Chapter III: Part 3

Some time later, upon the occasion of one of his visits, Mr. Harding told me that he had found out something he had not then known: namely, that a member of the House of Representatives or of the United States Senate cannot be detained for any reason whatsoever when he is enroute to Washington to serve the people. At the time of our almost tragic adventure Mr. Harding had been “enroute,” for he had stopped to be with me in New York on his way back to Washington from some city where he had delivered an address.

Shortly after that, a week or ten days probably, he came over again. We took a taxi ride. Mr. Harding asked the taxi man where we could find a nice, quiet place where we could feel assured of not being disturbed. I shall never forget how much fun we had over this drive. The taxi driver nodded and turned the car into Riverside Drive. On and on we sped, and we both wondered where under the sun the place was to which he was driving us. When we reached Riverside Drive and One Hundred and something (this was before the Drive was cut through to Dyckman Street), the driver stopped the car beside a lonely wood, jumped out and disappeared into the wood. I shall never forget how funny it seemed to us. “Well,” laughed Mr. Harding, “he is an accommodating driver anyway!” In about ten or fifteen minutes the driver returned. “Say, George,” Mr. Harding said, “we want a _hotel_.” “Yes, sir,” the driver replied, without glancing around, and with every indication that he understood all along but was just carrying out a little program of his own. Back down the Drive we went and into 60th Street. He stopped in front of a hotel of his own selection, hopped out and went in and almost immediately returned. “This is all right, sir,” he said.

It was a rather shabby place but we felt fairly safe. However, in hotels of that character there was always the fear of being raided. We never had any trouble, however, and we went there several times, probably six or seven in all.

_19_

On August 11th, 1917, I received from Mr. Harding my first gift. It was a wrist-watch--a birthday present, given in advance of my twenty-first birthday because I was so in need of a time piece. With it, or rather in the same mail, came a letter from Mr. Harding. The Daniels had been informed that “Dean Renwick,” the young man I had met in Chicago and with whom I was still carrying on a desultory correspondence, had been sent to Washington on war-work (though he had not), and I named him as the donor of the wrist-watch. However, they always accused me of having received it from Mr. Harding, I suppose because the letter accompanying its receipt was obviously from him, bearing the United States Senate return. Mrs. Daniels always inspected the mail carefully.

The letter I received was written merely for me to show because I had told Mr. Harding that I wished he would write something I could show to Mr. Close. He therefore wrote this, and sometime later another, which formal letters, in view of the many love-letters I was receiving, were jokes to us.

The above-mentioned letter stated that he had seen Mr. Filbert of the United States Steel Corporation when the latter was in Washington, and had been told by him that I was doing nicely in the Welfare Department and “promised to become a most valuable addition to their force.” Mr. Harding also wrote, “I hope you like the place as much as he reports liking you, and ... find it a desirable avenue to an agreeable career.... _Making good_ counts with them.” Then he assured me of his very best wishes for my success and, which made me smile affectionately, “the happiness which goes with it.” He knew that our love for each other provided the abundance of that happiness.

I received a good many letters from Mr. Harding at the Steel Corporation. He usually sent them in plain envelopes. He used blue envelopes very frequently; these were of very tough fibre but not weighty. His letters varied in length from one to sixty pages. He wrote me a great deal, he said, sitting within hearing distance of the Senate proceedings. And I received a special delivery letter almost every Sunday morning, for which my landlady usually signed. What glorious awakenings those Sunday morning letters used to bring!

In the fall--in November of 1917--I moved next door to 611 West 136th Street, and from then until the spring of 1919 I lived with Mr. and Mrs. P. J. Johnson, as I shall call them. I am sure Mrs. Johnson often wondered who my “man of mystery” was. The one and only picture on my dresser was the photograph of Mr. Harding which he had sent me while I was still living with the Carters. Naturally I stayed out all night with him and I am sure Marie Johnson never believed I was staying with “one of the girls” as I used to tell her.

One evening I walked into my rather exclusive boarding-place, which was at 136th Street and Riverside Drive in a private apartment. About twenty people ate there, among them the former wife of Carlyle Blackwell, the moving-picture actor, and several girl friends of mine. One of the girls called out to me, “Oh, Nan, I saw you at the Grand Central Station this afternoon with a stunning iron-gray haired man. How you were hanging on his arm! What I know about _you_! I knew who he was, all right!” I probably blushed, but there was nothing left for me to do but admit it. Afterward I doubted her statement for I don’t think Mr. Harding was very well-known then in New York. Mr. Harding had been obliged to return to Washington at four that afternoon, which accounted for the fact that I was dining at my boarding-place that evening.

I always loved my room at the Johnson’s. The room I occupied at Daniels’ next door had been one right off the kitchen, the maid’s room really, and the one I secured at Johnson’s was larger, far better furnished, and lighted by electricity instead of gas as the former room had been. The Johnsons were young, very attractive, and heartily in sympathy with my love-affair, though in the two years I lived with them I could not introduce them to my “mysterious sweetheart.”

