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Title: The president's daughter
Author: Nan Britton
Release date: October 17, 2024 [eBook #74595]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Elizabeth Ann Guild, Inc
Credits: Carla Foust and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRESIDENT'S DAUGHTER ***
[Illustration]
THE PRESIDENT’S
DAUGHTER _by Nan Britton_
_Published by_
_E_LIZABETH _A_NN
_G_UILD
INC.
[Illustration]
_New York, U.S.A., 1927_----[Illustration]----
COPYRIGHT, 1927, _by_ ELIZABETH ANN GUILD, INC.
_All rights reserved_
Including Translations,
Reproductions, Reprinting
in Newspapers or
Periodicals. Quotation
from this book restricted
to three hundred words
except by special permission
of the publishers
_Printed in the
United States
of America_
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
The engraving of the illustrations and the printing of this entire book
were done by the Polygraphic Company of America, Inc., New York, who
employed the CONTRASTO process of printing.
“There is no such thing as concealment”
--_Ralph Waldo Emerson in
the Essay on Compensation_
“Only by frankness concerning the truth that hurts can we secure a
sustained respect for the truth that helps”
--_Glenn Frank, President,
University of Wisconsin_
HER EYES
By NAN BRITTON
Sometimes her eyes are blue as deep sea-blue,
And calm as waters stilled at evenfall.
I see not quite my child in these blue eyes,
But him whose soul shines wondrously through her.
Serene and unafraid he was, and knew
How to dispel the fears in other hearts,
Meeting an anxious gaze all tranquilly:
These are her father’s eyes.
Sometimes her eyes are blue--the azure blue
Of an October sky on mountain-tops.
I do not see my child in these blue eyes;
They are the eyes of him whose spirit glowed
With happiness of soul alone which lies
Far deeper than the depths of bluest eyes--
Whose smile a thing of joy it was to see:
These eyes, this smile, are his.
Sometimes her eyes are of a tired gray-blue,
Filled with the sadness of an age-old world.
And then again my child’s not in these eyes;
These are the eyes of one whom grief assailed,
Whom disappointment crushed with its great weight.
Around his head a halo memory casts,
Reflecting that refiner’s fire which purged
Him clean, and made him what he was.
Sometimes in child-amaze and wonder-blue
Her baby eyes are lifted up to mine.
These only are the eyes she brought with her.
And so I fold her close within my arms
And talk of dolls, and stars, and mother-love,
For well I know that pitifully soon
She will be grown, and then her eyes will hold
Only the deeper lights--his own eyes knew!
_Reprinted by permission from_
THE NEW YORK TIMES
DEDICATION
this Book is dedicated with understanding and love to all unwedded
mothers, and to their innocent children whose fathers are usually not
known to the world....
_Nan Britton_
THE AUTHOR’S MOTIVE
If love is the only right warrant for bringing children into the world
then many children born in wedlock are illegitimate and many born out
of wedlock are legitimate.
In the author’s opinion wedlock as a word quite defines itself. Often a
man and woman are locked at their wedding in a forced fellowship which
soon proves to be loveless and during which the passions of the two
express themselves in witless and unwanted progeny. And yet we wonder
what is wrong with the world!
The story of my life-long love for Warren Gamaliel Harding and his love
for me and our love for our child is told in these pages, together with
the family, community, and political circumstances under which this
relationship continued for the six and one-half years preceding the
sudden passing of the President on August 2, 1923.
The author has had but one motive in writing for publication the story
of her love-life with Mr. Harding. This motive is grounded in what
seems to her to be _the need for legal and social recognition and
protection of all children in these United States born out of wedlock_.
To the author, this cause warrants the unusual and conscious frankness
with which she has written this book, and the apparent disregard for
the so-called conventions, because she feels that _the issue is greater
than all the personal sacrifices involved_.
Indeed, even like frankness on the part of thousands of mothers who
could divulge similar life-tragedies might well be added to that of the
author’s if such sacrifice would insure the aggressive agitation of a
question involving one of the gravest wrongs existent today, with a
view toward a legislative remedy.
Because of the political stature of the man-character involved, this
fact-story would no doubt get to the public sooner or later, as news,
or as court testimony in trials such as have recently involved men who
are or have been national figures. In such case the story so sacred to
the author would doubtless be garbled by news writers, or told only
partially to serve some legal, personal or party interest. The author
feels therefore that through her experiences she has been led to see
the need for telling it herself, truly and completely, and in making
it the basis for an appeal in behalf of the unfathered children of
unwedded mothers, in the sincere hope that this book may result in
happier conditions for childhood and motherhood throughout these United
States of America.
Much consideration has been given by the author to all probable
reactions resulting from the publication of this book. The fact
that this narrative is bound up with the life of a man who has held
the highest office in this land may mean that temporarily he may be
misjudged. But the author, who has shrined him in reverent memory,
feels in her heart that these revelations cannot but inspire added love
for him after his trials and humanities are perceived and acknowledged.
Moreover, the author is obliged to introduce to a none-too-kindly
world the daughter of her love-union with Mr. Harding and thus subject
her to curious gaze and speculation. The author regrets this as any
mother would, but feels that in no way can she effectively show
her understanding love for all children except by baring her own
experience, in the hope that the notability of the case itself may
influence regard for the welfare of children and help to right an old
and current wrong.
Nor, indeed, does the author herself hope to escape criticism unless
her real motive is definitely apprehended and conceded. It has required
no little heart-break on her part to relive the story of her love-life,
but it had to be relived in memory that the story might be portrayed
truthfully. Only by keeping before her the human cause which impelled
the writing, and a constant hope that through her own suffering she
might be instrumental in preventing the heartaches of thousands of
potential mothers, has this been possible.
Knowing the real President Harding as she does, the author feels that
if he could be brought back today to witness the futile struggle the
mother of his only child has suffered, he himself would proclaim his
own fatherhood, and seek to open eyes blinded by convention to a
situation which is depriving thousands of innocent children of their
natural birthright in denying them legal recognition before the world.
In the author’s opinion, _there should be no so-called “illegitimates”
in these United States_.
It is to be remembered that all children must be precious in the
sight of our Father, otherwise he would not be a heavenly father, and
that Jesus of Nazareth did _not_ say, “Suffer little children born in
wedlock to come unto me for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus
loved and honored all little children and didn’t bother at all about
who their parents were or about the manner of their birth. He himself
was born in a manger which was most unconventional.
As a result of the author’s own personal experiences written in this
book, and because of the thousands of prospective mothers who face
unknowingly like tragic situations, she feels that an organized effort
should be made to secure State and Federal legislation providing the
following benefits for unwedded mothers and unfathered children:
_First_: That on the birth of a child the name of the father be
_correctly_ registered in the public records, and that failure to do
so shall constitute a criminal offense.
_Second_: That every child born in the United States of America be
regarded as legitimate whether born within or without wedlock.
The enactment of these statutes would not, in the author’s opinion,
detract from the dignity of the marriage-union which automatically
legalizes children born therein, but would insure protection for those
innocent children born of a love-union in which one or both parents are
unmarried.
_Readers of this book who agree with the author that this entire
situation constitutes a Cause, and who feel with her that members
should be gathered into the Elizabeth Ann League to collectively urge
the proposed legislation suggested above to provide social equality
among children, are invited to write her a personal letter in care of
the publishers {see title page}._
THE AUTHOR
FOREWORD
The author desires to express gratitude to the many public-spirited men
and women who have shared her earnest in the cause sponsored by this
book; also to those friends whose knowledge and review of the facts
herein recorded have contributed to their chronological correctness.
The author early sought legal counsel regarding the use of the letters
from which she has quoted in this book, and others unmentioned by her.
She was advised that the copyright of these letters remains with those
who wrote them and she has therefore been obliged by law to paraphrase
them or quote only partially. The originals of all these letters from
President Harding, Mrs. Ralph T. Lewis (Abigail Harding), Mr. Heber
Herbert Votaw, Mrs. Heber Herbert Votaw (Carolyn Harding), Tim Slade
(as he is called in this book), Hon. James M. Cox, Democratic nominee
for President in 1920, Mr. C. E. Witt of the Picture Publicity Bureau
of the Republican National Committee during the Harding Campaign, and
others, are in the possession of her publishers and may be read by any
persons whose request appears justified.
_The_
PRESIDENT’S
DAUGHTER
_1_
I was born in Claridon, Ohio, a very small village about ten miles east
of Marion, Ohio, on November 9th, 1896. My father, a physician, was
at that time practising under the supervision of his cousin, an older
physician who had an established practice of long standing. My mother,
who had received some of her high school training in Marion, where
she had come from New Philadelphia, Ohio, to live with her maternal
grandmother, was teaching a country school in Claridon when father met
her. I was still a baby and my older sister Elizabeth about three when
we moved to Marion, where we settled permanently.
Inasmuch as this book has much to do with President Harding and myself,
I may sketch briefly the friendly relations which existed early between
our families:
While my father was working up a practice in Claridon, Mr. Harding,
then in his twenties, was struggling with Marion’s now well-known
newspaper, _The Marion Daily Star_. Father, being himself somewhat of
a writer, often wrote humorously to Mr. Harding of his experiences
among the country-folk, and these letters were edited by Mr. Harding
and published in his paper; I remember Mr. Harding’s telling me how
delighted he always was to receive them.
My father always spoke of Mr. Harding with warmest affection, and,
later on, was one of Mr. Harding’s strongest advocates despite the fact
that my father was a Democrat. It is very likely that they developed
mutual regard and affection for each other back in those days of
ambitious editor and country doctor. Certainly no finer tributes could
be paid any man than those which I have myself heard from Mr. Harding
concerning my father.
Mr. Harding’s father was a physician also, and this fact may have
strengthened the bond of friendship which early grew to warm regard. As
far back as I can remember Dr. Harding had his office in the old _Star_
Building, right across the hall from his editor-son. I believe it is
only recently that he has discontinued active practice. I know he has
passed his eighty-second birthday.
My mother’s attitude in the matter of my relationship to Mr. Harding
has not been conducive to discussion with her about her own early
acquaintance with the Harding family, but this I know: she must have
been attending high school at the same time that _some_ of the Hardings
were, because she is only a few years Abigail Harding’s senior.
There were, as Miss Abigail Harding has often told me, three “sets” of
Harding children: first came Warren, the eldest, then Charity, these
two forming the first set; then came “Deac” (Dr. George Tryon Harding
III, only brother of Warren) and presumably Mary, the sister who was
almost blind and who died about 1910, I think, soon after Warren
Harding’s mother passed on; then came Abigail, known to everyone as
“Daisy” Harding, and lastly Carolyn, the “baby” of the family. It seems
to me there was a child who died very early, though I am not sure about
this.
My mother had a sister Della who also lived a good part of the time
with mother’s and her maternal grandmother, Mrs. Mary Richards, in
Marion, and, I believe, went to school there also. Della Williams
married a missionary to Burma, India, Howard E. Dudley. Some time
after, Carolyn Harding also married a missionary to Burma, Heber
Herbert Votaw. Up to that time “Carrie” and “Dell” had been friends, if
not intimate at least upon the friendliest kind of terms.
However, their husbands were missionaries of decidedly different
denominations. Carrie Harding married a Seventh Day Adventist and my
Aunt Dell married a Baptist. So from then on their paths diverged.
Diverged indeed so widely that my first recollection of hearing the
Hardings discussed at any great length is identified with a heated
argument between Aunt Dell and my older sister Elizabeth. I remember
that Aunt Dell was almost ferocious in her condemnation of the Seventh
Day Adventists and their religion which, to her certain knowledge, she
said, was a detrimental influence upon the natives wherever it was
promulgated.
At that time Mrs. Carrie Harding Votaw’s cause was warmly espoused
by my older sister who, then in high school and in the English class
of Miss Abigail Harding, had met and had developed a girlish “crush”
upon her sister, the missionary. I cannot forget that argument, which
resulted in more or less of a family quarrel (for even my parents’
loyalty was divided) and was responsible for my aunt’s sudden
departure. She took occasion to denounce the Seventh Day Adventist
religion before a group of her own denomination at a camp meeting and
almost immediately flounced out of the city with her very picturesque
family.
This must have been about 1908 or 1909. The following year, 1910, I
entered high school and _my_ English teacher was Miss Abigail Victoria
Harding. Curiously enough, I thought that I could see in this sister
of the missionary mannerisms which were decidedly peculiar to my Aunt
Dell, whom I had quite adored in spite of the family incident recited
above. Up to this time I had remained neutral.
However, seeing Miss Harding day after day, and agreeing heartily
with the general dictum that she was a very beautiful woman, I came
to idolize her. And thereafter my respect for her sister’s religion
was a matter of course. English became my favorite study--a study for
which I would neglect if needs be all other assignments. As a matter of
fact, Miss Harding inspired me with such pride in my ability to excel
that during that year I was made exempt from all final examinations,
having kept my grade standing 90 or above.
[Illustration:
ABIGAIL VICTORIA (“DAISY”) HARDING
(_now Mrs. Ralph T. Lewis_)
the President’s sister
]
_2_
Nineteen-ten was an epochal year in my life. Ohio was electing a
Governor, and the Republican candidate of that famous gubernatorial
election was no other than the brother of my adored English teacher!
I have often tried to remember how this knowledge was first conveyed
to me; whether I had actually known that there was a Warren Gamaliel
Harding from hearing conversations about him at home, whether I had
been first introduced to his existence through talks with Miss Harding
on one of the many “walks home” we used to have; whether I had heard
of him through one whom I will call Mrs. Sinclair, whose husband, a
judge and a prominent Democrat in Ohio, played cards with Mr. Harding
very often; or whether I beheld his picture, ubiquitously displayed in
almost every store window on Main and Center Streets, as I walked to
and from high school. My early recollections are not so much concerned
with actually seeing him as with the unforgettable sensations I
experienced after I had once seen him and knew that he was for me my
“ideal American.”
If I had ever childishly allied myself with my father’s political
party, the Democrats, I withdrew instantly in favor of the party
advocated by my mother’s family, and from then on I was a full-fledged
Republican.
It must have kept me pretty busy to maintain a high average in school
and at the same time become the self-appointed spokesman into which I
developed during those stirring pre-election days. Warren Harding and
Warren Harding’s future formed my life’s background, and whether or not
anyone else credited me with the capacity for such a cumulative emotion
as love, _I_ knew that I was in love with Warren Harding.
Certain people, including Abigail and Carolyn Harding, speaking
truthfully, could tell you of the spectacle I made of myself those
months, and indeed in years that followed, for I talked about their
brother incessantly; no, I did not talk, I _raved_. I was fourteen
years old, or going on fourteen, an age when one would think a wife of
a man Warren Harding’s age (he must have been about forty-five then and
Mrs. Harding six or seven years his senior) would be entirely free from
any feeling of jealousy regarding a mere child. But I remember well
when Mrs. Sinclair telephoned my mother, and with friendly solicitude
advised her to curb my girlish enthusiasm, or at least try to quiet
me vocally, for my own sake! She said that at the most recent meeting
of the Twigs (the most fashionable older ladies’ club in Marion), to
which Mrs. Harding also belonged but who was absent on that occasion,
“Nan Britton” had been almost the sole topic of conversation, and
furthermore the ladies thought it quite scandalous that I should be so
freely declaring my adoration for a married man. Of course mother did
also, but apparently I didn’t!
My mother used to try to inspire me with antipathy for Mr. Harding
and the thing she cited more than anything else was his fondness for
tobacco. She would come home from downtown and say, “I saw Mr. Harding
standing such-and-such a place, _chewing tobacco_!” But neither this
information nor the withering disdain of mother’s grimace affected me
in the least. I think he must have given up this habit later on; I know
I never saw him in later years use tobacco in any form except cigars
and cigarettes.
In order for my adoration to appear more “in form” I conceived the idea
of affecting a crush on Mrs. Harding. She was not my “type” of heroine
at all, but I used to pretend I was a great admirer of her anyway. I
remember how I used to telephone the Harding residence when I thought
Mr. Harding might be there and might answer the phone. I would shut
myself up in our “back bedroom” which was away from the rest of the
house and where the telephone hung on the wall, and then softly give
central the number. I was always afraid mother might hear me. Often the
maid answered the telephone. When this occurred I would ask for Mrs.
Harding. Sometimes she herself would answer. Once, I remember, mother
came in while I was calling and demanded to know to whom I was talking.
When I said “Mrs. Harding,” she took the receiver and talked with her
herself. It may have been that very time when Mrs. Harding informed
mother that she could tell Nan that so far as “Warren” was concerned,
“distance lends enchantment.” But there were those rare times when he
himself answered the telephone, when he would say upon my telling him
it was “Nan Britton,” “Well, how-do-you-do, Miss Britton; and how are
you?” in that silvery voice I so loved, and I would immediately become
so confused and tremble so I thought he must sense it all from the
other end of the wire.
I knew the number of the Harding car by heart and could spot it blocks
away. One time I had occasion to go to the Union Station to meet
someone and when I reached there I saw the Harding Stevens-Duryea
parked outside. The Harding dog then was a bull, rather a fearsome
looking animal, and he was always in the car whenever it was out. I
was so full of love for Mr. Harding that it extended to any possession
of his, and when I observed that dignified creature sitting alert in
the front seat alone, I walked over to the car to pet him. But he was
“on his job” and snapped at me so fiercely that I backed off with all
possible speed. Thereafter I confined my manifestations of affection to
the Hardings themselves.
_3_
About this time we were asked in school by Miss Harding to write an
essay on Sir Walter Scott’s _Ivanhoe_, the particular chapter we had
to cover being “The Combat with the Templar.” I think we were given
something like a week to complete the writing. I worked upon little
else during that time--dreaming over it and sitting up with it into
the “wee sma’ hours of the morning.” I prefaced my composition with
“Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall,”
a quotation I had heard my mother repeat. The fatal day arrived,
and I handed in my composition with fear and trembling--albeit with
sufficient confidence in its worth to make me wish I had kept a copy
of it to read over to myself. I was not conscious that I was being
discussed by the pupils in Miss Harding’s other classes until someone
informed me that she had read my essay to all of her classes. And then
she even read it before my own class! But what was most gloriously
compensating for my labor was her statement to me in private that she
had taken my essay over to “brother Warren’s” and had read it aloud to
him and to Mrs. Harding as a sample of what her better pupils could do.
Then my happiness knew no bounds.
Upon the sloping walls of my modest little bedroom hung three or four
pictures of Mr. Harding, cut from the election posters and all the same
except that I had varied the style of the frames in which they were
set, which frames I had purchased with careful reference to size and
suitability from Marion’s one and only five-and-ten-cent store! One of
these pictures hung directly in front of my bed so that when I awoke in
the morning I looked into the handsome face of him whom I loved, and
saw his likeness the last thing before turning off my light.
One day father came home and said he had ridden some distance on
the street car with Mr. Harding. I was immediately all aflutter and
demanded to know just what had been said. Father said he had outlined
for Mr. Harding my advancing campaign in his behalf--in short, they
had discussed “this foolish talk” of mine. But evidently Mr. Harding’s
verdict as to what should be done with me was not strictly condemnatory
for his words were, “Bring her into my office sometime! Perhaps if she
_sees_ me----”
[Illustration: Early likeness of Mr. Harding--cut from a campaign
poster by the author in 1910 and hung on the wall of her room when she
was fourteen years old]
If I saw him! Unknown to a living soul, I had been for many weeks
shadowing the Republican candidate for Governor. His desk, in the
newspaper office, which looked down upon East Center Street, was very
near the window, and one of my hero’s favorite positions seemed to
be to sit in his easy swivel chair with his feet on the windowsill.
Across from the _Star_ Building was Vail’s, the photographer’s, studio.
Many were the times I stood in Vail’s doorway, sometimes an hour at a
stretch, watching those feet from across the street, knowing that when
the owner removed them from my sight he would likely use them to carry
him home. Then I would follow him to his home on Mt. Vernon Avenue,
about a block behind, in a state of high rapture, until he turned
into the grounds of the big green house and disappeared. This was an
indulgence I did not dare boast about--partly because I was becoming
growingly sensitive to the ridicule such confessions usually brought
down upon me at home (and my love was too sacred to be made the subject
of ridicule), and partly because my tardiness in reaching home from
school could not be explained thus to an oftentimes impatient mother
who could have found many chores for me had I come directly home.
_4_
There was in Marion a very attractive and extravagant woman whose name,
let us say, was Mrs. Henry Arnold. Gossip had it that Mrs. Arnold and
Warren Harding were very friendly, and gossip-mongers wondered how Mrs.
Harding could be so blind to such a mutual infatuation.
These things reached my ears from the girls at school whose parents
kept in close touch with anything smacking of scandal, and very likely
discussed these things around the family table. I know I never heard
them from my father or mother.
But this knowledge of what was currently thought concerning Marion’s
leading citizen and one of Marion’s most beautiful women did not move
_me_ to condemnation of either Mr. Harding or Mrs. Arnold. Rather did
I sympathize with her in her regard for him, for I could conceive of
nothing save a very high-minded friendship existing between him and
anybody. And wasn’t it quite possible that she too thrilled to her very
finger-tips under his smile? The only thing I regretted was that _I_
was not her age, and that _I_ had not travelled in Europe, and that _I_
was not “in society” or in any kind of position to attract his notice.
Mrs. Arnold had a lovely daughter, Angela, I will call her, about my
own age, with golden curls, who had every indulgence loving parents
could bestow, and my jealousy was directed solely toward her.
Very often the Harding car would whiz by our house, which was then
on East Center Street, on Sunday afternoon, and I knew the occupants
were headed for Bucyrus, a town some miles north-east of Marion which
distance constituted a “nice drive” from Marion. Once, I remember,
there were in the car Mr. and Mrs. Harding, Mr. and Mrs. Arnold, and
their daughter Angela, as well as Frank the chauffeur, and of course
the bulldog. I was sitting on our front porch. Mrs. Harding waved and
blew me kisses and Mr. Harding doffed his hat and bowed. How I envied
Angela! I would retire on such nights a most unhappy little girl. But I
knew they would be coming back later on in the evening and so I would
stay awake. My bed was alongside the window and the window screen
opened on hinges like a door. I would swing wide open the screen and
hang out of the window. I could see about fifty or sixty feet of street
from that window and that part of the street was lighted by the corner
street light. But even though it had not been lighted I would have
recognized the smooth buzzing of those wheels as the great car sped
swiftly past the house on its return from Bucyrus. Many a time I have
waited until I knew he was safely back in our town.
Angela Arnold, knowing of my adoration for Mr. Harding, one time
stopped my sister Elizabeth on the street and told her to “tell Nan”
that her hero had been up to call upon them and had sat the bottom out
of one of her mother’s favorite chairs! The truth of it was that it was
probably a frail chair and Mr. Harding’s weight had broken it.
_5_
When my youngest brother, John, was born there was much discussion
about what he should be called. I immediately attempted to solve the
problem by announcing, “Why, he’s going to be named ‘Warren,’ of
course!” Father, in cahoots with “his girl,” said we could call him
“Warren Le Grand” the latter name for father’s only brother, Le Grand
Britton. But Mrs. Sinclair, the judge’s wife, my mother’s friend,
seemed to have quite a bit to say in our household and now stepped
into the picture. “He’s going to be plain John Britton, isn’t he, Mrs.
Britton?” I think she had in mind John the Baptist, much less deserving
of a namesake in my opinion than my beloved Mr. Harding. It took a long
time for me to recover from this defeat.
In Marion the livery stables rented by the hour one-seated phaetons,
drawn by dependable, equine “plugs,” as my father called the drooping
animals that jogged about the town pulling the occupants of these
pleasure-providing equipages.
Before my doctor-father acquired the small red motor runabout which
served to carry him about on his professional calls, he was a good
customer at these livery stables, and we children often accompanied
him. Often he gave the reins into my small hands and I experienced the
thrill of a real charioteer as I called “Giddap!” to the horse and
whisked imaginary flies off his back with the reins, even as I had seen
my father do.
I have marvelled at what must have been an effort at resigned
suspension of parental watchfulness which was responsible for the few
memorable afternoons my sister Elizabeth and I enjoyed, unchaperoned,
and with fine airs, the use of one of these coveted livery conveyances.
One such “drive” in particular stands out in my memory because it is
coupled with the memory of the only real “call” I ever made upon the
Warren Hardings at their Mt. Vernon Avenue home. This occurred the
Sunday following the birth of my baby brother.
I always looked up to Elizabeth with great sisterly reverence for
her poise and superior judgment. When she privately voiced to me her
resentment that mother and father had not consulted us before adding a
baby to the family just when she and I were enjoying associations in
high school which demanded dignity in our family circle, I followed
suit willingly enough and maintained with her an injured air toward
mother and father. I was vaguely confident that divine Providence,
in the form of the proverbial stork, could have been appealed to to
bestow its infantile goods elsewhere had my sister Elizabeth been
allowed to take the situation in hand early enough. Here we were now,
Elizabeth seventeen and I fourteen, compelled to admit that we had a
tiny, squawking, red-faced youngster in our home. How shamefacedly
we responded to congratulations! I might say that within a week or
so after the baby’s arrival, both Elizabeth and I were won over to
the tiny bundle and became his willing slaves, and, as time went on,
yielded him to mother only when he demanded to be fed, spoiling him
with attentions which mother deplored with shaking head and futile
admonitions. Just so, in our more extreme youth, we were told, had we
spoiled Janet, our baby sister.
In our chagrin at having been precipitately thrust into a position
of such embarrassment, Elizabeth and I charged an afternoon’s
entertainment to father’s livery account, endeavoring to assuage our
injured pride by driving about the town. I retain a very vivid picture
of my sister, sitting erect, holding the reins, her arms begloved
with white kid above the elbows. She wore a black hat which turned up
on the left, dropping on the right to accommodate the great red rose
which hung heavy with “style” on that side. She wore what seemed to
me a stunning blue and white dress. High-heeled slippers encased the
small shapely feet which were always my despair. How insignificant
and positively ugly I felt, sitting beside her in my gingham dress,
occasionally patting my taffy-colored hair which was pulled tightly
away from my face and tied with the stiffest ribbons procurable those
days.
Mt. Vernon Avenue afforded quite a lengthy drive before one reached
the end of the paved road. When we drove past the Harding residence I
observed with rapid heart beats my hero sitting on the front porch.
Mrs. Harding was with him. Would I dare to suggest to Elizabeth? ...
no, I’d better not divulge my thoughts to her ... she didn’t care
anything about Mr. Harding and probably wouldn’t want to waste the time
to call upon them. We were passing the house. Mr. and Mrs. Harding
smiled and waved to us. My heart pounded madly and I felt the heat
in my cheeks. A block later I relaxed and breathed deeply. Elizabeth
turned to me suddenly. “Say, why don’t we go back and call on the
Hardings?” Oh, the blessed intuition of elder sisters! I trembled, but
replied enthusiastically, “Oh, yes, let’s!” She turned the horse’s head
in the direction of the Harding home.
In front of the house stood the Stevens-Duryea, the big car which sped
about town sometimes carrying my hero. It was parked right in front
of the hitching-post, and when Mr. Harding observed our intention of
stopping he came lightly down the steps and called to us, saying he
would tie our horse; he greeted us with smiles and said we should go on
up on the porch. With what seemed to me superhuman strength he pushed
his car out of the way and hitched our livery nag.
There was a long hanging swing at the end of the porch. Mr. Harding
reseated himself there after Elizabeth and I had taken chairs.
The new-baby topic so painful to us was mercifully avoided. I doubt
whether Mr. and Mrs. Harding had even read the announcement of our
little brother’s birth in their own _Marion Daily Star_, but if they
had they showed excellent restraint!
Being so engrossed in trying to realize that I was sitting next to
the man I so adored naturally left me quite speechless, but my sister
Elizabeth did not suffer from this affliction. In fact, she and Mrs.
Harding carried on a most animated conversation, the thing I remember
most vividly about it being that Mr. Harding’s oft-interposed opinions
invariably met with vigorous protests from his wife who seemed to me
to be very sure that _her_ information about so-and-so was the last
word in authority upon the subject and whose remark to her husband, I
remember distinctly, usually was either, “Now, Warren, you don’t know
anything about it!” or, “Well, Warren, _I_ know _better_!” The topics
did not concern me but I did question _any_ piece of information which
could inspire such disputatious quality in the tone of Mrs. Harding’s
voice.
When we left, Mr. and Mrs. Harding accompanied us on the short walk to
our carriage. Elizabeth, with vast grown-upness, turned to Mr. Harding.
“You know, Mr. Harding, Nan talks of _nothing_ but you! She has little
campaign poster pictures of you all over the walls of her room!”
Secretly elated that he should actually be told of my adoration in my
presence, though outwardly greatly perturbed, I furtively watched the
effect it would have upon him. I confess I momentarily forgot all about
Mrs. Harding in my eager gaze at her husband’s face. I was used to
seeing this information amuse the hearer, when dispensed by my parents,
and I wondered just a little apprehensively whether Mr. Harding would
treat it lightly. But he smiled understandingly, kindly, comfortingly.
I ventured to look at Mrs. Harding then. She did not smile.
“Well, Miss Britton,” my hero said, looking down at me, “I move that
you have a _real_ photograph of me for your wall!” This met with no
seconding from his wife however, and somehow I wished in the silence
which followed his remark that Elizabeth had not brought up the subject
of my admiration for him. Now Mrs. Harding would _know_ it was not she
whom I admired, as I had tried to pretend, but her husband only. I
stole another glance at him. Oh, dear, what was the use of trying to
pretend anyway! I just loved him and that was all there was about it.
He was like a giant Adonis as he stood there petting the horse before
unhitching him for us. I felt so diminutive, so pitifully young! How I
adored him!
Memories and revisualizations happily filled my days following this
visit ... but, though I waited long and patiently, the weeks passed by
and I failed to receive the expected photograph. Oh, it was cruel to be
young!
_6_
Our neighbors, the Sinclairs, lived in a large brick house on the
outskirts of town, which was surrounded by a spacious lawn dotted with
rose bushes of all varieties. Tall trees lined the drives and walks and
shaded the grounds throughout.
Mrs. Sinclair often sent her hired man to our house with a basket of
lovely green vegetables, fresh from her own garden. Oftener, she would
telephone mother to send one of the children with a pail and she would
have Emma the cook send back some of the creamy milk of which they had
had an over-supply that evening. It often fell to me to “fetch the
milk.”
In spite of Mrs. Sinclair’s solicitude concerning the gossip about
my frank declarations of love for her husband’s friend, she often
suggested to me, with a twinkle in her eye, “Why don’t you stay a
little while, Nan? Your hero is coming home with the judge to play
cards!” But instead of wanting to linger, I would pick up my heels and
fly out the door.
One evening about sunset I swung my pail of milk back and forth as I
sauntered leisurely toward home. My eyes were fixed on the grass along
the sidewalk where sometimes wild flowers raised their dainty faces and
seemed to ask to be gathered. I had just stooped to pick a particularly
pretty wild poppy when I looked up--to see Warren Harding approaching!
It was too late to retreat, so I walked bravely toward him, one hand
literally seeming full of buckets, the other clutching the stem of my
pretty wild flower. I wished fervently, in my visible nervousness and
hidden delight, that the ground would open and swallow me, bucket,
flower and all. My knowledge of father’s talk with Mr. Harding, coupled
with the more intimate knowledge of the adoration I had been so
publicly boasting, intensified my confusion a thousandfold, and my face
burned pitifully.
I did not seem to be advancing, though he seemed to be steadily drawing
nearer, and I knew that he recognized me for he began to smile and take
off his hat. Then, with a bow that could not have been more gallant had
I been a titled lady, and the same smile which has won even the hearts
of his enemies, he bade me, “Good evening!” To this day I have not the
slightest idea whether I found my voice to answer, but I remember I
momentarily recovered sufficiently to look up at him, while all the way
home I exulted, “Isn’t he _won_derful! Isn’t he _won_derful!”
(Years later, in May of 1917, when Warren Harding made his first trip
to New York in my behalf, he himself asked me if I remembered the
incident and confided that the desire to possess me had been born in
his heart upon that occasion--the occasion which had so long been
enshrined in my own heart as a wonderful memory.)
_7_
Election Eve in 1910 was a memorable occasion for me. I shall never
forget the mass meeting in the old Opera House on State Street. Shortly
afterward, this theatre burned to the ground, but I cherish still the
memory of the hall in which the last meeting I attended was a town
rally for my beloved editor, Ohio’s Republican candidate for Governor!
I do not remember that I told anybody where I was going that night.
I only know I went along, in all haste, after the dinner dishes had
been cleared away, out the back door and down to the Opera House. The
theatre was comparatively small, accommodating perhaps seven or eight
hundred people, but fully twice as many it seemed to me had crowded in,
jamming the narrow aisles and standing wherever there was an available
spot for a human being to balance himself. I pushed my way up through
the stuffy crowds to the balcony and managed to find a seat onto which
I climbed. I took a deep breath. From my post I could see every corner
of the stage. The whole theatre was decorated, and even the boxes were
beflagged. Two or three dozen people stood or sat in a semi-circle at
the back of the stage--the more favored few.
The multitude--it seemed a multitude to me--cheered and whistled and
suddenly the applause grew to a deafening roar as the audience rose
as in a body to greet the hero of the hour. I bent eagerly forward,
my heart in my throat, as he advanced to the edge of the platform
and bowed. How dear he was! After comparative quiet was regained, he
began his address, in his deep silvery voice, the voice I loved years
afterward to listen to across the dinner-table or in more intimate
surroundings....
Out on the street great flags floated in the cool breeze and telephone
posts and store windows were draped effectively in the American colors.
The throngs of people stood about expectantly. I wondered if my father
had attended the meeting and whether I had been missed at home ... then
down the street in an open carriage with seats facing each other rode
the Republican candidate, his wife and a couple of intimate friends.
The entire carriage was a mass of red, white and blue; even the horses
seemed to sense the importance and enthusiasm of the occasion, and
lifted high their beflagged heads as they stepped mincingly along
through the cheering lines of people.
Still smiling and bowing and occasionally raising a hand to wave to the
people, the editor stood throughout the entire procession, head bared,
acknowledging this tribute of the home folks who loved him....
Loved him? Yes. But who of men can essay an explanation of that
instinct of the American voter who can hypocritically hail a candidate
one day and the following day betray him at the polls?
As I look back upon that election, a state-wide land-slide for the
Democrats, putting Judson Harmon in the Governor’s chair, I do not feel
as I felt then, saddened beyond words, for events have been witness
to the fact that nothing can prevent those who are predestined from
“coming into their own.”
(These two episodes, the one of the meeting with Mr. Harding when I
carried the pail of milk, and the political mass meeting, I have quoted
in substance from an autobiography which I wrote in 1921 at Columbia
as one of our class assignments. I took this manuscript down to the
White House at that time and Mr. Harding read it, expressing in a
letter to me his interest and praising me for having received an “A” on
it at Columbia, however cautioning me as usual very lovingly against
treading compositionally upon what he thought seemed to be “dangerous
ground.” The whimsical expression in his face when we used to discuss
his earlier political activities often led me to feel that _he_ had
felt far from the hero I had pictured him, and perhaps more like the
disillusioned candidate his friends reported him to be after that
election, driven by ambitious admirers into a field he would fain have
avoided.)
_8_
In June of 1913, when I was a Junior in high school, my father passed
on. We had very little money, but my mother managed to keep us together
for a year and a half or so. She went back to teaching and was given a
position in the Marion Public Schools. My baby brother John was about
eighteen months old. My older sister Elizabeth was the pianist in a
local theatre, a moving picture house. However, we girls continued to
chum with the “best people” up to the time we left Marion, which was in
1915.
My mother had often thought she would like to do Chautauqua work, and
it was in this connection that after father’s passing she took occasion
to consult Mr. Harding. He had had some experience in this line for
I remember my mother took me one Sunday afternoon to hear him, and
afterward allowed me to go up and shake hands with him and tell him how
much I enjoyed his speech, for which hesitating utterance I received
one of his loveliest smiles and a courtly “Thank you kindly, thank you
kindly!”
It was upon the occasion of my mother’s visit to Mr. Harding’s
office that Mr. Harding, inquiring how “Nan” was, and being assured
of my continued admiration of him and any cause he sponsored, said
ruminatively, “Mrs. Britton, maybe I can _do_ something sometime for
Nan.” I walked for days in the clouds after mother had repeated this to
me.
Before we broke up our housekeeping and left Marion, the people had
elected Warren G. Harding United States Senator from Ohio. Even in
the face of my own difficulties--being thrown upon the world with
absolutely no equipment except a high school education and possibly
some innate common sense--I felt an ecstatic elation over this victory
for my beloved hero, and when Miss Abigail Harding “dared” me to
go out to his house and congratulate him, it took less urging than
courage to do so. Mrs. Harding came to the door in a pink linen dress.
I braved her all right and asked if I might be permitted to speak to
her husband. It was late afternoon and he was playing cards with his
regular “bunch.” He came out, and I shall never forget his smile--I do
not think now it would be too much to say it was a smile of genuine
appreciation, for so he assured me in later years--and I thrilled
unspeakably under the touch of his hand. Mrs. Harding stood pat; it
even seemed to me she curtailed any lengthy remarks Mr. Harding might
have been tempted to make just to please me by drawing his attention
to the gentlemen in the other room who were waiting for him. But she
could have nothing to do with the pressure of a hand-shake which was
Mr. Harding’s seal of sincere cordiality to me.
_9_
Sometime during the summer of 1915 I went to Cleveland, Ohio, where,
through the influence of friends, I was given a position in the George
H. Bowman Company, a china store on Euclid Avenue. I lived at the Y. W.
C. A. where I obtained board and room for the nominal sum of $3.50 a
week.
My mother was then teaching school in Martel, Ohio, a small village
east of Marion, and it seems to me she had one of the younger children
with her, though I don’t remember which one. I think my baby brother
John was being taken care of by my Aunt Anna in Canton, Ohio. I went
from Cleveland a couple of times to Martel, I know, to see my mother.
My position in Cleveland paid me $6 a week, and I was so delighted
when my salary was raised a dollar and a half that I sent for my
brother Howard whom we called “Doc,” then about sixteen years of age,
to come to Cleveland where, through my own influence and good standing
at Bowman’s I was able to secure a position for him also. He lived
at the Y. M. C. A. down the street from me. I very early assumed
responsibilities toward my family.
However, my sister Elizabeth, working her way through music school
in Chicago, persuaded me that we two could live more comfortably and
happily together there, and after having been in Cleveland about eight
months I went to Chicago to join her.
I remember how my brother Doc helped me to gather together the $11 or
so carfare to Chicago, and when I boarded the train it was with just
thirty cents “over” in my pocket-book. I became very hungry near
noontime and the slender lunch I had brought did not satisfy my healthy
appetite, so I went into the diner in search of something “cheap.”
Apple pie was 15 cents without cheese; with cheese, 25 cents. I
dispensed with the cheese because I thought I _must_ tip the waiter 10
cents, and I must have a nickel to phone Elizabeth in Chicago in case
she failed to meet me.
I presented my letter of recommendation from the George H. Bowman
Company, which read, “We are glad to recommend Miss Nan Britton, who
has been in our employ for about a year, as a girl of ability and
good character,” and was given a position in Carson, Pirie, Scott and
Company, in the china department, soon after my arrival in Chicago.
Elizabeth did wonders with her needle to “fix me up” and make me a
little more presentable than I had been able to do on my $6 a week.
Moreover, in my new job I received $9 a week wages!
The Brittons were never “good managers.” While my father lived we
children had everything we needed and more; but father was far too
generous for his income, and never denied where it was possible to
give. With so little idea of the value of a dollar, mother, Elizabeth
and I were all having a pretty hard time.
I had carried on correspondence while in Cleveland with Miss Abigail
Harding, “Daisy,” as she was more commonly called at home, but the
dissatisfaction I was experiencing because of my seeming inability to
get on more quickly had inclined me to less letter-writing. In other
words, I knew my ability and I was ashamed of my small-waged position.
Finally, without saying anything to Elizabeth, I wrote to my father’s
favorite college classmate, whom I will call Grover Carter, at that
time Vice-President of a coal company in New York, asking his advice
concerning the possibilities of my working my way through school. I
received an immediate reply in which he assured me of his genuine
interest and told me he had written to another Kenyon College classmate
of my father, in the offices of the Union Stock Yards in Chicago. In
due time I received from him a cordial note in which he invited me to
dine with him and his family.
In short, I was given a choice of attending a business school in
Chicago at the expense of my father’s two college friends or of coming
on to New York City to attend school. It was up to me. The latter
plan appealed to me, and I remember I felt the very trip East would
in itself be an education to me whose travelling experiences had been
necessarily limited.
The remainder of the summer of 1916 was then devoted to preparations
for my trip East, my Chicago benefactors taking me to Marshall Fields’
where I was outfitted properly from head to toe. I thought my fairy
existence had actually begun.
During the summer of 1916, while I was still working at Carson, Pirie,
Scott and Company, the Republican National Convention was being held
in the Coliseum, not far from my place of business. United States
Senator Warren G. Harding, former Lieutenant-Governor of Ohio, was
nominating Charles E. Hughes for the Presidency of the United States.
Morning after morning I bought the papers, watching the progress of
the proceedings with avid interest, most particularly, of course, any
mention of my beloved Warren Harding.
In the spring of 1917 when Mr. Harding came over to New York to help
me find a position (or rather to place me in one) I told him of how I
had followed the convention items in the Chicago papers. He expressed
his regret that I had not at that time gotten in touch with him for it
would have been a pleasure, he said, to see that I had a “front seat”
during the convention at the Coliseum.
_10_
In the fall of 1916 my Chicago benefactors put me on the train for New
York and at the Pennsylvania Station in the Big City I was met by Mr.
Carter. I was put immediately in school; the school selected was the
Ballard Secretarial School for Girls which is an endowed school housed
in the Y. W. C. A. Building, which building, Central Branch, was at
that time down on 16th Street between Broadway and Fifth Avenue.
I entered six weeks late but through the out-of-school-hours’ tutoring
of my dear teacher and friend, to whom I will give the name of Miss
Helen Anderson, I was enabled to catch up with the class very quickly.
I studied hard. The Carter family was an intellectual one and Mr.
Carter early began to dictate to me in the evenings, which was a great
help. I received A’s in everything when the spring came and I was
graduated.
In early spring, in April I believe, there was a request made to the
Y. W. C. A. Employment Bureau for a stenographer for one whom I shall
call Mrs. Emma Laird Phelps, publicity manager for Ignacy Paderewski,
the famous pianist, and I went to be interviewed. I had several hours
in the afternoons which I knew I could devote to this work and in that
way make some extra expense money. Mrs. Phelps hired me after giving
me some trial dictation, and I was launched upon my first stenographic
position! During this employment I had occasion to do some special work
with Mme. Paderewski and in this connection I met her famous husband.
Inasmuch as I had, when in high school, not been allowed much freedom
where boys were concerned, I knew comparatively little about them. I
had had my ideal American in my heart for years and all others paled
into insignificance beside him. True, I had endeavored to weave romance
several times into friendships with boys I had known in Marion, after I
became almost seventeen years of age and was a junior in high school,
when mother permitted a few “dates”--few and far between. But somehow
these fellows, as well as those I met after I left Marion--in Cleveland
and in Chicago--all seemed to have things “wrong with them.”
However, I was beginning to receive attentions from men whom I would
meet even casually, and the fact that I was able to hold a secretarial
position, and had been the only one in my class at Ballard to attempt
such a thing before graduation, strengthened my faith in myself and
tended to dignify me in my own estimation.
_11_
When spring came, and graduation day was drawing near, I decided I
might now safely appeal to Warren Harding to help me to a position
in the business world. I felt sure I could do myself credit and he
would not have to be ashamed to recommend me for a position. I could,
of course, have depended upon many other sources for situations, and
in fact Mrs. Phelps kindly intimated that the Paderewskis might wish
to take me to California with them, Mme. Paderewski having evinced a
certain fondness for me. But I had other plans. Mr. Harding’s words to
my mother back in Marion in 1914, “Maybe I can do something sometime
for Nan,” recurred to me again and again. So one afternoon I stayed at
school and wrote, after many revisions, and after destroying dozens of
sheets of perfectly good Y. W. C. A. paper, and without saying a word
to a soul, the following letter, a carbon copy of which I retained:
New York City
May 7, 1917
HON. WARREN G. HARDING
UNITED STATES SENATE
WASHINGTON, D. C.
MY DEAR MR. HARDING:
I wonder if you will remember me; my father was Dr. Britton, of
Marion, Ohio.
I have been away from Marion for about two years, and, up until last
November, have been working. But it was work which promised no future.
Through the kindness of one of my father’s Kenyon classmates, Mr.
Grover Carter, of this city, I have been enabled to take up a
secretarial course, which course I shall finish in less than three
weeks.
I have been reading of the imperative demand for stenographers and
typists throughout the country, and the apparent scarcity, and it has
occurred to me that you are in a position to help me along this line
if there is an opening.
My experience is limited; I have done some work for Mr. Carter this
winter; I have also been doing publicity work in the afternoons
while going to school; the latter has been in connection with Madame
Paderewski’s Polish Refugee work. Now that I am about to look for an
all-day position I do so want to get into something which will afford
me prospects of advancement.
Any suggestions or help you might give me would be greatly
appreciated, I assure you, and it would please me so to hear from you.
Sincerely,
NAN BRITTON
[Illustration: The author, when she wrote the letter on Page 25]
Three days later, toward evening, when I came home from school, I spied
a large envelope on the hall table. It was addressed to me in a man’s
handwriting and bore the United States Senate return. I tore it open.
At first my eyes swept the pages unseeingly, noting only the signature,
“W. G. Harding.”
Mrs. Carter was in the living-room on that floor and I joined her
there. She was an extremely conventional woman and I knew she would not
understand or sympathize if I were to confess my intense admiration for
a married man. So, with a supreme effort at nonchalance, I told her
that I had some days before written to Senator Harding inquiring about
a position, and that this was his reply. With forced calm I read aloud
to her his letter to me.
The opening sentence was an assurance that he did indeed remember
me. He added, “... you may be sure of that, and I remember you most
agreeably, too.” Compared with the warmth of these first sentences the
following cordially expressed desire to be of assistance in furthering
my ambition to become a secretary held only secondary interest for me.
He said frankly that if he had a position open in his own office he
would “gladly tender it to me.” The next best thing he said, would
be to help me to a government position provided I were secretarially
equipped for it. To this end he inquired specifically what I had been
trained to do. He suggested that I accompany my next letter with a
note of recommendation, parenthetically emphasizing that this note was
not for his own satisfaction but for that of the department chief.
After this was in his hands he would “go personally to the war or navy
department and urge my appointment.” He thought that “the fact that my
esteemed father had belonged to the party now in power” would help.
He mentioned the maximum departmental salary of $100 per month, but
warned me that I would probably have to be satisfied with an initial
salary of $60. Such positions as were available might last only during
the period of the war, he said, and added, “which we all hope will not
be long--however, it may be very long.”
The latter paragraphs thrilled me. He wrote that there was “every
probability” of his being in New York the following week! If he could
reach me by phone or “becomingly look me up,” he would do so, and “take
pleasure in doing it.”
The whole tone of the letter was one of utmost cordiality. I could
scarcely refrain from uttering exclamations of delight. I took my
things and went upstairs to my room where I could reread the letter
alone.
My bedroom on the third floor of the Carter home was a joy to me. The
house itself stood almost in the shadow of Queensboro Bridge, which
spans the North River at 59th Street. My windows faced the southeast
and afforded a gorgeous view of the river. On a clear evening the
lights of the Williamsburg, Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges looked like
arches of stars hung low and twinkling against the sky.
Outside my windows trees were freshly green. Sparrows perched there and
chirped joyously. For weeks children had been playing out-of-doors,
mingling their cries with a hundred other street noises. And, from the
background of these sounds, arose momently the varied shrilling of the
river-boat whistles....
It all fascinated me. It was so different from any atmosphere I had
ever known. At first these very things had made me homesick, but I
was growing now to love New York! I liked to watch the barges glide
smoothly and with scarce perceptible progress up or down the river....
I could even see from my bed in the morning the sparkling water surface
dancing in the sun!...
Now I closed my door and seated myself on the sill of an open
window.... All I had dared to hope for from Mr. Harding was a possible
letter of introduction from him to someone, either in Washington or New
York, to whom I might apply direct for a position.... But he himself
seemed genuinely interested in helping me!... And was coming over to
New York, and would see me!... Warren Gamaliel Harding!
As the evening deepened, and even as I crept in between cool white
sheets that night, the impression grew upon me that under the cordial
phraseology of his letter there was more than the mere desire to be of
assistance to me. It was almost a sweet ingratiation.... “You see I do
remember you ...” was his concluding sentence....
Well indeed had I perceived this hidden warmth! When, upon his visit,
I quoted to him those lines which had moved me to feel an underlying
sweetness beyond the evident friendliness, he smiled and nodded and
confessed to an overwhelming desire to _see_ me after these years. _To
see me_, he said, had been the sole motive for his trip to New York at
that particular time!
And so an inexpressible happiness reigned in my heart, even though
my impressions had not yet been grounded in fact by his assurances.
Therefore I did not allow secret delight to vent itself in written
words, but on May 11th wrote the following formal letter:
MY DEAR MR. HARDING:
It was good to know that you remembered me; and I appreciated your
kind interest and prompt response.
As to my qualifications: I will say frankly that I have had little
practical experience. As I said in my recent letter, my work this
winter has been, in a degree, handicapped by the fact that it has been
carried on while I have been going to school; therefore, I could not
give it my entire attention. But certainly the little I have done has
been wonderfully helpful, and has given me, at least, a start.
I am hoping that you will be in New York next week and that I can
talk with you; I am inclined to believe that an hour’s talk would be
much more satisfactory. There is so much I want to tell you; and I
am sure that I could give you a better idea of my ability--or rather
the extent of my ability, for it is limited--and you could judge for
yourself as to the sort of position I could competently fill.
I am almost certain that I will be able to secure a good
recommendation--both from Mr. Carter and Mrs. Phelps; if I do not get
to talk with you I shall send them to you. This work has been in the
stenographic line; this is really the work I want to follow.
If you call Stuyvesant 1900, the telephone number here at school,
you would find me here from nine in the morning until one in the
afternoon. In case you are able to see me for an hour it would please
me immensely to make an appointment--provided it does not interfere
with your plans.
Sincerely,
NAN BRITTON
_12_
I did not comply with Mr. Harding’s request for a letter of
recommendation, not immediately securing it and not wishing to hold up
my reply to him. I really felt I might likely be able to secure it and
send it to him in advance of his answer to my letter of the 11th.
But May the 15th brought, to my surprise, a reply to my second letter
sent the 11th. This letter too was written in longhand and was somewhat
longer than the first one. In the corner of the stationery this time
were the words, “Senate Chamber.”
If the first letter contained what I chose to regard as statements of
rather more than conventional import, the second letter only served to
confirm my belief.
He wrote that he had every confidence I would succeed--“... an
ambitious young woman of your character and talents must succeed.”
He spoke of having to break down the civil service bars to secure a
place for me, adding, “I must ask it as a very personal favor, with
the advantage of your good father having been a loyal supporter of the
party in power.” However, he immediately assured me that he did not
hesitate “to apply the purely personal appeal” and was glad to do it
for me. He merely wished to be satisfied on one point--could I take
dictation?
“You write a fine letter, your intelligence is of the high Britton
standard.... I will have no doubt you will make good from the very
start.”
It pleased me immensely to read, “I like your spirit and determination.
It is like I have always imagined you to be.” Like he had _always
imagined me to be_. Then he _had_ thought about me! Even speculated
as to what I was like! “... I shall rejoice to note your success,” he
wrote.
“I knew you had gone out to contest with the world and win your way,
but I had no detailed knowledge....” Why, there was the implication
that he had wondered, had perhaps even wanted detailed knowledge and
of course hadn’t dared to betray his interest! Wonderful that he had
thought about me!
He expected to be in New York within the next ten days and, he said,
might definitely advise me in advance of his coming, and again he
assured me, “It will be a pleasure to look you up.”
I liked the last line of his letter. “... always know of ... my very
genuine personal interest in your good fortune.”
A skylark amid the clouds could not have been happier than I during
the intervening days between my receipt of this letter and the arrival
of its author. I would often speak sharply to myself when occasionally
I touched earth long enough to realize the source of my joy and
light-heartedness, “Don’t make a perfect fool of yourself, now, Nan. He
hasn’t said anything which actually _means_ much ... and naturally he
would take a fatherly interest in _any_ girl who might seek help from
him....” But my spirits would not be downed! I talked to the birds. I
arose earlier than usual to stand and gaze out of my window and dream.
I examined my face carefully in the mirror. I planned exactly what I
should wear. My Chicago benefactor had recently sent me $50 with which
I had purchased a new gray tailored suit, and I would wear a dark blue
sailor hat, the crown covered with grey veiling.
_13_
Before I had an opportunity to get another letter to _him_, Mr.
Harding came over to New York. He telephoned me at school and made
an appointment for me to meet him at the Manhattan Hotel, at Madison
Avenue and 42nd Street. What a sweet shock to hear his voice!...
He was standing on the steps of the hotel when I reached there.
It must be remembered that I was but sixteen years of age when I had
last seen Mr. Harding (the time I called at his house to congratulate
him upon his election to the Senate) and, although I looked very young
when I met him at the Manhattan Hotel, still I had had the advantage of
the intervening two years, and the added advantage of having lived with
the Carters from whom I had learned a great deal, and I am sure Mr.
Harding’s agreeable surprise was genuine. Certainly he could not have
been more cordial.
He invited me to come back to the reception room near 43rd Street.
It was about 10:30 in the morning. We sat down upon a settee and it
was not difficult for me to talk to him for he invited confidence. We
became immediately reminiscent of my childhood and my adoration of him,
and he seemed immensely pleased that I still retained such feelings. I
could not help being perfectly frank.
Some kind of convention in New York at that time had made hotel
accommodations very scarce, and Mr. Harding confessed that he was
obliged to take the one room available in the Manhattan Hotel--the
bridal chamber! He asked me to come up there with him so that we might
continue our conversation without interruptions or annoyances.
The bridal chamber of the Manhattan Hotel was, to me, a very lovely
room, and, in view of the fact that we had scarcely closed the
door behind us when we shared our first kiss, it seemed sweetly
appropriate. The bed, which we did not disturb, stood upon a dais,
and the furnishings were in keeping with the general refinement of
atmosphere. I shall never, never forget how Mr. Harding kept saying,
after each kiss, “God!... God, Nan!” in high diminuendo, nor how he
pleaded in tense voice, “Oh, dearie, tell me it isn’t hateful to you to
have me kiss you!” And as I kissed him back I thought that he surpassed
even my gladdest dreams of him.
Between kisses we found time to discuss my immediate need for a
position and I found Mr. Harding less inclined to recommend me in
Washington. In fact, he frankly confessed to me, he preferred to have
me in New York where he could come over to see me and where he would
feel more at liberty to be with me. There were no intimacies in that
bridal chamber beyond our very ardent kisses, and, Mr. Harding, having
been acquainted with my plans for going to Chicago after graduation
to visit my sister, tucked $30 in my brand new silk stocking and was
“sorry he had no more that time to give me.” Inasmuch as I received my
carfare and small spending money from Mrs. Carter in amounts of $1.00,
$.75, $1.25 or whatever change she happened to have on hand, to have
$30 all at one time to “spend as I chose” seemed to me almost too good
to be true! I had always been very grateful to the Carters for the way
in which they took me into their home as one of them, but of course I
would not have been my natural self had I not thought wistfully over
Mr. Harding’s statement to me, “Why didn’t you ask _me_ to send you to
school, Nan?” and his emphatic “You bet!” after I had inquired with
wide eyes, “Oh, would you have done that?”
The first letter I received from Senator Harding I had shown to Mrs.
Emma Laird Phelps with whom I was working in the Paderewski connection,
and she read it with what I thought seemed avidity.
“A typical letter, my dear,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.
“Typical of what?” I inquired.
“Why, that man has an object--can’t you see that?” she said easily.
“What kind of object do you mean?” I queried wonderingly.
Her explanation must have been very vague for I can’t remember it at
all, but I suppose the affectional things that actually did transpire
upon our first visit together were things which she would have said
proved such ‘object’ on Mr. Harding’s part. But they were all too
spontaneous, too sincere to have been premeditated.
Mrs. Phelps afterward asked me one time to give her a letter that she
might use to gain a conference with Mr. Harding and I am sure, while
I never gave her such a letter, that she changed her mind completely
about Mr. Harding’s possible purposes toward me so graciously did she
voice her admiration of him to me many times.
Upon this first visit, Mr. Harding and I had luncheon at the Manhattan
Hotel, in the dining-room on the 43rd Street side. Then we took a taxi
uptown to see Mrs. Phelps--to her apartment on 116th Street.
The entrance hall to Mrs. Phelps’ apartment was dimly lighted, and
when we emerged into the living-room which is on 116th Street Mr.
Harding turned to Mrs. Phelps. Except for their acknowledgments of
introductions nothing had been said by any of us, and now Mr. Harding
remarked pleasantly, “Well, Mrs. Phelps, we people with big noses
always seem to get along, don’t we?” I had not been long enough in New
York and was still too unsuspecting to realize the significance of that
remark, though I am confident Mr. Harding meant it all good-naturedly,
and I am not at all sure even now that Mrs. Phelps is a Jewess. Within
the past year and a half I have been in Mrs. Phelps’ apartment and she
asked me if I remembered when President Harding, then Senator, had sat
in “that chair,” indicating an easy rocker.
From Mrs. Phelps Mr. Harding obtained the information that I was rather
more than a good stenographer.
On the way back downtown in the taxi to the Y. W. C. A. where Mr.
Harding next talked with Miss Anderson about my school work, he put his
arm around me.
“Nan,” he queried kindly, “just how fast do you think you could take
dictation?”
“Oh, I don’t know, not so very fast,” I answered frankly.
“Well, look here, I’ll dictate a letter to you and you tell me whether
you ‘get’ all of it.” The “letter” as it was dictated verbatim I do not
recall, but the trend of it is easy rememberable:
“My darling Nan: I love you more than the world, and I want you to
belong to me. Could you belong to me, dearie? I want you ... and I need
you so....”
I remember the letter did not run into length because I silenced him
with the kisses he pleaded for. He would tremble so just to sit close
to me, and I adored every evidence of his enthusiasm.
“Do people address you as ‘Judge’ or ‘Senator’?” asked Miss Anderson
after I had presented Mr. Harding to her.
“No, I have never been a judge,” he answered, “I guess I’m just plain
Mr. Harding.” He smiled. Miss Anderson suggested that we sit in one of
the little waiting-rooms.
It will be remembered that this visit was in late May of 1917 and our
whole United States was full of “the war.” It was entirely logical that
the general trend of conversation should bear upon the various aspects
of the war. But how it drifted into a discussion of babies I do not
recall. Mr. Harding vouchsafed the information he had recently acquired
in Washington, that the Germans were actually attempting to create
children by injecting male serum, taken at the proper temperature, into
the female without the usual medium of sexual contact. He denounced
this method of propagation as “German madness” and affirmed that in his
belief children should come only through mutual love-desire. I shall
never forget the expressions of his face and Helen Anderson’s. Surely
she must have thought he was talking strangely to speak of these things
so frankly and upon such short acquaintance. But I, though I confess
it did not occur to me then, understand these processes of his mind to
have been the direct result of contemplations concerning me, and it is
not unlikely that even as early as that very first visit Warren Harding
was entertaining the possibility of becoming the father of a real
love-child. Certainly his face was a study.
Miss Anderson assured him of my readiness for a position and we went
from the Y. W. C. A. to Judge Elbert H. Gary’s office at 71 Broadway,
Empire Building. I remember we stood quite a few minutes waiting for
a Broadway street car, and it must have taken us about forty-five
minutes to go from 14th Street to Rector Street. I remember how Mr.
Harding suddenly seemed to come to himself somewhere in lower Broadway
and exclaim, as we were getting off the car, “Why, Nan, why didn’t we
take a taxi!” and his surprise was so genuine that I knew he had not
realized _where_ he had been during that ride downtown.
_14_
Mr. Harding had told me that he thought the very place for me was in
the United States Steel Corporation. I had never even heard of Judge
Gary, strange to say, and he explained that he was the Chairman of the
Board of Directors of the largest industrial corporation in the world.
Mr. Harding handed his card to the secretary in Judge Gary’s outer
office. The judge came out immediately. After introducing me to Judge
Gary, Mr. Harding inquired casually of him whether his senatorial
services in a certain matter had been satisfactory. The judge replied
that they had indeed and thanked Mr. Harding. We were then taken into
the office of the Comptroller, Mr. Filbert, and Judge Gary made this
statement to Mr. Filbert: “Mr. Filbert, I want to help Senator Harding
to help this young lady.” Then Judge Gary retired.
Our interview with Mr. Filbert was rather a lengthy one and I thought
there were infused in it the elements of a battle of wits between the
two men. Mr. Filbert seemed to resent Mr. Harding’s assurance that
“Miss Britton can write all of your letters for you!” But, as usual,
when we left it was Mr. Filbert who had been won over and I was asked
to await a letter from him telling in which branch of service in the
Steel Corporation I would be placed.
Going down in the elevator, Mr. Harding whispered to me, “_Now_, do you
believe that I love you?”
We took a taxi back to the Manhattan Hotel. We stopped at the 43rd
Street entrance. The taxi had not drawn close enough to the curb and
there was a space of perhaps ten inches between the running-board and
the sidewalk. Mr. Harding caught his foot and tripped, falling in
a very awkward position. His face became red and he arose the most
embarrassed man imaginable. I remember how it immediately reminded me
of a story mother used to tell about my doctor-father, accompanied
also by a young lady, when he was making calls in his shiny “buggy”,
being suddenly seized with cramps which bore him to the ground when he
alighted in front of the patient’s house; he had been obliged to remain
in a squatting position for several moments. Mr. Harding’s blush of
confusion after his fall remained a good many minutes and was explained
by him, “You see, dearie, I’m so crazy about you that I don’t know
where I’m stepping!”
The bridal chamber at the Manhattan seemed almost to be our home when
we returned to it for the second time, and the manner in which we threw
off our wraps and settled ourselves together comfortably in the big
arm-chair the most natural thing in the world. And the fact that Mr.
Harding told me dozens of times the thing I had always longed to hear
from him, “I love you, dearie,” seemed no less the perfectly natural
and normal thing. “We were made for each other, Nan,” he said.
Especially did it all seem so right when Mr. Harding repeated to me
many times, “I’d like to make _you_ my bride, Nan darling.”
Mr. Harding came over once more before I left for Chicago on my
vacation trip, for which my Chicago friends had sent me my railroad
ticket. It was upon this occasion that he took me to his room in the
Manhattan and talked over with me my prospective position in the United
States Steel Corporation. He expressed his desire to have me dignified
in the eyes of the officials there who would hear of me through Mr.
Filbert, and about fifteen or twenty minutes before it was time for
him to catch his train, he sat down at the desk and wrote out in
longhand a letter which he said would be suitable for me to send to Mr.
Filbert when that gentleman should send me a note to report for further
interview at the Steel Corporation. Mr. Harding seemed very sure that I
would be the recipient of such a letter and I watched over his shoulder
while he wrote a hasty draft of “my reply.” It was the first time I had
seen him slam his Oxford glasses upon his classic nose and I marvelled
aloud at this feat.
I have always been quite averse to deception such as claiming
authorship for something written by another, and I could not sincerely
enthuse over the letter Mr. Harding had tried to couch in terms such
as I might employ. However, I accepted it with thanks and he needed
only to glance at his watch to see that he had barely time to catch his
train. He kissed me and rushed away.
In due time I received the letter from Mr. Filbert, in which he asked
me to see Miss Blanche Sawyer, in the legal department, who would tell
me about my position in the Corporation. But the letter received from
Mr. Filbert seemed not to call for the kind of reply Mr. Harding had
pencilled and so I wrote one of my own. I sent Mr. Harding a carbon
copy, however, which he approved in his next letter to me.
_15_
In early June I left for Chicago to visit my sister Elizabeth before
taking up my work with the Steel Corporation in New York, in a
stenographic position at $16 per week.
Up to that time I had made no one my confidante--in truth, I was
finding it difficult to realize that my hero, Warren G. Harding, loved
me, Nan Britton. Naturally I told no one. But my sister, Elizabeth,
knowing me as she did, sought a reason for the unusual glow of my
cheeks and the happiness written so visibly in my eyes, and when I
received my first forty-page love-letter from Mr. Harding, I told
Elizabeth the truth. She was unmarried then and living at the Colonial
Hotel where I visited her, but she was in love herself with the man she
finally married, and, having known so well my childhood adoration for
Mr. Harding, sympathized with me though she did not encourage me to
continue my friendship with him.
My finances were rather low at that time, I disliked to ask my Chicago
benefactors for more money, so I wrote to Mr. Harding about it, as he
had instructed me to do. The first money he sent me was in the form
of a money order--it seems to me on the American Express Company--for
$42, which amount, he told me by letter, was odd enough to make it
appear that it was in payment of some possible work I had done for him.
Elizabeth went with me when I had it cashed.
A week or so after that I received a letter from Mr. Harding saying
he had been asked to speak in Indianapolis, and inviting me to come
there to meet him. So I packed my suitcase and the following day Mr.
Harding met me at the station in Indianapolis. I was, curiously enough,
quite free from nervousness as I walked through the iron gate where he
stood waiting, and wondered why _he_ seemed so nervous. His hand shook
terribly as he took mine after we were in the taxi. Even his voice
shook. For me it was a great moment. I was so happy to be with him.
We went immediately to the Claypool Hotel where he registered me
as his niece, Miss Harding. During my stay there (we left late
that afternoon), I had several phone calls from newspaper men and
Republicans who were endeavoring to get hold of Senator Harding. A
great deal of the time he was in my room with me and instructed me to
tell them to try him at the Republican Club. It was such fun to have
him cut them all for me!
There were no climactic intimacies in Indianapolis. When I came to
unpack my things I found a note pinned to my nightie on which Elizabeth
had written these words, “I trust you, Nan dear.” Elizabeth knew I
loved Mr. Harding very dearly.
Mr. Harding had to leave me after luncheon--which, I believe, we had
together, though I do not remember for sure--and I wandered about until
the hour set for me to meet him with my bag at the interurban station.
I bought a postcard of the Claypool Hotel to keep as a souvenir. I
remember the clerk at the desk had occasion to say something to me and
it sounded so good to be addressed as “Miss Harding.”
Late that afternoon we took the interurban car to Connersville,
Indiana. Mr. Harding was scheduled to speak that evening at Rushville,
Indiana, which is near Connersville. That trip on the interurban
train was wonderful to me. I wore a black satin dress which my sister
Elizabeth had “made over” from one of her own for me. I explained to
Mr. Harding that I had a “better one” in my suitcase. “This one suits
me, Nan!” he said gaily.
He spent quite some time explaining to me the layout of the City of
Washington. He seemed to take much pride in Washington, and I thought
to myself that he just looked as though he belonged there rather than
in the small city of Marion, Ohio, our home town; he looked eminently
the part of a United States Senator. Yet, as I write this, I remember I
used to find myself cherishing the nice things he said about our home
town.
“What would your sister, Daisy Harding, say if she could see us
together?” I exclaimed to him.
He laughed whimsically, evidently thinking rather of his wife.
“What would _Florence_ Harding say, I want to know!” he answered.
At Mr. Harding’s suggestion I registered in Connersville at the
McFarlan Hotel, where he also stopped, as “Miss E. N. Christian,” or
“Elizabeth N. Christian.” Christian was Mr. Harding’s secretary’s
name--George B. Christian--and Mr. Harding said he thought it would be
“a good joke” to use his secretary’s name. My father and mother must
have known the Christians in Marion, and when in high school I knew the
older gentleman, George Christian’s father, “Colonel” as he was called,
because he used to take us girls to the drug store and buy us sodas.
Mr. Harding intended to take me to Rushville that evening, but when he
knocked on my door I was in the bathroom down the hall, and as his car
was waiting for him he could not wait for me. So I was left to roam
around the little village and wait for his return. There, too, I bought
a postcard picture of the McFarlan Hotel “for remembrance.”
He returned about ten-thirty or eleven. I was sitting in the lobby of
the hotel, one of the typical lobbies of a small town hotel, with the
chairs lined up before the front window. As he came in he ignored me
altogether and I smiled to myself. We had planned to take the midnight
train into Chicago, and he had told me that afternoon on the interurban
that we would get a berth together if I agreed. But it had really been
left undecided.
A taxi was announced about eleven-forty-five and I picked up my bag
and went out. Mr. Harding was at my side in a moment. The several
politicians who escorted Mr. Harding to the cab did not know of course
that we were known to each other, and ostensibly we were not. He spoke
up, “I am catching the midnight train into Chicago. Is that your
train, young lady?” I replied that it was and he said, “Well, I guess
we can both ride down in the same taxi.” Inasmuch as I doubt whether
Connersville boasted more than one, it was a wise suggestion! I was
afraid the taxi man would surely hear Mr. Harding’s whispered remarks
to me on the way down, especially when he said over and over again,
“Dearie, ’r y’ going t’ sleep with me? Look at me, Nan: goin’ to sleep
with me, dearie?” How I _loved_ to hear him say “dearie”!
We secured a section to Chicago. The remembrance of that trip from
Connersville to Chicago is very beautiful although it, too, was free
from complete embraces. We were both dressed the next morning before
we reached the Englewood Station, about nine minutes from the downtown
station, and I remarked to Mr. Harding that he looked a bit tired.
“God, sweetheart! what do you expect? I’m a man, you know.”
In Chicago, we went to a downtown hotel. Here Mr. Harding registered
us as man and wife, although I stood apart and do not know the name
he used. However, if I were to see that register as well as all of
the others wherein we were registered, I am sure I could identify his
writing, for he did not disguise it well no matter how hard he tried.
I noticed he was conversing with the clerk and when he joined me he
said, in a low voice, on the way to the elevator, “The clerk said if
I could prove that you were my wife he would give us the room for
nothing!” I asked him laughingly what he had replied to that and he
said, “I told him I was not in the habit of proving my wife’s identity
and that I had no objection at all to paying for accommodations!”
Nevertheless, we were very circumspect while there that morning and
our love-making was, as it had been up until then, restricted. We had
breakfast served in our room. I remember that it was the first time
that season I had had strawberries.
Mr. Harding took the noon train back--I think going direct to
Washington.
_16_
During the remainder of my visit with my sister Elizabeth at the
Colonial Hotel in Chicago, I analysed my feelings as best I could. What
a maze of emotions! I knew I loved Warren Harding more than anything
in all the world. However, up to this time I had kept my virginity,
despite his very moving appeals to become his completely. Mr. Harding
had explained to me that were we to be found on the train coming from
Connersville to Chicago, sleeping together in one section, we would
invite as severe censure as though we had shared love’s sweetest
intimacy; and the trip itself would be sufficient to incriminate us.
But in my own eyes, I was safe so long as my virginity was sustained.
It seems to me unbelievable now when I think back on my ignorance about
certain things. I had early reached this conclusion: people got married
and undressed and slept together; therefore, one must be undressed in
order for any harm to come to them. I remember that this belief was so
strong in my mind that when, during our ride together from Connersville
to Chicago, I experienced sweet thrills from just having Mr. Harding’s
hands upon the outside of my nightdress, I became panic-stricken. I
inquired tearfully whether he really thought I would have a child right
away. Of course this absurdity amused him greatly, but the fact that I
was so ignorant seemed to add to his cherishment of me for some reason.
And I loved him so dearly.
I had never had, as most girls do have I suppose, a single talk with or
from my mother on sex. As a matter of fact, I did not know how babies
came into the world, and I frankly told Mr. Harding so. I remember
once during one of our “kissing tours”, as he jocularly called them,
I asked him what under the sun people were given navels for! I shall
never forget how it amused, and then saddened him, nor his face as he
told me that that was where I had been attached to my mother. It was
all so wonderful and beautiful when he told me. It was he who told me
of course what my body functions would be if I were to yield myself to
him. He said, “You ask _me_ whatever you want to know; I’ll tell you.”
In my father’s medical library were many books on women and women’s
diseases. My sister Elizabeth and I had girl friends who were
enormously interested in coming up to my father’s office and poring
over these books in his absence, studying with inconceivable interest
the lurid pictures portraying various intimate parts of woman’s
anatomy, all of course highly colored, but it was to me no less than
repulsive to even glance at those medical pictures. I never spent one
solitary second looking at them. When I came to the age when all girls
experience that normal function which makes of them potential mothers,
I was most painfully embarrassed and told my sister Elizabeth, who in
turn communicated it to my mother, and even she dwelt very briefly upon
it, merely cautioning me not to get my feet unnecessarily wet when I
was ill each month.
I told Mr. Harding that I was aware that there was a lovely mystery
connected with life itself, but I had early decided that it was a
mystery for one’s husband to reveal, and I had been perfectly content
not to pry into it. I accepted my puberty as a necessity, even as a
sacred necessity to a cause which should later reveal itself. Mr.
Harding confessed to me that he had never possessed a woman who had
hitherto been possessed of no man, and perhaps that fact concerning me
made me the more desirable to him, in addition to his love for me. He
told me about his early amours, and he confessed that it had been many
years since his home situation had been satisfying.
Mr. Harding told me that he knew of _no_ man except his brother “Deac”
who married, having had no previous experience with women. “Brother
Deac” was a male virgin, he said, before he married.
The fact that at home we girls were held down, even to not being
allowed to attend parties where boys were until we were quite
seventeen--at least that applied to me--indicates the measures that my
mother and father had taken to guard us. “And no young man is going to
visit my girls after ten o’clock at night,” my father used to say. If
we expressed sentiments concerning boys--and my sister Elizabeth was
early a “man hater” so this refers to me mainly--we were told that they
were joshing us, “making fun of us.” So the outlets for my inclinations
in this direction were confined to raving about Mr. Harding, and about
moving picture actors to whom there was not quite so much parental
objection inasmuch as they were only on the screen and in the flesh
safely distanced from me.
Of course there was the perfectly logical plea from Mr. Harding that
if I loved him so deeply I would consent to belong to him, not merely
to be with him, trying him by continued denial. I think I made up to
Warren Harding everything I ever denied him--and I was afterward so
glad I had not plunged headlong into a relationship which was of such
vastness and which I can now look back upon with absolutely no regrets.
In the history of lovers, there was, I am sure, none to compare with
Warren Gamaliel Harding. And to him I was, or so he has often said,
“the sweetheart incomparable.”
_17_
Through my sister I had met, while in Chicago, a young man, whom I
shall call Dean Renwick, who was a pianist of considerable talent, and
a rather nice-looking boy. He seemed to like me and “after a fashion”
asked me to marry him--perhaps he wanted merely to “be engaged” to me.
I have often thought since that the poor boy was just lonesome, for I
don’t see how I could have appealed to him particularly; our interests
were not the same. In any event, I rather seized the idea of annexing a
beau--one who was free to marry me if I wanted and he wanted. You see,
I tried hard to convince myself that it was wrong to love Mr. Harding
as I loved him, that it would mean ultimate surrender, and perhaps
sorrow for us and for our families.
My sister Elizabeth was amazed at the letters I would receive from
Mr. Harding when I shared their contents with her. I remember among
the first of them that came to me while I was in Chicago that month,
was one which particularly took me off my feet. It contained in sweet
phrasing a picture of his desire for me, summed up in the final
parenthetical exclamation, “God! what an anticipation!” He used to tell
me that just to visualize me as he loved to see me brought pangs that
seemed virginal in their intensity and surpassed any longing he had
ever experienced in his life.
I returned to New York the latter part of June, not having committed
myself to Dean Renwick beyond verbal gratitude for his regard and an
attempt at a show of affection for him which fell flat in my heart.
The first of July, 1917, I went to work in the United States Steel
Corporation. I was interviewed by Miss Blanche Sawyer in the legal
department. She informed me that although I had had a splendid
introduction I would of course have to prove my worth. She took me in
and introduced me to Mr. C. L. Close, Manager of the Bureau of Safety,
Sanitation and Welfare, in whose office I was employed for the two
years that followed. Mr. Close came from Shelby, Ohio, and his wife,
formerly Edna Kennedy, had been a Marion girl. Mr. Close knew George
Christian pretty well, having known Mr. Christian’s wife who also came
from Shelby, Ohio. This was, in a way, a sort of social grounding for
me, as George Christian’s boss, Senator Harding, had been instrumental
in placing me with his secretary’s friend in the United States Steel
Corporation.
I left the Carter home in Sutton Place, preferring for obvious reasons
to live by myself, or rather with a strange family where my movements
would not be restricted. The first room I rented was with Mr. and Mrs.
Daniels who lived at 607 West 136th Street. I had heard of Mrs. Daniels
through Helen Anderson who in turn had met her at the Y. M. C. A. where
she had filed her notice of “rooms to rent.” I lived there from July to
November, 1917.
Of course I was proud of my friendship with Mr. Harding, and, inasmuch
as up to this time it had been free from deepest intimacies, I felt
freer to discuss him, although as a matter of fact I had always talked
about him so much at home and elsewhere that it was much a matter of
course.
The Daniels were wise enough to appreciate that their roomer was rather
more than “in” with a United States Senator. Moreover, mention was
made from time to time in the papers of senate activities in which Mr.
Harding took a prominent part, and on August 12, 1917, _The New York
Times_ carried in its magazine section a front-page article entitled,
“Need of Dictator Urged by Harding.” I wondered at the time whether
the publication of this article had been arranged for in a series of
telephone calls made to the _Times_, the _Sun_ and newspaper friends of
Mr. Harding upon the occasion of one of his visits here when I was with
him. The Daniels immediately said that I ought to try to persuade the
senator to dine at their home. It would, obviously, have been a feather
in their joint social headgear! As a matter of fact, he did not do so,
though I had his assurance that he would if it would please _me_.
_18_
It was mid-July when Mr. Harding came over from Washington. We went to
a moderate-priced hotel on Seventh Avenue. He told me that that hotel
had once been a very nice place, and he knew George and Dan Frank
(dry-goods merchants from Marion) used to stop there when in New York.
We were not questioned when he registered, and we were made very
comfortable in a room on the sixth floor, if I remember rightly,
looking down upon Broadway. Although I was deliriously happy to lie in
close embrace with my darling, I just could not even yet permit the
intimacies which would mean severance forever from a moral code which,
while never identified to me by my parents as the one virtue to hold
intact, was intuitively guarded by me as such. Mr. Harding has many
times said to me that if people were to know that we had been together
intimately without indulging in closest embrace they would not credit
the story. In fact, he said to me with something like chagrin that the
_men_ would say, “there certainly must have been something wrong with
Harding!” But somehow it is characteristic of me to be sure of myself,
and when once committed to a cause there is seldom a turning-back. And,
as much as I loved Mr. Harding, the traditional frailty men are wont to
attribute to women as the weaker sex did not dominate me. This sureness
on my part accounted later on for the total lack of “recriminations,”
a word Mr. Harding very frequently employed. “Remember, dearie, no
recriminations!” he used to say.
On July 30th, 1917, Mr. Harding came again to New York. He decided
we could safely go to a hotel where friends of his in Washington had
intimated to him that they had stopped under similar unconventional
circumstances with no unpleasant consequences.
This was on Broadway in the thirties. I remember so well I wore a pink
linen dress which was rather short and enhanced the little-girl look
which was often my despair. I waited in the waiting-room while Mr.
Harding registered. I have been in that hotel once since that time and
I have noted that they have changed the first floor entirely. I think
Mr. Harding said he registered under the name of “Hardwick” or maybe
“Warwick.” There were no words going up in the elevator.
The day was exceedingly warm and we were glad to see that the room
which had been assigned to us had two large windows. The boy threw
them open for us and left. The room faced Broadway, but we were high
enough not to be bothered by street noises. We were quite alone.
I became Mr. Harding’s bride--as he called me--on that day.
The telephone startled us. Mr. Harding jumped up to answer it. He said,
“You’ve got the wrong party.” Almost simultaneously, however, there
was a rap at the door. Then it was unlocked from without and two men
came in. I could hear them speaking to each other before they entered.
One man asked my name. I whispered to Mr. Harding, “What shall I say
to them?” curiously enough not feeling much fear in the distress of
the situation. I never could explain this to myself except that I
loved Warren Harding so much that if he were with me it didn’t matter
what happened. “Tell them the truth!” he said. “They’ve got us!” He
seemed so pitifully distressed. So I told the man my name, where I
lived, where I worked, in answer to queries put to me gruffly. All this
information he wrote down on a pad. Mr. Harding sat disconsolately on
the edge of the bed, pleading for them to allow me to go. He seemed to
base his plea on the argument that we had not disturbed any of their
guests, and for this reason we should be allowed to depart in peace.
“I’ll answer for both, won’t I?” he entreated them. “Let this poor
little girl go!” They told him he should have thought of that before,
and other things I thought were very unkind considering he had not
bound and dragged me there; I had come of my own free will. I remember
he told them I was twenty-two years old, and I, not realizing that he
wanted to make me as old as he safely could, interrupted him and stated
truthfully that I was only twenty.
To almost every argument he advanced in my behalf they answered,
“You’ll have to tell that to the judge.” They intimated that they
were sending for a police-patrol. I did become frightened then. About
that time one of the men picked up Mr. Harding’s hat. Inside was his
name, “W. G. Harding,” in gold lettering, and upon seeing that name
they became calm immediately. Not only calm but strangely respectful,
withdrawing very soon. We completed our dressing.
We packed our things immediately and the men conducted us to the side
entrance. On the way out Mr. Harding handed one of them a $20 bill.
When we were in the taxi, he remarked explosively, “Gee, Nan, I thought
I wouldn’t get out of that under $1000!”
We went to Churchill’s for dinner and he returned to Washington on the
midnight train.
Some time later, upon the occasion of one of his visits, Mr. Harding
told me that he had found out something he had not then known: namely,
that a member of the House of Representatives or of the United States
Senate cannot be detained for any reason whatsoever when he is enroute
to Washington to serve the people. At the time of our almost tragic
adventure Mr. Harding had been “enroute,” for he had stopped to be with
me in New York on his way back to Washington from some city where he
had delivered an address.
Shortly after that, a week or ten days probably, he came over again. We
took a taxi ride. Mr. Harding asked the taxi man where we could find a
nice, quiet place where we could feel assured of not being disturbed.
I shall never forget how much fun we had over this drive. The taxi
driver nodded and turned the car into Riverside Drive. On and on we
sped, and we both wondered where under the sun the place was to which
he was driving us. When we reached Riverside Drive and One Hundred
and something (this was before the Drive was cut through to Dyckman
Street), the driver stopped the car beside a lonely wood, jumped out
and disappeared into the wood. I shall never forget how funny it seemed
to us. “Well,” laughed Mr. Harding, “he is an accommodating driver
anyway!” In about ten or fifteen minutes the driver returned. “Say,
George,” Mr. Harding said, “we want a _hotel_.” “Yes, sir,” the driver
replied, without glancing around, and with every indication that he
understood all along but was just carrying out a little program of
his own. Back down the Drive we went and into 60th Street. He stopped
in front of a hotel of his own selection, hopped out and went in and
almost immediately returned. “This is all right, sir,” he said.
