Among the Bohemians (52 page)

History does not stand still, and some things have been lost; graciousness and sobriety perhaps, and the measured graduation from formality to intimacy in human relationships.
Sex often precedes friendship rather than the other way round.
Self-control is often an inadequate substitute for rules.
New social neuroses have replaced the old.

But as the twenty-first century dawns it is worth looking back to the early decades of its predecessor and, while they are still just within the grasp of our senses, acknowledging the undoubted debt we owe to a pionéer generation.
Even at the age of twenty-two, Arthur Ransome was able to recognise that his Bohemian life possessed a unique intensity:

Now, in youth, it is the best life there is, the most joyously, honestly youthful… My life will be the happier, turn out what it may, for these friendships, these pot-house nights, these evenings in the firelight of a studio, and these walks, two or three of us together talking from our hearts, along the Embankment in the Chelsea evening, with the lamps sparkling above us in the leaves of the trees, the river moving with the sweet noise of waters, the wings of youth on our feet, and all the world before us.

Augustus John in Norfolk, 1909: ‘Henceforth I was to live for Freedom and the Open Road!’

Illustration to the 1879 edition of
Scènes de la Vie de Bohème
by the grandfather of Bohemia, Henri Murger.

The unromantic reality of the garret: ‘An Unfinished Masterpiece’ by Philip Burne-Jones,
c
.
1900.

Mixing poetry and domesticity: Robert Graves in his kitchen at Galmpton.

Kathleen Hale and her boyfriend, possibly Frank Potter, on holiday in Italy, 1926.

In 1920, to avoid the scandal of her divorce, Rosalind Thornycroft fled to Italy with her three small children.

Quentin and Julian Bell,
c
.
1914, photographed by their mother Vanessa.

‘The Tutor’, John Hope-Johnstone, portrait by Augustus John,
c
.
1911.

The curriculum at Bedales, then as now, laid emphasis on healthy outdoor work.

Dorelia’s second son, Romilly; bronze by Jacob Epstein, 1907.

By the Avon, 1930.
Left to right
: Poppet John, Jean – a friend, Nicolette Macnamara, Vivien John, Caitlin Macnamara.