Sex Wars (29 page)

He stumbled into the salon where Victoria was hearing Zulu’s lessons. He was emaciated, his scraggly beard unkempt, his hair matted. He stuttered when he spoke and it took several minutes for him to address her coherently. She sent Zulu upstairs. He had not even looked at his daughter, perhaps had not guessed who she was.

“What is it, Canning?” She could not bring herself to address him in a more distant way. After all, he was the father of her children.

“I…I think I’m dying…”

“Of what?” She had a moment of fear that he might be contagious, might infect her daughter.

“Look at my hands.” He held out both bony hands before him. They were shaking so violently he could not unbutton his tattered coat.

“You’ve been drinking.”

“It’s the curse I bear.”

His pupils were dilated. He was on some drug as well. He sank to the floor and knelt there. “Wait.” She rang for the butler. Tennie and she had a staff of twelve, including the coachman, the cook, Byron’s caretaker, various maids. “Tell cook to prepare some broth. Then help me get this gentleman upstairs into the third-floor guest room.”

“Where’s my son?” Canning asked as they half carried him up the stairs between them.

“He’s in his bedroom playing with blocks. He can’t read the letters on them, but he likes to pile them up and knock them down.”

“Can I see him?”

“In the morning. We’ll get you cleaned up and into bed.” She called Tennie.

“Is that Canning? Oh my god. He’s a bum.”

“Drugs and drink. But I can’t turn him out. He’ll die in the street.”

“But he can’t stay here!”

“Why not? Everybody else in the world does.”

They got him bathed, then into bed. Victoria felt false modesty was ridiculous. After all, she had been married to the man for years. Hard years, yes, but once she had loved him. She felt little more toward him than as if he had been a dog she had owned for a pet who had run away and then been found starving and injured in the road. She would see he got proper care. She spooned broth into him.

“My darling Vickie,” he mumbled. “You’ve always been so good and kind. My wife…”

“I’m not your wife and I’m not your darling. I’m with Colonel Blood and you would do well to remember that if you wish my help and my protection. You’re the father of my two children—”

“Two?”

“The little girl who was doing her multiplication tables when you arrived—she’s Zulu Maud, your daughter as well as mine.”

“Is she…slow?”

“She’s bright and lively and sweet.” She stood. “She calls Colonel Blood ‘Father’ and you should leave well enough alone. Claim Byron, but you may not claim Zulu Maud.”

Over the next week, Canning began slowly to regain his health. Soon he was out finding opium and morphine again, shutting himself in his room, but he made himself useful with Byron. Byron didn’t care who this ragged man was. He was happy as a puppy with the attention. Canning had little else to do but take care of Byron and play simple games with him, as one would with a child who had not yet learned to speak. She let one of the caretakers go, the one she did not trust, for she had found bruises on Byron recently that she did not believe came from clumsiness, as the man insisted. Canning could share the care of Byron with the stout lady of late middle age who came in every day but Sunday to be with him.

When Zulu Maud asked her who the funny old man was, she said he was Byron’s father. “I was married to him many years ago—but you can see why I left him. Your father is a great improvement, don’t you think?”

“Daddy is smart and handsome and he goes to work every day.”

“Absolutely.” Victoria ruffled Zulu’s hair. “And we like all that. We like it very much. We wouldn’t mind if everybody in the house did the same—like your Aunt Tennie and me.”

“When I grow up, I’ll go to work every day too.”

Victoria kissed the top of her daughter’s head. “Perhaps you’ll work with me. That way, we’ll always be together.”

E
LIZABETH WAS ASTONISHED
and pleased by how efficient Isabella was proving to be. She put on the Washington convention, sparing Susan a lot of hard work. She had the same organizational gifts Susan had—the ability to stage an event, keeping the details that must be delegated on some vast list in her head and checking them off as they were done or reassigning them if a problem or delay arose. Just as Elizabeth appreciated Susan’s abilities, she was delighted with Isabella, although that delight did not prompt her to go to Washington.

