Many Loves of Buffalo Bill

by Enss, Chris

  His daughters joined him in New York in August 1901, two months after the train wreck. The Wild West show was to perform at Madison Square Garden, and William wanted his children around him when he wasn’t hosting the nightly extravaganza. According to John Claire, Bessie left for Wyoming just before Irma and Arta arrived. Believing the climate would be good for Bessie’s health, William suggested that she stay at his ranch in the Bighorn country.

  After more than three years with the Wild West show, Bessie and William parted company. Her tuberculosis was advancing, and she decided to travel to the desert country of the Holy Land to live out the remainder of her days.14

  TENThe Sharpshooter

  To the loveliest and truest little woman both in heart and aim, in all the world.

  —WILLIAM F. CODY, IN A NOTE TO ANNIE OAKLEY (1890)

  In April 1885 the sun-bleached wooden grandstand in Louisville, Kentucky, which ordinarily surrounded a well-maintained baseball field, overlooked Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West set. The plush, green outfield was filled with scenes depicting the wild frontier, and the infield had been transformed into a parade ground for horses, buffalo, and steers. A number of members of the show’s cast stood in a line in front of home plate patiently waiting to be introduced to a petite, unassuming young woman named Annie Oakley. William and the manager of the Wild West show, Nate Salsbury, had signed a contract with the expert riflewoman to appear in the historical program, and they were anxious for her to meet the rest of the cast.1

  Cowboys, Indian warriors and chiefs, and vaqueros greeted the pretty woman with a hearty handshake and a warm welcome. “There I was facing the real Wild West,” Annie recalled in her memoirs, “the first white woman to travel with what society might have considered an impossible outfit.”2 Buffalo Bill affectionately referred to Annie as Missie and positioned the talented markswoman at the start of his show. According to William’s sister Julia, Annie’s act “always brought the crowds to their feet.”3

  Annie Oakley and Frank Butler, her husband and manager, traveled with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show for more than fifteen years. Her relationship with William was one of trusted friendship. Drawn together by their similar rough upbringing and love of hunting and performing, the pair had a mutual respect and admiration for each other.4 Annie noted in her biography that “there were hundreds of people in the outfit…. And the whole time we were one great family, loyal to one man, Buffalo Bill Cody. His words were better than most contracts.”5

  The demure entertainer’s front-and-center spot in Buffalo Bill’s show helped make the program a success but had a negative effect on his marriage. The attention he paid to Annie’s career was threatening to Louisa. She was jealous of any woman who could take William’s focus away from her and their children for any reason. Louisa didn’t doubt that William and Annie’s association was strictly platonic, but that didn’t stop her from resenting the overly kind considerations her husband made for the sharpshooter.

  Annie’s relationship with William extended beyond one of employer and employee. During the off-season of the Wild West show, she and Frank Butler often visited the Codys at their ranch in Nebraska. Annie and Buffalo Bill thought of each other as siblings. They spent time together riding, roping, and practicing the art of shooting glass balls that were tossed into the air. In 1889 he gave her a high-spirited horse named Black Jack as a gift. Annie was one of only a few who could ride the once-wild horse, and William admired her fearlessness with the animal. He had the horse transported to Europe with the rest of the entourage for their overseas tour.6

  In addition to Louisa’s frustration over the generous gifts her husband gave the female cast member was the jealousy she felt over Annie’s reputation. The public viewed Louisa as cold and somewhat distant. Annie, on the other hand, was revered by millions. “How I admired her,” one female fan said after seeing Annie perform. “I would have given anything if I could rope and ride and shoot as she did.”7

  Louisa stayed largely removed from William’s professional life and concentrated her attention on maintaining the home. Rarely, if ever, did she discuss the show or Annie Oakley with him, and he was not in the habit of divulging specifics about the acts or his business dealings. Her disinterest in his livelihood drove him to seek attention elsewhere. Annie served as his confidante on more than one occasion. She was not a drinker but could be persuaded to have a glass of wine with Buffalo Bill periodically. He would discuss upcoming performances, and they would exchange ideas for riding and shooting stunts.8

