The William F. Cody Archive: Documenting the life and times of Buffalo Bill

Buffalo Bill in England.

At this distance it looks as if the British aristocracy were accepting Buffalo Bill's Wild West show as fairly representative of American life. Even Mr. Gladstone said, at Buffalo Bill's lunch party, that "There was nothing more desirable on this side of the water than a true and accurate representation of the American World." There was a time in England when the word "America," suggested to English minds the idea of semi savage. The average American was supposed to live on horseback and divide his time between hunting buffaloes and Indians. The Buffalo Bill show will revive that idea. The man who gives the show its name is as fine a specimen of American manhood as is often met, but where one sees the man thousands will see the show. Mr. Gladstone does not, of course, imagine that the border drama he witnessed is in any sense representative of the American world which is known in Europe, but his speech may lead others less well informed to think that it represents something more than a phase of civilization which can be found only on the frontiers. Mr. Gladstone was entirely right in assuming that it was a cmmercial speculation, but he was mistaken in the assumption that it was more than that. It is that and nothing else. Buffalo Bill does not care what England thinks of America, but he would like to fill his capacious pockets with English sovergns. S. F. Call. [1]