Sex Wars (10 page)

Two days later, she was walking with Lucretia in St. James’s Park admiring the swans when Lucretia said, “Have you forgiven Henry?”

Elizabeth turned to her in confusion. “Forgiven him for what?”

“Voting against us. Voting with his faction not to seat us.” “I

didn’t know. I didn’t know, Lucretia.” No, she would not lightly forgive him.

Lucretia was more than twenty years older than Elizabeth, but they felt like sisters, joined in their politics, their tastes, their courage. Elizabeth had been appalled that the movement to free the slaves could not endure freeing women to speak and vote. She felt debased. The rest of the time in London, Lucretia and she spent their days together, at the convention, visiting schools and prisons, museums and restaurants, shopping and sightseeing. Henry was not overjoyed by her intense friendship with Lucretia or that she was now an ally of the opposing faction to his. That was the first betrayal this fiasco brought back. In spite of more than twenty years of working together, the men had no intention of releasing their hold upon women who were once again consigned to sitting on the sidelines.

“How could they turn on us so?” Susan wrung her hands. “How could they forget all those years of fighting side by side?”

“Maybe that skirmish with Wendell just before the war meant more than we thought at the time.” Elizabeth closed her eyes for a moment, remembering the runaway wife who had come to Susan for help. Juliet Pet-tibone was married to a Massachusetts state senator who had beaten her badly when she confronted him about his other women. He took custody of their children and had her confined to a mental institution. She escaped, managed to take her daughter and flee. Susan brought them to Elizabeth, who hid them in the backyard gymnasium she had built in Seneca Falls, between the house and the apple orchard. She had put it up because little girls were not encouraged to exercise or included in calisthenics and because she did not want her sons hanging around billiard parlors in town. The older boys were now away at a school run by abolitionist allies in New Jersey. She told her younger sons and daughters that the gym was off limits because of an infestation of hornets, the same story she told Henry on his infrequent stays at home. Juliet and her daughter lived there for two months. Eventually the younger Stanton children met them and she swore them to secrecy. In the meantime, Wendell was pressuring them to produce the woman, whom he and Garrison saw as a fugitive from the law. When Susan argued that it was the same as harboring fugitive slaves, both men were furious. Wendell had sat in her parlor only a hundred yards from where mother and daughter were eating their evening meal and berated her for putting the abolitionist movement in jeopardy by interfering in a
man’s family. Elizabeth and Susan had hidden Juliet until they found a place for her in the Wyoming Territory They scraped together the money and sent mother and daughter off to a new life. Wendell had not understood their position then and he didn’t understand it now. It was time to stop trying to persuade him.

“We’ll have to go it alone,” she said to Susan as they proceeded slowly down the hall arm in arm, hearing the boom of voices through the closed doors of the auditorium. In anger, Elizabeth kicked over a brass spittoon, lifting her skirts away.

“What do you mean?” Susan stopped, turning to face her.

“We can’t count on men. We can’t count on congressmen or senators, we can’t count on judges or newspapermen. We must build a movement of women, controlled by women, with women officers and a women’s agenda.”

“I agree.” Susan clasped Elizabeth’s hands.

“We’ll start our own organization. I won’t be controlled!”

Susan stood tall and proud as a flagpole. “We’ll put our rights in the forefront and we won’t give an inch.” She seemed to shine with courage and will. Sometimes Susan looked absolutely handsome, almost radiant. It was a beauty, Elizabeth thought, that came entirely from within.

“Precisely…” Elizabeth beamed at her, squeezing her hands back. “Now let’s go to the
Revolution
office. I want to tear up the issue I was laying out and put out a call for rebellion. We’re going to war. I feel a need for some downright honest fighting.”

V
ICTORIA WAS NOT
immensely pleased but hardly surprised to answer the door of their leased town house—they had no servants yet so she was answering the door herself—and find her father Buck standing there.

“Give your old daddy a big kiss, Vickie. I had a mite of trouble finding you, but I kept on it like a hound dog on a trail and here I be. Glad to see me?”

“Of course… Where’s the rest of the clan?”

