go and dropped and missed the boat. That is actually what he did. He missed the house and landed in the stern of the scow. It was not much of a fall, yet it knocked him silly. He lay there unconscious. If the house had been 97 feet long he would have made the trip. The fault was Cooper's, not his. The error lay in the construction of the house. Cooper was no architect. They still remained in the roost five Indians. The boat has passed under and is now out of their reach. Let me explain what the five did. He would not be able to reason it out for yourself. Number one jumped for the boat but fell in the water a stern of it. Number two jumped for the boat but fell in the water still further a stern of it. Number three jumped for the boat and fell a good way a stern of it. Then number four jumped for the boat and fell in the water away a stern. Then even number five made a jump for the boat for he was a Cooper Indian. In that matter of intellect the difference between a Cooper Indian and the Indian that stands in front of the cigar shop is not spacious. The scow episode is really a sublime burst of invention but it does not thrill because the inaccuracy of details throws sort of air of fictitiousness and general improbability over it. This comes of Cooper's inadequacy as observer. The reader will find some examples of Cooper's high talent for an accurate observation in the account of the shooting match in The Pathfinder. Quote, A common wrought nail was driven lightly into the target its head having been first touched with paint. Unquote. The color of the paint is not stated. An important omission but Cooper deals freely in important omissions. No, after all it was not an important omission for this nail head is a hundred yards from the marksman and could not be seen at that distance no matter what its color might be. How far can the best eyes see a common house fly? A hundred yards? It is quite impossible. Very well, eyes that cannot see a house fly that is a hundred yards away cannot see an ordinary nail head at that distance for the size of the two objects is the same. It takes a keen eye to see a fly or a nail head at fifty yards, one hundred and fifty feet. Can the reader do it? The nail was lightly driven its head painted and game called. Then the Cooper miracles began. The bullet of the first marksman tipped an edge of the nail head. The next man's bullet moved the nail a little way into the target and removed all the paint. Haven't the miracles gone far enough now? Not to suit Cooper for the purpose of this whole scheme is to show off his prodigy. Dear Slayer Hawkeye long rifle leather stocking pathfinder Bumper before the ladies. Quote, Be all ready to clench it boys cried out pathfinder stepping into his friend's tracks the instant they were vacant. Never mind a new nail I can see that though the paint has gone and what I can see I can hit at a hundred yards though we're only a mosquito's eye. Be ready to clench. The rifle cracked the bullet spared its way and the head of the nail was buried in the wood uncovered by the piece of flattened lead. Unquote. Here you see is a man who could hunt flies with a rifle and command a ducal salary in a Wild West show today if we had him back with us. The recorded feat is certainly surprising just as it stands but it is not surprising enough for Cooper. Cooper and a touch. He has made pathfinder do this miracle with another man's rifle and not only that but pathfinder did not even have the advantage of loading it himself. He had everything against him and yet he made that impossible shot and not only made it but did it with absolute confidence saying be ready to clench. Now a person like that would have undertaken the same feat with a brick bat and with Cooper to help he would have achieved it too. Pathfinder showed off handsomely that day before the ladies. His very first feat a thing which no Wild West show can touch. He was standing with a group of marksmen a hundred yards from the target mind one Jasper raised his rifle and drove the centre of the bullseye. Then the quartermaster fired the target exhibited no results this time there was a laugh it's a dead miss said Major Lundy Pathfinder waited an impressive moment or two then said in that calm indifferent no role way of his no major he has covered Jasper's bullet as will be seen if anyone will take the trouble to examine the target wasn't it remarkable how could he see that little pellet flies through the air and enter that distant bullet hole yet that is what he did for nothing is impossible to a Cooper person did any of those people have any deep seated doubts about this thing no for that would imply sanity and these were all Cooper people quote Pathfinder's skill and for his quickness and accuracy of sight was so profound and general that the instant he made his declaration the spectators began to distrust their own opinions and a dozen rushed to the target in order to ascertain the fact there sure enough it was found that the quartermaster's bullet had gone through the hole made by Jasper's and that too so accurately as to require a minute examination to be certain of the circumstance which however was soon clearly established by discovering one bullet over the other in the stump against which the target was placed unquote they made a minute examination but never mind how could they know that there were two bullets in that hole without digging the latest one out for neither probe nor eyesight could prove the presence of any more than one bullet did they dig as we shall see it is the Pathfinder's turn now he steps out before the ladies takes aim and fires but alas here is the disappointment an incredible and unimaginable disappointment for the target's aspect is unchanged there is nothing there but that same old bullet hole quote if one dared to hint at such a thing cried Major Duncan has also missed the target unquote as nobody has missed it yet the also was not necessary but never mind about that for the Pathfinder is going to speak quote no no Major said he confidently that would be a risky declaration I didn't load the piece and can't say what was in it but if it was lead he will find the bullet driving down those of the quartermaster Pathfinder a shout from the target announced the truth of this assertion unquote is the miracle sufficient as it stands not for Cooper the Pathfinder speaks again as he quote now slowly advanced towards the stage occupied by the females unquote quote that's not all boys that's