Notorious Victoria Read online

  In 1868, Elizabeth Cady Stanton had issued a call in her newspaper, The Revolution: “Let women of wealth and brains step out of the circles of fashion and folly, and fit themselves for the trades, arts and professions and become employers instead of subordinates; thus making labor honorable for all and elevating their sex by opening new avenues for aspiration and ambition.” Victoria heeded that call. In 1870, she officially and very publicly crossed the threshold into the man’s world of Wall Street: “It was never intended that we should remain permanently in Wall Street,” Victoria explained. “There were several reasons, however, for our going there. One of these was to secure the most general and at the same time prominent introduction to the world that was possible. In this respect our first effort was certainly successful, for our advent was published in every printed language in the world. There could have been nothing else in a legitimate business line that could have attracted the public notice or called forth the comments of the Press more fully than the establishment of a banking house by two women among the ‘bulls’ and ‘bears’ of Wall Street.

  “Another reason was that we might become familiar with the financial schemes then flourishing in that locality, by which the unsuspecting public, through flaming advertisements and the use of great names, were inveigled into the purchase of securities that were well known would soon be worthless. . ..

  “Still another reason was that we might make the money that it would be necessary to have to start and maintain a newspaper, and conduct the active public campaign that was marked for us to prosecute, and finally that we might acquire a practical knowledge of the details of business and financial operations, and comprehend the application of the principles of political economy in which we had been theoretically instructed by the spirits in the administration of public affairs.”

  NEW YORK CITY, FEBRUARY 1870

  Before Mrs. Victoria C. Woodhull and Mrs. Tennie C. Claflin, as Tennessee now called herself, established themselves as stockbrokers with offices there, the Hoffman House hotel was best known for the scandalous William Bouguereau painting of two nude women that hung in the hotel bar. It was so audacious it was considered a must-see for visitors to New York. But for the month of January 1870, Victoria and Tennie eclipsed interest in the painting. The Hoffman House visitors who might have lingered over the nudes were more interested in the pair of sisters who had set themselves up in parlors 25 and 26 as brokers.

  On January 22, 1870, headlined as “Queens of Finance,” “Future Princesses of Erie,” and “Vanderbilt’s Proteges,” the sisters were front-page news in the New York Herald. Their move to Wall Street had lifted them out of obscurity and into the spotlight of the most populous and important American city.

  A Herald reporter said he called on the ladies at their apartments in the Hoffman House and was ushered into parlor no. 25, which he found to be “profusely decorated with oil paintings and statuary and . . .furnished with a sofa, chairs, a piano and the various other articles, useful and ornamental, which go to the make up of a ladies’ drawing room.”

  As he glanced around the room he was also advised as to whom the sisters turned for help: God and the Commodore. A small frame contained the motto “Simply to Thy Cross I Cling” and on the wall hung a portrait of Cornelius Vanderbilt.

  The reporter wrote: “Mrs. Tennie C. Claflin entered the room with a buoyant step and a smiling countenance. She introduced herself and in a business-like manner, bade the reporter to be seated, and having drawn her chair near she expressed her surprise that a Herald reporter should honor her with a visit. Mrs. Claflin, though married eight years, is still a young lady of some twenty-four years of age. Her features are full, and a continuous smile plays upon her countenance. She is, to all appearance, the photograph of a business woman—keen, shrewd, whole-souled, masculine in manner and apparently a firm foe of the ‘girl of the period’ creation, whom she describes as a sickly, squeaming, nondescript, unworthy to breathe the free air of heaven. She was very plainly dressed and spoke business in every gesture.”

  As businesswomen, Tennie and Victoria wore tailored, mannish jackets cut to the waist and contoured. Their skirts were daringly short—coming to the tops of their shoes—and instead of jewelry they wore brightly colored neckties. But their attempt to disguise themselves in masculine attire served only to emphasize their womanly contours.

  It was left to Tennie to give their first interview as brokers. Victoria, as bold as she was in her thinking, was terrified by encounters of the sort. She was notoriously halting and tense, but Tennie exhibited no such inhibitions: “Reporter—‘You are a member of the firm of Woodhull, Claflin & Co., and you are doing business as stock brokers?’

