My Heart Laid Bare (53 page)

He couldn't have guessed at the degree of his aristocrat's sensibility, before he discovered himself offended, upon several occasions, by Mrs. Harding (a supremely brash, squat, ugly woman, older than Harding, whom Harding had married for her money, known with sniggering affection as the Duchess); and revulsed by the President's mistress Nan (a coy, simpering, fleshy Ohio girl decades younger than the Duchess, who professed to adore her “Warren,” and to be faithful to him unto death: no matter that her portly lover had no more gallantry than to copulate with her on the floor of the clothes closet in his very White House office, with any number of ushers, couriers and secretaries close by). Accustomed, perhaps, to the degree of sophistication and wit possessed by (ah, he hardly dared think of her!) Eva Clement-Stoddard, Abraham Licht found himself disgusted by the coarseness of men like Harding's Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall (who scarcely made it a secret, from the start, that his office was open to “bids” from private parties, in the matter of leasing oil-rich public lands), and Colonel Charley Forbes of the Veterans Bureau (who had somehow finessed a budget of a half billion dollars yearly, and was busily involved in the sale of “surplus” and “damaged” medical supplies left over from the War), and Daugherty's constant companion Jess Smith (big-boned, shambling, flabby, asthmatic, yet rewarded with a mysterious connection to the Justice Department, and to its files and influence, though he was never officially on the payroll); and, indeed, the pugnacious Daugherty himself. (Both Abraham Licht and Gaston Bullock Means resented the fact that Daugherty blew hot and cold—to use Means's expression—with his Special Employees at the Bureau of Investigation. Clearly, he wanted them
to spy on all his enemies in Washington, and on all his friends with the exception of Jess Smith and Harding; he wanted detailed reports, though not in writing; and not at any prescribed time. When one or another of the Bureau's special deals fell through, or was in danger of being discovered by the opposition press, Daugherty shouted abuse at them over the telephone, and threatened to fire them; when a deal went very well indeed—Abraham Licht labored for weeks, for instance, to arrange a nearly legal means by which unsaleable whiskey stocked in warehouses might be shipped to foreign countries, with a generous “surcharge” split between the Prohibition Bureau and the Bureau of Investigation—Daugherty boasted of the coup as if it were his own.)

In order to repay hundreds of political favors, Harding had appointed friends, or friends of friends, or reliable party hacks, to nearly all the federal judgeships; and to such offices as the Alien Custodian Bureau, and the Public Health Bureau, the Bureau of Special Reports, the Bureau of Engineering, the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the Bureau of the Budget, the Bureau of War Risk Insurance, et al. Unqualified but faithful Republicans were named as Governor of the Federal Reserve System, Superintendent of Federal Prisons, Governor of Puerto Rico, Alien Property Custodian, Chairman of the Shipping Board . . . and, to Abraham Licht's amazement, his old kinsman “Baron” Barraclough was named Comptroller of the Currency, and the wily Jasper Liges, of whom he hadn't heard in years, was named Commissioner of Indian Affairs! (When Abraham inquired of one of the President's men what the duties of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs might be, he was told with a broad smile: “Oil leases and real estate.”)

Most astonishing of all: Harding would have appointed Jess Smith Secretary of the Treasury if there hadn't been protests from all sides.

“WHY, THE WORLD
has been turned upside down,” Abraham Licht thought in despair, “—and where is
my
place!”

Yet, as he fully intended to make clear in his memoir one day,
all
was not disappointing during his Washington years: for, as Gordon Jasper Hine, he commanded uneasy (if not occasionally resentful) respect about town; he traveled where and when he wished, under the auspices of the Bureau; and it pricked his gambler's curiosity, as to how long the Harding administration could last, before the house of cards came tumbling down.

“Why, we will go on forever—who will stop us?” Gaston Bullock Means asked, staring. “The people
love
Harding.”

Which was true, at least initially.

No matter the passionate vacuity of his public addresses, no matter the childish nature of his “bloviating” (as he himself called his speech-making talents), or the laughable presumption of his beliefs (“I do not think any government can be just if it doesn't have somehow a contact with Omnipotent God”), crowds everywhere applauded him with unstoppered enthusiasm: for, at the start at least, Harding
looked
like a President.

