A Snuggery for the General: James Garfield’s Study in Mentor

A senator once spent six hours in a small study in Mentor, Ohio, and afterward complained that the president-elect had offered him tea. The room is James Garfield’s “snuggery for the General,” and a National Park Service guide tells its story.

Garfield’s study, or “snuggery,” as drawn for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper during the 1880 presidential campaign.

A room to read, relax and work

In 1880 James and Lucretia Garfield expanded their Mentor farmhouse to fit the Congressman and his large family. One important addition was the snuggery, a room at the top of the staircase where he could read, relax and work in quiet. When Garfield became the “dark horse” Republican presidential candidate in June, it was ready. Through summer, fall and winter, first as candidate and then as president-elect, he met supporters, wrote letters and speeches, and welcomed friends in the small private office. Newspaper and magazine articles describe it, and the Frank Leslie’s drawing shows how it looked that campaign year.

The meeting with Conkling

In January 1881, while assembling his cabinet, Garfield invited New York Senator Roscoe Conkling to Mentor to consult on matters including New York interests. Conkling, who insisted that he and not Garfield should control party patronage in New York, took ten days to reply, and wrote that he needed hardly say Garfield’s administration could not be more successful than he wished it to be. The two met in the snuggery for six hours.

The snuggery looks much today as it did when Garfield and Conkling met there in early 1881. NPS photo.

Garfield’s diary called the meeting “frank and friendly.” By the guide’s account, Conkling opened by saying that the Treasury was the only post that would satisfy New York, and that the state would rather be passed over altogether than not receive the department its rank and service deserved. It soon became clear to Garfield that Conkling did not speak for all New York Republicans, and that he would not offer the Treasury to any New Yorker. Afterward Conkling ranted about why he had been summoned, how long the talk lasted and the tea; he never called the meeting friendly.

Lucretia Garfield’s changes

At the end of February 1881 the family left Mentor for the White House, and Garfield never came back. A month after his death, his private secretary, Joseph Stanley-Brown, suggested to Lucretia Garfield that the General’s desk and the furniture of his library at the family’s Washington home on I Street be preserved so the room could be reproduced, perhaps at the new library in Mentor. She took up the idea, brought pieces from Washington and made some changes, most notably a gas fireplace with a mantelpiece inscribed “In Memoriam.”

The fireplace with “In Memoriam” carved above it, one of the few changes Lucretia Garfield made to the room. NPS photo.

What hangs on the walls

Above the desk hangs a picture of Dr. John P. Robison, Garfield’s lifelong friend and mentor, twenty years his senior, a physician, businessman and leader of the Disciples of Christ in northeast Ohio. Robison owned a farm in Mentor and suggested in summer 1876 that Garfield buy the nearby property for sale, “the old Dickey farm,” then oversaw many improvements while the Garfields were in Washington. He conducted the funeral services in Cleveland on September 26, 1881.

James A. Garfield’s desk, with the photograph of Dr. Robison on the wall above it. NPS photo.

Beside the desk are pictures of James Smithson, the British scientist and explorer whose bequest founded the Smithsonian, and of the Smithsonian Castle. The Smithsonian was established by Congress in 1846. Garfield was a regent of the National Museum from 1865 to 1873 and again from 1878 to 1881, and he enjoyed visits to the museum with his children. His inaugural ball on March 4, 1881, was held in the new National Museum building. Above the fireplace is a framed group of twenty men, Garfield, Mark Hopkins and eighteen members of Williams College’s class of 1856, photographed in Washington in March 1881. On March 5, the first full day of his presidency, Garfield wrote in his diary that the call of the Williams alumni and Dr. Hopkins’s speech were the pleasant event of the day.

The lopsided chair

The most interesting piece in the room, the guide says, is President Garfield’s lopsided leather reading chair, one of the most commented-upon artifacts in the house. Though not unique, it is rich in family tradition, and its worn original leather invites visitors to imagine Garfield relaxing with a book at the end of a busy day.

Garfield’s “lopsided” leather reading chair. NPS photo.

Lucretia Garfield called it “a snuggery for the General,” and the guide describes it as the room in the Mentor home that most reflects his personality and interests.

Sources

• National Park Service, James A. Garfield National Historic Site, A Snuggery for the General, by Joan Kapsch, Park Guide, for the Garfield Observer; rewritten in hubnx’s own words.