HOLLYWOOD : FIRST WILCOX MAP

 

Coming up: A Hollywood Golden Era Couple who were married - but not to each other.

Posts for the year 2023 will begin on January 3rd!

See you then!

WISHING PEACE - AN END TO ALL DESTRUCTION !

It will soon be a year since Russia began destroying Ukraine.  There seems no end in sight.  The United States has provided millions in aid.  As we tuck into our warm beds this evening, let us not forget those who are cold and hungry.  Let us not forget the innocents who have been killed, maimed, raped, and had their lives as they know it destroyed. Peace comes through action, though communication, through creativity.  Let us all use these attributes to make this world a better place, starting now.

Missy

MAJESTIC

 

HAVE YOU READ ANY OF THE BOOKS I HAVE ? MISSY ASKS YOU!

I was wondering if any of the books I've used for references for the posts here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot have influenced you to read the book from cover to cover as I do.

As always, if you have a suggestion for a topic for me, or any books or e-books, or articles, or other media you think I should know about, please leave a comment!  (Send me a link!)

Missy

GREETINGS

 

WHAT'S INSIDE?

 

WHITE CHRISTMAS : THE DRIFTERS

An animated cartoon to the traditional Christmas Holiday tune, sung by the Drifters, posted by Joshua Held.

CRAZY ABOUT TIFFANY'S : MISTRESS MANIFESTO FILM REVIEW

CRAZY ABOUT TIFFANY's is a documentary film about the store famous for the robin's egg blue boxes as well as the exquisite and expensive, sometimes tremendously so, jewelry within.  Having received a couple of those blue boxes in my lifetime - which contained crystal and not jewelry - I must say it was exciting to receive them.  

The essence of this film is about the excitement people feel about the store and what it has to offer as well as the attention to detail and tremendous design and workmanship that goes into making these pieces. Here we see actress Jessica Biel having her stylists work with the store to obtain the most perfect jewelry to wear for her Red Carpet dress. 

We see the shine and the gleam and the flash of wondrous "real thing' bracelets and necklaces. Though some of what Tiffany's has might be found elsewhere less expensively, so much of what they offer is original design and custom work.

Although I personally believe that every human being should have food, shelter, and clothing, have all their basic needs met, and that should be a priority, I also love beautiful and fine things. I think art, design, and invention achieve what is possible for all of humanity, ultimately an advance for civilization. 

Crazy About Tiffany's allows us all to imagine What If we really afford a necklace worth $100,00 and wonder Who does afford these things.  It can't all be going to Brunei can it?

C 2022 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

STILL STANDING

 

DEAR SANTA I CAN EXPLAIN : PUPPINI SISTERS

PUPPINI SISTERS

FASHION CLIMBING by BILL CUNNINGHAM : MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

 

 Bill Cunningham discovered he liked to wear girl's dresses when he was a boy and an errant parent tried to beat the girl out of him. What he loved was beauty. He was destined to work in fashion and his first preoccupation, circa the 1940's was to be a milliner - a designer of hats - which went on until 1960 when hats went out of fashion in favor of showing hair. By the time he died in 2016 at the age of 87, Cunningham was best known as a photographer who was on the streets of New York as well as anywhere fashion was being made, worn, modeled.  His overall work is sometimes thought of as "fashion anthropology," a documentation of that world and how it translates to the people. What no one knew as that he had been working on a memoir.  The writing was found after his death and "Fashion Climbing" is the result.

In life, he eventually worked for the New York Times : Let's link to what the New York Time obituary column had to say about him:

NEW YORK TIMES : BILL CUNNINGHAM FASHION DESIGNER - OBIT

Excerpt:  In 2008, Mr. Cunningham went to Paris, where the French government bestowed the Legion of Honor on him.  In New York, he was celebrated at Bergdorf Goodman, where a life-sized mannequin of him was installed in the window.

It was the New York Landmarks Conservancy that made him a living landmark in 2009, the same year The New Yorker, in a profile, described is On the Street and Evening Hours columns as the city's unofficial yearbook: "an exuberant, sometimes retroactively embarrassing chronicle of the way we looked."

***

The illustration on the cover of the book is one that Cunningham used to advertise his hats.  For years, even while inducted into the Korean War and stationed in France, he hand made highly original and creative hats, sensing trends years ahead of time.  As an artist he struggled to earn. His personal endurance is a story of both dogged determination and living by his wits, as well as having been the recipient of kindnesses. He also got ripped off in the fashion business and makes it sound like putting up with less creative types stealing is how its done. Buyers would return from shows with a few purchases and turn them over for mass production. He tells about the kind of women who could afford to pay, the women who got free clothing to advertise it, the women who were loaned clothing, the women who never intended to pay at all. The most conservative women, those who followed trends if the Duchess of WIndsor was wearing it, were too cautious to entertain wearing some of his creations, yet other designers and stores knocked off his designs.

