My Life in Many States and in Foreign Lands Part 21

CHAPTER XXVII

DECLARED A LUNATIC

1872-1873

I had hardly got out of the Presidential race before I got into jail again. I pa.s.sed easily from one kind of life to the other. In fact, the last thing I did in connection with my political campaign had been the indirect cause of getting me into the Tombs. The Tombs has the honor of being the fourteenth jail that has given me shelter for purposes of meditation.

In November, '72, I was making a speech from Henry Clews's steps in Wall Street, partly to quiet a mob, when a paper was thrust into my hand. I glanced at it, thinking it had to do with myself, and saw that Victoria C. Woodhull and Tennie C. Claflin had been arrested for publis.h.i.+ng in their paper in Brooklyn an account of a scandal about a famous clergyman in that city. The charge was "obscenity," and they had been arrested at the instance of Anthony Comstock. I immediately said: "This may be libel, but it is not obscenity."

That a.s.sertion, with what I soon did to establish its truth, got me into jail, with the result that six courts in succession--afraid to bring me to trial for "obscenity"--declared me a "lunatic," and prevented my enjoyment of property in Omaha, Nebraska, which is now worth millions of dollars.

From Wall Street I hurried to Ludlow Street Jail, where I found Victoria C. Woodhull and Tennie C. Claflin in a cell about eight by four feet. I was indignant that two women, who had merely published a current rumor, should be treated in this way, and took a piece of charcoal and wrote, on the newly whitewashed walls of the cell a couplet suggesting the baseness of this attack upon their reputations. It is sufficient to say here that public feeling was so aroused that these women were soon set free; but I got myself deeper and deeper into the toils of the courts.

[Ill.u.s.tration: George Francis Train with the children in Madison Square.]

In order to prove that the publication was not obscene, if judged by Christian standards of purity, I published in my paper, called The Train Ligue, three columns of quotations from the Bible. Every verse I used was worse than anything published by these women. I was immediately arrested on a charge of "obscenity," and taken to the Tombs. I was never tried on this charge, but was kept in jail as a lunatic, and then dismissed, under the ban of declared lunacy, and have so remained for thirty years. Although the public pretended to be against me, it was very eager to buy the edition of my paper that gave these extracts from the Bible. The price of the paper rose from five cents a copy to twenty, forty, sixty cents, and even to one dollar. In a few days it was selling surrept.i.tiously for two dollars a copy.

I was put in Tweed's cell, number 56, in "Murderers' Row," in the Tombs, where at that time were twenty-two men imprisoned under the charge of murder. I made the twenty-third inhabitant of that ghastly "Row." It is remarkable that not one of these men was hanged. All were either acquitted, or tried and sentenced and got off with varying terms of service.

It was not a select, but it was at least a famous, group of men in "Murderers' Row." Across the narrow hallway, just opposite my cell, was Edward S. Stokes, who had killed James Fisk, Jr. Next to me were John J.

Scannell and Richard Croker, both of whom have been prominent in the city administration in later years. There was, also, the famous Sharkey, who might have got into worse trouble than any of us, but who escaped through the pluck and ingenuity of Maggie Jordan. Maggie happened to be about the same size as her lover, and changed clothes with him in the cell. The warden, one morning, found he had a woman in his cage instead of Sharkey. This was the last ever heard of Sharkey, so far as I know.

My chief purpose in jail was not to get out, but to be tried on the charge of obscenity. I had been arrested for that offense, and determined that I would be either acquitted or convicted. But I have never had a trial to this day. I do not believe that any court in the land would face the danger of trying to convict a man of publis.h.i.+ng obscenity for quoting from the standard book on morality read throughout Christendom.

However this may be, I was offered a hundred avenues of escape from jail, every conceivable one, except the honest and straightforward one of a fair trial by jury. Men offered to bail me out; twice I was taken out on proceedings inst.i.tuted by women; but I would not avail myself of this way to freedom. Several times I was left alone in the court-house or in hallways, or other places, where access to the street was easy, entirely without guards, in the vain hope that I would walk off with my liberty. I was discharged by the courts; and I was offered freedom if I would sign certain papers that were brought to me, but I invariably refused to look at them. In all cases I merely turned back and took my place in the cell, and waited for justice.

