Around the World on Two Wheels Read online

  The Rochester Post-Express described Annie’s arrival in similar terms, and noted that the cyclist was something of a roving billboard: “The young woman presented a bedraggled appearance. She wore many flying ribbons, which on close inspection were seen to be advertisements for factories, medicine, dry goods and every variety of proprietary articles. Her coat was covered with advertisements and her bloomer costume was similarly adorned.” When Officer Stein “recovered his breath,” said the Post Express, he demanded an explanation for Annie’s rather outlandish appearance, to which she replied: “My autographs cost 25 cents a piece. If you want one I should be glad to give it to you.”

  She is “prepossessing in appearance” and “extremely bright and animated in conversation,” wrote a reporter who later met Annie for a chat at the Novelty Manufacturing Company on Exchange Street. During their talk, several wheelmen stopped by to meet her and she received them “with as much tact and graciousness as though she were in full dress in a ball room instead of being attired as she was in an ugly looking riding costume and wearing muddy shoes.”

  On her arrival in Rochester, Annie was “looked upon as a suspicious character in having a diamond frame wheel” and a “riding habit, which she acknowledged as being far from conventional even from the point of view of those who favor the bloomer.”

  “I am going around the world and with that object in view I cannot afford to let conventionalities impede my progress,” she said. “Consequently, I have grown accustomed to this costume and do not now mind the stare of people.”

  When asked what she would do with her winnings, Annie wittily responded, “Why, I’ll marry some good man and settle down in life.”

  On Friday evening, November 2, Annie attended receptions at the clubhouses of two Rochester cycling clubs, the Century Cycling Club and the Lake View Wheelman’s Club, and prepared to leave for Syracuse, where her visit was much anticipated: as early as October 30, the Syracuse newspapers began writing of her impending arrival.

  ON THE MORNING of Sunday, November 4, in the company of three Rochester wheelmen, H. W. Rulifson, H. Bachman, and C. J. Appel, Annie pushed off for Syracuse, ninety miles to the east, intending to arrive in Syracuse that night. The weather had been unseasonably warm in upstate New York, with gentle winds and temperatures reaching the mid sixties. But, unfortunately for Annie and her party, Sunday’s weather turned. It became cold, with temperatures in the thirties and forties and brisk westerly winds. The roads were less than ideal. Annie and her party had “a hard struggle over poor roads from Rochester,” and were compelled to spend the night in Jordan, New York, about fifteen miles west of Syracuse. The group finally arrived in Syracuse at 9:30 A.M. on Monday, November 5, where Annie checked in to the Globe Hotel.

  “‘IS IT A GIRL?’ was the query of pedestrians in South Salina Street this morning when Miss Anna Londonderry dismounted in front of Reuben Wood’s Sons’ store and displayed her shapely form in a men’s bicycle suit,” reported the Syracuse Courier upon Annie’s arrival. At Wood’s, a purveyor of sporting goods, Annie, spattered with mud, was seen “laughingly describing her trip to a knot of local ’cyclists.”

  Public fascination with Annie was clearly growing, as was the rather tangled web of stories she imparted to those she spoke with—often changing her story from state to state, and even town to town. “Miss Londonderry is an intrepid woman and backed by plenty of courage and muscle she will complete a circuit of the globe in the time specified if such a thing is possible,” said the Syracuse Standard. Calling Annie’s trip “one of the most perilous and remarkable trips ever undertaken by a woman,” the Syracuse Post quoted the cyclist as describing her ride from Boston to Chicago as “a horrible nightmare.” “Starting without a cent of money, she plodded along, [often] meeting with scant courtesy, even from her own sex,” stated the Post, though Annie had said just the opposite in Buffalo a few days earlier. “The little woman had no means of earning money, except selling autographs and these had as yet not acquired a market value.”

  Annie worked for a few days as a clerk in the bicycle department of Reuben Wood’s, mainly to lure customers. The Centuries Cycling Club of Syracuse hosted a reception in her honor and arranged for some of its members to pace her toward Utica when she resumed her trip east. She left for Utica, fifty-three miles east, on the morning of November 10.

