Elizabeth Richards Tilton
Elizabeth Monroe Richards Tilton was an American suffragist, a founder of the Brooklyn Woman's Club, and a poetry editor of The Revolution, the newspaper of the National Woman Suffrage Association, founded by woman's rights advocates Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Elizabeth Tilton also served on the executive committee of the American Equal Rights Association.
Tilton became the largely silenced center of "the most sensational and highly publicized social scandal of the era" in 1875, when her husband Theodore Tilton brought a lawsuit charging "criminal conversation" against his friend, the popular preacher Henry Ward Beecher.
Although the long trial ended in a deadlock, it destroyed the social positions and careers of both Elizabeth and Theodore Tilton. Beecher's reputation was tarnished, but he retained his position and much of his influence.
Early life and education
Elizabeth Monroe Richards was born on May 28, 1834, in Brooklyn, New York, to Johanna Handley and Joseph Richards, a jeweller. Johanna married Nathan Brewster Morse, Sr. After having been a widow for a number of years, Johanna died on July 26, 1889, at her home in Brooklyn after a nine-month illness.Elizabeth Richards attended the Brooklyn Female Seminary.
She tutored her younger brother Joseph H. Richards and his friend Theodore Tilton, who attended Public School No. 1. When Tilton's parents decided to move to New Jersey, Tilton boarded with Elizabeth, Joseph, and their mother. They attended Plymouth Church, where Henry Ward Beecher was an extremely popular preacher. Elizabeth became a Sunday school teacher at Plymouth Church.
Suffrage and women's rights
She was a participant in the women's rights movement. She was a contributor to and the poetry editor of The Revolution, which was the voice of the National Woman Suffrage Association, founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. With them, Elizabeth Tilton was one of a dozen signatories of a petition appealing for protection for voting rights in 1866.In 1868 and 1869, she served on the executive committee of the American Equal Rights Association. In 1870, she was the corresponding secretary of the Brooklyn Equal Rights Association, and one of three members of a committee to find and set up a house in Brooklyn to serve as its headquarters. She founded the Brooklyn Woman's Club in 1870 with Celia M. Burleigh, Laura Curtis Bullard, and others.
Marriage and children
Elizabeth Richards married Theodore Tilton on October 2, 1855, in Plymouth Church. He was 20, and she was 21. The ceremony was performed by Henry Ward Beecher. Tilton worked on The Independent, a pro-Abolition magazine. Theodore Tilton began to write for The Independent in 1856, while Beecher became the editor-in-chief in 1861. Tilton was his assistant, and replaced him as editor in 1864. Theodore Tilton was active and respected as a writer, speaker, and lecturer.Of the seven children born to the Tiltons over 14 years, four of the children survived past infancy. Her daughter Florence was born around 1858. Alice was born in 1859. A child named Mattie died in infancy. Her son Carroll was born in 1864. An infant son, Paul, died in August 1868. Her last surviving child, Ralph, was born June 21, 1869. For the first five years of their marriage, and again from 1860 to 1863, the Tiltons lived in a boardinghouse run by Elizabeth's mother, on Harrison Avenue in the Sixth Ward. By 1866, the upwardly mobile Theodore Tilton aspired to a brownstone in the more fashionable area of Brooklyn Heights.
He increasingly disparaged his wife's family, and sought to separate her from them. Although he was reported to have said that "Elizabeth was undervalued in her intellectual character... she was the finest critic he had ever had", Theodore Tilton also felt embarrassed in his new social circle by Elizabeth's dress, deportment, speech and demeanor. Elizabeth described occasions when her husband indicated that she was "so insignificant that he was ashamed of ", and another when he held a gathering of "woman's rights people" at their home, and "particularly requested me not to come near him that night". Theodore Tilton also traveled frequently on lecture tours in 1866-1868, which gave him opportunities to be sexually unfaithful, something he confessed to Elizabeth on January 25, 1868.
Scandal
Friendship with Henry Ward Beecher
Theodore Tilton and Henry Ward Beecher became close friends, a relationship that has been described as both passionate and physical. Tilton and Beecher worked on The Independent, a pro-Abolition magazine. Both men were advocates of abolition and temperance. The more radical Tilton spoke in favor of women's rights to vote and to divorce. Beecher, who was unhappily married to Eunice White Beecher, emphasized the role of women in the home.During 1866-1868 Beecher was struggling to write Norwood, a book one reviewer described as "apparently interminable, and so amazingly dull". On January 3, 1866, Beecher described the main characters to his publisher as "the man of philosophy and theology and the woman of nature and simple truth".
It has been suggested that Elizabeth Tilton encouraged Beecher in his writing, and that she can be associated with his "woman of nature". It has also been suggested that she turned to him for comfort after baby Paul's death in August 1868. To what extent Elizabeth was or saw herself as Beecher's "muse" is unclear. She identified October 10, 1868, as "A Day Memorable" in her private diary, but did not indicate why.
