Major Taylor

by Conrad Kerber

  Up in the grandstand, the large American contingent pleaded for Taylor to make his move before the Great Frenchmen ran away with it again. His mind drifting back to the unforgettable thumbing incident, Taylor inched up along his brash rival and ground his teeth. Through his binoculars, Buckner could see Taylor’s anger. He knew it was now or never.

  In a celebrated career spanning hundreds of professional races dating back to 1896, through the 1899 World Championships, defeating everyone America could throw at him, rarely had people seen the full wrath of Major Taylor. With one and a half furlongs remaining to the finish line, he set his jaw, bent down, and unleashed a ferocious forward assault. He slashed high up on the bank, curved his body around the final turn, and steered his machine down into the belly of the track’s homestretch. Jacquelin, already gunning at a torrid pace, looked to his side in shock. He watched as Taylor inched up alongside him, then around him—first his wheel, then his crank, then his rear wheel. The pace was inconceivable. Within the space of a few seconds, the lead had changed hands, Jacquelin now swooping in behind Taylor’s purple and black silks. Over in the press section, the French contingent sagged, their faces a rictus of apprehension.

  Amid the merciless tempo, Taylor actually accelerated. The gap between him and Jacquelin began widening—a half-length, a length.

  Along the tape Buckner stood chewing his fingernails down to the bone. With such a ruthless pace he, Breyer, Coquelle, and everyone else in the crowd knew one of them had to give. The first to show signs of cracking was Jacquelin. He looked forward and saw Taylor’s back and hamstrings floating through the warm air like an eagle, seemingly effortless. “There is something mysterious about his power,” wrote a European columnist, “and that mystery is itself a potent force.”

  Trailing, Jacquelin refused to give up. He stomped down on his pedals, his knees nearly thumping into his chest. Ahead, he heard the metallic sound of chain links stretching and cranks bending, and the familiar hum of metal spokes whirling at forty-plus miles per hour. With just under a furlong to go, his face took on the pained look of man nearing his limit.

  Taylor was flogging the world champion, his one-length lead becoming two, two and a half, then three. Behind Taylor, Jacquelin was red-lining, his body zigging and zagging in an irregular sideways thrashing movement, his usual erratic form further degenerating into a scene of man banging against machine. The speed—the last 200 meters was run off in twelve seconds—seemed way too much for him.

  Taylor dropped his head and body parallel to his top tube and rode for all he was worth. His world compressed into a few thoughts, sights, and sounds: out in front, the sight of the finish line rushing toward him; Buckner waiting at the line; Daisy in New England writing another love letter to “Major Taylor World’s Greatest Cyclist”; in Washington, DC, Teddy Roosevelt, a follower of his; Brady in Manhattan, preparing for his return; hundreds gathered around the famous pillar at Café l’Esperance waiting for the telegram; around sixty thousand eyeballs looking down from the stands. Now it was just him, his bicycle, and an open span of track.

  In the backdrop, it was all over for the proud Frenchman. Jacquelin felt the deadening buildup of lactic acid pushing through his legs, the limiting experience of oxygen debt, and the humiliating feeling of another man out of reach. For the first time in as long as reporters could remember, during a race he really wanted to win, the Triple Crown winner was being cut to pieces.

  For Taylor, there was a sense of tranquility. He felt the penetrating warmth of the Parisian sun, the exhilarating tenfold high of man wedded to machine, the distant hymn of “The Star Spangled Banner,” and the sweet sense of revenge.

  Major Taylor glided across the line a convincing four lengths in front, riding high over the world.

  The entire American expatriate community leaped from their seats. They charged down through the aisles, passing heaps of stunned Frenchmen, tore right past the police cordon, and lunged after Taylor. They hurled their hats in the air and slipped a large bouquet of roses around his neck. Jogging along his side as he circled the track, they watched as he waved an American flag toward the French sky.

  Jacquelin disappeared quietly from the roaring group of celebrants, his stomach still collapsing in and out from exertion. According to some, he would never be the same that year. It was, they believed, his Waterloo. “The redoubtable Jacquelin has been vanquished,” claimed one reporter months later. “He has been taking back ever since Taylor took his measure . . .”

  During the ceremony, with “The Star-Spangled Banner” playing in the background, Taylor was handed a beautiful silver loving cup donated by Delancey Ward, an American artist living in France. Buckner stood proudly nearby. Taylor looked forward, his mouth curled up in a reserved expression. Breyer and Coquelle looked on, their eyes green with profit.

  Back at their Le Velo offices, the presses were churning out newspapers in unprecedented numbers. Before Taylor’s visit, an average day’s circulation at Le Velo was around twenty-five thousand. In a handful of days before and immediately following the second race, nearly three-quarters of a million copies of Le Velo alone flowed out of their presses and into the streets, cafès, and homes of Paris. A number made all the more amazing considering the New York Times had a circulation of around one hundred thousand at the time, up from twenty-five thousand in 1898. Even the heavily publicized death of Madison Square Garden architect Stanford White at the hands of Harry Shaw (who lost $20,000 betting on Taylor over Jacquelin), that resulted in the trial of the century increased circulation by fewer than one hundred thousand. With the aid of the world’s greatest drawing card, Breyer, Coquelle, and Desgrange were rolling in money.

  And the frenzy was only just beginning.

  At some point, Taylor and his wide grin hopped into a Renault automobile, rolled out of the Parc des Princes, and sailed through the streets of Paris. In his state of giddiness, he apparently forgot that Paris had speed limits. An angry local gendarme flagged him down near the Arc de Triumphe. He got out and walked up to Taylor’s car with a speeding ticket in hand. When he got close enough to see who it was his eyes widened and his hand reached up to doff his cap. “Oh, my God. It’s Le Champione,” he said as he waved Taylor off, sans the speeding ticket.

  Taylor eventually made his way to the Chalets du Cycle, a popular outdoor café in the Bois de Boulogne frequented by wheelmen and their admirers. The warm sun and an eager crowd followed him. On his way in, he noticed a crowd thick as plankton milling around someone. He walked in to see what all the commotion was about. The crowd cleared an opening for him. There in the middle of the gathering stood none other than Jacquelin. Taylor walked toward him. The normally chatty crowd shushed. The two “knights of the track” drew up next to each other in silence.

  Jacquelin was the first to break the silence. With a stern look on his face, he muttered something in French. Taylor, who was just learning fragments of French, could barely pick it up. A man dashed through the crowd, emerging with a bottle. A loud pop was heard. Suds sprayed into the air. Someone handed each of them a glass. Champagne was poured. Jacquelin raised his glass and spoke.

  “Do the honor of sharing a drink with me,” he said.

  “With pleasure,” retorted Taylor. “But you know very well I only drink water.”

  “Oh,” Jacquelin said assertively, hoping to lure him in, “for once have a little champagne.”

  There was a dreadful silence. The crowd pushed inward, locking their gaze on Taylor. For what may have been the first time in his life, Taylor raised an alcoholic drink up to his lips and took a sip. Bad idea! He choked on it. “Awful, terrible,” he complained. “Abstinence,” wrote French paper La vie au Grand Air, “gives him spiritual pleasures.”

  After the thrashing he had endured, one wheelman later joked, Jacquelin probably finished the bottle himself.

  June dawned warm and glorious for Major Taylor. The turning wheel of his life was spinning forward splendidly, and he couldn’t conceal his jo
ie de vivre. He was in peak condition, all things right with the world, and the cold, wet spring was giving way to summer. Since those first gusts of warm weather blew across the Old World, he had felt a smooth cadence in the saddle, a feeling of quiet invincibility, a desire to take on all comers. And while he was at it—to see the world. While Paris reeled, he and Buckner clattered across the vast European continent for several weeks of nonstop racing and sightseeing.

