War-dated ALS, one page, 7 x 9, October 19, 1898. Letter to author and editor E. S. Martin of Harper & Brothers, in full: "I hope you will notice the fact and comment upon it that a great many college foot ball men went into the army—(I see a young Harvard man has just died in Boston—from Puerto Rico) and that if any 'prize fighters' went I did not hear of them. You may be able upon investigation to find that there were 'prize fighters' in the war but you will have to look up the fact. A favorite defense of the 'ring' is that it develops the manly qualities so necessary to a country etc." In fine condition, with splitting along the intersecting folds. Accompanied by the original mailing envelope, addressed in Remington's own hand.
Remington had just returned to his home in New Rochelle from Cuba, where he had been posted as a war correspondent and illustrator for William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal. There, he witnessed Theodore Roosevelt’s celebrated assault on San Juan Heights, immortalizing the event in his painting ‘Charge of the Rough Riders at San Juan Hill.’ Remington had a longstanding association with Roosevelt, having illustrated his serialized articles in The Century a decade earlier, later published as Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail. Roosevelt’s admiration for Remington’s work was well known, and when the Rough Riders returned to the United States, they presented their fearless leader with Remington's bronze statuette, ‘The Broncho Buster,’ which the artist proclaimed as ‘the greatest compliment I ever had…After this everything will be mere fuss.’ Roosevelt responded, ‘There could have been no more appropriate gift from such a regiment.’ More interestingly, Roosevelt would have been one of the ‘prize fighters’ serving in the war—while attending Harvard, he was a member of the Harvard Boxing Club, and lost the lightweight championship in 1879. A superb letter connecting a great American artist with one of his chief supporters.
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