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

by Charles Lachman

  Frances did not move from her place on the ledge for a moment, and only after the entire procession had passed by did the president look up. Frances acknowledged him with a coquettish little wave of her dainty handkerchief and he, in turn, doffed his hat to her. That fleeting encounter was the first time they had seen each other in fourteen months. Modesty required that they not be seen together in public. Cleveland was careful to observe all the proprieties of Victorian courtship; his engagement to his former ward was already fraught with worry, and the slightest breach in etiquette now could lead to embarrassing questions. Later that day, at 3:30 p.m., Cleveland met his betrothed face-to-face at Gilsey House, where they could greet each other with a warm embrace. That evening, they dined with Emma Folsom, Ben Folsom, and the Lamonts.

  The matter of the honeymoon had been put on the back burner, but now Frances showed Cleveland a letter she had received that day from Jennie Davis, the daughter of the former U.S. senator from West Virginia who had befriended her in Italy. Jennie had written to remind Frances of her promise to honeymoon in Deer Park, Maryland, should she ever marry President Cleveland. That was good enough for Cleveland. Deer Park it would be. It just so happened that the trout fishing in Deer Creek was excellent.

  At eleven o’clock, Cleveland took his leave. He had a train to catch back to Washington. He was getting married in just fourteen hours.

  The next morning, Frances did not get up until ten. She had a late breakfast with her mother in a private parlor at the Gilsey House and caught up with her correspondence. When it was time to leave for Washington, the full concierge services of the hotel were put at her disposal. Eleven Saratoga trunks stenciled with the name Folsom were piled onto a wagon for the trip while the other trunks were sent off to 394 Main Street in Buffalo where her mother lived. There were so many hatboxes, it was difficult to gather them all. Deluxe accommodations welcomed them at every step. The president of the railroad had made available his personal drawing-room car, now hitched to the rear of a four-car train. Not taking any chances, the railroad’s most dependable engineer was put at the controls. The train lumbered out of the station at nine twenty that night, and at five twenty the next morning, Frances, Emma, and Ben (wearing a foppish white derby) were in Washington. Lamont was there to greet them and escorted them all to the White House where, in a gentle rain, Frances bounded up the steps and crossed the grand threshold of the presidential mansion like a “radiant vision of young springtime.” She was shown to the south room where she dressed for her wedding before Dolly Madison’s mirror.

  Cleveland was still focusing on every detail of the ceremony. He had personally written out the invitations: “I am to be married Wednesday evening at seven o’clock at the White House to Miss Folsom. It will be a very quiet affair and I will be extremely gratified at your attendance on the occasion.” Lamont was a big help. Working with the conductor of the Marine Band, John Philip Souza, he timed out the exact number of steps Frances would have to take down the staircase to reach the correct position in the Blue Room at the climax of the “Wedding March.” Sousa, the great composer of “Stars and Stripes Forever,” was also ordered to submit his musical selections for the president’s approval. When Cleveland saw that the title of one number was the quartet, “The Student of Love,” a Sousa standard, he flinched and ordered Sousa to make a change. “Tell Sousa he can play that quartet, but he had better omit the name of it,” he told Lamont, concerned that the spicy title might fan any lurking flames of derision. Rather than censure his own work, Sousa decided to simply omit “The Student of Love” from the evening’s performance.

  The time for the wedding was now at hand, and in her last hours as First Lady, Rose was to receive every guest as they made their way into the Blue Room. Cleveland’s brother William and his sister Mary were also there, and from Buffalo, just two old friends had been invited, Wilson Bissell and the lawyer Sherman S. Rogers. All the members of the cabinet came with their spouses, with the exception of the curmudgeonly attorney general, Augustus Hill Garland, who detested all social functions and refused to attend any gathering that required him to wear a dress suit. Ben Folsom was there of course, and Dan Lamont and his wife. Rose had invited a Miss Nelson who, now that Annie Van Vechten was out of the picture, was the First Lady’s steady companion. In all, there were just twenty-eight guests.

