Berthe Cleyrergue was not merely anybody. It was often said that Berthe began her life with Natalie Barney in 1927. But Berthe was born in 1904. She was first called Philiberthe, a heavy name to pull like a wagon. Shortly thereafter she changed to Bébert, a lithe little tomboy in the fields of Bourgogne. At ten she ran the farm, at fourteen she left for Paris. It was not yet 1927 and she had lived several lives already. But then Berthe Cleyrergue was always one to do things herself.
Berthe wanted to dance, Berthe wanted to travel. Like her father she loved a glass of Gamay and the songs that young people sang. When Philiberthe had fallen ill as an infant, they kept her alive with spoonfuls of wine, watered down to be sure, but still strong as beef blood. In 1923 Berthe went dancing every weekend at the Palais d’Orsay. Her carnet de bal was an object of worship. A dance card in those days was an archive of flattering glances and hard-knuckled hands pressed to her back. Berthe in 1923 worked all week for what she wanted: dresses for dancing, and more dancing.
Djuna Barnes lived in the 15ème and shopped in the 16ème. It was there that she met Berthe Cleyrergue, her arms full of the tins of cocoa powder you could find nowhere else in Paris. Djuna was a smart girl, Berthe said, but with careless hands: an American. It wasn’t long before Djuna burnt a hole in her rug and Berthe had to go round to pacify the landlord. After that, Djuna told Berthe, they would be friends forever.
It turned out that Djuna knew an astounding number of other women like her: Americans, writers, women like that. Almost none of them could cook. Some few of them could speak French. Djuna, who could not really speak French, made a meagre wage and cooked for herself; Miss Natalie Barney, an heiress who spoke French like Louis XIV, had never entered the kitchen of her house. Berthe was willing to work all week, and Miss Natalie Barney would give her 450F and a little room on the mezzanine. Thus in 1927 Berthe came to live with Miss Barney at 20 rue Jacob. She could cook, she could sew, she had intelligent green eyes that observed everything.
Berthe met Romaine Brooks in a crowd of a hundred people and sandwiches in the salon of Miss Barney. Romaine detested crowds and sandwiches, she liked solitude and cakes that were half-chocolate and half-vanilla. Romaine wore black clothes that made a room colder, more elegant. In her house she wore black outfits in black rooms and painted all day without eating. She brooded like a crow, Romaine Brooks did, but she loved Miss Barney until the end of her life.
Romaine had the left side of the house to herself. Miss Barney, on the right, filled her rooms with bronze lamps and bearskin rugs, with gay posies of marguerites from the fields. Or more truly it was Berthe who filled the rooms of Miss Barney with wondrous comforts and bright objects; once the villa was bought and named, Berthe was sent down to clean and furnish it. After two months of work Berthe regarded it as a masterpiece. Then at last Miss Barney and Romaine met in the dining room that joined the two separate wings of Trait d’union, and made a toast to the indelible Hyphen that linked their lives. Berthe made a cake, half-chocolate and half-vanilla.
The sojourn of Élisabeth de Gramont at the villa Trait d’union was delightful, like everything else undertaken by the Duchess. She amused Miss Barney, she soothed Romaine, they all went swimming in the sea and Colette came from St-Tropez for supper afterwards. The Duchess was like a coquelicot, a red poppy, she was as noble in blood as they come but hardy as a wildflower, and a communist to boot. She used to speak on the radio so eloquently about the revolution. Every year on May Day there was the anniversary celebration of Miss Barney and the Duchess: a lunch of white wine and lapwing eggs, six each.
Alice was one of the few Americans who could both cook and speak French. When Berthe brought a partridge back from Bourgogne, Alice would pluck it herself. Gertrude on the other hand was always writing, brusque, impatient with any interruption. Gertrude got on well with artistic men and dogs, she always had a poodle at her feet. In 1927 there was no telephone at Miss Barney’s, it was Berthe who dashed down the street to deliver an invitation or a packet of books to Alice and Gertrude.
Of all of the books written by Miss Barney, Berthe considered Aventures de l’esprit her best. In 1927 Miss Barney had just begun writing it and she was nervous, excitable, when she rang for something she had forgotten what it was by the time Berthe came upstairs. She changed dresses four times a day. Adventures of the Spirit was to be a book of portraits, Miss Barney told Berthe; each poet would have her pedestal.
Miss Barney was thinking of Renée Vivien, Berthe could tell. Once a long time ago Miss Barney and Renée Vivien had travelled to an island where they believed every poet would be honoured as she deserved. It was an island in Greece, very ancient, where they dreamed of building a villa called Sapho and holding splendid receptions. That was the same year Berthe was born.
Berthe preferred the books of Colette above all others. Colette too was from Bourgogne, she was lively and warm-hearted and trilled her rrr. Colette had an untameable mass of curls that flared every which way in the rains of Paris. She wore simple sandals with rope soles. She was not one of those stern barking writers like Gertrude Stein who could not be disturbed for anything less than Art. As a girl Colette had worked in the music halls, she knew what it was to sit lightly in the lap of power and smile. Even her staff was sympathique: from the villa Trait d’union it was a short trip by boat to St-Tropez, where Berthe would meet the governess of Colette and dance until five in the morning.
At that time there was not a single woman admitted to the Académie Française. Miss Barney rightly found that ridiculous, all you had to do was look round her salon to find a dozen who deserved the honour more than Paul Valèry. Frankly Berthe could scarcely make enough eclairs to feed all the women writers of merit! Thus the Academy of Women was founded at 20 rue Jacob. On a series of Fridays in 1927 Berthe poured out tea and cream, and then with wickedly pompous ceremony a woman artist would be inducted into the Académie des Femmes. As Miss Barney proclaimed upon the day of Colette, her work was so greatly superior to that of male novelists that she ought to tread carefully among them in her rope sandals, so as not to step on their heads.
In 1927 Colette told us that at last Natalie Barney had found someone steady. It had been several vagabond years of maids, cooks, and chauffeurs coming and going at 20 rue Jacob. Some of them were too scandalized to stay, what with the homosexuals on every floor of the house, and others found Miss Barney too vexing a mistress. When we first saw Berthe in her neat white blouse with her lips tucked together we thought she might last a week. At the first reception she clung to the curtains like a frightened cat.
But by 1928 we learned that Berthe was merely observing everything with her intelligent green eyes. She knew that Djuna, too poor to buy the extravagant clothes she desired, wore the cast-off capes of other ladies. She saw Romaine in her moods of burnt ash, she saw Natalie nervous in a new dress with puffed sleeves. Berthe not only had all of her own lives to herself; she also saw straight through a dozen others. In short Berthe Cleyrergue was the one who taught us that we had been wrong about housekeepers.
After almost everyone else had gone, Berthe Cleyrergue remembered. She had written some things down and other things just remained hanging in her mind like dishcloths on their hooks. She remembered how dusty the house was at 20 rue Jacob, how you had to go out into the garden to beat the carpets. She remembered her first Friday reception, the sheer quantity of sandwiches, everyone talking of books she had never heard of. There was Colette, at least someone else from Bourgogne, laughing and giving her the first novel about Claudine, was it Claudine à Paris? There was Berthe herself freshly arrived in Paris, her carnet de bal scrawled all over with gallant yearnings; then in no time at all Berthe was pouring flutes of Kir for Miss Barney and Romaine lounging salty under the trees after their swim. When they had all gone away, Berthe wrote a portrait of everyone she remembered and called it by her own name: Berthe, A half-century of life around the Amazon. That was Miss Barney, who liked her pain au raisin toasted with butter and cinnamon.