The Scarlet Sisters (20 page)

That summer and fall, with Tilton’s help, Victoria tried to form a sizable political bloc of radical reformers—Spiritualists, labor activists, freed blacks, socialists, abolitionists, free lovers, and radical feminists. Victoria found herself facing a paradox of her own making. On one hand, she professed to loathe all that Henry Ward Beecher’s hypocrisy embraced. On the other, she was still trying to appeal to the “respectables” who might give credence to her “social freedoms” and Spiritualism. An esteemed male sanctioning those views seemed vital. Her choice was none other than the preacher she threatened to expose; having such an eminent man by her side would be the ultimate prize. She pushed Tilton, who arranged for the nervous Beecher to meet her at Tilton’s house.

A confident Victoria left that evening rendezvous certain that Beecher would support her. Beecher was nothing if not gifted in syrupy cordiality and vague promise. Only Woodhull’s version exists. She assured readers that Beecher told her he had followed mesmerism and Spiritualism. They met two more times, and according to Woodhull, Beecher expressed a similar view that marriage laws needed reforming: “Marriage is the grave
of love.” When she allegedly asked why he did not preach such convictions, Beecher exclaimed, “I should preach to empty seats. It would be the ruin of my church.”

Still, Victoria held out hope that he would introduce her in November at a Steinway Hall speech, “And the Truth Shall Make You Free,” on the principles of social freedom. Agitated by his silence, she penned a threatening letter, one that her foes would cite as blackmail—not for money, but for that Steinway Hall introduction. She demanded an interview with him, unleashing her anger: “Two of your sisters have gone out of their way to assail my character and purpose.” Echoing the blackmailing letters her own family had crafted, Woodhull threatened, “You doubtless know that it is in my power to strike back and in ways more disastrous than anything that can come to me. I do not desire to do this. I simply desire justice and a reasonable course on your part will assist me to it. I must have an interview tomorrow,” she demanded, as her speech was that same night. She added ominously, “What I shall or shall not say will depend largely on the result of the interview.”

This scared Beecher into a meeting. She urged him to come out for social freedom (a.k.a. free love), and that introducing her could “bridge the way.”

“I cannot!” Beecher cried. “I should sink through the floor. I am a moral coward on this subject and you know it.” He knelt on the sofa, began to weep, and begged her to “Let me off.” Victoria said “if I am compelled to go upon that platform alone I shall begin by telling the audience why I am alone and why you are not with me.” Beecher was in hysterics, shouting, “I cannot face this thing!” If she was going to expose him, Beecher begged for twenty-four hours’ notice “so that I may take my own life.” While this tale might be excused as Victoria’s extravagance, Frank and Emma Moulton would later testify to remarkably similar histrionics from a pleading Beecher as the scandal unfolded.

Manhattan’s streets were mostly empty as heavy winds and slashing rain sliced through the city on the night of November 20, 1871. Yet a vast waterlogged crowd of more than three thousand crushed together, huddling
under umbrellas, and pushed and shoved to enter Steinway Hall. They were drawn to giant yellow banners on every side of the hall, announcing Victoria’s speech on marriage, divorce, prostitution, and free love. The
New York Times
said it was “one of the largest audiences ever collected together in a public hall in this City,” drawn by the “novelty of the doctrines enunciated” and especially the “greater novelty of their expression by a lady.”

By 7:00 p.m., an hour before Victoria’s speech, the boisterous, impatient crowd jammed the steps, with young men shoving and wisecracking among glowering old women. When the doors opened, “the crowd burst in like an avalanche.” The crowd was a mix of old and young, some with “several children of a tender age.” A man with long hair and green spectacles had a “decidedly free love look,” and “several young ladies of very bad behavior” were “evidently professional.” They coexisted with many “respectable looking people.” A redheaded girl grabbed a seat, threw off a soggy shawl, and grumped, “I hope, by gosh, I haven’t come here for nothing in all this rain.” She would not be disappointed.

As the crowd packed every seat on the ground floor and in the two galleries, and stood in the aisles, there was that unmistakable hum of an audience expecting a good show. Backstage, Victoria and Tennie stood together in a small room off a narrow passageway, Woodhull nervously twisting her rolled-up manuscript in her hands. A transfixed reporter said she looked “inspired” and that she put Anna Dickinson “in the shade by the boldness of her utterances.” He admired her small waist, little feet, and her “dark eyes burning with suppressed fire,” and underestimated her age as twenty-seven; she had recently turned thirty-three. A watch chain pendant dangled from the neck of her simple black dress, and a fresh tea rose at her throat “enhanced the fairness of her skin.”

