Major Taylor

by Conrad Kerber

  With his signature, Taylor entered an intriguing new chapter in his life and his career, one that would be given more space in his memoirs than any others. It would also further include his wife. Since they had not yet shared a real honeymoon together, Taylor broke the news to Daisy in the form of a honeymoon proposal. Wanting to see the world and her superstar husband compete in what she believed would be a friendly environment, Daisy immediately set about stuffing suitcase after suitcase with new clothing for the long journey that lay ahead.

  In late November 1902 amid a puff of light snow, a porter hoisted seventeen suitcases into a Southern Pacific baggage car, then watched the train push out of Worcester’s Union Station. Major and Daisy spent the first five days of their honeymoon rocking in the middle of a transcontinental train as it twisted west through the plains, over the Rockies white with snow, before steaming into Oakland’s long wharf. They ferried over to San Francisco. When Major called for his steamship tickets at the Ferry Building, the agent paused, looked him over, then glanced at Daisy who was standing behind him. “I’m assuming the two of you are aware of the rigid color line in Australia,” the agent stated. There was a long pause. After becoming a Federation in 1901, Australia did indeed have a “White Australia policy” that specifically “excluded coloured races.” Taylor was caught completely unaware. “I somehow figured that race prejudice only flourished in this country,” he lamented.

  The honeymoon glow on Daisy’s face quickly disappeared. “My first thought upon getting this information,” Major remembered, “was to cancel my Australia tour . . .” The agent pressed the issue. “Do you want the tickets or not?” Major craned around and saw a look of confusion on Daisy’s face. But having signed a contract, he had no choice. With much trepidation, he bought tickets for the next day’s trip.

  Hungry, the newlyweds flagged down a horse-taxi and asked to be taken to the nearest eatery. But in 1902 San Francisco, racism was not only prevalent, it was city policy. Like in Newark, they were turned away at restaurant after restaurant. Because their steamship wasn’t scheduled to leave until the crack of dawn, they asked to be dropped off at the nearest hotel. Once again they moved up and down Market Street, this time getting turned away at hotel after hotel. As dusk fell over San Francisco, the Taylors, standing with heaps of luggage, still hadn’t secured lodging. Hungry and humiliated, Daisy and Major apparently spent the night together under the stars.

  The next morning they boarded the RMS Ventura at Pier 7. No sooner had the steamship pushed off from the dock before a crewman draped in a white pressed uniform and a sailor’s cap walked toward them.

  “Are you Major Taylor?” the man barked.

  “Yes, I am,” answered Taylor hesitantly.

  The man smiled, offered his hand, then started chattering with a thick East Coast accent. It turns out the ship’s purser was from Westborough, Massachusetts, a small town in Worcester County only miles from the Taylors’ home. It was a happy encounter. For the next few weeks, Major and Daisy bantered with the purser, listening in amazement as he spoke of Taylor’s seven world records, his World Championship victory in Montreal, defeat of Jacquelin in France, and a few races even Taylor had to stretch his mind to remember. The camaraderie helped the days slip by. They paused in Honolulu before steaming by an endless string of tiny islands. Somewhere along the vast South Pacific, winter turned into summer. Each day, the purser pulled aside passengers, proudly introducing them to the world champion and his newlywed. Surrounded by a tropical sun and pellucid waters, endless racing stories were spun. At one point, a Catholic priest, wondering what all the commotion was about, slid into the conversation.

  “What church or denomination do you belong to?” asked the clergyman.

  “Well, sir,” Taylor replied, “I guess I’m a Baptist.”

  “Oh, well,” remarked the priest, “I think you’ve got a chance.”

  “Yes, sir,” Taylor said proudly, “I think I have got a chance and a very good chance, too.”

  Seven thousand miles slipped by. But as the ship inched closer to Sydney, the uplifting conversation switched to the ugly subject of the color line in Australia. The purser confirmed that what they heard from their agent was true. But, he added, he wasn’t sure if the racism was directed at blacks or the influx of Asians who were desperately trying to emigrate to the United States and Australia.

