A valentine to us all
Through successes and failures and periods of depression,
they share a friendship and a love that defines what is special
about gay love between men
B Y
E R I C
R O F
E S
Rat and the Devil: Journal Letters o f F.O.
Matthiessen and Russell Cheney, edited by
Louis Hyde (Alyson Publications, $9.95).
s our contemporary gay and lesbian com­
munity becomes interested in the inner
workings of couples, a book is published that
provides us with an illuminating and moving
account of the relationship between two remark­
able homosexual men who found each other in
A
the 1920s. Rat and the Devil: Journal Letters of
F.O. Matthiessen and Russell Cheney provides
us with an intimate look into the lives of a
Harvard professor and a Maine painter who
began a twenty-year love affair in 1924. Their
story — told through a collection of letters
between them — is a rare and wonderful look at
gay identity, substance abuse and love between
men during a time when we have few firsthand
accounts. Thank goodness these letters were
rescued from an archive and published!
Quite separately, as individuals, these men
made their mark on American culture.
M atthiessen, well known as a champion of
American literature through his groundbreaking
book American Renaissance, which is still used
in college classes, was a popular teacher, writer
and political activist in Cambridge until his
death by suicide in 1950. Cheney, the darling
son o f an old New England family and the
“ older m an” in this relationship, traveled
throughout America and Europe making a name
for him self with painting. Their union — and
I've seen that word applied to many couples less
worthy o f the term — provided each man with
the foundation to live a life with some degree of
integrity and openness during very repressive
years.
They met by chance aboard the ocean liner
Paris on a trans-Atlantic journey in 1924. Their
meeting is recounted in a letter written by
M atthiessen to his Yale classmate Russell W.
Davenport, and is fascinating both because of
M atthiessen’s joy at finding a gentleman of like
mind and because of its clear connection to the
long line o f gossip, storytelling and dishing that
constitutes the history o f queens:
Came two o ’clock, and we went down to our
cabins. Now, I said, steeled by desperation, now,
now. I’ll never get up courage enough if I don’t
do it now. So I sat Rat down in a chair in my cabin
on the pretense of giving him some fruit before
we went to bed. And while his mouth was stuffed
with a pear, I said in a voice that attempted to
maintain its usual pass the bread, please conver­
sational tone, but which sounded queer and
remote for all that:
“ I know it won’t make any difference to our
friendship, but there’s one thing I’ve got to tell
you: before (my extraordinary senior year at
Yale) I was sexually inverted. Of course I’ve
controlled it since. . . ”
The munching of the pear died away. There
followed perhaps half a minute of the most
heavily freighted silence I have ever felt. Then, in
a far away voice I had never heard came the
answer: “ My God, feller, you’ve turned me
upside down. I’m that way too.”
Coming out to each other — 1920s style — and
from this point on through 20 years of time
together and time apart traveling, through suc­
cesses and failures and periods of depression,
they share a friendship and a love that defines
— to me at least — what is special about gay
love between men.
The issues are all there: talking about cruising
other men in dark alleys, monogamy and sexual
issues, how a couple articulates itself and its
values to straight friends. The letters take the
reader on a journey down a special path of love.
The twists and turns are there, but so are many
golden sunsets and warm hugs.
Two aspects o f the relationship and the book
demand special attention. The first is the
manner in which their identity as “ inverts”
undergoes a period o f transition during the 20
years. Matthiessen and Cheney discuss Whit­
man, Carpenter, Havelock Ellis, and one can
note specific changes in their conceptualizations
o f themselves and their love as new concepts of
sexual identity are popularized. While a subtext
throughout the letters reveals a deep and
ominous homophobia and sex-negative attitude
on both m en’s part (Matthiessen appears to
have quite deliberately avoided other homo­
sexual men at Harvard; both fall into tradi­
tionally moralistic attitudes about their sexual
urges and guilt drips from some of the finer
passages o f the book), at other times they seem
brazenly open about being gay.
Some have argued that Matthiessen’s suicide,
a few short years after Cheney’s death. was due
less to his political feelings about the state ot the
world during the Cold War — the traditional
view o f his death — than to the fact that he
could only survive as a homosexual within the
trappings o f a relationship that appeared, on
many levels, to be a standard marriage.
The other fascinating aspect of this book
involves Cheney’s obvious problem with con­
trolling his alcoholism, and Matthiessen’s con­
sistently co-alcoholic response. It was not until
the ’70s that gay men as a community began to
address issues of addiction and co-addiction,
but these men appear as textbook examples —
much like Auden and his Chester. Matthiessen’s
attempts to keep Cheney sober — through any
means possible — add a dimension to the rela­
tionship that is both comic and tragic. For any­
one interested in a portrait o f a couple tangled in a
web o f addiction-related issues, this book will
have special meaning.
Louis Hyde is to be commended for editing
his friends’ letters — controversial when first
published in hardcover in the ’70s — and
Alyson is to be commended for making the
book accessible in paperback. These men with
their lovey-dovey nicknames are fertile ground
for more scholarship and for treatment in
theatrical settings. These letters are a valentine
to all o f us.
•
Eric Rofes is a former teacher, a writer and the
executive director of the Los Angeles Gay and
Lesbian Community Services Center.
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