It was good to know that you remembered me; and I appreciated your
kind interest and prompt response.
As to my qualifications: I will say frankly that I have had little
practical experience. As I said in my recent letter, my work this
winter has been, in a degree, handicapped by the fact that it has been
carried on while I have been going to school; therefore, I could not
give it my entire attention. But certainly the little I have done has
been wonderfully helpful, and has given me, at least, a start.
I am hoping that you will be in New York next week and that I can
talk with you; I am inclined to believe that an hour’s talk would be
much more satisfactory. There is so much I want to tell you; and I
am sure that I could give you a better idea of my ability--or rather
the extent of my ability, for it is limited--and you could judge for
yourself as to the sort of position I could competently fill.
I am almost certain that I will be able to secure a good
recommendation--both from Mr. Carter and Mrs. Phelps; if I do not get
to talk with you I shall send them to you. This work has been in the
stenographic line; this is really the work I want to follow.
If you call Stuyvesant 1900, the telephone number here at school,
you would find me here from nine in the morning until one in the
afternoon. In case you are able to see me for an hour it would please
me immensely to make an appointment--provided it does not interfere
with your plans.
Sincerely,
NAN BRITTON
_12_
I did not comply with Mr. Harding’s request for a letter of
recommendation, not immediately securing it and not wishing to hold up
my reply to him. I really felt I might likely be able to secure it and
send it to him in advance of his answer to my letter of the 11th.
But May the 15th brought, to my surprise, a reply to my second letter
sent the 11th. This letter too was written in longhand and was somewhat
longer than the first one. In the corner of the stationery this time
were the words, “Senate Chamber.”
If the first letter contained what I chose to regard as statements of
rather more than conventional import, the second letter only served to
confirm my belief.
He wrote that he had every confidence I would succeed--“... an
ambitious young woman of your character and talents must succeed.”
He spoke of having to break down the civil service bars to secure a
place for me, adding, “I must ask it as a very personal favor, with
the advantage of your good father having been a loyal supporter of the
party in power.” However, he immediately assured me that he did not
hesitate “to apply the purely personal appeal” and was glad to do it
for me. He merely wished to be satisfied on one point--could I take
dictation?
“You write a fine letter, your intelligence is of the high Britton
standard.... I will have no doubt you will make good from the very
start.”
It pleased me immensely to read, “I like your spirit and determination.
It is like I have always imagined you to be.” Like he had _always
imagined me to be_. Then he _had_ thought about me! Even speculated
as to what I was like! “... I shall rejoice to note your success,” he
wrote.
“I knew you had gone out to contest with the world and win your way,
but I had no detailed knowledge....” Why, there was the implication
that he had wondered, had perhaps even wanted detailed knowledge and
of course hadn’t dared to betray his interest! Wonderful that he had
thought about me!
He expected to be in New York within the next ten days and, he said,
might definitely advise me in advance of his coming, and again he
assured me, “It will be a pleasure to look you up.”
I liked the last line of his letter. “... always know of ... my very
genuine personal interest in your good fortune.”
A skylark amid the clouds could not have been happier than I during
the intervening days between my receipt of this letter and the arrival
of its author. I would often speak sharply to myself when occasionally
I touched earth long enough to realize the source of my joy and
light-heartedness, “Don’t make a perfect fool of yourself, now, Nan. He
hasn’t said anything which actually _means_ much ... and naturally he
would take a fatherly interest in _any_ girl who might seek help from
him....” But my spirits would not be downed! I talked to the birds. I
arose earlier than usual to stand and gaze out of my window and dream.
I examined my face carefully in the mirror. I planned exactly what I
should wear. My Chicago benefactor had recently sent me $50 with which
I had purchased a new gray tailored suit, and I would wear a dark blue
sailor hat, the crown covered with grey veiling.
_13_
Before I had an opportunity to get another letter to _him_, Mr.
Harding came over to New York. He telephoned me at school and made
an appointment for me to meet him at the Manhattan Hotel, at Madison
Avenue and 42nd Street. What a sweet shock to hear his voice!...
