The Chainbearer , livre ebook

The Chainbearer. Or, The Littlepage Manuscripts

James Fenimore Cooper
The Writings of JAMES FENIMORE COOPER

J AMES F RANKLIN B EARD , F OUNDING E DITOR -I N -C HIEF , 1966–1989
K AY S EYMOUR H OUSE , E DITOR -I N -C HIEF , 1990–2002
L ANCE S CHACHTERLE , E DITOR -I N -C HIEF , 2002–
S TEPHEN C ARL A RCH , A SSOCIATE E DITOR-IN -C HIEF
J AMES P. E LLIOTT , C HIEF T EXTUAL E DITOR
R. D. M ADISON , T EXTUAL E DITOR
Sponsors
A MERICAN A NTIQUARIAN S OCIETY
C LARK U NIVERSITY
W ORCESTER P OLYTECHNIC I NSTITUTE
Advisory Committee
L ANCE S CHACHTERLE , EDITOR-IN-CHIEF AND CHAIR
S TEPHEN C ARL A RCH , ASSOCIATE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
J AMES P. E LLIOTT , CHIEF TEXTUAL EDITOR
A SHLEY C ATALDO
W AYNE F RANKLIN
J OHN M C W ILLIAMS
R. D. M ADISON
L INN C AREY M EHTA
K EAT M URRAY
T HOMAS P HILBRICK
A NNA S CANNAVINI
G. T HOMAS T ANSELLE
THE CHAINBEARER. Or, The Littlepage Manuscripts
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
Edited by Lance Schachterle and James P. Elliott
Historical Introduction by Lance Schachterle, Wesley T. Mott, and John P. McWilliams
Explanatory Notes by Lance Schachterle
“O bid our vain endeavors cease,
Revive the just designs of Greece;
Return is all thy simple state,
Confirm the tale her sons relate.”
Collins, “The Passions: An Ode for Music,” 115-18.
Cover image: The Adirondacks, James M. Hart (1861). Oil on canvas, 42 in. x 69 in. Albany Institute of History and Art. Gift by exchange, Governor and Mrs. W. Averell Harriman, 1987.32.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
©2020 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cooper, James Fenimore, 1789-1851, author. | Schachterle, Lance, editor. | Elliott, James Paul, 1945- editor. | Mott, Wesley T., writer of introduction. | McWilliams, John P., writer of introduction.
Title: The chainbearer, or, The Littlepage manuscripts / James Fenimore Cooper ; edited by Lance Schachterle and James P. Elliott ; historical introduction by Lance Schachterle, Wesley T. Mott, and John P. McWilliams ; explanatory notes by Lance Schachterle.
Other titles: Littlepage manuscripts
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2020] | Series: The writings of James Fenimore Cooper | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020000057 | ISBN 9781438480657 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781438480664 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: New York (State)--History--Revolution, 1775-1783--Fiction. | Hudson River Valley (N.Y. and N.J.)--Fiction. | GSAFD: Historical fiction.
Classification: LCC PS1405 .C4 2020 | DDC 813/.3--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020000057
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents

Acknowledgments
Historical Introduction
Illustrations
The Chainbearer
Explanatory Notes
Textual Commentary
Note on the Manuscript
Emendations
Rejected Readings
Textual Notes
Word-Division
Acknowledgments

