Part 12

I had been out walking in the late afternoon, and when I came into the somewhat deserted lobby of the Eagle Bay Hotel the manager at the desk called to me that a gentleman in the lounging room wished to see me. Of course, having been warned by Mr. Harding of shadowers and reporters, I became frightened, and it was with some misgivings that I approached the man who now came toward me with the query, “Is this Miss Britton?” I said it was, and in turn asked him who he was and why he wished to see me.

He immediately delivered into my hands a rather bulky envelope which was obviously more than a mere letter, and asked that I follow the instructions which he told me I would find inside. I retired to my room to do so. Mr. Harding had not dropped me a note apprising me of this proceeding. In the package he had enclosed $800 in bills and a short, hurried note, which he asked me to please return with one from me, telling him the money had been received and indicating the amount. This I did, not sending him, however, any of the love-letters I had written and been saving up to this time, but merely doing exactly as he requested. Then I joined the gentleman below.

The messenger was a man of slight build, with ruddy complexion and pleasing manner. Inasmuch as it was impossible for him to leave Eagle Bay before that evening (there being no train out), we took a walk down the road, and afterward returned to sit awhile down by the lake, on one of the porches of the casino. I had gone about very little with the young crowd up there, preferring for many reasons to be by myself the greater part of the time and to retire early, and I knew that this messenger had come direct from the one man I would rather be with than all the others put together. Therefore I felt friendly toward him.

He had not told me his name, and his obvious reticence had piqued my curiosity. When I inquired of him who he was, he indicated that he did not care to disclose his correct name. On his finger, however, he wore a signet ring, rather an unusually good-looking one I thought, and I made out the initial “S.” “Mr. S.” I called him then, and he smiled and substituted the name “Scott.” So “Mr. Scott” it was during the remainder of his visit. He seemed to think I had selected the most God-forsaken, undesirable place in the world, and I did not blame him, for the mosquitoes were more than usually aggressive that evening. I had a lot of fun with him, and discovered to my delight that he had quite a sense of humor in the many suggestions he had for making Eagle Bay a passably habitable place for human beings who had small regard for where they lived!

The following Sunday in the paper I happened to see a picture of a man who, in this narrative, I shall call Tim Slade, chief secret service man and bodyguard to the President-elect, and in this newspaper likeness I identified the messenger who had come to me at Eagle Bay. In the same paper there was an excellent enlarged snapshot of Miss “Daisy” Harding and Mrs. Votaw, her sister, together in the garden of their father’s home at Marion, and I cut it out and have it now, framed.

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

_50_

July 22nd, 1920, Warren G. Harding formally accepted the nomination for the Presidency of the United States, delivering his acceptance speech at Marion, Ohio, to the thousands gathered in Garfield Park to hear him. I never had the privilege of hearing Mr. Harding in his supreme moments, though I bought all the available newspapers and thrilled second-handedly at his speeches. In the public utterances of my beloved hero were instanced variously the characteristics which I knew so well dominated his life movements, and I need not cite passages to illustrate the sincerity by which he seemed to be actuated in his every purpose. However, in the papers which I have retained, now becoming yellow and worn, as well as in my huge Harding scrapbook which contains clippings from many newspapers dating from the time of his senatorship to his death, I find marked passages which have moved me deeply and in which I have seen the character of the real Warren Harding. “These are the things I so love in him,” I think as I read them over. His humbleness, kindness, good will, generosity, sympathy, honor, trust in mankind, honesty, fidelity to friends--these qualities mark the Warren Harding the people love and revere. The concluding paragraph of his speech, accepting the Presidential nomination, is as follows:

“I would not be my natural self if I did not utter my consciousness of my limited ability to meet your full expectations, or to realize the aspirations within my own breast, but I will gladly give all that is in me, all of heart, soul, and mind, and abiding love of country, to service in our common cause. I can only pray to the Omnipotent God that I may be as worthy in service as I know myself to be faithful in thought and purpose. One cannot give more. Mindful of the vast responsibilities, I must be frankly humble, but I have that confidence in the consideration and support of all true Americans which makes me wholly unafraid. With an unalterable faith and in a hopeful spirit, with a hymn of service in my heart, I pledge fidelity to our country and to God, and accept the nomination of the Republican party for the presidency of the United States.”

All the editorial panegyrics which followed the unexpected and tragic death of Warren G. Harding might well have been based upon any one of the above ideals of service to his country and to his God. Adding three words to the shortest sentence in the paragraph quoted above, he could truthfully have said, “One cannot give more _than one’s life_.”

