by The Lost Cyclist: The Epic Tale of an American Adventurer;His Mysterious Disappearance
Baldwin was incensed. "You have not treated me fairly," he wrote back testily. "I recall very distinctly our conversation in St. Louis relative to the very point in question which you give as an excuse for your withdrawal. At that time you promised, indeed you assured me, that a matter of this kind would positively make no difference with you. This was upon my statement to you that I would take no one who would not willingly part with his dearest friend on earth."
Two and a half years later, in December 1903, Sachtleben married that certain young lady, Mae Merriman, the daughter of a wealthy St. Louis merchant. The two promptly moved to New York City, where Sachtleben took a job with a publisher, before eventually settling in Houston to run the Majestic Theater. The wheelman's days as a world-famous adventurer and correspondent were well behind him.
And what about Frank Lenz? Where might he have been at the start of the new century had he completed his circuit? Certainly, the timing of his return would have been most fortuitous. Pittsburgh, like every other American city, had become bicycle-mad. Declared a downtown retailer in early 1895: "The increase in the sale of bicycle goods is wonderful. We have sold three times as much goods compared to the same period last year." That summer, the Dispatch mused: "The disease is absolutely incurable, and unless something remarkable happens soon the major part of the atmosphere promises to be pumped into pneumatic tires. The many growlers who have cried down the bicycle amusement since its inception will consequently have to utter their protests in indistinct gasps. It will make but little difference. The bicycle has come to stay."
Without a doubt, Lenz would have been welcomed home a hero and deservedly honored as an early proponent of the safety bicycle. Had he written a book, it would have enjoyed brisk sales. Had he embarked on a lecture tour, he would have been in high demand. It seems unlikely, however, that he would have rested on his laurels for long. Perhaps he would have gone on that bicycle trip to South America that he had once proposed, or into the bicycle business.
No doubt Lenz would have resumed an active role in the local cycling community. But he hardly would have recognized his old club, the Allegheny Cyclers, whose membership had soared into triple digits. He might also have been surprised at the number of lady riders. Shortly after his departure, his other club, the Keystone Bicycle Club, began to admit women. Reported the Press at the time: "The Keystone members all like the idea and they are doing missionary among their lady friends to increase the number."
Yet, as much as the sport had opened up, many were still effectively excluded. Asian cyclists on the West Coast were often harassed, and blacks were formally disbarred from the LAW in 1895. Although the ban came about largely at the insistence of southern whites, anti-black sentiment prevailed throughout the country, Pittsburgh included. Observed the Press on New Year's Day 1893: "The wheelmen in all the cycle clubs hereabouts are very seriously opposed to colored men joining the L.A.W The Keystones would about as soon disband as admit an off-color member."
Perhaps Lenz, who had dedicated his trip to a "more sympathetic appreciation of fellow men" following his near-fatal attack in China, would have lent his considerable prestige in favor of inclusion. After all, he had spoken eloquently about the virtues of tolerance. And there is little doubt that he would have returned from his great adventures a vastly more mature and thoughtful man.
In sum, Lenz would no doubt have found some creative and profitable way to ride out the great boom. To be sure, he would have had to share the local limelight with George A. Banker, the youngest of the Banker brood, who would take over Zimmerman's place as America's top racer, winning the World Championship in 1898. Lenz, however, would have been elated with Banker's success, having photographed the champion's first race in Brownsville on July 4, 1889—atop a high-wheeler.
With regard to his personal life, Lenz would no doubt have maintained his base in Pittsburgh, to be near his beloved and long-suffering mother. Perhaps he would have married Annie R. Leech, who would live until 1951 without ever taking a husband. Had they had children, he would no doubt have been the kind and loving father he himself had never had.
By the start of the new century, with the bicycle in dramatic and seemingly irreversible decline, Lenz would doubtless have found a new direction. He would have had many attractive options to choose from. Perhaps, like Robert Bruce, who joined the American Automobile Association, he would have worked in the budding field of motor tourism. He had always loved maps and topology after all. Or perhaps he would have found employment in the manufacturing sector, like his old rival A. C. Banker, who made a small fortune developing windshields.