Bill was not a designer of clothing but as an observer he was sensitive to cut and fabric, what made a dress move with the wearer and what made a dress obviously off a rack, and he was a valuable consultant to the owners of  the then only custom clothing house for the most elegant, Chez Ninon, who didn't become known until FIrst Lady Jackie Kennedy came calling.

As a keep observer, Bill Cunningham moved into fashion journalism and photography.

However, the retelling of his stories is lighthearted and sometimes truly funny and had me LOL. So while this book is about his place in the fashion world,  it strikes me that he has no bitterness, and I can imagine him laughing as he wrote those passages himself.  I'm reminded that there are rewards besides money and that to remain true to oneself requires sacrifices.

C 2022 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

All RIghts Reserved including Internet and International Rights

SANTA BABY WHERE ARE YOU?

 

THAT'S GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME : PEARL BAILEY

BETTINA By GUY SCHOELLER : MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

SIMONE MICHELINE BODIN -  "BETTINA" - THE FIRST SUPERMODEL and MISTRESS OF ALY KHAN - A JET SET ERA MISTRESS  was our June 2015 Mistress of the Month. You can find that month in the archives and it may be fun for you to simply search for the word 'fashion.' Recently I found this small fashion memoir by Guy Schoeller.

This short but sweet book is mostly full of black and white photos of Bettina as a model, some of her in her personal life, some from her heyday - from 1944 to 1990. Her career spanned about twelve years and she twice abandoned it for love. At a time when holding a pose stiffly and haughtily was the way one modeled, Bettina was loved for her movement and her lack of pretense. She came from an ordinary background in Normandy but came to Paris with the ambition to model at eighteen. She dropped everything at 30 to be with Prince Ali Khan but he died five years later. I'm struck by the expressiveness of her hands, the way she used her arms, her bearing.

What I did not know: That in 1952 she helped Hubert de Givenchy launch his couture house.

That she created a first knitwear collection for Jacques Heim in 1954. That in 1969 CoCo Chanel created a collection inspired by her. That in 1972 she became Couture Director for Emanuel Ungaro. In 1974 she was in charge of public relations for Valentino in Paris.

C 2022 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

MISSY ASKS YOU! : ARE YOU INSPIRED BY ANY OF THE PEOPLE PROFILED HERE AT MISTRESS MANIFESTO?

Have any of the people I've chosen to elect to the Mistress of the Month Pantheon here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot inspired you?  I'd like to hear who and why!

If you are new to this blog, you can look in PAGES where there is a list of all the subjects I've covered her over very many years.  Leave me a comment!  

Missy

READY

 

GRACE CODDINGTON'S MEMOIR

  I listened to this audio book, read by the author Grace Coddington, with her British accent, and thoroughly enjoyed hearing her tell her own tale of leaving home at 18 and giving modeling a try.  Her first assignment was nude, though she didn't understand that was the case when she showed up, but she went with it.  Coddington is well known as Vogue magazine Editor Anna Wintour's sidekick, both included in the documentary called The September Edition. She's the red haired one, if you haven't guessed, the one who actually can speak to Anna candidly. According to Grace, it was the film "The Devil Wears Prada," a fictive account, the human devil said to be based on Anna Wintour, that brought Anna - and then Grace - to infamy.  It was that film and all the commentary, and her true relationship with Anna, that lead the normally publicity shy (OK, we'll try to believe her) Grace to go ahead and speak up for herself, her life, and her profession and write her book.

One of the things I appreciated was that she didn't do much introspection and certainly no apology for her life or rise in fashion but as I also read other audio memoir type books this past year by British women, I'm beginning to think there is something British about it. Certainly this woman must have faced competition and made some enemies along the way, but her own perspective is that she went from event to event, opportunity to opportunity, almost as if it were all fate or a done deal. But believe it: she worked her butt off.

C 2018 Book Review Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot  Originally posted.

JOXEUX

 

THE CHIFFON TRENCHES by ANDRE LEON TALLEY : MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

 

He was six foot seven and followed a dream. Doors opened for him, one especially held open by Diana Vreeland, so that Talley, who went to college in love with all things French and aimed to be a writer in the fashion world could succeed, though a Black man from the South, and often the singular representative of his race. 

Talley has passed since this book was published. Born in 1928, he died of a heart attack at age January 18, 2022. The man was considerably obese as a result of food addiction and compulsive eating.  In this book he talks about how he got so, the interventions by his friends, the attempts to lose the weight, and eating as a substitute for ever having a partner. Lap band surgery did not work for him. Because of his weight, he took to wearing caftans and big coats over custom made suits. In that way, he accepted himself as a man of size and became known outside the closed world of the great designers. 

Although interviewers and the press seemed to focus on his professional and personal relationship with Vogue editor Anna Wintour revealed in this book, there is quite a bit in this book about his relationships with other designers and the fashionistas, such as Lee Bouvier Radizwill, First Lady Jackie Kennedy's sister, who he calls a best friend, and his long time professional and personal relationship with designer Karl Lagerfeld.

