by Marge Piercy
Protesting, screaming, weeping, Roxanne along with Buck, Polly and her husband and children were all packed off to a good boardinghouse a few blocks away. Roxanne kept shouting that Colonel Blood had stolen both her loving daughters away from her. She swore she would go to the police, she would go to court, but she would never, never let go of her own flesh and blood.
Victoria then took Tennie and they headed for Vanderbilt’s. He would not see them. He had his butler close the door in their faces. Victoria sat down on the steps with her head in her hands. They were losing their best sources of information on stocks. How could they continue the business?
“He has to forgive us. We didn’t do anything! I wrote him a note, but it was returned unopened,” Tennie said. “How can the old boy just dump us?”
“He won’t forgive. When he gets disgusted with someone, he writes them off. We’ve seen him do that time after time.” Victoria sighed, getting to her feet, shaking down her dress and reaching for Tennie’s hand. “It’s who we are, Tennie, Claflins. We can’t disown them, but they’re as destructive as a pack of wild dogs. They rip up everything.”
There was nothing to do but go home and get ready for the convention in three more days. Maybe if they could not be brokers any longer, she could find another source of money. She must not despair. The spirits would come through for her. She kept telling that to Tennie.
THE HALL FILLED RAPIDLY to overflowing. Some of the National women demurred at Victoria sitting on the platform with them, but Julius seated Victoria between herself and the eminently respectable grandmother of the movement, Lucretia Mott. Mott whispered something in Julius’s ear. Stanton said firmly, “Victoria has the courage to say openly what people like Henry Ward Beecher and several of the Boston women practice secretly. Let us honor her honesty, Lucretia.”
When the time came for Victoria to speak, she knew she faced many skeptics. She began quietly as she always did, and then the spirit filled her, adrenaline coursed through her veins igniting her brain and tongue, and she spoke ringingly of a woman’s rights. “I ask for equality, nothing more. Sexual freedom means the abolition of prostitution both in and out of marriage, means the emancipation of woman from sexual slavery and her coming into ownership and control of her own body…” She spoke for half an hour until the audience erupted into cheers. When she returned to her seat, Lucretia Mott hugged her.
It was not until she went home that she learned from James that Rox-anne had sworn out a complaint against him for alienating her children from her, for forcing them into prostitution and using them for blackmail—exactly what Buck had tried to do. She was claiming that the house was filled with communists, free lovers and woman’s rights people brought there by Colonel Blood and Stephen Pearl Andrews. The newspapers picked up on the scandal at once, bannered across front pages. Victoria’s triumph was yanked out from under her. She was loyal to her family, but oh, the cost. Roxanne was crazy, Victoria knew it, but still her mother.
The court case commenced immediately. Roxanne made wild accusations. Tennie, in defending herself, blabbed far too freely about their upbringing and previous life. The reporters were amused and titillated. Rumors were reported from all the places the Claflins had lived, stories of houses of prostitution supposedly run by Victoria, of Victoria scandalous on the stage in San Francisco. The irregular living arrangements were the subject of lurid testimony, although both Victoria and James conducted themselves coolly on the stand. Nobody else did. Tennie had to be removed from the courtroom to shut her up, she became so emotional talking about her life as a fortune-teller traveling from town to town and fleecing people. Under cross-examination, the presence of Victoria’s ex-husband Dr. Woodhull was revealed, and that seemed to shock the reporters and the public more than anything, even though James explained that Woodhull was there to care for his brain-damaged son.
The judge dismissed the charges but the papers exploited the story, sensing Victoria’s new vulnerability. From the bewitching broker and the female politician, she became the notorious Woodhull, free lover and communist. When Victoria returned from court, Annie sent her a message to come at once. She was bubbling over with news. Josie had given her boyfriend Eddie Stokes all of Jim Fisk’s letters for publication. Since Stokes had lost his position in the oil company, he was desperate for money. “Jim paid them fifteen thousand in cash for the letters back,” Annie said. “I’m sure it was worth it to him not to be made a complete fool of in public. But he hates being taken as much as the Commodore does. So he immediately charged them with blackmail. They’re countersuing for libel and perjury. It’ll drag everyone connected with it through the muck.”
