by Marge Piercy
“I wish I could help you.” Elizabeth drew Victoria onto the sofa beside her, stroking her shoulder soothingly. “You must keep trying to reach an audience with your ideas. You’re an excellent speaker. If you can get a hall, you can pull a crowd and they will listen, enthralled.”
“I’m desperate,” Victoria said. “The sky is falling on me.”
“Victoria, they’re trying to crush you. But those of us who believe in freedom, we’re all free lovers at heart. We believe in the good time coming when men and women will be free of compulsion in love. When woman will no longer join with man out of fear, out of pressure from her family or his, out of economic need, but only because she wants to be with him.”
“You understand me,” Victoria said, seizing her hand and staring into her eyes. “I feel so very alone.”
ELIZABETH WAS FRANTICALLY BUSY getting her four younger children packed and off to their various colleges and schools. She loved having the younger ones around, but their absence would free her up to write the speeches and articles she had promised and was way behind on producing. In ten days, she must begin the lecture circuit—by train to Chicago and then on loops out into the Midwestern states, back to Chicago, out again—a full six months of lecturing seven days a week and twice on Sundays. If she had a day off, she held a special meeting for women only.
Elizabeth heard that in spite of repudiating Victoria, Susan voted in the congressional election under the legal arguments Victoria had set forth in her memorial to Congress. Three weeks later, Susan was arrested, along with the men who had let her vote, led away in handcuffs. Normally Elizabeth would have rushed to Susan’s side, but they were not even writing each other. She followed the trial—an obvious farce—in the papers and letters friends sent. The jury was all male. As a woman, Susan was not permitted to testify. No constitutional arguments were allowed. After a few witnesses, the judge presented a decision he had written before the trial began, directing the jury to find Susan guilty. Elizabeth wept for Susan and for herself, that they were so estranged.
But the judge made one mistake. He followed precedent in asking Susan if she had anything to say before sentence was pronounced. Susan made a ringing speech about rights and the injustice of the trial, refusing to pay her fine. She said she would gladly go to jail instead. The judge put off enforcing the sentence so that Susan could not appeal, so she neither paid the fine nor went to jail.
The remaining link between Elizabeth and Susan was Isabella, who stayed in touch with both. It seemed easier for Susan to forgive Isabella her support of Victoria than to forgive Elizabeth. Elizabeth felt sore with guilt. They had been close for so many years, it should have been she at Susan’s side during the trial. The old warmth remained thrust down underneath the surface disagreement but still there, giving out an almost suffocated glow. She missed Susan daily. A dozen times a day she would think, I have to tell Susan about that, then realize she no longer could.
Grant won by a landslide and Greeley returned to New York and his sick wife, who died two days later. Elizabeth had little love for Greeley. He had opposed woman’s rights in his paper, in his speeches, in his actions, in his life. When this news reached Elizabeth, she was in Topeka, Kansas, having traveled half the night. Her hotel room was endurable. She ate whenever she could in restaurants, after a bad experience when, following an exhausting day of travel and a long lecture, she was put up by sympathizers in a small town in Illinois and treated to a meal consisting of thin oatmeal, cold water and graham bread. She went to bed hungry and resolved to stay in hotels, noisy and dirty as they often were.
She knew how good a speaker she was, how she came across warm and motherly, feminine and gracious. Newspapers compared her to Queen Victoria, considered a great compliment. When a ferry crossing the Mississippi got stuck on a sandbar, she entertained the other passengers with an impromptu speech until they were tugged off and could resume the journey. One of the male passengers asked her to marry him. She told him one husband at a time was quite enough.
