Oscar Wilde first met Natalie Barney when she was a little girl playing on the beach with her mother in 1882.1 But in this story we are going to fast forward to the other end of her life for a rare interview with her, in her 90th year, as she talks about both Oscar and Bosie.
Natalie Barney was a playwright, poet and novelist resident in Paris, during which time she served on committees “that commemorated both [Wilde’s] birth and death.”. As early as 1900, she was openly lesbian and published love poems to women under her own name, before going on to found a salon of decadent Modernists on the Left Bank that endured more than 60 years.
Within this clique Natalie Barney conducted many non-monogamous relationships, and at least two of her lovers had Wildean connections.
The first was a brief affair she had with Olive Custance, the future wife of Wilde’s own lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, whom Douglas had conveniently married after Wilde’s death.
Through this relationship Natalie came to know Douglas quite well, befriending him during his visit to Washington DC, and later becoming godparent to Douglas’ and Olive’s only child, Raymond.
The second romance was with Dorothy Ierne Wilde, the only daughter of Oscar’s brother Willie Wilde from his second marriage, known as Dolly Wilde: Oscar’s only niece. The relationship was a passionate one for both Natalie and Dolly and continued until the latter’s death in 1941.
Interview
In this little known video in which she recounts her life in her 90th year, still she does not forget her “first adventure” as she called it in her memoir: the joy of meeting Oscar Wilde as child; and she also has a word about the the difficulties of knowing Alfred Douglas in later years.
This is worth noting because in all the contentious commentary about Wilde and Douglas in print, this is possibly a unique example of a firsthand account on film from someone who met them both.
© John Cooper, 2021.
Footnote:
- For the story of the intrigue inlving Natalie Barney and how she became the lover of Oscar’s niece and had an affair with Wilde’s own lover’s future wife you should read my post A Scene at Long Beach. ↩︎
Related:
Natalie Clifford Barney (Wikipedia)
Oscar Wilde Blog 
Interesting. But Miss Barney was quite wrong to state that Raymond Douglas committed suicide. Raymond Douglas did nothing of the kind.
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And all the more puzzling thing to say in 1960 considering Raymond did not die until 1964.
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