The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 68
In October of that year, 1921, I went again to Washington. I do not remember at which hotel I stopped on each occasion, but on my various visits to Washington I have stopped at the Raleigh, New Ebbitt, Harrington, New Willard, Capitol Park, and, I think, at the Washington.
It seems to me it was upon this visit that Mr. Ferguson, another secret service man, met me at the station with his Ford coupe. I do not remember very distinctly whether it was after or before my conference with the President that Mr. Ferguson asked if I would like to occupy some of my time by driving. I thanked him and he took me for a drive out along the Potomac. He seemed curious about me and endeavored to "draw me out." It gave me the keenest pleasure to pretend to misunderstand his questions and to be naively ignorant of the motive behind them. I am sure he must have despaired of being enlightened as to my identity, even though the President had given him my correct name.
I told Mr. Harding at that time that I felt he was very foolish to allow anyone but Tim Slade to meet me. I voiced my own faith in Tim's trustworthiness and put it up to him direct.
"Don't you trust Tim Slade, sweetheart?" I inquired.
I remember right where Mr. Harding stood, beside his desk, when I asked him this. He shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows as he answered, "Oh, measurably!" He told me he had tried to get Tim on that occasion, but he was either busy or out of the city—probably out of the city, for it always seemed to me Tim was at my beck and call, and I am sure he must have been more so at the President's. But I managed to convince Mr. Harding that every new man he sent to me was just "one more," and he agreed we might better stick to Tim. "I like Slade all right," he conceded when I pressed him for an opinion. In fact, as time went on, I was sure an element of affection in Mr. Harding's attitude toward the man who was our confidential intermediary. In any event, that was the one and only time that Mr. Ferguson met me in Washington, although he did come on one occasion to Chicago with some money when the President was unable to secure Tim Slade's services. Tim himself reminded me of this in one of the many talks we have had during the past two years.
The President listened eagerly to the latest news I had received from my sister Elizabeth concerning our child, and upon these visits to Washington I would invariably take with me pencilled scratches from Elizabeth Ann, these constituting the "letters" she would occasionally send to me. Naturally the enthusiasm with which I began these recitals ended in tears for me, for I could not talk long with her father about her without crying. And Mr. Harding's eyes would grow heavy with sadness as he turned the conversation into other channels and pulled out a ready handkerchief to dry my eyes. He would try so hard to bring a smile to my face!
"What did you say to Woodrow Wilson that made him laugh when he rode with you the day of your inauguration?" I inquired of him upon one such occasion of weeping.
"Why, dearie, I don't know! Did I make him laugh?" he asked, himself deeply amused at my query. I told him he must have done so because it was in the papers. He smiled whimsically, seeming to get quite a kick out of my credulity as to the accuracy of newspaper accounts.
Mr. Harding wanted to know whether I liked my work, and intimated that he either had already spoken to another steel man who was a friend of his or he intended to speak to him—J. Leonard Replogle. I know Mr. Harding played golf with Mr. Replogle and two other men some time that fall on Long Island. But I did not encourage him to use his influence in getting me into another permanent position, for my movements were too uncertain those days.
During that visit I asked Mr. Harding if I might be taken through the rooms in the White House. We discussed the possibility of my running into Mrs. Harding, and Mr. Harding said it was possible, though not probable. It didn't seem to worry him, and I was confident I could handle such a situation, anyway. The only time I had met Mrs. Harding, since the time back in 1915, when I went to their home on Mt. Vernon Avenue in Marion to congratulate Mr. Harding upon his election to the United States Senate, was one day in Chicago shortly after Mr. Harding's nomination for the Presidency. I had a friend with me who was interested to meet Mrs. Harding and we waited in the Florentine Room of the Congress Hotel, where we knew Mrs. Harding intended coming to hold a brief reception. I was entirely at ease with her when she finally made her appearance. And, if I may be permitted to so assume without seeming presumptuous, there was in her manner toward me almost an affection as I took her arm and led her over to where my friend stood who wished to meet her. And so, there in the White House, I felt entirely free from any apprehensions regarding Mrs. Harding's attitude toward me should we meet there.
"Sure, go along, Nan, and see the place!" said Mr. Harding when I was ready to leave, or rather when he told me it was time for me to go. As I look back upon that visit now, it is as though he might have said to me, "Sure, visitors are allowed to go through the prison! Go along!" for as a prison he soon regarded the White House.
That was the first time Mr. Harding had seen my squirrel coat and he remarked that it was very beautiful. "But, Nan, darling, do be careful! How in the world do you explain these expensive-looking things?" I assured him I had not been approached for any explanations and I was sure I could handle the situation if I were. As a matter of fact, later on, when I went to school at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, I did feel obliged to make certain explanations, and I simply named my sister as the
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donor of all things beyond reasonable possibility of my own acquirement.
And so this particular visit ended with Mr. Ferguson, of the secret service, taking me through the White House reception rooms, the private dining-room, and many others which I was told were usually barred from public view. We made our exit by the entrance which is on the left of the portico as one enters the White House.