The sweetest and pluckiest girl that ever professionally rode a bicycle thanks from the bottom of her heart her thousands of new American friends and sends them all A FOND GOOD BYE!
—Advertisement in the Minneapolis Journal, September 17, 1898
Tillie was champion, but in the fall of 1898 and winter of 1899, the managers and promoters of women’s bicycle racing focused their publicity efforts on Lisette as the sport’s primary draw. In October Messier signed Lisette, Dottie, Lillie, and Ida to a six-day, nine-hour race at the Auditorium in St. Paul. Tillie was initially announced as a participant, but instead she retreated to Chicago for some long-overdue recovery time for her hip and other assorted ailments she’d accumulated since the summer.
The headline of the St. Paul Globe preview article—“It Is to Beat Lisette”—placed the entire focus of the race on Lisette and made out Dottie and the others as challengers. “Lisette,” the Globe insisted, “has been more talked about, more discussed, made more of and has ridden in more remarkable female bicycle races in all parts of the world than any other fair maid that ever pushed a pedal.” The effusive writing suggests the heavy hand of a press agent; the words could easily match Messier’s megaphone introductions at the start of each night’s racing.
Part of the pitch was Lisette’s beauty: “Added to her racing qualities and her marvelous endurance,” the Globe continued, “she is an exceptionally trim and graceful figure in racing attire.” The article also paired Lisette’s major accomplishments—beating Jimmy Michael and riding 29.6 miles in an hour, which through repetition had transformed from rumor to fact—with a commendable degree of modesty, even self-effacement. Despite all her records, the article said, “she makes no boasts and claims nothing for herself.”1
What makes the article seem even more like a press release published verbatim by the sports editor is its contrast with the same paper’s reports of the race. Those reports can only be called snarky, pointing up a rising undercurrent in the women’s coverage in the final months of the year and the beginning of 1899. Lisette’s arrival wasn’t enough to stave off a growing cynicism over the authenticity of women’s racing, at least among reporters. “Messier Said It Was Fine,” the Globe headline for day 2 read, followed by “He Made Several Speeches, and Referred to the Exhibition as a Race on Some Occasions.”
The event clearly didn’t seem like a real race to the reporter assigned to cover it. In that same report on the second night, the writer says that when Messier announced that eleven minutes remained in the heat, “the riders who had been loafing all the evening let out another link in the diamond frames and dashed around in the little wooden bowl faster than before.” A few minutes later, Dottie made a spurt for the lead. “Up she went to the edge of the track,” the reporter yawned. “She did not ride any faster than she had been, but it was so much farther around then.”2
After Friday’s win by Dottie, which put Lisette and Dottie even going into the final night, the reporter made it clear that, as far as he was concerned, the people of St. Paul were merely being set up for a contrived finale. A pun on “hippodrome” implied the race was purely exhibition: “Lisette received a tip before the bikadrome began at the Auditorium last evening to take things easy, so that Farnsworth could finish first.” When Dottie did win, Messier announced that Lisette now had twenty-three points going into Saturday’s finish and Dottie had twenty-two. “He tried to impress upon the audience how exciting the contest would be,” the reporter concluded drily, “but most of those present knew the French woman will win.”3
Interestingly, the writer did seem to think Lisette was the superior rider, as she had to “take things easy” to let Dottie win. As it happened, Dottie won the race on Saturday, but that didn’t dampen the Globe reporter’s sarcasm. “Dottie Farnsworth won last night’s race,” he reported. “She and Lisette each won three nights and ran second two nights. They will cut that $1,000 in two—perhaps.”4
It’s impossible to say how representative this one reporter’s views were in St. Paul and Minneapolis. The cities had been eager hosts to dozens of women’s races through the years, and women’s six-day racing was effectively reborn in the Twin Cities in the summer of 1895. The Globe had certainly covered the sport with breathless enthusiasm in the past, with no hint of irony. It could be that after three years and over a dozen major races, the people of St. Paul and Minneapolis were growing weary of the sport. The Globe reported reduced crowds for the race, despite the promise of a Dottie/Lisette showdown.
It’s also possible that the new point system that Messier adopted for the race had something to do with the sudden increase in cynicism. So far just three races had been run using the point system. In Des Moines Tillie routed the field, so the points never came into play. In Minneapolis Tillie won on points and also finished in front on the last night, so any potential conflicts were avoided. Here in St. Paul Lisette and Dottie traded wins, keeping things even up to the finish. As the Globe pointed out after the second-to-last heat, “Had the French woman won, the race would have been over, for the score would have placed her so many points ahead of Farnsworth and the others that none of them could have even tied her.”5
Ironically, while the purpose of the point system was to ensure keen competition every night of the week, its effect may have been to heighten the suspicion that the finishes, particularly over the first five nights, were fixed. If this was the effect of the new system, the managers apparently didn’t realize it: the point system continued into 1899 and beyond. Eventually, the promoters started giving prizes for the women who finished first every half hour—surely a sign of growing desperation to maintain interest in the nightly races.
For now, however, it was all about Lisette, and after a week off, Messier started a new race, also at the St. Paul Auditorium, on October 24, this time with Lizzie Glaw replacing Lillie Williams and Clara Drehmel added to bring up the rear. Lizzie fell on the second night and evidently hurt herself fairly badly, as she never challenged for the lead and came in third. Dottie and Lisette traded wins each night, but this time Lisette finished first on Saturday, giving her, in her fourth try, her first major American victory.
It was time for Lisette to hit the road. She signed on with the management team of Parker & Wirtensohn—Shorty Wirtensohn and a Minneapolis friend, Charles Astor Parker. The team’s publicity materials presented Lisette as the hot new sports commodity. She undeniably represented a combination of attractions the American sports world had never seen in a single package. First, she was already famous. One flyer called Lisette “the most celebrated cyclienne in the world, and the greatest drawing card in bicycle history.” Parker & Wirtensohn told of Lisette’s popularity in Minneapolis—the wild cheers, the bouquets of flowers, the crush of admirers at the end of each heat. They also cited the gross receipts for the Festival of Fire race: $7,486, “mainly on account of the presence of Mlle. Lisette,” to entice venue operators and cycling promoters across the country.
Parker & Wirtensohn also called Lisette the world’s fastest female cyclist, repeatedly citing her purported hour record of 29.6 miles. The prospect that Lisette approached thirty miles in a single hour must have astonished anyone interested in bicycling. Of course, the publicity materials also emphasized Lisette’s feminine qualities. A testimonial from the St. Paul Dispatch said she was “the sweetest and most considerate girl that ever rode a bicycle.” Minneapolis racing star John S. Johnson called Lisette “the positive sensation of the bicycle world, and the most attractive figure I have ever seen on a wheel.”6 Johnson’s endorsement was supported by a new batch of seductive publicity photographs that showed Lisette both on and off her bike. These appeared in the flyers Parker & Wirtensohn produced, as well as in newspapers, which were just then making the transition from etchings to photographs. Lisette wears black tights—no shorts—and a tight-fitting white sweater.
The most stunning series appeared in a special photographic supplement of the New York Journal on Sunday, November 13, 1898. Even before Lisette’s arrival in August, there were persistent rumors of a Madison Square Garden race that would pit Lisette against her American rivals. The Journal went so far as to refer to the “coming” seven-day championship race, so apparently plans had reached some level of detail. The colorful display showed just how far women’s bicycling had come since the days of “Grandma’s hobby-horse” back in 1820. There were fairly standard photographs of Tillie, Lizzie, and Clara Drehmel on their bicycles, but the spread was dominated by a progression of shots of Lisette, beginning with one of her wrapped tightly in a dark, high-collared robe. The caption was “Mlle. Lisette coming on the track.” Next she was caught in the act of removing the robe, revealing her white sweater and the shapely contours of her body. The caption was “Stripping for the race.” Then, the robe discarded, Lisette is shown standing in her sweater and tights, one heel raised, her left arm bent and her hand poised as if to pat her bouffant hair. The caption: “Ready to mount.” The final photograph from the set shows Lisette in profile on her bicycle. Never before in the coverage of women’s racing had athletic performance and sexuality been so frankly intermingled.
The Madison Square Garden race never materialized, but through the end of 1898 and into the spring of 1899, Lisette was the star attraction in a handful of well-attended contests, and while her appeal wasn’t enough to forestall the slow decline of women’s racing, the personal attention she received from fans and reporters anticipated the mix of laudatory and patronizing reporting that would characterize twentieth-century coverage of attractive women athletes.
