Eva, Natalie, Pauline
Miss Eva Palmer had her coming out—not that kind of coming out!—in December 1893. Eva’s wealthy mother, Catherine Abbe, was presenting her daughter to New York society. Her tea dance was covered in all the society pages. One news clipping raised eyebrows: “Mrs. Robert Abbe gave a tea with informal dancing yesterday afternoon, at Sherry’s, to introduce her daughter, Miss Eva Palmer.... Among the young ladies who assisted in receiving were Miss Mary Putnam Hayden, Miss Therese Keyser, Miss Frances Havens Ives, Miss Ethel Hartshorne and Miss Barney.”[1] The other young ladies were listed by first and last name, as a mark of respect. It was only “Miss Barney” whose first name was omitted. To single Natalie out was to draw attention to something improper.
The insinuation was correct: Natalie, just seventeen, and Eva, nineteen going on twenty, had probably become lovers the summer before. Eight years later, the world would learn about this in Sapphic Idyll (Idylle saphique), the first known lesbian novel in any language. Its author was the celebrated courtesan Liane de Pougy, another rock star of the era and one of Natalie’s lovers. Liane ascribes these words to the character based on Natalie:
Je vois très vaguement, comme à travers un songe, une auréole de cheveux roux, flamme vivante qui m’inspira et me fit connaître l’amour. Elle s’appelait Éva, la mère de mes désirs, l’initiatrice de mes premières joies. Je crois qu’elle est morte depuis, ou mariée, oui, mariée, ce qui revient au même.[2]
I see vaguely, as in a dream, an aureole of auburn hair, the living flame that inspired me and introduced me to love. She was Eva, the mother of my desires, the teacher of my first joys. I think she is dead since, or married—yes, married, which amounts to the same thing.
Eva was famous for her long red hair, much as Natalie was famous for her blue eyes and tresses of pale silver-blond. Alone or together, they stopped traffic. (It was, after all, the carriage age.) In the copy of Sapphic Idyll owned by the National Library of France, someone has penciled in the margin: Eva Palmer.[3]
The mother of my desires. Eva was not just Natalie’s lover—she was her first love. Time and again, in unpublished manuscripts and in novels such as My Young Duchess (L’adultère ingénue), written in 1912, Natalie accords this privilege to Eva in scenes of nostalgia always tinged with unresolved loss.[4] We have not yet established the first time they met. Natalie was twelve when she started attending the Misses Ely’s School in Manhattan. She probably encountered Eva in the bohemian atmosphere of the Nineteenth Century Club, a cultural salon hosted by Eva’s parents in the parlor of their Gramercy Park townhouse.[5] Eva and Natalie both recalled playing together as children in Bar Harbor, Maine, where their families had summer homes.
Pauline and Natalie, by contrast, were introduced when they were both twenty-three years old. It was the fall of 1899, at a matinée performance at the Théâtre-Français. Liane had broken things off with Natalie, who was still hoping to resume the relationship. At first sight of Pauline, Natalie was unimpressed. But hearing Pauline recite one of her poems stirred desire—and something more. Natalie felt she was in the presence of greatness.[6]
The friends who introduced them, the Shillito sisters, had been close to Natalie for many years. In fact, they had grown up together like sisters. The Barneys and the Shillitos were neighbors in Cincinnati. Natalie and her younger sister, Laura (the future Bahá’í religious leader), had fond memories of playing together with Violet and Mary Shillito. They had all learned French together as children. Violet, Mary and Natalie were boarders at the same school on the Upper West Side of New York as teenagers. Pauline, for her part, was now their neighbor in Paris, at 23 avenue du Bois de Boulogne.[7]
In the summer of 1900, Eva, Natalie, and Pauline were young and in love. Having been rejected by Violet Shillito, but still infatuated, Pauline had committed herself to Natalie, who was equally committed to her, but Natalie and Eva had never stopped loving each other from afar. What happened when the two of them saw each other again in the summer of 1900, after a long absence, would change the course of all three lives.
Notes
[1] “One Week in Upper Tendom: Incidents in Society,” New York Times, 3 Dec. 1893, The World, 24.
[2] Liane de Pougy, Idylle saphique (Paris: La Plume, 1901), 272, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bd6t5775282m/f284.image.r=eva. All translations are ours unless otherwise noted.
[3] Liane de Pougy, Idylle saphique, 272.
[4] Natalie Barney (as Natalie Clifford Barney), L’adultère ingénue, ed. Francesco Rapazzini (Paris: Bartillat, 2024), 31. The title is a place-holder, since the novel remains untranslated.
[5] Here and elsewhere, information about the lives of Natalie Barney, Pauline Tarn, and Eva Palmer is drawn from Suzanne Rodriguez, Wild Heart: A Life: Natalie Clifford Barney’s Journey from Victorian American to Belle Epoque Paris (New York: Ecco, 2002); Diana Souhami, Wild Girls: Wild Girls: Paris, Sappho, and Art: The Lives and Loves of Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004); Artemis Leontis, Eva Palmer Sikelianos: A Life in Ruins (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019).
[6] Suzanne Stroh, afterword to Natalie Barney (as Natalie Clifford Barney), I Remember Her, trans. Suzanne Stroh (Sequim, WA: Headmistress Press, 2025), 96–97; Natalie Barney (as Natalie Clifford Barney), Souvenirs indiscrets (Paris: Flammarion, 1960), 40–43.
[7] Natalie Barney, Souvenirs indiscrets, 27, 40.