Around the World on Two Wheels

by Peter Zheutlin

  The combination of the new Sterling bicycle and her new riding clothes made cycling an entirely new and far more pleasurable experience for Annie, and both changes contributed to her decision to continue with her journey. Nevertheless, she still faced the reality of geography and the lateness of the season, which compelled her to make a radical decision. She would indeed try and circle the globe, but she would do so by pedaling back to New York and making her way around the world going east. The likelihood of Annie’s making the trip within the fifteen months to which she was publicly committed looked remote indeed, but she was determined to try. She would sail for Le Havre on the French liner La Touraine, scheduled to depart New York on November 24. After sailing to France, Annie’s proposed route would take her “from Bordeaux southward through Italy and Greece and on to Constantinople, thence by steamer to Bombay, riding across India to Calcutta, by steamer to Japan, riding through that country and taking the steamer to San Francisco…”

  ON THE MORNING of October 14, at ten A.M., Annie mounted her ivory and gold Sterling at the Columbus Fountain in front of Chicago City Hall. The send-off was surely gratifying. Members of Chicago’s “lady cyclist” club joined her at the start to ride as far as Pullman, Illinois, and “all along the route down Michigan [A]venue unattached cyclists joined the procession until by the time the end of the boulevards was reached several hundreds were in line…” said the Chicago Inter Ocean.

  As encouraging as it was to see the swarm of cyclists around her, it must have been daunting for Annie to realize that her long, hard trip from Boston to Chicago was for naught and to contemplate making a circuit of the earth in just eleven months. To win the purported wager and claim success, she would now have to circle the globe and return to Chicago by September 25, 1895.

  The trip back to New York promised to be easier, if colder, than had been her trip west. She was now on a faster, more comfortable bike. Her freedom of movement was greatly enhanced by bloomers, and she was familiar with the route and could call on any number of acquaintances she had made going west should things get tough. Even her recent weight loss worked in her favor: between her new bike, new clothes, and new body, Annie and her gear weighed at least forty pounds less than when she left Boston, a huge difference. She was also a stronger and far more experienced cyclist than she had been when she’d begun her journey in June. Barring mechanical problems, a long stretch of severe weather, or a serious accident, Annie would be able to make New York in time to sail for France and continue her trip around the world.

  Once Annie pedaled out of Chicago, she began garnering a lot of attention from the newspapers, mostly through a public relations campaign of sorts that she had devised herself. Intercity phone service was virtually nonexistent in 1894, so to ensure people would be anticipating her arrival, she routinely sent telegrams or telegraph messages ahead to the newspapers and cycling clubs to generate interest. The newspapers of those times and their readers alike had insatiable appetites for sensational, even outlandish, stories, and Annie was only too happy to give them what they wanted. Indeed, it was during her trip back to New York that her “inventive genius,” her gift for showmanship and her flair for the dramatic, truly started to emerge. With her men’s bicycle, bloomers, and advertising streamers flying from her clothing and bike frame, Annie was a virtual one-woman show.

  On October 15, the day after leaving Chicago, she reached South Bend, Indiana, where she was joined by a woman named Jessie Padman, also on a Sterling, for part of the trip east. How Annie met Mrs. Padman is unclear, though Mrs. Padman, who was described by one newspaper as “an admiring friend” of Annie’s, may have sought her out, given her growing fame. They planned to ride together for several days, until reaching the vicinity of Toledo, Ohio.

  Then as now, October in the Midwest typically brought ideal cycling weather. Annie and Mrs. Padman most likely encountered weather that was not too hot but not yet cold while cycling through orange-hued trees and the golden light of autumn.

  The two women left South Bend at ten A.M. on October 17 and arrived in Elkhart an hour later, where the Elkhart Daily Truth, as would most newspapers covering her journey, commented on Annie’s physique and her clothing: “Miss Londonderry is unusually vivacious, and to add to her charms she wears the bloomer costume, which exquisitely becomes her petite figure. She has now traveled 1,580 miles, 1,400 of which she has traveled in the regulation feminine attire.”

