The Square Pegs (19 page)

But, continued Victoria, Beecher had given grave offense to Tilton. When Tilton learned of his wife’s unfaithfulness, he tore the wedding ring off her finger and smashed Beecher’s framed picture. Beecher, Victoria concluded eleven columns later, was “a poltroon, a coward and a sneak” for not owning up to his clandestine affair.

The uproar that followed was tremendous. Newsboys hawked the weekly through the city, and over one hundred thousand copies were sold. As copies became scarce, single issues began to sell for ten dollars each, and finally for forty. Beecher was confronted with the scandal. A friend wanted reassurance that the whole thing was a fraud. “Entirely!” said Beecher. His attitude made it clear that he was above the battle. “In passing along the way, anyone is liable to have a bucket of slops thrown upon him,” he remarked. But if he pretended to ignore the expose, Anthony Comstock did not. This part-time guardian of the nation’s morals read the story after midnight and felt it to be a “most abominable and unjust charge against one of the purest and best citizens of the United States.” When Beecher refused to sue for libel, or for anything else, Comstock himself instigated criminal action. The morning after publication, he sought out the United States District Attorney, who was a member of Beecher’s congregation, and demanded that Victoria and her sister be arrested for sending obscene printed matter through the mails.

The deputy marshals found Victoria and Tennessee in a carriage on Broad Street with five hundred new copies of their weekly beside them, waiting to be arrested. A prohibitive bail of $8,000 was placed on each, and they were hustled into a cramped cell of the Ludlow Street Jail. After a month without trial, they were released on bail, then rearrested on another charge and again released on bail, and finally arrested a third time when Comstock discovered that they were sending reprints of their scandal edition through the mails. After six months of confinement, Victoria and Tennessee were granted a jury trial. Their savior proved to be none other than Congressman Butler, who had first brought Victoria to public prominence in Washington. He had helped write the law against sending obscene material through the mails and now explained that it was meant to cover only “lithographs, prints, engravings, licentious books.” In court Victoria’s attorney pointed out that the offending weekly was none of these. The jury agreed and found the sisters “Not guilty.”

But to the editorial writers of
The New York Times
, Victoria was still guilty. In attacking Beecher so unfairly, she had “disgraced and degraded … the female name.” It was not until three years later that Victoria saw herself partially vindicated. After Beecher’s backers, accusing Tilton of slander, had drummed him out of the Plymouth Church by a vote of 210 to 13, and after an examining committee of the church had completely exonerated their beloved pastor, Tilton was moved to act. He instigated suit against Beecher for $100,000 for alienation of his wife’s affections, and on January 11, 1875, in Brooklyn, the great scandal at last came to trial. Tilton testified that Beecher had seduced his wife, and for a year and a half “maintained criminal intercourse” with her. He presented letters to prove that the good pastor had told his wife that she was not properly appreciated by her husband and had suggested that they find other ways to express their love beyond “the shake of the hand or the kiss of the lips.” Beecher, for his part, admitted affection, denied adultery, and, after 112 days of wrangling and 3,000 pages of testimony, got a hung jury (with a vote of 9 to 3 against Tilton after 52 ballots). Beecher’s followers gave him a hero’s welcome. The
Louisville Courier-Journal
, like most of the press in sentiment, branded Beecher “a dunghill covered with flowers.”

Though Beecher had hoped to become president, his ambitions for public office were destroyed by the scandal. Yet, he held his following, and his lecture audiences even increased, enabling him to count on as much as $1,000 a speech. As the accused, he had survived nicely. Victoria Woodhull as his accuser fared not half so well. The scandal she had brought to light had done little to aid her in her bid for the presidency. She was behind bars, in the Ludlow Street Jail, on November 5, 1872, when Grant was easily reelected president. Victoria received no electoral votes and but “few scattered popular ones.” At first she blamed her crushing rejection on the corruption of the Grant machine. “If Jesus Christ had been running against this man,” she told a San Francisco audience, “he’d have been defeated.” Later she sensed that her theories and reforms were too advanced for the general public.

