Michael and Lytton Strachey

[mb0521]

I notice that there are a few photographs of Michael with Lytton Strachey on the website? Where were these taken and by whom? How did Michael get to meet Lytton Strachey? Was Strachey a bad influence. After reading a few of Strachen’s diary accounts (see below) I’m surprised Barrie gave permission for Michael to meet him.
‘In Florence people have better taste. Duncan (who's there) writes to say that large crowds collect every day to see the young aristocrats bathe in the Arno - and they are 18 or so. As each one steps out of the water a murmur of approbation or the reverse rises from the crowd. They criticise details - that young man's legs are too fat - oh! the beautiful torso! etc. I long to go and live there, or at any rate stay there a week.’

[Dandy Lion]

I can't see any Strachey photos on this website. If they are any of the usual ones seen in books or online I think the photos were likely taken either at Garsington Manor near Oxford (home of Lady Ottoline Morrell) or The Mill House at Tidmarsh, where Strachey and Dora Carrington lived.  Large size copies of these can be bought online.

[mb0521]

Hi Dandy Lion. Thanks for that. The photographs are on the section with all the photographs.

[mb0521]

There are other pictures of Michael at Garsington Manor. In one picture he’s seen with Dora Carrington, Julian Morrell and R Partridge at Garsington Manor in June 1920. He’s seen on a doorstep in one photograph. Is this the front door of the Manor House? Where these people friends of Barrie? Also, what’s the link with Glan Hafren?

[Dandy Lion]

Haven't a clue which door. I don't think they were friends of Barrie as such, they were members of the 'Bloomsbury Group' that Michael was introduced to. Check the Bloomsbury Group out on Wikipedia for an overview of who they were and what they got up to. 

[Sara72]

Lytton Strachey and JM Barrie were basically neighbors. Lytton Strachey, the eminent biographer, spent 25 years at 69 Lancaster Gate. JM Barrie lived around the corner at 100 Bayswater Road, among several other addresses in the vicinity of Kensington Gardens.