by Marion Meade
It was a long, difficult birth. True to his word, Canning stayed with her, but he was half drunk. As the agonizing hours passed, he became even shakier. Finally it was over. She had given birth to a boy.
Vicky heard Canning moving toward the door. Although she begged him not to leave her, Canning mumbled that he was just going for a walk. He would be back soon.
As the door slammed, the exhausted Vicky, too weak to weep, fell asleep. Later that evening, Canning returned to care for her and the infant. But three weeks later he disappeared.
After a few days, when the larder was empty, Vicky left her baby, Byron, with a neighbor and set out to find her husband. She had not been out of the house since before Byron was born. Most of the time, they huddled under blankets to keep warm. Now, dressing, she could find no underwear or stockings or shoes. She had to make do with a calico dress and a pair of rubber boots for her feet.
Her first and most logical stop was the corner saloon, one of Canning's favorite hangouts. "Have you seen Dr. Woodhull?" she asked the owner.
"No, ma'am."
A man drinking ale at the bar spoke up. "Why, he's living at Mrs. Petty's boardinghouse with his girl friend," the obliging customer volunteered.
A deadly rage began to seethe in Vicky. Shivering, she skidded along the glassy streets until she reached the house. Bursting in the front door, she found the boarders, Canning and his woman friend included, assembled around the table eating dinner. The sight of a big side of roast beef and a platter of fried potatoes made her feel nauseated.
When Canning looked up and saw her, he tried to explain and calm his furious wife. But Vicky refused to listen. Withering him with a single glance, she accused him of not loving her. "Your wife and child are starving while you sit here with your mistress, feeding your fat belly!"
That was only the beginning. Turning to the other startled diners, their forks suspended in mid-air, she proceeded to describe vividly what kind of man Dr. Woodhull really was. Her performance was as dramatic, and as vulgar, as any scene Roxanna Claflin had ever thrown. It was Vicky's first speech, and one of her most effective. Mrs. Petty's guests responded by angrily throwing Canning into the street.
And so her husband returned home, which was what she wanted. But nothing else changed. Gradually, however, a transformation began to take place in Vicky. She spent hour after hour brooding about her life. Like all young women in those days, she had grown up expecting to marry and be taken care of by her husband. Even a rascal like Buck always managed to provide a roof and food for his family. He knew his duty as a father and husband.
Canning was another story. He may have been aware of his duty, but he remained incapable of doing it. The truth was simple and unavoidable: Canning was sick. While she felt pity for him, Vicky slowly began to understand that she could not depend on him. Maybe she could never depend on any man.
In the future she would take care of herself, her baby, and yes, even Canning. If he would not be the head of their family, as tradition demanded, then the position went to her by default. From now on, she would give the orders.
Thinking led to action. The next thing Canning knew, they were on a boat bound for San Francisco. Once again, Vicky was trying the Claflin's last resort. Moving.
She had never seen a town like San Francisco. It was new. And wild. Five years earlier, in 1849, gold had been discovered in California. People had plenty of money. On the hillsides above the bay, makeshift wooden buildings went up overnight; down in the harbor, ships crowded the wharves. Didn't the man in her vision predict that she would live in a city of many ships, a city where she would rule over her people? Perhaps this is the place, she thought excitedly.
Leaving Canning and the baby at their hotel, hoping that her husband would stay away from the numerous saloons and gambling houses, Vicky set off to look for work. Her youth and prettiness swiftly won her a job selling cigars in a saloon. But the rough, bearded miners, full of leers and coarse remarks, made tears come to her eyes. She lacked the knack of answering their jokes in kind and, as a result, she sold few cigars. After a few days, the proprietor suggested that she find a more suitable line of work.
Money! In this city of riches, everybody seemed to have it but her. In those days, very few women had moneymaking skills. Most mothers routinely taught their daughters to sew, however, and that was the only skill Vicky could offer. She began traveling from house to house, asking if a dressmaker was needed.
