by Marge Piercy
The following day, the entire adventure was written up at length in the Tribune, with drawings of himself brandishing a cane over the head of a cowering bookseller, drawn in caricature as a swarthy small man with a huge potbelly and long nose. Actually none of the booksellers looked anything like that caricature of a Jew—they were all native-born. But it gave an impression Anthony found perfect. The article was extremely favorable, treating him as a hero. He was grateful to Griffith. He would not forget the reporter, but would slip him information when he was planning an action. They made an excellent partnership. Griffith told him that an editorial praising his work to protect the youth of the city was being written even as they spoke. Griffith told the truth, because two days later there it was: A CRUSADER IN OUR MIDST.
He was sleeping with Maggie again. She had not been enthusiastic about the idea—he would have been shocked if she had shown undue passion. He loved her with his entire being. She was devout, frugal, conscientious and a soldier at housekeeping. Always when he came home, there was a good hot meal waiting. His clothes were perfectly kept, although she told him he must roll around in them to get them so messy. If he had any criticism, it would be that she did not work the maid hard enough. She formed too ready an attachment, not always keeping the requisite distance. But even that fault was due to her gentle disposition and kind heart. She was a thoroughly good woman; in his visits to the dark side of the city, he was beginning to understand how rare and wonderful that was. Women were weak and easily corrupted, except for those like his mother and Maggie who were armored by religion. Without that armor, women rotted from within and brought down any man who came near them.
Soon he guessed she might be pregnant again, for she was vomiting her breakfast. She said nothing. Of course, it was too delicate a matter to discuss. He noticed her mother was about more than usual. He never discouraged those visits unless she stayed around when he came home. He did not like sharing his wife with anyone. Her attention was balm to him after the tedium of his job or the darkness of his exertions on behalf of the Lord.
Soon the trial opened of the purveyors of filth he had raided with Griffith. He was a star prosecution witness and once again the papers noted him, this time with almost universal approval. The Lord had called him and he had answered, like Joshua at the battle of Jericho. His next target was Williams Haynes, who had been publishing obscene books since well before the Civil War. His wife worked with him, a coarse foul woman no doubt. Haynes had a henchman who operated a store on Nassau Street in the heart of the filth district, and another who distributed Haynes’s output from his sporting goods store. Anthony was closing in on all of them, having alerted Griffith to his plans, when Haynes up and died of a heart attack. Anthony was grimly satisfied. A dead pornographer was as good as one in jail. He added Haynes to the list in his ledger book: “W. Haynes, ob. book and plate publisher, dead.”
He took the ferry to New Jersey to visit the Widow Haynes. She was a tiny white-haired woman with a sweet tinkling voice, dressed in a black dimity gown. She received him in her parlor, which seemed respectable enough. She did not invite him to sit but stood before him quivering with rage. “You drove my husband to the grave!”
“Perhaps his conscience did him in.”
“His books were fine erotica. There was nothing vulgar or disgusting in them, including the beautiful etchings.”
“They were obscene, madam, and they must be destroyed.” Beautiful! They were foul. He remembered endless naked women lying upon beds in all manner of shameless poses, rumps in the air, breasts hanging down, men with their members rigid and exposed, naked men leaning on pillars as if waiting for an omnibus.
“They are my only income, now that you have hounded my husband to his death. I will fight you to my dying day”
“Suppose I buy out your inventory I don’t imagine you intend to go on publishing by yourself.”
She glared, but they began to haggle price. Finally she invited him to sit down on a horsehair couch. Anthony wrote a check which would wipe out his account at the Brooklyn bank while removing an entire source of filth from the market forever.
He noted in his book “24 cases Ob. Stereotype Plates, 182 Ob. Steel and Cooper Plate engravings for 22 different books, 500 assorted Ob. books.” He went through it all carefully, making a detailed inventory. The $650 left him broke. He would not be able to pay his mortgage if he did not secure backing. It was time to approach the Y.
He wrote a letter to Robert McBurney to request help and delivered it to him in person. McBurney looked at the letter and grimaced. “This is a pencil scrawl. How do you expect me to carry something like this to the board? Really. Make a fair copy in ink, please, before I even consider what if anything to do with it.”
Anthony stormed out, leaving the note. What an appalling and effeminate reaction to his plea for assistance.
But the Lord was looking out for Anthony. He received a note from the president of the YMCA, Morris Jesup. It turned out that Jesup had come into McBurney’s office to ask about some other matter, noticed Anthony’s note and read it. Anthony learned this because Jesup actually came to see him. Anthony was in his study, where he had the books and plates. One by one he was examining them. He had worked his way through about a third of his take. A novel had been open to a plate of a naked woman copulating with two men at once, one man in the usual place and the other in her rump. Quickly he stuffed it into a drawer and invited Jesup to sit.
“Rewrite the letter. Attach a description of everything you’ve done on your own from the beginning, with arrest records and outcomes. I will hand-carry it to our board and support your request.”
Anthony wrung Jesup’s hand. “I would desperately appreciate your support. I put my family in hock to seize these plates. I need help in destroying them.”
