The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Fred Vaughan to Walt Whitman, 2 May 1862
Date: May 2, 1862
Whitman Archive ID: loc.00589
Source: Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. The transcription presented here is derived from Calamus Lovers: Walt Whitman's Working-Class Camerados, ed. Charley Shively (San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1987), 48. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Elizabeth Lorang, Eric Conrad, Blake Bronson-Bartlett, Kathryn Kruger, and Nick Krauter
Walt,
I1 am to be marri'd 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 axious you should come.—
Truly yours,
Fred
Notes:
1. 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." [back]