;1-loliday Fashions
lily HONOR CROOME SOCIOLOGISTS must be a self-denying race. They have carried out field-work in factories and in slums, in shops and in offices, in schools and railway termini ; but no sociologist has ever made a systematic, first-hand, on-the-spot survey of holidays. True, a camouflaged explorer or two has mingled instructively with Mr. Butlin's lads and lasses ; but his findings remain unrelated to the main theme. Here, surely, lis a grave omission. Psychologists learn most about the minds Cad emotions of children by watching them at play ; students of society could emulate them by watching social groups in a state of relaxation—and sample for themselves, as the child-watcher is unlikely to feel tempted to do, the pleasures under observation.
No doubt much that is obvious and excessively dull could be written about holidays, the physical and psychological need for holidays, the economics of the holiday industry, the historical rise and spread of the holiday habit and so forth ; not only !could be written but assuredly would be written. The observer Might, however, elect a less obvious approach. The fashion in holidays, for instance ; the characteristics which, by one's choice lof holiday, one chooses to emphasise ; the holiday as an index, like the rise and fall of the hem-line as chronicled by Mr. James !Laver, of attributes and attitudes currently favoured in this circle or that. Why, among the wealthy and cultured of yester- year, was it the Dalmatian coast this season, Taormina another ? But to discuss foreign travel in terms of taste and fashion :would, in present political and economic circumstances, be Altogether too unrealistic. Better stick to the home scene, admit- ting from the beginning that for the great majority no change in , fashion is thinkable. They do like to be beside the seaside, the seaside of a very special type, concrete-and-asphalt-edged, bounded by piers, supplemented by fun-fairs and amusement arcades, enlivened by brass bands, and plentifully supplied with ice-cream cartons and mineral-water bottles ; they do not like anything else ; their preference is a massive datum, a foundation fact about the holiday scene, deserving a volume in itself but likely to overweigh any more comprehensive study. Noting, as a curious and probably connected fact, that Britain has absolutely nothing to correspond to the fashionable Continental plage, the observer, then. may be expected to turn elsewhere.
Open air, change of scene, return to Nature. . . . Camping, now ; how does that stand in the public eye today ? Not, one would guess, as high as it did twenty years ago. Time was when the camper carried his bedding-roll like a banner. " I am young," it proclaimed. " I am tough. I am unconventional. I can get more fun out of sixpenbe than you can get out of a fiver." The same camper today, the greying unconventional, returning puffy- eyed and bedraggled from his (or her) conscientiously comfortless sojourn among cowpats and mosquitoes, has no such contagious panache. Is there more to this loss of glamour than the mere revolution of an age-cycle ? Ensconced in his own pup-tent, the hardy investigator may find out.
He need not, presumably, look very far to discover why the walking-tour is, while certainly no less popular, considerably less classy than it was a generation ago ; the one word " hiking " provides an answer. Would he, perhaps, detect an upturn from the nadir ? One does not apologise for belonging to the Youth Hostels Association, nor does one join as a Done Thing. In the realm of dress an analogue might be found in the story of the dirndl, adopted as a deliciously novel Continental vogue, dis- carded by the modish-minded as its popularity became over- blown, established eventually not as a fashion but on its merits as a comely convenience. Much the same may be surmised of the cycling tour. There are fewer clubs nose-down to the arterial road, more small groups on the by-ways--or is the generalisation too rash ? Fieldwork of the most literal variety is needed here.
Is the river holiday on the way up again ? In popularity, certainly ; in caste—that depends. The enquirer might have to sit long on the bank before reaching an answer, and then it might vary according to the river selected. Minor points for elucidation would include the decline of the punt and the rise of the folding canoe ; and he would doubtless have noted, before his fieldwork began, today's sudden spurt of interest in canals and canal-boats. Is a new vogue germinating ? And if so why ?
It is probably too early for him to judge the post-war status of the motor-tour. Economic forces have restored to it a certain prestige value, particularly when conducted abroad ; but is there perhaps some return, owing to those same economic forces. of the faint aroma of vulgarity once associated with the smell of petrol ? Or is that aroma detectable only to the envious sense of those who own either no car at all or no car in which any sane man would tour ?
The status of the salt-water holiday presents a truly complex problem. It has, it always had, a certain cachet ' • but there was, to put it mildly, a certain difference between a holiday spent on board one of the rivals of Britannia or Astra and one devoted to messing about in a tenth-hand, ten-pound dinghy. Both, alas. are extinct—economic forces again. But what ever-widening enthusiasm greets—and somehow finds funds to acquire—those compendious miracles of the boat-builder's art which have replaced them ! Gybing round the mark buoy in a stiff breeze, half a length ahead of his rival, the small-boat skipper feels refreshingly unlike the citizen of a Welfare State ; can that be it ? Then, having exhausted the list of active holidays, the student must turn to the sedentary, to the amenities of hotel, guest-house and cruising lines ; to the conferences, the summer schools, the professional and political jamborees ; to the festivals, the pilgrim- ages, the cures. . . . No, it is too much. Someone else, he will conclude, must finish ,the job ; for.himself, he needs a holiday.
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