I was in town last night at The Players and I got so out of tune with the Infinite that you could notice it for two blocks.
Copyright by Mrs. Frederic Remington
“THE SCALP”
MODELED BY FREDERIC REMINGTON
The value of mere anecdotes of any man is that each reader draws from them that side of the personality which he would have seen and drawn from the man himself, not merely the element open to the proper vision of the reporter; and that must be the excuse for anecdotes. E. W. Kemble, or, as his friends know him, Ed Kemble, introduced the writer to Remington in 1890. The two illustrators were friends, but the most beautiful side of their friendship needed a third friend for its precipitation. Kemble is universally amusing when he cares to be. Few men are his equal in putting the spirit of caricature into ordinary verbal report or comment; even his famous drawings do not show such sure fun. Remington responded promptly to Kemble’s comedy, however expressed. Most men who know it do the same, but Remington went further. When Kemble had left him after any interview, all of Kemble’s woes of which Remington had been the repository were suddenly dwarfed in the larger horizon of Remington’s experiences and transmuted into side-splitting jokes. In his mind, Kemble was never “grown up”; and Kemble reciprocated. Remington’s throes, viewed through Kemble’s prism, were just as amusing. They took even each other’s art as playfellows take each other’s games. There were years when much of their leisure was passed in company; in the winter, skating and long walks over the hills of Westchester; in the summer, swimming baths in the Sound, bicycling, and tennis. Their understanding was mutual and immediate. One night after the theater, on the train home from New York, sitting together, Remington was by the car window, Kemble next to the aisle. An obstreperous commuter was disturbing the passengers, men and women. The busy conductor’s admonition had been ineffective, the brakeman’s repeated expostulations useless. The men passengers seemed cowed; the rowdy was gaining confidence. On his third blatant parade through the car, and as he passed Kemble’s side, Remington’s two hundred and fifty pounds of bone and muscle reached out into the aisle, and, with the precision of a snapping-turtle, lifted him from his feet like a naughty boy and laid him face downward over Kemble’s interposing lap. With the spirit of perfect team-work, as Remington held the ruffian, Kemble spanked him, while the legs in the aisle wriggled frantically for a foothold. The correction, prolonged and ample, was accompanied by roars of laughter from fifty other passengers. Being done, Remington stood the offender on his feet. The man began a threatening tirade. Before half a sentence was uttered Remington had him again exposed to Kemble’s rhythmic tattoo. This was enough; and when again released the fellow rapidly left the car for the relative seclusion of the smoker.
Mrs. Remington used to tell of her husband’s return to her one night when they had transiently taken rooms at a New York hotel. Remington, after escorting her back from the theater, had her consent to a little romp at the club. It had come to be two o’clock in the morning; Mrs. Remington had gone to bed, but was as yet only in the border-land of sleep when she was aroused by the repeated slamming of hallway doors. At the proper moment in the crescendo her own door was opened, and in the frame of light stood her husband, quickly joined by a protesting attendant.
“It’s all right,” said Remington; “this one’s my wife—good-night!”
One early morning in February, 1898, James Waterbury, the agent of the Western Union Company at New Rochelle, telephoned me that the Maine had been blown up and had sunk in the harbor of Havana. Knowing the interest the report would have for Remington, I immediately called him on the telephone and repeated the information. His only thanks or comment was to shout “Ring off!” In the process of doing so I could hear him calling the private telephone number of his publishers in New York. In his mind, his own campaign was already actively under way.
One incident of that campaign illustrates the primitive man in Remington. He and Richard Harding Davis were engaged to go into Cuba by the back way and send material to an evening newspaper. The two men were to cross in the night from Key West to Cuba on a mackerel-shaped speed boat of sheet-iron and shallow draft. Three times the boat put out from Key West and three times turned back, unable to stand the weather. The last time even the crew lost hope of regaining port. Davis and Remington were lying in the scuppers and clinging to the shallow rail to keep from being washed overboard. The Chinaman cook between lurches was lashing together a door and some boxes to serve as a raft. Davis suggested to Remington the advisability of trying something of the kind for themselves.