  “Mrs. C.—‘Yes, sir. Myself and my sister, Mrs. Woodhull, are the active members of the firm. We have been interested in stocks in this city some two or three years. We have lately used these apartments as our offices; but within a few weeks we shall have suitable offices for the transaction of our business in Wall Street or in that vicinity.’

  “Reporter—‘It is a novel sight to see a woman go on the street as a stock operator, and I presume you find it rather awkward?’

  “Mrs. C.—‘Were I to notice what is said by what they call ‘society,’ I could never leave my apartments except in fantastic walking dress or in my ballroom costume; but I despise what squeamy, crying girls or powdered counter-jumping dandies say of me. I think a woman is just as capable of making a living as a man. . .. I don’t care what society think: I have not time to care. I don’t go to balls or theatres. My mind is in my business and I attend to that solely.’

  “Reporter—‘But stock speculations are dangerous, and many persons of great experience and with large capital at their backs have been swamped as you are aware, and I presume your experience is rather limited?’

  “Mrs. C.—‘I studied law in my father’s office six years and I know as much of the world as men who are older. Besides, we have a strong back. We have the counsel of those who have more experience than we have, and we are endorsed by the best backers in the city.’

  “Reporter—‘I have been told that Commodore Vanderbilt is working in the interest of your firm. It is stated that you frequently call at his office in Fourth Street about business. Is this true?’

  “Mrs. C.—‘I know the Commodore and frequently call to see him on business, but I am not prepared to state anything as to whether he is working with us. I will say that we have the advice and assistance of the shrewdest and most respectable financiers in the city.’

  “At this point in the conversation,” the reporter wrote, “Mrs. Victoria Woodhull entered.”

  It could be that Victoria had been listening to Tennessee and was afraid she might give away the extent of Vanderbilt’s influence. In any event, she interrupted Tennie’s soliloquy and distracted the reporter from pursuing the subject.

  He wrote of Victoria: “She is some five years older than her sister and has a keen, bright eye. She was very plainly dressed, having no ornament but a single rose tastefully inserted in her hair and the diamond ring that decorated the third finger of her left hand. She is evidently of a sanguine, nervous temperament, and it might be apprehended that a serious financial shock would not tell well on her constitution.”

  Despite her case of nerves, Victoria, he said, “immediately entered into the spirit of the conversation,” though not returning to the subject of Vanderbilt, and “told a story of the work she performed and the difficulties she had to contend with in her efforts to establish the Arcade Railway. She stated that the firm have on hand a project for the incorporation and working of a silver ledge company in Nevada, which they believe will yield them large profits. She stated that since she has been in the business in New York—some two or three years—although their operations were conducted solely through agents in the street, they have made about seven hundred thousand dollars and she expects that when they establish an office on Wall Street and go in earnest into gold and stocks that they will d
o much better.

  “She remarked with an air of perfect nonchalance, ‘What do present profits amount to when it costs us over $2,600 a month to live?’”

  The interview was ended. New York had its first introduction to the team of Woodhull and Claflin.

  TENNIE HAD APPARENTLY decided to spin several tales in her introductory interview—notably that she had studied law in her father’s office and that she was a married woman. Tennessee was not a lawyer but, in fact, she had been married: she had impetuously married a man named John Bortels during a stay in Illinois, but the marriage was short-lived. An early biographer quoted Bortels as saying that Tennessee dissolved the match by paying him twenty thousand dollars and eliciting a promise that he would disappear. Whatever became of Bortels, it had never been an issue for Tennessee previously, but she had decided that for the moment and for purposes of respectability it behooved her to be a married lady.

  The Herald, which was the best source of information about Wall Street among the daily newspapers in New York City, was delighted by the new traders. In a playful yet patronizing editorial, it suggested that the other women’s rights activists could learn a thing or two from the brokers: “Here is something for the consideration of Susan B. Anthony and her sister apostles in woman’s rights. With what complacency must she and they regard the success which so far attended their efforts. If finesse is woman’s gift, why not finance also? We all know the skill with which she administers the domestic exchequer. . .. And as to Wall Street, she would be quite in her element. The nursing of a ‘corner’ would enjoy her maternal skill. ‘Calls’ would be her delight.