  In ancient towns all over Europe, he either visited or passed by a cornucopia of historic sites. Their train, moving at all hours of the day and night, whistled into Antwerp, Hanover, Berlin, Lyon, Toulouse, Agen, and Bordeaux, each visit and race a special story in its own right. Posters, billboards, and newspaper ads promoting his visit lit up the continent. In Leipzig, someone drove all over town for days in a sputtering Mercedes Benz holding up a gargantuan portrait of him. Reporters welcomed him to their cities with long, tasteful poems. As before, fans greeted Taylor with profound reverence everywhere he went and, good weather or bad, rarely was a velodrome seat left unoccupied. On the way to and out of each track, hundreds if not thousands followed him enthusiastically. Luminaries continued to invite him to sporting events and elaborate social functions.

  It was a following unlike any before, but it was the freedom from bigotry that Taylor would cherish most. Barring a few minor exceptions, from the moment he stepped on foreign soil, the bitter racism he had faced from riders and hotel and restaurant operators in the States had been checked at the ocean’s edge. On one occasion, he nearly broke down as he discussed the treatment he had received in Southern American states, clearly stoking old wounds. There could not have been a more remarkable adventure for him or for his black trainer.

  In each city, his dominance continued. In twenty-four total races, his only losses were to Jacquelin in the first match race runoff in the cold, Thor Ellegaard because of a flat tire that he immediately avenged, his first race to Arend shortly after stepping ashore, and a couple of races against two men on tandems. An urgent call went out for a third match race between Taylor and Jacquelin. But because of his tight, prearranged schedule of non-Sunday races, it never took place that summer. Taylor fans would have to settle for watching him thump Jacquelin in an open race. “It was a victory from which there is no appeal,” wrote a prominent French reporter, “and I must now recognize that Taylor is the better man. He is ‘it’ without a doubt.”

  By the beginning of June, Taylor was basking in the European glow so much—and Breyer and Coquelle were rolling in so many francs—he was asked to extend his stay. Taylor agreed. But with this ill-advised move, he and the French tandem infuriated some powerful men on the other side of the Atlantic. In New York, A. G. Batchelder, chairman of the NCA, fired off a flood of cables reminding Taylor and the parochial Frenchmen that Taylor was under contract to ride back in the States. Failure to return immediately, he threatened, would mean suspension and heavy fines for each race that he missed. Having leased the Manhattan Beach Track for the entire season, William Brady also expressed concern with Taylor’s extension. Perhaps a bit more diplomatic in his choice of words, he also fired off cables asking Taylor to jump ship. He then sent lucrative offers to Jacquelin, asking him to join Taylor in his voyage back to the States: first $2,000, then $3,000, then $4,000, as a down payment for a few weeks of racing. Jacquelin, perhaps a bit Eurocentric in orientation, and a man who seemed to enjoy living as close to the pulse of Paris as possible, did not commit. After a delay that he’d pay dearly for, Taylor finally responded. Brady received his cablegram; he would head home on June 28, a few weeks later than his contract called for.

  Taylor rounded off his racing engagements and then said his good-byes to his new friends at elaborate farewell ceremonies. At one mammoth gathering he was showered in American flags—“I received enough flags to tapestry my bedroom” he told a trainload of cheery reporters. Women approached him, batting their eyelashes and wreathing him in colorful bouquets. William K. Vanderbilt was there, trying to wriggle into the gravity of the moment. But with Taylor present, reported the Chicago Tribune, one of the world’s richest men went completely unnoticed.

  As he prepared to leave on that late June day, he felt like a new man—proud, elated, and emphatically free.

  On an evening before setting sail, Taylor strolled through the lobby of the Malesherbes Hotel where he was staying at the time. There in the center of the lobby sat a black Steinway piano staring at him, tempting him. Being a lover of music and a fine, self-taught pianist, Taylor, because of his hectic schedule, hadn’t found the time to play it as often as he had wished. But on this night, being in a particularly melodious mood, he drew up a vacant stool, set his bowler hat on top of the piano, and sat down. Initially a small crowd noticed and gathered around him. Taylor played tentatively. The small crowd grew. Warming to the gathering, Taylor started singing “Hullo My Baby,” an American song made popular during the 1900 Paris Expo. The crowd joined in.

