November 14, 2008
Nellie Bly Says Goodbye (1889)
At 9:40 a.m., Nellie Bly sailed from Hoboken Pier to race around the world against a fictional character.
Long before the current crop of best-selling "stunt memoirists," the reporter for the New York World was there first. But instead of spending her time reading classic books, learning to play the piano and pretending to be religious, Bly risked her life, sanity and reputation for the benefit of newspaper readers. Before attempting to outdo Phileas Fogg, the fictional hero of Jules Verne's "Around the World in 80 Days," she spent six months in Mexico for the Pittsburgh Dispatch. She wrote articles on the people and the country, but she had to flee after reporting on political corruption under the dictator Porfirio Díaz.
She moved to New York, where she talked her way onto Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. Faking insanity, she got herself committed to the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell Island. For 10 days, she experienced brutal, mind-deadening treatment at the hands of incompetent warders, and found that many of the patients were sane, at least when they entered the madhouse. Her expose and subsequent book caused a major sensation, resulting in investigations, firings and a rededication to improving the lives of the inmates.
By this time, she decided she could use a rest, so she proposed traveling around the world. Her editors, however, objected: "In the first place you are a woman and would need a protector, and even if it were possible for you to travel alone you would need to carry so much baggage that it would detain you in making rapid changes. Besides you speak nothing but English, so there is no use talking about it; no one but a man can do this."
She took this obstacle in typical Nellie fashion: She promised them that the day they sent a man, she would race him and beat him, on behalf of another newspaper. They let her go.
She traveled lightly, carrying £200 in English gold and Bank of England notes, and a satchel holding "two traveling caps, three veils, a pair of slippers, a complete outfit of toilet articles, ink-stand, pens, pencils, and copy-paper, pins, needles and thread, a dressing gown, a tennis blazer, a small flask and a drinking cup, several complete changes of underwear, a liberal supply of handkerchiefs and fresh ruchings and most bulky and uncompromising of all, a jar of cold cream to keep my face from chapping in the varied climates I should encounter."
The trip caused another sensation. Circulation shot up as readers followed her adventures in London, France (where she met Verne, who was pleased that her trip revived sales of his novel), Brindisi, Egypt, Ceyon, Singapore, Hong Kong, Yokohama, and San Francisco.
By the time she reached the West Coast, her journey became a triumphal procession. Everybody knew who Nellie Bly was, and they cheered her on at every stop. By the time she reached New ‘York, she wrote, "the station was packed with thousands of people, and the moment I landed on the platform, one yell went up from them, and the cannons at the Battery and Fort Greene boomed out the news of my arrival. I took off my cap and wanted to yell with the crowd, not because I had gone around the world in seventy-two days, but because I was home again."
Born: Frederick Jackson Turner, historian, scholar, Portage, Wis., 1861; Astrid Lindgren, children's author, Vimmerby, Sweden, 1907; William Steig, cartoonist, Brooklyn, N.Y., 1907; Harrison Salisbury, journalist, historian, Minneapolis, Minn., 1908; P.J. O'Rourke, liberal humorist, conservative satirist, Toledo, Ohio, 1947.
Died: Jean Paul (ps. Johann Richter), novelist, humorist, Beyreuth, Barvaria, 1825; Booker T(aliaferro) Washington, author, education reformer, Tuskegee, Al., 1915; Saki (ps. H.H. Munro), short-story writer, humorist, Beaumont-Hamel, France, 1916; Robert Sherwood, playwright, New York City, 1955; Meridel Le Suer, novelist, journalist, poet, Hudson, Wis., 1996.
Quote for the Day: "You can't shame or humiliate modern celebrities. What used to be called shame and humiliation is now called publicity. And forget traditional character assassination. If you say a modern celebrity is an adulterer, a pervert, and a drug addict, all it means is that you've read his memoir." — P.J. O'Rourke, humorist, who was born today in 1947
Also from the "Writers 365" project:
- The Hoax That Backfired (1877)
- Rimbaud the Gunrunner (1885)
- Casey strikes out; Thayer doesn't (1888)
- Oscar Wilde Blows It (1894)
- Stephen Crane: I Fought the Law and the Law Won (1896)
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