On Board the Oneida
East River, New York City
July 2, 1893
10:30 A.M.
As the Oneida pulled anchor on a warm, sunny morning and set sail northward, the president of the United States smiled and relaxed comfortably on her deck. He always felt his best when surrounded by old friends, and he had plenty of them now lounging beside him: his friend Elias Benedict, Lamont, and Joseph Bryant, who was his brother-in-law, family doctor, and frequent fishing companion. Over the years, Cleveland had traveled more than fifty thousand miles on the Oneida, often with some combination of these three men at his side and a fishing pole in his hand.
Cleveland’s affinity for the boat was understandable, perhaps even unavoidable. With two masts and a glistening white 144-foot hull, she was a sleek, spectacularly gorgeous yacht. In 1885, the vessel—then named the Utowana—won the prestigious Lunberg Cup race. Soon after that, Elias Benedict purchased it and rechristened her Oneida.
The president chatted amiably with his friends about matters large and small while the Oneida glided past dozens of other boats in the East River. Their destination, Buzzards Bay, was no secret, and a typical trip would take about fifteen hours. But Cleveland and his friends were all too aware that this was no ordinary journey. The expected departures from their usual route, as well as what would happen on that route, were known only to a handful of people—including the four gentlemen currently lounging on the ship’s deck, as well as a small number of passengers who had been hidden belowdecks, out of sight from the utterly unsuspecting public and press corps.
Shortly before noon, Cleveland watched as Joseph Bryant rose from his deck chair and walked toward the steps leading belowdecks. “If you hit a rock,” Bryant called to the captain, “hit it good and hard, so that we’ll all go to the bottom!”
Cleveland was not amused.
On Board the Oneida
July 2, 1893
12:05 P.M.
One of the small, tastefully decorated rooms belowdecks was a saloon. Grover Cleveland walked into it and stood in the middle of the room.
A socially active ladies’ man back in his Buffalo days, Cleveland had been in hundreds of saloons over the course of his fifty-six years. But there were at least two unusual, even bizarre, aspects about the appearance of this particular one and the man who now stood in it.
The first was that the saloon had been stripped of all but one piece of furniture.
The second was that the three-hundred-pound president of the United States was standing nearly naked, wearing only his underwear and walrus mustache.
“I am ready for you,” said the commander in chief. “Are you ready for me?”
New York City
July 3, 1893
Elisha Jay Edward was midway through the New York Times and all but done with his cup of tea when he noticed it.
NO SIGN OF THE ONEIDA
THE PRESIDENT HAS NOT YET ARRIVED AT GRAY GABLES
The dispatch was buried in the middle of a tall column, below other short reports about a shooting at a boardinghouse and a political quarrel between an Irish-American organization and the mayor of Newark, New Jersey.
Buzzards Bay, Mass.—The weather is thick in Buzzards Bay, and there are no signs of the yacht Oneida, having on board the Presidential party. Nothing has been heard of the party since they left New York.
The report’s last paragraphs noted that the “usual run” from Manhattan to Buzzards Bay was “fifteen hours,” and it stated that “inasmuch as the boat has not been reported at any of the ports, it is the opinion here that the yacht is at anchor down the bay awaiting the clearing of the fog, which will allow her to proceed.”
Despite the breezy tone of the Times report, one fact was unavoidable: The president was missing.
New York City
July 4, 1893
E. J. Edwards’s curiosity was further aroused when he arrived at the Schermerhorn Building on Independence Day and learned from the morning papers that President Cleveland was still unaccounted for. It had been three days since the Oneida slipped through the narrow channel between Manhattan and Queens, and no one on dry land had heard from the president since.
Dressed in a dark suit, necktie, high-collared shirt, and high-topped leather shoes, Edwards continued to skim the morning papers and noticed that the more sensational of them were speculating that Cleveland was somehow in trouble. There were rumors of a serious illness, although Edwards thought that to be unlikely, as it would be cause for a return to shore, not a reason to remain at sea.
