Ada Clare (whose given name was Jane McIlheny) was born in South Carolina.
In this overview of Whitman's life and work, Folsom and Price make the following comments about the poet's connection to Pfaff's: "At Pfaff's, Whitman the former temperance writer began a couple of years of unemployed carousing; he was clearly remaking his image, going to bars more often than he had since he left New Orleans a decade earlier. At Pfaff's, he mingled with figures like Henry Clapp, the influential editor of the anti-establishment Saturday Press. . . . Whitman also became friends with many writers, some well known at the time: Ada Clare, Fitz-James O'Brien, George Arnold, and Edmund Clarence Stedman. It was here, too, that a young William Dean Howells met Whitman" (61).
"A loose confederation of young men who seemed anxious to explore new possibilities of male-male affection."
Whitman's connection with Pfaff's is mentioned on pages 61, 62, and 87.
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