The Scarlet Sisters (42 page)

When Woodhull took the stand in January 1894, the fully bewildered British counselors sought yes and no answers. Did Tilton “not publish a biography” of her? Woodhull’s mystifying answer: “If he did it is quite true. My memory did not follow it.”

Trying to find out if she wrote the Beecher article unleashed a torrent of words, everything but an answer to the question she was asked (“Did you write it, yes or no?”). Woodhull answered in a 361-word circuitous tease, wandering back into the history of the scandal prior to the article, using the words
persecution
or
persecuted
several times, until the agitated judge broke in: “I think we are going beyond the point.”

Woodhull’s lawyer stated that her Beecher article had been “perverted and garbled by the wretched man Pearl Andrews” and that she had denounced these concepts on 250 platforms while lecturing. A British Museum lawyer showed that “no such ‘denunciation’ had been produced from her writings and speeches.” He noted that
Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly
had even reprinted the entire article in 1873. (The British lawyers may not have known that the sisters spoke of it with pride as well as republishing it.)

The Martins’ lawyers cited as “gross libel” the twenty-year-old
Chicago Times
story about Tilton being Victoria’s lover, reprinted in a pamphlet. Woodhull stated, as she had previously, that the interview never happened. Other alleged libels in a pamphlet reprint of the Beecher trial testimony included a
Brooklyn Eagle
editorial that called her “the queen of prostitutes.” The museum argued that the materials had been placed in the library according to its rules and regulations and without malice.

The museum lawyers made a major error when they ridiculed Woodhull. When asked if she had told Tilton, “My spiritual vision dates back as early as my third year,” she said, “I have no recollection of stating that,” but added unconcernedly, “My spiritual vision does date back further than that.” The British Museum counselor read from Tilton’s fulsome passages several lines about Demosthenes. When asked if he was her spiritual guardian, Woodhull said, “I do not think I shall tell you who he is or what he was.” As the counselor continued to badger her, he cut her answers off in midsentence until Martin’s lawyers objected. When asked if an apparition had appeared to her, Woodhull looked at the esteemed counselors and judge and said wryly, “There is one appearing at me now.” The judge asked, “Not a ghostly apparition, I hope?” Woodhull shot back, “I do not know. I am waiting to see what your conclusions are.” Laughter filled the courtroom. In his summation, Woodhull’s counselor, sensing the feeling in the courtroom, asked, “Why was the poor lady kept for four hours on the rack and tortured with questions and insinuations” that had nothing to do with the case?

This seemed to hit a nerve with the jury. In 1894, Victoria was no longer a sexually intriguing young woman but a fifty-five-year-old distinguished matron, covered in bulky layers of Victorian dress, and the possessor of an esteemed and influential husband. The jury returned with a split decision. The documents were libelous, but the museum defendants bought, catalogued, and circulated the books as a duty. It was not their duty to know that the books contained libels, so they were not guilty of negligence, but, the jury stated, they should have used more care.

The judge ruled in favor of the British Museum. The couple declined
to appeal, stating that Victoria’s character had been “thoroughly vindicated,” since the jury had said the material was libelous. Woodhull got what she called a victory: an apology from the British Museum for “annoyance which had been caused to them.” Martin had to pay court costs. The London
Times
called for an act “to prevent the British Museum from being Bowdlerized; the Martins had found a defect” in their rules. Six years later, in 1900, Parliament passed a bill that exempted public library authorities from liability in legal proceedings “in respect of libellous matter” in books in their libraries. Thus Woodhull succeeded in forcing the British Parliament to rewrite the nation’s library rules. Victoria would always call this battle a victory. “I did not dare to hope that I would live to the turn of the tide but we have,” she ecstatically wrote Tennie in the fall of 1994. “The 21 years was up [since their 1873 battle] last spring when the papers came out & said ‘persecution & insult has ended.’ ”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Widows

In the bitter English winter of 1897, John Martin developed a severe cold and decided to recoup in the Canary Islands. He did not rest long, leaving posh hotels for grueling hikes in remote territory. He had clearly rebelled against the stultified life he had known before Victoria. “This is far more to my taste than the Grand Hotel… where they play lawn tennis & golf, dress for dinner & are as dull as anywhere else, & the ladies more homely than any… I ever met.”

