The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 55
It was the following day or the day after that I went out to see Miss Daisy Harding. She had as a guest in their home her sister's daughter, the daughter of Mrs. Charity Remsberg of California, the sister to whom Mr. Harding had told me he would not hesitate to confide our secret. Miss Harding's niece looks remarkably like her Aunt Daisy. It was during one of my visits with Miss Harding, perhaps while I was visiting with her during her lunch hour at high school where of course she was still teaching, that I told her I had a picture of Mr. Harding which I wanted him to autograph. I thought it better to ask him to autograph it with Miss Harding present. She immediately said she was sure he would do it for me and suggested that we walk over to the headquarters and see him after her school hours, some evening.
The headquarters, Mr. Harding's office, was in the residence next door to his own home on Mt. Vernon Avenue, the former home of the Christians, George B. Christian being his private secretary. If Tim Slade ever exhibited a look of surprise over anything that he had witnessed up until then, or that he has known since, certainly it has never surpassed the look of surprise that registered upon his face when he beheld Nan Britton approaching the Harding Headquarters with Daisy Harding. He stood stock-still for a moment. Of course I did not appear to know him. We learned upon inquiry that Mr. Harding was with Mr. Will Hays, who had managed his campaign. "Let's walk around outside and peek in the window," suggested Miss Harding. This we did, leaving the picture with someone in charge who said they would see that Mr. Harding autographed it for me in due time. Through the window we could see Mr. Harding at his desk in earnest conversation with Mr. Hays whose back was toward us. How we attracted the President-elect's attention I do not remember, but Mr. Hays turned and looked out and smiled and Mr. Harding immediately came out the side door. We shook hands formally, and I thought Mr. Harding looked slightly annoyed; perhaps he was. Anyway I asked him if he would mind autographing the picture for me. It was a photograph he had found in his desk in the Senate office (so he told me in New York in 1917) and had said to himself when he found it, "I'm going to give this picture to Nan," and Miss Harding and her family had agreed it was the best likeness they had ever seen when I showed it to them before taking it over for his autograph. "Where did you get that picture. Nan?" inquired Miss Harding, "I have never seen one like it." I think I told her I had gotten it at the Republican Headquarters in Chicago. It is possibly one of perhaps a very few copies in existence. I have never seen one except my own.
After talking with us a few moments, Mr. Harding walked back into the office and Miss Harding and I went downtown. Frank, the chauffeur the Hardings had for so many years, was just ready to go down in the President-elect's official car and he drove us.
A few days later I obtained from the headquarters my own special photograph of Mr. Harding, duly autographed in the handwriting which was so familiar to me. I remember Miss Harding inspected it closely and said, "Yes, that's his writing all right," indicating that he had not given it to a possible copyist to do for him. Could she have known of the thousands of words her brother had written to me! On the bottom of the photograph he had inscribed, "To Miss Nan Britton, with the good wishes of a Marion neighbor and friend, Sincerely, Warren G. Harding."
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