A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [62]
Not long after she settled in at Wells College, Frances received a shipment of fresh-cut red roses; when they died, another shipment arrived, and then another—a fresh bouquet every week, filling their room with the fragrance of roses. They were from her beau, she said, but would never utter the gentleman’s name. She could never let it be known that her admirer was Grover Cleveland, twenty-seven years her senior.
At some point, Cleveland wrote Emma Folsom to ask her what he should do with a treasured Folsom family heirloom that had come into his possession, a sword that had once been owned by her late husband, the sword that Oscar Folsom had carried when he fought in the Civil War. In the letter, he also, just in passing, asked Emma for permission to write to Frances. He may have felt a little uncomfortable doing so, but he was in a bind because Wells College required parental consent to permit correspondence with its students. Emma gave her blessing, presumably considering Cleveland’s request the innocent gesture of a guardian who wanted to keep in touch with his ward who had gone off to college.
During Cleveland’s entire six-week campaign for governor, the acceptance speech he delivered from the balcony of Billy Dranger’s saloon turned out to be the only formal address he gave. Having refused to travel the stump circuit, the only electioneering he did was in the form of two letters he wrote for publication and a pamphlet extolling his virtues, which was published by the Democratic state committee and distributed throughout New York. He was coasting to victory on a wave of history. What was the point of campaigning when his triumph was a foregone conclusion? Cleveland’s Republican opponent, Charles Folger, had had to acknowledge that his nomination had come about through “fraudulent practices,” and even his friends were calling on him to withdraw. Major Republican newspapers bemoaned the corruption that had sullied the party of Lincoln and were openly advocating Cleveland’s election. At a Republican rally, America’s most renowned clergyman, Henry Ward Beecher, said that he would see his right arm “wither” before he would vote for Folger.
“I will vote for Mr. Cleveland,” Beecher declared.
On Election Day, Cleveland cast his vote in the morning, then went to his office at Buffalo City Hall. He was alone except for an artist from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper who was rendering a sketch of the man of the hour for an article that was to run in the following week’s edition. Cleveland seemed at ease, but in fact, he missed his mother very much. In this pensive state, seated at his desk, Cleveland penned a letter to his brother William.
“I have just voted,” he wrote. “If Mother were here, I should be writing to her.” He wrote William that he was “certain” of success in the election. But something was vexing him; the middle-aged bachelor was aware that once he was ensconced in the governor’s mansion in Albany, an active “social life” would be expected of him. Balls, dinner parties, receptions, social teas were obligatory for a governor. Who would serve as his first lady? The matter was giving him much “anxious thought,” and Cleveland wrote William that he was thinking about cutting back on some of the “purely ornamental” duties of the office.
“Do you know that if Mother were alive I should feel so much safer? I have always thought her prayers had much to do with my success.”
Then suddenly his office became the scene of frenzied activity: Wilson Bissell, the newspaper publisher Charley McCune,