Part 27

I was enchanted with Miss Barnett’s log cabin, with its spacious rooms and screened-in porches, its picturesque furnishings, its hardwood floors in bedrooms, where nothing had been forgotten to make the guests perfectly comfortable, the grounds, the deep green coolness of the forest which rose majestically around it. And most of all did it amaze me to see served to us a luncheon as delicately appointed as one might get at the Plaza or Ritz-Carlton.

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When we arrived in Washington that night about eleven o’clock, we found Mr. Votaw waiting up for us, having received word from Mrs. Votaw as to when we would arrive. Daisy Harding had told me that her brother-in-law, Heber Herbert Votaw, had been very ill, and one needed only to glance at him to know it. I had seen Mr. Votaw only a few times, and these occasions dated back to my high school days, when he and his wife had returned from Burma on a furlough, and it occurred to me as I looked at him closely for the first time that night, that he might be described as being handsome in much the same way that George Christian was considered handsome. He had very dark hair and eyes that laughed, and teeth of flashing whiteness, and he was of pleasing height and bearing. On meeting him again after these years I liked Mr. Votaw immediately, with one reservation. It seemed to me his voice was unpleasantly loud. I decided it had been abnormally developed because of his wife’s difficulty in hearing, and was not at all his own natural voice. And further, I concluded that even if he _were_ inclined to be irritable, his late illness and resultant weakness were sufficient grounds. I remember when I was passing through the most trying months of my nervous breakdown following Elizabeth Ann’s birth, I used to manifest a disposition of irritability both in my voice and actions which I may, in justice to my true self, disclaim as a part of my nature when I am physically sound.

Yet somehow, despite these explanations to myself, I could not reconcile the irritancy of Mr. Votaw’s voice, no matter to what it might be attributable, with the meekness and patience which should mark a missionary of religion.

The Votaws lived in a very comfortable house which Carrie Votaw told me they rented partially furnished, having brought some of their own things to complete the outfitting. They kept one maid, a young girl Mrs. Votaw had befriended in a motherly way, and Mrs. Votaw herself went into the kitchen and superintended the getting of the meals. Mrs. Votaw liked young people about and very early introduced me to a young man and several young people, all nearer my own age. She was a charming hostess and did many things I was sure were done just to please me. When she said to me she wished I would come down there and live with them and help her in a secretarial way to write up her many experiences in Burma, I was quite thrilled. I thought it might work out that I could bring her brother’s child with me and in that way introduce her into the household along with myself. Then we could _all_ share her.

Mrs. Votaw talked a great deal about “wanting a baby,” and I could not help reflecting how tragic it is that into some homes come so many children, oftentimes unwanted, while into other homes where they would find welcome and love awaiting them, for some reason they do not come. I felt genuinely sorry for her and thought to myself, “How she will adore Elizabeth Ann!” even as her sister Daisy had prophesied. And her longing for a child only served to strengthen my hope of being asked very soon to bring Elizabeth Ann, their beloved brother’s own child, into their homes and into their hearts as the child of their flesh and blood. And, although I would never, never part with her, to have them know the blessing of her smile and the happiness I knew she would radiate for them all, would, I thought, be a great joy to them, even as it was for me my life joy.

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One evening Mr. and Mrs. Votaw and I sat talking before bedtime, and our conversation drifted into religion. We had talked pro and con about this phase and that for perhaps an hour or more when Mrs. Votaw excused herself and went on upstairs to bed. Mr. Votaw and I talked on until one o’clock. His fervency struck me as being that of a man genuinely convinced that he had found the truth, and I expressed the wish that I, too, some day would find a religion that would fill me as satisfyingly. Mine up to this time had become merely a philosophy of my own, from conning religious books, and influenced predominately by the bitter-sweet experiences I had met up with in life. I must always have been innately religious, else I would not always have longed to know that something which satisfies the soul. But I had witnessed on all sides the hypocrisy which makes people live lives they despise and practise religions insincerely for the mere sake of upholding conventional standards. I had therefore turned into my own mental paths.

My independent thinking was of course inspired by my intimate knowledge of Mr. Harding’s apparent unhappiness with his legal wife and his evident preference, in his relations with me, for subterfuge, which seemed to promote peace of mind, rather than open rebellion and consequent turmoil. “She’d raise hell!” had been Mr. Harding’s frequent statement to me, and, even though she seemed not to love him in the way a man has the right to expect to be loved by his wife, I knew, without Mr. Harding’s telling me, that she would not release him to another. And, though I had been surrounded ever since a child with an atmosphere of strictest convention, I had found with Warren Harding that the realest happiness is of the spirit, and far transcends in its sublimity the exquisiteness of physical rapture. And stress of circumstances, preventing our more frequent trysts, and fraught with pain, had brought me to a realization that our love was a thing divine. The love I bore Warren Harding, my love for the spirit which was he, was the most God-like instinct I possessed--a thing not of this world.

