Bloomsbury Stud

So much has been written by and about the Bloomsbury Group, yet Stephen Tomlin has been almost air-brushed out.

In Miranda Seymour’s biography, Ottoline Morrell, Life on the Grand Scale he is not mentioned but here he is at Garsington sitting between Dora Carrington and Lytton Strachey. Lady Ottoline Morrell took the picture.

Clive Fisher’s biography, Cyril Connolly A Nostalgic Life says only “he (Cyril) went to stay with Julia Strachey and her husband, the sculptor Stephen Tomlin”. It is telling that Tomlin needs to be described as a sculptor while Julia Strachey needs no explanation – she was Lytton’s niece actually. Cyril considered him “the most interesting young person I have met”.

“Tommy” Tomlin was mad, bad, dangerous to know. His life was characterised by drink, drugs, depression, sex and sculpting – the last when he was up to it. He died young, he didn’t leave an archive of letters or diaries and his life was too hot to handle in the 20th century. His legacy is his sculptures of Lytton Strachey and Virginia Woolf and others, all of quality, many in public collections.

Now Michael Bloch and Susan Fox have pieced together the shards of his tormented life;  as far as I know Tommy’s only biography. With such a paucity of material Susan Fox proved invaluable to Michael; she is an historical researcher with special interest in the Bloomsbury Group. Their book is everything you want to know about the Bloomsbury Group; because of Tommy’s promiscuity it may be more than you want to know.

Bloomsbury Stud drew me in, like a multi-storey car park, on a number of levels. It is a chronological history of his life embroidered with quotes from the letters and diaries of his Bloomsbury contemporaries almost all off whom adored him, often more than was good for them. He wasn’t a letter writer himself. It explains why he was so magnetic and how multi-talented he was as a conversationalist, ceramicist, actor, musician and poet, as well as a sculptor. When he was on form he put the bloom in Bloomsbury. But he was not always on form and the book explores his dark side when he hurt others and himself. It analyses his complex personality and convinced me, had I met him, I would have fallen for his amoral charm and mourned his early death. It is a Restoration romp, lock up your daughters and your sons, with a huge cast stretching beyond the Bloomsbury Group.

It is a beautiful, lavishly illustrated book but that comes at a price – £40. The cover picture is of Tommy Tomlin by John Banting. Within there are drawings and portraits of Tommy by Duncan Grant, John Strachey and Henry Lamb. There are many photographs of him, dressed and undressed, his friends and pictures of his work.  However, the scholarship of the text raises it far above the level of adornment for a coffee table.

Bloomsbury Stud, The Life of Stephen “Tommy” Tomlin is only available via the website www.bloomsburystud.net.