by Marion Meade
One of the important points Harriet Beecher Stowe made in Uncle Tom's Cabin was that slavery is not only cruel but also destroys the family. The subjects of marriage and the family fascinated her. One reason may have been that her own marriage had turned out badly. Calvin Stowe acted like a typical Victorian husband—he treated his wife like a servant. He was also fussy, tyrannical, and suffered from constipation.
After ten years of marriage, Harriet couldn't stand him any longer. Developing a mysterious paralysis on the right side of her body, she checked into a Vermont clinic for a "water cure." Her husband and three children were left to fend for themselves. Harriet stayed away a year. In the end, she agreed to come home only if her husband promised to treat her better.
Harriet's experience with marriage had not been much happier than Vicky's. It's conceivable that she might have sympathized with a divorcee like Victoria Woodhull. Instead, she despised her and everything she represented. To show her contempt for the aggressive "new woman," Harriet Stowe chose ridicule as her weapon of attack. She began a novel, My Wife and I, which ran in monthly installments in the Christian Union. One of the main characters was a brazen feminist named Audacia Dangyereyes who sat on men's laps, smoked cigars, and ran around town acting unwomanly. Audacia, a "free lover," was presented as a silly woman with dreadful behavior. Harriet invited her readers to laugh along with her. They did. Everybody knew she was writing about Victoria Woodhull.
Of course, Harriet Stowe didn't know Vicky personally. The serious Vicky could never be called silly or frivolous. If Audacia resembled anyone, it was Tennie.
Harriet's portrait stung Vicky to fury. How dare anyone make fun of her? It was humiliating. And when she felt humiliated, she began to grow bitter and depressed. There were moments now when she'd gaze into the mirror and feel ugly.
"I'm thirty-two," she would tell herself sadly. "I'm old."
Harriet struck at Vicky's touchiest point—she couldn't laugh at herself. To her, life was serious, even tragic, because she had known much pain and suffering. After her appearance before Congress, she hoped the bad times had been left behind. Now she understood that some people would never like or accept her. Respectability seemed forever beyond her grasp.
At this time, when Vicky still smarted from Mrs. Stowe's pen, she first heard the story of how the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher had seduced his best friend's wife.
On the night of July 3, 1870, a frightened and heartsick woman who had been recuperating in the country from an illness returned unexpectedly to her home in Brooklyn Heights. Her name was Elizabeth Tilton, but her friends called her "Lib." She went directly to her bedroom on the second floor where she found her husband, Theodore.
Lib Tilton had come home for the express reason of confessing. She told her husband that for the past year and a half, she had been having a love affair with another man.
At first she had not felt too badly because her lover had assured her their intimacy was pure and holy. Now, overwhelmed by guilt, she could carry the burden of the secret no longer. She spilled out the story to her unsuspecting husband and asked his forgiveness.
Stunned, Theodore listened in disbelief. When she had finished all he said was, "Who, Lib? Who is the man?"
"Promise me you will do no harm to the person?" she begged.
Theodore reluctantly agreed.
The name she finally uttered, in a small quiet voice, was the last one Theodore expected to hear. It was Henry Ward Beecher, the most famous minister in the land.
The Reverend Mr. Beecher had married the Tiltons; ever since, he had treated the young couple like a father or an older brother. He had even arranged for Theodore, a struggling young journalist, to become managing editor of the Independent, the country's best-known religious publication. In addition to all this, Theodore Tilton regarded Henry Beecher as his dearest friend.
"Incredible," Tilton thought.
Weeping, his wife implored him to tell nobody what had happened. She wished to blot the affair from her memory, pretend it had never taken place. Theodore, who felt "just blasted," numbly agreed to forgive and forget.
Each of them spent the night alone in separate rooms. The next morning, Theodore went early to his office but found he could not work. Tormented by jealousy, he could think of nothing but his wife's infidelity and his rage toward Beecher.
Lib Tilton had kept her secret for a year and a half. Theodore could not even keep it for a few weeks. One evening in early August he was having dinner with his old friend, Elizabeth Stanton. Before the meal ended, he had blurted out the whole story.
