Part 11
I had taken an “extra fare” train, scheduled to reach Chicago earlier than the others, and that night I wakened after a first sleep to feel the train fairly skimming the tracks. “Gone wild!” I thought and sat up quickly in my berth. I pulled the curtains and peeked out. Everything seemed to be normal and the passengers were sleeping. How could they sleep, I thought, when every moment brought us nearer to destruction! It would be awful to die in a railroad crash, I thought to myself. And terrible fears assailed me when I thought that maybe Elizabeth wouldn’t be able to locate our precious baby, and perhaps my sweetheart would be afraid to claim her openly after my death--horrible, horrible! I felt I ought to get up and go forward to the engineer--but what could I tell him! Evidently he knew the train was going wild and couldn’t do a thing to stop it. Nor could I help him, surely. I became drowsy and concluded that a protecting Providence would intervene. At any rate, this was a case beyond human power! I lay back on my pillow praying, and gradually the rhythm of the flying wheels grew fainter and fainter and I slept.
* * * * *
I must have been a pitiful, broken-looking creature when Elizabeth met me the following day at the Englewood Station in Chicago. The train was late, after all, and had not made the usual fast time. I was amazed to learn this after the nightmare I had had. I told Elizabeth and she just laughed at me. I thought it would be impossible to explain to anybody what agony of mind I had been through. Elizabeth looked so healthy and strong and it seemed so good to be with her. She took me straight home and put me in bed, and I lay there until the waves of weakness which enveloped me had passed somewhat and I felt more serene.
In a few days Elizabeth located a nurse, recommended by the same doctor who had discouraged my having an abortion--a woman by the name of Mrs. Belle Woodlock, who would take Elizabeth Ann into her home and care for her for $20 a week. She lived within easy distance from my sister’s apartment, which was at that time at 6103 Woodlawn Avenue.
During the lapse of time--which was about three weeks, I think--between my arrival and my sending for Mrs. Howe to bring on the baby to Chicago, I carried on correspondence with her regularly. I received my letters, addressed to “Mrs. E. N. Christian,” in care of my sister Elizabeth (Mrs. S. A. Willits), usually getting the mail before my brother-in-law, or “kid sister” Janet, who was living with Elizabeth then, had a chance to see to whom they were addressed.
Once, I remember, my brother-in-law, Scott Willits, was quite put out because the postman requested him to sign for a special delivery letter from Mrs. Howe to me and he stoutly refused to do so, saying there was no such person as “Mrs. Christian” living there! In the end, the postman took the letter back and afterward I myself signed for it.
I remember also another incident. It was before Mrs. Howe brought Elizabeth Ann on from Asbury Park to Chicago that my mother came to Chicago to visit. It is possible the occasion of her visit was explained by the Christmas vacation from work in Ohio University where she taught, though possibly she was curious to see whether or not her daughter Nan was really safe and sound, perhaps not believing my written reports to this effect.
Mother and I had just come downstairs and were leaving the apartment to go shopping over on 63rd Street when I spied the postman across the street. Without thinking I called, “Any mail for us?” “A letter here for Mrs. Christian,” he answered. I knew it was foolish for me to disclaim knowing such a person before my mother, inasmuch as she had been told that I was living in Asbury with a “Mrs. Christian,” so I said, “Give it to me--it is for a friend of mine.” And I took it and put it away in my bag. Mother asked sharply, “Nan, what is Mrs. Christian having her mail sent to you for?” And I, searching my mind for a quick explanation, found this to say, “Why, she is coming here enroute to California and I shall see her soon. I told her I would take care of any mail she might want sent here.” This, you see, came to my mind because Mrs. Howe, the nurse, had written that she was planning to go on to California--so I simply substituted names.
I think about that time, however, my mother’s suspicions were definitely aroused, for she remarked to me on one occasion, “You think you are deceiving your mother about a lot of things, but you’re not.” Often she has said to me, “God has certainly protected you, my girl,” and of course I know that He has. More fortunate was this protection for my sweetheart, however, than for me, for his position, as United States Senator, _demanded_ protection.