It was a rather shabby place but we felt fairly safe. However, in
hotels of that character there was always the fear of being raided.
We never had any trouble, however, and we went there several times,
probably six or seven in all.
_19_
On August 11th, 1917, I received from Mr. Harding my first gift. It was
a wrist-watch--a birthday present, given in advance of my twenty-first
birthday because I was so in need of a time piece. With it, or rather
in the same mail, came a letter from Mr. Harding. The Daniels had been
informed that “Dean Renwick,” the young man I had met in Chicago and
with whom I was still carrying on a desultory correspondence, had been
sent to Washington on war-work (though he had not), and I named him as
the donor of the wrist-watch. However, they always accused me of having
received it from Mr. Harding, I suppose because the letter accompanying
its receipt was obviously from him, bearing the United States Senate
return. Mrs. Daniels always inspected the mail carefully.
The letter I received was written merely for me to show because I had
told Mr. Harding that I wished he would write something I could show to
Mr. Close. He therefore wrote this, and sometime later another, which
formal letters, in view of the many love-letters I was receiving, were
jokes to us.
The above-mentioned letter stated that he had seen Mr. Filbert of the
United States Steel Corporation when the latter was in Washington,
and had been told by him that I was doing nicely in the Welfare
Department and “promised to become a most valuable addition to their
force.” Mr. Harding also wrote, “I hope you like the place as much
as he reports liking you, and ... find it a desirable avenue to an
agreeable career.... _Making good_ counts with them.” Then he assured
me of his very best wishes for my success and, which made me smile
affectionately, “the happiness which goes with it.” He knew that our
love for each other provided the abundance of that happiness.
I received a good many letters from Mr. Harding at the Steel
Corporation. He usually sent them in plain envelopes. He used blue
envelopes very frequently; these were of very tough fibre but not
weighty. His letters varied in length from one to sixty pages. He wrote
me a great deal, he said, sitting within hearing distance of the Senate
proceedings. And I received a special delivery letter almost every
Sunday morning, for which my landlady usually signed. What glorious
awakenings those Sunday morning letters used to bring!
In the fall--in November of 1917--I moved next door to 611 West 136th
Street, and from then until the spring of 1919 I lived with Mr. and
Mrs. P. J. Johnson, as I shall call them. I am sure Mrs. Johnson often
wondered who my “man of mystery” was. The one and only picture on my
dresser was the photograph of Mr. Harding which he had sent me while
I was still living with the Carters. Naturally I stayed out all night
with him and I am sure Marie Johnson never believed I was staying with
“one of the girls” as I used to tell her.
One evening I walked into my rather exclusive boarding-place, which
was at 136th Street and Riverside Drive in a private apartment.
About twenty people ate there, among them the former wife of Carlyle
Blackwell, the moving-picture actor, and several girl friends of mine.
One of the girls called out to me, “Oh, Nan, I saw you at the Grand
Central Station this afternoon with a stunning iron-gray haired man.
How you were hanging on his arm! What I know about _you_! I knew who he
was, all right!” I probably blushed, but there was nothing left for me
to do but admit it. Afterward I doubted her statement for I don’t think
Mr. Harding was very well-known then in New York. Mr. Harding had been
obliged to return to Washington at four that afternoon, which accounted
for the fact that I was dining at my boarding-place that evening.
I always loved my room at the Johnson’s. The room I occupied at
Daniels’ next door had been one right off the kitchen, the maid’s room
really, and the one I secured at Johnson’s was larger, far better
furnished, and lighted by electricity instead of gas as the former room
had been. The Johnsons were young, very attractive, and heartily in
sympathy with my love-affair, though in the two years I lived with them
I could not introduce them to my “mysterious sweetheart.”
Next to my bed stood a good-sized table on which I wrote to my beloved.
There was a reading lamp with a shade of yellow and green. Above the
table hung a large oval mirror. My letter-writing oftentimes extended
into the early morning hours and there was something companionable
about sitting there with my reflection. Not only was it companionable
but it was satisfying to glance more than occasionally into the mirror
and smile at the girl who smiled back at me knowing, as I knew, that
she was the sweetheart of the man who was to me easily the most
desirable man in all the world. I studied the features of this girl
in the mirror, studied them interestedly, minutely, to discover for
myself just _why_ he had chosen to love her! Sometimes, after I had
been talking most intimately to my lover on the small ruled pad before
me, I would glance up and catch the soft lights in the eyes of the girl
in the mirror which were the tell-tale lights of worshipping love or
languishing passion. And with flushed cheeks and fast-beating heart I
would bring my letter to a close, exchange exultant smiles with the
girl in the mirror, and jump into bed.
_20_
It was during my visit to my mother in New Philadelphia, Ohio, her
old home town where she was teaching in 1918, that I, desiring to see
my mother settled in a larger city, wrote Mr. Harding for a suitable
letter to use as an introduction to the Superintendent of the Cleveland
Public Schools. I had talked this whole situation over with Mr. Harding
in person, and the letter which I sent him from New Philadelphia was
merely to advise him that I was now ready for his proffered letter of
introduction in behalf of my mother. Of course I told my mother nothing
about the previous talk with him.
Mr. Harding always gave me very explicit instructions, whether it was
where to meet him and the hour, or, as in this case, how to proceed
in a given situation, and the letter received from him, which I have
before me now, clearly indicates this characteristic. With the letter
to me he enclosed one to Dr. Frank T. Spaulding, then Superintendent
of Public Schools in Cleveland, and one to Mr. Mark Thomson, then
President of the Board of Education. The letter to Mr. Thomson has been
mislaid or lost but I have retained the one addressed to Dr. Spaulding.
To me, Mr. Harding wrote more than a full-page, single-space, letter.
He suggested that I apply in behalf of my mother, going to Cleveland
enroute East after my vacation. He wrote that I should “speak frankly”
to the Cleveland officials concerning my mother’s age. “... there may
be a limitation of age in the beginning of employment of teachers under
the Cleveland system,” he explained.
“I am sure you will have the tact and understanding to go into these
matters quite fully in Cleveland ... if I had the opportunity of going
to Ohio, I should be delighted to make a personal inquiry at Cleveland
in your mother’s behalf. I do not think there is a possibility of my
going to the home state until some time in July and this matter, of
course, must be settled at a very early time....”
Then, in an informal, chatty tone, he wrote, “I was interested to note
of your visit to Marion and hope you had an enjoyable visit there. I
have not been in the old town myself since early in last February....”
What fun to read these things and to know that he had only the week
before received from me a letter in fullest detail about my visit to
Marion, my time having been divided among his sister’s, Mrs. Sinclair’s
and my chums’ homes!
I was quite accustomed to receiving lengthy letters from Mr. Harding
where there were instructions to be given me, and I am afraid I paid
less heed to his counsel in this case than it warranted. I always
felt so confident when I attempted to gain admittance anywhere and
was privileged to use his name, because I knew he would “back me up
strong,” as he so often assured me. Therefore, fortified with two
letters and these addressed to the principal officials in the Cleveland
schools, I made ready to take my mother there immediately instead
of abiding by his advice to stop there myself enroute East and make
preliminary inquiry.
This matter of changing positions was entirely my own idea and not at
all instigated by my mother. Mr. Harding had smiled when I explained
to him, “If mother were in Cleveland she would be on a direct line
from New York. New Philadelphia is so inaccessible when I take my
vacations!” Considering that I made all of one or two trips a year
to Ohio (!) this argument could hardly have been expected to work
substantially in behalf of the desired change, but Mr. Harding always
accepted tolerantly even my flimsiest reasoning. Naturally I hastened
in this instance to build up my case.
When mother saw how earnestly I had sought to make possible an
interview with the Superintendent of Public Schools in Cleveland, she
consented reluctantly to accompany me to Cleveland. She read very
carefully Mr. Harding’s letter to Dr. Spaulding. Mr. Harding had
written all that was necessary, _I_ was sure, to obtain an excellent
position for mother, possibly an immediate principalship! I couldn’t
quite understand my mother’s persistent skepticism. In fact, she
didn’t even seem enthusiastic about making the trip.... “I have known
Mrs. Britton for as much as twenty years and know her to be a woman
of sterling character and very notable intellectual capacity....
I have known the family for a great many years and have known of
Mrs. Britton’s attainments during all of that time.... If you have
a vacancy in your schools I am confident you will find her a very
desirable member of your teaching staff, who is well able to give quite
as satisfactory account of herself as the numerous teachers which
Cleveland has taken from my home town of Marion....”
With characteristic assurance I handed this note to the gentleman into
whose presence mother and I were ushered with due ceremony. He read it,
I thought, with indifferent interest. When he had finished he shrugged
his shoulders slightly, lifted his eyebrows, and looked from mother to
me. Mother seemed embarrassed. I was not. I showed plainly that _I_
wished to represent my mother in this matter when the gentleman before
us inquired frankly why mother had not applied direct. I was not used
to this kind of reception! I stated for my mother that _she_ was not
particularly interested in changing positions but that _I_ wanted her
to teach in the Cleveland schools. And Mr. Harding, as United States
Senator from Ohio, was also interested in having her placed there.
The gentleman and my mother exchanged glances. The gentleman’s eyes
lighted as though with sudden comprehension. “Um.... I see!...” He
turned to me. All at once, as I returned his look, I wilted inside. How
well I knew the meaning of that look! It was the inevitable result of
my oft-lamented little-girl appearance. I had encountered it too many
times. In this instance, as in dozens of others before it, it provoked
the tone of voice I deplored--the patient, explanatory, slow tone, the
unmistakable talk of an elder to a child....
But, although the letter on which I had banked 100% had failed in its
mission, I was entirely unwilling to recognize that the Cleveland age
limit had anything whatever to do with it. I immediately fixed in my
mind a descriptive noun which was sufficient to me to explain the whole
situation. “Democrat!” I whispered to mother with a curl of my lips as
we went down in the elevator. Poor mother! How often has she suffered
in silence for her children’s whims!
And it was a long time, try as he would, that even Mr. Harding could
persuade me that the fact that mother was beyond the age limit of
thirty-five years disqualified her immediately for consideration as a
beginning teacher in the Cleveland Public Schools.
During the years I was Mr. Harding’s sweetheart, I always, even from
the first, helped my mother financially. Mr. Harding used to say,
“Let’s take a taxi to such-and-such a place,” but I would say, “Let’s
walk,” and he very often accused me affectionately of wanting to save
that money so that I could send it to my mother. Of course it would
not have been possible for me to send her anything had it not been
for his generosity, and he was glad, more than glad, as he told me
repeatedly, to make it possible so long as no comment was made or no
wonder excited. When I started to work in the United States Steel
Corporation my salary was $16, and my room rent $4 per week, and it
was obviously impossible for me to do much on the balance. Mr. Harding
was always interested, and very sympathetic toward the position in
which my mother had suddenly found herself upon father’s death. He has
often said to me, “Nan, dearest, you know how much I would like to
help you to make it easier for your mother, don’t you?” I surely did.
Often also he expressed the feeling that Howard, my younger brother,
should be bearing the heavy load of responsibility. “He should be the
bread-winner, Nan,” Mr. Harding would say to me. But “Doc,” as we
called him, was scarcely more than a child, with far less sense of
responsibility toward the family than had Elizabeth and I, both his
seniors.
_21_
Mr. Harding’s attitude about my taking on any possible confidantes was
a very decided one. From the first he begged me to keep our secret
and tell it to no one. It seemed to me that he most of all warned me
against my mother’s knowing. It has many times occurred to me that this
solicitude on his part came from his keener wisdom about mothers in
general as well as, in my particular case, his knowledge of my mother’s
conventionality.
It was during our first sweetheart days, although it seems to me it was
before my complete surrender to Mr. Harding, that I visited in Marion,
and, with the longing to talk with someone I really loved and respected
besides my beloved Mr. Harding, I put my case _hypothetically_ to his
sister “Daisy.” She recalled that I had done this when I first talked
with her about the whole matter in June of 1925, and she also recalled
her answer which I had in the meantime, immediately after my visit with
her, repeated to her brother Warren. She had said, when I asked her
what _she_ would do if _she_ were in love with a man whom she could not
marry, but who might want her to belong to him anyway, “Don’t do it,
Nan; the world is against you; no matter how much you love each other,
_don’t_!” I had repeated this to Mr. Harding. I remember he said, as he
has often said about Daisy, “Dais’ is a good girl, Nan, but, dearie,
_any_one would tell you _that_! Anyone would advise you against it
who didn’t know how much I love you!” This intimation of his loving
protection strengthened my decision that ours _was_ an exceptional case.
And he did love me too! With the first forty-page love-letter of
which I have spoken and which came to me at the Colonial Hotel in
Chicago in June of 1917, came also from Washington a snapshot which I
have preserved, though the corners are frayed from much kissing and
handling. I wrote him that I had kissed it many many times. He wrote,
“Don’t waste any more kisses on a likeness, Nan, when the original
yearns for your kisses.” The only thing I did not like about that
cherished likeness was that he told me a woman had snapped it!
[Illustration: Snapshot received by the author in June, 1917, with a
forty-page letter from Mr. Harding]
In this connection an incident occurs to me which he related to me upon
one of our earlier visits. He told it to me at dinner, with reference
to annoying requests from petty office seekers who employ all kinds of
bribery to gain their ends.
One such individual, a man, had an even more ambitious wife, who
desired to see her husband lifted to a certain post and chose Senator
Harding as the intercessor. Mr. Harding said that the lady called
him on the phone and requested that he stop in on his way home one
evening--she wished to see him “on business.” He said he thought
nothing about it and accordingly stopped at her apartment, naturally
expecting to find her husband home also. The lady herself answered
his ring, however, and Mr. Harding said when he followed her into the
living-room he observed with bewilderment and embarrassment that she
was becomingly _en negligee_, and the way in which she dropped down
upon the comfortable couch and spread the flimsy folds of her negligee
gracefully about her could mean but one thing. He told me with such
adorable embarrassment of her frankness and of his own confusion. I can
imagine well all of this because I know his innate sense of delicacy
and refinement. It was probably with difficulty that he excused
himself, for I am sure women of that type do not let their prey go
easily. The thing of course that pleased me about the story was his
assurance that he couldn’t ever “fall for” anybody but me.
I think it was late fall of 1918 when Mr. and Mrs. Harding went to
Texas to visit their friends, Mr. Fred Scobey and his wife. Mr. Scobey,
Mr. Harding told me, had a large warehouse in San Antonio and was
rather wealthy.
I failed to hear from Mr. Harding upon the occasion of that trip South
as soon as I felt I should, and so I wired him at Scobey’s, in care of
the warehouse. I received a wire in return, though I have forgotten
the contents, except for the love allusion. It was sent to me either at
the Steel Corporation or at 611 West 136th Street. He told me later in
New York how they had all gone off on an island somewhere and he just
didn’t seem to have a minute to himself to write me.
_22_
Earlier that fall, on August 17, 1918, to be exact, Mr. Harding had an
engagement in Plattsburg, New York, to address an audience. He wrote
inviting me to come up there for the day, enclosing ample funds, and
told me with his usual explicitness the exact train to take out of New
York at night which would land me in Plattsburg in the morning. He
stopped at a hotel which I recognized recently in a post card picture
as the New Witherell. I arrived about 8.00 o’clock in the morning
and went to the same hotel, registering, I believe, under the usual
fictitious name of Christian.
I shall never forget how the sun was streaming in at the windows of
that room in the hotel when Mr. Harding opened the door in his pajamas
in answer to my rather timid knock. His face was all smiles as he
closed the door and took me in his arms.
“Gee, Nan, I’m s’ glad t’ see you!” he exclaimed. I just loved the way
he lapsed into the vernacular when we were alone together. My room was
not far from his and I had deposited my bag before going to him. He
asked all about these things--when I arrived, how I had registered, and
where my room was located.
Then we planned our day. He was to speak that afternoon and gave me the
direction and location of the training-ground where his address would
be delivered, and explained that he would not be able to see me after
the luncheon hour for the people in charge would take possession of
him. But we could, he said with adorable enthusiasm, have the whole
blessed morning together.
Oh, how happy that made me! There were really so few times when we
could be together with a feeling of utter safety, and the sunshine, the
occasion and the beauty of the place itself all pointed propitiously to
a red letter day in our calendar of happiness.
I met him about half an hour later, by arrangement, in a grove near the
hotel, and together we strolled toward the main street of Plattsburg
and out into the country. But first Mr. Harding stopped at a corner
store and bought some smokes. I was proud of the new dress I was
wearing and thought Mr. Harding’s smile betrayed approval as he joined
me outside the store, cigarettes in hand, and surveyed me with beaming
countenance.
I accused him affectionately of having made a reconnaissance of the
outskirts of the village prior to my arrival, for certainly it seemed
to me he could have chosen no lovelier spot than the sunny meadow where
we spent the morning. It sloped gently down to a winding stream, and
on one side there was a thick wood. The ground was soft and the grass
high. It was sweet to hold his head on my lap and have him just lie
there looking up at the blue sky.
We were both full of loving reminiscences and future plans, and Mr.
Harding included in his musings certain things bearing upon his
position as senator. I realize the paucity of political allusions
in this manuscript, but the reader is to remember that while he was
moving in the most active governmental circles at that stressful period
in the history of our country, when I was with Mr. Harding alone
our conversation was not principally political but warmly personal.
However, when he chose to confide his problems and little worries to
me it made me very proud and I took them very seriously. Right then he
was up against a problem which was causing him considerable anxiety:
the folks back home had scheduled him for a speech in December, I think
he said, and he was supposed to call upon some fellow senator to
accompany him to Marion and make an address also.
“La Follette would be fine,” he mused with emphasis as he chewed
thoughtfully on a stalk of timothy, “but he doesn’t want to do it.”
“Why?” I inquired.
“Oh, principally because he is small of stature compared with me and a
bit sensitive on that score; I can understand that perfectly, although
he is a convincing speaker and I think would make a sensation in
Marion....”
How well I could appreciate just how keen Mr. Harding was to give our
home town one of the best speakers the United States Senate could
boast! I suggested with some timidity Hiram Johnson, or Borah of Idaho,
both of whom I judged from my morning perusals of the New York papers
were picturesque enough certainly, and seemed to make the Senate
sit up and take notice. He discussed various senators ruminatively
and explained patiently why he could not ask this one or that one.
When I interposed certain remarks or suggestions he would smile
appreciatively; I suppose there was an element of naivete about my
suggestions of which I was blissfully unaware. He was quite talkative
that day, telling me something of the friendship which existed between
him and Mrs. Harding and the Frelinghuysens. The circumstances of
our companionship that day were highly conducive to deliberate and
confidential meditation, though these things interested me far less
than our intimate personal discussions.
“Do you like my dress, sweetheart?” I could not help asking.
“You bet!” he replied, with admiration, sitting up to examine it more
closely.
“Guess how much I--you--paid for it?” I challenged.
“Oh, I couldn’t guess, dearie. How much?”
“Thirty-five dollars!”
“Honestly, Nan?”
I nodded, with pride. That was, for war-time, quite inexpensive.
“Why, Nan,” he said, “it looks a great deal more. And it is in very
excellent taste--so are the shoes and hat.”
“The hat and shoes are _good_ ones,” I informed him, “and I thought the
dress such a bargain.”
“Gee, yes, Nan--why, Florence pays----”
But I was never interested to know how much Mrs. Harding paid for
anything, even though I knew she must pay a great deal more for
everything than I did. I was happier, I’m sure, than she ever was, and
though I did not care to speak of her except to inquire casually of Mr.
Harding how she was, it was from no dislike of her; for I merely felt
sorry for her. For one to lose the affection of this man beside me was,
to me, a loss so colossal that surely she could never find anything to
take its place. I was so happy in his love.
Mr. Harding himself was never extravagant. I remember distinctly that
on one occasion when I told him I had sent my “kid brother Doc” some
money and confided to him that “It costs Doc $8 for a pair of shoes!”
he turned to me and said, “Nan, do you know how much I pay for shoes?”
I said, “No, how much?” and he answered, “I pay $5 and I have had this
particular pair of shoes for two years. That is all any fellow should
pay for shoes.” And that was during war-time when things were high.
I have witnessed many instances illustrative of Warren Harding’s thrift
so far as he himself was concerned. He preached economy when he was
President and he honestly practised economy and applied his preachments
to his own daily life. Only where those dearer to him than his own life
were concerned did he allow extravagance, and even then he used to
chide me in a loving way for not putting away some money. It was for
this reason that I began to buy steel stock, having put but $60 into
it however when an urgent need of my mother caused me to draw out the
money and send it to her.
I might give another incident of Mr. Harding’s ideas of fair prices.
We were dining at Churchill’s. Our dinner was simple enough--chicken,
I remember. It seems to me we did have one cocktail apiece before
dinner. The bill was something over $15. Mr. Harding tipped the waiter
$1.50. I watched his face as he counted out the money for the waiter.
After the waiter had gone, he looked across at me and shrugged his
shoulders. “You know, Nan, I am not penurious, but a bill like that is
really ridiculous.” Then quickly the look of impatience was gone and
the incident closed.
_23_
I used to love these dinners with Mr. Harding. They were so sweetly
intimate, and it was a joy just to sit and look at him. The way he used
his hands, the adorable way he used to put choice bits of meat from
his own plate onto mine, the way he would say with a sort of tense
seriousness, “That’s a very becoming hat, Nan,” or, “God, Nan, you’re
pretty!” used to go to my head like wine and make food seem for the
moment the least needful thing in the world.
But there was nothing whatever the matter with my appetite. Perhaps I
was still adding stature at twenty, which has been known to give zest
to one’s appetite. Whatever the reason, it would not be exaggerating
greatly to admit that I was, at least in my own opinion, quite a young
gormandizer. I remember writing to Mr. Harding, “You’re not in love
with a girl--she’s a hungry little animal!”
Mr. Harding himself was, I thought, quite an epicure, despite the fact
that he could enjoy plain, substantial food. Eggs were my breakfast
stand-by, but invariably Mr. Harding’s query when we breakfasted
together would be, “Will you have codfish cakes with me this morning,
dearie?” In fact, I do not remember that he seemed to care for eggs
at all. He seemed fond of honey-dew melon, I remember. He would look
across the table (which seemed to me always to be at least half a mile
wide!) and inquire smilingly, “How about a little orange marmalade
this morning, Nan?” I never could make up my mind whether he ordered
this for me because he knew I had a sweet tooth, or whether he really
liked it himself; I’m inclined to the latter opinion.
But it was at dinner that Mr. Harding could play the host to great
advantage so far as I was concerned. I have been introduced to many
delicious dishes through Mr. Harding. Often these things, ordered by
him after a side consultation with the waiter to which I hugely enjoyed
listening, were served by Mr. Harding instead of by the waiter. How he
seemed to love to hear me exclaim over a dish that was new to me!
The dessert course usually inclined me to an enthusiastic inspection
of the menu. Mr. Harding knew this and his query, “What kind of sweets
tonight, Nan?” was accompanied by a smile and the adjustment of his
Oxford glasses. Then he himself would suggest, and his smile deepen as
I would childishly exclaim, “Oh, yes, I just adore biscuit tortoni!” I
early observed that he himself was inclined to skip this course of the
dinner, and grew glad, because then he could plan our evening aloud
while I acquainted myself fully with the contents of the little cup in
front of me.
I remember that Mr. Harding never seemed to care for the ice-water
served in hotels. I can just hear him, either at dinner, or after we
had retired to the privacy of our room, instructing the attendant,
“Bring me a bottle of White Rock, George.”
Mr. Harding’s table manner charmed me. I say “manner” because the
plural would be taken for granted once one had seen him. With what
grace he ate and talked! With his eyes upon me, it was impossible
for _me_ to concentrate upon two things at one time, impossible to
give the necessary heed for enjoyment to the most delicately served
viands-under-glass when it was expected that I should look up and make
ardent reply to an affectional question. Therefore, when I was wont
to sit absorbed, I would suddenly be reminded in gentle tones that my
food must be getting cold! But I have known this absorption to work
mutually, when we were lost to ourselves and our surroundings in the
depths of each other’s eyes.
So potent was this spell which we had for each other that for whole
evenings we were its willing prisoners, living as in a dream, neither
of us coming out from the intoxication of each other’s presence until
long after separation. Often then we wrote to each other about it. If
we were in a taxi, we would become so oblivious to the entire world we
would both be amazed when we reached our destination.
I was so proud of Mr. Harding, too, for he never entered a room that
all eyes were not turned in his direction. I used to think of Florence
Harding, his wife, in this connection, for I knew well his fascination
and could readily understand how she, or any other woman, might “run
after him” as Marionites say she pursued Warren Harding before they
were married, when she was Florence Kling DeWolfe, and years older than
Warren Harding. I understood, for hadn’t I followed him around when I
was but a child back in our home town?
_24_
One time Mr. Harding visited Senator Weeks at his place in the White
Mountains along with some of the “other fellows,” as he called them,
and came down to New York on his way to Washington after a season of
“chopping wood.” I met him at the Grand Central Station and we dined
at the Belmont Hotel, downstairs in the grill. He had had a speaking
engagement which he had filled enroute to New York, and had spoken in
a tent, he said. It had been dark when he made his way in through the
rear entrance of the tent and he had fallen over one of the cables
supporting the tent and scratched his hand terribly. He used to tell
me things like this with a sort of embarrassment, as though he were
ashamed of admitting them, and the very manner of telling increased my
sympathy a thousandfold.
I think it was during this particular visit at Senator Weeks’ that he
had become ill. He had a particularly sensitive stomach, and he had
eaten too much lobster. He said they had had lobster for luncheon, and
were all gathered together when the chef came in and asked Senator
Weeks what it should be for dinner. Mr. Harding spoke up and said
laughingly, “Lobster!” and he had been taken seriously and they had
dined on lobster that night. And he had overeaten. He said he was so
ill and his fears about whether or not he would recover were so great
that he almost confessed his relationship with me to someone up there,
in order that they might carry out his plans for a suitable settlement
upon me. I never liked the idea of even talking about “settlements”; it
made things seem so final.
Once I met Mr. Harding in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where he delivered an
address at the local armory. I arrived there to find he had already
gone on the platform. So I wrote a note and despatched it to him by
messenger. He left immediately and came out to meet me in the lobby
of the armory, where we stood and talked until it was time for him to
go back to the platform. I remember how he instructed me to return
immediately to New York after he had finished speaking, because they
were taking him to the local Elks’ Club and he could not see me anyway.
He used to remind me of my father in his solicitude for my getting
home safely. But I waited, and after he had had time to reach the Club
I phoned him and asked if I couldn’t go on over to Washington with
him that night. I said I could come back the following day. “Why,
dearie, they’re stopping a special train for me--a through train--and
I couldn’t explain having you with me. Now you take the first train
back to New York and I’ll be over soon, I promise you!” Which I did of
course. And he kept his promise.
_25_
There were memorable visits to Washington. The first time I went over
I went to the New Ebbitt Hotel, following Mr. Harding’s instructions,
where I registered as Miss Elizabeth N. Christian. Mr. Harding came
to see me and came up to my room. He took me for a long ride that
afternoon in a beautiful hired touring car about the city and out along
the Potomac. I well remember that car; it was grey and very beautifully
upholstered and glided so smoothly along the streets while Mr. Harding
pointed out places of interest to me. His boyish enthusiasm in playing
host was delightful, and I am sure I was a most appreciative guest.
That evening we went to his office in the Senate Building, which was
then Room 314; later on he moved to Room 341, I think it was. I was in
both offices I know.
On our way to the Senate Office Building, we cut through the Capitol
grounds.
“Some day you will be President,” I said to him.
“Say, you darling,” he replied, “I’ve got the best job in the United
States right now!” I think Mr. Harding did like being Senator.
I remember once when I was in Washington, going over Saturday and
returning Sunday night, he took me on Saturday night to the theatre to
see the play, “Good Morning, Judge!” That is, he took me to the _door_
of the theatre! I remember how disappointed I was when he turned to
leave me after telling me to take a taxi after the performance and “get
back to the hotel and into bed.” I had not asked him, but had taken it
for granted he was going to the show with me. I must have forgotten I
was in Washington and not in New York, where he could go around with me
without so much fear of being recognized.
[Illustration: The Capitol on a rainy evening]
In New York we _did_ go to the theatre together. Sometimes he would
come over, take me to the theatre and return to Washington at midnight.
Mrs. Harding was ill a good deal of the time and he found it difficult
to be away as much as he would have liked. Perhaps the reader may
recall Woodrow Wilson’s saying to a New York theatre audience one
evening, “You think you are seeing a President of the United States,
but you are just seeing a tired man having a good time.” This was when
he attended a performance of “Jack O’Lantern,” starring Fred Stone,
at the Globe Theatre. One week later, Mr. Harding and I dined at the
Biltmore and he bought tickets there for “Jack O’Lantern.” As we walked
over to the theatre from the hotel, Mr. Harding said, “Guess how much
these tickets cost, Nan?” and told me he had paid $5.50 apiece for
them. Another instance of what he termed war-time graft. But these
prices still stay!
Behind us in the theatre sat a man who seemed to recognize Mr. Harding,
for I heard him speak Mr. Harding’s name and turned after awhile to
look at him. Mr. Harding turned too later on, but said he did not know
the man. I suggested that some day everybody would be turning to look
at _him_--when he was President! In this connection I repeated to Mr.
Harding what Woodrow Wilson had been quoted as having said the previous
Friday night. “Well, I’ve got one over _him_!” Mr. Harding whispered to
me, as the curtain rose, “I’m _not_ tired and I am having a grand time!”
One night we went to see Al Jolson in “Sinbad, the Sailor,” at
the Winter Garden. I was not particularly taken with the show and
evidenced my impatience to leave during the finale. I pulled my wrap
about my shoulders, picked up my gloves and paid no attention to the
performance. “Where are you going, Nan?” Mr. Harding asked in gentle
rebuke. If ever there was anyone thoughtful of others it was Warren
Harding, and it is likely that, being a speaker himself, he wished to
extend all possible courtesy and attentiveness to others who held the
stage.
[Illustration: HOW HARDING LOOKED IN THE BAND
MARION, O.--This is how Candidate Warren G. Harding looked when, as a
youth, he played a horn in his home-town band. Note the plumed hat,
foxy buttons and epaulets of the uniform.
From a newspaper print]
I am reminded in connection with these gay evenings of the many times
Mr. Harding told me how proud he was as a youth to play in the local
band in his very small home town of Caledonia, Ohio. He said he played
the bass horn, and would chuckle over recollections of his vociferous
contribution to the ensemble.
Despite the fact that I cut out and preserved pictures of him in his
band uniform, I have always been unable to visualize a youthful Warren
Harding in any capacity. He always seemed to me too dignified to have
ever been less than the statesman I first beheld; yet he said that he
felt far more eminently important and dignified as a member of the
Caledonia Band than as United States Senator from Ohio!
Shortly after this, Mr. Harding invited me to Washington. He met me at
the station and announced zestfully that he had secured the apartment
of a friend of his with whom he sometimes played cards. I registered
at the New Ebbitt Hotel, and he called for me there. The apartment to
which he took me was not far from the New Ebbitt and we walked. He told
me on the way over that it was quite a “cute little apartment” and he
guessed it was all right for him to borrow it, although he knew the
fellow to whom it belonged would undoubtedly come after him for some
political favor as a result. When we entered the apartment, a walk-up,
on the second or third floor, it seemed so dark, and when we found the
room untidy and things in quite a mess, poor Mr. Harding was more than
embarrassed. “Really, Nan, it is quite a nice place when it is fixed
up,” he apologized, and I felt so sorry for him in his embarrassment.
He never borrowed it again.
In January of 1919 Theodore Roosevelt died. Mr. Harding came over with
many other notables to attend the funeral. I met him at the Biltmore
Hotel. A good many of his friends and colleagues were standing about
the lobby, looking very dignified and important in their formal clothes
and top-hats. How stunning Mr. Harding looked! That time and once in
the White House on Sunday morning were the only occasions on which
I ever saw him “dressed up.” We dined at the Biltmore that evening,
and as we passed through the aisle of tables in a dining-room which
sparkled with atmosphere under glittering candelabra, I heard a woman
say, “There goes Harding!” I told him this and he identified her as a
friend with whom he sometimes played billiards in Washington.
_26_
Mr. Harding and I had often talked of how wonderful it would be to have
a child, and Mr. Harding told me frankly he had often wanted to adopt
one, but “Florence” would not hear of it. He told me this in connection
with his recital of his domestic unhappiness, and his usual final
exclamation was, “She makes life hell for me, Nan!” And I, knowing
this, did all within my power to make up to the man I loved all his
legal wife failed to do. There was a time in 1918 when Mrs. Harding was
very ill but Mr. Harding came over to New York to see me just the same.
I remember once he said they had a trained nurse there constantly for
a period. I felt sorry for Mrs. Harding, but I must confess I doubted
very much Mr. Harding’s love for his wife at any time in his life.
I used to think Mr. Harding might have liked to adopt _me_, though he
never said so to me. However, he spoke very freely to me about what he
would do if Mrs. Harding were to pass on--he wanted to buy a place for
us and live in the country, and often during those days Mr. Harding
said to me, “Wouldn’t that be grand, Nan? You’d make such a darling
wife!”
This reminds me: It was Warren Harding who told me for the first
time of Angela Arnold’s engagement. But he did not use the word
“engagement.” “I understand Angela Arnold is announcing her
betrothment,” he said to me one evening at dinner. He chose to use
words which, though sometimes archaic, were somehow substantially
good and seemed especially congruous coming from the lips of Warren
Harding. But this bit of gossip interested me far less than his hushed
exclamation across the table, “Gee, Nan, _you’d_ make a lovely bride!”
Once in a while, as on this occasion, I answered him, “Would I, darling
Warren?” I called him Warren very rarely. He used to tease me to say
to him, “Warren, darling, I love you,” and it seemed to delight him
to hear me say his name. But I was so much younger than he--exactly
thirty years his junior--that somehow it seemed out of tune for me to
address him by his first name. I just resorted to endearments, usually
calling him “sweetheart.” He called me “Nan” from the first and his
letters usually began, “Nan darling.” I remember the salutation very
often seemed as though it might have been put in after the body of the
letter had been written, and when I asked him about it he said that was
the case, for he so often wrote his letters to me on memo paper during
legislative discussions in the Senate Chamber.
The first part of January, 1919, I went over to Washington. I think I
stopped at the Raleigh Hotel. Mr. Harding sometimes found it difficult
to be with me all of the afternoon and of course I understood this.
He himself would in that case plan my afternoon for me, sending me
on a bus trip to Arlington Heights, or suggesting some other form of
entertainment. That particular afternoon and evening, however, he did
spend with me up until ten-thirty or eleven o’clock. We went over to
the Senate Office in the evening. We stayed quite a while there that
evening, longer, he said, than was wise for us to do, because the
rules governing guests in the Senate Offices were rather strict. It
was here, we both decided afterward, that our baby girl was conceived.
Mr. Harding told me he liked to have me be with him in his office,
for then the place held precious memories and he could visualize me
there during the hours he worked alone. Mr. Harding was more or less
careless of consequences, feeling sure he was not now going to become
a father. “No such luck!” he said. But he was mistaken, and of course
the Senate Offices do not provide preventive facilities for use in such
emergencies.
“That’s a very stunning cape you have Nan,” were his words as he helped
me slip into its brown woolly softness. That was the first time he had
seen the cape which Marie Johnson had helped me to select in New York
and for which I had paid $75, buying it of course on the instalment
plan. I adored the casual intimacy of tone he used.
In mid-January Mr. Harding came over to New York. He telephoned me
at the Steel Corporation and I shall never forget how thrilled I was
because I hadn’t known he was coming and he had surprised me. “Ask Mr.
Close if you can have the rest of the afternoon off,” he said. Also, he
suggested that I borrow the apartment of a friend of mine, a girl of
whom I had spoken to him many times.
I told Mr. Close that my sweetheart was here unexpectedly and he gave
me permission to leave for the rest of the afternoon. Mr. Close as
well as everybody else in the office knew, of course, that I had a
sweetheart who lived in Washington. I usually referred to him as “my
man”--seldom calling him by name and when I did using the name “Dean.”
Then I got my friend’s permission to go up to her apartment, at 120th
Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Mr. Harding got off on the floor below
and walked up one flight to prevent any suspicion on the part of the
elevator man.
For a second time in less than two weeks, having none of the usual
paraphernalia which we always took to hotels, and somehow not
particularly concerned about possible consequences, we spent a most
intimate afternoon. How indelible my memory of Mr. Harding sitting on
the day-bed, his back against the wall, holding me in his arms and
looking down at me with a smile that was so sweet that it made me want
to cry from sheer contentment! “Happy, dearie?” he asked.
He thought my friend’s apartment very attractive and wished that I were
earning enough to make it appear possible for me to have just such a
place for myself, for he would love to give it to me. He picked up my
Christmas mesh-bag, his gift, which I carried back and forth with me to
work until the newness of its possession wore off. “Do you like this
sort of thing. Nan?” Mr. Harding asked me as he examined the bag. The
mesh in the bag is so soft that it seems almost like silver cloth. “Oh,
_yes_!” I answered quickly and he smiled understandingly at my fervor.
Sometimes I was almost ashamed because I _was_ so passionately fond of
frivolous things like that.
_27_
Through mutual recognition of the trouble we might cause each other and
the ensuing unhappiness that might befall, we early decided to destroy
all love-letters. It goes without saying that this was a difficult
thing for us to do, and we both clung to each other’s most recent
letters as long as possible. Mr. Harding had a drawer in his desk in
the Senate Office which he always kept locked and George Christian, his
private secretary, had been instructed to destroy the contents, burn
them I believe Mr. Harding said, if anything happened to him. Many of
the heart-revealments of which I have spoken and will speak were put
in writing by Mr. Harding--and declarations much stronger as well--and
he himself admitted that nowhere except in French had he ever read
anything comparable to the love-letters we used to write to each other.
When he wrote to me he enclosed his letter in an inside envelope which
he invariably stamped with postage also, sometimes on the back as a
seal, and when I wrote to him I enclosed and sealed my letter as many
as three times, buying for this purpose envelopes of graduated sizes.
I wrote on a small-sized note pad, ruled, and always used a pencil.
Usually I addressed the innermost envelope to “Dean Renwick” so that
if a letter were opened it gave the impression that it had been sent
to someone merely in Mr. Harding’s care and was not meant for him
personally.
He told me laughingly how he had once received a letter which was meant
for a Rev. Harding, although the contents, he said, were far from
religious. Also he said he had received mail for the Mr. Harding who
was the Governor of the Federal Reserve, as well as mail meant for the
Mr. Harding who was once the Governor of Iowa.
We lost several letters in transit. One that Mr. Harding addressed to
me at the Steel Corporation, in a blue envelope, contained $30 in cash.
It never reached me.
I sent Mr. Harding a letter one time, as he asked me to do, to Atlanta,
Georgia. I have forgotten the occasion of his visit to that city. I
put the letter in an inside envelope, as we always did, addressed
it to him correctly at Washington, then in another outside envelope
addressed to him as we had decided to address it, “Mr. A. Y. Jerose,
General Delivery, Atlanta, Georgia,” each part of this name having for
us an intimate meaning. Then I mailed it so it would reach him during
his stay there. We puzzled a long time over the disappearance of that
letter for it never reached him in Atlanta. Nor did the inside envelope
which was addressed to him correctly in Washington. I remember we
decided that _someone_ in the dead letter office must have got hold of
it, and we wondered what they thought if they read it.
_28_
The latter part of February, 1919, I knew for a certainty that I was to
become the mother of Warren Harding’s child. I remember one morning in
the subway train I felt so queer and faint that I was obliged to ask
someone for a seat. Too, I had faint spells from nausea. These things
did not distress me except as I was sometimes taken with the feeling
that I just could not sit there opposite Mr. Close a minute longer and
take dictation. Yet, on the whole, I felt well. I wrote Mr. Harding as
soon as my belief was confirmed in my own mind.
The effect of Mr. Harding’s letters whenever I was perturbed over
anything was to calm me, and he wrote that this trouble was not so very
serious and could be handled. I honestly felt from the very first that
he was more interested in having the child by far than in helping me to
“handle” the problem otherwise, but of course our difficult situation
called for a discussion of an operation, or other means of procedure.
He was a married man, and United States Senator from Ohio.
I think Mr. Harding came over once or twice before I left New York for
Chicago--though curiously enough these meetings do not stand out in
my memory for the very possible reason that my mind was at that time
occupied with my immediate problem.
It was late March or early April when I went to Chicago, having
received permission from my employer in the Steel Corporation to take
a vacation in advance of the regular summer-time absence. I stopped
in Washington enroute according to arrangement and went to the New
Willard. Mr. Harding came up to my room. I remember well, how, in spite
of the fact that his forehead was wet and he showed other signs of
nervousness, he said in the low voice which always soothed me, “We must
go at this thing in a sane way, dearie, and we must not allow ourselves
to be nervous over it.”
The growing lapse of time since the conception of our child very
likely had weighed upon his mind for that was, I think, the thirteenth
week. His evident nervousness strangely belied his words, but it did
not matter for I myself was by that time entirely free from fear. I
recall also how he said repeatedly, “I do not fear for the future,
after the child comes, but only for the now.” It was those frequent
allusions to the future and his worded assumption that we were going
ahead and have the baby, coupled with his letters telling me it could
be “handled,” and his apparent indifference to an operation, that made
me all the more determined to have the child. But most of all was I
swayed by my visit with him at this time, the visit at the New Willard
which convinced me absolutely that Warren Harding craved to be the
father fully as much as I craved to be the mother of his child. His
wistfulness was so precious to me. “You know, Nan, I have never been a
father,” he said.
However, he was deeply concerned for both of us, and in an attempt at a
simple solution, he went out and returned with some Dr. Humphrey’s No.
11 tablets, which, he said, Mrs. Harding used to take and found in some
instances effective. I affirmed my belief that they would do _me_ no
good. I even made fun of the tiny white pills. I remember how he smiled
faintly at me from the lavatory where he stood washing his hands when I
expressed my belief that the pills would not be effective in my case.
“No faith, no works, Nan!” he said.
He sat in the big chair by the window and took me on his lap. He told
me how I had filled him with the first _real_ longing he had known to
have children. He said he had wanted them, yes, but Mrs. Harding had
been a mother when he married her, and she had not wanted any more
children, and, he reminded me, “You know Mrs. Harding is older than
I.” I think very probably the glory and wonder of having a child or
children could not be aroused within him to the fullest by Mrs. Harding
because she had already shared the initial glory of that experience
with another man. Mr. Harding always spoke disparagingly to me of Mrs.
Harding, and in loving as well as in disposition and everything else he
certainly failed to picture her as his ideal. Rather did I seem to be
his ideal woman. This never failed to fill me with wonderment.
I told him in mock seriousness that since he had always had such a
desire for children I’d have to raise a family for him. “All right,
dearie, but let’s see how this one comes out!” he answered facetiously.
Again he told me, as he had written me so often since we knew of the
coming of our child, how he had “enshrined” me in his heart as “the
perfect sweetheart and perfect mother.” “Enshrined” was a word he so
often used. Or, “You are my shrine of worship, darling Nan,” he would
say or write to me.
This brings to my mind a scene in the New Ebbitt when I, upon a visit
to Washington during 1917 or 1918, had waited beyond the appointed hour
for him to come to my room. When he came, about half an hour late, he
found me _en negligée_ and weeping! He kissed me tenderly and sat down
on a chair to take me on his lap. But I, in mingled contrition and
ingratiation, perhaps thinking a woman had been the cause of his being
held up, dropped at his feet on the floor. He arose immediately and
raised me up.
“Don’t you ever get down like that to me, you sweetheart!” he said,
and the attempted gaiety in his voice somehow carried a note of
self-reproach. “_I’ll_ do all the kneeling in _this_ family that is to
be done!”
Then he explained how he just couldn’t get away earlier, and as he
talked he fussed with a necklace I was wearing, asking me where I
bought it, and pretty soon we were both smiling over my foolishness.
Now at the New Willard, facing our problem together, he was telling me
how he had always thought of me as “the perfect sweetheart and perfect
mother.” Of course those things were immeasurably sweet to hear. So
were the things he visioned often for me of our life together after he
had “finished with politics.” It was an old story to hear about “the
farm” where he would like to settle down and just enjoy life. There
would be dogs and horses, chickens and pigs, books and friends, and of
course he would have to have “his bride!” Yes, this was an old story,
but today it sounded strangely new to me. As he talked his voice grew
tense. His hands trembled visibly. I took one of them in mine and held
it tightly. His gaze was directed out the window and he spoke as to
himself. I had to blink very hard to keep back my tears. I had never
seen him so moved, so shaken....
“... and I would take you out there. Nan darling, as--my--wife....”
He freed his hand with sudden force and grasped both my arms tightly.
“Look at me, dearie!” he cried, “you _would_ be my wife, wouldn’t you?
You would marry me, Nan? Oh, dearie, dearie,” brokenly, “if I only
could ... if we could only have our child--together!” This last came as
a hushed exclamation, almost a prayer, scarcely audible. The yearning
of a heart laid bare! I nodded wordlessly. The very air seemed sacred.
When he spoke again it was as if he had returned to stern realities,
and the return brought partial emotional relaxation. He smiled at me
sadly. “Would be grand, wouldn’t it, dearie?” I could not yet safely
answer but I nodded. He repeated it and looked out the window at his
left. The voice grew stern again; he did not smile now; only just
turned and looked at me hard as a man might who is trying not to cry....
To marry Warren Harding! To live on a farm and raise children with
Warren Gamaliel Harding! What rapture! I put my lips against his and
spoke through my kisses. “Oh, sweetheart, that would be too heavenly!”
He whispered back, “You tell _me_ about it, dearie!” And so I in turn
pictured for him just what it would mean to be his wife, to live with
him before the world, to raise “the young lieutenant” and perhaps other
children, to love him, to wait upon him, to worship him forever and
ever as the true bride of his heart! And the light of a love divine was
in his eyes as I spoke. “And the young lieutenant must be the image of
his dad, remember!” I ended brightly. “The young lieutenant” we had
always called our coming baby, and strangely enough this fitted in with
the story we afterwards concocted in explanation of our very difficult
situation. “Won’t it be g-r-a-n-d to have a son?” I asked him now. He
nodded smilingly. But months later, as I roused up out of the influence
of chloroform to inquire of the doctor, “Is it a girl or boy?” and he
answered briefly, “girl,” I decided immediately that _I_ had wanted a
girl all along!
“Grand” was a word Mr. Harding used to say, which seemed to him to
express the different raptures he experienced in being with me. He used
to drag the word out just as one might hold a morsel of ambrosially
delicious food in his mouth to prolong the taste. “Isn’t this
g-r-a-n-d?” he used to ask me.
Sometimes just to ingratiate himself with me, to make me feel he was
really just human like myself, he would deliberately use words like
“ain’t,” or he would deliberately mispronounce words, as he used to do
with the word “pretty,” calling me “you purty thing!”
Once, remembering how someone from Marion had spoken of him to me
as not having had a particularly good education, and that only his
personality had “put him over” so strongly, I spoke unthinkingly of
this to Mr. Harding. My object in telling him was merely to instance
the manner of jealousy on the part of some people who were themselves
unqualified to fill his position. And he replied, “Well, Nan, none of
them is sitting in the United States Senate!” I assured him that that
was just what I had told the Marionite who had gossiped about him.
But to return to the visit at the New Willard. Somewhat related to this
characteristic visioning in which we both indulged were his many dreams
of being able to have me in a “fitting atmosphere,” one, he said, which
would, as he flatteringly put it, “become your beauty, Nan.” He used to
tell me that he visioned me always in a “blue mantle,”--a fancy he had
never had about anyone else before, he said. Perhaps that was why he
seemed to like to see me in blue....
So the trend into which our “serious conversation” drifted--I had hoped
Mr. Harding would tell me definitely to go on and have the baby--was
not one, in truth, to decide the issue. Therefore our problem was left
in the air, or rather for me to solve. The fact that my own fears about
myself were in no degree comparable to his own brought him back into
the mood in which I loved most to see him, and I left a far calmer
Warren Harding upon my departure than I found upon my arrival. I am
sure my own sense of comparative serenity was entirely due to the fact
that way down deep in my heart I had resolved to have no operation.
_29_
I arrived in Chicago the following day.
Up to this time I had never told Mr. Harding that I had ever confided
at all in Elizabeth, my sister. I knew it would worry him needlessly.
The first afternoon Elizabeth and I were alone together we had a talk.
Elizabeth must have felt that the letters I had received from Mr.
Harding during my visit to her in June of 1917, and our trip together
in Indiana when I met Mr. Harding in Indianapolis, would eventuate in a
_liaison_, for she warned me before I had volunteered any information
that I ought to be “very, very careful.” She herself had in the
meantime married and was living in an apartment she and her husband had
taken.
Perhaps my face betrayed me. I felt so free with Elizabeth and did
not attempt to hide my emotions. In any event, when she said that I
ought to be “very, very careful” I began to cry. I told her with an
attempt at a smile that it seemed to be too late to be careful. She was
distressed beyond measure, but I hastily assured her, as Mr. Harding
had assured me, that it was “all right” and I could “handle” it while
in Chicago. Though I had been amply funded for this emergency I had
actually thought not at all about an operation. It frightened me so to
contemplate such a thing. The thought of having a child held no terror
for me; it was the natural thing, and I did not fear it.
Nevertheless I pretended to engage myself in the serious consideration
of such an operation. My sister Elizabeth seemed far more anxious than
I. She helped me to find a doctor who took care of such cases, and went
with me to see him. I remember how he told me, after an examination,
that I was of such a nervous temperament that he would be fearful of
performing an operation upon me. “If it were your sister there,” he
said, indicating that if I were as imperturbable as my sister’s plump
figure made her appear to be, “it would not be taking such a risk.”
But I knew that Elizabeth’s forced smile belied her real feelings.
Moreover, the doctor reminded me that I had allowed thirteen weeks to
elapse.... “If you are, as you say, so situated that you _can_ have the
baby, I say by all means go ahead and have it,” was his parting advice.
He said also that the process of having the child would not be nearly
so painful as a premature operation would be and not detrimental to my
health.
Elizabeth, however, was far from being at ease, and she then sought
the advice of a dear friend of ours, telling her that it was _she_ who
needed advice. This friend helped her to prepare some “bitter apple”
medicine for me which had to be compounded with painstaking effort, but
after it was all ready and bottled I just could not bring myself to
take it. The real reason was of course that I could not bring myself to
destroy the precious treasure within me.
My letters from Mr. Harding further inclined me to believe that he
himself was really indifferent to an operation. He wrote his distress
at my having told Elizabeth, and said he really felt there was no need
for that, that he had provided ample funds and it seemed I might have
sought counsel without telling her, and so on. He wrote that if he had
to choose between medicine and an operation he personally would prefer
“the knife.” Just reading that word “knife” seemed almost to stab me
every way, and served to strengthen my determination not to consider
such a course. I remembered the wistfulness with which Mr. Harding had
talked of a child. In short, I made up my mind to “go ahead and have
the baby,” as the doctor had advised. I wrote that decision to Mr.
Harding after I had taken occasion first to shame him for criticising
me because I had confided in my sister. I wrote him that one would
think from his letter that I had “shouted it from the housetops,” and
that Elizabeth was an entirely safe person with whom to entrust our
secret; and that, after all, one cannot solve such problems all alone.
He answered immediately that it was all right with him, he was sorry
he had complained, he trusted me implicitly, and was “strong for me,”
and that it was “the greatest experience a woman ever has,” and that he
was looking forward to seeing me again. I welcomed the experience of
childbirth with all my heart.
_30_
I returned to New York. The first of May I left the Johnson’s home on
136th Street and moved into a one-room-and-alcove-bedroom apartment
in the Hotel La Salle Annex in East 60th Street. I sublet it from a
woman whose husband was in Constantinople and whom she was planning to
join there. There was a nice private entrance and my apartment was one
flight up, on the second floor, rear.
It was on a Friday evening, my second evening in the apartment, when
Mr. Harding came over from Washington. As a matter of fact, I had
not yet moved into my own apartment, which was not available when I
arrived, but was being housed temporarily in a very much superior
apartment in the Hotel La Salle itself. This hotel was at that time
the home of Mr. and Mrs. Dick (the former wife of John Jacob Astor),
as well as Cyril Maude, the English actor. In the annex, on the top
floor lived Pearl White, famed in pictures. Of course I told these
interesting items to Mr. Harding when he came over. He had first been
sent up to my temporary apartment in the hotel, where I had a cozy
living-room. But I had been advised that I could move into my own place
that evening and Mr. Harding said immediately that he much preferred
that we “go where we belonged.” So he helped me move my baggage.
I recall my disappointment in hearing his first remark about my little
place--_our_ little place--for it was one of marked deprecation. The
apartment was so much roomier and so much pleasanter than anything
I had ever had that I thought it a veritable palace, and was much
hurt at his observations. “Really, Nan, it isn’t _worth_ $100 a
month!” he said. “Why, dearie, it isn’t good enough--I wanted you to
have something really fine.” I said very little. I knew that he had
originally told me about what he thought I ought to have to pay, and
I had kept within that figure. I decided I must be a poor picker, yet
I had been justified in my decision by having seen other apartments
for which a higher rent was asked and which did not compare in my
estimation with that one.
However, I remember with satisfaction how he retracted his criticism
the second visit he made, after I had had an opportunity to dispense
with some of the unnecessary furniture and fix things up a bit. He was
quite enthusiastic. “Why, dearie, this is not such a bad place after
all!” he smiled, taking in “the effect” with a sweeping glance into
bedroom, bathroom and kitchenette. I took his coat and he handed me a
big box of dark red cherries, for which he knew I had a weakness. He
used to send me five-pound boxes of Martha Washington candies, they
being my favorite sweets at that time, but after he knew I was going to
have a child he would bring me fruit.
For two months we were very happy with that apartment, the only place
we could call our very own during the six and one-half years we were
lovers.
I had intimated to Mr. Harding that I would feel more comfortable now
if I had a ring, and I expressed, upon his interrogation, my preference
for a sapphire surrounded with diamonds. So on one of his trips to our
60th Street apartment he brought me the ring. I remember how he kept
quiet about it, not telling me at first that he had brought it, and I
confess I was a wee bit disappointed. I wanted a ring so badly. But at
a very propitious moment he fished it out of a pocket, threw away the
tissue paper in which it was wrapped, and slipped it upon my finger. We
performed a sweet little ceremony with that ring, and he declared that
I could not belong to him more utterly had we been joined together by
fifty ministers. The ring was indeed a great comfort to me, helping to
sustain me in the conventional atmosphere I tried to throw about our
baby’s coming, and, during those days after her birth when I had tried
to lie in bed idle when there was much to be done, it was a source of
courage and support to me, steadying me in my uncertain plans about the
future. It was a material evidence of a relationship which no wedding
ceremony could have made more solemn or more sacred than that very own
ceremony between ourselves, with God as our witness.
_31_
Of course I continued working at the United States Steel Corporation,
for my physical conformation was such that I could “get away” with
quite a good deal. In fact, I worked there until the first of July when
I gave up the apartment and my position and went to Asbury Park, New
Jersey. I have often wondered if I did create any secret comment in the
offices of the Steel Corporation. I remember a _Wall Street Journal_
editor, who used often to come in to see Mr. Close, said one day to me,
“Miss Britton, you look so matronly these days; have you grown up?”
Five months for an unmarried girl who is expecting a child to attempt
to remain in a position such as that required a good deal of courage.
But I did it only with Mr. Harding’s approval, and whatever he thought
wise usually went with me.
During those years I had a few friends here in New York who were Ohio
people, and some of them were even Marionites like myself. Mr. Albert
R. Johnstone, as I shall call him, represented at that time a certain
Marion corporation here in New York, of which Mr. Harding had been one
of the larger stockholders. I had been friendly with Mr. Johnstone’s
wife ever since my coming to New York, and I had spoken several times
to Mr. Harding about them. Mr. Johnstone knew of my fondness for his
wife and very often the three of us went together to dinner or to the
theatre. There was a time, however, when Mrs. Johnstone went to Marion
to visit, and Mr. Johnstone telephoned me and asked me to dine with
him. This I did, thinking nothing about it until he asked me when he
left me that night not to tell Mrs. Johnstone. Then I saw that he was
afraid for her to know, and I knew that in that event it had been wrong
for me to go with him, for I didn’t care at all if she knew that I was
gracious enough to spend an evening with her lonely husband because
she was my friend. All this I told Mr. Harding and I remember he said,
“Well, Bert Johnstone is the last person on earth I feel I need to be
jealous of!”
Mrs. Johnstone had been in our apartment on 60th Street one evening
when she and I had dined together, and I suppose she had mentioned to
her husband where I was living--probably wondering, as did most of my
friends I imagine, how I could afford to live in an apartment alone.
One evening Mr. Harding was with me. I was just preparing to jump into
the tub, and he was already in bed, when a knock on my door arrested my
further movements. My door was “chained” as well as locked, so that I
could open it slightly with no fear of anyone’s pushing it open.
This I did cautiously, and there stood Mr. Johnstone. I confess it gave
me quite a shock, but I spoke to him very casually and fearlessly,
told him I was just preparing for bed as I was very tired, apologized,
and asked him to come again sometime. But, knowing that that was the
first time he had dared to do such a thing as call upon me without Mrs.
Johnstone, and being quite a bit put out with his presumption, I called
quite loudly after him, “Oh, Mr. Johnstone, the next time you call
bring Mrs. Johnstone along, won’t you?”
Then I went to the phone and called Mrs. Johnstone. After chatting with
her a few moments, I told her about Mr. Johnstone’s coming to see me,
and pretended I was very sorry I could not receive him. Her amazement
was unfeigned.
“_Bert Johnstone?_” she asked incredulously. “The very same,” I told
her. He never called again.
When I came back into the bedroom after closing the door upon Mr.
Johnstone, Mr. Harding was hiding in my wardrobe closet, and it did
amuse me so to see him. I asked if he thought if anyone _did_ break
in, that his being in a closet, with his clothes strewn about on the
chairs, would help matters! He laughed, of course.
_32_
In May or June, while I was still living on East 60th Street in our
apartment, Mr. Harding had an engagement to speak at Carnegie Hall. He
came over during the day and we were together until time for him to go
on the platform. In the evening we dined at the Hotel Manhattan, where,
I think, for business reasons, he had engaged a room. He wished to walk
to Carnegie Hall from the hotel, which we did. I remember the exact
route we took, up Madison Avenue and across 56th Street where we passed
several little tea rooms which, Mr. Harding said, he thought ought to
be “good and safe” places for me to dine alone in the evenings. He
seemed to be afraid I might be annoyed and used to suggest safe places
for me to go. He was always looking out for my comfort and peace of
mind.
On our way up he inquired of me what this building was and that, and
I in turn asked him a question. How could he speak that evening when,
as he had told me, he had made no preparation whatever for his speech?
“How do you know what to say?” I asked curiously.
“Gee, dearie!” he laughed, “it’s not so much what _to_ say as what
_not_ to say!”
When we reached Carnegie Hall, Mr. Harding went to the box office
and secured a front-row seat for me, sent me on in, and ascended the
platform. I remember well that speech. I did not very often get to hear
him speak and it was always such a joy--I was so proud of him. But that
speech I remember because he did not do himself justice. He rambled
on about this man and that who in one instance had been a “farmer’s
son,” and had persevered and become a banker, or “here’s Jim So-and-So,
whose father was owner of the stone quarry back in my home town and who
worked his way through school....” The Land of Opportunity, I think,
was his topic.
Afterwards, in our apartment, I told him he seemed not to speak as
well as usual. “Why, dearie,” he confessed, “I was so tired I thought
I couldn’t even speak at _all_!” And I knew enough by that time to
understand why. He had a lot on his mind.
There was an evening when we dined at the Savoy. We sat by the window
and looked out upon the Plaza Square where the fountain is. The window
was open and it was cool and lovely. We had dined there before in the
days before prohibition and Mr. Harding, I thought, seemed to be known
to the hotel management. We had once had one glass each of champagne at
that same table.
Mr. Harding spoke to me. “You are not larger now than that woman,
Nan,” nodding his head toward the lithe feminine figure which tops the
fountain in the Square. “And far more lovely,” he added, smiling. He
was always generous with his appreciations.
Of course prohibition had already gone into effect, but I was told it
was possible still to obtain liquor or wines if one knew how to do so,
and evidently Mr. Harding thought he did. In any event, he took me home
after dinner and then suggested that he go back and get some champagne
for us to have that evening before we retired. He had often said to me
that he would love to spend an evening with me when I was relaxed and
exhilarated from a glass of champagne, because when he allowed me a
cocktail or something to drink, we were usually going to the theatre
afterwards. I guess I was a bit shy with him, and a glass of champagne
made me a bit more talkative and revealing. I doubt that in all the
times we were together we had drinks more than six times; he allowed it
rarely.
But now he went out for the champagne. In about fifteen minutes he
returned, empty-handed, or rather empty-pocketed. I searched in his
pockets myself and looked up at him.
“You couldn’t get it!” I said, half disappointedly.
“No, dearie, I couldn’t get it,” he repeated, but his tone belied his
statement, and I felt instinctively that he hadn’t even tried. Nor
had he himself had anything to drink. For some reason, which was no
doubt prudential and right, he had decided that I should not have any
champagne. Perhaps he had recalled a time at Reisenweber’s when I, for
apparently no reason, had become ill after drinking part of a highball.
Warren Harding protected me at every turn. And I remember well that
he once wrote, “Darling, when I pray for you it is that you may have
abundant health. Health and freedom from worry, for _worry kills_,
Nan.” And he was right. I think that worry killed Warren Harding.
_33_
One morning in that same apartment on East 60th Street, I dressed
leisurely and Mr. Harding sat watching me. Milk, of a lovely richness,
was already coming from both of my breasts, and my toilets those days
required more than ordinary care, if I would not find when I reached
the office at the Steel Corporation that it had seeped out and spotted
my dress conspicuously. Mr. Harding seemed to love the maternal
evidences about me those days, and often remarked that I possessed the
loveliest woman-form of anyone he had ever seen. Or he would entertain
me while I dressed by telling me that he had gone to the theatre the
previous week and had watched some actress--I remember in one instance
it had been Dorothy Dickson--dance, and, because I resembled her a bit,
he had watched her to the exclusion of all others on the stage during
the performance, and tried to imagine he was looking at me. He was such
a darling.
That particular morning, he sat telling me some such tale and waiting
for me to dress for breakfast, which we usually had around the corner
at the Hotel Netherland, when he noticed a picture of my sister
Elizabeth on the wall--one I had recently put up and which he had never
seen. He took it down to look at it. The frame was a cheap one and I
had broken the cord from which it was suspended and had replaced the
cord with an ordinary office clip. It required no little ingenuity
therefore to attach the clip to a nail on the wall. Mr. Harding worked
at it for several minutes, adjusting his tortoise-shell Oxford glasses,
but he could not re-hang the picture. I was so tickled, and finally
giggled outright. “Let me do it, honey!” I exclaimed, holding out my
hand for the picture. “No, I’ll do it all right,” he insisted, shaking
his head. I said nothing. I think he worked at it for perhaps five
minutes, then gave it up. He was always persistently firm when he
set out to accomplish something. I have often read into this little
incident that characteristic determination to carry upon his own
shoulders his share of the burdens of a nation, and how he died in the
struggle which is for any President a superhuman task.
I am reminded of another time when he came over to address an
audience--this time at the Astor Hotel. It was back in 1917 or 1918.
He was particular that he should deliver his address well on this
occasion, and so left me at midnight at my home on 136th Street and
went back downtown in the taxi to the Astor for the remainder of
the night. The following morning I got up bright and early and we
breakfasted together at the Astor, in the dining-room on 45th Street.
He had his newspapers in his hands when I met him in the lobby. When
we entered the dining-room the head waiter led us to a table on the
far side, but I, noticing the light for that particular table was
not as good for reading as the light on the table next to it, said,
“Let’s take this table.” Evidently Mr. Harding thought my suggestion
was just caprice. Anyway, he said quietly but very firmly, “We’ll sit
right _here_, Nan,” taking the table the waiter had first indicated.
But if he had any idea of rebuking me, it was soon dissipated by my
explanation. I won in this instance, though he usually did. But when I
was really right in any matter he would acknowledge it only too gladly.
I remember too I wore that morning a very lovely georgette crepe blouse
with my tailored suit. It was far too delicate a thing to wear to the
office, but I had put it on especially for my darling. And it wasn’t
lost on him! “That’s a very beautiful blouse you have on, dearie,”
he said, “but do you wear things like that to your office?” He was
relieved when I owned up that I didn’t.
In some of the first pictures I had taken for Mr. Harding I wore
that same blouse. I had not had my picture taken but once--except
for snapshots--since I was a child. That little-girl photograph was
published in _The Marion Daily Star_. This was done, I remember hearing
my mother say, without her previous knowledge, having been arranged
between the photographer across the street from the _Star_ Building and
the editor of the _Star_, Warren Harding. I was then five years old.
The pictures I had taken to display the blouse Mr. Harding was so fond
of (it was white with blue flowers embroidered on the front) were four
in number and I sent one of each to my sweetheart. I wrapped them
well and addressed them inside and out, sending them in time to reach
him for a particular week-end during which he had expressed the wish
to be with me but could not. Well into the following week I had not
heard from him about the photographs, and finally wrote and asked if
he had gotten them safely. In his reply which came immediately he said
they had not been received. I was frantic, because I had autographed
them especially for him and no one else. In a very few days he came
to New York. He said he had looked everywhere in the office, in his
stenographic secretaries’ office and in George Christian’s office, but
he could not locate them. Had I addressed them correctly? I assured him
I had, and he said he would ask “George” if he himself were not able to
find them when he returned. He could not find them and was therefore
obliged to inquire of his private secretary. George Christian brought
them to him immediately, having put the package away so safely that
it was hidden from Mr. Harding. “I never knew portraits could be so
comforting,” he wrote to me. _I_ knew they could be, for I went to bed
early every night with my sweetheart’s picture propped up beside me on
the pillow.
[Illustration: Portrait of the author when she was five years old;
published in _The Marion Daily Star_ during the early days of Mr.
Harding’s editorship]
_34_
Mr. Harding’s generosity took many forms. One time during 1917 or 1918
when we were alone--though I don’t remember where--I was sitting on
his lap admiring his hands. They were large, well-shaped hands, the
hands of capability, yet artistic too, and I never tired watching
him use them. They were expressive of many feelings. They fascinated
me completely. I was admiring them, and incidentally the ring on the
third finger of his left hand. The ring was set with one quite sizable
diamond--a beautiful ring in its entirety. Some organization had
presented it to him “in appreciation,” he said. I think he thought I
admired the stone and had visions of having it in a ring for myself!
“So far as I’m concerned, I’d as lief give you this ring, Nan, if
it were not for Florence!” He smiled when I looked up at him, and
hugged me tight. Frankly, I would have loved the ring, of course, but
I knew he could not give it to me. I wonder who has it now, for I
would cherish it so if it were in my possession. Many nights I have
spent with that hand in mine and twisted and played with that ring. It
sparkled at me across the table and I could see a thousand colors in
it when I, lying beside him, held his hand up to the light which came
through the transom above our bedroom door.
This was, as I said, before 1919. After I had my own ring I found the
same pleasure in studying its lights. I remember the morning after he
had put my ring upon my engagement finger we walked in Central Park. A
windy morning and a brilliant sun. I strolled along with my left hand
in front of me, looking at my precious ring. _He_ had given it to me!
I remember that morning Mr. Harding’s hat blew off and he had to
chase it about half a block. Somehow I used to love to witness those
“embarrassing moments”--his confusion was so boyish. I remember too how
I exclaimed over the glory of everything that morning, in the sheer
joyousness of being with him. We passed the zebras and I remarked upon
_their_ beauty! “Nan, you don’t think _those_ things are beautiful, do
you?” Mr. Harding asked incredulously, smiling. But, as I continued to
express my admiration of each animal, he suggested that we look at them
no longer, and led me into, the sheltered paths where eventually he
found a bench where we could sit down and he could make love to me.
An instance of his kindly nature and generosity occurs to me. We were
going down Fifth Avenue. He was taking me to a store of my choosing,
Lord & Taylor’s, to buy me a bag. I was always happily oblivious of
everybody and everything about me when I was walking on the street with
Mr. Harding, and so I did not notice that we had passed a blind man
carrying the proverbial tin cup and selling pencils. But Mr. Harding
had seen him and he disengaged himself from my arm, went back and
dropped a coin into the blind man’s cup, and was back with me, scarcely
giving me time to realize what had happened.
“Never pass a blind man, Nan,” he admonished me gently. I knew his
sympathy had been made the keener by his intimate knowledge of
blindness in the case of his own sister Mary who had passed on a good
many years before and who had been almost blind. To this day I cannot
pass a blind person, and if they do pass me before I have got my money
out, I go back, as he did, prompted by his voice and the impulse it
always arouses.
Mr. Harding himself selected the bag for me at Lord & Taylor’s. Nothing
gave me greater pleasure than to have something he had selected for
me himself. The bag was a dark blue pin-seal and cost $11.75. “Here,
Nan,” he said brightly, picking up the bag from dozens of others on the
counter, “I think this is fine--what do you think?” I loved it. I would
have loved it had it been but one-hundredth as pretty as it was, but
it happened to be a very stunning bag. Everything he chose, I thought,
would be just right.
I afterwards had this bag in Marion, Ohio, at Miss Daisy Harding’s,
during the time when she was still living with her father on East
Center Street, before she was married. Mrs. Heber Herbert Votaw, her
sister and Warren’s, was there. They were examining and admiring the
bag.
“Where did you get this bag, Nan?” one of them inquired.
“Oh, a sweetheart of mine gave it to me,” I answered lightly, just as
I was about to pass up the front stairs to the room I occupied while
visiting there.
“Now, Nan,” called Carrie Votaw after me, “you _know_ you never loved
anybody in your life but Warren!” How little she knew the deep meaning
of her words! I have since recalled this incident to Daisy Harding in a
letter written to her last year.
Another instance of Mr. Harding’s kindheartedness comes to mind:
I always used to take him to the Pennsylvania Station when he left for
Washington. I knew pretty well what trains came into New York from
Washington and those that went out. Often he would come over just to
spend the evening, taking me to dinner and the theatre and returning
on what he called “the midnight” to Washington. When I first met him
in 1917 at the Manhattan Hotel, one of the things he said to me, after
learning that I had a great fondness for the theatre, was, “Nan, let
_me_ take you to the theatre! I’ll come over from Washington just for
that, and I’d delight to do it too!”
So one night he had been over and was returning. It was quite late,
of course, when we reached the station from the theatre--about
eleven-thirty probably--and before he left me to get his train he took
me over to the candy stand in the corner of the vaulted concourse and
asked me to pick out a box of candy.
Two or three unkempt little children stood gazing wistfully up at the
colorful array of sweets above them--children whose bed-hour should
have been six or seven o’clock. Mr. Harding looked down at them and put
his hand on one little fellow’s head.
“Why don’t you buy it?” he teased. I adored him when he talked to
children. Their eyes grew big as they looked way up at him and smiled
sheepishly. He handed them each a coin--a quarter apiece I think it
was--and looked at me and winked.
Around Christmas time in 1918 I received a letter from Miss Daisy
Harding, with whom I have always corresponded more or less regularly.
After I had read it I enclosed it in one of mine to her brother Warren.
He had given me $50 that Christmas, with which I had purchased the
long-coveted mesh-bag of which I have spoken. In his reply to my letter
he enclosed a letter which _he_ had recently received from his sister
Daisy in which she thanked him for his Christmas gift to her of $10.
Miss Harding remembered having received this amount of money from him
as a Christmas gift when I recalled it to her mind in June of 1925.
I remember hearing my mother tell how Mrs. Sinclair had told her that
Warren Harding, upon being at their residence one Sunday morning when
she was about to leave for church, had given her $25 to put in the
collection basket. Although he did not attend the church Mrs. Sinclair
attended, nor even attended his own church regularly, Mr. Harding
was quick to recognize the good in any organization, religious or
otherwise, and wanted to contribute to its progress. Warren Harding was
one of the three kindest men I have ever known.
_35_
I have gotten away from my main story, but these things occur to me and
I wish to set them down. Little things that happened, or that dropped,
unconsciously perhaps, from Mr. Harding’s lips, often gave me clues
as to how he felt about important matters concerning which we had no
actual discussion.
In this connection, I remember well a dinner at the Manhattan Hotel
early in 1918. Woodrow Wilson, then President, was making spectacular
efforts which occupied front-page space. However, the newspaper
headlines that night carried the latest news from the battle-front, and
Mr. Harding’s eyes were heavy when he looked up at me. He was quiet for
several seconds and his eyes went wet.
“The world’s in a bad way, Nan,” he said, shaking his head.
I myself had had no intimate contact with the war except through my
friends, having had no relatives--at least no near relatives--who
had gone over, and its grim horrors were not felt by me as deeply as
those who had sent their dear ones to the front. In fact, the two
years the United States was in the war were the two years I shall
ever look back upon as the happiest of my life, as one cherishes the
memory of precious hours with one’s sweetheart. And if I ever during
that time voiced a desire to be of more active help in war-work, I was
reminded by both Mr. Harding and my employer in the United States Steel
Corporation that an employee of that Corporation, in view of the vast
part steel played in the war, was doing his or her bit effectively.
Perhaps something of this was going through my mind as I watched
Mr. Harding over the dinner-table. So far as I knew, he had no near
relative “over there” either, but I was sure he was very close to the
war situation as a United States Senator. His tone changed into one of
severe criticism with his next remark.
“Wilson’s a plain damned fool!” he muttered, as to himself, still
perusing the front-page headlines.
I meekly acquiesced in Mr. Harding’s view that the world was “in a bad
way” and that Wilson was “a plain damned fool.” “But, sweetheart,”
I reminded him, “wait until the next election, when _you_ will be
President!” He smiled indulgently and leaned over the table, head bent
to one side in the appealing pose he sometimes affected when he made
love to me.
“If I’m President, Nan, I’ll make you White House stenographer!” were
his exact words. “A President can do just about as he pleases, you
know!” he added, smiling.
I recalled vividly that statement three years later when I visited him
at the White House and heard from his very lips, lips that were set in
grim determination to bear up at any cost, that “the White House was a
veritable prison,” and that he could not even retire to the privacy of
his toilet without being guarded--“shadowed” as he termed it.
“I’m in jail, Nan!” he would say in a broken voice, shaking his head
sadly, “and I can’t get out; I’ve got to stay,” and he would lift his
hands in a gesture of futility. No, Warren Harding did _not_ like being
President of the United States, as I am sure no man with real American
blood and a love of life and fair play and freedom would or could like
it. What a pity the highest honor a great republic can bestow upon a
loyal citizen should be one which saps that citizen’s vitality, and
makes impossible the achievement of certain ideals through breaking him
down physically! And, in my humble opinion, the “system” of American
politics is wholly responsible for these hellish conditions. No, Warren
Harding did not like being President. Six months after he went into the
White House he was a broken man. The seven million majority of votes
cast for him by the American people was his death sentence. And I, too,
cast my vote for him!
Even in gayer mood, I seemed to see in Mr. Harding a certain pathos.
People have observed it in Elizabeth Ann, our daughter, not knowing of
course whose child she is. “There is something pathetic about watching
her at play,” a girl friend of mine said to me last winter. And so it
was with her father. There was something pathetic about watching him at
play. But he had a keen sense of humor.
I think it secretly amused him to realize, as he did and I did, that
the scandal that came up in the presidential campaign of 1920 in which
Mrs. Arnold’s name and his were linked very frequently, was for us
the source of greatest protection, for while the Democrats who were
“slinging mud” played with Mrs. Arnold’s name they were not looking for
mine or any other.
One time, when we were dining, Mrs. Arnold’s name came up naturally.
Of course Angela, her daughter, had been my childhood playmate, and
when I went to Marion I usually saw her either at a party or dance or
on the street, and likely this had been the case and I was relating
to him how lovely she looked. She was a stunning girl. I had never
mentioned Mrs. Arnold’s name to him in connection with the old-time
gossip I used to hear, but something I asked him brought forth this
spontaneous ejaculation, “Mrs. Arnold is a damned fool--a brilliant
conversationalist but a damned fool--if she had _half_ the sense of her
daughter....”
I do not know a thing about the truth of things that were said
concerning Mr. Harding’s one-time relations with Mrs. Arnold. I never
pressed him to tell me anything, nor did I care what he had done before
we became sweethearts. I only know that during our six and a half
years I remained true to him in those essentials that are demanded
and expected by one’s sweetheart, and I most certainly know that Mr.
Harding was most loyal and true to me. There were times when I made
frantic endeavors to break away from him, feeling that I was becoming
so growingly dependent upon his love and support in every way as to
make it inconceivable for me to do without him, but he was constantly
in the background of my thoughts--why, I have thought about him every
hour of the nine years now since we first met at the Manhattan Hotel in
1917, and not a day has passed since I first saw him in Marion when I
was a child that I have not thought lovingly of Warren Gamaliel Harding.
_36_
During his visits to our 60th Street apartment, Mr. Harding had
advised me to deliberate well before deciding upon a suitable place
to summer, and await my confinement. He suggested numerous avenues of
procedure with regard to helping determine the best place to go, and
I remember it was with some timidity that he even made the suggestion
that I might look into the Catholic institutions here in the East
where I might find comfort and quietude and safety, and perhaps some
occupation for diversion. However, this appealed to me not at all,
because an institution immediately presented to me a picture of
enforced seclusion. I vetoed the idea and he then suggested I take a
taxi and go along the Jersey Shore and also over into Long Island,
sizing up the possibilities and going there leisurely afterwards. I
spent several days going about week-ends in search of a place where
I felt I might live happily for the several months intervening. Long
Island did not appeal to me and I finally decided upon Asbury Park, New
Jersey. There seemed to be plenty of entertainment there, good air,
pleasant surroundings, and yet it was far enough from New York to make
embarrassing contacts improbable. As a matter of fact, I saw only one
man during the whole summer whom I knew, and that was during my first
week in Asbury Park while I was still in such figure as to excite no
comment.
I registered at the Hotel Monmouth, one block from the ocean, under the
name of Mrs. Edmund Norton Christian. Mr. Harding had suggested that
I simply keep on using the name E. N. Christian, prefixing it with a
“Mrs.” instead of “Miss” and substituting for the initials “E. N.” a
man’s full name. I used to go a bit with a young fellow back in Marion
whose name was Edmund, and had always liked the name. So Edmund it was
for the first name. “N” was rather difficult, but one of the managers
of a theatre in Chicago where my sister Elizabeth was in charge of the
orchestra had the name of Norton. “Edmund Norton Christian!” It sounded
rather well and we agreed to it.
My “story” which I took to Asbury Park and which Mr. Harding and I had
rehearsed carefully was as follows:
During the war I had married a Lieutenant Christian, serving in the U.
S. Army, who had been sent to Europe almost at the close of the war.
My mother had not approved the marriage, so that explained my presence
in Asbury Park alone when I more logically would have been under my
mother’s wing at such a time, with the baby coming.
Mr. Harding’s suggested address in Paris of “17 Rue Can Martin” was
adopted by me as my “husband’s” permanent address, to which address
I sent Lieutenant Christian several letters, allowing the envelopes
to lie about conspicuously upon my bedroom dresser for the possible
observing eyes of my landlady. I was to surround myself in Asbury Park
with the atmosphere of the bride of a war veteran who could not be
with his wife during the trying experience of a first childbirth.
I secured a Post Office box immediately in Asbury Park in the name
of Mrs. E. N. Christian. My mother of course knew nothing about my
physical condition, nor indeed anything about my relationship with
Warren Harding, so I was under the necessity of having her write me
as Nan Britton. However, I wrote her I was planning to do social
secretarial work for a Mrs. Christian for the summer and that I could
be addressed in her care, Box so-and-so. My sister Elizabeth was
apprised of my fictitious name for the summer, and so in that way I
had letters coming from both Elizabeth and Mr. Harding in the name I
had assumed. Mr. Harding’s letters were tender and solicitous--sweeter
love-letters I am sure no one has ever written--and there were many of
them, in lieu of our ability to see each other.
My sunny room at the Hotel Monmouth was comfortable, except for an
egregious rose-red rug upon the floor, but I felt somewhat conspicuous,
living alone with apparently no friends, and I determined to leave and
go to a regular rooming-house.
I stayed at the Monmouth, however, two weeks, during which time
the following incident added to my temporary dissatisfaction and
comparative unhappiness:
I had left New York for Asbury Park on the 7th of July. One evening on
the Boardwalk I read among the society items of the local newspaper
which I chanced to glance through that the Frelinghuysens and Senator
Harding had been bathing at the Casino on the Boardwalk. My sweetheart
in Asbury Park! And he did not look me up! My first sensation was one
of fright. Fright occasioned by the suggestion that he was possibly
“dropping me.” This was followed by a feeling of nausea, a faintness
due to the shock which the reading of the announcement gave me. Then,
I experienced hurt and a cynicism that would have vented itself in
unkind words, I am sure, had I been able to say them to him I loved.
After all, I had not got into my condition by myself, and why should
he have any feeling of shame about being seen with me! I was seething
with indignation. I hurried back to the hotel and wrote him. I referred
sarcastically to the incident, expressing my regret at not having
taken my books and done my reading down at the Casino on the morning
when I might have witnessed an interesting bathing party. I tried to
be as unkind as my hurt pride encouraged me to be, and still infuse an
element of shame into my reproach.
In New York, shortly afterward, I met him for luncheon. He had not
alluded to the bathing party incident in his reply letter, only
specified where we should meet, and I felt sorry for what I had
written. After all, he was shut up all day long and at night he was not
always with congenial companions. Why not allow him a little respite
with those he enjoyed? So I had determined to let it pass unmentioned
at our luncheon. However, before we had finished, he remarked quietly
and with appealing intonation, “Sweetheart, on what date did you leave
New York?” I replied that it had been the 7th. “Well, Nan, I was in
Asbury Park on the 5th, two days before you got there.” Not even a
retaliatory tone, simply a statement of fact! He was nearly always
right, and made me feel ashamed of myself more than once. I just
worshipped him when he proved himself and his love for me in ways like
this.
_37_
I went from the Monmouth Hotel to a rooming-house. My new quarters
proved to be very unsatisfactory--damp, dark and dusty. Moreover, the
roomers were mostly elderly people who looked at me severely as I
passed in and out. But while there someone told me of a boardinghouse
where three meals a day could be obtained for the nominal sum of $9 a
week. I began eating there and it was then that I met Mrs. Marietta
Tonneson.
I do not recall how I met Mrs. Tonneson. But I secured a front room
in her rooming-house on the third floor for $14 per week, and moved
into it immediately, having been at the other place about a week. This
combination brought my room and board to $15 a week, which I decided
was as well as I could do in Asbury Park. I had been paying $40 a week
at the Hotel Monmouth and both Mr. Harding and I agreed that it was
steep. Mr. Harding was always very generous with me and I had ample
funds for my comfort during the summer, but I seemed to need a good bit
of money even then, and it was a satisfaction to have my board and room
reduced to the minimum.
