Part 4

“My darling Nan: I love you more than the world, and I want you to belong to me. Could you belong to me, dearie? I want you ... and I need you so....”

I remember the letter did not run into length because I silenced him with the kisses he pleaded for. He would tremble so just to sit close to me, and I adored every evidence of his enthusiasm.

“Do people address you as ‘Judge’ or ‘Senator’?” asked Miss Anderson after I had presented Mr. Harding to her.

“No, I have never been a judge,” he answered, “I guess I’m just plain Mr. Harding.” He smiled. Miss Anderson suggested that we sit in one of the little waiting-rooms.

It will be remembered that this visit was in late May of 1917 and our whole United States was full of “the war.” It was entirely logical that the general trend of conversation should bear upon the various aspects of the war. But how it drifted into a discussion of babies I do not recall. Mr. Harding vouchsafed the information he had recently acquired in Washington, that the Germans were actually attempting to create children by injecting male serum, taken at the proper temperature, into the female without the usual medium of sexual contact. He denounced this method of propagation as “German madness” and affirmed that in his belief children should come only through mutual love-desire. I shall never forget the expressions of his face and Helen Anderson’s. Surely she must have thought he was talking strangely to speak of these things so frankly and upon such short acquaintance. But I, though I confess it did not occur to me then, understand these processes of his mind to have been the direct result of contemplations concerning me, and it is not unlikely that even as early as that very first visit Warren Harding was entertaining the possibility of becoming the father of a real love-child. Certainly his face was a study.

Miss Anderson assured him of my readiness for a position and we went from the Y. W. C. A. to Judge Elbert H. Gary’s office at 71 Broadway, Empire Building. I remember we stood quite a few minutes waiting for a Broadway street car, and it must have taken us about forty-five minutes to go from 14th Street to Rector Street. I remember how Mr. Harding suddenly seemed to come to himself somewhere in lower Broadway and exclaim, as we were getting off the car, “Why, Nan, why didn’t we take a taxi!” and his surprise was so genuine that I knew he had not realized _where_ he had been during that ride downtown.

_14_

Mr. Harding had told me that he thought the very place for me was in the United States Steel Corporation. I had never even heard of Judge Gary, strange to say, and he explained that he was the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the largest industrial corporation in the world.

Mr. Harding handed his card to the secretary in Judge Gary’s outer office. The judge came out immediately. After introducing me to Judge Gary, Mr. Harding inquired casually of him whether his senatorial services in a certain matter had been satisfactory. The judge replied that they had indeed and thanked Mr. Harding. We were then taken into the office of the Comptroller, Mr. Filbert, and Judge Gary made this statement to Mr. Filbert: “Mr. Filbert, I want to help Senator Harding to help this young lady.” Then Judge Gary retired.

Our interview with Mr. Filbert was rather a lengthy one and I thought there were infused in it the elements of a battle of wits between the two men. Mr. Filbert seemed to resent Mr. Harding’s assurance that “Miss Britton can write all of your letters for you!” But, as usual, when we left it was Mr. Filbert who had been won over and I was asked to await a letter from him telling in which branch of service in the Steel Corporation I would be placed.

Going down in the elevator, Mr. Harding whispered to me, “_Now_, do you believe that I love you?”

We took a taxi back to the Manhattan Hotel. We stopped at the 43rd Street entrance. The taxi had not drawn close enough to the curb and there was a space of perhaps ten inches between the running-board and the sidewalk. Mr. Harding caught his foot and tripped, falling in a very awkward position. His face became red and he arose the most embarrassed man imaginable. I remember how it immediately reminded me of a story mother used to tell about my doctor-father, accompanied also by a young lady, when he was making calls in his shiny “buggy”, being suddenly seized with cramps which bore him to the ground when he alighted in front of the patient’s house; he had been obliged to remain in a squatting position for several moments. Mr. Harding’s blush of confusion after his fall remained a good many minutes and was explained by him, “You see, dearie, I’m so crazy about you that I don’t know where I’m stepping!”

The bridal chamber at the Manhattan seemed almost to be our home when we returned to it for the second time, and the manner in which we threw off our wraps and settled ourselves together comfortably in the big arm-chair the most natural thing in the world. And the fact that Mr. Harding told me dozens of times the thing I had always longed to hear from him, “I love you, dearie,” seemed no less the perfectly natural and normal thing. “We were made for each other, Nan,” he said.

Especially did it all seem so right when Mr. Harding repeated to me many times, “I’d like to make _you_ my bride, Nan darling.”