He was standing on the steps of the hotel when I reached there.
It must be remembered that I was but sixteen years of age when I had
last seen Mr. Harding (the time I called at his house to congratulate
him upon his election to the Senate) and, although I looked very young
when I met him at the Manhattan Hotel, still I had had the advantage of
the intervening two years, and the added advantage of having lived with
the Carters from whom I had learned a great deal, and I am sure Mr.
Harding’s agreeable surprise was genuine. Certainly he could not have
been more cordial.
He invited me to come back to the reception room near 43rd Street.
It was about 10:30 in the morning. We sat down upon a settee and it
was not difficult for me to talk to him for he invited confidence. We
became immediately reminiscent of my childhood and my adoration of him,
and he seemed immensely pleased that I still retained such feelings. I
could not help being perfectly frank.
Some kind of convention in New York at that time had made hotel
accommodations very scarce, and Mr. Harding confessed that he was
obliged to take the one room available in the Manhattan Hotel--the
bridal chamber! He asked me to come up there with him so that we might
continue our conversation without interruptions or annoyances.
The bridal chamber of the Manhattan Hotel was, to me, a very lovely
room, and, in view of the fact that we had scarcely closed the
door behind us when we shared our first kiss, it seemed sweetly
appropriate. The bed, which we did not disturb, stood upon a dais,
and the furnishings were in keeping with the general refinement of
atmosphere. I shall never, never forget how Mr. Harding kept saying,
after each kiss, “God!... God, Nan!” in high diminuendo, nor how he
pleaded in tense voice, “Oh, dearie, tell me it isn’t hateful to you to
have me kiss you!” And as I kissed him back I thought that he surpassed
even my gladdest dreams of him.
Between kisses we found time to discuss my immediate need for a
position and I found Mr. Harding less inclined to recommend me in
Washington. In fact, he frankly confessed to me, he preferred to have
me in New York where he could come over to see me and where he would
feel more at liberty to be with me. There were no intimacies in that
bridal chamber beyond our very ardent kisses, and, Mr. Harding, having
been acquainted with my plans for going to Chicago after graduation
to visit my sister, tucked $30 in my brand new silk stocking and was
“sorry he had no more that time to give me.” Inasmuch as I received my
carfare and small spending money from Mrs. Carter in amounts of $1.00,
$.75, $1.25 or whatever change she happened to have on hand, to have
$30 all at one time to “spend as I chose” seemed to me almost too good
to be true! I had always been very grateful to the Carters for the way
in which they took me into their home as one of them, but of course I
would not have been my natural self had I not thought wistfully over
Mr. Harding’s statement to me, “Why didn’t you ask _me_ to send you to
school, Nan?” and his emphatic “You bet!” after I had inquired with
wide eyes, “Oh, would you have done that?”
The first letter I received from Senator Harding I had shown to Mrs.
Emma Laird Phelps with whom I was working in the Paderewski connection,
and she read it with what I thought seemed avidity.
“A typical letter, my dear,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.
“Typical of what?” I inquired.
“Why, that man has an object--can’t you see that?” she said easily.
“What kind of object do you mean?” I queried wonderingly.
Her explanation must have been very vague for I can’t remember it at
all, but I suppose the affectional things that actually did transpire
upon our first visit together were things which she would have said
proved such ‘object’ on Mr. Harding’s part. But they were all too
spontaneous, too sincere to have been premeditated.
Mrs. Phelps afterward asked me one time to give her a letter that she
might use to gain a conference with Mr. Harding and I am sure, while
I never gave her such a letter, that she changed her mind completely
about Mr. Harding’s possible purposes toward me so graciously did she
voice her admiration of him to me many times.
Upon this first visit, Mr. Harding and I had luncheon at the Manhattan
Hotel, in the dining-room on the 43rd Street side. Then we took a taxi
uptown to see Mrs. Phelps--to her apartment on 116th Street.
The entrance hall to Mrs. Phelps’ apartment was dimly lighted, and
when we emerged into the living-room which is on 116th Street Mr.
