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The queer heyday that was the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the US has been neglected in modern queer discourse, but the sapphic “Boston Marriages” era has left historians with numerous fascinating narratives. One of these belongs to the purported inaugural “Lesbian First Lady” of the United States, Rose Cleveland. Rose was a seemingly public queer figure at a unique moment in American history when sapphic passions were both visible and widely accepted – even at the White House.
The Bostonians
The 19th century height of the Boston Marriages phenomenon was a unique and intriguing phase in modern queer history (a topic which I covered in depth in another recent blog post here). Although the term was not coined until an eponymous novel was written in 1886, “Boston Marriages” seem to have been replete through the Victorian period until approximately the Great Depression in the next century. Boston Marriages typically involved women, concentrated in and around New England in the United States, of significant means who partnered with one another instead of pursuing traditional mixed-gender marriages. Female couples would cohabit a single home, share both public and intimate aspects of their lives (including a bedchamber) and showed deep, loving and often lifelong devotion to one another.
On the surface, modern observers would see the Boston Marriage trend as simply lesbians living out their romantic partnerships in public view. But the historical record is a bit more nuanced; out of many famous Boston Marriage couples, there are some examples (such as Eleanor Charlotte Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, who lived together in Wales) in which the partners scoffed openly at suggestions that their partnerships were sexual or romantic in nature. There are also plausible social and economic justifications for the Boston Marriages trend. Such arrangements could also have been queerplatonic in nature or involved partners along the asexual and aromantic spectrums.
Whatever the exact purpose (which likely varied from partnership to partnership anyway), the Boston Marriage trend was well-practiced and undeniably popular during the late Victorian and early 20th century progressive eras. It is perhaps unsurprising that the trend touched one of America’s most important and influential families – one which would hold the US presidency not once, but twice.
Reluctant First Lady
Rose Cleveland (1846 – 1918) was one of nine children in the prolific Cleveland family.[1] Her older brother, Grover, was nine years her senior and would go on to become the only US president in history elected twice to serve non-continuous terms. Born to a Presbyterian minister, the Cleveland children were raised in and around New York state. The family’s boys and girls were well-educated, and Rose seems to have shared her bookish, introverted personality with her more famous elder sibling. As a young lawyer, Grover Cleveland became infamous for his intensive focus and problem-solving capacity, as well as his inflexible judgment and even stubbornness.[2] Both he and Rose disdained publicity, pomp and circumstance, making each of them in some ways poorly suited to the tasks which ultimately befell them.
by the time her older brother became President in 1885
Grover Cleveland was still a bachelor when he was first elected to the presidency in 1885; though unusual, he was not America’s first unwed president (that distinction belongs to James Buchanan who, incidentally, never married and is rumored to be America’s first gay president). Regardless of his marital status, however, the social demands of the White House required the presence of a First Lady – a non-negotiable matter in the late 19th century when the president’s home was as important in its leisure roles as its governing ones.
The preeminent female role in the presidency thus fell to Grover’s nearest relative of a suitable age for the job – the 39-year old Rose. By then, Rose had already acquired a reputation as a curious intellectual. She had taught at colleges and seminaries in New York state, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. In these institutions and elsewhere, Rose was known for her strident and independent personality, but also her commitments to social justice and the responsibility of the individual for improving the human condition. At her alma mater Houghton Seminary, for example, she argued:
“We cannot touch humanity at large, except as we touch humanity in the individual. We make the world a better place through our concrete relationships, not through our vague, general good will. We must each find a true partner, someone who understands and appreciates us, someone whose faith in us brings out our best efforts. Our deepest craving is for recognition—to be known by another human being for what we truly are.”[3]
Her sentiments are particularly notable given Rose’s later relationships – but that was not to come until after Rose’s brief, reluctant stint in the White House. By all accounts, Rose had little interest in becoming the First Lady for her unwed brother, but did so as a generous, sororal act to help him shoulder the burdens of the office. She attended his inauguration in March 1885 and would live in the White House for fifteen months.
Stuffy dinner parties, endless ballgowns and dogged press attention were by then requisite to the First Lady position, but anathema to the studious Rose. One source notes that “Rose Cleveland was a ‘bluestocking,’ more interested in pursuing scholarly endeavors than in entertaining cabinet wives and foreign dignitaries.”[4] Rose reportedly spent long, boring evenings at the affairs which required her presence by musing silently to herself or conjugating Greek verbs in her mind.[5] It was perhaps during these tedious gatherings that Rose found the time to draft not one, but two, complete nonfiction books: George Eliot’s Poetry and Other Studies (published 1885) and You and I: Moral, Intellectual and Social Culture (published in 1886).[6]
It was perhaps with palpable relief that Rose organized her brother’s wedding to the vivacious 21-year old Frances Folsom in June 1886. As a bright, fashionable light opposite the stolid President Cleveland, Frances immediately sparkled in her sister-in-law’s former position. But however much Rose appreciated Frances’ partnership with her brother, Rose would soon meet the woman who would permanently transform her own life.
“You cannot realize what you are to me…”
Rose was nearly 44 years old when she met the widowed Evangeline Simpson (then nearing her mid-30s) in the late winter of 1890.[7] The pair reportedly met in Florida during the winter social season, but their famous written correspondence began in April 1890. Like many elite ladies who entered into so-called “Boston Marriages” during this period, both Rose and Evangeline were independently wealthy in their own rights. In Evangeline’s case, she was heiress to her late husband’s considerable fortune.
