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# The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 105

It was Saturday, August the 18th, 1923, when we sailed into the New York harbor. I had little trouble with my baggage, the only thing of any consequence which I had bought being a big doll for Elizabeth Ann for which I had paid $11 in Geneva. I had early christened the doll "Ninon," and Elizabeth Ann treasured it.
I went to the McAlpin Hotel. Along the street I observed with aching heart the many signs of a nation's mourning, and when I went to the window of my room in the hotel the last touch was added; outside hung a huge American flag, at half-mast. The cumulative reaction was too much, and with a sense of mingled anguish in bereavement and relief for my return I flung myself down upon the bed and wept.
I had lived only to get back to Elizabeth Ann, and I could scarcely wait to hold my baby in my arms. My first impulse was to leave immediately for the West. However, I did not know the lay of the land out there, and did not want to take any false steps which would indicate the state of my feelings and lead to exposure of Mr. Harding in any way. It was an absurd thought for me to entertain, to think that after we had been able thus far to keep our love a secret it should come out at this time of all times. But I was so nervous that I suspected everybody of knowing that there was a story, and was as circumspect in my behavior as if I personally had the responsibility of the nation in my keeping.
I immediately wrote to my sister Elizabeth in Chicago to be very careful, and I bought up all the newspapers previous to and following the President's illness. My purpose in buying them was two-fold. First, I wanted to satisfy myself that there had crept out no breath of scandal during his late days in Canada before he started for San Francisco; and, secondly, I wanted these clip​pings for my Harding book which I was keeping for Elizabeth Ann.
Having pored over the papers in my room at the McAlpin, and finding no evidence that Mr. Harding had been subjected to worry on account of our secret love, and still awaiting a letter from Elizabeth, I turned my attention to the finance question. I went to the American Express Office and found $200 which Captain Neilsen had deposited for me, awaiting my demand. Captain Neilsen was mighty nice, I thought, to do this for me, and just as soon as I had received the money I was sure Mr. Harding had left for me, I would repay him. I wondered how Mr. Harding had arranged it. Bless him! It hurt me unspeakably to ponder this question. I was absolutely certain, however, that we had been taken care of, our precious baby and myself, and I put the how of it out of my mind.
I felt I should buy a dress for myself which would be in conformity with my mood. My winter coat, the squirrel coat Mr. Harding had made it possible for me to have, was in storage, and so I decided to buy one of lighter weight, a black one, for early fall wear. I spent one afternoon, therefore, choosing a black dress, black coat, black hat and black gloves.
# The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 109

About the first of December, Scott and Elizabeth decided they ought to return to Chicago, where Scott was better known and could get immediate work. For various reasons it seemed best for me to move away from that rooming-house after my family left, so I took a room at the Endicott Hotel, Columbus Avenue and 81st Street. My room there was on the first sleeping floor and had no daylight, just windows into a court which was less than ten feet wide, but the bed was comfortable, ​and, anyway, I could not afford to pay more than $12 from the salary of $35 which the position I had finally secured paid me.
I put on my bravest front when I bade my baby girl goodbye again, and faced the contemplation of hardships hitherto unknown to me. I felt so pitifully alone, and swallowed hard the great lump that rose in my throat as I tried to smile and blow farewell kisses to her who was my very life.
On the occasion of one of my visits to the White House I had, with the nervous apprehension born of mental unsettlement, spoken to Mr. Harding about the future.
"Why, just think, honey, I am twenty-four years old now!", indicating that the years were piling up alarmingly and I could as yet see no possible way for me to have our baby with me.
"Well, dearie," he had answered me with the gentleness that always aroused my most worshipful love, "if you are twenty-four years old you should be grown up, you know!"
And then he had told me how when he was about that age he went through a nervous breakdown, but here he was now, in the White House, and President of the United States! He was sure I would weather through. And this gentle banter brought a smile back to my face. Therefore now, as then, I must remember how much I had at stake in my precious baby's future and bear up for her sake.
One of my biggest difficulties was to live on $35 a week. It was very hard to suffer denials but I set about with grim determination to adapt myself. I continued to shun my friends to a very great extent. Captain Neilsen returned from another sea trip and came to the hotel to see me. My meagre salary oftentimes would not allow me to have even as much food as I could have eaten, especially toward the end of the week before pay day, and, pridefully concealing my poverty, I accepted Captain Neilsen's invitations to dine with inward thankfulness for his persistent attentiveness.
There was another friend who called upon me frequently, whom I had known since 1917, but he was a man with whom I felt I must keep up appearances far more than with the captain, ​so I did not encourage him to call. I needed many things and I felt less conscious of the lack of these things when I was with the captain. Though the captain always seemed to have a great deal of money with him, and though he spoke carelessly of moneys he controlled, running into many thousands of dollars, still he dressed with a carelessness that often distressed me and brought my frank criticism.
# The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 115

