Around the World on Two Wheels Read online

  FROM SINGAPORE, the Sydney sailed to Saigon. Annie, acting as her own press agent, sent a telegraph message from Singapore to the Progres de Saigon, one of the city’s major newspapers, to tell of her impending arrival there on February 16.

  She found a more sympathetic reception in Saigon than the one afforded her in Singapore, and two admirers in Gaston Amelot, editor of Le Courrier de Saigon, a French-language newspaper, and a Monsieur Mouline, also of Le Courrier. So taken was he with Annie, Mouline penned an ode to her on a small piece of paper, three by four inches, to the left of which he sketched a woman on a bicycle atop a globe, which in turn sits on a pedestal from which the American and French flags are flying. On the pedestal, the words Le Courrier de Saigon are written.

  The ode, dated Saigon, February 17, 1895, was a tribute to Annie’s daring, courage, and tenacity. It is fourteen lines long and, read vertically, the first letters of each line spell out MISS LONDONDERY, with one r missing. Though the anagram disappears when the poem is translated, it reads:

  Ladies and Gentlemen, Hurrah for the cyclist!

  Idol of a growing public

  If France believes in a fearless traveler

  We should offer her our warmest bravos

  The fashion today is to pedal on a path

  However, Miss Londondery [sic], in a delectable speech

  Invites us to celebrate her artistic voyage

  Do we have to hold back our enthusiastic praise?

  Should we deny the audacity of this woman

  Deny her beautiful courage and her boldness

  In a century where everything is somber and depresses the soul

  As I question you, I hear you say

  Nothing is as beautiful as a deserving talent

  And the treasure of a radiant smile.

  Le Courrier de Saigon, it appears, was serving as a collection agency for donations to help Annie continue her journey. On February 18, the newspaper reported that Monsieur Mouline, the poet, had added $23.50 to what had already been donated by “friends of Le Courrier de Saigon” and that $85 had been collected at the theater the night before. When, at a performance of a play called Voyage de Suzette, arrangements had been made for Annie to make a cameo appearance with her Sterling. “The Cyclewoman, Miss Londonderry, was to appear in the ninth act and everybody was looking forward to seeing her,” wrote theater critic Harry Cappa. “Unfortunately she was not able to appear due to nails sticking out of the stage floor. She had to be satisfied with a public appearance with her bicycle and holding a French flag and giving a little speech in English that the spectators seemed to be listening to with deep interest.”

  Annie, never shy and retiring, used the opportunity to ask the audience directly for donations, something Cappa found rather bold but appropriate under the circumstances. “I can’t say that she doesn’t have a lot of energy and tact,” he admitted, “but, equally, under these conditions, I am also the first to subscribe to these tactics in order to do my jaunt around the world.”

  ANNIE AND the Sydney left Saigon on February 18 or 19, with a positive send-off from the Le Courrier: “All who had the good fortune of studying her from near were able to see that this charming girl isn’t a comedian or an adventurer, not even as eccentric as some people claim, but an accomplished, courageous and strong-willed intrepid woman that imposed on herself the will to reach a specific goal and nothing will come in her way to achieve the pursuit of her ideal…Miss Londonderry is in the process of proving to the whole world that the American race is the most tenacious and strong-headed of the universe, and, furthermore, that women are able to sum up the courage and energy that very few men would be able to stack.” It is striking that Annie engendered such different responses in different cities, generally meeting with approval in France and its colonies and skepticism in parts of the British Empire. Whether she was viewed as a hustler making a buck, as in Singapore, or as a becoming young woman making a statement, as in Saigon, it’s clear that Annie made an impact wherever she traveled. In reality, she embodied a piece of every description given to her—a beguiling combination of P. T. Barnum and Nellie Bly, a bold New Woman emblematic of the pursuit of sexual equality, but with a decidedly cunning twist.

  AS ANNIE MADE her way from Europe across Asia, the tone of journalists at home, like those in Singapore, was becoming decidedly less flattering. At first, the negative press focused on her shameless self-promotion and the commercialization of her trip. Later, those paying attention to her timeline would begin to question her entire enterprise, some going so far as to label her a fraud.

