Chapter XIV: Part 14

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.