The Colonel and Little Missie

by Larry McMurtry

  And in fact, she would have had the Wild West perform at Windsor had she not been persuaded that it would be physically impossible to have so many animals running around the castle. The buffalo might abscond, as they once had from P. T. Barnum on Staten Island.

  What probably whetted the queen’s curiosity to an intolerable pitch was gossip that floated back to her from the two command performances that preceded hers, one ordered by Prime Minister Gladstone and the other by her own son, the often disappointing Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, by whom she was very seldom amused though frequently annoyed because of the prince’s gambling or philandering activities that were sure, sooner or later, to embarrass the throne. No one would ever defend more seriously the dignity of that particular throne than the small plump lady who sat on it from 1837 until her death, in 1901.

  The first command performance, for the prime minister, went off rockingly, after which Cody, Annie Oakley, Red Shirt, Lillian Smith, and others came up to be presented to the Prince of Wales and his shy, gentle wife, the long-suffering Princess Alexandra. When it became Annie Oakley’s turn to shake, or at least touch, hands with the royal couple, Annie boldly dispensed with protocol and shook the princess’s hand first. “I’m sorry,” she said to the startled prince, whose hand she then shook. “I’m an American and in America ladies come first.”

  Annie Oakley’s shooting act was wildly successful in London, so successful that no one much wanted to comment on this gaffe. Although a mature woman of twenty-seven at the time, she still looked like a slip of a girl. No one wanted to be harsh, so the slip was put down to girlish naivete, when in fact it was probably the one purely feminist act of Annie Oakley’s life. Annie knew—because everyone knew—that the Prince of Wales was a shameless and, indeed, a serial philanderer. The gentle Alexandra was much beloved, and not least because of the grace with which she ignored, to the extent that was possible, the prince’s terrible behavior. Annie Oakley did what she did in order to show support for a sister of a sort. Whether Princess Alexandra understood this is unclear, but she did love the Wild West and, as I mentioned earlier, once slipped incognito into the press box in order to watch it without herself being quite so onstage.

  * * *

  Buffalo Bill Cody got along splendidly with the Prince of Wales, with whom he shared many faults. Cody saw the prince as a man he could happily drink with, carouse with, shoot with, club with. Throughout the show’s run the prince frequently invited Cody here and there, and Cody usually went. One or two aristos may have snubbed Cody, or at least have maintained a stiff formality; but Cody, as usual, was too affable and too presentable to be kept out.

  When Queen Victoria showed up for her command performance, or later, when she summoned the troupe to Windsor for tea and a visit, she was not rude to Cody but she also made no effort to single him out for attention. She told Annie Oakley that she was “a very clever little girl” and she definitely admired Red Shirt’s good looks. It may be that she saw in Cody a man whose habits were too much like her eldest son’s.

  3

  THERE are numerous printed accounts of Queen Victoria’s visit to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West—she herself twice recorded her admiration for Red Shirt and her surprise that the Indians, mainly Sioux, were so good-looking. The visit was mentioned in many memoirs and picked up by so many newspapers that Louisa Cody heard about it and concluded that both Queen Victoria and Princess Alexandra had paid improper attentions to her husband. Bitterness over the queen’s visit surfaced eighteen years after the fact, in the ill-conceived and unsuccessful divorce attempt that Cody pressed in 1905.

  Of the many accounts of the earth-shattering visit of the queen, who had been absent from the public eye for twenty-six years, the most poetic and most charming by far is that of Nicholas Black Elk, the young Ogalala who had been coaxed into coming on the trip because he was the best dancer the Sioux could boast.

  In Black Elk’s account, “Grandmother England” arrived in “a big shining wagon with soldiers on both sides.”

  Black Elk and his friends proceeded to dance themselves silly:

  We stood right in front of Grandmother England. She was little but fat, and we liked her because she was good to us. After we danced she spoke to us. She said “I am sixty-seven years old . . . I have seen all kinds of people; but today I have seen the best looking people I know. If you belonged to me, I would not let them take you around in a show like this.”

