Among the Bohemians (54 page)

‘The Kitchen, Charleston’ by Vanessa Bell, 1943.
Grace Higgens Worked for the family for fifty years.

‘Dorelia – Washing Day’ By Augustus John,
c
.
1921.

Mark Gertler, self-portrait, 1920.

Christabel Dennison, self-portrait, 1925.

Ethel Mannin in 1930.

Carrington’s portrait of Gerald Brenan,
c
.
1921.

Roy and Mary Campbell, Jacob Kramer and the model known as ‘Dolores’.

Betty May.
This photograph appeared in her memoir,
Tiger-Woman
–
My Strory, 1929
.

David Garnett’s ‘penny dreadful’
Dope Darling
(1919) was written under the pseudonym Lead Burke.
Its heronine was based loosely on Betty May.

The painter Ethelbert White and his wife, Betty, often provided the music for Bohemian parties.
Nina Hamnett painted them around 1920.

Nicolette Macnamara, with Augustus John and his daughters Poppet and Vivien, Christmas 1934.

Dylan abd Caitlin in their natural habitat, around 1938.

‘I could feel the music running through me as if I was a tunnel, and nothing could stop me leaping to my feet and letting fly.’ ‘Caitlin Dancing’, by Rupert Shephard, 1932.

Epilogue

Bohemia didn’t end with the Second World War, though many people said it did.
With the formation of the Arts Council in 1946, and the foundation of the Welfare State, some of the struggle was removed, and with it the sacrifice.
For those who had survived the times of hardship, and got through the war, their personal Bohemia seemed a bitter-sweet memory, like the passing of youth.
On 15 October 1949 Liam O’Flaherty wrote to a friend:

I now eschew heavy potations and addict myself to Coca-Cola.

I see little of London these days.
It’s like a morgue, although it’s picking up a little.
Passing through there three weeks ago it seemed quite cheerful on the surface.
The imperial glitter and the feeling of security is gone, however.
The Fitzroy was crowded with frightful pansies, the Café Royal was inedible and all the old crowd gone… Stulick’s Eiffel Tower is now run despicably by a Greek, Ma Lewis’s place is still open, or so they say, but merely a barely perceptible chink.