RENEE VIVIEN was born Pauline Tarn in 1877 a daughter of a Scottish/American marriage. She was educated in Paris in Switzerland, speaking fluent French in which she wrote all of her poetry. She was small with buck teeth, blue eyes and a mass of shining blond hair; she was emotional, imaginative, antisocial and depressive. She loved jewellery and heavy luxurious flowers; towards the end of her short life she became anorexic, addicted to alcohol and laudanum, and obsessed with death. Meeting the rich American Natalie Barney in Paris in 1898 they embarked upon a long love affair which became threatened by Barney's chronic inability to remain constant; parting in 1902. Later Renee took up with the rich and masculine Baroness Helene van Zuylen de Nievelt. Stung, Barney rushed back and re-united they went on a trip to Lesbos but the magic had gone. Returning to her Baroness Renée slipped further into emotional decline, rarely leaving her apartment which was said to be furnished with black velvet and white lilies, with a coffin upon which she wrote her poems. She died of consumption in 1909 aged thirty two and is buried in Passy Cemetery in Paris. Picture below; red rose
From Old Dyke 8, January MMI
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