Fitz-Greene Halleck - Sexuality

Sexuality

Halleck never married. His biographer Hallock believes that he was homosexual. He found that Halleck was enamored at the age of 19 with a young Cuban named Carlos Menie, to whom he dedicated a few of his early poems. Hallock suggests that Halleck was in love with his friend Joseph Rodman Drake and noted how he described serving as best man at Drake's wedding:

" has married, and, as his wife's father is rich, I imagine he will write no more. He was poor, as poets, of course, always are, and offered himself a sacrifice at the shrine of Hymen to shun the 'pains and penalties' of poverty. I officiated as groomsman, though much against my will. His wife was good natured, and loves him to distraction. He is perhaps the handsomest man in New York, - a face like an angel, a form like an Apollo; and, as I well knew that his person was the true index of his mind, I felt myself during the ceremony as committing a crime in aiding and assisting such a sacrifice."

Hallock also noted that Halleck's last major work, "Young America", was both "a jaded critique of marriage and a pederastic boy-worship reminiscent of classical homosexuality."

It was reported in the New York Times that in his will, Halleck asked for the body of his friend Drake to be dug up and reburied with him. In 1903, plans were set to move the bodies of Drake, his wife, daughter, sister, and nephew to Halleck's plot in Guilford.