To Mr. Votaw I said, as I realized anew these things, “To me, Mr. Votaw, Warren Harding was spiritual, almost an immortal.” Tears were in my throat. “Bah!” he replied, with a slight grimace, “don’t you believe it! Warren was as material as any of us.” I marvelled that he had not understood that I only meant that Warren Harding’s soul had finely shone through the veil of his material body.

How little the world knew the true Warren Harding!

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The following day I was to leave Washington for New York. Carrie Votaw and I were chatting together in the room I had occupied since my arrival, and she was showing me some of her lovely clothes, many of which she said she had not worn since the days her brother was in the White House. This hat had been bought for a garden party at the White House, and this dress was selected for another particular occasion. The prematurely snow-white hair of the woman before me, coupled with the beauty of a face which was, like her sister Daisy’s of queenly loveliness, made a startlingly beautiful woman, one who could, I reflected, more fittingly fill the role of the First Lady than she who had recently actually held that title. As I stood there handling this gown and that, my mind flew back to a certain White House reception held on the lawn one summer afternoon in 1922, the only one I ever witnessed, and I wondered if Mrs. Votaw had been there.

I had visited with President Harding that morning, in his private office as usual, and he had told me how he wished he might “get me in on” the party scheduled for that afternoon without Mrs. Harding’s suspecting the source of my invitation. As he sat pondering the possibility, I could see many difficulties--my lack of a suitable gown and so on--and I assured him I would be just as happy knowing he had _wanted_ me there.

That afternoon I strolled past the White House, along the side near the conservatory which commanded a view of the sloping green. It was a gay assemblage, and in its midst I spied my sweetheart, handsome and tall, standing with Mrs. Harding and receiving guests who were arriving in throngs. It occurred to me he stood in an unusually conspicuous spot, easily observable from my post outside the fence, and I suddenly knew he must be standing there so that I could see him. When I accused him lovingly upon my next visit of raising a hand to me as a signal of recognition, he only smiled and said, noncommittally but fondly, “That _would_ please you, wouldn’t it, Nan.” And I nodded and told him the next time I would hope for a friendlier guard, one who would not say “No loitering, young lady!” as I stood there harmlessly adoring _my_ president!

Little did his sister suspect what was going through my mind as she spoke of this gown and that and I viewed them in unfeigned admiration. And, I thought, wasn’t it just like her to have invited me on one occasion to wear her own black wrap trimmed with ermine, and one of her evening hats? If I were to live there, it would be just like her generous self to let me wear all of her pretty things!

Before we went out of the room, Mrs. Votaw went to the dresser and took from one of the dresser drawers a black pin-seal wallet or bill-book. It bore the marks of long usage.

“Here, Nan. You always loved Warren so much and I want you to have this. Brother Warren carried it with him right up to the time he died, and that makes it very precious.” What could I say to her! How could she know how it tortured me to see again the old familiar wallet and to experience the rush of memories which this new sight of it conjured up for me! How often had I adored the offhand manner in which her brother had inquired of me across the dinner-table, “How are the finances today, Nan?” or, “Have you paid Mrs. Johnson your rent a month in advance?” And whether or not my finances were in good shape, he would draw out contemplatively a twenty or fifty, depending upon my immediate needs, often a cigarette between his lips, his eyes narrowed to keep out the smoke, as he drew the bill from the wallet. Then he would hand it to me and say, “Better put that in your bag, dearie, right away,” if I sat oblivious, adoring the nonchalant manner in which the cigarette hung from his lips--I never saw anyone smoke with such perfect grace as he. The leather fairly smelled of him! How queer that she should have elected to give me _this_ as a memento! Yet here it was, the empty bill-book, and I opened it to read in gold lettering his name, “Warren G. Harding.” Why, it was in this very worn wallet that he used to keep a certain snapshot of me to which he had taken a particular fancy! Now, at the hand of his sister, it had come back to the mother of his child....

My heart was full of gratitude for these visits, both with Miss Harding in Marion and with Mrs. Votaw in Takoma Park, suburban to Washington. It seemed I had surely trod upon holy ground, for had I not been among those who knew and loved him dearly? Yes, it was good, good to have been in both homes, good to renew friendship on a more intimate basis, good to realize how genuine was their affection for their brother, whose child they would surely welcome lovingly, and who in turn would know the full depth of their love in the material expression they would give as proof.

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I returned to The Town Hall Club in New York on July first (1925) to take up my duties again, and took a room within walking distance of the Club.

