If I seem impatient in wishing to have this matter settled as quickly as possible, it is not at all because I wish to hurry you in your investigations; because, contrarily, I wish to do everything in my power to assist you; but I am anxious to make plans for the very immediate future and I therefore would be very glad if the investigations were expedited. As I stated to you in Marion, I would very gladly accompany you to the various hotels, here in this city as well as to others in Washington, etc., if I could be of service. Of course, aside from hotel registrations, this thing can be proven and I mean to keep at it until it is. It would be grossly unfair for me to expect the Hardings to go into such investigations without giving them such proof, and from a sufficient number of sources as would scatter any remaining doubts in their minds as to the authenticity of the statements made and the absolute right I have had to approach them. Mr. Harding used to be a great man for doing things on a 50-50 basis and I have from the first wished to be fair with you people—and to receive such treatment in return. I am sure I shall.
I hope you reached home safely—it was very kind of you to come out in such a storm and I was appreciative. Your coming on Wednesday afternoon enabled me to get off that night and back to New York. I have just started to work with the above concern, and, as Mr. Harding once wrote to me about the Steel Corporation, “making good counts with them.”
Most sincerely,
Nan Britton”
“P. S.—I can be reached at the above address, care of Suite 516, and the telephone number is above. I have my annulment now, you know, so am known as Miss Nan Britton. You can also address me at my home, 609 West 114th Street, Apartment 46, and address me the same—Miss Britton.”
I sent Daisy Harding and Tim Slade letters also, telling the latter in brief form what had been accomplished by me in Marion.
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When in Marion on April 1st, during my talk with Miss Harding, I had told her very frankly how in debt I was and that my rent of $130 would fall due again on April 10th. It had been her postal telegraph order for $400 which had enabled me to pay the two previous months’ rent, and at that time I really felt that when the time rolled around for the April rent a sufficient amount would again be forthcoming to cover it. However, Miss Harding had given me only enough when there to cover my return fare, Pullman and meals on the train, and, back in New York on the 2nd of April, I found bills awaiting me on all sides. Moreover, as is often the case when receipts are not asked for, I was being charged $40 in one instance which I did not owe at all, and this distressed me very greatly, and depleted my bank account even more than I had anticipated. But the rent was my chief concern. Not knowing where to turn, I wired Daisy Harding again for something more than that amount; I think I wired her for $150, though I did not retain a copy of that particular telegram.
Miss Harding’s reply to that telegram, a letter sent special delivery under date of April 10th, enclosing money orders in the amounts of $50 and $75 was a clear index to her feelings, feelings obviously developed toward me since my visit with her brother at Daisy Harding’s home less than two weeks before. In her opening sentence she said she was enclosing $125, “which is all I can let you have.... I feel that I have been generous ... especially when I gave you that $400.... I can’t let you have any more, for I, too, have obligations....” Then followed the suggestion that I should find cheaper living quarters by going out to one of the suburbs. “... It would necessitate your rising a little earlier ... but that means very little at this time of the year....” Then came the astounding suggestion that if I could not get a cheaper place to live I might better send Elizabeth Ann to her Grandmother Willits’ farm, where she could have the advantage afforded by the country! As though the mother of Warren Harding’s child should have nothing to say, should acquiescently ship his daughter to people who were not relatives, simply because she would find there a welcome for her! My brother-in-law’s people, though admittedly the kindest people one could imagine, were nevertheless certainly not the people upon whose shoulders the burden of maintaining a home for Warren Harding’s daughter should rest. And after giving some further suggestions, the letter ended with “Hastily, A. V. H. Lewis.” Something told me instinctively that Daisy Harding would no more sign her letters to me, “Lovingly.”
It seemed to me that I had been cruelly dismissed from further loving consideration by her who had once termed herself one “who never fails a friend.” Perhaps I had been removed from her friend category. But if so, it was only since I had talked with her brother in Marion.
Yet I knew this was not the real Daisy Harding. It was another woman, a woman lately influenced, in my opinion, to believe that she had been the victim of an imposition. I was mortally sure that members of her family who had been utterly remiss in recognizing their own obligations to their brother’s child had been swift to denounce my appeal as an attempt to obtain money under false pretenses.