Sex Wars (33 page)

Isabella seized her hand and wrung it. “Oh, dear Mrs. Woodhull. You are the savior of our movement. You will lead us like Moses out of bondage.”

Victoria kept her gaze locked with Isabella’s. “I will try. I have a vision of the grandest revolution this nation has ever seen. And the three of us here will play a great role in this. I know it.”

Benjamin marched in from the hall. “Your memorial is being set in type. I’ll use my franking and we can send out thousands of copies, also a petition we should draw up directly, to present to Congress after we have enough—impressive numbers—of signatures. We need thousands.”

Susan wrung Benjamin’s hand. “I can’t wait to tell Mrs. Stanton.”

“Where is Mrs. Stanton?” Victoria still hoped to meet her, disappointed that the philosopher, the greatest brain of woman’s rights, had not come to hear her.

“She’s back in New Jersey writing. She’s tired of conventions—she says they don’t move things forward but just act as social events and occasions for infighting. She’ll be furious with herself when she hears what she missed!” Susan did not sound at all unhappy. “She’ll see that important events do occur when women come together determined to act.”

Victoria met with the women the next day at their convention, gave them money and pledged more for a delegation to remain in Washington to lobby Congress. Isabella offered to head the group. Victoria felt reasonably sure of her now. She was smitten. Victoria was familiar with the looks that Isabella gave her, the doting glances, the fervent handclasps. When they were alone, Victoria was effusive and spoke much of the spirits. When she was with Susan, she spoke of political tactics and how they might proceed with Congress while the fire was still lit.

Victoria received a note from the president’s wife, Julia Grant, complimenting her on the memorial. Susan told her that Mrs. Grant was sympathetic to the movement. Then an invitation came from President and Mrs.
Grant inviting her to tea at the White House. No one in woman’s rights had ever been invited to meet with the president, Susan said in great excitement, hugging her. She liked Susan’s forthright manner. Susan might be an aging virgin, but she had a shrewd mind and she was not a prude. She kept her eye on the goal. Isabella was flightier, more emotional, more prone to enthusiasms and visions and extravagance. Susan would stand by her as long as she was useful. Isabella was a little in love with her, although she would never have phrased it that way to herself. As long as Victoria kept Isabella feeling special, the Beecher woman would never waver.

The visit to the White House was formal and stiff. But for Victoria, the supreme moment came when the president showed her the Oval Office, shook his finger at her and, pointing to the presidential chair, said, “Someday you will occupy this chair, no doubt, the way you’ve been playing the politician here.”

When Victoria repeated that to Susan, Susan laughed. “He was teasing you.”

Victoria shook her head. She knew it was the spirits speaking through the president. “Nonetheless, I think I’ll run for president.”

Isabella clutched herself in excitement. “What a truly excellent idea!”

“Why on earth would you do that?” Susan asked. “We need the right to vote long before we can elect a woman to any office.”

Victoria smiled serenely. She knew she was called on to lead a mighty crusade. “It’s a way to raise issues and force the other candidates to discuss woman’s rights.”

“That’s quite clever,” Susan said. “It should garner publicity for our cause.”

Victoria rode back on the train to New York with Susan while Isabella remained in Washington to head the small delegation of women who would lobby Congress. Susan was eager to introduce her to Cady Stanton. She must make a favorable impression on Stanton or she would not have the leverage in the movement that she needed.

That week,
Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly
carried her memorial in full, and the week after, it bannered her intention to run for president. The idea of running was all her own. Had not the spirits promised her that she would be a great leader and had they not spoken through Grant? Everything was working out according to plan. They had come to New York, Tennie and she, and snared Vanderbilt. They had made enough money to feel rich. She had encountered men and women of ideas who educated and stimulated her. She had become famous. Reporters wrote up everything
she did. She had entered the woman’s rights movement with a great splash and now she was counted among its leaders. All was happening as the spirits had instructed her so many years before, that she would be rich and famous and lead a great cause.

“Running for president is fine, so long as you don’t take it too seriously or waste time electioneering,” James said. “It gets your name in the papers. It could provide you a springboard for the lecture circuit. But otherwise, best to treat it as a publicity stunt.”

She felt an unusual anger toward him, but she concealed it. He did not believe in her as she believed in herself. His attitude belittled her. She decided she would not open herself and her plans to him as fully as she always had. She felt just a sliver of distance between them. She said nothing and she did not act any differently toward him, but in her heart she knew he did not believe in her as fully as she had always hoped.

She had to return to Washington again briefly, because Isabella, Benjamin and she had been invited to lecture at Lincoln Hall on constitutional equality. Isabella came to her—Victoria was staying with Benjamin, as his family was out of town—almost in tears. “I have never spoken to a large audience before. How can I? I just cannot do it, Victoria.”

