When theres snow on the roof there’s still fire in the belly.
Old Warren and his good buddy Jerry knew how to stick it to the ladies.
I’m curious to read more of these letters. There should be some interesting comments about events in Harding’s life and what was happening in the US.http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dc/president-warren-harding-love-letters-sex-real-romance-foreign-policy-blog-entry-1.1883637
Could we find geopolitical inspiration today from a dead president who called his penis “Jerry”?
The foreign affairs question could surface (inadvertently) Tuesday when the Library of Congress unveils a treasure trove from a domestic affair: the 15-year extramarital dalliance of President Warren G. Harding and Carrie Phillips, who was possibly a German agent during World War 1.
“He presciently writes that it was not our job to change governments,” James Robenalt, a Cleveland lawyer-author who originally found the letters and published discreet parts of some of them.
But, Robenalt conceded, the more salacious elements of the letters are already the prime focus of attention. It’s clear that young women, especially, are flabbergasted with Harding’s passionate prose since some letters have already gone viral.
“Jerry sends Christmas greetings! He would come too, if I might: would he be welcomed cordially?” he wrote her in a letter to be formally disclosed Tuesday and one of several that Robenalt passed along to The Daily News.
Another article and more information.
Why don’t we express ourselves with this kind of emotion anymore? Letters and emails today are either dry and dull or sexting. What happened to the art of prose? He even expresses anger artfully.http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2014/07/29/0729-warren-g-harding-letters.html
In sometimes flowery, sometimes lurid prose, Harding wrote of his “mad, tender, devoted, ardent, eager, passion-wild, jealous, reverent, wistful, hungry, happy” love for Carrie Fulton Phillips.
“My Darling,” he wrote on the back of a portrait of himself, dated Dec. 24, 1910. “there are no words, at my command, sufficient to say the full extent of my love for you.”
In another, he writes her three pages of poetry, listing everything he loves about her.
Those letters – approximately 1,000 pages in total – were kept for decades after they were written, first in a closet in Phillips’ home, then under close secrecy by the Library of Congress, until today. An agreement between the Harding family and the Library of Congress permitted their release on July 29, 2014 – approximately 50 years after an Ohio probate judge ordered them sealed at the family’s request.
The range from passionate – Harding writes of Phillips “thrilling lips,” “matchless breasts,” “incomparable embrace” – to petulant. At one point, irked by something she wrote, Harding replied, “ Feeling as you do, we ought not meet…I used to argue to myself that deep in your heart you did not feel all the resentment and indifference which you utter, and now I know that you do.”
Shouldn’t this be in the Erections forum?
How well known was it that Harding had a mistress? Or that he was execising his pocket veto?
jtur88
July 29, 2014, 9:10pm
4
To be quite honest, I don’t want to read anybody’s love letters. They are very personal and intimate matters that were not written for my eyes. The writer deserved the eternal dignity of not having his personal space intruded upon.
Oh my, I just caught the double pun in the Christmas greetings quote.
Harding wrote this lady for fifteen years. There will be a lot of historical information in these letters. The sex stuff will get the news quotes but I’m finding the actual letters from such a prominent figure very interesting.
heres the Harding collection.
This correspondence (240 items; 1910-1924) consists primarily of letters written by President Harding (1865-1923), before and during his tenure as a U.S. senator, to his paramour Carrie Fulton Phillips (1873-1960), wife of a Marion, Ohio, store...
So far I haven’t been able to see the documents. The index pages displays correctly. Clicking a document opens a tab with a big black square. I can change page numbers but always get the black square. I’ve tried IE and Firefox.
Jerry, a guy who lives down the street from me is a real dick. I find this amusing.
P-man
July 30, 2014, 1:07am
7
When it comes to historical documents with salacious material, give me The Diary of William Byrd of Westover. “I neglected to say my prayers, but slept well despite having committed uncleanness in bed.” (Here he was away on business and had bedded a prostitute). He still had time for his wife, though; “I rose at seven after rogering my wife.”
