A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [143]
President and Mrs. Cleveland came to visit Rose to lift her spirits. The train from Washington rolled into the Utica station at five fifteen on the morning of July 12, 1887. The postmaster from Utica was an old acquaintance, and when Cleveland saw him at the station, he called out, “Hello!” Then the presidential car was uncoupled and switched to the Rome, Watertown and Ogdensburg railroad line. A special engine was at the ready to haul the presidential party twelve miles to Holland Patent. It was good to be home.
The president tucked a bundle under his arm, picked up a satchel, and the Clevelands got off at Holland Patent. The Weeds stood only a block from the station, and Cleveland led the way. Rose, looking plump and flushed, met them at the door and welcomed them in. After inspecting the damage from the fire and cleaning up after the long trip from Washington, President Cleveland took a drive with an old friend, Dr. Delos Crane, while Rose showed Frances around the village in her pretty one-horse carriage. At the reigns, Rose proved herself to be an experienced horsewoman, in complete control of the spirited animal. Frances sat in the traverse seat, set back-to-back to Rose. Later in the day, everyone met up at the village cemetery where President Cleveland’s parents were buried beneath a granite tombstone, and for the first time, Frances got to see the family monument to Cleveland’s two brothers who had been lost at sea in 1872.
Rose had big news. She informed the president and her sister-in-law that she had found a new job in New York City, teaching history at Mrs. Sylvania Reed’s School for Girls at 6 East 53rd Street, starting in September.
Mrs. Sylvania Reed was a Mayflower descendant; her father, Albert Gallup, had been a congressman from Albany. All of New York’s elite sent their daughters to Mrs. Reed’s school, and Rose had problems from the outset dealing with the “highbred” student body. She refused to allow the girls to see a production of Shakespeare’s romance, Cymbeline, on grounds that the bedchamber scene in which a Roman soldier tempts Imogen to commit adultery was “utterly unfit for young girls.”
Predictably, Rose also came into conflict with the obstinate Mrs. Reed, who had founded the fashionable school in 1864. The headmistress was already in her sixty-seventh year when she hired Rose for a salary of $100 a month, plus board and lodging. Rose, who absolutely believed she could run things better if she were in charge, made a move to take control of the school. She asked Mrs. Reed to sell it to her, proposing a small down payment and paying out the rest in yearly installments. To this, Mrs. Reed responded that her asking price stood at $200,000 in cash up front. It was a far-fetched amount, well beyond Rose’s reach. That settled things. She resigned after a year.
Once again, Rose was adrift. She considered a vacation in the south of France. Then she settled on Florida, where she would meet the love of her life.
18
THE TRIAL
FRANCES FOLSOM CLEVELAND’S time as the youngest First Lady in American history was brief but unforgettable. Her youth and exquisite beauty earned her the affection of an entire nation. Frances found her image adorning sewing machines, bars of soap, luggage, liver pills, and even tobacco products. Any association with the popular Mrs. Cleveland spiked sales. The commercialization of the First Lady infuriated President Cleveland. When he saw an advertisement featuring his wife’s likeness in the Albany Evening Journal, Cleveland denounced it as “dirty and disreputable.” Frankie Folsom Cleveland clubs sprang up across America, but the president considered the clubs a “perversion” and a waste of time—“a direct menace to the integrity of our homes.”
The memory of the Maria Halpin scandal never ceased to loom. It was the story that would not