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James
Fenimore Cooper
HOMEWARD BOUND, or THE CHASE. A TALE OF THE SEA Kessinger
Publishing, LL reprint. c. 2000
ISBN-10: 1419124501 ISBN-13: 978-1419124501 Paperback (WORK IN PROGRESS 01/06/2010) reviewed by Patrick Killough I. biblio.com An accurate title of this review could be: AN EXCITING VERY EARLY SEA ADVENTURE NOVEL. After years spent traveling in Europe, 50-year old widower Edward Effingham and his 20-year old daughter Eve are returning by sea from London to their ancestral home in central New York. In his PREFACE, author James Fenimore Cooper explains what he had in mind when he began to write two novels published in 1838 : "it was commenced (to form one book) with
a sole view to exhibit the present state of society in the United
States, through the agency, in part, of a set of characters with
different peculiarities, who had freshly arrived from Europe."
There was to be a very brief introduction on life aboard the returning ship. But as Cooper wrote, a voice kept demanding "more ship" -- until his first volume became "all ship." HOMEWARD BOUND, or, THE CHASE. A TALE became volume one in a two-volume set concluded high and dry in New York State by HOME AS FOUND. HOMEWARD BOUND is worth several readings. A first reading may focus on the adventure dimensions, and they are striking and exciting. For reasons misunderstood by the Americans until the end, the luxurious 700-ton American passenger sailing vessel or "packet," the Montauk, is pursued by a faster British corvette, the HMS Foam. Even more exciting is what happens to the Montauk after a huge storm separates pursuer and pursued off the coast of Northwest Africa. The Montauk is dismasted, takes refuge in protected shallow coastal waters and laboriously retrieves shorter masts than are ideal from a Danish merchantman driven on land a few miles north during the same storm, and then looted by savage natives. Captain, crew and passengers succeed in cannabalizing the Danish vessel in competition with local Arabs who manage, briefly, to capture the miles away Montauk. Battle scenes worthy of Cooper's LAST OF THE MOHICANS put the Americans back in command of their passenger vessel. Captain, crew and some passengers then play crucial, breath stopping roles in using tide and trade winds to move the refitted but clumsy Montauk out of shallow water past reefs and out into the wide Atlantic in the teeth of ferocious Arab opposition. Three weeks later, within American waters, the Montauk is overtaken by the Foam and the mystery of the latter's pursuit of the former is cleared up. Some false identities of passengers are also unmasked and two young lovers are parted when the man is taken back to England, ostensibly in some disgrace. We are left in suspense panting for the follow-on HOME AS FOUND. The book is an early example of the sea adventure tale: a genre of novel created fifteen years earlier by Cooper in THE PILOT (1823). HOMEWARD BOUND is also the first instance of another new genre created by Cooper: characters traveling together in a passenger ship representing a microcosm of their time and nations. Read HOMEWARD BOUND the first time for its adventure. Then look into it again for its contrasting views and slants of England and America -- warts and all. Also for some memorable characters and caricatures. Cooper believed that America had started off extraordinarily well, when geniuses conceived its Constitution. Then it became a nation of levelers and money grubbers and he wanted to explore whence and how the political and ethical falling off. -OOO- Would you recommend this book to other readers? ............... YES, PROBABLY. Depends on the readers. * * * * http://www.biblio.com/books/259585017.html =-=-=-=-=-=-= II. lunch.com Title of review: A rollicking tale of fictional American newpaperman Steadfast Dodge. "Majorities were his hobby." James Fenimore Cooper's 1838 novel HOMEWARD BOUND, or THE CHASE: A TALE OF THE SEA is fun to read for many readers. It is also important to scholars of the novel for the two genres that it illustrates: one for the first time ever. First, HOMEWARD BOUND is a "sea adventure" novel of the sort later improved upon by Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad. Cooper had created that genre 15 years earlier in THE PILOT, a tale of John Paul Jones and the American Revolutionary War. But HOMEWARD BOUND is also the first example of another genre: passengers on a ship presenting a microcosm of their times and countries. James Fenimore Cooper issued in 1838 two novels: HOMEWARD BOUND and its sequel, HOME AS FOUND. He had started to write only one tale. It would focus on the culture shock a wealthy, somewhat snobbish 50 year old father and his 20 year old daughter experienced after returning to their native New York following a dozen years in Europe. There would be a brief description of their journey by passenger sailing vessel from London to New York. That sea voyage would serve to introduce the main characters: especially Edward Effingham and daughter Eve Effingham, Edward's first cousin