He is forthright and dishy, and can't help but drop names, after all these were the people he worked with and knew personally. Anyone who adores reading around the world of luxury will find this memoir a page turner. One may find themselves longing for just a taste of what it is like to have friends so rich that they can send you over to Paris on the Concorde or gift you thousands of pairs of shoes over the years.

It takes creativity, vision, fortitude, and business savvy to make it to the top of the fashion trenches and there are a few - Diane Von Furstenburg comes to mind - who seemed to have gone away but made it back again. Talley takes credit where it is due, and he gives credit where it is due. Both Lagerfeld and Wintour were capable of jettisoning people who were no longer useful to them.  It was his displeasure to be ghosted.

On page 93, Talley says,  "At Chanel's haute couture show in January 1998, inspired by Misia Sert, a true friend of Mademoiselle Chanel, I said to Anna (Wintour): "We must stand up and applaud Karl."  Karl (Lagerfeld) had returned to the famous rue Cambon salon and we were packed in like sardines.  I bolted to my feet and Anna Wintour sat there, as she was expected to do, as editor in chief of Vogue.

A note to my readers:

MISIA SERT : THREE MARRIAGES - THIRD TO TO JOSE MARIA SERT : THE ACCOMMODATION OF A YOUNGER WIFE   was the subject here at Mistress Manifesto for July 2019

DIANE VON FURSTENBURG was Honorary Mistress of the Month for December 2018.

Check those out in my archives!

C 2022 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

PS: The Documentary film The Gospel According to Andre is also worth seeing!

A HOLIDAY EDITION WITH A LITTLE FOCUS ON FASHION

Hello Sweeties!  Happy Holidays! 

I just looked into my closet and well...    

Are you one of those people who finds fashion challenging?  Do you perhaps buy only one good dress or suit for the winter season, knowing that you need to splash out a bit during the holidays?  Or are you a fashionista with a great sense of style and an impressive budget to spend on clothes, perhaps with a special closet just for your shoes and purses?  Or maybe you're into sewing your own clothes.  Or you are one of those who are concerned about our ecology and don't like fast fashion?

How aware are you of the fashion world?

I love watching the fashion shows, especially those in Paris, in which top models parade the latest fashions designed the most interesting and esteemed designers, each a personality. Like many of you, I have to watch these on film. These creatives and their crews influence all that there is to wear every season, planning well in advance, so the truly fashionable can anticipate and adjust their wardrobes seasonally. However, much of what I see on the runway would not work for my lifestyle and seems extremely unpractical to me.

Over the last several years there has been a trend to sustainable fashion and against what is called "fast fashion." This is an eco-fashion trend which emphasize buying quality items that last and usually that means that the colors and designs are not influenced by the runway displays or the inexpensive throw-aways that are derivative of them, but clothing that will last, can be worn for years, is well made and comfortable, and will not take a couple hundred years to decompose in our landfills.

There is a store near me that has clothes of this type that I love, though all casual wear, and the salesclerks there have told me that stretchy fabrics are the worst, taking near forever to decompose in land fills. There goes tights and skinny jeans! 

This month I hope you'll be inspired to a bit of an upgrade of your appearance so that when the new year begins there will be, maybe not a whole new you, but a change that readies you for it.

An eco kind of thing you can do is throw a clothing trade party. Each of your friends go through their closet and pull the things that they have not been wearing, clothing that is still in good condition, and bring them over to your place. You serve drinks and some appetizers, and each of you takes a turn and selects one item from the pile until everything brought has a new owner.  After that, the item might need a revision, by its new owner or a seamstress or tailor. Perhaps you have talent that I do not, and everyone can also have fun refiguring the clothes. Sewing machines, needles and thread, patches, whatnot, available, it brings a whole new dimension to the term "Ladies Sewing Circle." (You can turn pants into shorts, dresses into blouses, and sew (!) on.)

Now, be it that you are a socialite who will be out at parties through the holidays or a stay-at-home person who just wants to be alone to read a good book, I have some book recommendations for you that will help you to think fashion!

Missy

 

HOW ARE WE ALL DOING?

Hello My Readers!

As I look back on this year of blogging, I want to thank my readers for encouraging me and giving me reason to continue, for though I never write for hits, and am sometimes surprised at what topics turn out to be of most interest so far to you, I suppose I'd be a bit down if I thought no one was interested with my grand project here. 

Through these years of creating Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot, we have all been through our changes. Writing and researching this blog has certainly informed me and helped me understand Alternative Lifestyles and to be much less judging of those who indulge in them than I once was.  I thought one, life-long monogamous marriage was the only way to live for a long long time. That's how I was raised, though I did and still do think a woman is better off not being involved at all than in a relationship in which the partners are incompatible or there is abuse.  

