Gary L. Roberts is a well-recognized historian with a professional emphasis in the American West and violence. These qualifications make him uniquely suited to write about John Henry “Doc” Holliday. There is no doubt that Roberts has done his homework. He has extensively explored both primary and secondary sources and is candid concerning what they say. He does an excellent job of placing Doc Holliday in the West that Holliday knew. When he periodically makes suppositions, he is careful to back them up with logic but does not claim them to be any more than a well-thought-out opinion.
One example of such supposition is when he talks about the claim made by Kate Elder, Holliday’s paramour and possible wife, that she nursed Holliday through his final illness. Roberts notes that “the contemporary record does not sustain a Glenwood Springs reconciliation. And given Kate’s insistence that she was Mrs. John H. Holliday in her later accounts, if she had been at his side, it would have been more than a little odd that the only reference to a relative in the Ute Chief obituary would have been Mattie Holliday. How could the presence of a wife have escaped notice?” (397).
Unfortunately, much of what the primary sources taught Roberts is that a good deal of Doc Holliday’s life is shrouded in ambiguity. It is not uncommon to read things such as “the shooting did not make it into the record if it occurred at all” (102). This can be frustrating when reading the book as a historical work. However, the incident that Doc is most famous for, the shootout at the O.K. Corral (or as Roberts calls it “The Fremont Street Fiasco”) is well documented. Court and newspaper records provide an almost blow-by-blow account. However, Holliday does not speak for himself. His reputation at the time undermined his credibility.
Roberts sees “The Fremont Street Fiasco” and the following Earp posse episode as the linchpin of Holliday’s Western experience. During these events he was a lawman and he was expressing the loyalty to a friend that was bred into him as Southern gentleman from Georgia. While both events were somewhat controversial in the West at that time, they led to the downfall of the “Cow-Boys” or rustlers who were causing so many difficulties for ranchers, and also reduced the robbery of stagecoaches. In fact Wells, Fargo supported the activities of the Earp posse. Despite legal and corporate support, the members of the Earp posse realized that Arizona would be too dangerous for them following their killing of Cow-Boys. Doc went to Colorado, and this is when Roberts’ book begins to get really interesting for folklorists.
As early as Doc’s sojourn in Dodge City, Roberts notes that “what survived are anecdotes that have an apocryphal feel about them” (92). The last two chapters and the epilogue of the book focus on Doc as a legend. So much of what exists of the Doc Holliday story comes from others. Wyatt Earp wrote of his loyal friend. And Kate Elder was somewhat prolific in her changing story of her relationship with Holliday. Roberts speculates that much of what she wrote about Holliday was an effort to rehabilitate herself as a respectable woman rather than the prostitute she most certainly was.
In the epilogue, Roberts makes a profound statement: “Were facts the measure [of Holliday], 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” (407). Holliday’s life tells us more about the West as it is viewed today when it is looked at in terms of the legend. The legend is of a gunslinger, a gambler, and marginally, a dentist, who made his way in the romantic, rough-and-tumble West that is the stuff of movies and legends. And this is perhaps the crux of the matter: what was there about Doc Holliday that suited him so well for the development of legend? Roberts asserts that “In Doc Holliday’s case...the legend was part of who he was” (408).
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[Review length: 711 words • Review posted on January 29, 2008]