A lot of them were hell-
raisers, for they had a lust for life and were maddened by
tame respectability. Nobody but obsequious politicians and
priggish "Daughters" wants to make them out as models of
virtue and conformity. A smooth and settled society--a society
shockingly tame--may accept Cardinal Newman's definition, "A
gentleman is one who never gives offense." Under this
definition a shaded violet, a butterfly, and a floating summer
cloud are all gentlemen. "The art of war," said Napoleon, "is
to make offense." Conquering the hostile Texas
wilderness meant war with nature and against savages as well
as against Mexicans. Go-ahead Crockett's ideal of a gentleman
was one who looked in another direction while a visitor was
pouring himself out a horn of whiskey.
Laying aside climatic influences on occupations and manners,
certain Spanish influences, and minor Pueblo Indian touches,
the Southwest from the point of view of the bedrock Anglo-
Saxon character that has made it might well include Arkansas
and Missouri. The realism of southern folk and of a very
considerable body of indigenous literature representing them
has been too much overshadowed by a kind of _So Red the Rose_
idealization of slave-holding aristocrats.
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