Book Review: Melanie Benjamin's The Swans of Fifth Avenue

The Swans of Fifth Avenue – Melanie Benjamin

• Print Length: 368 pages
• Publisher: Delacorte Press (January 26, 2016)
• Publication Date: January 26, 2016
• Sold by: Random House LLC

How Acquired:  Net Galley

What's it about:  Of all the glamorous stars of New York high society, none blazes brighter than Babe Paley. Her flawless face regularly graces the pages of Vogue, and she is celebrated and adored for her ineffable style and exquisite taste, especially among her friends—the alluring socialite Swans Slim Keith, C. Z. Guest, Gloria Guinness, and Pamela Churchill. By all appearances, Babe has it all: money, beauty, glamour, jewels, influential friends, a high-profile husband, and gorgeous homes. But beneath this elegantly composed exterior dwells a passionate woman—a woman desperately longing for true love and connection.

Enter Truman Capote. This diminutive golden-haired genius with a larger-than-life personality explodes onto the scene, setting Babe and her circle of Swans aflutter. Through Babe, Truman gains an unlikely entrée into the enviable lives of Manhattan's elite, along with unparalleled access to the scandal and gossip of Babe's powerful circle. Sure of the loyalty of the man she calls "True Heart," Babe never imagines the destruction Truman will leave in his wake. But once a storyteller, always a storyteller—even when the stories aren't his to tell.

Truman's fame is at its peak when such notable celebrities as Frank and Mia Sinatra, Lauren Bacall, and Rose Kennedy converge on his glittering Black and White Ball. But all too soon, he'll ignite a literary scandal whose repercussions echo through the years. The Swans of Fifth Avenue will seduce and startle readers as it opens the door onto one of America's most sumptuous eras.

My thoughts: Sometimes a book comes along that seems as if it were written just for you.  As if the author had gotten inside your head, read your thoughts, and tailored a book that so neatly dovetailed with the things that you love, that you can’t even believe that it exists. The Swans of Fifth Avenue is that book for me.  The minute that I heard about the book, I instinctively knew that I was going to love it.  A book about Truman Capote and the women in his life, his swans, Babe Paley, Gloria Guinness, Slim Keith, CZ Guest, and Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman? Done! I eagerly downloaded a copy from Net Galley, happily spending two nights devouring the book as if it were a particularly delicious box of macarons.

Like the author, I was first introduced to Truman Capote via the 1970’s Neil Simon film Murder by Death, a spoof about mysteries and their authors.  Later in 8^th grade, I read his short story A Christmas Memory for English class.  It was hard for me to connect the dots between the caricature he had become on late night television with the beautiful and sensitive writer of Breakfast at Tiffany and In Cold Blood.  I’m also a little obsessed with not only with murder amongst the rich and famous but also the post-war New York era when women and dressed up to go to dinner, the theater or even grocery shopping.  I devoured The Two Mrs. Grenvilles when it came out, Dominick Dunne was my spirit animal.  For my 16^th birthday, I convinced my parents to take me to dinner to at the Rainbow Room in Rockefeller Center.  Reading about the glamourous lives of movie stars and socialites took me far away from the gritty streets of 1970’s and early 80’s New York where porn theaters outnumbered legitimate ones in Times Square.

But enough about me, how about the book? Did it live up to my expectations? It exceeded my expectations.  This book is an intimate portrait of a world that has disappeared like Avalon in the mist.  Benjamin’s prose lures you in from the very first paragraph.  It’s almost as if she had hidden in the bushes and recorded the personal and intimate conversations of these women and Capote. The dialogue and the emotions are just so real that it’s hard to believe that they came out of one woman’s imagination, that’s how closely she’s captured this particular man and women, and the era in which they lived.  I’ve read a great deal over the years about Capote, Babe Paley, and the others, and there isn’t a false note anywhere.  And believe me I looked, waiting for that ‘Aha’ moment where I could point and say ‘this couldn’t be possibly have happened,’ or ‘he couldn’t possibly have said that.’

Truman Capote and Babe Paley were unlikely soul-mates. Barbara Cushing Mortimer Paley, along with her two sisters, was raised to marry a rich man, to be a sort of upper class geisha. She was expected to be perfect, to hide her emotions behind a calm, smiling façade. Capote’s parents were too concerned about their own wants to pay too much attention to their son.  He was dropped off with relatives as a child, after an early childhood spent locked in hotel rooms while his parents were off partying. Truman learned early on to entertain, to tell stories to combat the loneliness. These two people came together because they recognized that they could only ever be their true selves when they were either alone or with each other.  There is a beautiful moment in the book when Truman gets Babe to take off her make-up in front of him, revealing the faint scars left over from a horrific car accident.

Even you are a subscriber to Vanity Fair or New York Magazine, then you know that Truman caused a scandal when Esquire magazine published an excerpt from what was supposed to be his follow-up to In Cold Blood. Entitled ‘La Cote Basque 1965’ this excerpt and the one following revealed, in fictional form, not only the intimate secrets that Truman’s swans had revealed over the years but also those of Ann Woodward who famously shot her husband when she allegedly mistook him for a burglar. While Woodward committed suicide, the consensus was that Capote had committed professional suicide. His swans, apart from Lee Radziwill and CZ Guest, abandoned him.  This is the saddest part of the book, Capote’s decline after the triumph of In Cold Blood and his Black and White Ball.

I’ve always found it interesting that Capote referred to his special female friends as swans.  While they are beautiful and elegant birds, they are also some of the meanest birds on the planet, capable of breaking a man’s arm with a whap of their wings.  Did he sense that they would eventually turn on him? While in the final stages of cancer, Babe Paley points out to Slim Keith, that while Truman betrayed them, they also betrayed him by not loving him unconditionally.

My verdict:  Fans of vintage New York glamour who loved books such as Dominick Dunne’s The Two Mrs. Grenvilles will delight in the chance to experience vicariously the highs and lows of 1950’s and 60’s society. Benjamin’s novel highlights that old adage ‘Be Careful what you wish for, you just might get it’. You will sigh with regret when you turn the last page, wishing that you could linger just a minute longer in the scandalous, delicious but ultimately artificial world of Truman and his wans. Highly recommended.

Hetty Green – America’s First Female Tycoon

I was first introduced Hetty Green during the Bicentennial.  LIFE Magazine had put out a special issue on noted American women during the previous two hundred years of the nation’s existence and Hetty was one of the women.  Of course, they chose the least flattering picture they could find, Hetty during her later years when she was noted for her eccentricities.  She was nicknamed “The Witch on Wall Street,” which is interesting when you consider there were hardly any women on Wall Street or in business in the 19^th century.  All of which makes Hetty’s accomplishments all the more remarkable.  Unlike Victoria Woodhull and her sister Tennessee Claflin, Hetty didn’t get her stock tips from a railroad tycoon like Cornelius Vanderbilt.  She studied the markets closely, bought low and sold high (Warren Buffett would have been proud), and kept her expenses low by borrowing a desk in the offices of Chemical bank (which later merged with J.P. Morgan).  For years, Hetty was known more for her eccentricities and her frugality and then for her business acumen.  In recent years, however, Hetty has been recognized for being the first American woman to make a substantial impact on Wall Street.  Her success paved the way for women such as Muriel Siebert and Sayra Lebenthal.

She was born Henrietta Howland Robinson in New Bedford, MA on November 21, 1834. At the time of her birth, New Bedford was a thriving town, whose primary industry was whaling.  Her family were Quakers who owned a large whaling fleet.  Her father was disappointed that she hadn’t been the longed for son, and her mother suffered from post-partum depression after her birth.  As a result, Hetty was farmed out to relatives, including her maternal grandfather Gideon Howland.  Feeling abandoned by the people who were supposed to love her, from an early age, Hetty began to act out and throw tantrums when she didn’t get her way.  It also led her to become a massive control freak as she got older.

Hetty became interested in finance, through reading the financial papers to her grandfather whose eyesight was failing. It became a way for her to connect not only to her grandfather but also to her father as well.  By the time she was 13, she was the family bookkeeper.  Despite her financial savvy, when her father died in 1864, and left her $7.5 million ($107 million in 2010), the money was still left in a trust. Hetty was furious that she was not allowed to control the bulk of her money.  Hetty had invested a small amount of money on her own; she invested what she could in Civil War bonds, against the objections of her family.  Hetty made a killing, as she would continue to do for the rest of her life. 