Every day the papers linked woman’s rights with the scandalous Claflin family and the notorious Victoria Woodhull. Horace Greeley was writing editorials defaming her as a woman with two husbands under the same roof, a fallen woman whom the National had embraced, making them an organization of free lovers. Many women in the National were threatening to quit unless Victoria was removed from the leadership. They attacked to distance the organization from her—the same women who had cheered and embraced her five days before. Only Elizabeth and Isabella stood by her. Susan had withdrawn. She knew that Elizabeth and Susan quarreled about her. Then she turned to Theo, asking him to introduce her at the next rally.
He glared at her coldly. “I can’t do that. Don’t ask me again.”
“But why?” She was genuinely shocked. “Because of your wife?” It had never occurred to her he would refuse her request.
“Don’t be absurd. Because I’ve promised to support Horace Greeley.”
She stared. “How can you? After writing my campaign bio. You make me look like a fool. And Greeley—he hates woman’s rights.”
Theo grimaced. “You can’t win. He could. And then I’d be able to ask for a position in the government and get out of Brooklyn and away from Beecher.”
His defection shocked and wounded her. How could he have lain in her arms, making wild love countless times, how could he have said he loved her again and again, then just stroll off and forget her? She felt used. He, whom she had adored, was the one lover with whom she was not going to maintain a friendship. She was left almost without defenders on what she had expected to be the launch of her campaign. Theo’s desertion scalded her. He had never loved her, she knew that now.
She saw Josie from time to time. Josie was unabashedly infatuated with Eddie Stokes, who was slim and wiry where Jim Fisk was fat, who was from an old rich Philadelphia family as opposed to Fisk’s New England peddler roots. Stokes dressed like a gentleman while Fisk dressed like a mountebank. Stokes had a reputation for temper, but Josie did not believe he would ever hurt her.
In January, the grand jury returned an indictment against Stokes for blackmail. Josie was beside herself and ran to Victoria and to Annie to ask their advice, which she promptly ignored. Victoria was arguing with Rox-anne in the boardinghouse where she had moved them when she heard newsboys crying headlines in the street, “Jim Fisk Shot Down,” “Fisk Murdered in Cold Blood over Actress.”
Victoria went down to the street and bought several papers, taking them home to read away from her mother’s hectoring. Stokes had walked into the Grand Central Hotel and caught Fisk walking up the stairway. He was on his way to see a widow he had installed there with her children to help her out—one of his many charity cases. Fisk could ruin ten thousand men and reach out to a needy family. Stokes pulled out a pistol and shot Fisk twice, once in the arm and once in the abdomen. He tossed the pistol under a sofa and ran off toward the barbershop on the ground level. There he was seized and taken upstairs to the room where Fisk lay slowly dying. Fisk identified Stokes as the man who had shot him.
The papers printed special editions every two hours, reporting on Fisk’s condition. His wife took the train from Boston and attended him, as did his little partner Gould. No one had ever seen Gould weep before. It was duly reported in the papers. Fisk spoke calmly with everyone present, dictating
his will. He was given morphine for the pain, passed out and never regained consciousness.
Victoria and Tennie joined the immense procession passing by his lying in state at the Opera House, in an open casket in his colonel’s uniform. Thousands waited in line, women throwing flowers at the casket. The next day, the cortege crept up Fifth Avenue to the depot with military bands, soldiers in uniform, troops of policemen, a hearse drawn by six matched white horses.
Erie stock rose abruptly on Fisk’s death. Popular sentiment turned him into a hero, and ballads were sung on street corners and penny sheets sold. His generosity in sending railroad cars of food and clothing to Chicago after the Great Fire was retold. He left an estate of considerably less than a million, for he had spent almost all he made. Henry Ward Beecher gave sermons on Fisk as a bad example, but the masses mourned him. He was the kind of rich man they approved of, because he was irrationally generous and spread around what he made. They could understand his keeping of actresses and chorus girls far better than they understood Gould, the dour family man true to his wife. Fisk’s diamonds and his carriages and his canaries were auctioned off to pay for the funeral. Victoria was sorry he was gone, and for what? Jealousy was an evil that caused great damage. It was important never to allow herself to feel it. Fortunately, James was free from its vise. Those who believed in free love, so defamed in the papers and from the pulpit, did not go about gunning each other down in cold blood. Perhaps she should incorporate that into one of her speeches.
