by Jill Jonnes
Many of the Wild West personnel held court for their fans. At Annie Oakley’s tent, a cowboy served as her sentinel, maintaining decorum and raising a rope to let in visitors. After the opening show, the Paris Herald reported a crowd of admirers: statesmen, journalists, and soldiers of many nations, all received with notable graciousness and poise. “I am delighted with my reception,” Oakley told The Herald, “but I am so hungry that I must go to dinner. I was a little nervous the first time in France, but I feel I have so many friends that I shall do better than ever I have done before.” Inside her spacious tent, a large collection of shooting prizes and trophies— silver cups, medals, prize pistols—covered a table. At certain times, Oakley would wear her many decorations. “She is not even 25,” wrote Écho de Paris, “and her chest is more bedecked with medals than that of an old general.” (In truth, Oakley would be twenty-nine on August 13, but in classic show-business style, she had knocked six years off her age, listing her year of birth as 1866.)
Like many another fashionable Parisian, after attending the Wild West show, Paul Gauguin bought a Stetson to wear. Within weeks, L’Illustration, which first acclaimed Guillaume Buffalo as “le Napoléon de la Prairie,” further declared him the social lion of the moment, the most beloved and famous American in Paris since Benjamin Franklin. Paris had abandoned Boulanger, in pouting self-exile in England, to idolize Buffalo Bill. One suspects the officials of the Third Republic could not believe this unlikely stroke of fortune.
About a week after the Wild West show opened, the Herald reporter arrived at Neuilly after breakfast to join Major Burke on a special sightseeing jaunt. The good-natured major, his jacket a bit tight across his ample midriff and his sombrero at a rakish tilt, was taking the Indians on a trip into Paris and the fair. Promptly at 9:00 a.m. they boarded the three brakes and headed downtown along the bucolic Champs-Élysées, traversed several tree-lined boulevards, and then passed by the Bastille and the Place de la Concorde en route to the fairgrounds. “Many of the Indians,” wrote the journalist, “had been brought straight from the interior of America to New York, shipped at once on board the Persian Monarch and brought direct from Havre to Neuilly. . . . Major Burke promised his recruits to show them the big city which all good Americans hope to see before they die, and he has kept his promise.”
As the three carriages rolled along, and the Indians took in the ornate buildings and wide boulevards lined with flowering chestnuts and busy with horsedrawn omnibuses, trams, and carriages, their excitement “was strange to witness. When passing before the Louvre and the Tuileries, Rocky Bear said he thought they had better return to camp or some of the Indians would go mad with excitement. Some of them even covered their eyes, because they had already seen too much for one day.” At the fair, the New York Times man joined the outing and wrote in bemusement, “It would be hard to say whether [the Indians’] astonishment was greater than the delighted enthusiasm of the crowd. The American section [in the Galerie des Machines] was the scene of this first inspection.”
Major Burke shepherded the Indians through the immense Galerie des Machines, with its acres of whirring machinery and overhead moving sidewalks, to the fair’s painting gallery. There the Indians “stopped suddenly before some picture representing a horse in full gallop and remained wrapped in admiration,” many of the Indian women and children squatting comfortably as they studied the scene. Exclaimed an artist in the gallery, “Really this is the best group I have seen at the Exhibition.” Then Major Burke proposed they return to the noise and clatter of the Galerie des Machines to view the Edison exhibits. They wended their way to the always crowded phonographs, where Red Shirt listened to music and speeches recorded on the phonograph cylinders.
The Edison people then asked the chief to record a message in Sioux for Rocky Bear, including an Indian war whoop. When it was Rocky Bear’s turn, he listened to the cylinder of Red Shirt’s recording, his face registering utter surprise. At Red Shirt’s shrill war cry, he dropped the listening apparatus and said he was ready to go back to the carriages. The Times man reported that the French were agog “over these dark-skinned savages. Had they tomahawked half the people Parisians would have fled, but not with surprise.” In fact, the Indians settled themselves sedately into the three brakes as once again crowds gathered, and “waved their hands in farewell with as much grace as could have done a popular monarch.”
