Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2: If you listen to the listener mail segments at the
Speaker 2: end of our episodes, you might remember that Kristen wrote
Speaker 2: in about a Marie Lawrence exhibition at the Barnes Foundation
Speaker 2: in Philadelphia. I did indeed manage to get down there
Speaker 2: before it closed on January twenty first. It was absolutely
Speaker 2: worth it, even though I had some weather related travel
Speaker 2: stress and I picked up a cold that has been
Speaker 2: lingering for nearly three weeks now. If you're like Tracy,
Speaker 2: that's COVID, it's not COVID. Negative for COVID, including on
Speaker 2: a molecular test, not COVID anyway, though the exhibits introductory
Speaker 2: signage included this, Before and after the war, Lawrence sah
Speaker 2: attended salons inspired by the ancient Greek poet Sappho, held
Speaker 2: at the Paris home of lesbian writer Natalie Clifford Barney,
Speaker 2: and standing there in the museum, I was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm taking that as a message from the universe to
Speaker 2: finally do an episode on Natalie Clifford Barney. Her name
Speaker 2: has come up before, including in our episodes on both
Speaker 2: Brie Lawrencen and Collette, who we talked about last year,
Speaker 2: and then she's also she was connected to a bunch
Speaker 2: of other people we have talked about in the past,
Speaker 2: including Isidora Duncan, Edna Saint Vincent Malay and Gertrude Stein
Speaker 2: and Alice by Toklas. And then every time her name
Speaker 2: comes up in something that I'm researching, I'm like, we
Speaker 2: gotta do an episode on her sometime, and so now
Speaker 2: we finally are. I did not mean for this to
Speaker 2: be a two part episode. I got to the end
Speaker 2: of my note taking phase in what I did not
Speaker 2: even feel like were particularly like. I didn't feel like
Speaker 2: I was taking overly detailed notes. But I got to
Speaker 2: the end of notes and I had a word count
Speaker 2: that was already a whole episode, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm in trouble. So this became two parts. Today we
Speaker 2: are going to talk about Natalie Clifford Barney's upbringing, her
Speaker 2: young adult life in Paris, and then the death of
Speaker 2: her father leaving her independently wealthy. And then next time
Speaker 2: on Wednesday, we will talk about the Paris Salon that
Speaker 2: she became really famous for.
Speaker 1: Natalie Clifford Barney was born in Dayton, Ohio, on October
Speaker 1: thirty first, eighteen seventy six. She loved that this was
Speaker 1: her birthday. She felt like her life contained a lot
Speaker 1: of duality, so she liked that October thirty first had
Speaker 1: connections to both Christian and pagan observances. Later, she also
Speaker 1: developed an affinity for astrology and numerology, and she formed
Speaker 1: a club called the Scorpions after their astrological sign of
Speaker 1: Scorpio for people with the same birthday, and one of
Speaker 1: the other members of that club was Marie Lawrence Soon.
Speaker 2: Natalie was the first daughter born to Albert Clifford Barney
Speaker 2: and Alice Pike Barney, who were both from wealthy families.
Speaker 2: Albert's father had made a fortune manufacturing railway cars, including
Speaker 2: for the Pullman Company, and Alice's father was an entrepreneur
Speaker 2: who ran a dry goods store and distilleries, doing well
Speaker 2: enough that he eventually moved into investing in things like
Speaker 2: property and trolley systems and opera houses. Thanks to those
Speaker 2: opera houses, guests at the Pike home when Alice was
Speaker 2: young included past podcast subjects Marie Taglioni and Lola Montes,
Speaker 2: and Alice developed a deep love of music and the arts.
Speaker 1: The Barney family moved to Cincinnati when Natalie was still
Speaker 1: a baby, and her younger sister, Laura was born there
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy nine. While Natalie was always creative and
Speaker 1: outgoing and sociable in many ways, Laura was nearly her oppice.
Speaker 1: She was just a lot more quiet and reserved. But
Speaker 1: the two of them had a very tight and lifelong
Speaker 1: bond as sisters.