“Do you remember how frightened I was when I first began to speak before the joint committees of Congress? I know you saw how I was trembling. Call on the spirits, Isabella. They will aid you. The spirits are inspiring and protecting you! You need only feel their presence, draw upon their aid, and you will succeed.”

Victoria was far more confident this time. Her ability to memorize stood her in good stead, because she could speak without a written text, apparently extemporaneously. Audiences liked that. They felt that a speaker who did not read her speech knew her stuff.

Benjamin was powerful, as always, a master of rhetoric. The surprise was Isabella. Victoria was sure that Isabella had been asked because of her connection with the powerful, famous and respected Beecher clan. But Isabella spoke well. Her voice was higher-pitched than Victoria’s but carried well and sounded convincing. She understood what she was discussing—she had a kind of legal mind, in spite of her effusiveness and her romantic side. She made an elegant presentation, dressed in mauve velvet and white satin with a huge bustle that emphasized her tiny waist, amethysts plaited into her hair and at her throat. The audience was silent and engrossed. She lacked Butler’s rhetorical flair or Victoria’s ability to fascinate, but she was coherent, logical and persuasive. Isabella was thrilled with her own success.

“This is what I was born for. I could never draw or paint, never write like Harriet, I have no gift for educating girls like Catherine—but I have discovered at last my own true gifts. I have found my métier at last—because of you, dear Victoria. Because of you!”

Victoria was growing accustomed to women developing crushes on her. Her charm worked on women as well as men. She had always had women friends, but these new conquests were a more accomplished type than she had encountered before. It was all going very well indeed.

E
LIZABETH KNEW ONLY
what she read in the papers, accounts of Victoria Woodhull addressing the joint committees of Congress, apparently triumphantly. There were, of course, cartoons—Woodhull as a schoolmarm lecturing Congress, Woodhull as a circus performer riding an elephant labeled Benjamin Butler. But most of the coverage was surprisingly respectful. Susan was going to gloat over her that she had missed the most spectacular and meaningful advance of their movement in several years. She could hardly endure waiting till Susan appeared. She considered going off by train to Washington, but that would be too abject—to arrive after everything important had happened, as a sort of caboose to the powerful engine Mrs. Woodhull seemed to embody.

Finally Susan appeared, rosy-cheeked and scarcely able to take the time to throw aside her cloak and gloves before launching into an account of the Washington adventure, as Elizabeth had been calling it to herself.

“So Isabella stayed in Washington?”

“She’s heading our delegation. Woodhull is paying. Also Senator Butler has sent out thousands upon thousands of copies of Woodhull’s memorial along with petitions requesting that Congress make a declaration of our right to vote according to the Constitution.”

“Is she paying for all this?”

“It’s free, Mrs. Stanton. The petitions are going out on Senator Butler’s franking privilege. We could never have afforded this.”

Elizabeth asked Amelia to make coffee. “We certainly couldn’t. Now I’m sorry we let go of the
Revolution.
Perhaps Woodhull would have helped us with our debts.”

“We still have them. I don’t know how I’ll ever pay them off.…If you could manage to contribute something?”

“Susan, I have my younger children still to support. I have this house, where you are a member of the household whenever you wish. I live off the lecture circuit, the same as you. I have no money to spare. Nothing!”

“I wish we could ask Woodhull to pay off a creditor or two, but she has her own paper.” Susan pulled a copy from her reticule.

Elizabeth poured them both big mugs of coffee with hot milk. “It’s pretty progressive. She seems bright. Is she?”

“You can judge for yourself, Mrs. Stanton.” Susan drank her coffee, holding the cup in both hands to warm them. “I’ve invited her for luncheon next Sunday. Here.”

“Will she come?” Elizabeth turned to Amelia. “Bring Susan some soup.”

“She’s eager to make your acquaintance. She was bitterly disappointed that you weren’t in Washington.”

“All right, Susan, admitted: I’m sorry I didn’t go. But I’ve been to so many of these conventions, I’m heartily sick of them.”

“It was a most hopeful and stimulating experience, Mrs. Stanton. I’m convinced Woodhull will be a great asset for our movement.”

In the papers the next morning was an account of President Grant receiving Woodhull at the White House. Elizabeth shook her head in wonder. In a couple of weeks, Woodhull had accomplished more for the cause than they had been able to do in the last year. Sunday she would meet this marvel. All that buildup and probably she would meet someone flashy, arrogant or just a pawn in a male game. There were always rumors circulating that the
Weekly
was written by various men, from Woodhull’s husband to Stephen Pearl Andrews. Pearlo was an old friend of hers; she could ask him directly. She dashed off a note at once.

