Half the Virgins in Paris: Winnaretta Singer’s Little Black Book

Winnaretta Singer-Polignac wasn’t just shaping culture for generations to come while she was living in Paris and London - she also had quite a few lesbian lovers, and every single one of them was a remarkable woman with a few wild love stories of their own: the suffragette and composer Ethel Smythe, the painter Romaine Brooks, the socialite and writer Violet Trefusis, and so many more. We’ve collected them all here in a marathon tour of over 30 years of Winnaretta’s love affairs! 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It sounds like I always come in like we're going
to talk about what I want to talk about. So
just so you know, I tried to start it with
Diana today and I got nothing.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
I know, it was like air quality, So who cares?

Speaker 1 (00:15):
How about that air quality?

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Huh?

Speaker 1 (00:16):
How about the one thing I'm excited for? Well, okay,
excited is not the word I'm interested in? Is Indiana Jones.
This weekend, I'm gonna I got a hot take about
Indiana Jones. I'm gonna share it with you all now,
hot tape. Here comes the hate mail. I believe personally

(00:37):
that in the late nineties, if they were going to
continue the Indiana Jones franchise in the in the mid
to late nineties, they should have made a new Indiana
Jones movie with a brand new actor. And I know
that sounds crazy, because of course, Harrison Ford is Indiana Jones,
but let me throw this out to you. One of
the big influences for Indiana Jones was James Bond. Yes,

(01:00):
and a lot of people thought Sean Connery is James
Bond and no one else ever can be. And now
it's very normal that the franchise of Bond continues as
the actor changes, and honestly, I would have rather seen
twenty Indiana Jones movies with a different actor every three
or four movies than this long, continuous story about Indiana

(01:21):
Jones getting old and who passes the torch to and
all this stuff. I don't know, haven't seen Diala Destiny
yet as of this recording. And Harrison Ford is untouchable.
How could you fill his shoes in any part? But again,
I think that is only true until you do it,
and then you're like, Okay, there's a new Indiana Jones.

(01:41):
I would just I would take that over this. I
I think I.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Agree because we've talked about this before. It's like the
American James Bond could have been the American James Bond,
and I kind of like that. But also, like, you know,
we have a theater background. We're used to, We're more
used to and more fine with people being like, this
is my production of Hamlet and it's a different guy
playing Hamlet. Like deal with it. You know, it's rarely
the same guy. But I think that's kind of a

(02:06):
cool idea because then you get to see I don't
want someone to try to be Harrison Ford. Of course
that's what's good about James Bond is that they all
had their own take are their own. They brought something
to the table for James Bond that made him very
distinct for their James Bond, their particular Bond. So I
think that would have been cool for Jones as well,
But that's not what we did. We want to watch

(02:28):
him get old and feeble. I guess.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
About feeble. That man can take a punch still.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
I mean, Harrison before you could beat my ass, Harris,
for it shows.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Us that you know, eighty something ain't nothing but a number.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
He's doing great.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
He's doing great.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
He's good at shrinking, shrinking.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Speaking of digging up bold history, how's that? Hey, come on,
We've done worse transitions than that.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Very true.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Speaking of things belonging in a museum, I would.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Love a museum of hookups. Yeah, just like a museum hookups.
And it's just like all all these Actually it's the
Ridiculous Romance Museum. I mean basically, yeah, this is all
these ridiculous connections.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Currently accepting funders patrons for the Ridiculous Romance Museum.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Foundation money for you will finally have Ridiculcon as our
first right ribbon cutting event.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yeah, we'll have to have like, you know, an attached
hotel or something.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Right, I mean, at least when nearby.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
Well, it's got to be. It's got to be part
of it because we're going to be responsible for everything
that happens in there.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Oh damn.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
Yeah, ridiculon is going to get weird, you know, right,
Well I hope so yeah, I mean, but specifically the
ridiculous Romance branch, the track for Ridiculous Romance, Like, it's
gonna be a lot of hookups, I think, yeah, going on, Yep, yep,
it's going to be a real, a real Winnaretta singer
Web of Romances.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
Yeay, there it is.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
We made it thirty eight minutes and the record.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
On our last episode, we told you all about Winneretta
singer Slash, the Princess to Paulignac, who was a patron
and champion at the Arts and Public housing. She bankrolled
some of the most iconic classical music and operatic works
of our time.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
Not bad, but in.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
That episode we kind of skipped over her many lesbian liaisons.
The most interesting part the best yadayada. But that's just
because she hooked up with some really amazing people, and
everyone that she messed with has a very interesting story
and a lot of crazy romances in her own and
there's a lot of fun overlap, and it's complicated going on,

(04:38):
and it's all worth exploring. Yeah, so we had to
make it its own little episode. So join us as
we take a marathon tours through Winnaretta singer Paulignac's a
little Black book.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
Oh boy, let's go.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Hey, their friends come listen. Well, Eli and Diana got
some stories to tell. There's no match making a romantic tips.

Speaker 3 (04:58):
It's just about ridiculous relation shift, although there might be
any type of person at all, and abstract concept on
a concrete wall. But if there's a story worth a
second glance, ridiculous romance.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
A production of iHeartRadio, all right.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
And also we're doing this in order of who win
a Redit dated, so order of who she dated. What
we're talking about.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
This is like a bunch of little This is almost
a whole bunch of mini episodes, pretty much about the
individual romances that branched off of everyone that Winaretta dated. Basically, Yes,
a real spider web of lesbianism.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, it's a Charlie Day conspiracy chart right, get your
red thread out, be ready. Because a lot of these
names overlap and years later they had an affair with
somebody who also had an affair with somebody and so on.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
This is one of those I think we have our
own distinct episode styles. This is one of those Diana Yep,
complicated names, just so many names.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
I don't know why I'm always the one I know.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
I don't think it's the way you researched. I think
it's just literally the ores you end up with.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
Maybe, although I do, I do get in Wikipedia rabbit
holes where I'm like, let me click on this, let
me click on this, let me click on this person,
and I find a lot of things very interesting. So okay,
So the first name on our list is Olga Demyer.
Winneretta was seeing her from nineteen oh one to nineteen
oh five, and Olga and Winneretta had quite a lot
in common because Olga also married a prince in eighteen

(06:24):
ninety two. It did not work out, and they were
divorced in eighteen ninety nine. Well, like Winneretta's first marriage.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
And this is so old. Winneretta's like mid thirties at
this point, right.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
She was born in eighteen sixty five, right, Yeah. Yeah.
A month after the divorce was finalized, Olga married a
photographer named Adolph Demyer.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
Adolf the popular name in nineteen.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
Thirty somehow fell off sharply after nineteen forties. But he
was a baron. He could give Olga respectability in society
again after her divorce. Okay, and he was gay, so
she could go her own way in sexual relationships.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
Man, listen to the story, and I'm like, was everyone
gay in Europe in the late I mean.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
There was actually somebody who wrote one of these ladies
that I'm talking about, wrote about like, I think there's
more people like me than we're willing to admit.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
Sure, and I think that's very true. Like it was.
It's really just about like at the time, I was
more I guess, especially if you're in Paris and stuff,
Sure you're like a little more free to experiment. Adolph
actually wrote in his unpublished autobiography that he told Olga quote,
marriage based too much on love and unrestrained passion has

(07:38):
rarely a chance to be lasting, whilst perfect understanding and companionship,
on the contrary, generally make the most durable union. Oh
well said, which I don't disagree.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
I guess, yeah, I wouldn't say that like marriage based
on love and understanding passion rarely has a chance to
be lasting. And just saying, you know, different strokes.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
For difference, right, Yeah, that sounds right.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
And he's like, I definitely like different strokes, you know
what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
Well, for them, that kind of marriage totally worked because
they found true companionship and platonic love. Just like the
de Polignacs. They had a very good relationship.

