Emerson Hough

“ MANY are the things that have been done to the West in the name of art and fiction by the ignorant, the innocent, the deliberate faker, the plagiarist, and the patronizing car-window tourist. "The best Wild West writers live in Brooklyn, New York, and most of the prominent Wild West artists reside in Lyme, Connecticut." The craftsmen in ink and color and acting picture the cow-puncher with leather "panties" wrong side foremost, wide "hanky," large gun, large spurs, large quirt, and large muffler. ”

“ Urge your artist to draw the line between the Wild West show article and the real man. I am writing him, asking him to give us something out of the usual cut-and-dry foundry product of Western cow-men. I have urged him to accent languor in his Texas men. My advice was to take Russell of Montana as a guide to the range man. Russell can draw a cow-puncher, swimming naked in a lake, that any Western man can recognize at a glance. Russell plays to the gallery, but he has to live, and the standard is set in the markets. ”

“ It takes genius to foresee and meet a public frame of mind which will accept as real a third act such as that of "The Girl of the Golden West." In effect, we are asked to believe that grown men acted like clowns and fools at a time and in a country where the best and the shrewdest men of the entire world were gathered—California in the early gold days.
On of the first Wild West dramas ever written was done in earlier and less responsible days by Mr. Belasco and Mr. Flyes—that whilom example of Western realism know as "The Girl I Left Behind Me." ”

“ To the ignorant and deliberate fakers must be added a large class of entirely innocent enthusiasts who annually rediscover the railroad and summer resort west from the Yellowstone to the Grand Cañon, and who return to write and paint about it. These give annual details of the phenomena of Western life, with diagrams of the diamond hitch, or the ever-present story of Curly, Sandy, Pete, and in the fair but honest daughter of the ranch-owner. ”

“ There was nothing missing form the catalogue of articles characterized as Western by all New York and Brooklyn authors, actors, and artists, and nothing wrong as to their disposition; nothing except that the earnest young author, when he posed for the picture, had put his leather panties on wrong side foremost!
An American sculptor (Mr Edward Kemeys) once went to Europe, where he met a German artist who was engaged in painting the picture of an American buffalo, an animal he had never seen. ”

“ The dead horse is about four feet and a half through sidewise—excellent for a fortress, but a trifle wide for a thin-flanked cow-horse. It would be useless to point out any detail like this to any earnest artist of today. Worse than useless would it be to suggest that a cow-puncher is the laziest created thing; for in art he must do perpetual "stunts" of "action."
Lynching situations are common and popular in Western art. There were times in the West when men were hanged without law and in the name of the law. ”

“ He died disappointed, died poor, and in large part forgotten. At a later day some sculptor may arise, and erect in Washington some statue of distorted horse, impossible man and absurd garb, and we will call that indicative of what the American West once was. ”

“ The male star who packs a décolleté gun also packs the house. At least, so I am advised. I am, so far as I now, the only American who never saw Mr. Dustin Farnum depict the real Wild West. But I saw Mr. William Faversham in "The Squaw Man"—once! He was too décolleté with his gun. Besides, he had never heard tell of a "G string," and he did not tie down his very décolleté gun scabbard.
We are accustomed to call David Belasco a genius. So he is. ”

“ If the buffalo’s tail be not commensurate with the notion of the artist, then so much the worse for the buffalo. Why criticize the foreigner? His is precisely the rule that has been followed by Eastern artists in depicting the natural history of the West. If the cow-puncher does not wear his hip pockets in front, so much the worse for the cow-puncher. ”

“ They seem to be even more unpardonable than the work of patronizing car-window tourists, such as one who in a current issue of a New York magazine deplores the fact that in his travels he could not get a Havana cigar in Kansas City, who thinks the Garden of the Gods a very bad name for a very unworthy place, finds Pikes Peak quite an ignoble sort of mountain, and none of the Rockies in the same class with the Alps—with which latter he is pains to inform us he is quite familiar. ”

“ When Russell draws a cow-horse or a cow-man, neither is doing impossibilities; but, having lacked in a training, he does not always measure up to the standards of Lyme, Connecticut. Once he did a picture for a New York broker, and the latter returned it with the criticism that in his belief the artist had made the humerus too long in the central figure. ”

“ One gets the impression that a cow-puncher’s regalia was a matter of national ordinance, like the army and the navy, universal and irrevocable. I have known men cut the brim off a hat when it flopped in their eyes—the cow-puncher had sense enough to insist on a clear line of vision. ”

“ I am convinced that this author knows his West.
"Besides, what’s the use?" he resumed brightly; "the West doesn’t care, I don’t care, the public doesn’t care, so why should you? We have to give the public what it wants, and what the public wants is something strong."
Three men Who Knew the West There have been three Western artists—one a sculptor, one a writer, and one a painter—who have tried to treat the West with sympathy and accuracy. Last spring there died, at Washington, District of Columbia, the sculptor Edward Kemeys, a genius if this country ever knew one. ”

“ Advice from Andy Adams Laboring under this handicap of unemotionalism, I concluded to refer the inquiry to an old cow-puncher friend of mine who, ten years before my time, rode the trail from the Rio Grande to the British line at the dates mentioned, Andy Adams of Goldfield, a man who really knows about cows and cowmen in the early days. His comment ought to be useful to many artists and many writers:
"The Texas cowmen of my acquaintance were much more interested in a good market for steers, a big calf crop, good grass, and plenty of water than this kind of rot. ”

“ Jimmy is on the blacklist in Wyoming, because of his expertness with rope and telegraph wire. No Wyoming cowman wants anybody but himself to brand a maverick. I know one or two Wyoming and Colorado fortunes which have got into statesmanship by the maverick route ”