O’Connell suggests another, simpler explanation of their relationship, one especially consistent with Mattie’s character. He notes that it was likely that John Henry did, in fact, at some point convert to Catholicism, as the local obituaries in Colorado said, because of Mattie’s influence. He also believes that Mattie realized Doc needed her to be a steadying force in his life because of his illness or his demoralized lifestyle or both, which explains her ongoing correspondence with him after he left Georgia. He suggests that the relationship was platonic and that Mattie was simply “trying hard to keep her errant cousin on the right track.” Mattie did not “carry ‘love letters tied with a ribbon’ with her when she dedicated her life to Christ.” This is a plausible explanation of what happened, but the burning of the letters ensured that the possibility of unrequited love would remain a part of the legend of Doc Holliday.65
Henry Holliday left no comments about his son or his reputation as a Western gun player. Rather, he went on with his life in Valdosta, where he was active in both politics and business. He was involved in local politics, serving several terms as mayor, was credited with introducing pecan growing to southern Georgia, and lived a long, respectable life until his death on February 22, 1893.66 In 1879, Henry wrote to his brother-in-law, A.W. McCoin, who lived in Laclede, Kansas, on behalf of a group of Lowndes County blacks who were interested in migrating to Kansas as a group. McCoin wrote a long response encouraging them to send a committee to investigate before moving to ensure that they would make the right choices. The former Freedman’s Bureau agent still had the respect of the black community in Lowndes County.67
After Major’s death, his widow continued to live in Valdosta, and on March 30, 1899, Rachel Martin Holliday married Joseph I. Gloer, a former Atlanta policeman. In 1905, they moved to Atlanta.68 One of the later tales to add mystery to the Holliday legend was the report that in 1955 a box of junk found in the attic of a local home turned up in an antique shop in Waycross, Georgia. The box contained a wooden cross that appeared to be a grave marker and a bundle of letters postmarked Pensacola, Florida, written by John Henry Holliday. The owner of the shop dismissed the letters as forgeries because of the Pensacola postmarks and gave little thought to the possibility that they were actually written by Doc Holliday. The box and its contents had disappeared before anyone made the connection between Waycross and Doc’s stepmother, who had relatives there and could well have left materials there when she moved to Atlanta with her new husband. The cross would also fuel other speculation about Doc.69
All the contemporary sources said that Doc was buried in the new Linwood cemetery at Glenwood Springs. Over time, however, the grave marker disappeared and eventually the exact location of the grave was lost. In 1956, the city of Glenwood Springs decided to place a new headstone in the local cemetery for the benefit of visitors. Placing the marker became a matter of local controversy. The city manager, A. E. Axtell, eventually placed the marker, insisting that it was on the site of Doc’s grave. “Art Kendricks, before he died, took up and showed me the spot he was buried in,” Axtell said. “Kendricks was mayor of Glenwood years ago and worked as a busboy at the old hotel when Doc stayed there.”
