A FREE-LOVE WIDOW.

Waikato Times, Volume I, Issue 57, 10 September 1872, Page 3

A FREE-LOVE WIDOW.

(From the Saturday Review.) Last -week a great "Woman's Suffrage Convention was held in Now York, at which Mrs. Woodhull presided, and she and other leaders of the womi n's rights party in the United States delivered thrilling harangues. It appears however that, although the demand for votes is still kept up by a certain class ofAmerican women, it is rather as a matter of form and in vindication of a principle than with a genuine and anxious desire that it should be successful. They seem to have come to the conclusion that, wh'le they are logically bound to assert their equality in all respects with men, votes are of comparatively little consequence to them, and that they would perhaps be better without them. What they are most intent upon attaining is not so much political as social freedom. As one of them eloquently expresses it, " The old tyrann'os are trembling for their power, not at the ballot-box but at the fireside." If they could only erase all traces of the Seventh Commandment from modern legislation, or at least from the social compact, they would be pretty well satisfied. Mrs. Woodhull, for example, claims "an inalienable, constitutio' a l , and natural right to love whom I may, to love for as long or as short a period as I can, and to change that love every day if I please." Under these conditions Mrs. Woodhull has no objection to marriage, and until a few weeks since she and her two husbands—we are not quite sure whether we should not say, two of her husbands —made a happy trio in the same house. It appears tliat her first husband died on the 6th of April, .and a graceful "In Memoriam" from the bereaved widow, who has, however, still one lnisband at least left to console her, appears in the weekly paper which she edits and publishes. She is constrained to admit that " our former husband and later friend and brother" was by no means a perfect character. " Certain unhappy habits of life, with peculiarities of cpnstitution, placed a not indefinite tenure tipon the extension of his physical life." Br. Woodhull, we gather, was too partial to the bottle; but then, as Mrs. Woodhull remarks, people are born to be what they are. Some people are constitutionally drunkards; other? are constitutionally sober. "In either case there is neither merit nor dismerit f sic), since both are alike the result of circumstances and causes beyond individual control. - ' There is no use in struggling against;fate. Mrs. Woodlmll's own case is a remarkable illustration of this, for her biographer states that her second marriage was decreed by " those spirits whom she is ever ready to follow, whether they lead her for discipline into the valley of the shadow of death, or for comfort into those ways of pleasantness which are paths of peace." The dictates of the spirits, it may be observed, are always interpreted by Mrs. Woodhull herself. Colonel Blood, "the legal partner of a morally sundered marriage"—that is, he. had a wife already but was tired of her—called on. Mrs. Woodhull one day, : rind the instant she saw'him" she fell into a trance, during which she anuounced-

that his future destiny was to be linked with hers ; and as he liad no objection so it was. divorce from Woodhull and marriage with/Blood, {the retained her first husband's name, and, slie-,and her- two spouses, and her children T?y the firSt'inarriage, all lived happj- and family. I)r. Woodhull, she ynyV felt the change severely,;bpt"hb was just enough to rejoice in knowing that the changed conditions offered a wider field of usefulness and happiness to us." Mrs. Woodhull confesses that at first,, not being quite emancipated from old social prejudices, she

rather shrank from having it known that she was keeping lxouse with a couple of husbands. "It became a rod in the hands of unscrupulous persons, held in terror over our heads, to compel us to do their bidding, and most cruelly and unrelentlessly did they make use of it." This, however, was only one of the trials reserved for all good and heroic people in this narrow-minded and uncharitable world; and she had the consciousness of her own moral elevation to sustain her, as well as the counsels of the spirits. But when, after the Doctor's death, it was suggested that perhaps an inquest would be necessary, "this," Mrs. Woodhull acknowledges, " was almost more than we could philosophically accept." It may be admitted that it is not agreeable to live in an atmosphere of suspicion of this kind, and we are afraid that Mrs. Woodhull can hardly say that her ways of pleasantness have been paths of peace. She appears, however, to have been exceptionally happy in finding a couple of husbands who took to each other with such frank and cordial ail'ection as Doctor Woodhull and Colonel Blood, and who were superior to worldly prejudices. " These two people," she assures us, "were not rivals; they were brothers; and, in spite of all the attempts to make them enemies, they remained friends to the last; he who.is still with us watching over the death-bed of him who has gone, with all the sleepless anxiety that danger imparts to those we love." Mrs. Woodhull will not say that she docs not care for the approval of the world, but she prefers that of her own conscience and of the spirits ; and perhaps on the whole it is just as well for her own peace of mind that she should do so. She is described by one of her admirers as the best representative of aggressive ideas in America ; but aggressive people llnd it difficult to command the good opinion of society, especially when their aggressions are of the peculiar kind in which Mrs. Woodhull delights. Even King Arthur found his " white blamelessness" accounted blame, and a free-love heroine must not be surprised if the world does not all at oice accept a mode of life which it has been accustomed to associate with harsh epithets as an embodiment of a highly superior kind of modesty and morality. It is difficult for a lady to pose as Sappho in these days without exciting unpleasant remarks. Indeed it appears to be one of the grievances of Mrs. Woodhull and her sisterhood that ccrtainopprobrious names which we need not particularize are applied to women, while there are no corresponding names to apply to loose men ; and one of the clauses of a Bill which has been drafted by the women's rights people, and which is published in Woodhull's Weekly, makes it an o(fence to designate any woman by these disreputable names. In the meantime it is open to the women to invent any names they like, and to apply them to men. (To be continued.)