The Scarlet Sisters (25 page)

The
World
’s sentiment was in the article’s title:
TENNIE CLAFLIN’S LECTURE: ANOTHER POLLUTION OF THE ACADEMY OF MUSIC
. The
New York Herald
also kissed off her performance, headlining it
TENNIE’S TIRADE
. She discussed the relations of the sexes with “biblical plainness and boldness of speech unfit for its readers,” so the
Herald
paraphrased her lecture: “Women should be free to disown her wedded husband, for cause, and free to turn the tables upon a man when he went after strange women.” Then she attacked capitalists, ticking off the lower wages that women made as cooks, tailors, and saleswomen. “There is no single kind of labor that is performed by both women and men for which men do not receive much the higher rate of pay, even at typesetting.”

Tennie described the discrimination she experienced in the brokerage business. Once, after entering a firm “upon a purely business matter,” the head of the firm said, “ ‘Tennie, see here, I don’t want you to come here so much; it will be remarked on the Street’… as though my visits must mean something wrong, against which these immaculate men stood in fear.” She relayed that a female servant then entered with a tray of drinks for the bankers.

“ ‘Does this woman come here every day?’ ” Tennie demanded.

“ ‘Yes,’ the banker replied.

“ ‘Why don’t you make the same rule for her that you require me to follow? Are you not in danger from her, and from those who daily mop your floor and dust your office?’ ” Tennie looked out at the thousands listening to her. “You see, the real objection to me was that I was attempting to stand upon an equality with them, to transact business, while these other women were their slaves, to wipe up their vile tobacco puddles.”

The
New York Times
was beside itself, with a sexist defense of its practice of paying more for male linotype operators than females: “The latter
do not work as well as the former.” Women “lack the patience to acquire the careful thoroughness characteristic of good workmen.” As reporters, they received the same pay as men, stated the
Times
, a dubious premise to those familiar with newspaper practices. Nor did it mention that women were relegated to social news and “story writing in our magazines.”

The
Times
came close to calling Tennie a whore; when a woman “tries to gain business favors in exchange for familiarities too freely offered to be attractive, the ordinary man of business is annoyed and disgusted.” It cited Tennie’s attacks on marriage and her advocacy of free love. “She must not be surprised if her acquaintance is not regarded as desirable by men”—here the
Times
italicized an attribute not overly noticeable among males on the Street—“
with reputations to lose
.”

Men of Wall Street, many of whom had come as friends to hear her the summer before as a congressional candidate, were now bitterly opposed to Tennie and her sister and their pro-labor rhetoric. Life on Wall Street as the sisters once knew it had indeed come to a limping end.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Future Presidentess

At the beginning of 1872, despite the free love fracas, family scandal, and divided loyalties in the women’s movement, Victoria was still supported by many in the NWSA wing. She drew long and enthusiastic applause at their Manhattan convention in January of that year. Her speaking tour had garnered enough money to pay for the convention program, but this gesture to aid the ever-strapped NWSA came with a string attached: Anthony must treat her with respect. Anthony was not enamored of Woodhull’s growing presidential ambitions. Yet she was trapped to some degree by Woodhull’s largesse.

At the convention Anthony gave an unscheduled speech, which was an adroit act. It flattered Woodhull but rippled with warning; NWSA would back either the Democrats or Republicans, depending on who supported women’s suffrage. She emphatically rebuffed Woodhull’s bid: NWSA did not endorse “any sect, breed or political power” including Spiritualism and labor reform. “Now,” she asked the crowd, “do you understand our platform?”

Anthony continued to both praise and belittle Victoria: “I have been asked by many: ‘why did you drag her to the front?’ ” Then she said, “She was ‘not dragged.’ ” She came from Wall Street with a “powerful argument” in her memorial to the Judiciary Committee and “lots of cash.” A bit of a knife cut received loud applause and laughter: “I bet cash is a
big thing with Congress.” If “youth, beauty and money” were needed to capture Congress, “Victoria is the woman we are after.” Anthony never mentioned intelligence or dedication.

