Chapter IV: Part 4

I sent Mr. Harding a letter one time, as he asked me to do, to Atlanta, Georgia. I have forgotten the occasion of his visit to that city. I put the letter in an inside envelope, as we always did, addressed it to him correctly at Washington, then in another outside envelope addressed to him as we had decided to address it, “Mr. A. Y. Jerose, General Delivery, Atlanta, Georgia,” each part of this name having for us an intimate meaning. Then I mailed it so it would reach him during his stay there. We puzzled a long time over the disappearance of that letter for it never reached him in Atlanta. Nor did the inside envelope which was addressed to him correctly in Washington. I remember we decided that _someone_ in the dead letter office must have got hold of it, and we wondered what they thought if they read it.

_28_

The latter part of February, 1919, I knew for a certainty that I was to become the mother of Warren Harding’s child. I remember one morning in the subway train I felt so queer and faint that I was obliged to ask someone for a seat. Too, I had faint spells from nausea. These things did not distress me except as I was sometimes taken with the feeling that I just could not sit there opposite Mr. Close a minute longer and take dictation. Yet, on the whole, I felt well. I wrote Mr. Harding as soon as my belief was confirmed in my own mind.

The effect of Mr. Harding’s letters whenever I was perturbed over anything was to calm me, and he wrote that this trouble was not so very serious and could be handled. I honestly felt from the very first that he was more interested in having the child by far than in helping me to “handle” the problem otherwise, but of course our difficult situation called for a discussion of an operation, or other means of procedure. He was a married man, and United States Senator from Ohio.

I think Mr. Harding came over once or twice before I left New York for Chicago--though curiously enough these meetings do not stand out in my memory for the very possible reason that my mind was at that time occupied with my immediate problem.

It was late March or early April when I went to Chicago, having received permission from my employer in the Steel Corporation to take a vacation in advance of the regular summer-time absence. I stopped in Washington enroute according to arrangement and went to the New Willard. Mr. Harding came up to my room. I remember well, how, in spite of the fact that his forehead was wet and he showed other signs of nervousness, he said in the low voice which always soothed me, “We must go at this thing in a sane way, dearie, and we must not allow ourselves to be nervous over it.”

The growing lapse of time since the conception of our child very likely had weighed upon his mind for that was, I think, the thirteenth week. His evident nervousness strangely belied his words, but it did not matter for I myself was by that time entirely free from fear. I recall also how he said repeatedly, “I do not fear for the future, after the child comes, but only for the now.” It was those frequent allusions to the future and his worded assumption that we were going ahead and have the baby, coupled with his letters telling me it could be “handled,” and his apparent indifference to an operation, that made me all the more determined to have the child. But most of all was I swayed by my visit with him at this time, the visit at the New Willard which convinced me absolutely that Warren Harding craved to be the father fully as much as I craved to be the mother of his child. His wistfulness was so precious to me. “You know, Nan, I have never been a father,” he said.

However, he was deeply concerned for both of us, and in an attempt at a simple solution, he went out and returned with some Dr. Humphrey’s No. 11 tablets, which, he said, Mrs. Harding used to take and found in some instances effective. I affirmed my belief that they would do _me_ no good. I even made fun of the tiny white pills. I remember how he smiled faintly at me from the lavatory where he stood washing his hands when I expressed my belief that the pills would not be effective in my case. “No faith, no works, Nan!” he said.

He sat in the big chair by the window and took me on his lap. He told me how I had filled him with the first _real_ longing he had known to have children. He said he had wanted them, yes, but Mrs. Harding had been a mother when he married her, and she had not wanted any more children, and, he reminded me, “You know Mrs. Harding is older than I.” I think very probably the glory and wonder of having a child or children could not be aroused within him to the fullest by Mrs. Harding because she had already shared the initial glory of that experience with another man. Mr. Harding always spoke disparagingly to me of Mrs. Harding, and in loving as well as in disposition and everything else he certainly failed to picture her as his ideal. Rather did I seem to be his ideal woman. This never failed to fill me with wonderment.

I told him in mock seriousness that since he had always had such a desire for children I’d have to raise a family for him. “All right, dearie, but let’s see how this one comes out!” he answered facetiously.

Again he told me, as he had written me so often since we knew of the coming of our child, how he had “enshrined” me in his heart as “the perfect sweetheart and perfect mother.” “Enshrined” was a word he so often used. Or, “You are my shrine of worship, darling Nan,” he would say or write to me.

This brings to my mind a scene in the New Ebbitt when I, upon a visit to Washington during 1917 or 1918, had waited beyond the appointed hour for him to come to my room. When he came, about half an hour late, he found me _en negligée_ and weeping! He kissed me tenderly and sat down on a chair to take me on his lap. But I, in mingled contrition and ingratiation, perhaps thinking a woman had been the cause of his being held up, dropped at his feet on the floor. He arose immediately and raised me up.

