Part 10

About a week before my confinement my mother wrote me, demanding to know the reason for my continued stay into October at Asbury. I had previously written her that I intended to go to Chicago, but that was when I thought I might go there to have the baby. She said her alarm about _why_ I was remaining so long had been to her such a nightmare that, had she the necessary funds, I would have long since seen her in Asbury Park. Poor mother! What worry I must have caused her!

Inwardly terrified at the possibility of her coming on, but realizing that I would not dare indicate such terror to her, I wrote immediately, expressing my regret at not being able to supply the funds she would need for fare, and saying that “Mrs. Christian” had elected to remain longer in Asbury and I could not of course desert her when she had been so lovely to me all summer. That seemed to satisfy my mother.

Then I wrote my sister Elizabeth that I did not think it at all necessary for her to come on, entailing an unnecessary expense, and gave her as nearly as possible the date of my confinement. This I did also with Mr. Harding, so they both knew exactly where I would be and when I expected to be confined.

Mr. Harding wrote immediately and asked me to please write him a love-letter before I would be in such position (in bed) that I couldn’t write him for some time. I remember well the tone of that letter from him. I knew he was homesick to see me, and it reacted to make me more impatient for the day to come which would give me our baby so that I could begin to plan to see _him_ again. I went over to Dr. Ackerman and asked him when he thought I would have the baby. My hands were somewhat swollen, I complained, and I was getting uncomfortable generally. He assured me I was in excellent shape and that I would soon have my baby. Somewhat mollified, but still irritable, I walked down to the post office. I found another letter from my sweetheart and devoured it as I walked back home. I think that was Saturday, perhaps Friday.

On Sunday afternoon, a gorgeously brilliant autumn day, I went over to the woods to my three-cornered seat, which was a board nailed to three trees. I sat there for a couple of hours and wrote to my darling. I remember I wanted to cry my eyes out that afternoon, I was _so_ homesick to see him, and very likely this longing was written vividly into the letter which I mailed at the post office late that afternoon. Incidentally, I used to take his letters to various towns all along the shore just to avoid sending too many from one post office. As though they would have noticed to whom the letters were addressed! But it was just another of those precautions which were responsible for the absolute safeguarding of our secret from the world.

On Monday I walked most of the day, anxiously. Tuesday evening I found a letter from Mr. Harding, telling me he had never in his life received from me a love-letter equal to the one I had written Sunday out of the depths of my longing for him. He cautioned me to “take it easy,” and stressed, as he had all summer in his letters, the necessity for complete recuperation after the baby’s birth. “It will mean your health, Nan, so be deliberate in getting up afterward. I cannot emphasize this point enough.” Elizabeth wrote me the same thing, telling me I wouldn’t be at all the same afterward, my strength would be gone, and I must rest all I could. I smiled to myself; they didn’t realize how strong I felt, nor how well I was! Probably many women who were weak would have to wait through long periods of recuperation, but I was sure I would be strong enough to travel soon after my baby came.

I spent a great deal of time conjecturing about the baby’s looks. Mrs. Tonnesen and her brother Billy took a great interest in the coming event, though I stayed away from the house and away from everybody as much as possible, talking with them only when necessity commanded. On Monday or Tuesday Helen Evans, the nurse Dr. Ackerman had recommended, came to call upon me. She told me all the different things I would need to have for a home confinement, and I was surprised, for I had thought all I needed was clothes for the baby! I liked Miss Evans. She was Scotch, and had something of a burr, though she said she had been quite a while in this country. I decided we would get on splendidly.

_40_

Wednesday, October 22nd, 1919, dawned clear and bright. My room, though tiny, had three windows on the front and one on the side and my bed was by the latter window. It looked out upon the loved park where I had done much of my reading, and the trees were beautiful in their autumn colors.

I was awakened very early, about five o’clock, by pleasant sensations which reminded me of caresses, except that they were inside. I lay there marveling. My baby would come today, I was sure of it. _My_ baby, and my darling Warren Harding’s child!

