The Letter

When the Washington Post's Music Critic Paul Hume got back to his office from Constitution Hall one night last week, he addressed himself to an uncomfortable chore--criticizing the President's daughter. He had just heard Margaret Truman's Washington concert. In a sense, it had been a triumphal occasion: the hall had been packed with Washington bigwigs, including both her father and Clement Attlee; Soprano Truman had looked radiant on the stage and had drawn waves of friendly applause.

But Paul Hume, a well-grounded student of music, had come to the widely shared conclusion that Margaret just "cannot sing very well." He wrote: "Miss Truman is a unique American phenomenon with a pleasant voice of little size and fair quality. She is extremely attractive on the stage. Yet . . . there are few moments during her recital when one can relax and feel confident that she will make her goal, which is the end of the song.

"She is flat a good deal of the time . . . she cannot sing with anything approaching professional finish . . . she communicates almost nothing of the music she presents ... It is an extremely unpleasant duty to record such unhappy facts about so honestly appealing a person. But as long as Miss Truman sings as she . . . does. . . we seem to have no recourse unless it is to omit comment on her programs altogether. . ."

Beefsteak for Black Eyes. The day after the review appeared, 34-year-old Critic Hume got a letter, written in longhand on White House stationery, that made his eyes pop. It read:

"Mr. Hume:

"I have just read your lousy review of Margaret's concert. I've come to the conclusion that you are an 'eight ulcer man on four ulcer pay.'

"It seems to me that you are a frustrated old man who wishes he could have been successful. When you write such poppycock as was in the back section of the paper you work for it shows conclusively that you're off the beam and at least four of your ulcers are at work. Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you'll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below.

"Pegler, a guttersnipe, is a gentleman alongside you. I hope you'll accept that statement as a worse insult than a reflection on your ancestry."

It was signed: "H.S.T."

Can't Be True. Hume hurried in to show the letter to Managing Editor James Russell Wiggins. They decided to send it back to the White House with a mild reply. But word of the letter spread, and the next afternoon it turned up on Page One of the tabloid Washington News.

Margaret, on concert tour in Nashville, refused to believe the news. "I am absolutely positive my father wouldn't use language like that," she told reporters. "In the first place ... my father wouldn't have time to write a letter . . . Mr. Hume is a very fine critic. He has a right to write as he pleases..."

But a little later, when the White House confirmed that the President had indeed written the scurrilous letter, Margaret retired behind a "no comment."

Westbrook Pegler got into the act with a pious statement of un-Peglerian mildness: "It is a great tragedy that in this awful hour the people of the U.S. must accept . . . the nasty malice of a President whom Bernard Baruch . . . called a rude, uncouth, ignorant man. Let us pray."

Critic Hume was the only one concerned who seemed to have kept his head. Said he: "I can only say that a man suffering the loss of a close friend [Press Secretary Charles G. Ross] and carrying the terrible burden of the present world crisis ought to be indulged in an occasional outburst of temper."

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