When Springtime’s buds are flowering through the land;
While Summer’s bloom is strewn on every hand;
And through Autumn blows
Or the chilling Wintry snows,
She drives her airy wheel so free and grand.
—Ariel, The Bicycling World, February 16, 1894
On November 24 in New York City, Annie rolled her Sterling up the gangplank of one of the fastest and finest ocean liners of the day, the French Line’s La Touraine, bound for Le Havre on France’s north coast. Five hundred thirty-six feet long, and weighing over 9,000 tons, La Touraine was the sixth-largest ship ever built, capable of carrying 1,090 passengers at a speed of nineteen knots across the Atlantic. Also known as “the steady ship,” La Touraine had a reputation for managing exceptionally well in rough seas. Equipped with a world-class kitchen staffed by trained French chefs, the vessel was often called “a piece of France itself.”
La Touraine passed the southern tip of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty. The last time Annie had sailed through New York harbor, she was a little girl on her way to America from Eastern Europe and Lady Liberty had not yet been built. From the harbor, the French liner slipped through the Verrazano Narrows and into the Atlantic. The air was mild, the breeze light from the west, and a slight haze lingered off Sandy Hook.
Annie loved being the center of attention and, during her time on the ship, she exercised her powers of self promotion by charming the passengers. She regaled everyone she met—Dr. C. W. Chancellor, the United States consul at Le Havre, the Baron and Baroness de Sellières, the Prince and Princess Ruspoli di Poggio Suasa, and Mr. and Mrs. Potter Palmer, socialites from Chicago, among them—with tales of her adventures. She may also have taken her ivory and gold Sterling for a few turns over the deck, or around the ship’s ballroom, to the delight of her new friends. Once she had made herself known to the passengers, she “earned 150 francs lecturing.”
La Touraine arrived at Le Havre on December 3, 1894, her daughter Mollie’s sixth birthday. Annie’s arrival was completely unheralded and without fanfare; she was listed among the ship’s arrivals in a local newspaper simply as “A. Kopchovsky.” She immediately rode into a bit of bad luck: French customs officials impounded her bicycle and her money was stolen. “I was in a predicament, for I was not permitted [by the terms of the wager] to speak French and I found it difficult to make myself understood in English,” Annie later wrote in the New York World, though she didn’t know French at all. Fortunately, Annie’s new acquaintance, Dr. Chancellor, came to her aid and “printed a large placard which explained in French the object of my visit and asking for an opportunity to earn some money.” Unable to persuade customs officers to release her bicycle, she negotiated for the Sterling to be shipped to Paris, where she traveled by train to stay with a Paris agent for the Sterling Cycle Works, Victor Sloan, and his wife, until its arrival.
The Paris where Annie arrived on December 4, 1894, was that of Camille Pisarro, Louis Pasteur, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and le Moulin Rouge, perhaps the world’s most famous nightclub, then and now. Almost every night Toulouse-Lautrec was at le Moulin Rouge, sketching the bohemians who came to smoke, drink, carouse, and watch the dancers. Sophisticated, cosmopolitan, and artsy, Paris was a modern world capital of some 2 million people, its skyline graced by the new Eiffel Tower, built just six years before. The salon, evenings of conversation among the city’s intellectual, cultural, and artistic elite, was a fixture of the local social circuit, as was the café, where artists, writers, and poets would pass their days and nights talking over coffee and cigarettes.
The bicycle, too, was a prominent fixture of Parisian life in 1894. Indeed, earlier development of the vehicle decades before had proceeded roughly in parallel in France and the United States, with the French calling their machines vélocipèdes (literally, “rapid feet”). “In a short time you will see the country roads and the parks filled with people wheeling along upon vélocipèdes [and] the great ladies of the land will unblushingly don man’s dress, or something alarmingly like it, and jump astride their apparatus,” wrote Arsène Alexandre, a Paris writer, in 1895. So popular was cycling among the women of Paris that half a dozen tailors in the city specialized in bicycle costumes for society women. Bicycle “fever” was “at its height” and its popularity transcended class lines. “I have used the expression bicyclemania,” continued Alexandre, “and in view of the facts is it anything short of that? No class of the community is free from the passion, the workers as well as the butterflies.”