When her aunt Sylvia died and left the bulk of her fortune to charity, Hetty was livid.  Her aunt had used her fortune throughout her life as a way to control people; Hetty had catered to her in the expectation that she would inherit everything.  Showing just how ruthless she could be, Hetty challenged the will’s validity in court by producing an earlier will which allegedly left the entire estate to her.  The case dragged on for years, and ultimately Hetty ended up losing, after the court decided that the signature on the will had been forged.

While Hetty was no raving beauty, she was considered attractive with fine blue eyes and a tall, shapely figure.  While living in New York, she met Edward Henry Green, who came from a wealthy Vermont family.  Thirteen years older, he was tall and handsome, with wavy blond hair, and blue eyes.  While Hetty was reticent, no interest in clothes or parties; and had no small talk , her beau had a robust personality, was a witty conversationalist filled with amusing anecdotes, and he was the type of man who feasted on life. Fluent in several languages, he had lived abroad for twenty years.  After a long courtship, the two married when Hetty was 33 years old. In a sort of 19^th century pre-nuptial agreement, she made him renounce all rights to her money before their wedding.  For several years, they lived abroad in London, making their base at the ultra-exclusive Langham Hotel.   The couple soon had two children, Edward Howland Robinson born in 1868 and Sylvia born almost three years later in 1871.  While her husband was much more of a gambler when it came to investing, Hetty was much more practical when it came to money.  She had a simple investment strategy, conservative investments, substantial cash reserves, and an exceedingly cool head.  While other investors might drop their stock at the first sign of a dip in the markets, Hetty would hold on until the stock rebounded.  She initially invested heavily in greenbacks, which according to Wikipedia, were notes printed by the U.S. government immediately after the Civil War. While other investors were wary, Hetty invested heavily and made $1.2 million from her investment in the first year.  She later expanded her portfolio to include railroads, eventually feuding with most of the major players including Collis Huntington.

In 1885, the financial house John J. Cisco collapsed, in which Hetty was the largest investor.  In the fall out, Hetty discovered that not only was her husband the firm’s biggest debtor but that the firm had used her money as collateral for their loans to her husband.  While Hetty had no problem turning a blind eye to her husband’s infidelities and gambling, she put her foot down when it came to her money.  Despite his transgressions, the idea of divorcing him never occurred to her.  The couple separated, although they stayed on friendly terms, sharing lunch occasionally, and Hetty even nursed him in the years before his death. 

Over the years, Hetty began to develop a reputation as an eccentric.  Believing merchants raised the prices when they knew that she was coming, she started dressing in old clothes and using a false name to get a better price.  When she lived in New York, instead of renting a house or an apartment in one of the new luxury buildings like the Dakota, Hetty preferred to live in boarding houses because it was not just cheap but convenient.  Later in life, she moved from one furnished apartment to another in Brooklyn and Manhattan in order to avoid having a permanent residence (and to avoid paying income tax).  When the five boroughs combined into what we now know as New York City, she moved across the river to Hoboken. She ate baked onions because she believed that they warded off colds. Instead of eating in fancy restaurants like Delmonico’s, Hetty brought her lunch to work every day to save money.  She allegedly wore her clothes until they were falling apart.  There were rumors that she ate oatmeal that she heated on the office radiator. 

The biggest and most juicy myth was the story that Hetty’s frugality cost her son his leg.  Ned injured his leg while sledding at their home in Vermont.  Hetty applied a home remedy to try and heal the leg but she also called the local doctor. When it appeared that the methods were working, she canceled the doctor who had been called to attend him, because she would have had to pay him for his time, which she felt would be wasted since Ned appeared fine.  Unfortunately for Ned, the healing was only temporary.  Hetty, to her credit, when she realized that Ned’s leg was not healed, took him to see several eminent physicians. Almost all of them recommended that Ned have the leg amputated which both Hetty and her son were reluctant to have happen.  Over time, the leg grew worse and eventually had to be amputated.  She couldn’t escape the rumors even in death; she supposedly died of apoplexy when she argued with a maid about the virtues of skimmed milk. The truth was that Hetty had been suffering ill-health for a number of years.  Diagnosed with a hernia, she refused to pay $150 to have an operation, considering the price too high.  Instead, she put a ruler in her underwear, pressed against the hernia. 

Many of the stories were spread by her mostly male business competitors who gave her the lovely nickname of the ‘Witch of Wall Street,’ partly due to her habit of mostly wearing black. It no doubt galled them that Hetty was so successful in business that the City of New York came to Hetty more than once to help keep the city afloat.  Hetty could be just as ruthless and litigious as any male tycoon. She sued the trustees of her father’s estate, accusing them of mismanagement, and despite the negative publicity, she foreclosed on a church that had gotten behind in its loan payments.  When the pastor told her that she was in danger of not getting into heaven, Hetty told him to pray for her.  Hetty enjoyed making money, the wheeling and dealing, much more than she did spending it. While other tycoons built lavish mansions, monuments to their wealth, or donated large sums to charity, Hetty quietly went about her business, crisscrossing the country to inspect the various properties she owned. Instead of just donating money to charity, Hetty preferred to help others help themselves by providing jobs whenever possible.

Hetty believed that it was important for women to have some knowledge about business, how to write a check, open a bank account, read a financial statement, in order not to be taken advantage of by unscrupulous businessmen.  She believed that knowledge of business would make them better wives, since they would have an understanding of the pressures their husbands were under. However, Hetty didn’t believe in women’s suffrage, that they should have the vote or even run for political office.   Despite her success in business, she still believed that a woman’s greatest job was to be a wife and a mother.

But all of her money made Hetty paranoid.  She believed that not only her aunt but her father had been poisoned.  She began carrying a gun to protect against the possibility of an attack. Determined to protect her children against fortune hunters, she made her son Ned promise not to get married for twenty years (he eventually married his long-time girlfriend after his mother’s death). When her daughter Sylvie eventually married in her late thirties to Matthew Astor Wilks, Hetty made sure that he signed a pre-nuptial agreement waiving his right to her fortune.  At point, Hetty moved into the brand new Plaza Hotel, but she moved out after six weeks, sick and tired of the letters she received from people begging for money. She also became afraid that she would be kidnapped and made detours to evade the would-be pursuer.

Hetty finally passed away on July 3, 1916 at the age of 81.  She left a fortune of between $100 million to $200 million (or $1.9 – $3.8 billion in 2006 dollars), arguably making her the richest woman in the world at the time.  Apart from a small bequest to a relative, the majority of her wealth was left to her two children, Ned and Sylvie.  Freed from his mother’s eagle eye, Ned spent lavishly but still managed to leave his sister a substantial fortune after his death.  Since neither of Hetty’s children had children of their own, Hetty’s fortune ended up being dispersed after Sylvie’s death to 63 charities and financial institutions.

Further Reading:

Farquhar, Michael:  A Treasury of Foolishly Forgotten Americans: Pirates, Skinflints, Patriots, and Other Colorful Characters Stuck in the Footnotes of History. New York:  Perigee Books (2008)

Slack, Charles, Hetty: The Genius And Madness Of America's First Female Tycoon. New York: Ecco (2004).
Wallach, Janet:  The Richest Woman in America – Hetty Green in the Gilded Age. New York:  Nan A. Talese/Doubleday (2012)

Katherine Hepburn Exhibit: Dressed for Stage and Screen

 

Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

Most of the time living in New York is delightful, and there are few other cities on this planet (apart from London) that I could see myself living.  However, holiday weekends in New York can be a pain, particularly this past weekend with all the sales going on.  To escape the crowds, I headed up to the Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center to see the Katherine Hepburn exhibt entitled 'Dressed for State and Screen.'

While I've been a fan of Katherine Hepburn's since I was a kid, I've never thought of her as a style icon but walking through the exhibit, I had to change my mind.  The exhibit was sponsored by the Kent State University Museum, the recipiant of Hepburn's costumes and other theatrical paraphenalia after her death.  The exhibit wasn't huge but the items they had on display were choice, including the evening gown that she wore in ADAM'S RIB, and the wedding dress that she wore in the Broadway production of The Lake (the famous production of which Dorothy Parker wrote that Hepburn ran 'the gamut of emotion from A to B').