“Don’t you ever get down like that to me, you sweetheart!” he said, and the attempted gaiety in his voice somehow carried a note of self-reproach. “_I’ll_ do all the kneeling in _this_ family that is to be done!”

Then he explained how he just couldn’t get away earlier, and as he talked he fussed with a necklace I was wearing, asking me where I bought it, and pretty soon we were both smiling over my foolishness.

Now at the New Willard, facing our problem together, he was telling me how he had always thought of me as “the perfect sweetheart and perfect mother.” Of course those things were immeasurably sweet to hear. So were the things he visioned often for me of our life together after he had “finished with politics.” It was an old story to hear about “the farm” where he would like to settle down and just enjoy life. There would be dogs and horses, chickens and pigs, books and friends, and of course he would have to have “his bride!” Yes, this was an old story, but today it sounded strangely new to me. As he talked his voice grew tense. His hands trembled visibly. I took one of them in mine and held it tightly. His gaze was directed out the window and he spoke as to himself. I had to blink very hard to keep back my tears. I had never seen him so moved, so shaken....

“... and I would take you out there. Nan darling, as--my--wife....” He freed his hand with sudden force and grasped both my arms tightly. “Look at me, dearie!” he cried, “you _would_ be my wife, wouldn’t you? You would marry me, Nan? Oh, dearie, dearie,” brokenly, “if I only could ... if we could only have our child--together!” This last came as a hushed exclamation, almost a prayer, scarcely audible. The yearning of a heart laid bare! I nodded wordlessly. The very air seemed sacred.

When he spoke again it was as if he had returned to stern realities, and the return brought partial emotional relaxation. He smiled at me sadly. “Would be grand, wouldn’t it, dearie?” I could not yet safely answer but I nodded. He repeated it and looked out the window at his left. The voice grew stern again; he did not smile now; only just turned and looked at me hard as a man might who is trying not to cry....

To marry Warren Harding! To live on a farm and raise children with Warren Gamaliel Harding! What rapture! I put my lips against his and spoke through my kisses. “Oh, sweetheart, that would be too heavenly!” He whispered back, “You tell _me_ about it, dearie!” And so I in turn pictured for him just what it would mean to be his wife, to live with him before the world, to raise “the young lieutenant” and perhaps other children, to love him, to wait upon him, to worship him forever and ever as the true bride of his heart! And the light of a love divine was in his eyes as I spoke. “And the young lieutenant must be the image of his dad, remember!” I ended brightly. “The young lieutenant” we had always called our coming baby, and strangely enough this fitted in with the story we afterwards concocted in explanation of our very difficult situation. “Won’t it be g-r-a-n-d to have a son?” I asked him now. He nodded smilingly. But months later, as I roused up out of the influence of chloroform to inquire of the doctor, “Is it a girl or boy?” and he answered briefly, “girl,” I decided immediately that _I_ had wanted a girl all along!

“Grand” was a word Mr. Harding used to say, which seemed to him to express the different raptures he experienced in being with me. He used to drag the word out just as one might hold a morsel of ambrosially delicious food in his mouth to prolong the taste. “Isn’t this g-r-a-n-d?” he used to ask me.

Sometimes just to ingratiate himself with me, to make me feel he was really just human like myself, he would deliberately use words like “ain’t,” or he would deliberately mispronounce words, as he used to do with the word “pretty,” calling me “you purty thing!”

Once, remembering how someone from Marion had spoken of him to me as not having had a particularly good education, and that only his personality had “put him over” so strongly, I spoke unthinkingly of this to Mr. Harding. My object in telling him was merely to instance the manner of jealousy on the part of some people who were themselves unqualified to fill his position. And he replied, “Well, Nan, none of them is sitting in the United States Senate!” I assured him that that was just what I had told the Marionite who had gossiped about him.

But to return to the visit at the New Willard. Somewhat related to this characteristic visioning in which we both indulged were his many dreams of being able to have me in a “fitting atmosphere,” one, he said, which would, as he flatteringly put it, “become your beauty, Nan.” He used to tell me that he visioned me always in a “blue mantle,”--a fancy he had never had about anyone else before, he said. Perhaps that was why he seemed to like to see me in blue....

So the trend into which our “serious conversation” drifted--I had hoped Mr. Harding would tell me definitely to go on and have the baby--was not one, in truth, to decide the issue. Therefore our problem was left in the air, or rather for me to solve. The fact that my own fears about myself were in no degree comparable to his own brought him back into the mood in which I loved most to see him, and I left a far calmer Warren Harding upon my departure than I found upon my arrival. I am sure my own sense of comparative serenity was entirely due to the fact that way down deep in my heart I had resolved to have no operation.

_29_

I arrived in Chicago the following day.

Up to this time I had never told Mr. Harding that I had ever confided at all in Elizabeth, my sister. I knew it would worry him needlessly. The first afternoon Elizabeth and I were alone together we had a talk. Elizabeth must have felt that the letters I had received from Mr. Harding during my visit to her in June of 1917, and our trip together in Indiana when I met Mr. Harding in Indianapolis, would eventuate in a _liaison_, for she warned me before I had volunteered any information that I ought to be “very, very careful.” She herself had in the meantime married and was living in an apartment she and her husband had taken.

