Anyway, the poetry that made Ibn Zaydun famous was the cry-dicky stuff he wrote out of longing for Wallada after she’d cast him off for cheating on her. It’s not known if the cheating took the form of criticising her work, or actually sleeping with someone else – though both are equally bad to a poet, I suppose.
After this incident, the poetry got petty. Ibn Zaydun pleaded to her: ‘Remove your mask of anger, so that I may be the first to bow down and worship.’
Wallada replied: ‘You are a pansy, a bugger, a fornicator, a cuckold, a swine and a thief. If a phallus could become a palm tree, you would turn into a woodpecker.’ Nice.
Wallada eventually pulled the time-old revenge tactic of hooking up with Ibn Zaydun’s worst enemy, this guy called Ibn Abdus, whom she’d stay with till she was old. And holy hell, did she live to be old! Wallada was nearly 100 when she died. In the motherfucking 11th century! Shit.
Anyway, Ibn ‘Cry Dick’ Zaydun then wrote some insulting poetry about Wallada and Ibn Abdus, who replied by exiling him. Then he became a Sad Man and wrote a famous love poem about missing her.
The poetic back-and-forth that followed, SOME SAY, was the inspiration for future genres of European romance lyrics, once the Europeans had stopped clubbing each other over the head with sticks for long enough to do a bit of writing. SOME SAY the works of Wallada and Ibn Zaydun, and the work produced in Wallada’s salon, laid the literary foundations for works like the Canterbury Tales, the Divine Comedy, and Tristan and Iseult, and the Arthurian tales – particularly since Wallada was of a higher social status than Ibn ‘Whiny Fuckboy’ Zaydun, a staple theme of later chivalric tales.
Despite Cordoba’s openness to literary salons filled with ~sensual wordplay~, there were of course haters who took issue with Wallada’s general attitude, comportment, and habit of striding about town giving no fucks. Luckily, those haters have been cast into the dustbin of history, unlike Wallada and her poetic pals.
A hundred years after her death, the Andalusian writer Abu Al-Hasan Ibn Bassam described Wallada’s influence on the Cordoban cultural scene. He called her ‘a lighthouse in a dark night’ and said that, ‘The greatest poets and prose writers were anxious to obtain the sweetness of her intimacy, which it was not difficult to attain.’
Listen, readers. One of you is probably very clever. One of you will surely invent time travel in the next fifty years or so. Is it you? Yes. You there. You sitting on the train with the crisps. I can see you. When you have invented time travel, sweet and clever reader, please slide into my DMs and let me know. We can take a little trip to Wallada’s literary salon together, listen to some anguished poetry, and take forbidden night walks in gardens with our new Andalusian lovers. Sound like a plan? Good. Now get inventing, please.
Until then, here’s one more fact about Wallada before you go. On each sleeve of her robe, Wallada had embroidered a line of poetry. The lines in English differ a bit between translations, but here’s the idea:
On one sleeve: ‘I am, by God’s will, fit for high positions! And I walk with pride along my own road.’
On the other sleeve: ‘I let my lover touch my cheek, and gladly bestow my kiss on him who craves it.’
She bestowed those kisses gladly, friends! May you also bestow your kisses gladly, and walk with pride along your own road. And should you encounter a cheating asshole while on your way, just sleep with his political rival, exile him from your life, make fun of him through the medium of ~sensual wordplay~, and live your best life like Wallada did.
78
Nell Gwynn
1650–1687
Nell Gwynn was one of the greatest hos of English history, and we should all pay our respects to her for this. She was born in 1650 to a ho mother who ran a house of hos, and then went to work in that great hotbed of hos, the theatre. England had just emerged from two decades of rule by the Puritan non-hos24 who had won a bloody civil war between supporters of the Parliament hos and the monarchist hos, in which lots of people died, and so everybody was ready for a laugh. Nell Gwynn was just the ho that England needed to deliver that laugh. She worked her way up from the lowest rung of the theatre – the orange-selling wenches who had to spar daily with the ho men of the theatre pit – to a bonafide star. From there, she caught the eye of an even greater ho than she, King Charles II, the first king to attend the public theatre. For 17 years Nell became the ho king’s favourite ho, and was beloved throughout the land, that land full of hos, England.