Although I've read several biographies of Hepburn, I learned a few things during this exhibit that I hadn't known before. 

1)  Katherine Hepburn apparently at one time had a 20 inch waist.  Seriously, and I'm not talking with the help of a girdle or a corset.  I don't think my waist has ever been smaller than 24 inches!

2) She made a movie with Bob Hope called THE IRON PETTICOAT which hopefully TCM will show at some point because that is the craziest pairing probably in movie history.  No, I take that back pairing Hepburn with Nick Nolte was probably crazier.  Apparently in THE IRON PETTICOAT, Hepburn plays a Soviet flyer who is introduced to the delights of the west by Bob Hope.  Here's the synopsis from TCM:  'Captain Vinka Kovelenko defects from Russia, but not for political reasons. She defects because she feels discriminated against as a woman. Captain Chuck Lockwood gets the order to show her the bright side of capitalism, while she tries to convince him of the superority of communism. Naturally, they fall in love, but there's still the KGB, which doesn't like the idea of having a defected Russian officer running around in London.'  The exhibit had her costume from the film, a drab olive uniform.  Apparently Hepburn really wanted the uniform to be a drab color and not bright green.

3) Hepburn made quite a few films based on the plays of James M. Barrie including Little Minister and Quality Street.

Walking through the exhibit I was reminded of so many Hepburn films that I've loved over the years including THE PHILADELPHIA STORY (Apparently Hepburn wanted Clark Gable to be her co-star in the movie!).   The exhibit had a dress that she wore in the film that she later recycled when she played Amanda in a TV version of Tennessee William's play THE GLASS MENAGERIE with Sam Waterston.  She made 4 movies with Cary Grant, 3 of which are classics (BRINGING UP BABY, HOLIDAY and THE PHILADELPHIA STORY.)  It made me wish that she had done more movies with Grant and fewer with Spencer Tracy frankly.

The coolest part of the exhibit was the display case with various pairs of pants that Hepburn wore.  Along with Marlene Dietrich, she was one of the few starss back in the day who were regularly photographed in pants, which the studios hated but she would not be budged.  If they took away her jeans or her trousers, she would just apparently walk around on set in her underwear until they gave them back.  It's hard to imagine Hepburn wearing dresses, although she wore some stunning ones in her films.

The Hepburn exhibit contains quite a few photos, as well  as posters, scrapbooks, press clippings, and, of course, clothes. Some of the gems include two costumes from LOVE AMONG THE RUINS, a movie directed by George Cukor, starring Hepburn and Laurence Olivier; two outfits that Hepburn bought from Chanel when she played the designer in the Broadway musical Coco (she wasn't sure that Cecil Beaton's costumes would be right), her hat from Alice Adams, and the costumes from Mrs. Delafied. There's also a a letter from her favorite wig-making company, in London; her make-up case, several pairs of shoes, and an audio conversation between Hepburn and Louis Botto, a Playbill Magazine's senior editor, who was working on a biography of costume designer Walter Plunkett, with whom she did 11 films.

There's also a book, that's not tied to the exhibition, but is a must-have for all film buffs entitled Katherine Hepburn:  Rebel Chic.

The exhibit runs through January at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

Hello Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand

Title:  Hello Gorgeous:   Becoming Barbra Streisand

Author:  William J. Mann

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Publication date: 10/9/2012

Meet the Author:

William J. Mann is the author of Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, which was named a New York Times Notable Book, as well as several other acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction. He divides his time between Provincetown, Massachusetts and New York City.

My take:  

Like the author, I’m not a huge fan of Barbra Streisand.  I think that she has a phenomenal voice, but I haven’t been a huge fan of hers as an actress, apart from her earlier films WHAT’S UP DOC (which is a classic screwball comedy) and THE WAY WE WERE.  While I enjoyed the PRINCE OF TIDES, I thought the last film she directed, THE MIRROR HAS TWO FACES, was just one long therapy session. I suspect that if I knew her, I would find her somewhat insufferable.  I totally get that she’s a perfectionist, I suffer from that same malady myself, but she takes it even to extremes.  I remember watching her on the Oprah Winfrey show, where she claimed that she managed to will some bulbs that she had planted in a window box outside her bedroom, to change color so that they matched the wallpaper in the room.  Seriously?

So why did I pick up a biography of Barbra Streisand given my love/hate relationship with the subject? Well, I was intrigued by the fact that Mann focuses solely on the first 5 years of Barbra’s career, I had to order the book from Net Galley.  The book chronicles the trajectory of Barbra's career from struggling actress to reluctant chanteuse, all the way to her triumph on Broadway, portraying Fanny Brice in a little musical called ‘Funny Girl.’ This is a Barbra that has all but been forgotten, the young insecure girl who was determined to ‘go big or go home.’  For Barbra there was no other option. Mann deals with Barbra’s early childhood, the loss of her father before her 2^nd birthday and the hole that left in her and her mother’s short-lived second marriage to Louis Kind in a few pages.  He’s more concerned with the impact that it had on her life. 

The reader learns about the men and women who helped Barbra along the way, including her first real love Barry Dennen, who was the first one to hear the potential and Barbra’s voice and did a great deal to shape her early persona of a kooky Brooklyn girl with the big nose and the even bigger voice.  From the beginning of Barbra’s career, her looks were treated as an asset instead of a detriment.  Barbra was enormously lucky that she was beginning her career in the early sixties at the end of the reign of the studios who controlled every aspect of a performer’s career.   If Barbra had come along in the thirties, forties or even the early fifties, everything about her would have been changed from her nose, her name, they would have tried to mold her into whatever niche on their roster needed filling.  By the sixties, a whole new generation of Actors Studio trained actors paying their dues in small theaters Off and Off-Off Broadway were making their mark, including a fellow acting student named Dustin Hoffmann.

Mann does a fantastic job of not just chronicling Barbra’s career but also the changing times from the Puritanism of the 1950’s to the ‘Let it all hang out’ 1960’s, from the standard heavy and novelty tune pop music to the British Invasion bringing back the rawness of the early years of rock and roll. In many ways, Barbra embodies the changing times.  On the one hand, she made her mark breathing new life into old songs, on the other hand, she benefited from the changes in the business.  One of the things that I found fascinating in the book was how Barbra’s publicists were able to use publicity in the forms of the many newspaper columnists who covered show business, as well as the medium of television.  Here was Barbra Streisand at the tender age of 18 years old already appearing on the Tonight Show after only making a few club appearances in New York.  The only equivalent I can think of would be Ellen DeGeneres having the two little girls who became a YouTube sensation singing pop songs but even that isn’t quite the same thing.  Barbra became famous so quick and so early because a) she was incredibly talented, b) she was incredibly focused and determined, one could almost say pushy and c) she was able to attract people to her who knew a good thing when they saw and were determined to make her career happen. Not out of any altruistic sense, but because they saw a money-maker.

One of the more poignant moments in the book comes about half-way through when Mann describes Streisand’s appearance on the short-lived Judy Garland Show.  The contrast between Judy’s life and Barbra’s is fascinating.  You just wish that Judy had had people around her to protect and guide her the way that Barbra did. The meatiest part of the book is of course the second half of the book which details the journey of Funny Girl from concept to execution.  Frankly this could be a whole book on its own, and hopefully someday someone will write a book doing just that. I give Mann credit because he the reader a bird’s eye view not just from Barbra’s perspective but also of the other participants including Lainie Kazan, who was Streisand’s understudy.  For a theatre geek and actress like me, this part of the book was like manna from heaven.  I couldn’t get enough, I almost wish that Mann had continued and given us more from when the show moved to the West End.  I had no idea that Anne Bancroft was seriously in the running to play Fanny Brice, from what I know about the real Fanny Brice (the subject of a future blog post), Barbra seems to have been born to play the role.  She even resembles Fanny Brice.