I, and this blog stand for Choice. I do hope my readers will make truthful assessments of themselves and their relationships, ask themselves what it is they really want in this time and place, and also have relationships based on honesty. Perhaps while reading about other's lives we can come to terms with our own needs and desires. We can compare ourselves to the Belle Epoch Courtesans or the people who've had the experience of being Kept.

If you are new to this blog take a look in PAGES for the long list of topics and where you can find them in my archives. UPDATED GUIDE TO ARCHIVES : MISTRESS MANIFESTO BLOGSPOT TOPICS BY MONTH!

Someone once told me that it takes a person of some sophistication to find this valuable.

In the past year I've met a few women who live in a pre-feminist mentality and lifestyle, which I suppose works for them, but who are condemning of anyone who is not married with children.  These women have no idea I'm the person behind Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot and there was no reason to tell them, so I just listened as they talked about "the kind of people' who have no children. I thought they were ignorant really, and perhaps did not even know they were lucky to so easily have children and afford them! There is nothing wrong with being unmarried or without a partner either.  I want you to know that I think that way.

I thought about the women I've known in my life who married for the right reasons and had traditional expectations yet had affairs while married.  I thought about the few couples I've met who made it to 50 or more years of marriage and do seem to have great love. There are a wide range of options when it comes to lifestyle though, at least here in America and the West, where independence is admired.

Wishing You All The Best,

Missy

LIVELY

I'LL BE SEEING YOU : SARAH VAUGHAN

LOVEY DOVEY

 

COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS

 

NATALIE CLIFFORD BARNEY - AN INTERVIEW OF HER AS AN OLD WOMAN

It's 1966 and she is 90 something.  She says loyalty is the most important virtue.  Friends have given her up but she never gives up her friends.

WHAT LIANE DE POUGY HAD TO SAY ABOUT NATALIE CLIFFORD BARNEY WHO SHE CALLED "MY FLOSSIE."

EXCERPT page 122

From Dec 22, 1920

I have written a hai-ku in honor of Nathalie-Flossie, whom I also used to call Moon-Beam.  I am sending her a picture of a little woman in a short frock smelling flowers in the moonlight; and because of our mutual longing to see each other is not stronger than the times, places and circumstances which keep us apart, here is my work.

O brilliant moon

We see each other better

From afar

***

EXCERPT page 140  January 28 1922

On Wednesday, lunch with Balthy.*** Louise was very gay, she had been dancing until three in the morning.  At present she is collecting blue and white from China and Persia.  She has blinds made of ostrich feathers and cushions made of fur.  I caught her in bed, having herself daubed with oil of turpentine by her masseuse as she reclined on pink crepe de chine sheets!  Nathalie came with Romaine Brooks to pick me up; they wanted to see her close too, and seemed disappointed.  Romaine was sporting the Legion of Honour.  Nathalie took me to Madeleine Vionette, the great dressmaker of the moment.  A plain dress of black crepe de chine, with no embroidery or decoration; 2,600 francs!  'What would its sale price be? - $1,600 francs.'  Nathalie was able to wrangle it and got it for 1,000 francs. But that's still dear, for a reduction.

The Flossie took us to Madame R., who was giving a tea party in my honor.  It was big, grand, cold, and comfortable.  I'm enormously fond of Madame R... but my Flossie!  What a matchless creature she is, what a rare wit!  She has it and inspires it.  When someone said her house is very dusty she answered :'But dust is pretty, it's furniture's face powder.'  We saw her little old mother, frisky, alert, sparkly.  Georges is mad about her.  An incredible youthfulness runs in her veins, shines in her eyes, curls her white hair and vibrates the feather in her hat  Long ago, in our wild young days, she disapproved of my relationship with her daughter.  I can hardly blame her.  We didn't stir up the past, pressed each others hands and paid each other compliments.

*** Notes

Flossie is Liane's nickname for Natalie Clifford Barney, who she uses Nathalie, the French version of her name, also.

Romaine Brooks is a woman that Natalie Clifford Barney had a long relationship with. 

Georges is Liane's husband, a Prince.  She goes by the name Princess Anne-Marie Ghika of Roumania.

Louise Bathy is the courtesan who first inspired Liane to choose the life of a courtesan.  As a young woman new to Paris she lived across the way from Louise, who was successful and rich as a result of her Courtesan lifestyle.

C 2022 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights.

EIFFEL TOWER

Link here to the official web site of the Eiffel Tower and learn what a tremendous engineering feat it was.

There were those who were opposed to it being built. 

TOUR EIFFEL PARIS

"It was at the 1889 Exposition Universelle, the date that marked the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution that a great competition was launched in the Journal Officiel."

