Pre-Nudist Nudism in America

By WILL C. WALKER

I WAS BORN in 1884, perfectly nude.

I Since then I have found myself frequently reverting to this state. My parents were of conventional, somewhat austere type, and it was a matter of considerable concern to them that their only child should at times depart from the excellent example which they set. More than once was I punished for "indecent exposure." I remember one time when quite a young boy I looked into the great bin of oats in my father's barn and suggested to my playmate how nice those oats would feel against our bare bodies. We at once proceeded to the experiment and that night, after a very unpleasant session with my shocked father, I was sent to our neighbor to apologize for leading her little son astray.

After this incident my boyhood adventures in nudism were mostly confined to my own personal practice alone, but they were not infrequent. I loved the freedom of feeling that came when nothing separated me from the air, sunshine, or water.

In 1905 I was invited to join a family party of people who were planning to camp in the Berkshires. At one time there were sixteen in the group, but during much of the summer I was the only grown man, being then twenty-one. 1 Ve were all readers of Physical Culture magazine, which in those days frankly advocated the practice of nudity. We had also read John R. Coryell's Child of Love. So we were already inclined to try the virtue of sunbathing.

With some canvas we fenced off a space in the orchard and the girls rook their sun-baths within this enclosure, with the boys on the outside. The one exception to this was in the case of myself and the girl who that summer had consented to become my wife. We took our sunbaths together.

The following summer we were married and spent our honeymoon in Bernarr Mac-Fadden's so-called Physical Culture City in Helmetta, New Jersey. A large tract of land, surrounding a seventy-acre artificial lake, had been laid out in streets and avenues, parks and business blocks, and building lots had been sold to readers of the magazine all over the country. I bought five of these lots. Although the city looked very impressive on paper, it was in a very wild and rough state on the ground. So were the inhabitants of it. There were not many of them, and they lived in crude shacks, but they were the most enthusiastic of Mac-Fadden's followers, and practiced nudity to their heart's content within the confines of what they confidently believed was one day to be a city of several thousand like minded enthusiasts.

Nearer the highway and railroad, on the oither side of the little river which ran over the spillway out of Lake Marguerite, were the tents of the summer camp, the gymnasium of the physical culture school, the vegetarian restaurant, the publishing plant, and the playground. Here the people were much more circumspect. The men wore shorts and the women wore bloomers, and only the children wore nothing. But even this was shocking to the public and many buggy-loads of people came from miles away and brought their lunch, for the thrill of being shocked.

From our vacation at Physical Culture City, my bride and I went immediately to a Holiness Camp Ground, where we found enough seclusion to continue our practice of nude bathing and sunbathing. As I look back now, I wonder whether we should have been put in the stocks or burned at the stake if the elders had found us out.

We did not find the opportunity for extending our practice beyond our own family circle until 1910, when we started a summer camp for girls on a delightful lake in Maine. We did not introduce nudism there; the custom of discarding clothes arose perfectly spontaneously with the girls themselves ; but we did not discourage them and that, I suppose, made us responsible. About this time a man and his wife from Birmingham, England, came to this country to start a nudist camp, and I spent three days at Ellis Island straightening out their difficulties so that they could get in. An entire nudist family from Bermuda spent the summer with us in 1914 and we returned their visit in 1915. An enthusiastic nudist from Phoenix, Arizona, came all the way to Boston for the purpose of visiting us, though we had known him only through the medium of the little paper of which I was the editor. In course of time the fact that we dispensed with clothes part of the time in our Maine camp was found out, and a woman agent for the Maine Society for the Suppression of Vice had me hailed to Portland and was with difficulty constrained from breaking up my camp and taking my guests into the custody of the society for the protection of minor female children ! With the aid of a lawyer we reached a compromise. I must leave the camp, but my wife might carry it on, with the promise that there would be no more "scandalous conduct." Incidentally, a rumor of my difficulties was carried by some busy-body to the president of the college where I had been an instructor for eleven years, with the result that I was asked to resign.

Denied the privilege of living in my own camp, I went to Missouri and started a new one. This time it was frankly a nudist camp. At first there was but one other man and myself ; later two women joined us, and later still a few others. We were twenty-five miles from the nearest railroad. in an oak forest on the Gasconnade River. In this seclusion we conducted on a small scale exactly the same sort of camp that the modern nudist movement thinks of as being new to this country, although ours was held in 1917, seventeen years ago.

Two years later, one of these women helped me in establishing a similar camp in the lake region of New Hampshire. At this time our small magazine already referred to, was advocating nudism among other things, and we organized its readers into a society called the Common Sense Club. Through this magazine we inspired the starting of five "common sense" camps in various parts of the country.

At our Common Sense Camp No. 1 we had a small lake all to ourselves, and the member who owned the land had built a cottage for us right on its shore. Although we had "staterooms" with double decker built-in bunks, we all preferred to sleep on the large screened porch.

The camp started with four men, three women, and two children, but as the summer advanced, a number of others joined us, some for week-ends or a fortnight. and some to stay for the rest of the season. Our expenses were very low, but we strove to keep the company congenial by inviting only those with whom we were already acquainted or had had considerable correspondence.

Since my associate was a woman with much knowledge of, and more enthusiasm for, the unfired, i.e., uncooked, food diet, and since we had tried it out with considerable success in our Missouri camp, we adopted it here. Some of our guests were rather sceptical at first, but soon found themselves well satisfied with meals which had not been cooked, and there were frequent requests for recipes. Our raw biscuits, or as one man dubbed them "riscuits," were particularly subjects of good natured bantering, but all agreed that they made very tasty substitutes for baked bread.

I do not know whether other Common-sense Camps were nudist, but we had a genuine nudist camp in New Hampshire. Our neighbors knew of our practice and wondered at it, but remained on no less friendly terms with us. They seemed to assume that what we did on our own land was our own business, and since we appeared to be fairly respectable otherwise, and they profited by our trade, they were content to live their lives and let us live ours.

By the next season the nationwide membership of the Common Sense Club had grown to about a thousand. Every state in the union was represented and several foreign countries. We published two editions of a directory, whereby members might find other members in their vicinity or correspond with others at a distance. Nudism was not our only common interest, but we endeavored to list those of similar views in religion, politics, diet, and other matters.

My correspondence increased until I was sometimes writing as many as two hundred letters a day. I felt that I was spending too much time and energy on what was only a hobby with me, carried on in addition to my regular vocation. I had to do some-thing about it, and I did. In 1920, I arranged with a young man in Chelsea, Massachusetts, to take over the magazine, the club, and the correspondence. I wrote my last editorial in the form of a swan-song, and departed, leaving no forwarding address except that of my substitute and successor. Unfortunately, my successor died shortly after he assumed this responsibility, and the whole movement which I had started, died with him.