Drag and transgender in the 1900s

Colette’s lover Missy / Max (Mathilde de Morny, the Marquise of Belboeuf) lived most, if not all, of her adult life in drag. Society in the 1900s was still rigidly divided into binaries: male/female, heterosexual/homosexual. Today, we are lucky enough not to have to define ourselves so strictly, but then, blurred boundaries, fluid identities, the rainbow spectrum of gender and sexuality, transgender identities, biculturalism, bisexuality, Adrienne Rich’s scale of lesbian continuum… all of these had yet to be invented.

In “Secrets of the Flesh”, Judith Thurman writes, “It is not clear whether Missy thought of herself as a lesbian or as a man”, but she didn’t like [other] women who dressed as men, and “a lesbian couple, both in drag, offended her.” (pp.152-153). From what I’ve read, it seems that Missy did think of herself as a man; those of Colette’s biographers who recognise their six-year relationship (not all of them do) agree that Missy liked to be addressed as “Monsieur le Marquis” (the masculine version of her correct title, “Madame la Marquise”), and “Max” or “Uncle Max” by her circle of intimate friends (“Colette” by Allan Massie, p.58). If she were alive today, it seems likely that Missy would identify as transgender, and so I’ve become used to thinking of Missy as Max.

However, while reading Colette’s letters to Missy, (“Lettres à Missy” edited by Samia Bordji and Frédéric Maget), I was surprised to find only one instance where Colette refers to Missy as Max. In a telegram dated 15 December 1908, Colette begs forgiveness for writing to “Max”, and explains that she was feverish and will never do so again. It is unclear whether she is begging forgiveness for calling Missy “Max” in a previous letter, or for the contents of that letter.

In the novel I’m writing about Colette and Anaïs Nin, Nights in Paris, I first had Colette addressing Missy as Max. However, after reading Colette’s letters, I’ve changed it to Missy, with Max as a special erotic name. I’ve also kept to female pronouns for Missy, unless she is being Max (again, I’m going by Colette’s letters). I want to be authentic, and for my Colette character to think about Missy as the real Colette did. However, I do think that, if they were living their relationship today, Missy would call her/himself “he” and “Max”. So which is the right thing to do? What would Colette do?

Colette’s infidelity — a natural greediness

In Colette’s letters to her lover, Missy / Max, (“Lettres à Missy”, edited by Samia Bordji and Frédéric Maget), Colette often signed off by promising to be good, and sending her kisses and love to Missy and “the children” (their cats and dogs). I wonder if when Colette said she was being “good”, she was reassuring Missy / Max that she was being faithful.

As well as having more sexual relationships than was socially acceptable in the early 1900s, Colette also had many lovers. During her six-year relationship with Missy / Max, Colette had at least three affairs: a renewed secret liaison with Willy (her first husband); a fling with Auguste Hériot (a handsome, rich young man, who had previously been Polaire’s lover); and a serious affair with Henri de Jouvenel, whom she left Missy / Max for and who became her second husband.

Colette argued that having lovers was part of her “gourmandise” (greedy nature), it was something she did “par folie, par emballement, par… gourmandise” (through madness, enthusiasm… greediness) (p.207). Some writers are greedy for the altered states of alcohol or drugs; Colette was famously greedy for good French food and sex.

However, Colette’s self-indulgence didn’t extend to indulgence towards others. In 1911 (the last year of their relationship), Colette was furious when Missy /Max told her that she had had a young blonde in their house at Rozven, and had cut her hair. The editors of “Lettres” question whether this blonde ever existed, or if Missy /Max invented her as revenge for Colette’s affairs (p.29). Whether the blonde existed or not, the trick certainly worked: after her rage, Colette begged Missy / Max for forgiveness, and begged her not to be unfaithful, not to do what she herself had done (p.207).

It’s interesting that all of Colette’s affairs were with men, whereas when she was married to Willy, she had affairs with women. Perhaps this was part of Colette’s sensual nature, her greed for life: wanting to experience everything, not wanting to miss out on or regret anything… which one might also interpret as “the grass is always greener on the other side”!

Missy or Max? Tu or vous?

The “tu / vous” distinction is very important in French, as a measure of intimacy between speakers and writers. Traditionally, “tu” was used only by adults to children, between close relatives, intimate friends, and lovers. Nowadays, the rigid distinction is easing, and many young people instantly use “tu” with each other, dispensing with that awkward step in a friendship of progressing from “vous” to “tu”. In the “Claudine” novels, the narrator reveals that, although she scandalizes polite society by saying “tu” to acquaintances, she never uses the familiar “tu” with her husband. In this way, the formal “vous” is a sort of erotic linguistic caress between the couple (Claudine en Ménage / Claudine Married).

In her letters to her lover Missy (also called Max) (“Lettres à Missy” edited by Samia Bordji and Frédéric Maget), Colette uses both “tu” and “vous” — often veering from one to the other in the same letter, or even the same paragraph, in a haphazard fashion. She wrote many of her letters late at night, exhausted after an evening’s performance in the mime play “La Chair” (Flesh) and just before going to bed. Most of the letters begin with her using “tu”. Perhaps Colette was so tired that she used “vous” by accident, but that’s an odd mistake to make with a lover — wouldn’t you always use “tu” for a lover, and always think of them (and write to them) using “tu”?

