BROADSIDE: Woodhull Will Speak at Huntington Hall.
Thursday October 30, 1873, "at 7/12 o'clock" about "The Relation of Politics to the Industrial and Social Questions."
“The Queen Of The American Rostrum”
Woodhull, Victoria. Advertising Circular: “The Relation of Politics to the Industrial and Social Questions.” October 30, 1873.
8vo.; single leaf of yellow bond; all sides printed; fine.
A rare advertising circular publicizing an upcoming talk by Woodhull at Huntington Hall on Thursday, October 30, 1873, “at 7 1/2 o’clock” about “The Relation of Politics to the Industrial and Social Questions.” This flyer dates from the apogee of Woodhull’s fame, or infamy: in June 1873 she had been acquitted of charges of distributing obscene material in the Beecher-Tilton affair; later that summer Woodhull underwent a series of terrifying health scares (near-comatose episodes, high fevers, chest pains) which both forced her to confront her own mortality and made her even more of a fixture in the tabloid press, where it was widely alleged that she was dying.
This flyer, produced just weeks after Woodhull’s Chicago lecture at the Spiritualists’ Convention, capitalizes on the publicity garnered there—excerpts from the many enthusiastic “reviews” of Woodhull’s fall lecture series are printed on both the recto and the verso, for example: “Victoria Woodhull has risen from nothing to a position on the forum where she stands without a peer. Her intellectual position and vigor are no longer a question of doubt; in this respect she is above all discussion” (Chicago Times, Sept. 18, 1873). In many instances these blurbs speak volumes on the public perception of intellectual women of the era: see, for instance, the Boston Herald reporter’s remarks:
Music Hall was packed last night to see Victoria C. Woodhull, inventor and expounder of so many advanced opinions on various subjects. Few of the audience expected to see in the lecturer what they did see—a small woman of frail figure, devoid of crinoline and all sorts of modern nonsense;
or those from the Cincinnati Commercial, whose description of Mrs. Woodhull is quite gripping:
...as she stood there dressed in plain black, with flushed face, gleaming eye, locks partly disheveled, upraised arm and quivering under the fire of her own rhapsody, [she] reminded me of the great Rachel in some of those tragic or fervid passages....She seemed at moments like one possessed.
In this lecture of October 30 Woodhull promises “to impeach the government, as the revolt of the early patriots was an impeachment of the English throne”; unfortunately, no review of the speech seems to exist.
An uncommon memento from the high point of Woodhull’s long and varied career.
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