"Oh, that the damned lecherous scoundrel should have defiled my bed and at the same time professed to be my best friend," he cried. "I thought he was a saint. Oh, it is too much!"
Mrs. Stanton thought that she had never seen a person in so much mental agony.
Later that evening, returning home to Brooklyn, Theodore found his wife with another old friend of theirs, Susan Anthony. When the couple began to quarrel viciously, Lib accused her husband of being unfaithful himself. Susan, who had never married, found herself an unwilling spectator to this ugly domestic scene. Finally, promising to stay with Lib for the night, she persuaded the hysterical young woman to go to bed.
Eventually, Liz and Susan, who had been the closest of friends for many years, compared notes on what had happened that shocking evening. The story must go no further, they agreed. It would cause a dreadful scandal.
Earlier, Vicky had heard rumors about the Reverend Mr. Beecher. Once she became friendly with many feminists, women who were also friends of the Tiltons, it was only a matter of time before the full scandal reached her ears. Women like Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Stanton were familiar with the trauma taking place in the unhappy Tilton household. They knew that Theodore had finally accused Beecher of adultery. At first, Beecher denied it; then he admitted his guilt; then he had Theodore fired from his job. Theodore, they felt sure, would retaliate. It frightened them.
The first to reveal what she knew was Pauline Davis. Vicky immediately recalled the mysterious conversation James had overheard the day she made her Memorial speech. What was it? Someone telling Isabella that her brother preached to his mistresses on Sunday mornings. Now the odd remark made sense.
Pauline could not stop talking about Lib Tilton's miseries. Livid, she blamed the situation on Beecher.
"That hypocritical scoundrel'" she cried. "Somebody should strip away his mask and show the world what he really is."
"Beecher pretends to be virtuous," Vicky observed. "Even worse, he preaches virtue to others from his pulpit." It was precisely this type of hypocrisy that she had always abhorred.
A few days later Vicky finally met Mrs. Stanton and the Beecher-Tilton story came up again. Liking each other at once, the two women sat in Vicky's drawing room and drank tea and gossiped together like two old friends. Vicky confessed how much she had been hurt by Harriet Beecher Stowe's new novel. Elizabeth Cady Stanton replied that Mrs. Stowe should be the last one to laugh at Vicky when her own brother was a "free lover." One thing led to another until Mrs. Stanton had spilled the beans. Her story sounded essentially the same as Pauline's. Vicky had no doubt that she was hearing the truth.
Shortly afterward, another Beecher entered Vicky's life. She was Catherine, a never-married woman in her sixties and an outspoken foe of the women's movement. Aside from her career as an educator, she had written the country's first popular cookbook. With her sister Harriet, she had also published a book on how to keep house properly. Catherine Beecher had once remarked that since American women did such a miserable job of housekeeping, they certainly couldn't handle a big responsibility like voting. Needless to say, she was dead set against divorce, sexual freedom, and Victoria Woodhull.
Isabella Beecher Hooker could not bear her sister hating a woman she adored. "Just meet Vicky," she pleaded with Catherine, "and you will love her as much as I do."
Reluctantly Catherine agreed.
On a glorious spring day i
n the year 1871, Catherine Beecher arrived at the house on Thirty-eighth Street.
"Don't you think the weather is much too lovely to sit indoors?" asked Vicky. "Why don't we go for a drive in Central Park?"
As the carriage rolled along through the budding greenery, Catherine talked and Vicky listened. Soon it occurred to Vicky that this was not a conversation. It was a lecture, a sermon. Catherine's contempt for her was obvious. She behaved like a missionary who has come to convert the heathen from their evil ways.
"Those who insist on attacking marriage and advocating free love," Catherine pronounced loftily, "will destroy civilization. People will behave like animals."
Vicky, who had listened politely out of respect for the older woman, began to protest. But Catherine cut her off.
"If you want the respect of decent people," she clucked, "you must behave like a decent woman."