The book also gives the reader details about Barbra’s first marriage to Elliot Gould, her brief relationship with Tommy Smothers (who knew?), and her affair with Sydney Chaplin (son of Charlie) who played Nicky Arnstein.  Frankly, I felt for Elliot Gould, it can’t have been easy to be in love or even married to a powerhouse like Barbra. Particularly when she walked away with all the acclaim in the musical I CAN GET IT FOR YOUR WHOLESALE in a minor role when he was the star.  Some of this will be familiar to Streisand fans, especially her fraught relationship with her mother Diana who comes across as an overprotective mother who was unable to nurture her daughter in a way that she needed.  Diana never praised Barbra because she didn’t want to encourage her only to have Barbra end up disappointed the way that Diana had been when she had to give up a spot in the chorus of the Metropolitan Opera.  You feel for Barbra, and it certainly explains her drive.  When anyone told Barbra no, she couldn’t do something, it just made her all the more determined to prove them wrong.

I can’t say that I liked Barbra Streisand more after reading the book.  There were times when I wanted to strangle her for her narcissism, her inability to thank the people who did so much for her, and her willful blindness to the needs of other people in her life.  However, I certainly feel like I understand her better, and I have sympathy for that fatherless little girl whose mother never talked about her late husband, and who seemed to prefer her youngest daughter to Barbra.  The book is over 500 pages, but it reads more like a novel than a biography.  I found that I couldn't put it down and even though I've read other biographies about Barbra, I had to find out what happened next.

The Passion of Ayn Rand

Ever since Paul Ryan was announced as Mitt Romney’s running mate, the press has made note of his long time devotion to novelist, screenwriter and philosopher Ayn Rand. In a 2005 speech, Ryan said that he grew up reading Rand’s works “and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and why value systems are, and what my beliefs are.” He added, “There is no better place to find the moral case for capitalism and individualism than through her writings and works.” He also claimed that he got involved in public service because of her, and that Atlas Shrugged still informs his views on monetary policy. Well he was a disciple of Ayn Rand; he began to backpedal when his name was thrown began to be bandied about as a possible running mate. Now he says that because of her atheism, and no doubt her stance on abortion, he is no longer such a big fan. Which is kind of funny because it’s not like that’s been a big secret, if you know anything about Ayn Rand.

I’ve been meaning to write about Ayn Rand for a long time, but she’s one of those women that were sort of on my bucket list until now. Quite a fascinating and complicated creature is Ayn. According to a recent article in the New York Observer, when Rand was alive she was condemned by intellectuals across the spectrum. “To the left, she was a reactionary, a fascist, a capitalist pig who advocated for a complete separation between government and economics, limitless individualism and the virtue of selfishness. To the right, she was an atheist, to moderates, an absolutist. Her books are often dismissed as over-the-top, Nietzschean (she studied Nietzsche in college) romance novels for alienated adolescents, and her philosophy – which Rand described as ‘the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute,’ is ridiculed to this day.” (New York Observer, 8/21/2012)

Just a few quick facts about Ayn Rand: Her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged have been in continuous print since they were published. As of 2007, 25 million copies had been sold (Take that E.L. James!), and continue to sell more than 800,000 a year. Not bad for a woman who has been deceased for 30 years. Her novel Atlas Shrugged was voted the second most influential book after the Bible in a survey by the Library of Congress and the Book-of-the-Month Club. In 2009, GQ’s columnist Tom Carson described her books as “capitalism’s version of middlebrow religious novels” in the same vein as Ben-Hur and the Left Behind Series. Another book critic, Leslie Clark, called her novels “romance fiction with a patina of pseudo-philosophy.” I have a confession to make, I have never read either of Rand’s novels The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged. Frankly they are not my cup of tea; I prefer more story and less philosophizing or moralizing when I read fiction. I have however tried to watch the first 20 minutes of the most recent film of Atlas Shrugged but gave up.

Still one can’t deny the influence that Rand has had over the years. Parents have named their kids after her characters. Ronald Reagan, Steve Jobs, Billie Jean King, Clarence Thomas, Frank Lloyd Wright, Hugh Hefner, Barry Goldwater and Ted Turner are just a few celebrities and politicians who are fans. Jerry Lewis claims that he carries a copy of The Fountainhead wherever he goes, and the band Rush based a concept album on her novel Anthem (one of her lesser known works). Even Hilary Clinton has said that she went through an Ayn Rand phase in college (no doubt when she was supporting Goldwater for President). Alan Greenspan was part of her inner circle during the 1950’s.

Rand was born Alisa Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg, Russia on February 2^nd, 1905 which makes her an Aquarius, a sign notorious for unique individuals who go against the grain (she called herself “the most creative thinker alive” so she also wasn’t short on ego either). Her parents were largely non-observant Jews. Her father was a successful pharmacist, who eventually owned his own business. Young Alisa was bored by school, not finding it challenging enough for her. Instead, she began writing screenplays at the age of 8 and novels by the age of 10. Life as she knew it was interrupted by the Russian Revolution when she was 12. The pharmacy was confiscated by the Bolsheviks, and the family fled to the Crimea which was under control of the White Army. During this time, Alisa became an atheist. After her high school graduation, the family moved back to what was now known as Petrograd and later Leningrad. But life was difficult for the Rosenbaum family who were living on the edge of poverty.

One of the few benefits of the Russian Revolution as far as Rand was concerned was that women were now allowed to attend universities. She enrolled at the Petrograd State University where she majored in history. While at college, she studied the works of Aristotle and Plato as well as the work of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. By the time she graduated in 1924, she had changed her name to Ayn Rand. She traveled to the US in 1925 to visit relatives in Chicago, but her intention from the beginning was to stay to become a screenwriter. After a few months, she was on her way to Hollywood. Her first few months were a struggle as she had to take odd jobs to make a living, but she soon met film director Cecil B. DeMille which led to a job as an extra on one of his films. Subsequently she moved up to a position as a junior scriptwriter. The job with DeMille led to her meeting her husband, an actor named Frank O’Connor who she married in 1929. As a sign of her devotion to her new country, she became an American citizen in 1931. She also tried to bring her family to the US but they were unable to get permission to emigrate.

During the 1930’s, Rand worked not just as a screenwriter, but at one point she was also the head of the costume department at RKO! She sold one screenplay Red Pawn but it was never produced. She had more success as a playwright with the courtroom drama Night of January 16^th which ran on Broadway in 1935. Each night the ‘jury’ was chose from members of the audience who voted whether or not the defendant was guilty or innocent. She also wrote an autobiographical novel set in Soviet Russia called We the Living which was published in 1936.

It was during the 1940’s that Rand became politically active and started to develop her philosophy of objectivism. She supported candidate Wendell Wilkie who ran against FDR in 1940. She began to meet other intellectuals who were sympathetic to free-market capitalism, and who had opposed the government programs that FDR had put into place during the Great Depression. She also became friends with libertarian writer Isabel Patterson. Vehemently anti-Communist, Rand testified as a ‘friendly witness’ before the House Un-American Activities committee, testifying to her experiences in the Soviet Union. Her novel The Fountainhead, after being rejected by 12 publishers, was finally published in 1943. It also led to her dependence on the amphetamine Benzedrine which she started taking to fight fatigue.

Rand moved to New York from LA in 1951, where she gathered a group of acolytes around her including the future head of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan. Her last novel Atlas Shrugged (which clocks in at over 1,000 pages) was published in 1957. At the heart of the novel are Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism and her concept of human achievement. Rand advocated reason as the only means of acquiring knowledge, rejecting all forms of faith and religion. She also didn’t believe in ethical altruism. No doubt, she was alive today and riding the subways in New York, she’d spend her time lecturing the panhandlers instead of giving them change! Or perhaps she’d consider them a part of free market capitalism? The reviews this time were savage, even the New York Times which had praised her previous work The Fountainhead had nothing good to say about the book. After it was published, Rand fell into a deep depression. She never published another work of fiction, but it marked the beginning of a new career as a popular philosopher.

She became friendly with a young psychology student named Nathaniel Branden and his wife Barbara. She and Branden began an affair which was depicted in the Showtime film The Passion of Ayn Rand starring Helen Mirren as Rand and Eric Stoltz as Branden (if you can rent this, it is totally worth it, especially for Mirren’s performance as Rand). This affair was apparently with the consent of their spouses, but apparently it was like Branden and Rand told them they were having an affair and their spouses just had to deal with it. Rand’s professional relationship with Branden ended when she discovered that he was having an affair with another woman.

