The First Ladies (7 page)

FIRST LADY: 1886–89, 1893–97

A Star Is Born

When it was announced that the gruff, grumpy, overweight, forty-nine-year-old bachelor president was finally going to marry, the country was stunned and then delighted by his choice. Grover Cleveland would wed twenty-one-year-old Frances Folsom, recently graduated from Wells College. He had known her all her life. She was the daughter of his former law partner and close friend, Oscar Folsom. Cleveland had even presented the new parents with the baby carriage. When Folsom died nine years later, Cleveland, as estate executor, was named Frances’s guardian and provided every advantage
for the little girl and her widowed mother. Uncle Cleve would always be a prominent male figure for Frances as she grew up in Buffalo, New York.

About the time her hair went up and her hems came down, Democrat Grover Cleveland, then governor of New York, began looking at his ward with refocused interest. Their courtship, what little there was, was via letter and bouquet. But by the time he was inaugurated as president in 1885, he had proposed and she had accepted. Their engagement was a top presidential secret for more than a year while Frances and her mother traveled through Europe. Cleveland’s bookish sister, Rose Elizabeth, grudgingly pinch-hit as White House hostess.

Cleveland’s wedding in 1886 was the first time, and so far the only time, a sitting president was married in the White House. It had been one of the best-kept secrets of the day. People knew nothing about it until only a few days before the nuptials. Cleveland directed everything himself. He hand-wrote the fifty invitations, engaged the minister, and arranged the honeymoon. His sister planned the menu, ordered the flowers, and hired the Marine Band. All Frances and her mother had to do was buy gowns and show up. No press was invited. As a matter of fact, they were publicly and vociferously
excluded.

There had not been a real First Lady in the White House for more than four years. James and Lucretia Garfield had very little time to make an impression. He was assassinated only three months into his term and spent another three months dying. Sophisticated New York widower Chester Alan Arthur
installed his sister to do a few honors, but he preferred to do most of the honors himself. By the mid-1880s, the world was changing. Newspapers abounded, and women’s magazines were flourishing. The “New Woman” proclaimed by Mary Clemmer Ames had actually taken hold, and for the first time in history, journalists were specifically assigned to report on the pretty, young, new First Lady’s activities, starting with the wedding and the honeymoon. This galled President Cleveland to no end. He loathed intrusion into his personal life, possibly because of the scandal uncovered during his election campaign: he had fathered a child out of wedlock some twenty years earlier. He admitted it, documented his responsibility and financial contribution to the child’s welfare, and the country obviously forgave him.

Cleveland may have disliked the press, but Frances would be its darling, and she never failed to charm them. She was a pretty girl, nearly five foot seven, with a good figure, an endearing smile, and dimples. The press adored her, and photographers did likewise. They always would. With her youthful vitality, she was the youngest First Lady ever, and she never objected to standing for hours to shake hands and say a few kind words to the thousands of people who lined up for her weekly receptions. During her first official hostess stint at the White House, a delighted Cleveland was seen to nudge his new mother-in-law and, grinning, say, “She’ll do! She’ll do!”

And Frances certainly did do. But she did only what Victorian convention and her superconventional husband
permitted. He would no more think of consulting his wife about a political issue than he would consult a classroom of six-year-olds. She would do exactly what her husband wished, and she never “developed any notions,” as Cleveland once remarked. “Frank” as he called her, would be the bouquet receiver, the smile bestower, the table arranger, the tea party hostess, and possibly an escort around town for occasional women’s groups. In fact, the president so wanted to protect himself and
his wife
from the intrusion of the insatiable ghouls of the press, that he bought a private house for them in Georgetown and became a commuter.

But the letters came pouring in. Where previous First Ladies could count a few dozen unsolicited letters a week, Frances received hundreds. The White House would order ten thousand copies of her photograph only to reorder more in a few months. A form letter (hitherto considered discourteous) was devised to spare Frances from hours and hours of repetitious letter writing. And what were the letters about? Personal and usually trivial things. Things like what kind of hand cream she used, her perfume preference, or her favorite book, color, poem, or recipe. In the 1880s there was no law forbidding the unsanctioned use of a person’s name or likeness in advertising, so Frances’s pretty photo and implied endorsement was frequently seen praising the virtues of somebody’s soaps and powders and pills. One manufacturer claimed that Mrs. Cleveland’s peaches-and-cream complexion was due to her daily dose of their arsenic. The president righteously introduced legislation forbidding the use of photographs
and endorsements without permission. It failed. Advertisers stepped up their campaigns. But while the grouchy Cleveland fumed, the First Lady continued to smile.

Grover Cleveland was the only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms, and by the time he was reelected in 1892, he and Frances were parents, with another baby on the way. The press returned in droves. Now the letters solicited her advice on child rearing. (She was only twenty-five!) People congregated outside the White House to get a glimpse of a nurse pushing the baby carriage. When one woman tried to
snip a lock of the baby’s hair, an incensed Cleveland took action. He had a fence built around the White House.

There are only two recorded instances of First Lady Frances taking a public or quasi-public position. When her husband wanted to go fishing one Sunday, she put her foot down, saying it wouldn’t sit well for the president of the United States, and a minister’s son at that, to dishonor the Sabbath. He reluctantly stayed home.

Then there is the story about Frances’s receiving days, which drew literally thousands of well-wishers and tourists, happy to stand in line for hours just to shake her hand. One aide suggested she might change the date from her regular Saturday afternoons to cut down on the traffic. “But that’s the only day that the shop-girls and government clerks can come,” she explained. “Exactly,” replied the sanctimonious aide. It is unknown if Frances ever thought that as a fatherless young woman herself, she might have become a shop-girl or clerk. What
is
known is that the Saturday afternoons remained.