Mr. Harding came over once more before I left for Chicago on my vacation trip, for which my Chicago friends had sent me my railroad ticket. It was upon this occasion that he took me to his room in the Manhattan and talked over with me my prospective position in the United States Steel Corporation. He expressed his desire to have me dignified in the eyes of the officials there who would hear of me through Mr. Filbert, and about fifteen or twenty minutes before it was time for him to catch his train, he sat down at the desk and wrote out in longhand a letter which he said would be suitable for me to send to Mr. Filbert when that gentleman should send me a note to report for further interview at the Steel Corporation. Mr. Harding seemed very sure that I would be the recipient of such a letter and I watched over his shoulder while he wrote a hasty draft of “my reply.” It was the first time I had seen him slam his Oxford glasses upon his classic nose and I marvelled aloud at this feat.

I have always been quite averse to deception such as claiming authorship for something written by another, and I could not sincerely enthuse over the letter Mr. Harding had tried to couch in terms such as I might employ. However, I accepted it with thanks and he needed only to glance at his watch to see that he had barely time to catch his train. He kissed me and rushed away.

In due time I received the letter from Mr. Filbert, in which he asked me to see Miss Blanche Sawyer, in the legal department, who would tell me about my position in the Corporation. But the letter received from Mr. Filbert seemed not to call for the kind of reply Mr. Harding had pencilled and so I wrote one of my own. I sent Mr. Harding a carbon copy, however, which he approved in his next letter to me.

_15_

In early June I left for Chicago to visit my sister Elizabeth before taking up my work with the Steel Corporation in New York, in a stenographic position at $16 per week.

Up to that time I had made no one my confidante--in truth, I was finding it difficult to realize that my hero, Warren G. Harding, loved me, Nan Britton. Naturally I told no one. But my sister, Elizabeth, knowing me as she did, sought a reason for the unusual glow of my cheeks and the happiness written so visibly in my eyes, and when I received my first forty-page love-letter from Mr. Harding, I told Elizabeth the truth. She was unmarried then and living at the Colonial Hotel where I visited her, but she was in love herself with the man she finally married, and, having known so well my childhood adoration for Mr. Harding, sympathized with me though she did not encourage me to continue my friendship with him.

My finances were rather low at that time, I disliked to ask my Chicago benefactors for more money, so I wrote to Mr. Harding about it, as he had instructed me to do. The first money he sent me was in the form of a money order--it seems to me on the American Express Company--for $42, which amount, he told me by letter, was odd enough to make it appear that it was in payment of some possible work I had done for him. Elizabeth went with me when I had it cashed.

A week or so after that I received a letter from Mr. Harding saying he had been asked to speak in Indianapolis, and inviting me to come there to meet him. So I packed my suitcase and the following day Mr. Harding met me at the station in Indianapolis. I was, curiously enough, quite free from nervousness as I walked through the iron gate where he stood waiting, and wondered why _he_ seemed so nervous. His hand shook terribly as he took mine after we were in the taxi. Even his voice shook. For me it was a great moment. I was so happy to be with him.

We went immediately to the Claypool Hotel where he registered me as his niece, Miss Harding. During my stay there (we left late that afternoon), I had several phone calls from newspaper men and Republicans who were endeavoring to get hold of Senator Harding. A great deal of the time he was in my room with me and instructed me to tell them to try him at the Republican Club. It was such fun to have him cut them all for me!

There were no climactic intimacies in Indianapolis. When I came to unpack my things I found a note pinned to my nightie on which Elizabeth had written these words, “I trust you, Nan dear.” Elizabeth knew I loved Mr. Harding very dearly.

Mr. Harding had to leave me after luncheon--which, I believe, we had together, though I do not remember for sure--and I wandered about until the hour set for me to meet him with my bag at the interurban station. I bought a postcard of the Claypool Hotel to keep as a souvenir. I remember the clerk at the desk had occasion to say something to me and it sounded so good to be addressed as “Miss Harding.”

Late that afternoon we took the interurban car to Connersville, Indiana. Mr. Harding was scheduled to speak that evening at Rushville, Indiana, which is near Connersville. That trip on the interurban train was wonderful to me. I wore a black satin dress which my sister Elizabeth had “made over” from one of her own for me. I explained to Mr. Harding that I had a “better one” in my suitcase. “This one suits me, Nan!” he said gaily.

He spent quite some time explaining to me the layout of the City of Washington. He seemed to take much pride in Washington, and I thought to myself that he just looked as though he belonged there rather than in the small city of Marion, Ohio, our home town; he looked eminently the part of a United States Senator. Yet, as I write this, I remember I used to find myself cherishing the nice things he said about our home town.

“What would your sister, Daisy Harding, say if she could see us together?” I exclaimed to him.

He laughed whimsically, evidently thinking rather of his wife.

“What would _Florence_ Harding say, I want to know!” he answered.

