Book review: Queens of Bohemia, and other Miss-Fits

Queens of Bohemia: And Other Miss-Fits by Darren Coffield, with a foreword by Marianne Faithfull, tells the story of the taboo-breaking women of bohemian London.  Covering roughly the 40 years from 1920 to 1960, the book tells the stories of the “Queen of Clubs”, Kate Meyrick; the scary “Tiger Woman”, Betty May; the original “Chelsea Girl”, Viva King; outrageous artist, Nina Hammett;  the “Euston Road Venus”, Sonia Orwell and Isabel Rawsthorne, pornographer, artist and spy — to name but a few. There’s a very useful Biography of Contributors at the back of the book which runs to 145 names, so you get an idea of how many people are featured. A dramatic personae of amazing characters.

Like his last book Tales From the Colony Room, Queens of Bohemia is an oral history with contributions from both the people who were there and their friends and children. It’s like a discussion across the years with contributions from the living and the dead, interspersed with Coffield’s very eloquent and inciteful interjections, as if they were were all sitting in a bar chatting and gossiping about the old days. The big difference is that whereas the Colony Room book documented the habituées of one Soho drinking hole, this is a complex survey of a whole cultural phenomenon over 40 years. It links the often untold stories of generations of strong, talented, independent and outspoken women, who struggled for recognition in their chosen disciplines, frequently in the shadow of their famous male partners and friends, while having a wild old time!

Attitudes persist, and Coffield was warned of writing the book. The art critic Tim Hilton, who wrote the obituary of Francis Bacon’s muse, Henrietta Moraes, said that he shouldn’t waste his time writing about bohemian women. He opined, what is there to commemorate about such women. “They produced nothing or next to nothing that would give them a place in the history of 20th-century culture.” Well apparently he was very wrong, as this book attests.

We are given a glimpse of many hubs of bohemia, and circles of friends, enemies, lovers, colleagues that crisscross over the years. The Gargoyle Club (on the corner of Meard Street and Dean Street, in what is now part of Soho Town House) opened its doors to the “bright young things” in 1925, and stayed open to 1955. Owned by David Tenant, Matisse consulted on the interior, including a stunning entrance staircase in glittering steel and brass. Tenant and his actress wife Hermione Baddeley played host to such notorious women as Talullah Bankhead, Hollywood bad girl and force of nature, who famously said: “Cocaine isn’t habit-forming, darling. And I should know. I’ve been taking it all my life.”

World War II encouraged a mood of devil may care promiscuity in bohemian circles, as the Blitz may take you at any moment. Author Peter Quennell called these young women “the lost girls who flitted round London dodging bombs and attending cocktail parties.” One such lost girl, Barbara Skelton, “liked to keep half a dozen beaus on the boil. She was determined to enjoy herself as life was short, and possibly even shorter still during wartime.”

During an air raid, writer Julian Maclaren-Ross, a regular at The Wheatsheaf on Rathbone Place, begged a lost girl to make love to him before they were both killed. She replied, “I’d love to, but you’re not the kind of man I could afford to be found dead with.”

Until the 1970s, what is now called Fitzrovia was considered North Soho, and a lot of the action took part north of Oxford Street. The Fitzroy Tavern was the stomping ground of two formidable and talented women: outstanding artist, Nina Hammett and scary performer, Betty May. After supper in Mayfair, parties of toffs would have their drivers to take them the short distance to The Fitzroy, to see the Bohemians, as entertainment, rather like in the eighteenth century, when people paid to see the mad people in Bedlam Hospital! 

The book documents many of these locations, frequently run by women. The George on Great Portland Street was known as The Gluepot because people working at the nearby BBC tended to stick there. Le Petit Club Francais in St James, home to the Free French was run by documentary film pioneer Olwen Vaughn. The Colony Room on Dean Street, ruled with a rod of iron by legendary Muriel Belcher and home to many Miss-Fits.

The French House, on Dean Street, in those days, used to have what was called “the shallow end”, which was to the left (if facing the bar) and “the deep end” to the right, the domain of the bohemian glitterati. New faces would, over time move along the bar, the till being the half way point, until they were accepted into the deep end. Sandy Fawkes was taken to The French for first time by the artist, Johnny Minton, only to discover Dylan Thomas slumped on a bench under the window and an inert Nina Hammett outside the door to the ladies’ lavatory.

Artists’ models feature a lot in the book, and was a common route into the bohemian world. Many women started as innocents, especially those from bohemian dynasties, and had little knowledge of their own bodies, because their parents used to farm them out to friends and relatives, and never really did much parenting. Joan Wyndham, when a young woman, said: “I know a doctor, a friend of mine went to and it seems we’ve got a thing called a clitoris, which makes us have an orgasm.” Casual sex, often with much older men was the norm. Augustus John’s chat up line was: “I’d like to knock a baby out of you.” He used to pat the head of every child in Fitzrovia, on the off chance it was one of his! Bohemian women drifted in and out of relationships. They all seem to meet casually and are smitten, and then just as nonchalantly leave their husbands / partners and children and move on.

The book is a fascinating read, full of outrageous stories, many straight from the mouths of the women who were there. You will meet many new people whose stories have been forgotten over the decades, but Coffield’s diligent research has managed to uncover. 

Marianne Faithfull, in her introduction said: “The Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher explained to me that the problem with my life story becoming the basis for a feature film was that it wasn’t bad enough. I thought I’d degraded myself plenty, but apparently not. I guess I wasn’t thinking of the movie rights … take me back to old bohemia!“

Queens of Bohemia: And Other Miss-Fits by Darren Coffield was published by The History Press in May 2024. Signed hardback editions are available to purchase here.