Read The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley Online

Authors: Glenda Riley

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Women, #History, #United States, #19th Century, #test

The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley (10 page)

Page 43

Neither Annie Oakley nor William Cody commented on the cause of their estrangement. Always a gentleman who refused to talk about private matters, especially those involving women, Cody was so tight-lipped that when in 1888 he published his updated autobiography,
Story of the Wild West and Camp-Fire Chats
, he omitted any mention of Oakley. He did remark that during Queen Victoria's visit to the Wild West, he had had "the pleasure of presenting Miss Lillian Smith, the mechanism of whose Winchester repeater was explained to her Majesty, who takes a remarkable interest in firearms." He added, "Young California spoke up gracefully and like a little woman." Neither do his personal correspondence or other papers comment on the matter.

Annie's and Frank's lips remained sealed as well. In her autobiography, Annie simply wrote: "I had severed connections with the wild West at the close of the London season. The reasons for so doing take too long to tell." The newspaper accounts mentioned above indicate that Annie's rivalry with Lillian lay at the bottom of the schism, but other underlying reasons may have existed as well. Frank later threatened to expose the real reasons that Annie left the Wild West. This suggests that Cody and Oakley may have clashed over something in addition to Lillian Smith, something as serious as Annie's slot in the lineup or perhaps her open criticism of Cody's decision to forego an appearance at the Crystal Palace grounds in Sydenham.

At any rate, Annie and Frank left the Wild West at the end of its London run, just before it was to appear in Birmingham and Manchester. Less than two weeks later they staged an exhibition in Berlin at the Charlottenburg Race Course before Crown Prince Wilhelm and were scheduled to give another exhibition in Paris. Annie pleaded illness, however, and she and Frank skipped the Paris engagement, a decision that later caused a lawsuit and cost them fifteen hundred dollars.

The following year of 1888 proved strenuous for Annie and Frank. They had left the Wild West, sacrificing star billing, job security, fair wages, and good living to go on their own again. They soon settled into an apartment opposite Madison Square Garden, and

Page 44

Annie began to demonstrate one of her great strengthsknowing how to survive the ups and downs of life. Frank too had learned early to expect adversity and change and knew how to adapt. Whatever depression, bitterness, or loss of hope they may have experienced, they kept it to themselves.

Frank placed an advertisement in the
New York Clipper
announcing that Annie would take a new melodrama called
Little Sure Shot, the Pony Express Rider
on the road and would welcome the assistance of a financial backer. Butler also organized shooting matches for Annie and negotiated a contract with Tony Pastor. On April 2, Annie opened with Tony Pastor's variety show at the South Broad Street Theater in Philadelphia, then traveled with the troupe to the Criterion in Brooklyn, the Howard Athenaeum in Boston, and Jacob & Proctor's in Hartford.

On the vaudeville circuit, Oakley helped draw capacity crowds and received good reviews but failed to overshadow the other performers, which included singers, dancers, comedians, vaulters, and Little Tich, who stood three feet tall and delighted audiences with his "big shoe dance." One critic called Annie a "modest, pleasant-looking young lady," and another noted that she was a "good" shooter. Annie appeared at the end of the program, perhaps because her guns fouled the air and created litter on the stage or perhaps because her name lacked clout in the world of vaudeville.

Annie and Frank's situation improved in mid-April when Annie presented a private shooting exhibition at the Boston Gun Club grounds. "There were a large number of spectators, fully one-half being ladies," the
Boston Daily Globe
reported on April 20. They flocked around Annie to see the elegant gold bracelets that the club secretary presented to her. In May, she played theaters from Toronto to New Jersey with Tony Pastor, giving shooting exhibitions along the way. Near the end of the month, one reviewer called her a "decided acquisition in the vaudevilles"; the
Syracuse Standard
referred to her as "a rattling shot" who gave "a spirited exhibition." Although reviewers then, as now, pounced on performers' flaws and lapses, not one critic panned her act.

