When Charlie Russell met the lady who was to be his wife he was living in Cascade. He had given up the range and was painting full time to try and make a living. Nancy was a housekeeper for some friends of Charlie’s and they met over dinner one night. It seemed to be love at first sight so they got “hitched up” as Charlie often said, and lived in a tiny house in Cascade for a time until the two of them found they would have a much easier time selling his paintings if they moved to Great Falls.
So, they moved to Great Falls. It was there that Nancy realized she had to take over the selling of Charlie’s work. He would just as often give a painting away as sell it and would always paint something just for a drink or two. She said she would take over the finances, and that he needed to just paint and paint and paint so they would always have some product to sell and pay the bills.
There was a huge difference between Nancy and Charlie. Nancy had come from very poor life and Charlie had come from a very wealthy life in St. Louis, Missouri. It did not matter to anyone that Charlie came from money as Charlie was just Charlie. Mostly a kid all of his life and a friend to everyone.
On the other hand Nancy had her troubles in Great Falls society from the first day. She was considered ignorant and not at all educated as a proper Great Falls woman should be so she was more or less shunned from the upper crust of women in Great Falls until after Charlie’s death when she finally got to leave that very unfriendly town. Remember, though, the town was unfriendly to her, not to Charlie.
Once the money started to roll in, neither of them spent much time in Great Falls. They had bought a piece of land in what is now Glacier National Park and had Milo Apgar build them a cedar log cabin on the land. Called Bulls Head Lodge, Charlie and Nancy and many friends spent from May until October there every year from around the turn of the century until Charlie’s death in 1926.
In the fall they were back in Great Falls for a few weeks and then it was off to art shows in the eastern United States and in Britain as well. Then it was off to Pasadena, California for the winter and back to Great Falls usually in March.
After Charlie Russell’s mother died she left him a little money so the couple had a house built on Fourth Avenue North. They lived in that house until Charlie’s death when they were in Great Falls. The house, on the grounds of the Russell Museum is open to tour most of the time as is the log studio next door.
Russell wanted a log studio where he could paint and cook up meals in the fireplace for years. He finally decided, with Nancy’s encouragement (it is said that she was sick and tired of him painting in their house all the time) he had a cabin built next door out of telephone poles. While the cabin was being built, he stayed away from it thinking it was a big mistake to put what he called his log shack in the middle of this upper-class neighborhood. When it was completed, Charlie did not even open the door and look in for several months.
Finally one night he and their neighbors, the Triggs, were having supper. After supper Mr. Trigg said to Charlie, come on and show me your cabin. I want to see if that fireplace looks as good inside as it does from the outside. So they went in the studio, Russell fell in love with it and painted there whenever he could from then on.
There are two questions people usually ask about the relationship of Nancy and Charlie. First is why they didn’t have any children? It is thought by some that Nancy could not have children because she contacted a venereal disease given to her by Charlie. That is supposition on the part of a couple of biographers. Nancy and Charlie did adopt a little boy they called Jack and the way they drug him from school to school while they travelled all over the world, it is probably good they did not have any other children. However, it has been said by many that Charlie loved children and was a big child himself whenever he could be.
The other matter concerned Charlie’s drinking. Nancy said that he stopped drinking entirely when they began to make good money in his painting. However, many others who were around him said that he may have limited his drinking a bit but never stopped entirely.
In Great Falls typically Charlie would get up early and start breakfast for whoever was staying with them at the time. After that he would go to the studio and paint until lunch time. After lunch he would take a nap. After the nap, he would saddle up his horse Monte and ride down to the Mint Saloon on Central Avenue in Great Falls to talk with his friends. As he went by the front porch of the house on his way downtown, Nancy would come out and say, “Charlie!” Charlie would then turn around on his horse and hold up one or two fingers. That was the amount of drinks he was going to have that afternoon.
It was well known that Charlie had no love for automobiles and thought they were one cause of the west dying. He and Nancy never learned to drive. However, what is not often told about that story is that they usually had a Pierce Arrow or Cadillac in the garage and always a chauffeur to take them where they wanted to go on a moment’s notice.
Charlie and Nancy were celebrities in all of western America and huge celebrities in Great Falls. That may have been another reason why Nancy was not liked. Many were jealous of her.
It is said that Nancy drove Charlie to paint more and more all the time. She got obsessed that one day he might not be able to paint. Then what would they do?
But, in spite of all that, when reading Russell biographies, not a lot is known about Nancy and her zest for life, but as for Charlie, he had a good time all the way through and left a legacy for us all to marvel at. Happy Birthday Charlie!
