 Hello and welcome. I'm Laura Shepherd, Director of Events here at the Mechanics Institute in San Francisco. Thank you for joining us for our online program, Young Bloomsbury, the generation that redefined love, freedom and self expression. In 1920s England, with author Nino Stracci in conversation with San Francisco State University Professor Loretta Steck. We are very proud to cosponsor this event with the Fromm Institute for lifelong learning. If you're new to the Mechanics Institute, we were founded in 1854 and we're one of San Francisco's most vital literary and cultural centers in the heart of the city. We feature our General Interest Library, an international chess club, an ongoing author and literary programs, and on Friday night, our Cinema Lit Film Series. So please see our website, milibrary.org, to see all of our events and offerings. So if you're here in San Francisco, please join us for free tours of our beautiful Beaux Arts building and library and chess room on Wednesdays at noon. Our program today will be followed by a Q&A with you, our audience, and we will ask you to put your questions in the Q&A or the chat. Please purchase a book through your nearest independent bookstore. Keep the bookstores alive. This is an incredible book. Of course, we know so much about Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster and Lytton Stracci, but today we'll have a window on the next generation of writers and artists, and also of the political and social climate of London and England during this time, and how both the younger and the older generation of artists influenced each other. I'm very pleased to welcome our two guests. Nino Stracci is the last member of the Stracci family to have grown up in Sutton Court in Somerset, home of the for the family for more than 300 years. After studying at Oxford University and Corthold Institute, Nino worked as a curator for the National Trust and English Heritage. She is also the author of Rooms of Their Own, and she lives in West London with her family. And Loretta Stack is professor in the English department of San Francisco State University, where she teaches courses on modernist literature with a focus on women writers, animal studies and literature, Southern African literature in English, and literature of exile and migration. One of her favorite courses to teach is an intensive study of Virginia Woolf's works. She has published articles on Woolf, Gertrude Stein, Juna Barnes, D.H. Lawrence, Bessie Head, and other 20th century writers. So I'm so pleased to welcome our very special honored guests, and I will turn this program over to Professor Stack to introduce the program. Well, thank you so much for that lovely introduction and welcome to everyone. I am very honored to be here to speak with Nino Stracci about her wonderful book. I would like to say just a few words about Old Bloomsbury before we get to Young Bloomsbury in a moment, just to sort of remind us of the history behind the history. And in thinking about how Bloomsbury came to be known as Bloomsbury, I almost always think about a passage in Virginia Woolf's diary that she wrote in 1928, where she was reflecting on her father Leslie Stephen. Her father Leslie Stephen had died in 1904, and in 1928 she was writing in her diary on the, on his birthday on the day that would have been his, his birthday. And she writes that he might have lived many more years than he did, but mercifully, he did not. And this is a, this is a quotation from that entry. She says, his life would have entirely ended mine, what would have happened, no writing, no books inconceivable. Now that may seem like a bit of a harsh judgment on the part of a daughter thinking about her father's passing. But I think that what is enmeshed in that comment is the sense that her father's death allowed for many changes in the Stephen family. And his passing was in some sense symbolic of the passing of the Victorian era, and the Victorian era really needed to make way for the new changes of the 20th century, and the radical experimentation that the contemporary group, including his children, helped to create. So when Leslie Stephen passed in 1904, Virginia will sister Vanessa packed up the old dark claustrophobic claustrophobic family house in Hyde Park gate. She moved with her siblings to 46 Gordon Square in the Bloomsbury neighborhood of London. And it was here that the Stephen children's began to host their Thursday evenings, where intellectual conversation took place among many guests many types of guests, but many of the, the core members of those conversations had been friends at university. And in a reflection about that era, Virginia Wolf writes, we were full of experiments and reforms. We were going to do without table napkins, we were going to paint to write to have coffee after dinner instead of tea, everything was going to be new, everything was going to be different, everything was on trial. And that everything, of course included sexual relationships, gender identities, as well as artistic and aesthetic experiments. Bloomsbury evolved over the years in different directions, but those core values of creativity, philosophical discussion and sexual experimentation really persisted through through the decades. And just to list a few of the members who would be considered kind of core Bloomsbury group members. Here they are. Virginia Wolf, of course, the writers, Virginia Wolf, Lytton, straight G and E. M. Forster, the political thinker and writer Leonard Wolf, the visual artists Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington, the economist Maynard Keynes, the art critics Clive Bell and Roger Fry. And there were many others who were more loosely associated with that core group of friends. So I'm so delighted to be here to speak with Nino about her book about the next generation about the younger group that found a kind of elective family a kind of home with this older generation of Bloomsbury figures. So Nino I'd like to ask you to just talk with us a little bit about how your family was connected to the Bloomsbury group and how you came to this project about the younger generation. Hey, so well thank you very much Loretta for that wonderful introduction to that the world of old Bloomsbury. And I think it's fair to say that I had always grown up knowing that my family the straight G family were intimately associated with Bloomsbury. And at one point I think it was fair to say that there were more straight she is resident in Bloomsbury than any other family amidst the Bloomsbury group. Because at one point in Gordon Square, you had Lytton straight she his mother and two sisters, number 51, you had his brother Oliver and his daughter Julia at number 42, and you had his brother James straight she who was the first English translator of Freud, and his wife Alex straight she living at number 41 so you had like a row of straight she's in the core row in Bloomsbury. And so they were really dominant presence. So, again, it's fair to say I knew about that history, I knew about the history of writing and involvement in psychoanalysis and involved with