Meeting point : 2 pm – Bibliothèque François Mitterrand Ligne 14 or RER C
The sight of two women on an evening walk, one whose bright golden hair reflected that of the other’s poodle, would have been a familiar one to residents of the 6th arrondissement in Paris by the end of the 1930s. Natalie Clifford Barney spoke fondly of her nightly strolls with Gertrude Stein and her pet dog, and indeed the women had much to discuss: both being American expatriates living in the same neighbourhood, both writers, and both openly queer.
Paris welcomed the likes of many such women: Margaret Anderson, Djuna Barnes, Natalie Clifford Barney, Sylvia Beach, Kay Boyle, Caresse Crosby, Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), Janet Flanner, Jane Heap, Solita Solano, Gertrude Stein, and Alice B. Toklas. These women were active in the literary scene, either as writers, booksellers, publishers and journalists. Sylvia Beach and her French partner Adrienne Monnier opened Shakespeare and Company and La Maison des Amis des Livres, bookshops as well as social spaces of literary gatherings. From 27 rue de Fleurus Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas cultivated their modernist salon, known for supporting (and often launching) the careers of modernist painters and writers such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. On the rue Jacob, Natalie Clifford Barney, a unique figurehead straddling both nineteenth and twentieth century lesbian culture, actively embodied the figure of Sappho in her life and writing while hosting outrageous parties in her garden. The conference will end on a literary visit of the left bank, delivered in the form of a walking tour, focussing on some of these illustrious women. At each site a passage will be read from the work of these writers to emulate the spoken nature of their salons.
Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein with Basket the poodle. (Carl Mydans, LIFE, 1944, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley)