In all those letters Bird wrote to Lyndon she never mentioned Aunt Effie until October 29, when she unveiled a plan to come east for two weeks. She had decided she wanted to see Lyndon, and she could justify a trip to Washington by combining it with a dutiful visit to Aunt Effie in Georgia. Unbeknownst to her, Lyndon had already decided to set out for Texas without telling her. Driving night and day, he made the three-day trip in two and arrived in Karnack on Halloween to deliver his marriage proposal in person. He pressed her: “If you don’t love me enough now, you never will.” But Bird, who still considered herself a “slow, considered sort of person . . . not given to quick conclusions or much rash behavior,” refused to say “yes.” Finally, she agreed to go with him to Austin and pick out an engagement ring, but she returned alone to Karnack by bus on November 7, still uncertain what to do.
Nearly everyone she knew was urging her to wait. Even T.J. was wavering, in spite of what he liked about Lyndon: his looks, prospects for a bright future, his apparently genuine love for Bird. This courtship was entirely too accelerated for T.J., and he joined other relatives and friends who cautioned Bird that two months wasn’t long enough to know the man you would take as a partner for life. If Lyndon really loved her, he would wait. Even matchmaker Gene Boehringer decided this courtship was much too rushed. Bird understood they all spoke out of concern for her, but her head ached with their dire warnings. She pled with Lyndon not to “hate” her for listening to them and to give her some leeway.
Still hoping a trip east would clarify things, Bird left Lyndon to take care of his boss’s business in Corpus Christi while she visited her Alabama cousins and Aunt Effie. She knew he was still counting on a wedding at Thanksgiving, which came on November 29, and he had already sketched out an itinerary for a honeymoon in Mexico. But she wanted to hear what others thought about this faster-than-whirlwind romance before she made up her mind.
The physical separation did not mean the two lovers forgot about each other, even for a minute. He had flowers waiting when she arrived at her cousin’s in Montgomery, and Bird wrote immediately to say that the distance between them had made her “want” him even more and see their situation “in a clearer perspective.” She went on and on about how she thought him “a superior person, as a lover and as a man,” and she had already convinced her cousin Elaine that he was a “wonderful person.” Another line from that letter indicates she was prepared to serve as his chief marketer for life: “I could sell you to your worst enemy, if you ever had one!”
After visiting her cousins, Bird moved on to secure the blessing of Aunt Effie, who was residing in Atlanta, 160 miles east of Montgomery. When Bird arrived there on Tuesday, November 13, she planned to stay several days since she knew it would “break” Aunt Effie’s heart if she rushed off. But she was counting on making it back to Texas and Lyndon by the following Saturday.
That much anticipated visit quickly turned into a disaster. Frail Aunt Effie, whom Bird had not seen in a year, could barely manage a few steps, and when the subject of marrying Lyndon came up, Aunt Effie let loose with a string of reasons why Bird should not go ahead (she was too young; she would be missing out on a career of her own; she didn’t even know this young man yet; if he loved her he would wait). Rather than argue, Bird became so upset, exhausted “both mentally and physically,” that she fled. Before nightfall, she was on a train west, planning to stop briefly at her Alabama cousins before going on to Karnack.
All she could think about was getting back to Lyndon: “I want to rush on home and meet you somewhere and I want you to put your arms around me and kiss me and let’s us laugh! I’m so damned tired of being serious (please pardon me one ‘damn’ will you?)” Her evening prayer was that the two of them could have fun and “be gay.”
Lyndon was waiting for her in Karnack, and now his plan to marry immediately made more sense. Alongside Aunt Effie’s warnings, which still rang in her ears, Bird could hear her father’s pronouncements about how the best bargains were made in a hurry. She had not yet unpacked her suitcase on the morning of Saturday, November 17, but without promising Lyndon anything she added two of her best dresses, including a new lavender one, and climbed into his black coupé. She could always get out in Austin, she told herself, but that was not how she was leaning. When Lyndon stopped briefly in Marshall to have a blood test, she used the time to buy herself a “beautiful negligee.”