Of course Abraham Licht bitterly envied Warren Harding. He felt the crude injustice of Fate, that
he
should be but an anonymous federal employee, under the capricious thumb of Harry Daugherty, while a bumptious fool like Harding was President of the United States! Daugherty was said to have groomed Harding for public office and to have worked over the years to assure his nomination,
solely on the basis of Harding's appearance
; the irony being, that Abraham Licht was every bit as attractive—as noble, as stately, as “sincere,” as Presidential. Why had he thrown away his political prospects, as a greenling youth! Was he himself to blame? It didn't bear thinking about, Abraham Licht counseled himself; that way lay madness.

When he first rose to national prominence Harding was a stately-appearing, silver-haired, rather ordinarily handsome man in his mid-fifties, with a strong profile, prominent brows, and a winning smile. His heroes were Caesar, Hamilton, and Napoleon, so far as he knew of them;
he carried himself with an air of purposeful dignity, as, perhaps, they had done in their times. (Was the Harding line tainted by Negro blood, as vicious, unproved rumors would have it, originating in his hometown?—those who wished to vilify Harding claimed to see “Negroid features” in his face; others professed themselves incapable of seeing any such thing.) Harding had been for years the editor of a small Ohio newspaper and his sense of the world's complexity derived from that experience: what was significant might be presented in a column or two of type; what could not be fitted into that space could not be significant. Once in the White House he had neither the time nor the concentration to read newspapers carefully, and of course he never read books; even an interview with a “specialist” (in taxation problems, in European affairs, for instance) wearied him. He was too small for the office of President, he smilingly complained to his friends, who waved aside his remarks impatiently: for, after all, were not
they
prepared to help? Apart from poker, golf, infrequent trysts with Nan, and drinking with his companions, nothing so delighted Harding as addressing crowds in large, open, public places; and afterward mingling with the people and shaking hands. If only the Presidency could always be thus—!

With his sharp eye for imperfection Abraham Licht noted early on a certain unmistakable air of doom about the President: dapper, and congenial, and resigned: but doom nonetheless. Perhaps Harding sensed that his friends were betraying him on all sides; that he wouldn't live out his term of office; and that, following his death, every aspect of his Presidency would be contemned. (Even Nan, dear sweet silly Nan, would boast to the world of their liaison, selling their “true love story” to the press!) At times it seemed to Abraham Licht that Harding must know of the corruption practiced by his friends, and was giving his tacit consent; at other times it seemed clear that the poor fool knew nothing, and wished to know nothing.

“Shall I be the one to tell him?” Abraham mused. But then, sighing, “Ah, but
why
!”

YET HARDING WAS
deteriorating rapidly, and with so queer, stoic and wistful an air, Abraham Licht came to pity him.

The President's weakness for bootleg whiskey, wienerwurst and batter-fried chicken took its toll; by degrees he grew bloated. His fleshy jowls puffed out even as his eyes retreated beneath the heavy patrician brows. His voice, once blandly well modulated, now quavered when he stood before the most innocuous of well-wishers; microphones unnerved him. He sweated in public. His luck, of which he'd once innocently boasted, now deserted him at both poker and golf; if he won bets, they were frantic off-the-cuff wagers for a pittance, or items of jewelry. (Though one memorable evening he infuriated the Duchess by gambling away an entire set of exquisite Wedgwood White House china which, as the Duchess charged, was not his to barter.) To his male companions he joked crudely—yet wistfully—of having a “monkey-gland” operation to restore his virility. Though beginning to be criticized by sharp-eyed foes of tobacco, largely female, Harding chewed his Piper Heidsieck tobacco compulsively, hacking and spitting in a way some observers found offensive. Yet, Harding pleaded, he required chewing for his health: he simply couldn't get through a morning without it!

