Chapter VI: Part 6

“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.

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.

_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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

_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.

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.