“They be coming any day now, soon as I tell them I found you. I bet Tennessee’s here too.”

Victoria sighed. She would do her best to protect her younger sister from their father’s schemes. “She is.”

“But I bet she misses her days on the open road with her daddy. Those were the times. From Cleveland to Memphis, from Cincinnati to Wheeling, we rode our wagon and we cleaned up good.” He stepped forward and eyed her. “You’re looking a little peaked but right handsome. Nice dress. Must have cost a pretty penny. You got yourself a sugar daddy?”

“We have someone who may help us. I’m not his mistress.”

“Is Tennessee?”

She wasn’t about to tell him anything he might decide to cash in on. She wouldn’t permit his trying to blackmail the Commodore, who would crush him like a beetle. “She just flirts with him. We’re operating as mediums.”

“That’s always a good in.” He surveyed the room, strolling back and forth. “Bare as a baby’s ass in here. No money for furnishings, eh?”

“We’re working on it.” The parlor had only a green plush love seat and a mirror. They were expecting an Oriental via Annie Wood that recently graced one of the Seven Sisters’ fancy brothels. That sister had just changed her decor. Victoria waved her hand at the wall. “We have gas laid on. Also water and central heating.”

“Central heating? I hear tell that’s unhealthy. Chokes you up.”

“I think freezing half to death the way we always did is harder on the health.” She turned away toward the fireplace, which was only for decoration. “James and the children are here too, of course.” Buck hated James for taking Victoria away and then protecting Tennie. Those daughters had been his to use for profit, and now James was in the way. Roxanne didn’t like him any the better, for she was jealous of the influence he wielded over Victoria. She and Utica had been Roxanne’s favorites, as Tennie was Buck’s. Roxanne had tried ineffectually to protect her from Buck, but never to the point of truly angering him, or he would beat his wife just as hard as his kids.

“We can all double up, darlin’, don’t you worry about us.”

“I’m not. We have the entire house.”

“You can’t tell me your Colonel is paying for all this.”

“We expect to be doing right well here.” God, she was slipping back
into idioms she never used. “We’ve started selling chemicals to the better houses of pleasure.”

Buck lit up. “That’s just fine, little darling. I can handle that.”

“I’ll tell you which ones you can handle. A few of them have to be dealt with by Tennie or myself.”

“Where is my sweet child Tennessee?”

“She’s out at the moment. Taking the air.” Tennie was riding in the park with Vanderbilt. He liked to race his bays every day flat out. He had terrified many a passenger over the years. Most men would only ride with him once. But Tennie understood the rules of the game, claiming vivaciously to enjoy the racing as much as the Commodore. It was not exactly a lie to say Tennie wasn’t his mistress. He couldn’t perform the sexual act, but Tennie gave him release in her daily massages. Tennie was not looking for lovers. She said she’d had enough of men to last her a few years. She wanted money, she wanted comfort, and she wanted fun. Vanderbilt was good for most of that. Victoria just had to keep Buck out of it.

Three days after Buck telegraphed them, they arrived, her mother Roxanne, her sisters Utica, Polly, Margaret Ann and children. They must have been packed and waiting, either back in Ohio or in some wayside town after their money had been exhausted, run out of another town by the law.

“My sweet baby daughter!” Roxanne, shorter than Victoria, embraced her tightly. “My angel. I been missing you something terrible.” She was wizened like an old raisin, her eyes squinting from poor vision.

“Where did you get that black eye, Mama?”

“Some fool give it to me. Like the Good Book says, if he smite ye on one cheek, turn the other.”

“It wasn’t Daddy?”

Roxanne was examining Victoria closely, touching her hair, fingering the material of her dress. Now she made a circuit of the room. “Was some sinner who said our cancer medicine made his auntie die. Where’s your darling babes?”

“Upstairs. I’ll show you.”

“Is that Colonel man around still?”

“He’s my husband, Mama. He’s working over in Jersey today with his brother.”

“Some husband. Can’t even walk straight.”

