MacArthur in love

Douglas MacArthur may have been one of the most famous generals in military history, but when he fell in love, he turned to mush.

We know that MacArthur married twice: First, to Louise Cromwell in 1922, and after they divorced in 1929, he married Jean Marie Faircloth in 1937. MacArthur was the second of Louise Cromwell’s four husbands, and Jean Marie Faircloth’s one and only—she survived him in 1964. In between these two relationships, there was a Filipino mistress, Isabel Rosario Cooper, aka Elizabeth Cooper, aka “Dimples,” who, in the 1926 film “Ang Tatlong Hambog,” was at the receiving end of the first lips-to-lips kiss in Philippine cinema. MacArthur’s former aide, Dwight Eisenhower, made a veiled reference to the MacArthur-Dimples scandal in a 1944 letter to his wife, saying:

“I see by the papers that some of MacArthur’s correspondence has been aired as part of the political struggle now going on at home. Thank the Lord no misguided friend has been able to embarrass me seriously in this manner—no wartime soldier can retain his military effectiveness if he becomes tied up, in the public mind, with political problems.” I never knew or heard about a Florence Adams. The library record simply described her as a woman studying in Manila during MacArthur’s short tour of duty with the US Army Third Engineering Battalion that was deployed in the Visayas from late 1903. We know nothing about Florence Adams, no photos, no biographical data, just the 24-year-old MacArthur’s attempts at cheesy poetry: “Dear Lady of my Dreams, the days seem long/And sweet sad memories round me throng/Those happy summer hours are past/And darkness shrouds my life at last/Illumined once by thee/Tonight, sweetheart, the sun unrolled across the bay a path of gold/And in the glory of that track I sent a lonesome wanderer back/A burning thought to thee/Sweet Child, be on the watch tonight/Between the sunset and moonlight/Perhaps my thought will come to rest/And seek repose upon thy breast/When the long, drear day is done.”

He composed this at the end of 1904, after returning to the US from Manila, lovesick and afflicted with malaria and “hadhad” (tinea cruris or “jock itch”). He had not heard from her since he sailed months before. In the collection of manuscripts donated to the University of Michigan (U-M) Library by Duane Norman Diedrichs is a receipt from the Army-Navy Club in Manila dated Oct. 15, 1904, amounting to P42.13 for chits, mess, and room. On the back of this receipt, MacArthur scribbled in pencil:

“This certifies that being unable to meet my financial obligations, I liquidate my debts—it would be true to say I increase them by hereby certifying my soul and body to one Florence Adams.

“Given under my seal this 15th day of October 1904. Signed Douglas MacArthur. First Lieutenant, Corps of Engineers, US Army.

One Sunday, probably in October 1904, MacArthur wrote Florence twice, in the morning and in the evening, this is what he said: “There isn’t in the slightest excuse for this little note except to press your sweet hand and tell you how mortified, I can’t say how sorry I am, at having kept you up so late last night. You have only yourself to blame, though—Your revenge has already been accomplished, however, for all day long I have been trying to read, study, what you will, but the spell of the night still hounds me.

“Again and again have I fallen into a midnight trance and caught myself listening with a thirsty ear to the witching melody of those ‘wee small hours.’ The print on every page, in every book, every paper, I’ve taken up has faded away, the lines have blotted out, the pictures blurred into nothingness, and left there only a sweet girl’s tender eyes, until I’ve given it up. But strange, incongruous in the very papers I lay down, others taken up and even as I smile to myself at these surprises when they find what’s there, they read away just as if the day’s news were really there. It has made me strangely afraid they are stamped on my brain, merely mirrored and reflected on the pages through my eyes. I must be careful and let no one look into them for fear they will see there what I have been seeing.“Am I beginning to lose my head about you, I wonder? Douglas MacArthur. Sunday Evening.”

These love letters preserved in the U-M Clements Library helped me understand the literal meaning of the figurative phrase “head over heels.”

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