by Marge Piercy
Life on the road was hard. She would be one night in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the next in Jackson, the next in Lansing. They stayed in whatever hotels they could afford and ate what meals were available. Occasionally some local spiritualist or woman’s rights advocate would put them up. She remembered Elizabeth’s complaints about traveling hardships. Elizabeth had seen her twice in New York, but had not invited Victoria to her home; Susan had never spoken to her again. Isabella remained loyal, but she was in France, away from Beecher and his doctors and their desire to commit her to an asylum.
Occasionally she took a lover on the road, and he would travel with them for a while—some young man who struck her as intelligent, soulful. She did not expect a great deal from them, but, like Tennie, she sought a little solace and a little pleasure. She was making money, they were out of debt—Howe paid off, at last. She had clothes again instead of the same two worn dresses. She could afford a rose now and then to wear at her throat. She found to her surprise that she did not miss James. He felt very distant. Now was a time when he might have come to her aid, made money himself, volunteered to travel with her, perhaps write articles or make speeches in her defense. He complained that his war wounds, including the ball still lodged in his thigh, were bothering him. The truth was he enjoyed his life in New York, his round of discussion groups, reading free-thinking journals, giving a little talk here and there, drinking a bit, playing billiards. Their sex life had never recovered from their separation in jail. He had said several times that her choosing to attack someone as prominent as Beecher was an error, but he had not said so before she wrote the piece—only after Comstock and the courts had almost crushed her.
She was weary with traveling. She was sick of the speech she had written and given well over a hundred times. Who was counting? Actually Roxanne kept count, drawing sticks in a notebook. When she had too sore a throat to speak, Tennie took over. After all, they had heard the speech so many times, even Zulu Maud could give it from memory. As it was, Zulu often opened the program by reciting poetry She had no desire for the spotlight, but her recitation was popular and she was cute, so she obeyed and performed. At twelve, Zulu was shy with boys and did not seem to know how to flirt or even chat with them. She shrank from the presence of strangers, although she could mount the platform and recite in a clear impassioned voice that people said sounded like a smaller version of Victoria.
Victoria looked at herself as she passed a wall of mirrors in a hotel lobby in Kansas City. She was still beautiful. She had a fine slender figure and a chiseled face and black hair without a trace of white. Her eyes were as intense a blue as ever. But inside, she was not what she had been. Something had broken, beyond repair. How much longer could she continue to pull the weight of her squabbling family through the mud? For how many years could she exploit her notoriety? Did she any longer believe in anything except survival? She was frightened to the core. She had dared to do what no other woman had, and she had been punished and feared yet worse punishment. She would wake in the middle of the night soaked with a cold sweat, her heart pounding, her mouth dry, and she could not return to the comfortable numbness of sleep. She woke thinking she was back in a cell in the Tombs. She had come so close to a life in prison, she could not keep that from her nightmares.
All over the country, men were out of work and women were hungry. In every city, homeless children roamed the streets. Hoboes went from town to town riding the rails, looking for work, looking for a handout, looking, like herself, to survive. Sometimes the country felt on the verge of the revolution she had preached, and sometimes apathy was so thick, despair settling over the lives of ordinary people like a dust storm too thick to see through, too thick even to allow breathing. Only revivalists seemed to be thriving.
Word came to her via the newspapers that Theo had launched a suit against Henry Ward Beecher for adultery and alienation of Lib’s affections. Theo had risen at last to strike back, but she thought him a coward. He had not come to her defense; she would not come to his. She would not offer to testify unless subpoenaed. Since he was busy denying they had ever been intimate, she doubted he would subpoena her, and she was fairly confident Beecher’s lawyers wouldn’t. That trial was the sensation of the country.
Pearlo wrote her as she was speaking in San Francisco that around the Brooklyn courthouse, concessions were set up where refreshments and souvenirs were sold. Men lined up every day at dawn to crowd into the limited seating in the courtroom. Thousands were turned away. Each side had teams of famous lawyers. Every word was reported in the papers. She followed the trial as she trekked up the West Coast, then back to the Midwest.
Finally, in the spring of ’75, as she was leaving the stage in Brattle-boro, Vermont, she was subpoenaed by Beecher’s lawyers to turn over relevant letters and to appear in court to deliver them. When she returned to New York, she at once destroyed the letters from Theo she had been saving except those dealing with the writing and publication of her autobiography. She did not crave more notoriety. If Theo said they had never been lovers, fine. She didn’t need that hung around her neck with all her other scandals. She would give them only the most respectable of communications. She traveled to Brooklyn with James. All eyes were on her and artists sketched her for the next day’s papers, but the lawyers were deeply disappointed by the letters she produced.
While in New York, she wrote a new speech about the Beecher-Tilton scandal. She might as well make some money from it, for it had cost her enough. She imagined there would be a great deal of interest in this speech, and there was. There was.
