station . . .
Annabel had many times examined the back of her hand, looking for the imprint of the stranger’s sharp incisor. But the skin was smooth, quite thin and creamy-pale, with only a fine filigree of bones beneath, and a translucent web of bluish veins.
As Annabel was glancing, another time, at her hand, there came from the second floor sudden cries, and shouts; female screams; and, following almost immediately, a sound of struggle, or scuffling—as of persons grappling about on the floor directly overhead.
Josiah ran unhesitatingly upstairs, bounding the steps two and three at a time; Annabel and Dabney came following after, though not running. In her fear, Annabel had grasped Dabney’s arm; and Dabney leaned to her, as if to protect her.
“Oh, what is it? Is someone hurt? It sounds like President Cleveland—is that his voice?” Annabel cried.
Upstairs, Josiah discovered, in a bedroom of the Craven house, one of the most astonishing sights of his young life: Grover Cleveland, our former President, a rotund gentleman of nearly seventy years, and three hundred pounds, badly flushed in his face, and loudly wheezing, had fallen to the plank floor in a convulsive thrashing, being held in place, clumsily, by several persons including Josiah’s father, Augustus, and the distraught Mrs. Cleveland. The corpulent old gentleman, yet panting, and wheezing, so that one feared he was on the brink of an apoplectic seizure, would not cease his struggling, and cried in a grieving voice:
“Let me up—please let me up—O stand back, if you have any heart! Here’s Pappa! Here’s Pappa, I say! My dear daughter, do not abandon us again!”
In the doorway Josiah stood transfixed. What was this? Had the world suddenly gone mad? It was like a scene out of a film— The Great Train Robbery which everyone had seen, two years before—calamitous excitement, jerky and uncoordinated movements, a rapid, headlong pace, sensational music to rouse the blood—yet, though you stared at the moving images, you could not make immediate sense of them; you could not slow them, to comprehend.
Grover Cleveland, it seemed, had fallen to the floor, or had possibly been pushed to the floor, to save him from falling out a window that opened out onto a section of tile roof; it seemed that Josiah’s father was wrestling Cleveland down, and Mrs. Cleveland herself—ripely Junoesque, darkly handsome, and, ordinarily, complacent and composed in her every gesture—was trying to pin her husband to the floor by the rough application of a silken knee, to his immense midriff; which effort had bared the woman’s shapely leg, in a sheer white stocking, that drew Josiah’s astonished attention, like nothing he had ever seen in actual life, nor had even imagined.
IT IS TRUE: my fellow historians have bungled this episode, having not a clue of what had happened in the old Craven house on Rosedale Road, at midday of 20 April 1905; their collective failure is to be attributed to the zeal of Frances Cleveland in suppressing the lurid facts, that she might protect her elderly husband from censure and ridicule; for the former First Lady was most sensitive to cruel remarks made behind her husband’s (massive) back, correctly assuming that such derision reflected upon her, as well. After Cleveland left the presidency, under a considerable cloud, in 1897, and sought to retire to the “sleepy village” of Princeton, New Jersey, it fell to his young wife to shield him from over-excitement, as from over-eating and –drinking, for it was said that Grover could “no more stop himself from gluttony, than a gold fish in a bowl, that eats all that is given to him, until his stomach bursts.” Despite her youth, Mrs. Cleveland soon cultivated an arch and imperial style in society, as in public; so it was, knowing her and her husband both sought-after, and shamelessly talked-of, Mrs. Cleveland was not one to suffer fools gladly. Not just Woodrow Wilson, as we
Annabel had many times examined the back of her hand, looking for the imprint of the stranger’s sharp incisor. But the skin was smooth, quite thin and creamy-pale, with only a fine filigree of bones beneath, and a translucent web of bluish veins.
As Annabel was glancing, another time, at her hand, there came from the second floor sudden cries, and shouts; female screams; and, following almost immediately, a sound of struggle, or scuffling—as of persons grappling about on the floor directly overhead.
Josiah ran unhesitatingly upstairs, bounding the steps two and three at a time; Annabel and Dabney came following after, though not running. In her fear, Annabel had grasped Dabney’s arm; and Dabney leaned to her, as if to protect her.
“Oh, what is it? Is someone hurt? It sounds like President Cleveland—is that his voice?” Annabel cried.
Upstairs, Josiah discovered, in a bedroom of the Craven house, one of the most astonishing sights of his young life: Grover Cleveland, our former President, a rotund gentleman of nearly seventy years, and three hundred pounds, badly flushed in his face, and loudly wheezing, had fallen to the plank floor in a convulsive thrashing, being held in place, clumsily, by several persons including Josiah’s father, Augustus, and the distraught Mrs. Cleveland. The corpulent old gentleman, yet panting, and wheezing, so that one feared he was on the brink of an apoplectic seizure, would not cease his struggling, and cried in a grieving voice:
“Let me up—please let me up—O stand back, if you have any heart! Here’s Pappa! Here’s Pappa, I say! My dear daughter, do not abandon us again!”
In the doorway Josiah stood transfixed. What was this? Had the world suddenly gone mad? It was like a scene out of a film— The Great Train Robbery which everyone had seen, two years before—calamitous excitement, jerky and uncoordinated movements, a rapid, headlong pace, sensational music to rouse the blood—yet, though you stared at the moving images, you could not make immediate sense of them; you could not slow them, to comprehend.
Grover Cleveland, it seemed, had fallen to the floor, or had possibly been pushed to the floor, to save him from falling out a window that opened out onto a section of tile roof; it seemed that Josiah’s father was wrestling Cleveland down, and Mrs. Cleveland herself—ripely Junoesque, darkly handsome, and, ordinarily, complacent and composed in her every gesture—was trying to pin her husband to the floor by the rough application of a silken knee, to his immense midriff; which effort had bared the woman’s shapely leg, in a sheer white stocking, that drew Josiah’s astonished attention, like nothing he had ever seen in actual life, nor had even imagined.
IT IS TRUE: my fellow historians have bungled this episode, having not a clue of what had happened in the old Craven house on Rosedale Road, at midday of 20 April 1905; their collective failure is to be attributed to the zeal of Frances Cleveland in suppressing the lurid facts, that she might protect her elderly husband from censure and ridicule; for the former First Lady was most sensitive to cruel remarks made behind her husband’s (massive) back, correctly assuming that such derision reflected upon her, as well. After Cleveland left the presidency, under a considerable cloud, in 1897, and sought to retire to the “sleepy village” of Princeton, New Jersey, it fell to his young wife to shield him from over-excitement, as from over-eating and –drinking, for it was said that Grover could “no more stop himself from gluttony, than a gold fish in a bowl, that eats all that is given to him, until his stomach bursts.” Despite her youth, Mrs. Cleveland soon cultivated an arch and imperial style in society, as in public; so it was, knowing her and her husband both sought-after, and shamelessly talked-of, Mrs. Cleveland was not one to suffer fools gladly. Not just Woodrow Wilson, as we
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