Salem Press

Great Lives from History: The 19th Century offers worldwide coverage of important men and women in all areas of achievement who flourished between 1801 and 1900. Below is an excerpt from the Great Lives's essay on William Cody.

William Cody
The show played at such diverse locations as the World Cotton Exposition in New Orleans in 1884 and the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Cody and some of his cast were invited to the Vatican in 1889. Queen Victoria attended a performance in 1887, and the Prince of Wales, later Edward V, saw the show on more than one occasion. New Yorkers saw the show performed in Madison Square Garden; the residents of Paris and Barcelona also witnessed the feats of Cody’s performers. Well into the new century, Cody moved with his collection of people, animals, and paraphernalia, collecting huge receipts from people whose appetite for the West seemed insatiable.

Showmanship took its toll on Cody, however, and brought out the worst as well as the best in his character. Always a hard drinker, he was sometimes so drunk while on tour that colleagues feared that he would not be able to perform.Agenerous man by nature, he often squandered huge sums of money on projects in which unscrupulous entrepreneurs or well-intentioned but ill-fated friends encouraged him to invest.

Cody found himself caught up in the fast life, and his relationship with his wife, never strong, deteriorated. For years, he had been accustomed to leave behind Louisa and his children, first for duty with the Army, then for his career onstage and with the Wild West Show. Other women pursued him; certainly he pursued some of them. His relationship with Louisa reached its low point in 1904, when Cody sued for divorce, claiming that Louisa had tried to poison him at Christmas in 1900, and that he could no longer live with her. At the divorce trial, Cody’s affair with an actress and other improprieties were made public, Louisa was able to generate substantial public sympathy, and the suit was dismissed. After a period of estrangement, the two were reunited, and Cody managed to live amicably with Louisa in his later years.

- Laurence W. Mazzeno