Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences
describes the ark, 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 one hundred and forty feet long. It was of “greater breadth
than common.” Let us guess, then, that it was about sixteen 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 log dwelling occupies “two-thirds of the ark's length”--a
dwelling ninety feet long and sixteen feet wide, let us say a kind of
vestibule train. The dwelling has two rooms--each forty-five feet long
and sixteen feet wide, let us guess. One of them is the bedroom of the
Hutter girls, Judith and Hetty; the other is the parlor in the daytime,
at night it is papa's bedchamber. The ark is arriving at the stream's
exit now, whose width has been reduced to less than twenty feet to
accommodate the Indians--say to eighteen. 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 out of that arched sapling and just stepping aboard when
the ark scraped by? No, other Indians would have noticed these things,
but Cooper's Indians never notice anything. Cooper thinks they are
marvelous creatures for noticing, but he was almost always in error
about his Indians. There was seldom a sane one among them.
The ark is one hundred and forty feet long; the dwelling is ninety feet
long. The idea of the Indians is to drop softly and secretly from the
arched sapling to the dwelling as the ark creeps along under it at the
rate of a mile an hour, and butcher the family. It will take the ark a
minute and a half to pass under. It will take the ninety foot dwelling
a minute to pass under. Now, then, what did the six Indians do? It would
take you thirty 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,
warily watched the canal-boat as it squeezed along under him, and when
he had got his calculations fined down to exactly the right shade, as
he judged, he let go and dropped. And missed the house! 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 ninety-seven 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.
There 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--you would not be able to reason it out for yourself.
No. 1 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water astern of it. Then No.
2 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water still farther astern of it.
Then No. 3 jumped for the boat, and fell a good way astern of it. Then
No. 4 jumped for the boat, and fell in the water away astern. Then
even No. 5 made a jump for the boat--for he was a Cooper Indian. In
the matter of intellect, the difference between a Cooper Indian and the
Indian that stands in front of the cigarshop is not spacious. The scow
episode is really a sublime burst of invention; but it does not
thrill, because the inaccuracy of the details throws a sort of air of
fictitiousness and general improbability over it. This comes of Cooper's
inadequacy as an observer.
The reader will find some examples of Cooper's high talent for
inaccurate observation in the account of the shooting-match in The
Pathfinder.
“A common wrought nail was driven lightly into the target, its
head having been first touched with paint.”
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
marksmen, and could not be seen by them 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 nailhead at that distance, for
the size of the two objects is the same. It takes a keen eye to see a
fly or a nailhead 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 chipped an edge
off the nail-head; the next man's bullet drove 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, Deerslayer--
Hawkeye--Long-Rifle--Leather-Stocking--Pathfinder--Bumppo before
the ladies.
“'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 is
gone, and what I can see I can hit at a hundred yards, though
it were only a mosquito's eye. Be ready to clench!'
“The rifle cracked, the bullet sped its way, and the head of the nail
was buried in the wood, covered by the piece of flattened lead.”
There, you see, is a man who could hunt flies with a rifle, and command
a ducal salary in a Wild West show to-day 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 adds a touch. He has made
Pathfinder do this miracle with another man's rifle; and not only that,
but Pathfinder did not have even 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 that same feat
with a brickbat, and with Cooper to help he would have achieved it, too.
Pathfinder showed off handsomely that day before the ladies. His
very first feat was a thing which no Wild West show can touch. He was
standing with the group of marksmen, observing--a hundred yards from the
target, mind; one Jasper raised his rifle and drove the centre of the
bull's-eye. Then the Quartermaster fired. The target exhibited no result
this time. There was a laugh. “It's a dead miss,” said Major Lundie.
Pathfinder waited an impressive moment or two; then said, in that calm,
indifferent, know-it-all way of his, “No, Major, he has covered Jasper's
bullet, as will be seen if any one will take the trouble to examine the
target.”
Wasn't it remarkable! How could he see that little pellet fly 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.
“The respect for Pathfinder's skill and for his 'quickness and
accuracy of sight'” (the italics [' '] are mine) “was so
profound and general, that the instant he made this 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.”
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? No; 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 a disappointment; an incredible, an unimaginable
disappointment--for the target's aspect is unchanged; there is nothing
there but that same old bullet-hole!
“'If one dared to hint at such a thing,' cried Major Duncan, 'I
should say that the Pathfinder has also missed the target!'”
As nobody had missed it yet, the “also” was not necessary; but never
mind about that, for the Pathfinder is going to speak.
“'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, you will find the bullet driving
down those of the Quartermaster and Jasper, else is not my name
Pathfinder.'
“A shout from the target announced the truth of this
assertion.”
Is the miracle sufficient as it stands? Not for Cooper. The Pathfinder
speaks again, as he “now slowly advances towards the stage occupied by
the females”:
“'That's not all, boys, that's not all; if you find the target
touched at all, I'll own to a miss. The Quartermaster cut the
wood, but you'll find no wood cut by that last messenger.”
The miracle is at last complete. He knew--doubtless saw--at the distance
of a hundred yards--that his bullet had passed into the hole without
fraying the edges. There were now three bullets in that one hole--three
bullets embedded processionally in the body of the stump back of the
target. 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
ears. 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 conversational 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 of his. He even 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 Deerslayer story he lets
Deerslayer talk the showiest kind of book-talk sometimes, and at other
times the basest of base dialects. For instance, when some one asks
him if he has a sweetheart, and if so, where she abides, this is his
majestic answer:
“'She's 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