Harding turned to Mrs. Phelps. Except for their acknowledgments of
introductions nothing had been said by any of us, and now Mr. Harding
remarked pleasantly, “Well, Mrs. Phelps, we people with big noses
always seem to get along, don’t we?” I had not been long enough in New
York and was still too unsuspecting to realize the significance of that
remark, though I am confident Mr. Harding meant it all good-naturedly,
and I am not at all sure even now that Mrs. Phelps is a Jewess. Within
the past year and a half I have been in Mrs. Phelps’ apartment and she
asked me if I remembered when President Harding, then Senator, had sat
in “that chair,” indicating an easy rocker.
From Mrs. Phelps Mr. Harding obtained the information that I was rather
more than a good stenographer.
On the way back downtown in the taxi to the Y. W. C. A. where Mr.
Harding next talked with Miss Anderson about my school work, he put his
arm around me.
“Nan,” he queried kindly, “just how fast do you think you could take
dictation?”
“Oh, I don’t know, not so very fast,” I answered frankly.
“Well, look here, I’ll dictate a letter to you and you tell me whether
you ‘get’ all of it.” The “letter” as it was dictated verbatim I do not
recall, but the trend of it is easy rememberable:
“My darling Nan: I love you more than the world, and I want you to
belong to me. Could you belong to me, dearie? I want you ... and I need
you so....”
I remember the letter did not run into length because I silenced him
with the kisses he pleaded for. He would tremble so just to sit close
to me, and I adored every evidence of his enthusiasm.
“Do people address you as ‘Judge’ or ‘Senator’?” asked Miss Anderson
after I had presented Mr. Harding to her.
“No, I have never been a judge,” he answered, “I guess I’m just plain
Mr. Harding.” He smiled. Miss Anderson suggested that we sit in one of
the little waiting-rooms.
It will be remembered that this visit was in late May of 1917 and our
whole United States was full of “the war.” It was entirely logical that
the general trend of conversation should bear upon the various aspects
of the war. But how it drifted into a discussion of babies I do not
recall. Mr. Harding vouchsafed the information he had recently acquired
in Washington, that the Germans were actually attempting to create
children by injecting male serum, taken at the proper temperature, into
the female without the usual medium of sexual contact. He denounced
this method of propagation as “German madness” and affirmed that in his
belief children should come only through mutual love-desire. I shall
never forget the expressions of his face and Helen Anderson’s. Surely
she must have thought he was talking strangely to speak of these things
so frankly and upon such short acquaintance. But I, though I confess
it did not occur to me then, understand these processes of his mind to
have been the direct result of contemplations concerning me, and it is
not unlikely that even as early as that very first visit Warren Harding
was entertaining the possibility of becoming the father of a real
love-child. Certainly his face was a study.
Miss Anderson assured him of my readiness for a position and we went
from the Y. W. C. A. to Judge Elbert H. Gary’s office at 71 Broadway,
Empire Building. I remember we stood quite a few minutes waiting for
a Broadway street car, and it must have taken us about forty-five
minutes to go from 14th Street to Rector Street. I remember how Mr.
Harding suddenly seemed to come to himself somewhere in lower Broadway
and exclaim, as we were getting off the car, “Why, Nan, why didn’t we
take a taxi!” and his surprise was so genuine that I knew he had not
realized _where_ he had been during that ride downtown.
_14_
Mr. Harding had told me that he thought the very place for me was in
the United States Steel Corporation. I had never even heard of Judge
Gary, strange to say, and he explained that he was the Chairman of the
Board of Directors of the largest industrial corporation in the world.
Mr. Harding handed his card to the secretary in Judge Gary’s outer
office. The judge came out immediately. After introducing me to Judge
Gary, Mr. Harding inquired casually of him whether his senatorial
services in a certain matter had been satisfactory. The judge replied
that they had indeed and thanked Mr. Harding. We were then taken into
the office of the Comptroller, Mr. Filbert, and Judge Gary made this
statement to Mr. Filbert: “Mr. Filbert, I want to help Senator Harding
to help this young lady.” Then Judge Gary retired.
