ABSTRACT
Lulworth Cove provided the camping ground for a party of artists and writers in the summer of 1905. Among this group was Laurence Housman (1865-1959), an illustrator, art critic and writer. His conversion to ‘that will-o’-the-wisp, the simple life’, as well as to naturism, was of a piece with the general rebellion against Victorian prudery which marked his life.1 Mixed camping and nude bathing were part of this rebellion, and after one swim Laurence Housman reported that ‘I was scraped and pounded by the shingle till I felt like an Indian curry come to life.’ The local vicar continued to call on the campers, although the party had tried ‘to shock him off: but all the shock has been taken out of him…there is no more Grundy left in him’.2
