This Old Trunk

Anyone who knows me can tell you that I have a lot of old trunks. It started with one my hubby bought me in the early years of our marriage, and then somehow, people got the idea that I collected them. Big, green, old fashioned steamer trunks, in varying states of decrepitude. Next thing I knew, the house was overrun with them. At one point, there were eight of them scattered around our home, performing various functions as makeshift pieces of furniture.

One old trunk stands out from the rest by virtue of it’s contents. It came to us locked, from the estate of a wealthy man. The curiosity of what might be inside was just about more than we could stand. Hubby finally figured out a way to open the lock without defacing it, and the adventure began. Hours later, we sat on the floor, surrounded by the evidence of one man’s fascinating life. It seems the owner had been a financier, Harvard graduate, and playboy who traveled around the world on various passenger liners more times than we have been able to determine for certain, but at least three of those trips were during the Great Depression.

He kept a journal of his college days, activities, and conquests in a tiny Harvard Handbook (not much bigger than the picture here), and had a drawer full of letters from a few relatives and a lot of women.

It seems hard to imagine that so much of one person’s life could fit into relatively so little space. The contents of the trunk were extensive: letters, layouts of various cruise ships in every passenger line imaginable, menus from ship’s dining rooms, hotel bills, passports, photos, postcards, souvenirs, the list goes on.

Evidence showed that he married a woman named Gertrude for her money and honeymooned extensively all over the world, but kept up a long distance affair with the lovely and captivating “Mary” (in the framed portrait below) and other women even after his marriage to the unfortunate Gertrude.

From time to time, we open the trunk and read a little more, look at the ship memorabilia, and stare at the hauntingly beautiful portrait of Mary, wondering who she was and what became of her.