“The Most Beautiful Suffragette“: Inez Milholland and the Political Currency of Beauty1

² National Woman's Party Papers: The Suffrage Years, 1913-1920 (NWPSY) (Sanford, NC, 1981), Reel 95.

³ C.W. Gustin, “Election Day!,” (1909), “Votes for Women: Suffrage Pictures, 1850-1920,” Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-51821].

⁴ Baker, Josephine, Fighting for Life (1939; New York, 1974), 194.

⁵ Behling, Laura, The Masculine Woman in America, 1890-1935 (Chicago, 2001), 1–2.

⁶ Flexner, Eleanor, Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States (1959, Cambridge, MA, 1996).

⁷ Cott, Nancy F., The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven, 1987).

⁸ DuBois, Ellen Carol, Harriot Stanton Blatch and the Winning of Woman Suffrage (New Haven, 1997).

⁹ Graham, Sara Hunter, Woman Suffrage and the New Democracy (New Haven, 1996).

¹⁰ Ford, Iinda G., Iron-Jawed Angels: The Suffrage Militancy of the “National Woman's Party, 1912-1920 (Lanham, MD, 1991), 4.

¹¹ , Cott, Grounding, 53.

¹² Finnegan, Margaret, Selling Suffrage: Consumer Culture and Votes for Women (New York, 1999), 6.

¹³ , Finnegan, Selling Suffrage, 12.

¹⁴ Tickner, Lisa, The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign, 1907-1914 (Chicago, 1988), 151.

¹⁵ , DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch, 275.

¹⁶ Graham, Sara Hunter, “The Suffrage Renaissance: A New Image for a New Century, 1896-1910” in One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement, ed. Wheeler, Marjorie Spruill (Troutdale, OR, 1995), 171.

¹⁷ Iron Jawed Angels, dir. Katja von Garnier, HBO Films, New York, 2004; Lumsden, Linda J., Iaez: The Life and Times of Inez Milholland (Bloomington, IN, 2004).

¹⁸ “New MaH Tubes Tested,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Aug. 2, 1898, p. 7.

¹⁹ “Warm Week at Lakewood,” New York Times (NYT), Jan. 13, 1907, p. 1.

²⁰ Rudwick, Elliot M., “The Niagara Movement,” Journal of Negro History 42 (July 1957): 177–200, esp. 184.

²¹ “Cyrano's at Vassar,” NYT, Nov. 12, 1905, p. 7; 'Vassar Girls Give Play,” NYT, May 19, 1907, p. 1.

²² “Vassar Girls' Field Day,” NYT, May 9, 1909, p. 8.

²³ “Vassar's Head Indignant,” NYT, June 10, 1908, p. 7.

²⁴ “Lusitania to Have a New Commander,” ATT, Aug. 22, 1908, p. 7

²⁵ Unsigned letter, no date, Inez Milholland Papers [Hereafter IM Papers], Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Cambridge. Microfilm Edition, 1981, Folder 16.

²⁶ “Vassar Students are Now Radicals,” NYT, May 9, 1909, p. 8.

²⁷ “Miss Milholland Won't Surrender,” NYT, Oct. 24, 1909, p. 19.

²⁸ “Retains Miss Milholland,” NYT, June 30, 1913, p. 3.

²⁹ “Facing Starvation To Keep Up Strike,” NYT, Dec. 25, 1909, p. 2.

³⁰ “Suffragist Attacks Gaynor,” NYT, April 9, 1911, p. 4.

³¹ “Seeking Notoriety,” Fort Wayne Daily News, April 28, 1914, p. 7.

³² Undated memo, IM Papers, Folder 22.

³³ “Fashion's Fads and Fancies,” Washington Post, Feb. 21, 1911, p. 7.

³⁴ “The Spokesman for Suffrage in America,” McClure's Magazine, July 1912, pp. 335–37 ; Milholland, Inez, “The Liberation of a Sex,” McClure's Magazine, Feb. 1913, pp. 181–88.

³⁵ “‘Throw-Away-Your Corset’ Crusade Opens Here Today,” Washington Post, March 1, 1912, p. 7.

³⁶ Inez Milholland to Jean Torry Milholland. n.d., John A. Milholland Papers, private collection. Quoted in Lumsden, Inez 39.

³⁷ Stevens, Isaac Newton, American Suffragette: A Novel (New York, 1911), 57.

³⁸ Belmont divorced her first husband, William Vanderbilt, for his infidelity, scandalizing Gilded Age society but becoming immensely rich in the process. Her second husband, Oliver Belmont, whose family was in banking, died in 1908, leaving Alva a very rich widow indeed.

³⁹ “Harmon Has Another Smash,” NYT, June 7, 1910, p. 3.

⁴⁰ “Mrs. Belmont Home for Suffrage War,” NYT, Sept. 16, 1910, p. 9.