“Come.” She took Roxanne’s callused hand. “Let’s go to Zulu Maud
and Byron.” As a child, she had been tremendously close to Roxanne, who encouraged her visions, her voices, her trances. She had felt as if Buck wanted to use her powers to make money, but her mother truly believed. Her first husband hadn’t been the only drunk in the family. Roxanne liked to hit the bottle. Utica was addicted to opium, but also liked to drink until she collapsed. They were blood, and they had hidden each other from vengeful lovers and furious wives, from bill collectors and sheriffs. When she was close to dying after Byron’s birth, Roxanne had nursed her back to health. She was alive today because of her mother, and only because of her.

Slowly she was putting the house together. She did not trust Roxanne’s taste or Buck’s, but she entrusted them with shopping for simple necessities—straight chairs, a kitchen table, pots and pans and cutlery, baskets and buckets. Her mother knew a bargain when she saw one, and it was always a good idea to keep her and Buck occupied. Both Tennie and Victoria were getting money regularly from Vanderbilt. Victoria had established contact with his favorite son and his mother. But she needed a lot more than what the Commodore was giving them if she wanted to establish herself as a power for good, as the spirit of Demosthenes had bade her do.

She never permitted anyone but Tennie to accompany her to Annie Wood’s. They had struck a deep connection. She felt at ease with Annie. They confided their plans for the improvement of their lives far more frankly than Victoria shared with anyone except Tennie. Although Tennie liked Annie, when she accompanied Victoria to the brothel there was a lot of laughter and gossip but little serious discussion.

The same boisterous mood prevailed when Josie Mansfield dropped in. Victoria liked Josie, even if she was a bit simple and greedy. She would pass on what she heard Fisk say about the stock market and his machinations only because she liked the attention it brought and because she thought it made her seem knowing. That precious information meant little to her.

“I don’t have to bother with that stuff,” she said. “Jim takes care of me. I don’t need to be worrying is the market going up, is the market going down, does Daniel Drew have a corner on this or that. They sneak around behind each other’s backs. I think the only people Jim is completely open with is that weird little partner of his, Jay Gould, and me. But he’s generous to a fault. He gave his coat to a beggar he felt sorry for. Just this week, he gave me pearl earrings the size of dice. The trouble is they hurt my ears, or I would have worn them over for you ladies to see.”

“There’s a trick to heavy earrings,” Victoria said. “Place a little disk on
the other side of the ear—it balances the weight and keeps them from falling off”

“I’ll try that.”

Victoria knew that Vanderbilt was extremely interested in anything Fisk was involved in. Fisk and Gould were the only players who had ever taken Vanderbilt. He had been trying to buy up Erie stock after collecting six or seven railroads. He intended to take it away from Gould and Fisk, who controlled the stock and the board. But Gould just kept printing more stock. Gould flooded Vanderbilt with Erie he kept gobbling up until finally he realized he would never get enough to control the railroad, because Gould would make sure there was always more. They had taken the Commodore for seven million—not that he would miss it, but he didn’t like to lose. She wasn’t about to let him know how she had obtained her information. She must figure out how to feed him what she learned, just a bit at first till she was sure that what Josie and Annie were telling her was accurate.

Of Annie’s sources, she was reasonably confident. Champagne flowed freely in Annie’s brothel, and the girls were encouraged to coax the gentlemen to chat about their business affairs and politics. This was no five-minute house. Often the girls were hired for the evening, and some had regular appointments with a certain man every Tuesday or Friday. After the client left, the girls were instructed to write down everything relevant they remembered. Annie wouldn’t hire an illiterate white girl—Victoria’s own mother was illiterate—and she liked them on the bright side. Of course, many of the men liked to boast and make much of their activities, but over time, often Annie could guess who was exaggerating. Some of the mulatto girls had learned to read and write illegally under slavery or had been born free. Those still illiterate, if Annie thought them smart, she would hire. Then she’d have them study with a young man who had the run of the house on Mondays—the day they were closed—in return for his tutoring the girls in the mornings before the brothel opened for business. It occurred to Victoria, and made her smile for an instant, that Vanderbilt couldn’t have gotten a job with Annie since he could scarcely read a paragraph. Anything longer than a sentence or two he would abandon. His secretary read letters to him. Tennie and she took turns reading the newspapers aloud while he lay on his couch cursing the idiocy of politicians and people in general.

