This week Frank’s cupboard contains some essential equipment for the Victorian camping enthusiast…
For convenience the following list is inserted here. It is condensed from a number of notes made for trips of all sorts, except boating and horseback-riding. It is by no means exhaustive… Be careful not to be led astray by it into overloading yourself, or filling your camp with useless luggage. Be sure to remember this.
Axe (in cover). Axle-grease. Bacon. Barometer (pocket). Bean-pot. Beans (in bag). Beef (dried). Beeswax. Bible. Blacking and brush. Blankets. Boxes. Bread for lunch. Brogans (oiled). Broom. Butter-dish and cover. Canned goods. Chalk. Cheese. Clothes-brush. Cod-line. Coffee and pot. Comb. Compass. Condensed milk. Cups. Currycomb. Dates. Dippers. Dishes. Dish-towels. Drawers. Dried fruits. Dutch oven. Envelopes. Figs. Firkin. Fishing-tackle. Flour (prepared). Frying-pan. Guide-book. Half-barrel. Halter. Hammer. Hard-bread. Harness (examine!). Hatchet. Haversack. Ink (portable bottle). Knives (sheath, table, pocket and butcher). Lemons. Liniment. Lunch for day or two. Maps. Matches and safe. Marline. Meal (in bag). Meal-bag. Medicines. Milk-can. Molasses. Money (“change”). Monkey-wrench. Mosquito-bar. Mustard and pot. Nails. Neat’s-foot oil. Night-shirt. Oatmeal. Oil-can. Opera-glass. Overcoat. Padlock and key. Pails. Paper. Paper collars. Pens. Pepper. Pickles. Pins. Portfolio. Postage stamps. Postal cards. Rope. Rubber blanket. Rubber coat. Rubber boots. Sail-needle. Salt. Salt fish. Salt pork. Salve. Saw. Shingles (for plates). Shirts. Shoes and strings. Slippers. Soap. Song-book. Spade. Spoons. Stove (utensils in bags). Sugar. Tea. Tents. Tent poles. Tent pins. Tooth-brush. Towels. Twine. Vinegar. Watch and key.
John M Gould, How To Camp Out (1877)
Gould has winnowed out some of the items deemed essential earlier in the century. As Anne Fadiman records in Ex Libris : Confessions Of A Common Reader (1998):
Who but an Englishman, the legendary Sir John Franklin, could have managed to die of starvation and scurvy along with all 129 of his men in a region of the Canadian Arctic whose game had supported an Eskimo colony for centuries? When the corpses of some of Franklin’s officers and crew were later discovered, miles from their ships, the men were found to have left behind their guns but to have lugged such essentials as monogrammed silver cutlery, a backgammon board, a cigar case, a clothes brush, a tin of button polish, and a copy of The Vicar Of Wakefield. These men may have been incompetent bunglers, but, by God, they were gentlemen.
also to add to the list: large extending mahogany dining table and a range of diseases deadly to the indigenous folk
Wasn’t lead poisoning implicated in the Franklin deaths too? Going from memory there.. Nonetheless, period camping was splendidly unenjoyable: here’s a first-hand account from an Edwardian schoolteacher who turned to his tent to get away from city smoke.
I was ever of the opinion that, in all things tented, the most essential aid to comfort was the company of a good woman. Unfortunately in those austere post war days not many of the little darlings were interested in spending the night in a reeking ex army bell tent with bugs in their hair and the scent of cow dung in the air.
Did I really just say ‘little darlings’, my god, forgive me Germaine, I know not what I say.
Malty, I felt you’d stabbed yourself with a tent peg when you referred to a ‘good woman’.
(Laughing)
Plus one, might as well, the Dabblers insist.
“A tin of button polish”? Even Lakeland would baulk at so superfluous a product these days.
And I note that Gould recommends both chalk and cheese, which sounds like a punchline but I can’t quite work it up into a gag… perhaps someone else can.