Around the World on Two Wheels

by Peter Zheutlin

  But we shouldn’t be too surprised to find Annie embellishing her role for the sake of a good story. Like her namesake, Nellie Bly, she had already demonstrated a “brazen capacity…to tell a white lie.”

  Although Annie’s wild man story for the World may have stretched the truth, it was typical of the sensational journalism of the day. Much like her bicycle trip around the world, it was more farce than fraud, more mischief than malice. And she concluded with a surprisingly forthright avowal of how the newspapers benefited from the scandal: “Young Richardson was released and allowed to go home, as he had really committed no crime. He had only frightened his poor old mother almost into fits, also his friends and neighbors for miles around, had given the local detectives and officers the hardest case they had ever tackled, and the Massachusetts papers the only occasion for months to bring out their big ‘scare’ headlines and the Sunday World an opportunity to show its usual expertise in exposing the whole business.”

  IF ANNIE SAW the article from the Athol Transcript labeling her a fraud, she probably would have been amused to see the fuss she had created at a time when the only two pieces she had written for the World were the account of her bicycle trip and an article on women farmers living in New York tenements that appeared under the byline “N.B. Jr.” Annie had all of the characteristics the World would have coveted in any journalist, especially a woman journalist, of whom there were very few at the time. She was, as her bicycle trip demonstrated, fiercely independent, flamboyant, and a risk taker. She was also, by all accounts, a clever conversationalist, physically strong and courageous, bright, cunning, resourceful, and nothing if not persistent. She had chutzpah, “unmitigated gall,” as she herself might have said.

  Charley Richardson was never charged with a crime. He stayed on his farm, married in 1901, and fathered a daughter, Clara, born in 1905, and a son, Charles, born in 1908. He later served on the Royalston School Committee and the town finance committee, and died in 1942.

  As for Annie, the wild man story marked the beginning of a brief career with the World and journalism became, for a time, another outlet for her showmanship, just as her cycling trip had been. Within a few months, however, she stopped writing altogether and the Massachusetts wild man soon became an obscure piece of local lore about mysterious doings in the haunted woods of north-central Massachusetts during Halloween week, 1895.

  Epilogue

  In 1898, Susan B. Anthony wrote a letter to the editor of Sidepaths, a cycling magazine, in which she elaborated on her comment to Nellie Bly—the real one—two years earlier that “bicycling has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.”

  “The moment she takes her seat [a woman] knows she can’t get into harm while she is on her bicycle, and away she goes, the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood,” wrote Anthony. “The bicycle also teaches practical dress reform, gives women fresh air and exercise, and helps to make them equal with men in work and pleasure; and anything that does that has my good word. What is better yet, the bicycle preaches the necessity for woman suffrage. When bicyclists want a bit of special legislation, such as side-paths and laws to protect them, or to compel railroads to check bicycles as baggage, the women are likely to be made to see that their petitions would be more respected by the law-makers if they had votes, and the men that they are losing a source of strength because so many riders of the machine are women. From such small practical lessons a seed is sown that may ripen into the demand for full suffrage, by which alone women can ever make and control their own conditions in society and state.”

  Annie’s fifteen-month, around-the-world odyssey in 1894–95 was an audacious and unprecedented one, and a colorful, if convoluted—indeed bizarre—chapter in cycling history. Truly, there is no way to measure the impact of her adventure on the larger struggle for women’s equality—to know how many women it inspired or empowered. But Annie’s journey epitomized perfectly the confluence of the woman’s movement and the bicycle craze and is, therefore, a small, but revealing chapter in the story of women at the turn of the twentieth century.

  Though some of her contemporaries were harsh in their judgments about what she was doing and how she was doing it—one Omaha wheelman said she was “one of the biggest frauds that ever passed through this city”—more than a century later, Annie seems more of a lovable rogue, a clever young woman who capitalized brilliantly on the major social forces of her day, than a charlatan. In the 1890s and early twentieth century, hundreds, if not thousands, of men and women were setting out to cross the country (or substantial parts of it), or to circle the world, by bicycle, on foot, or rolling along in barrels or pushing wagons. Though some rode, rolled and walked for pleasure, many, like Annie, also sought to cash in on the public’s interest in bold, long-distance journeys. Indeed, the around-the-world traveler on a wager was such a fixture of the times that a play called The Globe Trotter opened the 1895 season at Boston’s Hollis Street Theater on September 2, just ten days before Annie finished her journey in Chicago. The play, said the Boston Globe, “should meet with appreciation at the [H]ub which sent Paul Jones and Miss Londonderry on their journeys around the world. It presents the trials of one of these peripatetic tourists who started penniless from Boston to circumnavigate the globe and return with $5,000 in his pocket.”

  Annie was one of those cycling pioneers described by writer Irving A. Leonard: “Theirs were the glow and throb and the innocent ardor of the authentic adventurer, of the true traveler who subjects himself to the conditions of the strange places and languages through which he passes, unlike the tourist who merely transfers his accustomed style of life to a different setting. These pedaling wanderers were romantic heroes of the era wholly depending, as they did, upon their own physical resources during long stretches of time and space.”