John Effingham (who had vied with John to marry Eve's long deceased mother), Captain John Truck of the luxurious 700-ton passenger packet, the Montauk, and a prototype "ugly American," Steadfast Dodge, stupid, opinionated publisher of an American newspaper. In theory Dodge was ultra-Republican. All social distinctions were to be leveled. In fact, Steadfast Dodge, Esq. was in awe of British nobility. All others he "knocked" soundly. Whatever a majority wanted had to be right. Other characters include two young male passengers and the captain of a British corvette, HMS Foam. The first two fall in love with Eve Effingham in this novel, the third during a visit to her father's estate in the sequel, HOME AS FOUND. Several persons are in false or at least hidden identity and their mystery is in at least one case, young Paul Powis, not cleared up until the end of the second novel. All those and other characters proved too much for the proposed introductory chapter or two. In addition, Cooper added more and more detail about "the ship, the ship." The British corvette pursued the Montauk to the African coast (for reasons not understood by Captain Truck and others on the Montauk until novel's end). After a titanic storm, the Montauk is dismasted and forced to shelter in protected waters off the coast of Northwestern Africa. There they fight for their lives and property with marauding Arab tribes who live from the wrecks washed up on their shores. In addition to the sea adventure, however, there is much talk among the multi-national crew and passengers of differences between Britain and the young United States. Cooper himself and his family had spent eight years in Europe before returning to the States. They too experienced cultural shock. The America of Washington, Franklin, Madison and even the fiery Jefferson had started brilliantly, but then sunk to crude money-grubbing selfishness and provincialism. In the two novels, HOMEWARD BOUND and HOME AS FOUND, Cooper probed the reasons for America's decline. There is discussion of South Carolina's recent "nullification" efforts and overtones of the Civil War to come 22 years later. All in all, a very rich book. Read it the first time for adventure. Return to savor it for its descriptions of British and American societies of the 1830s. The ugly American, ignorant, supremely confident newspaperman Steadfast Dodge, will long remain in your memory. "Majorities were his hobby." -OOO- =-=-=-=-= III. bn.com Title of this review: A routine 1830s' Atlantic crossing becomes exciting when a passenger vessel is stranded on the coast of tribal Africa. Reviewer's rating of HOMEWARD BOUND: * * * * TEXT OF REVIEW: January 07, 2010 In 1838 James Fenimore Cooper issued two intertwined novels: HOMEWARD BOUND and HOME AS FOUND. It is hard to review the two in isolation. The first novel is subtitled: THE CHASE. A TALE. The second has no subtitle. Imagine Homer's Odyssey with the journey from Ilium home to Ithaca by sea re-proportioned by cutting 3/4 of its length. And you then have something like the structure of Cooper's two novels. Odysseus's return to Ithaca and wife Penelope is gripping in intensity. HOME AS FOUND, by contrast, is lacking in external violence but full of wordy, often irked commentary on the current American scene. HOMEWARD BOUND is also a tissue of assumed identities clarified only by the ending of HOME AS FOUND. The first novel presents 50 year old American plutocrat John Effingham as a lifetime bachelor. The second novel reveals him as the father of fellow passenger Paul Blunt aka Powis, a mysterious but gentlemanly young American sailor. Know-it-all, gauche American newspaper publisher Steadfast Dodge variously amuses or disgusts all his well-bred fellow passengers on the good packet ship Montauk during the adventure-packed voyage from London to New York. Yet in the second volume Dodge is invited as a guest of Edward Effingham to fictional Templeton, today's Cooperstown, New York. An American sailor Paul Blunt (aka Powis) and Captain Charlies Ducie, the master of HMS Foam, a speedy corvette in pursuit of the Montauk, are shown to be distinctly cool to each other at sea in the first novel, yet the best of friends on land in New York in the second. HOMEWARD BOUND introduces Edward Effingham, his cousin "Jack" Effingham and Edward's 20 year old daughter Eve Effingham. They are members of an American Loyalist family once (four decades and more earlier) very close to Cooper's greatest hero, Natty Bumppo, aka the Deerslayer, Hawkeye, the Pathfinder, etc. Eve Effingham's attendants include her old nanny Ann Sidley, her French governess Mlle. Viefville and an unnamed fille de chambre. The second novel, set in Templeton where Bumppo was introduced in Cooper's THE PIONEERS, will pay tribute to that perennial outsider and marginal man's undying memory. Also brought on center stage are Paul Powis (Mr Blunt), an English baronet in disguise (Mr Sharp), another man who had absconded with 40,000 pounds from the English treasury, an alcoholic businessman, Mr Monday, Captain John Truck, master of the 700-ton