Next to my bed stood a good-sized table on which I wrote to my beloved. There was a reading lamp with a shade of yellow and green. Above the table hung a large oval mirror. My letter-writing oftentimes extended into the early morning hours and there was something companionable about sitting there with my reflection. Not only was it companionable but it was satisfying to glance more than occasionally into the mirror and smile at the girl who smiled back at me knowing, as I knew, that she was the sweetheart of the man who was to me easily the most desirable man in all the world. I studied the features of this girl in the mirror, studied them interestedly, minutely, to discover for myself just _why_ he had chosen to love her! Sometimes, after I had been talking most intimately to my lover on the small ruled pad before me, I would glance up and catch the soft lights in the eyes of the girl in the mirror which were the tell-tale lights of worshipping love or languishing passion. And with flushed cheeks and fast-beating heart I would bring my letter to a close, exchange exultant smiles with the girl in the mirror, and jump into bed.

_20_

It was during my visit to my mother in New Philadelphia, Ohio, her old home town where she was teaching in 1918, that I, desiring to see my mother settled in a larger city, wrote Mr. Harding for a suitable letter to use as an introduction to the Superintendent of the Cleveland Public Schools. I had talked this whole situation over with Mr. Harding in person, and the letter which I sent him from New Philadelphia was merely to advise him that I was now ready for his proffered letter of introduction in behalf of my mother. Of course I told my mother nothing about the previous talk with him.

Mr. Harding always gave me very explicit instructions, whether it was where to meet him and the hour, or, as in this case, how to proceed in a given situation, and the letter received from him, which I have before me now, clearly indicates this characteristic. With the letter to me he enclosed one to Dr. Frank T. Spaulding, then Superintendent of Public Schools in Cleveland, and one to Mr. Mark Thomson, then President of the Board of Education. The letter to Mr. Thomson has been mislaid or lost but I have retained the one addressed to Dr. Spaulding.

To me, Mr. Harding wrote more than a full-page, single-space, letter. He suggested that I apply in behalf of my mother, going to Cleveland enroute East after my vacation. He wrote that I should “speak frankly” to the Cleveland officials concerning my mother’s age. “... there may be a limitation of age in the beginning of employment of teachers under the Cleveland system,” he explained.

“I am sure you will have the tact and understanding to go into these matters quite fully in Cleveland ... if I had the opportunity of going to Ohio, I should be delighted to make a personal inquiry at Cleveland in your mother’s behalf. I do not think there is a possibility of my going to the home state until some time in July and this matter, of course, must be settled at a very early time....”

Then, in an informal, chatty tone, he wrote, “I was interested to note of your visit to Marion and hope you had an enjoyable visit there. I have not been in the old town myself since early in last February....” What fun to read these things and to know that he had only the week before received from me a letter in fullest detail about my visit to Marion, my time having been divided among his sister’s, Mrs. Sinclair’s and my chums’ homes!

I was quite accustomed to receiving lengthy letters from Mr. Harding where there were instructions to be given me, and I am afraid I paid less heed to his counsel in this case than it warranted. I always felt so confident when I attempted to gain admittance anywhere and was privileged to use his name, because I knew he would “back me up strong,” as he so often assured me. Therefore, fortified with two letters and these addressed to the principal officials in the Cleveland schools, I made ready to take my mother there immediately instead of abiding by his advice to stop there myself enroute East and make preliminary inquiry.

This matter of changing positions was entirely my own idea and not at all instigated by my mother. Mr. Harding had smiled when I explained to him, “If mother were in Cleveland she would be on a direct line from New York. New Philadelphia is so inaccessible when I take my vacations!” Considering that I made all of one or two trips a year to Ohio (!) this argument could hardly have been expected to work substantially in behalf of the desired change, but Mr. Harding always accepted tolerantly even my flimsiest reasoning. Naturally I hastened in this instance to build up my case.

When mother saw how earnestly I had sought to make possible an interview with the Superintendent of Public Schools in Cleveland, she consented reluctantly to accompany me to Cleveland. She read very carefully Mr. Harding’s letter to Dr. Spaulding. Mr. Harding had written all that was necessary, _I_ was sure, to obtain an excellent position for mother, possibly an immediate principalship! I couldn’t quite understand my mother’s persistent skepticism. In fact, she didn’t even seem enthusiastic about making the trip.... “I have known Mrs. Britton for as much as twenty years and know her to be a woman of sterling character and very notable intellectual capacity.... I have known the family for a great many years and have known of Mrs. Britton’s attainments during all of that time.... If you have a vacancy in your schools I am confident you will find her a very desirable member of your teaching staff, who is well able to give quite as satisfactory account of herself as the numerous teachers which Cleveland has taken from my home town of Marion....”