  At two o’clock, after a brief stopover in Elkhart, the women headed for Goshen, where they “attracted considerable attention by their appearance in bloomers of a tight fitting pattern.” Annie and Mrs. Padman called at the offices of the Goshen Daily News, introduced themselves, and explained that the former was on her way around the world. The Daily News, like some of the Boston press that covered Annie’s farewell, was skeptical: “It is quite likely that such a world-circuiting tour is not at all contemplated, but that the scheme is simply a supposed ingenious device of the manufacturer of the bicycle used to advertise the wheel.”

  The following day, Annie and her companion passed through Ligonier and once again “soon became the objects of much interest not because they were at all good looking for they were not and not from any reason that they were expert riders but from the fact that they wore a new fangled and some what [sic] abbreviated bicycle dress and the further fact that one of the ladies, Miss Londonderry, is on her way around the world.”

  After dinner in Ligonier with Mr. Edward Sisterhen, the local Sterling agent, the riders, accompanied by two local cyclists, rode to Wawaka, making the short trip in thirty-one minutes. Later the same evening, Annie and Mrs. Padman arrived in Kendallville, where the town’s pharmacist and Sterling bicycle dealer, Paul Klinkenberg, hosted them.

  In Kendallville, Annie was questioned about her romantic life. “Miss Annie Londonderry, a plucky and good looking lady cyclist, arrived in the city from the west,” said the Kendallville Weekly News. “To a reporter here who inquired if there were any danger of her falling in love with some handsome cyclist and abandoning her venture, Miss Londonderry pleasantly replied that she was too intent on gaining the distinction of being the only lady rider who had ever encircled the earth on a wheel to entertain any marriage propositions.”

  Here, for the first time, but certainly not the last, Annie elided the truth about her marital status. She didn’t lie, but she didn’t leap at the opportunity to correct the assumption in the question that she was unmarried, either. Although she surely resented the condescension implicit in questions about her marital status and marriage prospects, Annie would be asked such questions often. Here she was, attempting to go around the world by bicycle, something no woman had ever tried, and reporters, most of them men, were asking her whether her heart might get the better of her head. And if she spoke of her marriage, questions about children were sure to follow. Leaving a husband was radical enough; leaving him with three small children was, quite simply, socially and morally unacceptable in 1890s America. Even the most ardent suffragist might have raised an eyebrow.

  Indeed, it probably never even occurred to most reporters that Annie might be married. Surely no self-respecting husband, especially one with three young children, would permit his wife to undertake a journey such as this. By ducking the question, as she did in Kendallville, Annie avoided having to explain how and why she had left her husband and children behind. It was easier to simply deflect questions about her marital status and move on.

  ON THE AFTERNOON of Friday, October 19, Annie and Mrs. Padman passed through Butler, Indiana, near the Ohio state line. “It seems rather shocking to see young ladies dressed in such a manner,” opined the Butler Record of their bloomers, joining the chorus of stunned observers.

  Because of bad roads, Annie had planned to avoid Toledo. However, she apparently accidentally rode off course and wound up passing through the town anyway, where she was quite a curiosity.

  Apparently alone and wearing her “sky blue bloomer suit” Annie “shot dow
n Jefferson Street like a streak of blue and white” and stopped at the Jefferson House hotel. When she went in to register, she left her white Sterling at the “center of a curious crowd of people who inspected it as intently as though it were a baby elephant.” Then people followed her into the hotel to inspect her signature in the hotel register as some of the more inquisitive grilled the desk clerk about her. Annie later appeared in the dining room in a plain gray dress and “was allowed to eat her dinner in peace” before several local cyclists joined her in the parlor.

  The Toledo Commercial also took careful notice of Annie’s riding outfit, which she continued to tinker with during her journey, noting that the trousers had been taken in “tighter than the ordinary divided skirts so as to offer no resistance to the wind.”

  Slowly but surely, Annie’s riding clothes were evolving into something a man would wear. “Don’t you attract considerable attention with your novel costume?” asked the reporter. “Oh yes,” she replied, “the people all along these little country towns flock by the hundreds and stare at me as though I had escaped from a circus.” Which was, of course, precisely the point.