It was quite seven-thirty before I felt I should call Mrs. Tonnesen and have her send for Miss Evans. Having no telephone in the house, Billy was obliged to go to the nearby drug store and phone the doctor, who in turn sent the nurse over immediately. I dressed and went downstairs and ate a hearty breakfast. Mrs. Tonnesen suggested I’d better eat all I could, but I thought she was fooling when she said it would be all I would get for awhile. I wanted so badly to go once more to the post office, but the nurse refused to let me.

I continued at intervals to have the little sensations which gradually increased into intermittent pains growingly severe as the morning advanced. The doctor came to examine me. Toward noon he came again, and I heard him say to Mrs. Tonnesen on his way out that I was “physically superb,” or “superbly fit,” or something like that, which encouraged me. But I didn’t need much encouragement. I really was not the least bit frightened.

I had taken the two front rooms, both facing the street. One I occupied and the other was for the nurse. Mrs. Tonnesen supplied a clothes basket for a temporary bed for the baby. I roamed around in and out of the four rooms on that floor, watching the proceedings of the nurse with interest.

At two o’clock sharp, on one of the most beautiful afternoons imaginable, a little girl baby was born to me. The doctor said that I was an excellent patient, and I know myself, despite the agony of that experience, that God made possible to me a perfect birth. After the ordeal, still, as I felt, in the “pink of health,” I ran up against the first law of medical care in that connection that bothered me: I requested a chicken dinner with all of the appetizing accessories that go with it! Imagine my disappointment when I was given nothing then but a glass of cold water, and later some weak tea!

I am reminded of a point right here that has often occurred to me. I am not very superstitious, but I do think queer things happen sometimes, in that the same number or the same day figures strongly in one’s life. _Two_ seems to me to have a weird way of springing up in Mr. Harding’s life. He was born on November 2nd. He died on August 2nd. He was elected our 29th President on November 2nd, having accepted the nomination on July 22nd. I saw him on September 22nd, one month before the date of my confinement which was October 22nd. Our baby came at exactly 2 o’clock in the afternoon. These are not the only 2’s that occurred in our chronology. I used to note how often the number 2 appeared, though I did not jot the times down, nor remember them, except for those I have given above which were the outstanding recurrences.

_41_

Even as early as the day of her birth, the “young lieutenant,” as Mr. Harding and I had always referred to the girl we thought might likely be a boy, there was a distinct resemblance to the Hardings, and more particularly to her distinguished father. As she grows older this resemblance is strikingly like his sister Daisy, but she retains her father’s smile, his eyes, and many of his mannerisms. As she lay in my arms, a few hours old, drawing her mouth into comical contortions, and wrinkling her face in what seemed a thousand wrinkles, I saw Warren Harding--oh, I saw him so strongly that it seemed I was holding a miniature sweetheart in my arms! She was born with black hair which afterwards disappeared to give place to the soft blond fuzz which was more like her mother’s.

I could not nurse her of course, because I did not know how our difficult situation would work out, but oh, how I longed to! Miss Evans put her on a good brand of infant’s milk, and would feed her and then bring her in to me. It seemed to me almost sacrilegious to submit to the treatment I was obliged to undergo in order to have my breasts dried up, and somehow I thought the pain I experienced in this procedure was the merited punishment for not nursing my baby. How strong was my urge to nurse her! Even before she came, when I would lie on the bed and watch the various shapes my body assumed as she moved around inside, I used to think of the natural nourishment process and picture it. I wanted to experience every one of the sensations belonging to a mother. One time, after I had been up a week or so, I took her on my lap and gave her an empty breast that two or three weeks previous had been swollen with milk, and I shall never forget her tiny hands nor the feel of her mouth at my bosom, nor the indescribable thrill that swept over me in those moments of pretended nursing. I just seemed to want to keep her a part of me, and this denial gave the keenest suffering I had ever known.