With characteristic assurance I handed this note to the gentleman into whose presence mother and I were ushered with due ceremony. He read it, I thought, with indifferent interest. When he had finished he shrugged his shoulders slightly, lifted his eyebrows, and looked from mother to me. Mother seemed embarrassed. I was not. I showed plainly that _I_ wished to represent my mother in this matter when the gentleman before us inquired frankly why mother had not applied direct. I was not used to this kind of reception! I stated for my mother that _she_ was not particularly interested in changing positions but that _I_ wanted her to teach in the Cleveland schools. And Mr. Harding, as United States Senator from Ohio, was also interested in having her placed there.

The gentleman and my mother exchanged glances. The gentleman’s eyes lighted as though with sudden comprehension. “Um.... I see!...” He turned to me. All at once, as I returned his look, I wilted inside. How well I knew the meaning of that look! It was the inevitable result of my oft-lamented little-girl appearance. I had encountered it too many times. In this instance, as in dozens of others before it, it provoked the tone of voice I deplored--the patient, explanatory, slow tone, the unmistakable talk of an elder to a child....

But, although the letter on which I had banked 100% had failed in its mission, I was entirely unwilling to recognize that the Cleveland age limit had anything whatever to do with it. I immediately fixed in my mind a descriptive noun which was sufficient to me to explain the whole situation. “Democrat!” I whispered to mother with a curl of my lips as we went down in the elevator. Poor mother! How often has she suffered in silence for her children’s whims!

And it was a long time, try as he would, that even Mr. Harding could persuade me that the fact that mother was beyond the age limit of thirty-five years disqualified her immediately for consideration as a beginning teacher in the Cleveland Public Schools.

During the years I was Mr. Harding’s sweetheart, I always, even from the first, helped my mother financially. Mr. Harding used to say, “Let’s take a taxi to such-and-such a place,” but I would say, “Let’s walk,” and he very often accused me affectionately of wanting to save that money so that I could send it to my mother. Of course it would not have been possible for me to send her anything had it not been for his generosity, and he was glad, more than glad, as he told me repeatedly, to make it possible so long as no comment was made or no wonder excited. When I started to work in the United States Steel Corporation my salary was $16, and my room rent $4 per week, and it was obviously impossible for me to do much on the balance. Mr. Harding was always interested, and very sympathetic toward the position in which my mother had suddenly found herself upon father’s death. He has often said to me, “Nan, dearest, you know how much I would like to help you to make it easier for your mother, don’t you?” I surely did. Often also he expressed the feeling that Howard, my younger brother, should be bearing the heavy load of responsibility. “He should be the bread-winner, Nan,” Mr. Harding would say to me. But “Doc,” as we called him, was scarcely more than a child, with far less sense of responsibility toward the family than had Elizabeth and I, both his seniors.

_21_

Mr. Harding’s attitude about my taking on any possible confidantes was a very decided one. From the first he begged me to keep our secret and tell it to no one. It seemed to me that he most of all warned me against my mother’s knowing. It has many times occurred to me that this solicitude on his part came from his keener wisdom about mothers in general as well as, in my particular case, his knowledge of my mother’s conventionality.

It was during our first sweetheart days, although it seems to me it was before my complete surrender to Mr. Harding, that I visited in Marion, and, with the longing to talk with someone I really loved and respected besides my beloved Mr. Harding, I put my case _hypothetically_ to his sister “Daisy.” She recalled that I had done this when I first talked with her about the whole matter in June of 1925, and she also recalled her answer which I had in the meantime, immediately after my visit with her, repeated to her brother Warren. She had said, when I asked her what _she_ would do if _she_ were in love with a man whom she could not marry, but who might want her to belong to him anyway, “Don’t do it, Nan; the world is against you; no matter how much you love each other, _don’t_!” I had repeated this to Mr. Harding. I remember he said, as he has often said about Daisy, “Dais’ is a good girl, Nan, but, dearie, _any_one would tell you _that_! Anyone would advise you against it who didn’t know how much I love you!” This intimation of his loving protection strengthened my decision that ours _was_ an exceptional case.

And he did love me too! With the first forty-page love-letter of which I have spoken and which came to me at the Colonial Hotel in Chicago in June of 1917, came also from Washington a snapshot which I have preserved, though the corners are frayed from much kissing and handling. I wrote him that I had kissed it many many times. He wrote, “Don’t waste any more kisses on a likeness, Nan, when the original yearns for your kisses.” The only thing I did not like about that cherished likeness was that he told me a woman had snapped it!

In this connection an incident occurs to me which he related to me upon one of our earlier visits. He told it to me at dinner, with reference to annoying requests from petty office seekers who employ all kinds of bribery to gain their ends.

One such individual, a man, had an even more ambitious wife, who desired to see her husband lifted to a certain post and chose Senator Harding as the intercessor. Mr. Harding said that the lady called him on the phone and requested that he stop in on his way home one evening--she wished to see him “on business.” He said he thought nothing about it and accordingly stopped at her apartment, naturally expecting to find her husband home also. The lady herself answered his ring, however, and Mr. Harding said when he followed her into the living-room he observed with bewilderment and embarrassment that she was becomingly _en negligee_, and the way in which she dropped down upon the comfortable couch and spread the flimsy folds of her negligee gracefully about her could mean but one thing. He told me with such adorable embarrassment of her frankness and of his own confusion. I can imagine well all of this because I know his innate sense of delicacy and refinement. It was probably with difficulty that he excused himself, for I am sure women of that type do not let their prey go easily. The thing of course that pleased me about the story was his assurance that he couldn’t ever “fall for” anybody but me.