The 1660s diarist and confirmed messy bitch who lived for drama, Samuel Pepys, called Nell ‘the most impertinent slut’, which funnily enough was also my nickname in college. A critic of Charles II, Bishop Burnet, called her ‘the indiscreetest and wildest creature that ever was in a Court,’ which funnily enough was my other nickname in college. Women of the theatre were basically treated as pieces of meat by the genteel theatre-going hos of the Restoration period, and the actresses were paid less than the men (classic). Some theatres actually paid salaried whores to come and be professional hos for the theatre, to deflect the attentions of horny patrons away from the actresses so that they wouldn’t get pregnant and leave.
Before finding her way to the theatre, Nell said she was ‘brought up in a bawdy house to fill strong waters to the gentlemen.’ I’m not sure what this means but it sounds pretty ho-y. Her rise to the top can’t only be explained by the fact that Nell was a 10/10 babe – what really mattered was that she was a wit and a comedian. In all three settings of the bawdy house, the theatre, and the court, Nell set herself apart from all the other hos by being incredibly funny and quick, which is hard to believe, given that everybody knows women can’t be funny. As an orange wench, she would have to stand in the pit and yell, ‘Oranges! Will you have any oranges?’ because apparently people didn’t know about delicious crisps back then. They’d also earn tips by passing notes between all the men and women in the audience who loved to come to the theatre to get laid.
With her quick wit and swearing ability in the pit, Nell was the first orange wench to make it as an actress, though she wouldn’t be the last. Nell became friends with the renowned playwright of the day, Aphra Behn, who was scandalously a woman and a professional writer. That’s right: a GIRL wrote SCRIPTS in the SIXTEEN HUNDREDS. Nobody tell Hollywood that girls can write scripts or they’ll get really stressed and confused and we wouldn’t want to upset them.
Here’s Sam Pepys again, who loved to go backstage because he was a big ho himself, describing what he saw there:
‘Nell was dressing herself, and was all unready, and is very pretty, prettier than I thought …’ But then he goes on: ‘But Lord! To see how they were both painted would make a man mad, and did make me loathe them; and what base company of men comes among them, and how lewdly they talk!’ And thus Pepys completed the full Tinder fuckboy repertoire of ‘Wow ur cute,’ to ‘God you’re such a slut I don’t even think you’re that good-looking,’ to ‘Um, I actually prefer girls who don’t wear make-up.’
Anyway Charles II was a guitar-playing fucker who had more mistresses than would be possible to list in a book of this size. Charles’ main ho before Nell came along was one Barbara Castlemaine, who apparently bit the penis off a dead bishop. Sounds like my ex-wife! But yes, Charles was the ho king, and did his ho-ing not just in his private chambers but out and about in the taverns and even eventually Nell’s house, where he would sometimes receive foreign dignitaries. In fact, there’s a chance Charles even visited Nell’s mother’s bawdy ho house. The point is, Charles was a big ho and they were a perfect couple.
The actual queen, Catherine, was never able to have a child, but Charles, the ho that he was, had lots of children by his fleet of mistresses, including Nell. She also got a sweet-ass house out of this arrangement. So don’t despair, those who say they’ll never be able to afford to buy a house in London: be a ho and a wit and everything will work out just fine.
We will end on an extract of a really shit poem that some rando admirer wrote for Nell:
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She is pretty, and she knows it;
She is witty, and she shows it;
And besides that she’s so witty,
And so little and so pretty,
Sh’has a hundred other parts
For to take and conquer hearts.
All love poetry should be banned.
79
George Sand
1804–1876
The French novelist Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dudevant was born in 1804 in Paris to parents who clearly had trouble deciding on a single first name. When she picked a pen name, however, Amantine-Lucile-Aurore came up with the polar opposite of her birth name: George Sand. A strong name, a sandy name, a name totally without hyphens. She published her first novel under this name in 1832, titled Indiana, about a woman who ditches her crap husband in search of good times – something that happened in George’s own life.
