These months at home with her mother whom she dearly loved were a great comfort to them both. They enjoyed reading aloud, finding George Eliot's Middlemarch and Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter of particular interest as Susan was searching for the answers to many questions which had been brought into sharp focus by the Beecher-Tilton case, now filling the newspapers. Like everyone else, she read the latest developments in this tragic involvement of three of her good friends. She was especially concerned about Elizabeth and Theodore Tilton, in whose home she had so often visited and toward whom she felt a warm motherly affection. Her sympathy went out to Elizabeth Tilton, whose help and loyalty during the difficult days of The Revolution she never forgot. Although she had often differed with Theodore, whose quick changes of policy and temperament she could not understand, he had won her gratitude many times by befriending the cause. The same was true of Henry Ward Beecher, who had found time in his busy life to say a good word for woman's rights.
Susan was close to the facts, for in desperation a few years before, Elizabeth Tilton had confided in her. Unfortunately both Elizabeth and Theodore had made confidants of others less wise than Susan. Mrs. Stanton had passed the story along to Victoria Woodhull, who late in 1872 had revived her Weekly for a crusade on what she called "the social question" and had published her expose, "The Beecher-Tilton Scandal Case." As a result the lives of all involved were being ruined by merciless publicity.
The Beecher-Tilton story as it unfolded revealed three admirable people caught in a tangled web of human relationships. Henry Ward Beecher, for years a close friend and benefactor of his young parishioners, Theodore and Elizabeth Tilton, had been accused by Theodore of immoral relations with Elizabeth. Accusations and denials continued while intrigue and negotiations deepened the confusion. The whole matter burst into flame in 1874 in the trial of Henry Ward Beecher before a committee of Plymouth Church, which exonerated him. Reading Beecher's statement in her newspaper, Susan impulsively wrote Isabella Beecher Hooker, "Wouldn't you think if God ever did strike anyone dead for telling a lie, he would have struck then?"[318]
When early in 1875 the Beecher-Tilton case reached the courts in a suit brought by Theodore Tilton against Henry Ward Beecher for the alienation of his wife's affections, it became headline news throughout the country. The press, greedy for sensation, published anything and everything even remotely connected with the case. Reporters hounded Susan, who by this time was again lecturing in the West, and she seldom entered a train, bus, or hotel without finding them at her heels, as if by their very persistence they meant to force her to express her opinion regarding the guilt or innocence of Henry Ward Beecher. They never caught her off guard and she steadfastly refused to reveal to them, or to the lawyers of either side, who astutely approached her, the story which Elizabeth Tilton had told her in confidence. Yet in spite of her continued silence, she was twice quoted by the press, once through the impulsiveness of Mrs. Stanton, who expressed herself frankly at every opportunity, and again when the New York Graphic without Susan's consent published her letter to Mrs. Hooker.
The sympathy of the public was generally with Henry Ward Beecher, whose popularity and prestige were tremendous. A dynamic preacher, whose sermons drew thousands to his church and whose written word carried religion and comfort to every part of the country, he could not suddenly be ruined by the circulation of a scandal or even by a sensational trial. Behind him were all those who were convinced that the future of the Church and Morality demanded his vindication. On his side, also, as Susan well knew, was the powerful, behind-the-scenes influence of the financial interests who profited from Plymouth Church real estate, from the earnings of Beecher's paper, Christian Union, and from his book the Life of Christ, now in preparation and for which he had already been paid $20,000.
Susan and Mrs. Stanton paid the penalty of being on the unpopular side. When Elizabeth Tilton was not allowed to testify in her own defense, they accused Beecher and Tilton of ruthlessly sacrificing her to save their own reputations. In fact, Susan and Mrs. Stanton knew far too much about the case for the comfort of either Beecher or Tilton, and to discredit them, a whispering campaign, and then a press campaign was initiated against them. They and their National Woman Suffrage Association were again accused of upholding free love. Their previous association with Victoria Woodhull was held against them, as were the frank discussions of marriage and divorce published in The Revolution six years before.
Actually Susan's views on marriage were idealistic. "I hate the whole doctrine of 'variety' or 'promiscuity,'" she wrote John Hooker, the husband of her friend Isabella. "I am not even a believer in second marriages after one of the parties is dead, so sacred and binding do I consider the marriage relation."[319]
Although in public Susan uttered not one word relating to the guilt or innocence of Henry Ward Beecher, she did confide her real feelings to her diary. She believed that to save himself Beecher was withholding the explanation which the situation demanded. "It is almost an impossibility," she wrote in her diary, "for a man and a woman to have a close sympathetic friendship without the tendrils of one soul becoming fastened around the other, with the result of infinite pain and anguish." Then again she wrote, "There is nothing more demoralizing than lying. The act itself is scarcely so base as the lie which denies it."[320]
Susan's silence probably brought her more notoriety than anything she could have said on this much discussed subject, and it heightened her reputation for honesty and integrity. "Miss Anthony," commented the New York Sun, "is a lady whose word will everywhere be believed by those who know anything of her character." The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle had this to say: "Whether she will make any definite revelations remains to be seen, but whatever she does say will be received by the public with that credit which attaches to the evidence of a truthful witness. Her own character, known and honored by the country, will give importance to any utterances she may make."[321]
She was not called as a witness by either side during the 112 days of trial which ended in July 1875 with the jury unable to agree on a verdict.