In '73 I was finally taken before Judge Davis in the Court of Oyer and Terminer. William F. Howe, who died this year, was one of my counsel, and Clark Bell was another. Howe took the ground, first, that obviously there could be nothing obscene in the publication of extracts from the Bible, and, second, if there were, that I was insane at the time of the publication. The judge hastily said that he would instruct the jury to acquit me if the defense took this position. Mr. Bell then asked that a simple verdict of "not guilty" be rendered; but the judge insisted upon its form being "Not guilty, on the ground of insanity." This verdict was taken.

I rose immediately, and said: "I protest against this whole proceeding.

I have been four months in jail; and I have had no trial for the offense with which I am charged." I felt that I was in the same plight as Paul.

The Bible and the Church, surely, could not condemn me for quoting Scripture; and I had appealed unto Caesar; but Caesar refused, out of sheer cowardice, to hear me and try me. I was not even listened to when I made this protest, and I shouted, so that all must hear me: "Your honor, I move your impeachment in the name of the people!"

The sensation was tremendous. "Sit down!" roared the judge. He evidently thought that I would attack him. An order committing me to the State Lunatic Asylum was issued, and I was taken back to the Tombs. But I did not go to the asylum. Another writ of habeas corpus took me out of jail, and I at last turned my back on the Tombs--a lunatic by judicial decree.

I hope that the courts, inasmuch as I am their ward, and have been for thirty years, have protected me in my rights, and have safeguarded those interests in Omaha where some millions of dollars depend upon the question of my sanity.

The moment I was taken out of the Tombs, I went down town, had a bath, got a good meal, put on better clothes, and bought pa.s.sage for England.

I went to join my family at Homburg, as my sons were then in Germany, studying at Frankfort.

This Woodhull-Claflin affair had far-reaching effects. Besides leaving me for thirty years in the grip of the court, it affected many other persons. I shall refer here only to one of these, the publisher of a newspaper in Toledo, who printed some of the matter that I had printed in New York. He was prosecuted, and his paper and press were seized. The poor fellow asked me to lecture in his interest. I could not do this, but helped him to raise some money to buy a new printing-press. This was in August, '83, when I was at Vevay, Switzerland.

A worthless piece of paper eventually fell into the hands of another man, who proceeded to prosecute me, and, with the a.s.sistance of the courts, kept me in the Charles Street Jail, Boston, for some time. I was arrested for this old debt of another man, and was refused the const.i.tutional relief of habeas corpus by Judge Devins and five other judges of Ma.s.sachusetts. The amount of the debt had steadily increased, and was $800 in '89. Finally, I went before Judge McKim, and he at once dismissed the case as groundless.

This brought my jail experiences to a close. Was it fitting that Boston, where I had lived and worked; where I had devised the building of the greatest s.h.i.+ps the world had known up to that time; where I had projected and organized the clipper-s.h.i.+p service to California, and opened a new era in the carrying trade of the world, and where I had organized the Union Pacific Railway to develop the entire West and draw continents nearer together, should put me in jail for a petty debt that I did not owe, as in some sort an evidence of its grat.i.tude?

My prison experience has been more varied than that of the most confirmed and hardened criminal; and yet I have never committed a crime, cheated a human being, or told a lie. I have been imprisoned in almost every sort of jail that man has devised. I have been in police stations, in Marshalseas in England and in Ireland, in common jails in Boston, in the Bastile of Lyons, in the Prefecture at Tours as the prisoner of Gambetta, Dictator of France, and in the famous old Tombs of New York. I have used prisons well. They have been as schools to me, where I have reflected, and learned more about myself--and a man's own self is the best object of any one's study. I have, also, made jails the source of fruitful ideas, and from them have launched many of my most startling and useful projects and innovations. And so they have not been jails to me, any more than they were to Lovelace:

"Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage."

CHAPTER XXVIII

AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY, SIXTY-SEVEN, AND SIXTY DAYS

1870, 1890, 1892

I went around the world in eighty days in the year '70, two years before Jules Verne wrote his famous romance, Le Tour du Monde en Quatre-vingts Jours, which was founded upon my voyage. Since then I have made two tours of the world, one in sixty-seven and a half days, and the other in sixty. The last voyage still stands as the record trip in circling the globe.