That same week Gen. Rush Hawkins finally had the American painting galleries properly hung and open for viewing. At the last minute, the French had allotted part of the American space to “some of the petty Balkan states. Then the American eagle did scream and no mistake.” Commissioner Hawkins informed the authorities on behalf of the American artists that “unless the space was restored to them forthwith, they would withdraw their entire exhibit. This firmness had the desired effect.”
That moment of calm was brief-lived, for within days the American artists were squabbling and complaining. There was no gainsaying that those American painters who had served on the committees claimed the best places for themselves, displaying more and larger canvases. “It is not surprising that there should have been lamentation and gnashing of teeth among those who sent or brought their pictures,” said one Boston correspondent. “The Parisianized Americans wanted all or nearly all the available space; but is there not the same gnashing of teeth among hundreds of refusés every year just before the Salon opens?”
The artists’ imbroglios became a regular and entertaining feature of the Paris Herald’s letters to the editor. From that high-profile perch, American painters unhappy with their lot began issuing a steady barrage of verbal brickbats. On June 1, one wrote that General Hawkins “knows very little, if anything, about ancient or modern art, and how he ever secured the position he now holds is a political mystery. . . . [N]ever before in the history of Americans abroad was there such injustice, unkindness, unfairness and un-manliness shown as this Exposition coterie have been guilty of recently. . . . [N]ever since the time when Miss Gardner bravely went in to study the nude, the first American girl who dared to do such a thing, never in all these years has there been so much pain inflicted.”
On Sunday, June 2, a day of bright sunshine, London Times reporter Henri de Blowitz, famous for his flamboyant facial hair, huge white cravat, and amazing diplomatic scoops, returned again to the Eiffel Tower to be treated to a test run in the Otis elevator, riding up with Eiffel; Mr. Gibson, chairman of the Otis company; a Figaro reporter; and Monsieur Édoux. As the elevator moves upward “through the transparent tower the panorama is constantly changing, expanding, taking new colours and proportions,” wrote de Blowitz. “A beautiful scene is unfolded beneath them, which it would have been impossible to imagine. One of the most remarkable sensations experienced between the ground and the second stage is caused by the change in the position of the Otis lift. Up to nearly the middle of its course it inclines backwards. Then there is a change of position; it inclines forward, and those in it feel themselves bending over, and completely suspended over the abyss. However there is no feeling of danger. The great solid [Otis] machine ascends and descends majestically, without the slightest shock or inequality in its movements that could cause alarm, and the most timid of those who ascend to the second platform do so with a feeling of perfect security.”
The group transferred at the second floor and rode Monsieur Édoux’s elevators (in two stages) to the very top. It was a respectably swift ride, taking all told only seven minutes from the ground to the pinnacle. The Édoux vehicles, large cages essentially, were straightforward in comparison to the double-decker, tilting-one-way-and-then-the-other Otis elevators. Otis was now six months behind the original contracted date of January 1, and a month later than the revised delivery date of May 1. Just the day before, the Paris civil court had appointed an expert to determine fault in Eiffel’s suit against the Roux elevator company. The World’s Fair had been open for more than three weeks, and still no visitor could ascend by elevator beyond the first fl
oor of the Eiffel Tower. The ever-optimistic Figaro de la Tour wrote that by Thursday, June 6, at the latest, the public could ascend to the summit by elevator.
On the subject of the Eiffel Tower, the Americans remained adamantly truculent. Harper’s Weekly reported Americans “have flocked to Paris” and “as much as anybody else have helped to make the exhibition a success.” As for the American visitor they encountered up on the Eiffel Tower, he was determinedly unimpressed by the tower, saying, “Yes, fairly lofty; but lay it flat, and it would not span the East River. As to height, well, take an elevator in any of the new buildings in New York, and if you want dizzy you can have quite enough of that kind of thing.” Already citizens of New York and Chicago were on the scene, busily vying for their cities to be the site of the next World’s Fair. Americans still smarting over the Eiffel Tower confided that they were planning a 1,500-foot-high tower in Manhattan “to which the Eiffel Tower would be only a walking stick.” This New York Tower would be “surmounted by a figure of an angel blatantly trumpeting to the world the marvels of American industry and enterprise.”
