so you’re going to travel, by clara e. laughlin, a travel gem!

combing through the travel sections of denver’s west side books last week, i found a charming and somewhat humerous (so i thought) book titled so you’re going to travel. written by clara e. laughlin in 1938, the book provides all the information a traverler in the 1930s would need. i grabbed it immediately, and flipped through the pages, laughing at its entire chapter devoted to steamships, sailing day, and motoring abroad.

i had planned to write a post listing some of the more humerous advice ms. laughlin gave in regards to travel. however, while reading it on my flight back to LA, i started to realize something pretty quickly: that clara laughlin was one smart cookie. her advice is perfect, albeit somewhat out of date (i mean, this was written over 70 years ago). i googled old clara, and learned that she founded a travel service company that specialized in travel advice for women, and gave weekly radio talks on travel on the chicago daily news station. pretty great job, that clara had.

great advice for “landing day,” when you arrive at your travel destination

a few things we can all learn from clara:

• travel used to be incredibly different. this seems obvious, yes, but not obvious enough until i read this book. for example, if you wanted to travel to europe, you had to book your fare on a steamship through a steamship or travel agent (clara’s opinions on steamship agents is one of the more humerous rants in the book). the voyage would take at least eight days, and perhaps up to twelve! this meant that if you wanted to go to europe, you had to budget at least a month to include two weeks of transportations and one to two weeks of actual travel. and while i’m no expert on inflation, it seems like the costs of the trips back then were prohibitively expensive for most of america (unless you were willing to travel in the “no collar” or “immigrant” section, as clara lovingly refers to third class).
• people traveled for the same reasons they do now. clara’s first chapter explores why we travel, and why we should travel. probably one of the most written-about topics on travel blogs, clara seems to nail it instantly: “perpetual discovery is, i say, the best equivalent i know for the fountain of youth. while we can keep staleness at bay, life is a continuing adventure. we crave new scenes, new faces, new sensations, new ideas; and only travel can give them to us. we’ll bring back new longings, of course; new wistfulness. but those are nothing to be afraid of; for our longings are one measure of our soul, and the trouble with too many of us is that we haven’t enough of them for things that really matter.” i think i would have been friends with this clara.

safety first! a chapter on healthy precautions while traveling.

• we shouldn’t travel for others. in clara’s second chapter, she discusses the importance of traveling for yourself, and not for your friends back home. what she means by this is that we should find what we, personally, would like to get out of travel, and not be persuaded by tour books or friends’ recommendations to see what we think we should see. this is such a basic concept, but is unbelievably hard to do. for example, i am really not a fan of impressionist art, preferring fauvist, modernist, and surrealist art much more. therefore, it seemed a natural choice to choose the pompidou to visit in paris over the orsay. holy smokes, you would have thought i had spent the entire trip in my hotel room based on the reactions of my friends. you went to paris and did NOT see the orsay? why even go at all?? well, its just not my thing. i love that clara identified this, and stresses to be true to yourself in travels.

i’ll keep you posted as i read more. there is a quite humerous section where she warns of diarrhea when travelling without ever using the word (upset is the word of choice). check it out, and remember to always travel for yourself!

clara has “known many interesting people, and talks delightfully about them!”