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==Salon== [[File:Natalie Clifford Barney, between ca. 1890 and ca. 1910.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|Barney, c. 1890–1910, photographed by [[Frances Benjamin Johnston]]]] For over 60 years, Barney hosted a literary [[Salon (gathering)|salon]], first in Neuilly but mostly at her home at 20, Rue Jacob, in Paris.{{sfn|Schenkar|2000|p=xiii}}{{sfn|Rodriguez|2002|pp=xvi, 154, 177}} Her salon was a weekly, Friday gathering at which people met to socialize and discuss literature, art, music and any other topic of interest. Though she hosted some of the most prominent male writers of her time, Barney strove to shed light on female writers and their work.{{sfn|Schenkar|2000|p=12}} In addition to its focus on women, Barney's salon was distinguished by its deliberately international character.{{sfn|Rodriguez|2002|pp=180, 183}}{{sfn|Schenkar|2000|pp=174–175}} She brought together [[expatriate]] [[Modernists]] with members of the [[French Academy]].{{sfn|Schenkar|2000|p=165}} The salon Biographer Joan Schenkar described Barney's salon as "a place where lesbian assignations ''and'' appointments with academics could coexist in a kind of cheerful, cross-pollinating, cognitive dissonance".{{sfn|Schenkar|2000|p=164}} The range of sexualities welcomed at the salon was also uncommon in Paris, and Barney's openness with her own sexuality made her salon comfortable to homosexual or bisexual attendees.{{sfn|Rodriguez|2002|p=183}} In the 1900s Barney held early gatherings of the salon at her house in Neuilly. The entertainment included poetry readings and [[Play (theatre)|theatricals]] (in which Colette sometimes performed). [[Mata Hari]] performed a dance once, riding into the garden naked as [[Lady Godiva]] on a white horse harnessed with [[turquoise]] [[cloisonné]].{{sfn|Schenkar|2000|p=144}} The play ''Equivoque'' may have led Barney to leave Neuilly in 1909. According to a contemporary newspaper article, her landlord objected to her holding an outdoor performance of a play about Sappho, which he felt "followed nature too closely".<ref>''Dayton Journal'', November 14, 1909. Quoted in {{harvnb|Rodriguez|2002|p=172}}.</ref> She canceled her lease and rented the [[pavilion]] on Rue Jacob in Paris's [[Latin Quarter]], and her salon was held there until the late 1960s. This was a small two-story house, separated on three sides from the main building on the street. Next to the pavilion was a large, overgrown garden with a [[Doric order|Doric]] "Temple of Friendship" tucked into one corner. In this new location, the salon grew a more prim outward face, with poetry readings and conversation, perhaps because Barney had been told the pavilion's floors would not hold up to large dancing parties.{{sfn|Rodriguez|2002|p=177}}{{sfn|Schenkar|2000|p=195}} Frequent guests during this period included poets Pierre Louÿs and [[Paul Claudel]], diplomat [[Philippe Berthelot]] and translator [[J. C. Mardrus]].{{sfn|Wickes|1976|pp=108–109}} During World War I, the salon became a haven for those opposed to the war. [[Henri Barbusse]] gave a reading from his anti-war novel ''[[Under Fire (Barbusse novel)|Under Fire]]'' and Barney hosted a Women's Congress for Peace. Other visitors to the salon during the war included [[Oscar Milosz]], [[Auguste Rodin]] and poet [[Alan Seeger]], who came while on leave from the [[French Foreign Legion]].