Courtship
Dear Bird: The 1934 Courtship Letters, LBJ Presidential
Letters
Library, Austin Texas.
CTJ
Claudia Taylor Johnson
HM
LBJ Library Video, Lady Bird Johnson’s Home Movies.
LBJ
Lyndon Baines Johnson
RTCM
Recordings and Transcripts of Conversations and Meetings, LBJ Presidential Library, Austin, Texas.
WHD
Lady Bird Johnson, White House Diary, LBJ Presidential Library, Austin, Texas.
Prologue
“neglected”: WHD, January 5, 1965, Box 2.
“regal” . . . “all the way”: AWHD, pp. 599–600.
“magic” . . . “Pied Piper”: WHD, April 15, 1964, Box 1.
“looked just like my nose looks”: WHD, February 17, 1967, Box 4.
“firm and clear” . . . “Her mother and I”: AWHD, p. 600.
“pure hell”: Michael Beschloss, Reaching for Glory: Lyndon Johnson’s Secret White House Tapes, 1964–1965 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), p. 426.
“vast array of cameras”: WHD, December 9, 1967, Box 5.
“a swirl” . . . “awful purple dress”: WHD, December 9, 1967, Box 5.
“most satisfying”: WHD, December 10, 1967, Box 5.
1: Bird Learns to Fly
“How did you handle your flirt and ladies’ man husband”: Barbara Walters interviewed Lady Bird Johnson on NBC’s Today show; quotes are taken from The New York Times article on the interview, February 21, 1974, p. 21.
“T. J. Taylor owns everything”: Karnack resident Sylvia Wisdom Bishop to author, March 16, 2011.
“stressful”: Jan Jarboe Russell, Lady Bird: A Biography of Mrs. Johnson (New York: Scribner, 1999), p. 31.
“the meanest man in Autauga County”: Randall B. Woods, LBJ: Architect of American Ambition (New York: Free Press, 2006), p. 92.
“white trash”: Russell, Lady Bird, p. 36.
“two thousand miles”: Taylor v. Taylor, Divorce papers, Harrison County Courthouse, Marshall, Texas.
“5 weeks”: Ibid.
“nervous trouble” . . . “quiet country home”: Ibid.
“valuable . . . real and personal property”: Ibid.
“judgment by default”: Ibid.
“deemed more respectable to assign credit to the nurse”: Michael L. Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson: An Oral History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 8. This was told to Gillette in private and does not appear in Mrs. Johnson’s oral histories, which are online.
“wacky”: WHD, August 19, 1965, Box 3.
“slacker”: Same term used by two different sources in describing what Minnie Taylor said: Transcript, Dorris (Mrs. Hugh) Powell, Oral History Interview II, April 18, 1978, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 7. Transcript, Eugenia Boehringer Lasseter, Oral History Interview I, March 10, 1981, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 3.
“I’ve been with a black woman”: Woods, LBJ, p. 93.
“pushed her down”: Ibid., p. 94.
“the will of God”: Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson, p. 18. This phrase also appears in the Charles Guggenheim documentary film, A Life: The Story of Lady Bird Johnson (directed by Charles Guggenheim, produced by Guggenheim Productions, Washington, D.C., 1992).
“my daily companion”: Lady Bird, Naturally, a documentary, produced by KLRN, San Antonio, Texas, 2001, and available from Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.
“It did not come with the genes”: Lynda Johnson Robb, speaking at First Lady Conference, Grand Rapids, Michigan, April 20, 1984.
“passive” . . . “sights on being more like my father”: Merle Miller, Lyndon: An Oral Biography (New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1970), p. 51.
“wouldn’t share an account with the Angel Gabriel”: Bess Abell to author, December 16, 2010.
“had resources most people don’t have”: James Ketchum to author, April 14, 2011.
“veil” . . . “Southern thing”: Sally Newcomb MacDonald to author, March 31, 2012.
“She put on her mask and let the world go by”: Harry Middleton to author, June 7, 2010.
“psychic leave”: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York: St. Martin’s, 1991), pp. 83–84. This second edition has a new foreword; the original was published under the author’s maiden name, Doris Kearns, in 1976.
“She had her own car”: Sylvia Wisdom Bishop to author, March 16, 2011.
“Yes, in a coarse and crude sort of way”: Russell, Lady Bird, p. 63.
“because of sympathy”: Copy of Claudia Taylor’s high school essay, in the Collections of the Harrison County Historical Museum, Marshall, Texas, supplied to the author by Ruth Briggs and quoted by permission of Janet Cook.
“Don’t just say ‘a man is cruel’ ”: Harry Middleton, A Life Well Lived (Austin: Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation, 1992), p. 59.
“I loved the theater”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview XXXVII, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 10. Also in Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson, p. 253.
“the most exciting ride of my young life”: Russell, Lady Bird, p. 60.
2: Mama’s Boy
“Then I came along”: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York: St. Martin’s, 1991), p. 22.
“I’d Rather Be Mama’s Boy”: Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy (New York: Macmillan, 1968), p. 15.
