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Among the Bohemians: Experiments in Living 1900-1939

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Among the Bohemians is a fascinating and thorough excursion through the colorful streets, homes and cafes of bohemian England during the early 20th Century. Virginia Nicholson, who is related to both the painter Vanessa Bell (often mentioned in this book) and the writer Virginia Woolf, handles the subject in a rather scholarly manner, covering a range of topics chapter by chapter. This organized approach may seem out of tune with the book's subject, but it works well here, allowing the reader to meet the same cast of characters from different vantage points. Like a naturalist studying the behavior of animals in the wild, Nicholson examines almost every conceivable aspect of bohemian life. Using memoirs from that era, we learn all about the homes, love lives, dress, eating habits, parties and child-rearing practices of these flamboyant characters.

Some writers (e.g. Herbert Gold) have successfully examined Bohemia from the inside, using a poetic and meandering voice, but Nicholson prefers the more sociological/ anthropological method. The fact that she is writing about a past era also makes a certain distance inevitable. Despite this methodical approach, Nicholson is not detached from her subject in a coldly objective way. She is clearly sympathetic and admiring of the people she describes. Indeed, she credits bohemians with creating much of the freedom we take for granted today. As she states in the introduction, Nicholson does not confine her study to famous people, though the well known (e.g. Dylan Thomas, Carrington, Robert Graves), are certainly not neglected. As an American, I had always associated Bohemia with places like Paris (which, Nicholson confirms, has always been the Bohemian capital), Greenwich Village and North Beach, but never England. This book filled in some rather large gaps in my knowledge, illustrating the very significant role played by bohemian Brits.

Nicholson has a genuine appreciation for the bohemian spirit, and acknowledges the sacrifices made by many obscure artists, poets and others existing (often marginally) at society's fringes. For some, the idealistic decision to forsake conventional society for a life dedicated to art, romance, poetry or perhaps a vaguer idea such as beauty or authenticity was never rewarded with any kind of material success. Was there any compensation for those living such marginal lives? Nicholson makes the case that for many, a life dedicated to art, romance and freedom is its own reward. For those who embody the bohemian spirit, material comforts and security are not worth the price of suppressing one's creativity and individuality. Bohemia during this era was a radical negation of the conservative Victorian values that were dominant. Similar to the Beatniks of the 1950s and the hippies of the 60s, but to an even greater extent, these early rebels in many ways charted the course for what was to become the modern world. Nicholson presents them as revolutionaries who helped to create a freer and more creative world for everyone. Many of these people lived in abject poverty, and at those days there were few resources to help those who became destitute. There were virtually no government social programs, and relatives were seldom in a position (and often unwilling) to help those who fell between the cracks. The decision to "drop out" of mainstream society had potentially far more dire consequences than for, say, the mostly middle class hippies of the 60s who operated with a safety net of affluent parents, free or very inexpensive education and a growing economy (arguably, we may now be moving back towards a harsher economic climate similar to the Victorian times, at least for those outside the mainstream).

Among the Bohemians is a very readable, informative and enjoyable look at bohemians, who are always among the most interesting and creative members of any society.

Virginia Nicholson's "Among the Bohemians" is an evocative account of the revolt against Victorian and Edwardian values engaged in by the artists and writers of the early 20th Century. The freedom from the constraints of convention that these bohemians fought for was won at a price - and the price was usually poverty, disease and, more often than not, a squalid and disquieting end.

Given the desperate nature of their lives, and their sometimes shocking deaths, the amazing thing is that the book is a fun read. Nicholson is an engaging prose stylist who knows how to pluck out that little detail that will interest her reader. It's not enough, for example, to point out that the artist Eric Gill engaged in incestuous relations with his daughters - he also refused to wear underwear. Dylan Thomas preferred to steal shirts from friends and acquaintances rather than launder the ones he had. The painter Augustus John leapt on just about every female in sight, and went about in his younger days like a bedraggled gypsy.

There are some omissions. I would have liked Nicholson to have included George Gissing's "The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft," simply because it includes so much of the essence of what these people thought and felt, and not to mention Quentin Crisp, the author of "The Naked Civil Servant," is a definite loss to the book.

"Among the Bohemians" is a bit too British and Bloomsbury-centric (understandable enough, given that Nicholson's grandmother was Vanessa Bell and her great-aunt Virginia Woolf), and the Americans who came over to Europe between the wars are practically ignored, but given the limits of what she's chosen to work with, it's a splendid job.

Like it or not, though, we live in the world that the rebels that Nicholson describes brought about. Our attitudes about just about everything are a lot more free-spirited and a lot less censorious than they would have been a century ago, and we owe those people who paid the price of their rebellion for the social freedoms that too many of us take for granted. That's reason enough, I think, to read this book.

