The first camp meal being necessarily eaten in full view of the crowd, the dining-tents not being ready, was a novel sight to them, from the motley population of Indians, cowboys, scouts, Mexicans, etc. The meal was finished by 7 o’clock, and by 9 o’clock the little camp was complete, and its tired occupants, men, women, and children, were reposing more snugly, safely, and peacefully than they had done in many weeks.
Trivial as these details may appear at first sight, the rapidity with which the Wild West had transported its materials from dock to depot, and depot to ground, had an immense effect upon the people of London. A number of notable visitors present, especially the representatives of the press, expressed great astonishment at the enterprise of the Americans, and communicated that feeling throughout London.
“The Yankees mean business” was the expression heard upon all sides. As the Wild West was not to open its exhibition for several days after its arrival, Colonel Cody and Mr. Salsbury had an opportunity of meeting many distinguished persons in England, who called upon them, and who afterward proved most friendly and hospitable. Among these prominent persons was Mr. Henry Irving, who had witnessed the Wild West performance at Staten Island, and paved the way in a great measure for its success in London by speaking in the kindest terms to a representative of the great dramatic organ, The Era. It may not be amiss to here quote his remarks. Mr. Irving said in The Era:
“I saw an entertainment in New York, the like of which I had never seen before, which impressed me immensely. It is coming to London. It is an entertainment in which the whole of the most interesting episodes of life on the extreme frontier of civilization in America are represented with the most graphic vividness and scrupulous detail. You have real cowboys with bucking horses, real buffaloes, and great hordes of steers, which are lassoed and stampeded in the most realistic fashion imaginable. Then there are real Indians, who execute attacks upon coaches driven at full speed. No one can exaggerate the extreme excitement and ‘go’ of the whole performance. It is simply immense, and I venture to predict that when it comes to London it will take the town by storm.”
Among other early callers upon the Wild West, and who gave their influence and friendly aid in London, were genial John L. Toole, Miss Ellen Terry, Mr. Justin McCarthy, United States Minister Phelps, Consul-General Gov. Thomas Waller, Deputy Consul Moffat, Mr. Henry Labouchere, M. P., Miss Mary Anderson, Mrs. Brown-Potter, Mr. Charles Wyndham, Lord Ronald Gower, Sir Cundiffe Owen, Lord Henry Paget, Lord Charles Beresford, the Grand Duke Michael of Russia, Lady Monckton, Sir Francis Knollys, private secretary to the Prince of Wales; Colonel Clarke, Colonel Montague, Lady Alice Beckie (whom the Indians afterward named the “Sunshine of the Camp”), Lord Strathmore, Lord Windsor, Lady Randolph Churchill, Mrs. John W. Mackay, and a host of distinguished American residents in London, who also visited the camp before the regular opening of the Wild West, and by their expressions of friendship gave encouragement for success in the future.
The sight of the Indians, cowboys, American girls, and Mexicans, with Buffalo Bill as chief, was most attractive to Londoners, while the English love of horsemanship, feats of skill, and fondness for sports presaged an appreciative community. The press was also most generous, the columns of the papers teeming daily with information so eulogistic that the Wild Westerners were afraid they would never be able to come up to expectations.
Fifty large scrap-books, filled to repletion with press notices, now form a conspicuous part of Colonel Cody’s library at Scout’s-Rest Ranch. The London Illustrated News, in connection with two pages of illustration, is drawn upon for the following extract:
“It is certainly a novel idea for one nation to give an exhibition devoted exclusively to its own frontier history, or the story enacted by genuine characters of the dangers and hardships of its settlement, upon the soil of another country 3,000 miles away. Yet this is exactly what the Americans will do this year in London, and it is an idea worthy of that thorough-going and enterprising people. We frankly and gladly allow that there is a natural and sentimental view of the design which will go far to obtain for it a hearty welcome in England. The progress of the United States, now the largest community of the English race on the face of the earth, though not in political union with Great Britain, yet intimately connected with us by social sympathies; by a common language and literature; by ancestral traditions and many centuries of common history; by much remaining similarity of civil institutions, laws, morals, and manners; by the same forms of religions; by the same attachments to the principles of order and freedom, and by the mutual interchange of benefits in a vast commerce, and in the materials and sustenance of their staple industries, is a proper subject of congratulation; for the popular mind in the United Kingdom does not regard, and will never be taught to regard, what are styled ‘imperial’ interests—those of mere political dominion—as equally valuable with the habits and ideas and domestic life of the aggregate of human families belonging to our own race. The greater numerical proportion of these, already exceeding sixty millions, are inhabitants of the great American Republic, while the English-speaking subjects of Queen Victoria number a little above forty-five millions, including those in Canada and Australasia and scattered among the colonial dependencies of this realm. It would be unnatural to deny ourselves the indulgence of a just gratification in seeing what men of our own blood, men of our own mind and disposition in all essential respects, though tempered and sharpened by more stimulating conditions, with some wider opportunities for exertion, have achieved in raising a wonderful fabric of modern civilization, and bringing it to the highest prosperity, across the whole breadth of the Western Continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. We feel sure that this sentiment will prevail in the hearts of hundreds of thousands of visitors to Buffalo Bill’s American camp, about to be opened at the west end of London; and we take it kindly of the great kindred people of the United States that they now send such a magnificent representation to the motherland, determined to take some part in celebrating the jubilee of her majesty the queen, who is the political representative of the people of Great Britain and Ireland.”
The tone of this article strikes the same chord as the whole of the comments of the English press. It divested the Wild West of its attributes as an entertainment simply, and treated the visit as an event of first-class international importance, and a link between the affections of the two kindred nations such as had never before been forged.