  AFTER SPENDING the night in Toledo, Annie rode to Fremont, Ohio, covering the nearly forty miles in four hours, and spent the night before heading east.

  When she passed through Norwalk, Ohio, on the twenty-third, she stopped long enough to chat up a reporter who noted that it was “the bad weather in this country at this time of year” that had caused her to reverse course in Chicago. The interview also revealed yet another way Annie supported herself monetarily while on the road: “Wherever she stops she sells silk handkerchiefs in order to obtain enough money to buy her meals. She says if she gets hard up she will do almost anything that is honorable—sometimes selling papers….”

  ON THURSDAY afternoon, October 25, Annie wheeled into Cleveland, proclaiming she had just set a new record for lady riders for the run between Elyria and that city, covering the approximately twenty-six miles in one hour and forty-two minutes. “[A] remarkably good performance,” said one local newspaper. But, as would be the case for most of her trip, there was nothing to support the claim other than Annie’s word.

  Annie’s first stop in Cleveland was Eberhart & Wright, a bicycle store on Euclid Avenue that sold Sterling wheels. She remained in the city as a guest of Mr. Wright, through Sunday morning, October 28, before continuing her eastward journey. Each night, Annie made an appearance at which she sold souvenir pins at twenty-five cents a piece, first at the Cleveland Wheel Club, then the Lakeside Clubhouse, and finally at the Cleveland Athletic Club.

  THE WEATHER had been unseasonably warm, though occasionally rainy, as Annie, joined by a cyclist identified only as Mr. Bliss, covered the approximately two hundred miles between Cleveland and Buffalo in four days, arriving in Buffalo at five o’clock on the afternoon of the thirty-first. Here again, she was enjoying the freedom of the New Woman. Bliss would not be the last male rider to accompany Annie for part of the route, and her companions likely assumed Annie was both single and available. But she knew how to handle herself and seemed unconcerned with the impression that might be created as a lone woman traveling in the company of men.

  She is a “clever and intrepid little wheelwoman” and a “bright and vivacious little person, possessed of any amount of grit and pluck,” and her journey “one of the most perilous and remarkable trips ever undertaken by a woman,” said the Buffalo Courier on Annie’s arrival. Asked by the Courier if she wasn’t taking “a mighty big risk in traversing portions of savage lands,” she replied: “Well, $10,000 is a large amount, and I know that I am taking a big risk, and may never again see my native land, but then the grim shadow of death is ever at one’s elbow, and my chances for not getting through safely are not sufficiently great to deter me from making the experiment.” Of course, at this point the most savage land Annie had seen was New York City, but that was beside the point. She was in the process of creating both a drama and a farce, and she was quite conscious of the impression she wanted to make. Though she was often very impulsive in conversation, she was also very deliberate about stage-managing her traveling one-woman show. The reporter’s question called for a dramatic answer and Annie provided it.

  This skill for relating calculatedly colorful detail permeated many of her interviews. In addition to boasting to the Buffalo Express of her Elyria-to-Cleveland run (her time, she said, was only fourteen seconds off the record), she claimed to have ridden 110 miles in nine hours during a rainstorm, though she didn’t specify where she had accomplished that feat. By now she had already amassed a growing collection of amusing anecdotes, some of dubious veracity, about her travels and she shared them at every opportunity.

  During her brief stop in Elkhart, Indiana, some two weeks earlier, Annie told the Buffalo Express, she had been threatened with arrest for wearing bloomers, and had to apply to the chief of police for a permit to go about the town. “The chief of police eyed me from head to foot and when he got to the foot he seemed satisfied and gave me the permit,” said Annie. “In about a half an hour I got $3 out of the men in the town by selling my brownie pins, but the women nearly dropped dead.”

  Although it is doubtful Annie had planned her route around the world by the time she reached Buffalo, she said that she would be cycling along the shores of the Mediterranean into Turkey, across Persia and thence to India. Her proposed itinerary was ever changing, but it was clear even by the time she reached Buffalo that she was determined to go around the world and had figured out how to support herself on the road.