I have always been something of a traveler, restless in my earlier years, and never averse to visiting new scenes and experiencing new sensations. In Australasia I had improved every opportunity to see the new world of the South Seas, and later had visited every part of the Orient that I could by any possibility reach during my various journeys in that portion of the globe. Europe I had traversed quite thoroughly, from the Crimea to Nijnii Novgorod, from the Volga to the Thames, from Spain to Finland. When I left Australia it was my intention to establish a great business in Yokohama, and, when that had been done, I intended to pa.s.s on across the Pacific, thus girdling the globe; but my first effort to go around the world was prevented by the war in the Crimea, and so I turned back and came home, as already described, by way of China, India, Egypt, and Europe.

The desire for travel possessed me mightily in '69, just after the golden spike was driven at the completion of the Union Pacific Railway, by which California and New York were made nearer one another by many days of travel. The circ.u.mference of the globe had been shrunken. I wanted, naturally, to be the first man to utilize the great advantage thus given to travel by making the quickest trip around the world.

After closing my lecture tour on the Pacific coast in the spring and summer of '70, I prepared for such a trip, carefully calculating that it could be made within eighty days, even with the inevitable losses due to bad connections at different ports. I wanted to take my sons, George and Elsey, with me, but, at the last moment, they were prevented from going.

I found out only a few days ago, when accusing my daughter Sue of keeping them in Newport, that their mother had given them ten golden eagles each not to go. I sailed from San Francisco August 1, '70. On the same s.h.i.+p was Susan B. King, whom I found in San Francisco waiting to sail, as she was tired of the way her affairs were going in New York and wanted a long trip for rest and recreation. She had $30,000 with her, which she said she would try to invest profitably on the voyage. She was then quite an old woman, as the world generally estimates age.

I made Yokohama in very good time, and went immediately to the j.a.panese capital, the new seat of the Emperor, Tokyo. I may record here a very curious thing. I believe I was the last man--the last foreigner, at least--who had taken part in an old national custom of j.a.pan, by which persons of opposite s.e.x bathe together, without bathing suits. It was then considered, in that land of good morals and fine esthetic sense, that no impropriety was involved in this custom. Manners and customs there were open and free as in Greece, when Athens was "the eye of Greece" and the center of the world's civilization. I went to one of the public baths to experience a decidedly new sensation. I was allowed to bathe with old men and women, young men and maidens--and no one, except, perhaps, myself, felt any degree of embarra.s.sment or false modesty.

But the fact that a foreigner was bathing in this way with j.a.panese women and girls made something of a stir in Tokyo that had been unexpected by me. It seems that, a short time before, some Englishmen had gone into one of the public baths and made themselves very offensive. This had taught the j.a.panese that they could not trust the foreigner, and they had already nearly decided to exclude foreigners from their baths, or to separate the s.e.xes. My experience was, therefore, the last, as I believe. After this the s.e.xes were not permitted to bathe together.

I observed that the j.a.panese used small paper packages for tea, thus making it convenient to handle tea. I then recalled the custom of the Chinese in compressing tea for transportation by caravan to the great Fair of Nijnii Novgorod. Here was an opportunity, I thought, and I suggested to Susan B. King that she might invest her $30,000 to good purpose in sending to New York a cargo of tea put up in little paper packages, and that, if she wanted to try it, I would give her letters to men in Canton who could arrange the matter for her. She undertook the scheme, and I wrote a description of it for Anglin's Gazette, in Yokohama. The tea was s.h.i.+pped to New York, and was handled at the Demorest headquarters. The tea was in half-pound and pound packages.

This was long before Sir Thomas Lipton employed this method of putting up teas.

At Saigon, in French Cochin-China, I met the United States s.h.i.+p Alaska; and from that port sailed on a s.h.i.+p of the Messagerie Imperiale line for Ma.r.s.eilles. The remainder of the voyage was uneventful, except for the diversion just before we left Singapore of hearing the news of the fall of the Second Empire, the defeat of Louis Napoleon at Sedan, and the establishment of the republic.

I have already recorded, in the chapter on the Commune in France, my arrival at Ma.r.s.eilles and my experiences in the brief period of my visit. After I had been arrested and liberated, and had had my interview with Gambetta at Tours, I pa.s.sed on rapidly to New York, and finished my tour of the world inside of eighty days.

My second trip was made in the year '90. I planned it while I was in jail in Boston for a debt that I did not contract. There had been some note-worthy efforts on the part of newspaper writers to make a record-breaking trip, and Miss Bisland had gone around in seventy-eight days, while Nellie Bly had succeeded in making the voyage in seventy-three days. I proposed to Col. John A. c.o.c.kerill, of the New York World, who had sent Nellie Bly on her trip, to make the circuit in less time; but he did not care to upset the World's own record. I then telegraphed to Radebaugh, proprietor of the Tacoma Ledger, that if he would raise $1,000 for a lecture in Tacoma, I would make a trip around the world in less than seventy days. He told me to come on.

