Among the Bohemians: Experiments in Living 1900-1939 [Paperback]

I picked this up from one of those 'XXX recommends" from Waterstones and I'm so glad I did. This is a wonderful, fresh and very readable look at bohemia at the turn of the century. It's fascinating how much of the way we live now was influenced by handful of brave people who were prepared to try another way of living in the face of severe disapproval from the stuffy Victorians and Edwardians. I was particularly taken by the bravery of the women, who had so much to lose by not getting married, eschewing the status quo and so on - whilst still being treated in a very paternalistic manner (ie it may have been a new way of living but the women were still expected to do the cooking, cleaning and to be the ones to give up their art for the sake of a family). But it does seem to have been hard on the kids, and I do echo the previous reviewers comments about Eric Gill: Ms Nicholson suggests that having their father have sex with them didn't do the children any harm... Hmm, a little too wide-eyed about her subject methinks.

When I say it's very readable I really mean it: I'm quite lazy when it comes to books, probably reading two 'easy books' (like chick-lit) to one of 'literature', and in terms of pleasure this falls into 'easy' even though it's actually quite intellectual. Win-win!

Dare I talk about breeding in a book that deals with Bohemians? Sure, why not! The author's father was Quentin Bell- writer, artist and academic...and the biographer of his aunt, Virginia Woolf. Her grandmother was the artist Vanessa Bell, who was Virginia Woolf's sister. With bloodlines like that, you'd expect Virginia Nicholson to finish "in the money" with this subject...and she doesn't disappoint. I think the family connection has helped her to be more charitable and sympathetic than a dispassionate observer might be concerning the behavior of the Bohemians. Where some people might only find childishness, selfishness and irresponsibility (and Ms. Nicholson can see these traits as well), the author can see nobler things. She can see the ability to think independently, to believe that Art and Truth and Beauty are worth devoting your life to.....and to have the courage of your convictions by doing just that- no matter what the cost. Many of the people described in this book did not possess first-class talent, but they still gave it their best shot. They had little money, they often were hungry and cold, and they spent their lifetimes being rejected by the mainstream. They didn't have to live that way...they chose a way of life that had those consequences. Ms. Nicholson's achievement is to get you to respect, if not to admire, these people...rather than to laugh at them or think them foolish. The book has been put together in a very creative fashion. Rather than just make the book a collection of anecdotes, Ms. Nicholson has come up with an interesting theme for each chapter. For example, one chapter deals with the nuts-and-bolts of living in poverty, another deals with how the Bohemians raised their children, and still others deal with love and marriage, interior decoration, clothing, cooking, cleanliness, the importance of travel, etc. The book is an intriguing mixture of the philosophical and the down-to-earth. On one page the author will be asking "Can a person be wealthy and still be a Bohemian?" and on another page she will describe how the sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska was so filthy that when the writer Ford Madox Ford was forced to sit next to him one warm summer day, Ford was so overwhelmed by the stench that he had to leave. But, Ms. Nicholson adds, "...as the weather cooled Gaudier was promoted to the guest list for Ford's At Homes, and Ford even went so far as to install the artist's phallic statue of Ezra Pound in his front garden". Another funny story concerned the painter Augustus John losing his temper when he found out he had been charged 43 pounds for lunch at the "Eiffel Tower" restaurant in London. The proprietor explained the bill wasn't just for lunch. It turns out that Dylan Thomas had been eating there for 2 weeks and had told the owner not to worry about the money, Augustus John would take care of it! (And he did.) On the sociological side, the author describes how many of the Bohemians, Augustus John for one, didn't so much raise their children as just let them raise themselves....giving them what amounted to almost total freedom. Some of this was a belief, a la Rousseau, that children would turn out best if brought up "in a state of nature". A lot of it was also humbug disguised as philosophy...it was a lot easier to let the kids do what they wanted while mom and dad got back to the really important stuff...like writing and painting! Interestingly, a good many of the children not only enjoyed this way of life but turned out quite nicely- they became creative, self-sufficient, well-adjusted adults. Others resented being ignored and the lack of structure....and turned out insecure, with a craving for order. Ms. Nicholson is also quite good in describing the price creative women often paid when they got into relationships with creative men. It seems Bohemian men were no more enlightened than their more conventional brethren- the fairer sex was still expected to clean the house and cook the meals and make the afternoon tea, etc. Many of these women were so tired they had very little time or energy to devote to their artistic pursuits. The women, understandably, resented this state of affairs.....but, at great cost to their own careers, usually tolerated it. I really enjoyed this book. It is well-written, well-organized, thought provoking and also just plain fun to read.