At first his letters to Woodhull sound like a jolly travelogue. “I am marching about five hours a day with a guide… it is the strangest country that I ever saw; nothing but lava-beds, extinct volcanoes, & devastation. I get along without eating meat, of which there is none; but on the other hand no fleas have eaten me, as they [villagers] do not use garlic, so things could be worse.” He wondered if she would get this letter, written on February 1, as “I am out of the world.” A mule carrying mail would take days.

Their correspondence reveals a tragedy of urgent messages not received on time or at all. He had not received many loving letters sent in January and February. A hurt John pleaded, “Why have you not written or cabled to me to say where you are going?” However, Victoria had explained in a letter two weeks before, on January 29, “Darling husband I am very unwell and must fly tomorrow to some warmer place. I cannot throw off this horror.” On January 15 she had written, “Your dear letter
lies next to my heart and it breathes to me of love and fidelity.” Again she wrote, “My darling husband… worrying about you… Oh how lonely our dear home is but thank God you are in more sympathetic climate than London.” Two days later she cabled: “Not able to take voyage—you must get well—don’t worry.”

Then came an urgent telegram in February to Martin’s Las Palmas hotel:
PRECIOUS HUSBAND LIVE FOR MY SAKE MY HEART IS BREAKING—MY SOUL IS WITH YOU—ARE YOU BETTER
. Then another on February 25:
WHEN COMING HOME [STOP] HEART ANXIOUS.

He did respond to that telegram, as she noted on the twenty-sixth: “Darling husband I have just received your cable and my heart went out searching through space for your answer to the wish of my heart—listening to hear your blessed voice.” Even under such dire circumstances, Victoria could not stop obsessing about feeling persecuted: “Oh could we but live our life over again. Those who made us suffer so intensely might attempt in vain to disturb the tranquility of our hearts—I cannot bear to see them or hear their voices. Get well and we shall yet see some happy days together.” In a “world of treachery and hollowness,” he was “one who cares if I am… in despair.” She did note that if he wanted her to come, to wire, “and if I am able to endure the long fatigue of the voyage I will do so.”

On March 6, Martin responded that since his sick father was recovering at the Overbury estate, he would remain and “sail tonight for the most remote of all the Islands, Lanzarote.” He would be away “from the world for 10 days,” returning to Las Palmas on the sixteenth, hoping to catch the next steamer and “be back to you and to our dear home before the end of the month… Keep your dear heart happy, & all will be well.” On March 18, his brother, Richard, wrote: “My dear Johnny… my [not “our”] father died last night… He was getting dressed for dinner… and quietly passed away.” The family was shocked, as he had been “so much better.” Richard assumed that Victoria had cabled John the news. He then critically noted: “I have written several times to Victoria but I have heard nothing from her. I urged her to go… to you at once as probably careful nursing is what would do you more good than doctors.”

Victoria never forgave his family for the slights she felt. She was sending a friend to the island with a letter “that I may know the truth—I know your family do not
love
me—and I do not trust them—they did not care for us when we were well—how is it possible that they should
now
—hear me call you this moment—my soul speaks to you—live for my sake—we may be happy yet.” On March 18, the same day his father died, a telegram was sent to Victoria from the Canary Islands:
MARTIN VERY ILL BUT NO IMMEDIATE DANGER–WILL WIRE AGAIN.

A flurry of cables followed, from doctors: March 19, 11:10 a.m.:
MARTIN WORSE—IN DANGER—FOURTH DAY ILLNESS
; that afternoon, 5:50 p.m.:
PLEURO—STILL DANGEROUSLY ILL—WRITING AGAIN
; March 20, 11:00 a.m.:
AFRAID MARTIN SINKING—NO USE COMING—;
that afternoon, 5:34 p.m.:
YOUR DEAR HUSBAND DIED THIS AFTERNOON
. John Martin never knew that his father had died just three days before him.

The next day, Sunday, March 21, Martin’s doctor, Brian Melland, wrote a three-page letter to Victoria about “your husband’s terribly acute and sudden illness.” Martin was on Lanzarote Island when he was taken ill on Sunday, March 14, “with rigors and very severe pain at the base of the right lung as if a knife were there.” Martin managed to get on the boat to Las Palmas on Monday night and “was delirious all that night and never took off his clothes.” When the boat landed at Las Palmas on Tuesday, bearers carried Martin from the boat to the hospital. Martin told Dr. Melland that he had a “frightful pain in his liver.” He urgently hoped to be well enough to catch the boat for England on Friday, the nineteenth. “I saw he was very ill and that he had got Pleuro-Pneumonia… His breathing was very difficult on Friday morning.” The doctor removed fluid from his lungs, and Martin “was rather better on Friday… but in the evening he was feeling short of breath again… On Saturday morning he became delirious and unconscious and passed away at 3 in the afternoon having made a most gallant fight for life.” Martin was only fifty-five. The doctor told Victoria details her husband had kept from her in his letters. He had been having “shivering fits,” had little to eat in mountain villages, and had endured severe cold. He had also fallen into water and ridden in wet
clothes back to his Spanish Fonda. “It made all our hearts bleed not to be able to get him through his terrible illness for he was a very noble man.”