  “Miss Annie Londonderry as an attraction is hardly a success,” reported the Pittsburgh Chronicle-Telegraph. “It certainly is bringing down the level of legitimate touring when one sees a woman working her way around the world and so far degrading herself as to be put on exhibit, so to speak, dressed in a fancy costume with circulars and advertisements sewn all over her dress.” Another sour note appeared in Cycling Life, which had been covering Annie’s progress in short news briefs: “Glib and vulgar is Annie Londonderry. Her aim is to be notorious.”

  But Annie cared little about the negative press. From her point of view, the more ink she got, the better. At one point, before reaching Asia, she responded to a critical column, though precisely which column is not known, in this way: “Did you see the scorching the reporter for the cycling column of a daily paper gave me? Wasn’t it great? Just what I wanted. Thought he was worrying and mortifying me. I’m going to write up some beautiful ‘roasts’ of myself and send them to some of the leading dailies, and I’ll get all the free advertising and notoriety I want, and everybody will be on the lookout for me. Then people will flock to see me and buy my cheap souvenirs, over which they can lift their hands in thankfulness that they have not the courage to make of themselves wheeling advertisements for the sake of husband and children, and at the same time envy me my hardihood and business sense.”

  Not only was this a rare acknowledgment by Annie that she was both married and a mother, it addresses a subject never hinted at elsewhere—either by the cyclist or those following her story—that she was making the trip to support her family. Indeed, Annie usually went out of her way to suggest she was unmarried. But she was very savvy, and very modern, when it came to understanding the power of the press: if fame is your goal, there is no such thing as bad publicity.

  Indeed, fame, money, and an escape from the ordinary, were Annie’s real quest and her real achievement. Already evident by this point in her journey, was her extraordinary skill at finding a way to make that dream come true. She may have been cavalier and cunning, with the dash of a snake-oil salesman, but in the space of seven short months she had radically changed the circumstances of her life. She was no longer an anonymous working mother living in a Boston tenement; she was a global celebrity, albeit an increasingly controversial one.

  They loved her in Marseilles and Saigon, but back in the States some were less than enamored of Annie and her methods. She couldn’t have cared less as long as people, and particularly the newspapers, were paying attention.

  ON FEBRUARY 21, Annie’s hop-scotch tour of Asia continued as the Sydney arrived in Hong Kong. Here she demonstrated just how skilled she was at talking rings around any subject. “Miss Londonderry describes herself as a journalist,” reported the Hong Kong Daily Press, “but says that according to the terms of her bet she is allowed neither to work nor beg. On our venturing to express our disapproval of people traveling around the world without money the young lady asked what was the good of traveling with money, and went on to explain that with money you could do anything, but that her object was to show what could be done without money. We did not try to argue the point with her.” Just a day or two in Hong Kong and Annie was off yet again, cycling but little and riding the waves a lot.

  When she reached Shanghai a few days later, Annie wrote the Boston City Press Association from Astor House, a hotel on Shanghai’s famed Bund that runs along the north bank o
f the Suzhou Creek: “I left Boston last June on trip around the world without money. I have succeeded in getting so far and I feel sure to win my $10,000 wager.” Then she added, cryptically, “My cycle is my only protection.”

  On February 25, Annie wrote a note to the editor of Shanghai’s Celestial Empire newspaper, asking him to call on her at Astor House. When he arrived, he found Annie in knickerbockers and a blouse, eager to spin her tale. She “at once informed her interviewer that she was a journalist and was at that time engaged in writing to twenty-two newspapers, for which she was allowed to correspond.” Not a single such dispatch from Annie has been found, however. She also claimed that she had been accompanied into Marseilles by “a brass band and ten thousand people” and that at every place she had visited “she had been taken up by the press and ‘boomed.’” She made it clear she expected the same in Shanghai so she could “secure the balance of her passage to Japan.” One can only imagine the look on the face of her interlocutor; Annie was a woman of astonishing directness and said the most outlandish things without batting an eye. She wasn’t so much asking for help as insisting upon it as her due. “Assuring the lady that he would have great pleasure in assisting to any scheme she might arrange whereby this could be done, our representative left. Up to going to press no further notice has arrived, so we are unable to say how the lady fared,” said the Empire.

