Elisa Rolle's Blog, page 242

February 3, 2017

Vincent Astor (November 15, 1891 – February 3, 1959)

William Vincent Astor was a businessman, philanthropist, and member of the prominent Astor family.
Born: November 15, 1891, New York City, New York, United States
Died: February 3, 1959, New York City, New York, United States
Education: Harvard University
Lived: Ferncliff, Astor Courts, Astor Dr, Rhinebeck, NY 12572, USA (41.93635, -73.92604)
130 E 80th St, New York, NY 10075, USA (40.77573, -73.959)
Buried: Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Sleepy Hollow, Westchester County, New York, USA, Plot: Section 88, row 2
Spouse: Brooke Astor (m. 1953–1959), Mary Benedict Cushing (m. 1940–1953)
Books: Memphis Movie Theatres
Parents: John Jacob Astor IV, Ava Lowle Willing
Siblings: John Jacob Astor VI

Helen Huntington was a prominent socialite, patron of the arts, heiress and political hostess. Having grown up in Rhinebeck, New York, she played alongside Vincent Astor, who lived at 'Ferncliff' nearby. They married on April 30, 1914. At the ceremony, he was stricken with the mumps, a disease that made him sterile; as for the bride, her friend Glenway Wescott, the novelist, admiringly described her in his unpublished diaries as "a grand, old-fashioned lesbian." "Mrs. (Vincent) Astor said she always had a homosexual to dinner" because they were "the only people who could talk," the architect Philip Johnson remembered. The couple divorced in 1940. A year later, Helen became the second wife of Lytle Hull (1882-1958), a real-estate broker who was a friend and business associate of her former husband. She also considered Leonard Bernstein, Cole Porter, Elsa Maxwell and Cholly Knickerbocker good friends. A supreme lover of animals, she owned three large dogs and three small dogs, as well as five horses, six cows, four sheep, 5 chickens, 2 parrots and numerous other pets. Shortly after his divorce, Astor married Mary Benedict Cushing. They divorced in September, 1953, and the following month, Mary wed James Whitney Fosburgh, a painter who worked as an art lecturer at the Frick Museum, and gay. On 8 October, 1953, several weeks after divorcing his second wife, Astor married the once-divorced, once-widowed Roberta Brooke Russell. Together, Vincent and Brooke developed the Vincent Astor Foundation, designed to give back to New York City. Brooke died in 2007 at the age of 105.
Together from 1914 to 1940: 26 years.
Helen Dinsmore Huntington (April 9, 1893 - December 11, 1976)
William Vincent Astor (November 15, 1891 – February 3, 1959)

Days of Love edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1500563325
ISBN-10: 1500563323
Release Date: September 21, 2014
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Ferncliff, the Astor family estate on the Hudson, had been demolished in the 1940s. Astor Courts, the guest house on the same property, is a wedding place facility, which hosted, among other, Chelsea Clinton’s wedding.
Address: Astor Courts, Astor Dr, Rhinebeck, NY 12572, USA (41.93635, -73.92604)
Type: Guest facility (open to public)
Place
Built in the XIX century
“Minnie (Mary Benedict Cushing, Vincent Astor’s second wife) made him tear down the old mansion. If I had been married to him I would certainly never have made him do this. Ohhh! I can’t imagine a house, where you came in the front door into a hall that ran straight through and looked out on the river – to tear that down, and live in an old swimming pool house which didn’t have one view. Perhaps she didn’t want to run it. I don’t know because I never discussed it with her. And Vincent when he came up after it was gone, and saw just the steps of the big house still standing almost cried. The tennis court (house) was designed by Stanford White and built by Lady Ribblesdale (Vincent’s mother whose second husband was Lord Ribblesdale) when she was married to Jack Astor.” Brooke Astor. The current 50-ish acre estate, most often referred to as Astor Courts, was once part of the sprawling 2,800 acre spread of John Jacob Astor IV, the great-grandson of John Jacob Astor who made a mountain of money in real estate, opium, and fur trades. Astor Courts–sometimes referred to as Ferncliff Casino and/or Astor Casino–was commissioned by John Jacob “Jack” Astor IV and his first wife Eva in the early XX century as a sporting pavilion and guest quarters to go along with the estate’s main house built in the late 1850s by another of the wildly wealthy of the Astor clan. The long and low Beaux Arts style building, inspired by the Grand Trianon at Versailles and completed 1904, was one of the last buildings finished by architect Stanford White before he was shot and killed in 1906 at Madison Square Garden by Harry K. Thaw, the notoriously volatile heir to a Pittsburgh coal and railroad fortune. Along with vast entertaining spaces and several guest rooms, the Astor Courts housed what some believe was the first indoor swimming pool at a private residence, as well as an indoor clay tennis court with soaring vault and truss ceiling of industrial glass, two indoor squash courts, a bowling alley, and a shooting range. There was a grass tennis court that sat along side the building. The entire estate was inherited by Vincent Astor who in the 1940s razed the monumental main house at Ferncliff and, after an extensive renovation and re-purposing of some rooms, moved into the sporting pavilion. In the spring of 2003 the property was purchased for $3,200,000 by its current owners, real estate developer Arthur Seelbinder and his Democratic fundraiser and former tee-vee producer wife Kathleen Hammer. The couple hired architect Sam White–Stanford White’s great-grandson–to oversee the renovation of the hotel-sized house that stretches out over 40,000 square feet.
Life
Who: William Vincent Astor (November 15, 1891 – February 3, 1959)
In 1953 Vincent Astor married for a third time. His new bride was the once-divorced and once-widowed Brooke Russell Kuser Marshall who became the powerful queen of New York high society Brooke Astor, a formidable woman who once upon a time Your Mama would sometimes see swaddled in fur at big shindigs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Although it has been reported that Brooke Astor didn’t particularly care for the drafty and vast Astor Courts, the couple used the former sporting pavilion as a country retreat until Vincent Astor died in 1959. Subsequent to Vincent Astor’s death, Ferncliff was cut up into bite sized pieces, some of which was sold off and some of which–the part where Astor Courts is situated–was donated by Brooke Astor to The Catholic Archdiocese of New York who used the former Astor family playhouse as a nursing home where the old folks were cared for by nuns. Vincent Astor is buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, New York.