Virginia Nicholson describes the citizens, customs, and traditions of a country that doesn't exist, but which is instantly recognisable: Bohemia. Using the lead metaphor of a virtual country of which Bohemians of the early 20th century were the inhabitants, she gives us a very detailed and colourful account of what life was like in that virtual place and real time.

Nicholson is, of course, supremely qualified to serve as Bohemia's ambassador to the modern world, as she descends from a family of Bohemian celebrities. She's not called Virginia for nothing: Virginia Woolf was her great-aunt, Woolf's biographer Quentin Bell her father, and Woolf's sister, the painter Vanessa Bell, her grandmother. (Oh, and Julian Bell, whose adventures in China inspired Hong Ying's book "K: The Art of Love", was Quentin's brother. What a family.)

Considering these family connections, it would have been easy for her to explore the faraway realm of Bohemia through the eyes of its best-known citizens. Instead, she turned her attention to the lives and times of the less successful artists and writers, to those for whom the move from "normal" England to Bohemia often meant a descent into real hardship.

Like an anthropologist describing the customs of a remote pacific island population, Nicholson studies the minute details of everyday life in Bohemia and devotes separate chapters to elementary aspects of the lives of the natives, including money, love life, education, interior decoration, clothes, food, housework, travel, and partying. Being an anarchistic place by definition there is no section on hierarchy or power.

These chapters are populated with a swirling cast of painters, models, and writers ranging from the almost famous to the long-forgotten, so the "Dramatis Personae" in the appendix becomes the most valuable part of the book, as one gradually learns to navigate the social networks of 1920s Bohemia. There have been many memoirs and biographies of the people involved, so there is no shortage of brilliant quotes to liven up the proceedings. My favourite one has to be the (unattributed) geometric description of the Bloomsbury set as a circle of friends who lived in squares and loved in triangles.

As additional material to make the sheer visual wealth of Bohemia more palpable, I recommend to consult the book "Charleston: A Bloomsbury House and Gardens" (Frances Lincoln 2004) as well, which Nicholson wrote together with her father, and which contains many wonderful photos by Alen Macweeney of the country house where Vanessa Bell and various associates lived. Additional visualisation help is provided by the movie Carrington [DVD] [1995] (about the various love triangles involving the painter Dora Carrington and the writer Lytton Strachey), which is available on DVD.

In all of this, the very endearing Bohemian philosophy of life shines through, which essentially implies that for each individual their art, love, and friendships are infinitely more important than the ten million rules and regulations that Victorian society imposed on its members. Living in a society which in many ways is closer to Bohemia's jurisdiction than to Victoria's, we are bound to find the Bohemian rule-breaking and mischief-making amusing, even in instances which contemporaries must have considered truly shocking.

Therefore, the whole makes for a highly entertaining read, but it also provides food for thought and self-questioning. Many of Bohemia's battles against Victorian norms have been won by now - for instance, women can wear their hair short, and men theirs long without shocking anybody. And yet, people with any kind of creative inclination still face the age-old dilemma whether they can afford to put their art (in the widest sense) first, or whether they have to make bourgeois compromises to ensure they can pay their bills. Today, there isn't a separate country called Bohemia any more. On the sliding scale between Bohemian and Bourgeois, everybody has to find their own place.