I think it was late fall of 1918 when Mr. and Mrs. Harding went to Texas to visit their friends, Mr. Fred Scobey and his wife. Mr. Scobey, Mr. Harding told me, had a large warehouse in San Antonio and was rather wealthy.

I failed to hear from Mr. Harding upon the occasion of that trip South as soon as I felt I should, and so I wired him at Scobey’s, in care of the warehouse. I received a wire in return, though I have forgotten the contents, except for the love allusion. It was sent to me either at the Steel Corporation or at 611 West 136th Street. He told me later in New York how they had all gone off on an island somewhere and he just didn’t seem to have a minute to himself to write me.

_22_

Earlier that fall, on August 17, 1918, to be exact, Mr. Harding had an engagement in Plattsburg, New York, to address an audience. He wrote inviting me to come up there for the day, enclosing ample funds, and told me with his usual explicitness the exact train to take out of New York at night which would land me in Plattsburg in the morning. He stopped at a hotel which I recognized recently in a post card picture as the New Witherell. I arrived about 8.00 o’clock in the morning and went to the same hotel, registering, I believe, under the usual fictitious name of Christian.

I shall never forget how the sun was streaming in at the windows of that room in the hotel when Mr. Harding opened the door in his pajamas in answer to my rather timid knock. His face was all smiles as he closed the door and took me in his arms.

“Gee, Nan, I’m s’ glad t’ see you!” he exclaimed. I just loved the way he lapsed into the vernacular when we were alone together. My room was not far from his and I had deposited my bag before going to him. He asked all about these things--when I arrived, how I had registered, and where my room was located.

Then we planned our day. He was to speak that afternoon and gave me the direction and location of the training-ground where his address would be delivered, and explained that he would not be able to see me after the luncheon hour for the people in charge would take possession of him. But we could, he said with adorable enthusiasm, have the whole blessed morning together.

Oh, how happy that made me! There were really so few times when we could be together with a feeling of utter safety, and the sunshine, the occasion and the beauty of the place itself all pointed propitiously to a red letter day in our calendar of happiness.

I met him about half an hour later, by arrangement, in a grove near the hotel, and together we strolled toward the main street of Plattsburg and out into the country. But first Mr. Harding stopped at a corner store and bought some smokes. I was proud of the new dress I was wearing and thought Mr. Harding’s smile betrayed approval as he joined me outside the store, cigarettes in hand, and surveyed me with beaming countenance.

I accused him affectionately of having made a reconnaissance of the outskirts of the village prior to my arrival, for certainly it seemed to me he could have chosen no lovelier spot than the sunny meadow where we spent the morning. It sloped gently down to a winding stream, and on one side there was a thick wood. The ground was soft and the grass high. It was sweet to hold his head on my lap and have him just lie there looking up at the blue sky.

We were both full of loving reminiscences and future plans, and Mr. Harding included in his musings certain things bearing upon his position as senator. I realize the paucity of political allusions in this manuscript, but the reader is to remember that while he was moving in the most active governmental circles at that stressful period in the history of our country, when I was with Mr. Harding alone our conversation was not principally political but warmly personal. However, when he chose to confide his problems and little worries to me it made me very proud and I took them very seriously. Right then he was up against a problem which was causing him considerable anxiety: the folks back home had scheduled him for a speech in December, I think he said, and he was supposed to call upon some fellow senator to accompany him to Marion and make an address also.

“La Follette would be fine,” he mused with emphasis as he chewed thoughtfully on a stalk of timothy, “but he doesn’t want to do it.”

“Why?” I inquired.

“Oh, principally because he is small of stature compared with me and a bit sensitive on that score; I can understand that perfectly, although he is a convincing speaker and I think would make a sensation in Marion....”

How well I could appreciate just how keen Mr. Harding was to give our home town one of the best speakers the United States Senate could boast! I suggested with some timidity Hiram Johnson, or Borah of Idaho, both of whom I judged from my morning perusals of the New York papers were picturesque enough certainly, and seemed to make the Senate sit up and take notice. He discussed various senators ruminatively and explained patiently why he could not ask this one or that one. When I interposed certain remarks or suggestions he would smile appreciatively; I suppose there was an element of naivete about my suggestions of which I was blissfully unaware. He was quite talkative that day, telling me something of the friendship which existed between him and Mrs. Harding and the Frelinghuysens. The circumstances of our companionship that day were highly conducive to deliberate and confidential meditation, though these things interested me far less than our intimate personal discussions.

“Do you like my dress, sweetheart?” I could not help asking.

“You bet!” he replied, with admiration, sitting up to examine it more closely.

