_143_
I had readily perceived from Miss Harding’s letter, received October
16th, 1925, that the line of thinking pursued by the Votaws as well as
by herself led straight to the fear of exposure, and though, for their
sake, I was ready to further guard their brother’s and my secret from
the world, in my heart I rated my child’s future and my own sense of
justice for her far above the continued consideration of protection of
the Harding name. _It lay with them and their sense of right toward
Elizabeth Ann whether or not the story they wished to conceal were
further revealed._ I had assured them of my co-operation, and, except
they fail me, I would continue to suffer the fictional explanations
which surrounded the identity of Elizabeth Ann’s father. But it seemed
to me that our child, Warren Harding’s and mine, possessed enough
of distinction in being the only child of the 29th President of the
United States, and I enough of pride in having been loved by Warren
Harding and having borne him a child, to warrant an open expression of
indifference if they in turn did not as dearly value the protection
of their own family name. And the knowledge of their apparent lack of
appreciation of my efforts up to that time filled me with hurt and
righteous indignation. If, in the process of being obliged to approach
personally friends of Mr. Harding, the story leaked out, I would know
that I had done everything in _my_ power to keep it intact, and that
only the refusal of Warren Harding’s own brothers and sisters to
sponsor the cause of his own daughter had precipitated such revelation.
_I would sacrifice myself, in dedicating every remaining shred of
nervous energy to protective efforts in their behalf, if they would
make possible to me the possession of my child._ But I would not
forever tolerate unjust criticism of past conduct either on my part
or on the part of their brother any more than I would countenance the
figurative drawing away of skirts from the child who had every right
in the world to tug at them in her rightful demand, through the voice
of her mother, for recognition and equity.
_144_
In a letter received by me from Daisy Harding (Mrs. Lewis), under
date of October 20th, a post office order in the amount of $110
was enclosed. Miss Harding wrote in this letter, in asking me to
immediately destroy her letters to me, “perhaps it is best to destroy
them at the Club.” In this I recognized a conscience which whispered
the right thing, but a human mind which overruled and dangled the
fear of exposure before frightened eyes. A wave of pity swept over
me. It seemed to me that the _values_ of the real things in life were
being placed only upon their shadows, not upon the things themselves.
What if the whole _world_ knew? What if a nation knew that it elected
a President who was so much a man that he craved to be a father?
Where was the infamy of such an exalted desire? Would not every man,
woman and child enshrine him in their hearts as a martyr, a man who
had sought to know the real things but who was cruelly deprived of
his birthright as a lover and a father, in the fullest sense of the
word? 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!
I did _not_ promise to destroy Daisy Harding’s letters. These letters,
with carbon copies of my own to her and to the Votaws, I was saving for
my daughter. Through them she could read the story of my approach to
her father’s family, and, whatever the result of that approach, she was
entitled to read of it first-hand.
The next letter I wrote to Miss Harding was one dated November 2nd, Mr.
Harding’s birthday. His birthday fell one week to the day before mine,
and he and I, though he was thirty years older, had always spoken of
him as being just one week my senior. I wrote only to tell Miss Harding
how “memories crowded each hour of the day,” and made no allusion to
Elizabeth Ann’s matter except to tell her that I had heard nothing from
the Votaws in answer to my lengthy letter to them.
Her answer was mailed under date of November 5th, 1925, and, aside
from comments about the manner in which that particular birthday of
her brother’s had been commemorated in Marion, she wrote, “I realize,
my dear, how hard your lot, and the tremendous burdens you must be
carrying. Pay no attention to the attitude of sister and husband. The
situation is a difficult one and will come out all right, I’m sure.
In the meanwhile, remember you have my love and sympathy....” Again
she promised help, this time for Elizabeth Ann’s clothes. And her
expressions of solicitude for my own health, in cautioning me not
to overwork in my playwriting course at Barnard, touched me deeply.
“Lovingly yours, A. V. H. Lewis,” her letter was signed.
How dear she was, I thought. No wonder I chose her when I was in high
school as my ideal American woman, for she was a very great deal like
her brother Warren, who would always be my ideal American man. Much
like him in sympathies and instincts.
_145_
In the crowded three-room apartment where my mother, my baby and I were
living, I was finding it all too difficult to devote as much quiet time
to my course in playwriting as it required. It seemed to me far more
desirable to retire early with my little girl and visit with her until
she fell asleep on my arm. I was grateful for the attitude of Daisy
Harding, but the attitude the Votaws had assumed made me heartsick, and
when a realization of what it would all mean to Elizabeth Ann swept
over me, I wanted literally to catch her up close to me and close her
eyes and mine to life’s cruelties.
The mental misery I suffered must surely have been reflected by
Elizabeth Ann, for she was oftentimes restless and unnaturally
apprehensive for a child of six. I remember one evening when she gave
me a great shock, so really did she mirror my own mood. My mother had
gone away that evening and Elizabeth Ann was in my bed awaiting me
and the bedtime story I had promised to tell her. But when I came in
from the bathroom I found her crying. “Why, whatever is the matter
with my precious darling?” I asked her, taking her in my arms and
kissing her wet cheek. “Oh, Nan, dear,” she sobbed, and her voice grew
hysterical, “I was just thinking about our poor dear Mr. Harding!” I
had not mentioned Mr. 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?”