The first issue of the
Revolution
was out. Susan looked at it and threw it across the room in a rare fit of anger. Elizabeth read it, sighing and muttering over the watered-down paper full of homilies and arguments that women and men had common interests and should all just get along. She
was not overly fond of Tilton these days, but what could they do? She and Susan had sold it to Laura Bullard for a dollar so that it would continue—but what a pallid continuation. She felt as if they had given away a child and now that child was being turned into a simpering fool. Certainly this paper would anger no one, inspire no one. Isabella was upset with the change and quit as literary editor. Besides, she was immensely busy in Washington carrying out the great work that her dear Queen, as she called Victoria, had given her. Now “Queen” was a common term of endearment among women Elizabeth knew, but this particular usage made her wince. Isabella was enamored, there could be no other word for it. Isabella had that enthusiastic side, a dither of spiritualism.

Elizabeth liked the spiritualists well enough—they were a far gentler less doctrinaire religious group than most, and more egalitarian. The Quakers and the spiritualists were the only religions that gave women a strong role—and among spiritualists, many leaders and prominent mediums were women. Elizabeth had seen how comforting spiritualism was to mothers who had lost children, which included most women. A mother could feel her beloved son or daughter had simply passed onto a higher plane of being where they were still evolving and from which they could communicate. It was marvelously comforting to the bereft, and most Americans were often enough in mourning. After all, just about every family had a son or brother or husband killed in the Civil War.

She had lost her faith years before—no, she did not like that phrasing, suggesting she had misplaced it absentmindedly like a glove. She had fought her way free. She had wrestled with it like Jacob with the angel, and she had scars to prove the battle. She was not done yet. At some point in her life, she would take on religion and its role in denigrating women and keeping them subservient and compliant. It was a great task she promised herself she would tackle in her elder years.

Sunday arrived and Elizabeth was impatient to finally meet this Wood-hull, who had so enraptured Susan and Isabella. To prepare a proper lunch for the woman who had been asked to address a joint committee of Congress and invited to the White House and lauded as a successful stockbroker, she needed to put out a meal that was elegant. She joined Amelia and the maid Maureen in the kitchen to assist in the complicated preparations.

At eleven-thirty, she put on one of her better dresses, a blue and green and gold taffeta walking dress. Susan was dressed in a gray walking suit with a fine garnet pendant one of her young admirers had pressed on her.
Amelia wore Quaker gray and white as she set out vases of camellias from the conservatory.

Just before twelve, they heard a knocking. Amelia opened the door and ushered in a young woman, taking her fur-lined cape. The woman was dressed in black, an unusually simple dress but finely tailored and of the best silk. She wore a single white rose at her throat. The startling thing about her, besides the simplicity of her dress, was her beauty. Elizabeth had been pretty in her day, certainly, and Isabella had been considered so, but Victoria Woodhull was simply and outstandingly beautiful. Her eyes were the most striking feature, being a singularly bright and piercing blue that seemed to gather light in their direct, forceful gaze.

Woodhull greeted Susan warmly, hugging her. Then she approached Elizabeth where she sat, seizing her hand. Woodhull’s grasp was strong. “To meet you at last fulfills one of my ambitions,” she said. Her voice was also striking, low-pitched but quite carrying, a little huskiness never affecting its clarity. “I’ve admired you for years. You’re a unique and powerful voice of liberation. The breadth of your interests and your erudition are extraordinary. You stand head and shoulders above us all.”

“You flatter me,” Elizabeth said, but did not really think so. She had been so embattled in the last couple of years that praise was like balm ladled over her sore ego. “You’re a very striking woman. Everyone in the press and in the movement has been talking about nothing but you.”

“If it’s useful to the movement, good,” Woodhull said.

They sat almost knee to knee, Woodhull having dragged an overstuffed chair almost effortlessly near the rocker. Susan brought a straight chair up to them and all three sat tête-à-tête. Amelia was unnecessarily fussing with the vases and papers scattered about. “Amelia, don’t stand there. Take a seat. I know you’re as curious about Mrs. Woodhull as I am,” Elizabeth said dryly.

Amelia took a seat on a davenport, sitting dead center on the edge of the cushion lest she be thought to be taking liberties in the salon.

“I am prepared to offer ten thousand to your association. Some of it can be in the form of printing. We have female typographers working for us at the
Weekly.”

“Ten thousand would be of great assistance to us,” Elizabeth said, a wide smile spreading across her face.

Susan added, “I suppose it’s too late to get the
Revolution
back.”

Woodhull smiled. “We already have a weekly paper. You would both be most welcome in its pages.”

They thanked her, although in truth Elizabeth had no idea when she could write anything she had not already pledged to do. “You had a great success in Washington.”