  Daisy remained apprehensive. Major tried reassuring her, suggesting that a shrewd promoter like McIntosh wouldn’t have coughed up a fortune if he believed they would be rejected. Unsure of his own words, Major’s voice fluttered like the waves beating against the bottom of the ship. Daisy nodded her head unconvincingly. A spasm of fear spread through them. “It certainly was a distressing outlook,” he would later write.

  On the afternoon of December 22, 1902, under blue skies, the captain of the RMS Ventura steered the six-thousand-ton ship into Sydney Harbor. Daisy tilted her white Victorian hat lined with silk flowers and purple ribbons upward, then pressed a pair of double-barreled opera glasses against her eyes. In the distance, she could see the faint silhouette of another vessel pointed in their direction. As they inched forward, one ship became two, three, then four—all headed right for them. She lowered her glasses, wiped the lenses clean, and peered out again. This time she saw flags waving, followed by a whistling noise. Major slid open a bronze sailor’s telescope and looked out. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was seeing. Perched behind the ships Daisy had spotted sat dozens more with signs hanging over their rails. More tooting sounds were heard, each growing louder as the Ventura cruised deeper into the harbor.

  Puzzled, the purser peered through a maritime telescope.

  For the next few miles, starting at the entrance to Jackson Head, leading all the way up to the Sydney pier, awaited one of the most sensational displays of athletic adoration ever seen. Daisy, Major, the purser, and everybody on board the steamer stood in amazement, running their eyes back and forth along both sides of the harbor. Facing them were hundreds of boats of all makes and models, both steam and naptha launches, filled with men and women yelling “Taylor! Taylor!” from behind long megaphones. Steaming through the harbor, which Taylor called “the most beautiful in the world,” Australians leaned over the sides of their vessels waving American flags, blowing their whistles, and screaming themselves hoarse. “Welcome Major Taylor, welcome!” There, probably in his yacht Mabel—which would later famously capsize due to too much champagne on board—was McIntosh, leading the celebration.

  Pointing over the railing, the purser, having never seen anything like it before, yelled to the honeymooners. “Look, look,” he said, his throat choking with excitement. “Do you see all those American flags, do you hear those whistles and horns?” Major looked over the side of the liner, tears streaming from his eyes. The purser glanced at them and smiled. “Now do you think you will be allowed to land in Australia?” he asked cheerfully.

  At the pier, an army of newsmen, track owners, and racing officials joined thousands of fans cheering wildly as they went ashore. Daisy’s anxiety over the possible drawing of the color line was quickly replaced with tears of joy as she walked down the plank, her jaw quivering with emotion.

  The animated procession trotted off to the Metripole Hotel where thousands more massed, including city officials, prominent Australian cricket players, jockeys, and footballers. McIntosh had the hotel’s best luxury suite reserved for them. That evening, McIntosh, who entertained with legendary munificence, held an elaborate outdoor banquet, giving Daisy, who carried herself with remarkable social ease, an opportunity to wear her spectacular new garb. The Lord Mayor of Sydney gave a rousing speech to their good health, telling the crowd that Taylor had “defeated everyone in America and Europe,” and asked him lightheartedly if he would kindly go easy on the Australians.

  The next day, the newlyweds strolled about Sydney, taking in a harbor excursion and a shopping spree while shaking off their sea legs. Everywhere they went, they elicited stares
. “Hey mate, look it’s the Maja, there’s Maja Tayla.” When they returned to the hotel each night, they were deluged with offers from civic leaders, executives, and sports figures to attend social functions. But because of his commitment to the syndicate, and the fact that he had not been on his bike for some time, Taylor had little time for socializing.

  After a few days of sightseeing, Taylor rushed off to the Sydney Cricket Grounds and Racetrack for some serious training. He was greeted there by Sid Melville, his syndicate-appointed registered trainer, one of the finest in the business. Melville bore a startling likeness to the man in the American Gothic painting, minus the pitchfork. He was a thin-as-a-rake, spindle-legged, craggy-faced veteran racetracker who had a habit of not smiling. When he did force out a crooked smile, it usually synchronized with that split second when one of his riders crossed the finish line first. Mindful of his substantial investment, McIntosh ordered Melville to watch over Taylor with eagle eyes. He took his job seriously. When a green-as-grass amateur walked into Taylor’s locker room puffing joyously on a cigarette, all one-hundred-something pounds of Melville chased him out. “No one, it seems,” wrote a sportswriter known as Wheeler, “may smoke in the presence of a cycling chieftain.”

