Eighty Days
Page 48
51 an elderly man who had once lived in England: Verdery, 5769.
52 with little need of revision: In the Times-Democrat, Lafcadio Hearn wrote, “We afterward discovered” that Bisland’s poems had “been written without revision or remodelling of any sort.” Tinker, 177.
53 “mob of gentlewomen who wrote with ease”: Brady, (1999), 7.
54 In the winter of 1882: Bisland (1907), I:77. In the winter of 1882 Elizabeth Bisland was twenty-one years old. Hearn mistakenly described her as being “sixteen years old, or so, when I first met her” (Stevenson, 125), an error that was compounded by later biographers. Edward Larocque Tinker, for instance, called Bisland “a tall, handsome, dark-eyed girl of 18” (Tinker, 175); a later biographer, Jonathan Cott, says that she was seventeen (Cott, 151).
55 a small whitewashed room: See the description in Bisland (1903), 224.
56 vacancies were signaled: Coleman (1885), 64.
57 “a wretched little provincial”: Bisland (1903), 225.
58 on lower Camp Street: The exact address was 58 Camp Street. New Orleans City Directory, 1882 (New Orleans: L. Soards), 819. Today the building would be on the 300 block of Camp Street, between Natchez and Gravier Streets.
59 a German visitor to the city: Campanella, 117.
60 Across Canal, on Camp Street: See the section called “A Stroll Up Newspaper Row,” in ibid., 151.
61 a far different city: See the descriptions of New Orleans in Jackson (1969), 16, 26.
62 of which she was an original member: King (1932), 57.
63 (another was Julia Ward Howe): Howe was living in the city while she served as chief of the Woman’s Department of the 1884 New Orleans World’s Fair.
64 No invitations to the Royal Street salon were ever sent out: Brady (1992), 155.
65 “a place of resort for men and women of brains and wit”: Ibid.
66 “a little circle of magnetic sunshine”: Brady (1999), 7.
67 “to remain on good terms with him”: Bisland (1907), 79.
68 “diamond-hard”: Ibid.
69 “une jeune fille un peu farouche”: Bisland (1907), II:475.
70 who at the age of eighteen: Margaret Brownson Bisland was born on September 30, 1839, and married on June 24, 1858. McGehee, 16.
71 in 1884 … she inserted a notice: The notice appeared in the September 9, 1884, edition of the Times-Democrat.
72 “elevated financially, socially, and morally”: Lindig, 49.
73 “equal salaries with men”: Ibid.
74 twelve women showed up: Ibid.; Miller, 341.
75 the New Orleans Woman’s Club: The club’s name was not officially established until the following year. Lindig, 51.
76 “This Louisiana sisterhood”: Miller, 341.
77 its aggressive religiosity: In a later essay, entitled “Amateur Saints,” Bisland would write, “If there is any one thing more particularly repulsive to me than another it is the way the average clerical person speaks of religious things. One would suppose that such matters, if one really believed them, would be the profoundest sentiments of one’s nature, and be mentioned with the reserve and reverence with which the lay person treats the deeper sentiments, such as love, honour, or patriotism.” Bisland (1906), 153.
CHAPTER FOUR: “HOW QUICK CAN A WOMAN GO AROUND THE WORLD?”
1 She had fifty dollars in her purse: Tutwiler, 631.
2 on Madison Avenue: Bisland is not listed in the city directories of the time. The first record of where she lived came from Lafcadio Hearn, who in 1887 tried to visit her at her previous address of 136 Madison Avenue. By that time, though, she had already moved to Fourth Avenue. McWilliams, 198.
3 a kind of naturalized citizen of New York: See Tutwiler, 628.
4 a European style of building called an apartment house: See the description of New York apartment houses in The Strangers Mercantile Guide, 97. Note, by the way, the distinction between apartment houses and tenements, which had long existed in New York: apartment houses, unlike tenements, provided a bathroom within each dwelling.
5 only a single rental apartment building: Nevius, 150.
6 fourteen stories tall: Landau and Condit, 112.
7 “Why not go as high”: Ibid., 135.
8 “large and determined”: The description of him is from Lafcadio Hearn. Bisland (1907), I: 408.