July passed and no word came from Daisy Harding. So on August 3rd I wrote her briefly, greeting her again after the lapse of a month or more and making inquiry as to whether she had seen her sister, Mrs. Votaw. When Daisy Harding speaks of Elizabeth Ann, she often calls her “Bijiba,” the baby’s self-imposed nickname, and in her letter she used merely the initial “B” to indicate “Bijiba.”

She wrote: “I feel that we have such different ideas about men and our relations to them that it is useless for me to suggest or advise.” (Why, I had _sought_ her counsel, her help!) “I want so much to see you happy and attain the desires nearest to your heart that I hesitate to say anything which might interfere with your plans....” (Plans? I had no plans, as she surely must have known, except as they might develop through financial help from the Harding family.) “... My heart goes out to you in any of your suffering, relative to B-- (Bijiba), and you must know and feel that....”

This letter astounded me. Even the concluding words of endearment, “Lots of love, Nan dear,” failed to carry the usual note of sincerity. I read and reread the passages pertaining to Elizabeth Ann, trying to read into them something which was obviously not there, trying to discern an attitude of active interest instead of merely a passive inactive acceptance of a tragic situation. Could it be that she had failed to understand that my revelations to her had been for the express purpose of bringing the Harding family to a realization that there existed an obligation on their part to Elizabeth Ann, and not merely to solicit sympathy and discuss the intimate details of my relationship with her brother?

If such were the case, I would have to make plainer the import of my appeal to her, and frankly state my desire to see this wrong toward my child, and their brother’s, righted. She had asked me, with kindly spirit and apparent understanding, to “leave it with her,” and she had promised to confer with her sister, Mrs. Votaw, at the earliest opportunity. Was it possible that this talk between them had resulted in the apparent indifference her letter indicated? Impossible. They were _Hardings_!

But I had their brother’s daughter’s future at stake, and her welfare was dearer to me than life. I deliberated well, and then wrote her at length, and below are excerpts from my letter which dealt almost entirely with Elizabeth Ann’s problem:

“New York, September 23, 1925.

DEAREST MISS HARDING:

... When I was in Marion, I remember distinctly that you told me how deeply sympathetic and interested Mrs. Votaw was bound to be if you told her the whole story about Elizabeth Ann as I had related it to you. In your letter recently to me you ignored completely Mrs. Votaw’s possible visit to you.... I am naturally assuming therefore that you have told Mrs. Votaw and the attitude you felt sure she would take has not been the attitude she actually has assumed. Of course, the mere fact that you did not even allude to your having had a discussion with her on the subject has hurt me very deeply.

I hope you don’t mind my talking in a rather business-like manner about a subject which is a veritable part of me and nearest and dearest to my heart, but the time has come when I must make some kind of separation between sentiment and being fair to Elizabeth Ann. When I went West in June, as I told you, my sole reason was to talk with you and gain whatever helpful suggestions you might make. Your saying in your last letter that my attitude toward men and that of your own were at such wide variance as to make you hesitant about making suggestions was another thing that hurt me quite a bit. I will admit that Elizabeth Ann’s father and I indulged in the height of unconventionality--but to be fair to myself, I must say that it was as much his idea of right as mine--and I shall never be able to attach one iota of sordidness to the beautiful, natural, and finely impelled love we had for each other which resulted in God’s giving us Elizabeth Ann.

I am very sure, knowing your loving regard for his happiness and your deep affection for him as a brother, you would not in the same breath imagine him capable of being actuated by any but the finest, truest motives, and that I, loving him as I always have, could respond had I not instincts as lofty as his own. Bless him! But my declarations now are merely to prove to you that if you loved him one-tenth as much as I, you would lose sight entirely of the “right” or “wrong” of the question, in assuming that you are incapable of advising or helping simply because our views concerning relations with men differ, in your desire to see things as he saw them--and in your intense longing to help me to solve the problem which his tragic death has left unsolved.

Not that I believe you do not want to help me. Understand me, I am sure you do. Both you and Mrs. Votaw. Else you could not have loved him dearly. I think I would have died for him. But my problem now is to _live_ and care for and protect a precious gift--our gift to each other. I wish I might picture to you his face when he talked of the future--the worshipful sweetness of his smile when he talked with me about Elizabeth Ann--his pride in her, his adorable pride in me, his enthusiasm about little girls in general, where, he said to me, the very last time I saw him, he “never used to feel so deeply moved.” You see how I have all these things with me, and how endeared every remembrance makes her to me.

It has all been going through my mind all summer, and I feel very strongly that before I take any big steps, I should immediately put my problem up to you very frankly.

