Wednesday, February 3 1886
With maddening slowness, everything was put into place. Tom and Tony created our itinerary as far as Mexico City. Madden paid for the tickets. I thanked him by filing a story on women's charity work that would warm Bessie Bramble's prickly heart. It was my only published piece in January.
Meanwhile, the household was in an uproar. Harry was alternately excited and jealous, wishing we had made the trip before he had started work. Charlie was amused, Sarah exasperated. Kate was delighted to leave her husband for a few months and bring Beatrice up to Pittsburgh. Albert was mockful, saying I lacked the gumption to go anywhere without our mother's skirts to cling to.
But nothing could take the gloss from my excitement. I was doing something new, going somewhere unknown, and would soon see things with fresh eyes. This might not be the grand tour of Europe that Bessie had praised, but it was by far the most exciting thing I had ever done. Even disguising myself as a factory girl hadn't given me such a lift!
The only extended travel I had ever done was to the finishing school. I'd been a student then, with very specific instructions of what to bring. For this trip, I packed clothes and necessaries with only my wild imagination to guide me as to what I might require. I was in serious danger of overpacking until Mother pointed out, “It's better to bring too little than too much. We can always buy a hairbrush there. And then you'll have a souvenir.”
So it was that on a gray January morning, we went to Station Square to board the Panhandle Express. We'd said most of our goodbyes at home, but Charlie took the morning off from work to help us with our bags. At the station he passed them off to a Pullman porter and then helped Mother up into the Pullman car.
I was about to follow them when I felt a gentle grip on my elbow. Turning, I half expected to see Wilson. But no, it was Madden. He lifted his hat and handed me an envelope. “Some extra money never went amiss. Wire when you need more. And start writing the moment you leave the station. I want copy as soon as possible.”
Tucking the envelope into my coat, I was genuinely touched. “Thank you, Mr. Madden.” I glanced behind him. “Is Q.O. with you?”
“Razzy? No. Why?”
I shook my head. “No reason. I just thought he'd try to talk me out of this again.”
“Do you want to be talked out of it?”
“No!”
He tapped the brim of his hat. “Then safe travels, Miss Bly.”
Charlie called from the top of the train stairs. “Pink! The train will leave without you!”
“Pink?” asked Madden.
Shaking my head, I scampered up the steps into the car and took a seat, vibrating with excitement.
I needn't have hurried. It was ten more minutes before the train actually departed. I saw Madden and Charlie shake hands, introduce themselves, and fall into conversation. At one point they both laughed, which piqued my temper. Clearly, they're discussing me! Thank God Albert didn't come.
Charlie and Madden remained by our window and waved goodbye as the engine lurched once, twice, then began rolling. They were soon engulfed in steam as we pulled away, hurtling into a new life of adventure.
I could hardly sit still. I didn't know how to behave on a long-distance train. I felt trapped in my seat. I decided not to rise until someone else did. Once they did, I thought I might go to the dining car, or the observation car. Having more experience and far more patience, Mother decided to nap.
We were traveling in a line of Pullmans. I realized there might be a story in that. Determined to be industrious, I called the porter over to ask about them. He was a handsome black man with his hair worn close, his face clean-shaven, and not a speck of lint on his cap or buttoned coat.
He was more than happy to tell us the provenance of our conveyance. “All the cars on this train, Miss, were built at the new Pullman factory on Lake Calumet, south of Chicago. Each car is seventy feet long, with lacquered walnut finish and inlaid decorative carving.”
“All of them are made in Chicago?”
“Lake Calumet, Miss. South of Chicago.”
“How much does a worker there get paid?”
If my question surprised him, I was equally surprised by the answer. “Miss, my cousin took a job there last year. He's paid one dollar and thirty cents a day.”
“And how many hours a day does he work?”
“Oh, ten or eleven. It's good work, Miss, and there are many things to enjoy in his free hours. Mr. Pullman has created a whole town, with churches, theatres, parks, and a library.”
“That's very impressive.”
