Free Bess Truman by Margaret Truman

a home as you have already.” Then, either with great shrewdness or great honesty or both, he added: “Still, if I thought you cared a little, I’d double my efforts to amount to something and maybe would succeed.”
    Bess responded with some thoughts on husbands and money. Harry could not know, at this point, the painful memories this subject stirred in her mind. She told him that she and her friend Mary Paxton had decided that a woman should never get involved with a man who was unable to support her in decent style. Mary, obviously reacting to her bitter experience with Charlie Ross, added that she lately was inclined to wait around for a millionaire.
    Harry replied that he was surprised to find that he agreed with Mary Paxton for once. When they were kids, they never were able to agree on anything. But Mary was not the point here, although he wished her the best of luck in her hunt for a millionaire. “I am going to start in real earnest now . . .,” Harry wrote. “For what you say sounds kind of encouraging, whether you meant it that way or not.”
    After that exchange, money became a frequent topic of discussion between them. When Bess invited Harry to dinner at the Salisbury farm and told him they would walk the three miles from Independence, he protested that he was more than willing to hire a buggy. He obviously was not acquainted with Miss Wallace’s fondness for marathon walks or that this invitation was another favorable sign.
    On February 13, 1912, when Bess turned twenty-seven, Harry apologized for not giving her a birthday present or sending a valentine for the following day because he did not have the money to buy anything “good enough.” Bess replied by giving him a stickpin with her birthstone in it for Valentine’s Day. Harry reported that he had found a fortune teller’s prospectus in a cough-drop box, and it said that people with February birthdays had a quieting effect on the insane. “I suppose that means those they have caused to become dippy. Don’t you?” he asked.
    Three weeks later, on March 4, 1912, ten months after she rejected his proposal, Harry began calling her “Bess.” He had been admitted to the inner circle. Even more encouraging was the way she took him into her confidence about her name. She told him she was not really happy with Bess and was considering several other variations on her baptismal name, Elizabeth. Harry offered some lively comments and observations on the subject.
    My Dear Elizabeth:
    How does that look to you? I just wrote it that way to see how it would look.
    You know we have associations for every name. England’s great Queen always goes to Elizabeth for me. When I was a very small kid I read a history of England and it had a facsimile signature of hers to Queen Mary’s death warrant. I’ll never forget how it looked if I live to be a hundred. But that didn’t put me against her, for I always thought she was a great woman. I never think of you as Elizabeth. Bess or Bessie are you. Aren’t you most awful glad they didn’t call you the middle syllable? It is my pet aversion. There is an old woman out in this neck of the woods who is blest with enough curiosity for a whole suffragette meeting and a marvelous ability for gratifying it, to her own satisfaction. She has a wart on the end of her nose and a face like the Witch of Endor. Her first name is Liz. She is an ideal person to carry the name. I am sure it is not a nickname but her real one as no one of her caliber could possibly be called Elizabeth. I have a very belligerent (spelled right?) cousin whose name is Lizzie. Therefore, I care not for Liz and Lizzie for those two very good reasons. . . . I don’t know what got me started on this line of talk, but I hope you won’t be offended because I don’t like some of the nicknames of your good name. But please remember that I like yours muchly - anyway - as well as the real one.
    Making some money became almost an obsession with Harry Truman.