Edwards knew that if Cleveland were gravely ill, it would spell doom for the repeal of the Silver Purchase Act. Foisted on Cleveland’s ticket for political balance at the Democratic convention, Vice President Adlai Stevenson was a staunch silverite. If fence-sitting congressmen sensed that Stevenson would soon be assuming power, they wouldn’t dare cross him and his pro-silver allies.
Edwards believed there was little sense in dwelling on such far-fetched possibilities. Newspapers could speculate as much as they wished about the president’s seventy-two-hour absence, but Edwards thought Cleveland’s disappearance didn’t seem out of character. The president was famous for his desire for privacy, and he wasn’t the kind of man who needed much of a reason for keeping his whereabouts a secret.
The possibility of a serious illness seemed especially unlikely to Edwards for one additional reason: On the ferry to New York, Cleveland had said that he was merely “going to Buzzards Bay for a rest.” He had assured reporters there was nothing out of the ordinary about the trip. And, as everyone knew, Grover Cleveland was nothing if not honest.
New York City
Morning, July 7, 1893
Six days after Cleveland had set sail from Manhattan, E. J. Edwards was finally beginning to have doubts about the president’s story. The morning papers reported two pieces of intriguing news.
The first concerned the president’s reemergence. Yesterday morning, the eight reporters awaiting his arrival at Gray Gables on Buzzards Bay had learned that Cleveland, Lamont, and Bryant had reached land in the middle of the night and slipped into Gray Gables without informing a single member of the press. When reporters pressed Lamont for an explanation of the president’s arrival—four days late and seemingly clandestinely choreographed—Lamont assured them the trip was “leisurely,” the party had “found good fishing grounds,” and that Cleveland’s health was “excellent, excepting that he was suffering from a slight attack of rheumatism.”
The second news item detailed the transcript of an interview with Dr. Bryant conducted the previous evening by an unidentified reporter for United Press.
United Press: Doctor, a number of conflicting stories are told concerning the illness of the president. Some of them make the matter very serious. You would confer a great favor by making some sort of official statement.
Bryant: The president is all right.
United Press: From what is he suffering?
Bryant: He is suffering from rheumatism, just as was reported this afternoon. Those reports were correct.
United Press: Then, Doctor, the report that he is suffering from a malignant or cancerous growth in the mouth and that an operation was necessary and had been performed to relieve it is not correct?
Bryant: He is suffering from the teeth; that is all.
United Press: Has an operation been performed?
Bryant: That is all.
Gray Gables, Massachusetts
July 7, 1893
7:15 P.M.
Bryant’s failure to unequivocally deny that an operation had been performed led to a feeding frenzy in the press. In an effort to alleviate the growing suspicions, the doctor quickly assembled the reporters. “The president is absolutely free from cancer or malignant growth of any description,” he told them. “No operation has been performed, except that a bad tooth was extracted.” Bryant categorically denied that any interview with a United Press reporter had taken place the night before.
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But it was too late. By midafternoon, the number of reporters staying at Walker’s Hotel near Buzzards Bay had swelled from eight to fifty. Each of them was demanding answers to the question of what exactly the president of the United States had been doing for four unexplained days at sea.
As Secretary of War Lamont entered a large barn on the Gray Gables grounds, he felt an enormous sense of responsibility. Assembled there were the fifty reporters he had asked to gather for a 7:00 P.M. press conference that was intended to answer their questions once and for all.
Lamont had been willing to reprise his role as Cleveland’s press secretary, not because he relished a return to the lion’s den, but because he believed no one else was up to the task. If he could convince reporters that the president’s health problems were nothing worse than rheumatism and a toothache, Cleveland would retain the public’s confidence. More important, he would still be able to pressure Congress into repealing the Silver Purchase Act. On the other hand, if the reporters did not leave the barn satisfied that the rumors of cancer surgery were false, Cleveland’s reputation, and his political capital, would be gone.