For a while, wracked by illness and exhaustion, she persisted with her lectures on free love. Though well attended, they no longer generated the old excitement. As always, Victoria continued to live her personal life without regard for public opinion. She had several affairs. One was with a nineteen-year-old college boy whom she had hired to help manage her lectures. His name was Benjamin R. Tucker, and in 1926 he revealed the extent of his involvement to Emanie Sachs, who published it in
The Terrible Siren
. Though he was shy, he professed to believe in Victoria’s doctrines, and tried not to appear surprised when she kissed him or sat on his lap. One Sunday morning he entered her parlor to find her stretched on a lounge. “After some conversation,” wrote Tucker, “she said: ‘Do you know, I should dearly love to sleep with you?’ Thereupon any man a thousandth part less stupid than myself would have thrown his arms around her neck and smothered her with kisses. But I simply remarked that were her desire to be gratified, it would be my first experience in that line. She looked at me with amazement. ‘How can that be?’ she asked.” The arrival of Colonel Blood interrupted any further discussion. But when Tucker returned that afternoon, Victoria was still waiting to seduce him. “Mrs. Woodhull was still obliged to make all the advances; I, as before, was slow and hesitating… . But, despite all obstacles, within an hour my ‘ruin’ was complete, and I, nevertheless, a proud and happy youth.”

Victoria, apparently, was insatiable, for young Tucker was obliged to return for the same purpose that night and frequently in the days that followed. But when Victoria insisted upon making this promiscuity a family affair, Tucker revolted. “One afternoon, when I was walking up town with Victoria from the office, she said to me suddenly, ‘Tennie is going to love you this afternoon.’ I looked at her wonderingly. ‘But,’ I said, ‘I don’t care to have her.’ ‘Oh, don’t say that,’ she answered; ‘nobody can love me who doesn’t love Tennie.’” With that, Tucker fled.

Though Victoria expected tolerance toward her own affairs, she demanded faithfulness on the part of her lovers. When in 1876 she learned that Colonel Blood had been attentive to several young females, she was outraged. She told him that she was tired of supporting him and asked him to leave. Though they had not been married, Victoria formally divorced Blood on the complaint that he had consorted with a prostitute. Except for one occasion, years later, when she silently passed him on the street, she never saw him again and long after, she learned that he had died on a gold-hunting expedition to Africa, far from the Utopian world of free love and fiat money he had so long adored.

At about the time of Blood’s departure from her home, Victoria began to lose interest in radicalism and reform. Her ideals seemed as tired and passe as her person. Her existence seemed to have lost all point and purpose. Once the noble Demosthenes had guided her toward the path to wealth and power. She had tasted both and found them bitter. Now her deepest yearning was to find peace, normality, and refuge in some placid orthodoxy. And so, in her thirty-eighth year, she abandoned Demosthenes for Jesus Christ.

The startling conversion first became apparent on the editorial page of the
Weekly
, which was appearing erratically again. A standard quotation from John Stuart Mill on “the diseases of society” was abruptly replaced by more soothing words from St. Paul. Also, a series of interpretative articles on the “Book of Revelations” crowded out shrill arguments on equal rights. Finally Victoria canceled her popular lectures on the prostitution of marriage for lectures, well punctuated with Biblical references, on her discovery that the Garden of Eden was in the body of every married woman.

Before this vague and confused exploration into religion could go any further, an event occurred that completely changed Victoria’s life. On the morning of January 4, 1877, after shouting for his wife to sing him some hymns, the mighty Commodore Vanderbilt expired. In death, as he had in life, he rescued Victoria from need and oblivion. The Commodore’s will left over $100,000,000 to his heirs. Of this total, $95,000,000 went to his eldest son, William, and the remaining paltry $5,000,000 to his other son, Cornelius, and his eight daughters. The indignant minority sued on the grounds that the deceased had been mentally incompetent at the time the will was written. Though Cornelius settled for $1,000,000 out of court, the eight Vanderbilt daughters fought on. To prove their father’s incompetence, they consulted, among many others, Victoria Woodhull, who had once been his medium.

In the clash over the Commodore’s will, Victoria saw a golden opportunity to recoup her fortune. The Commodore had left her nothing, though he had left Tennessee an oil painting and had entrusted to both sisters “certain large sums” to be used in advancing the cause of spiritualism. Victoria made it known that the Commodore owed her more than $100,000, the residue of an old, unfulfilled business deal.

