Ladies of the Salon

Washington Life
by Donna Evers
June 2010

Oscar Wilde and the Barney Women

One summer day in 1882, at a Long Island hotel, a pretty little tomboy of a girl ran smack into an eccentric-looking gentleman wearing a velvet jacket and silk stockings. The girl was Natalie Clifford Barney and the man she encountered was the famous writer and art devotee Oscar Wilde, who was on a year-long speaking tour of America. As a result of the collision, Wilde met the girl's mother, distilling heiress Alice Pike Barney, and spent the afternoon telling her about the aesthetic movement in England and how life should be dedicated to art. Alice later claimed that the conversation changed her life, and she went away with the resolve to make her hometown, Washington, D.C., into the cultural as well as the political capital of the country.

But first, Alice decided to take Natalie and her sister Laura to Paris to be educated. Already a talented singer and musician, Alice studied painting with James McNeill Whistler and became an accomplished portrait painter. At the same time, Natalie was reveling in the City of Lights' bohemian atmosphere, and when she wrote a book of love poems, her mother provided the illustration. What Alice didn't know however, was that the poems were dedicated to Natalie's female lovers. Back in the U.S., Alice's husband Albert Clifford Barney, heard of the scandal and crossed the ocean to bring his wife and daughters home to the safety of Washington and Bar Harbor, Maine. He was so upset that he began drinking heavily, had a heart attack, and died. This left Natalie with a fortune to pursue her own lifestyle in Paris and it left Alice to fulfill her dream inspired by Oscar Wilde.

In 1902, Alice commissioned Washington architect Waddy B. Wood to construct a house on Sheridan circle that would serve as a salon where artist could meet and perform for each other. The result was a romantic Spanish Mission-style Studio House with At Nouveau flourishes, carved wood paneling, tiled floors, and a large raised stage for performances. Her guests ranged from Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft to a raft of actors and artist that included Whistler, Enrico Caruso, Anna Pavlova, Sarah Bernhardt, and the Barrymores. Alice sang in some of the operas and was soon wring plays.

Back in Paris, Natalie pursued her lesbian affairs and threw herself into the literary and art scene. Her home at 20, Rue Jacob on the left bank became a salon to rival that of Gertrude Stein's drawing writers and artists by Pound, Auguste Rodin, T.S. Eliot, W. Somerset Maugham, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and later on, even Truman Capote.

It was an amazing twist of fate that Natalie's salon was en vogue just a few years after Wilde died in a seedy hotel around the corner. Unlike Paris, England did not tolerate homosexuality, and when Wilde got involved with a young English lord and ended up in hail for two years, thus falling from the height of celebrity to the depths of scandal and poverty. Although his health had declined precipitously in prison, he managed to retain his wit. On his deathbed in his run-down hotel room, he claimed he was "dying beyond his means," quipping that "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has got to go." Today, the hotel has four stars and the lavishly refurbished Oscar Wilde room can be occupied for a hefty sum. He would have appreciated the irony.

Natalie's salon flourished for 60 years and through two world wars. Wilde's tomb in Paris's Pere Lachaise cemetery is visited by thousands of devotees each year, and Alice's Studio House on Sheridan Circle NW is now the Latvian Embassy.