Will took me to our stateroom and scratched a lucifer and lit the hanging lamp. Then he closed the door and we were alone. My heart leapt when he smiled.
I took him in my arms. “Now I have you, and no one else will ever have you,” I said.
“Then I’m had,” he said, something almost comic in him.
And that was now I came to be married to Will. How I plunged into the unknown, married to a man I really didn’t know, entering a life filled with strange and bitter memories, living in places I never thought of as home.
At Ft. Leavenworth his sister Eliza and her husband were waiting for us and we were given a fine reception, so I met more of his family and many of his friends. I thought Leavenworth might be a good place to live. At least it was settled.
Will did have plans to settle down. He rented the very house outside of town that had once belonged to his mother and tried to turn it into a hotel and tavern, the Golden Rule House. It wasn’t large, and I was certainly feeling cramped, with a life all too public, especially because I was pregnant. I was the only chambermaid in the place as well as the cook and scullery maid. But Will seemed determined to support his wife and family as an innkeeper and it seemed to work, for a while anyway.
Will took his meals with his guests and not with me. He caroused with them, too, and rare was the moment when he slid to our small suite at the rear and spent a moment with me. Usually, when he walked in, it was only to ask for something, most often a meal. He certainly was a splendid host, conjuring up every sort of comfort for his visitors, who came from afar to sample the Cody hospitality. I absorbed all this as a part of my new life, felt the child grow within me, and supposed that this was my fate and Will Cody was my sweetheart.
But Will never had a head for business, which was something I didn’t then know. He was so glad to see old cronies that they got free drinks and free bed and board, and he could never bring himself to charge them. Once I learned that Will couldn’t hang onto a dime I took my own steps.
I watched in amazement as Will poured drinks, served my food, and rarely charged for anything. I didn’t think he could ever say no, turn anyone down, resist any hard-luck story from some vagrant. We were in debt and Will couldn’t even pay the rent on the place, which was owned by a certain Dr. Crook, who had been a surgeon in Will’s regiment. It was then that I began to wonder what sort of man I had married.
After six months of that, and mounting debts, it became plain even to Bill that he had no head for it and he needed to do something else. He folded up the Golden Rule. I stayed in Leavenworth while he headed west. There were opportunities there for a restless young man, a chance to scout for the army, develop towns, grade roads, supply food for construction crews... anything, it seems, but settle down to the happy domesticity that I had supposed would be our lot in life.
As it turned out those six months were the longest period Will Cody would ever spend with me the rest of our lives. After that, it was time snatched here and there, hasty meetings in hotels, a few weeks in North Platte between shows. As soon as he began bringing guests to the Welcome Wigwam, I found myself in my old role as cook, scullery and chambermaid. I do not mind woman’s work and have kept house from the first days of our marriage until now. But as time went by, my housekeeping was for Will and his important friends and not for us; not for the union we had pledged ourselves to that day in 1866.
Soon Will was out on the Kansas and Nebraska plains, killing buffalo for contractors, grading roads, squandering his pay in the rough saloons that sprang up along the trails and tracks. I saw all too little of his earnings and even less of Will. Somehow, a great sadness had entered my life and my marriage. I was married yet alone. I loved my husband but he thought of me as a servant who would wait on him and his friends, and the mother of his children.
Arta was born December 16, 1866, nine months and ten days after I first took Will into my arms. That is how it would be for many years. Whenever Will came home we would increase our family, and I would enjoy a few moments of happiness. But then he would fly away like some lone bird of passage that had alighted only momentarily on a spar to rest. And when he was away, I would take care of them all, Arta, Kit Carson, Orra Maud, and Irma Louise. Kit died of fever at the age of six, and Orra at the age of eleven, and only Arta and Irma reached adulthood. And now only Irma lives, and she doesn’t know how my life has been.
(From the memoir of Colonel William F. Cody)
Now, our marriage had a few bad patches, and these are public record and no more needs to be said of them. But I want to tell you that no man was more blessed in his wedlock than I, and I have only the fondest regard for my Lulu.