Today Elizabeth was working on a speech about raising daughters, for even committed suffragists seemed uncertain what they should tell their daughters and what they should permit or urge upon them. She had raised two, which gave her credentials. She was grappling with the organization of the talk when Susan came in, breathless from walking from the train. Obviously she had been in a hurry, rushing over the icy sidewalks. It was March but still wintry. Susan cast her simple bonnet and gloves on a chair, where Amelia promptly seized them and stashed them away. Amelia stood in the doorway then, as eager as Elizabeth to find what had given the flush to Susan’s cheeks and caused her to rush from the station to the Tenafly house.

Susan knew she had an audience, so with a glint of mischief she proceeded to say how much she needed a bit of tea to warm her.

“Thee don’t look cold to me,” Amelia muttered, but she went to make tea while Susan patted her hair into its bun and then had her tea with a buttery scone Amelia had baked. Elizabeth was ready to pour the tea on Susan’s head by the time she relented. “You will never guess where I went today.”

“To hell, if you don’t stop playing with us,” Elizabeth snapped.

“I visited the offices of those women brokers the papers have been full of, Woodhull and Claflin. I met Victoria Woodhull.”

“What do you think of her? They say she and her sister are both Van-derbilt’s mistresses.”

“She struck me as intelligent, charming. She isn’t a floozy, Mrs. Stanton.”

“How would thee know?” Amelia snorted and turned half away but did not leave.

“The offices are well appointed but businesslike. She has a separate entrance for women—”

“Like a concert saloon,” Elizabeth said.

“No, Mrs. Stanton. Hear me out. It leads directly into a cozy parlor right by the sisters’ offices. Tennie, the younger, was with a client when I arrived, but Victoria joined me. Men have to enter through the front and are grilled by Victoria’s husband, Colonel James Blood, who was wounded six times in the Civil War on the Northern side. After our tête-à-tête in the women’s parlor, Mrs. Woodhull introduced me to him and his brother. There’s even one of those machines that spits out prices of stocks minute by minute.”

“Is Vanderbilt behind them? I dislike that man. He runs his railroads efficiently by squeezing his workers.”

“Mrs. Woodhull told me that the money behind the brokerage is hers and her sister’s, money they made on Wall Street. Vanderbilt has accepted stock advice from her and gives them tips in return. She says she has served as his financial adviser. She comes from poverty, a large family in Ohio. She was blunt and open with me. She has brought her entire family to New York to keep them in comfort. She said she and her sister already made seven hundred fifty thousand dollars and were prepared to help other women invest as successfully as they have.”

“Seven hundred fifty thousand dollars? I can’t imagine that much money. Did you believe her?”

“I did. I want you to meet her, Mrs. Stanton.”

“To what end? With my children in college, I have little to spare and nothing to invest.”

“I spoke to her about woman’s rights, and I found not only was she fascinated but she’s been thinking about the situation of women. She believes that ours is the cause she was born to serve, and that once she has established herself in business, she can aid our movement.”

“Oh, we could use an angel, we surely could. A woman who made her own money and wants to give us some! Susan, I share your excitement.”

“Be careful with this woman,” Amelia said. “She may be no better than she should be. They say she has been divorced.”

“If she makes a commitment to our cause, I don’t care if she’s had twelve husbands. Every woman is entitled to a few mistakes in that line,” Elizabeth said with a wince. “If women were free to have affairs as men do, many foolish marriages would be avoided, and the sum of pain in the world would diminish.”

“Mrs. Stanton! You don’t really mean that.” But Susan was amused, Elizabeth could tell from the crinkles at the corners of her eyes.

“We’ll never know, will we? I’m past the age of more than polite flirtation.”

T
HEODORE TILTON HAD BEGUN
a new suffrage party aimed at uniting the two organizations, the American and the National, over the spring and summer of 1870, but it fizzled out. The distance between the groups widened. But Theo had at least tried to make peace, and Elizabeth thought he deserved credit. With so much more money behind them, the American was outshining their National. The American had a slick well-financed journal focused only on suffrage, while the
Revolution
got deeper in debt every month. The American had the money to do a huge mailing campaign and were affiliating chapters all over the country. Their recent convention had been large.