Letters containing the harsh reality of sudden death followed—embalming arrangements, authorization of payment to ship Martin’s body home. Victoria received a formal letter from his brother, Richard, concerning a request from the Canary Islands regarding the remains. “I am proposing to wire the following ‘—Return [the body]—Having learned all particulars Victoria remains here.’ If you have anything to add perhaps it will be as well to do so in a separate telegram. I shall always be pleased to be of use. Yours very sincerely, Richard B. Martin.” He followed with “Dear Victoria: have you made arrangements with an undertaker or agent to meet the body and convey… Let me know if I can help you.”

After Martin’s death she wrote bitterly to Tennie about “my family”: “Dear Sister, In the divine aroma of my dear husband’s old library I am now at midnight and going over all that I have suffered. I have seen Johnny’s tears flow as he would tell me how my family persecution had unnerved him. And he would turn to me with a face white as death, saying who will take care of my dear wife when I am no longer able to
shield
her from their malignant ignorance & venom… my heart has been rent asunder by it all. Be
happy
[twice underlined]. We may never meet again on earth. We [no doubt Zula and Byron with her] leave London tomorrow morning. How long or where they may take me I do not know or care. I only know that my life has been made wretched by them all.”

Apparently Tennie had been with her, perhaps at a memorial for Martin, but, unfortunately, all Victoria’s letters are undated. She alluded to past coolness between her and Tennie, slightly apologized, and blamed Martin’s family. Victoria’s earlier hostility to Sir Francis Cook, whom she had called a “libertine,” and the rumors about the sisters that had scandalized the Martin family, were indications of how visits from Tennie—despite her “Lady Cook” title—must have been discouraged. “When I said goodbye to you today with my heart not with my lips,” Victoria wrote, “I realized that we both were nervous wrecks and that those who caused it all were utterly unworthy… Try and you may succeed in being
happy with those who stand by you,” she continued. “My family have [
sic
] done all they could to kill me as they did Johnny.”

Four years later it was Tennie’s turn to wear widow’s weeds. Headlines emphasized Sir Francis Cook’s philanthropy as he lay ill in February 1901:
LIFE OF GOOD DEEDS DRAWING TO A CLOSE
. “His riches are said to amount to tens of millions, and he has spent enormous sums in philanthropy and in aiding persons of moderate circumstances.”

His death on February 17 was covered by papers in the United States because he had married an “American Girl.” In this new century, obituary writers viewed Tennie and Victoria as quaint artifacts who had “attracted notice soon after the Civil War by advocating Spiritualism and clairvoyancy [
sic
] and their public utterances on woman’s rights and other subjects.” Vanderbilt was always mentioned. Some referred to Tennie’s appointment as colonel of the colored veteran guards. Father Buck was transformed into a “well known New York merchant.” A massive turnout of retainers mourned outside Monserrate, where Tennie would no longer be welcome.

Yet, in Claflin fashion, this was not to be a quiet and distinguished death. Six weeks later, Lady Cook requested that her husband’s body be exhumed so that she could answer “rumors that Sir Francis died an unnatural death and owed his demise to me, the conspirators hoping in this fashion to blackmail me. Had I not been a woman of worldwide reputation, I could have afforded to let these calumnies die. My own health is extremely poor. Should I die now these lies might go on forever. I have therefore resolved to refute them now. False stories have been circulated by a person not related to Sir Francis, but who was disappointed at not being remembered in his will.” “Harrowing as it is, I shall not flinch,” vowed Tennie regarding exhuming the body. “My husband was beloved by me and I by him; and these iniquitous slanders shall be stamped out.” Once again, screaming headlines in cities in the United States as well as London accompanied her actions:
SHE WANTS TO SHOW THE WORLD SHE DIDN’T KILL HER HUSBAND
. British officials decided that the stories
were “so evidently absurd and so manifestly without foundation that they couldn’t think of letting the sorrowing widow open her husband’s grave.”