All in all, no one would deny that the Exposition Universelle was a beauteous wonder, a cornucopia of modern human achievement—the tallest tower, the strongest engine, Thomas Edison’s electrical and phonographic wizardry—deliciously mixed with art, gastronomy, French historical pageants, and exotic colonial pavilions. The 228-acre fairground was an aesthetic triumph, the spare Eiffel Tower and the equally gigantic and handsome iron-and-glass Galerie des Machines serving as foils to the gorgeous and gaudy, wildly embellished exhibition pavilions.
The Decauville train pulls up near the Algerian Pavilion.
Everyone loved the tiny open-air Decauville railroad that steamed around the perimeter of the fair. And then there was that other delightful mode of transportation: Oriental rickshaws, which came to be known as les pousse-pousses. One American lady explained their appeal: “These voitures Tonkinoises are more comfortable than the ordinary rolling chair used in the Champ de Mars, because of the hood that can be drawn up to keep off the sun. Under their umbrella-shaped shade hats, with loose, light jacket and trousers and sandaled feet, these little men look far too small for their loads; but they seize the shafts of the chaise with their well-developed, muscular hands, and off they go. . . . The little men cry ‘Attention!’ right and left, in very broken French, as they force their way along, and the people pass the word on and give way with smiles of delight. . . . Thirty cents an hour, with a little fee to your man pays for this diversion.” The pousse-pousse was equipped with little cards for riders offering useful translated phrases: Straight ahead (Di-Thang), Go right (Di Duong hao), and so on.
The official American Exhibition, with its commercial glass-making, pottery, and jewelry, was judged by its own citizens to be paltry and underwhelming. The Paris Herald summed it up mournfully: “Our Inventive Genius Is Unsurpassable, but Our Ignorance of the Beautiful is Unpardonable.” The American railway exhibit was likened to a train wreck. Sophisticated Yankees cringed both at the American Corn Palace and one U.S. firm’s full-size chocolate Aphrodite sculpture, the latter provoking a French critic to scoff, “Only a Yankee could have conceived the idea of creating an edible Venus de Milo.”
Americans distressed by their nation’s dismal showing in the fair’s official exhibitions were relieved to be rescued from ignominy by Thomas Edison’s magnificent display and the miracle of his talking phonograph, and by Buffalo Bill and his Wild West. Here, thankfully, was splendid American private enterprise at its sensational best: Edison’s exhibit was not only a marvel of modern technology and invention, but, as Edison manager W.J. Hammer was quick to point out, at 9,000 square feet it was the largest department in the Exhibition. “It is American! It is not a commercial display, but a scientific one. We sell nothing, give no prices, solicit no trade. Edison’s exhibit costs him between seventy-five and a hundred thousand dollars.”
Also, Bill Cody’s show was an authentic living spectacle whose success at least rivaled that of the ubiquitous Eiffel Tower. Ultimately, when all the elevators were finally working at the Eiffel Tower, it would attract about twelve thousand visitors each day. Contrast that with Thomas Edison’s recording machines, which tens of thousands came daily to hear, or with the Wild West’s, where every day thirty thousand paying spectators attended two sold-out shows, jamming the grandstands to gawk and cheer on the cowboys and Indians.
Thomas Edison, delighted by the smashing success of his phonograph at the fair, was eager to start selling the device in Europe. That was, of course, Gouraud’s bailiwick. The two partners had patched things up after the unpleasantness about fees and the fair, and Edison immediately began pressing the colonel: How many phonographs could Edison ship to London and when? Even as Gouraud sang the praises of the Edison machine, he parried these queries with all sorts of reasons why it would be more prudent to wait for a more perfect version before plunging into actual sales. On June 1, Edison wrote, “Phonographs are ready when you want them.” Although Gouraud had successfully promoted the Edison telephone a decade earlier, he no longer seemed to be the enthusiastic go-getter.