Ayn Rand often took controversial or contradictory stands on hot button issues during the 1960’s and 1970’s. She thought homosexuality was ‘immoral’ and ‘disgusting’ yet she also advocated repealing laws against it (one wonders what she would make of gay-marriage!), she opposed the Vietnam War and the military draft but condemned draft dodgers. However she supported Israel in the Arab-Israeli war. She also believed that Europeans had the right to take land from the Native Americans.

Rand died at the age of 80 from heart failure in 1982. Her funeral was attended by many of her prominent followers. A six-foot flower arrangement of a dollar sign was placed near her casket, a fitting memorial for the woman who promoted free-market capitalism. Since her death, the Ayn Rand Institute was founded in 1985 to promote her works and philosophy. Interest in her work has only increased not decreased, especially after the economy went into the toilet in 2008, although few colleges or universities include Rand or Objectivism as a part of literature courses or philosophy. She’s considered to be more of a pop cultural phenomenon. The political figures who cite Rand most often are of course members of both The Republican Party and the Libertarian Party (she’s also a favorite of the Tea Party).

I’ve included the above video from YouTube, so that you can see the woman in action and draw your own conclusions.

Sources:

Female Force - Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand for Beginners
Ayn Rand Institute - www.aynrand.org

　

Fascinating Women: Edith Minturn Stokes

The paintings of John Singer Sargent have gone in and out of fashion over the years. I, for one, am an unrepentant Sargentaholic! One of my favorite things to do is to go to the American Wing at The Metropolitan Museum of Art to visit my two favorite paintings of his, Madame X, and this portrait of Mrs. I.N. Phelps Stokes, also known as Edith Minturn Stokes. What do I love about this painting? Where do I start! I love the vitality of the subject, she just glows with health and energy. And then the slight smile on her face.  She looks fresh and alive and most of all modern. Even her outfit reflects her independence, it's as if she's game for anything.  Love the hands on the hips!

Edie's brother Robert once described her as 'fierce.' As a toddler, one of the games that she liked to play was to try and escape the parasol her mother held over her on the beach, running shrieking to the waves. 30 years old when this portrait was painted, she'd already had a bit of notoriety when the sculptor Daniel Chester French sculpted her for Chicago's Columbian Exposition as the face of the Republic.

The portrait was a wedding present from a family friend, James Scrimser. The couple had been on an extended honeymoon in Paris when they decided to visit London to have the portrait done. It was 1897, the year of Queen Victoria's Jubilee. According to Jean Zimmerman's new mini-biography about Edith and her husband Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes entitled Love Fiercely, A Gilded Age Romance (Hougton Mifflin 2012), Edith initially wore a blue evening gown for her portrait. But after five weeks of sittings, Sargent wasn't satisfied with the painting so he scrapped it. It wasn't until Edith and her husband showed up at Sargent's studio in Chelsea in London after walking across the city that he knew how he wanted to paint her, in her every day clothes. When the painting was first exhibited, Edith's outfit caused comment. Her simple shirtwaist and skirt, mannish jacket and tie, plus the straw boater sitting on her hip reflected a more modern woman, one who rode a bicycle, possibly worked for a living as a teacher or a journalist.

One of the many things that I love about the painting is the fact that her husband stands behind her, almost as an afterthought (Sargent had initially thought of painting a Great Dane standing beside her). He stands with his arms folded, in the shadows. It's clear from the painting that Edith is the more extroverted partner in the marriage, and that her husband is quite happy and even a little amused to even be in the painting.  Perhaps he was just amazed that he'd finally gotten Edith to marry him!

Both Edie and her husband Newton were contemporaries of Edith Wharton. In fact they could have stepped out of the pages of one of her novels. Theirs was a world filled with balls, mansions, summer 'cottages' and European vacatons. Both came from old money, at one time Newton's grandfather Anson owned most of the Murray Hill neighborhood in New York. The house he grew up in now houses the Morgan Library.  Edith's paternal grandfather built the world's fastest clipper ship. Her maternal ancestors were equally illustrious. Her Josephine Shaw Lowell was involved with the settlement movement in New York, and her uncle was Robert Gould Shaw who led the 54th Massachusetts regiment depicted in the film Glory. The couple, both born in 1867, grew up together on Staten Island where the Minturns and the Stokes had homes before the hoi polloi moved in and made it unfashionable. Edith's father Robert suffered a reversal of fortune briefly, but luckily for Edith she was spared Lily Bart's fate.  Although her debut was much simpler than the usual debutantes, in a few years, the Minturn fortunes had been restored.
Both Edith and Newton were 28 when they got married in 1895. After spending years abroad studying architecture in Paris, over New Years 1894/95, Newton finally turned his attention to his childhood friend. But he had no game! On a sleigh ride in the country, he tried to propose but Edith cut himn off at the pass. With his tail between his legs, Newton went back to Paris to lick his wounds. It was only when her sister sent him a letter hinting that he should try again, conveniently letting him know exactly where they were going to be, that Newton came back to the States.  On the way, he stopped off in London for a new wardrobe! At the Minturn summer home in Canada, he pressed his suit again and this time he was accepted. Still, he wasn't sure if the marriage was actually going to take place until he saw his bride walk down the aisle. Unusually for the time, the marriage took place 2 months after the engagement.  Clearly Newton wanted to get his bride down the aisle as soon as possible!

But once Edith made up her mind to marry him, she never looked back. The couple were both interested more in improving the lives of others than spending their time attending balls. Newton plied his trade as an architect (among his buildings are St. Paul's Chapel at Columbia University, and the University Settlement House), as well as attempting to create decent housing for the poor. However, he's most known for a 6 volume tome called the Iconography of Manhattan Island. Edith became involved with the New York Kindergarten Association, and also ran a sewing school for immigrant women. Unable to have children, the couple adopted a little girl from England. Oh, and did I mention that they bought a house in England and had it taken down and then shipped across the Atlantic?

Edith seems to have suffered from chronic hypertension which often left her an invalid which greatly curtailed her work. In her sixties, she suffered a series of strokes, which left her almost completely paralyzed. Her husband would spend hours reading to her from her favorite books, or playing her favorite music.  She finally passed away at the age of 70 in 1937.  Her husband lived on for another 7 years until he passed away in 1944.  Their ashes are buried together at St. Paul's Chapel. Interesting factoid, Edith's great niece was Edie Sedgwick, the 1960's and Warhol icon, who was named after her. Her other niece (daughter of her sister Gertrude who married Amos Pinchot) was Rosamond Pinchot Gaston.

Other painters such as Cecilia Beaux (see below) painted Edith but they are more conventional portraits.

 

and then there is this one painted by Fernand Paillet (owned by the New York Historical Society), painted in 1892 when Edith was 25.

While both are beautiful, I don't think they come close to the Sargent portrait.  That woman I'd like to get to know, to hang out with.  The woman in the other portraits is someone that you might see at a tea party and have a pleasant conversation with.  They don't have the vitality that Sargent's portrait does.

Scandalous Movie Review: Grey Gardens

"My mother gave me a completely priceless life." -- "Little Edie" Beale, 1917-2002


Last night I was lucky enough to get see a screening of the new HBO film Grey Gardens starring Jessie Lange as 'Big' Edie Bouvier Beale and Drew Barrymore as 'Little' Edie. Since I don't have HBO, this was the only way that I was going to see the film until it came out on DVD.

As a native New Yorker, I was aware vaguely of the story of Jacqueline Onassis' relatives out on Long Island, and the documentary that was made about them, but I had never actually seen the film until two years ago after I had seen the Broadway musical of their live starring Christine Ebersole.

After seeing the documentary and the musical, I wasn't sure that the world needed another depiction of their lives unless it was in book form (so far there has been no real biography written about these two women apart from a book by the Mayles and reminiscences from people who worked for them). I'm glad to say that I was proved wrong after seeing this film. I was incredibly bowled over by the performances, particularly that of Drew Barrymore as 'Little' Edie. For the past six or seven years, Drew's performances have chiefly required her to be just adorable, which she is, but she's never really had an acting challenge in any of them. Grey Gardens definitely takes her out of her comfort zone. For the first time, she has lived up to the legacy of her last name, Barrymore. I think her grandfather John and her great-uncle Lionel and great-aunt Ethel would be proud of her. Jessica Lange, well one expects an amazing performance from her, and she doesn't disappoint. The two women play so well off of each other, almost as well as the real life characters that they portray.

