Part 18

Elizabeth lovingly approved of Elizabeth Ann’s calling me “Mamma Nan,” which she did for quite a while. I never encouraged or approved of her calling me “Aunt Nan,” because I am not her aunt and do not wish to be so called by her. She calls me plain “Nan” now, which is better than prefixing it with “Aunt.” Often during those days when Elizabeth Ann called me “Mamma Nan” someone would remark about it and I would have to brush it aside with an explanation. This never failed to cause a wave of weakness to pass over me as I faced the blunt truth that practically I had made myself her aunt by submitting to an adoption by my sister and her husband.

People remarked her fondness for me, and my most unnatural fondness for her who was not supposed to be related to me. Elizabeth had taken in two girls as roomers, finding it difficult even with Mr. Harding’s generous allowance to keep up the expenses in connection with the household, send Scott a specified amount monthly for his expenses abroad where he was studying, and keep her own piano lessons paid for. Both of these girls were very fond of Elizabeth Ann. I remember I was jealous of their attention to her, not wanting anyone to have her but myself, fiercely resenting references to her as my sister’s “daughter,” even with the love I bore my sister. My daughter was a passion with me and I simply worshipped her. She and I would retire early, nearly every night, even as early as six-thirty sometimes, immediately after dinner, and I would have her in my bed with me until seven o’clock or so when she had to go to sleep in her crib. Oftentimes I kept her with me all night, and I lay awake thinking, planning, my face against her silken hair, her hand in mine, long after she had gone to sleep.

_80_

During the summer, Grace Cunningham, who had been my eighth grade teacher back in Marion, Ohio, came to Chicago to attend normal school. My sister Elizabeth, who had always been particularly fond of Miss Cunningham, entertained her at our home for a couple of days. Miss Cunningham occupied my bedroom while she was at our apartment. One whole side of my wall was devoted to photographs of the Harding family. On the other side hung a picture of me as a child, the picture Vail’s had taken when I was five and which Mr. Harding had published in his paper, _The Marion Daily Star_.

“Nan,” remarked Grace Cunningham to me one morning, “I wouldn’t know whether this picture was of you or of Elizabeth Ann--which is it?” Which was certainly eloquent proof to me that she had recognized in me the mother of the baby, even though she had not said so in so many words.

I wondered how she would react to the actual truth. I had always felt that Grace Cunningham, though a maiden lady, was thoroughly romantic, and she had given me during that visit reason to feel she would view broad-mindedly certain situations not condoned by the general run of people.

However, I was forced to conclude to myself that perhaps what people might think of the child of Warren Harding was not the usual opinion held in regard to the children-of-love-alone. As the days passed, I was beginning to realize, from sententious remarks of certain people, that in no wise would there be universal condonation where Elizabeth Ann and I were concerned if the situation were not protected _legally_. Mr. Harding’s statement to me when I went to Asbury Park, “Pay your way, Nan; money is power,” seemed not to appear so all-inclusive to me now as then.

In other words, in my own case, not being able to divulge the identity of my child’s father, which might place her above the ordinary run of love-children, the great love I had for the man himself whose child I had borne would be self-stamped with the brand of commonplaceness--yea, of a monstrous sin committed against society! And all the money in the world could not blot out the significance of such expression. And millions of safely married women nightly deplored the indulgence which threw them into an intense state of worriment from month to month! Love-children! The very words are beautiful and rightly belong only where the impulse itself has been lovely.

But even though I myself were willing, for the sake of having my child, to bear the stings such a stigma would inevitably carry, could I, in fairness to my little girl, suffer her to be placed in a position where she would receive at best more of critical sympathy than understanding love? Of her love for me I was as sure as I was of that of her father, and never for a moment entertained the idea that she might turn against me, as was suggested to me by certain ones to whom I dared to confide my longing to proclaim my motherhood. My own case was simple, and when she grew older she would understand. I had, before I gave Mr. Harding the full measure of love, loved no man in a degree even approachable to the love I had for one smile from Mr. Harding. As his sister, Mrs. Votaw, had laconically said to me upon the occasion of one of my visits to Marion, though she knew not whereof she spoke: “You never really loved anybody but Warren, Nan.” Therefore, to be relegated to the list of possible wrong-doers would be to impute wrong motives to the one beautiful impulse of my life, and the only impulse I had ever experienced which carried with it the sacred instinct to which my mind had given birth under the breath of Warren Harding’s love long before my body had known its realization in motherhood. Knowing so well my own heart, it would have been but the crowning glory of my experience to tell the world that Warren Harding was the father of my child, to dwell with others in open admiration upon her smile which is the smile of her father, or upon her lovely eyes which are lighted with the lights of his eyes.

