The First Ladies Read online

  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.

  Frances’s Legacy

  Despite a notoriously grumpy and aging husband, despite no real romance in her young life, despite a lack of contemporaries and peer-companions, despite being sheltered and secluded, despite spending hours standing in receiving lines with forced smiles, despite hours spent answering unwanted and insipid letters, Frances never complained. She was GOOD NATURED about her duties, her husband, and life in general. It is not easy to maintain a pleasant disposition throughout the demands of First Ladydom, then or now. Frankie Cleveland’s dimples and sweet temperament made her everyone’s favorite for the rest of her long life.

  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.

  Postscript: FRANCES WAS THE FIRST FIRST LADY TO REMARRY. FIVE YEARS AFTER CLEVELAND DIED AT SEVENTY-ONE, AND WITH FOUR CHILDREN TO RAISE, SHE MARRIED PRINCETON PROFESSOR THOMAS PRESTON. SHE WAS MARRIED TO HIM FOR NEARLY THIRTY-FIVE YEARS, FIFTEEN LONGER THAN SHE WAS TO THE PRESIDENT—BUT SHE IS BURIED NEXT TO GROVER CLEVELAND.

  CAROLINE HARRISON

  1832–92

  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.

  Carrie’s Legacy

  At a time when being a good housekeeper was considered the highest compliment a woman could receive, Caroline Harrison excelled in HOUSEHOLD MANAGEMENT. Even though she never had to wash a dish or polish a spoon in the White House, she knew exactly what needed to be done, and saw to it that the president’s house not only ran smoothly, but positively sparkled. Nothing escaped her white glove. Today’s White House employs a large professional housekeeping staff, but it still falls to the First Lady to oversee that department. Carrie was the best of the lot. By a lot.

  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.

  Postscript: MRS. HARRISON WAS NOT IMMUNE TO CARING ABOUT WOMEN’S ISSUES. WHEN JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY SOLICITED HER FOR A CONTRIBUTION TOWARD ITS NEW MEDICAL SCHOOL, CARRIE REPLIED THAT SHE WOULD BE HAPPY TO OBLIGE, PROVIDED THEY ACCEPTED WOMEN STUDENTS. THEY DID. SHE SENT HER DONATION. STOUT AND SIXTY-ISH OR NOT, SHE HAD THE REAL ELEMENTS OF THE NEW WOMAN.

  EDITH ROOSEVELT

  1861–1948

  FIRST LADY: 1901–09

  The Elegant White House

  There was never a time Edith Carow did not know Theodore Roosevelt. Her best friend Corinne was Theodore’s younger sister, and their nannies wheeled their prams around Gramercy Park in New York City. Hers was an old and decent family, but her father was inclined toward drink and thus a spotty provider. The kindly patrician Roosevelts included little Edie in their outings whenever possible. Most of their acquaintances believed that when the children grew up, Edith would marry Theodore. But it didn’t happen. At least not the way they thought.

  Theodore went off to college and fell deeply in love with beautiful and wealthy Alice Lee. They married when Theodore graduated. True to her steely reserved nature, Edith Carow showed little outward regret and kicked up her heels at the wedding. What happened within Edith usually stayed within Edith. Since her family’s lack of finances precluded either a college education or a traditional social debut, and it would have been social suicide to get a job, she led a quiet life, seeing a few friends, reading voraciously, and keeping to herself. She seemed destined to become an old maid.

  Three years later, Theodore’s young wife died in childbirth. The grieving husband deposited his infant daughter with his older sister and went west to become a cowboy. It would be another two years until Theodore and Edith became reacquainted. This time, the grown man and the attractive twenty-five-year-old young woman discovered the commonalities that would make for a happy, prosperous, and never-boring union.

  First and foremost, according to those who knew her, Edith Roosevelt was a wife and mother. In addition to baby Alice, there would be five more vigorous Roosevelts, all possessed of their father’s abundant energy and vitality and both parents’ unending curiosity about everything. It is said that Theodore read a book a day, and Edith matched him one-for-one, albeit their tastes were different. His were more scientific, hers more arty. What developed was an incredibly broad range of subjects that could and would be discussed intelligently and in detail at their always-lively dinner table. Since Theodore Roosevelt was not only wide-ranging and political, but very, very social, their large family table was usually expanded to include numerous, diverse guests nearly every night.

  Edith R.’s Legacy

  When Edith Roosevelt was First Lady, it was as if the stars had aligned themselves in a smiley face over the White House. The country was at peace. It was prospering at a rapid rate. Her family enjoyed vigorous good health. She was completely equal to and comfortable with the tasks set before her. She was constantly surrounded by the most fascinating people. She was married to a man who was devoted to her, the man she had loved since childhood. And he was hugely popular! Edith was HAPPY and LUCKY, perhaps more a wish than a legacy. And nobody gets better than that!

  While Edith was as bright and intelligent as one would expect of a Roosevelt mate, her temperament was cooler; many said cold. She seldom lost her temper, but her distance and verbal antipathy could be venomous. Her daughter once said, “Mother took no prisoners.” It would fall to Edith to manage the household, the servants, the children, the money, and Theodore. It was not an easy task. He indulged himself with yearly six-week hunting vacations out west, leaving his wife to entertain, amuse, supervise, and move the children back and forth between their Washington residence and their New York home on Long Island. If she ever objected, it was private. Perhaps she considered it her great blessing to finally marry the man she had always loved.

  TR, like Thomas Jefferson, was a man of many careers all practiced simultaneously, but never in a way to amass a fortune. First and foremost, he was a Republican politician. Then came amateur natural scientist, ranch owner, and prolific writer. By forty, he had secured a spot as assistant secretary of the navy under President William McKinley, single-handedly (according to his critics) fomented the Spanish-American War, resigned to command the volunteer Rough Rider regiment, charged up San Juan Hill to become a hero, t
hen became governor of New York, vice president, and finally president—all within three years. It was par for the course. Edith, of course, took it in stride, as she took everything.

  Only forty when she entered the White House after McKinley’s assassination, Edith Roosevelt’s contribution to the realm of First Ladyhood had much in common with that of Jacqueline Kennedy a half century later: class and elegance. The repairs and refurbishing undertaken under Caroline Harrison only a decade earlier proved to be inadequate, considering the new inventions and technologies pouring out of the Patent Office. The return of the second Cleveland administration had contributed little in redecoration, and frail Ida McKinley undertook no projects. The Roosevelts, however, would make huge alterations. The White House needed to expand with the new century.

  Even with the Harrison expansion, the private family quarters were insufficient for Theodore, Edith, six children, a menagerie of pets, frequent guests, plus presidential office space. The downstairs area was strictly for formal and ceremonial entertaining. So Caroline Harrison’s beloved conservatory was demolished and replaced by the West Wing. That would be Theodore’s domain. Edith took charge of much of the mansion’s transition into the twentieth century, and it would now officially be called the White House on the letterhead. The large East Room was stripped of its hotel lobby décor and painted white and gold. The full-length portraits of George and Martha Washington were removed from other locations and hung on each side of the fireplace. The room today is very much the same as it was when Edith redecorated. The Roosevelts also wanted to make the White House look like home, so the dining room sported elk and moose trophies.