The last session we were able to attend at Charleston was a discussion on the history of bohemianism, based on Vic Gatrell’s recent book, The First Bohemians:  Life and Art in London’s Gokden Age.   But the use of the term for eighteenth-century Covent Garden felt wrong.   As Gatrell himself admitted, the term derives from the nineteenth century romanticisation of the life of the artist, first used in France in Henri Murger’s Scènes de la Vie Bohème (1845) and, in England, in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1848).   What Gatrell is writing about is conventional low life which was a matter of necessity, not choice.   Fiona McCarthy argued the case for Byron and William Morris being regarded as bohemians.   Possibly.   Both espoused a version of an alternative lifestyle.   Most convincing was Antony Penrose describing the extraordinarily hedonistic life of his father in the south of France alongside Picasso, Man Ray and his mother, Lee Miller.

Silver spoon bohemianism