“In the rambling old farm house”: Rebekah Baines Johnson, A Family Album (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965), p. 17. This is a published version of the family history Rebekah Johnson put together for Lyndon at Christmas 1954.
“dominant force”: Ibid., p. 29.
“call me lucky”: Ibid., p. 28.
“think and to endure”: Ibid.
“severe and sudden financial reverses”: Ibid., p. 29.
“Red Warriors”: Ibid., pp. 74–75.
“personable young man”: Ibid., p. 24.
“a girl who really liked politics”: Ibid., p. 30.
“We didn’t really know about it at the time”: Transcript, Josefa Baines Saunders, Oral History Interview I, December 28, 1964, by Juanita Roberts, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 2.
“shuddered over the chickens”: Rebekah Baines Johnson, A Family Album, p. 30.
“rambling farmhouse”: Ibid., p. 17.
“Lyndon may have been born in a log cabin”: Harvey Herbst to author, October 6, 2011.
“Dr. John Blunton of Buda”: Rebekah Baines Johnson, A Family Album, p. 17.
“extremely beautiful woman” . . . “embarrassed and ashamed”: Transcript, Virginia Foster Durr, Oral History Interview I, by Mary Walton Livingston, October 17, 1967, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, pp. 12–13.
“typical manic’s career”: D. Jablow Hershman, Power Beyond Reason: The Mental Collapse of Lyndon Johnson (Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade, 2002), p. 22.
“laughable”: Ronnie Dugger, The Politician: The Life and Times of Lyndon Johnson (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), p. 89.
“always bossy”: WHD, December 12, 1966, Box 4.
“May the Lord keep Watch”: Transcript, Juanita Roberts, Oral History Interview I, April 28, 1965, by Eric F. Goldman, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 13.
“the man who started the fire under me”: Robert Dallek, Lone Star Rising, p. 72.
3: Getting Out of Karnack, with the Right Man
“Well, let’s hope we did”: Transcript, Sharon Francis, Oral History Interview III, June 27, 1969, by Dorothy Pierce McSweeney, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 35.
“magic place”: PBS documentary, Lady Bird Johnson, produced by MacNeil/Lehrer Productions and KLRU, Austin, 2001, Transcript, Part I.
“a romantic newspaperman”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview III, August 14, 1977, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 14. Also in Michael L. Gillette, Lady Bird Jo
hnson: An Oral History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 34.
“Navajo parties”: Jan Jarboe Russell, Lady Bird: A Biography of Mrs. Johnson (New York: Scribner, 1999), p. 80.
“never amount to anything”: Transcript, Emily Crow Selden, Oral History Interview, January 10, 1980, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 11.
“That one’s not for you”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview III, August 14, 1977, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 40. Also in Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson, p. 42.
“oil men” . . . “Casino de Paree”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, September 20, 1934.
“lady friends” . . . “his domestic life”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview IV, February 4, 1978, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 13. Also in Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson, p. 49.
“the gentlest of men”: Inscription on T. J. Taylor’s gravestone, Algoma Cemetery, Marshall, Texas.
“forget we’ve got him”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, September 30, 1934.
“stem-winding, arm-swinging speech”: Transcript, Welly K. Hopkins, Oral History Interview I, May 11, 1965, by Eric F. Goldman, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 4.
“That’s one of the most brilliant men”: Transcript, Sam Fore, Dan Quill, Oliver Bruck, and William S. White, Oral History Interview I, January 20, 1965, by Douglass Cater, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 1.
“children”: Transcript, Estelle Harbin, Oral History Interview, November 10, 1977, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 16.
“charm”: Ibid., p. 25.
“he had something”: Transcript, Sam Fore, Dan Quill, Oliver Bruck, and William S. White, Oral History Interview I, January 20, 1965, by Douglass Cater, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 26.
“didn’t know what he wanted to be”: Robert A. Caro, The Path to Power (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), p. 229.
“came on strong”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview IV, February 4, 1978, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 19. Also in Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson, p. 51.
“the moth in the flame”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview IV, February 4, 1978, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 21. Also in Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson, p. 52.
“best side”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview IV, February 4, 1978, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 20. Also in Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson, p. 52.
“very much a gentlewoman”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview IV, February 4, 1978, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 22. Also in Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson, p. 53.
“an eagerness about his face”: Transcript, Cecille Harrison Marshall, Oral History Interview I, February 19, 1976, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 13.
“mule”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview XX, February 20–21, 1981, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 35. Also in Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson, p. 189.
“rather overpowering” . . . “aging duchess”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview IV, February 4, 1978, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 25. Also in Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson, p. 54.
“You’ve brought home a lot of boys”: Notes to CTJ interview with Ruth Montgomery, July 3, 1963, p. 14, in Lewis Gould Papers, Box 1, at LBJ Library. Also in Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson, p. 55.
4: More than “Electric Going”
“so rich”: WHD, August 24, 1965, Box 3.
“very close”: AWHD, p. 604.
“the excitement of Lyndon mounting” . . . “one of the strangest, most off- key”: AWHD, p. 605.
“hard” . . . “how satisfying and gratifying”: Courtship Letters, Lyndon Johnson to Lady Bird Taylor, September 11, 1934.