also the female members campaigning for women suffrage. Although I'd worked as a curator and researcher for the National Trust and English Heritage you'd be fair to say I hadn't done any personal research into straight she's and Bloomsbury until the mid 2000s. And then one day one of my colleagues rang me up to say that they'd found a box of straight she papers at no in Kent. Eddie Sackville was the childhood home of Vita Sackville West, the inspiration for Wolf's Orlando, and also of her first cousin the air tunnel Eddie Sackville West. I mean, I simply hadn't known that Eddie Sackville West had lived in London with my cousin John straight she in the 1920s. And the two of them they were born around 1900. So they were 20 years younger than the older the pre war generation of Bloomsbury. In the 1920s, they had formed close and intimate relationships with those in John's case older relations in Eddie case Eddie's case older friends. And when they've moved out of their flat in London in 1926 they had simply pushed all the papers into a box, and nobody had really looked at it since then and it was not just papers there were objects there was even a patent chest under that Eddie had used to stretch his muscles. And so there were letters, there were plays they were both wanting to be great writers so they've been sending off articles to magazines, mostly being turned down. They've written plays all this stuff and it suddenly were catapulted into the world of Bloomsbury in the twenties. And then was a world I didn't know much about and I looked in and what was revealed in these letters was extraordinary sense of of candor about relationships, queer and straight about conversations regarding gender conversations regarding literature, art, everything, and it was such a wonderful source that led me into writing my first book rooms of their own looking at the interiors created by Eddie by Virginia and by Vita. There was much more to be said, because there was a much broader canvas, and that is what I've been writing about in young Bloomsbury and I think it'd be fair to say that I began the research looking thinking about the the probably the literary and artistic influence of this on the older so very much thinking of that cultural influence. But as I went more in depth into the research, I look much more at the social influence and this incredible beneficial relationship of old Bloomsbury, who we would describe today as a family of a choice or chosen family a group of queer friends and allies who had come together through choice. And now they were nurturing a new generation of queer young creatives who were experimenting both with sexual and gender identities, and helping them to be the people they wanted to be the be the writers and artists and performers that they wanted to be. So it's quite a difficult time in the UK we probably think of the 20s, you know the jazz age we am thinking about night clubs and fancy dress and dancing, but in the UK, the mid 20s, there was a very repressive conservative government in place with a home secretary who was cracking down on what he described as public indecency he didn't like nightclubs he didn't like this new mood of you know freedom and dancing so it was a period of actually strangely constrictive political feelings. And so here were a lucky group of queer young creative people who found a group of supportive adults to help them develop. And some of the people include the sculptor Stephen Tomlin who carved the long standing images of Virginia Wolf of living straight sheet of Duncan Grant. And you have artists like Stephen Tennant, who worked with little beaten to create some of the most iconic images of the 20s, and many of which were uniquely expressive of trans and non binary identities. And you have writers like Julia straight she who was very much supported by Virginia Wolf and Rocha for weather for the weddings I hope that gives a little bit about why I wrote the book and some of the areas it covers. Wonderful, thank you. We are now in a moment of backlash in this country. We have in Florida, the, the don't say gay bill. We have anti trans legislation across the nation. We have a long story hour being attacked in various libraries. So, I wondered if you wanted to say more about how you feel telling this story of the young Bloomsbury generation is important now I think it's very important and I'm very delighted that this book is arriving in the United States now, but could you speak a little bit about what your aspirations are for the kind of impact it might have in this moment. I think what was wonderful for me about the book was the opportunity to celebrate the value of acceptance. Here was a group of people of admired writers and artists who were uniquely supportive in every way they believed that people had the right to live and love in the way they chose and this is over 100 years ago, and surely we can learn by example. I think it was just it's so well it was so empowering for me to read about the way that they were opened as I said every form of sexuality every form of gender expression and also to read about the way they described it I mean Virginia Wolf of course is is uniquely productive she gives amazing descriptions of a party for example she co-hosted in 1925 where she had deliberately invited a group of young men from Oxford University to entertain little straight she and how he went booming and humming from flower to flower. And how she'd invited Stephen Tomlin the sculptor bisexual and how he had approaches from every person there more or less and sat for hours on the sofa talking to her sister Vanessa Bell. And then when the music began Virginia invited everyone to come in in white tie and tails. It was a, you know, smart party. And she says that all the young men began waltzing around the room in each other's arms, and all the young women sat flirting with each other in corners. And it's just such a lovely vision of queer contentment. And I love the way that Virginia played such a nurturing and motherly role to this, this group of queer young people, nurturing their artistic endeavors so she employed young women at the Hogarth Press. She sponsored their works, and she was inspired by them. And so for example, Eddie sat for West feet as young cousin. She encouraged his writing. She supported him in discussing his relationship she even asked him to bring his diary around her so they could read it together. She helped him work through these relationships and little straight she played an equally supported role again for a whole wide group of young men and women entertaining with his home at handspray, encouraging them to carry out performances which are different types of gender expression. And it's, it's just, it feels like we can, we can learn so much from the generation that has gone before and it was particularly lovely for me I think as as a mother of a child to identify as queer and gender fluid to be able to think about the positive queer role models with our own family, not just thinking of little but also his sister Dorothy straight she wrote the lesbian novel Olivia by Olivia