The porter nodded. “Mr. Pullman is very generous. My cousin says one of the other men had his foot—well, he was injured. He's getting half his wages paid for the rest of his life.” Someone across the car called, “George!” and the porter begged our pardon as he went to help them with their children.
Looking to Mother, I said, “I wish all employers were as generous.”
“I do not,” she replied from behind her closed eyelids. “It would lead to malingering. A lifetime of half pay for a foot? Some men would think it a bargain at half the price.”
I knew which man was on her mind. Ever since Wilson's call, the name of Ford had hung in the air between us. My fault. It had been an unspoken family agreement to never again mention his name.
Feeling guilty, I rose. “Would you like to visit the dining car?”
Mother agreed and together we moved down the train. Stepping from one bumping, thumping car to the next was fraught with peril. As the ground raced visibly beneath our feet, I held Mother's hand, and she mine, and together we traversed the gap to the car where meals were served.
The combination of the food and the rhythm of the train convinced me to nap that afternoon. Or siesta, as I remembered to call it. Knowing only a handful of Spanish words, I had to get the most out of them.
After a siesta, we chatted with our fellow passengers, few of whom were going half so far as we were. Most were headed for Chicago or St. Louis. No one in our car was heading as far as Texas. I felt a shimmer of pride—Mother and I are pioneers!
It felt strange, traveling west in order to go south. But Tom had assured me that if we went south first, our trek would take much longer. “More stops, and the rails aren't as sure. Best head over to St. Louis, then on to Texas from there.”
That night, our porter made up our beds in the sleeper car. I remained awake in the upper berth, listening to the sounds, feeling the shocks and tumult of the wheels traversing the rails beneath us. I felt a sense of wonder for the achievements of mankind, that such things could exist in the world.
Man could do so much. Surely Woman could achieve more, given the chance.
♦ ◊ ♦
During a stop in Cincinnati the next morning, several new passengers greeted the porter by name. “Good morning, George” and “thank you, George” rippled up and down the car.
When his duties were finished, the luggage was stowed away, the new passengers were comfortably seated, and the train was underway once more, I called our porter over. “How does everyone know your name? Do they ride this route often?”
The porter smiled with polite indulgence. “I wouldn't know, Miss. All porters are called George.”
“Oh. Really? Why is that?”
“After George Pullman, our employer.”
I was shocked. “But—forgive me, but isn't that what used to be done to slaves? Weren't they all named for their master?”
He nodded. “Yes, Miss. I believe that is so.”
“That's appalling! What is your actual name?”
For the first time, he looked flustered. “Matthew, Miss.”
“Well, Matthew, here is at least one passenger who will use your proper name!”
“Thank you, Miss. It's very kind. May I get you another drink, Miss?”
“That would be very kind, Matthew. Thank you.”
As he retreated from our embarrassing conversation, I fretted. I had admired George Pullman for his decision to employ only Negroes as Pullman porters. It had given employment to hundreds of former slaves. Tom and Tony had said it was a job they would have wished for, and Albert had often joked that they should put shoe polish on their faces to apply.
Now I perceived an uglier side to Pullman's operation. Hiring former slaves ensured an air of subservience in his employees. And some of his customers might feel empowered to behave badly in front of a Negro tasked with serving them.
That night, in the relative privacy of our sleeper, I asked Mother about this, and she offered a different perspective. “Only the rich are waited upon this way. By employing these porters, Mr. Pullman offers people of the middle class an upper-class experience.”
“And perpetuates the notion that black people are here to serve,” I said through pinched lips.
“And pays them wages to do so,” she countered.
That sent my brain whirring. In my “Girl Puzzle” column, I had suggested the employment of women as Pullman porters. After actually riding on a train, I imagined what that would look like in reality: wearing pretty dresses, serving drinks, forcing smiles, and accepting all kinds of boorish behavior. All while reinforcing the notion that women were subservient to men.
On the other hand, it was a job. It was employment. Surely it was better than being a factory girl. Or was it? Was it better for the individual girl, but worse for all girls? At what point did the benefit to the individual become a detriment to the whole?
