Wednesday, February 27, 2013
RLS and Gentrification
We think of the bohemian and artist acting as the unwitting vanguard of gentrification in the inner cities as a phenomenon of the latter half of the 20th century onwards. But what is happening in the Marais, in Harlem, in Homerton and Brick Lane was being written about in the 19th century. Robert Louis Stevenson on the artists' villages of Fontainebleau:
"The institution of a painters' colony is a work of time and tact. The population must be conquered. The innkeeper has to be taught, and he soon learns, the lesson of unlimited credit; he must be taught to welcome as a favoured guest a young gentleman in a very greasy coat, and with little baggage beyond a box of colours and a canvas; and he must learn to preserve his faith in customers who will eat heartily and drink of the best, borrow money to buy tobacco, and perhaps not pay a stiver for a year. A colour merchant has next to be attracted. A certain vogue must be given to the place, lest the painter, most gregarious of animals, should find himself alone. And no sooner are these first difficulties overcome, than fresh perils spring up upon the other side; and the bourgeois and the tourist are knocking at the gate. This is the crucial moment for the colony. If these intruders gain a footing, they not only banish freedom and amenity; pretty soon, by means of their long purses, they will have undone the education of the innkeeper; prices will rise and credit shorten; and the poor painter must fare farther on and find another hamlet."
Labels: artists, Fontainebleau, gentrification, Robert Louis Stevenson
