by Marion Meade
"Women know nothing but blind obedience to their fathers and husbands," she told James. "They do whatever their menfolk say."
She thought of the countless women who had come to have their fortunes told. Over and over, she heard the same stories. After a while, it began to sound like all of female America had only one story. Women had no opportunities.
Their education was scant or nonexistent. They could not earn their own livings, except at the most menial jobs. Everything depended on finding a man to marry. Then, cooped and caged, they had to do whatever the men wished them to.
And the troubles women had with men! Vicky had listened to them all. There were the desperate unmarried girls who had no future, no chance to express sexual feelings, until they found a husband. Married women, locked into loveless marriages, were not much better off. It was a wife's duty to sleep with her husband whenever he demanded sex.
If there was one thing Victorian America felt sure about, it was that normal women didn't experience sexual desire. Men, of course, did. But normal women had relations with their husbands only for the sake of having children.
No, decided Vicky, women had no control over their lives, much less their bodies.
"Marriage is the most damnable outrage upon women that was ever conceived," she suddenly burst out. "Someday we will rebel."
To her surprise, James did not disagree. In fact, he confided to her that he believed in "free love." Vicky had heard of it. Of all the idealistic doctrines invented during the nineteenth century, "free love" was the one which made most people turn pale with horror. They mistakenly equated it with immorality and promiscuity.
Actually, the "free lovers" thought highly of love and sex—so highly that they believed sex should take place only between two persons who felt genuine affection for each other. They said it was dishonest for a man and a woman, even if married, to make love if they felt no love. The "free lovers" also believed that sex should be as free and natural as eating or sleeping.
Such ideas scandalized almost everyone. The years during which Vicky lived—called the Victorian era after England's Queen Victoria—were probably the most prudish in history. Supposedly, a girl could not be alone with a boy; they had to be accompanied by a chaperone. From the earliest age, all signs of sexuality were stamped out of girls. They were not to sit with their legs crossed or to sleep on soft beds. Their bodies were encased in stiff corsets. Stimulants such as tea, coffee, or alcohol were forbidden.
Anything concerning the body was unmentionable. That included the way people talked. "Leg" was a naughty word; instead, a leg was called a "limb." The word "breast" was also forbidden—people spoke of "the bosom of a chicken."
Not only was speech censored but art as well. A man named Thomas Bowdler went through the works of Shakespeare and hacked out everything "which cannot with propriety be read aloud in the family." Another man, Noah Webster, wrote a new version of the Bible because he thought the original too risqué.
In every period of repression, a few people rebel. Most of them complain bitterly but continue to lead more or less conventional lives. Others—the militant rebels—speak out to call a lie a lie. They also defy the conventions in their own lives by practicing what they believe.
Without being aware of it, Vicky was one of these militants. So was James Blood. In every way, he could be called a radical, an extremist. Not only did he believe in "free love," but he also told Vicky about other new ideas that had never penetrated her limited world.
For example, he spoke of new political systems such as socialism, which sounded fairer than the capitalistic American system. "It's wrong," he said, "when a few people have plenty of money and the rest have to scramble for enough to eat." James described an ideal society in which there would be no prejudice or hypocrisy, in which people would not be blinded by fear and jealousy, where people—women and men—would lead truly free lives.
To her amazement, Vicky learned that a few women had already begun to revolt. They called themselves "feminists," which simply means that they strongly believed women should enjoy the same rights and privileges as men. Eventually they would be called by other names: women's righters, suffragists (because they sought the right to vote), even the cute label "suffragettes."
James told her about Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, who had rewritten the Declaration of Independence. Other women, following the example of Amelia Bloomer, had abandoned petticoats in favor of loose trousers gathered at the ankles. And when another prominent feminist, Lucy Stone, had married, she defied tradition by deciding to keep her own name. Her husband, Henry Blackwell, heartily approved.
Whether it was history, feminism, philosophy, or economics, everything they discussed made sense to Vicky. She could relate all of it to her own experiences. Since childhood, she had hidden many of her inner thoughts and feelings. Secretly she had suspected that she might be a little mad. Now she realized that she was not mad and she was not alone.
Never before had she known a man like James. Gentle, courteous, and kind, he spoke to her as an equal, not as a grown-up child who could not comprehend because she was a woman. And comprehend she did. Everything he told her, she immediately understood. What's more, she invariably added some original view of her own. James was amazed to learn that she had practically no formal education. He thought she was the most intelligent woman he had ever met.
At last, Vicky summoned the nerve to tell him of her childhood vision, the prophecy that she would become a leader. He didn't laugh or even smile. He listened seriously.
"Why not?" he replied. "Doesn't a woman sit on the throne of England? Why shouldn't a woman be President of the United States?"
Spring became summer. May, June, and July passed. Vicky and James realized their vagabond life could not last forever. They must go home and put their lives in order.
Shortly after their return to St. Louis, James divorced his wife. While he and Vicky had been roving the countryside, the idea of living together without being married had seemed like a wonderful, liberating notion. Now they were having second thoughts. For one thing, Roxanna Claflin took an instant dislike to James. Perhaps she was put off by his education and manners, but more likely she was jealous of the influence he had on Vicky. Roxanna, no less puritanical than the rest of the country, was outraged that James did not plan to make "an honest woman" of her daughter.