NATALIE CLIFFORD BARNEY THE HEIRESS WITH A FASHIONABLE SALON

When Colette, who Natalie had a relationship with, published the book Claudine s'en va, Natalie's reputation as a lesbian was affirmed. In the book she wrote, Colette depicted Natalie, and in what seems to have been a literary tradition, though disguising her under another character name, and calling the work fiction, readers guessed right. This was the third time that she had appeared as a character in a book and this was not Liane de Pougy's writing but that of a woman of literary strength who well captured Natalie's personality and mannerisms. 

Natalie's mother lived in Washington D.C. and her father lived in Europe. Natalie was still depending on her father's generous hand-outs, when he died in Monte Carlo in 1903.  She had him cremated and traveled to America with his ashes. As it turned out he had split his fortune (which would be about $63 million today) into three parts, one for his wife, Alice, one for Natalie's sister, and one for Natalie, and all in trust, which would prevent any one of them from spending foolishly. Natalie would never have to worry about his rages, his attempts to silence her, or him buying up copies of books so that no one could read them. 

I find it interesting that her father made his will this way, because he could have punished Natalie since he was so conservative and upset about her lesbianism.

Natalie had been living with her lover, beautiful Eva Palmer, for some time when she became an heiress. The women had met at a time when Renee Vivian was involved with an aristocratic and married woman, perhaps the wealthiest woman in Europe, who had already done her duty by providing two children in the marriage. Though not entirely disconnected from Renee, Eva and Natalie had lived in an apartment together, and eventually the two of them bought small houses near each other in Neuilly, near Paris.

Natalie's urge to meet new and fascinating people meant turning her little house into a Salon where the artists, musicians, and other creatives and their admirers could turn up and read their poetry, and otherwise test and show off their skills. She was a wonderful hostess who sometime planned special events to entertain, and Eva participated as an actress in the plays that Natalie scripted for it was her desire to act professionally. ***.

EXCERPT page 154 "The hostess stood serenely in the midst of the crowd. Dressed completely in white, her long hair glinting in the sunlight, she held herself with the straight back and self-assured regality that would still be remarked upon in the tenth decade. She made a point of talking to everyone at least once, focused upon each her ice blue eyes, variously described as kind or cruel, depending on how one felt about her.  She spoke in a soft murmur, never raising her voice and her infectious, melodic, laughter rang out often.

Natalie had other, passionate affairs, beginning immediately.

Perhaps more so than her affairs or her writing, it is her Salons that she is noted for.

*** Isadora Duncan and her brother Raymond came to these events and participated in them.  The names of dozens of creative people and liberals.  February 2016 was devoted to Isadora Duncan, our Mistress of the Month, for her relationship with Paris Singer.

 2022 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights

The primary reference for this book report post is Wild Heart by Suzanne Rodriguez.  My notes were taken especially from pages pages 150, 152, 154.

ENTWINED

 

NATALIE CLIFFORD BARNEY and RENEE VIVIAN : NATALIE WASN'T MONOGAMOUS, and VIVIAN ?

Though the relationship with Courtesan Liane de Pougy put an end to the rumors and outed Natalie Clifford Barney to the world, especially after Liane published a 'fiction' novel that faintly disguised herself, Natalie, and other characters, that was popular, perhaps the relationship that Natalie was most known for was with Renee Vivian.  This is because, though there were others, it was the most enduring.

Born plain old Pauline Mary Tarn in 1877, Rene was the daughter of an American woman and English man who settled in Paris. After her father's death, her mother sent her off to live in England and her mother lived beyond her means. When Vivian finally got her inheritance at 21, she moved back to Paris and rented a small apartment. As she did not keep a chaperone, she became a persona non gratis to society.  Even some Americans in Paris snubbed her and she no longer received invitations. Preferring to have a small group of friends was more her style anyway.

The two women were different enough to be considered an odd couple. What they had holding them together was first, that they met young and were contemporaries, the same generation and lesbian. Secondly, they both adored poetry and wrote it, especially French poetry, though their poetry also revealed their differences. Last but not least, the two women were part of the wave of feminism that came out of the Victorian era. It was a time in which most women did not go to college or have careers. It could be argued that the restrictions were worse for elite women than poor women. It helped that they shared a sense of humor.

Temperamentally the two women were opposites. Natalie was outgoing and loved the social scene and going places and travel while Renee so loathed engaging with others that she was capable of staying in her room reading and writing while a party was taking place in the other rooms. She was shy and introverted and no doubt experienced depression. Rene was also a drug addict and alcoholic who ruined her body. She mixed a drug called Chloral Hydrate, a hypnotic, with booze, and that started when she was in her teens.  It was a sleep medication and she overdosed at least once. So, her mother had tried to put her into a mental hospital.  

Renee was also in love with Natalie. She put her on a pedestal and wrote all her love poetry to Natalie, while Natalie's poetry was to or about the various women she had loved. Young, she published a book that was titled Quelques Portraits - Sonnets de Femmese.

Was Natalie in love with her?

There are many ways to love.

