Nan Britton

“ Should not all children be love-children? But were they? I remember once a girl friend of mine said to me when I charged her with insincerity in her marriage, “Well, you know, Nan, a woman has to marry if she wants to have children!” She herself was no more in love with her husband than with the telephone pole outside her very beautiful home, and was in truth later on divorced. But she had “protected” her child! Mr. Harding was not free to offer me such protection, though he loved me, avowedly before God, far more than he had ever loved any other woman. ”

“ I have had a very sweet letter from Miss Harding, in which she assured me she wished to take care of Elizabeth Ann’s kindergarten expenses and I am deeply appreciative and happy for my darling’s sake. And I know one thing, and that is that no matter what Mrs. Votaw may say or do, I know she has a whole heap of her brother in her and some day she may see that for herself. And I know, too, that Mr. Votaw could not love Elizabeth Ann’s father and not come to see that mere man-made convention is not always the only law that gives man the right to love. There is a higher and a diviner law. ”

“ Harding’s frequent statement to me, and, even though she seemed not to love him in the way a man has the right to expect to be loved by his wife, I knew, without Mr. Harding’s telling me, that she would not release him to another. And, though I had been surrounded ever since a child with an atmosphere of strictest convention, I had found with Warren Harding that the realest happiness is of the spirit, and far transcends in its sublimity the exquisiteness of physical rapture. ”

“ Votaw, a Seventh Day Adventist, had followed his heart and as a consequence had become a father out of wedlock? Granted that petty criticism would ensue, Mr. Harding himself was a Baptist, and it seemed to me that that would cross the fingers of both churches! But was one religion and its accomplishments advanced at the expense of another? Do churches capitalize upon each other? Is this the spirit that Jesus exemplified? “Do unto others as ye would that they should do to you.” Would not true Christians tend their own flock, nor heed the strayings of their neighbors? ”

“ 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! ”

“ As Daisy Harding had written to me, so evidently had she been persuaded to believe “... your claim is one that any woman can make and get away with to a certain extent, and while it isn’t, it might look like a complete case of blackmail....” How overwhelming are the feelings of disappointment and hurt I experience as I write these things and live over the agony of mind they caused me!
Yet quite unconsciously one does change under the force of cruel circumstance. One does become raw under the lash of injustice. One is apt to become, as I did, almost stark and brutal in stating truths. ”

“ You know as well as I that I am asking nothing but a square deal for Elizabeth Ann and I shall certainly tolerate no conduct on your part which smacks of being ignored by you. If I cannot settle amicably a matter which should long ago have been settled without making it the basis for a life-long enmity and possible unpleasantness for all of us, then I shall be obliged in fairness to Mr. Harding’s child to fight for what is her due. ”

“ When he spoke to me of our child there was in his eyes the longing for open, acknowledged fatherhood, and my heart cried out against the cruelties of both the political and social orders which prevented Warren G. Harding from ever once looking into the eyes of his own little girl. The great pity of it! The injustice of a man-made law which would impose the necessity for renunciation of a desire so natural, so fine, and so normally impelling as that implanted in his heart as her parent!
“Nan darling,” he would say, “I find myself longing to take little girls in my arms. ”

“ But I rented a typewriter and spent my evenings creatively at home. This was a great source of relaxation mentally, and on warm nights, when it seemed too sultry to retire, I would become oblivious to the heat and to fatigue as I sat before my typewriter, balancing this line and that, searching the dictionary for suitable synonyms, or turning to my beloved Keats for poetic atmosphere and delicacy of word manipulation.
Naturally the themes of my thoughts were my love for Warren Harding and my love for our child. ”

“ Then came the astounding suggestion that if I could not get a cheaper place to live I might better send Elizabeth Ann to her Grandmother Willits’ farm, where she could have the advantage afforded by the country! As though the mother of Warren Harding’s child should have nothing to say, should acquiescently ship his daughter to people who were not relatives, simply because she would find there a welcome for her! ”

“ If my child, the child begotten of the President of the United States, and maintained by him as such, gladly, with fond acknowledgment of his fatherhood,—if this child could not obtain justice at the hands of her blood relations, how futilely must thousands and thousands of unhusbanded mothers plead for the recognition of their little ones over all the land! Fidelity to my sweetheart, loyalty to his family, truth and honesty of purpose, were rewarded thus! ”

“ Do you wonder that the whole family are up in arms against a thing that is so hard to prove?...”
“Hard to prove?” Why, I had kept, with her brother, the faith! That very fidelity which her brother and I had shown toward each other; that faith which had protected the Harding name; that very brand of faith was responsible for the fact that every love-letter, any one of which would have irrefutably proved my story, had been destroyed. “But if convinced, they will be just,” she wrote. Yet the Votaws had denied me the interview which I knew would have enabled me to advance sufficient proofs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And who but would love him the more because he had suffered in silence, as he said, harassment and years of weary unhappiness at the hands of her, who, a tragedy in herself, had also been the victim of a wrong placement of life’s values. And where the reflection of shame upon Warren Harding’s family simply because a child had been born to us, a daughter had been given to me, to help fill my life during his veritable incarceration in the White House, and afterwards—after he had met death as a result of having literally used up his life for his country! ”

“ Was it right that they, who had never known the glory of my sweetheart’s smile as a father, should deny his daughter her birthright as a Harding? Did God give only to deprive? No! “Every mountain shall be made low and every valley shall be exalted.” Wherefore, then, Pride? I must be humble. Resentment? I must forgive! Hatred? I must love. ”

