Timeline: Walt Whitman, Sexuality, and Intimacy

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A Chronology on Walt Whitman, Sexuality and Intimacy

1840, December

A rumor circulating in the mid-twentieth-century asserted that Whitman, while a teacher in a Southold, Long Island school, had reputedly been run out of town after a parent became irate over what he considered Whitman's undue familiarity with his son, one of Whitman's students.[1] Whitman confirmed to Abby Price that he had once been criticized by a rural father for "making a pet" of a young student. However, Mitchell Santine Gould argues that gossip about Whitman and a tar and feathering, which never met the requirements of historical evidence, should never have been propagated by professional researchers. Gould claims to have identified the local conflation of Whitman with a contemporary, Charles G. Kelsey, a Huntington poet, who was tarred, feathered, and later murdered for his attentions to an underage girl.[2] The circulation in the mid-twentieth century of the rumor about Whitman as, in effect, a child molester, may be studied as evidence of the mythic conflation at that time of homosexual men and the sexual abuse of male children.


1848, February 25-May 25

Walt Whitman visits New Orleans, Louisiana, for three months.

Whitman scholar Maverick Marvin Harris remarks on "the dramatic change in Whitman after the New Orleans trip, his sexual awakening, and the inspiration for the first edition of Leaves of Grass (1855).[3]

In 1867 Whitman published "Once I Pass'd through a Populous City," in which he said, "Yet now of all that city I remember only a woman I casually met there who detain'd me for love of me . . . who passionately clung to me." However, Whitman's earlier manuscript read "the man" instead of "a woman".

In 1867 Whitman published "I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing" with the lines: "I wonder'd how it could utter joyous leaves, standing alone there, without its friend, its lover near—for I knew I could not".[4]

In 1871-72, Whitman published a poem with the opening lines: "O Magnet-South! O glistening, perfumed South! My South! / O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and love! good and evil! O all dear to me!" (in "Longings for Home" [later "O Magnet-South"]).[5]

On August 19, 1890, Whitman responded to John Addington Symonds' queries about the American's man-love poems, saying: "My life, young manhood, mid-age, times South, &c: have been jolly bodily, and doubtless open to criticism". Though he had never married, Whitman then went on to claim having fathered six (!) children (for which there is no documented evidence despite years of research dedicated to finding some evidence them).[6]


1855-1862

Whitman frequents Pfaff's, the beer cellar popular with New York City's actors, artists, and workmen. As Ed Folsom and Ken Price write in their biography of Whitman, "It was at Pfaff's, too, that Whitman joined the 'Fred Gray Association,' a loose confederation of young men who seemed anxious to explore new possibilities of male-male affection" (Re-Scripting 62). Whitman appears to have developed a particularly close relationship with Fred Vaughan (one of the members of the Fred Gray Association), a relationship that has been speculated to have sparked Whitman's homoerotic Calamus poems.[7]


1855, July 6

Whitman puts on sale the first edition of "Leaves of Grass."[8]


1856, May -- May 1859

Sometime during this period, Walt Whitman is believed to have lived with or near Fred Vaughan. Whitman was living in his family home on Classon Avenue in Brooklyn, and Vaughan either lived with him or nearby with his own family.[9]


1856, September 11

Whitman registers for copyright his second edition of Leaves of Grass.[10]


1860, May

Whitman publishes third edition of Leaves of Grass, containing his 'Calamus' cluster of books exploring the theme of adhesiveness, or same-sex attraction.[11]


1862, September 18

Whitman learns the news of the battlefield death of Union soldier Bill Giggee, as relayed by his surviving comrade, Arthur Giggee. Whitman uses the circumstances of Bill's death & Arthur's response in the Drum Taps poem, "Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night."[12]


1865, January to March

Whitman meets his second known male intimate, Pete Doyle, a former Confederate soldier who is working as a streetcar conductor in Washington, DC.[13]


1871, September 3

Anne Burrows Gilchrist, widow of Alexander and co-author with him of a biography of William Blake, first writes to Whitman.[14]


1874, July 12

Edward Carpenter, who would gain prominence as a British Fabian Socialist and defender of the "intermediate sex," sends his first letter to Walt Whitman.[15]


1876, January to April

Whitman meets Harry Stafford, an 18-year old errand boy in the offices of the Camden "New Republic" newspaper and printing shop, where Whitman's 1876 centennial edition of Leaves of Grass is being printed.[16]


1876, February 14

Bram Stoker sends a letter to Whitman that he had written two years prior, on February 18, 1872.[17]


1876, September 13

Whitman meets Anne Gilchrist, who has moved from England to Philadelphia with her son Herbert, an aspiring artist, and daughters Beatrice, a medical student, and Grace. Mrs. Gilchrist remains in Philadelphia until April 1878, and returns to England the following year.[18]


1877, May 1

Edward Carpenter pays his first visit to Walt Whtman, and remains through the end of June. Gavin Arthur claimed that Carpenter told him that Carpenter and Whitman were sexually intimate during this visit.[19]


1882, January

Oscar Wilde visits Walt Whitman in Camden.[20]


1882, May

Oscar Wilde pays Whitman a second visit.[21]


1884, April

Bram Stoker in the company of British actor Henry Irving meets Walt Whitman in Camden.[22]


1884, June

Edward Carpenter makes his second visit to Walt Whitman in Camden.[23]


1887, December 22

Bram Stoker pays a second visit to Walt Whitman in Camden.[24]


Primary Sources on Whitman, Sexuality, and Intimacy

Whitman, Walt. [sex manifesto in Leaves of Grass 1856]


Secondary Sources on Whitman, Sexuality, and Intimacy

Fone, Bryne R.S. Masculine Landscape: Walt Whitman and the Homoerotic Text (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992).

