A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney

by Natalie Clifford Barney

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  That extravagance which consists of lavishing on the indifferent

  what we must later refuse the one we love... A worthy topic: in

  praise of avarice.

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  "I have nothing left," is not even an excuse.

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  Why do the poor not invent other values: would they then be

  truly poor?

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  The sun: the pauper's gold.

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  I never do anything silly, to leave myself room to be foolish.

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  A thin, sickly, dying mother bends over her child without shame,

  unabashed at letting him foresee the skeleton she has already

  become.

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  Not to have a beautiful mother is to start life with old age.

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  I wanted more precise information about my ancestors. I went to

  see my grandmother's thirteenth sister who was 102 years old, the

  only one still alive. She still spoke quite lucidly, and in French.

  Being nearly deaf and nearly blind, there was nothing to disturb

  her memories. She recounted insignificant details: the first to

  come to mind. Her mother, despite the rudimentary conditions in

  the United States at that time, used to file her nails with little

  pieces of frosted glass... Delicate habits, and an inability to adjust,

  brought over from France which she had left to save their fragile

  necks from the guillotine. Flight? As though such a death were not

  just compensation for necks which were too frail, stretched away

  from real life which they would have needed to contemplate from

  above... What then was this lesser bravery: exile. Cowardice?

  Courage?

  I lifted my hands to my own neck, long and frail like theirs,

  inordinately so, and I wished I had been born in those troubled

  times, which demanded absolute heroism or total cowardice, even

  if only to learn what blood beat most fiercely in my veins... To be

  caught unawares… To have a spontaneous reaction, faced with

  unexpected events… To escape, get outside myself, to return and

  know at last what I am worth before conscious reflection.

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  Democracy: the nothingness of colorless people, devoid of beauty;

  it is worse than ugliness.

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  It is fear of ridicule which makes all these people so ridiculous!

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  My eyes hurt. The revenge of things I have seen only too well?

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  Since nothing is impossible, nothing is inevitable.

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  We see only by contrast.

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  Lovers, those idlers who are satisfied by the first pleasures they encounter.

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  We love those whom we cannot appreciate any other way.

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  How can her friendship, satisfied with so little, satisfy me at all?

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  It is better to be a lover than to love a lover.

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  There are two kinds of question, the interrogative and the reply:

  those who ask phrase the question, those who reply shift its

  grounds.

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  What I like about people is the unknown and no acquaintance will ever rival it.

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  I lost sight of her, or rather she lost sight of me: how many people

  we see only in profile!

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  It is hard to forgive a sensual being for liking neither vice nor debauchery.

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  It is dangerous to look down upon things from above, unless one

  was born on top of them.

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  Perhaps you are right, but perhaps being right is not such a big thing.

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  That parasite: the past.

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  How many yesterdays there are in tomorrow!

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  You should not fear to survive the dead, but your own self.

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  My voice is low, so that only I may hear?

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  You gain nothing by questioning a singer.

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  A waterfall, made smaller by distance, is framed by my window.

  Light and youthful as a lock of hair, it flows. Not falling in a

  straight line, it does not reach its full length, being continually

  intercepted by the strong wind. Unfaithful, away it flies, before it

  can touch the rock it has wet (and which at other times it shapes,

  uses and transforms,) to join that passing force which carries it off,

  light as air, and which, being freer, outlasts it.

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  Love, like Ben Johnson's goose: too big for one, too small for two!

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  A face wondrously chiseled by emotion. Each line told of some

  former joy. I compared it with those other faces ruined by old age

  and habit, upon which time had left but one sign: destruction.

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  What diversity amongst the ruins!

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  Grace, power grown civil.

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  The finest life is spent creating oneself, not procreating.

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  Perhaps it is our belief in fate which makes it fateful.

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  Why resuscitate old gods when new gods are waiting to be created?

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  A god who is not also a devil, what an incomplete being!

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  Love, what a work of juvenilia!

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  I find it difficult to believe there are as many nights as there are days.

  Certain seeds are scattered here, but what of the uncertain ones:

  less colorless, taking wing?

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  Observing oneself is dangerous—but not observing oneself is boring.

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  One looks differently into a mirror.

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  Many of my thoughts belonged to others before me ( I blush only

  with pride in my predecessors), many will be adopted by others

  after I have gone... Repeating something true does not make it

  less true, except perhaps for he who said it before!

  ⚜

  That most difficult of accomplishments—oneself.

  Part Five: Friends From the Left Bank

  The Colette I Knew

  The dead belong to us more than the living, for they force us to gather together the inheritance of memories they bequeath us, from which to get our bearings, and make a final tally—draw out the essence of countless hours spent together, in which we find ourselves all too often replaced by a mere semblance.

  Beyond these encounters, in which Colette excelled at playing Colette, what was our relationship really like, apart from that lazy intimacy where we would often see but misread each other?

  Did I experience with Colette any of those flashes of recognition in which the mysterious nature of another being is suddenly revealed? But perhaps an affectionate friendship such as ours had no need of violent revelation.

