#MeetMeInAnHour

Biographer Suzie Rodriguez on
What Natalie Barney Would Make of the Modern World

Suzanne Stroh: Finally, a party for Natalie that she didn’t have to host herself! Thanks for stopping by, Suzie. As the author of Wild Heart, you’re Natalie’s most complete biographer. If she were to suddenly appear in 2013, what would she make of computers, smart phones and the Internet?

Suzanne Rodriguez: She’d probably find them useful. After all, Natalie wielded the technology of her day without hesitation: telephones, telegrams, typewriters; in Paris she frequently sent meet-me-in-an-hour notes flying through pneumatic tubes, which were kind of an early 20^th Century equivalent of text messaging. She had a Kodak Brownie camera the year they arrived on the scene, somewhere around 1900, and loved taking snapshots of her friends.

Natalie was smart and quick-witted, so it wouldn’t take her long to learn the modern tech ropes. She’d be using her iPhone—it might be the new gold-plated one—to take photos and videos, send messages, or just talk. She’d probably check on what her friends are doing on Facebook, but I bet she’d find LinkedIn more useful and more to her taste.

What do you think she would see as the highest possible use of the Internet? The greatest possibilities? The most appalling realities? 

Natalie loved to learn and had insatiable curiosity, so my guess is that she would most respect the Internet’s power for education; she’d think its greatest use would be in helping to create a more-informed and thoughtful society. The most appalling reality? Maybe that so much of the Internet is given over to celebrity gossip, cyber bullies, pornography, comments left by mean-spirited trolls.

Whom would she have wanted most to correspond with? 

She’d figure out soon enough that full-blown correspondence probably wasn’t going to fly in this day and age. It’s possible that she’d prefer today’s version of correspondence, though, since she could contact a lot more people in a much shorter amount of time.

As for persuading them, Natalie was a force you ignored at your peril. She’d still be such a force.

Would she tweet? What about?

I don’t think she would. Natalie was an elitist and a snob; she wasn’t interested in the hoi polloi. I can’t see her having any interest in widely broadcasting her opinions.

What TV shows would she want to be on?

I don’t know if being on TV would appeal to her. She had a spotlight focused on her from a young age, thanks to the scandals that constantly surrounded her. And in her own world she was almost always on center stage. So she didn’t really need to seek attention. But it’s fun to think of her on TV. Can you imagine the witticisms she’d exchange with Ellen DeGeneres? Or what if she walked into the women’s bookstore in Portlandia? And she’d cut quite a swath through the female prison population of Orange is the New Black!

Do you think Natalie would meet women on the Internet? (Like would she wish happy birthday to actress Piper Perabo, star of “Covert Affairs”? They were both born today.) 

Sure, why not? If someone appealed to her, meeting them via the Internet—perhaps by sending a connection request on LinkedIn, friending on Facebook, or using other forms of social media—would provide an entrée. And she’d know how to play it after that initial contact. Or even within that initial contact.

Would she enjoy net sex? 

Maybe not. She was a hands-on kind of gal.

How would she react to portrayals of herself and her friends on Facebook? 

With sharply-pointed aphorisms, for which she was famous. One of my favorites: “To be one’s own master is to be the slave of self.”

If Natalie could post a single painting of Marie Laurencin’s, which one? 

Marie’s 1911 painting, Les Jeunes Filles, would certainly please Natalie on a few levels. The graceful young girls, for one thing; for another, it had the merit of being displayed at that year’s Salon des Independants, which Natalie would have relished. I personally have always been struck by the cubistic influence in this painting—straight from her close friends of the time like Picasso, Picabia, and others. It actually reminds me of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, which Picasso completed a couple of years earlier.

When poet Lucie Delarie-Mardrus broke up with Natalie and wrote that scathing novel about her, Lucie accused Natalie of making 21 appointments a day. Berthe Cleyreugue later revised that number down to 18 or something, I think. (I, for one, was relieved to hear it. Twenty-one meetings a day had been so exhausting all those years.) Do you think our modern wired world would have enabled Natalie in indulging her excesses even more? Why or why not?

Yes, she was frenetically busy—I’m not sure even modern gadgets could allow her to be any busier than she was.

But she wasn’t just busy; she was also productive. She left many unpublished manuscripts, for example—she wrote quite a lot.

And now we have a new one, Amants féminins ou la troisième, pretty steamy. Rescued from oblivion by Chelsea Ray and Yvan Quintin. I’m giving away signed copies of the novel in French today. But it appears none of her friends or loved ones ever saw it. So Natalie did keep a few things close to the chest. Apart from the décolletage of others. But back to filial love.

She had a huge circle of friends and acquaintances and kept up with them, and she was involved in many undertakings and projects. She was very helpful, sometimes financially and always with useful introductions, to writers and artists. It’s difficult to think of her just sitting on the beach, idly contemplating. Maybe her overly-busy nature was a way of avoiding herself. But there are worse things. Some of her peers—wealthy and without the need to work—passed the time with excessive drug use or lots of drinking, but Natalie didn’t indulge in either.

I’ve often wondered what Natalie would be like if she’d been born in 1976 instead of 1876. She’d have been able to hone that extraordinary intelligence, for one thing. The typical wealthy girl in her day learned to speak French, run a household, sing and play the piano, and that was about it. But born a century later Natalie would doubtless have gone to college. Maybe she’d have studied literature, becoming a better writer; maybe she’d have gone into law. She was a superb equestrienne in her day, but born later she might have competed in the Olympics. She certainly would have had an easier time of it as a lesbian.

For most of her life, Natalie agreed with Gertrude Stein that “dead is dead.” Then, closer to death, she showed signs of softening those views. Has Natalie Barney reincarnated? If so, as who or what?

As far as I’m concerned, there’s a bit of Natalie Barney in every woman who dares to be herself and live the truth, despite the consequences.

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Suzanne Rodriguez writes from her wine-country base in Sonoma, California. The author of three non-fiction books and hundreds of articles, she is currently completing a novel about a fascinating but little-known aspect of early California history. When not at her desk, Suzie can be found on steep hiking trails, traveling, enjoying great meals in wonderful dives or Michelin-starred restaurants, and pursuing research. Write her at sonomasuzie@gmail.com.