{{sfn|Rodriguez|2002|pp=221–223}} {{Multiple image|total_width=400|align=left |image1=Atget - Pavillon at 20 Rue Jacob.jpg |alt1= |caption1=Two-story pavilion at 20, Rue Jacob |image2=Atget - Temple of Friendship at 20 Rue Jacob.jpg |alt2= |caption2=Temple of Friendship }} Ezra Pound was a close friend of Barney's and often visited. The two schemed together to subsidize [[Paul Valéry]] and [[T. S. Eliot]] so they could leave their jobs and focus on writing, but Valéry found other [[patrons]] and Eliot refused the [[Grant (money)|grant]]. Pound introduced Barney to [[avant-garde]] composer [[George Antheil]], and, while her own taste in music leaned towards the traditional, she hosted premieres of Antheil's ''Symphony for Five Instruments'' and ''First String Quartet''.{{sfn|Rodriguez|2002|pp=243–250}} It was also at Barney's salon that Pound met his longtime mistress, the violinist [[Olga Rudge]].{{sfn|Conover|2001|pp=2–3}} In 1927 Barney started an ''Académie des Femmes'' (Women's Academy) to honor women writers. This was a response to the influential [[Académie Française]] (French Academy) which had been founded in the 17th century by [[Louis XIII]] and whose 40 members included no women at the time. Unlike the French Academy, Barney's was not a formal organization but rather a series of readings held as part of the regular Friday salons. Honorees included Colette, [[Gertrude Stein]], [[Anna Wickham]], [[Rachilde]], Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, [[Mina Loy]], [[Djuna Barnes]] and posthumously, Renée Vivien.{{sfn|Wickes|1976|pp=153, 167}} The academy's activities wound down after 1927.{{sfn|Rodriguez|2002 |pp=255}} [[File:Natalie Barney - Aventures de L'Esprit.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|Cover of ''Aventures de l'Esprit'']] Other visitors to the salon during the 1920s included French writers [[Jeanne Galzy]],{{sfn|Hawthorne|2000|pp=69–74}} [[André Gide]], [[Anatole France]], [[Max Jacob]], [[Louis Aragon]] and [[Jean Cocteau]]. English-language writers also visited, including [[Ford Madox Ford]], [[W. Somerset Maugham]], [[F. Scott Fitzgerald]], [[Sinclair Lewis]], [[Sherwood Anderson]], [[Thornton Wilder]], T. S. Eliot and [[William Carlos Williams]]. Barney also hosted German poet [[Rainer Maria Rilke]], Bengali poet [[Rabindranath Tagore]] (the first Nobel laureate from Asia), Romanian [[aesthetics|aesthetician]] and diplomat [[Matila Ghyka]], journalist [[Janet Flanner]] (also known as Genêt, who set the ''[[The New Yorker|New Yorker]]'' style), journalist, activist and publisher [[Nancy Cunard]], publishers [[Mary Phelps Jacob|Caresse]] and [[Harry Crosby]], publisher [[Blanche Knopf]],{{sfn|Claridge|2016|p=139}} art collector and patron [[Peggy Guggenheim]], [[Sylvia Beach]] (the bookstore owner who published [[James Joyce]]'s ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]''), painters [[Tamara de Lempicka]] and [[Marie Laurencin]] and dancer [[Isadora Duncan]].{{sfn|Rodriguez|2002|pp=246–247}} For her 1929 book ''Aventures de l'Esprit'' (''Adventures of the Mind'') Barney drew a social diagram 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''.{{sfn|Rodriguez|2002|p=260}} In the late 1920s [[Radclyffe Hall]] drew a crowd reading her novel ''[[The Well of Loneliness]]'', recently banned in the UK.{{sfn|Flanner|1979|p=48}} A reading by poet [[Edna St. Vincent Millay]] packed the salon in 1932. At another Friday salon in the 1930s [[Virgil Thomson]] sang from ''[[Four Saints in Three Acts]]'', an opera based on a libretto by Stein.{{sfn|Rodriguez|2002|pp=249–50, 301}} Of the famous Modernist writers who spent time in Paris, [[Ernest Hemingway]] never made an appearance at the salon. James Joyce came once or twice but did not care for it. [[Marcel Proust]] never attended a Friday but did come once to talk with Barney about lesbian culture whilst doing research for ''[[In Search of Lost Time]]'', though he ended up too nervous to bring up the subject.{{sfn|Rodriguez|2002|pp=250–251}}
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