Bohemianism and the Seven Arts?

St Thomas Aquinas and St Ignatius of Loyola were of course not Bohemians while studying the Seven Arts. I also find improbable that C S Lewis or J R R Tolkien should have been such. Nevertheless, Bohemianism has a certain devotion to them too:

Journalists were to be regular members; artists and musicians were to be honorary members.[5] The group quickly relaxed its rules for membership to permit some people to join who had little artistic talent, but enjoyed the arts and had greater financial resources. Eventually, the original "bohemian" members were in the minority and the wealthy and powerful controlled the club. Club members who were established and successful, respectable family men, defined for themselves their own form of bohemianism which included men who were bons vivants, sometime outdoorsmen, and appreciators of the arts. Club member and poet George Sterling responded to this redefinition:

Any good mixer of convivial habits considers he has a right to be called a Bohemian. But that is not a valid claim. There are two elements, at least, that are essential to Bohemianism. The first is devotion or addiction to one or more of the Seven Arts; the other is poverty. Other factors suggest themselves: for instance, I like to think of my Bohemians as young, as radical in their outlook on art and life; as unconventional, and, though this is debatable, as dwellers in a city large enough to have the somewhat cruel atmosphere of all great cities.

Despite his purist views, Sterling associated very closely with the Bohemian Club, and caroused with artist and industrialist alike at the Bohemian Grove.

And as CSL and JRRT though well into the Seven Arts were no Bohemians, so GKC, though a Journalist, was no Bohemian.

If any one were to accuse me of Bohemianism because I have named my blog Trivium et Quadrivium, I respond it is like calling CSL or JRRT, or even Sts Thomas Aquinas and Ignatius of Loyola "Bohemians".

If any single person were to consider me a Bohemian because I do a kind of journalism, let them look at Gilbert Keith Chesterton. He was a journalist and most certainly no Bohemian.

And if my liking for Oscar Wilde is supposed to make me suspicious, I can answer that I pity him for having in 1882 visited Bohemian Club. It very arguably ruined his life up to possibly a last moment redemption if he sent for a priest before dying (he died before the priest arrived). I pity him for that bad visit.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bibliothèque Audoux
and Townhall of III:d Arrondissement
Ste Hedwige of Poland
16-X-2013