Rose Cleveland and Evangeline Marrs Simpson Whipple: 1889-1918

An OutHistory.org Presidential Election Special

The President's Sister and the Bishop's Wife

Copyright (c) 2008 by Jonathan Ned Katz. All rights reserved.

Rose and Evangeline

As a new president is elected OutHistory.org is pleased to present the story of an earlier White House resident and her lover, an unfamiliar bit of lesbian American history.

As playful provocation, I cannot resist titling this story in the suggestive mode of Victorian pornography. But that title misleads; it defines Rose Elizabeth Cleveland and Evangeline Marrs Simpson Whipple by the men in their lives. And despite Rose's sibling tie to a president and Evangeline's marriage to a bishop, this is a story of two women's romance with each other.

In Florida, during the winter of 1889-1890, Rose Cleveland and Evangeline Simpson fell madly in love. And when the winter season ended, Evangeline urged Rose on to another rendezvous: "Oh, darling, come to me this night--my Clevy, my Viking, my Everything--Come!"

Who was this impassioned Evangeline, this ardent Rose?

Rose, at 44, was a well-off spinster (as they said), teacher, and successful public speaker who had edited a Chicago literary magazine, published a novel, and written a popular book of essays dedicated to her fellow countrywomen.

As Grover Cleveland's ultrarespectable sister, Rose had helped her brother survive the scandal of fathering a child out of wedlock and then win his first presidential term (1885-1889). Rose had stood by Grover as First Lady during his inauguration and his two initial bachelor years in the White House.

Evangeline was a wealthy widow of 30, well educated and well traveled, and fluent in several languages. The fortune of her businessman husband, Michael Simpson, had supplemented her own when he disappeared at sea.

Soon after Rose and Evangeline's fervid Florida inaugural in April 1890 on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico, Rose wrote to Evangeline, suggesting that they meet in New York City--though she'd then be forced to stay at Grover's. She added, hopefully, "But if you liked, I could spend most of the time at your hotel--in your room.

"Ah, how I love you!" Rose exclaimed. Evangeline's letters made her "heavy with emotion." Rose proclaimed, "Ah, Eve, Eve . . . you are mine by every sign in Earth and Heaven--by every sign in soul and spirit and body."

"Oh, Eve, I tremble at the thought of you," Rose declared, closing, "Sweet, Sweet, I dare not think of your arms." The two do get together again, apparently in that New York hotel room.

The intimacy grew. Rose wrote from her home near Utica, N.Y., "I love you, love you beyond belief--you are all the world to me."

Rose viewed Eve's picture, "the look of it all making me wild." During the night, said Rose, "I . . . tried to feel your hand--but it is no use, Eve. I am sure of you, but I do not see your delightful face--or feel your enfolding arms-- and lose all else in the shelter and happiness of that haven."

"My Eve," said Rose, and refered to her friend's "long rapturous embraces--when her sweet life-breath and her warm enfolding arms appease my hunger and quiet my breast--and carry us both in one to the summit of joy, the end of search, the goal of love!"

Rose called Eve "the woman who is my world--my Earth--and God forgive me--my Heaven!" She compared Eve to Cleopatra and herself to Antony: "Ah, my Cleopatra . . . looks a very dangerous Queen--but I will . . . crush those Antony-seeking lips." She ended this letter with a tease: "How much kissing can Cleopatra stand?"

For a year and a half, Rose and Evangeline lived together. But by 1892, Eve, though still asserting her love for Rose, had apparently decided to seek a socially sanctioned relation with a man. Rose says she won't stand in Eve's way but acknowledges her own "pain" and "hurt" and began to distance herself emotionally from Eve.

In the 1892 election, Grover Cleveland was returned to the presidency for a second term (after Benjamin Harrison). In 1893, Rose wrote to Eve on White House stationery. Though still having trouble separating from her friend, Rose sent Eve "my best blessing--whatever you do."

In 1895, Rose wrote to congratulate Eve's fiance, the widower Henry Benjamin Whipple, the Episcopal bishop of Minnesota, on the success of his courtship. She added poignantly, "Ah, how much we need, all of us, all the love we can get." A year later, the 36-year-old Evangeline became the second wife of the 74~year-old bishop.

When Bishop Whipple died in 1901, Evangeline waited the required year, then abruptly left for Europe and never returned to the bishop's Minnesota.

By 1905 Rose and Eve were writing toeach other again, and by 1908-1909 they were making travel plans. In 1910 Rose assured the Cunard Line that she and Eve would happily share a cabin.

The two women lived together in Italy for eight years until Rose dieed of fever in the 1918 epidemic. Evangeline died 12 years later, having directed her executors to bury her in Italy beside Rose and another woman friend.