Perhaps my face betrayed me. I felt so free with Elizabeth and did not attempt to hide my emotions. In any event, when she said that I ought to be “very, very careful” I began to cry. I told her with an attempt at a smile that it seemed to be too late to be careful. She was distressed beyond measure, but I hastily assured her, as Mr. Harding had assured me, that it was “all right” and I could “handle” it while in Chicago. Though I had been amply funded for this emergency I had actually thought not at all about an operation. It frightened me so to contemplate such a thing. The thought of having a child held no terror for me; it was the natural thing, and I did not fear it.

Nevertheless I pretended to engage myself in the serious consideration of such an operation. My sister Elizabeth seemed far more anxious than I. She helped me to find a doctor who took care of such cases, and went with me to see him. I remember how he told me, after an examination, that I was of such a nervous temperament that he would be fearful of performing an operation upon me. “If it were your sister there,” he said, indicating that if I were as imperturbable as my sister’s plump figure made her appear to be, “it would not be taking such a risk.” But I knew that Elizabeth’s forced smile belied her real feelings.

Moreover, the doctor reminded me that I had allowed thirteen weeks to elapse.... “If you are, as you say, so situated that you _can_ have the baby, I say by all means go ahead and have it,” was his parting advice. He said also that the process of having the child would not be nearly so painful as a premature operation would be and not detrimental to my health.

Elizabeth, however, was far from being at ease, and she then sought the advice of a dear friend of ours, telling her that it was _she_ who needed advice. This friend helped her to prepare some “bitter apple” medicine for me which had to be compounded with painstaking effort, but after it was all ready and bottled I just could not bring myself to take it. The real reason was of course that I could not bring myself to destroy the precious treasure within me.

My letters from Mr. Harding further inclined me to believe that he himself was really indifferent to an operation. He wrote his distress at my having told Elizabeth, and said he really felt there was no need for that, that he had provided ample funds and it seemed I might have sought counsel without telling her, and so on. He wrote that if he had to choose between medicine and an operation he personally would prefer “the knife.” Just reading that word “knife” seemed almost to stab me every way, and served to strengthen my determination not to consider such a course. I remembered the wistfulness with which Mr. Harding had talked of a child. In short, I made up my mind to “go ahead and have the baby,” as the doctor had advised. I wrote that decision to Mr. Harding after I had taken occasion first to shame him for criticising me because I had confided in my sister. I wrote him that one would think from his letter that I had “shouted it from the housetops,” and that Elizabeth was an entirely safe person with whom to entrust our secret; and that, after all, one cannot solve such problems all alone.

He answered immediately that it was all right with him, he was sorry he had complained, he trusted me implicitly, and was “strong for me,” and that it was “the greatest experience a woman ever has,” and that he was looking forward to seeing me again. I welcomed the experience of childbirth with all my heart.

_30_

I returned to New York. The first of May I left the Johnson’s home on 136th Street and moved into a one-room-and-alcove-bedroom apartment in the Hotel La Salle Annex in East 60th Street. I sublet it from a woman whose husband was in Constantinople and whom she was planning to join there. There was a nice private entrance and my apartment was one flight up, on the second floor, rear.

It was on a Friday evening, my second evening in the apartment, when Mr. Harding came over from Washington. As a matter of fact, I had not yet moved into my own apartment, which was not available when I arrived, but was being housed temporarily in a very much superior apartment in the Hotel La Salle itself. This hotel was at that time the home of Mr. and Mrs. Dick (the former wife of John Jacob Astor), as well as Cyril Maude, the English actor. In the annex, on the top floor lived Pearl White, famed in pictures. Of course I told these interesting items to Mr. Harding when he came over. He had first been sent up to my temporary apartment in the hotel, where I had a cozy living-room. But I had been advised that I could move into my own place that evening and Mr. Harding said immediately that he much preferred that we “go where we belonged.” So he helped me move my baggage.

I recall my disappointment in hearing his first remark about my little place--_our_ little place--for it was one of marked deprecation. The apartment was so much roomier and so much pleasanter than anything I had ever had that I thought it a veritable palace, and was much hurt at his observations. “Really, Nan, it isn’t _worth_ $100 a month!” he said. “Why, dearie, it isn’t good enough--I wanted you to have something really fine.” I said very little. I knew that he had originally told me about what he thought I ought to have to pay, and I had kept within that figure. I decided I must be a poor picker, yet I had been justified in my decision by having seen other apartments for which a higher rent was asked and which did not compare in my estimation with that one.