These inherent qualities of nobility in Warren Harding were readily discernible even to those who knew him slightly, but the friends who knew him intimately as a man as well as a President carry in their hearts the memory of sincerity and loyalty in the numberless manifestations of his service to others. And what more meetly parallels the above quoted paragraph, and others of similar manfulness, than the text upon which the President’s lips rested when he took the oath of office? This text, kissed by the President as a seal of his oath, is the eighth verse of the sixth chapter of Micah and reads: “He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”

_51_

Back in Chicago, after my several weeks’ sojourn in the mountains, I set about immediately to seek admittance into the Republican National Committee offices in a secretarial capacity, so that I might help in a small way to elect my hero. The headquarters were in the Auditorium Hotel. There I went and, upon hearing that Congressman Martin B. Madden was there, I went to see him. I explained that Mr. Harding had been kind enough to put me in the United States Steel Corporation in New York in 1917; that I came from Marion and had known him as a child; also that I was a girlhood chum of Judge Grant E. Mouser’s daughter Annabel, Mr. Mouser having been at one-time a Congressman and close friend of Mr. Madden. Mr. Madden forthwith took me in to Captain Victor Heinz’s office and introduced me as a friend of Mr. Harding. Captain Heinz was from Cincinnati; I afterwards met some of his relatives at the Mouser’s in Marion where they visited. Captain Heinz in turn took me to Mr. Frank A. Nimocks, whose regular job was postmaster in Ottumwa, Iowa. He “took me on” in a secretarial capacity immediately at a salary, if I remember correctly, of $35 a week. He had charge of the distribution of Republican campaign lithographs--a highly pleasing branch of the work to me. Next door to our office was that of the afterwards Postmaster-General, Hubert Work.

I was very happy to be a Harding booster; in fact, of all the work I have ever done, that was the most enjoyable. _Everything_ was Harding! I wrote to Mr Harding’s sister Daisy, telling her where I was, and in her letter she said she knew how happy I must be to be working for my “hero.” She well knew he was that to me.

It seemed to be rather generally known in the offices along the corridor that I came from Marion, Ohio, and it is very likely that those who were not acquainted with this fact learned it from me, for I was the proudest person alive and wanted everybody to know where I hailed from.

Many notables were in and out of campaign headquarters, some of whom I met. Mr. Charles E. Witt, one-time secretary to Governor Harding of Iowa, had charge of another phase of the Harding picture distribution work and had his desk in our office. When Governor Harding came in one day Mr. Witt introduced me as a “friend of the next President.” In some such similar manner I was introduced to Senator New, whom I had often heard Warren Harding speak of and whom I was anxious to meet so that I might tell Mr. Harding I had met him.

Political fanatics roamed in and out of the headquarters as well as substantial party supporters, and I have devoted a whole page in my Harding scrapbook to clippings concerning one, Everett Harding, who falsely claimed to be a cousin of Warren G. Harding and embarrassed the President-to-be through spurious publicity.

Mrs. Woodlock was living on 48th Street during that time, and invariably when I left the offices of the Republican National Committee it was to go directly to her home to see our baby, Elizabeth Ann. I would usually reach there so fatigued I could scarcely stand, but what recuperative powers her baby exuberance had for me! And Mrs. Woodlock’s hearty laugh would ring through the length of the apartment as she related to me something amusing that had happened during the day. Or she, with her daughter Ruth, would show me how my baby had learned to laugh, and we would all bend over her, each trying to bring to her face the Harding smile that quickened my heart and made the others cry, “Isn’t she a darling!” Aunt Emma, gentle soul, would hobble into the room and say, as she said over and over again to me those days. “I don’t often take to babies, Mrs. Christian, but Elizabeth Ann certainly has won my heart!” She was her father’s daughter, all right.

_52_

I wanted very much to see Mr. Harding, of course, not having been with him since June, and when I wrote to him in Marion that I would leave Chicago for our home town the night of election and see him there, I immediately had his hearty approval and his worded assurance by letter that he was “hungry” to see me. That was the word he used.

At campaign headquarters they knew of my intended visit to Marion and, before I left, Mr. Witt handed me a letter of appreciation. I have this letter pasted in my Harding scrapbook. It commends my “faithfulness, efficiency and initiative” in the campaign work at the Republican National Headquarters. I do not remember how Mr. Witt happened to give me this letter, but I recall very vividly one story which the Ohio Democrats, in casting about for propaganda, were endeavoring to circulate. It stirred me to such bitter indignation that my expressed desire to work overtime, or all night if necessary, to effect its immediate repudiation, may have been so marked as to excite wonder on the part of those about me. The remembrance of my zealous belligerence may have prompted Mr. Witt’s letter of appreciation.

