Among the Bohemians

Experiments in Living 1900 - 1939. Virginia Nicholson. (2002) Viking.

Free thinking artists and the development of a bohemia, based on gypsy travels and colourful dress, garlic, freer love lives, unorthodox relationships, naked wild children, and experimental parenting bordering on neglect. What's not to like? Fabulous book with themed chapters about manners, love, children, money, travel; all the good things. Gender relations I found particularly revealing. Great inequality continued.

"Today we can conduct relationships with people from any class without fear of ostracism, while deploring oppressive , stratified societies. Our choice of friendships and love affairs are our own. The idea of chaperonage makes us laugh; women are independent. We recognise that children have potential that must not be squashed...We re hatless, relaxed and on first-name terms with people we barely know. Red paint, ratatouille and yellow corduroy brighten our lives...We live in a society which most people's great grandparents would hardly recognise..."p279

"the Bohemians... resolved to bring their children up as happy, carefree, creative individuals, and they were determined to spare them the boring, punishing childhoods that so many of them had been forced to endure. It was Rousseau versus repression." p97

Some children did not learn to read until 12 and it seemed not to do any harm to their future lives and careers. Some felt the need for strict order, one son of the John brood for example joined the navy.

"Many parents saw the provision of liberty for their children as a prior condition of creativity, both their own and their children's. But at times one feels that this neglect was as much expedient as ideological. Bringing up children is very hard work. For parents with not much money, teams of nursemaids boiling nappies, starching frills and enforcing table manners were beyond their reach. Leaving children to get on with their lives was a great deal simpler and cheaper than keeping them up to the mark....You could maintain cleanliness and order, or spend the time on creative activities - but not both."p 76