The Marrying Americans

by Hesketh Pearson

  In time he got a job on the staff of the Daily Telegraph, and made a success in reporting the judicial proceedings of the Parnell Commission, his accounts being the most vivid in the press. He was appointed a leader-writer, and his Micawberish form of language, in which many words did the service of one, was exactly suited to that form of beguilement. The humorous verbosity of Dickens was still in vogue, and it was said that an old lady paid Willie £300 a year for keeping her amused every afternoon for two or three hours. He envied the great reputation for wit and humor won by his brother, his own ripostes being of a less exalted order. When George Moore’s brother Augustus asked what he thought of a particularly bright necktie, Willie replied: “I should have thought that only a deaf man could have worn it with safety.” Often in need of stories for his gossip-column, he appealed to Oscar, who invented dozens for his benefit, which may have aroused his gratitude at the moment but increased his sense of inferiority.

  However, it looked as if he need no longer bother about earning a living the moment he was safely married to Mrs. Frank Leslie, who had more than enough to keep him in sybaritic comfort for the rest of his life. But Mrs. Leslie (there is no evidence that she was ever called “Mrs. Wilde”) had different views. She actually thought that a husband, in return for his luxury, should occasionally show some consideration for herself. He might for example drop in at the office for an hour or two, give advice when asked, and take a little interest in the means whereby his comforts were assured. He might even, though this was asking a lot, prefer her company to that of other women and his fellow clubmen. He failed to appreciate this view, spending his evenings drinking with congenial spirits at the Century Club and sometimes in more questionable company. He seldom left his bed before 1 o’clock in the afternoon, though he was considerate enough to call for his wife at the office in the mid-afternoon and take her for a drive; after which it was time for snifters and the ceremony of dressing for dinner, followed by a carousal at the Club. She tried to persuade him that work and early hours were necessary, but he replied that far too many people were working in America and that the country was badly in need of a leisured class which he proposed to adorn. In his opinion it was ridiculous for a man to labor when his wife already had more money than they could spend. As his brother had said: “Work is the curse of the drinking classes.”

  All this was very irritating to a woman whose life had been devoted to industry, though she might have made the best of it if he had attended to her sexual needs. But her remark that “he was of no use to me either by day or night” implies that his drinking habits reduced his potency as a lover, such strength as he possessed in that character having perhaps been frittered away elsewhere. Their marriage lasted two years and ended with a divorce. On his arrival in England brother Oscar was sympathetic, but at the moment of their greeting Willie was alcoholic. “Has your marriage broken up?” asked Oscar.

  “No, it has broken down,” said Willie with a tipsy man’s insistence on accuracy.

  “What is the difference?”

  “She is up, I am down.”{20}

  Willie went to America a drinker; he returned to England a drunkard. His second marriage was reasonably happy, but his wife could not reclaim him from the bottle. He lived on loans and his personal appearance became so disreputable that even the gentle Oscar said: “He sponges on everyone but himself.” There was perhaps a hint of feeling in the remark made by Gwendolen in The Importance of Being Earnest: “I have never heard any man mention his brother. The subject seems distasteful to most men.”

  But Willie had his revenge when Oscar, between his two trials, sought refuge in his mother’s house. The insanely malevolent Marquis of Queensberry had hired a gang of roughs to follow Oscar from hotel to hotel and get him turned out of each. After midnight he reached the Chelsea house where Willie lived with his mother and almost fell into the hall, dead beat, when Willie opened the front door. Willie, having mixed his drinks pretty freely, also mixed his metaphors in recounting the incident: “He came tapping with his beak against the window-pane, and fell down on my threshold like a wounded stag.”

  It was a great moment for Willie and he took full advantage of it. He defended his brother outside the home, saying to Bernard Shaw: “Oscar was not a mail of bad character; you could trust him with a woman anywhere.” But within doors his attitude was offensive. “Thank God my vices are decent!” he declared in his brother’s presence. He managed to raise money on the predicament caused by vices he considered indecent, for he pawned or sold everything of value his brother then possessed. On hearing that Willie was defending him all over London, Oscar remarked: “My poor dear brother would compromise a steam-engine.”

  W. B. Yeats called one day with letters of sympathy from people in Ireland. “Do these letters urge him to run away?” demanded Willie. “Every friend he has is urging him to, but we have made up our minds that he must stay and take his chance.”

  Provoked no doubt by whisky, the tears stood in Willie’s eyes as he babbled on: “He could escape. Oh yes, he could escape. There is a yacht in the Thames, and five thousand pounds to pay his bail—well, not exactly in the Thames, but there is a yacht. Oh yes, he could escape, even if I had to inflate a balloon in the backyard with my own hand; but he has resolved to stay, to face it out, to stand the music like Christ....It is his vanity that has brought all this disgrace upon him. They swung incense before him...they swung it before his heart.”

  From which we may guess one of the reasons why Mrs. Frank Leslie jettisoned Willie: she tired of his conversational style. But she was not tired of making money. At first she handed over the business to a syndicate, retaining a considerable income for herself. In three years certain incautious investments had ruined the syndicate. She returned to assess the situation, found she had lost a fortune, and started to make another by transforming the enterprise into a stock company of which she was president, with herself as editor of Leslie’s Popular Monthly. This publication was greatly improved, and such writers as Bret Harte and William Dean Howells contributed to it. In the midst of her whirlwind activities she managed to produce a new volume of essays on the perennial themes of love and marriage.