I had no answers, and that troubled me. The debate raged inside my brain until the motion of the car finally rocked me to sleep.
♦ ◊ ♦
As Tom had predicted, our progress slowed once we reached the South. When I asked Matthew about this, he informed me that not every rail line was built for an open throttle. Thus our speed was reduced from the breathtaking fifty miles per hour to around thirty-five.
Though we were no longer racing toward our destination, the slower pace did allow me to take in more of the scenery as we passed from St. Louis to Little Rock. To my amazement, it had suddenly become summer. When Matthew had made up our bunks the previous evening, the world chugging past our window had been slumbering under a blanket of snow. By morning, there were green trees outside, and the warm air in our car made a fool of my shawl.
From that moment onward, I spent all my time in the observation car at the back of the train, which had windows facing behind us. There was even a terrace of sorts out the rear door where one could stand in the open air and view the land as we chugged through it. I wasn't even in Mexico, yet I was already seeing things I never had before: cotton fields and wide empty plains, counterpointed by mountains and rivers and dotted with the occasional homestead.
I was amazed, and not just by the landscape. I saw all kinds of people living lives as foreign as if we had already entered another country. I saw women plowing fields while their lords and masters sat on fences, smoking. I'd never longed for anything so much as I longed to shove those lazy fellows off their perches. As we got further south and west, I was glad to see those fences—along with their unbecoming ornaments—disappear. Of course, then the men just slept under trees.
One afternoon, I saw real, live cowboys riding along the plains. I was seated on a folding chair as the train moved along at a “putting-in-time” pace, when I suddenly spied two horsemen on the open plain to my left. They wore immense hats—sombreros, I mistakenly thought then—and shiny spurs, and lassos hung from their saddles.
Cowboys! Mine was one of the many imaginations that had been captured by Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday's fight against the Cochise County Cowboys at the O.K. Corral. I had read somewhere that cowboys wore red sashes, so I raced back to our car and interrupted Mother's reading. “Mother, give me your scarf.” It was red. Bemused, she handed it to me.
I dashed back to the rear platform and began waving the scarf at the two men on horseback. Belatedly, I wondered if they might shoot me. But they both lifted their wide-brimmed hats from their heads, just as any man would have done on the streets of Pittsburgh. I laughed, and it must have carried, because, with a sudden burst of their own laughing voices, they urged their horses after us!
Other passengers came to join me, and still more pressed against the windows, waving to the cowboys as they chased the train. The horses' hooves never seemed to actually contact the earth, concealed as they were in the great cloud of dust that bore them along behind us. At last, the horses tired and the train pulled away.
I waved to the cowboys one last time, wondering what might happen if I were brave enough to abandon my mission, and my mother, and leap from the train into their arms. I'd never considered myself a Romantic. Yet those two young, sun-browned men, so cheerful and carefree, would come to haunt my dreams.
♦ ◊ ♦
The food on our journey began to distress me. I had thought that the West would be a land of plenty: steaks, butter, cheese, cream, and more steaks. I could not have been more mistaken. On those occasions when the train stopped to cool down, all we found available was hard bread and salted meat. Not a creamery in sight. Thank Heaven for the dining car!
I was also not sleeping well. My own bed had been a refuge to me for so long that I had been unaware of how it would feel to sleep in sheets I had not washed, in a bed I had not made. By nature, I was not an early riser, and the trouble I had falling asleep only made waking me that much more of a chore—one that Mother accepted, but not without comment.
Wherever the train stopped, the local folk would draw near to see who was inside the painted car with its polished wood and shiny brass knobs. We made genial conversation, and I was amazed at the accents and how politely everyone treated us. I remember one black woman drawing near me as I sat on my chair at the open end of the observation car. “Good mornin', missis.”
“Good morning,” I replied.
She laughed at me in a truly kind way. “Missis, why are you sittin' out here, when there's such a nice cabin back there?”