Of course, none of those happy scenarios played out. On the contrary, even his feeble legacy took a severe beating. The brief mourning period had barely elapsed before the press printed unflattering portraits depicting a reckless young man who might even have harbored a thinly veiled death wish. A member of the Hagerstown Bicycle Club recalled a disturbing dialogue with the ill-fated wheelman early in his tour, shortly after he rolled into that city on a flat tire and under a hard rain:
After donning a dry uniform he talked of the big task before him. He took anything but a cheerful view of it. He said he felt that he would never return to this country alive. When told that others had safely accomplished what he intended to do, he replied: "Oh, no they haven't. I propose literally to ride around the globe on my wheel wherever it is possible. Other persons when they struck Asia used the railroads and ships. I expect that my determination will cost me my life. But I fully intend to go ahead." The last words Mr. Lenz said when he mounted his wheel were: "Well, good-bye. I suppose it is forever."
Another cyclist, Charles Fuller Gates, writing in the Los Angeles Times, recalled a similarly eerie exchange:
I rode part of the way with Frank Lenz while he was crossing this country. As he was our guest for several days, I had a good chance to study him. He was a persistent fellow and full of courage but with poor judgment. The last time I saw him, I said partly in humor: "You'll surely get killed in Asia, you are so stubborn," or words to that effect. He replied: "I expect to be."
Well before motorized vehicles rendered the notion of a world tour by bicycle laughably quaint, the press had already dismissed its supposed merits. In early 1895, following Lenz's disappearance, Bearings articulated the prevailing sentiment.
When Thomas Stevens rode around the world, it had the merit of novelty. But when Tommy returned all the cream had been skimmed from this jar. Nothing was left for his successors but thin milk. Allen and Sachtleben followed him, but although they are only a year or so home, they are already forgotten. Poor Lenz started out on an old and beaten track, and even if he had succeeded the result would have been nil. The bicycle may have a great mission to perform in the world, but bearing a lone man through the wilds of Asia is not part of it.
As the twentieth century unfolded and the bicycle boom became a faint memory, Lenz's name quickly ceased to circulate. In 1923, when eighty-two-year-old Anna Lenz died and was buried beside her second husband in Pittsburgh's St. Mary's Cemetery, not one of the local newspapers recalled that she was the mother of the missing wheelman.
Lenz's cycling contemporaries nonetheless occasionally invoked his memory. Writing for a motorcycle review in the early part of the new century, Robert Bruce recalled his old friend from time to time. When Allen and Sachtleben briefly reunited in 1935, after nearly forty years of separation, they naturally alluded to Lenz. That same year, shortly before he retired to Florida, Charlie Petticord reminisced about his old buddy with a Pittsburgh reporter, showing her the photos and letters he had kept all those years. Ned Friesell described how he had almost become Lenz's escort. "I am still looking forward to that trip around the world," he mused to a gathering of dentists in 1940, "but have given up the idea of doing it by bicycle."
One by one, however, their voices were stilled; Petticord (1944), Friesell (1946), McClarren (1952), Sachtleben (1953), Bruce, Langhans (1954), and Allen (1955). Frank G. Lenz, once o
ne of the world's most famous wheelmen, was "lost" once again—becoming an utterly forgotten figure.
16. REFLECTIONS
ONE MIGHT, OF COURSE, dismiss Lenz's trip as an ill-conceived lark. His various justifications, ranging from the mundane (to test tires) to the sublime (to foster human harmony), were hardly convincing. Yet, however meager its real merits, there is little doubt that a successful conclusion would have accomplished his overriding, if tacit, objective—to get somewhere in life. He knew when he started out that he would never go back to a boring desk job. He was bound for better things. And the fact that he came so agonizingly close to achieving his objectives is proof enough that his calculations were not far off the mark.