  Presumably other interests were now represented in the management of the paper, because in 1900 she was replaced as editor, and three years afterwards she sold out completely, becoming an aristocrat instead of a plutocrat. The name “Frank Leslie” had ceased to produce thrills in the world of journalism, so she changed it to Baroness de Bazus, her Huguenot ancestor having been awarded the title of baron, and, getting into the skin of her part, she began to repair a castle in Normandy where the nobleman had lived, at any rate in her imagination. She continued to hold receptions in New York hotels, but people who went to pray remained to scoff, or, more accurately, those who would have liked to pay their respects found that she had become a figure of fun.

  She died in September 1914, and though a great war had just started, her last will and testament caused a sensation. Almost two million dollars were left to Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt to be devoted to the movement in favor of votes for women. Her own and her late husband’s relations promptly disputed the will, and in the course of the legal proceedings she was described as a mad and illegitimate mulatto. These statements were eventually disproved, and Mrs. Frank Leslie’s fortune supported the cause for which she had intended it. None of her husbands would have approved her action, but she had a strong feeling that “men were deceivers ever” and it was high time for women to emulate them.

  CHAPTER 11—Three Clever Women

  Victoria Claflin and John Biddulph Martin

  Minnie Stevens and Sir Arthur Paget

  Maud Burke and Sir Bache Cunard

  In the last two decades of the nineteenth century it was the general opinion of peeresses with unmarried daughters that the American girls who had been brought to England by ambitious mothers were far too clever, this opinion, as we have seen, being echoed by Oscar Wilde. Many of their fathers had c
ashed in on the Civil War, and desirous of social distinction were willing to pay a part of their quickly gotten wealth on noble sons-in-law. As a rule they were easily accommodated, but sometimes the daughters had to use as much intelligence to gain husbands as the fathers to win fortunes. It was not always plain sailing. Let us briefly survey the careers of three totally different types of American women with marked intelligences.

  About the year 1849 a married pair named Claflin were to be seen in many districts of the United States advertising their ability to heal sickness and tell fortunes.{21} With them were two small daughters, Victoria and Tennessee (Tennie for short), both of whom were credited with magnetic powers. They went into trances, spoke messages from another world, and under spiritual influence revealed truths and induced cures. The parents did well, but the daughters ultimately did better. We are chiefly concerned with the elder child, Victoria, who was born in 1838 and could claim inspiration at the age of eleven. When she was fifteen years old a doctor called Woodhull said to her: “My little puss, tell your father and mother I want you for a wife.”

  Apparently her parents raised no objection, and they were married in 1853. But there were thorns with the roses of married life, and she continued to travel about the country, working as a cigar seller, a seamstress and an actress. The doctor loved her so much that when not in her company he drank to excess. This must have reduced his amorous potency, and she took a lover named Colonel Blood, who no doubt sympathized with a spirit-voice which ordered her to join her sister Tennie in New York. Here they set up business as healers and sellers of patent medicines, occasionally touring the country in a covered wagon and making speeches on free love and spiritualism. Victoria’s chief spirit was Demosthenes, who chose the New York house in which they all lived, though we hear less of Dr. Woodhull as time goes on and may assume that he dwelt among his bottles.

  At last the Claflin girls got into touch with Commodore Vanderbilt, now past seventy, who would have married Tennie if his family had not put obstacles in the way. He set them up as brokers, giving them enough tips to make a fortune on Wall Street, and they were able to take a house in the fashionable Murray Hill quarter. He financed a paper for them, edited by Blood, and they began to expose the morals of certain well-known citizens. Victoria turned to propaganda, both in print and on the platform. Her speeches were described as dazzling, brilliant and inspiring, though her passionate advocacy of free love undermined the effect she made as a fighter for women’s suffrage, such females as supported the one being not much attracted to the other. As a radical reformer she clarified their policy by publicly stating that they wanted to overthrow “this bogus Republic,” their intention being treasonable and their object a revolution. All her sayings and doings received headlines in the papers, and at length she announced her design to stand for the Presidency. She believed in progress in block capitals and proclaimed herself a free lover in practice as well as belief.

  Enthusiasm outran reason and she asked the famous Brooklyn minister Henry Ward Beecher to take the chair at one of her performances. On his refusal to do so she decided to settle, or rather unsettle, his hash, and at that moment he was in a vulnerable position. In July 1870 Mrs. Elizabeth Tilton confessed to her husband that she had committed adultery with Beecher, the most famous preacher in the country, whose words caused many women in his congregations to swoon with adoration. The Tiltons could not keep their secret to themselves, Elizabeth no doubt feeling obscurely that it was an honor to be seduced by America’s leading divine, her husband Theodore perhaps taking pride in being cuckolded by so notable a personality. It was soon an open secret, and Victoria Woodhull, furious with Beecher for refusing to support her propaganda for free love though himself an adulterer, started press and platform operations against him, exposed what she considered his hypocrisy, and turned what had been a whispering campaign into a shouting-match. The Brooklyn preacher was eventually compelled to bring an action in the courts. The case lasted for six months, provided the chief news sensation in America, and ended in a jury’s disagreement, though more voted for than against Beecher.

