Timeline: Walt Whitman and Same-Sex Sex Intimacy, 1848-2021

A chronology of references to same-sex desire and sexual activity in the life of Walt Whitman and in the works of Whitman's biographers and critics. This timeline is a collaborative work-in-progress. Some of the language used and concepts referenced, influenced by colonialism, imperialism, racism, sexism, and anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs and practices, might have been considered offensive or otherwise problematic by the individuals discussed in the historical documents; some might be considered offensive or otherwise problematic by LGBTQ+ people today or in the future. All of this is part of LGBTQ+ history. We welcome new contributions; please contact outhistory@gmail.com. First published on OutHistory in 2020; last edited in 2023.

Timeline: Walt Whitman and Same-Sex Sex Intimacy, 1840s-present

1840-00-00 [early 1840s]: Photo of bohemian Walt Whitman with hat and cane and small beard, smiling. Jonathan Ned Katz, Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality, 33.

1841-11-20: Walt Whitman publishes "The Child's Champion" in the New World, a widely distributd literary weekly. Jonathan Ned Katz, Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality, 34.

1848--02-00: In late February 1848, a 28-year-old Whitman and his younger brother, Jeff, arrived in New Orleans on the steamboat St. Cloud. While Whitman's later poem published as “Once I Pass’d Through a Populous City” recounts a New Orleans romance with a woman, the original manuscript proves a male lover was his inspiration.

1855-00-00: Walt Whitman publishes the first edition of Leaves of Grass.

1855-00-00: Reviewing the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, a critic at the New York Herald objected to Whitman’s “disgusting Priapism.”

1855-00-00: A review in 1855 in the New York Criterion rebuked the book as “a mass of stupid filth.”

1855-00-00: In 1855 a New York Times critic accused Whitman of rooting “like a pig among a rotten garbage of licentious thoughts.”

1855-11-10: In the November 10, 1855, issue of The Criterion, Rufus Griswold anonymously reviewed the first edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, declaring: "It is impossible to image how any man's fancy could have conceived such a mass of stupid filth." Griswold charged that Whitman was guilty of "the vilest imaginings and shamefullest license," a "degrading, beastly sensuality." Referring to Whitman's poetry, Griswold said he left "this gathering of muck to the laws which...must have the power to suppress such gross obscenity." He ended with: "The records of crime show that many monsters have gone on in impunity, because the exposure of their vileness was attended with too great indelicacy. "Peccatum illud horribile, inter Christianos non nominandum" [That horrible sin, not to be mentioned among Christians]. Note that this is specifically a reference to sodomery and buggery, most often referring to anal sex between men. Griswold was the first person in the 19th century to publicly point to and stress the theme of erotic desire and acts between men in Whitman's poetry. More attention to that aspect of Whitman's poetry surfaced late in the 19th century. Source: https://whitmanarchive.org/criticism/reviews/lg1855/anc.00016.html. See also the Wikipedia entry on Griswold and Jonathan Ned Katz, Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality.

1850-00-00: Late 1850s, dating inexact. Fred Vaughan lived with Whitman.

1862-00-00: Emily Dickinson confides in an 1862 letter to Thomas Higginson that she has not read Leaves of Grass but had heard Whitman was “disgraceful.”

1862-03-25: Ellen Eyre: to Walt Whitman, March 25, 1862. On March 25, 1862, Walt Whitman received the following letter addressed to him at Pfaff’s, the bar on the corner of Bleeker Street and Broadway.

Tuesday Mar 25 1862

Walt Whitman

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."[1]

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] These lines originally appear in Thomas Gray's poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard": "Full many a gem of purest ray serene, / The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear: / Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, / And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Ellen Eyre/William Kinney/Dr. B. Coffin

Scholars long argued about the identity of Ellen Eyre, all of them assuming that the writer was a female.