During those days I had a colored laundress, Mrs. Jones, whose daughter, about eleven or twelve, used to come for my laundry. She also went to the post office for my mail. As soon as I could prop myself up fairly comfortably, I wrote notes to Elizabeth and to Mr. Harding and “Lieut. Edmund Norton Christian.” The one to “Lieutenant Christian,” addressed fictitiously to Paris, I handed to the nurse to mail, for obvious reasons; the other two the little colored girl mailed. My first letter from Mr. Harding after the baby arrived had been mailed from Philadelphia, and was sent to me at the house, 1210 Bond Street, Asbury Park, instead of the post office. It was written in pencil, as most of his letters were, and in it he said he had received my note. Evidently he thought he should take precautionary measures in writing this first letter lest it fall into another’s hands, so he wrote that he had “conveyed the news to the Lieutenant who was proud to hear it.” That was all right and might have served to throw anybody off the track who read the letter had he not followed it immediately with the sentence, “If she looks like her mother, _I will be satisfied_,” directly alluding to _himself_ as the party who was really interested in the news! Bless his heart! He tried to protect me and himself and everybody, but sometimes he surely did stupid things. Forgetting all about “the Lieutenant” he proceeded in his letter to urge again my leisurely recuperation, and the manner of his concluding would hardly have been construed by an outsider as the heart-promptings of his friend “the Lieutenant” who would obviously have written his own love messages and not sent them second-hand!

_42_

No sooner was I upon my feet than I was nervous and anxious to get to Chicago to my sister Elizabeth. The superb strength which had been mine before the baby came had completely left me. My appetite was forced, my cheeks were pale, and constant letters from my mother as to when I was coming West worried me terribly.

Several mornings after the baby was born Dr. Ackerman came to see me. He sat on a straight chair at the foot of the bed and took out a notebook. I was amazed at myself for becoming frightened, but somehow my nerves were shattered and things troubled me which amounted to nothing at all. He informed me that he needed certain data for registering the child’s birth. I didn’t know exactly what that might mean to Mr. Harding, and so I inquired if it was necessary to register a child’s birth always. “Unless you want to pay a fine of $100,” he replied in his business-like voice. He said he merely wished to know my maiden name, my husband’s, and our ages, my husband’s business, etc. I thought quickly about whether I ought to tell him at least the partial truth--that I was _not married_! I didn’t know whether or not it was a criminal offense to say you were married when you were not. I longed to shout the whole truth to the world, that my baby was Warren Harding’s baby, that we were not married in the eyes of the world, but truly married in the sight of God, and that I was proud, proud, proud to be her mother!

Within, I was growing hysterical in those brief moments, but controlled my voice as I told him that my age was twenty-three, my husband’s thirty-two, his business was an officership as Lieutenant in the U. S. Army, and that my name before I was married was “Nanna Eloise Britton.” I said this I thought very clearly, but when he repeated it he said “Emma Eloise Britton?” I nodded. The first name did not matter anyway, I thought, but I wanted my surname to go into the records in the only right way--Britton. I could not give her the name Harding without betraying my darling, but I could give Britton. “Eloise” was a middle name I had adopted when a child in substitution for my real name of “Popham,” which was always so objectionable to me. I have postcards from my father which he addressed to me “Nanna Popham Eloise Evelyn Britton,” the full name I cherished as an ideal combination when a child!