not all if you find the target touched at all soon to amiss the quartermaster cut the wood but you'll find no wood cut by that last messenger unquote the miracle is at last complete he knew doubtless saw in the distance of 100 yards that his bullet had passed into the hole without fraying the edges there were now three bullets in that hole three bullets embedded processionally in the body of the stump everybody knew this somehow or other and yet nobody had dug any of them out to make sure Cooper is not a close observer but he is interesting he is certainly always that no matter what happens and he is more interesting when he is not noticing what he is about than when he is this is a considerable merit the conversations in the Cooper books have a curious sound in our modern years to believe that such talk really ever came out of people's mouths would be to believe that there was a time when time was of no value to a person who thought he had something to say when it was the custom to spread a two minute remark out to ten when a man's mouth was a rolling mill and busied itself all day long in turning four foot pigs of thought into thirty foot bars of conventional railroad iron by attenuation when subjects were seldom faithfully stuck to but the talk wandered all around and arrived nowhere when conversations consisted mainly of irrelevancies with here and there a relevancy a relevancy with an embarrassed look as not being able to explain how it got there Cooper was certainly not a master in the construction of dialogue inaccurate observation defeated him here as it defeated him in so many other enterprises in his life he failed to notice that the man who talks corrupt English six days in the week must and will talk it on the seventh and can't help himself in the dear slayer story he lets dear slayer talk the showiest kind of book talk sometimes and at other times the basest of base dialects for instance when someone asks him if he has a sweetheart and if so where she abides this is his majestic answer quote she is in the forest hanging from the boughs of the trees in a soft rain in the dew on the open grass the clouds that float about in the blue heavens the birds that sing in the wood the sweet springs where a slake may thirst and in all the other glorious gifts that come from God's providence unquote and he preceded that a little before with this quote it concerns me as all things a friend concerns a friend unquote and this is another of his remarks quote if I was engine born now I might tell of this or carry in the scalp and burst of the exploit to fall the whole tribe of if my enemy had only been a bear unquote and so on we cannot imagine such a thing as a veteran scotch commander in chief comporting himself like a windy melodramatic actor but Cooper could on one occasion Alice and Cora were being chased by the French through a fog in the neighborhood of their father's fort quote cried an eager pursuer who seemed to direct the operations of the enemy stand firm and be ready my gallant 60th suddenly exclaimed a voice above them wait to see the enemy fire low and sweep the glaces the father exclaimed a piercing cry from out the mist it is I Alice thy own Elsie spare save your daughters hold shouted the former speaker in the awful tones of parental agony the sound reaching even to the woods and rolling back in a solemn echo it is she God has restored me my children throw open the sallyport to the field 60th to the field I'm not a trigger lest you kill my lambs drove off those dogs of France with your steel unquote Cooper's word sense was singularly dull when a person has a poor ear for music he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it he keeps near the tune but is not the tune when a person has a poor ear for words the result is a literary flatting and sharpening you perceive what he is intending to say but you also perceive that he does not say it this is Cooper he was not a word musician his ear was satisfied with the approximate words I will furnish some circumstantial evidence in support of this charge my instances are gathered from the half a dozen pages of the tale called deerslayer he uses verbal for oral precision for facility phenomena for marvels necessary for predetermined unsophisticated for primitive preparation for expectancy rebuked for subdued dependent on for resulting from fact for condition fact for conjecture precaution for caution explained for determine mortified for disappointed meretricious for factitious materially for considerably decreasing for deepening increasing for disappearing embedded for enclosed treacherous for hostile stood for stooped softened for replaced rejoined for remarked situation for condition different for differing insensible for unsentient brevity for celerity distrusted for suspicious mental imbecility for imbecility eyes for sight counteracting for opposing funeral obsequies for obsequies there have been daring people in the world who claimed that Cooper could write English but they are all dead now all dead but Lonesbury I don't remember that Lonesbury makes the claim in so many words still he makes it for he says that deerslayer is quote a pure work of art pure in that connection means faultless in all details and language is a detail if Mr. Lonesbury had only compared Cooper's English with the English he writes himself but it is plain that he didn't and so it is likely that he imagines until this day that Cooper's is as clean and compact as his own now I feel sure deep down in my heart that Cooper wrote about the poorest English in our language and that the English of deerslayer is the very worst that even Cooper ever wrote I may be mistaken but it does seem to me that deerslayer is not a work of art in any sense it does seem to me that it is destitute of every detail that goes to the making of a work of art in truth it seems to me that deerslayer is just simply a literary delirium tremens a work of art it has no invention it has no order, system, sequence or result it has no life likeness no thrill, no stir no seeming of reality its characters are confusedly drawn and by their acts and words they prove that they are not the sort of people the author claims that they are its humour is pathetic its pathos is funny its conversations are oh undescribable its English a crime against the language counting these out what is left is art I think we must all admit that end of Fennymour Cooper's literary offences by Mark Twain read by Gesine in October 2006