Part 5

The Daniels were wise enough to appreciate that their roomer was rather more than “in” with a United States Senator. Moreover, mention was made from time to time in the papers of senate activities in which Mr. Harding took a prominent part, and on August 12, 1917, _The New York Times_ carried in its magazine section a front-page article entitled, “Need of Dictator Urged by Harding.” I wondered at the time whether the publication of this article had been arranged for in a series of telephone calls made to the _Times_, the _Sun_ and newspaper friends of Mr. Harding upon the occasion of one of his visits here when I was with him. The Daniels immediately said that I ought to try to persuade the senator to dine at their home. It would, obviously, have been a feather in their joint social headgear! As a matter of fact, he did not do so, though I had his assurance that he would if it would please _me_.

_18_

It was mid-July when Mr. Harding came over from Washington. We went to a moderate-priced hotel on Seventh Avenue. He told me that that hotel had once been a very nice place, and he knew George and Dan Frank (dry-goods merchants from Marion) used to stop there when in New York.

We were not questioned when he registered, and we were made very comfortable in a room on the sixth floor, if I remember rightly, looking down upon Broadway. Although I was deliriously happy to lie in close embrace with my darling, I just could not even yet permit the intimacies which would mean severance forever from a moral code which, while never identified to me by my parents as the one virtue to hold intact, was intuitively guarded by me as such. Mr. Harding has many times said to me that if people were to know that we had been together intimately without indulging in closest embrace they would not credit the story. In fact, he said to me with something like chagrin that the _men_ would say, “there certainly must have been something wrong with Harding!” But somehow it is characteristic of me to be sure of myself, and when once committed to a cause there is seldom a turning-back. And, as much as I loved Mr. Harding, the traditional frailty men are wont to attribute to women as the weaker sex did not dominate me. This sureness on my part accounted later on for the total lack of “recriminations,” a word Mr. Harding very frequently employed. “Remember, dearie, no recriminations!” he used to say.

On July 30th, 1917, Mr. Harding came again to New York. He decided we could safely go to a hotel where friends of his in Washington had intimated to him that they had stopped under similar unconventional circumstances with no unpleasant consequences.

This was on Broadway in the thirties. I remember so well I wore a pink linen dress which was rather short and enhanced the little-girl look which was often my despair. I waited in the waiting-room while Mr. Harding registered. I have been in that hotel once since that time and I have noted that they have changed the first floor entirely. I think Mr. Harding said he registered under the name of “Hardwick” or maybe “Warwick.” There were no words going up in the elevator.

The day was exceedingly warm and we were glad to see that the room which had been assigned to us had two large windows. The boy threw them open for us and left. The room faced Broadway, but we were high enough not to be bothered by street noises. We were quite alone.

I became Mr. Harding’s bride--as he called me--on that day.

The telephone startled us. Mr. Harding jumped up to answer it. He said, “You’ve got the wrong party.” Almost simultaneously, however, there was a rap at the door. Then it was unlocked from without and two men came in. I could hear them speaking to each other before they entered. One man asked my name. I whispered to Mr. Harding, “What shall I say to them?” curiously enough not feeling much fear in the distress of the situation. I never could explain this to myself except that I loved Warren Harding so much that if he were with me it didn’t matter what happened. “Tell them the truth!” he said. “They’ve got us!” He seemed so pitifully distressed. So I told the man my name, where I lived, where I worked, in answer to queries put to me gruffly. All this information he wrote down on a pad. Mr. Harding sat disconsolately on the edge of the bed, pleading for them to allow me to go. He seemed to base his plea on the argument that we had not disturbed any of their guests, and for this reason we should be allowed to depart in peace. “I’ll answer for both, won’t I?” he entreated them. “Let this poor little girl go!” They told him he should have thought of that before, and other things I thought were very unkind considering he had not bound and dragged me there; I had come of my own free will. I remember he told them I was twenty-two years old, and I, not realizing that he wanted to make me as old as he safely could, interrupted him and stated truthfully that I was only twenty.

To almost every argument he advanced in my behalf they answered, “You’ll have to tell that to the judge.” They intimated that they were sending for a police-patrol. I did become frightened then. About that time one of the men picked up Mr. Harding’s hat. Inside was his name, “W. G. Harding,” in gold lettering, and upon seeing that name they became calm immediately. Not only calm but strangely respectful, withdrawing very soon. We completed our dressing.

We packed our things immediately and the men conducted us to the side entrance. On the way out Mr. Harding handed one of them a $20 bill. When we were in the taxi, he remarked explosively, “Gee, Nan, I thought I wouldn’t get out of that under $1000!”

We went to Churchill’s for dinner and he returned to Washington on the midnight train.