Natalie's nature was not so sensitive. It was said that while the free spirit had her feminist ideals and could be a great friend to those who she chose to have in her life, she was not especially concerned with the masses. She was a bit oblivious to how most people had to live. She left her exclusive boarding school, Les Ruches, in France as a teenager with a sense of entitlement and knowing she was part of the upper crust. She went through her debut without fuss, even though she had an aversion to marriage and would soon decide that it was not even her nature to be monogamous. She even flirted with men, and the suspicious and jealous Renee wondered about Natalie's relationships with men.  In America, though there was gossip, she also continued to participate in society functions.

One of the issues in their relationship was sex. Renee was disgusted by the idea of sex with men. Natalie's role was to be the pursuer, in today's way of thinking, she took the dominant role, the male role if it were a traditional heterosexual relationship. She had sought out many experiences and became a great lover, but Renee was, shall we say, indifferent. She was a challenge to Natalie because she was difficult to impossible to stir.  The challenge frustrated Natalie.  It also meant that Natalie could not be satisfied with Vivian in that way.  Would Natalie ever be able to settle down with just one person anyway?  She was considered a "conquering Amazon."

The Quelques Portraits - Sonnets de Femmese.book got reviewed in Town Topics, Natalie got called a Sappho, her father saw the article, and his rage had no end. He blamed her mother. While he bought out the publisher and tried to destroy any copies of the book, Natalie's mother wrote to her in great distress, telling her she had sinned against nature and the law. Yet, she did come to accept her daughter as lesbian. The Barney family had allowed Natalie and Renee to move in together in Paris, so long as chaperone was present.  They hired an older lesbian to be the chaperone.

While Renee was known to have other affairs, she and Natalie were never quite through with each other.  Believe it or not Renee did get around to having an affair with... Liane de Pougy!

When Renne commit suicide, it was thought that her love for Natalie, perhaps her obsession, was the reason for it. Natalie was asked to write about it when she was 83 years old, and though her emotions and thoughts may have been all over the place about Renee, from the distance of a life well lived into old age, she typified Renee as a weak person, sad and tragic, and that only enhanced her reputation as being a Lady Killer.

C 2022 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights

The primary reference for this book report post is Wild Heart by Suzanne Rodriguez.  My notes were taken especially from pages 191, 122-123.  It's a highly interesting book and I do hope you will read it!

NATALIE WITH FLOWING HAIR - A PORTRAIT BY ALICE PIKE BARNEY OF HER DAUGHTER

Mentioned in the book Wild Heart, I was elated to find the portrait her mother did of Natalie available on the Internet.  The link below will take you to other works by artist Alice Pike Barney.

Alice Pike Barney, Natalie with Flowing Hair, 1900, pencil and pastel on fiberboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Laura Dreyfus Barney and Natalie Clifford Barney in memory of their mother, Alice Pike Barney, 1951.

AMERICAN ART - SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM

A LONG EMAIL CONVERSATION THAT TURNS INTO GHOSTING? QUESTIONS FOR MISSY

QUESTION FROM READER

Missy,

I did meet, "Robert" on line and we started e-mailing. He lives in another country but has been in the United States a few times. We e-mailed frequently and have shared so much about our lives. This went on for a few years. The problem is that I have only seen one blurry picture of Robert and I only spoke to him on the phone one time. That was towards the end of our e-mailing. I didn't know if we had just taken the emailing friendship was far as it would go or if maybe seeing the picture of me (a decent one) made him realize he was not interested in me. There wasn't any context that was flirty or sexual, but I also didn't think a man would spend so much time e-mailing and not have a sincere interest in our friendship. It all stopped short of Zoom or other on line conversations.  He started responding with a few lines and then ghosted me.

I may have lost Robert but I was wondering if you have any ideas about how to conduct an e-mail friendship.

Judy

Baltimore

ANSWER FROM MISSY

Hi Judy,

I'm sorry to hear that your good friend Robert is no longer in your life. I suspect he has gotten himself in a serious romance with a local woman.  Maybe some day you will be surprised with an e-mail from him but you should probably think of him as gone.

I've been giving this subject a lot of thought lately because I too had a friendship that was all about e-mail with a woman who I met volunteering.  The e-mailing was during Covid.  She's an anti-vaxxer and now that restrictions are eased, she does not want to get together, not even to have lunch at a restaurant that has outside seating.  I like her and we have some things in common, but sometimes she would send messages that gave me a feeling she had not "heard" me. I sometimes spent an hour or more communicating through typing with her and admit that sometimes her messages kept me from feeling down. I'm getting busier and started feeling like I do not want to communicate with her so much by e-mail.

I don't know that it's any different - be it a man FRIEND or a woman FRIEND, but sometimes a friendship has it's reasons for a while but not a lifetime.