For all their age and disposition differences, the Clevelands had a happy marriage—including five children. Friends said they parented each other as well. He doted on her like a favorite child, and she mothered him like one of their kids.

FIRST LADY: 1889–92

Alias Martha Stewart

Caroline Harrison is arguably one of the more obscure First Ladies who truly deserves far better recognition. She was active, vital, and gifted.

Born in Ohio to a minister-educator, Caroline Scott, called Carrie within the family, married her classmate Benjamin Harrison when she had just turned twenty-one. It would be a long financial struggle. Ben, a grandson of a president and a great-grandson of a wealthy Virginia signer of the Declaration of Independence, inherited little of their great estates, which had been long diluted by the large families of the early Harrisons.

Ben Harrison had studied the law, and in the days before the Civil War, young attorneys starting out were dependent on crumbs from their peers’ tables. Having a reputation as a cold fish, Harrison received few referrals. But Carrie was a talented homemaker. She sewed, knitted, cooked, baked, gardened, canned, preserved, recycled, and reworked everything to make ends meet. She did it with so much style and taste that visitors to the newlyweds’ little cabin would remark on how lovely it was. When their two children came along, she added mothering to her list.

Harrison augmented his meager income by serving as a court clerk, but even with that, he once considered giving up law entirely and buying a store so he could at least feed his family. At the start of the Civil War, Ben was thirty and decided to spend their life’s savings to purchase a substitute to serve in his place, so his wife and two children would not be left unsupported. Fortunately for him, the governor of Indiana (where they then lived) was empowered to grant an officer’s commission to any man who could raise a regiment. Harrison hung an American flag from his window with a sign that said “Enlist Here” and raised a regiment. The governor duly made him a colonel. Now at least he had an officer’s pay to send home to Carrie. He eventually was promoted to brigadier general and served efficiently and honorably, mostly in an administrative capacity.

Administrative or not, brigadier generals and lawyers were prime political candidate material following the war (even better if they were Republicans), and Benjamin Harrison’s
star began to rise, wimpy handshake notwithstanding. His law practice began to flourish, and the Harrisons moved to a lovely house in a better section of Indianapolis. His political opinions were now actively sought, and he was sent to the Senate.

With their two children nearly grown, Carrie could indulge her creative and artistic side: watercolors. She had always been an accomplished artist, and now she began china painting, a new and popular Victorian hobby. She installed a small kiln in her house and began giving classes to other women. She also played piano and organ, taught Sunday school, and was
the president of the Indianapolis Woman’s Club. And she still cooked and canned and gardened. She was one busy lady.

Harrison’s path to become president was neither gradual nor meteoric, nor even merited. For more than a quarter century, presidential candidates were selected partly for geopolitical acceptability and partly because they were safe. They had incurred no strong opposition, nor were they likely to make political waves. Harrison fit the bill perfectly: Indiana was neither North nor South, and Ben was an administrator, not a wave maker. He was also the grandson of a former president, another asset. He was duly elected.

Carrie bustled into the White House and immediately took charge, eliminating waste and establishing order. Nearly sixty years old and fairly stout, she nevertheless rolled up her sleeves and made a complete and thorough inspection from attic to cellar and was dismayed at its condition. Termites, rats, and rot had done serious structural damage. Hoping to modernize and bring electricity to the White House in 1889 (it had been in other cities for more than a decade), they consulted Thomas Edison and his scientists, who spent two days poking around and declared that the mansion could not withstand the necessary wiring. It was a tinderbox. Besides being a firetrap with an outdated kitchen, Carrie also complained that there were insufficient rooms in the private quarters. The Harrisons had come to the White House with a large extended family: their two children, their spouses and their children, her aged father, her widowed sister, and her widowed niece. And there was only one bathroom! It was suggested that the
White House be torn down and a more suitable presidential palace be erected in its place, along the lines of its European counterparts. Architectural designs were solicited and a committee was formed, with Mrs. Harrison as a prominent member. But traditional heads prevailed, and Congress determined that the “Home of Jefferson and Lincoln” warranted repair not razing, and substantial renovations were made to support the necessary electrical wiring. But once there was light, the Harrison family refused to flip the switch on or off, fearful of electrocution.

Carrie also took a hand in modernizing the kitchens, which had not been updated for more than forty years. Next, she reorganized the conservatory (which stood where the West Wing is today), made sure that fresh flowers were displayed at all public functions, and generously dispatched bouquets to high-ranking government officials for births, bereavements, illness, and other notable events, “compliments of President and Mrs. Harrison.”

Her china painting was not neglected either. If she received a letter announcing the birth of a baby named Benjamin, Caroline, or Harrison, a pink or blue baby cup, hand-painted by First Lady Harrison was promptly sent along with her best wishes. When she discovered parts of old dinner services used by past administrations collecting dust in the attic, she had them brought downstairs and carefully researched their place in history, thus beginning the famous Presidential China Collection that is a highlight of White House tours today.

Mrs. Harrison was also asked to serve as the first
president-general of the newly formed Daughters of the American Revolution. While she was not descended from the Virginia signer herself, her children were, and she was proud to lend her name and prestige. The DAR was happy to commission a suitable portrait.

In late 1891, Carrie began to weaken, and true to her bustling nature, she ignored it until it could no longer be ignored. She was diagnosed with “galloping consumption,” a rapidly deteriorating form of tuberculosis, which then was always fatal. Within six months she was dead.