Many people don't realise that Agatha Christie spent many years working on archaeological sites in the Middle East with her second husband Max Mallowan. During these years she wrote a number of her best known books including Murder on the Orient Express.
Recently, while re-reading her wonderful and light-hearted account of those years Come Tell Me How You Live, I found this terrific passage on the challenges of trying to purchase clothes for an adventure in the desert during the fashionable 1930s. I wanted to share it with you and have reproduced it below with a few illustrations for good measure.
.................................................................
IN A FEW WEEKS' time we are starting for Syria!
Shopping for a hot climate in autumn or winter presents certain difficulties. One's last year's summer clothes, which one has optimistically hoped will 'do', do not 'do' now the time has come. For one thing they appear to be (like the depressing annotations in furniture removers' lists) 'Bruised, Scratched and Marked'. (And also Shrunk, Faded and Peculiar!) For another alas, alas that one has to say it! – they are too tight everywhere.
So - to the shops and the stores, and:
'Of course, Modom, we are not being asked for that kind of thing just now! We have some very charming little suits here - O.S. in the darker colours.'
Oh, loathsome O.S.! How humiliating to be O.S.! How even more humiliating to be recognized at once as O.S.! (Although there are better days when, wrapped in a lean long black, coat with a large fur collar, a saleswoman says cheeringly: 'But surely Modom is only a Full Woman?')
I look at the little suits, with their dabs of unexpected fur and their pleated skirts. I explain sadly that what I want is a washing silk or cotton.
'Modom might try Our Cruising Department.'
Modom tries Our Cruising Department - but without any exaggerated hopes. Cruising is still enveloped in the realms of romantic fancy. It has a touch of Arcady about it. It is girls who go cruising - girls who are slim and young and wear uncrushable linen trousers, immensely wide round the feet and skintight round the hips. It is girls who sport delightfully in Play Suits. It is girls for whom Shorts of eighteen different varieties are kept!
The lovely creature in charge of Our Cruising Deparrment is barely sympathetic.
'Oh, no, Modom, we do not keep out-sizes.' (Faint horror! Outsizes and Cruising? Where is the romance there?)
She adds:
'It would hardly be suitable, would it?'
I agree sadly that it would not be suitable.
There is still one hope. There is Our Tropical Department.
Our Tropical Department consists principally of Topees - Brown Topees, White Topees; Special Patent Topees. A little to one side, as being slightly frivolous, are Double Terais, blossoming in pinks and blues and yellows like blooms of strange tropical flowers. There is also an immense wooden horse and an assortment of jodhpurs.
But yes - there are other things. Here is suitable wear for the wives of Empire Builders. Shantung! Plainly cut shantung coats and skins - no girlish nonsense here - bulk is accommodated as well as scragginess! I depart into a cubicle with various styles and sizes. A few minutes later I am transformed into a memsahib!
I have certain qualms - but stifle them. After all, it is cool and practical and I can get into it.
I turn my attention to the selection of the right kind of hat. The right kind of hat not existing in these days, I have to have it made for me. This is not so easy as it sounds.
What I want, and what I mean to have, and what I shall almost certainly not get, is a felt hat of reasonable proportions that will fit on my head. It is the kind of hat that was worn some twenty years ago for taking the dogs for a walk or playing a round of golf. Now, alas, there are only the Things one attaches to one's head :- over one eye, one ear, on the nape of one's neck - as the fashion of the moment dictates - or the Double Terai, measuring at least a yard across.
I explain that I want a hat with a crown like a Double Terai and about a quarter of its brim.
'But they are made wide to protect fully from the sun, Modom.'
'Yes, but where I am going there is nearly always a terrific wind, and a hat with a brim won't stay on one's head for a minute.'
'We could put Modom on an elastic.'
'I want a hat with a brim no larger than this that I've got on.'
'Of course, Modom, with a shallow crown that would look quite well.'
'Not a shallow crown! The hat has got To Keep On!'
Victory! We select "the colour - one of those new shades with the pretty names: Din, Rust, Mud," Pavement, Dust, etc.
A few minor purchases - purchases that I know instinctively will either be useless or land me in trouble. A Zip travelling bag, for instance. Life nowadays is dominated and complicated by the remorseless Zip. Blouses zip up, skirts zip down, ski-ing suits zip verywhere. 'Little frocks' have perfectly unnecessary bits of zipping on them just for fun.
Why? Is there anything more deadly than a Zip that turns nasty on you? It involves you in a far worse predicament than any ordinary button, clip, snap, buckle or hook and eye.
In the early days of Zips, my mother, thrilled by this delicious novelty, had a pair of corsets fashioned for her which zipped up the front. The results were unfortunate in the extreme! Not only was the original zipping-up fraught with extreme agony, but the corsets then obstinately refused to de-Zip! Their removal was practically a surgical operation! And owing to my mother's delightful Victorian modesty, it seemed possible for a while that she would, live in these corsets for the remainder of her life - a kind of modem Woman in the Iron Corset!
I have therefore always regarded the Zip with a wary eye. But it appears that all travelling bags have Zips.
'The old-fashioned fastening is quite superseded, Modom,' says the salesman, regarding me with a pitying look.
'This, you see, is so simple,' he says, demonstrating.
There is no doubt about its simplicity - but then, I think to myself, the bag is empty.
'Well,' I say, sighing, 'one must move with the times.'
With some misgivings I buy the bag.
I am now the proud possessor of a 'Zip travelling bag, an Empire Builder's Wife's coat and skirt, and a possibly satisfactory hat.
There is still much to be done.
Agatha in her Empire Builder's Wife's Outfit
Source
