Many Loves of Buffalo Bill (18 page)

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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.”
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Ecstatic that her parents' union had withstood many trials and troubles, Irma made plans to celebrate the couple's forty-fifth wedding anniversary. A great deal had happened since Louisa and William's reconciliation.

The anniversary festivities were held over a two-day period at the Codys' ranch in North Platte. The twenty-six guests, including Louisa's divorce attorney and his wife, were treated to a seven-course meal served at a lavishly set table with fresh flowers, cut glass, and silver. “I have forgotten all our tribulations,” William told their friends, “and remember only the good in our union.” When reflecting on Louisa's past unpleasant behavior toward guests at Scout's Rest Ranch, he said that there had been “much misunderstanding. But all is forgiven.”
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A month after the anniversary party, William began the farewell tour of his Wild West show. He would again be gone from Louisa for long periods of time. She was used to the lifestyle and made no issue of his going. “Now our marriage had a few bad patches,” he recalled years later, “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 the fondest regard for Lulu.”
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William's later years were spent negotiating peace between his sisters more so than between himself and Louisa. May, Helen, and Julia were jealous not only of one another at times but also of Louisa and Irma, as well as the men and women in Cody's life whom he tried to help financially. When the infighting and malicious talk about whatever was bothering them became too much, William, as usual, would turn to Julia for help and a sympathetic ear. In a letter to Julia in October 1905, he expressed his exasperation with his sister's behavior. He wrote,

Julia Dear, I can't stand it. Nellie no sooner gets back to Cody. And listens to gossip, then jumps on me with a ten page letter accusing me of everything vile. Says I have left you with a mortgaged house on your old shoulders. Will you please give her the facts, before she tells it all over town. She says I spend thousands of dollars more on others than I do on my sisters
.
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Before Irma helped her parents reconcile, Louisa complained to her youngest daughter that William spent much more money on his sisters than he did on his wife and children. Irma disagreed and championed her father's giving nature to both her mother and her aunts. Irma kept William apprised of the disparaging talk whenever she went to see him. He listened and then encouraged his daughter to “ignore the lot of them.” Buffalo Bill looked forward to being with Irma. Often she would meet him at the train depot to welcome him home. He would put his arm around her, and they would walk side by side talking until they reached their final destination.
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As her father got older, Irma worried about his declining health. William suffered from inflammation of the joints and was constantly uncomfortable. In May 1910 he announced his plans to retire and enjoy some of the fruits of his labor. However, he was not ready to give up the spotlight until the winter of 1916. At the age of sixty-nine, he was exhausted and in extreme pain from acute arthritis. He had to be helped in and out of his saddle before and after each performance. His last show was on November 11, 1916, at Portsmouth, Virginia. When the program ended, the crowd gave the tearful Buffalo Bill Cody a ten-minute standing ovation.

Shortly after his final public ride, William headed to Colorado to visit his sister May. No sooner had he arrived than he became seriously ill. Telegrams were quickly sent to Louisa, Irma, Fred, and Julia summoning them to his bedside. The December 17, 1916, edition of the
San Francisco Examiner
claimed that Buffalo Bill was suffering from a general breakdown. Within a few days his health briefly improved. “You can't kill the old scout,” William told his physician whenever his condition started to get better.
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His family was so convinced he was on his way to a full recovery that they returned to their homes. A few weeks later they rushed back to Denver after receiving word that William had had a relapse. He was then taken to the Glenwood Springs resort in the hope that treatment at the facility might help him get better, but his condition didn't change.

In her autobiography, Louisa recalled how hard William fought to stay alive and how he comforted her when she thought the end was near. “He laughed at my tears, he patted my cheek, and strove to assemble again the old, booming voice. But it was weak and now breaking,” she noted. “‘Don't worry, Momma,' he said time after time. ‘I'm going to be all right. The doctor says I'm going to die, does he? Well, I'm pretty much alive just now, ain't I. I've still got my boots on. I'll be all right.'”
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According to Irma, when the doctor told William his life was ebbing, “he accepted his fate like a stoic.” He told Julia to “let the Elks and Masons take charge of the funeral.” He then made arrangements with his relatives regarding his business affairs, urging them to continue his work.
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On January 9, 1917, William slipped into a coma. He died the following morning from acute cardiac trouble, hypertension, and kidney failure. News of Buffalo Bill's passing echoed around the globe. His wife and daughter were showered with condolences from kings, military leaders, and politicians. Historians paid tribute to William in newspapers and referred to him as “the finest specimen of young manhood in the West.”
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Reporters at
Hearst Magazine
called Buffalo Bill the “last of the vanished Wild West's heroes.” In a series of articles about the showman,
Hearst Magazine
editors noted that with William's passing “disappeared the one great vivid personality which remained as a living link between the present generations and the courageous founders of that now rich and civilized American empire that was the ‘Wild West.'”
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