Making conversation with a ghost

In the introduction to his book Wheeling Through Europe, young W. E. Garrison implied that prior to his summer trips through England and central Europe he had bicycled from the east coast to the Midwest. Confirmation of these earlier travels can be seen in a letter that the twenty-four year old graduate student wrote to his father, J. H. Garrison, an editor, publisher, and church leader in St. Louis.

In this extensive report of one of the most memorable incidents on young Garrison’s English travels, he refers to cycling trips he had done in previous summers: 1895, New Haven to Terre Haute, Indiana; 1896, tour through Wisconsin; 1897, Boston to Chicago. The heading of this letter can be seen below.

To read the letter, click Letter to Father 8-23-98:

The Garrison papers (deposited in the Disciples of Christ Historical Society in Nashville, Tennessee) also contain additional examples of his photography. A note in the Garrison files indicates that he not only exposed the film but also developed it. The two prints in this column demonstrate his interest in special effects. Friend and colleague Don Haymes, historian and archivist at Christian Theological Seminary, Indianapolis, wrote this comment when he saw these prints:

“Double exposures” are easy enough to make with an older camera—just don’t advance the film or take out the plate and replace it. Most of them were accidents—products of haste—but an artist might make a double exposure deliberately, with some planning and forethought. WEG could have photographed the scene, almost surely with the camera securely mounted on a tripod or some sort of steady base, then increased the shutter speed and set a timer to activate the shutter. He could also have done it in the darkroom, with some artful “dodging” of the human figure or by carefully superimposing two frames.  Nowadays the adept have Photoshop, and can place you in this scene making conversation with a ghost . . . but the learning curve is much more steep.

When we consider the weight of the camera and tripod, not to mention the rest of the gear he likely carried, we renew our respect for WEG’s physical strength and fortitude. We may wonder how many tires he may have mended on that winding road.

As a bicyclist-photographer, Garrison continued a tradition that had been well-established a few years earlier by Frank Lentz who in 1892 embarked upon a trip around the world and then mysteriously disappeared. In his book about Lenz, David V. Herlihy publishes a studio pose of Lenz with bicycle and camera on tripod. The Garrison photos in my column today display his bicycle and gear, both of which will be discussed in later columns.

At this point, it is enough to say that the bicycle probably weighed between twenty-two and twenty-five pounds, which is lighter than many touring bicycles in use today. It can be inferred from the letter that this bicycle was a new model, purchased shortly before the trip. Graduate student that we was, Garrison seemed to have cash on hand not only for the bicycle, but also for the steamer to London and hotels throughout his two-month cycle tour.

Into the Heart of England: an 1898 travel story

When Winfred E. Garrison bicycled across Great Britain and central Europe more than a hundred years ago, what were the roads like? How much did his bicycle weigh? How far could he travel in a typical day? What did he wear? Was it safe to bicycle through those parts of the world? Was he the man who disappeared during a round-the-world trip and was never heard from again? These are some of the questions that people have raised after reading my first post from Garrison’s 1900 book, Wheeling Through Europe.

The last question is easy to answer. No, he was not the man who disappeared. Garrison lived a long and fruitful life as church historian, with most of his career at the University of Chicago. He died in 1969 at age 94. The lost cyclist was Frank Lenz of Pittsburgh, who started his trip in 1892, six years before Garrison’s summer in Great Britain. Lenz’s story has recently been recounted, in full detail and with many pictures, by David V. Herlihy in The Lost Cyclist: The Epic Tale of an American Adventurer and His Mysterious Disappearance.

The other questions are more difficult to answer, largely because Garrison gives little information about these matters. He offers hints about his “wheel” (its color, for instance–green–and the fact that he had pneumatic tires), the roads traveled, his clothes, and how far he would go in a day, but the information is sketchy. He is more interested in the character and mood of the journey than in the external details of the journey.

Information about these matters can be gleaned from other sources, such as Archibald Sharp’s 1896 book Bicycles & Tricycles: An Elementary Treatise on Their Design and Construction reprinted in 1977 by MIT Press). In later posts I may add notes derived from this compendium of technical information about the development and functional characteristics of bicycles during the decade that Garrison made his trips.

Garrison and his friend arrived in Liverpool during a prolonged rain storm, but they started out that very day, following their rule that everything was to be enjoyed. Here are the first few lines of  his first chapter, “Into the Heart of England.”

“A rainy Sunday at sea, a rainy Monday off the north coast of Ireland, and then we land at Liverpool on a rainy Tuesday morning. The immediate outlook for cycling is not brilliant, but one of the rules already laid down is that everything is to be enjoyed. Remembering this, we comment upon the beauty of all rain, and the special beauty of this particular shower. Then we go out and get wet in it. It seems rather an ominous indication of a moist climate that nearly every other shop on the first street we ascend displays waterproof goods in the windows.

“It seems as if half the population earned its living by keeping the other half dry. I have since learned that this is a slight overestimate of the importance of the mackintosh industry in England, but my conviction of its magnitude remains. In the course of a nine weeks’ tour in any civilized land one is sure to have a variety of weather, and some of it wet. If we start with the worst, the next change must be for the better. On the basis of such sage considerations as these we determined to make the start at once. Mounting our wheels early in the afternoon we rode out of Liverpool in a torrent of rain, and down the road toward Manchester.”

To read the full story, click here:  Into the Heart of England