luxuriously outfitted sailing vessel and passenger packet, the Montauk, and various members of the Montauk's crew. Passengers are thrown into peril when a storm dismasts the Montauk and it takes shelter in coastal Atlantic waters off northwest Africa. In his Preface, Cooper tells us that these books are novels of character -- of Americans going home. Thus, cowardly Steadfast Dodge acts the coward when Captain Truck mobilizes crew and some passengers to retake the Montauk after scavenging Arab tribesmen had mastered it. As weeks go by, Dodge tries to make others believe he was as heroic as Paul Powis, the Effingham men and others. The stage is set for HOME AS FOUND with its severe criticism of American degeneracy by the Effinghams, who have returned from a dozen years abroad. Meanwhile, however, we readers have been treated to a sea adventure of the first rank and the beginning of a romance between Eve Effingham and one of three eligible swains. -OOO- http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Homeward-Bound/James-Fenimore-Cooper/ e/9781406555820/?itm=24&usri=james+fenimore+cooper++homeward+bound =-=-=-=-=- IV. amazon.com Title of this review: In 1836 two wealthy American cousins are swept up on the coast of Africa On the 50th birthday of each, two wealthy sons of brothers -- long widowed Edward Effingham ("Mr Effingham" and confirmed bachelor John ("Cousin Jack") set sail for New York October 1, 1836 (or thereabouts) from London via Portsmouth. Traveling with them were Edward's beautiful, refined, polyglot unmarried daughter Eve, her onetime nanny Ann Sidley, her French governess Mlle. Viefville and an unnamed fille de chambre. Much earlier, Edward and Jack "had
passionately loved the same woman, who had preferred the first-named,
and died soon after Eve was born; had, notwithstanding this collision
in feeling, remained sincere friends ... had lived much together at
home, and travelled much together abroad, and were now about to return
in company to the land of their birth, after what might be termed an
absence of twelve years..." (Ch. I)
After a three day sail to Portsmouth. the Effinghams are joined at the stern by a handful of other first-class passengers and a large number of poorer people traveling towards the bow of the 700-ton, passenger packet, the Montauk, luxuriously built and outfitted in New York. The Montauk's captain is a Connecticut bachelor, John Truck. Like each of the passengers and a few of the crew, Truck is described at length in his strengths, weaknesses and idiosyncrasies. Among the last is the good Captain's fascination with a famous handbook of international law written by Swiss scholar Emmerich de Vattel (1714 – 1767). If you have never before heard "Vattel" invoked in moments of crisis, you will dozens of times during the several weeks it takes the Montauk to reach New York. Much of the extra length of this voyage is due to a misunderstanding. A British warship, the speedy corvette HMS Foam, under Captain Charles Ducie, has suddenly received intelligence that a once trusted civil servant posing as a baronet has fled aboard the Montauk bearing 40,000 pounds in notes stolen from his ministry. Captain Truck, not without reason be it admitted, thinks that the Foam is after his ship for one of two wrong reasons: either to haul back for trial a charming young passenger who has eloped for America with an heiress without her uncle's consent, or to confiscate Truck's ship because a seaman or two may have smuggled small quantitites of tobacco into England. In any event, relying on Vattel and law of the sea, Captain Truck makes a run for it. The Foam drives the larger but slightly slower Montauk farther and farther south, past Portugal and into a giant storm which takes down all its masts. The Captain is, fortunately, able to unload his steerage passengers onto an American merchantman returning empty from supplying the American squadron stationed in the Mediterranean. It accepted any passenger who chose to board it on to the USA. The wealthier passengers might go as well, but prefer to stay behind in the greater privacy and comfort of their passenger packet. The Montauk is driven inexorably closer and closer to the inhospitable coast of Senegal. The intact Montauk manages to find shelter from tide and winds inside a reef. A few miles to the north, however, it had passed a smaller, less fortunate Danish merchantman. The latter had been beached on the sand and was being looted by wild Arab tribesman who made a good living from European wrecks on their coast. Of the Danish crew their is no trace. They are probably enslaved and being held by the Arabs for ransom. Captain Truck needs masts and the beached Dane has them. So Truck takes northward his entire crew plus some of the passengers and all his arms except for one small cannon in small boats back to the north to cannibalize the merchantman. Meanwhile he leaves the Montauk with its remaining first-class passengers still aboard to await his return. Two passengers, Mr Monday and cowardly, blowhard sneak newspaper owner Steadfast Dodge, negotiate for time with the