CANDLELIT CHRONICLES: HISTORIC HAUNTS

Entry 12/28

Prompt: You've a big date for New Year's Eve with a celebrity. (Who?) He or she cancels. Now what?





Washington, District of Columbia-


Dec. 31, 1872





         I tapped the toes of my highly-polished spats impatiently against the lobby's parquet floor and brushed back my oiled brown hair. Waiting, always waiting: whenever I wanted to see Miz Victoria, it was I who would be left waiting. The woman was a whirlwind, never still. I doubt she ever rested. Sincerely I had believed that after the collapse of her Presidential campaign earlier this year, she would have seen the Light and given up her political aspirations. If she would only listen!





         I would give Miz Victoria Claflin Woodhull all that she ever asked, dreamed, and desired-with the exception of course, of the Presidency of this Union, of suffrage for women (bah! Silly sentimental concept!), and of freewheeling affairs-no, when we marry that will have to cease! But all of that is just Vickie playing at politics, playing at love, playing at upending social mores. When we are married she will settle down and raise her children and ours, a dutiful little haus frau indeed. When we are married--





But oh, wherever is she now?





---written by a fictional suitor about Victoria Claflin Woodhull, Stockbroker, Newspaper Owner, Women's Suffrage Advocate, and 1872 Presidential Candidate (with Frederick Douglass as Vice Presidential Candidate)