Some time later, upon the occasion of one of his visits, Mr. Harding told me that he had found out something he had not then known: namely, that a member of the House of Representatives or of the United States Senate cannot be detained for any reason whatsoever when he is enroute to Washington to serve the people. At the time of our almost tragic adventure Mr. Harding had been “enroute,” for he had stopped to be with me in New York on his way back to Washington from some city where he had delivered an address.

Shortly after that, a week or ten days probably, he came over again. We took a taxi ride. Mr. Harding asked the taxi man where we could find a nice, quiet place where we could feel assured of not being disturbed. I shall never forget how much fun we had over this drive. The taxi driver nodded and turned the car into Riverside Drive. On and on we sped, and we both wondered where under the sun the place was to which he was driving us. When we reached Riverside Drive and One Hundred and something (this was before the Drive was cut through to Dyckman Street), the driver stopped the car beside a lonely wood, jumped out and disappeared into the wood. I shall never forget how funny it seemed to us. “Well,” laughed Mr. Harding, “he is an accommodating driver anyway!” In about ten or fifteen minutes the driver returned. “Say, George,” Mr. Harding said, “we want a _hotel_.” “Yes, sir,” the driver replied, without glancing around, and with every indication that he understood all along but was just carrying out a little program of his own. Back down the Drive we went and into 60th Street. He stopped in front of a hotel of his own selection, hopped out and went in and almost immediately returned. “This is all right, sir,” he said.

It was a rather shabby place but we felt fairly safe. However, in hotels of that character there was always the fear of being raided. We never had any trouble, however, and we went there several times, probably six or seven in all.

_19_

On August 11th, 1917, I received from Mr. Harding my first gift. It was a wrist-watch--a birthday present, given in advance of my twenty-first birthday because I was so in need of a time piece. With it, or rather in the same mail, came a letter from Mr. Harding. The Daniels had been informed that “Dean Renwick,” the young man I had met in Chicago and with whom I was still carrying on a desultory correspondence, had been sent to Washington on war-work (though he had not), and I named him as the donor of the wrist-watch. However, they always accused me of having received it from Mr. Harding, I suppose because the letter accompanying its receipt was obviously from him, bearing the United States Senate return. Mrs. Daniels always inspected the mail carefully.

The letter I received was written merely for me to show because I had told Mr. Harding that I wished he would write something I could show to Mr. Close. He therefore wrote this, and sometime later another, which formal letters, in view of the many love-letters I was receiving, were jokes to us.

The above-mentioned letter stated that he had seen Mr. Filbert of the United States Steel Corporation when the latter was in Washington, and had been told by him that I was doing nicely in the Welfare Department and “promised to become a most valuable addition to their force.” Mr. Harding also wrote, “I hope you like the place as much as he reports liking you, and ... find it a desirable avenue to an agreeable career.... _Making good_ counts with them.” Then he assured me of his very best wishes for my success and, which made me smile affectionately, “the happiness which goes with it.” He knew that our love for each other provided the abundance of that happiness.

I received a good many letters from Mr. Harding at the Steel Corporation. He usually sent them in plain envelopes. He used blue envelopes very frequently; these were of very tough fibre but not weighty. His letters varied in length from one to sixty pages. He wrote me a great deal, he said, sitting within hearing distance of the Senate proceedings. And I received a special delivery letter almost every Sunday morning, for which my landlady usually signed. What glorious awakenings those Sunday morning letters used to bring!

In the fall--in November of 1917--I moved next door to 611 West 136th Street, and from then until the spring of 1919 I lived with Mr. and Mrs. P. J. Johnson, as I shall call them. I am sure Mrs. Johnson often wondered who my “man of mystery” was. The one and only picture on my dresser was the photograph of Mr. Harding which he had sent me while I was still living with the Carters. Naturally I stayed out all night with him and I am sure Marie Johnson never believed I was staying with “one of the girls” as I used to tell her.

One evening I walked into my rather exclusive boarding-place, which was at 136th Street and Riverside Drive in a private apartment. About twenty people ate there, among them the former wife of Carlyle Blackwell, the moving-picture actor, and several girl friends of mine. One of the girls called out to me, “Oh, Nan, I saw you at the Grand Central Station this afternoon with a stunning iron-gray haired man. How you were hanging on his arm! What I know about _you_! I knew who he was, all right!” I probably blushed, but there was nothing left for me to do but admit it. Afterward I doubted her statement for I don’t think Mr. Harding was very well-known then in New York. Mr. Harding had been obliged to return to Washington at four that afternoon, which accounted for the fact that I was dining at my boarding-place that evening.

I always loved my room at the Johnson’s. The room I occupied at Daniels’ next door had been one right off the kitchen, the maid’s room really, and the one I secured at Johnson’s was larger, far better furnished, and lighted by electricity instead of gas as the former room had been. The Johnsons were young, very attractive, and heartily in sympathy with my love-affair, though in the two years I lived with them I could not introduce them to my “mysterious sweetheart.”