  We all shook hands with her. Her hand was very little and soft. We gave a big cheer for her and then the shining wagons came in and she got into one of them and they all went away.

  Then, Windsor:

  . . . in about half a moon we went to see Grandmother. They put us into some of those shining wagons and took us . . . to a very big house with sharp pointed towers on it. There were many seats built high in a circle, and these were just full of Wasichus [whites] who were all pounding their heels and yelling: Jubilee! Jubilee! Jubilee! I never heard what this meant.

  Then we saw Grandmother England again . . . Her dress was all shining and her hat was all shining and her wagon was all shining and so were the horses. She looked like a fire coming . . .

  We sent up a great cry and our women made the tremolo . . . when it was quiet we sang a song to the Grandmother . . .

  We liked Grandmother because we could see that she was a good woman, and she was good to us. Maybe if she had been our grandmother it would have been better for our people.

  4

  WHEN the long run at Earl’s Court ended, the troupe loaded up and played Birmingham and then Manchester, after which they sailed for home, with young Nicholas Black Elk not among them. Always curious, and habituated to running on his own notion of time, rather than the playbill’s, he somehow failed to make the disembarkment and was wandering around Manchester when he bumped into some other Indians who were similarly stranded. Fortunately they were all to some extent show people now; they soon managed to get on with an impresario named Mexican Joe whose troupe was then performing in London. Mexican Joe didn’t have many Indians; he was glad to take them on at a wage of $1 a day.

  When Mexican Joe moved on to Paris he took the Indians with him. Black Elk was particularly wary of the Metro—he didn’t like the sight of people disappearing into the ground.

  Black Elk got very sick in Paris. The Indians who were with him decided he was a goner and went out to make a coffin; but Black Elk recovered and was taken in by his French girlfriend for the rest of his stay. While lying near death in her Paris apartment, Black Elk had one of his greatest visions: the vision of the cloud that came to take him home.

  Then I was alone on the cloud, and it was going fast, I clung to it hard because I was afraid I might fall off. Far down below I could see houses and towns and green land and streams, and it all looked flat.

  Then I was right over the big water. I was not afraid any more, because, by now, I knew I was going home. It was dark and then it was light again, and I could see a big town below me, and I knew it was the one where we first got on the big fireboat, and that I was in my own country again. The cloud and I kept going very fast, and I could see streams and towns and green lands. Then I began to recognize the country below me. I saw the Missouri River. Then I saw far off the Black Hills and the center of the world where the spirits had taken me in my great vision.

  Then I was right over Pine Ridge, and the cloud stopped and I looked down and could not understand what I saw, because it seemed that nearly all my people were gathered together there in a big camp. I saw my father and mother’s teepee. They were outside and she was cooking. I wanted to jump off the cloud and be with them, but I was afraid it would kill me. While I was looking down my mother looked up, and I felt sure she saw me. But just then the cloud started going back, very fast . . . I was very sad, but I could not get off. . . soon the cloud and I were going right back over the big town again, then there was only water underneath me, and the night came without stars; and I was all alone in a black worl
d and I was crying. But after a while some light began to peep in far ahead of me. Then I saw earth beneath me and towns and green land and houses, all flying backward. Soon the cloud stopped over a big town, and a house began to come up toward me, turning round as it came. When it touched the cloud it caught me and began to drop down, turning round and round with me.

  It touched the ground and I heard the girl’s voice.

  Soon after Black Elk recovered, Cody arrived in Paris on his first continental tour. Black Elk soon found his way to him. Cody offered him a job, but he soon saw that Black Elk was too homesick to be much use. With his usual generosity Cody got him a berth home and gave him $90 to see him through to Dakota. It was because of this kind act that Black Elk said Cody had a strong heart.

