A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [158]
On September 6, there was a vast throng at the Pan-American Exposition’s concert hall, the Temple of Music, where President McKinley was holding a public reception. He was standing in the great arena, shaking hands with visitors, when Leon Czolgosz, a twenty-three-year-old anarchist, opened fired with a .32 Iver-Johnson six-shooter. The first bullet grazed the president’s chest. McKinley took the full blast of the second shot in the stomach. He was taken by ambulance to the hospital and, later that night, was transported to a private residence at 1168 Delaware Avenue—the home of John Milburn. For the next eight days, the world was focused on Milburn’s house. Delaware Avenue (“Mansion Row”) was roped off, an armed camp, with absolute silence ordered for the president’s comfort. McKinley lingered until September 14, when he uttered his final words, “It is useless, gentlemen. I think we ought to have a prayer.”
The assassination of McKinley was a calamity for Buffalo, the nation—and for Milburn on a personal level. The bullet that killed McKinley would forever link Buffalo to a presidential assassination; when the Pan-American Exposition officially closed in November, it was found to have lost more than $6 million. Milburn was crushed and could see nothing but enduring heartbreak if he remained in Buffalo. Like his friend Grover Cleveland, he forsook the city that had given him his start and resettled in Manhattan. The vagaries of history passed Buffalo by. In 2010, it was ranked the sixty-ninth largest city in the United States, with a shrinking population of 270,000.
Rose Cleveland was mesmerized. Before her lay seven miles of sugary white beach and a turquoise bay of exquisite tranquility. For Rose, having been raised in the blustery climate of upstate New York, it was a revelation.
Rose was in the town of Naples, in the old Confederate state of Florida, where she was accorded a special privilege. It was January 22, 1889, and she had been invited to register as the first guest at the opening of the sixteen-room Naples Hotel. The hotel was the social hub of the new town, founded only three years earlier, with a name designed to evoke the sunny peninsula of Italy. Her room was charming and cozy, and like the other guests, she promptly lost her heart to the town’s simple diversions. She wandered for miles down the beach, gathering pretty shells, and when she returned to the hotel, she rested under the shady porch until it was time for dinner. In the dining room, she feasted on oysters, turtle steaks, wild turkey, and venison and a mouth-watering tray piled with local tropical fruit.
Other distinguished guests were also checking in. There was a Judge Meier, the railroad tycoon Bennett Young, and a Miss Hattie Snyder from Chattanooga. Then Evangeline Marrs Simpson arrived in town, the beguiling widow of Michael Simpson, a millionaire merchant from Boston who had made a fortune in hide and leather. Simpson had died in 1884 when he was seventy-five, and had left Evangeline, just twenty-seven, enormous assets that afforded her the luxury of traveling the world in high style. The Naples Hotel was for her a stop on a never-ending tour of the world’s pleasure spots.
Rose Cleveland and Evangeline Simpson clicked. The young widow had a flare for drama that some people considered excessive but Rose found enchanting. There was chemistry between the two, and Rose fell in love. She called Evangeline her Eve, or “my Viking.” Rose threw herself into the relationship, and Eve reciprocated. The private correspondence between the two women lays bare one of the great forbidden romances of the Victorian Age.
“Ah, Eve, Eve, surely you cannot realize what you are to me—what you must be. . . . Oh, darling, come to me this night, my Clevy, my Viking,