  Annie’s keen eye did not miss the many women who flirted with William and those he allowed to lead him astray. He wrote letters to Annie explaining why his attraction got the better of him and about his initial encounter with actress Katherine Clemmons. He eventually became romantically involved with Katherine, but in the beginning he was not impressed with her. “She is too swift and dishonest for me,” he told Annie and Frank in a note dated January 27, 1891.9

  The first year Annie was with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, an elegant, high society lady sought to secure William’s affections by signing up to join the cast. She thought it would be “cute to see the world from the back of a horse with Buffalo Bill.” Life on the road proved to be more challenging than she anticipated, and in a short time any hope the woman had of remaining with the show dissipated. As Annie explained about the misguided woman in her autobiography,

  A small tent with a cot was assigned her when she reached St. Louis. The next morning she stuck her head through the flap of the tent, spying a cowboy as he flitted by to slick up his mustache before the bugle blew for breakfast. She called out, “I say, you, where do I get my bath? There is only a pitcher of cold water here. Bring me some hot water quick.” “I don’t do that, Ma’am,” the cowboy said. “Cody would never forgive me. He will attend to that honor himself, if you will convey a personal note for his perusal.

  So the note for her bath went forth. Cody opened and closed his mouth hard enough to unhinge his jaw. Then he joined the cowboy in a hearty laugh and ordered a small boy to take the lady a bucket of hot water.

  In the first parade, the lady had to be lifted from her mount after riding only a quarter of the way around. She was on her way home that night, cured of the idea that honest, hard work was “just too cute.”10

  At times Annie did empathize with Louisa’s feelings of jealousy. Annie was fond of William and supported him in most matters, but she believed that Louisa’s gruff, distant behavior toward her husband was justified at times. Annie struggled herself with wanting Buffalo Bill’s undivided attention. When fourteen-year-old Lillian Smith was hired on with the show in 1886 and billed as the “Champion Rifle Shot of the World,” Annie was resentful. She was the troupe’s female sharpshooting star and didn’t care for the idea of another woman encroaching on her territory. “Another joined the company,” Annie wrote about Lillian in her memoirs, “bragging of how Annie Oakley was done for once they saw her own self shoot. Well, they saw both her work and her ample figure and the next season her salary was cut in half.”11

  The ordinarily self-assured Annie would not allow herself to be upstaged in either William’s eyes or the audience’s. In between performances, she developed new acts designed not only to challenge her own abilities but also to prove to William that she was a better entertainer than Lillian. Buffalo Bill never doubted Annie’s exceptional showmanship. His motivation for adding a second female trick shooter was purely financial. He wanted his program to be a commercial success. Lillian had her followers, but Annie was the main attraction. “[Annie] was a consummate actress,” William bragged in a letter to his press agent, “with a personality that makes itself felt as soon as she enters the arena. She is the single greatest asset the Wild West Show ever had.”12

  William frequently told Annie how much she meant to him and the show, but by early 1887 she felt as though she was being taken for granted. A great deal of time and money was being invested in promoting Lillian Smith. Annie Oakley w
as well known, but Lillian was a hopeful star whose name was not yet recognized. Wherever the show was based, William saturated the area with posters and flyers about Lillian. The publicity he created for her, borrowed in part from her life, claimed that when she was a little girl, she had traded her toys for a gun. “Tired of playing with dolls at the age of seven,” William told the press, “she took up the rifle, shooting forty mallards and redheads a day on the wing and bobcats out of towering redwoods.”13

  The rivalry between Annie and Lillian was further fueled by William when he offered $10,000 to anyone who could publicly outshoot Lillian. Convinced that Lillian was getting far more attention than she was, Annie left the Wild West show in 1887. The only condition on which she would be persuaded to return was if Lillian were no longer with the program.