However, I remember with satisfaction how he retracted his criticism the second visit he made, after I had had an opportunity to dispense with some of the unnecessary furniture and fix things up a bit. He was quite enthusiastic. “Why, dearie, this is not such a bad place after all!” he smiled, taking in “the effect” with a sweeping glance into bedroom, bathroom and kitchenette. I took his coat and he handed me a big box of dark red cherries, for which he knew I had a weakness. He used to send me five-pound boxes of Martha Washington candies, they being my favorite sweets at that time, but after he knew I was going to have a child he would bring me fruit.

For two months we were very happy with that apartment, the only place we could call our very own during the six and one-half years we were lovers.

I had intimated to Mr. Harding that I would feel more comfortable now if I had a ring, and I expressed, upon his interrogation, my preference for a sapphire surrounded with diamonds. So on one of his trips to our 60th Street apartment he brought me the ring. I remember how he kept quiet about it, not telling me at first that he had brought it, and I confess I was a wee bit disappointed. I wanted a ring so badly. But at a very propitious moment he fished it out of a pocket, threw away the tissue paper in which it was wrapped, and slipped it upon my finger. We performed a sweet little ceremony with that ring, and he declared that I could not belong to him more utterly had we been joined together by fifty ministers. The ring was indeed a great comfort to me, helping to sustain me in the conventional atmosphere I tried to throw about our baby’s coming, and, during those days after her birth when I had tried to lie in bed idle when there was much to be done, it was a source of courage and support to me, steadying me in my uncertain plans about the future. It was a material evidence of a relationship which no wedding ceremony could have made more solemn or more sacred than that very own ceremony between ourselves, with God as our witness.

_31_

Of course I continued working at the United States Steel Corporation, for my physical conformation was such that I could “get away” with quite a good deal. In fact, I worked there until the first of July when I gave up the apartment and my position and went to Asbury Park, New Jersey. I have often wondered if I did create any secret comment in the offices of the Steel Corporation. I remember a _Wall Street Journal_ editor, who used often to come in to see Mr. Close, said one day to me, “Miss Britton, you look so matronly these days; have you grown up?” Five months for an unmarried girl who is expecting a child to attempt to remain in a position such as that required a good deal of courage. But I did it only with Mr. Harding’s approval, and whatever he thought wise usually went with me.

During those years I had a few friends here in New York who were Ohio people, and some of them were even Marionites like myself. Mr. Albert R. Johnstone, as I shall call him, represented at that time a certain Marion corporation here in New York, of which Mr. Harding had been one of the larger stockholders. I had been friendly with Mr. Johnstone’s wife ever since my coming to New York, and I had spoken several times to Mr. Harding about them. Mr. Johnstone knew of my fondness for his wife and very often the three of us went together to dinner or to the theatre. There was a time, however, when Mrs. Johnstone went to Marion to visit, and Mr. Johnstone telephoned me and asked me to dine with him. This I did, thinking nothing about it until he asked me when he left me that night not to tell Mrs. Johnstone. Then I saw that he was afraid for her to know, and I knew that in that event it had been wrong for me to go with him, for I didn’t care at all if she knew that I was gracious enough to spend an evening with her lonely husband because she was my friend. All this I told Mr. Harding and I remember he said, “Well, Bert Johnstone is the last person on earth I feel I need to be jealous of!”

Mrs. Johnstone had been in our apartment on 60th Street one evening when she and I had dined together, and I suppose she had mentioned to her husband where I was living--probably wondering, as did most of my friends I imagine, how I could afford to live in an apartment alone.

One evening Mr. Harding was with me. I was just preparing to jump into the tub, and he was already in bed, when a knock on my door arrested my further movements. My door was “chained” as well as locked, so that I could open it slightly with no fear of anyone’s pushing it open.

This I did cautiously, and there stood Mr. Johnstone. I confess it gave me quite a shock, but I spoke to him very casually and fearlessly, told him I was just preparing for bed as I was very tired, apologized, and asked him to come again sometime. But, knowing that that was the first time he had dared to do such a thing as call upon me without Mrs. Johnstone, and being quite a bit put out with his presumption, I called quite loudly after him, “Oh, Mr. Johnstone, the next time you call bring Mrs. Johnstone along, won’t you?”

Then I went to the phone and called Mrs. Johnstone. After chatting with her a few moments, I told her about Mr. Johnstone’s coming to see me, and pretended I was very sorry I could not receive him. Her amazement was unfeigned.

“_Bert Johnstone?_” she asked incredulously. “The very same,” I told her. He never called again.

When I came back into the bedroom after closing the door upon Mr. Johnstone, Mr. Harding was hiding in my wardrobe closet, and it did amuse me so to see him. I asked if he thought if anyone _did_ break in, that his being in a closet, with his clothes strewn about on the chairs, would help matters! He laughed, of course.