My little Louisa was well nigh the ideal mate for a man of my temperament. She loved to keep the hearth fires glowing and make a good home for a wandering man. My occupations took me far afield but I always knew there was a warm hearth to return to, with my Lulu raising our children with all the natural maternal instinct of her sex. It was always heartening to me to return, after buffalo hunting or scouting or driving coaches, to walk through the door into my beloved home and embrace my boy and my girls, and kiss my wife, and set down to a well-prepared meal while I told them all of my latest adventures.
Now, in recent years, we’ve traveled to Oracle, Arizona, together, and she loves to read or knit on the veranda of our country inn while I look after the tungsten mine. She’s less a homebody now with the children grown and gone. We’ve had peaceful and loving trips together.
There’s been a deal of misunderstanding about Lulu and me. On the occasions when I’ve entertained large numbers of guests about to embark on a hunting trip, she has occasionally eaten in the kitchen after serving us. Now these guests were all male and Lulu felt uncomfortable in such a male society and retreated to the kitchen for her dinner to let the us enjoy the easy companionship of the hunt, cigars and port and relax and unfettered conversation. I thought, actually, that was a splendid sensitivity on her part. She fed us well and retreated to the bosom of the hearth.
On the occasions when we did have couples among our guests, Lulu was always quite at home with the women, though leaving the men to themselves. The one exception was women in show business. Actresses in particular. She strongly disapproved of any woman in that business and her aloofness told us all that we should engage in our revelries elsewhere. Let an actress arrive in Scout’s Rest or the Welcome Wigwam and the atmosphere was frosty. But actresses never stayed long out on that golden prairie, having been accustomed to the gaslights of the cities, and the awkward moments swiftly passed. Within a day or so they would board the expresses east or west, and my Lulu would relax.
I supposed Lulu would surely enjoy Annie Oakley and Frank Butler who never touched spirits, but where show business women were involved she pulled up the drawbridge and barricaded herself and left the entertaining to me.
She never abandoned that prejudice and more’s the pity, because she denied herself some fine friends. The other thing that obsessed her was rivalry with other women. She once even said that she feared I would succumb to the affections of Queen Victoria. What a thing to say. I can only wish Lulu had ventured to England and met Her Royal Highness. She would have been cured of that notion in about two seconds. Lulu wanted me all to herself; and that includes all friends of both sexes. She would have been happiest if I had found employment in Saint Louis and returned each evening to her kitchen to spend the time with her and the children.
I find that flattering, even now. I wish to forget our tribulations and remember only the good in our union.
Chapter 11
Major John M. Burke
When Cody and Salsbury told me they were taking the Wild West to England, I knew it would be up to me to bring in the crowds.
How do you fill an arena with English spectators day after day after day? They were keen on horses, so I had something there. They were keen on shooting, so I could use that. They had probably never seen an Indian—the Brits called them Red Indians to d
istinguish them from the Asian ones—and I knew I could do much with that, provided the Indian Bureau would cut them loose. They were, after all, either wards of the government or prisoners of war.
The very name, Buffalo Bill, was unfamiliar in England. In the United States his name was known everywhere thanks to the dime novelists. Buntline started it with two or three Buffalo Bill stories but soon lost interest. It was important for the Wild West to keep the name before the public and I had worked closely with a whole den of harum-scarum scribblers to churn out Buffalo Bill thrillers by the dozen for Street and Smith, a publisher of dime romances, or the Beadle dime library books. Whenever we ran a new act into the Wild West we made sure the novelists inserted that sort of thing in their stories. Prentiss Ingraham was a regular factory, but we also had half a dozen others grinding away, including W. Bert Foster, William Wallace Cook, and the Reverend John Harvey Whitson, who penned some dandies.
I always knew that the dime romances were helping us when some freckled kid hanging around the show would tug at my sleeve and ask me something like this:
“Is it really true that Buffalo Bill rescued Miss Julia from that burning cabin when the thousand Potawatomi Indians surrounded him?”