Arabs looting the Danish ship. Their success allows the Captain and others to start floating the cannibalized masts a dozen miles down the coast to the otherwise intact Montauk. Meanwhile, that unarmed passenger vessel retains the four women, the senior Effinghams and, importantly, a young man of 25 who may be English, who may be American, but who had met the Effinghams in Vienna under the name of Paul Powis. He now calls himself Paul Blunt. He and Eve have fallen in love. Captain Truck has left Blunt/Powis -- obviously an experienced sailor -- in command. Mainly through Paul's cleverness, the unprotected civilian party floats off to safety in the Montauk's cutter when Arabs swarm towards them from the land. They reunite with the group returning under Captain Truck and recapture the Montauk from the Arabs after a sharp fight. The re-rigged Montauk then slowly and with difficulty evades a final attack by the Arab savages and reaches open waters. Three weeks later it is near New York. In a final scene, the English Captain of the Foam, respecting Vattel, persuades Captain Truck to give up the absconding thief for trial in England. Captain Ducie also removes, whether voluntarily or not is not clear, Paul Powis to return to England with him. A heartbroken Eve Effingham watches her lover sail away. HOMEWARD BOUND is also a novel of social commentary. It contains much comparison from many points of view of the young USA currently being threatened with dissolution by South Carolina's "nullification" doctrine with the more smugly stable United Kingdom. Perhaps more importantly, the novel leaves us in suspense, with many questions still to be answered. Fortunately its sequel appeared within weeks, HOME AS FOUND. The second companion novel will reveal many things we never suspected about an early romance of Cousin Jack Effingham when on the rebound from failing to win Eve's mother. Paul Powis will reappear at the Effingham estate in what is now Cooperstown, New York as will other survivors of the exciting voyage of the good ship Montauk. Don't miss that sequel! -OOO- TAGS: sea adventure novel, Eve Effingham, Paul Powis, Captain Truck, Steadfast Dodge, Captain Charles Ducie. http://www.amazon.com/Homeward-Bound-Chase-Tale-Sea/dp/141912451X/ ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230148393&sr=1-5 http://www.amazon.com/Homeward-Bound-Chase-Tale-Sea/dp/1419124501/ ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230148393&sr=1-7 =-=-=-=-=-== V. epinions.com title of this review: Passenger ship as mirror of society: another genre created by James Fenimore Cooper by aohcapablanca, Jan 09 '10 Reviewer's rating * * * * Recommended to a friend? YES! =-=-=-- In effect, James Fenimore Cooper divided one overly long novel into two, both published in 1838: HOMEWARD BOUND and HOME AS FOUND. Betwixt the twain, they present examples of at least three distinct genres of novel, each invented by Cooper. HOMEWARD BOUND instances the sea adventure tale, created 15 years earlier by Cooper in his novel of John Paul Jones and the American Revolution at sea: THE PILOT. And there are indeed two great yarns of the sea embedded in HOMEWARD BOUND: first, the American passenger sailing ship the Montauk is pursued by the British corvette HMS Foam -- for reasons misconstrued aboard the Montauk. Second, The American packet is dismasted during a colossal storm and forced to take refugee in coastal waters off Senegal. This is as exciting stuff as the best battle scenes in Cooper's THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS or the storm scenes on Lake Ontario in THE PATHFINDER. Scholars of American literature admire HOMEWARD BOUND for an additional reason: Cooper had almost effortlessly tossed off yet another new literary genre. It seemed he couldn't help himself. This time: shipmates as a microcosm of their various societies. A landlubberly version of this sea genre, it occurs to me, was Chaucer's CANTERBURY TALES. A 20th century version set high and dry in the Andes is Thornton Wilder's THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY. But the honor of locating a fictional social microcosm aboard a 700-ton, luxurious New York passenger packet boat, sailing from London to New York in 1835 or thereabouts, falls to James Fenimore Cooper. A dozen persons of varying nations and degrees of society are sketched, including Cooper's second-best-known caricature, Steadfast Dodge, Esq., newspaper publisher. * * * * *