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Published on February 03, 2017 01:34

Mabel Mercer (February 3, 1900 - April 20, 1984)

Mabel Mercer was an English-born cabaret singer who performed in the United States, Britain, and Europe with the greats in jazz and cabaret.
Born: February 3, 1900, Burton upon Trent, United Kingdom
Died: April 20, 1984, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, United States
Buried: Red Rock Cemetery, Red Rock, Columbia County, New York, USA
Movies: Mabel Mercer: A Singer's Singer, The Sand Castle
Albums: Mabel Mercer Sings Cole Porter, more
Genres: Jazz, Cabaret

Although she never achieved the fame she deserved, Mabel Mercer was one of the most respected singers of the mid-20th century, a most original stylist, and the toast of the New York cabaret scene. After the end of World War I, Mercer settled in Paris, where she met the celebrated Ada "Bricktop" Smith, an American singer and cabaret proprietor whose patrons included Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald. During her Paris years, Mercer became friends (and possibly more) with the notoriously eccentric lesbian heiress, speedboat racer, and womanizer Marion “Joe” Carstairs. Carstairs, who had settled in her own "kingdom"--Whale Cay, on an island in the Bahamas--paid Mercer's way across the Atlantic, fearing what the Nazis would do to the biracial singer. Mercer resided in the Bahamas until 1941, when she married Kelsey Pharr, an openly gay African-American musician, and obtained an entry visa from the United States government. The marriage was clearly one of convenience, as Mercer and Pharr never lived together and rarely saw each other; however, Mercer, as a devout Catholic, would not divorce Pharr, and they remained legally married until his death. Pharr was one of The Delta Rhythm Boys, an American vocal group active for over 50 years from 1934 to 1987.
Together from 1941 to 1961: 20 years.
Mabel Mercer (February 3, 1900 - April 20, 1984)
Kelsey Leroy Pharr, Jr (January 10, 1917 - April 20, 1961)

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Published on February 03, 2017 01:18

James Bridges (February 3, 1936 - June 6, 1993)

James Bridges was an American screenwriter, film director, producer and actor.
Born: February 3, 1936, Paris, Arkansas, United States
Died: June 6, 1993, Los Angeles, California, United States
Education: University of Central Arkansas
Buried: Oakwood Cemetery, Paris, Logan County, Arkansas, USA
Books: The Baby Maker: A Novel, Perfect!: The Screenplay, more
Awards: Edgar Award for Best Television Episode Teleplay, Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Drama

James Bridges was an American screenwriter and film director. He got his start as a writer for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and one of his episodes, An Unlocked Window, earned him a 1966 Edgar Award. Bridges went on to write and direct a number of notable films, including The Baby Maker, The Paper Chase, September 30, 1955, The China Syndrome, Urban Cowboy, Perfect, and Bright Lights, Big City. From 1958 to 1993, his life partner was actor Jack Larson, best known for his portrayal of Jimmy Olsen in the TV series Adventures of Superman, whom he met during the filming of “Johnny Trouble” (1957). Among his other work, Larson wrote the libretto to the opera Lord Byron to music by Virgil Thomson. He was the first playwright to be awarded a grant by the Rockfeller Foundation. Bridges died in Los Angeles, California of cancer. The James Bridges Theater at University of California, Los Angeles was named in his honor in Nov. 1999. Larson owned the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed George Sturges House in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles, California. Larson died on September 20, 2015, and his memorial was held at UCLA James Bridges Theatre on Dec. 6, 2015.
Together from 1958 to 1993: 35 years.
Jack Larson (February 8, 1928 – September 20, 2015)
James Bridges (February 3, 1936 - June 6, 1993)

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Published on February 03, 2017 01:13

Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946)

Gertrude Stein was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in the Allegheny West neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...
Born: February 3, 1874, Allegheny, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Died: July 27, 1946, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France
Education: Harvard University
Johns Hopkins University
Lived: Algonquin Hotel, 59 W 44th St, New York, NY 10036
Manor House, Bilignin, 01300 Belley, France (45.76579, 5.66466)
5 Rue Christine, 75006 Paris, France (48.8543, 2.33972)
27 Rue de Fleurus, 75006 Paris, France (48.84683, 2.32934)
20 Bloomsbury Square, Bloomsbury, WC1A
David Bachrach House, 2406-2408 Linden Ave, Baltimore, MD 21217, USA (39.31391, -76.63612)
850 Beech Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15233, USA (40.4531, -80.01646)
Buried: Cimetière du Père Lachaise, Paris, City of Paris, Île-de-France, France, Plot: Division 94
Buried alongside: Alice B. Toklas
Movies: Paris Was a Woman
Anniversary: September 8, 1907

Gertrude Stein was an American writer of novels, poetry and plays that eschewed the narrative, linear, and temporal conventions of 19th century literature, and a fervent collector of Modernist art. Alice B. Toklas met Stein in Paris on September 8, 1907, the day she arrived. Acting as Stein's confidante, lover, cook, secretary, muse, editor, critic, and general organizer, Toklas remained a background figure, chiefly living in the shadow of Stein, until Stein published her memoirs in 1933 under the teasing title The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. It became Stein's bestselling book. In her will, Stein willed much of her estate to Toklas but Stein's relatives took action to claim the couple shared art collection, eventually removing it from Toklas's residence while she was away on vacation. Toklas remained in Paris until her death and is buried next to Stein in the Père Lachaise Cemetary.
Together from 1907 to 1946: 39 years.
Alice B. Toklas (April 30, 1877 – March 7, 1967)
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946)
Anniversary: September 8, 1907

Days of Love edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1500563325
ISBN-10: 1500563323
Release Date: September 21, 2014
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Gertrude Stein’s birthplace and childhood home is located at 850 Beech Avenue in the Allegheny West neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The historical marker on the front of the house says the following: "Allegheny West. Birthplace of Gertrude Stein. In this house on February 3, 1874, Gertrude Stein was born to Daniel and Amelia Stein. Author, poet, feminist, playwright, and catalyst in the development of modern art and literature. “In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. This is what makes America what it is.” Allegheny West Historic District."
Address: 850 Beech Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15233, USA (40.4531, -80.01646)
Type: Private Property
National Register of Historic Places: Allegheny West Historic District (Roughly bounded by Brighton Rd., Jabok Way, Ridge and Allegheny Aves.), 78002334, 1978
Place
Allegheny West is a historic neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s North Side. It has two zip codes of both 15233 and 15212, and has representation on Pittsburgh City Council by the council member for District 6 (Downtown, North Side.) The area was frequented by Native Americans until late in the XVIII century. In 1787 David Redick began a survey of the area, with land to be given to Continental soldiers as part of their pay for service in the American Revolution. In 1788 lots in the area were auctioned off in Philadelphia. Houses were first built in the district in 1846-47 and streets were laid out about the same time. In the 1860s there was another boom in housing construction. In the late XIX century Ridge Avenue became known as "Millionaire’s Row" with mansions built for Henry W. Oliver, William Penn Snyder, Harmar Denny, Alexander M. Byers, and others. Lincoln Avenue also became known for its mansions.
Life
Who: Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946)
Gertrude Stein, the youngest of a family of five children, was born on February 3, 1874, in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (which merged with Pittsburgh in 1907) to upper-class Jewish parents, Daniel and Amelia Stein. Her father was a wealthy businessman with real estate holdings. German and English were spoken in their home. When Stein was three years old, she and her family moved to Vienna, and then Paris. Accompanied by governesses and tutors, the Steins endeavored to imbue their children with the cultured sensibilities of European history and life. After a year-long sojourn abroad, they returned to America in 1878, settling in Oakland, California, where her father became director of San Francisco’s street car lines, the Market Street Railway, in an era when public transportation was a privately owned enterprise. Stein attended First Hebrew Congregation of Oakland’s Sabbath school.

