Members of London’s Bloomsbury Set were everything you would expect from a bunch of white middle-class writers, artists and intellectuals. They were snobbish and they were privileged. They moaned about old Victorian values and aristocracy but had no qualms about taking Papa’s allowance each month. They were the hipsters of the early 1900s, only with champagne instead of oat milk matcha lattes.
The group met every Thursday at 46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, a fashionable area of London with a ludicrous number of garden squares. During these meetings conversations often turned to ethics, sex, philosophy, sex, literature, sex, economics, feminism and sex. Sex seemed to be an important subject for the Bloomsbury Set, as many of them (mostly the men) ended up in each other’s beds. As the poet Dorothy Parker perfectly put it, ‘They lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles.’
I’m mostly jealous of the squares.
By far the cleverest of the lot was the writer Virginia Woolf. Virginia was known for her early feminist ideologies, many of which she presented in her writing. In one essay, A Room of One’s Own, Virginia highlighted just how important it was for a woman to have… a room… of her own. Of course, she was talking about intellectual freedom and financial independence, but seriously, a woman does need a room of her own. ‘That’s just, like, the rules of feminism.’1
The essay also explored Mary Carmichael’s novel Life’s Adventure, and the simple line, ‘Chloe liked Olivia.’ Virginia was buzzing. ‘Sometimes women do like women,’ she wrote, and maybe… just maybe… they like each other in that way, you know… like that.
Oh, it then turned out that Virginia had made the whole thing up. Mary Carmichael didn’t even exist, and the ‘Chloe liked Olivia’ line was created by Virginia to make a point. Crafty bitch.
It was obvious from the get-go that Virginia’s affections were primarily towards women. In 1898, at just sixteen years old, she fell for Margaret (Madge) Symonds Vaughan, the twenty-nine-year-old wife of her cousin. Oh, the older relative! We’ve all been there. For me it was a sexy great-aunt.
Many years later, Virginia met up with Madge, who was now much older and had turned into a bore. Virginia couldn’t believe that this was the woman who at one time had made her so hot and bothered. Later that day she reflected on her theatrical teenage thirst in her diary: ‘And this was the woman I adored! I see myself now standing in the night nursery at Hyde Park Gate, washing my hands, & saying to myself “At this moment she is actually under this roof.”’
Madge may have grown tiresome, but she made such an impression on Virginia that she appeared years later in the form of Sally Seton, the blatant lesbian in Virginia’s most famous novel (and let’s be honest, easiest to wrap your head around), Mrs Dalloway. In one scene, the main character, Clarissa Dalloway, fondly looks back on her relationship with Sally: ‘she could remember standing in her bedroom at the top of the house holding the hot-water can in her hands and saying aloud, “She is beneath this roof… She is beneath this roof!”’
After Madge came Violet Dickinson, a family friend who was over six feet tall and, in Virginia’s eyes, the sexiest thing since discovering Greek and Latin in her father’s library. Virginia had better luck with Violet, mainly because Violet wasn’t married to her cousin.
The pair wrote many saucy letters to one another. In one correspondence, Virginia alluded to passions between the sheets: ‘It is astonishing what depths – what volcano depths – your finger has stirred.’
You know what they say about tall women… tall fing…
Virginia and Violet even holidayed together in the famously unromantic cities of Florence, Venice and Paris, and in one letter, years later, Virginia wrote, ‘yes I remember all kinds of scenes with you – at Hyde Park Gate up in my room. One of these days I shall write about them.’
Sadly, to the frustrations of lesbians worldwide, Virginia never did write about those scenes with Violet up in her room.
The relationship between Virginia and Violet eventually fizzled out, and Virginia met the nice but dull writer Leonard Woolf. At first, Virginia wasn’t very keen on Leonard. Her sexual experiences with men were limited, and she was unsure about marriage in general. As a child, she had been sexually abused by her half-brothers, George and Gerald Duckworth, and, unsurprisingly, this had had a lasting effect on her. She also suffered greatly from mental health breakdowns and suicide attempts throughout her life.
While these factors contributed to her uncertainty about marrying Leonard, the biggest reason was that, well… she just didn’t fancy him. ‘As I told you brutally the other day, I feel no physical attraction in you. There are moments – when you kissed me the other day was one – when I feel no more than a rock. And yet your caring for me as you do almost overwhelms me. It is so real, and so strange…’
Ouch.
