The Jersey Lilly

Roy Bean kept a saloon in Langtry and held court in it, and called himself the Law West of the Pecos, which for a while he genuinely was. The appointment was real: justice of the peace from August 1882, voted out twice, back both times, and retired of his own accord in 1902. He named the bar after the actress Lillie Langtry, whose nickname was the Jersey Lily, one L, after the island she was born on and a portrait of her that stopped traffic at the Royal Academy. The sign came out with a second L in it and the misspelling stayed. He also told everyone who would listen that he had named the town for her. He had not. Railroad records name George Langtry, a construction foreman who ran a Chinese work crew on the line, and who was no relation to the actress at all; she was born Emilie Le Breton and Langtry was a married name. That is the pattern with Bean. He threatened to hang a great many men and, on the evidence, hanged nobody, and he never remitted a fine to the state in his life. After fire took the first saloon in 1897 he rebuilt it and put up a one room adobe on the rise behind, which he called the Opera House, on the understanding that Lillie Langtry would one day sing in it. She did come. She arrived on 4 January 1904, ten months after he died, was shown the bar, accepted his six shooter as a gift, and went on the same afternoon.