by Marion Meade
The press also pointed out, with unbridled glee, that Vicky was a leading figure in the woman's movement. Feminists who had cheered themselves hoarse for her just a few weeks ago began to squirm, and some wished they had never heard of her.
Refusing to stand by while her presidential aspirations went down the drain, Vicky struck back at her critics. After all, she owned a newspaper, too. In an editorial in the Weekly, she tried to defend herself.
"Victoria C. Woodhull's personal and individual private life is something entirely distinct from her public position," she wrote. "Daniel Webster and William Pitt were bon vivants; they were also great statesmen."
And she added, "If Mrs. Woodhull has valuable ideas, what has her past history to do with them?" It was a reasonable question, but nobody was listening to reason.
For the past eighteen months, Woodhull and Claflin's brokerage house had handsomely supported Vicky and her family. It also provided funds to publish the Weekly. During that entire period, they were fortunate to have the support and advice of Commodore Vanderbilt. Now, annoyed by the gossip surrounding his proteges, the Commodore withdrew from the picture. Soon afterward, profits began to decline.
Alarmed, Vicky tried to cut her expenses. Servants were dismissed, cheaper food appeared on the dinner table, parties became more infrequent. Soon she was forced to start selling, piece by piece, many of the valuable furnishings she had collected. Her rich velvet carpets were sold. The carved mahogany furniture mysteriously disappeared to pay bills. But the one thing she vowed never to lose was the Weekly.
If she had hoped the gossip would blow over, it did not happen. As the attacks on her private life continued, she began to lose her temper. At the end of May, fighting mad, she dashed off a scathing letter to the New York Times: "Because I am a woman and because I hold opinions somewhat different from the self-elected orthodoxy which men find their pride in supporting, they have assailed me, vilified me, and endeavored to cover my life with ridicule and dishonor."
She stated frankly that she did not intend to become a scapegoat or a victim. "My judges preach against 'free love' openly, practice it secretly. For example, I know of one man, a public teacher of eminence who lives in concubinage with the wife of another teacher of almost equal eminence. . . . So be it, but I decline to stand up as the 'frightful example!"
The letter closed with a veiled threat: "I shall make it my business to analyze some of these lives and I will take my chance in the matter of libel suits."
Only a few people in New York understood to whom Vicky was referring. But over in Brooklyn, the letter catapulted three persons into hysteria. The one most panicky was the Reverend Henry Beecher.
By throwing down this angry challenge to Beecher and the Tiltons, Vicky unwittingly began to spin a web which would eventually smother her.
Why did she do it? What made her imagine that she could declare war on one of the most admired men in America and win? At this point, it was not her intention to expose Beecher's adultery. She did not seriously plan "to analyze some of these lives," as she threatened in her letter to the Times. Libel suits were a luxury she could not afford.
What she did hope for was to silence her critics. Tired of being ridiculed, she fought back in the only way she knew. Her strength, seemingly inexhaustible, had sustained her for many years. Somehow she had survived and managed to reach a position of prominence. She would not be crucified for her beliefs, she promised herself fiercely, not when pious liars like Beecher practiced "free love" on the sly.
In the public mind, Vicky was assumed to be a "free lover." However, she herself had never said so. In fact, as she recently pointed out in the Weekly, her private life was distinct from her public position. But she had boldly discussed sex in her newspaper, and she had advocated the principle of sexual freedom on many occasions. This—and the fact that she was a woman—were enough to condemn her in people's eyes.
Ironically, there is no evidence whatsoever to indicate that Vicky practiced "free love." With Canning, she had always been a faithful wife. During the five years she had known James, no other man had attracted her. So far, it had been the idea of sexual freedom that she found so appealing. Now, all that was about to change. Within the next few weeks she would become a "free lover" in practice as well as theory. For she met a man with whom she fell in love.