  IN 1893, H. H. “Dead Broke” Wylie set a record for the Chicago to New York run on a Sterling bicycle equipped with racing tires: ten days, four hours, and thirty-nine minutes. He earned the nickname “Dead Broke” because he traveled without money. Traveling as Wylie did became known as the “dead broke” plan, and when Annie arrived in Utica the Utica Sunday Journal announced the arrival of “A ‘Dead Broke’ Girl”:

  “The latest phase of woman’s development and woman’s enterprise along a unique line struck this city at 3:45 P.M. yesterday in the form of a charming and striking young lady attired in men’s bicycling costume and ‘treading’ a twenty pound Sterling wheel in gallant style in very ungallant weather. Miss Annie Londonderry is the name of the daring young woman who is undertaking a bicycle trip around the world…She believes she can [do it], and with the grit and enterprise of modern femininity has determined to do it, or die in the attempt.”

  Annie arrived in Utica, as she had in Rochester and Syracuse, weary from traveling in bad weather. “I’ve made only forty-eight miles to-day, from DeWitt [just east of Syracuse],” she said. She then proclaimed she had on several occasions “ridden the century,” or one hundred miles. “But the roads are so bad they made me tired,” Annie continued. “I’ve had to try the railroad tracks, the highways being simply impassable, and it’s hard work. I’ve never ridden a bicycle before!”

  As she spoke with a reporter, Annie opened a parcel containing a new riding suit. “‘How do you like my new suit? Isn’t it a dandy? I received [it] to-day from one of my advertisers in Buffalo, and am going to don it henceforth, though sometimes I’ll wear my skirts—as I did from Boston—when I’m not riding.’” She explained that she chose her unusual clothes because they were best suited to riding, but that they also “helped her as a drawing card” as well.

  “I have been treated handsomely wherever I’ve been,” said Annie, “especially by cyclist clubs, and always royally by the press—and the newspapers are a very great help. [I] experienced a little difficulty between Buffalo and Rochester when a tramp placed a railroad tie on the tracks and dumped [me] into the ashes.” Because she was riding with three men between Buffalo and Rochester, this story doesn’t ring true, though she later repeated it, with some variations, when she got to France in December.

  Annie’s exaggerations didn’t stop with her own stories. While in Utica, she was asked about the disappearance of an around-the-world cyclist from Pittsburgh named Frank Lenz, who had not been heard from in some time. She said she had heard a rumor that Lenz’s traveling companion had left him sick somewhere in Asia, but she didn’t know if the report was true. Never at a loss, she then ventured her opinion that Lenz was all right, though she had absolutely no way of knowing, and that “he was keeping close for a purpose that had a business idea in it.” In fact, Lenz was already dead, though it was not publicly known yet, murdered by bandits near the modern-day border of Turkey and Armenia.

  During her stay in Utica, Annie sold tie pins to the Utica Cycling Club and gave a lecture about her travels. The Sunday Journal urged readers to attend her departure from Utica: “Everybody ought to be present to give Miss Londonderry a hearty send-off. The sight will be worth seeing.” But if there was any crowd turnout at the Utica city limits on November 11 to watch members of the cycling club escort Annie out of the city, they were sorely disappointed. The only people who saw her leave town were those at the train station at 8:51 P.M., when Annie boarded a train bound for Albany. It would not be the last time she played fast and loose with her means of travel, for she was often just as cavalier about her means of transport as she was with her stories.
After all, she was now living life on her own terms, not the wager terms she made up and often modified along the way when it suited her purposes. Nor did she go to great lengths to conceal her actions, relying instead on her boundless self-confidence and colorful stories to distract attention from careful scrutiny of her day-to-day movements.