A few months later, Anthony’s pique at Victoria turned to rage when she heard gossip from anti-Woodhull suffragists that Woodhull was threatening blackmail and that she would publish the sexual liaisons of well-known suffragists who maligned her while they hypocritically practiced free love. Of course this tidbit was much bruited about among the women. Anthony, who deplored Woodhull’s unceasing drive to run for president, believed the rumor and told Ezra Heywood, a friend of Victoria’s, that Woodhull had “resorted to blackmailing intentionally.”

Woodhull vehemently denied blackmail. She saw no blackmail, just retaliation, and her answer to the rumor contained no subtlety: “I concluded to shut the mouths of a clique of loose and loud-tongued women who were continually stabbing me.” She justified her actions, noting that she had sent the women on the list proof sheets of the projected article, giving them a chance to desist in their actions, before she used it. “The filthy fountains suddenly ceased to vomit forth their slime.” She did not publish, but warned that, if need be, “I shall not hesitate to do so.”

Even her protectors in the movement chided Woodhull when they heard of her proposed article, called “Tit for Tat.” The elegant and wealthy Paulina Wright Davis wrote from Europe, where she was convalescing, thinking the piece had already been published: “My dear Victoria, driven to bay at last you have turned, poor hunted child, and dealt a cruel blow… everyone of these women you name has been hounded by men and now it suits them to make cat’s-paws to hunt you… dear child, I wish you had let them pass and had taken hold of these men whose souls are black with crimes and who set up to be the censors of morality.”

Throughout the winter of 1872, the sisters kept up a bold front—even to the point of funding the NWSA’s January programs—sensing the vulnerability of their position if they were perceived as sinking financially. By April, unable to pay the rent on the Thirty-Eighth Street mansion, the
sisters and their entourage moved out, but they were missing one member: Canning Woodhull had died on April 6, at the age of forty-eight. Woodhull buried her first husband with a gushing
Weekly
obituary, despite her damaging portrayal of him in the past.

Once again Victoria was in the position of trying to defuse family scandal, this time caused by her drug addict sister Utica, who came to the house upon learning Canning was dying and raised “a great fuss,” until sister Meg Miles called the police to get her to leave. Utica wanted to give Canning morphine. “She takes it herself—as much as 30 grams a day,” revealed Miles. Utica demanded an autopsy, which found that Canning had died of “congestion of the lungs.” Meg Miles said that he had been cared for lovingly until the end: “People will find out sometime that Tennie and Victoria are the two best girls in the world.”

The Murray Hill mansion, a shimmering sinkhole of excess, the home of dazzling and expensive dinners and salons, was now but a memory. Much of the furniture must have been rented; at least there were no articles of a public auction, an event that would surely have caused the New York press to scavenge and salivate over the sisters’ turn of fate. Gone were the massive gilt-edged mirrors, the yards of purple velvet drapes, the incense discreetly placed, the art and statuary, the Oriental rugs, grand piano, tinkling champagne glasses, and political chatter.

Without the aid of Vanderbilt, the brokerage firm was also crumbling. If it was true that he had helped subsidize the
Weekly
for two years, as the sisters intimated, time had run out on that, too, with no expectation of further assistance. They continued to make money through lectures and, like celebrities, sold their autographed photos through the mail, but it was all slim pickings compared to their glory days. The sisters moved in with sister Meg, who ran a magnetic healing institute on West Twenty-Sixth Street. There Woodhull nurtured her presidential obsession, gathering her coalition of laborers, African Americans, abolitionists, Spiritualists, and suffragists under the umbrella of social change and reform.

The
Weekly
, the campaign’s publicity arm, was now run by Blood, as Woodhull and Tennie kept up a frenetic pace speaking to interested
groups and urging labor unions to come on board. If Woodhull’s quest ever came to votes, male union backing would be a necessity. Women suffragists could attempt only symbolic voting, and the eclectic Spiritualists often bowed to a higher order than the voting booth.

Woodhull had dreamed of becoming president, even practicing her unruly scrawl until she could compose the fanciful signature “Future Presidentess,” a weird combination of president and princess. Now, as the May NWSA convention drew near, Woodhull had a grand scheme to turn the gathering into a nominating convention for herself. Moreover, she had Stanton’s backing. A furious Anthony saw that Stanton had added her own name to a list of Woodhull supporters without her knowledge. Anthony stormed at Stanton for backing Victoria and vowed to stop her.