Next to my bed stood a good-sized table on which I wrote to my beloved. There was a reading lamp with a shade of yellow and green. Above the table hung a large oval mirror. My letter-writing oftentimes extended into the early morning hours and there was something companionable about sitting there with my reflection. Not only was it companionable but it was satisfying to glance more than occasionally into the mirror and smile at the girl who smiled back at me knowing, as I knew, that she was the sweetheart of the man who was to me easily the most desirable man in all the world. I studied the features of this girl in the mirror, studied them interestedly, minutely, to discover for myself just _why_ he had chosen to love her! Sometimes, after I had been talking most intimately to my lover on the small ruled pad before me, I would glance up and catch the soft lights in the eyes of the girl in the mirror which were the tell-tale lights of worshipping love or languishing passion. And with flushed cheeks and fast-beating heart I would bring my letter to a close, exchange exultant smiles with the girl in the mirror, and jump into bed.

_20_

It was during my visit to my mother in New Philadelphia, Ohio, her old home town where she was teaching in 1918, that I, desiring to see my mother settled in a larger city, wrote Mr. Harding for a suitable letter to use as an introduction to the Superintendent of the Cleveland Public Schools. I had talked this whole situation over with Mr. Harding in person, and the letter which I sent him from New Philadelphia was merely to advise him that I was now ready for his proffered letter of introduction in behalf of my mother. Of course I told my mother nothing about the previous talk with him.

Mr. Harding always gave me very explicit instructions, whether it was where to meet him and the hour, or, as in this case, how to proceed in a given situation, and the letter received from him, which I have before me now, clearly indicates this characteristic. With the letter to me he enclosed one to Dr. Frank T. Spaulding, then Superintendent of Public Schools in Cleveland, and one to Mr. Mark Thomson, then President of the Board of Education. The letter to Mr. Thomson has been mislaid or lost but I have retained the one addressed to Dr. Spaulding.

To me, Mr. Harding wrote more than a full-page, single-space, letter. He suggested that I apply in behalf of my mother, going to Cleveland enroute East after my vacation. He wrote that I should “speak frankly” to the Cleveland officials concerning my mother’s age. “... there may be a limitation of age in the beginning of employment of teachers under the Cleveland system,” he explained.

“I am sure you will have the tact and understanding to go into these matters quite fully in Cleveland ... if I had the opportunity of going to Ohio, I should be delighted to make a personal inquiry at Cleveland in your mother’s behalf. I do not think there is a possibility of my going to the home state until some time in July and this matter, of course, must be settled at a very early time....”

Then, in an informal, chatty tone, he wrote, “I was interested to note of your visit to Marion and hope you had an enjoyable visit there. I have not been in the old town myself since early in last February....” What fun to read these things and to know that he had only the week before received from me a letter in fullest detail about my visit to Marion, my time having been divided among his sister’s, Mrs. Sinclair’s and my chums’ homes!

I was quite accustomed to receiving lengthy letters from Mr. Harding where there were instructions to be given me, and I am afraid I paid less heed to his counsel in this case than it warranted. I always felt so confident when I attempted to gain admittance anywhere and was privileged to use his name, because I knew he would “back me up strong,” as he so often assured me. Therefore, fortified with two letters and these addressed to the principal officials in the Cleveland schools, I made ready to take my mother there immediately instead of abiding by his advice to stop there myself enroute East and make preliminary inquiry.

This matter of changing positions was entirely my own idea and not at all instigated by my mother. Mr. Harding had smiled when I explained to him, “If mother were in Cleveland she would be on a direct line from New York. New Philadelphia is so inaccessible when I take my vacations!” Considering that I made all of one or two trips a year to Ohio (!) this argument could hardly have been expected to work substantially in behalf of the desired change, but Mr. Harding always accepted tolerantly even my flimsiest reasoning. Naturally I hastened in this instance to build up my case.

When mother saw how earnestly I had sought to make possible an interview with the Superintendent of Public Schools in Cleveland, she consented reluctantly to accompany me to Cleveland. She read very carefully Mr. Harding’s letter to Dr. Spaulding. Mr. Harding had written all that was necessary, _I_ was sure, to obtain an excellent position for mother, possibly an immediate principalship! I couldn’t quite understand my mother’s persistent skepticism. In fact, she didn’t even seem enthusiastic about making the trip.... “I have known Mrs. Britton for as much as twenty years and know her to be a woman of sterling character and very notable intellectual capacity.... I have known the family for a great many years and have known of Mrs. Britton’s attainments during all of that time.... If you have a vacancy in your schools I am confident you will find her a very desirable member of your teaching staff, who is well able to give quite as satisfactory account of herself as the numerous teachers which Cleveland has taken from my home town of Marion....”

