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.

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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.

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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.