After we returned from Venice, where only our governess had much joy of the trip, Opale rejoined her family in Norwich. Shortly afterwards we were aghast to learn of Violette's death. Renée "unconsolable and more dead than alive" came back to the Rue Alphonse-de-Neuville where I was waiting for her in consternation, having no idea this time what to say or do! She seemed scarcely conscious of my presence however, and shut herself up in her room where I could hear her sobbing, then chanting, sometimes all night long in a rapture of suffering which at last found an outlet in poetry.
Violette was more dear to me for our childhood memories whereas she had been Renée's friend throughout adolescence.
Worried about Renée's pallor and her unwillingness to speak, I took advantage of one of her visits to Violette's sister to try to find out more about her state of mind in her absence. This would no doubt be revealed in her poems: the fever-readings lying on her table... I opened the first notebook and read:
I alone am able to bestow nights without tomorrow.
Was she tempted by Death?… Had she contemplated suicide? I knew her method of composing a poem one line at a time: starting with a single phrase. Knowing that this fragment was awaiting completion I turned the page and discovered several verses:
While I yet sob they tell me:
In the shadow of the sepulchre where her grace
grows pale,
She enjoys the fleeting peace of that bed
Her forehead sombre, and in her eyes the dawn.
I listen, but the wind from the void blows away
brave hopes of serene infinity.
I know she is no longer in the hour I clasp,
The unique and certain hour, and I believe her dead.
Next a whole poem entitled Epitaph:
Gently you passed from sleep to death
From night to the grave and from dream to silence.
And finally:
Here comes the night: I will bury my dead,
My dreams, my desires, my pain and my remorse,
All the past... I will bury my dead.
I bury your eyes among the sombre violets,
Your hands, your forehead and your silent lips,
You who sleep among the sombre violets.
Then further on:
I will cover with incense, with roses, with roses
The pale hair and the closed eyelids
Of a love whose flame burned out among the roses.
So I was included, still very much alive, in this burial: "Let the Dead bury their Dead." Saddened by this discovery, I closed the notebook.
When would she give up this role as "weeper" over a live woman and a dead one, and confide in me and all the tenderness which awaited her in vain? Perhaps she harbored a secret resentment against me since she had neglected Violette for me. Trying to hide her remorse by turning away from me, giving herself up entirely to this harrowing memory, was a just revenge. I could only wait for a sign from her. It came at last when she saw me preparing for my departure to the United States.
"I'm going with you," she declared suddenly, more perhaps through fear of finding herself alone than from a desire to be with me.
To tear her away from that room where she had suffered the most grievous pain, and on the pretext of moving nearer the center of town to facilitate our departure, we took rooms at the Hotel Regina. Leaving the Rue Alphonse-de-Neuville without regret, I remembered how several times after a scene with Renée I had watched her go, my eyes following her stooped shoulders as she walked up the street, then, touched by the sight, I would run after her and bring her back—her and her smile—a smile she seemed now to have lost completely.
Our journey was good for her:
At last I despise you, fleeting pain!
My head is raised, my tears are over.
My soul is freed and your flickering shadow
Strokes it no longer these sleepless nights.
Today I smile at the wounding dawn.
Oh wind of vast oceans unperfumed by flowers,
With a sharp salt tang invigorate my frailty.
Oh wind from the sea, forever blow my pain away...
Before she left France, however, she had given our governess the go ahead to get ready a little apartment which Violette's sister had told her about. Renée had rented this apartment at 23 Avenue du Bois, where she had spent so much time already. This is how she described it to The Friend:
Let us flee, Serenity of my ravaged hours
To the depths of twilight, weary and barren.
In the evening, grown tender, softly will I tell you
Of the beauty of the only Mistress in this house.
Oh the sharp scent, the bitter music
Of joy extinguished never to return.
She got off the boat with me in New York as vacant as a sleep-walker who no longer feels the weight of his own body. Arriving at Bar Harbour, we were greeted by a friend from the summers of my early youth. Barely adolescent, we would wander all day long by the sea, in the mountains or the woods. When we left Eva's house, turning our backs on our family homes, her brother, a sensitive artist, would watch how our long hair, red and blonde, rippled about us, stretched out in the sun or flowing in the sea breeze.
One day, when I was waiting for Eva to finish combing her prodigious hair, which swept down to her ankles, and marveling at its length, she suddenly seized the scissors and haphazardly hacked off a thick lock which she then held out to me. Delighted, but concerned, I scolded her for this gesture which marred her beauty. She confessed that her hair was her rival, for people were always admiring it and ignoring her; getting rid of even a small hank was not sacrifice but revenge!
This strange young woman with the sea-green eyes looked like a medieval virgin with her hair pinned up above her pale face and delicate neck, bowed down by their weight. Their blood red color seemed to feed off her, to the point of making her anaemic. She had, however, just passed her exams at Bryn Mawr with flying colors.
