Lez Keep It Real

This week’s Notable Lesbian is:
Renée Vivien, born Pauline Mary Tarn
June 11, 1877-November 10, 1909

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. Vivien was born in London, England to a wealthy British father and an American mother from Jackson, Michigan. She grew up in Paris and London. Upon inheriting her father’s fortune at 21, she emigrated permanently to France. Vivien was cultivated and very well-traveled, especially for a woman of the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. She wintered in Egypt, visited China, and explored much of the Middle East, as well as Europe and America. Contemporaries considered her beautiful and elegant, with blonde hair, brown eyes flecked with gold, and a soft-spoken androgynous presence. Before the manifestations of illness, Vivien was well-proportioned and fashionably slender. She wore expensive clothes and particularly loved Lalique jewelry. She died on at the age of 32; the cause of death was reported at the time as “lung congestion”, but likely resulted from pneumonia complicated by alcoholism, drug abuse, and anorexia nervosa. Vivien was interred at Passy Cemetery in the same exclusive Parisian neighborhood where she had lived.

Interesting tid bit:
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. During her brief life, Vivien was an extremely prolific poet who came to be known as the “Muse of the Violets”, derived from her love of the flower. Her obsession with violets (as well as with the color violet) was a reminder of her beloved childhood friend, Violet.

You for whom I wrote, O beautiful young women!
You alone whom I loved, will you reread my verse…?
Will you say, ‘This woman had the ardor which eludes me ..
Why is she not alive? She would have loved me ….’
Everywhere I go I repeat: I do not belong here.
Who will bring me hemlock in their own hands?

More Notable Lesbians 

If you have a suggestion for a Notable Lesbian, e-maill me at lyndsey.darcangelo@451press.net or use the contact form above and I’ll highlight her in an upcoming post.

renée vivien, pauline mary tarn, passy cemetery, violet shillito, muse of the violets, notable lesbians