But, if my sweetheart, the father of my child, had been of lowly estate, what then? Ah, then indeed, from what I could see of the hypocrisy of mankind, I would suffer the unjust criticism of slanderous charges--that I had “sold myself cheaply,” or, indulging an unbridled passion, had been unable to escape the penalty. This would be the inevitable result, and might in a measure attach itself to human opinion even if a frank declaration from her father revealed his fatherhood. But in either event, the stains of ignominy would attach themselves _to the child and mother_--and why? Simply because that mother did not seek to strike his existing legal bonds asunder. As Warren Harding said to me the last visit I had with him in the White House, “If you had been _born earlier_, Nan!...” If I had been born earlier Warren Harding would have undoubtedly chosen me for his _legal_ bride. But I was never even so much as tempted to try to destroy a legal yoke which had existed thirty years merely for the sake of bending my head under a similar one, thereby legalizing with man-made law that love which was already God-given.

In her own way Florence Harding may have loved her husband, and I am glad today that I do not have upon my conscience the remembrance of marital interference which would have added not a whit to the love Warren Harding and I had for each other and might possibly have succeeded only in precipitating sordid gossip. Yet I say this with the full knowledge of my own influence over the man I loved and who loved me, and had I exerted that influence selfishly in my own behalf I might early in our sweetheart days have solved the problem which remains unsolved and which has led me to write this book.

How then, I pondered, could I save the good name of my child if I acknowledged my motherhood? Where lay the possibility of a continued sharing of sweet intimacies with her father? And where, oh, where, lay my own peace of mind? Certainly no good result could come from my constant mental pandemonium!

My sweetheart, in the very nature of his position, had sacrificed what would have been to him and me the culminating happy years of our love, by the political victory which would doubtless eventuate in claiming four or eight years of his life. Could our present personal regime survive over a period of eight years? It could not, I decided, if I were to keep my right mind and continue ever-alert vigilance in Mr. Harding’s behalf. No human being, I argued to myself in despair, could withstand the devastating mental effects of a problem so seemingly unsolvable, so shattering from the very method in which a solution had been effected. A cowardly, covering adoption of the daughter of the President of the United States!

And so on and on ... and the days passed, and months were behind me, and still my mind continued to go round and round, evolving no workable plan, however, and I continued to support to the best of my ability the regime as it stood.

_81_

But I never for one moment ceased searching for a plan, and I wonder now as I write just when the plan which I decided definitely to follow after Mr. Harding’s death, really took form in my mind. It may even as early as that summer--1922--have been latent within my consciousness, and my subconscious thinking might very possibly have directed a course of action which would have received vigorous opposition from my conscious thought.

I began to perceive the _easy way out_ was to find myself a husband. It would be comparatively easy then to take Elizabeth Ann, give her my married name, and, having her thus _legalized_ as mine, confess to the man that I would never love him except for the fact that he had made it possible for me to have my child with me. Some may think that this was a most unworthy contemplation, even as it was admittedly a subconscious consideration, but it must be remembered that my child was growingly dearer to me than life itself, and I did not even so much as dwell upon the sacrifice of mind and body which such an arrangement would mean to me. Somehow, I thought _that_ was possible of working out by “_paying my way_,” and I would choose to marry someone whom I could easily dominate, with whom my secret, if I elected to tell him my secret, would be safe, and who withal had sufficient worldly goods to put up a front consistent with being Elizabeth Ann’s father. I was even willing for the sake of having her myself to eliminate certain demands I had made when submitting to the adoption by my sister and her husband, viz., that Scott attain for himself as soon as possible music prestige which would becomingly fit him to fill the role of foster father to Warren Harding’s and my child. I would dispense with this requirement in any man I might choose to marry because I did not mean, down in my heart, that he should fill much of a role in that way. Who knows? Maybe I intended to leave him after I had taken his name for myself and my child! I know I would then have been capable of just such procedure had I determined to act upon it. Or perhaps those same fates which had so generously guarded Warren Harding and me during our earlier days would intervene later on to make possible the great miracle of our own marriage!

Thereupon, with provisionary intent, I began to consider this one and that as a husband possibility. My acquaintance among men was limited. I dabbled unhappily however in friendships, trying to see this one or that in the role of step-father to our child, and recoiling ever unless my subject of concentration seemed to display conspicuous ability in the matter of winning Elizabeth Ann’s affection; this at least, I thought, would be desirable.

I even went so far as to confess to Mr. Harding, upon my next trip to the White House, that such a course of action had suggested itself to me, and the memory of the disappointment and hurt in his expression should have been sufficient to cause me not only to immediately abandon further thoughts along this line as unworthy, but to be heartily ashamed that I had ever voiced such thoughts to him.

But my confession was made only because I sought, in mental desperation, a way to make my child my very own. I even mentioned one man who at that time seemed logical for my own peculiar marriage purposes. Mr. Harding faced me on the couch in his private office.