“Why, kid,” says I, “there’s no one on earth like Buffalo Bill. I’d say he can do just about anything!”
And the kid would race off, sure that I had affirmed that the hero of the Wild West had indeed rescued Miss Julia, or Lady Pearl, of the Grundy sisters, or Smokey Joe the Trick Dog, from bandits, Indians, or occasionally a thunderstorm or buffalo stampede or Barbary pirates.
I don’t know how many of those dime and half-dime yarns we churned out. I had a hand in penning some, mostly revising some one else's miserable copy. Cody tried to write a few about himself but he needed help. He was far too modest and left out all the juicy parts, so I had to insert material.
But these delectables had rarely been seen on the east side of the Atlantic. I thought for a while to export a few hundred thousand of the gaudy yellow-backs to England, but gave up on it. Too slow. I needed to sell Buffalo Bill and the Wild West fast.
Then what to do about Cody? It wasn’t enough to dress the old boy up in embroidered shirts and fringed buckskins, stuff him into calf-high boots, slap a creamy sombrero on his long locks, and call him a hero. Cody, bashful fellow that he was, had no idea how to help. Somehow, I had to persuade the entire English nation that our majordomo was not just an measly actor but a man of some prowess, the Great Wazoo Himself. I mulled that one over, talked to Cody, and finally came up with a solution that I'm rather proud of. I’d get the United States Army to endorse him. Cody had scouted for some of the top men, done a fine job of it, and had pocketed a Congressional Medal of honor. Maybe I could render some fat out of it.
I began by writing every general officer and colonel who had employed him during the Indian wars. Many were still on duty; a few had retired. Some had headed for Valhalla. What I wanted, simply, was an endorsement of Cody the man, or at least a kind word about the show. The result surpassed my wildest expectations, and ever since I’ve believed that my effort is what made Cody an international celebrity.
Before we sailed across the Atlantic on the State of Nebraska, I had enough endorsements to impress even the most sniffish old curmudgeon in the most venerable and exclusive of London clubs.
When I showed them to the Colonel, he slapped me on the back. “Arizona John,” he said, using my stage moniker because I still liked to ride around an arena playing a cowboy now and then, “now you’ve gone and embarrassed me.”
Cody was not easily embarrassed but when he saw the sheaf of letters his first response was to think the generals were talking about someone else.
“Well, my tiddlywinks,” he said.
Incredibly, there were endorsements from the top dog, General of the Army William Tecumseh Sherman, Commanding General of the Army Phil Sheridan, Major General George Crook, Brevet Major General Wesley Merritt, Major General Nelson Miles, Brevet Major General W. H. Emory, Brigadier General H. C. Bankhead, Brevet Major General James B. Fry, General John H. King, Colonel W. B. Royall, Colonel N. A. M. Dudley, and Colonel James W. Forsyth.
And what hosannahs, too. Sheridan said that Cody “was always ready for duty and was a cool, brave man, with unimpeachable character.” Merritt said that Cody was “the superior of any scout I ever knew. He was cool and capable when surrounded by dangers, and his reports were always free from exaggeration.”
Royall wrote, “He filled every position and met every emergency with so much bravery, competence, and intelligence as to command the general admiration and respect of the officers, and became Chief of Scouts of the Department.”
Now there was a publicist's dream. I struck it rich. I had a corner on caviar. I billed him as Colonel Cody, Chief of Scouts, and let it be assumed by the public that he was chief of scouts of the whole United States army. Oh, ho, I'd learned a few wrinkles in my day.
Cody always wanted me to be accurate and I hewed to that as much as was convenient. Chief of Scouts he certainly was. As for the title of colonel, we debated that. Cody had been appointed a militia colonel by Nebraska governor John Thayer on March 8, 1887, just a few weeks before we set sail for England. So Cody became Colonel Cody just in time for me to float that around England. Up until that moment he had been Honorable Cody, having been elected to the Nebraska legislature for a few days as a young man, at least until a recount indicated he lost. Honorable Cody was pretty good; Colonel Cody was excellent.