In the end, Virginia did marry Leonard and the marriage was a happy one based on respect and affection rather than attraction and sex. Leonard took on the role of doting husband, especially during Virginia’s depressive states. A decade later, in 1922, Virginia met the author and unapologetic sapphist Vita Sackville-West. Virginia and Vita were complete opposites. Vita was a rich aristocrat and a big-time lover; Virginia was a bohemian intellectual who could cut you down in just one sentence.
At the start of their relationship, Vita mocked Virginia’s dress sense: ‘She dresses quite atrociously’. She also wasn’t intimidated by the academic allure of the Bloomsbury Set, hilariously referring to them as ‘Gloomsbury’. Look! Lesbians being funny again!
Virginia also threw a few punches and scoffed at Vita’s writing: ‘Vita’s prose is too fluent. I’ve been reading it, & it makes my pen run.’ Virginia’s burns only continued: ‘She is not clever; but abundant & fruitful’, and ‘I have no enormous opinion of her poetry.’
However, underneath such shadiness was a huge sexual attraction, an attraction which they acted upon at least twice. Virginia even told her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell, about their lovemaking and recounted the conversation to Vita in a letter: ‘I told Nessa the story of our passion in a chemists shop the other day. “But do you really like going to bed with women” she said – taking her change. “And how’d you do it?” and so she bought her pills to take abroad, talking as loud as a parrot.’
Their romance was also charmingly chronicled in letters to one another. ‘I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way,’ said Vita. ‘I have been dull; I have missed you. I do miss you. I shall miss you,’ Virginia responded.
By 1927, the relationship had ended. Vita had a lot of fingers in a lot of pies and was a bit bored with Virginia. She also accused Virginia of turning their relationship into a fantasy that escaped the dreary truths of real life. Virginia denied the accusation but then wrote Orlando, which was literally a fantasy about Vita escaping the dreary truths of real life. Vita’s son, Nigel Nicolson, later called it, ‘The longest and most charming love letter in literature.’
Thankfully, like all good lesbian stereotypes, they remained the best of friends, and Virginia always had a bedroom readily decorated with fresh flowers in case Vita were to spontaneously drop by (which she often did). They also continued to affectionately write to one another until Virginia’s suicide in 1941. Below is one of their final exchanges.
Friday, 30 August 1940
I’ve just stopped talking to you. It seems so strange. It’s perfectly peaceful here – they’re playing bowls – I’d just put flowers in your room. And there you sit with the bombs falling around you. What can one say – except that I love you and I’ve got to live through this strange quiet evening thinking of you sitting there alone.
Sunday, 1 September 1940
Oh dear, how your letter touched me this morning. I nearly dropped a tear into my poached egg. Your rare expressions of affection have always had the power to move me greatly, and as I suppose one is a bit strung-up (mostly sub-consciously) they now come ping against my heart like a bullet dropping on the roof. I love you too; you know that.
Virginia did not identify as a lesbian but, as we all know, that doesn’t mean much. It is clear from her diaries, letters and novels that Virginia saw most people as individuals rather than bodies limited by their gender. She did not like labels and thought that they excluded rather than included. Vita was of the same opinion…
Born in 1892, Vita came from a long line of rich nobles in big houses. One of these nobles was her grandfather, Lionel Sackville-West, 2nd Baron Sackville, who had had an affair with the married Spanish dancer Josefa Durán y Ortega, also known as Pepita. The affair resulted in several illegitimate children. Does it still count as an ‘affair’ if the ‘affair’ results in several children? Asking for a friend.
One of the children, Victoria, was gutted that she couldn’t inherit her father’s wealth on account of her being illegitimate. To get around this she married her first cousin, also a Lionel, who succeeded her father’s (his uncle’s) barony. Stay with me…
At first, the marriage between Victoria, or Lady Sackville as she was now known, and Lionel was a happy one. They had sex, got drunk, and did all the things that Barons and Baronesses do. But after a while, things turned sour. Lady Sackville kept involving herself in weird money-making schemes and Lionel copped off with an opera singer whom he later moved into the family home. That must have caused a lot of ‘treble’… oh my gosh, I’m so sorry.
Amid all the chaos, Lady Sackville and Lionel did manage to have a child; enter another Victoria, Vita for short. Vita was a smarty pants, and by the time she was eighteen years old, she had written several (unpublished) novels. She had also been proposed to countless times, proposals that she had rejected. For Vita was not ready for marriage, nor was she interested in men; instead she was necking school pal Rosamund Grosvenor.
