On the occasion of one of my visits to the White House I had, with the nervous apprehension born of mental unsettlement, spoken to Mr. Harding about the future.
“Why, just think, honey, I am twenty-four years old now!”, indicating that the years were piling up alarmingly and I could as yet see no possible way for me to have our baby with me.
“Well, dearie,” he had answered me with the gentleness that always aroused my most worshipful love, “if you are twenty-four years old you should be grown up, you know!”
And then he had told me how when he was about that age he went through a nervous breakdown, but here he was now, in the White House, and President of the United States! He was sure I would weather through. And this gentle banter brought a smile back to my face. Therefore now, as then, I must remember how much I had at stake in my precious baby’s future and bear up for her sake.
One of my biggest difficulties was to live on $35 a week. It was very hard to suffer denials but I set about with grim determination to adapt myself. I continued to shun my friends to a very great extent. Captain Neilsen returned from another sea trip and came to the hotel to see me. My meagre salary oftentimes would not allow me to have even as much food as I could have eaten, especially toward the end of the week before pay day, and, pridefully concealing my poverty, I accepted Captain Neilsen’s invitations to dine with inward thankfulness for his persistent attentiveness.
There was another friend who called upon me frequently, whom I had known since 1917, but he was a man with whom I felt I must keep up appearances far more than with the captain, so I did not encourage him to call. I needed many things and I felt less conscious of the lack of these things when I was with the captain. Though the captain always seemed to have a great deal of money with him, and though he spoke carelessly of moneys he controlled, running into many thousands of dollars, still he dressed with a carelessness that often distressed me and brought my frank criticism.
110
In October or November I read with loving interest of the fund which was being gathered together throughout the country to go toward the erection of a memorial to the 29th President of the United States. My secretarial position was not a very exacting one, and I had ample leisure in which to do any outside work I might care to undertake, so it occurred to me that there might be typing in connection with the clerical work the memorial project would entail, and that I might help in this way to raise the fund, inasmuch as I could not myself give any actual money towards it.
Mrs. Warren G. Harding herself seemed, from the newspaper reports, to be actively engaged in the matter, and so I decided to write direct to her and make known my desire. First, however, I wrote to Judge Elbert H. Gary, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the United States Steel Corporation, to whom Mr. Harding had taken me in 1917 when I was given a secretarial position in the Corporation, and who now was prominent in the activities connected with the Harding Memorial Fund. I recalled to his mind that Mr. Harding had once introduced me to him and that he in turn had kindly made it possible for me to obtain a position in his organization, and I told him that it was my desire to be of service to those who had undertaken the initial steps in creating the Harding Memorial Fund. I waited for several days and received no reply to that letter.
Then I directed a note to Mrs. Harding. About a week or so afterwards I received a note from her secretary, Miss Harlan, expressing, for Mrs. Harding, appreciation for my proffered assistance, but regretting that there was really no way in which I could be of service. After several lesser attempts I had to give it up.