Nino Strachey

 

On a crisp February night in 1925, Virginia Woolf and her sister-in- law Karin threw an extravagant Bloomsbury party. Lytton Strachey and Vanessa Bell waited eagerly at 50 Gordon Square as crowds of ‘bright young people’ flooded through the doors. Strachey and Bell belonged to a different age group, but their attitudes were thoroughly modern. Lytton hovered ecstatically amidst the latest crop of Oxford graduates, invited specially to capture his attention; Vanessa spent hours talking to the bisexual sculptor Stephen Tomlin, who was besieged by admirers from every side. Writing afterwards to her friend Jacques Raverat, Virginia conjured up a perfect vision of queer contentment: young men in white tie and tails waltzing around the room in each other’s arms, while young women flirted happily with each other in corners.

The writers and artists of the Bloomsbury Group – Woolf, Strachey and Bell among them – had gained a controversial reputation before the First World War. By the 1920s they were at the height of their influence. Young people who met them in person were struck by their frank approach to life and love – it was rare to find an older group so open to new ideas, so accepting of different sexualities. Bloomsbury entertainments came in all shapes and sizes, each occasion an opportunity for departure from the mainstream. They took place in rooms designed to make a bold aesthetic statement; at 46 Gordon Square, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell painted the walls deep red, covering the doors, mantel, shutters and ceiling with sensuous decoration. Younger guests would have been left in no doubt about the different world they were stepping into.

Bloomsbury Group houses formed safe spaces for sexual expression – places where men who loved men could meet women who loved women with little threat of exposure or challenge. Gender non-conformity was to be expected, and age was never seen as a barrier. For a queer young person in the twenties, these homes provided welcome moments of life-affirming normality in a generally hostile adult world. Severe legal penalties threatened the unwary. Policemen prowled the streets around Piccadilly looking for signs of ‘gross indecency’ (lipstick, powder compacts, wide- legged trousers). But tall Bloomsbury houses had their drawing rooms on the first floor, and transgressive parties were safely out of view from the pavements below.

Twenties London was a place of confusing extremes. On one side stood the new, syncopated world of the ‘Bright Young Thing’ – treasure hunts, fancy-dress parties, jazz music and cocktails. On the other stood the old establishment: stern figures of Conservative reaction, represented most fearsomely by William Joynson-Hicks, repressive Home Secretary from 1924, who cracked down on nightclubs and indecent literature. Tabloid journals like John Bull fulminated against the apparent rise in ‘painted boys’, deploring male use of perfume and cosmetics, encouraging arrests for anything that could be interpreted as public indecency.

Men who danced with men became a clear target for police enforcement. Plain-clothes officers inveigled their way into clubs and dance halls, seizing clothing and make-up as evidence, and recording what they saw. If you were unlucky enough to have a hostile neighbour, raids could even be made on private homes. A dancer called Bobby Britt was subjected to the full force of the law when officers stormed into his basement flat at 25 Fitzroy Square, arresting everyone present. The police had been watching his home for several days, peering in through the bedroom rooflights, looking for signs of men entering the room together

A strange double standard seemed to apply. If found wandering near Piccadilly with a powder compact in his pocket, a young man could be charged with importuning for immoral purposes and sentenced to three months in prison. If invited to an expensive fancy-dress ball, you could smother yourself in makeup and expect your face to appear in the press with little adverse comment, even if you were dressed as a foreign queen or a famous female film star. The context was critical, regardless of socialbackground. Men who enhanced their features on a daily basis were to be suspected of vice, their behaviour a signifier of sexual transgression. Guests transforming themselves to fit the theme of a party were quite another matter.

Wary of backchat from expensive lawyers, the police were generally reluctant to tackle wealthy targets. Cross-dressing bright young people were as happy to be snapped by Cecil Beaton in broad daylight as they were after dark, and Bloomsbury figures began to embrace the new approach, appearing in popular magazines among writers and artists twenty years their junior. Amongst the colourful new cast of creatives were novelist Edward (‘Eddy’) Sackville-West, who wore elaborate make-up and dressed in satin and black velvet; artist Stephen Tomlin, who sculpted the heads of his male and female lovers; and author Julia Strachey, who wrote a searing tale of blighted love for the Woolfs’ Hogarth Press.

The Bloomsbury Group had always celebrated sexual equality and freedom in private, but this younger generation brought their transgressive lifestyles out into the open. This was the age of the elaborate fancy-dress party, and Bloomsbury loved nothing more than gender-blurring costume. Lytton Strachey and Duncan Grant appeared regularly on guest lists in the Evening Standard, donning elaborate outfits for events like the Nautical Party or the Circus Party. Virginia Woolf accepted almost as many invitations, merrily denouncing her hosts and fellow guests thereafter.

Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey adored gossip and sexual intrigue, lending a sympathetic ear to troubled young lovers of varying orientations. Journalist Raymond Mortimer was one of many to find contact with Bloomsbury a transformative experience. As a smart young man about town, he was soon writing pieces for the New Statesman and Vogue. Slim, dark and attractive, with a mop of curly hair, Raymond would never be Lytton’s idea of a ‘beauty’, but he cut a dashing figure. Virginia was amused by his tiger-striped sweaters and loud ties, and the curious shape of his inquisitive nose. Ever charming, he was invited everywhere, figuring as often in the social columns as he did in the review pages.

For a few brief years Raymond became what would be described today as a ‘social influencer’. Old Bloomsbury were pleased when he reviewed their work, or attended their parties, and Young Bloomsbury turned out in droves for his after-dinner gatherings. His flat in Gordon Place was helpfully located halfway between the Woolfs’ home in Tavistock Square, and the growing cohort in Gordon Square itself. His set of upper rooms became the setting for regular late-night parties. Some were mixed, but the majority were for men only – invitations were issued for after dinner, and exciting encounters were to be anticipated with an ever-changing selection of male beauties.

Every now and then Virginia would stray into one of Raymond’s evenings, and the frankness of conversation pops up in her letters and diaries. Images are passed round, relationships discussed, clothing admired. Young men would cluster around Lytton Strachey’s chair, admiring photographs of the artist Stephen Tennant, posing semi-naked in a classical tunic.

Vogue articles mentioned Raymond’s bizarre newspaper wallpaper, but they tended not to dwell on his pair of back-lit wig stands, perched on corner cupboards painted by the surrealist John Banting with naked men and the portraits of young male friends. In the adjoining room, murals by Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell showed rich red curtains being drawn back to reveal a lush garden filled with fountains, flowers and fruit. The stage was set for amorous interaction on the divan below.

By 1928, the range of queer spaces was widening even further. Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell were holding their own ‘evenings’ in Vanessa’s rooms at 37 Gordon Square. Sometimes these were small, designed for the intimate exchange of conversation. Sometimes they were much larger, incorporating whoever might be lodging upstairs and their growing cohort of younger friends. If queer male self-expression was ubiquitous in Bloomsbury, then queer women were equally likely to feel at home. Virginia and Vanessa chose female guests who would fascinate and provoke – appealing to admirers of all genders and sexualities. There was a careful mixture of the familiar and unfamiliar, the sensuous and the sensational.

27 November 1928 was a timely moment for Virginia and Vanessa to hold one of their gatherings. The obscenity trial for Radclyffe Hall’s lesbian novel, The Well of Loneliness, had started at Bow Street on 9 November. Bloomsbury had united in their support for Hall, so discussion of the outcome would have been inevitable. Woolf had to tread carefully, as her own 1928 novel, Orlando, could easily have been interpreted as a Sapphist tract. Luckily the fanciful language and time shifts were distracting enough to evade hostile attention, even though Virginia’s lover, Vita Sackville-West, was clearly identified as the hero/heroine, her images used as illustrations for the book, her name on the dedication page.

Vita’s presence at the November 1928 party would have been anticipated by all, and her views on The Well of Loneliness well known. With a distinctive appearance calculated to annoy the conservative press, Vita was used to causing a stir. In London her long limbs tended to be draped in semi-feminine attire; in the country she adopted a deliberately androgynous uniform of breeches and high, lace-topped boots. In typical swashbuckling form, she arrived at Gordon Square with a youthful ‘plus- one’ on her arm. Valerie Taylor was a popular West-End actress, best known for her role in the hit show Berkeley Square. Publicity photos from the period show her in two very different modes: swathed in heavy silks for the eighteenth-century scenes in Berkeley Square, or suited and crop- headed in jacket and tie, looking like the principal boy in a pantomime. Taylor’s boyish charms sent ripples spreading in surprising directions; even Raymond Mortimer made a heartfelt, but short-lived, declaration of love.

The Bloomsbury Group reached a high point of fame in the 1920s. Success is always alluring, but this was not the only reason why a group of forty-somethings suddenly appealed so strongly to young men and women in their twenties. There was something else, something more subtle at play. The growing numbers of young people who gathered like bees around a honey pot were not just seeking celebrity, they were seeking affection. As queer young people they were looking for a place they could be themselves, amidst adults who would accept them for who they really were. Bloomsbury writers and artists seemed to have defied conventional morality and lived to tell the tale – faith, fidelity and heterosexuality had all been rejected, but without noticeable penalty. Ahead of their time, they had established an open way of living that would not be embraced for another hundred years.