The Old Buzzard and the Pretty Lady

Roy & Lily  by Loren D. Estleman is who I'm rattling on about. Here's this old hard case rascal buzzard Texan from Vinegaroon (later changed to Langtry) who fell in love with a pretty English actress whom he had never met and would never meet and she was a conniving beautiful Lady, who liked to appear on the stage for money in various cities in Europe and the U. S.

While he was administering a type of justice to anybody who was brought before his Justice of the Peace court, she was looking for ways to make the British pound to keep up appearances and get herself on the stage and her name in the papers. She married this Brit who loved to enter his craft in sailing races, but she talked him into selling the boat and drove him virtually nuts, finally abandoning him for all intents and purposes and diddled around with the future King Edward Albert what-his-name and others.

And the old buzzard, full of rascality and humor, was following her every move in the press that he could lay his hands on and keeping up his desire for her love, hoping some day to actually come face-to-face with her pleasant countenance. He wrote her letters, telling her what was going on his life and she would read them and wonder if he was pulling her leg or just being saucy or could it be the truth.

Talk about opposites attracting, this relationship was the epitome of relationships in that regard. There certainly was none other like it in Texas history or maybe any other history that received so much publicity and later study by some Western studiers. Mister Estleman did his research thoroughly and wrote this book in a way that jumped between Roy and Lily and laid out their lives in an interesting manner, relating what was going on in their lives in a contemporaneous fashion. I really enjoyed reading it, since it covered them both in the same book, and I was sorry that Roy just didn't live quite long enough to meet Lily in person. And I laughed a lot as I read the book.