Another old-time resident of Glenwood Springs, Wayne Burge, a local mortician, said, “Doc Holliday is buried in Glenwood Springs, but not on the Hill.” Burge added, “I am aware of his true burial place but at this time, it is a residential area and it would not be feasible to bring it out to the public.” And Charley Hopkins, another old-timer, said flatly, “I don’t give a damn what any of those politicians say, he is buried right down on that corner [pointing to the corner of Ninth and Palmer]….That’s where he is buried because the guy that was standing at the foot of the grave [George Manley] swore to it.” Yet another story said that Doc’s coffin washed away from its place in the Linwood cemetery down a gully and had to be reburied at a different site.70
The debate over where Doc was buried gained added significance and intensity in 1972, when Susan McKey Thomas, the granddaughter of Doc’s uncle William Harrison McKey, initiated an effort to have his body returned to Valdosta. Local authorities in Colorado resisted, and eventually state officials became involved; they made it plain that legal action would be required. Disappointed, Thomas did not pursue the matter further, but the controversy seemed to further exacerbate the question of Doc’s burial site. Glenwood Springs leaders could use the argument that they could not return the body because they did not know exactly where it was. They even suggested the possibility of a lawsuit if they moved the wrong body.71
One of the most persistent stories over the years was that Doc’s body had been buried in a “holding plot” at the foot of the hill because the ground at Linwood cemetery was frozen. This idea was finally discredited in 2005 because of evidence that in 1887, the town scavenger, Richard Hewson, was employed by the town council to remove bodies from the old town cemetery to Linwood. The very week that Doc died, Hewson was moving bodies from the old cemetery to the new cemetery on the hill. It would be unlikely then that Doc would be buried in a temporary grave. The contemporary sources had it right all along.72
Another variation on the story was that Doc’s body was actually returned to Georgia at some point under instructions from Henry Holliday himself. The cross reported in the box found in Waycross would be explained by such a move. Curiously, Henry Holliday’s grave has been lost as well, although the papers reported that he was buried in the cemetery at Valdosta. Bill Dunn, a researcher in Griffin, Georgia, believes that Doc and Henry are buried side by side in unmarked graves in Griffin, in a plot owned by close friends of the Holliday family. So far, no hard evidence has come to light to support such a claim, but the story does prove that legends rarely “rest in peace.”73
Bruce Dettman, a capable and articulate student of both the Tombstone story and its manifestations in popular culture, coined the phrase “the Holliday mystique” to explain Doc Holliday’s peculiar hold on the popular imagination. While Wyatt Earp’s actions at Tombstone raised significant and troubling issues that transcend Tombstone and touch on important questions relating to justice and the law, Dettman suggests that Doc Holliday, not Wyatt Earp, explains the ongoing popularity of Tombstone as a subject of interest to movie audiences. He does not diminish Earp’s central role in the story, nor does he play down the themes that are rightly at the center, but he hypothesizes that it has been the character of Doc Holliday, with his moral ambivalence and apparent fatalism, that has given the story its powerful appeal. Dettman writes that Doc, “with his questionable conduct, unlawful behavior, and nasty temperament, became a sounding board against which the ethically chiseled hero could not only showcase his high principles and steady resolve, but often…to sometimes seriously question them.”74
Perhaps this is more a commentary on the portrayal of Wyatt Earp in film and fiction than on Doc’s essential role, but Doc has consistently been the more compelling figure. This has been so because of the internal battle with which Doc struggled. The way in which he confronts himself as well as his enemies is more interesting than the self-confident, self-reliant, self-assured, and often self-righteous figure that Wyatt Earp inevitably presents. Earp’s steady, serious, humorless character still wrestles with some of the most fundamental issues raised by the industrialization of America on the Western frontier, and, for that reason, his struggle with violence, justice, and law has power and importance. However, it is possible, Dettman suggests, that the legend of Wyatt Earp required Doc Holliday.75
The solitary defender of justice represented by Wyatt Earp was a more popular figure in the first half of the twentieth century. It ensured the success of Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal. But in the post—World War II era, with antiestablishment trends, revisionism, a more general cynicism, and greater attention to self-analysis, the solitary hero seemed naive and self-righteous. Before the end of World War II, Doc Holliday was almost always presented in the familiar B-Western sidekick role. Only in The Arizonian (1936), F
rontier Marshal (1939), and My Darling Clementine (1946) did Doc have a more expanded role closer to the legendary fit. Not even the classic Law and Order (1932) really needed Doc, who bears no resemblance to the historical Doc Holliday. Oddly, one of the most compelling figures based on Doc Holliday was the character Hatfield in John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939), who presented a deadly, polished Southern gentleman gambler in a role with no connection to the Tombstone story save John Wayne’s name, Ringo.76
Beginning with the low-budget Masterson of Kansas (1954), Doc Holliday routinely stole films from Wyatt Earp, though rarely by design. Kirk Douglas’s performance as Doc in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1956) completely overshadowed Burt Lancaster’s puritanical Wyatt Earp. Even in the dark antiestablishment, antiwar Doc (1971), Wyatt Earp is a sniveling wimp without Doc, who is hardly admirable himself. In the pedestrian, Wyatt-centered Wyatt Earp (1994), the most interesting character is Doc Holliday. The most compelling scenes in the movie invariably involve him, and in a script obviously designed to showcase the moody, morose Wyatt Earp portrayed by Kevin Costner, Dennis Quaid as Doc still has the most memorable lines.77
In Kevin Jarre’s Tombstone (1993), however, Doc Holliday, as portrayed by Val Kilmer, not only stole the movie from Kurt Russell’s Wyatt Earp but also became a popular culture icon who crystalized the Doc Holliday legend. Cultured, cynical, fatalistic, and sardonic, Kilmer’s morally challenged Doc seems resigned to his fate, yet he is drawn to Wyatt because of what he stands for. Doc is debauched but oddly principled. The ambiguity of his character makes him a more appealing hero for today’s world than the vengeful Wyatt Earp, and yet draws him back to the imagery of the “good bad man” that predominated in accounts of Doc Holliday from the 1880s through Burns and Lake. It is the mystique that makes him so appealing.