Our interview with Mr. Filbert was rather a lengthy one and I thought
there were infused in it the elements of a battle of wits between the
two men. Mr. Filbert seemed to resent Mr. Harding’s assurance that
“Miss Britton can write all of your letters for you!” But, as usual,
when we left it was Mr. Filbert who had been won over and I was asked
to await a letter from him telling in which branch of service in the
Steel Corporation I would be placed.
Going down in the elevator, Mr. Harding whispered to me, “_Now_, do you
believe that I love you?”
We took a taxi back to the Manhattan Hotel. We stopped at the 43rd
Street entrance. The taxi had not drawn close enough to the curb and
there was a space of perhaps ten inches between the running-board and
the sidewalk. Mr. Harding caught his foot and tripped, falling in
a very awkward position. His face became red and he arose the most
embarrassed man imaginable. I remember how it immediately reminded me
of a story mother used to tell about my doctor-father, accompanied
also by a young lady, when he was making calls in his shiny “buggy”,
being suddenly seized with cramps which bore him to the ground when he
alighted in front of the patient’s house; he had been obliged to remain
in a squatting position for several moments. Mr. Harding’s blush of
confusion after his fall remained a good many minutes and was explained
by him, “You see, dearie, I’m so crazy about you that I don’t know
where I’m stepping!”
The bridal chamber at the Manhattan seemed almost to be our home when
we returned to it for the second time, and the manner in which we threw
off our wraps and settled ourselves together comfortably in the big
arm-chair the most natural thing in the world. And the fact that Mr.
Harding told me dozens of times the thing I had always longed to hear
from him, “I love you, dearie,” seemed no less the perfectly natural
and normal thing. “We were made for each other, Nan,” he said.
Especially did it all seem so right when Mr. Harding repeated to me
many times, “I’d like to make _you_ my bride, Nan darling.”
Mr. Harding came over once more before I left for Chicago on my
vacation trip, for which my Chicago friends had sent me my railroad
ticket. It was upon this occasion that he took me to his room in the
Manhattan and talked over with me my prospective position in the United
States Steel Corporation. He expressed his desire to have me dignified
in the eyes of the officials there who would hear of me through Mr.
Filbert, and about fifteen or twenty minutes before it was time for
him to catch his train, he sat down at the desk and wrote out in
longhand a letter which he said would be suitable for me to send to Mr.
Filbert when that gentleman should send me a note to report for further
interview at the Steel Corporation. Mr. Harding seemed very sure that I
would be the recipient of such a letter and I watched over his shoulder
while he wrote a hasty draft of “my reply.” It was the first time I had
seen him slam his Oxford glasses upon his classic nose and I marvelled
aloud at this feat.
I have always been quite averse to deception such as claiming
authorship for something written by another, and I could not sincerely
enthuse over the letter Mr. Harding had tried to couch in terms such
as I might employ. However, I accepted it with thanks and he needed
only to glance at his watch to see that he had barely time to catch his
train. He kissed me and rushed away.
In due time I received the letter from Mr. Filbert, in which he asked
me to see Miss Blanche Sawyer, in the legal department, who would tell
me about my position in the Corporation. But the letter received from
Mr. Filbert seemed not to call for the kind of reply Mr. Harding had
pencilled and so I wrote one of my own. I sent Mr. Harding a carbon
copy, however, which he approved in his next letter to me.
_15_
In early June I left for Chicago to visit my sister Elizabeth before
taking up my work with the Steel Corporation in New York, in a
stenographic position at $16 per week.
Up to that time I had made no one my confidante--in truth, I was
finding it difficult to realize that my hero, Warren G. Harding, loved
me, Nan Britton. Naturally I told no one. But my sister, Elizabeth,
knowing me as she did, sought a reason for the unusual glow of my
cheeks and the happiness written so visibly in my eyes, and when I
received my first forty-page love-letter from Mr. Harding, I told
Elizabeth the truth. She was unmarried then and living at the Colonial
Hotel where I visited her, but she was in love herself with the man she
finally married, and, having known so well my childhood adoration for
Mr. Harding, sympathized with me though she did not encourage me to
continue my friendship with him.
