Life & Letters

Correspondence

About this Item

Title: Fred B. Vaughan to Walt Whitman, 2 May 1862

Date: May 2, 1862

Whitman Archive ID: loc.00589

Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Transcribed from digital images or a microfilm reproduction of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.

Contributors to digital file: Alex Kinnaman, Elizabeth Lorang, Eric Conrad, Blake Bronson-Bartlett, Kathryn Kruger, Nick Krauter, and Stephanie Blalock



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Walt,

I am to be married tomorrow, Saturday at 3 o'cl at 213 W. 43rd St.—near 8th Ave.

I shall have no show! I have invited no company.—

I want you to be there.—

Do not fail please, as I am very anxious you should come.1

Truly yours,
Fred

New York
May 2/62


Correspondent:
Fred Vaughan was a young Irish stage driver with whom Whitman had an intense relationship during the late 1850's. For discussion of Vaughan's relationship with Whitman, see Jonathan Ned Katz, Love Stories: Sex between Men before Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 123–132; Charley Shively, Calamus Lovers: Walt Whitman's Working-Class Camerados (San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1987), 36–50; Ed Folsom and Kenneth M. Price, Re-Scripting Walt Whitman: An Introduction to His Life and Work, "Chapter 4: Intimate Script and the New American Bible: "Calamus" and the Making of the 1860 Leaves of Grass."

Notes:

1. If Whitman attended Vaughan's wedding, there is no description of the occasion in any of the poet's surviving records. Vaughan's later letters do not mention the ceremony. [back]


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