Among the Bohemians (58 page)

‘Dolores’ (1894–1934)
Described by Epstein, who sculpted her several times, as a ‘High Priestess of Beauty’, this Café Royal model was notorious for her amours and much followed by the gutter press.
Her chosen pseudonym was, according to some, appropriate to her indefinable air of tragedy; she had cancer and was found dead in a Paddington basement aged forty.

Doone, Rupert (1903–1966)
Rupert Doone ran away from home to become a dancer.
He later lived in Paris and became a friend of Cocteau’s.
This handsome prodigy became the lifelong partner of the painter Robert Medley after they met in 1925; together they founded the Group Theatre with W.
H.
Auden and Christopher Isherwood.
Their relationship is described in Medley’s autobiography
Drawn from the Life
.

Dowdall, Mary (1876–1939)
‘The most charming and entertaining character in Liverpool’, according to Augustus John, Mary Dowdall, nicknamed the Rani, was high-born (the daughter of Lord Borthwick) but, with her bare legs and gypsy manners, too unconventional for Liverpool society.
She was a journalist and the author of several novels, and was to become epistolary confidante to Ida John.

Duncan, Isadora (1878–1927)
‘When she appeared we all had the feeling that God… was present.’ The American-born dancer and choreographer pioneered fluid, expressive movement, and championed free love and women’s liberation.
Isadora’s life was blighted by the tragic deaths of her first husband and her two children.
She herself was strangled when her scarf caught in the wheels of a car.

Earp, Thomas (1892–1958)
A promising poet and writer, Tommy Earp’s drinking companion Roy Campbell described him as ‘the finest wit and the most exquisite literary critic alive’.
Earp reputedly squandered his inheritance on riotous living, and his rubicund face with
en brosse
haircut was often to be seen alongside Augustus John or Wyndham Lewis in the Fitzroy Tavern or Eiffel Tower restaurant.

Ellis, Edith (1861–1916)
An influential writer and lecturer, and wife of the sexologist Havelock Ellis, Edith was of the generation of ‘new women’ influenced by writers such as Olive Schreiner and Edward Carpenter.
She was unstable, extravagant and vivacious, but her lesbianism meant that the marriage, for all its progressiveness, was not altogether successful.

Ellis, Havelock (1859–1939)
A champion of Freud, Ellis’s pionéer work on sexology had a liberating influence on succeeding generations.
His passionate attachment to the feminist writer Olive Schreiner survived his problematic marriage to Edith Lees.
In
My Life
(1940) Ellis reflected optimistically on the progress that he felt had been achieved against repression and unthinking tradition.

Epstein, Jacob (1880–1959)
Epstein was born in New York, but settled in England in 1905.
In pre-First World War London Epstein’s controversial sculpture inspired reverence among the avant-garde; socially he was a Bohemian divinity equal only to Augustus John.
Parallel with his first marriage, Epstein had a long-term affair with Kathleen Garman, who was to become his second wife.
In 1954 he was knighted.

Epstein, Margaret (1870-1947)
Margaret Dunlop divorced her husband to marry Epstein; they had one child.
Ten years his senior, she ‘looked like a Russian doll’.
Their forty-one years together were dogged by Margaret’s ill-health and Epstein’s infidelity; in jealousy she shot and wounded Kathleen Garman.
Nevertheless Margaret’s intelligence and solicitude provided much-néeded stability in the Epstein household.

Fedorovitch, Sophie (1893-1953)
Born in Poland, the painter Fedorovitch came to England in 1920, then lived in great poverty in Paris.
Her circle of friends included Iris Tree, Epstein, Augustus John, and Constant Lambert.
In the 1930s she and Frederick Ashton started a fruitful collaboration as set designer/choreographer.
She died in a gas poisoning accident.

Firbank, Ronald (1886–1926)
Financially independent, Firbank indulged his taste for champagne at his regular haunt, the Café Royal.
A lonely homosexual, his novels (written on piles of blue postcards) are witty aesthetic fantasies, influenced by the nineties, but influential in their turn on such writers as Evelyn Waugh and Ivy Compton-Burnett.
Firbank died young from a disease of the lungs.

