Bohemia in London

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES Gift of Miss L. Belle Ford UNIVBKSiTY 01 CALiFOHNlA AT LOS ANGELES LIBRARY Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation iittpy/www.archive.org/details/boinemiainlondonOOransiala BOHEMIA IN LONDON A SOHO RESTAURANT " Bohemia in London BY ARTHUR RANSOME AtTTHOR OF " THE SOULS OP THB STREETS " THB STONE LADY," ETC. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY FRED TAYLOR NEW YORK DODD, MEAD & COMPANY 1907 134064 Copyright, 1907, by DODD, MEAD & COMPANY Published October, igoj AT / ^; N ^ TO M. P. SHIEL :) NOTE This book would never have been begun if it had not been for the ^ friendly suggestion of Miss Ocean ^\ Lee. It would never have been finished but for the strenuous scold- ^ ing and encouragement of Mr. Hughes Massie. It would be worse than it is if my friends, especially Mr. Edward Thomas, had been less generous of their advice. ^ Carlyle Studios, A July, 1907. .1 — CONTENTS INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER PAGE Planning books and writing them—The material of the book—Paris and London—^The method of the book—The word " Bohemia "—Villon—Grub Street—Hazlitt and Reynolds—Petrus Borel, Gautier, Murger—Modern Bohemia—Geography 3 AN ARRIVAL IN BOHEMIA Walking home in the morning—^Cofltee-stalls—Haz- litt, De Quincey, Goldsmith—The grocer's van The journey—" Love for Love " at the World's End—^The first lodging—Furniture—^The first night in Bohemia 15 OLD AND NEW CHELSEA Don Saltero's—Smollett—Franklin—The P.B.—Car- lyle and Hunt—Carlyle's house—Chelsea and the river — Rossetti in Cheyne Walk — Whistler's dinner-party—and Steele's—^Turner's house—^The Embankment 33 A CHELSEA EVENING — " An actor " Gypsy —A room out of a fairy tale — " guests " Opal hush —Singing and Stories Going home 51 — CONTENTS IN THE STUDIOS PACE The Studio—Posing the model—^Talking and painting —The studio lunch—The interrupter—Ârtists* models—^The Chelsea Art Club—^The Langham Sketch Club—Sets in the Studios—Hospitality . 69 THE COUNTRY IN BOHEMIA London full of countrymen—Hazlitt in the Southamp- ton—Burrow and the publisher—Bampfylde's life —^The consolation of the country—Country songs from an artist's model—Â village reputation . 87 OLD AND NEW SOHO — " Pierce Egan " Life in London —De Quincey in Greek Street—Thackeray—Sandwiches and ba- nanas—Barrel-organs—^The Soho restaurants Beguinot's—^The Dieppe—Brice's—^The waiters loi COFFEE-HOUSES ABOUT SOHO Casanova at the Orange—^The Moorish—^The Alge- rian—the Petit Riche—^The Bohemian in the Provence—Newspaper proprietors in the Europe 121 THE BOOKSHOPS OF BOHEMIA The Charing Cross Road — Book-buying — " The Anatomy of Melancholy "—The ordinary shop Richard Savage pawning books—Selling review copies—Gay and the bookshops—Lamb and " " street readers —Market-stalls—^True Book- men—Old ladies—^Tom Folio—Â prayer to my publishers . 137 — —— CONTENTS OLD AND NEW FLEET STREET PAGE Johnson and Boswell—Goldsmith and Doctor Kenrick —Hazlitt and Charles Lamb—De Quincey and Coleridge at the Courier office—^The " Tom and Jerry " times—Dickens—Elizabethan Fleet Street —Fleet Street on a sunny morning—^The pedes- trians — Mitre Court — Salisbury Court — The Cock—The Cheshire Cheese—^The Rhymers' Club—The Press Club—Cafes in Fleet Street—Â Fleet Street Talking Club 153 SOME NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES An organ of enlightened criticism—An editor Methods of work—^The gay way with reviewing —Log-rolling—Our circulation—Another editor —^Two more—^The Bohemian magazines—Finan- ciers and poets 175 WAYS AND MEANS — " Literary Ghosting " An author to be let —^Borrow- ing Chatterton—^Waiting for your money—Pen- ury and art—Extravagance the compensation for poverty—Scroggen—Â justifiable debauch . 193 TALKING, DRINKING AND SMOKING " The true way for enjoyment—" Tavern crawls The right reader—Doctor Johnson— —Ben Jonson —Beaumont—Gay—Herrick " The Ballad of Nappy Ale " — Keats — William Davies — The Rules of the old talking clubs ^To the reader . 209 — 1 CONTENTS OLD AND NEW HAMPSTEAD PAGE Steele—The Kit-Cats—Dickens and— red-hot chops Lamb—Leigh Hunt's cottage " Sleep and Poe- try "—Hazlitt on Leigh Hunt—Leigh Hunt's friends—Modern Hampstead—The salons—^The conversation—The Hempstead poets .... 229 A WEDDING AN BOHEMIA Bride and bridegroom—^The procession—Madame of the restaurant—Creme de Menthe—The morning 24 A NOVELIST 255 A PAINTER 267 A GIPSY POET 275 CONCLUSION Crabbe in 1781 and In 18 17—Bohemia only a stage in a man's life—^The escape from convention—Prac- tical matters—Hazlitt and John Lamb—^The farewell to Bohemia—Marriage—Success—Quod erat demonstrandum . , 283 ILLUSTRATIONS A SoHO Restaurant . Frontis piece The Coffee Stall . Facing page i6 RossETTi's House in Cheyne Walk 42 Work ..... 74 The Artist's Model 94 In the Moorish Cafj^ . 