One of her customers was Anna Cogswell, a popular actress who headed her own repertory company. Feeling sorry for the young woman, Anna suggested that she join the company as an actress. Before long, Vicky was playing minor parts and walk-ons.
Suddenly life seemed more wonderful than she had ever thought possible. She had an exciting new career. The actors and actresses impressed her as being tremendously glamorous and sophisticated. Some of it rubbed off on Vicky. Not only did she mature into a strikingly beautiful woman, but she also acquired poise, elegant manners, and a sense of style. Her speech improved greatly.
At home, life wasn't bad either. Canning's bouts with the bottle lessened, and he was proving to be a devoted father to Byron. Vicky had always had strength. Now the vitality she possessed as a child started to flow again.
One evening she was on stage in a drama called The Corsican Brothers. Dressed in a salmon gown trimmed with lace, she was waltzing in the ballroom scene when, above the music, she heard the voice of her sister Tennie.
"Victoria, come home," Tennie's voice called. And then, as clear as could be, a picture flashed before her eyes. Her mother and sister seemed to be stretching out their arms and crying, "Vicky, come home!"
Completely forgetting where she was, Vicky rushed off the stage. Still wearing her costume and makeup, she raced through the dark, misty streets back to her lodgings and told Canning to start packing. They were going home.
Despite her ominous vision, no disaster had befallen the Claflins. But they were delighted to have Vicky back again.
Buck hadn't changed a bit. Still the conniver, always searching for get-rich-quick schemes, he had now devised a new and profitable family business. He had decided to expand Tennie's psychic powers. If she could tell people their futures, she could also heal their illnesses. Accordingly, he organized a traveling medicine show which toured from town to town in a covered wagon with a ball-fringed top.
Everybody got into the act. Roxanna and Vicky's little sister Utica brewed salves and potions; brother Hebern distributed leaflets and brought in the customers; Buck acted as public relations man and general medical adviser. Tennie, the star of the show, was billed as "the Wonder Child who can cure the most obstinate diseases, including cancer, and in the course of a trance travel to any part of the world, and establish communication between the living and the dead." Her pretty childish face appeared on bottles of Roxanna's homemade medicine, Miss Tennessee's Magnetic Elixir for Beautifying the Complexion and Cleansing the Blood.
Years later, Vicky would tell a newspaper reporter, "I believe Tennie ought to use the gift God has given her but not in the mercenary way she was forced to use it. She had no right to prostitute her powers." She might just as well have been talking about herself because, for the next dozen years, she would use her psychic ability to earn a living. While she never resorted to the outright deception practiced by Tennie and the rest of the Claflins, there is no doubt she stretched her talent to please the customers.
The Claflins held a family conference at which Buck urged Vicky to join the medicine show.
"No, Pa," she refused. "I think it would be best if I struck out on my own."
Believing that she would do best in a large city, she chose Indianapolis. She decided to call herself a medium, one who specializes in treating patients and curing diseases.
Today psychic research is being done at a number of universities. All that has been determined is that some people do have the faculty of extrasensory perception. Some people are able to do healing. Some people pos
sess knowledge that they have made no effort to acquire. But that is all that has been established. In the 1850s, nothing of the kind had been established. Still, there was a considerable market for the services that psychics had to offer.
With Canning and Byron, Vicky took rooms in the Bates House hotel and placed advertisements in Indianapolis newspapers. Mrs. Victoria Claflin Woodhull, Spiritual Healer, the announcements read. Her first customers were astounded to discover that Vicky could tell them their names, addresses, and the nature of their illnesses. In a few days, the news spread. The amazing Mrs. Woodhull became the talk of the town.
Vicky predicted future events, gave business advice, solved bank robberies, straightened the feet of the lame, and made the deaf hear again. Or so she later would claim. Apparently enough of her cures and predictions worked because the customers kept coming in and so did the money.
Along with prosperity, however, came tragedy. One morning Byron fell from a second-story window in the hotel. He was so badly injured that the doctors did not expect him to live. Eventually he recovered, but his brain was permanently damaged. For the rest of his life, he was severely retarded, physically and mentally.