Actually, Vicky might have ignored her mother's feelings but for one fact. Roxanna's reaction was similar to everyone else's. Perhaps Vicky looked ahead to a time when she would be seeking a position of leadership. Who would accept a woman who lived with a man without being married? Her background was not terribly respectable anyway. Why deliberately add another offensive mark to her record?
What she did would not be much better in the eyes of the public. But it satisfied both Vicky's and James's conviction that marriage must be open and free. They married and the following year filed secretly for divorce. Thus they satisfied the legal and moral codes as well as their own desires for a relationship that would rest only on love, freely given.
Remembering Lucy Stone, who declined to take her husband's name, Vicky also decided to keep the name Woodhull. This decision, incidentally, confused people later on and gave them one more reason to turn against her. They assumed that she had never married James Blood, that because her name was Woodhull, she had simply been his mistress.
Vicky was not the sort of person who lost herself in fantasy. Of course, in a sense, her dream of the Presidency might be called a fantasy, probably the most audacious fantasy a woman could conceive. Still, she had no intention of waiting for some fairy godmother to appear and turn a pumpkin into the White House. Smart enough to realize that she knew nothing about politics, government, or the economy, Vicky began to educate herself.
For the next two years, first in St. Louis, then in Chicago and Pittsburgh, Vicky continued to earn her living by fortune-telling. With her parents and two children to support, she had no other choice. But
her evenings were dedicated to the schooling of Victoria Woodhull. In her quest for knowledge, she read the classics, history, philosophy, and economics. Most important, she thought about what she read. She could not swallow whole what others presented as the truth.
Very often, James would suggest problems for her to investigate. Sometimes Vicky would use her psychic powers. Putting herself into a trance, she would come up with proposals for an ideal society, all of which James recorded and saved.
"Working people pay the biggest rents for the worst housing," she once began, pinpointing a problem of slum housing that still exists today. "The first step is to get the workingman out of the city. Small communities of inexpensive cottages could be built in the nearby countryside and cheap trains could carry them back and forth to work each day. With a decent home for his family, a cabbage garden in his backyard, and cheap trains, he could live very well. And I wager he won't want half the beer or whiskey he drinks now."
The subject that preoccupied her, however, was women. "Half of the population do not even possess full rights of citizenship," she declared to James. "There is something terribly wrong with a government that makes women the legal property of their husbands."
He nodded.
Vicky went on. "The whole system needs changing, but men will never make the changes. They have too much to lose."
It was clear to her that the only kind of leader who could begin to make such radical revisions in our political system was a woman. A woman in the White House.
James argued that having a woman ruler did not necessarily mean laws would be changed to benefit women. Reminding Vicky of Queen Victoria, he pointed out that women in England were no better off than women in America.
"Queen Victoria has no sympathy for her own sex," Vicky retorted hotly. "I do. I would encourage American women to disobey the laws until we received justice."
"You are talking treason," James observed.
"No," Vicky corrected. "I'm talking revolution."
And so the nightly sessions went on. In 1868, Vicky and her family were living in Pittsburgh. Late one afternoon, she lounged by the sitting-room fire trying to read the evening paper. Unable to concentrate, she suddenly had an overwhelming feeling that she was not alone. Slowly a figure began to form before her eyes. It was her beautiful young man in the Grecian tunic, the same one who had appeared to her as a child. He began to speak.
"Go to New York City," he said, "to Seventeen Great Jones Street. There you will find a house ready and waiting for you and yours."
As he spoke, Vicky could see a picture of the house, its outside and then its interior. To the right of the entrance hall was a parlor. A staircase led to the upper floors.
As the vision faded, she could see the young man again. This time she determined not to let him get away.
"Who are you?" she demanded, staring at him with fierce intensity. "All these years, I have never known. Tell me who you are!"
The robed figure reached out and began to write with one finger on a table top. At first Vicky was unable to read the letters. Then the word he had written began to glow. It was a name. DEMOSTHENES.
Two years before, the name Demosthenes would have meant nothing to her. Until she met James, she would not even have known how to pronounce it. Now she recognized it immediately—Demosthenes, the greatest orator of ancient Greece and champion of his country's liberty.
As she struggled to digest what had just happened, the letters on the table quickly faded. Looking up, she realized that Demosthenes was gone.
The next morning she boarded the first train bound for New York City. Number 17 Great Jones Street turned out to be a four-story brownstone in a respectable section of the city. A matronly woman answered her knock.
"Excuse me, ma'am," stammered Vicky, trying to think of an excuse for being there. "Is this house for rent?"
"Why, of course, dear," replied the woman. "We're moving to Buffalo in two weeks. Won't you come in?"
Vicky stepped inside. The hall, the staircase, and the parlor were exactly the same as in her vision. On a table in the parlor, she noticed a book. Stamped in gold on its cover was the title: The Orations of Demosthenes. As she later confessed to James, "I was so astonished my blood ran cold!"