“Guess how much I--you--paid for it?” I challenged.

“Oh, I couldn’t guess, dearie. How much?”

“Thirty-five dollars!”

“Honestly, Nan?”

I nodded, with pride. That was, for war-time, quite inexpensive.

“Why, Nan,” he said, “it looks a great deal more. And it is in very excellent taste--so are the shoes and hat.”

“The hat and shoes are _good_ ones,” I informed him, “and I thought the dress such a bargain.”

“Gee, yes, Nan--why, Florence pays----”

But I was never interested to know how much Mrs. Harding paid for anything, even though I knew she must pay a great deal more for everything than I did. I was happier, I’m sure, than she ever was, and though I did not care to speak of her except to inquire casually of Mr. Harding how she was, it was from no dislike of her; for I merely felt sorry for her. For one to lose the affection of this man beside me was, to me, a loss so colossal that surely she could never find anything to take its place. I was so happy in his love.

Mr. Harding himself was never extravagant. I remember distinctly that on one occasion when I told him I had sent my “kid brother Doc” some money and confided to him that “It costs Doc $8 for a pair of shoes!” he turned to me and said, “Nan, do you know how much I pay for shoes?” I said, “No, how much?” and he answered, “I pay $5 and I have had this particular pair of shoes for two years. That is all any fellow should pay for shoes.” And that was during war-time when things were high.

I have witnessed many instances illustrative of Warren Harding’s thrift so far as he himself was concerned. He preached economy when he was President and he honestly practised economy and applied his preachments to his own daily life. Only where those dearer to him than his own life were concerned did he allow extravagance, and even then he used to chide me in a loving way for not putting away some money. It was for this reason that I began to buy steel stock, having put but $60 into it however when an urgent need of my mother caused me to draw out the money and send it to her.

I might give another incident of Mr. Harding’s ideas of fair prices. We were dining at Churchill’s. Our dinner was simple enough--chicken, I remember. It seems to me we did have one cocktail apiece before dinner. The bill was something over $15. Mr. Harding tipped the waiter $1.50. I watched his face as he counted out the money for the waiter. After the waiter had gone, he looked across at me and shrugged his shoulders. “You know, Nan, I am not penurious, but a bill like that is really ridiculous.” Then quickly the look of impatience was gone and the incident closed.

_23_

I used to love these dinners with Mr. Harding. They were so sweetly intimate, and it was a joy just to sit and look at him. The way he used his hands, the adorable way he used to put choice bits of meat from his own plate onto mine, the way he would say with a sort of tense seriousness, “That’s a very becoming hat, Nan,” or, “God, Nan, you’re pretty!” used to go to my head like wine and make food seem for the moment the least needful thing in the world.

But there was nothing whatever the matter with my appetite. Perhaps I was still adding stature at twenty, which has been known to give zest to one’s appetite. Whatever the reason, it would not be exaggerating greatly to admit that I was, at least in my own opinion, quite a young gormandizer. I remember writing to Mr. Harding, “You’re not in love with a girl--she’s a hungry little animal!”

Mr. Harding himself was, I thought, quite an epicure, despite the fact that he could enjoy plain, substantial food. Eggs were my breakfast stand-by, but invariably Mr. Harding’s query when we breakfasted together would be, “Will you have codfish cakes with me this morning, dearie?” In fact, I do not remember that he seemed to care for eggs at all. He seemed fond of honey-dew melon, I remember. He would look across the table (which seemed to me always to be at least half a mile wide!) and inquire smilingly, “How about a little orange marmalade this morning, Nan?” I never could make up my mind whether he ordered this for me because he knew I had a sweet tooth, or whether he really liked it himself; I’m inclined to the latter opinion.

But it was at dinner that Mr. Harding could play the host to great advantage so far as I was concerned. I have been introduced to many delicious dishes through Mr. Harding. Often these things, ordered by him after a side consultation with the waiter to which I hugely enjoyed listening, were served by Mr. Harding instead of by the waiter. How he seemed to love to hear me exclaim over a dish that was new to me!

The dessert course usually inclined me to an enthusiastic inspection of the menu. Mr. Harding knew this and his query, “What kind of sweets tonight, Nan?” was accompanied by a smile and the adjustment of his Oxford glasses. Then he himself would suggest, and his smile deepen as I would childishly exclaim, “Oh, yes, I just adore biscuit tortoni!” I early observed that he himself was inclined to skip this course of the dinner, and grew glad, because then he could plan our evening aloud while I acquainted myself fully with the contents of the little cup in front of me.

I remember that Mr. Harding never seemed to care for the ice-water served in hotels. I can just hear him, either at dinner, or after we had retired to the privacy of our room, instructing the attendant, “Bring me a bottle of White Rock, George.”

