Madame Presidentess

by Nicole Evelina

  “But you have no positive knowledge that would justify your doing so.”

  “No positive…” Catharine spluttered. “Mrs. Beecher is a virago, a constitutional liar, and a terrible woman altogether, so terrible my brother’s friends and family seldom visit. But unfaithful—no. I will hear no more of it.” She crossed her arms and turned away from me, directing her full attention to the gardens and pond we were passing.

  I snickered. “If you frequent the market, the milliner, or even your own church, you will be hard-pressed not to hear that he is in concubinage with his parishioner’s wife—it is common knowledge. And if you were a proper person to judge, which I grant you are not, you should see that the facts are fatal to your theories.” I sat back, satisfied I’d finally landed a blow that the old woman would not forget.

  Catharine raised her fist, shaking with rage. “Victoria Woodhull”—spittle flew from her mouth as if she were rabid—“I will strike you for this. I will strike you dead.”

  I looked down my nose at the woman who was clearly now my strongest enemy. “Strike as much and as hard as you please. Only don’t do it in the dark so I cannot know who is my enemy.”

  “Stop!” Catharine rang the bell for the driver. As the carriage slowed, she narrowed her eyes at me with the chilling calmness of a bird of prey. “You will know exactly whom it is who strikes at you.” As she slid out of the carriage, she added in a menacing tone, “I will strike at you in every way I can and will kill you if possible. That is a promise.”

  Light one passenger, the coachman returned me to the mansion, and I stormed up the stairs, itching to tell Isabella about how the meeting she was so sure would make us bosom friends had backfired. But the sound of raised voices inside made me pause with my hand on the doorknob.

  “Useless? I built a brokerage firm on Wall Street. How can you possibly call me useless?” Tennie’s voice was raised in anger and high-pitched in indignation.

  A snort came in reply. “Using your thighs to dupe a gullible old man into parting with his fortune.” It was our sister Utica.

  “I can think of worse ways to humbug someone,” added a male voice. It sounded like Canning.

  Why were they ganging up on Tennie?

  I quietly opened the door and peered inside. The foyer was empty. The commotion was emanating from the dining room. I peeked in, unnoticed. My mother and Utica were once again playing dress up in frocks belonging to Tennie and me. They were seated at the dining room table, which was fully set for high tea. Canning was across from them, one ankle on the other knee, dressed in a mismatched mockery of formal best, including a bowler hat even though he was indoors. The room reeked of alcohol.

  “The apple don’t fall far from the tree, does it?” Annie asked, elbowing Utica and giving her a toothless, leering grin.

  “Ma, give me some credit,” Tennie wailed, voice quavering as though she were close to tears.

  “Why can’t you be more like your sister? Victoria’s out makin’ all them speeches, and she’s gonna be president. What are you doing other than playing around with all them numbers up in your office?”

  It was time to intervene. I stepped inside. “She’s making the money that’s supporting my campaign, Ma. Not to mention putting a roof over your head, food in your belly, and”—I sniffed my mother’s cup—“drink in your cups. Don’t be so hard on her.” Drugstore brandy, the lowest form. No wonder they were all drunk.

  “So that’s all I am to you?” Tennie asked me, crossing her arms defensively. “I’m your trust fund?”

  “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

  Annie giggled, clearly enjoying the row. “Maybe you should run for office too, Tennie. First Claflin to get voted in wins.”

  I stared at my relatives, who were near to falling out of their chairs with merriment. At least Canning didn’t seem to find the situation funny.

  “I’m happy to know my career means so much to you.” I rang the bell to have the maid come take away the “tea” service. My alcoholic family clearly needed no more encouragement.

  Canning stood unsteadily and made his way over to me. He kissed my hand before I could stop him. “All in jest, my love.”

  I jerked away my hand. “I have not been your love for more than a decade. Do not touch me.”

  Canning made to respond but was distracted by the arrival of the maid, who handed me a stack of envelopes—the afternoon mail—before clearing the tea service amid protests from Annie, Canning, and Utica, who held on to her cup until Tennie forcibly removed it.

  I squinted at the top envelope, not recognizing its origin. “Who would be writing to us from Ohio?”

  “A relative maybe or a former neighbor from when we were young?” Tennie guessed. “Or perhaps it’s a contribution to your campaign.”

  “No, they all hated us. Held a collection to run us out of town. You were too young to remember. And I have my campaign funds sent elsewhere to keep them safe from sticky fingers.” I meant my father, who was known to lift checks delivered to the brokerage firm.

  Her addled mind presumably catching up to the conversation, Annie cried, “That’s mine!” She lunged at me, knocking over a candlestick and sending the centerpiece crashing to the floor.

  I easily maneuvered out of her reach and removed the contents from the envelope. A letter and a slip of paper fluttered to floor. I snatched them up before Ma could try.

