In actuality, Fenimore loved the genteel continent of Europe, and waited gasping for the newspapers to praise his WORK. In another actuality, he loved the tomahawking continent of America, and imagined himself Natty Bumppo. His actual desire was to be: _Monsieur Fenimore Cooper, le grand écrivain americain._ His innermost wish was to be: Natty Bumppo. Now Natty and Fenimore arm-in-arm are an odd couple. You can see Fenimore: blue coat, silver buttons, silver-and-diamond buckle shoes, ruffles. You see Natty Bumppo: a grizzled, uncouth old renegade, with gaps in his old teeth and a drop on the end of his nose. But Natty was Fenimore's great Wish: his wish-fulfilment. "It was a matter of course," says Mrs. Cooper, "that he should dwell on the better traits of the picture rather than on the coarser and more revolting, though more common points. Like West, he could see Apollo in the young Mohawk." The coarser and more revolting, though more common points. You see now why he depended so absolutely on MY WIFE. She had to look things in the face for him. The coarser and more revolting, and certainly more common points, she had to see. He himself did so love seeing pretty-pretty, with the thrill of a red scalp now and then. Fenimore, in his imagination, wanted to be Natty Bumppo, who, I am sure, belched after he had eaten his dinner. At the same time Mr. Cooper was nothing if not a gentleman. So he decided to stay in France and have it all his own way. In France, Natty would not belch after eating, and Chingachgook could be all the Apollo he liked. As if ever any Indian was like Apollo. The Indians, with their curious female quality, their archaic figures, with high shoulders and deep, archaic waists, like a sort of woman! And their natural devilishness, their natural insidiousness. But men see what they want to see: especially if they look from a long distance, across the ocean, for example. Yet the Leatherstocking books are lovely. Lovely half-lies. They form a sort of American Odyssey, with Natty Bumppo for Odysseus. Only, in the original Odyssey, there is plenty of devil, Circes and swine and all. And Ithacus is devil enough to outwit the devils. But Natty is a saint with a gun, and the Indians are gentlemen through and through, though they may take an occasional scalp. There are five Leatherstocking novels: a _decrescendo_ of reality, and a crescendo of beauty. 1. _Pioneers_: A raw frontier-village on Lake Champlain, at the end of the eighteenth century. Must be a picture of Cooper's home, as he knew it when a boy. A very lovely book. Natty Bumppo an old man, an old hunter half civilized. 2. _The Last of The Mohicans_: A historical fight between the British and the French, with Indians on both sides, at a Fort by Lake Champlain. Romantic flight of the British general's two daughters, conducted by the scout, Natty, who is in the prime of life; romantic death of the last of the Delawares.