Queer Places, Vol. 2 edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1532906312
ISBN-10: 1532906315
Release Date: July 24, 2016
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27 rue de Fleurus is the location of the former home of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas on the Left Bank of Paris. It was also the home of Leo Stein for a time in the early XIX-hundreds.
Address: 27 Rue de Fleurus, 75006 Paris, France (48.84683, 2.32934)
Type: Private Property
Place
27 rue de Fleurus was a renowned Saturday evening gathering place for both expatriate American artists and writers and others noteworthy in the world of vanguard arts and letters, most notably Pablo Picasso. In the early decades of the XX century, hundreds of visitors flocked to the display of vanguard modern art, many came to scoff, but several went away converted. Entrée into the Gertrude Stein salon was a sought-after validation, and Stein became combination mentor, critic, and guru to those who gathered around her, including Ernest Hemingway, who described the salon in “A Moveable Feast.” The principal attraction was the collection of Paul Cézanne oils and watercolors and the early pictures by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso which Gertrude and Leo Stein had had the funds and the foresight to buy. The walls of their atelier at 27 rue de Fleurus were hung to the ceiling with now-famous paintings, the double doors of the dining room were lined with Picasso sketches. On a typical Saturday evening one would have found Gertrude Stein at her post in the atelier, garbed in brown corduroy, sitting in a high-backed Renaissance chair, her legs dangling, next to the big cast-iron stove that heated the chilly room. A few feet away, Leo Stein would expound to a group of visitors his views on modern art. In 1933, Stein published a kind of memoir of her Paris years, “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas,” written in the voice of Toklas, her life partner. The book became a literary bestseller and vaulted Stein from the relative obscurity of cult literary figure into the light of mainstream attention.
Life
Who: Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946)
From 1903 until 1914, when they dissolved their common household, Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo shared living quarters near the Luxembourg Garden on the Left Bank of Paris in a two-story apartment (with adjacent studio) located on the interior courtyard at 27 rue de Fleurus, 6th arrondissement. Here they accumulated the works of art that formed a collection that became renowned for its prescience and historical importance. The gallery space was furnished with imposing, Renaissance era furniture manufactured in Florence, Italy. The paintings lined the walls in tiers trailing many feet to the ceiling. Initially illuminated by gaslight, the artwork was later lit by electric light shortly prior to WWI. In April 1914 Leo relocated to Settignano, Italy, near Florence, and the art collection was divided. The split between brother and sister was acrimonious. Stein did not see Leo Stein again until after WWI, and then through only a brief greeting on the street in Paris. After this accidental encounter, they never saw or spoke to each other again. The gatherings in the Stein home "brought together confluences of talent and thinking that would help define modernism in literature and art.” Dedicated attendees included Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, Gavin Williamson, Thornton Wilder, Sherwood Anderson, Francis Cyril Rose, René Crevel, Élisabeth de Gramont, Francis Picabia, Claribel Cone, Mildred Aldrich, Carl Van Vechten and Henri Matisse. Saturday evenings had been set as the fixed day and time for formal congregation so Stein could work at her writing uninterrupted by impromptu visitors. It was Stein’s partner Alice who became the de facto hostess for the wives and girlfriends of the artists in attendance, who met in a separate room. Gertrude herself attributed the beginnings of the Saturday evening salons to Matisse, as “more and more frequently, people began visiting to see the Matisse paintings—and the Cézannes: ‘Matisse brought people, everybody brought somebody, and they came at any time and it began to be a nuisance, and it was in this way that Saturday evenings began’.”

