LUGGAGE AND OTHER LUXURIES
Never in the world did people have so much luggage with nowhere to put
it and nothing in it when it is put! Each black piece is bursting! Yet
everything we have with us is the wrong thing and just so much to take
care of without any compensating comfort. We have gradually eliminated
everything we could until now we have just enough for three hallboys on
our arrival and three porters on our departure to stagger under. Then
too, although possibly all right for a man and wife, sharing the motor
trunk with a son is an inconvenience unimagined! If the trunk is put
in my room, he finds himself somewhere on another floor or at the end
of an interminable corridor unable to get his pajamas without entirely
redressing. If the trunk is in his room I have to hunt for him, get his
key, and bring the trays to my room. Packing one trunk in two rooms at
once is even more difficult. Consequently, he has in desperation bought
a “suitcase.” It is orange-colored, made of paper, I think, and it also
makes one more lump of baggage to be carried up and down and packed on
top of our traveling companion.
The thermometer was at about thirty when we left home, so I could think
of nothing but serge coats of heavy weight, plaited skirts also nice and
warm, sweaters of various thicknesses, and fur coats. There came almost
a break in a heretofore happy family when I insisted that over the Rocky
Mountains our “chauffeur” would need his heaviest coat. He refused to
take a coonskin—Heaven praise his intuition on that!—but obligingly
brought a huge ulster. We had not gone fifty miles from New York when the
sun came out hot and has ever since then been trying to show how heat
is produced in the tropics. Our car is loaded down with wraps for the
Rockies, and in this sweltering heat not one thin dress have I brought.
In every way my clothes are a trial and disappointment. A taffeta
afternoon dress that was intended to give me a smart appearance whenever
I might want to look otherwise than as a bedraggled tripper comes out
of the trunk looking like crinkled crepon. I thought of pretending that
it _was_ crinkled crepon, but its crinkle was somehow not quite right
in evenness or design. There is also a coat and skirt of a basket weave
material that I had made especially to be serviceable motoring. I don’t
know what sort of dresses would have packed better, but I _am_ sure none
could be worse. In fact, I unhesitatingly challenge these two of mine
against the most perishable clothes that anyone can produce, that mine
will wrinkle more and deeper and sooner than any others in existence.
I have, however, found one small article that I happen to have brought, a
great success, and that is a lace veil with a good deal of pattern—one of
those things that make you look as though something queer was the matter
with your face—unless there is something the matter with your face, in
which case it takes all the blame. In doing the same thing every day
you find you shake down to a rather regular system. As we come into the
outskirts of the city where we are to spend the night, I take off, in
the car, my goggles and the swathing of veils that I wear touring, and
put on the lace one. The transformation from blown-about hair and dusty
face to a tidy disguise of all blemishes is quite miraculous. Dusters
are ugly things, but as every woman who motors knows, there is nothing
so practical. I don’t think personally that silk ones can be compared
for sense and comfort with those of dust-colored linen or cotton. Silk
sheds the dust perhaps a little better, but wrinkles more. At all events,
I find that by putting my lace veil on and taking my duster off, I can
walk up to the desk and register without being taken for a vagrant. The
lady who was traveling with us is one of those aggravating women who stay
tidy. She keeps her gloves on and her hands dustless. But even she saw
the transforming possibilities of a lace veil and soon bought one too.
Hotels, however, are very lenient in the matter of the appearance of
guests, because of all the begrimed-looking tramps, our “chauffeur” after
driving ten hours or so in the sifting dust is the grimiest. The only
reason why he is not taken for a professional driver is because no one
would hire anyone so disreputable-looking.
In one hotel, though, a grimy working mechanic having gone up in the
elevator and a strange, perfectly well turned out person having come
down, the confused clerk asked where the chauffeur went and did the new
gentleman want a room?