  Cody’s European tour of 1889 will be dealt with later. Both he and Black Elk were to be in Dakota again. Cody was blocked in his final attempt to see and possibly soothe Sitting Bull, and Black Elk lived to deliver the saddest statement about the unnecessary tragedy of Wounded Knee.

  Before we get to that sad day I would like to finish the account of the triumphs of the Colonel and Little Missie in London—the home of Grandmother England.

  5

  ALTHOUGH Annie Oakley was outshot a couple of times on her first acquaintance with English shooting, in the main she went, as always, from triumph to triumph and garnered as much good publicity as anyone except Cody himself. Both of them were constantly in the news, with Cody being feted by the biggest wigs in the land. At one point he returned the favor and held a buffalo roast, which greatly pleased all who were invited. The Indians cooked the buffalo and ate their part with their hands—a tiny but vivid illustration of the drama of civilization, which most spectators felt free to ignore. What they liked was the riding and the whooping.

  On one shoot at least Annie, boasting the new light gun that Charles Lancaster had crafted for her, scored a triumph over both her archrival, Lillian Smith, and her boss, Bill Cody. This was held at the famous Wimbledon sporting club, which featured a mechanical deer which raced along on a track.

  In this era most shooting clubs were, of course, all-male institutions. In many cases Annie Oakley was the first female to set foot in them, and famous though she was, her presence in this rigidly male precinct did not please all members. There were many snubs, both in America and England, and the snubs continued throughout her long career. Annie did her best to ignore them. She stood on her considerable dignity and her even more considerable abilities with the gun.

  Lillian Smith also got invitations to shoot and accepted some of them. Probably the reason she didn’t accept more was because it was painfully clear that even though she might win the shooting, Annie would inevitably win the crowd.

  By the time of the Wimbledon shoot Lillian Smith was under attack in the press; a skeptical English journalist named Carter studied her act through binoculars and accused her of cheating. Most trick shooters cut a corner here and there. Sights that were supposedly covered might not in fact be covered. The matter of Lillian Smith’s cheating filled the shooting papers for some time, inconclusively. What hurt her more than these accusations was her racy dress. When she arrived at the Wimbledon sporting club she wore a dress that sported a vivid yellow sash, and a plug hat the likes of which had never been seen in this august club before.

  The sash and the hat might have been overlooked had Lillian shot well, but she didn’t. She twice missed the running deer outright, and then only managed to hit it in the haunch, which, in English eyes, was worse than missing. Members who hit the haunch were in fact fined, since a haunch hit meant a wounded deer.

  Lillian Smith tried to make light of the matter, claiming she had brought too heavy a rifle—she agreed to come back, more effectively equipped, and she readily agreed to pay the fine.

  In fact, she did neither, annoying the directors of the Wimbledon sporting club no end.

  Even more annoying to them was the fact that Buffalo Bill Cody never showed up to shoot at all. Annie was very popular, but Cody was still the headliner and one of the most popular men on earth. Though he may have gone on a few toots while in London, he never neglected his appearance, and his fame was as high as it was possible for fame to be. Why he never showed up to shoot at the mechanical deer has never been explained; probably he was just too busy. It seems unlikely that he doubted his shooting; in real life he had hit more than one running deer.

  Cody didn’t come, but Annie did. She hit the deer readily, and not in the haunch, either. It was perhaps her most conspicuous triumph over Lillian Smith.

  Shortly after this well-publicized shoot there was an attack on Annie, a critique published somewhat remotely, in a California journal called Breeder and Stockman. Remote as this calumny seemed to be—some thought it had been commissioned by Lillian Smith—Nate Salsbury and Frank Butler took it very seriously—any threat to Annie’s credibility as a markswoman must be taken seriously by those running the show. Salsbury knew how much the show needed Annie Oakley—her ability to draw crowds was exceeded only by Cody’s. (In France, as we shall see, she was more of a draw than Cody, at least at first.)