  In contrast to the fluctuations of love, the constancy of such a sentiment was a haven, sheltering us from the storms by which we were all too often assailed.

  The English saying, "Love me little, love me long," has some truth in it, but how can we apply a coat of varnish to the comforting images of the past, now grown a little dim, and make them sharper?

  For a start, here are some lines from Colette's Claudine s’en va, come to my aid, highlighting the vivid colors and certain aspects of our childhoods:

  Miss Flossie, declining a cup of tea, gives voice to such an elongated "no," in her throaty little drawl, that she seems in tot
al agreement with herself. Alain does not want me (why?) to get to know this American, more supple than a scarf, whose glowing face shimmers with golden hair, sea blue eyes and implacable teeth. She smiles easily at me, her eyes fixed on mine, until a peculiar quiver of her left eyebrow, as troubling as a call for help, makes me look away... Miss Flossie smiles more nervously this time, while a slim red-headed child, crouching in her shadow, gazes intently at me with deep, hate-filled eyes...

  Was I really that greedy, wasteful Flossie?1 I do not know, but already aware of true values and lasting friendship, I have never lost sight of Colette for long. So the times we spent together come back in waves. How can I choose amongst them? I jot some down at random. At the beginning of our century, when I first saw Colette, she was no longer the slim adolescent with long braids lying in the hammock, but a young woman solidly planted on her stocky legs, her back swaying out to a rounded behind; her manners were as frank as her language, but her enigmatic, triangular face had a feline silence about it, and her beautiful grey eyes with their eyebrows slit lengthwise, held a slow trickling glance which had no need to make itself seductive in order to seduce.

  Her favorite companions, a cat and a dog—as everyone knows—were doubtless chosen for their singular resemblance to their mistress. Was not her nature a combination of these two animals? Obedient and devoted to one master, while secretly enjoying the instincts of the feral beast which escapes all domination.

  Dressed in button-up boots for long walks, she would take her animals to the Bois, beyond the Sentier de fa vertu where ladies of "little virtue" merely climbed out of their carriages and took a few steps—to which they give the ridiculous name of “footing”—their perfume blending with that of the acacias which fell at their feet in little showers of blossom, to be crushed under high heel shoes. Liane de Pougy, driving amongst her rivals, fascinated me by her androgynous slenderness, setting her apart from those who cultivated plumpness as an irresistibly feminine attribute.

  "In the age of horse-drawn carriages" one had time to exchange long glances and half smiles as one drove from the Tir aux pigeons [Shooting Gallery] to the Cascade [Waterfall], passing and re-passing most of the courtesans, actresses, society ladies and demimondaines of the day.

  None had, we felt, a smile as beautiful as Colette's.

  I met the Willys at the home of the Countess Armande de Chabannes, and they invited me to their house in the Rue de Courcelles. I was particularly intrigued by the little gymnasium they had in their apartment, for back in the United States we ran in the fresh air, rode horses, played tennis, rowed on Frenchman's Bay in Bar Harbour, never dreaming that these sports could be the subject of methodical training.

  Colette practiced regularly on the barre, the trapeze, the rings—for a future music-hall act, perhaps. But the other workroom, in which the schoolgirl learned to write novels under Willy's tutelage, remained invisible. Was it perhaps their bedroom, serving a dual purpose?

  This couple, who denied themselves the luxury of a private life, were seen everywhere together and soon, considering the aft of publicity as the surest aid to the writer's craft, Willy enlarged the picture by annexing Mademoiselle Polaire to the couple.

  He forced not only Colette but also Polaire to cut her hair2 and go dressed as "Claudine at School" twins the better to illustrate those schoolgirl passions—which neither Colette nor Polaire felt for each other. That this cultured individual, who was also a man of letters and the most influential music critic of the time,3 should stoop to amuse himself in this role is all the more surprising given that in those days people were still quite fearful of compromising themselves by scandal. It took a certain courage to provoke a scandal like that and turn it to one's own benefit for, even nowadays, it is not within everyone's capabilities to create a bad reputation for themselves.

  Another characteristic of that master publicist was revealed to me by his vigilant supervision of his wife's comings and goings, despite his good nature, or pretended good nature. He watched her closely, less out of love than the desire to curtail anything which did not serve to pleasure or profit that odd ménage à trois. Willy was kind enough to lend me Colette, without Polaire, to play in a pastoral scene which she later described as follows:

  One fine afternoon on a lawn in Neuilly, in Miss Natalie C-B’s garden, I performed Pierre Loüys' Dialogue au soleil couchant [Dialogue at the setting of the sun]. The other impromptu actress was called Eva Palmer, a miraculous redhead with hair down to her feet. Only on my elder half-sister have I seen such abundance as graced Eva's forehead. For our Dialogue she had twisted this exceptional adornment into long ropes and put on a Greek-looking tunic of greeny-blue, while I considered myself a perfect Daphnis by virtue of a very short piece of terra cotta crêpe de chine, a Roman buskin and a crown borrowed from Tahiti.