Vicky could not keep silent another moment. Forgetting caution, she finally said: "Miss Beecher, I'm surprised to hear you condemn me for my beliefs. Your brother Henry is a secret adulterer."
Catherine's mouth fell open. For a minute, the shaken woman stared at Vicky. "My brother has never been false to his marriage vows," she whispered.
Instead of dropping the subject, Vicky recklessly went on to tell about Henry's affair with Lib Tilton.
Catherine gave a strangled cry. "Impossible!"
She looked as though she could kill Vicky. "I will strike you for this, Victoria Woodhull! I will strike you dead!"
"Just don't do it in the dark," Vicky snapped. "I like to see who my enemies are."
Isabella Hooker had imagined that Vicky and her sister would fall into each other's arms. Instead, they parted deadly enemies.
Catherine Beecher aroused Vicky's bitter hatred. She didn't realize how her contempt for Vicky might damage her brother's life. For under Vicky's serene, even temper slept a great hater. She passionately hated class snobbery, injustice, bigotry, and people pretending to be good when they weren't. The Beechers personified all that she hated.
Vicky had become the most talked-about person in the women's movement. When it came time for the National Woman's Suffrage Association to hold its New York convention in May, who could be a more logical person to deliver the keynote address than Victoria Woodhull. A few members complained but to no avail.
The house on Thirty-eighth Street knew an unusual peace. Roxanna, after threatening to leave for months, had finally moved into a nearby hotel. Taking advantage of the quiet at home, Vicky worked on her speech in the library, struggling to analyze her innermost thoughts about equality. While she believed the vote to be an important step forward, she didn't fool herself. It did not hold the key to true equality. Were not the oppressive institutions of marriage and the family major obstacles to emancipation? Wouldn't a sexual revolution be necessary before women could be free?
One thing Vicky understood: Before women could be truly liberated, there must take place a complete transformation in the way society views women. There must be a sort of revolution, but what sort? She pondered this question for weeks.
On the morning of May 11, Vicky mounted the platform at Apollo Hall and surveyed the gathering crowd of feminists. As she began to speak, some of them felt resentment. But soon, caught up in her words, they became mesmerized. Never before had they heard a woman utter such thoughts.
"If the very next Congress refuses women all the legitimate results of citizenship," Vicky was saying, "we shall proceed to call another convention expressly to frame a new constitution and to erect a new government."
"Does she mean what I think she means?" the delegates excitedly whispered to each other.
Flinging out her arms, Vicky answered their question. "We mean treason. We mean secession and on a thousand times grander scale than was that of the South. We are plotting a revolution'"
The delegates could hardly suppress their emotions as Vicky thundered on: "We will overthrow this bogus Republic and plant a government of righteousness in its stead!"
Vicky threw down a challenge to her sisters. Not until the female sex revolts, she said, will there be complete equality. By our own actions, we can free ourselves.
Apollo Hall exploded. Women stood in the aisles, weeping and full of rapture.
Overwrought with revolutionary fervor, the convention passed many resolutions before it adjourned. The women demanded reforms in government, education, business, divorce, marriage, and the family. Among the resolutions was one, passed almost unnoticed, which endorsed sexual freedom for women and men. The words "sex" or "love" were not mentioned, of course. But the gist of the resolution spelled out "free love" quite clearly.
Later, when the embarrassed women realized what they had done, they blamed The Woodhull. Who would take them seriously if the movement were associated with "free love"?
The next day the press called Vicky's fiery address, "The Great Secession Speech." Men read about her remarks in astonishment. Their feelings were best summed up by editor Horace Greeley, who wrote in his New York Tribune: "This is a spirit to respect, perhaps to fear, certainly not to be laughed at."
Unquestionably, it had been a mad, magnificent speech. But it was not the kind of speech a person makes if she wants to be the next President of the United States.
8
The Unsinkable Woodhull
On April 1, Roxanna Claflin had suddenly announced her intention to change her place of residence. With her daughter Polly's encouragement, she had packed up her clothes and had moved to the Washington Hotel.
