Free Woman (19 page)

"These won't do, Mrs. Woodhull."

Vicky lost her patience. "Very well, sir," she said severely. "I am not to be the judge of that. But you were very anxious to have them!" She rose and threaded her way out of the crowded courtroom.

Not until June did the case go to the jury. Beecher's attorney summed up the defense's case by insisting that his client, a man whose "silver tongue would lure an angel from paradise," could not possibly have committed adultery. Tilton's attorney declared that Beecher might be a great man but that he was still a sinner. The jury retired.

For eight days, the country waited breathlessly while the jury tried to decide which man was telling the truth. After fifty-two ballots, they returned to the courtroom on July 2 and informed the judge that they had been unable to reach a decision. When the case was dismissed, it was interpreted as a victory for Beecher. The courtroom exploded with cheers and hysterical sobs as people leaped on tables and chairs. On the next Sunday morning, the crowds at Plymouth Church were so great that the police came to keep order on the street.

The trial had run for 112 days. Over two million words had been spoken or entered as evidence. There had been almost a hundred witnesses. It would go down in history as one of the most discussed trials in American jurisprudence.

Beecher's triumph could not help but add to Vicky's bitterness. She had suffered by practicing what she sincerely believed. Henry Beecher practiced what she believed, too, but he did not suffer. As far as she was concerned, he had lied his way through the trial—nine hundred times he had said, "I don't know," or, "I can't recollect"—but still the nation crowned him as its idol. In a twisted way, she drew a lesson from the Beecher-Tilton trial: dishonesty can be the best policy.

Vicky began the Beecher drama. By the time it had been played to its deceitful end, it destroyed her psychologically. She was no longer the same woman; in fact, she would never be that person again. Justice had not triumphed. Instead, it had risen and strangled her.

Vicky dozed against the coach seat on a train between Chicago and Milwaukee and clung to her mother's leathery hand. Trees flashed by the window and, when she half-opened her eyes, she could catch a glimpse of Lake Michigan.

"I won't stand to rest till I get you to that hotel and into bed," Roxanna was saying. "Looks like you're wore out, darlin'."

From a satchel at her feet, Roxanna pulled out a chunk of cornbread and an orange. "I reckon we got quite a piece to go yet. Better take something to eat, darlin'."

"Yes, Mama," said Vicky, hunched against her mother's shoulder.

There was no more fight left in her. Sometimes she thought that touring the lecture circuit was like living in a dream. Memphis, Dallas, Binghamton, St. Louis—all cities looked alike to her. She grieved to herself that her health was ruined and her appearance wretched. If pleurisy or anemia didn't plague her, then pains in her chest and shortness of breath did.

Her life had become a series of melodramas. At each new town, she'd unpack and try to pull herself together. She would get buttoned into one of her stylish dresses and pin her trademark, a fresh rosebud, at her throat. Before leaving for the lecture hall, she'd swallow a cup of scalding tea with plenty of honey. If she were having one of her really bad days, she'd lace the tea with a spoonful of brandy.

In command of herself then, she would be able to walk confidently onto the stage and speak for an hour and a half, sometimes two hours. Immediately afterward, she would collapse.

The one person who kept her going was Roxanna. It was Roxanna who insisted she accompany Vicky on tour, Roxanna who packed and unpacked, argued with hotel porters, put Vicky to bed at night and dragged her out of bed in the morning. She dressed Vicky and fed her and gave her medicine. She fussed over her daughter as she had never done when Vicky was a child.

Vicky didn't object to Roxanna's babying. The truth was she felt like a helpless child. She desperately wanted to be mothered and taken care of. Traveling with Roxanna, Tennie, and Zulu Maud was curiously comforting. It reminded her of the old days when the Claflin medicine show roamed the Midwest, telling fortunes and promising astounding cures.

Roxanna, now in her seventies, was a powerful old woman with strong shoulders and an active tongue. In fact, she never stopped talking. Vicky let her prattle on, thankful for her comforting presence. Roxanna's favorite opening phrase was, "I just used to set there and keep my mouth shut...." Then she'd go on to tell Vicky what she thought of her radical ideas on feminism, politics, and sex. All her tirades ended on the same note: "Well, I knowed doggone well it were the work of the devil."