  … tell me I’m your own, my baby

  Hello my baby, hello my honey

  Hello my ragtime, summertime gal

  Send me a kiss by wire, by wire

  Baby my heart's on fire, on fire

  If you refuse me, honey, you lose me

  And you’ll be left alone, oh baby . . .

  “Remarkable singing voice,” opined one journalist in the entourage. Taylor’s hands poured across the piano, feet stomping on the pedals, voice wafting throughout the room. Champagne was brought out, and people listened and sang and slurped.

  If man could freeze time during the moment of his greatest joy, Major Taylor may have lowered his thumb on his timepiece in that Parisian hotel, on that night, during that glorious season of 1901.

  ___________

  * Several events in which Taylor competed—Montreal in 1899, Philadelphia in 1898, Madison Square Garden in 1896 and 1900, etc.—drew larger crowds, but these were multiday events. Had the track been large enough, some people believe the crowd could have been double the reported size.

  During his fourteen-year career, Taylor competed in hundreds of races. At each meet, several preliminary heats were run. Nearly all match races, including both against Jacquelin, were two out of three affairs. So as to not overburden the storyline with endless race descriptions and to maintain an even reading flow, the authors have described only the deciding heats of Taylor’s most important races. It should be noted that in the first match race, Jacquelin won both heats, the first by a half-length and the second by under two lengths. In the Second World War race in warmer weather, Taylor won both heats by around four lengths.

  Chapter 18

  THE LAST BLACK FACE IN AMERICA

  The luxury liner Deutschland steamed into New York on the muggy but festive afternoon of July 4, 1901. Like his trip to France, the return voyage was a rocking, rolling, heaving affair. Sea travel, Taylor was now certain, simply did not agree with him. For four days, he had eaten almost nothing. During the other two days, whatever went in, came right back out. “I am such a wretched sailor,” he would tell a reporter, “that a sea voyage leaves me knocked up.” Had it not been for his commitment to Brady, he likely would have gone straight home, curled up in bed, and lay motionless for weeks. Instead, he and Buckner hobbled off the ship, jumped on a tram, and went straight to the Manhattan Beach Track.

  Brady had the famous track all decked out for Taylor’s reentry into America. Major Taylor banners and balloons hung from the grandstand, a large military band played in the infield, and a pyrotechnic display stood ready for a huge Fourth of July post-race soirée. He had even installed a new track surface. It was typical of the former peanut butcher. “Brady,” wrote the Trenton Times, “always does things on a big scale . . .” Down in the locker room, Brady must have taken one look at Taylor and wondered what on God’s earth the Europeans had been feeding him. Both men knew Taylor was in no condition to race, but outside, an early afternoon crowd was already milling about the grandstand. Brady was hoping Taylor woul
d compete in the evening races, but after a quick huddle they apparently decided he would charm the crowd with a quick exhibition spin around the track. So he raised his sea legs over his bike and rolled around the track where he had gained worldwide fame by beating Jimmy Michaels three years earlier.

  Even though the main races were during the evening and Brady had little time for marketing his name, five thousand raucous fans showed up mid-afternoon. They pushed up against the rails, hurling their hats, canes, and umbrellas in the air, yelling “Taylor! Taylor!” as he circled the track. The wild cheering continued for nearly ten minutes, all but drowning out one of Brady’s bands playing “Way Down in Dixie.” Long after Taylor had retreated to the locker room to prepare for home, the crowd remained standing, hollering his name until he reappeared, doffed his cap, and waved his appreciation.

  But Brady would have to celebrate the Fourth of July without him. Immediately following his exhibition spin, Taylor charged home and contacted a physician. A Dr. Comey stopped by to look over his gaunt, bleary, dehydrated form. He immediately shot him up with a vaccine before demanding that he rest for at least two weeks. Taylor mentioned his commitment to chairman Batchelder, but his doctor was unmoved: “Rest and rehydrate or face the possibility of a more serious illness,” he said. Dr. Comey promptly wrote up a certificate explaining his condition. Buckner sped off to race headquarters in New York and handed the note to Batchelder. He read it, glared at Buckner, pushed his chair away from his desk, and boiled over.