The Square Pegs (17 page)

The press, less interested in mother love than in free love, was fascinated only by the fact that a presidential candidate, female, was keeping two lovers, male, in her bedroom at the same time. As far away as Cleveland, the
Leader
branded Victoria “a vain, immodest, unsexed woman” and a “brazen snaky adventuress.” And in New York, for all who knew her to read, Horace Greeley wrote in the
Tribune
: “Let her be the one who has two husbands after a sort, and lives in the same house with them both, sharing the couch of one, but bearing the name of the other (to indicate her impartiality perhaps) and cause and candidate will be so fitly mated … that there will be no occasion even under the most liberal and progressive enlightened regime to sue for their divorce.”

In her
Weekly
, Victoria lashed out, first at Greeley, then at all who mocked and criticized her. “Mr. Greeley’s home has always been a sort of domestic hell … the fault and opprobrium of domestic discord has been heaped on Mrs. Greeley… . Whenever a scold, a nervous, an unreasonable, or even a devilish tendency is developed in a wife, it is well to scrutinize closely the qualities of the husband.” As for the rest of them, let them cower in their glass houses. “At this very moment, awful and herculean efforts are being made to suppress the most terrific scandal in a neighboring city which has ever astounded and convulsed any community … We have the inventory of discarded husbands and wives and lovers, with dates, circumstances and establishments.”

Still Victoria was not done. Her blood boiled at the injustice of being so severely and universally condemned and censured. She must let more persons than the readers of her
Weekly
know her true feelings. She must be vindicated in their eyes. Thus, on May 20, 1871, she addressed a letter, or “card” as such communications were then called, to the editor of the
New York World
, with a copy written out for
The New York Times
. Two days after its receipt it was published prominently in the World. It was not, as we shall see, just another angry protest. For in its content was an elaboration of that “most terrific scandal in a neighboring city,” previously mentioned by Victoria in her
Weekly
, which would rock all of America and bring an idol crashing down from his high pedestal. Victoria’s memorable revelation began:

“Sir: Because I am a woman, and because I conscientiously hold opinions somewhat different from the self-elected orthodoxy which men find their profit in supporting, and because I think it my bounden duty and my absolute right to put forward my opinions and to advocate them with my whole strength, self-orthodoxy assails me, vilifies me, and endeavors to cover my life with ridicule and dishonor.

“This has been particularly the case in reference to certain law proceedings into which I was recently drawn by the weakness of one very near relative and the profligate selfishness of other relatives.”

Victoria went on to admit candidly that she did, indeed, dwell “in the same house with my former husband … and my present husband.” She could not, she said, do otherwise, for Dr. Woodhull was ill and needed her support. Despite this charity, “various editors have stigmatized me as a living example of immorality and unchastity.” Victoria said she was always prepared for criticism, but on this occasion her enemies had gone too far.

“I know that many of my self-appointed judges and critics are deeply tainted with the vices they condemn. … I advocate Free Love in its highest, purest sense, as the only cure for the immorality, the deep damnation by which men corrupt and disfigure God’s most holy institution of sexual relation. My judges preach against free love openly, practice it secretly; their outward seeming is fair, inwardly, they are full of ‘dead men’s bones and all manner of uncleanliness.’ For example, I know of one man, a public teacher of eminence, who lives in concubinage with the wife of another public teacher, of almost equal eminence. All three concur in denouncing offenses against morality. ‘Hypocrisy is the tribute paid by vice to virtue.’ So be it. But I decline to stand up as the ‘frightful example.’”

Several hours after the publication of this letter, Victoria sent a message to Theodore Tilton, a “public teacher” who was editor of the
Golden Age
magazine. She asked him to call upon her, at once, at her office. He appeared, at once, wary and puzzled. Victoria handed him the morning edition of the World, folded open to her letter.

Victoria indicated the letter. “I wish you would read it aloud.”

He read it aloud. He read all of it, including the exposure of “a public teacher of eminence, who lives in concubinage with the wife of another public teacher, of almost equal eminence.” He finished lamely, and looked up.

“Do you know, sir, to whom I refer in that card?” asked Victoria.

“How can I tell to whom you refer in a blind card like this?”

“I refer, sir, to the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher and your wife.”

Tilton showed his surprise, not at the knowledge of his wife’s infidelity, about which he already knew, but at the realization that her infidelity was public property.

Victoria watched him. “I read by the expression on your face that my charge is true.”

