Thirty-Second Issue: Natalie Clifford Barney and Her Lovers

Natalie Clifford Barney was a writer who was American but lived in Paris and ran a salon, where tons of writers and artists from the US, France, and Britain gathered. She supported writing by women and was a lesbian, publishing love poetry to women as a way to “get rid of nuisances” which is what she called men who were interested in her. She was a feminist, a pacifist, and believed in polyamory. She had tons of relationships and her life and loves inspired many books.

Natalie was born in 1876 in Ohio, and her parents were wealthy. When she was a kid, she was playing one day, and Oscar Wilde was there. He sat her on his knee and told her a story and he talked to her mother on the beach and inspired her to do art – Natalie’s mother, Alice, not Natalie. Some of her art is now in the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Natalie went to a French boarding school, the same one Eleanor Roosevelt went to, and all her published works were in French. She spoke the language fluently. Natalie said that by the time she was twelve she knew she was gay. In 1899, she saw a courtesan named Liane de Pougy in a dance hall in Paris and she fell in love, so she dressed up as a page and went to her house. She said she was a “page of love sent by Sappho” and charmed Liane. They had a short affair. Natalie kept talking about “rescuing” Liane from her life as a courtesan though, and Liane wasn’t into it. Natalie had resolved to live her life openly. She said homosexuality was natural and that her “queerness is not a vice, is not deliberate, and harms no one.” Below is a picture of Natalie.

 

In 1893, Natalie dated a woman named Eva Palmer-Sikelianos. Eva was tall and had long red hair with green eyes and pale skin. They shared an apartment in Paris, and even later when they each had their own places Natalie would ask Eva to help her when she was trying to pursue other women. Eventually Eva went to Greece and married a man named Angelos, which Natalie got upset about. Later in life they made up. Here's a picture of Eva:

 

 

In 1899, Natalie met a woman named Pauline Tarn, who was a poet and went by a pen name: Renée Vivien. Pauline loved her at first sight, and Natalie was into her because she heard her poem that was “haunted by the desire for death”. Super goth. They were both inspired to write, mainly about love between women and heroic women in history. They studied Greek so they could read Sappho and wrote plays about her. Unfortunately, Pauline was into monogamy and fidelity and Natalie was not. They broke up, and Natalie tried to get her back for years. She even had her friend sing under Pauline’s window and threw a poem wrapped around a bouquet of flowers up to her balcony. Here's a picture of Natalie with Pauline.

 

 

In 1904, Natalie wrote a poem and gave it to Pauline to get her back. It worked, and they went together to Lesbos and talked about starting a school of poetry for women there, just like Sappho had. However, Pauline got a letter from a past girlfriend, Baroness Hélène van Zuylen, and went to go break up with her in person, but when she got to Constantinople she got back with her. Pauline ate very little and drank a lot, and she was addicted to drugs. She died in 1908. Natalie said, “She could not be saved. Her life was a long suicide. Everything turned to dust and ashes in her hands.”

Natalie’s poetry got positive reviews and often people didn’t realize or deliberately did not talk about the lesbian themes of the poems. Her parent didn’t really approve so Natalie started publishing under pseudonyms until her father died in 1902, leaving her a good amount of money as well.

Natalie’s literary salon ran for more than sixty years. One visitor said that the salon was “a place where lesbian assignations and appointments with academics could coexist in a kind of cheerful, cross-pollinating, cognitive dissonance.” There were poetry readings, theatricals, and one time Mata Hari rode “into the garden as Lady Godiva on a white horse harnessed with turquoise cloisonné.^”

During World War I the salon was filled with people who were against the war, and in the 1920s Ezra Pound visited a lot. So did Edna St. Vincent Millay, as well as countless other poets, writers, musicians and singers. James Joyce came by once but he wasn’t into it. Ernest Hemingway never stopped in even though he was in the same circles at the time.

Natalie dated a LOT of people. She eventually was better known for her relationships than for her salon or writing. She divided out a list one time of all the people she had been with into liaisons, demi-liaisons, and adventures. Often times her shorter adventures turned into lifelong friendships, like the one she had with Colette. I’ll talk about a couple of the people that she dated, but they honestly are so fascinating in their own right I could write just about them and have a whole nother issue of the newsletter.

Élisabeth de Gramont was a writer and she was an aristocrat who was descended of Henry IV of France. She didn’t like the world of wealth she had grown up in and was into socialism, so she became known as the “red duchess”. She was married with kids when Natalie met her, but her husband was the worst, violent and abusive, and they separated. In 1918 she wrote a marriage contract with Natalie instead, and wasn’t super happy with Natalie’s tendency to have other lovers, but she eventually went out of her way to be gracious to them, even inviting them out together. They saw each other until Elisabeth died in 1954. This is what Elisabeth looked like:

 

 

Natalie’s longest relationship was with Romaine Brooks, the famous American painter. Romaine also didn’t do super well with Natalie’s affairs with other people, but she tolerated them. She didn’t want to live with Natalie full-time though, because she preferred to be alone and Natalie was super social. To fix this, Natalie and Romaine built a summer home with two separate wings connected by a dining room. Romaine and Natalie both travelled a lot, but they did stay together for over fifty years. Here is a picture of the two of them:

 

 

Oscar Wilde, who Natalie had met as a girl, had a wild, hard-partying niece named Dolly Wilde. Dolly was witty and talented, but never really wrote anything other than letters. She translated a lot, and lived off of other people, including Natalie. Dolly drank a lot, was a heroin addict, and tried to kill herself a few times. Natalie paid for her to go to rehab, but it never worked. When World War II broke out, Dolly fled to England and Natalie went to Italy, so they separated and Dolly died that next year. To read more about Dolly, you could read this which has more about her life: http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/schenkar-wilde.html

During World War II, at first Natalie took the side of the Axis Powers, which was not a good look especially because she herself was a quarter Jewish. Eventually she changed her mind and supported the Allies, and she did help a Jewish couple escape Italy during the war, giving them money for places on a ship to the United States.

Her house with Romaine was ruined by the bombing. After the war, Romaine stayed in Italy and Natalie lived in Paris. They visited each other all the time and actually stayed monogamous until the 1950s when Natalie met another lover, Janine Lahovary. Janine did make a point of becoming friends with Romaine, and Natalie assured Romaine that she always came first.

Natalie started her salon up again in 1949, with guests such as Truman Capote, Alice Toklas, and others. Natalie wrote a couple more books and helped to promote Romaine’s paintings at the same time. In the late 1960s Romaine became depressed and paranoid and wouldn’t see the doctors that Natalie hired to come check her out. Romaine became upset that Janine was still around and broke up with Natalie, not answering any of her letters. Romaine died in 1970, and Natalie died two years later. They’re buried together in Paris.