It's been said that the 29th president of the United States of America, who served in this capacity from 1921 to 1923, is considered "one of the worst - if not the worst - men to hold America's highest office," as also noted by People. He is also described as one of the most boring presidents; but after recent findings, he is now also one of the lustiest as well, as The New York Daily News puts it.
"Nearly 1,000 pages worth of steamy love letters between Harding and one of his mistresses, Carrie Fulton Phillips, will go public later this month after sitting dormant for half a century - exposing the notoriously boring president as a passionate and tangled lover," the news publication reported. "The Republican's sensual correspondence runs the gamut between Shakespearean prose and late-night Cinemax."
Who knew this man had a lot of passion in him? Did all that "amore" lead to his premature death? Ironically, a heart attack ended his life two years into his term. However, his mistress lived on until 1960, when she died at age 87. Their affair lasted about 15 years, with the letter correspondence ranging between 1910 and 1920.
Here's a sample of one of his racy writings, penned in 1913:
"Honestly, I hurt with the insatiate longing, until I feel that there will never be any relief until I take a long, deep, wild draught on your lips and then bury my face on your pillowing breasts."
"Wouldn't you like to make the suspected occupant of the next room jealous of the joys he could not know, as we did in morning communion at Richmond?"
Another excerpt, revealed by People, taken from a 1912 letter, reads thus:
"I love your poise / Of perfect thighs / When they hold me / In Paradise / I love the rose / Your garden grows / Love seashell pink / That over it grows."
It was also revealed that the former President named his manhood "Jerry," "a nickname it shared with an anti-German slur that originated during the war," People noted. He also mentioned the little guy in one of his steamy love letters to Phillips in 1918:
"Wish I could take you to Mount Jerry. Wonderful spot. Not in the geographies but a heavenly place, and I have seen some passing views there and reveled in them."
Speaking of the said affair, which was a known fact in Marion, Ohio, where the Warren G. Harding Home is, Harding Home site manager Sherry Hall told Newsweek that the former leader "was a human being like anyone else."
"It's nothing that anybody tries to hide or anything. It's part of the fabric of his life," she added. "He was a person who expressed himself through his writing. He always did. He was a newspaper man."
"It doesn't surprise me that he would put his most uninhibited, private thoughts in words. That's very much in his character," she concluded.
The letters will be released by the Library of Congress on July 29.
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