The film starts off depicting the moment in 1973, when filmmakers Albert and David Maysles entered the strange world of "Big Edie" and "Little Edie" Bouvier Beale. The filmmakers spent six weeks with the reclusive mother and daughter who chose to live in squalor and almost total isolation in a decaying, 28-room mansion in East Hampton. Interspersed with the present day filmmaking are scenes from the past, starting in 1936 when 'Little Edie' is about to make her debut in front of her New York society at the Pierre Hotel. 'Big Edie' was the sister of 'Black Jack' Bouvier, father of Jacqueline and Lee. She is married to Phelan Beale (Ken Howard), but the marriage is showing signs of cracking apart. 'Big Edie' loves to entertain at parties, singing for her guests. Although 'Little Edie' wants to be an actress and dancer, her mother encourages her to get married instead, telling her that it is possible to have her cake and eat it too.

Director and co-writer (the film's other writer is Patricia Rozema, who wrote and directed the wretched film of Mansfield Park starring Frances O'Connor) Michael Sucsy's offers a wry, behind the scenes look at the lives of these two extraordinary and eccentric women. The film is told over the span of four decades, the film focuses on their glamorous and well-heeled lives long before the making of the documentary and on the circumstances behind their riches-to-rags story. The film depicts 'Little' Edie's affair with Julius Krug (played by Daniel Baldwin who sounds exactly like his brother Alec), a married man and member of Truman's cabinet during the years that she lived in New York at the Barbizon Hotel for Women (where Grace Kelly also lived) during the late 1940's.

After the death of her father, Edie moves back home to Grey Gardens. Krug ends their relationship, and 'Big' Edie convinces her daughter that she will have other chances for an acting career. The deterioration of these women's lives was an incredibly slow process. Some of the saddest scenes in the movie are when 'Big' Edie pretends to be a maid while answering the phone. Afte Phelan Beale leaves 'Big' Edie, she no longer has the money to keep up Grey Gardens, which eats up huge amounts of cash, but she refuses to give up the house. Slowly the two women end up living in one room, surrounded by cats and refuse. It's not until the local health inspectors threaten to evict them, and articles are written about them in The National Enquirer and New York Magazine, that Jackie and Lee come to the rescue, spending money to fix up the house from its prior disgusting appearance.

The brief scene of Jackie O (played by Jeanne Tripplehorn) visiting her Aunt and cousin after what appears to be years is priceless. The contrast between what Jackie's life became and 'Little' Edie's is captured. 'Little' Edie is eaten up by envy, she wanted to be famous and adored, and doesn't understand why it should have happened to Jackie who didn't seem to want it.

What keeps people coming back to this story is that these two women, 'Big' Edie and 'Little' Edie are every bit as much of an enigma as Jackie Onassis. Why didn't 'Big' Edie's sons do something about the house and the situation before it became an embarassment? What happened in the years during the war? Why did 'Little' Edie really leave the city and come back to Grey Gardens? Was she afraid to really go for her dreams? Was it just a guilt trip from her mother? The relationship between the two women is one of co-dependence, they can't live with each other but they can't seem to live without each other.

The film ends with the premiere of the film of Grey Gardens and 'Little' Edie's cabaret debut at Reno Sweeney's in New York. 'Big' Edie died shortly after the movie opened, and her daughter sold the house to Ben Bradlee of The Washington Post and his wife with the proviso that they had to restore the house, not tear it down. 'Little' Edie lived in Manhattan for a time, before finally retiring to Bal Harbor in Florida.

I highly recommend this film. In fact, I would suggest a double feature of the HBO film and then watching the documentary.

Love Gone Wrong: Butchery on Bond Street

On the morning of January 31st, 1857, dentist Harvey Burdell was found brutally murdered in his surgery at his home at 31 Bond Street in New York City. The prime suspect was Emma Cunningham, a 39 year old widow with five children who had been serving as the landlady of the boarding house that Burdell ran out of his home.

This is the basis for Benjamin Feldman's excellent book Butchery on Bond Street: Sexual Politics & The Burdell-Cunningham Case in Ante-Bellum New York. The case filled the newspapers throughout the inquest and the murder trial of Emma Cunningham for the murder of her lover. She was eventually acquitted but the case brought to light the unsavory underbelly of middle-class life in New York.

Emma Cunningham had been born Emma Hempstead in Brooklyn, New York on August 15, 1818. Her father had a small business as a rope-maker for the shipyards. Emma was the oldest of three daughters, and she had ambitions far behind the little neighborhood in which she lived. Her parents were devout Methodists which meant that anything that smacked of worldiness was discouraged including the making of money for profit, dancing, drinking, and vanity. Emma could see the lights of Manhattan from the waterfront and she longed to be either a part of Manhattan society or even Brooklyn for that matter. At the age of 19, she married George Cunningham, the son of a local brewer, who was 21 years her senior. The Cunningham family were upper middle class and Presbyterian. When Emma married George not only had she moved up in the world, but her relationship with her family was severed.

For a brief time things were good in the Cunningham household. They were even able to move into Manhattan in the fashionable Union Square area for several years. But George Cunningham soon suffered a series of financial reversals that slid the Cunningham family back down the economic ladder. Soon they were back in Brooklyn, but not in the fashionable area of the Heights. Emma gave birth to three daughters, but George was determined to have a son, despite the fact that he could barely support the three children that they already had. Soon two sons were added to the family. George, like many others, left for California to see his fortune, but he was back after a year. He died in 1853 leaving Emma $10,000, which wasn't enough after death duties, to support herself and her children. Finding a job that pay her enough to feed herself and 5 children was an impossibility. With no help from her family, Emma realized that her only hope of supporting herself and her children was to marry again. She had decided to move back into Manhattan, realizing that she would not be able to find a husband living in Brooklyn.

She spend two fruitless years in Manhattan before she met Burdell. While she met many single men, finding one willing to take on 5 children was another story. It is unclear when or how Emma made the acquaintance of Harvey Burdell. Soon they were keeping company, and Emma accompanied Burdell to Saratoga for the summer season. By the end of the summer, Emma was pregnant, and their relationship began to fall apart. Instead of marrying her, Burdell forced Emma to have an abortion. He allowed her to move into his home to run the boarding house but he refused to marry her. To add insult to injury, he began conducting an affair with a younger cousin who had just gotten a divorce. Emma also suspected that the prostitutes who gave for dental appointments were not just getting their teeth checked out.

Emma had once again made another poor choice in a man. Burdell turned out to be nothing more than a sociopath, and a swindler. Somehow, he had gotten the idea that Emma had money, that she was a wealthy widow just looking for a little fun, not looking for a baby daddy. The relationship quickly turned sour and bitter on both sides. The final straw apparently occurred when Burdell decided to sell his house, and evict Emma.

Butchery on Bond Street is more than just a true-crime book. It is a social history of ante-bellum New York, as the city became the leading economic and social center that dominated the country for more than a century. It also details the rise of the press and scandal sheets as they fought to tell the story of what happened that fateful night. The press attention to this crime rivals that given to the OJ Simpson trial over a hundred years later. Newsboys would fight to be the ones to get to sell the papers. And it wasn't just the press, the appetite for the sensationalistic aspects of the trial was heavy. Quickie novellas about the case appeared seemingly overnight.

It's hard not to feel sympathy for Emma Cunningham. One is constantly reminded in the book of just how few choices women had in the 19th century. One Emma threw her lot in with Harvey Burdell, she'd basically made herself ineligible for marriage to anyone else in that social class. Too many people had seen them together in Saratoga. She'd moved into his home under the guise of running the boarding house. She became increasingly desperate as she could see Burdell slipping away. It doesn't excuse her behavior if indeed she was the one to murder Burdell.

Emma was acquitted of the murder, but she then tried to stake a claim to Burdell's estate by insisting that not only were they married but that she was carrying his child. She was so desperate that she tried to buy a baby to pass of as her own (shades of daytime drama!). She was brought up on charges for fraud but was acquitted of those two. She then fades into obscurity over the next thirty, surfacing occasionally. She finally passed away in February of 1887. She is buried in Green-wood Cemetary in Brooklyn as is Harvey Burdell.

