Throughout her life, Winnaretta Singer made little secret of the fact that she was a lesbian, with no interest whatsoever in having sex with men. On the night of her first wedding to Prince Louis-Vilfred de Scey Montbéliard in 1887, she allegedly climbed on top of a wardrobe and threatened him with an umbrella, saying “If you touch me, I’ll kill you!”.

Singer’s life was never likely to be conventional. She was an American-born daughter to Isaac Singer; a sewing-machine tycoon with 24 children in total. Following his death, she inherited a fortune worth $18 million in today’s money. Raised in Britain and France, she needed an aristocratic husband to truly advance in European social circles, hence the ill-fated wedding which ended with divorce in 1891. With her money and his title, however, she was able to exercise her passion for the arts by conducting salons – gatherings of anyone who was anyone among creatives and intellectuals – in Paris. She was able to immerse herself even further in this world upon her second marriage to Prince Edmond de Polignac, an impoverished royal composer. He also happened to be gay and, with no expectations for a sexual relationship, the two remained close friends until his death in 1901. Singer continued to host salons and patronise creatives until her death in 1943, with her guests including Igor Stravinsky, Marcel Proust, and iconic gay writer Oscar Wilde. 

Queer culture flourished in the inter-war period

Singer’s lesbian conquests, meanwhile, were numerous. Many shared her love of the arts including painter Romaine Brooks, pianist Renata Borgatti, and suffragette composer Ethel Smyth. Many of her lovers were married and one disgruntled husband reportedly found himself standing outside her home, shouting “If you are half the man I think you are, you will come out here and fight me!” 

It wasn’t an accident, however, that Singer was able to meet so many fellow lesbians in Paris. She is widely regarded as having been a part of the Paris-Lesbos, a loose collective of wealthy, upper-class queer women who made the French capital their home. These women included Brooks, poet Renée Vivien, authors Colette and Radclyffe Hall – although Hall’s precise gender identity has been the subject of speculation – and Dorothy “Dolly” Wilde, Oscar Wilde’s niece. Their settling in the city makes sense when we consider that although homophobia remained, homosexuality was decriminalised in France all the way back in 1791. Over a century later, Paris was a haven of sexual permissiveness. In it and Weimar Berlin, gay venues were plentiful and queer culture flourished in the inter-war period, especially during the 1920s. 

It was not so, however, in Singer’s other adopted country. Male homosexuality in Britain had been heavily criminalised since 1533. In 1885, the law was modified so that even acts committed in private with no witnesses were illegal. It was this legislation that Oscar Wilde fell victim to in 1895. Lesbian relationships, meanwhile, were never explicitly criminalised. This was considered in 1921, but Parliament (hilariously) rejected the bill over fears that drawing attention to lesbianism would encourage women to try it. It was this climate into which Hall released her debut novel, The Well of Loneliness, in 1928. The book quickly became infamous due to its depiction of lesbian relationships: the editor of the Sunday Express wrote that he “would rather give a [child] a phial of prussic acid than this novel” because “Poison kills the body, but moral poison kills the soul.” It was subjected to an obscenity trial and forcibly withdrawn from the U.K. market. Thankfully, however, the publisher had already sold the rights to a firm based in – guess where – Paris. Copies quickly started coming back across the Channel, and were seized and detained at the border once the Home Office got wind of them. Hall herself spent time in Paris and helped to popularise the then quintessentially lesbian tradition of wearing a monocle; the city even had a famous lesbian club called Le Monocle. And outside the clubs, financially secure queer women like Singer were free to openly have affairs with other women, their wealth and class privilege offering substantial protection from stigma and persecution.

Singer wasn’t the only salon hostess however. Natalie Clifford-Barney – an American author whose lovers included Vivien, Wilde, and Brooks – held her first in 1900. They quickly became a staple of the city’s artistic scene, with famous guests including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and even Marta Hari. Allegedly, the courtesan once danced nude at the salon, but Barney drew the line at her idea of arriving on an elephant. The gatherings even made their way into The Well of Loneliness: Hall’s queer protagonist attends similar Paris salons, and Barney was written into the book as their hostess Valerie. 

No European queer culture, however, could survive the arrival of the Nazis. In Germany, they had started persecuting LGBTQ+ people within weeks of coming to power in 1933. In 1941 they invaded Paris and drove France’s queer community underground. Singer’s salons had already ended in 1939 and she lived in London until her death in 1943. Barney, meanwhile, relocated to Italy with Romaine Brooks. 

Barney returned to Paris in 1949. Whilst her salons continued for another few decades, it just wasn’t the same. The iridescent queer culture of the 1920s and 30s had been shattered and erased and the women who had helped to build it were long gone. Since then, the Paris-Lesbos has been all but forgotten as have many of its members.

This LGBTQ+ History Month, then, most of us – especially queer women – should raise a glass to Singer and her fellow underrated lesbian icons. During a time of widespread intolerance and persecution, they were able to carve out a niche for themselves, defy social norms and prejudices, and live their best lives – at least for a while. The Paris-Lesbos, then, is an example of how unique and rich and varied queer history can be and should be far more widely remembered than it is now.

Emma Curzon

Featured Image courtesy of Léonard Cotte via Unsplash. Image license can be found here. No changes were made to this image.

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