When the latter part of January of 1925 came, I knew I just could not go through the spring as I had done the greater part of the winter, and I wrote Elizabeth, who was at that time with her husband in charge of certain music work at the Ohio University at Athens, Ohio, to come and get ​Elizabeth Ann if she could. It hurt me to do this, for I had taken my child with the full intention of being able to provide a home for her permanently. But I could not longer stand the physical strain of keeping up the apartment, though that strain was not equal to the mental strain of never knowing whether or not the captain could meet the rent and other obligations. The last month we lived there, January, I was obliged to go to a friend for $75 to help me out with the rent, and I did so, taking Elizabeth Ann with me and meeting the friend in the lobby of the Pennsylvania Hotel. I have not been able to pay that back any more than I have yet been able to repay the Italian the $90 borrowed in 1923. And January of 1925 found me owing other debts also—school tuition for my baby, Helen Anderson's loans amounting in the aggregate to over $300, and others.
# The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 117

Here in New York in 1924, when I brought her on from Chicago to be with me, she was five years old. She had the same love for Mr. Harding then as when she was more babyish, but spoke of it now in an amazingly grown-up fashion. For instance, she listened when those present thought she was not listening, and naturally heard Mr. Harding discussed pro and con. But whatever she heard did not influence her deep-rooted love for the man who was her father. She so often said to me during that winter of 1924-25, raising the question herself, "We won't let anybody talk about our dear Mr. Harding, will we, Nan dear?" And I would gaze at her and reiterate softly, "No, indeed, precious Bijiba, we won't let anybody talk about our dear Mr. Harding," knowing she meant "against" him, when she said ​"about." "Bijiba" was her own baby interpretation of "Elizabeth Ann" and has clung to her as a fond nickname ever since.
Then again, she would request that I take down from the mantel the picture of Mr. Harding so that she could kiss it, and she would shake her head and exclaim, "Isn't he just the sweetest man!" And once she repeated what she had of course heard, "Mr. Harding is dead . . . what does 'dead' mean, Nan dear?" And with tears I would tell her that our dear Mr. Harding has just gone away, into another land. And once, curiously twisting her query as though she knew whereof she spoke, she asked, "And won't he ever see me?" And she seemed for all the world to be unconsciously expressing her father's disappointment more than her own. And I thought sadly, as I searched for a suitable reply, no, he will never see his own daughter, not on this earth. It was all so cruel, so cruel!
I simply had to ask Elizabeth and Scott to take Elizabeth Ann back by the time the latter part of January had come around. Even as early as the previous October, when the baby had been with me scarcely more than a month, I had a bitter taste of what real need was. I had exactly seven cents in my purse when I took Elizabeth Ann with me one day to the Provident Loan Society to pawn my wedding ring. I had the captain's watch also which he had given me permission to pawn, and the combined pawnings brought $75. This enabled me to buy my darling little girl a new coat and hat and a couple of school dresses, shoes, etc., in preparation for her kindergarten. Everything seemed to cost so much; but I thought that must be because I was not used to a limited income. I wondered how people who had no more than we had really got along; I know I fervently wished that I had learned the ability that makes a dollar stretch five times its worth.
# The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 122

