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MATTSON, Jeremy Lawrence, 1936- THE CONFLICT OF CIVILIZATION AND THE WILDERNESS: A STUDY OF A THEME IN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND PAINTING OF THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY.

The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1972 Language and Literature, modem

University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan

© Copyright by

Jeremy Lawrence Mattson

1972

THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. THE CONFLICT OF CIVILIZATION AND THE WILDERNESS:

A STUDY OF A THEME IN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND

PAINTING OF THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By

Jeremy Lawrence Mattson, B.A., M.A.

The Ohio State University 1972

Approved by PLEASE NOTE:

Some pages may have

indistinct print.

Filmed as received.

University Microfilms, A Xerox Education Company ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For the pursuance and completion of this study I am indebted to the following:

The Graduate School, The Ohio State University, for financial assistance to cover the photographic work necessary for the analysis.

Dorothy Bishop, Department of Arts and Sciences, International

Business Machines Corporation; John K. Howat, Associate Curator in

Charge of American Paintings and Sculpture, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Peter 0. Marlow, Curator of Painting and Sculpture, Wadsworth

Atheneum; Linn Orear, Reproductions Secretary, Fogg Art Museum; Susan

Platt, Curatorial Assistant, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of

Design; and Mrs. Patricia Zarelli, Department of Paintings, Museum of

Fine Arts, Boston; for their assistance in gaining access to both paintings and reproductions.

Sue Duckworth, University College, Michigan State University, for the typing and proofreading of the manuscript, with considerable patience.

Julian Markels, who provided the continuing critical evaluation of the manuscript, and without whose perspective on the material I could not have completed the study.

And finally my wife, Joan, whose encouragement and love kept me going throughout.

ii VITA

April 25, 1936 . . . Born - Evanston, Illinois

1958 ...... A.B., Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio

1963-1965 ...... Graduate Assistant, English Department, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

1965 ...... M.A., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

1965-1970 ...... Teaching Associate, English Department, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

1970-1972 ...... Instructor, Department of American Thought and Language, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: Nineteenth-Century American Literature

Studies in the Relationship of Literature and Painting. Professor Julian Markels

Studies in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century American Architecture and Interior Design

Studies in the Relationship of Violence and Technology in Twentieth- Century American Culture

iii TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... ii

VITA ...... iii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS...... V

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHAPTER I: James Kirke Paulding ...... 10

CHAPTER II: Washington Irving ...... 31

CHAPTER III: Washington Allston ...... 51

CHAPTER IV: William Cullen Bryant 77 •

CHAPTER V: Thomas C o l e ...... 99

CHAPTER VI: James Fenimore Cooper ...... 152

EPILOGUE ...... 201

LIST OF WORKS CONSULTED...... 206

iv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Plate Page

I Washington Allston, Landscape, 1798 ...... 54

II Washington Allston, Rising of a Thunderstorm at S e a ...... 57

III Joshua Shaw, The Deluge...... 59

IV Washington Allston, Elijah in the Desert ...... 63

V Washington Allston, Moonlit Landscape ...... 68

VI Washington Allston, Landscape: Evening ...... 70

VII Washington Allston, American Scenery ...... ‘75

VIII Thomas Cole, View of Monte V i d e g o ...... 103

IX Thomas Cole, View Near Ticonderoga ...... 105

X Thomas Cole, View Near Conway, New Hampshire ...... 108

XI Thomas Cole, Beach Mountain House ...... 113

XII Thomas Cole, Mt. Chocorua...... 118

XIII Thomas Cole, Northwest Bay, Lake Winnepesaukee ...... 120

XIV Thomas Cole, View of the White M o u n t a i n s ...... 124

XV Thomas Cole, Sunny Morning on the Hudson River ...... 127

XVI Thomas Cole, Landscape with Tree Trunks ...... 132

XVII Thomas Cole, The Last of the M o h i c a n s ...... 138

XVIII Thomas Cole, John the Baptist in the Wilderness...... 142

XIX Thomas Cole, Expulsion from the Garden of E d e n ...... 146

XX Thomas Cole, Kaaterskill Falls ...... 148

v vi

XXI Thomas Cole, Wolf in the G l e n ......

XXII Thomas Cole, Landscape (reverse of Watkin's Glen) ...... 152 INTRODUCTION

During the first third of the nineteenth century, a period of extreme national self-consciousness, the American artist attempted to define his nationality by contrasting it with the English or

European varieties. It was an obvious ploy; the Frenchman, for example, was a known entity, and so was the Englishman. But who was the American? It was the American who had to prove himself, and no one felt the necessity of this more than James Kirlce Paulding, a

New Yorker by birth, a writer by inclination, and a government offi­ cial by profession. Much of his writing was an implicit attempt to define the American nationality by contrast with the English;

the titles of two works make this concern explicit: John Bull and

Brother Jonathan (1812) and A Sketch of Old England, by ja New England

Man (1822). In a short passage from the latter work he took the

English to task for their royal customs, so notably absent in the young American democracy. The section is entitled "The Royal and the

Presidential Household":

To me it was really amusing to note the uncouth names of these [royal] offices, and the pitiful functions of others, that are filled by some of the highest no­ bility of the kingdom. It is in these, as well as in more important particulars, that the radical, essential, and irreconcilable difference between this people and government, and ours, is clearly indicated. Our people would laugh ready to split their sides, or, if they did not laugh, they would groan in spirit, to see these men, to whom they had been accustomed to look

1 2

up with reverence or respect, deriving dignity, impor­ tance, and wealth, from the performance of the most menial offices, such as the lowest white man among them would not deign to discharge for the highest.

It was quite true that the President of the United States was not

encumbered with anything like the English Royal household; this was

part of the past that Paulding and other Americans, with such relish, were breaking away from. But in the overt attempt to escape the

English past, Paulding produced an analysis of that past rather than

a positive treatment of the American present. Thus Paulding's self-

consciousness led him, ironically, to a consciousness of England.

The self-conscious approach to American nationality was generally

quite sterile. Doctor Walter Channing, brother of the Unitarian and-

abolitionist William Ellery Channing and father of the transcenden-

talist Ellery Channing, in his "Essay on American Language and

Literature," (1815), argued that the originality of American litera­

ture depended on the originality of its language, and since it used

a language in common with England, America could not soon hope to

enjoy an original literature. Channing was so much under the influ­

ence of English letters that he could not imagine the young republic

ever producing anything comparable, much less distinctively its own.

And he went so far as to say, finally, that America possessed no ft national character at all. Channing's self-conscious stance blinded

•'‘From James Kirke Paulding, A Sketch of Old England, by a New England Man (New York, 1822), reprinted in W.I. Paulding, The Liter­ ary Life of J. K. Paulding (New York, 1867) , p . 67.

o Walter Channing, "Essay on American Language and Literature," The North American Review, I (1815), 311. him to what was American, just as much as Paulding’s self-conscious­ ness did, in a different way. But both men, when they were not

explicitly involved in controversy between the traditional English culture and the upstart American one, exhibited by their lives, rather

than talked about, what it was to be American.

Dr. Channing, according to an announcement in the back of the

same issue of The North American Review in which his essay on the

American language appeared, was appointed the first lecturer in ob­

stetrics (then called "midwifery") in the medical college of Harvard

University. This was the beginning of a medical career that spanned

a good part of the nineteenth century. He was an early editor of

the New England Journal of Medicine, he helped found the Boston

Lying-In Hospital (1832), and he- was a pioneer in the use of anes­

thetics in childbirth cases.^ He had a fundamental part in the

development of American medicine. His life, thus, was an illustration

of that elusive term, the American nationality. Similarly, James

Kirke Paulding, in dealing directly with the problems that he found

in America, provides another illustration of the American nationality.

The central problem that captured Paulding's attention in. most of his

literary work was the conflict between the American, who was building

a society, and the wilderness, the land which the American had to

contend with in this effort. It was in his attempt to face this con­

flict rather than in utterances about the differences between the

English and the Americans that he illustrated the American nationality.

^Dictionary of American Biography. [Henry R. Viets, "Walter Channing," DAB (N.Y.: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1937), pp. 3-4.] 4

It is possible to contend, therefore, that the American nation­ ality is most clearly illustrated when the American is least involved in a self-conscious, international rivalry. The psychological truth of this, is, I think, manifest. When an individual is embroiled in a rivalry, he is, to the extent of that embroilment, influenced by the rival. On the contrary, we see an individual as most nearly

"himself" when he has the self-assurance of his own being. And one major characteristic of this self-assurance is the ability to define and deal with those problems that are central to the individual's existence.

An attempt, therefore, to define the American nationality at any given period in our history should begin with the selection of those Americans who appear to have dealt with the central problems of American existence. Clearly, many different kinds of Americans could be used for such a study. The farmer, the politician, and the businessman would be American types familiar to all. But less famil­ iar, and in some ways more difficult to deal with, are the literary men and painters whose work reflects, analytically or symbolically, the same concerns that motivate the American types just mentioned.4 This is not to say that the farmer, politician, and businessman saw

^John A. Kouwenhoven has pointed out that our arts are generally considered less American than our other achievements. "In one way or another almost everyone, native or foreign, who has commented on our artistic history has borne witness to the disparity between our achievements in the arts and in the realms of politics, economics, and social organization .... And thus the theory of a transplanted culture leads us at last to the paradoxical conclusion that thou art in America is American it is singularly less so than the acts and institutions which embody our history." From The Arts in Modern American Civilization (New York, 1967), pp. 2-3. Original title: Made in America (1948). literature and painting as the embodiment of their aspirations. Quite to the contrary, the men of agriculture, commerce, and politics prob­ ably knew nothing about the literature and painting of their country­ men. But American writers and painters were, nonetheless, directly

involved in the same problems that faced all Americans. And one of the major problems in early nineteenth-century America was the conflict

that Paulding tried to face: the conflict between the American civ­

ilization and the wilderness.

That there was a conflict between American civilization and the wilderness needs no illustration. Today, even a schoolboy is con­ versant with the problems created by the rapid expansion of the

American republic, and the high cost of this expansion in terms of natural resources and human resources, the latter specifically in

terms of the destruction of the Indian (i.e., native American) cul­

ture. Assuming this to be so, then it is fair to say that a realistic

response to American experience is one that accepts the objective

existence of a conflict between American civilization and the wilder­

ness. Any response to American experience, therefore, that colors

the conflict (i.e., informs it with an idea) is, to the extent of

that coloration, idealistic.

Idealism and realism, so defined, are clearly theoretical ex­

tremes. The mere verbalization of objective reality gives it to a

certain extent ideal form. On the other hand, the total elimination

of objective reality from an idealization would remove from that ideal­

ization its basis of meaning. The application of these terms to works

of art, therefore, requires a positioning of the works on the con­ tinuum between the two theoretical extremes of realism and idealism.

In looking at selected American literary works and paintings of the first third of the nineteenth century, I find several variations on this conflict and its resolutions. Two of the most active American writers of the early nineteenth century, James Kirke Paulding and

Washington Irving, were generally classified as realists. But their realism had its limits. It is true that they accepted the reality of the conflict between civilization and the wilderness, but neither was able to offer a workable solution. Paulding saw man as the destroyer of the wilderness, or sometimes, its victim. His solution, when he had one, was ironic humor, appropriate for the observer of society, but not a practical solution. It was more a comment on the issue than a treatment of the problems involved. Washington Irving,

Paulding's friend and collaborator, and an equally astute observer of society, saw the American society similarly as a destroyer of the wilderness, and was similarly lacking in solutions for the problem, even though he occasionally opted for an idealistic retreat into a fanciful landscape. But Irving knew what some more idealistic

Americans failed to grasp— that it was not possible to transcend time as a way of solving the conflict of civilization and the wilder­ ness. Thus, both Paulding and Irving approached the problem with the clear vision of a realist, accepting the objective existence of the conflict, but neither could provide a solution other than an aesthetic one (Paulding's irony and Irving's fancy). Such solutions are by definition more idealistic than realistic since they are not capable of being applied to the practical problems of existence. Other artists, however, were less willing to accept the reality of the conflict. Their response to American experience was, there­ fore, more idealistic than Paulding's or Irving's. With a few excep­ tions, the paintings of Washington Allston exhibit an idealism that consists in the imposition of a human emotion upon the landscape.

The emotion of his mature paintings is generally so pervasive that it creates a perfect harmony between man and nature. There is, thus, almost no conflict between man and nature apparent in Allston's work.

E. P. Richardson describes Allston's art as an "art of memory" which appears to transcend time: "His images of the beauty of a tree against the sky, of a plant growing by the roadside, or of distant effects of light over mountain and sea are images distilled by time and affection and translated into the harmonies of art."^

Another idealist, William Cullen Bryant, differed from Allston in that he recognized a conflict between civilization and the wilderness, but his vision of this conflict was colored by a religious emotion.

In his poetry of the 1820's, this was the center of his idealism.

While he saw the conflict, he resolved it neatly in religious terms.

(In the early 1830's, however, a less idealistic, darker view begins to emerge in Bryant's poetry.)

Very few artists of the period show the conflicting tendencies of realism and idealism as clearly as Thomas Cole. He was capable of portraying the conflict between civilization and the wilderness with the realistic clarity of Paulding or Irving, while at the same time

^E. P. Richardson, Washington Allston: A Study of the Romantic Artist in America (New York, 1967; orig. 1948), p. 147. he produced landscapes informed with emotional harmony similar to what can be found in Allston's work or with the religious peace of a Bryant poem. But unlike Bryant he was not able to harmonize the conflict itself in a vision of a newfound Eden. Rather, Cole becomes more and more concerned with the fact that the passage of time makes impossible the existence of an Eden. And this, on a universal level, was the subject of his large-scale series paintings, The Course of

Empire and The Voyage of Life.

James Eenimore Cooper, like Cole, demonstrated the conflicting. tendencies of realism and idealism, but on the balance it is his realistic vision that is most characteristic of his response to

American experience. And he is the only artist in this study who provides a realistic resoultion of the conflict between American civilization and the wilderness. He was similar to Cole, and unlike

Allston and Bryant, in that he recognized the impossibility of an

Eden in the New World. Yet, he came closer than Cole to finding a resolution because, instead of dealing with the problem in universal terms, he dealt with it in national terms, in terms of the recent history of the young republic. In The Pioneers, The Prairie, and The

Last of the Mohicans, he depicted the human cost of progress— of time— in the character of Leatherstocking. And he offered a tentative res­ olution of the conflict in the figure of Judge Temple.

This selection obviously does not exhaust the literature and painting of the first third of the nineteenth century. But I have chosen to deal with a few major works of major figures at this stage of our cultural development, and out of this have isolated certain distinctive responses to a central conflict in American experience.

It is not possible for me to determine if any one of these deserves to be considered the essential part of American nationality. Within the limits of this study, I do not have the necessary historical per­ spective. But I will be able to show in the analyses that follow the variety and complexity of one facet of American nationality in an early period of our history. The responses of six artists to a single broad issue— the conflict between civilization and the wilderness-comprise therefore a beginning of a search for the meaning of American nationality. CHAPTER I

JAMES KIRKE PAULDING

The wilderness loomed large in the writing of James Kirke

Paulding. In each of his four major works between 1818 and 1828 he offered a perspective on the wilderness in conflict with advancing civilization. In The Backwoodsman (1818), a narrative poem, the wilderness is destroyed by the inevitable progress of civilization, but the progress is not viewed as an untarnished victory. By rec­

ognizing the value of what has to be destroyed, Paulding suggests

the white man should accept the guilt that accompanies the progress

of civilization. But Paulding failed to end the poem in a manner

consistent with his development of the conflict. Basil, his hero

emerges victorious, enjoying the fruits of victory. If Paulding had

developed to their logical conclusions the issues he raised, then

the white American would have learned to accept the inevitable qiult.

In Letters from the South (1817), a travel book, Paulding began to

develop the figure of a frontiersman, who, in contrast to the back­ woodsman of his narrative poem, is not threatened by the wilderness

and thus seems to be a possible compromise between civilization and

the wilderness. But this frontier figure is not developed sufficiently

to become a legitimate resolution of the conflict. In fact, the same

travel book includes a satiric resolution of the conflict in a descrip-

10 11 tion of the white man's prostitution of Natural Bridge in Virginia.

The ironic humor of this passage turns out to be Paulding's most frequent response to conflict between civilization and the wilderness.

In Koningsmarke (1823), a satiric novel, Paulding presented the early settlers'struggle with the wilderness but coated the otherwise pathet­ ic, if not tragic, resolution with a layer of ironic humor. Then in

New Mirror for Travellers (1828), another travel book, he used a mixture of understatement and humor to turn the conflict into praise of his country. Such praise, not unlike the patriotism in the false conclusion of The Backwoodsman, is a less common response for Paulding than ironic humor. But both share a substantial idealism because both responses color reality with an idea.

Let us see how the conflict develops. In The Backwoodsman, the hero Basil heads westward to find his piece of land to work. The power of the wilderness becomes quite clear to him, first in the form of a thunderstorm:

Brave was our BASIL, as became a man, Yet still his blood a little cooler ran, 'Twixt fear and wonder, at that murmur drear, That every moment wax'd more loud and near. The riddle soon was read— at last it came, And nature trembled to her inmost frame; The forest roar'd, the everlasting oak In writing agonies the storm bespoke, The live leaves scatter'd wildly every where, Whirl'd round in madd'ning circles in the air, The stoutest limbs were scatter'd all around, The stoutest trees a stouter master found, Crackling, and crashing, down they thund'ring go, And seem to crush the shrinking rocks below: Then the thick rain in gathering torrents pour'd, Higher the river rose and louder roar'd,

• * • A Hundred cataracts, unknown before, Rush down the mountain's side with fearful roar, And as with foaming fury down they go, Loose the firm rocks and thunder them below; Blue light'nings from the dark cloud's bosom sprung, Like serpents, menacing with forked tongue, While many a sturdy oak that stiffly brav'd The threat'ning hurricane that round it rav'd, Shiver'd beneath its bright resistless flash, Came tumbling down amain with fearful crash.1

Paulding presented the thunderstorm in images of madness: writhing

agonies, scatter'd wildly, maddening circles, foaming fury, raving madness. The storm wreaks havoc on both man and the landscape. Thus

nature is self-destructive: "A sturdy oak . . . came tumbling down

amain with fearful crash." Such a force is clearly uncontrollable; man, within the realm of nature's storms, is powerless. His only

recourse, following the example of Basil, is stoically to endure,

with "steady visage and calm eye."

The poet, of course, has different ways of controlling his sub­

ject. Throughout this long narrative poem, the heroic couplet imposes

a form on the material that slightly but significantly lessens the

force and energy of the wilderness. And since Paulding does not alter

his prosody, this inhibiting factor remains a constant. But the aes­

thetic order produced is also partly a function of the distance between

the poet and the event, and this distance varies throughout the poem.

In this passage, the poet is rather far removed from the storm, and

thus its power, while felt, is somewhat subdued.

A force almost as potent against the westward-moving white man

is the Indian, the human representative of the wilderness. In The

Backwoodsman, the storms and the Indians combine to face down the

■kjames Kirke Paulding, The Backwoodsman, A Poem (Philadelphia, 1818), pp. 48-50. 13 white man. In the end, Basil wins, but along the way there is much lost— by the white man, by the Indians, and in the destruction of the wilderness itself. In the final battle between whites and Indians, there is really no decision, even though ostensibly the whites are victorious. Paulding described the aftermath of the battle thus:

a strapping blade Flat on his back, beneath yon elm is laid; I know him well, a lone and sad exile, From his lost Paradise, green Erin's Isle; Hither he came, but sure against his will, To murder those, to whom he wish'd no ill, And when he came, in sooth he hardly knew What brought him here, or what he had to do— Until he fell, and with his latest sigh, Utter'd, "I know it now— I came to die." Beside him lay an Indian, stript half bare, With one hand twisted in a Whiteman's hair, While still the other grasp'd the scalping knife, Yet smoking with the warmth of recent life. And near the Indian sprawl'd a lusty lad, In homespun coat, and linen trowsers clad, Whose head bereft of half its flaxen hair, Lay reeking with the skull exposed and bare. This luckless lad, though but a village boy— Was an old father's pride, a mother's joy— And when they heard their only son was slain, 'Tis said they ne'er held up their heads a g a i n . ^

These couplets may be rather pedestrian; they may be unoriginal.

But the attitude of the writer is honest. Paulding is not avoiding the carnage before his eyes. The two white youths and the Indian are simply and starkly dead. There is no relief, no high patriotism, or other moral recompense. The first had discovered finally why he had come west: "I came to die." And the parents of the second white boy were apparently not at all satisfied with the romance of the ex­ panding frontier; their own frontier contracted: "Tis said they ne'er

^Ibid., pp. 164-165. 14 held up their heads again."

The conflict present in the passage is more intense than that in the thunderstorm passage just quoted because Paulding brings the reader into closer contact with the violence of the scene by focusing sharply on such details as the Indian’s hand twisted in a white man's hair, a "smoking" scalping knife, the homespun coat and linen trousers on one body, and a skull, after scalping, exposed and bare. Having thus involved the reader in the actual violence, he then shifts his attention to the larger issue, the reaction of the parents of the dead.

And here he allows no consolation, no satisfactory resolution.

This climactic battle in The Backwoodsman shows the white man to be not only the victim but also the destroyer, since the human exten­ sion of the wilderness, the Indian, suffers as well. This latter function of the white man actually receives the greater emphasis in the poem. Man’s destructive character is established early in the poem:

. . . vain it is, that rich and bounteous Heav'n, To wretched man this smiling Earth has giv’n, And all in vain its winning face displays Such beauties to allure his reckless gaze, While this same rash, malignant, reas'ning worm, Bereft of all that's human but the form, Pollutes her bosom with his kindred blood, Turns to rank poison all her proffer'd good, And plays before his Maker's sick'ning eyes The serpent of this blooming P a r a d i s e . ^

This passage foreshadows the conclusion of the tale. Basil is going west toward a tragic clash with the embittered Indians, out of which no one really emerges victorious, although the white man is the nom-

3Ibid., p. 37. 15 inal victor. The victory implies distinct losses, the loss of nat­ ural, unspoiled landscape and the loss of a race— the Indian. The loss of landscape is not actually realized in this poem, although it is occasionally prophesied. As for the Indian, however, we are able to watch his demise. One of the Indian types in American literature is the solitary Indian, usually a decaying figure to the extent that white civilization has swallowed him up. Copper's Chingachgook is the prime example of this; his importance varies according to hisage and, of course, the advancement of white civilization. In Paulding's poem, we find the solitary Indian to be a prophetic maniac, ranging in an isolated, dar, and foreboding glen in the woods:

like maniac oft he trod, And curs'd the white-man, and the white-man's god. Once the proud painted chief of warriors brave, Whose bones now bleaching lay without a grave, A thousand red-men own'd his savage sway, And follow'd on where'er he led the way, Rang'd the wide forest many a countless mile, And hail'd him lord of cruelty and wile— Now like a girdled tree, unleaf'd he stood, The only relick of a stately wood, The last of all his race— he lived alone, His name, his being, and his haunts unknown.

The maniacal Prophet, once a chief, represents a dying civilization.

It is not accidental that he is linked to nature in two ways: 1) he is presumably a maniac, and nature, in the sudden thunderstorm, was likened to a maniac; and 2) in the present passage he is likened to a tree, "the only relick of a stately wood." But he is girdled, picked, as it were, for slaughter. The Indian, then, shares the com-

^Ibid., pp. 88-89. 16 plexity of the wilderness. Neither Is an unqualified good in Pauld­ ing's eyes; yet Paulding is not happy to see them destroyed, and both are so destined.

The maniac Prophet presents his point of view at some length in a debate, more of less climactic, with an aged Christian Pilgrim.

The debate, occurring late in Book V, serves as prelude to the final battle between the whites and Indians in Book VI. One of the as­ sertions in the Prophet's argument is that Christianity has perverted the Indian:

"I know what things your Christian Indians are! 0! I have seen them naked and forlorn, Of every attribute of man hood shorn, Skulking from town to town, a worthless race, Earning the wages of their deep disgrace, Shooting for liquor with the self same bow, That laid the red-main of the forest low, And sunk beneath the lowest Chirstian knave, Take kicks and buffets from the white-man's slave; These are the products of your Christian love, Men while on earth, and angels when above!"5

The aged Christian Pilgrim presents his counter-arguments, but there is really no decision in the final battle. What is clear is the destruction of a race, in this case symbolic of the destruction of the wilderness.

Paulding presented the conflict of civilization and the wilder­ ness clearly enough. But in The Backwoodsman he failed to accept the consequences of that conflict. Basil, as he grows older, becomes an influential man on the frontier, on the basis of the heroic achieve­ ments of his youth. And the country itself prospers, with no apparent

5Ibid., p. 125. 17 regard for the cost of its prosperity:

Again Peace shower'd her blessings o'er the land, And Happiness and Freedom, hand in hand Went gayly round and knock'd at every door, Hailing the rich, and biding with the poor, While wondering nations watch'd our bright career, And look'd, and long'd to seek a refuge here, From all the countless pack of galling ills That slaves still suffer when the tyrant wills.

Basil and the young republic are thus bright examples for the rest of the world to follow. This brings the poem to a neat, patriotic conclusion, but it belies the implications of the conflict that

Paulding presents in the poem. The progress of civilization would inevitably destroy the wilderness. And Paulding usually regretted this fact.

In Letters from the South, Paulding showed that the American left dirty footprints wherever he went. The following passage shows these footprints or "traces of man":

The sides of these [rivers] are sometimes skirted with narrow strips of meadow; and when this is the case, you may be pretty certain somebody lives near. The traces of impetuous torrents, now dry, or only displaying here and there a pool of clear water among the rocks, occur frequently, and sometimes form the road over which you travel. Little is seen of the traces of man, except the tracts of the road, or occasionally a column of smoke rising at a distance, which gives a token of his being near, but which not seldom turns out to proceed from the unextinguished fire of a west country wagoner, who has, perhaps, encamped there the night before, or stopped to cook his supper. Of living objects, we sometimes saw a covey of partidges, a’cock of the woods, or a ground squirrel. Their tameness convinced us they were little ac­ quainted with man, whose acquaintance, instead of ripening into familiarity, produces nothing but fear. Occasionally we saw a litter of swine, half wild,

6Ibid., p. 174. 18

which always snorted violently, and scampered into the woods as we approached; which convinced me they had some knowledge of our race, else they would not have been so frightened. In some few instances we came suddenly upon a brace of wood-cutters, with a couple of hounds, which were employed in scouring the forest, while their masters were felling trees. In the solemn repose of the woods we could hear the echoings of every stroke of their axes a great dis­ tance. They sometimes condescended to stop a moment to look at us, but often continued their work with­ out deigning us that attention; for there is a pride in these people that prevents them from doing strang­ ers the honour to gape at them, as our fashionable wellbred people do. It sometimes happened that we found it expedient to inquire of them our way, when they always answered very civilly, and with much intelligence.7

This passage is quite representative of Paulding's double vision. In the first paragraph the traces of man are minor. They do not represent man's destructive nature. He has cleared the banks of a river, but not apparently to the real detriment of the land because he has left simply "Narrow strips of meadow." Then there is the occasional

"column of smoke," which means perhaps that man is present or that he has moved on and left an "unextinguished fire." In neither case ap­ parently is there any implied threat.

In the first half of the next paragraph, however, the traces of man become more ominous. Here it is the animals of the woods that reveal their acquaintance with man. If, like the partridges, the cock of the woods, and the ground squirrel, they do not know man, then they are tame and unafraid. But the fright of the half-wild pigs discloses their past experience with man. Paulding is not at all

^Letters from the South, Written During an Excursion inthe Summer of 1816, 2 vols• (New York, 1817), Vol, I, pp. 153-155. 19 tentative about this effect of familiarity with man. It is never good.

When the men do finally make their appearance in the passage, however, they appear not as predators but as strong, hard-working, proud people who respond to queries with civility and intelligence.

To be sure, these are the Americans who are slowly pushing the frontier westward and who are actually destroying the landscape in the name of progress. But Paulding is here applauding their efforts implicitly by means of the introduction of another opposition— rather than man vs. wilderness it is now city man (tourist) vs. country man (backwoodsman or frontiersman). And although the animal life in the woods still suffers from human contact, the country men are otherwise forces of good. It is the tourist that gets the brunt of Paulding's attack. The tourist is out of his proper element for two reasons: he is not there to work, and he is not able to find his own way. To use the phrase soon to become popular, he is not "self- reliant."

The emphasis on the country man in this selection from Letters from the South suggests a possible resolution of the conflict between society and the wilderness. The country man might potentially be the compromise figure, the man who is able to bring the values of society and the wilderness together. But Paulding never fully developed the country man as a resolution of the conflict; it remains merely a sug­ gestion.

The resolution that Paulding did develop was ironic humor. This was primarily a literary solution dependent upon a certain distance 20 between the observer and the conflict. An ironic view is not, of course, solely in the province of the artist, literary or otherwise.

Any man, in business or politics for example, would profit from a certain ironic perspective upon the affairs that concern him. But as a basis for action— as a controlling view— it is incomplete. It is the observer's perspective.®

Letters from the South provides us not only with the under­ developed country man as a possible resolution of the conflict but also with the ironic resolution. In the following passage, the prostitution of the land is covered by a layer of satire derived somehow from the world of Shandy. It is a description of Natural

Bridge, Virginia:

Its simplicity is admirable— it is one single blue, white-veined arch, unbroken and unornamented; its aspect is that of severe and adamantine hardness— unbroken by a single fissure, and indicating a dura­ tion without aid— while its name and its uses cause a direct comparison between this lofty work of nature

®Since Paulding was an active official in the government as well as a critic of society we would ecpect to see the ironic veiw tempered at times by a more politic view. While he was Van Buren's Secretary of the Navy (1838-1841), he was being urged to convert the navy to steam ships, a conversion which he opposed. Still, as Secretary, he accepted the reality of the situation, which was that his position was very much in the minority. A letter to his brother-in-law, Gouvernour Kemble, reflects both his ironic and his politic views: "If I had time, I would endeavour to place the subject before the public on both sides, with a view of allaying the steam fever now raging among us. But such fevers, like all others, must pass through their various stages, and the people of the United States must have some mania to excite them, whether it be a merino, a morus multicaulis, a canal, a railroad, or a steam mania. . . . We must yield the palm to the major­ ity in this as in other things; for, whatever may be his opinions, the man who opposes the world is a fool for his pains. I am willing there­ fore to go with the wind, though I don't mean to carry full sail, and keep the steam enthusiasts quiet by warily administering to the humor of the times; but I will never consent to let our old ships perish and transform our Navy into a fleet of sea monsters." The Letters of James Kirke Paulding, ed. Ralph M. Aderman (Madison, 1962), p. 258. 21

and the works of art erected for similar purposes. The result of this comparison, which crosses the mind quick as lightning, is a feeling of the sublime, more definite than that caused by the contemplation of natural objects, which do not challenge the direct and inevitable comparison with the productions of art. All the views of the Natural Bridge that I have seen are utterly deficient in conveying a tolerable idea of the general aspect and expression of this admirable scene, which seems calculated to mortify the pride of man, by proving that neither him imagination or his art is capable of conveying even a remote idea of its majestic beauty. Some leaden genius, I know not who, has erected a little wooden sentry-box on the top of the bridge, about the centre of the arch, and intersected it below by a canvas tube reaching from the top to the bottom, thus destroying the unity of effect both above and below. His object was to make shot, although I am told there is no lead within half a thousand miles, except what may peradventure be detected in that part of his skull where other people's brains are usually found.^

The first part of this passage has an eighteenth-century surface, char- terized by the abstract description: "Its simplicity . . . its as­ pect . . . adamantine hardness . . . [no] fissure . . . duration with­ out aid." This is an intellectual description, made almost without the use of the senses, and with absolutely no recognition of the indi­ viduality of the observer; in other words, no romantic subjectivity.

