A Secret Life: The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland

by Charles Lachman

  The pure malevolence of King’s interview reached the peak of cynicism when, in so many words, he accused the late Oscar Folsom of fathering Maria’s child. Folsom made the perfect fall guy. He was dead and couldn’t defend himself. Libel laws offered no protection for the departed.

  The World interview received national attention, even from Republican newspapers, which found the prurient details too delicious to ignore. Not only was Maria Halpin a shamed woman, she was also a harlot. Now everything made sense.

  To everyone, that is, except Maria Halpin.

  11

  FINDING MARIA

  SOMETIME AROUND AUGUST 1, a Western Union telegram was delivered to the offices of the New Rochelle Pioneer newspaper. Addressed to the publisher, Charles Banks, who was an absentee owner, it ended up on the desk of the paper’s office manager.

  The telegram came from a Republican Party contact in Pittsburgh, a hotbed of anti-Cleveland sentiment.

  Interview Mrs. Maria Halpin who is said to have had child by Gov. Cleveland telegraph us before two o’clock this afternoon.

  The name Maria Halpin was instantly familiar to the office manager. In the two weeks since the publication of “A Terrible Tale,” her name had become synonymous with the scandal that was threatening the presidential candidacy of Grover Cleveland. Everyone wanted to know what Maria Halpin had to say, but no one had been able to find her. The office manager was stunned to read that, not only had she been found—she was living right there in New Rochelle of all places, at the home of James Albert Seacord, a local carpenter. The telegram urgently asked Charles Banks to approach Mrs. Halpin and obtain an interview in which she would give a full “endorsement” of the revelations as published in the Buffalo Evening Telegraph.

  New Rochelle had an interesting history. It was founded in 1688 by Protestants fleeing persecution in France. The Huguenot colonists were artisans and craftsmen from the French coastal city of La Rochelle. In this way, the village in the New World came to be called la Nouvelle-Rochelle. Even in 1884, New Rochelle retained an exotic distinctiveness. French was still spoken by many of the shopkeepers and tradesmen who were direct descendants of the original settlers. The village was also growing into a desirable town to live in for people who worked in New York City. The great showman George M. Cohan would in the not-too-distant future immortalize New Rochelle’s easy proximity to Manhattan with the song, “Forty-five Minutes from Broadway.”

  As luck would have it, the office manager who opened the telegram was a die-hard Democrat. Rather than hand-deliver this remarkable news about Maria Halpin to Charles Banks, he took the telegram down the block to the offices of a New Rochelle lawyer, Charles H. Roosevelt. Unlike his distinguished relative Theodore Roosevelt, this Roosevelt was a Democrat.

  Roosevelt read the telegram. He knew James Seacord. Everyone in New Rochelle did. Seacord lived right on Main Street. He was a sixty-nine-year-old descendant from the line of Ambroise Sicard, one of the town’s original Huguenot settlers. The spelling of the name had been anglicized over the decades to Secor, Seacor, Secord, and finally to Seacord. Roosevelt sent a messenger to Seacord’s carpentry shop to tell him that Charles Roosevelt wished to see him on a matter of urgent business. James Seacord dropped everything and went right over.

  Roosevelt immediately came to the point and asked Seacord whether Maria Halpin was living at his home. He responded that she was. She was the niece of his wife Harriet, a seamstress who had run a little dressmaking business out of the Seacord house. The Seacords had been childless when they took Maria in to live with them when she was a teenager. She was like a daughter to them, and under Aunt Harriet’s tutelage, she had learned dressmaking skills. She had also learned to speak French in New Rochelle.

  Seacord told the lawyer that Maria had been trying to deal with her troubles in Buffalo when he and his wife offered her sanctuary in their tranquil little village where no one would know of her shame. Harriet Seacord had died the previous November, and Maria was now living alone with Uncle James, serving as his housekeeper and keeping the dressmaking business going to make a little money on the side. Maria (Seacord affectionately referred to her as “Rittie”) was now a woman close to fifty years of age, “well preserved” and dignified. She had been living a “quiet, decorous, unobtrusive” life as Seacord’s housekeeper and always conducted herself with propriety.

