Spin

by Peter Zheutlin

  “Ah, yes,” I replied. “I suppose I have. But all the attention, good or bad, is good for business.”

  “Business?” he replied.

  “What I mean is that publicity, good or bad, raises my profile and creates more opportunities for me to earn the money I need to finish this trip and win the reward that awaits me when I have succeeded.”

  “Yes, yes, I have read about this wager of yours. A very clever device, Miss Londonderry!” He was still grinning.

  “Device?” I asked.

  “Well, as if a solo trip around the world by a woman on a wheel needed any added drama, this wager provides it, does it not?”

  I was having trouble reading him. Was he questioning my veracity or merely observing what was obviously true: that the wager turned the whole enterprise into a race against time and, with a woman at the center of it, a defining moment in the debate over women’s equality? Before I could respond, Mr. Ilfeld continued.

  “Your pluck and determination are to be admired, Miss Londonderry. Tell me, how can I help you?”

  I told Mr. Ilfeld I hoped to make a few dollars working in his store and that we could make a festive occasion of it and draw in some extra customers. He was happy to oblige.

  I can’t tell you what caused me to say what I said next, but perhaps it was a little nostalgia for home, for Grandpa’s prayer shawl, the one he left draped over a hook in the front hall, the tefillin he donned daily, and the Hebrew prayer book that was his constant companion. Funny how details you never give a second thought come into sharper focus when they’re no longer in front of you.

  “Mr. Ilfeld, I hope you won’t mind a personal word,” I said. “I haven’t said this to a soul since leaving Boston, but I feel comfortable confiding it to you. I am Jewish.” It was one of the very rare occasions since leaving Boston when I broke character, as they say in the theater.

  Mr. Ilfeld smiled knowingly.

  “The name is Irish or English,” he said, “but the cast of your face is anything but. I had my suspicions the moment you walked into my office.”

  His tone turned paternal. He was, after all, old enough to be my father.

  “Tell me, dear, what is your true name?”

  “Cohen,” I said. “Anna Cohen. I am married to a man named Kopchovksy.” I said nothing about children. That might well have been a bridge too far for a traditional man such as Mr. Ilfeld.

  “Married!” he exclaimed. “That you are Jewish does not surprise me. At least it didn’t upon seeing you. But married? That is a surprise! Pray, tell me, what does your husband think of this adventure of yours? It could not have gone down easily.”

  “I can’t say he was happy about it, but, frankly, I gave him little choice,” I replied. “I am a very determined woman, and he is a rather passive man.”

  “Well,” said Mr. Ilfeld, “it is not for me to judge the marriage of another man, but that is highly irregular. Bless your husband. I would not have stood for it, but that is between you and him.” He wasn’t being judgmental, just stating the obvious, for few men of his generation, or even this one, would have stood for it.

  “Miss Londonderry,” he continued, “or should I say, Mrs. Kopchovsky, I would be glad to have you in our store over the weekend. I’d wager it’s been a while since you have had a proper Shabbat dinner. Why don’t you join Mrs. Ilfeld, the children, and me at our home this Friday evening? My brothers and their wives and children will be joining us, too.”

  “I dearly wish I could, and thank you for inviting me, but I have a commitment to lecture at the bicycle club that evening, and a dance in my honor has been arranged for afterward,” I answered. “Please don’t think me rude. You are very kind.”

  In truth, I was torn, but glad to have a good excuse not to accept the invitation. The struggle to maintain my new identity was growing more difficult with each passing week as I drew closer and closer to the end of the journey and the eventual return to the home I had been so desperate to flee. Breaking character, as I did with Mr. Ilfeld, was something I fought mightily to avoid. But there was something about him, the prayer book, the tefillin, that caused me to drop my guard. I was just starting to reckon with what it would be like to reenter the life I’d left behind, to assume once again the role of housewife and mother, and to slip into familiar and unwelcome routines.

  “The sabbath is very important, Mrs. Kopchovksy, but I understand the impracticalities of being observant while on a journey such as yours. Come back this Friday and Saturday, and we will engage you to work the counter and chat up the customers. And I will arrange for some homemade borscht and a fresh challah to be delivered to your hotel this evening. You look as though you could use some home-cooked food.”