You intimated to me that perhaps this fall--your property there having involved your own income quite deeply--you might be able to help me to put E. A. in school--to have her with me. I am up against the following problem:

I could, presumably, though not positively, procure funds wherewith to enable me to put E. A. in school this winter--but ever since I married the Captain in order to _have_ E. A. permanently, have I been borrowing--from Peter to pay Paul. It has not worked out at all well. I am now in debt over $500 and only this very afternoon have I gone on the witness stand in an endeavor to have my marriage annulled and start anew....

Now, my mother, not having been in particularly good health this summer, and so far not having a school because of her health, is, you know, a fine teacher. I have been considering having her come East with Elizabeth Ann ..., take a two or three-room apartment, have her tutor Elizabeth Ann part of the day and have E. A., for the sake of being thrown in with children, go to kindergarten the other part of the day.

It will involve quite a bit of expense considering that I myself can live on my salary, but could not begin to keep two others. Mother would simply be hired in the capacity of a teacher, though of course the compensation she would ask of me in money would be small in proportion to that which I might be obliged to pay a regular tutor. I would, however, have to maintain an apartment, buy the food, clothe all of us, and meet E. A.’s kindergarten expenses and other expenses connected with such a program.

If, for instance, you would be willing to help to the extent of taking care of E. A.’s kindergarten expenses, and Mrs. Votaw would meet her expenses so far as clothes are concerned--and I would endeavor to be as economical as possible and still keep her looking as well as the children she comes in contact with at school--it would relieve me greatly. It is possible that my mother can find something worth while to do and would be able to fill in the hours E. A. is in school to advantage.

As I said, I am assuming that you have told Mrs. Votaw. I know in my heart that you girls could not be his sisters and feel disinterested to the point of not being eager to do anything you could--and I have an idea that Mrs. Votaw could be appealed to to see the thing in its true light, as a problem that I am up against for him as well as myself. You know, of course, that I would not think of having E. A. go through her life and not know who she is,--I am too proud of it, to begin with, and it is only fair to her to know. And when I feel she should know, I would adore to be able to tell her how her father’s people came to my rescue so that she might be reared in the manner he has so often pictured to me. And when that time comes I would love to have her be more than merely acquainted with you. I need not say that she is the most lovable of children--all that have I told you--but I may say that I feel some day she will make us proud of her, if she has the opportunity she should have as his daughter.

As I say, I have people in mind whom I would feel absolutely safe in going to--men in particular of whom E. A.’s father has spoken with fondness,--but it seems to me that we, as two families interested, should be able to work out some means, through working together for her good--and, after all, the burden will not fall upon the shoulders of one of us, but on all.

I am writing to Mrs. Votaw tonight, asking her if I may run down, very possibly this week-end, to see her. I imagine it is her delicacy of feeling toward me that has inclined her to remain silent. But it is absolutely my problem to solve and I feel I must reach out in every _right_ direction until I exhaust every effort. Then, and only then, will I feel justified in turning to outsiders.

Curious how sure I feel that things will come out all right. I merely feel that instinctive longing to do the thing that is right and to be fair with everybody, and have everybody deal fairly with me. It is bound to come out that way....

Lots and lots of loving thoughts to you.

Affectionately, NAN BRITTON NEILSEN”

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To Mrs. Votaw, under the same date, September 23rd, 1925, I wrote:

“DEAR MRS. VOTAW:

Won’t you write me in the enclosed envelope whether or not it would be convenient for you to have me run down to see you this week-end? I could make the Friday night train and arrive Saturday morning, or I could come down Saturday morning and arrive in the early afternoon, returning Sunday night.

I’d love to see you.

Most affectionately, NAN BRITTON NEILSEN”

Under date of September 25, 1925, Mrs. Votaw wrote me a short note in longhand. I took heart when I noted the salutation, “Dearest Nan,” but the note itself was not especially heartening. She wrote that she had had a great deal of company. “Am just all in--been going to the Sanitarium for a week taking treatments and fighting to keep on my feet, ...” she wrote. The doctor had informed her that she must go to bed and be quiet for a time. After that she was going to Clifton Springs, New York, where her sister Daisy would soon join her. “Am so tired--hope you are feeling well,” the note ended.

Not a single intimation that she knew my story! Never a word of sympathy for me, though she must have known from her sister Daisy that I, too, was nervously exhausted beyond words. Never a promise of help, though she must have known the purpose of my desire to see her. It was all so evasive. Yet the tenor of the note, with its implication of a rather sudden breakdown, seemed to my sensitive mind to impute to me responsibility therefore, if it resulted from revelations made by Daisy Harding. Not to be permitted to see her, to talk with her, and give her the many details I had given her sister Daisy, seemed to me unfair treatment. It left me with the feeling a child has when accused of something and sent off to bed with no opportunity of explaining his innocence.

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