Speaker 2: While their life at home was financially pretty comfortable, it
Speaker 2: was not always happy. Albert and Alice's marriage was strained
Speaker 2: pretty soon after the wedding. Alice had come to see
Speaker 2: him as narrow minded and prejudiced. He also had a
Speaker 2: lot of affairs over the course of the marriage, and
Speaker 2: there's really not evidence that Alice did the same, but
Speaker 2: he was deeply jealous and possessive of her.
Speaker 1: For example, not long after they got married, Albert found
Speaker 1: letters that explorer and writer Henry Morton Stanley had written
Speaker 1: to Alice. Henry and Alice had met in New York
Speaker 1: when Alice was seventeen and Henry was thirty three, and
Speaker 1: he eventually proposed, but Alice's mother had sent her back
Speaker 1: to Dayton to separate the two of them. When Albert
Speaker 1: found these letters, Alice insisted they were nothing to be
Speaker 1: threatened by, but he made her burn them all while
Speaker 1: he was watching Albert. It's jealousy of and antipathy for
Speaker 1: Henry Morton Stanley went on for years, and it didn't
Speaker 1: help that newspaper reporters writing about Stanley often brought up
Speaker 1: the fact that he had once been betrothed to an
Speaker 1: heiress who had left him and married someone else. It
Speaker 1: was one of those details they liked to drop in
Speaker 1: reporting that was not about his relationships at all, They
Speaker 1: just throw that in there. Albert's behavior could also be
Speaker 1: really frightening, especially when he was intoxicated. Once, after he
Speaker 1: had a fight with Alice, he took Natalie and Laura
Speaker 1: out of the house and boarded a train with them
Speaker 1: and then threatens to kill all three of them by
Speaker 1: throwing them off of it. He only stopped when Natalie
Speaker 1: grabbed the emergency brake and threatens a pullet and make
Speaker 1: a scene. When Natalie and Laura were still young children,
Speaker 1: the family started spending their summers at seaside resorts. When
Speaker 1: Natalie was six, she had a formative experience. While they
Speaker 1: were in Long Beach, New York. Natalie was trying to
Speaker 1: run away from a pack of boys when a tall
Speaker 1: man came to her rescue and picked her up. That
Speaker 1: tall man turned out to be Oscar Wilde, who was
Speaker 1: in New York on a North American tour. Natalie later
Speaker 1: called this her first adventure.
Speaker 2: This was a formative moment for her mother too. The
Speaker 2: next day, Oscar Wilde showed up at the beach and
Speaker 2: struck up a conversation with Alice. They were essentially strangers,
Speaker 2: but they wound up having this really intimate discussion about
Speaker 2: Alice's life and her marriage. Alice and Oscar were confidants
Speaker 2: until Oscar had to go back to his tour, and
Speaker 2: their conversations really highlighted for her how unhappy she was
Speaker 2: and how her passions for art and music had been
Speaker 2: squashed through her marriage to Albert.
Speaker 1: Soon after, Alice convinced Albert to take a trip to
Speaker 1: Europe under the guise of looking for a boarding school
Speaker 1: for the girls to attend when they got a little older.
Speaker 1: Albert was of the opinion that a European education would
Speaker 1: be necessary for the girls to attract suitable husbands, so
Speaker 1: he agreed to this trip. But Alice also had another
Speaker 1: goal in mind, which was figuring out how she could
Speaker 1: get herself to Europe to study painting.
Speaker 2: About four years later, in eighteen eighty seven, Albert's mother
Speaker 2: died and Albert inherited enough money that the family became
Speaker 2: really wealthy. This was wealthy enough to actually afford the
Speaker 2: kind of lifestyle they'd been living for the last few years,
Speaker 2: and to kick it up a notch. Not long after
Speaker 2: the estate was settled, Albert started construction on two new homes.
Speaker 2: One was the family's main residence in Washington, d c.
Speaker 2: The other was a summer cottage in Bar Harbor, Maine.
Speaker 2: Although the word cottage has connotations of something small and quaint,
Speaker 2: a lot of the so called cottages built in North
Speaker 2: America during the Gilded Age were quite the opposite. They
Speaker 2: were literally mansions. This Bar Harbor cottage, known as Bannyburn,
Speaker 2: had twenty seven rooms, including seven bedrooms just for the servants.
