Natalie Clifford Barney was the eldest daughter of an extremely wealthy Ohio family. She was a rebellious child who refused to wear traditional clothes and always wore her hair down and untamed. It was obvious from the outset that Barney took after her mother, an aspiring painter who loved the world of the literati and longed to be accepted by them. The young Barney was often in the presence of genius. At the age of six, she was dragged along by her mother on a day out with Oscar Wilde, who took a day out of his American tour to be with them.
But Barney`s rebellion against convention ran much deeper than her mothers dislike of social codes. Among her peers she was considered a hero for her anti-conformist ways. At school, she was expelled for smoking. When travelling, she would often leap from the carriage to escape the control of her guardian.
However, her natural intelligence meant that her education did not suffer despite her wayward behaviour. Barney developed a love of the French language and diligently studied until she was fluent.
Unlike many young gays growing up in Victorian America, Barney discovered her sexuality early. By the age of 12, she had already become aware of her sexual desire for women and had resolved never to run away from her feelings. Although she courted many men in her teenage years, she always insisted that her feelings for them were strictly Ў®from the neck up. She had many offers of marriage but stuck to her guns and refused the advances of her suitors.
For a rich heiress, travel was affordable and most of her early years were spent travelling. France was her favourite location and it was there, at the age of 23, that she fell hopelessly in love with Liane de Pougy, a dancer she saw perform in Paris. So taken with de Pougy was she, that on one occasion she arrived at the stage door dressed as a page with a single red rose. Although de Pougy was one of the most famous women in France and never short of admirers, Barney`s sheer audacity charmed her and the couple began an affair. They were completely open about their relationship and their liaison soon became the talk of Paris and was widely reported in the society gossip papers. With the affair came Barney`s first of many depictions in literature, when de Pougy published a revealing account of their relationship in her 1901 book Idylle Saphique (Sapphic Idyll).
However, their relationship was short lived. In 1899, Barney met another artiste from the Parisian social scene, poet Pauline Tarn. Better known by her pen name – Renee Vivien – she fell instantly in love with the young and vibrant Barney who fell in love with Vivien`s morbidly obsessed poetry. Although she was an American, Vivien wrote in strong and fluent French. Barney found her work inspirational, and also began dabbling in writing poetry in French. Together, she and Vivien explored female poetry, focusing especially on the works of Sapho.
Despite their shared interests, Barney and Vivien`s relationship was stormy and full of jealousy. Neither of them cared for monogamy and the twisting and turning of their love lives eventually became too much. In 1901, while Barney was visiting her family in the States, Vivien`s attention was distracted and the couple parted. Barney was devastated and tried for a long while to regain the affections of Vivien, once going as far as hiring a top French soprano to serenade her. Frustrated, Barney penned a romantic prose poem of their relationship, which was published under the title Je Me Souviens (I Remember). It struck a chord with Vivien and the couple travelled to Lesbos, the island where their joint idol Sapho had lived and died.
For a while, the couple were reunited and talked of creating a school of poetry, similar to the one Sapho had created on the island hundreds of years before. However, there was one problem to iron out. In the intervening years, Vivian had found another lover, the Baroness de Zuylen de Nyevelt. Feeling she needed to face the Baroness face to face, Vivien returned to Paris to put and end to their relationship. Sadly for Barney, she instead chose to stay with the Baroness. Vivien would go on to lead a short life, full of depression and drug addiction. She died at the young age of just 32.
Barney, however, continued to thrive in the artistic air of Paris. Having already published a few notable books, all of which had a decidedly Sapphic angle to them, Barney was the first ever “fashionable” lesbian, and was in demand for every high society gathering. She decided to host a “salon”, a gathering at her home with the sole intention of sharing poetry, prose and artistic opinions. In Paris, salons were all the rage among the growing literary ex-pats and Barney`s Friday afternoon gatherings were soon the place to be and be seen. An invitation was a true medal of literary honour. The salon ran for most of Barney`s life and attracted some of the biggest names in writing and art. Mata Hari gave a notable performance as Lady Godiva, Vita Sackville West gave her controversial novel The Well of Loneliness its first reading at the salon. Even Mercedes de Acosta and Greta Garbo attended one of the sessions.
During World War I, Barney`s salon became a haven for the growing number of academic dissenters in the French capital. Poets, painters, writers and the odd ex-soldier would all turn up every Friday to join her in a small ornate building in her garden, named the Temple of Friendship.
After the war, she turned her attention to feminist issues. She was determined to further the cause of female writers and set up a controversial (and very much unofficial) alternative to the Academy of France, exclusively for women. Her Academe des Femmes honoured some greats of 20th century French literature including Anna Whickam, Gertrude Stein and Lucie Delarue-Mardrus.
But Barney`s influence was beginning to go beyond organising and gathering creative people together. With an intimate, flamboyant and instantly lovable character, the somewhat eccentric Barney started to crop up as characters in the books of those she had charmed. Famous writer (and former lover of Barney) Colette based an outrageously bold seductress named Miss Flossie in her novel Claudine sen Va, on her. Radcliffe Hall admired Barney so much that the in The Well of Loneliness, the character she inspired is the only one based on a real life character that is a fair depiction. Many more from the salon also chose Barney as one of the main characters of their stories. The reputation and legend of Natalie Clifford Barney and her famous salon became greater than her own writing.
But the Second World War stood to disrupt everything. Barney was now in love with famous American painter Romaine Brooks. They met in 1914, and had an on-off relationship that spanned 50 years. Although the couple were never monogamous and often spent time apart, their love was to be the most significant relationship of Barney`s life. When the war came, their love was in full swing. As Barney had some distant Jewish ancestry, the couple chose to spend the war in Italy, away from the direct influence of the Nazis. Not only did the war put a stop to the salon, but Barney`s writing began to take on a worryingly sympathetic view of Hitler and the fascist machine. Although this was probably an attempt to deflect attention from her Jewish roots, this work caused a subsequent decline in sympathy for her.
After the war, Barney returned to Paris and resumed the salon. But everything was different. The hedonistic days were gone and in the ruins of Paris, the struggle to recover from World War II dominated modern thinking. The salon continued and still attracted some big names, such as American screenwriter Truman Copote. However, the heyday had passed and Barney was beginning to lose her youth. She became more reclusive and before long, the letters to her great love Brookes, who had decided to stay on in Italy, began to dwindle. In the 60s, the rest of the world began to embrace free love and the hedonistic morals that Barney had advocated for years, but she was now an old woman and her time had passed. At the age of 94, she passed away.
Natalie Clifford Barney is not a name you will readily find in reference books simply for her writing. She was far from prolific and her work did not reap the respect it truly deserved. Barney`s influence was more behind the scenes. Not only did she gather together some of the greatest minds in Paris and offer them a forum for thought, she also represented a character that was an irresistible addition to any storyline. In a sense, her influence away from the pen reached wider and further than any of her contemporary writers could possibly dream of.
