Showing posts with label Debutants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Debutants. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 2, 2022

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.

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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.

Thursday, June 23, 2022

THERE IS NO OTHER WAY TO SAY IT : LADY IDINA SACKVILLE'S LAST YEARS WERE TRAGIC

She had been Mrs. Euan Wallace... and Mrs. Josslyn Hay (He'd since become the 22nd Earl of Erroll) ... She had married and married and married.

Idina Sackville had given birth to three children, two sons, and a daughter. True, people of her class were used to sending their children away to boarding school and having relationships with the children then was dependent on letter writing, if that. Idina had been kept from being involved in the raising of her sons though. She'd made an effort to get to know them as they neared adulthood that went not so well. World events affected her personal life as it did so many others.

World War I had affected her life when her first husband Euan Wallace, had joined up and came back uninterested in her or their marriage. He and his next wife, Barbie, had raised those sons as well as three sons of their own.  

Now World War II would further destroy lives.

In a series of tragic events, Euan Wallace and Barbie's three sons would also not live long enough to produce offspring.  

Lady Idna Sackville's daughter by Josslyn Hay would live to adulthood, did marry, have children, and continued on her matriarchal line.  When she married, the Queen and the Princesses Elizabeth (the future Queen Elizabeth II) and her sister attended the wedding. And so, despite all of Idina's scandal, her daughter did not suffer for her mother's reputation. Perhaps that is because relatives had raised the girl.

Idina's sons were killed during service in World War II. As had been the case in World War I, young men of the peerage did not normally avoid military service for their country. This left Euan, who had been so possessive of them without any male heirs.

Then her first two husbands, the fathers of her children died. Josslyn Hay was murdered and her once best friend, Alice De Janze was a suspect.

These deaths put Idina Sackville into a notable depression in which she did not eat or sleep properly and also developed a nerve disease called neuritis, which was said to be made worse because she lived at her house, Clouds, at high altitudes up the mountain. These high altitudes were also said to enhance the effects of alcohol. Idina Sackville was forced to go down the mountain to live in lesser circumstances.

Of great hope to Idina was that her daughter would come to visit her in Africa.  It was not to be. She died before that could happen!

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Excerpts are from The Bolter, a book by Frances Osborne, the main reference for this month's po

My readers, we are not yet done with the Happy Valley Set. Next month we will turn our attention to another book and another woman of that set and learn again how Idina Sackville's life and hers entwined.

Friday, March 8, 2019

PLAIN OLD PAMELA DIGBY and THE DEBUTANTE YEARS - MARRIAGE TO RANDOLPH CHURCHILL

"Reflected Glory" by Sally Bedell Smith is the primary reference for posts.

Pamela Digby was born into the peerage of Great Britain, but she spent 20 years of her life as a courtesan - mistress -  a kept woman.  She was feminine, flirtatious, and maternal to men and made them - and her select women friends - feel special.  Wives worried about their husbands around her.  She changed her man and her life many times but she loved to be surrounded by powerful people. She was highly criticized and judged from her earliest days as a society girl but if she knew it she pretended not to or didn't let it get her down.  She was a "bad girl" and yet to her funeral came those with prestige and power.

Randolph Churchill, the son of Winston Churchill of World War II fame, asked her to marry him the first date they had, an arranged date, and had asked many women before who turned him down.  She said yes and was married to him before he went off to war. She quickly became pregnant and bore him a son - an heir, named Winston. He would be her only child.

Pamela's family had an old title and prestige if not money.  Her education was not substantial.  They couldn't afford the best schools for her.  But they sent her to France to board with a family that took in girls like her and showed them around to absorb the culture.  Who knew that in her later years she would become the United States Ambassador to France after having lived as a mistress in that country.

At the age of 17 her education had ended. She was "finished."  But she went to the Coronation of King George VI, who took over the throne when his brother The King Edward VIII abdicated his throne to be married to Wallis Simpson.  Who knew that someday she and Wallis, who was a good 20 years older than she, would become good friends.

