Peter Zheutlin - Around The World On Two Wheels: Annie Londonderrys Extraordinary Ride

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AROUND THE WORLD ON TWO WHEELS

AROUND THE WORLD ON TWO WHEELS

Annie Londonderrys Extraordinary Ride

PETER ZHEUTLIN

CITADEL PRESS

Kensington Publishing Corp.

www.kensingtonbooks.com

For my late father, Lionel Zheutlin, a kind and gentle soul.

Contents

AROUND THE WORLD ON TWO WHEELS

Prologue

The maiden with her wheel of old

Sat by the fire to spin,

While lightly through her careful hold

The flax slid out and in

Today her distaff, rock and reel

Far out of sight are hurled

And now the maiden with her wheel

Goes spinning round the world

Madelyne Bridges, Outing magazine, September 1893

O n the morning of January 13, 1895, an enthusiastic crowd, giddy with anticipation, lined the streets of Marseilles to see the arrival of a brave young American in her early twenties. As the petite, dark-haired cyclist pedaled into town with one foother other foot, wrapped in bandages, was propped on the handlebarsthe Stars and Stripes flew in the breeze from an improvised mount on her bike frame. A loud cheer went up and people waved and shouted as she wheeled by. Dressed in a mans riding suit and astride a mans bicycle, she was accompanied by several Marseilles cyclists who had ridden with her from the village of Saint Louis. The riding party proceeded to the Brasserie Noailles where the local cycling club, the Cyclophile Marseille, hosted a luncheon in her honor. Feted in Paris for several weeks, she had braved bitter cold and snow to reach the south coast of France.

Annie Londonderry was already famous by the time she reached Marseilles. The French press had been writing about her prolifically since her arrival in France, at the northern port of Le Havre, on December 3, 1894. She had started from Boston seven months earlier in a daring attempt to become the first woman to circle the globe by bicycle, and, it was widely reported, to settle an extraordinary, high-stakes wager between two wealthy Boston businessmen.

While in Marseilles, Miss Londonderry endeared herself to the local population. She donated to a childrens clinic several pieces of jewelry she had purchased in Paris. Admirers sent her countless letters at lHtel de Provence, where she was staying. Unable to reply to them all, she set visiting hours, published in the local newspapers, when people could come to meet her. There, she sold photographs of herself, which she autographed, to help pay her travel expenses. She became a familiar, if curious, sight on the Cannebiere, riding up and down the boulevard, her bicycle and her clothing festooned with advertising ribbons, and handing out leaflets promoting the wares of perfume maker Lorenzy-Palanca, and the dairy cooperative of Alpes-Bernoises.

On Friday, January 18, a crowd filled the citys Crystal Palace to see her. When the famous cyclist appeared, dressed in a suit provided by la Maison Jaegel, a local boutique, the audience applauded wildly. As Miss Londonderry circled the room on her ivory and gold Sterling bicycle, an orchestra, conducted by the Maestro Trave, struck up The Star-Spangled Banner and La Marseillaise, the French national anthem. In a brief speech, translated into French, she told the people of Marseilles they were the elite of the French nation. The crowd roared its approval and threw flowers at her. She had, said one local newspaper, captured the hearts of the people of Marseilles.

Two days later, thousands gathered to bid Miss Londonderry adieu as a drum and bugle corps and a delegation of local cyclists escorted her aboard a French paquetbot, the 413-foot steamship Sydney. Deeply moved by the outpouring of affection, she wept. Then Miss Londonderry and her Sterling bicycle sailed away through the Mediterranean toward the Suez Canal and points east.

But, unbeknownst to the people of Marseilles, the young cyclist from Boston with the Irish name was, in fact, Annie Cohen Kopchovsky (Mrs. Simon Max Kopchovsky), a Jewish working mother of three young children, ages five, three, and two. What the people of Marseilles also didnt know is that Mlle. Londonderry was not simply a cyclist on an around-the-world journey, but an illusionist possessed of what one American newspaper called an inventive genius. She was, to be sure, making a trip around the world by wheel, though she made liberal use of steamships and trains, as well. But just as Londonderry was not her real name, with Annie Kopchovsky things were rarely as they appeared. There were even some who questioned whether she was a woman at all.

By the time she arrived in Marseilles, Annie was halfway through a traveling fifteen-month theatrical production starring herself, a veritable one-woman carnival on wheels who turned every Victorian notion of female propriety on its ear. An inveterate storyteller, consummate self-promoter, and masterful creator of her own myth, she turned her journey into one of the most outrageous chapters in cycling history, and herself into one of the most colorful characters of the gay 1890s.

For more than a century, the story of the audacious and charismatic Annie Kopchovsky and her attempt to circle the world by wheel has been lost to history. Who was this mysterious young woman on a bike? What was she like? How did she free herself from the social constraints that surrounded late Victorian women, and undertake such an adventure? Finally, how did an anonymous working-class Jewish mother from the tenements of Bostons West End transform herself into a new womanthe daring, internationally renowned globetrotter, Mlle. Londonderry? In short, what happened?

Chapter One

Going Woman

A NNIE K APCHOWSKY I S A P OOR R IDER, BUT I NTENDS TO D O THE E ARTH

Good health to all, good pleasure, good speed,

A favoring breezebut not too high

For the outbound spin! Who rides may read

The open secret of earth and sky.

Anonymous, Scribners Magazine, June 1895

M onday, June 25, 1894, was a perfect day for baseball in Boston. The weather was fair, if somewhat overcast, but the hometown team, the Beaneaters, was in Louisville to play the Colonels. The big news this early summer daynews carried by telegraph cables to newspapers across the country and around the worldwas the assassination the previous day in Lyon of French president Sadi Carnot at the hands of an Italian anarchist.

With the South End Baseball Grounds on Columbus and Walpole streets quiet, some who might have gone to the ballpark chose instead to ride the swan boats plying the lagoon in the Boston Public Garden. Others sat on benches, reading the news from France. Pedestrians strolled along gently curved walkways under the gardens graceful willows. If any of them had wandered the short distance to the gold-domed Massachusetts State House on Beacon Hill they would have been treated to an unusual sight. There, at about eleven oclock in the morning, a crowd of five hundred suffragists, friends, family members, and curiosity seekers gathered at the steps to see a young woman about to attempt something no woman had beforean around-the-world trip by bicycle.

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