National Affairs: Unwarranted Attack

Last July, editors were in a quandary over a book called The President’s Daughter, published and issued for review by an “Elizabeth Ann Guild, Inc.” of Manhattan. The author, one Nan Britton, purported to have been infatuated since girlhood with her fellow townsman, the late President Harding. He was represented as having returned her devotion after she had grown up and he had become a U. S. Senator. He was said to have placed her in Manhattan with the U. S. Steel Corp. as a secretary, through his friend, the late Elbert H. Gary. The most intimate scenes, complete details and fulsome memories of a furtive union were related.

In 1919, Miss Britton bore a daughter whom she named Elizabeth Ann and for whom, together with all illegitimates, she now sought legal recognition and a patrimony, sale of The President’s Daughter at $5 per copy was said to be for the benefit of the Elizabeth Ann Guild Inc an organization to better the lot “of illegitimates. The latter part of the book related Miss Britton’s futile efforts to obtain a settlement from the Harding estate or relatives. She had been touring in Europe she said on money he had given her after his election to the Presidency. She hurried home and was astonished to find that he had made no provision in his will for Elizabeth Ann Christian,” as the girl was said to have been called for “a good joke on President Harding’s Secretary, George Busby Christian Jr.

Editors were in a quandary because, startling though it was, every page of The President’s Daughter seemed to ring true. Nan Britton did not sound like an adventuress but like a smalltown girl who felt she had experienced one of the worlds great loves. Moreover, names and places, letters, photographs and episodes were in great and confident profusion through the book. The bravest, most brazen charlatan would never have dared so much.

Before the book was published, John S. Sumner of Manhattan, professional moral crusader, had tried but failed to seize and suppress the printing plates. Local newspapers gave this episode routine mention, but most editors chose not to air the alleged love life of Warren Gamaliel Harding and the appeal based thereon. Henry Lewis Mencken touched on it in a distant, rambling article for the Baltimore Sun. The Democratic New York World treated it conventionally as biography, in a book review, with no front page headlines. The New Republic came closest to “featuring” the item. For the rest, there was what amounted to a conspiracy of silence, letting bad enough alone.

Not until last week did anyone close to the late President Harding make any public statement about The President’s Daughter. This statement was not a denial but a protest. Hearing that the book was having an everwidening sale, Dr. George T. Harding Jr. (the late President’s brother), Mrs. Ralph Lewis and Mrs. H. H. Votaw (the late Presidents sisters), conferred with friends in Marion, Ohio. Letters from other friends had been pouring in urging action of some kind. Grant E. Mouser of Marion, a lifelong friend of President Harding and often host to Nan Britton, was the author of the following statements:

“… I am convinced some ulterior motive prompted the publication of The President’s Daughter, which, even if true, is infamous. The whole thing is very much regretted by Mr. Harding’s family and loyal friends, who cannot conceive of events alleged, knowing him as they did. . . .

“If President Harding had been the father of the child, we know provision would have been made for it. Upon that the President would have insisted.

“We also have had occasion to recall that President Harding was an instinctive lover of children, and as such would not have left any child, whether his or not, without all advantages if the matter had been brought to his personal attention. That is the kind of a man we knew him to be.

“It is certainly to be hoped the American nation will rise up to condemn such unwarranted attack upon a defenseless man and force the book’s retirement from circulation.’

In Manhattan, at the request of the U. S. Post Office Department, an Assistant U. S. Attorney last week started an inquiry to discover if funds solicited in a leaflet mailed with copies of The President’s Daughter were being used for purposes other than the stated one of aiding illegitimates.