F. O. Matthiessen - Personal Life

Personal Life

Matthiessen, as a gay man in the 1930s and 1940s, chose to remain in the closet throughout his professional career, if not in his personal life – although traces of homoerotic concern are apparent in his writings. In 2009, a statement from Harvard University said that Matthiessen "stands out as an unusual example of a gay man who lived his sexuality as an 'open secret' in the mid-20th century."

He had a two decade long romantic relationship with the painter Russell Cheney, twenty years his senior. Like Matthiessen's family, Cheney's was prominent is business, being among America's leading silk producers. In planning to spend his life with Cheney, Matthiessen went as far as asking his cohort in the Yale secret society Skull and Bones to approve of their partnership. With Cheney having encouraged Matthiessen's interest in Whitman, it has been argued that American Renaissance was "the ultimate expression of Matthiessen's love for Cheney and a secret celebration of the gay artist." Throughout his teaching career at Harvard, Matthiessen maintained a residence in either Cambridge or Boston. However, the couple often retreated to their shared cottage in Kittery, Maine. Russell Cheney died in July 1945.

Matthiessen committed suicide by jumping from a Boston hotel window in 1950. He had been hospitalized once for a nervous breakdown in 1938-1939. He continued to be deeply affected by Russell Cheney's death. Commentators have speculated on the impact of the escalating Red Scare on Matthiessen's state of mind. Inquiries by the House Un-American Activities Committee into his politics may have been a contributing factor in his suicide. Writing in 1958, Eric Jacobsen referred to Matthiessen's death as "hastened by forces whose activities earned for themselves the sobriquet un-American which they sought so assiduously to fasten on others". However, in 1978 Harry Levin was more skeptical, saying only that "spokesmen for the Communist Party, to which he had never belonged, loudly signalized his suicide as a political gesture".

There is no doubt that Matthiessen was being targeted by anti-communist forces that would soon be exploited by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Clear evidence of this is reflected in the April 4, 1949 edition of Life Magazine. In an article subsection titled Dupes and Fellow Travelers Dress Up Communist Fronts, Matthiessen is pictured among fifty prominent academics, scientists, clergy and writers, including Albert Einstein, Arthur Miller, Lillian Hellman, Langston Hughes, Norman Mailer and fellow Harvard professors, Kirtley Mather, Corliss Lamont and Ralph Barton Perry. He spent the evening before his death at the home of his friend and colleague, Kenneth Murdock, Harvard's Higginson Professor of English Literature. In a note left in the hotel room, Matthiessen wrote, "I am depressed over world conditions. I am a Christian and a Socialist. I am against any order which interferes with that objective."

Matthiessen was buried at Springfield Cemetery in Springfield, Massachusetts.