Around the World on Two Wheels

by Peter Zheutlin

  Although Annie wasn’t among the first women to ride a bicycle, nor the first long-distance female cyclist by any means, until June 1894, no woman had ever attempted to cross the United States on a bicycle, let alone circle the world alone on one. In this regard, Annie was both a product of the times and in the vanguard of them, as well. For unlike Fanny Workman and Elizabeth Pennell, she rode without her husband and with a purpose much different than the comfortably situated Pennells and Workmans: she rode for money, for fame, and for freedom. And if Annie and the new Woman were about anything, they were about personal freedom.

  WHAT ALL OF THIS meant for Colonel Albert Pope was a huge and growing women’s market for bicycles, a market being competed for by hundreds of manufacturers. Being associated with Annie’s trip, especially if successful, would be an enormous public relations coup. But, did Pope, or his company, do anything more than provide Annie’s bicycle?

  In late December 1894, one French newspaper reported that Annie had, “made an arrangement with a manufacturer who consented to initiate her into the sport [of cycling]. This man of industry, in return for the commitment that she would not ride any other brand during the entire course of her voyage, gave her a machine and 500 dollars.” If the report is true then the “man of industry” was surely Pope and the “machine” was Annie’s Columbia.

  There was also precedent for Pope’s involvement in around-the-world bicycle travel. He had provided the Columbia bicycle on which Thomas Stevens made the first successful around-the-world bicycle trip in the 1880s. Indeed, Pope had not only supplied the bicycle, he had funded the trip, albeit indirectly, by ensuring Stevens received payment for articles about his trip from another Pope entity, Outing magazine. (If the colonel had paid Stevens directly, it would have called into question Stevens’s amateur status. Pope was eager for people to see cycling as a popular, amateur sport, not one limited to professionals.) Stevens, ever grateful for Pope’s support, dedicated his lengthy 1887 book, Around the World on a Bicycle, to the manufacturer.

  But, while it is clear that Pope had a hand in Annie’s adventure, it likely amounted to little more than providing a bicycle to a young woman who had an obvious knack for publicity and might help him reap a public relations windfall. There was nothing to lose, from his point of view. But, there is simply no evidence that Pope or his company conceived or sponsored Annie’s trip in any other way.

  Annie would prove to be such a master at advancing her own goals, so adept at creating sensation, and so skilled at building her own legacy, it strains credulity to believe that this anonymous Jewish working mother of three small children from the tenements of Boston was somehow plucked from obscurity to settle a bet, especially in Boston, a city where, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once wrote, “anti-Semitism seems to have reached its American pinnacle.” Furthermore, Annie wasn’t active in the woman’s movement, so how would she have come to the attention of bettors seeking to settle an argument over the capabilities of women? Annie was not the Billie Jean King of her time, but she was clever enough to read the social trends of the 1890s and to exploit them, quite brilliantly, for her own purposes. Thus, the most plausible explanation of Annie’s radical decision to use a bicycle to trade one life for another is that she concocted the entire scheme herself, persuaded Pope Manufacturing to supply her wheel, and, like E. C. Pfeiffer, alias Paul Jones, used the story of a wager to sensationalize her trip.

  Though her scheme already had a grandiose twist—she would attempt to be the first woman to circle the world by wheel—positioning her trip as taken to settle a wager about women was a brilliant device. First, it turned a bicycle trip into a dramatic race against time: Would Miss Londonderry meet the deadline? Would she win the bet and reap the $10,000 prize? Would she prove some male chauvinist back in Boston wrong and, in the process, cause him to lose a large sum of money? Plus, by making the wager one that rested on and tested the capabilities of the New Woman, Annie ensured that both men and women, whatever their views on sexual equality, would have a vicarious stake in the outcome. Newspapers of the day devoted enormous attention to the New Woman and her doings, and by setting her trip up as a test of the New Woman, Annie greatly heightened her media appeal.

