Sex Wars (28 page)

“I’ll go to the market tomorrow and find you some clothes. Yours will have to go.” She had Sammy carry them down to the street and discard them, for the seams were full of lice and fleas. She cut part of her old dress into a sort of shift, pinned under the girl’s arms.

“What’s all that for?” Kezia was pointing at the rack of rubber sheets, the metal table, the vat for vulcanizing and the forms for making condoms.

“We make rubber goods for a living. We make them here and we sell them to pharmacies and other stores… Have you ever gone to school, Kezia?”

She nodded. “When Papa was alive.”

“Can you read and write?”

“I read a little bit. I know the alphabet. But I don’t know how to write… Are you mad at me?”

“No! But we’ll try to get you into school.”

Sammy frowned. “She has to do some work. She’s no good to us.”

“I can do things!” Kezia shouted at him. “I can fetch water. I can cut up things. I used to help my mama cook.”

“It will all work out,” Freydeh promised, looking at the bone-thin waif with her body covered with old and new bruises and her head shaven like a clay bowl. She did not know how it would work out, but Hashem had put this little one in her path, and she accepted responsibility. If Kezia would try, she would try and they would make it work. After a while, Sammy would come round. He had a good heart. He would have to make room in it for this raw little
pisherkeh.

After supper, she put Kezia to sleep in her bed and occupied herself sewing her old dress into a little one for Kezia. The spare material could be bindings to wrap her legs. She had to find a used dress and a shawl—that would be a start. They didn’t let barefoot children into school. She would measure Kezia’s feet with a stick and then find shoes to make do.

Everything was make do, yes, but Freydeh could remember when she had no bed to call her own, not a coat or boots for winter. She looked at Sammy, still studying at the table with the kerosene lamp at the head of his book, and she remembered when he was little bigger than Kezia and just as thin and battered. Now he was tall and filling out. She had bought him a pair of glasses he used sometimes, never in the street. He was a bit nearsighted. That meant he didn’t need glasses for reading. He was a lot healthier than he used to be, although he still got sore throats too often. It was the bad air, she was sure. He was a good boy, tempted sometimes by the street, but loyal to her. What would Kezia turn out to be? She had no idea. Sammy was right, she had leapt into action without knowing the child, but again, she felt she had no choice. So she had chosen life for Kezia, and life it would be.

V
ICTORIA WAS ECSTATIC.
Presenting the Commodore with an opportunity to make a huge profit in gold and get out unscathed when half the brokers on Wall Street and two-thirds of the investors were stripped clean and left to drown in debt should make him generous. She approached him with her idea and he considered it, mulling it over long enough to unnerve her—enjoying his power, of course. He loved power almost as much as money. She could not sleep all week. She scarcely ate. She had been so sure he would support her scheme. The next week, he agreed.

Now Woodhull, Claflin and Company was a brokerage firm with offices and their first clients. Victoria had laboriously written out a script for Tennie so she would not make a mistake with a customer if Victoria was occupied. Tennie was not as quick as Victoria at memorizing, but during the weeks the office was being set up, legally and physically, Victoria rehearsed with her sister. They visited a tailor and had business suits made up, men’s jackets with straight severe skirts ending at the ankles—no
hoops, bustles or trains. If they were going to make a success of their business, they couldn’t dress like tarts or superior courtesans or even like ladies. They were the first female brokers ever, and the newspapers covered their opening. The journalists were treated to good wine, good beer and better bourbon to warm their copy. It worked. They were declared a great success within days after their doors opened to the public, long before they actually turned a profit.

The Commodore did not abandon them. Between him and the financial tidbits Annie Wood shared and Josie let drop, they were able to offer their clients good information. Victoria did not pretend to knowledge she lacked. She intended to be honest in her business practices—aside from letting anyone know where the information came from. Everyone thought her source was Vanderbilt. She was careful never to affirm his influence or to deny it, but she also gave credit to the spirits. Anyone put off by spiritualism would probably not come to women to do business.

Victoria was well off, as Demosthenes had promised long ago. Had she not brought her ragtag family to a fine house on East Thirty-eighth Street? The offices were located in Hoffman House, a fine hotel on fashionable Madison Square, famous for its paintings, statuary, seventy-foot-long bar, ornate banquet hall with a ceiling decorated in gold, silver and allegorical paintings of nymphs and goddesses, and for being the hangout of Boss Tweed. The parlor of their office was ladylike, with bucolic oils on the walls in ornate frames, a piano, green velvet sofa and chairs. Vases of fresh flowers stood on tables shaped like pillars of Greek temples. A portrait of the Commodore hung prominently, where it would be seen by anyone entering. No point in hiding their assets. The Commodore had a Wall Street reputation as honest, firm in his word and shrewd beyond imagining. That he had made money in gold when everyone else, including probably Fisk and Gould in the end, had been losing it by the bushel only increased his reputation for financial wisdom.