Tilton did not deny that it was true. When Victoria went on to review the affair in detail, he was forced to agree that her account, though “extravagant and violent,” was substantially accurate. Tilton had to face an ugly fact: his pious wife’s adultery, begun three years before and made known to him only eleven months before, could no longer be kept secret.

The scandal had had its beginnings on that day in 1855 when Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, pastor of the wealthy Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, officiated at the wedding of a worshipful member of his flock, the darkly attractive, charming Elizabeth Richards, to a handsome, twenty-year-old journalist named Theodore Tilton.

In the fifteen years following the wedding, the short, stocky, dynamic Beecher became the highest-paid preacher in America. He received $20,000 a year from the grateful Plymouth Church. He collected an additional $15,000 annually from writing and speaking tours. His colorful sermons made him not only a god to the three thousand Congregationalists who packed his church every week, but also a Republican of national prominence. Though he frowned upon the free-love theories held by Victoria Woodhull and her followers, he considered himself liberal and open-minded. He permitted the celebrated atheist Robert Ingersoll to address his congregation. He defended his Jewish brethren against the anti-Semitism of Judge Henry Hilton in the notorious Saratoga hotel boycott of Joseph Seligman. He tried to auction a slave woman from his pulpit to publicize his sister’s book,
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
. He was a man of magnetic personality, and his followers were fanatically devoted to him. Yet, for all of his success and acclaim, he was a lonely and restless person. An early marriage had bound him to a thin-lipped, disapproving, forever unamused New England wife named Eunice Bullard. She gave him nine children and little else. Her conversation, Beecher admitted, was “vapid” and “juiceless.” Eventually, Beecher turned from his unhappy wife to the company of more admiring women. And finally, as an outlet for his needs and desires, he settled upon the wife of his protege and closest friend.

Elizabeth Richards had, in a sense, been a product of Beecher’s teaching and of his fervor. She had gone to school with one of his daughters and she had been a member of his church for fifteen years. When she met young Tilton she brought him into the church. Tilton was the eternal juvenile. Greeley dubbed him “Boy Theodore.” The son of a carpenter, Tilton was educated at New York City College. Upon leaving school he became a reporter on the New York Observer. Though tall and strong, he possessed an air of feminine softness. He was brilliant, he was idealistic, and he was weak.

The year after his marriage Tilton fell under Beecher’s influence and patronage. Through the pastor’s intervention Tilton became editor, and then part owner, of the Independent, his salary climbing from $700 to $15,000 a year. Tilton and Beecher became close companions, and the lonely pastor was constantly in the Tilton home.

Beecher had always been aware of Elizabeth Tilton, first as an awed member of his congregation, then as the wife of his best friend. But soon enough he began to consider the warm, slight brunette as something more than a friend. And Elizabeth Tilton, now “Lib” to her pastor, found herself drawn closer to Beecher because of problems that had arisen with her husband. Tilton had become a fanatic abolitionist and had abandoned religion for free thought. Too, it was rumored that he was neglecting his wife for the company of other women. One of these women was a pretty, sixteen-year-old girl, Bessie Turner, who was employed to help care for his five children. Tilton had much affection for this girl, and on a night in 1867 he entered her bedroom lightly clad and slid into bed beside her. According to Miss Turner, Tilton whispered “that if I would allow him to caress me and to love me as he wanted to do that no harm should come to me, and that a physical expression of love was just the same as a kiss or a caress.”

In August 1868 Elizabeth Tilton lost a son by cholera. If ever she needed consoling, this was the time. But her husband was off on a lecture tour. At last, she went to see Beecher at his home. She said that she needed him. As it turned out, he needed her as much. And that night, in her diary, Elizabeth wrote: “October 10, 1868. A Day Memorable.” The most detailed account of the illicit affair was later made public by Tilton himself:

“She then said to me … that this sexual intimacy had begun shortly after the death of her son Paul … that she had received much consolation during that shadow on our house, from her pastor; that she had made a visit to his house while she was still suffering from that sorrow, and that there, on the 10th of October, 1868, she had surrendered her body to him in sexual embrace; that she had repeated such an act on the following Saturday evening at her own residence … that she had consequent upon those two occasions repeated such acts at various times, at his residence and at hers, and at other places such acts of sexual intercourse continuing from the Fall of 1868 to the Spring of 1870 … that after her final surrender, in October 1868, he had then many times solicited her when she had refused; that the occasions of her yielding her body to him had not been numerous, but that his solicitations had been frequent and urgent, and sometimes almost violent… .”

