Madame de Ford considered my words. “Why Minnie?”
I shrugged. “I’ve always had a fondness for the girl, and she has a sweet temperament that I think would suit Byron’s needs well.”
“Does she know of your son’s condition? What if she refuses?”
“Then you’ve lost nothing and we can pretend this conversation never took place.”
“How much are you offering?”
“What is left on her contract plus half to make up for your temporary loss of a worker.”
Madame de Ford clenched and unclenched her jaw as she thought this over. Finally, she called one of her girls to fetch Minnie. The girl arrived quickly, shoulders bent and eyes downcast as though she expected a punishment.
“Oh, don’t look so dour, girl. I’m not about to send you to the gallows.”
Minnie dared look up then, meeting Madame de Ford’s eyes.
“Mrs. Woodhull has something she would like to ask you.”
I turned to Minnie. “How would you like to work for me?”
Minnie wrinkled her brow. “Doing what, ma’am? Are you opening your own house?”
Of course the girl would think that. This was the only work she had ever known.
I shook my head. “I need someone to care for my son. He is a few years older than you but has the mind of a young child and he cannot speak, though he has ways of communicating you will learn in time. But he is the sweetest child you will ever meet.”
“So I would be a caretaker to him?”
“And a companion, yes. You will be paid well for your services.”
Minnie looked to Madame de Ford. “What about my contract?”
“Mrs. Woodhull is taking care of that. You will leave here in no debt to me.”
Minnie turned back to me, her eyes shining. “You would do this for me? With no conditions?”
“None,” I promised. “You would be free to quit if you find the work is not suitable for you.”
Minnie nodded, suppressing a smile. “Yes, I will work for you.”
I breathed a sigh of relief, and Madame de Ford did the same, only hers was of resignation.
“Go pack your things, Minnie, while Mrs. Woodhull and I finish our business here,” she said.
That night, when Minnie was tucked safely into bed with Tennie, and Zula and Byron were asleep in their room, I turned to my husband, who lay awake beside me. I wanted to talk about Minnie, to make sure he was comfortable having yet another person in our rapidly expanding household. Plus, I wanted to broach a few delicate subjects with him.
“That was a fine thing you did for Minnie today,” James said as though reading my thoughts. “But we cannot expect her to sleep in the same bed with Tennie forever. We should probably look into finding a house of our own, especially if our family continues to grow. We have Minnie now, and Stephen is here more often than not. We can’t impose on Katherine’s hospitality much longer no matter how much we pay her.”
“You make a good point. Plus, my father has been hinting that my family needs a better place to live.” My entire family—mother, father, brothers, sisters, and their spouses and children—were all crammed into two rooms, sleeping atop one another like flowers crushed in a child’s poesy. “He is right. With all of our good fortune, the least we can do is buy them a house or find one of our own that is large enough for them to live in as well.”
James grumbled, “I don’t like the idea of your family living with us. Your mother already thinks I steal from you. Now with Ester’s prophesy, it seems like too much risk.”
I turned my head so I could face him. “You think I don’t see that? They will be in our home all the time anyway. They are like ants. Once one gets in, you can be sure the rest of the colony will follow. The only way we could escape them completely is to move out of the city, and that didn’t work out too well when we came here. Plus, if they live with us, we will be paying for only one home.”
“But it is not as though we are short on money.”
I sat up. “No, but I’ve been thinking of other possible uses for our funds. All this talk with you and Stephen has made me want to take action. Hiring Minnie was a small first step, a way I could affect change here, in our lives. Now I want to expand, to work on behalf of all women. I want to prevent as many as possible from feeling the shame and sting of abuse.”
James levered himself into a sitting position as well. “What are you thinking?”
“It will be years before I can work my way up in the suffrage movement, and even then, I doubt Miss Anthony or Mrs. Stanton will concede their leadership positions before death claims them. While I still wish to work with them, I’ve thought of a way of going around them as well. If women want true rights, women need to be in power, yes?”
James nodded slowly, as if wary of agreeing too openly until he heard me out.
“Well, I’ve already broken one barrier to women by opening our firm and showing we can be successful in business. Why not in politics as well? We’ve made plenty of connections.”
“You are saying you wish to run for office?” James’s voice was skeptical.
“Yes.” I bit my lip and took in a deep breath. I let it out with a puff before continuing. “But not just any office. The one that can truly affect change.” I clasped his hands. “Do you remember the night Demosthenes instructed us to come to New York? He said I was named for a queen and that I would become queen of this land. James, it’s time. I want to run for president.”
APRIL 1870
Scarcely a fortnight passed between James’s first spluttering of “You want to what?” and my formal announcement of my candidacy for president. Each time I explained my reasons, along with my qualifications, it came down to the same set of basic points. Tired of repeating myself, I set them down in the first of a number of columns contracted in the New York Herald—thanks to Tennie’s relationship with Johnny.