and James and his wife added Alex who had an inclusive polyamorous relationship, embracing different genders so again, great role models great examples great historical examples of a positive relationships 100 years ago something to celebrate today. I completely agree thank you so much for that I do think that the specificity of your, your study here gives us it just grounds the idea that gender identity and sexuality have been flexible across history. That was one particularly important moment of flourishing. And so that's a wonderful part of what the book offers to our moment. I'd like to ask a little more about the writing of the book and particularly the genre. Bloomsbury is very much known for its innovations in biographical writing with Lytton straight she's eminent Victorians, a kind of satirical writing about famous people, and his other works as well. Wolf of course subtitles Orlando a biography. So part of the intellectual work of Bloomsbury was rethinking biography and I feel like you're doing something. Now that's in the that's continuing that tradition that's really drawing a biographical portrait of a collective of these two generations and that's not easy to do. I wondered if you could talk a little bit about genre and about writing this kind of collective biography, which is a kind of tough, tough decision to make. Well, I have to say it was incredibly daunting to follow in the footsteps of little Virginia as you say who both in their very individual ways were pioneering in the way they approached biography whether it's in Lytton's case almost getting into this mode of bio fiction, essentially so, although he was rooted in historical examples he was essentially fictionalizing their lives whereas Virginia with Orlando was I mean it is fictional it's fictionalist biography it's incredible media in its own right. I think what gave me comfort through this process and through the research process was being able to learn more about Lytton and Virginia themselves and in the way that their dynamic of their relationship and how that played through both into their own work. In the way they had this equally nurturing relationship with this new young group of writers and artists because in a sense, and you couldn't kind of see it on the cover of the book really you have Virginia and Lytton as these two linking characters throughout and it's through their relationship and their relationship with others that helps to give a narrative frame to the book. You know, lovely that the playful way that they as writers teased each other and had this kind of mock rivalry going on, because Virginia was jealous of Lytton's sales figures, whereas Lytton was jealous of Virginia's critical response. And it was both were equally stimulated by their contact with the younger generation, and that plays through into their work and so there's a rolling theme through the book of how that plays out and so with Virginia. I mean the obvious example is Orlando, because although the book was was triggered, it was so it was inspired by her love of Vita, actually the idea was sparked by the premature death of Lytton straight she's young lover Philip Richie. And it was in response to the tragedy of that early death the young man in his twenties that she thought that she should write the lives of her friends during their lifetimes and create a story centered on a young person who essentially live forever and remained forever young. And then within that character you have somebody who is obviously an Orlando has aspects of Vita, but equally has aspects of Vita's first cousin Eddie. And you have this blending of two people into one into a character that lives for hundreds of years and changes their gender over time. And you have Vita who had a very masculine expression like to dress in in breaches and boots and has an alter egos Julian and Eddie who had a very feminine expression and like to wear tapeter and satin and eye shadow and makeup and jewelry, and how every now and then when you're seeing Orlando you see pot Eddie pot Vita and it sort of flows in and out. And then for Lytton, exploring his relationship with the young Oxford graduate Roger Stenhouse and seeing how that relationship plays through in his Elizabeth and Essex and that relationship of an older queen and a much younger lover. And the sheer joy of his relationship with Roger which he said made him feel like having doing cartwheels over the downs, which he said. And one of my favorite photographs in the book is from Lytton's albums which preserved at the King's College Cambridge. There are images of him sitting beside Roger at Hamspray and there's a beautiful one obviously taken by Lytton, where Roger is garlanded in lilies all around his head and lilies at his breast and you just have such a look of love in his face. And it starts to think of the way that Lytton helped to inspire Roger to change his life. So his family wanted him to work in the city but thanks to that Bloomsbury influence, Roger went on to be a founding publisher of Sakura Moorburg, and to translate French almost like Colette so again you have this, the structure was able to interrelate the lives and works of old and young. And hopefully to weave a story and I have to thank my American editor in particular who challenged me throughout to not just simply be listing categories and names and activities but to be making sure there was that narrative through. Yeah, like I think you you achieved it beautifully. And I like the way you're describing that these two figures helped to coalesce all of these different younger folks and party goers. And for those of you who haven't read the book you'll you'll get to go to a lot of wonderful parties in the book. And I also found that that revelation that wolf was inspired to write Orlando out of her grief for Philip Ritchie to be very moving and very illuminating, and I haven't read that before so thank you for that insight into into the inspiration. And even if it was a sad one. Another another very sad thing in the book was to learn that Eddie Sackville West and several of the other figures in the younger generation wound up undergoing treatment or conversion therapy in Germany. Both psychological treatment and some physical, you know, quasi medical treatment to convert them away from homosexuality. I was quite surprised at that and I got the sense from the paragraphs that you write in the book that that this had something to do with sexual influence but I'd love to hear more about why you think these young men felt the need to go do that, despite the fact that they had found this wonderful family and this wonderful supportive community for their, for their sexuality and life choices. And it's extraordinary. There's a very sad passage in which little straight she writes how he's, you know, sitting on the lawns at Garsington Manor Lady Otterling Morrell's house. And nearly all the young men that he's looking at have come back just come back from Germany from their conversion therapy. Almost, you know, almost more creepily than that. Most of them have been introduced to Dr Martin who ran the