In short, France was primed for a heroine of the wheel, when in rode Annie on her ivory and gold men’s Sterling. News of Annie’s arrival in Paris wasn’t reported in Boston until a month later. “Miss Londonderry…is now in Paris,” reported the Boston Daily Globe on January 5,1895. “‘She,’ as the French papers say, ‘is the object of much interest.’ Deservedly, for when one has no money and no clothes one is, as the racing boys say, ‘a poor beggar!’”
Annie’s family probably knew of her arrival in France earlier than the Globe reported it. Though none of her letters or cables home have survived, she surely would have been writing home from time to time, if only to reassure her family that she was all right. It may have been remarkably brash for her to have left her husband and children, but she didn’t abandon them altogether and would return to them when her trip was finished.
WHEN ANNIE ARRIVED in Paris, she immediately became the object of a great deal of interest and speculation in the press. “She seems made only of muscles and nerves and in spite of her petite size gives the impression of remarkable energy,” said one French newspaper. This was one of the more flattering descriptions she would read about herself while in France, for although the French people embraced her with great enthusiasm and warmth, their journalists didn’t think much of her appearance.
Though Annie was often described in American newspapers as a highly attractive woman, the French saw her quite differently. Because she was muscular from cycling and wore a man’s riding suit, she didn’t conform to French notions of femininity. After referring to France’s “fragile and delicious” young maidens, one Lyon columnist wrote:
Truth be told, Miss Londonderry is not of their race, not even…their sex. She belongs to that category of neutered beings, single women without a husband or children, that social evolution and the increasing difficulties of existence [have] given birth to especially in America and in England.
Such women…resemble neutered worker bees whose superiority of labor is a result of infertility. And the suppression of love and maternal function so profoundly alters in them any feminine personality that they are neither men nor women and they really constitute a third sex.
Miss Londonderry belongs to this third sex. It is enough to see her masculine traits, her muscled physique, her athlete’s legs, her hands which appear strong enough to box vigorously, and everything masculine which emanates from her energetic being, to establish that it would be difficult to apply the legendary verse of Mr. Legouve: “Fall at the feet of this sex as you would to your mother!”
Though this was the most venemous attack on Annie’s femininity, many French reporters commented on what they saw as masculine traits. “[O]ne would be tempted to believe that Miss Annie Londonderry, with her boyish charms, is really a young man who assumed a female name in order to draw attention to her reckless enterprise,” wrote one such observer. “Mannish, bright eyes, dark, tan, a bony and energetic face,” said Le Figaro. She “has none of the physical charms of a woman,” opined another Paris newspaper. “Of average height, very slender, Miss Londonderry could easily be taken for a young boy rather than a woman, and she doesn’t have any coquettish mannerisms of a woman.” Annie didn’t appear slender to another reporter, who described her as “definitely not pretty, but, on the other hand, has a Herculean build.”
Although the French press spilled a torrent of positive ink about Annie and her journey, lavishing her with praise for her gumption and her guts, many reporters simply could not believe that a woman on so independent a journey and dressed as she was could have any of the feminine attributes they so prized in women. Even her capacity to love was questioned. In Lyon, Annie was asked if she had left behind in Boston a romantic interest. She looked perplexed at first and then laughed heartily, a laugh the reporter interpreted as incredulity that she would have any interest in romance at all.
Once again, while in France, Annie changed her story to suit her mood or situation, painting a confusing picture of her background to match the confusing picture of her sexuality being painted by the press. Her repertoire of tall tales was limitless. In various interviews she described herself as “an orphan at a very young age” (not so); a law student (not true); a doctorate of law (not true); a medical student who earned money “dissecting cadavers” (not true); a businesswoman (true; she was an advertising solicitor); an accountant (apparently not); a reporter for several newspapers (unclear); a wealthy heiress who had inherited “a substantial fortune” (untrue); and the founder of a newspaper which she sold just before embarking on her journey (not true). Annie even claimed to have invented a method of stenography and boasted, disingenuously, that she was the cousin of a United States congressman and the niece of a United States senator. It’s impossible to discern her motive in making these varied and, in some cases, outlandish claims. She often seemed to take delight in pulling the legs of reporters, almost all of whom were men at the time, and in testing the limits of their credulity. But the sheer randomness and grandiosity of some of her claims hints at an almost pathological aversion to telling a straight story, though she was never delusional—she knew exactly what she was doing and appears to have enjoyed the game, almost daring reporters to find out who she really was.
