Twenty-Seventh Issue: Winnaretta Singer

Winnaretta Singer had a pretty cool life. Her dad was Isaac Singer, of singer sewing machines, and her mom was French. She and her twenty three siblings along with her mom and dad, lived in a 115 room mansion growing up in England (she was American but the family moved because of the civil war). 

 

 

When her dad died, her mom moved the family to Paris, where Winnaretta was married to a prince at the age of 22. The marriage did not work out because Winnaretta was a lesbian and reportedly told the prince if he came near her she’d kill him (on their wedding night).

After the Prince, Winnaretta married an older gay man named Edmond Polignac. He was having money problems, and his nephews suggested he marry a rich woman. Winnaretta was a lesbian so that was easy, she had tons of money, and her social status could benefit from marrying a prince, especially after she had just gotten divorced. Both of them were interested in music. They had an unconsummated marriage where they did not share a bed but did share artistic interests. They became friends, and in 1893 they were married.

 

 

Winnaretta was a patron in public musical circles, and she hosted a music salon in her house with her husband. It had an organ, a two story ceiling, and two grand pianos. She hosted famous performers at the time, and one of the regulars was Marcel Proust with his boyfriend Reynaldo Hahn. His musical education took place at the salon.  Winnaretta and her husband visited Europe and hung out in Italy. Just before his death, Edmond Polignac collaborated with the famous dancer Isadora Duncan.

 

 

Isadora Duncan was fascinating in her own right. Known mainly for being a dancer, she was bisexual, an atheist, and probably a communist too. This was the early twentieth century! Isadora had two kids. One was named Dierdre, and the other was named Patrick. His father was Paris Singer, one of Winnaretta’s brothers. Both children died in 1913 in a tragic accident. The next year, Isadora wanted another baby so she asked a stranger to sleep with her. Unfortunately that baby died just after birth. Isadora married a poet named Sergei Yesenin, nearly 20 years younger than her, just after the Russian Revolution, but the marriage only lasted a year. Isadora dated Mercedes de Acosta for a while. We know this because of letters they wrote each other. One of them said “Mercedes, lead me with your little strong hands and I will follow you – to the top of a mountain. To the end of the world. Wherever you wish.”

Anyway, back to WInnaretta, she was only 29 when she got married, and so when her husband died she was still young. She had many affairs with ladies and he had many with men while they were both alive and married to each other.  She dated other married women, and some of them didn’t have the same kind of arrangement than she did. One husband actually yelled up to her window one night “if you are half the man I think you are, you will come out here and fight me!”

She dated Olga de Meyer (whose godfather was Edward VII), and then Romaine Brooks, and Ethel Smyth. She dated Renata Borgatti, and then Violet Trefusis. She dated Alvilde Chaplin, and was living with her in 1943 when Winnaretta died. I was going to talk a little bit about the women she dated because they were all interesting, but she dated too many for me to write about all of them! Feel free to click the links to learn more about them if you're interested though. 

A part of Winnaretta’s life that was often overlooked was that she was not only well connected and very involved in the arts, she was also into community service. She paid to build several public housing developments in Paris, as well as a hospital and nursing school. During World War I she hung out with Marie Curie, setting up mobile radiology units in converted limousines to help wounded soldiers on the front.

If you’d like to learn more about Winnaretta, here are a few links that you might find interesting. My apologies at the amount of time between newsletters. Please let me know if you have any suggestions for future topics! At the moment most of what I have to write about is historical lesbians and that's great but I probably should have some variety in topics.