Byron's accident plunged Vicky into the deepest depression. It seemed that every time she reached the brink of happiness and success, something terrible happened. Outwardly, her feelings didn't show. She continued to work, but money now meant little to her. Much of it she sent to her parents.
Inside, she felt wretched. Canning, as distraught over Byron as she was, had fewer and fewer sober periods. Once, in a drunken rage, he kicked her. As the months crept by, she began to long for more children. Sometimes, when she hugged and kissed Byron, he'd push her away because he didn't even know her.
"Dear God," she would pray, "please give me another child. A daughter who will be born with a beautiful body and a sound mind."
In April 1861 her daughter, Zulu Maud, was born, healthy and beautiful, just as Vicky had wished. For some inexplicable reason, Vicky allowed Canning to deliver the child. This time, he did more poorly than with Byron, ineptly cutting the umbilical cord too close to the skin and tying it so loosely that the string fell off. Afterward, he disappeared.
Several days later, Vicky was sitting up in bed near the window and saw Canning stumbling up the street. He started to climb the steps of the house across the street, mistaking it for his own.
When she saw her husband unable to find his way home, Vicky choked in despair. Then a horrible, comic thought occurred to her. "Now I have three children to look after."
The month Zulu Maud was born, life changed for most Americans. The explosive issue of slavery, which had slowly been tearing the country apart, now ignited the Civil War.
Enthusiastic young men rode off to join the army, promising their anxious mothers and sweethearts they would be home in a few weeks. Nobody returned in a few weeks. For many, the end came at places nobody had ever heard of—sites like Gettysburg and Appomattox. For the rest, it would be four years before the war ended and they rejoined their families.
The war had little effect on Vicky, or for that matter, on any of the Claflins. No fighting occurred in the Middle West. None of the Claflins enlisted in the army, and they had no opinions about slavery one way or the other. Politics, civil rights, and national affairs did not interest them. As far as they were concerned, this was somebody else's war.
In only one respect did the Civil War touch the Claflins. As is typical in wartime, people were restless and full of uncertainty; they also had money to spend. Both, figured Buck, couldn't hurt the spiritual-healing business. Vicky spent the war years traveling with her family. While Tennie was still the main attraction, Buck advertised himself as Dr. R. B. Claflin, American King of Cancers. He promised to cure anybody who followed his instructions. Telling fortunes was harmless enough, but with his cancer cures, Buck finally went too far.
In 1863 he opened a "cancer infirmary" at Ottawa, Illinois. When one of the patients died, Tennie was indicted for manslaughter. Before she could be jailed, the Claflins hurriedly stole out of town. After that, Buck decided that Tennie should retire from medicine and stick to a safe profession like fortune-telling.
In Cincinnati, and later Chicago, the family rented a house and put a sign in the front window: Tennessee Claflin and Victoria Woodhull, Clairvoyants. It was all very respectable, for the Claflins anyway, but troubles continued to hound them. Wherever they lived, the neighbors complained. Of course, the Claflins had never been a quiet family. Now there was a new complaint. Strange men were said to be entering the Claflin house after dark. Charges that the sisters must be operating a brothel were filed with the police.
While most of the men came to have their futures told, undoubtedly others were beaus of Tennie's. The neighbors' complaints amounted to nothing serious, but they did make life unpleasant for Vicky. She began to grow bitter. When she wasn't playing second fiddle to Tennie, the "Wonder Child" who was nearly twenty now, she was nursing Canning and caring for Byron and Zulu Maud. Ever since her daughter's birth, Vicky had been saying to herself, "What do I need Canning for? Why should I live with this man any longer?"
She had always believed that a wife should stay with her husband. For eleven years, she had been faithful to him. But theirs had never been a normal marriage. In those days, divorce was a disgrace and a scandal. Couples rarely divorced. But, as usual, the Claflins couldn't be bothered with what "nice people" did. Both of Vicky's older sisters, Margaret Ann and Polly, had been divorced. Even impetuous Tennie, who had recently married a playboy named John Bartels, didn't remain with him long.
