Search >> Vaughan, Frederick B. ( Fred ) (1837-)

Stage Driver.

Little is known about Fred Vaughan outside of his affiliation with what was known as the "Fred Gray Association," a group of young men at Pfaff's whom Ed Folsom and Ken Price characterize as "a loose confederation of young men who seemed anxious to explore new possibilities of male-male affection" (Re-Scripting 62). Folsom and Price argue that Vaughan, a young stage driver of Irish origin with whom Whitman "clearly had an intense relationship at this time [i.e., the Pfaff's period]," is identified as a possible inspiration for "the sequence of homoerotic love poems Whitman called 'Live Oak, with Moss'" (62). After leaving Pfaff's, Vaughan married and fathered four children; his contact with Whitman in the post-Pfaff's period was sporadic.

[view works by this person]

References & Biographical Resources

Charley Shiveley, ed. Calamus Lovers: Walt Whitman's Working-Class Camerados. San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1987. [more about this work]

Shiveley describes Fred Vaughan as the man "who formed the prototype for Whitman's future lovers" (14). He further asserts that Whitman wrote the Calamus sequence in Leaves of Grass for Vaughan (14).

The author notes that, in addition to being lovers, Vaughan and Whitman lived together (38). It was during this time that Whitman wrote the Calamus poems (39).

Although the relationship eventually began to fall apart, Shiveley notes that Whitman and Vaughan still managed to meet "regularly; only now they met in the semi-gay bar Pfaff's" (40).

According to Shiveley, the end of romantic relationship between Vaughan and Whitman came about after Vaughan impregnated a woman and then married her in 1862 (40).

Shiveley paints a bleak portrait of Vaughan's life after Whitman. He became a father of four or more sons, worked numerous jobs--including elevator operator and insurance salesman, and drank "heavily" (41). [pages: 14, 16, 36-50]

Epstein, Daniel Mark. Lincoln and Whitman: Parallel Lives in Civil War Washington. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2004. 379 p. [more about this work]

[pages: 55]

Folsom, Ed and Kenneth M. Price. Re-Scripting Walt Whitman: An Introduction to His Life and Work. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. [more about this work]

Vaughan, a young stage driver of Irish origin with whom Whitman "clearly had an intense relationship at this time [i.e., the Pfaff's period]," is identified as a possible inspiriation for "the sequence of homoerotic love poems Whitman called 'Live Oak, with Moss.'" After leaving Pfaff's Vaughan married and fathered four children. His contact with Whitman in the post-Pfaff's period was sporadic. [pages: 62]

Folsom, Ed and Kenneth M. Price. "Walt Whitman." The Walt Whitman Archive. http://www.whitmanarchive.org, 2006. [more about this work]

Foslom and Price write, "It may have been at Pfaff’s that Whitman met Fred Vaughan, an intriguing mystery-figure in Whitman biography. Whitman and Vaughan, a young Irish stage driver, clearly had an intense relationship at this time, perhaps inspiring the sequence of homoerotic love poems Whitman called 'Live Oak, with Moss,' poems that would become the heart of his Calamus cluster, which appeared in the 1860 edition of Leaves. These poems record a despair about the failure of the relationship, and the loss of Whitman’s bond with Vaughan—who soon married, had four children, and would only sporadically keep in touch with Whitman—was clearly the source of some deep unhappiness for the poet."

Katz, Jonathan Ned. Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001. [more about this work]

Vaughan claimed to have stopped by to see Whitman at Pfaff's before he left for Boston in 1860. [pages: 123-125]

Levin, Joanna Dale. American Bohemias, 1858-1912: A Literary and Cultural Geography. Ph.D Dissertation; Stanford University, 2001. 394 p. [more about this work]

Vaughn, a stagecoach driver, is mentioned as a friend and possible lover of Whitman. Vaughn specified that Pfaff's was "a favorite meeting-place" of his (28). [pages: 28]

Stansell, Christine. "Whitman at Pfaff's: Commercial Culture, Literary Life and New York Bohemia at Mid-Century." Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. 10.3 (1993): 107-126. [more about this work]

Stansell refers to him as Whitman's "working-class lover" and suggests that they may have met at Pfaff's (111). [pages: 111]