The Scarlet Sisters (39 page)

There is something sad and pathetic in proud Victoria’s departure from much she had once professed, to the extent of inventing royal antecedents—and something odious in her need to traduce Andrews and Blood. Years ago, Woodhull had stitched into her dress sleeves a
biblical passage decrying “lying lips” and a “deceitful tongue.” Now all her boasts of truth-telling, her “Yes, I’m a free lover!” claim, were being sacrificed as she faced a bleak future. In January 1881, when all seemed lost with Martin, she printed one issue of a
Woodhall
[with an
a
]
and Claflin’s Journal
that blamed Stephen Pearl Andrews and Colonel Blood in poisonous terms. She had discovered Blood in an “adulterous” embrace, she wrote, using the same melodramatic phrases she had used against her first husband. She had once said, of Blood, “a nobler man never lived”; now she even suggested he might have written the Treat pamphlet. Ever-loyal Tennie, who had often said Blood treated her with kindness and “saved her” from ruin, now called him “that bad man Blood.” Andrews had sullied their paper with his foul doctrine while she was out of town lecturing, claimed Victoria. She denied writing the Beecher article that she now called “obscene.” She dissembled to an amazing degree, claiming “during no part of my life did I ever favor free love, even tacitly.” While it is true that both sisters kept to one tenet of free love (that one should marry only for love), they spoke no more of love outside a legal marriage. The sisters’ makeover consisted of doctoring the tough caricatures that the
Days’ Doings
had drawn of them, even painting a row of ruffles on their skirts to cover the ankles they had so proudly revealed when they opened on Wall Street. “For over a century only the revised images” appeared in literature about the sisters, wrote Amanda Frisken, a writer who examined the before and after illustrations. Even after death, the sisters succeeded in recasting an unfavorable image.

In her frantic pursuit of Martin, Victoria was not shy about using the kind of pressure she would have abhorred years ago in an attempt to force him into a legal marriage. When Martin told her he was going abroad, she appealed to Cook again to talk to John’s brother, Richard, stating that if Martin did not “fix a day” for marriage, she might “claim damages.” This threat was not for money. She wanted a husband. Throughout months of frenetic onslaught Martin remained in love, but hesitant.

Victoria and John were finally married on October 31, 1883, six years after they met. The bride was now forty-five. Tennie, Annie, and Zula
were present. There were no Martins. Brother Richard said he would not receive her. Sister Julia said she would see her in private but would not “insult” her friends by introducing them to Victoria. Julia sneered at her “weak” brother ensnared by the “harlot” Woodhull.

John did not tell his parents until after the fact, first through a telegram and then a long letter written three days after the wedding. Unlike his crisp, sure writing in less personal matters, this letter is smudged, with words crossed out and rewritten: “My Dear F & M, I think that my telegram will have led you to guess what I have to tell you. I am, & have long been [clearly meant in spirit rather than fact], married to Victoria. It is impossible to keep such a secret forever… I have to regret that I have had to keep anything hidden from you.” He acknowledged “bitterness in my heart” because of those who tried to “wreck our happiness.” He hoped “this will now fade away.” He added a note to his mother: “I have a letter from you written long ago in w[hich] you said that you should not depart until you had seen all your children happy. You know how much unhappiness… has been visited on me.” It had “made my life at times almost unbearable. I am looking forward to more happiness in the future, & your love will help us to attain it.”

As for Tennie, hers would be a longer wait.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Lady Cook

Despite family coolness, Victoria and Martin were enraptured newlyweds in their new home at 17 Hyde Gate Park in bustling London. Good breeding had won out, at least with John’s mother, who decided to properly, if coolly, receive her daughter-in-law.

The following August of 1884, Francis Cook’s first wife died. Three weeks later he told Victoria and John Martin about his intention to marry Tennie. The next spring Victoria and Martin visited Cook’s Doughty House, tacitly giving their support to his relationship with Tennie. Martin was deeply impressed with Cook’s magnificent art collection.