In general I think e-mail is better than long distance phone charges, but now that so many of us have unlimited cell phone long distance, I don't see a reason for e-mailing back and forth so much.  An in-person friendship is best, phone calls between in-person get-togethers. You can say more and all you have to in much less time with a phone call.  However, some people just like to write or feel they express themselves best in writing. Just like some people are satisfied with one long phone call a year to keep their friendship. Time zone differences and life circumstances may also make e-mail a better option, such as when a friend has young children to attend to but might be able to pick up and answer e-mails once they're asleep.

Your question edges into the question of men and women who meet on-line, sometimes who live at too great a distance to meet up in person and find out if they like each other or are comfortable with each other.  Sometimes when people do meet up they find themselves turned off or, though they considered it a platonic friendship, find themselves attracted to one another. I've heard of people who did all their dating by Zoom or the like, even men who sent for women to marry from other countries who dated this way.  I personally would not trust that.

In general I think that if a woman is actively seeking a man for reasons other than platonic friendship, and the connection is social media or on-line dating, she should not get caught up in an e-mail relationship with him. After a few back and forth, hello, how are you, tell me more about you communications, plan to meet for coffee or tea, spend an hour or so, and go home alone. I'm advising everyone to SLOW IT DOWN.

That is because by now I've heard of too many bad relationships that were entered into on a whim.

If a heterosexual man tells you about women he is dating or having a relationship with, clearly he has no interest in you as a special woman but sees you as one of the boys, so to speak. If he does not venture there he either has nothing much happening, wants to be private about it, or maybe has the idea that maybe, maybe one day he'll have interest in you.

Missy

C 2022 

MORNING GLORIES

NATALIE CLIFFORD BARNEY and THE COURTESAN LIANE DE POUGY WHO OUTED HER IN A PUBLISHED BOOK

Though as a very young woman circa 1898, Natalie Clifford Barney had already had sexual encounters with other women before this, it was a married model named Carmen Rossi who turned her into an "exquisite lover." She was inspired to become a 'poet of love' for there was something of the great romantic in her at the time and she wished to seduce a women's mind, body and soul. Carmen and Natalie went around Paris having a good time, attending both low and high entertainment, and one of the highs was witnessing and participating in the rides around the Bois de Boulogne, where the rich especially showed off their gorgeous carriages, horses, and wore the latest fashions. One day while Natalie was making the round herself with a male companion, she sighted Liane de Pougy in that procession and was immediately intrigued. Her friend told her Liane was "just a courtesan.'" She might not have known what that meant at the time and when she did understand she did not like the idea.

Around this time Natalie began to further define her sexuality and the role she would play in seductions. She embraced her lesbianism and also realized that she could not be faithful to just one woman, that she craved variety. She became a seductress and began to proposition women she found attractive, even approaching strangers. If the woman said no firmly, Natalie would let them alone. If the woman seemed a little hesitant to reject her, she would go into full-on pursuit mode, sending flowers and poetry, doing whatever she could to wear down that person's resistance. However, once she succeeded, she lost interest.

That was not the case with Liane de Pougy, who she pursued strategically, watching the procession daily until it appeared that the latest reported conquest had gone his way. Natalie disguised herself first by using the name Florance Temple Bradford so that she could remain a mystery. She sent flowers daily and little notes to intrigue the woman into meeting her. When finally, the day came to reveal herself and meet Liane in person, she arrived dressed in a costume of a Knight, there to rescue a damsel in distress. Was Liane in need of rescue?

Natalie was still corresponding with her unofficial fiancée Robert Kelso Cassatt, and he too was enabling Natalie's affairs, helping her sneak around. Natalie was always looking for places she could meet women to have sex since she was still living with her parents. Cassatt was heterosexual and at one point she even went with him to the Folies Berger and Maxims to select a prostitute for his satisfaction. However, an experience that challenged that notion that he could accept a White Marriage with her occurred. The other woman arrived to their private dining area in a restaurant where the waiters knew to leave the food aside and stay away. Though he immediately left, he could not resist watching. She later blamed him for doing so, but the man was shaken.

Natalie wanted Liane to leave the Courtesan life. Liane's friends, especially her mentor Valtesse de la Bigne, were opposed to that idea. Valtesse reminded Liane that a Courtesan could have a few weeks with another woman, but she risked losing clientele. There was always someone else ready to take her place as the number one Courtesan in Paris.

At the time there were about forty successful, rich Courtesans who were well known by the public -celebrities. Liane was called The Divine, The Queen of Love, The Pearl, and the Sultana of Sex.  Her image was in photos, on postcards and posters.  She was in the press.

Liane was considered regal, elegant, intelligent, and accomplished. She spoke English and Spanish as well as French fluently. She also played the guitar and piano well and rode a horse with style. She had no talent for acting or singing but her presence in a production meant a sold-out house. She would eventually write seven novels that were not considered to be literary, but they sold, and one play as well as her My Blue Notebooks, a diary.  Could she really give his all up?

