Ethel Payne was the first African American woman to give commentary on national TV and radio, and Kissinger called her ‘that woman who gives me hell on CBS’. In the course of her career, she travelled to every corner of the globe; she reported on black troops in the Vietnam war; and she interviewed Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr. and JFK. She was a reporter, but Ethel was fully committed to the idea that her purpose as a journalist was deeply tied to activism, as she explained to an interviewer a few years before she died, quoted in a 2011 Washington Post article, ‘Ethel Payne, “First Lady of the Black Press,” Asked Questions No One Else Would’:
I stick to my firm, unshakeable belief that the black press is an advocacy press, and that I, as a part of that press, can’t afford the luxury of being unbiased … When it comes to issues that really affect my people, and I plead guilty, because I think that I am an instrument of change.
Women who wore trousers and enjoyed terrifying hobbies
53
Annie Smith Peck
1850–1935
According to science, there is a small but very important part of the brain which clearly instructs human beings to be terrified of precipitous cliff edges, pointy rocks, slippery, stabby, near-vertical slopes of ice, great big jaggedy crevasses, and swirling, blizzardous death-storms. It has ensured the continued survival of the human race.
Annie Smith Peck, however, seemed to lack this bit of her brain, and so became famous in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for climbing murdery-looking mountains, laughing in the icy face of death, and other such ~girly things~.
Born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1850 to a fancy-enough family, young Annie spent her early years furiously studying the classics, snogging her dreamy boyfriend Will (shout-out to Will), and fangirling over the young suffragist Anna E. Dickinson, who toured the country giving lectures about how women were actually quite good at things.
Eventually, Annie wanted to go to university, as her older brothers had. Unfortunately, however, it was the 1870s, a time when many great men of learning and science firmly believed, in their logical and rational way, that higher education for women would lead to their infertility and early deaths. A very popular 1873 book by one Edward H. Clarke, a Harvard professor with a presumably large and important willy, stated that women’s attendance at university would ‘shut the uterine portals of the blood up, and keep poison in, as well as open them, and let life out.’ Sorry, girls, that’s just science.
If Annie hadn’t been a woman and therefore a highly illogical being, she might have heeded such wise and important willy-given advice. However, she persisted against the warnings of such learned men, and wrote to the president of the University of Michigan, which had in 1870 begun to admit women and even treat them as equals. She was accepted, and had a grand ol’ time studying classics.
After university, Annie was once again warned against the dangers of ~a lady~ moving around the country to different teaching jobs, let alone to Europe to carry on her studies, which she very much wanted to do. Her mother warned her what it might look like for a young woman to travel alone to Europe like a giant slut. But Annie, according to Hannah Kimberley’s biography A Woman’s Place Is At the Top, was not bothered what others thought of her, and replied: ‘I have lived long enough to have got beyond trying to make all my actions satisfactory to my numerous friends and acquaintances.’ Whack that over a sunset and put it on Instagram, friends.
But now to the murdery mountains.
Being outdoorsy, Annie got a taste for mountain climbing when she found that she was not only good at it, but that it was excellent for her humours. She began mounting moderately murdery mountains like Mount Shasta in California and the Matterhorn in Germany. She drummed up press interest in each of her attempts to increase her own celebrity enough to make a living on the lecture circuit after her climbs. In these lectures, she would show rooms of elegant ladies and gentlemen slides of her journeys and describe the mountains’ beautiful views, as well as their ‘chasms of unknown depth where a few inches more of slipping would have meant farewell to earth’s pleasant scenes’.
Listen. We all have our strengths. Annie could scale perilous mountains with hands and feet numb from impending frostbite, keeping a cool head at mind-bending altitudes, and staying steadfast despite the possibility of a terrible death at any moment. And I can hold my pee in for a really long time.
Annie, ever the PR girl, made enough of a name for herself that the media would sometimes exaggerate the heights of the mountains she’d climbed, or say she’d been the first woman to climb them when she actually wasn’t. (Just some more of that FAKE NEWS we’ve been hearing so much about lately.) Annie didn’t always make a huge effort to correct them, preferring to increase her own notoriety, and therefore her desirability on the lecture circuit. Feel free to judge her for this, but just make sure you’ve climbed at least 21,831 feet in ice and snow first. Then go right ahead.