conversion therapy treatment in Germany by Lady Otterling. And he had actually invited him to Garsington and you can see photographs of him on the same lawn. His treatment center was extremely expensive. So my assumption is that their families must have paid for them to go they were this was mostly in the summer after they'd left Oxford. They'd all gone there together and reading Eddie's diary accounts of the treatment is absolutely harrying because he received several hours of what he called persuasive therapy every day which was intensive therapy to persuade you against sexuality. There were awful painful protein injections into his groin, which he said were agonizing. And he worried that he would never be able to write again and this is the person who'd written his first novel while still a student. And he worried that he would never be able to write again. I thank goodness that effect wasn't there. And I think actually being able to have, you know, in Virginia Wolf and the Nitin Strait she people for whom these group of young men could talk to after they'd had their therapy, hopefully help them come out of it. And it draws some comparisons between what appears to have been the approach they were receiving from their biological families and the support they received from their chosen family and what a difference that made. It's quite an upsetting story and it leads me to other thoughts about the private and the public in the Bloomsbury world. I mean here were all of these parties all of these friendships relationships diaries pieces of writing some of which were published some of which could be published. And yet, publicly, for example Vita Sacramento West and her husband Harold Nicholson went on to the BBC radio in 1929, and did a show about marriage and presented their own marriage as if it was a kind of model of sexual respectability. So publicly, there was no sense that they, they both had lovers they had many lovers of many sexes, and they didn't reveal that and they had the privilege to have a private life that was that was out of the public guy. So I've been thinking about that about this distinction between the private community of Bloomsbury and the public world that they moved in, and wondering where the role of advocacy comes in, right, if at all. And so I have a little bit of information that some of the Bloomsbury group members supported the World League for sexual reform, which was an organization started in Germany and they had an international conference in 1929 in London. So they tried the donations, right behind the scenes, did, did the Bloomsbury group go out there in public and advocate for changes to attitudes towards sexuality. I think the most obvious example is the way that Bloomsbury as a whole really stood behind the writer Radcliffe Hall, when her book The Well of Loneliness was prosecuted for obscenity. And so not only did most Bloomsbury writers sign public letters of support for Radcliffe Hall. Several came forward to act as witnesses, if they were wanted, if she wanted during the trial. And certainly, Vita in Virginia attended the trial and then held a gathering afterwards to discuss the results of the trial. So that was probably the most public example of Bloomsbury coming together and saying, you know, this, this is an appropriate way of sharing openly and honestly in that case about lesbian relationships. But you could say maybe that was the easier of the two options because obviously at that point, same sex relationships between women were not illegal in the UK. But same sex relationship between men obviously were. And this was an era when you could be prosecuted if you were found wandering in the street with a powder compact in your pocket. A young man was sentenced to three months hard labor for the crime of having a powder cop in your property. Wide leg trousers were also suspicious. And any sign of obviously makeup or anything on your face and the police were prowling the streets at the request of the Home Secretary looking for signs of sexual depravity. And there was an unfortunate young dancer called Bobby Britt, who was arrested in Fitzroy Square. He had the bad luck to live in a basement flat. So the police could peer down through his windows and they could see men dancing with men. And I think one of the reasons why most of Bloomsbury weren't arrested. You know, thinking of Virginia Woolf's party with all the young men dancing with men is just a strange fact of architectural geography. If you think of those tall white houses in Bloomsbury, most of the large drawing rooms were on the first floor. So the parties were all taking place out of sight of the police on the street. Because if they had been within sight, I think we would have seen a host of arrests. Wow. Well, thank you for that specificity that gives us a sense of private in the public. So thank you for that. Let's shift gears a little bit and think a little bit more about artistic influence, if you would, if that's of interest to you. I'm interested in how not only the older generation helped to mentor and help develop the younger generation but whether there's instances of artistic influence in both directions. Absolutely. And I think one of the most striking ways that young Bloomsbury influenced older Bloomsbury was introducing this group of writers and artists who, although they had been known before the First World War, they didn't actually reach a broad audience, both in England and America until after the First World War until the 20s. And here they were what they did they interacted with this group of younger writers and artists who were familiar with all the new types of a media that were available in the 20s. And we're thinking here of all the journals like Vogue that were available of opportunities like gossip columns, broadcasting on the radio. And I'm thinking in particular of a young journalist called Raymond Mortimer, who came to the fore in the 20s he probably what we would describe as today as a social influencer. He was working for Vogue, he met Clive Bell, Clive Bell brought him along to an evening at Bloomsbury I think it was in 1919, and he was completely overwhelmed by meeting this group of older artists and writers and he said to them, please, can you, can you write for Vogue? I will write about you. And he did he wrote wonderful articles on Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant's work on Virginia on Lytton, he said I'll write about you can you write for me. And it was this point that Virginia began describing scraping guineas off the Vogue counter, because she was paying such high fees for Vogue articles, and how she ended up being photographed by the in-house Vogue photographer next to a fashion shoot. And these were sort of new departures reaching new audiences and Clive Bell in particular was delightedly then accepting invitations from all Raymond's young friends because you knew, as a writer or an artist, if you were invited, just as you would be today to high society parties, you would then feature in all the press articles that followed thereafter. And lo and behold, there was an