Annie's stock was clearly on the rise. She and Frank knew how to whet appetites and garner publicity. By midsummer, Annie had

Page 45

even returned to the arena, but with Comanche Bill's Wild West rather than with Buffalo Bill's Wild West. The salary of three hundred dollars and hotel expenses for both Annie and Frank must have lured them, but when Butler discovered that the Comanche Bill Wild West, probably backed by empresario Charles M. Southwell, was a sloppy outfit and employed cowboys and Indians who originated no farther west than Philadelphia and had difficulty staying on horseback, he canceled the contract. "I can't afford to have you connected with a failure," he told Annie.

Butler then persuaded Comanche Bill's backer to merge with the Pawnee Bill (Gordon W. Lillie) Historical Wild West Exhibition and Indian Encampment, which sat broke and stranded in Pittsburgh. Annie recalled that with six days left before the opening performance, "rehearsals began in earnest." On parade day, July 2, 1888, spurs and the trim on saddles gleamed in the sun, and the show opened to a packed grandstand in Gloucester Beach, New Jersey.

Although Pawnee Bill's wife, May Manning Lillie, performed in the show and wore costumes remarkably like Annie's, the two women had no difficulties, perhaps because Pawnee Bill gave Annie top billing and otherwise treated Annie with the respect that she and Frank felt she deserved. Although Pawnee Bill called himself the "White Chief of the Pawneesa young daredevil who performs miracles with a rope and six-shooter and rides like a fiend on a big black stallion" and referred to May as the "World's Champion Woman Rifle Shot," his posters proudly announced, "There is but one Annie Oakleyand she is with us . . . fresh from her London triumph with Buffalo Bill."

During July, Pawnee Bill also wagered two hundred dollars that Annie could kill forty of fifty pigeons with her light 20-bore guns. On July 31, before an audience of twelve thousand people, Annie eclipsed herself; she broke a record by downing forty-nine out of fifty live pigeons. Still, Annie found some of Pawnee Bill's other publicity stunts repugnant. When he made the wedding of a Kaw chieftain named Wah-Ki-Kaw and a white woman named Annie Harris into a public affair before eight thousand viewers, Annie turned disdainful.

In the meantime, Oakley's association with Pawnee Bill an-

Page 46

noyed Cody and Salsbury. When Salsbury threatened to fight any company she joined, Frank Butler counterthreatened that he "might tell the reasons" that Annie had left the Wild West. As it turned out, Annie left Pawnee Bill of her own volition in early August. Pawnee Bill, after competing with Buffalo Bill's Wild West for the rest of the season, in October once again found himself broke and stranded, this time in Easton, Maryland.

Annie and Frank, however, had several of their own projects in mind. Annie continued to play with Tony Pastor while she made arrangements to take her own company on the road in a blood-and-guts western melodrama titled
Deadwood Dick, or the Sunbeam of the Sierras
. She also shot exhibitions and matches. While in Dayton, Ohio, she skirted a challenge from Lillian Smith, who had parted company with the Wild West and, according to the
Daily Herald
, now existed only on "what little reputation she can gain by matches with reputable persons."

Smith's departure from the Wild West may have opened the way for Oakley's return. Shortly, Frank Butler and Nate Salsbury resolved their contretemps and began to negotiate. On February 25, 1889, the
Baltimore Sun
announced that Annie would sail for Paris with the Wild West in time to help inaugurate the new Eiffel Tower and celebrate the Paris Universal Exposition in honor of the one hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution. The company left for the port of Le Havre in April, took a train to Paris, and played to an elegantly dressed but stony-faced audience of twenty thousand Parisians.

When Annie entered the arena and noticed "clackers"men employed to start the applausestationed around the arena, she asked Frank to shoo them away. "Mr. B.," as she called Frank, informed the men that she "wanted honest applause or none at all." Annie recalled, "As the first crack of the gun sent the stiff, flying targets to pieces, there came 'ahs,' then the shots came so fast that cries of 'bravo!' went up." The Parisians had a "show me'' attitude, and Annie showed them. At the end of her act, Annie bowed to what she described as the ''roaring, hat-battering, sun shade-and-handkerchief throwing, mad 20,000." The Parisians were icebergs no longer, Annie said; they were now to fight for her during her six-month run in Paris.

