30th April, 2024 in Biography & Memoir, Society & Culture, Women in History

The soundtrack to ‘Queens of Bohemia’

By Darren Coffield

Introduction – G. Puccini, “Quando m’en vo'” La Boheme for Cello & Piano

DARREN COFFIELD: Bohemian was a term used for those who lived unconventional lives, when the first Romani Gypsies appeared in sixteenth century France they were labelled bohemian and their non-conformist lifestyle and dress caught the popular imagination. By the twentieth century, a new generation of British women began rejecting the protection of the traditional family hierarchy and fashioned themselves a new identity through the arts and in doing so turned the idea of Victorian respectability on its head.

Track 1: Fitzrovian Femmes – The Charleston

DARREN COFFIELD: Queens of Bohemia and Other Miss-fits begins in the 1920s, when the Suffragettes had fought hard for equality and nightclubs became the new social spaces where women could socialise unchaperoned. Kate Meyrick’s ’43’ club on Gerrard Street scandalised society and inspired the creation of The Gargoyle club, a hunting ground for Femmes Fatales and film stars. This was the age of the dance craze and the arrival of the gender-bending ‘Flapper.’

Track 2: Femme Fatales – Poor Little Rich girl

DARREN COFFIELD: Hermione Baddeley had her own independence, wealth and status. ‘Cochran’s Young Ladies’ were then considered the most beautiful girls in the world, an Edwardian chorus line that creamed off the best talent. She appeared in, On with The Dance, where her big number was the Noel Coward song, Poor Little Rich Girl. It became her theme tune and was played whenever she entered a club.

Track 3: Sladies – Teddy Bears’ Picnic, Henry Hall

DARREN COFFIELD: Contrary to popular belief, bohemians were very conservative and met every morning for a coffee to kill their hangover. By the Scala Theatre off Charlotte Street there was a little café run by the Swiss émigré, Madame Buhler. Originally an outlet for the Librarie Hachette to provide foreign language books and newspapers for foreign workers, Madame Buhler had turned it into a café where her customers could sit and read them…

Track 4: Viva La Vie Boheme – Land of Hope and Glory

SHEILA VAN DAMM: I had never thought of Father as brave. I don’t think he is. But in the Blitz he was terrific. He was up on the roof fire-watching when the sky was red, down in the wings when near-misses were shaking the building—and still the show went on; he exuded a calm, ridiculous confidence that we could not be hit, and somehow persuaded everyone else to think the same. Even I fell for it. We are very proud that we never closed. We were immensely proud when, for ten dangerous weeks, the Windmill was the only theatre open in the West End of London. We did not kid ourselves that we were keeping culture alive or anything highbrow like that. We were simply doing our bit as civilians to show that London could take it…

Track 5: Let’s Blitz Bohemia – Every little breeze seems to whisper Louise, Chevallier

DARREN COFFIELD: Louise’s contribution to the war effort was to become a barmaid at Olwen’s Le Petite Club Francais, where Barbara Skelton drank freely with Augustus John until Louise lost it over a French opium smoker nicknamed Chopin.

Track 6: The Lost Girls – Puttin’ On The Ritz

DARREN COFFIELD: Barbara Skelton spent her mornings doing her face and telephoning friends for dinner dates. As all the cooks had been called up, the herd instinct of the rich was to gather and eat at the Ritz. Centrally placed by Piccadilly, the few remaining buses would pull up outside … At first Barbara was shy and self-conscious at Horizon’s Ritz dinners but soon realised that when the Horizon crowd hit the hotel it was Ritz-Krieg!

Track 7: Café Society – London Pride, Noel Coward

MISS SIN: They were mostly eccentrics who didn’t realise they were eccentric – as opposed to those who tried too hard to be. I remember all the models; Ironfoot Jack with his huge cape, ‘I’m the King of the bohemians, I am.’, Joan Rhodes ‘The Mighty Mannequin’, Ernest the Astrologer, Quentin Crisp and the Countess – Eileen. They preferred to frequent the cafes – they were ‘Café Society’.

Track 8: Ripping Yarns – Wish Me Luck, Gracie Field

DARREN COFFIELD: By now, thousands of men had been trained in unarmed combat skills such as garrotting and breaking necks, many of whom wandered around London’s West End. But with no enemy to fight their pent-up emotions were often unleashed on the local female population with random acts of violence.

Track 9: The Gluepot Gang – We’ll Meet Again, Vera Lynn

DARREN COFFIELD: Mrs Henderson enjoyed providing opportunities for British artists and was proud of Britain and all it stood for in the face of fascism. Amidst the carnage of war the Windmill provided a welcome interlude of glamour and eroticism … a glimpse of flesh created long queues outside the theatre and the slogan ‘We never closed’ was appropriated to, ‘We’re never clothed’.