Paulding's concept of the sublime, however, is not so easy to place in the eighteenth-century tradition, at least not in the tradi­ tion of Edmund Burke's treatise on the sublime. Burke's sublimity evokes something akin to terror and is characterized by vagueness and obscurity. There is none of this in Paulding's description, even though elsewhere he is quite "Burkean." Here the characteristics are

^Letters from the South, II, pp. 66-67. 22 clarity, simplicity, and hardness of line, which for Burke would be characteristics of beauty evoking pleasure, not at all mixed with terror. The difference between this sublimity and Burke's is, I think, an indication of the nineteenth-century popularization of the word sublime, a foreshadowing of the time when Burke's distinction between the beautiful and the sublime would be lost, especially in the popular fiction and poetry of the annuals and gift books.

Paulding's sublimity is, of course, short-lived. The Natural

Bridge has been prostituted. Man has found a way to make the beauty and wonder of nature into a ridiculous, rather small joke. Man's part in this scene was to provide the little hut with its depending canvas tube. The result is a grotesque mixture— God's wonder and man's folly. And the folly, it turns out, is not only aesthetic but practical, since there is apparently no lead in the area to use to make the lead shot. Paulding's aim in this passage is mostly to denounce the efforts of man to alter his natural surroundings and partly to laugh at the impractical man's lack of success. And this presents a paradox because the implication here is that, had there been some lead available, this contraption would have been quite well suited for a shot-making venture. After all, the bridge pro­ vided easy access to a place from which one could drop the hot lead a great distance, thus forming the ball of shot.

In Koningsmarke; a satire on the romantic adventure story, ironic humor prevails. The prevalence of ironic humor could be explained away by the fact that the story itself does not involve a deep commitment to the young republic. The time is far removed— mid-seventeenth cen­ 23 tury— and the basic matter is the legend of a Finnish immigrant. But the conflict between the white settlers and the Indians is as much a part of Koningsmarke as it is of The Backwoodsman. And the humorous treatment of the conflict thus becomes a significant alternative res­ olution.

At the end of the first volume of Koningsmarke, the Indians at­ tack the Swedish settlement on the west bank of the Delaware River,

Elsingburgh, and they win the battle handily, taking a few prisoners, including the hero, Koningsmarke, the heroine, Christina, and the comic

"vigilant high constable," Lob Dotterel. Their last futile attempt to avoid capture is described thus:

They fled [Koningsmarke, Lob Dotterel, and Ludwig Varlett], pursued by some of the foremost savages, one of whom seized the queue of Lob Dotterel, who luckily wore a wig, which he left in the hands of the astonished warrior as a trophy. The three fugitives jumped into the boat, where was the fair Christina and some two or three women and children, and pushed it off after the others, which had drawn off to some distance. A tall Indian rushed into the water after the last boat, and seized hold of the gunwale with his left hand, grasping his tomahawk in his right. Koningsmarke hastened to the bow with his sword, and with a well-aimed blow cut off the hand that detained the boat. The savage then seized her by the other, which was cut off at the same instant by Koningsmarke. The Indian yelled with rage and fury, and, as the last effort of despair, seized by the side of the boat with his teeth, where he maintained his hold, till his head was severed from his body, and he fell dead into the blood-dyed waters.-*-®

We might think that the part would effect their escape, after Konings- marke's valiant efforts. But unfortunately, the delay caused by the

-*-®Koningsmarke, The Long Finne, A Story of the New World (New York, 1823), Vol. I, Book 2, Chapter V, p. 93. 24 butchering of the intransigent Indian gave the other Indians the opportunity to prevent the flight. The courage and prowess could, of course, have been established and the capture could have been effected with the severing, say, of one hand, but Paulding chooses the exaggeration for the resultant grotesque humor. The contrast between the bloodless scalping of Lob Dotterel and the bloody kill­ ing of the Indian is enormous, but both incidents conjure up gro­ tesquely humorous images at a point which, in the non-satiric adven- 11 ture, would be highly serious and exciting drama.

The ironic humor of the butchered-Indian passage from Koningsmarke offers a solution of the conflict between the white man's civilization and the Indian, the representative of the wilderness. In the Natural

Bridge passage from Letters from the South the irony.serves to resolve

H-An example of the kind of story Paulding might have had in mind is a novel by John Neal, entitled Logan, The Mingo Chief, A Family History (1822). The hero of Neal's story is Harold, a half-breed who appears to combine the best of white and Indian traits, although he has something of a temper. An episode typical of the violent, melo­ dramatic high points scattered through the story is a sea battle be­ tween a French ship and the British ship which includes Harold among its passengers. At the climax, just at the end of the first of two volumes of the romance: The two ships lay yard arm, and yard arm, at last in a whirl­ wind of smoke and flame. The shrieks of the women and children, and the wounded, were altogether deafening. A bugle rang! It was for the boarders. But lo! they were anticipated. Harold had already driven his battle axe through and through a young salior, and was now wrestling with an officer, upon the bowsprit— both fell— their comrades slipped in their gore, and tumbled over them— their hands were grappled about each other's throats— Harold was undermost— mercy! mercy!' cried a female voice; and Harold was abandoned. His foe leaped over him, and left him, bleeding, and fainting, and suspended in the torn rigging, that lay over the side, and dragged in the discoloured water, unconscious of his situation, his peril, or his escape. The thunder and the earthquake still raged above him— he was almost suffocated with smoke and spray— but he was awakened 25

the conflict between civilization and the wilderness itself, as the ingenious white man corrupts the natural rock formation with the little wooden sentry box. In neither case does Paulding go further than the regretful observation of the blundering ways of white civi­ lization. It is significant, however, that he does not turn his back on the conflict, as he did in the artificially imposed conclusion of

The Backwoodsman.

The use of ironic humor, of course, does not preclude the possi­ bility of avoiding the conflict. In one of the essays in The New

Mirror for Travellers (1828), Paulding uses a mixture of understatement and humor to turn the conflict of civilization and the wilderness into praise of his country. In the following passage, man's puny efforts in the face of the power of nature appear simply ludicrous:

(Note 11 cont.) by a soft hand reached down, and stealing over his wounded head. A strange delirium, delicious, and intox­ icating, followed the touch. He caught the hand, and pressed it madly and passionately, to his mouth; bloody as it was— wildly imagining that it was the hand of Loena, herself. 'Yes! yes!' said his heart— 'I am dying, dying; but what of that? Here is she, my beloved, to weep for me!' He lifted his eyes, and had just sense enough to discover a face, and to shriek, as if his heart had been pierced by a thousand knives at the same instant! She was wounded the next moment, and fell by his side— the hot blood ran through the scuppers, and smoked upon the water about them, in red bubbles, By a supernatural effort, Harold arose, took up the wounded woman in ths arms, regained the bend, slipped, staggered, and fell, amid a heap of wounded and shattered human beings— sobbing out faint and inarticulate cries for assistance— unheard— unperceived [John Neal, Logan, A Family History (Philadelphia, 1822), Vol. I, pp. 316-317.] So ends the first of two volumes. The passage has in common with Paulding's hatchet-job from Koningsmarke exceeding violence, a sense of urgency, superhuman effort, and the female involvement. But Pauld­ ing does not maintain the straight face that characterizes Neal in his melodrama. 26

Those who are fond of climbing mountains in a hot day, and looking down till their heads turn, must land at the village of Kaatskill, whence they can procure a conveyance to the hotel at Pine Orchard, three thousand feet above the level of the river, and have the pleasure of sleeping under blankets in the dog days. Here the picturesque tourist may enjoy a prospect of unbounded extent and magnificence, and receive a lesson of the insignificance of all created things. Standing near the verge of the cliff, he looks down, and no object strikes his view, except at a distance of fifteen hundred feet below. The space between is nothing but vacancy. Crawling far below, man is but an atom, hardly visible; the ox is but a mouse; and the sheep are little white specks in the green fields, which themselves are no bigger than the glasses of a pair of green spectacles. The traveller may judge of the insignificance of even the most sublime objects, when told that a fashion­ able lady's hat and feathers dwindles in the dis­ tance to the size of a moderate mushroom! It is, we trust, needless to caution the tourist against falling down this dizzy steep, as in all probability he would come to some harm. There are two cascades not far from the Pine Orchard, which want nothing but a little more water to be wonderfully sublime. Generally, there is not water at all, but the proper application of half a dollar, will set it running presently.

"Music* has charms to sooth the savage breast to raise flood gates, and make the waters flow."

[Paulding's footnote] *Music— figurative for the jingling of silver— the only modern music that works such mircles.

Messrs. Wall and Cole, two fine artists, admirable in their different, we might almost say, opposite styles, have illustrated the scenery of the Kaatskill, by more than one picture of singular excellence.

One of the elements of this passage is the litotes of the tourist's potential stumble down the steep— "in all probability, he would come

•^The New Mirror for Travellers, pp. 143-144. 27 to some harm." Although this rhetorical device has its origin in classical antiquity, it is possible to see it as particularly appro­ priate to the American experience. Daniel J. Boorstin includes understatement in his category of tall talk because it is implied exaggeration. He then links tall talk in general to the twentieth- century stream-of-consciousness technique which, as he says, allowed the writer "to depict the emotional and mental reactions of characters to external events rather than the events themselves." 1 ^ This is certainly what occurs in Paulding's brief description. Paulding, the narrator, is the character whose emotional and mental reactions to the event are expressed by the "tall talk." Further, the event is not simply the possibility of the tourist tumbling down the cliff, but also the magnificent piece of American landscape and the partic­ ularly American tourist. Thus the event which Paulding reacts to includes a character, the setting, and an action.

Paulding, an ardent nationalist, finds the American landscape quite admirable. In particular, the tourist at the Kaatskill "may enjoy a prospect of unbounded extent and magnificence, and receive a lesson of the insignificance of all created things." The distance from the verge of the cliff to the land below is 1500 feet. Thus everything— man and natural things— looks minute from such a distance.

It is extremely gratifying to Paulding to see this certain facet of his country. But he is aware also of some embarrassment about prais­ ing the American landscape. There are three reasons for this: (1)

■^Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans (New York, 1965), p. 290. 28

It is probably unwise and not very convincing to relentlessly pile praise on anything. The auditors (both American and English) will

become uneasy, doubting. (2) Paulding as a spokesman for a young, vigorous country is typically self-conscious, needing always to prove himself and his country, and thinking always of the ready and biting

criticism that the hostile English reviewers were exporting across

the Atlantic. (3) Paulding points out elsewhere that it is difficult—

perhaps impossible— to reproduce the effect of the landscape in words.

Thus, he sometimes feels himself in the ridiculous position of trying

to do what everyone knows cannot be done. To conceal this embarrass­ ment, then, he finds it convenient to use an understatement, trying

to detach himself from his real emotion, but nevertheless expressing

it by implication, In this way, the "tall talk" is a response by the

character to the setting.

The two other facets of the event, the character and the supposed

action, are best considered together. Again, Paulding is an American

tourist, imagining another American cliff, of course, of magnificent

proportions, and a cliff of which Paulding is clearly very proud. The

image of the tourist falling off the cliff and coming to "some harm"

is certainly one way of indirectly expressing the magnitude of the

"dizzy steep." The reader is asked immediately to envision the actual

result of such a fall, to provide the information that the understate-'

ment omits. Since the reader probably cannot imagine what a body

would look like after a 1500-foot fall, we can see immediately one

good reason for using the understatement: the truth is inexpressible.

But this of course is a good way to express the magnificence of the 29 prospect from the verge of the cliff. It is an alternative way of

saying to the reader, "Never in your life have you seen anything like

this."

But all this is to ignore the humor of the image, the humor that

is directed at the bumbling sort of American tourist who might well make the fatal error of falling off the cliff. Paulding recognizes

shortcomings in Americans, even through his patriotism. You might wonder if Paulding himself is sometimes such a tourist.

Then too, the concept of the sublime receives a humorous treat­ ment, in two satiric thrusts. The sublime is first linked to a

"fashionable lady's hat," which, when viewed from the top of the cliff

seems no larger than "the size of a moderate mushroom"— truly a drop

from the sublime to the ridiculous. The second thrust at the sublime

c.ould be seen as the incipient industrialization of the concept.

Whereas Burke's sublime often has the foreboding and magnificent aspect

of the old testament God, the tone of Paulding's sublime artificial

cascades is more akin to that of the Yankee inventor. In the Cats­

kills, the creation of the rivers can be performed at will and re­

peatedly by any tourist with a supply of small change. Thus, Pauld­

ing is capable of using the sublime both as a positive element of

his national spirit, and as a part of a larger kind of wisdom, which

sees the country and its people more objectively.

The conflict of civilization and the wilderness appears quite

clearly in the works of Paulding that we have examined. The power

of the wilderness is indisputable; yet, the inevitability of its

destruction by the force of civilization is also indisputable. And 30

Paulding responds in various ways to this fact. He can approach an acceptance of that portion of guilt which is involved in the progress of civilization, as The Backwoodsman, only to deny it in the false conclusion. Or he can see the destruction through a shield of irony, as he does in Koningsmarke or in Letters from the South. Or he can try to turn the ironic view of the conflict into praise of America, as he does in The New Mirror for Travellers. In all cases his solu­ tions fall short of total effectiveness. Whether he poses as a patri­ ot or an ironist, the pose turns out to be an idealistic shield inca­ pable of practical application. His merit, therefore, does not lie in being able to resolve the conflict of civilization and the wilder­ ness, but rather in being observant enough to see it with clarity. CHAPTER II

WASHINGTON IRVING

Like Paulding, Washington Irving observed the new American society with clear vision. And again like Paulding, Irving was par­ ticularly concerned with the conflict of civilization and the wilder­ ness. He regarded civilization as the inevitable destroyer of the wilderness. But in Irving's writings the conflict takes on added dimensions. In "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" Irving provides hints of the conflict even in the most serene landscapes. In "Rip Van

Winkle," Irving uses Rip's dilemma as a metaphor of the conflict and provides a solution that Paulding never suggested— a retreat to the world of fancy. Then in several short pieces— "Forest Trees," "The

Devil and Tom Walker," "Dolphin Heyliger," and the Indian essays in

The Sketch Book— the values of the wilderness are set directly against the force of civilization, and the result in most cases is the de­ struction of the wilderness.

Irving presented us with three kinds of landscapes: the beauti­ ful, the fanciful, and the sublime. Each type of landscape, in one way or another, suggested for Irving the conflict of civilization and the wilderness. Irving's landscape of the beautiful is some­ times an inhabited paradise, to some degree dependent upon human cul­ tivation, and sometimes an uninhabited paradise, with an unreal com-

31 32 position. In either case, the beauty is quite transient and repre­ sents nothing of real value to American civilization. The fanciful landscape, closely related to the beautiful, is more subjective. It is the landscape of the mind that offers, in "Rip Van Winkle," an apparent but only temporary solution ot the dilemma of the contradic­ tory values of civilization and the wilderness. The most prevalent type of landscape is the sublime, and in it the conflict of civili­ zation and the wilderness is most clear. In the sublime landscape the metaphor of a battleground is common: nature is self-destructive; or man is pitted against natural forces; or he is pitted against the

Indian, who is an inherent part of the land. And Irving regretted the fact that the American civilization was apparently destroying the wilderness as it had certainly destroyed the Indian.

These three kinds of landscape— the beautiful, the fanciful, and the sublime— each imply somewhat different attitudes toward the land.

The beautiful landscape, often connected with a pastoral feeling, suggests an unreal experience, as if Irving, in spite of his apparent praise of the American scenery, did not really consider it a viable

American characteristic. The fanciful landscape serves as a purely

subjective solution of the American's temporal problems, the alleged absence of a past and the loss of paradise as the push of civilization alters, then destroys, the wilderness. The sublime landscape usually

suggests the tenuous character of man's existence as opposed to the

powerful forces of nature.

Irving's "beautiful" landscapes are characterized by variety,

spatial compression, and a pervading sense of peace. The following 33 selection from The Sketch Book has these characteristics plus a careful ordering of details according to both chronology and theme.

In "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Ichabod Crane is journeying to

Mynheer Van Tassel’s house on the occasion of a quilting "frolic" that the Van Tassels are hosting. After describing Crane's rather gro­ tesque, grasshopper-like appearance on his "broken-down plough-horse,"

Irving described his journey in a four-paragraph section. The first paragraph presents the autumn colors in the full light of day; in the second we see a succession of birds; the third paragraph focuses on

Ichabod's awareness of "every symptom of culinary abundance"; and the fourth paragraph returns to the landscape itself, still colorful but now approaching sunset:

It was, a I have said, a fine autumnal day, the sky was clear serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet .... The small birds were taking their farewell banquets. In the fulness of their revelry, they fluttered, chirping and frolicking, from bush to bush, and tree to tree, capricious from the very profusion and variety around them. There was the honest cockrobin, the favorite game of stripling sportsmen, with its loud querulous notes; and the twittering blackbirds flying in sable clouds; and the golden-winged woodpecker, with his crimson crest, his broad black gorget, and splendid plumage; and the cedar-bird, with its red-tipt wings and yellow-tipt tail, and its little monteiro cap of feathers; and the blue jay, that noisy coxcomb, in his gay light-blue coat and white under-clothes, screaming and chattering, nodding and bobbing and bowing, and pretending to be on good terms with every songster of- the grove. As Ichabod jogged slowly on his way, his eye, ever open to every symptom of culinary abundance, ranged with delight over the treasures of jolly 34

autumn. On all sides he beheld vast stores of apples; some hanging in oppressive opulence on the trees; some gathered into baskets and barrels for the market; . . . anon he passed the fragrant buck­ wheat fields, breathing the odor of the beehive, and as he beheld them, soft anticipations stole over his mind of dainty slapjacks, well buttered, and garnished with honey or treacle, by the delicate little dimpled hand of Katrina Van Tassel. Thus feeding his mind with many sweet thoughts and "sugared suppostions," he journeyed along the sides of a range of hills which look out upon some of the goodliest scenes of the mighty Hudson. The sun gradually wheeled his broad disk down into the west. The wide bosom of the Tappan Zee lay motion­ less and glossy, excepting that here and there a gentle undulation waved and prolonged the blue shadow of the distant mountain. A few amber clouds floated in the sky, without a breath of air to move them. The horizon was of a fine golden tone, changing gradually into a pure apple-green, and from that into the deep blue of the mid-heaven. A slanting ray lingered on the woody creses of the precipices that overhung some parts of the river, giving greater depth to the dark-gray and purple of their rocky sides. A sloop was loitering in the distance, dropping slowly down with the tide, her sail hanging uselessly against the mast; and as the reflection of the sky gleamed along the still water, it seemed as if the vessel was suspendeded in the air.-*-

The sense of variety here is expresses as abundance, which is the key­ note of the passage. The autumn colors are abundant, as well as the animals, birds and the edible products of the land that Ichabod covets.

The spatial compression occurs in the catalogue of birds: the cock­ robin, the blackbirds, the woodpecker, the cedar-bird, and the blue jay. Such a scene also occurs in Bryant, suggesting the unreality of an Audubon painting or of a composed scene of stuffed birds in a muse­ um.^ The birds in Irving's description are actually abstracted from

-*-The Works of Washington Irving, Knickerbocker Edition (New York, 1869), The Sketch Book, Vol. 15, pp. 477-479.

^See below, pp. 80-81 35 their natural habitat. The sense of peace is established at the beginning of the passage ("the sky was clear and serene") and is de­ veloped through the description of the birds and Ichabod's gustatory musings. There is a sense of anticipation in this middle part of the journey resulting from the fact that Ichabod looks forward to the happy realization of his quest— the favor of Katrina Van Tassel.

Ichabod's feeling of contentment is expresses in terms of, among other things, "dainty slapjacks, well buttered, and garnished with honey or treacle." The peacefulness is brought to a climax in the last paragraph, in which the sun begins to set on the nearly "motionless"

Tappan Zee. The scene is quite still: the clouds float, "without a breath of air to move them." The sail of a Hudson River sloop is

"hanging uselessly against the mast," and finally suspended animation nearly becoms a fact as the sloop appears, because of the reflected sky in the water, to be "suspended in the air."

The total effect of this extended landscape is the feeling that it is unreal, not in the sense that it cannot happen in nature, but rather that it is such a transient, fleeting experience that it is impossible really to capture it, to "suspend" it.^ In Irving's narrative, of course, the serenity is, in fact, illusory or at best

3 Occasionally a painter tries to capture a brilliant sunset, to suspend time at just the moment that the colors are their most bril­ liant. To such paintings it is always tempting to respond that the colors are impossible, that such brilliance is imaginary. Frederic E. Church, a pupil of Thomas Cole, produced this effect in a canvas called "Twilight in the Wilderness," (1860) recently reproduced on the cover of the quarterly The Living Wilderness, XXVIII, 108 (Winter, 1969). A photograph with comparable colors we might believe— but not a painting.And the difference between a newspaper story and a novel is precisely analogous. 36 only quite transient since Ichabod's experience at the "quilting frolic" is to end in disappointment, and finally in apparent violence.

This is presumably the last time that Ichabod knows peace.

The fanciful landscape represents for Irving as escape from commonplace worries. In "Rip Van Winkle," escape from civilization into the wilderness is the central theme. The problems of civilization are embodied in Dame Van Winkle, a "terrible virago" who makes poor

Rip's life miserable. His only means of escape "was to take gun in hand and stroll away into the woods. in the central episode of the story, what Rip finds, after escaping to the top of a green knoll, is a landscape of contrasts which serve as the exact image of the contrast between his natural desires and his domestic duties, or on a larger scale, between the wilderness and civilization:

In a long ramble of the kind on a fine autumnal day, Rip had unconsciously scrambled to one of the highest parts of the Kaatskill mountains. He was after his favorite sport of squirrel-shooting, and the still solitudes had echoed and re-echoed, with the reports of his gun. Panting and fatigued, he threw himself, late in the afternoon, on a green knoll, covered with mountain herbage, that crowned the brow of a precipice. From an opening between the trees he could overlook all the lower country for many a mile of rich woodland. He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far below him, moving on its silent but majestic course, with the reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail of a lagging bark, here and there sleeping on its glassy bosom, and at last losing itself in the blue highlands. On the other side he looked down into a deep mountain glen, wild, lonely, and shagged, the bottom filled with fragments from the impending cliffs, and scarcely lighted by the reflected rays of the setting sun. For some time Rip lay musing on this scene; evening was gradually advancing; the mountains began

^The Sketch Book, p. 56. 37

to throw their long blue shadows over the valleys; he saw that it would be dark long before he could reach the village, and he heaved a heavy sigh when he thought of encountering the terrors of Dame Van Winkle. As he was about to descend, he heard a voice from a distance, hallooing, "Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!"5

This contrasted landscape serves as a transition into the world of fancy, the silent episode with Hendrik Hudson and his crew. Rip is

fatigued from his mountain jaunt and finally lies down on a "green knoll" where he remains "musing" for a considerable length of time.

This fact prevents us from knowing exactly when Rip falls asleep. It

is possible that the entire landscape is a dreamed experience. But

even if the landscape is not part of his dream, it does correspond to

the psychological conflict that Rip is laboring under, the conflict between the civilization down on the banks of the Hudson and the wilder­ ness up in the Catskills. The conflict is intensified by the fact that

civilization here, even with the implication of his unwanted domestic

duties, is beautiful, and the wilderness, with its implied freedom,

is wild and lonely. What inspires Rip at last to escape to the

imaginary world of fancy is the "thought of encountering the terrors of

Dame Van Winkle." He does escape, and long enough apparently to be rid

of his nagging wife. But clearly this is a purely imaginary solution to

a problem of American experience. The American does not have the alter­

native of escaping into Paradise. When Rip returns from his twenty-year

sleep, his wife has long since passed away, but he is doomed to be a local

curiosity of somewhat doubtful sanity. The only auditors he can count

^Ibid., pp. 57-58. 38 on to respect his tale are young people, strangers, and Dutchmen.

Rip's escape into the fanciful landscape turns out to be merely another ineffectual resolution of the conflict between civilization and the wilderness. Irving does not pretend to offer a viable sol­ ution. It is perhaps enough for an ironist like Irving to delineate the problem.

Even without man's presence, the wilderness can be seen as a battleground. In "Forest Trees," a section in Bracebridge Hall,

Irving describes two seemingly vicious scenes which demonstrate nature's capacity for self-destruction. In the first scene, the blast of wind tears its way through the trees, "leaving a long track of desolation." The effect is chaos, made more terrible by the fact that the wind seems to have a will of its own (it "seemed to have rushed down from the clouds") but no apparent motive. And there is no attempt to invoke the natural cycle of life and death, thus to suggest the renewal of life. The reader is left only with destruction. In the second scene a vine had choked off the life of "an oak of prodigious size." This scene is perhaps more terrifying because not only is the destruction again unmotivated, but the destructive agent, the vine, is figuatively embodied as a snake, "a vegetable boa," which image for the modern reader has the effect of a surrealistic horror film.^

When Irving places man in the wilderness he puts him right down into the tangled natural obstructions of pathless forests, a mountain-

^The Works of Washington Irving, Knickerbocker Edition (New York, 1869), Vol. 4, Bracebridge Hall, pp. 101-102. 39 side, or perhaps a swamp, and he will go even further to suggest, either implicitly or explicitly, that the wanderer's foe in such instances is not simply nature but the devil himself. In "The Devil and Tom Walker," Tom is making his way home through a swamp on what he thinks is a short cut, but is in fact only a prelude to his meeting with the devil, "Old Scratch."

One day that Tom Walker had been to a distant part of the neighborhood, he took what he considered a short cut homeward, through the swamp. Like most short cuts, it was an ill-chosen route. The swamp was thickly grown with great gloomy pines and hemlocks, some of them ninety feet high, which made it dark at noonday, and a retreat for all the owls of the neighborhood. It was full of pits and quagmires, partly covered with weeds and mosses, where the green surface often betrayed the traveller into a gulf of black, smothering mud: there were also dark and stagnant pools, the abodes of the tadpole, the bull-frog, and the water- snake; where the trunks of pines and hemlocks lay half-drowned, half-rotting, looking like alligators sleeping in the mire. Tom had long been picking his way cautiously through this treacherous forest; stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes and roots, which afforded precarious footholds among deep sloughs; or pacing carefully, like a cat, along the prostrate trunks of trees; startled now and then by the sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking of a wild duck rising on the wing from some solitary pool. At length he arrived at a firm piece of ground, which ran out like a peninsula into the deep bosom of the swamp.^

This is explicitly a "treacherous forest" because nothing is as it seems. What appears to be a short cut is in fact a path to the devil.

The swamp is so thickly overgrown that at noon it appears to be dark.

"Pits and quagmires" of mud are covered, often to the traveller's

^The Works of Washington Irving, Knickerbocker Edition (New York, 1869), Vol. 16, Tales of a Traveller, pp. 437-438. 40 sorrow, with "weeds and mosses." And finally the half-submerged rotting tree-trunks appear to be "alligators sleeping in the mire."

Clearly, Irving is quite justified at this point in his use of the phrase "treacherous forest," to describe Tom's immediate environment.

The treachery, however, does not end here, even though Tom seems to be able to negotiate the obstacles well enough. He finds his way cautiously, by means of "precarious footholds," and becomes like a cat "pacing carefully" along the tree trunks. His success, of course, is only apparent— the meeting with "Old Scratch" is inevitable. In this wilderness of swamp Tom is thrice threatened: by natural imped­ iments, by the fact that he is trespassing on the devil's stamping ground, and by the Indian heritage of the place— "it was asserted that the savages held incantations here, and made sacrifices to the g evil spirit." ,

The challenge of the wilderness is distinct in this passage in spite of the fact that Irving's landscape is very much an enclosed space. One could even describe his treatment of Tom Walker's struggle through the swamp as an internal landscape, a landscape of the mind, which would bring Irving's awareness of the land into a different per­ spective. In passages like this one he is not thinking of the land as part of the national experience but rather as a personal psychological experience. And this is one of the reasons why Irving's sense of nationality is hard to define.

Irving is nevertheless capable of adapting the general situation

8Ibid., p. 438. 41 of man's struggle through the wilderness with a resultant expansion of the limits of the scene. In the story of Dolph Heyliger, included in Bracebridge Hall, the threat of the wilderness remains, and even the implication of the devil's presence, but the vista is broadened.

