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

on the Thames. The papers praised Liane’s beauty, her ermine coat, her hat wreathed with roses.

Mr Barney travelled to Paris, irate at what he was hearing about his daughter. His tolerance of alcohol had diminished; one whisky and he was drunk. He forbade Natalie to have anything more to do with Liane, and took her to Dinard in Brittany with her mother and sister, Laura. Natalie went for long horse rides, read the poetry of Verlaine, Baudelaire and Mallarmé, wrote poems in French about her lovers and sent letters to Liane about her beauty and skin like rose-tinted snow.

Liane began a memoir, Idylle Saphique, a confession from the demi-monde, about their affair. ‘It’s going well’, she wrote to Natalie after twelve pages. ‘I think you’ll like it.’ She tried to join her in Brittany but was snubbed by the Barneys. Robert Cassatt wrote from Pittsburgh ending his engagement and la Valtesse wrote to Liane asking, where was she? A charming young man of good family was offering 500,000 francs for her. It was not possible to run a business this way.

Back in Paris, Natalie and Liane resumed their affair. Mr Barney had his spies. He wrote to Natalie that he was informed of ‘things so repugnant that one has to pity the minds that have conceived them’ and demanded she end all contact with Liane or return to Washington. Natalie replied with scorn:

Ever since I remember you your one ambition for us was petty and worldly. Even religion was made a sort of social duty. One should go to church because it looked well, or because people would think it strange if we didn’t. You must understand how petty, how ugly our whole upbringing was. You showed me at the age of twelve all that marriage means – the jealousness, the scum, the tyrannies – nothing was hidden from me. I was even made a witness when still a mere child of the atrocious and lamentable consequences an uncontrollable temper can have on a good and kindly woman… Seeing all this made me lose faith in you – respect for you. I no longer felt myself your daughter.

To keep him from coming to Paris, she gave false assurance she would ‘give up seeing this woman’. Liane wrote to her of her intention to end the relationship. ‘Everyone tells me to let you go, that we can have no future together.’

Natalie worked on a collection, in French, of thirty-five of her love poems to and about her lovers, Quelques Portraits-Sonnets de Femmes. In them, she experimented with rhyme and verse. She wrote of breasts like lotus flowers on a tranquil pond, hearts pounding like the sea, the scent of her lover’s hair, her lovers’ orgasmic cries… In a personal preface, ‘for those who never read prefaces’, she apologized for daring to offer ‘French verses to France’. ‘Nothing about me must surprise you. I am American,’ she wrote.

In another room of their house, Alice Barney did pastel portraits to illustrate the book. Her French was poor, she did not read the poems, but thought these friends of Natalie made beautiful models.

Renée Vivien

Natalie’s response to her father’s ultimatum about Liane de Pougy was to court additional scandal. Riding in the Bois one afternoon, she met a childhood friend from Cincinnati, Violet Shillito, and her sister Mary. Violet told her of her close friend Renée Vivien, and how she, like Natalie, wrote poetry in French. The four arranged to go to a matinée:

The butler announced the arrival of the landau and at the same time handed me an envelope on which I recognised Liane de Pougy’s handwriting. She was travelling in Portugal.

Natalie took little notice of the play or of Renée, whom she thought looked ordinary. She sat in the back of their box and read and reread Liane’s letter. Liane was with a client, a prince from somewhere, but her thoughts were of Natalie.

The moon sulked and I thought of you moonbeam, of your fine, fine hair… my little blue flower whose perfume intoxicated me oh so sweetly, you, my fair one, my Flossie…

Next evening, Natalie took Renée skating at the Palais de Glace in the Champs Elysées. Afterwards, they went back to Renée’s vast apartment in rue Crevaux. It was candlelit, perfumed with incense and the windows were heavily curtained. The place was adorned with gigantic Buddhas draped in black, masks, ancient instruments and snakes behind glass, and in every corner were vases of white lilies. Natalie left at dawn. It was, she said, ‘a disquieting beginning in which two young women try to find themselves in a mismatched love affair’.

Renée Vivien © PDVE / Bridgeman Images

Renée had blonde hair, a smooth complexion, heavy eyelids, a retroussé nose, a hand tremor and an engaging lisp. Though tall, she stooped to make herself appear less so. She wore unsteady hats and long purple or black dresses. She was clumsy, always losing her gloves, a scarf, or giving things away, her bracelets, a necklace. She would open her bag, spill out banknotes then scoop up most, though not all of them. She translated the poetry of Sappho from Greek to French and in refined French wrote her own poetry about her love for and scorn of women and her longing to be dead.

She was born Pauline Tarn in England in June 1877; her mother was from Michigan and her father from Teesdale. Her paternal grandfather made a fortune by expanding a single grocery shop into chain stores. Her parents fought and her father, like Natalie’s, became an alcoholic.

The family moved to Paris when Pauline was two. She had an English governess, went to a French school and by the age of nine was writing love poems in French to a girl called Blanche. Also when she was nine, her father died. Weakened by alcoholism, he developed pneumonia after bathing in the sea near Étretat in Normandy. His father accused his daughter-in-law of ruining his son’s life and in revenge excluded her