  At seven fifteen, a hush fell over the gathering. Sousa lifted his baton, and the scarlet-and-gold bedecked members of the Marine Band launched into the “Wedding March.” With Frances, President Cleveland came down the staircase—not only the groom but also the father figure giving the bride away. He wore a fitted black broadcloth suit. A low-cut vest displayed a wide expanse of dress shirt closed by three flat white studs. His shoes were patent leather. On his left hand he wore a white kid glove, so-called because it was made from young goat leather. In his right hand he held the other glove. There was no best man or maid of honor.

  Sousa kept his eye on the couple, and when Cleveland and Frances reached the center of the Blue Room, the Reverend Byron Sunderland stepped forward to greet them. The president nodded, and at the signal Sousa directed the band to cease playing. There was a moment of silent prayer, then Sunderland, speaking resolutely, said, “If you desire to be united in marriage, you will signify the same by joining your right hands.” With his ungloved hand, Cleveland took his bride’s pretty little hand in his own.

  “Grover, do you take this woman whom you hold by the hand to be your lawful wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of wedlock? Do you promise to love her, cherish, comfort, and keep her in sickness and in health, in joy and in sorrow, and forsaking all others, keep you only unto her so long as you both shall live?”

  “I do,” said the president.

  Sunderland recited the same oath to Frances, who responded in a low but clear voice, “I do.”

  Sunderland pronounced them husband and wife. Then William Cleveland, who had been standing behind and to the left of Sunderland, came forward to offer a benediction for life everlasting. With those tender words, Emma Folsom was the first to kiss her daughter on the cheek, the moment both sweet and sad for Emma. Rose and Mary offered their congratulations, Rose with tears in her eyes. Ben Folsom was next, followed by Secretary of the Treasury Daniel Manning, first among equals, and then the other members of Cleveland’s cabinet and their wives. Frances offered kisses to just the wives. Sousa’s band struck up a march, and President and the new Mrs. Cleveland led the way into the East Room where the guests spent just a few moments in conversation before Cleveland, escorting his wife, ushered everyone into the family dining room. At the supper table, the newlyweds stood in front of a huge wedding cake. Frances took a pearl-handled knife and buried it into the rich cake. It was the signal for the banquet to begin. Champagne glasses were raised to the bride’s health. Cleveland quaffed his drink; Frances, a teetotaler, put her lips to her glass for just a taste. Rose had made sure a bottle of Appollinaris, sparkling water from Germany, would be at her sister-in-law’s place setting, and a grateful Frances emptied an entire glass. In the overheated room, the water, chilled by chunks of ice, was deliciously refreshing. At the plate of each guest was a wedding favor—a box of bonbons. After a simple meal of spring chicken and terrapin, each guest was given another outstanding souvenir: a dainty satin box containing a slice of wedding cake wrapped in silver foil and placed inside a layer of lace. A small card bore the autographs of the bride and groom. On the box, the date had been artistically painted, June 2, 1886.

  Early in the evening, President and Mrs. Cleveland took their leave and went upstairs to the second floor. Cleveland disappeared into his bedroom while Frances andher attendants—her mother and Rose Cleveland—followed her into her sitting room. All the guests remained seated. When Cleveland emerged, he had changed into a black Prince Albert frockcoat. Then Frances came out. Standing there on the landing for everyone to see, she had changed into a deep gray traveling dress and double-breaste
d waistcoat decorated with rows of steel buttons. A magnificent hat lined with velvet and trimmed with picot ribbon and ostrich feathers completed the ensemble. The Clevelands descended the staircase, and all the guests gathered around to bid the couple farewell and good wishes. Emma and Frances said a tearful adieu. Cleveland gently tugged at his bride, saying they were behind schedule. Rose dabbed at a burst of tears that had flooded her eyes as she bid her brother good-bye. The First Couple climbed into a closed carriage that awaited them outside the south balcony, and the horses started off in a shower of rice and old slippers as the guests waved, shouting, “God speed.”

  Everyone lingered for a moment on the balcony and watched the carriage wind its way through the White House grounds without escort then take an unused road up 17th Street to outwit the small army of newspaper reporters who were massed at the southwest entrance in hired cabs, ready to give chase.