Speaker 2: This was also the year that Natalie and Laura were
Speaker 2: sent to boarding school in France, to a school called
Speaker 2: Le Rouche, which they had visited on that earlier trip
Speaker 2: to Europe. Natalie was eleven at this point and her
Speaker 2: sister was seven, and Alice convinced their father that since
Speaker 2: they were so young and had never been away from
Speaker 2: home like this before, that she should go to France
Speaker 2: as well and rent an apartment in Paris. Although this
Speaker 2: was really about her getting away from Albert and getting
Speaker 2: to study painting, this transition really was hard for the girls.
Speaker 2: When their parents had first tried to drop them off
Speaker 2: at the school, they were both so upset that the
Speaker 2: family wound up going back to Paris for a while
Speaker 2: before trying again. Yeah, this is also like the pattern
Speaker 2: for the rest of Alice's life was finding reasons, like
Speaker 2: finding reasonable explanations for her to be in Europe studying
Speaker 2: painting instead of back in the United States with her husband.
Speaker 2: There was an irony in this choice of boarding school though,
Speaker 2: as we said, in Albert's mind this education was going
Speaker 2: to help his daughters attract suitable husbands, and Le Rouche
Speaker 2: was a prestigious school. Its curriculum was focused on the
Speaker 2: kinds of subjects that were considered appropriate for the future
Speaker 2: wives of rich men, so things like languages, music, poetry,
Speaker 2: deportment and drawing, but the school's founder, Maurice vest also
Speaker 2: she thought that girls should be able to think for themselves.
Speaker 2: By the time Natalie and Laura enrolled at the school,
Speaker 2: she herself had moved on to start a school outside London,
Speaker 2: where one of her students would be the famously headstrong
Speaker 2: Eleanor Roosevelt. But the school was still very focused on
Speaker 2: teaching girls to make their own decisions and to think
Speaker 2: about things logically and rationally. This school they were sent
Speaker 2: to in France was really not one that was going
Speaker 2: to teach them to be obedient to their parents or
Speaker 2: subservient to future husbands. Meanwhile, Alice Barney was making a
Speaker 2: serious study of art. One of the paintings she created
Speaker 2: during her daughter's first term at school, called Paissan Polonaise
Speaker 2: or Polish Peasant, was accepted at the Paris Salon in
Speaker 2: eighteen eighty nine. We will get to Natalie's life at
Speaker 2: school after a quick sponsor break. While in school at LaRouche,
Speaker 2: Natalie Clifford Barney was an excellent student in some subjects,
Speaker 2: kind of an okay student in other ones. It seems
Speaker 2: like it really depended on whether this interested her or not.
Speaker 2: She had started learning French from a governess earlier in
Speaker 2: her life, and French was the only language allowed to
Speaker 2: be spoken at LaRouche. This put her on the path
Speaker 2: to becoming a fluent speaker of both French and English,
Speaker 2: and most of her later riding was in French. Natalie
Speaker 2: wrote and played the violin, and she also played tennis
Speaker 2: and croquet, and she spent as much time as she
Speaker 2: could riding horses. Horseback riding was one of her great
Speaker 2: loves in life. She also became increasingly free spirited and rebellious,
Speaker 2: so things like refusing to wear corsets and insisting on
Speaker 2: riding a stride on her horse instead of side saddle,
Speaker 2: as women and girls were expected to do.
Speaker 1: And she also realized that she was attracted to other girls.
Speaker 1: We have talked on the show before about how for
Speaker 1: much of the nineteenth century there was a lot of
Speaker 1: stigma around lesbianism in adult women, but it was simultaneously
Speaker 1: considered normal and healthy for girls to have physically affectionate
Speaker 1: relationships and even crushes on one another. This was thought
Speaker 1: of as sort of a necessary step in becoming a
Speaker 1: good wife to a man. People only started to regard
Speaker 1: these relationships with suspicion if girls got too old for
Speaker 1: it or if their relationships were too intense. But by
Speaker 1: the time she was about twelve, Natalie understood that her
Speaker 1: attraction to girls was not just part of her childhood,
Speaker 1: that it would be central to her entire life.