“Don’t you think he would be a safe person to marry?” I asked him earnestly.

“Well, Nan, do you think you could _love_ this fellow?” Mr. Harding inquired of me gently. I did not look directly at him, though I answered him quickly.

“Of course _not_, but _that_ wouldn’t matter!”

Mr. Harding’s voice was firm and I knew he was looking at me searchingly.

“Oh, yes, dearie, it would!” It was as though he were reasoning with a small child, I felt, one who did not know what was good for her to do.

“That would be grossly unfair to the man, Nan darling,” he went on very gently, as I continued to avoid his eyes, looking down at my hand which played with my “wedding ring” from Mr. Harding.

“Well,” I said finally with emphasis, raising my eyes now to my sweetheart, “You _know_ I never _shall_ love anybody but you!”

What relief and joy overspread his face! The exclamation that escaped his lips seemed almost a sob as he crushed me to him. How I loved him for wanting me so! But how I also loved my child and wanted her!

_82_

During the interim between this and my next visit, which must have been in late August or early September, Tim Slade came to Chicago to deliver a package from Mr. Harding which contained money and a letter to me. Tim Slade came several times to Chicago, and I always met him at the Congress Hotel. He was frank to express to me his feeling toward Mrs. Harding, which amounted to much more than mere dislike, and on one occasion revealed his resentment toward her which had been aroused by the occasion of one of his visits to me. He said Mrs. Harding, knowing he was going to make a trip to Chicago, but not of course knowing why, had said to him, “Tim, where are you going?” His resentment because of her curiosity prompted a reply which Tim said simply enraged her, and she _demanded_ to know why he was going to Chicago. He said he told her it was to meet some member of his family who was to be in Chicago on the day he planned to see me. It was Tim Slade himself who recently reminded me that Mr. Harding had one time sent another man to Chicago because he, Tim, could not go, and I recalled then that I did meet someone other than Tim, at our usual meeting-place, the Congress Hotel. I did not, you see, go to Washington every time Mr. Harding would have liked to have me come. There were times when he could not have me, and I went only when he wrote that it would be all right. Mr. Harding’s letters expressed more and more his fear about our situation, and more and more cautioned me to be guarded both in speech and action. And my perturbation and dissatisfaction grew apace with his concern.

It seems to me it was the fall of 1922 when Miss Daisy Harding came again to Chicago to visit her cousin, Mrs. John Wesener. She had visited there in 1921, but at that time I was in New York. This time her father, Dr. Harding, was there (with his wife by his third marriage) and it so happened that my Grandfather Williams was visiting at my sister Elizabeth’s at the same time.

Dr. Harding, Daisy’s father, and my grandfather were both Civil War veterans and therefore old friends. So I took my grandfather to call upon his friend, Dr. Harding. Grandfather Williams was usually careless about his appearance, and I knew Dr. Harding had been kept carefully groomed ever since his son’s election to the presidency, so I tactfully suggested to Grandfather that he have his shoes shined, and upon that occasion I myself brushed his coat and prepared him otherwise for his call upon his old friend, the President’s father. My grandfather’s pride was his uniform, and this he wore then, though I am sorry to say it was sadly in need of cleaning and pressing, albeit he reserved this dress for his G. A. R. encampments and other state occasions.

I remember I had not seen Dr. Harding except briefly since his son had been made President, and it occurred to me he looked far different from the man I used to see back in Marion driving around with his “horse and buggy.” Then his shoes were as dusty as my grandfather’s, and I have been in his home when it was futile for his daughter Daisy to urge him not to pin his coat together with a safety-pin. He just would do it.

The two dear old fellows had a lovely confab over the Civil War, while I, off in Miss Harding’s bedroom, visited with her. I have often recalled that visit, for to me Daisy Harding was not quite the same Daisy Harding I had known in high school. But perhaps this was only natural. The world’s spotlight had fallen upon her, and she talked about how she had to avoid the reporters who, as she said, literally camped about wherever she went. I could readily appreciate this, but I could not understand the change in her otherwise; and when one is sister to the President one naturally takes for granted that one’s friends know that one is subjected to reporters and even false news items.

One reason why Miss Harding had come to Chicago was to purchase some new clothes and these she showed me upon that visit with her. They were lovely, but she needed nothing elaborate, in my estimation, to accentuate the natural loveliness which was hers.

I could not help deploring the change in her which was not a becoming change. I remember when I was a child, in Grace Cunningham’s eighth grade class, I was given a poem by her to recite upon Lincoln’s birthday. It was known as Lincoln’s favorite poem, and begins, “Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud!” The changed Daisy Harding brought this poem to my mind. I thought of the visits with her brother Warren in the White House--the President of the United States--yet to me he had not been changed a whit by this great honor; rather had he been made nobler and more humble. And it grieved me to see this instance of woman-change in Daisy Harding. But I loved her none the less.

