Page 57 - Sorrow of the Earth: Buffalo Bill, Sitting Bull and the Tragedy of Show Business

than the rest—and be finally reconciled. So he had several short-lived affairs.

He had the stubborn sorrow of victors, the secret pain of people who have had
everything and imagine that they still deserve something more. He didn’t
know what. A town? A girl perhaps?
A lady of Venice was the greatest mirage of his life. At the age of almost
forty he fell for a starlet. The story is banal, which makes it all the more
profound. Everything relating to Buffalo Bill becomes such a cardboard cut-
out that it’s ultimately quite disarming. They met in London during the first

European tour of the Wild West Show, which was a veritable triumph. The
gigantic counterfeit creation had won over the most demanding audiences.
She was in the crowd of spectators and it’s not known how she came to his
notice. The girl had just turned seventeen, and her name was Katherine. No
sooner had he met her than a few days later, with a well-crafted mix of

sincerity and grandiloquence, the old fox told her that she was “the most
beautiful girl in the world”. In these circumstances imagination counts for
nothing, and it’s the most hackneyed phrases that work the best. But Buffalo
Bill didn’t have time to finish the job, he had to go back to America; they
wrote to each other. Very soon, she confessed her passion for the theatre, and
came to join him. He was beginning to feel his age, but with her, he thought
he felt a renewed enthusiasm. So he acquired the rights for a dreadful play, A

Lady of Venice, and he took it to the best producer in New York.
The premiere was a disaster. The most favourably inclined journalists
wrote that she had a pretty face and some expression, but that she didn’t have
an ounce of talent. Audiences didn’t take to it either. Buffalo Bill had to bail
out the producer; he spent several thousand dollars in an attempt to rescue the
play. But it continued to lose money. It was terrible for him to encounter such

resistance. For a long time, success had taught him to regard audiences as
amenable, submissive entities; and now, all of a sudden, they weren’t
responding to him, he couldn’t transfer his winning streak, the only star he
could create was himself, and his only success was his show. He didn’t know
how to apply to other circumstances the magic formula he thought he
possessed; all he actually possessed was his métier; chance had been
responsible for the rest.

However, he did what he could. He listened to no one. Not to the
newspapers, nor to his friends, nor to John Burke, who advised him to be
careful. Buffalo Bill loved Katherine. He loved her delicate skin, her voice,
her arse, her youth. For almost two months, the play toured from one town to