With characteristic assurance I handed this note to the gentleman into whose presence mother and I were ushered with due ceremony. He read it, I thought, with indifferent interest. When he had finished he shrugged his shoulders slightly, lifted his eyebrows, and looked from mother to me. Mother seemed embarrassed. I was not. I showed plainly that _I_ wished to represent my mother in this matter when the gentleman before us inquired frankly why mother had not applied direct. I was not used to this kind of reception! I stated for my mother that _she_ was not particularly interested in changing positions but that _I_ wanted her to teach in the Cleveland schools. And Mr. Harding, as United States Senator from Ohio, was also interested in having her placed there.

The gentleman and my mother exchanged glances. The gentleman’s eyes lighted as though with sudden comprehension. “Um.... I see!...” He turned to me. All at once, as I returned his look, I wilted inside. How well I knew the meaning of that look! It was the inevitable result of my oft-lamented little-girl appearance. I had encountered it too many times. In this instance, as in dozens of others before it, it provoked the tone of voice I deplored--the patient, explanatory, slow tone, the unmistakable talk of an elder to a child....

But, although the letter on which I had banked 100% had failed in its mission, I was entirely unwilling to recognize that the Cleveland age limit had anything whatever to do with it. I immediately fixed in my mind a descriptive noun which was sufficient to me to explain the whole situation. “Democrat!” I whispered to mother with a curl of my lips as we went down in the elevator. Poor mother! How often has she suffered in silence for her children’s whims!

And it was a long time, try as he would, that even Mr. Harding could persuade me that the fact that mother was beyond the age limit of thirty-five years disqualified her immediately for consideration as a beginning teacher in the Cleveland Public Schools.

During the years I was Mr. Harding’s sweetheart, I always, even from the first, helped my mother financially. Mr. Harding used to say, “Let’s take a taxi to such-and-such a place,” but I would say, “Let’s walk,” and he very often accused me affectionately of wanting to save that money so that I could send it to my mother. Of course it would not have been possible for me to send her anything had it not been for his generosity, and he was glad, more than glad, as he told me repeatedly, to make it possible so long as no comment was made or no wonder excited. When I started to work in the United States Steel Corporation my salary was $16, and my room rent $4 per week, and it was obviously impossible for me to do much on the balance. Mr. Harding was always interested, and very sympathetic toward the position in which my mother had suddenly found herself upon father’s death. He has often said to me, “Nan, dearest, you know how much I would like to help you to make it easier for your mother, don’t you?” I surely did. Often also he expressed the feeling that Howard, my younger brother, should be bearing the heavy load of responsibility. “He should be the bread-winner, Nan,” Mr. Harding would say to me. But “Doc,” as we called him, was scarcely more than a child, with far less sense of responsibility toward the family than had Elizabeth and I, both his seniors.

_21_

Mr. Harding’s attitude about my taking on any possible confidantes was a very decided one. From the first he begged me to keep our secret and tell it to no one. It seemed to me that he most of all warned me against my mother’s knowing. It has many times occurred to me that this solicitude on his part came from his keener wisdom about mothers in general as well as, in my particular case, his knowledge of my mother’s conventionality.

It was during our first sweetheart days, although it seems to me it was before my complete surrender to Mr. Harding, that I visited in Marion, and, with the longing to talk with someone I really loved and respected besides my beloved Mr. Harding, I put my case _hypothetically_ to his sister “Daisy.” She recalled that I had done this when I first talked with her about the whole matter in June of 1925, and she also recalled her answer which I had in the meantime, immediately after my visit with her, repeated to her brother Warren. She had said, when I asked her what _she_ would do if _she_ were in love with a man whom she could not marry, but who might want her to belong to him anyway, “Don’t do it, Nan; the world is against you; no matter how much you love each other, _don’t_!” I had repeated this to Mr. Harding. I remember he said, as he has often said about Daisy, “Dais’ is a good girl, Nan, but, dearie, _any_one would tell you _that_! Anyone would advise you against it who didn’t know how much I love you!” This intimation of his loving protection strengthened my decision that ours _was_ an exceptional case.

And he did love me too! With the first forty-page love-letter of which I have spoken and which came to me at the Colonial Hotel in Chicago in June of 1917, came also from Washington a snapshot which I have preserved, though the corners are frayed from much kissing and handling. I wrote him that I had kissed it many many times. He wrote, “Don’t waste any more kisses on a likeness, Nan, when the original yearns for your kisses.” The only thing I did not like about that cherished likeness was that he told me a woman had snapped it!

In this connection an incident occurs to me which he related to me upon one of our earlier visits. He told it to me at dinner, with reference to annoying requests from petty office seekers who employ all kinds of bribery to gain their ends.