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

propaganda for the practice which has long been known as Lesbianism, a well-known vice, unnatural, destructive of the moral and physical fibre of the passive persons who indulge in it, who are the victims of others, this book is a plea for the active persons who practice this vice… it is corrupting and obscene and its publication is a misdemeanour.

The subject was off limits. Radclyffe Hall became a martyr and lesbian icon. Her Well of Loneliness, dubbed ‘The Bible of Lesbianism’, stood alone. Natalie was joyful about lesbian desire. Radclyffe Hall’s tortured and quasi-religious references to sex were, as Colette said, ‘terribly adolescent’. Janet Flanner, in her Paris letter for The New Yorker, called it an innocent and confused book that should have paved the way for better novels about lesbian love. Virginia Woolf said it was so dull any indecency might be lurking in it – she could not keep her eyes on the page. As a literary or psychological study, The Well received scant praise and much derision. ‘The Sink of Solitude’ was the title of one spoof. But the prurient scandal stirred by censorship meant millions of pirated copies were sold.

Radclyffe Hall’s courage in speaking out was commendable, but her lack of wit, wisdom, irony, style, oomph and fun made her book a sorry candidate for lesbian literary accolade. Homosexual men had Oscar Wilde to cherish, grieve for and admire. Lesbians had Radclyffe Hall, who, in deference to Havelock Ellis, called herself a congenital sexual invert with ‘terrible nerves’.

Her clothes were tailored, her demeanour patrician. She was everywhere accompanied by her partner, Una, Lady Troubridge, who called her John and revered her – until John fell for Eugenia Souline, ‘Chinkie Pig’, a Russian nurse, then all hell broke loose. At Radclyffe Hall’s salon afternoon in 1929 at Natalie’s, crowds of lesbians were eager to meet her. Janet Flanner was there. She described her as a strange but impressive looking woman, short of stature, with a disproportionately large head and perfect haircut. ‘Her hands and feet were also large as were the beautiful sapphires which she wore, one as a finger ring and one each as a cufflink.’

the sapphic centre of the western world

Natalie championed the way for lesbians who wanted more fun than down the gloomy Well. Many of her guests had been, were or would be her lovers. These lovers should have had a calligram to themselves: the Hellenist Evalina Palmer, the courtesan Liane de Pougy, the poets Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, Renée Vivien and Olive Custance, the writers Lily de Gramont, Colette and Djuna Barnes, the portrait painter Romaine Brooks, the patron and socialite Nancy Cunard, Elizabeth Eyre de Lanux, an American fresco painter, artist and writer, who lived next door in rue Jacob and became intrigued by the visitors to Natalie’s temple. Year on year, the list grew longer.

Dolly Wilde

Oscar Wilde said to André Gide: ‘Do you want to know the great drama of my life? It’s that I’ve put my genius into my life; I’ve put only my talent into my work.’9 Natalie echoed this sentiment. From childhood she had a passion for Oscar and the theatre of his life.

Dolly Wilde © Joan Schenkar

Oscar’s niece, Dolly Wilde, lived in the shadow of her uncle. Born in 1895, the year he was imprisoned, she looked like him ‘except that she was handsome’, Janet Flanner said. Oscar’s homosexuality, glittering career and downfall informed Dolly’s own sense of self. The difference was that his genius triumphed over his downfall. Dolly’s personal connection to him was slight: from prison he sent her mother, his brother Willie’s second wife, £50 to pay for her birth. That was the extent of his concern for her. Nonetheless, she described herself as ‘more Oscar-like than he was like himself’.

Dolly arrived at Natalie’s salon on 28 June 1927. She was thirty-one, Natalie fifty. The Oscar connection made seduction de rigueur. Natalie described Dolly as ‘half androgyne and half goddess’. ‘No one’s presence could be as present as Dolly’s.’ They began a love affair that lasted, on and off, for fourteen years, until Dolly’s death.

Like Natalie, Dolly wanted to live her life as a work of art, but she had nothing of Natalie’s toughness or self-regard. Nor did she have a private income. She wanted to write. She earned occasional money translating work by Colette, Nancy Cunard and Lily de Gramont from French to English, but not enough to fund her lifestyle. She ran up bills at the Paris Ritz and hoped someone else would settle them, squatted in borrowed flats, left letters unanswered and Sylvia Beach’s library books unreturned. She was always late. She drove too fast in borrowed cars and moved from alcohol to heroin addiction.

Joe Carstairs

In the First World War, she lived in Montparnasse with Marion ‘Joe’ Carstairs. They both then drove ambulances at the front for the American Red Cross. Joe Carstairs was tattooed with stars, smoked cigars, had affairs with Marlene Dietrich, Gwen Farrar, Tallulah Bankhead and others, and apparently could ‘dance a Charleston which few people can partner’. Via her American mother and the Standard Oil Company, she inherited a fortune. She was not sure who her father was.

After the war she started a London chauffeur service using all women drivers, bought a speedboat and became ‘the fastest woman on water’. In 1933, with mere thousands of the millions of dollars of her inherited money, she bought the Caribbean island of Whale Cay. ‘I am going to live surrounded only by coloured people,’ she told the press. She built a Great House for herself and her lovers, cottages for her workers, a dock, a school, a church, a fish cannery and a general store. She made laws: adultery and alcohol were banned and miscreants punished by her private militia, who wore uniforms and wielded machetes. She was more than a little mad.

Janet Flanner

Janet Flanner was briefly one of Dolly’s lovers. She arrived