Harry and Bess

I've been wanting to post this for months but have been soooo busy. (One thing I'm really looking forward to about married life is a less rigorous social calender... not to say I'm a social butterfly but as a young single adult, I feel obligated to be out meeting and mingling.) Anyway, while I was training for my marathon, I listened to David McCullough's Truman on my ipod. Which is where I found this love letter Harry wrote to Bess in... 1911?

"You know, were I an Italian or a poet I would commence and muse all the luscious language of two continents. I am not either but only a kind of good for nothing American farmer. I've always had a sneaked notion that someday maybe I'd amount to something. I doubt it now, though, like everything. It is a family failing of ours to be poor fin and seers. I am blessed that way. Still, that
doesn't keep me from having always thought that you were all that a girl could be possibly and impossibly. You may not have guessed it but I've been crazy about you ever since we went to Sunday school together. But I never had the nerve to think you'd even look at me. You said you were tired of these kind of stories in books so I'm trying one from real life. I guess it sounds funny to you but you must bare in mind that this is my first experience in this line and
also it is very real to me."

He goes on to propose but a few weeks later she calls and rejects him. He responded with the following letter.

"You know that you turned me down so easy that I am almost happy anyway. I never was fool enough to think that a girl like you could ever care for a fellow like me. But I couldn't help telling you how I felt. I have always wanted you to have some fine, rich looking man. But I know that if ever I got the chance I'd tell you how I felt even if I didn't even get to say another word to you. What makes me feel good is that you are good enough to answer me seriously and not make fun of me anyway. You know when a fellow tells a girl all his heart and she makes a joke of it I suppose it would be the awfullest feeling in the world. You see, I never had any desire to say such things to anyone else. All my girlfriends think I am a cheerful idiot and a confirmed old bach. They really don't know the reason nor ever will. I've been so afraid you were not even going to let me be your good friend. To be even in that class is something. You may think I'll get over it, as all boys do. I guess I am something of a freak myself. I really never had any desire to make love to a girl just for the fun of it and you have always been the reason. I have never met a girl in my life that you are not the first to be compared to her to see wherein she was lacking, and she always was. Please don't think I am talking nonsense or bosh. For if ever I told the truth I am telling it now. And I'll never tell such things to anyone else or bother you with them again. I have always been more idealist than practical anyway, so I never really expected any reward for loving you. I shall always hope though."

I don't think this is the most spectacularly written, flowery love letter I've ever read but the manner in which he puts himself on the line is to be admired. What a compliment to be proffered love out of someone's vulnerability and weakness. I wish we all felt that natural desperation to compliment someone we love by revealing our affection, in spite of how they may or may not feel about us. But as I determined in the post about divorce, we're all far to apt to protect ourselves and our feelings that we scarcely bare ourselves the way Truman did in this letter.

On another note, I am far to attracted to guys with verbal ability. Time and time again I hear Rosie O'Donnell's voice from Sleepless in Seattle loathe, "Verbal ability is highly over-rated in a man and our pathetic need for it is what gets us into so much trouble in the first place." I hope I find an expressive man. That's all I'm saying. I wonder what my chances are.