LE TOUR DU MONDE
[A TOUR OF THE WORLD]
About a month and a half ago, we had a visit from two young English journalists…who, having left their country without a penny in their pocket proposed to go around the world by foot earning their living during the trip. One must admit that the attempt did not lack originality.
Now here is a young American woman who has undertaken to accomplish the same feat, but who, more practical and more 1900s than her competitors of the ugly gender, wanted the bicycle to be part of the feat. And so she left her native Boston…to pedal courageously forward, to tempt luck and to attempt the unknown.
On departure she only had a penny and many ordeals were awaiting her but didn’t daunt her. Her adventures? We would need an entire book to describe them. Attacked by a negro in New York whom she shot and nearly killed next to a railroad track where she had fallen off her bicycle onto the rails at the moment a…train was coming with phenomenal speed. It was truly a miracle that she escaped a terrible death and saved her bicycle.
—an unidentified Paris newspaper, December 1894
Here again was Annie, the master storyteller, at work, creating a larger-than-life portrait of herself: the courageous heroine narrowly escaping death to make her journey around the world. The entire story about being attacked “by a negro,” shooting him, and nearly being run over by a train is almost certainly apocryphal, a piece of pulp fiction used to build her legacy. Annie repeated this story to several French newspapers, saying the incident occurred between Rochester and Syracuse, a stretch, considering at that time she was riding in the company of three wheelmen from Rochester. Nor was the story reported in any of the two dozen or so accounts of her travels in the Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Utica newspapers.
Despite the questionable veracity of the stories she was spinning to European journalists, or perhaps because of them, Annie found French soil fertile for making money. By her own account, she was “quite the rage [in Paris] as an advertising medium.” Various bicycle sellers engaged her at the Salon du Cycle, a huge bicycle exhibition held in Paris, to promote their wares, as did the director of the Vélodrome d’Hiver, where Annie was to compete in a five day indoor bicycle race against two of France’s best male riders, Tricot and Chevreuil. The race was canceled before it began, however, purportedly because use of the indoor track for five consecutive days would interfere with the training regimen of many racers.
Annie also lectured in Paris, though she did so in English. “Not one in a hundred could understand,” she wrote. “Every few minutes I would shout ‘Vive la France!’ Then how they did cheer! It was positively inspiring. I found out what they liked and gave them plenty of it.” (emphasis added) This would be Annie’s modus operandi throughout her trip; she knew how to win over both a crowd and a single reporter, and this type of showmanship contributed to her livelihood on the road.
THOUGH ANNIE later wrote that she stayed in Paris two weeks, it was closer to three and half weeks. Before leaving Paris, the American consul presented her with a silk American flag, one she would deploy as a prop to make her dramatic entrance into Marseilles a few weeks later. “He told me to keep that flag prominently displayed wherever I went and that it would always protect me.”
ANNIE LEFT PARIS on December 30 at eight thirty in the morning from the Porte-Dorée Café on avenue Daumesni, riding down the rue Coquillière. Among those now accompanying Annie were Victor Sloan, the Sterling dealer with whom she stayed during her time in Paris, and his brother, James.
To help her find her way south, Annie sewed a small piece of cloth into her bicycle jacket with a message written in French: “Miss Annie Londonderry from Boston (America) is traveling around the world on her ‘Sterling’ bicycle, built like a watch, with only a penny. Please show her the way to Marseilles.” She wouldn’t need it, however, because the Sloans were just the first in a series of escorts organized by France’s ubiquitous cycling clubs, escorts that traveled with her, in relay fashion, nearly every mile of her journey from Paris to Marseilles.