absolute snowball of publicity with beneficial results for everybody across Bloomsbury. So I suppose that's sort of, you know, thinking about exploiting new techniques but if you're thinking about that, you know, young, old benefit both ways. I think there's a couple of artistic examples, one of which is the sculptor Stephen Tomlin. He was very much sponsored by little straight she who employed him more or less as his in-house sculptor at Amsbury carvings and things. And Tommy, he was trained by sculptor called Dobson, he produced abstract figures in the style of Gadier Brushka but what he's most well known today is the extraordinary portrait heads that he produced of Virginia Woolf of Duncan Grant and little straight she and Wolf's image is probably the most commonly used image of Wolf internationally today. And so you have this sort of symbiotic relationship whereby here as a young artist producing images of an older generation. And that helps him progress his career, but it also goes the other way and thinking particularly of little straight she the image he produced of straight she in 1930 was then the first image of straight she to be pretended to take gallery after straight she's death. And as straight she's reputation began to fade. There was his image on public display in a national collection, and therefore the two things had gone round. And then also it's important to think about the influence of the young artist Stephen Tennant, who partnered with the photographer Cecil Beaton to produce some of the most iconic images of the mid 20s. And one of those images are used on the cover of the UK edition of the Young Bloomsbury and it's sort of probably one of my all time favorite pictures. It's written by Cecil Beaton on the morning of the 17th of October 1927. And Stephen Tennant has assembled a group of young people in costumes. And it's impossible to tell whether they're men or women, you don't know what gender anybody is they all dressed exactly the same. And that that afternoon he went over to see little straight she said, I've just had a visit from Tennant extraordinary young man he has a few feathers where brains should be. Last night they dressed up as nuns this morning as shepherds and shepherdesses tomorrow, God knows what. These were images Cecil Beaton's images were ubiquitous they used in the press everywhere they used in vogue they've used in newspapers. And here was a group of young people who were not afraid to express their identity in daylight. If you think Bloomsbury had had all these parties experimenting with different ways of dressing and performing but that was after dark. This generation of doing it in daylight they were being photographed, and they were being published in the press, and that again is that sort of the two way nature of the relationship and the creative passage between the two generations. That's a beautiful description of how they supported each other and how the new media really helped, you know, further everyone's career. So, interested in in the book, and how in the way that it highlights the Hogarth press which you've already mentioned briefly, but maybe there's more to say there about that but also the bookstore Burrell and Garnett, which I didn't know much about until this book, and it seems like that was such a focal point for bringing people into the Bloomsbury group group and helping to further, you know, the aesthetic principles that they believed in and that they wanted to develop so if you'd like to speak a little bit to the bookstore in the press. That would be lovely. I wish I had had a bookstore like Burrell and Garnett to go to. This was founded by Bunny Garnett, who was a lover of Duncan Grant, and just about everybody you can think of in Bloomsbury eventually marrying Grant and Vanessa Bell's daughter Angelica, but in the 20s he opened a bookshop just up the road from Gordon Square just in the in the road that runs off the corner Taberton Street. And so it was uniquely positioned for everybody in Bloomsbury to drop in and he deliberately stocked everything that Bloomsbury writers and artists might want to buy. So he had 18th century titles for Lytton. He would have translations of Russian authors, he would have art books, and he obviously he stocked all the Hogarth Press books. He stocked Carrington's paintings so that you could buy both books and images and he had omega workshop tables on which the books were laid out, and sofas strewn around the room to sit so if you went in one day you know you might well find Lytton or Virginia or Forster or anybody there chatting, and you might well be invited to a party after the book the store notionally closed in the evening and it was at those parties that many members of Young Bloomsbury met Old Bloomsbury because it was an opportunity to interact and for me it just sounds the most appealing place and somewhere I'd love to have hung out. I agree. Can we start a bookstore like that? That would be fantastic. Yeah. So it was really lovely to hear about about that bookstore. And some of the figures who wandered through the bookstore were Americans. And if we could speak a little bit about the cross Atlantic connections, and particularly I was noticing how your book opens with a party thrown by two American socialites that includes African American musicians. So maybe we could talk a little bit about influences from African Americans on Bloomsbury or modernism, and possibly the other way as well. Absolutely. Now, I mean, you know, it was entirely thanks to the bookshop, Birle and Garnet, that the American artist who's that I think the daughter of a Boston department store owner Mina Kirsten met Bunny Garnet and through Bunny, all the members of the Bloomsbury Mina had come to London. In the 20s she had been a professor at Smith, and she brought with her her student Henrietta Bingham, who was a Kentucky press heiress, and the two of them they were in love, and they came to England in order on the pretext of a break from Smith, but they were sharing a home in London. And they were both receiving psychoanalysis, Freudian psychoanalysis which was encouraging them to explore different relationships and relationships with men, as well as with women. And by meeting Bunny Garnet, certainly Mina that, but thinking of this two way relationship what Henrietta and Mina were bringing to London was absolutely a cutting edge of understanding how jazz music was developing in the States, and it was really a knowledge of African American performers. And this was the year in which Dover Street to Dixie was being performed in London. And so you had the African American dancer Florence Mills known as the Queen of Happiness, and the blues singer Edith Wilson. The book opens with an after show party that Henrietta and Mina threw in which they invited all the members of old Bloomsbury, but also the cast from Dover Street to Dixie. They performed for and with everybody. And so you had this really dynamic introduction of the older generation of Bloomsbury writers and artists to this, you know, absolutely of the moment, African American music. And you see that