Mountain climbing was of course a sausage fest in Annie’s time. As well as our time, I suppose. Throughout her career, Annie would have to deal with men doubting or belittling her achievements. And while many climbing clubs and outdoorsy societies included women, some, like Britain’s Alpine Club, would not admit women, even those as accomplished as Annie. ‘I was told the presence of ladies would spoil their dinner,’ Annie wrote of that club. Which makes sense. The presence of a woman at dinner would lead to mass hysteria and the early deaths of all, surely.
Even more shocking to 19th-century sensibilities was a widely circulated portrait of Annie posing in her climbing outfit – wearing trousers LIKE A COMMON HARLOT. This fashion choice created quite the stir in a time when American women were literally being arrested for wearing trousers. Which also makes sense. Imagine being forced to know that women had two separate legs, and not just one big tree-trunk leg hidden under a voluminous skirt? Yes, everything made sense in the 19th century.
Annie’s most famous climb was in 1908 when she reached the summit of the northern peak of Peru’s imposing Huascarán mountain, where she and her climbing team reached her career record altitude of 21,831 feet (aka the height you have to beat to be allowed to talk shit about Annie). This altitude made her the record holder of any man or woman in the entire Western Hemisphere. And she did it at the sprightly age of 58.
Annie achieved all of her mountaineering feats without the high-tech Patagonia gear that dads pretend they need to go camping for a night. Her supplies included woollen socks, a wool face mask with a moustache painted on, and bars of chocolate. She said that ‘chocolate is absolutely essential’ for climbing. Amirite, ladies?! No really, it’s good for altitude sickness, apparently.
After her achievement at Huascarán, Annie thought for a time she had achieved the altitude record for the entire world, but one woman would set out to prove her wrong: Fanny Bullock Workman. No, I didn’t make up that name. Once upon a time in the 1800s, two parents looked at a baby girl and thought, ‘She looks like a Fanny Bullock.’
An aside: in 2011 my best friend Emily and I (hey Emily) decided we should stop referring to other women as bitches. Now, should we ever feel tempted to call a woman a bitch, we instead pause, take a deep, calming breath, and say: ‘I’m sure she’s lovely.’
Since Emily is reading this book (you better be reading this book, Emily) I shall simply say of Fanny Bullock Workman that she was, I’m sure, a very lovely person. Perhaps the loveliest!
Fanny was ten years younger than Annie, and from a much wealthier and better-connected family. While Annie had to scramble for funds for each trip she took, Fanny and her husband travelled all around the world’s highest peaks with all the best gear and the best guides. Hearing Annie’s estimates that she had reached anywhere from 22,000 to 24,000 feet or above on Huascarán, Fanny took it upon herself to hire a team of engineers to ‘triangulate’ (idk, use maths) the mountain’s exact height and thereby debunk Annie as FAKE NEWS. Fanny spent the equivalent of $300,000 to prove that Annie was not, in f
act, the Queen of Climbing, and rather it was she, the lovely Fanny, who was Queen.
But it wasn’t enough for Fanny to spend huge amounts of money triangulating mountains. No, this Fanny was an insatiable fanny. She was an old-timey Regina George. She went on to talk shit in the press about Annie’s physical appearance and, of course, her slatternly trouser-wearing. One interviewer recorded that Fanny ‘alluded with a smile of subtle scorn to the fact that the scaler of the Andes (AKA OUR ANNIE) invariably climbed in knickerbockers.’ Fanny added, ‘I have never found it necessary to dispense with the skirt.’ OK, Fanny. OK. Cool. I’m sure you were lovely.
When Annie learned that Huascarán was in fact lower than Aconcagua – which Fanny had climbed with her dirtbag husband – her reply was ice cold:
I always hoped Huascarán would prove to be the highest mountain in the Western world, but now it seems that Aconcagua is highest. But anyone can climb that. It’s just a walk. No cliffs. No glaciers.
Fanny left her alone after that.
