“It is well known that the man, whom it delighteth the people to honor, keeps, and for many years has kept, as his concubine, one of his slaves. Her name is SALLY.” Thus scandalmonger James T. Callender, writing in the Richmond Recorder on Sept. 1, 1802, launched one of the most blistering attacks ever leveled at the private life of an American president. “Sally” was Sally Hemings, the beautiful mulatto daughter of slave Betty Hemings and her master John Wayles, Jefferson’s former father-in-law. Sally had accompanied Jefferson’s daughter Polly to France in 1787 when she was 14 years old, and she remained with Jefferson, occupying a place of special privilege at Monticello, until his death 39 years later. Only recently have white historians begun to accept what black historians have maintained for years, that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings’ seven children, and that there was some truth to a ballad that made the rounds during his presidency. Sung to the tune of “Yankee Doodle” and presented from the point of view of Jefferson, it included the following verses:When press’d by loads of state affairs,
I seek to sport and dally,
The sweetest solace of my cares
Is in the lap of Sally.
She’s black you tell me—grant she be—
Must color always tally?
Black is love’s proper hue for me—
And white’s the hue for Sally.
—D.R.
Bachelor President
GROVER CLEVELAND (March 18, 1837-June 24, 1908)
HIS FAME: New Jersey-born Stephen Grover Cleveland, the only president in U.S. history to serve two nonconsecutive terms (1885-1889 and 1893-1897), is remembered for his opposition to that era’s tariffs and for his prolific use of the veto—413 times in his first term alone. Many thought of him as an uncouth, uneducated, barroom ruffian, while others saw him as an honest statesman and a man one could count on. As sheriff of Erie County, N.Y., in 1871, “Big Steve” was required by law to fill in when the usual hangman wasn’t available. Twice Cleveland threaded the noose around a murderer’s neck and sprang the gallows trapdoor. This attention to duty provoked his enemies to dub him “the Hangman of Buffalo.” He was described as unimpressive and charmless, but his physical size was notable. Short and stocky, he weighed 250 lb.
HIS LOVES: While Cleveland was an unlikely choice for the role of president, let alone paramour, he began his first term amid the hubbub of a sex scandal. His trudging efficiency and integrity as governor of New York State had at first made him the perfect Democratic opponent to Republican nominee James G. Blaine in the 1884 election because Blaine’s political career had been tainted with corruption. Early on in the campaign, however, the Republican party revealed that Cleveland had fathered a son out of wedlock. Apparently Cleveland had regularly enjoyed the company of women during his years in state and local politics, for his saloon pals took no special notice of a tall, slender widow named Maria Crofts Halpin. The 35-year-old mother of two was different from most of Cleveland’s female friends in that she seemed cultured and educated, never swore, and seldom drank. Then, in 1874, she bore a son. Although he wasn’t certain the child was his, Cleveland never denied that he was the father. Desperate for a husband, Widow Halpin tried to cajole Cleveland into marrying her. He refused and the despondent woman turned to drink. Ever conscientious, Cleveland placed the boy in an orphanage until foster parents could be found, and when Maria protested, she was committed to a Buffalo asylum for five days. Later, she tried to win legal custody of her son until Cleveland gave her $500 to drop the suit. Maria moved to Niagara Falls, where she started a small business with more of Cleveland’s money, and ultimately remarried. A wealthy couple was located to adopt the boy, who grew up to become a doctor. The gossip faded out until 1884. Then the Republicans—taunting Cleveland with their “dirty tricks” campaign slogan, “Ma, Ma! Where’s my Pa? Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!”—brought the long-dead affair into the open. When his campaign workers asked how they should respond, Cleveland commanded them, “Tell the truth.” This they did, right down to the fact that Cleveland had financially supported the mother and child. Such unprecedented honesty turned the scandal into a political asset.
Two years after the election, the first presidential marriage to occur in the White House united Grover Cleveland and 22-year-old Frances Folsom. The daughter of Oscar Folsom, Cleveland’s law partner, she was the youngest, and many said prettiest, First Lady ever. Cleveland had looked after her in the years following her father’s death. He once confided to his sister that he was “waiting for his wife to grow up.” A regular visitor to the Folsom house, Cleveland had taken young Frances toys, once surprising her with a pet terrier. While at Wells College, her room was kept bright with flowers from “Uncle Cleve.” Although only 31 guests attended the wedding ceremony, the Chief Executive’s romance captured the public’s fancy. The newspapers wanted to squeeze every possible headline out of the event, and despite efforts to keep the presidential honeymoon plans secret, reporters trailed the newlyweds to Deer Park, Md. The next morning, Cleveland was infuriated to discover his honeymoon lodge surrounded by news-men equipped with powerful field glasses. Marriage had a settling influence on the President, and Frances brought a social elegance to the White House that the bachelor executive had not achieved. Their second child, Esther, was the first baby born in the White House. Their first child was born between Cleveland’s two terms.
Unable to attack Cleveland’s politics successfully, the Republicans kindled rumors about his private life toward the end of his first term. Opponents accused Cleveland of drunken rages that led to wife-beating. Frances repeatedly denied such allegations, standing by her husband until he died of a stomach ailment at age 71.