With stops only to make phone calls, buy gas, and eat, they completed the 320-mile drive to San Antonio by early evening. During his three years in Congressman Kleberg’s employ, Lyndon had rendered many favors to people in the 14th District, and now he meant to collect on them. He phoned Postmaster Dan Quill, whose sister he had found a job for in Washington, and in his peremptory style ordered Quill to make all the preparations for a wedding that evening. He didn’t ask Quill if he could; he didn’t give details about what he wanted. He just said, “Fix everything” and hung up the phone, leaving Quill to solve them on his own.
Quill disobeyed several laws and ignored strong traditions that day as he put aside his own plans for the weekend and tried to satisfy Lyndon’s request. Texas required a marriage license, not easy for out-of-towners to manage on short notice and virtually impossible on a Saturday; St. Mark’s Episcopal Church had its own rules against uniting couples not fully instructed in church teachings on the subject of matrimony. When the Reverend Arthur K. McKinstry, a much loved liberal rector, refused to perform the ceremony until he had talked with the couple, Quill reminded him of the favorable postage rates Lyndon had procured for St. Mark’s weekly newsletter, and McKinstry decided that in this case he would make an exception.
By the time Lyndon and Bird checked in at the Plaza Hotel about six that evening, Quill had secured the license and lined up a priest but ignored other conventions typically associated with a marriage ceremony. When Bird inquired about a ring, bachelor Quill rushed across the street to Sears, Roebuck to buy one, and clueless about sizes he brought back several for her to try. When she selected the $2.50 one, he made it his wedding gift to the couple. Getting either family there in time was out of the question, but Bird couldn’t envision herself taking this huge step without at least one friendly face by her side, and she phoned Cecille Harrison, who lived nearby, to join her. When Cecille arrived at the Plaza, she found a jittery Bird, talking a “mile a minute” about whether she should marry Lyndon or “jump out the window.”
After Cecille helped her into the lavender dress, the two of them walked to St. Mark’s where a motley group waited, talking so loudly that the Reverend McKinstry had to shush them. Dan Quill had not found it easy to put together a jolly wedding party on a few hours’ notice, and he was not happy to have skipped a much anticipated hunting trip with Vice President John Nance Garner so he could witness the nuptials himself. Those he had rounded up for the evening included attorney Henry Hirshberg, accompanied by his wife and his brother-in-law. Hirshberg’s law partner and his wife were also there, but Bird had never met any of them. Except for Malcolm Baldwell, one of Lyndon’s co-workers whom she had met briefly, they were all strangers to the bride.
As Bird Taylor and Lyndon Johnson approached the altar to take their vows, Henry Hirshberg ended up next to the groom, and he signed the registry as “witness” alongside Cecille Harrison. After the very brief ceremony, the guests agreed that some kind of celebratory dinner was in order, but Quill had done as much as he intended to do for Lyndon Johnson that day and he took off, leaving the others to manage as best they could.
The Hirshbergs, who were well-established residents of San Antonio, took charge and prevailed on the St. Anthony Hotel to find rooftop space and a music ensemble appropriate for the occasion. Providing alcohol for the celebratory toast was more difficult. Although the Twenty-first Amendment had technically ended Prohibition a year earlier, Texas still had a dry law on the books, and the hotel was obeying it. Attorney Hirshberg had to send his brother-in-law to his own special stash to get “four or five bott
les of sparkling burgundy.” Then Hirshberg used his connections with the hotel management to make sure “the stuff was properly dispensed despite the law.” Bird’s wedding was a ragtag, impromptu affair, arranged by people she didn’t know and toasted with illegal booze. At the reception, talk focused on politics and the health status of a newly elected congressman rather than on prospects for the newlyweds.
The next morning, the bride and groom phoned friends and family to relay the news. To Gene Boehringer, Bird used enthusiastic, earthy terms: “Lyndon and I committed matrimony last night.” Back in Karnack, T.J. received instructions to have wedding announcements printed up, and with the help of neighbor Dorris Powell, he proceeded. The marriage certificate, with incorrect details supplied by Dan Quill, had listed the bride as “Bird Taylor,” but in the announcement T.J. managed to tack on one of the names he and Minnie had given their daughter at birth. Christened Claudia Alta Taylor, she was “Claudia Bird,” when her father officially announced her marriage “to Mr. Lyndon Johnson on Saturday, the 17th of November, San Antonio, Texas.”