_45_
The day arrived when Mrs. Howe and my darling baby girl would reach Chicago. It was difficult for my sister Elizabeth to go to the station with me, for she had a regular position as leader of an orchestra in a local theatre and she had to observe on-the-dot hours. But she went with me. We arrived fifteen minutes or so before the train came in, and I was so weak from the trip downtown and the excitement of seeing my baby again that I lay in Elizabeth’s arms in the waiting-room until Mrs. Howe came. She was a rather heavy-set woman, with grey hair and spectacles--mother-looking--and I can just see her as she came into the waiting-room, carrying my precious baby in her arms.
We had arranged for Mrs. Howe to go over to the Plaza Hotel on the North Side, so we bundled her into a taxi and I promised to get in touch with her the following day. Then Elizabeth, the baby and I took a taxi for Mrs. Woodlock’s on the South Side. I can’t remember that I had made a previous visit to Mrs. Woodlock’s, having let Elizabeth make all the arrangements and trusting implicitly to her judgment in the matter. In the taxi, Elizabeth held the baby and exclaimed over her prettiness. She had grown even in those brief weeks of my separation from her, and I thought there never could be a baby to equal her in sweetness. As soon as the taxi began to move she fell asleep. Elizabeth and I studied her little face and Elizabeth, too, marked the Harding resemblance.
Mrs. Belle Woodlock’s apartment was half a block from 61st Street, I think on Prairie Avenue, and Elizabeth lived at the corner of 61st Street and Woodlawn Avenue. So it was but a short street car ride for me. Mrs. Woodlock’s apartment was quite comfortable, like her good self. She was a fat, husky Irish girl, and quite pretty. She had a daughter about six, Ruth, and an old Aunt Emma who lived with her. I don’t know whether Belle Woodlock’s husband was dead or whether she had been divorced; I never asked her. But the atmosphere was not at all bad, I thought, and there was enough youth about the house to make it pleasant. I remember how grateful I was to see a little girl of six there.
Of course the excitement had been great and I know Mrs. Woodlock wondered why I broke down and sobbed as I knelt over my tiny treasure. We did not stay long, but went away, I back home to bed and Elizabeth to her theatre, leaving the baby in charge of her new nurse.
Mrs. Woodlock was a person not to be downed, I soon learned. In her position as nurse, she had acquired a hardness of a sort, but withal I found her extremely sentimental and sympathetic. She took an immediate fancy to Elizabeth Ann, as did her little daughter Ruth and her old Aunt Emma. Aunt Emma was a partial cripple, and she proved to be a great comfort to me because I knew she kept watch over our baby at times when Mrs. Woodlock’s attention was demanded elsewhere.
Mrs. Woodlock moved twice during the year and two months that the baby was with her. She soon moved over on 48th Street. That place, too, was accessible from Elizabeth’s, even though it was a longer trip for me to take. But my strength certainly seemed to be gone permanently. I ate normal meals, but I was just unable to do the things I formerly did. Mr. Harding urged me in every letter to rest, rest, rest, but it was growingly impossible. My mind was sick, and nothing would cure it except an arrangement whereby I could have my baby with me.
Mr. Harding was very generous, sending me as a rule $100 or $150 at a time, and of course I kept Mrs. Woodlock paid right up to the minute. I have in my possession a little red book in which I have jotted down at different times how I spent the cash Mr. Harding sent me in his letters. He used to send very old bills so they would not be noticeable to one handling the letter, and has sent me as much as $300 and $400 in one letter with nothing but a two-cent stamp to carry it. For instance, about this time I made the following notation:
“Last $150: $52.00 carriage for Elizabeth Ann 60.00 three weeks’ board Elizabeth Ann 16.00 shoes for Nan 5.50 bonnet for E. Ann 5.50 robe for E. Ann 2.60 another robe and bow 5.00 dress cleaned and fixed ------- $146.60 total” which shows about how I spent my money those days. I bought Elizabeth Ann a dear little diamond ring for her first birthday, October 22, 1920, which has since been lost; I paid $50 for it at Peacock’s in Chicago, though I paid for that with money I earned myself doing secretarial work that fall. But as a rule, during those days, the money I had was not spent foolishly; and most of it was for my darling baby.