  Charles Roosevelt took it all in then advised Seacord to quit work for the day, return home immediately, and stay there until Roosevelt communicated with him again. In the meantime, he told Seacord, Mrs. Halpin was to remain in “strict seclusion.” No one except for Roosevelt was to be permitted access to the house. As an inducement to follow these directives, Roosevelt said he would guarantee Seacord “liberal compensation.”

  James Seacord left the office bewildered by this turn of events. In the meantime, Roosevelt went over all the information he had gleaned from their conversation. His first order of business was to reach out to Lawrence D. Huntington, a wealthy Wall Street broker who was chairman of the Westchester County Democratic Committee. He would know what to do. Roosevelt went to Huntington’s house and informed him that he had Maria Halpin in his back pocket. Time was of the essence. There was no telling when Charles Banks might learn that his telegram had been purloined. Huntington arranged for a telegram to be sent to the right people in Albany. In quick order, he got a response. It reinforced the absolute necessity that the Halpin woman be kept under lock and key.

  The next day, a distinguished visitor arrived in New Rochelle. It was Wilson Bissell, Grover Cleveland’s confidant and former law partner. Bissell and Huntington were joined by another Westchester County Democrat, former state assemblyman William H. Catlin, who lived in the nearby village of Port Chester. Bissell told the men that he had come to New Rochelle for the sole purpose of convincing Mrs. Halpin to issue a public statement “pronouncing the story of her alleged relations with the governor a base fabrication.” A plan of action quickly came together, with Catlin in charge of coordinating everything on the local level. Pulling it off was going to be a delicate business.

  The following day, another distinguished visitor from Buffalo was seen in New Rochelle. It was Reverend George Ball. The whistle-blower had learned from his Republican friends that Maria Halpin had been found alive in New Rochelle. Ball had come down to speak with the woman personally. His first stop was the law office of Charles Banks, for a “consultation.” Banks was a prosperous lawyer, the senior partner in the Westchester County firm of Banks and Henderson. When he had taken ownership of the Pioneer two years before, he had announced that henceforth he would run the newspaper “in the interests of the Republican Party.” So his political bent was evident to everyone who read his newspaper. Through Banks, the Pioneer had become a reliable puppet of the state and local Republican political machine. It had been three days since the telegram about Maria had been sent to the publisher of the New Rochelle Pioneer, and nothing had happened. When Ball told Banks the purpose of his visit, Banks must have been shocked to learn of the existence of the telegram—and the treachery of his office staff. Undoubtedly, heads would soon be rolling at the Pioneer. Ball took his leave, telling Banks that he wished to visit with Mrs. Halpin alone, and set for James Seacord’s house.

  He found the house on Main Street. It was, as the expression went, a “plain address”—an unpretentious New England colonial made of timber and clapboard siding, with a picket fence surrounding the property. It was a fitting home for a humble village carpenter. Ball walked up four steps, opened the gate, and knocked on the front door. James Seacord opened it, and Ball introduced himself. Seacord shook his head. There was no way he was letting anyone see Maria. The two elderly gents eyed each other warily. Ball tried to explain who he was and the essential role he was playing in this national crisis. He said he was there to help. But Seacord was not hearing any of it. The carpenter stood his ground, blocking Ball’s path, and even though Ball used all his gifts as a communicator, Seacord woul
d not step aside. At last, Ball turned away in “disgust” and took the next train out of town. Irritated beyond words by his encounter with Seacord, he was nevertheless more convinced than ever “of the truth of the story.”

  Not knowing whom to trust, Seacord was mistrustful of everyone. He was staring out the window, looking up and down the street, when he saw some curious activities. There were men who didn’t look like they were from New Rochelle positioned at the corner. They seemed “very sharp” and seemed to be keeping an eagle eye on the comings and goings at the Seacord house. When the carpenter confronted them, one man claimed to be an “antiquarian” interested in researching the gravestones in the church cemetery next to Seacord’s property; another acknowledged that he was a detective. Obviously, Maria Halpin was under twenty-four-hour surveillance.

