Book Review: Young Bloomsbury

An Experiment in Living

Young Bloomsbury by Nino Strachey  (John Murray, 2022)

Review by Mitchell Alcrim, Cambridge, Mass. 

In this richly packed book, Nino Strachey explores the lives of the generation of young people who followed what Virginia Woolf called ‘Old Bloomsbury’. By the 1920s, Bloomsbury figures such as Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, and Lytton Strachey were gaining fame and success as writers and artists. To the younger generation, though, they represented something more than celebrity and professional achievement – they were the originators of an ‘experiment in living’ worth emulating. In the years since 1904, when Virginia Stephen (later Woolf) and her three siblings moved to 46 Gordon Square after the death of their father, they and their close friends had become ‘a family of choice, [creating] ties of love that lasted a lifetime, embracing queerness, acknowledging difference, defying traditional moral codes.’ (Strachey, 4)

Young Bloomsbury, Strachey writes, ‘seems the most helpful shorthand to describe the acolytes who gathered near Gordon Square’. (10) Here they encountered a group of supportive adults who were firmly committed ‘to honest communication between the sexes, to freedom in creativity, to openness in all sexual matters.’ (4) Frances Marshall amusingly referred to herself and others of her generation as ‘young fringe-Bloomsburies’, (4) and likened the sensation of meeting the older set to ‘a lot of doors … suddenly [opening] out of a stuffy room which I had been sitting in for too long’. (4) Strachey tells us that ‘[n]early all were looking for ways to explore different sexual identities’ (8) and found amongst this circle of older people the affection and acceptance often not found in their familial homes. Surprising new friendships arose, ‘relationships [not] of dependency, but of equality, and a shared rejection of convention’. (8) 

One of the strengths of Strachey’s book is her sensitive approach to these friendships. She movingly describes the relationship between her relative Lytton Strachey and George ‘Dadie’ Rylands. A Cambridge student, Apostle and protégé of John Maynard Keynes, Dadie was known for his ‘eye-catching feminine roles’ in university theatrical productions. Indeed, he beat out fellow undergraduate Cecil Beaton for the starring role in The Duchess of Malfi, Beaton characterising Dadie’s performance as ‘like a unicorn, neither male nor female, dignified, rare’. (70) Not surprisingly, Lytton took notice of this remarkable young man; even Virginia Woolf, Strachey tells us, ‘admired Dadie ‘for his corn-coloured hair and sky-blue suits’. (69) Lytton took a paternal role, ‘listening to the vagaries of Dadie’s butterfly love life’ as he ‘flitted from casual street pickups to heartrending affairs with the sons of rural clergymen’. (70) Nino Strachey is interested in the nurturing provided by the older generation. She quotes a touching letter written by Dadie to Lytton on 26 December 1929: 

You say we shall all need each other’s support during the coming months. But I am at all seasons and in all places terribly dependent upon you for my peace of mind and way of life. I seem to become more & more so. And you must in return call upon me by day and by night when you are in need. (81)

Though twenty-two years apart in age, the two men support and care for one another in times of need. 

Virginia Woolf and Eddy Sackville-West formed a close friendship. Eddy, the cousin of Woolf’s friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West, was heir to the ancient Sackville estates. (57) Eddy was a member of the contingent of ‘queer, aristocratic’ Oxford undergraduates invited by Lady Ottoline Morrell to Garsington Manor to entertain her daughter, Julian. (56-57) Known for their extreme aestheticism and bold personal adornment, which included lipstick and heavy foundation, they became post-war press darlings. (58) The young men, according to Woolf, [tended] to be pretty and ladylike … They paint and powder, which wasn’t the style in our day’. (58) Although she at times mocked Eddy’s effeminacy, referring to him as ‘a tiny lap dog called Sackville-West … [with] a voice like a girl’s and a face like a Persian cat’s’, Woolf also appreciated and cherished ‘his odd individualities and angles’. (117)

Strachey suggests that many of Eddy’s more melancholy traits went into the creation of Orlando, the hero/heroine of Woolf’s 1928 novel. (115, 120) For a time, the pair enjoyed a lively correspondence, ‘the perfect blend of gossip and literary criticism’. (116) Eddy enjoyed discussing his own burgeoning writing career with Woolf (he published two novels in quick succession and later would be awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his 1936 biography of Thomas de Quincey), while Woolf also benefitted from the intergenerational contact declaring, ‘My theory is that at 40 one either increases the pace or slows down’. (91)

The discussion of Eddy and Virginia’s relationship does much to rectify the overly narrow view of Woolf throughout the book. Strachey writes that ‘Virginia thrived on gossip and sexual innuendo, winkling salacious details from the unsuspecting young’ (90) and for much of the book the quotations from Woolf are backbiting and catty. This gives us a distorted impression of the writer. Here, however, the picture which emerges is much more nuanced. While clearly enjoying the gossipy side of things in her friendship with Eddy (at various times, she even read his diary to help him make sense of his chaotic love life), (59) she also cherished their many serious conversations about music and literature.