Dolph initially intends to travel to Albany by sloop up the Hudson

River, but as the river bends at West Point, a sudden vicious storm comes up, creating confusion on deck, with the result that Dolph is knocked into the river by the swinging boom, momentarily out of control. The sloop continues up the river, but Dolph, after a brief swim, finds himself on the shore:

Dolph rose, and sought about to see if any path led from the shore, but all was savage and trackless. The rocks were piled upon each other; great trunks of trees lay shattered about, as they had been blown down by the strong winds which draw through these mountains, or had fallen through age. The rocks, too, were overhung with wild vines and briers, which completely matted themselves together, and opposed a barrier to all ingress; every movement that he made shook down a shower from the dripping foliage. He attempted to scale one of these almost perpendicular heights; but, though strong and agile, he found it an Herculean undertaking. Often he was supported merely by crumbling projections of the rock, and sometimes he clung to roots and branches of trees, and hung almost suspended in the air. The wood-pigeon came cleaving his whistling flight by him, and the eagle screamed from the brow of the impending cliff. As he was thus clambering, he was on the point of seizing hold of a shrub to aid his ascent, when something rustled among the leaves, and he saw a snake quivering along like lightning, almost from under his hand. It coiled itself up immediately, in an attitude of defiance, with flattened head, distended jaws, and quickly vibrating tongue, that played like a little flame about its mouth. Dolph's heart turned faint within him, and he had well-nigh let go his hold and tumbled down the precipice. The serpent stood on the defensive but for an instant; and finding there was no attack, glided away into a cleft of the rock. Dolph's eye followed it with fearful intensity, and saw a nest of 42

adders, knotted, and writhing, and hissing in the chasm. He hastened with all speed from so frightful a neigh­ borhood. His imagination, full of this new horror, saw an adder in every curling vine, and heard the tail of a rattlesnake in every dry leaf that rustled. At length he succeeded in scrambling to the summit of a precipice; but it was covered by a dense forest. Wherever he could gain a lookout between the trees, he beheld heights and cliffs, one rising beyond another, until huge mountains overtopped the whole. There were no signs of cultivation; no smoke curling among the trees to indicate a human residence. Every­ thing was wild and solitary. As he was standing on the edge of a precipice overlooking a deep ravine fringed with trees, his feet detached a great fragment of rock; it fell, crashing its way through the treetops, down into the chasm. A loud whoop, or rather yell, issued from the bottom of the glen; the moment after there was report of a gun; and a ball came whistling over his head, cutting the twigs and leaves, and burying itself deep in the dark of a chestnut-tree. Dolph did not wait for a second shot, but made a precipitate retreat; fearing every moment to hear the enemy in pursuit. He succeeded, however, in returning unmolested to the shore, and determined to penetrate no farther into a country so beset with savage perils.^

Irving's perspective in this passage is limited to Dolph. At first we are right down in the tangled underbrush with Dolph. The obstacle of the matted vines and briers seems impregnable. And we even feel

the water shaken loose as Dolph brushes past the foilage. Then, as

Dolph begins his climb up the rocky bluff, we are still right with

him, feeling for a grip, and then startled by the flight of a wood-

pigeon and then by the scream of an eagle. Irving is giving us in

this passage all the details of Dolph's struggle up the rocks, and

the perspective is thus quite limited.

Having established this limited perspective, Irving then limits

^Bracebridge Hall, pp. 474-476. it even further by providing an extended description of a single obstruction, a frightful serpent. It is true that this is a much more dramatic kind of obstacle and for this reason alone deserves extended description. But this confrontation turns out not to be so much a dramatic event but rather a psychological one. The emphasis turns swiftly to Dolph's emotional response. After Dolph's heart

"turned faint within him," his eye followed it "with fearful in­ tensity," and then his imagination took over, making him see and hear snakes at every turn. Dolph finally does reach "the summit of a precipice, "from where all appeared wild and solitary. Yet, no sooner does he reach this apparently secure vantage point, than he is reminded of the threat that the wilderness represents. When he accidentally dislodges a large rock, which tumbles "crashing . . . into the chasm," he is answered by a loud whoop and rifle shot.

He has already experienced a confrontation with the snakes, in whose territory he is apparently trespassing. The combination of these two experiences indiactes that the threat of the wilderness here is not the same as the threat that Tom Walker faced. His wilder­ ness was treacherous; Dolph's is not. Irving makes it quite clear that neither the snakes nor the unidentified human inhabitant of the wilder­ ness will strike unless attacked. First, the "serpent stood on the defensive but for an instant; and finding there was no attack, glided away into a cleft of the rock." And then Dolph never would have been aware of the presence of other human beings in the forest, he never would have been shot at, if he had not inadvertantly sent the rock

tumbling down the chasm. 44

Both the snake and the unseen rifleman demonstrate the logic of self-defense. They do not strike irrationally, without cause,

Thus, in Dolph's wilderness there is a predictable kind of justice which lends a certain limited value to the wilderness and to these who are at home in it. Indeed, Dolph does find that his unseen adversary is a man who has property and social responsibility, but who is also an accomplished woodsman and a friend to the Indians.

His name is Antony Vander Heyden of Albany, and he represents for

Dolph, formerly something of a ne'er-do-well, a model to emulate.

The narrative, in fact, concludes with the marriage of Dolph and Heer

Antony's daughter, Marie, a wedding which symbolizes Dolph's achieve­ ment of his identity.

We have seen that Irving links the sublime landscape with, first, the extreme power of the forces of nature, sometimes self-destructive, and second, with man's struggle, often psychological, in the wilder­ ness. The sublime landscape has thus a permanence that the beautiful and the fanciful landscape lack. Then the discussion of Dolph's experience suggested that certain kinds of men are somehow identified with something of value in the wilderness. This latter connection is elaborated in The Sketch Book, specifically in two chapters, "Traits of Indian Character" and "Philip of Pokanoket."^-® In a representative passage, a description of another sublime swamp, the link between the

Indian and the wilderness is demonstrated. As the Indian Prince Philip of Pokanoket is unjustly pursued into the wilderness by the English, he seeks shelter in the swamps, in which the "loose bogs of deep black

10 The Sketch Book, pp. 371-410. 45 mud," and "the tangled mazes of these shaggy wilds" prevented the white man from following the Indian, who "could thrid their labyrinths with the agility of a deer." The Indian has a natural affinity for

the wilderness, and since in this case Philip has justice on his

side, it follows that the wilderness is something of value, not

something to be destroyed.

But civilization will destroy the wilderness. The two Indian

essays in The Sketch Book are mostly very bitter attacks on the

injustices perpetrated on the Indians in the name of civilization.

Like Paulding, Irving sees both the evil and the good sides of the

progress of civilization. Or, to be more accurate, he generally

dismisses the oversimplified duality of good and evil "sides" and

insists on the evil effects in the good. In Irving, as in Paulding,

the destruction of the wilderness is figured primarily in the des­

truction of the Indian, but both writers, as we have seen consider

the Indian as an inherent part of the land. The corruption and des­

truction of the Indians is in ample evidence in the two Indian essays,

but before examining specific instance, it is interesting to note

that Irving anticipated this whole process, from discovery to

destruction, a decade earlier in his youthful History of New York, in

which he outlined with heavy irony, the four rights by which property

may be acquired in a country: the rights to Discovery, Cultivation,

Civilization, and Extermination (also known as the Right of Gun­

powder) .

11The Works of Washington Irving, Knickerbocker Edition (New York, 1869), Vol. 13, The History of New York, pp. 80-90. The conclusion of 46

Contact with white civilization has, thus, two effects on the

Indian: corruption and destruction. The corruption of those Indians that "hang on the skirts of the settlements" is described in this way:

These are too commonly composed of degenerate beings, corrupted and enfeebled by the vices of society, without being benefited by its civili­ zation. That proud independence, which formed the main pillar of savage virtue, has been shaken down, and the whole moral fabric lies in ruins. Their spirits are humiliated and debased by a sense of inferiority, and their native courage cowed and daunted by the superior knowledge and power of their enlightened neighbors. Society has advanced upon them like one of those withering airs that will sometimes breed desolation over a whole region of fertility. It has enervated their strength, multiplied their diseases, and superinduced upon their original barbarity the low vices of artificial life. It has given them a thousand superfluous wants, whilst it has diminished their means of mere existence. It has driven before it the animals of the chase, who fly from the sound of the axe and the smoke of the settlement, and seek refuge in the depths of remoter forests •and yet untrodden wilds. ^

Note that the connection of the Indians and the land is reiterated in

the image of the "withering air," which essentially defoliates the land, and in the inclusion of the wild animals that are still fleeing the push of civilization. The mention of the animals flying before the

(Note 11 cont.) the passage will suffice: "And all this at once brings me to a fourth right, which is worth all the others put together. For the original claimants to the soil being all dead and buried, and no one remaining to inherit or dispute the soil, the Spaniards, as the next immediate occupants, entered upon the possession as clearly as the hangman succeeds to the clothes of malefactor and as they have Blackstone, and all the learned expounders of the law on their side, they may set all actions of ejectment at defiance;— and this right may be entitled the RIGHT BY EXTERMINATION, or, in other words, the RIGHT BY GUNPOWDER."

•^The Sketch Book, p. 373. 47

sound of the axe is reminiscent of Paulding's observation of the

behavior of the wild pigs, which from their manifest fear had

obviously had some contact with humanity. Irving's charge is,

however, much more damning.

The renegade Indian is represented twice in the "Philip of

Pokanoket" sketch, in two treacherous Indians who on separate

occasions help the English to capture Philip. The first mentioned

is Sausaman, whose allegiances shift with the wind, the second renegade is not names but only briefly mentioned as the guide who

showed the English to Philip's winter headquarters. Sausaman's

description is typical:

a renegado Indian, whose natural cunning had been quickened by a partial education which he had received among the settlers. He changed his faith and his allegiance two or three times, with a facility that evinced the looseness of his principles. He had acted for some time as Philip's confidential secretary and counsellor, and had enjoyed his bounty and protection. Finding, however, that the clouds of adversity were gathering round his patron, he abondoned his service and went over to the whites; and, in order to gain their favor, charged his former benefactor with plotting against their safety.

Sausaman's "partial education . . . among the settlers" is evidently

the principal cause of his treachery. We will see in Cooper a more

complicated situation with Leatherstocking whose education has two

sources— the Delawares and the Moravian missionaries.

When Irving turns to the destruction of the Indians, he presents

the atrocities in all their viciousness. He drew from "one of the

homely narratives of the Indian Wars in New England" the following

•^Ibid., p. 394. 48 account of the slaughter of the Pequod Indians by the white settlers:

Humanity shrinks from the cold-blooded detail of indiscriminate butchery. In one place we read of the suprisal of an Indian fort in the -night, when the wigwams were wrapped in flames, and the miserable inhabitants shot down and slain in attempting to escape, "all being despatched and ended in the course of an hour." After a series of similar transactions, "our soldiers," as the historian piously observes, "being resolved by God's assistance to make a final destruction of them," the unhappy savages being hunted from their homes and fortresses, and pursued with fire and sword, and scanty, but gallant band, the sad remnant of the Pequod warriors, with their wives and children, took refuge in a swamp. Burning with indignation, and rendered sullen by despair, with hearts bursting with grief at the destruction of their tribe, and spirits galled and sore at the fancied ignominy of their defeat, they refused to ask their lives at the hands of an insulting foe, and preferred death to submission. As the night drew on they were surrounded in their dismal retreat, so as to render escape imprac­ ticable. Thus situated, their enemy "plied them with shot all the time, by which means many were killed and buried in the mire." In the darkness and fog that preceded the dawn of day, some few broke through the besiegers and escaped into the woods: "the rest were left to the conquerors, of which many were killed in the swamp, like sullen dogs who would rather, in their self-wilderness and madness, sit still and be shot through, or cut to pieces," then implore for mercy. When the day broke upon this handful of forlorn but dauntless spirits, the soldiers, we are told, entering the swamp, "saw several heaps of them sitting close together, upon whom they discharged their pieces, laden with ten or twelve pistol-bullets at a time, putting the muzzles of the pieces under the boughs, within a few yards of them; so as, besides those that were found dead, many more were killed and sunk into the mire, and never were minded more by friend or foe.

Both Paulding, as we have seen, and Irving in this passage, directly.. confront the facts of the carnage. For Irving.the destruction of

14Ibid., pp. 383-384. the Indians was an inescapable fact. And this had a great deal to

do with his attitude toward his native land because he saw the Indian

as part of the land itself. The slaughter of the Pequods could be

seen as the necessary result of the conflict between civilization and

the wilderness that seems to recur in Irving's landscapes over and over

again. The conflict was adumbrated in the description of Ichabod's

journey where the beauty of the landscape proved transitory— perhaps

illusory. The conflict then took a clear form in "Rip Van Winkle,"

but here Irving found the only solution to be an escape into a fanciful

landscape— a nonexistent paradise. It was only the third type of

landscape— the sublime— that Irving found worth preserving. The wilder­

ness presented a real challenge to Tom Walker and to Dolph Heyliger.

Then in the Indian essays of The Sketch Book, Irving showed the values

of the wilderness as reflected by the Indian— independence, honesty,

and self-reliance. But in these same essays Irving demonstrated the

corrosive effect that civilization had upon the wilderness. And chis

destruction of the wilderness by the force of civilization was prob­

ably due to the fact that the wilderness in its most sublime aspect had

to be eliminated in order that civilization survive.

The emphasis in the Indian essays suggests that Irving regretted

this resolution of the conflict. But, like Paulding, who also regretted

the destruction of the wilderness, he had no good alternative to

suggest. Where Paulding responded with ironic humor, Irving suggested

Rip's dream world, an escape into a fanciful landscape. But both men were aware that these responses were fundamentally idealistic, in the

sense that they dealt with the world as it ought to have been, not as 50 it was. Paulding's irony was a handy view for the observer, the social critic, but it was not especially helpful to the man who had to deal with the real problems generated by the conflict of civilization and the wilderness. And Irving's response does not resolve the conflict at all; Rip is simply translated through time into a situation where the conflict is irrelevant to him.

Paulding and Irving, therefore, provide two distinct but related responses to the conflict of civilization and the wilderness. Neither one was able to suggest an effective resolution of the conflict, but neither one avoided facing the conflict. CHAPTER III

WASHINGTON ALLSTON

Not every artist in the first third of the nineteenth century did face the conflict of civilization and the wilderness. Indeed, one can also speculate that there were many people, artists or otherwise, who were only subliminally aware of the conflict. An important reason for this is the strain of idealism that is prominent in the history of the American people. In America, to believe in the world as it ought to be rather than to accept the world as it is has always been a common response to experience. We have just seen that even Paulding and

Irving, two staunch realists, found it necessary to attempt partly idealistic resolutions of the conflict of civilization and the wilder­ ness. But the idealistic response becomes much clearer in other writers and painters of the period. Washington Allston was a painter whose idealism became so strong as he matured that it nearly eliminated any sense of a struggle between man and nature, or civilization and the wilderness. And the poet William Cullen Bryant, as we shall see in the next chapter, was aware of the conflict but found a resolution in idealistic, religious terms. After an examination of the paintings of

Allston and the poems of Bryant, we shall see how two kinds of idealism dilute the conflict of civilization and the wilderness to the point that it no longer is a problem. We shall then see how, in the early

51 52 thirties, the idealism of Bryant begins to break down, and is replaced by a darker view of the world, more characteristic of Thomas Cole or

Fenimore Cooper. But let us begin with Allston.

Washington Allston's very early work (around 1800) shows a distinct interest in the darker, German-gothic side of man. When he was at

Harvard (1796-1800) he painted scenes from the great exemplar of Gothic romanticism, Mrs. Radcliffe. And he did several small, gloomy land­ scapes like the one of 1798 which now hangs at the Boston Athenaeum

(Plate I). The scene is nearly impossible to make out, but the tiny human figures are very much under the domination of brooding nature.

In another canvas, Tragic Figure in Chains (1800), his gothicism merged with the grotesque.He once wrote to William Dunlap: "I delighted in being terrified by the tales of witches and hags, which the negroes used to tell me; and I well remember with how much pleasure I recalled these feelings on my return to Carolina; especially on revisiting a gigantic wild grapevine in the woods, which had been the favorite swing for one of these witches."2 But Allston's gothicism was very much a youthful abberation; it is quite absent from his mature work.

Still, a recognition of Allston's early gothic phase helps us to understand the evolution of his romaticism. For many years Allston was believed to have painted two major seascapes in 1804: Rising of a

Thunderstorm at Sea and The Deluge (Plate II and III). Richardson

■^Oil on panel; 12 3/8 x 9 1/2; Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Mass. For reproduction, see Plate III in E. P. Richardson, Washington Allston (New York, 1967.)

^Richardson, p. 28. Plate I

Washington Allston, Landscape, 1798

Oil on canvas, 11 1/2 x 13 1/4

Boston Athenaeum

Richardson, catalogue no. 11

53 54 55 called them the first landscapes of mood in America.-^ We now know that

The Deluge, the more gothic and certainly the more terrifying of the two canvases was painted by Joshua Shaw.^ Aside from the fact that, as

Gardner and Feld point out, The Deluge was owned at one time by

Allston'sfather, it is easy to see why the canvaswas thought to be painted by Allston: it seems to grow directly out of his earlier gothic treatments of man and nature. Richardson's description of this ter­ rifying painting is quite good, although not all the details are visible in my reproduction:

The first impact of his picture is an iron-gray murk, full of space yet impenetrable to the eye and broken only by fragmentary lights in the foreground. On the brown beach lie three ashen bodies. Beside them a howling dog and three snakes, the only living creatures to survive the storm, add to the sense of horror. Beyond the beach are three faint spots of light among the wild shapes of gray foam, which may be human beings clinging to wreckage. All the rest is black­ ness and storm. But gradually, as one looks into the darkness, gray sea birds become visible, flying directly toward the observer— first six to the left, then eight more in the center, finally at the right, far out and barely seen, three. The ghostly effect of these birds, the sensation they create of an infinite extent of darkness beyond the limits of sight, is very dramatic.^

The Deluge has the obscurity and the implied power of the Burkean sub­ lime. And the terror evoked by the painting is unmitigated, as

Richardson suggests. The attribution of this painting to Allston,

% b i d ., p. 66.

^For the story of the canvas, see Albert Ten Eyck Gardner and Stuart P. Feld, American Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Vol. I, Painters Born by 1815 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1965), pp. 130-133.

^Richardson, pp. 66-67. Plate II

Washington Allston, Rising of a_ Thunderstorm at Sea, 1804

Oil on canvas, 38 1/2 x 51

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Richardson catalogue no. 33

56

Plate III

Joshua Shaw (Formerly attributed to Allston), The Deluge, 1804

Oil on canvas, 48 1/4 x 66

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, N.Y.C.

Gardner and Feld, pp. 130-133

58

60 however, perpetuated a misunderstanding about Allston's romanticism, which, except for his student work, was not dark and brooding.

Rising of a^ Thunderstorm at Sea differs markedly from The Deluge in tone. The terrifying aspect of the dismal beach strewn with corpses is quite absent from Allston's canvas. To be sure, the picture has a sublime effect in the obvious power of the ocean storm, which is beginning to toss about the samll boat as if it were a piece of drift­ wood. But the observer's fear for the safety of the men in the boat is lessened by three factors: (1) There is another boat in the distance, which relieves to an extent the fearful sense of isolation that one might otherwise feel. (2) The pale blue sky in the background affirms the existence of a less turbulent state of nature and so eases

the observer's fears, I think, even if the picture implies that the

thunderstorm will soon obliterate the portion of blue sky. The blueness

is explicit; what may happen after the moment depicted on canvas can only be implicit. And this gives the blue sky what may seem to be an

illogical power in this scene of a rising thunderstorm. (3) The third factor is the artist's perspective. The observer of Rising of a

Thunderstorm as Sea is farther removed from the men in the boat than is

farther removed from the boat than is the observer of The Deluge from

the bodies on the beach. To the extent of that difference, the observer

is less involved with the men in the boat.

While these three factors diminish the sublime aspect of the painting, they do not eliminate the distinct sense of man in conflict with nature. But such conflict is a holdover, I suggest, from his

earlier, darker mood. In his later paintings, man is usually at home 61 and at peace in natural surroundings. George Winston has reminded us that the harmony of God, man, and nature was an essential part of

Allston’s artistic theory.^

In 1818, the year Allston returned from England to America where he remained for the last twenty-five years of his life, he painted

Elijah in the Desert (Plate IV) . ^ Elijah contains an element of the conflict between man and nature in the barren aspect of the desert, but it implies quite strongly the potential harmony of the completed triad: God, man, and nature. The text of the canvas is I Kings 17:

2-6: "And the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, Get thee hence, and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan. And it shall be, that thou shalt drink of the brook; and I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there. So he went and dwelt by the brookCherith, that is before Jordan. And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening; and he drank of the brook." Now, Elijah is here a tool of the

^George P. Winston, "Washington Allston and the Objective Correl­ ative," Bucknell Review, XI (1962), 96. From Allston's Lectures on Art (New York, 1850), the explanation of the objective correlative: "The mind . . . needs . . . as the condition of its manifestation, its objec­ tive correlative. Hence the presence of some outward object, predeter­ mined to correspond to the preexisting idea in its living power, is essential to the evolution of its proper end,— the pleasurable emotion." (pp. 15-16).

^Elijah was the first acquisition made by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. This painting caught the interest of James Fenimore Cooper, ac­ cording to a letter he wrote to Henry Labouchere in July (?), 1833: " . . . I will come all the way to Hamilton Place to see you, if you have Alston's.[sic] Elijah yet in your possession . . . I take it for granted that you will be willing to sell, for I remember when I went to see the picture five years since, it was in the garret. ..." [James F. Beard, ed., Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper (Cambridge, Mass., 19.6,0), Vol. II, p. 397.] Plate IV

Washington Allston, Elijah in the Desert, 1818

Oil on canvas, 50 x 70

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Richardson, catalogue no. 107

62 63 Lord, sent as a messenger of Ahab’s punishment to prophesy a drought.

Hence the barren aspect of the painting. But the Lord is clearly watching over his servant by sending the ravens to feed him. As Jules

Prown has pointed out, ravens are normally scavengers.® The barren landscape serves as the objective correlative of man's sorrow in the presence of evil and its punishment as well as of the spiritual trial of Elijah even as he is in the service of the Lord. And the fact that the Lord is kind to Elijah, and will be so, is reflected in the blue sky, and its repetition in Elijah's blue robe. On the whole, then, the landscape does not have the characteristics of a sublime conflict between man and God or man and nature. Rather, it emphasizes the reso­ lution of a conflict, and could be said to prophesy success for Elijah in the service of the Lord.^

The comparison of Rising of a_ Thunderstorm at Sea and Elijah in the Desert illustrates an easing of the sense of conflict between man and nature as Allston grows older. Other canvases, done in Europe and

England between 1804 and 1818, would bear this out. But in examining the works of an artist, one must always be aware of the possibility of theoperation of formal principles that may transcend subject matter or the artist's emotional response to his material. One such principle of composition is quite apparent in this pair of paintings: the irreg­ ularly shaped wedge of blue sky extending into an area of dark clouds.

®Jules David Prown, American Painting; From Its Beginnings to the Armory Show. Intro, by John Walker (Cleveland, 1970), p. 63. g The unusual tone of this canvas may be due to a technical inno­ vation on Allston's part. An account of the actual painting appears in Flagg's biography, p. 196. 65

Because the sky treatment in both paintings conforms loosely to this description, perhaps this phenomenon may represent merely a liking on

Allston's part for a particular composition and color arrangement in landscapes. To the extent that this speculation is valid, an inference made on the basis of the sky composition in these landscapes of Allston would lose some significance.

During Allston's last American period, 1818-1843', one part of his consciousness was concerned with a single canvas and its studies:

Belshazzar's Feast. ^ This depiction of the prophet Daniel's announce­ ment of Belshazzar's impending death caused Allston so many problems that it remained unfinished at his death in 1843. The popular interpre­ tation of his difficulties is that he found himself quite out of place, an artist in America; the public was not interested in his grandiose treatment of biblical story. There is a certain amount of truth in this interpretation, but Allston was not doomed, as the legend some­ times goes on, to a tragic obsession with this one unsuccessful canvas.

In Richardson's catalogue, if we just look at the dated works between

1818 and 1843, we find a record of thirty-seven paintings, including landscapes, portraits, and literary and biblical illustrations. Most of these canvases reveal Allston as a romantic, a painter of the ideal, but in the landscapes expecially we can find a clear definition of the idealism which served Allston as a resolution of the conflict between man and nature that was suggested by some of his earlier paintings.

■*-®The large unfinished canvas (144 1/8 x 192 1/8) is in The Detroit Institute of Arts. A sepia study (25 5/8 x 34 1/2) is at the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard. And a color study (25 1/2 x 34 1/4) is at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The work was begun in 1817. 66

The landscapes of Allston's last American period are characterized by (1) a dreamlike, hazy atmosphere; (2) a pervading sense of the harmony of man and nature; (3) the presence of a group of figures or a single figure in the landscape; (4) a narrow range of hues; and (5) a dominant contrast of light and dark. Two representative canvases will suffice to illustrate the type: Moonlit Landscape, 1819 and Landscape:

Evening, sometimes called Classical Landscape, 1821 (Plates V and VI).

After examining Allston's early gothic paintings, one might first notice in Moonlit Landscape the recurrence of the dark, brooding quality, but with a significant difference. Upon closer examination, the dark­ ness turns out to be not so menacing as in, say, Landscape, 1798

(Plate I). The atmosphere in Moonlit Landscape is warm, with the combination of the browns of the land, the white of the clouds and the blues of the sky. In this example, Allston's narrow range of hues offers nothing to startle the observer. Indeed, the figures, as dark and poorly defined as they are, reflect a sense of peace because they are nearly an organic part of the landscape. If they appear to be shadowy, they are simply as natural as shadows.^ Further, in the central group, we can see a family (mother, father, and child) speaking to a horseman, asking directions perhaps, but we cannot know. We do know that there is no implied threat to anyone in the picture.

The painting has no certain link with any particular place or event. The figures, the boat, the river, and the bridge are only elements of a scene that could be any number of different places. And

HThe naturalness of shadows was recognized by the early American Quakers, who, while rejecting portrait painting as vanity, accepted the silhouette as natural because of its affinity to a shadow. Plate V

Washington Allston, Moonlit Landscape, 1819

Oil on canvas, 24 x 35

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Richardson, catalogue no. 117

67 68 Plate VI

Washington Allston, Landscape: Evening, 1821 (Classical Landscape)

Oil on canvas, 25 1/2 x 34

International Business Machines Corporation, N.Y.C.

Richardson, catalogue no. 126

69 70 71 there is no implied story in the painting. What Allston depicted in

Moonlit Landscape was a particular light effect on a moonlit night. The contrast of light and shadow seems to be the real focal point in the painting, which suggests Allston's concern for the painting as painting, rather than as a vehicle for a story or message. But along with this light effect, he portrayed a mood of serenity, which implies that triadic harmony of God, man, and nature. In this painting there is none of the conflict between man and nature that is apparent in his earlier work. This is the harmony then that is characteristic of

Allston's idealized view of man in nature.

Indeed, Moonlit Landscape is so idealized and so much a painting of mood-that it. might well be a recollection of some time past, perhaps a feeling that Allston recollected from his experiences in Europe and

England. Or it could be a recollection of a more recent experience, such as his landing in Boston in 1818, as Barbara Novak suggests.^

The point is that while Allston undoubtly observed such a light effect at some time in actual fact, he just as clearly derived the mood of the landscape from his mind. And this gives the painting an introspective quality that represents a different kind of idealism from that char­ acteristic of the more "American" Luminist school of painters (Fitz

Hugh Lane, Martin Heade, and William Sydney Mount).^ It may be just this introspective quality itself that keeps Allston from being regarded as truly an American painter.

12 Barbara Novak, American Painting of the Nineteenth Century: Realism, Idealism and the American Experience (New York, 1969), pp. 5 pp. 53-54.

•^Ibid., p. 5 5 , and chapters 5-8. 72

Certainly, introspection is the key to the second representative

canvas, the idealized Landscape: Evening (Plate VI). This is even more

of a mental picture than is Moonlit Landscape. The young man in the

foreground, sitting on the grass with his dog could easily be generating

the entire landscape from his mind. And whether the scene is in

America, as it could be, or perhaps Italy, as the alternate title Clas­

sical Landscape suggests, is immaterial. The mood is again, as in

Moonlit Landscape, the serenity of man in nature; the figure is abso­

lutely at home in the woodland scene.

The extremely limited range of hues in this painting is appropriate

if we regard it as an introspective landscape of mood. The consistency

of the reddish-golden palette contributes to the unity of feeling:

peace and warmth. The setting sun raking across the canvas has reduced

the landscape and the figures in it to various shades of a single hue.

And this phenomenon, although not impossible, is not realistic. It is

Allston's idealism, an expression in pigment of the unity of man and

nature.

Richardson places the painting in the category of "Reverie," and

describes it thus:

. . . and reverie upon the serenity and grace of the Italian landscape .... Allston created for American painting a warmer and more golden palette, which came down through William Page and Alexander, to Innes, a separate and distinct tradition of atmospheric

This is an apt description. The landscape does not represent itself as

a photographic record of an actual location in nature. It is rather an

^Richardson, p. 147. 73 idealized aesthetic composition intended by the artist to communicate a mood, in Richardson’s words, of "serenity and grace."

Of all Allston's paintings there is only one that, at least in respect to its title, records a specifically American scene. This is the late canvas, American Scenery. Time: Afternoon with a_ Southwest

Haze, 1835 (Plate VII). This may well be a record of a particular place; and Allston went to some trouble to specify a particular time in the title. But significantly it is just as much idealized as the other landscapes that we have examined. And the general characteristics of

Allston's American period landscapes are quite obvious. The hazy, dreamlike atmosphere which covers the scene is apparent even if we do not see the specific mention of "haze" in the title. The warm glow of the pinks in the clouds, the blue sky, and the blues in the distant hills offer no threat at all to the lone figure on horseback; there is nothing to disturb the harmony of man and nature. Except for the pinks and blues in the treatment of the sky, the painting is dominated by shades of brown, in the trees, the ground, the pool of water, and the figure on horseback. The range of hues is thus similar to that in

Moonlit Landscape. And the contrast of light and dark is carefully handled, with the shadow dominating the left half of the painting and the lower right and the light dominating the right half of the painting and the upper left.

American Scenery has, thus, the same characteristics as the other idealized landscapes, Moonlit Landscapes and Landscape: Evening. There is nothing particularly "American" about its dreamlike atmosphere. Like

Landscape: Evening, it could be derived primarily from the artist's Plate VII

Washington Allston, American Scenery. Time: Afternoon with a_ Southwest Haze, 1835

Oil on canvas, 18 1/2 x 24 1/2

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Richardson, catalogue no. 143

74 75 consciousness. Allston is, in fact, the most introspective artist in this study and presents, therefore, interpretative difficulties that do not occur with the other figures. It could be said, as Richardson,

Novak, and others have suggested in different ways, that the land in

Allston's landscapes exists only as a figment of the artist's imag­ ination. We cannot find, therefore, in Allston's landscapes a conflict of civilization and the wilderness of the type found in Paulding and

Irving. Yet my purpose in beginning the examination of Allston's painting with his student work and with some of the European landscapes was to show that a real conflict between man and nature did at one time exist in his work, but that his idealism and introspective bent produced a sense of harmony in his treatment of landscape. So no sense of a conflict between civilization and the American wilderness ever materialized in Allston's mature work.

This puts Allston in a philosophical category distinct from that containing James Kirke Paulding and Washington Irving. Paulding and

Irving were both basically realists who recognized the conflict inherent in the onrush of civilization. And both in their writings occasionally attempted an artist's response to the conflict, in which response an idealistic view emerged. Paulding's ironic humor and Irving's fanciful landscape each implied in its own way the imposition of an idea upon the real world. But this idealism was only a minor part of their out­ look; with Allston, the idealistic view was fundamental. And the difference between Paulding and Irving, on the one hand, and Allston, on the other, may well be based on the latter's greater tendency toward introspection. CHAPTER IV

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

Parallel to the development of Allston's idealism is that of

William Cullen Bryant. While Allston in his landscapes aimed at the production of a dreamlike atmosphere and a pervading sense of the harmony of man and nature, Bryant, in his longer nature poems of the

1820's, sought to create the appearance of timelessness. The effect of timelessness in Bryant's poetry is his attempted resolution of the conflict of civilization and the wilderness, which he saw much more clearly than did Allston. The transcendence of time allowed Bryant to focus on what was eternal in nature rather than the purely temporal clash between man and the wilderness. And what was eternal had to be, for Bryant, the divine presence.