enthusiasm, you know, running through the group and you have Henrietta performing African American spirituals at Bunny Garnet 30th birthday party. You have jazz being played at those Bloomsbury evenings. You have those themes going through into the new nightclubs in London 20s. And you have Virginia Woolf and Duncan Grant signing up as founder members of the Gargoyle nightclub, which you might might not necessarily think of Virginia being a nightclub. I'm not sure how often she went after dark. She's certainly been there for lunch a lot, because it was the most amazing place it was founded by Stephen Tennant's brother, David, and it was a converted printworks. And you took a sort of rickety metal lift up the outside and emerged right at the top of the building and then you walked down a spiral stand, the deep blue dance floor which had twinkling nights lights like the night sky. And it goes through the dance floor to the dining room which was entirely lined with gold mirrors on the advice of the artist Matisse, and there were two huge pictures by Matisse, hanging in the club, one of which is now in the Museum of modern art from New York and again, I'd love to have been there dancing to jazz music with Duncan, didn't even the 20s, amazing place to be. You describe it well and it does sound like an idyllic place, and I did chuckle when I read that Virginia went with Duncan Grant often for lunch, rather than during the evening hours. And mentioning Matisse that brings us to Paris and a kind of wider cosmopolitan artistic community so would you like to speak a little bit about those those connections. Yeah, one of the discoveries of the research for the book I mentioned right at the beginning. It was my relation john straight she who had shared a flat with Eddie sack for Western the 20s. And john was an East seat and a writer who's favorite thing was sipping crème de mothe while wearing a red brocade just in gun and had chocolate cake for breakfast and other things. But to America to lecture in 1928, taking advantage of looking straight she just published Elizabeth Nessex, and so there was lots of popularity for that and john straight she was invite invited to lecture. And while he was in New York, he met Esther Murphy, and he proposed to Esther Murphy which was surprising, and even more surprisingly she accepted him so Esther was an heiress. She was a cross leather goods tree, but more interestingly she was had lived for several years in Paris. She was bisexual previously most of her relationships have been with women. Natalie Barney's literary salon in Paris, and she was friends with that great lost generation of American artists, particularly a close friend of Scotland's elder Fitzgerald, and she introduced Fitzgerald to her brother Gerald Murphy, who then moved to France and lived on the island as the inspiration for Dick Diver and tender is the night. And so through john's relationship with Esther, and their marriage in 1929 you get this wonderful collect connection directly between Bloomsbury, and the Barney salon in Paris, and also Fitzgerald on the island. And I think my kind of most exciting moment was when I, I knew that when Esther and john straight she had their honeymoon in August 1929 they'd spent it at the Villa America at Captain T, which was the home of Gerald Sarah Murphy. Fitzgerald had been just down the coast at the time and I thought, did they meet well they're on honeymoon I'd love to know. So I read his ledger, and sure enough he talks about seeing Murphy's and straight she's that week. So yes, absolutely. Now you got direct connection Bloomsbury Fitzgerald. Um, wonderful. Um, I just love to think about Bloomsbury as connected to this wider world in Paris and the United States in Berlin, as a kind of as you put it at one point in the book a queer and creative counterculture. And so that's what this book is about it's it's very exciting. It sounds like we're ready to do the question and answer. And if we have any time at the very end, I would love to hear about your new project, you know, but let's hear some questions and answers, before we go there. First of all, I'd like to just thank Loretta and Nina for a wonderful discussion, very inspiring but I'd like to also segue off of the expats and in in Paris and the whole connection between London and Paris to talk about a matter of style and genre. I want to know more specifically about the younger and the older generation in terms of style of writing and how they influenced each other or not. And then of course 1922 James Joyce's Ulysses is published by Shakespeare and company by Sylvia beach. And I'm wondering if Joyce's writing and also Gertrude Stein's experimental writings of that time had any influence on either older or younger during this period. I'm thinking in terms of literary influences, and those sort of relationship, the most obvious example is the work of Julia straight she, and in particular the way that Virginia Wolf, absolutely encouraged Julia who was Lytton's niece to write. And at that point Julia was living in the heart of Bloomsbury and Gordon Square number 42. She's another person who's 20 in the 20s and she talks about coming out of the house every day while she was going off to do something frivolous like by a hat. And she'd go slap bang into Virginia Wolf, it would immediately start quizzing her about you know how was she writing how was she getting on. And Virginia's persistence paid off because even though Julia was, as Virginia described a typical straight she and slippery as an eel. She had a prize, a finished manuscript out of her, and she published it in 1932 through the Hogarth Press with a cover painted by Duncan Grant, and the book was called cheerful weather for the wedding. Really, in a way it's a deceptive book, because you think you imagine it's going to be a happy tale but it's on with actual black sadness at its heart, because she talks about a bride preparing for her wedding, getting drunk and drunk and then she spills ink on her wedding dress and you know something is badly wrong you gradually discover that the bride had been pregnant with twins the previous year which she'd given birth to and given away. And the lover and father of her twins turns up at the wedding but does nothing to stop her marrying the other man and you know she's heading off into this bleak future having abandoned her baby so it's a tragedy and a comedy at the same time. And Wolf admired it, the critics admired it and so I felt you know there you had this great supportive relationship between an older younger writer with a successful results. I'm proud of her telling that story I've lost the thread of the question. Also, any influences between Shakespeare and company Sylvia Beach and James Joyce's Ulysses. Yeah, I mean I think that's inevitably was running through Brunsby and endlessly discussed but Loretta would probably be better placed to answer the detail of the influence on Wolf or not. Very much. But I think it'd be fair to say I couldn't cite direct examples of younger Bloomsbury. I'm not sure that they were fully tuned in but older Bloomsbury