The trip out of Paris was an awful one, twenty miles of mud-covered roads in rain to Lieusaint, where Annie and her party arrived at 11:45 A.M. for a forty-five-minute break to rest and dry off. Then the “half-frozen riders hobbled on their course.” By early afternoon they had arrived in Melun, where she posed for photographs before heading off again about 2:30 P.M. Joined by two additional local cyclists from Melun, they then rode through the famed oak and pine forests of Fontainebleau by the Seine. L’Abeille de Fontainbleau, the local newspaper, noted that the woman who had passed through town on her white Sterling was “known under the pseudonym of Miss Annie Londonderry,” one of the few French newspapers to report that Londonderry was not her real name. Annie had given an interview, reportedly in Paris just before her departure from that city, in which she said, “By the bye, you know Miss Londonderry is only my pseudonym; my real name is much prettier and better known, but I can’t let you know it at present. You will know it if I succeed.” Of course, Kopchovsky was neither prettier nor better known than Londonderry, but the statement was pure Annie, designed to be an intriguing tease. Around 5:30 P.M., “spattered with mud and soaked to the bone,” she arrived in Nemours and bid farewell to the Sloan brothers. She spent the evening at l’Hôtel de l’Écu de France, where the proprietor provided a change of warm clothes, no doubt a relief to Annie, who had ridden some fifty cold and rainy miles that day.
She was on the road again at 9:30 A.M. the next day. A sizable contingent of local townspeople came to see her off, and two employees of a local bike shop rode with her through the bitter cold and falling snow to Souppes, a few miles south. The bad weather made for slow progress, and by New Year’s Eve Annie was in or near Montargis, a mere twenty miles or so south of Nemours and about sixty miles south of Paris.
The dawn of the new year brought little change in the weather. On New Year’s Day, Annie continued south on the national highway to Cosne-Cours-sur-Loire, where she arrived “in a very good state, but covered in mud.” From there, she wrote to Le Vélo, a French cycling journal, of the warm hospitality she received in that town, which included gifts that she accepted in exchange for sharing stories of her journey, per the terms of the purported wager, which prohibited her from accepting anything gratuitously. One in particular, a box of chocolates, she described as “superb.” Annie spent the night at the home of the Hourds, “a hospitable family…who offer[ed] her lodging [and] a meal.”
Her progress was slow again the next day. After she arrived in the small village of la Charité-sur-Loire, the local consul of the Union Vélocipédique de France (U.V.F., the Velocipedic Union of France), Monsieur Nicart, persuaded Annie to take the train some 170 miles to Lyon “because of the deplorable state of the routes.”
Annie stayed at l’Hôtel de l’Univers in Lyon, where she regaled a reporter with her story of being attacked by “a negro” in New York State, which she altered slightly from other tellings. In this version of the story, she hadn’t fired any shots, but she was portrayed as heroic nonetheless. “Miss Annie Londonderry, with unusual energy and a vigorous push, rid herself of the negro. She just had enough time to get up and throw herself and her bicycle aside as the train went by at full steam.” She left this city on January 6, in the company of three Lyon wheelmen. Again, the weather was dreadful. It was snowing and the temperature was well below freezing. Just as the group was ready to depart, however, Annie had a mishap and suffered a minor injury to her leg, delaying her party for an hour. The group then pedaled on to Vienne, where the president of the local bicycle club provided a luncheon; then they continued south and spent the night in the village of Saint Rambert.
Annie left for Valence in the company of a new group of cyclists. The roads on the way to Valence were poor, the weather was still cold, and her ankle was sore from the accident in Lyon. She arrived in Valence at eleven o’clock in the morning, completely fatigued, though one of her riding companions told a local newspaper he was “stunned by her valiant enthusiasm.”
“Her endurance is remarkable,” said the Journal de Valence. Apparently unaware that she had taken the train from Cosne-Cours-sur-Loire to Lyon, the Journal continued: “She took only four days to go from Paris to Lyon never sleeping more than two hours a night. Her routine is such, that from Saint Rambert to Valence, where, by the way, she was only pedaling with one foot, the cyclist accompanying her had a hard time keeping up.”
