At every station stop Indians crowded around the train. The women carried their babies strapped on their backs in small wooden crates softly lined with rabbit skins; the mothers turned their backs to the passengers to show off their babies, and then held out their hands hoping for a coin. In the West as in the East, it seemed, there was money to be made in displaying oneself for the curiosity of strangers. She thought the Indian children were very beautiful, with smooth tawny skin and long, shining black hair on the boys and girls alike. The old women were impossibly wrinkled; they squatted in the dust, huddled in blankets against the cold, as impassive as idols. A coin dropped in their hand would elicit an indistinct mumble and perhaps a glance of acknowledgment, but they seemed not to care much one way or the other, just as the arrival of the fast mail train, gleaming white and altogether modern, did not interest them. It was clear that they had long ago given up any hope of comprehending the vagaries of the white man, and had come to understand, as Bisland noted, that “peace and composure lay only in entirely ignoring him.”
Less than a hundred hours earlier Elizabeth Bisland had been lying in bed reading the newspapers; now she was riding on a train in the desert, looking at Indians. Once more she had the sensation she had felt back in her apartment waiting for the hansom to take her to the station: that she was living inside a dream from which she could not awake. As the afternoon drew to a close the train began ascending to higher ground, into the districts of silver and lead, through old mining towns with names like Mirage and Look Out and Miser. The towns seemed to have been rigged up entirely out of canvas and wood, with little more concern for permanence than the weekend camp of a traveling medicine show. What a relief it was that evening, stopped at a little wayside eating station, to make out through the dusk a line of poplars. The echoing timber, Gerard Manley Hopkins had called it, full of birdsong that rinses and wrings the ear. The mountain air felt delightfully soft after the aridity of the desert, and in the darkness was a sweet smell that reminded her of white clover, though she knew that there could be no early flowers of grass in November, not in the Sierra Nevada.
Awaking at daybreak, Bisland saw from the window of her berth the Sacramento Valley opening itself up below her, grassy, rounded hills with wisps of mist like whitecaps rolling among them. The sky had now grown cloudy, the light filtered and low across the horizon. She opened the window wider and was startled to see the distinctive spreading canopy of live oaks, unexpected but absolutely unmistakable, and wonderfully reminiscent of her home places of Louisiana and Mississippi. The western edge of America seemed almost to be echoing the eastern, another sign that her cross-country journey was nearing its end. Just after breakfast the train rolled into the Oakland Mole, a pier built fully two miles out into the bay, where the train passengers boarded the ferry to San Francisco. The boat made its way through the choppy waters of the bay toward the narrower strait of the Golden Gate, passing the lighthouse at Alcatraz, the Army barracks of Angel Island, the island itself ringed by cannons. Through the rain and the mist San Francisco rose into view, a vision in white, lines of elegant frame houses spread out over the steep hills, broad streets running up and down between them. Just ahead was the ferry house at the foot of Market Street, a low wooden building on which stood a single clock tower. At a quarter past nine on Tuesday, November 19, the ferry bumped up against the San Francisco wharf: Elizabeth Bisland had traveled coast to coast in only four days, fifteen hours, and fifteen minutes. The mail, too, had arrived on time, and the railroad officials cheered and clasped hands in jubilation and then went to deliver their statements to the reporters. Bisland made her way to the terminal, through the rain and the oozing mud, feeling great pleasure in walking with long strides and swinging arms after days of confinement on the train, delighted to be rid of the roar of the engine in her ears.