But the women had much more in common than entrée into the highest strata of America’s Gilded Age society; both were also intellectuals, serious-minded and enthralled with the arts, literature and travel. These topics filled the letters from Rose to her paramour which are now entrusted to the Minnesota Historical Society. These letters were examined in detail in a recent book Precious and Adored: The Love Letters of Rose Cleveland and Evangeline Simpson Whipple, 1890-1918, co-edited by Lizzie Ehrenhalt and Tilly Laskey.
In one such letter, Rose wrote:
“My Eve! Ah, how I love you! It paralyzes me … Oh Eve, Eve, surely you cannot realize what you are to me. What you must be. Yes, I dare it, now, I will not longer fear to claim you. You are mine by every sign in Earth & Heaven, by every sign in soul & spirit & body — and you cannot escape me.”[8]
Although effusive expressions of love among women were not uncommon during the late Victorian Age, historians argue that Rose’s surviving letters are marked by a particularly intensive feeling. Some historians even suspect that these letters could refer to specific physical and sexual acts, such as “long rapturous embraces [that] carry us both in one to the summit of joy, the end of search, the goal of love!”[9] Rose herself wrote of their relationship, “I cannot find the words to talk about it,” as if she herself were befuddled by the exact nature of what she felt for Evangeline.
But did Evangeline share that love? It seemed so, for at least a few years as the pair traveled extensively together and maintained their correspondence when separated. In 1896, however, Evangeline’s sudden marriage to her second husband, Bishop Whipple, was a horrible shock to the distraught Rose. Why Evangeline decided to remarry is unclear; it is possible she preferred the social and economic privileges afforded to elite women in mixed-gender partnerships, or that she felt genuine emotional or romantic attachment to Whipple (despite the fact that he, like her first husband, was decades older than her). Either way, Whipple died in 1901, once again freeing Evangeline to be with her still devoted Rose.
Together in Italy
Rose and Evangeline quickly resumed their public partnership after Whipple’s passing, though they maintained separate homes until a bittersweet trip to Italy in 1910. Evangeline’s brother was then ailing in Bagni di Lucca; like Rose years before, Evangeline offered her sisterly support and traveled to be with him during his apparent hospice. She did not, however, travel alone; Rose Cleveland joined her after demanding that they, in modern parlance, define the relationship.[10] It would be the final twist in their long affair, bringing them together permanently at last.
Their years in Italy were likely happy ones, despite the passing of Evangeline’s brother in 1912. The couple lived together in beautiful Tuscany in contentment, though not in passivity. Rose published her third book in 1910, The Soliloquies of St. Augustine. When World War I engulfed Europe in the summer of 1914, Rose and Evangeline quickly volunteered to support local relief efforts targeting displaced persons and migrants.[11] At war and peace, Italy offered both women plentiful intellectual stimulation even as they enjoyed perhaps the most emotionally fulfilling years of their lives.
The halcyon days, unfortunately, would not last indefinitely. Rose tragically succumbed to the ravages of the Spanish Flu in 1918 at age 72. Evangeline was devastated at the loss of Rose, and would ultimately dedicate a book on Tuscany to her departed lover years later. Evangeline herself would live another dozen years and passed away in London in 1930. She did not stay there, however – today, she and Rose are buried together, side-by-side, in Bagni di Lucca each with magnificent matching cross headstones.
Lady Loves and Legacies
Of course, explicit confirmation of the exact nature of Rose and Evangeline’s relationship will almost certainly elude historians. But as I have argued here and in other queer history blogposts, the precise definitions – queer, platonic, romantic, sensual, sexual – are intriguing but largely irrelevant. All available evidence strongly implies a loving affair between the two women at a time in history when such relationships were both common and yet, in certain intimacies, still socially unacceptable.
played a key role in open queer relationships among women
Another notable aspect of their affair is its proximity to power and privilege; as women of substantial means, Rose and Evangeline were especially empowered to live in a queer relationship (of whatever stripe) in a manner unavailable to women who lacked their manifold societal advantages. The nexus of privilege and marginalization is a repeated theme across the pantheon of queer history, and is especially important to understanding how and why “Boston Marriages” like that of Rose and Evangeline were treated with the level of tacit acceptance they were afforded during this era.
In the end, however, the tale of America’s gay First Lady comes down to a pair of women in love – like so many sapphic stories before, since and forever. That so much of their affair, particularly their correspondence, has survived is a gift to those us who are intent on uncovering more and more of these precious stories previously lost to time.
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[1] The White House Historical Association, “Rose Cleveland”, accessed August 6, 2023, https://www.whitehousehistory.org/bios/rose-cleveland.
[2] The White House Historical Association, “Grover Cleveland,” accessed August 6, 2023, https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/grover-cleveland/.
[3] Hardy, Rob, “The Passion of Rose Elizabeth Cleveland,” New England Review 28.1 (2007): 180, 193, 207
[4] The Miller Center, “Rose Cleveland, Frances Cleveland,” University of Virginia, accessed August 6, 2023, https://millercenter.org/president/cleveland/essays/cleveland-1885-firstlady.
[5] Ibid.
[6] The White House Historical Association, “Rose Cleveland”, ibid.
[7] Gillian Brockell, “A gay first lady? Yes, we’ve already had one, and here are her love letters”, The Washington Post, June 20, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/06/20/she-was-once-first-lady-she-is-buried-next-her-longtime-female-partner/.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Meilan Solly, “New Book Chronicles First Lady Rose Cleveland’s Love Affair With Evangeline Simpson Whipple,” Smithsonian Magazine, June 21, 2019, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/new-book-chronicles-first-lady-rose-clevelands-love-affair-evangeline-simpson-whipple-180972472/.
[10] Brockell, ibid.
[11] Ibid.