Speaker 1 (08:15):
Okay, so not uncommon back then for these fancy types.
A lesbian and a gay man get married, right, so
they can you know, they both got their beard right, Like,
we are living under the guise of respectable married couple
and we're still getting to go get what we want
and nobody's jealous exactly.

Speaker 2 (08:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think we mentioned this last time,
but they were called lavender or mauv marriages.

Speaker 1 (08:36):
Sure, so. Adolph Demeyer was dubbed the Debusy of photography.
He snapped impressive post portraits of everyone from John Barrymore
and Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin all the way to
King George the Fifth and Queen Mary not of fancy names.
He later became a fashion photographer for little magazines called

(08:58):
Vogue and Harper's Bizarre. In the book De Meyer, his
biographer Philippe Julienne wrote that quote without Olga, Adolf would
have remained merely a fashionable decorator, or a snub who
took photographs, or a homosexual ballet fan. And indeed he
was all of these. He also points out that Olga

(09:21):
was the one who inspired Adolf to learn from great
painters and also to get him involved in this world
where he ended up at like the two most brilliant
courts of this era, Edward the Seventh and the ballet
dancer Diaga Lev he talked about last time. So Adam
de Meyer, because of Olga ends up in all the

(09:41):
right places. And I mean Olga was already in artists
viwse right. She posed for painters Giovanni Baldini, James McNeil, Whistler,
if you remember these guys, and they also became a
huge influence on Adolph as well. So really through Olga
that Adolph like became Yeah, he incredit person that he was.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
Yeah, apparently like the way he framed his photographs in
the way people were posed and the backgrounds like were important,
like you would find esthetics, places to take his po
you know, stuff like that, and that all came from
the painters that was on Speci.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
Just copy, my friends, you'll really go places.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
Olga was also an amateur woman's champion fencer. She briefly
worked for a Paris newspaper, writing a society column. She
also wrote a novel that was pretty roughly panned by critics,
not great. And of course, like we said, she had
her own lovers in her marriage, one of which was
Violet Trifusus, who Whineretta would also date in the nineteen twenties.

(10:39):
Violet was the daughter of Alice Keppel, who was King
Edward the seventh's favorite mistress. And that's kind of funny
because Olga was the king's god daughter.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
In fact, her mother was a bit of a wild
child herself, and some people speculated that Olga was actually
King Edward's illegitimate daughter. I mean, checks out to me,
I know, right, it should be funny if she was
being with the daughter of her mom's boyfriend.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
I guess Violet was the daughter of King Edward's mistress
and Olga, who dated Violet, was the king's god daughter
and maybe his daughter with someone else.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
Lord, but a lot of scholars have decided that's not
very likely. Oh yes, guess, and Edward did give her
a lot of financial and social protection through her life,
probably because she was his god daughter. But you know,
that's what gave rise to the speculation. I guess.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Okay, So Olga loved to party, kind of a wild
party girl. She's also like a little a little spiteful.
She kind of had an attitude, a little bit of
a tude.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
I think the era demanded it a little is the
wit of the day was so much about like being
a little smack yeah, and saying the most cutting thing that.

Speaker 1 (11:54):
You can think of, right right before somebody cuts you,
exactly yeah. Violet Trefusis once wrote that Olga had quote
a vicious tongue. Now, eventually Olga became addicted to cocaine,
and this just kind of pushed her further away from
respectable society and Phillip Julian again in the book, Demeyer
wrote that quote people only visited her because they could

(12:16):
be sure to find a pipe of opium or a
sniff of cocaine. We've all had that friend.

Speaker 2 (12:22):
They only show up right when you see the weed guy.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
Mm now. Olga died on January sixth of nineteen thirty one,
right after a stint in a rehab center, and now interestingly,
Adolph Demyer, her husband, would die also on January sixth
in nineteen forty six, He died in Los Angeles. After
her death, he got romantically involved with a young man

(12:46):
named Ernest Frolick, who he hired as his chauffeur and
then later adopted as his son, which is not an
uncommon way for gay couples to legally make their loved
ones the next of kin back in the day.

Speaker 2 (12:59):
Such a strange thing they have to do, right, But
I mean, it's what you had to do right, if
you wanted to leave, if you wanted them to inherit
anything right.

Speaker 1 (13:05):
I'm trying to imagine, like us, spending our whole lives together,
you and I and then you know, we're one hundred
and fourteen years old. The time's coming. Let's say, Oh,
they won't let me leave you all my stuff, so
I'm going to adopt you as my daughter.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
Like very weird.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
It's so weird, but that's that was the only path
they had. That's wild and unacceptable.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
Very true, because we're talking about two adults trying to
like do their life. Who cares?

Speaker 1 (13:34):
And somehow it's less weird for you to be legally
father and son than it is for you to be
just a couple in love with each other.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
So that's the story of Olga Demayer, one of Winneretta's lovers.

Speaker 1 (13:46):
Yeah, tangled Web.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
Now her next lover has a little overlap with Olga,
she's kind of seeing them at the same time. Okay,
And this is Ethel Smith, who is a British composer. Now,
Ethel had several love affairs with women throughout her life,
but her my most enduring relationship was actually with her
lover and creative partner, Henry Bennett Brewster, who was likely
Ethel's only male partner. But they were just like seriously

(14:09):
a thing together.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
She once wrote to him, quote, I wonder why it
is so much easier for me to love my own
sex more passionately than yours. I can't make it out
for I am a very healthy minded person. Oh that
poor girl, which I mean it kind of shows you, like,
you know, all these women had kind of an interesting
way of seeing themselves. I guess because they are products
of their times, so they see themselves as sexually deviant

(14:33):
and perverted in a way, but also like it's natural
and I don't know why it matters, so that you know,
they're kind of torn. It's a contradictor.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
Yeah, I mean it's got to be. When your own
intrinsic nature goes against everything you've ever learned about how
things are supposed to work, then you're stuck in this
place like, wait a minute, this seems wrong. But also
it's not not. I mean I very much feel in
my bones that it's not. Yeah, and still today that's
going on.

Speaker 2 (15:00):
Well, Ethel and Henry, you know, we're pretty serious together,
serious enough that they wanted to live in a menaj
Autois with Henry's wife Julia, who Ethel was super into
had a con crush on, but Julia was not into it.
Classic polyamory issue, I guess. So that led to a
lot of heartache that made its way into one of
Ethel's most famous compositions, the opera The Wreckers.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
The Wreckers wr e Reckers.

Speaker 2 (15:27):
Yeah, the records.