  THE WAR BETWEEN China and Japan waged over control of Corea (as it was then spelled) in 1894–95, had been a dominant story in the American press for months before Annie arrived in the area. War was declared on August 1, 1894, while Annie was pedaling toward Chicago, and by November of that year, as she made her way back to New York, China’s defeat already seemed certain with the fall of Port Arthur. By the time Annie arrived in the vicinity of Port Arthur, sometime after February 25, 1895, the war was winding down. The smaller but better equipped Japanese forces had overwhelmed the Chinese, the Japanese navy had routed the Chinese navy at Weiheiwei Harbor and taken the town, and signs of the siege were everywhere.

  It was a war notable for its savagery, with both sides engaged in decapitations, mutilations, and the cold-blooded slaughter of civilians.

  Annie saw the war as a human tragedy—she vividly described its horrors in her story for the New York World—but she also was quite candid about seeing the war as an opportunity. She decided to make herself an eyewitness to the war so that upon her return to America she could earn money lecturing about it. Indeed, a substantial number of the slides in her lantern slide show depict scenes of the war: Japanese soldiers on horseback, hand-to-hand combat between Japanese and Chinese soldiers, great naval battles in the Yellow Sea, and prisoners of war. For American audiences, Annie would be their eyes and ears, bringing home a firsthand account of a distant and bloody war. In the process, not incidentally, she would further build upon her image as a daring and dashing heroine undaunted by great risk. What American audience, whose only news came from ink on newsprint, and few of whom had ever ventured abroad, wouldn’t be enthralled by the stories Annie had to tell from the front?

  Annie’s account in the World was filled with hyperbole and utterly fantastic stories very similar to those she delivered in her lectures:

  [W]hen I reached Shanghai I heard of the danger of traveling through that country. I had unwittingly approached the very seat of hostilities. I was warned to get out of the country as quickly as possible, but my American spirit was up, and I was determined to see the fun. I knew that here was a glorious opportunity for me to collect material that would yield a good financial return when I reached my own country, for that was my only hope of raising the stipulated $5,000.

  So I determined to go to the front, and I went. I knew that I could fill any hall in the United States with the announcement that I was an eye-witness of battles in China. The result proved that I was right, for I easily completed the amount as soon as I reached this country. From Shanghai I went to Nagasaki and met two war correspondents bound for the front. I received passports from the Japanese Government and accompanied them. We landed near Port Arthur with the second Japanese Army. Wei-heiwei was their objective point. We followed. I shall never forget the horrible scenes I witnessed at Port Arthur. We arrived there after the butchery, but the dead remained unburied. I saw the bodies of women nailed to the houses, the bodies of little children torn limb from limb. Everywhere there was evidence of the most horrible butchery and mutilation of the dead. At Wei-heiwei the slaughter had been worse than at Port Arthur. When we passed through Chefoo the streets were filled with the dead.

  I was an eye-witness of the battle of Gasan. It was the first I had seen, and I don’t want to see another. The fighting continued from 9 o’clock in the morning until 4 o’clock in the afternoon. The Chinese had laid some mines for the destruction of the Japanese Army, and then by some mistake the Chinese Army occupied that identical position. The stupid men in charge of the mines exploded them at that moment and caused a frightful slaughter of their own people. Fifteen hundred Chinamen were killed and only twenty-two Japanese. Great chasms fifty feet in depth were formed by the explosion. They proved to be burial places for the dead. It was a horrible experience.

  I crossed the Pontoon River accompanied by a Japanese guide and a British missionary named F. A. Moffatt. The river was frozen over, but when near the shore the ice broke and we fell in. While in that predicament a party of Chinamen appeared on the opposite bank and fired at us, killing the Japanese guide, and wounding both Mr. Moffatt and myself. I was shot in the shoulder. Both of us reached the shore alive, but Mr. Moffatt died from the effects of his wound a few days later.