At Mr. Harding’s suggestion I registered in Connersville at the McFarlan Hotel, where he also stopped, as “Miss E. N. Christian,” or “Elizabeth N. Christian.” Christian was Mr. Harding’s secretary’s name--George B. Christian--and Mr. Harding said he thought it would be “a good joke” to use his secretary’s name. My father and mother must have known the Christians in Marion, and when in high school I knew the older gentleman, George Christian’s father, “Colonel” as he was called, because he used to take us girls to the drug store and buy us sodas.

Mr. Harding intended to take me to Rushville that evening, but when he knocked on my door I was in the bathroom down the hall, and as his car was waiting for him he could not wait for me. So I was left to roam around the little village and wait for his return. There, too, I bought a postcard picture of the McFarlan Hotel “for remembrance.”

He returned about ten-thirty or eleven. I was sitting in the lobby of the hotel, one of the typical lobbies of a small town hotel, with the chairs lined up before the front window. As he came in he ignored me altogether and I smiled to myself. We had planned to take the midnight train into Chicago, and he had told me that afternoon on the interurban that we would get a berth together if I agreed. But it had really been left undecided.

A taxi was announced about eleven-forty-five and I picked up my bag and went out. Mr. Harding was at my side in a moment. The several politicians who escorted Mr. Harding to the cab did not know of course that we were known to each other, and ostensibly we were not. He spoke up, “I am catching the midnight train into Chicago. Is that your train, young lady?” I replied that it was and he said, “Well, I guess we can both ride down in the same taxi.” Inasmuch as I doubt whether Connersville boasted more than one, it was a wise suggestion! I was afraid the taxi man would surely hear Mr. Harding’s whispered remarks to me on the way down, especially when he said over and over again, “Dearie, ’r y’ going t’ sleep with me? Look at me, Nan: goin’ to sleep with me, dearie?” How I _loved_ to hear him say “dearie”!

We secured a section to Chicago. The remembrance of that trip from Connersville to Chicago is very beautiful although it, too, was free from complete embraces. We were both dressed the next morning before we reached the Englewood Station, about nine minutes from the downtown station, and I remarked to Mr. Harding that he looked a bit tired.

“God, sweetheart! what do you expect? I’m a man, you know.”

In Chicago, we went to a downtown hotel. Here Mr. Harding registered us as man and wife, although I stood apart and do not know the name he used. However, if I were to see that register as well as all of the others wherein we were registered, I am sure I could identify his writing, for he did not disguise it well no matter how hard he tried.

I noticed he was conversing with the clerk and when he joined me he said, in a low voice, on the way to the elevator, “The clerk said if I could prove that you were my wife he would give us the room for nothing!” I asked him laughingly what he had replied to that and he said, “I told him I was not in the habit of proving my wife’s identity and that I had no objection at all to paying for accommodations!” Nevertheless, we were very circumspect while there that morning and our love-making was, as it had been up until then, restricted. We had breakfast served in our room. I remember that it was the first time that season I had had strawberries.

Mr. Harding took the noon train back--I think going direct to Washington.

_16_

During the remainder of my visit with my sister Elizabeth at the Colonial Hotel in Chicago, I analysed my feelings as best I could. What a maze of emotions! I knew I loved Warren Harding more than anything in all the world. However, up to this time I had kept my virginity, despite his very moving appeals to become his completely. Mr. Harding had explained to me that were we to be found on the train coming from Connersville to Chicago, sleeping together in one section, we would invite as severe censure as though we had shared love’s sweetest intimacy; and the trip itself would be sufficient to incriminate us.

But in my own eyes, I was safe so long as my virginity was sustained. It seems to me unbelievable now when I think back on my ignorance about certain things. I had early reached this conclusion: people got married and undressed and slept together; therefore, one must be undressed in order for any harm to come to them. I remember that this belief was so strong in my mind that when, during our ride together from Connersville to Chicago, I experienced sweet thrills from just having Mr. Harding’s hands upon the outside of my nightdress, I became panic-stricken. I inquired tearfully whether he really thought I would have a child right away. Of course this absurdity amused him greatly, but the fact that I was so ignorant seemed to add to his cherishment of me for some reason. And I loved him so dearly.

I had never had, as most girls do have I suppose, a single talk with or from my mother on sex. As a matter of fact, I did not know how babies came into the world, and I frankly told Mr. Harding so. I remember once during one of our “kissing tours”, as he jocularly called them, I asked him what under the sun people were given navels for! I shall never forget how it amused, and then saddened him, nor his face as he told me that that was where I had been attached to my mother. It was all so wonderful and beautiful when he told me. It was he who told me of course what my body functions would be if I were to yield myself to him. He said, “You ask _me_ whatever you want to know; I’ll tell you.”

