A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [164]
On Cleveland’s last day as president, he suffered an attack of gout and walked with a limp as he escorted President-elect McKinley up the steps of the Capitol building to his inauguration. In one hand, Cleveland carried a tightly rolled umbrella, which he held at the ready in the event that he required something to lean on. He left office a pariah in his own party, his policies held in low esteem for having brought economic malaise to America. Nevertheless, there was grudging admiration for his steadfastness and rigid honesty. With the passage of time, Cleveland has come to be regarded as a well-thought-of if not a great president. His administration restored good feelings between North and South. He successfully opposed adoption of the silver standard, and many credit him with rescuing the nation from bankruptcy. He also stood firm against British imperialist designs in South America by embracing the broadest possible definition of the Monroe Doctrine. His was one of the most eventful peacetime presidencies in American history. In reviewing the hapless line of presidents who followed the martyred Abraham Lincoln, Daniel Lamont offered an interesting summary. For Andrew Johnson there was sorrow, for Grant scandal, for Hayes humiliation, for Garfield death, and for Arthur unpopularity. As for Cleveland, Lamont had this uncomplicated observation: “Herculean toil.”
Cleveland lived out the final years of his life in the charming village of Princeton, New Jersey, where he bought a Georgian-style estate surrounded by lovely lawns. He became a trustee of Princeton University and wrote letters, hunted rabbits and quail, and sometimes went fishing for bass. Now and then he spoke out on national issues. In 1905, he wrote an article for the Ladies Home Journal, still stubbornly denouncing the women’s suffrage movement. Sensible and responsible women “do not want to vote,” he maintained. The status of women in civilization was “assigned long ago by a higher intelligence.”
Frances Folsom Cleveland gave birth to five children during their marriage. Their first child, Ruth—Baby Ruth as she came to be called—was born in 1891, at the Cleveland townhouse on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. Esther came next, in 1893, the only child in history ever to be born in the White House. Marion was delivered at Buzzards Bay in 1899. A son, Richard, came in 1897, followed by the last born, a boy, Francis, in 1903, when Grover Cleveland was sixty-six years old. Fatherhood agreed with Cleveland. He was no longer scowling and harrumphing all the time. “I sit on the piazza a good deal and herd the children,” he said about his days in comfortable retirement.
The Clevelands suffered a terrible loss when Baby Ruth was stricken with what seemed like a mild case of tonsillitis the day after New Year’s 1904. Five days later the twelve-year-old was diagnosed with diphtheria. On January 7, she was dead. Her death came as a staggering loss for the former president and his wife.
President Cleveland died of a heart attack on the morning of June 24, 1908, in a large room on the second floor of his home in Princeton. At his side were Frances and three physicians. His death came six years after Maria Halpin’s passing. His last words were, “I have tried so hard to do right.”
Emma Folsom died of pneumonia at the age of seventy-six, in 1915, also in Princeton, where she had gone to live in 1901 after the death of her second husband, Henry Perrine.
Rose Cleveland lived to the age of seventy-two. Her greatest days were her last. She was living in Tuscany when the influenza epidemic of 1918 swept through the village of Bagni di Lucca on its way to killing fifty million people worldwide. Rose organized the village’s medical response. Working at her side was the great love of her life, Evangeline Simpson Whipple, their romance having been rekindled following the death of Evangeline’s husband, Bishop Henry Whipple, in 1901. The two women acted heroically.