What happened after
Victoria Woodhull's threat of exposure to the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher,
minutes before she was to begin her lecture to a hall jammed with spectators
lured there in hopes of a candid exposition of free love, was probably a
surprise to all. When Victoria and her supporters, her sister Tennie
included, marched out onto the platform, Theodore Tilton was at the head of the
group. Stepping to the front of the platform, he raised his hands to
quiet the crowd, then explained that he had come to hear what his friend had to
say on a great question of much importance to her, and since various gentlemen
had declined to introduce her because of objections to her character, he would
do so himself. He then vouched warmly for her character and said that it
was with great pride that he presented Victoria Woodhull, who would speak on
the subject of social freedom.
What had prompted this
sudden act by Tilton? Perhaps he wanted to deflect her threat to expose
Beecher, which would also compromise his wife's reputation. Perhaps he
was yielding to a generous quixotic impulse, as he was known to do. And
perhaps it was out of gallantry. The tone of his words was that of a
lover. He may well have been one of her many inamorati, which
complicates even more the complexities of the Beecher-Tilton relationship.
Following the outlines of a
speech prepared by one of her male associates, Victoria began with an account
of changing attitudes toward the freedom of the individual. But when she
got to the present, she registered more passion and emphasis, and excitement
began to mount in the audience, then hissing countered by applause.
"Are you a free
lover?"someone shouted.
"Yes!" she replied.
"I am a free lover!" And as cheers, hoots, and howls redoubled,
she persisted with fervor, ignoring her prepared text completely: "I have an
inalienable, constitutional, and natural right to love whom I may, to love as
long or as a short a period as I can, to change that love every day if I
please!"
Pandemonium ensued.
Some hissed and booed; others cheered and tossed their hats in the
air. She continued speaking for another ten minutes, decrying the false
modesty that silences discussions of sex, and the evils attending such modesty's abuses, while insisting that she would have her fellow beings think well of her, that she
was telling them her vision of the future because she loved them well. No
one present was likely to forget her impassioned finale.
The speech was fully reported
in the Herald, and dire consequences followed. Victoria and her household were soon forced
to leave their mansion for a boardinghouse on 23rd Street, and business fell
off dramatically at their Broad Street office. Commodore Vanderbilt's
family were doubtlessly thanking their lucky stars -- or perhaps the Beneficent
Creator -- that he had long since severed ties with this wanton and her sister,
whose names would now be inexorably linked to free love. But if Americans
didn't share the firebrand's opinions, they were eager to hear about them;
lecture invitations poured in from all over the country.
A
cartoon by Thomas Nast, 1872.
BE
SAVED BY FREE LOVE offers Woodhull, in the garb of the Devil,
as a
respectable housewife toils in the opposite direction, burdened
with
children and
an alcoholic spouse: "I'd rather follow the
hardest
path of matrimony than follow in your footsteps."
|
In December 1871 the
undaunted sisters marched up Broadway in solidarity with the International
Workingmen's Association, in memory of martyred Communards executed by the
bourgeois government of France after the brutal repression of the French
Commune. And at the annual winter convention of the National Suffrage
Association in Washington, Victoria appeared on the platform with Susan B.
Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton, who were not yet ready to break with the
firebrand whom some were now calling Mrs. Satan. Rumors of scandal
plagued her campaign for the presidency on the ticket of the newly formed Equal
Rights Party, and lack of funds forced her from the Broad Street office and
caused the Weekly to suspend publication. Things didn't
look good for Mrs. Satan.
But Victoria wasn't done
yet. In September, when a delegate to the National Spiritualists'
Association in Boston accused her of obtaining money under false pretenses, she
took the stand and, furious, gave the details of the Rev. Beecher's affair with
Libby Tilton. How dare he preach the sanctity of marriage while
practicing free love clandestinely? Impressed, the spiritualists
reelected her president of the association. So the cat was out of the bag
at last.
Back in New York, using
funds from a still unknown source, she revived Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly
with a bang. The first new issue, dated November 2, 1872 (though
published earlier), gave a lengthy account of the Beecher-Tilton scandal.
She claimed to speak reluctantly, out of a sense of duty, so as to
support her campaign against the outworn institution of marriage. She was
nothing if not candid, mentioning Beecher's "demanding physical
nature" and "immense physical potency." With the intimacy of
Mrs. Tilton and the minister she had no quarrel, only with Beecher's hypocrisy.
As for Tilton, his conduct had been no better than Beecher's; she
deplored his displays of wounded feelings and pride. (Whatever intimacy
they may once have shared by now had obviously soured.)
Word spread quickly; issues
flew off the stands. By evening, they were said to be going for forty
dollars a copy. The scandal of the century had finally burst into full
view of the public.
On November 2, several days
after the issue actually appeared, the sisters were arrested while riding in a
carriage on Broad Street. Arraigned before a packed courtroom, they
learned that they were charged with sending obscene matter through the mail,
the matter involved being "an atrocious, abominable and untrue libel on a
gentleman whom the whole country reveres." Who had brought the
charges? None other than Anthony Comstock (see post #37), using a federal
law of 1872, since the famous and infamous Comstock law had yet to be lobbied
for and passed. The sisters were in full bloom, according to the press,
which described Victoria as "sedate," and Tennie as
"bright" and "animated," with sparkling blue eyes, and
"splendid teeth" that she took care to display. And who was
there to defend them? Another giant of the day whom we have seen already
(post #29): William Howe, the bejeweled elephant. The sisters were
a magnet for the eminences of the time.
