Skinny-dipping and the dangers of having one's clothes stolen while in the water is a recurrent theme particularly of Canning's early work.
In the first book, Mr Finchley discovers his England, there is an episode involving Mr. Finchley and a tramp at Blagdon Lake. He looked about for a spot to undress and, a few minutes later, stepped from the rear of a blackthorn as naked as the day of his birth. To any observer the pallid white of his flesh might have proved a discordant element in the harmonies of blue and gold and brown. Mr. Finchley was not worrying about observers. His little bay was practically hidden from all except the hills opposite, and they were too far away to give him concern.The incident ends in fisticuffs. In the second book, Polycarp's Progress, Polycarp rescues the millionaire businessman Joseph K Winterton who has fallen asleep while sunbathing in the nude and has his clothes stolen by a tramp. In the third book, Fly Away Paul, Paul Morison finds himself having to shelter behind a partition to hide his nakedness from the approaching Margaret Sinclair. A wave of panic flooded through Paul. He thrust up an arm and shouted “Stop! Don’t come any closer!” In Two Men Fought Hilda Selyac strips off and swims naked in the sea in a deliberate but futile attempt to seduce Stephen Cornelly. In Every Creature of God is Good the farm girl Lena comes across Godwin swimming in a pond. When the man came into the shallow water he changed to breast stroke and a few seconds later he saw her. He stopped swimming and let his hands sink to touch the bottom and support him, his head and shoulders rising from the water. For a moment or two he stared at her as though he expected her to make some move. In Everyman's England there is a chapter on Oxford and the nude bathing area Parson's Pleasure. |
In Fountain Inn Ben and Helen Brown have to strip off when they swim across the lake to the island in search of Miss Logan. Ben says: "I wish I’d got a costume with me. But it’s dark enough for me to undress without being immodest. You’d better stay here and watch my clothes.” In Panthers' Moon The hero is in hospital after a train accident: "Look, I want to get out of this place and come with you. I’m quite fit. Can you persuade Dr. Sergius to let me go? I don’t want to make a fuss, but he is being rather high-handed. They’ve even taken my clothes away.” In The Great Affair Nelo remembers this incident from his childhood: [My brother] was getting cross and if it went on I knew that he would begin throwing things. He always had. We were bathing together once, both stark naked, when some idiocy of mine had annoyed him and he had thrown a dustbin lid at me. The edge was jagged and cut me, leaving me for the rest of my life with a long, slightly puckered scar on my left side just below the ribs. In The Doomsday Carrier Clarence Bedew, a retired civil servant, is enjoying a morning swim in a river when Charlie the escaped chimpanzee picks up his clothes, plays with them and starts throwing them in the river. In the story "The White Spell" one of the three brothers will be obliged to marry Helen since she has been bathing naked in a mountain stream and they have seen her "as only a husband should". ![]() |
Last updated October 2018, John Higgins, Shaftesbury.