Tennie, also wearing black, talked at a typically fast pace; her quick movements swirled her skirt, revealing galoshes. Victoria flushed with anger as she anxiously waited, checking her script. Tilton “the blond poet,” friend Moulton, and “the Great American
Pantarchist
” Stephen Pearl Andrews arrived, followed by “a large number of Free Love ladies and gentlemen, most of the latter being very homely.” Still, there was no
Beecher. An agitated Victoria cornered Tilton for a private talk. He told her Beecher had half-promised to come, if he could muster the courage. Woodhull paced, cheeks burning, her fury mounting by the second.

Out front, the waiting crowd could read a memo, written in the third person, placed on each chair. It explained that Woodhull was giving this speech “for the express purpose of silencing the voices and stopping the pens of those who, either ignorantly or willfully, persistently misrepresent, slander, abuse and vilify” her because of her “outspoken advocacy of, and supreme faith in God’s last and best law. She wishes it to be distinctly understood that freedom does not mean anarchy in the social relations any more than it does in religion and politics; also that the advocacy of its principles requires neither action nor immodest speech.” The circular exhorted Horace Greeley, among her “defamers,” to sit with her on the platform, while her “lesser defamers should secure front seats.”

The crowd grew restless as 8:00 p.m. came and went. Finally Woodhull gave up waiting for Beecher. As she, Tennie, and Tilton moved toward the stage, Moulton cried out, “Are you going to introduce Mrs. Woodhull to the audience, Tilton?” “ ‘Yes, by heaven,’ said Tilton, ‘since no one else has the pluck to do it.’ ” Andrews hovered at the foot of the stage, holding the script he had written. As Tennie began to move toward a nearby balcony, she shot a parting warning to her sister: “Now Vicky, be calm.” The towering Tilton walked onstage, quieting the rowdy audience; he took an anonymous swipe at Beecher, condemning “several gentlemen” who had refused to introduce Woodhull, because of objections to “the lady’s character” and “her views.” He had planned to come only to hear “what my friend would have to say in regard to the great question which has occupied her so many years of her life” and was introducing her because she was going to have to face the audience “unattended and alone.” Tilton defended her character: “I know it and believe in it and vouch for it.” The audience could judge for itself about her views. He then uttered a backhanded compliment, stressing her right to speak. “It may be that she is a fanatic; it may be that I am a fool—but, before high heaven, I would rather be both fanatic and fool in one than such a coward as would
deny to a woman her sacred right of free speech!” He struck the right chord, and the audience applauded. Tilton ended with a flourish: “with as much pride as ever prompted me to the performance of any act in fifteen or twenty years, I have the honor of introducing to you Victoria C. Woodhull, who will address you upon the subject of social freedom!”

The next day, the
New York Herald
bannered a headline,
VICTORIA AND THEODORE
. No last names were necessary. The tier of headlines stated
MRS. WOODHULL CLAIMS THE RIGHT TO CHANGE HER HUSBAND EVERY DAY IN PRESENCE OF THREE THOUSAND PEOPLE
. The
Herald
characterized her speech as “the most astonishing doctrine ever listened to by an audience of Americans.” For some reason, Woodhull spared Beecher. Instead, she exposed herself with words that followed her for life and beyond.

As Woodhull walked timidly onstage, she was greeted by a blast of applause and shouts from every corner of the hall. “A hundred ravenous male bipeds leaned over the platform, standing up in front of the audience.” Woodhull bowed and began her two-hour speech in a clear and pleasing voice. She read several thousand mind-numbing utterances about a “trinity in all things,” before emphasizing a feminist position that was genuinely hers: “the principle by which the male citizens of these United States assume to rule the female citizens is not that of self-government but that of despotism.”

For those who questioned her intelligence or saw her as a mere puppet for Andrews, Victoria’s ability to electrify, either with her words or those written for her, was exceptional—especially regarding radical women’s rights. She would stride, her face illuminated by stage gaslights, ignoring the written speech in her hand. Some lines were so well memorized that she took the stage like a diva, speaking without notes in a clear voice that carried throughout the hall, modulating her cadence, eyes flashing, color flushing her cheeks.