My finances were rather low at that time, I disliked to ask my Chicago
benefactors for more money, so I wrote to Mr. Harding about it, as he
had instructed me to do. The first money he sent me was in the form
of a money order--it seems to me on the American Express Company--for
$42, which amount, he told me by letter, was odd enough to make it
appear that it was in payment of some possible work I had done for him.
Elizabeth went with me when I had it cashed.
A week or so after that I received a letter from Mr. Harding saying
he had been asked to speak in Indianapolis, and inviting me to come
there to meet him. So I packed my suitcase and the following day Mr.
Harding met me at the station in Indianapolis. I was, curiously enough,
quite free from nervousness as I walked through the iron gate where he
stood waiting, and wondered why _he_ seemed so nervous. His hand shook
terribly as he took mine after we were in the taxi. Even his voice
shook. For me it was a great moment. I was so happy to be with him.
We went immediately to the Claypool Hotel where he registered me
as his niece, Miss Harding. During my stay there (we left late
that afternoon), I had several phone calls from newspaper men and
Republicans who were endeavoring to get hold of Senator Harding. A
great deal of the time he was in my room with me and instructed me to
tell them to try him at the Republican Club. It was such fun to have
him cut them all for me!
There were no climactic intimacies in Indianapolis. When I came to
unpack my things I found a note pinned to my nightie on which Elizabeth
had written these words, “I trust you, Nan dear.” Elizabeth knew I
loved Mr. Harding very dearly.
Mr. Harding had to leave me after luncheon--which, I believe, we had
together, though I do not remember for sure--and I wandered about until
the hour set for me to meet him with my bag at the interurban station.
I bought a postcard of the Claypool Hotel to keep as a souvenir. I
remember the clerk at the desk had occasion to say something to me and
it sounded so good to be addressed as “Miss Harding.”
Late that afternoon we took the interurban car to Connersville,
Indiana. Mr. Harding was scheduled to speak that evening at Rushville,
Indiana, which is near Connersville. That trip on the interurban
train was wonderful to me. I wore a black satin dress which my sister
Elizabeth had “made over” from one of her own for me. I explained to
Mr. Harding that I had a “better one” in my suitcase. “This one suits
me, Nan!” he said gaily.
He spent quite some time explaining to me the layout of the City of
Washington. He seemed to take much pride in Washington, and I thought
to myself that he just looked as though he belonged there rather than
in the small city of Marion, Ohio, our home town; he looked eminently
the part of a United States Senator. Yet, as I write this, I remember I
used to find myself cherishing the nice things he said about our home
town.
“What would your sister, Daisy Harding, say if she could see us
together?” I exclaimed to him.
He laughed whimsically, evidently thinking rather of his wife.
“What would _Florence_ Harding say, I want to know!” he answered.
At Mr. Harding’s suggestion I registered in Connersville at the
McFarlan Hotel, where he also stopped, as “Miss E. N. Christian,” or
“Elizabeth N. Christian.” Christian was Mr. Harding’s secretary’s
name--George B. Christian--and Mr. Harding said he thought it would be
“a good joke” to use his secretary’s name. My father and mother must
have known the Christians in Marion, and when in high school I knew the
older gentleman, George Christian’s father, “Colonel” as he was called,
because he used to take us girls to the drug store and buy us sodas.
Mr. Harding intended to take me to Rushville that evening, but when he
knocked on my door I was in the bathroom down the hall, and as his car
was waiting for him he could not wait for me. So I was left to roam
around the little village and wait for his return. There, too, I bought
a postcard picture of the McFarlan Hotel “for remembrance.”
