Cooper & Melville Insights

James Fenimore Cooper -- Cooperstown, New York

This famous early American novelist’s claim to fame is the stories he wrote featuring his epic character Natty Bumppo. A 40-foot high statue of the mythic character can be found in the cemetery at the south east corner of Lake Otsego. A statue of Cooper himself can be found in the middle of town at was once the family homestead.

Cooper’s father founded Cooperstown in upstate New York. Cooper owned tens of thousands of acres there. He granted his son and his wife a large plot of land on the southwest shore of Lake Otsego where James lived as a gentleman farmer.

The anecdotal story of Cooper’s beginnings as a novelist is that he was reading one of the works of Sir Walter Scott when he flung it aside in disgust exclaiming to his wife that he could write better novels. Supposedly she challenged him to the task and he met the challenge.

The Leatherstocking cyle of novels clearly shows the influence of the Lake Otsego and Cooperstown landscape. Glimmerglass, Council Rock, the cave, Three-Mile Point – all are clearly referenced in his works. After seeing the beautiful country, it is easy to understand how Cooper seems to overly focus on the lush descriptions.

Cooper wrote with quills and metal-tipped pens. He always had copies of Shakespeare’s works with him when he wrote. He even kept a traveling copies with him for his journey’s to Europe and Italy.

In all, Cooper is credited with writing ___ novels

Herman Melville’s Arrowhead -- Pittsfield, Massachusetts

Melville’s home, Arrowhead, is located on Holmes Road in rural Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The road is called Holmes Road because the famous writer Oliver Wendell Holmes had his summer home just down the road in those days.

The home itself was a pretty simple farm house with a couple barns for animals. The land was cleared for farming. He called it Arrowhead because of all the arrowheads that could be found in the fields in those days. Originally constructed as a tavern, it was situated along this busy narrow post road through the Berkshires. It has a beautiful view – from Melville’s workroom of Mt. Graylock. Melville planted the towering spruce trees that still surround the house. One of his first projects was to build a porch – he called it his piazza – which also faced the mountain. It is no mansion – the walls were covered with all paper and the floors simple wide planks from the local forests.

Melville moved in with his widowed mother, wife and young son, and four unmarried sisters. His mother ran the house. A Georgian style home it is built around a massive fireplace hearth which became a contentious subject between Melville and his wife. It became the subject of a humorous poem which his brother paid to have etched on the mantle. His wife thought the old centrally located fireplace took up too much of the space in the house. Besides the dining room hearth, fireplaces in all the key rooms also sprang from this giant chimney at the center of the Melville home. See photo.

The china on the Melville table had an unusual Oriental design – probably showing the influence of his whaling days in the Pacific.

Melville was born in New York. His father began as a relatively prosperous business man, but was later forced out of New York by bankruptcy. They left in the dead of night and much like Charles Dickens, the boys of the family were expected to work to pay off the debts. This happened when Herman was 12 – his older brother seemed to hold the key to the family success as he became a famous orator and was rewarded after a successful campaign by President James Polk with a diplomatic post in London. (This would work out for Herman’s benefit because his brother was instrumental in helping to arrange the publication of his first book Typee both in London and New York.)

As a teen, Herman was involved in many different jobs. He loved the Berkshire area because of summer experiences while he was growing up. Melville even spent a summer in Illinois looking for work before signing up as a “boy” on a ship traveling from New England to England. After that experience, he signed on to the whaling ship the Acushnet and left on a tour of duty that would take him around the tip of South America into the Pacific.

His exotic experiences during this time led to seven of the books he ended up writing and really have become his claim to fame. His first two Typee and Omoo which recount his experiences with the cannibals on his whaling tour were bestsellers. With those successes, Melville decided to purchase Arrowhead and try to do something few had ever been able to accomplish in the literary world – make his living as a writer. That was not meant to happen.

Melville worked hard writing to try to recapture the critical acclaim he had once enjoyed. Each day after feeding the animals, he would take his private stairway up to his work room which was locked to keep the children and other disturbances away while he wrote. He wrote on a large table – often covered with books. He especially enjoyed Shakespeare and the Bible. He kept a copies close at hand. He wrote with quill pens. Some critics believe that the line from Moby Dick of when the whale first was sighted: “ insert quote” may be a reference to Mt. Graylock which was part of the view from his study each day and was covered with white throughout the year – snow in winter and wild flowers in spring & summer. He would write from morning till about 2:30 in the afternoon when his children were instructed (by his mother) to knock at his door so that he would not write for the whole day.

In his writing hey-day, he met with Nathaniel Hawthorne who had recently published The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne would stay in the back room just off of Melville’s work room. Hawthorne’s Tanglewood Cottage is also close to Arrowhead. Hawthorne’s Tanglewood Tales were inspired by his time in the Berkshires. It is said that often Hawthorne and Melville would “repair” to the barn to smoke their pipes and share their thoughts since the house was filled with ladies and children.

Melville would never earn the critical acclaim he had once garnered. At the time of its publication, Moby Dick was panned by the critics. Because of his failing career, Melville eventually lost Arrowhead. For a while his brother – who owned the farm behind Arrowhead -- swapped properties with him to try to bail out his brother. Eventually, Melville ended up living in New York in a home provided by his brother. His father-in-law paid for Melville to take a trip to Europe to try to recapture his health and inspiration. He continued his writing, eventually giving up prose for poetry. He spent his last 19 years working on the docks in New York as a customs inspector.

The Melville “revival” began in the 1920’s when a biographer was interviewing his daughter and asked if there were any unpublished documents that she might have. She pulled out a metal box which contained correspondence as well as Billy Budd which later was published as his last major work. Since that time, Melville’s work has grown in prestige with Moby Dick leading the way.