  Lillian left the Buffalo Bill’s Wild West cast in 1889 and formed her own short-lived show. A desperate struggle with alcohol and weight gain forced her to abandon her own show. Shortly after Lillian’s entertainment career ended, Annie and William were appearing on the same bill again.

  Annie enjoyed seventeen seasons with William’s show. She retired from regularly performing in 1902.14 The injuries she sustained in the 1901 train accident had caused trauma to her spine and made it too painful for her to continue riding.15 On January 10, 1917, Annie was giving an exhibition of her shooting skills on the East Coast when she received the news that Buffalo Bill had died. Her tribute to the showman appeared in the newspaper he established, The Cody Enterprise.

  He was the kindest, simplest, most loyal man I ever knew. He was the staunchest friend. He was in fact the personification of those sturdy and lovable qualities that really made the West and they were the final criterion of all men.… His relations with everyone he came in contact with were the most cordial and trusting of any man I knew.16

  Cody’s Wild West show brought Annie Oakley and William Cody together as entertainers, and more than a decade of touring the globe with the program made them fast friends. Almost every account that has been written about their lives mention the significant impact they had on each other, both professionally and personally.

  Annie’s name is conspicuously absent from Louisa’s biography. In an effort to keep one aspect of her life where her husband’s name and Annie’s were not intertwined, she chose to omit William’s beloved “Missie” from her memoirs.

  ELEVENThe Final Ride

  I wish to forget our tribulations and remember only the good in our union.

  —WILLIAM F. CODY, ON HIS MARRIAGE TO LOUISA (1910)

  On July 28, 1910, Irma Cody-Garlow nervously paced up and down the inlaid parquet floors outside the spacious library at her parents’ home in North Platte. Welcome Wigwam was a large, ornate three-story house her father had purchased for the family in 1893. The structure was her mother’s primary residence. A variety of guests had visited the grand home during the fifteen years Louisa lived there. Between theatrical seasons, William invited politicians, entertainers, and foreign dignitaries to stay at the Nebraska house. They could relax in their own private rooms, enjoy horseback riding across the wide-open countryside, and visit the museum on the third floor of the residence, which was filled with mementos Buffalo Bill had brought home from his travels.

  William seldom spent any extended time at Welcome Wigwam. He preferred to stay at Scout’s Rest Ranch, away from Louisa. She didn’t object. The living arrangement had broadened the distance between them. The animosity the couple had for each other erupted into a public divorce hearing in 1905, leaving each of them with hurt feelings and lingering bitterness. Irma and her fourteen-year-old nephew, Cody Boal, who had been raised by Louisa since his mother Arta’s death in 1904, were deeply affected by the ongoing strife. They made plans to trick Louisa and William into meeting with each other to iron out their differences once and for all.

  Although the heavy door to the library was closed, Irma could make out the voices of her parents deep in discussion. At times the conversation seemed heated, but she resisted the temptation to interrupt their talk. For many years Irma had been the go-between for her parents. They refused to speak to each other directly and used their daughter to convey their requests, criticism, and plans. Irma disliked the uncomfortable position Louisa and William put her in, and it was in part the desire to remove herself from the situation and the dream of seeing her parents back together that prompted her to seek out a resolution.

  After several hours the Codys emerged from the library reconciled. The only conditions they placed on each other was that William had to abstain from drinking (he had given it up nine years earlier) and that Louisa would accompany her husband to New York, where the Wild West show was set to open at Madison Square Garden.1

  News of the restoration of the Codys’ marriage reached the local newspaper, and an article congratulating the two appeared in the North Platte Telegraph. The owner-editor of the paper, A. P. Kelley, “wished Louisa and William many happy days together.” The article also extended best wishes to Irma and the rest of the family.2

