Natalie Clifford Barney was an American playwright, poet and novelist who lived as an expatriate in '
Gay Paree' ..... literally
.... she couldn't have started further away, being born in 1876 in Dayton, Ohio, USA. She was tutored in French, which gave her a lifelong interest in all things French, and when her family moved to Washington, she was soon making headlines. As the rebellious and unconventional daughter of one of the wealthiest families in town, she was
often mentioned in Washington newspapers. In her early twenties she made
headlines by galloping through Bar Harbor while driving a second horse on a lead ahead of her, and by riding
astride instead of sidesaddle Ooh la Laa 
As an adult she spoke French fluently without an accent and made her home in Paris. In 1899, aged 23 she saw the courtesan Liane de Pougy (who has a
post here), at a dance hall in Paris, Barney presented herself at de Pougy's residence in a page costume and announced she was a "
page of love" sent by Sappho..... Barney later said she knew
by age 12 she was lesbian and was determined to "live openly, without hiding anything". So they went
at it like knives, and their brief affair became the subject of de Pougy's tell-all roman à clef, 'Idylle Saphique' (Sapphic Idyll), which was published in 1901. The thinly disguised
kiss'n'tell tale of her love affair with Barney was soon became the talk of Paris (being
reprinted at least 69 times in its first year ...
I wonder why 
) ... everyone soon worked out who the sapphic couple were in the book.
The lesbian affair was a brief one, principally because Barney was a closet reformer, who repeatedly rowed with de Pougy over Barney's desire to "
rescue" de Pougy from her life as a courtesan, and de Pougy had cast her aside. However, the grass hadn't grown much, before she had her fancy tickled by the poetess Pauline Tarn (aka by her pen name 'Renée Vivien') in 1899, and before long they were also at it like a couple of stoats in a bag. They studied Greek so that they could read
read the works of Sappho to each other ... but a lovers tiff ended with Vivien refusing to see Barney for a long while. She tried everything, including persuading a friend, operatic mezzo-soprano Emma Calvé, to sing under Vivien's window .... this kinda worked becasue they reconciled and travelled together to Lesbos.
but Vivien was a two timing little minx, who had another lover, the Baroness de Zuylen de Nyevelt and left Barney for good, but died in 1909 (
after a suicide attempt in 1908). Years later Barney said "
She could not be saved. Her life was a long suicide. Everything turned to dust and ashes in her hands".
In 1900 Barney had published the first of many books, a collection of poems called Quelques Portraits-Sonnets de Femmes (Some Portrait-Sonnets of Women), which many reviewers glossed over the openly lesbian odes, but one society gossip paper cried out "
Sappho Sings in Washington" and this alerted her father, who bought and destroyed all the publisher's remaining stock and printing plates
His death in 1902 left her with a substantial fortune, and she never used a pseudonym again. The money allowed her to write what she wanted and not rely on sales, which was lucky or she would have starved to death .... that's not quite fair, she wrote a lot over the next six decades.
For over 60 years, Barney hosted a literary salon (attended by another of our gals,
Eva Le Gallienne), discussing literature, art, music and any other topic of interest. Joan Schenkar described Barney's salons as "
a place where lesbian assignations and appointments with academics could coexist in a kind of cheerful, cross-pollinating, cognitive dissonance" .... so there you are then. These gatherings attracted much gossip, when for example,
Mata Hari performed a dance once, after riding into the garden as Lady Godiva on a white horse....
Throughout her life she indulged openly in lesbian liaisons, and despite the
gossip and scandal this attracted, she was not put off living her own lifestyle.
Quotes:
"
My queerness is not a vice, is not deliberate, and harms no one".
Trivia:
- A chance meeting as a six years old child with Oscar Wilde, who befriended her and her mother, changed the course of her mother Alice's life, inspiring her to pursue a career as an artist seriously.
- Both Natalie and her sister, the writer Laura Clifford Barney were inspired by their mother, to have literary careers.
- Nearly all her published works were written in French.
Pictures:
