Afterwards, the Remingtons and ourselves became the closest friends. Mrs. Remington's maiden name was Eva Caton, and after the first few meetings, she became "little Eva" to me—and if ever there was an embodiment of that gentle lovely name and what it implies, it is this woman, the 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.
Now the book was dramatized and produced, with Hackett as John Ermine, at the Globe Theatre in September of 1902—the hottest weather ever on record in Boston at that season. Of course seats were reserved for us; we were living at Nantucket that year, and we set sail at noon to see the great production. We snatched a bite of supper at a near-by hotel in Boston and hurried to the theatre, but being late, had some difficulty in getting our seats.
The curtain was up and there sat Hackett, not with long yellow hair (which was the salient point in the half-breed scout) but rather well-groomed, looking more like a parlor Indian than a real live half-breed, such as all we army people knew. I thought "this will never do."