It relays his racist and elitist attitudes but it was written in 1853 so the author is equally unenlightened.
This was my review with some excerpts:
I knew relatively little about him before reading a reprint of Louis Legrand Noble's "The Life and Works of Thomas Cole", first published in 1853. The book is remarkable for its use of Cole's diary entries and personal letters which provide a very modern, primary source, window onto Cole. As a writer currently obsessed with the genre and impact of biographies, the format of the book was as interesting as its subject. Noble's interpretation and bridge materials often repeated what you could read for yourself more directly from Cole. Noble does not soften or excuse some of Cole's rougher edges.
Cole sees himself as English; he was born there and the USA may have seemed a temporary entity, especially before and during the War of 1812. This is not unique to Cole -- before the War of 1812 the term "Americans" referred only to Indigenous Americans. His anglophile mindset comes across most strongly in letters written to his parents. I was reminded of an observation made by Michael Myers, the Canadian comedian / actor, 'No one is more English than English expats.' Cole writes from Rome, March 4, 1832:
>...in this land of milk and honey, where you have to pass day after day without being able to get either of them, and to travel through countries where coffee is known only in name, and tea utterly unknown; where shepherds of the hills wear skins, and are no more civilized than Indians, and somewhat more stupid and superstitious....There is as much safety in traveling here, as in America or England, and the peasants are infinitely more civil and obliging.
...
You would laugh heartily to see modern Roman labourers "at work". They have wheelbarrows that hold about a good shovel full; these they load half full...lifting slowly about a spoonful of earth at a time, resting some five minutes between each effort.<
He was banished from Florence for "breaking his cane across the flanks of a horse [of a mounted Dragoon ] that came too close". Cole is more careful and likable in his letters to clients. He specifically mentions the building of the railroad which is 200 yards from my home.
>They are cutting down all the trees in the beautiful valley on which I have looked so often with a loving eye. This throws quite a gloom over my spring anticipations.< -3/26/1836
>After I had sealed my last letter, I was afraid what I had said about the tree-destroyers might be understood in a more serious light than I intended. My maledictions are gentle ones, and I do not know that I could wish them any thing worse than that bareness of mind, that sterile desolation of the soul, in which sensibility to the beauty of nature cannot take root...[some trees are to be saved] ...Thank them for that. If I live to be old enough, I may sit down under some bush, the last left in the utilitarian world, and feel thankful that intellect in its march has spared one vestige of the ancient forest for me to die by.< -3/28/1836
Cole is a contemporary of Washington Irving (1783-1859), who was similarly obsessed with the Catskill Mountains. While Cole champions American landscapes, Irving is first American to make a fortune writing fiction and remains far better known.
Overall the book provides a unique look not only into Cole but into the era and places he lived in. He comes across not as altogether likable or unlikable but as an artist chasing perfection and compelled to create. # # #
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