Speaker 1 (15:28):
That's cool. It sounds like a punk band right apparent.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
She wrote some very great comic operas, so I also
listened to them. Ethel was the composer and Henry was
the librettis. Leah Broad, in her article titled Everything You
Need to Know about Ethel Smith's The Wreckers, wrote that
Ethel also fell in love with Winneretta in nineteen oh
three while she was composing this opera, and her exciting
new passion is as palpable in the opera as her

(15:53):
heartbreak is later Whenaretta started kind of pulling off toward her.
And then Leah writes quote when Smith had difficulties getting
The Wreckers performed later down the line, she mused that
it was perhaps because everything associated with Winneretta was faded
to end in disaster, Oh damn, which kind of speaks
to how it must have ended between the two of them. Yeah,

(16:14):
little acrimonious.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
Maybe right, But actually it might have just been Ethel's
gender that really kept her work from being produced, because
she was consistently hit with all these double standards by critics.
You know, go figure in the art community, oji little
male dominated when she wrote things that were like stirring,
these thrilling compositions they criticized her music for not being

(16:38):
soft and womanly, so she would come back and write
some delicate melodies and critics said, well, they're not as
good as what the male composers are doing, so you know,
classic story. It's no exhausting, very exhausting bullshit. All that considered,
it's not really surprising that Ethel really strongly identified with
the suffragette cause she in fact composed the theme song

(17:01):
for them, the March of the Women. Now, Ethel fell
absolutely head over heels in love with the leading suffragist,
Emmeline Pankhurst, and Ethel's credited with teaching Emmeline to throw
stones at politicians windows. In nineteen twelve, awesome Now, over
one hundred suffragists, including Ethel, were arrested for stone throwing,

(17:24):
and Ethel spent two months in prison for this. And
one day her friend, the author Thomas Beecham, went to
visit her in prison, and he saw a bunch of
suffragettes marching in the prison yard singing the March of
the Women, and Ethel was leaning out of the window
conducting them with a toothbrush. Love awesome sight to see,
so fun, I mean terrible, I shouldn't be imprisoned, right.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
But no, I just but yeah, that indomitable spirit like
eat my shorts. Yeah, we're doing this well.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
Ethel also revealed the terrible conditions of this women's prison.
It was infested with cockroaches, including the hospital wing, which
is just the last place you want a bug infestation,
I know now. Ultimately, authorities decided to let Ethel go
early for being quote mentally unstable, crazy lady, get her

(18:15):
out of here, okay.

Speaker 2 (18:16):
I was like, I don't know if that it refers
to her being a lesbian, uh huh. And they were like,
get her out of this place with all these ladies
because that's not good. Or if they were like, oh,
she's talking, like get her out of here, she's gonna
say more things that make us look bad. I don't know.
No indication that she was actually mentally unstable.

Speaker 1 (18:34):
Right, And they didn't lock her up in a mental
health facility. Instead, they were just like, lady, you're crazy,
get out of prison, go back into the real world.
We don't want you here. You're too crazy for prison.
You belong in society.

Speaker 2 (18:46):
Well. Ethel Smith also had an affair with Violet Gordon Woodhouse,
who lived with four husbands and what was dubbed the
Woodhouse Circus, and that is another listener's suggestions that we're
hoping to get.

Speaker 1 (18:56):
Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:58):
Also, according to the Queer Incyclepedia of Music, dance and
Musical Theater, Ethel Smith met Oscar Wilde's older brother Willie
Wilds on the train on the way to Ireland one
day and got engaged to him, like on the train,
a very whirlwind sort of thing. But she also broke
it off within three weeks. So I wish there was

(19:19):
more information about that, because that seems like such a weird,
like out of character thing for her to do.

Speaker 1 (19:23):
She's like, I just really want to be Oscar wilde sister.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
Maybe maybe that was it.

Speaker 1 (19:28):
The time with Willy, and was like, I just don't
like Willie.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
It might be because Willy was apparently kind of.

Speaker 1 (19:34):
Oh I thought she just didn't like Willie, you know
what I mean? Oh, that's right, or Willy's Willie.

Speaker 2 (19:43):
Little Willy.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
He called it big WILLI he said, this is a
big Willie style. It's the Willennium.

Speaker 2 (19:52):
I love it. Also, at the ripe old age of
seventy one, Ethel Smith fell in love with the author
Virginia Woolf didn't they all who described it as quote
like being caught by a giant crab. Oh my god,
Virginia has a me shit to say such time. Yeah,
so Virginia did not return this crush, but the two
women did become friends and they exchanged a lot of

(20:14):
friendly letters. Okay, despite the sexism that she was dealing
with throughout her career, Ethel Smith was the first woman
to receive a Dame hood for her service to culture.
That's pretty cool. But before you decide, okay, great, dust
off your hands. Women are fine and equal. Now, just
know that Ethel Smith's opera Dervolve, which was mounted in

(20:35):
nineteen oh three, was the only opera by a woman
composer ever produced at the Metropolitan Opera in New York
until more than a century later. Oh when they produced
Kaija Sariajo's La more de lan in twenty sixteen.

Speaker 1 (20:51):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
So literally one hundred and three years later, they finally
were like, I guess this one's good enough for us.

Speaker 1 (20:56):
Man, I can't believe not a single woman wrote a
good opera between nineteen oh three and twenty sixteen. What
a coincidence?

Speaker 2 (21:05):
How weird? What were these ladies doing.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
Try writing a good opera next time, women. Damn well,
let me show you how it's done.

Speaker 2 (21:15):
Fuck you now, I'm angry, all right, let me let
me cool off. Yeah, I'm starting to get mad, right,
let me cool off. Well, these ladies are giving us
a lot to talk about. So before we get to
Romain Brooks, Brinado, Burgotti, and the rest, let's take a
quick break and we'll be right back after this. All right,

(21:37):
welcome back to Winnaretta Singer's Little Black Book. Everybody.

Speaker 1 (21:40):
So, starting in nineteen oh five, probably right around the
time that Winneretta started cooling off on Ethel Smith, she
had a fling with the painter Romayne Brooks. And this,
this is gonna be the toughest one to tell you about,
succinctly because Romain just had an insane life, all right. Romaine, Well,
first that while she had a terrible childhood, she had

(22:01):
this emotionally abusive mother. She had a mentally unstable and
physically abusive brother, so definitely a rough household. But her
parents ended up fostering her out to another family, but
then they stopped making payments to them. Fortunately, the foster
family chose to keep caring for her anyway, Like, we're
not going to throw this kid on those streets just

(22:22):
because your parents suck. Lucky, very lucky, because a lot
of families might have back in that day or today.
So at nineteen, Romayne sang in a cabaret in Paris,
but shortly after that she got pregnant. She was unmarried,
so she placed the kid in a convent the old
drop them off at the fire station, trick, and she
went to Rome to study painting. Logical turn of events

(22:44):
sometimes these lives. I'm just like, you're a singer in Paris,
you drop out a baby, drop them off for adoption somewhere,
and then you're like, you know what, I'm going to
go to Rome and learn how to be a painter instead.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
I mean, I think it was more that she was married,
so maybe people saw her pregnant in Paris and she's like,
I need to let this cool off, likeeple think I'm
not a respectable woman. I'm having trouble, Like I don't
know the.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
Number of reasons that I might be, like, whoof I
really need to go restart my life in Rome? Well
I can't do it. Well, Romayne goes to Rome to
study painting, and she was the only woman in the
life drawing class because it was considered pretty unseemly for
a woman to be there painting nude models, right right,

(23:33):
They're like, the naked body is for men to see,
not for women.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
I always to get so weird that they're like, oh,
women can't handle blood, women can't handle nudity, And I'm like,
but also, women are frequently the caretakers of the elderly.
To undress them and be them, then we have blood
to deal with on a monthly basis. Like, you know,
I just don't understand those stereotypes at all.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
But well, all the boys didn't exactly make it easy
for her in this art class either. One persistent classmate
left a pornographic book on her chair, opened to the
page that he said he wanted to demonstrate with her.
Check it out, lady, this could be us. I mean, well,
she picked that book up, walked over and smacked that

(24:16):
kid upside the head with the yeah. But he and
his friends still got together and stalked her, and then
he tried to force her to marry him. Well, she
had to get the hell out of there, so she
fled to Capri to escape these boys.

Speaker 2 (24:30):
Whish I could flee to Capriame. But fortunately her hard
times came to an end. In nineteen oh one, she
went back to America when her brother died. A year later,
her mother also died, and Romayne and her sister inherited
a large estate, so they were finally independently wealthy. All
her money troubles were behind her and she could kind
of relax with which.

