How the French Invented Love

by Marilyn Yalom

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Lesbian Love

  Colette, Gertrude Stein, and Violette Leduc

  THANKS TO MY CONVENIENT SHORT HAIR . . . MEN AND WOMEN FIND ME EQUALLY DISTURBING.

  Colette, Claudine Married, 1902

  Colette at the Olympia, circa 1900. Photograph by Reuthinger. Paris: Musée d’Orsay. Copyright Kathleen Cohen.

  Between 1900 and World War II, lesbians came out in Paris as never before. With their cropped hair and boyish jackets, they were immediately recognizable to each other, as well as to tourists, in the bars, bistros, and cabarets where gay women were known to congregate. Newspapers given to gossip made no secret of the fact that Madame X was living with her latest protégée or that two women riders in the Bois de Boulogne went home to the same bed. Despite ongoing religious and societal disapproval, lesbian and bisexual women became increasingly visible before World War I, and their androgynous figures eventually fed into the garçonne or flapper style of the 1920s. In avant-garde circles, it was even fashionable to be gay, just as it would be during the last quarter of the twentieth century in certain American universities.

  Who were these women flouting age-old conventions and loving other women, instead of men? Some were originally provincials, like the courtesan known as Liane de Pougy and the young writer Colette, open to sexual opportunities in Paris that were not available in la France profonde. Among the provincials coming to Paris, many were working-class women—domestic servants, factory workers, models, and prostitutes—thrown together for mutual support as they earned their keep far from their families and childhood communities. Some were foreigners, like the Americans Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Natalie Barney, and Romaine Brooks, who came to taste the aesthetic and erotic pleasures of the vaunted French capital and never went home. A good many were Parisian-born, accustomed to big-city freedom and willing to embrace whatever was new in fashion, including Sapphic clothes and modes of loving.

  “Sapphic,” referring to the ancient Greek lesbian poet Sappho, took on a positive meaning when used by lesbians, as opposed to the negative meaning that most men had given it. Throughout the nineteenth century, male critics had accused women of being Sapphic if they wore trousers, smoked cigarettes, wrote fiction, or departed in any other way from socially accepted norms. At the height of her renown, Liane de Pougy was one of the first women to claim the word publicly in her 1901 novel Idylle Saphique, based on her exalted love affair with Natalie Clifford Barney during the summer of 1899.

  Barney was the acknowledged queen of the “Amazons”—a word that refers, in French, both to a riding habit and to a lesbian. Outrageously wealthy and equally headstrong, Barney became famous for the literary salons and amateur theatricals that drew to her home on the rue Jacob a clique of French and American writers for over sixty years. It was at one of Barney’s events that Colette made her theatrical debut as a shepherd in love with a nymph. At a subsequent soirée she also played the part of the legendary shepherd, Daphnis, in a play written by Pierre Louÿs. Mythological characters were popular in homosexual circles as a form of homage to the ancient Greek world that had produced Sappho, as well as such eminent apologists for homosexuality as Socrates and Plato. Louÿs, while not a homosexual himself, was the friend of André Gide and other gays, and much appreciated for his scandalous Chansons de Bilitis (Songs of Bilitis), which he claimed to have translated from one of Sappho’s female contemporaries. The name “Bilitis” quickly circulated as another term for lesbian and was adopted in the United States by an early lesbian rights group called the Daughters of Bilitis.

  Barney did nothing to hide her love of women, which enraged her American father before he conveniently died at the age of fifty-two and left her $2.5 million! With that kind of money, Barney could well afford to spend the rest of her life writing poetry and memoirs, traveling, and entertaining her many gay friends. She counted among her female lovers the writers Colette, Renée Vivien, and Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, as well as her longtime partner, the stunning painter Romaine Brooks. Under her aegis, an elite lesbian clan thrived in Paris, the only city—according to Barney—“where you can live and express yourself as you please.”1

  But Sapphic love, so public in Paris, had to be hidden in the provinces, where whispers and rumors could result in social ostracism and even loss of employment. This was the world Colette explored in her first novel, Claudine at School, set in her native Burgundy. Love, the major theme of all Colette’s books, sprang from pantheistic Burgundian roots and from the shining presence of her mother, Sido.