Speaker 2: Although Natalie had crushes and flirtations at LaRouche, it seems
Speaker 2: like the first time another girl returned her affections in
Speaker 2: the same way was in Bar Harbor in eighteen ninety three.
Speaker 2: Eva Palmer's family also summered there, and she and Natalie
Speaker 2: had become friends a few summers before. When their relationship
Speaker 2: moved from platonic to physical, Natalie was sixteen and Eva
Speaker 2: was nineteen. Their first sexual experience together was after Eva
Speaker 2: read a poem by Sappho at a variety show. She
Speaker 2: read this in its original Greek, so unless they knew Greek,
Speaker 2: the people and the audience were not really aware of
Speaker 2: its significance. Can't imagine there were a lot of people
Speaker 2: fluent in Greek. Probably not.
Speaker 1: For the next couple of years, Natalie traveled back and
Speaker 1: forth between Europe and North America, and she spent some
Speaker 1: time at a finishing school in New York. Although there
Speaker 1: were a number of women's colleges by this point, she
Speaker 1: never really aspired to go to one of them, and
Speaker 1: she also did not aspire to get married. Seeing the
Speaker 1: realities of her parents' marriage had made her wary of
Speaker 1: the whole institution, and seeing how her father behaved while
Speaker 1: drunk also led her to avoid alcohol.
Speaker 2: Getting married was the expected path for her, though, and
Speaker 2: since she was witty and vivacious, beautiful, and very rich,
Speaker 2: she attracted plenty of suitors. She liked the attention, she
Speaker 2: liked to flirt, but she made it clear that she
Speaker 2: was not interested in these men. But then, in eighteen
Speaker 2: ninety five, she met Robert Kelso Cassatt, nephew of Mary Cassat,
Speaker 2: and he fell deeply in love with her. Natalie told
Speaker 2: him directly that she was interested in women and not men,
Speaker 2: and he proposed that they get married anyway, their relationship
Speaker 2: to one another would be platonic, and each of them
Speaker 2: would be free to see other people. At least in theory,
Speaker 2: this seemed like an ideal scenario. Bob would get to
Speaker 2: marry the woman he was in love with, Natalie would
Speaker 2: get to marry a man, which is what society and
Speaker 2: particularly her father expected of her, and it was also
Speaker 2: a man she liked, even if she wasn't physically attracted
Speaker 2: to him, and they'd each meet their physical needs with
Speaker 2: other people, something that Bob thought that he could handle.
Speaker 2: By the time Natalie had her formal society debut, they
Speaker 2: were unofficially engaged. We will pause here for a second
Speaker 2: to talk about Natalie Clifford Barney's thoughts on monogamy, because
Speaker 2: they were at play here. Of course, they would also
Speaker 2: be a very big part of the rest of her life.
Speaker 2: She really advocated for having lots of lovers without being
Speaker 2: jealous or possessive of anybody. She had a number of
Speaker 2: long term relationships that overlapped with one another, some of
Speaker 2: them lasting for decades. Later in her life, she sorted
Speaker 2: all of these into three broad categories. There were the liaisons,
Speaker 2: the demi liaisons, and the adventures. The liaisons were the
Speaker 2: most important of them.
Speaker 1: Some writers discuss Barney's concurrent relationships in terms of infidelity,
Speaker 1: but that has some connotations of secrecy or of deception
Speaker 1: or breaking a commitment to be faithful to someone. Barney
Speaker 1: did make commitments to some of the women she was
Speaker 1: involved with, but those commitments did not involve being monogamous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she might commit to like somebody being first in her heart,
Speaker 1: but like not to just excluding other people from her life.