Queer Places, Vol. 1 edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1532901904
ISBN-10: 1532901909
Release Date: July 24, 2016
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Vast tree-lined burial site with famous names including Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison & Maria Callas.
Address: 16 Rue du Repos, 75020 Paris, France (48.86139, 2.39332)
Type: Cemetery (open to public)
Hours: Monday through Friday 8.00-18.00, Saturday 8.30-18.00, Sunday 9.00-18.00
Phone: +33 1 55 25 82 10
Place
Père Lachaise Cemetery is the largest cemetery in the city of Paris (44 hectares or 110 acres), though there are larger cemeteries in the city’s suburbs. Père Lachaise is in the 20th arrondissement and is notable for being the first garden cemetery, as well as the first municipal cemetery. It is also the site of three WWI memorials. The cemetery is on Boulevard de Ménilmontant. The Paris Métro station Philippe Auguste on line 2 is next to the main entrance, while the station called Père Lachaise, on both lines 2 and 3, is 500 metres away near a side entrance that has been closed to the public. Many tourists prefer the Gambetta station on line 3, as it allows them to enter near the tomb of Oscar Wilde and then walk downhill to visit the rest of the cemetery. Père Lachaise Cemetery was opened on May 21, 1804. The first person buried there was a five-year-old girl named Adélaïde Paillard de Villeneuve, the daughter of a door bell-boy of the Faubourg St. Antoine. Her grave no longer exists as the plot was a temporary concession. Napoleon, who had been proclaimed Emperor by the Senate three days earlier, had declared during the Consulate that "Every citizen has the right to be buried regardless of race or religion.”
Notable queer burials at Père Lachaise:
• Louise Abbéma (1853-1927) was a French painter, sculptor, and designer of the Belle Époque. She first received recognition for her work at age 23 when she painted a portrait of Sarah Bernhardt, her lifelong friend and possibly her lover.
• Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) was a French stage and early film actress.
• Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899), Nathalie Micas (1824-1889) and Anna Elizabeth Klumpke (1856-1942), buried together.
• Jean Börlin (1893-1930) was a Swedish dancer and choreographer born in Härnösand. He worked with Michel Fokine, who was his teacher in Stockholm. Jean Borlin was a principal dancer of the Royal Swedish Ballet when Rolf de Mare brought him to Paris in in 1920 as first dancer and choreographer of the Ballets Suedois at the Theatre de Champs-Elysees. According to Paul Colin, de Mare “was very rich” and he had brought the Swedish Ballet to Paris “especially to show his young lover, Jean Borlin.” The Stockholm press derided de Mare's sexual orientation. In contrast, open-minded Paris welcomed the Ballets Suedois. One wonders what might have happened if de Mare had not disbanded the company in 1925, reportedly because its recent performances had disappointed him. But he had a new lover. Borlin's last years were melancholy. By 1925, he was exhausted: he had choreographed all 23 ballets in his company's repertory and danced in each of its 900 performances -- a grueling schedule that led him to alcohol and drugs. In 1930, he opened a school in New York but died of heart failure shortly thereafter. He was only 37. He was buried at his own wish in the cemetery of Pére Lachaise in Paris in January l931. A stricken de Mare founded Les Archives Internationales de Danse, in his memory.
• Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès (1753-1824) 1st Duke of Parma, later 1st Duke of Cambacérès, was a French lawyer and statesman during the French Revolution and the First Empire, best remembered as the author of the Napoleonic Code, which still forms the basis of French civil law and inspired civil law in many countries. The common belief that Cambacérès is responsible for decriminalizing homosexuality in France is in error. Cambacérès was not responsible for ending the legal prosecution of homosexuals. He did play a key role in drafting the Code Napoléon, but this was a civil law code. He had nothing to do with the Penal Code of 1810, which covered sexual crimes. Before the French Revolution, sodomy had been a capital crime under royal legislation. The penalty was burning at the stake. Very few men, however, were ever actually prosecuted and executed for consensual sodomy (no more than five in the entire XVIII century). Sodomites arrested by the police were more usually released with a warning or held in prison for (at most) a few weeks or months. The National Constituent Assembly abolished the law against sodomy when it revised French criminal law in 1791 and got rid of a variety of offenses inspired by religion, including blasphemy. Cambacérès was a homosexual, his sexual orientation was well-known, and he does not seem to have made any effort to conceal it. He remained unmarried, and kept to the company of other bachelors. Napoleon is recorded as making a number of jokes on the subject. Robert Badinter once mentioned in a speech to the French National Assembly, during debates on reforming the homosexual age of consent, that Cambacérès was known in the gardens of the Palais-Royal as "tante Turlurette".
• Colette (Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, 1873-1954) was a French novelist nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. She embarked on a relationship with Mathilde de Morny, Marquise de Belbeuf ("Missy"), with whom she sometimes shared the stage.
• Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897) was a French novelist. He was the husband of Julia Daudet and father of Edmée Daudet, and writers Léon Daudet and Lucien Daudet. Cultivated, “very beautiful, very elegant, a thin and frail young man, with a tender and a somewhat effeminate face”, according to Jean-Yves Tadié, Lucien Daudet lived a fashionable life which made him meet Marcel Proust. They shared at least a friendship (if not a sexual relationship), which was revealed by Jean Lorrain in his chronicle in the Journal. It is for this indiscretion that Proust and Lorrain fought a duel in 1897. Daudet was also friends with Jean Cocteau.
• Isadora Duncan (1877-1927) was an American dancer. Bisexual she had a daughter by theatre designer Gordon Craig, and a son by Paris Singer, one of the many sons of sewing machine magnate Isaac Singer. She had relationships with Eleonara Duse and Mercedes de Acosta. She married the Russian bisexual poet Sergei Yesenin, who was 18 years her junior.
• Joseph Fiévée (1767-1839) was a French journalist, novelist, essayist, playwright, civil servant (haut fonctionnaire) and secret agent. Joseph Fiévée married in 1790 (his brother-in-law was Charles Frédéric Perlet), but his wife died giving birth, leaving him one child. At the end of the 1790s, he met the writer Théodore Leclercq who became his life companion, and the two would live and raise Fiévée’s son together. When becoming Préfet, Fiévée and Leclercq moved to the Nièvre department, and their open relationship greatly shocked some locals. The two men were received together in the salons of the Restoration. Both men are buried in the same tomb at Père Lachaise Cemetery.
• Loie Fuller (1862–1928) was an American dancer who was a pioneer of both modern dance and theatrical lighting techniques. Fuller supported other pioneering performers, such as fellow United States-born dancer Isadora Duncan. Fuller helped Duncan ignite her European career in 1902 by sponsoring independent concerts in Vienna and Budapest. She was cremated and her ashes are interred in the columbarium at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Her sister, Mollie Fuller, had a long career as an actress and vaudeville performer.
• Anne-Louis Girodet (1767-1824) was a French painter and pupil of Jacques-Louis David, who was part of the beginning of the Romantic movement by adding elements of eroticism through his paintings. According to the scholar Diana Knight, over the years Girodet’s homosexuality became widely known.
• Eileen Gray (1878–1976) was an Irish furniture designer and architect and a pioneer of the Modern Movement in architecture. Gray was bisexual. She mixed in the lesbian circles of the time, being associated with Romaine Brooks, Gabrielle Bloch, Loie Fuller, the singer Damia and Natalie Barney. Gray's intermittent relationship with Damia (or Marie-Louise Damien) ended in 1938, after which they never saw each other again, although both lived into their nineties in the same city. Damia died at La Celle-Saint-Cloud, a western suburb of Paris, and was interred in the Cimetière de Pantin (163 Avenue Jean Jaurès, 93500 Aubervilliers). Today, she is considered to be the third greatest singer of chansons réalistes, after Edith Piaf and Barbara.
• Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947) was a Venezuelan, naturalised French, composer, conductor, music critic, diarist, theatre director, and salon singer.
• Harry Graf Kessler (1868-1937) was an Anglo-German count, diplomat, writer, and patron of modern art. In his introduction to “Berlin Lights” (2000) Ian Buruma asserted Kessler was homosexual and struggled his whole life to conceal it.
• Boris Yevgen'yevich Kochno (1904-1990), was hired as the personal secretary to Serge Diaghilev, the impresario of the famed Ballets Russes. He served in this capacity until Diaghilev's death in 1929. In addition to his other duties, he also wrote several ballet libretti for the troupe. He died in 1990 in Paris following a fall. He was buried next to Wladimir Augenblick who died in 2001.
• Marie Laurencin (1883-1956) was a French painter and printmaker. She became an important figure in the Parisian avant-garde as a member of the Cubists associated with the Section d'Or. She became romantically involved with the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, and has often been identified as his muse. In addition, Laurencin had important connections to the salon of the American expatriate and famed lesbian writer Natalie Clifford Barney. She had heterosexual and lesbian affairs. During WWI, Laurencin left France for exile in Spain with her German-born husband, Baron Otto von Waëtjen, since through her marriage she had automatically lost her French citizenship. The couple subsequently lived together briefly in Düsseldorf. After they divorced in 1920, she returned to Paris, where she achieved financial success as an artist until the economic depression of the 1930s. During the 1930s she worked as an art instructor at a private school. She lived in Paris until her death.
• Mary Elizabeth Clarke Mohl (1793–1883) was a British writer who was known as a salon hostess in Paris. She was known by her nickname of "Clarkey". She was admired for her independence and conversation. She eventually married the orientalist Julius von Mohl. She was an ardent Francophile, a feminist, and a close friend of Florence Nightingale. She wrote about her interest in the history of women's rights. She was buried with her husband, Julius von Mohl, at Père Lachaise Cemetery (56th division).
• Mathilde (Missy) de Morny (1863-1944), a French noblewoman, artist and transgender figure, she became a lover of several women in Paris, including Liane de Pougy and Colette.
• Francis Poulenc (1899–1963) was a French composer and pianist. The biographer Richard D. E. Burton comments that, in the late 1920s, Poulenc might have seemed to be in an enviable position: professionally successful and independently well-off, having inherited a substantial fortune from his father. He bought a large country house, Le Grande Coteau (Chemin Francis Poulenc, 37210 Noizay), 140 miles (230 km) south-west of Paris, where he retreated to compose in peaceful surroundings. Yet he was troubled, struggling to come to terms with his sexuality, which was predominantly gay. His first serious affair was with the painter Richard Chanlaire, to whom he sent a copy of the Concert champêtre score inscribed, "You have changed my life, you are the sunshine of my thirty years, a reason for living and working". Nevertheless, while this affair was in progress Poulenc proposed marriage to his friend Raymonde Linossier. As she was not only well aware of his homosexuality but was also romantically attached elsewhere, she refused him, and their relationship became strained. He suffered the first of many periods of depression, which affected his ability to compose, and he was devastated in January 1930, when Linossier died suddenly at the age of 32. On her death he wrote, "All my youth departs with her, all that part of my life that belonged only to her. I sob ... I am now twenty years older". His affair with Chanlaire petered out in 1931, though they remained lifelong friends. On 30 January 1963, at his flat opposite the Jardin du Luxembourg, Poulenc suffered a fatal heart attack. His funeral was at the nearby church of Saint-Sulpice. In compliance with his wishes, none of his music was performed; Marcel Dupré played works by Bach on the grand organ of the church. Poulenc was buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery, alongside his family.
• Marcel Proust (1871-1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental novel “À la recherche du temps perdu” (In Search of Lost Time), published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927. Also his friend and sometime lover, Reynaldo Hahn is buried here.
• Raymond Radiguet (1903–1923) was a French novelist and poet whose two novels were noted for their explicit themes, and unique style and tone. In early 1923, Radiguet published his first and most famous novel, “Le Diable au corps” (The Devil in the Flesh). The story of a young married woman who has an affair with a sixteen-year-old boy while her husband is away fighting at the front provoked scandal in a country that had just been through WWI. Though Radiguet denied it, it was established later that the story was in large part autobiographical. He associated himself with the Modernist set, befriending Picasso, Max Jacob, Jean Hugo, Juan Gris and especially Jean Cocteau, who became his mentor. Radiguet also had several well-documented relationships with women. An anecdote told by Ernest Hemingway has an enraged Cocteau charging Radiguet (known in the Parisian literary circles as "Monsieur Bébé" – Mister Baby) with decadence for his tryst with a model: "Bébé est vicieuse. Il aime les femmes." ("Baby is depraved. He likes women.") Radiguet, Hemingway implies, employed his sexuality to advance his career, being a writer "who knew how to make his career not only with his pen but with his pencil." Aldous Huxley is quoted as declaring that Radiguet had attained the literary control that others required a long career to reach. On December 12, 1923, Radiguet died at age 20 in Paris of typhoid fever, which he contracted after a trip he took with Cocteau. Cocteau, in an interview with The Paris Review stated that Radiguet had told him three days prior to his death that, "In three days, I am going to be shot by the soldiers of God." In reaction to this death Francis Poulenc wrote, "For two days I was unable to do anything, I was so stunned". In her 1932 memoir, “Laughing Torso,” British artist Nina Hamnett describes Radiguet's funeral: "The church was crowded with people. In the pew in front of us was the negro band from the Boeuf sur le Toit. Picasso was there, Brâncuși and so many celebrated people that I cannot remember their names. Radiguet's death was a terrible shock to everyone. Coco Chanel, the celebrated dressmaker, arranged the funeral. It was most wonderfully done. Cocteau was too ill to come." ... "Cocteau was terribly upset and could not see anyone for weeks afterwards.”
• Mlle Raucourt (1756-1815) was a French actress.
• Oscar Wilde’s tomb in Père Lachaise was designed by sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein, at the request of Robert Ross (1869-1918), who also asked for a small compartment to be made for his own ashes. Ross's ashes were transferred to the tomb in 1950.
• Salomon James de Rothschild (1835–1864) was a French banker and socialite. He was the father of Baroness Hélène van Zuylen.
• Raymond Roussel (1877-1933) wrote and published some of his most important work between 1900 and 1914, and then from 1920 to 1921 traveled around the world. He continued to write for the next decade, but when his fortune finally gave out, he made his way to a hotel in Palermo, Grand Hotel Et Des Palmes (Via Roma, 398, 90139 Palermo), where he died of a barbiturate overdose in 1933, aged 56.
• Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was an American writer of novels, poetry and plays. In 1933, Stein published a kind of memoir of her Paris years, “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas,” written in the voice of Toklas, her life partner. Alice B. Toklas (1877-1967) was an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early XX century. They are buried together.
• Pavel Tchelitchew (1898-1957), Russian-born surrealist painter. Loved by Edith Sitwell, he then in turn fell in love with Charles Henry Ford and moved with him in New York City.
• Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet. The modernist angel depicted as a relief on the tomb was originally complete with male genitals. They were broken off as obscene and kept as a paperweight by a succession of Père Lachaise Cemetery keepers. Their current whereabouts are unknown. In the summer of 2000, intermedia artist Leon Johnson performed a 40 minute ceremony entitled Re-membering Wilde in which a commissioned silver prosthesis was installed to replace the vandalised genitals.