Dettman offers interesting conclusions about the place of Doc Holliday in the Tombstone story:
If then, after all these screen incarnations, the legend of Wyatt Earp did require the seeds of the troublesome dentist from Georgia to help harvest and cultivate it, then so did Doc who probably would have roamed the West until struck down by his disease as one of the West’s more minor figures, need Wyatt’s steadiness, patience, tenacity, moral rectitude and later gift for self-promotion, to assure his own Western immortality, fame, and Hollywood screen time. As they say, it was a good fit.78
Legends are not about life as it actually happened; rather, they are about what humanity values. Heroes do not always stand up well under the light of history, but they remind human beings of things they need and crave in their own lives, something deep and empowering that transcends who they actually are. Heroes are inevitably flawed, because it is not their deeds that make them heroes so much as their capacity to act in spite of their flaws. In the legendary interplay of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday can be seen some of the issues, great and small, that have troubled humankind across the centuries. In their story—in their weaknesses and in their strengths—generations of people see their own and find instruction and hope for themselves.
EPILOGUE
THE MEASURE OF A LEGEND
That “Doc” Holliday had his faults none will attempt to deny; but who among us has not, and who shall be the judge of these things?
—Glenwood Springs Ute Chief, November 12, 1887
Lives evolve, experience shapes, and values change. John Henry Holliday was no exception to such laws of human conduct. He was—as all men are—more than the sum of the facts of his life. Were facts the measure, we would have too little to take the measure of him, because even now, great gaps exist in the factual base of Doc Holliday’s life, and because so many of the “facts” are themselves in dispute. The legend that grew up around him is partially to blame for the confusion, and yet without the legend he might have been forgotten. The legend left him mysterious and compelling and fixed him in an imagery that, in all its variants—and they are surprisingly few—brooked no room for the transpositions wrought naturally by life’s unplanned and unexpected vagaries.
Ironically, the facts and the legend cannot be separated successfully without destroying the truth, and those who seek “to set the record straight” run the risk of distorting reality as surely as those who uncritically accept the legend at face value. Unfortunately, extricating the man from the legend has proven a difficult and even misguided task. It is difficult because so much of his life was lived in relative obscurity with little opportunity or reason for documentation; it is misguided because for at least part of his life the legend directly affected who he was. Biographers must trace the evolution of a life through the accumulation of its parts, but ultimately they must take a measure of the whole. In Doc Holliday’s case, that cannot be done apart from the legend, because the legend was part of who he was.