Pamela Digby made her debut in front of the Queen in 1938, wearing clothes that were not much compared to most of her more wealthy peers, clothing that embarrassed her.  But she still attended a marathon of parties, races, and entertainments designed to show off aristocratic girls ready to marry and breed with wealthy young men. More than 1000 girls debuted that year and most of them left the city and went back home to the country to wait on marriage proposals. The others stayed in the city.  Maybe a hundred girls were considered popular. Not Pam. That same year Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy and her sister Rosemary, daughters of Joseph Kennedy, the United States Ambassador to Britain, and father of the future American President John F. Kennedy, called her dumpy.  As it turned out, she and Kick would have an enduring friendship.


Pamela's father won a substantial amount of money at the horse races that allowed him to afford her a Jaguar car, if not the ability to give her a fancy dress ball like other girls. He rented a place in Mayfair, London, to put her in the right neighborhood. But she was taken under wing by her mother, who never failed to have confidence in her, and some of her mother's friends. One, Olive Baille, invited her to house parties where she had famous Hollywood stars on the guest list. Clearly she had something going for her.

Pamela did get an inheritance that would have allowed her to be independent, so long as she budgeted, but she wanted more. Fulke Warwick (ie. of Warwick Castle fame) may have been her first lover. But she claimed only a dinner while he dined out on stories of being sexual with her. Debutantes were thought to be virgins. Most of them were chaperoned.

And so she went through a second season, 1939, as did many girls still in need of a husband.  She went to a pre-war ball at Blenheim Palace - the home of Winston Churchill's family - that was given by the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough for Lady Sara Spencer - Churchill. (Are the names sounding familiar?)  But she was set up on a blind date with Randolph Churchill.

On October 4, 1939 they married.  The smiling bride wore a coat with a fur collar, not the typical white wedding dress, while the smiling groom wore his military uniform. She now had the Churchill name, so respected, and would carry it all her life. Randolph, by many accounts, was obnoxious and probably alcoholic. By January 1940 she was pregnant. He was in the Fourth Hussars. She had to live alone and went from one friend's accommodations to another.  (I know, you're wondering what about the Palace?)  They were totally incompatible and unhappy but then people thought Randolph as difficult. She was 20.  He was 29.  Like many wives, Pamela got involved in the war effort and became something of a tour guide, guiding American officers in London. Her ability to organize and plan large and small events would be useful in all her relationships.

By the time Randolph returned after almost a year away, Pamela acted excited and happy to see him and introduced them to their son, Winston, for the first time. But she had already met and had an affair with another man who would figure in her life, William Averell Harriman. 

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Thursday, March 2, 2017

KATHLEEN "KICK" KENNEDY, SISTER OF J.F.K., BRIDE and WIDOW OF BILLY HARTINGTON aka William CAVENSIH, then MISTRESS OF PETER WENTWORTH FITZWILLIAM, 8th EARL FITZWILLIAM

KATHLEEN "KICK"  KENNEDY, SISTER OF J.F.K.,   BRIDE and WIDOW OF BILLY HARTINGTON aka William CAVENSIH, then MISTRESS OF PETER WENTWORTH FITZWILLIAM,  8th EARL FITZWILLIAM

First Published March 2 2017
Go to the archives to read the whole month!

This book is the primary reference for this month's
Mistress of the Month post!

KATHLEEN "KICK"  AGNES KENNEDY CAVENDISH, LADY HARTINGTON
(1920-1948)

The story of Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy, one of children of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, and sibling of John Fitzgerald Kennedy who one day became President of the United States, has long been repressed.  Maybe that's because her behavior was scandalous.  Or maybe it's just that her other siblings lived longer, did more, or became more famous that she.  Paula Byrne, author of the book that is the primary reference for this post, had access to Kick's own diaries and other materials not previously seen by a biographer, and brought the lively, self depreciation good sport that Kathleen was to life, noting that her unusual nickname was based not only on the use of the term 'kick" to mean fun, but because she had a habit of kicking off her shoes at staid parties and dinners, and once had to wear a mismatched pair of right-foot shoes when her English companions hid the rest of her shoes in one of those huge mazes created out of shrubbery on a great estate. She was a good sport.