  “I will be most grateful for a taste of home, Mr. Ilfeld, you can be sure of that. I don’t know how to thank you.” And, indeed, I savored every morsel when I found it waiting for me that evening.

  With that, he walked me to the door and said, “Until Friday, Mrs. Kopchovksy. Come at noon. The store closes early on Fridays for the Sabbath, but we are open Saturdays. It’s our busiest day of the week.”

  “Thank you again, Mr. Ilfeld. You are most kind.”

  * * *

  On Friday morning, as I perused the newspaper in the hotel lobby, I saw this.

  After the lecture and the dance on Friday, I paid a long overdue visit to a local barbershop on Saturday morning to have my hair dressed. More than a hundred people gathered outside, peering in the window to watch, and dozens followed me to Ilfeld’s, where I took up my position for the second time behind the ladies’ hosiery counter.

  Though I received a warm and enthusiastic welcome in Las Vegas, skepticism about me and my claims to have wheeled around the world was growing. The Optic, the largest paper in town, had welcomed me by calling me “sharp as a tack and as bright as a new silver dollar,” but it was very much tongue in cheek. The day after I left, when I was no longer present to defend my reputation, the paper went on the attack, even mocking my name:

  The Optic’s conclusion of the whole matter is that Miss Bostonberry is a plucky little woman making a trip to advertise the Sterling bicycle; that she has been around the world, wheeling but little and riding a good deal on trains and ships; and that, like many travelers, she has a vivid imagination, the incidents of travel growing in number and startlingness the farther she gets from their supposed location.

  (Las Vegas Daily Optic, July 29, 1895)

  I had been of the belief that as long as they were writing about me, for good or ill, the press was serving my purpose. But now I wasn’t so sure, for all the doubts being raised could be fodder for Colonel Pope to refuse me the coveted prize money. The article left me chagrined.

  In the days that followed, I began to regret that I wasn’t able to share Shabbat dinner with the Ilfelds. Though I have never been a devout person, there was always some comfort in the old rituals, the familiar words of prayer, and the taste of familiar, traditional foods. It was, whether I wanted it to be or not, part of my life experience; part of me.

  This regret, this touch of nostalgia for the rituals that were part of life at home, in turn troubled me, for it was a reminder that no matter how far or how fast I pedaled my Sterling, I could not completely leave Annie Kopchovsky behind. It was as if I were riding the front end of a tandem and she was seated in back, shadowing me wherever I went. The prospect that I would soon be back in Boston, back to the old life I had escaped, bewildered and depressed me. Perhaps my old life, my old self, were, quite simply, inescapable. No matter how furiously you pedal, the occupant of the second seat on a tandem is still right behind you. Each day, as home drew closer and closer, these feelings intensified. I had no idea how I would react to being delivered into the life I had left behind more than a year before, but I was going to find out soon enough.

  Fifteen

  It was now the end of July. I had six weeks to get to Chicago.

  By bicycle I passed through the towns of Springer and Ma
xwell, arriving in Raton, just south of the Colorado border, on July 30. Then on to Trinidad, Colorado Springs, and Denver, where I arrived on August 12, exhausted and sick with pneumonia. The weather had been stormy for much of the trip north, and I was frequently drenched and forced to sleep wherever a little shelter from the elements could be found. I lost a week to the sickness before deciding that I would have to take the train to Cheyenne and then east to Columbus, Nebraska. I felt well enough to mount the Sterling there and rode to Fremont, where I explained to an inquiring reporter who saw me alight from the train that I was permitted to take the rails provided I secured permission from the parties to the wager, but that was a white lie like so many others.

  The Daily News, Denver, Colorado (August 12, 1895).