Annie’s second great rival would come in the form of Hiram Bingham III, a fancy Yale man said to be the inspiration for Indiana Jones. Hiram disapproved of women climbers, especially middle-aged women climbers in knickerbockers like Annie, and decided to outdo her by climbing what was thought to be a higher peak than Huascarán, Coropuna in Peru. Annie had set her sights on the very same mountain. As the headline blared in The New York Times: ‘MISS PECK GOES OUT TO CLIMB THE HEIGHTS: Huascarán Not Being the Top of America, She’s Going to Find the Top and Stand on It’.
Of course, Hiram was too proud to admit that he was in direct competition with a woman 25 years his senior. He wrote to his wife: ‘Of course we are not racing for Coropuna but she thinks we are – which makes it amusing.’ Ha ha yes, very amusing, dearest Hiram. I’m sure you were lovely.
Annie and Hiram set off from New York to Peru in a rush, even ending up on the same boat for one deeply awkward bit of the journey. After a race across South America that should probably be the inspiration for the next Indiana Jones film, Annie and her crew made it to the mountain first. She planted a flag near the top which read: VOTES FOR WOMEN. It may as well have read: SUCK IT, HIRAM.
Annie spent her later years actively involved in the suffragist movement. As a seasoned expert in pan-American relations, she also wanted to be a diplomat to a South American country, but, naturally, women weren’t allowed to be diplomats in those days. On the plus side, in her old age she began to hang out with a girl gang of other overly daring women such as Amelia Earhart, who cited Annie as an inspiration. Earhart wrote of Annie: ‘I am only following in the footsteps of one who pioneered when it was brave just to put on the bloomers necessary for mountain climbing.’
Annie would continue to climb until the age of 82, and after a lifetime of travel and exploration, always living by her motto that ‘home is where my trunk is,’ she died at 84. Her gravestone in Providence reads: YOU HAVE BROUGHT UNCOMMON GLORY TO WOMEN OF ALL TIME.
54
Jean Batten
1909–1982
If you’ve ever been on a plane, you’re probably aware that they make no sense. How do they get off the ground? How do they know which way to go? How do they stay up? They’re so heavy. These are just some of the questions that mankind will never be able to answer.
But none of this bothered Jean Batten, the mega glam 1930s aviator from New Zealand who set multiple world records for her daring long-distance solo flights around the world. Jean was born in Rotorua, New Zealand, in 1909. She was a gifted musician and ballet dancer, but what she really wanted, like all teen girls, was to fly planes. And so she moved with her mother to London to join the London Aeroplane Club, learn to fly, and find out how to make planes stay up.
Jean and her mother were laser-focused on their goal: for Jean to attain international superstardom by hurtling across oceans in tiny tin cans in a state of constant peril. And to do so while maintaining a glamorous image. Just how glam are we talking? Well, Jean would carry a make-up bag in her tiny planes so that her lipstick would be camera-ready as soon as she got out of her plane after each heroic feat. Jean would have been amazing at Instagram, and her mother would have been the first to comment each time she posted.
Jean’s first feat was to try and break the record of Amy Johnson, the British aviator who was the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia. Jean wanted to do the same, but faster. On her first attempt, she flew into a sandstorm and went into a terrifying tailspin, but managed to pull out in time to make a safe landing near Baghdad. Back in the air, she carried right on, as if she hadn’t just nearly died – and hit ANOTHER sandstorm, this time forcing her to land in Balochistan, in what is now Pakistan. At this point, her tiny plane was knackered, and the engine gave out entirely. She crashed near Karachi, but crawled out of the wreck just fine, presumably with her make-up looking absolutely 10/10.
A word on planes in the 1930s: Jean was flying a plane known as a Gypsy Moth. It wasn’t even enclosed, guys. Have you ever been on a motorway and had to roll up the windows because the wind was getting a bit much? OK, now imagine flying through a series of sandstorms in an open-top plane, alone, from England to Australia. Also, you have no way of communicating with anyone on the ground. Also, your lipstick looks great.