9 the Hubert Home Club: Landau and Condit, 135. The building still stands on the northeast corner of Madison Avenue and Thirtieth Street.
10 coal cost twice as much by the scuttleful: Tutwiler, 629.
11 “My dear little girl”: Verdery, 5770.
12 “a little sketch of a negro funeral”: Tutwiler, 633.
13 “She works for four papers”: Stevenson, 190. The entry for Elizabeth Bisland in the Library of Southern Literature estimates that during this period she was turning out, on average, fifty thousand words a month, and further states that she was earning as much as five thousand dollars a year, a prodigious amount for a freelance writer of the time. Verdery, 5770.
14 Fourth Avenue between Thirty-first and Thirty-second Streets: The address was 475 Fourth Avenue. The first listing for the sisters does not appear until the directory for 1890. Trow’s New York City: Directory, Vol. CIV, for the Year Ending May 1, 1891 (New York: Trow City Directory Company, 1890), 111.
15 “undoubtedly the most beautiful woman in Metropolitan journalism”: The Journalist, December 8, 1888, 3.
16 “the prettiest writing woman in New York”: Molly Bawn, “Feminine Bachelors,” Philadelphia Inquirer, December 1, 1889, 9.
17 “She was a devilishly beautiful woman”: Tinker, 317.
18 “expanded mentally and physically”: Cott, 234.
19 “She is a witch—turning heads everywhere”: Ibid.
20 “Mentally American women do not interest American men”: Bisland (1906), 125.
21 he would leap over a four-barred gate: Sedgwick, 113.
22 “English, Philosophy, Sciences”: McDonald, 57.
23 a prize of three thousand dollars: Dictionary of American Biography, vol. X (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936), 347. The prize was given to a Duryea Motor Wagon that covered the sixteen miles in just over an hour.
24 “representing the highest thought”: Schneirov, 106.
25 “How quick can a woman go around the world?”: “Woman Against Woman” Daily Picayune, November 20, 1889, 6.
26 (“This we explained we could readily do”): “Round the World,” Cook’s Excursionist and Tourist Advertiser, January 1890, 10.
27 “the stiffest man in New York to work for”: Sedgwick, 113.
28 her most recent feature article had caused consternation: Elizabeth Bisland, “Cooperative Housekeeping in Tenements,” The Cosmopolitan, November 1889, 35–42.
29 “the very essence of culture and refinement”: New Haven Register, January 31, 1890, 3.
30 put the salary at $3,000 a year: “Miss Bisland and Miss Bly,” Idaho Statesman, June 6, 1890.
31 “substantial arguments”: Bisland (1891), 5.
32 “a vigorous interview”: Ibid.
33 Fifty people had been invited: “Miss Bisland’s Story,” San Francisco Examiner, November 20, 1889, 1.
34 a hard-working bee: Ibid.
35 a glazed black sailor’s hat: This was apparently the latest style. A World editorial of the period remarked, “The shiny black sailor hat has taken possession of the New York girl. Where did she get it? Give us the inventor’s name, that we may expose him to the world.”
36 bribery and price manipulation: See Klein, 39–48.
37 “Keep the money together, hey”: Homberger, 17.
38 the largest enclosed space in the United States: Burrows and Wallace, 944.
CHAPTER FIVE: “I THINK I CAN BEAT PHILEAS FOGG’S RECORD”
1 still the brown of a penny: “For more than twenty years, the Statue of Liberty was dark brown, changing to its familiar hue around the time of America’s entry into World War I.�
�� Jean Ashton et al., When Did the Statue of Liberty Turn Green? (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 90.
2 rejected by Egypt’s ruler: Michael B. Oren, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), 269.
3 from 1877 until 1884: Ellis, 389.
4 “you are really on your tour around the world”: Bly (1890), 16.
5 her great-uncle Thomas Kennedy: Ross (1936), 48.
6 “Have you any ideas?”: This and the succeeding quotations are from Bly (1890), 8.
7 The World received a letter: The various proposals to race around the world were reported in the World article “Around the World,” November 14, 1889, 1.
8 a Washington correspondent: This was probably Frank G. Carpenter.
9 the field of record-breaking travel: See Jules C. Ladenheim, The Jarrett-Palmer Express of 1876: Coast to Coast in Eighty-three Hours (Westminster, Maryland: Heritage Books, 2008).
