Rat & the Devil: Journal letters of F. O. Matthiessen and Russell Cheney

by F.O. Matthiessen

Rat and the Journal Letters of F.O. Matthiessen and Russell Cheney , edited and published by Matthiessen's friend Louis Hyde in 1978, provides selections from over twenty years of correspondence between Matthiessen and Cheney, chronicles their relationship, and demonstrates how these two men, without a sense of gay community, constructed their identities from reading and writing.(From GLBTQ Literature)

408 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

Reviews

[Larry-bob Roberts]

Recently finished reading Rat & The Devil: Journal Letters of F.O. Matthiessen and Russell Cheney (SF Public Library copy). Grad student turned Harvard professor Matthiessen (nicknamed Devil) & painter Cheney (nicknamed Rat) met on a ship to Europe in 1924 and had a relationship until Cheney’s death in 1945. Cheney was 20 years older, but both were Yale graduates. Mattheissen wrote the acclaimed book American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman.

After meeting in September 1924, Matthiessen went to study at Oxford, England, while Cheney went to paint in Italy. They wrote almost daily and met up for Christmas break in Italy. M returned to England and C painted in France. In their early letters, Walt Whitman & Edward Carpenter are cited as inspirations for their same-sex relationship.

They rendezvoused in Paris. Cheney returned to the U.S. first for a show of paintings

Eventually after they returned to the US, Mattheissen became a professor at Harvard. Cheney was often off painting in Europe or the western US, but they had a summer house together in Kittery, Maine and had cats. Cheney had lung problems and couldn’t spend winters in the Northeast. Also he struggled with alcoholism in a time before effective treatment.

The correspondence gets darker. Some of the letters are written from hospitals after drinking binges or in winter stays in warmer climes because of lung ailments. Mattheissen was productive with writing books and teaching but also suffered from depression and was worried about his partner’s drinking and health.

I was alerted to read the letters of Matthiessen and Cheney by a mention in New Directions publisher James Laughlin’s memoir Byways - Matthiessen had been a professor of his at Harvard. (No mention of Laughlin in this book of letters though.)

You can see Cheney’s paintings and find out more at www.russellcheney.com