No Modernism Without Lesbians by Diana Souhami (latest books to read txt) 📕

to his children. ‘The finest life is spent creating oneself, not procreating’ was Natalie’s view. ‘What makes marriage a double defeat is that it works on the lowest common denominator; neither of the ill-assorted pair gets what they want.’ Natalie was not going to battle with the male establishment to change man-made laws, or march for women’s right to vote or be deans of colleges, or lawyers, doctors, politicians. Nor, like Sylvia Beach, did she set herself a mission to accomplish, a goal to achieve. She took her own freedom as a birthright. Her defining characteristics were independence of thought and doing as she pleased.

Her inspired contribution was to be transparent about same-sex desire in a repressed and repressive age. Too impatient, privileged and self-occupied to give much time to a task or a cause, she led by candid example. Many women followed and were liberated by her courage. She bleached of stigma the language of same-sex love, was proud of her love affairs and cocked a snook at her detractors. ‘Why should I bother to explain myself to you who do not understand – or to you who do?’

Natalie Barney © Eyevine

She had a sort of moral compass, though of her own calibration. She valued and sustained friendship, dispensed with euphemism and guilt and tried to live the truth of what she felt. She bore no grudges, was patient with difficult partners and emotional frailty, and her lovers felt understood by her. ‘You are capable – and it’s your only fidelity – of loving a person for that which she is. For that I esteem you,’ the poet Lucie Delarue-Mardrus wrote to her. ‘I often reflect that nothing has come to me from you, great or small, that has not been good’ was Colette’s view.

On the downside, her multiple and overlapping involvements hurt many vulnerable women. Dolly Wilde, Renée Vivien, Romaine Brooks, Eva Palmer were among those who suffered being adored by Natalie one night but left alone because she was with someone else the next. And after a time, with the litany of so many women, and Natalie’s reluctance to draw a line as her list of lovers accrued, more really did come to seem like less.

mother. the first relationship

The first woman for whom Natalie said she felt ‘an absolute emotion’ was Alice Pike Barney, her mother:

When she bent over my bed before she went out to a party, she seemed more beautiful than anything in my dreams. I would stay awake anxiously waiting her return, for whenever she was away I was afraid something terrible might happen to her…

When she came home with my father, often very late at night, I would hear the rustling of her dress as she passed my bedroom. I would tiptoe barefoot toward the strip of light which shone under her door. I could not leave until she put out her lamp…

Mother – beautiful, beyond any dream, a strip of light under the door – induced sleeplessness and anxiety, was out of reach and set the bar for unattainable love.

Alice Pike Barney © Everett Collection Historical / Alamy

Alice Barney, a woman of formidable energy, enthusiasms and self-regard, was thwarted and denied expression, in her own and Natalie’s view, by her husband, Albert. On honeymoon in 1876, Alice realized that her marriage was a mistake. To her diaries she confided her contempt for Albert: his eyes were set too near together, his ideas were prejudiced and narrow, he had no soul.

Albert Barney, mortified and frustrated by her rejection, sought consolation in whisky and other women. He viewed the artistic aspirations of his wife and Natalie, his elder daughter, as affectations and an undermining of his authority as head of the household. His dissatisfaction was at its worst when he was drunk. He became alcoholic and abusive. Natalie thought he wanted to love his family, but his love was thwarted. ‘His affection for me was demonstrated with gifts and bruises: he would pull me back from the traffic with such vigor that I would have preferred the accident.’

She thought her mother responded to his behaviour with saintly restraint:

‘Live and let live’ was her motto. She had great patience with difficult characters, ungenial though they might be. The desire to control other people was foreign to her. When anyone failed her she was more sorry for them than for herself.

For herself, Natalie resisted her father’s authority, shunned his presence and would not do as he instructed. She would not allow him to thwart her lesbian identity, curtail her freedom or interfere with her intention to live her life as a work of art. Scornful of his drinking, she disdained alcohol. Liquor, she said, brutalized the mind and body. Drinking someone’s health in it was a contradiction in terms. ‘I loathe the enthusiasm, the writing, friendships and love affairs that come from being drunk.’ Her self-expression took root in opposition to him. ‘I can’t and won’t submit to his whims as you do’, she told her mother. ‘It doesn’t pay. I think I shall be very polite and never answer him back, but have my own way when it’s reasonable just the same.’

Having her own way became Natalie’s creed for life. Her sexuality was her business, not her father’s or any man’s. She said she once had eighteen assignations in one night. But though her compulsion was to explore and gratify the range of her desires, she stayed true to the ideal of love. There was a questing nature to the transference chain, a search for purity of feeling, a desire freely to evolve, defy, be true to herself and to live life to the full.

Natalie matched her mother in theatricality. She saw her parents’ marriage as a disaster, a trap to curtail her mother’s freedom and artistic aspiration. To conform was to deny and repress. She was glad to be ‘naturally unnatural’ and spared desire for any man. She would not comply with society’s expectation of a woman’s place. Were