The methods Bryant used to create the effect of timelessness will remind us of some of the attributes of Allston's Moonlit Landscape and

Landscape: Evening (Plates V and VI). They include the static scene, characterized by spatial compression and a prevailing sense of peace; the portrayal of the woods as a place of refuge from the timbound world of business; the emphasis on ordered beauty, as opposed to disordered wilderness; the condensation of time, as in the coexistence of the past, present, and future; and finally a sense of the divine presence.

I intend to show by a close examination of three of Bryant's longer

77 nature poems that as Bryant becomes more aware of the reality of the wilderness, his ability to reduce nature to a timeless Eden diminishes.

But to counteract this diminishing ability, he turns to an emphasis upon the divine influence in nature. Poems that demonstrate this relationship of time, divinity, and the wilderness are "A Winter Piece,

(1820), "Monument Mountain," (1824), and "A Forest Hymn," (1825). In

"A Winter Piece," the poet finds a natural context for meditation, but without any explicit religious concern; he is basically successful in his quest for an environment appropriate for meditation, but paradox^ ically the poem ends in nature's rage, which alters the poet's contem­ plative mood by reminding him of the fact of change. In "Monument

Mountain," a similar meditative environment exists, but with the sig­ nificant difference that the implications of time are more serious and thus more difficult for the poet to deal with; as a result, Bryant appeals to the divine influence as a way of giving precedence to the ordered beauty that he prefers; but this effect of timelessness is diffused by the fact that the poem ends in a narrative, albeit a mythic one. In "A Forest Hymn," a divine presence is felt most clearly, and the influence of time is reduced so far as to allow the poet at the end simply to dismiss the wild, timebound aspects of nature in his prefer­ ence for the divinely ordered beauty.

In "A Winter Piece," (1820)f Bryant gives a complex view of nature

The woods in the poem are characterized by both beauty and wilderness, but the poet seems to prefer the orderly beauty. Thus, even though the

William Cullen Bryant, The Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant, ed. Parke Godwin. (New York, 1883), Vol. I, pp. 34-38. (This edition hereafter is referred to as Works.) 79 woods are not immune to the passing time, they offer a welcome escape from the cares of the city. And a corollary value is that man is not automatically the destroyer of nature because his presence in the woods is a pleasant one. But the poem ends in nature's rage, an alteration of the meditative context, and this brings time back in at a crucial moment which seriously qualifies any sense of peace that might have been produced by the balance of the poem.

In the very beginning of the poem, Bryant describes his attempt to create a proper context for meditation, away from the time-bound world of business:

The time has been that these wild solitudes, Yet beautiful as wild, were trod by me Oftener than now; and when the ills of life Had chafed my spirit— when the unsteady pulse Beat with strange flutterings— I would wander forth And seek the woods. The sunshine on my path Was to me as a friend. The swelling hills, The quiet dells retiring far between, With gentle invitation to explore Their windings, were a calm society That talked with me and soothed me. Then the chant Of birds, and chime of brooks, and soft caress Of the fresh sylvan air, made me forget The thoughts that broke by peace, and I began To gather simples by the fountain's brink, And lose myself in day-dreams. While I stood In Nature's loneliness, I was with one With whom I early grew familiar, one Who never had a frown for me, whose voice Never rebuked me for the hours I stole From cares I loved not, but of which the world Deems highest, to converse with her.

The unsteady pulse of the poet's heart is an indication of a distur­ bance in his temporal orientation. In such moments, the remedy is to leave the scene of the disturbance and find a place where time is not reflected by "strange flutterings" of the heart. The poet must "seek the woods," the "calm society." 80

But it is not always possible to find uninterrupted peace in the calm society of nature. As soon as Bryant asserts that Nature does not rebuke him for the attempt to conquer time by stopping it in meditation away from the cares of the world of men, the peace that he desired seems to be destroyed by nature herself:

When shrieked The bleak November winds, and smote the woods, And the brown fields were herbless, and the shades, That met above the merry rivulet, Were spoiled, I sought, I loved them still; they seemed Like old companions in adversity.

This is a suggestion of the wilderness mentioned in the opening lines of the poem, but dismissing the sentimental reference to past adversity, it is not immediately clear why the poet responds to the shriek of the wind with love.

In fact, such a response is not really out of place. The thrust of the poem is toward the beauty of the landscape, increased by the variety of the different stages of winter. One scene involves the animals of winter:

The snow-bird twittered on the beechen bough, And 'neath the hemlock, whose thick branches bent Beneath its bright cold burden, and kept dry A circle, on the earth, of withered leaves, The partridge found a shelter. Through the snow The rabbit sprang away. The lighter track Of fox, and the raccoon’s broad path were there, Crossing each other. From his hollow tree The squirrel was abroad, gathering the nuts Just fallen, that asked the winter cold and sway Of winter blast, to shake them from their hold.

This passage creates a strange sense of containment— a variety of animals all in one small scene: the snow-bird, a partridge, a rabbit, a squirrel, and the tracks of a fox and a raccoon. There is something 81

unreal in this scene similar to an Audubon painting, in which the

separate animals or birds are real enough, but the enveloping space

is abstracted. Or in our own time it is reminiscent of the diorama

in the museum— an arrangement of stuffed animals behind glass,

entitled perhaps "New England Woodland Inhabitants.In other

words, Bryant's little orderly scene is a distortion of both time

and space, but it is pretty— there is beauty in such order.

The description of the beauty in nature— the beauty of winter—

contains in the next section of the poem:

Look! the massy trunks Are cased in pure crystal; each light spray, Nodding and tinkling in the breath of heaven Is studded with its trembling water-drops, That glimmer with an amethystine light. [And very soon this comes to a climax:] Or haply the vast hall Or fairy palace, that outlasts the night, And fades not in the glory of the sun;— Where crystal columns send forth slender shafts And crossing arches; and fantastic aisles Wind from the sight in brightness, and are lost Among the crowded pillars. Raise thine eye; Thou seest no cavern roof, no palace vault; There the blue sky and the white drifting cloud Look in. Again the wildered fancy dreams Of spouting fountains, frozen as they rose, And fixed, with their branching jets, in air, And all their sluices sealed. All, all is light; Light without shade. But all shall pass away With the next sun. From numberless vast trunks Loosened, the crashing ice shall make a sound Like the far roar of rivers, and the eve Shall close o'er the brown woods as it was wont.

Suddenly in the description of the beauty, the element of time

^Bryant coined the phrase "fixed tranquillity" to describe a static scene in an earlier poem: "The mossy rocks themselves,/ And the old and ponderous trunks of prostrate trees/ That lead from knoll to knoll a causey rude/ Or bridge the sunken brook, and their dark roots,/ With all their earth upon them, twisting high,/ Breathe fixed tran­ quillity." From "Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood" (1815). 82 intrudes— all shall pass away as the season changes. The peace and exquisite beauty of the scene is only transitory. But the reader recalls that the poet sought this solitude, "when the ills of life/

Had chafed his spirit." The woods had been a refuge from the world of men. When the refuge turns out to be only temporary (because time does pass), then the poet turns back to the world of men, but not in the city.

'Tis pleasant to behold the wreaths of smoke Roll up among the maples of the hill, Where the shrill sound of youthful voices wakes The shriller echo, as the clear pure lymph, That from the wounded trees, in twinkling drops, Falls, mid the golden brightness of the morn, Is gathered in with brimming pails, and oft, Wielded by sturdy hands, the stroke of axe Makes the woods ring.

Man in nature now suggests an explicitly pleasant experience. Time may be passing and consequently destroying the peace in the natural sanctuary, but man is not guilty of complicity. The traces of man are welcomed in this poem; both his fires and his axe are pleasant. So far, then, we have seen the woods as both beautiful and wild, but with a prevalence of the orderly beauty that provides a refuge for the poet from the mundane worries of city life. And this implies that man can potentially achieve a harmonious relationship with nature.'

But the last lines of the poem alter this view of nature somewhat:

. . . the time Of blossoms and green leaves is yet afar. And ere it comes, the encountering winds shall oft Muster their wrath again, and rapid clouds Shade heaven, and bounding on the frozen earth Shall fall their volleyed stores, rounded like hail And white like snow, and the loud North again 83

Shall buffet the vexed forest in his rage.

The alteration does not depend on the introduction of something new here; rather it is a matter of emphasis. It is odd that the final word in the poem, so much of which is devoted to the description of peace— nature itself and man in nature— is the contradictory, wild emotion "rage." The conclusion can be partially explained as a full circle return to the sentiment of the opening line— the "wild solitude," but the return is not perfect because now the solitude is missing.

I suggest that the problem is the poet's ambivalent attitude toward nature. Bryant clearly prefers the peaceful, the orderly, and the beautiful in nature; he aspires toward the timeless condition of pure space. This would be the basis of the perfect "calm society" that he seeks as a refuge from "the ills of life." But the passage of time keeps impinging on his solitude, and because the poem ends, not in peace, but on a note of rage, with all its implications of motion and change, the poet clearly is not yet able to resolve the ambivalence of his attitude.

O In "Monument Mountain" (1824), the natural conditions are similar to those prevailing in "A Winter Piece." The forest is a sort of refuge for man; it is a mixture of the beautiful and the wild; and the beauty of the forest is expressed in predominantly spatial terms. But the temporal implications are more intrusive here, so in order to give pre­ cedence to the orderly and peaceful beauty that he prefers he introduces the divine element. There are three large sections in the poem: (1) a description of mountains, emphasizing the mixture of the lovely and the

^Works, pp. 102-107. 84

wild; the poet attempts to bring these diverse elements into an

ordered, spatial composition; (2) a description of the monument moun­

tain which is primarily wild, but which ends in beauty and divinity;

and (3) the story of an Indian girl who commits suicide because the

love that she feels for her cousin is considered incestuous by her

tribe. The effect of this narrative is to deny somewhat the signifi­

cance of the divinely ordered beauty in the conclusion of the second

section, but because of its mythic character it does itself tend,

paradoxically, to deny the significance of time.

Here is the first section of the poem:

Thou who wouldst see the lovely and the wild Mingled in harmony on Nature's face, Ascend our rocky mountains. Let thy foot Fail not with weariness, for on their tops The beauty and the majesty of earth, Spread wide beneath, shall make thee to forget The steep and toilsome way. There, as thou standest, The haunts of men below thee, and around The mountain-summits, thy expanding heart Shall feel a kindred with that loftier world To which thou art translated, and partake The enlargement of thy vision. Thou shalt look Upon the green and rolling forest-tops, And down into the secrets of the glens, And streams that with their bordering thickets strive To hide their windings. Thou shalt gaze, at once, Here on white villages, and tilith, and herds, And swarming roads, and there on solitudes That only hear the torrent, and the wind, And eagle's shriek.

This first section introduces all of the important attitudes toward nature that we have so far found in Bryant's poetry. The poet offers

the mountain forest as a refuge from "the haunts of men;" he suggests

that there is both beauty and wilderness; and he adds the hint that the mountain peak is, in a real sense, a religious peak as well: "Thy 85 expanding heart/ Shall feel a kindred with that loftier world/ To which thou art translated."

There is also a familiar timeless scene, similar to the static tableau of animals in "A Winter Piece." This is a visual scene, in which the enlarged vision is able to gather in both the beautiful

("the green and rolling forest-tops," the white villages, tilth, herds, and roads) and the wild or sublime (the secret, hidden glens and streams, the solitudes, the storm, the eagle.) In "A Winter Piece" it was a variety of landscape compressed into a narrow verbal canvas, limited by the simple words "here" and "there." The implication is that the temporal dimension is lost. The vision can take in the landscape at once and as a whole, in all its variety, its wilderness and its loveliness. The result is a beautiful composition. But it is artifice. The poet creates the impression that the natural world makes a poem, that its discordant parts exist together in harmony. And as far as the single observer is concerned, this impression is an objective fact. It is a way of imposing a control over one's environment, a control that ignores time.

If the observer moves down from his vantage point, he will no doubt find that the way is difficult (it was "steep and toilsome" on the way up). It would take time to traverse the distance between the white villages and the green forests and between the secret glens and the winding streams. But of course the men who must make the land their own— the explorers, frontiersmen, and farmers— cannot afford the luxury of standing at one high vantage point and imposing order on the land­ scape. This is only a visual control. The poet can create a whole 86 empire without losing a single ideal, as if time stands still. But after the frontiersman successfully imposes his will upon the land, he is a different person; time has passed.

Bryant, however, was only just coming to the problem of time in its fully developed state. In "A Winter Piece," time occasionally intrudes in his orderly visual space, but the most important intrusion is the concluding word of the poem "rage." In "Monument Mountain," the temporal implications, especially the wildness, are more pronounced, but there is an obvious similarity in the two poems in that the first section ends with the "eagle's shriek," an image comparable to "rage" in "A Winter Piece." The shriek distrubs the calm and serves to introduce the second section, in which the wildness begins to predom­ inate :

There is a precipice That seems a fragment of some mighty wall, Built by the hand that fashioned the old world, To separate its nations, and thrown down When the flood drowned them. To the north, a path Conducts you up the narrow battlement. Steep is the western side, shaggy and wild With mossy trees, and pinnacles of flint, And many a hanging crag. But to the east, Sheer to the vale go down to the bare old cliffs— Huge pillars, that in middle heaven upbear Their weather-beaten capitals, here dark With moss, the growth of centuries, and there Of chalky whiteness where the thunderbolt Has splinered them. It is a fearful thing To stand upon the beetling verge, and see Where storm and lightning, from that huge gray wall, Have tumbled down vast blocks, and at the base Dashed them in fragments, and to lay thine ear Over the dizzy depth, and hear the sound Of winds, that struggle with the woods below Come up like ocean murmurs.

The above description,, which is all but the last seven and one-half lines of the second section, is not the spatial panorama that the first section is. The observer is somehow closer to the scene. The observer does not forget "the steep and toilsome" way; he is, rather, confronted with another path, different from the one in the previous section, which is steep, shaggy, and wild with mossy trees, and flint, and crags.

This new scene makes the observer aware of time— the precipice seems to hark back to the old testament flood. The cliffs are ancient ruins, "huge pillars . . . [with] weatherbeaten capitals." The moss is

"the growth of centuries." The scene is also frightening, because it is impossible for the observer to impose an order upon it. The observer is, in fact, so far from being able to order the scene that he feels a sort of vertigo: "It is a fearful thing/ To stand upon the beetling

Verge . . . and to lay thine ear/ Over the dizzy depth."

The observer experiences the incomprehensible magnitude of the power of nature, and his response is fear. But there is a temporal element in this sublime scene. Part of the sense of fear, and much of the vague power of the scene is based on the references to the ravages of time. Its vagueness is due, of course, to the physical impossibility of experiencing time past, explicitly, in an instant. The observer must make a choice to view the landscape in this way. He might have chosen an alternative view, as he did in the previous section, by stepping back, (to gain perspective, as we say) to see both the beau­ tiful and the sublime in one ordered and "poetic" scene. This would have been equivalent to ignoring time, and this is what the observer chooses to do in the closing lines of the section:

But the scene Is lovely round; a beautiful river there Wanders amid the fresh and fertile meads, The paradise he made unto himself, Mining the soil for ages. On each side The fields swell upward to the hills; beyond, Above the hills, in the blue distance, rise The mountain-columns with which earth props heaven.

This is a return to the orderly beauty of the first section or of

"A Winter Piece." The spatial experience is now emphasized— the broad vistas of the American frontier are suggested. And, as is not at all uncommon, the passage ends with the link to divinity, with the mountain peaks apparently touching heaven. The reason why the divine influence is not felt in "A Winter Piece" and is felt here in "Monument

Mountain" is that the wildness, in all its temporal implications, is a more serious threat in the latter poem. Thus the divine presence is brought forward to counteract the wildness.

The passage just quoted from "Monument Mountain" is certainly a foundation of American optimism, the landscape becoming a kind of cathedral for the worship of God: the "Mountain-columns" support heaven.

But such a vision and the analogy of the cathedral seem to overturn the usual relationship of God to man's world. God's heaven is propped up by the mountains of earth, specifically American mountains. The danger of this kind of imagery is that the poet, in his desire to glorify

America, may elevate his country to the status of a god. Bryant avoided this danger, even though he showed an affinity for it.

The spatial experience suggested by this brief concluding passage of the second section is not exactly pure. Bryant refers to the ages required for the river to make the present "paradise." But this is a strange contradiction. If the idea of paradise here is equivalent to 89 that of Eden, suggesting a common expression of the American's dream for his country, then Bryant is talking about an ideal existence with­ out time which is achieved, paradoxically, by working in time. The river "mining the soil for ages" to achieve a paradise is possibly a metaphor for the American dream. It is not uncommon, when one works toward a goal, to desire the ability to maintain that goal, once it is achieved. But such stability is probably not possible on earth, and it is certainly a contradiction of the idea of change that is implicit in any desire to progress toward a goal.

The poem "Monument Mountain" does not, however, end on this note.

The third and longest section is yet to come. I suspect that any reader of this poem will be surprised to come upon the sad tale of an Indian suicide, following hard upon a rather final statement about the connection of God, man, and nature. But some kind of surprise is inevitable because there is no felt necessity to append this narration to the poem. This is not to say that the story is not connected to the first half of the poem; it explains, after all, the poem's title.

The mountain is a monument'at the grave of the Indian girl. Nor is the story unsuitable; the pathos of unrequited love, for whatever reasons, is very romantic. And the Indian subject adds a touch of exoticism.

The most important implication, however, for this argument is that the sad narrative brings the poem back into time. After the peaceful spaciousness of the present scene— the mountains, hills, and distant sky— the poem abruptly shifts into the past:

There is a tale about these reverend rocks, A sad tradition of unhappy love, And sorrows borne and ended long ago, When over these fair vales the savage sought His game in the thick woods. There was a maid, The fairest of the Indian maids, bright-eyed, With wealth of raven tresses, a light form, And a gay heart.

It is a very simple introduction to a story, not unlike the formula,

"once upon a time." Both beginnings ask the reader or auditor to transport himself imaginatively into the past; both also insist upon a unique occasion. ("Once" in the formula is equivalent to "there was a maid.") But paradoxically both beginnings lead into a sort of mythic present. "Once upon a time" introduces a tale that invariably has an ever-present meaning. It might be followed, for example, by the tale of Rapunzel, the princess in the tower who is singularly unsuccessful in her attempts to escape to her lover, a representation, according to some, of the woman's fear of violation. The Indian maid, who commits suicide because she is forbidden to love her cousin, represents a very similar truth, that people habitually translate their internal fears into external prohibitions in order to absolve themselves of the re­ sponsibility for acting despite their fears.

I am not concerned here with defending these specific interpreta­ tions; there are others, to be sure. My purpose, rather, is to suggest that the tale of the Indian maid is essentially mythic, since it can be translated in its simple form into other times and other places.

This tale, therefore, like the myth, is an attempt to transcend time.

The poem as a whole is thus a mixture of attitudes toward time.

In the first section, Bryant attempts to bring the diverse elements of the wild and the beautiful into an ordered, spatial composition; in the second section, there is a distinct recognition of the passage of 91

time and its consequences, but this is abruptly dropped in the last

lines of the section, in favor of a spatial image of the American paradise, with the divine presence quite noticeable. The divine influence is introduced here in order to counterbalance the effect of the wildness. But in the third section, the effect of the divine presence is considerably diffused by a narrative whose focus is not at all religious. The narrative itself tends to deny time its sway, because of its mythic character, but the poem as a whole, because of its diverse elements, fails to come to terms with time.

The divine presence, a significant element of "Monument Mountain," becomes absolutely central in "A Forest Hymn," (1825)4 and the temporal implications are reduced to a minimum. In fact, the wild, time-bound landscape is mentioned at the end of the poem only to be dismissed rather hurriedly. The central analogy of the forest and the church is set out at the beginning of the poem:

The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, And spread the roof above them— ere he framed The lofty vault, to gather and roll back The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood, Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down, And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks And supplication. For his simple heart Might not resist the sacred influence Which, from the stilly twilight of the place, And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound Of the invisible breath that swayed at once All their green tops, stole over him, and bowed His spirit with the thought of boundless power And inaccessible majesty. Ah, why Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect God's ancient santuaries, and adore

4Ibid., pp. 130-134. 92

Only among the crowd, and under roofs That our frail hands have raised? Let me, at least, Here, in the shadow of this aged wood, Offer one hymn— thrice happy, if it find Acceptance in His ear.

Along with the familiar analogy, we see again the connection of heaven and nature in the "old trunks that high in heaven/ Mingled their mossy boughs." A third familiar theme is the necessity of removing oneself from the "crowd" of men, in order truly to worship God. This point is made in the introduction of the hymn, and made again in the hymn itself, in which the singer finds the forest (whose trees "shot toward heaven") a perfect place for religious communion ("Fit shrine for humble worshipper to hold/ Communion with his Maker"). Continuing,

These dim vaults, These winding aisles', of human pomp or pride Report not. No fantastic carvings show The boast of our vain race to change the form Of thy fair works. But thou art here— thou fill'st The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds That run along the summit of these trees In music; thou art in the cooler breath That from the inmost darkness of the place Comes, scarcely felt; the barky trunks, the ground, The fresh moist ground, are all instinct with thee. Here is continual worship.

The hymn continues very much in this vein. Written in 1825, this poem

stands as a very early piece of American transcendentalism, with its

ample romantic and pantheistic elements. Bryant believes here that man

cantranscend time by returning often to the cathedral of nature, in which he finds a flower, for example, to be "An emination of the

indwelling Life,/ A visible token of the upholding Love,/ That are the

soul of this great universe." 93

Bryant's assurance is based on the realization thatnature is not altered appreciably by time, now that the divine context, the cathedral of nature, is established.

My heart is awed within me when I think Of the great miracle that still goes on, In silence, round me— the perpetual work Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed Forever. Written on thy works I read The lesson of thy own eternity. Lo! all grow old and die— but see again, How on the faltering footsteps of decay Youth presses— ever gay and beautiful youth In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees Wave not less proudly that their ancestors Moulder beneath them. Oh, there is not lost One of earth's charms: upon her bosom yet, After the flight of untold centuries, The freshness of her far beginning lies And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate Of his arch-enemy Death— yea, seats himself Upon the tyrant's throne— the sepulchre, And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth From thine own bosom, and shall have no end.

These lines are truly the poetic embodiment of youth in all its arrogance and optimism. There is even a near metaphysical wit in the lines "upon her [earth's] bosom yet./ After the flight of untold centuries,/ The freshness of her far beginning lies/ And yet shall lie.

[italics mine] Time is here condensed and thereby conquered; the past, present, and future all co-exist.

The wild, time-bound landscape finally does make its entrance into this poem, but only in the concluding section, and even then it is dismissed rather easily:

0 God! Wien thou Dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill, With all the waters of the firmament, The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods 9 4

And drowns the villages; when, at thy call, Uprises the great deep and throws himself Upon the continent, and overwhelms Its cities— who forgets not, at the sight Of these tremendous tokens of thy power, His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by? Oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face Spare me and mine, nor let us need the wrath Of the mad unchained elements to teach Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate, In these calm shades, thy milder majesty, And to the beautiful order of thy works Learn to conform the order of our lives.

In these lines Bryant recognizes the tempestuous side of God's power, which is equivalent to the rage in the conclusion of "A Winter Piece."

The difference is that in the earlier poem, "rage" is the final word,

and it represents a rather enigmatic comment on the otherwise beautiful

and peaceful experience. In "A Forest Hymn," it is, ofcourse not

the final word. Bryant seems to' believe that the rage can be avoided,

in favor of the "calm shades," the "milder majesty," and the

"beautiful order" of things.

The divine presence provides a significant resolution for the

problem of time in American experience. In Bryant's early poetry there

is clearly a relationship between the emphasis given to the divine

presence (the natural cathedral metaphor) and the degree of awareness

of the temporal implications of the landscape. In "A Winter Piece,"

the implications of time are relatively minor; they all focus finally

on one word, "rage." The divine presence, therefore, is hardly felt

at all. In "Monument Mountain," the wild, time-bound landscape becomes

a more significant factor, and hence the feeling of divine influence

increases. In "A Forest Hymn," the religious influence is central to

the poem, and it allows Bryant to conquer time completely— generations 95

are telescoped; the past, present and future all exist simultaneously;

and the wild landscape is simply dismissed in favor of the divinely

ordered beauty.

While the foregoing scheme pertains to a large part of Bryant's

early poetry, it is not so easy to apply it to the work of his later

years. It would be wrong, that is, to consider Bryant merely as the

poet who sang of natural cathedrals. In order then to put this

discussion of Bryant's early work in a broader context and at the same

time to bring him somewhat closer to Cooper's position, it would be helpful at this point to look at "The Prairies," (1832)^ a poem that

indicates that Bryant may have been moving toward a darker view of man and nature. He wrote it after a trip through the plains of

Illinois, and in it the temporal implications, the wild, timebound

landscape, seem to dominate. Significantly, the divine presence is hardly felt at all. After a long description of beauty of the Illinois plains, Bryant begins to wonder about the races of man that have

preceded him here. First, the mound-builders, and then

The red man came— The roaming hunter tribes, warlike and fierce, And the mound-builders vanished from the earth. The solitude of centuries untold Has settled where they dwelt. The prairie-wolf Hunts in their meadows, and his fresh-dug den Yawns by my path. The gopher mines the ground Where stood their swarming cities. All is gone; All— save the piles of earth that hold their bones, The platforms where they worshipped unknown gods, The barriers which they builded from the soil To keep the foe at bay— till o'er the walls The wild beleaguerers broke, and, one by one,

5lbid., pp. 228-232. 96

The strongholds of the plain were forced, and heaped With corpses. The brown vultures of the wood Flocked to those vast uncovered sepulchres, And sat unscared and silent at their feast. Haply some solitary fugitive Lurking in marsh and forest, till the sense Of desolation and of fear became Bitterer than death, yielded himself to die. Man's better nature triumphed then. Kind words Welcomed and soothed him; the rude conquerors Seated the captive with their chiefs; he chose A bride among their maidens, and at length Seemed to forget— yet ne'er forgot— the wife Of his first love, and her sweet little ones, Butchered, amid their shrieks, with all his race.

The solitary fugitive is the last of the mound-building race. His life is spared by the red men, because, for some unexplained reason, their "better nature triumphed" after they slaughtered the rest of the mound-builders. And the fugitive cannot forget his own butchered family. The emphasis in this passage is placed much more on the physical fact of the carnage than on the transitory nature of human history. Men's lives and societies are, to be sure, fleeting things, but Bryant is here suggesting that there is a tragic cost in the conquering of one race of men by another, a cost that cannot ever be paid in the currency of "progress." Nor can the cost be defrayed by a fatalistic cyclic view of history. At least, when Bryant puts this view into words, his words have an empty, hollow sound compared to the shrieks of a butchered race with which the previous passage ended:

Thus change the forms of being. Thus arise Races of living things, glorious in strength, And perish, as the quickening breath of God Fills them, or is withdrawn.

Bryant goes on to describe the advance of the white man westward, pushing the Indians, as well as the beaver and bison, ahead of him. 97

Still, Bryant maintains, the white man has not destroyed the land; much life remains:

Myriads of insects, gaudy as the flowers They flutter over, gentle quadrupeds, And birds, that scarce have learned the fear of man, Are here, and sliding reptiles of the ground, Startlingly beautiful. The graceful deer Bounds to the wood at my approach.

This scene is similar to the enclosed animal grouping in "A Winter

Piece," with the variety of a museum exhibit. But this later scene could also be a painter's conception of paradise, when created things lived in harmony. It is true the image of paradise appears to be shattered when the deer bounds away at the approach of man, yet the shattering lacks violence; man is apparently bringing to the wilderness more happiness than grief:

The bee, A more adventurous colonist than man, With whom he came across the eastern deep, Fills the savannas with his murmurings, And hides his sweets, as in the golden age, Within the hollow oak. I listen long To his domestic hum, and think I hear The sound of that advancing multitude Which soon shall fill these deserts. From the ground Comes up the laugh of children, the soft voice Of maidens and the sweet and solemn hymn Of Sabbath worshippers. The low of herds Blends with the rustling of the heavy grain Over the dark brown furrows. All at once A fresher wind sweeps by, and breaks my dream, And I am in the wilderness alone.

With these concluding lines, Bryant realizes that he has projected into the future and he breaks the illusion so that he wakes up in the wilder­ ness alone, in time. Now, although the wilderness in this poem is beautiful, the beauty is preceded by the shrieks of butchered children and is in some sense founded on that carnage. And because of the emphasis placed on it in the longest section of the poem, it must be a significant component of the poet's loneliness in the wilderness.

The concluding line, then, may be a realization of the high cost of change.

But the prevailing theme in this early period of Bryant's nature poetry was more idealistic. The divine presence in the wilderness allowed him to transcend the difficulties of time passing. In

Allston's landscapes we can see a similar transcendence of temporal problems but not necessarily as a result of the divine presence. The timeless quality was rather the effect of his introspective bent.

Bryant and Allston, therefore, represent two quite different kinds of idealism: Bryant's emphasizes the divine influence in the wilderness;

Allston's, although it is based on the divine presence, emphasizes the personal, introspective view of the wilderness. If Bryant's work is generally considered more "American" than Allston's, this is the distinction that is probably meant. Historically, Americans have tended to distrust Allston's introspective idealism. CHAPTER V

THOMAS COLE

Very few artists of the period show the conflicting tendencies of realism and idealism as clearly as Thomas Cole. He was capable of protraying the conflict between civilization and the wilderness with the realistic clarity of Paulding or Irving, while at the same time he produced landscapes informed with emotional harmony similar to what can be found in Allston's work or with the religious peace of a Bryant poem.

