A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [48]
Their daughter, Mary, was born in 1864 and died in 1874, seven months before the birth of Oscar Folsom Cleveland. Mary’s death had been a crushing blow, and Sarah wanted another child, but for whatever reason—perhaps medical—whether she could conceive again was uncertain. For Sarah King, Oscar Folsom Cleveland’s birth came as a blessing. She had been one of the schemers who had arranged to have her sister-in-law Minnie Kendall (her brother William’s wife) nurse Oscar from birth. Now, with Oscar’s return to the custody of the Buffalo Orphan Asylum and with his mother Maria under siege, Sarah was consumed with bringing into her life this child who, so incongruously, seemed to be wanted by everyone and no one.
Maria was finally coming to the realization that if she were to succeed in winning custody of Oscar, she needed her family’s support. Throughout the tumult of her life in Buffalo, she had kept the Halpins and her father, Robert Hovenden, in the dark about Grover Cleveland. They knew nothing of her pregnancy or the birth of Oscar. It was time to brace them for the news.
Simeon Talbott, now the titular head of the Halpin family, was Maria’s brother-in-law, having married Maria’s late husband’s sister, Lizzie Halpin. Talbott was born in Brooklyn, and Maria had gotten to know him when he was courting Lizzie. Now the Talbotts were living in Jersey City and taking care of Maria’s two adolescent children, Freddie and Ada. The entire clan resided in the sprawling home of the master engraver Frederick Halpin Sr., sixty-six years old in the year 1876 and in failing health. When Talbott heard from Maria, he was beside himself, to say the least. Without delay, he boarded the train for Buffalo to manage the crisis.
Talbott was a good-looking traveling salesman with an outsized walrus mustache that looped over his entire mouth like a furry bandage. He worked for a New York City wholesale leather dealer, Henry Arthur & Co., and his business kept him on the road for most of the selling season, taking him as far west as Indiana.
As Talbott heard Maria’s story straight from her lips, he came to the conclusion that this Grover Cleveland was a “seducer” of vulnerable women, who had made his sister-in-law a “positive promise of marriage.” The more he learned about Cleveland, the more a quiet fury built within Talbott. He came to believe that the man was a “notorious libertine and kept a regular harem in Buffalo”—or at least those were the stories he was hearing from Maria.
Even so, Talbott remained levelheaded. He didn’t appreciate the fact that Maria had hired a lawyer. Above all, he told Maria, scandal must be avoided and the Halpin name protected. After listening to everything Maria had to say, the best advice he could offer her was to forget about the boy, leave Buffalo, and return to the bosom of her family downstate. From Talbott’s point of view, Oscar Folsom Cleveland was a bastard child born out of a rape, and not fit to live with the Halpins. If Cleveland wanted to assume financial liability for the boy and pay the $5 fee required by the orphanage, then let him take the responsibility.
There was the added factor of Maria’s children, Freddie and Ada. Freddie was now thirteen, Ada eleven. They needed their mother. Wasn’t it about time Maria started looking out for their interests? Come home, Talbott told Maria, and connect with the family again. In the meantime, he would personally meet with this Grover Cleveland and see what