“You couldn’t ask for better timing,” Stephen assured me when I voiced uncertainty about announcing my candidacy two and a half years before the election. “The suffrage movement is badly divided right now. Lucy Stone, Henry Ward Beecher, and their ilk want to step back and take the fight state by state, while Miss Anthony and her group are forging ahead with their national strategy. They need someone who is neutral to step in and lead them on a path that can bring both sides back together. Whoever can do that will have the attention of the whole country. And if you don’t do it soon, Anna Dickinson will beat you to it. She’s already got Theodore Tilton’s support to be the leader of a unified party.”
In my mind, I sneered Anna Dickinson’s name. The woman already had everything I’d ever wanted. She was a famous lecturer on women’s issues and could command sold-out audiences from the East Coast to the wilds of the West. I’d be damned before I’d let that blue-blooded pompkin beat me to the head of the women’s movement. What reason could Anna have to want to lead us? She certainly didn’t understand how the law oppressed women. She wasn’t even married. How could she understand? But I knew all too well. Women deserved to have a leader who was not only passionate and well-informed, for any fool could become so, but one who had experienced the pain and degradation we were fighting against.
“You’re right. Whether or not men wish to admit it, women’s suffrage will be the issue of the next election. The Republicans have yet to put forth a rallying topic since their abolition victory, and the Democrats seem not to care about anything. If we can force the issue, we can capture the voters.”
Stephen nodded. “It will be all the stronger because you are a woman. I’m pleased at how fast you are learning the political landscape.”
Over the next few days, I expanded upon what I wished to say. Then James and Stephen gave it a finishing finesse, molding my ideas into the type of language the public was used to seeing from political candidates and adding the basis of what would become my platform—formalities far beyond my knowledge, at least at that point.
When I opened the paper on
Saturday, April 4, before office hours began at the firm, my heart swelled with pride. There was my soul’s desire in black and white under the headline, “The Coming Woman: Victoria C. Woodhull to Race for the White House – What She Will and What She Won’t Do.”
“As I happen to be the most prominent representative of the only unrepresented class in the republic, and perhaps the most practical exponent of the principles of equality, I request the favor of being permitted to address the public through the Herald. While others of my sex devoted themselves to a crusade against the laws that shackle the women of the country, I asserted my individual independence; while others prayed for the good time coming, I worked for it; while others argued the equality of woman with man, I proved it by successfully engaging in business; while others sought to show that there was no valid reason why women should be treated, socially and politically, as being inferior to man, I boldly entered the arena of politics and business and exercised the rights I already possessed. I therefore claim the right to speak for the unenfranchised women of the country, and believing as I do that the prejudices which still exist in the popular mind against women in public life will soon disappear, I now announce myself as a candidate for the presidency.
“I am well aware that in assuming this position, I shall evoke more ridicule than enthusiasm at the outset. But this is an epoch of sudden changes and startling surprises. What may appear absurd today will assume a serious aspect tomorrow. I am content to wait until my claim for recognition as a candidate shall receive the calm consideration of the press and the public. The blacks were cattle in 1860; a Negro now sits in Jeff Davis’s seat in the United States Senate. The sentiment of the country was, even in 1863, against Negro suffrage; now the Negro’s right to vote is acknowledged by the Constitution of the United States. Let those, therefore, who ridiculed the Negro’s claim to exercise the right to ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,’ and who lived to see him vote and hold high public office, ridicule the aspirations of the women of the country for complete political equality as much as they please. They cannot roll back the rising tide of reform. The world moves.
“All that has been said and written hitherto in support of equality for women has had its proper effect on the public mind, just as the anti-slavery speeches before secession were effective; but a candidate and a policy are required to prove it. My candidature for the presidency will, I confidently expect, develop the fact that the principles of equal rights for all have taken deep root. The advocates of political equality for women have, besides a respectable known strength, a great undercurrent of unexpressed power, which is only awaiting a fit opportunity to express itself.
“The simple issue of whether woman should not only have this complete political equality with the Negro is the only one to be tried, and none more important is likely to arise before the presidential election. These important changes can only be expected to follow a complete departure from the beaten tracks of political parties and their machinery; and this, I believe, my canvass of 1872 will affect. I have deliberately and of my own accord placed myself before the people as a candidate for the Presidency of the United States, and having the means, courage, energy and strength necessary for the race, intend to contest it to the close.”
It was done. It was there for the whole country to read. A woman was running for president. And not any woman—one who had a history of breaking down barriers in the very halls men held sacred and would like to cement them out of.
Some men would snicker and dismiss me as yet another crazy suffragist, while others may see me as an object of curiosity to be watched simply for my oddity. Then some would hate me for this simple act, for daring to do what many would never consider—and several of those may well have been my clients.
My stomach clenched as I considered the implications on my fledgling business. I had been so caught up in the glory of declaring myself a candidate I hadn’t stopped to think I may hurt Tennie, not to mention our main source of income. What if dissenters broke into the firm again or worse?
My burst of anxiety was temporarily assuaged when I read the highly favorable editorial the Herald had printed along with my letter, supporting the Sixteenth Amendment and encouraging women to vote for me. That was a major coup; to have the backing of a major paper upon declaring my candidacy went a long way in establishing myself as a legitimate candidate.