_32_

In May or June, while I was still living on East 60th Street in our apartment, Mr. Harding had an engagement to speak at Carnegie Hall. He came over during the day and we were together until time for him to go on the platform. In the evening we dined at the Hotel Manhattan, where, I think, for business reasons, he had engaged a room. He wished to walk to Carnegie Hall from the hotel, which we did. I remember the exact route we took, up Madison Avenue and across 56th Street where we passed several little tea rooms which, Mr. Harding said, he thought ought to be “good and safe” places for me to dine alone in the evenings. He seemed to be afraid I might be annoyed and used to suggest safe places for me to go. He was always looking out for my comfort and peace of mind.

On our way up he inquired of me what this building was and that, and I in turn asked him a question. How could he speak that evening when, as he had told me, he had made no preparation whatever for his speech? “How do you know what to say?” I asked curiously.

“Gee, dearie!” he laughed, “it’s not so much what _to_ say as what _not_ to say!”

When we reached Carnegie Hall, Mr. Harding went to the box office and secured a front-row seat for me, sent me on in, and ascended the platform. I remember well that speech. I did not very often get to hear him speak and it was always such a joy--I was so proud of him. But that speech I remember because he did not do himself justice. He rambled on about this man and that who in one instance had been a “farmer’s son,” and had persevered and become a banker, or “here’s Jim So-and-So, whose father was owner of the stone quarry back in my home town and who worked his way through school....” The Land of Opportunity, I think, was his topic.

Afterwards, in our apartment, I told him he seemed not to speak as well as usual. “Why, dearie,” he confessed, “I was so tired I thought I couldn’t even speak at _all_!” And I knew enough by that time to understand why. He had a lot on his mind.

There was an evening when we dined at the Savoy. We sat by the window and looked out upon the Plaza Square where the fountain is. The window was open and it was cool and lovely. We had dined there before in the days before prohibition and Mr. Harding, I thought, seemed to be known to the hotel management. We had once had one glass each of champagne at that same table.

Mr. Harding spoke to me. “You are not larger now than that woman, Nan,” nodding his head toward the lithe feminine figure which tops the fountain in the Square. “And far more lovely,” he added, smiling. He was always generous with his appreciations.

Of course prohibition had already gone into effect, but I was told it was possible still to obtain liquor or wines if one knew how to do so, and evidently Mr. Harding thought he did. In any event, he took me home after dinner and then suggested that he go back and get some champagne for us to have that evening before we retired. He had often said to me that he would love to spend an evening with me when I was relaxed and exhilarated from a glass of champagne, because when he allowed me a cocktail or something to drink, we were usually going to the theatre afterwards. I guess I was a bit shy with him, and a glass of champagne made me a bit more talkative and revealing. I doubt that in all the times we were together we had drinks more than six times; he allowed it rarely.

But now he went out for the champagne. In about fifteen minutes he returned, empty-handed, or rather empty-pocketed. I searched in his pockets myself and looked up at him.

“You couldn’t get it!” I said, half disappointedly.

“No, dearie, I couldn’t get it,” he repeated, but his tone belied his statement, and I felt instinctively that he hadn’t even tried. Nor had he himself had anything to drink. For some reason, which was no doubt prudential and right, he had decided that I should not have any champagne. Perhaps he had recalled a time at Reisenweber’s when I, for apparently no reason, had become ill after drinking part of a highball.

Warren Harding protected me at every turn. And I remember well that he once wrote, “Darling, when I pray for you it is that you may have abundant health. Health and freedom from worry, for _worry kills_, Nan.” And he was right. I think that worry killed Warren Harding.

_33_

One morning in that same apartment on East 60th Street, I dressed leisurely and Mr. Harding sat watching me. Milk, of a lovely richness, was already coming from both of my breasts, and my toilets those days required more than ordinary care, if I would not find when I reached the office at the Steel Corporation that it had seeped out and spotted my dress conspicuously. Mr. Harding seemed to love the maternal evidences about me those days, and often remarked that I possessed the loveliest woman-form of anyone he had ever seen. Or he would entertain me while I dressed by telling me that he had gone to the theatre the previous week and had watched some actress--I remember in one instance it had been Dorothy Dickson--dance, and, because I resembled her a bit, he had watched her to the exclusion of all others on the stage during the performance, and tried to imagine he was looking at me. He was such a darling.

That particular morning, he sat telling me some such tale and waiting for me to dress for breakfast, which we usually had around the corner at the Hotel Netherland, when he noticed a picture of my sister Elizabeth on the wall--one I had recently put up and which he had never seen. He took it down to look at it. The frame was a cheap one and I had broken the cord from which it was suspended and had replaced the cord with an ordinary office clip. It required no little ingenuity therefore to attach the clip to a nail on the wall. Mr. Harding worked at it for several minutes, adjusting his tortoise-shell Oxford glasses, but he could not re-hang the picture. I was so tickled, and finally giggled outright. “Let me do it, honey!” I exclaimed, holding out my hand for the picture. “No, I’ll do it all right,” he insisted, shaking his head. I said nothing. I think he worked at it for perhaps five minutes, then gave it up. He was always persistently firm when he set out to accomplish something. I have often read into this little incident that characteristic determination to carry upon his own shoulders his share of the burdens of a nation, and how he died in the struggle which is for any President a superhuman task.