While Roxanna talked, Vicky listened. It would be too easy to suggest that Roxanna was responsible for the changes taking place in Vicky. Roxanna was only one influence among many; she only hastened the final outcome. But there was no doubt that a new Victoria Woodhull now appeared on the lecture platform.

Gradually she spoke less and less about sexual freedom and the slavery of marriage. She began to talk more about God and religion. A statue of the Virgin Mary began to appear on the platform with her. She'd begin a lecture by opening a morocco-bound Bible and reading from the Scriptures. She composed new speeches and called them "The Human Body, the Temple of God" and "The Garden of Eden, or Paradise Lost and Found."

The latter dealt with menstruation, which proved the old, bold Vicky had not vanished entirely. In those days, menstruation was a taboo subject. Nobody, man or woman, discussed woman's "curse" in public. But Vicky's radical statements grew less frequent, both on the lecture platform and in the pages of the
Weekly
.

Some people welcomed her new image. One newspaper noted that her lectures "could be heard without shame by every woman, man and child in the city."

Nevertheless, readers of the
Weekly
were puzzled at this new turn of events. They wanted to read about social revolution, not religion. "Has Mrs. Woodhull gone over to the Roman Catholic Church?" demanded one irate subscriber. Some readers canceled their subscriptions, others simply never renewed them. James, who had been left behind in New York to work on the paper, saw what was happening and tried to warn Vicky. Closing her eyes, she continued to send him articles on the meaning of the book of Genesis and the Revelations of Saint John the Divine.

On June 10, 1876,
Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly
was forced to suspend publication. With the exception of six months in 1872, when Vicky had gone broke and then to jail, the
Weekly
had run for over six years. By this time, practically nobody remembered its original purpose: to promote Victoria Woodhull for President.

In the final issue Vicky fervently denied that she had ever supported "free love." She insisted that she had always advocated "the sanctity of marriage."

"Nor do I believe," she added, "in the loose system of divorces now so much in vogue. To me, this business is as reprehensible as the promiscuousness that runs riot in the land."

She had lived hard, but now her body and spirit failed her. Unlike other despondent women, she disdained ordinary methods of escape such as alcohol, drugs, or suicide. Instead, unconsciously perhaps, she destroyed herself in a far more dramatic way. She systematically denied all she had ever been.

Almost viciously, she slashed her ties with everything she had once held dear. Some said she had been a fake all along. Others found her actions a mystery. But there really was no mystery. And it wasn't a matter of suddenly abandoning her beliefs in sexual freedom or divorce or women's rights. The truth was, she didn't believe in anything anymore.

Despite her new defense of marriage, she no longer believed in it either. At least not with James. She no longer loved him. For that matter, the very thought of him infuriated her. He didn't know how to make money and he could not offer her the emotional security she needed.

While seriously ill, she had practically crawled from city to city just to earn money for them. James, sitting comfortably in New York, wrote a few articles each week and waited for her to mail him money. It was intolerable, she fumed.

Month after month in her mother's company only reinforced her rage. Roxanna had always hated James. She talked endlessly and obsessively about his shortcomings as a husband.

During their entire marriage, James had never earned money to support Vicky. Quite the opposite. He had allowed Vicky to support him. Was that manly, Roxanna demanded? Was it right for Vicky to work and slave while James sat in New York like a prince?

Sometimes Vicky tried not to listen to Roxanna, but eventually she was forced to agree. In the fall of 1876, without emotion or regret, she sued James for divorce. She had divorced him once before, shortly after their marriage, to prove their love would be free. By now, however, the law apparently recognized her as a common-law wife since they had lived together for ten years. This divorce marked the end of their once-loving friendship.

Abandoning her past was one thing; burying it proved far more difficult. She wanted a new life, but people had good memories. Everywhere she went, there were constant reminders. Every newspaper had a library full of clippings to document what she had once said.

Slowly a plan began to take shape within her tired mind. It was the old Claflin cure for trouble. Moving. Going someplace new where nobody knows you. Except this time, where could she move? It would have to be someplace far away.