Feldman does a good job of recreating the world that Emma and Burdell occupied. If I have one quibble it is that he tends to jump from one subject to another and it can get a bit confusing at times. Still he provides a fascinating glimpse into a lost world and a tantalizing bit of New York history.

Butchery on Bond Street - Benjamin Feldman, 2007, New York Wanderer Press.

The Woman Who Ran For President – The Scandalous Life of Victoria Woodhull

"If my political campaign for the Presidency is not successful, it will be educational!"

Victoria Woodhull

The election was one of the nastiest political campaigns in years. The incumbent President was hated and reviled by members of his own party. The opposing candidate was running as a maverick, and third political candidate was a woman. The year was 1872 and the candidates for the highest political office in the land were Ulysses S. Grant, war hero who was seeking his second term, Horace Greeley the most famous editor in the United States, and Victoria Woodhull. Yes, over fifty years before women finally gained the vote in the United States, a woman stepped forward to fight for the highest office in the land. Now 170 years after her birth, Victoria Woodhull is all but forgotten, but for a period of ten years in US history, she was one of the most famous women in the country.

To show just how improbable and daring this was, let’s remember that women were considered little more than property in the 19th century. And Victoria Woodhull was an unlikely candidate for many reasons. Talk about having baggage! By the time she declared her candidacy in 1870, she had been worked as a fortune teller and medium on the revivalist circuit, actress, stockbroker, and newspaper publisher. Like Sarah Palin, she was the mother of a special needs child, her son Byron was brain damaged, whether from birth or through an accident was never clear. She was a proponent of free love, talked openly about her spirit guides, and expressed sympathy with communist principles.

There was nothing in her background to suggest the heights she would achieve. Victoria California Claflin was born on September 23, 1838, number seven of what would eventually be ten children. Her father Reuben ‘Buck’ Claflin was a drifter, con man, and swindler. Her mother Roxana ‘Annie’ Claflin was the illiterate daughter of German immigrants. From birth, Annie believed that Victoria was destined to be something special. After all, she had named her favorite child after Queen Victoria. Buck had studied a little bit of law, and worked in the logging industry until he managed to save enough money to open a tavern and a grist mill. He was also abusive when he was drinking and possibly sexually abusive to Victoria and her younger sister Tennie. Once he realized Victoria and Tennie’s gifts, he forced them out on the road while he sold spurious bottles of an elixir that he claimed cured cancer.

Roxana believed fervently in spirits and she encouraged this belief in Victoria. From early childhood, Victoria believed that she could communicate with spirits, and that they guided her. One of her spirit guides she identified as the Greek orator, Demosthenes. And there is little doubt from the fiery speeches that she gave throughout her career that she believed that she owed her eloquence to his influence. She had only three years of formal education, but her teachers were impressed by her innate intelligence.

At the age of 14, she married Canning Woodhull, a doctor fourteen years her senior, primarily to escape her home life. She soon found out that she had made a terrible mistake, exchanging one miserable existence for another. Woodhull was an alcoholic and a womanizer, who spent more time drinking than he did doctoring. Woodhull eventually went on the road with her father and younger sister Tennessee Celeste, working the revivalist movement as a medium and magnetic healer. She eventually moved her young family, which now included a daughter Zulu Maude to San Francisco, where she worked briefly as an actress.

She encountered her second husband, Colonel James Blood, a Civil War veteran, while working in St. Louis as a fortune teller. Apparently she told him from their first meeting that they would be married, despite the fact that he had a wife and two daughters at the time. Like Victoria, Blood also had an intense interest in spiritualism; he claimed that he was in contact with his fellow soldiers who had died during the Civil War. Within months of their meeting, Blood and Victoria ran off together, only returning to St. Louis long enough for Blood to divorce his wife and pay off his debts.

In 1869, Victoria had a vision that she was to live in a city surrounded by ships. Soon after she and her sister Tennessee, along with Colonel Blood moved to New York, to a house on Great Jones Street. Soon after their arrival, the two sisters made the acquaintance of Cornelius Vanderbilt. A spry 74 years old at the time, the Commodore held open house hours at his office, where he was willing to listen to anyone who might have a good idea he could steal, I mean use. When the two beautiful sisters showed up, the Commodore perked right up. Both an inveterate womanizer, and a believer in the spirit world, he eagerly welcomed them into his world.

While Victoria administered to the Commodore’s spiritual needs, holding séances to contact his late mother on the other side, Tennessee, in her role as a magnetic healer, worked on his physical needs. The Commodore was so entranced with Tennie in particular that he soon asked her to marry him. She refused primarily because she was still married. Not that any of his children would have allowed a backwoods grifter to take their mother’s place.

Soon, the sisters were set up in their own brokerage firm, backed by the Commodore, making them the first women stockbrokers on Wall Street. The move garnered a huge amount of press. While Victoria was tall and striking with dark hair and vivid blue eyes, her sister Tennie was the picture of Victorian womanhood with her curls and round figure. The women were called the ‘Queens of Finance,’ and the ‘Bewitching Brokers,’ in the newspapers.

Both Victoria and Tennie reveled in the publicity. They moved into a huge house on East 38th Street in the Murray Hill district of New York. Soon a host of relatives moved in with them including Victoria’s ex-husband Canning Woodhull who was now addicted to morphine as well as alcohol.

The sisters held salons, where they surrounded themselves with the crème de la crème of intellectual and radical thinkers of the time. One of their most frequent guests was Stephen Pearl Andrews, who became Victoria’s intellectual mentor for a time. A lawyer by trade, Andrews was an ardent abolitionist, who devised a popular system of phonographic reporting. A linguist who spoke 30 languages, he created a new one called ‘Alwato’ as well as being the first one to use the word ‘scientology.’

In 1869, Victoria attended her first suffragette’s convention in New York. She listened and learned, all the while formulating her own opinions. At the time she believed that “a woman’s ability to earn money is better protection against the tyranny and brutality of men than her ability to vote.” She made the acquaintance of several of the leaders of the movement including Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Victoria began to spend time in Washington working as a lobbyist to further the women’s right’s movement. She cultivated a relationship with Senator Benjamin Butler, a Civil War General who was a supporter of women’s rights, who encouraged her to focus her efforts on the House Judiciary Committee.

The suffrage movement was in a crisis when Victoria came onto the scene. During the war, they had supported the abolition platform over the move to gain women the vote, but now that the Civil War was over, and the 13th and 14th Amendments had been ratified, many felt the time had come for women to finally achieve the vote. The biggest difference was how that would be achieved. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton favored a constitutional amendment, while others like Lucretia Mott favored working for suffrage state by state. The movement finally split apart into two separate groups, the National Women’s Suffrage Association headed by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the American Women’s Suffrage Association headed by Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe. The two groups wouldn’t merge for another seventy years.

On May 14, 1870, Victoria and her sister had established Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly, a newspaper that stayed in publication for the next six years. Originally founded to be an organ for her political campaign, the paper quickly established itself as a reputable weekly. The two sisters were now ‘Queens of the Quill.’ At its height the newspaper had 40,000 subscribers. The paper not only published such authors as George Sand, but it also printed the first English version of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. The paper advocated not only women’s suffrage, spiritualism, but also vegetarianism and the legalization of prostitution. Whatever issues interested women, the Weekly published an article on it. They also published book reviews, and a series of hard hitting articles on corruption in business.

In January of 1871, when the NWSA met in Washington, to their surprise they discovered that Woodhull was about to speak to the House Judiciary Committee on the subject of women’s rights. The convention was suspended for the day so that members could listen to Victoria’s speech. In what became known as the ‘Woodhull Memorial,’ Victoria argued that not only did the constitution give women citizenship but that if women were citizens than they were given the right to vote by the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. “All persons are citizens. Are women not persons?” It was only custom that barred women from voting. The committee agreed to deliberate on Victoria’s argument.

Woodhull invigorated the cause of women’s suffrage. Her lecture on constitutional equality attracted thousands across the country. Newspapers claimed that she was “the ablest advocate on woman suffrage, a woman of remarkable originality and power.” When the Judiciary Committee issued a minority report supporting her position, thousands of copies were distributed across the country.