Speaker 1: For example, in eighteen nineteen, Natalie Clifford Barney and Elizabeth
Speaker 1: de Grimmau wrote up what was basically a marriage contract,
Speaker 1: and this was not the only such commitment that she
Speaker 1: made with another woman. By that point, they had been
Speaker 1: together for nine years, during which they had each also
Speaker 1: been involved with other people at various points, and Elizabeth
Speaker 1: de Grandma was married to a man, although that marriage
Speaker 1: had been horrifically abusive. This contract set in part quote,
Speaker 1: Adultery is inevitable in these relationships when there is no prejudice,
Speaker 1: no religion other than feelings, no laws other than desire,
Speaker 1: incapable of vain sacrifices that seemed to be the negation
Speaker 1: of life itself. This contract later went on to say quote,
Speaker 1: since the danger of affairs is ever present and impossible
Speaker 1: to foresee, one will just have to bring the other back,
Speaker 1: neither out of revenge nor to limit the other, but
Speaker 1: because the union demands it. No other union shall be
Speaker 1: so strong as this union, nor another joining so tender,
Speaker 1: nor relationships so lasting polyamory would not be coined until
Speaker 1: about two decades after Barney's death, and today polyamory has
Speaker 1: its own vocabulary and cultural elements that absolutely had not
Speaker 1: developed at this point. But there were some similarities in
Speaker 1: terms of the idea that everyone in these relationships was
Speaker 1: meant to know about the other partners, to consent to
Speaker 1: being involved, and to approach it all with a sense
Speaker 1: of trust. But all of that is way more true
Speaker 1: in terms of how Barney conceptualized these relationships than how
Speaker 1: they actually worked in practice. Sometimes she was really jealous
Speaker 1: or possessive. She could be deeply petty when this was
Speaker 1: the case. There were times when she would try to
Speaker 1: keep her partners from seeing other people or from seeing
Speaker 1: specific other people. And then there were also times when
Speaker 1: one of her partners, who had at least theoretically agreed
Speaker 1: to this kind of open relationship, did the same thing
Speaker 1: to her. Sometimes somebody thought they would be okay with
Speaker 1: Barney's other relationlationships until they were actually in the middle
Speaker 1: of a relationship with her.
Speaker 2: At various points there was just a lot of drama
Speaker 2: and mess and angst. We're not going to like go
Speaker 2: through all the drama with all of the relationships we're
Speaker 2: going to talk of, but like there was a lot
Speaker 2: simultaneously though Natalie Clifford, Barney maintained lifelong friendships, sometimes very
Speaker 2: close friendships with a lot of these women after their
Speaker 2: romance had ended, even if that romance had been like
Speaker 2: really tumultuous. So to return to the timeline, one of
Speaker 2: the people who thought they would be okay with Barney's
Speaker 2: other relationships but turned out not to be was Bob Cassot.
Speaker 2: He visited her in Paris in the spring of eighteen
Speaker 2: ninety nine, so about four years into their relationship. By
Speaker 2: that point, their engagement was considered official enough that Barney
Speaker 2: was allowed to be out with him unchaperoned. They met
Speaker 2: up with a woman named Carmen Rossi, who was one
Speaker 2: of Alice Barney's favor art models. By this point, Alice
Speaker 2: Barney had studied painting with James McNeil Whistler and was
Speaker 2: hosting a salon out of her Paris apartment. Barney and
Speaker 2: Rossi already had a sexual relationship, which Cassatt knew about.
Speaker 2: They all went to a restaurant that had these small
Speaker 2: dining rooms that were basically made for privacy the view
Speaker 2: of the room was blocked by a screen, and the
Speaker 2: wait staff did not enter beyond that screen unless they
Speaker 2: were invited to do so. Rossi and Barney became increasingly
Speaker 2: affectionate with each other, so Cassatt decided that he would
Speaker 2: leave them alone for a little while. He did not
Speaker 2: actually leave the room, though, he watched what they were
Speaker 2: doing from behind that screen and eventually started audibly sobbing.
Speaker 1: This led to an argument between him and Barney. She
Speaker 1: was really frustrated by the fact that he was the
Speaker 1: one who suggested they have a sexless open marriage, and
Speaker 1: now the very first time he had experienced firsthand what
Speaker 1: that would mean, he was breaking down and describing it
Speaker 1: as unbearable.