  Inside the house, Maria tried to make sense of the confounding turn her life had taken. This was a nightmare. Grover Cleveland was the Democratic nominee for president, and the entire country was now aware of her disgrace. It had been ten years since she had given birth to Oscar Folsom Cleveland and eight years since she had been run out of the city of Buffalo, three hundred miles to the northwest. As for the account in “A Terrible Tale,” Maria had read it; and when a New Rochelle neighbor asked her whether the stories were true, she answered, “They are, and God knows they are true too.”

  Maria’s nerves were shot to hell, and she asked Dr. Bevin, her New Rochelle physician, to do what he could to calm her. Her eldest son, Frederick Halpin, went to the Seacord house to lend his mother support. Frederick was now a fine young man of twenty-one, working for the Erie Lackawanna Railway, but with aspirations of working his way up to locomotive engineer. He stood about six foot two, with a muscular build and his mother’s dark good looks. He showed her a telegram he had just received from Albany, from William Hudson, Cleveland’s political counselor. In it, Hudson asked Frederick to meet with him at the Hoffman House in Manhattan.

  The Hoffman House was a handsome Italian Renaissance hotel at Broadway and 24th Street. It took up an entire city block and was centrally located near all the principal New York City theaters and retail department stores. At the time it was also serving as national campaign headquarters of the Democratic Party. The food was impeccable—as good as Delmonico’s—and the wine cellar was reputed to be the finest in Manhattan. The Hoffman House had a café for the gentlemen, a separate dining room for the ladies, and a seventy-foot-long carved bar paneled in mahogany that spread out a “swell” free buffet seven days a week. It was said to be the bar where the Manhattan cocktail had been concocted, though several other swanky saloons asserted the same claim.

  Grover Cleveland had recently appointed Hudson to the New York State Railroad Commission, so the former political reporter for the Brooklyn Eagle finally had a real function in state government. But his true value was taking on these sensitive and sometimes dirty political missions. Hudson was waiting for Frederick in Room 210. Young Halpin disdained Hudson on sight; after all, he was there as the representative of the man who had violated Frederick’s mother and had her committed to an insane asylum. It was a thorny conversation to say the least, and Hudson, having found it impossible to get past Frederick’s personal antagonism, got down to business.

  Hudson said it was in Maria Halpin’s best interests to issue a public denial of the allegations concerning her relationship with Grover Cleveland. He took a sheet of paper and wrote out a statement that he said he would like Maria to sign. If she did, according to Frederick’s recollection of the meeting, he would be offered a job working for the commissioner of the New York State Board of Public Works, and his mother would receive the extraordinary sum of ten thousand dollars. Hudson handed the statement he’d drafted to Frederick:

  I have read the statement published in the Buffalo Telegram [sic] of the date of _____, concerning myself and Mr. Cleveland, a statement which is largely false and malicious. Shortly after the death of my husband, some twelve years ago, I removed to Buffalo with my children. Some time after that I met Mr. Cleveland and made his acquaintance, which acquaintance extended over a period of some months. During that time I received from Mr. Cleveland uniform kindness and courtesy. I have now and have always had a high esteem for Mr. Cleveland. I have not seen him in seven or eight years.

  Frederick read the statement, not surprised to find it a fraught with lies and falsehoods, but he knew it was his duty to bring it to his mother’s attention. An enormous sum of money was at stake, and she would have to decide what to do. Frederick returned to New Rochelle with the statement in hand.

  William Hudson wasn’t far behind young Halpin. Now that the Cleveland camp had established a direct line of communication with Maria, nothing could keep him away from New Rochelle. On August 7, when Hudson got off the train at the New Rochelle junction, former State Assemblyman Catlin was waiting for him. They had lunch at the country club. For security purposes, Catlin introduced Hudson as his friend “Louis Delafield.” (Hudson’s identity only later came to be exposed because he made the blunder of traveling with a free train pass, issued in his real name by the office of the New York State Railroad Commission.)

  After lunch, Hudson and Catlin climbed aboard a one-horse carriage and drove into New Rochelle where they were dropped off at Charles Roosevelt’s law offices. There they waited for darkness to settle on the village. Then the three of them—Hudson, Catlin, and Roosevelt—went to the home of James Seacord.