When I had been out of bed about a week, one morning a man called. I heard Mrs. Tonnesen say, “Yes, Mrs. Christian lives here.” I was abnormally apprehensive those days, an inexplicable nervousness seizing me when the least little thing went wrong, and I called downstairs quickly, “What do you want of Mrs. Christian?” I sat down on the top step of the stairs. He called up to me, “What’s your baby’s name?” Immediately I thought maybe something was wrong. They wanted to take her away from me! The most absurd possibilities danced like demons in my mind. “Who wants to know?” I asked, almost quivering. “Gotta have it for record,” he replied, in what seemed to me a surly voice. I breathed a great sigh. “Oh, I see! Well, I haven’t named her yet!” I said. “What! Two weeks or more old, and you haven’t named her?” he shouted. I became frightened again. Maybe _this_ was an offense under the law! “Oh, that’s all right,” I said timidly, “you may register her as ‘Elizabeth Ann!’” Only that morning I had had a letter from my sister Elizabeth in which she said she would love to have me call the baby Elizabeth, and my own name, Nan, didn’t seem to go as well with Elizabeth as Ann. So Elizabeth Ann it was. Elizabeth Ann Christian it was, and was so written into the records of the Department of Vital Statistics in Trenton, the capital of New Jersey. Afterward, when I said it to myself, I used to think, “Elizabeth Ann Harding! Elizabeth Ann _Harding_!” And as she lay in my arms in bed I would whisper to her, “Say, you darling (a verbal salutation I so often heard from her father), do you know _who your dad is_? Oh, wait until he sees _you_! Wait till you see _him_, sweetheart!” She would lie there complacently blinking her eyes and working her mouth. It seemed to me as if Harding were written in every twist of her lips.

_43_

I went to New York about six weeks after the baby came, which was about the first week in December. My clothes were very shabby, and so I bought a new hat at Arnold, Constable’s, and some other things I needed. The cape which I had worn all the fall, during the two chilly months before Elizabeth Ann came, now seemed big enough for two, and I was so thin that I was sure I must look ill. The hotels were filled with automobile show visitors, and after trying several places I finally was given a room at the Hamilton Hotel on 73rd Street, though with the stipulation that I would give it up the following day to another guest who had reserved it several days in advance. I registered as Nan Britton, and I remembered it was with almost a sense of relief that I did so. I had moved in an atmosphere of make-believe for so long that somehow it was refreshingly good to be myself.

I was so pitifully weak that I should not have gone over to New York in the first place, but once there, there were several things I wished to do. One was to go up to my friends, the Johnsons, for my mail, for when I had moved down on East 60th Street I had not apprised many people of the change, and I knew there must be mail for me at the Johnson home. I knew that even Marie Johnson (Mrs. Johnson) did not know the number of my apartment on East 60th Street, so could not have forwarded my mail there.

Another thing was to call Mr. Harding on long distance, a thing I would not have attempted while in Asbury Park.

The following day I went up to Marie Johnson’s. She was surprised to see me, of course, and I am sure the manner in which I conducted myself must have given her reason to think something was wrong with me. I had to lie down almost as soon as I got in the house. She handed me a big bunch of mail, among which was a telegram. I almost fainted at the sight of it. Probably somebody had found out that I had had a child by Warren Harding! I said, “You open this, Marie.” Then I caught myself. Suppose it was some kind of a summons, or even suppose it was from Mrs. Harding! I opened it myself. It was from a girl in Cleveland who wondered why I had not answered her letters!

At the apartment of a friend up the street I secured a room. I think I stayed one night there at that time. After I had deposited my bag, I went to the corner drug store at 136th Street and phoned Mr. Harding at the Senate Chambers in Washington. He had scarcely said “Hello!” when I began to cry. I told him I was so _weak_ and asked him when he thought I would be strong again. He said, “Why, Nan darling, you should go back and rest at Asbury Park another month. Don’t do a thing but rest. Everything’s all right.” But that was just the thing I couldn’t do. I told him I seemed to have lost all my courage. Wasn’t it possible for him to come over? He said he was in fact coming over to New York, but he thought it unwise for us to be seen together if I were in the weakened condition I said I was. I told him that I was sure I would be stronger if he would only take me in his arms. Bless him! I realized it would be dangerous for us to be together when I felt so weak that it seemed I might faint every minute. He begged me to return to Asbury and rest, and urged me not to stop to see my mother in Ohio when I did go on to Chicago.

“Be of good cheer, Nan!” came over the wire in a voice that was so sweet that it wrung my heart and brought the tears so fast that I could only cry, “Goodbye, sweetheart!” and stumble out of the booth.

_44_

I went back to Asbury Park faint and dizzy, but found our baby Elizabeth Ann in fine condition. This pleased me and seemed to give me some strength.

