Ellen Eyre to Walt Whitman, Tuesday, March 25, 1862

My dear Mr. Whitman

I fear you took me last night for a female privateer. It's true that I was sailing under false colors.—But the flag I assure you covered nothing piratical—although I would joyfully have made your heart a captive.

Women have an unequal chance in this world. Men are its monarchs, and “full many a rose is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness in the desert air.”

Such I was resolved should not be the fate of this fancy I had long nourished for you.—A gold mine may be found by the Divining Rod but there is no such instrument for detecting in the crowded streets of a great city the [unknown?] mine of latent affection a man may have unconsciously inspired in a woman's heart. I make these explanations in extenuation not by way of apology. My social position enjoins precaution & mystery, and perhaps the enjoyment of my friend's society is heightened which in yielding to its fascination I preserve my incognito; yet mystery lends an ineffable charm to love and when a woman is bent upon the gratification of her inclinations—She is pardonable if she still spreads the veil of decorum over her actions. Hypocrisy is said to be “the homage which sin pays to virtue,” and yet I can see no vice in that generous sympathy with which we share our caprices with those who have inspired us with tenderness,—

I trust you will think well enough of me soon to renew the pleasure you afforded me last P.M., and I therefore write to remind you that there is a sensible head as well as a sympathetic heart, both of which would gladly evolve wit & warmth for your direction & comfort.—You have already my whereabouts & my hours—It shall only depend upon you to make them yours and me the happiest of women.

I am always Yours sincerely, Ellen Eyre[1]

Comment

To begin with, let's recognize that any analysis of what is going on between Eyre and Whitman is complicated by the fact that we know nothing of Eyre's/Calkin's gender identity or biological sex.

To further complicate any analysis of Eyre's/Calkin's letter, their opening statement to Whitman takes on multiple ironies in light of the later revelation that they were a “conman” blackmailer.

First, Eyre's statement that “I fear you took me last night for a female privateer” (a female prostitute) is ironic in that Eyre's goal, just like a prostitute's, was probably cash.

Second, Eyre's claim that “it's true that I was sailing under false colors” is ironic in that the person identified in the press as male and a blackmailer was certainly “sailing under false colors.”

Third, Eyre's reiteration, “But the flag I assure you covered nothing piratical,” is ironic in that their conning and blackmailing was precisely “piratical.”

Finally, does Eyre's admission that she “was sailing under false colors” suggest that Whitman had recognized Eyre to be a cross-dressed man?

Note that Eyre's quoted words were drawn from Thomas Gray's poem “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”: “Full many a gem of purest ray serene, / The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear: / Full many a flow’r is born to blush unseen, / And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”[2]

Notes

[1] Ellen Eyre to Walt Whitman, March 25, 1862, in The Walt Whitman Archive, ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, and Kenneth M. Price (Lincoln: Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska–Lincoln), https://whitmanarchive.org/item/loc.00588. See also Walt Whitman Papers in the Charles E. Feinberg Collection, General Correspondence, 1841–1892: Eyre, Ellen, 1862 (includes Horace Traubel's copy of the letter), Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/mss1863000169/.

[2] Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” Poetry Foundation, accessed September 21, 2026, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44299/elegy-written-in-a-country-churchyard.