In the meantime, she had the damage caused by the Claflin clan to contain, if only she could. Everything had been almost within her grasp—money, the fame, the power—and now it all was slipping away.
THIRTY-FIVE
IT WAS NOT THAT Elizabeth and Susan had never quarreled, but their disagreement over Victoria was deeper and more painful. Elizabeth felt close to Victoria. Her charm and wit were delightful. Like Susan, Victoria had a quick mind, but one less rigid, more innovative in her thinking. Her analysis leapt over the entire suffrage question, of which Elizabeth was at times heartily sick—such a one-string harp, as if everything that kept women down would be erased if they could walk into polling places.
Elizabeth enjoyed Victoria’s salon, especially now that the cruder family members had been exiled. Elizabeth came from an old, respected and well-off family in Johnstown, New York. She should have been more of a snob, and in some ways she was, but she saw Victoria as a truly brilliant woman and gave her credit for raising herself out of the muck into which she had been born. She admired self-made heroic figures like Frederick Douglass—and like Victoria. She missed Pearlo at Victoria’s—he had withdrawn, cooped up in his house withering away waiting for his wife to contact him from the afterlife. Although Elizabeth knew he had been Victoria’s lover, she assumed from his age and fragility that this had been an affair more of minds than the obviously mismatched bodies. Elizabeth did not share Susan’s horrified disdain of Victoria’s free love ideas and her expression of them in the lecture hall and in her bedroom. She had no desire for lovers herself, but she rather liked seeing a woman behave just as she wished, taking lovers and not so much discarding them as turning them into friends if they did not continue to please her. She liked Victoria’s daring and her total lack of shame in proclaiming how she lived. Her ideas and her actions were seamless.
Elizabeth was perfectly well aware of liaisons in the woman’s rights movement, as there had been in abolitionist groups. Anna Dickinson and Wendell Phillips had been lovers for years. Lucy Stone’s husband Henry Blackwell had long enjoyed a passionate affair with a married woman, Abby Patton. The only difference Elizabeth could see was that others concealed their adventures and Victoria did not bother, since she did not believe what she did was wrong. Elizabeth and Susan fought bitterly about Victoria until it tore them apart.
Theo had brought out his short laudatory biography of Victoria. Now he was going to Cleveland to nominate Horace Greeley, the Tribune editor, abuser of his wife Mary and opponent of woman’s rights, as the candidate of the Democrats and breakaway Liberal Republicans—who repudiated the graft in government under Grant. After all that had gone on between them, he would not support Victoria, who was insulted to tears; the breach appeared permanent. Theo was disillusioned with liberal politics, unsuccessful in his career moves—mostly because of Beecher and the scandal—but determined to reach a position of power where he would overshadow his onetime mentor, now his enemy. Elizabeth, who liked Theo but had always seen him as a bit of a mental lightweight, was not as shocked as Victoria or Isabella. Isabella had drawn the story of the Beecher-Tilton romance out of Victoria and come to Elizabeth for confirmation. Elizabeth told her of the melodramatic night in Brooklyn.
Isabella wrote her brother to come forward and be truthful. He begged her to remain silent, hinting at suicide. Isabella was naïve to believe Beecher would abandon his extremely well-paid position as head of the influential Plymouth Church to appear on a platform at Victoria’s side proclaiming publicly what he practiced privately—the implications of his gospel of Love. Beecher had just brought out the first volume of his life of Jesus and had never been more famous. He was not about to sacrifice book sales or lecture fees. He was even recommending soap and liniment in advertisements for a handsome price.