I dismissed Miss Evans at the end of three weeks, and the nurse I next employed, upon Dr. Ackerman’s recommendation, was a Mrs. Howe. She was what he termed a “practical nurse,” and not so expensive as Miss Evans, who was strictly a private nurse. Mrs. Howe had raised a family of five children and was more like a mother than a nurse. She sometimes held me close in her arms, and I felt so much safer now that I had her.

She did not get along well with Mrs. Tonnesen, and we decided that we would change quarters before I left for Chicago. I had discussed my plans with Mr. Harding, both over the phone and by letter, which were that I should go on ahead to Chicago and find a suitable place for Elizabeth Ann, having Mrs. Howe follow later with the baby as soon as I had found someone to take care of her in Chicago.

So one day Mrs. Howe and the baby and I bundled ourselves into a taxi and went around to a semi-sanitarium, nearer the downtown district of Asbury Park, and quite a distance from the Tonnesen abode. Here the lady usually took only those who were recuperating from illnesses, she said, and I thought it seemed like a fairly good place to leave Mrs. Howe with the baby until I could send for her to come on to Chicago with Elizabeth Ann. I trusted her implicitly.

Late that evening an automobile ambulance drove up with a woman on a stretcher. They brought her in and she and her nurse had a room on the same floor, across from my nurse and baby. About an hour or so after she arrived we began to hear the most horrible moans and groans accompanied with shrieks of, “Oh, I’m nervous! I’m nervous!” This kept up until I was myself completely exhausted listening to her and in such a high state of nervousness that I thought I, too, would scream. It didn’t seem to bother Mrs. Howe and I asked her to read aloud to me to take my mind from the moaning across the hall. But the walls were very thin and it was as though the poor woman were right in the room with us. I had to tell the landlady that if that kept up we would have to go to a hotel. They gave the woman some morphine which quieted her temporarily, and I went into my own room and soon fell asleep. About three o’clock next morning it started again. I crept into Mrs. Howe’s room and into bed with her, and lay there shivering and mentally crazed with nervousness until the morphine which they administered again took effect and the poor woman slept. The next morning they took her back to her home in Philadelphia. I was so tired of doctors and nurses and of shifting from place to place!

Someone had told me that it took about six months to recuperate completely from having a baby, and I began to count the weeks and try to find some improvement in myself as time passed. But when I took the train back to New York, from where I was going to leave for Chicago, I had to confess that in the seven or eight weeks that had passed since the baby’s birth I had grown weaker instead of stronger. In New York, in the same room I had when I had been there before, I stayed in bed most of the time. The lady who rented the rooms had been an actress and was very broad-minded, and once or twice her sympathy and tender solicitude tempted me to tell her why I was so ill. But I didn’t. I called Mr. Harding again on the phone and he urged me to get to Chicago and to rest after I got there. “Never mind about the baby now,” he said, “she will be all right. It is _you_ who need to be taken care of now.” But the baby was on my mind constantly. I phoned Mrs. Howe sometimes twice a day. I had given her my sister’s address in Chicago and I told her to write me immediately if anything went wrong.

I remember I bought a ticket for a Saturday train--it was almost impossible at that time to procure reservations, soldiers returning home for Christmas, the general rush of holiday travelers--and I was fortunate to get a reservation at all for that particular day.

A chum of mine, Dorothy Cooper, who lived where I had been staying, went down in the taxi with me to the train. I felt so faint that she suggested we stop at a drug store and get a bottle of smelling salts for me to have on the train. As a result, when we reached the Grand Central Station, we were just in time to see the iron gate close and watch the train pull out. I had wired Elizabeth I would be there for Sunday, and of course I was just sick over missing the train. I went to the Consolidated Ticket Office and learned that I could not get another reservation until the following Tuesday. Those days of waiting tortured me. When finally I found myself in the train, bound for Chicago, where I longed to creep into my sister Elizabeth’s arms and cry, I sighed audibly with relief.