Edison had become so suspicious of his London partner that he had dispatched Alfred O. Tate, twenty-six, his private secretary, to England to investigate. By late May, Tate had arrived and set up shop at the Metropole Hotel. It was his first trip abroad and he loved being in the land of Dickens, relishing his first stay at a big country house, and tasting gooseberries. Young Tate found Gouraud to be a “tall, handsome man whose distinguished presence would attract attention in any company.” He made numerous visits to Edison House to discuss with Gouraud just exactly how and when he planned to form a Continental Phonograph Company. One day, wrote Tate, he was finishing up a meeting with Gouraud “when the card of a visitor was sent in. Immediately I rose to leave when [Gouraud] put out his hand protestingly and said:
“ ‘No! No! My dear chap! Don’t go yet! I make it a rule never to see any caller under fifteen minutes. It impresses them.’
“I could have assured him that it impressed them, but not in the way he imagined.”
Tate eventually concluded, after hearing Gouraud’s vague and complicated plans, “He does not intend to invest a dollar in the business personally and for the very good reason that he has not got a dollar to invest.”
In those early weeks in Paris, Colonel Cody held court in his huge tent, the front entry flap crowned with a shaggy buffalo head and draped with American flags. Those lucky enough to be invited inside found a reception room furnished with chairs, a dining room, and a bedroom. Cody had on prominent display a collection of souvenirs of his Wild West life, including Yellow Hand’s scalp, a trophy from their putative fight to death. The Herald correspondent was among the guests and he noted with pride the stream of French generals and high army and government officials who came by, and how Buffalo Bill “received his guests with that easy urbanity. . . . Colonel Cody had an appropriate greeting for everyone.”
Most amazing to the French, however, was Annie Oakley, above all her shooting skills while at full gallop astride a horse. The reporter for Écho de Paris marveled at how she had charged across the Wild West arena on horseback, aimed at a tossed-up ten-sou piece, and shot a hole right through it. Dazzled, he sought her out in her tent. There he was charmed by her simple friendliness. “Go see her,” he wrote, “and she will give you her photograph. She even writes a few words, if you know to ask . . . and because there’s no furniture yet in her tent she graciously kneels, makes two neat lines with her pencil and signs on them, Compliments of Annie Oakley, and then stands up and hands you her picture.”
Not all the French reporters were so gallant. One wrote frankly, “I attribute her masterly shooting skill to the fact that she is not voluptuous. But if she marries and she has a child who needs to be nourished, I defy her to show comparable skill. Actually, I have to confess she has a sureness. . . . [A] shooting guest of this caliber could end up destroying everyth
ing up to the last lark in France.”
Annie Oakley poses in a formal gown before her tent in the Neuilly camp.
Oakley loved her life with the Wild West. She and her husband did not generally sleep in their luxurious tent, with its rugs and chairs and cots and many vases of flowers, but spent many restful hours there. “We could always have hot water, plenty of soap, a collapsible bath tub and crash towels. I often took a morning dip like a wild bird, my tub on the green grass in one corner of the tent.
“Eat? Everything in sight! Good coffee, bread, butter, preserves, fine steaks broiled over wood coals, with fruits and berries in season.
“I could rope and hold the strongest horse. I could smile at the torrents of rain, that drenched me to the the-the—well, never mind!
“An afternoon of rehearsal, then a rub of witch hazel and alcohol and rolled in a soft blanket I lay me down in a hammock to sleep, lulled by the wind. Then a five o’clock dinner, an hour for writing, a practice with my lariat and I was ready for the night’s performance.”
Among the more surprising events in those early weeks at the Wild West camp was the appearance of Sioux holy man Black Elk, who had been with the show in England but had failed to appear when the steamship departed to New York. In the intervening two years, as Buffalo Bill learned, Black Elk and several other stranded Indians had toured around Europe with Mexican Joe’s, a ragtag third-rate variation of the Wild West. When the show played Paris earlier in the year, Black Elk was too ill to perform. A young Frenchwoman and her family took him in, nursing him as best they could. When he emerged from a three-day coma, the family told him, “Pahuska [Buffalo Bill] was in town again. So they took me to where he had his show, and he was glad to see me. He had all his people give me three cheers. Then he asked if I wanted to be in the show or if I wanted to go home. I told him I was sick to go home. So he said he would fix that. He gave me a ticket and ninety dollars. Then he gave me a big dinner. Pahuska had a strong heart.” Soon, Black Elk was crossing the “big water” home to Pine Ridge.