  Indeed, around-the-world travelers of the 1890s provided a spectacle comparable to the contestants on today’s reality TV shows, though their feats were not reported in real time. For people of that era, blow-by-blow accounts of the adventures of globetrotters such as Nellie Bly, Thomas Stevens, and Annie Londonderry was a form of entertainment (with money on the line often adding to the intrigue) that appealed then, as do such feats today, because the protagonists assumed risks most people did not, were willing to have their success or failure and their strengths and shortcomings made public, and because of the danger and suspense inherent in their perilous undertakings. Whether they followed such stories on television in the twenty-first century, or in the newspapers in the nineteenth, people are, and were, captivated by the exploits of those who act on the dreams many have but few ever realize.

  Annie was hardly the only globetrotter of her era who embellished her story, though no one raised the around-the-world-on-a-wager expedition to an art form as high as Annie did. Nor did any globetrotter of the era, except Nellie Bly, succeed in generating nearly as much publicity. Hardly a week went by when Annie wasn’t in the press somewhere around the globe.

  As with Annie, it was impossible to verify the claims of most of these travelers or to know when they hopped the train, hitched rides, or, in extreme cases, whether the person involved even existed. In the case of Margaret Valentine Le Long, for example, whose article about a bicycle ride from Chicago to San Francisco in 1896 appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle and later in Outing Magazine, some suspect the account was entirely fictional and that Le Long herself was a fiction, as well. Even renowned explorers such as John Wesley Powell, whose daring exploration of the Colorado River in the late 1860s charted one of the last great expanses of American wilderness, burnished his own legend in the service of what he saw as a noble cause—the sensible settlement of the American West and appreciation of the unique treasure that is the Grand Canyon.

  At the beginning of her journey, the bicycle was little more than Annie’s ticket to freedom, fame, and fortune, and the opportunity to reinvent herself and assume a new and glamorous identity. The United States was mired in a deep depression in th
e mid-1890s. That Annie succeeded in tough economic times bespeaks her remarkable ingenuity in achieving what was for most the difficult task of upward mobility, and she did it with her bicycle.

  What Annie accomplished with her bicycle in 1894–95 was a tour de force of moxie, self-promotion, and athleticism. Though she was a skilled raconteur and gifted self-promoter with a penchant for embellishment and tall tales, she was also, as the evidence shows, an accomplished cyclist who covered thousands of miles by bicycle during her journey. Hers was a remarkable achievement, all the more so because she was a female and she did it in the 1890s, as traveling around the world as she did was utterly unconventional for a woman of her day. The logistical hurdles were formidable as was the physical challenge. She rode through desert heat and winter cold, over rugged roads, and along lonely side paths at night. But she succeeded in her quest not because she could pedal, but because she was clever, brazen, and possessed of no end of grit and determination. Often alone, in an age when intercity telephone service was virtually nonexistent, Annie fended for herself for fifteen months on the road.

  As with all popular phenomenona, the story of the long-distance traveler eventually grew stale. By 1901, those who imitated Annie in one form or another had become commonplace and a skeptical public grew wary of their claims. The Washington Post, had this to say about these wanderers:

  “Every once in a while,” remarked The Man Who Declines to be Conned by the Dispatches, “we read in the telegraphic news about some fellow who is about to embark upon a bicycle tour of the world on a wager of $12,345.67, the conditions being that he shall start out without a soumarkee, and yet turn up at the end of two years, fat and sassy, with papers to prove that he has actually made the trip; or about some other chap, who on a wager of $19,236 has already started upon a walking tour of the globe, conditions the same, in so far as his setting off without money is concerned, only this one is to be allowed four years to fulfill the terms of his wager; or about still another peripatetic proposition who has undertaken to shove a wheelbarrow twice around the earth on a bet that he shall get away from the post without so much as the price of a package of punk tobacco in his homespuns, and return to the starting point within six years, four months, twenty-seven days, five hours and eighteen minutes….

  “Now what I want to know, and what I want to know bad, is this: Who, and where are, and whyfore, the persons who put up these large wagers that these itinerant globe-trotters (on their own say-so) are essaying to yank down—also on their own statement of the case? What condition in life do these moneyed idiots hold? What possible good is it going to do for a man with many superfluous thousands to know that a bicycle sharp can wheel, or a strong-legged bilk can hoof, or an earth-roaming ex-gardener can wheel-barrow his way around the globe in a busted condition within a certain specified period of time?…Let me whisper something real confidentially in your ear, son: It hath been my opinion for quite a large assortment of years past that these coinless circumnavigators are nothing more nor less than ingenious hoboes, Wandering Willies With Graft, who frame their little spiels [about] world tours on wagers for the sake of the cordial mitts and the unhesitating hand-outs and the better facilities for pan-handling which they encounter in the many and sundry and divers towns and townships through which they pass. That’s what I think. Far be it from me to indulge in sordid suspicion of my fellow man—but that’s what I think.”