  Annie was not alone in her use of the wager as a device for attracting attention. Indeed, around-the-world wagers in which the traveler was to earn a fixed sum and return within a specified time were becoming so commonplace by the mid-1890s that, on May 29, 1895, the Los Angeles Times commented, “Scarcely a week passes in which some person does not turn up who is bumming his way around the world on some asserted big wager that he will do it in a certain length of time, and sometimes in addition that he will collect so much money on the road. This style of beating one’s way…is getting very stale and tiresome.” Then, in an obvious reference to Annie, for she departed Los Angeles headed east on May 28 or May 29 of that year, the Times continued, “Of late even the ‘coming woman’ has gone into this line of business. It takes a good deal of faith in human nature to believe that there are so many people back East who are ready to wager thousands of dollars upon the feats of individuals, when they can never ascertain whether those feats have been properly performed or not. The globe circler has got to be as much of a ‘chestnut’ as the bridge-jumper and the forty-day faster, whether he starts with a paper suit and a cent in his pocket, or with a dozen trunks full of clothes and his pockets full of first-class tickets.”

  Few, if any, who tried similar stunts came close to achieving the notoriety Annie did: some because the rigors of the journey proved too much, others because they lacked her gumption and talent for self-promotion. Whether newspaper editors and their readers truly believed she was traveling on a wager or not, Annie caught their attention wherever she traveled because she made such good copy and was creating a popular storyline that resonated with the public of the 1890s.

  The wager, as Annie described it, placed her squarely in the middle of the broad public debate over women’s equality even though she had no personal history as an active feminist. She was quite unabashedly and adroitly exploiting the women’s movement of the time as a platform for her personal ambitions. From a modern perspective, however, Annie was certainly a feminist in her determination to fulfill her personal need for freedom and independence, and to realize her full potential as a woman by charting a truly radical course for herself unbound by social convention.

  By setting herself up as a symbol of the New Woman, however, she was also assuming some heavy baggage: the hopes and aspirations of millions of women were riding on her handlebars. It might have been a burden had her motives been political. But because her motives were at first purely personal, this extra baggage would not slow her down. Rather, it ensured that as she went people would take notice, lend their support, and, in some cases, empty their pockets to help ensure her success. And, if there were times during the ride when she was about to give up, the fact that she was no longer riding for herself may have provided just enough motivation to keep her going.

  Chapter Three

  A Woman with Nerve

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

  Away on the road where the dusty clouds whirl

  Away with a spirit ecstatic

  Goes the cool-as-an-icicle, bicycle girl

  Bestriding the latest pneumatic;

  She heeds not the scoffers who scorn,

  Though knickers her kickers adorn,

  The cool-as-an-icicle, bicycle, tricycle maiden by no means forlorn.

  —London Judy, Buffalo Illustrated Express, July 29, 1894

  When she reached Chicago in late September 1894, Annie publicly declared defeat. The Columbia was an albatross, her skirts were cumbersome, and she had worn herself out on the ride from New York. There was no way she was going to cross the Great Plains, the Rockies and the Cascades before the snow started to fly, and a lengthier southerly route was a daunting prospect, too.

  Annie appears to have
done very little pretrip planning, despite what she told the New York Herald in early July, and her decision to travel west was beginning to look like a fatal mistake. At the very least, her leisurely but arduous three-month journey to Chicago had done her in. “Mlle. Londonderry, who started on a trip around the world by bicycle a few weeks ago, has decided not to complete the journey,” reported the New York Times on October 11. “She is now in Chicago and she has a new scheme. It is to make a record ride for her sex between Chicago and New York. She will start on Sunday next. Her route is through Cleveland, Buffalo, and Albany.”

  A few weeks later, Annie explained how she felt on her arrival in Chicago: “When I left Boston…I rode a 42-pound wheel and was attired in skirts. The result was that when I reached Chicago I was completely discouraged [and was about giving up riding and walk] to San Francisco.”

  Her new goal of a record run from Chicago to New York was nothing more than a face-saving maneuver. For a woman as ambitious as she was, her new proposed journey was a trifle compared to the glory, not to mention the money, she had expected to earn when she started out from Boston in June, hoping to become the first woman to circle the earth by wheel.