According to the New York Times, cancer was an “incurable” disease. If politicians in Washington believed Cleveland’s life was in jeopardy, then his plans to revive the abominable economy would be as well. More banks would collapse; more farms would be foreclosed on; and millions more Americans would lose their jobs.
“I have a brief statement to make,” Lamont began, doing his best to affect a confident and casual air. “There has been quite a stir over a trivial occurrence of rheumatism. I think the reactions to the president’s minor aches and pains have been rather foolish, but I understand how unfounded rumors tend to take on a life of their own.”
As reporters scribbled Lamont’s words into their notebooks, the secretary of war continued. “It was nothing but dentistry that occasioned President Cleveland’s journey on his friend Elias Benedict’s yacht. The president had been too busy attending to affairs of state in Washington to see a dentist, and he used the occasion of his boat trip from New York to Buzzards Bay to have some dental work performed in a comfortable environment. President Cleveland understands the public’s curiosity about his health, and he is grateful for their concerns about his well-being.”
It was a hot and stuffy July evening, and sweat poured from the brows of the journalists packed into the barn. Lamont, on the other hand, looked as cool as a cucumber. There was no hesitation in his words or doubt in his tone. “President Cleveland’s dentist performed admirably, as did the patient, who has spent a relaxing day playing checkers with the First Lady.”
Having swatted away the “unfounded rumors,” Lamont turned to the silverites who Cleveland blamed for the country’s economic woes. “The only dishonorable behavior in the past week,” he said coolly, with the slightest of smiles, “has come from quarters opposed to the president’s attempts to revive the American economy. The opposition knows that the public stands firmly behind President Cleveland’s monetary policies, and their attempt to portray the president as ill or injured is a sign of their desperation.”
For the next half hour, Lamont fielded questions asking for details about the dental procedures performed and the identity of the dentist employed, but time and again, Lamont dismissed the questions as “trivial” and “unworthy of a response.”
There was, in fact, only one question Lamont answered directly.
“Is it true,” asked a correspondent from the New York Tribune, “that Vice President Stevenson left the World’s Fair in Chicago yesterday and is travelling to Buzzards Bay?”
“No,” Lamont answered emphatically. “Although, the Vice President did apparently make the mistake of believing some of the more sensational reports of the president’s health in your newspapers. It’s true he did leave Chicago yesterday, and was heading here out of concern for the president’s health, but President Cleveland telegraphed him en route, reassured him of his general fitness, and requested Mr. Stevenson embark on a tour of the West Coast. There are important party leaders out there, and the administration desires that they know they have our respect and attention. For the next month, Vice President Stevenson will be visiting San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, and cities in between.”
When Lamont returned to the main residence at Gray Gables he telegraphed the secretary of state to reassure him of the information he had just shared with the press. “To Walter Q. Gresham, Secretary of State,” Lamont wrote: “The president is laid up with rheumatism in his knee and foot, but will be out in a day or two. No occasion for any uneasiness. —D.S. Lamont.”
As his last official act of the evening, Lamont instructed an assistant to send a copy of the telegram to the reporters staying at Walker’s Hotel. He was unsure how much of his story in the barn they believed, but he figured it couldn’t hurt to show them the same information was being sent to President Cleveland’s own secretary of state. Even if reporters believed Cleveland would allow Dan Lamont to mislead a group of reporters, surely they wouldn’t believe Cleveland would allow Lamont to lie to his own secretary of state.
New York City
July 8, 1893
As the morning sun streaked through his window in the Schermerhorn Building, E. J. Edwards leaned back in his desk chair, puffed on his pipe, and skimmed the New York Tribune.
MR. CLEVELAND IS BETTER
LIKELY TO RECOVER IN A FEW DAYS
The New York Times agreed:
“The assertion that President Cleveland is afflicted with any malady is all nonsense.”
Most ardent in its defense of the president’s good health was the New York World’s editorial page.
The persistent attempts to misrepresent and exaggerate President Cleveland’s ailment are something more than scandalous at this time. If these reports were believed by the public, they might very easily, and probably would, precipitate a financial panic.