Natalie thought so. She realized though that she would have to support Liane financially. She was still getting handouts from her father. What she was supposed to do is get married and get her dowry. Going against her principals, she wrote to Robert Kelso Cassatt and said she was ready to marry him.  She never heard back.  He had moved on and married a heterosexual woman.

Liane published a book called Idylle Saphique, a tell all about her affair with Natalie.  Natalie knew about the book having read drafts and contributed a chapter. The book, published in 1901, had all the real people's names changed to protect the guilty, including her own name and Natalie's. However, the public was wise to who was who.  Natalie wasn't entirely happy with the book's depiction of her, yet she gave out copies of it for years.

Finally, the rumors were so strong that Natalie was lesbian that her father heard about it.  He was enraged and made her promise she would never see Liane again. 

C 2022 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights

The primary reference for this post is Wild Heart by Suzanne Rodriguez.  My notes were taken especially from pages 74, 75, 87, 90,100-101.  It's a wonderful book!

THE PETALS ARE SO SOFT

 

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.

 

MASQUERADE

 

THIS MASQUERADE : GEORGE BENSON

THE COURTESAN PRINCESS ENDS HER YEARS A DEVOUT CATHOLIC

This is about  Liane de Pougy, married name Princess Anne-Marie Ghika of Roumania, and her later-in-life involvement in Catholicism. 

Born Anne-Marie Chassaigne in 1869, Liane had been born into a Catholic family. After her retirement as a courtesan, due to her marriage to the Prince, she again became acquainted with her faith. She was not especially happy in her marriage as the years went on. She sought some advice on marriage, and she was told that it would be most honorable and spiritual if she stuck with it, though her husband and her were not compatible in important ways. He was younger than she, he was apparently desperately alcoholic and in ill health, and he may also have sought sex with prostitutes. At one point she wanted to leave him and live separate lives.

The Dominican Sisters at Saint Agnes cared for children who were fundamentally disabled.  From her Blue Notebooks, here is an excerpt of how she became familiar with their work. She would chose to fund raise for them and the fashion designer and once-upon-a-time Mistress, CoCo Chanel was a generous donor to the same !

Here is an excerpt:

"We were punctual.  She took us to the playground... and there I saw sixty-seven unhappy creatures between eight and sixteen years old, ... the most inexorable suffering.  I nearly fainted. ... Oh! Those cries!  Those contortions, those grimaces, that smell...  Once you have seen that, never never again can you complain of anything.  I was ashamed of having talked so much about myself to Sister Marie Xavier. I pressed the poor tremulous, rather dirty hands which reached out towards me.  I searched those wandering, fixed or mad eyes for some glimmer of light.  I laid my hand on those foreheads, tumultuous or stunned. feverish, so pale... I gave five hundred francs.  George Ghika (her husband) gave a hundred, and I knew that he was more disturbed than he liked to admit.   (page 219 of The Blue Notebooks)

C 2022 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

NOT SHY

 

VALTESSE DE BIGNE's LETTERS FROM LIANE DE POUGY END UP SOLD and HER GRANDDAUGHTER ANDRE DE LA BIGNE FOLLOWS IN HER FOOTSTEPS

After her death in 1910 at the age of 62, the famous old courtesan, Valtesse De Bigne not only gave herself a decorative grave, but her estate held some beautiful antiques and paintings that were selectively given to her friends.

Courtesans of Paris often had a child somewhere in their youthful past, often raised by others, while they sent money. My observation is that the child was usually from a very early relationship, and that somehow these women managed to avoid further pregnancies. It is unknown to me, but I speculate that they may have also denied having any children to the men who they had affairs with. If you read Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot, you know that these relationships varied, that some courtesans had many, some had one at a time, and the definition of Courtesan varies. I always wonder who in the family knew about the child and if the child grew up to know its mother or even know her reputation or if that child admired its courtesan mother.

Valtesse's own granddaughter took the letters that Liane de Pougy had sent to Valtesse and she sold them.  (Page 293)  My guess is that she read them. That she did come to understand some things and might have been inspired.

Perhaps you watch The Crown, as I do, and you caught the way Prince Phillip was depicted, a boy alone sent to a rather, in my opinion, brutal school, where team work was emphasized. After the devastating loss of relatives due to a plane crash, it would seem that his mother, who had been mentally ill and received treatment in a hospital, joined a nunnery.  His father was not much in his life.  His father was with his Mistress in Monaco.

Guess who Prince Phillip's father, Prince Andrew of Greece, had as a Mistress in Monaco!

Comtesse Andre de la Bigne, as she called herself was the grand-daughter of Valtesse de la Bigne.  

She deserves a month all to her own here, so I'll stop with that teaser here...

C 2022 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

Our primary reference for this month's subject, Courtesan Laine De Pougy, is the book titled the Mistress of Paris by author Catherine Hewitt. Additional information comes from other sources, such as, for this post, wikipedia.