Who can say that he was not looking down upon his two loved ones,
hovering near us in spirit, urging me to the exhaustion of every effort
to establish his daughter’s rights, and deploring with all his heart
the struggle I was having to come into my own, to have our child?
But I could not have survived in an atmosphere of constant conscious
worry, and there were days when the full buoyancy and optimism of my
true self would assert themselves, and I would reflect gratefully and
lovingly upon Miss Harding’s prophecy that things would “come out all
right,” and dream of the day when my child would be welcomed into the
hearts of those whom she should know as her own people.
When friends commented upon my taking Elizabeth Ann and my mother for
the winter, I reminded them that I was alone in New York, awaiting the
final decree of my marriage annulment, that my sister Elizabeth and her
husband were busy teaching, and that it was the most natural thing in
the world for me to want company.
_146_
Soon after receiving the November 5th, 1925, letter from Daisy Harding,
I received from her a draft for $65 for Elizabeth Ann’s clothes. She
wrote a very hurried note, signed, “Lots of love, A. V. H.”
It was a delight to purchase winter things for Warren Harding’s and
my child with money received from Warren Harding’s sister. It seemed
so _right_. I retained all of the receipts for the purchase of these
things in order to show them to Miss Harding if she should ever care
to see them, and indeed the purchases ran over the $65 sent. Elizabeth
Ann had no winter things to speak of, even though my sister Elizabeth
had made her some pretty summer dresses. But I had to buy her winter
things, from underwear to a coat, hat, galoshes and gloves. She looked
adorable in them.
Under date of November 12, 1925, I replied to Miss Harding’s brief
note enclosing the check, and I wrote, “It makes me feel _so good
inside_--the knowledge that it comes from you. And I love you. You
know that.” I also said that I felt sure it was Mr. Votaw who refused
to understand my situation--and not Mrs. Votaw. Miss Harding had said
she might be coming to New York soon and I wrote that it would be fine
if she and Mrs. Votaw could come to New York to see me. On December
1st I wrote again to Miss Harding after I had finished the shopping
for Elizabeth Ann, and I told her how very pretty the baby looked in
her new things. She was growing out of her babyhood, however, and was
beginning to shoot up, and I observed daily how much like Mr. Harding
she was, with the Harding olive complexion, the Harding eyes, and the
height which belonged to me as well as to her father.
_147_
Under date of December 9th I was obliged to write to Tim Slade and
tell him that a circumstance had arisen which would make it impossible
for me to count upon some money I had hitherto been counting upon, to
supplement any amounts I might receive from the Harding family or from
my salary. This supplemental fund was promised by a friend who at the
last minute failed me, and it was going to be even more difficult for
me to manage financially from then on. I had my rent paid up to January
10, 1926, and this being December 9, 1925, I had a month’s leeway
before having to raise the rent of the furnished apartment which we
occupied. Tim had been in New York on December 8th, the previous day in
fact, but I had not known then of the emergency.
I received no answer from Tim to that letter and was surprised that I
did not. On the date on which I mailed the letter to Tim I received
a letter from Daisy Harding. I had written her quite at length about
Elizabeth Ann’s school work, and how proud I was of the way in which
she was progressing day by day under my mother’s excellent tutelage.
Miss Harding sent the rest of Elizabeth Ann’s kindergarten money, and
$15 had been added to the amount, which, she wrote, would be a little
Christmas gift for Elizabeth Ann and me.
She wrote that she was going to Battle Creek, after which she would
join her husband in the South. This letter too had an affectionate
ending, “Lots of love ..., A. V. H. L.” There was nothing in the letter
that seemed to require immediate response. However, I answered it on
December 11th. I wrote of Tim Slade’s having been over again to New
York and that I felt sure he was the genuine person I had up to this
time judged him to be.
It was upon the occasion of a trip of Tim’s made in early January,
about the twelfth, that he gave me the first money I had ever received
from him, in amount $100. It was accepted by me in the strictest
business sense. I sent him a promissory note for the amount, at his
own suggestion, dating it January 14th, and promising to repay him in
three months. I told him at the time that it did not look as though the
Hardings were willing to do anything in a _substantial_ way to help
me to keep Elizabeth Ann, but that I was still “hoping against hope.”
I told him about Daisy Harding’s assurance that she would help me as
soon as she realized anything on her Florida property. I explained to
Tim that I was sure she didn’t have any cash or she would have helped
me that winter even more than the $175 or so she had already sent. I
frankly expressed my resentment at the attitude the Votaws had assumed,
but Tim said it was no more than he had expected. He repeated what he
had said long before, “They don’t want to part with their money.” But
I could not believe that this was the reason they were keeping aloof,
and insisted it must be because they did not believe my story. And that
hurt me more than their unwillingness to help financially.
Tim Slade is not the type of man one would expect to be wordily
sympathetic, but his apparent “hard-heartedness” was construed by me
always as merely an unrelenting attitude toward the members of the
Harding family who had received Mr. Harding’s generous legacies, and
who guarded this money to the point of refusing to share it with their
brother’s own child.