In Lisette’s case, the coverage focused on her femininity, even in the grip of intense competition with her coarser rivals, and on her naïve attempts to learn the ways of the American style of racing. In Columbus in April 1899, for example, Lisette competed in a three-woman showdown with Tillie and Lizzie. Before the starting gun even sounded, Tillie and Lizzie engaged the managers in a prolonged debate over the exact conditions that would govern the race—the required number of laps, the handling of accidents, and so on. All the while, Lisette, feeling no need to haggle, stood aloof, “waiting to know how it was all to turn out.”7 Then during the race itself, Tillie and Lizzie jockeyed constantly, always wary of the other’s position but saving the sprint for the end of each half-hour and the promise of points. Lisette, on the other hand, took much of the pace, sprinting often, gaining the full sympathy of the crowd. She seemed refreshingly eager to “let out the links” and enjoy herself, while the Americans appeared overly cautious and strategic.
The uncluttered format, with just the three riders, encouraged personalized reportage, and most of the attention went to Lisette. The reporters lamented the point system and how it encouraged Tillie and Lizzie to loaf, but when it came to Lisette, it seemed that everything she did—even crashing—was ladylike and endearing. At the end of Wednesday night’s heat, Lisette was sandwiched between Tillie and Lizzie and suddenly went down, “sliding gracefully to the floor without injury to herself or to the wheel,” reported the Ohio State Journal. “As she stopped she found herself in a sitting posture, and, womanlike, she immediately raised both hands to her head to see if her hat was on straight or her hair disarranged.” Tillie and Lizzie finished, and the judges quickly huddled and decided to call a foul on Lizzie for squeezing Lisette. Lisette, meanwhile, took it all in stride: “Finding all of her hairpins in place, she immediately arose and donned her track robe, none the worse for the little spill.”8
Lisette kept her composure after the foul by Lizzie, but she didn’t forget the offense. She got her revenge on the final night of the race. By points she was stuck in third place regardless of the finish. With two minutes left, she showed that she was catching on to the sport’s culture of intense personal rivalries. Lisette was in front, and Tillie made a move to the outside and took the lead. Lizzie had enough points to win the race if she could pass Tillie, but each time she pulled slightly ahead of Lisette she unaccountably fell back again. This happened in four consecutive laps, until finally Lizzie managed to slide into second place. By that time Tillie’s lead was too great, and Lizzie was unable to make another charge. Tillie won the race.
Afterward, to the assembled reporters’ delight, Lisette explained the final moments. Because of her poor English, she relied on pantomimes and sign language to convey her stories. “Everything she says is accompanied by gestures of hands and shrugs of shoulders,” explained the Ohio State Journal, “and every position that she is in relative to other riders while in a race illustrated by holding her hands in the positions of the wheels, and she turns her hands in a circle to show how they went around the corners.” Lisette made it clear that there was no love lost between her and Lizzie and that in her opinion Lizzie was a tricky rider—or, as she put it, “sure dirty, beeg dirty.” Via her mixture of gestures and broken English, she told how Lizzie had wronged her in several races and even caused Lisette to fall repeatedly. So in the final laps in Columbus, she repaid Lizzie for past injustices, surreptitiously holding Lizzie’s hip or seat whenever she tried to pass. “Sure, me dirty too,” she admitted. “Little dirty, not much dirty.” When asked if she was upset about losing the race, Lisette just shrugged. “Me no care,” she said. “Glaw no win.”9
Two months later, in Nashville, the crowds again chose Lisette as their favorite, cascading her with cheers every time she started a sprint. Lisette described the experience as a simple formula. “I ride,” she said. “The people speak Lisette.”10 Part of Lisette’s audience appeal was that she responded so directly to the cheers with both smiles and sprints. The other riders had by now become quite “professional” in their demeanor—focusing their eyes straight ahead, pacing themselves strategically at all times, sprinting only when cued by their trainers—and to some in the crowd this came across as a lack of engagement. They preferred watching Lisette as she chattered in French with Émile or growled in irritation at any perceived slight. She was nothing if not entertaining.
