Warren G. Harding’s Irrepressible Libido
Library of CongressWarren G. Harding carried on multiple affairs, fathered a child out of wedlock, and left behind pages of steamy love letters.
In 1927, a woman named Nan Britton ignited a presidential sex scandal with her book, The President’s Daughter. Britton claimed that she had had a six year affair — and a child — with former President Warren G. Harding.
Britton offered salacious details, like how the married then-Senator Harding had taken her virginity in a New York hotel room, and how they’d had sex in a White House closet. “In the darkness of a space no more than five feet square the President and his adoring sweetheart made love,” Britton wrote.
Even after Harding died in 1923, his allies loudly denounced Britton as a slut, a gold-digger, and a liar. But her claim — later substantiated by a 2015 DNA test — were nothing compared to letters that Harding wrote to a different mistress, Carrie Fulton Phillips.
In these letters, which Harding wrote between 1910 and 1920, often on official Senate stationery, the future president described his love life in poetic, lurid detail.
In one letter, Harding wrote, “There is one engulfing, enthralling rule of love, the song of your whole being which is a bit sweeter — the ‘Oh Warren! Oh Warren!’ When your body quivers with divine paroxysm and your soul hovers for flight with mine.”
Library of CongressA letter that Harding wrote Phillips on official Senate stationary.
In another, Harding spun his affections into poetry, writing, “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 glows.”
Philips later threatened to reveal the affair when Harding ran for president. He avoided a presidential sex scandal when the Republican establishment paid her off, and the letters weren’t revealed in full in 2014.
When Harding died suddenly in 1923, some wondered if his long-suffering wife, Florence, had actually poisoned him.