After leaving her annoying husband in the French countryside, George moved to Paris to cultivate an artistic and literary network of male and female lovers, as one does in Paris. One of George’s artsy toy boys was the composer Frédéric Chopin. When the pair broke up after about two years, George publicly dragged him in her novel Lucrezia Floriani by basing a sickly prince character on the frail composer. What’s the point of writing novels if you don’t get to parody your exes? Another of her lovers, the writer Alfred de Musset, described her as ‘the most womanly woman’, once again proving that men make poor writers.
George’s novels featured love affairs that crossed class boundaries and, inspired by her upbringing in Normandy, were often set in the French countryside, among the fields of baguettes and rivers of Camembert, or whatever it is they grow in the French countryside. She scandalised the public by wearing men’s clothing, citing the fact that it was cheaper and more practical. When will clothing companies learn that women just want pockets? She caused even more scandal by not only smoking tobacco, but doing so publicly, something forbidden to women by custom. George Sand didn’t give a damn, and smoked giant cigars all over town while happily invading the private sanctums of men.
The super emo French poet Charles Baudelaire was not a fan of George and her various immortalities. He wrote: ‘She is stupid, heavy and garrulous. Her ideas on morals have the same depth of judgement and delicacy of feeling as those of janitresses and kept women … The fact that there are men who could become enamoured of this slut is indeed a proof of the abasement of the men of this generation.’ We can only assume from the above quote that Charles Baudelaire was a sad virgin, and also completely in love with George Sand.
In addition to her novels and her torrid affairs, George wrote political texts on the rights of women and working-class people, who often featured in her novels. Her most famous quote of all, though, is this incredibly French and Instagram-worthy line: ‘There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.’ Poor Baudelaire, who probably never got to feel such a thing.
80
Lucy Hicks Anderson
1886–1954
Lucy Hicks Anderson was born in 1886 in Kentucky. When she was young, her parents took her to the doctor to find out why their child, who had been born a boy, had declared she was a girl called Lucy, and that she’d be wearing a dress to school. Her parents weren’t sure what to do, but the doctor simply told them to raise Lucy as a girl, and that was that – they did.
Or at least, that should have been that. Lucy made it to middle age before she had to deal with any BS for being trans. In the meantime, she lived her life, and what a life it was.
Lucy left school to work as a domestic servant at age 15, got married at 34, and moved to settle in Oxnard, California to live her best Californian life. Lucy would host elaborate dinner parties for dozens of people and was a famously exceptional cook. Her soirées would make the society pages, and Lucy won all sorts of competitions for her cooking. She held rallies for the Democratic Party and was an all-around star of Oxnard. Meanwhile, on the other side of town, Lucy ran a ‘boarding house’, a place to get illegal booze and women in the midst of Prohibition. She got in trouble for her side-hustle a few times, and fortunately was once bailed out of jail by a wealthy banker who was desperate for her to cater his dinner party that evening. This is why everyone needs at least one rich friend.
Life was going just fine when one day in 1945, a doctor came to inspect the women of Lucy’s boarding house, where a venereal disease outbreak had been traced. Lucy was 59 years old and married to her second husband when the doctor insisted on examining her as well as the girls, resulting in a scandal that would embroil Lucy in court for perjury. Wait, what? Yes, Lucy was charged with ‘falsifying marriage documents’ (since two ‘men’ could not be married) and ‘defrauding the government’ (since she should therefore not be entitled to collect her husband’s GI benefits).
Imagine ‘defrauding the government’ with your genitals. Because it would be just horrible if the government didn’t know what your genitals looked like at all times.
And so Lucy went to court, the first trans person to have to do so to fight for her marriage. She argued that her gender identity had nothing to do with how she was born, and challenged the court:
I defy any doctor in the world to prove that I am not a woman. I have dressed and acted as just what I am: a woman.