Katz, Jonathan Ned. Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).

Martin, Robert K. The Homosexual Tradition in American Poetry: An Expanded Edition (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1998).


Murray, Martin G. "'Pete the Great: A Biography of Peter Doyle," Walt Whitman Quarterly Review (Summer 1994, 12:1), 1-51.


Murray, Martin G. "Responding Kisses: New Evidence about the Origins of 'Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night,' Walt Whitman Quarterly Review (Spring 2008, 25:4), 192-197.


Murray, Martin G. "Walt Whitman, Edward Carpenter, Gavin Arthur, and The Circle of Sex," Walt Whitman Quarterly Review (Spring 2005, 22:4), 194-198.


Shively, Charley. editor. Calamus Lovers: Walt Whitman's Working Class Camerados (San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1987).


Scholnick, Robert J. "'An Unusually Active Market for Calamus': Whitman, "Vanity Fair", and the Fate of Humor in a Time of War, 1860-1863," Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 19 (Winter/Spring 2002), 148-181.


Creators of this Entry Listed Alphabetically by Last Name (optional)

Katz, Jonathan Ned

Murray, Martin G.

Gould, Mitchell S.


References

  1. ↑ Katherine Molinoff, Walt Whitman at Southold (Smithtown, n.p., 1966), privately printed; also David S. Reynolds Walt Whitman's America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), pp. 70-73.
  2. ↑ "Huntington's Horrible "Tar Town" Murder" http://longislandgenealogy.com/tar.html
  3. ↑ Accessed February 5, 2012 from The Walt Whitman Archive.
  4. ↑ Accessed February 5, 2012, from The Walt Whitman Archive.
  5. ↑ Accessed February 5, 2012 from The Walt Whitman Archive
  6. ↑ Jonathan Ned Katz, Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), page 282.
  7. ↑ Folsom, Ed and Kenneth M. Price. Re-Scripting Walt Whitman: An Introduction to His Life and Work. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. Whitman's connection with Pfaff's is mentioned on pages 61, 62, and 87. Quoted and accessed October 31, 2010 from: http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/pfaffs/p47/
  8. ↑ Ivan Marki, 'Leaves of Grass, 1855 Edition,' in J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings, eds., Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998), pp. 354-359.
  9. ↑ Charley Shively, editor, Calamus Lovers: Walt Whitman's Working Class Camerados (San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1987), pp. 36-50.
  10. ↑ Harold Aspiz,'Leaves of Grass, 1856 Edition,' in J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings, eds., Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998), pp. 359-361.
  11. ↑ Gregory Eiselein, 'Leaves of Grass, 1860 edition,' in J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings, eds., Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998), pp. 362-365.
  12. ↑ Martin G. Murray, "Responding Kisses: New Evidence about the Origins of 'Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night,'" Walt Whitman Quarterly Review (Spring 2008, 25:4), 192-197.
  13. ↑ Martin G. Murray, "'Pete the Great: A Biography of Peter Doyle," Walt Whitman Quarterly Review (Summer 1994, 12:1), 13.
  14. ↑ 'Gilchrist, Anne Burrows (1828-1885)', in J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings, eds., Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998), pp. 251-252.
  15. ↑ Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, edited by Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1964), 3: 41n.
  16. ↑ Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, edited by Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1964), 3: 37n.
  17. ↑ Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, edited by Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1964), 3: 28.
  18. ↑ Jerome Loving, Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), p. 378. See also, 'Gilchrist, Anne Burrows (1828-1885)', in J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings, eds., Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998), pp. 251-252.
  19. ↑ Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, edited by Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1964), 3: 82n, 89n, 95n. See also Edward Carpenter, Days with Walt Whitman, With Some Notes on His Life and Work (London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1921 (reprint of 2nd editition, December 1906; first edtion published May 1906)), 3-4, 32. See also Gavin Arthur, The Circle of Sex (New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1966, 2nd edition), pp. 128-139. See also, Martin G. Murray, "Walt Whitman, Edward Carpenter, Gavin Arthur, and The Circle of Sex," Walt Whitman Quarterly Review (Spring 2005, 22:4), 194-198.
  20. ↑ Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, edited by Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1964), 3: 263.
  21. ↑ Richard Raleigh, Wilde, Oscar (1854-1900), in J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings, eds., Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998), p. 790.
  22. ↑ Gay Wilson Allen, The Solitary Singer, p. 516.
  23. ↑ Walt Whitman, Daybooks, 1876-1891, p. 337.
  24. ↑ Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, edited by Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1964), 4: 41n.
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