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)
Does one really need furniture? Why not steal? Why shouldn’t one be dirty? Is it wrong to be promiscuous?
Between the end of the Victorian age and the start of the Second World War, a generation of writers and artists refashioned their lives according to a set of ideals. Questioning almost every aspect of daily living they sacrificed luxury for liberty, showed contempt for convention and became pioneers of a domestic revolution. In Among the Bohemians, Virginia Nicholson explores the astonishing world they created – and its consequences both for the Bohemians and for ourselves.
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