At the 1952 Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, I met Margaret Truman's New York
manager Kenneth Allen (travelling with his aunt, the great Scots-born
soprano Maggie Teyte), and he told me a story about that famous letter that
deviates in one linguistic detail from The Washington Post's published
version.
Kenny Allen said that the morning Paul Hume's review of Margaret's recital
appeared - December 6, 1950 - the three Trumans had invited him to join them
at White House breakfast, where HST took him into another room and showed
him the letter he had just written. Allen said he gulped hard, and could
manage no comment beyond "Quite a letter, Mr. President. What do you plan
to do with it?"
He quoted Truman as saying, to his vast relief, that he'd written it simply
to let off steam, and intended nothing more than to tear it up - which he
manifestly did not do.
Allen, who'd held that letter in his own hands and read it with his own
eyes, told me that the passage referring to Paul Hume's groin declared the
President of the United States' sincere wish "to kick you in the balls" -
indicating that Truman apparently wrote his bilious letter not once but
twice.
Paul Moor
Wilhelmsaue 132
D-10715 Berlin
<Texas-Paule@Sigmund-Freud.Org>
Telefon: (0114930) 8639-5784
Telefax: (0114930) 8639-5785
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