Cole's emergence as an artist occured in the Autumn of 1825, when three of his early landscapes were discovered in a New York gallery; on

June 1, 1829, Cole was on his way to Europe to take an artist's tour of

England and the continent. During this period of nearly four years he did many paintings of the American landscape and managed to establish himself as a painter of the first rank. But after his return from

Europe in 1832, he got intrested in larger conceptions, usually alle­ gorical. Although he never ceased doing the American landscape, he seemed to spend more time on such grand allegories as The Course of

Empire, The Voyage of Life and the companion pieces like Past and

Present, Departure and Return. Then just at the end of his life, he attempted another series, the Cross and the World, which was to be a sequel to The Voyage of Life. Looking at the paintings of his first

99 100 period, before his first trip to Europe, we can perhaps speculate that

Cole developed the interest in allegory because simple landscape did not express what he wanted to say. But this does not mean precisely that Cole felt too restricted in the landscape form. We will see on the contrary that this rather small group of early landscapes incor­ porates a wide variety of attitudes toward the wilderness.^

For the sake of clarity, I am going to divide this group of paintings into two parts according to whether they represent the

American landscape as a static garden, and thus are linked more closely to Allston and Bryant, or a dynamic wilderness, which aligns them rather to Paulding and Irving. The garden-wilderness opposition includes corollary pairs of opposites, such as peaceful and turbulent; spatial and temporal; descriptive and narrative; low contrast and high contrast. These are the same opposites that apply in various ways to the other figures in this study. While using the garden-wilderness opposition as my central critical tool, I intend, as the analysis of

Cole progresses, to apply the other patterns of oppositions to specific paintings, without trying to force all the paintings into all of the patterns.

To begin the analysis, let me illustrate briefly the two cate­ gories, without going into any qualifying detail. In 1828, Cole painted the home of his friend and patron Daniel Wadsworth, View of

■^•My purpose is not to pursue a full-scale analysis of Cole's painting and philosophy, but it will be clear that the various atti­ tudes toward nature that can be derived from this limited sample of Cole's work will imply a complicated and contradictory man. The Thomas Cole that results from this study will be quite in contrast to the principle images we have of (1) the founder of the Hudson River School of landscape, and (2) the painter of grand philosophical allegories. 101

Monte Video (Plate VIII). A glance at the painting will suffice to

show that it is the home in its setting rather than the home itself

that primarily concerns Cole. The setting is a green garden. The low

hills in which the tiny white house is nestled are covered with green

trees and grass. A young lady sits in the foreground, somehow

separated from the rest of the scene. The whole scene is lit with warm, glowing sunlight, perhaps an afternoon sun. And, except for the

intruding, jagged tree in the left foreground, the total effect is the

serenity and order of a carefully cultivated garden.

The wilderness category can be exemplified by a canvas painted in

1826, View Near Ticonderoga (Plate IX). In contrast to Monte Video, man does not here seem to be in control of his environment. The scene

is wild and storm, and one of the two small figures has fallen. It is

clearly an event, perhaps climatic, in a story. There is not only more variety of color but also more contrast of light and dark than in

Monte Video. These contrasts have the effect of enhancing the impli­

cations of motion that are derived from the cloud formations and the

posture of the one upright figure and the trees. Thus, there is no

peace here, no evidence of human cultivation— nothing but man

O struggling with the wilderness.

Keeping these two paintings in mind then as touchstones, let us

examine in more detail first the less familiar category of Cole's

landscapes— the garden type. View of Monte Video, which has already

been introduced, is one of three landscapes which in different ways

^A single canvas, The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden (Plate XIX) embodies both types of landscape. Plate VIII

Thomas Cole, View of Monte Video, the Seat of Daniel Wadsworth, Esq., 1828

Oil on panel, 19 3/4 x 26

Wadsworth Atheneum

Seaver, catalogue no. 11

102

Plate IX

Thomas Cole, View Near Ticonderoga, 1826

Oil on panel, 24 x 34 1/2

The Fort Ticonderoga Association

Seaver, catalogue no. 4 (View Near Ticonderoga or Mount Defiance)

Merritt, catalogue no. 7 (Gelyna)

104

106 focus on a house. The other two are Beach Mountain House (Plate XI) and View Near Conway, New Hampshire (Plate X) . ^ Each one of these landscapes presents the landscape as a peaceful environment for man, but clearly there are marked differences in the three versions of man's natural environment, and also in man's relationship to that environment.

The View Near Conway is the most primitive of the three in the sense that it shows man in a very humble situation, living in a log cabin which is apparently isolated in the natural wilderness. But regardless of the isolation, he is not in any sense at war with the wilderness. The man's concerns are domestic: he returns from a fishing excursion as his family, a wife and three children, awaits him. The

^Beach Mountain House: According to Esther Isabel Seaver, Thomas Cole, One Hundred Years Later (Hartford, 1948), p. 22, "The painting was probably done c.1828 for it corresponds in every detail to the engraving of the subject." The reference is to Engraving No. 59 in J. H. Hinton's History and Topography of the United States (London, 1830). This is one of two major catalogues (i.e., Cole, One Hundred Years Later) available for the works of Thomas Cole, and will hence­ forth be referred to as Seaver. View Near Conway: There is some doubt about the history and title of this canvas. Howard Merritt, in Thomas Cole (Rochester, 1969), without elucidating his argument, calls it Home in the Woods and ascribes it to the later period of New Hampshire pictures, 1845-1846 (p. 40). Seaver, with almost equal reticence, says "Although this painting does not correspond in every detail to the engraving [published in Hinton's History and Topography of the United States (London, 1830)] bearing the same title, it is probably an early work" (p. 21). I am concerned here only with the possibility that this is an early work, which justifies its inclusion in this study. But even were it to be definitely assigned to the mid-forties, it would still represent one of Cole's responses to the American landscape. The problem would then be to find its earliest manifestation. The Merritt catalogue mentioned above is the second major catalogue of Cole's works, and will be hereafter referred to as Merritt. Plate X

Thomas Cole, View Near Conway, New Hampshire, prob. 1828

Oil on canvas, 44 x 66

Kennedy Galleries, N.Y.C.

Seaver, catalogue no. 10

Merritt, catalogue no. 55 (Home in the Woods, 1845-1846)

107

109 fact that there is washing hanging out to dry further domesticates the scene. The day appears to be still since there is no motion in the trees and the lake has a glass-like surface. Add to this the absence of dramatic contrast of light and dark, the relatively narrow range of hues, the quite ordinary grayish sky, and the very slow modulation from the detailed foreground to the hazy mountain peak in the distance— the result is a peaceful scene; there is no conflict here between man and nature.

Whether this peacefulness is a realistic view or a romanticized one is, however, quite another question. Howard Merritt’s comment

(in full) about this canvas is: "One of the artist’s fine late picture idylls, as Noble says, and as full of interesting nostalgic detail as its contemporary [The Pic-Nic]. Although the peacefulness is certainly manifest, I do not see the scene as inherently nostalgic, mainly I suspect because the lighting is rather harsh. A comparsion could be made between this painting and another fishing scene that I am going to examine later, Mt. Chocorua (Plate XII). In Mt. Chocorua

the fisherman is entirely isolated in what looks to be a wilder environment than that in View Near Conway, but the lighting is al­ together different. The whole Mt. Chocorua picture is bathed in golden sunshine, and the result is that it is much more romantic or nostalgic than View Near Conway.

There is one way, however, to argue for the romantic, nostalgic effect of View Near Conway. The observer of this scene has to be

^Merritt, p. 40. The Pic-Nic is illustrated in color in Merritt, p. 56. 110 elevated— considerably detached from mundane realities of daily existence. Otherwise the scene as a whole could not be included in the painting. But unfortunately for this argument, this point of view obtains in nearly all of Cole's canvases, with the possible ex­ ception of two or three.** This observation suggests quite rightly that most of Cole's pictures are, in fact, romantic, but a char­ acteristic that most of Cole's pictures have in common admittedly is not a very good feature by which to make distinctions within his work.

The second painting in this group of house-inhabited landscapes,

Beach Mountain House (Plate XI), is very different from View Near

Conway.^ The feeling of peacefulness is, of course, quite evident.

But we see immediately that the wilderness is quite absent, if the elaborate mansion and the figure of the artist sketching can be taken as signs of civilization. The white house effectively dominates its

^Occasionally Cole used a less detached and not at all elevated point of view as in Kaaterskill Falls (Plate XX), Wolf in the Glen (Plate XXI), and Landscape (Plate XXII). These paintings, especially the latter, have a more sketchy appearance than is usual for Cole, and because of the lower point of view the viewer is pulled in closer to the scene. Thus, these paintings have the appearance of direct, realistic versions of actual landscapes.

^Seaver, p. 22: "The original and very famous Hudson River Tavern here portrayed was built in 1823 on the picturesque, rock ledge 2,250 feet above the water near Catskill. Built in Greek Revival style, its elegant portico with thirteen gilded Corinthian capitals, was as much admired by visiting travelers as the comfort of its sumptuous interiors was enjoyed. It was first known as Pine Orchard House from the fact that it was built in a clearing of pines. When taken over by Charles L. Beach, grandfather of the owner of the picture, in the 1830's and run by him and his descendants, it became known as Beach Mountain House. An early, if not the first use of the name Catskill Mountain House, was by Charles Rockwell, a preacher poet, as a title of a poem." Ill natural surroundings which consist of a rather indistinct array of trees in their autumn colors. Even though there is something photographic about this scene, it is also somehow unnatural. When we know, for example, that the house is build on a "rocky ledge 2250 feet above the water near Catskill" we are satisfied that it would be possible to journey to that spot and actually photograph it.^ James Kirke Paulding did visit it, when it was known as Pine Orchard, and found the environs to be worthy of his praise, but with an ironic touch. Cole did not adopt an ironic perspective here, but the painting is somewhat dis­ turbing. Why does the tree line drop off so suddenly on the left?

What sort of foundation does the white house have? Where does the dirt road lead? It is not that these questions do not have answers; any rational being can provide them. But the possibility of such questions creates a slightly unsettling effect, which of course counteracts somewhat the peacefulness which is the dominant effect. Furthermore, this unsettling effect, points to the conclusion that man is not quite at home in the natural world. Here we have a large Greek revival house perched on a wooded American mountain, but not at all an organic part of it. Even in the peacefulness of the scene, man is to this extent at odds with nature.

The third painting in the group, View of Monte Video (Plate VIII), we have looked at but briefly. The house is nearly hidden in the landscape, instead of in a position of dominance like the Beach mountain house. The light, as we have already noted, is the warm glow of prob­ ably a late afternoon sun. The scene as a whole is dominated by the

7Ibid. Plate XI

Thomas Cole, Beach Mountain House, c.1828

Oil on canvas, 14 1/2 x 23

Collection of Mrs. Mary Beach Van Wagonen, Catskill, N.Y.

Seaver, catalogue no. 13

112 presence of green grass and trees on the low rolling hills. There is a feeling throughout that man has come to terms with nature by successfully cultivating his environment, turning it into a garden. In these respects the painting is quite different from the first two landscapes. Exactly what is the degree of peacefulness in this land­ scape and on what assumptions does it rest? To oversimplify, man is quite comfortable in this landscape because he is the gardener who cultivates it. This is not the case in View Near Conway, which shows man existing in domestic peace along with nature, or in Beach Mountain

House, which shows the combination of man and nature to be somehow discordant. The attitude implicit in Monte Video is not really typical of Cole, but it must be observed even at this early point in the analysis, that so many attitudes toward nature are implicit in Cole's landscapes as to make the typical attitude perhaps impossible to isolate. It could be said that each canvas examined in this study embodies a unique set of attitudes.

Now, although the landscape is obviously a cultivated one, and although the house is nestled quite comfortably on the hillside, it is not exactly clear how to view the relationship of the young girl to the landscape. She is not blended in with the natural environment as

Leatherstocking might be or as the barely visible hunter is in Cole's

Lake Winnepesaukee (Plate XIII). But she is not an artificial appendage like the Beach mountain house. Thus she is not so close to the natural world as to be nearly part of it, nor is she at all uncomfortable in it.

She is apparently an ideal inhabitant of an ideal garden. By virtue of this conclusion as well as the warm glow of the afternoon sun, this 115 painting becomes one of Cole's more romantic landscapes.

An additional romantic element in this picture is the dead tree trunk, partially covered with vines. The gnarled, twisted tree trunk appears in six of the thirteen major landscapes in this study. It is usually on a slant in the right or left foreground, and it is undoubtedly a compositional element derived from Salvatore Rosa, an Italian painter whom Cole greatly admired. It takes on different aspects in these pictures, and it has varying amounts of sybolic value. For example, it seems to me that the trunk in the right foreground of View Near

Conway (Plate X) has very little symbolic value, or any other value save as an element of the composition and as a support for the laundry.

The trunk in Monte Video, easily the most pleasant one of the group, seems almost to reflect the dominant green of the landscape. And this is as it should be. But it does faintly suggest the romantic idea of the tenuous quality of life. In this garden, it is a reminder of mortality.8

Although it is easy to quarrel over the exact meaning and function of the tree trunk in Monte Video, there is no doubt about the overall romantic tone of the picture. On this note, it is not far-fetched to see a reminder of Allston's element of reverie. The girl in white could be interpreted as a girl in reverie, which would make her the active mind of the canvas; the whole scene could be an image of the girl's consciousness. This strain in Cole is perhaps surprising, yet

®It is easy to overemphasize this sort of symbol, especially in view of Cooper's use of the gnarled oak tree, as in The Pioneers, p. 28, where it is a symbol of wild unrestrained liberty. It clearly cannot have such a meaning here. 116 is not an isolated instance. Two other canvases painted at about this same time are also dominated by a tone of reverie: Mt. Chocorua (Plate

XII) and Northwest Bay, Lake Winnepesaukee (Plate XIII).^ Mt. Chocorua has the golden hazy effect which we have already briefly noted. The atmosphere is hazier than that in Monte Video, but the warmth is, if anything, increased because of the dominance of yellow hues. And the haziness enhances the feeling of peaceful reverie. The scene could be a man's idle dream of boyhood's lazy summer afternoons. The only element that is slightly out of kilter is the large double tree trunk on the right. It does add a touch of the wilderness to the scene, but since it is so close in hue and tone to the hill in the background it partly blends into the scene, and certainly does not imply any threatening force. And of course, if the trunks suggest wildness, the buildings in the middle background on the left suggest the outpost of civilization

Northwest Bay, Lake Winnepesaukee has the thickest haze of reverie of any Cole canvas that I have seen. With this picture one cannot help but be reminded of Washington Allston, especially his American Scenery

(Plate VII). Lake Winnepesaukee has Allston's narrow range of hue as well as his characteristic light-dark contrast, although the haze tends

Q Mt. Chocorua: Originally exhibited, according to Dorothy Bishop of IBM, in 1828 at National Academy of Design, #48, entitled Carroway Peak, New Hampshire, owned by J. A. Hillhouse. Northwest Bay, Lake Winnepesaukee: The original date is uncertain but it was exhibited at the National Academy of Design, New York, in 1829, and an engraving was made by A. B. Durand and published by Bryant in 1830 in The American Landscape, with the following caption: "After the painting in the possession of Daniel Wadsworth." The engraving is owned by the Watkinson Library, Hartford, Conn. (Seaver p. 48). Plate XII

Thomas Cole, Mt. Chocorua, 1828?

23 1/2 x 32 1/4

International Business Machines Corporation

117 118 Plate XIII

Thomas Cole, Northwest Bay, Lake Winnepesaukee, 182?

Oil on canvas, 19 5/8 x 26 3/16

Wadsworth Athenaeum

119 120 121

to diminish the effect of the contrast. The curious thing about

Winnepesaukee, however, is an element which is almost invisible: the hunter (soldier, Indian?) standing with rifle (spear, bow?) at the bottom of the picture about one-third of the distance from the left edge. The presence of this figure, whoever he is, makes the scene seem more wild than it would seem otherwise, probably because his great aloneness is manifest. Yet he does blend in with his surroundings so

that there is no possible conflict. The dominant effect is serene reverie. One recalls E. P. Richardson's phrase "landscape of mood," which certainly is applicable, not only to Winnepesaukee but also to

Mt. Chocorua, and even to Monte Video. These three landscapes are representative of Cole's idealistic side rather than his more usual realistic side.

The last two canvases in what I have called the garden group both have strong distrubing overtones so that the peaceful effect of the

scene as a whole is noticeably altered. The paintings are View of the

White Mountains and Sunny Morning on the Hudson River (Plates XIV and

X V ) . View of the White Mountains is essentially a peaceful country

% i e w of the White Mountains: "According to correspondence and notebooks, this is the view 'seen 18 miles S.W. from Foot of Mt. Washington.' In a letter of December 2, 1827, D. Wadsworth expresses to Cole his great pleasure in painting and desire for more information: ' . . . Is the scene of the Mountain from near Crawford's house?— or where— & how far west of the Notch?— as I shall wish when asked to say distinctly.— Are the obscure yellow lines under the snowy point of Mount Washington the traces of the slides.— A few words explaining of this scene I shall be glad of . . .'" (Seaver, p. 20). Sunny Morning on the Hudson River: "This . . . is almost certainly a painting done for Henry Ward in 1827. A partially torn paper label on the back . . . still has on it the Ward's address, '23 Bond St.' EXHIBITIONS: Probably N.A.S., 1828, No. 65 (View of the Round-Top in the Catskill Mountains, owner Henry Ward.)" Merritt, p. 25. 122 scene showing a solitary man walking along a dirt road on a bright sunshiny day. (There are possibly two other figures in the distance on the road, but it is not clear.) The remarkable thing is that Cole has broken his landscape in two by placing a dark mass of hills in the foreground. The man is seen in a small island of warm light in this shadowy mass. The background then is all light— it contains a meandering river, the White Mountains and majestic Mt. Washington, and the partly cloudy sky. Unlike the other canvases we have examined so far there is dramatic contrast between the areas of sunshine and those of shadow. And the walker is in fact walking away from the mountains and light and toward the shadows, which contain a suggestion of the blasted tree trunk in the vine-covered tree in the right fore­ ground, and, very faint, almost invisible, two tree trunks in a V- formation, like the Mt. Chocorua trunks, but this time more foreboding.

The two trunks in the deeper shadows seem hardly necessary to the composition because they are so dim. Either Cole put them there because they actually were there or he had a thematic reason for doing so. We have ample evidence in Noble that Cole's habit was to sketch in the open and paint in the studio, where he could sort and evaluate.

I do not mean to suggest that he had Allston’s propensity for painting memories, but rather that he did compose his scenes to a certain extent. The tree trunk for example is the subject of many studies

(sketches) which were subsequently used as needed in his paintings.

Thus, because he did not feel bound to a realistic representation, he might easily have put the tree trunks here for their symbolic value, to suggest the aging process, mortality. Plate XIV

Thomas Cole, View of the White Mountains, 1827

Oil on canvas, 25 1/2 x 35

Wadsworth Atheneum

Seaver, catalogue no. 8

123 124 125

Be that as it may, it is clear that the dramatic contrast of light and dark areas detracts from any felt serenity, even though there is not yet any serious threat of force directed against the walking man. It is merely a suggestion realized mostly by what Cole does with the surface of the painting. Sunny Morning on the Hudson River (Plate

XV) is not unlike View of the White Mountains. It lacks the background mountain range, but it has the meandering river and blue sky in the background, the dark mass this time in the middle background to fore­ ground on the left and in the very front a lighted place which seems little more than a tiny standing place on the edge of a cliff. Another unusual element of composition in this landscape is that instead of a central body of water the mountains behind and the bluff in front, the mountain, entirely in shadow, is brought into the central area.

There is a certain similarity in arrangement between this and Landscape with Tree Trunks (Plate XVI). Sunny Morning is not nearly so turbulent as Tree Trunks, but it has the potential. The mountain in Sunny

Morning (called "Round Top" in the N.A.D. exhibit, 1828; see note 10) is quite foreboding, and it seems to represent an insurmountable obstacle between the viewer, effectively stranded on a barren cliff, and the peaceful Hudson River in the distance.

The misty, nearly insubstantial clouds that hover around "Round

Top" have not been seen before in this analysis. They increase the mystery of the central mass. This kind of cloud will appear again, for great effect, in one of Cole's wilderness paintings, St. John in

the Wilderness (Plate XVIII).

The foreground of Sunny Morning is, as I have suggested above, a Plate XV

Thomas Cole, Sunny Morning on the Hudson River, c.1827

Oil on panel, 18 3/4 x 25 1/4

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Merritt, catalogue no. 14

126 127 128 barren, unfriendly place, not at all appropriate to the garden land­ scape. It consists of a few twisted trees, surely by now an ominous sign, and a short stand of rock jutting straight up from the level of the plateau. It seems a precarious perch indeed for human beings, and we are glad it is uninhabited.-^ The keynote, then, of the landscapes in the garden group is peacefulness. Man is generally at peace in his natural surroundings which exhibit varying degrees of wildness, from the rustic frontier of View Near Conway (Plate X) to the cultivated garden of Monte Video

(Plate VIII). A note of Allstonesque reverie also appears in a few canvases, including Mt. Chocorua (Plate XII) and Winnepesaukee

(Plate XIII). But in the garden group itself, the prevailing peace is occasionally dispelled by a dark obscurity suggestive of a transition between the garden and the wilderness. This effect we have just seen in View of the White Mountains (Plate XIV) and

Sunny Morning on the Hudson River (Plate XV). It is clear then that even in a single category, characterized by a prevailing sense of peace, the variations on the central theme are many. Cole was not a man with a single, uncomplicated view of the world.

The darker side of Cole's consciousness is portrayed in the paint­ ings of the wilderness group, represented here by Landscape with Tree

Trunks (1827-1828), View Near Ticonderoga (1826), and John the Baptist

■^These foreground elements are quite similar to those used in a painting that survives, as far as we know only as an engraving, "Choc- orua's Curse," done in 1830 by George W. Hatch for The Token as an illustration of a story by Lydia Marie Child. The engraving is re­ produced in Seaver, Plate 20. If Cole also made this connection, then it would help support my theory that he tended to use a more dynamic, even wild setting in his narrative paintings. 129 in the Wilderness (1827) . The potential or actual conflict between civilization and the wilderness is implied by the turbulence of the natural world as protrayed by Cole. Such motion and even the emphasis upon the light-dark contrast imply the passing of time, in a way that is usually absent from the more peaceful garden scenes discusses above.

Further, man himself is either absent or essentially powerless in the face of nature. Only in John the Baptist in the Wilderness does he receive the support of God. An examination of these paintings leads to the conclusion that man's life on this earth is a tenuous thing, that change and conflict are essential elements of life.

Let us examine first Landscape with Tree Trunks (Plate XVI).

Because the immediate effect of this painting is so different from the effect of "garden" landscapes, so much explosive, it is tempting to say that it depicts a different world. It surely is not the same world as is shown in Monte Video (Plate VIII), even though the tree trunk is a common link. But if you except the stormy clouds and the general darkness of the scene, the elements are not unlike those of the garden landscapes: mountains, tree trunk, patch of autumn foliage, light blue sky. The point is that it is essentially the same world, but now it has the aspect of wild turbulence. There is no rest for the viewer of this scene, except possibly for what may be considered the heavenly light entering from the upper left and shining on the red and yellow trees and the tree trunks. After examining Cole's more peaceful scenes, we see, I think, more easily how little repose there really is in this present painting.

We have just seen, in the examination of Sunny Morning on the 130

Hudson and View of the White Mountains (Plates XV and XIV), the dynamic effect of the light-dark contrast. This effect is probably even greater in this painting in which the large dark triangular shaped areas in the upper right and lower left corners are separated by the shaft of light. But this light-dark contrast is only one of the tur­ bulent elements of this painting, and not the most important at that.

The main elements of turbulence are the storm clouds and the trunks themselves. The storm clouds seem to be rushing off to the right, leaving an expanding clear area, but they could of course be going in just the opposite direction. The actual direction is only a super­ ficial matter because the point is that the clouds are in motion.

Turbulence and motion are implied also by the gnarled, twisting tree trunks. The effect of motion could be the result of the duplication by the main trunk of the curve of the cloud front. Or it could be that the trunks appear to be reaching toward the light, as plants are known to do. In either case the trunks imply motion. At this point it is not difficult to convert these implications of motion into implications of time: motion implies time, changing weather conditions imply time, the aging tree trunks imply time.

This view of the American landscape is not at all the view that

Cole presents in the "garden" group of paintings. Nor does it have any analogues in Allston's work or Bryant's, both of whom tend toward a more idealistic view of nature. But it does have similarities to

Paulding's turbulent scenes in The Backwoodsman. The Cole landscape is not quite so desolate perhaps because there are no corpses and there is more pronounced relief in the sunlight, but the dark, stormy effects Plate XVI

Thomas Cole, Landscape with Tree Trunks, c.1827-1828

Oil on canvas, 26 3/8 x 32 1/4

Rhode Island School of Design

Seaver, catalogue no. 14

131 132 133 are common to both, and each in its slightly different way insists on the inevitable passing of time.

In its temporal implications, Landscape with Tree Trunks (Plate

XVI) tends toward a narrative situation. Its closest companion in

this study is Paulding's narrative poem The Backwoodsman. But the landscape itself does lack an actual narrative. This is not the case with another wilderness painting, View Near Ticonderoga, or Gelyna

(Plate IX). The story is about Gelyna,

a beautiful young lady whose betrothed took part in the Abercromby expedition and was mortally wounded. His name was Edward Rutledge and his friend and fellow officer Herman Cuyler tried desperately to rescue him and finally went to the French for medical aid for his friend. And after many long hours of trying to find an interpreter he returned to his friend with help only to find that Rutledge had struggled to an open space of high rock which commanded a view of Lake George, the creek and opposite shore and had there died.12

Of all the canvases examined so far this is the first to include a distinct narrative. The landscape itself is wild and stormy, although the light this time comes in from the right and provides some relief, similar to the relief in Landscape with Tree Trunks. It is a cold light, however, or call it harsh. At any rate it is not the same diffuse warm glow as in Monte Video (Plate VIII) or any of the other more peaceful landscapes. Nor is it even as warm as the shaft of light in Landscape with Tree Trunks. It may be that the presence of the stricken figure causes one to read this landscape differently. It

1 2This summary made by S.II.P. Pell, director of the Fort Ticonderoga Association in 1948, in a letter to Seaver, who quoted it in the 1948 catalogue, p. 18. 134 is of course paradoxical that he lies dead in the brightest sunshine, but this fact adds to the effect of the tremendously overpowering storm clouds which, with the dark impenetrable hills on the left, cover fully half the canvas, split on the diagonal from lower left to upper right.

Man is shown to be powerless in the face of nature. The summary of the story suggests that even though Edward Rutledge was mortally wounded by man, it was the wilderness that killed him. Perhaps if he had not struggled to an open space of high rock, medical help could have reached him in time. This interpretation is supported by the facts that the figures are themselves tiny and that they occupy a relatively small clearing between and dark hills and storm clouds above them on the left and the darker chasm in front of them on the right. This treatment of the landscape aligns Cole with Paulding rather than Bryant or Allston.

(Allston's Rising of ci Thunderstorm at Sea is a possible exception to this.)

In view of this contrast in spirit between View Near Ticonderoga and Bryant's landscapes it is with considerable surprise that we dis­ cover an engraving of Cole's landscape in The Talisman of 1830, a

Christmas annual edited by Bryant, J.C. Verplanck and Robert C. Sands.

The engraving was used to illustrate a fully developed version of the story of Gelyna and Edward Rutledge, and is appears likely that Bryant himself wrote the story using his nom de plume, Francis Herbert, the name with which he signed the prefaces to the only three issues of The Talisman, 1828-1829-1830.-^ The focus of Bryant's version of the story is not really on the scene of discovery on the bluff that Cole depicts in his painting, even though that is indeed a high point. But Bryant is more concerned with Gelyna, the woman who loved Rutledge, hence the title, "Gelyna; a tale of Albany and Ticonderoga, Seventy Years Ago."

Gelyna becomes the pathetic heroine of a romantic melodrama. When

Rutledge's friend Cuyler returns with the news of Rutledge's death,

Gelyna exhibits the quick shifts of mood characteristic of her type.

She changes in a few lines from ecstatic hope when Cuyler first appears to a prostrating grief when the story is told. The key both to the tone of the story and to Bryant's romantic inclinations in general is in the conclusion where he claims that his story is

worthy of some more eloquent pen. Oh Campbell, Irving, Allston! had I your genius, I could desire no higher subjects for the canvas, for poetry or pathos, than might be drawn from this simple story of faithful, unfaltering, undoubting love, running on through infirmity, insanity, and old age, through half a century of separation and sorrow.

The exclusion of Cole from this invocation is not insignificant. I take it as a sign of Bryant's recognition that his own type of romanticism separated him from the painter of View Near Ticonderoga, and aligned him with Allston, whose romanticism, although we have not examined it from

I O The argument for this attribution is simple and nearly conclusive We know "Francis Herbert" is Bryant and a note by the author of the story is signed F.H. Also, a reference is made to "my Friend Cole" on p. 306. And the general tone is not unlike Bryant's romanticism. The only counter argument I am aware of is that his biographer, Parke Godwin, did not include this story in his list of the prose pieces that Bryant wrote for the annual.

•^The Talisman, III (1830), p. 335. 136 this perspective, is closer to that of Bryant than that of Cole.

But then Cole turns around and does an illustration of a story that, instead of making the story more sublime than it is, as in the case of "Gelyna," tones down the sublime effect. This reversal is represented by two almost identical versions of a scene from The Last of the Mohicans (Plate XVII), done in the same year, 1827.^ The scene illustrated is Cora's death at the hands of Magua's "assistant." In the early exhibitions of the painting the nonbracketted parts of the following excerpt from the penultimate chapter of Cooper's novel were quoted:

"Woman," he said, "choose; the wigwam or the knife of Le Subtil!" Cora regarded him not, but dropping on her knees, she raised her eyes and stretched her arms towards heaven, saying, in a meek and yet confiding voice,— "I am thine! do with me as thou seest best!" ["Woman," repeated Magua, hoarsely, and endeavoring in vain, to catch a glance from her serene and beaming eye, "choose!"] But Cora neither heard nore heeded his demand. The form of the Huron trembled in every fibre, and he raised his arm on high, but dropped it agian with a bewildered air, like one who doubted. Once more he struggled with himself and lifted the keen weapon again; but just then a piercing cry was heard above the, and Uncas appeared, leaping frantically, from fearful height, upon the ledge. [Magua recoiled a step; and one of his assistants, profiting by the chance, sheathed his own knife in the bosom of Cora.]-^

The problem is that the narrative is very much like that of Gelyna, in the previous landscape. One would expect the scene to be less peaceful,

•^The version I am concerned with is in the Wadsworth Atheneum; the other is in the New York Historical Association.

^The Last of the Mohicans, p. 358 Plate XVII

Thomas Cole, The Last of the Mohicans, 1827

Oil on canvas, 21 1/2 x 35

Wadsworth Atheneum

Seaver, catalogue no. 6

137

139 glowing and warm, and more dramatic and stark, perhaps sublime. If we ignore the narrative, we see it, of course, as a magnificent scene.

And perhaps the key to Cole's intention is here. He apparently did not want to portray the precise narrative content faithfully, but he had perhaps read The Pioneers along with The Last of the Mohicans, and (again, perhaps) wanted to give his general impression of Cooper's sense of the magnitude of the country. (The treatment is more appro­ priate to the descriptive mode of The Pioneers.) This is only speculation, but it is a possible explanation of Cole's avoidance of the essential narrative excitement of Cooper's greatest narrative.