When roads were blocked with snow, she froze in open sleighs. She was jounced in dogcarts and coaches with broken springs, she breathed the coal smoke of locomotives and ate in dining rooms surrounded by men aiming for and missing the spittoons. Often walking into an ordinary, she felt faint from the smell of unwashed men and the reek of tobacco. On trains, the only food available was at a ten-minute stop when all the passengers rushed a cold buffet and grabbed what greasy food they could. She was making a living for herself and her family. More important, she was proselytizing for woman’s rights and giving good advice on child-raising, especially the rearing of daughters. Third, just being up there on the platform, she was a living refutation of the caricature of a feminist as a skinny woman in trousers with beard and cigar. The mother of seven children, she was plump and jolly with wit and warmth. She knew that as she spoke, she left behind women who were energized, men who felt more kindly toward woman’s rights, and some who were going to become active themselves in securing those rights. Everywhere—in stagecoaches, in trains, waiting in stations and in lobbies, at the long communal tables in hotels—she talked with everyone around her. As Johnny Appleseed had gone westward sowing his seeds and planting trees, she was sowing seeds too and planting what would flower and bear fruit for women—the fruit of freedom, of justice, of equality. So she soldiered on, recognizing that in spite of the hardships, in spite of the pain of her estrangement from Susan, she was enjoying herself.
THIRTY-SIX
ANTHONY GRIEVED WITH Maggie over her miscarriage, but the doctor was not pleased. “She can’t take much more of this. She’s a delicate woman.” It was true, she was like a fine porcelain teacup. But they needed a child. He prayed for guidance. The Lord had given Abraham Isaac when Sarah was old and not in the way of women, as the Good Book said. Surely the Lord could give him a child. It need not be a boy; he would be happy with a girl, to replace dear Lillie, who had been called to heaven.
He was now in the employ of the Committee for the Suppression of Vice of the YMCA, his work sanctioned and remunerated. The wealthy financiers and businessmen who supported the Y were backing him. “The working class is in danger of losing itself in vice, wasting their bodies in drink and loose living. Our young men could drown in pools of vice produced by immigrant vermin, polluters of our genes,” a board member said. There were stirring speeches in support when he finished his report. If only Maggie were stronger, he could fully enjoy his new sense of power. From a dry goods salesman, he had transformed himself into a fist of justice.
He was stalking a purveyor of obscene rubber articles near Chinatown one Wednesday in October when he came upon a scene of chaos in a tenement. A woman was crying on the stairs, clutching a baby—a little girl as blond as the silk on an ear of corn. The woman had dirty reddish hair and a nose that looked as if it had been broken. It was hard to tell with these women how old they were—in her ragged dirty dress and unwashed face blotched with tears, she could have been twenty or thirty. If this was trouble, he was always prepared. He touched his revolver through his black frock coat. “Madam, are you all right?” He tried to be polite even with these wretched creatures.
“My sis died in the night and this is her baby. She died of consumption and now there’s no one to care for the wee one. I’m living in the next building and they say I can’t bring in the baby ’cause I have too many childers already And I’m a widow, with nothing extra to spare.”
“Can you look for another place to live with your children and this poor babe?”
“I don’t have no money. I don’t have two cents.” She looked him over, her tears abating. She was thinking, he guessed, whether to try to beg from him.
“What will you do with this little babe?”
“Take her to the church and put her on the steps, I reckon. What else can I do?”
“You don’t want her?”
“My sis didn’t leave a penny to care for her. I have three of my own. What can I do?” Again s
he shrugged her bony shoulders in the dirty ragged dress.
“I’ll pay you twenty dollars for her and take her away to raise as my own.”
The woman sat up as if he had poked her in the behind. Her eyes met his with a suddenly appraising stare. “Twenty? She’s a fine pretty babe. She’s worth more than that.”
So she had revealed her true character, a shameless seller of babies. “Take it or leave it. There’s plenty of abandoned babies to be had.”
The woman frowned at the baby. Then she held out her palm. “Twenty in cash.”
Anthony counted out the money for her, but held on to it until he took the baby from her. “What’s her name?”
“Bridget, but you can name her whatever. She don’t know her name—she’s only three months. The woman upstairs was nursing her—Sis couldn’t—but she won’t do it no more without you paying her.”
“I’ll find a wet nurse, don’t worry.” Not that he thought this slattern would concern herself with the baby for five minutes after he went down the steps. He took the baby and hastened toward the Bowery, where he should be able to hail a cab to take him to the ferry. The baby began to cry, feebly, and he held her close. This little child would be saved and save Maggie, all at once. He looked down at her in the cab, trying feebly to suckle on his overcoat, and he melted with pity.