  Though the skepticism I encountered in New Mexico followed me to Nebraska, it didn’t dim the enthusiasm of the wheelmen and others who were curious to meet and hear from a celebrity. My lecture in Omaha drew a large crowd, which I regaled with the stories that had become my routine, with a few new twists thrown in for good measure. The Evening Bee called me “the greatest lady bicycle rider,” and when I was engaged at the Boston Store, a large department store in the city, for a few days, hundreds came each time to talk, get an autograph, and admire the Sterling, which was placed on display.

  On September 1, with just two weeks to reach Chicago, I pedaled out of Omaha, through Missouri Valley, Iowa, toward Ames. There was little drama crossing Iowa, so I had to invent some for the local newspaperman who interviewed me when I arrived in Marshalltown on the third. It was a familiar story, I just changed the location, telling him that between Council Bluffs and Crescent I was riding the railway tracks when a speeding mail train came around a curve, forcing me to throw myself and the wheel to the side of the tracks as the train sped by. I was telling these stories with less conviction than before, however, for bit by bit, as I gained on Chicago, I felt the air slowly going out of Miss Londonderry.

  But then I had a real mishap, one that threatened my prospects for making it to Chicago in time, and I was sure that failing in that regard would doom my chances of claiming my prize, chances that were already dwindling thanks to my switching to the Sterling and the increasing number of newspapers casting doubt on the stories of my travels. It would be much harder for Colonel Pope to disprove that I had ridden the required ten thousand miles (who was there to keep count?) than that I had made the circuit in the time allotted (the date of my departure from Boston was known to all), so it was essential that I make Chicago by September 25, fifteen months to the day since leaving Boston. The prize money, always part of my motivation, loomed larger and larger the closer I came to the end of the journey. It had become, as I have said, the only way to justify all I had put them through to Grandpa, Brother Bennett, Baila, Rosa, and the children (when they were older, of course). Not least, it was how I was justifying it to myself.

  The mishap occurred between Tama and Gladbrook. I was coasting down one of the rolling hills that dot the eastern Iowa landscape when a farmer herding a drove of pigs started across the road. With no brake on the Sterling, I veered to the side, lost my balance, and was thrown from the wheel. I tried to break my fall, but only succeeded in breaking my wrist. The pain was intense, but the farmer, miffed that I had scared and scattered his pigs, made no effort to assist me, and I had to ride fifteen miles to Tama with only one hand on the handlebars to find a doctor to set the fracture. The small cast was a nuisance, and my wrist ached, but riding was still possible. Two Tama wheelmen were summoned to ride east with me toward Cedar Rapids, and when they learned that the farmer responsible for my injury had done nothing to help me, they were indignant and promised that the local L.A.W. chapter would look into the matter, but I never heard a word about it after that.

  * * *

  On the tenth of September I rolled out of Clinton, Iowa, in the company of two wheelmen, Roy Upton and Clarence Rumble, hale and hearty men a little past their prime but excited to be the escort for the final leg of my journey. My broken wrist was still bandaged and sore, but it did not impair my riding. By midday we were halfway to Chicago and stopped in the town of Rochelle, Illinois, where I gave my final interview to the press.

  Miss Londonderry, who has the proud distinction of being the only woman who has circled the globe on a wheel (that is the land portion thereof) was well-equipped in point of education to make the trip, as she speaks six languages fluently. However, this, together with her wheel and a large share of American pluck constituted her only equipment. Miss Londonderry was dressed in knickerbockers and sweater, and carried a revolver, flask, and cup.

  (The Rochelle Register, September 13, 1895)

  The sweater I quickly jettisoned, for an oppressive heat wave struck northern Illinois over the next couple of days.

  You would think that with Chicago now in sight that I would be in a celebratory mood. But it was quite the opposite. I suppose I felt like the fisherman who spends a lifetime trying to catch the biggest fish in the pond. When, at last, he succeeds, his excitement is fleeting, for now he must face life without that which has inspired and enticed him for so many years. Barely in my mid-twenties, how would I ever again achieve what I had in the previous fifteen months? What could compare? And there was the nagging uncertainty about trying, like a square peg into a round hole, to fit into the life I had left behind. Every mile that I drew closer to Chicago, the urge to turn that wheel around and do it all over again grew stronger.