⁴¹ Banner, Lois, American Reauty (New York, 1983), 164.

⁴² Glenn, Susan A., Female Spectacle: The Theatrical Roots of Modern Feminism (Cambridge, MA, 2000), 6.

⁴³ For a discussion of the ways in which women used their bodies to navigate the continuum between public and private, see Piepmeier, Alison, Out in Public: Configurations of Women's Bodies in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill, 2004).

⁴⁴ , Glenn, Female Spectacle, 128

⁴⁵ “Suffrage at Hammerstein's,” NYT, Sept. 2, 1912, p. 9.

⁴⁶ “Mrs. Boissevain Again in Vaudeville,” NYT, Dec. 13, 1914, p. 14 (Milholland married Eugen Boissevain in 1913); “Brooklyn History Shown in Pageant,” NYT, May 22, 1915, p. 11; “Suffrage Seats Sell Fast,” NYT, March 24, 1912, p. C6; Kincaid, Mary Holland, “The Feminine Charms of the Woman Militant: The Personal Attractiveness and Housewifely Attainments of the Leaders on the Equal Suffrage Movement,” Good Housekeeping, February 1912, p. 155.

⁴⁷ “‘Our Mutual Girl’ Visits Blackwell's Island to Save Her Protegee [Sic],” Journal Gazette, May 24, 1914, p. 18.

⁴⁸ “Advertisement for “Our Mutual Girl,” NYT, January 18, 1914, p. C5.

⁴⁹ Tinnin, Glenna Smith, “Why the Pageant?,” The Woman's Journal, Feb. 15, 1913, p. 50.

⁵⁰ Reyher, Rebecca Hourwich, “Search and Struggle for Equality and Independence,” oral history conducted in 1973, in Suffragists Oral History Project, Regional Oral History Office, University of California, Berkeley, <http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docld=kt6x0nblts&brand=calisphere>.

⁵¹ Lumsden, Linda, “Beauty and the Beasts: Significance of Press Coverage of the 1913 National Suffrage Parade,” journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 77 (Autumn 2000): 593–611, esp. 595.

⁵² , Finnegan, Selling Suffrage, 46.

⁵³ Barber, Lucy G., Marching on Washington: The Forging of An American Political Tradition (Berkeley, 2002), 59.

⁵⁴ , Lumsden, “Beauty and the Beasts,” 594–95.

⁵⁵ , Barber, Marching on Washington, 50.

⁵⁶ Paul's construction of beauty was limited to white women. Black women were not welcome in the frontal ranks. For a good discussion on the racial tensions of the march, see , Barber, Marching on Washington, 62–65.

⁵⁷ “5,000 of Fair Sex Ready to Parade,” Washington Post, March 13, 1913, p. 1.

⁵⁸ “Will Ride as Heralds,” Washington Post, Jan. 27, 1913, p. 2.

⁵⁹ “Washington Mob Ruins the Parade of Suffragettes,” Atlanta Constitution, March 4, 1913, p. 1.

⁶⁰ Frederick N. McMillin to IM, March 10, 1913, IM Papers, Folder 27.

⁶¹ Although initially dismayed at the violence in the D.C. parade, Paul and fellow suffragists benefited from the widespread sympathetic coverage of the parade and the police investigation that followed.

⁶² “10,000 Marchers in Suffrage Parade,” NYT, May 4, 1913, p. 1.

⁶³ “Mock Suffragists Startle Broadway,” NYT, May 16, 1913, p. 11.

⁶⁴ “Suffragists Excite the Evils They Claim to Decry, Says ‘Anti,’” Washington Post, May 6, 1913, p. 4.

⁶⁵ Sandford, Edward Martin, The Unrest of Women (New York, 1913), 116–24.

⁶⁶ Schwartz, Judith, Radical Feminists of Heterodoxy: Greenwich Village, 1912-1940 (Norwich, VT, 1986), 14.

⁶⁷ IM Papers, Folder 26.

⁶⁸ “Moving Pictures Shown in Court,” NYT, March 5, 1914, p. 2 ; “Writers Turn out for Book Trial,” NYT, Feb. 7, 1914, p. 9.

⁶⁹ Marconi, Degna, My Father, Marconi (London, 1962), 144.

⁷⁰ Eastman, Max, Enjoyment of Living (New York, 1948), 320.

⁷¹ , Eastman, Enjoyment, 324.

⁷² Field, Sara Bard, “Poet and Suffragist,” oral history conducted in 1974, in Suffragists Oral History Project, Regional Oral History Office, University of California, Berkeley, <http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docld=ktlp3001nl&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=d0e141&toc.depth=1&toc.id=dOe141&brand=calisphere>.

⁷³ Upton Sinclair to IM, Aug. 19, 1911, IM Papers, Folder 13.

⁷⁴ “Inez Milholland Not to Wed,” NYT, Dec. 9, 1910, p. 11.

