In the spring of 1862 he [Whitman] may have had a brief affair with a woman who sent her servant to deliver a letter to Whitman “At Pfaff’s Restaurant, Broadway, New York,” signing herself protectively “Ellen Eyre.” He could have met her anywhere. Perhaps she was, like him, a hospital visitor. He did notice a lady (“I dare not mention her name, but she is beautiful”) moving through the wards with small gifts she had brought to distribute  . . ..
Whatever pleasure he shared with “Ellen Eyre” on a Monday night in March, it was one she longed to repeat. “I fear,” she wrote, “you took me last night for a female privateer. It is time I was sailing under my true colors.—but then today I assume you cared [sic] nothing piratical though I would joyfully have made your heart a captive.”

-Philip Callow

          Philip Callow From Noon to Starry Night (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1992) 277-278; “Eyre’s” letter is in the Oscar Lion Collection, Rare Book Room, New York Public Library.