The Forgotten LGBT Queen of Paris and Her Secret Masonic Temple

She was the kind of woman who never belonged to anyone but herself. At least, when it came to love. But for Natalie Clifford Barney, life overflowed with colour, creativity, and passion in Paris’ Left Bank during one of city’s most romantic periods. Think of her as a lesser-known Gertrude Stein, albeit one who curated a literary salon with just as much clout for over 60 years. Under the roof of her enchanting home in the  6^th arrondissement, the likes of Colette, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, T. S Eliot, James Joyce, Rodin, Hemingway and other leading figures of the Lost Generation found not just a safe haven to be weird, but a temple for friendship. And not just any temple– a mysterious masonic temple. 

“What made No. 20 a kind of miracle on the Left Bank was its garden, a small oasis in a jungle of tightly packed streets,” wrote her friend Eyre de Lanux, “a remnant of the great 17^th and and 18^th century gardens which once stretched from the rue Jacob down to the Seine”. It contained a tiny Doric “Temple d’Amitie” (Temple of Friendship).