“I heard it through the grapevine that you sisters have snagged the Commodore. But he’s tight as a five-year-old’s twat. You won’t get much out of him for your troubles.” Josie fanned herself.

“So far, so good,” Victoria said. “I’m consulting the spirits for him. The physical work is up to Tennie.”

“You used not to be so fine!”

“I’m not his type, Josie. Tennessee is. He likes a bit more flesh than I can offer. I hear he was a skirt chaser in his youth.”

“His youth ending yesterday, maybe?” Annie Wood laughed. “He isn’t one of our customers or any other sporting house. Usually he chases governesses. That’s a sign of great laziness or great miserliness. He never gives away a penny. Can you squeeze blood from that stone?”

Josie chimed in, “Jim told me a story about him. Some years ago he was interested in a governess. His wife wouldn’t go away for a while, so he had her committed to a madhouse. Other people say he did that because she wouldn’t leave Staten Island and move to Manhattan. But he sure did have her locked up. Finally William, the oldest, got some doctor to swear there was nothing wrong with her and got her freed. But she’s stayed out of his way since, Jim says.”

“We dine with him regularly. He doesn’t give us diamonds or fine gowns, but he does pass over cash. He’s had mediums on call for years. When he wants something for himself, he puts out the money.”

“Mediums?” Josie laughed. “Jim doesn’t believe in that bunk, and neither do I. Table-rapping. Scary noises.”

“I do believe in the spirits. I’ve felt their presence many times. Why be surprised that the next life touches at least tangentially on this one?” Victoria leaned back in her chair, a little defensive.

“So he really believes in all that?”

Victoria was very careful what she said about Vanderbilt, for she felt if it got back to him they’d lose their sponsor. She said only what she felt he would not mind others knowing. She had heard him tell several people about his communication with spirits. “He was haunted by a ghost some years ago, that was how his interest began. He sleeps with dishes of salt under the four legs of his bed to keep them away. A medium he used to consult told him to do that.” She did not add that one ghost was that of a boy his coach had run down in the street, and the second ghost was a signalman killed on his line whose family he had refused to compensate. Those were the spirits he wanted kept away.

“And everybody thinks he’s so hardheaded. Each man has his weakness,” Josie said. “I’m sure glad that Jim’s is me.”

As Victoria was leaving, Annie gave her the usual list of the chemicals and preparations her girls would need. Their business had grown slowly at
first, but seemed to be burgeoning lately. One madam told another. It was a second source of income. Victoria didn’t like being entirely dependent on Vanderbilt’s largesse. Any patron could change his mind; every one did eventually. She confided in Annie that she was determined never to be forced to go to bed with a man she did not want for himself—because he was attractive to her physically or because he was intelligent, knowledgeable—a man who could teach her something she passionately wanted to learn. Love was a malleable thing; after all, she had loved some real losers, like Dr. Woodhull. Sex was too powerful to use for gain. It was an overwhelming force that linked her to deeper powers, and she intended to go only where its magnetism pulled her. She could never endure sexual contact with Vanderbilt, even if it had been her he had pursued and not her sister.

James was working for his brother, who ran a press in Newark. He commuted via the ferries, staying over several nights a week. Today Buck was out with the rest of the clan. Victoria had suggested they go sightseeing, recommending the Croton Reservoir—Fifth Avenue from Fortieth to Forty-second Street—a huge Egyptian-style edifice that resembled a fort. It had towers on the corners and granite walls over forty feet thick. It was a popular place for a promenade, strolling on top of those walls looking down on the city. The clan’s absence gave her and Tennie time to discuss how to begin slowly and gradually feeding the tips she got from Annie and Josie to Vanderbilt.

“His mother,” Tennie said. “He has enormous respect for his mother. When he had that huge steam yacht and sailed to Europe, he made the captain give a twenty-one gun salute as they passed her place on Staten Island. He thinks she was one shrewd lady. She lent him the hundred dollars that started him on his career.”