Speaker 2: Their engagement was not immediately over, though Natalie's father had
Speaker 2: started to make some preliminary plans for the wedding and
Speaker 2: for how her dowry would be handled. By the time,
Speaker 2: Bob apparently decided he was not up for this after all,
Speaker 2: and he doesn't seem to have formally told her that
Speaker 2: it was over. She soon learned from friends, though, that
Speaker 2: he had married Amanda Drexel Fell known as Many in
Speaker 2: January of nineteen hundred.
Speaker 1: We'll get to some things that were happening simultaneously in
Speaker 1: Natalie's life. After We paused for a sponsor break.
Speaker 2: In nineteen hundred, when she was twenty three, Natalie Clifford
Speaker 2: Barney published her first book. This was a chap book
Speaker 2: length collection of poetry called kilk portraits sont de femme
Speaker 2: or some portrait Sonnets of Women. This had four illustrations
Speaker 2: that were created by her mother, Alice. There are a
Speaker 2: bunch of accounts that say that Alice didn't know that
Speaker 2: these were love poems to women. I kind of feel
Speaker 2: like that was only really possible if she just didn't
Speaker 2: read it, although there were some early reviews of the
Speaker 2: book that seemed to have been oblivious to that aspect
Speaker 2: of it. A number of these poems were dedicated to
Speaker 2: specific women, although only by their initials. Those women included
Speaker 2: Natalie's first love, Eva Palmer, and Pauline Tarn, who wrote
Speaker 2: sapphic poetry under the pen named Rene Vivien. We have
Speaker 2: not mentioned Pauline yet, but she and Natalie had started
Speaker 2: seeing one another in eighteen ninety nine. There was also
Speaker 2: one to actor Sarah Bernhardt, following her appearance in the
Speaker 2: role of Napoleon. The second in the play leglo.
Speaker 1: In the words of a Washington Post article on Natalie
Speaker 1: and her sister Laura that was published eleven years later, quote,
Speaker 1: those poems scandalized Washington. They were written in French. The
Speaker 1: French was very good, but the tone of the verse
Speaker 1: was very unconventional. According to Barney, at some point a
Speaker 1: New York City gossip magazine called Town Topics the Journal
Speaker 1: of Society published an article about this book that was
Speaker 1: called Sappho Sings in Washington.
Speaker 2: This magazine really existed, and Barney mentioned this article and
Speaker 2: the furor that it caused a number of times in
Speaker 2: her own writing, but biographer Suzanne Rodriguez, author of Wild Heart,
Speaker 2: Natalie Clifford Barney and the Decadence of Literary Paris, was
Speaker 2: not able to find an actual copy of it. At
Speaker 2: some point, though, Natalie's father, Albert, read the article and
Speaker 2: was outraged and bordered a ship to Europe, where he
Speaker 2: stormed the publisher's office in Paris and demanded to buy
Speaker 2: all the remaining copies of the book and the printing
Speaker 2: plates so that he could destroy them.
Speaker 1: Then he shamed his wife for her having been involved
Speaker 1: with it.
Speaker 2: Alice was initially disgusted and horrified at the realization of
Speaker 2: what this book was about and what that meant about
Speaker 2: her daughter. She eventually seems to have come to see
Speaker 2: her daughter's sexuality as part of who she was, but
Speaker 2: their relationship was always really complicated after this, and it
Speaker 2: also seems like Alice felt conflicted about it for the
Speaker 2: rest of her life. Like twenty years later, when Alice
Speaker 2: was in the middle of some drama of her own,
Speaker 2: she was supposed to stay with Natalie in Paris for
Speaker 2: a while, but after they had a series of arguments,
Speaker 2: Alice abruptly changed her mind, and she said outright that
Speaker 2: she disapproved of Natalie and that staying with her at
Speaker 2: her house would make it seem otherwise.
Speaker 1: In spite of her parents' reactions and the fact that
Speaker 1: some of her society friends back in Washington d C
Speaker 1: cut ties with her, Natalie kept living her life in
Speaker 1: the way that she wanted to live it. In addition
Speaker 1: to her relationship with her mother's art model Carmen Rossi,
Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety nine, she had started seeing Cortizon Leande
Speaker 1: de Pougee. Natalie had seen Leanne while driving in a
Speaker 1: carriage with a male friend, and she had been instantly captivated,
Speaker 1: she bought a page costume and went to visit her,
Speaker 1: saying that she was a page of love sent by Sappho.