4
Queen of Wall Street
Mark Twain called the period following the Civil War America's "Gilded Age." Men like Cornelius Vanderbilt and Andrew Carnegie built incredible fortunes. Railroads crisscrossed the nation. New industries began to mushroom. The industrial revolution, now in full swing, was remaking the country in its own image.
By 1868, New York was one of the liveliest cities in the world. Before the Civil War, Forty-second Street had been a country road. Now the town was booming. Central Park was just beginning to be landscaped. Broadway, the most elegant street, was strung with shops selling jewels, fine imported silks, and the latest bonnets. Along the Bowery, the beer gardens, dance halls, and theaters were crowded with New Yorkers seeking amusement.
Great Jones Street, running between Broadway and the Bowery, was right in the middle of everything. Of course, Vicky thought, the brownstone at Number 17 was hardly the mansion of her prophecy. Nevertheless, it was the most stately house in which she had ever lived. Fortunately, it was large, too, because most of Vicky's family had followed her to New York.
Buck kept pestering her and Tennie to take up fortune-telling quickly before they starved. "Great balls of fire,” he would drawl, a familiar glint in his one good eye, "we can make a fortune here. The city is loaded with swells."
But Vicky couldn't concentrate on money. She was too busy exploring the city. Sometimes she walked around the corner to Lafayette Street where she discovered the fabulous Astor Library. The prophecy had said she would live in a city surrounded by ships. Now, as she strolled along the wharves by the Hudson and East rivers, or peered down into the churning green waters of New York harbor, she felt her destiny close enough to touch.
Bemused, she roamed up one street and down the next. Never had she seen so many churches. It seemed as if each block boasted its own house of worship. On Sunday mornings, it sounded like the whole city was ringing.
At first, Vicky assumed that New York must be a very religious city. Every time she opened a paper, she read about one minister or another. They were the city's celebrities, some of them more famous than stage stars. The best known was Henry Ward Beecher, a stocky man with a mane of gray hair. His emotional sermons could make people laugh or cry. Beecher's pulpit, at Plymouth Church across the river in Brooklyn, was so popular that special ferryboats had to be added on Sundays to accommodate all the worshipers. The boats were known as "Beecher's ferries."
If nearly every block had a church, Vicky soon noticed another common sight. Slowly, she began to doubt the show of godliness and must have murmured angrily to herself, "What hypocrisy!"
For if God were for sale on Sundays, sex was for sale every day of the week. There was nothing secret about the bustling, thriving business of prostitution. The brothels, making themselves as conspicuous as possible, even advertised in the papers.
Strolling on the Bowery, Vicky could also see the street prostitutes, some of them young and well dressed, others aging and desperate. She observed that passersby looked at them with contempt.
One of the preachers' favorite topics for sermons was the evils of prostitution. "Yes," said Vicky to herself, "men sit in church on Sunday and nod their heads in agreement. But who keeps these poor women in business? There would be no prostitution if men did not patronize them."
Then another thought occurred to her. Society insists that women aren't interested in sex. Secretly men take their pleasure with prostitutes; then they turn around and condemn them. Vicky felt no horror at the prostitutes, only waves of pity.
"It's not their fault," she whispered to herself. "Society has doomed them." They were not, after all, so different from other women who offered themselves as sexual objects to lure a man into marriage.
/> "All of us," fumed Vicky, "are forced to deny we have sexual feelings." Someday, she vowed, people would have to face the truth about women and sex.
Still thinking of the prostitutes, she turned the corner sharply and strode down Great Jones Street.
Buck flew up the front steps at Number 17 and flung himself through the door with such velocity that the parlor windows rattled.
"Vicky!" he bellowed. "Tennie! Everybody!"
At the sound of his shouts, the family began to appear, even fourteen-year-old Byron who squatted in confusion at the top of the staircase.
Beside himself, Buck began to dance madly around the hall, babbling that he had done something extraordinary. Finally he calmed himself sufficiently to make his announcement: he had arranged an appointment for Vicky and Tennie to meet Cornelius Vanderbilt.
The group stared at him in awe, which was precisely the reaction he expected. Nobody needed to ask, "Who is Cornelius Vanderbilt?” He was the richest man in America.
Despite the millions Vanderbilt had made from his vast shipping and railroad empires, he had no use for the things most Americans held dear. He disdained gentlemanly behavior and turned his back on fashionable society. "What do I care about the law?" he had once shouted arrogantly. "Haint I got the power?"
At the age of seventy-six, he did as he liked, which meant playing cards with his cronies and racing his horses at Saratoga. He couldn't stand phonies or people who talked high-falutin. Above all, he hated doctors and ministers. Instead, when his joints began to ache, he consulted a spiritual healer who could relieve his pain by "the laying on of hands." Rather than attend church, he visited a psychic on Staten Island who brought him messages from his dead mother.
These facts about Vanderbilt were common gossip which contributed to his reputation as an eccentric. For Buck, who never stopped scheming to promote his talented daughters, they meant the key to the promised land.