“I hope my ideas were persuasive. I was so happy when your association asked me to repeat my memorial to your convention.”

“You were the star of the convention,” Susan said fervently.

Woodhull waved that away. She had fine long-fingered pale hands. “We managed, all of us, to stir things up in Washington.”

“Amelia, perhaps we could eat?” Amelia and Elizabeth stood. Amelia went off to serve, with the help of Maureen, and Elizabeth led the way into the dining room. She was pleased to see Amelia had placed lilies as a centerpiece. Having a conservatory was a luxury she passionately appreciated. It was small, not a place she could sit and read among the plants, but it sufficed to fill vases in the house.

Amelia and the maid had prepared a rich and buttery terrapin soup. It was a lot of work, but Amelia had been willing to undertake it since this was an occasion. Elizabeth had left the disgusting part of the terrapin preparation to them, cooking beet and rice soubise and a pie from dried apples that would end the meal. Amelia and she had gutted squabs the night before and hung them. They were the main course.

Woodhull was a dainty eater but put it away. She complimented Amelia, who answered, “Maureen and Elizabeth did part of the work. Elizabeth is a fine cook, thee should realize. ’Tis one of her many gifts. She has a touch with pastry that equals any woman’s.”

Over the soup, Woodhull said, “You should be aware that the Boston women don’t trust me. I am not a lady in their eyes.”

“We have too many ladies, and too few useful women,” Elizabeth said. “I’m not interested in gossip about your past or your lovers. I’m interested in your ideas and your abilities.” And your money, Elizabeth added with sour honesty to herself. It was dreadful to be so mercenary, but as she was always reminding Susan, movements ran on money and theirs had run out. “The Boston ladies find me a bit rank too. I write and lecture upon topics they consider unmentionable—divorce, childbirth, sexuality, contraception, abortion. They think it shocking to discuss such things in public. But I’m old enough to remember when it was shocking for a woman to lecture about anything. If the Grimke sisters had listened to their critics, we might have had slavery for another twenty years. They spoke powerfully and moved audiences.” Elizabeth frowned. “I have a question for you. What does it mean that you’ve announced that you’re running for president?”

“Consider this. If a woman comes into a city and gives a speech on woman’s rights, perhaps the papers will cover it and perhaps not.” Victoria put down her spoon and leaned slightly forward. “But if a woman bold enough to run for president comes into that same city and gives a speech, it will be in every newspaper.”

“Very shrewd,” Elizabeth said.

There was a calm certainty in this woman that Elizabeth found attractive. Woodhull was much less fussy than Isabella. She focused attention on herself without seeming to try. Her beauty certainly helped, but Elizabeth had met beauties whom people admired when they entered a room and then ignored. They were lovely wallpaper. Woodhull was a presence. She did not play with her dress or her gloves or her necklace, she did not fidget with her hair or the folds of her gown. She sat quite still and radiated power and certainty.

“I believe, and I know Isabella does also, that it’s our time at last.” Woodhull leaned forward again, staring into Elizabeth’s eyes. “We must strike at the core of resistance. Push onward in every way. The more publicity we arouse for our cause, the more chance we have to succeed.”

“Is your sister—the Claflin part of Woodhull and Claflin—also interested in woman’s rights?”

“She surely is. She too had a disastrous marriage and a difficult childhood. Our father took her on the road to tell fortunes and sell patent medicines—the scandalous past to which the Boston ladies refer. We were exploited as children. Our special powers were abused. But I forgive my parents—they were poor and needy. Tennie and I still support them. We’re not ashamed of coming from poverty. Stephen Pearl Andrews has met all my family and he can tell you exactly what stock we sprang from. They’re crude and uncultured, yes, but we refuse to disown them, as I find so many young people who come to New York do. Our parents were hardly saints, but they did their best to feed us.

“I was only able to attend school spottily. I had to work. I’ve educated myself. I read history, economics, literature, philosophy. I never stop trying to improve my grasp of the forces that have shaped and will shape society. If I’m no longer ignorant, I owe it to my own efforts and finding mentors who help me with choosing books to read and subjects to study.”

Elizabeth suspected that Woodhull had heard the rumors that she did not write the articles signed with her name, that she had not written the memorial. She was answering that accusation obliquely. Elizabeth was sorry she had written to Pearlo with her query about Woodhull.

“What do you consider the most important reforms for women?” Susan asked her. “In your own opinion.”

Woodhull frowned, considering. “Of course the vote is extremely important. With the vote, we can tackle other problems facing women. We know from the case of Wyoming that we will vote in large numbers as soon as we’re able. But working women survive on miserable pittances. The current situation of marriage makes a woman a chattel. Child-rearing is absurd for girls who grow up ignorant of everything real and of their own bodies and desires.”