natalie clifford barney
PARIS • 1876 - 1972
Natalie Clifford Barney’s literary salon at 20 Rue Jacob, the Temple a l’Amitié, grew out of a tradition of Salonnières, women who subverted their role in the home, or private space, to exercise power and influence in the public arenas of culture, publishing and politics. Born in Dayton, Ohio, and lived as a poet, novelist and salonnière, while an expatriate in Paris.
1966 Natalie Clifford Barney interview at The Temple of Friendship
Barney’s early 1900’s salon boasted a impressive guest list (below), for six decades, famous writers and artists from around the world gathered, including Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, Earnest Hemingway, Jean Cocteau, and Paul Valéry, but as Judy Chicago noted in her research for “The Dinner Party” -“her salon was quite unique in that the stature of the women who frequented it was in no way derived from the importance of the male visitors, nor were these women expected to “inspire but not write”, as many of their predecessors had done”. Barney’s incubation and patronage of writers is canonized in her anthology Aventures de l’Esprit. They swarmed to her elegantly furnished apartment and mysterious masonic Temple d’Amitie (Temple of Friendship) next door, which nestled in an overgrown garden. There, she would keep a fire constantly lit, feed them chocolate cake, and discuss the work of her idol, ancient Greek lesbian poet, Sappho.
A SELECT LIST OF ATTENDEES TO 20 RUE JACOB
gertrude stein
scott+zelda fitzgerald
isadore duncan
sylvia beach
djuana barnes
ezra pound
marcel proust - read about our madeleine dinner here.
rainer maria rilke
auguste rodin
anatole france
edna st.vincent millay
t.s.eliot
mata hari
w.somerset maugham
thornton wilder
william carlos williams
remy de gourmant
peggy guggenheim
truman capote
gabrielle d’annunzio
paul valery
guillame apollinaire
ernest hemingway
rabrindranath tajore
andre spire
max jacob
laurent tailhade
sinclair lewis
valery laurbaud
phillipe souplault
nancy cunard
mina loy
jean cocteau
collette
Vogue November 1, 1969 Fresh Remembrance of Oscar Wilde by Philippe Jullian and photos by Cecil Beaton on Vogue Archive.
(above) From Salonnière Paper issue 01
“War—men’s childbirth. They give birth to death, as women do to life, inevitably and with courage.”
For her 1929 publication of Adventures of the Mind, Barney drew a social diagram (above) which crowded the names of over a hundred people who had attended the salon into a rough map of the house, garden and Temple of Friendship. The first half of the book had reminiscences of 13 male writers she had known or met over the years and the second half had a chapter for each member of her Académie des Femmes. This gender-balanced structure was not carried through on the book’s packaging, which listed eight of the male writers then added “… and some women.
View of the two-storey pavilion at 20, rue Jacob, courtyard side.
Photograph of Eugène Atget in 1910.
Interior of the temple in 1909.
^ Natalie Clifford Barney in a brocaded velvet robe. This photo was taken in the dining room of her pavilion on 20 Rue Jacob Paris 6 a few years before her death in February 1972 at age 95.
Photograph of a wood sculpture entitled 'L'Amazone' by Chana Orloff, a sculpture of 1915, considered an unofficial portrait of Natalie Clifford Barney. Barney was often mentioned in newspapers for her unconventional habits, such as riding horses astride rather than sidesaddle. Such actions coined her the nickname l’Amazone (The Amazon) by the poet Remy de Gourmont.
Remy de Gourmont with Élisabeth de Gramont and Barney in 1913. Drawing by André Rouveyre.
How to reach NCB’s salon… Drawing by André Rouveyre.
Natalie Clifford Barney and an unknown woman (identified by Smithsonian as Colette), 1906, ph. Cautin & Berger, Paris
Barney was unabashedly gay, seeing lesbianism as a “perilous advantage.” She had hundreds of lovers, including the American painter Romaine Brooks for 50 years. Collette, above, was another of her famed lovers.
THE PARIS REVIEW Salons took place on Fridays, and have have been recounted to include chocolate cake, strong drinks, and the artful mediation of interaction. In an interview with George Wickes in a 1974 Paris Review, Virgil Thomson describes a salon Friday he attended: “Well, it was the French style. There was tea at an enormous dinner table with lots of food... And there would be sandwiches and huge cakes and all sorts of things like that. And they would continue sitting at the tea table unless there were too many people, in which case they would move off into the parlor or sometimes into the garden in the summertime. It all depended on how many were there. Like any skill full hostess Natalie always saw to it that some were there, and sometimes would run up a much larger number if some star like Radclyffe Hall or maybe Rilke or someone like that would be around.”
More research archived on Are.na
To read a group chat among a few of our favorite (and unexpected) salonnières spanning five centuries, click here.