Mrs. Marietta Tonneson (Mrs. Martin Tonneson she had been until her
husband’s death made her a widow about a year or so previous) lived
with her brother Billy in a large house just around the corner from
my boardinghouse. They had lived, she told me, in Marlborough Road,
Brooklyn, and after her husband’s death, probably wishing to conserve
all of his monetary bequests, she and her brother had decided they
would defray their summer expenses by keeping a rooming-house that
season. That accounted for the rather unusually nice furniture in
her house. I think my being alone excited her curiosity, but I was
so perfectly well, and my physical soundness coupled with a growing
sense of ease as I lived myself day by day into the plausibility of
my “story” and my situation, made it a pleasure for me to witness
evidences of this curiosity and deliberately refuse to satisfy them.
I wrote Mr. Harding, telling him all about Mrs. Tonneson, my feelings
concerning her, and how she did attempt to take sort of a motherly
interest in me, and his reply brought forth the advice that she might
prove a valuable person to “hang onto,” and that I should simply “pay
my way” and stay out-of-doors away from her and everybody else who
might be interested in knowing more about me.
During the latter part of the summer Mrs. Tonnesen had also as roomers
a Jewess and her husband. The woman was a nurse and her husband a
musician. She had charge of a Brooklyn hospital and it seemed to me an
excellent idea to accept her proffered invitation to visit her in the
hospital after she returned there with a view to deciding whether such
a place would be desirable for my approaching confinement.
I shall never forget that visit. I had luncheon with the nurse, whose
name has slipped my memory. The food seemed to me to be half swimming
in grease. I walked all over the place, and even submitted to an
examination by the head doctor, who was, I thought, rough and uncouth
and who informed me gruffly, when I complained that he really hurt me,
that I would be “hurt harder than that when my baby came.” A woman who
had given birth to a child that morning lay apparently unconscious from
the agony of her experience, and I went in and touched her to see if
she really lived. The nurse took me into the baby ward where a dozen
or more babies lay in baskets, each tagged on their tiny wrists with
numbers to identify them. Many were crying loudly.
The building itself stood alone and lonely with no companion buildings
within several blocks, and I thought when I had done looking the place
over that I could not possibly consider having Warren Harding’s child
born there. Goodness! I thought, to have our baby _tagged_! Perhaps it
was customary and the only safe way, but I preferred to keep her in
my room where she would not need identification. I say “her,” but as
a matter of fact, when I thought _then_ about our child I thought of
a boy, for as I have said Mr. Harding and I always talked about “the
young lieutenant.”
While I was in Brooklyn I looked at possible apartments and decided
after a weary afternoon, in which I trailed around in the heat, that I
would stay in Asbury Park, and possibly right with Mrs. Tonnesen. She
was sympathetic and willing to do anything to help me.
As the summer progressed and early fall set in, Mrs. Tonnesen told me
of her plans to take for the winter a small cottage on Bond Street, a
veritable “doll’s house,” as she described it. Not committing myself to
the promise of staying on with her through the fall, I went with her to
see the house. It was No. 1210 Bond Street. I passed it this summer.
It is very near the North Asbury Park Railroad Station, near a wood I
was fond of, and I agreed with her that its cozy sun porch would be a
delight through the winter, and the rooms, though small, were certainly
cheerful. And infinitely preferable to a hospital!
Mrs. Tonnesen, having learned not to inquire into my affairs too far,
suggested that it would be foolish for me to go to Chicago just to have
the baby, as I was contemplating, when I might better remain with her
and her brother Billy and have my sister Elizabeth come on to Asbury
Park. She even suggested that I allow her to snap my picture and that I
send it to Elizabeth to show her how healthy I was looking--which fatal
thing of course I did not do.
[Illustration: The birthplace of Elizabeth Ann, Asbury Park, New
Jersey]
However, her interest was becoming more appreciated by me since my trip
to the Brooklyn hospital, and finally I wrote my sister in Chicago not
to bother about hospital accommodations there for I had decided to
remain in Asbury Park, away from everybody, and go through it all by
myself. I was so free from fear concerning any serious complications
that I even welcomed the coming pain of childbirth; I have never been
so superbly healthy as I was that summer.
Mr. Harding had listed some books which had been favorites of his at
different times in his life and these books I obtained from the public
library in Asbury which was just down the street. I have a notebook
which contains many of the names of these books, copied from the list
Mr. Harding gave me, and others which I read that summer. Among them
were _Tess of the d’Urbervilles_ and _Far From the Madding Crowd_,
Gertrude Atherton’s _The Conqueror_ (Mr. Harding said he had met
Mrs. Atherton, and had told her how he admired her novelized life of
Alexander Hamilton, his favorite character in American history); O.
Henry’s books, and many others. I can see Mr. Harding now as he wrote
down the list for me--the way he would look up and ask me if I had read
this or that, and his hearty, “Oh, you must read _that_, Nan!”
My time was delightfully idled all summer, reading, crocheting baby’s
jackets and writing love-letters to my beloved. The latter consumed
a great deal of my time. His letters to me were the most beautiful
things imaginable, always full of cheer, and ever implying that he
wanted to do everything in his power to make me comfortable. He spoke
often of the “reverential love” he felt for me as the mother of our
coming child. I used to wish in moments when I naturally yielded to the
longings I felt for him, that we were together on the longed-for “farm”
and that he could minister to me personally in the manner portrayed in
his incomparable letters.
It was Mrs. Tonnesen who suggested my seeing the “society doctor of the
Jersey shore,” as Dr. James F. Ackerman is called. He was of a very
sympathetic and kindly nature, albeit brusk. I liked him immensely
from the start. He advised me that I should make a reservation for my
confinement period in the hospital in Spring Lake, not far distant, but
I said I would wait, for I might yet decide to go on to Chicago. It was
only my fear of hospitals that made me say that, and when I found he
would attend me at Mrs. Tonnesen’s home, I indicated to him definitely
that I wished him to take my case. I was happy in the contemplation of
having the baby in my own sunny room.
_38_
On September 22nd, just one month before the baby was born, I made a
trip to Washington, stopping while there at the Capitol Park Hotel
near the Railroad Station. I telephoned Mr. Harding immediately upon
my arrival, at the Senate Offices, and he told me afterward that the
man who answered the phone was Heber Herbert Votaw, his brother-in-law,
“Carrie’s husband.” When he heard me on the other end of the wire he
seemed so pleased and said that he would come right over. Which he did.
I shall never forget how he rejoiced to see me, even in the shape I was
in! I remember we sat by the window, I on his lap, and talked about
everything. It was while we were sitting with our cheeks together
looking down upon the passing automobiles that he sighted Senator
Newberry’s car. With some pride he told me the occupant was the richest
man in the Senate, and said what he would like to do for me “if he had
Senator Newberry’s money.” I forthwith assured him he could have done
no more that summer to make me happy if he had had the combined riches
of all his senatorial colleagues.
He provided me with ample funds to tide me over my confinement period
and to buy our baby’s layette, found out about trains for me as he
always did, and took me to the station. There he bought me magazines--I
even remember distinctly that they were _Smart Set_ and _Harper’s
Bazaar_--and candy and fruit, then sat in the station and talked to
me until my train was called. At that time Mrs. Votaw, his missionary
sister, “Carrie,” was on the Washington police force in the capacity of
welfare director--as Mr. Harding explained to me with a sly smile, “one
who cares for fallen girls”--and we had quite a bit of fun wondering
just what his sister would say could she see me at that time with him!
I told him _I_ certainly had _fallen_--for _him_! He took me to the
train, kissed me adorably, asked me to tell him I was happy, and stood
on the platform talking to me through the window until the train pulled
out.
I went to Philadelphia, where I stopped at the Bellevue-Stratford
Hotel over night and did my shopping at Wanamaker’s the following day.
My baby’s clothes cost me the outrageous price of $75, which I knew
afterwards was far too much to spend for clothes which were so soon
outgrown. But it was heaps of fun to pick them out.
Then I returned to Asbury Park.
_39_
About a week before my confinement my mother wrote me, demanding to
know the reason for my continued stay into October at Asbury. I had
previously written her that I intended to go to Chicago, but that was
when I thought I might go there to have the baby. She said her alarm
about _why_ I was remaining so long had been to her such a nightmare
that, had she the necessary funds, I would have long since seen her in
Asbury Park. Poor mother! What worry I must have caused her!
Inwardly terrified at the possibility of her coming on, but realizing
that I would not dare indicate such terror to her, I wrote immediately,
expressing my regret at not being able to supply the funds she would
need for fare, and saying that “Mrs. Christian” had elected to remain
longer in Asbury and I could not of course desert her when she had
been so lovely to me all summer. That seemed to satisfy my mother.
Then I wrote my sister Elizabeth that I did not think it at all
necessary for her to come on, entailing an unnecessary expense, and
gave her as nearly as possible the date of my confinement. This I did
also with Mr. Harding, so they both knew exactly where I would be and
when I expected to be confined.
Mr. Harding wrote immediately and asked me to please write him a
love-letter before I would be in such position (in bed) that I couldn’t
write him for some time. I remember well the tone of that letter from
him. I knew he was homesick to see me, and it reacted to make me more
impatient for the day to come which would give me our baby so that I
could begin to plan to see _him_ again. I went over to Dr. Ackerman and
asked him when he thought I would have the baby. My hands were somewhat
swollen, I complained, and I was getting uncomfortable generally. He
assured me I was in excellent shape and that I would soon have my baby.
Somewhat mollified, but still irritable, I walked down to the post
office. I found another letter from my sweetheart and devoured it as I
walked back home. I think that was Saturday, perhaps Friday.
On Sunday afternoon, a gorgeously brilliant autumn day, I went over
to the woods to my three-cornered seat, which was a board nailed to
three trees. I sat there for a couple of hours and wrote to my darling.
I remember I wanted to cry my eyes out that afternoon, I was _so_
homesick to see him, and very likely this longing was written vividly
into the letter which I mailed at the post office late that afternoon.
Incidentally, I used to take his letters to various towns all along the
shore just to avoid sending too many from one post office. As though
they would have noticed to whom the letters were addressed! But it
was just another of those precautions which were responsible for the
absolute safeguarding of our secret from the world.
On Monday I walked most of the day, anxiously. Tuesday evening I
found a letter from Mr. Harding, telling me he had never in his life
received from me a love-letter equal to the one I had written Sunday
out of the depths of my longing for him. He cautioned me to “take
it easy,” and stressed, as he had all summer in his letters, the
necessity for complete recuperation after the baby’s birth. “It will
mean your health, Nan, so be deliberate in getting up afterward. I
cannot emphasize this point enough.” Elizabeth wrote me the same thing,
telling me I wouldn’t be at all the same afterward, my strength would
be gone, and I must rest all I could. I smiled to myself; they didn’t
realize how strong I felt, nor how well I was! Probably many women who
were weak would have to wait through long periods of recuperation, but
I was sure I would be strong enough to travel soon after my baby came.
I spent a great deal of time conjecturing about the baby’s looks. Mrs.
Tonnesen and her brother Billy took a great interest in the coming
event, though I stayed away from the house and away from everybody as
much as possible, talking with them only when necessity commanded. On
Monday or Tuesday Helen Evans, the nurse Dr. Ackerman had recommended,
came to call upon me. She told me all the different things I would need
to have for a home confinement, and I was surprised, for I had thought
all I needed was clothes for the baby! I liked Miss Evans. She was
Scotch, and had something of a burr, though she said she had been quite
a while in this country. I decided we would get on splendidly.
_40_
Wednesday, October 22nd, 1919, dawned clear and bright. My room, though
tiny, had three windows on the front and one on the side and my bed was
by the latter window. It looked out upon the loved park where I had
done much of my reading, and the trees were beautiful in their autumn
colors.
I was awakened very early, about five o’clock, by pleasant sensations
which reminded me of caresses, except that they were inside. I lay
there marveling. My baby would come today, I was sure of it. _My_ baby,
and my darling Warren Harding’s child!
It was quite seven-thirty before I felt I should call Mrs. Tonnesen and
have her send for Miss Evans. Having no telephone in the house, Billy
was obliged to go to the nearby drug store and phone the doctor, who
in turn sent the nurse over immediately. I dressed and went downstairs
and ate a hearty breakfast. Mrs. Tonnesen suggested I’d better eat all
I could, but I thought she was fooling when she said it would be all
I would get for awhile. I wanted so badly to go once more to the post
office, but the nurse refused to let me.
I continued at intervals to have the little sensations which gradually
increased into intermittent pains growingly severe as the morning
advanced. The doctor came to examine me. Toward noon he came again, and
I heard him say to Mrs. Tonnesen on his way out that I was “physically
superb,” or “superbly fit,” or something like that, which encouraged
me. But I didn’t need much encouragement. I really was not the least
bit frightened.
I had taken the two front rooms, both facing the street. One I occupied
and the other was for the nurse. Mrs. Tonnesen supplied a clothes
basket for a temporary bed for the baby. I roamed around in and out of
the four rooms on that floor, watching the proceedings of the nurse
with interest.
At two o’clock sharp, on one of the most beautiful afternoons
imaginable, a little girl baby was born to me. The doctor said that I
was an excellent patient, and I know myself, despite the agony of that
experience, that God made possible to me a perfect birth. After the
ordeal, still, as I felt, in the “pink of health,” I ran up against
the first law of medical care in that connection that bothered me: I
requested a chicken dinner with all of the appetizing accessories that
go with it! Imagine my disappointment when I was given nothing then but
a glass of cold water, and later some weak tea!
I am reminded of a point right here that has often occurred to me. I am
not very superstitious, but I do think queer things happen sometimes,
in that the same number or the same day figures strongly in one’s
life. _Two_ seems to me to have a weird way of springing up in Mr.
Harding’s life. He was born on November 2nd. He died on August 2nd.
He was elected our 29th President on November 2nd, having accepted
the nomination on July 22nd. I saw him on September 22nd, one month
before the date of my confinement which was October 22nd. Our baby
came at exactly 2 o’clock in the afternoon. These are not the only
2’s that occurred in our chronology. I used to note how often the
number 2 appeared, though I did not jot the times down, nor remember
them, except for those I have given above which were the outstanding
recurrences.
_41_
Even as early as the day of her birth, the “young lieutenant,” as Mr.
Harding and I had always referred to the girl we thought might likely
be a boy, there was a distinct resemblance to the Hardings, and more
particularly to her distinguished father. As she grows older this
resemblance is strikingly like his sister Daisy, but she retains her
father’s smile, his eyes, and many of his mannerisms. As she lay in my
arms, a few hours old, drawing her mouth into comical contortions, and
wrinkling her face in what seemed a thousand wrinkles, I saw Warren
Harding--oh, I saw him so strongly that it seemed I was holding a
miniature sweetheart in my arms! She was born with black hair which
afterwards disappeared to give place to the soft blond fuzz which was
more like her mother’s.
I could not nurse her of course, because I did not know how our
difficult situation would work out, but oh, how I longed to! Miss
Evans put her on a good brand of infant’s milk, and would feed her
and then bring her in to me. It seemed to me almost sacrilegious to
submit to the treatment I was obliged to undergo in order to have my
breasts dried up, and somehow I thought the pain I experienced in this
procedure was the merited punishment for not nursing my baby. How
strong was my urge to nurse her! Even before she came, when I would
lie on the bed and watch the various shapes my body assumed as she
moved around inside, I used to think of the natural nourishment process
and picture it. I wanted to experience every one of the sensations
belonging to a mother. One time, after I had been up a week or so, I
took her on my lap and gave her an empty breast that two or three weeks
previous had been swollen with milk, and I shall never forget her tiny
hands nor the feel of her mouth at my bosom, nor the indescribable
thrill that swept over me in those moments of pretended nursing. I
just seemed to want to keep her a part of me, and this denial gave the
keenest suffering I had ever known.
During those days I had a colored laundress, Mrs. Jones, whose
daughter, about eleven or twelve, used to come for my laundry. She also
went to the post office for my mail. As soon as I could prop myself up
fairly comfortably, I wrote notes to Elizabeth and to Mr. Harding and
“Lieut. Edmund Norton Christian.” The one to “Lieutenant Christian,”
addressed fictitiously to Paris, I handed to the nurse to mail, for
obvious reasons; the other two the little colored girl mailed. My
first letter from Mr. Harding after the baby arrived had been mailed
from Philadelphia, and was sent to me at the house, 1210 Bond Street,
Asbury Park, instead of the post office. It was written in pencil, as
most of his letters were, and in it he said he had received my note.
Evidently he thought he should take precautionary measures in writing
this first letter lest it fall into another’s hands, so he wrote that
he had “conveyed the news to the Lieutenant who was proud to hear
it.” That was all right and might have served to throw anybody off
the track who read the letter had he not followed it immediately with
the sentence, “If she looks like her mother, _I will be satisfied_,”
directly alluding to _himself_ as the party who was really interested
in the news! Bless his heart! He tried to protect me and himself and
everybody, but sometimes he surely did stupid things. Forgetting all
about “the Lieutenant” he proceeded in his letter to urge again my
leisurely recuperation, and the manner of his concluding would hardly
have been construed by an outsider as the heart-promptings of his
friend “the Lieutenant” who would obviously have written his own love
messages and not sent them second-hand!
_42_
No sooner was I upon my feet than I was nervous and anxious to get to
Chicago to my sister Elizabeth. The superb strength which had been mine
before the baby came had completely left me. My appetite was forced, my
cheeks were pale, and constant letters from my mother as to when I was
coming West worried me terribly.
Several mornings after the baby was born Dr. Ackerman came to see
me. He sat on a straight chair at the foot of the bed and took out
a notebook. I was amazed at myself for becoming frightened, but
somehow my nerves were shattered and things troubled me which amounted
to nothing at all. He informed me that he needed certain data for
registering the child’s birth. I didn’t know exactly what that might
mean to Mr. Harding, and so I inquired if it was necessary to register
a child’s birth always. “Unless you want to pay a fine of $100,” he
replied in his business-like voice. He said he merely wished to know my
maiden name, my husband’s, and our ages, my husband’s business, etc. I
thought quickly about whether I ought to tell him at least the partial
truth--that I was _not married_! I didn’t know whether or not it was a
criminal offense to say you were married when you were not. I longed to
shout the whole truth to the world, that my baby was Warren Harding’s
baby, that we were not married in the eyes of the world, but truly
married in the sight of God, and that I was proud, proud, proud to be
her mother!
Within, I was growing hysterical in those brief moments, but controlled
my voice as I told him that my age was twenty-three, my husband’s
thirty-two, his business was an officership as Lieutenant in the U.
S. Army, and that my name before I was married was “Nanna Eloise
Britton.” I said this I thought very clearly, but when he repeated it
he said “Emma Eloise Britton?” I nodded. The first name did not matter
anyway, I thought, but I wanted my surname to go into the records in
the only right way--Britton. I could not give her the name Harding
without betraying my darling, but I could give Britton. “Eloise” was a
middle name I had adopted when a child in substitution for my real name
of “Popham,” which was always so objectionable to me. I have postcards
from my father which he addressed to me “Nanna Popham Eloise Evelyn
Britton,” the full name I cherished as an ideal combination when a
child!
When I had been out of bed about a week, one morning a man called.
I heard Mrs. Tonnesen say, “Yes, Mrs. Christian lives here.” I was
abnormally apprehensive those days, an inexplicable nervousness seizing
me when the least little thing went wrong, and I called downstairs
quickly, “What do you want of Mrs. Christian?” I sat down on the top
step of the stairs. He called up to me, “What’s your baby’s name?”
Immediately I thought maybe something was wrong. They wanted to take
her away from me! The most absurd possibilities danced like demons
in my mind. “Who wants to know?” I asked, almost quivering. “Gotta
have it for record,” he replied, in what seemed to me a surly voice.
I breathed a great sigh. “Oh, I see! Well, I haven’t named her yet!”
I said. “What! Two weeks or more old, and you haven’t named her?” he
shouted. I became frightened again. Maybe _this_ was an offense under
the law! “Oh, that’s all right,” I said timidly, “you may register
her as ‘Elizabeth Ann!’” Only that morning I had had a letter from my
sister Elizabeth in which she said she would love to have me call the
baby Elizabeth, and my own name, Nan, didn’t seem to go as well with
Elizabeth as Ann. So Elizabeth Ann it was. Elizabeth Ann Christian it
was, and was so written into the records of the Department of Vital
Statistics in Trenton, the capital of New Jersey. Afterward, when I
said it to myself, I used to think, “Elizabeth Ann Harding! Elizabeth
Ann _Harding_!” And as she lay in my arms in bed I would whisper to
her, “Say, you darling (a verbal salutation I so often heard from her
father), do you know _who your dad is_? Oh, wait until he sees _you_!
Wait till you see _him_, sweetheart!” She would lie there complacently
blinking her eyes and working her mouth. It seemed to me as if Harding
were written in every twist of her lips.
_43_
I went to New York about six weeks after the baby came, which was
about the first week in December. My clothes were very shabby, and so
I bought a new hat at Arnold, Constable’s, and some other things I
needed. The cape which I had worn all the fall, during the two chilly
months before Elizabeth Ann came, now seemed big enough for two, and
I was so thin that I was sure I must look ill. The hotels were filled
with automobile show visitors, and after trying several places I
finally was given a room at the Hamilton Hotel on 73rd Street, though
with the stipulation that I would give it up the following day to
another guest who had reserved it several days in advance. I registered
as Nan Britton, and I remembered it was with almost a sense of relief
that I did so. I had moved in an atmosphere of make-believe for so long
that somehow it was refreshingly good to be myself.
I was so pitifully weak that I should not have gone over to New York in
the first place, but once there, there were several things I wished to
do. One was to go up to my friends, the Johnsons, for my mail, for when
I had moved down on East 60th Street I had not apprised many people of
the change, and I knew there must be mail for me at the Johnson home. I
knew that even Marie Johnson (Mrs. Johnson) did not know the number of
my apartment on East 60th Street, so could not have forwarded my mail
there.
Another thing was to call Mr. Harding on long distance, a thing I would
not have attempted while in Asbury Park.
The following day I went up to Marie Johnson’s. She was surprised to
see me, of course, and I am sure the manner in which I conducted myself
must have given her reason to think something was wrong with me. I had
to lie down almost as soon as I got in the house. She handed me a big
bunch of mail, among which was a telegram. I almost fainted at the
sight of it. Probably somebody had found out that I had had a child by
Warren Harding! I said, “You open this, Marie.” Then I caught myself.
Suppose it was some kind of a summons, or even suppose it was from
Mrs. Harding! I opened it myself. It was from a girl in Cleveland who
wondered why I had not answered her letters!
At the apartment of a friend up the street I secured a room. I think I
stayed one night there at that time. After I had deposited my bag, I
went to the corner drug store at 136th Street and phoned Mr. Harding
at the Senate Chambers in Washington. He had scarcely said “Hello!”
when I began to cry. I told him I was so _weak_ and asked him when he
thought I would be strong again. He said, “Why, Nan darling, you should
go back and rest at Asbury Park another month. Don’t do a thing but
rest. Everything’s all right.” But that was just the thing I couldn’t
do. I told him I seemed to have lost all my courage. Wasn’t it possible
for him to come over? He said he was in fact coming over to New York,
but he thought it unwise for us to be seen together if I were in the
weakened condition I said I was. I told him that I was sure I would be
stronger if he would only take me in his arms. Bless him! I realized it
would be dangerous for us to be together when I felt so weak that it
seemed I might faint every minute. He begged me to return to Asbury and
rest, and urged me not to stop to see my mother in Ohio when I did go
on to Chicago.
“Be of good cheer, Nan!” came over the wire in a voice that was so
sweet that it wrung my heart and brought the tears so fast that I could
only cry, “Goodbye, sweetheart!” and stumble out of the booth.
_44_
I went back to Asbury Park faint and dizzy, but found our baby
Elizabeth Ann in fine condition. This pleased me and seemed to give me
some strength.
I dismissed Miss Evans at the end of three weeks, and the nurse I next
employed, upon Dr. Ackerman’s recommendation, was a Mrs. Howe. She was
what he termed a “practical nurse,” and not so expensive as Miss Evans,
who was strictly a private nurse. Mrs. Howe had raised a family of five
children and was more like a mother than a nurse. She sometimes held me
close in her arms, and I felt so much safer now that I had her.
She did not get along well with Mrs. Tonnesen, and we decided that we
would change quarters before I left for Chicago. I had discussed my
plans with Mr. Harding, both over the phone and by letter, which were
that I should go on ahead to Chicago and find a suitable place for
Elizabeth Ann, having Mrs. Howe follow later with the baby as soon as I
had found someone to take care of her in Chicago.
So one day Mrs. Howe and the baby and I bundled ourselves into a taxi
and went around to a semi-sanitarium, nearer the downtown district of
Asbury Park, and quite a distance from the Tonnesen abode. Here the
lady usually took only those who were recuperating from illnesses, she
said, and I thought it seemed like a fairly good place to leave Mrs.
Howe with the baby until I could send for her to come on to Chicago
with Elizabeth Ann. I trusted her implicitly.
Late that evening an automobile ambulance drove up with a woman on a
stretcher. They brought her in and she and her nurse had a room on
the same floor, across from my nurse and baby. About an hour or so
after she arrived we began to hear the most horrible moans and groans
accompanied with shrieks of, “Oh, I’m nervous! I’m nervous!” This kept
up until I was myself completely exhausted listening to her and in
such a high state of nervousness that I thought I, too, would scream.
It didn’t seem to bother Mrs. Howe and I asked her to read aloud to me
to take my mind from the moaning across the hall. But the walls were
very thin and it was as though the poor woman were right in the room
with us. I had to tell the landlady that if that kept up we would have
to go to a hotel. They gave the woman some morphine which quieted her
temporarily, and I went into my own room and soon fell asleep. About
three o’clock next morning it started again. I crept into Mrs. Howe’s
room and into bed with her, and lay there shivering and mentally crazed
with nervousness until the morphine which they administered again took
effect and the poor woman slept. The next morning they took her back to
her home in Philadelphia. I was so tired of doctors and nurses and of
shifting from place to place!
Someone had told me that it took about six months to recuperate
completely from having a baby, and I began to count the weeks and try
to find some improvement in myself as time passed. But when I took the
train back to New York, from where I was going to leave for Chicago, I
had to confess that in the seven or eight weeks that had passed since
the baby’s birth I had grown weaker instead of stronger. In New York,
in the same room I had when I had been there before, I stayed in bed
most of the time. The lady who rented the rooms had been an actress
and was very broad-minded, and once or twice her sympathy and tender
solicitude tempted me to tell her why I was so ill. But I didn’t. I
called Mr. Harding again on the phone and he urged me to get to Chicago
and to rest after I got there. “Never mind about the baby now,” he
said, “she will be all right. It is _you_ who need to be taken care
of now.” But the baby was on my mind constantly. I phoned Mrs. Howe
sometimes twice a day. I had given her my sister’s address in Chicago
and I told her to write me immediately if anything went wrong.
I remember I bought a ticket for a Saturday train--it was almost
impossible at that time to procure reservations, soldiers returning
home for Christmas, the general rush of holiday travelers--and I was
fortunate to get a reservation at all for that particular day.
A chum of mine, Dorothy Cooper, who lived where I had been staying,
went down in the taxi with me to the train. I felt so faint that she
suggested we stop at a drug store and get a bottle of smelling salts
for me to have on the train. As a result, when we reached the Grand
Central Station, we were just in time to see the iron gate close and
watch the train pull out. I had wired Elizabeth I would be there for
Sunday, and of course I was just sick over missing the train. I went to
the Consolidated Ticket Office and learned that I could not get another
reservation until the following Tuesday. Those days of waiting tortured
me. When finally I found myself in the train, bound for Chicago, where
I longed to creep into my sister Elizabeth’s arms and cry, I sighed
audibly with relief.
I had taken an “extra fare” train, scheduled to reach Chicago earlier
than the others, and that night I wakened after a first sleep to feel
the train fairly skimming the tracks. “Gone wild!” I thought and sat up
quickly in my berth. I pulled the curtains and peeked out. Everything
seemed to be normal and the passengers were sleeping. How could they
sleep, I thought, when every moment brought us nearer to destruction!
It would be awful to die in a railroad crash, I thought to myself. And
terrible fears assailed me when I thought that maybe Elizabeth wouldn’t
be able to locate our precious baby, and perhaps my sweetheart would be
afraid to claim her openly after my death--horrible, horrible! I felt I
ought to get up and go forward to the engineer--but what could I tell
him! Evidently he knew the train was going wild and couldn’t do a thing
to stop it. Nor could I help him, surely. I became drowsy and concluded
that a protecting Providence would intervene. At any rate, this was a
case beyond human power! I lay back on my pillow praying, and gradually
the rhythm of the flying wheels grew fainter and fainter and I slept.
* * * * *
I must have been a pitiful, broken-looking creature when Elizabeth met
me the following day at the Englewood Station in Chicago. The train was
late, after all, and had not made the usual fast time. I was amazed to
learn this after the nightmare I had had. I told Elizabeth and she just
laughed at me. I thought it would be impossible to explain to anybody
what agony of mind I had been through. Elizabeth looked so healthy and
strong and it seemed so good to be with her. She took me straight home
and put me in bed, and I lay there until the waves of weakness which
enveloped me had passed somewhat and I felt more serene.
In a few days Elizabeth located a nurse, recommended by the same doctor
who had discouraged my having an abortion--a woman by the name of Mrs.
Belle Woodlock, who would take Elizabeth Ann into her home and care for
her for $20 a week. She lived within easy distance from my sister’s
apartment, which was at that time at 6103 Woodlawn Avenue.
During the lapse of time--which was about three weeks, I think--between
my arrival and my sending for Mrs. Howe to bring on the baby to
Chicago, I carried on correspondence with her regularly. I received
my letters, addressed to “Mrs. E. N. Christian,” in care of my sister
Elizabeth (Mrs. S. A. Willits), usually getting the mail before my
brother-in-law, or “kid sister” Janet, who was living with Elizabeth
then, had a chance to see to whom they were addressed.
Once, I remember, my brother-in-law, Scott Willits, was quite put out
because the postman requested him to sign for a special delivery letter
from Mrs. Howe to me and he stoutly refused to do so, saying there
was no such person as “Mrs. Christian” living there! In the end, the
postman took the letter back and afterward I myself signed for it.
I remember also another incident. It was before Mrs. Howe brought
Elizabeth Ann on from Asbury Park to Chicago that my mother came
to Chicago to visit. It is possible the occasion of her visit was
explained by the Christmas vacation from work in Ohio University where
she taught, though possibly she was curious to see whether or not
her daughter Nan was really safe and sound, perhaps not believing my
written reports to this effect.
Mother and I had just come downstairs and were leaving the apartment
to go shopping over on 63rd Street when I spied the postman across
the street. Without thinking I called, “Any mail for us?” “A letter
here for Mrs. Christian,” he answered. I knew it was foolish for me
to disclaim knowing such a person before my mother, inasmuch as she
had been told that I was living in Asbury with a “Mrs. Christian,” so
I said, “Give it to me--it is for a friend of mine.” And I took it
and put it away in my bag. Mother asked sharply, “Nan, what is Mrs.
Christian having her mail sent to you for?” And I, searching my mind
for a quick explanation, found this to say, “Why, she is coming here
enroute to California and I shall see her soon. I told her I would take
care of any mail she might want sent here.” This, you see, came to my
mind because Mrs. Howe, the nurse, had written that she was planning to
go on to California--so I simply substituted names.
I think about that time, however, my mother’s suspicions were
definitely aroused, for she remarked to me on one occasion, “You think
you are deceiving your mother about a lot of things, but you’re not.”
Often she has said to me, “God has certainly protected you, my girl,”
and of course I know that He has. More fortunate was this protection
for my sweetheart, however, than for me, for his position, as United
States Senator, _demanded_ protection.
_45_
The day arrived when Mrs. Howe and my darling baby girl would reach
Chicago. It was difficult for my sister Elizabeth to go to the station
with me, for she had a regular position as leader of an orchestra in
a local theatre and she had to observe on-the-dot hours. But she went
with me. We arrived fifteen minutes or so before the train came in,
and I was so weak from the trip downtown and the excitement of seeing
my baby again that I lay in Elizabeth’s arms in the waiting-room until
Mrs. Howe came. She was a rather heavy-set woman, with grey hair and
spectacles--mother-looking--and I can just see her as she came into the
waiting-room, carrying my precious baby in her arms.
We had arranged for Mrs. Howe to go over to the Plaza Hotel on the
North Side, so we bundled her into a taxi and I promised to get in
touch with her the following day. Then Elizabeth, the baby and I took a
taxi for Mrs. Woodlock’s on the South Side. I can’t remember that I had
made a previous visit to Mrs. Woodlock’s, having let Elizabeth make all
the arrangements and trusting implicitly to her judgment in the matter.
In the taxi, Elizabeth held the baby and exclaimed over her prettiness.
She had grown even in those brief weeks of my separation from her, and
I thought there never could be a baby to equal her in sweetness. As
soon as the taxi began to move she fell asleep. Elizabeth and I studied
her little face and Elizabeth, too, marked the Harding resemblance.
Mrs. Belle Woodlock’s apartment was half a block from 61st Street, I
think on Prairie Avenue, and Elizabeth lived at the corner of 61st
Street and Woodlawn Avenue. So it was but a short street car ride for
me. Mrs. Woodlock’s apartment was quite comfortable, like her good
self. She was a fat, husky Irish girl, and quite pretty. She had a
daughter about six, Ruth, and an old Aunt Emma who lived with her. I
don’t know whether Belle Woodlock’s husband was dead or whether she
had been divorced; I never asked her. But the atmosphere was not at
all bad, I thought, and there was enough youth about the house to make
it pleasant. I remember how grateful I was to see a little girl of six
there.
Of course the excitement had been great and I know Mrs. Woodlock
wondered why I broke down and sobbed as I knelt over my tiny treasure.
We did not stay long, but went away, I back home to bed and Elizabeth
to her theatre, leaving the baby in charge of her new nurse.
Mrs. Woodlock was a person not to be downed, I soon learned. In her
position as nurse, she had acquired a hardness of a sort, but withal I
found her extremely sentimental and sympathetic. She took an immediate
fancy to Elizabeth Ann, as did her little daughter Ruth and her old
Aunt Emma. Aunt Emma was a partial cripple, and she proved to be a
great comfort to me because I knew she kept watch over our baby at
times when Mrs. Woodlock’s attention was demanded elsewhere.
Mrs. Woodlock moved twice during the year and two months that the baby
was with her. She soon moved over on 48th Street. That place, too, was
accessible from Elizabeth’s, even though it was a longer trip for me
to take. But my strength certainly seemed to be gone permanently. I
ate normal meals, but I was just unable to do the things I formerly
did. Mr. Harding urged me in every letter to rest, rest, rest, but it
was growingly impossible. My mind was sick, and nothing would cure it
except an arrangement whereby I could have my baby with me.
Mr. Harding was very generous, sending me as a rule $100 or $150 at a
time, and of course I kept Mrs. Woodlock paid right up to the minute.
I have in my possession a little red book in which I have jotted down
at different times how I spent the cash Mr. Harding sent me in his
letters. He used to send very old bills so they would not be noticeable
to one handling the letter, and has sent me as much as $300 and $400 in
one letter with nothing but a two-cent stamp to carry it. For instance,
about this time I made the following notation:
“Last $150:
$52.00 carriage for Elizabeth Ann
60.00 three weeks’ board Elizabeth Ann
16.00 shoes for Nan
5.50 bonnet for E. Ann
5.50 robe for E. Ann
2.60 another robe and bow
5.00 dress cleaned and fixed
-------
$146.60 total”
which shows about how I spent my money those days. I bought Elizabeth
Ann a dear little diamond ring for her first birthday, October 22,
1920, which has since been lost; I paid $50 for it at Peacock’s in
Chicago, though I paid for that with money I earned myself doing
secretarial work that fall. But as a rule, during those days, the money
I had was not spent foolishly; and most of it was for my darling baby.
_46_
Before Elizabeth Ann’s birth, during the early days when Mr. Harding
and I referred to our coming baby as “the young lieutenant,” we had
discussed many times the possibility of giving the baby over to his
sister in California, Mrs. Charity Remsberg. Mr. Harding said that, of
all of his relatives, he was sure she would understand the situation
best, and also she had children of her own. I entered into this and
other discussions very seriously, and I marvel now to think how I could
have done so. For, months before Elizabeth Ann actually came, I had
fully determined within my heart that I could never, never give her
up--I could never allow our darling baby to be reared and loved by
anyone but myself or her father.
However, I talked over these possibilities with Mr. Harding both
in person and in letters. He was disposed also to consider the
Scobeys--Mr. Fred Scobey and his wife of San Antonio, Texas. Mr.
Harding had told me once upon a visit to New York how Mr. Scobey had
mailed a letter from Mr. Harding, addressed to me. He said he thought
afterward it hadn’t been exactly wise to entrust it to him, for, he
said, Mr. Scobey had been a bit convivial that afternoon. I remember
how I said, “Oh, sweetheart, why will you do foolish things like
that?--why, he might have looked at it!” I was amazed at such daring
on Mr. Harding’s part. It was then that Mr. Harding told me what I
recalled afterward, in later years, so vividly, “Why, Nan, Scobey’s the
best friend I’ve got!” Of course I took his statement very literally.
The Scobeys had quite a bit of money, Mr. Harding said, and I think he
said they had no children of their own. He was sure they would love our
baby and he said he would “have no hesitancy” in telling Mr. Scobey
that he was the father of the child.
We also discussed an institutional home where the baby might be
placed until of such age that I, through some unforeseen favorable
circumstance, might be able to take our child myself. It was then that
Mr. Harding first discussed with utter frankness the probability of
Mrs. Harding’s death far in advance of his own, in which event he said
with undisguised enthusiasm, “I’d take the baby myself and make her a
_real_ Harding!” Later he repeated that statement very emphatically
to me in the White House, telling me how he wished to make Elizabeth
Ann a “real Harding.” Of course that plan met with a hug and a kiss
from me and much worded enthusiasm. But Destiny thwarted the plans
Warren Harding had for his child, although during those days we were
completely oblivious of its presence.
_47_
The summer of 1920 was arriving, and with it the Republican Convention
in June which was to nominate my sweetheart for the Presidency. Only
four years before I had hung on street car straps going to and from my
work at Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company, reading about my beloved Mr.
Harding and his much featured oratorical achievement in connection with
making the nominating speech for his friend Charles E. Hughes, the then
Republican candidate for President.
Now I was back in Chicago, making almost daily visits to Warren
Harding’s child and mine, and watching every political aspect with
keenest interest. Only four short years and I had come to these
heights! The mother of Warren Harding’s only child! The glory of it!
Mr. Harding came on to Chicago early in June and came out immediately
upon his arrival to my sister’s, 6103 Woodlawn Avenue. I remember I
missed him at the station and was so disappointed because I thought he
had not come, but I had gone to the wrong station to meet him and so we
reached the apartment almost simultaneously, having come from opposite
directions.
[Illustration: Out for an airing in Chicago]
I had, in letters to Mr. Harding, described Elizabeth’s apartment,
calling it a “perfectly adorable place.” When I came on from Asbury
Park I was in such a weakened condition that any place where my adored
sister lived seemed heaven to me. And I really did think for a young
married couple their apartment was dear. Elizabeth’s husband is rather
small compared with Mr. Harding, and the tiny four rooms did not seem
out of proportion to his stature. But I shall never forget how I gasped
when I beheld Mr. Harding in the living-room of that apartment. His
head nearly touched the ceiling!
“I thought you said Elizabeth had a lovely roomy apartment, dearie!” he
teased me.
“Well, I thought it was--but, my, you fill it up so!” He sat down in
a big chair and took me on his lap. Elizabeth knew he was going to be
there and had arranged so that the rest of the family would be away
during his visit with me.
That visit was a very important one from many angles. While Mr. Harding
scouted my prophecy that he would soon be the President of the United
States, it must have been that he did think some about it, for even as
early as that first visit he warned me about what might happen in case
he were nominated. I would be “shadowed” very probably, he said, and
certainly would be if he were elected President.
Those were stirring days for me as well as for my hero. I would fly
from the Republican Convention at the Coliseum out to our baby, often
giving her airings in the nearby park. The excitement those days seemed
to sustain me with a strength not really mine. Elizabeth Ann made a
perfect picture in her new carriage. I tried to persuade Mr. Harding
to meet me some morning in the park so he could see her, but, though
he pondered it all lovingly and said he was as “crazy to do it” as I
was to have him, he never did. I suppose it would have been unwise,
though I was sure I could pilot that project as safely as I seemed to
have done the others up to this time, with my sister Elizabeth’s good
co-operation.
[Illustration: _Top_: Early in the Administration period
_Bottom_: The opening of the season, American League Park, Washington]
Elizabeth Ann and I had lovely times together. I talked to her even
from babyhood as though she were a companion instead of a baby, and she
would lie there looking up at me so seriously that sometimes I felt
she must understand me. I would whisper to her, “Darling, do you know
who your daddy is? Well, maybe you do (her answering look was full of
wisdom!), but you don’t know who he is _going_ to be!” Then I would
stoop down and whisper in her ear, “_Your daddy is going to be the
President of the United States!_” And surely her look of comprehension
was more than a baby’s look--it seemed to me to be the understanding
gaze of her father’s own eyes.
Mr. Harding came several times to 6103 Woodlawn Avenue during that
month. I remember one time I rode downtown on the elevated with him.
Standing on the platform at University Avenue, I said, “Honey, why do
they have primaries?” I could see no need for them. In fact, I told him
I thought politics was a terribly complicated business--to go through
all the red tape, when he would be President anyway. I talked on and
on, suggesting a simplification of the whole governmental machinery. He
seemed highly amused. “A fine politician you’d make, Nan!” he said. I
remember also how he leaned far over to read his neighbor’s paper after
we were seated in the train, and when I strained my eyes to see what
could interest him, he turned and explained that he “was just trying
to steal the baseball score.” He followed the ball games with great
interest, and was a dyed-in-the-wool fan if ever there was one.
A few days later, in the lobby of the Auditorium Hotel, I met him and
he gave me a ticket to the Convention. It seemed to please him to do
it, and very likely he could not help recalling my many predictions.
He may even have gloried a bit in the knowledge that he was fulfilling
every ambition I ever had for him.
I listened with rapt attention and rising regard to Frank B. Willis,
who made the nominating speech for Warren G. Harding. I had heard Mr.
Willis only once before and that was at Kent, Ohio, where I attended
Normal School the summer immediately following my graduation from high
school. At that time--1914--I had looked upon him as an illy-groomed,
small-stage politician, but my appraisal of him swiftly swung in his
favor with that speech.
I witnessed excitedly the balloting at the Convention which slowly but
surely rose in favor of Ohio’s son. I could not share with anyone, by
the most extravagant verbal picture, the emotions I experienced as
it was announced amid roaring acclaim that the Republican nomination
for the Presidency of the United States had been given to Warren G.
Harding. How could that surging multitude--cheering and whistling
and stampeding the aisles with their Harding banners held aloft--be
interested anyway in the tumult of unutterable emotion that rose within
me? My eyes swam, and I recalled my Freshman school year at Marion,
when, in the margins of all my books, I, then but thirteen years
old, had written the prophecy of my heart-longing, “Warren Gamaliel
Harding--he’s a darling--Warren Gamaliel Harding--President of the
United States!”
_48_
The next conference between the new Republican candidate for President
and his sweetheart, which took place at 6103 Woodlawn Avenue, was
necessarily an important one. This time he was “dropped off” by the
man whose car he said he could command during his stay in Chicago.
He had been, he said, held up by Moffett, who had taken innumerable
photographs of him and who, Mr. Harding told me in his adorably modest
way, had seemed to take quite a fancy to him. He had wanted to get to
me earlier but he just couldn’t. Mr. Harding said that the pictures Mr.
Moffett had taken ought to please me because he had been thinking about
me every minute during the sittings for them.
He warned me again that if I were shadowed I should give no heed to
the trailer and just go about my business as usual. He told me how
proud he was of the way things had been handled to date, and he did
not seem at that time to have very great fear concerning our secret.
He was, however, hurried, and I complained because he had to leave me
earlier than I had planned. When I told him I had many things to tell
him he smiled and said, with his characteristic slang which seemed to
be reserved for me alone, “Well, shoot!” He used often to say that when
I bubbled over with confidences. He was with me a couple of hours, and,
though disappointingly brief, that visit was one of the sweetest I ever
knew.
He attempted to seriously discuss with me plans for financially caring
for my situation and for Elizabeth Ann’s, but, though I finally changed
the topic, saying, as always, that I didn’t want to discuss those
things, he did persuade me to begin some insurance, and he said that
no matter how small the amount I took out, he could add to it. He had
other plans, he said, for establishing a fund in a more substantial
amount, but I curtailed that discussion. The time was so brief and I
adored his kisses. However, I did actually start a policy with the
Prudential Life Insurance Company, one of $500, requiring no medical
examination. I had only a little over $100 paid upon it when I went to
Europe in June of 1923, and when I returned I dropped it altogether.
Mr. Harding saw that I looked greatly worn and he fell in very readily
with my plan to go to the Adirondacks for six or eight weeks, in the
hope that the elevation and air might bring back the lost roses to
my cheeks. My sister had assured me that she would herself visit the
baby periodically and every day phone Mrs. Woodlock and keep in close
touch with her. Mrs. Woodlock’s efficient care of the baby was my chief
inducement to leave for the mountains. I explained all of these things
to Mr. Harding, and he agreed that it was imperative that I get on my
feet as soon as possible. I assured him that I would not try to write
to Mrs. Woodlock or have her write to me while in the mountains, for,
of course, except for my visits to the Woodlock home where I was known
as “Mrs. Christian,” I had resumed my maiden name and could not divulge
this name to her. I remember how discreet Mrs. Woodlock was, for she
did not even ask why nor where when I went away. She merely promised to
take good care of my darling baby.
Mr. Harding made suggestions as to a suitable place to go, and talked
to me a little about Paul Smith’s. But I told him I had already
consulted with the Foster Bureau and had decided upon the Eagle Bay
Hotel at Eagle Bay, on the Fulton Chain of Lakes. One reaches there
by going to Utica and changing for the northern train. It is on the
western side of the Adirondacks. I could obtain board and room there,
I told him, for something like $25 a week. He seemed to think this a
fine plan all around. He instructed me not to write to him while there
except as he advised me, because his own movements were uncertain. And,
as usual, when he kissed me he asked me to tell him I was happy. I
walked over to the “L” with him and watched the tall, handsome figure
of my sweetheart until he disappeared inside the station. Then he came
out to the railing of the elevated platform and waved to me below. That
was the last unguarded tryst we ever had, for after that he was always
surrounded by secret service men, and we were not together again until
after he had been elected President. Even as President-elect he had
ceased to be his own boss.
_49_
During my stay in the Adirondacks I wrote many letters to Mr. Harding,
saving them, of course, until such time as I should see him to deliver
them in person. He wrote me, but more guardedly than ever before.
During my stay there I also received a couple of letters from his
sister Daisy, one of which I have and which asks me all about Eagle
Bay, requesting the information on account of her desire to leave
Marion, where, she said, she was under fire photographically and
socially, and was growing weary of it all. Although I sent Miss Harding
pictures of the hotel and instructions as to how one reaches there, she
did not decide to join me. Which, from the standpoint of the following
incident, was a good thing.
[Illustration: When “the stage” went to Marion during the famous
Harding “front porch” campaign in 1920]
About the third or fourth week of my stay in the mountains, Mr. Harding
sent the first communication which ever came from him to me by personal
messenger.
I had been out walking in the late afternoon, and when I came into the
somewhat deserted lobby of the Eagle Bay Hotel the manager at the desk
called to me that a gentleman in the lounging room wished to see me. Of
course, having been warned by Mr. Harding of shadowers and reporters,
I became frightened, and it was with some misgivings that I approached
the man who now came toward me with the query, “Is this Miss Britton?”
I said it was, and in turn asked him who he was and why he wished to
see me.
He immediately delivered into my hands a rather bulky envelope which
was obviously more than a mere letter, and asked that I follow the
instructions which he told me I would find inside. I retired to my
room to do so. Mr. Harding had not dropped me a note apprising me of
this proceeding. In the package he had enclosed $800 in bills and a
short, hurried note, which he asked me to please return with one from
me, telling him the money had been received and indicating the amount.
This I did, not sending him, however, any of the love-letters I had
written and been saving up to this time, but merely doing exactly as he
requested. Then I joined the gentleman below.
The messenger was a man of slight build, with ruddy complexion and
pleasing manner. Inasmuch as it was impossible for him to leave Eagle
Bay before that evening (there being no train out), we took a walk down
the road, and afterward returned to sit awhile down by the lake, on
one of the porches of the casino. I had gone about very little with
the young crowd up there, preferring for many reasons to be by myself
the greater part of the time and to retire early, and I knew that this
messenger had come direct from the one man I would rather be with than
all the others put together. Therefore I felt friendly toward him.
He had not told me his name, and his obvious reticence had piqued my
curiosity. When I inquired of him who he was, he indicated that he
did not care to disclose his correct name. On his finger, however, he
wore a signet ring, rather an unusually good-looking one I thought,
and I made out the initial “S.” “Mr. S.” I called him then, and he
smiled and substituted the name “Scott.” So “Mr. Scott” it was during
the remainder of his visit. He seemed to think I had selected the most
God-forsaken, undesirable place in the world, and I did not blame him,
for the mosquitoes were more than usually aggressive that evening. I
had a lot of fun with him, and discovered to my delight that he had
quite a sense of humor in the many suggestions he had for making Eagle
Bay a passably habitable place for human beings who had small regard
for where they lived!
The following Sunday in the paper I happened to see a picture of a man
who, in this narrative, I shall call Tim Slade, chief secret service
man and bodyguard to the President-elect, and in this newspaper
likeness I identified the messenger who had come to me at Eagle Bay. In
the same paper there was an excellent enlarged snapshot of Miss “Daisy”
Harding and Mrs. Votaw, her sister, together in the garden of their
father’s home at Marion, and I cut it out and have it now, framed.
My sister Elizabeth, writing from Chicago, kept me pretty well posted
about the baby, but there were times when I felt I just must get back
immediately to her. I managed to gain several pounds while in the
mountains, and in early August, if I remember correctly, I returned to
Chicago. I found the baby pink and white, like a peach blossom, and
was delighted with Mrs. Woodlock’s fine care of her. She was getting
prettier and prettier every day. And, oh, that Harding smile which
captivated everyone who saw her!
_50_
July 22nd, 1920, Warren G. Harding formally accepted the nomination for
the Presidency of the United States, delivering his acceptance speech
at Marion, Ohio, to the thousands gathered in Garfield Park to hear
him. I never had the privilege of hearing Mr. Harding in his supreme
moments, though I bought all the available newspapers and thrilled
second-handedly at his speeches. In the public utterances of my beloved
hero were instanced variously the characteristics which I knew so
well dominated his life movements, and I need not cite passages to
illustrate the sincerity by which he seemed to be actuated in his every
purpose. However, in the papers which I have retained, now becoming
yellow and worn, as well as in my huge Harding scrapbook which contains
clippings from many newspapers dating from the time of his senatorship
to his death, I find marked passages which have moved me deeply and
in which I have seen the character of the real Warren Harding. “These
are the things I so love in him,” I think as I read them over. His
humbleness, kindness, good will, generosity, sympathy, honor, trust in
mankind, honesty, fidelity to friends--these qualities mark the Warren
Harding the people love and revere. The concluding paragraph of his
speech, accepting the Presidential nomination, is as follows:
“I would not be my natural self if I did not utter my consciousness
of my limited ability to meet your full expectations, or to realize
the aspirations within my own breast, but I will gladly give all that
is in me, all of heart, soul, and mind, and abiding love of country,
to service in our common cause. I can only pray to the Omnipotent God
that I may be as worthy in service as I know myself to be faithful
in thought and purpose. One cannot give more. Mindful of the vast
responsibilities, I must be frankly humble, but I have that confidence
in the consideration and support of all true Americans which makes me
wholly unafraid. With an unalterable faith and in a hopeful spirit,
with a hymn of service in my heart, I pledge fidelity to our country
and to God, and accept the nomination of the Republican party for the
presidency of the United States.”
All the editorial panegyrics which followed the unexpected and tragic
death of Warren G. Harding might well have been based upon any one of
the above ideals of service to his country and to his God. Adding three
words to the shortest sentence in the paragraph quoted above, he could
truthfully have said, “One cannot give more _than one’s life_.”
These inherent qualities of nobility in Warren Harding were readily
discernible even to those who knew him slightly, but the friends
who knew him intimately as a man as well as a President carry in
their hearts the memory of sincerity and loyalty in the numberless
manifestations of his service to others. And what more meetly parallels
the above quoted paragraph, and others of similar manfulness, than
the text upon which the President’s lips rested when he took the oath
of office? This text, kissed by the President as a seal of his oath,
is the eighth verse of the sixth chapter of Micah and reads: “He hath
showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of
thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy
God?”
_51_
Back in Chicago, after my several weeks’ sojourn in the mountains, I
set about immediately to seek admittance into the Republican National
Committee offices in a secretarial capacity, so that I might help in
a small way to elect my hero. The headquarters were in the Auditorium
Hotel. There I went and, upon hearing that Congressman Martin B. Madden
was there, I went to see him. I explained that Mr. Harding had been
kind enough to put me in the United States Steel Corporation in New
York in 1917; that I came from Marion and had known him as a child;
also that I was a girlhood chum of Judge Grant E. Mouser’s daughter
Annabel, Mr. Mouser having been at one-time a Congressman and close
friend of Mr. Madden. Mr. Madden forthwith took me in to Captain Victor
Heinz’s office and introduced me as a friend of Mr. Harding. Captain
Heinz was from Cincinnati; I afterwards met some of his relatives
at the Mouser’s in Marion where they visited. Captain Heinz in turn
took me to Mr. Frank A. Nimocks, whose regular job was postmaster in
Ottumwa, Iowa. He “took me on” in a secretarial capacity immediately
at a salary, if I remember correctly, of $35 a week. He had charge of
the distribution of Republican campaign lithographs--a highly pleasing
branch of the work to me. Next door to our office was that of the
afterwards Postmaster-General, Hubert Work.
[Illustration: The author, while employed by the National Republican
Committee in campaign work in Chicago, in the fall of 1920]
I was very happy to be a Harding booster; in fact, of all the work I
have ever done, that was the most enjoyable. _Everything_ was Harding!
I wrote to Mr Harding’s sister Daisy, telling her where I was, and in
her letter she said she knew how happy I must be to be working for my
“hero.” She well knew he was that to me.
It seemed to be rather generally known in the offices along the
corridor that I came from Marion, Ohio, and it is very likely that
those who were not acquainted with this fact learned it from me, for
I was the proudest person alive and wanted everybody to know where I
hailed from.
Many notables were in and out of campaign headquarters, some of whom
I met. Mr. Charles E. Witt, one-time secretary to Governor Harding of
Iowa, had charge of another phase of the Harding picture distribution
work and had his desk in our office. When Governor Harding came in one
day Mr. Witt introduced me as a “friend of the next President.” In some
such similar manner I was introduced to Senator New, whom I had often
heard Warren Harding speak of and whom I was anxious to meet so that I
might tell Mr. Harding I had met him.
Political fanatics roamed in and out of the headquarters as well as
substantial party supporters, and I have devoted a whole page in my
Harding scrapbook to clippings concerning one, Everett Harding, who
falsely claimed to be a cousin of Warren G. Harding and embarrassed the
President-to-be through spurious publicity.
Mrs. Woodlock was living on 48th Street during that time, and
invariably when I left the offices of the Republican National
Committee it was to go directly to her home to see our baby,
Elizabeth Ann. I would usually reach there so fatigued I could scarcely
stand, but what recuperative powers her baby exuberance had for me!
And Mrs. Woodlock’s hearty laugh would ring through the length of the
apartment as she related to me something amusing that had happened
during the day. Or she, with her daughter Ruth, would show me how my
baby had learned to laugh, and we would all bend over her, each trying
to bring to her face the Harding smile that quickened my heart and
made the others cry, “Isn’t she a darling!” Aunt Emma, gentle soul,
would hobble into the room and say, as she said over and over again
to me those days. “I don’t often take to babies, Mrs. Christian,
but Elizabeth Ann certainly has won my heart!” She was her father’s
daughter, all right.
[Illustration: _THE OFFICIAL REPUBLICAN CAMPAIGN SONG_
HARDING
You’re The Man For Us
WARREN C HARDING
Republican Candidate for President
CALVIN COOLIDGE
Republican Candidate for Vice President
Words and Music by
AL JOLSON]
_52_
I wanted very much to see Mr. Harding, of course, not having been with
him since June, and when I wrote to him in Marion that I would leave
Chicago for our home town the night of election and see him there, I
immediately had his hearty approval and his worded assurance by letter
that he was “hungry” to see me. That was the word he used.
At campaign headquarters they knew of my intended visit to Marion and,
before I left, Mr. Witt handed me a letter of appreciation. I have this
letter pasted in my Harding scrapbook. It commends my “faithfulness,
efficiency and initiative” in the campaign work at the Republican
National Headquarters. I do not remember how Mr. Witt happened to
give me this letter, but I recall very vividly one story which the
Ohio Democrats, in casting about for propaganda, were endeavoring to
circulate. It stirred me to such bitter indignation that my expressed
desire to work overtime, or all night if necessary, to effect its
immediate repudiation, may have been so marked as to excite wonder on
the part of those about me. The remembrance of my zealous belligerence
may have prompted Mr. Witt’s letter of appreciation.
The story to which I allude had to do with the propaganda of a
statement that Mr. Harding’s family had a strain of colored blood in
their veins. I do not know how the promoters supported their story
nor whence its origin; I only know that my being revolted at such a
suggestion. The first time it reached my ears was one morning when my
boss at campaign headquarters received an out-of-town telephone call,
apprising him that such a story had been circulated in that particular
town, and requesting suitable literature as a means of refutation. Well
I remember how he turned to us in the office, repeating what had been
said to him over the phone, and how someone in the office said, “Tell
them it’s a damned lie,” and how I reiterated with all the intensity of
one who knew better than anyone else the falsity of such story, “Yes,
tell them it’s a _damned lie_!” I was defending my own baby.
The following day as I entered the headquarters I found, stacked
outside along the corridor and inside our offices, great piles of
genealogical sheets, tracing, in diagram form, the Harding stock back
to Stephen Harding, who was born about 1624.
It is needless to comment upon the reaction of this piece of unfair and
unsuccessful propaganda. All one needs to do is to recall the Harding
majority, unprecedented in the history of national elections.
_53_
The evening of the election, November 2nd, 1920 (Mr. Harding’s
birthday), I took a midnight train for Marion, Ohio, with a view to
returning to New York and even possibly to the United States Steel
Corporation. I had an idea if I could get back to New York I might work
out some plan whereby I could have our baby with me, though my ideas as
to how such a plan would develop were vague. My sister Elizabeth again
promised to watch over her for me, and I myself planned to return to
Chicago for Christmas anyway. But the hurt I experience every time I
leave Elizabeth Ann is a hurt of indescribable poignancy, just as the
homesickness I experience in being separated from her is torture in the
raw, like a thing one can stand only so long before breaking.
My train pulled into Marion about seven the following morning. About
half-past six I called the porter and asked with pardonable excitement
in spite of inward assurance, “Well, porter, who is our new President?”
He grinned from ear to ear. “Harding’s the man, Miss,” he replied. I
sprang out of bed with a thumping heart and dressed quickly.
Everybody in Marion had been up all night and had only just retired
about six that morning. So I was informed by the first girl friend I
telephoned upon my arrival. She herself had just gotten into bed. So I
told her to return to her sleep, and, in spite of her insistence that
I come right up to her home, I went to the Marion Hotel for the time
being. I had told none of my friends of my coming and did not intend to
impose upon them, but when I talked with Mrs. Sinclair over the phone
she said she would not permit me to remain even for one night in the
hotel, where I had, by this time, settled myself and had my breakfast.
She told me to go out to her sister’s, because she herself had company.
I did not call up Daisy Harding until the next day, knowing she must be
exhausted with excitement and company.
Mrs. Sinclair’s sister lived on a street in which several houses had
been converted into temporary clerical headquarters during the famous
Front Porch campaign period, and she lived beyond these houses in the
house almost at the end of the street.
_54_
I wanted to see Mr. Harding first of all, and so I telephoned Tim
Slade, the secret service man whom I had first met at Eagle Bay, and
asked him to make an engagement with Mr. Harding for me. I met Mr.
Slade, who was also bodyguard to the President-elect, that evening in
front of the post office and he took me out East Church Street and Mt.
Vernon Avenue and down to a little house where Mr. Harding soon met
me. It was one of the houses I have spoken of which were used by the
campaign clerical forces, and the sun parlor into which I first entered
was filled with desks and papers. Evidences of great activity were
apparent.
Tim Slade stood outside the front door and I had to wait only a few
moments for Mr. Harding. He came up the short flight of steps and
entered the door which Tim held open for him.
“Why, good evening, Nan!” he said. The door was closed behind him and
we were alone. We went into the room on the left, which had evidently
been used as a dining-room when the house was occupied as a home. The
shades had already been drawn down, but Mr. Harding whispered to me as
he greeted me with kisses that we would be wiser to go on out into the
kitchen. The kitchen was almost totally dark except for the shaft of
light which came from under the swinging door we had just come through.
We stumbled around until we found a chair where Mr. Harding could sit
and hold me on his lap.
After affectionate greetings, I exclaimed softly, “Oh, sweetheart,
isn’t it _won_derful that you are President!” He held me close, kissing
me over and over again. Our eyes were now becoming accustomed to the
darkness and I could see his face dimly outlined. Oh, how dear he
was! I repeated my exclamation. “Isn’t it _won_derful that you are
President!” He looked at me some time before he answered. Then his
“Um ... say, dearie, do you love me!” showed me that the glories of
a victorious hero were submerged in the grander glories of a lover’s
delight in being with his woman. “_This_ is the best thing that’s
happened to me lately, dearie!” he whispered.
“How’s our little girl?” he asked when I had settled myself back in his
arms for the talk I knew would be all too short. It delighted me to
tell him all about Elizabeth Ann. Even then I had some snapshots and
the first baby picture she had had taken. I showed them to him after
we had again come back to the light of the dining-room. “Thought you
said her ears were _flat against her head_!” he teased with an adorable
smile. I observed then for probably the first time that the camera had
not so registered. “But they really _are_!” I affirmed.
[Illustration: Elizabeth Ann at six months]
Then we talked of other things and Mr. Harding gave me two (or maybe
three--I cannot remember) $500 bills. “Now, put these away, Nan, where
they’ll be safe--where are you going to keep them?” he asked, as I
opened my mesh-bag and lightly dropped them into it. “Oh, I’ll take
care of them all right, darling,” I assured him, as I thanked him for
what I told him was far more than I should need. I had always found
that with his letters I experienced a greater sense of safety when I
carried them with me constantly than when I left them at home in a
dresser drawer, so I decided I would do the same with this large amount
of money.
While Mr. Harding and I stood there, he getting out the bills for me,
I glanced down at the array of papers on the desk or table in front of
me. The paper on top caused me to look at them more closely; they were
concerning Mrs. Harding’s first marriage to Mr. DeWolfe, and stated
that she had been obliged to obtain a divorce because of Mr. DeWolfe’s
intemperance in drink. I read further to the end of the page and a
wave of sympathy for Mrs. Harding swept over me. I knew of her son by
Mr. DeWolfe and of how they said he had followed in the footsteps of
his unfortunate father, and it really grieved me to think how one’s
personal sorrows must be unearthed to be made the topic for discussion
by a gossipy public. And the enormity of Mr. Harding’s secret and mine
again possessed me as I thought triumphantly, “They haven’t got _our_
story!” And when I spoke of this to Mr. Harding he agreed with me that
Providence had protected us.
Mr. Harding left ahead of me, returning to his home only about a block
away. Of course Tim Slade did not know that I was far better acquainted
with every corner of Marion than he ever could be, and when he asked
me where I was going I told him I was going out on East Center Street
to see a girl chum of mine. I do not remember in whose car we drove,
probably one of the official cars that were at Tim’s disposal, but
I remember we drove out East Church Street and Tim let me out at a
particular corner which was a block or so away from the home I intended
visiting that evening.
_55_
It was the following day or the day after that I went out to see Miss
Daisy Harding. She had as a guest in their home her sister’s daughter,
the daughter of Mrs. Charity Remsberg of California, the sister to whom
Mr. Harding had told me he would not hesitate to confide our secret.
Miss Harding’s niece looks remarkably like her Aunt Daisy. It was
during one of my visits with Miss Harding, perhaps while I was visiting
with her during her lunch hour at high school where of course she was
still teaching, that I told her I had a picture of Mr. Harding which I
wanted him to autograph. I thought it better to ask him to autograph it
with Miss Harding present. She immediately said she was sure he would
do it for me and suggested that we walk over to the headquarters and
see him after her school hours, some evening.
The headquarters, Mr. Harding’s office, was in the residence next
door to his own home on Mt. Vernon Avenue, the former home of the
Christians, George B. Christian being his private secretary. If Tim
Slade ever exhibited a look of surprise over anything that he had
witnessed up until then, or that he has known since, certainly it has
never surpassed the look of surprise that registered upon his face when
he beheld Nan Britton approaching the Harding Headquarters with Daisy
Harding. He stood stock-still for a moment. Of course I did not appear
to know him. We learned upon inquiry that Mr. Harding was with Mr. Will
Hays, who had managed his campaign. “Let’s walk around outside and
peek in the window,” suggested Miss Harding. This we did, leaving the
picture with someone in charge who said they would see that Mr. Harding
autographed it for me in due time. Through the window we could see Mr.
Harding at his desk in earnest conversation with Mr. Hays whose back
was toward us. How we attracted the President-elect’s attention I do
not remember, but Mr. Hays turned and looked out and smiled and Mr.
Harding immediately came out the side door. We shook hands formally,
and I thought Mr. Harding looked slightly annoyed; perhaps he was.
Anyway I asked him if he would mind autographing the picture for me.
It was a photograph he had found in his desk in the Senate office (so
he told me in New York in 1917) and had said to himself when he found
it, “I’m going to give this picture to Nan,” and Miss Harding and her
family had agreed it was the best likeness they had ever seen when I
showed it to them before taking it over for his autograph. “Where did
you get that picture. Nan?” inquired Miss Harding, “I have never seen
one like it.” I think I told her I had gotten it at the Republican
Headquarters in Chicago. It is possibly one of perhaps a very few
copies in existence. I have never seen one except my own.
After talking with us a few moments, Mr. Harding walked back into the
office and Miss Harding and I went downtown. Frank, the chauffeur
the Hardings had for so many years, was just ready to go down in the
President-elect’s official car and he drove us.
A few days later I obtained from the headquarters my own special
photograph of Mr. Harding, duly autographed in the handwriting which
was so familiar to me. I remember Miss Harding inspected it closely and
said, “Yes, that’s his writing all right,” indicating that he had not
given it to a possible copyist to do for him. Could she have known of
the thousands of words her brother had written to me! On the bottom of
the photograph he had inscribed, “To Miss Nan Britton, with the good
wishes of a Marion neighbor and friend, Sincerely, Warren G. Harding.”
[Illustration: This photograph was conventionally inscribed to the
author in Marion, Ohio, after Mr. Harding’s nomination for the
Presidency in November of 1920]
_56_
Those were exciting days for Marion, Ohio. I remained in our home town
visiting various friends of mine for about two weeks, long enough
I remember to harm me physically, for I tried my best to be one of
the “devils” into which it seemed that a good many of the younger
society people had developed during the campaign period. I was almost
back in the weakened condition I had partially pulled myself out of
through early-to-bed hours in Chicago. However, I was determined upon
proceeding to New York.
While in Marion, I kept the $500 bills in my silver mesh-bag, as I
have already stated. This was, I must say, more money than I had ever
received from Mr. Harding at one time, but I had told him that I wanted
to buy a coat, and that one item might require a goodly part of one
of the $500 bills. I remember one night when I was visiting Annabel
Mouser Fairbanks, we had been up well into the morning, and when I
retired I very carelessly, though not intentionally so by any means,
left my mesh-bag downstairs on the chair where I had been sitting
during the evening, “keeping it right with me.” Wilfred Schaffner and
John Fairbanks, Annabel’s husband, remained up playing cards long after
Annabel and I had retired. The next day John said to me, “Say, you are
a fine one to leave a bunch of money around like that? You can see
right through that mesh-bag! Don’t you know we never lock our doors?
What are you going to do with all that money, anyway?” I explained
it was money I was to invest for my brother-in-law in stocks when I
reached New York.
About the middle of November I reached New York and stayed two weeks
with a girl friend, whose apartment was at the Poinciana at Amsterdam
and 120th Street, the apartment where Mr. Harding and I went to spend
an afternoon in January of 1919.
Although I did look into the matter of positions while in New York,
my enthusiasm about actually taking a position waned with my fading
strength, and at the end of two weeks, thinking myself in no physical
condition to remain in the East alone, and having consulted a doctor
who confirmed my belief and ordered me back to Chicago to complete rest
for a month at least, I took the train back to that city.
However, I did buy a squirrel coat and some Christmas gifts for my
family and for Mrs. Woodlock and her daughter Ruth and Aunt Emma, which
shopping expeditions took all my surplus strength.
It seems to me that Mr. and Mrs. Harding and some friends of theirs
went South during the month of December, 1920, to visit the Scobeys,
returning to Marion about a month later. Of the Scobeys I have already
spoken. Mr. Harding and I had discussed them as possible foster
parents for our baby who had not been born when we had entertained
such thoughts. About the middle of January Mr. Harding wrote to me
from Marion, suggesting that we endeavor to hit upon a suitable
plan of action in connection with settling more or less permanently
the all-important question of Elizabeth Ann. That question had been
paramount in my thoughts. It was probably the main cause of my
continued physical weakness; and I agreed with him that something would
have to be done.
_57_
The latter part of January Mr. Harding sent for my sister Elizabeth to
come to Marion to see him. When she returned to Chicago, she repeated
to me his almost desperate concern about a final, permanent arrangement
for caring for our child. She told me how they had discussed at length
the advisability from many angles of her taking Elizabeth Ann, and how
Mr. Harding had paced the floor of his office (the same office in the
Christian home where he had sat with Mr. Will Hays when his sister
and I had beckoned for him to come out) and said, “My God, Elizabeth,
you’ve got to help me!” She told me that he had said to her, “Nan is
just a child in many ways and must be guarded and guided,” a statement
I think I resented just a little because I felt I had thus far
engineered our secret safely. Mr. Harding told Elizabeth, “I would not
hesitate a minute to give you and Scott $300 or $400 a month to care
for Elizabeth Ann if you would adopt her.”
My sister on this occasion had taken with her a picture of Mr. Harding
to him to autograph for her. It was one of those for which he had posed
at Moffett’s in June of 1920, after which sittings he had rushed out
from Moffett’s to see me, and Elizabeth said that when she showed it
to Mr. Harding he said he preferred it to all the others taken at that
time. His autograph for Elizabeth is as follows:
“With greetings and good wishes to Mrs. Scott A. Willits, with that
high regard which goes to the daughter of a valued friend.
WARREN G. HARDING.”
Elizabeth reported to me very graphically that visit with Mr. Harding.
I was so upset over the whole situation that I must have listened but
dully to the things she said. The above statements are all I can recall
now, with the exception of one other. This “one other” stands out
clearly above everything else that was told me by Elizabeth. She said
that when she entered his office he shook hands with her and remarked
with his Harding smile, “You are looking very stunning, Elizabeth!”
Knowing his charm when he said complimentary things, I must confess to
a tiny bit of jealousy, though I was naturally proud that he found my
sister so attractive. I loved Elizabeth very dearly.
Elizabeth and I discussed very fully after that visit the advantage
of such an arrangement, both from Elizabeth Ann’s standpoint and from
mine. It must have been about this time that Elizabeth told me that
she had been obliged to tell her husband, Scott Willits, the truth.
Although I resented this further confidence on her part at the time,
it was understandable in the light of many mysterious movements both
on my part and on the part of my sister, and it was only natural that
Elizabeth should take her husband into the secret.
[Illustration: This inscription is to the sister of the author--1921]
I wanted so much to have the baby with me. To give her up completely
through a legal adoption meant the greatest sacrifice of my life.
Elizabeth presented the question to me in the light of my helping Mr.
Harding at a time when he genuinely needed my co-operation. Of course I
wanted to help my darling, but I loved our child with a devotion that
was equal in its intensity to the love I felt for her father. I was so
profoundly disturbed over the thing that my sleep became nightmarish;
my nerves seemed to be gone completely.
Of one thing I was certain in my mind: I would not consent to Elizabeth
Ann’s being adopted by anyone, not even my sister and her husband,
unless I could have full control over her future, her education and her
welfare in general. For some reason my brother-in-law took exactly the
opposite viewpoint when we discussed it with him, and resisted such a
plan, desiring, as I desired, to have full authority. While I could
not understand then his attitude, I can more charitably view it now,
for indeed a child with three parents means “a house divided against
itself.” Scott Willits, my sister’s husband, was with the Chicago Opera
Company then, and they were about to go on tour. Elizabeth and he and
I talked and talked but what I agreed to did not seem to be what Scott
would agree to, though Elizabeth loved me so much she would have done
anything to make it possible for me to control my own child.
_58_
It must have been in early February, 1921, that Mr. Harding wrote
to me, telling me he and his family were going to Cleveland to have
some dental work done and that I should meet him at the Hotel Statler
there. I did so, following his instructions to await a messenger on
the mezzanine floor who would bring me a note in his (Mr. Harding’s)
handwriting so that I should know it was all right to accompany him
to where Mr. Harding would be waiting for me. This messenger, whose
name I do not recall, evidently thought I had considerable influence
with the President-elect, for he talked to me very earnestly about
certain things that Mr. Harding “ought to do,” all of which I listened
to without much comment. Then at the appointed time he escorted me
upstairs to the room which had been reserved for our interview. Mr.
Harding joined me in this room almost immediately and we remained there
for an hour or so. Outside the door a guard was stationed.
Mr. Harding looked worn and I asked him if he had had a trying time at
the dentist’s, to which he replied, “I’ve been in the chair for four
hours straight, Nan,” with a wry smile. I tried to kiss the memory of
it away.
I told Mr. Harding how I felt about the adoption, and that I could not
bring myself to give our child up to anyone. He said he understood how
I felt, but that the time had come when we would have to devise _some_
means of taking care of her and he did not feel the home of the nurse
was the proper place.
“How about putting her in a Catholic Home, dearie?”, he inquired
gently. I was sitting on his lap and at this suggestion I sat up very
straight and looked at him, astounded. “A Catholic Home!” I repeated
incredulously. “Why, Nan, they are not bad places--the surroundings are
refined, and she would receive excellent care until such time as you or
I might be able to take her,” he explained.
But the very idea of a “home” conjured up before me pictures too
distasteful for words. I remembered the “orphans’ home” near Marion,
which I occasionally used to pass when my father, who practised
medicine twenty-five years in Marion, took me with him on calls into
the country, and the memory of the pity and sense of fear with which I
shrunk from going past that “home” was something akin to the feeling I
experienced when Mr. Harding mentioned a “Catholic Home.” Once inside
such a place, perhaps one might have to remain--I didn’t know. And it
seemed all out of proportion to the character of our own special case
to suggest such a home for a President’s child.
I supposed I voiced these things aloud; I don’t remember. But Mr.
Harding was entirely sympathetic. “I’ll agree to anything you suggest,
dearie,” he said. Of course I had nothing to suggest. I would not
listen to his repeated suggestion that he see Mr. Scobey, or even that
he talk with his sister, Mrs. Charity Remsberg. I wanted Elizabeth Ann
myself, and somehow it seemed to me I would never _never_ see her again
if I allowed either of these families to take her, even though Mrs.
Remsberg _was_ my sweetheart’s sister.
“I guess the only thing is to let Elizabeth and Scott adopt her,” I
said resignedly. Then I could be with her at least. “See, here I have
Elizabeth’s itemized statement of her expenses if we decide to follow
such a course,” and I produced a small piece of paper on which my
sister had entered her necessary monthly expenses. Mr. Harding slapped
his Oxford glasses on his nose and looked at the final amount at the
bottom; he was never much interested in my money items except as a
whole. He agreed to the amount, saying if such an arrangement would
make me happier than would an arrangement such as he had suggested,
whereby later on I or he might take the baby as ours, he was agreeable
to it. He tried to impress upon me how I would want to take the baby
later on, but I could not see any future possibility of my being
able to do so; and would he not be in the White House for four long
years?--possibly eight. The adoption by the Willitses seemed to me
to be the only thing in sight, regardless of how I deplored the
arrangement.
Mr. Harding had met Scott Willits casually, immediately following his
nomination in Chicago. This meeting was prearranged by Mr. Harding
and me, and took place in the Florentine Room of the Congress Hotel.
It was late afternoon when Mr. Harding appeared where others besides
Elizabeth, Scott and I were waiting to shake his hand. He came in
hatless and the June warmth was in his face. I have never experienced
in Chicago, heat surpassing the heat of those exciting days of the
Republican Convention in 1920. My brother-in-law had been out of the
hospital less than a week where he had undergone a slight operation,
and his cheeks were sallow. How healthy Mr. Harding looked! His
greeting for all of us was one of such natural cordiality and long-time
friendliness that I am sure it did not go unremarked by others in
the room. We chatted several minutes, then Mr. Harding said with his
good-natured smile, “You know, we folks who run for office sometimes
neglect a lot of things--I just happened to think, standing here, that
I have had no luncheon!” I looked at the watch which he had given
me three years before. “Why, it’s four o’clock!” Mr. Harding looked
around cautiously at the others waiting to claim his time. “Yes, and
I must go--” I interrupted him. “You’re going _first_ and have some
luncheon--please!” I pleaded as he turned to Elizabeth and Scott and
held out his hand. I squeezed his fingers, and, as he turned away,
called after him again, “Don’t forget to eat!”
Now, on the occasion of my visit with him in the Statler Hotel, he
was recalling this meeting with Scott and assuring me that he thought
everything would be fine if we decided to proceed with the adoption
arrangement. I remember he said, “You love Elizabeth, don’t you,
dearie?” And when I sobbed against his shoulder, “Y-e-s, b-u-t,” he
said, “Well, I know she will do all in her power to see that you have
Elizabeth Ann with you as much as you wish.” I told him then that she
had indeed been a peach. “Yes,” agreed Mr. Harding, “I have never
known a more beautiful love between two sisters than that which exists
between you and Elizabeth.” He knew better than anyone else how I
adored my sister.
Then, in an attempt at a gayer mood, which I am sure the work of
the dentist and our serious considerations could not have genuinely
inspired, Mr. Harding told me how he thought he could have me often
in Washington. He promised to send for me just as soon after the
inauguration as possible. He gave me sufficient funds to carry me over
and to pay Elizabeth and Scott in advance, and urged me to complete
the adoption arrangements as soon as I comfortably could.
Then he kissed me goodbye and we parted again.
_59_
But Scott remained adamant. And so the controversy about where the
authority should rest which would govern Elizabeth Ann in the future
continued. However, Elizabeth and I did seek a lawyer, and I laid
before him in confidence my problem, and the three of us--Elizabeth,
Scott and I--had a long talk with him. He proved to be a judge--and a
Catholic. He pointed out to me the advantages in connection with the
Catholic “home” proposition, of course not dreaming he was advising
me in behalf of a child that belonged to the President of the United
States, or rather the President-elect. But I could not see that. The
only thing that seemed to hold out the promise of being with my baby
was the adoption.
When Scott left to go on tour with the Chicago Opera Company the final
decision had not been reached. But after he departed, Elizabeth wrote
to him, finally obtaining his consent to the adoption, which also
provided a legal guardianship which would give _me_ full authority over
Elizabeth Ann. In this way was the matter consummated, and I wrote to
Mr. Harding in Marion, telling him that final arrangements were being
made and requesting the necessary $300 which the lawyer said would
be his fee. Of course I had told the lawyer I wished the matter kept
strictly confidential, and I gave him my name as Nan Britton Christian,
though my name in the birth certificate registering our baby as
Elizabeth Ann Christian had been Emma Eloise Britton (Christian). Mr.
Harding sent me the $300 from Columbus where he was passing through on
his way to Washington for the inauguration, enclosing the money in a
note to me, the envelope being stamped only with a two-cent stamp and
not registered.
The lawyer was very kind to me, though Mr. Harding said upon my first
visit to him in the White House that the charge for the adoption papers
was exhorbitant. I have often thought that my statement to the lawyer
to the effect that Elizabeth Ann might some day have some money, and
that I wished to be in a position to take charge of all of her affairs,
may have had some influence in the matter of his arriving at so large a
fee. I know I did state to him that she would very likely have a small
amount to her credit immediately, and he suggested my investing it in
government bonds. However, in spite of the fact that Mr. Harding often
spoke to me of such a fund, he did not tell me definitely that he had
started it, and he died very suddenly, with an ocean between us.
I was distinctly given to understand by my lawyer that my legal
guardianship over Elizabeth Ann really constituted me the sole parent
in all but name. It was because I desired this statement in writing
from the lawyer that early in 1926 I was prompted to write to him,
recalling to his memory the circumstances surrounding the adoption and
requesting to know my legal status and whether I was obliged to report
back to the court in the matter. I told him I was under the impression
that it had been fixed up for all time so that such a report from me
was unnecessary. In his letter to me, dated June 26, 1926, he states,
“Where the appointment is only for the purpose of consenting to her
adoption and that having transpired and the accounting having been
filed and you having been excused from further accounting and further
duty by the court, there is no further necessity for a guardianship,
unless she receives some property and if that should happen in
Illinois, then you would be the legal guardian to control said property
until she becomes of legal age,” a statement widely at variance with
the positive one he made to me in 1921, viz., that by the arrangement
then made I would be Elizabeth Ann’s legal guardian, fully empowered
to act for her in all things, and that this arrangement would be final
and for all time. In fact, it was for this service I thought I paid
him the sum of $300. When I saw Mr. Harding for the first time in the
White House, I told him I was sure my Chicago attorney had been
obliged to go outside the regular procedure in cases of adoptions in
appointing me legal guardian for all time, thus endeavoring to explain
away the charge of $300 which Mr. Harding had termed “exhorbitant.” The
statement from my lawyer’s letter which I have just quoted--and the
general information contained in the full letter, which is of course in
my possession--does not point to the fact that I had at any time during
the legal proceedings been made Elizabeth Ann’s legal guardian for all
time as I fondly thought; though I may be wrong about this after all.