Not every suffragette was enamored of Victoria. While Woodhull was applauded and celebrated for her appearance before committee, there were women in the movement who were envious that Victoria had managed in a short amount of time to achieve something that no other member of the suffrage movement had achieved. Although Isabella Beecher Hooker became a good friend of Victoria’s due to their mutual interest in spiritualism, her sisters Catherine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe were not so taken in. Harriet even wrote a novel called My Wife and I that featured a character called Audacia Dangyreyes that was clearly based on Victoria. Other suffragettes were appalled by her advocacy of free love, which came out after her unorthodox living arrangements were revealed to the public due to her mother suing Colonel Blood for abuse. The idea of ‘free love’ was not a new notion. It was coined by John Humphrey Noyes, the founder of the Oneida community. Victoria was one of the first women to openly espouse the notion and to tie it into women’s rights.

In Victoria’s view, marriage without love was immoral. She believed that the government should have no say in what went on between a man and a woman. “I have an inalienable right to love whom I may, to love for as long or as short a period as I can, to change that lover every day if I please.’ Victoria wasn’t advocating promiscuity; she herself believed in monogamy, but she believed that others had the right to their own lifestyles. Ironically, Victoria was also against abortion. She felt that there would be no unwanted pregnancies; if a woman were in healthy relationships. Victoria’s views on marriage were no doubt honed by her experience with Canning Woodhull and the marriage of her parents.

Victoria tried to recruit Henry Ward Beecher to her free love movement. She had learned from both Susan B. Anthony among others that Beecher had been involved both romantically and sexually with several members of his parish. And she had evidence of her own, one of his parishioners Elizabeth Tilton had confessed to Victoria about her relationship with Beecher. There is also evidence that Victoria had her own affair with Beecher as well as with a colleague of his Theodore Tilton, husband of Elizabeth. Victoria hoped that he would publicly proclaim what he practiced privately but her hopes were in vain.

Victoria launched a lecture tour across America over the next year taking her message to the people. The lecture tour was necessary because Victoria was almost out of money. She was spending less time at the brokerage firm, and while the newspaper was successful it wasn’t enough to support the lavish lifestyle and her relatives that she was supporting. She also reveled in the attention that she was receiving at every stop on her lecture tour. One of the reasons she was a sensation was that she didn’t fit the image of a suffragette, she wasn’t a Quaker like many members of the suffragette movement, nor was she upper or middle class. Victoria had come from nothing and made something of life. She was also feminine, even with the short hair that she had come to favor. But more important than her physical charms, Victoria was courageous in her convictions. She was fulfilling her vision of being a ‘representative woman,’ a woman of importance.

Not forgetting her roots, she also courted the spiritualists, a move that also alienated a certain members of the suffrage movement. But to Victoria, these were her people, she understood them. For her efforts, she was voted as president of the movement. She also courted radical reformers and members of the labor unions. In May of 1872, Victoria was nominated for President by members of the Equal Rights Party.

The convention stands as the largest, most representative third party gathering. Fifteen hundred men and women attended to witness Woodhull’s historic nomination. Her supporters included suffragettes, land and labor reformers, spiritualists, and peace and temperance people. The party’s platform supported women’s suffrage, free love, naturalization of land, elimination of high interest rates, and a fairer division of wages. Woodhull was certainly not lacking in chutzpah when she chose as her running mate, distinguished abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass. When he was told, he stated that he was unaware of her intentions, and he planned on supporting President Grant. However, he never asked to be removed from the ballot.

From the beginning Victoria’s campaign floundered. She was out of money. The cost of renting Apollo Hall and staging the convention had made a dent in her finances. The country was also in the midst of a recession. Banks were closing right and left, and the Woodhull, Claflin brokerage was one of many that went under. The Commodore was no longer supporting them. He had remarried, he’d also been unhappy when his name came up during a court case between Woodhull’s mother and her husband. Nor was he happy about Victoria’s socialist views or the muckraking articles the newspaper had printed about the railroads. Susan B. Anthony was also campaigning for President Grant. The newspapers had turned against her, not because of her views on free love, but because of her socialist and communist sympathies. Calling Jesus a communist wasn’t going to win friends in conservative Victorian America.

"Mrs. Satan" Cartoon by Thomas Nast in Harpers Weekly

Woodhull and her family eventually had to move out of their house in Murray Hill. For the next few months they led a nomadic life. No other landlord would rent them a house, and several hotels turned them away. When Woodhull forced the issue with one hotel, she found herself escorted out by the police. Eventually she and her family were forced to bed down in the office at 49 Broad Street at night. Woodhull’s daughter Zulu Maude was forced to assume an alias to attend school. Even the newspaper was forced to suspend operations for four months.

Victoria reached out to Henry Ward Beecher of all people for support. When he declined, Victoria decided to get revenge against what she saw as his hypocrisy. She wrote an expose for the next issue of The Woodhull & Claflin weekly, along with another expose on Luther Challis, a womanizing stockbroker, with a penchant for young girls. The issue was a sensation, and had to be rushed back to press several times. Copies were so scarce it was reported they were selling for $40 on the street.

In a twist of fate, Victoria spent Election Day sitting in jail. Beecher’s supporters had frantically tried to buy up as many newspapers as possible to destroy. When that failed, they got that pious prig Anthony Comstock involved to do their dirty work for them. Comstock had set himself as a moral crusader against vice, and had managed to get a law passed that made it illegal to use the U.S. mail to pass “obscene publications.” Comstock suggested that they mail him the issue of the Weekly containing the articles on Beecher and Challis.

On Sunday, November 2, 1872, Victoria, Colonel Blood and her sister Tennessee were arrested with 3,000 copies of the Weekly hot off the press. They were hauled into Ludlow Street jail where they were held. Although their bail had been paid, they were rearrested and thrown back in jail. This was a pattern that continued for the next six months. Victoria’s lawyer’s argued that the Comstock law didn’t apply to newspapers. Victoria described her ordeal as an attempt by the government to “establish a precedent for the suppression of recalcitrant Journals.” In the meantime, Ulysses S. Grant took the election by a landslide. His opponent, Horace Greeley, died before the electoral votes were calculated but he received few. Victoria received a negligible percentage of the vote and no electoral votes.

"To be perfectly frank, I hardly expected to be elected. The truth is I am too many years ahead of this age, and the unelightened mind of the average man."

Although the case was eventually dismissed the legal wrangling took its toll on Victoria and Tennessee. Theodore Tilton then sued Beecher for alienating his wife’s affections. The trial made Victoria notorious and not in a good way. Although she continued to lecture for a time on women’s health issues, the notoriety from the Beecher/Tilton trial followed her around like a bad smell. Spiritualism which had reached its peak during the Civil War was waning; it would revive with another war. The robber barons were settling into respectability, creating their own society apart from the old Knickerbocker one. When the Commodore died in 1877, William Vanderbilt allegedly paid Tennessee and Victoria to leave the country to avoid them being called as witnesses by his siblings to state that Vanderbilt was not mentally fit when he made his final will.

In England, Victoria tried to reinvent herself, disavowing her earlier stance on free love. She married John Biddulph Martin, the son of a prominent banking family but the doors to society were closed to her once the truth about her past came out. Even the British suffragettes wanted nothing to do with her. She made two more attempts to run for President but they were both merely for show. After her husband’s death in 1897, Victoria lived quietly with her children at her country estate, Bredon Norton, until her death at 89 in 1927.

Although historians agree that she was the first woman to run for President, the question remains about the legality of her run. She was a year short of the constitutionally prescribed minimum age required to run for President which is 35. And no ballots for the Equal Rights Party survive. What is true is that Victoria rattled cages, and promoted changes that frightened, embarrassed and scandalized her contemporaries. She attempted to change people’s views about women’s sexuality, and the need for a new way to look at marriage. She believed that it was possible to use the political system to affect change, and she paved the way for other women to make their own attempt to run for President, like Hillary Clinton.

She also lives on in the fiction of Henry James who based his character of Verena Tarrant in The Bostonians on Victoria.


Sources:

Other Powers: the age of suffrage, spiritualism, and the scandalous Victoria Woodhull – Barbara Goldsmith
Notorious Victoria: the life of Victoria Woodhull, uncensored – Mary Gabriel
The woman who ran for president: the many lives of Victoria Woodhull – Lois Beachy Underhill
A Woman for President: the story of Victoria Woodhull – Kathleen Krull