Mr. Harding’s table manner charmed me. I say “manner” because the plural would be taken for granted once one had seen him. With what grace he ate and talked! With his eyes upon me, it was impossible for _me_ to concentrate upon two things at one time, impossible to give the necessary heed for enjoyment to the most delicately served viands-under-glass when it was expected that I should look up and make ardent reply to an affectional question. Therefore, when I was wont to sit absorbed, I would suddenly be reminded in gentle tones that my food must be getting cold! But I have known this absorption to work mutually, when we were lost to ourselves and our surroundings in the depths of each other’s eyes.

So potent was this spell which we had for each other that for whole evenings we were its willing prisoners, living as in a dream, neither of us coming out from the intoxication of each other’s presence until long after separation. Often then we wrote to each other about it. If we were in a taxi, we would become so oblivious to the entire world we would both be amazed when we reached our destination.

I was so proud of Mr. Harding, too, for he never entered a room that all eyes were not turned in his direction. I used to think of Florence Harding, his wife, in this connection, for I knew well his fascination and could readily understand how she, or any other woman, might “run after him” as Marionites say she pursued Warren Harding before they were married, when she was Florence Kling DeWolfe, and years older than Warren Harding. I understood, for hadn’t I followed him around when I was but a child back in our home town?

_24_

One time Mr. Harding visited Senator Weeks at his place in the White Mountains along with some of the “other fellows,” as he called them, and came down to New York on his way to Washington after a season of “chopping wood.” I met him at the Grand Central Station and we dined at the Belmont Hotel, downstairs in the grill. He had had a speaking engagement which he had filled enroute to New York, and had spoken in a tent, he said. It had been dark when he made his way in through the rear entrance of the tent and he had fallen over one of the cables supporting the tent and scratched his hand terribly. He used to tell me things like this with a sort of embarrassment, as though he were ashamed of admitting them, and the very manner of telling increased my sympathy a thousandfold.

I think it was during this particular visit at Senator Weeks’ that he had become ill. He had a particularly sensitive stomach, and he had eaten too much lobster. He said they had had lobster for luncheon, and were all gathered together when the chef came in and asked Senator Weeks what it should be for dinner. Mr. Harding spoke up and said laughingly, “Lobster!” and he had been taken seriously and they had dined on lobster that night. And he had overeaten. He said he was so ill and his fears about whether or not he would recover were so great that he almost confessed his relationship with me to someone up there, in order that they might carry out his plans for a suitable settlement upon me. I never liked the idea of even talking about “settlements”; it made things seem so final.

Once I met Mr. Harding in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where he delivered an address at the local armory. I arrived there to find he had already gone on the platform. So I wrote a note and despatched it to him by messenger. He left immediately and came out to meet me in the lobby of the armory, where we stood and talked until it was time for him to go back to the platform. I remember how he instructed me to return immediately to New York after he had finished speaking, because they were taking him to the local Elks’ Club and he could not see me anyway. He used to remind me of my father in his solicitude for my getting home safely. But I waited, and after he had had time to reach the Club I phoned him and asked if I couldn’t go on over to Washington with him that night. I said I could come back the following day. “Why, dearie, they’re stopping a special train for me--a through train--and I couldn’t explain having you with me. Now you take the first train back to New York and I’ll be over soon, I promise you!” Which I did of course. And he kept his promise.

_25_

There were memorable visits to Washington. The first time I went over I went to the New Ebbitt Hotel, following Mr. Harding’s instructions, where I registered as Miss Elizabeth N. Christian. Mr. Harding came to see me and came up to my room. He took me for a long ride that afternoon in a beautiful hired touring car about the city and out along the Potomac. I well remember that car; it was grey and very beautifully upholstered and glided so smoothly along the streets while Mr. Harding pointed out places of interest to me. His boyish enthusiasm in playing host was delightful, and I am sure I was a most appreciative guest. That evening we went to his office in the Senate Building, which was then Room 314; later on he moved to Room 341, I think it was. I was in both offices I know.

On our way to the Senate Office Building, we cut through the Capitol grounds.

“Some day you will be President,” I said to him.

“Say, you darling,” he replied, “I’ve got the best job in the United States right now!” I think Mr. Harding did like being Senator.

I remember once when I was in Washington, going over Saturday and returning Sunday night, he took me on Saturday night to the theatre to see the play, “Good Morning, Judge!” That is, he took me to the _door_ of the theatre! I remember how disappointed I was when he turned to leave me after telling me to take a taxi after the performance and “get back to the hotel and into bed.” I had not asked him, but had taken it for granted he was going to the show with me. I must have forgotten I was in Washington and not in New York, where he could go around with me without so much fear of being recognized.

In New York we _did_ go to the theatre together. Sometimes he would come over, take me to the theatre and return to Washington at midnight. Mrs. Harding was ill a good deal of the time and he found it difficult to be away as much as he would have liked. Perhaps the reader may recall Woodrow Wilson’s saying to a New York theatre audience one evening, “You think you are seeing a President of the United States, but you are just seeing a tired man having a good time.” This was when he attended a performance of “Jack O’Lantern,” starring Fred Stone, at the Globe Theatre. One week later, Mr. Harding and I dined at the Biltmore and he bought tickets there for “Jack O’Lantern.” As we walked over to the theatre from the hotel, Mr. Harding said, “Guess how much these tickets cost, Nan?” and told me he had paid $5.50 apiece for them. Another instance of what he termed war-time graft. But these prices still stay!