I am sure my sister Elizabeth and her husband both would be very much
surprised at this piece of contradictory information for they have
never been told by me that I have received such a letter and are, as I
was, under the decided impression that I am Elizabeth Ann’s guardian
for all time. Whether or not the difference in names given--the birth
certificate bearing my maiden name as Emma Eloise Britton (Christian)
and the adoption papers made out in the name of Nan Britton (Christian)
would in itself annul the adoption and make void even the action taken
back in 1921, I do not know. I know little about the law and its
intricacies.
[Illustration:
ADOPTION NOTICE.--STATE OF ILLInois. County of Cook, ss.--County Court
of Cook County. In the matter of the petition of Scott A. Willits and
Blanche E. Willits to adopt Elisabeth Ann Christian. Adoption. No.
45321.
To Elizabeth Ann Christian, Edmund N. Christian, Nan Britton
Christian, and all whom it may concern:
Take notice, that on the 2nd day of February, A. D. 1921, a petition
was filed by Scott A. Willits and Blanche E. Willits in the County
Court of Cook County, Illinois, for the adoption of a child named
Elizabeth Ann Christian and to change her name to that of Elizabeth
Ann Willits.
Now, unless you appear within twenty days after the date of this
notice and show cause against such application, the petition shall be
taken as confessed and a decree of adoption entered.
Dated, Chicago, Illinois. February 2nd, A. D. 1921.
ROBERT M. SWEITZER, Clerk.
Feb--3
Elizabeth Ann Willits
Adopted March 15, 1921
Mr. and Mrs. Scott A. Willits
]
In any event, the adoption cards announcing that Mr. and Mrs. Scott
A. Willits had adopted Elizabeth Ann Willits were dated March 15,
1921, were mailed out by the Willitses at that time, and Elizabeth Ann
(Harding) Christian became legally Elizabeth Ann Willits.
My brother-in-law had been during the war a private in the navy, and
after the armistice he very much desired to be released so that he
might get back to his musical vocation. He is a violinist, and the
duties of a sailor had necessarily done much damage to hands which were
entirely unused to manual labor. Through my appeal to Mr. Harding,
who was then of course a United States Senator, Scott was given an
honorable discharge which enabled him to return to his music. I
remember his telling us how the other boys at the Fort sat up and took
notice when it was learned that a United States Senator had intervened
in his behalf.
Therefore, when Elizabeth Ann became legally a Willits, it was agreed
that the story surrounding her adoption should be that her real father
had been a friend of Scott in the navy and that her real mother was
dead. On the whole it sounded plausible and seemed to “get over”
admirably. I found _myself_ unwilling however to state that the mother
was dead, and found that in the instances I was approached for an
explanation, it sufficed to say merely that the father was a friend of
Scott, which was true in the main.
_60_
Before Scott had returned from his Chicago Opera tour, Elizabeth and
I had begun to plan for a new apartment. They lived on the South Side
in Chicago, which is not generally conceded to be as fashionable or
desirable as the North Side, and Elizabeth and I agreed we would prefer
to be on the North Side. I was to live with them, of course, and my
room and board were included in the amount of money paid to them
monthly. This money, Mr. Harding agreed heartily with me, should always
be paid to them through me, and it always was, most of the time being
all cash, except for a couple of months when I sent them my personal
checks from New York. Outside of my board and room, as Mr. Harding
stated to Elizabeth during the Marion, Ohio, interview, “I mean, of
course, to take care of Nan in the matter of clothes, etc.” and he did,
too, liberally. With the first payment to the Willitses which he had
advanced, handing it to me in Cleveland upon my visit with him in the
Hotel Statler, Elizabeth and I chose some additional furniture for the
new apartment, and in a short time selected the apartment itself, which
was at 901 Lafayette Parkway. It had a sun porch and a back porch, and
even a real back yard, which we could share along with the other five
families who lived in the apartment house. We thought the yard ideal
for Elizabeth Ann to play in.
Mrs. Belle Woodlock shed real tears when we took Elizabeth Ann away
in the taxi, never again to return to her. Only once afterward did
I see Mrs. Woodlock, and it had then been so long since I had heard
myself called “Mrs. Christian” that she had to hail me several times,
on the elevated platform downtown, before I realized she was calling
to me. The baby had been with her, you see, over a year, and one grows
attached to a baby in that length of time even though the parents hover
near.
My sister Elizabeth continued for several weeks to play in the theatre
where she led the orchestra, but Scott’s work permitted him to be home
on certain evenings. Scott’s father, a hardy farmer, was visiting
the Willitses about a week after the baby had arrived to make that
her home, and both he and Scott were home one evening when the baby
exhibited unusual lung force and much temperament. The reason therefor
was doubtless because she had begun to cut her first difficult teeth.
I shall never forget how that night she cried herself to sleep in my
arms, her cheek, tear-wet, against my cheek, her tiny arms wrapped
about my neck. This, of course, excited wonder from Mr. Willits, Sr.,
who, not knowing of course that I was the mother, marvelled at my “way
with babies”!
In the spring of that year, 1921, possibly in April when most people
move, we went over to the North Side. Dr. and Mrs. John Wesener, the
latter a first cousin of Mr. Harding, also lived on Lafayette Parkway,
down the street in an apartment house right on Lake Michigan. I have
forgotten how we discovered this; perhaps Daisy Harding told us in a
letter after Elizabeth or I wrote to her giving her our new address.
Lafayette Parkway is but a block or so long and runs from West to East
between Sheridan Road and Lake Michigan. It was at the Weseners’ that
Daisy Harding visited when she came to Chicago, and it was when she
made such a trip--in the summer of 1921, I think--that she first saw
her brother Warren’s child, her niece, though, of course, not known to
her then as such.
_61_
I was at this time unable to walk a block without feeling the most
inexpressible sensations of fatigue. I would waken in the morning,
always being able to sleep all right--a sort of heavy, dead sleep--and
could not stand on my feet unless I immediately had something to
eat. At last I decided if I could but get into a hospital, anywhere,
where I would not be allowed to get out of bed for weeks, and where
I would be waited upon hand and foot, I might regain some of my lost
strength. There was a minor operation which I had contemplated having
for some time, and I thought I would go ahead and have it and thus
get into a hospital. I consulted doctors about it and was headed
definitely in that direction. I wrote to Mr. Harding. He sent me $450
for my expenses. He sent this of course in a plain envelope, as usual,
enclosing it several times in smaller envelopes.
Elizabeth, however, who had tried all along to persuade me not to go
to a hospital, finally did influence me to see her friend and family
doctor, Dr. Frederic L. Barbour, a physician whom Scott had known for
several years and who had skilfully treated Scott early in January of
1920, when the latter was seriously ill. Dr. Barbour had two offices;
one on the South Side and one in the Marshall Field Building downtown.
It was to the latter office that Elizabeth took me one noon. I shall
never forget how I looked those days. My eyes were weak as a direct
result of my general run-down condition and I wore tortoise-shell
glasses most of the time. I was extremely thin, and I had no smile
except certain times when I had been lying down for awhile and felt
comparatively rested.
Dr. Barbour was young and cheerful. I think it did me good to look at
him. He examined me thoroughly, took an X-Ray of my chest, and in the
end told me I was in a very excellent condition to pass on under any
anesthetic, refusing to treat me at all if I even so much as considered
an operation of any kind. I became Dr. Barbour’s patient at once,
giving up all thought of an operation, and remained under his care
for many months. And he became one of my best friends. He was obliged
among other things to treat me for a very weak condition resulting from
lack of recuperation after my baby’s birth, and he himself guessed
intuitively the whole of my story with very little information from me,
even to the identity of Elizabeth Ann’s illustrious father.
My sister Janet was living with us at that time, and my brother
“Doc” was also in Chicago and at our apartment frequently. It was
difficult for us to hear each other correct Elizabeth Ann, who was
now approaching the age when she had to be told right from wrong. It
annoyed Scott, my brother-in-law, fully as much as it annoyed me, I am
sure, to suffer her to be reprimanded first by one of us and then by
the other, though I felt I was naturally the one to give orders in her
behalf and the one whom she should obey above all others. This created
a state of continual dissension and superinduced an added nervous
condition in me which I was trying desperately with Dr. Barbour’s
treatment to overcome. Therefore, I determined the only thing for me
to do was again to yield my baby to the care of others and return to
New York for the oncoming winter, allowing the Willits home to regain
normal composure. I am sure this must have brought a great sense of
relief to Scott and I know it made things far easier of accomplishment
for my sister Elizabeth, in regard to both the baby and Scott.
_62_
In June of that spring, 1921, I made my first trip to Washington. I had
wanted so much to attend the inauguration on March 4th, but it did not
seem wise for me then to undertake a trip which would doubtless prove
physically detrimental to me; and there was much to do anyway, because
my precious girl was with us; and, mother-like, I felt no one could
handle her as well as I. So this June trip was the first I had made
to Washington since the President’s formal installation in the highest
office of the land.
Up to this time I had for the most part sent my messages to the
President through Tim Slade. The first letter I sent to Washington
after Mr. Harding’s inauguration I sent independent of Tim, simply
addressing it to my sweetheart at the White House, taking care,
however, to enclose it a couple of times in inside envelopes, on one
or both of which I had written, “This is a confidential and private
letter and is to be handed immediately to the President.” I followed
it with another, similarly addressed, in which I inquired if the first
one had been received. My distress was very genuine when I had Mr.
Harding’s reply that he had received but one letter, the second one I
had sent. The first one had contained several snapshots of Elizabeth
Ann and some of Elizabeth Ann and me. On the backs of these snapshots
I had written explanatory messages, calling his attention to her eyes,
or her expression, or something about her which resembled her father so
strongly.
So, after this experience Mr. Harding advised me to send the letters
in Tim’s care until he could think of another and better way. Which I
did, of course, Tim delivering them in person to the President. And I
had arranged through Tim, he fixing it with the President, for my first
visit to Washington.
As soon as I reached Washington I connected with Tim on the phone. It
seems to me he told me my appointment with Mr. Harding had already been
arranged. In any event, Tim called for me at my hotel and escorted me
to the White House.
Needless to say, I “took in” everything I could on that first visit. We
entered the executive offices through the main office entrance, which
is the entrance on the right of the White House portico, and passed
through the hall leading to the Cabinet Room. Here we waited for Mr.
Harding.
While we waited, I observed the Cabinet Room with less awe, I guess,
than natural curiosity. There was a long table around which stood the
substantial chairs of the twelve men who met there every Tuesday
morning and every Friday morning, each chair having the name of the
particular Cabinet member engraved upon a little metal plaque which
was fastened on the back. A fireplace, a clock on the mantelpiece, and
a few pictures completed the furnishings. Mr. Harding’s chair at the
head of the table interested me most, and I stroked the back of it and
sipped stale water from a partially filled glass which stood on the
table in front of the President’s chair. So this was where sat the
leaders of the greatest nation in the world! I recalled articles I had
read about this awesome office. One had recently appeared in _The New
York Times_ and was entitled, “At the Keyhole of the Cabinet Room.” But
I was not at the keyhole. I was on the really-and-truly _inside_!
We had been waiting only a very few minutes when Mr. Harding opened the
door, a door immediately behind and opposite his Cabinet Room chair. He
greeted me cordially and instructed Tim to remain in the Cabinet Room.
Then I preceded him into a very small adjoining room, a room with one
window. He explained to me that this was the ante-room, and crossed
over to another door which led into his own private office.
Once in there, he turned and took me in his arms and told me what
I could see in his face--that he was delighted to see me. Not more
delighted, however, than I was to see him.
There were windows along one side of the room which looked out upon
the green of the White House grounds, and outside, stalking up and
down, face rigidly to the front, moved the President’s armed guard.
But in spite of this apparent obliviousness on the part of the guard,
we were both skeptical and Mr. Harding said to me that people seemed
to have eyes in the sides of their heads down there and so we must be
very circumspect. Whereupon he introduced me to the one place where,
he said, he thought we _might_ share kisses in safety. This was a
small closet in the ante-room, evidently a place for hats and coats,
but entirely empty most of the times we used it, for we repaired there
many times in the course of my visits to the White House, and in the
darkness of a space not more than five feet square the President of the
United States and his adoring sweetheart made love.
I was tremendously interested in Mr. Harding’s private office.
First I examined his desk. It was very large and seemed to contain
much drawer space. Mr. Harding told me that in one of the drawers he
intended to keep my letters and anything that pertained to me, and
that for this reason his private secretary, George Christian, had
been instructed as at the Senate Office, to burn everything in that
particular drawer if anything should happen to the President.
On his desk stood a miniature portrait of his mother, and I observed on
my calls upon him at the White House that in her memory fresh flowers
frequently stood upon his desk near her portrait.
There was a grate fireplace directly opposite the President’s desk.
Here, Mr. Harding told me, he burned all the letters I sent him after
he had committed their messages to his heart. In this connection we
discussed the loss of the first letter and, deplorable as it was, Mr.
Harding said it “was done” and all we could do was to guard against
future losses. He begged me to write him _much_, actually mailing the
letters, however, only occasionally and a number at a time. He said he
would “sit right in that chair” (indicating his desk chair) and read my
letters and think of me. And his expressions of hunger for worded love
from me made me homesick in anticipation for the visits I knew could
nevermore be as they had been in the past. I promised him he should
have many love-letters, and I told him that after all, writing to him
and being near our blessed child were the only real joys in my life,
and to be separated from him for such long intervals was fully as great
a hardship for me as for him.
I recall the dress I wore upon that occasion. It was of white silk
crepe with a tiny black figure, a figure so small that from a distance
the dress looked grey. It was trimmed with a narrow border of cerise
and many-colored wooden beads. With it I wore a rather large picture
hat, also cerise, and grey suede slippers and grey stockings. The
excitement had brought unnatural roses to my cheeks and, despite my
physical weakness, I felt exhilarant and strong when I was with my
darling sweetheart.
In the ante-room there was a leather couch, so dilapidated that I
remember I remarked to Mr. Harding that one might think it had been
there ever since the White House was built. We used to sit there a
great deal, especially the times when Tim Slade would wait for me
either outside or on the other side of the President’s office, in a
large room beyond Mr. Christian’s office and far away from the sound of
our voices. And sometimes, especially later on in Mr. Harding’s brief
two and one-half years of service, it was wise that we should be away
from everybody, for I took many tears down to the White House.
_63_
On this first visit we discussed the wisdom of continuing to send
letters in Tim Slade’s care, and Mr. Harding seemed disposed to make
a change. I imagine he didn’t want to impose too much upon Tim and
didn’t wish to further arouse Tim’s curiosity. At that time Tim was out
of the secret service, I believe, though for a month or two after Mr.
Harding’s inauguration Tim said he helped George Christian until the
latter “got onto” things in a secretarial way.
The most direct channel through which my letters could be delivered
into his hands, Mr. Harding said, was to address them in care of his
valet. Major Arthur Brooks, a light colored man, who was, in the
opinion of Mr. Harding, entirely trustworthy and, what was better,
so far as Tim was concerned, Major Brooks was always availably near
to deliver them immediately without putting himself out to do so.
Mr. Harding always referred to him as “Brooks.” So it was arranged:
I was to enclose my letter to the President in another envelope,
sealed, and then enclose the whole in an envelope addressed to Major
Brooks personally, with a short letter to Brooks instructing him to
deliver the enclosure to the President immediately. I remember very
well, because I wrote so many of those letters, that they always read
something like this:
“MY DEAR MAJOR BROOKS:
“Kindly hand the enclosed letter to President Harding immediately upon
its receipt. This is in accordance with the President’s request.
Very truly yours, (Signed) E. BAYE.”
“E. Baye” was the name I used also when I wrote to Tim Slade, and was,
if I remember correctly, suggested by Tim, as a result of his first
trip to Eagle Bay in the summer of 1920, when he for the first time
delivered a communication from Mr. Harding to me.
After my visit to Washington when we had decided upon sending my
letters to the President in Major Arthur Brooks’ care, we never
experienced any further losses, and up until June of 1923, when Mr.
Harding left for Alaska and I sailed for Europe, I sent my letters to
my sweetheart in care of Major Brooks.
I have already stated that there existed a mutual agreement between Mr.
Harding and me to destroy each other’s letters, and as a result I have
in my possession only certain formal letters (from most of which I have
quoted near the beginning of my story) which I asked Mr. Harding if I
might keep. In view of the fact that I was to destroy all love-letters
from him, and these early letters contained no intimate allusions,
being the first ones he ever wrote me, he gave his permission for me to
keep them; otherwise, they, too, would have gone with the rest.
Two letters Mr. Harding sent me--one in 1918 and another in 1919, the
first to New York, in care of the United States Steel Corporation
office, and the second to Asbury Park addressed in error to the Hotel
Marlborough instead of the Hotel Monmouth--were never received. They
contained respectively $30 and $40 in cash. The third letter lost in
the mails was the one I have spoken of as having been sent to the
fictitious name of “A. Y. Jerose” and mailed from Chicago by me to Mr.
Harding in Atlanta, Georgia. So, with one letter sent to the White
House which he did not receive, there had been four letters sent which
had gone astray, two from Mr. Harding to me, and two from me to Mr.
Harding.
_64_
As I have said, things occur to me which happened and may be of
interest to the reader, but which I do not think of in chronological
order, hence occasionally I must go back to them. Such an incident
comes to my mind in connection with that first memorable visit to the
White House. I expressed my delight to Mr. Harding that “we” had beaten
his long-time Ohio rival, James M. Cox, so overwhelmingly for the
presidency. Mr. Harding shrugged his shoulders, evidently recalling the
following incident.
It was back in 1918, upon the occasion of one of my trips West when I
visited my mother in New Philadelphia, Ohio, where she was living and
teaching school, that I, doing up the breakfast dishes one morning,
took a notion to do some extra cleaning, and forthwith began to wash
the kitchen shelves and paper them with clean newspapers. I smoothed
the lower shelf with the front page of the local paper, stopping to
glance a second at the face which looked up at me. It was that of James
M. Cox, then Governor of the State of Ohio. He had recently made a
speech in New Philadelphia or thereabouts and his picture was appearing
for that reason in connection with his speech.
Shortly after that I returned to New York and work. In leaving New
Philadelphia, Ohio, I was obliged to go to a nearby town to catch the
fast 5 P. M. train, and had to take a taxi because a severe electric
storm had put the interurbans out of commission temporarily, and
the ride over and my excitement in catching the train and the warm
weather had inclined me to have some ice cream in the diner as soon
as I boarded the train. I had previously dined with my mother before
leaving. As I passed through the Pullman from my seat about midway in
the car, I noticed sitting in the end section a man whose face looked
strangely familiar. However, I quickly forgot it and passed on to the
diner.
When I returned I found that man sitting in the seat opposite my own,
the porter being engaged in making up his berth for him. I took my bag
and went into the ladies’ dressing-room, thinking I also would retire
early, and assuming that upon my return the gentleman in question would
have departed for his dressing-room.
However, when I came back, he was still there. I sat down opposite,
cupped my chin in my hand, and gazed out of the window into the
gathering darkness in which vagrant lights were flashing.
“Do you mind if I sit here until the porter has finished my berth?” I
looked up. “Certainly not,” I replied.
“It is very warm isn’t it?” he continued pleasantly.
“Yes, sir,” I answered. Then I looked directly at him. “Do you know,”
I said, as it suddenly dawned upon me where I had seen that face, “you
_look_ enough like the Governor of Ohio to be he?”
“I _am_ he,” replied Governor Cox.
Being somewhat familiar with Mr. Harding’s natural dislike for the man
opposite me, even though he had mentioned him to me but casually in the
course of our friendship, I was not hasty to speak with him further.
But he had evidently made up his mind to talk to _me_, and we gradually
drifted into conversation.
He had known Judge Sinclair, Mr. Harding’s friend, at whose home I had
been visiting when in Marion that trip, and of course I told him, with
encouragement from him, of other people I had visited, not forgetting
the Hardings on East Center Street. He asked me all about how I knew
them, and I told him Miss Daisy Harding had been my teacher in high
school. However, I did not, of course, even mention Mr. Harding’s name.
“I understand Mr. Harding is a great one with the ladies.” For no
apparent reason Governor Cox fairly tossed these words at me. I was
infuriated, probably more at the plural “ladies” than at anything else.
I replied as coolly as possible, “I don’t know anything about _that_; I
know he is very lovely to his wife.”
He inquired where I worked in New York and I told him in the United
States Steel Corporation. He asked me if they treated me nicely and I
assured him that they did, indeed. He became very friendly, offering
me a position in his own executive office in Columbus, Ohio, the
State Capital, if I cared to leave the Steel Corporation. I saw here
a possible opportunity to help my young brother Howard, and told the
Governor how I myself wanted my mother to allow him to join the army
or navy, but that mother would not give her permission and that Howard
was under age. Governor Cox said I should send him to Columbus to see
him and he would see that Howard got a commission. I was delighted
with this promise. (After I returned to New York I wrote Governor Cox,
reminding him of his promise and telling him it was a pleasure to meet
him, and I have a letter from him, which was sent for Howard to use as
a form of introduction, but which Howard never used and I retained.)
In the morning, I arose bright and early. I had not been able to
secure a lower berth and Governor Cox had the previous night urged
me to take his section, as it would, he thought, be more comfortable
for me. To which I replied that if he could get along in an upper I
ought to be able to, and I have a vivid recollection of mounting the
ladder that night, the porter on one side and the Governor of Ohio on
the other, assisting me into my upper berth. I was in the diner early
next morning, but had scarcely been seated when Governor Cox appeared
in company with another man who was obviously taking the Governor to
breakfast. They found their table, and then Governor Cox immediately
excused himself and came over and asked to sit a minute at my table. He
inquired after my health and my sleep and expressed the wish that some
time he would see me again.
When our train reached the Pennsylvania Station in New York, the red
caps were all busy and I proceeded to pick up my suitcase and mount the
stairs. But Governor Cox was on the platform and very kindly offered
to carry my bag. He said he was stopping at the Ritz-Carlton and had
come to join his daughter, whose husband, Mr. Mahoney, was sailing the
next day. He asked me to ride uptown with him. He said he would very
much like to have me meet his daughter Helen, and invited me to dine
with them at the Ritz-Carlton that evening. I was very frank to tell
him that I had no clean blouse, and that I really didn’t think I would
even dine with the King of England that night after my long journey to
New York. He left me at his hotel and I went on uptown, but before he
got out of the taxi, he put his hand on my knee and said, “Let me tell
you, young lady, I’d trust you anywhere in the world.”
I could hardly wait to relate this to Mr. Harding--the entire episode
I was sure would interest him. However, the knee business and Governor
Cox’s reference to Mr. Harding’s being a favorite with the ladies
infuriated him far more than it had me, and his letter in answer to
mine was the first of its kind I had ever received.
“I never did have any use for that man,” he wrote, “but now I despise
him.”
I could scarcely blame him, but why he should have scolded me I
could not understand. At least I could not understand it then. I
remember well Mr. Harding also wrote, “Perhaps Mr. Cox can assume all
responsibilities toward you more capably than I have done.” This was
cruel.
I slept little the night I got that letter and could not wait for
the morrow when I could phone my darling. During those days I very
often called Mr. Harding long distance. I usually called him at noon
during my luncheon hour, and I went across the street to the Equitable
Building. There was one particular girl who always got the call
for me, and she grew so accustomed to getting it that as soon as I
appeared above her at the switchboard, she inquired with a smile, “W.
G. Harding--Senate Chamber?” Sometimes she was smiling broadly when I
came out of the booth and I would not be surprised if she heard many
interesting conversations.
But when I nodded to the telephone operator upon this particular
occasion I just could not smile. I think she understood something was
wrong. She put the call through quickly. I reached him, as usual,
in the Senate Chamber. He was cool as could be over the phone and I
apologized and apologized, though in truth I hardly knew what for!
It grieved me to have him take such an unfair attitude. I was most
disconsolate.
But the following day came his letter of forgiveness, yes, of humble
apology, and his confession that it had been only his jealousy that had
prompted him to write as he had and to speak to me over the phone in
that way. He would never do so again, he was a “damned fool,” and so
on, but he loved me so much. “And after all, dearie,” he wrote, “there
is bound to be jealousy where there is love.” And I knew well he loved
me greatly.
Curious that the only man who ever really caused Mr. Harding a moment
of jealousy, on my account at least, should have been his opponent in
the Presidential election of 1920!
_65_
This brings to my mind the little personal catechism I underwent upon
that first visit to the White House. He had often in the early days
questioned me concerning other, younger, men. Of these younger fellows
he seemed not so much jealous as curious. But sometimes he pretended
jealousy. He often said to me, “Nan, darling, I don’t want you to be a
hermit maid.” And so I went occasionally to dinner or to the theatre
with fellows nearer my own age. But I told Mr. Harding about them.
Now, upon this first visit in the White House I thought his interest
in my social movements seemed almost pathetically curious. “Don’t go
off and marry any of the fellows you meet, dearie!” he pleaded with me
there on the dilapidated couch in the ante-room. As he spoke he blushed
faintly. “I love you so much. Nan--and I don’t like to have you be with
anybody else--that’s the real truth!” he finished lamely. I could have
screamed my delight at his concern. If he could only have realized that
the liveliness exhibited there with him was for me only reaction to the
stimulation I felt always when around him. Why, back in Chicago I felt
weak, and ill. I hugged him and whispered soothing negations in his
ear, denying emphatically that I should ever marry at all since I could
not marry him. Free or not free, I told him, I preferred Warren Harding
to all the other men in the world put together.
There would be opportunities for intimate companionship, he promised.
I told him _I_ was in no danger of being a hermit maid in that event.
I was free to be with him just as in the old days. And I hoped he was
going to be equally free. Yet somehow I inwardly lamented the personal
restrictions I felt the presidency would impose. I think it took Warren
Harding a few months to discover these restrictions.
After I returned to Chicago from my initial trip to Washington and
the White House, I prepared to go to New York. Scott, Elizabeth and
Elizabeth Ann were going down on a farm in Illinois, which is the home
of Scott’s people, and I left Chicago for New York about the same
time. That was in August. Scott’s mother and father adored the baby;
she seemed to make everyone love her, and people outside of the family
spoke about her “adorable smile,” which is the smile of her father.
On July 30th, 1921, I took Elizabeth Ann and went away for two days. I
wanted to be alone with her for a little space, away from everybody. We
took a lake boat and went across to St. Joseph, Michigan. Going over it
was a lot of fun for me to speak to strangers openly as “her mother,”
for Elizabeth Ann was too small to know things, and her affection
for me was always the very natural affection of a daughter for her
mother. We stopped at a hotel in St. Joseph, the name of which I have
forgotten, and the next day some time I held Elizabeth Ann in my arms
while one of those “tin-type” photographers snapped our picture, which
eventually found its way to Washington. She was so small that we could
not do much except walk about a bit and take a long ride in a touring
car which I hired by the hour. I remember Elizabeth Ann slept most of
the rather uninteresting ride we took about the country, but we were at
least together--mother and darling baby--and for two whole days!
[Illustration: In 1921]
When we crossed the gang-plank to board the steamer on our return,
a gentleman asked if he might assist me with my bag. I carried the
baby. I turned later to thank him and said, “Thank you very much,
sir.” Elizabeth Ann, with characteristic mimicry, looked up at him and
echoed, her Harding smile very evident, “Ver’ much, ver’ much,” which
delighted the whole crowd.
_66_
I stopped at the White House enroute East in August. I went to see
President Harding as soon as Tim Slade could make an appointment for
me. It seems to me that appointment was in the late afternoon, though
it is difficult to remember these details.
Leaving Elizabeth Ann had again thrown me into a state of mental
depression I could not shake off, and I was far from normally strong
and well in spite of the enormous good Dr. Barbour had done me. As he
said, I had been “pretty far gone nervously.”
I told Mr. Harding I contemplated plans for combining work with a
course at Columbia University that fall and winter. He heartily
approved of this. I told him I had understood that secretarial
positions were scarce in New York, but that if I _could_ get a good
all-day position I would take it and attend Columbia at night, unless
the strain proved too great. He did not encourage me to take an all-day
position, but he did make some suggestions with regard to obtaining
work, and offered to give me a card of introduction, and to write a
letter in my behalf, to the Collector of the Port of New York, Mr.
George Aldridge, whose office was of course in the Customs Building,
Battery Place. He told me Mr. Aldridge had been one of his appointees
and that he did not hesitate to ask such a favor of him. The card Mr.
Harding gave me to present to Mr. Aldridge merely bore his name,
Warren G. Harding, and, in his handwriting, “Introducing Miss Britton.”
Remembering Mr. Harding’s remark about making me White House
stenographer, a remark made to me one night in the earlier days when we
had dined at the Manhattan and I had lovingly prophesied the position
he now held, I said to him, “Sweetheart, couldn’t you let me come down
here and work?” I told him it would help to make me happier, inasmuch
as it didn’t seem possible for me to remain in Chicago and be only a
third parent to Elizabeth Ann. It was during that visit, I remember,
that his woman stenographer came in. I was sitting in a chair near Mr.
Harding’s desk and Mr. Harding was seated in his chair at the desk.
The stenographer came across the room and Mr. Harding looked up and
smiled and said, “Can’t read it?” She pointed to the words she couldn’t
make out (in his handwriting so familiar to me!) and he read them for
her. After she had gone out and closed the door, I said wistfully,
“Oh, I wish _I_ could work for you, darling!” Mr. Harding smiled--the
old smile of indulgence and love I liked to think he smiled best at
_me_--but shook his head. “It would never do, dearie,” he said. Then
he went on to picture in the face of his refusal how he would _love to
have me_, and how, if I _were_ his stenographer he would give me _all_
his dictation just to have me with him, and he feared the nation’s
business would suffer! Thus it was that he would picture for me the
things he would love to do, making their impossibility a thing of
unspeakable disappointment to me, and causing me to exclaim more than
once, “Oh, I _wish_ you weren’t in this position!”
We talked over the situation with regard to Elizabeth Ann and I
explained to Mr. Harding how difficult it had become to really work out
the three-cornered parentage. He said, “Well, just wait, dearie. Some
of these days I’ll take her myself,” but that prospect was at least
four years off, which to me seemed an eternity.
I showed him snapshots of Elizabeth Ann we had taken, and particularly
one which to me is the image of her father. He was delighted with
everything. We had to talk so fast, too, in order to say everything to
each other; and even then I never failed to leave without realizing I
had forgotten dozens of things I meant to say to him. It wasn’t at all
as it had been in the days when he was Senator. And his statement to
me, repeated substantially every time I went to the White House, only
added to my sorrow after I had left him--“I find myself longing to take
baby girls in my arms, dearie--I never used to feel so deeply moved,”
he would say, and the lights in his eyes were divine.
Mr. Harding gave me several hundred dollars and admonished me to be
careful in spending it so that people wouldn’t talk about me. Then I
left him. I do not really know the usual length of my visits with Mr.
Harding in the White House, but I do know that it is not possible for
sweethearts to spend three-fourths of their time in making up for lost
kisses and have much time left to discuss serious affairs. These visits
were never satisfying in length of time.
_67_
I went down to the Custom House to see Mr. Aldridge almost as soon as
I reached New York, armed with Mr. Harding’s card of introduction. The
deputy, Mr. Stewart, took me in to Mr. Aldridge’s office. With Mr.
Aldridge was another man whom he introduced to me, “Colonel William
Hayward, another friend of the President.”
The letter which Mr. Harding had told me he would write to Mr. Aldridge
had not as yet reached the latter’s hands, and so I was obliged to
explain my errand. Mr. Aldridge assured me he would do all in his power
to assist me, and Col. Hayward volunteered to do the same. I thanked
them both and tried to make it clear to Mr. Aldridge, after Col.
Hayward had gone out, that I needed the position from the standpoint
of salary, thinking by so doing I would entirely disarm him of any
suspicion as to why President Harding had taken the pains to intercede
for me.
I have often wished I had asked him frankly in the days that followed
to see the letter which Mr. Harding actually wrote to him. I imagine
the President wrote that I was the “daughter of an old friend,” etc.
But evidently what he did write was sufficiently strong. For two weeks
there were a good many people down there working directly or indirectly
to find a suitable position for the President’s friend! I am afraid
they all thought I wanted something much finer than I actually desired.
Mr. Aldridge early turned the onus of the job upon his assistant, Mr.
Stewart. Col. Hayward interviewed me with (what he said was) a view to
creating a position in his own office for me in case I found nothing
that pleased me.
As a matter of fact, I did not obtain work at all as a result of the
efforts exerted in my behalf by the Custom House officials. I took the
civil service examination at that time, but, having used my shorthand
only spasmodically since I left the Steel Corporation, my speed was
cut in half and I fell down on the stenographic examination, though I
passed creditably in typing.
The position I finally obtained came entirely through my own personal
contacts with employment bureaus, and was with an advertising man who
employed me mornings and certain afternoons during the week. The rest
of the time I spent getting out work for my journalistic course at
Columbia.
I located at 314 West 72nd Street, in a room on the top floor of a
studio apartment building. This structure has since been torn down and
one of the newer type of tall apartment buildings substituted.
Mr. Harding had always encouraged me to write as much as possible,
praising me for my letters which I wrote to him and which he said were
the most graphic letters he had ever read. He used to tell me how he
kept them under lock and key until he had absorbed every line of them,
often taking them to the Senate Chamber, where he so often wrote to
me, sitting apart from the other senators. “I am writing to you within
hearing of epoch-making speeches,” or “I am writing near the scene of
important legislative events,” he often said in his letters to me. And
the knowledge that he had so often expressed what seemed to me was
genuine pride in my writing encouraged me more than anything to strive
for a certain goal that year at Columbia--that goal being a fair mark
of excellence, of course.
_68_
In October of that year, 1921, I went again to Washington. I do not
remember at which hotel I stopped on each occasion, but on my various
visits to Washington I have stopped at the Raleigh, New Ebbitt,
Harrington, New Willard, Capitol Park, and, I think, at the Washington.
It seems to me it was upon this visit that Mr. Ferguson, another secret
service man, met me at the station with his Ford coupe. I do not
remember very distinctly whether it was after or before my conference
with the President that Mr. Ferguson asked if I would like to occupy
some of my time by driving. I thanked him and he took me for a drive
out along the Potomac. He seemed curious about me and endeavored
to “draw me out.” It gave me the keenest pleasure to pretend to
misunderstand his questions and to be naively ignorant of the motive
behind them. I am sure he must have despaired of being enlightened as
to my identity, even though the President had given him my correct name.
I told Mr. Harding at that time that I felt he was very foolish to
allow anyone but Tim Slade to meet me. I voiced my own faith in Tim’s
trustworthiness and put it up to him direct.
“Don’t you _trust_ Tim Slade, sweetheart?” I inquired.
I remember right where Mr. Harding stood, beside his desk, when I asked
him this. He shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows as he
answered, “Oh, measurably!” He told me he had tried to get Tim on that
occasion, but he was either busy or out of the city--probably out of
the city, for it always seemed to me Tim was at my beck and call, and
I am sure he must have been more so at the President’s. But I managed
to convince Mr. Harding that every new man he sent to me was just “one
more,” and he agreed we might better stick to Tim. “I like Slade all
right,” he conceded when I pressed him for an opinion. In fact, as time
went on, I was sure an element of affection in Mr. Harding’s attitude
toward the man who was our confidential intermediary. In any event,
that was the one and only time that Mr. Ferguson met me in Washington,
although he did come on one occasion to Chicago with some money when
the President was unable to secure Tim Slade’s services. Tim himself
reminded me of this in one of the many talks we have had during the
past two years.
The President listened eagerly to the latest news I had received from
my sister Elizabeth concerning our child, and upon these visits to
Washington I would invariably take with me pencilled scratches from
Elizabeth Ann, these constituting the “letters” she would occasionally
send to me. Naturally the enthusiasm with which I began these recitals
ended in tears for me, for I could not talk long with her father about
her without crying. And Mr. Harding’s eyes would grow heavy with
sadness as he turned the conversation into other channels and pulled
out a ready handkerchief to dry my eyes. He would try so hard to bring
a smile to my face!
“What did you say to Woodrow Wilson that made him laugh when he rode
with you the day of your inauguration?” I inquired of him upon one such
occasion of weeping.
“Why, dearie, I don’t know! Did I make him laugh?” he asked, himself
deeply amused at my query. I told him he must have done so because it
was in the papers. He smiled whimsically, seeming to get quite a kick
out of my credulity as to the accuracy of newspaper accounts.
Mr. Harding wanted to know whether I liked my work, and intimated that
he either had already spoken to another steel man who was a friend of
his or he intended to speak to him--J. Leonard Replogle. I know Mr.
Harding played golf with Mr. Replogle and two other men some time that
fall on Long Island. But I did not encourage him to use his influence
in getting me into another permanent position, for my movements were
too uncertain those days.
During that visit I asked Mr. Harding if I might be taken through the
rooms in the White House. We discussed the possibility of my running
into Mrs. Harding, and Mr. Harding said it was possible, though not
probable. It didn’t seem to worry him, and I was confident I could
handle such a situation, anyway. The only time I had met Mrs. Harding,
since the time back in 1915, when I went to their home on Mt. Vernon
Avenue in Marion to congratulate Mr. Harding upon his election to
the United States Senate, was one day in Chicago shortly after Mr.
Harding’s nomination for the Presidency. I had a friend with me who
was interested to meet Mrs. Harding and we waited in the Florentine
Room of the Congress Hotel, where we knew Mrs. Harding intended coming
to hold a brief reception. I was entirely at ease with her when she
finally made her appearance. And, if I may be permitted to so assume
without seeming presumptuous, there was in her manner toward me almost
an affection as I took her arm and led her over to where my friend
stood who wished to meet her. And so, there in the White House, I felt
entirely free from any apprehensions regarding Mrs. Harding’s attitude
toward me should we meet there.
“Sure, go along, Nan, and see the place!” said Mr. Harding when I was
ready to leave, or rather when he told me it was time for me to go. As
I look back upon that visit now, it is as though he might have said to
me, “Sure, visitors are allowed to go through the prison! Go along!”
for as a prison he soon regarded the White House.
That was the first time Mr. Harding had seen my squirrel coat and he
remarked that it was very beautiful. “But, Nan, darling, do be careful!
How in the world do you explain these expensive-looking things?” I
assured him I had not been approached for any explanations and I was
sure I could handle the situation if I were. As a matter of fact, later
on, when I went to school at Northwestern University in Evanston,
Illinois, I did feel obliged to make certain explanations, and I
simply named my sister as the donor of all things beyond reasonable
possibility of my own acquirement.
[Illustration: Mr. Harding was much worn within the first year after
his inauguration]
And so this particular visit ended with Mr. Ferguson, of the secret
service, taking me through the White House reception rooms, the private
dining-room, and many others which I was told were usually barred from
public view. We made our exit by the entrance which is on the left of
the portico as one enters the White House.
_69_
I was growingly introspective those days and especially after a trip to
the White House. I would ponder morbidly a future, four years of which
(Mr. Harding’s presidential years) seemed unalterably mapped out beyond
hope of change, wherein I seemed to be shut out from the happiness I so
longed to share with the two people I loved more than all else. I was
selfish to the point of forgetting that the man down in Washington whom
I loved and who loved me, as he kept writing me, “more than the world,”
was also bearing a burden of loneliness such as he never dreamed would
be his lot. So far he had not complained to me, though I felt the
presence of much unrest and unhappiness even as early as the visits I
made to him that fall. His was an attitude of constant hopefulness;
mine of constant regret for the conditions of our entire situation.
Already I could not measure the regret I was experiencing as a
result of the steps I had permitted to be taken in order to protect
Elizabeth Ann “legally,” that she might have a name and home. After
all, would I not have to undo all this when I revealed to her her real
identity, which I certainly expected to do? What, then, would be the
good of having provided her with a protection which was utterly false
fundamentally, notwithstanding the fact that I could not doubt the
kindly intentions of my sister and her husband? Where was the justice
of a law which would deprive a mother, worthy to be a mother, of her
child simply because that child was born a “love-child”? Should not
all children be love-children? But were they? I remember once a girl
friend of mine said to me when I charged her with insincerity in her
marriage, “Well, you _know_, Nan, a woman _has_ to marry if she wants
to have children!” She herself was no more in love with her husband
than with the telephone pole outside her very beautiful home, and was
in truth later on divorced. But she had “protected” her child! Mr.
Harding was not free to offer me such protection, though he loved me,
avowedly before God, far more than he had ever loved any other woman.
I have often wondered whether I would have been tempted to act in
defiance of social conventions in taking my child openly myself, had
her father been a man of lesser rank. I only know that during the
period of which I am speaking, within the early months of Mr. Harding’s
presidency, I was rebelling with all my heart at the situation as it
existed, blame for which seemed to rest upon “the law.” Only my daily
work and conscientious efforts to make good in my journalistic course
at Columbia kept me from being unfair to everyone and upsetting a
legalized regime.
And my rebellion was as fiercely directed against the law as it
affected Mr. Harding as it was against the law as it affected myself.
His attention to and love for little children during his tenure of
office as President was marked sufficiently to prove, even to one who
preferred to doubt, the sincerity in his heart when he voiced to me his
longing just “to hold little girls.” Bless him! By all the laws of God
and man certainly Warren G. Harding was entitled to nurture this spring
of hidden father-love! Other little girls he could fondle openly, but
his own dear child he dared not acknowledge, nor bestow upon her the
love he felt, before a narrow-minded and censorious public.
In my Harding book of clippings I have a most appealing photograph
which was published, I think, in _The New York Times_. It shows Mr.
Harding holding a little girl in one arm and the little girl’s dog
in the other, and a picture more expressive of his feelings I have
never seen; I think this particular child is the daughter of Edward
B. McLean--unfortunately, I have cut away the inscription below the
picture. Another half-tone is inscribed, “A proud daughter of New
England is kissed by the President of the United States, at Crawford
Notch, New Hampshire,” and shows Mr. Harding holding close a shy little
girl, his face buried in what seems to be the fur of the child’s coat.
Another pictures Mr. Harding with Norma and Levett Sweig of New York,
who, according to the words below the picture “were tickled pink” when
they asked the President to pose with them at the White House and he
agreed. All of these children look to be about three years old. Still
another picture shows Mr. Harding leaning far out of his executive
office window to buy Christmas seals from a little girl whose name is
Sally Le Fevre, and, the paper says, she “was greeted by a real Harding
smile.” Even up in Alaska this love for children was evidenced, and
I have a picture which shows Mr. Harding shaking hands with school
children, the two in this picture also being little girls. I have other
pictures of Mr. Harding with groups of children, and one where he is
shown (_The Saturday Evening Post_ of July 2, 1921) with two boys; but
for the most part he chose to show his preferment for girls, and very
naturally so, since his own and only child was a little girl.
Enrico Caruso, so another clipping goes, was struck with the likeness
Mr. Harding bore to George Washington, and, with his deft artistry,
took a picture of Mr. Harding and touched it up so that the resemblance
to Washington is marked. But the heading above the picture which reads,
“Harding becomes Father of Country,” struck a note of deep longing in
my heart, for my yearning was not that he be known as the Father of His
Country, but that I might proudly say to the world, “He is the father
of my child!”
Thus the longing to claim Elizabeth Ann as mine battled with the
tortuous plans already existent, and regret for past steps and worry
over future ones were my constant mental companions. It is very
possible that out of this bitterness was born my prayer for strength
to ultimately set right a grossly wrong condition. Though at that
time little did I know of the pathways of suffering my feet would tread
before I could bring myself to claim the child of Warren G. Harding as
mine before the world! This I now do in this book, _The President’s
Daughter_.
[Illustration: A page from the author’s Harding book of clippings
gathered through the years]
_70_
Scott Willits, my brother-in-law, planned to sail for Europe the
latter part of January or the first of February of 1922 to study with
Professor Otakar Sevcik, whose music colony is in Czechoslovakia,
near Prague, where I think he is head of the Music Department in
the Conservatory. Shortly before his arrival in New York (my sister
Elizabeth and the baby accompanying him East) I made another trip to
the White House.
If I am not mistaken, I was to first meet Tim Slade in a waiting
room which is on the left as you enter the executive offices.
Evidently the imposing-looking doorman in uniform who stands inside
the entrance to the offices had been advised of my coming, for I was
immediately conducted to the waiting-room. I observed with great
interest a portrait of Mr. Harding which stood in one corner of this
room, obviously unfinished. And I was examining the portrait when a
gentleman, unknown to me, entered. He was a foreigner in appearance,
and, I thought to myself, probably the artist in the case. It occurred
to me at the same time that he might have been persuaded to come in and
obtain what information he could with regard to my identity and the
nature of my visit to the President, for he had been standing with the
reporters who, as usual, were lined up just outside the President’s
door.
The foreign gentleman spoke. “I think I have seen you somewhere,” he
said. Utterly stupid, I thought. “I’m sure I have seen you in Los
Angeles. Have I not?” he inquired with an ingratiating smile.
“Oh, very likely,” I answered him, going on with my inspection of the
unfinished portrait of Mr. Harding. I have never been West of Chicago.
My tone must have conveyed sarcasm, because he ceased abruptly and
turned with me to the portrait. I informed him frankly that the
artist had given our President a very weak chin, and I think I made
other uncomplimentary remarks about the painting which I discovered
was actually his own work. I have often wondered since where that
particular portrait hangs. I am sure my suggestions, if the artist
followed them, have improved it immensely!
I had received an announcement from Tim Slade, a printed card which
informed me that he had been made manager of a brokerage firm in
Washington. I went there to see him, before meeting him at the White
House later. I remember distinctly how I cried when Tim told me how
they were “putting it over” on “the Chief,” as he often called Mr.
Harding. He said it was a pity, and Mr. Harding ought to know some
of the crooked work that was going on all around him. Of course my
tendency then was to cry at the least little thing, I was so nervous.
(I remember glancing out of the large window in Tim’s office--I called
him Mr. Slade during those days, but have called him Tim for the past
two years--and commenting upon the beauty of a car which he said was
his.) And I determined to say to Mr. Harding upon my visit just what
Tim had said to me. It didn’t seem possible that those around my
darling sweetheart would dream of taking advantage of him--but, anyway,
I thought I would say something to him about it. I felt confident that
if I just told him that some of his associates were getting the best of
him that he could immediately stop it!
So, after my friend the artist had left me, and Tim Slade had piloted
me through certain difficult rooms into the President’s private
office, I said to Mr. Harding, almost immediately after the door had
been closed, “Sweetheart, Tim Slade says they are doing things behind
your back down here to hurt you....” He smiled to note the concern
registered in my every feature, and said, “Say, you darling, don’t you
worry about _me_!” implying that I had enough to do to attend to my own
thoughts and problems. “I’m all right,” he added, and smiled broadly
to see the look of relief that must have passed across my face. I
said I really couldn’t see what anyone _could_ do to “double-cross” a
_President_, but I did wish he would be watchful. It may have been this
time that he told me that he was surrounded by friends, and knowing
what a true and loyal friend Warren Harding was it seemed reasonable to
believe that he would inspire in others equally loyal friendship toward
himself.
I had with me some character sketches which I had written in my
course at Columbia University, one of them about his very own self,
and which my professor had read aloud to our class. I put the rather
bulky package of manuscript in his hands with a request that he read
the contents when he found time. “Found time!” he agreed was a good
expression. “Gee, Nan, they watch every move I make. Why, I even have
to steal the time I take to write to you.” I said I thought it was
perfectly horrible, and I wished to goodness he were out of it. And a
full year had not yet elapsed since he went into office! The months
seemed fettered with some ball and chain, so slow they moved.
Of course we talked of Elizabeth Ann and I told him that I thought I
had made a terrible mistake in allowing our baby girl to be adopted,
even as much as I adored Elizabeth my sister. And again he told me how
he would love, if he were free to do it, to take Elizabeth Ann and
“make her a real Harding.” And the wistfulness of his smile when he
said this was precious to me.
_71_
Enroute to New York, Scott Willits, my brother-in-law, my sister
Elizabeth and Elizabeth Ann, stopped in Washington. They went almost
immediately to the office of Mrs. Heber Herbert Votaw, youngest sister
of President Harding whose husband, Heber Herbert Votaw, had been
appointed by Mr. Harding as Superintendent of Prisons. Mrs. Votaw was
prominent in welfare work of some kind. Mrs. Votaw, or Carrie Harding
as you may recall, was my sister’s favorite among the Harding sisters
back home in Marion. In her office they were introduced to Colonel
Forbes who, my sister told me, took quite a fancy to Elizabeth Ann.
Mrs. Votaw entertained them at the Senate Dining-Room for luncheon,
where, Elizabeth said, Vice-President Coolidge sat across from them
at the next table. In the afternoon Mrs. Votaw took them through the
White House, and, Elizabeth said, voiced her regret that her brother,
the President, was attending a conference. Otherwise, Mrs. Votaw told
them, they might have gone in to see him. And also otherwise, I have
often thought wistfully, he might have seen his own little daughter
whom he never once saw in the almost four years she had been living
at the time he passed on in San Francisco. A queer topsy-turvy set of
circumstances--the President’s own sister escorting the President’s own
child, unknown to her as such, through his home and grounds!
[Illustration: This photograph of Elizabeth Ann was taken by the author
to Mr. Harding at the White House]
I almost devoured Elizabeth Ann when she landed with Scott and
Elizabeth in New York. She was but two-and-a-half, and the best-natured
child imaginable. I shall never forget how she became sleepy during
our gaddings, and actually walked along the street so asleep that the
sympathetic interest of pedestrians was drawn to her. I would take her
on my lap every chance I got, hugging her to me, and worshipping the
little face which bore to me such a pathetic resemblance to her father.
And, oh, the joy of taking her to bed with me, and of doing the little
things for her which she told me in her baby way she wanted done--her
back rubbed or her “pidda” fixed this or that way. I think there is
nothing comparable to the pleasure it gives a mother to wait upon her
baby, though in the extreme it may possibly be poor training for the
child.
Scott sailed for Bremen on the _America_ (1922) and I gave up my work
at Columbia, having completed the first semester with a B grade, and
returned with Elizabeth and the baby to Chicago to remain the year
Scott was to be abroad. That spring and summer I resumed my treatments
with Dr. Barbour and in the fall, feeling much stronger, sought a
suitable secretarial position. I did some part-time work during that
summer, but for the most part I remained at home helping as I could
with the house work and taking care of my precious darling.
_72_
On the afternoon of June 8, 1922, Elizabeth, my sister, had gone
downtown and Elizabeth Ann and I were alone in the apartment. I had
been taking a bath and had gone into my bedroom for something, and when
I came back to the bathroom I found the baby had locked herself in. She
was always at my heels, but I did not know that she ever even so much
as touched the lock on the door. As the door could be opened only from
the inside, and as the baby could not open it, I became frantic. She
was then only two-and-a-half years old.
I called in to her, telling her what to do to release the lock, but it
was a difficult one to turn, more easily locked than unlocked. There
was a note of fear in the tiny voice when she inquired “How do I do
it?” I called down from the back porch to the lady who lived on the
first floor and she suggested that I call the fire department. I put
the call in immediately. Between the time the baby had locked herself
in and the time the fire department arrived, I played “post office”
with her, sitting outside the door on the floor and pushing innumerable
envelopes, papers, blotters, etc., under the door which she in turn
would push back with a giggle. I had quieted her and that quieted me
somewhat.
Evidently the fire department didn’t often have calls to rescue babies
who had locked themselves in bathrooms, and the fire chief was quite
annoyed. However, they hoisted the ladder, and a fireman climbed
through the open bathroom window, unlocked the door, and allowed a very
calm and undisturbed Elizabeth Ann to walk forth.
This proved to be too unusual a thing for the ubiquitous newspaper
reporters to pass up, and within ten minutes after the rescue the
doorbell rang. _The Chicago Tribune_ wished to take my picture and that
of the baby together! Yes, perhaps right there before the bathroom door
would be the best, the reporter said.
I was so nervous that the possibility of any publicity frightened me
because I knew what Mr. Harding would say. I refused flatly to allow
them to take any pictures at all. “All right, madam, then we’ll make
up our own story!” the reporter threw back at me as I closed the door
upon him. I opened it again and called him back, explained that I
had been ill and that things like that made me very nervous. In the
end he promised not to make a great ado about it in _his_ paper, but
Elizabeth, my sister, came up the stairs almost simultaneously with
another more persistent reporter, from the Hearst headquarters. “They
want my picture and the baby’s” I cried hysterically. Elizabeth turned
calmly to the reporter. “Can’t you come back in the morning?” she
smiled, after she had learned what it was all about. They consented.
Elizabeth promised that they might snap the baby’s picture alone if
they would return in the morning. And so it was.
I have the picture clipping which appeared in the Hearst daily on June
9, 1922; it is headed, “FIRELESS RESCUE.” It shows the side of the
apartment building, with ladder, faked in pen and ink, against the
apartment, and a child’s arms extended from the window above toward
the rescuing fireman. Below is a good-sized picture of Elizabeth Ann
Willits, a very excellent likeness of her, quite Harding-like.
_73_
My baby was ill. As I try to recall now the exact time of her illness
my memory fails me--even to the month. But the memory of the terror of
that experience shall stay with me forever.
I had not been home long from a sojourn in the hospital, where I had a
slight throat operation, when I began to notice that Elizabeth Ann was
not as lively as usual. Then one morning I looked at her closely. Her
eyes drooped unnaturally. The circles under her eyes, too, which are a
Harding facial characteristic, were darker than usual, and she dragged
her dolls and books through the hall with listlessness.
Scott was still abroad and Elizabeth and I were alone with the baby
in the apartment at that time. How can I forget how I hung upon every
word that fell from Dr. Barbour’s lips, every expression that crossed
his face when he came to see Elizabeth Ann! To this day I do not know
what Elizabeth Ann’s trouble was. I doubt if I asked Dr. Barbour at
that time. I was a coward. I felt her life was in my doctor’s hands and
I looked to him. But whatever the trouble, it was serious. She slept
most of the time--a heavy, dead sleep from which she seemed scarcely
able to open her eyes. Each hour, when medicine time came, I prayed
she would swallow the liquid, and when she opened her eyes I demanded
of her sharply that she take it. It was like nothing that I have ever
known--that sickness of my child. I held her in my arms. Her lips were
dry, almost colorless, it seemed. Her eyes always closed. The doctor
had ordered that her chest be covered with a white paste-like stuff and
then swathed in flannels. She submitted to this treatment with closed
eyes and a limpness of body that sent my heart racing with terror. All
day I would lie beside her. Often when I awoke in the middle of the
night she would be talking. I knew the fever made her talk aloud. God!
What days those were! I myself was such an invalid that through the
day Elizabeth, my sister, alternately tended me and the baby. But like
nervous people, I felt improved as evening came on, and this made it
possible for me to care for Elizabeth Ann through the night while my
sister slept.
What joy to watch her recover! What sweet pain in my heart to see
her sit up in a chair! What gratitude I felt to Dr. Barbour for his
excellent ministry! And how often I sobbed myself to sleep, out of
sheer thankfulness to God for sparing her to me! And, as a normal
two-and-a-half does not require many weeks to regain lost baby
plumpness and pink cheeks, soon Elizabeth Ann was opening sparkling
eyes in the morning and closing play-tired ones at night. Elizabeth and
I would stand over her crib. We needed not the spoken word to read the
great relief and gratitude in each other’s eyes.
_74_
When I was a child, even before I had reached the age of ten, my
flights of imagination in picturing my future self always took one of
two directions--toward being an actress or a writer. It was said of
my mother that she possessed considerable dramatic ability when she
was a girl, and I know my father wrote extremely well. Neither mother
nor father realized the glories of these talents developed, except
in amateur, local settings. Doubtless, mother’s Quaker grandmother,
with whom she lived a great deal of the time, would have thrown up her
hands in holy horror at the mere mention of a stage career for her
granddaughter, Mary Lee Williams. So this love of the drama took with
my mother an entirely safe form, and she became known among her friends
and the townspeople as a monologuist of more than usual ability.
I am frank to say that the dramatic appeal of my own life-play, which
had passed the climactic stage with Elizabeth Ann’s entrance into the
world, greatly appeased the instinctive hunger for self-expression
which I likely inherited from my mother, and indeed I was finding the
drama in which I held the center of the stage to be fast developing
into a tragedy. A tragedy because it was failing--yea, had failed--to
provide the satisfying denouement which I had looked forward to with
hopeful heart at the rise of the curtain. This sense of unfinishment
had begun to prey upon my mind even before our baby came, but I had
banished it rather successfully with the full buoyancy of my nature
and had clung to visionary hopes and to Mr. Harding’s oft-repeated
statement to me that in his “sober judgment” he felt that our
relationship was “predestined.” And surely, I thought, predestination
would naturally slate lovers for the perfect fulfillment of their
desire in every direction.
But Life, stark with dire realities, confronted me now, and the
romantic illusions upon which I had fed were meeting with pitiful
destruction on many sides. Enforced separation from my beloved,
submission to an arrangement whereby I forfeited the glory of being
known as my own child’s mother, and continued ill-health, sufficed to
precipitate the unhappy disillusionments I was experiencing. And the
process of introspection and introversion constantly indulged, more
pronouncedly after a visit to Washington, seemed sometimes to leave
me momentarily in a terrifying state of inability to think at all, so
intensely _did_ I think.
It was this state of mentality which inclined me again to consider
the stage, and I began anew to see in it an outlet for “suppressed
emotions.” I had in the fall of 1920 succumbed to an advertisement and
taken some desultory instructions from a man who had his studio in the
Auditorium Building in Chicago, but it had seemed for many reasons
an unworthwhile investment and I had given it up. Now I pondered it
seriously. To live another’s vicissitudinous experiences might, I
thought, take my mind from my own mind and prove an emotional boon.
A very dear friend of mine, who knew the whole of my story, listened
sympathetically to these arguments and agreed it might help enormously
to relieve me both mentally and physically. She took me to see a friend
of hers who had long been a leader in the motion picture world, but,
after hearing from him and his wife that they would prefer to see their
daughter “scrub floors in the Boston Store” (that being considered a
low-priced department store in Chicago) than to enter upon a career in
the movies, I felt less inclined to view it with approval myself, and
this in spite of the fact that the motion picture magnate cordially
volunteered to allow me to act in the next film he produced, and
offered a camera test to see whether or not I screened well.
[Illustration]
Still harboring a hope that this character of activity might benefit
me, and feeling disinclined to return to secretarial work, and,
moreover, firmly convinced that I ought not to remain at my sister
Elizabeth’s entirely unemployed except for my preferred occupation of
being with and caring for our darling baby, I took my problem in early
June, 1922, down to Washington and laid it before Mr. Harding.
I remember how he smiled, the smile of an indulgent parent to a spoiled
child perhaps, when he said, “Why, sure! Go on! I think that would be
fine!” smiling at my tearful attempt to explain what must to him have
seemed like a wild idea. “_Then_ I’ll become a movie fan!” he added
merrily, having only been twice to the movies in Washington, he told
me. He said he was sure I could do as well as any actress he had ever
seen(!), and he also said he could understand how the partial outdoor
activity might do me good.
However, later on he wrote me, almost upon the heels of my departure
from Washington, asking me _not_ to consider going either into the
movies or on the stage, saying he had thought it over and was “afraid”
of it. No doubt he was thinking of possible publicity and ultimate
exposure. At any rate, I gave up the idea altogether and have never
been so tempted since. How I could have thought it possible to undergo
the hardships to which even the moderately successful screen or
stage artist is subjected--the rehearsals, travel, hours, etc.--is
incomprehensible to me now, when I remember that I was then making two
trips a week to the South Side to Dr. Barbour who was administering
iron hypodermics, and who even found it necessary to recommend that I
spend about half of my time in bed.
_75_
It was upon the occasion of this last-named visit to the White House
that I showed Mr. Harding the picture of Elizabeth Ann’s “rescue” which
had appeared in the Hearst paper in Chicago. I remember we were sitting
at his desk, and I can just see his face twitch and the impatient
gestures of his hands as he laid the picture upon his desk.
“Oh, Nan, _why_ did you allow it? Why _did_ you allow it?” he exclaimed
over and over. I failed to see why it should cause him so _much_
distress, and said so frankly. However, I told him in the same breath
that I tried to stop them. I wondered as I looked with him again at
the picture whether the headlines immediately above, which referred to
another column and read, “INTIMATE CHAT AT WHITE HOUSE,” added to his
disconcertion in seeing his daughter’s picture below. When I asked him
he did not reply; he only shook his head, his expression betraying the
perturbation he felt.
However, he had the happy ability to come out of things, and he picked
up the picture and looked at it again. This time he studied it and a
slow smile lit his face. It was Warren Harding, the man, the father,
who spoke next.
“Really, Nan, she’s much like you!” he said softly, as he folded up
the picture and handed it back to me. “Oh, darling, she’s much more
like _you_!” I insisted. “Why, just look at her _eyes_!” I exclaimed,
holding the picture up again for us both to look at. He smiled and
nodded acknowledgment of the resemblance so strikingly caught by the
Hearst cameraman. “Well, if she’s as sweet a baby as her mother is a
woman....” Mr. Harding concluded, leaving his desk and walking over to
the leather couch, where he was evidently not intending to sit alone.
This was on Sunday morning. A tall vase with pink roses stood upon his
desk, in memory of his mother. Mr. Harding himself was dressed for
church, and, as we dropped down together upon the couch he asked me
suddenly, as though it had just occurred to him, if I would care to
attend his church that morning. “Have Tim Slade drop you off there,” he
suggested, when I told him Tim was waiting for me outside with his car.
I was delighted. Mr. Harding seemed to be, too. We could at least be in
the same building for another hour!
We talked, as usual, of many things and he urged me to tell him
everything of interest that had happened to me since he last saw me.
Somehow it really was like bringing the outside world inside the prison
bars to the one shut in; he seemed so happy to hear of my doings. I
remember so well how back in ’17 or ’18 I used to relate to him my
experiences, usually after we had retired and I could lie close in his
arms, and, when I suddenly realized I had been talking steadily for
quite some time I would interrupt myself and apologize, and he would
say so adorably, “Why, Nan, I _love_ to listen to you!” Here in the
White House our time was limited, and I gradually learned that if I
wanted to touch upon all topics I must jot them down upon a card, and
scratch them off the list as I spoke of them to Mr. Harding. Which I
invariably did. I told him at this time of a diary I had begun--it was
to contain accounts of my visits to him in the White House, as well as
the many little cunning things Elizabeth Ann was saying those days in
her sweet baby way. Again Mr. Harding shook his head. “Oh, dearie, you
_mustn’t_ keep such a book around. You must destroy it as soon as you
return to Chicago. Promise, Nan, that you will destroy it immediately!”
I promised readily, though, of course, presented healthy arguments to
disparage such a program. “Why, honey, I paid $11 for that book at
Dutton’s in New York last fall, and I have it almost over half full
now. I didn’t think you’d mind a diary!” But he pleaded with me to keep
nothing around, in my trunk or elsewhere, that would be evidence of
our relationship, and, of course, I said I would not from then on. I
felt hurt about having to destroy the pages of that beautiful lavender
diary. I have retained the cover and the blank pages that were left. I
remember writing him after I returned to Chicago, and telling him that
it had been destroyed and that now there existed nothing that could be
taken as evidence of our dearness to each other--nothing save my first
letters from him, my autographed picture of him, and my Harding book
of newspaper clippings to which he never seemed to object because the
material was public anyway.
We talked about the baby, about his cousins, the Weseners, who lived
scarcely half a block from Elizabeth’s and many things, all hurried
discussions, but still discussions. Then Mr. Harding stood up to take
me in his arms.
“Honestly, darling,” I exclaimed as I held out my hand for him to pull
me to my feet, “You are the best looking thing that I have ever seen!”
His smile was the smile of the little snapshot I have of him, the smile
he knew I so adored, the smile our daughter gives me occasionally which
stirs me so deeply and moves me to tears, it is so sweetly reminiscent
of her father’s smile. “Well, dearie,” he replied, “_that’s_ something
I just can’t help, you know!” And then for a brief space of time--all
too brief--we became oblivious to our surroundings, to his identity as
President of the United States, and to all the world. “Why don’t you
tell me you love me, Nan darling,” he coaxed, and I told him over and
over again, as I had told him a thousand times, “I love you, darling
Warren Harding, I love you.”
In low tones Mr. Harding told me again how he dreamed of having me all
night with him, which prompted my usual query, “How is Mrs. Harding
now?” He lifted his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders and replied
in the usual way, “Oh, all right!” There was, as I have said, always
a certain deprecatory attitude which he seemed to reserve for Mrs.
Harding. I remember in one of my very early letters to him back in
1917, I expressed some concern over the possible greetings he might
have for his legal wife when he met her again after his absences from
home, and in his reply letter he had written, “You need give yourself
no concern over that, sweetheart. My kiss for her is most perfunctory,
I can assure you!” Indeed, I have often thought with the pardonable
vanity of one who is conscious ever of priority in her sweetheart’s
thoughts, that likely Mrs. Harding was, as Mr. Harding had stated to
me concerning another woman whom we both knew, as safe with him “as
though she were in jail, Nan!” And I think his affectional interest in
his wife had ceased long, long before Mr. Harding and I met in New York
in 1917.
These mental dips back into the recent past occurred as he touched upon
possible plans on Mrs. Harding’s part which would make possible for
us a night together somewhere in Washington. It seemed to me he did
not even value her casual companionship. As we sat there that morning
on his couch in his private office, I expressed a wish that instead
of going to church we might go off somewhere to be alone. “Gee, I do,
too, dearie!” was his enthusiastic rejoinder. “Will Mrs. Harding go
to church with you?” I inquired. He nodded. “Yes, and I have another
appointment this morning before church, and am fifteen minutes late for
it now!” I arose. I’m sure that he, too, had forgotten that he was the
President of the United States.
He walked over to his desk and selected a lovely pink rosebud for me.
Then he unlocked his private drawer and took out the bills he wanted
to give me--mainly the money due Elizabeth and Scott for our baby’s
care. I had tried hard not to complain too much of arrangements then
existent in view of the fact that Elizabeth, the baby, and I, were
living happily together then, but these partings always stirred up
the feeling of incompleteness, and made me long intensely for a happy
fulfillment with him whom I loved. I felt the urge to say to him that
we _must_ make a change, rescind existing plans for the future, allow
me the happy restitution of motherhood, frankly acknowledged, and solve
a problem that was becoming growingly more complicated and difficult of
permanent solution.... But I only kissed him back in purest passion,
and to his query, “Are you happy, dearie?” I whispered “Yes!” against a
soft lapel.
When I joined Tim Slade outside in his handsome car my eyes were
still wet and I fondled the pink rosebud reminiscently. Tim asked
me if I cared to drive, and I said yes, but that I intended to go
to Mr. Harding’s church later on. He directed the chauffeur to
take us out along the river, and Tim and I talked. Tim knew so many
things of interest to me then because they had a direct bearing upon
the President and his tremendous problems, and I thoroughly enjoyed
listening to him.
Our drive lasted too long, for I was unable to secure a front-row
balcony-seat, from where Mr. Harding had told me I might see best all
over the church. However, I found one three or four rows back and could
look over the balcony and down upon the fast-whitening head of the
President. It was all strongly reminiscent of the early days in Marion
when I, as a child, was wont to go anywhere and everywhere just to be
close to my hero. For a whole precious hour my eyes were riveted upon
him, and I was unspeakably happy just to look at him. My heart was full
of tears. If only I could have him forever--even at a distance like
this--just to worship him! I loved him so.
The official car stood outside the church and I hastened down so that
I might watch him pass out. He did not see me, because I had to be
careful, as he had instructed, that Mrs. Harding did not see me, but I
watched him nevertheless from a point of safe vantage. Then I walked
slowly back to my hotel, had luncheon, and went to a movie, where I sat
through two shows in order to see twice the news event which pictured
my darling welcoming delegates, from somewhere, on the White House
lawn. Mr. Harding always seemed to know which was the best train to
take out of Washington, no matter whether I might be returning west or
east, and he had that time told me of a very good train for Chicago
which I could get if I wanted to wait until late that afternoon or
early evening. That was why I filled in my time going to a movie, when
I more naturally would have hastened to leave the city which held him
after his disappointing statement that he could not see me again that
visit.
[Illustration: The White House in Summer]
[Illustration: The White House in Winter]
_76_
It was July 5th, 1922, when I next saw President Harding, about a
month after the visit which I have just related. But this time I saw
him along with thousands and thousands of others. The occasion was the
100th anniversary of the founding of the city of Marion, Ohio, his home
town and mine.
I went down to Marion from Chicago on the night of the 3rd, arriving
about 7:00 on the morning of the Fourth. Every family in Marion had
crowded homes, “filled up” with extra guests, for it was reported that
Marion accommodated about 50,000 extra people for that homecoming
event. Inasmuch as I had advised no one of my coming, I was obliged,
even with a host of friends living in Marion, to go to a hotel, and
I secured a room there only through my knowing the wife of that
particular hotel proprietor.
President Harding spoke at the Marion Fairgrounds on the afternoon of
the 5th. I drove up to the grounds with Mrs. John Fairbanks, of whom I
have spoken before. She had been Annabel Mouser, my chum, daughter of
former Congressman Grant E. Mouser, the then Judge of the Common Pleas
Court. She and the others in the car, seeming indifferent as to whether
or not they heard Mr. Harding, threw themselves down upon the green
while I alone went over nearer the grandstand to listen to his speech.
Annabel Fairbanks always treated with pretended disdain my adoration of
Mr. Harding and his sister Daisy.
“Oh, you and your Hardings weary me!” she said, “Go on over; we’ll wait
right here for you.”
It seemed to me always that Mr. Harding was more than human. In my
Harding book I have the following clipping from a March 4, 1921, paper,
the day of his inauguration:
“The sun struck the inaugural stand in such a manner as to make his
head appear in a halo. It was so marked that there was comment on it
from the crowd.”
He was, to me, almost divine. I remember once, in 1920, the first time
he came out to see me at my sister Elizabeth’s (6103 Woodlawn Avenue,
Chicago) in June of that year, that we were “talking things over,” I
on his lap. My elbow accidentally struck his ribs. “Ouch, dearie!” he
exclaimed. I apologized and asked if I had hurt him. “No, you just
poked me in the ribs!” he laughed. “Ribs!” I echoed, “Have _you those
things_?” I shall never forget his low laugh as he hugged me.
It seemed to me I had never heard Warren Harding speak so feelingly as
on that afternoon when he addressed his home town people and the great
throng of visitors who had come from miles over the country to hear
him. I well remember how he ended his speech, with a quotation from a
piece my mother often used to recite. It was the concluding verse of
Will Carleton’s poem, “The First Settler’s Story,” and goes:
“Boys flying kites haul in their white-winged birds,
But you can’t do that way when you’re flying words.
Thoughts unexpressed may sometimes fall back dead,
But God Himself can’t kill ’em, once they’re said!”
He must have been inspired by knowledge of all the gossip that had
surrounded his campaign, and I wondered, standing there in the bright
sun, bare-headed, again adoring my hero from afar, how there could live
one who would open his lips unkindly about Warren Gamaliel Harding!
In front of me stood Lois Archbold, as I shall call her, a neighbor
and former teacher of mine. She had been a life-long friend of our
family and my sister Elizabeth and I had each experienced the school
girl “crush” on her which we usually developed upon our teachers. She
and her sister were probably as strong Democrats as lived in Marion,
and I was surprised to see Lois there in view of all the severe things
I had been told by Miss Harding had passed her lips during the recent
campaign--things so unkind that even Daisy Harding, who had up to that
time been a friend of Miss Archbold and her sister, and had accepted
their politics good-naturedly, ceased to speak to both of them on the
street. And even I had been tempted to follow suit when I was in
Marion in November of 1920 and Daisy had repeated to me these things
when I went to visit with her during her luncheon hour at the high
school or at her home.
Miss Harding had told me how her brother Warren had been instrumental
in helping the Archbold sisters to better positions, and she had
related how he had jocosely inquired of them on the morning of the
Presidential election which way they intended to vote! Politics never
stood in Mr. Harding’s way where friendship was concerned. Still, both
the Archbold sisters had been frank to sponsor the cause of James M.
Cox, Democratic candidate for President in 1920, and there is every
reason to believe that they cast their votes for him. And now to see
Lois Archbold right in front of me listening to Mr. Harding speak! I
was amazed.
There was all about me the sound of clearing of throats and blowing of
noses, and my own eyes were wet when Mr. Harding ceased speaking. But
you may be sure it was by far the greatest surprise I had received for
a long time to behold Lois Archbold’s eyes streaming with tears when
she, unconscious of my presence in the immediate crowd, turned to walk
away. It was to me only another triumph for my beloved Warren.
_77_
When we returned to Judge Mouser’s the judge was sitting on the porch,
and his remark to his wife was, “Dell, one of us ought to go over to
Dr. Harding’s and say how-do-you-do to President and Mrs. Harding.”
Dr. Harding was the President’s father. His home was the social
headquarters for the presidential party. After considerable discussion,
Mrs. Mouser decided she herself would go and convey the Judge’s
compliments to the President and his wife.
“But you must come along with me, Nan,” she said turning to me.
I insisted I did not care to go, fearing Mr. Harding might disapprove
for some reason, but Mrs. Mouser naturally could not see why I objected
to going.
“You adore Mr. Harding so, Nan, and always have, so I can’t see why you
object to going over--it’s just a matter of form, anyway.” So it did
seem up to me to accompany her and in the end I consented.
Annabel, or else young Mrs. Grant Mouser (I have forgotten which),
drove us over but would not go in with us.
We found that Mr. Harding had gone off with the Dr. Carl Sawyers, Sr.
and Jr., and Brigadier-General Charles G. Dawes to play golf, but Mrs.
Warren Harding was receiving informally in the living-room of Dr.
Harding’s home. With her we found Mr. and Mrs. “Ed” Uhler, and it seems
to me another person whom I cannot recall now was there also.
If I had any personal misgivings as to the spirit of Mrs. Harding’s
greeting they were entirely without foundation, for, after shaking
hands with Mrs. Mouser, she held out her hand to me with a smile. “Why,
how-do-you-do, Nan? How are you?” she inquired pleasantly. If I had
ever had reason to doubt that Warren Harding’s love for another woman
was suspected by his legal wife, I was with this meeting disarmed
of all further semi-pleasurable apprehension that I was the person
Florence Harding would name! As a matter of frank truth, it was never
that I particularly cared whether or not she did discover it, but Mr.
Harding’s statement to me that “she’d raise hell, Nan!” had been my
cue for guarding well a situation which Mr. Harding had termed his
“greatest joy.” In the past year and a half, Tim Slade has stated
to me that if Florence Harding had known the love Warren Harding
and I bore to each other, the qualities latent in her temperament
would not have released him but might very possibly have sought some
form of retaliation. What a strange love, I thought, that would hold
the happiness of one’s husband in a vise! But my solicitude for Mr.
Harding’s peace of mind insured every cautionary measure on my part.
There in the familiar atmosphere of Dr. Harding’s home, it occurred
to me that perhaps now Mrs. Warren Harding might drop her patronizing
manner and become natural; certainly the Uhlers, genuine people,
inspired such naturalness, for I knew them to be as good friends as
the Hardings had in Marion. In my Harding book I have a clipping which
says of Warren Harding, “President Harding has one of those rare
temperaments which can keep aloof and cool at close range,” and I know
that even from my own experience of greeting him in public places
where it seemed wise for us to maintain a certain dignity, I was ever
conscious of his “close range” and felt the sincere warmth of his
smile and hand pressure sufficient to assure me that he was not above,
but one with, me. Mrs. Harding was looking particularly well on that
occasion and I am sure that her general hauteur of manner was felt by
her to be in keeping with the position in which she had found herself.
“Yes, indeed,” Mrs. Harding continued what had become a monologue, “I
keep Warren the best dressed man in Washington.”
I could not help remembering how happy Mr. Harding was when he could
just lounge around in his old clothes. Moreover, Mr. Harding had said
to me, “Brooks is my valet; responsible for my clothes,” when we had
discussed him in connection with sending my letters to Mr. Harding
through Brooks.
“That’s right, Florence!” laughed Mr. Uhler, “don’t let anyone get
ahead of you!”
_78_
The afternoon following Mr. Harding’s speech at the Fairgrounds was an
exciting one also. I was visiting that day with Ellen Lucile Mezger
Stoll, whose brother, Roscoe Mezger, was married to Florence Harding’s
daughter-in-law, Mrs. Esther DeWolfe. Ellen Lucile’s little twin
girls were about five years old and Ellen and I took them with us,
it seems to me, when we went down to witness the program scheduled
for that afternoon in honor of President Harding. It was to include a
parade of many organizations, which would file past the Presbyterian
Church at the corner of Church and Prospect Streets, where a temporary
grandstand, gayly beflagged, had been erected for the President and his
party.
Ellen Lucile, the babies, and I found a good place to stand on the
steps of the house next door to the church, and cheered lustily with
the crowd as President Harding, Miss Daisy Harding, and other members
of the President’s party descended from their automobiles and mounted
the steps of the grandstand. President Harding looked stunning, and
Ellen Lucile turned to me and said, “Isn’t he just the sweetest thing?”
I told Miss Daisy Harding afterwards that _she_ was beautiful, too, and
it seemed to me a real pity that _she_, who typified everything lovely
in American womanhood, could not grace the social throne of the First
Lady of the Land, instead of Florence Harding. She had once written
to me about her brother, “He _looks_ like a real President, Nan,” and
I simply extended that expression to her when I hold her she herself
_looked_ like a real First Lady.
One segment of the parade consisted of a number of Civil War veterans,
and I observed from my post where I stood on tiptoe that the President
was shaking hands with these dear old fellows. When they passed where
Ellen Lucile and I were standing I suddenly spied my own Grandfather
Williams, whom I had not even known was in town for the celebration. I
broke through the ranks of people and ran out into the street to greet
him. The dear old darling! I thought. He was probably as staunch a
Republican as there is in the United States. The day was exceedingly
warm and the heavy military belt Grandfather was wearing had become
irksome and he had removed it and was now carrying it over his arm. He
kissed me before the crowd and said, “Did you see me shake hands with
the President? He even remembered me! He said, ‘Oh, yes, I know you all
right, you needn’t tell me your name!’” Grandfather beamed his pride.
I thought to myself as I patted affectionately the arm of this proud
member of the G. A. R., “Probably my sweetheart was thinking, ‘This is
Nan’s grandfather. I’d like to be especially nice to him!’” That would
be just like my sweetheart.
I returned to Chicago after that trip just as soon as I knew Warren
Harding was enroute to Washington. I had not seen him in private at
all, nor even attempted to advise him of my presence in Marion, but
somehow I cannot tell anyone how inexpressibly happy it always made me
just to be near him. I did not need to be sharing with him an embrace
or kiss in order to feel ecstatic happiness. Just to be near him
satisfied me.
In my next letter I told him all about my visit to Marion, how I had
listened to his speech at the Fairgrounds, and even in detail of how
I had gone with Mrs. Mouser to Dr. Harding’s to call upon him and
Mrs. Harding and had found him gone, but had talked briefly with Mrs.
Harding. But, as I felt, letters didn’t amount to much those days.
Washington was such a long way off!
_79_
In August of that same year, 1922, I accepted a position as secretary
to Walter Dill Scott, President of Northwestern University, in
Evanston, Illinois. With the exception of severe spells of weakness I
felt much stronger, even equal to the daily trips back and forth on
the elevated to work. There were several girls under consideration for
the position and I, feeling always a certain sense of independence,
because I was not really leaning financially upon any position, grew
impatient with President Scott for not deciding immediately upon one
of us. Finally he narrowed his selection to two of us, and we both
were requested to take the famous psychology Scott Test. This we did
one morning sitting on either side of Dr. Scott’s desk, and, though
my grade was below the other girl’s, we were both considerably above
average, and for some reason President Scott chose me. I enjoyed being
out there. The natural beauty of the campus comforted me. And I think
it pleased Mr. Harding immensely to have me there. I remember he
wrote, “Gee, Nan, I think that’s just fine!” when I had apprised him of
my new job.
But even with this comparatively perfect arrangement--living right with
my baby and working in a congenial atmosphere--I was not happy. The
constant shock of realizing that I must _do_ something immediately if I
would claim Elizabeth Ann as mine fairly dogged my mental footsteps. My
mind was ever at work trying to formulate a plan whereby I might cancel
the adoption altogether and proclaim my rightful motherhood.
I was, however, willing that the present regime should, while I thus
meditated upon a course of action, justify itself, though I knew
that when my brother-in-law returned from abroad the resumption of a
three-cornered parentage would leave me still unsatisfied.
Elizabeth lovingly approved of Elizabeth Ann’s calling me “Mamma Nan,”
which she did for quite a while. I never encouraged or approved of her
calling me “Aunt Nan,” because I am not her aunt and do not wish to be
so called by her. She calls me plain “Nan” now, which is better than
prefixing it with “Aunt.” Often during those days when Elizabeth Ann
called me “Mamma Nan” someone would remark about it and I would have to
brush it aside with an explanation. This never failed to cause a wave
of weakness to pass over me as I faced the blunt truth that practically
I had made myself her aunt by submitting to an adoption by my sister
and her husband.
People remarked her fondness for me, and my most unnatural fondness
for her who was not supposed to be related to me. Elizabeth had taken
in two girls as roomers, finding it difficult even with Mr. Harding’s
generous allowance to keep up the expenses in connection with the
household, send Scott a specified amount monthly for his expenses
abroad where he was studying, and keep her own piano lessons paid for.
Both of these girls were very fond of Elizabeth Ann. I remember I was
jealous of their attention to her, not wanting anyone to have her but
myself, fiercely resenting references to her as my sister’s “daughter,”
even with the love I bore my sister. My daughter was a passion with me
and I simply worshipped her. She and I would retire early, nearly every
night, even as early as six-thirty sometimes, immediately after dinner,
and I would have her in my bed with me until seven o’clock or so when
she had to go to sleep in her crib. Oftentimes I kept her with me all
night, and I lay awake thinking, planning, my face against her silken
hair, her hand in mine, long after she had gone to sleep.
_80_
During the summer, Grace Cunningham, who had been my eighth grade
teacher back in Marion, Ohio, came to Chicago to attend normal school.
My sister Elizabeth, who had always been particularly fond of Miss
Cunningham, entertained her at our home for a couple of days. Miss
Cunningham occupied my bedroom while she was at our apartment. One
whole side of my wall was devoted to photographs of the Harding family.
On the other side hung a picture of me as a child, the picture Vail’s
had taken when I was five and which Mr. Harding had published in his
paper, _The Marion Daily Star_.
“Nan,” remarked Grace Cunningham to me one morning, “I wouldn’t know
whether this picture was of you or of Elizabeth Ann--which is it?”
Which was certainly eloquent proof to me that she had recognized in
me the mother of the baby, even though she had not said so in so many
words.
I wondered how she would react to the actual truth. I had always felt
that Grace Cunningham, though a maiden lady, was thoroughly romantic,
and she had given me during that visit reason to feel she would view
broad-mindedly certain situations not condoned by the general run of
people.
However, I was forced to conclude to myself that perhaps what people
might think of the child of Warren Harding was not the usual opinion
held in regard to the children-of-love-alone. As the days passed, I was
beginning to realize, from sententious remarks of certain people, that
in no wise would there be universal condonation where Elizabeth Ann
and I were concerned if the situation were not protected _legally_. Mr.