124 " Comfort and Secluded Luxury 128 The Wild Bohemian 130 A Bookshop .... 140 The Bookstalls of the Charing Cross Road 148 Doctor Johnson's House in Gough Square .... 154 Fleet Street .... 158 The Old Cheshire Cheese 164 The Editor .... 176 The Novelist 256 The River from Battersea Bridge 278 " ' Ce livre est touie ma jeunesse; Je Vai fait sans presque y songer. II y parait, je le confesse, Et j'aurais pu le corriger. Mais quand I'homme change sans cesse, Au passe pourquoi rien changer? Va-t'en, pauvre oiseau passager; Que Dieu te mene a ton adressel INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER authors are honest to them- WHENselves, they admit that their books are failures, in that they are never quite what they wished to make them. A book has a wilful way of its own, as soon as it is fairly started, and somehow has a knack of cheating its writer out of itself and changing into something different. It is usually a reversal of the story of " Beauty and the Beast." The odious beast does not become a prince; but a wonderful, clear, brilliant-coloured dream (as all books are before they are written) turns in the very hands of its author into a monster that he does not recognise. I wanted to write a book that would make real on paper the strange, tense, joyful and despair- ing, hopeful and sordid life that is lived in Lon- don by young artists and writers. I wanted to present life in London as it touches the people who come here, like Whittingtons, to seek the gold of fame on London pavements. They are conscious of the larger life of the town, of the struggling millions earning their weekly wages, of the thousands of the abyss who earn no wages and drift from shelter to shelter till they die; 4 BOHEMIA IN LONDON they know that there is a mysterious East End, full of crowded, ill-conditioned life ; they know that there is a West End, of fine houses and a more elaborate existence; they have a confused knowledge of the whole, but only a part be- comes alive and real, as far as they themselves are concerned. That part is the material of which I hoped to make this book. There are a dozen flippant, merry treatises on Bohemia in London, that talk of the Savage Club, and the Vagabond dinners, and all the other consciously unconventional things that like to consider themselves Bohemian. But these are not the real things; no young poet or artist fresh to London, with all his hopes unreal- ised, all his capacity for original living unspent, has anything to do with them. They bear no more vital relation to the Bohemian life that is actually lived than masquerades or fancy dress balls bear to more ordinary existence. Mem- bers of the Savage Club, guests of the Vaga- bonds have either grown out of the life that should be in my book, or else have never lived in it. They are respectable citizens, dine com- fortably, sleep in feather-beds, and find hot water waiting for them in the mornings. It is, perhaps, the unreality of their pretences that makes honest outsiders who are disgusted at the imitation, or able to compare them with the inhabitants of the Quartier or Montmartre, say INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER 5 that there is no such thing as Bohemia in London. But there is; and anyone who considers the number of adventurous young people fresh from conventional homes, and consequently ready to live in any way other than that to which they have been accustomed, who come to town with heads more full of poetry than sense, must realise how impossible it is that there should not be. Indeed, it is likely that our Bohemia, certainly in these days, is more real than that of Paris, for the Quartier is so well advertised that it has become fashionable, and Americans who can afford it go there, and almost out- number the others who cannot afford anything else. Of course, in London too, there are people who are Bohemians for fun; but not so many, because the fun in London is not an organised merriment that anyone may enjoy who can pay for it. Visitors to London do not find, as they do in Paris, men waiting about the principal streets, offering themselves as guides to Bohe- mia. The fun is in the life itself, and not to be had less cheaply than by living it. I wanted to get into my book, for example, the precarious, haphazard existence of the men who dine in Soho not because it is an unconventional thing to do, but because they cannot usually afford to dine at all, and get better and merrier dinners for their money there than else- 6 BOHEMIA IN LONDON where, the men who, when less opulent, eat mussels from a street stall without unseemly amusement at the joke of doing so, but as sol- emnly as you and I eat through our respectable meals, solacing themselves meanwhile with the thought of high ideals that you and I, being better fed, find less real, less insistent.

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