When her father Joseph Kennedy became Ambassador to the Court of Saint James,  London, England in 1938, during the Roosevelt Administration, World War II loomed.  Kathleen and her sister Rosemary, who was "slow" probably due to oxygen deprivation at birth, took their bows before the Queen that year as the British press and Life Magazine in the United States took interest in the  American family. In 1938, the 18 year old Kathleen was voted England's Most Important Debutant!

The young, energetic Irish-American woman's introduction to English society was also fostered by one of the most famous American Ex-Patriots, Lady Astor, who was into English politics.  Soon Kick was attending house parties on Great Estates owned by outstandingly anti-Catholic British peers and became friends with other Catholic girls who were in love with Church of England aristocrats. 

Due to their Irishness and Catholicism, both in America (Boston) and in England, Joseph and his family had experienced social exclusion.  Maybe that's one reason the many children of Joseph and Rose became such good friends with each other. Joe Senior's elite college education, his amazing career in banking, his investments in Hollywood film making, and the many connections he had made in business and in politics, including President Roosevelt, hadn't made the Kennedy family acceptable in Protestant- American  WASP circles.

Joseph and Rose taught their children to be competitive, to not cry in response to tragedy but get on with it, to exceed the high expectations placed on them, and to stand out. Defying the stereotype that the Irish were all drunkards, no alcohol was allowed in their home. As the Kennedy couple continued to be married and procreate, they also came to live separate lives, an arrangement that Kathleen didn't realize was strange until she was older. Joseph having more influence on the sons and Rose on the daughters, both young Joe Jr. and Jack had affairs with married women, while Kathleen and her sisters were sent to convent schools and expected to conduct themselves as devout Catholics. One of her favorite ways of gifting someone was to go to Masses, say rosaries, and do good deeds in their honor.

Kick was great friends with her brothers and in the know about their affairs. While she personally held back from sexuality, and was considered prudish, her warm personality gained her many admirers and several marriage minded suitors on two continents. Could it be that she was thinking, "if it's OK for them, why not me?"  Would the devout, convent educated young woman really sell her soul for a title or become a Dollar Princess, one of those wealthy American girls who were pursued by broke nobles?

After her debut and introduction to the wealthy aristocrats and royals in England, Kick came to love the country and the people, feeling she had experienced her true home.  When she married Billy Hartington aka William Cavendish*, she had been in love with him for six years and likely he felt the same.  After the family returned to the United States at the onset of the war, Kick had spent four years away from Billy.  She was popular and pursued but she had not forgotten him and endeavored to find her way back to England.  She joined the Red Cross where some gritty work awaited. 

Then, there were difficulties in which the couple and their families wrestled with the issue of their incompatible religions. As time went by, Billy's family had come to love Kick and believe in her.  Even his Catholic-hating father who had a mistress, Lady Dufferin, came around.  Kick's mother, Rose, was the hold out.  Billy's parents had the feeling that this long ordeal, for which there never were any easy answers, had proven the young couple's sincerity and that they would make it as a couple.  From the beginning the two of them had easy conversation, sometimes long into the night.