Harding’s statement to me when I went to Asbury Park, “Pay your way,
Nan; money is power,” seemed not to appear so all-inclusive to me now
as then.
[Illustration: Likeness]
In other words, in my own case, not being able to divulge the identity
of my child’s father, which might place her above the ordinary run of
love-children, the great love I had for the man himself whose child I
had borne would be self-stamped with the brand of commonplaceness--yea,
of a monstrous sin committed against society! And all the money in
the world could not blot out the significance of such expression. And
millions of safely married women nightly deplored the indulgence which
threw them into an intense state of worriment from month to month!
Love-children! The very words are beautiful and rightly belong only
where the impulse itself has been lovely.
But even though I myself were willing, for the sake of having my child,
to bear the stings such a stigma would inevitably carry, could I, in
fairness to my little girl, suffer her to be placed in a position where
she would receive at best more of critical sympathy than understanding
love? Of her love for me I was as sure as I was of that of her father,
and never for a moment entertained the idea that she might turn against
me, as was suggested to me by certain ones to whom I dared to confide
my longing to proclaim my motherhood. My own case was simple, and when
she grew older she would understand. I had, before I gave Mr. Harding
the full measure of love, loved no man in a degree even approachable
to the love I had for one smile from Mr. Harding. As his sister, Mrs.
Votaw, had laconically said to me upon the occasion of one of my
visits to Marion, though she knew not whereof she spoke: “You never
really loved anybody but Warren, Nan.” Therefore, to be relegated to
the list of possible wrong-doers would be to impute wrong motives to
the one beautiful impulse of my life, and the only impulse I had ever
experienced which carried with it the sacred instinct to which my mind
had given birth under the breath of Warren Harding’s love long before
my body had known its realization in motherhood. Knowing so well my
own heart, it would have been but the crowning glory of my experience
to tell the world that Warren Harding was the father of my child, to
dwell with others in open admiration upon her smile which is the smile
of her father, or upon her lovely eyes which are lighted with the
lights of his eyes.
But, if my sweetheart, the father of my child, had been of lowly
estate, what then? Ah, then indeed, from what I could see of the
hypocrisy of mankind, I would suffer the unjust criticism of slanderous
charges--that I had “sold myself cheaply,” or, indulging an unbridled
passion, had been unable to escape the penalty. This would be the
inevitable result, and might in a measure attach itself to human
opinion even if a frank declaration from her father revealed his
fatherhood. But in either event, the stains of ignominy would attach
themselves _to the child and mother_--and why? Simply because that
mother did not seek to strike his existing legal bonds asunder. As
Warren Harding said to me the last visit I had with him in the White
House, “If you had been _born earlier_, Nan!...” If I had been born
earlier Warren Harding would have undoubtedly chosen me for his _legal_
bride. But I was never even so much as tempted to try to destroy a
legal yoke which had existed thirty years merely for the sake of
bending my head under a similar one, thereby legalizing with man-made
law that love which was already God-given.
In her own way Florence Harding may have loved her husband, and I
am glad today that I do not have upon my conscience the remembrance
of marital interference which would have added not a whit to the
love Warren Harding and I had for each other and might possibly have
succeeded only in precipitating sordid gossip. Yet I say this with the
full knowledge of my own influence over the man I loved and who loved
me, and had I exerted that influence selfishly in my own behalf I might
early in our sweetheart days have solved the problem which remains
unsolved and which has led me to write this book.
How then, I pondered, could I save the good name of my child if I
acknowledged my motherhood? Where lay the possibility of a continued
sharing of sweet intimacies with her father? And where, oh, where,
lay my own peace of mind? Certainly no good result could come from my
constant mental pandemonium!
My sweetheart, in the very nature of his position, had sacrificed what
would have been to him and me the culminating happy years of our love,
by the political victory which would doubtless eventuate in claiming
four or eight years of his life. Could our present personal regime
survive over a period of eight years? It could not, I decided, if I
were to keep my right mind and continue ever-alert vigilance in Mr.
Harding’s behalf. No human being, I argued to myself in despair, could
withstand the devastating mental effects of a problem so seemingly
unsolvable, so shattering from the very method in which a solution had
been effected. A cowardly, covering adoption of the daughter of the
President of the United States!
And so on and on ... and the days passed, and months were behind me,
and still my mind continued to go round and round, evolving no workable
plan, however, and I continued to support to the best of my ability the
regime as it stood.
_81_
But I never for one moment ceased searching for a plan, and I wonder
now as I write just when the plan which I decided definitely to follow
after Mr. Harding’s death, really took form in my mind. It may even as
early as that summer--1922--have been latent within my consciousness,
and my subconscious thinking might very possibly have directed a
course of action which would have received vigorous opposition from my
conscious thought.
I began to perceive the _easy way out_ was to find myself a husband.
It would be comparatively easy then to take Elizabeth Ann, give her
my married name, and, having her thus _legalized_ as mine, confess to
the man that I would never love him except for the fact that he had
made it possible for me to have my child with me. Some may think that
this was a most unworthy contemplation, even as it was admittedly a
subconscious consideration, but it must be remembered that my child was
growingly dearer to me than life itself, and I did not even so much as
dwell upon the sacrifice of mind and body which such an arrangement
would mean to me. Somehow, I thought _that_ was possible of working
out by “_paying my way_,” and I would choose to marry someone whom I
could easily dominate, with whom my secret, if I elected to tell him
my secret, would be safe, and who withal had sufficient worldly goods
to put up a front consistent with being Elizabeth Ann’s father. I was
even willing for the sake of having her myself to eliminate certain
demands I had made when submitting to the adoption by my sister and
her husband, viz., that Scott attain for himself as soon as possible
music prestige which would becomingly fit him to fill the role of
foster father to Warren Harding’s and my child. I would dispense with
this requirement in any man I might choose to marry because I did not
mean, down in my heart, that he should fill much of a role in that way.
Who knows? Maybe I intended to leave him after I had taken his name
for myself and my child! I know I would then have been capable of just
such procedure had I determined to act upon it. Or perhaps those same
fates which had so generously guarded Warren Harding and me during
our earlier days would intervene later on to make possible the great
miracle of our own marriage!
Thereupon, with provisionary intent, I began to consider this one and
that as a husband possibility. My acquaintance among men was limited.
I dabbled unhappily however in friendships, trying to see this one or
that in the role of step-father to our child, and recoiling ever unless
my subject of concentration seemed to display conspicuous ability in
the matter of winning Elizabeth Ann’s affection; this at least, I
thought, would be desirable.
I even went so far as to confess to Mr. Harding, upon my next trip to
the White House, that such a course of action had suggested itself to
me, and the memory of the disappointment and hurt in his expression
should have been sufficient to cause me not only to immediately abandon
further thoughts along this line as unworthy, but to be heartily
ashamed that I had ever voiced such thoughts to him.
But my confession was made only because I sought, in mental
desperation, a way to make my child my very own. I even mentioned
one man who at that time seemed logical for my own peculiar marriage
purposes. Mr. Harding faced me on the couch in his private office.
“Don’t you think he would be a safe person to marry?” I asked him
earnestly.
“Well, Nan, do you think you could _love_ this fellow?” Mr. Harding
inquired of me gently. I did not look directly at him, though I
answered him quickly.
“Of course _not_, but _that_ wouldn’t matter!”
Mr. Harding’s voice was firm and I knew he was looking at me
searchingly.
“Oh, yes, dearie, it would!” It was as though he were reasoning with a
small child, I felt, one who did not know what was good for her to do.
“That would be grossly unfair to the man, Nan darling,” he went on very
gently, as I continued to avoid his eyes, looking down at my hand which
played with my “wedding ring” from Mr. Harding.
“Well,” I said finally with emphasis, raising my eyes now to my
sweetheart, “You _know_ I never _shall_ love anybody but you!”
What relief and joy overspread his face! The exclamation that escaped
his lips seemed almost a sob as he crushed me to him. How I loved him
for wanting me so! But how I also loved my child and wanted her!
_82_
During the interim between this and my next visit, which must have been
in late August or early September, Tim Slade came to Chicago to deliver
a package from Mr. Harding which contained money and a letter to me.
Tim Slade came several times to Chicago, and I always met him at the
Congress Hotel. He was frank to express to me his feeling toward Mrs.
Harding, which amounted to much more than mere dislike, and on one
occasion revealed his resentment toward her which had been aroused by
the occasion of one of his visits to me. He said Mrs. Harding, knowing
he was going to make a trip to Chicago, but not of course knowing why,
had said to him, “Tim, where are you going?” His resentment because of
her curiosity prompted a reply which Tim said simply enraged her, and
she _demanded_ to know why he was going to Chicago. He said he told
her it was to meet some member of his family who was to be in Chicago
on the day he planned to see me. It was Tim Slade himself who recently
reminded me that Mr. Harding had one time sent another man to Chicago
because he, Tim, could not go, and I recalled then that I did meet
someone other than Tim, at our usual meeting-place, the Congress Hotel.
I did not, you see, go to Washington every time Mr. Harding would have
liked to have me come. There were times when he could not have me, and
I went only when he wrote that it would be all right. Mr. Harding’s
letters expressed more and more his fear about our situation, and more
and more cautioned me to be guarded both in speech and action. And my
perturbation and dissatisfaction grew apace with his concern.
It seems to me it was the fall of 1922 when Miss Daisy Harding came
again to Chicago to visit her cousin, Mrs. John Wesener. She had
visited there in 1921, but at that time I was in New York. This
time her father, Dr. Harding, was there (with his wife by his third
marriage) and it so happened that my Grandfather Williams was visiting
at my sister Elizabeth’s at the same time.
Dr. Harding, Daisy’s father, and my grandfather were both Civil War
veterans and therefore old friends. So I took my grandfather to call
upon his friend, Dr. Harding. Grandfather Williams was usually careless
about his appearance, and I knew Dr. Harding had been kept carefully
groomed ever since his son’s election to the presidency, so I tactfully
suggested to Grandfather that he have his shoes shined, and upon that
occasion I myself brushed his coat and prepared him otherwise for his
call upon his old friend, the President’s father. My grandfather’s
pride was his uniform, and this he wore then, though I am sorry to say
it was sadly in need of cleaning and pressing, albeit he reserved this
dress for his G. A. R. encampments and other state occasions.
I remember I had not seen Dr. Harding except briefly since his son had
been made President, and it occurred to me he looked far different from
the man I used to see back in Marion driving around with his “horse and
buggy.” Then his shoes were as dusty as my grandfather’s, and I have
been in his home when it was futile for his daughter Daisy to urge him
not to pin his coat together with a safety-pin. He just would do it.
The two dear old fellows had a lovely confab over the Civil War, while
I, off in Miss Harding’s bedroom, visited with her. I have often
recalled that visit, for to me Daisy Harding was not quite the same
Daisy Harding I had known in high school. But perhaps this was only
natural. The world’s spotlight had fallen upon her, and she talked
about how she had to avoid the reporters who, as she said, literally
camped about wherever she went. I could readily appreciate this, but
I could not understand the change in her otherwise; and when one is
sister to the President one naturally takes for granted that one’s
friends know that one is subjected to reporters and even false news
items.
One reason why Miss Harding had come to Chicago was to purchase some
new clothes and these she showed me upon that visit with her. They
were lovely, but she needed nothing elaborate, in my estimation, to
accentuate the natural loveliness which was hers.
[Illustration:
_The President and his father_, DR. GEORGE T. HARDING
Dr. Harding with his horse and buggy on East Centre Street, Marion,
Ohio, in front of the _Star_ office
]
I could not help deploring the change in her which was not a becoming
change. I remember when I was a child, in Grace Cunningham’s eighth
grade class, I was given a poem by her to recite upon Lincoln’s
birthday. It was known as Lincoln’s favorite poem, and begins, “Oh,
why should the spirit of mortal be proud!” The changed Daisy Harding
brought this poem to my mind. I thought of the visits with her brother
Warren in the White House--the President of the United States--yet
to me he had not been changed a whit by this great honor; rather had
he been made nobler and more humble. And it grieved me to see this
instance of woman-change in Daisy Harding. But I loved her none the
less.
I remember a passing remark which Miss Harding made to me upon the
occasion of that visit. We were talking about my sister Elizabeth and
Miss Harding remarked her surprise that Elizabeth and Scott with their
music careers ahead of them (Scott a violinist and Elizabeth a pianist)
should have taken a baby. It occurred to me then, as it has occurred to
me dozens of times since in the distress of my own dilemma, that a more
admirable thing they could not have done, even though the baby were
taken from an orphan’s home, even though they had taken a child as a
means of preventing their too deep engrossment in themselves and their
“careers.” However, perhaps I am prejudiced in favor of taking care of
the babies in this world.
_83_
Winter--the last winter Warren Harding was ever to know on this
earth--was fast coming on. My letters from him spoke his disappointment
that he had not seemed able as yet to have me with him intimately in
Washington. Around Christmas time he wrote and sent me $250 with which
to buy my own Christmas present, besides having provided me liberally
with other Christmas money. With $225 of that $250 I bought myself a
little diamond and sapphire link bracelet, having indulged again in the
erroneous belief that a new trinket might help to make me forget--at
least while its newness lasted. This idea had become somewhat of a
mania with me. Whenever I found myself eaten to distraction with too
much thinking I would go out to purchase a gaily colored gown or a hat
or a pretty pin, eventually giving it away perhaps, but easing myself
at least during the moment of buying. I used to drag my darling baby
around with me on these mad hunts for happiness, which, alas, never
sparkles for the desolate even in caskets of diamonds and rubies.
I surfeited Elizabeth Ann with toys; there was nothing she wanted that
I did not immediately buy for her, often to my sister’s disgust. But
somehow I felt that my sorrow must also be Elizabeth Ann’s and that I
must assuage her grief, in advance, by heaping frivolous toys upon her
then, for I was sure she would be ultimately saddened by the knowledge
that I could not have her for my own. It is easy to see that my mind
was not functioning normally. I was becoming unable to view things
evenly, and the slightest mental upheaval brought on magnified mental
distortion, and a pronouncement of inevitable disaster; I rushed madly
about to find a method of forestalling the doom which seemed to impend.
But it was all so vain. Happiness for myself and my baby could not be
bought in stores. I could not escape the thing that was to come.
_84_
In my position at Northwestern University, as President Walter Dill
Scott’s secretary, which position I filled for six months, I was being
thrown into a social element I might have enjoyed had it not been for
my preoccupation in my own trying matter. Acting on impulse, I decided
to give up my work with President Scott and go into the University as
a student. I set about to gain Mr. Harding’s consent and approval.
I wrote him I wanted to see him on a matter, and he set the date of
my coming. It was in January, 1923, and the second semester of school
would begin in February.
[Illustration: Elizabeth Ann at four, while her mother was attending
Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois]
Mr. Harding’s latest letter had inclined me to think that perhaps we
might be able to have more than a formal visit, and so I invested in
a lovely orchid neglige and ostrich-befeathered mules. These I hoped
I might have occasion to need upon my visit to Mr. Harding, and you
may be sure this intimation from him had set my heart beating wildly.
Perhaps I needed this intimate nearness to re-affix a certain sanity I
seemed to have lost; perhaps he needed me to help banish the harassing
fears besetting him on all sides.
Mrs. Warren G. Harding, wife of the President of the United States,
was a very sick woman. According to the bulletins she was still in a
critical condition at the time I saw Mr. Harding, despite the fact that
she had, I think, passed the crisis of her illness. Brigadier-General
Sawyer, personal physician to Mrs. Harding, headed the list of
doctors in attendance upon her. But Mrs. Harding had, as far back as
I could remember, been ill or ailing most of the time, and one time
in particular, when Mr. Harding was Senator, he had come over to New
York to see me during her illness and told me very calmly that they had
been “sure she would die.” So the credence given by most people at that
time to the unusual severity of her illness was somewhat discredited by
those of us who knew the chronic character of her sickness. And when
Mr. Harding wrote thus hopefully to me in very early January, I felt
sure that the papers had grossly exaggerated the First Lady’s illness,
and that likely by the time I reached Washington she would be on her
way to Florida, or some other place, for a period of recuperation.
_85_
I recall for many reasons that visit to the White House in January of
1923. Sometimes it recurs to me with such vividness that I long with
all my heart to be able to forget it. Mr. Harding’s letter conflicted
greatly with the situation as I actually found it, and I had not been
long with him when I saw that what I had taken literally as high hope
on his part to be able to have me as of our old sweetheart days was
really a dreamy lapse on his part into contemplation in writing of what
he would _love_ to do, rather than what he _could_ do.
My reaction to his unwitting deception was such as to sink me
immediately into a state of weeping, a bitter railing against fate, and
complaint such as I had never allowed myself to voice on any previous
visit to the White House no matter how low my spirits had been.
My preparations for this visit had been quite elaborate and extended
not only to the purchase of a new neglige, but also to a lovely hat
and dress and slippers. The dress was a stunning grey thing, and with
it I wore a hat which I had purchased at Joseph’s and for which I had
paid $55. My slippers were high-heeled patent leather trimmed with grey
suede. Mr. Harding helped to remove my squirrel coat and, as always,
remarked in an adorably off-hand manner which was really intimate,
“That’s a very good-looking outfit, Nan!” Then he looked at me and
said almost fiercely with that look which I always knew foretold a
tremendous hug and many kisses, “You pretty thing!” But I did not feel
in a dressy mood now that I knew the real situation with him.
We sat first in his private office, on the leather couch. I had brought
with me, to show to Mr. Harding, a cunning doll which I had bought
myself for Christmas, in company with the many dolls I had bought for
Elizabeth Ann. It was really a doll’s head mounted upon a stick, and
for the doll’s bodice there was a round music box, covered with a
frock which came down nearly to the end of the stick. When one twirled
the stick the frock stood out very stiffly and the doll appeared to be
dancing and humming a tune. The tune was a little German folk-song, and
it was this rather mournful melody which had attracted me; it somehow
chimed in with my spirit of persistent melancholy.
“What ’ave y’ got there, dearie?” asked Mr. Harding, looking down at
the doll. The day, I remember, was not particularly bright, and he
strained his eyes to look. I stopped crying and smiled wanly as I
slowly twirled the dancing doll. The sweet sadness of the music seemed
to fill the silent room. Mr. Harding smiled and took the doll out of my
hands. “Sh! darling,--they can hear out there in the hall.”
I suggested that we go into the ante-room. There Mr. Harding sat in
the corner of the couch and faced the window. I could observe his face
here, and I exclaimed, “Why, honey, what a terrible cold you have!”
His eyes and nose were red from it, his face was deeply lined as I had
never before seen it, and his drooping body expressed a dejection which
was shocking to see. “Believe me,” I told him, “if I had my way I’d see
that you got into bed until you are rid of that cold.” “Can’t do it,
dearie,” he said briefly, “got to keep going--why, right _now_ I am the
cynosure of the whole world--‘the President of the United States, with
a sick wife’!”
“How is Mrs. Harding, anyway?” I inquired. But, though the First Lady
of the Land lay not a block away, the subject of discussion, as Mr.
Harding said, of the whole world, in my world her fate did not even
seem to touch me. You see, my own problems eclipsed those of anybody
and everybody.
“About the same,” Mr. Harding replied to my query.
“Oh, dear!” I exclaimed, “I do hope she gets better and is able to go
to Florida!” Mr. Harding smiled and bent over to kiss me. “I do, too,
dearie!” he replied with an attempt at cheeriness. But the attempt
was a failure. In truth, the whole atmosphere of that visit was one
of finality. I felt a presentiment of much evil. I could not shake
off the uncanny feeling I was experiencing. And I know something of
that feeling communicated itself to Mr. Harding, if indeed he had not
already experienced it with me from the beginning of our visit.
“Nan,” Mr. Harding took my hand, “our matter worries me more than
the combined worries of the whole administration. It is on my mind
continually. Why, dearie,” he continued with something akin to shame,
“sometimes in the night I think I shall lose my mind worrying over it.”
Strange as it may seem, I could not then see why it should worry him so
much. Had we not passed through the most critical stages of possible
exposure? And had I not engineered the thing to the point of safety
thus far? I asked him, with rather a spirit of resentment. _I_ worried,
_too_. I told him, but it was not from fear of exposure, but from the
daily ghostly fear of living the rest of my life in such unhappiness as
that adoption had brought to me. It harassed me almost to the point of
insanity. _I wanted my baby_, I told him, bursting into tears.
Seeing me so distressed, Mr. Harding again tried to get hold of himself.
“Why, listen, darling, you are foolish to worry on that score. I have
told you that after I am out of office I myself will take her--you’d
give her to _me_, wouldn’t you, sweetheart?” His attempt at a smile was
pathetic. I crept over closer to him, heedless of the stalking guard
outside the window.
“Oh, if you only could!” I breathed. But, I hastened to remind him, how
could he when Mrs. Harding....
“You must remember, dearie, that Mrs. Harding is older than I, and very
probably will pass on before I go, and if she goes first, remember, I
myself will adopt Elizabeth Ann and make her a _real_ Harding!” But, I
argued, Elizabeth and Scott had already adopted her. Would they? ...
could he?... I was anxious to have him banish _all_ my doubts.
“You leave that to me, Nan! I’ll manage all that when the time comes.
And in the meantime, you are to have ample funds, for them and for
yourself. _I expect to provide amply, in any event, for you and our
little girl as long as you both live._”
“Honey, why do you have Dr. Sawyer?” I asked him, as he used his
handkerchief. “My father used to make fun of him, really!” I informed
him frankly. Mr. Harding’s mouth twitched and registered a faint smile.
Seeing I had not offended him, I continued. “I don’t see why you have
to consult the same doctor Mrs. Harding consults, anyway. If he were
much of a doctor, he would put _you_ to bed!”
“_You’d_ take good care of me, wouldn’t you, Nan?” he asked fondly.
He bent over to kiss me. “I’m selfish to kiss you with this cold,” he
said, drawing back. “I don’t want to give it to you!” and the semblance
of a smile lighted his dear, tired face.
I kissed him very long in reply. “Say, sweetheart, I never got
_any_thing from you that wasn’t good!” I told him, kissing him again.
He stood up and took me in his arms in the corner away from the window.
He used to draw his mouth into a certain shape when he made ready to
kiss me, which somehow gave him and me the fullest rapture of the
kiss. I have never read or heard of anyone else doing it. After we had
returned to the couch he turned again to voicing his troubles.
“Nan,” he confided to me, “I’m in debt right now $50,000, and I just
can’t seem to get out!” It occurred to me even then that this was a
small amount for a President to owe, but I simply said how sorry I was,
and that I would economize, and help a little bit that way. Somehow
this promise seemed to amuse him, and his tone indicated that what he
gave me was the least of his worries. “I don’t care _how_ much I give
you, dearie,” he said, with a caressing smile, “so long as you can
account plausibly for it. I want you to have everything to make you
comfortable. I only tell you these things that you may know what I’m up
against down here.” He rose and paced the little room. Somehow I had a
feeling that he was not telling me the whole of his troubles. “Really,
dearie,” he said, slowly coming back to the couch, “my burdens are more
than I can bear!” The tired face was lifted to the window and the tired
eyes gazed wearily at the wintry vista outside.
The misery of that picture! The haggard face, the bent figure, the
white head! Surely this was not the man who had come, at the call of
a nation, to serve, and to “give all of heart, and mind, and abiding
love of country to service in our common cause.” My heart ached for
him. Plainly, the disillusionments suffered in the Presidency of these
United States were cruel. I said that I wished he might get out of it,
resign, anything that would get him away from his worries, anything
that would relieve this darling man who was being tortured with the
slow stabs of disappointment and disillusionment. And they called this
the greatest position in the land--this nerve-wrecking, energy-sapping
job,--the Presidency of the United States!
President Harding shook his head sadly. “No, I’m in jail, Nan, and
can’t _get_ out!”
He opened wider the door leading into his own office and we went in
there again. The darkness of the day made our figures less visible over
near the grate fireplace than they were in the ante-room, which was
small and therefore quite light. Mr. Harding said his stenographer was
at liberty to come in and ask about anything, but we’d “take a chance,”
anyway.
“Oh, sweetheart, sweetheart,” I cried in his arms, “tell me, what
constitutes happiness for me? What constitutes _our_ happiness,
darling?”
He kissed me tenderly.
“Work, dearie, _work_!” he whispered.
“But I _do_ work! I want _you_! And I want our baby as _mine_! And I
don’t believe I can ever have you again in the same way. I can’t stand
it, darling! It is breaking my heart. My baby lost to me, and the world
has my sweetheart!”
Then something within me suddenly rebelled at the irony of a fate which
would give us so much and then make us both suffer with separation and
denial. And I saw more clearly than ever before the real depths of my
heart, and the real urge of my subconscious mind.
“There have lived some men who have given up _every_thing for their
sweethearts!” I challenged, standing away from him with head held high.
A cruel thing to say! And a cowardly demand! He _had_ given everything
he could, everything, in fact, I had asked him to give within reason
and within his power, and it was not now immediately within his power
to give me our baby and to take me for his wife. And he had promised
what he would do in the future. I was only making it very difficult
for him, for him whose burdens were already, as he said, “more than he
could bear.” I began to regret that speech as soon as it was uttered.
Even as the words escaped my lips, there flashed into memory the
picture of my sweetheart, when he spoke at the Fairgrounds in Marion
the previous summer, and warned a nation against this very sort of
thing in words made immortal to me by him:
“Boys flying kites haul in their white-winged birds,
But you can’t do that way when you’re flying words;
Thoughts unexpressed may sometimes fall back dead,
But God Himself can’t kill ’em once they’re said.”
I am sure I did not imagine it; there was rebuke in his tones when he
answered.
“Nan, I’m tied. I can do no more. And I cannot desert my party!” Then,
in a softer tone, he added, “We can’t retract--if you had been _born
earlier_, Nan!” he sighed. I loved him for that and put my arms around
his neck again. “Nan, darling, you must help me; our secret must not
come out. Why, I would rather die than disappoint my party!” were his
words. Then, seeing he had hurt me a bit by emphasizing his loyalty to
a political party instead of to his sweetheart there in his arms, he
smiled sadly and pleaded brokenly, “Oh, dearie, try!”
We went back to the couch.
I told Mr. Harding about my wish to quit working for President Walter
Dill Scott and to go to school at Northwestern University instead. He
said, “Fine!” immediately. “You _like_ to study don’t you, Nan?” he
asserted rather than asked, and nodded his head approvingly. He said
he’d keep me in school all of the time if I thought I could explain it
satisfactorily. “What will your mother say, for instance?” he queried.
I told him I didn’t even try to explain things to mother. She was busy
teaching, and I thought it would be entirely safe. “All right, you’re
the boss!” he said playfully.
Mr. Harding was in knickers, and I told him for about the dozenth
time how stunning he looked. He smiled and said he thought maybe
getting out into the open air after luncheon would help him to get rid
of his cold. I told him it would very likely do him much more good
than Dr. Sawyer’s prescriptions. “Oh, well,” he replied, shrugging
his shoulders, “he doesn’t doctor _me_ much, you know; Mrs. Harding
has lots of faith in him. Gee, Nan,” and he shook his head in the
I-give-it-up-it’s-too-much-for-me-to-solve way, “they bother me to
death as it is, looking at my tongue and feeling my pulse; why, a
fellow can’t be alone a minute! Now, what I _really_ need is _your_
treatment!” and he finished with a big hug and kiss.
Mr. Harding said it was time for him to go to luncheon and time for me
to go, anyway, and I, pouting as usual when I had to leave him, rose
with reluctance. For some reason which I do not remember, I was to meet
my secret service escort on the conservatory side of the White House
instead of outside Mr. Harding’s office. So Mr. Harding said I could
walk over with him, down the passage known as the “secret passage,”
I believe, and under the pergola. We lingered long inside the closed
door, however, before we left the executive office. Little would I
have actually believed, in spite of the chills of premonition I had
experienced during that visit, that never again would we stand thus
together upon this earth. Perhaps that was why we clung so to each
other in our farewell embrace. And Mr. Harding’s eyes, as well as my
own, were wet. I shall never forget how he looked down at me, in the
dim light of that room, and asked, as he so often did, that I say to
him that I was happy now. “Are you happy now, dearie?” he asked softly,
and with quivering lips and brimming eyes I bravely lied, “I am happy,
sweetheart!”
We went out. Several feet behind us as we passed through the pergola
came Brooks, returning evidently from an errand to the offices. I asked
Mr. Harding who he was and he told me. In my brief glance backward I
saw that his valet was a very good-looking light colored man. This was
the one and only time I ever saw the trustworthy servant in whose care
I addressed so many letters to my sweetheart.
Laddie Boy came bounding out to meet his master as we reached the
entrance to the White House proper, and Mr. Harding stooped to pat him.
It seemed this was the kitchen entrance. Just inside the door a guard
was stationed. The kitchen maids peered through the partly opened door
upon us with curious glances. Mr. Harding indicated that his private
elevator was on the left and turned to shake hands with me. I thanked
him for the “conference” in quite audible tones and he bowed slightly
over my hand. Then he left me and I proceeded to the conservatory.
That was the last time I ever saw Warren Gamaliel Harding, my
sweetheart.
_86_
I returned to Chicago on an early train. The following day or so after
that President Walter Dill Scott was confined to his home with a severe
cold, and sent for me to take some work. It was up in his den that I
told him of the change I intended to make--to go to school instead of
being his secretary. He expressed himself as glad that I wished to
attend the University, but said he would be sorry to lose my services,
and suggested that I try to combine studies with secretarial work. But
this I knew I could not do, for I was still under Dr. Barbour’s care,
making two trips to him weekly for iron inoculations. This President
Scott knew nothing about and I explained it to him and said I knew I
could not undertake to do both things.
My brother-in-law, Scott Willits, returned home from abroad about
this time and I changed my residence to one of the girls’ dormitories
in Evanston. This was on Sherman Avenue, Evanston, and Mr. Harding
wrote me at that address during the next six months instead of at my
sister’s. He kept me well funded, also, during that spring, and I found
my studies more absorbing than I had found the secretarial work with
the President of the University.
But I was far from happy. I had Elizabeth Ann out at the dormitory
with me many times, and frequently stayed in the city all night at my
sister’s. Elizabeth Ann was the most lovable child imaginable. The
girls at school adored her and I never saw a child who could adapt
herself more quickly to playmates than Elizabeth Ann, even though those
playmates were, like the girls in the dormitory, eighteen and nineteen
years old. Of course, I was much older than the others there, being
twenty-six years old.
It was, I think, about the middle of March, when I, one day, called up
my sister’s apartment from Evanston to learn from my brother-in-law
that she had taken the baby and gone to Ohio. I had exhibited my
growing dissatisfaction with the arrangement as it stood, and to
Elizabeth, my sister, I had not hesitated to express, in all the
fierceness of my desire, my opinion that matters would have to undergo
a change. I might even have intimated that I myself knew of one way
which would give me my child, and in moments when the bars were let
down entirely I probably told her very bluntly how it hurt me to hear
Elizabeth Ann call Scott “daddy.” I never had as strong feeling about
Elizabeth Ann’s calling my sister “mamma,” although I objected to her
calling her “mother.”
Things as they stood were not harmonious. It all affected _me_ like
a poison, and I am sure was the direct cause of my so slow return
to normal health. And when I visited the baby at my sister’s and
heard Elizabeth Ann speak of what “daddy” or “mamma” did, even her
manifestations of love for me only made me the more unspeakably
miserable. I used to want to pick her up and fly away with her. And,
oh, how I longed to shout to the world, “She’s mine! She’s _mine_!”
The knowledge of this state of affairs and of the equal dissatisfaction
on the part of Elizabeth and Scott, experienced as a result of my
unrelenting attitude, told me, even as my brother-in-law was informing
me of my sister’s departure for Ohio, that she had _really_ also gone
on to _Washington_. My high-strung nervous system made my perceptive
abilities all the keener, and I had scarcely hung up the receiver when
I saw very plainly the whole picture. Either Mr. Harding, his greater
fears aroused by my first frank confession to him in January of utter
dissatisfaction with the present adoption arrangement, had sent for
Elizabeth, or she, tossed about mentally by the hurricane of my own
expressed sentiments and then by the more direct tornado of refusals
by Scott to longer suffer interference from me where the baby was
concerned, had written to him and asked for an appointment. To this day
I do not know how it came to be arranged that Elizabeth went down. In
any event, I knew intuitively, without being told, where she had gone.
When Elizabeth returned from Washington, she told me she had talked
with Mr. Harding, and I learned that she had left the baby at my
mother’s in Athens, Ohio, while she went on to the White House.
But what passed between Mr. Harding and my sister Elizabeth is to
this day almost a closed book to me. I was shaken with fury to think
that she would go to see him and not advise me of it beforehand. And
I was wroth with him I loved so dearly for inviting or permitting an
interview without my knowledge.
I will admit the possibility at that time of actual mental impairment
on my part where Elizabeth Ann was concerned, and perhaps it would
not be too much to say, that only by offsetting the effect that my
too-concentrated thinking wrought in me physically, by vigorous mental
application to my studies, was I able to appear the normal, fairly
healthy individual I had to be in order to keep going. But I so
powerfully discounted the wisdom and right of a mother’s having to give
up her love-child simply because stupid convention held a Damocletian
sword over her head, that I had developed a decided complex on the
subject, to apply the modern phrase.
And, instead of pressing Elizabeth to tell me what had been said by
Mr. Harding to her and what she had said to Mr. Harding, I sat down
and poured out to my sweetheart in a letter, which I fain would have
recalled as soon as it was mailed, my angry resentment at what I termed
being “double-crossed.” I wrote unkindly, I wrote hysterically, I wrote
intolerantly, I wrote pleadingly.
And, as always, my answer from him was characteristic. He wrote kindly,
he wrote calmly, he wrote tolerantly, and he, too, wrote pleadingly.
And, as always, my subsequent letter to him was one of apology for a
hasty temper indulged. I remember back in 1917, when I had shown anger
for a moment over something, Mr. Harding wrote to me afterward, “I
love you, Nan, darling, as much when you are angry as any other time.”
Indeed, I have never had anything _but_ love displayed by him toward me.
And even in late years when my sister has intimated to me that “Mr.
Harding was not as loyal to _you_, Nan, as you were to _him_, believe
me!” I have recognized that whatever Mr. Harding said to my sister
Elizabeth in that interview, he said not because he didn’t love or
trust _me_, but because, as he told me so often, he “couldn’t be
expected” to trust anybody beyond or outside of me, because he knew
that in all the world nobody loved him as devotedly or as passionately
as Nan Britton. And when he talked to Elizabeth, even though she was my
own sister, he was talking to a comparative outsider.
_87_
And so there continued to be dissension in the Willits household
whenever the mother of their adopted daughter appeared on the scene,
and I continued to cast about in my mind for a plan which would make
it possible for me to take my daughter. As the spring advanced, and
I realized another summer was drawing near, I grew more panicky than
ever. In June my school would be out and I knew Elizabeth and Scott
intended to go down on the Illinois farm that summer as early possibly
as July. That meant Elizabeth Ann would be away from me for one month,
two months, and perhaps longer. Oftener than ever, as a result of
contemplating another whole season away from her, would steal over me
the old, sinister suggestion of taking a husband. “Get married and you
can have her, get married and you can have her, get married and you can
have her.” The wordy little demons danced in my brain like mad until
sometimes I wanted to scream, “Stop! _Stop!_” But in the dead of night,
when I could reason more sanely, the idea itself would recur and it
seemed to grow less and less obnoxious in proportion to the recompense
it alluringly offered.
I grabbed at the following unexpected straw which was suddenly floated
before my sinking mind. In late April or early May I received a letter
from Helen Anderson, who was my teacher in New York when I took my
secretarial course.
“You have a way of getting things you want, Nan, why don’t you go to
Europe with me? I’m sailing on June 21st with the Armstrong Tour, and
enclose circular,” Miss Anderson wrote.
My unhappiness inclined me to try anything that would, even
temporarily, take my mind off the situation as it existed, and, knowing
that soon my sister, her husband and my baby would be gone, and having
made no plans whatever for myself for the summer, the trip to Europe
seemed a real Godsend. I had never been abroad, and the novelty itself
would surely occupy my thoughts and relieve me mentally, as well as
doubtless improve me physically. According to the circular the entire
trip, including six weeks of university study in Dijon, France, would
cost but $525. I had been studying French at Northwestern University
that semester and looked with favor upon continuing my study abroad and
at the same time, as was contemplated in the tour, seeing various parts
of France.
But the deciding element was that it gave promise of getting me away
from myself, and from the too exhaustive thinking about my baby girl.
It was certain I could not continue to survive the present mental
maelstrom. The get-a-husband program was not as easy at it had seemed,
and though I was accepting casual attentions from two or three young
men, one an instructor at Northwestern, I could see in none of them
enough of the desirable qualities needful in the enactment of the
program I had been considering.
[Illustration]
I wrote Mr. Harding immediately upon receiving the letter from Miss
Anderson, and told him exactly why I thought the trip would benefit me.
He himself was to be away in Alaska, I reminded him, which would mean
that I could not see him at all, and the baby would be on the Willits
farm most of the summer. I told him it would help to make me a little
bit more happy if he could let me go to Europe.
Mr. Harding had met Helen Anderson, you will remember, when he first
came over to New York, and he knew her to be a gentlewoman. Therefore,
in his reply he endorsed heartily my plans and enclosed $200 or $300 as
a deposit to be placed with the Armstrong Tour people. He advised me to
go ahead immediately and get my passport.
I remember very well that, even as enormously busy as he must have
been, he went quite into detail, telling me how I would have to have
my picture taken for the passport, and so on, and every succeeding
letter I had from him until I sailed contained advices. Advices and
expressions of how he “would love to be going” with me! “I would love
to see your face when you see London, Nan!” he wrote, and though our
plans did not contemplate London, I knew that Miss Anderson who had
been abroad about a dozen times, knew London well, for she often
visited a friend there, and I thought we would probably break away
from the regular tour and go for a brief time to London. Mr. and Mrs.
Harding had been abroad but once, I think, during their entire married
life, but evidently London had impressed Mr. Harding beyond Paris. He
wrote, “I wish _I_ might take you, dearie; I wish we might make the
trip together; I wish we might make it our second honeymoon trip!”
Instead, he said, he would be journeying in the opposite direction, to
Alaska. But not in spirit, for he would be thinking of me every hour,
he wrote. And I! Ah, he was never out of my thoughts, try as I did to
forget things.
_88_
One night I had Elizabeth Ann with me out at the dormitory. It was
about two weeks or so before I was to leave Chicago. We went to bed
and I talked things over with Elizabeth Ann. I would talk with her
as though she were an older person, and I swear I do believe she
understood many of the serious things I used to talk about. I don’t
know that I had mentioned to her up to this time that I was going away.
She was lying very close in my arms when I said, “Sweetheart, Nan is
going away for a little while--on a big boat!” There was silence for
a second, then she uttered a scream; it was not the scream of a child
except as an older voice might speak through a child. How often have I
thought of it! It was a cry of alarm, of premonition.
“No, no!” she cried. I had explained it to her so quietly and in what
I thought was a cheerful voice that her cry seemed almost to presage
tragedy. And all through the days of preparation following, that cry
sounded and resounded in memory.
She was so adorable that year--just three and a half years old. She had
all of her mother’s impulsiveness with periods of her father’s reserve,
and she was the most affectionate child I have ever seen. A true
love-baby like Nancy Hanks, Lincoln’s mother.
In this connection I am reminded of an incident which occurred
during Miss Daisy Harding’s first visit to her cousin Mrs. Wesener,
in Chicago, in the fall of 1921, I think. I was in New York, but my
sister Elizabeth related it to me. Miss Harding had come to call upon
Elizabeth. During her visit, Elizabeth Ann, who had been presented to
Miss Harding, walked up to her and, with charming frankness and with
the Harding smile, said, “Miss Harding, I jus’ _love_ you!” Elizabeth
said that her husband remarked after Miss Harding had left, “Well,
blood certainly tells!” Elizabeth Ann may possibly have felt that here
was her kin, at least in spirit, for she immediately decided that she
loved Daisy Harding.
So again I parted from my baby, and a few days before the 21st of June,
1923, I was in New York. I stopped at the Bretton Hall Hotel. This was
right around the corner from Helen Anderson’s apartment, on West 86th
Street.
_89_
I had met, when I was going to Columbia University in 1921, and living
in the studio apartment building on 72nd Street, a Norwegian sea
captain whom I shall refer to in this book as Captain Angus Neilsen.
According to the girl on my floor who had introduced him to me, Captain
Neilsen had until recently been a very wealthy man. She said he had
lost heavily through Charles W. Morse, in ship matters, but even so
he was reputed to be substantially wealthy if he could convert his
properties into cash. The girl who introduced me to the captain told
me, in a grandiloquent manner, that she had known Captain Neilsen when
he lived in his apartment on Central Park West and had a couple of cars
at his disposal. She claimed to have helped him enormously mentally to
recover from the terrific shock it had been to him to lose his money
through Charles W. Morse. He was at that time very lovely to me and I
judged him to be a fine man.
We remained friendly, and Captain Neilsen even came to Chicago during
the spring of 1923 to see us, staying at my sister’s. I spared a little
time from my lessons at Northwestern to come to Chicago from Evanston
to see him. When Scott had sailed for Europe the captain had been
greatly in evidence, taking us all, including Elizabeth Ann, who had
taken quite a fancy to him, to the theatre and so on, and helping me to
box some of my belongings when I returned later on with Elizabeth and
the baby to Chicago. He had quite a way with children.
Now, before I sailed for Europe, he helped me with last-minute errands,
and, in fact, took Helen Anderson and me down to the boat on the
morning of June 21st, 1923. It was much like having a big brother
around, and I could not help being sympathetic toward a man who showed,
as Captain Neilsen had always shown, such a deep regard for me.
Helen Anderson and I sailed on the _Roussillon_, of the French Line,
the same day, if I remember correctly, that the Harding party set out
upon its ill-fated Alaskan trip.
I had received several letters from Mr. Harding at the Bretton Hall
Hotel, in which he continued his advices and his wishes that he were
going with me. I tried to be happy. Now, at least, he could relax and
recuperate. I had retained a very vivid picture of him as he looked
in January, and I knew that the strain of Mrs. Harding’s illness had
greatly worn him.
In a letter from him, received Tuesday (I sailed on Thursday), he
wrote, “Don’t spend any money in New York, dearie; there will be many
things you will see in Paris which you will want to buy.” But already
I had, as a matter of fact, bought clothes, and I was indeed taking
very little of the extra $400 or so he had provided, in addition to the
regular tour expense of $525. When Captain Neilsen asked me frankly if
I was taking plenty of extra money, knowing all about how money goes on
the Continent, and I replied “not much,” he offered to lend me some,
and I accepted an extra $50, telling him I would repay him upon my
return. When Scott, my brother-in-law, returned from Europe the captain
had met him at the dock, as I had written and requested him to do, and
Scott, being broke, had accepted a loan of $100 from the captain then
and was grateful for the offer. This brotherly consideration on Captain
Neilsen’s part did not go unappreciated by me, either.
Mr. Harding had told me in his letter of Tuesday, which came to
Bretton Hall, that he would send me a steamer letter, and no sooner
was I on board than I sought the mail department in search of my
message. I found Mr. Harding’s letter and about twenty other pieces
of mail--letters, telegrams and specials. I hugged my sweetheart’s
letter and put it inside my dress next to my heart. Then I joined Helen
Anderson on deck, and bade her nephew and Captain Neilsen goodbye.
_90_
I think the sensations experienced when one leaves the shores of
America for the first time are indescribable. I stood alone at the
railing and looked back at the skyline of New York, gradually becoming
hazy with lengthening distance. Soon the Statue of Liberty was shrouded
in mist. Miss Anderson had gone downstairs for her luncheon. To leave
New York was, for her, an old story. I still had in my arms some
American Beauties I had received from the Northwestern University
instructor, as well as gorgeous flowers from Captain Neilsen. In my
hand I held my packet of letters, and next to my heart was my farewell
note from my beloved. I took my flowers into our cabin, and went back
to the rail to read my letters. Even as I drew out Mr. Harding’s
letter and gazed fondly at the familiar handwriting, I felt a shock.
I could not account for it, but it was the same uncanny feeling I had
experienced upon my last visit to him, which had been the January
before--six long months ago. Mr. Harding’s own preparations for his
Alaska trip had made it inexpedient for me to stop in Washington, and
we had in our letters spoken of the grand reunion we would have in the
fall when we both returned from our respective journeyings.
“Nan, darling,” Mr. Harding wrote, “how I wish I might be going with
you! To think of spending the days in glorious idleness with you,
lolling in comfy deck chairs, holding you all through the nights in my
arms, seeing strange lands with _you_, Nan!” Then, more fatherly, he
wrote, “Try to save out enough money so that you will not be entirely
broke when you land back in New York, because it may be difficult for
me to see you immediately upon your return.” His farewell letter had
contained no money. It was just full of love. “Darling Nan, I’d love to
go to the end of the world with you,” he wrote, and the old oft-written
message, “I love you more than all the world,” was repeated in that
letter. The postscript was sweet, and fairly long, and for me alone.
I could not, however, help feeling an inexplicable tone of finality,
of foreboding, unconsciously expressed by him. Was it all over? How
_could_ I know?--then!
In September of 1923, about a month after Mr. Harding’s death, when I
went to Marion, Miss Daisy Harding told me that Carrie Harding Votaw
had passed through her brother’s office in the White House shortly
before the Harding party started for Alaska, and Mr. Harding had called
out to her, “Carrie, I’m making my will!” “Your _will_, Warren! Why,
what for?” asked Mrs. Votaw in amazement. “Oh, I don’t expect to come
back from Alaska,” Mr. Harding replied in a semi-offhand manner. I have
often considered the last letter which he sent me when I sailed, in
connection with that statement my sweetheart made to his sister about
his will.
I kept Mr. Harding’s farewell letter several days, loath to part
with the latest and only love-letter I then possessed from him. But,
finally, one evening, just before dark, when the deck was almost
deserted and the passengers in their cabins dressing for dinner, I
took my letter to the railing. I read it over slowly, then kissed it
and tore it into bits. I tossed the bits out upon the billowing waves
and watched the little white floating pieces as our boat sped along.
I foolishly thought to myself, “They may be here when I come back and
I shall pass them again.” It reminded me of the summer of 1919, when
I was in Asbury Park awaiting my baby’s coming and used to take Mr.
Harding’s precious love-letters over to Spring Lake, a resort town near
Asbury, to a favorite grove where I spent many an afternoon. There,
after reading and re-reading the latest letter from Mr. Harding, I
destroyed it, scattering the tiny bits all through the grove. To know
that his letters were strewn all through that wood made it a very
sacred place to me. I would sit down and write him from there, and
sometimes I would stoop to pick up a wee scrap of the letter destroyed
perhaps the previous day, and find written there parts of the word
“darling” or “bliss” or “ultimate,” and often they would recall his
entire sentence of endearment to me. Now, as I dropped this last
letter into the sea, I thought that hereafter the sea, like the grove,
would always seem sacred to me, would seem almost to belong to me--even
as _he did_ belong to me!
_91_
On board the _Roussillon_, and subsequently when I reached Paris and
Dijon, I tried ardently to plunge into gaiety. I summoned all the
light-heartedness I could muster. After all, I had come to lose myself,
to try to find a temporary new existence, even to briefly forgetting,
if possible, the problem of how to obtain my daughter for myself.
I had gay clothes and plenty of them, and I put wine in my water as
everyone else did, and tried to act the part I suppose I actually did
look--a modern flapper. Certainly with the short skirts everybody
wore then, and with bobbed hair, I could not have looked as old as I
was--twenty-six.
But all the superficial gaiety in which I indulged could not make me
forget the problem paramount in my mind, and I found myself actually
reverting to the study of this man and that man, and wondering whether
I would consider him fitted for the role of foster father, in name
only. However, the men on board were for the most part very young,
and there was but one who looked fairly good to me in this respect. I
found out he had a responsible position in a bank, and from his own
remarks he evidently had known wealth all his life. He might do, I
thought drearily. Then I would shake myself out of this mood and join
the young people in their games or talk. But when we landed at Havre,
the one man I had quietly been making a study of proceeded to follow
his own divergent itinerary, and I forget all about _him_ as a husband
possibility.
There were about twenty-five in the Armstrong Party, in which Helen
Anderson seemed to be the star traveler. Being with her, I always had
the best accommodations. In Dijon, therefore, after ten days in Paris
and its environs, we were given separate rooms at M. and Mme. Lachat’s
very picturesque little home. We were to be in Dijon for several weeks,
attending the University of Dijon, and going on sight-seeing trips into
the adjacent mountain country. The Lachat home had a perfectly charming
little garden, shut in all around by a high wall common to many French
neighborhoods. Our rooms overlooked the garden, that of Miss Anderson
being on the second floor and mine on the first.
Everything thus far had been of absorbing interest to me, and I found
Dijon none the less so, with its quaint, narrow streets, quainter homes
and smugly contented people. The inhabitants were more than willing to
talk French with us struggling foreigners, and I managed to learn more
of their language during the few weeks I was there than in the previous
six months at Northwestern University in Evanston.
And I was gradually learning other things I had not known well when I
landed--for instance, the value of the franc, both to them and to me.
At Havre the porter had been bold to ask me for “an American dollar
bill, _s’il vous plaît_,” and I had handed him one, for I really felt
he meant to give me back some change. But he did not, and I determined
that if that was what they charged us Americans for carrying a bag down
one flight of stairs, I would do the tipping in my own way after that!
I found that the servant class over there was more than Americanized in
this respect, and I gradually “caught on.”
Miss Anderson and I, as well as several of the other members of the
Armstrong Party, were assigned for our meals to the boarding house of
Mme. Daillant, a rosy-cheeked woman whose husband dealt in wines and
who herself kept up the expenses of the home, I perceived, chiefly by
taking boarders. Around our table sat an interesting group: an Italian
_avocat_, several Norwegians, four Americans, including Miss Anderson
and myself, and M. and Mme. Daillant, their attractive young daughter
of about eighteen, and one other, a French lady. The Italian and I
struck up a friendship, and often we took long walks, carrying our own
dictionaries and consulting them quite frequently along the road to
make ourselves understood to each other in the French language.
_92_
The latter part of July, having grown quite a bit bored with Dijon and
not taking seriously the course offered the students at the University,
I, as well as others in the Armstrong Party, decided upon going into
Switzerland. Miss Anderson remained in Dijon, saying she did not wish
to incur the additional expense inasmuch as she had been many times to
Switzerland.
Geneva was our destination, and there was rare beauty in the mountain
scenery enroute there from Dijon and later in the city itself. I
stopped at the Hotel de la Paix, and my room, from the small balcony of
which I could view the lake and afar off the snowy-capped Mt. Blanc,
was both French in artistry and American in practical comforts.
I had noted in the morning paper, which was a Paris edition of a New
York paper, the progress the Harding party was making through Alaska. I
felt here in Switzerland, almost by myself, as though I were in another
world. I felt as though I were walking through a picture-book. Even
the friendships I was making seemed of the picture-book sort. I was
more real to myself when I dreamed, for when I dreamed I was invariably
taken back to more familiar surroundings, oftentimes spending whole
nights either with my sweetheart or with our daughter.
I had promised my sister Elizabeth I would try to get fat, and she had
made her appeal on the ground of keeping my appearance, telling me I
was not at all presentable when so thin. So I had endeavored to eat as
much as possible and the traveling around had not made it difficult.
And the food here at the Hotel de la Paix was fine, _par excellence_.
Mr. Harding used to tell me that to him it was a real pleasure just
to sit and watch me eat when I was hungry, for I seemed to so enjoy
my food. He used to order things he thought perhaps would tempt me or
things I told him I had never eaten; I remember he taught me to eat
artichokes, things I had never heard of until then. I was quite a hick.
Mr. Harding himself could with ease carry considerable weight. He was
very tall--fully a head taller than I. Nevertheless, I used to tease
him, when, upon observing that he was not eating as heartily as usual,
he would confess that he was on a self-imposed diet, “to keep his
stomach down.” “Why, you’re not too fat to suit me, darling,” I would
say. “What d’yuh mean, ‘keep down your stomach’?” Then, with head on
one side and the adorable smile I loved, he would lean over the table
and whisper, “So I can hold you closer, you darling!”
_93_
I remember it was on a Saturday, the 28th of July, that I went, by
myself, up Lake Geneva to Territet. The others had planned a mountain
trip to Chamonix, but I preferred the water trip. As our tidy little
white steamer glided slowly away from Geneva it scattered before it
flocks of snowy pigeons that find a welcome home, there along the lake
front, and from my chair against the railing I watched dreamily their
fluttering escape far away on the turquoise surface of the water. There
was the delightful coolness of mountain air and the clear blue of the
skies to make it a day among days for sight-seeing.
In my English Literature class at Northwestern I had, that spring, been
studying Lord Byron’s _The Prisoner of Chillon_, and I was looking
forward eagerly to seeing the Chateau of Chillon, which is at Territet,
the last stop our tiny steamer would make.
Some of the seats on the observation deck were arranged so that they
faced each other, as in a train, and my heart suddenly jumped as I
stared at the front page of a foreign graphic sheet which the man
opposite me held at a visible angle. Mr. Harding was pictured on his
trip with some Indians, and the pose was so natural, with his straw
hat, and cane in his hand, that I felt the hot tears come in my eyes
and a great heaviness in my throat. The man lowered the paper just in
time to find me straining toward it, and thereupon offered it to me.
But I shook my head and thanked him. I determined, however, to buy a
copy immediately upon my return to Geneva.
At the Chateau of Chillon I strolled through the maze of big stone
rooms, and finally found myself down in the dungeons where stand “the
seven pillars of Gothic mould.” I met very few other tourists in my
roaming, and the sense of mediaeval days crept over me realistically
there in the stillness.... I imagined I was the daughter of an
indulgent but uncompromising father, living there in a great lonely
castle, shut off from the whole world. The room of the Duchess
So-and-So was my own room now, and it was my window which gave out onto
the glassy waters of Lake Leman. Here, tonight, my Prince Warren would
come to get me! I would jump from this window into his arms, into his
boat which would carry us both away, away forever, where my beloved
prince and I could live happily ever after! Then, finding myself in
the tower, I planned my escape in case my angry old father should
imprison me. But this escape was difficult to devise and so I dropped
out of the make-believe world and my roving mind took me back to the
newspaper picture I had seen a few hours before on the lake steamer. He
had looked a little tired, and I hoped they would not drag him all over
Alaska to speak and to shake hands with people. I wondered if he were
not perhaps thinking about me at that very moment, and the great love I
felt for him surged through my being. How good it would be to get back
to him! Already it seemed to me I had been away from him and from my
precious baby girl an eternity. And it was still three weeks until we
should sail on our return to America!
_94_
I shall never forget that night in my room at the Hotel de la Paix. It
was yet early when I reached Geneva from my day’s trip, and after I had
eaten my dinner and bought the paper containing Mr. Harding’s picture,
I retired to my room for early sleep. But my thoughts were too full of
Mr. Harding and I could not sleep. His face seemed very near to me, and
I switched on my light again and studied the picture in the graphic
sheet. The more I studied it the more tired he looked to me, until
I thought in terror, “Heavens! I wish they would let him alone!” I
slipped into my negligee and walked out upon the tiny balcony and drank
in the loveliness of a moonlight night on Lake Geneva.
Across the lake, beyond Mt. Blanc Bridge which connects the two
sections of the city, sounded the gay laughter of late diners. “Winers”
I thought, absent-mindedly. There is considerable difference in time
between Alaska and Switzerland, and I wondered where Mr. Harding was
then and what he was doing. It was nine o’clock by the little watch he
had given me in 1917. Perhaps he was thinking of me, too, and that was
what brought him so vividly before me.
I stood there thus meditating, when over the waters, clear in the
mountain air, floated to me a familiar song, an old-time favorite
from a musical comedy, “The Prince of Luxemburg.” The words, which I
remembered quite distinctly, at first seemed a reassuring answer to
my fears, and I mentally fitted them to the air as it was played and
replayed by the little cafe orchestra:
“Say not love is a dream, say not that hope is vain!
Say not that cruel fate will redeem
Perfect joy with pain.
Look, oh, look not beyond--joy so near!
True hearts may ne’er despond, for love knows naught of fear.
Love breaks every bond, and love, true love, is here!”
But instead of happy “Say not” negations the lines seemed to sing
themselves into positive affirmations of ill, and I struggled vainly
to banish the prophetic sadness that pervaded the atmosphere of my
thoughts just as it had during my last talk with Mr. Harding in the
White House in January. Persistently this line haunted me, “Cruel fate
will redeem perfect joy with pain,” until it seemed like a sinister
night-song as I lay in my bed longing for merciful sleep. I had come
over here to forget, certainly not lugubriously to anticipate a future
which, in spite of every unfavorable circumstance, held promise of
much happiness. “Perfect joy with pain, perfect joy with pain--perfect
joy--perfect pain--perfect joy--pain”; the words droned themselves
into my drowsy consciousness until at last I must have fallen asleep.
When I awoke it was very early morning. I remembered with a sense of
shrinking terror my own thoughts of the night before, and the haunting
imaginings from which I fain would flee before they gripped me hard
again. Something told me I should have prayed for Mr. Harding instead
of spending my time in worry, and it seemed strange I had not thought
of it the night before. So I turned my face toward the pillow now and
tried to ask God to protect him from all harm and take good care of my
baby and him for me until I returned to both of them. Then I slept a
while longer.
_95_
I wakened to find a brilliant day awaiting me, and I was to spend
it with my Italian friend who was to arrive in Geneva that morning.
We hired a taxi and drove up through the mountains, listening with
amusement to the very informative guide as he pointed out this estate
or that peak with all the flourish of a proud possessor. He spoke
alternately in English to me and in French to both of us. We viewed
the Rhone and Arve Rivers from a topmost peak and marvelled how they
retained their own colors of brown and turquoise blue even as they
flowed far out into Lake Geneva.
It occurred to me that this fellow, this guide, seemed almost too
typical of other loquacious guides I had observed, and after our return
to Geneva, I said to him as we got out of the taxi, “You speak very
much like an American.” He answered with embarrassment, “Well, I am
kind of an American. You see, I was born in _St. Louis_.” Unfortunately
I could not repeat this to my escort in French accurately enough for
his full appreciation.
During my stay in Geneva, remembering that Mr. Harding had assigned
Angela Arnold’s husband to a post in Switzerland, and that they were
supposed to be living in Geneva then, I endeavored to locate Angela. I
could not remember her husband’s name, however, and the American consul
with whom I talked over the telephone said there were so many attaches
there that it would be almost impossible to locate them unless I could
definitely identify them by the husband’s surname. So I did not get to
see her. The following day we all returned to Dijon.
_96_
I heard very rarely from my sister Elizabeth about Elizabeth Ann. This
worried me quite a bit, but then, I thought, impatient with myself,
worry was my very mind’s shadow, and likely she was fine and having a
good time on the farm. My mother was a faithful correspondent, however,
and I was continuing to correspond with other friends, even keeping up
a desultory sort of correspondence with the Northwestern University
instructor, so I hung around the little apartment of the Dijon
University _concierge_ almost hourly to get my mail. As a matter of
fact, Elizabeth had a good reason for not being able to write oftener,
for I learned afterward what I had not known before I sailed, and what,
if I had known, would have kept me from sailing at all. That was that
my sister had undergone in my absence a severe operation in Chicago,
and had entrusted the baby to her husband’s father and mother on the
farm while she was in the hospital.
I had promised Mr. Harding that I would write to him. Indeed, he did
not have to ask me, for I knew I would want to anyway. Letters were
a medium of expression of my love for him which I could not lightly
abandon. But I could not, obviously, _mail_ any of them. I kept them in
my trunk, adding a little each night to what I knew, from experience,
he would term a veritable feast when I gave them to him in the fall.
Little wonder, staying so close to him in this way, and being unable to
banish fears about him, that I was torn mentally in what had been my
serious resolve to forget!
The Italian was very attentive and, I discovered, was highly
intelligent. How would it be, I thought, if I married _him_ instead
of an American, and made him the convenience-father of my child?
He spoke often of coming to America, where he might very likely
settle permanently. He was manifestly fond of children. And he was a
gentleman. It was a thought, anyway.
_97_
In Dijon, Madame Daillant’s little garden behind the house provided a
gathering place for her boarder-guests as they dropped in for meals,
but the evening of August 1st, 1923, it was conspicuously deserted.
I found it so when I, going on ahead of Helen Anderson, entered; so
I threw myself down into one of the empty chairs and picked up a
newspaper. It was very warm and I fanned myself with the paper before
opening it. A curious country this, I thought, looking around at the
graveled walks, the rickety benches, and the walls surmounted by
overturned glass jars on sticks. In parts of the country where I had
been it was very beautiful, and it had proven rather diverting. But
oh, where could one find a country to equal our own United States! How
really shabbily the middle classes here lived! The daughter of Mme.
Daillant, a pretty girl, with abundant dark hair and creamy skin, and
cheeks pinked by nature to an enviable glow, a pianist, too, of marked
ability--what prospects had she in this place? An American girl of
her class might rise to fame with like beauty and equal talent. But,
it seemed to me, I could see this pretty creature growing old and fat
like her mother, with nothing save a drab fate awaiting her. One of
the young men in our Armstrong party who also dined at Mme. Daillant’s
_pension_ had pleaded with me to stay close by when Mlle. Daillant
was in the vicinity for, he said, she attached herself to him with
leechlike persistency, and he knew how these French people tried to
rope one in. Poor girl! No doubt my American friend provided for her
the most romance she had ever known.
I opened the paper. My heart stopped; then pounded. My head swam and I
went limp. “HARDING HAS PNEUMONIA, BUT WORST FEARS ALLAYED.” I read the
headlines over and over--_over and over again_. As the words gradually
sunk meaningfully into my consciousness an indescribable terror seized
me. I crushed the paper in my hands and let myself out the little gate
into the wider, freer space beyond the garden. My lips were dry; I
put my hand to my forehead to steady myself. I wondered why I did not
faint. I never fainted, no matter how badly I felt. I have never to
this day fainted. So I did not faint then. I only paced up and down,
experiencing a mental anguish I had hitherto never known. A thousand
suggestions of action came to me. They tumbled about in my poor brain
in utter confusion, but from among them I was able to choose the first
to be acted upon: I would rush back to Paris immediately, and thence
to America by the first boat.... No, that would not do.... I must “act
natural” before these people and get out of the city without arousing
any suspicions. “Now is the time to summon all your courage, Nan,” Mr.
Harding had said to me over the telephone when I pleaded with him to
see me in New York shortly after the baby’s birth. I seemed to hear him
say it now. I tried to shake myself into common sense; to tell myself
everything was all right; he was ill but he would recover!
I seemed to go over, during those brief moments, my years with Mr.
Harding--our whole love-life together, even up to the time I had seen
him last, suffering from a terrible cold and looking, oh, so tired
and miserable. I remembered hearing Mrs. Harding one time tell how
“Warren” was pathetically afraid of pneumonia, above all other ills.
I remembered so dearly the things that had seemed to throw such an
atmosphere of finality over our last visit in the White House--his
little parting advises, our lingering kisses, his general despair.
And vividly did I recall my forebodings just five evenings before in
Geneva. And the memory of each dark thought added terror to my heart.
Miss Anderson found me a few minutes later, having followed the lead
of the open gate. I read the headlines to her through dry lips and
held the partially crushed paper up for her to see. “All paper talk,”
she said shortly. She bade me come in, as dinner was being served. I
could not tell her why I was so vitally concerned over the illness of
the President of the United States, and she, of course, thought it was
but natural sympathy for a man who had been a family friend. “You’re
silly to take paper talk so seriously,” she reproved. I followed her
into the house and found my place at the table. “‘Just paper talk,’ as
Helen says,” I told myself in desperate hope. “Now go on and eat your
dinner or you’ll be ill yourself from worry and lack of food.” So I
forced food down and passed dishes to and fro and listened to voiced
speculations from those around the table, particularly those in our
American party, about the probable severity of President Harding’s
illness.
Mlle. Daillant was endeavoring as usual to dazzle the American at
her right with charms and conversation, and part of me listened
apathetically to this babble of French while the other part continued
the contemplation of the newspaper report and an advisable course of
action ... the Italian shot solicitous glances my way throughout the
meal, but I could only raise dull eyes to him ... maybe I ought to
marry him, I thought ... he was a nice fellow ... maybe if I married
him, or somebody, it might relieve Mr. Harding’s mind of much worry
even though we both would suffer in other ways as a consequence of such
marriage ... the Norwegian professor’s wife looked as though she had
been weeping, though her eyes were always red, I thought ... a cold,
maybe, for she kept wiping her nose ... what did these people know of
tears, anyway! Mlle. Daillant’s laugh rang out and she repeated in
rapid French to the rest of the boarders something her American had
said which had amused her.... I wondered how it would seem to have no
care beyond an ardent wish to capture an attractive blond American
boy.... Good heavens! I hadn’t even enough money left for a passage!...
I would borrow ... yes, I must go ... these meals were interminable....
I looked at Helen Anderson and she understood. I excused myself, and I
even had enough presence of mind to nod to my hostess and murmur the
customary “_Bonsoir, Madame; à demain!_” as I passed out.
It seemed good to be able to walk fast, and as I directed my steps
toward Mme. Lachat’s, I tried to reason sanely with myself. Why, Mr.
Harding had a superb constitution! It was only the physical drag of
responsibility and worry which had overcome him. Maybe he did not even
have pneumonia! When he was inaugurated Brigadier-General Sawyer,
Mrs. Harding’s personal physician, had issued a statement something
like this: “President Harding represents the finest there is today
in America--morally and physically and mentally.” Although I did not
credit Dr. Sawyer with being a particularly good physician, I knew that
Mr. Harding’s general health had been excellent before he went into the
presidency, except for a few minor ailments now and then. I remembered
how strong he was, how he used to pick me up and carry me about the
room in his arms. I remembered how I grew to think he was made of iron
and was surprised if he expressed a wish to sleep occasionally! I
expected him to stay awake and talk with me all night.
I remembered one night how he had come into New York from a speaking
engagement up in New England somewhere and had closed his eyes almost
as soon as he touched the pillow, and how I, piqued to tears, had
lain away from him, silently, wordlessly, hurt, until he whispered,
“Nan, darling, come close to me! Why, Nan, you’re not crying?” And how
sweetly he had gathered me into his arms, and how ashamed I had been
when he confessed, with his usual embarrassment over indisposition
of any character, “I have a ripping headache, dearie; please forgive
me!” And I had rubbed his head with my finger-tips until he went off to
sleep, and then I had stayed very close to him and just looked at his
dear face and worshipped him. Oh, God, how sweet he was! How I wished
now I might fly to him over this hopeless space between us, and take
him away from _every_body, and nurse him to strength and smiles again!
That night I dreamed fitfully. I arose in the morning, unrested, and
hastened immediately to the Dijon railroad station, where I knew I
could obtain the latest papers from Paris.
_98_
The papers dated August 1st, which I bought on the morning of the 2nd,
caused me to take hope. The headlines were reassuring. “PRESIDENT MUCH
BETTER; GIVES PREPARED SPEECH; HIS SECRETARY HANDS TO PRESS HIS ADDRESS
HE PREPARED FOR DELIVERY IN SAN FRANCISCO.” That was more like _news_,
I thought joyously. I hurried back to Helen Anderson with the paper. My
Italian friend met me on the way. I translated into French as best I
could the good news. Helen Anderson had explained to the people at the
boarding house the evening before that I had come from the President’s
home town and had known him from childhood. My Italian friend smiled
broadly. _Now_ would I go to the theatre with him that evening? he
asked. Yes, I said, I would go.
I felt as though I ought to be gay. Mr. Harding would want me to. Maybe
my prayers were of avail, after all, and I breathed another prayer,
this time one of thankfulness. I went to school that day. I laughed
with the others at the funny mistakes we all made. I could have shouted
all the day long, so relieved did I feel, and so thankful.
That evening my friend called for me and we dined together, and drank
more wine than usual, and afterwards laughed with sheer joy at strange
French comedy which I did not at all understand. We sat in a box. My
friend was most agreeable; his face reminded one of some of the heroic
bronze faces on plaques. He called me “Ninon,” which he informed me
was French for Nan. I giggled to myself when I reflected how funny it
would really be to marry a man who knew but two or three words in my
language. Yet when I thought about it I decided this very fact might
prove an important factor in making him desirable for my peculiar
marriage purposes. But he was, after all, a very likable man, and some
girl might marry him for love of him alone. On our walk home after the
theatre, he proposed marriage to me again, for the severalth time,
and, as he bent to kiss my hand, I said to myself audibly in English,
“It would be a crime when he seems so genuinely fond of me.” He looked
up at me pleadingly. “_S’il vous plaît, Ninon, parlez en français!_”
I smiled softly and shook my head. “_Je vous a dit, simplement, ‘vous
êtes un bon ami.’_”
_99_
That night, Thursday, the 2nd of August, 1923, I dreamed a strange and
terrible dream. I had retired about twelve; I had not been long in
bed, and _surely_ had not even closed my eyes, though when I seemed to
come to my senses I realized I _must_ have been dreaming. My room, in
the corner where my bed stood, was dark, and when I realized what a
horrible nightmare I had experienced, I sprang out of bed like a shot
and over to the wall to turn on the electric light. I looked at my
watch. Why, I had been in bed for three whole hours! Seven o’clock in
America--Elizabeth Ann’s bed-hour. My heart was beating violently and I
shook all over. I passed an icy hand across my hot forehead. Yes, I was
awake, all right, now. God! What a ghastly dream! I opened my shutters
and breathed deeply of the sweet-scented garden air. A million stars
blinked down at me.... Peace, peace, there was peace everywhere but in
my heart. I turned off my light and crept back into bed. Strange how
really cold it got here at night; I should not have stood those few
moments at the window. I was trembling like a leaf; my teeth chattered
and my heart was still pounding up into my throat. My mother had taught
us children at home many things to repeat before we fell asleep and
mechanically I whispered these things now to myself--the Lord’s Prayer,
the 91st Psalm, the 23rd Psalm. I repeated them all, over and over, but
I knew not what I was repeating. My conscious mind was reviewing my
dream in minute detail for the morbid satisfaction of the mental devils
which seemed to possess me. I was conscious again of _a something_
above me, to the left. It seemed to be floating through the air. It
was shrouded about with white clouds which seemed not to hide it from
view but rather to protect it in its slow mount upward. _What_ was I
seeing! God! A coffin! A coffin draped with, and trailing about it,
American flags, and heaped with red, red roses! A coffin, ascending on
my left, rising so slowly that it seemed suspended in mid-air, yet ever
moving upward and away from me. How blood-red were the roses! And the
crimson stripes of the trailing flags stained the clouds! The whole,
mounting majestically, lifted by an invisible force, upward, onward,
protectingly shrouded by white, white clouds!
So he had come to me! He had come in this way that I might be the
first to know he was leaving this earth! He himself, tired unto death,
lay hidden beneath the folds of the crimson-striped flag he had so
loved, revealing to me only the symbol of his going, the beautiful
cradle of his last restful sleep! Perhaps he had been too tired, too
tired to bend over me, too tired even to murmur before he went away,
“I love you, dearie!” But I knew. I understood. He meant to waft me
sweet kisses in his sleep. Yet later he would come back, come back to
hold me close, and I would feel his presence, even as we were wont to
waken to sweet consciousness in each other’s arms, realizing with keen
morning wakefulness the bliss of reciprocal touch ... yes, now he must
sleep.... How beautiful the roses! They hung in tangled masses over
the edge of the coffin, mingling their blood-red with the crimson and
white stripes ... how gentle the Hand that steadied the coffin ... a
Hand that sensed his weariness and guarded well his slumber ... going
upward, heavenward, away from me--away from _me_! Oh, God! No, not
away.... I stared, wide-eyed, fearfully fascinated, _knowing_, yet not
daring to move, feeling instinctively the futility of lifting human
hands in an effort to stay the coffin in its slow flight heavenward....
Even as one transfixed I lay, moving only pitifully frightened eyes to
watch the coffin fade slowly out of sight, protectingly enveloped in
the white, white clouds...!
With a shock I came back to conscious thinking and sprang from my bed
to switch on the light. God! what a horrible nightmare it had been, I
thought as I lay in bed now reviewing it and mechanically repeating the
Lord’s Prayer ... the Psalms ... over and over.... “He maketh me to lie
down in green pastures, he leadeth me beside the still waters”.... Oh,
God, how glad I was that it had been only a dream! I thought as I fell
asleep.
_100_
When, on the following morning, August 3rd, I arose, pale-faced, to
rush down to the Dijon station for my paper, I wept for joy to read the
headlines. He was much, much better! There, I thought, that _proved_
that dreams “go by opposites” as I had often heard people say, for I
had _dreamed_ that he was dead, yet he _lived_! How good was God to
keep him safe for me! In spite of dreams and heavy heart I had found
him alive and getting better each minute. Tears of gladness streamed
down my face.
This was Friday. I remembered there was to be a dance that night for
the foreign students. I would attend that! I would buy a new dress
of brightest color and I would be gay indeed! I would evidence my
gratitude by banishing from this moment all apprehensive thoughts. I
would possess myself of a new spirit, a spirit of happiness born of
gratitude for my beloved’s recovery. He was _all right now_. He was so
strong, how foolish for me to imagine ... how we would talk about all
this after I was back in America and made my first visit to the White
House! And I would tell him of all my fears and he would smile and hug
me and say adorably, “You _do_ love me, don’t you, dearie?” Oh, _how_ I
loved him!
I smiled at passers-by as I skipped along to buy “something new.” The
lady in the dress shop was eager to please me. “_Je desire une robe,
madame, avec beaucoup le coleur jolie!_” I informed her gaily in my
best French. I selected one with cerise predominating. I had a large
evening hat which would do finely, and I would wear my black satin
slippers and sheerest black stockings.
Next I must have my hair washed and cut. I was wearing it straight that
summer. I went into what appeared to be a well-conducted beauty parlor.
“_Je desire ma cheval coupé et laveé!_” I informed the attendant, a
man, at the desk. He looked puzzled. I repeated my statement, taking
off my hat and running my hands through my hair. I had noticed that the
several ladies who were being either curled or combed had turned to
look at me in undisguised amusement, but then people were always amused
at my French. So I repeated the statement the second time more loudly,
generously enabling the amused ladies and attendants to have another
smile at my expense. _They_ didn’t know how happy I was. What did I
care if I provoked their laughter. Everybody should laugh. Everybody
should be gay. The President of the United States was fast recovering.
He was sick, but he was getting well! My sweetheart! My darling!
“_Certainment_,” I said, smiling, “_cheval--laveé--coupé!_” He burst
into unrestrained laughter. The attendants burst into unrestrained
laughter. The ladies who were getting curled or combed burst into
unrestrained laughter. And I laughed, too, though I knew not what had
so greatly amused them.
“_Cheval--cheveaux_----,” explained the attendant between spasms.
“Oh, I know!” I said in English, then I laughed with them. Mistakes
we traveling Americans had made in plenty, but never, I am sure, had
anyone topped this one, and never, I am sure, will that attendant
forget that he one day received the strange request from an American
woman to “_have her horse washed and cut_!”
Smelling much too strongly of cologne, which my attendant had insisted
was the proper thing to sprinkle on one’s hair after a shampoo, I flew
home to show Helen Anderson my new dress. She came into my bedroom.
“Mr. Harding is _much_ better,” I told her with a smile. “Didn’t I tell
you,” she answered, “that was probably all paper talk?” I nodded, glad
to acquiesce. We talked about the dance that night and both planned to
go. “I have a few more things to do downtown,” I said, “and will run
and do them now--or, rather, immediately after luncheon,” I decided,
seeing by my watch that it was almost time to go to Mme. Daillant’s.
_101_
By one-thirty that afternoon I had finished my purchasings, having
found at the last minute some gaily colored handkerchiefs which I
felt I would buy right then for gifts when I returned to America. My
money was low. I had wired Captain Neilsen once for $200, which he had
sent almost immediately to me by cable, having cabled him in Paris of
my anticipated need. This fund was fast diminishing. I would have to
cable him for more. I was glad I felt free to do so, because it was
impossible for me to cable Mr. Harding or for him to cable money to
me. On my way home I stopped at the _patisserie_ for some ice cream.
These afternoons in southern France were very warm. Some of the girls
who were in our Armstrong Tour were there and I sat down with them. We
talked about the party that night and our school work.
“Oh, by the way,” one of the girls remarked casually, “did you know
that President Harding was dead?” Like a knell, afar off, I heard a
clock strike two.
I never saw that girl afterwards, so I do not know what she and the
others thought of my conduct. I felt momentarily that I should faint.
“Where did you read that?” I demanded. (To myself I was saying, “God!
These varying reports will kill me! _Why_ do they print such things!”)
“On the bulletin board in the Square,” she answered.
I gave the waitress some change, picked up my parcels with trembling
hands and rushed out into the street. I made immediately for the
bulletin board. It was several blocks away. I was suddenly so tired
I thought I could not possibly walk so far. The sun was very warm.
My heart pounded and my cheeks felt strangely hot. And I kept trying
to wet my dry lips with an equally dry tongue. Aloud I was saying to
myself as I ran along, “Oh, that could not be, that could not be; of
course it is a mistake; oh, God, that just _could_ not be!”
Two university boys tried to stop me as I ran, calling after me
something about the dance as I shook my head and ran on. I did not stop
until I reached the bulletin board. I was tense and faint when I got
there and was clutching my little packages in hands that shook. The
glare of the sun was in my face as I stared up at the bulletin board
and tried to decipher in French much too difficult for me the news
about President Harding. A good many people stood about, also reading.
I turned to ask one of them, but remembered that they could only tell
me in French what the bulletin board said, and I could as well make it
out myself. I steeled myself and laboriously translated the bulletin.
The word _mort_ I knew, of course, meant death. Oh, God! Yes, that was
it. I translated words meaning eighteen hours. Yes, that was it. He had
been gone now for eighteen hours! Eighteen hours dead! “_How_ does it
read, really?” I asked in a strained voice of a man beside me. But he
only shook his head. “_Je ne comprends pas_,” he said.
Oh, it is difficult for me to bring this picture back to my mind! I
can remember it as plainly as though it were yesterday, and all the
horrible sensations of the shocks I experienced come over me anew. The
world seemed without bottom. Things suddenly lost their meaning. The
world, people, life itself, were like a horrible nightmare. I felt,
like the coffin, as though I were balanced in mid-air. I could not
ground either myself or my thoughts.
_102_
I turned away from the bulletin board and walked blindly up the street.
The fact that I was conscious of the direction in which I was going
seemed to me an assurance that I had not yet lost my mind. But it would
go. Yes, I was sure of that. I could not, after I had _realized_ that
my beloved had gone away from me, live on. But indeed even to this day
it has seemed to me that I have not fully _realized the reality_ of Mr.
Harding’s passing. He had been to me not mortal but immortal; he just
could not die.
Strangely enough, I did not cry. I could not cry. My head thumped
mercilessly and it seemed to me I was conscious of passers-by looking
at me, but I could not see wherein I was misbehaving. I was sane. I
was maddeningly sane. I knew that in my hands I still carried the
little colored handkerchiefs, and that I was on the main street. And
I wondered why I had not thrown the handkerchiefs away. All the way
up through the long street that is the main thoroughfare of Dijon I
walked. What was there to do? Where was I to go? What did it matter?
How strange that this should happen to me and I could not feel it
within my heart to cry!
I remember a street car coming alongside of me in that narrow street.
It seemed to bring me back partially. It was a long walk home, and I
was very, very tired. Yes, I was so tired I might faint. And people
might then find out, if I fainted and lost my mind and talked, that
I was President Harding’s sweetheart. I could not afford to faint. I
would take the car back home and I would be safe, once I was with Helen
Anderson.
God, what torture to sit in that car! There were five or six blocks
to ride, and they seemed interminable. The man called my stop--it was
_Place Octobre 30th_--queer name for a street. October 30th! It was the
22nd of October that Elizabeth Ann was born--the 22nd of October just
four years ago that fall. Elizabeth Ann! Our daughter. _His_ daughter,
and he had never seen her! And he was gone! Oh, no, no! It must be a
mistake! I was asleep again and it was a horrible dream. If he were
dead I would be crying. I pinched myself very hard and felt the hurt
keenly. I could not remember ever having felt such queer pressure
around my heart or such heaviness in my head. I reached our garden gate
and mechanically let myself in with the great key I carried.
I entered my room. On the bed lay the cerise dress. Was it possible
that I could actually have enthused over a mere dress? Was it I who had
entered this room less than three hours before in high spirits? Good
God, how meaningless everything seemed! How blank! I tried to ponder
the meaning of _death_ as it now affected me. But my mind was in a
daze. I could not pin my thoughts to contemplative consideration of
anything save the sickening emptiness and gnawing pangs I was conscious
of within. The effects of the bulletin-board statement were very real;
but the full significance of the statement itself I could not grasp.
The possibility that I should eventually awaken to the full import of
my sweetheart’s passing seemed remote, for _to me_ he continued to
live. Only the world-void and the dullness of an inactive mentality
seemed real then.
Helen must have heard me turn the key in the garden door, for she now
called downstairs to me. I answered her. I even went to the foot of the
stairs and called up to her in a voice that seemed strangely detached
from me, “He is dead, Helen!”
She came downstairs to my room. I was sure that something would snap
within my brain and I would be wholly without power of reason. So
I must tell her. In incoherent fashion, and in a strange, hollow
voice, I related to Helen Anderson how Mr. Harding was my sweetheart.
As I listlessly revealed to her fragments of my strange story,
Miss Anderson’s face grew flushed from shock. I wondered vaguely at
her changing expressions. I was puzzled that she should utter an
exclamation when I told her that the Elizabeth Ann I talked so much
about was President Harding’s child--and mine!
I remember distinctly, even in my state of mental lassitude, that I was
secretly amazed at her first question. “Well, how did you ever _do_
it, Nan?” “How did I ever _do_ it?” I repeated. “Why, yes, how could
you ‘get away with’ having a child?” It was inconceivable to me, who
had loved Mr. Harding for so long, how anyone could primarily feature
the obstacles in mentally digesting my story, for love such as ours
could encounter no insuperable obstacles to the full expression of its
divine nature. But Helen Anderson had never married, and she was a
conventional woman.
I stumbled through explanations, and as I reminisced aloud about
Elizabeth Ann I found myself quivering anew from head to foot and the
hot tears in my eyes. I was now really crying! It eased me. It was not
so difficult after that to go on. The tenseness of my body gave place
to violent paroxysms of shaking, but the relaxation I felt from talking
with someone was great relief to me. Helen directed me to get to bed
immediately. I _was_ very tired, I thought, as I crept into bed. Helen
stayed with me through the evening, reading to me, comforting me, until
I told her I felt perhaps I could sleep. But I was too shaken to be
alone, and that night, when I decided I could not stand it one moment
longer, I crept upstairs and into Helen’s bed, where I lay shivering in
the dark, crouched close to my friend, like a hunted creature.
