#peter doyle

knowhomo:

LGBTQ* Couples You Should Know:

Walt Whitman and Peter Doyle

“Many literary scholars consider Walt Whitman [the United States of America]’s most influential poet. Widely referred to as the father of free verse, he liberated poetry from rhyme and meter, opening it up to the flexible rhythms of feeling and voice. The works collected in Leaves of Grass pay homage to the freedom and dignity of the individual while celebrating democracy and the brotherhood of man, even though early critics condemned his references to same-sex love as being obscene.

Peter Doyle was a 21-year-old conductor on a horse-drawn streetcar when he and Whitman, who was at the time, began their romantic relationship. During their quarter-century marriage, Doyle became Whitman’s muse…

Despite the men being attracted to each other, family circumstances kept them from living together. Whitman repeatedly told his young partner that he wanted them to set up housekeeping as a couple, but Doyle insisted that it was his duty, as the oldest unmarried son, to live with and care for his widowed mother. And so, Whitman had to be satisfied with spending most nights with Doyle, either at a hotel or at the poet’s rooming house, while the two maintained separate residences.”

FromOutlaw Marriages: The Hidden Histories of Fifteen Extraordinary Same-Sex Couples by Roger Streitmatter

To read more about this couple, check out Calamus: A Series of Letters Written During 1868-1880 to a Young Friend (Peter Doyle), edited by Richard Maurice Bucke.