Major Taylor, by Charles R Smith Jr, illustrated by Leo Espinosa
Title: Major Taylor – World Cycling Champion
Author: Charles R Smith Jr
Illustrator: Leo Espinosa
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Year: 2023
Pages: 48
Order: Candlewick Press
What it is: Major Taylor’s one and only entry in a Six Day race, in 1896, becomes a framing device in this kids’ picture book (7-10 years) telling the story of the teenage years of one of cycling’s first superstars, a man who swept all before him in America, Europe and Australia
Strengths: This is a lively story, told in vivid images and free verse that puts a focus on the two key strands of Taylor’s story, cycling excellence and racism
Weaknesses: Can I really complain that Teddy Hale, the Irishman who wasn’t, doesn’t feature, even though he won the 1896 Garden Six?
On a Saturday evening in December, 1896, 18-year-old Marshall ‘Major’ Taylor made his professional debut in a half-mile race in New York’s Madison Square Garden. Years later, he told the story of that race in his autobiography, The Fastest Bicycle rider in the World:
I started from the 35-yard mark with such stars as Eddie (Cannon) Bald, Tom Cooper, Earl Kiser, and Arthur Gardiner, as scratch men. At the crack of the pistol I shot out for the lead and gained the front position in the first three laps. Not satisfied with this I continued my wild sprint, and almost lapped the field when I won the event, and the $200 that was hung up for first prize. The Garden which was taxed to capacity on that Saturday night went wild when they noticed that I had failed to hear the bell for the last lap, and continued tearing off lap after lap until I had ridden three laps more than the required distance. I immediately wired the $200 to my mother. This was my first money prize.
It was his first money prize, but not his first prize: Taylor rode his first bike race when he was just 13, shortly after his time as paid-for playmate of the Southard family’s son had come to an end. He had recently taken up employment in the Hay & Willits bicycle store and it was this store that organised the event, a 10-mile handicapped road race with a gold medal for the winner.
My entry into this event was an accident pure and simple. I had gone out to witness the event, which attracted the cream of the amateur riders of Indiana, and had taken a vantage point near the start when Mr. Hay spotted me. Thinking to inject a laugh into the race for the benefit of the thousands that lined the course, Mr. Hay insisted that I take my place on the starting line. I rebelled, but he fairly dragged me and my bicycle across the road saying, ‘Come on here, young man, you have got to start in this race.’ I was badly scared at the thought as one may well imagine since I had never seen a bicycle race before.
Tom Hay, his employer, didn’t expect much from Taylor that day – “I know you can’t go the full distance, but just ride up the road a little way, it will please the crowd, and you can come back as soon as you get tired.” – and all Taylor wanted to do was to cover the whole distance, no matter how long it took.
Crack! went the pistol, and with tears in my eyes I was off with a 15 minute handicap on the scratch man. There were hundreds of cyclists stretched along the route, and it seemed to be a friendly sort of cheer and one that encouraged me and inspired me to keep on going even after I had begun to feel very tired.
Also spurring Taylor on was the thought of that gold medal:
After I had ridden some distance I noticed a group of riders coming to meet me. As they drew closer I recognized Mr. Hay among them. He had the gold medal that was hung up for first prize and dangled it in front of my eyes as we rode along. As he did so he informed me that I was a mile ahead of the field and had half of the distance left to go. The thought flashed through my mind that I had a chance to own that medal which I had so many times pinned on myself in the store. The sight of it seemed to give me a fresh start, and I felt as though I had only just begun the race. The thought of that gold medal becoming my property spurred me on to my greatest efforts. The act on Mr. Hay’s part was the psychological turning point of the race for me. From then on I rode like mad and wobbled across the tape more dead than alive in first place about six seconds ahead of the scratch man, Walter Marmon.
The following summer – 1892 – Tylor raced again, this time in Peoria, Illinois, “the Mecca of bicycle racing in those days”, just as the first pneumatic tyres made their appearance in American races. “Although I did not win the race, I was third, but the kindly manner of the public toward me created a lasting impression in my mind.”
The kindly manner toward him turned, and by 1895 Taylor was on the receiving end of American racism, his growing palmarès putting him in the spotlight. In June 1895, Taylor took part in a 75-mile road race, Indianapolis to Matthews, Indiana. “Because of a growing feeling against me on the part of the crack bicycle riders of the day, due wholly to the fact that I was colored, the greatest secrecy surrounded the arrangements for this big event.” Taylor’s presence in this race wasn’t revealed until after the starter-pistol had been fired:
Shortly after his pistol shot sent the bunch away on the 75-mile grind, I jumped from my hiding place and started in hot pursuit of the fifty-odd riders who were pedalling for all they were worth down the roadway. I trailed along in the rear for several miles and was resting up in good shape before they were aware that I was in the race.
They made things disagreeable for me by calling me vile names, and trying to put me down, and they even threatened to do me bodily harm if I did not turn back. I decided that if my time had come I might just as well die trying to keep ahead of the bunch of riders, so I jumped through the first opening and went out front, never to be overtaken in the feverish dash for the finish line. When I took the lead we had covered about half the distance and on a weird stretch of road that was thinly inhabited, with weeping willows on one side and a cemetery opposite. The thought ran through my mind that this would make an ideal spot for my competitors to carry out their dire threats. Spurred on by such thoughts I opened up the distance between my wheel and the balance of the field to make doubly sure that none of them caught up to me and got a chance to do me bodily injury.
