Bold Spirit - Linda Hunt [57]
The New York Herald also covered their feat and added news on their contract and concerns. After referring to the ten-day delay caused by Clara’s sprained ankle, information was included on their extreme efforts to make up this lost time. “By forced marches, the women were able to make up six days of the ten.” The question loomed over whether the wealthy sponsor would quibble over the delay caused by Clara’s ankle sprain and not count these days as sickness. This “will have to be settled before the travelers know whether they win or lose the wager.”12
Wire services picked up these articles and the Christmas Eve Spokane Chronicle and the Spokesman-Review announced their safe arrival and successful achievement, most likely the first time their family and friends learned of their stunning accomplishment. After covering their accomplishment, the Spokesman-Review admitted that “it was not generally believed the proposed trip would be completed” when they left last spring. The reporter noted that Mrs. Estby left a husband in Mica Creek to take care of the balance of the family while “the two female globe-trotters are out for the alleged wager.” Then the reporter added a commentary on Spokane community attitudes toward Helga’s character and reputation. “Mrs. Estby, though regarded as rather peculiar, was a determined woman, and when she said she was going to walk to New York, those who knew her said she would carry out the determination. Doubt, however, exists about the $10,000 which she said she was to receive.”13
MRS. ESTBY AND HER DAUGHTER WALK ARMED FROM SPOKANE.
An artist for the New York World newspaper drew this sketch of Helga’s and Clara’s astounding achievement, which was published on Christmas day, 1896.
Courtesy General Research Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.
The Estbys always celebrated Christmas Eve with a festive Norwegian dinner, with the special preparation of lefse, sour cream pudding with lingonberry sauce, lutefisk, and almond cookies made by Helga. December of 1896 was a lonely Christmas for Ole and the seven children. Ole knew more than anyone the truth of the observations that Helga was “peculiar, but determined.” He had seen his wife, bedridden with pain just five years earlier, boldly risk innovative surgery to restore her health and then exert the physical strength to walk across America. But now the world knew they were delinquent on taxes and in danger of losing their farm, an embarrassing truth for this hardworking husband and father. The local newspaper article also may have raised Ole’s fears that all his wife’s heroic efforts might have been in vain.
Late on Christmas Eve afternoon, Helga and Clara returned to the World newspaper with troubling news. Somehow, after being in New York City less than four hours, they had lost all their money. What worried Helga most was not that she lost her money but that “the pocketbook contained most of the diary of her trip.” The pocketbook had Mrs. Estby’s Spokane address in it, and that of her present home on No. 6 Rivington Street.14
Perhaps because health promoters in the 1890s, such as Lydia Pinkham, urged