  “Meantime, we congratulate the brokers that their labors are to be shared by the fair sex. How refreshing the time when the bass and baritone of the ‘seller sixty’ shall harmonize with the tenor and soprano of ‘buyer thirty,’ and the halls of the Stock Exchange shall exhibit a variety of costume as diverse as the floors of a ballroom. Vive la frou-frou!”

  Their initial step into trading a success, the two sisters and Blood, who comprised Woodhull, Claflin & Co., set out to find proper quarters on Wall Street for their brokerage business. Vanderbilt gave them seven thousand dollars toward their business venture, perhaps as a gift to placate the “little sparrow” but also as a sign to the Fourth National Bank, where the check was deposited, that he stood behind the new firm. The group found spacious and elegant offices at 44 Broad Street. The location had been vacated by the firm of Williams and Gray, a supremely disreputable outfit whose members included a forger, a bank robber, a swindler, and a murderer. Gray, the forger, had spent seven thousand dollars decorating the office. The walnut-and-gold desks, oak-and-green sofas and chairs, and velvet carpets for which he had paid handsomely were sold to Victoria and Tennessee at a sheriff’s sale for just fourteen hundred dollars. Apparently the sisters were not worried about the dubious reputation of the late tenants; of more importance was the office’s location, at the center of the city’s financial activity.

  Broad Street was a wide thoroughfare lined by a mix of neoclassical bank buildings, storefronts, and offices. Above the street was a mesh of telegraph wires that appeared to hold the district bound under a web of loose stitching. The sisters’ Broad Street office was down the street from the New York Stock Exchange and surrounded by the offices of the other important traders. They were located just four doors up from the office of the notorious financial powerhouse and general rake Jim Fisk.

  Fisk had been a barker in the circus before coming to Wall Street, as well as, with his father, a dry-goods peddler working out of a “garishly decorated” wagon. No one questioned the antecedents of the Wall Street financiers; what mattered in that circle was not what one was born to but what one earned. In fact, the Street wasn’t even particularly interested in how the money was earned, as long as it was done boldly and well. Although Victoria’s sex set her apart from her fellow traders, her determination and gambler’s temperament did not.

  THE OFFICIAL OPENING of Woodhull, Claflin & Co. on February 5, 1870, was announced in both the stock and gold exchanges, enlivening what one reporter called an otherwise routine session. Traders sang songs and made jokes at the expense of the fair newcomers who dared to breach the masculine fortress of Wall Street. While many speculated over their potential impact on the market—skeptics expected them to have little or none—the New York World reported, “One and all, however, were disposed to give them a fair chance, and extend to them a helping hand.”

  The street outside the sisters’ brokerage was crowded with spectators hoping to catch a glimpse of the female financiers and eagerly watching the sisters’ notable visitors. The arrival of Victoria and Tennessee had brought a carnival atmosphere to the grim financial district, which threatened to be forever altered by the rustle of women’s skirts.

  Victoria and Tennessee—patiently, pleasantly, and with the reserve needed for conducting financial business—greeted thousands of mostly male visitors. Newspapers were quick to note that despite their youth they appeared conversant with all things financial. The World especially took note of Tennie, who, it said, had “conversational powers . . .that are really quite astonishing.”

  The Sun’s front-page story detailed the day’s comings and goings: “Woodhull & Claflin opened their office at 10 A.M. Mr. Edward Van Schalck was the first gentleman who called upon them. The ladies received him very cordially. They told him that as soon as they were firmly established they should be happy to receive his orders for the purchase of stock. While Mr. Van Schalck was conversing with the members of the firm Mr. George B. Alley and Mr. Abram B. Baylis entered, and wished the new firm much joy. Meanwhile, Mr. Van Schalck departed. A few minutes afterward Messers. Wm. B. Beekman, George H. Bend and John Bloodgood paid the ladies a visit and left apparently satisfied that the firm was well established and meant to have their fair share of business in Wall street. Mr. S. J. Blood and the handsome George T. Bonner were the next calls.

