The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 135

by Nanna Popham Britton

135

To Mrs. Votaw, under the same date, September 23rd, 1925, I wrote:

"Dear Mrs. Votaw:

Won't you write me in the enclosed envelope whether or not it would be convenient for you to have me run down to see you this week-end? I could make the Friday night train and arrive Saturday morning, or I could come down Saturday morning and arrive in the early afternoon, returning Sunday night.

I'd love to see you.

Most affectionately,

Nan Britton Neilsen"

Under date of September 25, 1925, Mrs. Votaw wrote me a short note in longhand. I took heart when I noted the salutation, "Dearest Nan," but the note itself was not especially heartening. She wrote that she had had a great deal of company. "Am just all in—been going to the Sanitarium for a week taking treatments and fighting to keep on my feet, . . . ." she wrote. The doctor had informed her that she must go to bed and be quiet for a time. After that she was going to Clifton Springs, New York, where her sister Daisy would soon join her. "Am so tired—hope you are feeling well," the note ended.

Not a single intimation that she knew my story! Never a word of sympathy for me, though she must have known from her sister Daisy that I, too, was nervously exhausted beyond words. Never a promise of help, though she must have known the purpose of my desire to see her. It was all so evasive. Yet the tenor of the note, with its implication of a rather sudden breakdown, seemed to my sensitive mind to impute to me responsibility therefore, if it resulted from revelations made by Daisy Harding. Not to be permitted to see her, to talk with her, and give her the many details I had given her sister Daisy, seemed to me unfair treatment. It left me with the feeling a child has when accused of something and sent off to bed with no opportunity of explaining his innocence.