Through those years Billy had also matured. As England was targeted by the Germans and the bombings of London began, he wanted to fight for his country and became a war hero.  As an officer of the Cold Stream Guards who stood out, Billy was killed by a sniper with single bullet through his heart. Kick and Billy had married in May at a humble registry office, he had left for the war five weeks later, and he was killed in September. Now the 24 year old "Widow Hartington," Kathleen would have to step aside for her debutant friend Debo, married to his younger brother Andrew, and was left with the title Lady Hartington and a small inheritance. Yet Billy's parents, the Duke and Duchess did not abandon her, not ever.  After grieving with them and being supported by them, which would continue until her death, living here and there, she got herself an apartment, and with that Kennedy view of life, knew she had to move on somehow. She threw herself into Red Cross volunteerism again.  She also spent time with her family in the United States where they had homes in Hyannis Port, New York, and Palm Beach, Florida.  Her time in America seemed to only reaffirm that she belonged to England.

KICK AS A RED CROSS VOLUNTEER IN ENGLAND
picture from FIND AS GRAVE
(Though she died with the married man she was Mistress to,
she was given the burial of the wife of Billy Hartington.)


This book gives in detail the excruciating Protestant and Catholic clergy diplomacies that Kick and Billy went through, looking for some way for him to keep to his Church of England legacy and familial anti-Catholicism, while in love with a devout Catholic woman whose mother would check herself into the hospital when word reached her that the compromise of a simple civil marriage had taken place. Kick's brother Joe Jr., was the only familial representative of the Kennedy's there. This detail, the crisis that was occurring as Kick attempted to marry into one of England's oldest, riches, and most Protestant families, was surprising to me.  This detail comprises most of the book, with the story of Kathleen's Mistresshood taking just a small end portion of the book. Yet, because of all that struggle with religion and grief, the story of her Mistresshood would not be as interesting or understood. 

Unlike the many years of waiting for marriage to Billy, the Widow Hartington, while chairing the Commando's Benevolent Fund Ball in June of 1946, was seduced by Peter, 8th Earl Fitzwilliam. Peter had been a Commando, which was an independent army company, and had completed twelve missions, and came back a decorated war hero himself.  Peter was married with a young daughter, and so unlike Billy Hartington.  He was a gambler, fond of fast cars, fast horses, fast women. He had been around in society for some time and she'd been introduced to him at the end of the summer season in 1945 when they both attended a fall hunt in County Wichlow. If people had doubted that Kick and Billy were made for each other, but had been won over...

"Kick's friends were horrified when they learned about the romance.  Nobody could understand the relationship as she and Peter appeared on the surface to be so different." 
(page 271)

Rose Kennedy was furious with her daughter and went to England to confront Kathleen personally. 

Revealed in this book, and also surprising to me, was that Joseph Kennedy, Kick's father, while gone a whole lot on business, wrote heartfelt and advisory letters to his children, showing support for them, and that even younger brother Robert Kennedy wrote letters of encouragement to his big sister. I came away from the book thinking of Joseph Kennedy, as a much more loving, wise, and involved father than I'd ever imagined.  He was far more wise to the world than his wife, Rose who seemed to hold to high ideals while ignoring her husband's womanizing, that included hitting on Kathleen's friends. It was to her father that Kathleen would now appeal to, after hiding the More-Scandalous-Than-Billy  affair from her family, and easing the truth that she wished to marry yet another Protestant, this time after he got a divorce. So while mother Rose attempted to prevent her daughter and family from any further scandal, it was her father Joseph who said he would try to help, and agreed to meet the couple in France, where it was planned that Peter, not divorced, would ask her father's permission to marry her.

Here is where my own sense of Kathleen emerges after reading the spare pages in this book about her affair with the married Peter. First, Kathleen went to several convent schools, and when she was at the school in Paris, where she studied French literature and needlepoint, in my mind nothing more than a finishing school for rich Catholic girls destined to marry well, the nuns called her "Mademoiselle Pourquoi"  meaning "Miss Why" because she was such a questioner.

I believe that Kathleen had come to question her Catholicism and did not think religion should or did matter so much, though it was her upbringing and the only religion she had known or come to depend on. I think she was torn, knowing the high profile of her Catholic family and the discrimination that people from her heritage had experienced.  She had been raised a privileged young woman, far removed from the earthly poverty of her Kennedy ancestors in Ireland who still lived without an indoor toilet. She had been a media darling. She had received hate mail after marrying Billy. 

