Free The Scarlet Sisters by Myra MacPherson

“frightening financial and political power.” Fisk sailed on, his mustache waxed to rapier sharpness, his red-blond hair marcelled in waves. His diamond-studded vests preceded the rest of him; Fisk seemed to use his girth as his calling card as he swaggered forth.
    In 1869, Gould and Fisk tried to corner the New York Gold Exchange’s gold market and created the financial panic known as Black Friday. The sisters, by now players in the market, had a lot at risk. The gold-cornering scandal was one of the most famous of many that rocked the Grant presidency. In their attempt to conquer the gold market, Fisk and Gould recruited Grant’s brother-in-law, Abel Corbin, to help them socialize with Grant. Over cigars and brandy, Gould argued against the government sale of gold even though the use of Civil War government greenbacks had waned. Grant resisted, but an assistant treasurer of the United States, Daniel Butterfield, agreed to tip off Gould and Fisk when the government intended to sell gold.
    Late in the summer of 1869, Gould began buying up massive amounts of gold, causing prices to rise and stocks to plummet. When Grant realized what was happening, the federal government swiftly sold $4 million in gold. On Black Friday, September 20, 1869, Gould and Fisk were foiled. When the government gold hit the market, the premium plummeted within minutes. Panicked investors scrambled to sell. But many were too late. Hysterical sobbing filled the Street and the Gold Exchange as ruined speculators saw their lives collapse in one day.
    The sisters were cool customers through it all, relying on Vanderbilt’s tips. Woodhull sat in her carriage for four days, from morning until night, operating heavily, a small smile playing on her lips as she watched the frantic movements of men coping with the crisis. At the end of the panic, Woodhull exclaimed, “I came out a winner!” She did not reveal the amount, but the sisters had pocketed a large sum, which Victoria often declared brought their accumulated wealth to the staggering, probably exaggerated, figure of $700,000.
    Four months later, on February 5, 1870, they opened their brokerage firm.

CHAPTER FOUR
    The Bewitching Brokers
    To ensure that the grand opening of their Woodhull, Claflin and Co. brokerage and banking firm would be a sensation, the sisters invited a New York Herald reporter for an interview a few weeks before, in their temporary headquarters: two parlors in the posh Hoffman House at Twenty-Fourth and Broadway. The sisters showed startling aplomb by doing business in a hotel, the domain of visiting male politicians, magnates, and financiers.
    Nearby was the Fifth Avenue Hotel, which was dubbed handsomer than Buckingham Palace when it opened in 1859. Ridiculed for being built too far uptown, it was the first New York hotel to feature a “vertical railway intersecting each story.” This new invention, the elevator, would forever change fashionable urban living. Soon higher floors were prized, paving the way for penthouse clientele. Now, five years after the end of the Civil War and the rush to move uptown, both the Hoffman House and the Fifth Avenue Hotel boasted princes and presidents as residents. Fifth Avenue and Broadway swarmed with potentates and high-priced prostitutes, wealthy matrons visiting Tiffany & Co., theatergoers and diners who patronized elegant Delmonico’s, and madams who ran brothels in mansions beside brownstone palaces owned by newly minted millionaires. This circus would soon be the playground for Victoria and Tennie.
    The Herald reporter eagerly appeared at the sisters’ Hoffman Houseparlor, which was “profusely decorated with oil paintings and statuary.” Commodore Vanderbilt stared down from the wall in a large photograph so prominent that the reporter enthused “his spirit is there… as though the mantle of the genial old Commodore had descended upon their shoulders.”
    When a smiling and buoyant Tennie sailed into the room, she drew her