Character Analysis
W.W. Beauchamp is the character you just love to hate.
The guy's a parasite, a suck-up, and a purveyor of hackneyed, sensationalized accounts of life in the Wild West. When we first meet him, he's attached to English Bob like some kind of spectacled leech (we're not joking). Later, after Bill completely emasculates Bob and exposes him for the violent drunkard that he is, Beauchamp attaches himself to the no less compelling Little Bill, whose adventures he, presumably, decides to commit to paper.
Beauchamp is timid, unused to violence, and absolutely dumbfounded when he discovers that gunfighters like English Bob aren't the heroic defenders of female honor they claim to be. In fact, Beauchamp's cheap, poorly written book sounds like a typical Western movie, especially since it glosses over all the dirty aspects of death and killing that Unforgiven, in contrast, puts front and center. The film, unlike Beauchamp, won't make a hero out of drunks and "men of low character" (Bill) like Bob and Will.
Although he's a complete weasel, Beauchamp can at least be applauded for possessing some small amount of intellectual courage. Once his initial ideas about the Wild West are completely exploded during a conversation with Little Bill, it would have been easy for a lesser man to leave and forget the whole thing.
But Beauchamp at least decides to stick around Big Whiskey, and learn about the reality of the frontier. In a way, then, he does commit himself to trying to get it right, even though he seems to idolize Little Bill a little too much at times.
But hey: what would this guy even do without somebody else to cling to?