Romantic Rebels: An Informal History of Bohemianism in America

by Emily Hahn

American avant-garde literature from 1849 to mid '60s.

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Emily "Mickey" Hahn was called "a forgotten American literary treasure" by The New Yorker magazine; she was the author of 52 books and more than 180 articles and stories. Her father was a hardware salesman and her mother a suffragette. She and her siblings were brought up to be independent and to think for themselves and she became the first woman to take a degree in mining engineering from the University of Wisconsin. She went on to study mineralogy at Columbia and anthropology at Oxford, working in between as an oil geologist, a teacher and a guide in New Mexico before she arrived in New York where she took up writing seriously. In 1935 she traveled to China for a short visit and ended up by staying nine years in the Far East. She loved living in Shanghai and met both Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai. She became the lover of Zau Sinmay, an intellectual, whom she particularly liked for his overwhelming curiosity about everything, she felt it rubbed off on her, and together they founded the English-language magazine Candid Comment. During her time in China she learned to smoke opium, persisting for two years until, inevitably, she became addicted; she was then cured by a hypnotist.

In Hong Kong Hahn met Major Charles R. Boxer, a married British intelligence officer; in 1940 she became pregnant and they had a daughter, Carola. Boxer was captured by the Japanese after being wounded in the attack on Hong Kong; Hahn visited him as much as possible in his prisoner-of-war camp, until she and Carola were repatriated to the United States in 1943. On his release they got married and in 1946 they arrived in Dorset where she called herself a "bad housewife". Although Boxer continued to live in England, where he became Professor of Portuguese at London University, Hahn lived mostly in America as a tax exile.

Reviews

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Back in the 1960s I used to be called a hippie, and it really bugged me. Nowadays I get called an Old Hippie, and I love it. What’s that all about? I thought this book might provide some answers.

Why are some of us considered Bohemians, and some of us not? Why do some of us embrace an alternative lifestyle, and some of us not? And just what is a Bohemian, anyway? According to Emily Hahn, here’s the origin of the word:

Why should all these people, obviously not denizens of the country of that name, be called Bohemians? It was a trick of the French language, that is all, a nickname bestowed by Balzac, in 1840, on artists and writers of a certain type, in a story called ‘Prince of Bohemia.’ He defined the term: ‘Bohemia is made up of young people, all of whom are between twenty and thirty years of age, all men of genius in their own line, as yet almost unknown but with the ability to become known one day, when they will achieve real distinction.’ …The French believed that gypsies came from Bohemia, so that ‘Bohemian’ was used interchangeably for ‘gypsy’ or ‘vagabond’ long before Balzac adopted it.

Emily Hahn tells the stories of several American Bohemians, from Walt Whitman through Jack London to Allen Ginsberg. She is trying to pin down just what exactly American Bohemia is — or was, as of 1965 when she was writing. For me in 2013, there is a special perspective: already in 1965, the hippies were taking shape as a new social expression as yet unknown to the world outside of California. Certainly unknown to Emily Hahn. But she would have recognized them immediately as the next Bohemian phase. Like the preceding phases, hippiedom would be embraced by some as a fashion but would be inborn to others as a predestined life. For the true Bohemians of whom she writes, the lifestyle was unavoidable.

She ends the book by quoting a newspaper article of 1965 about the end of beatnik culture which declares: “The young woman with the loose-flying hair and black stockings may well be majoring in elementary education, and the young man with the beard is a pre-law student having his last fling. Bohemianism is dead.” But Ms. Hahn begs to differ:

Let us say, rather, that this Bohemianism is dead. Bohemians are prophets, literally the avant-garde, who when their prophecies come to pass drop out of sight, their identity lost in the crowd … until the next avant-garde promulgates a new set of ideas just as outrageous and unacceptable as the old once seemed.
Everything in Bohemia changes, or ought to. There, if anywhere, history never repeats itself.

As for the stories she tells of the American Bohemians, I got bored. I started skipping ahead. Ms. Hahn has an opinionated and somewhat airy method of narration that irritates me. She’s not going to argue her opinions or provide much detail. You are expected to agree with her and move on, or she will leave you behind. As a highly opinionated person myself, I suspect we would not get along well face-to-face, she and I.

As for my original question, maybe she's helped me find an answer. Back in the 1960s, to call somebody a hippie was to make a statement of fashion. Or at least, that's how I heard it. Nowadays, to call somebody an old hippie is to make a statement of values.

The original American Bohemians such as Walt Whitman or Edgar Allen Poe were not choosing a fashion. They were the product of their values and their offbeat chemical makeup. They couldn't have been normal no matter how hard they tried. Thank heavens.

[Rob Branigin · Rating 3 out of 5]

As advertised -a breezy and anecdotal overview of American bohemianism that reads - and I mean this as a compliment - like an extended "American Heritage" article from 1965 or so. Coverage is perfunctory until the author arrives at the era she is clearly most interested in - early 20th century modernism. That was a bit of a bummer for me, as I find people like Gertude Stein -in the immortal words of George Gissing - unutterably tedious. Other than that, this is good bedside-table reading.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book sat in my bookcase for so many years, I did not like the title. Expected to not like the book as I had no idea of what it would be about, then when I saw it was about Bohemianism , well I should have read it long ago. I was about some of my favorite authors. Once started, I could not put it down.