Had she read the story in the Journal, Annie would not have rushed to correct the misimpression she had ridden all the way from Paris to Lyon. She seemed to have an intuitive understanding that people’s assumptions about her and her journey would often play to her favor. Like any good illusionist, she encouraged people to see what they wanted to see, or thought they saw; and the French, in particular, wanted to see a heroine of the wheel.
Just as Annie never disabused people of the assumption she was single (a logical assumption about a woman circling the world on a bicycle in those times), she would never have come forward to say that she had taken the train to Lyon if people assumed she had ridden, even though there were many, including Monsieur Nicart of the U.V.F., who knew differently. If the Journal had asked her directly, she likely would have told the truth, but with a creative explanation. Later in her journey, she sometimes explained away stints by train by stating that the wager had a rail allowance of a fixed number of miles, or permitted train travel with the advance permission of the bettors if conditions made riding impossible, which permission she would obtain by telegraph. Since Annie almost certainly concocted the wager story, there was no one back in Boston to contradict her creative variations of the wager terms.
Annie registered at l’Hôtel de la Tête d’Or in Valence and a Dr. Magnanon was summoned to see her. He diagnosed the injury to her leg as an inflammation of the Achilles tendon. As a result of her injury and the bitterly cold weather, Annie delayed her departure from Valence. Her Sterling was put on display at a local bicycle shop, to be admired by the curious public. “It is a man’s bicycle,” reported the Journal. “Seeing this specimen, we see to what degree of perfection the builders of the New World have attained.” While at the hotel, Annie received a note, certainly one of many such notes received over the course of her journey: “A lady great admirer of your courageous travel will come and see you tomorrow between twelve and half past one. Pray do wait for her.” Her celebrity was, by now, secure.
While she recuperated, Annie held court at the hotel and met with local journalists. “In general Miss Londonderry likes French men but couldn’t say as much for French women,” said the Journal de Valence. “In Paris she was very shocked to see that women smoked. During her stay in the capital people proposed to her to have a contest against cyclists of her own sex, but she declined having judged them not worthy of competing with her. She competed well against the finest of Parisian male cyclists and did not appear to be struggling to compete with any of the racers.”
Because there are no reports in the Paris newspapers of Annie’s having competed with male cyclists, let alone Paris’s finest, the Journal reporter may have been especially credulous, for she was the likely source for the story. Indeed, as noted, her scheduled five-day race against two male racers in Paris had been canceled so as not to interfere with the training schedules of the French cyclists.
Typical of Annie’s impulsive conversation were her comments about Frenchmen and women. What slights, real or perceived, she may have suffered at the hands of Frenchwomen she never said but, by hinting that she liked Frenchmen but not the women, she may have been coyly trying to disabuse people of some of the perceptions that flowed from the many reports about her masculine appearance and her uncertain sexuality, while at the same time boasting of her skills on the bike. (Modesty was not in her repertoire.) As for being “shocked” that Frenchwomen smoked, it’s hard to imagine that Annie, who had few qualms about dressing in men’s cycling clothes and making a general spectacle of herself, would find smoking a shocking affront to femininity.
At 9:00 A.M. on the morning of January 10, a crowd gathered at l’Hôtel de la Tête d’Or as Annie left Valence with eight other cyclists, including a gentleman by the name of Paul Seigneuret. Because of her injury, she and Seigneuret shared a tandem, while another rider rode Annie’s Sterling. Seigneuret intended to escort her to the village of Montélimar, but soon found himself twice as far down the road in Orange, having fallen under Annie’s spell. She was a woman of enormous charisma, charm, persuasiveness, and self-assurance, and repeatedly demonstrated, both during her bicycle trip and later in her life, an uncanny ability to hold people in thrall. Seigneuret was hardly alone in succumbing to her vivacious and captivating personality.