_46_
Before Elizabeth Ann’s birth, during the early days when Mr. Harding and I referred to our coming baby as “the young lieutenant,” we had discussed many times the possibility of giving the baby over to his sister in California, Mrs. Charity Remsberg. Mr. Harding said that, of all of his relatives, he was sure she would understand the situation best, and also she had children of her own. I entered into this and other discussions very seriously, and I marvel now to think how I could have done so. For, months before Elizabeth Ann actually came, I had fully determined within my heart that I could never, never give her up--I could never allow our darling baby to be reared and loved by anyone but myself or her father.
However, I talked over these possibilities with Mr. Harding both in person and in letters. He was disposed also to consider the Scobeys--Mr. Fred Scobey and his wife of San Antonio, Texas. Mr. Harding had told me once upon a visit to New York how Mr. Scobey had mailed a letter from Mr. Harding, addressed to me. He said he thought afterward it hadn’t been exactly wise to entrust it to him, for, he said, Mr. Scobey had been a bit convivial that afternoon. I remember how I said, “Oh, sweetheart, why will you do foolish things like that?--why, he might have looked at it!” I was amazed at such daring on Mr. Harding’s part. It was then that Mr. Harding told me what I recalled afterward, in later years, so vividly, “Why, Nan, Scobey’s the best friend I’ve got!” Of course I took his statement very literally.
The Scobeys had quite a bit of money, Mr. Harding said, and I think he said they had no children of their own. He was sure they would love our baby and he said he would “have no hesitancy” in telling Mr. Scobey that he was the father of the child.
We also discussed an institutional home where the baby might be placed until of such age that I, through some unforeseen favorable circumstance, might be able to take our child myself. It was then that Mr. Harding first discussed with utter frankness the probability of Mrs. Harding’s death far in advance of his own, in which event he said with undisguised enthusiasm, “I’d take the baby myself and make her a _real_ Harding!” Later he repeated that statement very emphatically to me in the White House, telling me how he wished to make Elizabeth Ann a “real Harding.” Of course that plan met with a hug and a kiss from me and much worded enthusiasm. But Destiny thwarted the plans Warren Harding had for his child, although during those days we were completely oblivious of its presence.
_47_
The summer of 1920 was arriving, and with it the Republican Convention in June which was to nominate my sweetheart for the Presidency. Only four years before I had hung on street car straps going to and from my work at Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company, reading about my beloved Mr. Harding and his much featured oratorical achievement in connection with making the nominating speech for his friend Charles E. Hughes, the then Republican candidate for President.
Now I was back in Chicago, making almost daily visits to Warren Harding’s child and mine, and watching every political aspect with keenest interest. Only four short years and I had come to these heights! The mother of Warren Harding’s only child! The glory of it!
Mr. Harding came on to Chicago early in June and came out immediately upon his arrival to my sister’s, 6103 Woodlawn Avenue. I remember I missed him at the station and was so disappointed because I thought he had not come, but I had gone to the wrong station to meet him and so we reached the apartment almost simultaneously, having come from opposite directions.
I had, in letters to Mr. Harding, described Elizabeth’s apartment, calling it a “perfectly adorable place.” When I came on from Asbury Park I was in such a weakened condition that any place where my adored sister lived seemed heaven to me. And I really did think for a young married couple their apartment was dear. Elizabeth’s husband is rather small compared with Mr. Harding, and the tiny four rooms did not seem out of proportion to his stature. But I shall never forget how I gasped when I beheld Mr. Harding in the living-room of that apartment. His head nearly touched the ceiling!