NOVEMBER 19–21, 1889
San Francisco
Along with the other passengers from the fast mail train, Elizabeth Bisland would be staying at the Palace Hotel, the most opulent hotel in San Francisco and, with more than eight hundred guest rooms, the largest anywhere in the country. The Palace featured all the latest conveniences, including electric call buttons in every room, more than seven hundred noiseless water closets, and four hydraulic elevators, which the hotel preferred to call “rising rooms.” Bisland was not sorry to learn upon her arrival that she would be remaining in the city for the next two days, as John Brisben Walker’s efforts to arrange an early departure for the Oceanic had fallen through. That afternoon she went out and bought herself some thin shirtwaists to wear in the hotter countries, to supplement the two dresses she had brought along with her. She also bought some silk and worsted for fancywork; she rarely did needlepoint in New York—she just never seemed to have the time—but now she thought it would give her something else to do on board ship. The San Francisco Examiner sent a reporter to the hotel to interview her about her trip, a young woman writing under the pen name “Annie Laurie.” The reporter’s real name was Winifred Black, and she would go on to become one of the most admired journalists in San Francisco; her article about Elizabeth Bisland was the first she ever published in a career that spanned five decades. Bisland did not like to be interviewed; it was something she knew she would never get used to, but it was unavoidable now and the best thing to do was to speak as pleasantly as possible. She fully anticipated, she told Annie Laurie, that she would enjoy her trip, though of course she wished she had more time to spend in the places she would be visiting, especially the Orient. She did not expect to meet Nellie Bly along the way, though it was certainly possible that they might pass each other without knowing, like Gabriel and Evangeline in the Longfellow poem. She would be very glad to return home again.
The next morning Bisland was surprised to see that the Examiner had placed its article about her on the front page. “She doesn’t look like a very daring creature, this little woman with the gentle voice and appealing dark eyes,” the story began. “But she’s going around the world in seventy-five days, and she’s going alone. If this thing can possibly be accomplished she is the very one to do it. It is always these delicate, highbred women who have unheard of endurance and wonderful pluck.” To her great consternation, as a result of the article she had become something of a celebrity in town, and all morning she was interrupted by visitors who sent their cards up to her room bearing urgent messages, but who upon admittance confessed that they had no reason for the intrusion other than a desire to look at her.
The marble-floored courtyard of San Francisco’s Palace Hotel (Illustration Credit 6.1)
Thankfully, that afternoon editors from the Examiner took her and some of the other mail-train passengers to lunch at the Cliff House. A steam railway carried them through the city. To Bisland’s eyes, grown used to the spires of New York, San Francisco seemed very low in scale, few of the buildings more than three or four stories high. That was because of the fear of earthquakes, her hosts told her; still, in recent years earthquakes had almost entirely ceased, and many of the newer buildings were much taller than the ones they replaced. Even in November, roses climbed up front porches, their heavy blossoms perfuming the damp streets with lovely garden smells. When she closed her eyes she could almost imagine herself back in New Orleans, on just such an expedition to the Spanish Fort by the lakeside, and she was filled with a sense of nostalgia for those earlier times, glad to be free for a few moments of the demands of the race clock, once again amid a cheerful group of witty, good-looking men who would let a day slip away with the carelessness of a spendthrift.
The Cliff House, a grand restaurant perched precariously atop a huge flat rock high above the ocean, was a sight that all visitors to the city wanted to see. Elizabeth Bisland had had quite enough of majestic cliffside views, but this establishment, at least, was stationary. Carriages brought patrons up the long road that led to the restaurant. There was terrapin and frogs’ legs, oyster soup and roast chicken and lamb chops. Between courses one could revive an
appetite with a promenade on a long balcony facing the ocean. Perhaps two hundred yards away the Seal Rocks jutted up from the waves like three black eggs, where a raft of sea lions played, hobbling from spot to spot on the rocks, then diving into the water with unexpected grace. The ocean breezes felt, somehow, both warm and cool on her cheeks. This was the first time she had ever seen the Pacific Ocean, grand and serene in its immensity, and she surprised herself with the thrill of discovery she felt, the joyous shock of astonishment at the sight. She was reminded of the Keats poem, recalling the lines about Cortez staring “with eagle eyes” at the Pacific; not even he, she thought, who stood “silent, upon a peak in Darien,” had felt a more magnificent opening of the spirit than she at that moment. In the distance the curtain of cloud began slowly to raise; low on the horizon, the sun reddened the sky and cast a single, shining beam on the water, as though making a golden road to the west. It was, Bisland’s companions assured her, a most promising sign.