The relationship between Vita and Rosamund was based purely on sex – well, for Vita anyway. Vita reflected on the relationship years later: ‘my liaison with Rosamund was, in a sense, superficial. I mean that it was almost exclusively physical, as, to be frank, she always bored me as a companion. I was very fond of her, however; she had a sweet nature. But she was quite stupid…’
In 1910, Vita met diplomat Harold Nicolson. Harold proposed and Vita accepted even though she was still sleeping with Rosamund. Again, Vita reflected on the decision years later: ‘It never struck me as wrong that I should be more or less engaged to Harold, and at the same time much in love with Rosamund. The fact is that I regarded Harold far more as a playfellow than in any other light. Our relationship was so fresh, so intellectual, so unphysical, that I never thought of him in that aspect at all.’
Vita wasn’t bothered about the wedding and later called it ‘the same for everybody’. I mean, she’s not wrong. Vita’s mother, Lady Sackville, also wasn’t bothered, and opted to stay in bed because she didn’t want to be emotional.2
Rosamund did care, especially as Vita had insensitively asked her to be a bridesmaid. Rosamund had spent weeks leading up to the wedding bawling her eyes out and was completely heartbroken, something Vita was very aware of. There was also another notable absentee, the man the myth the legend, Vita’s special friend, Violet Keppel…
Violet was the daughter of Alice Keppel, a mistress of King Edward VII. The King would casually visit the Keppel household for what he would call ‘afternoon tea’ – what the rest of us would call full-blown sex.
Vita first met Violet at the bedside of a friend with a broken leg. I don’t know why that’s funny, but it just is. Things escalated, and when Vita turned sixteen, Violet gave her a ring as a symbol of their love. The love affair came to an end when Violet learnt through someone else that Vita was engaged. The ever-obtuse Vita had struck once again and conveniently forgotten to tell her.
Vita and Harold got married and were happy. They shared a deep and emotional bond and loved each other dearly. At the same time, Vita was bedding as many women as possible and Harold was doing the exact same thing, only with men. It’s all so modern!
Everything was going smoothly until Harold was forced to confess that he had contracted a venereal disease from a random man whom he had met at a country house party. Fortunately, Vita did not have the clap. I say fortunately because she was still bonking Violet, quite vigorously too. They had sex, they argued, they fell out, they made up – the usual lesbian drama. At one point they lived in France, masquerading as husband and wife, Vita as the wounded war soldier ‘Julian’, and Violet the loving wife. Now that’s a role play I would like to be involved in.
Things soon came to a halt when Violet’s mother, Alice, announced that Violet was to marry the war hero (and pitiful) Denys Trefusis. Violet was devo’d and wrote to Vita saying, ‘I want you every second and every hour of the day, yet I am being slowly and inexorably tied to somebody else… Sometimes I am flooded by an agony of physical longing for you… a craving for your nearness and your touch… I try so hard to imagine your lips on mine…’
Vita was also fuming, but told Violet she could marry him so long as she didn’t screw him. Violet agreed, the wedding went ahead, and Vita and Violet went back to France.
By now, Harold was livid. He thought Violet was bad for Vita and told a poor, pitiable and oblivious Denys all about Vita and Violet’s sexual escapades. Harold then convinced Denys to climb into a two-seater plane and fly with him across the Channel to collect their wives. There is so much to unpack in that sentence, but I just can’t be bothered.
When Harold and Denys arrived, Vita refused to leave, so Harold let slip that Denys and Violet had done the nasty… It was a true Coleen Rooney reveal.
Vita was distraught, Violet starved herself, Denys cried, and Harold was… well, Harold was busy with the Treaty of Versailles and trying to prevent another catastrophic world war, which kind of puts things into perspective. In the end, Vita returned to England to play happy families with Harold and their two sons.
It was after this that Vita met Virginia. Vita had chilled out a bit by then, and was looking for something low-key. Vita wrote to Virginia and was like, ‘I have been doing something so odd, so queer, – or rather, something which though perhaps neither odd nor queer in itself, has filled me with such odd and queer sensations, – that I must write to you. (The thing, by the way, was entirely connected with you, and wild horses won’t drag from me what it was.)’ The thing was masturbating… right? Or am I failing reading comprehension again?