Stanton fought back and both she and Isabella Hooker accused Anthony of being “narrow, bigoted and headstrong.” Stanton quit as president but defied Anthony in her keynote speech by urging NWSA members to join Woodhull’s People’s Party. Anthony, now president, “positively refused to allow” Woodhull’s use of Steinway Hall, which had been rented in Anthony’s name. Woodhull then engaged Apollo Hall for her new party convention. Anthony thought the crisis was averted, but “just as she was about to adjourn the first evening session, to her amazement, Woodhull came gliding in from the side of the platform and moved that ‘this convention adjourn to meet tomorrow morning at Apollo Hall!’ ” An ally of Woodhull’s quickly seconded the motion, while Anthony “refused to put it,” but Woodhull herself shouted for the motion and her stacked hall of followers carried it overwhelmingly. Anthony shouted that the “whole proceeding was out of order” as the majority of voters were not members of NWSA, but Woodhull raced to the front of the platform and began a full-throttled speech. Furious at Woodhull’s attempt to highjack her meeting, Anthony bellowed in vain over the “Woodhull for President” party claque, then tore out of the hall, found a janitor, and ordered him to turn out all the gaslights in the hall. First the gas footlights, then all the lights went dark. Woodhull was forced into silence as the women clutched one another, searching for the aisles and groping their way toward light.

Woodhull had made an implacable enemy of Anthony. “The next day, almost without assistance and deserted by those who should have stood by her,” Anthony went through the motions of conducting three sessions and then closed the convention. That night Anthony moaned in her diary, “all came near being lost. Our ship was so nearly stranded, we rescued it only by a hair’s breadth…” The fight created the worst split in her twenty-four-year-old partnership with Stanton. Anthony was “never so hurt” by anything as “this folly” of Stanton’s “demoralizing” embrace of Woodhull.

Without NWSA backing, Woodhull swiftly turned the People’s Party into the Equal Rights Party—taking the name from the party formed in 1866 by the coalition of abolitionists and suffragists. She hoped to build a populist base at a time of widespread revulsion over the Boss Tweed and President Grant scandals, such as the gold-cornering scandal and Tweed’s extensive fraud and bribery empire. As delegates assembled in Apollo Hall on the morning of May 10, they were tagged the most “heterogeneous gathering that assembled in any city in any age.” One male speaker voiced his sentiment amid cheers: The Republican and Democratic parties had destroyed themselves by corruption. The present administration was rotten and “its financial system a failure. The country could not stand another Black Friday.” Now was a “golden opportunity for a reform movement.” The Equal Rights Party proved that it could be as long-winded as any political party, with twenty more speeches lasting until 4:00 p.m. Banners draped throughout the hall reflected the party’s support for radical working-class issues:
GOVERNMENT PROTECTION FROM THE CRADLE TO THE GRAVE
;
PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT A REMEDY FOR STRIKES
. Blue silken banners on either side of the platform included one with gold writing:
JESUS SAID: GIVE TO THE POOR
.

Some mainstream newspapers surprisingly gave the convention fair and prominent page-one coverage, but others vied for the most caustic reporting. The Democrats’ New York
World
was the most antagonistic, degrading the participants by writing, “So far as dress and appearance went, [they] could be classed with either sex. There were all varieties of color and complexion.” The women’s faces had “hard, angular
masculine expressions,” while the men, “most of whom were very old,” bordered on the “feminine,” with the men “growing their hair as long as possible, while the women cropped theirs almost to the usual masculine shortness.” Even the
Herald
headlined its convention piece,
VIC SAYS: “I WILL STUMP THE STATES WITH TENNIE,”
cuttingly called the six hundred delegates “strange looking people” who were ready to support African Americans and Native Americans and liberal issues far different from the white, male-controlled Republican and Democratic conventions. However, the Associated Press praised the party’s platform, which stated that “monopolies should be abolished… wars should be abolished by international arbitration.” It called for representation of minorities, free trade with all nations, and an end to capital punishment.