  Gabrielle Sidonie Colette was born in 1873 in Basse-Bourgogne. She was the much loved fourth child of a twice-married mother. Brought up by a doting mother, surrounded by the bounties of Burgundy, Colette carried with her throughout life the primal memories of a lost paradise, not unlike Proust’s Combray. Still, the attributes of her lost paradise did not resemble his. Proust, a member of the Parisian haute bourgeoisie that mingled with the aristocracy, never had to work, whereas Colette’s family were petit bourgeois country folk, for whom work was a necessity, as it would be for the adult Colette. But as a child, Colette considered herself a “queen of the earth,” happy in her skin and enraptured by the verdant woods and vines of her native region.

  When Colette was sixteen, her parents went bankrupt and were forced to sell their home and all their belongings. Colette moved with her family to a smaller home in a neighboring town. What was she to do? For a young woman without a dowry, the best scenario was to find a husband who would take her as is. “As is” did not mean second best, for Gabri (as she was called by her family) was a very attractive young thing—slim, pretty, with a foxlike face. Her long, thick, golden brown hair tied into braids hung down below her knees. In her later writing, Colette would present her adolescent self as a mixture of brusque self-confidence, sexual curiosity, and romantic longings.

  Love came her way when she was sixteen in the form of Willy Gauthiers-Villars, a man fourteen years her senior. Willy was the errant offspring of a good Catholic family, with roots in publishing. He himself had literary pretentions, and by the time he met Colette, he had published several articles, though they—and everything else he subsequently published under his name—were the creation of others. Willy was a gifted fraud. He ran a factory of ghost writers, known in French as nègres. To this day, the French use that unfortunate word, which can only be translated as “niggers.” Some of the best-known articles published under Willy’s name were on music and appeared in a series called Lettres de l’ouvreuse (Letters of the Usherette), which Gabrielle had read before Willy entered her life in person.

  A minor Parisian celebrity and rakish ladies’ man, Willy was enchanted by the budding country girl, so ready for pleasures of the flesh. He had lost his first wife, the mother of his infant son, and was ready to try marriage again, though it seems that Colette would have given herself to him without marriage. (This is at least the version she presents of herself in Claudine in Paris.) Married in May 1893, they honeymooned in the rugged Jura region and then settled in Paris in his bachelor apartment, which Colette found small and depressing. Willy introduced her to his lively Parisian circle, replete with famous writers and musicians like Anatole France, Marcel Schwob, Catulle Mendès, Debussy, Fauré, and Vincent d’Indy, as well as many of the ghost writers in his stable. She even met Proust during a dinner hosted by the formidable Mme Armand de Caillavet (one of the models for Proust’s Madame Verdurin). But Colette did not feel comfortable in salon society: she missed the nurturing atmosphere of her Burgundian homeland and the mother earth figure incarnated in Sido.

  In the winter of 1894, Colette discovered that her husband was having an affair. This would be the first of his numerous adulteries during their thirteen-year marriage. Still in love with her husband, Colette was devastated, and within the year she fell into a serious illness that kept her in bed for two months. Only the ministrations of her mother, in constant attendance, b
rought her back to life. As sick as she was, and throughout the years to come, Colette managed to keep her deep unhappiness hidden from her mother, Sido, who may have had her suspicions but never knew the particulars of Willy’s betrayals.

