"The First Bohemians" by Vic Catrell

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This rollicking history book published in 2013 is all about Covent Garden and its environs during the Eighteenth Century. It focuses mainly on the leading artists of the day who lived in this small area of central London alongside writers, tradespeople and a lot of prostitutes. I saw it in a bookshop when looking for material on Samuel Johnson, whose house / museum I recently visited just off Fleet Street, and who features reasonably prominently in this book.

It is a work of popular social history, but uses the lives of artists (notably Joshua Reynolds and William Hogarth) and a lot of their art to tell and illustrate the broader story. The central thesis is that between the Restoration in 1660 and the rise of Victorian-style prudery in the early nineteenth century, there was a long period in which many Londoners, including elites, lived much more liberally in a manner we later came to label Bohemian. The Churches held less sway and while this led to a lot of social problems, it was also great from an artistic point of view because conventions could be challenged and new experimental approaches tried out. There was an anti-authoritarian spirit around as exemplified in the outrageous cartoons lampooning authority figures which circulated quite freely. Hogarth and others delighted in being able to make a good living producing engravings depicting the lives of ordinary people. Coffee houses and public houses thrived as places where ideas were exchanged. In short, according to Catrell, this was a uniquely invigorating time to be living and working in London's artistic, literary and theatrical circles.

In this account it was the Gordon Riots of 1780 that started to bring about change. Mobs of protestants went on anti-papist rampages and had to be suppressed with a heavy hand by the authorities. There were a lot of public hangings and the upshot was that posher people started moving westwards. The construction of Regent Street in the 1820s then acted as symbolic divide between respectable and less respectable neighbourhoods. The clearance of streets at around the same time to construct Trafalgar Square further disrupted life in Covent Garden, and unusual eighteenth century social mix dissipated.

This book is very interesting indeed. With wonderful illustrations and pen portraits of some extraordinary artistic types, some now largely forgotten.