  How Annie reached New York City from Albany is anyone’s guess. There are no reports of her in Albany or at any point between that city and New York, suggesting she may have again taken the train. However, with La Touraine scheduled to depart for Le Havre on November 24, she certainly had time to make the trip by bicycle. In the event, sometime in mid-November, Annie was back in New York City, a city she hadn’t expected to see again so soon when she pedaled down Broadway in the intense July heat. Nearly five months into her trip and with ten to go on her wager clock, she prepared to set sail for France, where the spectacle that was Annie Londonderry would become even more spectacular.

  Chapter Four

  Le Voyage de Miss Londonderry

  When Springtime’s buds are flowering through the land;

  While Summer’s bloom is strewn on every hand;

  And through Autumn blows

  Or the chilling Wintry snows,

  She drives her airy wheel so free and grand.

  —Ariel, The Bicycling World, February 16, 1894

  On November 24 in New York City, Annie rolled her Sterling up the gangplank of one of the fastest and finest ocean liners of the day, the French Line’s La Touraine, bound for Le Havre on France’s north coast. Five hundred thirty-six feet long, and weighing over 9,000 tons, La Touraine was the sixth-largest ship ever built, capable of carrying 1,090 passengers at a speed of nineteen knots across the Atlantic. Also known as “the steady ship,” La Touraine had a reputation for managing exceptionally well in rough seas. Equipped with a world-class kitchen staffed by trained French chefs, the vessel was often called “a piece of France itself.”

  La Touraine passed the southern tip of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty. The last time Annie had sailed through New York harbor, she was a little girl on her way to America from Eastern Europe and Lady Liberty had not yet been built. From the harbor, the French liner slipped through the Verrazano Narrows and into the Atlantic. The air was mild, the breeze light from the west, and a slight haze lingered off Sandy Hook.

  Annie loved being the center of attention and, during her time on the ship, she exercised her powers of self promotion by charming the passengers. She regaled everyone she met—Dr. C. W. Chancellor, the United States consul at Le Havre, the Baron and Baroness de Sellières, the Prince and Princess Ruspoli di Poggio Suasa, and Mr. and Mrs. Potter Palmer, socialites from Chicago, among them—with tales of her adventures. She may also have taken her ivory and gold Sterling for a few turns over the deck, or around the ship’s ballroom, to the delight of her new friends. Once she had made herself known to the passengers, she “earned 150 francs lecturing.”

  La Touraine arrived at Le Havre on December 3, 1894, her daughter Mollie’s sixth birthday. Annie’s arrival was completely unheralded and without fanfare; she was listed among the ship’s arrivals in a local newspaper simply as “A. Kopchovsky.” She immediately rode into a bit of bad luck: French customs officials impounded her bicycle and her money was stolen. “I was in a predicament, for I was not permitted [by the terms of the wager] to speak French and I found it difficult to make myself understood in English,” Annie later wrote in the New York World, though she didn’t know French at all. Fortunately, Annie’s new acquaintance, Dr. Chancellor, came to her aid and “printed a large placard which explained in French the object of my visit and asking for an opportunity to earn some money.” Unable to persuade customs officers to release her bicycle, she negotiated for the Sterling to be shipped to Paris, where she traveled by train to stay with a Paris agent for the Sterling Cycle Works, Victor Sloan, and his wife, until its arrival.

  The Paris where Annie arrived on December 4, 1894, was that of Camille Pisarro, Louis Pasteur, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and le Moulin Rouge, perhaps the world’s most famous nightclub, then and now. Almost every night Toulouse-Lautrec was at le Moulin Rouge, sketching the bohemians who came to smoke, drink, carouse, and watch the dancers. Sophisticated, cosmopolitan, and artsy, Paris was a modern world capital of some 2 million people, its skyline graced by the new Eiffel Tower, built just six years before. The salon, evenings of conversation among the city’s intellectual, cultural, and artistic elite, was a fixture of the local social circuit, as was the café, where artists, writers, and poets would pass their days and nights talking over coffee and cigarettes.