  “At 10:45 A.M. Mr. Edward H. Van Schalck paid the firm a second visit. He had been to the barber’s and his really handsome face glowed with enthusiasm. He was accompanied by the dignified H. A. Bostwick, the lithe James Boyde, the gentlemanly Edward Brandon and Hugh Hastings. The latter gentleman regarded the ladies with evident astonishment and bluntly told them that they could not succeed. At this Mr. Van Schalck became quite indignant and told Mr. Hastings that he ought to know that ladies made the most successful lobbyists and he saw no reason why they should not become successful bankers. After some further conversation the party left. Daniel Drew and O.D. Ashley meanwhile paid their respects to the partners. Mr. Drew was evidently deeply impressed with the importance of the movement. As he went out the door he met Jay Cooke and Mr. John Bonner, who acknowledged that they had called out of mere curiosity. At this moment a group of well dressed men approached No. 44. . ..

  “At half past 11 o’clock Mr. Edward H. Van Schalck and Hugh Hastings paid a third visit to the new banking house. Mr. Van Schalck had changed his cravat and now wore one of blue silk of huge dimensions and exquisitely tied. . .. During their visit numerous capitalists entered the room. . .. These gentlemen listened to the business plans of the new firm with skeptical faces, but heartily wished the ladies success in their undertaking. . ..

  “At twenty minutes after twelve, Mr. Edward H. Van Schalck and Mr. Hugh Hastings again entered the room. Mr. Van Schalck wore a new hat, and Mr. Hastings had a gorgeous rose in the lapel of his coat. They wanted to know how Central stood. Miss Claflin sprang to the instrument and shouted ‘Before call 94½.’. . .The next visitors were S. W. Harned and Rufus Hatch. These gentlemen looked at the principal of the house with grim silence, and departed without vouchsafing a word. On the threshold they were met by the Hon. Oliver Charlick, John R. Jacquelin, and Charles A. Lemont. The ladies listened to Mr. Charlick’s advice with much interest. He gave them some points on Long Island stock, which they dotted down upon ivory memorandum books, after sweetly thanking him for his information. . ..


  “At 2 P.M. the firm were surprised by a visit from the Hon. Edward H. Van Schalck and Hugh Hastings. Mr. Van Schalck wore an elegant diamond pin and his boots had received a bright polish. Mr. Hastings had had his hair parted in the middle, and wore a stand up collar, with the points turned down. Close upon the heels of this party we noticed George Henriques, W. R. Travers and Mr. H. R. Le Roy. Mr. Travers told the ladies that they would lose money in Wall street. Mrs. Woodhull replied that they did not come to Wall street to lose money, but to make money. . ..

  “At 3 P.M. the partners were agreeably surprised by a visit from Mr. Edward H. Van Schalck and the Hon. Hugh Hastings. Both gentlemen wore brass dress coats with polished blue buttons, pearl colored pantaloons and green kid gloves. They were accompanied by Robert Walker, John K. Warren and M. A. Wheelock. The party departed after looking at the closing prices. . ..

  “Just as the office was being closed the Hon. Edward H. Van Schalck and Hugh Hastings called upon the fair bankers. They were told that it was after business hours and if they had any orders to give they would be received after 9 o’clock on Monday morning. Messers. Van Schalck and Hastings bowed and retired.”

  The Herald said that the “considerable commotion” on Wall Street was “inspiring many flashy young men to visit [the new] establishment. . .. to see the ladies, intent on administering lectures and showing off their exquisite figures. With the courtesy, urbanity and tact characteristic of the firm they were received, spoken to and dismissed just as if they had called at any other broker’s office in the city. Surprised, if not delighted, these exquisites of the street realized for the first time that young ladies can be wise and discreet and young men rash and foolish.”

  Victoria and Tennessee opened their brokerage firm, taking on the bulls and bears of Wall Street, to great fanfare in the press, which viewed the lady brokers as a delightful change but not one to be taken too seriously.