The president's daughter

by Nan Britton

Because of an impression I gained from my talk with Miss Harding in June, I judged that she preferred that I withhold from my mother and Elizabeth the knowledge that I had approached her, and, realizing because my mother and Elizabeth Ann would be here next Tuesday, that today was perhaps the most opportune time for me to go, I was prepared to drop everything else in my desire to see and talk with you people. I had had a letter from Mrs. Votaw some time ago, in which she said she had been and was ill, and it occurred to me that very possibly I should talk with Mr. Votaw anyway, inasmuch as Miss Harding’s latest letter indicated that it was he who felt so bitterly resentful about the whole matter. However, I can readily understand how he might be unwilling to give up a visit with his brother, even to sparing an hour and a half or so, and I should not have urged my coming. I was so strongly impelled, because of certain intuitive feelings on my own part, to offer at least to make it possible for you both to question me concerning anything you did not understand and to tell me frankly whether or not you cared to help me to help Elizabeth Ann.

Mind, I am seeking your help only through suggestion. I am too proud, for one thing, and I see no ultimate gain, for another, in accepting help from any source that is not freely and gladly given. I am confident, moreover, that Elizabeth Ann will develop enough of that charitable understanding and magnanimity which so strongly characterized her dear father, that her own high regard and love for him would in no wise be lessened by the mere fact that some of his family could not find it in their hearts to reconcile their love for him with a material manifestation thereof.

I cannot but feel that deep in Mrs. Votaw’s heart she has nothing but charity for the man who, with me, has done a thing which devolves a very, very grave responsibility upon those courageous enough to recognize and assume it. I am sure that in her immediate family there was enough of intimate knowledge concerning the unhappy atmosphere in which her brother lived for so many years (and I speak only those things which have come from him who experienced them), not to begrudge him at least some of the happiness to which all men are rightly entitled. And the expression of my love for him would, in my opinion, have been insincere and incomplete in the extreme had I denied him the little of joy, respite and comfort it was in my power to give, and which, through another’s unfortunate nature and unnecessary selfishness he had never received in full measure at home. I think there is no place in the Bible where such love as ours would go unsanctioned or unblessed, for it was God-given.

However, I cannot and do not expect Mr. Votaw, knowing me as slightly as he does, and loving his brother-in-law as devotedly as I am sure he does, to accept, without a sense of mingled incredulity and resentment, facts he prone would disbelieve and discredit and of which he has had no direct knowledge on which to base any belief at all. Of course, it seems a terrible shock to both of you! And it is but human nature for you to feel more or less justified in mentally refraining from attaching any sense of responsibility where you were not directly consulted or concerned. But in fairness to Elizabeth Ann, I made up my mind that there did exist a moral obligation to a brother’s child and that it was doing the baby an injustice if I did not give her father’s family an opportunity to help her, and in the hope of correcting an attitude of unfairness toward me, and in turn toward Elizabeth Ann, I am writing you.

Living as I have for nearly seven years with this growingly tremendous problem, and realizing, especially since two years ago August, the futility of attempting to solve it by myself to utmost satisfaction, it has transcended anything and everything else in importance in my mind and I have been exhausting every effort to the end that it be solved in the best—and that means the right—way. Very naturally, my feeling about the whole matter is that it is admittedly paramountly and imperatively my own immediate problem and one to be postponed not one minute longer if I would do for Elizabeth Ann what her father wished so earnestly to be done. To go back over the past and regret now his own inability to do the thing he planned—to have her for his own—is futile and does not help a whit. Nor will it do Elizabeth Ann any good for me to simply sit down now and make my life one long lamentation, or indulge in sad retrospection, no matter how deeply I feel or suffer. One thing I remember so well I’ve heard dozens of times from her father was, “Remember, no recriminations, dearie, ever!” And I feel as free today from them as I did when he smiled and shook his finger at me.

There is a thing I must say: I would not for a moment even try to convince Mr. Votaw of something he deliberately wished to discredit. But if you both will but look at the expressions on Elizabeth Ann’s face in these snapshots, there certainly cannot remain the vestige of a doubt in your minds as to whom she belongs. (By the way, will you please keep these safely or send them back—the one with the typewritten word was sent to her father in 1921 and returned to me and I prize all very highly.) Even when a mere baby she was he all over. But it is not my idea to prove what could so irrefutably be proven, but which I would not dream of bothering to prove to anyone in this world. I come of a family which was, if nothing else, at least reasonably truthful—and if that were not enough, I can tell you truly that there existed no man in the world in those glorious days of 1917 who could have so completely possessed me out of marriage. For, after all, my mother is perhaps as conventional as any woman in the world and I was brought up to think just as most people think about conventions.

Furthermore, my mother, on the other hand, feels just as strongly resentful as you, and her feeling is that I was incapable of judging right from wrong when appealed to by a man thirty years my senior and with whom I had been in love since a mere child—and she may feel this way about it all her life, no matter whether I attempt to convince her that I knew exactly what I was doing and did it of my very own free will and accord. So you see you are not alone in your resentment. And, after his death, it was my really innate desire to be conventional which led to the very unfortunate and unhappy marriage I am now trying to put behind me. To be conventional and to have Elizabeth Ann in a conventional way! A hopeless mess I made of it, didn’t I? Which has proven to me that if I would do the right thing for Elizabeth Ann I would not try to cut corners again.

Miss Harding’s letter also contained an allusion to my having been indiscreetly confiding with my affairs. I will admit that I told Captain Neilsen about Elizabeth Ann and about her father—but when one marries there are few things one keeps from one’s husband—and the very fact that Mrs. Votaw confided the story, told her by her sister, to her husband bears me out in this, does it not? Moreover, so far as Mr. G. is concerned, it is assuming more than was ever said by me to feel that he has been my confidant beyond his legal advice and friendly counsel concerning my matrimonial difficulties, and so far as I can see you have jumped pretty far in concluding that I have told Mr. G. about Elizabeth Ann’s father. He does know, however, that I have a child, and he has been more helpful than I can say in endeavoring to make me see my way clear in this affair with the Captain. The enclosed document—which you may or may not have seen—is worded as carefully as could possibly have been done. The word “child” has been omitted, if you will observe, and only the court testimony (which the judge readily consented to have sealed and opened only upon order of the court) contains statements to the effect that my “ward” was a child. Even so, Mr. G.’s questions and my answers were so guarded that no one could take exception to the testimony.

You must understand, I have been practically “brought up” for the past eight years on the necessity for secrecy and I personally feel very sure that my confidings have been to those whom I can trust implicitly with my secret—even to the Captain. Can you ask for greater proof of this than the campaign of 1920? And you should also remember that no one makes a statement concerning a man of such standing as Elizabeth Ann’s father without the surest evidence in hand that he can prove his accusations. And I feel that the time has long passed when anyone would or could derive any gain from divulging a story of this character, even if he had all the evidence in the world.

I did not mean to go so into discussion, because I feel if you are interested in knowing details you will apprise me of that fact and invite me to come to Washington. I can still come—and even would do so on a week day if it better suits your own convenience. However, I did want to tell you these few things and they are as well written as spoken.