The Oceanic was scheduled to depart at three o’clock Thursday afternoon. That morning Elizabeth Bisland used her remaining time in San Francisco to make the final preparations for her voyage. She exchanged American banknotes for English gold, read telegrams, wired parting messages to New York, and revised her itinerary. The plan now was for her to sail with the Oceanic to Yokohama and then board a train for Tokyo, where she would charter a special steamer to Hong Kong in order to catch the North German Lloyd ship Prussian, bound for Genoa. (The World had declared that Nellie Bly would not charter any special trains or steamers on her trip, but John Brisben Walker had never made such a stipulation.) In Genoa she would take an express train to Le Havre, where the fast French steamer La Champagne was departing for New York. She thought the trip might be accomplished in as little as seventy-two days, though (as she was quick to add to all the reporters who arrived to interview her) there was no predicting the final outcome.
By the time of the Oceanic’s departure, several articles about Elizabeth Bisland had appeared in the local newspapers, and the crowd that assembled on the dock that afternoon was much larger than usual to see off a steamship. The Examiner reported, “Women jostled and rumpled each other in the effort to crowd aboard the Oceanic and catch a glimpse of the adventurous heroine.” A few especially determined young women actually did manage to get aboard the ship and into her stateroom, “a delegation,” Bisland called them, “who had got wind of my eccentric performance and came with no other credentials than a desire to gape.” Two days earlier they had never heard of Elizabeth Bisland, but now she was being talked about in the papers, she was apparently beautiful and clever and daring and she was trying to do something that had never been done before, and if she could find her way around the world they could find their way to her cabin; and they gathered around her in the small, crowded room, peppering her with whatever questions came to mind: How old are you? Do you expect to be seasick? Have you any limes or lemons? Is this your first trip? Are you afraid of the water? Ain’t you got nobody with you?
Elizabeth Bisland’s replies were not recorded, although the Examiner reporter on hand did note that Occidental and Oriental officials, having refused John Brisben Walker’s offer of money in exchange for moving up the departure time, had at least consented to issue orders to the ship’s captain and chief engineer to proceed with all possible speed. “I intend,” Bisland said playfully, “to make eyes at the Engineer.” (The Examiner noted, “This will doubtless insure a trip of unexampled rapidity.”) She was being as amusing as she could, but in truth she was feeling especially low at that moment, lonely in an overcrowded room, making awkward conversation with acquaintances, openly stared at by strangers: turned, in her words, into “a sort of inexpensive freak show.”
In the future, Bisland silently resolved, she would conduct herself in such a way that journalists never again had reason to put her name in a headline.
At last the ship’s bell sounded, and Bisland accompanied her visitors back down to the wharf to say final goodbyes, when to her surprise a handsome gray-haired man handed up to her a bouquet of white chrysanthemums and roses; attached to the flowers was a card printed with the name J. M. Prather, the words good wishes and New Orleans written in pencil in the corner. He tipped his hat and smiled at her with such friendliness that she felt she was being greeted by a relative. That he had taken the trouble to bid her silent farewell seemed to her a delicate and charming example of chivalry; she felt that she had been entrusted with a memento from an earlier time, and though she never saw Mr. Prather again she did not forget him, nor his kindness, which bore up her spirits as she sailed from American shores.
NOVEMBER 22, 1889
London
THE SPECIAL MAIL TRAIN FROM SOUTHAMPTON ARRIVED IN LONDON’S WATELOO Station at five o’clock in the morning. Nellie Bly and Tracey Greaves, The World’s London correspondent, who would be accompanying her to France, had traveled for two hours in the train’s single passenger car, the locked compartment heated only by foot warmers and dingily lit by a smoky oil lamp. At that moment Elizabeth Bisland was beginning her trip across the Pacific Ocean, but Nellie Bly was unaware of this fact—no one from the World staff had wired the information about Bisland to Tracey Greaves, or if they had, he had neglected to tell her. As far as Bly knew, she was racing purely against a timetable established by a fictional character named Phileas Fogg, and she was thrilled by the opportunity she had now been given to meet Fogg’s creator, the world-famous novelist Jules Verne.