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Published on February 03, 2017 01:08

Elizabeth Blackwell (February 3, 1821 – May 31, 1910)

Elizabeth Blackwell was a British-born physician, notable as the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States, as well as the first woman on the UK Medical Register.
Born: February 3, 1821, Bristol, United Kingdom
Died: May 31, 1910, Hastings, United Kingdom
Education: Hobart and William Smith Colleges
St Bartholomew's Hospital
Bedford College, London
Lived: Rock House, 10 Exmouth Pl, Hastings, East Sussex TN34 3JA, UK (50.85682, 0.58974)
Dicksons Street, Bristol
1 Wilson Street, off Portland Square, Bristol
Buried: Kilmun Parish Church and Cemetery, Kilmun, Argyll and Bute, Scotland
Siblings: Emily Blackwell, Samuel Charles Blackwell, more
Parents: Hannah Lane Blackwell, Samuel Blackwell

Elizabeth Blackwell was born in a house on Dicksons Street in Bristol, to Samuel Blackwell, a sugar refiner, and his wife Hannah (Lane) Blackwell. She had two older siblings, Anna and Marian, and would eventually have six younger siblings: Samuel (married Antoinette Brown), Henry (married Lucy Stone), Emily (third woman in the U.S. to get a medical degree), Sarah, John and George. Four maiden aunts, Barbara, Ann, Lucy and Mary, also lived with the Blackwells during Blackwell's childhood. Blackwell's earliest memories were of her time living at a house on 1 Wilson Street, off Portland Square, Bristol.

