Distinctly Montana Magazine

34 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • S U M M E R 2 0 2 3 After 1914, Charlie and Nancy would sometimes entertain larger parties in the lobby of the newly re- built Lewis Glacier Hotel, amongst a wealth of bear rugs, taxidermied fauna, and faux-Native-American decor. Some rumors have Charlie designing the "In- dian" motifs on the large fireplace. They would also meet the train there, to sell paintings. Guests usually arrived via the luxuriously ap- pointed Oriental Limited to find a smiling Charlie greeting them, ready to take them across the lake in a boat. For Charlie's sometimes rarified Eastern guests, it must have seemed like stepping into an impossible storybook landscape: as Hipólito Rafa- el Chacón, Professor of Art History and Criticism at the University of Montana-Missoula observed, Charlie "transformed the neighboring woods with their lush undergrowth and dappled light into a kind of fairyland that everyone seemed to enjoy." Indeed, he populated his fairyland with hand-made gnomic figures assembled from birch bark, pine cones, and found objects. This sense of Bull Head Lodge as a place on the borderland with fantasy was fostered further by fre- quent play-acting and dress-up games. Charlie and his guests would don the clothes of storybook fig- ures, characters of romance—sometimes an Arab sheikh, a princess, a noble Indian chief, or even a stalwart cowboy, for as Charlie wrote to the silent film actor Douglas Fairbanks in the early 1920s, "the old time cow man right now is as much history as Richard the Lion Harted or any of those gents that packed a long blade and had their cloths made by a blacksmith... long haired Wild Bill Hickock with a cap and ball Colts could have made a correll full of King Arthur's men climb a tree." It was not un- common for plays to be performed, or for Charlie and Nancy to do Indian sign language skits to the amusement of watchers. After 1916, when Char- lie and Nancy adopted their only child, Jack Coo- per Russell (1916-1996), at least one child could be counted on to stay summers at Bull Head Lodge. Jessie Lincoln Mitchell wrote a story about Char- lie that ends at Bull Head Lodge and just might ex- emplify the kind of host Charlie was. While in New York City, which in contrast to Bull Head Lodge was one of his least favorite places, Charlie found him- self in one of those modern art galleries. He stood in front of one, a confused tangle he told Mitchell "fascinated him to realize any human mind could conceive such a thing." Charlie realized someone was standing behind him. It was the artist, who recognized him and asked "Charlie transformed e neighboring wds into a fairyland wi hand-made gnomes aembled from bark, pine cones, and found objects."

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