_103_
My interest in France, in Europe, in the whole world was over now. All
I wanted was to get back to America and to Elizabeth Ann. I wondered
if Mr. Harding’s funeral would be held before I reached home. I did
hope everything was safe so far as our love-story was concerned, for
my sweetheart’s sake. Miss Anderson calmed my fears on this score when
I spoke to her about it. She said of _course_ nothing would “get out”
about a President who had just passed on. But I was afraid, anyway, and
I was anxious to get back to take care for him that nothing was said.
Of course if anything _were_ said about him, I would lie for him. I
could always say Elizabeth Ann belonged to someone else. And he was
protected--unless he had left some of my letters or some of my pictures
in his desk. But probably his private secretary, George Christian,
would obey him and burn those things in his private drawer without
looking at them. I feared for Elizabeth Ann. If they _did_ find it out,
what might they not do with her! Kidnap _her_ and worry _me_ to my very
death? Oh, yes, I must get back immediately.
I did not have sufficient funds to go on any boat outside of the one
our Armstrong party was scheduled to return on. And only the day before
I had spent about $40 on the cerise dress and other foolish things. I
told my Italian friend that my sister “was very ill” and he came to my
rescue with a loan of 1,500 francs ($90). Helen Anderson had offered
to cable her sister for extra funds, but I did not wish to await the
return of her sister’s cable. The $90 would suffice to secure for me
a change of cabin in another boat on the French Line, in addition to
the amount I was allowed on my regular return passage. The boat, the
_France_, would sail the 11th of August. Yes, they would have buried
him by the time I reached America, I was sure. My thoughts never
ceased. They ran on and on, and sometimes I felt that likely it was the
ability to think that had kept me from _losing_ the ability to think.
Miss Anderson, saddened over Mr. Harding’s death, and having had enough
of Dijon anyway, left with me, as did a young man who had been with us
a good deal on the tour. He accompanied me, in fact, to Havre, at Helen
Anderson’s expense, and put me on my boat. I had secured a double cabin
all to myself because the clerk saw that I looked ill. And never was
I so glad to leave any place in my life. I saw the shores of France
recede and turned my face toward America.
_104_
The feeling of unreality which I had been experiencing in connection
with Mr. Harding’s death continued, and it seemed to me those days
on the ocean enroute home that I possessed two distinct entities:
the one, myself, who suffered constantly, underneath her comparative
calm, and another who seemed always to be looking on. This second self
watched me, I might say watched over me, observing that I did necessary
things in a normal manner--that I dressed, breakfasted, talked, read,
dined, and even slept. This second self seemed also to approve of my
companionships on board, especially with a Swiss Frenchman who sat at
my table and who seemed to appreciate that I had been through some
kind of ordeal. He thought it strange that I didn’t care to dance, but
walked with me and sat with me on the deck and gave me interesting
books to read.
The passengers, at my table and elsewhere, very naturally talked about
Mr. Harding’s death. I had grown used to hearing him discussed anywhere
I might go, and this fact may have helped to make it possible for me to
listen to their talk until I could quietly excuse myself or otherwise
slip away unobserved.
My funds were almost exhausted. I had cabled Captain Neilsen to have
money awaiting me in New York, having received a radio from him that he
was soon to leave for an indefinite period. And he had wired me back,
“Call for funds at American Express Office.” I had scarcely enough
money left to tip the stewards.
Each day there was a pool won by the passenger who guessed the final
numeral in the mileage made by the steamer at the end of a certain
hour. My Swiss friend, seeming fond of sports of that kind, always bet
on some number. I did not know that one who bets must also deposit $6
of the $60 which went to make up the pool and, when he said to me one
day, “Put your name down against a number,” I chose 5. Unknown to me
he had put $6 into the pool for me. The following day I was informed
I had guessed the lucky number. It was long afterward, even here in
New York, that I discovered he had made the necessary deposit for me.
He seemed at the time I won to be much more pleased than I, saying he
“loved to see girls win things.” Inasmuch as I had about $5 left you
may be sure the $60 lucky cash came in handy!
Mr. Harding’s generosity had made of me a far more extravagant girl
than might have been the case had he not made me feel that I needn’t
be so saving. I remember one time when I went to the White House, he
said to me, “Nan, darling, do you know how much I have sent you since
such-and-such a date?” He added, “Not that I am complaining, dearie; I
want you to have everything you want within reason, so long as there is
no comment.”
Another time, when he was hugging me so tightly, sitting there on the
dilapidated leather couch in the ante-room, I said, “Oh, sweetheart,
you are tearing my blouse!” He did not loose his hold of me; simply
answered in a voice I knew was smiling, as he sought my lips, “Well, if
I tear it, I’ll buy you another one!”
This reminds me of an incident in our first sweetheart days of 1917. It
was early fall. We were taxi driving, and were crossing the viaduct at
125th Street and Riverside Drive. I knew I would need a winter coat; in
fact, at the Carter’s the winter before I had had no winter coat; I had
worn the heavy suit the friends in Chicago had bought me and a rather
heavy raincoat over it, and very often Miss Carter’s fur piece and
muff. I now needed a winter coat badly.
“Sweetheart,” I said, “if I can save $20 toward a new winter coat, will
you give me $10?” How can I forget how he looked at me! Or his answer,
“Say, you darling, if you save _$10_ I’ll give you _$20_!” And, as a
matter of fact, he sent me $50, out of which I bought a coat for $38.
_105_
It was Saturday, August the 18th, 1923, when we sailed into the New
York harbor. I had little trouble with my baggage, the only thing of
any consequence which I had bought being a big doll for Elizabeth Ann
for which I had paid $11 in Geneva. I had early christened the doll
“Ninon,” and Elizabeth Ann treasured it.
I went to the McAlpin Hotel. Along the street I observed with aching
heart the many signs of a nation’s mourning, and when I went to the
window of my room in the hotel the last touch was added; outside hung a
huge American flag, at half-mast. The cumulative reaction was too much,
and with a sense of mingled anguish in bereavement and relief for my
return I flung myself down upon the bed and wept.
I had lived only to get back to Elizabeth Ann, and I could scarcely
wait to hold my baby in my arms. My first impulse was to leave
immediately for the West. However, I did not know the lay of the
land out there, and did not want to take any false steps which would
indicate the state of my feelings and lead to exposure of Mr. Harding
in any way. It was an absurd thought for me to entertain, to think
that after we had been able thus far to keep our love a secret it
should come out at this time of all times. But I was so nervous that
I suspected everybody of knowing that there was a story, and was as
circumspect in my behavior as if I personally had the responsibility of
the nation in my keeping.
I immediately wrote to my sister Elizabeth in Chicago to be very
careful, and I bought up all the newspapers previous to and following
the President’s illness. My purpose in buying them was two-fold.
First, I wanted to satisfy myself that there had crept out no breath
of scandal during his late days in Canada before he started for San
Francisco; and, secondly, I wanted these clippings for my Harding book
which I was keeping for Elizabeth Ann.
Having pored over the papers in my room at the McAlpin, and finding no
evidence that Mr. Harding had been subjected to worry on account of
our secret love, and still awaiting a letter from Elizabeth, I turned
my attention to the finance question. I went to the American Express
Office and found $200 which Captain Neilsen had deposited for me,
awaiting my demand. Captain Neilsen was mighty nice, I thought, to do
this for me, and just as soon as I had received the money I was sure
Mr. Harding had left for me, I would repay him. I wondered how Mr.
Harding had arranged it. Bless him! It hurt me unspeakably to ponder
this question. I was absolutely certain, however, that we had been
taken care of, our precious baby and myself, and I put the how of it
out of my mind.
I felt I should buy a dress for myself which would be in conformity
with my mood. My winter coat, the squirrel coat Mr. Harding had made
it possible for me to have, was in storage, and so I decided to buy
one of lighter weight, a black one, for early fall wear. I spent one
afternoon, therefore, choosing a black dress, black coat, black hat and
black gloves.
_106_
Finally word came from my sister Elizabeth. She wrote that my
brother-in-law, Scott Willits, had planned to study with Professor
Otakar Sevcik, who was to teach in New York that winter, and it was too
late for them to alter their plans. They were, therefore, coming East
as arranged, and would stop at my mother’s, in Athens, Ohio, where I
could meet them. Scott had been studying with Professor Sevcik for some
time, having been with him in Europe a year, a season in Ithaca, and a
season in Chicago.
So I went immediately to Athens, Ohio, to await their coming. Mother
surely sensed the grief I had experienced, and set me to work cleaning
house for her and getting meals and otherwise trying to occupy my mind.
She was teaching in the Training School of the Ohio University, was
busy every minute of the day, and it was a relief for her to come home
to prepared meals, she said.
In early September I went to Marion. I had become unbearably nervous
waiting for Elizabeth to bring my baby, and anyway I felt if I could
see and talk to Daisy Harding it would make me feel a shade better. I
telephoned Miss Harding immediately upon my arrival. She still lived
with her father on East Center Street. It was from this house that the
funeral of President Harding had been conducted. Daisy Harding was
surprised to hear my voice and invited me to come out immediately. The
last time I had seen her was when she had visited her cousin, Mrs.
John Wesener, in Chicago, in the fall of 1922, and I had taken my
grandfather there to call upon Dr. Harding.
Everything seemed very quiet as I stepped from the trolley in front of
Dr. Harding’s and walked across the street to the house. New railings
had replaced the old ones which had to be removed from the porch in
order to take the President’s casket in and out of the door, and when I
observed them the full significance of this struck me like a blow.
Miss Harding came to the door in answer to my ring. She had on an
all white serge suit and I thought she was truly the most beautiful
woman I had ever seen. The pallor of her lovely face was heightened by
the deep lights of her eyes and her black hair was combed back from
her forehead. How much she looked like _him_! The same understanding
seriousness in her eyes, the same facial contour, and much the same sad
smile.
We sat in the living-room, the same room in which I had, in July of
1922, seen and talked with Mrs. Warren Harding. Daisy Harding told me
many details about the passing of her brother. As she talked I thought
I should scream with each word. A portrait in colors of President
Harding, a “smiling picture,” hung in that room above the bookcase
and beneath it stood a bouquet of flowers. Just as Mr. Harding used
to have flowers on his White House desk beside the miniature of his
mother, I thought.
The house seemed very quiet. The East Center Street trolley cars
rumbled past at regular intervals, the same street cars I suppose
that used to pass our house when the “Brittons” lived farther out on
the same street. Everything was the same; but everything to me was
tragically different.
“That’s the way it is all day long, Nan,” said Miss Harding, calling
my attention to a car which drove slowly by while the occupants were
gazing curiously at the house wherein we sat. “Thousands and thousands
passed his coffin, and everybody remarked the expression upon his
face--he looked so peaceful and happy.” God, how awful to listen as
she told it! I sobbed with Miss Harding as she went on. “He loved life
so, you know, Nan,” she said. Oh, how well I knew! I told her about
the strange dream I had had in Dijon, and how I afterwards had counted
up the difference in time between France and the United States and had
found that the hour of my dream had been the hour of Mr. Harding’s
passing. She thought this startlingly coincidental.
I longed to go over and put my arms around her, to tell her that her
brother _had_ known _some_ joy during the last years of his life, and
that I would have given my own life to have had him know more of such
joy. But I sat still and silent in my chair.
Even the grief I felt could not overshadow a certain strange comfort I
experienced in being there, ’mid the old familiar surroundings, where
his body had last lain in perfect rest. And the spirit that had always
been Warren Harding seemed to linger near us as we talked.
Miss Harding’s fiance, Mr. Ralph Lewis, came for her. They were going
to dine at an inn in a nearby country town--Waldo, she said. (I knew
the very place, for I had dined there with the Mousers and Gorhams not
long before--the last visit I made to Marion.) They invited me to go
with them; they were driving, of course. But I told them I preferred to
remain there at the house and would try to rest a bit while they were
gone.
It seemed like the culmination of a fairy tale that Ralph Lewis should
be engaged to Daisy Harding. He had loved her all his life, I knew.
When I was a child he had owned a grocery-store, and we children often
went there for “sour pickles.” I can see him now, in his big white
apron, stooping over the pickle barrel and hauling up several pickles
with the dipper, dripping with the good-smelling vinegar. He used to
let us “pick ’em out,” I remember. After a good many years he gave up
the grocery business and went in for real estate, and I knew well his
reputed success.
Miss Harding told me to go out into the kitchen and help myself to
anything I found for luncheon; it was then about eleven-thirty in the
morning. Then they left, and I was entirely alone in the house. Miss
Harding had told me that her father and his wife had gone away for a
rest and visit following the funeral. So I was there alone in the house
where my beloved had lain in utter peace, in his father’s home, while
mourning thousands brought their tributes of affectionate regard.
I was nervously exhausted, and went upstairs, thinking I would lie
down for a while. Miss Harding had told me sometime before that
when her brother had been elected President his wife had sent some
of her furniture back to Marion from their Wyoming Avenue home in
Washington, and the room where I went to rest was fitted with Mr. and
Mrs. Harding’s bedroom suite. Their framed portraits hung above their
respective beds. I lay down and looked long at the likeness of my
beloved. My second self was watching me, and seemed to say, “Go right
ahead, Nan, and have a good cry. It will make you feel stronger.” I
think I did feel a bit stronger.
I bathed my eyes, put on a dressing-gown Miss Harding had laid out for
me, and went down to the kitchen. I prepared a cup of something hot
for myself and forced myself to eat some of the fresh things from the
ice-box. Then I washed up my dishes and went back into the living-room.
I roamed in and out, visioning the coffin in the front room with my
darling lying so peacefully there. I stooped and caressed the carpet
above which the coffin had rested, and closed my eyes as I stood above
an imaginary casket and looked down at my darling asleep. He had known
this house! He had once lived here, as I remembered hearing his sister
say, and therefore every inch of the old home was dear to him.
I longed to hold some of his clothes. He used to have an agreeable
man-smell all his own, and there was a time when I thought I knew all
his suits. I remembered he sometimes had come over to New York looking
not as well pressed as usual, seeming to joy in the comfort of old
clothes. On one occasion I told him I wished he were a milkman or a
postman or _some_body who was not at all important. He had smiled then
and looked down at his clothes, and I had hastened to assure him that
he was quite all right, that he looked good to _me_, and that I didn’t
care _what_ he had on. And another time, in Washington, we were walking
together down Pennsylvania Avenue, and he looked absolutely stunning.
And in the admiring glances of passers-by was also recognition. “I
never used to notice the conspicuity of men in public office as I have
since coming to Washington,” he said to me. And then another time he
was chewing gum and asked me if I wanted some, and I took it because I
was afraid I would hurt his feelings if I did not. And we walked along
together, my arm through his, and were so happy! “We’re just a couple
of small-towners together, aren’t we, Nan?” he said contentedly as he
looked down at me with fond eyes. And I nodded happily and said to him,
“May I kiss you, darling, all night long?” And to this and other loving
queries I made he answered gaily, “You can do any damned thing you want
to do to me, dearie. _I’m yours!_”
I left Miss Harding and her home with a sense of having actually
communed with my beloved. I did not allow myself to go up to the
cemetery. In fact, though I have been in Marion since, I have never
once been near where the coffin rests. For they could never bury the
_spirit_ of Warren Gamaliel Harding.
_107_
I returned to Athens, Ohio. Here Elizabeth, Scott and Elizabeth Ann
joined me some days later and soon we were all enroute back East to New
York, my younger sister Janet going with us.
I cannot tell anyone how sweet it was to be near my precious baby
girl once more. If I had idolized her before, I worshipped her now,
for my love was tinged with the spiritual. Elizabeth Ann and I slept
together at my mother’s for the few days we remained there before
leaving for the East, and I fairly devoured her with my hungry eyes.
I could see her father in her every glance. Even in the semi-darkness
of our bedroom, where the light from the hall made it possible for me
to contemplate her features, I saw constantly the face of him whom I
would never again see upon this earth. I felt toward her as Mr. Harding
used to write that he felt toward me. “I worship you, dearest, and I
reverence you,” he would say to me, and I remember how that reverence
was written all over his face when I, just a month before Elizabeth Ann
was born, went to see him in Washington. And now I felt more than ever
before that same worshipful reverence for my child, and I poured the
love I felt for both my child and her father upon her. For now I had
only the memory of him to adore.
_108_
When we reached New York (September, 1923) I suggested that we go to
72nd Street where I had been living when my sister came with the baby
to New York to see her husband off for Europe. The matter of finances
had to be faced. I had scarcely any money left, and Scott and Elizabeth
almost as little. But there was enough to last until we secured
positions. My sister Janet, six years my junior, was going to secure
a secretarial position also. The four of them--Scott, Elizabeth, Janet
and Elizabeth Ann--had an apartment downstairs and I secured my old
room on the top floor.
It was Elizabeth’s early suggestion that I go immediately to Daisy
Harding and reveal the truth to her. I had received no word from
anyone about funds having been provided by Mr. Harding and I could not
understand this. He had always been so generous, and it was upon the
very last visit to him in the White House that he had declared again
his full intention to care for both Elizabeth Ann and me all the rest
of our lives. So I concluded that whoever had been entrusted with
money for the baby and me would probably wait until a suitable time
had elapsed before making this bequest known to me. My sister and her
husband were skeptical, but then I could condone their attitude because
I knew that no one had ever known Mr. Harding as I had known him, and
no one could ever convince me that he would neglect his sweetheart and
his child. Had he not, long before we had dreamed of Elizabeth Ann’s
coming, been tempted upon two or more occasions to reveal to one or
more of his friends his relations with me, when he had been seized
with acute indigestion and had thought he was going to pass on? _Then_
there was no reason, as I had told him at the time he repeated these
things to me, for him to settle any money upon me. He had not harmed
me, but blessed me with his love, and I could see no reason why he
should even think of arranging for my comfort. But after Elizabeth
Ann was born I was far more dependent. My situation was increasingly
complicated. And now for me to think that Warren Harding had not made
ample provision for his child, and her mother as well, would be for me
to impute cowardice and injustice to one whom I knew always bravely met
life-issues. No, this was a feeling I could not in my most desperate
need ever share, for I knew well the man I loved and I knew his love
for me.
Captain Neilsen came around to see us after we had become comparatively
settled. Helen Anderson also came and brought on one occasion some
lovely preserves. But for the most part I neither looked up my old
friends nor cared to have them look me up. The captain was different.
He was kindly, he was understanding, and he was not fastidious in any
sense of the word. Therefore he came several times to call upon me
there in my sister’s New York apartment before he sailed for Germany
in October. I explained to him that a sudden financial embarrassment
had arisen with me as well as with my sister’s family, and that I would
be unable to then pay him the $450 I owed him. He waved away even the
idea of repayment, though I emphasized the fact that I was sure very
soon I would have the funds for him. I told these facts to my sister
and her husband and they thought he was a wonderfully fine man. “You’ll
go a long way before you ever find a man as kind-hearted as Captain
Neilsen,” they told me. And I agreed that he was indeed all that.
In spite of our almost destitute circumstances we were, at least,
together, and Elizabeth Ann slept with me nearly every night. But
it broke my heart to look at the little darling and realize what
everything meant.
At that time secretarial positions were scarce, and it was very
difficult for Janet and me to get located, especially when I declined
to work for less than $35 a week. Janet finally accepted a position for
a lesser salary, but it took me several weeks to find a place.
_109_
About the first of December, Scott and Elizabeth decided they ought to
return to Chicago, where Scott was better known and could get immediate
work. For various reasons it seemed best for me to move away from that
rooming-house after my family left, so I took a room at the Endicott
Hotel, Columbus Avenue and 81st Street. My room there was on the first
sleeping floor and had no daylight, just windows into a court which was
less than ten feet wide, but the bed was comfortable, and, anyway, I
could not afford to pay more than $12 from the salary of $35 which the
position I had finally secured paid me.
I put on my bravest front when I bade my baby girl goodbye again, and
faced the contemplation of hardships hitherto unknown to me. I felt
so pitifully alone, and swallowed hard the great lump that rose in my
throat as I tried to smile and blow farewell kisses to her who was my
very life.
On the occasion of one of my visits to the White House I had, with the
nervous apprehension born of mental unsettlement, spoken to Mr. Harding
about the future.
“Why, just think, honey, I am twenty-four years old now!”, indicating
that the years were piling up alarmingly and I could as yet see no
possible way for me to have our baby with me.
“Well, dearie,” he had answered me with the gentleness that always
aroused my most worshipful love, “if you are twenty-four years old you
should be grown up, you know!”
And then he had told me how when _he_ was about that age _he_ went
through a nervous breakdown, but here he was now, in the White House,
and President of the United States! He was sure _I_ would weather
through. And this gentle banter brought a smile back to my face.
Therefore now, as then, I must remember how much I had at stake in my
precious baby’s future and bear up for her sake.
One of my biggest difficulties was to live on $35 a week. It was very
hard to suffer denials but I set about with grim determination to
adapt myself. I continued to shun my friends to a very great extent.
Captain Neilsen returned from another sea trip and came to the hotel
to see me. My meagre salary oftentimes would not allow me to have even
as much food as I could have eaten, especially toward the end of the
week before pay day, and, pridefully concealing my poverty, I accepted
Captain Neilsen’s invitations to dine with inward thankfulness for his
persistent attentiveness.
There was another friend who called upon me frequently, whom I had
known since 1917, but he was a man with whom I felt I must keep up
appearances far more than with the captain, so I did not encourage him
to call. I needed many things and I felt less conscious of the lack of
these things when I was with the captain. Though the captain always
seemed to have a great deal of money with him, and though he spoke
carelessly of moneys he controlled, running into many thousands of
dollars, still he dressed with a carelessness that often distressed me
and brought my frank criticism.
_110_
In October or November I read with loving interest of the fund which
was being gathered together throughout the country to go toward the
erection of a memorial to the 29th President of the United States.
My secretarial position was not a very exacting one, and I had ample
leisure in which to do any outside work I might care to undertake, so
it occurred to me that there might be typing in connection with the
clerical work the memorial project would entail, and that I might help
in this way to raise the fund, inasmuch as I could not myself give any
actual money towards it.
Mrs. Warren G. Harding herself seemed, from the newspaper reports, to
be actively engaged in the matter, and so I decided to write direct to
her and make known my desire. First, however, I wrote to Judge Elbert
H. Gary, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the United States Steel
Corporation, to whom Mr. Harding had taken me in 1917 when I was given
a secretarial position in the Corporation, and who now was prominent
in the activities connected with the Harding Memorial Fund. I recalled
to his mind that Mr. Harding had once introduced me to him and that he
in turn had kindly made it possible for me to obtain a position in his
organization, and I told him that it was my desire to be of service
to those who had undertaken the initial steps in creating the Harding
Memorial Fund. I waited for several days and received no reply to that
letter.
Then I directed a note to Mrs. Harding. About a week or so afterwards
I received a note from her secretary, Miss Harlan, expressing, for Mrs.
Harding, appreciation for my proffered assistance, but regretting that
there was really no way in which I could be of service. After several
lesser attempts I had to give it up.
I wrote to Miss Daisy Harding and told her what I had hoped to do,
and I have her letter in which she said if I had not heard from Mrs.
Harding personally it was merely because she was so terribly busy. She
told me how generously her brother’s home town had given toward the
Fund, and expressed the opinion that he was indeed a greatly beloved
President.
It hurt me more than I can tell not to have been able to help in this
movement. I did so love to work for Mr. Harding or in an atmosphere
that breathed of him. But it seemed to me as the days went by and I
received no word of his having left any message for me, that I was more
and more alone, that I was shut out and away from the very things that
would have given me such comfort. For it did hurt me cruelly to receive
no word that I had been in his thoughts before he went away. If only he
had left a note! He might not have been able to entrust material aid
to anybody in the last days, to be given over to me for our child, but
I was under the impression that Major Brooks, his valet, had been with
him during his last illness, and I was sure he would have given him a
note to mail to me if it had been humanly possible for him to do so.
My longing for Elizabeth Ann and my yearning for the joy and comfort I
experienced from being with her and loving her was sometimes more than
I could bear, and I often went home after work to my gloomy bedroom in
the Endicott in a state of depression which brought vividly to my mind
some lines in a poem by John Keats:
“... and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a musèd rhyme....”
_111_
The first part of December Captain Neilsen sought my advice in a matter
of investment which would involve several thousands of dollars and
which would take him to Texas for the culmination of the transaction.
Christopher Hannivig, a wealthy Norwegian, and he, were to purchase
jointly from the U. S. Government some ships, which were to be utilized
for shipping oil. After consideration of the details it seemed to me it
was a wise investment and I so advised my friend. He then asked me a
question which I had grown used to hearing periodically and which I had
always answered negatively--would I marry him? Would I accompany him to
Texas as his wife and make of the trip a honeymoon?
I told him no, and I further said very bluntly that when I did marry,
there were certain reasons why I must require from my prospective
husband in advance of my marriage a check for $25,000 or $30,000. To my
surprise, Captain Neilsen smiled and answered easily, “Oh, is that all?
Well, shall I bring you my certified check for that amount tomorrow?”
And than I felt ashamed because I could not then explain to him that I
wanted it for a fund for my baby, inasmuch as her own father’s bequest
had not yet come to light and I feared to marry unless that marriage
provided amply for my child. So I shook my head.
The captain left shortly after that, returning around Christmas time.
In the meantime I sought my friend, Helen Anderson. She agreed with
me that it seemed to be the sensible thing to consider marrying the
captain and in that way be able to take my baby. The fact that he
dressed carelessly should certainly not deter me from doing the thing
that would give me my baby. He was, Miss Anderson and I agreed, a
“diamond in the rough,” and I would simply have to become his personal
polisher. He seemed genuinely in love with me, and would sit all
evening just talking to me, never attempting to get “fresh” as many
another man might have done after a friendship of such long standing.
I was thoroughly appreciative of these traits. I told Helen Anderson
that in return for his generosity in making it possible for me to take
my child, I would prove to him my gratitude in endeavoring to make him
at least reasonably happy. And I was very sure I could make him over in
appearance.
Upon the captain’s return from the South, I determined to tell him
about Elizabeth Ann. I thought I would try him out, and see what the
effect of my story would be, for, if he refused to allow me to take
Elizabeth Ann, I would not, of course, marry him. But I could not
marry him anyway unless I had been frank and honest about things. I
had deliberately postponed the telling until we should be together New
Year’s Eve, because I wanted to carry this new step in my life over
into another year, not wishing to identify the year 1923, in which I
had lost my beloved, with a marriage to another man. It was a foolish
little fancy I will admit, but quite characteristic of me. Therefore I
had postponed my confessionary revelations until the dawn of a new year.
When Captain Neilsen arrived, I found myself in a suitably revealing
frame of mind. I told him the whole truth. I confessed how miserable I
was without Elizabeth Ann, and gave him the entire picture just as it
stood. He was kindness itself, and repeated his oft-expressed desire
that I marry him. “Well, can I really _have Elizabeth Ann_?” I asked
him. “Of course you can!” he acquiesced heartily. He then told me he
wished me to understand his financial status, explaining that he was
actually worth something over $125,000, and even itemizing on paper his
holding for me to see. He said, however, it was not all available in
ready cash. I said that didn’t matter _if only I could have my baby_.
The captain knew of my natural extravagances in little ways, and he
had, as I have said, visited at my sister’s apartment in Chicago and
knew that, although I was not used to great luxury, I was at least used
to modest comforts. And I was very sure I could depend upon him to
provide more than generously for both my child and myself.
During the next day, not having the usual phone call from the captain,
I decided impulsively that he was avoiding me, having concluded that
if I actually married him I might do so from unfair motives. But I
could not reconcile these conclusions with his oft-repeated proposals
of marriage on any grounds that would please me. “Marry me,” he would
say, “and I’ll make you happy!” I felt that he meant that he would be
so generous in his material manifestations of love that I could bring
myself to care for him through sheer gratitude.
But my fears were groundless. He phoned the following day and that
night took me to the theatre. He asked me again and again to marry him
and let him provide for me and for Elizabeth Ann, but I found that I
could not even then, after my own careful decision to do just that,
tell him that I would marry him. “Well, if you refuse to marry me, I
will make a will tomorrow anyway, and leave all I have to Elizabeth Ann
when I die. I can at least do that for you,” he said, as we sped along
back to my hotel in the taxi under the elevated tracks on Columbus
Avenue. This to me was the acme of generosity and touched me very
deeply, though I didn’t let him know it. I told him, half-jestingly,
that I would certainly go on a search the following day for an
engagement ring of my liking! To this he also heartily agreed.
But the following day, after I had actually selected the ring I thought
would look well with the ring my beloved Warren had given me and which
I meant to keep _always_ on my engagement finger, the captain met me
and said he had been unable to convert into cash some stocks which he
owned and requested that I wait a while before deciding upon a ring. I
felt sorry, though slightly provoked that he should act this way--first
to convey the impression that money meant nothing to him, and then to
refuse to buy an engagement ring for the woman he seemed to want so
badly for his wife. But I decided he must be “trying me out,” and I
determined I would prove to him that I didn’t have to have the _ring_
in order to marry him. _Elizabeth Ann_ was my sole motive and purpose.
_112_
I thought about it all very seriously that night and when Friday,
January the 4th, came, and Captain Neilsen called me on the telephone
in the evening, I informed him that I had decided to marry him the
following day, Saturday, January 5th.
With my actual acceptance of his offer of marriage, it seemed to me he
was taken somewhat aback, though he said he would meet me, as I asked
him to do, at the Municipal Building, the following noon. He was late,
but explained that he had been inspecting a ship and could not come
when he had planned.
We secured our marriage license. When the man asked what the captain’s
business was I spoke up and said, as he had told me many times, “He
is a ship broker.” The captain looked slightly embarrassed as he said
to the clerk, “Better say ‘ship’s master’.” I didn’t know that this
different title meant another kind of business and it didn’t worry me
specially.
With the license in hand we went over to the Savarin in the basement
of the Woolworth Building for our luncheon. As we were crossing the
street, I remember that the captain had said that his money was not
all available. So I asked him, “You _could_ raise $50,000 if you had
to, couldn’t you?” thinking I would avail myself of $30,000 to put in
trust immediately for Elizabeth Ann, and the captain, Elizabeth Ann
and I would keep the other $20,000 to live upon and have a home for
ourselves, until he went back to work after our proposed honeymoon.
“Oh, of course, if I had to, I could raise $50,000. I should say so!”
The captain was very certain about it.
This was all the assurance I needed. Anyone who could raise $50,000
would have enough and plenty to keep me and my baby. And I would be
economical, and would try my best to love him to show him how grateful
I was that he had made it possible for me to have my baby with me.
That evening at nine o’clock we were married in the parsonage of a
Swedish Lutheran Church on Lexington Avenue. Helen Anderson and the
minister’s wife were our witnesses. We went to the Alamac Hotel for
three days. We had driven Miss Anderson home and were alone for the
first time since we had become man and wife.
It seemed almost sacrilegious to me to yield to my husband the body
which had belonged so completely to Warren Harding, and I appreciated
his leaving me for half an hour. It gave me an opportunity to mentally
pull myself together. I told myself that I would soon have Elizabeth
Ann and it would all be so worth while. But my husband looked to me so
much like a million other men.... I just could not feel that I had done
the fair thing by either of us.... I did not love him that way.
Monday morning following our marriage on Saturday evening I returned to
work. I had not given my employer any notice and I knew I would have to
remain at the office until he found someone to take my place. Moreover,
Captain Neilsen had told me during the previous day that he would
immediately send to Norway and get some money which his legal guardian
was holding for him; and he would also start negotiations for the sale
of certain property which he, as the eldest child in his family, should
have urged the sale of long ago, after the death of his parents. It
would amount to $90,000 in all, and $30,000 would come to him as his
share.
From the Alamac we moved up to Bretton Hall, and I kept my secretarial
position for a couple of weeks. I had not been married more than a
week when I discovered, through questioning the captain closely, that
he did not actually have sufficient funds in the bank to enable us to
live even another month. But he assured me that his next trip to Europe
would net him a commission of $20,000 on a ship he expected to sell. It
seems to me he must have procured a loan, and with some of this money
and $40 of my own salary I bought myself a diamond circlet wedding
ring, for which I paid $165 and which I wore on my engagement finger
next to the ring given me by Mr. Harding.
I grew fonder of the captain during the two weeks before he sailed
for Europe. He was so enthusiastic about taking Elizabeth Ann, and
said that just as soon as he returned from Europe we would begin the
arrangements.
During his absence abroad, after I had given up my position, a friend
of mine from Chicago came on to New York. When I learned she was
coming, and realized how little money I had, I borrowed $150 from Helen
Anderson, assuring her the captain would return it to her just as soon
as he came back from Europe. With part of this I bought new shoes,
a new dress, and entertained once for my Chicago friend at a small
theatre party. I really felt quite dignified as Mrs. Neilsen.
As soon as the captain stepped into our room at Bretton Hall I asked
him what success had attended his trip. He had not sold the boat. Nor
had his money come from Norway. He looked very much distressed about it
and I felt genuinely sorry for him. He kept telling me to be patient,
something would “break soon.” But the weeks passed, and he said he
would have to make another trip to Europe, and still nothing had
“broken”--except my hopes.
_113_
I planned to go to Athens, Ohio, to visit my mother in early March
while Captain Neilsen was in Europe. I had promised my mother that
she could come East to be with me that oncoming summer, thinking of
course that I was to have an apartment and that I would be fully
established in my new home with Elizabeth Ann. I despatched a letter
to my sister Elizabeth, asking her to let Elizabeth Ann come to Athens
for several weeks, and this she did, my mother going to Chicago for
another purpose, but bringing Elizabeth Ann back with her to Athens on
her return. I was heartsick to think I could not return to New York
with my baby and feel free to become settled permanently. But I knew
enough by then of the captain’s financial situation to know this was
impossible. I felt I had been trapped all around, though I could not
that early accuse the captain of having misrepresented himself to me,
and indeed I did not believe he would do such a thing. He had loved
me so much, and he had actually thought that he would be able to get
the money, I was sure. Still, I could not help remembering that he had
told me distinctly that he had sufficient funds to keep us comfortably,
and _that_ had been an untruth, for I was not even at liberty to lease
an apartment because we could not pay the rent in advance. The whole
situation was inexplicable. The captain’s generosity of former days,
when he had sent me $200 to Europe and had had $200 awaiting my demand
in New York, and had deprecated my repayment of these advances, all
pointed to comparative affluence.
The more I thought about it the more distressed I became, and I could
not even then admit to my family the truth of the matter. Instead, I
found myself lauding the captain on all sides. I felt the situation
would surely right itself, if, as he had asked me, I would give him
just a little while to “get on his feet.” Like a pendulum I swung from
one decision about him to another, and in the night when I reflected
that after all I might not be able to have my baby with me, it almost
crazed me. No one knew the state of mentality I was in, for I could not
admit that I had failed in marriage, and I had not divulged our plans
of taking the baby away from my sister and her husband.
Here in Athens, Ohio, at my mother’s home, I again had my baby with me
and we slept together and played together, and I thought I could not
stand it to give her back. I wanted her so badly that I didn’t care
whether or not I ever returned to New York if I could not take her with
me and have her to _keep always_. I wanted to die rather than to go on
as I might have to go on--without my child. Nevertheless, after the
most severe misunderstanding I had ever had with my sister Elizabeth,
who came on to Athens to get Elizabeth Ann after about a month, I
regained control over myself and accompanied her and the baby back to
Chicago, where I visited for a week or two longer before proceeding
back to New York and to my husband.
I had received instructions from him to go to live with a woman whose
husband was the captain of a U. S. liner, on which Captain Neilsen
had accepted the position of second officer. I lived with her for a
couple of weeks and when the captain returned from a voyage, we went
temporarily to a hotel again.
The first of May we moved into a furnished apartment on West 114th
Street. I realized, however, that we could not live there and pay the
rent of $100 a month, unless I, too, went to work. So at Columbia
University I obtained a position in the Appointments Office. I worked
there a part of the time, and also took small pieces of dictation from
the various professors, sometimes going to their offices and getting
the work and doing it at home upon a typewriter which I had rented for
the purpose. I never in my life worked so hard as I did that summer of
1924.
The captain wrote Elizabeth and Scott under date of May 16, 1924, and
told them that we now wished to take Elizabeth Ann. I had determined
that if the captain did not make good his promise to me to provide
a home for her and me without my having to go back to work as I was
then doing, that I would not under any circumstances permit her to be
taken permanently by us, for I would eventually have to leave a man who
had so erroneously represented himself to me. But I clung to the hope
of fulfillment on his part and tried hard to banish these unpleasant
thoughts, so together we devised a letter which the captain signed.
In his letter to Elizabeth and Scott the captain said that we would
come that fall to get Elizabeth Ann, after she had returned with them
from the farm where they went every summer, and where they expressed
a wish to take Elizabeth Ann with them on a farewell visit to Scott’s
people.
_114_
About the middle of September I went to Chicago and got the baby. We
had committed ourselves to the extent of expressing in our letter our
desire to take the baby ourselves, and this was the understanding that
Elizabeth and Scott had when I went to Chicago to get her. Scott
looked unfavorably on the whole thing, feeling that I should not
have given her into their keeping only to take her away. I had never
breathed a word to them of Mr. Harding’s promise to me to take her
himself as soon as circumstances made it possible, but I knew that in
that event _I_ would have had her through him, and was only endeavoring
to get her in another way since her father’s way was impossible.
I could not work, now that I had Elizabeth Ann, until I had put her
in kindergarten somewhere, and I had no money with which to do that.
The captain kept saying, or writing when he was away, that something
was bound to “break,” but the first of October came and nothing had
“broken.” Our apartment lease ran out October 1st and it was necessary
for Elizabeth Ann and me to move. As an officer on the liner, the
captain spent quite a bit of his time there, even having to sleep
on board certain nights. I found it difficult to find an apartment
suitable for three and comparatively cheap, but decided upon a large
room which would suffice until I could find more suitable quarters.
It was in 109th Street, and, although the sun streamed in at the back
court window all afternoon, the place was frightfully dirty and full of
vermin. My little girl was bitten at night and I soon knew we could not
stay there.
The captain had said he would be in the city two weeks steady before
making another sea trip. It had only gradually dawned upon me that
these trips he was taking were in themselves the only source of income
that the captain had, and up to this time not one of the things he had
told me about converting property into money had come true. And I, who
had been frank with him to the point of possibly hurting his feelings
in admitting I was marrying him so that I might have a home for my
child, could not understand these misrepresentations.
I cast about for a suitable apartment and at last found I could get
two rooms and bath, very clean and nicely furnished, on 116th Street
West, for $110 a month. We were paying $22 a week for the one room we
were living in then. The captain went with Elizabeth Ann and me to
look at the apartment, approved the price, and signed the lease. But he
was able to pay but $50 down. I promised to pay the other $60 when we
moved in, and the captain said that he would have that and more besides
before I would need it.
Elizabeth Ann helped me in her adorable little way to “pack,” and at
three o’clock on the appointed day we awaited the drayman. The captain
had not returned as yet, but I felt sure he would be up on 116th Street
with some money when we reached there. I had barely enough to pay the
drayman.
The phone rang. It was the captain. He was leaving within an hour
unexpectedly for Newport News to be gone two weeks with the U. S. liner
for repairs. “But, goodness,” I said in utter despair, “what am I to do
in the meantime for the rent? and food?” He told me to go right down to
his lawyer, who had $100 which he would give to me.
Leaving things as they were, with the possibility of the drayman coming
any minute, Elizabeth Ann and I boarded a subway train, and within the
next thirty-five minutes were at the lawyer’s office in 43rd Street.
But he didn’t seem to know to what money I referred. He asked me to
phone “Angus,” as he called my husband, so that he might talk with him.
I brought my little daughter in and introduced her to the lawyer. He
scarcely acknowledged the introduction and I was hurt and embarrassed
to tears. To think that the daughter of Warren G. Harding should be
so slighted! I didn’t care how he or anybody else treated _me_, but I
was furious if they were not entirely lovely to my darling. The lawyer
himself had children, and I thought at least he might have shaken hands
with her. What kind of a man was this lawyer my husband employed? He
asked us to leave the room while he talked with the captain. There
was no money from that source. This I found out after the lawyer’s
lengthy telephone talk with the captain. I took Elizabeth Ann and went
downstairs and telephoned Captain Neilsen from a booth. I reached him
just before the liner had disconnected the telephonic service prior
to sailing. He said his friend, the ship’s commander, wanted to
speak to me. He came to the phone. He said he had called his wife and
that she would come down that night to see me with the rent money,
$110. That left $50 from the $110 for Elizabeth Ann and me to live on
until further remittances from the captain might come. So, after all,
Elizabeth Ann and I slept in our new apartment that night.
I have since gone over that whole situation thoroughly and
fair-mindedly, and I am sure that no one could have done more to help
a husband get on his alleged normal financial feet than did I to help
Captain Neilsen. That is, I helped until February 1st. Helen Anderson,
ever glad to assist when she could, advanced the necessary initial
kindergarten fee of $108 and I placed Elizabeth Ann in school, paying
$30 a month extra to have her remain there all day so that I might keep
an all-day position. I had a girl from Columbia come in the mornings
and take her to school and go after her at night, and in that way the
baby and I reached home about the same time. In the evenings I would
clean her up and clean myself up and we would go out for our dinner. I
was so tired at night sometimes I thought I could not get up the next
morning, and very likely I could not have done so had I not retired
every night with Elizabeth Ann at seven or eight o’clock.
I was then working at The Town Hall Club on 43rd Street. I began to
work there in October, 1924, and remained there for a year and a half
until April, 1926, as assistant to the Executive Secretary, who had had
charge of the Appointments Office at Columbia when I worked there the
previous summer.
_115_
When the latter part of January of 1925 came, I knew I just could not
go through the spring as I had done the greater part of the winter,
and I wrote Elizabeth, who was at that time with her husband in charge
of certain music work at the Ohio University at Athens, Ohio, to come
and get Elizabeth Ann if she could. It hurt me to do this, for I had
taken my child with the full intention of being able to provide a home
for her permanently. But I could not longer stand the physical strain
of keeping up the apartment, though that strain was not equal to the
mental strain of never knowing whether or not the captain could meet
the rent and other obligations. The last month we lived there, January,
I was obliged to go to a friend for $75 to help me out with the rent,
and I did so, taking Elizabeth Ann with me and meeting the friend
in the lobby of the Pennsylvania Hotel. I have not been able to pay
that back any more than I have yet been able to repay the Italian the
$90 borrowed in 1923. And January of 1925 found me owing other debts
also--school tuition for my baby, Helen Anderson’s loans amounting in
the aggregate to over $300, and others.
_116_
I began very early to acquaint Elizabeth Ann with the likeness of her
father, and she could pick him out in the Sunday supplements when she
was as young as two. She knew, of course, my autographed photograph of
Mr. Harding which always stood in a silver frame on my bedroom table,
as well as pictures of other members of the Harding family, all of
which hung on my wall, and my sister Elizabeth’s photograph of Mr.
Harding which he had autographed for her early in 1921.
In many ways Elizabeth Ann reflects my own moods, but love for Mr.
Harding seems to have developed of itself in her heart with an almost
uncannily independent force. When we first moved into the apartment on
Lafayette Parkway in Chicago, Elizabeth Ann was about two and one-half
years old. I had a small book written by Joe Mitchell Chapple, entitled
“Harding, the Man,” on the cover of which was a small picture of Mr.
Harding, an excellent likeness, set against a background of American
flags. The frontispiece was a larger, though not as good, picture of
Mr. Harding, and throughout the book were various other pictures--one
of Mrs. Harding, one of the old Harding homestead, one of _The Marion
Daily Star_ Building, one of the Harding home on Mt. Vernon Avenue in
Marion, and also one of their Wyoming Avenue home in Washington.
I liked the manner in which Mr. Chapple had written about the
President-elect (for the book came out during the campaign of 1920)
and I had written Mr. Harding that if Mr. Chapple needed a secretary
I would consider it a pleasure to work for him. Anyone who was so
manifestly strong for my sweetheart appealed to me as the “slickest”
kind of a boss imaginable. Mr. Harding was evidently amused at my
reason for wanting to work for Mr. Chapple for I remember he said it
would “do no harm to write to him and ask.” However, I never did.
Elizabeth Ann took a curiously decided fancy to this Chapple book. She
seemed actually much to prefer it above her own picture books, and, on
the floor, her chubby little legs spread apart the book in front of
her, she would sit for long stretches leafing through the pages and
“reading” aloud to me the story improvised in her baby language. She
had a habit of telling her stories in the form of questions, answered
by herself in a slightly different tone, sometimes ringing in a third
party and adapting her voice to this person also. Often, too, her
stories would take the form of letters, and I can hear her now in her
babyish oratory “reading” aloud to me about her own father. Slightly
embarrassed because she knew she was really not following the text, she
would look up at me, and with impish delight and with the smile of her
father, which made me gasp, she would continue, “My _dear_ Mr. Harding,
how are you? I love you, dear Mr. Harding. Mamma Nan loves you too,
ver’ ver’ much....” Then she would turn to me and raise her great deep
blue eyes and set her lips in the soft line which so imaged the serious
sweetness of her father’s expression, and say, “Nan, dear, isn’t he a
_darling_ man!” And with that I would crush her to me and smother her
with kisses. Nor would I forget to tell her father on my next trip to
the White House her latest sayings about him, and he would look at me
exactly as she had looked and would say, “She’s rather like her mother
in some respects, isn’t she, dearie?” And then he would lapse into
audible musings over his extraordinary feeling for little girls, which
had come over him since his own daughter’s birth, and with the most
pitifully tense, unsmiling sweetness he would say, “How do you think
she would _like_ me for her father?” or, “Just think, Nan, how grand it
is to be a father!” and I would pat his hand and swallow to keep back
my tears for I knew he was but remarking his very heart’s desires.
Often in her two-and-a-half-to-three-year-old days I would call
Elizabeth Ann into my room, which was at the far end of the apartment,
front, and she would come trudging down the hall, her “Harding book”
under one arm, and her other favorite, an abridged edition of Webster’s
Dictionary sometimes dragged along by a few of its leaves, which was
the easiest way for her small hand to grasp such a grown-up volume.
And once, when we snapped her picture in the back yard beside her doll
carriage, her Harding book lay in the carriage, open to Mr. Harding’s
picture, and the whole “took” very distinctly.
_117_
Here in New York in 1924, when I brought her on from Chicago to be
with me, she was five years old. She had the same love for Mr. Harding
then as when she was more babyish, but spoke of it now in an amazingly
grown-up fashion. For instance, she listened when those present thought
she was not listening, and naturally heard Mr. Harding discussed pro
and con. But whatever she heard did not influence her deep-rooted love
for the man who was her father. She so often said to me during that
winter of 1924-25, raising the question herself, “We won’t let anybody
talk about our dear Mr. Harding, will we, Nan dear?” And I would gaze
at her and reiterate softly, “No, indeed, precious Bijiba, we won’t let
anybody talk about our dear Mr. Harding,” knowing she meant “against”
him, when she said “about.” “Bijiba” was her own baby interpretation
of “Elizabeth Ann” and has clung to her as a fond nickname ever since.
Then again, she would request that I take down from the mantel the
picture of Mr. Harding so that she could kiss it, and she would shake
her head and exclaim, “Isn’t he just the _sweetest_ man!” And once
she repeated what she had of course heard, “Mr. Harding is dead ...
what does ‘dead’ mean, Nan dear?” And with tears I would tell her that
our dear Mr. Harding has just gone away, into another land. And once,
curiously twisting her query as though she knew whereof she spoke, she
asked, “And won’t he ever see _me_?” And she seemed for all the world
to be unconsciously expressing her father’s disappointment more than
her own. And I thought sadly, as I searched for a suitable reply, no,
he will never see his own daughter, not on this earth. It was all so
cruel, so cruel!
I simply _had_ to ask Elizabeth and Scott to take Elizabeth Ann back
by the time the latter part of January had come around. Even as early
as the previous October, when the baby had been with me scarcely more
than a month, I had a bitter taste of what real need was. I had exactly
seven cents in my purse when I took Elizabeth Ann with me one day to
the Provident Loan Society to pawn my wedding ring. I had the captain’s
watch also which he had given me permission to pawn, and the combined
pawnings brought $75. This enabled me to buy my darling little girl
a new coat and hat and a couple of school dresses, shoes, etc., in
preparation for her kindergarten. Everything seemed to cost so much;
but I thought that must be because I was not used to a limited income.
I wondered how people who had no more than we had really got along; I
know I fervently wished that I had learned the ability that makes a
dollar stretch five times its worth.
_118_
Shortly after I had pawned my wedding ring and had bought Elizabeth Ann
some new clothes, I had a letter from Miss Daisy Harding, saying she
was to be in New York soon to do some shopping. I surmised that she
would soon be married to Ralph Lewis and in truth learned afterward
from her that the trip East was for the purpose of purchasing linens,
and certain garments to complete her trousseau.
Even the knowledge that my child’s aunt was, according to her own
written statement to me months before, liberally cared for as a result
of her brother Warren’s will, did not cause me for one moment then
to consider as advisable or proper an appeal to her for financial
assistance. Moreover, I had launched myself upon matrimonial waters,
and, though I knew the craft which carried my child and me appeared to
be headed toward the rocks, there was still hope.
While in the city, Miss Harding stopped with a girlhood friend whose
father had been a prominent judge in Ohio. They lived at Broadway and
71st Street in an apartment building, and it was there that I took
Elizabeth Ann one afternoon to call upon Miss Harding. Helen Anderson,
who had always wanted to meet Miss Harding, about whom she had heard me
speak so often, went with us.
I was glad it was cold enough to warrant my wearing my winter coat,
which was trimmed with the squirrel from the coat Mr. Harding had given
me the money to buy back in 1920. Thus I looked as presentable as my
child. Pride would not yet allow me to admit to certain people that
in less than a year I had found that, in my instance, marriage was a
failure. I could not in the same breath confess I had married for a
home for my child, and without such explanation I would be stamped
mercenary, and rightly so.
I do not know whether the explanation I offered Miss Harding in
extenuation of Elizabeth Ann’s separation from her foster parents
sufficed to satisfy her natural speculation about the situation. I
do remember, however, that we repaired for a little private chat,
toward the end of our visit, to the play-room of the little daughter,
where she and Elizabeth Ann had been playing together, and I remember
distinctly that I made a broad statement to the effect that if I ever
for a good reason found I could not live with my husband, I would not
hesitate a moment to seek my freedom. And Daisy Harding, standing there
before me, not yet a bride, echoed my statement.
When we returned to the other room, I called Elizabeth Ann and told
her that we must go, but she and the little girl were having such a
gay time that she was loath to leave, much less put on the little kid
gloves which meant the final touch for leave-taking. And the joy of the
whole visit for me was summed up in seeing her “aunt Daisy”--as unknown
to her as such as she herself was unknown to Miss Harding as Warren
Harding’s child--coax her little hands into the gloves and talk to her
in a low voice which in the quality of its sweetness was much like her
brother’s. And I could tell, though Elizabeth Ann’s back was turned to
me, that she was looking straight into Miss Harding’s eyes with the
same sweet seriousness which was in her father’s eyes when he talked to
me about our child.
_119_
I wanted to be perfectly fair to my husband, the captain, but I
wanted more than anything else in the world to be fair to my precious
Elizabeth Ann. Therefore, I struggled through the winter until the
latter part of January, going in debt in many directions and often
using available cash to buy things for Elizabeth Ann, when pressing
bills awaited payment. For instance, I could not bear not to get my
darling a tricycle when she expressed an ardent wish for one, nor could
I stand it to see her go without a bounteous Christmas. My sister
Elizabeth sent her many lovely things and I thought, with mingled
pride and relief, that she had fared, after all, far better than most
children. I felt a great wave of pity and sympathy for the captain
when he came home at New Year’s from another trip abroad, and brought
the baby a box of toys; ungracious as I was growing toward him, such
thoughtfulness toward my baby never failed to arouse my sympathy and a
renewed attempt to bear up a little longer.
[Illustration: Facsimile analytical report on Elizabeth Ann at the age
of five, while attending the kindergarten of the Training School of the
University of Ohio, Athens, Ohio]
[Illustration]
However, I despatched a letter to Elizabeth the latter part of January
and she came East almost immediately. I persuaded my landlady to allow
me to break my lease. I advised my family that I was leaving the
captain. Mother came in from Long Island where she was teaching, and
she, Elizabeth and I, talked things over. Elizabeth said her husband
did not approve of sending Elizabeth Ann back and forth from Chicago to
New York whenever I found it within my power to take her for a little
while, nor could I really blame him for this attitude. However, that
had been my first attempt to take her permanently, and I fervently
hoped that the next time would be more successful. It broke my heart
to see her go, but once more I bade her goodbye from the Pennsylvania
platform and watched the train pull out, taking her away from me.
After all, Captain Neilsen was not, in spite of his seeming
misrepresentations, such a “bad fellow,” for he had simply loved me
so much that he had thrown a veil over realities and had refused to
accept true facts, preferring to pour all of his hopes into the scale
of optimism, fancying perhaps he could in some miraculous manner clap
his hands, and fortune, hitherto so elusive, would appear. So I didn’t
really want to hurt him, but I wanted to rid myself of him now and
start anew, never again to jump into matrimony with closed eyes. I had
learned a very dear lesson. I was sure he had learned one also. And I
had no wish to incur his enmity.
I moved into a hotel in West 55th Street the first part of February. I
was working at The Town Hall Club, as you will remember, and the Club
is on West 43rd Street, so my hotel was conveniently within walking
distance of my place of business. My work at the Club was quite
absorbing, especially because the executive secretary, whose assistant
I was, was occasionally ill, which threw her work upon my shoulders
in addition to my own routine work. I had been far from well myself
all winter, and it was only by observing early-to-bed hours that I
was able to carry on. I liked the atmosphere of the Club and came in
contact with interesting people, and, for the period which I planned
to go through in my immediate endeavor to seek a divorce, it was
conventionally a good place for me to be employed.
_120_
I had, as I have stated, always felt that there had been some provision
made by Mr. Harding for me to care for our daughter, and, after my
failure in marriage, it seemed to me I ought, for Elizabeth Ann’s sake,
to ascertain whether or not such a bequest existed. But even so it did
not occur to me to go then to the Hardings, feeling that, since Mr.
Harding had not chosen to confide his long-continued relations with me
to any member of his family during his health-time, it was not likely
he had done so just before his death. The most logical person, in my
opinion, and the man who most likely could tell me to whom to go if he
himself did not know about such a bequest, was Tim Slade. He it was who
had met me so many times and had escorted me to the White House, and
had come to Eagle Bay and Chicago with funds from Mr. Harding. I knew
Tim Slade had long since made a change from the governmental secret
service to the brokerage business, but I did not know of any further
changes he had made. So, not knowing where to address him now, I merely
sent my letter to him at Washington, and apparently this address was
sufficient.
My first note simply greeted him after the stretch of more than two
years since I had last seen him, and I wrote that if he ever came to
New York I would be glad to see him. To this letter, which I had
signed of course with my married name, I had an early reply. Tim wrote
that he would give me a ring on the phone the next time he was in the
city; that he was glad to hear from me; and that I should address him
in the future at his residence, giving the number and street. Very
shortly thereafter he came over to New York, called me on the telephone
at The Town Hall Club, and invited me to have dinner with him at the
Waldorf, where, he told me later on, he always stopped. I do not
remember that I accepted his invitation for dinner that time, but I do
remember very well the talk I had with him there which was the first
talk I had ever had with anybody about any money Mr. Harding might have
left for our daughter and me.
We sat in the lounge which one enters beyond the lobby from 33rd
Street, on a couch in the north-east corner. It seemed strange indeed
to be sitting with Tim Slade discussing my sweetheart in the past
tense. Heretofore Tim had been merely the messenger to take me to Mr.
Harding. Tim really knew very little about me. I proceeded to tell
him that I had been married since I had seen him, which accounted for
my new name which he told me he had not understood. It was easy to
talk to Tim Slade for he knew everybody connected with the Harding
Administration, and our conversation gradually bordered upon the very
topic I had been apprehensively waiting for an opportunity to broach.
Tim was not so aggressively curious as to give me reason to feel his
curiosity was other than that any man might display toward a girl
who had apparently had certain claims upon the time and attention of
the President of the United States. So I thought I should proceed to
elucidate certain mystifying past actions on the part of both Mr.
Harding and myself which must have excited speculation on Tim’s part.
I tried to lead up to such explanation by first re-establishing in
his mind certain facts which he very readily recalled--his first trip
to Eagle Bay in the Adirondacks in 1920 with the packet of money from
President-elect Harding, his many subsequent trips to Chicago, and the
times he had escorted me to the White House. Also, I reminded him of
the many letters I had sent in his care to Mr. Harding previous to the
latter’s arrangement whereby I sent them all in care of his colored
valet, Major Arthur Brooks.
Even then I shied at a direct revelation. I merely parried with the
issue in such a manner as to hint at it strongly. I said since Mr.
Harding’s death there was but one thing in all the world that I wanted.
I found the tears coming into my voice as I talked, and oh, how
distasteful it was to me to think of speaking of such a sordid thing as
money in confessing why I could not have this one thing I wanted.
“What _is_ it you want more than anything else in this world?” Tim
asked me kindly, avoiding my eyes because he felt my sensitiveness.
And somehow I found great relief in confessing to him that _I wanted
the daughter of Warren Harding who was also my daughter_. And when Tim
turned to look at me there were tears in his own eyes as he said, “_I
thought so!_”
After that I talked much and at random, explaining this and that, and
Tim seemed genuinely interested in hearing the whole story. I told
him how I had married Captain Neilsen with the idea of being able to
take Elizabeth Ann, and how that marriage had been a failure from
the standpoint of fulfilling this promise. And when I observed that
it just did not seem possible that Mr. Harding could have entrusted
money to someone for me who would deliberately fail to hand it on to
me after his death, Tim ejaculated in great surprise, “Didn’t he leave
you anything at all?” I said I would never, never believe that he had
failed to do so, but I _was_ convinced that the manner in which he had
done so had been such as to make it a very simple thing for the person
entrusted with the money to withhold it from me.
Tim’s assertion was spontaneous and emphatic, “Well, he didn’t leave
anything with _me_, that’s a cinch!” I told him I had thought such a
thing was possible, but that inasmuch as he did not hold the fund I
wondered if he would have any suggestions as to who might have been
chosen by Mr. Harding as confidential messenger to me after his death.
He volunteered to make guarded inquiry in Washington in my behalf.
I was interested to hear Tim say that he had always felt I had a very
deep claim on Warren Harding, “the boss,” as he called him. He said he
had half concluded that I must be his daughter by some alliance of long
ago. One of the first things he said, and one which led me to believe
that he was honestly sincere, was his statement that if he had known
the facts he and Mrs. Slade would themselves have taken Elizabeth Ann
immediately. I explained to him that I never would have consented to
such a thing anyway, that discussion had occurred in other directions
along this same line, but that the adoption which had actually
eventuated was the whole source of my present unhappiness. _I wanted my
child myself._
_121_
It will avail nothing to go into detail concerning the many points
upon which we touched in our later conversations. I related during the
many interviews I had subsequently with Tim Slade much of the story as
it stands in this book. Tim had, of course, a slant upon many angles
of Mr. Harding’s life as President which were amazingly revealing
to me, and which grieved me beyond words to hear. I knew pitifully
little about politics in general, and next to nothing about the inside
workings of the “machine” which is apparently an indispensable part of
both of our great political parties. Tim said he had gone to “the boss”
and had warned him that even his closest friends were double-crossing
him at every turn. He said Mr. Harding had replied, “Why, Tim, you’re
crazy!” And Tim had answered, “All right, maybe I am,” and had found
Mr. Harding adamant where his trust in his friends was concerned.
Tim was frank to say that he had no use for anybody coming out of the
State of Ohio except President Harding. “But I certainly did feel
sorry for the boss,” he said. He said many of those connected with the
Harding Administration had been no less than cut-throats and that “the
Chief” had really had mighty few friends.
Tim related to me his own experiences in Marion, Ohio, where he was for
several months the President-elect’s bodyguard. I was sorry to hear
him say frankly that he had never met such a “bunch” in all his life,
and I assured him that I was certain the streak of social madness of
which he spoke had developed in Marion only since the birth of the
excitement surrounding Mr. Harding’s nomination for the presidency. I
knew all or nearly all of the people of whom he spoke and I had known
them from childhood, and the wildness to which they might have inclined
as the result of a misdirected patriotic stimulus was condoned by me
who knew the genuineness of my home town people. I could not believe
as Tim believed, that “The whole bunch out there is rotten.” No town
which could produce Warren Harding could be fundamentally wrong in any
respect. It was only a temporary social dementia from which they would
recover with the passing of time.
Tim said Mr. Harding had instructed him that in case of “anything
happening” to him, Tim should get from his private secretary, George
Christian, the President’s little black notebook in which the latter
had kept private memoranda. Tim said Mr. Harding had told him he was to
tear out immediately the sheets containing my several addresses and my
name. I moved around, you will remember, quite frequently, and likely
if Mr. Harding kept these addresses they had filled several sheets of
such a notebook. However, it did seem to me, as I told Tim, that Mr.
Harding would have felt it important enough to see that each time I
moved he himself blotted out or destroyed my previous address, and it
also seemed entirely unlikely that he would have my real name written
in this notebook. Any fictitious name would have sufficed, and he and I
had many secret initials which meant something to us and which he might
have used for such purpose. Nevertheless, Tim said, those were his
orders. It seems to me Tim said that when he had gone to Mr. Christian
for the notebook the latter told him it had already been destroyed.
When I left Tim Slade after our first interview I felt sure he would
be able to trace the fund I felt had been left by Mr. Harding for
Elizabeth Ann and me, and Tim had spoken of his intention to speak also
to Major Brooks, the President’s valet, who was with the President, Tim
said, shaving him, only a short time before he passed away.
I felt very sure I could depend upon Tim, and was confident that his
own expressed opinion of the terrible injustice to Elizabeth Ann would
incite him to immediate action in my behalf. When he apologized for
his financial position, telling me he had only recently acquired a new
country home in Maryland and was shy of money, I hastened to assure him
that I didn’t expect any help from him. I was merely intensely anxious
to hunt down the fund which I felt sure had been left for Warren
Harding for our child and me.
_122_
The Town Hall Club, through its executive offices, issued invitations
for two Club dinners, the first they had ever given since the opening
of their new club rooms, and the designing of these invitations as well
as the supervision of their issuance was left to my execution, under
the direction and approval of the Program Committee. This Committee
consisted of Miss Rachel Crothers, who was also a Vice-President of
the Club at that time, and Mrs. Francis Rogers. I was proud to find
that I was capable of assuming many executive responsibilities, and the
success of the First Club Dinner on April 27th, 1925, was a source of
great satisfaction to me personally. There were seven hundred and fifty
people in attendance.
I had, as you will remember, always wanted to “write,” and in my
position at The Town Hall Club I was constantly meeting men and women
who had actually accomplished things in the literary world. I was
chafing under physical strain and nightly fatigue which were far from
conducive to creative writing. But I struggled over what I thought
might some day be a play, writing it around my own experiences with
my beloved Mr. Harding, disguising it, of course, and making our
daughter the central figure. In connection with my work under the
approval of the Program Committee of The Town Hall Club, I was obliged
one evening to go up to Miss Rachel Crothers’ apartment to submit to
her the proofs of the First Club Dinner invitations. I adored Miss
Crothers, and I longed to say to her, “Oh, I would give the world
to put what I know into a play!” As it was I merely said, “I admire
your work tremendously, Miss Crothers. It is the work I want some day
to be doing.” “Have you ever written anything?” she asked me. “No,
nothing much,” shaking my head. “Well, what you need to do is to have
a _child_, and some _experience_. _Then_ you can write!” I wondered
whether even Rachel Crothers could match out of the fecundity of
her imagination a drama equal to mine. And she had written so many
successful plays!
_123_
When the next Club dinner was held, on May 19th, 1925, a prominent New
York attorney introduced himself to me as one of our Club members. In
the days that followed we became friends, and, after telling him that
I was merely separated from Captain Neilsen and not yet divorced from
him, he was kind enough to wish to help me in this respect.
I have been told that each phase of my experience seemed a needful one,
and certainly the manner in which my experience has worked itself out
appears to have been providentially directed. I had not a cent with
which to obtain a divorce. Moreover, the only legal grounds I had for
such obtaining were the grounds of misrepresentation, and divorces in
New York are obtainable only upon statutory grounds, and I would not
impose upon the captain even the suggestion of collusion. Therefore I
had decided that only by going to Reno would I be able to untangle the
matrimonial knot which I had precipitated for my child’s sake.
Tim Slade had offered to go to a friend in Washington, who, he said,
was a prominent lawyer, and who would advise me how I might best obtain
a divorce and the most quickly. Tim said he thought likely it would
have to be upon grounds of desertion, and for this purpose I could
establish a residence in Virginia across the Potomac, commuting daily
to Washington, where, Tim said, he would see to it that I obtained a
position as secretary. Furthermore, he said that this lawyer was a
particularly good friend of his and that he was sure he would handle my
divorce as a favor to him, Tim, and charge no fee whatever.
It seemed to me that fate had helpfully intervened when I met the New
York lawyer who became my friend, and, after he had sympathetically
extracted from me my real reason for wanting a divorce, and the
one contributing factor which had led to compulsory abandonment of
cherished plans in behalf of my daughter, he stated that in his opinion
I had sufficient grounds for a complete _annulment_ of my marriage,
with restitution of my maiden name. This pleased me immensely. He
immediately drew up what was in effect a mutual agreement between
Captain Neilsen and me bearing no legal significance beyond our own
promise to each other to respect each other’s rights, as though a state
of marriage did not exist, until such time as I could obtain absolute
legal severance. We both signed this agreement, which also specified an
amount of money which the captain was to pay to me monthly, and which
he did in good faith pay until my annulment the following February
had been legally consummated. But this amount of money was not even
sufficient to cover the rent I had been paying, and so of course would
not have kept me had I not supplemented it with my own salary.
_124_
Tim Slade came over to New York about once a month, and the second or
third time I met him at the Waldorf he advised me that he had spoken
to Major Brooks as well as to George Christian, of course talking to
them hypothetically. He said Major Brooks remembered very well indeed
having received letter from “E. Baye” enclosing letters for President
Harding, but he knew of no money having been left for anyone at all
outside of those who were mentioned in Mr. Harding’s will. And nothing
had been left with _him_. Nor had Tim’s talk with George Christian, the
President’s secretary, revealed knowledge of such a bequest.
Tim seemed very sure that he could go further in his investigations.
He spoke of various people who had benefitted by the Harding
Administration, and who would, he said, undoubtedly be glad to interest
themselves in my situation. He said he was very sure, from what he
knew about the Harding family outside of the President, that it would
be difficult to persuade them to part with any of their money, and his
characterizations of particular members of Mr. Harding’s family were
distinctly severe. But I felt sure they would come immediately to my
rescue with as much eagerness to do the right thing as Elizabeth Ann’s
father had always shown. I said to Tim Slade that I would prefer not to
go to Harding family until we had exhausted other channels of effort,
especially until he had definitely determined in his own mind that the
money which I believed had been left for us by Mr. Harding could not be
traced.
When I next saw Tim Slade he had not accomplished anything so far as I
could see except to have further confided the facts of the situation to
certain individuals of his own choosing. I did not try to advise him,
feeling he ought to know the right method of procedure if his desire to
help me was truly genuine.
He said there were so few men who were really Mr. Harding’s friends
that the situation was a difficult one. When I met him every month at
the Waldorf the time was not spent entirely with discussions about my
own affair. On the other hand, Tim would tell me long stories about
individuals in Washington. I was learning surprising things about such
people as George Christian, Brigadier-General Sawyer (Mrs. Harding’s
personal physician), Mr. Brush, who bought _The Marion Daily Star_,
Harry Daugherty, his son Draper, and many, many others, some of whose
names were familiar with me, and others of whom I had not heard and
therefore have forgotten. The one man above all others who escaped
critical mention was Charles G. Dawes, who, Tim said, was “his best
friend,” and who, he was sure, would “go a long way” in helping to
solve my problem about Elizabeth Ann and my rightful expectations for
her.
I asked Tim if he had ever heard about the lost letter I had sent to
Mr. Harding the first month of his term as President, and I explained
how I had addressed it and how I had enclosed many snapshots of
Elizabeth Ann, and some of myself with our daughter. This letter was
not received. Tim said that he himself had assisted George Christian
until the latter had got onto things, but that some one else had opened
all of the President’s mail at that time. He said he did not think this
particular letter had reached there for he was confident it would have
been given to the President.
I told Tim about having met a friendly New York attorney and about his
volunteering to assist me, for a nominal fee, to free myself from the
captain, and Tim thought that would be wise.
The latter part of May I talked to my New York lawyer friend again
about my matter and I put my case to him hypothetically, in the light
of the natural responsibility a family ought to assume toward the
maintenance of their brother’s only child despite the fact that that
child could claim no _legal_ relationship to the family. I did not
say of course who the father of my child was, but his answer to my
question was both direct and emphatic. He was of the opinion that there
did exist a moral responsibility toward such a child and that _the
right thing to do for the child_ was to approach the family direct.
“You have apparently tried to ‘cut corners’ by making a marriage for
Elizabeth Ann’s sake. You found it has proven a failure. Now the thing
to do is to do the _right_ thing, which is to go to her father’s
people.”
I did not see Tim Slade again before I left at the beginning of June
on a vacation of a month to be spent in the West with my people. But
I remember distinctly that I made up my mind that if Tim Slade could,
as he said, influence certain persons to help Warren Harding’s child,
then the members of the Harding family would surely see it in the same
way, and, in justice to them, they should be approached immediately. My
lawyer’s assertion of the justice of such procedure strengthened me in
the step I was deliberating upon, and I felt there was really but one
thing _for_ me to do--make my plea in my own way to Daisy Harding on
behalf of her brother’s child.
_125_
My mother, who had been teaching on Long Island, and my brother John,
fifteen years of age, went West with me the first of June, 1925.
Elizabeth and Scott were teaching music at the Ohio University, and so
we proceeded straight to Athens, Ohio.
How my darling little girl had grown even in the four months since I
had been obliged to return her to my sister and her husband! How much
she looked like her father, and how happy I was to be with her again!
How long and straight her legs! How lovely her eyes! And she had lost
a tooth. Oh, I told her, I was so happy to see her! “Well, Nan dear,
I’m happy to see you, too!” she answered, her head to one side like her
father, her lips drawn into the semi-serious smile of a grown-up, as
she took one of my hands in both of hers. How dear she was! And what a
peach my sister Elizabeth was to take such good care of her! Nor was I
unappreciative of the fact that Scott had not been unwilling to take
her back even after I had taken her away with the full and expressed
intention of keeping her permanently. Scott and I never agreed where
Elizabeth Ann was concerned, but I conceded much appreciation to him
for having been won over to accepting her back uncomplainingly in that
instance.
Elizabeth said they were planning to motor back to Chicago and from
there to the Willits farm for the summer, and would I not like to motor
with them? This I decided to do, and in that way remain a little longer
with my precious baby girl before proceeding back to New York. So about
the middle of June we left Athens, by motor, for Chicago.
I continued to think about the task to which I had set myself: telling
my friend and my sweetheart’s sister, Daisy Harding, about Elizabeth
Ann. Our route to Chicago took us through Marion, Ohio, and Elizabeth
Ann and I shared the same bed at the Harding Hotel where we spent the
night. An oil painting of Mr. Harding hangs in the lounging room of the
hotel, and Elizabeth Ann spied it immediately and recognized it. “Oh,
there is our dear Mr. Harding,” she said, pulling my hand, and we both
stood in front of the portrait silently. In our bedroom were all the
needed evidences to make one know that it had been Mr. Harding who had
inspired the building. Even in the bedspreads was woven the likeness of
the 29th President of the United States.
That night, or early the next morning, I telephoned Miss Harding,
who was, by the way, Mrs. Ralph T. Lewis now, and told her we were
passing through Marion to Chicago and I would likely return that way
enroute East. I had previously written of my intended trip West and
Miss Harding had advised me by letter when it would be most convenient
for her to have me at her home. I told her over the phone I was making
arrangements to be there at the time she suggested.
We went on to Gary, Indiana, where we were obliged to spend the night
because of tire trouble. The following day we were in Chicago. That
afternoon, after a short rest, Elizabeth, Scott and the baby went on
down to the farm, and I, after visiting with friends for a couple of
days, went back to Marion, Ohio.
_126_
On my trip from Chicago to Marion I went very carefully over the whole
situation as it affected and might affect everybody concerned. I
decided it was paramountly _my_ problem, to solve for Elizabeth Ann,
and, regardless of the shock which the revelation of my secret might
cause, there did exist an obligation in the Harding family toward
Elizabeth Ann, and I owed it to my child to apprise the Hardings of her
true identity and parentage.
Of course, it would be difficult for me to tell Daisy Harding. It would
mean for me the retracing of a word-for-word picture of that part of my
life which I would fain recall only by sad-sweet memories unspoken, and
the indelible imprint upon my character. Miss Harding’s cordial, “Why,
come right on out, Nan!” when I telephoned her from the Marion railroad
station, brought me face to face with my promise to myself: that I
would not postpone the telling, but have it over with.
I had scarcely seated myself when I said, “Miss Harding, I have
something which I want you to know and I am going to proceed to tell
you immediately.”
I sat on the couch in the living-room. This was the first time I had
been in Daisy Harding’s new home since her marriage to Ralph Lewis. On
the table stood a picture of my darling, taken with Laddie Boy, and it
was the first time I had seen this particular picture of Mr. Harding. I
looked closely at it when I sat down. Its presence bolstered me in the
ordeal I must go through.
I plunged into my story and followed it as best I could from beginning
to end. Neither nervous tension nor tears stopped me until I had pretty
well covered the ground. Daisy Harding’s face was a study. As I talked
it expressed kaleidoscopically the varied emotions she must truly have
experienced--amazement, pity, hurt, sorrow,--all there, _but never for
one moment incredulity_.
The very first thing she said was, “Why, Nan, I’ll bet that was
brother Warren’s greatest joy!” I said I thought it _had_ been. Then
she added, “If Carrie Votaw knew this she would want to go right out
there and get that baby right away. She’d just love her!” I knew Carrie
Votaw’s fondness for children exceeded even Daisy’s. The Votaw’s had
no children of their own. I told Daisy in tears that that was exactly
what _I_ had been wanting to do ever since Elizabeth Ann was born, and
especially was it unbearable for me not to have her, since I no longer
had _him_.
I shall not attempt to give the details of our conversation, for it was
inclusive of every phase of my situation and would be a mere repetition
of my story thus far told. I showed her letters I had, and pictures of
Elizabeth Ann, and she, too, saw the likeness which her brother’s child
bore to him.
Miss Harding was understanding and kind, never once criticising her
brother, even though she made a brave attempt to convince me that
Mr. Harding’s legal wife was fond of him. Though it seemed futile to
me to expend so much time discussing this point upon which no one in
the world was probably as intimately informed as I, I took occasion
to remark that I had fully appreciated her _rights_, imposed by
the long-standing union between her and Mr. Harding, and that this
recognition on my part and my respect above everything else for my
sweetheart’s peace of mind, had resulted in the tragic situation I was
today attempting to face.
It was pitifully plain to me that Miss Harding’s immediate concern was
for the Harding name, to preserve it conventionally intact, although
the very method she chose to employ in her endeavor to impress me with
my own duty toward my child and her brother’s, only made her alarm the
more apparent. It would be unfair to Elizabeth Ann, she said, to tell
her who she was until she became twenty-five years of age--and perhaps
had had a love-affair of her own. Miss Harding asserted that there was
every probability that Elizabeth Ann might turn against me, her own
mother, if she were told before that time. But this I would not admit
for one second. I said that it might be a shock to Elizabeth Ann, but
that I knew my child well enough to know that I could never lose her,
because she was too much like her father and mother, both, ever to be
unduly swayed emotionally by such a revelation.
“How many people know this, Nan?” Daisy Harding asked me.
I told her each one of them, not forgetting to include Tim Slade.
At the mention of Tim Slade’s name, Miss Harding seemed greatly
distressed, and questioned very much the wisdom of my having made
Tim a confidant, telling me a story in which Tim figured and which I
had heard from Tim himself, though in an entirely different version.
It had to do with an alleged indebtedness left unpaid by Mr. Harding
in the amount of $90,000, so Miss Harding said, which amount was due
a brokerage firm for stocks of some kind to which Mr. Harding had
supposedly subscribed, but for which he had failed to pay previous to
his passing. The firm had sued the Harding Estate and Miss Harding said
that their lawyers had advised them that, inasmuch as there remained
no proof that Mr. Harding did _not_ owe it, they might better strike a
compromise than have it made a matter of public knowledge. This they
had done, settling for $40,000. I cannot repeat Tim’s version of the
same story, but it had been colored throughout with resentment frankly
expressed, for it had been the brokerage firm for which Tim had acted
as Washington manager, and he therefore said that he knew whereof he
spoke when he said Mr. Harding actually owed the money.
I told Miss Harding, as I had told Tim Slade, that Mr. Harding had said
to me upon my last visit to the White House that he was then in debt
$50,000, and I suggested that perhaps this was the very indebtedness
to which he referred, although it seemed to me I did remember hearing
him add something about “campaign expenses.” However, I had never been
interested in remembering those things verbatim which pertained to
business, though I knew by heart the sweet things he had said which
affected our personal relations, and it was the amount of $50,000 which
had stayed in my mind and the fact that the poor darling had said he
just could not seem to get out of debt.
I would not be disloyal to Tim, who was, I was sure, trying to help
me in his own way, and so I tried not to bring his name into our
discussions after that, except in a general way. Miss Harding suggested
to me later on that I might try in an off-hand way to get Mrs. Votaw’s
opinion of Tim. Her sister from Washington was then in Marion, and Miss
Harding said she thought it would be fine if the friends who had driven
through from Washington to Battle Creek, Michigan, and had dropped Mrs.
Votaw off in Marion, would invite me to drive back East with them when
they stopped in Marion again in a day or two to pick up Mrs. Votaw, and
that it would save me that much carfare. I said I would be delighted.
_127_
That evening Mrs. Votaw came over to her sister Daisy’s. I had not
seen Carrie Votaw for several years, but I observed that she had lost
none of her regal beauty, and she, too, had certain facial expressions
which reminded me strongly of her brother. Early in our conversation,
Mrs. Votaw found occasion to inquire about my Aunt Dell, who, you will
remember, had been a missionary to Burma at the same time Mrs. Votaw
and her husband, Heber Herbert Votaw, had been engaged in work of the
same character, and it was plain to be seen that the old feeling toward
my Aunt Dell was still smoldering in the heart of her whose religion,
as a Seventh Day Adventist, was not generally concordant with that of
my Aunt Dell, who was a Baptist.
Mrs. Votaw said to me that she had felt very bitter when my Aunt Dell
had taken occasion to have published in a certain paper an article,
written by my aunt, which voiced the hope of her church that Mr.
Harding, now the most distinguished member of the Baptist Church, as
President of the United States, might see fit to exert his influence
in the direction of promoting the very worthy work which the Baptists
were carrying on so admirably in Burma. I knew my Aunt Dell’s sense
of humor, and it would have been too much for her to refrain from
making capital of a situation such as this, and I could not help being
secretly amused. But it saddened me to realize how this given instance
of Mrs. Votaw’s resentment proved that the work which should be so
universally missionary in spirit and never pettily denominational, was,
after all, permeated with the spirit of sect jealousy.
_128_
The following afternoon I walked with Miss Harding (I never called her
Mrs. Lewis, having gained her consent to continue addressing her in the
old way) to the home of a friend where she was having tea. From there
I went over to my friends’, the Mousers. I remember the queer sense of
detachment I felt toward old landmarks which since my childhood had
grown strangely unfamiliar to me. Here in my own home town, the same
feeling of unreality, of walking through the picture-book, possessed me
as it had in France, and it was difficult for me to realize that I was
alive and not dreaming dreams. In current slang, I wondered “what it
was all about.”
Yet all the time Miss Harding and I were discussing my problem. I was
telling her how deeply in debt I was, and she was telling me how she
had invested in real estate until she and Ralph were both frightened
lest they should lose heavily. I was a bit sensitive about even
discussing money, feeling assured that now that one of the Hardings
knew my story, she would set about to right things for Elizabeth Ann.
Miss Harding said she herself would tell Carrie Votaw the facts about
their brother’s child, but that Mrs. Votaw had not been particularly
well and it would be such a shock that she would prefer to wait until
later on, perhaps the following month, when she expected to see her
sister again. I agreed very readily to this, and told Miss Harding I
would leave the matter entirely in her hands, as she asked me to do.
When Mrs. Votaw came to the Lewis home the next time, Miss Harding
suggested to her that she and her friends take me along back as far
as Washington with them, and to this Mrs. Votaw heartily agreed,
saying that there was ample room in their Hudson car. She said
the car belonged to her friend, Mr. Cyrus Simmons, who, with his
brother-in-law, would be the only other two occupants on the return
trip. Mrs. Votaw remained over night at her father’s, Dr. Harding’s, on
East Center Street, the night before we were to leave Marion, and I,
staying at the Lewis home, slept that night in Miss Harding’s room. Her
husband had left that day for Florida to attend to some business down
there.
I remember well how it stormed that night. It occurred to me, as we lay
there talking in our beds across from each other, that the frequent
flashes of lightning and peals of thunder were possibly symbolic of
Miss Harding’s mental state. I felt so sorry for her. She seemed
to be so full of fear. I had passed all through the stage of fear
of exposure, and did not fear anything except my inability to get
Elizabeth Ann and to _keep_ her.
The question of the $90,000 came up again and I said to Miss Harding
that I could not see the awfulness of her brother’s speculation, for
most big men played the market, and just because the President had had
no cash with which to cover his pledge, likely they had volunteered
to go ahead and “play” _for_ him. Miss Harding took the attitude
that her brother was above gambling. I was not, however, at all in
agreement with her views that he would not have been capable of “taking
chances.” He and the fellows in Marion with whom he had played cards
had always played for stakes. I told her about one night when Mr.
Harding had come over to see me in New York. He related how three men
had approached him on the train with an invitation to play cards. They
had all repaired to the end compartment. He said that he did not seem
to “catch on” to them at first, but very soon he found himself deeply
in debt--that is, as I remember, to the extent of something over $100,
which was a considerable amount for a train card game I suppose--and
he told me how he had said to them, “Gentlemen, I always pay my just
indebtednesses, but in this instance I am going to give you only as
much as I can spare.” Thereupon he gave them $50 and his personal
card, and told them they could look him up in Washington if they
desired to collect the balance. He said to me that it had been a plain
“hold-up game” and that he never expected to see them in Washington
at all. So, even though the $90,000 in question, which Miss Harding
felt her brother did not owe, was nine hundred times the amount of the
indebtedness he incurred in playing cards, _I_ was quite sure in my
own mind that he had very possibly “taken chances” in this instance
as well. I decided he might even have done it for Elizabeth Ann and
me, knowing how he so frequently talked of “taking out some kind of a
policy,” or setting aside some money for me in some way.
