O my Luve’s like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
Thee left in weather dry.
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Tho’ thee take the name of Bly:
All ‘round the world thou went, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:
Thy trip by ship and rail, my dear,
In two and seventy was done.
And fare thee well, my only Luve
Thee met with Verne a while
And home though come again, my Luve,
Tho’ ‘twere twenty thousand mile.
With apologies to Robert Burns, that’s a retellling of Red, Red Rose in the matter of Nellie Bly. Today, you see, is Burns Day, marking the birth of the Scottish poet in 1759. And it’s the day in 1890 that Nellie Bly completed her round-the-world journey after the fashion of Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days.
Nellie Bly wasn’t her real name. That was Elizabeth Cochran, when she was born, although she changed it to “Cochrane,” and then married Robert Seaman. She got a job writing for the Pittsburgh Dispatch on the strength of a letter to the editor and a single article. She concocted the pen name “Nelly Bly” after a Stephen Foster song and wrote investigative reports about women working in factories. An editor misspelled her pen name as “Nelllie,” and she simply kept it that way. After complaints from US factory owners, she became a foreign correspondent in Mexico. She left when the Mexican government threatened her after an investigative report about an imprisoned journalist.
The Pittsburgh Dispatch only wanted her to report on the arts, so she quit, moved to New York, and wound up at the New York World. She convinced Joseph Pulitzer, the publisher, to let her do an undercover report about the treatment of inmates at the New York Women’s Lunatic Asylum. She faked her way into the asylum, pretending to be nuts, and ten days later when she was released (the newspaper explained the situation to the asylum) she published her report. The report turned into a book: Ten Days in a Mad-House, and just like that, Bly was famous.
This was the 1880s, and Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days was in the popular imagination. It had been published a few years before, and the idea of riding the new steam-powered ships and trains to circumnavigate the world in what had once been an unthinkably short time was, well, thinkable. And Bly was one of the rethinkers. She suggested the trip to her editor, and on November 14, 1889, left on a steamship to give it a try. All she brought with her was the dress she wore, an overcoat, some extra underwear, and toiletries. And, of course, some cash. She used the telegraph network, which was rapidly becoming worldwide, to send regular reports back to the newspaper.
Although Bly didn’t know it at the time, another New York newspaper, the Cosmopolitan, sent another reporter (Elizabeth Bisland) to try to beat Bly around the world — but in the opposite direction, heading west. Bly found out about it in Hong Kong, when an official from a shipping company told her Bisland had already come through a couple of days earlier. Bly wasn’t concerned about it being a race — that had been dreamed up by the Cosmopolitan editors. Bly was handily winning the publicity contest, largely because her newspaper was a daily and the Cosmopolitan only published monthly.
As it turned out, though, Bly did win the race. Bisland missed the fast steamship from England to New York and had to take a much slower one (there may or may not have been some underhanded sneakiness involved). Bly arrived back in New York by chartered train on January 25, 1890 at exactly 3:51PM. They kept close track of the time because the New York World was running a contest; whoever guessed closest to the actual time won their own around-the-world trip.
Bly published a book about her trip: Around the World in Seventy-Two Days. It was a best-seller, although it didn’t come anywhere near the success of Jules Verne’s novel. As an added bonus, Bly actually met Verne during her travel. She got a new job writing serialized novels for the New York Family Story Paper, and wrote 11 novels from 1889 to 1895. And that’s when she changed her name again, marrying Robert Seaman. She was a bit unconventional in marriage, too. She was 31 at the time — a bit old to get married by the standards of the day. But then Seaman was 73, which was a bit old to still be alive in 1895. He was also a millionaire and head of the Iron Clad Manufacturing Company that made things like milk cans, boilers, and oil drums. Bly took over running the business when Seaman died in 1904.
But Bly had finally found something she couldn’t do. She trusted some company executives she shouldn’t have, and they embezzled so much money the company went bankrupt. In the meantime, though, Bly had picked up a couple of patents; one for a new milk can design, and the other for a new type of garbage can. She went back to reporting, and wound up on the Eastern Front of World War I. She was one of the first women — or possibly the very first — to report on that part of the war.
Meanwhile, remember Elizabeth Bisland? She ended up losing the round-the-world race (if it was a race) by about four days — but that was 76 days, so she at least beat Jules Verne’s book. And she, too, wrote a book about her trip: In Seven Stages: A Flying Trip Around the World (she didn’t actually fly, in spite of the title). Bisland’s book didn’t sell as well as Bly’s, but like Bly, she did more writing when she got home. She wrote several more books, and also like Bly got married (though not to a millionaire forty years older). There isn’t any record of Bisland and Bly ever meeting in person, but they finally ended up in the same Woodlawn cemetery in New York City.
There’s no record of how Nellie Bly celebrated her return home on January 25, but she might have attended a Burns Supper. After all, it’s what you do on Robert Burns’ birthday. The Burns Supper, which is celebrated by people all over the world, follows a script called the Standard Order. First there’s a bagpiper welcoming the guests, and the host delivers a brief speech. Then the Selkirk Grace is recited, as Burns did at a dinner hosted by the Earl of Selkirk:
Some hae meat an canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thankit.
After that there’s soup, then haggis, which is a Scottish tradition. In fact, it’s such a tradition that when it’s brought to the table, everyone stands. And the host, or someone, recites Burns’ Address to a Haggis. That particular bit of verse is too long to reproduce here, and a bunch of it is in Scottish, or close enough to need translation, which I’m unable to provide. The haggis is toasted with Scottish whisky, then there’s dessert, more whisky, toasts, speeches (which by that point are probably beginning to sound a bit slurred). Finally one of the men delivers the “Address to the lassies” (with a toast to women’s health) and one of the women responds with the “Reply to the laddies” (and another toast, of course). At this point in the Burns supper some of Burns’ songs are sung and finally everyone still capable of standing joins hands and they all sing “Auld Lang Syne.” Then stumble away to sleep it off.
So I don’t know if Nellie Bly attended a dinner like that when she arrived home, but it would have been a great ending to her epic journey. And here’s a great ending for this less-than-epic journey; it’s the real text of A Red, Red Rose, by Robert Burns:
A Red, Red Rose
O my Luve’s like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry:
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:
I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.
And fare thee well, my only Luve
And fare thee well, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.