Colonel Cody, Chief of Scouts, was how we billed him in London and that was just the ticket. It got him through doors and into the parlors of the ones who counted. I’ve published the whole list of military endorsements since then, often in our program books about the Wild West, and I must say they add something formidable to the aura of Buffalo Bill.
I decided to plaster London with show bills, and to that purpose had gaudy broadsheets printed up in all sizes and shapes, with images of Cody, Oakley, buffalo, and all the rest. I wanted Cody’s image to pop into the lives of the English every hour of every day. No sooner had we set foot on English soil, and the crews started building bleachers and setting up shop at Earl’s Court, than I whipped an army of Cockney paperhangers into every corner of London to paste up the bills on any convenient brick or stone wall. By the time we were done, the Wild West had been hung from every naked wall in the city except Westminster Abbey, and I thought maybe I’d try that too if I had to. No one no one except the blind could have been innocent of any knowledge of the show. I spent a fortune with the lithographers but we figured the result would be well worth the cost.
In the Globe, there even appeared a little doggerel:
I may walk it, or ‘bus it, or hansom it; still
I am faced by the features of Buffalo Bill.
Every hoarding is plastered, from East-End to West,
With his hat, coat, and countenance, lovelocks and vest.
That was good, the lovelocks. Let ’em see for themselves. I thought that would sell a few tickets for the Colonel as he now was known. Little did I grasp what the future would bring or how wildly popular the show would become in London.
So that’s how I came to invent Cody in London. Of course there were other ploys. Whenever anyone distinguished came to visit us while we were rehearsing, I let the press know of it. Let a few royals show up, or a pair of dukes, or a few earls, or the deuce of spades, and the Times got wind of it. I wanted to beat the tom-toms. I sent the Indians roaming too, always in native attire. Let ’em stare. There was nothing like running our most ferocious Sioux, Red Shirt, through Piccadilly Circus, painted up to spill blood.
Cody was so busy attending receptions and soirees that he hardly had the chance to put the show together, which was fine with me. Get the old boy out on the town. The more he got invited into London society, the more he sold himself and the show. Cody had a natural and unaffected charm and was utterly devoid of snobbery. He could be just as attenti
ve to some waif or a timid boy as he could be to an imperious duchess. He sold himself without knowing he was doing it, so I made sure he was socially engaged every moment.
Well, I don’t know how I could have done better. They call it publicity now, but I called it advance work. I was out ahead of the show. By the time the show was ready to roll we had built up excitement that would serve us well for weeks, then months, and then the whole season.
I had left nothing to chance, including transportation to Earl’s Court, which was done with special show trains that brought the crowds almost to the ticket window. I wanted all those Londoners to get there easily and go home just as easily.
We had huge crowds, the largest ever assembled for any sort of spectacle or event in London, and the result was the merry ring of coin in our till. I had turned Buffalo Bill into the man of the times, and I am not shy about taking credit for it.
(From the memoir of Colonel William F. Cody)
I had started the memoir with the intent of rectifying the numerous errors that have cropped up in the accounts of my life over many years. But now, for the life of me, as I sit here with pen in hand and the ink bottle unstoppered, I cannot do it. What I am, and what I became, are all folded together in my head.
Sometimes a child approaches and says, “is it really true that you rescued Miss Agnes from the burning cabin surrounded by Apaches?” I discover that I haven’t the faintest recollection of such a thing. The episode must have appeared in one of the hundreds of dime novels that bear my likeness and my name. “That’s a good story,” I tell the child, “and I’m glad you enjoyed it.” But if I haven’t rescued a few hundred Agneses from a few hundred cabins, I may as well have because all these things run together now and I cannot separate the events of my life from the figure I became in the eyes of the world.
The Honorable Cody Page 9