“ But the hurt I experience every time I leave Elizabeth Ann is a hurt of indescribable poignancy, just as the homesickness I experience in being separated from her is torture in the raw, like a thing one can stand only so long before breaking.
My train pulled into Marion about seven the following morning. About half-past six I called the porter and asked with pardonable excitement in spite of inward assurance, “Well, porter, who is our new President?” He grinned from ear to ear. “Harding’s the man, Miss,” he replied. I sprang out of bed with a thumping heart and dressed quickly. ”

“ Harding or any of the Hardings that evening, and it seemed an uncanny thing to have her express the heartache I was experiencing those days from contemplation of the attitude the Votaws had assumed. It has often seemed to me that Mr. Harding has even spoken to me through our daughter, and, as I took her in my arms that night and talked to her, it was not to depart from the subject of Mr. Harding but rather to promise him, through my words to her, that she and I would not forsake him. As Elizabeth Ann herself put it, “We’ll always love our dear Mr. Harding, won’t we, Nan?” ”

“ Fear of the Republican Party! Fear of the Democratic Party! Fear of society’s condemnation! Fear of our respective families! Fear of a national scandal! Yes, fear it was that stayed the hand of Warren Harding, and fear it was that prevented the realization of the holy dream I had visualized as sweetheart and mother. ”

“ 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 have been patient, I have been decent, I have been fair—but it seems [Pg 381] it doesn’t pay. It does not seem possible that Mr. Harding could have been the brother of anyone who could fail to see his viewpoint so impassionately. Bless him! I am afraid he would retract a good many of the things he has said to me if he could but see how things are going now! And maybe he does see. Sometimes I feel his presence very strongly—and I see his smile and hear his precious voice—and I am constrained to feel only charity for those who have shown anything but charity toward me. ”

“ I put on my bravest front when I bade my baby girl goodbye again, and faced the contemplation of hardships hitherto unknown to me. I felt so pitifully alone, and swallowed hard the great lump that rose in my throat as I tried to smile and blow farewell kisses to her who was my very life.
On the occasion of one of my visits to the White House I had, with the nervous apprehension born of mental unsettlement, spoken to Mr. Harding about the future. ”

“ Committee it was to go directly to her home to see our baby, Elizabeth Ann. I would usually reach there so fatigued I could scarcely stand, but what recuperative powers her baby exuberance had for me! And Mrs. Woodlock’s hearty laugh would ring through the length of the apartment as she related to me something amusing that had happened during the day. Or she, with her daughter Ruth, would show me how my baby had learned to laugh, and we would all bend over her, each trying to bring to her face the Harding smile that quickened my heart and made the others cry, “Isn’t she a darling!” ”

“ Miss Harding had told me sometime before that when her brother had been elected President his wife had sent some of her furniture back to Marion from their Wyoming Avenue home in Washington, and the room where I went to rest was fitted with Mr. and Mrs. Harding’s bedroom suite. Their framed portraits hung above their respective beds. I lay down and looked long at the likeness of my beloved. My second self was watching me, and seemed to say, “Go right ahead, Nan, and have a good cry. It will make you feel stronger.” ”

“ Poor Daisy Harding! Trying to be fair to me and just to her own family as she understood justice! “... you still have me who never fails a friend ... for the sake of the dear beloved, guard the secret, protect his name and everything will come out all right....” ”

“ Scott was still abroad and Elizabeth and I were alone with the baby in the apartment at that time. How can I forget how I hung upon every word that fell from Dr. Barbour’s lips, every expression that crossed his face when he came to see Elizabeth Ann! To this day I do not know what Elizabeth Ann’s trouble was. I doubt if I asked Dr. Barbour at that time. I was a coward. I felt her life was in my doctor’s hands and I looked to him. But whatever the trouble, it was serious. She slept most of the time—a heavy, dead sleep from which she seemed scarcely able to open her eyes. ”

“ My sister Elizabeth, writing from Chicago, kept me pretty well posted about the baby, but there were times when I felt I just must get back immediately to her. I managed to gain several pounds while in the mountains, and in early August, if I remember correctly, I returned to Chicago. I found the baby pink and white, like a peach blossom, and was delighted with Mrs. Woodlock’s fine care of her. She was getting prettier and prettier every day. And, oh, that Harding smile which captivated everyone who saw her! ”

“ If I do not hear, I shall simply have to take very definite steps to endeavor to establish Elizabeth Ann’s claim to some attention from the Hardings as to their responsibility toward her. And I am determined to do so.
Knowing how kindly you have been disposed to feel toward the whole situation, and loving you as much as I do, I cannot help believing you will do everything in your power to bring about the proper sense of responsibility on the part of every one of the Hardings. However, I have been treated so shabbily by the Votaws that I cannot afford longer to allow sentiment to influence me. ”

“ President Harding shook his head sadly. “No, I’m in jail, Nan, and can’t get out!”
He opened wider the door leading into his own office and we went in there again. The darkness of the day made our figures less visible over near the grate fireplace than they were in the ante-room, which was small and therefore quite light. Mr. Harding said his stenographer was at liberty to come in and ask about anything, but we’d “take a chance,” anyway.
“Oh, sweetheart, sweetheart,” I cried in his arms, “tell me, what constitutes happiness for me? What constitutes our happiness, darling?” ”

“ According to a newspaper clipping which I have pasted in my Harding book, President Harding’s very “hobby” was to help the “down and out.” The clipping reads, “Mankind needs encouragement and help. There is much suffering in the world and there is much heart-sickness....” Truly, the recognition of how greatly charity, forbearance, mercy, goodness, and all their kindred attributes work for the stature of the spirit of man was exemplified with pathetic beauty in the heart and life of Warren Gamaliel Harding. ”