Queer Places, Vol. 2 edited by Elisa Rolle
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ISBN-10: 1532906315
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Rock House at 10 Exmouth Place, Hastings, East Sussex TN34 3JA, ca. 1820, has red brick with blue headers.
Address: 10 Exmouth Pl, Hastings, East Sussex TN34 3JA, UK (50.85682, 0.58974)
Type: Private Property
English Heritage Building ID: 293976 (Grade II, 1976)
Place
“Here lived and worked for thirty years Dr Elizabeth Blackwell, Born at Bristol 1821, died at Hastings 1910” Stuccoed east front. Slate hipped roof. 2 storeys and basement. Sash windows with glazing bars, louvred shutters. Bay windows to east on ground and 1st floors. Brick string course. Central moulded panelled door with rectangular fanlight with glazing bars. Inscription “The first woman to graduate in medicine in the United States, at Geneva (Syracuse University) New York 1849. The first woman to be placed on the British medical register 1859. One who never turn her back but marched breast forward never doubted clouds would break. Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, sleep to wake.”
Life
Who: Elizabeth Blackwell (February 3, 1821 – May 31, 1910)
Elizabeth Blackwell was a British-born medical practitioner, notable as the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States, as well as the first woman on the UK Medical Register. She was the first woman to graduate from medical school, a pioneer in promoting the education of women in medicine in the United States, and a social and moral reformer in both the United States and in the United Kingdom. Her sister Emily was the third woman in the US to get a medical degree. In 1856, when Blackwell was establishing the New York Infirmary, she adopted Katherine "Kitty" Barry, an Irish orphan from the House of Refuge on Randall’s Island. Diary entries at the time show that she adopted Barry half out of loneliness and a feeling of obligation, and half out of a utilitarian need for domestic help. Barry was brought up as a half-servant, half-daughter. Blackwell did provide for Barry’s education. She even instructed Barry in gymnastics as a trial for the theories outlined in her publication, “The Laws of Life with Special Reference to the Physical Education of Girls.” However, Blackwell never permitted Barry to develop her own interests. She didn’t make an effort to introduce Barry to young men or women of her age. Barry herself was rather shy, awkward and self-conscious about her slight deafness. Barry followed Blackwell during her many trans-Atlantic moves, during her furious house hunt between 1874 and 1875, during which they moved six times, and finally to Blackwell’s final home, Rock House, a small house off Exmouth Place in Hastings, Sussex, in 1879. Barry stayed with Blackwell all her life. After Blackwell’s death, Barry stayed at Rock House, and then moved to Kilmun in Argyllshire, Scotland, where Blackwell was buried in the churchyard of St Munn’s Parish Church. In 1920, she moved in with the Blackwells and took the Blackwell name. On her deathbed, in 1930, Barry called Blackwell her "true love,” and requested that her ashes be buried with those of Elizabeth. Emily Blackwell (1826-1910) was the second woman to earn a medical degree at what is now Case Western Reserve University, and the third openly identified woman to earn a medical degree in the United States. From 1883 Emily lived with her partner Elizabeth Cushier, who also served as a doctor at the New York infirmary. Blackwell and Cushier retired at the turn of the century. After traveling abroad for a year and a half, they spent the next winters at their home in Montclair, New Jersey and summers in Maine. Blackwell died on September 7, 1910 in York Cliffs, Maine, a few months after her sister Elizabeth’s death in England.

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Published on February 03, 2017 00:21

February 2, 2017

Xuan Dieu (February 2, 1916 – December 18, 1985)

Ngô Xuân Diệu more commonly known by the pen name Xuân Diệu, was a prominent Vietnamese poet.
Born: February 2, 1916, Binh Dinh Province, Vietnam
Died: December 18, 1985, Hanoi, Vietnam
Spouse: Diep Bach
Parents: Ngô Xuân Thọ, Nguyễn Thị Hiệp

Ngô Xuân Diệu was a prominent Vietnamese poet. A colossal figure in modern Vietnamese literature, he wrote about 450 poems (largely in posthumous manuscripts) especially love poems, several short stories, and many notes, essays, and literary criticisms. Although well known for his love poems, he was married for only six months without consummating the marriage before divorcing from his wife and died a bachelor. Many people believe that he was homosexual along with his lifelong friend the famous poet Huy Cận, as shown through his many poems about love dedicated to (and apparently addressed to) various men. These poems include Tình trai (Man's Love, about the love affair between the French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine) and Em đi (You leave, a heartfelt poem dedicated to a younger man with whom the poet shared a house for several years). For two years (1938-1940), Xuân Diệu was Huy Cận's roommate at the College of Agriculture in Hanoi, from which he received his engineering degree in agricultural science in 1943.
They met in 1938 and remained friends until Xuân Diệu’s death in 1985: 47 years.
Cù Huy Cận (May 31, 1919 - February 19, 2005)
Ngô Xuân Diệu (February 2, 1916 – December 18, 1985)

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Published on February 02, 2017 05:06

Thomas M. Disch (February 2, 1940 - July 4, 2008)

Thomas Michael Disch was an American science fiction author and poet. He won the Hugo Award for Best Related Book – previously called "Best Non-Fiction Book" – in 1999, and he had two other Hugo ...
Born: February 2, 1940, Des Moines, Iowa, United States
Died: July 4, 2008, New York City, New York, United States
Education: Cooper Union
New York University
Buried: Saint Johns Episcopal Church Columbarium, Dubuque, Dubuque County, Iowa, USA
Parents: Helen Disch
Movies: The Brave Little Toaster, The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars, The Brave Little Toaster to the Rescue

Thomas M. Disch was an American author and poet. He won the Hugo Award for Best Related Book – previously called "Best Non-Fiction Book" – in 1999, and he had two other Hugo nominations and nine Nebula Award nominations to his credit, plus one win of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, a Rhysling Award, and two Seiun Awards, among others. Following an extended period of depression following the death in 2005 of his partner of 35 years, poet Charles Naylor, Disch stopped writing almost entirely, except for poetry – although he did produce two novellas. Disch committed suicide by gunshot on July 4, 2008 in his apartment in Manhattan, New York City. His last book, The Word of God, which was written shortly before Naylor died, had just been published a few days before Disch's death. Disch's private life remained private, for the most part. He was publicly gay since 1968; this came out occasionally in his poetry and particularly in his 1979 novel On Wings of Song. He did not try to write to a particular community: "I'm gay myself, but I don't write 'gay' literature." He rarely mentioned his sexuality in interviews, though the Canadian gay periodical The Body Politic interviewed him in 1981.
Together from 1970 to 2005: 35 years.
Charles Naylor (died in 2005)
Thomas M. Disch (February 2, 1940 - July 4, 2008)

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Published on February 02, 2017 05:03

Thomas Ernest "Stella" Boulton (February 2, 1848 – December, 1904)

Thomas Ernest Boulton and Frederick William Park (1848-1881) were two Victorian cross-dressers who appeared as defendants in a celebrated trial in London in 1871, charged "with conspiring and inciting persons to commit an unnatural offence." After the prosecution failed to establish that they had had anal sex, which was then a crime, or that wearing women's clothing was in any sense a crime, both men were acquitted. Lord Arthur Clinton was an English aristocrat and Liberal Party politician. A Member of Parliament for three years, he was notorious for involvement in the homosexual scandal and trial of Boulton and Park. Ernest Boulton was the son of a stockbroker. From childhood he liked wearing female clothing, and was encouraged in his impersonations of maids and other women by his mother; he used the nickname "Stella." As a young man, he met Frederick William Park and the two became friends. The two men then formed a theatrical double act, touring as Stella Clinton (or Mrs. Graham) and Fanny Winifred Park, and receiving favorable press reviews for their performances. For around two years, they also frequented the West End of London in both women's and men's dress, attending theatres and social events. Lord Arthur Clinton had lived with "Stella" as his/her "husband“; he presumably committed suicide on June 18, 1870, the day after receiving his subpoena for the trial.
Lord Arthur Pelham-Clinton (June 23, 1840 – June 18, 1870)
Thomas Ernest Boulton (February 2, 1848 – December 1904)

