I liked the manner in which Mr. Chapple had written about the President-elect (for the book came out during the campaign of 1920) and I had written Mr. Harding that if Mr. Chapple needed a secretary I would consider it a pleasure to work for him. Anyone who was so manifestly strong for my sweetheart appealed to me as the “slickest” kind of a boss imaginable. Mr. Harding was evidently amused at my reason for wanting to work for Mr. Chapple for I remember he said it would “do no harm to write to him and ask.” However, I never did.
Elizabeth Ann took a curiously decided fancy to this Chapple book. She seemed actually much to prefer it above her own picture books, and, on the floor, her chubby little legs spread apart the book in front of her, she would sit for long stretches leafing through the pages and “reading” aloud to me the story improvised in her baby language. She had a habit of telling her stories in the form of questions, answered by herself in a slightly different tone, sometimes ringing in a third party and adapting her voice to this person also. Often, too, her stories would take the form of letters, and I can hear her now in her babyish oratory “reading” aloud to me about her own father. Slightly embarrassed because she knew she was really not following the text, she would look up at me, and with impish delight and with the smile of her father, which made me gasp, she would continue, “My dear Mr. Harding, how are you? I love you, dear Mr. Harding. Mamma Nan loves you too, ver’ ver’ much....” Then she would turn to me and raise her great deep blue eyes and set her lips in the soft line which so imaged the serious sweetness of her father’s expression, and say, “Nan, dear, isn’t he a darling man!” And with that I would crush her to me and smother her with kisses. Nor would I forget to tell her father on my next trip to the White House her latest sayings about him, and he would look at me exactly as she had looked and would say, “She’s rather like her mother in some respects, isn’t she, dearie?” And then he would lapse into audible musings over his extraordinary feeling for little girls, which had come over him since his own daughter’s birth, and with the most pitifully tense, unsmiling sweetness he would say, “How do you think she would like me for her father?” or, “Just think, Nan, how grand it is to be a father!” and I would pat his hand and swallow to keep back my tears for I knew he was but remarking his very heart’s desires.
Often in her two-and-a-half-to-three-year-old days I would call Elizabeth Ann into my room, which was at the far end of the apartment, front, and she would come trudging down the hall, her “Harding book” under one arm, and her other favorite, an abridged edition of Webster’s Dictionary sometimes dragged along by a few of its leaves, which was the easiest way for her small hand to grasp such a grown-up volume. And once, when we snapped her picture in the back yard beside her doll carriage, her Harding book lay in the carriage, open to Mr. Harding’s picture, and the whole “took” very distinctly.
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Here in New York in 1924, when I brought her on from Chicago to be with me, she was five years old. She had the same love for Mr. Harding then as when she was more babyish, but spoke of it now in an amazingly grown-up fashion. For instance, she listened when those present thought she was not listening, and naturally heard Mr. Harding discussed pro and con. But whatever she heard did not influence her deep-rooted love for the man who was her father. She so often said to me during that winter of 1924-25, raising the question herself, “We won’t let anybody talk about our dear Mr. Harding, will we, Nan dear?” And I would gaze at her and reiterate softly, “No, indeed, precious Bijiba, we won’t let anybody talk about our dear Mr. Harding,” knowing she meant “against” him, when she said “about.” “Bijiba” was her own baby interpretation of “Elizabeth Ann” and has clung to her as a fond nickname ever since.
Then again, she would request that I take down from the mantel the picture of Mr. Harding so that she could kiss it, and she would shake her head and exclaim, “Isn’t he just the sweetest man!” And once she repeated what she had of course heard, “Mr. Harding is dead ... what does ‘dead’ mean, Nan dear?” And with tears I would tell her that our dear Mr. Harding has just gone away, into another land. And once, curiously twisting her query as though she knew whereof she spoke, she asked, “And won’t he ever see me?” And she seemed for all the world to be unconsciously expressing her father’s disappointment more than her own. And I thought sadly, as I searched for a suitable reply, no, he will never see his own daughter, not on this earth. It was all so cruel, so cruel!
I simply had to ask Elizabeth and Scott to take Elizabeth Ann back by the time the latter part of January had come around. Even as early as the previous October, when the baby had been with me scarcely more than a month, I had a bitter taste of what real need was. I had exactly seven cents in my purse when I took Elizabeth Ann with me one day to the Provident Loan Society to pawn my wedding ring. I had the captain’s watch also which he had given me permission to pawn, and the combined pawnings brought $75. This enabled me to buy my darling little girl a new coat and hat and a couple of school dresses, shoes, etc., in preparation for her kindergarten. Everything seemed to cost so much; but I thought that must be because I was not used to a limited income. I wondered how people who had no more than we had really got along; I know I fervently wished that I had learned the ability that makes a dollar stretch five times its worth.
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Shortly after I had pawned my wedding ring and had bought Elizabeth Ann some new clothes, I had a letter from Miss Daisy Harding, saying she was to be in New York soon to do some shopping. I surmised that she would soon be married to Ralph Lewis and in truth learned afterward from her that the trip East was for the purpose of purchasing linens, and certain garments to complete her trousseau.
Even the knowledge that my child’s aunt was, according to her own written statement to me months before, liberally cared for as a result of her brother Warren’s will, did not cause me for one moment then to consider as advisable or proper an appeal to her for financial assistance. Moreover, I had launched myself upon matrimonial waters, and, though I knew the craft which carried my child and me appeared to be headed toward the rocks, there was still hope.