“We’ll take that up. In the meantime, I’ll cover your costs myself.” On the spot, Jesup wrote him a check for his expenses in the Haynes case and added $150.
“That’s more than the Widow Haynes charged me.”
“The extra is for your efforts.”
“Mr. Jesup, sir, I can scarcely believe you’re doing this!”
“Anthony—you don’t mind if I call you that?—so many of us have worked our lives away making a fortune for our families, and then we see our sons, who should inherit and run our affairs, seduced by corruption, by what they see as good times. The city is being swamped by dirty foreigners with corrupt customs, creating slums—breeding grounds of crime and vice. Tammany uses them and protects them. We men of substance must clean up our cities or society will rot and young men will gamble and waste the resources their fathers and grandfathers slaved to create.”
“Mr. Jesup, believe it, I am the man to head the effort.”
“I’m going to set up a meeting with the members of our Committee to Suppress Vice. You’ll find a great many of the most prominent men of business and finance are ready to support an effort to contain this contagion. Not only are our sons in danger, but our workers are sloughing off responsibilities in pursuit of low pleasures. They rush from the office to the brothel, from the bureau to the gambling hell. You’ll meet with my committee as soon as I can arrange it, and we’ll work out a formal arrangement of cooperation with your work.”
“That would be a big help. I’ve been exhausting my own resources.”
Jesup patted him on the shoulder. “I’m one hundred percent behind you. I have been looking for a strong able man to lead this fight. What’s your background?”
Anthony almost said, Similar to yours, but realized that would tip his hand, that he had scouted out the leadership of the YMCA. Better to let Jesup draw that conclusion himself. Anthony sketched out his religious and family antecedents, his Civil War experiences. When he finished, Jesup said. “You’re our man, I’m convinced. Now you must prepare carefully for the meeting I’ll host. Don’t be timid. Be forthright. Be bold. You want to persuade them you can do the job. Come with press clippings, come with lists of
what you’ve accomplished as specific as possible—dates, names, outcomes. You need to show them you’re strong, responsible, and that you can head this crusade.”
“I shall, Mr. Jesup. And I am!” Anthony saw Jesup out and felt like leaping into the air and shouting to the Lord like a Baptist.
“Maggie,” he called out. “Maggie! We’re saved. The Lord has provided. We have money again. We have friends in high places!”
THIRTY-FOUR
VICTORIA AND STEPHEN PEARL Andrews—whom she had begun calling Pearlo after Cady Stanton’s usage—were reading an amazing document by a German named Karl Marx entitled The Communist Manifesto. Pearlo discovered that it had never been printed in the States. He was determined to share it with as many people as possible. “It hit me like a thunderclap,” he said to Victoria.
They often read in bed together, discussing ideas and debating. The physical intimacy was quite secondary. Pearlo was not what she would consider a great lover—he was well over sixty and rather fragile—but she needed his mind to test her own against. He was widely read, with several languages at his disposal including Chinese. “We can publish it in the Weekly in its entirety,” she suggested.
“Brilliant! I’ll go over the translation and improve it. The German is more powerful.”
She particularly appreciated Pearlo these days because he encouraged her campaign for the presidency. Nobody else around her took it seriously, not even James. But she had been promised by her spirits she would be a great leader, and Pearlo believed in her.
They were seeing Vanderbilt less frequently. Victoria had little time to spend these days in the brokerage offices, leaving it mostly to James. Ten-nie went in oftener, but the Weekly used up much of their energy. If a client made an appointment or needed her special stroking, Victoria would rush to the offices. Until Pearlo asked her what Vanderbilt thought of the Manifesto, she had not considered his reaction. Indeed, he paid no attention to its appearance, for ideas he viewed as unimportant as the horse manure he stepped over in the street.
Further, he was around less because of his Frankie. She had moved him uptown into a splendid new mansion on Fifth Avenue near Central Park. She refurbished his wardrobe and kept him home several nights a week—something new and exotic to the Commodore. He did not need Tennie’s ministrations as often, and his health—which he claimed Frankie was watching over with a keen eye—began to deteriorate. He was unaccustomed to physical weakness and tried to ignore it, but he was slowing down. Still, they met at least once a week for the Commodore to pass on information on stocks and for her to pass on in séance what she learned from her network of madams and from Josie and thus from Fisk.
Josie was happy with how her stocks had done under Victoria and James’s guidance. She had her own little nest egg, which made her less dependent on Fisk. She was flirting with other men and obviously looking around. Victoria and Annie Wood tried to tell her that she could scarcely do better, for Fisk was rich, generous and crazy about her.
“But I don’t love him. Never have. Never will.”
Victoria—who felt that if she concentrated on any man long enough, providing he was equipped with intellect and knowledge, she could love him sufficiently—found such fastidiousness of the emotions rather silly. It wasn’t hard to love somebody. Many things in life were hard, but that wasn’t one of them. And it was important for a woman to stay on good terms with all her lovers—she thought it mean-spirited to discard someone you had been in bed with and behave as if there were no connection.
Josie was suddenly giggling. “But I’ve met him! The man of my dreams.”
Victoria groaned. “A dream is an illusion.”