  Frank Butler wrote a long rebuttal to the piece in the Breeder and Stockman. Most thought that he had successfully defended his wife’s reputation.

  Then, just as the troupe was ready to pack up and head for Birmingham, Annie Oakley and Frank Butler made a decision that rocked Nate Salsbury, even though he may have seen it coming. The couple quietly quit the show and made their way back to New York.

  6

  EXACTLY why Annie Oakley and her manager-husband decided to take herself out of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West at this juncture will probably never be known—at least not in full. There had always been rumblings and occasional disagreements with Cody, but no more serious rumblings than could be expected of any star performer amid the pressures of an extended run.

  What Annie claimed, in her little eulogy to Cody on the occasion of his death—that she had never had a contract with him—was as big a lie as her instinctive lie about her age. She had many contracts with Cody’s Wild West, all of them meticulously negotiated by Frank Butler. In these contracts it was clearly stated that Annie had the right to do considerable shooting on her own. She could give exhibitions and enter shooting competitions; she did both and made good money at it, sometimes as much as $750 a week, big money indeed for that day and time.

  At one point she received an excellent offer to compete in Germany, and she meant to accept, but Salsbury seems to have blocked it by insisting that he couldn’t do without his star for that long. Or Cody may have grumbled. At this point Annie and Frank had been with the Wild West a little more than three years, during which time Annie’s fame had steadily risen. She wanted to shoot in Germany and eventually did.

  I doubt, myself, that Cody was jealous of the attention Annie got in the London papers. The attention brought in more customers, and in any case, he got more publicity and was still the bigger star.

  I don’t think there’s any need to claim that the Butlers’ break with the show posited some huge falling-out between themselves and management—that is, Cody and Salsbury. Nowhere in the numerous biographies is there much indication that the Butlers and Cody were really close friends. They were star performers, working together in a show—possibly there were tiffs, but when aren’t there tiffs? Cody was gregarious and outgoing; he liked to drink and carouse and had an abundance of opportunities to do so in the great world capital where he found himself.

  Annie Oakley, by contrast, was very private. Her spirits during this run seemed to have been high, but that didn’t mean she was out with the boys, slugging them down. She stayed in her tent and did her needlework. Frank may have slipped his lead now and then, but not very seriously. As far as dissipation went Annie might occasionally allow herself a glass of beer, particularly if someone else was paying.

  Annie’s intense dislike of Lillian Smith may have been a big part of the reason she and Frank left the Wild
West at this time. Or it could merely have been that the Butlers felt they could do better financially on their own.

  Cody, for his part, may have reasoned that the Wild West was now so well established that even the loss of a big star would not really affect the box office that much.

  The shift to independence seemed to have proved, for the Butlers, mildly disappointing. They easily got bookings, but much travel was involved and $750 weeks were few and far between. They more than held their own but freelancing soon proved to be quite a bit harder than working for Cody.

  When the likable Gordon Lillie (Pawnee Bill) offered to hire them for a short tour they readily accepted and the tour did well, a fact that Cody and Salsbury, back in New York by then, certainly noticed. The Wild West was preparing for a big tour of Europe in 1889 and both men realized that after all, they still needed Annie Oakley. She was a bigger star than anyone except Cody himself.

  For their part, it probably didn’t take the Butlers long to figure out that they functioned better as part of an established troupe. Cody and Salsbury offered the best environment; with them, Annie—shooting maybe twenty minutes a day—could remain a major superstar. The transportation would be arranged for them, and they didn’t have to carry their own instruments, as it were. Besides that, Annie could profit from the energetic talents of Major Burke, a man Annie came to like, although she was not as deeply fond of him as Louisa Cody seemed to be.

  In any case the Butlers soon sat down with Salsbury and ironed out whatever differences there may have been. Annie Oakley happily came back to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. Not until the traumatic train wreck in 1903 would she leave it again.

  When Annie returned, Lillian Smith resigned. The two sharpshooters would rarely cross paths again.