Confession
On July 3 or 4, 1870, Elizabeth apparently confessed to her husband that October 10, 1868, had marked the start of a deeper relationship between herself and Beecher, which Beecher had encouraged her to keep secret. It may have been an emotional relationship or a sexual relationship. Whatever Elizabeth's actual involvement, her husband suspected her of adultery and her last surviving child of being illegitimate.The situation was complicated because both Henry Beecher and Theodore Tilton were believed to have affairs with other women. Beecher was rumored to have had relationships with several women in his Plymouth Church congregation including Lucy Maria Bowen, the first wife of Henry Chandler Bowen. She had confessed the affair to her husband on her deathbed. Theodore Tilton was rumored not only to have been sexually unfaithful while on tour, but also to be involved in an affair with Elizabeth's friend Laura Curtis Bullard.
The Tiltons' letters to each other over a period of several years reveal a shift from hopefulness on Elizabeth's part to awareness of the harmfulness of the "ungenerosity and fault-finding" of their actual time together.
Following Elizabeth's confession to Theodore, both of the Tiltons confided in others. These included Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Henry Chandler Bowen, and Francis D. Moulton and his wife Emma. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony apparently first heard about the scandal in the fall of 1870. Conflicting stories describe a contentious evening, in which Theodore Tilton dined at Laura Bullard's house with Stanton, leaving Elizabeth Tilton and Anthony behind at the Tilton house. Theodore Tilton told Stanton his side of the Tilton–Beecher affair over dinner; Anthony heard of it from Elizabeth Tilton that same night. Rival accounts of the evening were given by Elizabeth Tilton and Stanton in 1874, four years after the events. They agreed that after Theodore Tilton returned to his house, there was an altercation between him and one of the women, that Theodore Tilton had become violently angry, and that Susan B. Anthony had sheltered Elizabeth Tilton in her room overnight, locking the door. Stanton clearly saw Anthony as saving a threatened wife from a violent husband; Elizabeth Tilton may not have appreciated Stanton's assumption of authority.
Possibly as a result of this evening, Elizabeth left Theodore in late September or early October 1870 and traveled to Marietta, Ohio, where she stayed with a friend, Sarah Putnam. When Elizabeth Tilton returned to Brooklyn on December 10, 1870, there was a violent altercation with Theodore, and Elizabeth took their four children and went to her mother's home, where she remained for some time before again returning to her husband, when she was pregnant again by him. The pregnancy ended in a miscarriage on December 24, 1870, which Elizabeth attributed to "anxiety night and day".
The miscarriage seems to have triggered a rapid cascade of events. The same day, Mrs. Morse wrote to Henry Bowen, Tilton's employer, with complaints against Tilton. Bowen consulted Henry Beecher before confronting Tilton, who responded with accusations against Beecher. Bowen encouraged Tilton to write to Beecher and demand his resignation from the church. On December 26, 1870, Tilton wrote to Beecher, "Sir, I demand that, for reasons which you explicitly understand, you immediately cease from the ministry of Plymouth Church, and that you quit the City of Brooklyn as a residence." Bowen delivered the vaguely-worded letter to Beecher.
Theodore Tilton turned to Frank Moulton, a childhood friend of Tilton and Beecher, who became a mediator between the men. He primarily focused on hiding the scandal as their friendship disintegrated. There were a series of letters that Elizabeth signed beginning on December 29, 1870. In the first she described her confession, then Beecher had her sign a letter of retraction, followed by a retraction of the retraction at Theodore's request. On December 31, Elizabeth Tilton sent Moulton to Beecher to retrieve the letters.
On December 31, 1870, Bowen fired Tilton from The Independent, unwilling to support his radical politics and wishing to distance himself from a possible scandal. In an attempt to pacify Tilton, Beecher and Moulton created a new newspaper, The Golden Age, hiring Tilton as its editor. Possibly as part of the ongoing attempt to cover up the scandal, Tilton became involved with woman's suffrage and free love advocate Victoria Woodhull. By spring 1871, Theodore and Victoria were intimate, and in September 1871 he published an effusive biography of her.
As her marriage unraveled, Elizabeth Tilton became less hopeful. Her sentimental reading of Charles Reade's sensationalist novel Griffith Gaunt sparked a realization of the potential dangers of spiritual advisors, and a reevaluation of her involvement with Beecher.
On June 29, 1871, Elizabeth wrote a letter to Theodore that assumed great importance in later court proceedings, as lawyers tried to interpret her meaning.
The "Catherine Gaunt" letter clearly shows that Elizabeth had reinterpreted her actions from a spiritual perspective as sinful. What had actually occurred between her and Beecher, and whether their relationship had been emotional, physical, or both, remained utterly opaque.
All three people—Elizabeth, Theodore and Beecher—sentimentalized and reinterpreted their thoughts and actions as events progressed.
One historian reflects on the relationships between Beecher and the Tiltons, "They are real people. Living people... They aren't characters in a novel. They are complicated and contradictory, and I don't have a clue as to whom to believe."