Cole shows a different combination of wilderness and narrative in John the Baptist in the Wilderness (Plate XVIII).^ Here he places the biblical narrative in a wilderness setting that he had derived from studies of the American landscape. A possible text for this is Matthew

3:1-3: "And in those days cometh John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Jedea, saying, Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is he that was spoken of by Isaiah the prophet, saying, 'The voice of one crying in the wilderness, make ye ready the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight.'" The wilderness Cole portrays is a deep, dark chasm of unbelief. John and his followers are precariously perched on a rock jutting out into this chasm. (We should ignore, if we can, the anachronistic cross and the out of place palm trees, out of place in any mountains, but especially

•^The painting was ordered by Daniel Wadsworth as indicated in a letter December 21, 1827, to Cole, in the New York State Library and was bequeathed by him to the Wadsworth Atheneum in 1848. Exhibited N.A.D. 1827, No. 16, Landscape, Composition, St. John in the Wilderness" (Seaver, p. 20). 140

American ones.) The strength of the landscape depends on the grand sweeping curve from the dark lower right, through the spotlighted scene of John preaching the straight way of the Lord to'his followers, along the curve of the white mists at the left edge of the painting, and then returning past the higher central peak to the billowy white clouds in the upper right corner, which is closest to the divine source of light. After we follow that sweeping curve to the implied source of light. After we follow that sweeping curve to the implied source of light, we return diagonally to the object of the light, John preaching to his followers. By this means we can see that the theme of the picture is expressed in the composition itself.

In applying the biblical narrative to the American wilderness,

Cole is implying a perspective on his adopted country that is different from what we find in the other figures in this study. Bryant, of course, gives the landscape divine significance when he transforms the forests into cathedrals, but Cole's treatment is quite different. From

Cole's perspective there is more turbulence. Bryant may recognize the wildness, but he prefers the more orderly kind of nature. Cole does present the orderly peaceful landscape in some of the secular treat­ ments we have examined, but he is going to follow rather the implications of John the Baptist in the Wilderness. The temporal implications will lead him toward the ambitious series called The Course of Empire (1836), depicting in five canvases The Savage State, The Arcadian or Pastoral,

The Consummation of Empire, Destruction, and Desolation. And then in

1840 a similar sequence on an individual level: The Voyage of Life, in four canvases, Childhood, Youth, Manhood, and Old Age. And finally Plate XVIII

Thomas Cole, John the Baptist in the Wilderness, 1827

Oil on canvas, 36 x 28 3/4

Wadsworth Atheneum

Seaver, catalogue no. 7

141 142 143 the unfinished series The Cross and the World; Two Youths enter upon a_Pilgrimage— One to the Cross, the Other to the World; The Pilgrim of the Cross on his Journey; The Pilgrim of the World on his Journey; The

Pilgrim of the Cross at the End of his Journey; The Pilgrim of the

World at the End of his Journey.

The paintings of the garden group, exemplified especially by View of Monte Video, illustrate the lighter side of Cole's consciousness.

They correspond roughly to the moods of Allston and Bryant and suggest that man can find peace in nature, that the conflict of civilization and the wilderness is minimal or non-existent. But many of the paintings in this group are not so single-minded as View of Monte Video; often, as in Sunny Morning on the Hudson and View of the White Mountains, Cole allows the intrusion of more turbulent elements, suggesting that, after all, the garden can only be a temporary phenomenon.

The paintings of the wilderness group, exemplified especially by

View Near Ticonderoga, illustrate the darker side of Cole's conscious­ ness. And these correspond, not to the idealism of Allston and Bryant, but rather to the realism of Paulding and Irving. In these paintings the conflict of civilization and the wilderness is protrayed quite distinctly in the turbulence of nature, the narrative content of the canvases, the implied motion, and the marked contrast of light and dark areas.

One could say that Bryant looked at the beauty and orderliness of the American landscape and saw the evidence of God's presence. But

Cole, looking at the wildness of the American landscape was more impressed by the potential tragedy of man's unaided efforts against the forces of the wilderness. In some of his early landscapes he shows unmistakable evidence of his concern for the implications of time.

This concern grows into his grandiose efforts to show the destructive character of time, and this finally ends with the transcendant journey beyond time in his last unfinished series, The Cross and the World. Plate XIX

Thomas Cole, Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, 1827-1828

Oil on canvas, 39 x 54

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Merritt, catalogue no. 15

145 146 Plate XX

Thomas Cole, Kaaterskill Falls, 1826

Oil on canvas, 25 x 36

Wadsworth Atheneum

Merritt, catalogue no. 5

147 148 Plate XXI

Thomas Cole, Wolf in the Glen, n.d.

Oil on canvas, 28 1/8 x 36 5/16

Wadsworth Atheneum

149 150 Plate XXII

Thomas Cole, Landscape (reverse of Watkin's Glen), n.d.

Oil on panel, 12 1/4 x 15 5/8

Fogg Art Museum

151 152 CHAPTER VI

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER

James Fenimore Cooper viewed the conflict of civilization and the wilderness from a perspective essentially different from those used by

the other artists in this study. Paulding and Irving, the two satir­

ists, saw the conflict with the clarity of the realist, but were at a

loss for an effective resolution. Paulding attempted the ironic

response of the acute observer of society; Irving offered Rip Van

Winkle's resolution of the conflict, to retreat into a landscape of fancy. Neither resolution dealt directly and effectively with temporal problems of the conflict. Allston and Bryant, the two idealists,

offered different ways of resolving the conflict. Allston reverted to

an introspective, dreamlike landscape in which no conflict of civili­

zation and the wilderness could exist. Bryant developed a timeless

Eden, based on the divine presence in the wilderness. But in 1832,

there was another strain beginning to develop in Bryant's poetry, the

darker view of "The Prairies," in which the temporal conflict asserts

itself over and above the divinely ordered nature. Thomas Cole viewed

the wilderness sometimes idealistically and sometimes with a real sense

of the conflict with civilization. It is the latter perspective that

came to occupy his mind, and he turned to grandly conceived series

paintings, trying to resolve the problem of the effects of time.

153 154

Cole's perspective became, I think, closest to Cooper's. Cooper turned an adventure story into a narrative and descriptive treatment of the development of the young republic, as civilization pushed the frontier westward, destroying in the process the wilderness and its values. Cooper regretted the destruction of some of the wilderness values, but he insisted on the advantages that the progress of civi­ lization brought to the land. He developed a resolution of this conflict in the first three books of the Leatherstocking series: The

Pioneers (1823), The Last of the Mohicans (1826), and The Prairie

(1827).

Professor Donald A. Ringe has provided a starting point for an analysis of Copper's perspective on his country. Dr. Ringe attributes the difference between The Pioneers and The Last of the Mohicans to the different degree of security in man's relationship to nature:

The Pioneers, fundamentally descriptive, is essentially spatial in its development. The tone of secure repose that dominates the tale suggests the relatively secure life that the settlers have achieved at Templeton now that they have pushed back the wilderness, driven off the hunter and Indian, and achieved a degree of civilized life. The narrative mode of The Last of the Mohicans, on the other hand— the pattern of chase, escape, and battle— suggests the fundamental insecurity of the whites when they penetrate the virgin wilderness for the first time and become dependent upon the Indians— and the Indian-like Hawkeye— for survival.!

The feeling of security is identified with a spatial treatment of experience, and insecurity with a temporal treatment. To put this in a less simplistic way, I would suggest that Cooper's insecurity and frequently pessimistic responses to the American experience are

•^•Donald A. Ringe, James Fenimore Cooper (New York, 1962), p. 43. 155 founded on the realization that time passes and exacts its price. This realization is clearly implied in all three of the Leatherstocking tales written in the 1820's, but it is most evident in The Last of the

Mohicans and least in The Pioneers.

But along with the pessimism that manifests itself in the recogni­ tion of temporality is a secure optimism founded on the experience of

American space. As Dr. Ringe observes, The Pioneers presents a rela­ tively secure civilization established on the edge of the wilderness.

The optimism of the novel rests on the strength and insight of Judge

Marmaduke Temple, who represents the enlightened force of civilization, a force that has brought man's struggle with the wilderness essentially to an end, at least at this particular point in time and space, 1793 in New York. And this is how Dr. Ringe explains the lack of narrative drive in the book, which is better described as spatial, a series of descriptions of life in the new community.

The end of the struggle, however, does not imply a complete lack of tension. The last exponents of the wilderness, Leatherstocking and

Mohegan, see Judge Temple not as an administrator of justice but as a destroyer of freedom. And the slim narrative plot that Dr. Ringe does recognize is based precisely on this tension between Leatherstocking's wilderness ideals and the abstractions of the white man's law as represented by Judge Temple. This tension implies a temporal element in the predominantly spatial mode of The Pioneers. In fact, even in the most spatial, descriptive passages, the temporal implications are rarely absent.

The reader's introduction to the environs of Templeton Hall 156 provides a representative sample of the spatial-temporal mixture that prevails in The Pioneers. In chapter three, when Elizabeth, Judge

Temple's daughter, returns home from school "to preside over a house­ hold that had too long wanted a mistress,"2 she describes her first view (since childhood) of the estate. The description begins with an explicit recognition of the change that man has effected in the land­

scape, even though it appears to so much more grand and stable than man. In the central part of the description, Cooper presents the progress of civilization in spatial terms, thus giving the changing

scene a permanence, a solidity. The end of the description contains

the image of the mighty oak, "in all the wildness of unrestrained

liberty," and this image symbolizes Cooper's position in the conflict between civilization and the wilderness. In Cooper's eyes, the oak has a distinct beauty, but its wilderness must be restrained; civili­

zation mi4st impose order on the wilderness.

Here is the beginning of the description:

The side of the mountain, on which our travellers were journeying, though not absolutely perpendic­ ular, was yet so steep as to render great care necessary in descending the rude and narrow path, which, in that early day, wound along the precipices. The negro reined in his impatient steeds, and time was given to Elizabeth to dwell on a scene which was so rapidly altering under the hands of man, that it only resembled, in its outlines, the picture she had so often studied, with delight, in her

2 James Fenimore Cooper, The Pioneers, intro, by Leon Howard (New York, 1959), p. 24. Note on the text: "The text of this edition of The Pioneers has been set from the edition of 1825, which is a reprint of the first edition of 1823 with a few minor corrections, especially of eccentricities of punctuation that may be attributed to the original printer. Cooper himself later revised the text which was used for the collected edition of his works." [intro., p. xix] 157

childhood.^

This sets the scene by establishing that ever present physical danger that the early colonists accepted as a fact of their relationship to nature. Then too, Cooper states explicitly that change has overtaken the land, so that in the course of a mere ten years or so the scene has retained only its original outlines, but none of its details. Even though many of Cooper's landscapes have a static appearance which evokes a peaceful response, he is usually quite aware of the passing time.

The apparent stasis does not eliminate the fact of change.

Continuing the description, Cooper scans the landscape:

On the right, and stretching for several miles to the north, lay a narrow plain, buried among mountains, which, falling occasionally, jutted in long low points that were covered with trees, into the valley; and then again for miles, stretched their lofty brows perpendicularly along its margin, nourishing in the crags that formed their sides, pines and hemlocks thinly interspersed with chestnut and beech, which grew in lines nearly parallel to the mountains themselves. The dark foliage of the evergreens was brilliantly contrasted by the glittering whiteness of the plain, which exhibited, over the tops of the trees, and through the vistas formed by the advancing points of the hills, a single sheet of unspotted snow, relieved occasionally by a few small dark objects that were discovered, as they were passing directly beneath the feet of the travellers, to be sleighs moving in various directions.4

This passage contains a clear progression from virgin land to civili­ zation, but that temporal effect is combined with a treatment of space that tends to deny time. There is no evidence of civilization in the first sentence, or in the first half of the second sentence, but finally

O The Pioneers, p. 27.

4Ibid. 158 a few sleighs are observed in a singular way. At first the sleighs are only "a few small dark objects" that could easily be rocks, given the content of the first part of the description. But then they are seen to be moving and the deduction is that they are horse sleighs driven by the villagers. The sleighs are dots in a panorama that momentarily denies the usual perspective, because they appear to be

"directly beneath the feet of the travellers." The prose draws the sleighs into the same plane as the observer, allowing the background and foreground to merge. The description of the landscape thus both recognizes time and denies it. The advent of civilization is sym­ bolized by the gradual appearance of the sleighs but the whole scene is presented in a flat plane that eliminates the usual temporal implications.

The spatialization of the landscape is achieved in another way— by using a geometric language that tends to idealize the actual details of the scene. Literally, it is a distortion to say that mountains rise

"perpendicularly" in the air or that trees grow "in lines nearly parallel to the mountains." A painter who used a straight edge and

T-square to execute the lines of a natural landscape would produce a still, unnatural scene indeed. If he were aiming for an objective representation of the landscape, he would reproduce the jagged, irregular, roughly perpendicular line of the trees. But the writer is limited to qualifications of the geometric ideal, something like the language I just used in the previous sentence. What is interesting about Cooper's language is that his geometric terms are unqualified; the mountains do rise perpendicularly and the trees do grow in lines. 159

Cooper is replacing the actual visual image with an idealization. He seems almost to see a Platonic form in the landscape. But the descrip­ tion continues in a different vein:

On the western border of the plain, the mountains, though equally high, were less precipitous, and as they receded, opened into irregular valleys and glens, and were formed into terraces and hollows that admitted of cultivation. Although the evergreens still held dominion over many of the hills that rose on this side of the valley, yet the undulating outlines of the distant mountains, covered with forests of beech and maple, gave a relief to the eye and the promise of a kinder soil. Occasionally, spots of white were discoverable amidst the forests of the opposite hills, that announced by the smoke which curled over the tops of the trees, the habitations of man, and the commencement of agriculture.

The emphasis now is on the encroachment of civilization. These three sentences tend toward the implication of settlement. The first sentence points to the irregularly placed clearings ("terraces and hollows") that "admitted of cultivation." The second sentence ends with "the promise of a kinder soil," kinder to the farmer than the rocky slope.

And the third sentence gives us the tell-tale smoke which announces, now in very abstract and eighteenth-century language, "the habitations of man, and the commencement of agriculture." This language sets the stage for the generalized description of the next sentence, which is a very typical one for Cooper, being full of the abstractions that he so often uses in his descriptive writing. The list of generalized abstractions is long, as my italics indicate:

These spots were sometimes, by the aid of united labour, enlarged into what were called settlements; but more frequently were small and insulated;

5Ibid., p. 28. 160

though so rapid were the changes, and so perserving the labours of those who had cast their fortunes on the success of the enterprise, that it was not difficult for the imagination of Elizabeth to conceive they were enlarging under her eye, while she was gazing, in mute wonder, at the alterations that a few short years had made in the aspect of the country.6

Cooper's concern now, I think, is to give the advancing settlement a philosophical reality as well as a physical one. Throughout the central part of this description he has presented a temporal process, the progress of civilization, in spatial terms. At certain points, the sense of temporality seems nearly absent. It is this sort of description that has given Cooper the reputation for great panoramic descriptions. It is also true that at this particular point he treats time almost as Bryant does, without a clear realization of the price that time exacts. But this is not to be Cooper's usual practice, as we shall see when we examine his disquisitions on the destructiveness of civilized progress.

In the concluding portion of this description Cooper's symbolic oak tree begins to suggest that Cooper at least partially regrets the loss of the wilderness to the progress of civilization:

The points on the western side of the plain were both larger and more numerous than those on its eastern, and one in particular thrust itself forward in such a manner, as to form beautifully curved bays of snow on either side. On its extreme end a mighty oak stretched forward as if to overshadow, with its branches, a spot which its roots were forbidden to enter. It had released itself from the thraldom, that a growth of centuries had imposed on the branches of the surrounding forest-trees, and threw its gnarled and fantastic arms abroad,

6Ibid. 161

in all the wildness of unrestrained liberty.'7

Most of the time, Fenimore Cooper considers the "wildness of unre­ strained liberty" an evil; he is generally a philosophical and political conservative. But, as this image indicates, he has a certain respect for the beauty and strength of the "mighty oak" which is able to stand by itself. The oak is quite similar to Cooper’s fictional hero, Natty

Bumppo. In The Pioneers, Natty is about seventy years old, deserving of the epithet "gnarled," but still possessing much of his strength.

And he is wild enough to be suffering under the restraints that Judge

Temple's laws impose upon him. This issue is especially pertinent thoroughout The Pioneers and The Prairie, the last two tales in the

Leatherstocking chronology, an issue that we will return to in some detail. At this point, let Natty's response to Judge Temple early in

The Pioneers suffice to indicate his difficulties:

"There's them living who say Nathaniel Bumppo's right to shoot in these hills, is of older date than Marmaduke Temple's right to forbid him. But if there's a law about it at all, though who ever heard tell of a law, that a man shouldn't kill deer where he pleased!— but if there is a law at all, it should be to keep people from the use of them smooth bores. A body never knows where his lead will fly; when he pulls the trigger of one of them fancified fire-arms.®

The restraint of law is what keeps Natty moving westward. Nevertheless, he has mixed feelings about the law, more and more as he grows older and as he feels less self-reliant. "The law— -'Tis bad to have it, but

I sometimes think it is worse to be entirely without it. Age and

7Ibid.

8Ibid., p. 11-12. 162 9 weakness have brought me to feel such weaknessat times."

The "mighty oak" is, one another level, a symbol of America, a young country politically, having broken its ties with England, but an old country physically. From the point of view of the transplanted

European, now called American, the country was wild and uninhabited, awaiting civilization, but nonetheless beautiful in its wildness.

Of course, the existence of the Indian civilization puts the lie to this attitude; it is Cooper's recognition and partial understanding of the Indian society that makes his attitude toward his country some­ what complicated. So Cooper, in his first published Leatherstocking tale, established a theme and a symbol which will recur often in the continuing story of Leatherstocking. The image of the gnarled, mighty oak, "in all the wildness of unrestrained liberty" will also recur

(in spirit) in Bryant's advice to Thomas Cole, on the occasion of the latter's departure for Europe: "Keep that wilder image bright.

The wild oak was not, for Cooper entirely beautiful; part of it he feared because it implied the chaos of a random, Godless wilderness.

Judge Temple said that he felt desolation as well as pleasure when he

^James Fenimore Cooper, The Prairie, intro, by Henry Nash Smith (New York, 1950(, p. 22 Note on the text: "Three texts of The Prairie exist: the first edition (London and New York, 1827); the first revised edition (London, 1832), for which Cooper made a few corrections and provided footnotes explaining certain matters presumably unfamiliar to English readers; and the "Author's Revised Edition," published by George P. Putnam of New York, in 1851. Cooper made some revisions, not numerous or important, for the 1851.edition shortly before his death. It is the latest form of the novel which embodies any of the author's intentions. The present edition follows this text." [intro., pp. xx-xxi)

lOjames T. Flexner, That Wilder Image (Boston, 1962), p. ix. 163 first saw the land that was to become his estate.^ Cooper did not believe with Bryant that the natural world was necessarily a cathedral of God. And this suggests that Cooper, again unlike Bryant, did not see the wilderness as a refuge from the cares of society. Natty makes the attempt, but he never finds refuge.

This long description, Elizabeth's first view of Templeton since her childhood, sets a prevailing mood of security which is based on descriptive techniques which emphasize the spatiality rather than the temporality of the scene. But the temporal implacations are there, nonetheless, especially in the opening statements and in the final image of the oak tree. A similar combination of the temporal and the spatial can be found in the reminiscence of Judge Tmeple himself, when he later thinks back to his first view of what was to become his estate. 12 This temporal-spatial mixture does, therefore, provide some slight degree of tension in the relatively secure world of The Pioneers.

If this were the only evidence of tension in The Pioneers, it could perhaps be ignored. But the tension between man and the wilder­ ness makes its appearance in the episodic narrative, in the story of the.pigeon-shoot, and in the net-fishing segment, and indeed in the final conflict between Natty and Judge Temple over the idea of justice.

The pigeon-shoot will suffice to illustrate the tension because the complex problem of the destruction of the wilderness by the force of civilization is there most concisely presented. Everyone participates in the pigeon-shoot, even Natty, but he is of course more scrupulous

~^The Pioneers, p. 237.

•^Ibid., pp. 236-237. 164 than the others. It begins as a sport, with innumerable men and boys armed with rifles shooting at will into the immense flock of pigeons.

Their firing is effective enough to "cover the very ground with the fluttering victims."^ Early in the proceedings, Natty Bumppo responds with one of his moral pronouncements:

Leather-stocking was a silent, but uneasy spectator of all these peoceedings, but was able to keep his sentiments to himself until he saw the introduction of the swivel [a cannon loaded with duck shot] into the sports. "This comes of settling a country!" he said— "here have I known the pigeons to fly for forty long years, and, till you made your clearings, there was nobody to skear or to hurt them. I loved to see them come into the woods, for they were company to a body; hurting nothing; being, as it was, as harmless as a gartersnake. But now it gives me sore thoughts when I hear the frighty things whizzing through the air, for I know its only a motion to bring out all the brats in the village at them. Well! the Lord won't see the waste of his creaters for nothing, and right will be done to the pigeons, as well as others, by-and-by. There's Mr. Oliver, as bad as the rest of them, firing into the flocks as if he was shooting down nothing but the Mingo warriors."

The voice of Natty Bummppo here represents the anti-civilization argument in the continuing debate that runs through the Leatherstocking tales. It is a complex debate because there are always more than two sides. In The Pioneers, the main opponent of Natty's point of view is

Judge Marmaduke Temple, who represents the conservative force of society. He is educated, cultured, and thoughtful. His actions are usually moral, but sometimes they conflict with Natty's natural morality because the Judge is on the side of the abstract, man-made

•^I b i d ., p. 245ff. 165

law. Hence his decisions, which are usually wise and just, appear to

Natty sometimes to be colored with expediency. A secondary opponent

of Natty's point of view is Richard Jones, the minor public official, who has neither the education of Judge Temple nor the natural wisdom

of Natty Bumppo. He wastes his environment; he gives the order to fire

the swivel gun into the flock of pigeons. He would appear to be the more dangerous adversary, but it must be remembered that he is only

the agent of Judge Temple. He is, for the lawful society that Judge

Temple represents, the necessary evil.

In this passage, then, when the pigeons begin to be slaughtered,

Natty refers, as is usual for him, to the time before the heavy

settling of the country, when the animals were company for him. The

present slaughter gives him "sore thoughts," but he sets his mind

at east by uttering his faith that God's justice will ultimately prevail. Natty's Christianity will often come to his aid in difficult

times. It works as a mediating force, tempering his natural response.

Natty's response to the pigeon-shoot is not so simple, however

because he is, both indirectly and directly, a participant in it.

In directly, he is morally responsible for Oliver Edwards, and directly,

as a hunter he finally does take a shot. He observes that his young

companion Oliver Edwards is "as bad as the rest of them, firing into

the flocks as if he was shooting down nothing but Mingo warriors."

First, he is indirectly involved in the shooting through the agency of

Oliver, who is a close enough friend of Natty to agree with him in most things. Still, Oliver is younger and less closely connected to

the wilderness, so he does not al\?ays respond just as Natty himself 166 would. But Natty is not surprised at Oliver's response. There is even a certain fatalism in his recognition that his own companion must succumb to the temptation of the shoot.

Then Natty uses a simile that overshadows the problem of Oliver's response. Probably Natty prefers shooting Mingo warriors to shooting pigeons. The explanation of this preference in the context of the

Leatherstocking tales is that the Mingos represent many of the evil traits in human nature. They lie and cheat; they are treacherous; they are bloodthirsty. For Natty they are the epitome of the bad

Indian, and in the terms of natural justice it makes more sense to kill them than harmless animals or birds. His two main concerns, survival and fair play, are both threatened by the Mingo. And animals may be hunted for necessary food or clothing, but the hunt must be fair.

Natty's natural justice, or rules of fair play, are all well and good in the wilderness or simi-wilderness, as long as he is strong and able. The question of survival is clear-cut, and one can maintain his own standards of fiar play. But the push of civilization makes justice more complex by eliminating the question of mere survival.

When civilization advances to the point that survival is taken for granted, then begins the troublesome debate over secondary needs.

Also, the gathering of people together into a settlement complicates the issue of fair play. That Natty's standards must be reconciled with the standards of other people brings abstract law into existence out of necessity.

Natty views such progress as a progression out of weakness, toward 167 weakness. He says as much in a passage that I have already partially quoted from The Prairie. ^

"The law— tis bad to have it, but I sometimes think it is worse to be entirely without it. Age and weakness have brought me to feel such weakness at times. Yes— yes, the law is needed when such as have not the gifts of strength and wisdom are to be taken care of.

What we see in the progressive aging and weakening of Natty Bumppo is a metaphor for the relinquishing of individual rights to the society as civilization progresses. It is necessary to relinquish certain rights, perhaps, but there is always an accompanying loss. The noble hunt, for instance, turns into a pigeon-shoot.

There is one way, however, that Natty Bumppo can participate in- in the pigeon-shoot— as a contest of skill with a single-shot rifle, competing with another man. In these terms, the killing becomes fair, and Natty relishes it. Natty's opponent, the woodchopper, misses his first shot, and it becomes Natty's turn:

Natty lowered the rifle from his arm, when the challenge was made, and, waiting a moment, until the terrified victim had got in a line with his eyes, and had dropped near the bank of the lake, he raised it again with uncommon rapidity, and fired. It might have been chance, or it might have been skill, that produced the result; it was probably a union of both; but the pigeon whirled over in the air, and fell into the lake with a broken wing. At the sound of his rifle, both his dogs started from his feet, and in a few minutes the "slut" brought out the bird, still alive.^

14See p. 161. ~^The Pioneers, p . 22.

16Ibid., p. 249. 168

As soon as Natty shoots his pigeon, he provides one of his short sermons, an interpretation, really, of what he has just done. He kills only what he wants "without wasting [his] powder and lead," so as to avoid "firing into God's creaters in such a wicked manner."

He does not "relish to see these wasty ways" that the others are employing. At this point, Judge Temple asserts his authority, saying

■I T it is "time to put an end to this work of destruction." The judge is, of course, in charge of things and is allowing rather than encouraging the pigeon-shoot. His position is ambiguous because here, as elsewhere in the story, he seems to await Natty's judgment before acting, as if he might not be so quick to "end the destruction" were

Natty not present. Natty responds to the Judge in a typical manner, not allowing him the comfort of this decision because he expands the issue from the pigeon-shoot to the clearing of the woods themselves.

"Put an ind, Jedge, to your clearings. An't the woods His work as well as the pigeons? Use, but don't waste. Wasn't the woods make for the beasts and birds to harbour in? And when man wanted their flesh, their skins, or the feathers, there's the place to seek them. But I'll go to the hut with my own game, for I wouldn't touch one of the harmless things that kiver the ground here, looking up with their eyes on me, as if they only wanted tongues to say their thoughts."

Natty's moralizing is apparently not quite forecful enough to stop the proceedings, before the swivel gun is used. It is only after the cannon is fired into the flocks and the field is literally covered with pigeons that Judge Temple sees, like Natty, the eyes of the innocent. The Judge

18Ibid., pp. 249-250. 169 does not share Richard's exultation: "Victory!" shouted Richard,

"victory! we have driven the enemy from the field." Judge Temple finally halts the proceedings, but only after there are no more birds to shoot at. And he uses the word carnage to describe the slaughter.

It is a word that Natty would not know, of course, but it vindicates

Natty's judgments.

As the Judge initiated the pigeon-shoot, he also has the power to end it in a proper way, bu insuring that all the birds are mercifully put to death. He offers the boys "sixpence a hundred for the pigeons' heads only" so that none of the birds will beleft alive.

This expedient produced the desired effect, for every urchin on the ground went industriously to work to wring the necks of the wounded birds. Judge Temple retired towards his dwelling with that kind of feeling, that many a man has ex­ perienced before him, who discovers, after the excitement of the moment has passed, that he has purchased pleasure at the price of misery to others. Horses were loaded with the dead; and, after the first burst of sporting, the shooting of pigeons became a business, for the remainder of the season more in proportion to the people. Richard, however, boasted for many a year, of his shot with the "cricket," and Benjamin gravely asserted that, he thought they killed nearly as many pigeons on that day, as there were Frenchmen destroyed on the memorable occasion of Rodney's victory.19

The chapter closes with two images: (1) the saddened, thoughtful Judge, and (2) the boasting of Richard and Benjamin. At first we are tempted to emphasize the former image which express the more complex reaction of a more complex man. We feel that Cooper is speaking through Judge

Temple, and to a large extent this is true. Throughout The Pioneers,

19Ibid., p. 252. 170 we know that Leatherstocking is past his prime, and that he is not

equipped to cope with the coming civilization. Along with Cooper, we regret this fact. But Judge Temple, who represents the civilizing

forces, has the character and judgment necessary not only to prevail, but to prevail wisely. So we are not surprised to see the Judge reacting to the whole of the situation, with the necessary mixed

feelings, seeing both the good and the evil that civilization brings.

Of course, in this case, it is more personal— he himself brings the good and evil, and he realizes the extent of his personal involvement.

Still, there is the second image, in fact, the concluding image

of the chapter. The wasters, represented especially by Richard, are not to be denied their day. The fact that they do not have the far­

sighted vision of either Judge Temple or Natty Bumppo does not take

away from their boasting, for which the pigeon-shoot gave them ample material. Richard and Benjamin are indefatigable, as are the other minor characters of the merchant or bureaucratic classes. It is

entirely appropriate that the pigeon-shoot chapter ends with them

instead of with Judge Temple because the very next chapter brings another slaughter to our attention— net fishing.

In The Pioneers, Cooper presented differing views of American life,

showing the variety of responses to the new experience. In the pigeon-

shoot and net-fishing episodes, the plot, flimsy enough anyway, is

nearly forgotten. Both chapters are self-contained narratives which

for Cooper were vehicles for a thesis. Cooper informed the reader of

certain aspects of the American experience, and while in the long run

he seem to have favored the response of Judge Temple— wise, temperate, 171 far-seeing, sympathetic— he saw considerable value in the philosophical position of Natty, who is opposed to artifical laws, committed to natural usage of land and wildlife, fiercely independent, skillfully self-sufficient. Richard's response— wasteful, short-sighted, blind to the real value of things and people— Cooper rejected, yet he recognized the necessity of such functionaries in the expanding society.

Cooper's apparent conclusion is consistent with his attitude toward the Judge and Leatherstocking. There is often peace in the wilder­ ness, and he can love its beauty, but there is also turbulence, and he fears its tendency toward chaos, the lack of restraints. Civili­ zation— the settlement of the land— is a way of imposing order on what is naturally wild. To impose order on something, in Cooper's view, is to make it useful.