The National’s convention was fast approaching. Victoria announced that it would be a joint convention of the National and her People’s Party, infuriating Susan. At the planning meeting the day before the convention was to open, Susan attacked Victoria and Elizabeth protested. How dare Susan try to impose her notions of morality on everyone? She was behaving like that fanatic Comstock who was running around New York arresting free thought people for daring to have ideas different from his small-town background. Everything he disagreed with was obscene. Susan was being just as narrow-minded; she did not approve of the truly radical platform of the People’s Party and thus she wanted to deny Victoria and her supporters the use of Steinway Hall.
Elizabeth rose to her feet. “Susan, if you ram this through, I will resign!”
“I will not let the National be corrupted by the ideas and practices of Woodhull!”
They glared at each other, as angry as either ever had been. Elizabeth felt as if part of her heart were being torn out of her breast. “Then I resign.”
“So be it,” Susan said, her face a mask of disdain.
Elizabeth was not about to stay away. Although Susan was presiding in her place, Elizabeth still gave the keynote address and boldly proclaimed that everyone who could should vote the People’s Party. Victoria stepped forward, seized the lectern and moved that the two conventions join as one. Still presiding, Susan refused to put the motion. Elizabeth knew why. She could sense that the majority in the hall were moved by Victoria and wanted to support her. Elizabeth was delighted when Victoria refused to relinquish the podium and began speaking in her impassioned oratory about how beautiful the world could be if they would join to overcome corruption, inequality and oppression. Elizabeth noticed after a few minutes that Susan had left the platform. Was she going to walk out of her own convention? Elizabeth shook her head sadly. Susan would not share the platform with Victoria. Suddenly the lights went out. Someone had turned off the gaslights, leaving the hall completely dark. Women were screaming in fear.
Victoria went on speaking extemporaneously for several minutes, but no one was listening. Women were trying to escape, bumping into each other, occasionally shrieking, pushing, trying to force their way toward the doors, which opened wide. Victoria stopped and turned to Elizabeth, as if she could see in the dark. “What has happened? Is it a fire?”
“It’s Susan,” Elizabeth said.
Victoria took her arm. “Come. I’ll get you out of here. She’s a strong woman in her way, isn’t she?”
The next day Victoria was nominated at Apollo Hall by the group calling itself the Equal Rights Party. Frederick Douglass was chosen as her vice presidential running mate—without his permission, but w
hen he was notified the next day, he did not repudiate them. He seemed amused but not affronted. In spite of their disagreements about the Fifteenth Amendment, in spite of some of the inflammatory and racist things Elizabeth had said when she was infuriated by giving the vote to Negro men and denying it to all women, they remained friends.
Victoria launched her campaign and Susan retired to gather her forces. Isabella was buoyant. She was writing regularly for the Weekly under a variety of pseudonyms, praising Victoria’s campaign. Susan decided to support Grant for a second term. Elizabeth was disgusted. The Grant administration was corrupt to the core. One scandal followed another until it seemed there was no one in the White House, the Cabinet or Congress untainted by bribery. The Union Pacific Railroad had distributed shares of Crédit Mobilier among Congress like party favors to buy their votes.
Now Theo was promoting a Southern strategy for Horace Greeley, that white-coated worm, promising an end to Reconstruction, while the papers were ignoring Victoria’s campaign—except for Thomas Nast, the acid cartoonist of Harper’s, who had helped bring down Boss Tweed. He was attacking Victoria as Mrs. Satan.
Victoria came to Elizabeth extremely upset. “I am being pilloried. My lecture engagements are canceled in city after city. And to add to everything else, my first husband, Dr. Woodhull, died in our home.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. What did he die of?”
As usual, Victoria was blunt. “We have been trying various doctors to get him off morphine. This new doctor cut his dosage too quickly. I’ve been so busy I didn’t see what was happening. He died overnight. Now my idiot sister Utica is swearing to the police that he was murdered—as if I haven’t done everything for him I could. He rescued me from my family and gave me my first real education. He loved Byron and Byron loved him. Why would I want to hurt him?” Victoria ran her hands through her abundant black hair. She was letting it grow again, after keeping it short for the last two years. “Now our landlord is evicting us from the house I love.”