The editors’ greatest debt is to the Cooper family for entrusting the holograph of The Chainbearer to the American Antiquarian Society. Paul Fenimore Cooper’s donation of the novelist’s carefully written and lightly revised manuscript permitted the editors to use the holograph as the basis for this eclectic scholarly edition as part of the ongoing “Writings of James Fenimore Cooper.”
At the American Antiquarian Society we thank all the staff, especially Thomas G. Knoles, Marcus A. McCorison Librarian and Curator of Manuscripts, for providing us with convenient access to the holograph. In addition, the Society permitted us to make JPEG images of the holograph, to enable research outside normal library hours with the advantage of images which could be enlarged to inspect difficult passages. Finally, the Society kindly permitted us to use several of these images as illustrations in the present edition to allow readers to inspect the author’s initial inscriptions as well as his revisions.
Society Curator of Books David Whitesell (now with the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections at the University of Virginia) assisted Professor Schachterle with the physical description of the manuscript. He also very kindly directed the editors to a Virginia Ph.D. candidate interested in Cooper, Stephanie Kingsley, who made a detailed diplomatic transcription of the holograph Preface in the Small Collection, providing a second pair of eyes to ensure the accuracy of that transcription which originally was made from images the Small Collection had generously supplied to the editors.
Four scholars contributed to the Historical Introduction for The Chainbearer; their specific contributions are attributed by their initials as noted below. One of the textual editors, Professor Lance Schachterle (LS), wrote the sections on the novel’s inception and printing. Professor Wesley T. Mott (WTM) kindly took time from several pressing Emerson projects to investigate the reviews for Chainbearer. Professor John P. McWilliams (JPM) provided a detailed accounting of the Anti-Rent controversies which inform much of the background for Cooper’s second “Littlepage Manuscript.” He also supplemented and corrected parts of the Explanatory Notes. Finally, Professor Wayne Franklin exercised his customary grace and generosity by providing the editors with information about Cooper’s business arrangements for the novel, drawing on research conducted while producing the second volume of his magisterial biography of the author, published as James Fenimore Cooper: The Later Years (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017). His many contributions are noted in the Historical Introduction and Textual Commentary.
WPI undergraduates Emily Abbate, Kathryn Anne Byorkman, Alyce Buchenan, Emily Rivkah, and Emily Scott-Solomon became expert Hinman collation researchers. We appreciate their persistence with the frustrations of finding only minor accidental variants, as would be expected in texts printed from stereotype plates Cooper had reviewed before impressions began. Our students also conducted the sight collations of the first American edition of the novel (Burgess, Stringer) against the first British edition (Bentley) to determine, as discussed in the Textual Commentary, that Cooper made no revisions in the sheets sent to London.
The editors also record their gratitude to our colleague Professor Matthew Wynn Sivils, who converted our Word files into the InDesign format currently used by the Edition. AMS Press produced an edition of The Chainbearer in 2016 just as the proprietor Gabriel Hornstein died and the firm entered bankruptcy. Happily, the AMS executive editor Albert Rolls sent the editors the AMS production software, from which this edition was printed with some updating of the preliminary materials. And again we are indebted to James Hatch and his colleagues at the Modern Language Association, who expedited the invaluable peer review overseen by the MLA Committee of Scholarly Editions. We are especially grateful to the CSE reviewer, Professor Jerome McGann, who provided helpful suggestions and useful corrections during a thoughtful inspection of the project.
As in all previous editions of “The Writings of James Fenimore Cooper,” we conclude by expressing our gratitude to our three institutional sponsors: to the American Antiquarian Society for assistance already described, and to the two universities who have supported the two present editors since the inception of this edition: Worcester Polytechnic Institute (Professor Schachterle) and Clark University (Professor Elliott.)
The present edition of The Chainbearer, originally completed in 2014, is the twenty-sixth volume in “The Writings of James Fenimore Cooper,” James Franklin Beard (1919-1989), founding Editor-in-Chief. All the scholars who collaborated in preparing this volume are grateful for the opportunity to commemorate the life and work of our founding editor. Thus we dedicate this text to the memory of James Franklin Beard, on the occasion of the twenty-fifth year of his passing.
Historical Introduction

Composition and Publishing Arrangements (LS)
Composition
“The Littlepage Manuscripts,” of which The Chainbearer is the second of three volumes, constitutes Cooper’s most carefully constructed multivolume achievement in fiction. Before this Anti-Rent trilogy of 1845–46, Cooper had experimented several times with recurrent characters and settings. Most famously, Natty Bumppo appeared in the Leather-Stocking Tales published between 1823 and 1841, but for Bumppo’s five fictional roles Cooper devised significantly different plots, settings, and themes—and even names. In The Pioneers (1823), the first of the Leather-Stocking Tales, the owners of principal inn at Templeton (the fictional Cooperstown) bring forward poignant memories of the slain Revolutionary War heroic dragoon Captain Lawton of The Spy (1821), by naming their inn the “Bold Dragoon.” Later, the town of