Here in Athens, Ohio, at my mother’s home, I again had my baby with me and we slept together and played together, and I thought I could not stand it to give her back. I wanted her so badly that I didn’t care whether or not I ever returned to New York if I could not take her with me and have her to keep always. I wanted to die rather than to go on as I might have to go on—without my child. Nevertheless, after the most severe misunderstanding I had ever had with my sister Elizabeth, who came on to Athens to get Elizabeth Ann after about a month, I regained control over myself and accompanied her and the baby back to Chicago, where I visited for a week or two longer before proceeding back to New York and to my husband.
I had received instructions from him to go to live with a woman whose husband was the captain of a U. S. liner, on which Captain Neilsen had accepted the position of second officer. I lived with her for a couple of weeks and when the captain returned from a voyage, we went temporarily to a hotel again.
The first of May we moved into a furnished apartment on West 114th Street. I realized, however, that we could not live there and pay the rent of $100 a month, unless I, too, went to work. So at Columbia University I obtained a position in the Appointments Office. I worked there a part of the time, and also took small pieces of dictation from the various professors, sometimes going to their offices and getting the work and doing it at home upon a typewriter which I had rented for the purpose. I never in my life worked so hard as I did that summer of 1924.
The captain wrote Elizabeth and Scott under date of May 16, 1924, and told them that we now wished to take Elizabeth Ann. I had determined that if the captain did not make good his promise to me to provide a home for her and me without my having to go back to work as I was then doing, that I would not under any circumstances permit her to be taken permanently by us, for I would eventually have to leave a man who had so erroneously represented himself to me. But I clung to the hope of fulfillment on his part and tried hard to banish these unpleasant thoughts, so together we devised a letter which the captain signed.
In his letter to Elizabeth and Scott the captain said that we would come that fall to get Elizabeth Ann, after she had returned with them from the farm where they went every summer, and where they expressed a wish to take Elizabeth Ann with them on a farewell visit to Scott’s people.
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About the middle of September I went to Chicago and got the baby. We had committed ourselves to the extent of expressing in our letter our desire to take the baby ourselves, and this was the understanding that Elizabeth and Scott had when I went to Chicago to get her. Scott looked unfavorably on the whole thing, feeling that I should not have given her into their keeping only to take her away. I had never breathed a word to them of Mr. Harding’s promise to me to take her himself as soon as circumstances made it possible, but I knew that in that event I would have had her through him, and was only endeavoring to get her in another way since her father’s way was impossible.
I could not work, now that I had Elizabeth Ann, until I had put her in kindergarten somewhere, and I had no money with which to do that. The captain kept saying, or writing when he was away, that something was bound to “break,” but the first of October came and nothing had “broken.” Our apartment lease ran out October 1st and it was necessary for Elizabeth Ann and me to move. As an officer on the liner, the captain spent quite a bit of his time there, even having to sleep on board certain nights. I found it difficult to find an apartment suitable for three and comparatively cheap, but decided upon a large room which would suffice until I could find more suitable quarters. It was in 109th Street, and, although the sun streamed in at the back court window all afternoon, the place was frightfully dirty and full of vermin. My little girl was bitten at night and I soon knew we could not stay there.
The captain had said he would be in the city two weeks steady before making another sea trip. It had only gradually dawned upon me that these trips he was taking were in themselves the only source of income that the captain had, and up to this time not one of the things he had told me about converting property into money had come true. And I, who had been frank with him to the point of possibly hurting his feelings in admitting I was marrying him so that I might have a home for my child, could not understand these misrepresentations.
I cast about for a suitable apartment and at last found I could get two rooms and bath, very clean and nicely furnished, on 116th Street West, for $110 a month. We were paying $22 a week for the one room we were living in then. The captain went with Elizabeth Ann and me to look at the apartment, approved the price, and signed the lease. But he was able to pay but $50 down. I promised to pay the other $60 when we moved in, and the captain said that he would have that and more besides before I would need it.