A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [128]
Dan Lamont’s wife, Juliet, who was also at the party, found herself standing next to a gossipy Washington socialite to whom she said of Frances, “Isn’t she the loveliest, the sweetest little beauty you ever saw?”
“Charming, charming,” the socialite agreed. Then she said something she would one day come to regret. “How perfectly ridiculous it is to talk of the president marrying that child. The mother is even a trifle young for a man of his years and seriousness, and he will never marry while he lives in this house, I know. That sort of thing is not in his line and not in his mind, now that he has the duties of this great office on his shoulders.” It was this woman’s opinion that that other fetching White House visitor, Annie Van Vechten, would make a far more appropriate bride for the president.
There was genuine curiosity about President Cleveland’s romantic life. Already there were rumors afloat that the forty-eight-year-old president was thinking about taking a bride, an as-yet unidentified “Buffalo belle.” Scuttlebutt settled on four contenders, first among them Emma Folsom, although it seemed to many that Cleveland was smitten with Emma’s daughter. Another prospective bride was said to be Maria Maltby Love, heiress of a prominent Buffalo family. Annie Van Vechten also found herself on the short list. Meanwhile, Cleveland’s friends were quick to shoot down the reports, assuring everyone that the president was a confirmed bachelor. Those in the know, however, were putting their money on the winsome Frances Folsom.
Everyone wanted to get to know Frances. She and her mother were invited to a dinner party at the home of Senator George Pendleton of Ohio where she was introduced to the ambassadors of Great Britain, France, and Germany. Frances also saw all the sights and went shopping with her mother for a formal white gown for her college graduation. For this purchase, she wrote a letter to her grandfather asking for eighty dollars, assuring the flinty old man that it was a “fine gown,” which she would get plenty of use out of—“if I shall receive another invitation to Washington, as Miss Cleveland intimates I shall.” Even so, she was a little embarrassed about asking her grandfather for the cash. “Have you come to think that your oldest grandchild never writes you very much without tacking on a request for money—I believe that is almost so. But you know when that grandchild is going to the White House, money is rather inevitable, for one must have clothes. . . . Do you want any messages delivered to our good president?”
Cleveland took Frances on drives around Washington in his Victorian carriage, drawn by two seal-brown bays, with veteran White House coachman Al Bird at the reins, and it was, Frances wrote in her diary, a thrill to be sitting next to the president. After
Cleveland pulled a few strings, Frances got to be taken to the top of the Washington Monument which—though it had been completed in 1884 following thirty-six years of on and off construction—had not yet been opened to the public. Emma tagged along.
It was finally dawning on the widow Folsom that Cleveland had no interest in taking her as his wife. How Emma learned that it was her daughter who was the object of the president’s romantic desire and not herself has been a closely guarded family secret for more than a century, but it was said that when she was given the bracing news, Emma was “not pleased.” At some point, she came to an accommodation and, finally, gave her blessing to the union. Perhaps she was able to appreciate the fact that, though she could not be First Lady, she could at least be the mother of the First Lady.
After six weeks in office, President Cleveland had settled into a daily routine. He awoke at eight, had breakfast at nine, and by ten was starting his workday in the library. In the