Behind us in the theatre sat a man who seemed to recognize Mr. Harding, for I heard him speak Mr. Harding’s name and turned after awhile to look at him. Mr. Harding turned too later on, but said he did not know the man. I suggested that some day everybody would be turning to look at _him_--when he was President! In this connection I repeated to Mr. Harding what Woodrow Wilson had been quoted as having said the previous Friday night. “Well, I’ve got one over _him_!” Mr. Harding whispered to me, as the curtain rose, “I’m _not_ tired and I am having a grand time!”

One night we went to see Al Jolson in “Sinbad, the Sailor,” at the Winter Garden. I was not particularly taken with the show and evidenced my impatience to leave during the finale. I pulled my wrap about my shoulders, picked up my gloves and paid no attention to the performance. “Where are you going, Nan?” Mr. Harding asked in gentle rebuke. If ever there was anyone thoughtful of others it was Warren Harding, and it is likely that, being a speaker himself, he wished to extend all possible courtesy and attentiveness to others who held the stage.

MARION, O.--This is how Candidate Warren G. Harding looked when, as a youth, he played a horn in his home-town band. Note the plumed hat, foxy buttons and epaulets of the uniform.

From a newspaper print]

I am reminded in connection with these gay evenings of the many times Mr. Harding told me how proud he was as a youth to play in the local band in his very small home town of Caledonia, Ohio. He said he played the bass horn, and would chuckle over recollections of his vociferous contribution to the ensemble.

Despite the fact that I cut out and preserved pictures of him in his band uniform, I have always been unable to visualize a youthful Warren Harding in any capacity. He always seemed to me too dignified to have ever been less than the statesman I first beheld; yet he said that he felt far more eminently important and dignified as a member of the Caledonia Band than as United States Senator from Ohio!

Shortly after this, Mr. Harding invited me to Washington. He met me at the station and announced zestfully that he had secured the apartment of a friend of his with whom he sometimes played cards. I registered at the New Ebbitt Hotel, and he called for me there. The apartment to which he took me was not far from the New Ebbitt and we walked. He told me on the way over that it was quite a “cute little apartment” and he guessed it was all right for him to borrow it, although he knew the fellow to whom it belonged would undoubtedly come after him for some political favor as a result. When we entered the apartment, a walk-up, on the second or third floor, it seemed so dark, and when we found the room untidy and things in quite a mess, poor Mr. Harding was more than embarrassed. “Really, Nan, it is quite a nice place when it is fixed up,” he apologized, and I felt so sorry for him in his embarrassment. He never borrowed it again.

In January of 1919 Theodore Roosevelt died. Mr. Harding came over with many other notables to attend the funeral. I met him at the Biltmore Hotel. A good many of his friends and colleagues were standing about the lobby, looking very dignified and important in their formal clothes and top-hats. How stunning Mr. Harding looked! That time and once in the White House on Sunday morning were the only occasions on which I ever saw him “dressed up.” We dined at the Biltmore that evening, and as we passed through the aisle of tables in a dining-room which sparkled with atmosphere under glittering candelabra, I heard a woman say, “There goes Harding!” I told him this and he identified her as a friend with whom he sometimes played billiards in Washington.

_26_

Mr. Harding and I had often talked of how wonderful it would be to have a child, and Mr. Harding told me frankly he had often wanted to adopt one, but “Florence” would not hear of it. He told me this in connection with his recital of his domestic unhappiness, and his usual final exclamation was, “She makes life hell for me, Nan!” And I, knowing this, did all within my power to make up to the man I loved all his legal wife failed to do. There was a time in 1918 when Mrs. Harding was very ill but Mr. Harding came over to New York to see me just the same. I remember once he said they had a trained nurse there constantly for a period. I felt sorry for Mrs. Harding, but I must confess I doubted very much Mr. Harding’s love for his wife at any time in his life.

I used to think Mr. Harding might have liked to adopt _me_, though he never said so to me. However, he spoke very freely to me about what he would do if Mrs. Harding were to pass on--he wanted to buy a place for us and live in the country, and often during those days Mr. Harding said to me, “Wouldn’t that be grand, Nan? You’d make such a darling wife!”

This reminds me: It was Warren Harding who told me for the first time of Angela Arnold’s engagement. But he did not use the word “engagement.” “I understand Angela Arnold is announcing her betrothment,” he said to me one evening at dinner. He chose to use words which, though sometimes archaic, were somehow substantially good and seemed especially congruous coming from the lips of Warren Harding. But this bit of gossip interested me far less than his hushed exclamation across the table, “Gee, Nan, _you’d_ make a lovely bride!” Once in a while, as on this occasion, I answered him, “Would I, darling Warren?” I called him Warren very rarely. He used to tease me to say to him, “Warren, darling, I love you,” and it seemed to delight him to hear me say his name. But I was so much younger than he--exactly thirty years his junior--that somehow it seemed out of tune for me to address him by his first name. I just resorted to endearments, usually calling him “sweetheart.” He called me “Nan” from the first and his letters usually began, “Nan darling.” I remember the salutation very often seemed as though it might have been put in after the body of the letter had been written, and when I asked him about it he said that was the case, for he so often wrote his letters to me on memo paper during legislative discussions in the Senate Chamber.