I remember a passing remark which Miss Harding made to me upon the occasion of that visit. We were talking about my sister Elizabeth and Miss Harding remarked her surprise that Elizabeth and Scott with their music careers ahead of them (Scott a violinist and Elizabeth a pianist) should have taken a baby. It occurred to me then, as it has occurred to me dozens of times since in the distress of my own dilemma, that a more admirable thing they could not have done, even though the baby were taken from an orphan’s home, even though they had taken a child as a means of preventing their too deep engrossment in themselves and their “careers.” However, perhaps I am prejudiced in favor of taking care of the babies in this world.

_83_

Winter--the last winter Warren Harding was ever to know on this earth--was fast coming on. My letters from him spoke his disappointment that he had not seemed able as yet to have me with him intimately in Washington. Around Christmas time he wrote and sent me $250 with which to buy my own Christmas present, besides having provided me liberally with other Christmas money. With $225 of that $250 I bought myself a little diamond and sapphire link bracelet, having indulged again in the erroneous belief that a new trinket might help to make me forget--at least while its newness lasted. This idea had become somewhat of a mania with me. Whenever I found myself eaten to distraction with too much thinking I would go out to purchase a gaily colored gown or a hat or a pretty pin, eventually giving it away perhaps, but easing myself at least during the moment of buying. I used to drag my darling baby around with me on these mad hunts for happiness, which, alas, never sparkles for the desolate even in caskets of diamonds and rubies.

I surfeited Elizabeth Ann with toys; there was nothing she wanted that I did not immediately buy for her, often to my sister’s disgust. But somehow I felt that my sorrow must also be Elizabeth Ann’s and that I must assuage her grief, in advance, by heaping frivolous toys upon her then, for I was sure she would be ultimately saddened by the knowledge that I could not have her for my own. It is easy to see that my mind was not functioning normally. I was becoming unable to view things evenly, and the slightest mental upheaval brought on magnified mental distortion, and a pronouncement of inevitable disaster; I rushed madly about to find a method of forestalling the doom which seemed to impend. But it was all so vain. Happiness for myself and my baby could not be bought in stores. I could not escape the thing that was to come.

_84_

In my position at Northwestern University, as President Walter Dill Scott’s secretary, which position I filled for six months, I was being thrown into a social element I might have enjoyed had it not been for my preoccupation in my own trying matter. Acting on impulse, I decided to give up my work with President Scott and go into the University as a student. I set about to gain Mr. Harding’s consent and approval. I wrote him I wanted to see him on a matter, and he set the date of my coming. It was in January, 1923, and the second semester of school would begin in February.

Mr. Harding’s latest letter had inclined me to think that perhaps we might be able to have more than a formal visit, and so I invested in a lovely orchid neglige and ostrich-befeathered mules. These I hoped I might have occasion to need upon my visit to Mr. Harding, and you may be sure this intimation from him had set my heart beating wildly. Perhaps I needed this intimate nearness to re-affix a certain sanity I seemed to have lost; perhaps he needed me to help banish the harassing fears besetting him on all sides.

Mrs. Warren G. Harding, wife of the President of the United States, was a very sick woman. According to the bulletins she was still in a critical condition at the time I saw Mr. Harding, despite the fact that she had, I think, passed the crisis of her illness. Brigadier-General Sawyer, personal physician to Mrs. Harding, headed the list of doctors in attendance upon her. But Mrs. Harding had, as far back as I could remember, been ill or ailing most of the time, and one time in particular, when Mr. Harding was Senator, he had come over to New York to see me during her illness and told me very calmly that they had been “sure she would die.” So the credence given by most people at that time to the unusual severity of her illness was somewhat discredited by those of us who knew the chronic character of her sickness. And when Mr. Harding wrote thus hopefully to me in very early January, I felt sure that the papers had grossly exaggerated the First Lady’s illness, and that likely by the time I reached Washington she would be on her way to Florida, or some other place, for a period of recuperation.

_85_

I recall for many reasons that visit to the White House in January of 1923. Sometimes it recurs to me with such vividness that I long with all my heart to be able to forget it. Mr. Harding’s letter conflicted greatly with the situation as I actually found it, and I had not been long with him when I saw that what I had taken literally as high hope on his part to be able to have me as of our old sweetheart days was really a dreamy lapse on his part into contemplation in writing of what he would _love_ to do, rather than what he _could_ do.

My reaction to his unwitting deception was such as to sink me immediately into a state of weeping, a bitter railing against fate, and complaint such as I had never allowed myself to voice on any previous visit to the White House no matter how low my spirits had been.