⁷⁵ Matthews, Jean V., The Rise of the New Woman: The Woman's Movement in America, 1875-1930 (Chicago, 2003), 107–08.

⁷⁶ Boissevain married poet Edna St. Vincent Millay after Milholland's death. For an account of his life with Millay, see Milford, Nancy, Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay (New York, 2002).

⁷⁷ “Suffrage Husbands Praise Their Wives,” NYT, Feb. 25, 1915, p. 6.

⁷⁸ IM to Eugen Boissevain, n.d., 1913, IM Papers, Folder 2.

⁷⁹ Eugen Boissevain to IM, n.d., Oct. 1913, IM Papers, Folder 9.

⁸⁰ Ida Furney Mackville to Doris Stevens, Oct. 14, 1916, NWPSY, Reel 34.

⁸¹ Mackville to Stevens; see reel 34 for numerous telegrams between Milholland and Paul, and between Paul and other tour participants on this topic.

⁸² Abby Scott Baker to Alice Paul, Oct. 12, 1916, NWPSY, Reel 34.

⁸³ Alice Paul to Mrs. Robert Adamson, Oct. 11 1916, NWPSY, Reel 34.

⁸⁴ “Beauty of Suffrage Ranks Coming Here,” Nevada State Journal, Oct. 15, 1916, p. 6.

⁸⁵ A. Lamson to Alice Paul, Oct. 16, 1916; Julia Hurlbut to Alice Paul (telegram), Oct. 16, 1916; A. Lamson to Alice Paul (telegram), Oct. 14, 1916, NWPSY, Reel 34.

⁸⁶ Alice B. Henkle to the Suffragist, Oct. 12, 1916, NWPSY, Reel 34.

⁸⁷ She might have been suffering from pernicious anemia, a rare disorder in which the body does not absorb enough vitamin B12 from the digestive tract, resulting in an inadequate amount of red blood cells. Today the disease is easily managed by administering B12. There is some confusion as to whether she had pernicious anemia or aplastic anemia, in which the capacity of the bone marrow to generate red blood cells is defective. There is also the possibility that she was suffering from leukemia.

⁸⁸ IM to Eugen Boissevain, n.d., 1916, IM Papers, Folder 5.

⁸⁹ “Oust Wilson, Women Urge,” Idaho Statesman, Oct. 10, 1916, p. 1.

⁹⁰ IM to Eugen Boissevain, Oct. 15, 1916, IM Papers, Folder 5.

⁹¹ Stevens, Doris, Jailed for Freedom (1920, New York, 1971), 48.

⁹² Vida Milholland to Alice Paul, Oct. 30, 1916, NWPSY, Reel 35.

⁹³ Alice Paul to Inez Milholland (telegram), Oct. 23, 1916, NWPSY, Reel 34.

⁹⁴ Dr. Catherine Lynch to Alice Paul (telegram), Oct. 25, 1916, NWPSY, Reel 34.

⁹⁵ Alice Paul to Emily Perry (telegram), Oct. 26, 1916, NWPSY, Reel 34.

⁹⁶ Alice Paul to Emily Perry (telegram), Oct. 29, 1916, NWPSY, Reel 35.

⁹⁷ , Stevens, Jailed for Freedom, 49.

⁹⁸ Field, Sara Bard, quoted in Stevens, Jailed, 55.

⁹⁹ , Ford, Iron-Jawed Angels, 77.

¹⁰⁰ Although commonly referred to as Mount Inez, the name was never officially changed.

¹⁰¹ “By-Laws of the Inez Milholland Memorial Committee of the National Woman's Party” National Woman's Party Papers (Glen Rock, NJ, 1972), Reel 116.

¹⁰² Field, “Poet and Suffragist.”

¹⁰³ “Inez Milholland Masque,” NYT, Jan. 27, 1924, p. 23. This event created a controversy for the NWP as Alice Paul refused to let three African-American friends of Milholland speak at the memorial, causing John Milholland to speak out against the snub. “Sees Snub to Negro by Woman's Party,” NYT Aug. 18, 1924, pp. 1, 4.

¹⁰⁴ “Mrs. Boissevain, Suffrage Martyr, an Inspiration for Statue by Paul Swan,” Fort Wayne Daily News, Jan. 1, 1917, p. 6.

¹⁰⁵ Londraville, Janis, “Paul Swan: The Art of ‘The Most Beautiful Man in the World’” in Prodigal Father Revisited: Artists and Writers in the World of John Sutler Yeats, ed. Londraville, Janis (West Cornwall, CT, 2003), 331–50.

¹⁰⁶ Clark, Electa, Leading Ladies: An Affectionate Look at American Women of the Twentieth Century (New York, 1976), 168–69.

¹ The author would like to thank Marisa Calabrese, Janet Gray, Mary Lynn Hopps, John Landreau, and the anonymous reader for their incisive remarks.