Virginia wrote back saying, ‘Should you say, if I rang you up to ask, that you were fond of me? If I saw you would you kiss me? If I were in bed would you—’
The relationship may have been chill, but that’s not to say that it didn’t have its problems. Virginia made no secret of her mental health struggles, and Vita worried that she would break Virginia’s heart. Vita wrote to Harold saying, ‘I am scared to death of arousing physical feelings in her, because of the madness… I have gone to bed with her (twice), but that’s all.’
Vita wasn’t that scared because on numerous occasions, consciously or subconsciously, she made Virginia jealous. One time, Vita revealed to Virginia that she had also been sexing the socialite Mary Campbell. Virginia wasn’t that shocked and replied, ‘And ain’t it wretched you care for me no longer: I always said you were a promiscuous brute – Is it a Mary again; or a Jenny this time or a Polly? Eh?’
Burn.
Vita and Harold remained happily married until Vita’s death in 1962. After her death, one of her sons, Nigel, found a locked Gladstone bag that Vita had stashed away in her writing room. After slicing it open, he found a rough copy of an unpublished memoir, which he later published along with his own commentary as Portrait of a Marriage (1973). On one page, Vita blamed society’s misunderstanding of sexuality and the concept of marriage, writing, ‘I believe then that the psychology of people like myself will be a matter of interest, and I believe it will be recognized that many more people of my type do exist than under the present-day system of hypocrisy is commonly admitted.’
She finished with: ‘I advance, therefore, the perfectly accepted theory that cases of dual personality do exist, in which the feminine and the masculine elements alternately preponderate… I have the object of study always to hand, in my own heart, and can gauge the extra truthfulness of what my own experience tells me.’
()
Across the pond, the Harlem Renaissance, a Black cultural explosion between 1910 and 1930 in New York City, was in full swing. The movement embraced literary, musical, theatrical and artistic talent, aiming to break free from damaging and reductive representations of Black people and culture by white media. It was also incredibly gay… for men… because even a gay revolution can entirely exclude women! Queer women did exist, because in 1925, blues legend Gertrude ‘Ma’ Rainey was arrested for having an orgy with a bunch of chorus girls. That’s something to put on the bucket list. The incident was said to have influenced the song ‘Prove It on Me Blues’, and the memorable lyrics, ‘Went out last night with a crowd of my friends. They must’ve been women, ’cause I don’t like no men.’ Ma Rainey’s protégé and sometime lover, Bessie Smith, also liked to sing about girls. She sang George Hannah’s ‘The Boy in the Boat’ (also a euphemism for clitoris), which contained the lyrics, ‘When you see two women walking hand in hand, just look ’em over and try to understand: They’ll go to those parties, have their lights down low – only those parties where women can go.’
Those parties with the lights down low sound a lot like Ma Rainey’s orgies…
Bessie also liked chorus girls, especially Lillian Simpson. The two had an intense relationship, and after one argument, Bessie yelled, ‘I got twelve women on this show and I can have one every night if I want it.’ Lillian then attempted suicide by barricading herself in her hotel room and filling it up with gas. Note to self: don’t tell women that you can have anyone you want.
Singer and entertainer Gladys Bentley was also part of the Harlem scene. Like Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, Gladys loved women. To prove it, she always wore a tuxedo and a top hat on stage. To prove it again, she openly flirted with female audience members by telling them all about her sexual adventures with other women. To prove it again, she married a woman in an illegal civil ceremony. That ought to do it.
Despite an open attitude to her sexuality on the outside, Gladys was struggling on the inside and spent most of her life trying to figure out why she was attracted to women. She concluded that it was probably because her mother had initially wanted a son. She then wondered if that was why she felt more comfortable in a tuxedo and why she fancied her female teacher at school.3 When you don’t exist in history nor see yourself in society it can be difficult to envision a place for yourself in the present.
When the Harlem Renaissance came to an end, Gladys moved to California and ended up performing in one of the first lesbian bars in San Francisco, Mona’s 440 Club. Mona’s was a place where lesbians from all over the country rubbed elbows (ahem) and the beautiful female bar staff served drinks while wearing tuxedos. Hmmm, maybe the tuxedo maketh the lesbian after all!