They named her Adele. Maggie’s mother found a wet nurse. The nursery had been set up already, so it was just a matter of putting Adele where Lillie had once lived. Maggie took to her at once. “It’s the most wonderful present in the world you’ve brought me, Tony.”
“She’ll be our own darling to raise.”
“The Lord works in mysterious ways. Now he has given me a child.”
“I prayed for a child for us, Maggie. I do the Lord’s hard work in the ditches of filth to preserve what’s right, and the Lord rewards us. The Lord’s given us this babe to raise.”
“Can we legally adopt her?”
“We have powerful friends. They’ll make the proper arrangements. There should be no problem at all in securing Adele.”
That evening, Anthony worked on his notes, updating his diary of arrests while the coal furnace heated the house and Maggie settled in the baby. He had an additional fire in the stove set into his fireplace. The wet nurse would come three times a day to feed the baby, upstairs out of his way should he be home.
Over the next weeks, his impulsive purchase proved a good one, confirming his judgment and the Lord’s protection. Adele turned out to be a good baby; she did not cry nearly as much as Lillie had. She smiled readily and gurgled and cooed as Maggie amused her with a rattle. She seemed healthy and happy, and Maggie was brighter than he had seen her since Lillie took ill. He looked over at the brand-new 16-shot Winchester repeating rifle one of his backers had given him, mounted over the mantel. There were raids on which his revolver was not protection enough. Now he had this dandy powerful new weapon. The Lord did provide. He felt twice the man he had recently been.
HIS NEXT SEIZURE was one Patrick Bannon, a forty-five-year-old Irish immigrant and papist who was selling circulars for a woman’s rights convention. In defiance of all decent behavior, he had his two young sons circulating the vile pamphlets. All this demanding of rights by viragos was contrary to the word of God in the Bible, contrary to nature, which clearly separated the man as head from woman created from his rib, who should cleave unto him, honor and obey and be his helpmate, as was his own dear wife. He brought Bannon before Judge Benedict. Anthony never lost a case in Benedict’s court. Benedict always sided with him and always sentenced the criminal to jail. Bannon got a year and a $500 fine. That would wipe him out good.
Satan was busy night and day in the city If Anthony had an army at his disposal, he could cleanse the city All he could do was go out every day to fight the Lord’s battles. So he went with his pistol and his notebook, feeling his strength, his vigor as never before. Sometimes he won and sometimes the police, instead of aiding him, tipped off his prey He had an assistant now, a burly man of German descent named Bamberger, handy with his fists. He also had a few volunteers he could call on, young men from the Y. One of them had come into possession of a madam’s card advertising a lewd show called the Busy Flea Dance at a brothel just below Houston. The madam charged them five dollars a head to watch a disgusting performance of four girls naked and performing obscene acts on each other, oral, anal, simulated congress with a large pink imitation organ. Anthony paid for himself, Bamberger and the young volunteer named Fred. He made mental notes so that after the arrests he could write up exactly what they did. He could not believe these creatures belonged to the same sex as his Maggie. Surely the daughters of Eve were born wicked unless saved. He could not imagine what he saw before his own eyes, mouths in the dirtiest places. He could not even look away. When the show was over, Anthony pulled his pistol and arrested everyone.
“Wrap yourself in a blanket,” he said to the four prostitutes, pointing his pistol at the madam’s head. “You’re going to the station right now. As you are.”
“I’m not going out that door without my clothes.” The mulatto woman put her hands on her hips and looked him straight in the eyes. “Shoot me.”
After ten minutes of these floozies screaming at him, Anthony let them get dressed and then marched them to the nearby Fourteenth Ward station. “What’s up, Sally?” the policeman at the desk asked the madam.
“This gent has been pointing a pistol at my girls and me. He paid for the show, he watched the show, and then he wanted to parade my girls naked down the street.”
“Are you okay, Janie?” the policeman addressed one of the prostitutes. “Have a seat, girls. You need anything?”
