First Ladies (44 page)

The correspondence shows a continued sharing of thoughts with so much background information missing that the writer must have assumed no need to repeat it. In September 1941, for example, Harry wrote from his hotel in Kansas City that he had spent hours with various Democratic Party leaders. After naming some of them, he concluded: “My, what a difference from last year … and what a kick there is in it. They all … wonder what I am going to do for the poor old ‘Party'. What should I do?”
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In his breezy accounts of meetings with Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill at the end of World War II, he summarized in the manner of one associate updating another. From Berlin he wrote on July 25, 1945: “We have accomplished a very great deal in spite of all the talk. Set up a council of ministers to negotiate peace with Italy, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Finland and Austria. We have discussed a free waterway program for Europe, making the Black Sea straits, the Danube, the Rhine, and the Kiel Canal free to everyone. We have a setup for the government of Germany and we hope we are in sight of agreement on reparations.”
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Harry Truman continued to defend his confidence in Bess's opinions long after he left office. In a 1963 interview with the Washington reporter Marianne Means, he explained that he had talked over with his wife the use of the atomic bomb, the Marshall Plan and post-war rebuilding, and the Korean military action: “I discussed all of them with her. Why not? Her judgment was always good.” The Trumans' daughter later underlined her mother's impact on the administration by crediting her with obtaining increased funding for the National Institute of Health and with arranging for theater groups to tour the world under the auspices of the State Department.
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The foundation for strong mutual respect between Bess and Harry was established when they were very young. His family had left their Missouri farm when he was six and moved into Independence so that he and his brother could get a “town” education. The Trumans owned hundreds of acres but like many farmers, they had borrowed heavily in order to buy. They always owed money, Harry once said, to somebody. First in Sunday school and then in the Independence elementary school, the bespectacled Harry was permanently smitten by a blond, blue-eyed classmate (whose family rarely owed money to anyone). Almost sixty years later he wrote her from the White House, “You are still on the pedestal where I placed you that day in Sunday School in 1890.”
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Bess Wallace's maternal grandfather, George Gates, had moved to Independence from Vermont in the 1850s and had established a profitable milling business that produced the nationally famous “Queen of the Pantry” flour. For his wife and three daughters, he built a seventeen-room Victorian mansion that was still impressive when it became the summer White House almost a century later. It was, one reporter wrote, a residence that “in any city anywhere … would command respect.”
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When one of Gates's daughters, Madge, the “queenliest woman” Independence ever produced,
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married David Wallace, the son of the town's first mayor, it seemed a perfect match. But neighbors later concluded that Madge's egotism made her a less than sensitive wife. One story that made the rounds of Independence had it that Madge had her dress splattered by a cantering horse, and she had immediately registered her surprise. “Doesn't he know who I am?” she asked, leaving it unclear whether she referred to the rider or the horse.
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Whatever his reasons, David Wallace put a gun to his head and took his life when he was forty-three, leaving Madge with four children. Bess, the oldest, was just eighteen, and according to Margaret Truman, this tragedy, more than any other single event, produced Bess's unusually great insistence on privacy.
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Widow Wallace moved her family back into her father's house on North Delaware Street but she never quite recovered from the shock. Bess, the dutiful daughter, did not go away to college, but remained in Independence and commuted to Barstow Finishing School in nearby Kansas City. Thus, she could begin a long correspondence with Harry Truman who was working his parents' farm ten miles out of town.

Harry, the most faithful of writers, constantly chided Bess about owing him a letter and reported his own activities with a combination of self-doubt and braggadocio. He insisted that if she married him he would try to provide the same level of luxury she had in the Gates mansion or, failing that, he would supply equivalent prestige. “How does it feel being engaged to a clodhopper who has ambitions to be Governor of Montana and Chief Executive of U.S.?” Harry wrote in 1913, but continued, “He'll do well if he gets to be a retired farmer … but I intend to keep peggin' away and I suppose I'll arrive at something. You'll never be sorry if you take me for better or for worse because I'll always try to make it better.”
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The combination of blundering ambition and great determination evidently appealed to Bess and, although she admitted she found him an enigma, she appreciated his devotion. He repeatedly offered to buy tickets for whatever show she would consider seeing with him.
Aware of her tennis prowess, he constructed a playing court at the Truman farm to tempt her to come visit him on Sundays.

Whatever Harry could offer her, he never seemed to think it enough, and while he tried first one scheme and then another, he compiled the longest courtship record of any president. He later complained that he never understood why she made him wait fifteen years to marry her. Bess's mother, the hard-to-please Madge Wallace, judged a farmer like Harry unworthy of her only daughter, but Harry was partly to blame, too, because he wanted to make good first. When the farm did not produce as he hoped, he turned to mining and then to drilling for oil. In 1917 he enlisted in the Army and opened a canteen.

Fighting in France evidently tempered Harry's expectations about what he should be able to offer his bride or changed Bess's ideas about how long she wanted to wait. They had announced their engagement before he sailed and when the war ended, he could not conceal his eagerness. She rejected his suggestion that she meet him in New York so that they could marry there, and their wedding took place in Bess's hometown church with the appropriate number of attendants on June 28, 1919. Madge Wallace continued to doubt that the bridegroom would ever amount to much. He had shown up for the wedding in a figured wool suit, she noted disapprovingly, when linen would have been more appropriate.
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Harry's mother-in-law was not the only one surprised by the marriage. The bride and groom, both in their mid-thirties, differed so much from each other that even their daughter, born when her parents were almost forty, marveled at the contrast. Bess, an athletic young woman who developed into a controlled and very private woman, made Harry look particularly bookish and impetuous. As a child, he stuck to his books because he feared breaking his spectacles, and he never did learn to mask his sharp temper. While he became widely read in American history, she liked a good murder mystery. He delighted in winning small stakes at poker, but she preferred bridge. Theirs was, apparently, one of those unions of sharply different partners who chose to team up in maturity after both had developed very separate identities.