This evening she and Susan had been invited by Tilton to dine with him and Lib. Lib would probably always feel more at home with Susan, but she had warmed to Elizabeth. In their presence, she was vivacious, full of ideas, quite different from the subdued wife. Susan and she were to meet with Theo that afternoon at Laura Bullard’s to discuss the possible transfer of their journal, too far into debt to continue. It was a sad decision, but one forced on them by their creditors. Susan was not persuaded they should let go.

Lib had seemed more confident lately, blooming. Tiny as she was, her beauty and newfound energy lit up a room. She had confided in Susan that her marriage had changed but provided no details. She said only that it had become more equal. Elizabeth wondered what that meant. Theodore had been enjoying a long affair with Laura Bullard, a widow and heir through her father to a large patent medicine fortune. A sophisticated lady who had lived in France for many years, she was an ardent believer in progressive ideas, including free love. It was one of the many clandestine affairs that percolated through the woman’s rights movement. For all the Boston contingent’s squeamishness about discussing marriage, divorce or,
God help them, sex, they were just as apt to have “affinities” as anybody in New York. Elizabeth wondered what Lib meant when she spoke of a new equality She didn’t mean that Theodore was home more or that he had given up the lecture circuit or his affairs. Still, Lib was obviously happy. The death of her little son years before had thrown her into a depression Elizabeth felt the woman had only fully emerged from that summer.

Elizabeth herself was suffering the sense of being embattled on all sides. Susan and she had been effectively thrust aside in the woman’s movement by the Boston-led American with their alignment with the Republican Party, more favorable notice in the press, their slick journal. Elizabeth was making a living and supporting her younger children through lectures. She was also subsidizing the New York apartment where Henry lived. He had a journalistic sinecure that did not begin to cover his expenses. With every issue, the
Revolution
was leaking money they did not have. She did not want to see it die, but they simply could not continue. “Susan, we must find someone with money to buy it, or at least to put money into the paper.”

“Does Theo have any money?”

“His special friend Laura Bullard does. Theo turned down a hefty bribe to support a railroad stock scheme that Henry Ward Beecher and most of the Republican establishment in Brooklyn went heartily into. Theo said his principles were worth more than could be bought. So I doubt he has money to spare. These days, you have money or you have principles.”

“I’d trust Theo more than most with the paper, if it comes to that.”

“Susan, it has come to that. We have no money to put out another issue and no one will extend us more credit. Either we pass on the
Revolution
to someone who can afford it, or it will simply cease. Do you want that?”

Susan pushed her face into her hands. “No,” she said in a muffled voice, “but to me it’s like giving away my own child.”

They took the train to the ferry, the ferry to Manhattan, a cab across and then the ferry to Brooklyn. “Look, Susan, the caisson,” Elizabeth said, standing at the rail with the wind blowing her curls so they whipped her cheeks, “They’ve started building the bridge. Perhaps when they finish, even more will come over to hear Beecher. He can preach in a stadium.” Beecher was close to President Grant and the Republican cabal that ran Brooklyn. His congregation included many of the richest and most powerful men in Brooklyn and some in Manhattan who journeyed over to Plymouth Church for his sermons on the power of love and how God had
ordained the order of things, where the deserving enjoyed riches like spreading chestnut trees, protecting the less fortunate beneath their leafy branches.

“He got rid of the articles of faith. Now all the Republican Party pooh-bahs have joined and turned Plymouth Church into their clubhouse.” Susan snorted.

“It is also said he preaches to twenty of his mistresses every Sunday.”

“Mrs. Stanton, that’s just gossip. We shouldn’t repeat such nonsense.”

Elizabeth pursed her lips. “I’m not convinced it’s gossip.”

She had never seen a building project such as this bridge. The caisson was made of lumber. Men were lowered in it down to the bottom of the East River and below. The bridge was to stand upon bedrock. It was cruel, dangerous work and several men had died already, falling, swept away in the violent currents or of the painful seizures they called caisson disease. Why did every bit of progress have to be paid for by the deaths of the workers who made it happen?