“I thought you said Elizabeth had a lovely roomy apartment, dearie!” he teased me.
“Well, I thought it was--but, my, you fill it up so!” He sat down in a big chair and took me on his lap. Elizabeth knew he was going to be there and had arranged so that the rest of the family would be away during his visit with me.
That visit was a very important one from many angles. While Mr. Harding scouted my prophecy that he would soon be the President of the United States, it must have been that he did think some about it, for even as early as that first visit he warned me about what might happen in case he were nominated. I would be “shadowed” very probably, he said, and certainly would be if he were elected President.
Those were stirring days for me as well as for my hero. I would fly from the Republican Convention at the Coliseum out to our baby, often giving her airings in the nearby park. The excitement those days seemed to sustain me with a strength not really mine. Elizabeth Ann made a perfect picture in her new carriage. I tried to persuade Mr. Harding to meet me some morning in the park so he could see her, but, though he pondered it all lovingly and said he was as “crazy to do it” as I was to have him, he never did. I suppose it would have been unwise, though I was sure I could pilot that project as safely as I seemed to have done the others up to this time, with my sister Elizabeth’s good co-operation.
Elizabeth Ann and I had lovely times together. I talked to her even from babyhood as though she were a companion instead of a baby, and she would lie there looking up at me so seriously that sometimes I felt she must understand me. I would whisper to her, “Darling, do you know who your daddy is? Well, maybe you do (her answering look was full of wisdom!), but you don’t know who he is _going_ to be!” Then I would stoop down and whisper in her ear, “_Your daddy is going to be the President of the United States!_” And surely her look of comprehension was more than a baby’s look--it seemed to me to be the understanding gaze of her father’s own eyes.
Mr. Harding came several times to 6103 Woodlawn Avenue during that month. I remember one time I rode downtown on the elevated with him. Standing on the platform at University Avenue, I said, “Honey, why do they have primaries?” I could see no need for them. In fact, I told him I thought politics was a terribly complicated business--to go through all the red tape, when he would be President anyway. I talked on and on, suggesting a simplification of the whole governmental machinery. He seemed highly amused. “A fine politician you’d make, Nan!” he said. I remember also how he leaned far over to read his neighbor’s paper after we were seated in the train, and when I strained my eyes to see what could interest him, he turned and explained that he “was just trying to steal the baseball score.” He followed the ball games with great interest, and was a dyed-in-the-wool fan if ever there was one.
A few days later, in the lobby of the Auditorium Hotel, I met him and he gave me a ticket to the Convention. It seemed to please him to do it, and very likely he could not help recalling my many predictions. He may even have gloried a bit in the knowledge that he was fulfilling every ambition I ever had for him.
I listened with rapt attention and rising regard to Frank B. Willis, who made the nominating speech for Warren G. Harding. I had heard Mr. Willis only once before and that was at Kent, Ohio, where I attended Normal School the summer immediately following my graduation from high school. At that time--1914--I had looked upon him as an illy-groomed, small-stage politician, but my appraisal of him swiftly swung in his favor with that speech.
I witnessed excitedly the balloting at the Convention which slowly but surely rose in favor of Ohio’s son. I could not share with anyone, by the most extravagant verbal picture, the emotions I experienced as it was announced amid roaring acclaim that the Republican nomination for the Presidency of the United States had been given to Warren G. Harding. How could that surging multitude--cheering and whistling and stampeding the aisles with their Harding banners held aloft--be interested anyway in the tumult of unutterable emotion that rose within me? My eyes swam, and I recalled my Freshman school year at Marion, when, in the margins of all my books, I, then but thirteen years old, had written the prophecy of my heart-longing, “Warren Gamaliel Harding--he’s a darling--Warren Gamaliel Harding--President of the United States!”