  FREE OF HER Columbia bicycle, Annie probably walked the streets soaking up the city’s extraordinary energy. After all, she was young, attractive, free, and anonymous in the big city. She needed a break before heading back east. Chicago was noisy and smoky and often basked in the sweet, nauseating smell of the nearby slaughterhouses. The city was a whirl of human motion. Bright yellow streetcars competed with wagons, horses, bicycles, and the occasional automobile for road space. With nearly a million and a half inhabitants, and more arriving daily, Chicago was big and getting bigger every day. People came from everywhere—job seekers from Iowa and Kansas, businessmen from New York and Baltimore, lawyers from Philadelphia and Boston, and cattlemen from Texas and Oklahoma. African Americans from the South, carrying cardboard suitcases, and young women from farms stepped off trains arriving in Chicago from every direction. Once there, the newcomers peered through smoke-filtered sunlight, many without any notion whatsoever of where to go next.

  Despite her announcement of defeat and her intention to try to set the Chicago–to–New York record, Annie wasn’t a woman who gave up easily, and it wasn’t long before she switched gears yet again. While in the Windy City, she met with the people at the Sterling Cycle Works, which had its offices and factory on Carroll Avenue. Sterling had a reputation for making extremely high-quality bicycles—bicycles that were, according to the company motto, “built like a watch.” How Annie’s relationship with Sterling originated is yet another mystery, but a deal was struck. “The Sterling Cycle Company came forward with an offer of a light 20-pound diamond [men’s] frame machine in exchange for the ice wagon [Miss Londonderry] was riding, and also made a lucrative contract with her to carry the Sterling banner on the tour,” according to the Buffalo Courier. The Morgan and Wright Tire Company, suppliers of tires to Sterling, “also entered into a contract to carry a ‘good tire’ streamer, and to-day [Miss Londonderry] has advertising contracts aggregating $3,500 in value….” The trip that had seemed doomed upon Annie’s arrival in Chicago was now on the verge of a revival.

  The bicycle the Sterling Cycle Works provided Annie with was a specially painted men’s Expert Model E Light Roadster, ivory with gold trim and the words “The Sterling” painted on the frame. With its wood rims and white pneumatic tires, the Sterling was an elegant-looking machine, and it rode beautifully, too. News stories published after Annie acquired the Sterling consistently said the bike weighed 20 or 21 pounds. If so, it was, as one newspaper reported, custom made, because the standard issue 1894 Sterling Light Roadster with wood rims weighed 26 pounds. Like the Columbia, the Sterling had only a single gear and no freewheel mechanism. But the Sterling lacked something Annie’s Columbia did have—a brake. Still, compared with the 42-pound bicycle that had brought her to Chicago, the lightweight Roadster was a vast improvement and offered a glimmer of hope that the journey around the world could be made after all.

  With a new bicycle and new corporate sponsors in Sterling and Morgan and Wright, Annie decided to carry on after all. Her around-the-world trip was back on, and now the Sterling Cycle Works, not Pope Manufacturing, would reap the public relations benefits. Sterling wasted no time capitalizing on the association. At the studios of J. Manz and Company, one of Chicago’s leading engraving and advertising houses, a photograph of Annie with her Roadster was turned into an image that graced the pages of at least two cycling magazines on October 11, 1894, Cycling Life and the L.A.W. Bulletin.

  There was another Annie helping to build the Sterling brand in 1894, too—Annie Oakley. As part of Buffalo Bill’s 1894 Wild West Show, Oakley sometimes demonstrated her skills with a rifle while mounted on a 27-pound ladies’ Sterling. “Miss Oakley is an ardent wheelwoman,” described The Bearings on August 17, 1894, “and takes a daily ride of twenty miles. She wears a suit of tan, with a white skirt that fastens at the knee to a pair of neat leggings.” A promotional trading card featured Oakley, aiming her rifle, on her bicycle. Together, the two Annies were pioneering sports-related marketing for women.