  Holding it up to the light, I read the letter aloud. “‘Dear Miss Claflin. A pirate has just left this letter with me, an old woman who said she was your mother. I believe from what she said that she was crazy. She said she had been told to get three hundred dollars out of me for that letter, but as she couldn’t read, I believed that she did not know what she had been put up to. I told her it was no use. That all I knew of you was that you were a woman who honestly earned your own living. I gave her three dollars because she said she hadn’t eaten and hadn’t a cent. I asked her why she didn’t go to you. She said her daughter and her husband would send her to Blackwell’s Island, that wretched dumping ground for hopeless debtors and the insane, if she did. I write this to you to put you on your guard and return proof that the parties behind your mother mean you harm.’”

  I quickly read over the paper that had accompanied the letter. It was in Polly’s handwriting and most certainly a blackmail attempt. I pinned my mother with a merciless stare. “Is this what you meant when you said you got in touch with some old friends on your last journey home? You and Polly are back to blackmailing people? Why? Tennie and I provide for all your needs and even your selfish whims. How could you do this? Is this your idea of fun? Polly, get down here,” I commanded, raising my voice so it would carry through the floors above to a sister who could not mistake its gravity.

  Before Annie could form a response, Tennie collapsed into a chair, tears falling thickly. “What have you done? Never, never will I ever go back to that life.” She scrubbed at her cheeks, halting suddenly and staring at her mother. “You’ve written to Cornelius too, haven’t you? When I went to his house yesterday, the butler told me he wasn’t at home even though we have a standing date. Then later I received word that he no longer wished to keep our appointments.” Her tears began anew. “I believed the note was another trick of William’s, an attempt to drive us apart, but now I know. Oh, God.” She dropped her head into her hands.

  “There’s more,” I said, fingering a second envelope. “This message informs us that Mr. Vanderbilt will no longer be a contributing patron of the brokerage or the paper.” I flung the second letter at my mother and sister. “You’ve done it, Mother. You’ve ruined us. The commodore values trust above all, and now that you’ve broken that, he will never forgive us.”

  Annie made a dismissive noise. “Don’t neither of you need the old coot. You got your own money and your own jobs. Well, you do.” She waved at me. “Like I said, this one is useless.” She dipped her head, indicating Tennie. “Now, if you’d come back to your father’s busine
ss, then you could contribute to this family somethin’ proper.”

  “I will never—” Tennie began.

  “Get out, all of you,” I bellowed, shaking with rage. “I will not have such vile thieves in my house. I don’t care if you are my family.” My vision blurred with anger. “You have thirty minutes to pack your things. You too,” I added to Polly and her husband, who had arrived unnoticed during the exchange. “And you’d better believe I will have maids stationed with the silver and our jewels. If even one seafood fork or a single earring is found missing, I will bring suit before you can say spit. Do you hear me?”

  “They have nowhere to go,” Tennie said in a small voice, sounding much as she did when we were children.

  “So?”

  “At least put them up in a boardinghouse.”

  “I will do no such thing. I have spent my entire life in the shadow of their schemes. I’ll be damned before I let them ruin what we have worked so hard to build. Mark my words, not another dime of my money will be spent on the lot of you.”

  I turned, intent on storming out, but Canning blocked my path. I shoved past him, which wasn’t difficult since he was already imbalanced from drink.

  “Do I have to go too?” he asked quietly. “I didn’t blackmail anyone.”

  I closed my eyes and took in a long, ragged breath, fighting for control. “No. Go to your room for now. I’ll deal with you later.”

  He wasn’t supposed to be drinking, the doctor said so, but that was such a trifling matter in comparison to all we’d lost I hardly cared. As the door was closing behind me, a snippet of conversation rose above Annie’s wails of how she’d been wronged.

  “Don’t worry, Ma,” Tennie said. “I’ll put you and Pa up in a boardinghouse. I have money of my own.”

  I balled my hands into fists at my sides. Tennie would never learn. She was the wounded puppy who always returned to her abuser.

  Rubbing my temples, I made a decision. I may not have been able to save my family, but I might be able to save our relationship with Mr. Vanderbilt if I could show him that Tennie and I had nothing to do with our family’s scheming. Pocketing the letter from Ohio, my one precious bit of proof, I summoned the coachman.

  Three days later, after brokering a tacit truce with Mr. Vanderbilt, I sat on the stage of Apollo Hall before a sold-out crowd of suffragists and laborers as part of the National Women’s Rights Convention, only minutes away from giving the keynote address.

  Over the last few days, dozens of women had given speeches, and as a body, we had ratified my idea that women had already been given the right to vote by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Even though Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott were running the business of the meeting, the press had begun calling it “the Woodhull Convention” and the attendees “Woodhull’s Women.”

  Could it be true? Was it possible that a mere two years after attending my first convention, I was the unofficial leader of this one? The suffragists in their bloomers, breeches, and gowns chatting happily with plainly dressed Spiritualists seemed to think so, as did the businessmen, politicians, and members of the International Workingmen’s Association Section 12, who sat elbow to elbow, exchanging ideas with a contingent of madams from the local brothels. They were all here to see me, to hear what I had to say.

  Normally I would have tried to dissuade myself from such hubris, but I would need all the confidence I could get to make it through this speech. Though the crowd was made up mostly of supporters, a fair contingent of journalists were also pressed in among the crowd, ready to deliver my words to a much less forgiving public.