After the first week, when hordes of men came to gawk, Victoria hired a butler who greeted all comers and pointed them toward a sign that said “All Gentlemen will state their business and then retire at once.” Victoria did not want to give the impression that the brokerage office was the anteroom to a brothel, or that men could lounge around playing cards or chatting.

Their offices were furnished with walnut desks, cabinets and a teletype and ticker-tape machine, which only the best brokerage houses had.
Everything, Victoria felt, reeked of quality.
Here you may invest your money with confidence and here you may be sure of discreet and intelligent advice. Here you will find quick and efficient service.
The newspapers called them “The Bewitching Brokers,” “The Queens of Finance,” “the Female Sovereigns of Wall Street,” but Victoria aspired to success rather than fame for their novelty.

Some women had money: widows, but also an increasing number of professionals like herself—an untapped market. It was assumed by male brokers that they could not possibly invest for themselves or manage their own money, yet they did. Victoria intended to encourage women to invest with her.

Within a month, they had too many clients for the small suite in the Hoffman. They could not handle everything themselves, and there was no room for anyone else. They moved into larger offices at
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Broad Street. Colonel Blood sat at a huge desk in the front office—no more sofas and pianos, but the portrait of the Commodore moved with them—with the stock ticker and a large imposing safe. James had been a successful businessman in St. Louis before the war had alienated him from his previous bourgeois life, so she trusted him to run the office. The first person he hired was his own brother, for whom he had worked when they first came to New York. George commuted every day from New Jersey to keep the firm’s books. Victoria insisted that all be done legally and cleanly. She could trust no Claflin to do that, but George Blood would keep the books to the penny.

Their opening here was an even greater event than the previous opening at the hotel. The street outside was so blocked with carriages, the police had to intervene. Of course the Commodore came, taking center stage and beaming at the sisters. Fortunately he had left by the time Josie brought in Jim Fisk. “So this is the little lady who outdid us in gold,” he said, patting Victoria’s arm.

She removed herself slightly, smiling but keeping a distance. “The spirits gave me counsel, Mr. Fisk.”

“Good spirits own lots of railroads too.”

“No, Mr. Fisk. It was I who advised our patron to sell—not vice versa.”

Even Boss Tweed came. She greeted him effusively, although he made her nervous. He was a gross man—obese, looking as if he were rolled in oil—but immensely powerful. He had gangs of thugs at his command; he controlled the Irish vote and the mayoralty, all public works in the city and
many private contractors as well. He bought and sold politicians as another man might buy up a carload of overshoes. She knew little about his private life except that he had put on a lavish wedding for his daughter, fit for a princess. The rooms were mobbed now. Actresses came, actors and producers, opera singers, lawyers, journalists, editors, merchants, they came to drink and eat the pastries set out, both savory and sweet that Tennie had arranged, and to gape, yes, to gape.

Her office and Tennie’s were much as they had been in the Hoffman House, except that instead of the hotel furniture, Victoria had desks made for them with Greek key details, to honor her spirit guide. Another difference was a special entrance for women, who could skip the front office with Colonel Blood and the clerk who screened callers. In a parlor by Victoria’s office, women could feel comfortable and private. No men were allowed into this part of the office, not even James.

That device was an immediate success. The professional women Victoria had hoped to attract came, not only singly but often in pairs or small groups to give each other confidence. Women felt that this firm had been created for their benefit. Not only proper ladies came: madams spread the word through their grapevine that Tennie and Victoria would receive them graciously and treat them and their money with respect. Victoria’s web of informants now extended through a number of the better brothels. She reduced her commission for any madam who passed on useful information from her girls and their clients. That too pleased the madams, who recognized a good deal.

One afternoon, Josie swept in, resplendent in a scarlet satin overskirt partly covering a gold brocaded underskirt, all arranged over an extra large bustle, under a fur cloak against the cold of a snowy day in late February. She threw back a hood lined with ermine. On her large bosom, a great emerald brooch sparkled, echoed by her earrings, gifts from Jim Fisk.

“What brings you by, Josie? I’m delighted to see you. Would you care for some sherry?”

“Don’t mind if I do… But this is a business call. You’ve been telling me for years I ought to invest. I’m not going to let Jim keep me in a cage the rest of my life, so I’m taking your advice. I mean to have my own money now. I want you to make it happen. I’ll give you some money and you make it grow like Jack’s beanstalk.”

“This is a wise move, Josie. Every woman needs her own money, her own independence. Then you can choose whom you will love and whom you will not.”

“Exactly!” Josie squeezed her hand through fine kid gloves, dyed green. “You’ll set me free.”