Late one afternoon in early June, Vicky was sitting in her brokerage office at 44 Broad Street. She was there to check the books and try to figure a way out of the firm's financial slump. Looking up from the ledger, she saw a tall, languid young man with long blond hair. In his hand he clasped a copy of the New York Times.
"Mrs. Woodhull?" he began hesitantly. "I'm Theodore Tilton."
Son of a carpenter, poet, journalist, lecturer, intellectual, liberal reformer, feminist sympathizer, Theodore Tilton was now primarily a tormented man. His visit to Vicky's office had not been voluntary. A shaken Henry Beecher had instructed him to see Vicky and shut her up.
Now, embarrassed and clumsy, he handed her the newspaper. "What 'eminent teachers' are you referring to?" he asked coyly.
"I am referring to you and Mr. Beecher," Vicky told him.
She went on to clarify her position. "I certainly do not condemn Dr. Beecher for loving your wife," she explained to the astonished Tilton. "People should be free to follow their natural instincts when it comes to love. But what I deplore is his hypocrisy. Why does he deny and hide his true feelings in this situation?"
Her crisp logic was not what Theodore had expected to hear. Alarmed and confused, he begged her to consider what effect such a confession would have on Dr. Beecher's reputation. And the damage it would wreak on Tilton, his wife and children.
But Vicky continued to argue with him. An hour later, when Theodore departed, nothing had been resolved. They agreed to meet again and discuss the matter further.
A few days later, Theodore invited Vicky to dine with him and his wife at their home. Lib, a frail, birdlike woman, wore a sad smile throughout the evening. She told Vicky that she taught Sunday school and gave her a book of poems. It was inscribed, "To my friend Victoria C. Woodhull, Elizabeth R. Tilton."
Theodore and Vicky began seeing a great deal of each other. Mutually attracted, they soon became lovers. Theodore's original purpose, persuading Vicky to keep his wife's adultery a secret, seems to have been temporarily forgotten. Now, infatuated with Vicky's loveliness, he could hardly bear to leave her side.
All that summer, the two lovers reveled in each other's company. Sometimes, they would take a picnic basket to Central Park and stretch out in the warm grass. Or they'd go rowing on the Harlem River and watch the sunlight dancing on the water. One afternoon they went bathing at Coney Island, romping and squealing in the icy breakers like two children. At night, Theodore often neglected to catch the ferry back home to Brooklyn. Lying in each other's arms on Vicky's roof, they would sleep under the stars.
James did not object. From the beginning, he had assured Vicky that she was free to love whom she pleased. Now, his beliefs tested, he remained true to his promise.
It is not surprising that Theodore should pour out his marital troubles to Vicky. The irony of the situation was not lost upon her. As she pointed out to him, why did he condemn his wife and Henry Beecher? They had only been enjoying the same good feelings which he now had with her.
Lib Tilton would not have appreciated Vicky's defense of her. A frightened, unhappy woman, Lib was anything but proud of her relationship with Beecher. She believed that she had behaved wrongly, and all that she desired was to wipe the shameful affair from her memory.
"Lib is not your property," Vicky went on to chide Theodore. "You're behaving like a slaveowner."
Intellectually, Tilton agreed with her. But in his heart, the jealousy continued to fester.
The summer days sped by. In his spare time, Theodore wrote a book about Vicky's life. It was to be used in her campaign for the Presidency. He also wrote highly flattering magazine articles ab
out her, extravagantly calling her "the Joan of Arc of the women's movement" and praising her "moral integrity."
When autumn came, Vicky took to the road. She had little time for Theodore now. Her financial problems had grown pressing, and one way to make money was by lecturing. Fortunately, she received plenty of invitations to speak. James and Stephen offered to work up rough drafts of speeches on topics such as women's rights and sex education for children. Then she would revise, polish, and add her own thoughts.
