Thelma Wood - Djuna Barnes

Djuna Barnes

Barnes and Wood began a relationship that lasted from 1921 to 1929. Barnes encouraged Wood to take up silverpoint, in which fine line images are created on paper from the residue of silver from a stylus. Wood crafted erotically charged drawings of animals, exotic plants, and fetishistic objects such as shoes.

Barnes was known for her jealousy with her lesbian lovers; Wood was known to be promiscuous with many women. The combination was an explosive one. Fueled by sex, alcohol, and marred at times by infidelities, jealousy, and violence, the relationship was called the "great love" of each of their lives. Although Barnes wanted their relationship to be monogamous, Wood regularly sought out casual sexual partners of both genders. Barnes, also, was never faithful.

Wood soon became involved in an affair with a wealthy woman named Henriette McCrea Metcalf (1888 – 1981), which effectively caused Barnes to end her relationship with Wood. When Wood moved to Greenwich Village in New York City in 1928, Metcalf followed. Wood continued to write and visit Barnes, to whom Wood still professed her love, and the two did occasionally have sexual encounters during that time, but Barnes refused to become involved with Wood on a regular basis. By 1932, Wood was more of an unofficial courtesan to Metcalf, and Metcalf supported Wood's art studies in Florence. In 1934, they moved to Sandy Hook, Connecticut. In Westport, Connecticut, Wood tried (with Metcalf's financial assistance) to run a gourmet catering business that failed. Her relationship with Metcalf was complicated by Wood continuing to seek out drinking and sexual companions of both sexes, and Wood became increasingly unfaithful.

When Nightwood, Barnes' best-known novel, was published in 1936, Wood, called "Robin Vote" in the book, was outraged and stopped speaking to Barnes completely. Wood is said to have felt misrepresented, and claimed that the publication of the book ruined her life. Barnes reportedly did not object to their no longer speaking to one another, and never made any apologies.