Winnaretta Singer

Winnaretta Singer (8 January 1865-26 November 1943), Princess Edmond de Polignac, was an important musical patron, lesbian, and heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune. She was the 18th of the more than 20 children of Isaac Singer. Her mother was his second wife, Isabelle Eugenie Boyer Summerville.

Marriages and relations

Winnaretta married, at the age of 22, Prince Louis de Scey-Montbéliard. The marriage was annulled in 1892 by the Catholic church, after a wedding night that reportedly included the bride's climbing atop an armoire and threatening to kill the groom if he came near her. The marriage was unconsummated.

In 1893, at the age of 29, she stepped companionably into an equally chaste marriage with the 59 year-old gay Prince Edmond de Polignac (1843-1901), an amateur composer: he died in 1901.

From 1923 till her death her partner was the British socialite and novelist Violet Trefusis, though she had numerous lovers, some married, others not. The affronted husband of one of her married conquests once stood outside the princess's Paris house declaring, "If you are half the man I think you are, you will come out here and fight me."

Patron of arts

The princess commissioned several works of the young composers of her time, amongst others Igor Stravinsky's Renard, Erik Satie's Socrate (by her intercession Satie was kept out of jail when he was composing this work), and Francis Poulenc's Two-Piano and Organ Concertos. Her salon in St-Leu-la-Forêt was frequented, amongst others, by Marcel Proust, Jean Cocteau, Monet, Diaghilev, and Colette. Manuel de Falla's El retablo de maese Pedro was premiered there, with the harpsichord part performed by Wanda Landowska. (Kahan 2003)

She also acted as patron for many others, like Nadia Boulanger, Clara Haskil, Arthur Rubinstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Ethel Smyth, Adela Maddison, the Ballets Russes, l'Opéra de Paris, and l'Orchestre Symphonique de Paris.

The Singer relatives

She had some part in the raising of her equally famous niece Daisy Fellowes, a noted socialite, fashion plate, magazine editor, and novelist. And her brother Paris Singer was a lover of Isadora Duncan and a developer of Palm Beach, Florida.

Personal characteristics

Winnaretta de Polignac is described (amongst others by Violet Trefusis) to have few physical charms, though generally she was considered to have a formidable character. As a patron she used to keep some distance to her protégés (e.g. when a work dedicated to her was presented to her she used to sit in front on a separate fauteuil, other selected guests, often not including the composer, way behind her) - in style this was very different from the more relaxed kind of patronage exerted by individuals such as Count Etienne de Beaumont and his wife, Edith.

As a lesbian she can be considered as one of the earliest documented examples of a butch personality, preferring to dominate women with a whip, dressed in riding boots. Her sympathies towards militarist displays (like in early fascism advocated by Ezra Pound) might not surprise when seen from this angle. Eventually in the 1920s some scandal about her lesbianism was in the press, for a short time: she appeared too big for scandal to stick. It is said that this was one of the major reasons why Alice Keppel did not object her daughter to carry on a lesbian relationship with her.

Apparently aware of her impending death, Polignac summarized: "Faced by what seems to be the end of it all for an old lady like me, I proclaim that I always loved music, paintings, and books more than anything else, and I was right!"