—T.C.
Supreme Commander
DWIGHT DAVID EISENHOWER (Oct. 14, 1890-Mar. 28, 1969)
HIS FAME: Supreme Allied Commander of the European theater in WWII, Eisenhower masterminded the Normandy invasion and liberated North Africa and Italy; it was to him that the Germans surrendered on May 7, 1945. His wartime military feats and his winning personality made him a popular hero; he capped his career by serving two terms as president of the U.S., 1953-1961.
HIS PERSON: Eisenhower was raised in Abilene, Kans., the son of a poor dairy worker. “Ike,” as he was called, entered West Point after working to help pay for a brother’s college education and graduated in 1915. While stationed in San Antonio, Tex., he met Mamie Geneva Doud, who was vacationing there with her parents. The young couple was married in 1916. One month later Ike put his arms around his new wife and said, “Mamie, there’s one thing you must understand. My country comes first and always will. You come second.” The couple had two children, David Dwight, who died young, and John Sheldon Doud, born in 1923. As a professional officer, Eisenhower never remained in one post very long; by the time he became president, he had moved 34 times, serving in posts in Panama, France, the Philippines and elsewhere. But none of these assignments seems to have changed his provincial outlook—the French were always “frogs” to Ike. In the peacetime army, his rise through the ranks was painfully slow; he was only a colonel at the outbreak of WWII. But his singular diplomatic gifts, including a marked skill at cards, won him rapid promotion during the war, with some assistance from friends like Generals George Marshall and Douglas MacArthur. Promoted for his ability to put strategic theory into action, Eisenhower always allowed himself free time to play bridge and read pulp magazines. As a general and as president, he delegated as much work as he could.
Eisenhower and Mamie in the beginning
His domestic life was far from tranquil. Mamie, the favorite daughter of a wealthy Denver meat-packer, often refused to live in army housing at distant outposts. She later cited squalid living conditions as the reason. Ike once had to protect her from an attacking bat by lunging at it with his dress sword, “just like Douglas Fairbanks,” she said. The death from scarlet fever of their beloved first son, “Icky,” was a blow from which they never fully recovered; they drif
ted apart as Ike was shuttled from post to post. During WWII, their separation for over two years while Ike led the Allies to victory in Europe prompted bitter correspondence (“please try to see me in something besides a despicable light,” he pleaded; “… you don’t really think of me as such a black-hearted creature as your language implies”).
After the war there was less moving around. The marriage settled down and Ike became involved in civilian politics, seeking and winning two terms as president. In office, Ike steered a moderate-conservative course and tried to leave as much time open for golf as he could. When chipmunks disturbed his putting on the White House lawn, he had them box-trapped and carted away. He left the White House in 1961, retiring to his farm near Gettysburg, where he died nine years later, following a heart attack. Mamie was by his side.
LOVE LIFE: As a young man Ike had a reputation as a woman hater; wife Mamie once said that this made him intriguing, and added that he was a “bruiser,” being well built and handsome. As a military hero during WWII he still retained some of those qualities and won the heart of Kay Summersby, an aristocratic young Irish woman who served as his staff driver. “His kisses absolutely unraveled me,” Summersby wrote afterwards. “Hungry, strong, demanding.” Their affair, hotly denied by the Eisenhower family, was unconsummated because the general was impotent, according to Summersby’s memoirs. After an attempt at lovemaking, the general reportedly confessed, “It’s too late.” On another occasion Ike told her his marriage to Mamie “killed something in me. Not all at once, but little by little. For years I never thought of making love, and when I did … I failed.” However, ghostwriter Sigrid Hedin says that Summersby told her that Ike was not totally impotent, although Summersby had to teach him about lovemaking. But Kay loved him: “I wanted to hold him … I wanted to lie on some grassy lawn and see those broad shoulders above me, feel that hard body against mine.” According to Harry Truman, Eisenhower wrote to General Marshall right after the war, asking to be relieved of duty so he could divorce Mamie and marry Kay. Truman said that Marshall sent a sizzling reply to the effect that, if Eisenhower ever did such a thing, Marshall would personally “bust” him out of the army and make his life hell.
Eisenhower was not about to let romance ruin his budding political career. But the aborted affair haunted the general and his family for years to come and would have surfaced in the 1952 election had Truman not destroyed the incriminating Marshall-Eisenhower correspondence. Ike and Mamie went on to share a king-sized, pink-ruffled bed during their White House years, though it was doubtful that sleep in a pink bedroom was pleasant for the general, who had once changed his suite in Claridge’s of London because the bedroom was “whorehouse pink.”
QUIRKS: While Mamie later claimed, “Ike took care of the office, I took care of the house,” she knew so little about housekeeping when they were first married that Ike had to do the cooking and cleaning. To save money when they were living on an officer’s pay of $100 a month, Ike also hemmed her dresses and showed enough skill with a needle to perk up a frock.
—J.A.M.
