NATALIE CLIFFORD BARNEY : LIBERTINE AMERICAN EX-PAT WHO PERSUED LIANE DE POUGY and RAN A LITERARY SALON IN PARIS FOR DECADES

These days, at least in intellectual, artistic, and progressive hotspots in the United States, many lesbian women choose to live their lives openly. What about a girl born in 1876, the Victorian era, who knew before puberty that she was not interested in the opposite sex and loved other women? Natalie Clifford Barney became an American expatriate who almost lost her inheritance because she refused to satisfy her family's concern for their reputation. Then she got on with the life of her choice, that of a lesbian woman who played the pursuer of other women. Although during the time that she was involved with Liane De Pougy, the famous Courtesan had no need to be Kept financially, Natalie had to cope with Liane's bisexuality and the sex work she was in. Of course, that was the relationship that outed her, because Liane published a book about it soon after!

NATALIE CLIFFORD BARNEY

1876-1872

Natalie Clifford Barney was born to a sweet artistic mother, born Alice Pike, and an alcoholic and womanizing father, Albert Clifford Barney, who defended himself by accusing her mother of cheating on him and went into rages. At a time when divorce was not a consideration for society people of wealth and prestige, Natalie witnessed her parent's arguments, her mother being verbally abused, and empathized with her mother's entrapment. After her mother, Alice, had Natalie and her sister, her parents started to live separate lives. Her father traveled for business and was most often in America or London. Alice was slowly able to develop her talent as a painter, eventually being acknowledged for her fine, museum-worthy paintings. 

Though the family had money from the start, once her father received his inheritance, he became truly rich, with about 60 million. He joined exclusive clubs in every city he had business in. Noteworthy is that Albert founded the Chevy Chase Club that was so 'men only' that women were allowed in only once a year for a Thanksgiving tea and were unable to contact their husbands there through any means. Was it odd that men cooked for each other there? Such a refuge, to me, makes me wonder if perhaps her father also had a secret gay life. Perhaps it simply speaks to the entrapment in wrong marriages men of the era and class also felt or the notion that Victorian wives were too needy.

The author of the book Wild Heart, our primary reference for this month's posts, Suzzane Rodriguez, does not seek to explain that Natalie may have had homosexual ancestors or genetics but she does show that Natlie's genealogy is a fascinating study of diverse ethnicities and religions. Early to America, her ancestral roots could have kept her in Cincinatti or Washington D.C., but because of her advantage she adopted Paris, France as her true home.

As a ten-year-old Natalie went to an exclusive boarding school there, Les Ruches, the same one that Eleanor Roosevelt, who would marry a cousin and become a First Lady of the United States, had been sent to. The most exclusive all-girls school in Europe at the turn of the century, Les Ruches was where Natalie first got a taste for sexual experimentation among the girls. Was that because there were no boys? Victorian era thought was that it was just natural in a girl's development to have a crush on another girl. Girls talked openly about these crushes. At school Natalie also began to develop as an intellectual though she mostly loved riding horses. People were shocked when she stopped riding side-saddle as a Victorian lady was to do and rode a horse like a man. At school she also took part in theatrical and musical productions and became known for her witticisms and energy. She trained as a violinist and would, throughout her life, develop her own writing. It's thought that her father was ignorant of the motives of the school. The intent was to encourage students to claim their independence.

At sixteen Natalie was sent to finish her education at Miss Ely's, another exclusive boarding school, this one in New York City. Soon she would be expected to marry.

When as a teenager she learned that her natural attraction to other females was considered an aberration, she was stunned.  While other teenagers found sexual experimentation just something that was part of the passage into heterosexual womanhood, Natalie had experiences with young women who were lesbian. The problem was that it was absolutely not allowed. There were suspicions about her and gossip but Natalie went through her debut to society well enough. With gorgeous long blond tresses and deep blue eyes, striking, well-educated, and the family fortune well known, even her recent adventures in Europe and her father's brusk ways were not an issue to prevent her from making a fine marital match.

There were others, male and female, who found themselves not interested in replicating their parent's marital situations or who tried to find a way around marriage. One of those ways was to marry someone who, for their own reasons, could accept a White Marriage, the term for a marriage that would not include sexuality. Such partnerships made sense for they preserved a family's reputation and often inheritances. To see this from their perspective, these families were very concerned about breeding and the continuation of their lineages and preservation of their wealth and gay people did not reproduce. Natalie had never liked playing with dolls, had an aversion to marriage, a horror of childbirth, and so, at first, she did not entertain the advantages of a White Marriage. However, the nephew of artist Mary Cassatt, Robert Kelso Cassatt, also an heir from a family of tremendous fortune, did pledge to marry her and they became unofficially engaged for a time.

"Natalie's Bar Harbor debut was the first private ball of the island's social season. More than five hundred people, "every one of social and diplomatic distinction summering at Bar Harbor, came to Ban-y-Bryn (the family home) that night, their carriages ascending a steep pathway lit by hundreds of Japanese lanterns.  Natalie dazzled in a white satin dress by Worth.  The drawing room was crowded with dancers, conversations took place on the silk-draped balconies overlooking the ocean, and food was served in the Great Hall with its trailing pine boughs and silk- shaded candlelight."  (Page 71 of the hardback book)  

Now that her lavish debut was covered by the press, the pressure was really on to marry and conform.

C 2022 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

There are three ways to pull up past posts in the Google Blogger. You can click on a tab, you can search the whole blog using the search feature embedded, or you can go through the archives and see what titles spark you!  Natalie Clifford Barney was the feature her at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot in September of 2014 as well.