When Lisette did gain a lead, she had the novice’s habit of looking back to gauge the other riders. Beyond showing her lack of experience and probably wasting energy, this practice also caused her on occasion to swerve unexpectedly, even very slightly. The other riders criticized her for it, saying that she put them all in danger of a fall. They called it “rubbernecking,” and they shouted the word whenever Lisette took the lead. Eventually, Lisette caught the word’s meaning, and when any other woman in the lead made the mistake of peeking back at the other riders, she was ready. “Wubbernecking” was her way of pronouncing it, and she took great delight in yelling it out to each offending front-runner.
The final race of 1898, one of the era’s last great big-city races, took place Thanksgiving week at Tattersall’s. This was the first race in Chicago in a year and a half and indeed the final women’s race in that city. The seven-day contest featured for the first and only time the ultimate Big Four of 1890s women’s bicycle racing: Tillie, Lizzie, Dottie, and Lisette. These were undoubtedly the era’s greatest women racers—and arguably America’s greatest women athletes of the nineteenth century. But what might have been the sport’s culminating moment turned instead into the beginning of the end. From Tillie’s debut race in Chicago in January 1896, the sport had come full circle.
The Windy City remained loyal to Tillie and Lizzie, but newcomer Lisette, with her “Titian hair and blue eyes,” drew the most attention here, as she had in Minneapolis.11 And as in Minneapolis, she descended into town on a cloud of inflated claims and was thus assumed to be the heavy favorite. Chicago’s fashionable young men, “with enormous rolls [of money] that resembled wall paper on shelves,” came to bet heavily on the French rider.12 She didn’t dominate the first night, as everyone expected, but the bettors were encouraged when she finished a close second to Lizzie. They figured Lisette was just biding her time. But they lost heavily the second night when she came in fifth (Lillie Williams and Ida Peterson were also on the bill).
What was going on? Her supporters believed she was the best rider, so they could explain her poor showing only by assuming that the others were conspiring to hold her back. They claimed that Tillie, Dottie, Lillie, and Ida had conspired to ride tightly clustered, trading one pacemaker for another, preventing Lisette from maneuvering around them. “Interest of spectators,” said the Democrat, explaining the shift in the week’s narrative, “is enhanced by the apparent efforts of four riders to defeat the little French woman.”13
Indeed, to the spectators Lisette looked small and vulnerable in the midst of her larger and sturdier competitors, heightening their sense of injustice. As in Minneapolis, Lisette was again cast as the victim of her own naïveté. In September she had been judged unwise for choosing an eighty-gear bicycle, a gearing that made perfect sense for the steady, paced events of Europe. Most American riders opted for gearings of seventy-four or seventy-six, which gave them slightly lower top speeds but more “spurting” ability. On the small track, it was crucial to respond immediately to a jump made by the other riders.
Stubbornly, Lisette in Chicago doubled down with an eighty-four-gear bike, and expert observers could see that she struggled as a result. But to the casual fan, Lisette’s inability to respond to the other riders’ sudden spurts looked like collusion, and Lisette apparently shared the fans’ suspicions. The Tribune reported that she often “wore a worried look on her face,” and when the American racers spoke to one another, as they often did during races, she shouted out in French to her husband, “What are the girls talking about among themselves?”14
“For some reason,” observed the Chicago Democrat, “Lizzie Glaw, the local rider, does not appear to be in the clique.”15 Free, perhaps, to ride beyond the attention of the other racers, Lizzie quietly finished first in both of the first two ninety-minute heats. Those nights saw fairly large crowds, at nearly three thousand per night, but unlike earlier races, the crowds failed to swell as the week wore on. Paid attendance leveled off at about two thousand. Perhaps some showed up initially just to see Lisette and, finding her a mere mortal after all, decided they’d seen enough. Even Chicago’s mayor, Carter Harrison Jr., who’d promised to attend on Wednesday evening, failed to show up.
Another explanation for the lagging interest could again be the point system, which the Tribune called a “rank failure.”16 As in earlier races, it seemed to achieve the exact opposite of its intentions. The old system delayed the drama until the final night, while the point system threatened to put ultimate victory out of reach for anyone who, like Lisette, earned only a point or two any given night by finishing a close fifth or sixth. By Thursday morning, with the race less than halfway finished, at least one newspaper reported that Lillie and Ida were already done. “Two of the competitors,” the Chronicle said, “have lost all chance of winning, and have consented to act merely as pacemakers the rest of the week.”17 Yet Lillie, at least, was still in a virtual tie with the four leaders, though she trailed significantly in points.