  Annie was emblematic of her times while also far ahead of them. She was the embodiment of the New Woman both on her bicycle and in her intrepid brand of journalism—indeed, she declared herself a New Woman in the very first line of her trip account for the New York World—and a harbinger of the equality women would achieve when they won the right to vote. She stepped far away from the traditional roles of the women of her times, blurred traditional gender roles by dressing as a man and riding a man’s wheel, and pioneered sports-related marketing for women athletes. And what a sight she was to Victorian eyes! At a time when many considered it unbecoming for a woman to make a spectacle of herself, and reprehensible for a woman to leave her husband and children, especially for a frivolity like an around-the-world bicycle trip, Annie was utterly without qualms about—indeed, she was intent upon—making as big a spectacle of herself as she could. She didn’t run away to join the circus; she became the circus.

  Though not an active feminist or a suffragist, she was willing to act on her dreams in the face of what would have been, for most women, overwhelming social forces. For the vast majority of women of her day, what Annie did was simply inconceivable. In this regard she was a true feminist, willing to ride past the limitations that circumscribed the lives of women to seek fulfillment of her unconventional dreams. She was, in this sense, heroic, though she didn’t always act heroically. Annie’s decision to leave her family for fifteen months was a harsh one, and she dispatched her children as early as possible to boarding schools after her return. She clearly had little attachment to her children and little interest in being a mother in any meaningful sense. And she freely traded on the foibles and gullibility of others. More than a century later, one can both admire her temerity and see the humor in her escapades, but she wasn’t above making fools of people in her pursuit of glory—editor Allen Kelly of the Las Cruces Independent Democrat and Sheriff Doane of Athol, Massachusetts, for example.

  AFTER HER around-the-world journey, Annie moved her family to New York and had a brief stint as a feature writer for the New York World. Typically writing under the byline “The New Woman,” some of her stories, like the wild-man story, were sensational accounts of derring-do. She spent a day with a self-proclaimed Messiah and his flock in New Jersey, and, posing as a lovelorn working girl, exposed the machinations of a New York City matchmaker. Not surprisingly, many of her stories were about women in their new roles. On assignment, she sorted mail on the New York mail train, once the exclusive province of men, and she wrote about a women-only stock exchange off Wall Street, among others.

  Shortly after her trip was completed, Annie received at least three letters from the wife of Victor Sloan (her first name is not known), the Sterling bicycle agent with whom she had stayed in Paris. It is clear they grew very fond of her and the letters reflect the power she had to hold people in thrall. “Dear Miss Annie,” begins a letter dated October 4, 1895, “We suppose you have not received our last letter, as we have not heard anything from you, but you are probably very busy by this time. What are you doing? Is your trip finished and how have you gone through? All this points [sic] would interest us so much. We hope you will kindly drop us a line down and we expect it will be from Boston, that means that you will be arrived; how happy it would make us.” The letter continues: “you don’t know how many times our thoughts were with you, it will be nearly a year that you have been in Paris, it seems now that time has gone so quick.”

  The letter also describes financial hardship. “Until now, our business is always at the same point, my dear husband is working very hard to make his Emery wheels [a brand of bicycle most likely], he has been disappointed many times…I hope, dear friend, the next time, we will write you, it will be good news. We are in good health & that’s much for us, who have to work hard…Write us soon, dear, & let us know all about you. If you have the chance to come to Paris & if we have succeed [sic], what a good time we will pass together. Always yours truly, C. Sloan.”

  Annie replied to this because in a second letter dated November 5, Mrs. Sloan begins by expressing great joy at hearing from her and the news that her trip has been successful. She thanks Annie for sending a copy of her article about her bicycle trip from the New York World, published just two weeks before. But then the letter turns plaintive. The Sloans had apparently been writing to her along her route after Paris, but had heard nothing from her. Whether Annie received the Sloans’ letters en route or not, she excused her own lack of correspondence by claiming she hadn’t been getting their mail.

  “We learned that you have been successful & I
must tell you, that we were a little surprised not to receive a little word from you,” Mrs. Sloan continued, “but it explains us all now, if you have not received our mail, you thought we had forgotten you.”

  “You can’t believe that since about two weeks, I was every night dreaming from you [sic], that you were coming to Paris and my husband, who says he never dreams, did to [sic], about 2 or 3 times this week. We hope you will come again soon, how happy we would be all together, you would interest us so much.”

  Clearly, the Sloans had fallen in love, but the sense that they are incomplete without her probably repelled Annie. And if the declarations of affection didn’t cause Annie some discomfort, she went on to unburden herself about their business difficulties, telling Annie that they had been reduced to living “in a little room” near the office on the Rue Sedaine. “We are so happy together, but we have much trouble in business,” Mrs. Sloan wrote, blaming their troubles on “that cursed money.”

  Annie, of course, had just won a $10,000 prize—at least the Sloans, familiar with her story, believed that to be the case. She may have thought they were hinting that they could use her financial help.

  It appears Annie, despite the closeness implied in Mrs. Sloan’s letters, never told the Sloans she was married, or indeed very much about herself, especially her lack of interest in parenting, for the November letter ends with this: “I expect you did find your little nephew in good health & that you were happy to see all your parents & friends again. I wish to have a little child, but until now there is nothing & we are sorry about it, but I hope also for this. Yours forever, C. Sloan.”