#27: Wild Heart: A Life: Natalie Clifford Barney and the Decadence of Literary Paris

On sapphic history and queer lineage

Hello and welcome to the first-ever guest edition of RSQ! This week, rather than a thousand words from me, you’ll be getting an excellent rec from Kira Deshler of Paging Dr. Lesbian.

If you’re unfamiliar with her newsletter, I’d recommend starting with this interview with Letterboxd Lucy, this essay on lesbian music videos, and this exploration of lesbians’ love for Hozier. 

You can also get a sense of her writing by reading her review below. The book she wrote about is one I hadn’t heard of before this week, but now cannot wait to read. 

But before we get to that, I wanted to give a quick update on how I’m thinking about continuing to use Substack, as I’m clearly still here. I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to do last week, or why I was sort of hesitant to leave. But right after sending that newsletter, I saw a thread from David Davis that got to the heart of it. The whole thing is worth reading (start here), but here’s what stood out to me: 

i considered leaving substack, and was interested in the possibility of organizing with other people interested in leaving on principle

but let's be real: do you think another platform, if able to do so, would not do the same thing? do you think the other platforms aren't transphobic (or based in any other kind of supremacy thinking)?

While there are lots of very valid reasons to abandon ship, I have yet to see a convincing argument for where we should all be taking our work instead. It seems like this would be a great opportunity for another newsletter company to step up and announce that they have a different stance than Substack on hosting transphobes, but that has yet to happen. 

And why do we think that is? 

From what I can tell, the two most popular alternatives right now are Buttondown and Ghost. And while these companies are likely aware of why they’re suddenly seeing an influx of new writers, neither have done anything to indicate that they do more than Substack to protect marginalized communities. 

Basically, there’s not a great solution here—at least not yet. But in the meantime, I don’t want to stop writing altogether and I hope that other queer writers (especially trans writers, but also cis) won’t, either. 

Anyway, on to a review! Enjoy it, then go subscribe to Kira’s newsletter, Paging Dr. Lesbian. 

— Becca 

Wild Heart: A Life: Natalie Clifford Barney and the Decadence of Literary Paris by Suzanne Rodriguez

Nonfiction, October 2002

Something I’ve noticed over the years that I’ve been studying sapphic culture is this: sapphics love historical fiction and non-fiction that includes lesbian or queer characters. We simply eat it up! From Gentleman Jack to Carol, the appetite for these stories seems to have only grown over recent years. 

I’ve written about this before, but I think part of the reason for this is a desire to see ourselves in history, thus giving us the ability to create a queer lineage of sorts—making enriching personal connections across time and space. We might even think of this media as an expansion of the “lesbian continuum,” to use Adrienne Richs’s term, as these stories can broaden our understanding of how queerness and lesbianism have existed over time. 

But while these genres have become particularly popular in film, as well as in television as of late, I hadn’t found much time to explore these themes in literature—until now. 

Enter: Wild Heart: A Life: Natalie Clifford Barney and the Decadence of Literary Paris. This biography tells the story of someone I wager most of you have never heard of: an astounding woman named Natalie Clifford Barney. 

Barney was born in 1876 in Dayton, Ohio, but spent much of her life in Paris, a city she came to call home. Paris was also where she held her literary salons, events that became legendary not only around the city, but across all of Europe. 

As Rodriguez puts it, Barney was unusual from a young age. She was charming and had luscious blonde hair, a quick wit, and was not one to hold her tongue. She was also exclusively attracted to women and took no pains to hide this fact from a very young age. 

Rodriguez paints a wonderfully vivid picture of Natalie’s love life. She was not someone who believed in monogamy, and had dozens of overlapping short- and long-term love affairs with women from various walks of life—some of whom were well-known in their own right. One of these women was Europe’s most famous courtesan, Liane De Pougy, and their legendary affair was quite explicitly discussed in De Pougy’s bestselling novel, Idylle Saphique. 

Though Barney’s life reads as exciting and even inspiring, Rodriguez also highlights Barney’s many faults, painting a picture of the complicated nature of her character as well as her outsized influence on the world around her. Barney was by many accounts a selfish person, as is evidenced by the long list of scorned lovers left in her wake, and also held some confusing and even contradictory political views, particularly as she grew older. 

Still, Barney’s story is undoubtedly a fascinating one, and I’m frankly surprised she’s not more well-known. Her greatest influence can be seen in the popularity of the weekly literary salons she held at her home in Paris, events which frequently put her in the company of figures like Proust, Colette, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Isadora Duncan, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and Truman Capote. (Famous names like these pop up throughout the book–the legendary spy Mata Hari once performed a dance at an early one of Natalie’s salons). 

Wild Heart spans nearly a century (Barney lived to be 95 years old), and Rodriguez packs it full of accounts of Barney’s many exploits, as well as quieter moments of rumination about her motivations and the complexity of her many relationships. In Rodriguez’ capable hands, it is a thrill to see the decades pass—from the Belle Époque, through two world wars, to the freewheeling ‘60s. As an added delight, the book also contains more than a dozen pages of charming pictures of Barney and her friends and lovers, a detail that makes the reader feel even more connected to Barney and her astonishing life. 

The book is a thrilling addition to the small but growing pantheon of famous historical sapphics. (One such woman, Barney’s friend Colette, even got a queer period drama made about her starring Keira Knightley). With Rodriguez’ rigorous and sensitive attention to her character, Barney springs to life on the page. And what a life it was, indeed. 

Queer points:

• +5 for teaching me about famous courtesan Liane De Pougy, who was reportedly so beautiful that men would see her and immediately pledge to die for her

• +10 for including artfully composed nudes from the year 1900

• +8 for including descriptions of double-dates between Natalie Clifford Barney and her partner Romaine Brooks, and Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas (just gals being pals)

Buy it from your favorite local bookstore on Bookshop

Thanks for reading! And again, if you enjoyed this rec, go check out Paging Dr. Lesbian.