  Sometime after her cure, Willy suggested that Colette write down her schoolgirl recollections. For several months, ending in January 1896, she wrote the pages that would become famous as Claudine at School. Oddly enough, Willy did not appreciate their value when he first read them. It wasn’t until 1898, while tidying up his desk, that he found the manuscript stashed away in a drawer and, upon rereading it, recognized its worth. He prodded Colette to “add a little spice” to the affectionate relations between Claudine and her schoolgirl friends, and then lost no time in finding a publisher.2 Claudine at School, published under the name of Willy with no credit to his wife, became a phenomenal hit, with more editions during the first half of the twentieth century than any other French book. At the time of their divorce, Colette signed the contracts that sold the novel outright under Willy’s sole authorship. Later she would write: “I shall never forgive myself for having done so.”3

  What is so special about the Claudine stories that have made them popular to this day? Claudine at School is written as the diary of a fifteen-year-old Burgundian girl. It exudes the vitality of a country adolescent, cheeky and indomitable in her relations with her schoolmates, teachers, and even the local inspectors. She brings into the schoolroom the feel of the Burgundian countryside with its pungent woods, meadows, farms, vineyards, and roaming animals. Imbued with a rustic strength, Claudine is sure of herself and dominates everyone around her, including her indulgent father. (There is no mother in this novel.)

  On her fifteenth birthday, Claudine is obliged to drop the hem of her skirts to her ankles. It’s time for her to be socialized into the manners of a young lady intended for marriage. Claudine finds her own way into adulthood, spurred on by her infatuation with the newly arrived assistant schoolteacher, Mlle Aimée, who is described as small, pretty, and talkative and possessing “one of those complexions that look so delicate but are so reliable that the cold doesn’t even turn them blue!”4

  Claudine, a clever little devil, succeeds in persuading her father that she needs English lessons in her home, to be given by Mlle Aimée for fifteen francs a month. Since the little schoolteacher earns only sixty-five francs a month, how can she refuse?

  The English lessons quickly degenerate into French conversations, designed by Claudine to establish a more personal rapport. She inquires about her instructor’s life under the direction of the senior teacher, Mlle Sergent. Did they sleep in the same room? They did, to Claudine’s jealous dismay. Already by her second English lesson, Claudine can’t control her overflowing heart.

  My English mistress seemed adorable to me that night under the library lamp. Her cat’s eyes shone pure gold, at once malicious and caressing . . . she seemed so utterly at ease in this warm, softly lit room that I already felt ready to love her so much, so very much, with all my irrational heart. Yes, I’ve known perfectly well, for a long time, that I have an irrational heart. But knowing it doesn’t stop me in the least.

  At school, Claudine’s “irrational” love for Mlle Aimée is threatened by similar feelings coming from Mlle Sergent, as well as the attentions of two male teachers from the boys’ school. Mlle Aimée is receptive to her many suitors, but in Claudine’s home, her pupil takes full advantage of the exclusive situation.

  How nice it was there with her in the warm library! I pulled my chair right up against hers and laid my head on her shoulder. She put her arm round me and I squeezed her supple waist.

  “Darling little Mademoiselle, it’s such ages since I’ve seen you!”

  “But it’s only three days . . .”

  “ . . . Don’t talk, and kiss me!”

  . . .

  She kissed me and I purred. Then, suddenly, I hugged her so violently, that she gave a little shriek.

  I wished my English grammar to the devil! I much preferred to lay my head on her breast while she stroked my hair or my neck and I could hear her heart beating breathless under my ear. How I loved being with her!

  This happy state of affairs is short-lived, since Mlle Sergent has more to offer Mlle Aimée than Claudine. The senior teacher, “a Fury, with snakes in her red hair,” gradually takes over and totally subjugates Mlle Aimée, to the amusement of all the observant schoolgirls except Claudine. Mlle Sergent and Mlle Aimée become a model lesbian couple, with the senior member assuming the traditional male role of mentoring the younger, more feminine, partner.

  Claudine does not let the setback with Mlle Aimée discourage her. Aimée’s younger sister, Luce, wants to take her sister’s place in Claudine’s heart, and though Claudine rebuffs her with gruff mockery, she gets some peevish satisfaction out of Luce’s servile devotion. She also knows how to fend off the men who come on to her, including the school doctor. Claudine has a creaturely confidence in herself that becomes the hallmark of Colette’s female characters. Independent at all costs, they refuse to be cowed and often act with the prerogatives of men, including their sexual freedom.