They joined the crowd rushing off the ferry, always a little dangerous in the press of bodies. The boat hook hanging on the dock was a reminder how often passengers fell into the East River and were drowned or crushed. Still she could not resist taking a last glance back at Manhattan. The steeple of Trinity stuck out above all other buildings. Masts of sailing ships bristled like so many enormous toothpicks.

That afternoon, at Laura Bullard’s house, the deal was closed with great rapidity and the
Revolution
passed to Laura Bullard and Theodore Tilton, the new editors. Theo and his mistress had papers already drawn up. Elizabeth had quietly broached the matter with Theo a few weeks before, to feel out his interest. She had not expected such a rapid response. Susan looked as if she would weep, then put on her stoical face. Dinner, it turned out, was to be at Laura Bullard’s. Lib was nowhere to be seen. Where was she, Elizabeth wondered. Laura’s house was larger and more sumptuous than Theo’s or Elizabeth’s, with a staff of servants, including a cook. The rooms were furnished with heavy draperies, a large tapestry imitating a medieval hanging with ladies and knights, fine Oriental carpets and chandeliers gaudy with gaslight. The furniture was oversized and ornately carved. Bronze statuary of shepherds and savages stood everywhere in an almost jungle confusion of bric-a-brac.

Dinner felt stiff. The food was fine and the wine excellent and free-flowing. Even Susan sipped a glass of tawny port, as letting the
Revolution
go had been upsetting for her even more than for Elizabeth. Theo was
drinking heavily and seemed to be undergoing some inner turmoil. He did not look his usual tousled handsome self, but drawn, off-color, as if he had been sleeping badly. Laura tried to soothe him, without much effect. Finally Theo exploded. “Henry Ward Beecher, who was supposed to be my true friend, my brother, has destroyed my life.”

“You mean those shenanigans with the president, the regular Republicans cutting you out of the loop?” Elizabeth was surprised he should take that so seriously, since he hadn’t been supporting Grant.

“Beecher has defiled my bed while professing friendship. And now he has made my own wife… She is carrying his child!”

Elizabeth frowned. “How can you be sure?”

“She confessed it.”

“Theo, how can you speak of defiling the marriage bed when you’ve had intimate friends for years? Here we sit in Laura’s house eating her food and drinking her wine. Can you possibly feel you are defiling Lib?” Elizabeth shook her head wearily. Men were a joke sometimes. It was fine for Theodore to have passionate relationships, but Lib was to be punished for probably the only affair of her life.

“When she first confessed her affair with Beecher, I tried to forgive him for seducing her while I was off giving lectures to pay for our home. I thought we’d all have our relationships and be friends together… But he’s a snake. He impregnated her. He lied to me, he played me false.” Theodore was tearing at his hair.

Elizabeth had never seen him so distraught. Laura and she tried to calm him. Susan stood. “I must speak with Lib.” Hurrying from the room, she went to get her cloak. It was only a matter of blocks to the Tilton residence.

Theo was ranting about how he had received Beecher into his house, tried to restore their full friendship, tried to make everything good between them, then this! His wife carrying another man’s child. It was not to be endured. Hadn’t he supported Beecher in every way, ghostwritten his articles, held his hand, edited his work?

At eleven, Theo announced he was going home. Elizabeth was not about to walk, especially so late, so Laura sent them in her carriage. When they entered the Tilton home, Susan and Lib were sitting up in the parlor. Lib ran up to him, furious. She was a full foot shorter than her husband, pregnancy thickening her waist. “You were supposed to pick me up to go to dinner with Laura. You promised!”

“Did I? I don’t think so.”

Lib screamed at him, “Liar! Liar!”

Theo stared down at her. He was a little drunk but not enough to explain his reaction. “Your child is not my child!” He pointed at her belly with an expression of deep revulsion scoring his face. “Are any of the children mine? How can I ever know?” Then he struck Lib hard across the face. Elizabeth was shocked.