Especially did it all seem so right when Mr. Harding repeated to me many times, “I’d like to make you my bride, Nan darling.”
Mr. Harding came over once more before I left for Chicago on my vacation trip, for which my Chicago friends had sent me my railroad ticket. It was upon this occasion that he took me to his room in the Manhattan and talked over with me my prospective position in the United States Steel Corporation. He expressed his desire to have me dignified in the eyes of the officials there who would hear of me through Mr. Filbert, and about fifteen or twenty minutes before it was time for him to catch his train, he sat down at the desk and wrote out in longhand a letter which he said would be suitable for me to send to Mr. Filbert when that gentleman should send me a note to report for further interview at the Steel Corporation. Mr. Harding seemed very sure that I would be the recipient of such a letter and I watched over his shoulder while he wrote a hasty draft of “my reply.” It was the first time I had seen him slam his Oxford glasses upon his classic nose and I marvelled aloud at this feat.
I have always been quite averse to deception such as claiming authorship for something written by another, and I could not sincerely enthuse over the letter Mr. Harding had tried to couch in terms such as I might employ. However, I accepted it with thanks and he needed only to glance at his watch to see that he had barely time to catch his train. He kissed me and rushed away.
In due time I received the letter from Mr. Filbert, in which he asked me to see Miss Blanche Sawyer, in the legal department, who would tell me about my position in the Corporation. But the letter received from Mr. Filbert seemed not to call for the kind of reply Mr. Harding had pencilled and so I wrote one of my own. I sent Mr. Harding a carbon copy, however, which he approved in his next letter to me.
15
In early June I left for Chicago to visit my sister Elizabeth before taking up my work with the Steel Corporation in New York, in a stenographic position at $16 per week.
Up to that time I had made no one my confidante—in truth, I was finding it difficult to realize that my hero, Warren G. Harding, loved me, Nan Britton. Naturally I told no one. But my sister, Elizabeth, knowing me as she did, sought a reason for the unusual glow of my cheeks and the happiness written so visibly in my eyes, and when I received my first forty-page love-letter from Mr. Harding, I told Elizabeth the truth. She was unmarried then and living at the Colonial Hotel where I visited her, but she was in love herself with the man she finally married, and, having known so well my childhood adoration for Mr. Harding, sympathized with me though she did not encourage me to continue my friendship with him.
My finances were rather low at that time, I disliked to ask my Chicago benefactors for more money, so I wrote to Mr. Harding about it, as he had instructed me to do. The first money he sent me was in the form of a money order—it seems to me on the American Express Company—for $42, which amount, he told me by letter, was odd enough to make it appear that it was in payment of some possible work I had done for him. Elizabeth went with me when I had it cashed.
A week or so after that I received a letter from Mr. Harding saying he had been asked to speak in Indianapolis, and inviting me to come there to meet him. So I packed my suitcase and the following day Mr. Harding met me at the station in Indianapolis. I was, curiously enough, quite free from nervousness as I walked through the iron gate where he stood waiting, and wondered why he seemed so nervous. His hand shook terribly as he took mine after we were in the taxi. Even his voice shook. For me it was a great moment. I was so happy to be with him.
We went immediately to the Claypool Hotel where he registered me as his niece, Miss Harding. During my stay there (we left late that afternoon), I had several phone calls from newspaper men and Republicans who were endeavoring to get hold of Senator Harding. A great deal of the time he was in my room with me and instructed me to tell them to try him at the Republican Club. It was such fun to have him cut them all for me!