At 26 she was a woman of independent means, beautifully dressed with some important jewelry, capable of chairing charity events in high society, intelligent, college educated, though not as well as her father and  Harvard alumni brothers. She was not expected to be in mourning or stay a widow forever. She was expected to remarry. 

I think the death of her husband and brother and the war in general had informed her that life was not to be taken granted, but seized.  She had but a brief  month of sexuality in her marriage. Having been married, she was no longer expected in English society to pretend to be a virgin.  Billy's parents and sister, her brother Jack, and several close friends were aware that she was in a full-on affair with Peter.  It was a whirlwind.  Peter was as keen.  Maybe he had never much been into the glamorous woman he had married and cheated on during their honeymoon. World War II was an era in which women stepped outside the roles of wife and mother, even to do hard physical labor in factories for the war effort.  It was a step ahead in the liberation of women from traditionally expected roles.

As Rose Kennedy threw a fit, Kathleen's maid couldn't believe her ears, that a 28 year old woman who was widowed would allow her own mother to talk to her that way.  Kathleen's sister Eunice Kennedy had come to visit for a couple months in the fall of 1946 and had not been aware that her sister had become a Mistress.

In a small plane, on the way to meet her father for that respectful moment in which the married Peter would, cart in front of the horse, ask permission to marry her, Kathleen and Peter were killed when it crashed. Joseph Kennedy found himself in France identifying her body instead.  Much has been made of the fact that with her she had lingerie and what could be used (in those pre Pill days) to prevent pregnancy - another sin for a good Catholic girl - in her suitcases.  Her worldly father was supposedly stunned to realize. I have to wonder.  This was, after all, a married man who was not sexually faithful to his often pregnant wife, and who had the actress Gloria Swanson as a mistress for some time.

Quoting Angela Lambert on Kick, on page 265, '"Gaiety, like honesty, is a kind of social courage.  It is not easy to be unfailingly charming, lively, and original.  It requires energy, and generosity, always to make the effort to be on one's form."

We may never know if it was love at first sight for the "hard smitten" Kathleen AND Peter, the seducer. What we do know is that the young woman took risks and had ambitions of her own, like so many of her siblings and the Kennedy Family, but hers were of the heart.

Later this month, I'll be posting based on this book:

In search of more information on Kathleen Kennedy and Peter Wentworth - 8th Earl Fitzwilliam.  The title "Black Diamonds" refers to the family's fortune in coal.

Missy

Notes: Most Americans are not familiar with the many titles of royal and noble persons in England or other countries since we don't use them here and give up any right to them upon becoming American citizens.  Generally, a person can have many titles, and as a result what to call them at any time or place is a question.  Their name can change as they inherit other titles as well.  Those in the know, know who they are however.  An example would be that Prince William goes by the lesser title of Duke of Cambridge, though he is most certainly a Prince, at this time but has many other titles.  Some titles are only used during a local visit to the area in which the title was first used or granted..

If interested in other Mistress of the British Isles, you might want to visit my posts on 
King George and his two mistresses, the Elephant and the Castle - October 2013
Camilla Duchess of Cornwall - April 2016
Mary Boleyn - Mistress of King Henry the 8th (who didn't loose her head) - January 2012
Hilda Lezard, Mistress of the Mysterious John Henry Manners - 9th Duke of Rutland -November 2014
 or run a search within MISTRESS MANIFESTO using the words Great Britain, England, or Ireland!

If interested in Mistresses surrounding the Kennedy Family, search for

Edie Bouvier Beale - Jackie's Eccentric Cousin - August 2014
Maria Callas  - Mistress of Ari Onassis - May 2009
Marita Lorenz - Mistress of Fidel Castro and General Marcos Peres -  May 2015

The search block is embedded in the left side bar!

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