Notorious Victoria : the life of Victoria Woodhull, uncensored

She was the first woman to address the U.S. Congress, the first to operate a brokerage firm on Wall Street, and the first to run for president. She's the woman Gloria Steinem called "the most controversial suffragist of them all." In this extensively researched biography, journalist Mary Gabriel has written a comprehensive account of one of American history's most unusual and fascinating women, who, in an era of Victorian morality, was the loudest and most radical voice for women's equality. "One of the most controversial American women of the late nineteenth century springs to life in this study that leaves no stone unturned."--Publishers Weekly; "Deftly written biography . . . __of__ a hell-raising visionary."--Mirabella; "A meaty slice of feminist history peppered with Victorian drama."--Civilization; "Remarkable . . . warrants a spot on every serious American history student's bookshelf."--Kirkus Reviews, pointer. NOTORIOUS VICTORIATHE LIFE OF VICTORIA WOODHULL, UNCENSOREDBy MARY GABRIELALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILLCopyright © 1998 Mary Gabriel.All rights reserved.ISBN: 1-56512-132-5CHAPTER ONE HOMER, 1850 Home to young Victoria Claflin was a wooden shack on the side of a hillin a town with one intersection in the middle of the vast state of Ohio.If there was a world beyond the endless rolling hills and fields, itwasn't apparent. On the south side of Homer's main street was the largeand prosperous Williams Mound Farm with its stately two-story home andtwenty-five-foot-high Indian burial mound in the yard. The north side ofthe street was lined with as many well-painted storefronts as a town offewer than three hundred could support. And on the back side of the mainstreet, clinging like a barnacle in the shadow of the shops andstorefronts, was the Claflin residence. In later years, when Victoria was in the business of reinventing her past,she would describe the Claflin home as a crisply painted white structuresurrounded by lovingly tended flowers. But in reality Victoria'sbirthplace was a twenty-five-foot-long, one-story unpainted frame hovel sorickety that the other children in Homer liked to run along the porch tohear the boards rattle. Victoria, born September 23, 1838, was the sixth of ten children, oneof whom died before she was born. She was a gifted, lovely, anddetermined child, a rare jewel in a quarrelsome and indolent family thatwas considered the town trash. One admiring neighbor remarked that it wasa shame the promising young girl had been born a Claflin. From her father Victoria learned to bend, if not break, the law, and fromher mother she learned to communicate with spirits. Reuben Buckman "Buck"Claflin was a one-eyed, one-man crime spree. The Homer shopkeeper JacobYoakam was known to say that Buck Claflin "could see more deviltry to dowith that one eye than any two men with their four eyes." A census reportfrom the time listed Buck's occupation as lawyer, but his career indicatedthat any background he mayhave had in the law was aimed at learning how to get around it. Amonghis alleged crimes were theft, counterfeiting, and arson. Victoria's mother, Roxanna Hummel Claflin, was a religious zealot who gavebirth every two years, on average, over a twenty-year period. Anna, as shewas known, was as homely as her daughter was beautiful. Her face was ashriveled triangle punctuated by small eyes and a tiny, tight mouth. Shewas an abrasive personality given to ecstasies whose nightlyconstitutional most often included a trip to a nearby orchard where shewould pray loudly and tearfully for the sins of her fellow Homerites andin the same hour curse till her lips were white with foam. She was thetype of person referred to politely as eccentric but in more honestmoments as just plain crazy. Still, there was a streak of brilliancebehind that imploded face: Anna's memory was so good she could recite theBible backward. Beginning early in life, Victoria was given to ecstasies, perhaps as a wayof escaping the small town's disapprobation of her family or perhaps as ameans of escaping the wrath of her father, who was known to beat hischildren with a willow or walnut tree switch that had been soaking inwater in anticipation of the character-building exercise. At various timesshe described her first encounter with the spirit world as having occurredat birth, at age three, and at age ten. But no matter when she said ithappened, each recounting of the experience detailed an escape to thenetherworld through the intercession of a spirit guide, and each ecstaticrevelation reinforced Victoria's notion that she was planted on the Earthto do more than multiply: "When I first saw the light of day on thisplanet," she wrote about her birth, "it seemed as if I had been rudelyawakened from a death-like sleep. How well I remember the conversationbetween the doctor and my father as they handed me over to the nurse. Iremember looking back at my mother's face at that moment, the look of painand anguish on it was burnt into my plastic brain, and often during myyoung babyhood I would watch as she suckled me. Somehow she was impelledto talk to me, not as a child, but as her