  The Sydney track where Taylor was scheduled to compete over a handful of dates was the most modern racetrack in the world. Much of the concrete track, which was three laps to the mile, was surrounded by grandstands that included a separate ladies’ pavilion, members-only section, smokers’ pavilion, bar and restaurant, and a shilling pavilion, otherwise known as cheap seats. Then there was “The Hill,” a steep embankment where rowdy hellions could imbibe at will, and fight without cause. It was a 35,000-seat racing seat Xanadu, that when combined with the large Australian purses, attracted riders from all over the world.

  Every day, thousands of fanatically devoted Aussies paid just to watch Taylor go through his twice-daily workouts, dissecting his every muscle twitch. A gathering of amateur wheelmen gaped at him. Taylor’s main professional rivals—Australians Joe Megson, Arthur Gudgeon, Bob MacDonald, and Don Walker, champion of Australia—watched his workouts with a degree of awe. They had never seen anyone train with such intensity. Nor had they seen such a gathering of spectators and reporters flooding the track for training sessions.

  Slowly, Taylor’s form, stunted from the long trip over, started to take hold. The public and the press watched every incremental step feverishly. “The sole topic of conversation yesterday,” wrote one Australian reporter, “was the visit of the World Champion Major Taylor . . . tremendous interest is being taken in his performances.” Their fascination with Taylor all but squeezed the hugely popular sports of cricket, football, and horse racing out of their usual position of prominence in the Australian newspapers. Nearly every day, papers provided extensive coverage, sometimes multiple pages, with several photos of Major and a few of Daisy.

  Australia’s religious papers, which had historically shied away from writing about athletes or encouraging sports, made an exception for Taylor. The New South Wales Baptist, which had taken heat for giving a few inches to the results of innocent cricket matches, devoted five entire columns in large type to a special interview of Taylor titled THIRTY THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR CONSCIENCE SAKE. The writer, clearly impressed with Taylor’s life story, wrote about all the money Taylor had given up because of his refusal to race on the Sabbath day and his transcendent value to his sport. “For years this man of deep and strong convictions has been preaching to the sporting world a silent but eloquent sermon of example.”

  “I have always tried to live as a Christian,” Taylor explained in the long interview. “I attribute most of my success entirely to the fact that I have tried to do what was right—live truly and squarely by every man—and any man who follows those principles is bound to succeed.”

  Not everyone was happy, however, with this unprecedented degree of attention being directed toward one man. After being denied access to the grounds for several important matches, the cricket association sued the tracks trustees. With revenues from the bike races vastly exceeding what they would have made from cricket matches, the trustees argued that they were merely doing what was in the best interest of the track. A heated, well-publicized trial would play out in the high courts of Australia for half a year after Taylor’s arrival.

  The Sydney portion of Taylor’s Australian racing circuit, officially dubbed “The Major Taylor Carnival,” began on January 3, 1903, only eleven days after his arrival. He didn’t waste time before making an impression. In his first race, the Half-mile International Championship, he defeated Australian champion Don Walker with a sensational burst that had the crowd standing in the aisles. Gnawing on an oversized plug of chewing tobacco, trainer Melville shifted his kangaroo-leather cowboy hat at the finish line where someone swears seeing the outline of a smile forming on his face. The report could not be verified.

  Despite losing the Walker-Plate Five-Mile Scratch Race to Don Walker that same night, it was obvious Taylor’s form was already coming around; he knifed through the last quarter-mile in twenty-six seconds, an Australian record for the last quarter of a five-mile race.

  The carnival continued. While no one event in Sydney stood out from a pure racing perspective, the Aussies couldn’t get enough of the spectacular evening events. Having recently installed colored incandescent lighting over the track, McIntosh thrilled the crowds at race time. He switched off all other lights, silhouetting the grandstand in multicolored fire, leaving only the track illuminated in a green tint by clusters of electric arc lamps hanging high on track poles.