While there exists no documentation on what happened next, it seems obvious that William Vanderbilt, as main heir and defendant, took the hint. Rather than have Victoria testify against his interests by recollecting the Commodore’s mental lapses, William paid off.

In 1876 Victoria had turned to Christ for salvation, but in 1877 it was the Commodore who saved her. We do not know the precise sum she extracted. Figures ranging between $50,000 and $500,000 have been mentioned. But a condition of William’s deal apparently was that Victoria and Tennessee remove their persons from American soil at once and for the duration of the contest over the will. And so, late in 1877, with new wardrobe, new servants, and six first-class staterooms, Victoria and Tennessee sailed for England.

Arriving in London, Victoria leased a fashionable suburban home and decided to make herself known by resuming her platform appearances. She had posters printed which announced the forthcoming personal appearance of “the great American orator.” On an evening in December 1877 she addressed a large audience at St. James’s Hall. Her subject was “The Human Body, the Temple of God,” and though it concerned varied problems of motherhood and heredity, there was at least one male member of the assemblage who listened with rapt attention. His name was John Biddulph Martin, the rich and aristocratic son of a rich and aristocratic father. Victoria’s appearance and her personality moved him deeply. “I was charmed with her high intellect and fascinated by her manner,” Martin recalled later, “and I left the lecture hall that night with the determination that, if Mrs. Woodhull would marry me, I would certainly make her my wife.”

Soon enough, Martin succeeded in meeting the astonishing American “orator.” It was not surprising that Victoria found him agreeable, and that she could reciprocate his affection. She wanted security, acceptance, love, and all of these John Biddulph Martin could promise in abundance. At thirty-six Victoria was then thirty-nine Martin was a full partner of the prosperous Martin’s Bank, at 68 Lombard Street, London, a firm that traced its origin back to 1579. Beyond this major inducement, Martin possessed several others. He had been an athlete at Oxford, and despite his age and beard, he still had the trim appearance of an athlete. He was a quiet man, devoted to culture and scholarship, and Victoria was his first real love.

If Victoria hoped for a quick, happy ending to a tumultuous career, it was not to be so simple. Martin’s parents, at Overbury Court, were appalled by his choice for wife. Had they thought to investigate Victoria, they would not have had to go beyond their daily newspapers. The press, if restrained, made it plain that Mrs. Woodhull’s past had been checkered. She had been twice married and twice divorced, the elder Martins incorrectly learned. She had crusaded horror of horrors for free love. She had been the inmate of an American jail. And her name had been linked with such public scandals as the Beecher trial and the Vanderbilt-will case. Were these the qualifications for an English banker’s wife? Evidently not. The elder Martins made their disapproval clear. Their son was desolate; their future daughter-in-law was indignant.

Like the ancient Chinese emperor who burned all history books and records so that history might begin with him, Victoria Woodhull now desperately and grimly set out to obliterate her past. She had been, she insisted, the editor of
Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly
in name only. Colonel Blood had written those reprehensible articles on free love, and Stephen Pearl Andrews had exposed the Beecher-Tilton scandal, all without her knowledge. While she did, indeed, believe in the emancipation of women, all else credited to her pen and tongue were the grossest falsehoods. Her own life, from birth, had been one of chastity and conformity.

It took six years to convince the elder Martins. At last, probably worn down by Victoria’s persistent chatter about purity and by their son’s endless romantic pleadings, they withdrew threats of disinheritance and gave their consent. On October 31, 1883, at the age of forty-five, Victoria Claflin Woodhull became Mrs. John Biddulph Martin, London lady and legal mistress of a gray, stately residence at 17 Hyde Park Gate.

But for Victoria, in all her eighteen years of contented marriage, the fight to suppress or revise her shocking and eccentric past was never done. When some of the wives of Martin’s friends cut her dead, Victoria offered 1,000 pounds reward for a list of those in “conspiracy to defame” her. Just as book publishers print excerpts of good reviews of their best authors, Victoria printed and circulated broadsides containing good character references taken from carefully screened American sources.