Mary Gabriel - Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria Woodhull, Uncensored

THE LIFE OF VICTORIA WOODHULL, UNCENSORED

MARY GABRIEL

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

This book is dedicated to
Owen Stinchcombe

So after all I am a very promiscuous free lover. I want the love of you all, promiscuously. It makes no difference who or what you are, old or young, black or white, pagan, Jew, or Christian, I want to love you all and be loved by you all, and I mean to have your love. If you will not give it to me now, these young, for whom I plead, will in after years bless Victoria Woodhull for daring to speak for their salvation.

VICTORIA WOODHULL

On February 5, 1870, Woodhull, Claflin & Co. formally opened its doors to the public, sending the perfumed scent of a new breed of broker wafting through the halls of finance then dominated by the masculine odors of cigars and champagne. In a front-page story, the New York Sun sounded the warning that change had come to Wall Street with the headline Petticoats Among The Bovine and Ursine Animals.

At the stock and gold exchanges, the news of a brokerage firm operated by women was greeted with a frenzy of speculation. The presence on Wall Street of Victoria C. Woodhull and her sister Tennessee Claflin created a commotion only slightly less dramatic than a crash. From early morning until the close of business, men and boys crowded the sidewalk outside their office at 44 Broad Street, peering through the windows and doors to get a look at this new creaturethe female broker. Jostling for a view they shouted to each other. They know a thing or two. When will this end? Two thousand visitors for two ladies within eight hours. Stocks will go sky high.

Inside, shielded from the crowds by a doorkeeper and a sign that read GENTLEMEN WILL STATE THEIR BUSINESS AND THEN RETIRE AT ONCE, the sisters were busy making history. It would be another century before a woman would hold a seat in her own name on the New York Stock Exchange, and possibly never again would a pair of female financiers cause such a stir.

A steady stream of visitors mounted the stairs to the sisters office that day, including elderly women hoping to invest their life savings. And young women, fresh and fair as pippins... bewitched by curiosity and afterwards delighted with all they saw and heard, left the premises bethinking themselves that there were other things to live for besides cosmetics, the toilet, fashion and vanity, reported New Yorks Herald. But most of the estimated four thousand visitors that day were men. Old war veterans who [had] been stumping it for a long time on short legs and aristocrats with silver beards and golden memories made the climb. The representatives of every banking and brokerage house in the city paid the new firm a call, as did scores of posturing young dandies eager to make the acquaintance of the lady brokers.

For their opening day, the sisters dressed alike, wearing dark blue walking suits elaborately trimmed in black silk and jockey hats (also of black silk) set jauntily on their heads. The Herald noted, The gold pens poised on their pretty ears formed a topic of unusual interest for the gouty old war horses of the street. The elder partner in the firm, thirty-one-year-old Victoria, was elegant, reserved, and intelligent. Tennessee, at twenty-four, was voluptuous, vivacious, and quick witted. The mischievous younger sister fairly burst out of her business costume.

The ladies received their visitors with a coolness and an eye to business that drew forth the plaudits and the curses of old veterans, the Herald reported. Hosts of friends with advanced ideas put forth their opinions and proffered their counsels, and hosts who came to scoff and to mock the gentle lionesses, who dared to take a stand in the most stormy and uncertain arena of life, pressed forward, but the blandishments and the opinions of all comers were received with an amount of dare-devil self-possession that indicated to the Street that Woodhull, Claflin & Co. appreciated the situation, that they knew their business, and that they proposed to take the stand like men.

The remarkable sisters had arrived in New York City two years earlier, after amassing a small fortune traveling caravan-style through the fallow fields and ruined towns of the Civil War, offering their services as clairvoyants and spiritualist healers. Their path to Wall Street was made easier by the legendary tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt, who, at seventy-three, had been one of the sisters patients before becoming young Tennessees lover and patron. But while Vanderbilts assistance was helpful, it was the sisters own ingenuity that won them praise and publicity, and it was Victorias ambition that propelled them.

The uneducated daughter of a petty criminal, Victoria Claflin Woodhull nonetheless envisioned for herself a brilliant future. From the time of her miserable first marriage at age fifteen to a man twice her age and the birth of her mentally retarded son a year later, Victoria had vowed to become a leader in the fight for womens rights. She was determined that no woman should be forced to endure her early heartache, to offer her bodyin marriage or on the streetin exchange for financial security. For Victoria, the fight for womens equality was not simply a matter of gaining access to the ballot boxit was a matter of winning the much more basic right of self-ownership.

The opening of Woodhull, Claflin & Co. was a crucial step toward Victorias goal. It would provide the financial backing she needed to wage war on Victorian sensibilities and thrust her into the public spotlight, where she would begin her crusade for womens rights. The firms successful debut left Victoria exuberant and appeared to prove her often expressed belief that women could advance, support themselves, and prosperif only they dared to try: I tell you that men will always respect women when they compel it, by their actions; and if women to-day would rise en masse and demand their emancipation the men would be compelled to grant it, Victoria wrote several years later. The women of the country have the power in their own hands, in spite of the law and the government being altogether of the male order. Let women issue a declaration of independence sexually, and absolutely refuse to cohabit with men until they are acknowledged as equals in everything, and the victory would be won in a single week.

Using the proceeds from her brokerage business and advice from a host of radical thinkers, Victoria would set about attacking in print and on the lecture circuit the hypocrisy and corruption she found in the worlds of finance, politics, and religion. She would also boldly live the life of social freedom that she preached. Men and women who would not attend a lecture by any of the other upright women reformersSusan B. Anthony or Lucretia Mott, for examplegladly parted with a few coins for a ticket and braved the crushing crowds when Victoria was in town. Whether they agreed with her or not, the intelligent and comely woman with flashing blue eyes was sure to shock with her frank discussion of sexuality, and equally sure to captivate with her fearless muckraking. She became the most notorious and polarizing woman of her day, hailed by admirers as Queen Victoria and denounced by critics as Mrs. Satan.

After she made history with her brokerage firm, Victoria quickly added a series of other firsts to her name. Her newspaper Woodhull & Claflins Weekly was the first American publication to reprint the Communist Manifesto. In 1871 she became the first woman in history to address a committee of the U.S. Congress, and in 1872 she became the first woman to run for president.