“To explain to you how, having departed to accompany Miss Annie to Montélimar, I went to Orange, will be difficult because I am not aware myself,” wrote Seigneuret two days later in an account of his trip with Annie written for the Messager de Valence. “[B]ut, what is certain, is that I saw myself almost en route to Marseilles and that I had the promise of a trip to Bombay using my bicycle, from this city to Calcutta. Do not believe this is a tall tale…I say this in all seriousness.”
By the time the riding party reached the village of Paillasse, en route to Orange, the entire group save for Annie and Seigneuret, had had enough of the cold weather and snow-covered roads and “steered their handlebars toward the station.” Three of the riders met up with Annie and Seigneuret a bit further south, in Loriol. She and Seigneuret continued on together, with two others, to Montélimar. The roads improved, but “the wind create[d] heaps of snow, especially on the descent of Saulce,” wrote Seigneuret.
Though her Achilles tendon continued to bother her, so much so that she was pedaling with only one foot, Annie managed the large hills near Montélimar quite well. Indeed, she and Seigneuret kept up a brisk pace of about twelve miles per hour. Her injury notwithstanding, Annie’s enthusiasm, joy, and joie de vivre were undiminished. “She possesses an unheard of energy, laughs continuously and does not stop singing,” Seigneuret wrote. “On the hills, she pushes her pedal leg with her hand and breaks out in laughter once she has ascended the slope. She is always gay and we arrive at Montélimar without even noticing the route.”
After lunch at l’Hôtel de la Poste in Montélimar, the group, now four strong, departed for Orange. Despite rough conditions, Annie’s buoyant personality kept the group’s spirits afloat. As the party ascended a steep two-mile slope at Bel-Air, they were forced to dismount and walk to the top before beginning a fast descent into the village of Donzère. On the way down, one of the riders lost control and was pitched into a snowbank. “[W]e [saw] a snow-covered head poking out of a hole in such an amusing way that we didn’t even notice his legs which were desperately kicking in the air,” wrote Seigneuret. Even a near collision didn’t dampen Annie’s spirits: “[W]e avoid[ed] the accident and, with a burst of laughter from Miss Londonderry we [got] back on our route.”
Beyond Pierrelatte, a village south of Donzère, the roads were smooth and clear of snow, and the party continued to Orange. Over their final dinner that evening, Annie playfully implored her companions to accompany her to America via Bombay, Calcutta, and Yokohama, but finally settled on a promise, never fulfilled, to return to Valence in 1896 for a reunion. After dinner, the Valence cyclists boarded the train for the trip back north, leaving Annie to begin the next leg of her trip on her Sterling—and to entertain a new group of escorts.
Annie spent the night of January 10 in Orange, just north of Avignon. The next morning, two members of the Avignon cycling club met her there and the Cercle Musicale, most of whose members were cyclists, played for her enjoyment, no doubt making her short journey to Avignon a festive one.
When Annie reached Avignon just before 11:00 A.M., with her two new companions, the city was well primed for her brief visit. Two days before, a local newspaper had already trumpeted, “Miss Londonderry will pass through Avignon on her bicycle tour of the world!!” and the organizers of Annie’s visit were “redoubling their zeal so that nothing is overlooked.” “Hip! Hip! For the courageous bicyclist,” proclaimed L’Echo du Jour, another Avignon paper, one of many that served as a chorus of cheerleaders as the American cyclist made her way south. She was, by now, a bona fide hero in France.
At a reception hosted in Avignon by a Madame Boyer, Annie was given a well-heated room “stocked with drinks to strengthen her.” Then, just four hours after arriving in Avignon, Annie was off again with Monsieur Geo, one of the Avignon cyclists who had met her at Orange. They reached Salon de Provence, some thirty miles southeast of Avignon, later that same day.
Marseilles, Annie’s final destination in that country, was now just a few hours’ ride away. But this last leg of her French sojourn proved to be the most perilous, at least by Annie’s account.