_129_
When finally, after discussing my problem, Daisy Harding went off to
sleep, I lay there thinking, trying to recall anything of importance
that I had failed to relate to her. I heard Miss Harding in her
sleep mutter the word “child” several times, and I knew that the
subject-matter of our conversation had drifted into slumberland with
her, and wondered what she was dreaming. I was sorry, too, very sorry,
that I had been obliged to tell her, for I knew the whole thing was
worrying her tremendously. She had said to me that she had not known
good health for quite some time, and I confess she did look tired. I
felt so sorry for her and I loved her deeply; but I loved my daughter
far more. In the shadows, as she lay there sleeping, she looked so much
like her brother, more perhaps than any of the others in the family
save the father, Dr. Harding, in whom I have more than once seen Mr.
Harding so strongly that I could just hug him.
[Illustration: GEORGE TRYON HARDING, M.D. the President’s father]
It was in fact during that very visit to Marion that I had gone over
to the Dr. Harding home on East Center Street one afternoon to join
Mrs. Votaw, and be there so Mrs. Mouser could pick us both up and take
us for a drive. Passing through the house out to the garden I had
come across Dr. Harding, lying down on the couch in the living-room.
I had not seen him before on that particular visit, and I went over
and leaned down and kissed him on the cheek and spoke to him. His eyes
were closed but I knew he was not asleep. He opened them and recognized
me immediately. I doubt very much whether I have ever encountered Dr.
Harding even in passing greeting that he did not remark in the same
exclamatory fashion, “Oh, yes,--Nan, _Nan_! Yes, I remember how your
father used to tell me how you stood up for Warren! He said you thought
Warren was the finest man in the country--yes, your father used to
say....” And I have known Daisy Harding to interrupt more than once
and say, “Yes, dad, you’ve told Nan that before,” or, “Yes, dad, Nan
knows.” And when I bent and touched his cheek with my lips and took his
dear old wrinkled hand in mine, he spoke to me immediately of his son
Warren. But now the voice was the far-away voice of a grief-stricken
aged man, and so pitifully weak that I bent over him and listened
intently to catch the words. Bless him! He was trying to recall to me
my father’s words to him about my love for his son. But the feeble
voice trailed off and I felt more than heard his whispered heart-cry,
“Too bad Warren had to die!” My heart was so full of love and sympathy
for him whose son I worshipped that something which must have been the
maternal in me longed to stoop and take the snow-white head on my arm
and mingle my tears with his against the wrinkled cheek. But, instead,
I stood looking down upon him and seeing in the deep-set faded eyes
of the father the eyes of the other, the younger man, his son and my
beloved.
I have yet to see, however, except in the eyes of my baby, who is
the soul of Warren Harding, the spiritual lights of understanding,
gladness, and sorrow that shone from the eyes of him whose gaze was
ever fixed beyond the pale of the material. I recall how one time Mr.
Harding and I were motoring in New York, in a car hired by him for the
purpose by the hour, and were passing under the elevated bridge at
Broadway and 64th Street, when I said to him, “Darling, you have such
beautiful eyes. Somehow I never can really see _into_ them.” And he
smiled and answered, “Aren’t they too sad, Nan?” Yes, I told him, they
were sad, but beautifully and spiritually sad.
He, in turn, seemed to delight in telling me how he loved my eyes, my
lips, my teeth, my woman’s body, my voice, and my nose. It was when he
said he loved my nose that I would interrupt him. “Oh, now I _know_ you
must be fooling,” I would say, “because I have always heard from my
family how big my nose is!” But he would shake his head and smile and
plant a kiss right upon the end of that emphasized feature and swear
over and over again, “I love your nose!”
_130_
It was with a great sense of relief that I looked now to my return
to New York. Daisy Harding was my friend, she knew the whole story,
she loved her brother dearly, and I was sure she would act quickly in
acquainting her family with a situation which needed immediately to be
righted for the sake of her brother’s child.
The motor trip to Washington with Carrie Votaw and her friends was,
for me at least, a lark. Not since my early days in France, before the
tragic news of Mr. Harding’s death reached me, had I experienced such
comparative relaxation, mentally. We were a jolly four, singing songs,
reciting pieces, and talking about everything--everything except those
things which lay nearest my heart. I was thankful that there would
be no more mental metastasis to shock and hurt me. My answer to all
fears henceforth would be, “Daisy knows; _Daisy_ knows!” And I would
soon, through the goodness which I knew was as inherent a quality in
the Hardings as was their knowledge of right, have my baby with me
permanently.
Many and many a time I thought to myself, as my eyes drank in every
move Carrie Votaw made, “What a wonderful family, these Hardings! Each
superlative in individual ways!” I visualized Mrs. Votaw with her
brother’s child on her lap, and thought within myself that God always
compensated in His own beautiful way for the things we longed for but
which were not always within His will. I had so prayed that I might see
our child with her father, on his knee, but instead I was to see her
with his sisters whom I also loved.
Our first night enroute to Washington was spent in Uniontown,
Pennsylvania. Mrs. Votaw and I shared the same room, and, after we had
retired, it occurred to me to inquire casually concerning her opinion
of Tim Slade. She answered very briefly, and said she thought that
he, like a good many others, had been “roped in” unconsciously, and
that he was very probably not a bad sort of man at all. I explained my
curiosity in some way which did not at all arouse her suspicions or
lead her to think I knew him personally, and it was very gratifying to
me to know that she held no unfavorable opinion of him.
Proceeding on our way, the following day we had luncheon in the
mountains at the log cabin of Mrs. Votaw’s friend, Miss Barnett. The
only knowledge I had ever had of log cabins was through conversations
with Mr. Harding. I think it was his friend, Senator Weeks, who had
many times entertained fellow senators and friends at his camp, which
was in New Hampshire. And Mr. Harding’s final exclamation, when he
described for me the beauty of the country up there and the comforts of
the lodge in the mountains, always was, “I wish I might have _you_ up
there, Nan, way off in the woods!” He longed, he said, to carry me away
to some spot like that for “weeks at a stretch.”
I was enchanted with Miss Barnett’s log cabin, with its spacious rooms
and screened-in porches, its picturesque furnishings, its hardwood
floors in bedrooms, where nothing had been forgotten to make the guests
perfectly comfortable, the grounds, the deep green coolness of the
forest which rose majestically around it. And most of all did it amaze
me to see served to us a luncheon as delicately appointed as one might
get at the Plaza or Ritz-Carlton.
_131_
When we arrived in Washington that night about eleven o’clock, we
found Mr. Votaw waiting up for us, having received word from Mrs.
Votaw as to when we would arrive. Daisy Harding had told me that her
brother-in-law, Heber Herbert Votaw, had been very ill, and one needed
only to glance at him to know it. I had seen Mr. Votaw only a few
times, and these occasions dated back to my high school days, when he
and his wife had returned from Burma on a furlough, and it occurred to
me as I looked at him closely for the first time that night, that he
might be described as being handsome in much the same way that George
Christian was considered handsome. He had very dark hair and eyes
that laughed, and teeth of flashing whiteness, and he was of pleasing
height and bearing. On meeting him again after these years I liked Mr.
Votaw immediately, with one reservation. It seemed to me his voice was
unpleasantly loud. I decided it had been abnormally developed because
of his wife’s difficulty in hearing, and was not at all his own natural
voice. And further, I concluded that even if he _were_ inclined to be
irritable, his late illness and resultant weakness were sufficient
grounds. I remember when I was passing through the most trying months
of my nervous breakdown following Elizabeth Ann’s birth, I used to
manifest a disposition of irritability both in my voice and actions
which I may, in justice to my true self, disclaim as a part of my
nature when I am physically sound.
Yet somehow, despite these explanations to myself, I could not
reconcile the irritancy of Mr. Votaw’s voice, no matter to what it
might be attributable, with the meekness and patience which should mark
a missionary of religion.
The Votaws lived in a very comfortable house which Carrie Votaw told
me they rented partially furnished, having brought some of their own
things to complete the outfitting. They kept one maid, a young girl
Mrs. Votaw had befriended in a motherly way, and Mrs. Votaw herself
went into the kitchen and superintended the getting of the meals. Mrs.
Votaw liked young people about and very early introduced me to a young
man and several young people, all nearer my own age. She was a charming
hostess and did many things I was sure were done just to please me.
When she said to me she wished I would come down there and live with
them and help her in a secretarial way to write up her many experiences
in Burma, I was quite thrilled. I thought it might work out that I
could bring her brother’s child with me and in that way introduce her
into the household along with myself. Then we could _all_ share her.
Mrs. Votaw talked a great deal about “wanting a baby,” and I could not
help reflecting how tragic it is that into some homes come so many
children, oftentimes unwanted, while into other homes where they would
find welcome and love awaiting them, for some reason they do not come.
I felt genuinely sorry for her and thought to myself, “How she will
adore Elizabeth Ann!” even as her sister Daisy had prophesied. And her
longing for a child only served to strengthen my hope of being asked
very soon to bring Elizabeth Ann, their beloved brother’s own child,
into their homes and into their hearts as the child of their flesh
and blood. And, although I would never, never part with her, to have
them know the blessing of her smile and the happiness I knew she would
radiate for them all, would, I thought, be a great joy to them, even as
it was for me my life joy.
_132_
One evening Mr. and Mrs. Votaw and I sat talking before bedtime, and
our conversation drifted into religion. We had talked pro and con
about this phase and that for perhaps an hour or more when Mrs. Votaw
excused herself and went on upstairs to bed. Mr. Votaw and I talked
on until one o’clock. His fervency struck me as being that of a man
genuinely convinced that he had found the truth, and I expressed the
wish that I, too, some day would find a religion that would fill me as
satisfyingly. Mine up to this time had become merely a philosophy of
my own, from conning religious books, and influenced predominately by
the bitter-sweet experiences I had met up with in life. I must always
have been innately religious, else I would not always have longed to
know that something which satisfies the soul. But I had witnessed on
all sides the hypocrisy which makes people live lives they despise
and practise religions insincerely for the mere sake of upholding
conventional standards. I had therefore turned into my own mental paths.
My independent thinking was of course inspired by my intimate knowledge
of Mr. Harding’s apparent unhappiness with his legal wife and his
evident preference, in his relations with me, for subterfuge, which
seemed to promote peace of mind, rather than open rebellion and
consequent turmoil. “She’d raise hell!” had been Mr. Harding’s frequent
statement to me, and, even though she seemed not to love him in the way
a man has the right to expect to be loved by his wife, I knew, without
Mr. Harding’s telling me, that she would not release him to another.
And, though I had been surrounded ever since a child with an atmosphere
of strictest convention, I had found with Warren Harding that the
realest happiness is of the spirit, and far transcends in its sublimity
the exquisiteness of physical rapture. And stress of circumstances,
preventing our more frequent trysts, and fraught with pain, had brought
me to a realization that our love was a thing divine. The love I
bore Warren Harding, my love for the spirit which was he, was the most
God-like instinct I possessed--a thing not of this world.
[Illustration:
PHOEBE CAROLYN (“CARRIE”) HARDING
(_Mrs. Heber Herbert Votaw_)
the President’s sister
]
To Mr. Votaw I said, as I realized anew these things, “To me, Mr.
Votaw, Warren Harding was spiritual, almost an immortal.” Tears were in
my throat. “Bah!” he replied, with a slight grimace, “don’t you believe
it! Warren was as material as any of us.” I marvelled that he had not
understood that I only meant that Warren Harding’s soul had finely
shone through the veil of his material body.
How little the world knew the true Warren Harding!
_133_
The following day I was to leave Washington for New York. Carrie Votaw
and I were chatting together in the room I had occupied since my
arrival, and she was showing me some of her lovely clothes, many of
which she said she had not worn since the days her brother was in the
White House. This hat had been bought for a garden party at the White
House, and this dress was selected for another particular occasion.
The prematurely snow-white hair of the woman before me, coupled with
the beauty of a face which was, like her sister Daisy’s of queenly
loveliness, made a startlingly beautiful woman, one who could, I
reflected, more fittingly fill the role of the First Lady than she who
had recently actually held that title. As I stood there handling this
gown and that, my mind flew back to a certain White House reception
held on the lawn one summer afternoon in 1922, the only one I ever
witnessed, and I wondered if Mrs. Votaw had been there.
I had visited with President Harding that morning, in his private
office as usual, and he had told me how he wished he might “get me
in on” the party scheduled for that afternoon without Mrs. Harding’s
suspecting the source of my invitation. As he sat pondering the
possibility, I could see many difficulties--my lack of a suitable gown
and so on--and I assured him I would be just as happy knowing he had
_wanted_ me there.
That afternoon I strolled past the White House, along the side near the
conservatory which commanded a view of the sloping green. It was a gay
assemblage, and in its midst I spied my sweetheart, handsome and tall,
standing with Mrs. Harding and receiving guests who were arriving in
throngs. It occurred to me he stood in an unusually conspicuous spot,
easily observable from my post outside the fence, and I suddenly knew
he must be standing there so that I could see him. When I accused him
lovingly upon my next visit of raising a hand to me as a signal of
recognition, he only smiled and said, noncommittally but fondly, “That
_would_ please you, wouldn’t it, Nan.” And I nodded and told him the
next time I would hope for a friendlier guard, one who would not say
“No loitering, young lady!” as I stood there harmlessly adoring _my_
president!
Little did his sister suspect what was going through my mind as she
spoke of this gown and that and I viewed them in unfeigned admiration.
And, I thought, wasn’t it just like her to have invited me on one
occasion to wear her own black wrap trimmed with ermine, and one of
her evening hats? If I were to live there, it would be just like her
generous self to let me wear all of her pretty things!
Before we went out of the room, Mrs. Votaw went to the dresser and took
from one of the dresser drawers a black pin-seal wallet or bill-book.
It bore the marks of long usage.
“Here, Nan. You always loved Warren so much and I want you to have
this. Brother Warren carried it with him right up to the time he died,
and that makes it very precious.” What could I say to her! How could
she know how it tortured me to see again the old familiar wallet and to
experience the rush of memories which this new sight of it conjured up
for me! How often had I adored the offhand manner in which her brother
had inquired of me across the dinner-table, “How are the finances
today, Nan?” or, “Have you paid Mrs. Johnson your rent a month in
advance?” And whether or not my finances were in good shape, he would
draw out contemplatively a twenty or fifty, depending upon my immediate
needs, often a cigarette between his lips, his eyes narrowed to keep
out the smoke, as he drew the bill from the wallet. Then he would hand
it to me and say, “Better put that in your bag, dearie, right away,” if
I sat oblivious, adoring the nonchalant manner in which the cigarette
hung from his lips--I never saw anyone smoke with such perfect grace
as he. The leather fairly smelled of him! How queer that she should
have elected to give me _this_ as a memento! Yet here it was, the empty
bill-book, and I opened it to read in gold lettering his name, “Warren
G. Harding.” Why, it was in this very worn wallet that he used to keep
a certain snapshot of me to which he had taken a particular fancy!
Now, at the hand of his sister, it had come back to the mother of his
child....
[Illustration: The President’s wallet, presented by his sister, Carrie
Votaw, to the author in 1925]
My heart was full of gratitude for these visits, both with Miss Harding
in Marion and with Mrs. Votaw in Takoma Park, suburban to Washington.
It seemed I had surely trod upon holy ground, for had I not been among
those who knew and loved him dearly? Yes, it was good, good to have
been in both homes, good to renew friendship on a more intimate basis,
good to realize how genuine was their affection for their brother,
whose child they would surely welcome lovingly, and who in turn would
know the full depth of their love in the material expression they would
give as proof.
_134_
I returned to The Town Hall Club in New York on July first (1925) to
take up my duties again, and took a room within walking distance of the
Club.
July passed and no word came from Daisy Harding. So on August 3rd I
wrote her briefly, greeting her again after the lapse of a month or
more and making inquiry as to whether she had seen her sister, Mrs.
Votaw. When Daisy Harding speaks of Elizabeth Ann, she often calls her
“Bijiba,” the baby’s self-imposed nickname, and in her letter she used
merely the initial “B” to indicate “Bijiba.”
She wrote: “I feel that we have such different ideas about men and our
relations to them that it is useless for me to suggest or advise.”
(Why, I had _sought_ her counsel, her help!) “I want so much to see you
happy and attain the desires nearest to your heart that I hesitate to
say anything which might interfere with your plans....” (Plans? I had
no plans, as she surely must have known, except as they might develop
through financial help from the Harding family.) “... My heart goes out
to you in any of your suffering, relative to B-- (Bijiba), and you must
know and feel that....”
This letter astounded me. Even the concluding words of endearment,
“Lots of love, Nan dear,” failed to carry the usual note of sincerity.
I read and reread the passages pertaining to Elizabeth Ann, trying
to read into them something which was obviously not there, trying to
discern an attitude of active interest instead of merely a passive
inactive acceptance of a tragic situation. Could it be that she had
failed to understand that my revelations to her had been for the
express purpose of bringing the Harding family to a realization that
there existed an obligation on their part to Elizabeth Ann, and not
merely to solicit sympathy and discuss the intimate details of my
relationship with her brother?
If such were the case, I would have to make plainer the import of my
appeal to her, and frankly state my desire to see this wrong toward
my child, and their brother’s, righted. She had asked me, with kindly
spirit and apparent understanding, to “leave it with her,” and she
had promised to confer with her sister, Mrs. Votaw, at the earliest
opportunity. Was it possible that this talk between them had resulted
in the apparent indifference her letter indicated? Impossible. They
were _Hardings_!
But I had their brother’s daughter’s future at stake, and her welfare
was dearer to me than life. I deliberated well, and then wrote her
at length, and below are excerpts from my letter which dealt almost
entirely with Elizabeth Ann’s problem:
“New York, September 23, 1925.
DEAREST MISS HARDING:
... When I was in Marion, I remember distinctly that you told me how
deeply sympathetic and interested Mrs. Votaw was bound to be if you
told her the whole story about Elizabeth Ann as I had related it to
you. In your letter recently to me you ignored completely Mrs. Votaw’s
possible visit to you.... I am naturally assuming therefore that you
have told Mrs. Votaw and the attitude you felt sure she would take has
not been the attitude she actually has assumed. Of course, the mere
fact that you did not even allude to your having had a discussion with
her on the subject has hurt me very deeply.
I hope you don’t mind my talking in a rather business-like manner
about a subject which is a veritable part of me and nearest and
dearest to my heart, but the time has come when I must make some kind
of separation between sentiment and being fair to Elizabeth Ann.
When I went West in June, as I told you, my sole reason was to talk
with you and gain whatever helpful suggestions you might make. Your
saying in your last letter that my attitude toward men and that of
your own were at such wide variance as to make you hesitant about
making suggestions was another thing that hurt me quite a bit. I will
admit that Elizabeth Ann’s father and I indulged in the height of
unconventionality--but to be fair to myself, I must say that it was as
much his idea of right as mine--and I shall never be able to attach
one iota of sordidness to the beautiful, natural, and finely impelled
love we had for each other which resulted in God’s giving us Elizabeth
Ann.
I am very sure, knowing your loving regard for his happiness and your
deep affection for him as a brother, you would not in the same breath
imagine him capable of being actuated by any but the finest, truest
motives, and that I, loving him as I always have, could respond had I
not instincts as lofty as his own. Bless him! But my declarations now
are merely to prove to you that if you loved him one-tenth as much
as I, you would lose sight entirely of the “right” or “wrong” of the
question, in assuming that you are incapable of advising or helping
simply because our views concerning relations with men differ, in your
desire to see things as he saw them--and in your intense longing to
help me to solve the problem which his tragic death has left unsolved.
Not that I believe you do not want to help me. Understand me, I am
sure you do. Both you and Mrs. Votaw. Else you could not have loved
him dearly. I think I would have died for him. But my problem now is
to _live_ and care for and protect a precious gift--our gift to each
other. I wish I might picture to you his face when he talked of the
future--the worshipful sweetness of his smile when he talked with me
about Elizabeth Ann--his pride in her, his adorable pride in me, his
enthusiasm about little girls in general, where, he said to me, the
very last time I saw him, he “never used to feel so deeply moved.”
You see how I have all these things with me, and how endeared every
remembrance makes her to me.
[Illustration]
It has all been going through my mind all summer, and I feel very
strongly that before I take any big steps, I should immediately put my
problem up to you very frankly.
You intimated to me that perhaps this fall--your property there having
involved your own income quite deeply--you might be able to help me
to put E. A. in school--to have her with me. I am up against the
following problem:
I could, presumably, though not positively, procure funds wherewith
to enable me to put E. A. in school this winter--but ever since I
married the Captain in order to _have_ E. A. permanently, have I been
borrowing--from Peter to pay Paul. It has not worked out at all well.
I am now in debt over $500 and only this very afternoon have I gone
on the witness stand in an endeavor to have my marriage annulled and
start anew....
Now, my mother, not having been in particularly good health this
summer, and so far not having a school because of her health, is, you
know, a fine teacher. I have been considering having her come East
with Elizabeth Ann ..., take a two or three-room apartment, have her
tutor Elizabeth Ann part of the day and have E. A., for the sake of
being thrown in with children, go to kindergarten the other part of
the day.
It will involve quite a bit of expense considering that I myself can
live on my salary, but could not begin to keep two others. Mother
would simply be hired in the capacity of a teacher, though of course
the compensation she would ask of me in money would be small in
proportion to that which I might be obliged to pay a regular tutor. I
would, however, have to maintain an apartment, buy the food, clothe
all of us, and meet E. A.’s kindergarten expenses and other expenses
connected with such a program.
If, for instance, you would be willing to help to the extent of taking
care of E. A.’s kindergarten expenses, and Mrs. Votaw would meet her
expenses so far as clothes are concerned--and I would endeavor to be
as economical as possible and still keep her looking as well as the
children she comes in contact with at school--it would relieve me
greatly. It is possible that my mother can find something worth while
to do and would be able to fill in the hours E. A. is in school to
advantage.
As I said, I am assuming that you have told Mrs. Votaw. I know in my
heart that you girls could not be his sisters and feel disinterested
to the point of not being eager to do anything you could--and I have
an idea that Mrs. Votaw could be appealed to to see the thing in its
true light, as a problem that I am up against for him as well as
myself. You know, of course, that I would not think of having E. A. go
through her life and not know who she is,--I am too proud of it, to
begin with, and it is only fair to her to know. And when I feel she
should know, I would adore to be able to tell her how her father’s
people came to my rescue so that she might be reared in the manner he
has so often pictured to me. And when that time comes I would love to
have her be more than merely acquainted with you. I need not say that
she is the most lovable of children--all that have I told you--but I
may say that I feel some day she will make us proud of her, if she has
the opportunity she should have as his daughter.
As I say, I have people in mind whom I would feel absolutely safe in
going to--men in particular of whom E. A.’s father has spoken with
fondness,--but it seems to me that we, as two families interested,
should be able to work out some means, through working together for
her good--and, after all, the burden will not fall upon the shoulders
of one of us, but on all.
I am writing to Mrs. Votaw tonight, asking her if I may run down, very
possibly this week-end, to see her. I imagine it is her delicacy of
feeling toward me that has inclined her to remain silent. But it is
absolutely my problem to solve and I feel I must reach out in every
_right_ direction until I exhaust every effort. Then, and only then,
will I feel justified in turning to outsiders.
Curious how sure I feel that things will come out all right. I merely
feel that instinctive longing to do the thing that is right and to be
fair with everybody, and have everybody deal fairly with me. It is
bound to come out that way....
Lots and lots of loving thoughts to you.
Affectionately,
NAN BRITTON NEILSEN”
_135_
To Mrs. Votaw, under the same date, September 23rd, 1925, I wrote:
“DEAR MRS. VOTAW:
Won’t you write me in the enclosed envelope whether or not it would
be convenient for you to have me run down to see you this week-end? I
could make the Friday night train and arrive Saturday morning, or I
could come down Saturday morning and arrive in the early afternoon,
returning Sunday night.
I’d love to see you.
Most affectionately,
NAN BRITTON NEILSEN”
Under date of September 25, 1925, Mrs. Votaw wrote me a short note in
longhand. I took heart when I noted the salutation, “Dearest Nan,”
but the note itself was not especially heartening. She wrote that she
had had a great deal of company. “Am just all in--been going to the
Sanitarium for a week taking treatments and fighting to keep on my
feet, ...” she wrote. The doctor had informed her that she must go
to bed and be quiet for a time. After that she was going to Clifton
Springs, New York, where her sister Daisy would soon join her. “Am so
tired--hope you are feeling well,” the note ended.
Not a single intimation that she knew my story! Never a word of
sympathy for me, though she must have known from her sister Daisy that
I, too, was nervously exhausted beyond words. Never a promise of help,
though she must have known the purpose of my desire to see her. It was
all so evasive. Yet the tenor of the note, with its implication of
a rather sudden breakdown, seemed to my sensitive mind to impute to
me responsibility therefore, if it resulted from revelations made by
Daisy Harding. Not to be permitted to see her, to talk with her, and
give her the many details I had given her sister Daisy, seemed to me
unfair treatment. It left me with the feeling a child has when accused
of something and sent off to bed with no opportunity of explaining his
innocence.
_136_
While I still puzzled and grieved over the disappointing note received
from Mrs. Votaw, I received a cheering telegram from Daisy Harding. She
wired that she had arrived home, the night before my letter reached
her, from a trip into Illinois and Indiana. “You can count on me for
K and C funds,” she said in her wire. She asked my permission to send
the letter she had received from me on to her sister, Mrs. Votaw. The
telegram was signed, “Mrs. A. A. Stuart.” I assumed that Miss Harding
had not wanted to sign this telegram in her name “Mrs. Lewis” because
of the necessity for having it go through the telegraph office where
she might be known. However, it occurred to me that the wire itself was
so coded that it would have made little difference. I knew that “K” and
“C” referred to Kindergarten and Clothes funds, and I was delighted
that she wished to send my letter on to Mrs. Votaw.
In the meantime, however, under date of October 5th, 1925, I had
written Daisy Harding again, telling her of Mrs. Votaw’s letter to me
and ending my letter with the following sentence:
“You know I must know now whether or not you and Mrs. Votaw are
interested in helping, because it means looking ahead to Elizabeth
Ann’s happiness a long, long way.”
Then, upon receipt of the above telegram from Miss Harding, I wrote her
again, under date of October 8th, 1925. I acknowledged her wire and
told her she could be sure I would do everything to co-operate in any
way she suggested, and that there was no reason why everything should
not go along in a perfectly quiet, normal way. Then I wrote, in the
same letter, as follows:
“My mother writes from Athens that she is making Elizabeth Ann’s last
winter’s dresses over and getting herself in readiness to come East if
I want her to--and I certainly do. I have been looking at three-room
apartments and shall definitely decide upon one, now that I am sure
about being able to have the baby. Oh, it will be such a joy! I am so
happy about it.
I have begun again a course in writing and am so interested in making
a success of it some day. I read the other night that Mary Roberts
Rinehart began when _she_ was twenty-eight--in the evenings when
her children were sleeping--and why not try to emulate Mary Roberts
Rinehart!... By all means give the letter to Mrs. Votaw.... I hope she
is much better.
By the way, I saw T. S. last night for a short time and am having
dinner with him tonight at the Waldorf, where he always stops. He had
another gentleman, a friend of his, with us, and we talked current
events--and I had to leave comparatively early. He is a fine man--and
I can assure you he is a man of honor....”
“T. S.” of course meant Tim Slade. I was meeting him every month and
having dinner with him at the Waldorf, and he was assuring me he was
still working upon Elizabeth Ann’s matter.
Daisy Harding had asked me not to tell Tim, or my sister Elizabeth
and her husband, Scott, about my having talked with her. It was
comparatively easy for me not to speak about it to Elizabeth and Scott,
for I only talked to them in letters, but I unintentionally allowed
something to slip one night in talking with Tim, and divulged to him
the fact that I had seen and talked with Daisy Harding. However, this
was not until some time in November or December, and I had seen Daisy
Harding in June of that same year, 1925.
Tim had previously inquired whether I thought I would be able to have
the baby with me that winter, and I had told him it was going to be
possible, not telling him I had talked with Miss Harding, and allowing
him to speculate as he might about the source of the added income which
would of course be necessary for such a regime.
_137_
It was with hopeful heart that I met Tim each month at the Waldorf,
for I felt so sure that one day he would bring me the news that he
had located the fund left, as I fondly thought, for Elizabeth Ann, or
if not this news, perhaps the next best, viz., that he had been able
to secure substantial funds, either through interesting the Votaws
himself, he and the Votaws wishing to surprise me, or by taking the
matter to the men whom he had spoken of as Mr. Harding’s most loyal
friends, notably among them Charles G. Dawes.
I was physically worn at that time, and, despite Daisy Harding’s
willingness to defray part of my expenses, I felt sure I was going
to find it beyond my power to carry on. I was ready to accept for my
daughter a fund which would in point of fact really be charitable
donations from her father’s best friends.
So I suffered Tim’s plans to go on uninterrupted, and hoped and prayed
that the Hardings themselves would come to a realization of what
they should do for Elizabeth Ann. If a fund of some sort could be
established, and Elizabeth Ann given the income therefrom, such income
could be in part applied upon our monthly expenses and enable me,
through her own income, to have her with me.
I accepted tolerantly Tim Slade’s oft-expressed opinions of the various
members of the Harding family, feeling it would be only a matter of
time when he would see for himself the characteristics I knew so well
predominated _in the hearts_ of the Hardings, no matter what the issue,
so long as that issue was _right_. And I felt sure they would come
to see that the right thing to do for their brother’s child was to
enable her, through their financial help, to share with them some of
that money which their brother had made possible for them to enjoy,
and further make it possible for her mother to have her. Women like
Daisy and Carrie Harding were not the kind of women who would stop in
at a meat market downtown to buy some poor street mongrel a piece of
meat, as I remember well they used to do in Marion, and then fail
to experience that far greater sense of human sympathy and sense of
justice where their own brother’s child was concerned.
So Tim Slade’s repeated statement, “They don’t want to part with their
money, I tell you,” fell upon deaf ears.
“Gee, if I had known this during the presidential campaign of 1920, you
could have had anything you wanted, and I myself could have got you
anywhere from $200,000 to a million!” was in substance Tim’s statement
to me, “and with only a crook of your little finger, too!” he added.
When I said to Tim that such a request from me would have been as
foreign to my thoughts as would have been the idea of threat of
exposure of my sweetheart, he replied that the money was going those
days to far less worthy causes than mine. He even cited the case of
the woman whom I have called Mrs. Arnold, of Marion, Ohio, whose name
had been mentioned with that of Mr. Harding during the campaign. “Look
what they did for Mrs. Arnold! Why, they sent her to the Orient!” Tim
declared. I remembered hearing that she had gone abroad upon the heels
of the gossip which arose during the campaign.
“Yes, and they gave Mrs. Harding plenty of money, too!” Tim continued
his amazing revelations. “And all the time _you_ held the safety of the
Republican Party in your hands!” But, I told Tim, Mr. Harding was the
man I _loved_, and moreover he was at the time making ample provision
for his sweetheart and our child, and Tim’s implication that I should
have taken financial advantage of the campaign situation filled me with
resentment. However, as he said, here I was, fighting to keep on my
feet, and depending upon my sister and her husband most of the time to
keep the child who should have been a first consideration at all times.
And I could not but concede that this was true. I knew, though others
perhaps would not believe it, that my darling sweetheart had his child
constantly in mind, and I could never, never be convinced that he had
not made as adequate provision for her, in case of his passing, as he
had personally provided for her and me during his lifetime.
_138_
Tim Slade had quite a lot to say about Mrs. Harding. He told me how
once, when he was preparing to make a trip to Chicago where he was to
meet me at the Congress Hotel to deliver a package, Mrs. Harding had
said to him, “Tim Slade, _what are you doing for Warren_?” And Tim,
glad of an opportunity to arouse her curiosity, replied blandly that he
was doing nothing at all. “Well, you _are_!” she insisted, “and what’s
more, I’ll see to it that you are put out--I’ll make you lose your job!”
He said it had infuriated her to think he had such a direct entree to
the President and upon a matter about which Mrs. Harding knew nothing.
According to Tim, he answered her, “Listen, my dear lady, you couldn’t
do a thing to me!” And he said she knew it, and that further infuriated
her.
I never quite understood how Tim would dare to defy the First Lady of
the Land, but from the things he has told me, such defiance on his part
was of frequent occurrence, and yet never lost him his government job
in the secret service.
Tim said he _knew_ that my relationship to the President, whatever
it was, was of paramount concern to Mr. Harding, to the “boss,” as
he so often called him when speaking of the President to me. In this
connection he told me how, upon different occasions, when he had
received either a telephonic communication from me or a letter, he had
gone immediately in each instance to the President, and the President,
no matter whether he was occupied with state matters, or a game of
cards in his private apartment, had given Tim the strictest attention
while the latter delivered his message from me.
Tim, having lived for twenty-one years in and about the White House,
knew and was known to everybody from the maid-servants to the Cabinet
members, and knew even the gossip of the White House kitchen. It was in
this way that I learned from Tim that Mrs. Warren Harding had not been
a popular mistress during her brief reign. Tim explained to me that
Mrs. Harding wanted her finger on the pulse of every activity in the
White House, and it was to this end that she had endeavored to direct
even the functionings of the servants’ quarters.
However, our conversations were not entirely taken up with the
discussions pertaining to my own difficulties, and I feel quite well
acquainted with certain phases of Tim Slade’s own life--his beautiful
country home, for which he said he paid $35,000 when he purchased it
early in 1924, I think, and his various cars, dogs, social doings,
intimate contacts with George Christian and Mr. Christian’s family, and
so on.
_139_
Tim early revealed to me what he termed the “inside dope” on _The
Marion Daily Star_ purchase by Mr. Brush and Mr. Moore. He said that
Mr. Brush would be vitally concerned in seeing that no expose of Mr.
Harding’s love-story was made, for it would affect the sales of his
paper. Tim was of the opinion that Mr. Brush ought to be asked to
contribute to any fund he, Tim, might undertake to raise for Warren
Harding’s daughter, because Mr. Brush had benefitted greatly from Mr.
Harding’s sale of the _Star_. Just why or how Mr. Brush had gained, I
do not remember, though Tim explained it all to me at the time.
But I do remember the incident which led me to think that Tim Slade
wanted to approach Mr. Brush as much in his own behalf as in my
daughter’s: He said that when Mr. Frank A. Vanderlip came out publicly
with statements concerning the sale of _The Marion Daily Star_, Mr.
Brush immediately promised to pay him a certain sum of money if he,
Tim, would intercede and successfully handle the situation. Tim said
that Mr. Vanderlip, on the other hand, called him to his home, or
office, and offered him a straight $35,000 a year if Tim would work
for _him_. This offer Tim said he refused. What Tim could do for Frank
A. Vanderlip, beyond negotiating in the matter about the _Star_, I do
not know. In any event, Tim said that he was responsible for having
smoothed the matter out for Mr. Brush, but, up until the time he
repeated the story to me, he had not received payment for his services.
Evidently, from the interviews which followed with Tim Slade at the
Waldorf, he was not allowing any grass to grow under his feet. He told
me he had called Mr. Crissinger on the phone and had intimated to him
the nature of my problem, and that Mr. Crissinger had been eager to
learn the details. “Dick” Crissinger was a Marion man whom Mr. Harding
appointed Governor of the Federal Reserve in Washington, and who now
holds that position. However, when Tim called Mr. Crissinger the second
time, presumably to make a definite appointment with him, inasmuch as
Mr. Crissinger had been frank to say he was very much interested in
hearing the whole story, Tim said he was informed very curtly by Mr.
Crissinger that he knew nothing about the matter nor did he care to
know, and that he refused to have anything to do with it at all. I said
to Tim that it looked as though Mr. Crissinger had approached someone
else in the meantime and had received suggestions as to the attitude he
should take.
About George Christian, President Harding’s private secretary, Tim
seemed to feel only the one thing which he very often expressed, which
was in substance, “Poor old George! If anything else comes to his ears
about the Harding Administration, I don’t know what will happen to him!”
How terrible it all was, to be sure! The more Tim told me of Mr.
Harding’s “friends,” the more my heart bled for him who had leaned upon
them for the same gracious support and loyalty he had so generously
bestowed. If such conditions existed, and Warren Harding, having
trusted and been betrayed, really knew about them, what heart-break
it must have brought! Tim’s revelations were startling, yet the court
trials, the talk, and the scandal that had gone on since Mr. Harding’s
tragic death all helped to make them seem plausible to me.
_140_
During the summer of 1924, when I was married and doing secretarial
work at Columbia University, I had even then been endeavoring, in the
evenings, to produce literary work, and in this connection had sent one
of my pieces to _The Marion Daily Star_ for consideration. It was a
story in dialect, and probably not really available for newspaper use.
But I sent it anyway, and addressed my communication to a childhood
friend, who has for some years been connected with the _Star_, James
Woods. When I was a little girl, “Jimmy” used to live next door to us.
He “carried papers,” and Mr. Harding had watched his industriousness
and rewarded him with the responsible position he now holds. Jim Woods
had taken the manuscript of my story to Roy D. Moore, editor of the
_Star_, and Mr. Moore had in turn read it and written Jim a memorandum
of considerable length, which Jim in turn sent on to me in explanation
of their refusal of my story. In this memorandum, Mr. Moore was
generous in his praise for what he termed my native ability, and urged
that I persevere and make of myself the writer I desired to be.
I related this incident to Tim Slade. I told Tim I had written a poem,
about Mr. Harding, which I wondered if the _Star_ would print. Tim
answered that anything I wanted printed in the _Star_ I should just
give to him and _he_ would see that Mr. Brush had it published! Of
course, such forced publication did not appeal to me and I have not
again approached _The Marion Daily Star_ with any of my material.
I told Tim also about having written to Mr. Fred Scobey during that
same summer, feeling even then that I might essay to interest one of
Mr. Harding’s friends in Elizabeth Ann, in case something happened
to me, or, as was growingly obvious, in case I eventually had to ask
outside aid.
Tim told me that President Harding had offered the position of
Director of the Mint to Mr. Scobey. “Why,” I said, “he _was_ the
Director of the Mint, I believe.” Tim answered that he himself had
refused the post and Mr. Harding had thereupon tendered it to Mr.
Scobey. Tim said, yes, Mr. Scobey had held the position for a while,
but had resigned on account of ill-health. I spoke to Tim of Mr.
Harding’s fondness for Mr. Scobey. Mr. Harding one time told me how
he had handed Mr. Scobey a letter addressed to me in New York with
the request that he drop it in the box on his way home; that was in
the Senate Office. I had said to him, “_Why_ do you do those things,
honey? Mr. Scobey might have _opened_ it!” He said no, he would not
open _any_thing, that he was utterly trustworthy. “Why, Scobey’s my
best friend, Nan!” Mr. Harding had said to me. No betrayal of trust on
Mr. Scobey’s part would ever be entertained in the mind of his friend,
Warren Harding. And so it was with the rest of Mr. Harding’s friends.
He trusted them all implicitly.
Tim Slade said that the position of Director of the Mint paid only
$5,000 a year and that he wouldn’t accept it. I wondered what the
secret service men received as salary, for Tim had told me he had been
employed in that capacity by the Government for twenty-one years. Mr.
Harding must have made it possible, I thought, for Tim to be advanced
to a position paying a larger salary, and I recalled how the newspapers
had stated, in the Teapot Dome Trial, that Tim Slade was receiving
$1,000 a week as manager of a brokerage firm in Washington. In casual
conversation about that trial and Tim’s appearance on the witness
stand, I said, half-jokingly, “Well, they even published your salary!”
And he said he had not received that much.
Tim talked very freely to me about everything and the statement he
often made, “They can’t pin anything on _me_!” seemed to indicate that
although Tim knew a great deal about everything that was going on, and
moreover had gone personally to Mr. Harding to warn the President of
conditions which were constantly at work against him, so far as Tim
himself was concerned he had kept aloof and could not now be identified
with anything of a disagreeable character which had developed as the
result of the Harding Administration.
I asked Tim his opinion of Harry M. Daugherty. He said he thought he
was “crazy,” and that instead of attempting to write a book, currently
rumored as Mr. Daugherty’s purpose, it was Tim’s judgment that he had
better “fade out of the picture” as quickly as possible. I remembered
the Hardings had spoken of Mr. Daugherty with affection and admiration,
but this was only another instance where Tim and Mr. Harding’s people
did not seem to agree. Mr. Harding certainly regarded Harry Daugherty
as a friend.
Among other newsy items which Tim advanced for my interest
and sometimes for my amusement, was the statement that even
Brigadier-General Sawyer, personal physician to Mrs. Harding, and
remembered by me since childhood for his diminutiveness and pointed
goatee, was given to philandering. This and many other stories which
I heard seemed so grotesquely incongruous, when I visualized the
appearance and idiosyncrasies of the various indulging culprits, that I
laughed heartily.
Tim said it was well-known that the Edward B. McLeans, of Washington,
were very lovely to Mrs. Harding. Mr. Harding had several times spoken
of the McLeans to me, and one time in particular had he referred to
Mrs. McLean when we were dining in New York and I was carrying our
baby for the fifth month. “Why, dearie, I have known some women to
keep their figure almost in normalcy up to the time the baby comes.
I remember I attended a reception given by Mrs. McLean just a month
before she had a child, and some of us were amazed to learn afterwards
that she had given birth to a baby.” This was cited to me in connection
with my remaining in the United States Steel Corporation where I was
working until July. I, too, Mr. Harding thought, carried my child with
slight showing.
It was Mr. Harding himself who pointed out to me the McLean residence
when I rode with him in Washington upon my visits there back in
1917-18. But at that time, as Senator, he was not so intimate with the
McLeans. In fact, Mr. Harding then seemed to speak of Mr. McLean,
as well as Senator Newberry and others, with awe, and I can remember
how he used to say such-and-such a person “has a pile of money, Nan,”
probably looking up to them somewhat for having acquired the riches
which he himself might never possess.
_141_
Meanwhile, during these monthly visits of Tim Slade to New York, “to
report to his boss and get his salary check,” I was going ahead with
my plans to have my baby and my mother with me in New York under the
arrangement worked out by me with the financial assistance Daisy
Harding had agreed to provide.
Under date of October 16, 1925, I received a letter from Miss Harding.
“I sent your letter on to sister but it didn’t have the desired
effect,” she wrote, “but I’m glad I sent it just the same....” Mrs.
Votaw had written her sister Daisy that she had been ill and in the
sanitarium, Miss Harding wrote to me, and, following this, she said,
“Somehow, I can’t write it in a letter, the whole situation, resulting
from the disclosure to her and her husband, especially in regard
to him (Mr. Votaw) who just idolized E. A.’s father and therefore
can’t and doesn’t want to believe it....” Those had been almost Tim
Slade’s identical words to me, “Say, they _don’t want to believe it_!”
Miss Harding went on to say that her sister, Mrs. Votaw, could not
understand why, if I cared so much for their brother, I should have
found it necessary to tell so many people the story about Elizabeth
Ann’s identity as our daughter. It occurred to me that in a nation of
millions, the real truth was that our story was known to amazingly
few! I could count on less than ten fingers those who had heard it
from my own lips, and this number included Daisy Harding and Tim Slade
as well as certain members of my own immediate family who had been
indispensable in the handling of our situation to date. As for the
two or three others, friends of mine, they had certainly shown their
friendship for me in guarding well the secret entrusted to them. I
determined to make a point of this picayunish written parley either
to Miss Harding or to the Votaws when I wrote to them. I felt my
resentment was justly indulged. If for six and one-half years I could,
with Mr. Harding, protect almost to inviolability a secret as colossal
as ours, it seemed to me I deserved credit for that much at least.
“As soon as you make arrangements for E. A.’s return to New York, let
me know as to schooling, etc., and I’ll help you as much as I can....
I want to help you,” Daisy Harding wrote in this letter. I knew that
the school circular I had sent her which specified $165 for Elizabeth
Ann’s kindergarten expenses could not as yet have reached her. Miss
Harding spoke of having made some investments and promised me some help
on my debts as soon as she realized some profit on her investments. Her
letter, signed, “Lovingly, A. H. Lewis,” was, on the whole, comforting.
It was good to know that at heart she took a sympathetic view of my
situation. But what a bitter disappointment that the Votaws should take
the opposite attitude!
_142_
Then under date of October 18th, having received Miss Harding’s letter,
sent the 16th, I wrote her again, sending her a carbon copy of a letter
which I had written to the Votaws, having been inspired to do so by the
following incident:
Upon receipt of the letter from Miss Harding which I have quoted
above, I determined that I ought now to go directly to the Votaws in
Washington and discuss the matter with them. After all, Mr. Votaw, whom
Miss Harding had particularly cited as wishing to discredit my story,
had probably got only a smattering of it from Daisy, or through his
wife second-hand, and I felt a first-hand knowledge might bring him
to a clearer understanding of the truth of the matter and a fairer
viewpoint concerning the obligation of the Harding family to Elizabeth
Ann.
My mother had not as yet arrived from Ohio with the baby, and I phoned
the Votaws, requesting them to allow me to come to Washington for an
interview. Mr. Votaw answered my call. I told him I wished to come down
that week-end to see them, and would arrange a time that would suit
their convenience. I spoke very kindly and the telephonic service was
excellent, for I heard his “hello” very distinctly.
Therefore you may imagine my hurt when he replied, in the same tone of
voice I remembered so unpleasantly, that they had company and could not
see me. I assured him that I would take only a little of their time,
even inviting him to come with Mrs. Votaw to the hotel where I would
take a room for the day in order that we might have sufficient privacy.
“But I tell you we’ve got company!” he shouted over the phone, “my
brother whom I have not seen for two years is here and we can’t see
you!”
It seemed inexplicable to me that a matter which affected his
brother-in-law, Mr. Harding, whom he professed to love so dearly, could
be relatively unimportant even though he had not seen his own brother
for _twenty_ years. But I saw no occasion for arguing.
“Oh, very well, Mr. Votaw,” I replied quietly, “if you don’t care to
see me, it is all right.”
“I didn’t say we didn’t want to see you!” he bawled back at me, “but we
can’t now.” And he rang off before I could answer him.
I wondered just what Warren Harding would have said could he have
“listened in” on that conversation, and with the feeling I have had
right along that Mr. Harding _has known_ everything I have tried to
do to right the situation, it is very likely that he _did_ listen in.
I remembered how Mr. Harding used to remark when I inquired who had
answered the phone at times when I called him at his office in the
Senate Building after I had arrived in Washington for a visit, “Oh,
that was Heber Votaw. He hangs around the office a great deal.” And I
knew of Mr. Votaw’s appointment as superintendent of the prison work,
received at his brother-in-law’s hands, and marvelled how he could
treat with such unkindness the woman who he must have realized meant a
very great deal to Warren Harding, who was the father of her child.
The following letter from me to the Votaws is quoted in full, and a
carbon copy of this letter went to Daisy Harding:
October 18th, 1925.
DEAR MR. AND MRS. VOTAW:
I did not know until comparatively recently that Miss Harding had told
Mrs. Votaw the strange story I went to Ohio last June especially to
reveal to her. Nor did I know that Mrs. Votaw in turn had repeated
the story to her husband until I received a letter from Miss Harding
on Friday which gave me a clue to the attitude you both have taken.
Had I been aware of your knowledge, I would, with the characteristic
directness I have acquired the past few years from being obliged to
take situations in hand, have communicated with you long since. I have
found that when I set my mind definitely to a given task or duty, the
thing is to accomplish it as speedily as possible. I am therefore only
sorry that I must write you at this time when I have much less leisure
than I enjoyed the latter part of August or during the entire month of
September.
Because of an impression I gained from my talk with Miss Harding in
June, I judged that she preferred that I withhold from my mother and
Elizabeth the knowledge that I had approached her, and, realizing
because my mother and Elizabeth Ann would be here next Tuesday, that
today was perhaps the most opportune time for me to go, I was prepared
to drop everything else in my desire to see and talk with you people.
I had had a letter from Mrs. Votaw some time ago, in which she said
she had been and was ill, and it occurred to me that very possibly I
should talk with Mr. Votaw anyway, inasmuch as Miss Harding’s latest
letter indicated that it was he who felt so bitterly resentful about
the whole matter. However, I can readily understand how he might be
unwilling to give up a visit with his brother, even to sparing an
hour and a half or so, and I should not have urged my coming. I was
so strongly impelled, because of certain intuitive feelings on my own
part, to offer at least to make it possible for you both to question
me concerning anything you did not understand and to tell me frankly
whether or not you cared to help me to help Elizabeth Ann.
Mind, I am seeking your help only through suggestion. I am too
proud, for one thing, and I see no ultimate gain, for another, in
accepting help from any source that is not freely and gladly given.
I am confident, moreover, that Elizabeth Ann will develop enough
of that charitable understanding and magnanimity which so strongly
characterized her dear father, that her own high regard and love for
him would in no wise be lessened by the mere fact that some of his
family could not find it in their hearts to reconcile their love for
him with a material manifestation thereof.
I cannot but feel that deep in Mrs. Votaw’s heart she has nothing but
charity for the man who, with me, has done a thing which devolves
a very, very grave responsibility upon those courageous enough to
recognize and assume it. I am sure that in her immediate family there
was enough of intimate knowledge concerning the unhappy atmosphere
in which her brother lived for so many years (and I speak only those
things which have come from him who experienced them), not to begrudge
him at least _some_ of the happiness to which all men are rightly
entitled. And the expression of my love for him would, in my opinion,
have been insincere and incomplete in the extreme had I denied him
the little of joy, respite and comfort it was in my power to give,
and which, through another’s unfortunate nature and unnecessary
selfishness he had never received in full measure at home. I think
there is no place in the Bible where such love as ours would go
unsanctioned or unblessed, for it was God-given.
However, I cannot and do not expect Mr. Votaw, knowing me as slightly
as he does, and loving his brother-in-law as devotedly as I am sure
he does, to accept, without a sense of mingled incredulity and
resentment, facts he prone would disbelieve and discredit and of which
he has had no direct knowledge on which to base any belief at all. Of
course, it seems a terrible shock to both of you! And it is but human
nature for you to feel more or less justified in mentally refraining
from attaching any sense of responsibility where you were not directly
consulted or concerned. But in fairness to Elizabeth Ann, I made up my
mind that there did exist a moral obligation to a brother’s child and
that it was doing the baby an injustice if I did not give her father’s
family an opportunity to help her, and in the hope of correcting an
attitude of unfairness toward me, and in turn toward Elizabeth Ann, I
am writing you.
Living as I have for nearly seven years with this growingly tremendous
problem, and realizing, especially since two years ago August, the
futility of attempting to solve it by myself to utmost satisfaction,
it has transcended anything and everything else in importance in my
mind and I have been exhausting every effort to the end that it be
solved in the best--and that means the right--way. Very naturally, my
feeling about the whole matter is that it is admittedly paramountly
and imperatively my own immediate problem and one to be postponed not
one minute longer if I would do for Elizabeth Ann what her father
wished so earnestly to be done. To go back over the past and regret
now his own inability to do the thing he planned--to have her for his
own--is futile and does not help a whit. Nor will it do Elizabeth
Ann any good for me to simply sit down now and make my life one long
lamentation, or indulge in sad retrospection, no matter how deeply
I feel or suffer. One thing I remember so well I’ve heard dozens of
times from her father was, “Remember, no recriminations, dearie,
ever!” And I feel as free today from them as I did when he smiled and
shook his finger at me.
There is a thing I must say: I would not for a moment even try to
convince Mr. Votaw of something he deliberately wished to discredit.
But if you both will but look at the expressions on Elizabeth Ann’s
face in these snapshots, there certainly cannot remain the vestige
of a doubt in your minds as to whom she belongs. (By the way, will
you please keep these safely or send them back--the one with the
typewritten word was sent to her father in 1921 and returned to me
and I prize all very highly.) Even when a mere baby she was he all
over. But it is not my idea to prove what could so irrefutably be
proven, but which I would not dream of bothering to prove to anyone in
this world. I come of a family which was, if nothing else, at least
reasonably truthful--and if that were not enough, I can tell you truly
that there existed no man in the world in those glorious days of
1917 who could have so completely possessed me out of marriage. For,
after all, my mother is perhaps as conventional as any woman in the
world and I was brought up to think just as most people think about
conventions.
Furthermore, my mother, on the other hand, feels just as strongly
resentful as you, and her feeling is that I was incapable of judging
right from wrong when appealed to by a man thirty years my senior and
with whom I had been in love since a mere child--and she may feel this
way about it all her life, no matter whether I attempt to convince her
that I knew exactly what I was doing and did it of my very own free
will and accord. So you see you are not alone in your resentment. And,
after his death, it was my really innate desire to _be_ conventional
which led to the very unfortunate and unhappy marriage I am now trying
to put behind me. To be conventional and to have Elizabeth Ann in a
conventional way! A hopeless mess I made of it, didn’t I? Which has
proven to me that if I would do the right thing for Elizabeth Ann I
would not try to cut corners again.
Miss Harding’s letter also contained an allusion to my having been
indiscreetly confiding with my affairs. I will admit that I told
Captain Neilsen about Elizabeth Ann and about her father--but when one
marries there are few things one keeps from one’s husband--and the
very fact that Mrs. Votaw confided the story, told her by her sister,
to _her_ husband bears me out in this, does it not? Moreover, so far
as Mr. G. is concerned, it is assuming more than was ever said by
me to feel that he has been my confidant beyond his legal advice and
friendly counsel concerning my matrimonial difficulties, and so far
as I can see you have jumped pretty far in concluding that I have
told Mr. G. about Elizabeth Ann’s father. He does know, however,
that I have a child, and he has been more helpful than I can say
in endeavoring to make me see my way clear in this affair with the
Captain. The enclosed document--which you may or may not have seen--is
worded as carefully as could possibly have been done. The word “child”
has been omitted, if you will observe, and only the court testimony
(which the judge readily consented to have sealed and opened only
upon order of the court) contains statements to the effect that my
“ward” was a child. Even so, Mr. G.’s questions and my answers were so
guarded that no one could take exception to the testimony.
You must understand, I have been practically “brought up” for the past
eight years on the necessity for secrecy and I personally feel very
sure that my confidings have been to those whom I can trust implicitly
with my secret--even to the Captain. Can you ask for greater proof of
this than the campaign of 1920? And you should also remember that no
one makes a statement concerning a man of such standing as Elizabeth
Ann’s father without the surest evidence in hand that he can _prove_
his accusations. And I feel that the time has long passed when
anyone would or could derive any gain from divulging a story of this
character, even if he had all the evidence in the world.
I did not mean to go so into discussion, because I feel if you are
interested in knowing details you will apprise me of that fact and
invite me to come to Washington. I can still come--and even would do
so on a week day if it better suits your own convenience. However, I
did want to tell you these few things and they are as well written as
spoken.
I have had a very sweet letter from Miss Harding, in which she assured
me she wished to take care of Elizabeth Ann’s kindergarten expenses
and I am deeply appreciative and happy for my darling’s sake. And I
know one thing, and that is that no matter what Mrs. Votaw may say or
do, I know she has a whole heap of her brother in her and some day she
may see that for herself. And I know, too, that Mr. Votaw could not
love Elizabeth Ann’s father and not come to see that mere man-made
convention is not always the only law that gives man the right to
love. There is a higher and a diviner law.
Lots of loving thoughts to both of you.
NAN BRITTON NEILSEN
_143_
I had readily perceived from Miss Harding’s letter, received October
16th, 1925, that the line of thinking pursued by the Votaws as well as
by herself led straight to the fear of exposure, and though, for their
sake, I was ready to further guard their brother’s and my secret from
the world, in my heart I rated my child’s future and my own sense of
justice for her far above the continued consideration of protection of
the Harding name. _It lay with them and their sense of right toward
Elizabeth Ann whether or not the story they wished to conceal were
further revealed._ I had assured them of my co-operation, and, except
they fail me, I would continue to suffer the fictional explanations
which surrounded the identity of Elizabeth Ann’s father. But it seemed
to me that our child, Warren Harding’s and mine, possessed enough
of distinction in being the only child of the 29th President of the
United States, and I enough of pride in having been loved by Warren
Harding and having borne him a child, to warrant an open expression of
indifference if they in turn did not as dearly value the protection
of their own family name. And the knowledge of their apparent lack of
appreciation of my efforts up to that time filled me with hurt and
righteous indignation. If, in the process of being obliged to approach
personally friends of Mr. Harding, the story leaked out, I would know
that I had done everything in _my_ power to keep it intact, and that
only the refusal of Warren Harding’s own brothers and sisters to
sponsor the cause of his own daughter had precipitated such revelation.
_I would sacrifice myself, in dedicating every remaining shred of
nervous energy to protective efforts in their behalf, if they would
make possible to me the possession of my child._ But I would not
forever tolerate unjust criticism of past conduct either on my part
or on the part of their brother any more than I would countenance the
figurative drawing away of skirts from the child who had every right
in the world to tug at them in her rightful demand, through the voice
of her mother, for recognition and equity.
_144_
In a letter received by me from Daisy Harding (Mrs. Lewis), under
date of October 20th, a post office order in the amount of $110
was enclosed. Miss Harding wrote in this letter, in asking me to
immediately destroy her letters to me, “perhaps it is best to destroy
them at the Club.” In this I recognized a conscience which whispered
the right thing, but a human mind which overruled and dangled the
fear of exposure before frightened eyes. A wave of pity swept over
me. It seemed to me that the _values_ of the real things in life were
being placed only upon their shadows, not upon the things themselves.
What if the whole _world_ knew? What if a nation knew that it elected
a President who was so much a man that he craved to be a father?
Where was the infamy of such an exalted desire? Would not every man,
woman and child enshrine him in their hearts as a martyr, a man who
had sought to know the real things but who was cruelly deprived of
his birthright as a lover and a father, in the fullest sense of the
word? And who but would love him the more because he had suffered in
silence, as he said, harassment and years of weary unhappiness at the
hands of her, who, a tragedy in herself, had also been the victim of
a wrong placement of life’s values. And where the reflection of shame
upon Warren Harding’s family simply because a child had been born to
us, a daughter had been given to me, to help fill my life during his
veritable incarceration in the White House, and afterwards--after he
had met death as a result of having literally used up _his_ life for
his country!
I did _not_ promise to destroy Daisy Harding’s letters. These letters,
with carbon copies of my own to her and to the Votaws, I was saving for
my daughter. Through them she could read the story of my approach to
her father’s family, and, whatever the result of that approach, she was
entitled to read of it first-hand.
The next letter I wrote to Miss Harding was one dated November 2nd, Mr.
Harding’s birthday. His birthday fell one week to the day before mine,
and he and I, though he was thirty years older, had always spoken of
him as being just one week my senior. I wrote only to tell Miss Harding
how “memories crowded each hour of the day,” and made no allusion to
Elizabeth Ann’s matter except to tell her that I had heard nothing from
the Votaws in answer to my lengthy letter to them.
Her answer was mailed under date of November 5th, 1925, and, aside
from comments about the manner in which that particular birthday of
her brother’s had been commemorated in Marion, she wrote, “I realize,
my dear, how hard your lot, and the tremendous burdens you must be
carrying. Pay no attention to the attitude of sister and husband. The
situation is a difficult one and will come out all right, I’m sure.
In the meanwhile, remember you have my love and sympathy....” Again
she promised help, this time for Elizabeth Ann’s clothes. And her
expressions of solicitude for my own health, in cautioning me not
to overwork in my playwriting course at Barnard, touched me deeply.
“Lovingly yours, A. V. H. Lewis,” her letter was signed.
How dear she was, I thought. No wonder I chose her when I was in high
school as my ideal American woman, for she was a very great deal like
her brother Warren, who would always be my ideal American man. Much
like him in sympathies and instincts.
_145_
In the crowded three-room apartment where my mother, my baby and I were
living, I was finding it all too difficult to devote as much quiet time
to my course in playwriting as it required. It seemed to me far more
desirable to retire early with my little girl and visit with her until
she fell asleep on my arm. I was grateful for the attitude of Daisy
Harding, but the attitude the Votaws had assumed made me heartsick, and
when a realization of what it would all mean to Elizabeth Ann swept
over me, I wanted literally to catch her up close to me and close her
eyes and mine to life’s cruelties.
The mental misery I suffered must surely have been reflected by
Elizabeth Ann, for she was oftentimes restless and unnaturally
apprehensive for a child of six. I remember one evening when she gave
me a great shock, so really did she mirror my own mood. My mother had
gone away that evening and Elizabeth Ann was in my bed awaiting me
and the bedtime story I had promised to tell her. But when I came in
from the bathroom I found her crying. “Why, whatever is the matter
with my precious darling?” I asked her, taking her in my arms and
kissing her wet cheek. “Oh, Nan, dear,” she sobbed, and her voice grew
hysterical, “I was just thinking about our poor dear Mr. Harding!” I
had not mentioned Mr. Harding or any of the Hardings that evening, and
it seemed an uncanny thing to have her express the heartache I was
experiencing those days from contemplation of the attitude the Votaws
had assumed. It has often seemed to me that Mr. Harding has even spoken
to me through our daughter, and, as I took her in my arms that night
and talked to her, it was not to depart from the subject of Mr. Harding
but rather to promise him, through my words to her, that she and I
would not forsake him. As Elizabeth Ann herself put it, “We’ll always
love our dear Mr. Harding, won’t we, Nan?”
Who can say that he was not looking down upon his two loved ones,
hovering near us in spirit, urging me to the exhaustion of every effort
to establish his daughter’s rights, and deploring with all his heart
the struggle I was having to come into my own, to have our child?
But I could not have survived in an atmosphere of constant conscious
worry, and there were days when the full buoyancy and optimism of my
true self would assert themselves, and I would reflect gratefully and
lovingly upon Miss Harding’s prophecy that things would “come out all
right,” and dream of the day when my child would be welcomed into the
hearts of those whom she should know as her own people.
When friends commented upon my taking Elizabeth Ann and my mother for
the winter, I reminded them that I was alone in New York, awaiting the
final decree of my marriage annulment, that my sister Elizabeth and her
husband were busy teaching, and that it was the most natural thing in
the world for me to want company.
_146_
Soon after receiving the November 5th, 1925, letter from Daisy Harding,
I received from her a draft for $65 for Elizabeth Ann’s clothes. She
wrote a very hurried note, signed, “Lots of love, A. V. H.”
It was a delight to purchase winter things for Warren Harding’s and
my child with money received from Warren Harding’s sister. It seemed
so _right_. I retained all of the receipts for the purchase of these
things in order to show them to Miss Harding if she should ever care
to see them, and indeed the purchases ran over the $65 sent. Elizabeth
Ann had no winter things to speak of, even though my sister Elizabeth
had made her some pretty summer dresses. But I had to buy her winter
things, from underwear to a coat, hat, galoshes and gloves. She looked
adorable in them.
Under date of November 12, 1925, I replied to Miss Harding’s brief
note enclosing the check, and I wrote, “It makes me feel _so good
inside_--the knowledge that it comes from you. And I love you. You
know that.” I also said that I felt sure it was Mr. Votaw who refused
to understand my situation--and not Mrs. Votaw. Miss Harding had said
she might be coming to New York soon and I wrote that it would be fine
if she and Mrs. Votaw could come to New York to see me. On December
1st I wrote again to Miss Harding after I had finished the shopping
for Elizabeth Ann, and I told her how very pretty the baby looked in
her new things. She was growing out of her babyhood, however, and was
beginning to shoot up, and I observed daily how much like Mr. Harding
she was, with the Harding olive complexion, the Harding eyes, and the
height which belonged to me as well as to her father.
_147_
Under date of December 9th I was obliged to write to Tim Slade and
tell him that a circumstance had arisen which would make it impossible
for me to count upon some money I had hitherto been counting upon, to
supplement any amounts I might receive from the Harding family or from
my salary. This supplemental fund was promised by a friend who at the
last minute failed me, and it was going to be even more difficult for
me to manage financially from then on. I had my rent paid up to January
10, 1926, and this being December 9, 1925, I had a month’s leeway
before having to raise the rent of the furnished apartment which we
occupied. Tim had been in New York on December 8th, the previous day in
fact, but I had not known then of the emergency.
I received no answer from Tim to that letter and was surprised that I
did not. On the date on which I mailed the letter to Tim I received
a letter from Daisy Harding. I had written her quite at length about
Elizabeth Ann’s school work, and how proud I was of the way in which
she was progressing day by day under my mother’s excellent tutelage.
Miss Harding sent the rest of Elizabeth Ann’s kindergarten money, and
$15 had been added to the amount, which, she wrote, would be a little
Christmas gift for Elizabeth Ann and me.
She wrote that she was going to Battle Creek, after which she would
join her husband in the South. This letter too had an affectionate
ending, “Lots of love ..., A. V. H. L.” There was nothing in the letter
that seemed to require immediate response. However, I answered it on
December 11th. I wrote of Tim Slade’s having been over again to New
York and that I felt sure he was the genuine person I had up to this
time judged him to be.
It was upon the occasion of a trip of Tim’s made in early January,
about the twelfth, that he gave me the first money I had ever received
from him, in amount $100. It was accepted by me in the strictest
business sense. I sent him a promissory note for the amount, at his
own suggestion, dating it January 14th, and promising to repay him in
three months. I told him at the time that it did not look as though the
Hardings were willing to do anything in a _substantial_ way to help
me to keep Elizabeth Ann, but that I was still “hoping against hope.”
I told him about Daisy Harding’s assurance that she would help me as
soon as she realized anything on her Florida property. I explained to
Tim that I was sure she didn’t have any cash or she would have helped
me that winter even more than the $175 or so she had already sent. I
frankly expressed my resentment at the attitude the Votaws had assumed,
but Tim said it was no more than he had expected. He repeated what he
had said long before, “They don’t want to part with their money.” But
I could not believe that this was the reason they were keeping aloof,
and insisted it must be because they did not believe my story. And that
hurt me more than their unwillingness to help financially.
Tim Slade is not the type of man one would expect to be wordily
sympathetic, but his apparent “hard-heartedness” was construed by me
always as merely an unrelenting attitude toward the members of the
Harding family who had received Mr. Harding’s generous legacies, and
who guarded this money to the point of refusing to share it with their
brother’s own child.
So when Tim came over to New York, very often he would say, “Well,
I talked with Hoke Donithen,” (a lawyer from Marion who, Tim said,
benefitted largely from the Harding administration) “and I put the
fear of the Lord into _him_!” And despite my seriousness, Tim’s boyish
enthusiasm and apparent sponsorship of my cause would make me smile.
But in the case of Mr. Donithen, as in the case of Mr. Crissinger, Tim
evidently failed, for nothing seemed to be developing from his efforts.
When I confided to him that I would need help now more than I had in
the past, inasmuch as the loan upon which I had depended had failed me,
he asked me if $100 a month extra would enable me to keep Elizabeth Ann
and mother with me as I had planned to do. I assured him it would be a
very great help and I thought would enable me to carry out my plans.
However, though he promised to send me $100 each month, as a loan,
he did not do so, and I have written Tim several times for help when
I have not heard from him at all, not even an acknowledgement of my
letters to him. But he had said to me, “Whenever you don’t hear from
me, you’ll know I’m broke.”
_148_
On January 27th, 1926, I wrote Mr. Votaw. I was under a nervous strain
which had superimposed other ailments, and was growing apprehensive of
what the Votaws might do to take advantage of my situation so frankly
and truthfully laid before them. It was all I could do to keep up my
work at the Club, and at the end of the first semester at Barnard I
had dropped the playwriting course I had started. It was too difficult
for me to do my school work at night and my day work at the Club, and
besides bear up under the constant worry about finances.
My letter follows:
“MY DEAR MR. VOTAW:
The telephone operator here tells me that a man came in this noon and
asked for me. He answered your description, and I am therefore writing
to ask if it were you. If so, and you wish to get in touch with me,
will you be good enough to call me at Bryant 4246? The gentleman
in question for some reason asked if I were in and then contrarily
assured the telephone operator that he did not wish to disturb me. As
I do not like that sort of thing occurring here at the Club, I thought
I could at least let you know where I was in case it had been you who
called me.
The address is as above and my home address is 609 West 114th Street.
The home telephone number is Cathedral 5770. I think I gave you this
information in my letter last fall.
Very truly yours,
NAN BRITTON NEILSEN”
I sent Tim Slade a copy of this letter, relating the circumstances, and
telling him how nervous every little thing made me.
After I had mailed this letter to Mr. Votaw, I went home and thought
the whole matter over carefully that night in bed, and the following
day I wrote _Mrs._ Votaw a brief note, telling her I felt that if
anyone came to New York to talk with me it would more logically be she
than Mr. Votaw. I apprised Tim Slade of what I had written, keeping him
thus in touch with my own steps.
The following day I received an answer to my letter to Mr. Votaw. It
reached me the same day it was dated, January 29th, and was as strictly
formal as mine to him had been. Very briefly Mr. Votaw advised me that
he had not called for me at The Town Hall Club on the date my letter
was written, “_nor at any other time_.” The italicized words were
heavily underscored on the typewriter by Mr. Votaw, who, I assumed, had
himself typed the letter to me. He went on to say that he had not tried
to reach me at my home either, and informed me that he had not been in
New York City at all for more than two years.
That was all the letter contained. Never an allusion to the matter
which I deemed of as great moment to the Hardings and Votaws as to
myself as the mother of their brother’s and my child. In fact, the
letter from Mr. Votaw to me was merely one of complete negation and
indifference.
Simply to read this note from Mr. Votaw made me ill all over and
brought on a state of high nervous tension which usually possessed
me when I came face to face with some new obstacle in my fight for
Elizabeth Ann’s rights. I have never, as a matter of fact, solved
the puzzle of who the strange man was who called in such a mysterious
manner and asked if a “Mrs. Nan Britton Neilsen worked there,” and then
disclaimed a desire to see her. The telephone operator’s description
fitted Mr. Votaw, or perhaps George Christian.
The possibility that I might be “shadowed” simply because I possessed a
secret which many people would be interested in protecting from public
dissemination, filled me with a new fear--a fear hitherto unfelt: that
of possible desire to destroy me and thus destroy my secret. I was the
only living person who knew the intimate details of our love-story,
Warren Harding’s and mine. And if such a thing should happen to me, my
baby girl would lose her birthright, except as she would be told of
it by my sister, who really knew pitifully little of the details. The
mere thought of such a happening struck terror to my heart amounting
to partial dementia at times when fatigue and despondency clutched at
me, and I was becoming weaker and weaker physically as a result of my
nightmarish thoughts. I _must_ be strong. I _must_ fight for Elizabeth
Ann’s sake! I _must_ shake off this state of weakness which was
dragging me down and down, and down.
_149_
Perhaps it was this crazed state of mentality which led me to
construe Mr. Votaw’s letter, with its heavy underscoring, as a direct
contumelious insinuation toward Elizabeth Ann and my claims for her,
and perhaps it was what I thought might be my last desperate effort in
her behalf which led me to write with the spirit which dominates the
following letter:
MY DEAR MR. VOTAW:
Thank you for your prompt reply.
It _was_ difficult for me to believe that you would call and then
for any reason be afraid to talk with me. But the idea of a call
would be, in my estimation, a very excellent one. In fact, I cannot
conceive of a brother’s or sister’s love taking the course yours and
Mrs. Votaw’s has taken. I am frank to say that no matter what anyone
might say about the lack of conventionality on my part or on that of
Mr. Harding, they would never, never condone complete ignoring of
responsibility to his own child. Nor do I mean that such shall be the
case.
I was quite sincere when I wrote to you last fall that I should
exhaust every effort to make you people--and that means all of the
brothers and sisters of Mr. Harding--see your responsibility to
Elizabeth Ann, and I mean to do so.
But I am and have been waiting for you to approach me, and I shall
expect you to do so. I have been under a terrific financial strain and
am about through trying to carry on alone. I need help and it should
be provided. The very last time I talked with Mr. Harding in the White
House he gave me every assurance that I should have ample financial
assistance throughout Elizabeth Ann’s life, and, with his death, I am
looking to his family to carry out his promises. And I do not mean to
have her so ignored. It is highly inconceivable that you should adopt
such attitude.
I shall expect to see one of you or both very soon, and I can assure
you it would be gratifying to have the opportunity to tell you both
things it would interest you to hear. If I do not hear from you to
this effect, I shall proceed to go about in other ways to justify
Elizabeth Ann’s claim to being cared for by her father’s people.
You know as well as I that I am asking nothing but a square deal for
Elizabeth Ann and I shall certainly tolerate no conduct on your part
which smacks of being ignored by you. If I cannot settle amicably a
matter which should long ago have been settled without making it the
basis for a life-long enmity and possible unpleasantness for all of
us, then I shall be obliged in fairness to Mr. Harding’s child to
fight for what is her due. And you cannot look me square in the eyes
and deny that I am asking aught but justice.
I want to add that you are at perfect liberty to show this letter to
whomever you like, knowing that I have nothing to conceal from any
member of the Harding family. And I am ready to face the entire group
at any time you say. I can offer to do no more.
Very sincerely,
NAN BRITTON NEILSEN”
I must say that this letter conveyed a fighting spirit which my broken
heart and body belied, but it was the spirit which has guided me in the
face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles to seek the justice which is
due Elizabeth Ann, and to justify my own claim to her as her mother.
I wrote Tim Slade on January 30th, telling him of the contents of Mr.
Votaw’s letter. Then I waited a few days for possible developments.
_150_
One evening I went home tired, soul and body. Elizabeth Ann met me
as usual at the door. Simultaneously with my ringing the doorbell I
could hear her voice, high-pitched in pleasurable excitement, “It’s
Nan, muz!” she exclaimed to mother, and came rushing to open the door
to greet me. Realizing keenly my dire financial status, daring not to
divulge to my mother how frantic I was, knowing she would immediately
have insisted upon taking some kind of position which would make it
necessary for me to again ask my sister Elizabeth to come East and get
the baby, I felt particularly unable to match my daughter’s playful
mood. She wanted to recite a piece for me! Would I please sit down and
listen?
Of course I would! I forced the gaiety I could not feel. It was all a
familiar procedure, this reciting business, and I sank acquiescently
into the nearest chair. Elizabeth Ann disappeared into the bedroom,
and returned with a grown-up scarf around her shoulders to announce,
as always, “Ladies, the princess will speak for you!” This, too, was
familiar, for she had so self-styled herself very early, and somehow
it seemed to me a most appropriate appellative considering the birth
distinction that was hers.
“The princess will speak--which one shall I speak, muz?” she turned to
inquire of my mother who was busy preparing dinner at the kitchenette,
which occupied one side of the living-room. Mother whispered into her
ear and Elizabeth Ann’s face lighted with the joy she could not conceal
in being encouraged to surprise me with her newest dramatic acquisition.
The Harding smile was directed at me, the “audience”; the Harding eyes
twinkled mischievously; the Harding bow was eloquently appealing; and
the voice of the Harding child fell sweetly upon the ears of her mother:
“A _bear_--how_ev_er hard he _tries_,
Grows _tub_by without exercise.
_My_ teddy bear is _short_ and _fat_--
Which is not to be _won_dered at!
He gets what exercise he _can_
From falling off the ottoman,
But gen-er-al-ly seems to lack
The energy to scramble _back_....”
The “piece” (by A. A. Milne) went on and on, and it was all the
“audience” could do to keep from rising to its feet and embracing the
speaker in her adorableness. But the “audience” was too well-trained.
The princess, like the princess’s father before her, demanded strictest
attention from an audience, and this audience knew that the princess’s
kisses were given only upon completion of oratorical delivery.
Never did a queen more completely rule the hearts of her subjects
than did this diminutive princess her “audience,” whose heart she had
always possessed! Never did the father of this princess move his myriad
listeners to greater tranquillity of heart! The princess restored her
mother’s hopefulness and strength of purpose.
That night I prayed anew that her father’s people would help me to keep
my darling. Would my prayer be answered?
_151_
Under date of February 5th, 1926, my rent falling due on the coming
10th, I wired Daisy Harding as follows:
“MRS. RALPH LEWIS,
Vernon Heights Boulevard,
Marion, Ohio.
SIMPLY MUST HAVE TWO HUNDRED BY SATURDAY SIXTH TO MEET OVERDUE BILLS.
HAVE WRITTEN OTHER FOLKS TO NO AVAIL. IMPOSSIBLE CARRY ON PRESENT
REGIME UNLESS MORE SUBSTANTIALLY ASSISTED. MUST HAVE HELP IMMEDIATELY.
LETTER FOLLOWS.
NAN.”
The following letter was written that evening:
“DEAREST MISS HARDING:
I wired you this morning for $200 and hope to have the answer tomorrow
by wire. If I do not hear, I shall simply have to take very definite
steps to endeavor to establish Elizabeth Ann’s claim to some attention
from the Hardings as to their responsibility toward her. And I am
determined to do so.
Knowing how kindly you have been disposed to feel toward the whole
situation, and loving you as much as I do, I cannot help believing
you will do everything in your power to bring about the proper sense
of responsibility on the part of every one of the Hardings. However,
I have been treated so shabbily by the Votaws that I cannot afford
longer to allow sentiment to influence me.
The present regime is impossible without more help and it seems to me
I am looking to the right source for it. I want Elizabeth Ann with
me--in the winter time at least--but I cannot have her and keep up
the expenses of an apartment without outside help. She should have
an income of her own independent of anyone else, even her mother. It
is her due as Warren G. Harding’s child, and I am prepared to fight
for it for her. I have lost a great deal of my pride in coming to
you folks, and the Votaws’ attitude has shown me that they prefer
unpleasantness to a very proper acknowledgement of their--and all the
Hardings’--obligations.
Mind, it is not as though I were asking anything for my own self--I
want only that which is due Elizabeth Ann--an income which will enable
me to have her with me as much and as often as I want. If I were
alone, I can assure every one of you that I could keep myself. But in
having Elizabeth Ann with me, I must go into a great deal of extra
expense. I pay $130 a month for a very simple, furnished apartment,
in a nice neighborhood. I give my mother $25 a week to feed her and
the baby. You have taken care of her kindergarten, and you have also
sent me $65 for her winter clothes, receipts for the purchase of which
clothing I have kept, and the amount is, I might say, in excess of the
$65, inasmuch as she had no winter clothing when she came to me, with
the exception of an old coat (which I bought her last winter) and a
couple of dresses. She needs another pair of shoes and another dress
at this very moment. She is as easy on clothes as any other child,
which means that she is normally hard on them.
In addition to the above, I have my own clothes to buy and I have to
pay my mother something. I will admit, when we started out last fall,
I included in the $25 paid mother for food the small amount paid her
as a tutor, but I found that she could not even buy her stockings on
that, and it has had to be increased. And I need not tell you of all
the other current expenses one incurs living in a New York apartment.
I give you the foregoing that you may know what I have been up
against. Last fall I had assistance from a friend of mine, but that
assistance is forthcoming no longer, for the reason that it involved
a point of honor with me and I refused to take it after the first of
the year. Therefore, I have been forced since then to go into debt in
every direction to keep going at all. I have drawn ahead of my salary
and I have borrowed. I do not feel under obligations to explain this,
but am doing so that you may know how I have tried to carry on by
myself before appealing again to the Hardings.
Two weeks or so ago I had a couple of telephone calls I could not
account for--three, to be exact--because I was out when they came,
or else when I _was_ in, the party would be gone when I answered
the phone. Then last week a man came in, in person, and asked the
telephone operator if I worked there. Upon receiving a reply in the
affirmative, when she started to ring my telephone, he hastily and
mysteriously assured her that he did not wish to disturb me at that
moment and hurried out. Of course, I have been and am so busy here,
with so many details on my mind, both of business and of my home, that
I cannot have that sort of thing occurring. The operators description
of him answered that of Mr. Votaw (or Mr. Christian), and I concluded
it must have been he. Thereupon, I wrote to ask and received a reply
which gave me a clue to Mr. Votaw’s attitude toward me. I have written
them--addressing the letter to Mr. Votaw, because I think it is he and
not Mrs. Votaw who is responsible for the Votaw attitude--and I have
not heard from them.
Now, without wasting any more time in explanations, I want to say
that I am not at all unconscious of the fact that any publicity in
connection with this would reflect upon the character and reputation
of Mr. Harding, notwithstanding the fact that I personally am not at
all ashamed of a single step I have ever taken. Nevertheless, there
are possibilities of its becoming an international scandal--and I
am sure you will agree that we none of us want that. Nor do I mean
that it shall be, except as it might creep out in my approaching Mr.
Harding’s friends for assistance which should be forthcoming from his
own family. But I am sure that some of the friends he had during his
lifetime would treat his child with more consideration than some of
his closest relatives have treated her. And I am not afraid to find
out.
I have been patient, I have been decent, I have been fair--but it
seems it doesn’t pay. It does not seem possible that Mr. Harding
could have been the brother of anyone who could fail to see his
viewpoint so impassionately. Bless him! I am afraid he would retract
a good many of the things he has said to me if he could but see how
things are going now! And maybe he does see. Sometimes I feel his
presence very strongly--and I see his smile and hear his precious
voice--and I am constrained to feel only charity for those who have
shown anything but charity toward me.
[Illustration: A spelling exercise of the President’s daughter--1927]
But that is sentiment. And even he would dispense with sentiment if
he had received such treatment as his child has--I very well remember
his face when he told me the very last time I was in the White House
that he would adopt Elizabeth Ann. I said, “Oh, but sweetheart, you
couldn’t! What would people say?” And he answered, “That’s _my_
affair, and I promise you it will be done.” But that was when he felt
Mrs. Harding would pass on--and she outlived him. Nevertheless, I was
_always_, at all times, assured of ample financial assistance for
Elizabeth Ann, and that is what I want now. And, like him, this is
_my_ affair, and it must be dealt with by me for my child.
I am very tired tonight, having had a very strenuous day. It is eight
o’clock right now and I have not eaten my dinner. It is difficult for
me to write letters and escape observing eyes, over my shoulder here
at my desk, etc., and therefore I stay after hours to write them.
Very likely you have received all of the invitations from the Club
for their various entertainments and you may have some idea of what
it means to hold a position such as this and have a constant terrific
worry about where rent and food will come from. Miss Breed was away
ill for three weeks the first part of the year, the busiest time the
Club has ever known--and I was in charge. The Dinner of the 15th and
the Supper-Dance of the 29th were both in my charge during her absence
and the work involved was so heavy that upon her return I was forced
to seek absolute quiet and rest. I went up to the Valeria Home, an
endowed home for “tired people,” and I stayed there a week. Of course
my expenses went on here just the same.
Now, in conclusion, I wish to say that I am ready to do everything in
my power to see that E. A. is fairly treated. I appreciate more than I
can tell you what you have done--and you know I am far from being one
to impose unfairly upon the Hardings. But I do know that Mr. Harding
died without having, to our knowledge thus far, left Elizabeth Ann
cared for financially. I also know very definitely that none of the
Hardings is any more entitled to a share of his consideration in this
respect than she is, and I also know that it is in the possession of
those to whom it was left. Therefore, I very respectfully, but very
firmly, ask that you get together--once more--and combine your efforts
and your funds into one whole, and that it be deposited in some bank
so that Elizabeth Ann will have a substantial sum monthly from which
her expenses may be met. I have some ideas about what would be fair
in this respect and I shall expect them to be regarded by you. I am
Elizabeth Ann’s legal guardian, also, and expect to be consulted as
such. My legal guardianship is, in point of fact, the last word so far
as directing her welfare, education, etc., is concerned, for it goes
beyond any authority her foster parents have.