The story to which I allude had to do with the propaganda of a statement that Mr. Harding’s family had a strain of colored blood in their veins. I do not know how the promoters supported their story nor whence its origin; I only know that my being revolted at such a suggestion. The first time it reached my ears was one morning when my boss at campaign headquarters received an out-of-town telephone call, apprising him that such a story had been circulated in that particular town, and requesting suitable literature as a means of refutation. Well I remember how he turned to us in the office, repeating what had been said to him over the phone, and how someone in the office said, “Tell them it’s a damned lie,” and how I reiterated with all the intensity of one who knew better than anyone else the falsity of such story, “Yes, tell them it’s a _damned lie_!” I was defending my own baby.

The following day as I entered the headquarters I found, stacked outside along the corridor and inside our offices, great piles of genealogical sheets, tracing, in diagram form, the Harding stock back to Stephen Harding, who was born about 1624.

It is needless to comment upon the reaction of this piece of unfair and unsuccessful propaganda. All one needs to do is to recall the Harding majority, unprecedented in the history of national elections.

_53_

The evening of the election, November 2nd, 1920 (Mr. Harding’s birthday), I took a midnight train for Marion, Ohio, with a view to returning to New York and even possibly to the United States Steel Corporation. I had an idea if I could get back to New York I might work out some plan whereby I could have our baby with me, though my ideas as to how such a plan would develop were vague. My sister Elizabeth again promised to watch over her for me, and I myself planned to return to Chicago for Christmas anyway. But the hurt I experience every time I leave Elizabeth Ann is a hurt of indescribable poignancy, just as the homesickness I experience in being separated from her is torture in the raw, like a thing one can stand only so long before breaking.

My train pulled into Marion about seven the following morning. About half-past six I called the porter and asked with pardonable excitement in spite of inward assurance, “Well, porter, who is our new President?” He grinned from ear to ear. “Harding’s the man, Miss,” he replied. I sprang out of bed with a thumping heart and dressed quickly.

Everybody in Marion had been up all night and had only just retired about six that morning. So I was informed by the first girl friend I telephoned upon my arrival. She herself had just gotten into bed. So I told her to return to her sleep, and, in spite of her insistence that I come right up to her home, I went to the Marion Hotel for the time being. I had told none of my friends of my coming and did not intend to impose upon them, but when I talked with Mrs. Sinclair over the phone she said she would not permit me to remain even for one night in the hotel, where I had, by this time, settled myself and had my breakfast. She told me to go out to her sister’s, because she herself had company. I did not call up Daisy Harding until the next day, knowing she must be exhausted with excitement and company.

Mrs. Sinclair’s sister lived on a street in which several houses had been converted into temporary clerical headquarters during the famous Front Porch campaign period, and she lived beyond these houses in the house almost at the end of the street.

_54_

I wanted to see Mr. Harding first of all, and so I telephoned Tim Slade, the secret service man whom I had first met at Eagle Bay, and asked him to make an engagement with Mr. Harding for me. I met Mr. Slade, who was also bodyguard to the President-elect, that evening in front of the post office and he took me out East Church Street and Mt. Vernon Avenue and down to a little house where Mr. Harding soon met me. It was one of the houses I have spoken of which were used by the campaign clerical forces, and the sun parlor into which I first entered was filled with desks and papers. Evidences of great activity were apparent.

Tim Slade stood outside the front door and I had to wait only a few moments for Mr. Harding. He came up the short flight of steps and entered the door which Tim held open for him.

“Why, good evening, Nan!” he said. The door was closed behind him and we were alone. We went into the room on the left, which had evidently been used as a dining-room when the house was occupied as a home. The shades had already been drawn down, but Mr. Harding whispered to me as he greeted me with kisses that we would be wiser to go on out into the kitchen. The kitchen was almost totally dark except for the shaft of light which came from under the swinging door we had just come through. We stumbled around until we found a chair where Mr. Harding could sit and hold me on his lap.

After affectionate greetings, I exclaimed softly, “Oh, sweetheart, isn’t it _won_derful that you are President!” He held me close, kissing me over and over again. Our eyes were now becoming accustomed to the darkness and I could see his face dimly outlined. Oh, how dear he was! I repeated my exclamation. “Isn’t it _won_derful that you are President!” He looked at me some time before he answered. Then his “Um ... say, dearie, do you love me!” showed me that the glories of a victorious hero were submerged in the grander glories of a lover’s delight in being with his woman. “_This_ is the best thing that’s happened to me lately, dearie!” he whispered.