“One night I had an encounter with highwaymen near Lacone [Laçon, about thirty miles north of Marseilles and about ten miles southeast of Salon de Provence],” Annie later wrote in the New York World. “I think they were waiting for me, for they knew I had been earning money in Paris. There were three men in the party, and all wore masks. They sprang at me from behind a clump of trees, and one of them grabbed my bicycle wheel, throwing me heavily. I carried a revolver in my pocket within easy reach, and when I stood up I had that revolver against the head of the man nearest me. He backed off but another seized me from behind and disarmed me. They rifled my pockets and found just three francs. They were magnanimous enough to return that money to me. My shoulder had been badly wrenched by my fall, and my ankle was sprained, but I was able to continue my journey. Several wheelmen of the Lacone Club rode out to meet me, and when they understood the cause of my injuries they would not let me travel alone while I remained on French soil.”
Despite the trauma of the night before, on the morning of January 13 Annie made her triumphant arrival in Marseilles. “Great preparations had been made for my reception in Marseilles, but I cut a sorry-looking figure when I reached the city,” she wrote. “My ankle was so badly swollen that I could not use it, so I was forced to ride into the city with my injured foot in bandages hanging over the handle-bar and pedaling with the other. I was escorted to the hotel by a long procession of cyclists, and the streets were lined with people who were anxious to see the American lady who was riding around the world on a bicycle. My Stars and Stripes were hung from a staff attached to my handle-bar, and it was heartily cheered.”
While the dramatic encounter with highwaymen near Marseilles quickly became a staple among Annie’s many stories, repeated regularly to reporters along her route, it was never mentioned in the Marseilles newspapers, near the scene of the alleged crime, nor, in fact, in any French newspapers. There was, of course, another explanation for why Annie pedaled into Marseilles with one foot and the other in bandages propped on her handlebars: the inflammation of her Achilles tendon diagnosed in Valence. But there was little glamour in an inflamed Achilles tendon. Surviving a dramatic robbery was much better copy and served to enlarge her already growing legend, and nowhere had it grown as large as it did in Marseilles.
Indeed, she had become such a star by that time that, during an appearance at the city’s Crystal Palace, Annie received a glorious ovation as she rode her Sterling through the crowd. Telling the people of Marseilles they were “the elite of the French nation” endeared her to the Marsaillais even more, as they loved being told their countrymen to the north were less hospitable and more vulgar. Annie regaled the local papers with anecdotes from her trip and continued to pour on the flattery, working her audience like the seasoned performer she now was. According to one local newspaper, “When she left for Marseilles, Parisians who had only given her a lukewarm welcome, didn’t hesitate to warn her: ‘You will be poorly welcomed in the South! Prepare yourself for a cruel deception.’ It was with a childlike joy that Miss Londonderry declared that the Parisians were bad prophets. She thinks that she has never experienced such sincere warmth and respectful kindness as that which surrounds her in our city.”
“Maybe Paris got up on the wrong side of the bed when I was there,” said Annie. “In Marseilles, people have shown such cordiality that I’m overwhelmed with emotion.”
INDEED, MARSEILLES was good to Annie. Not only was she given a hero’s welcome, local merchants eagerly helped her earn money to continue her trip. Monsieur Lorenzy-Palanca, a Marseilles perfume maker, initially offered her money directly but, citing the prohibition on gifts established by the wager, the cyclist replied, “nothing stops me from doing work for any amount you offer me.” True to her word, the next day Annie was out and about the streets of Marseilles, distributing handbills for the Lorenzy-Palanca company from her Sterling.
Annie received so many letters in Marseilles from well-wishers hoping for a word with her that visitation hours at her hotel were posted in the local paper. Indeed, her celebrity had grown so large, that on January 20, the day of her departure for points east on the steamship Sydney, thousands turned out by the docks to bid her farewell. The throng “resembled a huge swarm of ants,” reported Le Petit Provençal. “The Soufre pier was equally invaded. Along the quay, privileged hundreds came to make their good-byes to the intrepid…Miss Londonderry.” For all her outward bravado and, at times, emotional detachment, Annie was deeply moved by this outpouring of affection and her eyes “filled with tears.” France had embraced her and she returned the embrace.
As the Sydney maneuvered through the port, American and French flags flying from her stern, the captain passed as close as possible to the pier so the crowd could soak up one last long look at their heroine. The crowd cheered and Annie waved her final farewell. France would never see her again.