Produced by Bill Brewer
THE VIRGINIAN
A Horseman Of The Plains
By Owen Wister
To THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Some of these pages you have seen, some you have praised, one standsnew-written because you blamed it; and all, my dear critic, beg leave toremind you of their author's changeless admiration.
TO THE READER
Certain of the newspapers, when this book was first announced, made amistake most natural upon seeing the sub-title as it then stood, A TALEOF SUNDRY ADVENTURES. "This sounds like a historical novel," said oneof them, meaning (I take it) a colonial romance. As it now stands, thetitle will scarce lead to such interpretation; yet none the less is thisbook historical--quite as much so as any colonial romance. Indeed,when you look at the root of the matter, it is a colonial romance. ForWyoming between 1874 and 1890 was a colony as wild as was Virginia onehundred years earlier. As wild, with a scantier population, and thesame primitive joys and dangers. There were, to be sure, not so manyChippendale settees.
We know quite well the common understanding of the term "historicalnovel." HUGH WYNNE exactly fits it. But SILAS LAPHAM is a novel asperfectly historical as is Hugh Wynne, for it pictures an era andpersonifies a type. It matters not that in the one we find GeorgeWashington and in the other none save imaginary figures; else THESCARLET LETTER were not historical. Nor does it matter that Dr. Mitchelldid not live in the time of which he wrote, while Mr. Howells sawmany Silas Laphams with his own eyes; else UNCLE TOM'S CABIN werenot historical. Any narrative which presents faithfully a day and ageneration is of necessity historical; and this one presents Wyomingbetween 1874 and 1890. Had you left New York or San Francisco at teno'clock this morning, by noon the day after to-morrow you could step outat Cheyenne. There you would stand at the heart of the world that isthe subject of my picture, yet you would look around you in vain for thereality. It is a vanished world. No journeys, save those which memorycan take, will bring you to it now. The mountains are there, far andshining, and the sunlight, and the infinite earth, and the air thatseems forever the true fountain of youth, but where is the buffalo, andthe wild antelope, and where the horseman with his pasturing thousands?So like its old self does the sage-brush seem when revisited, that youwait for the horseman to appear.
But he will never come again. He rides in his historic yesterday. Youwill no more see him gallop out of the unchanging silence than you willsee Columbus on the unchanging sea come sailing from Palos with hiscaravels.
And yet the horseman is still so near our day that in some chapters ofthis book, which were published separate at the close of the nineteenthcentury, the present tense was used. It is true no longer. In thosechapters it has been changed, and verbs like "is" and "have" now read"was" and "had." Time has flowed faster than my ink.
What is become of the horseman, the cow-puncher, the last romantic figureupon our soil? For he was romantic. Whatever he did, he did with hismight. The bread that he earned was earned hard, the wages that hesquandered were squandered hard,--half a year's pay sometimes gone in anight,--"blown in," as he expressed it, or "blowed in," to be perfectlyaccurate. Well, he will be here among us always, invisible, waiting hischance to live and play as he would like. His wild kind has been amongus always, since the beginning: a young man with his temptations, a herowithout wings.
The cow-puncher's ungoverned hours did not unman him. If he gave hisword, he kept it; Wall Street would have found him behind the times.Nor did he talk lewdly to women; Newport would have thought himold-fashioned. He and his brief epoch make a complete picture, for inthemselves they were as complete as the pioneers of the land or theexplorers of the sea. A transition has followed the horseman of theplains; a shapeless state, a condition of men and manners as unlovely asis that moment in the year when winter is gone and spring not come, andthe face of Nature is ugly. I shall not dwell upon it here. Those whohave seen it know well what I mean. Such transition was inevitable. Letus give thanks that it is but a transition, and not a finality.
Sometimes readers inquire, Did I know the Virginian? As well, I hope,as a father should know his son. And sometimes it is asked, Was such andsuch a thing true? Now to this I have the best answer in the world.Once a cow-puncher listened patiently while I read him a manuscript.It concerned an event upon an Indian reservation. "Was that the Crowreservation?" he inquired at the finish. I told him that it was noreal reservation and no real event; and his face expressed displeasure."Why," he demanded, "do you waste your time writing what never happened,when you know so many things that did happen?"
And I could no more help telling him that this was the highestcompliment ever paid me than I have been able to help telling you aboutit here!
CHARLESTON, S.C., March 31st, 1902
THE VIRGINIAN