  Being a new concept to the Aussies—and with the mysterious black man from America lighting up the track—these events were described as having a surreal, almost ethereal quality to them. Sketching a meticulous drawing of elegantly dressed women in their pinks, greens, and purples, and the riders ripping across the track, one unidentified artist captured the dramatic evening scenes as well as any of the era. The scene, wrote the Town & Country, “was almost like fairyland.”

  Reporters described the crowds as being nearly hysterical. At one race, nearly thirty thousand fans showed up in the rain. “Never before,” wrote one reporter, “has enthusiasm been so prolonged.” Before the Major Taylor Carnival shoved off to Melbourne, the large seating capacity of the Sydney Track would be needed. During a handful of race dates, more than one hundred thousand fans showed up to watch him race, a number equal to nearly one-quarter of Sydney’s population. The excitement Taylor had ignited in sports fans spilled into other races. At twelve meetings in and around Sydney, a quarter of a million fans taxed local transit, devoured McIntosh’s track food, guzzled his refreshments, and cheered long into the night. Nearly every night, the separate ladies’ pavilion, normally closed, was packed on both the upper and lower decks with “representatives of the world of fashion.” Many of them were no doubt clamoring to be seen next to Daisy, whom one Australian reporter described as “one of the most fascinating of a fascinating sex.”

  McIntosh prowled the stands keeping his eye on Taylor, the continual stream of fans pouring through the turnstiles, and all the women who, because of his targeted marketing methods copied from Brady, often made up around half the audience at bike races in Australia. A consummate womanizer, McIntosh was in his element. “Put away the brooms boys,” joked one of his caterers. “Here comes Mac; he’d go after anything with hair on it.” But with his Clark Gable good looks and charisma, women had a tendency to flock to him. “Sometimes so many women surrounded him,” wrote Wheeler, “that H. D. himself could not be seen.”

  Women aside, what McIntosh saw could not have pleased him more. Even though Taylor had three stops left (two in different cities), concession revenue alone—which he controlled through his catering company—was already more than the high cost of bringing him across the Pacific. “He would have been cheap at double the price,” joked one reporter.

  For the honeymooners, everything was clicking. In contrast
to the cold Massachusetts winter and the bitterness of Major’s American rivals, they were finding the temperate Australian summer and the warmth of the Australian people enchanting. Gaining many new friends because of her “pleasant and attractive manners,” Daisy, known as a “brilliant conversationalist,” was having the time of her life. Major was winning races, making good money, and being universally praised by newsmen and fans alike. After enduring so much anguish back home the previous season, they were feeling good about life again. “I cannot emphasize too strongly,” Major expressed, “the pressure off my mind upon learning that I would have no worry from the color line.”

  Their train chattered six hundred miles southwest toward the sports-crazed city of Melbourne. The honeymooners looked out and saw the emerald glow of the Tasman Sea on one side, and koalas, wallabies, and kangaroos bounding about the countryside on the other. The Sydney to Melbourne Express whistled to a stop on January 23, 1903. When the railcar doors slid open, Daisy, Major, and Australian champion Don Walker wiped the cobwebs from their eyes before stepping into the Spencer Street Train Station. They looked around and couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Despite little publicity, people stood in the thousands waving American flags while shouting “Tayla, Tayla, welcome Maja.” “The Star-Spangled Banner” blared in the background.

  Daisy and Major shimmied their way through the throng before melting into an elegant “reserved” honeymoon-like carriage. Along the route to the Grand Hotel, fans lined the road in thick formations, tossing wads of confetti at the carriage as the couple rolled by. Flatteringly called a “dusky belle” by Aussies, Daisy must have been overwhelmed by the scene unfolding before her eyes. From the rich burgundy interior of their Victorian carriage, she could look forward, past the coachmen dressed in black frock coats and top hats, and see two regally beautiful white Percheron horses, plus rising balloons, flying confetti, and thousands of adoring Australians. In her wildest dreams, she could not have possibly fathomed a grander way to celebrate her honeymoon.