Women Lovers, or The Third Woman by Natalie Clifford Barney

She also continued to write, and Poems & Poèmes: Autres Alliances and Pensées d’une Amazone was published in 1920. It was he who christened Natalie “The Amazon,” a nickname that would stick. Natalie became well-established in the glittering literary and artistic community of the Belle Epoque, and counted Colette, Pierre Loüys, Count Robert de Montesquiou, Lord Alfred Douglas, Jules Cambon, and Remy de Gourmont among her friends.ĭe Gourmont in particular was a lifelong admirer and promoter of her work. Consequently, the book is incredibly rare today. Natalie’s father Albert, incensed by a headline that read “Sappho Sings In Washington,” stormed into the publisher’s offices to buy and then destroy the remaining copies and all printing plates. Reviews ranged from mildly complimentary to gushing (Henri Pene du Bois wrote of Natalie’s “miraculous power to write French verse”), but the fact that they were essentially love letters to women caused great scandal in some circles. However, it was Quelques portraits – sonnets de femmes, a chapbook of love poems to women published in 1900, that garnered the most attention.

Her earlier works are full of love and loss and classical beauty, mostly inspired by her readings of the classical poets - Sappho was a favorite - and her own, already tumultuous, love life.īy 1910 she had published four books: Quelques Portraits – Sonnets de Femmes, Éparpillements, Je Me Souviens, and Actes et Entr’actes. She was drawn to shorter forms of writing, particularly poetry and pensées (literally “thoughts” or “fragments”), and always wrote in French, claiming that it was the language in which she could best express her emotion. Writing and socializing were Natalie’s focus during the first years of the new century. In 1896 she left America to settle in Paris permanently. She continued to study French, Greek, violin, and literature, seeking out informal and formal tutors who encouraged her ambitions. She was a good student, but later spurned the option of going to college, stating that she preferred education of her own design.

The family often traveled, and from 1888 Natalie attended the exclusive Les Ruches boarding school in France. She was also beautiful, with a mass of pale blond hair that was often likened to moonbeams, sharp blue eyes, and delicate features.

Natalie grew into a confident child, sociable and outgoing, and was naturally athletic with a particular love for riding horses. Her parents, Alice Pike Barney and Albert Clifford Barney, were wealthy through a combination of inheritance and private income, and the family had homes in Cincinnati, Ohio Washington, DC and Bar Harbor, Maine.

Women Lovers, or The Third Woman by Natalie Clifford Barney