Remembering Mr. Harding’s remark about making me White House stenographer, a remark made to me one night in the earlier days when we had dined at the Manhattan and I had lovingly prophesied the position he now held, I said to him, “Sweetheart, couldn’t you let me come down here and work?” I told him it would help to make me happier, inasmuch as it didn’t seem possible for me to remain in Chicago and be only a third parent to Elizabeth Ann. It was during that visit, I remember, that his woman stenographer came in. I was sitting in a chair near Mr. Harding’s desk and Mr. Harding was seated in his chair at the desk. The stenographer came across the room and Mr. Harding looked up and smiled and said, “Can’t read it?” She pointed to the words she couldn’t make out (in his handwriting so familiar to me!) and he read them for her. After she had gone out and closed the door, I said wistfully, “Oh, I wish I could work for you, darling!” Mr. Harding smiled—the old smile of indulgence and love I liked to think he smiled best at me—but shook his head. “It would never do, dearie,” he said. Then he went on to picture in the face of his refusal how he would love to have me, and how, if I were his stenographer he would give me all his dictation just to have me with him, and he feared the nation’s business would suffer! Thus it was that he would picture for me the things he would love to do, making their impossibility a thing of unspeakable disappointment to me, and causing me to exclaim more than once, “Oh, I wish you weren’t in this position!”
We talked over the situation with regard to Elizabeth Ann and I explained to Mr. Harding how difficult it had become to really work out the three-cornered parentage. He said, “Well, just wait, dearie. Some of these days I’ll take her myself,” but that prospect was at least four years off, which to me seemed an eternity.
I showed him snapshots of Elizabeth Ann we had taken, and particularly one which to me is the image of her father. He was delighted with everything. We had to talk so fast, too, in order to say everything to each other; and even then I never failed to leave without realizing I had forgotten dozens of things I meant to say to him. It wasn’t at all as it had been in the days when he was Senator. And his statement to me, repeated substantially every time I went to the White House, only added to my sorrow after I had left him—“I find myself longing to take baby girls in my arms, dearie—I never used to feel so deeply moved,” he would say, and the lights in his eyes were divine.
Mr. Harding gave me several hundred dollars and admonished me to be careful in spending it so that people wouldn’t talk about me. Then I left him. I do not really know the usual length of my visits with Mr. Harding in the White House, but I do know that it is not possible for sweethearts to spend three-fourths of their time in making up for lost kisses and have much time left to discuss serious affairs. These visits were never satisfying in length of time.
67
I went down to the Custom House to see Mr. Aldridge almost as soon as I reached New York, armed with Mr. Harding’s card of introduction. The deputy, Mr. Stewart, took me in to Mr. Aldridge’s office. With Mr. Aldridge was another man whom he introduced to me, “Colonel William Hayward, another friend of the President.”
The letter which Mr. Harding had told me he would write to Mr. Aldridge had not as yet reached the latter’s hands, and so I was obliged to explain my errand. Mr. Aldridge assured me he would do all in his power to assist me, and Col. Hayward volunteered to do the same. I thanked them both and tried to make it clear to Mr. Aldridge, after Col. Hayward had gone out, that I needed the position from the standpoint of salary, thinking by so doing I would entirely disarm him of any suspicion as to why President Harding had taken the pains to intercede for me.
I have often wished I had asked him frankly in the days that followed to see the letter which Mr. Harding actually wrote to him. I imagine the President wrote that I was the “daughter of an old friend,” etc. But evidently what he did write was sufficiently strong. For two weeks there were a good many people down there working directly or indirectly to find a suitable position for the President’s friend! I am afraid they all thought I wanted something much finer than I actually desired. Mr. Aldridge early turned the onus of the job upon his assistant, Mr. Stewart. Col. Hayward interviewed me with (what he said was) a view to creating a position in his own office for me in case I found nothing that pleased me.
As a matter of fact, I did not obtain work at all as a result of the efforts exerted in my behalf by the Custom House officials. I took the civil service examination at that time, but, having used my shorthand only spasmodically since I left the Steel Corporation, my speed was cut in half and I fell down on the stenographic examination, though I passed creditably in typing.
The position I finally obtained came entirely through my own personal contacts with employment bureaus, and was with an advertising man who employed me mornings and certain afternoons during the week. The rest of the time I spent getting out work for my journalistic course at Columbia.