I am reminded of another time when he came over to address an audience--this time at the Astor Hotel. It was back in 1917 or 1918. He was particular that he should deliver his address well on this occasion, and so left me at midnight at my home on 136th Street and went back downtown in the taxi to the Astor for the remainder of the night. The following morning I got up bright and early and we breakfasted together at the Astor, in the dining-room on 45th Street. He had his newspapers in his hands when I met him in the lobby. When we entered the dining-room the head waiter led us to a table on the far side, but I, noticing the light for that particular table was not as good for reading as the light on the table next to it, said, “Let’s take this table.” Evidently Mr. Harding thought my suggestion was just caprice. Anyway, he said quietly but very firmly, “We’ll sit right _here_, Nan,” taking the table the waiter had first indicated. But if he had any idea of rebuking me, it was soon dissipated by my explanation. I won in this instance, though he usually did. But when I was really right in any matter he would acknowledge it only too gladly.

I remember too I wore that morning a very lovely georgette crepe blouse with my tailored suit. It was far too delicate a thing to wear to the office, but I had put it on especially for my darling. And it wasn’t lost on him! “That’s a very beautiful blouse you have on, dearie,” he said, “but do you wear things like that to your office?” He was relieved when I owned up that I didn’t.

In some of the first pictures I had taken for Mr. Harding I wore that same blouse. I had not had my picture taken but once--except for snapshots--since I was a child. That little-girl photograph was published in _The Marion Daily Star_. This was done, I remember hearing my mother say, without her previous knowledge, having been arranged between the photographer across the street from the _Star_ Building and the editor of the _Star_, Warren Harding. I was then five years old.

The pictures I had taken to display the blouse Mr. Harding was so fond of (it was white with blue flowers embroidered on the front) were four in number and I sent one of each to my sweetheart. I wrapped them well and addressed them inside and out, sending them in time to reach him for a particular week-end during which he had expressed the wish to be with me but could not. Well into the following week I had not heard from him about the photographs, and finally wrote and asked if he had gotten them safely. In his reply which came immediately he said they had not been received. I was frantic, because I had autographed them especially for him and no one else. In a very few days he came to New York. He said he had looked everywhere in the office, in his stenographic secretaries’ office and in George Christian’s office, but he could not locate them. Had I addressed them correctly? I assured him I had, and he said he would ask “George” if he himself were not able to find them when he returned. He could not find them and was therefore obliged to inquire of his private secretary. George Christian brought them to him immediately, having put the package away so safely that it was hidden from Mr. Harding. “I never knew portraits could be so comforting,” he wrote to me. _I_ knew they could be, for I went to bed early every night with my sweetheart’s picture propped up beside me on the pillow.

_34_

Mr. Harding’s generosity took many forms. One time during 1917 or 1918 when we were alone--though I don’t remember where--I was sitting on his lap admiring his hands. They were large, well-shaped hands, the hands of capability, yet artistic too, and I never tired watching him use them. They were expressive of many feelings. They fascinated me completely. I was admiring them, and incidentally the ring on the third finger of his left hand. The ring was set with one quite sizable diamond--a beautiful ring in its entirety. Some organization had presented it to him “in appreciation,” he said. I think he thought I admired the stone and had visions of having it in a ring for myself!

“So far as I’m concerned, I’d as lief give you this ring, Nan, if it were not for Florence!” He smiled when I looked up at him, and hugged me tight. Frankly, I would have loved the ring, of course, but I knew he could not give it to me. I wonder who has it now, for I would cherish it so if it were in my possession. Many nights I have spent with that hand in mine and twisted and played with that ring. It sparkled at me across the table and I could see a thousand colors in it when I, lying beside him, held his hand up to the light which came through the transom above our bedroom door.

This was, as I said, before 1919. After I had my own ring I found the same pleasure in studying its lights. I remember the morning after he had put my ring upon my engagement finger we walked in Central Park. A windy morning and a brilliant sun. I strolled along with my left hand in front of me, looking at my precious ring. _He_ had given it to me!

I remember that morning Mr. Harding’s hat blew off and he had to chase it about half a block. Somehow I used to love to witness those “embarrassing moments”--his confusion was so boyish. I remember too how I exclaimed over the glory of everything that morning, in the sheer joyousness of being with him. We passed the zebras and I remarked upon _their_ beauty! “Nan, you don’t think _those_ things are beautiful, do you?” Mr. Harding asked incredulously, smiling. But, as I continued to express my admiration of each animal, he suggested that we look at them no longer, and led me into, the sheltered paths where eventually he found a bench where we could sit down and he could make love to me.