Speaker 1 (24:50):
I'm laughing because like, if I became independently wealthy now,
I would say, I'm going to go to Rome and
take in our class. That's what she did.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
What she had broke, she already had that part done.
So then in nineteen oh three, Romayne married her gay
friend John Ellingham Brooks okay, And no one really knows
why she did this except that he was really broke
and he needed the support. So maybe it was just
something altruistic on her part. She didn't really need him.

(25:18):
She didn't see the same way that like Winnoretta and
Olga needed their husband right right right, But he was
Hella broke, so he's like help me out. She's like,
all right, I'll marry you. But he clearly did not
know how to be a good partner like Edmund and
Adolf de Meyer. Because their marriage broke down really quickly.
Romayne cut her hair and she ordered men's clothes to wear,
and John was like, I won't be seen with you

(25:40):
dressed like that, oh wow. And Romayne's like, okay, then
you won't see me at all.

Speaker 1 (25:45):
Ye sure, yeah, not a woman to be trifled with,
all right.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
And he also kept talking about her money like it
was his money, and that made her really nervous because
again she had been really broke for a long time.
She actually almost died of starvation at one point. Oh okay,
so she was really protective of her fund. Sure, and
she I guess, I mean he's we already know he's broke,
Like he wasn't good with money himself. She was probably like,

(26:10):
I'm seeing a road to destruction that I don't want
to go down. So after a year together, she left
him and Capri with his boyfriend E. F. Benson, and
she went to London. She kept his last name Brooks,
Romaine Brooks, and she supported him with a yearly allowance
of three hundred pounds and that enabled him to live
comfortably until his death in nineteen twenty.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
Okay, he's like, let me manage your money, all right,
She's like, I will tend to you.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
I know how what it costs to live in caprio. Okay,
Like here.

Speaker 1 (26:39):
You go, and probably enough to keep him from like
trying to come after her or bug her about more
money or whatever. Now we know that Romayne Brooks started
seeing Winneretta Singer in nineteen oh five, but there's no
details on how long that relationship lasted, or maybe it
was kind of off and on, or what the deal was,
but we'll just throw that in the it's complicated category.

(27:02):
But in nineteen oh nine, Romayne did have a love
triangle going on with the dancer Ida Rubinstein. She danced
with the ballet russ No. Romayne painted Ida more than
anyone else with my Roman art skills to the test,
here and paint this beautiful ballerina subject. But there was
a politician named Gabriel Danuzzio, and he was a good

(27:26):
friend of Romayne Brooks, but he was also in love
with Ida. Ida would barely give this guy the time
of day because she was so in love with Romain.

Speaker 2 (27:36):
Sorry de nuncio.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
At one point, the Nuncio asked Romayne to be his mistress.
He's like, why why don't you and I get together
and then I'll be closer to Ida. Maybe he was
even trying to get like I'm an a JATOI going on,
But Romayne was like, no, that's no good for me.
I'm into her, she's into me. Neither of us is
into you. You're the only one who's trying to get
this thing to happen.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
Neither of us want to enter the will any Okay.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
Now, even though Romayn and Dunnacio actually got along fairly well,
they were friendly with each other, he had this habit
of hanging portraits of his ex mistresses in a rogue's gallery,
which Romayne found pretty tasteless. You know, I mean it
is kind of like that sort of trophy room. Oh yeah,
like here's all the ladies I've banged.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
Like, ah, they're all so beauty.

Speaker 1 (28:22):
So to kind of tease him about this, she gifted
him with a self portrait one of herself. She's like, well,
you can just put me next to all those other ladies,
even though you never even got with me. It was
later found hanging in his music room, right, so I
guess right, He's like, well, I'm not about to not

(28:42):
hang up an original Romaine Brooks self portrait.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
I mean, but no good gift.

Speaker 1 (28:47):
Uh huh, but I'm not putting you in that category.

Speaker 2 (28:50):
So she had that going on. Then, in nineteen nineteen,
Romayne started dating a socialite named Mebe Francetti. A year later,
she had a fling with Renato Borne Gussie, the pianists,
who would eventually also date Winneretta. We'll get to her
in a minute, but her most enduring relationship was with
the American expatriot and celebrated Parisian hostess Natalie Clifford Barney.

(29:15):
This lady probably had more flings than anyone we've ever covered,
including Isaac Singer.

Speaker 1 (29:19):
I feel like her name has already come up several
times in past episodes.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
It has because she is a serial non monogamist. We
talked about her a lot in our Collette series.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
Yeah yeah, she.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
Made the poet Rene Vivian miserable by not committing to her.
We also mentioned in the last episode that Winneretta did
not like Natalie Oh yeah, Barney, which kind of points
to Winneretta being a bit more conservative than maybe Natalie.
Natalie was a bit more left bank wild, you know,
really open, very unapologetic. Winneretta was open, but she clearly

(29:50):
was more respectable.

Speaker 1 (29:51):
I got gotta have some principles still.

Speaker 2 (29:53):
Right, or she was like, well you still you still
conduct affairs discreetly? You know, you don't just walk around,
you know. She might have had a little more of
a stuck up vibe about it.

Speaker 1 (30:02):
One at a time, please, unless maybe you're planning on
breaking up the one, you can get the other one started.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
But but Romayne Brooks met Natalie in nineteen sixteen, and
Natalie had already been involved for seven years at that
point with the married and very glamorous Duchess Elizabeth de Gramont.
She was also known as Lily de Grammont. Okay, Lily
got jealous of Natalie's attention to Romayne, probably picking up

(30:28):
on the fact that this was probably like a more
real connection, right than Natalie had with like her, probably
many other flings that she had in the seven years. Right,
So Lily's like, hey, you know, stop seeing her. I
don't like that. And then Natalie bafflingly offered a marriage
contract to Lily while still saying that she would not
stop seeing Romayne. Oh, She's straight up like, hey, Lily, well,

(30:51):
don't worry. You're you're my main girl.

Speaker 1 (30:54):
I'll marry you, but I really keep flirting with this.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
Yeah, but I'll still have a mistress on the side. Yeah, Okay,
that's reasonable, which right, like that, I feel like that
means Natalie kind of had an idea in her mind
about what an aristocratic man could do, and she wanted
She's like, I want to be married to my woman
and have all the women I want on the side.
That's what I see men do. I want to do that. So,
but of course Lily was probably like, no, the whole

(31:17):
point is stop seeing Romay, So why are you talking
about marriage?

Speaker 1 (31:21):
Right?

Speaker 2 (31:22):
Fortunately, all the ladies figured it out, They got it
all arranged to their satisfaction, and they settled into a lifelong,
fifty year stable triangle together where nobody was apparently more
favored over the other, Like they really found a really
good balance together. And Lily once summed up their ethical

(31:42):
polyamory by saying, quote, civilized beings are those who know
how to take more from life than others love it,
which I do love pretty cool. The only time that
Natalie ever stopped seeing someone was at Romayne's request. She
stopped seeing Oscar Wild's Dolly wild Wow. Okay, but apparently

(32:03):
it was not so much a jealousy thing, as Dolly
Wilde was a serious heroin addict and Romayne was like,
I don't like you hanging out with her. She's really
drugged up and you shouldn't.

Speaker 1 (32:13):
Be with her. Or maybe Romaine was like, look, I
dated someone who dated someone who was briefly engaged to
Oscar Wilde's brother, so you can't date his daughter this way.
You know. It's like we've been talking about this episode
like a spiderweb, because there's all these overlapping romance lines
between all these lesbians. But it's more like a game

(32:36):
of pickup sticks where you just dump a big pile
of sticks on the ground and you have to sort
through him and try and get him in order. I mean,
very confusing.