By the time that Doc Holliday became a widely known public figure, he was already an anachronism. The heyday of the boom camp had passed. His profession as a gambler was even less respectable than it had been. Railroads and the age of exploitation were rapidly putting an end to the frontier age. However, it was then that he became notorious. The historian Richard White described the “decisive allure” that men like Doc had for the people of that age. He might well have been describing Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday when he said that people made heroes of “strong men who defended themselves, righted their own wrongs, and took vengeance on their enemies despite the corruption of the existing order.” Certain “manly virtues” won admiration even if they were embodied by men of less than noble character, so that a man like Doc had the respect even of many who disapproved his acts.1
He was measured, then, not merely by what he had done, but by attributes that he seemed to embody. And it did not matter whether the image was accurate. Men related to him based on what they believed about him or, perhaps, even needed from him. His reputation defined him. This was particularly true after Tombstone, so that he had a reputation and a kind of respect in Colorado that he had not known before. Doubtless, the nostalgic orientation of the time helped to fill in the gaps in his life with stories, both real and imagined, that made him more than he actually was, but that could not be blamed on him.
That he was a private man did not help. Even his friends, or those who called him friend, were ultimately as befuddled by him as strangers and those who had reasons to distrust or even to hate him. Even Wyatt Earp never seemed to really know Doc, and when Wyatt wrote about him later, he almost apologized for his friendship, which revealed more about Wyatt Earp’s character than about Doc’s. Wyatt was always too much concerned about what others thought; Doc never seemed to care. That was, at once, Doc’s charm and his most frustrating quality. It was the thing that made men fear him and forced them to admire him.
Understanding Doc Holliday begins with his roots. He was a Southern gentleman, not a Southern aristocrat, but a gentleman nonetheless. He was taught manners and values that shaped who he was throughout his lifetime. He learned a code of honor that affected every area of his life. He spoke with that quiet courtesy that transcended class in the South. He was comfortable in the drawing room and on the dance floor. He was garrulous and charming. He valued family and friends. He understood that a man’s word was his bond.
As he grew, Doc also acquired other “manly habits” common among Southern men. He learned to use firearms at an early age. Hunting, fishing, and horseback riding were as much a part of his education as reading, writing, arithmetic, and philosophy. The code he lived by taught him to stand up for himself and to defend himself, his family, and his friends from insult or injury. He was prepared to fight to protect his honor. The South of his day was not the Bible Belt, so that in spite of his mother’s devoted religious teachings, the young John Henry learned to gamble—on cards, dice, horse racing, and cockfights—he learned to drink, he learned to fight, and he explored the mysteries of sex, all of which were regarded as normal in the “education” of Southern men.
His life was also shaped during a troubled time. He was born during t
he prelude to the Civil War, and he came of age in its aftermath. His life was nurtured on the animosities of that period, which added to his aggressiveness. He also experienced tensions at home. His mother was doting, his father distant. He was spoiled and used to having his way. Southern boys were given considerable freedom, but Doc grew protective of his mother as her health worsened and resentful toward his father. When his mother died, John Henry felt the loss deeper than anyone, and when his father remarried quickly, his resentment became rebellion. Initially, it focused on the issues of his time: Reconstruction and black soldiers and the very idea of occupation. It also flared in his relationships. He kept his anger hidden, for the most part, but it was there, and it came into the open in calculating, controlled ways, as exhibited in his remembered confrontation with a schoolmate.
He never entirely lost these traits. They likely caused some of his troubles in the West. They showed in his character as he developed. He was loyal to his friends. His friendship with Wyatt Earp was one proof of that, although not the only one. His sense of honor would allow no less than loyalty even when it caused him problems, as in the case of his friendship with William Leonard, the Tombstone stage robber. He also expected loyalty from others, and there were times in his life when he was angered at the betrayal by friends.
He was courageous or a man without fear (not necessarily the same thing). This trait was not mere fatalism. It was not a part of him simply because he was dying. At times, he proved clearly that he wanted to live for as long as he could. No, it was bred into him to stand his ground, and he developed a bullheaded determination not to back away from a fight in the Western environment of gambling halls and saloons, where his reputation often depended on his resolve at the moment of conflict. At times, such as the Joyce incident and Tombstone and the Allen shooting in Leadville, he seemed foolhardy and desperate, but even if an episode ended badly, he did not back away from a fight.
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