It became an affectionate anecdote among the President's circle how poor Harding infuriated the Duchess by sneaking several plugs of Piper Heidsieck into his mouth while sitting on the dais at the Princeton University commencement ceremony of 1922, where with great pomp, drenched with sweat in his woollen cap and gown, he was awarded something called an “honorary doctorate”—indeed an honor for a man of Harding's modest educational background and yet more modest intellectual ambition.

Like all Presidents, despite his innocent good nature Warren Harding drew threats against his life, whether by those seriously intending to do him harm or by mere crackpots (of whom the nation's capital enjoyed a good many in the twenties). So Secret Service men accompanied the
President everywhere, as in a children's game, even to his hotel trysts with Nan (where, to the amusement of those in the know, they waited discreetly in the corridor outside the room) and to the Gayety Burlesque on lower Pennsylvania Avenue (where the President was privileged to sit in a special box screened from view of the lowlife audience). By degrees he found no relaxation and virtually no happiness anywhere except in the groggy uproarious midst of his circle of friends—who, perhaps, were not truly his friends.

One evening at the Little House on H Street, to which Abraham Licht had come after midnight in formal evening attire and tall silk hat (having attended a performance of the
The Flying Dutchman,
which magnificent tragic music never failed to excite him), Harding chanced to remark to Abraham, in a wistful tone, that when he was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws at Princeton it was said of him he “stood in the tradition of Lincoln”; but somehow, he didn't quite believe it, himself.

At this, Abraham professed to be puzzled; and said, with a gracious smile that if at Princeton they told him he was in the tradition of Lincoln, and one of the nation's greatest leaders, then certainly he must be—“For who would know better than the administrators at Princeton?”

Harding leaned over to spit a silver-dollar-sized clot of tobacco juice into the brimming brass spittoon at his feet. Weakly he said, “Yes. I suppose so.” Again he paused, to chew and spit. He turned to Abraham Licht as to a newfound friend and said, with a sudden frank smile, that he'd come a long distance from Blooming Grove, Ohio, and would be returned in one way only. “And do you know what that way must be, Mr. Hine?”

Abraham Licht felt a stab of recognition.
He is a form of myself only not schooled in The Game. Knowing like a fated animal that his doom is upon him.
Though afterward Abraham would regret not having spoken to Warren Harding in equally frank, brotherly tones, at the time, in the clamor of the poker setting, he could only stroke his goateed chin and look perplexed and reply emphatically, “Why, Mr. President, I certainly do
not.
”

ONE OF THE
very few controversial acts of Harding's term of office was the pardoning, in his second year, of a number of political prisoners whom Woodrow Wilson had charged with wartime sedition.

There were twenty-three remaining alive in federal penitentiaries by this time; all men; among them the notorious Socialist Eugene Debs and the yet more notorious Negro “revolutionary” Prince Elihu of the World Negro Betterment & Liberation Union.

Which of these “enemies of America” was the more dangerous had long been an issue in the conservative press. President Harding, to the astonishment of all his staff, decided that neither was an enemy, and must be freed at once.

No one was more furious than the Duchess. “Not only a traitorous
Red
but a traitorous
black
!—Warren, I put my foot
down; I will not allow it.
” Unspoken between them was the old, slanderous charge that Harding had “Negroid” ancestry; his opponents would take up the cause again, more cruelly than ever.

Harding yet held his ground. Saying, to the press, that he could not comprehend his predecessor's hatred for “political” foes—the United States, after all, under its sacred Constitution and with its special connection to the Omnipotent, is the only place in the world where freedom is guaranteed.

“I will pardon them because it is the right thing to do. That is the only reason to do any thing, I think,” Harding said tersely.

When Debs and Elihu were brought by special car to the White House to be photographed in the Oval Office with the President, Abraham Licht made certain he was among the small gathering of witnesses; and felt quite moved by the sight of the legendary Debs—tall and gaunt, with the look of a man uncertain of his surroundings; and Prince Elihu—who did indeed look princely though he was wearing not one of his flamboyant caftans but an ordinary brown gabardine suit, and his hair, formerly wild and woolly, was trimmed close to his head.

(Abraham felt a stab in his heart. For a weak moment, he worried he might faint. How greatly changed his 'Lisha! His Little Moses!)