GLR July-August 2022

cial norms, and made themselves available to transport cus tomers as far as Ireland. Joe seems to have thoroughly enjoyed the adventuresome side of the business, but her need for cash came to a halt with the 1920 death of her grandmother, Nellie Bostwick. Knowing her own daughter Evelyn’s capricious ways, Nellie had already set up two separate trust funds for Joe. By 1922, they were yielding her an annual income of some $200,000—roughly 3.5 million in today’s currency. She became still richer when her mother Evelyn died in 1921. After three years of complicated litigation over the will, by 1925 Joe found herself in possession of a considerable fortune. Without pausing for breath, Joe immediately commissioned the celebrated boat-builders on the Isle of Wight to build her an up-to-the-minute, seventeen-foot hydroplane, and named her Gwen in honor of her friend and sometime lover, the cabaret star Gwen Farrar, then on the verge of fame. From 1921 to ’24, in partnership with Norah Blaney, Gwen appeared regularly at leading variety theaters. Among her standout shows were Pot Luck , with Bea Lillie; Rats , with Gertrude Lawrence; and The Punch Bowl , with Hermione Baddeley. § H ER FORTUNE legally secured by the mid-1920s, Joe closed the X-Garage, and for the next half-dozen years, she devoted her full—and formidable—energy to femmeboat racing, to the sport that perfectly combined her physical daring with her instinctive indifference to “propriety.” Between 1925 and 1931, she par ticipated in most of the prominent powerboat races and won them often enough to cover the top of a good-sized dining room table with trophies. And she did so without apology, explana tion, or self-consciousness; she simply accepted herself. The ’20s, to be sure, were a decade more tolerant of gender and sex ual nonconformity than any preceding (or several that fol lowed). Doubtless both her wealth and her manner—“this is me; take it or leave it; I couldn’t care less”—played a role in her general acceptance in a decidedly male sport. Whatever the cause, during the ’20s neither her competitors nor the press mocked her, and “society” did not call for her exclusion. In the more conservative 1930s, however, there was something of an uptick of criticism in the press of her “mannish” ways. Occasionally, too, someone—usually a stranger—would ad dress her as “sir” or “mister.” When that happened, Joe—who couldn’t have cared less about “passing”—seems to have mostly reacted with detachment, choosing to regard the remark as an innocent mistake, or accepting the fact that there will always be people who take offense at any deviation from prevailing gen der norms. What she did not do was attempt to bring her appearance into conformity with standard gender expectations. She wore her hair in a crew cut, had tattoos running up one arm, and wore mostly working-class dungarees or trousers. Her “manly,” even rakish, stride through the world—her gaze assured, her purpose commanding—was performed with apparent disregard for its effect. When in pursuit of a bed partner, she seized the initia tive, appropriating her right to take control and steer the course. However, she wasn’t possessive and didn’t demand (or possi bly want) lifetime fidelity. Her pattern in love affairs was short term and serial. Her many partners were invariably young and drop-dead gorgeous—and none of them, as far as is known,

never a little girl. I came out of the womb queer.” At age eleven, Evelyn shipped her off to boarding school. Jabez Bostwick had died in 1892, leaving most of his for tune to his widow Nellie. Joe, meanwhile, bounced from school to school and then from job to dead-end job. After the outbreak of World War I, she became an ambulance driver in France (the male drivers called her “Tommy”), and while still a teenager she shared an apartment in Montparnasse with four other young female drivers. One of them was Dolly Wilde, a niece of Oscar, with whom Joe had her first sexual experience. She sometimes tagged along with Dolly to Natalie Barney’s famous literary salon, but neither she nor the Bohemian crowd could muster up much interest in each other. Joe loved sex, but the sophisticated manners of the literary set were antithetical to her brisk, stren uous style. Much more appealing to Joe’s earthy sensibility was the taxi service she and her friends from the ambulance corps put to gether in London after the armistice. They called themselves the X-Garage, perhaps signaling their noncompliance with so Joe in her speedboat, Newg (Gwen spelled backwards) after winning the Duke of York’s International Trophy race on the Thames.

Actress Gwen Farrar, Tallulah Bankhead, and Joe.

July–August 2022

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