In August 1877 Vicky sailed for England. With her went Roxanna and Buck, Tennie, Byron, and Zulu Maud. There was nothing left for her in America, she thought. Perhaps life in England would be better. She would lecture. She might even start another newspaper. Maybe she could find a cottage with a garden in some quiet, restful village. She didn't know. But, for better or worse, she had made her decision.

Her departure did not pass unnoticed. In fact, a fresh batch of rumors started to circulate immediately. Earlier in the year, Commodore Vanderbilt had died. He left a fortune of over $100 million, most of which he willed to his son William. His other children, determined to break the will, said that their father had not been in his right mind for years. To prove his eccentricity, they pointed to his association with Victoria Woodhull and Tennie Claflin.

People said that William Vanderbilt feared the sisters might be called as witnesses in the trial to contest the Commodore's will. They said he paid them a handsome sum of money to leave the country for a while. People wondered how Vicky, recently so penniless, could suddenly uproot and move her whole family to England. Vicky, however, always denied that she had been paid off.

"William H. Vanderbilt had no more to do with my departure than did the youngest child in San Francisco," she stated flatly.

In England she felt as if her life were starting all over again. After a two-month rest, her health improved and some of her old energy returned. The violet circles around her eyes began to fade.

Already she had made inquiries about appearing in English lecture halls. Now Tennie acted as her manager by going around with a scrapbook full of newspaper clippings to show that Vicky was a well-known speaker in America. Only the complimentary reviews were selected; any which smacked of notoriety was discarded.

Vicky made her debut in the provinces, first in Nottingham, then in Liverpool and Manchester. From the radical title of her speech, "The Human Body, the Temple of God," her audiences expected to be shocked. What they got was a conservative lecture on physical hygiene and religion. She advised English mothers to inform their children about sex.

Although one newspaper said that "no man would dare discuss such subjects as Mrs. Woodhull is ready to discuss anywhere," her notices were generally favorable. "Mrs. Woodhull is unquestionably a great orator," reported the Nottingham
Guardian,
"and it is not difficult to understand how she has gained so remarkable a hold upon the people of her own country."

In many ways, Vicky felt at home with the English. They were a gracious, cheerful people, she decided; but English high society appeared much too snobbish to suit her taste. They didn't respect anyone except those of their own class and position. It seemed to Vicky that they were obsessed with what is "respectable" and what isn't. She quickly discovered that a divorced woman isn't. Since she had little contact with the upper class, however, none of this disturbed her.

Shortly before Christmas, Vicky was scheduled to speak at St. James's Hall in London. Prior to the lecture, she managed to capture some publicity for herself. Announcements were sent to the press, and as a result, several papers interviewed her. To her dismay, she found that the papers investigated her background more thoroughly than she expected. Her connection with "free love" was mentioned, as well as the rumors about her supposed involvement with William Vanderbilt in the contested will case.

Despite these unpleasant moments, she felt a sense of joy about her new life. How thankful she was to feel well again. How thrilling to be speaking in a famous hall like St. James's! In fact, the entire city of London delighted her. It was the biggest place she had ever seen. There were rows of little houses, all looking very much alike, next to great mansions and palaces. She loved the labyrinth of streets, some narrow and winding, others wide promenades, and she delighted in the lush green parks punctuated by soaring church spires.

On the evening of her lecture at St. James's, she had never looked more ravishing. Dressed in an elegant black silk dress trimmed with bands of velvet, a pink rose with a geranium leaf at her neck, she looked like the old buoyant Vicky. During her first moments on the platform, she shivered from uncustomary nerves. But soon her eloquence returned. The excitement she felt at being there must have been contagious because, afterward, there were waves of applause.

Among the enthusiastic crowd, in a box near the platform, sat a strikingly handsome man with a beard and big childish eyes. He wore a frock coat and white kid gloves, and he clapped harder than anyone. John Martin, a banker, was thirty-six but looked younger than his age. His wealthy, aristocratic family owned Martin's Bank, an institution that dated back to the time of King Edward IV. It was older than the Bank of England.