  No piece of literature written by an English or American woman at the turn of the twentieth century dared to portray love between women so openly. The Anglo-Saxon world would have to wait for Radclyffe Hall’s 1928 novel, The Well of Loneliness, which attracted publicity from the legal challenges it encountered in England and the United States, but never acquired the broad success of Colette’s works. Once again, the French set in motion a wave of sexual revolution that would crest more than once during the rest of the century.

  In the subsequent Claudine novels, Claudine in Paris and Claudine Married, the young heroine discovers the joys and deceptions of marriage and finds herself pushed into a lesbian relationship by none other than her husband. The circumstances of Claudine’s marriage are not unlike those of Colette in real life: she marries an older, previously married man, who has a son and who introduces her to sophisticated Parisian society. True, Claudine’s marriage is more attractive than Colette’s—after all, we are in a novel, where it is possible to improve upon one’s material situation and endow one’s partner with more appeal. Initially, Claudine is enchanted with her husband, Renaud, despite their twenty-year difference in age, and she becomes captive to his voluptuous sexuality, “made up of desire, perversity, lively curiosity and deliberate licentiousness.”5 What do all these words mean? We shall find out soon enough.

  Renaud wants Claudine to choose her day in Paris, which means the day she will be at home to receive visitors. Claudine refuses: such social niceties are beyond her. She sees no need to imitate Renaud in his worldly ways. One afternoon, however, when an exotic couple visit Renaud on “his day,” Claudine comes under the spell of the beautiful Rézi, a Viennese-born blonde married to a rich but odious Englishman. Claudine and Rézi promise to meet at Rézi’s home on the avenue Kléber at five o’clock. This is the consecrated time that French lovers meet for sexual encounters. The set phrase un cinq à sept—“a five to seven”—has come to signify a love tryst.

  At first Claudine is satisfied with gazing at Rézi and inhaling her perfumed presence. The sensual creature we have come to know in the two earlier novels delights in observing the minute features of another lovely woman—her hair, her skin, her eyes, her eyelashes and delicate fingers. It may very well be, as one American feminist critic has claimed, the first time since Sappho that a woman author describes the pleasure she derives from gazing at another woman, and makes no excuses for it.6

  Claudine’s own appearance is of no small concern to her and her new friend, who gives her advice on clothes, hair style, and the art of deceiving one’s husband. Claudine has already cut off her long braids (as did Colette, to the great chagrin of her mother) and looks more like the “new woman” of her generation.

  Because of my shorn mane and my coldness
towards them, men say to themselves: “She only goes in for women.” . . . If I don’t like men I must be pursing women; such is the simplicity of the masculine mind.

  Claudine (like Colette) is attracted to both men and women. After her conjugal initiation into heterosexual love, the mysteries of lesbian love are revealed to her by Rézi.

  . . . five oclock visit to Rézi or from Rézi; she is becoming more and more attached to me without trying to hide it. And I am becoming attached to her, God knows, but I conceal it. . . .

  Claudine hides her growing infatuation as best she can, limiting herself to combing Rézi’s hair and sensing the presence of Rézi’s body through her clothes, sometimes daring to press up against her, accidentally. Soon she, too, longs for more intimate pleasures. Her husband Renaud encourages the relationship because he considers Rézi a suitable mentor for his provincial wife. But there is also a definite voyeuristic component in his encouragement, something that Claudine recognizes as perverse. Like many men, he is intrigued by lesbians and says as much: “You women can do anything. It’s charming, and it’s of no consequence whatever.”

  Note the typical downgrading of women’s sexuality, as if love between women were not as serious as heterosexual love, or to be compared with male homosexuality, which Renaud condemns. This is a position one can trace back to the Hebrew Bible’s condemnation of sex between men and its silence on sex between women. Renaud takes an especially dim view of male homosexuals because he has an outrageously gay son, Marcel, who plays a minor but piquant role in Claudine’s life. This two-faced treatment of female and male homosexuality was characteristic of the French at the turn of the century. Lesbians were simply not vilified as much as gay men, especially lesbians from the upper classes. In fact, postcards showing two or three comely women caressing each other in various stages of undress were considered a turn-on for men.