Speaker 2 (32:45):
I guess there's only so many lesbians, so right you
kind of all go through one another if you're having
so many affairs, I don't know, Oh jeez. So that's
the story of Romaine Brooks skipping over all the cool
painting stuff. So definitely checking out the painting stuff when
you a chance.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
So next up for Winneretta's Little Black Book is Renata Borgatti,
whose name we've mentioned so many times. Winneretta had an
affair with her in the early nineteen twenties. Renata was
originally trained as a ballerina, but she gave that up
to devote herself to playing piano, particularly Debussy, who, of
course we know that Winneretta had a hand in making famous. Yep.

(33:25):
Renata lived in Capri, which we've mentioned, is you know,
an island off the coast of Italy, and it was
known for being tolerant of home sexuality. So it was
like literally an island full of gays, oh yeah, and queers,
and it's like, let's go live there.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
She's hanging out with John Ellingham Brooks.

Speaker 1 (33:42):
Sounds like a great island.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
I know, right, she don't feel like I remember a
lot of gay activity when we were there, but now
I want to.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
Go No, when we were in Capri Honeymoon Alert, we
were there with like a boatload of Americans who like
worked in the film industry, and they were all super
straight and I know, a wonderfully, very nice, lovely. Yeah,
we had a great time in Capri, but it was no,
we were not faced with you know, an onslaught of
the lgbt.

Speaker 2 (34:09):
Q crowd too bad for Maybe there's a really cool
Capri Pride that no one knows about.

Speaker 1 (34:14):
Oh man, yeah, well, I guess we'll have to go back.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
Oh no, we have to go back to Capri.

Speaker 1 (34:19):
If you're gay and in Capri. H she just an
email and invite us over to will be coming out
with you. So Renata's living in Capri obviously very tolerant
of homosexuality there, so she was able to live openly
as a lesbian, and she had an affair with a
socialite named Mimi Franchetti for a year until Mimi left
Capri and started seeing Romayne.

Speaker 2 (34:41):
Brooks there it is, Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (34:43):
Then Renata had an affair with a married actress, Faith
Compton Mackenzie, whose husband, Sir Edward Compton Mackenzie, wrote a
book about lesbians living on a fictional island together called
Extraordinary Women.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
I wonder where he got his inspiration.

Speaker 1 (35:01):
They sure were extraordinary, they were.

Speaker 2 (35:04):
And it's kind of cool that he like he apparently.
I don't think he had any like homosexual tendencies like
any of these lesbians husbands or anything, but he was
clearly like, all right, girl, go on, you get you
what you need. Well after that, Renata Borgatti went to
Paris and in nineteen twenty she started seeing Romayne Brooks herself.
So I gotta wonder did they compare notes on Mimi Frechetti?

(35:25):
Like she was, like, you know what, I'd hate it, right,
She never brushed her teeth until after breakfast, so annoying.

Speaker 1 (35:32):
Wait wait, wait, wait wait, I know you don't. I
don't brush my teeth till after breakfast, and you brush
your teeth before breakfast like an insane person, because apparently
you love the taste of coffee and toothpaste.

Speaker 2 (35:44):
No, you don't taste the toothpaste anymore. You just don't
also drink your coffee and taste your disgusting mouth.

Speaker 1 (35:51):
You know, if you're well hydrated, you don't wake up
with a nasty mouth.

Speaker 2 (35:56):
That's what you think.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
Try to say, you don't wake up with as nasty
a mouth.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
All right, that might be true.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
I mean, I'm just saying, if we compare the nastiness
of our two mouths, you need a lot of dental
to your mouth.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
You watch your mouth.

Speaker 1 (36:18):
I'm sorry, my mouth is being nasty.

Speaker 2 (36:21):
Your mouth is being very nasty. Right now, you have
ambitious tongue.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
Well.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
While Renado was with Romayne, she had her portrait painted
it called Renado Borgatti at the Piano. Very nice. But
at that point Romayne was kind of trying to get
her flirtation with Natalie Clifford Barney off the government, So
she and Renata kind of saw each other off and
on for three years. Then Romayne started avoiding her awkward,
so Renada gave it up. She turned her attention to

(36:47):
the musical patronesque Winneretta singer Wow, and they had their fling.
She also started playing with Olga Rudge, who we mentioned
last episode Ezra Pound's mistress who found all that Vivaldi
and helped bring him back into musical popularity or whatever,
and also became Ranada's musical collaborator. They played together so

(37:07):
often at Winnaretas concerts that they were considered house musicians.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
Oh man. They all just kept dating each other. It's
uh so in and around college and shortly after I
had a group of friends that it was a lot
of lesbians, and I definitely when they would like it
was my girlfriend at the time, her roommate and sister
was a lesbian, and all their friends hanging out so

(37:31):
I was often being introduced and then later told, well,
she dated her, but then they dated before that, and
these teams to date each other, and it was I mean,
like they would tell me. It's like the joke is real.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
Yeah, that's what I saw. There's a joke on the
l Word, the TV show, Uh huh, where she's basically
talking about the chart like if you charted all the
lesbian relationships in a city, there would be no more
than four degrees of separation between every lesbian because because
of how much they date overlapped.

Speaker 1 (38:00):
I don't like to fall into stereotypes, but we're reading
historical evidence that I mean support right now. Well after
Renata Winneretta started seeing the socialite Violet Trefusus, who we
already know also had an affair with Olga Demeyer. Just
like we said, here we go. No, Violet's mother was

(38:22):
Alice Keppel, we've already mentioned, who was King Edward the
Seventh's favorite mistress. So obviously their family no strangers to
being a bit scandalous, right, but violent really pushed the
boundaries on that. Let's take a quick break, try and
sort our thoughts out, and we'll come back and untangle
this web.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
Right after this, Welcome back everyone.

Speaker 1 (38:49):
Violet Keppel the daughter of Alice Keppel, King Edward's mistress.
She was in love with a woman named Vita Sackville
West when they were both young girls at school. Violet
was only ten and Vita was about twelve. So that
young budding love that nobody really understands. Yeah, just weird feelings. Now.
When Violet was fourteen, she confessed her love to Vita

(39:13):
and gave her a ring. But Vita, who would have
been sixteen at this point, was already in love with
her first girlfriend, another schoolgirl named Rosamond Grovener m But
Violet and Vita still had something special, and two years later,
at sixteen, Violet wrote to Vita quote, I love in
you what I know is also in me. That is imagination,

(39:37):
a gift for languages, taste, intuition, and a mass of
other things. I love you, Vita, because I have seen
your soul.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
Also, could you have written that at sixteen?

Speaker 1 (39:48):
Could I've written that at I mean I might have
written that better at sixteen than I would now, you know,
because I was young and full of hope and love.

Speaker 2 (39:57):
Oh wow.

Speaker 1 (39:58):
Well. Also, Vita thought that her girlfriend, Rosamond, was sweet
but kind of stupid and boring, you know, so.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
She's like, I mean, she's not got a lot to say. Yeah, interesting, right.

Speaker 1 (40:11):
They fell in love as teenagers, dated for a couple
of years, and she was like, you know, I think
I might have tapped this one out right.

Speaker 2 (40:18):
It turns out she's kind of a basic bit.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
Not a lot left in this barrel. So Vita and
Rosamond's relationship ended in nineteen thirteen, and that's when Vita
married a diplomat named Harold Nicholson. And how's this ridiculous? Rosamond,
her ex girlfriend, ended up being one of her bridesmaids.

