The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 174

by Nanna Popham Britton

174

On July 22nd, 1926, I answered Daisy Harding's letter:

"Dearest Miss Harding:

 

It was indeed gratifying to read that you liked the poem. I don't want you ever to forget that it was under your instruction that I developed a love of poetry and literature; and I love you for having made so attractive to me the work I now want to do . . .

You will be sorry to learn that I could not continue my winter regime through the summer, but had to allow E. A. to return with Elizabeth and Scott when they motored out. My landlady requested that I vacate because I could not meet my rent, which I am still endeavoring to liquidate.

For your information, I might say that unless the knowledge has reached them from some other source, Elizabeth and Scott are entirely ignorant of the fact that I have ever talked with you or other members of your family on the subject of E. A., and unless you have a particular reason for wishing to acquaint E. and S. with the situation, I would suggest that it might be well not to tell them; it was, however, Elizabeth's suggestion to me long ago that I tell you, but before doing so I had to persuade myself deliberately that it was what he would want me to do, and I did not advise them when I did so. Moreover, I am, as you know, . . . Elizabeth Ann's legal guardian until she becomes of age, and as such I should be the sole individual to be consulted. This simplification of responsibility is very agreeable to me as a mother.

The paragraph immediately preceding has been a bit difficult for me to phrase, but I know you will understand my spirit in the matter. You will probably be glad to know that E. A. is to be on the farm this summer, because it would have been quite outside the realm of the possible for me personally to afford the country for her—this summer. Elizabeth may be addressed at Keithsburg, Illinois, care of A. L. Willits . . .

Too bad about Alice Guthery; but what is better than separation where there is discord? . . .

The other night I dined with one of the men about whom I spoke to you in March, and he tells me he has apparently lost $50,000, more or less, in Florida—but that he has well-grounded hopes of recovering it. It seems everybody just has to "hang on." I certainly hope that the natural resources and realities of the State, and their natural development in spite of

the temporary setback due to florid speculation, may enable you to realize satisfactorily on all the money you have put in down there.

With love to you ever, and hoping to hear from you as the impulse comes to write, I am,

Affectionately yours,

Nan"

Perhaps the letter I received from Daisy Harding on August 9th in answer to the foregoing might not have aroused in me the rebellious spirit I felt had it not epitomized the pitiful futility of attempting to argue for right for right's sake when a false sense of right satisfies a people enslaved by a superficial conventionality. The social fundamentals were all wrong.

In this letter, Daisy Harding voiced unconsciously the probable negative decision of the whole Harding family toward my situation, as well as the attitude of our whole country toward unwedded mothers and their children.

"I do hope you can make, some day, a name for yourself," she wrote. "Then you will have something to offer her for what you have denied her . . . she must suffer, and suffer deeply and bitterly when she knows all . . ." I stared back at these sentences which seemed to stand out in the letter, taunting me with their cruel injustice. ". . . something to offer her for what you have denied her"! Why, all I had denied my child was the knowledge of her parentage, and the privilege that knowledge carried of openly bestowing upon my child the love only a mother is capable of bestowing. And this latter denial on my part would cease as soon as the Hardings recognized and assumed their just obligation toward their brother's child. She wrote as though I might be a common woman, one whose life did not justify the role of motherhood, a woman who must redeem herself through fame before she could merit the God-given gift of her child!

My daughter "suffer" when she learned that she was the beloved child of a love-union between her mother and the 29th President of the United States! There does not live the person who could convince me of that, and I am willing to undertake the responsibility of rearing my child, even in her extreme youth, with the full knowledge of who she is, for it will not lessen by one jot the love which she bears to me—her mother.

"I am so glad you let E. A. go to her grandmother's . . . if she were my child I'd let stay there for the next two years. I believe he would say the same . . ." Keep her in the country, away from me, for two years! A cruel suggestion! That my sweetheart, who had been willing, yea, eager to do anything in his power to enable me to be with my baby and to have her with me, would concede that his sister's suggestion was the right thing was in my eyes only a pitiful thought to prop an argument which had been born of a frightened mind, and was in truth a mere apology for failure on the part of all the Hardings to act fairly toward Elizabeth Ann.

Miss Harding said my child should have the "quiet, fresh air and childish freedom" the country affords. This was exactly my idea, as it would be the idea of any mother, but I wanted to be with her, and this the Hardings were unwilling to make possible to me. I had therefore been obliged to let her go away from me because I myself was unable to provide those things which I knew were for her good.

Miss Harding's query in this letter as to how the money had been transferred to my sister Elizabeth was entirely superfluous in view of the fact that I had made it very plain to her and to her brother that all monies had been transferred through me, personally, from Mr. Harding to my sister and her husband. As a matter of fact, I had insisted upon this myself as my idea of added protection to Mr. Harding. I had even given his brother, Dr. Harding, the dates of certain cancelled vouchers, for which he asked during our interview. "Was the money sent through some bank in Ohio?" Miss Harding inquired in her letter. This was evidently why she had asked for Elizabeth's address—to make the inquiry direct to her. Even then there was current gossip which touched some of the government officials in high places when Mr. Harding was President. Was her query instigated by those who themselves would not ask me direct, but sought to allay their fears through information I might give to Miss Harding? I had no way of knowing.

Her letter contained another sentence which hurt me but at the same time aroused in me more resentment than I had known during the whole course of my appeal to the Hardings. She wrote, "I heard of a case the other day, where a woman of means thought she could defy the conventions, but she is realizing now what it means to her son . . ." To quote to me an example of what a "woman of means" was realizing through her indulgence in unconventionality was highly grotesque when at that very minute I was staggering under the weight of bills long overdue, even to being unable to send my sister any money toward my child's fall clothes. The utter incongruity of a situation where there existed an amplitude of funds, as was evident with the "woman of means," and my own situation, where I was unable to meet the rent for the apartment which was sheltering the child of Warren G. Harding, is apparent without any comment from me.

Nor had I, up to that time, even attempted to "defy the conventions" openly! In what way could I more meekly have conducted myself, both in the expenditure of nervous energy required to protect the great-hearted man I loved, and, in the later days after his death, in my efforts to carry on alone and practically unaided, that I might not be obliged to go to the Hardings and request to have the situation righted. This would have been justified, even while my daughter's father lived, had mere money been my paramount consideration. Open defiance of conventions could have yielded me no greater suffering than had the growing realization of the hypocrisy which calls itself Justice and marks out its path according to its own narrow-minded limitations.

Daisy Harding, I am sure, did not believe to be true certain things which she wrote—unconscious imputations of past wrong-doing on my part—for she herself had spoken her true feeling when, upon my first revelations to her, she had said, "Why, Nan, I'll bet that was brother Warren's greatest joy!" That was the real Daisy Harding speaking. And this sentiment so early and frankly expressed by her would be the sentiment of all who dare to speak truthfully.

The signature of this letter was merely "Lewis," written in a somewhat different hand and with paler ink. When I came to look at it closely and realized anew how terrified people become who are afraid to face situations and refuse to stand for Right, the bitter resentment I felt because of her insinuations gave place to pity.