The Town Hall Club, through its executive offices, issued invitations for two Club dinners, the first they had ever given since the opening of their new club rooms, and the designing of these invitations as well as the supervision of their issuance was left to my execution, under the direction and approval of the Program Committee. This Committee consisted of Miss Rachel Crothers, who was also a Vice-President of the Club at that time, and Mrs. Francis Rogers. I was proud to find that I was capable of assuming many executive responsibilities, and the success of the First Club Dinner on April 27th, 1925, was a source of great satisfaction to me personally. There were seven hundred and fifty people in attendance.
I had, as you will remember, always wanted to "write," and in my position at The Town Hall Club I was constantly meeting men and women who had actually accomplished things in the literary world. I was chafing under physical strain and nightly fatigue ​which were far from conducive to creative writing. But I struggled over what I thought might some day be a play, writing it around my own experiences with my beloved Mr. Harding, disguising it, of course, and making our daughter the central figure. In connection with my work under the approval of the Program Committee of The Town Hall Club, I was obliged one evening to go up to Miss Rachel Crothers' apartment to submit to her the proofs of the First Club Dinner invitations. I adored Miss Crothers, and I longed to say to her, "Oh, I would give the world to put what I know into a play!" As it was I merely said, "I admire your work tremendously, Miss Crothers. It is the work I want some day to be doing." "Have you ever written anything?" she asked me. "No, nothing much," shaking my head. "Well, what you need to do is to have a child, and some experience. Then you can write!" I wondered whether even Rachel Crothers could match out of the fecundity of her imagination a drama equal to mine. And she had written so many successful plays!
# The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 107

I returned to Athens, Ohio. Here Elizabeth, Scott and Elizabeth Ann joined me some days later and soon we were all enroute back East to New York, my younger sister Janet going with us.
I cannot tell anyone how sweet it was to be near my precious baby girl once more. If I had idolized her before, I worshipped her now, for my love was tinged with the spiritual. Elizabeth Ann and I slept together at my mother's for the few days we remained there before leaving for the East, and I fairly devoured her with my hungry eyes. I could see her father in her every glance. Even in the semi-darkness of our bedroom, where the light from the hall made it possible for me to contemplate her features, I saw constantly the face of him whom I would never again see upon this earth. I felt toward her as Mr. Harding used to write that he felt toward me. "I worship you, dearest, and I reverence you," he would say to me, and I remember how that reverence was written all over his face when I, just a month before Elizabeth Ann was born, went to see him in Washington. And now I felt more than ever before that same worshipful reverence for my child, and I poured the love I felt for both my child and her father upon her. For now I had only the memory of him to adore.
# The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 123

When the next Club dinner was held, on May 19th, 1925, a prominent New York attorney introduced himself to me as one of our Club members. In the days that followed we became friends, and, after telling him that I was merely separated from Captain Neilsen and not yet divorced from him, he was kind enough to wish to help me in this respect.
I have been told that each phase of my experience seemed a needful one, and certainly the manner in which my experience has worked itself out appears to have been providentially directed. I had not a cent with which to obtain a divorce. Moreover, the only legal grounds I had for such obtaining were the grounds of misrepresentation, and divorces in New York are obtainable only upon statutory grounds, and I would not impose upon the captain even the suggestion of collusion. Therefore I had decided ​that only by going to Reno would I be able to untangle the matrimonial knot which I had precipitated for my child's sake.
Tim Slade had offered to go to a friend in Washington, who, he said, was a prominent lawyer, and who would advise me how I might best obtain a divorce and the most quickly. Tim said he thought likely it would have to be upon grounds of desertion, and for this purpose I could establish a residence in Virginia across the Potomac, commuting daily to Washington, where, Tim said, he would see to it that I obtained a position as secretary. Furthermore, he said that this lawyer was a particularly good friend of his and that he was sure he would handle my divorce as a favor to him, Tim, and charge no fee whatever.
It seemed to me that fate had helpfully intervened when I met the New York lawyer who became my friend, and, after he had sympathetically extracted from me my real reason for wanting a divorce, and the one contributing factor which had led to compulsory abandonment of cherished plans in behalf of my daughter, he stated that in his opinion I had sufficient grounds for a complete annulment of my marriage, with restitution of my maiden name. This pleased me immensely. He immediately drew up what was in effect a mutual agreement between Captain Neilsen and me bearing no legal significance beyond our own promise to each other to respect each other's rights, as though a state of marriage did not exist, until such time as I could obtain absolute legal severance. We both signed this agreement, which also specified an amount af money which the captain was to pay to me monthly, and which he did in good faith pay until my annulment the following February had been legally consummated. But this amount of money was not even sufficient to cover the rent I had been paying, and so of course would not have kept me had I not supplemented it with my own salary.
# The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 125