(40:41):
You know, picture stay close, they stay close.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
I mean that's true. They did stay close, but it's
like it ended because she got married. So I'm just
I'm just seeing like this jealous ex girl standing there
clutching her flowers, you know what I mean. Now, Vita
actually went ag against her parents wishes by marrying Harold
Nicholson because he was just this modest politician. Right.

Speaker 1 (41:05):
Oh okay.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
Meanwhile, Vita herself had a very noble background. She was
being courted by incredibly rich dukes and shits, so you know,
they were like, you need to marry like that guy,
the Duke of Maboro or whatever it was. In fact,
she was a bit of a lady Mary Crawley in
a way from Dowton Abbey because she was the heir.
She was the eldest actually the only child of her parents' marriage.

(41:29):
But she was unable to inherit her father's estate because
of her gender. And she was real bitter about that,
which I would be too. So she's like looking to
get married and everything. And Harold Nicholson was smart and fun.
They had a really good time together. They enjoyed talking
to each other, which was not like Rosamond, right. And
he could also give her something that these fancy lords

(41:51):
and dukes and stuff might not have given her, which
was an equal and an open marriage. Oh enticing exactly
because Harold Nichelson was also bisexual. Ok, here we go.
I love these people really finding each other, finding the
perfect partner.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
And was Vita bisexual do we know? Yes?

Speaker 2 (42:11):
I mean yeah, pretty much. Mostly she had lesbian affairs,
but she did have two sons with Harold, right, she
found it within her to have sex with him at
least a couple times. So anyway, they both had affairs
outside of their marriage, but you know, they had their
two sons together, and they became very devoted to one another. Again,
like the pollen Nacs, like the Depolagnacs, they found a

(42:31):
lot of companionship and a lot to respect about one another.
But Violet Keppel, who of course super in love with Vita.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
They were school girls exactly, still.

Speaker 2 (42:41):
Was and everything, and they definitely were they were definitely
doing stuff. Oh okay, okay, they were definitely doing stuff.
So Violet did not like this separation because again, Feta
is married to a diplomat, so they were traveling. They
had to go live in like the Middle East for
a little while, so she's not around and violent kind
of like freaked out about it a little bit, Like

(43:03):
she wrote sort of aggressive love letters to Vita. One
line was like you want to see madness, I'll show
you madness, like I will drag you back, you know,
kind of wow kind of vibe in these letters.

Speaker 1 (43:15):
You'd think I'm crazy. I got you crazy.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
She said that, wow, but in like Brittany of her day,
so she's like pleading for her to come back to her,
and I guess Vita kind of liked that. It's sort
of flattering, I guess to have such an effect on
someone or whatever. Because in nineteen seventeen, when Vida and
Harold were back in England, Vida and Violet started their

(43:39):
fair back up again, real hot and heavy. Oh okay,
I guess Vida had also had both her sons by
this point, so maybe she's like, I'm good, you have
your air to spare or whatever, so I can like
do whatever I want. But meanwhile, Violet's mom, Alice Keppel,
was busy arranging a marriage for Violet to the handsome
son of a baron, Dennis Triffuses.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
In the background, she's like, can me get you somebody
respectable to be married to?

Speaker 1 (44:04):
Okay, Vita in an open marriage with Harold. They're both bisexual.
Vita and Violet having a little fling going on. But
Violet's mom, the mistress of the King, the king says,
you got to marry this guy, Dennis. That's right, okay.
So Viola and Vita ran off to Monte Carlo together
for several months, like, let's stall this marriage. Let's run

(44:27):
off to Monte Carlo together. Sounds great again. The other event,
I mean, of course, you're free in your sexuality when
you can just pick up and go to Monte Carlo
for a while. Now, while they were there, Vita would
dress like a wounded soldier named Julian and pretend to
be Violet's husband. Meanwhile, according to the Paris Review, Harold

(44:48):
was in Paris writing and signing the Treaty of Versailles.

Speaker 2 (44:52):
No big deal, dicking around in Paris redrawing the borders
of Europe.

Speaker 1 (44:57):
Right, I'm just gonna write the Treaty of Versailles. My
wife's off having a lesbian affair. So when this little
trip to Monte Carlo ended, as all great things must do,
and Violet and Vita went back to England, Violet finally
agreed to marry Dennis, per her mother's wishes, but only
if he promised to never have sex with her. What

(45:19):
a marriage proposal.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
Interesting, Well, he must.

Speaker 1 (45:23):
Have agreed, because they did get married in June of
nineteen nineteen. Now only a few months after their wedding day,
Violet and Vita ran off to France again for another
couple of months until Alice Keppel, Violet's mom, started hearing
so much gossip about the two of them that she
started to get worried that it was going to reflect

(45:43):
poorly on Violet's younger sister, who was about to get married. Right,
She's like, I know, Violet, I know you're out there
having fun with your little girlfriends, but you've got to
think about your little sister's right, she's trying to get married.
She don't need, we don't need a scandal. So she
sent Dennis. She said, Dennis, go get your wife. That's

(46:05):
what you got it. That's your husbandly duty. Stop.

Speaker 2 (46:07):
Hye, I got you here, Uh huh.

Speaker 1 (46:08):
You're gonna put a stop to these shenanigans now, Whencyclopedia
dot com says that Alice was actually surprisingly reasonable about
Violet's affair with Vita, but she thought that her marrying
Dennis would quote cure her right, So.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
She had kind of an enlightened way of looking at
I guess for the time, but still also thought, just
you need that the right dick, well just yea where
you need to go.

Speaker 1 (46:35):
Or whatever that idea of like, oh, this is a
fun little phase, but when you get up proper dicking right,
you'll you'll understand.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
Which I hate too, because it's sort of smacks of, oh,
it's just a trend right now, let's be in lover
or whatever. But she'll get over that and have kids
and settle down whatever. So yeah, these ladies keep running
off together and causing a lot of talk. You know,
it's like scandalous stuff. And then in nineteen twenty it
sort of came to a head when they tried to

(47:04):
Elope for real, oh Violet. Rita and Violet were like,
you know what, let's shake off all this straight shit
and go be gay together for life forever, and Harold
and Dennis had to follow them in a two seater aeroplane.
Oh and basically be like, y'all cannot do this, okay, Vita,
think of your kids, Like, let's not forget our lady
Seymour worstly episode where when she ran off from her husband,

(47:28):
she gave up her children, like, you know, that's the
property of your husband. So Harold's like, think of your
two kids. This is going to reflect on them, This
is going to reflect on me in my career. It's
going to be poor for your reputation. And Dennis is
pretty much saying the same stuff to Violet.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
Oh, like like after they catch up with them, because
I was I was picturing them in a two sitter airplane.
Oh you know, like I say, I love, don't come
back think of ill reputation. You can, can you hear me?

Speaker 2 (47:58):
They were straight up open air, but she at the time.

Speaker 1 (48:00):
I don't know, he's shouting something.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
No, they actually they caught up with them, and then
they started arguing. Sure, and it was a tense few
weeks of them all arguing about whether or not they
would go or stay or stay married or whatever. But
finally Violet confessed to Vita that she had, in fact
slept with Dennis Trefusis her husband one time.

Speaker 1 (48:25):
Dear god, what we think.

Speaker 2 (48:27):
Vita lost her shit. She called it a betrayal of
their vows of fidelity. Come on, I mean, okay, like
she had two sons with her own husband already, So
it's like, Vita, come.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
On, girl, cheat on me with your husband.

Speaker 2 (48:42):
Oh that's I mean.

