Astounding Benefactress

From England came recently the report of a considerable benefaction. Funds were raised to purchase Sulgrave Manor, the ancestral home of the Washington family. When the manor was purchased, it was found that there was little accommodation in the vicinity for American visitors. Then an ancient lady came forward. She had been a contributor to the Sulgrave Manor fund. Now she presented another ancient manor house near by to serve as an hostelry for visiting Americans. This manor house will accommodate some 30 guests at a time. It is about 300 years old.

Who is this benefactress? She is no less than a onetime candidate for President of the United States. Yet history books make little or no mention of her. By name she is Victoria Claflin Woodhull Martin, now in her 87th year. Complete and reliable accounts of her life are rare, but the following outline is gleaned from a pamphlet published by one of her supporters several decades ago:

She was born Sept. 23, 1838, in Homer, Ohio, seventh child of Reuben and Roxanna Claflin. They were very poor. She had less than three years' schooling. Her father was cruel.

At 14 she married. Her husband, just twice her age, was Dr. Canning Woodhull, by name. He came of an eminent family. He was a gay rake. He was cruel. To them was born a child. It was subnormal.

At last she left her husband and went to California. For six weeks she was an actress. Then she had a vision. She had an intimate view of God and angels summoning her to go home.

She went to Indianapolis and set up as a clairvoyant. Later she moved to Terre Haute. She wrought apparently miraculous cures, unveiled secrets, prophesied events by faith in her simple theology. "Every characteristic utterance" which she gave to the world was "dictated while under spirit influence, and most often in a totally unconscious state."

In 1869, she abandoned clairvoyancy, at the call of the spirits, having amassed a fortune of $700,000. Thereupon she founded a bank and began publishing a journal.

Meanwhile she had secured a divorce, and was married by the spirits to Colonel James H. Blood, Commander of the 6th Missouri Regiment, and President of the St. Louis Society of Spiritualists. Her ex-husband, Woodhull, then completely ruined, lived with them. This hurt her reputation.

But a few years later, "following the English plan of self-nomination," she announced herself a candidate for President (the British Who's-Who says that she was nominated by the Equal Rights Party). She went before Congress urging that women be given the vote in accordance with requests which came to her in a clairvoyant state.

So much her loyal supporter affirmed. The British Who's Who further records that she "lectured throughout U. S. on Finance, Women's Suffrage, Religious and Scientific Improvement of the Human Race."

Yet it is perhaps not surprising that she left little mark in the campaign of 1872, for that was a very hot contest. Grant was running for a second term. At a convention of Liberal Republicans in Cincinnati, Horace Greeley, editor of The New York Tribune, was nominated over Charles Francis Adams. Greeley was for high tariff; he had often flayed the Democrats. Yet the Democratic convention chose "to eat crow" and nominated Greeley. For a time Greeley scared the Grant men. He drew huge audiences when he spoke. The campaign became viciously personal. Thomas Nast, having just helped to upset the Tweed Ring in New York City by his cartoons, turned his devastating pen upon Greeley. Gratz Brown, a Missourian, who was Greeley's running-mate, was not known (by sight) in Manhattan, so Cartoonist Nast pictured him as a tag on Greeley's white coat. But Greeley fared even worse. A few days before the election Greeley's wife died. Greeley himself wrote a few days later: "I was the worst beaten man who ever ran for high office. And I have been assailed so bitterly that I hardly knew whether I was running for President or for the Penitentiary. . . . Well, I am used up." Indeed, he died in a few days more.

For although Greeley had drawn the audiences, Grant drew the votes. In the electoral college Grant had 272 electoral votes, Greeley 66, and Mrs. Woodhull none.

Perhaps it was as well that Mrs. Woodhull was not elected; for there would have been grave complications: she was only 34 years old on March 4, 1873, and the Constitution requires that a President must be 35 years of age.

In after years Mrs. Woodhull went to England with her sister Tennessee, who followed her in the Woman Suffrage movement. While lecturing there she was heard one night by John Biddulph Martin, a wealthy English banker and philanthropist. Anon they were married. Tennessee also made an advantageous marriage to Lord Cook. She died abroad recently. Mrs. Martin, erstwhile Woodhull, nee Claflin, lives on, known as a "financier and reformer." She has written a number of works, including The Origins, Tendencies and Principles of Government and Garden of Eden Stirpiculture. Her recreations are scientific agriculture, psychical research, motoring (she is a member of the Ladies' Automobile Club), collecting works of art. Now she enjoys old age in Worcestershire, at her beautiful home, Norton Park, Bredon's Norton, near Tewkesbury.