Fitzgibbon, Constantine (1919–1983)
Born in America, brought up in England, and educated in France and Germany, Fitzgibbon was a true cosmopolitan, gifted, amusing and attractive.
Theodora Rosling was the second of his four wives.
Fitzgibbon was, like his close friend Dylan Thomas, a heavy drinker.
His biography of Thomas is probably his best work, vividly evoking the Fitzrovian thirties.

Ford, Ford Madox (1873–1939)
Described by a friend as ‘an aristocratic Bohemian’, the novelist and influential editor of the
English Review
was dominated by his turbulent emotional life.
Ford eloped with his first wife, and his affair with the glamorous novelist Violet Hunt caused a public scandal.
In 1922 he moved to France with the artist Stella Bowen.
He later had an affair with Jean Rhys.

Fry, Roger (1866–1934)
Organised by Fry, the Post-Impressionist exhibitions of 1910 and 1912 ensure his place in the history of modern art, as does his foundation of the innovatory Omega Workshops.
Vision and Design
(1920) influenced a generation.
Fry’s wife became incurably insane; in 1911 he formed a lasting attachment to Vanessa Bell.
From 1926 he lived with Helen Anrep.

Garman, Kathleen (1901–1979)
Fourth of the seven Garman sisters, Kathleen ran away to London in 1920; ‘tall, self-possessed, remotely beautiful’, she was spotted by Jacob Epstein in the Harlequin restaurant, and became his model and mistress.
She had three children by him, and the relationship endured.
After Margaret Epstein’s death Kathleen married him and in 1954 became Lady Epstein.

Garnett, Angelica (b. 1918)
Vanessa Bell’s daughter by Duncan Grant, she was born at Charleston and raised as Clive Bell’s child until she was told of her true parentage at eighteen.
A versatile artist, Angelica became David Garnett’s second wife in 1942; they had four daughters.
Deceived with Kindness
(1985) is a memoir of her upbringing in the heart of Bloomsbury.

Garnett, David (1892–1981)
Birrell and Garnett’s bookshop in Taviton Street was a favoured Bloomsbury rendezvous.
‘Bunny’ studied biology, but switched to writing and achieved success with his first novel
Lady into Fox
(1922).
Explosive and passionate, he had affairs with Duncan Grant, Betty May, Carrington, Anna Wickham and many others.
He married Angelica Bell after the death of his first wife, Ray Marshall.

Gaudier-Brzeska, Henri (1891–1915)
Born in France, the sculptor Henri Gaudier moved to London in 1911 with his ‘sister’ Sophie Brzeska (this was a front for their relationship).
He became involved with the Vorticists, and met Wyndham Lewis, Ford Madox Ford, Horace Brodsky and Ezra Pound.
Mercurial and defiantly unconventional, his biographer dubbed him the ‘savage Messiah’; he was killed during the First World War.

Gertler, Mark (1891–1939)
Born into a poor East End Jewish family, Gertler attended the Slade School from 1908.
Talented and charming, he was at the centre of pre-war Bohemian society.
A passionate affair with Carrington left
Gertler disappointed.
In 1930 he married the painter Marjorie Hodgkinson, but ill-health, depression, and the failure of an exhibition took their toll; he committed suicide in 1939.

Gill, Eric (1882–1940)
Perhaps the foremost artist-craftsman of the twentieth century, the celebrated typographer Gill was as unconventional in his life as in his art.
The communities he founded in Sussex and Wales appeared to be experiments in monasticism; in truth Gill was indulging in various bizarre sexual proclivities, including incest with his daughters.
Gill’s writings include polemics on religion, art and various social topics.

Glenavy, Beatrice (1881–1970)
Beatrice Glenavy’s fellow-Irishman William Orpen described her as having ‘many gifts, much temperament and great ability’.
Beatrice attended the Slade from 1910.
Her friends included Katherine Mansfield, Middleton Murry, D.
H.
Lawrence, Mark Gertler and S.
S.
Koteliansky.
She married the lawyer Gordon Campbell in 1912; her memoir
Today We Will Only Gossip
(1964) describes their social life in London and Dublin.

Godley, Kitty (b. 1927)
Daughter of Jacob Epstein by his mistress Kathleen Garman, Kitty was mainly brought up by her Garman grandmother.
She attended the Central School of Art, had a brief romance with Laurie Lee and in 1947 married Lucian Freud, by whom she had two daughters (his only legitimate children).
She is now married to the economist Wynne Godley.

