The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 148

by Nanna Popham Britton

148

On January 27th, 1926, I wrote Mr. Votaw. I was under a nervous strain which had superimposed other ailments, and was growing apprehensive of what the Votaws might do to take advantage of my situation so frankly and truthfully laid before them. It was all I could do to keep up my work at the Club, and at the end of the first semester at Barnard I had dropped the playwriting course I had started. It was too difficult for me to do my school work at night and my day work at the Club, and besides bear up under the constant worry about finances.

My letter follows:

"My dear Mr. Votaw:

The telephone operator here tells me that a man came in this noon and asked for me. He answered your description, and I am therefore writing to ask if it were you. If so, and you wish to get in touch with me, will you be good enough to call me at Bryant 4246? The gentleman in question for some reason asked if I were in and then contrarily assured the telephone operator that he did not wish to disturb me. As I do not like that sort of thing occurring here at the Club, I thought I could at least let you know where I was in case it had been you who called me.

The address is as above and my home address is 609 West 114th Street. The home telephone number is Cathedral 5770. I think I gave you this information in my letter last fall.

Very truly yours,

Nan Britton Neilsen"

I sent Tim Slade a copy of this letter, relating the circumstances, and telling him how nervous every little thing made me.

After I had mailed this letter to Mr. Votaw, I went home and thought the whole matter over carefully that night in bed, and the following day I wrote Mrs. Votaw a brief note, telling her I felt that if anyone came to New York to talk with me it would more logically be she than Mr. Votaw. I apprised Tim Slade of what I had written, keeping him thus in touch with my own steps.

The following day I received an answer to my letter to Mr. Votaw. It reached me the same day it was dated, January 29th, and was as strictly formal as mine to him had been. Very briefly Mr. Votaw advised me that he had not called for me at The Town Hall Club on the date my letter was written, "nor at any other time." The italicized words were heavily underscored on the typewriter by Mr. Votaw, who, I assumed, had himself typed the letter to me. He went on to say that he had not tried to reach me at my home either, and informed me that he had not been in New York City at all for more than two years.

That was all the letter contained. Never an allusion to the matter which I deemed of as great moment to the Hardings and Votaws as to myself as the mother of their brother's and my child. In fact, the letter from Mr. Votaw to me was merely one of complete negation and indifference.

Simply to read this note from Mr. Votaw made me ill all over and brought on a state of high nervous tension which usually possessed me when I came face to face with some new obstacle in my fight for Elizabeth Ann's rights. I have never, as a matter of fact, solved the puzzle of who the strange man was who called in such a mysterious manner and asked if a "Mrs. Nan Britton Neilsen worked there," and then disclaimed a desire to see her. The telephone operator's description fitted Mr. Votaw, or perhaps George Christian.

The possibility that I might be "shadowed" simply because I possessed a secret which many people would be interested in protecting from public dissemination, filled me with a new fear—a fear hitherto unfelt: that of possible desire to destroy me and thus destroy my secret. I was the only living person who knew the intimate details of our love-story, Warren Harding's and mine. And if such a thing should happen to me, my baby girl would lose her birthright, except as she would be told of it by my sister, who really knew pitifully little of the details. The mere thought of such a happening struck terror to my heart amounting to partial dementia at times when fatigue and despondency clutched at me, and I was becoming weaker and weaker physically as a result of my nightmarish thoughts. I must be strong. I must fight for Elizabeth Ann's sake! I must shake off this state of weakness which was dragging me down and down, and down.