During this time, the House Un-American Activities Committee was, unfortunately, a thing. The committee investigated and attacked people who, according to them, were Un-American. So, what’s Un-American, you might ask? Well, Hollywood, commies, queers, women who wanted careers, people who weren’t racist – you know, the usual. Gladys was on their list, because… she wore a tuxedo, and at that time, female performers had to apply for a licence to wear men’s clothes. There was also the small issue of her illegally marrying a woman…
The investigation scared Gladys so much that she was brainwashed into believing that she had cured herself by taking female hormones; she also wrote an article for a magazine declaring, ‘I am a woman, again.’ Gladys then took off her tuxedo and put on a dress – nooooooooooo. She also married a man, which is less of a tragedy than ditching the tuxedo. Sadly, shit like this was an all-too-common occurrence; take Angelina Weld Grimké, for example.
Angelina was a teacher, a critic, a biographer, a poet, a playwright and a forerunner of the Harlem Renaissance. Despite such genius, Angelina failed (and still fails) to get the recognition that she deserved.
There are many reasons for this, the first being her gender. Women weren’t respected back then (unlike now…), so her brilliance was disregarded a lot of the time. The second thing was her skin colour. Black people were treated inhumanely back then (unlike now…), so her brilliance was disregarded a lot of the time. The final thing was her attraction to women. She was queer. She was a queer Black woman, a woman who was Black who was queer. So, her brilliance was… you get the picture.
Angelina came from a background of white abolitionists, enslavers and enslaved people. Her great-aunt and namesake was the white abolitionist and suffragette Angelina Emily Grimké Weld; her father, Archibald Henry Grimké, was the son of a white enslaver and a Black enslaved woman; and her mother, Sarah Stanley, who left when Angelina was young, was from a middle-class white family. It was this and the absence of her mother that influenced the style and content of her writing. But Angelina also had other things to write about… lesbian things…
In 1896, at just sixteen years old, Angelina wrote a letter: ‘I know you are too young now to become my wife, but I hope, darling, that in a few years you will come to me and be my love, my wife! How my brain whirls, how my pulse leaps with joy and madness when I think of these two words, “my wife”.’
The letter was addressed to Mamie, but Angelina had two Mamies in her life: her sweetheart, Mary ‘Mamie’ Burrill, and her other sweetheart, Mary ‘Mamie’ Edith Karn. Two sweethearts called Mamie, what are the chances? High, I’m told, seeing as it was the late 1800s and everybody was called Mary.
Angelina liked writing about women not called Mary too. In her poem ‘Caprichosa’, Angelina wrote about her love for all the ladies alongside being unable to act on her feelings.
Little lady coyly shy
With deep shadows in each eye
Cast by lashes soft and long,
Tender lips just bowed for song,
And I oft have dreamed the bliss
Of the nectar in one kiss…
Angelina’s father, Archibald, also influenced her work. Archibald was an activist for Black rights and one of the national vice-presidents of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). As a result, Angelina’s writing often highlighted racial injustice and the psychological effect it had (and still has) on the Black community.
In 1916, Angelina wrote the play Rachel after the NAACP had asked Black writers to respond to the horrifically racist film The Birth of a Nation. The play was about a young Black woman so sickened by racism that she decides never to have children. For the premiere, the play’s programme read, ‘This is the first attempt to use the stage for race propaganda in order to enlighten the American people relative to the lamentable condition of the millions of Colored citizens in this free republic.’
Writing Rachel made Angelina one of the first Black women to write a play about Black issues. This also made her one of the first Black queer women to write a play about Black issues.
Although Angelina was close with her father, the relationship was strained. Archibald was very demanding and set high academic standards for his daughter. Because Angelina was a boss, she attained her father’s expectations, but as a result, this meant no room for exploring her sexuality.
In the poem ‘To My Father Upon His Fifty-Fifth Birthday’, Angelina praised her father for raising her without her mother. It’s nice and all, but then she insinuates what she might have been without him…
What were I, father dear, without thy help?
I turn my eyes away before the figure and
Rejoice; and yet your loving hands have moulded me;
No credit, father dear, is due to me; ’twas you
What would you have been without your father’s help? A big old lezza.
After her father’s death in 1930, Angelina moved to New York and immersed herself in the up-and-coming Harlem scene. Despite being openly queer in her writing, her father’s death along with her move to New York wasn’t enough to free her from the closet. She died a recluse in 1958 at the age of seventy-eight.
Happy endings rarely exist in the history of queer women. You stand a better chance if you’re white, although even then it’s a bit shit.