Choosing not to put up
bail, the sisters were confined to Ludlow Street Jail, where they vividly
denounced the American Bastille to the journalists who flocked to
interview them. (In point of fact, their durance was not so vile, since
the staff there gave them courteous attention and by their own account never,
during their sojourn, uttered a word unmentionable to ears polite.) Meanwhile
Counselor Howe protested this attack on free speech, and insisted that the
Bible, Lord Byron, and Shakespeare could be similarly suppressed. As the
trial was endlessly delayed, the press made a good show of the lovely captives,
their grim accuser, their diamond-bedecked defender, and others related to the
case. Finally, after four weeks in the Bastille, the sisters consented to
put up bail and were released. Their month's incarceration had won them
sympathy, and garnered Comstock criticism and more than a touch of mockery.
 |
| Poster for a lecture by the sisters following their incarceration. From the collections of the Museum of the City of New York. |
The whole affair dragged
on, with further legal complications, and ever fuller measures of mockery for Comstock from the ungodly, until a ruling came at last on June 27, 1873, when
the presiding judge ruled that the 1872 law did not apply to newspapers.
By then the stricter Comstock law had been passed, but for this case it
was irrelevant. The sisters were gloriously free on a technicality, and
their accuser must once again ponder the mysteries of the Master's will, before consoling himself by arresting a local bookdealer for the
third time. Victoria meanwhile referred to the YMCA in the Weekly as
the American Inquisition, but added that there was no more similarity between the inquisitor Torquemada and Comstock than between a dead lion and a living skunk.
The ensuing scandal took a
heavy toll on all concerned. Plymouth Church was stricken, but at
Beecher's urging held a board of inquiry that, in spite of the misgivings of
some, exonerated Beecher; Tilton was then expelled from the church.
Tilton's wife was badgered by Beecher into retracting her
confession, and then badgered by Tilton into retracting the
retraction; she finally left Tilton because of the publicity. Then in
1875 Tilton sued Beecher for "criminal intimacy" with his wife; the long trial riveted the nation's attention, but after six days of deliberation it ended
in a hung jury. The troubled church held a second board of inquiry that
also exonerated their beloved minister, but Libby Tilton confessed again to the
affair and was also excommunicated. Unable to find employment in this country because of
the scandal, Tilton moved to Paris and spent the rest of his life there.
Beecher's popularity continued, but he never again enjoyed the uncritical
adulation of before.
 |
| Henry Ward Beecher A statue by John Quincy Ward, ca. 1888-89, at Amherst College, Massachusetts, the reverend's alma mater. The heroic pose shows that, for some, he is best remembered as a stalwart abolitionist. Alex756 |
Life for Victoria and her
sister was not triumphant either. They were shunned on Wall Street, no
longer had the support of the leading suffragists of the time, and had mounting
financial problems that made the continued publication of the Weekly difficult.
Victoria now divorced her current husband, who had supplied many of the
articles for their publication. In 1877, in a move that must have
surprised all, the two sisters left this country for England, probably financed
by William Vanderbilt, the Commodore's heir, so they wouldn't testify in court
when some of the Commodore's offspring challenged his will. In England
Victoria continued to give controversial lectures, but ended up marrying a
wealthy banker. Tennie did even better, marrying a wealthy widower who
became a baronet; so the rebel who had once scorned what squeamish people said of her, and who had graced the lap of the richest man in America, was now known as Lady Cook, Viscountess of
Montserrat, and lived at times in her husband's castle in Portugal.
Needless to say, a curious ending for two flaming female radicals. Their
rise in English society may have inspired Henry James's delicious story "The Siege
of London," in which an American woman with a shady past (multiple marriages) manages to hook a
most respectable young baronet. Tennie died in 1923, and Victoria in
1927. Though the feminists of their time came to shun them, they have
since been reclaimed with enthusiasm by the women's rights movement of today.
Historical footnote: When newly moneyed Americans began hitting Europe after the Civil War, in England the upper classes asked a crucial question: Does one marry Americans? When Lord Randolph Churchill of illustrious lineage married Jenny Jerome, the eldest daughter of Wall Street speculator Leonard Jerome, the answer was a resounding Yes! What was good enough for Lord Randolph had to be good enough for the rest of society. (The result, by the way, was Winston Churchill.) Usually these unions involved new American money bonding with impoverished foreign titles. In the case of the Claflin sisters, however, the money was all on the side of the husbands; the sisters provided spark and charm. After World War I impoverished foreign titles were much less enticing to American heiresses; they looked a bit shopworn (the titles, not the heiresses). Henry James treats this theme beautifully in many novels and short stories. He is my favorite American novelist; I highly recommend his works.
Thought for the day: Existence is ecstasy. (A Buddhist idea that has always intrigued me; it prompts reflection.)
(c) 2012 Clifford Browder
Historical footnote: When newly moneyed Americans began hitting Europe after the Civil War, in England the upper classes asked a crucial question: Does one marry Americans? When Lord Randolph Churchill of illustrious lineage married Jenny Jerome, the eldest daughter of Wall Street speculator Leonard Jerome, the answer was a resounding Yes! What was good enough for Lord Randolph had to be good enough for the rest of society. (The result, by the way, was Winston Churchill.) Usually these unions involved new American money bonding with impoverished foreign titles. In the case of the Claflin sisters, however, the money was all on the side of the husbands; the sisters provided spark and charm. After World War I impoverished foreign titles were much less enticing to American heiresses; they looked a bit shopworn (the titles, not the heiresses). Henry James treats this theme beautifully in many novels and short stories. He is my favorite American novelist; I highly recommend his works.
Thought for the day: Existence is ecstasy. (A Buddhist idea that has always intrigued me; it prompts reflection.)
(c) 2012 Clifford Browder
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