In a lecturing tone, the World went on to call it “a pity if a president cannot have a ‘touch of rhoumatix’ and a toothache without giving rise to a swarm of rumors and false reports—some of them more malignant than his disease.”
Edwards closed the paper and took a sip of his coffee. Like the rest of the country, he had been perplexed by the president’s disappearance. After reading the United Press’s interview with Dr. Bryant the morning before, he began to wonder whether there was some truth to the rumors about Cleveland’s ill health. However, the press corps covering the president seemed to believe what Lamont had told them. Now, in light of the morning papers’ consensus about the president’s medical condition, Edwards suspected that little more would be heard regarding the rumors.
Greenwich, Connecticut
August 27, 1893
It had been nearly two months since E. J. Edwards had given much thought to President Cleveland’s mysterious disappearance. In that time, he had taken a summer vacation and then returned to Greenwich, Connecticut, where he kept a home.
As Edwards rode down the sweltering streets he heard a voice calling, “Edwards! Edwards!” The reporter instructed his driver to stop the carriage and then he poked his head out the window. Outside, he saw his friend Leander Jones running toward him.
Jones was a local doctor, and although Edwards wasn’t surprised that his friend would want to say hello and catch up, he was taken aback when, upon arriving at Edwards’s carriage, Jones, half out of breath, asked “Can you have your driver pull to the side? I have incredible news to share!”
New York City
August 28, 1893
8:45 A.M.
In the late nineteenth century, the elegant brownstones of Harlem were among the most prestigious addresses on the continent. Inside their tony walls lived the leading men of New York City: doctors and lawyers, bank owners and industrialists, and a dentist named Ferdinand Hasbrouck, who happened to be among the nation’s leading experts in anesthesia.
E. J. Edwards rang the doorbell of Ferdinand Hasbrouck’s
town house so early that the dentist was still in his nightshirt when he opened the door.
“I apologize if you were sleeping, Dr. Hasbrouck,” the journalist said, extending his hand. “The name’s E. J. Edwards.”
The two shook hands as Edwards continued: “I write for the Philadelphia Press, and it’s only because I’m on a deadline that I’m here so early. Would you mind taking a few moments to confirm a couple facts for an article I’m working on?”
Edwards was somewhat surprised when Hasbrouck invited him in, excused himself to change out of his nightclothes, and returned with a polite and pleasant demeanor. The reporter wasn’t sure why Hasbrouck had received him, but he tried his best to hide how thrilled he was to be sitting in the parlor of a man who might have the answer to the biggest mystery in the history of the presidency: What had Grover Cleveland really been doing for four days on the Oneida?
“I happened to be returning home in Greenwich yesterday,” said Edwards, “when a friend shared some details about your assistance with the president’s surgery on the Oneida last month.”
Edwards was doing his best to make his information seem unimportant—as if he were just nailing down some details for a story that everyone already knew about. The truth, of course, was exactly the opposite: Dr. Hasbrouck might be able to provide first-person confirmation for the biggest scoop by any reporter of E. J. Edwards’s generation.
As Edwards told Hasbrouck what he’d heard the day before, the dentist’s face grew ashen. His eyes widened with Edwards’s every word, and after just a few minutes, he flung himself back in his chair and sank down into it.
Finally, after Edwards described what happened on the Oneida in exacting detail, Hasbrouck exclaimed, “Some of the physicians who were aboard the yacht must have told you that story! You could not have obtained it any other way!”
In fact, the first person from the ship to speak with E. J. Edwards was Ferdinand Hasbrouck. His time on the Oneida had caused him to miss an appointment to provide anesthesia for a July 3 surgery in Greenwich with a doctor named Carlos MacDonald. In an attempt to explain his absence and protect his reputation against charges of unreliability, Hasbrouck revealed to MacDonald exactly where he had been on the first three days of July and exactly what he had been doing. MacDonald then told enough friends and colleagues that rumors about Cleveland’s health swirled around New York social circles well before the president ever reached Buzzards Bay.