Jean, instead of deciding after her first failed attempt that the ground was actually a quite nice place to be, decided to give it another go. On her second attempt, Jean ignored warnings not to try and fly against a strong headwind across the Mediterranean Sea, and ran out of fuel. She knew it was her own silly fault, and recorded thinking at the time: ‘A watery grave is what I deserved.’ If it’s what she deserved, she didn’t get it, instead crash-landing on the outskirts of Rome without breaking a bone, and even finding a kind Italian gentleman to lend her some spare wings to get her plane back to England.
Still, Jean thought to herself that, yes, she’d quite like to try it again. She wasn’t, after all, enough of an international superstar yet. And so, in 1934, Jean finally made it from England to Australia, through a monsoon in Burma, in just under 15 days – breaking Amy’s record by four and a half days. She was the world record holder, and a media sensation. The headline of the Daily Express read: ‘THE GIRL WHO HAS BEATEN ALL THE MEN’. To drum up continued press for herself and her sponsors, she undertook tours across Australia and New Zealand with a little black kitten named Buddy.
Jean’s next feat was becoming the first woman to fly herself across the South Atlantic, and then in 1936, incredibly, to fly the first direct-ish flight from England to New Zealand. A flight from England to New Zealand nowadays is punishing enough, and at least you get to watch a few movies and have a look through the skincare section of the duty free catalogue. Jean, meanwhile, had to stay focused all that way on the difficult task of not plummeting to her death. At least by this time she was flying a plane with a top.
The last leg of the New Zealand feat was the most dangerous, crossing the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand. ‘If I go down in the sea,’ she said, ‘no one must fly out to look for me.’ This was a 1,200 mile crossing with only a watch and a compass to guide her, and yet she was such a keen navigator that she managed to land within 100 yards of where she’d planned.
To sum up: Jean Batten was a madwoman who escaped death over and over flying teeny tiny planes through perilous storms that would make most people shit themselves in terror. But shitting yourself in terror is not very glam, and Jean was a very glam woman.
Here’s the other thing about Jean, though, that comes up in anything you watch or read about her. Beyond her nutso solo flights in tiny tin-can planes, Jean Batten was also famous for charming men, taking their money to buy planes, crashing those planes, returning the bits of broken plane to the men, and then dumping the men. This, and the fact that she became a recluse and died alone, having never married, always ends up as the shameful denouement in the telling of her life story. Her critics will stress that she was too vain, too aloof,
and too cruel to the men who loved her. And she cared too much about her lipstick, after all.
One man gave her his life savings, £400, to buy her first plane. He wanted to marry her, and clearly saw this as the deal – a deal which she reneged on. A quick word to my gentlemen readers: if you give someone £400 to buy a plane, it doesn’t oblige them to marry you.
What Jean loved was flying. She loved ‘the intoxicating drug of speed, and freedom to roam the earth’. If she wanted to be remembered and beloved as a legend, I propose that we let her. It may be a tired line of argument, but truly, would history begrudge a man for his vanity at wanting to be a legend? Would we judge a man to be cold, and deserving of a lonely death, rather than remember him as a romantic and enigmatic confirmed bachelor, if he had wronged a few lovers in his 20s?
The truth is, Jean did want to marry, once – a fellow aviator named Beverley Shepherd. But one day, his plane went missing. Jean took off in her plane to help in the search, to no avail. While some of those in the plane survived, Beverley did not. Jean remembered reading the news: ‘I bought a newspaper and forced myself to read it. It was almost as if I deliberately drove a dagger into my heart.’
Later, she fell in love again, with an RAF pilot. He died, too, in World War II, which also marked the end of her flying career.
Is a woman not allowed to be cold after suffering all that? Or do women have to keep smiling to their graves? Do even the great female adventurers have to end up domesticated in order to earn the well wishes of history?
Wait, don’t go! Come back. I’m done ranting. Mostly. My point is, if Jean Batten was an asshole, let her be an asshole. Nobody cares that Winston Churchill was an asshole. So many famous men of history were probably assholes, but we remember their assholishness as their not giving a damn, their romantic rejection of the social pleasantries that would have held them back on their quest to greatness.
100 Nasty Women of History Page 15