Speaker 2: These two women gave very different accounts of how this
Speaker 2: was received in each of their written works. In Leanne
Speaker 2: de Pougee's Idel Safique, Barney was frivolous and worshipful, but
Speaker 2: in Barney's memoir Secret, she told Depougee that she should
Speaker 2: stop being a cortisan, and Depouge was so insulted by
Speaker 2: this that she demanded that Barney leave. This was a
Speaker 2: case where like Barney supported the idea of a woman's
Speaker 2: autonomy over her own body, but Depugie's work as a courtisan,
Speaker 2: especially with male clients, really bothered her, and she kept
Speaker 2: trying to get her to stop.
Speaker 1: Barney wrote her memoir Secret in the nineteen forties and
Speaker 1: did not publish them, but leand de Pouge published her
Speaker 1: Idel Safique in nineteen oh one, and this novel is
Speaker 1: often described as a thinly veiled autobiography, and it's one
Speaker 1: of a number of thinly veiled autobiographies that Natalie Clifford
Speaker 1: Barney would either feature in or write herself during her lifetime.
Speaker 1: Leand de Pougie was a famous courtisan and this book
Speaker 1: was scandalous, so of course it was also a bestseller.
Speaker 1: People in Paris knew that the rich American woman depicted
Speaker 1: in the book was Natalie Clifford Barney. She started to
Speaker 1: develop a reputation as a notorious pursuer of women. Her
Speaker 1: relationship with Pauline Tarn also known as poet Rene Vivier,
Speaker 1: started in nineteen hundred when it came to things like
Speaker 1: that their love of poetry, they were really well matched.
Speaker 1: Although it is generally agreed, including by me, Rene Vivier
Speaker 1: was a much better poet than Natalie Clifford Barney was.
Speaker 1: Beyond that, though, their differences caused some challenges in their relationship.
Speaker 1: Natalie was such a socialite and she loved to go
Speaker 1: to parties and play host and make friends, but Pauline
Speaker 1: was almost reclusive. At one point, they took a trip
Speaker 1: to Maine together and Pauline apparently intentionally did not bring
Speaker 1: any gowns with her, which were required to go to
Speaker 1: the formal dinners in the evenings on the ship. That way,
Speaker 1: shouldn't have to go to those dinners. She also skipped
Speaker 1: a lot of the social events in bar Harbor, which
Speaker 1: were things that Natalie was genuinely excited about going to.
Speaker 1: Natalie also disliked drugs and alcohol after her experiences growing
Speaker 1: up with her father, and she avoided them, but that
Speaker 1: was not the case for Pauline. On the nights when
Speaker 1: she didn't go to those formal dinner she spent dinner
Speaker 1: time alone in her stateroom taking sedatives.
Speaker 2: Pauline was one of the people who didn't wind up
Speaker 2: liking Natalie having other partners, and then Natalie also felt
Speaker 2: threatened by a relationship that Pauline started with baroness Ellen
Speaker 2: von Zuilin de Nuivel sometime in nineteen oh one. They
Speaker 2: went through a series of jealousies and breakups and reconnections,
Speaker 2: getting back together in nineteen oh four and taking a
Speaker 2: trip to Midelini on the island of Lesbos to explore
Speaker 2: the possibility of starting a women's colony there, inspired by
Speaker 2: Sappho's school. Eventually they broke up for good, but they
Speaker 2: remained friends afterward.
Speaker 1: Sometimes Natalie Clifford Barney is framed as having been immensely
Speaker 1: cruel toward Pauline tarn driving her to try to take
Speaker 1: her own life. Their relationship was definitely tumultuous, but Tarn
Speaker 1: also had a rich creative life, publishing multiple volumes of
Speaker 1: poetry and prose between nineteen oh one. When her romance
Speaker 1: relationship sort of ended with Barney in nineteen oh eight,
Speaker 1: they got back together briefly in nineteen oh four.