To Anthony’s overpowering disgust, the police captain himself came out to greet the madam, with whom he seemed to have an intimate relationship. He glared at Anthony. “Who are you to go around arresting folks? You’ve no authority. Waving a pistol at these girls.”
Anthony wrote up detailed notes on the performance, but the case was dismissed. The police often were hand in glove with the prostitutes, he reported to his backers at the Y. Something more was needed than the laws already on the books. He needed direct authority to arrest and prosecute without the agreement of a corrupt police force.
Anthony had better success against pornographers, blasphemers, free lusters and authors of books that displayed anatomy. Any discussion of the private parts, any drawings or photos of the naked body could incite dangerous longings. Once excited, such desires and fantasies were impossible to contain. He moved against two abortionists, small prey compared to Madame Restell, but he could not seem to touch her. She had powerful and rich friends who protected her as she lived openly in bloody luxury.
He did not think much of Plymouth Church—too lax. However, an attack on one minister could lead to a contempt for all, backsliding and, ultimately, atheism. He was shown a copy of Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly, as the smut journal was called, within a couple of days of its publication. It contained an obvious attempt to discredit the preacher of Plymouth Church, Henry Ward Beecher, known all over the United States as a Christian speaker of tremendous power, by detailing rumors of affairs. He considered Beecher full of hogwash, but the preacher was a Congregationalist and as such entitled to Anthony’s full protection. Besides, Woodhull was notorious, in the papers as often as the president. It would please his backers and the Lord to put her away. Most of the issue was taken up with a scurrilous interview with Woodhull, whose name had come to his attention before as one of those free lusters, an unsexed woman who demanded that women do things not even proper for men, a slut who hung out with communists and atheists and other lowlife. But there was worse obscenity in the same issue, an account of the French Ball, a scandalous orgy attended by a mix of prominent men, whores, society ladies and lowlife—all in masks. If it were not so strongly protected by men with money, he would have moved against it. The article in question, written by Tennie C. Claflin, was about the rape o
f a young virgin who had been foolish enough to go to the ball and who ended up in a brothel. He did not doubt the story, but such tales could not be printed and distributed where the eyes of the innocent could fall upon them. He couldn’t imagine the woman who could write such a report.
He swung into action at once with help from Beecher’s parishioners, fine upstanding men in positions of authority. One bought copies of the paper and mailed it to another. The district attorney met Anthony in his office on Sunday to issue a warrant for the arrest of Woodhull and Claflin for sending obscene matter through the mails. Anthony then went with his men and officers. He waited for almost an hour. Then one of the patrolmen called out, “Here they come!” He and his men intercepted the sisters in an open carriage, with five hundred copies of the dirty rag at their feet. Oh, he could tell they were caught totally by surprise. They were taken straight to the Ludlow Street jail.
In the morning he got them moved to the jurisdiction of the U.S. commissioner Davenport—an officer of the court he could trust—who sent them back to jail. Woodhull claimed to be running for president, so it was only fitting she spend Election Day in a cell. Woodhull was the worst kind of woman, and that men called her fair only made her more dangerous. The face of an angel and the soul of a devil, one of the prosecutors said. The Reverend Beecher staunchly denied the foul story of adultery the sisters had printed, probably when a blackmail attempt failed. Anthony got them moved from Ludlow to the Tombs—a dark, filthy, overcrowded dungeon that stank of the open sewage that flowed through it—a fit place for the likes of these low women.
Their next time in court, suddenly they were represented by that notorious shyster Howe of Howe and Hummel, who specialized in getting off criminals of all stripes. Howe was a huge bear of a man—bigger than Anthony himself—who dressed like the barker of a circus on the Bowery in loud clashing colors, plaids and silks. He glittered with diamonds on stickpins and studs, on rings and pins. On his head, instead of a respectable top hat or derby, he wore in all seasons a yachting cap. Anthony had crossed swords with Howe over three belly dancers gyrating in transparent veils. Howe had got the sluts off by claiming the dance was sacred to their Islamic faith—Anthony knew all three hailed from Philadelphia but he couldn’t prove they were fakes.