The point system also encouraged all manner of protests at the close of each night’s racing. Suddenly, it really mattered who came in first, second, and third on a Tuesday or Wednesday evening. Tillie won the third heat, a dozen lengths ahead of Lizzie and Lisette, who leaned desperately over their handlebars to finish in a dead heat. In former days the pair might have piped up briefly in their defense, but they would know that on Thursday the leaders would begin once again on even terms. Now, however, when the referee gave second place to Lisette, Lizzie protested vehemently. In the fight for points, finishing third instead of second meant a great deal, and Lizzie knew it. Despite winning the first two nights, her lead was now just two points.
Lizzie’s protests were even more clamorous the next night, on Thanksgiving. This time the Big Four sprinted the final mile almost as a single body. In the last seconds Tillie pushed ahead of Dottie and Lisette, while Lizzie was squeezed into fourth. Letting loose “a torrent of hysterical tears,” Lizzie claimed to have been pocketed, but the referee simply shrugged and repeated what he and everyone else plainly saw: the other women had outrun Lizzie in the homestretch. Lizzie’s finish now put her a point behind Tillie.18
It was Tillie’s turn to protest on Friday when she found herself in the same situation, stuck behind a clump of riders in the final laps. This time it was Lizzie, Dottie, and Lisette, and Tillie couldn’t get past Lisette’s flying elbows. Tillie’s protests fell on deaf ears, and she got only three points—so Lizzie was back in first place.
Again as in Minneapolis, the flip-flopping of leaders increased rather than allayed suspicions of an orchestrated competition. Despite acknowledging that “probably no branch of competition into which women have entered has received as much patronage in Chicago as women bicycle races,” even though “the participation by women in any branch of professional sport has always been looked on with more or less disfavor by the majority of those interested in athletic or sporting events,” the Tribune and other papers couldn’t hide their weariness with the tiresome string of suspiciously close finishes, loud protests, and constant record breaking.19 “As usual in all women’s bicycle races,” intoned the Chronicle, “the competitors broke records.”20 The women averaged over twenty-one miles an hour all week, but reporters were now blasé about such speeds. The truth was, the racers were reaching the performance limits of the bicycles and tracks. Adding the even competition among the Big Four, it looked to too many spectators as if the women simply weren’t trying very hard.
This is not to say that Chicago had lost all enthusiasm for the sport. Saturday night’s finish recalled the old days and brought back some of the breathless reporting of 1896 and 1897: “It was a race that will not soon be forgotten by followers of the flying wheel,” said the Tribune on Sunday morning. Tillie was again trapped behind Lisette, Lizzie, and Dottie. When Messier fired his pistol signaling the final sprint, Dottie edged outside to make her move, but Tillie rose even farther up the bank and executed to perfection her signature move, swooping down from the third turn and passing all three riders on the straightaway. She sustained her charge to the finish and crossed the tape “so far in advance that a blind man could have judged the result.”21
The race for second was just as exciting. With Dottie pushing from the outside, Lisette and Lizzie rode the last two laps completely even, with Lisette at the pole. The referee couldn’t tell who crossed the tape first, so he called a dead heat between Lisette and Lizzie, with Dottie falling to fourth. Immediately, both Dottie and Lizzie dismounted and charged the judges’ stand.
Dottie thought she’d been held back. Lizzie thought she’d finished ahead of Lisette. But the referee held firm, and he ruled that Lizzie and Lisette would split the nine points for second and third places. Going into the seventh and final night, then, the score in points put Tillie and Lizzie in a virtual tie—and Dottie and Lisette fighting only for third place:
|
Glaw |
193 miles, 7 laps |
29½ points |
|
Anderson |
193 miles, 7 laps |
29 |
|
Lisette |
193 miles, 7 laps |
24½ |
|
Farnsworth |
193 miles, 7 laps |
24 |
|
Williams |
193 miles, 7 laps |
13 |
|
Peterson |
192 miles, 9 laps |
6 |
The final night, Sunday, was a real spectacle. It began with forty-five minutes of debate among the racers, trainers, and judges, which pushed the starting time back to 9:15. People blamed the delay on Lizzie’s arguing over Saturday’s decision to make her split the second-place finish with Lisette. Indeed, Messier eventually hollered to the crowd that Lizzie had decided to withdraw from the race in protest. Her local supporters hissed loudly in their own protest against the decision. Dottie mounted the referee’s stand and made her own case that she was somehow cheated out of points on Saturday night. By this time, Lizzie had put on her robe and taken a seat in the grandstand, where she was given a lively ovation and “a bewildering bunch of flowers and greens.”22 The Tribune reported that things got so confused and tangled that the judges finally agreed to simply let the final night’s finish decide the entire race—which, given the disparity of points, might have been what Messier and the other backers of the race had wanted all along.23 Still, Lizzie remained seated, and the final heat began without her.
