The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 119

by Nanna Popham Britton

119

I wanted to be perfectly fair to my husband, the captain, but I wanted more than anything else in the world to be fair to my precious Elizabeth Ann. Therefore, I struggled through the winter until the latter part of January, going in debt in many directions and often using available cash to buy things for Elizabeth Ann, when pressing bills awaited payment. For instance, I could not bear not to get my darling a tricycle when she expressed an ardent wish for one, nor could I stand it to see her go without a bounteous Christmas. My sister Elizabeth sent her many lovely

Facsimile analytical report on Elizabeth Ann at the age of five, while attending the kindergarten of the Training School of the University of Ohio, Athens, Ohio

things and I thought, with mingled pride and relief, that she had fared, after all, far better than most children. I felt a great wave of pity and sympathy for the captain when he came home at New Year's from another trip abroad, and brought the baby a box of toys; ungracious as I was growing toward him, such thoughtfulness toward my baby never failed to arouse my sympathy and a renewed attempt to bear up a little longer.

However, I despatched a letter to Elizabeth the latter part of January and she came East almost immediately. I persuaded my landlady to allow me to break my lease. I advised my family that I was leaving the captain. Mother came in from Long Island where she was teaching, and she, Elizabeth and I, talked things over. Elizabeth said her husband did not approve of sending Elizabeth Ann back and forth from Chicago to New York whenever I found it within my power to take her for a little while, nor could I really blame him for this attitude. However, that had been my first attempt to take her permanently, and I fervently hoped that the next time would be more successful. It broke my heart to see her go, but once more I bade her goodbye from the Pennsylvania platform and watched the train pull out, taking her away from me.

After all, Captain Neilsen was not, in spite of his seeming misrepresentations, such a "bad fellow," for he had simply loved me so much that he had thrown a veil over realities and had refused to accept true facts, preferring to pour all of his hopes into the scale of optimism, fancying perhaps he could in some miraculous manner clap his hands, and fortune, hitherto so elusive, would appear. So I didn't really want to hurt him, but I wanted to rid myself of him now and start anew, never again to jump into matrimony with closed eyes. I had learned a very dear lesson. I was sure he had learned one also. And I had no wish to incur his enmity.

I moved into a hotel in West 55th Street the first part of February. I was working at The Town Hall Club, as you will remember, and the Club is on West 43rd Street, so my hotel was conveniently within walking distance of my place of business. My work at the Club was quite absorbing, especially because the executive secretary, whose assistant I was, was occasionally ill, which threw her work upon my shoulders in addition to my own routine work. I had been far from well myself all winter, and it was only by observing early-to-bed hours that I was able to carry on. I liked the atmosphere of the Club and came in contact with interesting people, and, for the period which I planned to go through in my immediate endeavor to seek a divorce, it was conventionally a good place for me to be employed.