10 underwrite half the cost of the trip: Ladenheim, 11.
11 she and her mother went to the Broadway Theatre: “Nellie Bly’s Story,” The World, February 2, 1890.
12 sometime after ten o’clock: This is one example of numerous inconsistencies in Bly’s account. In the initial World story about the trip (“Around the World,” November 1, 1889), Bly describes how she was at Ghormley’s “by 10 o’clock.” In her later account of the trip, though, published in The World on February 2, 1890, she wrote that “it was 11 o’clock before I started out.”
13 “I want a dress by this evening”: Bly (1890), 9.
14 one hundred fifty gowns ordered by Mrs. Vanderbilt: Morris (1996), 153.
15 for a final fitting: Neither Bly nor Ghormley ever mentioned the price he charged her for the dress, but it could not have been much—Bly was not nearly as wealthy as most of Ghormley’s clientele—and there is every likelihood that he gave it to her free of charge. Both he and Bly must have been aware of the invaluable publicity her trip would bring him, the countless questions that would be asked about who had made the dress she wore day after day in her race around the world.
16 Thomas Cook & Son: There is some confusion about this. The World’s announcement of the trip, published November 14, 1889, declared, “Here in New York, by a visit to that friend of all travellers—Cook’s Agency—it was possible to plan out a complete itinerary of the trip.” No mention was made of Nellie Bly having been present at the meeting. In Bly’s book about her trip, however, she wrote that she went with the World staff member to plan the itinerary—but stated that they went to “a steamship company’s office.” Bly (1890), 12. It is possible that she was thinking of the steamship company’s office she went to when she first contemplated making the trip.
17 three dozen steamships had been damaged: Lieutenant J. D. Jerrold Kelley, “The Ship’s Company,” in Chadwick et al., 203.
18 $2,500 in American gold and bills: In 2010 dollars, this would be worth approximately $60,000.
19 a suitable companion piece: Bly (1890), 11.
20 “will continue to work and propel the ship”: Across the Atlantic (New York: Hamburg-American Line, 1900), 65.
21 flags of country and company: The flag of the Hamburg-American Line was diagonally quartered into white and blue fields, with a black anchor and yellow shield at its center.
22 the largest ship ever built in a German yard: N. R. P. Bonsor, North Atlantic Seaway: An Illustrated History of the Passenger Services Linking the Old World with the New (Newton Abbott, United Kingdom: David & Charles, 1975), I:356.
23 364 first-class and 116 second-class passengers: “The Augusta Victoria,” Marine Engineer, May 1, 1890, 57.
24 “I wonder that people who wanted to break the souls”: Fox, 204.
25 to lie down and to stand up: Ibid., 203.
26 “makes the drinker very miserable”: Hoyt, 95.
27 “not recommended for daily or long-continued use”: Lockwood, 298.
28 “mixed Renaissance”: “The Augusta Victoria,” Marine Engineer, May 1, 1890, 57.
29 the stewards of the second-class dining hall: William H. Rideing, “The Building of an Ocean Greyhound,” in Chadwick et al., 138.
30 “you must come back every time”: “Nellie Bly at Sea,” The World, December 8, 1889.
31 the air smelled different: See Fox, 202.
32 The rail had been torn away: “A Smashing Wave,” New York Times, October 13, 1889, 3.
33 some had sewn weights: Coleman (1976), 33.
34 “I am sure we are all going down”: Bly (1890), 20.
35 A typical bill of fare: John H. Gould, “Ocean Passenger Travel,” in Chadwick et al., 137.
36 massive iron doors: Anderson, 44.
37 the same basins used to dispose of vomit: Fox, 333.
38 “No sick cans are furnished”: Ibid.
39 “It needs no imagination”: Ibid., 143.
40 “great fun to watch life in the steerage”: Lockwood, 304.
41 those up above tossed coins or candy: Fox, 334.
42 “The children among us pelt the little ones”: Lockwood, 304.
43 the most beautiful scenery in the world: Bly (1890), 22.
44 the Augusta Victoria continued its path: For the arrival of the Augusta Victoria in Southampton, see “Nellie Bly’s Trip,” The World, December 8, 1889; “Nellie Bly’s Story,” The World, February 2, 1890.