  Cleveland and his bride were off to Deer Park, Maryland.

  The honeymoon had begun.

  Maria Halpin also got married, in the year following President Cleveland’s White House wedding. She became a bride for the second time, and her choice of a groom was truly shocking: It was her uncle-in-law, James Albert Seacord, the carpenter in whose house Maria had sought sanctuary after she was run out of Buffalo. Seacord, who was sixty-nine when he married Maria, walked with a stoop and was so frail he could no longer ply his trade. Their twenty-three-year age gap eerily echoed that of Cleveland and Frances. Whether it was true love for Maria or the act of a woman who had nowhere else to go, no one can say. She and Seacord married quietly and moved into a yellow frame cottage on Hudson Street in New Rochelle.

  There had been another milestone worthy of attention—not a marriage, but the demise of a newspaper.

  On the afternoon of August 17, 1885, the staff of the Buffalo Evening Telegraph was shocked to see Ed Butler, the owner of the rival Evening News, in the newsroom. Butler appeared there with his business manager, his brother J. Ambrose Butler. Everyone gathered around.

  “Gentlemen,” Ed Butler said, “I have purchased the Telegraph, and after today, it will be issued from the office of the News.”

  What followed was the wholesale slaughter of the Evening Telegraph staff. Allen Bigelow, the editor, was asked to resign. So were the state editor and the paper’s three top reporters. John Cresswell, the editor responsible for “A Terrible Tale,” had resigned four weeks earlier after the Scripps brothers privately informed him that they were putting the Evening Telegraph on the market. Negotiations had otherwise been conducted in the strictest secrecy, and Cresswell’s brother, Harry, a reporter on the Telegraph’s staff, was now also informed that his services were no longer required. Everyone pulled together and put out one final edition. The lead story was the publication’s own obituary.

  And so the Evening Telegraph ceased to exist. Had the 1884 election gone the other way, it would have gone down in history as the gutsy little newspaper whose exposé had brought about Cleveland’s defeat and ensured Republican rule for another four years. But it’s greatest scoop, “A Terrible Tale,” became its undoing. Advertisers had been running away from the newspaper. No Buffalo business could afford to be associated with a newspaper that topped the president’s enemies list. Circulation had stagnated at ten thousand, and the Telegraph was $70,000 in the hole. Now it had been killed off by Grover Cleveland’s chum, Ed Butler. The sale was absolute and unconditional. It included everything in the building, even the cast metal typeface and the four-cylinder rotary press. The subscription list was folded into the Evening News.

  The first edition of the consolidated newspaper rolled off the presses on August 18, 1885.

  Four weeks after her brother’s marriage to Frances Folsom, Rose Cleveland moved out of the White House. Her era as First Lady had lasted fourteen months. She also left Washington—“simply because her heart was not there.” She was when she departed as she had been when arrived—an enigma. Rose returned to Holland Patent and, in July, published her first novel, a romance titled The Long Run. The central character, Emeline Longworth, seemed to be drawn from the life of Frances Folsom. Emeline was a rich and “haughty beauty” from Philadelphia society who was being courted by a priggish theological student, Rufus Grosheck—shades of Charles Townsend? The book received solid reviews, and not long after, Rose published a collection of essays, George Eliot’s Poetry and Other Studies, in which intriguingly, one of the essays dealt with the life of Joan of Arc. So Rose was reflecting on two great sexually ambiguous historical figures: George Eliot, the pen name of the English novelist Mary Anne Evans; and Joan of Arc, who dressed as a man to conceal her true sex.

  The Cleveland family home in Holland Patent was a humble little cottage, but befitting her new social status, Rose now christened it with a whimsical name, the Weeds. One day in late September 1886, she smelled a whiff of smoke coming from the fireplace and went to sleep thinking that the chimney needed cleaning. At five in the morning, she woke up and realized that her house was on fire. She ran out and sounded the alarm. Volunteers saved the Weeds from total destruction, but it was considerably damaged by smoke and water. It was a double blow because Rose had spent the previous three months renovating the Weeds to make it a proper residence. That all around her lay the ashes of her home was a depressing situation.

