Letter, Lady Bird Johnson to Lyndon B. Johnson, 1941

Specific Item Type:

Correspondence

Type:

Text

Format:

Paper

Identifier:

pp-ctjandlbj-b2-f07-i5

Date:

1941-xx-xx

Time Period:

Pre-Presidential (Before Nov. 22, 1963)

Transcript:

[undated 1941]
#4 Happy Hollow Lane
Austin, Texas
Dearest –
“The tumult and the shouting dies –
The captains and the kings depart” –
Most of them have departed and I’ve been busy picking up loose ends.
Lyndon, this has been a marvelous experience, this campaign. I wouldn’t trade it for a million dollars. Most important, I had the thrill of watching you
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grow under the stress, in your ability to speak and in your ability to hold and sway a crowd. Your actual voice, the tone and timbre of it, improved so much. You really “made friends” with that instrument the radio – though still your impromptu speeches to the crowd afterward fu excel your radio speeches.
I had the thrill of living among people who were working at the very top of their capacity. I’ll bet that’s the feeling
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you get in England these days! - a fighting feeling with the strong exhilaration find of knowing that what you’re fighting for is right.
It surely was fun! It was so good getting to be with Carroll again, and getting to really know Buck – whom I now love, and making a real new friend like Tom Price, and watching old Herbert stew and clatter away on that typewriter.
There’s a whole galaxy of them that pass in front of my eye – Blitzkrieg Roy Hofheinz and Deanie
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and Arthur Lee and sweet old Cameron McElroy and my all-time favorite Reese Locket and the gold-star ones like Sam Fore and Hayden Perry. All contributing their bit.
Are You’ll never know
I want to thank you, my dear, because I got to be in on it. You’ll never know how much I enjoyed doing my little jobs – my funny short-hand and laying out clothes and running errands and everything!
The day they were closing up the sun-room
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I went down to tell them all goodbye and thanks – for you and also for me. They’ve all been grand – Julia Bryden and sweet little Rose Groos and that slap-happy Jerry Wilke and Lela Scott and all. They all say “we” about the campaign – they don’t think they work for you – they work with you. I’ve come to think a lot of them, bless their hearts.
And now to business.
Here is a letter and
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check someone thrust into my hand.
I awoke from this to find we owed many wedding presents, etc. Here is what I did about them:
To Jesse Melinger, after ascertaining that he had fetched in several checks and worked very hard, I sent a beautiful silver salad bowl, costing $10.00.
To Bascom Lang I sent a silver cigarette box $4.50.
To Bob and Helen Jackson’s baby I sent an
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adorable tiny silver goblet, $5.
To Dr. Zeno Martin’s nephew, who was graduating, I had several weeks ago sent a bill-fold, which I paid for yesterday $3.00.
To Tommy’s (my brother’s) son I am sending the lovely fitted toilet case you have had in the closet upstairs for several years.
To Tom Martin’s son I intend to send your electric shaver as soon
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as I get to Washington (if I have your permission).
To Mrs. James Mary Edna Carroll, Mrs. J. V. Carroll’s daughter, I haven’t sent anything yet, as my $100.00 you gave me has dwindled to about $15. How much shall I spend on this present?
One more word about money. When I arrived here May 2 nobody was in charge of finances so I took it over – paying rent and utilities for both the months
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of May and June, laundry, milk bills, maid (all except for two weeks) and groceries for breakfast for the various people who have lived here. Also I paid $16.66 in milk bills for April and part of March that were somewhat over due, and some past power bills for this house…All of which is unimportant except that in settling up with John I thought you’d like to know the background of his living expenses.
During the last two or three days of the campaign I
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lost a bag of laundry, containing three of your summer shirts – in the course of us traveling by plane and the laundry luggage by car. I wired Lewis and Thomas Saltz to send you out three shirts and I have sent them a check. It was my fault they were lost.
There is one letter I want you to write – to Aunt Effie, #11 Hubbard St., Montgomery, Alabama. She wrote 52 letters and had everybody in Montgomery
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with so much as!! a third-cousin living in Texas writing to them.
I shall see that you get your clippings every day, from the Austin papers.
By Monday I shall be all ready to go and or stay either.
Get brown and healthy and have fun – and call me when you know something.
Lovingly,
Bird