美国总统的情书（英）

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美国的历届总统在世人面前展示的是刚毅和果断，而在夫人面前却充满了温柔和浪漫的情怀。

Book of letters reveals presidential passions

By Calvin Woodward

Presidents and their wives have been a loving lot, their White House years coming at the top of lives. The men pursued and loved these women as intensely as they tried hard to get hold of power.

"Touch you I must or I'll burst," Ronald Reagan¹ wrote to Nancy three years before he became California governor. Lyndon Johnson,² then a young congressman from Texas, declared to his lover, Lady Bird, mere weeks after they had met, "This morning I'm ambitious, proud, energetic and very madly in love with you."

College graduate Teddy Roosevelt³ put Alice Lee on a base of statue, telling her five days before they wed: "I worship⁴ you so that it seems almost desecration⁵ to touch you."

A new book of letters between presidents and wives add more information or details to  important periods of history with the full range of human emotion — love, longing, anger, betrayal, loss, lust.⁶

These men turned a resolute face to the world. In private, they could be emotional and romantic. The women were easily their match in exchanging heart-racing prose and pulled no punches on tough stuff. ⁷

Even as John Adams⁸ was in Philadelphia working on the Declaration of Independence and its statement that "all men" are created equal, his loving spouse, Abigail, sent the future second president a critical letter about the position of wives — this, way back in March 1776.

"That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical⁹is a Truth," she wrote. "Men of Sense in all Ages dislike those customs which treat us only as the servants of your Sex."

She was a flirt, ¹⁰ too, offering sweetly, "If you want more balm, ¹¹ I can supply you," in a letter the spring before they married in October 1764.

The correspondence¹² in My Dear President: Letters Between Presidents and Their Wives, by Library of Congress historian Gerard Gawalt, captures some of the couples in the first blush¹³ of their romance and follows them into the White House.

Presidents who were wild about their wives were not necessarily faithful to them — not even close. Some wives knew it.

Lyndon Johnson was a bull in the china shop when it came to women; Lady Bird once shrugged off his affairs as a "small piece of dirt on a wedding cake."

Lucretia Rudolph was not so helpful when she learned her fiancé, James Garfield, ¹⁴ had been stepping out. "James, to be an unloved wife, O Heavens," she wrote in 1857. They wed anyway; he was killed in 1881 just months after taking office.

Dwight Eisenhower, ¹⁵ as allied commander for Europe in World War II, tried in several letters to his wife in the States, Mamie, to shoot down rumors he was involved with his driver, Kay Summersby, with whom he formed an intense friendship. "I've no emotional involvements and will have none," he told his wife.

Civil War spouses and girlfriends received painful letters from the battlefield, for many presidents were soldiers when young. Whether in war or peace, many were ambitious men in eras of slow travel, meaning long absences from home and longings expressed in the worried language of their times.

"I have the Blues all the time," a love-struck Ulysses S. Grant¹⁶ told his sweetie, Julia Dent, writing from the Mexican War in 1848 two decades before becoming president.

"I feel the pulses of your love answering to mine," Chester Arthur¹⁷ wrote to his fiancée in New York, Ellen Lewis Herndon, during an 1858 Republican Party mission in Missouri. Arthur succeeded Garfield in 1881.

Such power couples enjoyed what might be politely called quality time.

Harry Truman¹⁸ mentioned to one such meeting in an indirectly way after Bess had visited him in July 1923, 22 years before he became president, when he was at military training camp in Kansas. "I, of course, acted like a man brute," he wrote in a somewhat sheepish tone soon after she left.

Gawalt drew his 184 letters, telegrams and cables from 4,000 to 5,000 found in the papers of 23 presidents held by the Library of Congress, provided by family members or available at presidential libraries. About half were unpublished before.

"What struck me is how early on that the wives were so vitally important to their husbands' careers," he said. "There's just an endless number of strong-willed women who are involved in these couples."

Exchanges between one such woman, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Franklin were friendly but emotionally distant. Such was the lasting result, Gawalt said, of his wife discovering FDR's¹⁹ affair with her social secretary Lucy Mercer 15 years before he became president.

"That's when the passion went out of that relationship," he said. "After that, I think, their relationship is pretty well summed up by the fact they were exchanging memorandums." ²⁰

In one, Franklin complained to his wife that White House food portions had gotten out of hand and everyone must be cut back, for example, to one egg for breakfast instead of two.

Another no-nonsense woman, Barbara Bush, got a sweet note from her husband, George, asking her to show more affection for the television cameras in the 1988 campaign, like their opponents.

"Sweetsie," he began. "Please look at how Mike and Kitty do it. Try to be closer in more — well er romantic — on camera. I am practicing the loving look, and the creeping²¹ hand. Yours for better TV and more demonstrable²² affection. Your sweetie pie coo coo. ²³ "Love 'ya GB."

Notes:

1.       Ronald Reagan 罗德纳·里根（1911~2004，美国第40任总统）

2.       Lyndon Johnson 林登·约翰逊（1908~1973，美国第36任总统）

3.       Teddy Roosevelt 特迪·罗斯福（1858~1919，美国第26任总统）

4.       worship vi. 崇拜，尊敬。

5.       desecration n. 亵渎（圣物）。

6.       lust n.　强烈欲望。

7.       对那些缺乏柔情的作品毫不留情。

8.       John Adams 约翰·亚当斯（1735~1826，美国第2任总统）

9.       tyrannical adj. 残暴的。

10.   flirt n. 买弄风情的人，调情的人。

11.   balm n. 安慰物，香膏。

12.   correspondence n.　通信，信件。

13.   blush n.　脸红。

14.   James Garfield詹姆斯·加菲尔德 (1831~1881，美国第20任总统)

15.   Dwight Eisenhower 德怀特·艾森豪威尔（1890~1969，美国第34任总统）

16.   Ulysses S. Grant尤利塞斯·S·格兰特（1822~1885，美国第18任总统）

17.   Chester Arthur切斯特·阿瑟（1830~1886，美国第21任总统）

18.   Harry Truman哈里·杜鲁门（1884~1972，美国第33任总统）

19.   FDR= Franklin Delano Roosevelt富兰克林·德兰诺·罗斯福（1882~1945，美国第32任总统）

20.   memorandum备忘录，便笺，便函

21.   creeping adj. 逐渐发生的，缓慢进行的。

22.   demonstrable adj. 明显的，可论证的。

23.   coo n. 咕咕声； v.（鸽等）咕咕地叫。