But in 2009, Ted Genoways provided evidence that Eyre was a man, William Kinney. A note on the website of the Whitman Archive explains:

"Ellen Eyre" was one of conman William Kinney's various pseudonyms. In 1862 Kinney managed to establish a fraudulent medical practice on Broadway between 8th and 9th under the name "Dr. B. Coffin." Running his scam as Dr. Coffin during the day, Kinney's evenings were spent posing as "Mrs. Ellen Eyre." As Eyre, Kinney would send letters to prominent men in New York; the men would agree to meet Eyre at the time and place appointed by her in the letter. As Ted Genoways notes, "What exactly transpired thereafter is veiled in niceties of the period, but the letters from several suitors, published later in the Sunday Mercury, are highly suggestive. One invited Eyre for some 'twilight entertainment,' another thanked her for 'your "loving kindness" at our last meeting.' One man, offended at being asked for money, wrote that he never considered 'our tender relations in the light of a financial operation.'" Kinney was eventually arrested after a sting operation exposed Ellen Eyre's true identity: Kinney performing sexual favors dressed as a woman and later blackmailing men to keep the affair discrete.

Eyre's interest in Whitman (and Whitman's interest in Eyre) remains unclear. Genoways summarizes some of the questions raised by Whitman and Eyre's encounter: "Is 'Ellen Eyre' attempting to elicit an admission from Whitman that he saw through the disguise, or is the young conman intent on extending his deception? If the latter, how complete could the deception have been? If Whitman clearly recognized his attire as a disguise, did he also recognize that 'Ellen Eyre' was attempting to disguise not just his identity but his gender? Was Whitman's interest, in other words, in the young woman 'Ellen Eyre' or the young man who arrived at Pfaff's under the shadowy light of the cellar's torches in the garb of a woman?" (For a later Whitman comment on Ellen Eyre see below: July 8, 1862.)

1862-07-08: Walt Whitman writes in a diary/notebook: "Frank Sweeney (July 8th ’62), 5th Ave. Brown face, large features, black moustache (is the one I told the whole story to about Ellen Eyre)--talks very little." Whitman, Walt. Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, edited by Edward Grier (New York: New York University Press, 1984). 488-89.

1863-10-09: Whitman writes in a diary/notebook: "Jerry Taylor [Oct. 9, 1863; Washington. D.C.], N.J. of 2d dist. reg't slept with me last night. Katz, Gay American History, p. 500; also see Note 140.

1868-00-00: Richard M. Bucke, Calamus: A Series of Letters Written During the Years 1868-1880 by Walt Whitman to a Young Friend (Peter Doyle).

1873-00-00: Horace Traubel is fifteen when he meets Whitman in 1873.

1875-00-00: In 1875 Whitman recalls with pleasure “the faces & voices of the boys” at Pfaff’s.

1874-00-00: "For some of these erstwhile Whitman lovers, in fact, marriage to a woman did not seem to fulfill their deepest emotional needs; rather poignantly, Fred Vaughan, with whom Whitman lived during the late 1850s, writes to Whitman in 1874: "There is never a day passes but what I think of you.... My love my Walt is with you always." (Charles Shively, Calamus Lovers, 50, quoted in Scott Giantvalley, review of Charles Shively, ed. Calamus Lovers: Walt Whitman's Working-Class Camerados, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 5 (Fall 1987): 35-37.)

1897-00-00: Richard M. Bucke, Calamus: A Series of Letters Written During the Years 1868-1880 by Walt Whitman to a Young Friend (Peter Doyle). Giantvalley: "in this case it was Doyle's letters that were lacking. The thinking was, since Doyle was neither an intellectual nor a creative artist, of what interest or value could his letters possibly be? The same could be said of many of Whitman's other correspondents-soldiers he helped in the hospitals during the Civil War, other young working-class men he met in the streets of New York or Washington. Yet with some of these young men Whitman had some of his most intense relationships." See Scott Giantvalley, review of Charles Shively, ed. Calamus Lovers: Walt Whitman's Working-Class Camerados, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 5 (Fall 1987): 35-37.

1905-00-00: The theory of Whitman's New Orleans romance with a woman, started by Henry Bryan Binns in his A Life of Walt Whitman (1905), proposes to explain the mystery of Whitman’s letter to John Addington Symonds in which he discussed his life down South and mentioned six illegitimate children (for which there is no documented evidence). See Scott Giantvalley, review of Charles Shively, ed. Calamus Lovers: Walt Whitman's Working-Class Camerados, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 5 (Fall 1987): 35-37, and Katz, Love Stories.

1914: Basil De Selincourt asserts in his 1914 critical study of Whitman that “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” bemoans the death of one who was all but wife to him—a genteel New Orleans lady.

1921: Emory Holloway published The Uncollected Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman (2 vols., 1921) after seven years of research.