45 “Mr. and Mrs. Jules Verne”: Bly (1890), 24.
46 talking to the Southampton postmaster: See Greaves’s account in “Nellie Bly’s Trip,” The World, December 8, 1889.
47 “Where are your keys?”: “Nellie Bly’s Story,” The World, February 2, 1890. Bly provided a slightly different version of the dialogue in her book-length account of the trip.
CHAPTER SIX: LIVING BY RAILROAD TIME
1 designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany himself: White (1978), 241.
2 by lightly scorching satinwood in hot sand: Ibid., 438.
3 billiard tables and bowling alleys: Ibid., 241.
4 “Their duties will be those of a maid”: “Ladies’ Maids on the Pennsylvania Limited,” New York Times, November 14, 1889, 5.
5 “futile wrestlings”: Bisland (1894), 375.
6 Eventually she managed to undress: This and the other bedtime preparations became Bisland’s nightly ritual aboard a train, the result of which, she would later advise other female travelers, “is that one’s body being quite free from compression of clothes, and the lungs fed with adequate oxygen, one wakes in the morning fresh and vigorous after healthful sleep, and is prepared for the new day’s trials or pleasures.” Ibid., 376.
7 “An epidemic of globe-galloping”: New York Tribune, November 15, 1889.
8 “summoned to the office yesterday”: “Broke the Record!” New York Herald, November 17, 1889.
9 a whimsical editorial: “Why Not the Moon?” New York Tribune, November 17, 1889.
10 “Miss Nellie Bly and Miss Elizabeth Bisland”: See “The Two Globe Trotters,” The Journalist, November 23, 1889, 8.
11 “When you come to think of it”: This and the subsequent quotations are from “Success to Nellie Bly,” The World, November 17, 1889.
12 “she is trying it in one-third of the time”: In fact it was much closer to one-half.
13 “in sending its bright little correspondent”: Dorothy Maddox, “Nellie Bly’s Trip,” Philadelphia Inquirer, November 18, 1889, 5.
14 It had been arranged: Bisland (1891), 8.
15 a telegraph office was still open: See the description in Louis Schick, Chicago and Its Environs: A Handbook for the Traveler (Chicago: L. Schick, 1891), 47.
16 “a commiserating adieu”: Bisland (1891), 8.
17 only a single restaurant: Zeisloft, 484.
18 The train to Omaha: See the description in August Mencken, The Railroad Passenger Car (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1957), 164–65.
19 “stupefaction of amazement”: Bisland (1891), 9.
&nb
sp; 20 “for some brief space”: Ibid., 10.
21 it was a hive of activity: See the description in Lucius Beebe, The Overland Limited (Berkeley, California: Howell-North Books, 1963), 15.
22 (“by chance”): Bisland (1891), 12.
23 a new fast mail train: See ibid., 12–20; White (1910), 123–32; “From Ocean to Ocean,” New York Tribune, November 20, 1889; “An Ocean-to-Ocean Race,” The World, November 20, 1889; “The Fast Mail,” San Francisco Bulletin, November 20, 1889; “Through on Time,” Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago), November 20, 1889.
24 newspaper reporters from some of the cities: Among them, as it happened, was a reporter from The World named Frederick Duneka.
25 Bill Downing: In her book about the trip Bisland called him “a certain engineer, whose name was Foley—or words to that effect.” Bisland (1891), 15.
26 hard red clay and sandstone: Great Trans-Continental Tourist’s Guide (New York: Geo. A. Crofutt, 1870), 90.
27 months of hard travel by covered wagon: Edwards, 40.
28 “the most important event of modern times”: Ambrose, 357.
29 “It carries its own food and water”: J. Scott Russell, “The Service of Steam,” Good Words for 1876, edited by Donald Macleod (London: Daldy, Isbister & Co., 1876), 619.
30 46,844 miles of railroad track: Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., ed., The Railroads: The Nation’s First Big Business (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965), 13.
31 “This railroad will be built”: Ambrose, 225.
32 “The railroad men in Omaha”: Ibid., 223.
33 (“In no parts of the 250 miles ranged by the buffalo”): E. D. Cope, “The Life of the Plains,” The Friend 45, no. 29 (1872), 1.