Wife of the great artist, who
has stood by him through all the reverses of his early life and
been, in every sense, his guiding star.
And now began visits to the studio, a great room he had built on
to his house at New Rochelle. It had an enormous fire place where
great logs were burned, and the walls were hung with the most
rare and wonderful Indian curios. There he did all the painting
which has made him famous in the last twenty years, and all the
modelling which has already become so well known and would have
eventually made him a name as a great sculptor. He always worked
steadily until three o'clock and then there was a walk or game of
tennis or a ride. After dinner, delightful evenings in the
studio.
Frederic was a student and a deep thinker. He liked to solve all
questions for himself and did not accept readily other men's
theories. He thought much on religious subjects and the future
life, and liked to compare the Christian religion with the
religions of Eastern countries, weighing them one against the
other with fairness and clear logic.
And so we sat, many evenings into the night, Frederic and Jack
stretched in their big leather chairs puffing away at their
pipes, Eva with her needlework,and myself a rapt listener:
wondering at this man of genius, who could work with his creative
brush all day long and talk with the eloquence of a learned
Doctor of Divinity half the night.
During the time we were stationed at Davids Island, Mr. Remington
and Jack made a trip to the Southwest, where they shot the
peccary (wild hog) in Texas and afterwards blue quail and other
game in Mexico. Artist and soldier, they got on famously together
notwithstanding the difference in their ages.
And now he was going to try his hand at a novel, a real romance.
We talked a good deal about the little Indian boy, and I got to
love White Weasel long before he appeared in print as John
Ermine.The book came out after we had left New Rochelle - but I
received a copy from him, and wrote him my opinion of it, which
was one of unstinted praise. But it did not surprise me to learn
that he did not consider it a success from a financial point of
view.
"You see," he said a year afterwards, "that sort of thing does
not interest the public. What they want," - here he began to mimic
some funny old East Side person, and both hands
gesticulating - "is a back yard and a cabbage patch and a cook
stove and babies' clothes drying beside it, you see, Mattie," he
said. "They don't want to know anything about the Indian or the
half-breed, or what he thinks or believes." And then he went off
into one of his irresistible tirades combining ridicule and abuse
of the reading public, in language such as only Frederic
Remington could use before women and still retain his dignity.
"Well, Frederic," I said, "I will try to recollect that, when I
write my experiences of Army Life."
In writing him my opinion of his book the year before, I had
said, "In fact, I am in love with John Ermine." The following
Christmas he sent me the accompanying card.