absolutely. Okay, I'm going to just start with the questions from chat I'm just going to begin with one and it is said but it's less about art is about it's a little concrete in 1930s from Ralph Samuel. And he says in 1939, I was evacuated to Guilford, and was one of the eight evacuees taken in by Mrs. Strati in her home, Harrow Hills Cops at Newland Corner. Did you ever meet Miss Strati. Have you ever thought of writing about Strati family. Thank you, Ralph Samuel. That's amazing news. What a great story I hope I can be connected afterwards yeah no sadly, I never knew Amy, or Lytton called her Oriental Amy which was a bit mean, I think, like I said, she is John Strati's mother. John Strati's dad, Johnson Lou Strati owned the spectator magazine. And he employed almost every member of the Strati family including Lytton to write articles for the spectator. And they live near Guilford, and had initially a house that was also filled with with Strati artwork. And I'd love to hear more about that direct experience. That sounds amazing. The next question is from M. The Bloomsbury set were cushioned, Maxine. The Bloomsbury set were cushioned by their wealth, which meant they experimented with lifestyle politics, but how progressive were they politically living through those years before and through the depression in the UK. Probably the most overt expression of their progressive political views would be in their pacifism, where they absolutely put themselves on the line before the first world, during the first world war as conscientious objectors and in campaigning for pacifist shoes throughout their lives. In the case of women's suffrage, massive support amongst the female members of Bloomsbury, particularly the stretching sisters, but also ray stretching, who wrote, you know, very important biography so I think those are probably ways that yes they were expressing their progressive political views. And yeah, class privilege might have helped some people. If policemen were thinking that they might be faced with expensive barristers rather than being making an easy arrest, but I think if any members of Bloomsbury had been caught in the or exposed in the way that Bobby Britt was they would have been arrested, absolutely. I don't think any protection that there was would have been limited. I will add that Leonard Wolf was very involved in labor politics, wrote a lot of anti imperialist work. So he was, he was certainly involved in leftist politics. And of course, I'm talking about the old in the young generation, john's loose. I mean john straight she was a member of the Labor Party. He was a marked committed Marxist. He became a minister in the post war labor government. So certainly that younger generation, very much progressive. I just want to ask do a follow up question because your response about the suffragism did you see the female members of Bloomsbury were supporters for any how did the male members of Bloomsbury feel about female women getting getting the right to the. So my, my clock is busy striking. And I think that they could be said across the board to be supportive. I think one of the things that members of young Bloomsbury commented on, looking back at their interaction with old Bloomsbury is how uncommon it was even in the for men and women to be meeting together on equal terms, unshaperoned, because this was a period, you know, even when Dora Carrington when she first got together with Lytton straight she her parents were expecting her to be shaperoned in male company. So you have a group of men and women who were meeting without older supervision and debating with each other on equal terms, regarding whether it was literature, art, politics, sexuality, philosophy, and talking openly about all those topics because again, normally in you were divided on gender terms as to what it was thought to be acceptable to talk about and in Bloomsbury young or older absolutely no boundaries. So you had this this wonderful sense of equality of encouragement of opportunity. And, you know exemplified in old and young male and female. I have a couple of questions from Nick. You discussed perhaps the interplay of queer gender experimentation and artistic experimentation, and the journal stuff about meeting the Murphy's etc was interesting. Where do you do the archive primary source research the book stuff you found that was cool but didn't get into the book. Okay, well, I was really spoiled with my archival sources. Because only was I looking at a lot of material that was still in family possession that is both within the straight she family and with other Bloomsbury families, but also at the wealth of material that is deposited in public archives. And often it was in the, the interplay between those two things between the personal material that was still available in private hands from undiscovered material like the material at no, and then matching that with the publicly available. And, oh, I'm sorry, the first part of the question, can you remind me because I went straight into the archives. It was, can you discuss perhaps the interplay of queer gender experimentation and artistic experimentation. Yeah, well I think you, you see this throughout particularly on the I'm thinking of the work of Stephen Tomlin and also Stephen tenants in the exploration of gender identities absolutely overtly in tenants work with beaten. But also it with Stephen Tomlin and his commissions from Lytton straight she which often explore sexual themes so for example one of Lytton's commissions was gosh now I'm going to forget the name it's, it's the two giants Pantagorel and the other one from the interplay, where the giant is wiping his bottom with a goose's neck. And that which is one of the things, but also this exploration of themes that Duncan Grant particularly follows as well of hermaphrodites. Lytton for example had hermaphrodite figures in his bedroom. And one of the active things discussed in the lepers preserved by john and Eddie is this discussion of the meaning of hermaphrodite and how you can get you know what it means to be between gender or mixed genders. I have a question from Laura Davis. I have always admired Lytton as wonderful wit, I remember laughing and loud when reading eminent Victorians description of general warden sitting in his tent with the Bible in one hand and a bottle of brandy and the other. What did you think of Jonathan prices portrayal of Lytton in the film caring. I think price gave an excellent performance and so much so that when over the last couple of years at the Charleston festival. I'm a trustee of the straight she trust which manages Lytton's copyrights and also those of James's and Alex's. And so we encouraged a performative reading of Lytton's letters. And in the first year we got Jonathan to reprise his role. And that was what I would describe as a traditional take on Lytton's letters, maybe quite me censored. And then last year we had to younger. And really going through absolutely openly and honestly all the aspects of Lytton's letters including his exploration of said a masochistic fantasies, and also what my child