The Good Bohemian: The Letters of Ida John review – the Bloomsbury group laid bare
As Virginia Woolf whimsically calculated, the world became modern “on or about December 1910”. Sadly, that was too late for Ida John, an artistically gifted and boldly emancipated “New Woman” who died in 1907.
“I must create something,” Ida insisted in a letter to one of her female confidantes; all she asked was “a studio and ability to paint for myself”. But artistic creativity was still a male prerogative and when a teenage girl of her acquaintance said that she too wanted to paint, Ida could only ironically advise her to “be a man”. Ida defied her stuffy family to marry the raffish society portraitist Augustus John, after which her occupation turned out to be breeding. She came to think of herself merely as “a Belly” and thought she had the gooey consistency of a suet pudding. When Gus, as she called him, took up with a mistress named Dorelia, Ida in desperation agreed to cohabit with the minx-like newcomer in an Edwardian seraglio.
She forced herself to snuggle up to the rival she called 'Mrs Harem'. Erotic energy pulsed in all directions at once
Having presented Gus with five children in six years – the total might have been six if she hadn’t quietly treated herself to an abortion in the off year – Ida died of a puerperal fever and peritonitis, aged only 30. By then, the priapic Gus had begun impregnating Dorelia, who bore him an additional four heirs; when they broke up, he acquired three more from three different mothers. Self-exempted from nappy-changing, Gus viewed babies as amusing aesthetic objects. As they grew up, he lost interest: according to Michael Holroyd, he casually disposed of the offspring Ida left behind by distributing them like cards “in a complex game of Happy Families”, loaning them for a few months or, better yet, a lifetime to “some agreeable woman – ideally a princess”.
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Read moreReading Ida’s letters, it’s hard not to think of Gus as a bad bohemian, who lived free while reducing Ida to a reproductive slave. For him, la vie de bohème was more than a dilettantish metaphor, as it is in Puccini’s opera. The true bohemians were vagabond refugees from Bohemia: imitating a Gypsy, Gus dressed like a tramp, taught his parrot to swear in the Romany language and left London to go roving in a tinker’s caravan, which he parked in the middle of Dartmoor so that Dorelia could give birth alone to her first child.
This “solitary Stag” or “eagle of the ranges”, as Ida described him, took advantage of her deference and sense of duty. Having abandoned her own ambitions, she settled for the mute, compliant role of artist’s model, only to have Gus casually paint her out of a double portrait in which she appeared beside Dorelia. Whenever Ida chafed against the troilist arrangement, she felt guilty about her wilfulness and forced herself to snuggle up to the rival she addressed as “Mrs Harem”.
In the letters, erotic energy occasionally seems to be pulsing in all directions at once. “I was bitter cold last night in bed without your burning hot, not to say scalding, body next to me,” Ida wrote, not to Gus, but to Dorelia. Gus’s sister, Gwen, who did manage a career as a painter, saw Ida as an androgyne, a hybrid of female and male like Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, able to share herself between her husband and his mistress.
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Augustus John playing the melodeon: the artist viewed children as a mere diversion. Photograph: Mary Dowdall/Collection of Martin Lee-BrowneDuring Dorelia’s pregnancy, Ida warned her that men are by nature “indifferent” to children. She envied that nonchalance and in part shared it. She didn’t really love her burdensome brats, she told a correspondent; she loved only Gus and viewed the children as “a curious – most curious – result of that love”. When her first baby groused and squalled, she speculated that “he would very much rather not have been created”. The second, she thought, resembled a piglet. Her fourth “beastly boy” was “a bull necked unpoetical snoring blockhead”; later, she described him as a weakling and wondered if his disposition had “anything to do with my violent efforts to dislodge him at first. Poor little unwelcome man”. As for child rearing, she proposed transferring the infants “into queer pots like the Chinese, to grow out of shape”. Such jokes crackle with resentment and frustration, as does her unsentimental report on feline fertility: after “the cat had 6 kittens (O Lord!)”, she watched Gus “drown 5 in a kettle with great apparent sang-froid”.
Ida’s consolation was the painless and playful invention of brainchildren. She reinvented her friends by fantastically nicknaming them after the unsocialised creatures of Kipling’s Jungle Book, with herself as Mowgli, a feral imp, whose liberty meant he could only be a boy. She also dreamed up “an invisible Puck-like spirit” called Friuncelli, another rebellious trickster, again inevitably male.