  While I was introduced, I fanned myself and prayed I would not faint. One would have expected Apollo Hall to be hot with so many people present on an unusually warm May night, but tonight it was suffocating. We’d discovered earlier in the day that the windows had to stay shut in order to hear the speakers over the clops and creaks of the horses and carriages outside. I sipped my water and took my place before the crowd.

  “Why do I war upon marriage?” I asked by way of introduction. “Because it is, I verily believe, the most terrible curse from which humanity now suffers, creating more misery, sickness, and premature death than all other causes combined. Sanctioned and defended by marriage, night after night, thousands of rapes are committed under the cover of this accursed license. I know whereof I speak.”

  A spool of stories of neglect and abuse told to me by clients over the years unwound in my mind. I could still hear their voices as clearly as the day they’d confessed their shames to me.

  “Millions of poor, heartbroken, suffering wives are compelled to minister to the lechery of insatiable husbands when every instinct of body and sentiment of soul revolt in loathing and disgust.”

  Memories of all the nights I had to submit to Canning’s drunken advances against my will assailed me—his calloused hands upon my thighs, his whiskey-soured breath in my mouth, his clammy skin rubbing against mine. Shame flooded me, bringing with it heat so strong my cheeks and neck tingled. This was why I spoke so freely—or bravely, as some said. I had to use the humiliation of my past to help free other women from similar bondage. It was the only way I, or they, would ever be free.

  I let my repressed fear, anger, and betrayal color my voice. “Prate of the abolition of slavery, there was never servitude in the world like this one of marriage.”

  A rumble flowed through the crowd as listeners commented to their neighbors. From the expressions of those in the front row, the opinions ranged from nods of agreement to scowls of indignation.

  I held up a palm to quiet the crowd. “I have asked 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. Rise and declare yourself free.” I motioned, encouraging the women to stand and cheer.

  “Women are entirely unaware of their power. If the very next Congress refuses women all the legitimate results of citizenship, we shall proceed to call another convention expressly to frame a new Constitution and erect a new government.”

  Cheers, applause, whistles of approval, and the chant “Woodhull! Woodhull!” filled the hall. The audience was replaced by a sea of white with occasional splotches of bright color as women waved their handkerchiefs.

  When I turned to take my seat, I found Lucretia Mott crying. She hugged me before I could take my seat, whispering, “You truly are an evangel.”

  It took nearly a quarter of an hour for the crowd to settle down enough that Elizabeth could speak. She gave a brief statement about my new political party before inviting me to once again take center stage.

  This time I spoke plainly, although not without conviction. “I have had ample occasion to learn the true worth of present political parties, and I unhesitatingly pronounce it is my firm conviction that if they rule this country twenty years to come as badly as they have for twenty years past, our liberties will be lost or the parties will be washed out by such rivers of blood as the late war never produced. Therefore, it is my conviction, arrived at after the most serious and careful consideration, that it will be equally suicidal for the woman suffragists to attach themselves to either of these parties. We will have our rights. We will say no longer ‘by your leave.’ We have besought, argued, and convinced, but we have failed; and we will not fail.

  “Though the right to vote be now denied, it must eventually be accorded. Women can be neither Democratic nor Republicans. They must be humanitarian. They must become a positive element in governmental affairs. They have thought little; they must be brought to think more. To suggest food for thought, a new party and a new platform is proposed for the consideration of women and men; the party, the Cosmopolitical—the platform, a series of reforms.”

  I proceeded to read the platform document, which had mostly been written by Stephen. Reactions were about as expected. Reform of the government, including a one-term presidency, br
ought some vocal agreement. The room was silent when I spoke of governmental and prison reform, while they greeted labor reform—especially the idea of an eight-hour workday—with raucous foot stomping and whoops of adulation. More cheers arose at tax reform but died to silent apathy as I explained my proposed system of national education and foreign policy.

  Finally, the moment I had been anticipating for months had arrived—my final proposal, the one that required government to stay out of personal affairs and paved the way for Free Love, which would bring an end to marriage being an iron trap for women. My words were couched in carefully arranged language so as not to arouse too much ire or undue excitement—I never called it Free Love—but several of the patrons were wise enough to connect my earlier speech about marriage reform to my call to limit the government’s involvement in personal issues.

  As I finished the closing remarks of my speech, the phrase “Free Love” began a slow ripple across the hall. I could actually follow its progress as one head turned to the next and the general level of chatter grew. By the time my speech ended, the level of applause scarcely drowned out the catcalls. I walked off the stage a woman both revered and reviled.

  By the morning, the press was crying “Free Love” as though the phrase had never before been uttered. For all my trepidation over what people were going to say, I now reveled in the coverage. The more scandalized the papers were, the more of them people bought and the more my name was on everyone’s lips. I could live with my name being temporarily associated with loose morals and marital infidelity if it meant my platform was spreading farther across the country. I still had eighteen months to help the American public understand what I truly meant by the term. If I had learned anything from Stephen in the last year, it was that the exposure could do me no lasting harm as long as I followed it up with something positive.