Speaker 1 (48:43):
I will say, like, if if that was their understood agreement,
I mean, if it was expressed like I'm not going
to sleep with that guy, and then you did. But
it's also hypocritical, right.

Speaker 2 (48:53):
It's true. So and we don't know exactly when they
made that vow fidelity. It might have been after, you know,
the sons were born and like, okay, now I sleep
with him. I don't know for sure, but it was
definitely steam. It seems very funny and hypocritical to be like,
have your two sons the two little Nicholson's yeah, Like
how dare you so? Anyway, but she did get mad

(49:14):
about it. She refused to speak with her for a
little while, but of course they made up and then
they ran off together for a final time in nineteen
twenty one, when finally Harold just threatened to leave Vita
for good. He's like, I can't do this anymore. You
either want me to be married to me or you don't.
I'm going to leave you if you do this again.
And Vita chose to go home to England and Harold

(49:37):
and end her relationship with Violet forget. Okay, they did
stay in touch and they stayed friendly and everything like that,
but Violet is still a little bit like, come, you know,
please let me be with you, and Vita's like, no,
it's over.

Speaker 1 (49:49):
Over. I'm settling into the family thing.

Speaker 2 (49:52):
Right or at the very least, I can't be with
someone who I'm gonna run off with, you know, Like
I can't be this obvious and love it's causing problems
in my family. So I'm gonna just not see you
any because Vita's next very serious relationship would be another intense,
very intense affair with Virginia Wolf. Oh my god, Virginia

(50:12):
Wolf popps up a lot.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
Of Eventually all these girls go and date Virginuale.

Speaker 2 (50:17):
In fact, it's actually kind of beautiful that Vita actually
kind of helped Virginia heal from the childhood sexual abuse
that she'd experienced, so she was actually her first erotic relationship.
She actually really helped her like kind of overcome a
lot of her physical like fear and dislike of intimacy

(50:39):
and stuff. So that's kind of beautiful about the two
of them. Virginia Wolf also wrote her novel Orlando, which
is the first novel with a gender fluid protagonist about Vita.
This is a I guess Orlando kind of wakes up
in different time periods as a woman or a man,
like it's always changing gender.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
Oh okay, And it's.

Speaker 2 (50:58):
Inspired by Vita, who, like Ethel Smith, kind of wrote
about herself as being deviant and sexuality, but she also
was very enlightened in a way where she was like,
I just don't think the gender matters, Like I fell
in love with the person and I don't the package doesn't. Yeah,
I don't know why it's relevant in the conversation. So
she kind of had a very modern day thought about

(51:20):
gender anyway. Vita's son, Nigel Nicholson called Orlando quote the
longest and the most charming love letter in literature. Oh
so they have a very beautiful story. We might want
to get to you one day because that's kind of lovely.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
Well, Violet was, you know, still a little heartbroken that
she and Vida couldn't be together, But don't worry, because
she moved on to her next lover, Winneretta Singer. Remember
her the sort of anchor point to this whole story
right now. Winneretta helped Violet pick up the pieces of
her life after this tumultuous affair with Vita by introducing

(51:57):
her to the gleam of society and bidding. This is
also when we get a glimpse of what Winneretta was
like to date, because maybe unsurprisingly, Whinneretta was a bit
of a dominant personality. She ruled her own life. She
kind of ruled her lovers as well. With a serious will.

Speaker 2 (52:17):
But some some source and I can't remember which one
called it whip in hand. Oh, so I guess she
was very like, this is what we're doing today, this
is how we're doing it, this is why we're doing it.

Speaker 1 (52:29):
Hey, look, I've been in that relationship and for a
while it's great. No hard choices. Right then you know,
you lose your autonomy a little bit. But it's sorry,
but it's all. But this worked out great for Violet
because she was more submissive and they seem to have
been pretty content for ten years together. Now. Violet's mother,

(52:51):
Alice Keppel, didn't even object this relationship because Whenneretta was
rich and powerful and most of all respectable, so there
weren't really anybarrassing scenes like there had been with Vita.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
Winneretta would never run off to money, Carlos. I would
not do that now.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
Later in life, Violet would split her time between France
and Italy, and she wrote some well liked and acclaimed books,
and she got like more eccentric as she got older,
as the best of us do. One author named Nancy
Mitford equipped that Violet's autobiography should be called Here Lies
Violet trefusis, as in she was always lying.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
Yes, she apparently had some like weird fantasies and myths
about her own life. Yeah, that people are like hmmm.

Speaker 1 (53:36):
This journalist named Joseph Alsop wrote in his memoir I've
Seen the Best of It that her quote enthusiasms have
long since inspired the rhyme missus trifusus never refuses. Oh,
and he implied that she had a brief affair with
the former governor of California, Culbert Olsen. He was actually

(53:59):
the first atheist governor in the US. Alsop wrote that quote,
by all accounts, they were much cheered up by one another.

Speaker 2 (54:07):
I love it. Wow, this is a pretty funny passage actually,
because Joseph Elsup is writing about Culbert Olsen visiting Florence
with a couple of friends, and his friends like got
tired of Colbert, Like they're like, he's kind of getting
on my nerves. So they arranged for him to meet Violet,
like they wanted him to, Like they were like, here
you go hang out a couple of weeks to give

(54:28):
me a break.

Speaker 1 (54:28):
I mean, you know that's isn't that? The trouble of
traveling abroad with friends for weeks at a times like,
oh man, oh crap, day four. I actually don't like
you that much.

Speaker 2 (54:38):
We don't travel together.

Speaker 1 (54:39):
Let me see if I can get you an international
fling to distract you for a while so I can
go have some fun.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
Well, Culbert sounds like an interesting guy. But they said
he had a hyena like laugh, so maybe it was
just laugh that did it.

Speaker 1 (54:51):
I can't everyone please only tell sad stories around him.

Speaker 2 (54:55):
We just can't take it. Do not amuse Culbert.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
They're all like having a great time at the cat.
Culbert walks in and they're like, oh, oh, oh my
my uncle just died. Real tragic the war.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
Am I right?

Speaker 1 (55:07):
Ooh ra having a real.

Speaker 2 (55:08):
Bad time thinking about that.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
Real bad time. Anyway, Culbert, this girl called you. She's
six blocks from here, right, all.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
Right, Well that's Violet Trifuss. Okay, scandalous, the scandalous. Violet trifuses,
never refuses, never refuses. But after Winneretta and Violet's affair
cooled off in nineteen thirty three, Winneretta started seeing Alvild
Chaplain around nineteen thirty eight. Now Alveild had married Viscount
Anthony Chaplin in nineteen thirty three. They had one daughter together,

(55:40):
but then they kind of both started seeing other people,
so they were not really involved with one another anymore. Now,
Alfield was involved with Winneretta, the Princess Depaula and Yac
until her death in nineteen forty three, So that was
Winneretta's like final affair was Alviald Chaplain. Okay, I'm kind
of glad to know she was dating somebody at the
end there. Sure, but al Wield had also met in

(56:02):
one of Winneretta's at one of Winnarta's parties and had
totally fallen in love with the writer and architectural historian
James Lee's Milne, who was also bisexual. Sure, and he
had had an affair with Vita Sackville West's husband, Harold
Nicholson in the nineteen thirty.

Speaker 1 (56:19):
What was that from Back from Park? That was eighteen
names ago, Harold Nicholson.