An instance of his kindly nature and generosity occurs to me. We were going down Fifth Avenue. He was taking me to a store of my choosing, Lord & Taylor’s, to buy me a bag. I was always happily oblivious of everybody and everything about me when I was walking on the street with Mr. Harding, and so I did not notice that we had passed a blind man carrying the proverbial tin cup and selling pencils. But Mr. Harding had seen him and he disengaged himself from my arm, went back and dropped a coin into the blind man’s cup, and was back with me, scarcely giving me time to realize what had happened.

“Never pass a blind man, Nan,” he admonished me gently. I knew his sympathy had been made the keener by his intimate knowledge of blindness in the case of his own sister Mary who had passed on a good many years before and who had been almost blind. To this day I cannot pass a blind person, and if they do pass me before I have got my money out, I go back, as he did, prompted by his voice and the impulse it always arouses.

Mr. Harding himself selected the bag for me at Lord & Taylor’s. Nothing gave me greater pleasure than to have something he had selected for me himself. The bag was a dark blue pin-seal and cost $11.75. “Here, Nan,” he said brightly, picking up the bag from dozens of others on the counter, “I think this is fine--what do you think?” I loved it. I would have loved it had it been but one-hundredth as pretty as it was, but it happened to be a very stunning bag. Everything he chose, I thought, would be just right.

I afterwards had this bag in Marion, Ohio, at Miss Daisy Harding’s, during the time when she was still living with her father on East Center Street, before she was married. Mrs. Heber Herbert Votaw, her sister and Warren’s, was there. They were examining and admiring the bag.

“Where did you get this bag, Nan?” one of them inquired.

“Oh, a sweetheart of mine gave it to me,” I answered lightly, just as I was about to pass up the front stairs to the room I occupied while visiting there.

“Now, Nan,” called Carrie Votaw after me, “you _know_ you never loved anybody in your life but Warren!” How little she knew the deep meaning of her words! I have since recalled this incident to Daisy Harding in a letter written to her last year.

Another instance of Mr. Harding’s kindheartedness comes to mind:

I always used to take him to the Pennsylvania Station when he left for Washington. I knew pretty well what trains came into New York from Washington and those that went out. Often he would come over just to spend the evening, taking me to dinner and the theatre and returning on what he called “the midnight” to Washington. When I first met him in 1917 at the Manhattan Hotel, one of the things he said to me, after learning that I had a great fondness for the theatre, was, “Nan, let _me_ take you to the theatre! I’ll come over from Washington just for that, and I’d delight to do it too!”

So one night he had been over and was returning. It was quite late, of course, when we reached the station from the theatre--about eleven-thirty probably--and before he left me to get his train he took me over to the candy stand in the corner of the vaulted concourse and asked me to pick out a box of candy.

Two or three unkempt little children stood gazing wistfully up at the colorful array of sweets above them--children whose bed-hour should have been six or seven o’clock. Mr. Harding looked down at them and put his hand on one little fellow’s head.

“Why don’t you buy it?” he teased. I adored him when he talked to children. Their eyes grew big as they looked way up at him and smiled sheepishly. He handed them each a coin--a quarter apiece I think it was--and looked at me and winked.

Around Christmas time in 1918 I received a letter from Miss Daisy Harding, with whom I have always corresponded more or less regularly. After I had read it I enclosed it in one of mine to her brother Warren. He had given me $50 that Christmas, with which I had purchased the long-coveted mesh-bag of which I have spoken. In his reply to my letter he enclosed a letter which _he_ had recently received from his sister Daisy in which she thanked him for his Christmas gift to her of $10. Miss Harding remembered having received this amount of money from him as a Christmas gift when I recalled it to her mind in June of 1925.

I remember hearing my mother tell how Mrs. Sinclair had told her that Warren Harding, upon being at their residence one Sunday morning when she was about to leave for church, had given her $25 to put in the collection basket. Although he did not attend the church Mrs. Sinclair attended, nor even attended his own church regularly, Mr. Harding was quick to recognize the good in any organization, religious or otherwise, and wanted to contribute to its progress. Warren Harding was one of the three kindest men I have ever known.

_35_

I have gotten away from my main story, but these things occur to me and I wish to set them down. Little things that happened, or that dropped, unconsciously perhaps, from Mr. Harding’s lips, often gave me clues as to how he felt about important matters concerning which we had no actual discussion.

In this connection, I remember well a dinner at the Manhattan Hotel early in 1918. Woodrow Wilson, then President, was making spectacular efforts which occupied front-page space. However, the newspaper headlines that night carried the latest news from the battle-front, and Mr. Harding’s eyes were heavy when he looked up at me. He was quiet for several seconds and his eyes went wet.

“The world’s in a bad way, Nan,” he said, shaking his head.

I myself had had no intimate contact with the war except through my friends, having had no relatives--at least no near relatives--who had gone over, and its grim horrors were not felt by me as deeply as those who had sent their dear ones to the front. In fact, the two years the United States was in the war were the two years I shall ever look back upon as the happiest of my life, as one cherishes the memory of precious hours with one’s sweetheart. And if I ever during that time voiced a desire to be of more active help in war-work, I was reminded by both Mr. Harding and my employer in the United States Steel Corporation that an employee of that Corporation, in view of the vast part steel played in the war, was doing his or her bit effectively.

