A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [124]
Rose was the mistress of the Cleveland homestead and its sole inhabitant. The house was filled with carefully placed family heirlooms: her father’s armchair in the library, her mother’s easy chair in the bedroom, and in the dining room a great mahogany sideboard dating back to the Cleveland clan’s early days in America. A special treasure was the piano her mother Ann Cleveland had once played, and all the parlor furnishings that had been her mother’s were now Rose’s. A visitor would have been hard-pressed to find any evidence of feminine interests or endeavors in Rose’s home—no sewing basket or cookery manuals—but there were plenty of books and literary magazines.
Rose was a creature of rigid habit. She took breakfast at eight and by nine was in her library where she spent the morning reading literature or history; her specialty was the Middle Ages. In the afternoons, even when the weather was harsh, the solitary figure of Rose Cleveland could be seen climbing the surrounding hills, crossing the meadows, or disappearing into the woods, defiant of wind and rain.
The townspeople had known Rose since she was a precocious seven-year-old, the youngest child in the Cleveland family of nine. She had been educated at the Houghton Seminary, taught history and English at a girls’ school in Pennsylvania, and returned to Holland Patent to take care of her ailing mother in Ann Cleveland’s final years. She remained there after Ann’s death in 1882 and built for herself a tranquil if solitary life, but for attending the church where her late father had once served as pastor and teaching the girls’ Sunday school Bible class.
Grover Cleveland’s announcement naming his sister his official White House hostess came on January 17, 1885.
Washington was eager to hear all about this interesting intellectual who had been anointed First Lady of the land. A thirty-eight-year-old spinster, with coiled hair already slightly tinged with grey, she, like her brother, possessed genuine brainpower and an extraordinary capacity for total recall. It was said that she never forgot a name, or the face that went with it. She also had a one-of-a-kind talent illustrative of her capacity to lose herself into another world: She could conjugate ancient Greek verbs in her head. Moreover, it was a skill she made use of on public occasions whenever she was flustered or found herself getting bored.
The inauguration of the new president was set for March 4, 1885, as prescribed by the Constitution. (The Twentieth Amendment, changing Inauguration Day to the twentieth of January, would not go into effect until 1933.) Rose, Mary Hoyt, their sister Louisa Bacon, their brother the Reverend William Cleveland, his wife and three nieces, all accompanied Grover Cleveland on the journey to Washington. Joining them were Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Manning—the incoming secretary of the treasury—and Mr. and Mrs. Dan Lamont. Lamont was going as Cleveland’s private secretary, having initially resisted Cleveland’s many efforts to persuade him to take the position. Cleveland had finally won him over by saying, “Well, Dan, if you won’t go, I won’t, that’s all.”
Everyone boarded a modest little train with an engine car, one baggage car, and two sleepers, and it quietly slipped out of the Albany station at 6:45 a.m. sharp, without so much as a toot or whistle. The only people to see them off were Cleveland’s personal physician, Dr. Ward, a military adjutant, a police officer, and several inquisitive youngsters from town who had come to observe this moment of history. There were no stops scheduled between the state capital and Washington except to take on water.
The entire trip