THE HOUSE PARTY IN CAMP

“Roughing it” in the fashionable world (on the Atlantic coast) is rather suggestive of the dairymaid playing of Marie Antoinette; the “rough” part being mostly “picturesque effect” with little taste of actual discomfort.  Often, of course, the “roughing it” is real, especially west of the Mississippi (and sometimes in the East too); so real that it has no place in a book of etiquette at all.  In the following picture of a fashionable “camping party” it should perhaps be added, that not only the Worldlys but most of the women really think they are “roughing it.”

At the same time there is nothing that a genuine dependent upon luxury resents more than to be told he is dependent.  It is he who has but newly learned the comforts of living who protests his inability to endure discomfort.

The very same people therefore who went a short time before to Great Estates, women who arrived with their maids and luggage containing personal equipment of amazing perfection and unlimited quantity (to say nothing of jewels worth a king’s ransom), and men who usually travel with their own man-servants and every variety of raiment and paraphernalia, on being invited to “rough it” with the Kindharts at Mountain Summit Camp, are the very ones who most promptly and enthusiastically telegraph their delighted acceptance.  At a certain party a few years ago, the only person who declined was a young woman of so little “position” that she was quite offended that Mrs. Kindhart should suppose her able to endure discomfort such as her invitation implied.

This year the Worldlys, the Normans, the Lovejoys, the “Bobo” Gildings, the Littlehouses, Constance Style, Jim Smartlington and his bride, Clubwin Doe and young Struthers make up the party.  No one declined, not even the Worldlys, though there is a fly in the amber of their perfect satisfaction.  Mrs. Kindhart wrote “not to bring a maid.”  Mrs. Worldly is very much disturbed, because she cannot do her hair herself.  Mr. Worldly is even more perturbed at the thought of going without his valet.  He has never in the twenty years since he left college been twenty-four hours away from Ernest.  He knows perfectly well that Ernest is not expected.  But he means to take him—­he will say nothing about it; he can surely find a place for Ernest to stay somewhere.

The other men all look upon a holiday away from formality (which includes valeting) as a relief, like the opening of a window in a stuffy room, and none of the women except Mrs. Worldly would take her maid if she could.

=THE CLOTHES THEY TAKE=

The men all rummage in attics and trunk-rooms for those disreputable looking articles of wearing apparel dear to all sportsmen; oil soaked boots, water soaked and sun bleached woolen, corduroy, leather or canvas garments and hats, each looking too shabby from their wives’ (or valet’s) point of view to be offered to a tramp.