  That same day we were captured by the Japanese and were thrown into a cell, and left without food for three days. Mr. Moffatt would have lived if he could have received proper medical attention. The cell was merely a hut with lattice-work sides. There was no protection from the bitter cold and I suffered keenly. While thus imprisoned a Japanese soldier dragged a Chinese prisoner up to my cell and killed him before my eyes, drinking his blood while the muscles were yet quivering.

  I appealed to the American Consul, but he paid no attention to my call. Then I requested the French official to secure my release, and he sent a troop of forty soldiers. I was released in a hurry. Before leaving for Japan I took a run up to Siberia, and saw the prisoners working in the mines. I saw one string of forty prisoners arrive. They had walked 1,400 Russian miles.

  Was any of it true? Almost certainly not. By February 15, at least ten days before Annie could possibly have arrived in the area, the Chinese had reportedly surrendered the port of Weiheiwei, but information was sketchy. “Admiral Ting sent a flag of truce to the Japanese Admiral offering to surrender all the men-of-war, arms, and fortifications,” reported the North China and Supreme Court & Consular Gazette on that date. And on the twenty-second, the Gazette reported, “Weiheiwei has now completely surrendered.”

  Annie’s claim to have been at Weiheiwei, or indeed anywhere else in the war zone, is further undermined by the fact that after leaving Shanghai, most likely on February 26, the Sydney arrived in Nagasaki, Japan, on February 27, Kobe on March 3, and Yokohama on March 4—where Annie was listed among the ship’s passengers. The only time she could have made it to the war front would have been between February 26 and March 3, assuming that she didn’t sail on the Sydney to Nagasaki but managed to get to the front by other means before rejoining the vessel in Kobe for the passage to Yokohama. Yet, she later wrote she had been in Nagasaki. In short, it is virtually impossible that Annie spent any time at the battlefront. Likewise, her claim to have reached Siberia (the only evidence is a lantern-slide photograph of Vladivostok in her collection) simply could not be true because she arrived in Yokohama on March 4 and left on the Belgic for San Francisco five days later. Though the majority of her tale was clearly impossible, she certainly managed to conjure dramatic and sensational accounts of those days, accounts she would use to entertain American audiences in the spring and summer of 189
5.

  BY THE TIME Annie arrived in Yokohama in early March, skepticism about her claims was, justifiably, on the rise. According to the Japan Weekly Mail, she was traveling the world “with a bicycle.” “The advanced lady appears to have availed herself of the services of the M.M. steamer Sydney from the Far East,” said the Weekly Mail, “but as she has several months in which to accomplish her task, she will doubtless put in her real bicycling in the States, starting from San Francisco…We hope she will accomplish her undertaking, but at the same time we must again express our astonishment at the open-handed manner in which the public support these undertakings…[T]he game seems extremely profitable for all those who care to take it up; and so long as it pays, so long will it find ready votaries.”

  Before setting sail for San Francisco, Annie had a run-in with the American consul in Yokohama, John McLean, to whom she appealed for help in raising the money for her passage home. She didn’t have a high opinion, in general of the American diplomats she met and decided, a few months later in El Paso, to bare her grudge. An El Paso reporter played Annie’s gripe to the hilt:

  The general run of American consuls were proven a sorry lot, sort of last run of shad. American consuls live in the finest houses and cut the biggest swell, but when it comes to putting themselves to any trouble to assist American citizens, particularly if they be women tourists, why it seems as though they don’t just ‘give a dern.’ Of course there are bright exceptions, but the average lot gave Miss Londonderry the dead cold shake, and didn’t want to be bothered. What business had a woman a galivantin’ ’round the wu-r-rld for enyheow on a boike?…

  The American consul at Yokohama, John McLean of New York City, proved a lovely specimen. He seemed to take about as much interest in his fellow citizens as he would in a dead cold griddle cake. Miss Londonderry wished his advice and cooperation in raising 85 yen to pay her passage from Japan, and all she could get out of this old stiff was that his wife was away, and he was, ter hum, taking care of things, and—oh, he could not be bothered at all. She could go out and rustle, leaving this misrepresentative of the glorious b-u-r-r-d of fray-dem at home, with his feet cocked up on his desk and complacently smoking his briarwood pipe.