As we neared Marion, Indiana, I noticed a number of local riders waiting for us to pace the leaders through that city. At first I was afraid they were out to do harm and rode cautiously towards them. I was agreeably surprised, however, when I found out they were friendly to me and very anxious to pace me the final twenty miles of the race. I finished fairly fresh, considering that the last 25-miles were ridden in a hard rainstorm.
In August the following year, riding on the track in Capital City, Indianapolis, Taylor broke a couple of records – the mile and one-fifth of a mile – in surreptitious circumstances, sneaking onto the track unannounced: “I received one of my most flattering ovations. The white riders attracted by the cheering of the spectators, crowded on to the track to see what was going on. As I passed through them to my dressing room I heard several threatening remarks aimed at me.” Taylor was thereafter banned from ever competing again on any track in Indianapolis.
And then, a few months later, in December 1896, just a couple of weeks after turning 18, Taylor turned pro in Madison Square Garden. And immediately followed up that half-mile race by taking the line in the 1896 Madison Square Garden Six Day race.
I have a bit of a thing for the Six Day race held in Madison Square Garden in December 1896. I first read about it a lifetime ago in Peter Nye’s seminal Hearts of Lions. There I not only learned about Major Taylor for the first time, but also about the man who became my cycling hero, Teddy Hale, the Irishman who wasn’t. In the years since, I have written about several of the Major Taylor books. And I’ve and spent hours down the mines of Gallica, or trawling the archives of the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian, reading reports of that Garden Six. So when a new book came along offering a fresh take on both topics, of course I was going to jump at it. Even when that book is a 48-page picture book aimed at kids aged seven to ten. Which, in case there is any doubt in your mind, is a little bit out of my age range.
I don’t write much about kids’ books here on the Café Bookshelf. Off the top of my head, I think Frank Dickens’ Boffo book might be the only time I have, and that I wrote about more as a way into the story of Dickens himself than any love for the book (although it is actually a lovely book). I know next to nothing about cycling books aimed at kids, save for the fact that between 2015 and 2019 Chris Hoy stuck his name on a series of such books actually written by Joanna Nadin. I do know this: Charles R Smith Jr’s Major Taylor is in an entirely different league to Hoy’s Flying Fergus books.
Smith – aided by illustrator Leo Espinosa – takes the story of the 1896 Garden Six and uses it as a framing device, enabling him to spin back in time through Taylor’s teenaged years, moving from the fear found on the road to Matthews, Indiana, when his fellow riders threatened to do him bodily harm to the joy of a 13-year-old winning a gold medal he had coveted.
This focus on Taylor’s teenaged years, obviously it connects the story with its audience, kids just a few years younger than Taylor was when he first took up bike racing. It also gives the book a focus other Taylor books – with, perhaps, the exception of Jim Fitzpatrick’s 2011 book about Taylor’s Australian years – lack. Those books have to cover a whole lifetime, 1878 to 1932, with Taylor’s professional years taking the story from 1896 through to 1910.
I have noted before how much there is to cover just in those years Taylor was a pro. Work backwards and you have 1907 through 1910 as the final hurrah, the fading of the light as Taylor tried to once more woo his European fans. Between 1904 and 1907 you have the wilderness years, when Taylor – shortly after becoming a father – fell into a slough of depression and retreated from the world. In 1903 and 1904 you have his Australian odysseys, two seasons in which he competed across the length and breadth of the continent. Between 1901 and 1903 you have his defining European years, the period in which the legend of Major Taylor, champion of the world, was crafted by men like Victor Breyer and Robert Coquelle, the journalists and promoters who lured him to the Continent. The five years between 1896 and 1900, they are the hard backbone of the story, Taylor’s rise, his struggle against racism in America. All this makes Taylor’s a story it is easy to get lost in.
Smith’s focus on Taylor’s teen years, it enables him to clarify the story, make it about the physical supremacy of Taylor – the apparent ease with which he rode away from his rivals, the records he set even as a kid – and the racism he was forced to endure. The story here is clearly about sporting excellence and societal failings, not about America’s Gilded Age or white saviours. Taylor is front and centre here, even to the extent that his white rivals all have a certain sameness about them and even to the extent that the rider I love like no other, Teddy Hale, the fake Irishman who won the 1896 Garden Six, is all but invisible, somewhere in the background of Taylor’s story.
This tight focus in the story being told is supported by the way the story is told. Describing a picture book as cinematic is probably a bit clichéd but there are important filmic elements in the way Smith and Espinosa tell Taylor’s story. Espinosa, he captures Taylor’s story visually in a way we haven’t seen since Hennessey’s 2018 ‘Wild Rabbit’ commercial, dynamic images further enlivened by a strong colour palette. Smith, as he drives the story of Madison Square Garden’s elliptical treadmill forward, he spins Taylor’s story backwards with a cinematic feel, like Gasper Noé’s Irréversible or Christopher Nolan’s Memento, only without all the sex and violence. The things we have to live without for the sake of the kids, eh? But it does have crashes.
From the crack of the pistol that sets the Six Day riders on their way, as the race moves forward Taylor’s story spins backwards, ending with the joy of a 13-year-old boy winning a bike race, a taste as sweet as all the glory that was still to come, while the story of the Garden Six has a more bittersweet finale.
Major Taylor serves as an introduction to Taylor – and cycling – while itself telling a fabulous story filled with narrative beats that keep the pages turning and reward rereading. For sure, turn to Andrew Ritchie when you reach the point where you want the detail of Taylor’s life. But for the heart of the story, to get swept up in the emotion of the story, I can think of no better telling than Smith and Espinosa’s take on the the teenage years of a future World Champion, a man who today is still a sporting icon, inspiring others to follow in his wheel tracks.