The follow-on novel, HOME AS FOUND, may or may not be America's very first American tale of American manners, but scholars agree it is the longest and the most minutely detailed early example of the new genre. Many of the characters of HOMEWARD BOUND who survive their clashes with Arabs in Africa come together months later in the interior of New York -- in today's Cooperstown (the novel's Templeton). In the second, much calmer, brainier and politically argumentative novel, Cooper will spread out in full his grand design to explain America to American readers through fictional characters returning home after various lengths of time in Europe. And this third genre, an American novel of American manners, shoves off in HOMEWARD BOUND, though it does not fully spread its sails before HOME AS FOUND. Some older genres also survive in the two intertwined novels: a bit of Gothic mystery of obscure identities, assumed names, red herring romance, an heir discovered whom a father never knew he had begotten, a blonde, blue-eyed 20-year old polyglot beauty, Eve Effingham, wooed by three socially suitable swains and (in the second volume) by one unacceptable American lawyer. And there are also echoes of Cooper's early novel THE PIONEERS: about the founding of fictional Templeton, New York (paralleling the real Cooperstown created by the author's father). THE PIONEERS also introduced Natty Bumppo, aka Leatherstocking, Hawkeye, Pathfinder, Deerslayer, Trapper and more. The memory of Bumppo, that quintessential marginal outsider, American libertarian and seeker of God in forests, is kept alive by the latest generation of Effinghams. For Natty and Chingachgook, "the last of the Mohicans" had served under an ancestral loyalist Effingham during the Revolutionary war. * * * * *
Is there something not to like about HOMEWARD BOUND? Granted: Cooper spins off a new literary genre every third or fourth novel. And he often thinks original thoughts, sees America from fresh perspectives. The trouble is: his words are often not up to his thoughts, and he knows it. Great insights are crying out in his soul to be put down on paper. But Fenimore does not always find the right words. As Mark Twain would remind us years later. For instance: toward the end of HOMEWARD BOUND, lofty, detached 50-year old American plutocrat John ("Cousin Jack") Effingham is keeping death watch over Mr Monday, an English salesman who had been speared while fighting bravely against coastal Arabs who had captured the Montauk. Cooper's constant political thesis is that America began very well under the likes of Washington, Hamilton and Franklin but was now, during the 1830s time of the Trail of Tears and South Carolina's Nullification Doctrine, turning into a nation of low-brow, provincial money grubbers. The dying Monday is a money grubber. But being English, he also had made time for higher vices: notably food and drink. The contrast between stereotypical American and British businessmen is illustrated in Cousin Jack's thoughts. The passage begins well, I think, with a vividly descriptive touch in the mind of Jack Effingham: "Death is appalling to
those of the most iron nerves, when it comes quietly and in the
stillness and solitude of night. John ... felt all the peculiarity of
his situation as he sat alone in the
state-room by the side of Mr. Monday, listening to the washing of the
waters that the ship shoved aside, and to the unquiet breathing of his
patient."
But then we sail into a fog bank of language: "... John Effingham
inwardly said, 'If there exist such varieties of the human race among
nations, there are certainly as many species, in a moral sense, in
civilized life itself. This (English) man has his
counterpart in a particular feature in the every-day American absorbed
in the pursuit of gain; and yet how widely different are the two in the
minor points of character! While the
other allows himself no rest, no relaxation, no mitigation of the
eternal gnawing of the vulture rapacity, this man has made
self-indulgence the constant companion of his toil; while the other has
centered all his pleasures in gain, this (English) man, with the same object in view, but
obedient to national usages, has fancied he has been alleviating his
labours by sensual enjoyments. In what will their ends differ? From the
eyes of the American the veil will be torn aside when it is too late,
perhaps, and the object of his earthly pursuit will be made the
instrument of his punishment, as he sees himself compelled to quit itall for the dark
uncertainty of the grave; while the (English) blusterer and the
bottle-companion sinks into a forced and appalled repentance, as the
animal that has hitherto upheld him loses its ascendency.'"
HOMEWARD BOUND rewards re-reading. The more you understand of sailing boats, their rig, anchors and tackle, the better equipped you are for an enjoyable first reading. -OOO- Pros: A wealthy American family sailing home around 1835 driven into the waters of rapacious Africa. Cons: Cooper is full of great insights but often fails to find the right words. The Bottom Line: Rollicking sea-adventure. Complex gothic tale of assumed identities, unknown heirs and young romance. Passenger ship as microcosm of Britain and America. Are you up on minutiae of sailing vessel rigging? -OOO- http://www.epinions.com/review/James_Fenimore_Cooper_Homeward_Bound _epi/content_498571513476 ===---=-=-=-= VI alibris.com http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?qwork=2979582&matches=66&wquery =james+fenimore+cooper+homeward+bound&cm_sp=works*listing*title OTHER LEADS AND TAGS: http://external.oneonta.edu/cooper/articles/titles.html The Effingham Novels: ([The Pioneers], Homeward Bound, Home as Found) file: cooper_homeward |