Rose Cleveland
Rose Elizabeth Cleveland was an American author and lecturer. She was acting First Lady of the United States from 1885 to 1886, during the presidency of her brother, Grover Cleveland, who married in 1886.
Receiving an advanced education in her youth, Cleveland defied gender norms and pursued a career in a variety of literary and academic positions. When her unmarried brother was elected president, she acted in the role of first lady until his marriage to Frances Folsom. She used the role of first lady to galvanize support for women's suffrage, expressing little interest in more typical household management tasks.
After leaving the White House, Cleveland wrote several fiction and nonfiction works, many relating to women's rights. She was editor of a literary magazine for several months, and she continued teaching and lecturing. She met Evangeline Marrs Simpson in 1889, and the two became romantic partners, interrupted for several years by Simpson's marriage to Henry Benjamin Whipple. After reuniting, they moved to Italy in 1910, where Cleveland spent her final years helping war refugees during World War I and then Spanish flu patients, before contracting the disease herself and dying in 1918.
Early life
Rose Elizabeth Cleveland was born in Fayetteville, New York, on June 13, 1846. The ninth and youngest child of Reverend Richard Falley Cleveland and Ann Neal Cleveland, she was known as "Libby" within her family. The Cleveland family arrived in the present-day United States with Moses Cleveland, who settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635 after emigrating from Ipswich, England. From her mother's side, Cleveland was descended from Anglo-Irish and German Quaker families. As a young child, Cleveland rejected gender norms where she encountered them and engaged in an active lifestyle outdoors. Cleveland and her siblings were raised as Presbyterian, and she would remain devoted to the religion her entire life. The Clevelands were poor, and their father struggled to support the family. In 1850, he moved the family to Clinton in New York's Oneida County so he could work as a district secretary for the American Home Missionary Society. In 1853, they moved to Holland Patent, New York. Their father died shortly afterward; Rose was seven years old. She stayed in their Holland Patent home, called "The Weeds", with her mother as her siblings began moving out.By the start of the American Civil War, when Cleveland was 14 years old, all of her siblings had moved out except for her 18-year-old sister Susan. Their brother Grover paid for them to go to college. Cleveland attended Houghton Seminary in Clinton from 1864 to 1866 and studied Greek and Latin literature. Shortly after graduating, she took a position at the school teaching history and literature. The following year, in 1867, she taught literature, math, and Latin at the Lafayette Collegiate Institute in Lafayette, Indiana. She then taught at a girls school in Muncy, Pennsylvania, in the late 1860s before returning to "The Weeds" in Holland Patent. She returned to Houghton Academy to again teach history, and she also taught Sunday school. She taught American history in New York City. Cleveland also delivered public lectures in the state of New York, speaking about topics including history and women's rights. The Magazine of American History published her lectures, and she was active in its editorial process.
Two of Cleveland's brothers, Frederick and Louis, were lost at sea in 1872 while on a ship from Nassau. Eventually, her time in Holland Patent was spent caring for her mother until her death in 1882. Cleveland inherited The Weeds from her mother. Her brother Grover was elected to be the governor of New York in 1882. Cleveland declined a teaching job in New York City so that she could assist him at the Executive Mansion. During this time, she published her first two poems in The Independent. Cleveland was with her brother at the Executive Mansion when he learned that he had been elected president, and she stood by him during his presidential inauguration.
Acting first lady of the United States
When Grover became president of the United States in 1885, he had no wife to serve as first lady, so he asked Cleveland to fulfill the role. She accepted the position despite having little interest in it; she preferred academic life to social life. As was typical of first ladies of the time, Cleveland was responsible purely for domestic aspects of the White House, including the organization of social events. She most commonly held receptions in the Blue Room. Cleveland grew bored with White House reception lines and once said that to pass the time she would conjugate Greek verbs in her head. She was sometimes assisted by her sister, Mary Hoyt.Cleveland was more academically-inclined than most women of her era. She was not interested in the small talk expected of her during social events, and writer Harry Thurston Peck said that her conversations were "decidedly allusive and interspersed with classical quotations". Her education served her well in the White House, where knowledge of history and languages was an asset when speaking to dignitaries from around the world. Shortly after her time as acting first lady began, Cleveland published her first book: George Eliot's Poetry, and Other Studies. The press did not treat her seriously as an intellectual because she was a woman, but her national renown as first lady helped sales, and she ultimately earned $25,000 in royalties across twelve published editions.