In Dr. Ringe's scheme, The Prairie occupies a middle ground between the felt security of man in nature in The Pioneers and the lack of it in The Last of the Mohicans. The Prairie approaches The Last of the

Mohicans in its degree of pessimism, but there is a different alignment of forces in the two books. In the earlier book, both in date of publication and in the chronology of the fiction, man's battle is with the wilderness, and there is considerable doubt about man's chances of success. The Prairie, on the other hand, presents a struggle between man and civilization. Here the strength of civilization is clear— the wilderness has been forced back, and along with it men like Leather- stocking, now reduced to a trapper, and men like Ishmael Bush, himself a creation of society, a borderer, but very much a transient phenomenon.

He too outlives his function. Thus, the large view of the development 172 of society is less pessimistic than the view of individual histories.

The prairie, into which the trapper and the borderer have been forced by civilization, is predominantly a gloomy environment. The spatial experience in The Prairie does not inspire the optimism that the feeling of space in The Pioneers often inspired. The most sig­ nificant description of the prairie appears in the first chapter of the book; it is also the longest description:

In the little valleys, which, in the regular formation of the land, occurred at every mile of their progress, the view was bounded on two of the sides by the gradual and low elevations which give name to the description of prairie we have mentioned; while on the others, the meagre prospect ran off in long, narrow, barren perspectives, but slightly relieved by a pitiful show of coarse, though somewhat luxuriant vege­ tation. From the summits of the swells, the eye became fatigued with the sameness and chill­ ing dreariness of the landscape. The earth was not unlike the ocean, when its restless waters are heaving heavily, after the agitation and fury of the tempest have begun to lessen. There was the same waving and regular surface, the same boundless extent to the view. Indeed so very striking was the resemblance between the water and the land, that however much the geologist might sneer at so simple a theory, it would have been difficult for a poet not to have felt, that the formation of the one had been produced by the subsiding dominion of the other. Here and there a tall tree rose out of the bottoms, stretching its naked branches abroad, like some solitary vessel; and, to strengthen the delusion, far in the distance appeared two or three rounded thickets, looming in the misty horizon like islands resting on the waters. It is unnecessary to warn the practised reader, that the sameness of the surface, and the low stands of the spectators, exaggerated the dis­ tances: but as swell appeared after swell, and island succeeded island, there was a disheart­ ening assurance that long and seemingly inter­ minable tracts of territory must be passed, before the wishes of the humblest agriculturist 173

could be realized.

The dominant effect of this passage is dreariness, which, in The

Prairie, is the invariable result whenever Cooper looks at the land­ scape. The "long, narrow, barren perspectives" of the "meagre prospect" do not suggest the panoramas of The Pioneers, the spaciousness of

Bryant's early poetry, or the varied perspective play of a Hudson

River School landscape. In the world of The Prairie, space fatigues the eye and chills the soul.

When Cooper responded to the American landscape, he was ever aware of its temporal implications. This prairie scene is no excep­ tion. His awareness of time is first evident in his choice of simile, the development of which comprises the bulk of the description. "The earth was not unlike the ocean." This image is a particularly appro­ priate one for Cooper because the ocean has a static appearance if you look at the large, uninterrupted panorama, but it is also ever changing if you look at the constant motion of the "restless waters."

Looking at the prairie wilderness, Cooper is aware of the progress of civilization. Specifically, in the fictional narrative he presents the borderers in their slow progress at the vanguard of civilization.

They are a sign of the coming changes which civilization will require.

The trapper expresses this in the very next chapter: "... and yet the wind seldom blows from the east, but I conceit the sound of axes, and the crash of falling trees, are in my ears."21

After noting the surface similarity between the prairie and the

^The Prairie, pp. 6-7.

21Ibid., p. 19. 174

ocean, Cooper makes a different kind of reference to time, suggesting

a poet's theory of the origin of the prairie— "produced by the sub­

siding dominion" of the ocean. Cooper's point here is not to initiate

a geological debate but rather to suggest a temporal context for the

priaire. He sees the prairie as a changing phenomenon which has evolved

through geological epochs. It is in no sense an American Eden. There

is no optimistic idea of the promised land in the concluding "disheart­

ening assurance that long and seemingly interminable tracts of territory must be passes before the wishes of the humblest agriculturist could be realized."

Cooper's awareness of the passing of time is suggested by his

imagery, by the dreary tone, and by the digression into geology. There

is yet one other suggestion of this awareness in a very characteristic device of Cooper's— the explicit reference to the reader: "It is unnecessary to warn the practised reader . . . ." Such a device indi­

cates that Cooper is not content to allow the reader to transpose himself into the illusory spatial world of narrative fiction. When

one is totally engrossed in a fiction, time seems to stop during one's

imaginative life in that fiction. But if one is reminded every so

often that he is in fact a reader, reading in time, then it is impos-

ible to escape fully into imaginative space. The temporal distance between the book and its reader is established. Cooper's references

to the reader, then provide an additional dimension for the temporal

experience.

Given this gloomy prairie on calm and peaceful days, one can

imagine what happens in turbulent weather. Violence predominate instead 175 of gloom, and Cooper’s temporal awareness continues to be obvious.

And note the device that begins the passage:

It is necessary, in order that the thread of the narrative should not be spun to a length which might fatigue the reader, that he should imagine a week to have intervened between the scene with which the preceding chapter closed and the events with which it is our intention to resume its relation in this. The season was on the point of changing its character; the verdure of summer giving place more rapidly to the brown and party-colored livery of the fall. The heavens were clothed in driving clouds, piled in vast masses one above the other, which whirled violently in the gusts; opening, occas­ ionally, to admit transient glimpses of the bright and glorious sight of the heavens, dwelling in a magnificence by far too grand and durable to be distrubed by the fitful efforts of the lower world. Beneath, the wind swept across the wild and naked prairies with a violence that is seldom witnessed in any section of the continent less open. It would have been easy to have imagined, in the ages of fable, that the god of the winds had permitted his subordinate agents to escape from their den, and that they now rioted in wantonness across wastes where neither tree, nor work of man, nor mountain, nor obstacle of any sort, opposed itself to their gambols.^2

Cooper begins the chapter by bringing the reader back into time, and then focuses on the landscape at a point in time at which one's awareness of change is heightened— the seasonal change, the transition from summer to fall. With the temporal context thus established,

Cooper proceeds to describe the violence of the landscape that confronts those who are migrating westward. The "driving clouds . . . whirled violently .... The wind swept across the wild and naked prairies with . . . violence." This is what seems permanent even as it changes,

Ibid., p. 92. 176 in contrast to the "transient glimpses" of the heavens, which ironically are "far too grand and durable to be disturbed by the fitful efforts of the lower world."

Cooper is suggesting here a rather complex view of experience. In the first place, it is true that God is in his heaven and is in no danger of removal. Just so, Cooper's Christianity is orthodox. But all is not, in fact, right with the world. In the lower world, man is faced with a violent experience in his conquest of the land. God is not going ot be disturbed by his "fitful efforts." So that, even if a long range religious optimism is justified, in the short term, man must realize that the odds against success are great. There are so great, in fact, that Cooper momentarily imagines man to be the play­ thing of the pagan gods. Going back to "the ages of fable," he imagines the lesser divinities rioting in wantonness, with nothing in the lower world presenting any obstacle to their "gambols." (This is a telling digression into history.)

In the more optimistic story of The Pioneers, in which man is more at east in his smaller civilized portion of space, Cooper used the image of a gnarled oak tree as a symbol of the wild, unrestrained liberty that is to be admired, but which is going to succumb to the progress of civilization. In this more pessimistic story of the prairies, Cooper provided another significant image of a tree, this time for quite a different purpose:

Ishmael chose a spring that broke out of the base of a rock some forty or fifty feet in elevation, as a place well suited to the wants of his herds. The water moistened a small swale that lay beneath the spot, which yielded, in return for the fecund gift, a scanty growth 177

of grass. A solitary willow had taken root in the alluvion, and profiting by its exclusive possession of the soil, the tree had sent up its stem far above the crest of the adjacent rock, whose peaked summit had once been shadowed by its branches. But its loveliness had gone with the mysterious principle of life. As if in mockery of the meagre show of verdure that the spot exhibited, it remained a noble and solemn monument of former fertility. The larger, ragged, and fantastic branches still obtruded themselves abroad, while the white and hoary trunk stood naked and tempest-riven. Not a leaf nor a sign of vegetation was to be seen about it. In all things it proclaimed the frailty of existence, and the fulfillment of t i m e . 23

The willow retains the wildness which characterizes the oak. But its difference is or paramount importance: it is essentially a dead thing, and Cooper leaves the reader in no doubt about its significance. "In all things it proclaimed the frailty of existence, and the fulfillment of time." This is as explicit a statement as Cooper makes in The

Prairie to describe the dark side of the American spatial experience— it cannot be divorced from the ravages of time. The tempest-riven, dying willow tree represents the ravages of time in the larger context which includes as a special case the ravages of civilization.

The theme of destruction is worked out not only in the description, but also in the narration. The narrative situation is this: Leather- stocking, now over eighty, and known throughout the book as the trapper, is much given to moralizing and sometimes to dreamy reminiscences of

2 A his youth. He has moved west out of necessity because the settlements of the East had too many restraints. And because the prairies do not

^ I b i d ., pp. 416-417.

24Ibid., p. 91. 178 offer the good hunting of the forests of the East, he becomes a trapper.

Then, too, his aim is not. as consistent as it used to be. It is clear that hunting in the eastern hardwood forests, unrestricted except by natural law, is not compatible with the settlement of the land. As the frontier is pushed westward, the hunter must follow, and even­ tually, like Natty, he becomes a trapper. Natty does not see much good in the prairies:

"You may travel weeks and you will see it the same. I often think the Lord has placed this barren belt of prairie behind the States, to warn men to what their folly may yet bring the land! Ay, weeks, if not months, may you journey in these open fields, in which there is neither dwelling nor habitation for man nor beast. Even the savage animals travel miles on miles to seek their dens; and yet the wind seldom blows from the east, but I conceit the sound of axes, and the crash of falling trees, are in my ears.2-^

Reading these last lines in the mid-twentieth century, we are able to see similarities to Chekov's The Cherry Orchard in which the sound of axes chopping off-stage heralds the disappearance of the old order.

Here the sound of the axes heralds the coming of the new civilization, which, as the trapper predicts in a later passage, will fill the wilderness "with all the abominations and craft of man," and strip the landscape of "the comforts and loveliness it received from the hands of the L o r d ! The Prairie is filled with passages in which the trapper expresses his regret for the destruction of the wilderness.2 ?

25Ibid., p. 19.

26Ibid., p. 215.

2^Ibid., pp. 13, 81, 215, 246, 290, and 433. 179

It is in The Prairie that Cooper is most nearly explicit in equating Leatherstocking with the frontier America. Early in the story, the trapper says, "I was born on the sea-shore, though most of my life has been passed in the woods." 28 So he moves from the shore into the woods and beyond, onto the prairies, just as the frontier has moved. Then he says, "It is a weary path, indeed, friend; and much have I seen, and something have I suffered in journeying over it."29

The tone of this remark, the weariness and finality of it, permeates the story, despite its vigorous adventure. It is a curious tone for an American story in this time of youthful optimism. It sounds more like the end of an age rather than the beginning of one. What Cooper expressed here was the inevitable loss that progress entails. Bryant, as we have seen, rarely recognized the loss. Paulding had an inkling of it, but either his patriotism or his yen for humor tended to obscure the recognition. But Fenimore Cooper showed his concern for the dark side of progress right up to the end of the symbolic life of Leather- stocking now the trapper. The last line of the epitaph on the trapper's gravestone, and the last words of the book, are "May no wanton hand ever disturb his remains.S i n c e the figure of Leatherstocking is equivalent to the American frontier, his epitaph is a sort of reprise, bringing back to the reader's mind all the destruction of the wood- choppers, the pigeon-shoot, and the net-fishers. It is significant, too, that the author of that line is the young Duncan Uncas Middleton,

2 8 Ibid., p. 17.

2 9Ibid., p. 18.

3 0 Ibid., p. 453. 180 the grandson of Duncan Heyward, and connected by name and apirit to the noble Delaware, Uncas. This genealogy links The Prairie to the previous volume, The Last of the Mohicans (written the year before), and the epitaph is Cooper's way of presenting the final affirmative judgment on the life of Leatherstocking.

In The Pioneers, Cooper demonstrated, by means of Natty's brush with the law, that human law in the abstract is not always equivalent to justice. The forebearance and wisdom of a man like Marmaduke

Temple are required to properly administer the law. In The Prairie,

Cooper demonstrates the need for law even out on the frontier. The need arises apparently whenever more than a very few people congregate.

The resulting interaction makes the ideals and unspoken code of men like Leatherstocking obsolete. They still may function on a personal level, but they are impotent in the governing of the group. Thus we have the irony that civilization creates its own need for law. As the trapper (Leatherstocking) moves west, in part to escape the re­ straints of law, he finds that law is necessary in spite of its occasional bad effects. In order to make this point clear, Cooper introduces a new social group into his tale: the skirters (borderers or squatters) represented by the Ishmael Bush family.

Ishmael Bush is at least as important to the story of The Prairie as the trapper is, perhaps more so. Bush is, in fact, introduced first, as soon as the desolate condition of the prairie is established. His description and characterization is remarkable:

He was a tall, sun-burnt man, past the middle age, of a dull countenance and listless manner. His frame appeared loose and flexible; but it 181

was vast, and in reality of prodigious power. It was only at moments, however, as some slight impediment opposed itself to his loitering pro­ gress, that his person, which in its ordinary gait seemed so lounging and nerveless, displayed any of those energies which lay latent in his system, like the slumbering and unwieldy, but terrible, strength of the elephant. The inferior lineaments of his countenance were coarse, extended, and vacant; while the superior, or those nobler parts which are thought to affect the intellectual being, were low, receding, and mean.^

Cooper has not as yet identified Bush as a skirter, nor has he explained the way in which the progress of civilization creates skirters, but his initial description of Bush indicates that he is a character of someconsiderable power. He is in some ways a direct contradiction of the values both of the civilized East and of the frontiersman like

Leatherstocking. He has physical strength ("prodigious power"), but it is slow to be activated. It is compared to "the slumbering and unwieldy, but terrible, strength of the elephant." His "dull coun­ tenance and listless manner" show the lack of intelligence and strong purpose, characteristics prized by both the civilized East and the frontier, by both Judge Temple and Leatherstocking.

To further characterize Bush, Cooper presents a sort of inventory of his dress and accessories:

The dress of this individual was a mixture of the coarsest vestments of a husbandman, with the leathern garments that fashion as well as use in some degree rendered necessary to one engaged in his pursuits. There was, however, a singular and wild display of prodigal and ill judged ornaments, blended with his motley attire. In place of the usual deer-skin belt, he wore around his body a tarnished silken sash of the most gaudy colors; the buclchorn haft of his knife was

^ I b i d ., pp. 4-5. 182

profusely decorated with plate of silver; the marten's fur of his cap was of a fineness and shadowing that a queen might covet; the buttons of his rude and soiled blanket-coat were of the glittering coinage of Mexico; the stock of his rifle was of a beautiful mahogony, riveted and banded with the same precious metal; and the trinkets of no less than three worthless watches dangled from different parts of his person. In addition ot the pack and the rifle which were slung at his back, together with the well filled, and carefully guarded pouch and horn, he had carelessly cast a keen and bright wood-axe across his shoulder, sustaining the weight of the whole with as much apparent ease as if he moved un­ fettered in limb, and free from incumbrance. 32

His whole appearance is the concrete embodiment of the words "singular and wilddisplay of prodigal and ill judged ornaments, blended with his motley attire." He is part farmer with his blanket coat and wood- axe; part frontiersman with his deer-skin belt, fur cap, rifle, pouch, and horn; part savage, with his gaudy sash of silk, silver and gold decoration on his knife, rifle, and coat, and "three worthless watches."

His clothes suggest his ambiguous station in life. He lives in a marginal society, acquiring habits of the Indian, the hunter, and the husbandman, but not belonging entirely to any one group.

Cooper goes to some length to provide the reader with anexplana­ tion ofIshmael Bush and the borderers that he represents.Besides the characterization and description of Bush himself, Cooper offers a more abstract exposition of the philosophical foundation of the borderer:

The resemblance between the American borderer and his European prototype is singular, though not always uniform. Both might be called without restraint, the one being above, the other beyond the reach of the law— brave, because they were inured to danger— proud, because they were in-

^Ibid., p. 5. 183

dependent— and vindictive, because each was the avenger of his own wrongs. It would be unjust to the borderer to pursue the parallel much farther. He is irreligious because he has inherited the knowledge that religion does not exist in forms, and his reason rejects mockery. He is not a knight, because he has not the power to bestow distinctions; and he has not the power because he is the offspring and not the parent of a system. In what manner these several qualities are exhibited, in some of the most strongly marked of the latter class, will be seen in the course of the ensuing narrative. Ishmael Bush had passed the whole of a life of more than fifty years on the skirts of society. He boasted that he had never dwelt where he might not safely fell every tree he could view from his own threshold; that the law had rarely been known to enter his clearing; and that his ears had never willingly admitted the sound of a church bell. His exertions seldom exceeded his wants, which were peculiar to his class, and rarely failed of being supplied. He had no respect for any learning, except that of the leech; because he was ignorant of teh application of any other intelligence than such as met the senses.33

This passage provides an almost complete picture of the borderer, and in some details it is quite remarkable. For one thing, it is clear that Cooper sees a good deal to be valued in the borderer. Because of his situation on the outskirts of society, he has become brave in the face of danger and proud of his independence. The borderer is not unlike Leatherstocking in this regard. He is also similar in bravery and pride to "his European prototype," the medieval knight who

"paved the way for the intellectual progress of nations, in the old world." Cooper is very careful in this passage not to equate the borderer and knight, but his reasoning is interesting: first, the borderer is not religious like the knight; second, he lacks the power

3^Ibid., pp. 69-70. 184 and influence of the knight "because he is the offspring and not the parent of a system." As for Cooper's attitude toward religion, we know that one of Leatherstocking's sources of strength is his faith in

the Christian God, learned from his contact with the Moravians when he was a youth. But even though Cooper states that the borderer is

irreligious, and that Bush boasted that he had never gone near a church, the reasons Cooper supplies for this irreligion might apply just as well to a supremely independent Protestant. His inheritance is iPuritan, in "that religion does not exist in forms, and his reason rejects mockery." This could be an anti-papist utterance from the

English Puritan revolution, but it is also distincly American. What: is lacking in the borderer is, however, the most important thing for

Cooper the ultimate faith in God. Thus, the borderer shares a certain strength is limited because he cannot make the leap of faith.

The second reason why the borderer is different from his European prototype has a similar ambiguity. Cooper seems to be saying that, besides the lack of religion, the only difference between the borderer and the knight is a social-historical difference, not having anything to do with the individual character. The borderer cannot, like the knight, "bestow distinctions" because he has not the power, and he does not have the power because he is the product of civilization, not the progenitor. This sociology smacks of environmentalism, but it is not really so. Cooper's idea of society is very rigid. Some men are offspring of the system, some are parents, and this limits severely the function of individuals in the society. But Cooper does not deny individual value. The borderer has a very real value— strength of mind, 185 bravery, pride— that he shares with certain men at all levels of society. Judge Temple, for example, is no more strong minded than

Ishmael Bush. Leatherstocking has no more physical bravery than

Ishmael. But the Judge has the power of a position in society that neither Ishmael nor Leatherstocking can have. And Leatherstocking has a privileged position in both white and Indian settlements that . neither Judge Temple nor Ishmael Bush can have.

Ishmael's attitude toward religion is that of an utter materi­ alist. Cooper presents him as a man who trusts only his senses. "He had no respect for learning, except that of the leech; because he was ignorant of the application of any other intelligence than such as met the senses." And of course he had never recognized the call of a church bell. There is implied strength in consistency of this man.

Then, too, Leatherstocking shares part of his attitude toward learning, as Cooper shows in the trapper's debates with the naturalist, Dr.

Battius. Ishmael can respect the doctor for his medical learning, but the other kind of learning that the doctor as naturalist displays— the constant classifying— is absolutely divorced from the realities of frontier living, as the trapper often points out. Thus, the fact that

Ishmael shares the trapper's view of this kind of learning is much to his credit.

A final virtue that Ishmael Bush can be proud of, according to the values of Cooper's Leatherstocking saga, is that he is not a waster of natural resources. We have seen that the wanton destruction of nature is part of the price that the progress of civilization exacts from the land. The subject is never far from the trapper's mind. But 186

Cooper points out that Ishmael*s "exertions seldom exceeded his wants, which were peculiar to his class, and rarely failed of being supplied."

Although it is true that this is partly due to the sluggish laziness that characterizes Ishmael, we must also recognize that Cooper is describing a balance between Ishmael and his surroundings that is at the moment more stable than that suggested in the pigeon-shoot or net-fishing episodes in The Pioneers.

The virtues of Ishmael Bush are undeniable, but to speak only of them is to distort his character. He is, after all, the antagonist, or one of them, in The Prairie. The reasons for this are extremely important. First, he is "without restraint"— "beyond the reach of the law." That freedom without restraint is, for Cooper an intolerable condition within the bounds of society is the point of the image of the

"mighty oak" on the plain near Templeton, described near the beginning of The Pioneers. I t "threw its gnarled and fantastic arms abroad, in all the wildness of unrestrained liberty." Thus, because freedom without restraint is characteristic of the wilderness, not of civili­ zation, Ishmael must move ahead of the white man's settlements.

Ishmael is not only unrestrained but "vindictive, because . . . the avenger of his own wrongs." But vindictiveness too, is impossible in society because it breeds chaos. The law must be above personal vindictiveness or else nothing will bind the people together. The trapper, as I have quoted above, 35 sees the necessity of law at a certain stage of his life, and if the trapper is partly a symbol of the

•^The Pioneers, p . 28.

3^see p. 167. 187 expanding frontier, then the necessity of law, as civilization supplants the wilderness, is celar. At the end of The Prairie, Ishmael Bush conducts a summary court, at which he dispenses justice of a sort.

The very fact that Ishmael finds this procedure necessary is significant because, as a borderer, he habitually avoids legal proceedings. So this bears out the trapper's observation that the law may be bad, but to be without it is worse.

After the question of the law is settled, then the means of arbitration and enforcement must be determined. Ishmael's solution is a personal one. He is very much a father in his "court," not a judge.

This means, first, that he very nearly condemns an innocent man, the trapper, who he thinks killed his son. When he discovers who actually killed his son— Abiram, his brother-in-law— he faces his second dilemma; the father, to avenge his son's death, must condemn his wife's brother.

Abiram dies by hanging. Thus ends the story of Ishmael Bush and his family, in an intolerable situation. After the burial of Abiram

"the teams and herds of the squatter were seen pursuing their course towards the settlements. As they approached the confines of society the train was blended among a thousand others. Though some of the numerous descendants of this peculiar pair were reclaimed from their lawless and semi-barbarous lives, the principals of the family them­ selves were never heard of m o r e . "36 Cooper is implying that they must disappear, just as Natty must die, because there is no place for them.

When the borderer finds that the need for law has caught up with him, then he begins to be an anachronism. He is an offspring of society

~^The Prairie, pp. 426-427. 188 with no place in society, which in the individual case could be tragic.

The case of Ishmael Bush is, I think, at least pathetic, if not tragic, because he does have certain redeeming features. By means of this episode Cooper is able to suggest the cost of progress in a way that

Bryant could not, at least in his early poetry.

Donald A. Ringe sums up the dilemma that Cooper's first three

Leatherstocking tales present: "Whether or not a free society can survive on a selfishly despoiled and wasted continent.If this was a question for Cooper, for the twentieth-century reader it has been answered. The Marmaduke Temples prospered, and the country survived, a strong, prosperous nation. But Fenimore Cooper was ever aware of the cost of prosperity— the waste of the land and the waning quality of life. Judge Temple's victory over Leatherstocking implies the distortion of the right relationship of man to nature. We think, too, of James Paulding's hero in The Backwoodsman, Basil, who achieved such startling success in the newly civilized lands at the expense of both life and land. Certainly Cooper and Paulding suggested that the temptation of progress is always present, and that the basic manifes­ tation of progress is the weakening of human values.

Even though Cooper's attitude toward the relationship of man and nature in The Pioneers and The Prairie is complex, it is quite explicit.

The two novels are both well supplied with talk. Leatherstocking, the

Judge, and most of the minor characters are very much given to making speeches. The Last of the Mohicans (1826) is a different sort of novel. As Dr. Ringe has pointed out, it presents man as more insecure

Ringe, p. 48. 189 in nature than he is shown to be in The Pioneers. I would add, on the strength of the previous discussion, that The Last of the Mohicans demonstrates more insecurity than even The Prairie does. But as in the other two novels, the natural landscapes (fewer in number than one expects from Cooper) are used primarily for the ulterior motive

OO of demonstrating the condition of man in the wilderness. The very first lines of the book advise the reader that the story will involve man's confrontation with the wilderness:

It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the toils and dangers of

90 A secondary motive is to establish a legitimate American subject matter, involving both physical and historical aspects of the country. He devoted the preface of the 1826 edition of The Last of the Mohicans to establishing the legitimacy of the Indian history (see the Riverside Edition, ed. William Charvat (Boston, 1958), pp. 3-6). Paulding, Bryant, and several writers for the North American Review had preceded Cooper in this attempt to establish an American subject matter. Paulding maintained in his essay "National Literature," that, lacking the material for the English or continental romance ("Fairies, giants, and goblins") as well as a mythology, the colonization of the New World was ample material for writers of fiction. [See The Minor Knickerbockers, p. 17J The North American Review rather consistently maintained that colonial history was good source material for fiction [see Walter Channing, "American Language and Literature," NAR, I (Sept., 1815), 307-314; William Tudor, "An Address Delivered to the Phi Beta Kappa Society, Etc.," NAR, II (Nov., 1815), 13-22; it is here that Tudor claims the analogy of the Five Indian Nations to the Greeks of Homer, in an attempt to establish a mythology for American romance; Cooper, of course, picks up this theme in his preface to The Last of the Mohicans, 1826.] And Bryant, concurring, even extended the field to include the contemporary doemstic scene, as he approved the efforts of Catherine M. Sedgwick in her book Redwood. (see W. C. Bryant, "Redwood, a Tale," NAR, XX (April, 1825), 246-256). And more advocates of using colonial history as fictional material: Walter Channing, "Reflections on the Leterary Delinquency of America," NAR, II (Nov., 1815), 33-43; Edward T. Channing, "On Models in Literature," NAR, III (July, 1816), 202-209; John Knapp, "National Poetry," NAR, VIII (Dec., 1818), 169-176; [Knapp notes the importance of historical matter, i.e., the revolution, the development of the frontier, and Indians, and nature.] At the same time, during these years reviews by R.H. Dana, Sr., John C. Gray, and sometimes Willard Philips argue the anti­ nationalist or universalist position. 190 the wilderness were to be encountered before the adverse hosts could meet. A wide and apparently an impervious boundary of forests severed the possessions of the hostile provinces of France and England.^

Man's battle with the wilderness is the primary issue even though the battle of man and man occupies more pages in The Last of the Mohicans.

Of course, these two subjects merge in this novel to the extent that the Indians are aligned with the wilderness, as in the massacre of

Fort Henry.

But sometimes the Indians are merely representative of mankind, quite transient in the face of the enduring wilderness. This is illustrated when Leatherstocking and his party (Chingachgook, Uncas,

Duncan Heyward, and the two girls) come upon the remains of a block­ house, the site of a battle between the Mohawks and the Mohicans, years before when Leatherstocking was a "yonker."

After penetrating through the brush, matted as it was with briers, for a few hundred feet, he entered an open space, that surrounded a low green hillock, which was crowned by the decayed block-house in question. This rude and neglected building was one of those deserted works, which, having been thrown up on an emergency, had been abandoned with the disappearance of danger, and was now quietly crumbling in the solitude of the forest, neglected, and nearly forgotten, like the circumstances which had caused it to be reared. Such memorials of the passage and

on James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, ed. William ■ Charvat (Boston, 1958), p. 15. Note on the text: "Cooper disliked the work of revision, and did it badly. He revised The Last of the Mohicans twice— once for the London edition of 1831 published by Richard Bentley, and again for the New York edition of 1850 published by G.P. Putnam. The present edition has been collated with both of these, and, except for misprints, the words of the text are as Cooper left them. The punctuation, however, has been changed whenever his inconsistencies are obtrusive; and when in doubt the editor has omitted superfluous commas." [intro., p. xxv] struggles of man are yet frequent throughout the broad barrier of wilderness which once separated the hostile provinces, and form a species of ruins that are intimately associated with the recollections of colonial history, and which are in appropriate keeping with the gloomy character of the surrounding scenery.^0

Nature, or the wilderness, is reclaiming this patch of land which was once man's battle-ground. Leatherstocking must make his way, a distance of more than one hundred feet, through the brush, matted with briers,

in order to reach the clearing, the old battle-ground. The experience

that is described here is, I think, recognizable by those who hike in

the woods. When the hiker comes upon a clearing after making his way

through denser forest, he is likely to experience a strange feeling of having entered a new world. It may even be true that the difficulty of passage through the forest causes the hiker to lose track of time.

In which case, upon reaching the clearing he would have the sensation of time resuming its normal course. This is something like what happens

to Leatherstocking in the present passage. But when he emerges into

the clearing, he is suddenly in a time past, as the relics of the

Indian battle become obvious to him. And with the passing of time,

the wilderness seems to have the advantage over man's puny efforts.

The block-house, once of human significance, is "neglected," "deserted,"

"abandoned," "crumbling," "nearly forgotten." (Cooper leaves no doubt

about man's transience.) Even the reasons for the battle are largely

forgotten. So the flora gradually grow back, reclaiming the land for

the wilderness. Cooper makes it clear that, far from being an isolated

instance, such evidence of man's stumbling is common in the wilderness.

^The Last of the Mohicans, p. 135. 192

The great set-piece in The Last of the Mohicans, the aftermath of the Fort Henry massacre, represents the confrontation of the white man with the Indian as embodiment of the wilderness. The situation in the narrative is this: In 1757, certain of the Indians, "Mingo dogs," were allied to the French, who had laid siege to the British Fort

Henry for a considerable time, finally forcing the British to surrender.

During the surrender, the Indians, succumbing to something like blood lust, perpetrated a horrible massacre of the British and American soldiers and civilians. The French commander, Montcalm, was apparently powerless to stop the outrage. In the chapter immediately following the battle, Cooper is in no hurry to resume the narrative. Initially he takes time to denounce Montcalm for his alleged deficiency in

"moral courage" and his "cruel apathy." Following this he pretends to continue the narrative:

The third day from the capture of the fort was drawing to a close, but the business of the narrative must still detain the reader on the shores of the "holy lake."^-*-

Instead of an immediate resumption of the narrative, Cooper provides a rather lengthy description of the scene of desolation that remained in the wake of the massacre:

When last seen the environs of the works were filled with violence and uproar. They were now possessed by stillness and death. The blood­ stained conquerors had departed; and their camp, which had so lately rung with the merry rejoicings of a victorious army, lay a silent and deserted city of huts. The fortress was a smouldering ruin; charred rafters, fragments of ecploded artillery, and rent masonwork, covering its earthen mounds in confused disorder.