Despite getting a renewed chance to win the race, neither Lisette nor Dottie was able to overcome Tillie’s superior strength. Dottie took the pacemaking and had the lead toward the end, but both Tillie and Lisette pushed past her, and while Lisette rode the final laps tight up against Tillie’s shoulder, she was unable to find any reserve strength, and that was how they finished: Tillie, Lisette, Dottie.
Dottie made one final complaint after the finish, arguing now that she would have been better off with the points from the earlier heats. But no one paid her much attention. Monday’s news reports were full of weary disgust over all the tussling, but by Tuesday it came out that the debates starting Sunday’s finale likely had more to do with the dwindling gate receipts than with any judge’s decision. Apparently, the racers and their trainers had learned earlier on Sunday that the receipts had failed to cover all the expenses, and the women would probably not receive any prize money at all. That’s when Lizzie put her foot down and refused to ride another lap. When the others threatened to quit, too, the managers doled out fifteen dollars to each rider as a kind of promissory note. That wasn’t enough for Lizzie, though, and she put on her robe and took her seat in the stands. Lizzie had always made it perfectly clear that she was in this game for money, and if there was no money waiting for her at the end of the race, she’d rather sit it out.
It’s unknown who promoted the race, but it was reported on Tuesday that they’d taken Sunday night’s $800 in gate receipts and left town. Messier, who’d built the track and acted as starter, was out $65. Bobby Smiley hadn’t received any of his salary for the week. The racers, it was reported now, had been promised $100 each but only got $15, which barely covered their expenses. Now they were stuck in Chicago under heavy snow, “the roads and railroad tracks unfit for travel,” with nowhere to go.24
This was bad news on a number of levels. First, it seemed to confirm suspicions that the women were paid salaries, not prize money. They might receive small bonuses for winning each heat and bigger cash for placing in the end, but the fact was that the bicycle manufacturers were no longer bankrolling the races as they had during the height of the “boom.” The problem with races now, said the Chicago Democrat, “all comes about through the lack of capital in carrying on ventures of this sort.”25 The Tattersall’s race was underwritten by private investors—$1,500 from C. E. Bloomquist of Chicago and $500 from Norman King of Minneapolis—but it wasn’t enough to overcome the disappointing crowds.
Second, the low attendance pointed to a decline of interest in women’s racing. Back in March 1897 opening day at Tattersall’s had drawn over ten thousand people. Now, twenty months later, the finale drew barely two thousand. And it wasn’t just an issue in Chicago. “Female bicycle races,” concluded the Journal, “do not seem to be a drawing card in any city any longer.”26
Perhaps most ominous of all, the Chicago race indicated that as fresh and appealing as the newcomer Lisette was in the bike-crazy cities of Minneapolis and Chicago, she wasn’t enough to lift the sport above its other problems. Many suspected the races were fixed, and the point system only served to highlight the convenient back-and-forth of nightly winners. Many also felt that the sport had devolved into petty bickering, a constant stream of protests and challenges and indignant letters to the editor. Now it appeared that the dramatic purses—$500 to the winner! $1,500 in overall prize money!—were either a thing of the past or a ruse from the beginning. Even Lisette’s husband, Monsieur Christenet, expressed dismay at the terrific sums bandied about before, during, and after every race. “I am beginning to get on to the ways of these Americans,” he told the Tribune. “All bluff. I offer to bet $20 and they say $500 only will they talk about. But they never have it.” Sure enough, during Sunday’s race one of Lizzie’s backers jumped up at one point and offered to bet $500 that Lizzie could beat any of the others in a one-hour match. But the money never materialized. “Why don’t they put up their money?” an exasperated Émile asked the Tribune, which had no answer. “Then,” the Tribune said, “he wandered away, saying things in French to himself.”27