1925: Emory Holloway discovered the original hand-written manuscript of “Once I Pass’d Through A Populous City,” showing the poet had changed the sex of the beloved person from a male to a female in the published poem.

1926: Emory Holloway publishes Whitman: An Interpretation in Narrative.

1960: Emory Holloway publishes Free and Lonesome Heart: The Secret of Walt Whitman (1960), a reply to critics who had charged him with ignoring evidence of Whitman's sexual orientation and behavior, laying out the controversy surrounding Whitman's "simple homosexual" disposition in the context of the disputed interpretation of "Once I Passed Through a Populous City", developing an extensive apologetic on Whitman's use of paradox and on the necessity for a poet to embody both male and female natures: "The key word in the comprehension of Whitman is 'balance'."

1962: Emory Holloway's last biographical work, Portrait of a Poet: The Life of Walt Whitman, was considered too lengthy for publication; it was ultimately deposited by Holloway in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library in 1962. The manuscript repeats much of the argument of Free and Lonesome Heart and includes detailed appendices supporting his positions.

1970-00-00: Walter Lowenfels in his edition of Whitman's erotic poetry, The Tenderest Lover (1970).

1972-06-00: Jonathan Ned Katz's documentary play Coming Out! includes a Whitman poem.

1978-00-00: Edward Carpenter, whose sexual experience with Whitman, cited in an interview with Allen Ginsberg later published in Gay Sunshine Interviews (1978) from an account by Gavin Arthur, has been ignored by Whitman commentators.

1983-00-00: Lewis Hyde in The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property. 1983. Sections on Whitman.

1985: M. J. Killingsworth essay for Walt Whitman: Here and Now (1985), edited by Joann P. Krieg. "Whitman's desire to dissociate himself from a libertine, aristocratic homosexuality that was European and upper-class in contrast to his democratic adhesiveness- has recently been explicated by M. J. Killingsworth" (see Scott Giantvalley, review of Charles Shively, ed. Calamus Lovers: Walt Whitman's Working-Class Camerados, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 5 (Fall 1987): 35-37).

1987-00-00: Charles Shively, ed. Calamus Lovers: Walt Whitman's Working-Class Camerados. Gay Sunshine Press, 1987.

1987-09-00 (Fall). Scott Giantvalley, review of Charles Shively, ed. Calamus Lovers: Walt Whitman's Working-Class Camerados, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 5 (Fall 1987): 35-37.

2003-06-15: Jonathan Ned Katz, Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, June 15, 2003.

2019-05-30: Lybarger, Jeremy. "Walt Whitman's Boys." Boston Review (May 30, 2019), bostonreview.net. [Reviews the long critical and biographical unease with Whitman's homosexuality and notes that, "on the poet's bicentennial, we are likely to see plenty of encomiums to Whitman's political idealism and democratic cheerleading, and perhaps gauzy reclamations of Whitman as a queer ancestor," but "identifying Whitman straightforwardly as a gay man in the way we now understand is fraught, not least of all because his sexual interests were less in adult men than in adolescents"; goes on to investigate the need "to reinterpret the poet in ways that have made generations of critical gatekeepers uncomfortable" and to confront "the reality of his 'boy love'"—something that "poses a complex challenge to those who have sought to enshrine him as a beloved LGBT ancestor"; argues that Whitman's "affinity" for "boys and young men . . . informed his life and his literary personas" and that "Whitman's brand of democracy was inextricable from his queerness" and "his worship of young male beauty": "The Whitman who matters most is the one who urged 'be not afraid of my body,' and whose deeply queer work is a hymn to love, no matter how unconventional, how unrequited."]

2021-06--00: Herzer-Wigglesworth, Manfred. "Der Streit um Walt Whitmans Homosexualität und Magnus Hirschfelds Zwischenstufenlehre" ["The Dispute Over Walt Whitman's Homosexuality and Magnus Hirschfeld's Doctrine of Sexual Intermediaries"]. Zeitschrift für Sexualforschung 34 (June 2021), 97-102.[Investigates how Magnus Hirschfeld learned from Eduard Bertz about Whitman's homosexuality and accepted it, even though according to Hirschfeld's own "doctrine of sexual intermediaries" it marked the poet as a "degenerate seducer of youth"; shows how writers Gustav Landauer and Thomas Mann agreed with Hirscheld's view that "homosexuality is just as healthy and normal as heterosexuality"; in German.]