Nevertheless, the jury found Lucy guilty of impersonation and fraud. Her marriage was voided, and in a twisted interpretation of justice, the only way that Lucy would be allowed out of jail was if she wore men’s clothing. There are so many cases in this book of women being the scandal of their times for wearing trousers. Lucy was scandalous because she didn’t – and this after decades of nobody knowing or giving a damn about her gender history, and only worrying about whether or not they could book the famous socialite to cater their parties.
Imagine being that afraid of who does or doesn’t wear trousers.
81
Mercedes de Acosta
1893–1968
The writer Truman Capote used to play a game called International Daisy Chain. It was a bit like a sexy game of ‘six degrees of separation’, with the aim of getting from one random person to another in as few hook-ups as possible. He said that Mercedes de Acosta, the Cuban and Spanish American playwright, was ‘the best card to hold’ in this game. ‘You could get to anyone from Cardinal Spellman to the Duchess of Windsor.’
Mercedes, you see, was a notorious seducer of the stars, known as ‘that furious lesbian’ and ‘the greatest starfucker ever’, and more innocently as a ‘social butterfly’. It’s not known if she ever uttered the perfect line attributed to her, ‘I can get any woman from any man,’ but whether or not she said it, it was quite true.
Mercedes was known for strutting through the streets of New York in the best possible way one can strut through the streets of New York: in manly trousers, with pointy, buckled shoes, a tricorn hat, and, of course, a cape. Why go for a walk around town if you’re not even going to wear a cape?
Mercedes wrote her first play in 1916, which was never produced, possibly because it included powerful female characters who challenged the institution of marriage. Producers weren’t keen to work with a strong-willed woman like Mercedes – and no doubt her work itself put them off. Luckily, today all plays and films feature lots of strong, relatable female characters!
Mercedes found most of her professional success as a writer in the 1920s and 30s. By age 35, Mercedes had had three poetry books and two novels published, and had four plays produced in a time when, as another female playwright who came before her, Marion Fairfax, put it: ‘The best and first thing for an aspiring playwright to do is to be born a man.’
Making things even more difficult for Mercedes, in 1927 the New York state legislature passed a bill to prevent plays from being interesting. More specifically, plays ‘depicting or dealing with, the subject of sex degeneracy, or sex perversion’ would be banned. This was exactly the sort of thing Mercedes wrote about, though what was considered degenerate or perverte
d in the 1920s is the kind of thing you’ll find within two minutes of searching Tumblr nowadays. And in the 1930s, when Mercedes tried her hand at scriptwriting for film, the Motion Picture Production Code of 1930 banned depictions of homosexuality, along with interracial sex and abortion.
In the following decades, things only got harder for a woman in showbiz, and especially for a queer woman who was uninterested in making herself palatable to mainstream homophobic culture. Mercedes was completely open about her sexuality, despite mounting suspicion of lesbians who many saw as having a mental health condition. One psychoanalyst, who frankly sounds like a virgin, helpfully explained in the 1950s that lesbians have ‘only a surface or pseudo happiness. Basically, they are lonely and unhappy and afraid to admit it.’ Yes. Yes, I’m sure that’s what it is.
Mercedes had an incredibly glamorous older sister, Rita, who was known for a time as ‘the most beautiful young woman in New York,’ a title now held by my pal Shiva (hey Shiva!). At an opera premiere in 1910, Rita wore a plunging backless gown, and the composer Puccini himself promptly ‘abandoned his seat and ensconced himself at the back of Rita’s loge, where he remained transfixed on her provocative back’. Why are men like this?
As a child at school, Mercedes had passed notes between two nuns who were in love. When the nuns were discovered and separated, Mercedes got so upset that she ran through the corridors shouting ‘I am not a boy and I am not a girl, or maybe I am both – I don’t know … I will never fit in anywhere and I will be lonely all my life.’ Mercedes did eventually marry a man, Abram Poole, a painter, but took with her on their honeymoon to Europe a bundle of love letters from her lover, the Broadway star Eva Le Gallienne – one to open each day of the trip. In fact, Eva ended up joining the happy couple in Europe.
100 Nasty Women of History Page 22