own heart, pouring out all herwoman's desires and bemoaning her failures. I remember well how the silentprayers, when her lips were moving, would stir my heart, and as I lookback over the years from childhood to maturity, I realize that there wassome subtle power of transmutation at work, for somehow, from the veryfirst moment, I seemed to know all the future without being able to giveany expression in words.... I know that my companions from the moment ofbirth were heaven's choicest souls.... I grew side by side with them, infact all the education and inspiration came over them." Victoria's earthly education consisted of a total of three years ofelementary school, which she attended off and on between ages eight andeleven. At school she was referred to--possibly mockingly--as "the littlequeen," in part because she shared the name Victoria with the Britishmonarch but also because of her regal bearing, despite her squalid roots.But even if her title did derive from sneers, she appeared to take herrole as a leader seriously. From a very early age Victoria believedherself destined for great things. She had nothing and wanted much. In Homer, residents remembered her at age eleven, crowned by thickuncombed hair, narrating Bible stories from atop the Williams Farm Indianmound, which she renamed the Mount of Olives, and when the childrenlistening grew restless, she abandoned Scripture for Indian stories, withwhich she held them captive. It was on that mound that the uneducated,unkempt, and dirty child first thrilled to an audience's approval. It wouldn't be long, however, before a family crisis would force Victoriato leave her audience behind in Homer. Buck Claflin had purchased agristmill and, as with most of his legitimate enterprises, he was having adifficult time making a go of it. What actually happened was not clear,but given Buck's reputation and the circumstantial evidence, it wasgenerally agreed that he decided to rid himself of the burden the mill hadbecome by burning it to the ground one stormy night in an attempt topocket five hundred dollars in insurance money. The mill fire was the last straw for the town, which had put up with therogue in its midst for more than a decade. Buck heard the rumblings beforehe saw the stampede and managed to escape Homer, leaving his familybehind. The locals were not prepared to support the Claflin clan, however,so the Presbyterian church held a fund-raiser to buy Anna and her childrena horse-drawn wagon and enough supplies to get them out of town. If any Homerites had qualms about ejecting the Claflins, they likely soondisappeared. After the family had gone, the town discovered that Buck hadused his brief appointment as postmaster to his own advantage: he had leftbehind a pile of undelivered mail addressed to Homer residents, and theenvelopes that indicated there was money inside had all been opened andthe money was gone. The Claflin clan, rejoined by Buck, rolled into Mount Gilead, Ohio, notfar from Homer, where Victoria's eldest sister, Margaret Ann, known asMaggie, lived with her husband, Enos Miles, and their three children. Bythe time the Claflins moved on to Mount Gilead, the family's compositionhad changed. Two of the children, Odessa and Hester, had died, but therewere two other healthy girls to take their place: Utica, named after anearby town, was born in 1843, and Tennessee, born in 1845, was namedafter the home state of President James Polk as a tribute to Buck'spresidential aspirations. Victoria's second eldest sister, Mary, thoughnot listed in genealogy records as married at the time, had also added achild to the Claflin brood, giving birth in 1850 to a daughter namedZilpha. And Victoria's two brothers, despite Anna's appeals that thefamily remain united, would leave the noisy flock to set out on their own.Maldon married his cousin Corintha Claflin, and Hebern moved to Illinois,where he married Mary Ann Edwards. The remaining crew of Claflins movedinto the American House, a hotel that Enos Miles owned. Considering thenumber of family members under its roof, it's questionable whether therewas any room for guests.THE MID-1800s were an age of possibilities for a man with ambition.Industrialists had penetrated the aristocracy by hard work and ingenuityrather than birth. School textbooks preached the message that, withenough effort or a bright idea, all Americans could become rich andfamous. Buck Claflin was looking to sample that success. In the early1850s, he was torn between a pair of moneymaking schemes discovered atopposite ends of the country: from California came cries of gold and fromNew York came a new phenomenon called spirit rappings. For a man whopreferred to earn his wealth by doing as little actual work as possible,the spirit rappings held the greater promise. In 1848, a pair of young sisters in a farmhouse in Hydesville, New York,reported hearing strange noises. The rappings themselves may not havesurprised anyone, since the farmhouse was said to be haunted by the ghostof a peddler who was murdered there. But what did come as a shock wasthat the sisters, Kate and Margaret Fox, appeared to be able tocommunicate with the spirit, "Mr. Splitfoot," who provided responses totheir