Track 10: Sisterhood of Sin – Thank Heaven For Little Girls, Chevalier

DARREN COFFIELD: Bohemia not only offered women creative and sexual adventure but also forbidden material and erotic experiences. However, they were not expected to create artworks from their experiences but rather become the raw material for the art of their male lovers…

Track 11: The Coach & Divorces – I’ll Be Seeing You, Billie Holiday

JOAN WYNDHAM: Tuesday, 8th May…We were all of us on the earliest morning train we could take. A crazy man in our compartment kept insisting that it was all a hoax — the war wasn’t over and we were now actually at war with the Russians! It wasn’t until the train got in and I heard the first church bells ringing that I finally knew that it was true…

Track 12: Pond Life – La Vie en Rose

DARREN COFFIELD: After the confinement of the war years there were many compelling reasons to get out of Britain. Debt didn’t seem so bad in a continental climate and life in France was much cheaper. Bohemia was full of fervent Francophiles: Olwen Vaughan, Isabel Rawsthorne, Sonia Orwell and Cyril Connolly whose novel, The Rock Pool, drifts through the flotsam and jetsam of arty types who’d adopted France as their home.

Track 13: Acid Queens – Don’t Have Any More, Mrs Moore

DARREN COFFIELD: The Colony was gender bending – a cultural and racial melting pot at a time when the mixing between different classes and races was frowned upon. Isabel [Rawsthorne] said the club was run with intelligence, for music lovers like herself … Several composers including Elisabeth Lutyens were known to tinkle the ivories. Both Isabel and Francis hated the sculptor Henry Moore and would gather around the piano for a sing along to Colin MacInnes’ parody of a Music Hall number, Don’t Have Any More, Mrs Moore, about a lady who keeps getting pregnant.

Track 14: Lost Horizon – Je Ne Regret Rien

DARREN COFFIELD: In an attempt to find a stepmother for his young son, George Orwell proposed to various young women including Elinor Bellingham Smith’s friend, Olivier Popham, who lived in the flat below. Sonia, who’d occasionally babysit for Orwell’s son, Richard, was way down the list. But when Orwell returned to Jura in the spring of 1947 to begin the second draft of Nineteen Eighty-Four, he used Sonia as the role model for Julia, the ‘girl from the fiction department’…

Track 15: The Monster Club – The Monster Mash

DARREN COFFIELD: The easy amiability of the Fitzroy Tavern had been replaced by professional jealousy and infighting. At its core was a group of individuals who collectively formed the Monster Club who met at noon each day at the Deep End of the French …

Track 16: Get Smart – All Of Me, Ella Fitzgerald

DARREN COFFIELD: Elizabeth Smart had a string of married lovers one of whom was the Scottish poet, Sydney Graham, who wrote love letters begging her not to be plagued by domestic disasters … With his ruddy drinker’s complexion, bulbous nose and sad bloodshot eyes, Sidney turned up at BBC Television Centre to give a live interview but the doorman mistook him for a tramp and refused him entry.

Track 17: Dangerous Muse – I Want To Be Loved By You, Marilyn Monroe

DARREN COFFIELD: The Debutante Season was one of the many British traditions to quickly re-established itself after the war. It began with the opening of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition on the first Monday of May and its purpose was to introduce aristocratic women to eligible men. ‘Debs’ as they were known, were chaperoned everywhere and watched intensely. Each girl had a coming out dance and were presented at court to the King and Queen. The problem was, after the war, there weren’t that many men around.

Track 18: Queen of Heaven – Mad Dogs and Englishmen

DARREN COFFIELD: Ebbertson Hall in Yorkshire’s became the northern outpost of 1950’s bohemia. Often called ‘England’s smallest stately home’ … Here Margaret and West Fenton lived in a relaxed eighteenth-century style happily co-habiting alongside various goats, chickens, pot-bellied pigs, deer, lamas, peacocks, and a turkey called Henry

Track 19: From Beijing to Bohemia – The Last Emperor theme

DARREN COFFIELD: After spending the war years at the BBC’s Liar’s School and drinking in the Gluepot, Hetta and William Empson bought the lease on Studio House, Hampstead Hill, and let it out to Henry Moore before taking the family to China, where William taught English at University and Hetta had many adventures smoking opium and dining on boiled sheep with a Mongolian Warlord.

Track 20: Absolute Hell – Mad About the Boy, Dinah Washington

MICHAEL SOUTHGATE: Some women are romantics, they had a misguided belief that homosexuality was an illness…that if they kissed you, rather like turning a frog into a prince, they’d cure you and make you straight. To everyone’s surprise, Olwen married one of her homosexual club members, the ballet photographer, Duncan Melvin, who moved into her flat above the club. But the marriage didn’t go to plan, her husband had developed a crush on an androgynous young man, George Jamieson, who later became the first Briton to undergo sex change surgery and emerge as April Ashley.