Tilton was able to reveal these details because he had heard them from his wife’s lips on the evening of July 3, 1870. Conscience-stricken, she had at last broken away from Beecher and decided to confess all to her husband. She told him that her fall had been encouraged not by “vulgar thoughts,” but by gratefulness to Beecher for his kind attentions in her bereavement and by his authoritative insistence that the act was not sinful. Through the year-and-a-half affair, she said, she had been in a “trance.” She made him vow to keep his knowledge secret. And he agreed.

But secret, as we know, is probably the most elastic word in English usage. Tilton, his reaction varying between hurt and happy martyrdom, unburdened himself to a close friend, Martha Bradshaw, a deaconess of Beecher’s church. He then repeated the same story to Henry Bowen, his publisher, whose own wife had once been seduced by Beecher. As for Elizabeth, she expiated her sin further by disclosing it to her hysterical and talkative mother, Mrs. Nathan B. Morse, who in turn gossiped about it to intimate friends.

When Victoria Woodhull revealed to Tilton her own full knowledge of the scandal, he thought at once that she had heard it from Mrs. Morse. He was wrong. Victoria had heard the scandal on May 3, 1871, from her fellow suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton during a private chat on marriage and free love. Not long before, Mrs. Stanton had been personal witness to the discord at the Tiltons, and she told Victoria about it.

It appeared that Tilton had dined with Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Bullard at the latter’s home. They planned to discuss the policy of
The Revolution
, a sufferage newspaper, which Tilton was helping them edit. But Tilton had no mind for journalism that evening. When the talk turned to marriage reform, Tilton exploded with a tirade against the influence of Beecher. He said that he despised “the damned lecherous scoundrel.” And he told the startled ladies his reasons.

This was the morsel of gossip which Mrs. Stanton passed along to Victoria Woodhull. Had Mrs. Stanton held her tongue, it is possible that there would never have been a Beecher-Tilton case in American history.

When Theodore Tilton left Victoria Woodhull’s presence that late morning of May 22, 1871, he realized that he was faced with a single difficult duty. He must preserve his wife’s reputation and his own by convincing Victoria that the scandal must not be exposed to further publicity. To this end, employing the principals involved, the services of his pen, and even his own sexuality, Tilton for more than a year sought to divert Victoria from any indulgence in sensationalism.

Tilton, despite Elizabeth’s protests, took Victoria to meet her, to prove to Victoria that his wife was really decent and deserved no injury. When he brought Victoria into the house, and introduced her, he said to his wife: “Elizabeth, Mrs. Woodhull knows all.” Elizabeth was troubled. “Everything?” Tilton nodded. The rest of the meeting went smoothly. As Elizabeth sewed she discussed her opinions on many subjects, and later presented her guest with a volume of verse.

Next, Tilton went to Henry Ward Beecher and advised him to receive Victoria and “treat her with kindness.” Apparently, the pastor was agreeable, for Tilton was able to write Victoria: “My dear Victoria … you shall see Mr. Beecher at my house on Friday night. He will attend a meeting of the church at ten o’clock and will give you the rest of the evening as late as you desire.”

Victoria was waiting in the Tilton parlor when Beecher arrived. She greeted him warmly, arms extended. They discussed the subject of marriage, and Beecher agreed that it was “the grave of love.” Victoria chided him for not preaching what he believed, and he replied, uncomfortably: “If I were to do so, I should preach to empty seats and it would be the ruin of my church.” Now she came to the topic uppermost in her mind. She wanted his public endorsement. She had written him, the day before, that she was scheduled to speak at Steinway Hall and “what I say or shall not say will depend largely upon the result of the interview.” Bluntly, she asked him to appear on the platform with her and introduce her. Beecher recoiled at the request. She was going to discuss free love, and he would have no part of it. Victoria called him “a moral coward.” It is possible she threatened him. At any rate, as she recalled it, he immediately climbed “upon the sofa on his knees beside me, and taking my face between his hands, while the tears streamed down his cheeks, he begged me to let him off.” When Victoria remained unmoved and repeated that she might yet expose his infamy, he exclaimed: “Oh! if it must come, let me know of it twenty-four hours in advance, that I may take my own life.” Years after, Victoria confessed to one of her associates that “she herself had had sexual relations both with Tilton and with Beecher.”