In those days, listening to lectures and speeches was a popular mode of entertainment. People could learn from them about the important issues of the day. Lecturers had to have something interesting to say, but they also had to present their material in an entertaining manner. Not only was Vicky a great show woman, but she possessed striking beauty as well. Many people came just to gawk. Afterward, they'd tell their friends and neighbors how they had seen The Woodhull in person.
One of her most successful lectures that fall was before the National Association of Spiritualists, who invited her to attend their annual convention in Troy, New York. Spiritualism was a popular but unorthodox religion which had sprung up around 1850 and by now had over four million adherents. They believed that the spirit survives after death and can communicate with the living. A "medium," a person with special psychic powers, is able to receive the messages.
As a group, the Spiritualists tended to be quite liberal in their thinking. Many of them also believed in feminism, communism, and "free love." The Spiritualists and Vicky took to one another at once. Always made to feel ashamed of her psychic abilities and her spiritual guidance from Demosthenes, she was delighted to find a group who believed as she did. At Troy, they unanimously elected her their president. Years later, still overwhelmed by their kindness, she would call the election "the greatest honor of my life."
With most of her time spent away on the lecture circuit, Vicky depended on James and Tennie to operate the brokerage company and the Weekly. Every few weeks she would interrupt her tour and return home. On one of these brief visits, she first met Henry Beecher. Theodore had arranged the meeting, the first of many.
That fall, at the age of fifty-eight, Reverend Henry Ward Beecher was at the height of his career. He earned the grand sum in his day of $20,000 a year as pastor of Plymouth Church; its congregation of two thousand was the largest in the entire country. He was so successful that New Yorkers used to say, "If you want to hear Henry Ward Beecher preach, take the ferry to Brooklyn and then follow the crowd." He also earned huge sums of money by lecturing and writing, not to mention paid endorsements for pianos, watches, and trusses.
As a child, he had never owned a single toy because his father disapproved of them. As an adult, Beecher made up for his early deprivation. He bought paintings, horses, precious gems, a townhouse, and a country estate.
His wife, Eunice, lacked his taste for luxury. A cold, jealous woman, she always wore a severe expression. Behind her back, people called her a shrew. Thanks to Eunice, there was little warmth or gaiety in the Beecher household. Back in the days when Theodore and Henry were still friends, Beecher would sometimes lament, "Oh, Theodore, I dread to go back to my own home." Once he admitted the unhappiness of his marriage and told Tilton, "God might strip all other gifts from me if He would only give me a wife like Elizabeth and a home like yours."
Physically, Beecher was a powerfully built man with a ruddy face and a full mouth. His gray hair, worn long, reached the collar of his black jacket. Although not handsome in the classic sense, he exuded a magnetic quality that made men admire him and women adore him. Vicky was later to remark that he had a lot of sex appeal.
Vicky and the Reverend liked each other. Their visits together—which Beecher would later deny—were intellectual sparring matches, each trying to win over the other. Beecher frankly admitted that he agreed with her on the subject of "free love" and divorce. Nonetheless, he said, he could never proclaim those beliefs publicly. It would mean preaching to an empty church.
"My dear Victoria," he teased her in a superior tone, "you are a dangerous radical. Do you realize what happens to militants like you? They are hanged."
"Nobody will ever hang me," Vicky laughed.
In November, the male citizens of New York trooped to the polls to vote in the city elections. Vicky, Tennie, and their feminist friends accompanied them. Carrying a copy of the Constitution, Tennie read aloud the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the voting inspectors. Unimpressed, they refused to allow the women to vote.
Back on the road again, Vicky had another clash with Catherine Beecher. Vicky was scheduled to speak in Hartford, Connecticut, on the subject of the Constitution, as respectable a topic as one could wish. Catherine, who lived in Hartford, resolved to prevent the appearance. Writing letters to the local newspapers, she warned the citizens of Hartford against listening to such an indecent woman.