The audience perked up when Woodhull got around to freedom from bondage over sexual relations, and hissing erupted as she continued on her central theme that sex conducted in a marriage without love was a form of legal prostitution. These passages were from her heart: “I have
seen the most damning misery resulting from legalized prostitution… thousands of poor, weak, unresisting wives are yearly murdered [referring to death in childbirth] who stand in spirit life looking down upon the sickly, half-made children left behind, imploring humanity for the sake of honor and virtue to look into this matter… and to bring out into the fair daylight all the blackened, sickening deformities that so long have been hidden by the screen of public opinion and a sham morality.” (Woodhull’s flawed eugenics—that forced sex in an unloving marriage bred deformed children—could not be confirmed or denied in an era just beginning to study reasons for stillbirths and deformed children.)

Woodhull tried to praise good marriages, “a very large proportion” of which are “commendable” and “as good as the present status of society makes possible.” As for the marriage certificate, she added archly, “no grosser insult could be offered a woman than to insinuate that she is honest and virtuous only because the law compels her to be so.” When she insisted that “good and commendable” marriages would “continue to exist if all marriage laws were repealed tomorrow,” half the immense audience leapt up and hissed vehemently, while the other half cheered as loudly. Tilton stepped forward to rescue her, but his shouts were hissed down. Victoria stamped her foot and moved into her premise that harmonious and loving partners, whether in or out of marriage, produced healthy children.

Then came the bombshell that, with few exceptions, was all that the contemporary papers covered and that many books to follow would discuss. As Woodhull tried to “excuse the stain of illegitimacy,” a beautiful woman who kept shouting from her box seat jumped up and faced the audience. She shouted to Woodhull, “How would you like to come into this world without knowing who your father and mother was?”

Woodhull stared up at the woman in the low overhanging balcony and shouted over the noise, “I assert that there are as good and noble men and women on top of this earth suffering from the stain of illegitimacy as any man and woman before me.” She added a possible rueful attempt at humor: “God knows I do not know how many illegitimate men or women are in this hall tonight.” At that, the confusion and shouting became so
great that no one could hear Woodhull. Pandemonium ensued for ten minutes, forcing Woodhull to stop her speech.

Tennie, who well knew that the woman shouting from the box seat could be drunk or on drugs, tried in vain to push through the mob to the woman’s side. “I am her sister!” the woman shouted, refusing to sit down and looking defiantly at Woodhull and then the audience. At that disclosure from Utica Claflin Booker, Victoria and Tennie’s sister, the audience cheered Utica wildly. Several women seated next to Utica, fearing a riot, retreated to the back of the inner box. Tilton, ever the free speech advocate, promised, “You shall all be heard if you only give us time. I must say, however, that this lady”—referring to Woodhull—“has hired the hall, and she is entitled to be heard first.” Many shouted for Utica to take the stage. Bedlam ensued when a policeman bolted through the door to Utica’s box, grabbed her wrist, and tried to drag her out. The entire audience rose up at this highhanded attempt, some with hisses and groans and others cheering Utica’s exit. The policeman was forced to leave the box. Utica sat back down.

Woodhull then continued “at race-horse speed, and as if she feared that something would again interpose.” Here reports break down. Either she was asked or she posed the rhetorical question “Are you a free lover?” “Yes, I am a free lover!” she shouted. “I have an inalienable constitutional and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or as short a period as I can, to change that love every day if I please!” Hisses grew louder, but Woodhull continued: “and with that right neither you nor any law you can frame have any right to interfere; and I have the further right to demand a free and unrestricted exercise of that right, and it is your duty not only to accord it, but as a community to see that I am protected in it. I trust that I am fully understood, for I mean just that, and nothing less.”

At this, “wild young men cheered most tumultuously.” Woodhull tried to elaborate, “I believe promiscuity to be anarchy and the very antithesis of that for which I aspire. I know that there are degrees of love and lust, from the lowest to the highest. But I believe the highest sexual relations are those which are monogamic [
sic
]… But I protest, and I
believe every woman who has purity in her soul protests, against all laws that would compel her to maintain relations with a man for whom she has no regard. What can be more terrible than for a delicate, sensitive woman to be compelled to endure the presence of a beast in the shape of a man who knew nothing beyond the blind passion with which he is filled, and for which is often added the delirium of intoxication? I protest against this form of slavery.”