People & Events
A Trip Around the World
As Nellie Bly tells the story, it was on a Sunday in the fall of 1888 that the
idea came to her. Feeling restless, she had the urge to go elsewhere and travel
the globe like the fictional Phileas Fogg, the protagonist of Jules Verne's
well-read "Around the World in Eighty Days."
It was then that the inspiration came to Bly: Why not have the "New York World," the newspaper she worked for, send her on a race around the globe to beat the 80-day trek of the
fictional Fogg? Like so many other Bly story ideas, this was a winner that
would capture the public's interest -- and once again put the young female
journalist on center stage.
On Monday morning, she proposed the idea to managing editor John A. Cockerill.
For a year, Cockerill and the other men at the newspaper put off Bly. Much of
the senior staff's reluctance had to do with Bly's gender. "World" business
manager George W. Turner preferred a man for the project. A man did not need a
chaperone, Turner argued. Besides, he said, a man could leave behind the "dozen
trunks" that a woman would also need for such a trip.
Bly was far from convinced. She replied that she would travel light -- and that
she did not need a chaperone. After a year of rebukes, Bly heard rumors that
the editors had selected a man. Her direct and feisty response was classic Bly.
"Very well," she threatened. "Start the man and I'll start the same day for
some other newspaper and beat him."
Cockerill acquiesced. The decision was made to send her on a Monday, and on
Thursday she sailed off in an attempt to better the 80 days of the fictional
Fogg. Bly carried only one piece of hand luggage for the journey and it was
just 16 inches wide and seven inches high. Into it she squeezed two traveling
caps, three veils, a pair of slippers, toilet articles, an
ink stand, pens, pencils, paper, pins, needles, thread, a dressing gown, a
tennis blazer, a small flask, a drinking cup, a few changes of underwear,
handkerchiefs and a jar of cold cream.
Many suggested she take along a revolver. She left it behind.
"It will be seen," Bly wrote, "that if one is traveling simply for the sake of
traveling and not for the purpose of impressing one's fellow passengers, the
problem of baggage becomes a very simple one."
The "World" gave her 200 pounds in English gold, which went into her pockets,
and bank notes that she stored in a chamois-skin bag. She also took along some
American money to see who in the world would accept it.
On the morning of November 14, 1889, Bly set sail from Hoboken Pier on a liner
named the Augusta Victoria. The "World," once reluctant to send her, now put
its full resources behind the voyage. "The `World' today undertakes the task of
turning a dream into reality. . . " read the newspaper's page-one story.
"Nellie Bly, so well known to millions who have read of her doings, as told by
her captivating pen, will set out as a female Phileas Fogg.... ''
In a little over six days, Bly arrived in England. The "World"'s London
correspondent, Tracy Greaves, met her and told her that Jules Verne wanted to
meet her. Assured the side trip would not ruin her tight schedule, Bly traveled
day and night to Amiens, France.
Verne asked her where Bly would stop. She had her itinerary memorized: New York
to London, then Calais, Brindisi, Port Said, Ismailia, Suez, Aden, Colombo,
Penang, Singapore, Hong Kong, Yokohama, San Francisco, and then, if all went as
planned, a triumphant return to New York City. If Bly could be said to be
riding on Verne's literary success, she repaid the favor by bringing fresh
publicity to his novel. "Around the World in 80 Days" was re-issued in over 10
new editions.
Since Bly's reports took a long time to arrive back in New York, the "World"
had to fabricate news during the time she was gone. One ploy was to launch a
sweepstakes that asked readers to guess exactly how long Bly's trip would take.
By the end of the solo circumnavigation, the newspaper would receive over half
a million guesses.
Everywhere Bly went, she brought her feminist and progressive perspective on
the world. In Port Said, Bly saw that, to keep the beggars at bay, the male boat passengers took to the
streets with canes and the women with parasols . Bly,
refused to take the casual weapons with her, saying that "a
stick beats more ugliness into a person than it ever beats out." On shore in Singapore, Bly visited a Hindu temple, but a holy man prevented her
from entering. Bly's response was true to form:
"Why?" I demanded, curious to know why my sex in heathen lands should exclude
me from a temple, as in America it confines me to the side entrances of hotels
and other strange and incommodious things.
"No, señora, no mudder," the priest said with a positive shake of the
head.
"I'm not a mother!" I cried so indignantly that my companions burst into
laughter, which I joined after a while, but my denials had no effect on the
priest.
Bly observed the world around her carefully, but also kept a worried watch on
the pace of her trip. After a required overnight in Singapore that threatened
her next connection in Hong Kong, she later wrote, "What agony of suspense and
impatience I suffered that night!" Caught in a brutal storm on her way to Japan
that again threatened the success she said, "I'd rather go back to New York
dead than not a winner."
When she arrived in San Francisco, it became apparent that her fears were for
naught: she would best Fogg's fictional record. She described the transcontinental run
that followed as a "maze of happy greetings, happy wishes, congratulating
telegrams, fruit, flowers, loud cheers, wild hurrahs, rapid hand-shaking and a
beautiful car filled with fragrant flowers attached to a swift engine that was
tearing like mad through flower-dotted valleys and over snow-tipped
mountains."
Bly described her journey as a
queen's ride. Everywhere she went she met cheering crowds. Bly wrote that she
"rejoiced with them that it was an American girl who had done it." At the
tender age of 25, Bly was the most famous woman on earth. Nellie Bly songs were
sung in music halls. A Nellie Bly housecoat was advertised. The "World," not
afraid to cash in on its star reporter, even marketed a parlor game called
"Round the World with Nellie Bly."
When a reporter from "The San Francisco Chronicle" remarked that her mad dash
around the world was something quite remarkable, Bly responded: "Oh, I don't
know. It's not so very much for a woman to do who has the pluck, energy and
independence which characterize many women in this day of push and get-there."
Bly was suggesting that she was more than just a lone and feisty reporter. Her bold trip was a symbol of the newly politicized and independent women
of her age who fought for new possibilities that now included a trip around the
world -- without a chaperone.
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