Although his vision, courage, and dedication were beyond reproach, his judgment obviously failed him, repeatedly and tragically. For starters, his decision to travel alone, though it was not his preference, placed him in perpetual danger. Notwithstanding Lenz's lame explanation to the Pall Mall Budget, Sachtleben was no doubt correct in his observation that an extra pair of eyes would have served the Pittsburgher well.
Lenz's vow never to take a boat or a train from one point to another, if he could theoretically cycle or walk there, further endangered him. Were it possible to circle the globe exclusively under one's own steam, such a rigid policy might have had some merit. But given that even the most ambitious globe girdler had to cover an arbitrary portion of his journey with assistance, all that really mattered in the end was the total distance traversed overland. Clearly, if Lenz had achieved his goal of covering twenty thousand miles and had returned home safely, no one would have cared if he had taken an occasional train or boat ride to get through a problematic stretch or to hasten his pace. Allen and Sachtleben had shown such sensible flexibility on several occasions, and the world thought no less of them for that.
Lenz's stubbornness also endangered the lives of others. If the main purpose of his trip was to prove the practicality of the safety bicycle, what was the point of hiring young men to carry his vehicle over mountains and streams, where one slip could have meant disaster, rather than shipping it ahead to the next bicycle-friendly destination? Had Lenz been more conscientious and prudent, the life of that poor man who drowned in Burma might have been spared.
Despite these pointless impositions, Lenz might well have returned home safely had he not made one glaring oversight: the failure to exercise more caution while traversing Turkey, one of the two countries he himself had identified at the onset as his most dangerous destination. Perhaps, as Bruce suggested, his narrow escape from China, the other country he cited, had lulled him into a false sense of security.
Certainly, as Chambers observed, Lenz should have advised the foreigners living along the caravan route of his approach, so that they could have kept an eye out for him. More importantly, he might have done a better job of concealing his valuables. His fatal error, however, was his failure to rely heavily on zaptiehs, as Allen and Sachtleben had done, even if they were an added expense and often a nuisance, and they might have slowed him down. But at least he would have probably made it to Constantinople.
Mrs. Lenz, of course, would claim that Frank had asked Turkish officials in Dyaden for protection. That does not, however, appear to have been the case. He was known to have disregarded the advice of several foreigners residing in Tabriz to avoid Turkey altogether. There seems little reason to believe that he had at least the prudence to ask for guards while approaching the notorious Deli Baba Pass, or that he would have been refused. Nor is it clear where Mrs. Lenz got the information that her son had wanted an escort. Perhaps it was simply wishful thinking on her part, or a claim she had to make to support the demand for an indemnity.
Still, no matter how much one attributes Lenz's untimely death to his own miscues and misdeeds, his story remains a heart-wrenching tragedy shrouded in mystery. Robert Bruce, for one, would never find closure. "I try to picture the intrepid young American among the barbaric Kurds who slew him—just when and where and how no one knows," he wrote in 1913. "They made away with him so completely that no trace of his body or bicycle or other belongings ever was found. The slayer may yet be holding the miserable secret, or have died with it."
One feels special sympathy for Mrs. Lenz. She had been right, of course. If only her son had heeded her advice and buckled down to the business of life.... The world, over time, would have opened up to him in ways he could have scarcely imagined in 1892, with the advent of automobile and jet travel. But the bicycle was Lenz's life, and he would have had it no other way. And so he remains one of those frozen figures, immortalized—ironically—by his premature death. There simply is no other way to picture Frank Lenz but as a young man in the prime of life, beaming with joy as he straddles his beloved two-wheeler.
As sad as Lenz's death was, the search for his remains was no less tragic. Although Sachtleben returned alive—no small feat under the circumstances—and his findings ultimately enabled Mrs. Lenz to collect more than $10,000 in insurance and indemnity payments, the plagued process took a heavy toll on an equally valiant young man. Worse, it claimed the lives of two Armenian captives and caused untold grief to their fellow villagers. In nearly every respect, the search was a colossal failure. Endless delays. No body. No justice. Although Lenz was long gone before anyone could have rescued him, it is fair to ask whether a different approach might have produced more satisfying results.