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Published on February 02, 2017 04:56

Robert McAlmon (March 9, 1895 - February 2, 1956)

Robert Menzies McAlmon was an American author, poet and publisher.
Born: March 9, 1895, Clifton, NJ
Died: February 2, 1956, Desert Hot Springs, CA
Education: University of Southern California
Buried: Lakewood Cemetery, Minneapolis, Hennepin County, Minnesota, USA, Plot: Sect 29 Lot 46 grave 3
Spouse: Bryher (m. 1921–1927)

At Lakewood Cemetery (3600 Hennepin Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55408) is buried Robert McAlmon (1895-1956). American author, poet and publisher, McAlmon collaborated with William Carlos Williams on the Contact Review, which did not last for long, but published poetry by Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, H. D., Hilda Doolittle, Kay Boyle and Marsden Hartley. The next year, he moved to Paris after marrying the wealthy and lesbian English writer Annie Winifred Ellerman, better known as Bryher. McAlmon typed and edited the handwritten manuscript of “Ulysses” by James Joyce, with whom he had a friendship.

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Published on February 02, 2017 04:53

Natalie Clifford Barney (October 31, 1876 – February 2, 1972)

Natalie Clifford Barney was an American playwright, poet and novelist who lived as an expatriate in Paris.
Born: October 31, 1876, Dayton, Ohio, United States
Died: February 2, 1972, Paris, France
Lived: 4 Rue Chalgrin, 75116 Paris, France (48.87412, 2.28996)
20 Rue Jacob, 75006 Paris, France (48.85535, 2.33564)
1626 Rhode Island Ave NW, Washington, D.C.
97 Cadogan Gardens, SW3
Ban-y-Bryn, Bar Harbor, Mount Desert Island, Hancock County, Maine, USA (44.38761, -68.20391)
Buried: Cimetiere de Passy, Paris, City of Paris, Île-de-France, France, Plot: Division 9.
Buried alongside: Romaine Brooks
Parents: Alice Pike Barney
Nominations: Lambda Literary Award for Small Press Book Award
Anniversary: May 1, 1910
Married: June 20, 1918

Renée Vivien was a British poet who wrote in the French language. She took to heart all the mannerisms of Symbolism, as one of the last poets to claim allegiance to the school. Her compositions include sonnets, hendecasyllabic verse, and prose poetry. Upon inheriting her father's fortune at 21, she immigrated permanently to France. In Paris, Vivien's dress and lifestyle were as notorious among the bohemian set as was her verse. She lived lavishly, as an open lesbian, and carried on a well-known affair with American heiress and writer Natalie Clifford Barney. She also harbored a lifelong obsession with her closest childhood friend and neighbor, Violet Shillito – a relationship that remained unconsummated. In 1900, Vivien abandoned this chaste love, when the great romance with Natalie Barney ensued. The following year Shillito died of typhoid fever, a tragedy from which Vivien, guilt-ridden, would never fully recover. By 1901, the tempestuous and often jealous relationship with Natalie Barney had already collapsed. Vivien died in Paris on the morning of November 18, 1909, at the age of 32.
Together from (around) 1898 to 1901: 3 years.
Natalie Clifford Barney (October 31, 1876 – February 2, 1972)
Pauline Mary Tarn aka Renée Vivien (June 11, 1877 – November 18, 1909)

Queer Places, Vol. 3 edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1532906695
ISBN-10: 1532906692
Release Date: July 24, 2016
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Natalie Clifford Barney’s salon was held at her home at 20 rue Jacob in Paris’ Left Bank for more than 60 years and brought together writers and artists from around the world, including many leading figures in French literature along with American and British Modernists of the Lost Generation.
Address: 20 Rue Jacob, 75006 Paris, France (48.85535, 2.33564)
Type: Private Property
Place
The play “Equivoque” may have led Natalie 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.” She canceled her lease and rented the pavilion at 20, Rue Jacob in Paris’ 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 pavillon was a large, overgrown garden with a 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 pavillon’s floors would not hold up to large dancing parties. Frequent guests during this period included Pierre Louÿs, Paul Claudel, Philippe Berthelot and translator J. C. Mardrus. During WWI the salon became a haven for those opposed to the war. Henri Barbusse once gave a reading from his anti-war novel “Under Fire” and Barney hosted a Women’s Congress for Peace at the Rue Jacob. 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. Other visitors to the salon during the 1920s included French writers Jeanne Galzy, André Gide, Anatole France, Max Jacob, Louis Aragon and Jean Cocteau along with English-language writers Ford Madox Ford, W. Somerset Maugham, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, Thornton Wilder, T. S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams and moreover, German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore (the first Nobel laureate from Asia), Romanian aesthetician and diplomat Matila Ghyka, journalist Janet Flanner (who set the New Yorker style), journalist, activist and publisher Nancy Cunard, publishers Caresse and Harry Crosby, art collector and patron Peggy Guggenheim, Sylvia Beach (the bookstore owner who published James Joyce’s “Ulysses”), painters Tamara de Lempicka and Marie Laurencin and dancer Isadora Duncan. In the late 1920s Radclyffe Hall drew a crowd after her novel “The Well of Loneliness” had been banned in the UK. 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 Gertrude Stein.
Note: Rue de Seine is a street in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. The Hotel La Louisiane at 60 rue de Seine is famous for having accommodated many notable jazz musicians and writers, including Miles Davis, Chet Baker, John Coltrane, Ernest Hemingway, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin known as "George Sand", French novelist known for her numerous affairs with celebrities including Frederic Chopin, lived at number 52 Rue de Seine. From 1868 to 1876, George Sand rented 5 Rue Gay-Lussac, Val-de-Grace, for her stays in Paris.
Life
Who: Natalie Clifford Barney (October 31, 1876 – February 2, 1972)
Natalie Clifford Barney was an American playwright, poet and novelist who lived as an expatriate in Paris. In November, 1899 Barney met the poet Pauline Tarn, better known by her pen name Renée Vivien. For Vivien it was love at first sight, while Barney became fascinated with Vivien after hearing her recite one of her poems, which she described as "haunted by the desire for death." In 1908 Vivien attempted suicide by overdosing on laudanum and died the following year. In a memoir written fifty years later Barney said "She could not be saved. Her life was a long suicide. Everything turned to dust and ashes in her hands." Barney had become more widely known for her many relationships than for her writing or her salon. She once wrote out a list, divided into three categories: liaisons, demi-liaisons, and adventures. Colette was a demi-liaison, while the artist and furniture designer Eyre de Lanux was listed as an adventure. Among the liaisons were Olive Custance, Renée Vivien, Elisabeth de Gramont, Romaine Brooks, and Dolly Wilde. Of these, the three longest relationships were with de Gramont, Brooks, and Wilde; from 1927, she was involved with all three of them simultaneously, a situation that ended only with Wilde’s death. Her shorter affairs, such as those with Colette and Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, often evolved into lifelong friendships.

Queer Places, Vol. 3 edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1532906695
ISBN-10: 1532906692
Release Date: July 24, 2016
CreateSpace Store: https://www.createspace.com/6228901
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Cadogan Square is a residential square in Knightsbridge, west London, that was named after Earl Cadogan. Whilst it is mainly a residential area, some of the properties are used for diplomatic and educational purposes. The square is known for being one of the most expensive residential streets in the United Kingdom, with an average house price of around £5.75 million in 2013.
Address: Cadogan Gardens, Chelsea, London SW3 2RJ, UK
Type: Private Property
Place
The square was built between 1877 and 1888. The west side has the greatest variety of houses, all variations on the same Flemish-influenced theme. Numbers 54-58 were designed by William Young in 1877 for Lord Cadogan, and the architect J. J. Stevenson was largely responsible for the south side, built in 1879-85. The east side was built in 1879 by G. T. Robinson. Number 61 is an early example of high-class mansion flats, and number 61A was once a studio-house for a Mr F. W. Lawson. Cadogan Square is one of the most desirable residential addresses in London and is one of the most expensive in the United Kingdom. It is formed of a garden (restricted to residents) surrounded by red-brick houses, the majority of which have been converted into flats or apartments. The square is south of Pont Street, east of Lennox Gardens, and west of Sloane Street. An independent preparatory school for boys, Sussex House School, at number 68, was founded in 1953. The school is sited in a house by architect Norman Shaw. Apartments or flats tend to be available on short leases and are sold for several million pounds. There are three or so houses on the square that have not been converted into flats, and these may be valued at over £25 million each. The freeholder of most of the properties is Earl Cadogan, a multi-billionaire whose family has owned the land for several hundred years. Numbers 4 (by G.E Street), 52, 62 and 62b, 68 and 72 are all Grade II listed buildings. Writer Arnold Bennet lived at number 75 during the 1920s. On July 25, 1899, at Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Street, Cadogan Square, in London, Adolph de Meyer married Donna Olga Caracciolo, an Italian noblewoman who had been divorced earlier that year from Nobile Marino Brancaccio; she was a goddaughter of Edward VII.
Notable queer residents at Cadogan Gardens:
• From 1898 to 1913 Adolph de Meyer (1868-1946) lived in fashionable 1 Cadogan Gardens, SW3 and between 1903 and 1907 his work was published in Alfred Stieglitz’s quarterly Camera Work.
• Sir Dirk Bogarde (1921-1999) lived from 1991 to 1999 and died at 2 Cadogan Gardens, SW3.
• Natalie Clifford Barney (1876-1972), US born one-time lover of Oscar Wilde’s niece, Dolly Wilde, and origin of the character Valerie Seymour in “The Well of Loneliness,” lived at 97 Cadogan Gardens, SW3 in the 1920s.
• Edward Sackville-West (1901-1965) was born at 105 Cadogan Gardens, SW3 the elder child and only son of Major-General Charles John Sackville-West, who later became the fourth Baron Sackville, and his first wife, Maud Cecilia, née Bell (1873–1920.)
• In 1907 at the Homburg spa in Germany, Radclyffe Hall met Mabel Batten (1856-1916), a well-known amateur singer of lieder. Batten (nicknamed "Ladye") was 51 to Hall's 27, and was married with an adult daughter and grandchildren. They fell in love, and after Batten's husband died they set up residence together at 59 Cadogan Square, SW1X. Batten gave Hall the nickname John, which she used the rest of her life. In 1915 Hall fell in love with Mabel Batten's cousin Una Troubridge (1887–1963), a sculptor who was the wife of Vice-Admiral Ernest Troubridge, and the mother of a young daughter. Batten died the following year, and in 1917 Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge began living together at 22 Cadogan Court, Draycott Avenue, SW3, a move Radclyffe originally planned to do with Mabel Batten. The relationship would last until Hall's death.
• On April 5, 1895, Oscar Wilde was arrested in room 118 of the upscale Edwardian Cadogan Hotel (now Belmond Cadogan Hotel, 75 Sloane Street, SW1X) on a charge of "gross indecency" stemming from his homosexual relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas. Friends had urged Wilde to flee the country once word of his impending arrest leaked out, but Wilde was resolute, saying, "I shall stay and do my sentence, whatever it is." The poet-dramatist was sentenced to two years imprisonment with hard labor, a cruel punishment that was to signal the beginning of the end for Wilde's brightly shining star. The arrest was immortalized by English poet laureate, John Betjeman, in his poem "The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel."
Life
Who: Baron Adolph de Meyer (September 1, 1868 – January 6, 1946) and Olga, the Baroness de Meyer (August 8, 1871 – 1930/1931)
Baron Adolph de Meyer was a photographer famed for his elegant photographic portraits in the early XX century, many of which depicted celebrities such as Mary Pickford, Rita Lydig, Luisa Casati, Billie Burke, Irene Castle, John Barrymore, Lillian Gish, Ruth St. Denis, King George V of the United Kingdom, and Queen Mary. He was also the first official fashion photographer for the American magazine Vogue, appointed to that position in 1913. In 1899 he married Donna Olga Caracciolo. The couple reportedly met in 1897, at the home of a member of the Sassoon banking family, and Olga would be the subject of many of her husband’s photographs. The de Meyers’ marriage was one of marriage of convenience rather than romantic love, since the groom was homosexual and the bride was bisexual or lesbian. As Baron de Meyer wrote in an unpublished autobiographical novel, before they wed, he explained to Olga "the real meaning of love shorn of any kind of sensuality.” He continued by observing, "Marriage based too much on love and unrestrained passion has rarely a chance to be lasting, whilst perfect understanding and companionship, on the contrary, generally make the most durable union." The de Meyers were characterised by Violet Trefusis—who counted Olga among her lovers and whose mother, Alice Keppel, was Edward VII’s best known mistress—as "Pederaste and Médisante" because, as Trefusis observed, "He looked so queer and she had such a vicious tongue." Among Olga’s affairs was one with Winnaretta, Princess Edmond de Polignac, the Singer sewing machine heiress and arts patron, in the years 1901–05. Cecil Beaton dubbed Adolph de Maeye "the Debussy of photography.” In 1912 he photographed Nijinsky in Paris. After the death of his wife in 1930/31, Baron de Meyer became romantically involved with a young German, Ernest Frohlich (born circa 1914), whom he hired as his chauffeur and later adopted as his son. The latter went by the name Baron Ernest Frohlich de Meyer.

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Published on February 02, 2017 04:48

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