  Throughout the course of the Codys’ rocky relationship, Louisa had tried to persuade her daughters to side with her against William. Arta was prone to take her mother’s position, but Irma favored her father no matter what he did. She enjoyed his company, and they shared similar interests. Both took pride in horses and riding, and they liked to entertain. Guests at William’s home bragged that like her father, “Irma had the rare ability of making every guest feel they were the one most welcome.”3

  Irma and William had both experienced Louisa’s quick temper. Indeed, all of the children were subject to Louisa’s verbally abusive tirades at one time or another, but Irma had withstood physical abuse as well. When news of the severity of Louisa’s actions came out in court during the divorce hearing, William was deeply saddened.4 Irma and William also had the same response to Louisa’s preoccupation with mediums. Both found it peculiar. During the divorce hearing, Louisa followed the medium’s directives more closely than those of her lawyers. She put a lot of stock in her disturbing, nocturnal dreams and was addicted to Ouija boards.5

  William overcompensated for Louisa’s oddities and his frequent absences from home by showering his girls with presents. Educated at the best eastern schools, Arta and Irma were accustomed to the finest of everything. William made sure they got whatever they asked for—clothing, carriages, lavish parties. All his daughters needed to do was select an item, and it was theirs. In her younger years Irma traveled with her mother to Boston, where they spent time with many high society families. Louisa wanted her daughter to be influenced by wealthy, important people in business. She hoped their company would counteract the rough and rowdy influence the cast of the Wild West show had on Irma.6

  Irma understood how driven her father was at his work and had grown familiar with his missing major events such as birthdays, baptisms, and holidays. When she married Lieutenant Clarence Armstrong Stott in February 1903, she was disappointed that William couldn’t attend, but she understood that he was overseas performing. After the wedding she and her father wrote often, even when he was touring. Lieutenant Stott and Irma were stationed in China and the Philippines. Once Irma and her husband were transferred back to the United States, she made a point of visiting her father in Nebraska whenever he was there.

  Fellow soldiers and neighbors of Irma and the lieutenant suggested that the Stotts had a troubled marriage. Much like her father, there were rumors that Irma was not a faithful spouse. After only four years of marriage, Lieutenant Stott became ill with pneumonia while on the job in White Horse, South Dakota. He died on December 16, 1907.7 Irma returned to North Platte from the post in Iowa where they had been stationed. According to Julia Cody Goodman’s memoirs, Irma was distraught over her loss and sought the comfort of her father. She traveled back and forth from Nebraska to Cody, Wyoming, to visit William. Sometime during her frequent trips, Irma met and married Frederick Garlow, the son of a prominent business owner from Omaha.8 Irma
and Fred would go on to have three children, two boys and a girl, whom her parents cherished.

  For a few weeks the newlyweds accompanied William and his cast of entertainers to various performance locations. Buffalo Bill eventually made his son-in-law the manager of Scout’s Rest Ranch, and Irma and Fred settled in Nebraska. In case his daughter got lonesome for him and wanted to visit, William furnished her with a schedule of show dates and locations. He was always anxious to see Irma and show her around. He found her easy to talk to and to be with because she wasn’t judgmental. Whenever the subject of Louisa and his marital problems arose, William was highly respectful. “Your mother wanted me all to herself; and that includes all friends of both sexes,” he said to Irma. “She would have been happiest if I had found employment in Saint Louis and returned each evening to her kitchen to spend time with her and the children.”9

  Despite the differences her parents had, Irma never stopped believing that their marriage could be salvaged. Her fourteen-year-old nephew, Cody, helped her arrange the meeting that led to Louisa and Buffalo Bill being reunited. After more than eight years leading separate lives, William sent a letter to his wife asking to be “forgiven for the past.” The tour the pair took shortly after making up included stops in Pennsylvania, Montana, and the Southwest. “We’ve had peaceful and loving trips together,” William recalled some time later in Nebraska. “In the past four 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 our mining interests. She’s less of a homebody now that the children are grown and gone.”10