Harry did not immediately set out to win political office. After he failed at running a men's store, opened in partnership with an army buddy, he accepted the invitation of another army friend, James Pendergast, nephew of Jackson County's political boss, and tried for a judgeship. When Harry Truman assumed that office in January 1923, he began a government career that lasted, with the exception
of two years, for three decades. Bess reluctantly faced the prospect of being a political wife.

Unlike Eleanor Roosevelt, who seemed intent on carving out her own niche in Washington, Bess merged her identity with Harry's. In 1945, when questioned about her past, Bess replied: “I have been in politics for more than 25 years.”
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But it was a subtle participation, quite unlike that of Eleanor who had combined her public and private lives into one seamless whole. For Bess, the two parts remained separate—her public role consisted of keeping quiet and making sure her hat was on straight. Her private life was her own business, although it was understood in Washington that she did not lack opinions.
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This apparent contradiction led to considerable confusion. Although
Good Housekeeping
named Bess Truman one of Washington's ten most powerful women in 1949, the public knew little about her because she refused to tell much. After nine months in the White House, she went Christmas shopping alone and unnoticed.
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When the
New York Times
published a feature article on her in June 1946, the headline read, “The Independent Lady from Independence,”
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and three years later readers of
Collier's
learned that Bess was “still a riddle.”
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All information about the First Lady came from her two secretaries: Reathel Odum, who had formerly worked for Harry, and Edith Helm, whose White House experience went back to the Wilson years. Reporters soon learned to expect from Odum and Helm only the barest facts, none of them very informative about the Trumans. After much badgering, Bess finally consented to respond to reporters' written questions but even then she used “No comment” for nearly one third of their queries. She revealed that she thought the two most important characteristics for a First Lady were good health and a strong sense of humor but, she added, a course in public speaking would also be helpful.
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Perhaps her most telling response came to the question of whether she had wanted her husband to be president. “Definitely did not,” she wrote, underlining “definitely.”

In the absence of other information, reporters wrote about her comings and goings, her housekeeping, which was “excellent,” and her “mind of her own about menus.”
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Her refusal to speak out on matters of public concern gave readers the impression she knew less than she did and that she was the “Martha” type who contented herself with “minding her knitting.”
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Much of the information was simply wrong. One national news magazine reported that Bess Truman “neither drinks nor smokes.”
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Another ran a photograph of her refusing a glass of wine, with the
caption: “No prohibitionist, Mrs. Truman just doesn't like the taste of the stuff.”
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When Bess and daughter Margaret chose orange juice over cocktails at a New York dinner, they made the
New York Times
and received an approving letter from a Binghamton (New York) Methodist church. Bess politely thanked her supporters but failed to enlighten them about her drinking preferences.
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White House employees made clear in their published memoirs that the Trumans liked a cocktail before dinner. In fact, they had definite preferences in how their drinks were mixed, something the staff had to learn. According to J. B. West, who worked many years in the White House, Bess rang for the butler her first night there and ordered old-fashioneds for herself and the president. Since the butler had once worked as a barman, he took considerable pride in his mixing abilities, and he confidently added fruit slices and bitters to the drinks before serving them. Bess made no comment about the fruit slices but pronounced her drink too sweet. The next evening an identical order received even greater attention from the butler but the same reaction from the First Lady. Finally on the third night an exasperated butler poured straight bourdon into the glasses. This time Bess smiled. “That,” she said, “is the way we like our old-fashioneds.”
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That such stories became known only after the Trumans left the White House resulted from Bess's refusal to talk rather than from her adjusting her behavior to fit what the public wanted. In fact, what endeared her to many people was her insistence on remaining unchanged by her prominence. She invited the entire membership of her hometown bridge club to stay at the White House and see Washington from the top. Each time she returned to Missouri she made clear that she wanted no fuss from her neighbors and that she expected to be treated like everyone else. In spite of heavy commitments as the president's wife, she kept her mother with her until Madge Wallace died in December 1952. Bess's brothers had volunteered to help but she insisted that it was a daughter's duty.

Beyond the household management and the ceremonial appearances, Bess Truman spent much of her time answering about one hundred letters a day. It was a far less demanding schedule than Eleanor had kept, but one congressman thought she ought to be compensated. Calling her job the “only case of involuntary servitude in the USA,” Representative James G. Fulton (Republican, Pennsylvania) proposed giving the president's wife an annual salary of $10,000. The country provided for widows of presidents, Fulton said, but did little “for wives who are in there working on their job every day.”
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The proposal was quickly dropped as not being authorized by
law,
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and Bess continued working as presidents' wives had before her—for nothing.

Unlike Eleanor Roosevelt, Bess Truman had never shown any interest in earning money on her own. She had spent the twelve years between graduation and marriage at home, improving her tennis and learning how to run a household. When Harry opened the men's clothing store, she assisted in keeping the books, and when he needed her in the Senate office, she helped out, but her income came from her husband.

To encourage women to break out of that kind of dependence, the 1944 Democratic Convention ran a campaign school to help women improve their public speaking skills and understand economics and foreign policy. Teachers included Helen Gahagan Douglas, a candidate for Congress from California, and Florence Jaffray Harriman, former minister to Norway, who demonstrated how to capture the attention of a street-corner audience. Bess Truman, who accompanied Harry to the 1944 convention which selected him to run for vice president, took no part in the women's school, and when reporters approached her and the wife of the current vice president, Henry Wallace, and asked for a statement, both women begged off. Bess “shrank from comment” according to the
New York Times
, and insisted she was primarily a homemaker.
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