  AS THE CYCLING mania swept the nation, manufacturers sought to appeal to both men and women with liberal use of the female image to promote their wares, and these images were sometimes very provocative. Columbia, for example, illustrated some of its ads with a photo of a partially nude woman, both breasts bared and a glass of wine held high overhead, seated on a Columbia. Art posters, a popular advertising medium of the day, frequently depicted women in poses that sought to convey the liberating and exhilarating sensation of cycling. Sometimes showing them scantily attired, at others more formally dressed in long skirts or bloomers, these images often suggested flight, literally and figuratively.

  Poster artists, too, were caught up in the craze and were eager to use their talents in the bicycle trade. By the turn of the twentieth century, “more posters were created for bicycles than for any other product.” The ubiquity of women in cycle posters, and beautiful, feminine women at that, conveyed the message that cycling was something quite ladylike and not, as some suggested, inappropriate or manly. Many images depicted woman triumphant. A French poster for Déesse Cycles, for example, depicted a very feminine winged angel in a translucent wisp of a gown floating above a throng of cyclists, the Eiffel Tower in the distance, holding a man’s bicycle high over her head. Even when more formally attired, the women in the cycle posters of the 1890s were always depicted as confident, in control, and very much out in the world. Bicycle manufacturers weren’t simply selling bicycles; they were selling freedom, prestige, and a new lifestyle.

  The commercial illustrations in magazine ads were much the same, though more modest in execution. Many depicted women getting the better of men. One Columbia ad of the mid-1890s shows a woman, smiling and upright, easily climbing a hill astride her Columbia while her male companion is wiping his brow with a handkerchief and walking his bicycle up the hill behind her. In other ads, men and women are presented bicycle touring together, sometimes in exotic locales such as Rome, images that suggested that bicycle riding could also be the path to love. Sterling frequently used an illustration, both in print advertising and on lapel pins (another popular advertising medium of the day), of two women, one in an ankle-length skirt and the other in a rather low-cut blouse and short skirt, trying to master the art of bicycle riding. Incongruously, the scene is a beach near the ocean’s edge, about the last place one would try and learn to ride a bicycle.

  But until 1894, when Annie Oakley appeared on a Sterling trading card and Annie Londonderry’s image appeared astride her Sterling, it appears that all of the woman in cycle ads were simply idealizations or models. The use of real women known for their athletic skills, whether as marksmen or cyclists, was new as was the notion of a product endorsement by a female athlete.

  What appears to be entirely original to Annie Londonderry were both
the use of a female athlete’s fame to promote a product unrelated to her sport (Londonderry Lithia Spring Water), and Annie’s use of her bicycle and her body as a platform, literally, for advertising all manner of products from bicycle tires to perfume. Though various male cyclists, mostly racers, promoted bicycles and related equipment, employing a woman for that purpose was unprecedented. Indeed, the photograph of Annie taken on June 25, 1894, which shows the placard of the Londonderry Lithia Spring Water Company on her bike frame, may be the first image ever taken that documents the marriage of female athletes and sports-related marketing.

  UNLIKE OAKLEY, who rode a women’s Sterling, Annie Londonderry’s riding a men’s Sterling meant that she had to ride in the increasingly popular bloomers, for riding a men’s bicycle in long skirts was utterly impractical if not impossible: because of its top tube connecting the handlebar stem to the seat post, skirts would pile up in front of the rider, making for a very awkward ride. Why Annie didn’t begin the trip in bloomers, which would have made the first part of her trip immeasurably more comfortable, she explained to a reporter: “I could not quite bring myself to wear the bloomers some women cyclists wear. Although I’ve cheek enough to go around the world, I’ve not enough cheek for that.”

  Although they had been around for decades, bloomers were still so risqué it was newsworthy when a city or town saw its first female rider wearing them. But it is surprising that a woman as independent and audacious as Annie was at first too modest to wear bloomers. Though she had been wearing them under her skirts so she could lift her skirts when necessary and not expose her undergarments, it was only when she acquired a men’s bicycle and was forced to change her riding attire that she overcame her resistance to bloomers as outerwear.