  * * *

  ROUND THE WORLD—A RIDING ADVERTISING AGENCY—WEARS BLOOMERS AND RIDES A MAN’S WHEEL

  Miss Anna Londonderry, who has acquired considerable fame in connection with her contract to circle the globe on a wheel, riding at least 15,000 miles of the distance on the road, arrived in Buffalo yesterday afternoon and rode to the rooms of the Ramblers [a cycling club], where she answered the correspondence awaiting her. To an Express reporter Miss Londonderry told of her…experiences since she left Boston…“Why, I am actually gaining in weight right along, and now I weigh 125 pounds,” she said to the reporter…

  Miss Londonderry is…only 23 years old…and in her riding trape presents a very attractive appearance…The young woman is a sort of a riding advertising agency. She wears ribbons advertising various goods and will receive $400 for one firm’s ad that graces her left breast. On her right bloomer leg she carries $100 worth of advertisements and she has just closed a contract to cover her left arm. She says her back is for rent yet and she hopes to get $300 for it. She must not beg a cent and makes enough money to pay for her board by selling little souvenir Brownie pins and other souvenirs of the trip.

  She has never had to sleep out of doors except once and that time she was dead broke and slept in the cemetery at Amboy, a little village near Ashtabula. Miss Londonderry spent three years at Harvard and has studied medicine for a time, and will resume her studies when she returns from her trip. She is of German descent and speaks German and Swedish…. she says that so far she has met with the greatest respect all along the line and has not once had occasion to make use of the pearl-handled revolver which she drew from a pocket in her bloomers.

  —The Buffalo Express, November 1, 1894

  * * *

  Although she told the Express that she had to sleep out of doors only once on her trip, she had another story for the Buffalo Courier. “[S]leeping in barns, haystacks, and under rail fences was a common occurrence, and the raiding of orchards and farms was necessary to sustain life and strength,” said the Courier.

  Just how much outdoor sleeping Annie actually did is not known, but one thing is certain: her claim to have attended Harvard and studied medicine was fanciful, and on many occasions she clearly delighted in testing the gullibility of reporters, especially men. She would often repeat her Harvard claim along the way, a small addition to her growing legend. And the further into her trip she got, the taller the ta
les she would tell.

  IN BUFFALO, Annie decided that even bloomers didn’t provide enough comfort, though they were an improvement over skirts. At the boys’ department of a Buffalo clothing store she purchased a pair of pants for five dollars, cut several inches off the legs, and secured the bottoms, knickerbocker style, with elastics. She also donned black stockings, gaiters, and a blue yachting cap to go with her tweed coat and vest, which the Buffalo Illustrated Express dubbed “an extraordinary and exceedingly unfeminine costume.” Indeed, she was now dressed as a man. “An innate modesty impelled her to appeal to the reporter as she posed before the photographer for a picture for the Express, regarding her general appearance. ‘Do I look dreadful,’ she asked. ‘Is this rig immodest?’” No doubt she was hoping the answer to the second questions was yes.

  ANNIE ATTENDED a Halloween Ball and stayed overnight in accommodations provided at the Ramblers Bicycle Club. (It was not uncommon for cycling clubs of the 1890s to have their own meeting halls with overnight accommodations.) The weather on Halloween had been wet, but when she left Buffalo for Rochester the next day, the skies had cleared and temperatures were in the low fifties. The roads were too muddy for cycling, however, and she was forced to ride her Sterling along the New York Central Railroad tracks toward Rochester. The seventy-five-mile trip was quite a slog, as suggested by the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: “Belated pedestrians on Lyell Avenue were somewhat surprised about 1 o’clock this morning to see an object closely resembling Billy Grimes [presumably a local drunk] doing his cellar-door act, flitting along the middle of the street towards State street. The object continued on its way eastward stopping at the Central-Hudson station, where it was corralled by Officer Stein. The officer was at a loss to make out what it was at first but finally discovered it to be a woman. She was dressed in blue bloomers, blue jacket and a blue cap.” The story continued, “She was pushing a white enameled bicycle ahead of her when she appeared in the station. The officer conducted her to the Hotel Atlantic where she registered as Miss Anna Londonderry, of Boston.”