He returned about ten-thirty or eleven. I was sitting in the lobby of
the hotel, one of the typical lobbies of a small town hotel, with the
chairs lined up before the front window. As he came in he ignored me
altogether and I smiled to myself. We had planned to take the midnight
train into Chicago, and he had told me that afternoon on the interurban
that we would get a berth together if I agreed. But it had really been
left undecided.
A taxi was announced about eleven-forty-five and I picked up my bag
and went out. Mr. Harding was at my side in a moment. The several
politicians who escorted Mr. Harding to the cab did not know of course
that we were known to each other, and ostensibly we were not. He spoke
up, “I am catching the midnight train into Chicago. Is that your
train, young lady?” I replied that it was and he said, “Well, I guess
we can both ride down in the same taxi.” Inasmuch as I doubt whether
Connersville boasted more than one, it was a wise suggestion! I was
afraid the taxi man would surely hear Mr. Harding’s whispered remarks
to me on the way down, especially when he said over and over again,
“Dearie, ’r y’ going t’ sleep with me? Look at me, Nan: goin’ to sleep
with me, dearie?” How I _loved_ to hear him say “dearie”!
We secured a section to Chicago. The remembrance of that trip from
Connersville to Chicago is very beautiful although it, too, was free
from complete embraces. We were both dressed the next morning before
we reached the Englewood Station, about nine minutes from the downtown
station, and I remarked to Mr. Harding that he looked a bit tired.
“God, sweetheart! what do you expect? I’m a man, you know.”
In Chicago, we went to a downtown hotel. Here Mr. Harding registered
us as man and wife, although I stood apart and do not know the name
he used. However, if I were to see that register as well as all of
the others wherein we were registered, I am sure I could identify his
writing, for he did not disguise it well no matter how hard he tried.
I noticed he was conversing with the clerk and when he joined me he
said, in a low voice, on the way to the elevator, “The clerk said if
I could prove that you were my wife he would give us the room for
nothing!” I asked him laughingly what he had replied to that and he
said, “I told him I was not in the habit of proving my wife’s identity
and that I had no objection at all to paying for accommodations!”
Nevertheless, we were very circumspect while there that morning and
our love-making was, as it had been up until then, restricted. We had
breakfast served in our room. I remember that it was the first time
that season I had had strawberries.
Mr. Harding took the noon train back--I think going direct to
Washington.
_16_
During the remainder of my visit with my sister Elizabeth at the
Colonial Hotel in Chicago, I analysed my feelings as best I could. What
a maze of emotions! I knew I loved Warren Harding more than anything
in all the world. However, up to this time I had kept my virginity,
despite his very moving appeals to become his completely. Mr. Harding
had explained to me that were we to be found on the train coming from
Connersville to Chicago, sleeping together in one section, we would
invite as severe censure as though we had shared love’s sweetest
intimacy; and the trip itself would be sufficient to incriminate us.
But in my own eyes, I was safe so long as my virginity was sustained.
It seems to me unbelievable now when I think back on my ignorance about
certain things. I had early reached this conclusion: people got married
and undressed and slept together; therefore, one must be undressed in
order for any harm to come to them. I remember that this belief was so
strong in my mind that when, during our ride together from Connersville
to Chicago, I experienced sweet thrills from just having Mr. Harding’s
hands upon the outside of my nightdress, I became panic-stricken. I
inquired tearfully whether he really thought I would have a child right
away. Of course this absurdity amused him greatly, but the fact that I
was so ignorant seemed to add to his cherishment of me for some reason.
And I loved him so dearly.
I had never had, as most girls do have I suppose, a single talk with or
from my mother on sex. As a matter of fact, I did not know how babies
came into the world, and I frankly told Mr. Harding so. I remember
once during one of our “kissing tours”, as he jocularly called them,
I asked him what under the sun people were given navels for! I shall
never forget how it amused, and then saddened him, nor his face as he
told me that that was where I had been attached to my mother. It was
all so wonderful and beautiful when he told me. It was he who told me
of course what my body functions would be if I were to yield myself to
him. He said, “You ask _me_ whatever you want to know; I’ll tell you.”