The day after the ceremony the newlyweds set off on a honeymoon to Mexico, with no set date for returning. They would stay “as long as our money lasted.” Ecstatic Bird was so caught up in the excitement, she did not register all the details of the trip: the drive to Saltillo, about 250 miles south of the border; the train to Monterrey; the flight to Mexico City to tour a pyramid excavation; the little boat they took through the floating gardens of Xochimilco. But she was fully aware that Lyndon was buying her “loads of flowers” and that the two of them looked exultant. In the photos of that trip, their broad grins and sparkling eyes betrayed such an erotic charge between them that Bird suggested the negatives should be destroyed.
The trip lasted ten days, time enough for both bride and groom to realize that his enthusiasm for picturesque and scenic places did not match hers. Her hope that they could have fun and be “gay” came up against his workaholic, impatient bid to get back home. His friends could not believe he stuck it out as long as he did. They had predicted he would be back in four days, but Bird had managed to keep him occupied more than double that time.
Reentry to Texas brought Bird a list of assignments. After seeing a gynecologist (for reasons she kept to herself), she went to work on becoming Lyndon’s political partner. In the courtship letters, she had made very clear her strong interest in contemporary issues and expressed some decided opinions. So Lyndon had ample notice that she was a woman who thought for herself. Even on matters that she knew his colleagues disagreed with her, she was blunt, writing him that she abhorred “protective tariffs” but did not consider socialism “essentially a malignant system.” When he told her that his good friend Welly Hopkins was critical of “ultra liberal” New Deal laws, she replied that she liked them and she had no objection at all to what Hopkins was calling the “increasing paternalism of our government.” People who insisted on a strict interpretation of the Constitution were wrong, she argued, because “I think it can be bent to suit new needs.” Offering to debate any of these subjects, she taunted Lyndon to join her: “Do you like to argue about economics and religions and . . .social systems, et cetera ad infinitum??? I do!”
Having gone on record about so many issues of the day, Bird was primed to take part in a political alliance, and Lyndon had an assignment ready as soon as the honeymoon ended. He wanted her to memorize the names of all the county seats in Kleberg’s congressional district and the most important bosses, or “jefes,” in each. Now when she accompanied Lyndon to political meetings, she could greet people as individuals and talk with them about what Lyndon could do to help them. If he was going to be the “best secretary that a congressman ever had,” they both knew she had an important role to play.
By late December, when Bird turned twenty-two, she was packing for Washington, where she would have to run a household for the very first time. She had met Lyndon less than four months earlier and had spent only a fraction of that time with him. But that was sufficient to delineate the terms for a long, mutually beneficial partnership. She had married a power-seeking man like her father who would take her away from boring talk of planting crops and making jelly. That journey would incorporate Bird into her husband’s career and make her part of his ambitious climb. Lyndon had found the mate essential to his success. She was his mood stabilizer, a gracious people pleaser, and incredibly strong shield of steel.
5
BECOMING A PRICELESS POLITICAL PARTNER
ONE STORY Lady Bird Johnson liked to tell about her husband concerned a meeting he had soon after becoming congressman for Texas’s 10th District. His mentor, the corporation attorney Alvin Wirtz, had arranged for him to talk with the top executive of a power company to work out a deal beneficial to his constituents. The two men talked and talked but the congressman got nowhere, and in a huff Lyndon stood up, told the businessman to “go to hell,” and stomped out.
A few hours later, when Lyndon returned to Wirtz for advice on how to proceed, Wirtz told him that he was very disappointed. It had taken months to get the businessman to meet and now Lyndon’s outburst had undone all that hard work. “Just remember,” Wirtz counseled, “you can tell a man to go to hell, but you can’t make him go.”
