Product Description

Bohemia is a hard country to place, yet it was utterly familiar to the people who inhabited it from the turn of the 20th century until the outbreak of World War II, a place where to be different was to be accepted. Here they felt at home and among friends: the disparate, eccentric club of artists, some rich, some poor, talented and untalented, who believed in friendship more than family and who by their very differences proclaimed to be part of a confederacy. Among these self-styled Bohemians were Ralph Partridge, Nancy Nicholson, Arthur Ransome, Rupert Brooke, Virginia Woolfe, Duncan Grant, Katherine Mansfield, Dylan and Caitlin Thomas. These people were in the avant-garde not only for their art, but possibly even more significantly, of a new kind of social life which has become so accepted today that we barely notice how utterly we have assimilated it and made it on our own. Subversive, eccentric and flamboyant, the Bohemians embarked on a quiet revolution that refashioned the way we live our daily lives. They re-invented the home, rejecting and questioning old rules and embraced creativity in every part of their lives.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #669094 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

Review
Virginia Nicholson is perhaps uniquely well placed to write about the Bohemian movement of the early 20th century, of which the Bloomsbury Group was a key part: she is the daughter of the writer and artist Quentin Bell, himself the son of Clive and Vanessa Bell. However, part of the charm of this eminently informed and readable account is that Nicholson does not seek to use her family connections to sell a rehashed litany of who-was-sleeping-with-whom Bloomsbury gossip, but has instead chosen to describe in minute domestic detail exactly what it meant to live as one of these free spirits in the middle of drab, joyless Edwardian Britain. She does not seek to explain the literary influences or grand passions that shaped the work and lives of these beautiful peacocks - Dylan Thomas, Katherine Mansfield, Ottoline Morrell, Robert Graves, Lytton Strachey, Eric Gill, Augustus John - but concentrates her attention on how they dressed their children; what underwear they wore; how they learned to cook; what it was like for a middle-class woman brought up with servants to have to empty the family's chamber pots. Beatrice Campbell's account of Katherine Mansfield's attempts to wash the dishes after cooking a leg of mutton - 'We had very little hot water and no washing powder, and the grease was in thick layers over everything.... I tried to make a joke of our predicament, but Katherine was beyond jokes; she started to weep ceaselessly and hopelessly' - says as much about the life of a woman writer of her time as any biography of Mansfield ever could. Similarly, the descriptions of the new culinary experiences of these adventurous creatures, garlic and herb-laden dishes with fresh fish and vegetables, contrast so tellingly with the boring, tasteless brown slop served in 'respectable' households that the author is able to draw a wonderful pen-picture of the excitement and interest these trail-blazers generated. Nicholson's breezy, entertaining style enhances, rather than detracts from this rigorously researched and annotated history: a thoroughly enjoyable read. (Kirkus UK)

After surveying grandmother Vanessa Bell's home in Charleston: A Bloomsbury House and Garden (not reviewed), Nicholson moves on to a broader but related subject: lifestyles of the poor and avant-garde. "I make no apology for my fascination with the laundry-list view of history," writes the author, who deems domestic arrangements and personal habits "the kind of detail I find not only revealing but indispensable to understanding." This everything-including-the-kitchen-sink approach is most effective when applied to less familiar material. Chapters on bohemian attitudes toward marriage, sex, and feminism tend to degenerate into, yes, laundry lists of famously unconventional menages (Laura Riding, Robert and Nancy Graves; Duncan Grant, Vanessa and Clive Bell, etc.) and yet another portrait of New Women scandalizing the bourgeoisie with their short hair and cigarettes. But when Nicholson delves into childrearing, clothes, food, and housework, she vividly delineates just how revolutionary Britain's early-20th-century bohemians were. (She seems unaware that an American avant-garde was pursuing a similar course.) The author's resume of the ridiculous amount of tight-fitting attire well-bred Edwardians, male and female, had to change in and out of several times a day, for example, reminds us how liberating were the loose, colorful garments painter Augustus John and others wore, romantically emulating carefree gypsies. Dirty, squalid garrets make more sense after Nicholson points out that the alternative before modern appliances was a houseful of servants, the money to pay them, and hours spent supervising them. The avant-garde prided themselves on caring about art, not appearances, and while the author doesn't ignore the contradictions involved in generally middle-class rebels living like the most disreputable poor, she respects their commitment to a freer existence. As well as the usual Bloomsbury suspects, Nicholson draws her examples from other names well known in British cultural gossip: Cyril Connolly, Nancy Cunard, Dylan and Caitlin Thomas, Ford Madox Ford, etc., etc. Entertaining social history, though the author's fondness for long quotes and many, many examples make it more fun to browse than to read cover-to-cover. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
Virginia Nicholson is the granddaughter of Vanessa Bell. A freelance journalist and researcher, she is Deputy Chairman of The Charleston Trust. Her first book was Charleston: A Bloomsbury House and Garden. Virginia Nicholson lives in Sussex.

Customer Reviews

C'est La Vie... (de Boheme)
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.

A little too sympathetic
This is an interesting book about a group of people who have more fame that is really justified. Ms Nicholson does a good job of explaining why we're still interested in the Bloomsbury crowd: their way of life remains influential even though their art wasn't so hot.

Being a relative helps. One gets a level of insight that is often facinating. But - and it's a bit of a big but - she can be too sympathetic. Too much is forgiven or brushed aside.

Her comments about Eric Gill is a case in point. Eric Gill, though a talented artist, had sex with children, including his own. If the book was judging artists for the quality of their art, there would be no problem. But Ms Nicholson investigates their lifestyles and such actions cannot be glossed over. A more critical approach would have made this a better book.

utterly charming
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!