  In the course of these proceedings there were subsidiary actions for libel and the issue of arrest-warrants, but money was always found to keep the sisters free, and in 1872 Victoria was put up for the Presidency by the Equal Rights Party. She had somehow managed to get rid of her husband, to marry Colonel Blood, and to enjoy a six months’ liaison with Theodore Tilton, who wrote her biography to boost her candidature. In the long run her lurid exposure of Beecher hurt her reputation, and she discovered that one cannot sully the fame of a well-favored man of God without inviting thunder and lightning. Her popularity dwindled; she was soon hard-up; and she tried to recover her position and wealth by a lecture tour. Dropping her belief in free love, she now preached monogamy and spoke heart-burning words on the divine inspiration of the Bible. But on that subject Beecher was heard with more confidence than Victoria, and his lecture tour eclipsed hers. Writs and warrants issued on behalf of those she had libeled in her heyday arrived with depressing frequency. The sisters applied to Vanderbilt for assistance, but he may have been annoyed by the sudden change-over from brokerage to bibliolatry or his family may have shown a united front against further disbursements: whatever the cause he declined further help and his relations disembarrassed him from the awkward pair by paying their fares to England.

  Victoria, soon after arriving in London, lectured on her latest revelation, a member of her first audience being John Biddulph Martin, wealthy son of a famous banker, who fell in love with her words or her figure or both and asked her to marry him. She approved such a consummation, but his family did not. To impress the family she spent six years laboriously building herself up as a maligned and innocent woman, denying that she had written certain articles and made certain speeches imputed to her. With extraordinary patience and persistence she wore the Martin family down, and gradually they came to accept her as a model of Christian virtue, even believing her statement that certain English capitalists were backing her nomination as President of the United States. At last the family surrendered, and she married John Biddulph Martin six years after his first proposal. Her sister Tennie also managed to win the admiration of a rich retired merchant named Francis Cook, later a baronet, and after their union she became Lady Cook and Marchioness of Montserrat in Portugal.

  Both the sisters settled down to a respectable existence in England, though the gambling instinct was strong in them and in 1898 they were again brokers, calling themselves Lady Cook & Co. Their past lives were continually causing them anxiety, and Victoria’s husband financed innumerable lawsuits against people whose memories were better than hers. In 1892 Victoria tried but failed to become a candidate for the Presidency of the United States, and then her admiring spouse started a magazine for her in London called The Humanitarian; but it was too dull for English readers and came to an early end.

  When they had been married for eighteen years John Biddulph Martin died, still firmly believing in the reformed Victoria and leaving her nearly two hundred thousand pounds. She retired to their estate at Bredon’s Norton, Worcestershire, where she enlivened the neighborhood by running spiritualist salons and flower shows, and where she founded a college for women and a village school. At the beginning of the 1914 war she worked for the Red Cross and began a movement for female land-laborers. Later she ardently supported what was called the “flapper franchise,” i.e. votes for women aged twenty-five. Her sister Tennie died in 1923, and Victoria’s final manifestation took the form of dangerous driving. She dashed about the countryside in a large white car and sacked any chauffeur who refused to exceed the speed limit. She tried to extend her life by passing the nights upright in a chair, and died in her sleep June 10, 1927, at the age of eighty-nine.

  No one could have less resembled Victoria Martin than Minnie Stevens, except in the undeviating purpose of finding a husband. As we have seen, Minnie was the intimate friend of Consuelo Iznaga, who married the
8th Duke of Manchester, and both of them were favorably received in the circle that surrounded the Prince of Wales. Minnie was the daughter of Paran Stevens, a successful hotel proprietor who had married a chambermaid in his employ—so it was commonly supposed. At one time Stevens owned the chief hotels in Boston, the Revere and Tremont, as well as the Continental in Philadelphia and the Fifth Avenue in New York. He and his wife lived at the Revere for a while after their marriage in 1850, then took a large residence on Beacon Street. But the lady was not received by Boston society, so they went to New York. Their daughter, Mary Fiske Stevens, our Minnie, was born in August 1853.

  The social world of New York showed no stronger disposition to receive them than had that of Boston, largely because hotel proprietors were not then considered respectable members of the community, particularly if they had married beneath them. But Mrs. Stevens was a woman of spirit and by degrees she fought her way into the exclusive circles of New York. Her dinners were too good, her entertainments too festive, to be ignored, and as European visitors of note were delighted to accept her invitations, her fellow countrymen were induced to do likewise. In time hers were the most fashionable parties and she was the most distinguished hostess on Fifth Avenue. They often visited Europe, and when Paran Stevens became a United States Commissioner to the Paris Exposition in 1867 their hospitality in the French capital was profuse. Paran died in ‘72, and though his widow did not dispose of their residences at New York and Newport she spent the next few years traveling about Europe, at first with the sole object of finding a suitable husband for her daughter.