71
Enroute to New York, Scott Willits, my brother-in-law, my sister Elizabeth and Elizabeth Ann, stopped in Washington. They went almost immediately to the office of Mrs. Heber Herbert Votaw, youngest sister of President Harding whose husband, Heber Herbert Votaw, had been appointed by Mr. Harding as Superintendent of Prisons. Mrs. Votaw was prominent in welfare work of some kind. Mrs. Votaw, or Carrie Harding as you may recall, was my sister’s favorite among the Harding sisters back home in Marion. In her office they were introduced to Colonel Forbes who, my sister told me, took quite a fancy to Elizabeth Ann. Mrs. Votaw entertained them at the Senate Dining-Room for luncheon, where, Elizabeth said, Vice-President Coolidge sat across from them at the next table. In the afternoon Mrs. Votaw took them through the White House, and, Elizabeth said, voiced her regret that her brother, the President, was attending a conference. Otherwise, Mrs. Votaw told them, they might have gone in to see him. And also otherwise, I have often thought wistfully, he might have seen his own little daughter whom he never once saw in the almost four years she had been living at the time he passed on in San Francisco. A queer topsy-turvy set of circumstances—the President’s own sister escorting the President’s own child, unknown to her as such, through his home and grounds!
I almost devoured Elizabeth Ann when she landed with Scott and Elizabeth in New York. She was but two-and-a-half, and the best-natured child imaginable. I shall never forget how she became sleepy during our gaddings, and actually walked along the street so asleep that the sympathetic interest of pedestrians was drawn to her. I would take her on my lap every chance I got, hugging her to me, and worshipping the little face which bore to me such a pathetic resemblance to her father. And, oh, the joy of taking her to bed with me, and of doing the little things for her which she told me in her baby way she wanted done—her back rubbed or her “pidda” fixed this or that way. I think there is nothing comparable to the pleasure it gives a mother to wait upon her baby, though in the extreme it may possibly be poor training for the child.
Scott sailed for Bremen on the America (1922) and I gave up my work at Columbia, having completed the first semester with a B grade, and returned with Elizabeth and the baby to Chicago to remain the year Scott was to be abroad. That spring and summer I resumed my treatments with Dr. Barbour and in the fall, feeling much stronger, sought a suitable secretarial position. I did some part-time work during that summer, but for the most part I remained at home helping as I could with the house work and taking care of my precious darling.
72
On the afternoon of June 8, 1922, Elizabeth, my sister, had gone downtown and Elizabeth Ann and I were alone in the apartment. I had been taking a bath and had gone into my bedroom for something, and when I came back to the bathroom I found the baby had locked herself in. She was always at my heels, but I did not know that she ever even so much as touched the lock on the door. As the door could be opened only from the inside, and as the baby could not open it, I became frantic. She was then only two-and-a-half years old.
I called in to her, telling her what to do to release the lock, but it was a difficult one to turn, more easily locked than unlocked. There was a note of fear in the tiny voice when she inquired “How do I do it?” I called down from the back porch to the lady who lived on the first floor and she suggested that I call the fire department. I put the call in immediately. Between the time the baby had locked herself in and the time the fire department arrived, I played “post office” with her, sitting outside the door on the floor and pushing innumerable envelopes, papers, blotters, etc., under the door which she in turn would push back with a giggle. I had quieted her and that quieted me somewhat.
Evidently the fire department didn’t often have calls to rescue babies who had locked themselves in bathrooms, and the fire chief was quite annoyed. However, they hoisted the ladder, and a fireman climbed through the open bathroom window, unlocked the door, and allowed a very calm and undisturbed Elizabeth Ann to walk forth.
This proved to be too unusual a thing for the ubiquitous newspaper reporters to pass up, and within ten minutes after the rescue the doorbell rang. The Chicago Tribune wished to take my picture and that of the baby together! Yes, perhaps right there before the bathroom door would be the best, the reporter said.
I was so nervous that the possibility of any publicity frightened me because I knew what Mr. Harding would say. I refused flatly to allow them to take any pictures at all. “All right, madam, then we’ll make up our own story!” the reporter threw back at me as I closed the door upon him. I opened it again and called him back, explained that I had been ill and that things like that made me very nervous. In the end he promised not to make a great ado about it in his paper, but Elizabeth, my sister, came up the stairs almost simultaneously with another more persistent reporter, from the Hearst headquarters. “They want my picture and the baby’s” I cried hysterically. Elizabeth turned calmly to the reporter. “Can’t you come back in the morning?” she smiled, after she had learned what it was all about. They consented. Elizabeth promised that they might snap the baby’s picture alone if they would return in the morning. And so it was.