“I will. Now would you prefer champagne or sherry? And we have some delicious chocolates from Belgium.”

Most days the Commodore dropped by to offer advice and collect their information. Whenever he appeared, Victoria and Tennie stopped whatever they were doing and saw him in Tennie’s office, where Victoria could leave them alone together in case the Commodore had something more than stocks in mind. Tennie was always ready to roll up her sleeves and give him one of her special massages. She confided in Victoria that he needed release less often, as his new wife Frankie was giving it to him once a week. He was thrilled with his marriage. He had been hangdog with Tennie at first, but now he was assured she bore him no ill will.

When he left, Tennie smoothed down her newly shorn locks. They had both decided to wear their hair shorter. Perhaps they would start a new fashion. It was part of looking more severe for business. “It’s more work than it used to be.”

In addition to the brokerage business, Victoria was busy furnishing the new house leased just off Fifth Avenue in a fashionable section, Murray Hill. She could not trust Roxanne, Utica or Buck to get involved with decorating the house, as their taste was lurid. Roxanne loved religious pictures, the more lugubrious the better. Buck liked large florid nudes. He would have been crazy about Josie, but Victoria had taken care never to let him meet her. Her family spent money amazingly fast. Buck liked horses and he liked to gamble, two ways of making piles of greenbacks disappear.

The house must be impressive without being gauche. She was going to have a salon. Now that she was rich and becoming famous, she needed men and women of advanced political ideas to stimulate her mind and teach her about history and politics and economics, as James had begun to do many years ago. Now she wanted more stimulation, vaster vistas than James could provide, new European notions. She longed for intellectual excitement after all the time she spent with the Commodore, who had never met an idea he had noticed.

She filled the house with mirrors that multiplied the light and scattered it. The salon had a colored glass dome through which the light beamed down prismatically, bathing the room and its occupants in magical hues. She loved velvet. Purple velvet downstairs, green velvet in her bedroom. Tennie chose lilac velvet for hers. Victoria had blue wallpaper hung in Byron’s room, where his new caretaker slept. Zulu Maud, nine
now, got warm pink. Occasionally Victoria brought Zulu along to the brokerage offices, to see what her mother did for a living and be inspired. She kept her daughter close. Zulu was going to have the kind of sheltered, pampered childhood she had not even been able to dream of as a young girl. No one was going to exploit her. Ever!

Her whole family moved in, not only Roxanne, Utica and Buck but their oldest sister Margaret Ann with her three children, sister Polly, her daughter Rosa and Polly’s brand-new husband Dr. Sparr, who did mesmeric healing in the parlor downstairs two afternoons a week. Utica and Roxanne spent most days getting drunk or wheedling money to buy clothes. Fashion magazines lay all around the salon until Victoria gathered them up and dumped them in Utica’s room. She did not want her house to appear frivolous to the visitors she was beginning to invite. She wanted them to take her seriously. Not “The Bewitching Brokers” but someone with ideas, heft, destiny.

She was choosing her lovers carefully. She had become involved with an older freethinker, Stephen Pearl Andrews, an extremely intelligent man, lean and still in good shape. He had been a follower of Fourier and had started a phalanx, a small utopian community, on Long Island, but it had not lasted long. He knew many of the leaders in woman’s rights and promised to introduce her. Their relationship was occasionally sexual but primarily intellectual. She was the student and he the teacher, but they argued frequently. They enjoyed debating. He critiqued her writing and encouraged her plan to start a paper with Tennie.

Her other new lover had been a general in the Civil War and now was a senator from Massachusetts, Benjamin Butler. She had met him when she went to Washington to sit quietly in the woman’s rights convention, to size up the leaders and study the lay of the land. She did not attempt to meet any of them yet, but she liked what she heard. She set out to learn from Butler how government worked. He indicated he would mentor her if she was willing to become his lover. She did not hesitate. He was a dynamic, almost flamboyant man, brave and well connected in Washington although resembling a pug. He was sympathetic to woman’s rights and willing to champion her. By and by, she would need his influence if she was to accomplish something great and good. After her early experiences, sex came easily to her. She took precautions—the same ones they sold to the madams. She saw no reason to discontinue that business, although she had passed on some of the deliveries to Utica and Buck. The way they spent money, they might as well make a little for the household. She still
went in person to take the orders, as madams were a precious source of financial information. When she was with one of her lovers, she thought only of him. She focused on him exclusively. She never spoke of the others. James welcomed the good connections she was making. He especially liked Stephen, who often stayed in the household overnight, sometimes with her, sometimes in the guest room.

She was still casting about for the right way to stake a claim to her new proposed identity when one evening of penetrating cold in late February, a gentleman appeared at the door and was announced by the downstairs maid. “Dr. Canning Woodhull, Esquire.”