  Roosevelt knocked on the door. Having developed a trusting relationship with Maria, she let him into the house. Hudson and Catlin remained outside under a street lamp, checking a railroad timetable for the next available train out of New Rochelle. A few minutes later, Maria Halpin emerged from the house in a fetching outfit, wearing a heavy veil and carrying a satchel. She got into the carriage and was driven to the New Rochelle station where she caught the 8:07 p.m. to Manhattan. A New Rochelle police officer named Kane made sure she boarded without being “molested” (in other words, no reporters or Republicans were present). Hudson accompanied her on the train, and when they pulled into Grand Central Depot in New York City, a coach was waiting for them. It was last seen rattling down 42nd Street, heading for the West Side, destination unknown.

  When James Seacord got home, he found Maria gone. She had left him a note, which he found on a table under the lamp. It was addressed to Uncle Albert—Albert being his middle name.

  Don’t worry, I am going away.

  It was signed, Rittie.

  Word had gotten out that Maria Halpin was living in New Rochelle, and James Seacord found himself in the middle of a 19th-century media frenzy. After Seacord had told all the reporters who’d come knocking that Maria Halpin had “gone away for a few days on a visit,” speculation swept the country that she had been kidnapped. Even reputable newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune expressed concern for Maria’s physical safety, reporting the bogus rumor that once again she had been thrown into a lunatic asylum against her will.

  With Maria under wraps, Grover Cleveland’s people were free to tarnish the woman as a prostitute and drunk. Democratic publications gleefully slammed Maria to the brink of malicious libel. A profile of Maria published in the New York Mercury depicted her as the village vixen of New Rochelle who, in her youth, the newspaper said had attracted a “host of admirers.” She was a “magnetic girl . . . full of life . . . with a free and jolly disposition . . . the village belle.” Even in middle age, according to the Mercury profile, Maria was said to possess bewitching charm—she was a woman with a wealth of dark hair, a pale complexion, and a “strange, fascinating power” over men; in other words, a woman with loose morals.

  The pro-Cleveland Boston Globe claimed to have obtained an exclusive sit-down interview with Maria from inside James Seacord’s house. According to this mendacious account, “Mrs. Halpin is evidently an epileptic, and she has every symptom of insanity. Her eyes are glassy; she cannot look her questioner in the face; she has the trembling twitching of th
e muscles and the sudden starts at every unexpected noise peculiar to insane persons.”

  The preposterous article went on to describe how the front doorbell rang and Maria Halpin “sprang to her feet with a shudder and trembling like an aspen leaf rushed to the hall and frantically called out, ‘Mr. Seacord! Mr. Seacord!’”

  It quoted Maria as saying, “I have been very sick, and am very sick now. I will not live six months I know.”

  The entire story was an invention, published to debase Maria Halpin and raise doubts about her sanity. “I hope that Mr. Cleveland will be elected, and I would not want to put anything in the way of his success” went one fabricated quotation. “I do not wish Mr. Cleveland any harm. I have no quarrel with Mr. Cleveland. He is a good, plain, honest-hearted, nice man who has always been friendly to me and used me kindly. It is a shame that the newspapers should have issued such lies. I would not harm a hair on the head of Mr. Cleveland.”

  Sadly, with the scandal at fever pitch, even Maria’s family sought to distance themselves from the scarlet woman. Her father, the retired police officer Robert Hovenden, was found living at 195 Ainslie Street in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. In his eighties, infirm, and going blind from cataracts, until the publication of “A Terrible Tale,” he had known nothing of the ordeal Maria had suffered when she was in Buffalo. The fact that he had a grandson named Oscar whose father was Governor Grover Cleveland was news to him.

  When a reporter from the Brooklyn Times interviewed Hovenden at his home, he defended the family honor: “I am known in this city and no one can point their finger at my children here.” He said he had lost contact with Maria when she moved to Buffalo following the death of her husband. “Afterwards, we learned that she was obliged to go out to work. She was, we heard, engaged as a forewoman in a millinery establishment. We heard from her occasionally but she rarely visited us. I wish she had remained home with me. This terrible trouble might then have been averted.” Then he broke into sobs.