Drawing together
Read moreA generation later, after Marie Stopes began to educate women about what Gus termed “the mysteries of child-prevention”, Ida’s fate might have been different. Dorothy Parker said that the members of the Bloomsbury group lived in squares, painted in circles and made love in triangles. Ida did not have the benefit of that polymorphous modern geometry. She may have forfeited her chance to paint, but her letters, salvaged by her granddaughter Rebecca, after a century during which the renegade Ida was not mentioned in the family, make belated amends. Between baby-minding chores, she proved to be a witty, wickedly outspoken writer, which ensures that she will now not be forgotten.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/25/the-good-bohemian-the-letters-of-ida-john-review
“I must create something,” Ida insisted in a letter to one of her female confidantes; all she asked was “a studio and ability to paint for myself”. But artistic creativity was still a male prerogative and when a teenage girl of her acquaintance said that she too wanted to paint, Ida could only ironically advise her to “be a man”. Ida defied her stuffy family to marry the raffish society portraitist Augustus John, after which her occupation turned out to be breeding. She came to think of herself merely as “a Belly” and thought she had the gooey consistency of a suet pudding. When Gus, as she called him, took up with a mistress named Dorelia, Ida in desperation agreed to cohabit with the minx-like newcomer in an Edwardian seraglio.
She forced herself to snuggle up to the rival she called 'Mrs Harem'. Erotic energy pulsed in all directions at once
Having presented Gus with five children in six years – the total might have been six if she hadn’t quietly treated herself to an abortion in the off year – Ida died of a puerperal fever and peritonitis, aged only 30. By then, the priapic Gus had begun impregnating Dorelia, who bore him an additional four heirs; when they broke up, he acquired three more from three different mothers. Self-exempted from nappy-changing, Gus viewed babies as amusing aesthetic objects. As they grew up, he lost interest: according to Michael Holroyd, he casually disposed of the offspring Ida left behind by distributing them like cards “in a complex game of Happy Families”, loaning them for a few months or, better yet, a lifetime to “some agreeable woman – ideally a princess”.
Sign up to our Bookmarks newsletter
Read moreReading Ida’s letters, it’s hard not to think of Gus as a bad bohemian, who lived free while reducing Ida to a reproductive slave. For him, la vie de bohème was more than a dilettantish metaphor, as it is in Puccini’s opera. The true bohemians were vagabond refugees from Bohemia: imitating a Gypsy, Gus dressed like a tramp, taught his parrot to swear in the Romany language and left London to go roving in a tinker’s caravan, which he parked in the middle of Dartmoor so that Dorelia could give birth alone to her first child.
This “solitary Stag” or “eagle of the ranges”, as Ida described him, took advantage of her deference and sense of duty. Having abandoned her own ambitions, she settled for the mute, compliant role of artist’s model, only to have Gus casually paint her out of a double portrait in which she appeared beside Dorelia. Whenever Ida chafed against the troilist arrangement, she felt guilty about her wilfulness and forced herself to snuggle up to the rival she addressed as “Mrs Harem”.
In the letters, erotic energy occasionally seems to be pulsing in all directions at once. “I was bitter cold last night in bed without your burning hot, not to say scalding, body next to me,” Ida wrote, not to Gus, but to Dorelia. Gus’s sister, Gwen, who did manage a career as a painter, saw Ida as an androgyne, a hybrid of female and male like Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, able to share herself between her husband and his mistress.
FacebookTwitterPinterest
Augustus John playing the melodeon: the artist viewed children as a mere diversion. Photograph: Mary Dowdall/Collection of Martin Lee-BrowneDuring Dorelia’s pregnancy, Ida warned her that men are by nature “indifferent” to children. She envied that nonchalance and in part shared it. She didn’t really love her burdensome brats, she told a correspondent; she loved only Gus and viewed the children as “a curious – most curious – result of that love”. When her first baby groused and squalled, she speculated that “he would very much rather not have been created”. The second, she thought, resembled a piglet. Her fourth “beastly boy” was “a bull necked unpoetical snoring blockhead”; later, she described him as a weakling and wondered if his disposition had “anything to do with my violent efforts to dislodge him at first. Poor little unwelcome man”. As for child rearing, she proposed transferring the infants “into queer pots like the Chinese, to grow out of shape”. Such jokes crackle with resentment and frustration, as does her unsentimental report on feline fertility: after “the cat had 6 kittens (O Lord!)”, she watched Gus “drown 5 in a kettle with great apparent sang-froid”.
Ida’s consolation was the painless and playful invention of brainchildren. She reinvented her friends by fantastically nicknaming them after the unsocialised creatures of Kipling’s Jungle Book, with herself as Mowgli, a feral imp, whose liberty meant he could only be a boy. She also dreamed up “an invisible Puck-like spirit” called Friuncelli, another rebellious trickster, again inevitably male.
Drawing together
Read moreA generation later, after Marie Stopes began to educate women about what Gus termed “the mysteries of child-prevention”, Ida’s fate might have been different. Dorothy Parker said that the members of the Bloomsbury group lived in squares, painted in circles and made love in triangles. Ida did not have the benefit of that polymorphous modern geometry. She may have forfeited her chance to paint, but her letters, salvaged by her granddaughter Rebecca, after a century during which the renegade Ida was not mentioned in the family, make belated amends. Between baby-minding chores, she proved to be a witty, wickedly outspoken writer, which ensures that she will now not be forgotten.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/25/the-good-bohemian-the-letters-of-ida-john-review
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