“He ain’t!” Josie tossed her dark curls. “He’s a gentleman and a real looker. He’s handsome, only twenty-eight and athletic—used to be a gymnast. From an old Philadelphia family. He has dark hair, the darlingest little mustache. He can dance. Oh, if you’d meet him, you’d fall in love with him too.”
“What does he do?” Annie asked.
“He’s got an oil business—the Brooklyn Oil Refinery.”
“Edward Stiles Stokes,” Annie said. “Oh dear. He’s a terrible businessman. Fisk is keeping him afloat. Does Fisk know you’re having an affair?”
“Eddie comes from money and he may be lousy at business, but he’s great in bed. And when you wake up next to him, you don’t wonder how you got into bed with a beached whale!”
“This could be a real mess,” Annie said. “When Fisk finds out, and he will—Josie, you have the discretion of an alley cat caterwauling on a fence—he can ruin Stokes, and you with him.”
She flicked her gloved hand at them. “He hasn’t found out and I have all his letters, so he’d better behave!”
“Blackmail?” Victoria asked. “Do you think he’ll actually pay you for the return of his letters? He loves the spotlight.”
“But no man wants to parade the broken heart of a cuckold in public,” Annie said, fanning herself slowly with a new ostrich fan.
“I’m counting on that,” Josie said. “I have the man I want now, and Fisk can go to hell.” She toasted both of them with a big café au lait cup.
“Don’t push him, Josie. He might take revenge.”
“He’s all wrapped up in being an impresario. He has a new production called Temptations with long chorus lines, all blondes on odd dates and all brunettes on even dates. They juggle balls of fire. There’s a giant waterfall onstage. It’s a hit and he’s ecstatic. Plus he’s putting it to the chorines, a different one every night. He doesn’t even notice what I’m doing.”
“May it stay that way,” Victoria said.
“Amen,” said Annie.
“I can tell you one thing I heard him and the weasel talking about.” That was how Josie referred to Fisk’s partner, Jay Gould. “The price of Erie is rising because there’s rumors the British investors are going to drive Fisk and Gould out. So expect Erie to climb.”
“Thank you,” said Annie and Victoria in chorus.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON had told her to call her Julius as her Quaker companion did, the woman introduced simply as Amelia. Julius was affectionate with Victoria. They gossiped about personalities in the movement for hours. Julius knew Pearlo from their abolitionist days and was fond of him. If she guessed the nature of their relationship, she said nothing. When Beecher’s name came up one day, Julius vented about him. They had once been friends, but with him assuming the chairmanship of the rival American organization, she was angry. “Woman’s rights indeed,” she said. “He thinks most of the women he knows have a right to his passionate attentions.”
Victoria’s memory was jolted. She remembered the tale Susan had told about Tilton and his wife. It was a most interesting story, and she filed it away mentally. The next time she saw Theo Tilton, she would probe him about the matter.
Julius lacked the front, the pretense and hypocrisy she had come to expect from ladies—women who had been raised by respectable and comfortable families and had married into more of the same. Julius confided that she was separated from her husband. She certainly had enough children of various ages—there were usually at least of couple of them about—but they did not define her. It seemed to Victoria that she was more of a mother on the side, almost as a hobby. She dressed well but simply, with a preference for blue.
Victoria was waiting for an opportunity to bring up the Beecher story with Theo. He had begun work on her biography. He sat across from her in a parlor at home—the little one she used for talking with friends and writing—while she recounted a period in her life and he took notes. He was writing her life as they proceeded, for he was, as Julius had suggested, facile. Tonight she was describing her marriage with Dr. Woodhull, to whom she had briefly introduced him.
He looked up, brushing a lock of his long wavy light brown hair from his eyes. “Are you still…close?”
“Sexually intimate, you mean?” She disliked euphemisms.
“Are you?” His gaze met hers and b
roke away.
“No. We were barely intimate when we were married. I let him live here out of charity, frankly. He’s frail and too far gone to support himself.” Something more than usual was on Theo’s mind. “Is something bothering you tonight?”
He sat silent for a moment, his gaze on her. “May I show you a small piece I’ve written?”
“You mean, other than my campaign biography?”
“Quite other… It’s a poem.”
“Certainly, if you wish.” She didn’t know much about poetry. Literature had been neglected in her education by her various mentors, but she liked to read it on occasion and always published some in the Weekly. She did like George Sand’s novels, peopled by passionate and active women she could identify with.
He took out of the bosom pocket of his waistcoat a folded sheet of foolscap and laid it on the table in front of her. She took it up at once. He retreated to his armchair across the room.
How beautiful thou art and darkly radiant,
As if the fulsome moon could burn the eyes
As does the sun, but thou art of the night,
Bright within dark as if in a disguise.
How dark thy hair and thy eyes, how bright
Blue as the overarching firmament.
Ah, lady who hast taken away my heart,
Do clasp me to thee and make me not depart!
“It’s written to you,” he said softly.
No one had ever written her a poem. It made her feel cherished. She met his gaze and smiled at him, not quite sure what her response should be. Should she try to critique the poem? Probably not. That was not the purpose for which he had composed it. She simply waited, smiling.