The Indiscreet President
WARREN G. HARDING (Nov. 2, 1865-Aug. 2, 1923)
HIS FAME: The 29th president of the U.S., Harding led the country during the restless years following WWI. Elected by the widest popular margin recorded up to that time, he was the only president to state that he lacked the stature for such an office and that he didn’t want the job.
HIS PERSON: Born in Blooming Grove, O., the son of a farmer turned doctor, Harding attended Ohio Central College, where he showed ability in public speaking and writing. After a brief stint as a schoolteacher, he purchased the Marion Daily Star, an unsuccessful small-town newspaper. The young publisher caught the attention of Florence Kling DeWolfe, an unattractive divorcée with one child and the daughter of the wealthiest man in Marion. The strong-willed Florence pursued Harding with a vengeance until he married her in 1891. Florence, a shrewd businesswoman, took the reins of the newspaper into her own hands, and its circulation soon increased. Harding was then able to devote more time to the community, and he became an important figure in local organizations and fraternal orders. He allied himself with the powerful Ohio political machine and was elected state senator in 1898 and U.S. senator in 1914. When the time came to select a presidential candidate, Harding’s political cronies in the Republican party knew that he was their man: a middle-of-the-road midwesterner whom war-weary Americans would rally around. Strikingly handsome and with an imposing stature, he looked the part. But most important, he was easily manipulated. He was decidedly lax in supervising his political appointees, many of whom were personal friends. By 1923 the gross misconduct in his administration had surfaced. The Teapot Dome scandal involved California and Wyoming oil reserves, which Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall secretly leased—in return for $400,000 in bribes—to oil barons Henry F. Sinclair and Edward L. Doheny. While Harding was not personally involved, the news of such corruption overwhelmed him. He became ill and died in San Francisco after eating spoiled shellfish. Some speculated that he was murdered, but no autopsy was performed and the cause of death was officially recorded as a sudden stroke.
Harding and his wife, Florence
LOVE LIFE: Harding’s character was best summed up by his father: “If you were a girl, Warren, you’d be in the family way all the time. You can’t say no.” A relentless womanizer, Harding’s lecherous desires led him from pleasure palaces to clandestine rendezvous, while his wife was left brooding over his infidelities. He was not physically attracted to Florence Harding, and it was common knowledge among their friends that Harding sought sexual fulfillment outside his home. The couple’s domestic life was a dramatic cat-and-mouse game. She spied on him and had him followed, castigating him with her evidence, while he remained impenitent, carrying on two long-term love affairs with women from Marion, O. The first of these women, Mrs. Carrie Phillips, the beautiful wife of a prominent local department store owner and a friend of the Harding family, was said by Warren’s intimates to have been the most important love of his live. Before Harding became president, the two couples traveled together extensively and their friendship appeared innocent. Eventually Mr. Phillips discovered the love affair, and when downtown Marion was decorated in bunting the day Harding’s presidential campaign opened, Phillips’ store remained conspicuously bare. Throughout the 15-year liaison, which continued until 1920, Harding wrote ardent love letters, clumsily describing his lover’s physical attributes and his strong sexual urges. In a letter dated Christmas, 1915, headed “The Seventh Anniversary,” he included this poem:I love you more than all the world
Possession wholly imploring
Mid passion I am oftime whirled
Oftimes admire—adoring
Oh, God! If fate would only give
Us privilege to love and live!
Carrie saved all of his letters, using them for blackmail when he refused to divorce his wife and marry her. In 1920 the Republican National Committee paid Carrie Phillips $20,000 and guaranteed her a monthly stipend of $2,000 as long as Harding held public office.
While Harding was still a U.S. senator, he began an affair with Nan Britton, the daughter of an old family friend. He had developed a more than paternal interest in her when he was in his mid-40s and she was a flirtatious 13-year-old, physically mature for her age and so obsessed with winning Harding’s attentions that Mrs. Harding asked Nan’s mother to restrain her from climbing on Harding’s lap, and to stop her from following him around town. When the pretty, voluptuous young girl finished college, Harding saw to it that she secured a secretarial job in New York. Unlike his clandestine behavior with Carrie, his conduct with Nan was extremely indiscreet. He met her regularly in New York and Washington hotel rooms, tucking $30 into her silk stocking during their first rendezvous. He wrote to her on Senate Chamber stationery, and after he became president he entertained her intimately at the White House, having sexual intercourse with her in a closet on one occasion
and barely escaping a confrontation with his wife. In January, 1919, Nan became pregnant and later gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth Ann Christian. Nan claimed that Harding was the father, and he provided $500 a month for the child’s support until his death. When the Harding family refused to recognize the deceased Harding’s paternity, Nan sought other means of supporting her child. She published her memoirs, detailing her intimacy with the late President. As no publisher would risk a lawsuit by printing her story, The President’s Daughter was published privately by the “Elizabeth Ann League,” which Nan formed to sponsor the cause of unwed mothers and their children. Nan Britton’s last known place of residence was Chicago.
—L.A.B.
The Philandering President
JOHN F. KENNEDY (May 29, 1917-Nov. 22, 1963)
The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People Page 48