As months went by after the death of Cook’s first wife, a patient Tennie finally reached a solution; according to legend, she told Francis Cook that she had communed with the late Mrs. Cook, who had blessed their union. Tennie became a happy bride on October 1, 1885, a few weeks before her fortieth birthday and a year after the death of the first Mrs. Cook. Sir Francis was sixty-eight when they took their vows in St. Mary’s Abbot—“the finest church in Kensington,” said Tennie. One of Buck Claflin’s last acts was to give away his youngest daughter. In an attempt to present a proper family to their esteemed British partners—and probably to stave off possible blackmail from relatives about their life in the United States—the sisters had hidden their family squabbles. They now presented Buck as a noble father, although there had been little reference
to him for several years. He had stayed behind in New York for some time before joining them. He died at eighty-nine of a stroke three weeks after Tennie’s wedding. New York papers wrote about the wedding, dredging up tidbits about the sisters’ notoriety. Victoria blamed the continued “persecution” by the press for her father’s death.

Marrying a year after the death of a first wife was considered rather hasty in Victorian upper circles. “I have no doubt Cook and she were happy. He was too powerful and distinguished a man to marry her one year after his first wife died if he had not cared for her a great deal,” remarked a British historian who had studied the Cooks. Sir Francis wrote longing letters when Tennie traveled. Huddled in Doughty House during a fierce snowstorm, he wrote, “My darling Tennie… the house is very lonely without you & I shall be counting the days for your return. I sincerely hope the trip backwards and forwards will do you good, but it is a great sacrifice for your poor husband. God bless Little Wifey and send her back to me” in good health. “Yours, forever, Frank.”

The couple had been married less than a year when Queen Victoria created a baronetcy for Francis in 1886. Tennessee, a scruffy child of no fixed address, who had grown up in hovels and was called a prostitute, became the immensely wealthy Lady Cook for the rest of her life.

She brought new life to Doughty House in Richmond Hill, with its sweeping view overlooking the Thames, described as the finest view in London. The Georgian home was no ordinary one inside, filled with art from many periods and countries. Cook had even hung a sixteenth-century Italian painting measuring eight by sixteen feet on the hall ceiling, and visitors looked upward to see nymphs and cupids cavorting.

Tennie delighted in organizing grand garden parties for as many as a thousand on the flowing lawns behind the house, worked hard on charities, and hosted Cook’s famed Sunday afternoon concerts. The most renowned musicians came to play, and the gallery resounded with the sound of an organ on which was carved in gilded letters across the frame,
IF MUSIC BE THE FOOD OF LIFE—PLAY ON
. The child fortune-teller, who would not have known a masterpiece from a fake, now discussed art
treasures with her guests—among them, the world-famous art critic and historian Bernard Berenson. Tennessee talked rapidly, with her American intonation, pointing out such masterpieces as the
Adoration of the Magi
, by Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi; Van Eyck’s
Three Marys at the Sepulchre
; Rembrandt’s
Portrait of a Boy
; Velázquez’s
Old Woman Cooking Eggs
.

To be sure, Tennessee retained her ability to shock with straightforward openness. “To hear the strong and unfamiliar accents of the United States and to hear the problems that Americans discuss eagerly and familiarly—and England passes over in shuddering silence—and to see the slight, alert, restless and intellectual face of this fiery-souled American woman by the side of this stately old Englishman and in the framework of old art and English landscape was one of those surprises and contrasts that show how startling life can be,” recounted one London visitor. Her scandalous past, however, was nowhere present when she became known as the wholesome “matchmaker”—“proper” young men and women often found good marriage partners at the fashionable dances she gave.

Vera Ryder, Francis’s great-granddaughter, used to play among the art collection as a child and felt “some slightly sinister influence creeping through the gallery… I came to realize from whispered insinuations and shocked expressions” that there was a “shadow of my step great-grandmama.” Ryder revealed a “mutual interest in Spiritualism” that formed a bond between Sir Francis and Tennessee. A more subdued Tennie nonetheless shocked the family by leaving pamphlets and tracts about suffrage, divorce reform, and equal rights around the gallery and slipped into catalogues. Condoned by her husband, Tennie’s views were still appalling to many upper-class English. Tennie striding into ballrooms and galleries, extending her hand in the all-American handshake, talking away rapidly—all easily shattered stiff Victorian correctitude. For many years she was well protected from criticism, by her husband. She never forgot her crusade for women’s rights, but as a bride, Tennie was busy meeting lords and ladies and, spectacularly, the future king and queen of England.