So when Tim came over to New York, very often he would say, “Well,
I talked with Hoke Donithen,” (a lawyer from Marion who, Tim said,
benefitted largely from the Harding administration) “and I put the
fear of the Lord into _him_!” And despite my seriousness, Tim’s boyish
enthusiasm and apparent sponsorship of my cause would make me smile.
But in the case of Mr. Donithen, as in the case of Mr. Crissinger, Tim
evidently failed, for nothing seemed to be developing from his efforts.
When I confided to him that I would need help now more than I had in
the past, inasmuch as the loan upon which I had depended had failed me,
he asked me if $100 a month extra would enable me to keep Elizabeth Ann
and mother with me as I had planned to do. I assured him it would be a
very great help and I thought would enable me to carry out my plans.
However, though he promised to send me $100 each month, as a loan,
he did not do so, and I have written Tim several times for help when
I have not heard from him at all, not even an acknowledgement of my
letters to him. But he had said to me, “Whenever you don’t hear from
me, you’ll know I’m broke.”
_148_
On January 27th, 1926, I wrote Mr. Votaw. I was under a nervous strain
which had superimposed other ailments, and was growing apprehensive of
what the Votaws might do to take advantage of my situation so frankly
and truthfully laid before them. It was all I could do to keep up my
work at the Club, and at the end of the first semester at Barnard I
had dropped the playwriting course I had started. It was too difficult
for me to do my school work at night and my day work at the Club, and
besides bear up under the constant worry about finances.
My letter follows:
“MY DEAR MR. VOTAW:
The telephone operator here tells me that a man came in this noon and
asked for me. He answered your description, and I am therefore writing
to ask if it were you. If so, and you wish to get in touch with me,
will you be good enough to call me at Bryant 4246? The gentleman
in question for some reason asked if I were in and then contrarily
assured the telephone operator that he did not wish to disturb me. As
I do not like that sort of thing occurring here at the Club, I thought
I could at least let you know where I was in case it had been you who
called me.
The address is as above and my home address is 609 West 114th Street.
The home telephone number is Cathedral 5770. I think I gave you this
information in my letter last fall.
Very truly yours,
NAN BRITTON NEILSEN”
I sent Tim Slade a copy of this letter, relating the circumstances, and
telling him how nervous every little thing made me.
After I had mailed this letter to Mr. Votaw, I went home and thought
the whole matter over carefully that night in bed, and the following
day I wrote _Mrs._ Votaw a brief note, telling her I felt that if
anyone came to New York to talk with me it would more logically be she
than Mr. Votaw. I apprised Tim Slade of what I had written, keeping him
thus in touch with my own steps.
The following day I received an answer to my letter to Mr. Votaw. It
reached me the same day it was dated, January 29th, and was as strictly
formal as mine to him had been. Very briefly Mr. Votaw advised me that
he had not called for me at The Town Hall Club on the date my letter
was written, “_nor at any other time_.” The italicized words were
heavily underscored on the typewriter by Mr. Votaw, who, I assumed, had
himself typed the letter to me. He went on to say that he had not tried
to reach me at my home either, and informed me that he had not been in
New York City at all for more than two years.
That was all the letter contained. Never an allusion to the matter
which I deemed of as great moment to the Hardings and Votaws as to
myself as the mother of their brother’s and my child. In fact, the
letter from Mr. Votaw to me was merely one of complete negation and
indifference.
Simply to read this note from Mr. Votaw made me ill all over and
brought on a state of high nervous tension which usually possessed
me when I came face to face with some new obstacle in my fight for
Elizabeth Ann’s rights. I have never, as a matter of fact, solved
the puzzle of who the strange man was who called in such a mysterious
manner and asked if a “Mrs. Nan Britton Neilsen worked there,” and then
disclaimed a desire to see her. The telephone operator’s description
fitted Mr. Votaw, or perhaps George Christian.
The possibility that I might be “shadowed” simply because I possessed a
secret which many people would be interested in protecting from public
dissemination, filled me with a new fear--a fear hitherto unfelt: that
of possible desire to destroy me and thus destroy my secret. I was the
only living person who knew the intimate details of our love-story,
Warren Harding’s and mine. And if such a thing should happen to me, my
baby girl would lose her birthright, except as she would be told of
it by my sister, who really knew pitifully little of the details. The
mere thought of such a happening struck terror to my heart amounting
to partial dementia at times when fatigue and despondency clutched at
me, and I was becoming weaker and weaker physically as a result of my
nightmarish thoughts. I _must_ be strong. I _must_ fight for Elizabeth
Ann’s sake! I _must_ shake off this state of weakness which was
dragging me down and down, and down.
_149_
Perhaps it was this crazed state of mentality which led me to
construe Mr. Votaw’s letter, with its heavy underscoring, as a direct
contumelious insinuation toward Elizabeth Ann and my claims for her,
and perhaps it was what I thought might be my last desperate effort in
her behalf which led me to write with the spirit which dominates the
following letter: