- Lorna Garman
Lorna Cecilia Garman Wishart ["Births, Marriages & Deaths Index of England & Wales, 1984-2004." Gives name at death as "Lorna Cecilia Wishart".] (1911 - 2000) was the youngest of the seven daughters (and two sons) of Walter and Margaret Garman, an eccentric Victorian doctor, led notoriously high profile lives within mid 20th century artistic circles.
Having grown up in the bleak surroundings of the ‘
Black Country ’ at Oakeswell Hall,Wednesbury , inEngland they were prominent in London's BohemianBloomsbury set , between the two world wars.The complex lives of the dazzling beauties Mary, Kathleen and Lorna included affairs and friendships with writer
Vita Sackville-West ; composerFerruccio Busoni , painterBernard Meninsky , sculptorJacob Epstein ; poetLaurie Lee and the painterLucian Freud .Her character may be summed up in this quote:
"“Lorna, the baby of the family, was perhaps the most flamboyant of the fabulous Garmans. She wore beautiful and unusual clothes and smelled of Chanel No. 5, went riding on her horse at night, drove a chocolate-brown Bentley, and would strip naked to swim in inviting lakes or rivers or 10-metre waves. At 14 she seduced the man who would become her husband when she was 16, the publisher Ernest Wishart.”" [""]
Ernest Wishart owned
Lawrence and Wishart , the anti-fascist publisher which became the publishing house of theBritish Communist Party in collaboration with Douglas Garman, the party's Education Secretary.Throughout the marriage she had affairs with, among others, writer
Laurie Lee , who fathered her third child Yasmin ["http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article442755.ece ".] and the painterLucian Freud for whom she modelled in many of his paintings, and for whom she brought objects such as a dead heron and a zebra head. Although she was renowned as the heartbreaker of her long-suffering husband and anguished lovers alike. Remarkably, Lee and Freud each went on to marry her nieces, Kathy Polge and Kitty Epstein.Lorna’s
quixotic character is perhaps crystallised by her comment to Laurie Lee when he announced his intention to fight in theSpanish Civil War , “…you don’t need a war because you’ve got one here.”She ended her days a pillar of the
Roman Catholic community aroundArundel , inWest Sussex Fact|date=February 2007.ee also
*
The Garman Sisters References
The Rare and the Beautiful: The Lives of the Garmans by Cressida Connolly, Fourth Estate
* [http://www.camdennewjournal.co.uk/2004%20archive/090904/r090904_4.htm Family Profile, book review and photographic images of Mary, Lorna and Kathleen]
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