“indifference”: Courtship Letters, Lyndon Johnson to Lady Bird Taylor, September 15, 1934.
“definitely just how and where you stand”: Courtship Letters, Lyndon Johnson to Lady Bird Taylor, September 15, 1934.
“Nobody in Marshall knows”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, September 17, 1934.
“electric going”: Michael L. Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson: An Oral History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 50.
“simple things”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, September 13, 1934.
“blue and depressed”: Courtship Letters, Lyndon Johnson to Lady Bird Taylor, September 29, 1934.
“own perseverance”: Courtship Letters, Lyndon Johnson to Lady Bird Taylor, September 30, 1934.
“moodiness”: Courtship Letters, Lyndon Johnson to Lady Bird Taylor, September 30, 1934.
“always feeling blue”: Courtship Letters, Lyndon Johnson to Lady Bird Taylor, October 2, 1934.
“never sure, never contented” . . . “Again I repeat”: Courtship Letters, Lyndon Johnson to Lady Bird Taylor, September 23, 1934.
“who loved me”: Courtship Letters, Lyndon Johnson to Lady Bird Taylor, November 8, 1934.
“to nurse me”: Courtship Letters, Lyndon Johnson to Lady Bird Taylor, October 10, 1934.
“help me to climb”: Courtship Letters, Lyndon Johnson to Lady Bird Taylor, September 26, 1934.
“Mix some ‘I love you’ in the lines”: Courtship Letters, Lyndon Johnson to Lady Bird Taylor, September 23, 1934.
“right this minute I’d rather see you”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, September 21, 1934.
“best letter you have written”: Courtship Letters, Lyndon Johnson to Lady Bird Taylor, September 26, 1934.
“one by one” . . . “new hope, new interest” . . . “just thrilled” . . . “to death”: Courtship Letters, Lyndon Johnson to Lady Bird Taylor, September 26, 1934.
“real” . . . “inward feelings ‘silly,’ ” . . . “depressed”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, October 11, 1934.
“too sentimental”: Courtship Letters, Lyndon Johnson to Lady Bird Taylor, October 14, 1934.
“For weeks I’ve only half heartedly done anything”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor quotes Lyndon in her letter to him, October 19, 1934.
“Stop it, dear!”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, October 19, 1934.
“I’m very unhappy tonight”: Courtship Letters, Lyndon Johnson to Lady Bird Taylor, October 19, 1934.
“four or five years”: Courtship Letters, Lyndon Johnson to Lady Bird Taylor, October 20, 1934.
“dear Bird”: Courtship Letters, Lyndon Johnson to Lady Bird Taylor, October 23, 1934.
“No, honey”: Courtship Letters, Lyndon Johnson to Lady Bird Taylor, October 27, 1934.
“sick little man”: Courtship Letters, Lyndon Johnson to Lady Bird Taylor, October 10, 1934.
“real friends”: Courtship Letters, Lyndon Johnson to Lady Bird Taylor, October 5, 1934.
“something awful might happen to us” . . . “forsaken” . . . “one thing I won’t do”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, October 18, 1934.
“I simply will not let it”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, October 4, 1934.
“I think its [sic] plain silly”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, September 24, 1934.
“my little radio writer”: Courtship Letters, Lyndon Johnson to Lady Bird Taylor, September 29, 1934.
“sharpened [Lyndon] up”: Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson, p. 68.
“I love you [but] I don’t know”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, September 26, 1934.
“Darling, don’t you see”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, October 17, 1934.
“poor lamb” . . .“Whenever do you play?”: Courts
hip Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, September 17, 1934.
“hundred kisses”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, September 26, 1934.
“Why you are all my laughter and my light”: Ibid.
“gay life beyond the ‘provinces’ ” . . . “very happy, nor content”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, September 27, 1934.
“so cosmopolitan”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, September 20, 1934.
“richest, raciest conversations” . . . “about what we’re going to plant”: Ibid.
“I don’t want to wait”: Courtship Letters, Lyndon Johnson to Lady Bird Taylor, September 27, 1934.
“Better than [on] a birthday”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, October 9, 1934.
“creditable”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, October 10, 1934.
“there are so many Crows”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, October 13, 1934.
“so of course”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, October 16, 1934.
“so terribly close!”: Ibid.
“go traveling around a few months”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, October 17, 1934.
“frightens me”: Ibid.
“from caring deeply about people or things suddenly”: Ibid.
“New York [job] offer”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, October 19, 1934.
“Lyndon, please tell me as soon as you can”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, October 22, 1934, No. 2.
“outcome”: Courtship Letters, Lyndon Johnson to Lady Bird Taylor, October 21, 1934.
“I’ve an awful inferiority complex”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, October 6, 1934.
“shirt sleeves with your arms on the desk”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, October 10, 1934. This photo is on the LBJ Library website with the Courtship Letters.
“And you do look very arrogant there!” . . . “proud, sure look out of your eyes”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, October 21, 1934.
“special delivery”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, October 8, 1934.
Lady Bird and Lyndon Page 43