Scatter Brained

C H A P T E R   5

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S C A T T E R B R A I N E D
brothel.  Before  settling  down  in  extramarital  bliss  with 
Charles, Gwynn was one of Europe’s fi rst professional ac-
tresses.
PRESIDENTS
Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s last words were “I have a terrifi c 
headache.” (Indeed, he’d just had a cerebral hemorrhage.) 
However, he spoke them not to his wife, Eleanor, but to his 
mistress, Lucy. And while Roosevelt is known to have had a 
number of aff airs, it’s the (unproven) speculation about Elea-
nor’s infi delity that tends to grab the headlines.
✖  ✖  ✖
Presidents known or believed to have had illegitimate chil-
dren include Th
 omas Jeff erson, Grover Cleveland, and War-
ren G. Harding.
✖  ✖  ✖
Speaking of Harding: After Carrie Phillips, with whom Hard-
ing had carried on a 15-year relationship, threatened to re-
lease their love letters to the newspapers, Harding’s campaign 
paid her $20,000 to keep quiet. And you thought Nixon was 
dirty. . . .
✖  ✖  ✖
Of course, Nixon 
was
 dirty. Although it isn’t exactly pleasant 
to  picture,  it’s  fairly  well  established  that  Nixon  repeatedly 
cheated on his wife, Pat.
✖  ✖  ✖
DNA tests have now confi rmed that Th
 omas Jeff erson fa-
thered children with his slave, Sally Hemings. Rumors have 
long  swirled,  though,  that  George  Washington  fathered  a 
child with a slave, too. According to the story, Washington 

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had a brief relationship in 1784 with a slave named Venus, 
who was owned by Washington’s brother. Nine months later, 
Venus had a son named West Ford, who became a prominent 
freedman in northern Virginia.
SCIENTISTS
Albert Einstein is a hero and a genius and everything, but he 
wasn’t the World’s Greatest Husband. “I treat my wife,” he 
once wrote in a love letter to his mistress, Elsa (who was also 
his fi rst cousin), “as an employee whom I cannot fi re.” Even-
tually, though, he 
did
 fi re her, divorcing her and then marry-
ing Elsa—with whom he lived happily, if not entirely 
faithfully, ever after.
✖  ✖  ✖
Sigmund Freud never named the particular complex from 
which he apparently suff ered. Th
  e Oedipus complex has to do 
with boys and their moms; the Electra complex involves fa-
thers and daughters; but what’s the one where you cheat on 
your wife, Martha, with her sister, Minna? Speaking of 
Freud . . .
02
  And You Thought Freud 
Was Nuts:
Notes from the Early Days of Psychology
Hydrotherapy, or the use of water to cure sickness, has been 
around for a long time—Hippocrates (of Oath fame) pre-
scribed bathing in clean spring water to cure all manners of 
disease. But it didn’t gain favor as a treatment for mental ill-