In a conspiratorial whisper I answered, “My mother is in there.”
She bobbed her head sagely, then carried on her way with a wave.
It was foolish, but ever since I had been saddled with the name Nellie Bly, I felt a kind of kinship with black women. I was always wanting to run up to them and introduce myself. I didn't, of course, because that would have been ridiculous and self-important of me. Yet the kinship existed, if nowhere but in my imagination. It allowed me to see them, whereas to most everyone else they were invisible.
Just as Matthew was invisible, except when needed. He was always there for us passengers: shining shoes, moving luggage, fetching items or drinks. Trying to set an example, I made sure to tip him often. After all, it was the Dispatch's money.
The evening of our sixth day onboard the train, Matthew came to inform us that our beds were turned down. “We arrive at El Paso early in the morning.”
“Already?” Part of me wished the ride would never end.
“Yes, Miss. Would you ladies like to be awakened beforehand, so you are not in a hurry to dress?”
Mother answered. “Yes, thank you, Matthew. A half an hour's warning would be splendid.” He touched the brim of his cap and moved off to make the same discreet offer to the other passengers in the car.
I had no notion of what the actual time was when he wakened us. It was black as pitch outside the curtains, and I could hardly open my eyes as I struggled into my clothes in the upper berth. Ah, the glamour of travel!
“It's so dark,” said Mother. “What on earth will we do when we arrive?”
“I'm glad it's dark,” I said. “I don't have to bother with my hair or my boot buttons.”
I finally got my dress fastened and my nightdress stuffed into my bag just as the train started slowing. My feet had barely found the floor when I was staggered by our lurching halt. As Mother and I emerged from the Pullman car, we were thrown amidst a frenzy I had only witnessed from a distance at other stations. Matthew and the other train staff were racing up and down the platform with lanterns on their arms, seeing the luggage properly bestowed.
We stepped past the chaos, and no one paid any attention to a drowsy pair of women seeking comfort and familiarity. Quite a change from being waited upon hand and foot for almost a week!
“I shall fall into the arms of the first man who mentions marriage to me,” I yawned to Mother as we wended our way through freight and baggage. “Then I will have someone to look after me.”
“One must look after one's self,” she answered tartly.
I wanted to say I was only joking, but again the shadow of Ford loomed. She was right: it was important not to depend upon a husband. A lesson hard learned.
There were no cabs, but it hardly mattered, because we were informed that no hotels were open at that hour. Instead, we exhausted travelers were all heaped into a waiting room, where men, women, children, dogs, and baggage were bestowed in one promiscuous mass.
It was a dreary scene. Some slept, some ate, and in one corner of the pile, a cluster of men shared a bottle as they dealt greasy cards by lamplight.
“I can't stay here,” I said.
“We could sit outside,” Mother suggested.
I took her arm in mine, and we returned to the platform. It was too dark for a view of the landscape. And it was surprisingly chilly. I had imagined Texas to be hot all the time, even at night.
“I hate five a.m. in El Paso,” I said mutinously.
We watched the train depart, our hearts longing for our lost berths. Then I spied a man with a lantern who had not departed with it. Apparently this was the station master. I asked him if it was true that there were no hotels open at this hour.
“Too true, I'm sorry to say.” Seeing my wilting expression and my mother's age, he took pity on us. “But if you ladies would be satisfied with a second-class house, I can take you to my home. My wife sometimes takes in lodgers from the railway.”
I laughed, and Mother had to quickly explain. “As do we, though ours are railway workers.” Sleepily, we told him of Tom and Tony as he conducted us to his home.
How foolish we must have seemed, walking off into the night with a man whose name we did not know, to an address we did not know, for what kind of accommodations we did not know. Fortunately, it was only a short walk through the sandy streets. The station manager had spoken the truth, and there was one room unoccupied. He introduced us to his wife, we paid our fee, and then we closed the door on the world. With real gratitude I collapsed onto the bed. I thought I might have felt Mother slipping off my unbuttoned boots, but in truth I was already asleep.