The courtship letters between President Lyndon Baines Johnson & Lady Bird Johnson

I don’t know why the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library chose to release the courtship letters between him and Lady Bird today on Valentine’s Day. I’m reading through them and it was a pretty fast and unromantic courtship. LBJ proposed to her on their first date (!) and then spent the next 10 weeks basically berating her into marrying him.

This is one of the first letters Lyndon sent Lady Bird, on September 15th 1934, two weeks after meeting her:

I’m sure that there is nothing that could be more distracting, disturbing and estranging to me than a continued evidence of indifference upon your part. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and today Saturday and no sentiments of affection nor expressions of love. Very likely time will make the picture brighter for me but I feel terribly blue this afternoon.

Tomorrow I plan to call you. Tomorrow I plan to tell you again what you have already heard so many times and probably it will be tomorrow that I learn definitely just how and where you stand.

Write me that long letter. Tell me just how you feel—give me some reassurance if you can and if you can’t let’s understand each other now. I’m lonesome. I’m disappointed but what of it. Do you care?

In addition to letters, he also sent her a book, Nazism: An Assault on Civilization.

Um, thanks LBJ Library. Happy Valentine’s Day to you, too.

(via @UsNatArchives)