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!