  Around this time, Rose was being recruited to serve as editor of the monthly magazine Literary Life. The publisher of Literary Life was Abram P. T. Elder, a colorful Chicago businessman who saw in Rose a way to reap attention for his publication. Elder wrote her effusive letters, offering her the position.

  “Your reception in Chicago would be the greatest literary and social event that has ever taken place in this country,” he told her. Elder’s overbearing language should have alerted Rose that something was amiss with this fellow, but she continued to negotiate the terms of the position.

  Rose drove a hard bargain. She insisted on approving all advertisements and refused to allow her name to appear on the title page or the masthead. Literary Life, she informed Elder, should stand or fall on its merits and not her celebrity. Elder agreed to all her conditions, but he put his foot down when Rose sought to hire her twenty-five-year-old nephew—Reverend William Cleveland’s boy—as her deputy editor. He found young Cleveland to be a “callow youth,” so Rose backed off then finally signed a five-year contract at a good salary—$350 a month.

  Rose and Elder butted heads from day one. When she was sent page proofs for her first issue, she banned all “quack” advertisements for wrinkle removers, beautifying elixirs, and patent medicines. Elder could not believe it; some of those ads ran a full page. He had granted her full control over the editorial content of Literary Life, but he had never imagined she would shrink his bottom line. “I am not publishing the magazine exclusively for the editor’s benefit,” he complained. Elder designed a new title page with the words “Edited by Ms. Cleveland” and sent it to Rose, hoping the classy illustration would appeal to her artistic sensibilities. By return mail came this tart response: “My name shall not appear—this is final.” Then Elder had an inspired notion. He got the idea from seeing Frances Folsom Cleveland’s image adorning so many storefront windows in Chicago. Elder hired an artist to sketch an engraving of Rose for the magazine’s cover. Rose was appalled and again said no.

  “The difference between us is this—I mean what I say—you do not,” she wrote him.

  It didn’t help that Rose lived in an inaccessible village in the interior of New York State. They disagreed on everything, even the little things. Elder considered the Weeds a preposterous name for a residence. It vexed him to be addressing his correspondence to Rose Elizabeth Cleveland, The Weeds, Holland Patent, New York. He made the silly suggestion that perhaps she should consider changing the name.

  “The Weeds it will remain,” Rose responded.

  Then Rose’s attempts to commission works from the most famous writers in America sometimes backfired. In terms of popularity, the
poet John Boyle O’Reilly was Longfellow’s successor, and Rose suggested a fee of twenty dollars for him to write two thousand words. O’Reilly’s blood boiled. He found her offer to be disgraceful and a “humiliation,” even though a cent a word was the going rate for writers working for Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated, two popular magazines of the era.

  In November 1886, Elder went to Holland Patent to work things out. He rang the doorbell at The Weeds, but Rose instructed her maid to refuse him entry. Four months into the job, with both sides weary of the endless hostility, Rose and Elder parted company. Stirring things up right to the end, Elder asserted that Rose was on the verge of a physical and mental collapse.

  “Ms. Cleveland has been in poor health and really unable to attend to the demands made upon her. Then her home at the Weeds was burned and that affected her in a depressing way.”

  He publicly questioned her competence in business and claimed her editorial leadership had plunged his once-profitable magazine into debt. Quoting Tennyson, Rose countered that Elder’s blatherings were half-truths, which were “the worst of lies.” Rose came to believe that Elder had used her fame as a publicity stunt to bring attention to his magazine, and she was probably right. Five years later, the huckster publisher found himself in jail on mail fraud charges.

  President and Mrs. Cleveland came to visit Rose to lift her spirits. The train from Washington rolled into the Utica station at five fifteen on the morning of July 12, 1887. The postmaster from Utica was an old acquaintance, and when Cleveland saw him at the station, he called out, “Hello!” Then the presidential car was uncoupled and switched to the Rome, Watertown and Ogdensburg railroad line. A special engine was at the ready to haul the presidential party twelve miles to Holland Patent. It was good to be home.