Similarly to the “tu / vous” distinction, in French you have to decide whether to use a feminine “you” or a masculine “you”. If you want to call someone “my darling”, you can say “ma chérie” my (feminine) darling, or “mon cheri”, my (masculine) darling. Unfortunately, the French language allows for no comfortable gender ambiguity, as there is in English!

In the same way that she uses both “tu” and “vous” to Missy / Max, Colette addresses her masculine lover, for whom drag was a way of life, in the feminine, and calls her “ma chérie” most of the time. However, she does write “mon cheri” now and then, and sometimes even uses both “ma chérie” and “mon cheri” — addressing Missy / Max both as a woman and as a man — in the same letter. It seems clear that Missy / Max would identify as transgender, if she were alive today. But does this mean that Colette thought of Missy as a woman most of the time, and only occasionally as Max / a man? I wish I could ask her. More musings on the mysterious Missy /Max in the next post!

Lettres à Missy — letters by Colette

“Lettres à Missy” edited by Samia Bordji and Frédéric Maget, published by Flammarion (Paris 2009).

Once or twice a year, I give myself the luxury of ordering some books from France. The most recent shipload included “Lettres à Missy”: a collection of letters written by Colette to her lover, Missy (Mathilde de Morny, the Marquise of Belboeuf). Colette never dated her letters, but the editors have given each letter an estimated date by finding out when Colette visited a particular town, or performed a play, that she mentions in each letter. This must have taken a lot of patience, dedication and detective work, so much credit is due to Bordji and Maget.

Colette’s first letter in the collection was sent from Le Grand Hôtel in Nice, and has an estimated date of February 1908. Colette has just arrived from Monte-Carlo, and gossips to Missy about the friends she saw there, and who won or lost in the casinos. Colette’s tone is friendly when she mentions Willy and Meg (her ex-husband and his girlfriend) — the famously tempestuous relationship between the literary ex-couple can’t have deteriorated yet.

Colette is on tour, miming in the play La Chair (Flesh). In wild Monte-Carlo, she ripped her dress completely as part of the play, and showed off one of her beautiful breasts, and most of a thigh. In conservative Nice, however, she was allowed only to unbutton the top of her dress. Colette describes to Missy how well the audience reacted to the play, and how pleased she is that the audience in Nice loved her, despite the lack of naked flesh in play with such a promising, titillating title.

The Pure and the Impure — Colette in drag

I’m looking at a famous, gorgeous photograph of Colette in drag. She is very debonair with her cropped hair, and wears a black jacket and trousers, and silk tie. She has a finger in the pocket of her striped waistcoat (is she being suggestive, or searching for her pocket-watch?), smokes a cigarette and looks directly, perhaps challengingly, at the camera. The photograph is on the cover of Colette’s memoir-novel, Ces Plaisirs (These Pleasures), later renamed Le Pur et l’Impur (The Pure and the Impure).

The photograph was taken circa 1910, when Colette was in a relationship with Missy (also called Max) (Mathilde de Morny, the Marquise of Belboeuf). However, these are rare: most photographs of Colette show her in conventionally female clothing. Missy / Max lived her life in drag, but for Colette, dressing up in men’s clothing was a fleeting pleasure rather than a lifestyle.

The Pure and the Impure, first published in 1932 when Colette was 59, is a fascinating account of subversive society in 1900s Paris — prostitutes, opium dens, transvestism and homosexuality. (And a description of the poet Renée Vivien, including her anorexia, in what is perhaps one of the earliest accounts of that illness.) In her memoir-novel, Colette recalls her much younger self, and describes how she would wear “a mannish necktie” and walk around “looking as much as possible like a bad boy” (p.61).

Drag was not a way of life for Colette; I have not seen any photographs of her dressed in a suit after her relationship with Missy / Max ended. Missy / Max’s masculinity was a major part of her self-image, and it is likely that today, she would identify as transgender. However, for Colette, dragging up was not serious: it was playful, exciting, adventurous, sexy.

Colette suggests that, although conventional femininity was not really her, boyishness wasn’t really her either: “How timid I was, at that period when I was trying to look like a boy, and how feminine I was beneath my disguise of cropped hair” (The Pure and the Impure, p.61). As a girl, she was “famous” in her village for her incredibly long, beautiful chestnut hair. As a young woman, therefore, perhaps she was bored of being conventionally beautiful, and found androgynous beauty more interesting, more exciting. Today, we are lucky to be able to choose and change our identities daily: one day a ballgown, the next, a suit.

Colette describes the erotic pleasure she takes in watching “mannish women” in suits, admiring their “strong slender hands” and “exciting scent of [the] horses” they loved to ride, (p.65). Colette is seduced by androgynous or masculine women, rather than wanting to be one herself. Colette sums it up perfectly: “The seduction emanating from a person of unknown or dissimulated sex is powerful” (The Pure and the Impure, p.68).

Next Page »