“How’s our little girl?” he asked when I had settled myself back in his arms for the talk I knew would be all too short. It delighted me to tell him all about Elizabeth Ann. Even then I had some snapshots and the first baby picture she had had taken. I showed them to him after we had again come back to the light of the dining-room. “Thought you said her ears were _flat against her head_!” he teased with an adorable smile. I observed then for probably the first time that the camera had not so registered. “But they really _are_!” I affirmed.

Then we talked of other things and Mr. Harding gave me two (or maybe three--I cannot remember) $500 bills. “Now, put these away, Nan, where they’ll be safe--where are you going to keep them?” he asked, as I opened my mesh-bag and lightly dropped them into it. “Oh, I’ll take care of them all right, darling,” I assured him, as I thanked him for what I told him was far more than I should need. I had always found that with his letters I experienced a greater sense of safety when I carried them with me constantly than when I left them at home in a dresser drawer, so I decided I would do the same with this large amount of money.

While Mr. Harding and I stood there, he getting out the bills for me, I glanced down at the array of papers on the desk or table in front of me. The paper on top caused me to look at them more closely; they were concerning Mrs. Harding’s first marriage to Mr. DeWolfe, and stated that she had been obliged to obtain a divorce because of Mr. DeWolfe’s intemperance in drink. I read further to the end of the page and a wave of sympathy for Mrs. Harding swept over me. I knew of her son by Mr. DeWolfe and of how they said he had followed in the footsteps of his unfortunate father, and it really grieved me to think how one’s personal sorrows must be unearthed to be made the topic for discussion by a gossipy public. And the enormity of Mr. Harding’s secret and mine again possessed me as I thought triumphantly, “They haven’t got _our_ story!” And when I spoke of this to Mr. Harding he agreed with me that Providence had protected us.

Mr. Harding left ahead of me, returning to his home only about a block away. Of course Tim Slade did not know that I was far better acquainted with every corner of Marion than he ever could be, and when he asked me where I was going I told him I was going out on East Center Street to see a girl chum of mine. I do not remember in whose car we drove, probably one of the official cars that were at Tim’s disposal, but I remember we drove out East Church Street and Tim let me out at a particular corner which was a block or so away from the home I intended visiting that evening.

_55_

It was the following day or the day after that I went out to see Miss Daisy Harding. She had as a guest in their home her sister’s daughter, the daughter of Mrs. Charity Remsberg of California, the sister to whom Mr. Harding had told me he would not hesitate to confide our secret. Miss Harding’s niece looks remarkably like her Aunt Daisy. It was during one of my visits with Miss Harding, perhaps while I was visiting with her during her lunch hour at high school where of course she was still teaching, that I told her I had a picture of Mr. Harding which I wanted him to autograph. I thought it better to ask him to autograph it with Miss Harding present. She immediately said she was sure he would do it for me and suggested that we walk over to the headquarters and see him after her school hours, some evening.

The headquarters, Mr. Harding’s office, was in the residence next door to his own home on Mt. Vernon Avenue, the former home of the Christians, George B. Christian being his private secretary. If Tim Slade ever exhibited a look of surprise over anything that he had witnessed up until then, or that he has known since, certainly it has never surpassed the look of surprise that registered upon his face when he beheld Nan Britton approaching the Harding Headquarters with Daisy Harding. He stood stock-still for a moment. Of course I did not appear to know him. We learned upon inquiry that Mr. Harding was with Mr. Will Hays, who had managed his campaign. “Let’s walk around outside and peek in the window,” suggested Miss Harding. This we did, leaving the picture with someone in charge who said they would see that Mr. Harding autographed it for me in due time. Through the window we could see Mr. Harding at his desk in earnest conversation with Mr. Hays whose back was toward us. How we attracted the President-elect’s attention I do not remember, but Mr. Hays turned and looked out and smiled and Mr. Harding immediately came out the side door. We shook hands formally, and I thought Mr. Harding looked slightly annoyed; perhaps he was. Anyway I asked him if he would mind autographing the picture for me. It was a photograph he had found in his desk in the Senate office (so he told me in New York in 1917) and had said to himself when he found it, “I’m going to give this picture to Nan,” and Miss Harding and her family had agreed it was the best likeness they had ever seen when I showed it to them before taking it over for his autograph. “Where did you get that picture. Nan?” inquired Miss Harding, “I have never seen one like it.” I think I told her I had gotten it at the Republican Headquarters in Chicago. It is possibly one of perhaps a very few copies in existence. I have never seen one except my own.

After talking with us a few moments, Mr. Harding walked back into the office and Miss Harding and I went downtown. Frank, the chauffeur the Hardings had for so many years, was just ready to go down in the President-elect’s official car and he drove us.