questions in a series of tapping sounds. Within a year the Fox sisters were exhibiting their powers onstage beforeaudiences that paid seventy-five cents to see them, and in June 1850 theywere set up by P. T. Barnum at his hotel in New York City, holdingdemonstrations three times a day at a dollar per person. The Fox sistersphenomenon sparked an epidemic of spiritual encounters and by 1851 therewere said to be thousands of mediums in every state. Two occurrences had primed the United States to accept the plausibility ofmessages from the beyond. The first, the invention of the telegraph in1848, showed that thoughts could travel mysteriously from one location toanother, which many viewed as scientific proof that there were unseenenergies at play in the universe. In fact, the Fox sisters' ability wasoften referred to as spiritual telegraphy. The second occurrence, thereligious revival in the first half of the nineteenth century known as theSecond Great Awakening,' gave birth to the notion that a person couldcommunicate directly with God without the intercession of a cleric, and ifpeople could speak to God, surely they could communicate with deadrelatives. Buck had two daughters of his own who, even before the Fox sistersannounced their skills, were exhibiting strange powers. Victoria believedthat she could communicate with her dead infant sisters and that, throughspirit intervention, she had the ability to heal the sick. And whenTennessee was just five she predicted a fire so precisely she was brieflysuspected of setting the blaze. Buck took advantage of his good fortuneand hung out a shingle at a Mount Gilead boardinghouse, establishingVictoria, fourteen, and Tennessee, seven, as mediums, for one dollar pervisit. Perhaps to boost Victoria's confidence in her first professionalundertaking, Buck wrote his daughter a prophetic rhyme that read, "Girlyour worth has never yet been known, but to the world it shall be shown."She later remembered he also gave her a piece of practical advice. He toldher, "Be a good listener child." From that time on, Victoria and Tennessee would be the primarybreadwinners in the Claflin family, supporting their extended clan, which,rather than thanking them for their efforts, jealously resented theirsuccess. Victoria's friend and first biographer, Theodore Tilton, wrote,"Victoria is a green leaf, and her legion of relatives are caterpillarswho devour her." Victoria Claflin Woodhull (1838-1927) Was The First Woman To Run For President (sharing The Ballot With Frederick Douglass). She Was The First Woman To Address The U.s. Congress And To Operate A Brokerage Firm On Wall Street. Gloria Steinem Has Called Her The Most Controversial Suffragist Of Them All. Famed Nineteenth-century Political Cartoonist Thomas Nast Portrayed Her As Mrs. Satan. She Butted Heads With Such Pillars Of Society As Cornelius Vanderbilt, Harriet Beecher Stowe, And Susan B. Anthony. So Why Have Most People Never Heard Of Victoria Woodhull? Journalist Mary Gabriel's Authoritative Biography Provides The Answer: She Was Written Out Of History, Censored By Historians Of The Women's Movement As Too Scandalous. Victoria Had Worked As A Traveling Clairvoyant In Medicine Shows. She Was Accused Of Blackmail And Prostitution And Was Jailed For Printing Obscenities. She Preached - And Practiced - The Concept Of Free Love, Once Living With Her Husband, Her Ex-husband, And Her Lover At The Same Time, In The Same New York Apartment. Victoria Was Arguably The Boldest Voice For Women's Rights In The Nineteenth Century, And She Was Taken Very Seriously By Her Contemporaries And By The Media, In Spite Of Her Unconventional Lifestyle. In Notorious Victoria, Gabriel Offers Readers A Balanced Portrait Of A Unique And Complicated Woman. Gabriel Has Extensively Researched Victoria's Entire Life, And Her Book Contains Revealing - And Uncensored - Excerpts From Victoria's Own Writing And Speeches As Well As The News Accounts Of Her Day. This Isn't Just The Story Of One Woman, It's Also The Story Of The Time In Which She Lived And The Many Famous - And Infamous - Figures Whose Lives She Touched.--jacket. Mary Gabriel. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 347-354) And Index. “A remarkable biography . . . Well written and researched, this book warrants a spot on every serious American history student’s bookshelf.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review She was the first woman to run for president. She was the first woman to address the U.S. Congress and to operate a brokerage firm on Wall Street. She’s the woman Gloria Steinem called “the most controversial suffragist of them all.” So why have most people never heard of Victoria Woodhull? In this extensively researched biography, journalist Mary Gabriel offers readers a balanced portrait of a unique and complicated woman who was years ahead of her time—and perhaps ahead of our own. “One of the most controversial American women of the late nineteenth century springs to life in this study that leaves no stone unturned.” —Publishers Weekly “[A] deftly written biography . . . of a hell-raising visionary.” —Mirabella “A meaty slice of feminist history peppered with Victorian drama.” —Civilization