First, one must acknowledge the obvious shortcomings of the Turkish justice system at that time. The sultan himself had insisted, not unreasonably, that Moostoe's possession of Lenz's inner tubes was not proof of his complicity in the murder. Yet five Armenians were thrown summarily into jail for possessing a handful of screws that allegedly had belonged to Lenz's camera. To secure justice from a system with such a glaring double standard would have been an extremely difficult task even under more tranquil circumstances.
Even so, one might have hoped for better results. The list of bunglers starts with James Henry Worman, who was largely responsible for the investigation's belated start. Even taking into account that transportation and communications were excruciatingly slow by today's standards, a year was a long time to get an investigator to the approximate location of the crime. Sachtleben himself noted that, upon his arrival in Erzurum in May 1895, "the first thing Chambers and Graves asked me was why Lenz's friends had waited so long before investigating."
Given Lenz's previous disappearing acts, Worman might be excused for having ignored the first signs of danger. By the fall of 1894, however, he should have been reporting Lenz missing to the State Department rather than writing the ministers abroad, who were powerless to act without Washington's approval. Contacting the missionary headquarters and cabling their envoys along Lenz's route would also have been a prudent measure. Valuable months might have been gained in the vexing quest to pinpoint Lenz's last known location.
In theory, if Worman had cabled Thomas Cook & Son by early August 1894, with instructions to look for Lenz, the agency might have promptly traced Lenz to Chilkani and gotten native investigators to the site before the outbreak of massacres in that region. Obviously, if they had been able to conduct a discreet search for Lenz's grave at that time, they would have stood a much better chance of finding it than Sachtleben did months later operating in a climate of fear. Presumably, they would also have been in a better position to uncover clues pointing to the murderer or murderers.
But even if Worman had acted with greater alacrity and resolve, he might not have obtained satisfactory results from on-the-spot agents. Certainly, he cannot be faulted for ultimately hiring an outside investigator, given his obligations to Lenz's family and the fact that Turkish authorities were unlikely to search for the body, let alone the murderers. Still, he managed to drag out the selection process and cause needless strife. And even when he finally settled on Sachtleben after clumsily dropping Bruce, his decision to detain the investigator in Alton while the winter passed in Turkey only riled his man and ad
ded further delay.
Terrell, having initially spurned the pleas of Lenz's friends for assistance, is another easy target for criticism. For all his wooing of the sultan, he seems to have had little ability to disrupt the Turks' endless stonewalling and foot-dragging. Still, he was hardly as ineffective as Sachtleben claimed. Turkish records show clearly that he did ultimately take the Lenz matter in hand, if not to heart, and he did push discreetly behind the scenes for Turkish cooperation. And Shakir's intervention probably was the result of Terrell's maneuverings, as the minister maintained, though one might question its ultimate value.
Nor was Terrell devoid of any sensible insights. His advice to Sachtleben—to concentrate on finding Lenz's grave—was sound. Had the wheelman accepted the two zaptiehs the vali initially offered in May 1895, he could have gotten to Alashgerd months earlier to search quietly for Lenz's remains. Had he found them, he would have accomplished at least one major objective, while perhaps uncovering important clues to the murder. Conceivably, even if he had failed to find the grave, he could still have returned in the fall with Shakir to conduct house searches and make arrests.
Instead, Sachtleben chose to remain in Erzurum and make highly public demands for a small army to enable him to search the homes of the Kurdish suspects, a dangerous task that even he admitted was unlikely to produce helpful results. Even if Sachtleben had managed to conduct his raids in the summer rather than the fall, it is doubtful that the outcome would have been any more satisfying.
In retrospect, one must question whether Sachtleben really was the best choice—or even a good choice—for an investigator. Certainly his credentials appeared impressive on paper, though he had no prior experience in criminal investigation or law enforcement. But as Worman and the State Department quickly found out, he was a loose cannon whose judgment was not always sound. One wonders if the jilted Bruce might have done a better job after all, despite his tender age.