41Ibid., p. 94. A frightful change had also occurred in the season. The sun had hid its warmth behind an impenetrable mass of vapor, and hundreds of human forms, which had blackened beneath the fierce heats of August, were stiffening in their deformity, before the blasts of a premature November. The curling and spotless mists, which had been seen sailing above the hills towards the north, were now returning in an interminable dusky sheet, that was urged along by the fury of a tempest. The crowded mirror of the Horican was gone; and in its place the green and angry waters dashed the shores, as if indignantly casting back its impurities to the polluted strand. Still the clear fountain retained a portion of its charmed influence, but it reflected only the somber gloom that fell from the impending heavens. That humid and congenial atmosphere which commonly aborned the view, veiling its harshness and softening its asperities, had disappeared, and the northern air poured across the waste of water so harsh and unmingled that nothing was left to be conjectured by the eye, or fashioned by the fancy. The fiercer element had cropped the verdure of the plain, which looked as though it were scathed by the consuming lightning. But here and there a dark green tuft rose in the midst of the desolation; the earliest fruits of a soil that had been fattened with human blood. The whole landscape, which seen by a favoring light and in a genial temperature, had been found so lovely, appeared now like some pictured allegory of life, in which objects were arrayed in their harshest but truest colors, and without the relief of any shadowing. The solitary and arid blade of grass arose from the passing gusts fearfully perceptible; the bold and rocky mountains were too distinct in their barrenness, and they even sought relief, in vain, by attempting to pierce the illimitable void of heaven, which was shut to its gaze by dusky sheet of ragged and driving vapor. The vapor blew unequally; sometimes sweeping heavily along the ground, seeming to whisper its moaning in the cold ears of the dear, then rising in a shrill and mournful whistling, it entered the forest with a rush that filled the air with the leaves and branches it scattered in its path. Amid the unnatural shower, a few hungry ravens struggled with the gale; but no sooner was the 194

green ocean of woods, which stretched beneath them, passed, than they gladly stooped, at random, to their hideous banquet. In short, it was a scene of wildness and desolation; and it appeared as if all who had profanely entered it had been stricken, at a blow by the relentless arm of death. But the prohibition had ceased; and for the first time since the perpetrators of those foul deeds which had assisted to disfigure the scene were gone, living human begins had now presumed to approach the place.

This magnificent interlude is far beyond the moral or artistic reach of the contemporary romances. Nor is anything like this to be found in Paulding, who works in narrower dimensions. One difference is that Cooper's interlude is only superficially a digression. Indirectly, it does indeed continue the narrative since he indicated early on that his purpose was, in part, to present a "picture of the cruelty and fierceness of the savage warfare" of the pre-Revolutionary days.^3

This desolate scene plays an important role in the narrative— it acts as the editorial comment on the preceding action.

The comment is both a moral condemnation of the savagery perpetrated by the Indians, and a larger, more cosmic, acceptance. Cooper manages his condemnation in three ways: (1) He uses conventional abstractions, very much of an eighteenth-century sort, to describe the results of the massacre (e.g., "the environs of the works . . . now possessed with stillness and death"; "the fortness was a smouldering ruin"; "objects were arrayed in their harshest but truest colors, and without the relief of any coloring.") This language is not to our ears the most forceful

A2Ibid., pp. 194-195.

^ I b i d . , p . 15. 195 medium of moral judgment, yet its very rational base is a warrant for the condemnation of what is certainly an irrational act, and it is a way for the writer-observer to bring the facts of the scene under control.

(2) Occasionally Cooper uses a more concrete language of des­ cription with a higher emotional content. First, the "hundreds of human forms, which had blackened beneath the fierce heats of August, were stiffening in their deformity." This combination of abstraction and concreteness develops a distinct and ugly picture. Then: "But here and there a dark green tuft rose in the midst of the desolation; the earliest fruits of a soil that had been fattened with human blood."

The idea of human sacrifice as a way to nurture grass is, on the one hand, unthinkable, a grotesque distortion of human values, but, on the other hand, a way for Cooper to say that life goes on, built literally on the remains of previous life. The life that continues is, of course, not entirely green grass; there is the more grisly side, the "few hungry ravens . . . [that] gladly stooped, at random, to their hideous banquet."

(3) Shifting his focus from the human tragedy to the effects on nature, Cooper allows nature— the landscape itself— to express condem­ nation of the massacre. It did not just turn suddenly cold, there was a "frightful change" in the season. A storm ("the fury of a tempest") arose, and the lake waters became rough ("lashed the shores, as if indignantly casting back its impurities to the polluted strand"). The water reflected the "somber gloom" of the sky, and the wind "poured across" the "harsh" water. Cooper then turns to the land, describing it 196

in similar terms, and then his gaze moves outward, seeking relief in

the distant mountains, but to no avail. Finally "the eye even sought relief, in vain, by attempting to pierce the illimitable void of heaven, which was shut to its gaze by the dusky sheet of ragged and driving vapor." It is for the present literally a God-forsaken scene; it is also unnatural, as the following peculiar gusting of wind demonstrates.

True to the romantic fallacy, going back at least as far as the pastoral

elegy of antiquity, all nature mourns the atrocities of the massacre.

This suggests the larger, more optimistic view that man at least is not alone in his grief, even though it appears that divine aid is out of reach behind the "illimitable void of heaven."

The wilderness in The Last of the Mohicans is primarily a battle­

ground. A measure of the severity of this battle between man and nature

is the fact that, as we have just seen, the influence of the Christian

God is played down. Man's existence in this wilderness is far too

tenuous to allow him to see natural cathedrals in the landscape, as

Bryant did. In the two later books in Cooper's fictional chronology,

The Pioneers and The Prairie, where man's battle with the wilderness is not quite as severe, Cooper does not subordinate his orthodox

Christianity. But in The Last of the Mohicans, the Christian God is usually overshadowed by other elements more important ot the narrative.

This is true in the Fort Henry Massacre scene, and it is true much

later in the story, quite near the end when Uncas and Hawkeye are pre­

paring the little band of Delawares to take the offensive and go meet

the Hurons lurking in the woods:

During the time Uncas was making this disposition 197

of his forces, the woods were as still, and, with the exception of those who had met in council, apparently as much untenanted, as when they came fresh from the hands of their Almighty Creator. The eye could range in every direction through the long and shadowed vistas of the trees; but nowhere was any object to be seen that did not properly belong to the peaceful and slumbering scenery. Here and there a bird was heard fluttering among the branches of the beeches, and occasionally a squirrel dropped a nut, drawing the startled looks of the party, for a moment, to the place; but the instant the casual interruption ceased, the passing air was heard murmuring above their heads, along that verdant and undulating surface of forest which spread itself unbroken, unless by stream or lake, over such a vast region of country. Across the tract of wilderness which lay between the Delawares and the village of their enemies, it seemed as if the foot of man had-never trodden, so breathing and deep was the silence in which it lay. But Hawkeye, whose duty led him foremost in the adventure, knew the character of those with whom he was about to contend too well to trust the treacherous quiet.^

God's presence here in the illusory paradise is overshadowed by the knowledge that the woods are filled with Hurons. Cooper notes in the beginning that the peace is illusory: "the woods were as still, and

. . . apparently as much untenanted, as when they came fresh from the hands of their Almighty Creator." The word apparently denies the peacefulness of the little woodland scene that Cooper goes on to describe. At first the scene is tranquil enough; the only noises are natural— the birds are fluttering, and the squrrel drops a nut. But when these noises cease, the peacefulness is unnatural. The only sound is the murmuring of the passing air, which is so faint that it could not be heard over the normal forest sounds. By making this faint sound

44Ibid., p. 346. 198 audible, Cooper is demonstrating just how unnatural the present scene is. And Hawkeye, of course, knows well the interpretation of the quiet— it is "treacherous quiet" because of the unseen presence of the Hurons.

It is not unusual for Cooper to insist on some sort of difference between appearance and reality. His great landscapes in The Pioneers and The Prairie, so static in appearance, usually betray some temporal influence. And a similar situation prevails in his characters.

Leatherstocking, Judge Temple, and Ishmael Bush are somewhat sterotyped on the surface, but in reality they each embody contradictory elements.

Cooper's realization of the difference between appearance and reality involved a double vision similar to what we found in Paulding.

The similarity even extends to the subject matter. Both writers described the effects of nature on man, seeing the wilderness as a battleground on which man pits his strength, often futilely, against the forces of nature. Both writers also described man's effects on nature, seeing the destruction of the wilderness as the ultimate result of the progress of civilization. In the treatment of both subjects, however, Paulding and Cooper differ because the latter pursued the implications further. While Paulding saw the destruction as well as the beauty of nature, he never really attempted to reconcile the dif­ ferences, except when he preferred to point up the ironic humor of the differences. Cooper, however, in his first three Leatherstocking tales, had the benefit of a continuing, developing story which was parallel to the story of the developing nation. Thus he had more working space in which to develop the civilization-wilderness themes. The progress of civilization was seen by Cooper as a costly, temporal process. In the three novels in question, the degree of temporality varies inversely with the progress of civilization. Where civilization is most advanced, as in The Pioneers, the sense of tem­ porality is muted, and man is relatively secure in space. Elizabeth's description is predominantly spatial, but even so is complicated by a recognition of change and the symbolic implications of the wild but declining oak tree. In The Prairie, the oak tree is replaced by the willow, an essentially dead thing, expressing the "fulfillment of time, and the prairie descriptions are filled with dismal references to the progress of civilization, to history, to various manifestations of change, not to speak of the trapper's constant musing about the good old days. There is more narrative action in this novel than in The

Pioneers, but it is still written largely in what Dr. Ringe calls a descriptive mode. Then in The Last of the Mohicans, as the narrative mode prevails, the sense of man's security in the wilderness diminishes

The temporality of this novel is expressed mainly in the prevalence of action as contrasted to the relatively few set pieces of description which, with one expception, the aftermath of the Fort Henry massacre, are short. In this exception, the transience of man is repeatedly emphasized.

The conflict of civilization and the wilderness comes to a kind of resolution in the complex relationship of Judge Temple and Leather- stocking. The natural values of the wilderness, represented by

Leatherstocking, are gradually altered by the values of civilization, represented by Judge Temple, and Leatherstocking moves westward into the prairie. And the wilderness finally loses, just as the trapper

(Leatherstocking) dies at the end of The Prairie, but not before the values of progressing civilization are established. The value of human law, for example, in some doubt in The Pioneers, is established in

The Prairie. Cooper rejected "the wildness of unrestrained liberty" even in its sublimity, because it had no place in a civilized land.

The progress of civilization thus entails distinct losses, because it precludes the possibility of retaining all the values of the wilder­ ness, as important as they may be. To retain the wilderness values in the course of the progress of civilization would require the ability to transcend time, and this would presume an Edenic America, which for Cooper did not exist. EPILOGUE

The conflict of civilization and the wilderness was handled in various ways by American writers and painters in the first third of the nineteenth century. I have made extensive use of the opposition between realism and idealism in this analysis, but it should be clear that the writers and painters here considered responded to the con­ flict often with contradictory vision, so that they kept slipping out of the easy, abstract categories. Paulding and Irving, classified as realists, each made use of their ironic perspective as a kind of ; idealistic overlay on experience. The ironic stance became in their hands an informing idea. And Irving added an extra touch of idealism in the handling of his fanciful landscape, as a possible response to the conflict.

Allston and Bryant, whom I called idealists, fit somewhat more comfortably into their category. The emotional unity of Allston's paintings provided the idealistic surface for the landscape; and in Allston's hands the serenity of man in nature nearly eliminated any sense of conflict between civilization and the wilderness. For

Bryant, in his poetry of the 1820's, this conflict was generally resolved in God. Thus his idealism had a dominant religious note.

But both Allston and Bryant revealed traces of the conflict: Allston

in his earlier work (e.g., Rising of a Thunderstorm), and Bryant in

201 's

202 his later work (e.g., "The Prairies").

Cole is unique in this study because he is the most self-contra­ dictory; he seems to fit in both categories, as both a realist and an idealist. His classification depends upon which canvas one is looking at at the moment. View of Monte Video shows clearly the garden type of landscape in which the idealism consists in an Edenic resolution of the conflict between civilization and the wilderness. Yet, View

Near Ticonderoga just as clearly shows the darker side of Cole's consciousness, with the conflict domination the canvas.

Cooper, the last figure in the analysis, is certainly best described as a realist. But having defined realism on the basis of the examples of Paulding and Irving, I must hasten to distinguish

Cooper's realism from theirs. All three men appear to be equally aware of the conflict between civilization and the wilderness; all three present this conflict directly in their writings. But Cooper, in his Leatherstocking narratives, does not very often adopt the ironic stance. He takes pains to develop a kind of compromise as a resolution of the conflict, a compromise which is costly but necessary. The wilderness values, as embodied in Leatherstocking, must eventually give way to the values of civilization, as em­ bodied in Judge Temple.

The arrangement of the analysis in this study should clearly suggest my personal preference for Fenimore Cooper's version of the conflict of civilization and the wilderness. From the per- 203 spective of the 1970's, it seems to me that an acceptance of the destruction of the wilderness and all the implications of that destruction for American society is mandatory. The present pro­ gress of our civilization is based upon the industrialization of our natural resources, and the results of this industrialization are, besides our national strength, the depletion of the natural resources and the production of vast quantities of waste. The civilization cannot progress without a consequent loss. The bal­ ance between this progress and loss was a resolution that Thomas

Cole was reaching for and never attained. But Cooper clearly did accept the cost of progress. His solutions, as epitomized by the figure of Judge Temple, are no doubt inadequate today, but I sug­ gest that his acceptance of the cost of progress is a necessary prerequisite of today's solution. And that makes Cooper, from my point of view, distinctly American.

But getting beyond my own personal preferences, is this truly an "American" characteristic, to recognize and accept the inevitable losses of progress? Allston and Bryant represent two ways of avoiding the conflict and thus its losses. Their different kinds of idealism (especially Bryant's) have enjoyed a certain popularity in America. The introspection of Allston recurs in certain groves of academe. And Bryant's escape into

Eden recurs in the communal movement in America, without the darkening implications of "The Prairies." Thus, Allston and

Bryant also represent attitudes that are identifiably "American." 204

Then too, the ironic view of Paulding and Irving is "American"

enough to have appeared again in Twain, especially, and lives still in

the satirical social commentary of the present. It is not now alligned

necessarily with either a conservative or liberal view, but rather is

an option chosen by the observers of society, usually, and not those i who act on the problems. The implication that Paulding and Irving

were not "doers" is of course false— they were both active in the

government. But I have examined part of their writing, not their

political careers. A further study should be undertaken to determine

the relationship between their attitudes as I have examined them here

and their political lives. (Such a study might well extend into the

twentieth century, to include such combinations of poetic talent and

involvement in non-artistic fields as the insurance executive Wallace

Stevens, the state department official Archibald MacLeish, and the

general practitioner William Carlos Williams.)

The definition of a special American characteristic— a national

view of a single issue, the conflict of civilization and the wilder­

ness— turns out to be exceedingly complex. Perhaps the mere effort to

find national characteristics presumes limiting the field of study to

materials that are exclusively national. And no writing or painting

of any artistic merit can be exclusively national; it must transcend

political boundries. The best that we can hope to find, therefore, are

suggestions of various national characteristics within artistic pro­

ductions that are not themselves nationalistic. Or else we can redefine

"artistic merit" so that it is essentially nationalistic, as govern­

ments have occasionally tried to do. In the latter case, the real artist, as well as the literary scholar, would quickly become anomalies.

And the subject of nationality would be a matter of doctrine, not an object of analysis. LIST OF WORKS CONSULTED

KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS:

AL American Literature ANQ American Notes and Queries AQ American Quarterly BNYPL Bulletin of the New York Public Library CE College English HR Hudson Review JAH Journal of American History KR Kenyon Review NAR North American Review NCF Nineteenth Century Fiction NEQ New England Quarterly PBSA Publications of the Bibliography Society of America PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association SAQ South Atlantic Quarterly TSLL Texas Studies of Language and Literature UTQ The University of Toronto Quarterly UTSE University of Texas Studies in English YR Yale Review

BOOKS:

Allston, Washington. Lectures on Art and Poems. Ed. Richard Henry Dana, Jr. New York: Baker and Scribner, 1850.

Allston, Washington. Lectures on Art and Poems (1850) and Monaldi (1841). Ed. Nathalia Wright. Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars Facsimiles and Reprints, 1967.

Allston, Washington. The Sylphs of the Seasons, with Other Poems. London: W. Pople, 1813.

American Paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1969.

Boorstin, Daniel J. The Americans. New York: Random House, 1965.

Brooks, Van Wyck. The World of Washington Irving. New York: E.P. Dutton and Co. 1944.

206 207

Bryant, William Cullen and Asher Brown Durand. The American Land­ scape, No. 1^, containing the Following Views: Weehawken, Cat- skill Mountains, Fort Putnam, Delaware Water-Gap, Falls of the Sawkill, Winnipiseogee Lake. Engraved from Original and Accurate Drawings; Executed from Nature Expressly for This Work, and from Well Authenticated Pictures; with Historical and Topo­ graphical Illustrations. New York: Elam Bliss, 1830. [not consulted ]

Bryant, William Cullen. The Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant. Ed. Parke Godwin. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1883.

Callow, James T. Kindred Spirits: Knickerbocker Writers and American Artists, 1807-1855. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967.

Charvat, William. Literary Publishing in America, 1790-1850. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1959.

Charvat, William. The Origins of American Critical Thought: 1810-1835. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1936.

Clark, Eliot. History of the National Academy of Design, 1825-1953. New York: Columbia University Press, 1954.

Clough, Wilson 0. The Necessary Earth: Nature and Solitude in American Literature. Austin, Texas: Univ. of Texas Press, 1965.

Cooper, James Fenimore. The Last of the Mohicans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958. [basically the 1851 edition]

Cooper, James Fenimore. Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper. Ed. James F. Beard. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1960.

Cooper, James Fenimore. The Pioneers. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1959. [The 1825 edition]

Cooper, James Fenimore. The Prairie. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1950. [The 1851 edition]

Curti, Merle. The Growth of American Thought. 3rd ed. New York: Harper and Row, 1964.

Dunlap, William. History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States. Three volumes. New York: Benjamin Blom, 1965. [a reissue]

Ekirch, Arthur A., Jr. The Idea of Progress in America, 1815-1860. New York: P. Smith, 1951. 208

Ekirch, Arthur A. Jr. Man and Nature in America. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1963.

Flagg, Jared Bradley. The Life and Letters of Washington Allston. New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1892.

Flexner, James Thomas. The Light of Distant Skies, 1760-1835. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1954.

Flexner, James Thomas. That Wilder Image. Boston: Little Brown, 1962.

Foerster, Norman. Nature in American Literature. New York: The Macmillian Co. 1923.

Fussell, Edwin. Frontier: American Literature and the American West. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1965.

Gardner, Albert Ten Eyck, and Stuart P. Feld. American Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Vol. I_, Painters Born by 1815. New York: New York Graphic Society, 1965.

Grossman, James. James Fenimore Cooper. New York: W. Sloan Asso­ ciates, 1949.

Hedges, William L. Washington Irving, An American Study, 1802-1832. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1965.

The Home Book of the Picturesque: or American Scenery, Art and Literature. Comprising a series of essays by Washington Irving, W.C. Bryant, Fenimore Cooper, and Others (1852). Ed, Motley F. Deakin. Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1967.

Huth, Hans. Nature and the American: Three Centuries of Changing Attitudes. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1957.

Irving, Washington. The Works of Washington Irving, Knickerbocker Edition. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1869.

Jones, Howard Mumford. The Frontier in American Fiction: Four Lectures on the Relationship of Landscape to Literature. Jerusalem: Magness Press 1956.

Kaul, A.N. The American Vision: Actual and Ideal Society in Nine­ teenth-Century Fiction. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press 1963.

Kohn, Hans. The Idea of Nationalism. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1944. Kouwenhoven, John A. The Arts in Modern American Civilization. New York: W.W. Norton, 1967. Originally: Made in America (1948). 209

Larkin, Oliver W. Art and Life in America. New York: Rinehart and Co., 1949.

Leary, Lewis. Washington Irving. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1963.

Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964.

Matthiessen, F.O. American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman. London: Oxford University Press, 1941.

McLanathan, Richard. The American Tradition in the Arts. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968.

McLean, Albert F. William Cullen Bryant. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1964.

Merritt, Howard. Thomas Cole. Rochester: Univ. of Rochester Pub­ lications Dept., 1969.

Miller, Lillian B. Patrons and Patriotism: The Encouragement of the Fine Arts in the United States, 1790-1860. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1966.

Miller, Perry. The Life of the Mind in America from the Revolution to the Civil War. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1965.

Nash, Roderick. Wilderness and the American Mind. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1967.

National Academy of Design Exhibition Record, 1826-1860. Two volumes. New York: New York Historical Society, 1943.

Neal, John. Logan, The Mingo Chief, A Family History. Philadelphia: H.C. Carey and I. Lea, 1822.

Noble, Louis Legrand. The Life and Works of Thomas Cole. Ed. Elliot S. Vesell. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1964. [originally 1853]

Novak, Barbara. American Painting of the Nineteenth Century: Realism, Idealism and the American Experience. New York: Praeger, 1969.

Nye, Russell B. The Cultural Life of the New Nation. New York: Harper, 1960.

Paulding, James Kirke. The Backwoodsman, A Poem. Philadelphia: M. Thomas, 1818.

Paulding, James Kirke. Koningsmarke, The Long Finne, A Story of the New World. New York: C. Wiley, 1823. 210 Paulding, James Kirke. Letters from the South, Written During an Excursion in the Summer of 1816, Two volumes. New York: James Eastburn and Co., 1817.

Paulding, James Kirke. The Letters of James Kirke Paulding. Ed. Ralph M. Aderman. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1962.

Paulding, James Kirke. The New Mirror for Travellers; and Guide to the Springs. By an Amateur. New York: G. and C. Carvill, 1828.

Paulding, James Kirke. A Sketch of Old England, by a New England Man. New York: C. Wiley, 1822.

Paulding, William Irving. The Literary Life of J.K. Paulding. New York: C. Scribner and Co., 1867.

Pearce, Roy Harvey. The Savages of America: A Study of the Indian and the Idea of Civilization. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1965.

Peckham, Harry Houston. Gotham Yankee: A Biography of William Cullen Bryant. New York: Vantage Press, 1950. Prown, Jules David. American Painting: From Its Beginnings to the Armory Show. Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1970.

Richardson, E.P. Washington Allston: A Study of the Romantic Artist in America. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1967. [Originally 1948]

Ringe, Donald A. James Fenimore Cooper. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1962.

Sanford, Charles L. The Quest for Paradise: Europe and the American Moral Imagination. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961.

Sears, Clara Endicott. Highlights Among the Hudson River Artists. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1947.

Seaver, Esther Isabel. Thomas Cole, One Hundred Years Later. Hartford, Conn.: Wadsworth Atheneum, 1948.

Smith, Henry Nash. Virgin Land. New York: Vintage Books, 1957.

Spencer, Benjamin T. The Quest for Nationality: An American Literary Campaign. Syracuse: Syracuse Univ. Press, 1957.

Spiller, Robert E. James Fenimore Cooper. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1965.

Stovall, Floyd. American Idealism. Norman, Oklahoma: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1943. 211 Taft, Kendall B. Minor Knickerbockers. New York: American Book Company, 1947.

Wagenknecht, Edward. Washington Irving: Moderation Displayed. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1962.

Washington Allston, 1779-1843: A Loan Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings and Memorabilia. Detroit: The Detroit Institute of Arts, 1947.

Willis, Nathaniel Parker. American Scenery; or, Land, Lake, and River: Illustrations of Transatlantic Nature. Two volumes. London: George Virtue, 1840.

Wilmerding, John. A History of American Marine Painting. Boston: Little, Brown, 1968.

ARTICLES:

Bartlett, Mabel R. "Washington Allston as Critic." Diss. Boston University, 1960.

Beard, James Franklin. "Cooper and his Artistic Contemporaries." in James Fenimore Cooper: A Re-Appraisal. Cooperstown, New York, 1954.

Becker, George J. "James Fenimore Cooper and American Democracy," CE, XVII (1956), 325-334.

Bewley, Marius. "The Cage and the Prairie: Two Notes on Symbolism," HR, X (1957), 403-414.

Bier, Jesse. "Lapsarians on The Prairie: Cooper's Novel," TSLL, IV (1962), 49-57.

Bleasby, George J. "James Fenimore Cooper: Frontier Novelist," Michigan Alumni Quarterly Review, LX (1954), 257-265.

Bolwell, R. W. "Concerning the Study of Nationalism in American Literature." AL, X (Jan., 1939), 405-416.

Bradsher, E.L. "Nationalism in Our Literature," NAR, 213 (Jan., 1921), 109-118.

Bruner, Marjorie W. "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: A Mythological Parody," CE, XXV (1964), 274-283.

[Bryant, William Cullen.] "Gelyna; a tale of Albany and Ticonderoga, Seventy Years Ago." The Talisman, III (1830), 302-335.

Bryant, William Cullen. "Redwood, a Tale," NAR, XX (April, 1825), 246-256. [a review] -212 Channing, Edward T. "On Models in Literature," NAR, III (July, 1816), 202-209.

Channing, Walter. "Essay on American Language and Literature," NAR, I (1815).

Channing, Walter. "Reflections on the Literary Delinquency of America," NAR, II (Nov., 1815), 33-43.

Clark, Harry Hayden. "Nationalism in American Literature," UTQ, II (July, 1933), 492-519.

Collins, Frank M. "Cooper and the American Dream." PMLA, LXXXI (1966), 79-94.

Conklin, W.T. "Paulding's Prose Treatment of Types and Frontier Life before Cooper." TJTSE, XIX (1939), 163-171.

Darnell, Donald. "Uncas as Hero: The Ubi Sunt Formula in The Last of the Mohicans," AL, XXXVII (1965), 259-266.

Eby, Cecil D. "Bryant's 'The Prairies': Notes on Date and Text." PBSA, LVI (1962), 356-357.

Fischer, Lillian. "Social Criticism in Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales: The Meaning of the Forest." Diss. Yale, 1957.

Foerster, Norman. "Nature in Bryant's Poetry." SAQ, XVII (Jan., 1918), 10-17.

Frederick, John T. "Cooper's Eloquent Indians," PMLA, LXXI (1956), 1004-1017.

French, David. "James Fenimore Cooper and Fort William Henry." AL, XXXII (1960), 28-38.

Grossman, James. "James Fenimore Cooper: An Uneasy American." YR, XL (1951), 696-709.

Guttman, Allan. "Washington Irving and the Conservative Imagination," AL, XXXVI (1964), 165-173.

Herold, Amos L. "Paulding's Literary Theories," BNYPL, LXVI (1962), 236-243

Hoffman, Daniel G. "Irving's use of American Folklore in 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,"1 PMLA, LXVIII (1953), 425-435.

Huddleston, Eugene L. "Washington Irving's 'On Passaic Falls'" ANQ, IV (1965), 51-52.

Hudson, William P. "Archibald Alison and William Cullen Bryant." AL, XII (March, 1940), 59-68. 213

Jones, Howard Mumford. "James Fenimore Cooper and the Hudson River School." Magazine of Art, XLV (Oct., 1952), 243-251. [shorter version of the Tulane article]

Jones, Howard Mumford. "Prose and Pictures: James Fenimore Cooper." Tulane Studies in English, III (1952), 133-154.

Knapp, John. "National Poetry," NAR, VIII (Dec., 1818), 169-176.

Lanier, Sterling. "The Moral, Social, and Political Theories of James Fenimore Cooper." Diss. Harvard, 1955.

Lyon, T.J. "Washington Irving's Wilderness." Western American Literature, I (Fall, 1966), 153-166.

Martin, Terence. "Rip, Ichabod and the American Imagination," AL, XXXI (1959), 137-149.

Merritt, Howard S. "American Landscape Paintings in the Museum Collection." Baltimore Museum of Art News, XXV (No. 2, 1962), 5-6.

Meyer, A.N. "A Portrait of Coleridge by Washington Allston." Critic, XLVIII (Feb., 1906), 138-141.

Miller, R.N. "Nationalism in Bryant's 'The Prairies."' AL, XXI (May, 1949), 227-232.

Mills, Gordon. "The Symbolic Wilderness: James Fenimore and Jack London." NCF, XIII (1959), 329-340.

Noble, David W. "Cooper, Leatherstocking and the Death of the American Adam." A£, XVI (1964), 419-431.

Pearce, Roy Harvey. "The Leatherstocking Tales Re-examined." SAQ, XLVI (Oct., 1947), 524-536.

Philbrick, Thomas. "Cooper's The Pioneers: Origins and Structure." PMLA, LXXIX (1964), 579-593.

Philbrick, Thomas. "The Sources of Cooper's Knowledge of Fort William Henry." AL, XXXVI (1964), 209-214.

Pickering, James Henry. "James Fenimore Cooper and the History of New York." Diss. Northwestern, 1964.

Ringe, Donald A. "Bryant's Use of the American Past." Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters, LXI (1956), 323-331.

Ringe, Donald A. "Chiaroscuro as an Artistic Device in Cooper's Fiction." PMLA, LXXVIII (1963), 349-357. 214

Ringe, Donald A. "James Fenimore Cooper and Thomas Cole: An Analogous Technique," AL, XXX (1958), 26-36.

Ringe, Donald A. "Kindred Spirits: Bryant and Cole," AQ, VI (1954), 233-244.

Ringe, Donald A. "Man and Nature in Cooper's The Prairie." NCF, XV (1961), 313-323.

Ringe, Donald A. "New York and New England: Irving's Criticism of American Society." AL, XXXVIII (Jan., 1967), 455-467.

Ringe, Donald A. "Painting as Poem in the Hudson River Aesthetic." A£. XII (1960), 71-83.

Rovit, Earl H. "American Literature and 'The American Experience,"' A£, XIII (1961), 115-125.

Russell, A.J. "Irving: Recorder of Indian Life," JAH, XLV (Mar., 1931), 185-195.

Sanford, Charles L. "The Concept of the Sublime in the Works of Thomas Cole and William Cullen Bryant." AL, XXVIII (1957), 434-448.

Sedgwick, William E. "The Materials for an American Literature: A Critical Problem of the Early Nineteenth Century," Harvard Studies and Notes in Philosophy and Literature, XVII (1935), 141-162.

Shepard, Paul H., Jr. "American Attitudes Toward the Landscape in New England and the West, 1830-1870." Diss. Yale, 1954.

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