This post has been updated.
Throughout his 15-year affair with Carrie Fulton Phillips, President Warren G. Harding wrote salacious love letters to his mistress, and although his family kept the steamy correspondence under wraps for years, the letters will be finally be released to the public this summer.
The Library of Congress will make the letters available to the public on July 29, but the New York Times has a sneak peek of the correspondence described as “perhaps the most sexually explicit ever by an American president.”
Harding’s letters were descriptive and full of passion. On Sept. 15, 1913 he wrote:
“Honestly, I hurt with the insatiate longing, until I feel that there will never be any relief untilI take a long, deep, wild draught on your lips and then bury my face on your pillowing breasts. Oh, Carrie! I want the solace you only can give. It is awful to hunger so and be so wholly denied. . . . Wouldn’t you like to get sopping wet out on Superior — not the lake — for the joy of fevered fondling and melting kisses?”
According to the Times, Harding used code words in his letters. For example, he referred to his penis as “Jerry.” As the Huffington Post pointed out, he mentioned Jerry in a March 12, 1915 letter:
“Jerry … came in while I was pondering your notes in glad reflection, and we talked about it … He told me to say that you are the best and darlingest in the world, and if he could have but one wish, it would be to be held in your darling embrace and be thrilled by your pink lips that convey the surpassing rapture of human touch and the unspeakable joy of love’s surpassing embrace.”
According to the Times, some of the letters were actually written on Senate stationary. Some of the letters were first published in Jim Robenalt’s 2009 book “The Harding Affair: Love and Espionage During the Great War,” but he left out some of the steamiest passages.
Read the New York Times’ collection of letters and full account of Harding’s affair here.
Correction: This post originally stated that Harding wrote some of his letters on Presidential stationary. He wrote some of them on Senate stationary.