Speaker 2: Her long term.
Speaker 1: Relationship with Helen ended in nineteen oh seven when Helene
Speaker 1: left her for another woman. Turn tried to take her
Speaker 1: own life in nineteen oh eight, and then she died
Speaker 1: in nineteen oh nine at the age of thirty two
Speaker 1: after a serious illness that was influenced by both heavy
Speaker 1: drug use and anarexia.
Speaker 2: Along with her mother and sister Natalie Clifford, Barney is
Speaker 2: sometimes also blamed for contributing to her father's death. Albert
Speaker 2: had been noticeably unwell as early as eighteen ninety nine,
Speaker 2: and he had a heart attack in nineteen oh two.
Speaker 2: This is actually his second heart attack, and it was
Speaker 2: not long after getting into a dispute with Alice and
Speaker 2: Laura over their involvement with the Bahai Faith. He went
Speaker 2: to Europe to try to recuperate from this heart attack
Speaker 2: in some of its health spots. Honestly, this seems like
Speaker 2: a bad idea to me, because that put him a
Speaker 2: lot closer to the dress of all the gossip about
Speaker 2: Natalie and her life in Paris. He eventually developed pleurisy
Speaker 2: there and got too sick to be able to make
Speaker 2: the voyage home, and he died in Monte Carlo after
Speaker 2: another heart attack. Later on that year.
Speaker 1: Albert Barney left an estate with a value of about
Speaker 1: nine million dollars to be held in trust, with the
Speaker 1: income from it to be divided evenly among his wife
Speaker 1: and two daughters. That made all three of these women
Speaker 1: independently wealthy, which of course changed all of their lives considerably.
Speaker 2: And we will be talking about that more in our
Speaker 2: next episode. And before, listener, mail, I have a correction
Speaker 2: because the pup couple of people have pointed out that
Speaker 2: in our episode on Emily Warren Roebling, I say she
Speaker 2: died in eighteen ninety three, and then I also we
Speaker 2: also say she died in nineteen oh three. Nineteen oh
Speaker 2: three is the cre I tried to go figure out,
Speaker 2: how did I make that mistake, because that's not even
Speaker 2: like a typo, that's a fully different century. I don't
Speaker 2: know how I made that error. Yes, Emily Warren Robeling
Speaker 2: died in nineteen oh three, not eighteen ninety three, and
Speaker 2: I got it in there two different times because at
Speaker 2: like I put eighteen ninety three there for some reason,
Speaker 2: I don't know why, and then I picked up that
Speaker 2: same wrong year later on in the episode. So sorry
Speaker 2: about that. Listener mail we have is from Eva, and
Speaker 2: Eva wrote to say, I just listened to The Mourning
Speaker 2: Dove behind the scenes that I somehow missed when it aired,
Speaker 2: and I heard highly speculate about other vendors called book
Speaker 2: barn in the Northeast. So you probably got lots of
Speaker 2: mail about all the book barns in the Northeast. I
Speaker 2: figured there are worse things to get lots of mail about,
Speaker 2: so I wanted to mention book Barn of the finger
Speaker 2: Lakes and dry in New York, which is an old
Speaker 2: actual barn that was converted into a labyrinthine bookstore that
Speaker 2: has been around for many decades, and it brags it
Speaker 2: has three hundred categories of books. If you're ever passing
Speaker 2: through Dryden, it's a trip. And then Eva sent a
Speaker 2: link to a video on YouTube about the book Barn
Speaker 2: of the finger Lakes and Dryed in New York. We
Speaker 2: did get a couple of emails about various book barns.
Speaker 2: I liked this one in particular because like the crowded,
Speaker 2: very tall shelves reminded me of a couple of used
Speaker 2: bookstores that I have been in in my life. I
Speaker 2: have a fondness for them, and this one in particular,
Speaker 2: I was like, Oh, I can sort of imagine myself
Speaker 2: in there, even though I have never been to that
Speaker 2: particular bookstore before. So thank you so much for that
Speaker 2: email and the link to the video. I did not
Speaker 2: watch all of it, but I did watch part of it.
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