1873 ONWARD
THIRTY-NINE
ANTHONY WENT TO WASHINGTON with one thing in mind: to get a federal law passed that would outlaw obscenity in word and object once and for all, and provide him legal power to seize and prosecute writers and vendors. He was being paid $3,000 a year by the YMCA, but since the Woodhull mess, donations had dropped. Some in the leadership worried about his aggressive approach and the publicity he generated. Jesup told him not to fret, for he would back him to the hilt; in the meantime, Jesup paid for Anthony’s sojourn in Washington as a lobbyist for decency.
He carried to Washington a trunk of condoms, dildos, pills and instruments for inducing abortions, obscene books and postcards. At first he had difficulty commanding the attention of anyone in Congress, because a scandal implicated a great many members, including Grant’s vice president Colfax—prominent senators had been pushing stock in Union Pacific cheap to whomever in Congress would buy it. Now the scandal had broken open. However, Anthony arrived with a strategy mapped out by his powerful friends in the Y who knew whom he should approach and how. Further, he had a letter of introduction to Justice William Strong of the Supreme Court, who had just lost the battle to write “God” into the Constitution and make Christianity the official religion. Strong drafted the new legislation and personally introduced Anthony to leading senators who would push the bill through Congress quickly—a necessity, since Congress would adjourn soon for Grant’s second inauguration. Anthony was indifferent to the railroad scandal—just stocks and money. Nothing dirty there. He liked to be adequately paid and to keep his family in reasonable comfort, but otherwise he had no interest in finance. He was about the Lord’s business, and he would be provided for. Justice Strong got Vice President Colfax to lend his office in the Capitol for Anthony to set up his display, inviting senators and representatives to visit his collection of horrors. They came, they saw, and he conquered.
Vice President Colfax was eager to display zeal on the side of righteousness, as were others implicated in the railroad scandal. Anthony’s placard behind the items said “These are examples of what is being sent through the mail to our innocent children in boarding schools across the nation!”
Now he had the attention of the legislators. They fingered one item after another, asking him what they did. Several would not actually touch the lurid objects but poked them with a walking stick. They paid particular attention to the Fren
ch postcards and the etchings, which they studied carefully. He appreciated their interest, now that he had finally aroused it. Benjamin Butler came in, looked over the table and had the audacity to wink at him, as if he were somehow involved in this smut. “Not a bad collection,” the senator said in his ear, “but Colfax has a better one. You should ask to see it.”
When Anthony had finished his spiel on the dangers to the youth of the nation, the senators and congressmen professed themselves ready to give him whatever law he needed. Few in Congress wanted to be seen as defending obscenity, although there were stubborn souls who insisted on blabbing about freedom of speech and the press—freedom to corrupt the innocent. He was working full-time, pressing the flesh, telling tales of his arrests and his trials, working them all. There would be inserted into the last appropriations bill before adjournment a special agent of the post office who would wield vast new powers to confiscate immoral matter in the mails and arrest those sending it: powers to search, to seize and to arrest. This special agent, everyone understood, would be him. Anthony insisted on serving without pay. If the agent were a paid office, it could be used as patronage, but if it were unpaid, then he could have it for all any politician would care. The Y would pay his salary anyhow. He had Jesup’s promise.
It took him the better part of a month and a half to get everything he wanted, but on March 3, the new law made illegal the spread of vile material, banning obscenity from the mails in pretty much the way he desired. The bill passed at the last minute before inauguration almost without discussion. Two-thirds of the congressmen had no idea what they were voting for. He was beginning to develop a certain contempt for Congress. They were men, he judged, of loose morals and wavering opinions. Politics was a dubious business and he was glad he had nothing to do with it. The new law made it a crime to send through the mail erotica, contraceptive devices, medications or information, abortifacients, sex implements and ads for any of the above. Anthony returned to New York as an agent of the federal government with broad new powers. Now evildoers like Woodhull would never again escape his net. A district or circuit court judge anywhere in the United States had the right to issue a warrant to search, seize and take possession of any obscene or indecent books, papers, articles or things.
As soon as he returned, his supporters began to put pressure on the legislature to incorporate a New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. It would be independent of the Y, although several directors would be the same men who had helped him for the last year and a half. The society would receive half the fines of those arrested by him or his assistants—and he would have several. Thus, Jesup said, if contributions fell off again because of some controversial case, he would still have ample funds. The police were instructed to help the society, and the obscenity law was strengthened to include all the items listed in the federal laws and more. Now items did not have to go through the mail in New York for him to seize them and arrest their manufacturers, authors or purveyors. Woodhull had gotten off on a fluke of the previous law. That would not happen again.
He now was a powerful special agent of the post office and secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Vice. He could travel anywhere in the States and seize evildoers. The Lord had seen that he was true in his aim and had given him the power to serve. He would not flinch. He would not hesitate to examine every dirty book and picture and show that he heard of, to protect youth. It took strong willpower and an unshakable belief to carry out his work, but he was man enough to do it.