referred to as scat which I did not so know about but anyway it features in the letter. And just, there's a question from George new full he just wants clarification. I'm not clear what the distinction is between young Bloomsbury versus older Bloomsbury Virginia Wolf DH Lawrence the bells etc. They are older Bloomsbury. So you have the older generation are a group of people who are mostly born in the 1880s. So they are in their 40s and come to 20s. Whereas the younger generation were born around 1900 or a little bit later and now for 20 in that 20s. And it's the coming together of those two groups and the catalytic effect that each was having on the other is that is what we explore in the book. So today this would also like you to remind her please which young man sipped creme de month while wearing red velvet. That was the mark future Marxist politician, john straight she didn't believe in inherited wealth wanted the nationalization of all industries and everything. Yeah. I have one question. It's something I've always wondered. I, in reading about Bloomsbury often heard a comment made about a specific a particular kind of accent, particularly among the straight cheese are there any recorded. Are there any any recordings of either Lytton or any of the other straight keys straight cheese at the time. Any recording to their voice. And, you know, I'd be really interested if there was a recording of Lytton someone will tell me there are felt this film of Lytton that Carrington took that you can watch online but sadly it's silent, but Lytton had a typical straight she voice. Male straight she's had a high pitched voice and that's recorded back to the 18th century. One of my relations was chaplain to George the third. And he said, Georgia third said, I knew, I knew little straight she was coming by his squeaky voice. Little high pitched voice coming along, and most male straight she's have high pitched voices and Lytton did. And also they load physical sports of any kind only interested in the life of the mind and that again goes back to the 17th century. So typical straight she will be found lying down reading the book. And as Lytton said he couldn't lift a matchstick before breakfast. And just briefly on Lytton's relationship with Dora Carrington. I mean it was, we always again probably from the movie you always think of it as the, you know, kind of a tree, a triad, Ralph Ray's partridge, Lytton straight he and and Dora Carrington. So Lytton Carrington and Ralph live as a polyamorous throttle. And so they had physical relationships, each with the other. And what's interesting about Carrington is obviously nowadays you would describe her probably as having gender dysphoria so she was open to relationship with different genders but also expressed a partly masculine identity. And one again one of the lovely things researched for the book I was looking at all the letters written to Lytton by Young's Bloomsbury which were all preserved at the British Library. And amongst them are all Ralph Partridge's letters to Lytton. And what's lovely about those is here you have this strapping rower who's been fighting in the wars and he's writing love letters to Lytton. And inviting him to come and shock his fellow Oxford students by talking about sodomy and the Elizabethan poets and reading the fairy queen. And then he writes a poem to Lytton after he's moved in together with Carrington, which talks very eloquently about Lytton having a choice of pillows for his head. And how lucky Lytton was. But it ends with saying how lucky I am to be your boy. And I think it's a wonderful, you know, expression of successful polyamorous relationship. Well, did Lytton have a relationship, a physical relationship to Carrington? I did not get that impression. She lost her virginity to Lytton. I mean it's written about in many sources. Yeah, so they had a physical relationship less often than with between the... Anyway, you can't statistically go, but they did all have sex with each other, but in a rotational way. Yeah. Well, I'm looking through the letters. Certainly the chat has been interesting. I'm just trying to find, see if we have any additional questions that we haven't covered. If anyone sees, if there's anything that anyone wants to add, my eyes are on the chat. If you want to add it, I will read it. Professor Steck, if you have any other comments or questions for Nino? Well, there is a question here about Duncan Grant's abstract kinetic scroll. I'm not sure quite what the question is. No, it's a comment. It's, I've been working on Duncan Grant's abstract kinetic scroll of tape, and I've been talking a lot with Simon Watney. He found it in the attic at Charleston in 1969 when he was a 19 year old student. It seems to have been such a formative experience for Simon and Duncan such an encouraging friend. There are small areas at Charleston that Simon painted very much in Duncan's style. The support and encouragement of Old Bloomsbury continued for so many decades. So I don't know if Nino wants to comment on that at all. Well, it's lovely to hear that continuing ongoing supportive role and I'm just thinking, I don't know if, well, I can't say, I don't know if any of you have saw the wonderful exhibition of Duncan Grant's erotic drawings at Charleston last year, which again, are this lovely example of queer inheritance where Duncan passed on those drawings to one to a young man who passed them on to another partner to another, and now they've been donated to Charleston and are publicly available. And that's that again, that sense of the passing on and sharing, which is such a lovely legacy of this group of people. Well, thank you for that. And we can't let you go until you tell us a little bit about your next project on monks. Well, it's sheer joy for me at the moment because I'm doing a research project for the National Trust on Virginia Wolf's home and collection. That's at Monks House in Sussex. If you haven't been I'd encourage you all to go or look at it virtually and really looking at Virginia, not just as a writer but as a patron and collector and and a maker herself because whenever she had a pen in her hand she had an embroidery needle, and she was embroidering Vanessa Bell or Duncan Grant's designs. And so looking at the the outpouring of all that, collecting and artistic energy as well as written energy in her interiors and objects that Monks House and unraveling some of those very personal stories. Wonderful. Well, I'd like to thank author Nito Stracci and Professor Loretta Steck for an inspiring conversation on this literary history, and also the influence from the older to the younger generation of artists and writers and back and forth and how we carry forward in in this tradition and also literary evolution. And I also want to thank Nito for sharing her family history with us. And we want to thank our audience as well, and our audience from Mechanics Institute and from the From Institute for lifelong learning for joining us. And we hope that you'll join us again at our programs here, Mechanics Institute online. And good afternoon to everyone. Thank you.