Vicky spoke anyway. Seven hundred persons jammed the Opera House, but if they came for a thrill, they went away disappointed. Her speech, a dramatic summary of her legal arguments on the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, proved to be a model of learning and good taste. Only at the end did she mention Catherine's campaign to keep her out of Hartford. Turning the other cheek, Vicky said that she hoped "Miss Beecher's conscience will not smite her for speaking so unkindly of me."
In public, Vicky expressed more patience with Catherine than she actually felt. The snobbish, self-righteous woman reminded her of old ghosts—the disapproving women in Homer, the haughty ladies in Canning's family who had spurned her as a new bride, the busybody neighbors in Chicago who called the police. Curious, she thought, but those who have condemned me most have been women. The thought made her feel more sad than angry.
As time went by, however, her mood grew increasingly impatient. Her fury at people like Catherine Beecher burned at her guts, and she could not rid herself of it. On the other hand, she sincerely believed that most people were decent and fair. What if she were to appeal to their best instincts? What if she rented the biggest hall in New York and frankly explained her beliefs? Surely such a bold move would end the gossip and abuse once and for all. Then she could get on with the real business of her life—campaigning for the Presidency.
On the evening of November 20, a rain and wind storm lashed New York. But there was standing room only at Steinway Hall where every one of the three thousand seats had been sold. One red-haired girl, the press reported, threw off her wet shawl and exclaimed, "By gosh, I hope I haven't come here for nothing in all this rain!" She expressed the mood of the crowd which had not been able to resist the provocative title of Vicky's speech: "The Principles of Social Freedom Involving the Questions of Free Love, Marriage, Divorce, and Prostitution."
A few minutes after eight, Vicky stepped onto the stage in a severe black dress with a pink tea rose at the neck. She was a dramatic, impressive figure as she stood waiting for the audience to quiet down. Gazing at the crowd, she saw that her mother and father were there. At stage left, Utica had engaged a box for her friends. Tennie, James, and Zulu Maud sat in the front row.
She began mildly by going back to the sixteenth century and describing how society had always suppressed the freedom of the individual. Back and forth across the stage she walked, explaining how marriage inhibits personal freedom. "The court holds that if the law solemnly pronounces two married, they are married. The law cannot compel two to love. Two people are sexually united, married by nature, united by God."
Warming up now, her voice began to rise. Her cheeks seemed on fire, so rich was the color of her skin. She continued to attack marriage. Calling it "slavery," she declared that it is better to break up a bad marriage than continue in misery. "All that is good and commendable now existing would continue to exist if all marriage laws were repealed tomorrow!"
A gasp began in the back of Steinway Hall and slowly spread to the front. Amid the hisses was a scattering of applause.
"Any lady or gentleman in the audien
ce who is hissing may come up on the platform with me," she challenged.
Off to the left, a woman stood up in a box. It was Vicky's sister Utica.
"How would you like to come into this world without knowing who your mother or father was?" Utica shouted.
The audience cheered and whooped. Men tossed their hats in the air. "Answer that!" yelled a woman in the balcony, waving her handkerchief.
"There are thousands of noble men and women in the world today who never knew who their fathers were," Vicky fired right back.
Pausing for a moment to wipe her forehead, she began talking about the need for a sexual revolution. Never discussing sex is false modesty, she said. Sex that is not based on love is wrong. One day in the future, "free love" would be accepted as normal and natural.
"Are you a free lover?" she heard someone shout. Finally the dangerous question had been asked in public. Three thousand people looked at her. She saw a sea of upturned faces gazing at her in silence, barely breathing, waiting to hear her answer.
"Yes!" she said in her grandest voice. "Yes. I am a free lover!"
The crowd broke into cheers and hoots. Vicky's voice rang out. "I have an inalienable, constitutional, and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or as short a period as I can, to change that love every day if I please! And with that right neither you nor any law you can frame have any right to interfere."
Her written speech forgotten, Vicky pleaded with the audience. "I dearly prize the good opinion of my fellow beings," she said plaintively. "I want so much to have you think well of me. It is because I love you all that I tell you my vision of the future."