In my father’s medical library were many books on women and women’s
diseases. My sister Elizabeth and I had girl friends who were
enormously interested in coming up to my father’s office and poring
over these books in his absence, studying with inconceivable interest
the lurid pictures portraying various intimate parts of woman’s
anatomy, all of course highly colored, but it was to me no less than
repulsive to even glance at those medical pictures. I never spent one
solitary second looking at them. When I came to the age when all girls
experience that normal function which makes of them potential mothers,
I was most painfully embarrassed and told my sister Elizabeth, who in
turn communicated it to my mother, and even she dwelt very briefly upon
it, merely cautioning me not to get my feet unnecessarily wet when I
was ill each month.
I told Mr. Harding that I was aware that there was a lovely mystery
connected with life itself, but I had early decided that it was a
mystery for one’s husband to reveal, and I had been perfectly content
not to pry into it. I accepted my puberty as a necessity, even as a
sacred necessity to a cause which should later reveal itself. Mr.
Harding confessed to me that he had never possessed a woman who had
hitherto been possessed of no man, and perhaps that fact concerning me
made me the more desirable to him, in addition to his love for me. He
told me about his early amours, and he confessed that it had been many
years since his home situation had been satisfying.
Mr. Harding told me that he knew of _no_ man except his brother “Deac”
who married, having had no previous experience with women. “Brother
Deac” was a male virgin, he said, before he married.
The fact that at home we girls were held down, even to not being
allowed to attend parties where boys were until we were quite
seventeen--at least that applied to me--indicates the measures that my
mother and father had taken to guard us. “And no young man is going to
visit my girls after ten o’clock at night,” my father used to say. If
we expressed sentiments concerning boys--and my sister Elizabeth was
early a “man hater” so this refers to me mainly--we were told that they
were joshing us, “making fun of us.” So the outlets for my inclinations
in this direction were confined to raving about Mr. Harding, and about
moving picture actors to whom there was not quite so much parental
objection inasmuch as they were only on the screen and in the flesh
safely distanced from me.
Of course there was the perfectly logical plea from Mr. Harding that
if I loved him so deeply I would consent to belong to him, not merely
to be with him, trying him by continued denial. I think I made up to
Warren Harding everything I ever denied him--and I was afterward so
glad I had not plunged headlong into a relationship which was of such
vastness and which I can now look back upon with absolutely no regrets.
In the history of lovers, there was, I am sure, none to compare with
Warren Gamaliel Harding. And to him I was, or so he has often said,
“the sweetheart incomparable.”
_17_
Through my sister I had met, while in Chicago, a young man, whom I
shall call Dean Renwick, who was a pianist of considerable talent, and
a rather nice-looking boy. He seemed to like me and “after a fashion”
asked me to marry him--perhaps he wanted merely to “be engaged” to me.
I have often thought since that the poor boy was just lonesome, for I
don’t see how I could have appealed to him particularly; our interests
were not the same. In any event, I rather seized the idea of annexing a
beau--one who was free to marry me if I wanted and he wanted. You see,
I tried hard to convince myself that it was wrong to love Mr. Harding
as I loved him, that it would mean ultimate surrender, and perhaps
sorrow for us and for our families.
My sister Elizabeth was amazed at the letters I would receive from
Mr. Harding when I shared their contents with her. I remember among
the first of them that came to me while I was in Chicago that month,
was one which particularly took me off my feet. It contained in sweet
phrasing a picture of his desire for me, summed up in the final
parenthetical exclamation, “God! what an anticipation!” He used to tell
me that just to visualize me as he loved to see me brought pangs that
seemed virginal in their intensity and surpassed any longing he had
ever experienced in his life.
I returned to New York the latter part of June, not having committed
myself to Dean Renwick beyond verbal gratitude for his regard and an
attempt at a show of affection for him which fell flat in my heart.