At home, things were good. Adele was a little doll baby. Maggie constantly sewed for her, dressing her up. She was cute and cheerful, although slow to learn to talk or walk. But that only showed what a good girl she was, never forward, meek and mild and gentle as a female should be, just like Maggie herself. Maggie’s health had improved. He had married the ideal woman, except for her ability to bear children, and that lack was made up for by her wonderful care of Adele. He exercised his conjugal duties twice a month and Maggie bore it without complaint.
Every year he toted up for his supporters the tonnage of bad books he had burned, the arrests, the convictions. He recorded the exact number of dirty postcards, lewd pictures, improper ads and periodicals he had confiscated. He imagined a lurid mountain of trash he piled up every year—not literally, for once he had examined them, he had the books, the postcards, the pictures burned and the plates destroyed by acid. When he was through with them, he banished them from the face of the earth.
He paid off the mortgage, waiting until it was done to tell Maggie. Mostly he had the press in the palm of his hand these days, but lately some of the sporting papers, vile things, had been after him for not arresting Madame Restell, the Fifth Avenue abortionist. They claimed he went after the small fry but left the powerful alone. He hated to be criticized in the press. He paced his study. He knew that the men who supported him liked to maintain good relations with other powerful men. They had appreciated his destruction of the Woodhull gang. Madame Restell had been a particular target of the sporting press, those salacious publications that catered to young men and wrote about unfit subjects such as prostitutes and masked balls. The one good thing about them was that they hated abortionists, who they felt gave too much power to women, to cheat and cover up their adultery, to carry on and bear no consequences. On that subject alone, he agreed with them. But he had ignored their attacks on Madame Restell for years because she seemed untouchable and there were so many targets crying out for his action.
She was no back-alley quack, carrying on her bloody trade in secrecy and shame. She flaunted her sordid profession. For years she had advertised in every paper that would carry her ads, even the ones that considered themselves respectable family sheets. Her husband had been in the game with her, until he died recently. They operated under a variety of pseudonyms, but everyone knew who she was and what she did. She lived in a marble palace, a huge mansion on Fifth Avenue. He had walked by it the week before. At the side entrance, carriages drew up and heavily veiled women scurried inside. He had been told that she could, if she wished, blackmail most of the richest and most prestigious families in the city and beyond. Her connections and her clientele had shielded her from trouble with the authorities, although years ago he knew she had been arrested, tried and served a year on Blackwell’s Island in the East River.
Even there, she had influence, he had been told by a police captain who cooperated with him. She had worn fine clothes, lived in a special cell, had food prepared for her and lived the life of a gracious lady behind bars. He did not doubt the story. Every high-placed man in the city and every wealthy family seemed in her debt. What disgusting scandals had been covered by her bloodletting he could only imagine. There she was living like a vulture in her castle, sinning and causing to sin countless women and the men who had impregnated them.
He would have liked to share his problem with Maggie, but the subject was too indelicate for her ears. If every woman were like his Maggie, then half the problems of the world would disappear overnight.
He arrested a free luster who had published a disgusting book of marital advice with pictures of male and female private parts that could corrupt any youth who stumbled upon it, three pornographers, the proprietor of a sexual peep show, a streetwalker who passed out broadsides displaying her bare body, a madam who specialized in masks, whips and chains, two condom makers and the proprietor of a shop that sold sex toys and dirty postcards. It was a profitable month doing the Lord’s hard work, but still that abortionist weighed on his mind. The Herald dared insinuate he was afraid to move against her—he who had no fear of the wicked.
The year before, that one-armed pornographer Conroy had stabbed him right in the face when Anthony was arresting him. Anthony had bled mightily, needing ten stitches to stanch the wound. He had lost so much blood he had been confined to his bed for a week. But he had risen from his bed to put Conroy in jail, not only for selling pornography but for assaulting an officer of the law. Conroy would rot there
for years to come. Anthony traced his scar with his fingers. He wore it as a badge of courage, proof of what he could endure and never flinch from his duty. Such a scar was a token of worth.
He fingered his scar again. How dare they imply he was a coward. He strode into the back parlor where Maggie was sitting at the pianoforte playing a hymn to amuse herself and little Adele. Adele was three now, a little doll with large pale blue eyes like bits of morning sky, strawberry blond curls and a sweet smile that showed a dimple. She had finally learned to speak, but she was never forward. The doctor said she was slow, but Maggie and Anthony considered her perfect. She was gentle, obedient, quiet, shy, everything a girl should be. If Maggie sat her down in a chair, she stayed there. He saw plenty of ill-behaved children, some who helped their parents at their evil work. He remembered one condom maker who had her whole family enrolled in her criminal activity. He saw child prostitutes, he saw eleven-year-old newsboys who had prostitutes their own age who served them, he saw children sold to young toffs to pollute their bodies and destroy their souls. He and Maggie would keep Adele safe. She was a good girl, and she would stay that way, protected, innocent.