The first part of January, 1919, I went over to Washington. I think I stopped at the Raleigh Hotel. Mr. Harding sometimes found it difficult to be with me all of the afternoon and of course I understood this. He himself would in that case plan my afternoon for me, sending me on a bus trip to Arlington Heights, or suggesting some other form of entertainment. That particular afternoon and evening, however, he did spend with me up until ten-thirty or eleven o’clock. We went over to the Senate Office in the evening. We stayed quite a while there that evening, longer, he said, than was wise for us to do, because the rules governing guests in the Senate Offices were rather strict. It was here, we both decided afterward, that our baby girl was conceived. Mr. Harding told me he liked to have me be with him in his office, for then the place held precious memories and he could visualize me there during the hours he worked alone. Mr. Harding was more or less careless of consequences, feeling sure he was not now going to become a father. “No such luck!” he said. But he was mistaken, and of course the Senate Offices do not provide preventive facilities for use in such emergencies.

“That’s a very stunning cape you have Nan,” were his words as he helped me slip into its brown woolly softness. That was the first time he had seen the cape which Marie Johnson had helped me to select in New York and for which I had paid $75, buying it of course on the instalment plan. I adored the casual intimacy of tone he used.

In mid-January Mr. Harding came over to New York. He telephoned me at the Steel Corporation and I shall never forget how thrilled I was because I hadn’t known he was coming and he had surprised me. “Ask Mr. Close if you can have the rest of the afternoon off,” he said. Also, he suggested that I borrow the apartment of a friend of mine, a girl of whom I had spoken to him many times.

I told Mr. Close that my sweetheart was here unexpectedly and he gave me permission to leave for the rest of the afternoon. Mr. Close as well as everybody else in the office knew, of course, that I had a sweetheart who lived in Washington. I usually referred to him as “my man”--seldom calling him by name and when I did using the name “Dean.”

Then I got my friend’s permission to go up to her apartment, at 120th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Mr. Harding got off on the floor below and walked up one flight to prevent any suspicion on the part of the elevator man.

For a second time in less than two weeks, having none of the usual paraphernalia which we always took to hotels, and somehow not particularly concerned about possible consequences, we spent a most intimate afternoon. How indelible my memory of Mr. Harding sitting on the day-bed, his back against the wall, holding me in his arms and looking down at me with a smile that was so sweet that it made me want to cry from sheer contentment! “Happy, dearie?” he asked.

He thought my friend’s apartment very attractive and wished that I were earning enough to make it appear possible for me to have just such a place for myself, for he would love to give it to me. He picked up my Christmas mesh-bag, his gift, which I carried back and forth with me to work until the newness of its possession wore off. “Do you like this sort of thing. Nan?” Mr. Harding asked me as he examined the bag. The mesh in the bag is so soft that it seems almost like silver cloth. “Oh, _yes_!” I answered quickly and he smiled understandingly at my fervor. Sometimes I was almost ashamed because I _was_ so passionately fond of frivolous things like that.

_27_

Through mutual recognition of the trouble we might cause each other and the ensuing unhappiness that might befall, we early decided to destroy all love-letters. It goes without saying that this was a difficult thing for us to do, and we both clung to each other’s most recent letters as long as possible. Mr. Harding had a drawer in his desk in the Senate Office which he always kept locked and George Christian, his private secretary, had been instructed to destroy the contents, burn them I believe Mr. Harding said, if anything happened to him. Many of the heart-revealments of which I have spoken and will speak were put in writing by Mr. Harding--and declarations much stronger as well--and he himself admitted that nowhere except in French had he ever read anything comparable to the love-letters we used to write to each other.

When he wrote to me he enclosed his letter in an inside envelope which he invariably stamped with postage also, sometimes on the back as a seal, and when I wrote to him I enclosed and sealed my letter as many as three times, buying for this purpose envelopes of graduated sizes. I wrote on a small-sized note pad, ruled, and always used a pencil. Usually I addressed the innermost envelope to “Dean Renwick” so that if a letter were opened it gave the impression that it had been sent to someone merely in Mr. Harding’s care and was not meant for him personally.

He told me laughingly how he had once received a letter which was meant for a Rev. Harding, although the contents, he said, were far from religious. Also he said he had received mail for the Mr. Harding who was the Governor of the Federal Reserve, as well as mail meant for the Mr. Harding who was once the Governor of Iowa.

We lost several letters in transit. One that Mr. Harding addressed to me at the Steel Corporation, in a blue envelope, contained $30 in cash. It never reached me.