Goldring, Douglas (1887–1960)
Goldring struggled all his life to survive by writing.
His links with the literary world were first forged when he became sub-editor of the
English Review
under Ford Madox Ford.
Goldring’s friends included Ethel Mannin, Alec Waugh and Hugh Kingsmill.
He married twice; he and his second, Swedish wife travelled widely and he became a respected minor travel writer.

Grant, Duncan (1885–1978)
Largely brought up with his Strachey cousins, the painter Duncan Grant was from the first an intrinsic member of the inner Bloomsbury circle.
His charm and talent made him irresistible to men and women alike, and he was beset by many romantic imbroglios.
Vanessa Bell – who had a daughter, Angelica, by him in 1918 – remained his closest companion.

Graves, Robert (1895–1985)
Graves’s autobiography,
Goodbye to All That
(1929), recounts his war experiences and his struggle to be a poet.
His marriage to the painter Nancy Nicholson broke down after he became involved with the American poet Laura Riding – the first of a series of ‘muses’.
Graves emigrated to Mallorca in 1929, remarried, and became a prolific and successful writer.

Gray, Stewart
Roy Campbell and Epstein both recalled this semi-mythical character, a one-time lawyer in Edinburgh, who ‘went bamboo’, gave away his fortune, and headed a hunger march to London.
He used his legal knowledge to open up uninhabited houses and provide ‘squats’ for homeless Bohemians.

Later he lived in Kathleen Hales basement and appears to have converted to spiritualism.

Grigson, Geofftey (1905–1985)
Handsome and enthusiastic, a ‘blend of sophistication and innocence’, Grigson was founder of
New Verse
– the most influential poetry magazine of the thirties.
As such his connections extended throughout literary London, and included Antonia White, Wyndham Lewis, Stephen Spender, and Dylan Thomas.
He married three times.

Hale, Kathleen (1898–2000)
Kathleen Hale describes her struggle to live independently and become an artist in her autobiography,
A Slender Reputation
(1994).
Poverty and hunger were setbacks, but London’s Bohemia provided many compensations, including becoming secretary to Augustus John.
She later married and gained her ‘reputation’ as the writer and illustrator of the ‘Orlando’ books for children.

Hamar, Haraldur
Known by his sobriquet ‘Iceland’, this penniless Café Royal ‘character’ was for many years a figure in the English Bohemian world.
Iceland claimed to be a playwright, but his plays were never produced.
His own walk-on role was in the lives of Augustus John, Nina Hamnett, C.
R.
W.
Nevinson and the Sitwells.

Hamnett, Nina (1890–1956)
The artist Nina Hamnett would often entertain friends with stories from her colourful past.
Parisian friends included Modigliani, Cocteau and Stravinsky; in London she was intimate with Roger Fry, Sickert, Augustus John and Gaudier-Brzeska.
Nina’s brief marriage failed, and she reverted to promiscuity.
Poverty and alcohol addiction eventually brought Nina low; she died after falling from her flat window.

Harper, Allanah (1904–1992)
After a privileged upbringing, Allanah Harper was a central figure of ‘haut’ Bohemia, where she pursued a carefree life with such friends as Nancy Cunard, Cecil Beaton, Brian Howard and the Sitwells.
She moved to France in 1929 and founded
Echanges
, a quarterly review which introduced English writers to a French readership.

Heseltine, Philip (aka Peter Warlock) (1894–1930)
Composer and musicologist, Heseltine was at the centre of Café Royal society in the twenties, with his close friends Cecil Gray and Bernard van Dieren.
He married the model Bobby Channing, known as ‘Puma’; Viva King fell madly in love with him.
Heseltine was eccentric, famous for his flamboyance, caustic wit and mood swings.
He committed suicide aged thirty-six.

Hillier, Tristram (1905–1983)
Good-looking and amusing, Hillier describes his art and impetuous love life in
Leda and the Goose
(1954).
While studying at the Slade he became an habitue of the Fitzroy Tavern and the Eiffel Tower restaurant.
Later he worked in Spain, Paris and the south of France, where he borrowed Vanessa Bell’s cottage at Fontcreuse.