Perhaps something of this was going through my mind as I watched Mr. Harding over the dinner-table. So far as I knew, he had no near relative “over there” either, but I was sure he was very close to the war situation as a United States Senator. His tone changed into one of severe criticism with his next remark.

“Wilson’s a plain damned fool!” he muttered, as to himself, still perusing the front-page headlines.

I meekly acquiesced in Mr. Harding’s view that the world was “in a bad way” and that Wilson was “a plain damned fool.” “But, sweetheart,” I reminded him, “wait until the next election, when _you_ will be President!” He smiled indulgently and leaned over the table, head bent to one side in the appealing pose he sometimes affected when he made love to me.

“If I’m President, Nan, I’ll make you White House stenographer!” were his exact words. “A President can do just about as he pleases, you know!” he added, smiling.

I recalled vividly that statement three years later when I visited him at the White House and heard from his very lips, lips that were set in grim determination to bear up at any cost, that “the White House was a veritable prison,” and that he could not even retire to the privacy of his toilet without being guarded--“shadowed” as he termed it.

“I’m in jail, Nan!” he would say in a broken voice, shaking his head sadly, “and I can’t get out; I’ve got to stay,” and he would lift his hands in a gesture of futility. No, Warren Harding did _not_ like being President of the United States, as I am sure no man with real American blood and a love of life and fair play and freedom would or could like it. What a pity the highest honor a great republic can bestow upon a loyal citizen should be one which saps that citizen’s vitality, and makes impossible the achievement of certain ideals through breaking him down physically! And, in my humble opinion, the “system” of American politics is wholly responsible for these hellish conditions. No, Warren Harding did not like being President. Six months after he went into the White House he was a broken man. The seven million majority of votes cast for him by the American people was his death sentence. And I, too, cast my vote for him!

Even in gayer mood, I seemed to see in Mr. Harding a certain pathos. People have observed it in Elizabeth Ann, our daughter, not knowing of course whose child she is. “There is something pathetic about watching her at play,” a girl friend of mine said to me last winter. And so it was with her father. There was something pathetic about watching him at play. But he had a keen sense of humor.

I think it secretly amused him to realize, as he did and I did, that the scandal that came up in the presidential campaign of 1920 in which Mrs. Arnold’s name and his were linked very frequently, was for us the source of greatest protection, for while the Democrats who were “slinging mud” played with Mrs. Arnold’s name they were not looking for mine or any other.

One time, when we were dining, Mrs. Arnold’s name came up naturally. Of course Angela, her daughter, had been my childhood playmate, and when I went to Marion I usually saw her either at a party or dance or on the street, and likely this had been the case and I was relating to him how lovely she looked. She was a stunning girl. I had never mentioned Mrs. Arnold’s name to him in connection with the old-time gossip I used to hear, but something I asked him brought forth this spontaneous ejaculation, “Mrs. Arnold is a damned fool--a brilliant conversationalist but a damned fool--if she had _half_ the sense of her daughter....”

I do not know a thing about the truth of things that were said concerning Mr. Harding’s one-time relations with Mrs. Arnold. I never pressed him to tell me anything, nor did I care what he had done before we became sweethearts. I only know that during our six and a half years I remained true to him in those essentials that are demanded and expected by one’s sweetheart, and I most certainly know that Mr. Harding was most loyal and true to me. There were times when I made frantic endeavors to break away from him, feeling that I was becoming so growingly dependent upon his love and support in every way as to make it inconceivable for me to do without him, but he was constantly in the background of my thoughts--why, I have thought about him every hour of the nine years now since we first met at the Manhattan Hotel in 1917, and not a day has passed since I first saw him in Marion when I was a child that I have not thought lovingly of Warren Gamaliel Harding.

_36_

During his visits to our 60th Street apartment, Mr. Harding had advised me to deliberate well before deciding upon a suitable place to summer, and await my confinement. He suggested numerous avenues of procedure with regard to helping determine the best place to go, and I remember it was with some timidity that he even made the suggestion that I might look into the Catholic institutions here in the East where I might find comfort and quietude and safety, and perhaps some occupation for diversion. However, this appealed to me not at all, because an institution immediately presented to me a picture of enforced seclusion. I vetoed the idea and he then suggested I take a taxi and go along the Jersey Shore and also over into Long Island, sizing up the possibilities and going there leisurely afterwards. I spent several days going about week-ends in search of a place where I felt I might live happily for the several months intervening. Long Island did not appeal to me and I finally decided upon Asbury Park, New Jersey. There seemed to be plenty of entertainment there, good air, pleasant surroundings, and yet it was far enough from New York to make embarrassing contacts improbable. As a matter of fact, I saw only one man during the whole summer whom I knew, and that was during my first week in Asbury Park while I was still in such figure as to excite no comment.