The first of July, 1917, I went to work in the United States Steel
Corporation. I was interviewed by Miss Blanche Sawyer in the legal
department. She informed me that although I had had a splendid
introduction I would of course have to prove my worth. She took me in
and introduced me to Mr. C. L. Close, Manager of the Bureau of Safety,
Sanitation and Welfare, in whose office I was employed for the two
years that followed. Mr. Close came from Shelby, Ohio, and his wife,
formerly Edna Kennedy, had been a Marion girl. Mr. Close knew George
Christian pretty well, having known Mr. Christian’s wife who also came
from Shelby, Ohio. This was, in a way, a sort of social grounding for
me, as George Christian’s boss, Senator Harding, had been instrumental
in placing me with his secretary’s friend in the United States Steel
Corporation.
I left the Carter home in Sutton Place, preferring for obvious reasons
to live by myself, or rather with a strange family where my movements
would not be restricted. The first room I rented was with Mr. and Mrs.
Daniels who lived at 607 West 136th Street. I had heard of Mrs. Daniels
through Helen Anderson who in turn had met her at the Y. M. C. A. where
she had filed her notice of “rooms to rent.” I lived there from July to
November, 1917.
Of course I was proud of my friendship with Mr. Harding, and, inasmuch
as up to this time it had been free from deepest intimacies, I felt
freer to discuss him, although as a matter of fact I had always talked
about him so much at home and elsewhere that it was much a matter of
course.
The Daniels were wise enough to appreciate that their roomer was rather
more than “in” with a United States Senator. Moreover, mention was
made from time to time in the papers of senate activities in which Mr.
Harding took a prominent part, and on August 12, 1917, _The New York
Times_ carried in its magazine section a front-page article entitled,
“Need of Dictator Urged by Harding.” I wondered at the time whether
the publication of this article had been arranged for in a series of
telephone calls made to the _Times_, the _Sun_ and newspaper friends of
Mr. Harding upon the occasion of one of his visits here when I was with
him. The Daniels immediately said that I ought to try to persuade the
senator to dine at their home. It would, obviously, have been a feather
in their joint social headgear! As a matter of fact, he did not do so,
though I had his assurance that he would if it would please _me_.
_18_
It was mid-July when Mr. Harding came over from Washington. We went to
a moderate-priced hotel on Seventh Avenue. He told me that that hotel
had once been a very nice place, and he knew George and Dan Frank
(dry-goods merchants from Marion) used to stop there when in New York.
We were not questioned when he registered, and we were made very
comfortable in a room on the sixth floor, if I remember rightly,
looking down upon Broadway. Although I was deliriously happy to lie in
close embrace with my darling, I just could not even yet permit the
intimacies which would mean severance forever from a moral code which,
while never identified to me by my parents as the one virtue to hold
intact, was intuitively guarded by me as such. Mr. Harding has many
times said to me that if people were to know that we had been together
intimately without indulging in closest embrace they would not credit
the story. In fact, he said to me with something like chagrin that the
_men_ would say, “there certainly must have been something wrong with
Harding!” But somehow it is characteristic of me to be sure of myself,
and when once committed to a cause there is seldom a turning-back. And,
as much as I loved Mr. Harding, the traditional frailty men are wont to
attribute to women as the weaker sex did not dominate me. This sureness
on my part accounted later on for the total lack of “recriminations,”
a word Mr. Harding very frequently employed. “Remember, dearie, no
recriminations!” he used to say.
On July 30th, 1917, Mr. Harding came again to New York. He decided
we could safely go to a hotel where friends of his in Washington had
intimated to him that they had stopped under similar unconventional
circumstances with no unpleasant consequences.
This was on Broadway in the thirties. I remember so well I wore a pink
linen dress which was rather short and enhanced the little-girl look
which was often my despair. I waited in the waiting-room while Mr.
Harding registered. I have been in that hotel once since that time and
I have noted that they have changed the first floor entirely. I think
Mr. Harding said he registered under the name of “Hardwick” or maybe
“Warwick.” There were no words going up in the elevator.
The day was exceedingly warm and we were glad to see that the room
which had been assigned to us had two large windows. The boy threw
them open for us and left. The room faced Broadway, but we were high
enough not to be bothered by street noises. We were quite alone.