What a carry-on
Stephen Hitchins travels through history to trace the evolution of luggage from its earliest form to the new smart case.
Words by Stephen Hitchins
There are certain times in life, a certain age achieved, an imminent particular birthday dreaded, when, as PG Wodehouse noted, things begin to get a bit serious.
At such a time, the excitement with which one landed at Dunkirk for the first time, carrying one's luggage, crossed the wilderness of railway tracks and pointed to the Customs hall seems a long way. It was a different world and a different author who then stumbled back over the railway sleepers, at night, in the rain, to an overcrowded train, lights shining from within, searching for a printed paper letter on the window to locate a reservation.
Equipped with visas, vouchers, multiple currencies, and Cook's Continental Timetable, a few questions answered, chalk marks on the suitcase between gummed steamship labels, and passport stamped, an enticing litany of romantic place names hanging from the carriages drew one aboard in an itinerary of inspiration. Adventure beckoned.
Louis Vuitton has been a leader in high-class travel products from not so many years after he arrived in Paris in 1837
Or in the days when airline stewards did not behave as if they were show business entrepreneurs; the memory of flying to Geneva at low altitude in the unpressurised cabin of a piston-engined British Air Ferries ATL-98 Carvair from Southend Airport, along with a few cars and 20 to 30 passengers, but unlike James Bond without -- in my case -- an Aston Martin, and to another Customs shed, more questions and chalk marks on the luggage, the jaws of the plane swallowing up the vehicles as they eased their way on to a rather flimsy ramp, and off the scissor lift before the hinged door clanged shut and that ungainly, misshapen aeroplane trundled down the short runway and made off across the Channel.
Louis Vuitton has been a leader in high-class travel products from not so many years after he arrived in Paris in 1837
If you ever saw one of those planes you never forgot it; they were that strange. (In 1962 the return fare for two and a car via the 'Air Bridge' to Le Touquet was £56, as against £40 by boat from Dover to Calais.)
Those were the days. Travelling alone without a camera or a watch, and in the days long before mobile phones and the internet, let alone smartphones or tablets, I never aspired to being a particularly great traveller, but with Evelyn Waugh I do rejoice that I went when the going was good.
His character, William Boot of The Daily Beast, overburdened with excessive kit, had literally tonnes of baggage, whereas Waugh himself lived modestly and far more sensibly out of one suitcase when he went to Abyssinia. Sensible man!
I learned to stay flexible. And I learnt to travel light. So, today my luggage is smaller than yours. When travelling, size does matter.
The sketch for Vuitton's bed/case, showing how a single bed came together out of its truck.
The smaller the better, and always, hand luggage only; it's smaller, safer, cheaper, greener, and faster, less tiring, and leaves you more flexible. Trekking to the station or airport, shuffling around and through endless walkways as we await today's unfailing checks and delays, a small bag is best. Cramped and disorientated, the traveller may well be compensated with piped music, films and instant alcohol, the reeling and stampeding hordes only driving one back to drink.
Vuitton's bed/ case, the actual bed
Checking in a bag can be a pain, merely waiting in line can take an hour just to drop one off and get a tag printed. So, cruise past those waiting by the carousel hoping their bags may appear, undented, unripped, or simply not missing. Struggling to identify your own bag in the reclaim hall can be soul destroying enough. This mainly applies to Heathrow. Confused by changing rules, disorganised at packing? Just take less. If you carry-on, the reliability of the baggage service becomes unimportant.
When Phileas Fogg went Around the World in 80 Days he did not take a suitcase. 'We'll have no trunks,' he tells his valet Passepartout, 'only a carpet bag, with two shirts and three pairs of stockings for me, and the same for you. We'll buy our clothes on the way.' Then, the suitcase hardly existed. As whole categories of travel have dissolved, trunks too have disappeared, along with travel snobbery and prejudice. Nancy Mitford's Uncle Matthew thought 'abroad unutterably bloody'. It was the confounded foreignness of it all.
Trunk calls: specialist luggage from Louis Vuitton from yesteryear
But, as frontiers fade it becomes increasingly difficult to feel abroad at all. There is little that is unfamiliar. Are we ever in foreign parts at all? Medieval scholars wandered across Europe, and everywhere spoke Latin to their peers. The language of scholarship is now the same as that of the travel industry; pre-eminently English. But, however strange it all may no longer be, one still has to travel there.
Passport to the delights and enlightenment of travel, a small bag is always best. Leave aside bafflement and bewilderment; carry your self-inflicted frustrations lightly, do not forget to pack charm, extravagant curiosity and a knowledge of the classics. It can get one a long way -- it did for writer Patrick Leigh Fermor. What to pack it all in? There's the question. Satchels, messenger bags, rucksacks, knapsacks and backpacks, have all been around since the beginning of time.
Trunk calls: specialist luggage from Louis Vuitton from yesteryear
The suitcase originated with the wooden chests of the Middle Ages. Relatively simple and painted with heraldic designs, they were used primarily for storage, but taken by aristocratic families on their travels. In the 14th century a lighter travelling chest had a wooden frame covered in canvas or leather.
It had a rounded lid and was divided into compartments. By the 16th century, the portmanteau arrived to literally carry coats.
'Luggage' was first recorded in 1596: Duffel bags (named after the town in Belgium where its thick cloth was manufactured) and carpet bags (named after the Oriental carpet from which they were made, they could be opened out to form a rug, protecting travellers on draughty trains) both emerged at the same time as steamer trunks and smaller cabin trunks in the second half of the 19th century.
Trunk calls: specialist luggage from Louis Vuitton from yesteryear
The aristocratic Maison Goyard predates Vuitton. It is so exclusive you have probably never heard of it. Founded in 1792 by Pierre-François Martin, the company specialised in box-making, packing and luggage, and reigned supreme during the golden age of the 19th-century trunk makers. Martin handed the business to Louis-Henri Morel as dowry for his ward, and Morel in turn handed it on to a François Goyard, who had been hired as an apprentice in 1845. It became an elite institution with branches in Monte Carlo and Biarritz, New York and Mount Street in London, and an international clientele that ranged from Picasso to the Duke of Windsor, the Romanovs and the Rockefellers, Jacques Cartier and Coco Chanel. Waterproof Goyardine fabric was a technical revolution at a time when the competition was using canvas.