  * * *

  I have described for you many times over the years the dazzling hero’s welcome that awaited me in Chicago when I arrived on September 12, with two weeks to spare. It was a staple of the bedtime stories I told you when you were a little girl. The resounding welcome was a much-needed lift to my spirits and took my mind off the dread of ending this chapter of my life and returning home.

  Thousands lined Michigan Avenue for a parade arranged by the mayor’s office and the Sterling Cycle Works. Thousands more crowded windows overlooking the avenue. It was a brilliant late-summer day, simply perfect in every way. I sat next to Mayor George Bell Swift in a horse-drawn carriage preceded by two dozen Chicago mounted police officers. Behind us a procession of many hundreds of cyclists and a dozen brass bands followed. The cheering never relented, and I was soon covered in confetti. This road circus ended at City Hall, where a VIP seating area had been arranged, and I was rendered speechless to see many familiar faces smiling happily at me there. Miss Anthony had made a special trip from upstate New York to be there. The Wild West Show was, by coincidence, back in town. Bill Cody and Annie Oakley were there, along with many of the friends I had met during my brief appearance in the show back in San Francisco. Even the great Nellie Bly came, representing the New York World, determined to get the first exclusive interview with me after the parade. Thomas Stevens, whose trip around the world was the catalyst for my own, had made the journey from England. Jessie Padman, the woman with whom I had a brief flirtation a year before, came from nearby South Bend. And the Palmers, the wealthy socialites I had met while sailing to France, were there. That evening they hosted an elegant dinner in my honor at their lakefront home. But seeing Mark Johnson, so tall and so handsome, beaming at me was the straw that broke the camel’s back. His presence was totally unexpected. I simply broke down and cried, composing myself in time to receive the key to the city from the mayor. At a lavish reception inside City Hall I had the chance to speak again with all of these people whose presence had brought me to tears moments before.

  * * *

  Well, that’s how I like to remember it, and that’s the story you have heard me tell a hundred times. But that’s not what happened. There was no parade. No Miss Anthony, Bill Cody, or Annie Oakley. Nellie Bly, Thomas Stevens, Jessie Padman, and Mark Johnson are also figments of my imagination about that day. The mayor, as far as I know, was working on the city budget in his office.

  I like to think that the reason my arrival in Chicago on the twelfth of September 189
5, was such a muted affair is that I made little effort to drum up the kind of publicity I’d so eagerly pursued for the previous fifteen months. But, in truth, skepticism about my story had been growing, and I was now widely viewed as something between a celebrity and a charlatan. Interest had waned. Only a modest reception organized for me and my escorts by the Sterling Cycle Works formally marked the journey’s end. It was over with a whimper, not a bang, though there would be a colorful second act, which I will come to shortly.

  When I signed the guest registry at the Wellington Hotel that evening, I signed it simply “Mrs. Kopchovksy, Boston, Mass.” Miss Londonderry had served her purpose. As I lay down my wheel in the hotel lobby, the character I had inhabited for well over a year vanished just like that. Even the Chicago newspapers made little mention that my journey had ended in their city.

  * * *

  Before returning home to Boston, I took the train, alone, to New York City to attend to two pieces of business.

  First, I went to visit my sister, Rosa, who, still just a child of seventeen, had married in my absence, and with her husband, Simon Newman, moved to New Brunswick, New Jersey. She was morbidly obese and mentally unstable, and had begged me to come. A local newspaper there got wind of my visit. Though Rosa claimed she had nothing to do with it, her need for attention suggests she did. The reporter proved to be a doubting Thomas and told me that walkers and cyclists claiming to be circling the earth were passing through New Brunswick “on an average of three a day for the past six months.” I lost my temper with him and told him the others were fakers, but truly I wasn’t in the mood to now have to defend myself to every skeptic. The only skeptics I needed to win over were back in Boston, where I had ten thousand dollars at stake. There were bound to be questions about whether I had vindicated Colonel Pope’s faith in me, whether he was entitled through my efforts to collect his winnings, and in turn, whether I was entitled to collect mine. That’s all I was focused on at the moment.