A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [123]
In the meantime, Cleveland had to adjust to life as the president-elect. He found the social demands on his time grating. He woke up one morning to the irritating sight of a Buffalo socialite who had invited herself to breakfast. She was there to insist that Cleveland have dinner with her family before he left for Washington. “Did you ever see such work?” Cleveland asked Bissell. One night in late November, he arrived home to find that a grateful citizen had sent him a sweet-tempered black Newfoundland dog. Cleveland sent the hound back by express rail at his own expense, saying he was “averse” to accepting gifts from admirers. Cleveland saw the next four years as a “dreadful self-inflicted penance for the good of my country.”
“I can see no pleasure in it and no satisfaction . . . ”
He couldn’t get Buffalo out of his head. It wasn’t just George Ball. He took the fact that the city had turned on him in the presidential election as a personal betrayal.
“I am overwhelmed with all kinds of things and perplexed more than I can tell you, but nothing is so annoying to me as my thoughts connected with Buffalo.
“I feel this moment I would never go there again if I could avoid it,” he confessed to Bissell. “Elected president of the United States, I feel I have no home at my home.” He had to shut down his Buffalo bachelor apartment, but he so dreaded going back, he wondered whether he could conduct his business in one day and leave before anyone knew he was there. They were “scum”—this “dirty and contemptible portion of the Buffalo population.”
“I wish you’d try to put yourself in my place and imagine how all this thing seems to me.”
It was a bitterly cold and lonely Christmas Day for the president-elect. The Folsom women had gone, leaving him without companionship except that of his sisters’.
“I wish you a very ‘Merry Christmas’ from the bottom of my heart,” Cleveland wrote Bissell. He had apparently sent Bissell a wool sweater for Christmas several days before—a gift that Cleveland said could not possibly match what Bissell meant to him. “If I had the world, I’d give you half of it at least.”
The two men again exchanged correspondence on New Year’s Eve. Bissell’s letter arrived first. Cleveland retreated to his den to write a reply.
It was time for Cleveland to set about the task of selecting a cabinet and reading up on the great policy issues of the day. He was determined to take Dan Lamont with him to the nation’s capital. That other Dan—Daniel Manning—would be rewarded for his loyalty with his appointment as secretary of the treasury. Cleveland had another critical choice to make. He would be the second president in American history, after James Buchanan, to enter the White House a bachelor. But even a bachelor required a first lady.
At Wells College, Frances Folsom was giddy with excitement. She had received a special invitation to attend the inauguration of Grover Cleveland, and she was determined, come March, to be at the ceremony—even if it meant missing exams.
In Buffalo, George Ball could not let go. The election had left his reputation in tatters. In the not-too-distant future, he would seek his vengeance.
In New Rochelle, Maria Halpin passed into history, her name forever soiled. Like George Ball, she was not yet through with Grover Cleveland.
15
ROSE
PRESIDENT-ELECT CLEVELAND CONSIDERED naming his even-tempered married sister Mary Hoyt his First Lady, but in the end, he decided that his youngest sister, Rose, would be more suitable.
Rose Elizabeth Cleveland lived in Holland Patent, nestled in the foothills of Oneida County, about a dozen miles from the city of Utica. It was a charming