Eddy’s best friend, John Strachey, chose a different path from his Oxford contemporaries. While never completely abandoning the privileged world from which he sprang, at university, John experienced ‘a sudden and bewildering loss of faith in the whole moral, religious and social ideology which [he] had inherited’ rejecting ‘the structure of repressions and taboos’ of his class. (215) Displaying an activism which Strachey states ‘remained a rarity in Bloomsbury circles’, (215) John became a committed Marxist, openly supported the General Strike of 1926, campaigned for the redistribution of wealth and was eventually elected to Parliament as a Labour MP in 1929. (76, 225, 238) Strachey sets John’s active engagement with the world around him as a counterpoint to what she describes as the more prevailing liberal ethos of Old Bloomsbury, which was ‘theoretical rather than practical’. (77) While giving due credit to Leonard Woolf and his years of serious political work (77, 216, 224), Strachey somewhat surprisingly omits mention of Clive Bell’s avowed commitment to pacifism through both world wars, brilliantly explored in Mark Hussey’s recent biography of Bell.

Many other fascinating people make appearances. Stephen Tennant is often described as the most dazzling of the ‘Bright Young Things’. Strachey writes that ‘[f]ew critics give Tennant credit for being an “artist” today; if he is considered at all, it is usually as a socialite or model’ and goes on to say that his line drawings were first exhibited when he was just 15 years old and that he subsequently attended the Slade at the age of 16. (132-133) This brief mention of his art makes the reader eager to learn more about what it meant to Tennant and how it related to contemporary art of the 1920s. Additionally, too often we see Tennant in relation to Lytton Strachey. We are told that upon meeting Tennant, Lytton wrote to a friend that Tennant and his set had ‘just a few feathers where brains should be’ (137) and that later, after Tennant experienced a rather serious bout of tuberculosis, Lytton revised his opinion and wrote that ‘[f]or the first time, I quite liked him’. (139) I would have liked to have learned more about Tennant’s longtime relationship with the poet, Siegfried Sassoon, which appears to have been far more significant than his friendship with Lytton.

Strachey never shies away from the darker aspects of her subjects’ lives, describing the painful testicular injections suffered by Eddy Sackville-West in a primitive type of ‘conversion therapy’, Stephen Tennant’s enforced stay in a psychiatric hospital under orders from his family, (12) and Stephen ‘Tommy’ Tomlin’s periods of deep self-loathing caused by the shame associated with his same-sex desires. (57) At a time when homosexuality was both illegal and treated as a mental disorder, finding a group of supportive adults was crucial to the conduct of an honest, joyful life. The younger generation really treasured the acceptance and affection they found amongst Old Bloomsbury. As she writes in her introduction, the importance of this remains relevant today:

To a twenty-first-century world still riven by homophobia, biphobia and transphobia, they provide a powerful historical example of the benefits of acceptance. (7)

Nino Strachey invites us to look at Bloomsbury and its lasting legacy in a new way. She asks us to explore the notion of legacy and its significance in the lives of future generations. In her epilogue, Strachey details the wills of many of the Bloomsbury figures, showing how often material possessions were left to members of their ‘chosen families’ rather than to biological relations. (261) Though there is perhaps too much emphasis placed on the Strachey family’s preeminence in Bloomsbury, it is understandable in the context of the book’s argument. As she explains in her introduction, Strachey is the mother of a child who identifies as queer. She writes, ‘My child and I have found much to celebrate in the world of Young Bloomsbury, and in the queer history of our own family.’ (13) In her acknowledgements, she writes that the book is for her child, Cas, ‘and for all those who push beyond the binary’. (267) 

Interestingly, Strachey ends her epilogue with a tantalising glimpse into the world of Long Crichel in Dorset, the Georgian house co-owned by Eddy Sackville-West and three friends, (themselves the subjects of a recently published book by Simon Fenwick) – another ‘experiment in living’, another attempt at leading truthful, open, productive lives, a legacy which began decades earlier at 46 Gordon Square.