I likely would be receiving visitors and well-wishers all day, in addition to the usual clients, so if I was going to reply, I had to do it now. I picked up a pen and tried to order my thoughts of gratitude to the paper and its editor. Normally I would have had James rewrite it in his more elegant hand, but I wished them to know this one was genuine. When finished, I signed it as I would all other documents from this moment forward: Victoria C. Woodhull, Future Presidentess.
Three days later, we embraced another much needed change as James, Zula, Byron, Tennie, Minnie, and I bid Great Jones Street farewell and moved a few blocks north to a mansion in the fashionable, moneyed Murray Hill neighborhood.
I chose the four-story brownstone at 15 East Thirty-Eighth Street between Madison and Fifth because it was the tallest on the block, as befit the home of a queen. Set apart from its neighbors by a generous plot of land, the house was surrounded by oak, maple, and pine trees so tall and thick they likely had memories pre-dating the Revolutionary War. Sprawling before them was an oval garden dotted with carefully maintained flowers in their first budding of the spring: cheerful yellow and white jonquils; clusters of purple, white, and gold crocus; and spikes of fragrant hyacinth.
We emerged from the carriage at the foot of two staircases that fanned out from a granite foundation to lead upward toward the massive black walnut door. Scrolling wrought-iron banisters led the eye upward toward two ten-foot parlor windows with black walnut sashes. Above them were twin balconies jutting out from the stone façade, supported by Corinthian columns.
Standing on the staircases in formal lines, six on each side, was the household staff Mr. Vanderbilt had helped us secure: a tall, thin man with regal bearing; an equally tall younger woman who had the serious posture and tightly wound bun of a schoolmarm; a plump woman with wild blond curls tucked beneath a chef’s cap; two young girls who clustered around her like assistants; half a dozen maids and footmen; and a man I guessed was a gardener.
“Welcome to your new home, Colonel Blood, Mrs. Woodhull,” the tall man greeted us like a steward of old. “I am Mr. Cross, your butler.” He gestured to the woman next to him. “This is Helena Beauchamp, your housekeeper.”
Tennie poked me in the side. “Who would have thought these two country bumpkins would have a dozen servants by age thirty? Momma’s gonna faint when she sees this.”
After introducing the rest of the staff, Mr. Cross led us inside. Though I had been on a brief tour of the house before James signed our lease, this was the first time I was truly at leisure to marvel in the luxury that was now mine, decorated according to my exacting instructions. The entryway of polished marble with its white, green, carmine blue, and gold frescoed ceiling depicting satyrs, cupids, seraphs, and the old Greek gods feasting in their heaven along with gilded mirrors and gold-and-crystal chandeliers combined what I liked most about Mr. Vanderbilt’s classic style with the French extravagance of Miss Woods’s parlor. Light filtered down through a pale stained-glass dome in the center, casting rainbows willy-nilly on the walls and floor.
The parlor was one of the largest rooms, its patterned violet-and-cream curtains giving way to deep blue silk-covered couches and chairs. Niches in each corner boasted marble statues of great thinkers of the past—Aristotle, Plato, and Shakespeare among them—for this was where I would receive guests, and I wished it to convey both my feminine sense of style and the masculine gravitas of my mind. The place of honor above the fireplace was reserved for a bust of Demosthenes, to whom I’d dedicated the house in gratitude for his unfailing guidance.
Before us rose a wide, gently curving staircase w
ith a delicate iron-and-wood banister that led up two flights. At the top of the first flight, where the stairway split into two along a hallway lined with white doors, was a single room with glass French doors, its far wall a semi-circle of glass looking out upon the lush back lawn. Seating was arranged to complement the view yet not obstruct the eye from the potted ferns, palms, and vines growing along the walls. Mixed in were clusters of orchids and other exotic flowers along with gilded cages containing small songbirds, whose sweet chirps could not fail to brighten any mood.
The Claflins, who were due to arrive later that day, would move into that floor while Tennie, James, the children, Minnie, and I occupied the uppermost floor. Stepping into the hall on the third floor, I relaxed my shoulders and took my first truly deep breath of the day. It was silent, for the noises the maids and footmen made conveying our trunks and setting everything in order did not penetrate this far. With any luck, the chaos that followed in my family’s wake would be shut out as well. I needed a place of sanctuary.
Tennie dropped out of the party as we reached her bedroom, allowing me to catch only a glimpse of the dark purple velvet and lilac-patterned silk she had special ordered from France to decorate her room before she shut the door. Minnie ushered the children into the suite she would share with them. Finally, James and I were left alone in the doorway of our own spacious room.
“It’s a far cry from the room we first shared in St. Louis,” James observed.
“There was barely room for a bed and washbasin, let alone a chest for our clothes.”
Now we had room enough for a large four-poster bed with gold-fringed, sage-green silk curtains and canopy plus a separate sitting area with gilt chairs and a small table, several free-standing wardrobes for each of us, a vanity for my toilet, and a white marble fireplace.
Madame Presidentess Page 17