Wilson Collection: Rose Cleveland and Evangeline Whipple

(Print of Rose Elizabeth Cleveland, 1885)

Under construction.

Rose Cleveland and Evangeline Whipple

In 1885-86 Rose Cleveland served as “acting First Lady” for her then-unmarried brother, President Grover Cleveland. Later, she met Evangeline Whipple. Their letters pop with passion. Evangeline to Rose: “Oh, darling, come to me this night—my Clevy, my Viking, my Everything—Come!”; Rose to Evangeline: “Ah, Eve, Eve, surely you cannot realize what you are to me...you are mine by everything in earth and heaven.”]1]

One note sizzles with woman-on-woman erotic role-play timeless as the Nile: "Ah, my Cleopatra [Evangeline] is a very dangerous Queen, but I will…crush those Anthony-seeking lips...because I [Rose] am her Captain…How much kissing can Cleopatra stand?”[2]

References 1. Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth- Century America (New York: Penguin, 1991), 32. 2. Ibid., 33.