Vicky was certainly influenced by her sisters. She began to feel that marriage, especially a bad marriage, needn't be a life sentence. In 1864, she filed for divorce.
Separation from Canning brought no great improvement in her life, nor did it alter her mood which was decidedly bored. The gray months, and then years, passed slowly. She drifted along with the Claflins on their trips across Missouri, Arkansas, and Illinois, put up with their quarreling and their disorderly mode of existence. She knew that her life had gone awry.
In the past, one thought had comforted her—the vision that promised her fame, wealth, and power. She had believed in it. Now the dream began to fade. The years had flown by. She was old—twenty-eight—and all she had to show for those years was disappointment and unhappiness. Her memories were of neighbors who hated her, little boys who jeered at her on the street, visits from the police, moving to another town because she was unwanted. "Life," she thought, "has passed me by."
The next year found the Claflin clan in St. Louis. One spring day, when it was Vicky's turn to sit in the darkened parlor waiting for customers, a man entered to have his fortune told. He was good-looking, with chestnut brown hair and sideburns. He walked like a soldier. Before he could speak, Vicky felt herself going into a trance. She heard herself speaking astonishing words to the strange man.
"I see our futures linked," she calmly declared. "Our destinies will be bound together by the ties of marriage."
The man gazed at her serenely, as if her words were not the least surprising. His eyes were twinkling, though.
Colonel James Blood, a veteran of the Civil War, was now the city auditor of St. Louis, a man of importance in the community. He was also an intellectual radical.
What's more, he was already married.
No matter. Vicky's prediction proved right on target. Their destinies would be entwined for the next decade. Vicky desperately needed someone to push her in the right direction. Colonel Blood was that someone.
3
In Search of Her Destiny
The horses kicked up a yellow dust as the covered wagon rolled lazily along the backwoods road. Puffs of fleecy white clouds slid softly over a sky of baby blue. It was a peaceful afternoon in May 1866, not the kind of day for the crazy adventure upon which Vicky and James had embarked.
From the moment they had met, they had been powerfully drawn to each other. Pe
rhaps it had been Vicky's first words to James, "I see our futures linked." Neither of them could explain it, but, to their mutual amazement, James abruptly cut all ties and walked away from his life as if it had never existed. He suggested they go away together. Others, Mrs. Blood to name one, would describe it in blunter terms and call it "running away." But James and Vicky, oblivious to everyone else, were in love.
Behind them lay the great Mississippi River and the city of St. Louis. Left behind, too, were the Claflins and Vicky's children and James's wife and daughter, not to mention his position as city auditor.
Ahead of them stretched the summer. Their wagon rambled westward through emerald orchards and olive-green farmlands, from one tiny village to another, hamlets that reminded Vicky of Homer and Mount Gilead. When they needed food and money, they stopped. James would stroll about the main street telling the curious villagers about the clairvoyant "Madame Victoria" who could look into their pasts and futures. As the townspeople lined up to have their fortunes told, James collected their money.
For a change, Vicky didn't care about money. She felt in a gay holiday mood. All her fire and joy, buried for so many years under the weight of a disastrous marriage and a handicapped child, bubbled to the surface. At last she felt free.
In the weeks that followed, Vicky and James spent all their hours together. They became lovers. And they talked. It is not surprising that the subjects they first discussed were marriage, love, and sex. Both had been unhappily wed, both had felt imprisoned by their marriages.
"Why can't people be free?" cried Vicky. "Married people think they own each other. Why can't people love whom they like, even if they do happen to be married?"
"Women as well as men," James added.
"Of course," declared Vicky. "What is right for one sex is right for the other."
But she knew from her own experience that women couldn't do as they pleased. Didn't she allow her father to practically sell her into marriage? Didn't she remain true to Canning even after all love for him had fled? In reality, men had freedom; women did not.