Sir Francis received his baronetcy for his charitable work, the major example being Alexandra House, which was named for Her Royal Highness,
the Princess of Wales. Here young women of limited means could study art, literature, and music, “protected from harm” in a lavish home that housed one hundred and fifty and had cost millions to build. Sir Francis began the construction of Alexandra House in 1884. Tennie soon became an influential champion. With all the pomp of royalty, Alexandra House was officially dedicated in the spring of 1887 by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, who would become King Edward VII on the death of his mother, Queen Victoria. The handsome building occupied the entire block opposite Albert Hall and contained a concert hall, a ninety-foot-long dining room, a drawing room, a counsel room, a library, a gymnasium, and an “American elevator.”

Carriages lined up for the afternoon opening ceremony, dispatching the archbishop of Canterbury and a collection of princes and princesses and lords and ladies. A red carpet led into the spacious main hall. Sir Francis and Lady Cook led the royal family on a tour that ended in the concert hall, with the audience cheering as the future king praised Sir Francis, whose name would live on through Alexandra House. Among the finely dressed women, a visitor noted that Lady Cook, “the little American beauty” in a suit of blue trimmed with gray sable, leaning on her husband’s arm, was “the nicest dressed and prettiest woman in the hall.” Only four years older than Tennie, the party-going Prince of Wales must have found her fetching; he had collected several mistresses, among them the celebrated actress Lillie Langtry.

Despite the lure of London, Tennie was happiest in her castle in Portugal, called Monserrate—an exotic pink-and-white confection reminiscent of the romantic Mughal era, with towers, cupolas, rose marble pillars, and arched windows. Walking through the castle corridors was like strolling through a Persian palace filled with arches and walls filigreed in delicate lacey patterns. On special occasions, Sir Francis and Tennie draped the large domed center from above with red cloth, which reflected a soft pink on the guests below. The chandeliered dining/ballroom looked out through arched windows to the terrace banked with dazzling flowers.

Tennie loved it all, walking in sunlight on the terrace, listening to a fountain spilling water in the center of the castle, warmed on chilly nights by elaborate fireplaces. Her bedroom was in one of three towers, and her second-story arched window held a breathtaking view of the garden, where fern trees grew eight feet tall and flowers of every conceivable species perfumed the paths. Waterfalls, glistening ponds, and an ancient chapel lay hidden behind a curtain of flowers, plants, and trees imported from all over the world and successfully transplanted after Sir Francis built the first irrigation system in Portugal. Cook, who employed vast numbers in the village on his estate, was so economically vital to the country that the king of Portugal titled him Viscount de Monserrate. The view was a thing of beauty long before Sir Francis Cook purchased the property in 1858. Lord Byron wrote of its splendor and was inspired to write
Childe Harold
there. A twelfth-century Moorish knight was buried high on a hill.

Tennie’s letters back to Victoria in England bubbled with joy in her wonderland. “I am very much in love with Cintra [spelled
Sintra
today]… the Promenades are full with Tourists. I am out all day & as happy as a bird.” She was busy decorating Monserrate and “should be pleased if you would give us a call. Our cook is perfection & we have two big fires going all the time.” Tennie scrawled in the margins a sentiment she repeatedly expressed in letters to Victoria: “I have every thing that heart could wish & perfectly happy & contented with my precious husband.”

Tennie shocked visiting British royalty by treating the villagers as equals, inviting them to her parties. She fed and clothed the half-starved children and started schools. She later recalled, “the Queen [of Portugal] and priests came to me, fearing I was going to interfere with their religion but I said: ‘You look after their souls. Let me look after their bodies.’ The schools were a great success.” And Lady Cook and the Queen became friends. When strangers asked the students who they belonged to they would respond “we are the contessa’s [Tennie’s] children.”

An American friend visiting Tennie in 1894 was astounded as their carriage neared Monserrate. Rockets shot up in the air, musicians played, and she was “nearly smothered with flowers, thrown by the natives.” A
laughing Tennie told her guest “this is all in honor of your arrival.” Sir Francis met them at the entrance. Flags of every nation floated from the turrets and in front of the castle; most prominent was “Tennie’s own Stars and Stripes,” Sir Francis remarked as he led them into the palace.