Among Cleveland's friends while she lived in the White House was the historian Laura Carter Holloway. Holloway was Cleveland's editor for George Eliot's Poetry, and Other Studies and later wrote a book on first ladies of the United States. Cleveland also befriended her predecessor Mary Arthur McElroy; both were the sisters of presidents who became White House hostess.
To protect Cleveland's privacy, the president kept the press from taking pictures of her, meaning that descriptions of her were often second-hand. She was described by contemporaries as "masculine" and as a "bluestocking". Many who knew her found her firm demeanor to be intimidating. She held a love of fashion and opted for bright dresses. Cleveland was generally well-liked by the public for what they saw as a moral lifestyle. In Washington, she was addressed as "Miss Rose". Her seriousness and respectability contrasted with her brother, particularly after he was discovered to have fathered a child out of wedlock. She was also praised for her ability to remember everyone who she interacted with. The increased attention she received as a public figure meant that false rumors spread about her, including that she was to be married to Representative Benjamin Le Fevre or to a clergyman.
Cleveland kept up-to-date on political issues. She held strong progressive opinions, and she continued to express them while she was acting as first lady.She supported the temperance movement, banning wine in the White House. Cleveland supported women's rights, publicly advocating women's suffrage and promoting the Women's Anthropological Society, which advocated the inclusion of women in science. She lived by the ideal of the New Woman that was advocated by the feminist movement of the time and was sympathetic to the Victorian dress reform movement that sought to move away from traditional conservative dresses, but her own deviation from the norm was limited to wearing low-cut dresses that exposed her shoulders—still a controversial choice. Cleveland also supported Indigenous sovereignty in the United States. She still held other prejudices common of the time, advising her brother not to appoint a significant number of Catholics to government positions. Later correspondences also indicate discriminatory views toward African Americans and the working class.
While she was acting as first lady, Cleveland became the subject of a ballad by Eugene Field in which she asked President Cleveland about whether he intended to marry. When her brother's bride, Frances Folsom, arrived in Washington on June 1, 1886, Cleveland met her and her mother at the train station and escorted them to the White House. Cleveland approved of the marriage, in large part because it meant that she could return to her previous life. She helped organize their wedding, and she left the White House after they were married, though she often returned in a social capacity.
Later life
Literary and academic career
A month after Cleveland left the White House, she moved to Chicago to become the editor of the magazine Literary Life. Her brother urged her to decline, fearing that the magazine only wished to take advantage of her relation to the president. He offered her an annual sum of $6,000 to not take any such position. She refused any income from her brother, wishing to be financially independent. To be the editor of a magazine was rare for women at the time. Cleveland served as editor for only a few months before leaving, as she fell ill and the magazine was having financial problems. To complicate matters further, her family home, The Weeds, had caught fire.In 1887, Cleveland moved to New York City to teach history at Sylvanus Reed's School for Girls. She rarely went out while teaching at the boarding school, instead focusing on her writing. Her brother Grover disapproved of the career. She left the following year after a disagreement with Reed regarding salary. In the final days of Grover's presidency, the first lady held a lunch in Rose's honor. Cleveland made several trips to Europe over the following years. Her prominence allowed her to socialize with celebrities and important political figures. Cleveland continued to express her political beliefs after leaving the White House. In 1887, she published a short story that was critical of women's fashion, which she believed was detrimental to women's health, while in 1909, she signed the national petition supporting women's suffrage.