  Eva Palmer, very pale, stammered out her part. The rolled Rs of my native Burgundy accent became Russian with stage fright. Pierre Loüys, one of the guests, listened. Perhaps he did not listen, for the sight of us was sweeter than the sound. But we believed that Paris, under its parasols and the enormous hats fashionable that year, thought only of us... Afterwards grown bolder, I dared ask Loüys whether "it had not gone too badly."

  "I have just experienced the strongest emotion of my life."

  “Oh! dear Loüys."

  "I assure you. The unforgettable impression of hearing my work performed by Mark Twain and Tolstoy."

  Eva Palmer blushed red under the red crown of braids twined and intertwined across her forehead and Pierre Loüys added some consoling remark, joining Natalie Barney and friends in their kind praise. But suddenly all attention was diverted from the Boston shepherdess and the Moscow shepherd by a naked woman on a white horse with a harness of turquoises who was making her entrance from the wings of greenery, a dancer whose unfamiliar name had already achieved some renown amongst the salons, sets and studios: Mata-Hari.

  Under the May sun of Neuilly, despite the turquoises, the loose black mane, the tinsel diadem and, especially, the long thigh against the white flank of the Arab stallion, what was surprising was the color of her skin, not brown and succulent as under the lights, but an uneven, artificial purplish-blue. Once the horse parade was over she dismounted and covered herself with a sari. She greeted people, talked, was a little disappointing... It was even worse when Miss Barney invited her, as a private individual, to a second garden party.

  -Mes apprentissages [My Apprenticeship]

  It became instead a closed gathering. And this time I had a distressing example of the constraint to which Willy subjected Colette: when I arrived at their house to invite Colette alone to the hastily improvised little party I was preparing at my house in Neuilly, at which Mata-Hari had offered to give another performance of her Javanese dances, but naked this time and for a group of ladies only, Willy, bad-tempered at being thus excluded, would not give his permission unless he could impose indecent conditions. And on the way Colette confessed, "I am ashamed that you have seen my chain so close up."

  The chain served, nonetheless, to discipline her gifts as a writer and Willy, that idle, perverse man of letters, proved himself a better teacher of the art of writing than the art of love.

  I was called home at that point, to my family in the United States, so I am not sure when or how Colette finally freed herself of her manager, Willy, so that she could live, love and write under her own name and in her own way.

  Would Colette have got divorced under other circumstances? I do not believe so, for being married and living with the person of her choice was more in keeping with her temperament than regaining her freedom, only to ask herself over and over, "What to do with it?"

  Is this not clearly seen in her books, Mes apprentissages and La Retraite sentimentale?

  Torn between the contradictory desires of her dual nature: to have a master and not to have one, she always chose the first solution, for Colette, though rich in herself, found it hard to live alone.

  As for me,
if I may slip a personal remark into these memories: living alone and my own master is essential, not through egotism or lack of love but the better to attend to others. Whereas drowning a passionate intimacy in daily life, living together in the same house, often in the same bedroom as the beloved, has always seemed to me the surest way to lose her.

  Moreover, does not that dreadful word "collage" [stuck like glue; living in sin] contain a warning of sorts? To be "stuck together", to the point where you no longer see each other, is that a desirable goal for a relationship?

  Is there not a middle ground between the two extremes of the song:

  You are the woman who is desired

  Between two mornings and two evenings

  Unless you can be held for life entire.

  And in the latter case, what tact one needs to display to renew oneself while keeping the chosen object "for life entire."

  Colette, who followed the instincts of a tiger-kitten, would either love or hate her partners overmuch and was in danger of suffocating them by her possessiveness.

  When she had to separate from her two husbands, because of their infidelity or their despotism, she began to hate them in direct proportion to the amount she had previously loved them. Beast of prey and submission, transformed into a praying mantis, she massacred them.

  Does not love, tested in this way, have too much in common with the animal kingdom?

  Profiting from this experience and the demands of my own nature—if I may continue my confession—I believe I resolved the problem in the following way, although it is not within the natural or material capabilities of all lovers:

  Two houses joined by a common garden and—essential ingredient—two street doors.

  Thoroughly taken with this idea, I had discovered a well-timbered property with fountains and outbuildings at Neuilly, just opposite the Ile de Puteaux, and rented it on the spot. I moved into the single story house and put the maisonette at the disposal of friends who were living, or staying, in Paris. And it was there that I lived most happily.

  Colette, who was part of a group of artists, including Sacha Guitry and Marguerite Moréno (to whom she remained a loyal friend), would often visit me there. And since I had just finished a play based on Sappho's fragments, the group lent me their assistance, as did Raymond Duncan's Greek wife, "Penelope," who had just arrived from Athens with her flute, on which she would play Ionian airs. All this (despite the lorgnette hanging from Lyses' peplum, a lorgnette from which she refused to be parted) created the right atmosphere for my two verse acts to be greatly appreciated, even by those guests who were most resistant to classical poetry—including Colette herself who, though she never admitted it, could only tolerate the free verse that is born of prose, the kind of poetry which imbues her own books with so much art and nature.