Old Friends Were Coming And Going All The Time, And It Seemed So
Good To Us To Be Living In A Place Where This Was Possible.
Captain Summerhayes was constructing officer and had a busy life,
with all the various sorts of building to be done there.
David's Island was then an Artillery Post, and there were several
batteries stationed there. (Afterwards it became a recruiting
station.) The garrison was often entirely changed. At one time,
General Henry C. Cook was in command. He and his charming
Southern wife added so much to the enjoyment of the post. Then
came our old friends the Van Vliets of Santa Fe days; and Dr. and
Mrs. Valery Havard, who are so well known in the army, and then
Colonel Carl Woodruff and Mrs. Woodruff, whom we all liked so
much, and dear Doctor Julian Cabell, and others, who completed a
delightful garrison.
And we had a series of informal dances and invited the
distinguished members of the artist colony from New Rochelle, and
it was at one of these dances that I first met Frederic
Remington. I had long admired his work and had been most anxious
to meet him. As a rule, Frederic did not attend any social
functions, but he loved the army, and as Mrs. Remington was fond
of social life, they were both present at our first little
invitation dance.
About the middle of the evening I noticed Mr. Remington sitting
alone and I crossed the hall and sat down beside him. I then told
him how much I had loved his work and how it appealed to all army
folks, and how glad I was to know him, and I suppose I said many
other things such as literary men and painters and players often
have to hear from enthusiastic women like myself. However,
Frederic seemed pleased, and made some modest little speech and
then fell into an abstracted silence, gazing on the great flag
which was stretched across the hall at one end, and from behind
which some few soldiers who were going to assist in serving the
supper were passing in and out. I fell in with his mood
immediately, as he was a person with whom formality was
impossible, and said: "What are you looking at, Mr. Remington?"
He replied, turning upon me his round boyish face and his blue
eyes gladdening, "I was just thinking I wished I was behind in
there where those blue jackets are - you know - behind that flag
with the soldiers - those are the men I like to study, you know, I
don't like all this fuss and feathers of society" - then, blushing
at his lack of gallantry, he added: "It's all right, of course,
pretty women and all that, and I suppose you think I'm dreadful
and - do you want me to dance with you - that's the proper thing
here isn't it?" Whereupon, he seized me in his great arms and
whirled me around at a pace I never dreamed of, and, once around,
he said, "that's enough of this thing, isn't it, let's sit down,
I believe I'm going to like you, though I'm not much for women."
I said "You must come over here often;" and he replied, "You've
got a lot of jolly good fellows over here and I will do it."
Afterwards, the Remingtons and ourselves became the closest
friends.
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