In my father’s medical library were many books on women and women’s diseases. My sister Elizabeth and I had girl friends who were enormously interested in coming up to my father’s office and poring over these books in his absence, studying with inconceivable interest the lurid pictures portraying various intimate parts of woman’s anatomy, all of course highly colored, but it was to me no less than repulsive to even glance at those medical pictures. I never spent one solitary second looking at them. When I came to the age when all girls experience that normal function which makes of them potential mothers, I was most painfully embarrassed and told my sister Elizabeth, who in turn communicated it to my mother, and even she dwelt very briefly upon it, merely cautioning me not to get my feet unnecessarily wet when I was ill each month.

I told Mr. Harding that I was aware that there was a lovely mystery connected with life itself, but I had early decided that it was a mystery for one’s husband to reveal, and I had been perfectly content not to pry into it. I accepted my puberty as a necessity, even as a sacred necessity to a cause which should later reveal itself. Mr. Harding confessed to me that he had never possessed a woman who had hitherto been possessed of no man, and perhaps that fact concerning me made me the more desirable to him, in addition to his love for me. He told me about his early amours, and he confessed that it had been many years since his home situation had been satisfying.

Mr. Harding told me that he knew of _no_ man except his brother “Deac” who married, having had no previous experience with women. “Brother Deac” was a male virgin, he said, before he married.

The fact that at home we girls were held down, even to not being allowed to attend parties where boys were until we were quite seventeen--at least that applied to me--indicates the measures that my mother and father had taken to guard us. “And no young man is going to visit my girls after ten o’clock at night,” my father used to say. If we expressed sentiments concerning boys--and my sister Elizabeth was early a “man hater” so this refers to me mainly--we were told that they were joshing us, “making fun of us.” So the outlets for my inclinations in this direction were confined to raving about Mr. Harding, and about moving picture actors to whom there was not quite so much parental objection inasmuch as they were only on the screen and in the flesh safely distanced from me.

Of course there was the perfectly logical plea from Mr. Harding that if I loved him so deeply I would consent to belong to him, not merely to be with him, trying him by continued denial. I think I made up to Warren Harding everything I ever denied him--and I was afterward so glad I had not plunged headlong into a relationship which was of such vastness and which I can now look back upon with absolutely no regrets. In the history of lovers, there was, I am sure, none to compare with Warren Gamaliel Harding. And to him I was, or so he has often said, “the sweetheart incomparable.”

_17_

Through my sister I had met, while in Chicago, a young man, whom I shall call Dean Renwick, who was a pianist of considerable talent, and a rather nice-looking boy. He seemed to like me and “after a fashion” asked me to marry him--perhaps he wanted merely to “be engaged” to me. I have often thought since that the poor boy was just lonesome, for I don’t see how I could have appealed to him particularly; our interests were not the same. In any event, I rather seized the idea of annexing a beau--one who was free to marry me if I wanted and he wanted. You see, I tried hard to convince myself that it was wrong to love Mr. Harding as I loved him, that it would mean ultimate surrender, and perhaps sorrow for us and for our families.

My sister Elizabeth was amazed at the letters I would receive from Mr. Harding when I shared their contents with her. I remember among the first of them that came to me while I was in Chicago that month, was one which particularly took me off my feet. It contained in sweet phrasing a picture of his desire for me, summed up in the final parenthetical exclamation, “God! what an anticipation!” He used to tell me that just to visualize me as he loved to see me brought pangs that seemed virginal in their intensity and surpassed any longing he had ever experienced in his life.

I returned to New York the latter part of June, not having committed myself to Dean Renwick beyond verbal gratitude for his regard and an attempt at a show of affection for him which fell flat in my heart.

The first of July, 1917, I went to work in the United States Steel Corporation. I was interviewed by Miss Blanche Sawyer in the legal department. She informed me that although I had had a splendid introduction I would of course have to prove my worth. She took me in and introduced me to Mr. C. L. Close, Manager of the Bureau of Safety, Sanitation and Welfare, in whose office I was employed for the two years that followed. Mr. Close came from Shelby, Ohio, and his wife, formerly Edna Kennedy, had been a Marion girl. Mr. Close knew George Christian pretty well, having known Mr. Christian’s wife who also came from Shelby, Ohio. This was, in a way, a sort of social grounding for me, as George Christian’s boss, Senator Harding, had been instrumental in placing me with his secretary’s friend in the United States Steel Corporation.

I left the Carter home in Sutton Place, preferring for obvious reasons to live by myself, or rather with a strange family where my movements would not be restricted. The first room I rented was with Mr. and Mrs. Daniels who lived at 607 West 136th Street. I had heard of Mrs. Daniels through Helen Anderson who in turn had met her at the Y. M. C. A. where she had filed her notice of “rooms to rent.” I lived there from July to November, 1917.

Of course I was proud of my friendship with Mr. Harding, and, inasmuch as up to this time it had been free from deepest intimacies, I felt freer to discuss him, although as a matter of fact I had always talked about him so much at home and elsewhere that it was much a matter of course.