Ever Victoria!

Part 16

Victoria appreciates the support but determines to wage her own defense. She writes an open letter to the World and the Times. “Sir,” she says, “Because I am a woman, and because I conscientiously hold opinions different from the self-selected orthodoxy which men find their profit in supporting, and because I think it my bounden duty and absolute right to put forward my opinions and advocate them with my whole strength, the self-selected orthodoxy assails me, vilifies me, and endeavors to cover my life with ridicule and dishonor.…One of the charges made against me is that I live in the same house with my former husband, Dr. Woodhull, and my present husband, Col. Blood. The fact is a fact. Dr. Woodhull being sick and ailing, and incapable of self-support, I felt it a duty to myself and human nature that he should be cared for, although his incapacity was in no wise attributable to me. My present husband, Col. Blood, not only approves of this charity but cooperates in it. I esteem it one of the most virtuous acts of my life, but various editors have stigmatized me as a living example of immorality and unchastity.”

            Personal lives ought to be kept out of politics, which should focus on policies and issues. “My opinions and prejudices are subjects of just criticism. I put myself before the public voluntarily.…I except to no fair analysis and examination, even if the scalpel be a little merciless.”

            Yet this, obviously, is a minority view. Victoria acknowledges that she cannot control what is said and written about her. But she warns the speakers and writers to take care. “Let him that is without sin cast the first stone. I do not intend to be made the scapegoat of sacrifice, to be offered up as a victim to society by those who cover over the foulness of their lives and the feculence of their thoughts with a hypocritical mantle of fair professions, and by diverting public attention from their own iniquities in pointing the finger at me.”

            Victoria has decided that the Beechers are the most egregious, or perhaps merely the most vulnerable, of the hypocrites. Catharine Beecher cloaks her poison-pen letters in an air of gentility; Harriet Beecher Stowe hides her ridicule of women’s equality behind the mask of fiction; Henry Ward Beecher prates about integrity and trust while sleeping with the wives of his congregants. Victoria fires a warning shot across the Beecher bow. “I know that many of my self-appointed judges and critics are deeply tainted with the vices they condemn. For example, I know of one man, a public teacher of eminence, who lives in concubinage with the wife of another public teacher of almost equal eminence. All three concur in denouncing offenses against morality. ‘Hypocrisy is the tribute paid by vice to virtue.’ So be it. But I decline to stand up as the frightful example. I shall make it my business to analyze some of these lines, and will take my chances in the matter of libel suits. I have no faith in critics, but I believe in public justice.”