Eva was as retiring as Renée; they managed to spend their evenings together so that they could continue to study Greek while I went to all the society functions, as my parents wished, in order to silence certain rumors which were being spread about me from Washington right up to the Bar Harbour peninsula. (Curious coincidence, the boat which brought us here was called the ‘Sappho'!)
After the dinners and balls, where I managed to enjoy myself as I have the art of repartee down to my finger tips, I would join my two friends at Eva's with a light dancer's step. Often I would arrive so late that day would already be breaking in the tower to which they had retreated. Since it seemed like a waste of time to go home and sleep, we would go and bathe instead in Duck Brook, where a babbling spring formed a series of little ponds whose clear water was not so cold as the water in the sea. In that sheltered place we would stretch out on the banks, warmed by the sun, knowing that no one would disturb us so early in the morning. Realizing that we were rather a pretty sight, we brought a Kodak along to take pictures. But as we took turns, one of us was necessarily excluded... An omen? Our nymphlike frolics were interrupted in the middle of the season by a telegram informing Renée that some close relatives, an American woman with whom we had stayed in London and her 'debutante' daughter, would be arriving at the smartest hotel in Bar Harbour where a room had already been reserved for Renée, who would thus find it easier to guide them around the social whirl. Since the social whirl was then in full flow I often had barely time to exchange despairing glances with Renée over the shoulders of our partners. Poor Renée, she hated putting on an evening dress and guiding the debutante, for whom, with my help, she had to find partners, through the quadrille!
When our duty was finally done we arranged to meet each other, Renée, Eva and myself, at Bryn Mawr where Eva had kept on her rooms. When we arrived, fall had already fired the beautiful Pennsylvania countryside with the brilliant colors of its decline. Renée wandered in the woods, seized once again by the idea of death, and with de
ath in her soul at the thought that we would soon have to part: she to accompany relatives to England, I to join my family in Washington. This return to our various folds would have seemed unbearable had we not been fortified by the hope of seeing one another again in Paris. In the meantime Renée sadly continued her lonely walks around the College after the literature classes given by the finest and most erudite professor there, Miss G., to whom I had dared show my English poems. She encouraged me, even going so far as to invite me to her apartment where, sitting on a stool at her feet, I would read poems I had composed for her. After these stirring sessions I would go and join Renée. One evening it took me a long time to find her for she had discovered an old graveyard and the haunting death of Violette had kept her there. Despite my efforts, and her attraction for Greece, she fell once again victim to that melancholy in which only death seemed an attractive prospect and a source of comfort.
We parted shortly afterwards in tears. She, after doing her social duty in England, to move into the new apartment which awaited her in the Avenue du Bois next door to Violette's sister, I to spend the long winter in Washington with my parents as promised. I took up my old social round of visits, balls, flirtation, horse rides around the capital and confidences to my old Embassy friends, until the sudden arrival of Alfred Douglas whom, in a moment of enthusiasm, I had once described as follows:
The whimsical profile of a page,
Hair of gold, a dreamy brow
and blue eyes, blue as a flower
opening its heaven in this face.
Although he enjoyed the protection of a cousin at the English Embassy, my parents would not allow me to receive him. I was therefore reduced to driving him in my carriage through the surrounding woods. I had to advise him to leave this hostile country and return to Opale, who loved him still, whereas I had no desire to get married on any condition despite Opale's insistence. She reproached me for not considering her 'Prince Charming', her 'golden boy good enough for me'.
As he listened, Lord Alfred nervously twisted a little ring which Opale had placed upon his finger. He soon returned to her and she, on a sudden impulse, ran away with him.
Unable to attend their wedding, or the birth of their son—whose godparents Freddy and I were to be—we wondered what present to give the child. We decided upon a set of opals which he could use as marbles.
This unfortunate child, handsome but half-mad, had no need of those unlucky stones to go the way of another Douglas, for he killed himself upon reaching puberty. Opale and 'Bosie' continued to live together, more for worse than for better.
A little while after Alfred Douglas' unfortunate stay, I was visited by a young Frenchman, the Comte de la Palisse, a rather shabby-looking fellow. He said he had been sent by our governess-chaperone, who had introduced me to him in Paris and "had led him to hope that I would accept his attentions." Realizing what he had in mind I immediately discouraged him. His behavior astonished me nonetheless, induced as it was by a schemer who, hoping to oust Freddy whom she considered my English suitor, had urged her unfortunate protege to try his luck and undertake that expensive journey, with its prompt return trip.
I wrote to Renée but with no reply. According to Mary S., she had moved not into the little apartment which had been prepared for her at such expense by our governess, but into the large one on the ground floor. Mary S. only saw her in passing as Renée was totally absorbed in decorating it in a highly original style. Was it her interior decorating which prevented Renée replying to my letters? Or was it the launch of her new book, Evocations, of which she had sent me a copy? I was worried and looked to this book to explain what could have provoked her silence. I found some reassurance in her poems "for Atthis”—Atthis being one of her nicknames for me—but was surprised to be referred to in the past:
For I remember the divine anticipation,
The shadow and the fevered evenings of the past...