As I started West, to sail on the Abyssinia, I received message after message from Radebaugh. Instead of the $1,000 I had asked for, $1,500 had been subscribed by the time I reached Chicago, and at St. Paul it had gone up to $3,500. I soon reached Tacoma, and lectured there to an immense audience, taking in $4,200, the largest amount ever paid for a single lecture--and sailed out into the Pacific March 18th. I was accompanied by S. W. Wall, editor of the Ledger. Lafcadio Hearn, the distinguished writer, was on the same s.h.i.+p, on his way to j.a.pan. He was so ill that he did not leave his state-room during the voyage.

We made Yokohama in sixteen days, and the moment I landed I telegraphed to the American legation at Tokyo to get me a pa.s.sport. It had always taken three days to get a pa.s.sport, but I said that I must have this at once, and I got it. In seven hours I was on the way to Kobe, overland, three hundred miles across j.a.pan. I caught the German s.h.i.+p for Nagasaki, from which point, after a short delay, I sailed for Hongkong. In a trip of this kind, of course, one sees little of interest. It is a mere question of rus.h.i.+ng from vessel to vessel the moment you get into port, or of catching trains, or of chartering boats to bridge gaps, or of haggling with s.h.i.+p-captains or railway managers about getting extra accommodations at very extra prices.

My longest delay was at Singapore, where I lost forty hours. The next longest loss of time was in New York--wonderful to relate--where I was delayed thirty-six hours, although four railways were competing for the honor of taking me across the continent on a record-breaking journey. I arrived on Sat.u.r.day, and had to charter a special car--which cost $1,500--and could not get away until Monday morning. I was near being delayed a day at Calais, France, but succeeded in chartering a boat to take me over the Channel. As this boat carried the British mails, I was relieved of the expense by the British Government.

At Portland I met with a most annoying delay of five hours, due entirely to mismanagement. This most unexpectedly lengthened out my tour at the very end, and so angered me that I refused to attend a banquet the people had prepared for me. I pushed on to Tacoma as soon as I could get anything to carry me, and arrived there exactly sixty-seven days, thirteen hours, two minutes, and fifty-five seconds from the time I had started. The actual time of traveling was fifty-nine days and seven hours. Seven days and five hours had been lost. This was then the fastest trip around the world. It has been beaten since by myself.

As I had started on my second trip from a Pacific coast point, there was a good deal of rivalry among the growing towns in that section with regard to the honor of being the starting-point of my third trip in '92, in which I eclipsed all previous records. I had already announced that this could readily be done, as the Pacific steams.h.i.+ps were very much faster than they had been at the time of my former voyage, and as the connections at various ports were much better. Sir William Van Horne had also written that he wanted me to make another tour of the world, using one of the fast s.h.i.+ps of the Canadian Pacific road, the famous Empresses, that soon would be put on the line to Yokohama. The new town of Whatcom, on Puget Sound, in the extreme northwest of Was.h.i.+ngton, raised the amount necessary for the trip, and I made my start from that point, catching the Empress of India from Vancouver.

An account of this voyage would necessarily be only a panoramic glance at a narrow line around the world. I made Yokohama in eleven days, was at Kobe, j.a.pan, in thirteen, and at Shanghai in fifteen. Here I had some difficulty in finding a fast steamer for Singapore, but succeeded in getting aboard a swift German boat, the Friga, which put me in Singapore in time to catch the Moyune, the last of the fast tea s.h.i.+ps, and on her I sailed as far as Port Said, through the Suez Ca.n.a.l. At Port Said I boarded the Ismaila for Brindisi, Italy. Then I again rushed across Europe, and caught the Majestic at Liverpool for New York. I found a distinguished company on board, including Amba.s.sador John Hay, D. O.

Mills, Lady Stewart, Mrs. Paran Stevens, and Senator Spooner.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Dinner in the Mills Hotel given by George Francis Train.]

I arrived in New York in good time, had a very slight delay in comparison with that of my second voyage, and went flying across the continent to Whatcom. The entire trip, giving a complete circuit of the globe, was made in sixty days.