This was a punch line whose wisdom Lady Bird knew only too well. Lyndon was forever losing his temper, lambasting aides, telling off associates, and offending the very people he needed on his side. He could flatter and charm, yes. No one could do that better, and she marveled at how often he remembered an employee’s birthday or inquired about an ailing family member. But he could also let loose with biting ridicule and nasty insults. He brought his loyal, hardworking secretary, Mary Rather, to tears by telling her in front of her co-workers that she had made an “ass” of herself by drinking too many martinis. Walter Jenkins and John Connally, early hires to Lyndon’s congressional staff, endured more tongue-lashings than they dared count, and Connally’s wife, Nellie, who worked as secretary in the same office, learned to duck when Lyndon threw a phone book at her.
All of them found some satisfaction in knowing their boss’s mood could improve in a flash and then he would be passing out gifts (Mary Rather received an expensive handbag). But it was Lady Bird who provided the best consolation. She treated Rather like a sister, inviting her along on driving trips and including her at parties. The same solicitous attention went to the Connallys and to the Jenkinses, along with repeated admonitions to disregard whatever Lyndon said in the heat of the moment. He hadn’t meant a word of it, Bird insisted. It was all part of that promise she had made before their marriage to sell him to his “worst enemy.” As “fixer” of the liaisons he broke and mediator in the messes he made, she aimed to be right there, ever ready to help his political climb.
It wasn’t just to others that she needed to “sell” Lyndon. When he was in one of his down moods, sick and pessimistic about accomplishing anything, she would remind him that things were sure to turn around. Sherman Birdwell, who managed Lyndon’s Washington office for three years, noted how his boss’s moods shifted rapidly. He could be the most exciting leader, laying out ambitious plans with such infectious enthusiasm that Birdwell worked eighteen-hour days to put those plans into action. But then Lyndon would take to his bed, refusing to budge, “next to death’s door.” That’s when Birdwell needed Bird.
To the amazement of his associates, Lyndon sometimes directed his derogatory comments and brusque demands at his wife. Martha James, whose husband worked with Lyndon, remembered being in the Johnson home chatting with Bird in perfectly normal tones when Lyndon starting yelling at them to stop: “Cut out the damn noise. I’m playing dominoes. I can’t think.” Mrs. James, not accustomed to being yelled at, was so upset she insisted her husband take her home immediately. But Lady Bird treated the reprimand like a puff of harmless hot air—she seemed not to have heard it. She was taking the advice she gave others—to toss off those angry words as meaningless.
Call it what
you wish—fixer, enabler, smoother-of-feelings—it was the role Lady Bird played in the career of a political genius who had trouble managing his own moods and his relations with others. She got started early, almost as soon as she arrived in Washington in late December 1934, and she combined that responsibility with a crash course in household management.
Here was a woman who had grown up with servants who did everything for her. She had approached the oven, when she baked that lemon pie from the congressional wives cookbook, like a student entering a science lab, moving slowly, step by step, through the printed instructions. In Washington, as the wife of a congressional assistant, she would have to do much more than bake a lemon pie now and then. She would have to oversee cleaning, take care of laundry, and shop for and prepare meals, not only for herself and Lyndon, but for all those they invited to their home.
Lyndon liked to tease her that she got off to a rocky start in Washington. The two of them had driven up from Texas (the first of what would become dozens of such trips for Bird) and arrived on December 31, 1934, in time for a big party at the Alexandria home of newspaperman William S. White. Bird hadn’t the slightest idea how to get there—her acquaintance with Washington was limited to those few days she had spent there the previous June—but she knew a bit about reporters and how they partied. This was a crowd with a reputation for heavy drinking and they didn’t go for the sweet, citrusy Tom Collinses that she liked. They drank whiskey and they drank it straight.
On a festive occasion like New Year’s Eve, the reporters had an added incentive to keep their own glasses (and Bird’s) full, and in the excitement of the evening she lost count of how much she had drunk. When she got sick, Lyndon blamed the host for serving bad booze, but White thought the problem was Bird’s. Like a lot of country girls, she didn’t know how to hold her liquor.
Lady Bird and Lyndon Page 9