My mother, who had been teaching on Long Island, and my brother John, fifteen years of age, went West with me the first of June, 1925. Elizabeth and Scott were teaching music at the Ohio University, and so we proceeded straight to Athens, Ohio.
How my darling little girl had grown even in the four months since I had been obliged to return her to my sister and her husband! How much she looked like her father, and how happy I was to be with her again! How long and straight her legs! How lovely her eyes! And she had lost a tooth. Oh, I told her, I was so happy to see her! "Well, Nan dear, I'm happy to see you, too!" she answered, her head to one side like her father, her lips drawn into the semi-serious smile of a grown-up, as she took one of my hands in both of hers. How dear she was! And what a peach my sister Elizabeth was to take such good care of her! Nor was I unappreciative of the fact that Scott had not been unwilling to take her back even after I had taken her away with the full and ​expressed intention of keeping her permanently. Scott and I never agreed where Elizabeth Ann was concerned, but I conceded much appreciation to him for having been won over to accepting her back uncomplainingly in that instance.
Elizabeth said they were planning to motor back to Chicago and from there to the Willits farm for the summer, and would I not like to motor with them? This I decided to do, and in that way remain a little longer with my precious baby girl before proceeding back to New York. So about the middle of June we left Athens, by motor, for Chicago.
I continued to think about the task to which I had set myself: telling my friend and my sweetheart's sister, Daisy Harding, about Elizabeth Ann. Our route to Chicago took us through Marion, Ohio, and Elizabeth Ann and I shared the same bed at the Harding Hotel where we spent the night. An oil painting of Mr. Harding hangs in the lounging room of the hotel, and Elizabeth Ann spied it immediately and recognized it. "Oh, there is our dear Mr. Harding," she said, pulling my hand, and we both stood in front of the portrait silently. In our bedroom were all the needed evidences to make one know that it had been Mr. Harding who had inspired the building. Even in the bedspreads was woven the likeness of the 29th President of the United States.
That night, or early the next morning, I telephoned Miss Harding, who was, by the way, Mrs. Ralph T. Lewis now, and told her we were passing through Marion to Chicago and I would likely return that way enroute East. I had previously written of my intended trip West and Miss Harding had advised me by letter when it would be most convenient for her to have me at her home. I told her over the phone I was making arrangements to be there at the time she suggested.
We went on to Gary, Indiana, where we were obliged to spend the night because of tire trouble. The following day we were in Chicago. That afternoon, after a short rest, Elizabeth, Scott and the baby went on down to the farm, and I, after visiting with friends for a couple of days, went back to Marion, Ohio.
# The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 127

That evening Mrs. Votaw came over to her sister Daisy's. I had not seen Carrie Votaw for several years, but I observed that she had lost none of her regal beauty, and she, too, had certain facial expressions which reminded me strongly of her brother. Early in our conversation, Mrs. Votaw found occasion to inquire about my Aunt Dell, who, you will remember, had been a missionary to Burma at the same time Mrs. Votaw and her husband, Heber Herbert Votaw, had been engaged in work of the same character, and it was plain to be seen that the old feeling toward my Aunt Dell was still smoldering in the heart of her whose religion, as a Seventh Day Adventist, was not generally concordant with that of my Aunt Dell, who was a Baptist.
Mrs. Votaw said to me that she had felt very bitter when my Aunt Dell had taken occasion to have published in a certain paper an article, written by my aunt, which voiced the hope of her church that Mr. Harding, now the most distinguished member of the Baptist Church, as President of the United States, might see fit to exert his influence in the direction of promoting the very worthy work which the Baptists were carrying on so admirably in Burma. I knew my Aunt Dell's sense of humor, ​and it would have been too much for her to refrain from making capital of a situation such as this, and I could not help being secretly amused. But it saddened me to realize how this given instance of Mrs. Votaw's resentment proved that the work which should be so universally missionary in spirit and never pettily denominational, was, after all, permeated with the spirit of sect jealousy.
# The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 132

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!