At first, Vicky tried to dissuade her, but Roxanna's mind was made up. She insisted that she would not spend another night under the same roof with James Blood.
Vicky was well aware of her mother's irrational hatred of James. She sighed and let her go, promising that she would pay her bills as always.
For weeks, she heard nothing from Roxanna. Ordinarily, the silence would have upset her. At any other time, she would have visited her mother. But those weeks had been busy ones. Her full attention had been focused on writing her secession speech for the convention.
On May 16, while the entire town was still talking about her inflammatory speech, James received a summons to appear in court. Roxanna had filed a suit against him. She charged that James Blood, her son-in-law, had threatened to murder her.
Vicky sensed trouble ahead. How much trouble she never dreamed.
On the morning of the hearing, the entire Claflin family appeared in court. Before the judge could call the proceedings to order, Roxanna dashed up and began to pour out her side of the story. "Judge, my daughters were good daughters and affectionate children till they got in with this Blood. He had threatened my life several times and one night last November he came into the house and said he would not go to bed until he washed his hands in my blood."
The judge banged his gavel, but Roxanna couldn't be switched off that easily.
"I'll tell you what that fellow is," she rattled on. "He is one of those who ain't got no bottoms to their pockets. You can keep stuffin' in all the money in New York but they never get full. If my daughters would just send him a-flyin' as I always tole 'em, I reckon they'd be rich now."
Roxanna's embarrassed attorney dragged her back to a seat. When she finally mounted the witness stand to present her charges, the storm resumed.
"I came here because I want to get my daughters out of this man's clutches," she bleated. "He has taken away Vicky's affection and Tennie's affection from their poor old mother."
Vicky winced. But there was more to come.
"So help me God, judge," said Roxanna, "I say here and I call Heaven to witness"—Roxanna paused for air and then plunged in again—"that there was the worst gang of free lovers in that house on Thirty-eighth Street that ever lived. Stephen Pearl Andrews and Dr. Woodhull and lots more of such trash."
When James took the stand, he patiently denied that he had ever threatened to kill Roxanna.
"One night last fall when she was very tr
oublesome," he explained, "I said if she were not my mother-in-law, I would turn her over my knee and spank her."
Every newspaper in New York had sent a reporter. To be sure, the case was trivial, even absurd. But any information about Victoria Woodhull was considered newsworthy. The press soon realized it would get its money's worth. Their pencils kept flying as one spicy tidbit after another emerged from the testimony.
Before long, the courtroom had turned into a sideshow. Questions were asked, not about Roxanna's charges against James, but about Vicky and her past. When had she been divorced? Why did she live with two husbands? Vicky and Tennie's unsavory careers as fortune-tellers, a secret until now, came out into the open.
In a desperate effort to get back to the original subject, Vicky took the stand. "Colonel Blood always treated my mother kindly," she testified. "Sometimes, when she became violent, he would utterly ignore her presence."
Tennie, too, rushed to James's defense. Unfortunately, she only made matters worse. She began describing her early life on the road with the traveling medicine show.
"Since I was fourteen years old, I have supported thirty or thirty-five deadheads," she declared, looking in the direction of her mother. "Vicky and Colonel Blood got me away from that life and they are the best friends I have ever had."
Suddenly full of remorse for having called her mother a "deadhead," she leaped from the witness box and, weeping, threw her arms around Roxanna.
"Please, James," whispered the mortified Vicky, "make her stop. She is only making herself conspicuous."
The trial continued for four days until the exasperated judge ordered the case dismissed. But the damage had been done. Woodhull and Claflin's dirty linen had been dumped into New York's lap. Every word of testimony had been promptly reported in the press.
Generally, the skeletons in a political candidate's closet are exposed by enemies. Thanks to her blabbermouthing family, Vicky's private life became the subject of gossip in every household and saloon across the country. In an editorial, the Cleveland Leader reminded readers of "the open, shameless effrontery with which she has paraded her name as a candidate for the Presidency." It went on to say that Victoria Woodhull was "a vain, immodest, unsexed woman with whom respectable people should have as little to do as possible."