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Before Elizabeth Ann’s birth, during the early days when Mr. Harding and I referred to our coming baby as “the young lieutenant,” we had discussed many times the possibility of giving the baby over to his sister in California, Mrs. Charity Remsberg. Mr. Harding said that, of all of his relatives, he was sure she would understand the situation best, and also she had children of her own. I entered into this and other discussions very seriously, and I marvel now to think how I could have done so. For, months before Elizabeth Ann actually came, I had fully determined within my heart that I could never, never give her up—I could never allow our darling baby to be reared and loved by anyone but myself or her father.
However, I talked over these possibilities with Mr. Harding both in person and in letters. He was disposed also to consider the Scobeys—Mr. Fred Scobey and his wife of San Antonio, Texas. Mr. Harding had told me once upon a visit to New York how Mr. Scobey had mailed a letter from Mr. Harding, addressed to me. He said he thought afterward it hadn’t been exactly wise to entrust it to him, for, he said, Mr. Scobey had been a bit convivial that afternoon. I remember how I said, “Oh, sweetheart, why will you do foolish things like that?—why, he might have looked at it!” I was amazed at such daring on Mr. Harding’s part. It was then that Mr. Harding told me what I recalled afterward, in later years, so vividly, “Why, Nan, Scobey’s the best friend I’ve got!” Of course I took his statement very literally.
The Scobeys had quite a bit of money, Mr. Harding said, and I think he said they had no children of their own. He was sure they would love our baby and he said he would “have no hesitancy” in telling Mr. Scobey that he was the father of the child.
We also discussed an institutional home where the baby might be placed until of such age that I, through some unforeseen favorable circumstance, might be able to take our child myself. It was then that Mr. Harding first discussed with utter frankness the probability of Mrs. Harding’s death far in advance of his own, in which event he said with undisguised enthusiasm, “I’d take the baby myself and make her a real Harding!” Later he repeated that statement very emphatically to me in the White House, telling me how he wished to make Elizabeth Ann a “real Harding.” Of course that plan met with a hug and a kiss from me and much worded enthusiasm. But Destiny thwarted the plans Warren Harding had for his child, although during those days we were completely oblivious of its presence.