benedict

This action-packed novel is a warning. Its main character, the young Frenchman Benedict Thurpin – the newly-minted d’Artagnan, daredevil, wit, Breter, warrior, painter, palmist, hunter, gallant gentleman, personification of the spirit of France – like a volunteer fighting Prussians and performing extraordinary feats.

The whaling schooner with an incomplete crew returns to America, after not very successful trades. On board is the owner’s wife with the child, their cousin Benedict, an analogue of Paganel and Jung Dick Send, fifteen turbulent years. Next comes the rescue of blacks from an abandoned flooded ship and a bloody scene of a whale hunt. This episode, although it did not greatly excite me as a child, having...

Inspired by accusations of venality leveled at the men who captured Major Andre (Benedict Arnold’s co-conspirator, executed for espionage in 1780), Cooper’s novel centers on Harry Birch, a common man wrongly suspected by well-born Patriots of being a spy for the British. Even George Washington, who supports Birch, misreads the man, and when Washington offers him payment for information vital to the...