_48_
The next conference between the new Republican candidate for President and his sweetheart, which took place at 6103 Woodlawn Avenue, was necessarily an important one. This time he was “dropped off” by the man whose car he said he could command during his stay in Chicago. He had been, he said, held up by Moffett, who had taken innumerable photographs of him and who, Mr. Harding told me in his adorably modest way, had seemed to take quite a fancy to him. He had wanted to get to me earlier but he just couldn’t. Mr. Harding said that the pictures Mr. Moffett had taken ought to please me because he had been thinking about me every minute during the sittings for them.
He warned me again that if I were shadowed I should give no heed to the trailer and just go about my business as usual. He told me how proud he was of the way things had been handled to date, and he did not seem at that time to have very great fear concerning our secret. He was, however, hurried, and I complained because he had to leave me earlier than I had planned. When I told him I had many things to tell him he smiled and said, with his characteristic slang which seemed to be reserved for me alone, “Well, shoot!” He used often to say that when I bubbled over with confidences. He was with me a couple of hours, and, though disappointingly brief, that visit was one of the sweetest I ever knew.
He attempted to seriously discuss with me plans for financially caring for my situation and for Elizabeth Ann’s, but, though I finally changed the topic, saying, as always, that I didn’t want to discuss those things, he did persuade me to begin some insurance, and he said that no matter how small the amount I took out, he could add to it. He had other plans, he said, for establishing a fund in a more substantial amount, but I curtailed that discussion. The time was so brief and I adored his kisses. However, I did actually start a policy with the Prudential Life Insurance Company, one of $500, requiring no medical examination. I had only a little over $100 paid upon it when I went to Europe in June of 1923, and when I returned I dropped it altogether.
Mr. Harding saw that I looked greatly worn and he fell in very readily with my plan to go to the Adirondacks for six or eight weeks, in the hope that the elevation and air might bring back the lost roses to my cheeks. My sister had assured me that she would herself visit the baby periodically and every day phone Mrs. Woodlock and keep in close touch with her. Mrs. Woodlock’s efficient care of the baby was my chief inducement to leave for the mountains. I explained all of these things to Mr. Harding, and he agreed that it was imperative that I get on my feet as soon as possible. I assured him that I would not try to write to Mrs. Woodlock or have her write to me while in the mountains, for, of course, except for my visits to the Woodlock home where I was known as “Mrs. Christian,” I had resumed my maiden name and could not divulge this name to her. I remember how discreet Mrs. Woodlock was, for she did not even ask why nor where when I went away. She merely promised to take good care of my darling baby.
Mr. Harding made suggestions as to a suitable place to go, and talked to me a little about Paul Smith’s. But I told him I had already consulted with the Foster Bureau and had decided upon the Eagle Bay Hotel at Eagle Bay, on the Fulton Chain of Lakes. One reaches there by going to Utica and changing for the northern train. It is on the western side of the Adirondacks. I could obtain board and room there, I told him, for something like $25 a week. He seemed to think this a fine plan all around. He instructed me not to write to him while there except as he advised me, because his own movements were uncertain. And, as usual, when he kissed me he asked me to tell him I was happy. I walked over to the “L” with him and watched the tall, handsome figure of my sweetheart until he disappeared inside the station. Then he came out to the railing of the elevated platform and waved to me below. That was the last unguarded tryst we ever had, for after that he was always surrounded by secret service men, and we were not together again until after he had been elected President. Even as President-elect he had ceased to be his own boss.
_49_
During my stay in the Adirondacks I wrote many letters to Mr. Harding, saving them, of course, until such time as I should see him to deliver them in person. He wrote me, but more guardedly than ever before. During my stay there I also received a couple of letters from his sister Daisy, one of which I have and which asks me all about Eagle Bay, requesting the information on account of her desire to leave Marion, where, she said, she was under fire photographically and socially, and was growing weary of it all. Although I sent Miss Harding pictures of the hotel and instructions as to how one reaches there, she did not decide to join me. Which, from the standpoint of the following incident, was a good thing.
About the third or fourth week of my stay in the mountains, Mr. Harding sent the first communication which ever came from him to me by personal messenger.