It was some time before the porter came to unlock the doors of the car. Bly was increasingly anxious to get going—they had, she knew, only four hours in the city, and much to accomplish while there—but finally he appeared, and the two rushed through the train shed and into the vast, deserted station, Bly struggling to keep up with Greaves’s longer strides. Outside, London seemed covered with a sheer scrim, the entire city clothed in heavy gray fog. In front of the station a dozen large carriages were lined up to receive the Royal Mail; they were the only vehicles in sight, other than a solitary hansom cab, a four-wheeled brougham that at first appeared to be empty but upon closer inspection revealed the cabman sleeping inside it. At some length the driver was awakened and persuaded to take on a pair of paying customers, and to make as much haste as he could in the run across the city. He asked where the trunks were, and Bly just smiled and pointed to the gripsack at her feet. The driver looked at Bly for a moment, not saying anything, and it occurred to her that he probably thought she had run away from home. But he did not ask any more questions; he just climbed up onto his seat and lashed the horse, and the carriage set off at a brisk clip, speeding across Waterloo Bridge without Bly getting a glimpse of the Thames flowing beneath it, along the Strand without her seeing any of its famous mansions, past Trafalgar Square without pausing to admire Nelson’s Column. “If she attempts any description at all of what she saw in England,” Tracey Greaves would write in The World, “it will be much the same as a man describing Broadway if he were shot through a pneumatic tube from the Western Union Building to the Twenty-third Street Uptown Office.”
Looking up through the carriage’s side window, Bly could see the forms of skeletal trees outlined in black against the sky; below, houses glided by like ghosts in the swirling mist. Here and there she could make out a shadowy figure on the sidewalk, on his way to complete some unknowable errand. It was a morning much like those she remembered from her years in Pittsburgh, the fog blurring the gas lamps and softening the edges of the buildings, lending a pleasing air of peace and solemnity to things that in the plain light of day would seem merely commonplace. “How are these streets compared with those of New York?” asked Tracey Greaves, breaking the silence.
“They are not bad,” Bly replied, in as offhand a tone as she could manage, turning her face to the window to avoid any further talk on the subject. In fact she had been thinking about how much better the London streets were than the dreadful ones back in New York; she wondered what possible excuse she would make
, if anyone dared actually say that to her. She had made up her mind that while on foreign shores she would hear no word spoken against her country.
She settled down deeper into the carriage seat; even in her wool cap and ulster she was shivering in the damp London chill. She had been awake for nearly twenty-four hours, and during that time she had been in a steamship, a tugboat, a train, and now a carriage. She could feel a headache coming on, that familiar dull throb, the world starting to totter around her. The brougham made its way through the gray, silent streets, the only sounds the rumble of the wheels and the clop of the horse’s hooves on the pavement. Finally the carriage pulled up at an address in the fashionable West End section of London, the residence of the second secretary of the American Legation, Robert S. McCormick. A light burned in one of the downstairs windows. Tracey Greaves had wired ahead with his special request—Nellie Bly, The World’s celebrated globe-trotter, needed a permanent passport to be issued immediately—and so even at this early hour the second secretary was already up and dressed. He was forty years old, with kindly dark eyes and a Vandyke beard with a mustache that curled up at the ends. After warmly welcoming Nellie Bly and congratulating her on the successful completion of the first leg of her journey (and, to Bly’s relief, offering his visitors coffee), he ushered them into a large room where he sat down at a desk and began making out the passport. Bly gratefully drank her coffee while McCormick asked her the standard questions: eye color, height, place of birth. Then McCormick asked Greaves to please stand at the other side of the room so that he might ask Miss Bly an important question. Bly had never filled out a passport before, and she wondered nervously what type of secret information might be connected with such official proceedings.
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