Speaker 2 (56:25):
That's yea. Literally researching this was just like, oh a name,
I've heard a name. I've heard name I heard crazy curiously.
So anyway, but in nineteen forty nine, Alveield and James
were head over heels in love with one another, and
the Viscount didn't care because he had his own long
term mistress, Rosemary Lyttleton, and actually, for a while all
four of them lived together in the same house until

(56:47):
the Chaplains finally got divorced in nineteen fifty. Oh so
just love that. They were like, whatever, just get in here, James,
why not? And the viscount married Rosemary. They had two
more daughters, and Alveield and James got married, with Vita
and Harold as their witnesses. Wow, it's like Rosman being
Vita's Bret bridesmaid.

Speaker 1 (57:08):
So she's the crossover events that happened in the story.
But after these two got married things seemed to have
gotten a little rocky between the two of them. I'll
Wield went off and had an affair with let me
just pull a name out of the hat here, Vita
Sackfield West of course, of course, which James pretended not

(57:29):
to know about, but it did bother him because he's like,
I think I dated someone who dated her, and then
did I date her? I can't even remember to her husband, Yeah,
oh my god. Well, i'll Field and James did have
an active sexual life before they got married, but afterwards,
i'll Wield kind of shut it down. James Lee'smilne dot

(57:51):
Com says that this added to his struggle to put
his homosexual past behind him.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
This is another guy who's like, oh, if I just
find the right woman, yeah, anymore, I'm sorry, that's.

Speaker 1 (58:02):
Not how it works, right. So then, of course he
ended up having an affair with a younger man, and
Alveield got really jealous of that, and she started steaming
his letters open and listening in on his phone conversations.
So they just fought a lot. They were both doing
the same thing, they both got jealous of it of
each other, and she's snooping around on him.

Speaker 2 (58:23):
Now, this is kind of like last episode we talked
about there being no sexual relationship, but people still getting
jealous because they feel possessive over who they're married to, yeah,
or who they're they're with or whatever. And this is
what I was thinking of, was Alveield kind of being like,
I don't want you like that anymore, but you're still
my husband, and I don't like that you're seeing someone else.

(58:44):
She was having a really hard time with it.

Speaker 1 (58:46):
Even though we're not sexually involved, right, I still feel
like we're committed, Like there's some sort of unbreakable partnership
between us that you're violating, right, I mean, which honestly
just comes down to a sense of ownership that sometimes
people feel when they're in relationships, even when they're not
committed relationships. That's not necessarily fair, not really. By the

(59:08):
nineteen sixties, these two were living pretty separate lives, and
i'll Veield purchased a house called Udly Grange and started
working on this garden. She had been inspired by Vita
Sackville West Gardens. Alveield's garden ended up being so acclaimed
that she became this sought after garden designer and landscape expert,

(59:29):
and she had clients like the Queen of Jordan and
another soon to be ridiculous romantic Mick Jagger.

Speaker 2 (59:37):
Right.

Speaker 1 (59:38):
But in nineteen seventies, James and i'll Veield repair their relationship,
and i'll Veield nurse James through a serious illness in
the eighties and he devoted two years to caring for
her until her death in nineteen ninety four.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
That's nice.

Speaker 1 (59:52):
It's so weird to me that we're talking about these old,
old stories and then they go right up to the nineties.

Speaker 2 (59:57):
I know, I thought the same thing that it seems
like a crazy long time, but you know, it's like a
normal amount of normal human life.

Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
It just tells me that, you know, nineteen twenty and
nineteen ninety four historically are not that far apart from
each other, and also that nineteen ninety four was a
long ast time ago.

Speaker 2 (01:00:17):
That all right, well, we know, you know, Winneretta has
died by this point, so that's the last affair of
her of her life. But of course Virginia Wolf has
come up a numerous times in this story, sure has.
We did mention in the last episode. Some scholars think
that Winneretta and Virginia Wolf had an affair, while others
think she just admired Virginia admired her writing, thought she's

(01:00:40):
a cool lady whatever, and they just became friends. So
there's no not a lot of detail or anything. But
last time we mentioned that Virginia Wolf had written some
kind of mean things about Winneretta. But I found the
full quote thanks to at Dyke another day on Twitter
with a great handle, an incredible handle, and the full
quote is whatever she was born, she's grown into the

(01:01:03):
image of a stately, mellow old tory to look at her,
you'd never think she ravished half the virgins in Paris.

Speaker 1 (01:01:11):
Oh okay, So out of context, it sounds like she's
saying she's ugly.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
Yeah, exactly, But it sounds like it's more about maybe
Winneretta being a bit more traditional yeah than other like
Mattie Lubarney and stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
It's like, if I see, like, you know, some stodgy
old businessman, I'm not going to be like in the
eighties that guy fucked everyone in the East village, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:01:30):
Yeah, no, I think that's true. So that that kind
of makes it a little different when just just the
part about to look at her, you'd never think she
ravished half the virgins in Paris makes it sound like
she's like, eh, look at that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
Ugly right right, Virginia Welf Well, if anyone knew it
was her, mm hmmm, my goodness.

Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
So yeah, that is all of Winneretto's lesbian liaisons that
we know about.

Speaker 1 (01:01:55):
And all their stories and all their stories tangled tangled
lesbian web they weave.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
Do you think that Winneretta ever met Harress Crosby and
Harry Crosby remember them?

Speaker 1 (01:02:05):
Remind me for the listeners Chris.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
Crosby, of course, is the woman who invented the modern braziers.
Oh right, yes, yes, if you remember. And she and
her husband Harry were like big and he loved photography
and like they had that printing press. I think, I
believe in Paris, so I think that they were sort
of in similar circles.

Speaker 1 (01:02:27):
I don't see why not, but.

Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
Anyway, yeah, but they were like very rich Americans too,
so they might have gone back to America more often.
But I just wondered. I was just thinking. I was like,
we have so many people in nineteen twenties Paris, and
they're all artists, and they're all you know what I mean,
crazy sexual deviance.

Speaker 1 (01:02:44):
So you know, it is the weird thing with history
where you know, what we have is what was written,
and of course all these people in these circles were
writing about each other. Yeah, so it feels probably smaller
than it was, my guess, because at times it feels like, well,
between Paris and Capri, there were eighteen people and they

(01:03:04):
were all sleeping with each other and that's all there was,
when in fact, like there's probably so much more happening
that you know, in little separate cliques and circles of
non writers. I wish we could find out all the
lesbians that were farming in yeahs Italy, all those spinach

(01:03:24):
farmers or whatever they grow in Italy. Well, but it's
just wild. I'm glad you were able to get it
down to something condensable.

Speaker 2 (01:03:35):
I hope that everyone followed it, because there was definitely
a lot of names, a lot of the same names
over there again but years later.

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
Yeah, fascinating stuff. I hope you all enjoyed it as
much as we did. Send us a list of all
the people you've slept with. We'll read it on air.

Speaker 2 (01:03:53):
We were just full name and location, or just let.

Speaker 1 (01:03:56):
Us know what you thought of the episode. We'd love
to hear that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:58):
Too, preferably.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
Yeah. You can shoot us an email Romance at gmail
dot com right or.

Speaker 2 (01:04:03):
We're on Instagram. I'm at Dianamite Boom, and.

Speaker 1 (01:04:06):
I'm at oh Great at Delai and Quick.

Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
Thanks again to Steth Bath for suggesting Winneretta Singer, since
we got so many great episodes out of her life. Hopefully,
if you have some good suggestions, you can send them
our way as well, either with the email address to
our instagram's or to the show's instagram at.

Speaker 1 (01:04:21):
The dig Romance thanks so much for tuning in and
we will catch up with the next one.

Speaker 2 (01:04:25):
Love you by right, so long friends, it's time to go.

Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
Thanks for listening to our show. Tell your friends names uncles,
and to listen to our show, Ridiculous Romance.