I would suggest that you and Dr. Tryon Harding, together with Mrs.
Votaw, and, if possible, Mrs. Tryon Harding (who has children of her
own), get together at once, and I shall be very glad to come West to
consult with you if you so desire.
Please know that I am appreciative of everything you have done and
may do--and that I do deplore any but the friendliest feeling in this
matter--but I shall not shirk my own responsibility toward Elizabeth
Ann.
Love to you.
Most sincerely,
NAN BRITTON”
Under the same date (February 5, 1926) I wrote Tim Slade and sent him
a copy of the letter sent to Miss Harding. I have no notes to indicate
that a copy went to the Votaws, and I do not think that I sent one to
them, but I do think Miss Harding sent her original on to them.
_152_
That night I returned home late, having been at the Club writing the
lengthy letter to Miss Harding, and I found a cheering answer from
Miss Harding to my wire to her sent that morning early. She had been
away from home for two weeks and my message had reached her the very
hour of her return home. She would fulfill my request on Saturday! The
following day I received another telegram from Miss Harding in which
she stated that the money had been wired to the wrong address. Would
I call the Postal Telegraph and trace the money? It was with a sense
of relief I had not known for some time that I had the money traced
by the telegraph office, and you may imagine my joy to find she had
doubled the amount asked for by me. She had sent me $400! I wrote her
immediately. I told her I was going to pay two months’ rent, which
would be $260, and this I did, and have the cancelled voucher in my
possession. I repaid $50 to one of the officers of the Club who had
kindly advanced that amount to me, and $40 to the Club for overdrawn
salary. That totalled $350, and left $50 for minor indebtednesses.
In my letter to Miss Harding I also inquired of her whether or not she
felt I ought to write direct to Dr. Harding, her brother in Columbus.
I had not known Dr. Harding and took it for granted that Miss Harding
had informed him of the situation in hand. As for the Votaws, of them
I wrote frankly. I would not have been my natural self had I not
expressed the resentment I felt.
I also wrote the Votaws a short letter in an attempt to shame them
after I had received the $400 from Daisy Harding, and I sent them
a carbon of the letter of thanks which I had just written to Miss
Harding. Not one of these various letters I sent the Votaws ever came
back to me, so I assume they must have received them.
_153_
A letter received from Daisy Harding, written under date of February
10th, 1926, was the longest letter I had yet received from her and was
in reply to my letter of February 5th. In this letter. Miss Harding
went into detail about many things. She told me how her husband had
recently learned the facts of my story for the first time from a man in
Marion, who in turn had heard it from Tim Slade. Inasmuch as Tim had
told me that he had spoken to Mr. Hoke Donithen, a Marion lawyer, while
approaching supposedly sympathetic persons, I assumed it was he to
whom Miss Harding referred. She wrote, “I was shocked beyond measure,
because I didn’t want Ralph to know and have his faith destroyed, then
I was alarmed for fear others might know of the same thing and the
terrible damage it would do to you both in your home town....” She
further wrote that she hoped and prayed it would not go farther.
Referring to the sharp letter sent to Mr. Votaw by me in reply to his
brief note to me, Miss Harding mistakenly alludes to it as having been
sent to her sister, Mrs. Votaw, and says, “ ... I got the letter you
wrote Carolyn, and Nan, dear, I was ... horribly sad and depressed
about it all. I knew you were desperate, but you are not using the
right tactics....” She begged that I withhold the story from her other
sister, Mrs. Charity Remsberg, in California. “... I want to spare her
the shock I had when it was told to me. Furthermore, I don’t want her
faith destroyed....”
Miss Harding frequently alluded to the “faith” members of her family
would lose when they learned that their brother had been the father
of a child. Of what real depth is any faith which can be destroyed by
the mere revelation that another faith of highest quality has been
maintained between a man and a woman? Webster defines faith as “firm
belief or trust in a person....” I defy anyone to say that Warren
Harding disqualified himself to be worthy of the faith reposed in him
simply because of his fatherhood! What would diminish that faith?
Watchful solicitude for the woman he loved above any other? Loving
kindness in his material manifestations toward her and toward his
child? Loyalty to his political party and to his country? Generosity
toward his family? Who more nobly kept these faiths than Warren
Gamaliel Harding?
Daisy Harding’s letter went on: “I want you to know, no matter what
you think of either Mr. V. or the other brother, that there are no two
finer, more honorable and just men living, and because of their love,
devotion and loyalty to the one already gone, they are not going to
believe anything against him until it can be absolutely proven....”
How varied are the conceptions of love and loyalty! And who of us
has reached immunity from sin and can judge what works _against_ his
brother? Had the case been reversed, who more quickly would have come
to the moral and financial rescue of another who needed help and
mental sustaining than the very brother whose own child these two men
hesitated to recognize? According to a newspaper clipping which I have
pasted in my Harding book, President Harding’s very “hobby” was to help
the “down and out.” The clipping reads, “Mankind needs encouragement
and help. There is much suffering in the world and there is much
heart-sickness....” Truly, the recognition of how greatly charity,
forbearance, mercy, goodness, and all their kindred attributes work for
the stature of the spirit of man was exemplified with pathetic beauty
in the heart and life of Warren Gamaliel Harding.
Daisy Harding wrote me the details of the $90,000 brokerage matter she
told me about in June of 1925. Then she went on: “Now then on top of
that, your claim is put in. Do you wonder that the whole family are up
in arms against a thing that is so hard to prove?...”
“_Hard to prove?_” Why, I had kept, with her brother, _the faith_! That
very fidelity which her brother and I had shown toward each other;
that faith which had protected the Harding name; that very brand of
faith was responsible for the fact that _every love-letter, any one
of which would have irrefutably proved my story, had been destroyed_.
“But if convinced, they will be just,” she wrote. Yet the Votaws had
denied me the interview which I knew would have enabled me to advance
_sufficient_ proofs.
Poor Daisy Harding! Trying to be fair to me and just to her own family
as she understood justice! “... you still have me who never fails a
friend ... for the sake of the dear beloved, guard the secret, protect
his name and everything will come out all right....”
In spite of the fact that I disagreed with a great deal that Miss
Harding wrote, there was one paragraph which pleased me. She was
leaving the following Sunday for Florida, and on her way back she said
she was either coming to New York or have me meet her in Takoma Park,
suburban to Washington, at the Votaw residence, where “we will trash
this matter out.” That was exactly what I wished--the opportunity to
present the thing to the entire group of Hardings.
_154_
Under date of February 12th, I answered Miss Harding’s letter. I took
it paragraph by paragraph. Seeing it expressed the same fear about
exposure, which had been regarded as paramountly the most important
issue by all of them, even to apparent indifference to the issue that
was to _me_ the most important and was _always_ their brother’s _first
consideration_, I tried to calm her fears.
I said further that “I refuse to use ‘tactics’ of any kind. I am
simply frank and honest about things and cannot be diplomatic in this
respect.” I further wrote that I felt the provision I wanted for
Elizabeth Ann _was_ left in some way for her, that time might prove
this to be true; but if so, someone had intercepted it in a way which
might be almost impossible to prove. And my concluding sentence was
reminiscent of bygone days when I had had her brother to cheer and
comfort me in moments that seemed too difficult to bear.
I added a supplemental letter to this one later in the day, sending her
a couple of photographs of Elizabeth Ann and asking her to show them to
the Votaws if she went through Washington enroute South.
“The hotels are wonderful and not exorbitant,” wrote Miss Harding to
me shortly after she arrived in Miami Beach, Florida. They had taken
an apartment. Miss Harding said, “We have ... a dining alcove, a large
living-room, dressing-room and bath, all for $150 a month. Isn’t that
reasonable?...” She was quite enthusiastic over Miami. “... Perhaps
when you get to writing and want new local coloring you can come down
here and enjoy a winter in the sub-tropics....” Weary and sick at
heart, this prospect seemed pleasant, even if a bit distant.
Miss Harding had received the pictures of Elizabeth Ann and said she
thought they were good ones. “She certainly looks sturdy and strong
... the front view is all Britton, but I can’t quite tell about the
side view. The cheek and eye are similar to those of yours truly or I
imagine it....”
She requested me not to write to the Votaws again until I heard from
her; she expected, she said, to be there about the last week in March.
As usual, her letter was signed, “Lovingly yours.”
I answered this letter on March 7th. I explained that Miss Breed, whose
assistant I was at The Town Hall Club, had been ill and that that fact
had doubled my own work at the Club again. I agreed to abide by her
request not to write the Votaws. I told her Tim Slade had been in New
York the previous week and I had had luncheon with him at the Waldorf
on Thursday. I mentioned that I hoped we could have him with us at our
conference, for he could give the Votaws some strong evidence.
_155_
But my faith in Tim Slade’s sincere desire to help me had dwindled
considerably. I had written him notes, urgent ones, requesting his
help, but these notes he rarely answered. Before I approached Miss
Harding by wire for the previously mentioned $200, I had telephoned
Tim by long distance, asking him to come to my rescue. Mrs. Slade
answered and called Tim immediately to the phone. I have always felt
that Tim made a confidante of Mrs. Slade about my affairs, but this
never gave me great concern. However, when I asked Tim on the phone if
he could send me $100 to ease my situation a little, he had answered,
rather unpleasantly I thought, “Go after the people in Ohio!” Then,
when I told him I despaired of getting any further help because of the
attitude the Votaws had taken, he said, “Well, if you don’t hear from
them, let me know, and I’ll help.” But the money from Miss Harding had
made further request to him then unnecessary.
[Illustration: “The cheek and eye are similar to those of yours truly
...”--in a letter to the author from Daisy Harding]
Why, after all, should Tim continue his proffered and promised
assistance? He had no assurance that I could repay him unless he
himself were able to financially interest those to whom he had gone
with my situation. And, though he had spoken about his intended
approach to four or five of Mr. Harding’s best friends, he had never
named them to me specifically. I was sure that such men as Hoke
Donithen and Mr. Brush of the _Star_ could not be numbered among Mr.
Harding’s closest friends. To be sure, Tim had intimated that Charles
G. Dawes was _his_ “best friend” and I knew Mr. Harding had admired Mr.
Dawes, but Tim said no more about him after my first few interviews
with him, and I assumed that he had decided not to approach Mr. Dawes.
Mr. Crissinger, too, had given Tim no hope that he would have anything
to do with the matter which had so vitally concerned the man who had
put Mr. Crissinger in the position he occupied, and it looked miserably
gloomy in my opinion from the Washington end.
I myself named over various men who, I felt sure, would be interested
in helping, or in influencing the Hardings to see their obligation
to Mr. Harding’s child. Among these men were Andrew Mellon, Joseph
Frelinghuysen, Senator Newberry, Edward B. McLean, Herbert Hoover,
Charles Evans Hughes, and Harry M. Daugherty.
I related to Tim how I myself had endeavored to approach Charles E.
Hughes one day in late January, 1926, I think, when, in a fit of
despondency, I had concluded that it was useless to continue my appeal
to the Hardings and I would simply have to give my child up again. I
thought if I could see Mr. Hughes he might settle for me the question
as to whether the Hardings were morally obligated to Elizabeth Ann, and
I would accept his superior judgment as final.
I retain in this connection the memory of a visit I had with Mr.
Harding in 1917 or 1918, when he came over to New York to stay all
night with me. I met him at the Pennsylvania Station, where I always
met him when he came in on the Congressional Limited about nine
o’clock. How sweet to see him, the familiar bag in hand, the great
overcoat which I always loved, and which used to make him look even
more of a giant than he was! And how I remember his cheery, “Hullo,
dearie!” when it seemed to me I could feel myself being kissed as he
said it. And the query which invariably followed, “Glad to see me?”
as I tried to match my shorter steps to his long ones as we made
immediately for a taxi. Even now, so vividly does the sight of the
Pennsylvania Station recall these meetings to me, that I sometimes
think I shall scream with terror to realize anew that he is actually
gone, that I shall see him no more!
That night we were talking and Mr. Harding said to me, “Nan, guess with
whom I came over in the train tonight?” I couldn’t guess. “Charles
E. Hughes,” Mr. Harding said, and there was pride and respect in his
tone. It was then that he told me how he used to think if he could
ever make the nominating speech for a presidential candidate he would
have attained his highest ambition. But, he added, this wouldn’t
satisfy _Mrs._ Harding. I recalled how in 1910 it was rumored that
it had been Mrs. Harding who took her husband’s gubernatorial defeat
with rebellious feeling. And Mr. Harding was reported to have remained
calm throughout, merely averring, “Well, that is the last time I shall
ever run for anything!” This recalls also to my mind a clipping in my
Harding book, and I think the anecdote given is amusing enough to quote:
WHO SHOULD GET HARDING’S JOB IF HE SHOULD DIE? GUESS!
“Who would take President Harding’s place if he should die?” an
applicant for naturalization, Pieroni Amato, of 1339 West Grand
Avenue, was asked yesterday by Judge Joseph Sabath of the Superior
Court.
“His wife,” was the answer.
Amato was given final papers.
I think Mrs. Harding would have made an admirable politician.
When Mr. Harding told me about coming over with Mr. Hughes I could see
how it had meant a very great deal to him to make the nominating speech
in behalf of Charles Evans Hughes for President in 1916. And to me that
night he spoke his very cordial admiration for Mr. Hughes. He said that
in his opinion Mr. Hughes would have made an excellent President.
I told Tim Slade how I had met Mr. Hughes one day on the street in New
York and had taken the liberty of going up and speaking to him, saying
I had no claim upon him except that I hailed from Marion, Ohio, and had
been an admirer of President Harding all my life. And at that time it
occurred to me that the steady eyes that smiled at me in appreciation
and greeting might some day take on the lights of understanding
sympathy if I made up my mind to approach him with my problem.
However, it was many months before I thought of Mr. Hughes again in
this connection, and, other sources of help having failed me, I went
to the office of the former Secretary of State, at 100 Broadway, and
presented to his secretary one of Mr. Harding’s letters to me, as a
sort of introduction to her employer. The secretary read the letter,
but said I would have to tell her the nature of my call upon Mr. Hughes
or she could not arrange an interview for me. To this I replied that it
was a matter so personal that I could not divulge its character to her,
but I assured her that I would not detain Mr. Hughes a second longer
than the time needed to state the purpose of my errand. She remained
adamant, and I came away without having seen Mr. Hughes.
When I made mention of Mr. Hughes to Tim Slade and repeated the above
incident to him, saying I was sure Mr. Hughes had been very fond of Mr.
Harding, Tim smiled broadly, and I felt I had again made a political
_faux pas_.
I disclaimed wanting anybody to do anything for Elizabeth Ann unless
they were so prompted by their love for her father. Tim declared that
in that case he was afraid, after all, that he could make little
progress. Though I appreciated Tim’s efforts in my behalf, I knew so
little about what he was doing that I felt incapable of advising him
what _not_ to do, and, anyway, I had my hands full in trying to bring
the Hardings to a realization of their obligation. In this connection I
very often said to Tim, “Tim, would you be willing to go with me to the
Votaws, or meet with us here in New York for a conference?” He assured
me he would be more than glad to tell them the things he knew which
pointed irrefutably to the truth some of the Hardings did not care to
believe.
_156_
I wrote to Miss Harding on March 14th, 1926, apprising her of my
resignation from The Town Hall Club, as assistant to the Executive
Secretary, and my contemplated association elsewhere. I told her I
planned to have from March 23rd until April 1st free, leaving the Club
for good the day following the March 23rd Club Dinner, which I had been
asked to supervise from the office end. I further expressed the hope
that she and Mrs. Votaw could come on to New York, so that I would be
spared the physical strain of a trip to Washington.
On the 20th of March I received from Tim Slade a note, sent special
delivery to the Club. I had written him again, asking him for help, and
in this instance, he answered my appeal. The note was dated March 19,
1926, and simply stated that he was enclosing his check for $100, which
he hoped would help me at that time, and that I should always let him
know when he could help me. Tim’s note was signed, “Sincerely, Tim.”
There was no salutation, though Tim called me “Nan,” having fallen into
that form of addressing me during our interviews at the Waldorf. He was
a great deal my senior, but somehow so boyish that it came easy to call
him “Tim,” as Mr. Harding had always done.
I answered Tim’s note under date of March 20th, saying I was sure I
would be able to pay the money back soon, and that I had not heard from
Daisy Harding in Florida as yet about our meeting, but would advise
him when I did. He had told me he would endeavor to join Miss Harding,
Mrs. Votaw and me in New York if they came there.
Soon thereafter I had a note from Miss Harding, dated March 20th, in
which she said that she and her husband were going home to Marion the
first of the week. Then, she wrote, in three or four days “brother and
I will come East.”
This was the first intimation from Miss Harding that her brother, Dr.
George Tryon Harding III, was to sit in at the interview we were to
have, and I rejoiced to think that he was coming. He was a man, his
brother Warren’s only brother, and would take a man’s view of this
situation. I acknowledged the receipt of this note from Miss Harding
under date of March 24th, and shall quote my letter almost in full:
“Your letter came this morning. As I understand it, you and your
brother, Dr. Harding, are coming East the last of this month or the
first of April and will no doubt pick up Mrs. Votaw in Washington
enroute. I shall await your wire, however, for I am not absolutely
sure I understand your letter correctly.
I am leaving the Club (officially) today, although I shall be coming
in every so often for the next week. I expect to take up my other work
the 1st of April....
I have on my desk this morning the final annulment papers, which gives
me the right and the extreme pleasure of signing myself,
Affectionately yours,
NAN BRITTON”
Then I wrote Tim Slade, giving him the outline of Miss Harding’s letter
and asking him to try to be on hand when they were here. It made me
feel better to know that I was to have the opportunity to talk to the
brother and sisters of Elizabeth Ann’s father face to face, and to
answer any questions they might put to me without the ambiguity that
the written word sometimes imposes.
But my sweetheart’s family must have consulted by letter and changed
their minds entirely, for under date of March 25th I received from
Marion, Ohio, a letter from Daisy Harding. She wrote that she and her
brother thought it would be better for me to come on to Marion to the
Lewis home (Daisy Harding’s). “... If you can convince him it will not
be necessary to call in the others ... if you have legal papers showing
the transaction between yourself and the Willitses, I would bring them
along ...” Miss Harding wrote. She suggested that perhaps it would be
wiser if I did not plan to see any of my Marion friends while there,
but left that for decision when I should reach her home. “I’m enclosing
a money order for your transportation here. I can give you more later
for your return fare....” This letter, also, was signed “Lovingly,”
and there was a postscript which said she thought it best for me to
be there by Monday or Tuesday morning. However, I did not receive the
letter until Monday noon.
This letter struck me as curiously strange in content, and I thought it
over as carefully as I could while making whirlwind preparations for
leaving that night. I determined, without giving _that_ determination
much thought, that I would have to see Tim Slade and get his advice
before going on to Marion. And possibly I might be able to persuade him
to accompany me, though I disliked to ask him to go to that expense. I
promised my precious daughter I would return in plenty of time to hail
the rabbit in his jumps at Easter, and left that night for Washington,
arriving the following morning.
_157_
I telephoned Tim Slade from the New Willard, and met him there an hour
or so later. It was a glorious morning and we took a walk around the
lower end of the White House grounds. It did not occur to me that the
great house beyond the trees was occupied. To me it would always be
deserted--because the big, genial, great-hearted man who used to live
there had gone away....
Tim talked to me about my trip to Marion, and when we returned
to the Willard and were seated on a couch in one of the emptier
drawing-rooms, we discussed definitely the amount of money which I
ought to stipulate as just, in my estimation, for Elizabeth Ann. I told
him I wanted only what was fair and within reason and thought that
$50,000 as a trust fund for Mr. Harding’s daughter would be equitable.
This seemed to me entirely fair in view of the fact that Mr. Harding’s
estate had been variously reported at from $400,000 to $800,000. In
addition to that amount of $50,000, Tim encouraged me to request a
minimum of $2,500 for myself, to pay my debts and to leave me a small
balance with which to get started in a permanent regime.
Tim reminded me that I could say to Dr. George Tryon Harding that
there was a man in Washington who thought enough of Mr. Harding to
volunteer to interest four or five other men, each to contribute toward
a fund for Elizabeth Ann if the Hardings themselves did not meet their
just obligations toward her. I thought this suggestion confirmed in a
degree a certain nervous apprehension I had experienced which had led
me to anticipate possible unfriendly treatment from the Hardings. I
inquired of Tim whether he thought Dr. Harding and his sister would be
kind to me, as the latter _had_ been up to this time. He answered with
characteristic drollery, “Say, they’ll just _love_ you!” Then he added
more seriously, “Why, they are _afraid_ of you! You just stand up for
your rights!”
Just then George Christian passed through the alley of the Willard
with another gentleman. They were busily engaged in conversation and
did not see us. “There goes poor old George!” exclaimed Tim, nodding
in his direction. This brought us to the discussion of Mr. Christian,
Mr. Daugherty, and others, and around to Mr. Brush. Tim said he had no
satisfaction from “Brush” or anybody else, but he had sent Brush word
that he wanted to see him the very next time he came to Washington. And
Tim’s tone indicated that Mr. Brush would come a-trotting when that
word reached him.
“Tim,” I said suddenly, as we sat there reminiscing about Mr. Harding
and bygone days and about my marriage-of-convenience to Captain
Neilsen, “do you think if this were known publicly I’d stand any
chance of ever getting married again if I cared to do so for the baby’s
sake?” Tim made a grimace intended to portray amused amazement at such
expectation on my part. “Well,” he answered comically, “some moving
picture man might have you!”
Tim offered to have a check cashed for me in the New Willard for $15,
because I had found that I had less when I reached Washington than I
might need before I reached Marion. He said he would have to have his
own check cashed, because they might not like to accept a stranger’s,
and he took my check to deposit in his bank. Then Tim bade me goodbye
and I went to meet a friend, with whom I spent the remainder of my time
until my train left.
_158_
I reached Marion, Ohio, my home town, about eleven o’clock the
following morning, and went immediately to the Lewis home on Vernon
Heights Boulevard. Daisy Harding (Mrs. Ralph Lewis) was alone in the
house when I arrived and she was surprised to see me come in at that
hour, having expected me earlier in the morning. I explained that I had
come by way of Washington, and she did not ask me why. She said her
brother intended to motor up from Columbus that afternoon to see me.
It was like a raw March day, although it was actually the first day
of April, and I observed that Dr. Harding would have quite a drive,
for Columbus was forty-five miles away. I was exceedingly tired and
lay down upon the couch in the living-room, the selfsame couch where I
had sat and revealed to Miss Harding my story nearly one year before.
Miss Harding left me to prepare luncheon, saying her maid had proven
unsatisfactory and she had therefore dismissed her and was doing her
own housework.
It was very quiet there in the living-room, and the peaceful atmosphere
and Daisy Harding’s loving welcome to me made it seem highly unlikely
that the interview could be other than friendly. Mr. Harding’s
picture, the one with Laddie Boy, stood in the same spot on the table
behind the couch where I lay ... all was restful with my sweetheart ...
no more worries ... harmony....
My mental relaxation continued as I chatted with Miss Harding during
luncheon, and after luncheon we did the dishes together. Dr. George
Tryon Harding III arrived by motor in a blizzard. Miss Harding and I
were in her own sitting-room upstairs, and she went down to open the
door for her brother. We were to have our interview there in Miss
Harding’s room, and so I remained on the _chaise longue_ where I had
been resting.
“Now, remember, Nan, brother ‘Deac’ intends to grill you unmercifully.
Don’t get angry. Just try to remain calm,” cautioned Miss Harding
before going downstairs to greet her brother. She brought him upstairs
immediately. Dr. Harding shook hands with me in a business-like manner
and with scarcely a smile, and Miss Harding went out of the room.
Evidently her brother had decided that she might betray her sympathy,
and it had been thought better for him to see me alone. But that did
not matter to me, for my story was the same, no matter to whom it was
repeated, and I can repeat it indefinitely without change.
I opened the conversation. “Well, Dr. Harding,” I remarked pleasantly,
as he sat down upon the edge of Miss Harding’s rocker, “I suppose this
story is a strange one to you.” He replied very briefly that it was a
story he felt obliged to investigate carefully, inasmuch as his brother
was not here to stand up for himself. I agreed that that was right and
proper.
“Now, where did the first intimacy which you allege take place?”
inquired Dr. Harding, looking up from the little notebook which was
poised upon his knee. A wave of hurt swept over me, that he should
plunge so indelicately into facts which were for me so shrouded in
sentiment.
I said, “Suppose I begin from the very beginning, Dr. Harding, giving
you a bit of my childhood background and adoration for your brother?”
He acquiesced and relaxed slightly.
I recalled my childhood, my father’s friendship with his
editor-brother, my love of Warren Harding, which began when I was
scarcely thirteen, my father’s death when I was about sixteen, my
subsequent schooling at the expense of my father’s college classmates,
my first meeting with Mr. Harding in New York following my request to
him for a position, and, gradually, our further meetings which led to
ultimate intimacies prompted by mutual love.
After I had got into the meetings with Mr. Harding which were all-night
trysts, Dr. Harding interrupted me many times to ask, “When was that?”
or “Where did that meeting take place?” and I supplied from memory the
approximate time and place. All of this information he jotted down in
his little notebook. It was as difficult for me to recall aloud for
the doctor the many occasions of our sweet visits together as it had
been to recite the whole story to his sister, Daisy Harding, but the
knowledge that I was doing it for Elizabeth Ann gave me the needed
courage to go on.
I had not dreamed that Dr. Harding intended to catechize me as a
judge might a witness, and I wondered if by so doing he had thought
to frighten me into confusion. But this was an unworthy thought. The
seriousness of the situation probably justified in his eyes the use of
pencil and pad and direct questions. Dr. Harding is rather a small man,
and somehow, seeing him sitting there on the edge of the chair, plying
me with questions as to “when?” and “where?” aroused my pity. If his
brother Warren were only there! _He_ would say, as he did once before,
“Let this poor little girl go--_I’ll_ answer your questions.”
I could not help associating Mr. Harding’s remark about his brother
with his brother’s very attitude toward me now. “Brother Deac is the
only man I know who never slept with a woman prior to his marriage,”
Mr. Harding had said to me. And as I looked at him now while I poured
out my story again through tears and exclamations of love for him I
worshipped, it occurred to me that indeed it might be difficult for
such a frail looking individual to understandingly sympathize with a
situation of this kind, which had needed the strength of a love this
man could probably never know to yield the glory of consummation Warren
Harding and I had experienced.
_159_
In the two hours we were together I gave Dr. Harding as detailed
information as I could. I showed him my copies of the guardianship
papers and the adoption papers, and he looked them over very carefully
and took notes upon them. I showed him the letters I had from his
brother, the early letters which contained no love allusions and which
Mr. Harding had permitted me to keep. These letters did not interest
him much, apparently. He seemed particularly interested in _dates_ and
_exact places_. I wondered vaguely at his wanting these so definitely,
for up to that time they had remained with me only because of their
dear associations, and it had not occurred to me that anyone would care
to _trace_ them. It seemed inconceivable that anyone should doubt my
story, hearing it from my own lips. However, this was Dr. Harding’s
manner of ascertaining facts, and I was eager to help him in any way I
could. I volunteered to go with him, or alone, to the hotels where his
brother and I had been, in an endeavor to trace for him the exact dates
in the instances where I could not recall the day, week, or month.
I inquired of him if he knew of a particular physical trouble his
brother had. He looked at me questioningly and I explained. The doctor
disclaimed knowledge of this condition, and I concluded that he had not
professionally looked after his brother’s ailments.
I described the layout of Mr. Harding’s senate offices, and told the
doctor I had been in both of them, and gave him the numbers on the
doors.
It seemed to me that Dr. Harding evidenced some irritancy at my
frankness, and indeed I gave him only the opportunity of squeezing in
his “wheres?” and “whens?” edgewise. But there was so _much_ to tell,
and my only fear was that I would not tell _every_thing. However, I
had been very tired even when I started, and finally I became actually
_voice_-tired. The doctor’s expression throughout had remained stonily
impassive, even when I drew pictures so sacred to me that my body shook
with feeling at their remembrance. Now he looked up.
“Well, what is your idea of a settlement provided we can ascertain
these things to be true which you state to be facts?” I thought, “Oh,
sweetheart Warren, you know how difficult this has been for me! You
know how it hurts me, cruelly, cruelly, not to be believed!”
Then I said to Dr. Harding in a voice which seemed to me suddenly
strengthened, “I think Elizabeth Ann should have that to which she is
rightly entitled as his daughter.”
Dr. Harding looked up quickly, his face full of consternation--the
first visible signs during our conference that he was moved at all by
my revelations.
“Why, you mean--” he stammered, “you mean _all_ of the Harding
Estate--for that would be what she would get as his daughter!”
Oh, God! I thought. Was Tim Slade right, after all? Could it be
possible that these people, _these Hardings_, were loath to part with
_money_, even a little of the money left to them by the man whose
daughter’s rightful claims I had been prosecuting with my spoken words?
Impossible! I spoke with outward calm to the doctor.
“No, I do not mean that at all. I mean that she should get a fair
amount, say $50,000, to be put into a trust fund so that she would have
a monthly income to live upon.”
I may have imagined the seeming relief in his voice as he answered,
“And is that _all_?” He was writing in his little notebook.
“No,” I answered, “I think also that I should have enough to settle my
indebtednesses which were incurred directly as a result of my attempt
to keep my daughter with me during my marriage, and $2,500 would
allow me to settle these debts and have a balance upon which to ‘turn
around,’ as it were.”
All this was jotted down in the notebook, apparently verbatim.
Dr. Harding started to rise. “And, Dr. Harding,” I said, “you will
understand that I would appreciate having this arrangement start as
soon as possible, because it means so much to me in making my plans
to have Elizabeth Ann.” The doctor’s face registered anger. “I most
certainly refuse to be hurried in my investigations,” he said. I
hastened to assure him that I did not wish to hurry him, but on the
contrary wished him to take all the time required to establish the
truth of my statements, and I myself would do all in my power to aid
him, thus perhaps expediting the investigations.
“But I must know whether or not you people wish to do this for
Elizabeth Ann,” I said, “because there is a man in Washington who
has volunteered to attempt to raise such a fund among Mr. Harding’s
most intimate friends.” I am sure the doctor did not mean to betray
the alert interest and alarm I so clearly read in his query, “Who is
it?” I explained that I was not at liberty at present to divulge the
gentleman’s identity. Dr. Harding moved toward the door. I rose to
follow him downstairs. I do not remember that Dr. Harding thanked me
for the interview, but I remember that I thanked him.
We joined his sister and her husband for dinner. Dr. Harding ate
hurriedly, saying he had to return to Columbus to attend school
exercises in which his daughter was taking part, and bade us goodbye.
I thanked him again for coming out in the storm forty-five miles to
talk with me and could not help wondering why he seemed to accept this
little speech with seeming impatience.
_160_
When Daisy Harding and I were doing up the dishes that evening, I
said to her, “Why, you said he would probably be very severe in his
remarks to me. He wasn’t so terrible--just wanted to know dates. I was
not afraid of him.” I did not add that rather had I felt sorry for
him. Miss Harding replied that he had threatened to “pin me down” to
every little thing. However, he hadn’t needed to contemplate any such
strenuous course of action, for I was all too ready to talk freely and
truthfully. Miss Harding sighed. “Brother Deac is not well. I wouldn’t
be at all surprised if he were to go any day; his heart is very weak.”
I said I was sorry to hear that. I was pretty weak myself.
I told Miss Harding that her brother had asked me for the dates of the
two checks which I had sent personally to my sister Elizabeth, for the
baby’s care, in amounts of $500 and $525, and I had promised to send
these to him. Also he had asked me for the date upon which Mr. Harding
had sent me my watch, and this date, also, I would send him from New
York immediately upon my return.
I did not think Miss Harding seemed anxious for me to remain over
until the following day, and so I decided to return on the late train
that night. Her husband, Mr. Lewis, bade me goodbye and retired early,
leaving Miss Harding and me to talk together until my taxi came. Ralph
Lewis seemed to be such a dear, and I have often wondered exactly what
is in his mind as to my _liaison_ with his wife’s brother. Yes, I
thought, as I shook hands with him that night, I would give a lot to
know just what Ralph Lewis thinks--the good-natured man who used to
sell me sour pickles in his grocery-store--when I was a little girl!
_161_
Again Daisy Harding and I went over the ground we had already covered
in our talk the previous June, and on into uncommented territory as
well.
The Marion High School, where Miss Harding had taught for perhaps
twenty years, had voted some time back to change its name to the
“Harding High School,” and I knew Miss Harding had taken great pride
in this. But Miss Harding’s statement to me, in a voice that betrayed
apprehension, “If this should get out, Nan, they would take the Harding
name away from the high school!” only made me realize more keenly
how pitifully narrow was the thinking which would place the fear of
revealment above the desire to do the right thing by their brother’s
child.
And the possibility itself was ridiculous. Had not hundreds of public
men been unconventional, and with far less justification than Warren
Harding, and were not their names and deeds written on the calendar of
achievement? Would a handful of people--even the home-town friends of
Warren Harding--decree that because he had become a father he was unfit
for namable perpetuation through any medium whatsoever? If this be the
test of true worth, of real manhood, pray what would become of many of
the statues and memorials and foundations which stand for the names of
world-heroes and benefactors? The strongest of men are weak, and the
weakest are strong, but the fact remains that “a man’s a man for a’
that”!
And what inescapable torment of the mind must my friends be suffering
to pin their fears to another remote possibility--that disclosure would
bring in its wake the condemnation of certain outsiders where their
_religion_ was concerned! Else what prompted Miss Harding to inquire
anxiously, perhaps at the instigation of her missionary sister, “You
don’t think your Aunt Dell knows this, do you Nan?” Poor child! What if
my Baptist missionary aunt _did_ know that the brother of her one-time
friend, Mrs. Votaw, a Seventh Day Adventist, had followed his heart and
as a consequence had become a father out of wedlock? Granted that petty
criticism would ensue, Mr. Harding himself was a Baptist, and it seemed
to me that that would cross the fingers of both churches! But was one
religion and its accomplishments advanced at the expense of another?
Do churches capitalize upon each other? Is this the spirit that Jesus
exemplified? “Do unto others as ye would that they should do to you.”
Would not true Christians tend their own flock, nor heed the strayings
of their neighbors?
And well did I ponder the source of inspiration which led Miss Harding
to insist that in her opinion the safest way out for me was to marry
again. Though I heartily agreed that this would be a way, and possibly
the easiest way, of solving my problem; though I discussed with her the
several eligible possibilities in my life at that time, and my frank
appraisement of each; still, as I told her, the fact remained that such
a course was cowardly unless I were prompted by genuine love of the man
himself, and not by a superficial, blind acceptance of him for the sake
of using his name. And Miss Harding agreed that love would be the only
right basis.
Miss Harding and I discussed the talk I had had that afternoon with
her brother, and I repeated in as much detail as time permitted my
interview with Dr. Harding. I told her that if the matter could not be
settled in a reasonable length of time by the Hardings, I thought I
should be so advised, because, as I had told her brother, I intended
in that event to approach in all seriousness the man in Washington who
had volunteered to raise a fund from the anticipated generosity of Mr.
Harding’s closest friends.
“Why, Nan!” exclaimed Miss Harding in amazement, “you would not
approach _strangers_, would you?”
What rightful thing would I _not_ do for the daughter of Warren
Harding? What would I not give of pride to have her with me, in her
rightful place? Ah, even then did the last vestige of pride die within
me, and the mother spirit to assert itself, it seemed for all time,
when I declared with almost arrogant fervor, “I would do _any_thing to
obtain fair treatment for Elizabeth Ann!”
“But, Nan,” Daisy Harding exclaimed in astonishment, “the money _was
not left_ to you nor to Elizabeth Ann!”
Is justice the result of a few pen scratches? Was not my story in
itself ample proof that provision must have been made somehow, even
though the written word of my daughter’s father had not been found?
Wherefore would a real man lovingly care for his sweetheart and child
during his lifetime and pass on, intentionally leaving a broken-hearted
and destitute love-family behind? And, even granted that his sudden
passing had made impossible the provision he had so often spoken of
to me, did the responsibility cease with his demise? Did not this
responsibility rest upon the shoulders of those whom he had been
able to publicly include in a will whose liberal bequests certainly
indicated his probable generosity to his own daughter?
“My dear,” I replied to Miss Harding, “you do not know _what_ was left,
nor do I, and he would not be the sweetheart I have known had he passed
on without making some kind of provision for our baby.”
Daisy Harding kissed me goodbye as the taxi honked outside, and wished
me a safe journey. As I whirled down Church Street, past scene after
scene so familiar yet so strangely remote, this thought occurred to me:
No one, to my knowledge, except the Lewises and Dr. Harding, knew I was
in Marion, Ohio, on April 1st, 1926.
_162_
I will quote the letter I wrote to Dr. Harding under date of April 4th,
1926, although I received not even an acknowledgment from him. I sent
it to him through Daisy Harding, because I did not have his address at
his sanitarium in Columbus.
“MY DEAR DR. HARDING:
The dates of the checks sent to my sister by me are October 24, 1921,
and November 7, 1921.
The date of the letter I have from Mr. Harding, which was sent the
same time that the watch from Galt’s was chosen and sent by him, is
August 11th, 1917. As I told you, this watch was a birthday gift, and
my birthday is November 9th, but it was given early because I was
greatly in need of a timepiece. His identity in connection with the
purchase of this watch might be ascertained.
I was conscious last Wednesday afternoon when talking with you (rather
_to_ you, for you did little talking!) of reminiscing, and perhaps the
approximate dates which I gave you were not put down chronologically
by you in your notebook. I only wish to say that I shall be very glad
to repeat the whole story to you at any time or to help you in any way
if you run up against anything you are not sure about.
I should also be very glad to give you the names and addresses of
various people who would be able and very glad for Elizabeth Ann’s
sake to tell you certain things in connection with this matter and to
verify other things that I have stated.
If I seem impatient in wishing to have this matter settled as
quickly as possible, it is not at all because I wish to hurry you in
your investigations; because, contrarily, I wish to do everything
in my power to assist you; but I am anxious to make plans for the
very immediate future and I therefore would be very glad if the
investigations were expedited. As I stated to you in Marion, I would
very gladly accompany you to the various hotels, here in this city as
well as to others in Washington, etc., if I could be of service. Of
course, aside from hotel registrations, this thing can be proven and I
mean to keep at it until it is. It would be grossly unfair for me to
expect the Hardings to go into such investigations without giving them
such proof, and from a sufficient number of sources as would scatter
any remaining doubts in their minds as to the authenticity of the
statements made and the absolute right I have had to approach them.
Mr. Harding used to be a great man for doing things on a 50-50 basis
and I have from the first wished to be fair with you people--and to
receive such treatment in return. I am sure I shall.
I hope you reached home safely--it was very kind of you to come out
in such a storm and I was appreciative. Your coming on Wednesday
afternoon enabled me to get off that night and back to New York. I
have just started to work with the above concern, and, as Mr. Harding
once wrote to me about the Steel Corporation, “making good counts with
them.”
Most sincerely,
NAN BRITTON”
“P. S.--I can be reached at the above address, care of Suite 516, and
the telephone number is above. I have my annulment now, you know, so
am known as Miss Nan Britton. You can also address me at my home,
609 West 114th Street, Apartment 46, and address me the same--Miss
Britton.”
I sent Daisy Harding and Tim Slade letters also, telling the latter in
brief form what had been accomplished by me in Marion.
_163_
When in Marion on April 1st, during my talk with Miss Harding, I had
told her very frankly how in debt I was and that my rent of $130 would
fall due again on April 10th. It had been her postal telegraph order
for $400 which had enabled me to pay the two previous months’ rent, and
at that time I really felt that when the time rolled around for the
April rent a sufficient amount would again be forthcoming to cover it.
However, Miss Harding had given me only enough when there to cover my
return fare, Pullman and meals on the train, and, back in New York on
the 2nd of April, I found bills awaiting me on all sides. Moreover, as
is often the case when receipts are not asked for, I was being charged
$40 in one instance which I did not owe at all, and this distressed
me very greatly, and depleted my bank account even more than I had
anticipated. But the rent was my chief concern. Not knowing where to
turn, I wired Daisy Harding again for something more than that amount;
I think I wired her for $150, though I did not retain a copy of that
particular telegram.
Miss Harding’s reply to that telegram, a letter sent special delivery
under date of April 10th, enclosing money orders in the amounts of
$50 and $75 was a clear index to her feelings, feelings obviously
developed toward me since my visit with her brother at Daisy Harding’s
home less than two weeks before. In her opening sentence she said she
was enclosing $125, “which is all I can let you have.... I feel that I
have been generous ... especially when I gave you that $400.... I can’t
let you have any more, for I, too, have obligations....” Then followed
the suggestion that I should find cheaper living quarters by going out
to one of the suburbs. “... It would necessitate your rising a little
earlier ... but that means very little at this time of the year....”
Then came the astounding suggestion that if I could not get a cheaper
place to live I might better send Elizabeth Ann to her Grandmother
Willits’ farm, where she could have the advantage afforded by the
country! As though the mother of Warren Harding’s child should have
nothing to say, should acquiescently ship his daughter to people who
were _not relatives_, simply because she would find there a welcome for
her! My brother-in-law’s people, though admittedly the kindest people
one could imagine, were nevertheless certainly not the people upon
whose shoulders the burden of maintaining a home for Warren Harding’s
daughter should rest. And after giving some further suggestions,
the letter ended with “Hastily, A. V. H. Lewis.” Something told me
instinctively that Daisy Harding would no more sign her letters to me,
“Lovingly.”
It seemed to me that I had been cruelly dismissed from further loving
consideration by her who had once termed herself one “who never fails
a friend.” Perhaps I had been removed from her friend category. But if
so, it was only since I had talked with her brother in Marion.
Yet I knew this was not the real Daisy Harding. It was _another woman_,
a woman lately influenced, in my opinion, to believe that she had been
the victim of an imposition. I was mortally sure that members of her
family who had been utterly remiss in recognizing their own obligations
to their brother’s child had been swift to denounce my appeal as an
attempt to obtain money under false pretenses.
Fragments of our conversation came back to me--and one sentence in
particular now seemed to me freighted with a meaning I had failed to
catch when Daisy Harding had uttered it to me in her home.
“Brother Deac thinks you might have changed, Nan. He said to me, ‘What
if she is not the same kind of girl you taught in high school ... she
has been in the city ... it is quite likely she has changed!’” Why,
if argued sufficiently strongly, this would become a peg upon which
to hang various and sundry ill opinions of me! As Daisy Harding had
written to me, so evidently had she been persuaded to believe “... your
claim is one that any woman can make and get away with to a certain
extent, and while it isn’t, it might look like a complete case of
blackmail....” How overwhelming are the feelings of disappointment and
hurt I experience as I write these things and live over the agony of
mind they caused me!
Yet quite unconsciously one does change under the force of cruel
circumstance. One does become raw under the lash of injustice. One is
apt to become, as I did, almost stark and brutal in stating truths.
This follows inevitably when one’s life cause, one’s sacred pledge
of fidelity, has been dealt with lightly, indifferently. The Votaws,
for instance, likely felt the smart of words I had written out of the
boldness of my spirit. For the body may be broken, but the spirit of
Right never faints. So perhaps the imputation that I had “changed” was
really true. But the _truth_ does not change. I had spoken the truth
unwaveringly. But it is not always expedient to believe.
The letter received from this changed Daisy Harding brought to my mind
something she said in a letter sent February 2, 1924, shortly after my
marriage to Captain Neilsen. She wrote, in speaking of her brother
Warren and lamenting his untimely passing:
“to think brother wasn’t permitted to live long enough to do the
things that he wanted to do, to go where he wanted to go. If only he
could have known a little of the love, a little of the praise that was
so generously bestowed on him after he was gone. We are all too slow
in appreciation, too little given to expressing our love when it is
most needed.”
_164_
My reply to Daisy Harding’s letter enclosing the money orders for $125
now follows:
“MY DEAR MISS HARDING:
Thank you for sending the money orders for $75 and $50.
I am able to account, from cancelled vouchers, etc., for every cent
you have given me, and I can assure you it was spent for nothing but
expenses in connection with my endeavor to maintain an apartment and
only decent living quarters for your brother’s and my own beloved
child. For nothing else.
I remember your telling me, Miss Harding, that you paid $150 for two
rooms, kitchenette and bath, in Florida this winter. You thought it
very reasonable, according to a letter received from you, but you
said Mrs. Keiler could not live with you because there was not enough
room. Well, I live in three rooms with mother and the baby, and we
have lived there all winter, with no other home to which to go. Do you
honestly think that my rent of $130 is out of keeping? I looked long
and hard before taking that place, and for many reasons it seemed the
best thing to do.
As for moving to the country, I thought I made it clear that my plans
for staying in my present apartment are altogether tentative, even
though I _had_ to take a lease until October in order to get the
place. In New York the only available thing to be had by the month
is “rooms”--and taking them by the month or by the week, oftentimes
they come higher than when one takes an apartment. I have, as a matter
of fact, been making inquiry into possible living quarters in the
country. Your suggestion about mother’s looking is impossible to me,
because mother does not venture anywhere except to church. She knows
nothing at all about the outlying districts or suburbs and I myself
have to make and have made all arrangements of all kinds in connection
with my plans this winter. If I find I can get something in New
Rochelle or some other place, be sure I shall try to sublet and move,
for summers in the city are not to be courted....
[Illustration]
I have already made some inquiry at one hotel here in the city to
help Dr. Harding in his endeavors to prove to the satisfaction of the
Harding family that the things I have said are true, and I think the
next time I write I shall have some more dates to give him.
You must remember that it has been almost a year since I confided this
thing to you, and up to this time nothing has been done in the way of
a steady, stable income for E. A. Does that really seem fair? To be
sure, I am not unmindful of, nor am I ungrateful for, your help, but
you know that the first $200--or nearly so--went for her kindergarten,
the $400 went for rent for two months and to repay some loans which
had to be met and which I incurred during the time I was writing the
Votaws and trying to get their co-operation without loading all the
burden upon you. This $125 is being paid out today for rent also.
You must remember, it is not as though you were actually paying my
rent--that money could be considered simply the income E. A. should
have--should be having month by month--to make it more bearable for
me--and _it should come from all of the Hardings_ instead of from your
dear self.
Of course your letter hurt me--but perhaps I may have to sacrifice
your friendship in endeavoring to have this thing settled rightly. And
it is not that I love you less, but that I love my precious daughter
more.
I would very much have liked to return your $125 to you, but I simply
could not. If I have been too truthful and honest with you in telling
you all about my affairs, expenses, etc., it is simply that I really
do not know much about being clever and dishonest. If I had, I would
not now be writing to you about money, or the need of it, because I
would have seen to it that I was amply taken care of in case of such
emergency as did arise. But I prefer not to be clever in that way.
Love to you.
Most sincerely,
NAN BRITTON”
Mr. Harding had, while alive, provided ample funds for the care of our
child. During the time of his incumbency in the presidential office,
after the adoption had been arranged, he had given me $500 a month to
give to my sister and her husband for their care of the baby, and had
also provided more than generously for me. The income on my suggested
$50,000 would only be $250 a month. So it was surely unfair both to his
sense of justice and to his daughter’s rightful requests, through her
mother, for Miss Harding to thus summarily dismiss the matter of a
reasonable trust fund for Elizabeth Ann.
Where was Justice? Where was Right? Where was Honor? Surely the spirit
of these high truths dwelt not among those who perceived them only
microscopically! If _my_ child, the child begotten of the President
of the United States, and maintained by him as such, gladly, with
fond acknowledgment of his fatherhood,--if this child could not
obtain justice at the hands of her blood relations, how futilely
must thousands and thousands of unhusbanded mothers plead for the
recognition of their little ones over all the land! Fidelity to my
sweetheart, loyalty to his family, truth and honesty of purpose, were
rewarded thus! Surely Jesus knew the human heart and the temptation
to harbor rancor when he said to his disciples, “After this manner
therefore pray ye ... forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”
_165_
In a letter to Tim Slade under date of April 30th, I was obliged to
apologize for some trouble I had given him in connection with his
having kindly cashed my check for $15 when I went through Washington.
Because of failure on my part to endorse the money order which Miss
Harding sent me for $40 to defray my expenses to Marion, my bank
account was credited with $40 less than I should have had, and having
had to pay the other $40 which was charged to me erroneously, my
account was not sufficient to cover Tim’s check when it came through.
In my letter to him I said, “If I receive enough from her (meaning
Daisy Harding) between now and the 2nd or 3rd to cover it (meaning the
check for $15 which I had not been able to make good), I’ll let you
know. Otherwise, will you go ahead and send me the $100, please? I am
pretty sure things are going to right themselves. I haven’t told you
the reaction my former letter has had, but I can talk to you better
when you come.” This was the letter from Miss Harding in which she
seemed to resent any further request for financial assistance.
On April 30th, after having despatched the letter to Tim Slade, I
received, upon my return home that evening, a small package from Miss
Harding. It contained a bracelet I had left on her dressing-table in
Marion, and wrapped around the bracelet were two $20 bills. Having
had so much difficulty over the $40 which I did not owe, and the $40
money order which Miss Harding had sent me for railroad fare to Marion
and which I had failed to endorse, with the subsequent distress of
not being able to cover my $15 check to Tim, I sighed with humorous
appreciation when I perceived another $40! But I was indeed grateful
for any amount she saw fit to send. Immediately, under the same date, I
sent her a letter of thanks. In this letter I quoted liberally from one
received from my sister Elizabeth. My sister had written of their own
financial difficulties, and how she and her husband planned to be in
Chicago that summer, both working. They were not planning upon taking
Elizabeth Ann unless I wrote that I myself could not keep her.
Under date of May 7th, I wrote Tim Slade, and shall quote from my
letter:
“I intimated to Miss Harding my financial status this month, but up
to this time I have had nothing except the $40 told you about in a
previous letter....
Would you be willing to go to the Votaws’ with me if I came to
Washington? Or would you suggest some other plan of action? As I told
Miss H. in my last letter to her, it has been almost a year since I
went to her with my story, and up to this time nothing permanent or
stable has been put in trust for E. A....
... don’t forget to send me the check for $100--and if you are broke
at this time, let me know, for I’ll have to resort to something,
though I don’t know what yet.”
As I look back upon Tim Slade’s course of comparative inaction, I
wonder why I kept on hoping he would ever be able to accomplish
anything for Elizabeth Ann. But it is easy to see that I have had
nothing except hope to cling to, and “hope springs eternal.”
Not having even an acknowledgment from Tim of the letter just quoted
above, I decided to take what had been in my head as the next step if
I met disappointment on all side. Perhaps, after all, I was wrong, and
it was right for me to suffer, and forfeit for my daughter all hope
of being aided substantially by those who were her father’s people. I
would seek the counsel and judgment of one who was surely eminently
qualified to advise me, and I would frankly ask him exactly where he
felt my duty toward my child lay. He was my sweetheart’s friend. He was
a statesman. He was an Ohioan. And I would go to _him_.
_166_
So, under date of May 15th, 1926, I wrote to the Vice-President of the
United States, Charles G. Dawes, as follows:
“Brigadier-General Charles G. Dawes,
Washington, D. C.
MY DEAR SIR:
There is a matter of grave importance which I would very much like to
discuss briefly with you.
It concerns an individual in whom a mutual friend of yours and of mine
was intensely interested.
Inasmuch as it is a matter both private and personal, it is impossible
of discussion with your secretary or anyone else who might represent
you in ordinary affairs of business.
Will you be good enough to grant me a brief interview?
Respectfully,
(MISS) NAN BRITTON”
I would go to him as soon as he replied to my letter, and I was sure
he would reply in the affirmative and grant me an interview. Even
though he were the Vice-President, he would be accessible to a citizen
of the United States if that citizen could produce a letter of such
friendliness as that which I would show him I had received back in 1917
from Mr. Harding. I was entirely unafraid to discuss my matter for
Elizabeth Ann with anyone, even the King of England, and I would put it
squarely to General Dawes as to whether he thought I had asked for more
than was Elizabeth Ann’s due when I requested from the Hardings $50,000
for her. I would explain to him that I was willing to continue carrying
my own indebtedness _if I could obtain justice for my child and Warren
Harding’s_. Tim Slade had said Mr. Dawes had been willing to help raise
a fund for Elizabeth Ann, and, though I did not understand Tim’s sudden
curtailment of the discussion of his plans in this respect, I would
straighten it all out in General Dawes’ mind when I saw him.
Tim had said to me that he had not divulged my identity to the various
men with whom he had talked, but Miss Harding’s letter to me, in
which she said her husband had learned the story from Hoke Donithen,
had inclined me to believe that perhaps Tim had forgotten in some
instances to be discreet. In the case of my letter written to General
Dawes, I was sure that the letter itself, with correct signature, would
immediately attach itself in the mind of Mr. Dawes to the story Tim had
told him, no matter how much or how little of it he was acquainted with.
On May 20th, five days after I had mailed the letter to General Dawes,
I received from Tim Slade a check for $100, and a note saying that he
had been away; to let him know how things were; and he would be over
the first week in June.
My indebtedness to Tim Slade was thereby increased to a total of
$327.50. That was the last money I received from him, and I have been
endeavoring vainly to repay him ever since.
When Tim came over the first week in June, he telephoned me at my
office and I promised to meet him at the Waldorf. One of the first
things I said to him was, “Tim, I wrote to General Dawes.” “Yes, I
know,” answered Tim. I was immensely interested. “Oh, how did _you_
know? My letter was short, and I asked him for an interview.” “What
did you do that for?” Tim queried. Tim had talked with Mr. Dawes after
the latter had received my note, he told me. I reiterated that there
was nothing in my letter which would give Mr. Dawes a clue to what my
errand would be unless he connected my name with the story, which
was in truth what I had hoped he would do. “Yes, I know, _I saw the
letter_,” were Tim’s words. Then Tim told me how the Vice-President had
called him over to his office and had handed him a bunch of letters,
saying, “Tim, here is a bunch of letters. Look through them, and if you
see any that interest you, take them out.” And Tim had looked through
and had found my letter and had taken it out and destroyed it. I
recalled how Tim had told me in an early discussion that Mr. Dawes had
said to him that his name “must not be known in this,” in case he, Mr.
Dawes, contributed to the fund which Tim hoped to raise for Elizabeth
Ann.
Tim told me upon this visit that he had seen Mr. Brush and the latter
had promised to go to Marion and to talk with all of the Hardings,
and Tim said he was sure something would come of such an interview.
He asked me to bring Elizabeth Ann down to the Waldorf the following
evening for dinner so that he might see her. This I did, and Tim said
several times during the evening that he could see “the Harding” in
her. As for Elizabeth Ann, she had played hard that day, and was a bit
tired that evening and fidgety at the table, but she kissed Tim when he
left us at the corner that night where we waited for the bus, and she
told him she had enjoyed her dinner with him. Tim said, “I’m glad you
did, dear.”
_167_
Meanwhile, in my home, my mother was awaiting my pleasure before making
definite plans for herself for the summer, and I did not want to admit
to myself as yet that I had failed to obtain substantial enough help
from the Hardings to enable me to carry on and keep Elizabeth Ann. But
I had to admit that it looked as though our little home would have to
be disrupted and I would have to appeal once more to my sister to take
Elizabeth Ann back.
[Illustration: _Drawn by_ ELIZABETH ANN--Mother’s Day, June 9, 1926]
I had read somewhere about the coming services in connection with the
laying of the cornerstone of The Harding Memorial in Marion, Ohio,
and I had written to obtain a descriptive leaflet about it. I noticed
that on the back of the leaflet were the officers and trustees of the
Memorial, among whom appeared at least four names of men who, I knew,
were acquainted, through Tim Slade, with part, if not all, of my story.
These men were George B. Christian, Jr., Vice-President Charles G.
Dawes, D. Richard Crissinger, and Hoke Donithen, all having been listed
as officers for The Harding Memorial in some capacity--all reckoned
friends of Mr. Harding.
I mailed Tim Slade this leaflet about the Memorial and the ceremony
programs, and wrote him that I wished I could attend. If only I could
obtain the necessary funds to make the trip, I would go to Marion, to
be there for the services, and while there I would “round up” in some
way the people who were attending and taking part in those ceremonies.
These, combined with the Hardings themselves, who, I was sure, would be
in attendance, I would ask in Warren Harding’s name to listen to me,
and to take some action in behalf of Warren Harding’s child. And, so
desperate was I, and so sick in mind and body, I even meditated upon
interrupting the ceremony itself, speaking publicly for the child of
her father, Warren Harding, whose memory could be better perpetuated by
providing for her welfare than by building million-dollar memorials in
his honor.
However, I did not have the necessary funds, and inasmuch as I heard
nothing from Tim I knew he was unwilling to finance such a trip for
me--although not to hear from Tim was an old story. Also, I was
physically unfit to contemplate such a journey as that and the nervous
strength it would demand. And so, while indignation and bitterness
surged hot within me, I continued to hope, and, in less rebellious
mood, to pray.
_168_
Meanwhile, having managed to pay something on my rent, I was holding
the apartment, trying to see in some direction financial alleviation
and the possibility of making a home through the summer for Elizabeth
Ann. My sister wrote that if I could not take care of her they would
of course motor out and get her, and the trip would provide them with
a vacation. But to these notes I made evasive replies, clinging to my
hope of hearing from the Hardings. But I did not hear, and the second
week of June rolled around. I was compelled to advise my landlady that
I would be unable to occupy the apartment that summer, and I ran an ad
in the _Times_ for a summer occupant to carry on my lease.
Under date of June 14th, 1926, I received a note from Daisy Harding.
The note had been posted from Hillsboro, Ohio, through which town
she must have been motoring, though it was headed in Miss Harding’s
handwriting, “Troy, Ohio.” It contained a money order for another $40.
The note itself was only a few lines. The $40, she wrote, might help in
defraying my monthly expenses. She supposed I was moving to a suburb,
where she was sure we would all be happier. This letter was signed,
“Hastily, Lewis.”
So it had come to this! She must sign her letters just plain “Lewis,”
and that disguisedly, so that it could be taken for the name of a man
if seen! Oh, how pitiful it all was! Miss Harding, who really wanted
to help me, had apparently succumbed to other members of her family
and was following their probable advices to be careful. The attempt to
disguise her signature was the final proof to me of their fear of the
entire situation. I had many, many letters from Miss Harding, and one
needed only to put the handwriting of the body of the letters side by
side to know that they had been written by the selfsame person. It was
as impossible for her to disguise her writing as it had been impossible
for her brother Warren to do so in the few instances which seemed to
demand his attempt in that direction. How deplorable the situation that
she should feel herself confronted with the _necessity_ for disguise
in order to insure protection. It was such an admission in itself. An
admission which spoke eloquently of responsibility deliberately ignored.
It seemed I had failed all around to sponsor Elizabeth Ann’s cause
successfully: In the first place my marriage had been a disappointment
and a failure; my approach to the Hardings had fallen flat except in
the case of the $800 altogether which Miss Harding had supplied; Tim
Slade had apparently failed in his attempts in behalf of my daughter;
and even the Vice-President of the United States, assuming that he knew
the truth, had failed to see in my situation enough of importance or
merit to warrant his serious consideration or kindly help.
Therefore, it seemed up to me to fight almost single-handedly--and what
mother is there in the world who, loving her child as dearly as I loved
the child Warren Harding and I had given to each other, would dare to
deny that it was my sacred duty now, all things having failed, to fight
for her rights, even to disregarding the sensibilities of those who had
ignored and neglected _her_!
_169_
But, in seeking the right method of solving Elizabeth Ann’s problem for
her, I realized that mere speed was impracticable where right motives
prompted, and I was forced to admit to myself that nothing could be
accomplished in time to enable me to keep Elizabeth Ann with me through
the summer of 1926.
I was determined to write again to Elizabeth and Scott, but had not
actually done so, when they dropped in upon us one Sunday afternoon,
having motored through from Ohio. In view of existing circumstances,
their appearance in New York seemed almost to indicate actual
divination, and I was secretly grateful for whatever decisions had
resulted in their making the trip East. They explained that they had
given up the idea of going to Chicago for the summer and planned
instead to go to the Willits farm in Illinois (Scott’s people’s farm),
making use of the quiet and leisure there for music practice in
preparation for their fall work.
I had not had up until then, and did not have after their arrival, any
discussion with Elizabeth and Scott of my attempts to date to establish
Elizabeth Ann’s claim upon the Hardings, and they made ready to start
back West, with my baby, after a few days’ visit. Again I was left
alone. Again I had been forced to give her up.
I had experienced many heart-breaks in having to part with my daughter,
but up to that time they had been, like the black clouds of a thunder
storm, mentally devastating to me only so long as I permitted myself
to see only the clouds. When I saw beyond their obscuration, the
sun, which was the glory of my child ultimately restored to me, then
my heartaches, like the clouds, disappeared. Mental indecisions and
temporary discouragements gave way to renewed purpose and heartfelt
anticipation. I was a crusader of a great Right,--_the right of every
sane and loving mother to possess her own child_.
But now, as I stood on the sidewalk, dry-eyed, waving goodbye to my
child and answering the kisses which she blew to me through the small
rear window of the motor car, I scarcely dared to think. Was I really
a crusader after all? Was there aught to assuage the grief of a mother
who had struggled against odds to hold her child and had failed? Was
there a ray of hope to light the coming day? Must I return again
to emptiness, to loneliness, to sorrow, to pain? Was it right that
_they_, who had never known the glory of my sweetheart’s smile as a
father, should deny his daughter her birthright as a Harding? Did God
give only to deprive? No! “Every mountain shall be made low and every
valley shall be exalted.” Wherefore, then, Pride? I must be humble.
Resentment? I must forgive! Hatred? I must love. Retaliation? “Do good
to them which despitefully use you.” And even as I struggled to give
these healing thoughts an abiding place in my consciousness, there came
before me the face of him I love, and clearly I saw his lips move, and
heard the incomparably sweet voice--“Courage, dearie!”
_170_
I haven’t a great deal to add to my story. The futility of pressing the
Hardings for recognition of their brother’s child was clearly apparent
to me. I gradually drew the sympathies of several men and women of
standing, who felt that I had a distinct cause to sponsor, and their
advices from then on have been for the most part followed.
Shortly after the departure of my sister and her husband and my child
came a request from my landlady to vacate the apartment we had been
occupying, because I had been unable to meet the full rent the previous
month and could not promise a definite day of payment. I had been frank
to tell her so.
My mother had found employment on Long Island for the summer. I was
forced to take a single room again. This I did, being able to secure
the same one-room-and-bath which I had occupied the previous summer,
within walking distance from my office. However, I felt very badly
about not being able to finish the payment of my rent, and once more,
having this and many other obligations to meet, I wrote Tim Slade under
date of June 26, 1926, as follows:
“This month finds me terribly in need of help. Many disappointing
things have happened since you were here. I seem to be eternally
slated for disappointments.”
I heard nothing, however, from Tim, and determined then that I would
never again approach him for help he was in no wise obligated to give.
On July 2nd came another $40 from Daisy Harding, this time enclosed
in an envelope with no accompanying letter. It was in the form of a
cashier’s check from the Marion County Bank Company. I wrote to Miss
Harding and thanked her sincerely for the check. I applied it upon
“back bills” immediately.
_171_
The work I was doing turned my thoughts toward literary effort, and I
found myself once more attempting to write. The necessary funds were
not forthcoming for a night summer course in literature at Columbia,
and anyway the heat was not conducive to comfortable journeying uptown
every third night. But I rented a typewriter and spent my evenings
creatively at home. This was a great source of relaxation mentally, and
on warm nights, when it seemed too sultry to retire, I would become
oblivious to the heat and to fatigue as I sat before my typewriter,
balancing this line and that, searching the dictionary for suitable
synonyms, or turning to my beloved Keats for poetic atmosphere and
delicacy of word manipulation.
Naturally the themes of my thoughts were my love for Warren Harding and
my love for our child. It was upon such a night that I sat before my
typewriter, reminiscently fondling my child and dwelling in the memory
of her father, and wrote my visions into a poem. I had sat dreaming for
hours before I touched the typewriter keys, but when I began to write
at one o’clock in the morning, and lost myself in juggling lovingly the
words which would best convey my thoughts, I felt, when a distant clock
struck four, that I had really written some worth-while lines.
My belief was confirmed later by _The New York Times_ poetry editor,
who accepted and published the poem within ten days after I had made up
my mind to send it to him. This was, however, not until late August.
It was published in the _Times_ of August 30th, 1926, under a partial
_nom de plume_--“Ninon Britton.” For this poem I received a check from
the _Times_ for $20 which I promptly had photostated, because it was
the first money I had ever received for literary effort. The editor
changed my title, “Her Eyes,” to “The Child’s Eyes.” The lines follow:
THE CHILD’S EYES
Sometimes her eyes are blue as deep sea-blue,
And calm as waters stilled at evenfall.
I see not quite my child in these blue eyes,
But him whose soul shines wondrously through her.
Serene and unafraid he was, and knew
How to dispel the fears in other hearts,
Meeting an anxious gaze all tranquilly:
These are her father’s eyes.
Sometimes her eyes are blue--the azure blue
Of an October sky on mountain-tops.
I do not see my child in these blue eyes;
They are the eyes of him whose spirit glowed
With happiness of soul alone which lies
Far deeper than the depths of bluest eyes--
Whose smile a thing of joy it was to see:
These eyes, this smile, are his.
Sometimes her eyes are of a tired gray-blue,
Filled with the sadness of an age-old world.
And then again my child’s not in these eyes;
These are the eyes of one whom grief assailed,
Whom disappointment crushed with its great weight.
Around his head a halo memory casts,
Reflecting that refiner’s fire which purged
Him clean, and made him what he was.
Sometimes in child-amaze and wonder-blue
Her baby eyes are lifted up to mine.
These only are the eyes she brought with her.
And so I fold her close within my arms
And talk of dolls, and stars, and mother-love,
For well I know that pitifully soon
She will be grown, and then her eyes will hold
Only the deeper lights--his own eyes knew!
--_Reprinted by permission of The New York Times._
[Illustration: A favorite portrait]
_172_
Those who have not known Warren Harding intimately--and I feel with
all gratitude and humbleness that I was privileged to know him more
intimately than any other human being--cannot fully appreciate those
“deeper lights” of his eyes. They were expressive of the heights
of every emotion experienced by a human heart, and of the greatest
sadnesses ever written into the life of a man. I have read in their
depths these as well as varying intermediate expressions. When he
spoke to me of our child there was in his eyes the longing for open,
acknowledged fatherhood, and my heart cried out against the cruelties
of both the political and social orders which prevented Warren G.
Harding from ever once looking into the eyes of his own little girl.
The great pity of it! The injustice of a man-made law which would
impose the necessity for renunciation of a desire so natural, so fine,
and so normally impelling as that implanted in his heart as her parent!
“Nan darling,” he would say, “I find myself longing to take little
girls in my arms. I never used to feel so deeply moved,” and with this
sweet confession there was wistfulness and pathos in his eyes. And so,
on the way home from my visits to the White House, I would resolve that
he _should_ see her, even if I had to take her at Easter-time when
_all_ little children were permitted to play and roll eggs on the White
House lawn. He might even pick her up and fondle her unremarked!
In my Harding book of clippings the following appears in a paper of
March 28, 1921, a few days after Easter:
“President Harding was a witness of the happy childhood panorama
before him, and he took part in a pretty incident shortly before the
gates were opened to the children.
“Little Winifred Hiser, six years old, in a new spring dress, and
bearing on her arm a basket of eggs, waited in the walk leading from
the White House to the executive offices. She is a daughter of an
employe of the boiler rooms. As she stood there the President came
down the path to his office, intent on starting his daily work.
“Perhaps she epitomized for the President the great crowd of children
which shortly were to shout and run and laugh through the grounds.
President Harding bent down and kissed the little maid twice, and
asked her about the fine time she was going to have.”
But such an experience for his own little girl never seemed possible.
It might have, but for Fear, that monster that hounded us continually,
and finally made him I loved the victim of its vicious poisoning. Fear
of exposure! Fear of the Republican Party! Fear of the Democratic
Party! Fear of society’s condemnation! Fear of our respective families!
Fear of a national scandal! Yes, fear it was that stayed the hand of
Warren Harding, and fear it was that prevented the realization of the
holy dream I had visualized as sweetheart and mother. I used to think
that if only I could see her go on his lap, and hear him talk to her
in the kindly, sweet voice I used to hear him use when he talked with
children everywhere, I would be the proudest and most completely happy
woman in God’s world. It made my throat ache so terribly just to think
of the apparent hopelessness of my hopes. It made the whole attempt at
secrecy so unworthwhile, so really _wrong_, so unnecessary! And, above
all, so futile in the face of its unfair demands upon us.
_173_
Upon completion of the poem, “The Child’s Eyes,” before I had submitted
it for publication, I sent Daisy Harding a copy, but I included no
letter and made no comment. Under date of July 16th, 1926, I received
a letter from her which in tone differed from some of her recent
communications. It was more like the _real_ Daisy Harding I know and
love.
She wrote that as she finished reading my poem she both thought and
said aloud, “beautiful!” “Perhaps it is in the full of poetry your
talent lies. Real poetry must come through true inspiration and it is
evident, very evident, in this one,” she wrote. Other paragraphs were
taken up with discussion of her doings, mainly, she wrote, in getting
back her health. She said frankly that she was glad I appreciated the
money she had been sending me each month because she denied herself to
send it. The investments she had made had not turned out at all well
and she and her husband were having “many blue hours” over them. Would
I please send her Elizabeth’s address? “I see where Alice Copeland
has sued for divorce. Unfortunate,” was a piece of information which
interested me. Alice Copeland (Guthery) was a schoolmate of mine,
daughter of a prominent Marion lawyer. She it was who said to me
in November of 1920, when I went to Marion simultaneously with Mr.
Harding’s overwhelming-majority election, “Nan, do you remember when we
were kids in school you used to say Warren Harding would be President?”
_Did_ I remember!...
I was riding in Marion with this same Alice Copeland one day back in
our Freshman high school days in 1910. Alice was driving the electric
runabout which always identified her those days. We passed the Warren
Harding home on Mt. Vernon Avenue. Alice observed my excitement with
relish: Mr Harding sat with his wife on their front porch! Having
passed the house once, she proceeded to turn around to pass it the
second time. And, as Mr. and Mrs. Harding smiled again and waved,
Alice said to me, “There he is, Nan! There’s your hero! Look at
him--quick!... Nan, why don’t you ‘set your cap’ for Mr. Harding
anyway? You’re so crazy about him ... and Mrs. Harding is sick most of
the time!” Alice always meant these things to be amusing and we all
accepted them in the spirit in which they were said. But I never forgot
that, and one time I repeated it to Mr. Harding. He smiled and said,
“Well, you ‘got’ me all right, you darling!”
_174_
On July 22nd, 1926, I answered Daisy Harding’s letter:
“DEAREST MISS HARDING:
It was indeed gratifying to read that you liked the poem. I don’t want
you ever to forget that it was under your instruction that I developed
a love of poetry and literature; and I love you for having made so
attractive to me the work I now want to do....
You will be sorry to learn that I could not continue my winter regime
through the summer, but had to allow E. A. to return with Elizabeth
and Scott when they motored out. My landlady requested that I vacate
because I could not meet my rent, which I am still endeavoring to
liquidate.
For your information, I might say that unless the knowledge has
reached them from some other source, Elizabeth and Scott are entirely
ignorant of the fact that I have ever talked with you or other
members of your family on the subject of E. A., and unless you have
a particular reason for wishing to acquaint E. and S. with the
situation, I would suggest that it might be well not to tell them; it
was, however, Elizabeth’s suggestion to me long ago that I tell you,
but before doing so I had to persuade myself deliberately that it was
what _he_ would want me to do, and I did not advise them when I did
so. Moreover, I am, as you know, ... Elizabeth Ann’s legal guardian
until she becomes of age, and as such I should be the sole individual
to be consulted. This simplification of responsibility is very
agreeable to me as a mother.
The paragraph immediately preceding has been a bit difficult for me to
phrase, but I know you will understand my spirit in the matter. You
will probably be glad to know that E. A. is to be on the farm this
summer, because it would have been quite outside the realm of the
possible for me personally to afford the country for her--this summer.
Elizabeth may be addressed at Keithsburg, Illinois, care of A. L.
Willits....
Too bad about Alice Guthery; but what is better than separation where
there is discord?...
The other night I dined with one of the men about whom I spoke to you
in March, and he tells me he has apparently lost $50,000, more or
less, in Florida--but that he has well-grounded hopes of recovering
it. It seems everybody just has to “hang on.” I certainly hope that
the natural resources and realities of the State, and their natural
development in spite of the temporary setback due to florid
speculation, may enable you to realize satisfactorily on all the money
you have put in down there.
[Illustration]
With love to you ever, and hoping to hear from you as the impulse
comes to write, I am,
Affectionately yours,
NAN”
Perhaps the letter I received from Daisy Harding on August 9th in
answer to the foregoing might not have aroused in me the rebellious
spirit I felt had it not epitomized the pitiful futility of attempting
to argue for right for right’s sake when a false sense of right
satisfies a people enslaved by a superficial conventionality. _The
social fundamentals were all wrong._
In this letter, Daisy Harding voiced unconsciously the probable
negative decision of the whole Harding family toward my situation, as
well as the attitude of our whole country toward unwedded mothers and
their children.
“I do hope you can make, some day, a name for yourself,” she wrote.
“Then you will have something to offer her for what you have denied
her ... she must suffer, and suffer deeply and bitterly when she knows
all....” I stared back at these sentences which seemed to stand out in
the letter, taunting me with their cruel injustice. “... _something
to offer her for what you have denied her_”! Why, all _I_ had denied
my child was the knowledge of her parentage, and the privilege that
knowledge carried of openly bestowing upon my child the love only a
mother is capable of bestowing. And this latter denial on my part
would cease as soon as the Hardings recognized and assumed their just
obligation toward their brother’s child. She wrote as though I might be
a common woman, one whose life did not justify the role of motherhood,
a woman who must redeem herself through fame before she could merit the
God-given gift of her child!
My daughter “suffer” when she learned that she was the beloved child of
a love-union between her mother and the 29th President of the United
States! There does not live the person who could convince me of that,
and I am willing to undertake the responsibility of rearing my child,
even in her extreme youth, _with the full knowledge of who she is_,
for it will not lessen by one jot the love which she bears to me--her
mother.
“I am so glad you let E. A. go to her grandmother’s ... if she were
my child I’d let stay there for the next two years. I believe _he_
would say the same....” Keep her in the country, away from me, for two
years! A cruel suggestion! That my sweetheart, who had been willing,
yea, eager to do anything in his power to enable me to be with my baby
and to have her with me, would concede that his sister’s suggestion
was the right thing was in my eyes only a pitiful thought to prop an
argument which had been born of a frightened mind, and was in truth a
mere apology for failure on the part of all the Hardings to act fairly
toward Elizabeth Ann.
Miss Harding said my child should have the “quiet, fresh air and
childish freedom” the country affords. This was exactly my idea, as
it would be the idea of any mother, but _I wanted to be with her_,
and this the Hardings were unwilling to make possible to me. I had
therefore been obliged to let her go away from me because I myself was
unable to provide those things which I knew were for her good.
Miss Harding’s query in this letter as to how the money had been
transferred to my sister Elizabeth was entirely superfluous in view
of the fact that I had made it very plain to her and to her brother
that all monies had been transferred through me, personally, from
Mr. Harding to my sister and her husband. As a matter of fact, I had
_insisted_ upon this myself as my idea of added protection to Mr.
Harding. I had even given his brother, Dr. Harding, the dates of
certain cancelled vouchers, for which he asked during our interview.
“Was the money sent through some bank in Ohio?” Miss Harding inquired
in her letter. This was evidently why she had asked for Elizabeth’s
address--to make the inquiry direct to her. Even then there was current
gossip which touched some of the government officials in high places
when Mr. Harding was President. Was her query instigated by those who
themselves would not ask me direct, but sought to allay their fears
through information I might give to Miss Harding? I had no way of
knowing.
Her letter contained another sentence which hurt me but at the same
time aroused in me more resentment than I had known during the whole
course of my appeal to the Hardings. She wrote, “I heard of a case
the other day, where a woman of means thought she could defy the
conventions, but she is realizing now what it means to her son....” To
quote to me an example of what a “woman of means” was realizing through
her indulgence in unconventionality was highly grotesque when at that
very minute I was staggering under the weight of bills long overdue,
even to being unable to send my sister any money toward my child’s fall
clothes. The utter incongruity of a situation where there existed an
amplitude of funds, as was evident with the “woman of means,” and my
own situation, where I was unable to meet the rent for the apartment
which was sheltering the child of Warren G. Harding, is apparent
without any comment from me.
Nor had I, up to that time, even attempted to “defy the conventions”
_openly_! In what way could I more meekly have conducted myself,
both in the expenditure of nervous energy required to protect the
great-hearted man I loved, and, in the later days after his death, in
my efforts to carry on alone and practically unaided, that I might not
be obliged to go to the Hardings and request to have the situation
righted. This would have been justified, even while my daughter’s
father lived, _had mere money been my paramount consideration_. Open
defiance of conventions could have yielded me no greater suffering than
had the growing realization of the hypocrisy which calls itself Justice
and marks out its path according to its own narrow-minded limitations.
Daisy Harding, I am sure, did not believe to be true certain things
which she wrote--unconscious imputations of past wrong-doing on my
part--for she herself had spoken her true feeling when, upon my first
revelations to her, she had said, “Why, Nan, I’ll bet that was brother
Warren’s greatest joy!” _That_ was the _real_ Daisy Harding speaking.
And this sentiment so early and frankly expressed by her would be the
sentiment of all who dare to speak truthfully.
The signature of this letter was merely “Lewis,” written in a somewhat
different hand and with paler ink. When I came to look at it closely
and realized anew how terrified people become who are afraid to face
situations and refuse to stand for Right, the bitter resentment I felt
because of her insinuations gave place to pity.
_175_
What a sorry state of affairs for the greatest country on earth! The
Harding attitude was but the universal social attitude toward all
unwedded mothers: that they have sinned against society and must suffer
the penalty. Indeed, do not ministers all over the country preach
this to a public willing to accept it, because, in most individual
instances, either temptation has not been experienced or else, being
experienced and indulged, has not resulted in actual childbirth? And so
this attitude is generally accepted as Right.
My own situation, which differed and was distinguished only because
it concerned the child of a man who had been placed in the highest
position the greatest republic in the world can offer, led me to the
conclusion that it was high time it was righted, and that little
children should be recognized, not for their parental origin, but for
themselves and _as having every right to legitimacy_, and to every
opportunity that would be theirs if they had been born under the yoke
of legal marriage.
In the chapter entitled “Social Justice,” in Warren G. Harding’s book,
“Our Common Country,” he says: “It will not be the America we love
which will neglect the American mother and the American child.”
If every man, woman and child were to ask this question: “Would
_I_ like to suffer ignominy, neglect, social slights, and unfair
recognition because _my_ mother and father had not been linked by
the bonds of conventional wedlock?” I am sure that the vehemence of
the united “NO!” would resound to the farthest corners of the country,
and that a people, drawn together through great human sympathy and
Christlike forgiveness, would unite to wipe out every stain upon the
motherhood of a nation through measures designed to _protect and honor
every mother’s child_!
[Illustration: The author in 1926]
There would then be laws governing such protective rights, there would
be frank and unashamed admission of fatherhood, and there would be
abstinence of indulgence where there existed unwillingness to make
such admissions, and equal advantages for the so-called illegitimate
as well as the legitimate; and there would be no more shifting of
responsibility upon the mother or upon her family.
And if I could, through my revelations, cause my daughter, as well as
thousands of potential mothers in the world, to recognize the gross
injustice humanity imposes through adherence to a social ruling which
is doing nothing in the right direction and much in the wrong, then,
indeed, we would have an array of intelligence raised against the
present system, in whose place would be demanded such legal measures as
would banish forever the heart-break of myriad lovers and their true
love-children.
I would not change the world. I would not preach recognition of
indiscriminate indulgence where admission of parenthood is denied. I
would not ask anything which is not humanly and divinely right and
possible. But I would, if it were within my humble prerogative and
power, as the mother of Warren Gamaliel Harding’s only child, open the
eyes of those blinded through adherence to hypocrisies which are basely
unfair, and I would bear the glorious fact of what constitutes true
birth legitimacy--which, in a word, is _love_.
_176_
It would have availed nothing to answer Daisy Harding’s letter. Had
there existed the slightest intention on the part of the Hardings to
take up the problem left unsolved by their lamented brother, I would
long before this have learned of their intentions. Nor would my failure
to answer this last letter of Miss Harding’s have debarred them from
concluding whatever plans they were advancing toward the upkeep and
maintenance of their niece.
Warren Harding’s empty wallet, given me by his sister, Carrie Votaw,
was indeed a symbol, unconscious and voiceless. But to me it spoke
eloquently of the universal empty pity, empty sympathy, empty love.
My not answering Miss Harding’s letter provided escape for all. So far
as I was concerned the whole Harding attitude had been summed up in the
last paragraph of Miss Harding’s letter, “I should like to have sent
you some money ... but I couldn’t ... on account of bills I had to pay.”
I would not have felt justified in ever approaching the Harding family
had not that very source of income which had fallen, for the most
part at least, into the hands of those who had not known it before
his death, been the one from which Mr. Harding had drawn the monthly
allowance which he gave into my hands for the care of our child. Surely
my child and his had a title as clear as that of his brothers and
sisters to the generosity he had shown in making his will--a title as
clear as the worded legacies which bore Mr. Harding’s signature.
I know nothing whatever about Mr. Harding’s will as it actually stands.
I have never inquired into it. I am ignorant also of what has gone
on about me since the revelation of my story to certain individuals,
except as I have stated it in this book. My fact-story is set down
just as the events occurred. The intimate details of Mr. Harding’s
death are also shrouded in mystery except as the papers gave them
forth. If I were to state my belief, I would say that his passing was
entirely untimely, and could have been avoided as truly as could the
necessity for this story have been avoided had the laws of the United
States provided for the legal protection and social equalization of all
children.
According to materia medica, Warren Harding died as the direct result
of a cerebral hemorrhage and indirectly from ptomaine poisoning. But
I, the mother of his only child, have never for one moment entertained
such a thought. I believe that under the burden of fatherhood which he
revered but dared not openly confess, combined with the responsibility
of the welfare of the nation he loved, the twenty-ninth President of
the United States truly laid down his life for his people. He died
of a broken heart. And through the voice of the child he loved may
there arise a diviner and more lasting memorial to his memory than any
reared by human hands,--the answer to the plea from the heart of a
mother,--_social justice for all little children_!
THE END
[Illustration]
* * * * *
Transcriber’s note
Typographical and punctuation errors have been silently corrected.
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