  The bicycle, too, was a prominent fixture of Parisian life in 1894. Indeed, earlier development of the vehicle decades before had proceeded roughly in parallel in France and the United States, with the French calling their machines vélocipèdes (literally, “rapid feet”). “In a short time you will see the country roads and the parks filled with people wheeling along upon vélocipèdes [and] the great ladies of the land will unblushingly don man’s dress, or something alarmingly like it, and jump astride their apparatus,” wrote Arsène Alexandre, a Paris writer, in 1895. So popular was cycling among the women of Paris that half a dozen tailors in the city specialized in bicycle costumes for society women. Bicycle “fever” was “at its height” and its popularity transcended class lines. “I have used the expression bicyclemania,” continued Alexandre, “and in view of the facts is it anything short of that? No class of the community is free from the passion, the workers as well as the butterflies.”

  In short, France was primed for a heroine of the wheel, when in rode Annie on her ivory and gold men’s Sterling. News of Annie’s arrival in Paris wasn’t reported in Boston until a month later. “Miss Londonderry…is now in Paris,” reported the Boston Daily Globe on January 5,1895. “‘She,’ as the French papers say, ‘is the object of much interest.’ Deservedly, for when one has no money and no clothes one is, as the racing boys say, ‘a poor beggar!’”

  Annie’s family probably knew of her arrival in France earlier than the Globe reported it. Though none of her letters or cables home have survived, she surely would have been writing home from time to time, if only to reassure her family that she was all right. It may have been remarkably brash for her to have left her husband and children, but she didn’t abandon them altogether and would return to them when her trip was finished.

  WHEN ANNIE ARRIVED in Paris, she immediately became the object of a great deal of interest and speculation in the press. “She seems made only of muscles and nerves and in spite of her petite size gives the impression of remarkable energy,” said one French newspaper. This was one of the more flattering descriptions she would read about herself while in France, for although the French people embraced her with great enthusiasm and warmth, their journalists didn’t think much of her appearance.

  Though Annie was often described in American newspapers as a highly attractive woman, the French saw her quite differently. Because she was muscular from cycling and wore a man’s riding suit, she didn’t conform to French notions of femininity. After referring to France’s “fragile and delicious” young maidens, one Lyon columnist wrote:

  Truth be told, Miss Londonderry is not of their race, not even…their sex. She belongs to that category of neutered beings, single women without a husband or children, that social evolution and the increasing difficulties of existence [have] given birth to especially in America and in England.

  Such women…resemble neutered worker bees whose superiority of labor is a result of infertility. And the suppression of love and maternal function so profoundly alters in them any feminine personality that they are neither men nor women and they really constitute a third sex.

  Miss Londonderry belongs to this third sex. It is enough to see her masculine traits, her muscled physique, her athlete’s legs, her hands which appear strong enough to box vigorously, and everything masculine which emanates from her energetic being, to establish that it wou
ld be difficult to apply the legendary verse of Mr. Legouve: “Fall at the feet of this sex as you would to your mother!”

  Though this was the most venemous attack on Annie’s femininity, many French reporters commented on what they saw as masculine traits. “[O]ne would be tempted to believe that Miss Annie Londonderry, with her boyish charms, is really a young man who assumed a female name in order to draw attention to her reckless enterprise,” wrote one such observer. “Mannish, bright eyes, dark, tan, a bony and energetic face,” said Le Figaro. She “has none of the physical charms of a woman,” opined another Paris newspaper. “Of average height, very slender, Miss Londonderry could easily be taken for a young boy rather than a woman, and she doesn’t have any coquettish mannerisms of a woman.” Annie didn’t appear slender to another reporter, who described her as “definitely not pretty, but, on the other hand, has a Herculean build.”

  Although the French press spilled a torrent of positive ink about Annie and her journey, lavishing her with praise for her gumption and her guts, many reporters simply could not believe that a woman on so independent a journey and dressed as she was could have any of the feminine attributes they so prized in women. Even her capacity to love was questioned. In Lyon, Annie was asked if she had left behind in Boston a romantic interest. She looked perplexed at first and then laughed heartily, a laugh the reporter interpreted as incredulity that she would have any interest in romance at all.