A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [133]
Jenny returned to America while the Folsom women, Emma having recovered from her bout with malaria, and Ben moved on to Paris. Frances planned to shop for her trousseau there, and Dan Lamont had arranged to have the American consul from Antwerp and his wife meet up with the Folsoms to lend a hand. John Steuart made the perfect guide; he was not only an experienced public servant but also a well-regarded antiquarian with excellent taste.
Back in Berlin, Kate Willard reflected on the Grover Cleveland situation and put her thoughts in a letter, which reached Frances at her Paris hotel.
“I should have begged you wildly never, never to marry Mr. Cleveland,” Kate told her friend. Frances deserved “another life and love”—anyone but Grover Cleveland. Kate was so sure of her ground, she put their friendship on the line: “I don’t know what, only not this.”
Frances then made another blunder. In Buffalo, New York, Cora Townsend, the mother of Frances’s former fiancé Charles Townsend, was having breakfast with her family, including young Charles, now an ordained Presbyterian minister and married, when Cora announced that she had received a letter from Frances Folsom. Charles bore Frances no hard feelings, and Frances adored the Townsends, especially Mrs. Townsend. As it was a family custom so that one and all could enjoy the latest news from the people they knew, everyone urged Cora Townsend to read the letter out loud. The last time Charles had had a letter from Frances, the ring he had placed on her finger asking for her hand in marriage had fallen out of the envelope.
Mrs. Townsend read from Frances’s latest that she was in Paris with her mother on the final leg of their European adventure and having a grand time, although these last few weeks had been a little rough because Emma Folsom had malarial fever, and now Frances was afflicted with a case of shingles and in a state of complete “misery.” She would be coming home in late May. And by the way, she was getting married to President Cleveland, but Mrs. Townsend had to promise not to breathe a word to anyone. All this had flooded out before Cora had grasped the fact that she was being let in on a fabulous secret. Now the secret was out, and everyone at the table sat dumbfounded as Mrs. Townsend finished reading: “I wish all you dear girls could have such a devoted sweetheart as I have. Grover Cleveland is the finest man in the world.”
Not long thereafter, Cora Townsend was in Troy, New York, visiting her daughter, who was married to George Wellington, an up-and-coming assistant United States attorney. She showed her daughter and son-in-law Frances’s letter, and in no time, the news spread through Troy. Pretty soon, a reporter from the New York Sun came knocking on their door, and George Wellington confirmed that he had read Frances’s letter, and “there was not the slightest doubt but that it was genuine.” From what he had gathered, Wellington said, the wedding “would be of the most quiet character possible.”
Meanwhile, Cleveland thought it was time for him to let his sister Mary Hoyt in on his wedding plans. He wrote,
I expect to be married pretty early in June—very soon after Frank returns. I think the quicker it can be done the better and she seems to think so too. . . . I want my marriage to be a quiet one and am determined that the American Sovereigns [Cleveland’s acid expression for newspaper reporters] shall not interfere with a thing so purely personal to me. . . . I have thought of