This book is a truly historical and sociologic analysis of the early 20th century movement known as Bohemianism. This movement and the individuals who comprised it are a frequently misrepresented group, and shallower attempts have been made to identify the impetus and driving force behind it and/or reproduce one's own simulacrum overnight. This book, unlike such endeavors, is clearly well-researched, thoughtful and well-articulated.

The reminder that the reader gets from this book is that if not for the artistic aspect that made these individuals remarkable and noteworthy, they would have been ordinary people who were living in or on the brink of poverty, and the reason that modern society remembers or cares is because of redemptive writing or art: something which is rather left out of the retrospective equation when we think of Bohemianism from a present-day point of view. Time, coupled with the artistic aspect, has twisted this somewhat into a romantic image. At the time, however, the "starving artists" themselves were not seeking a name for their lifestyle or trying to package their look or sensibility. They were muddling through quandries related to their work and linked to money issues: the idea of "I am an artist, therefore i despise wealth" (p.25), yet on the same page, "How I loathe poverty!" This paradox -- the clutching of the very chains that bind them -- is one of the analyses that really makes the book work. Other aspects of the lifestyle that are examined include concepts of value, aesthetics, sexuality and taste.

Perhaps the most fascinating investigation involves the evolution of the Bohemian world, which just can't be reproduced with an after-the-fact "how-to". This exploration is the genuine article: the history of an era as it evolved, versus an exaggerated mock-up after the fact (you don't have to look far to find an example of the latter).

This can all be distilled down into one quote, from Arthur Ransome: "A Man does not set out saying 'I am a Bohemian'..."; this is the fundamental difference between the thoughtful and intelligent research of this work and the comparatively parodic, pop-culture leanings of other sources on the subject. If you're looking for something of substance on the subject, here it is.

There is a madness that lives in all artists, I think, and the 'Bohemians' were all driven to 'BE' artists sometimes beyond their talents, abilities and mental health. Starvingly poor reveling in their personal and sexual abandon, they attempted to smash through the rigid artificiality of the classed society. Free will, Free art, Free love everything was going to be different. (In someways they remind me of the free love 'hippie' movements of the 60's). This book does a very competent job of capturing the elan, their wild joys and deep sorrows, the very 'living' that would lead some many of them to early deaths. Most of them are almost forgotten now strange relics of a seemingly far distant social past. This book brings them and their frantic movement to chaotic life

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(Virginia Woolf: A Biography), 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 Garden (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 (about the various love triangles involving the painter Dora Carrington and the writer Lytton Strachey), which is now 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.

This review also appears in my book The noughties brought to book.

I don't intend to try and elaborate on the excellent reviews given above, only I want to say that this book was recommended to me by a man who owns my favourite bookshop and lived during that time and at the places mentioned. He saw I enjoyed writing from the roughly the 1890's up to pre WWII and thought this might give me a insight into the daily lives and well as the reasons for social uprisings and rebellions which relate so much to the writing content and styles of the time. . .from the Victorian stuffiness through the Edwardian release from eloborate personal grooming and social housekeeping rituals. Despite the detailed meaty chunks of information the narrative flows quite uninterrupted.

The first book on bohemia I ever picked up and led me to a hundred other fantasticlly original,obscure memoirs. Characters who now have the unreal shine of celebrity (Augustus John, Virginia Woolf, Jacob Epstein) come across in a funny, gritty, real way that almost makes you want sell all your belongings and start sculpting (or painting, or writing) in Paris or London.

The lives of many famous and not so famous artists crash together and drink, create and mingle with each other throughout the early years of the twentieth century. In spite of illness, failure, drug addictions and heartbreak, everyone in the book looked back with nostalgia on their youths as a time when just living was a full time creative pursuit and no matter how broke you were, there was always someone, somewhere, who would stand you a drink and lively conversation, no matter, it was ART! It was LIFE! It was FREEDOM!

It makes great reading and gives you a new appreciation of central heating, grocery stores and cell phones, but also a little sadness that the fresh, new life that it was possible to look forward to in a more innocent day is long gone....

For someone interested in the 1st. quarter of the past century's artistic and creative environment in Paris - this is a book not to be missed. In spite it's novelistic approach, it resembles the life almost every artist, painter, writer, etc. lived in those days.
I have a special interest, in the development of artistic evolution - particularly painting - of those days, and reading this book gave me an overall insight of what the 'bohemian' life was exposed to - and intelectually/socially influenced by, rather than a merely account of their somewhat called 'eccentric' lifes.
As an avid reader in the matter, I could also mention "Women of the Left Bank", "Bohemians in Paris", "Bohemians of the Latin Quarter", "Kiki's Paris: Artists and Lovers 1900-30", and books written by Gertrude Stein, to broaden the perspective of the early twentieth century's artistic generation.

This book tells it like it is. Its so good I bought it twice!!