Norman Lindsay's A Curate in Bohemia

Norman Lindsay is (in my opinion) the only truly great painter Australia has ever produced. Lindsay was also a very successful writer. A Curate in Bohemia, published in 1913, was his first novel.

The Rev. James Bowles is about to depart for Murumberee to take up his first curacy but before doing so he makes the fateful decision to look up his old school chum Cripps. The young curate finds himself in the world of pre-WW1 Melbourne arty Bohemia.

Cripps and his friends are art students. Their idea of the pursuit of art is centred around talking about painting rather than actually painting, but mostly it’s centred around beer, tobacco and girls. The curate does not drink nor does he smoke. He is however a young man who always takes the path of least resistance and he is easily persuaded that one drink would do no harm. One drink having produced no great ill-effects he decides to have another. And another.

He wakes up the next morning with his finances sadly depleted but with happy memories of conviviality and even happy memories of long conversations with Florrie, Florrie being an artist’s model who poses for Cripps.

The curate has more convivial evenings. His finances are even more sadly depleted. And somehow he has still not managed to get himself to the railway station to take that train to Murumberee.

Bowles soon discovers that he rather likes beer and he rather likes girls as well. And the reader discovers that the curate doesn’t exactly have a strong vocation as a clergyman. He just drifted into it as a result of his usual practice of taking the line of least resistance.

Matters will come to a head when Cripps decides that his old school chum simply must have a grand send-off party before entraining for Murumberee. Paying for the party will be the challenge. The art students are all broke. They are always broke. Cripps somehow manages to scrape up enough money for the alcohol for the party but he has to adopt desperate and unorthodox measures to provide the food. As a result of those desperate measures he has the law after him.

An ingenious expedient is adopted to keep Cripps out of gaol and that expedient will have consequences for the hapless would-be curate of Murumberee. And things become steadily more farcical and more delightfully absurd.

The book is to some extent autobiographical, with Lindsay admitting that one of the art students, Partridge, is a thinly veiled version of himself.

A Curate in Bohemia is totally outrageous and filled with the vitality and joie de vivre that also infused his paintings. It expresses Lindsay’s love of the sensual pleasures life has to offer. It’s an extremely funny novel. Lindsay might be poking fun at the clergy but he’s deriving just as much enjoyment poking fun at himself and at the world of artistic Bohemia. He also has some fun with the terribly serious debates among the art students about the latest artistic theories.

Lindsay spent his whole life battling those who would censor art and literature. He was always controversial and he relished controversy.

I’ve also reviewed Lindsay’s wonderful 1938 novel Age of Consent which, along with several of his other novels, was banned in Australia.

A Curate in Bohemia was one of five Lindsay novels adapted by ABC Television in the early 1970s but tragically not one of those TV adaptations survives.

A Curate in Bohemia is a delight from start to finish. Highly recommended.