A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [1]
The submissive Mrs. Kendall, full of questions she did not dare ask, could not help wondering if Baby Jack’s mother, this Maria Halpin, would one day appear at their door.
Twelve days after Jack came into Minnie Kendall’s life, she gave birth to her son, William Harrison Kendall.
Mrs. Kendall nursed Jack and William together, and raised them like brothers. Overtime, the sore on Jack’s head healed, and he was growing into a handsome little toddler the Kendalls came to love as their own. With the extra money coming in, they moved to a nicer place on Union Street, in Buffalo proper, and did their best to “hide the traces” of Jack’s existence.
One morning, Dr. King and his wife, Sarah, William Kendall’s sister, showed up at the Kendalls’ door. They told Mrs. Kendall to immediately gather all of Jack’s things. They were taking him downtown—“to its father’s office.” Mrs. Kendall “rigged the child up” and climbed into a carriage for the trip to the law firm of Bass, Cleveland & Bissell in downtown Buffalo.
Everyone was crowded into Grover Cleveland’s second-floor law office when an extraordinary scene took place. A woman Mrs. Kendall had never seen before suddenly came in, ran toward her, and “snatched the child out of my arms without saying a word to me.” So this was Baby Jack’s mother, the mysterious Maria Halpin, Mrs. Kendall thought. It seemed to her that Maria was frantic—even “crazy” with grief.
Maria looked at her son, whom she called Oscar, now fast asleep in her arms.
“Oh, my baby, open your eyes and let me see them,” she whispered. “Oh, my precious baby, why don’t you open your eyes once more?”
Maria kept speaking this way to the baby until Grover Cleveland, his face twisted into what Mrs. Kendall called a “rough expression,” like an angry fist, said to Maria, “Give the child up to Mrs. Kendall.” Maria Halpin was crying—“as though her heart would break,” while Cleveland, his voice harsh and insistent, was repeatedly ordering her to turn the baby over to Mrs. Kendall.
Mrs. Kendall saw Cleveland give Dr. King a “sly wink” and heard him say, “It is all right, Doctor. Have a cigar, Doc.” It upset her to see them so chummy, laughing, while Maria was in tears. She felt nothing but sympathy for the woman.
When it was time for everyone to leave the office, a veil was placed over the baby’s face, and Mrs. Kendall, with her brother-in-law, walked out carrying him. The purpose of the gathering now became apparent to Mrs. Kendall: “It was to assure Maria Halpin that her child was alive and well.”
Outside the law offices, on Swan Street, Mrs. Kendall remarked, “How much the child looks like his father.” Before this eventful afternoon she had never heard of Grover Cleveland.
Dr. King lifted the veil and studied the baby’s face. “Yes, it does look like its father.”
1
BUFFALO
WHEN GROVER CLEVELAND turned seventeen, the time had come for him to go forth into the world. The year was 1854, and he was living in the tiny hamlet of Holland Patent, New York, about nine miles north of Utica; but it was too inconsequential a place to offer much of a future, so he tried Utica and Syracuse, but nobody seemed to be hiring. It was an exasperating time. Grover passed the evening hours studying Latin to keep his mind alert, but he had to admit to his sister Mary, “I am kind of fooling away my time here.”
Grover had a pet name for Mary—Molly; she was the big sister he could unburden his heart to. There were nine Cleveland children in all. Stephen Grover Cleveland (he dropped the “Stephen” early on) was born on March 18, 1837, the fifth child of Ann Neal Cleveland and the Reverend Richard Falley Cleveland. Grover was closest to Mary and his big brother William, a student at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City, but William had not written in a while, and what he did write said very little. Grover sometimes found dealing with William very frustrating.