Page 47

The rest of the season at the "Buffalodrum" passed in a blur of sold-out performances, dignitaries and royalty, parties, dinners, and balls. Annie received a number of accolades from her fans. For instance, President Sadi Carnot assured Annie that when she felt like changing her profession and nationality, a commission awaited her in the French army. The king of Senegal had a better idea. He offered Buffalo Bill one hundred thousand francs for Annie. "The lady is not for sale," Cody bellowed. Then he thought to ask, "What do you want her for?" To destroy the vicious tigers who devastate the country's villages was the king's reply. The monarch might also have added that Annie was pretty, sexually appealing, and wielded a certain amount of power. When Annie said she preferred to stay with the Wild West, the king dropped to his knees, kissed Annie's hand, and according to her, then ''departed with the air of a soldier."

That fall, when the Universal Exposition closed, the Wild West left for a tour of other parts of Europe. In November, the troupe reached Marseilles. Here Annie took the opportunity to visit the Mediterranean island of Montecristo. Everywhere, she saw deceit and poverty. She claimed that the authorities freed a counterfeiter after he proved his money contained more silver than government issue and that beggars abounded.

In Italy, Annie and Frank visited Mt. Vesuvius, the ruined city of Pompeii, the Vatican, and the Coliseum. But Frank wrote that Naples ranked as "one of the dirtiest cities in the world" and that Italy itself was devoid of "good gun makers." Butler much preferred Florence, "a very pretty city, containing a great many Americans," and Milan, "the home of all that is artistic and beautiful."

But it was Barcelona that most deeply engraved itself in Annie's and Frank's memories. Here the company lost its beloved announcer, Frank Richmond, to Spanish flu. Several Native American members of the Wild West troupe also died, but Annie and Frank successfully battled the disease. Butler arranged the shipment of Richmond's body back to the States and then collapsed into bed while Annie "worked for an hour weakly trying to get into [her] costume, and took [her] place in the arena that afternoon." Annie then "had the flu in earnest." Most of the company spent the Christmas of 1890 in quarantine, then finally moved to winter quarters in Alsace-Lorraine.

Page 48

Here Annie read a newspaper report that she had died in "a Far-Off Land" sometime early in December. Supposedly, she had fallen victim to pneumonia in Buenos Aires. Annie recoiled when she saw her picture draped in flags. Cody, back in the United States for the winter, wired Frank Butler in alarm. When Frank assured him that Annie had just finished a substantial meal, Cody wrote back, "I am so glad our Annie ain't dead, ain't you?"

Rather than complaining about the error, Frank placed a notice in the newspapers stating that Annie was "alive and enjoying splendid health," although "affected terribly" by the report of her death. Annie felt special concern for her mother, who reportedly cried for two days when she heard of Annie's death. Although mother and daughter had retained their affectional ties, regular communication proved difficult. Consequently, Susan had believed the newspaper reports and had begun to grieve the loss of her daughter.

Annie also wrote numerous letters to her family, friends, and concerned fans assuring them of her well-being and to reporters thanking them for their gracious obituaries. She marveled over "how many good traits" she had and must have felt especially gratified that the
Breeder and Sportsman
, which had previously run the scurrilous letter from "A California," had written that her death caused "the deepest sorrow throughout the entire sporting circle." It turned out that the death of Annie Oatley, an American singer, lay at the root of the confusion.

The following year of 1890 soon proved memorable not only for Annie Oakley and Frank Butler but for the United States as well. In retrospect, 1890 proved a turning point of sorts. During 1890 the U.S. Census Bureau announced the end of the American frontier by virtue of population density. In addition, a number of social commentators lamented that the age of the telephone, linotype, steam turbine, internal-combustion engine, electric elevator, and hand camera was corrupting the United States. Some observers even predicted the decline of American civilization.

To Cody and Salsbury, such news must have held a degree of promise. They had already made giant strides toward achieving acclaim and wealth before 1890 by immortalizing the rapidly disappearing western frontier, by playing long engagements rath-

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