Amid the sighs and the burning tears,
I loved you Atthis.
There followed several verses of description, then this last verse:
Now my sob is heard and rises with the flame,
And the soaring of songs and the breath of lilies,
The deep-rooted sob of the soul of my soul:
I loved you Atthis.
What prevented such strong feelings from enduring? I was in a fever of impatience and apprehension, bound as I was by my duty toward social frivolity and without resources of my own with which to escape. I returned at last to Paris in the spring with my family. Before setting foot in my bedroom at the Hotel d'Albe, I rushed over to the Avenue du Bois where the concierge informed me: "Mademoiselle went out a while ago."
I waited in the large courtyard at number 23. My heart beat wildly as I caught sight of her at last in her car. I was running to meet her when she ordered her chauffeur to drive on out the back way without stopping. Was it possible that she had not seen me? I ran up to Violette's sister's apartment. Mary greeted me kindly but either could nor or would not explain the mystery. I stayed there for hours hoping that Renée would come up unexpectedly. I stood watch from that apartment just above Renée's in case she should appear in the little garden. Fearing the treacherous governess might have intercepted the letter in which I announced my arrival, I wanted to get to the bottom of the matter and, indeed, I had my answer that very evening. Renée appeared in the garden in the company of a very large individual; the manner in which this individual placed her arms around Renée's person made the intimacy between them quite clear. She had evidently made a conquest of Renée, but how? Certainly not by her physical charms. Perhaps beneath all that flubber lurked not only the overbearing face of a Walkyrie but also a heart of gold? Renée had never aspired to all the useless luxury with which the new arrival surrounded her, her personal fortune having always more than sufficed for her needs. Who was to profit from this prodigality if not our artful governess?
If only I had been certain that Renée was happy, I would have slipped away unnoticed; but why had she bothered to send me her new book, which she knew I would read and in which I could feel that her love for me had not died? Rekindle it? Did her flight from me betray weakness or only a constraint imposed from outside? Should I write poems in reply to hers, in the same spirit and with the same Sapphic rhythm?
I wait for her, I keep vigil...
I hope in vain, I count the seconds,
And know not what to do. Oh double thoughts!
For what new love are her unfaithful glances,
Her braided locks?
Oh night who unites parted lovers
You most merciful, most often beseeched,
Can you lead back to my heart the cruel
Heart of my beloved?
Hating to suffer as much as I hated causing suffering, I observed that instead of laying me low it forced me to show what I was made of. Riding my horse past Renée's window one day, I noticed that when another mount tried to pass me, with one accord my horse and I leapt off at a wild gallop to avoid being overtaken. These reactions are, perhaps, a question of breeding.
But how could I win her back? Should I bang on her closed door? Dare to send her a more direct poem, reveal to her my suffering, how much I was suffering? Swallow my pride and admit that I loved her still, since I could not help but be faithful to her?
No longer trying to please or even move you,
Let me draw near you, more virginal
Than the snow: teach me your impartial peace,
Destroy my will and my power.
I want to hide my eyes, sadder than the evening,
From your eyes, forget everything save the small oval
Of your face and, with my forehead on your soft
breasts,
Sob out my hopeless tears.
My tears are a slow poison I will drink
Instead of gleaning from some trivial affair
A barren cure, the final numbness.
Near you, my desire burns up in disillusion.
Oh regret! How keenly I still feel the pain
Of dreaming of a joy in which I no longer believe.
But how to get this sonnet to her without anyone else reading it? I asked my friend, Emma Calvé—who was also suffering from a romantic desertion and whom I had tried to comfort during her triumphant tour of the United States in Carmen, to lend me her irresistible voice. That night, disguised as street singers, she sang under Renée Vivien's French windows: "I have lost Eurydice, there is no pain like mine," while I pretended to pick up coins thrown to us from the other floors. At last Renée opened her French window, the better to hear that astounding voice singing the famous aria. "Love is a Bohemian whom no law binds." The moment had arrived. I threw my poem, attached to a bouquet of flowers, over the garden fence so that she would see it and pick it up. But passers-by were beginning to crowd around us and we had to slip away before the singer, recognized even in the shadows by her voice, was swamped with applause.
I soon got a reply to my sonnet. Not from Renée as I had hoped, but from the governess who, having gathered up both poem and bouquet, "destined for a person whose welfare was her concern, begged me to cease these dispatches which were as useless as they were distressing."
If it is true that feelings cannot be summoned to order, it is truer still that they cannot be dismissed to order! My rage was only equalled by my anguish. I sent an SOS to Eva who came immediately. Horrified to find me in such despair, she went to plead my cause with Renée, who saw her several times and even made advances to her but obstinately refused to speak to me. By all appearances this existence suited her ("Since it is, apparently, necessary to live") for she knew I was obsessed by her flight from me and haunted by her poetry while she, inspired by my memory, need no longer be agitated by my presence.
A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney Page 6