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tle curly heads” of the children about Rosalind’s age and expresses a mild degree of guilt about leaving her young daughter. In Honolulu she writes: “There are Japanese everywhere — all of the servants and waiters in most of the shops. Their English is not good, and they never understand a word one says.” She is, however, full of praise for Americans: “Most of the women are fascinating, nearly all of the men have an individual and fantastic taste in headgear. . . and all the sailors have the funniest little tight round white caps!” (On Waikiki Beach, Christie snapped a photo of 14 male surfers, among them future actor and businessman Duke Kahanamoku, whose autograph would later appear on thousands of vintage souvenir ukuleles. Christie doesn’t mention Duke in her letters, and he’s not identified by Prichard in the photo’s caption.) Despite her keenness of observation, Christie is amazingly unaware of the decline of the empire she’s touring and seemingly oblivious to the more than 2,000,000 deaths suffered by the United Kingdom and its dominions during the world war that had ended only four years earlier. Notable also is the fact that Christie often mentions her first husband, Archie, who is only vaguely alluded to in most of her autobiographical writings. Unfortunately, readers are not provided any insights into the matrimonial difficulties that would eventually lead to divorce. The only hint of foreboding is contained in Christie’s mother’s warning concerning Archie: “If you’re not with your husband, if you leave him too much, you’ll lose him. That’s especially true of a man like Archie.” Four years later, Archie would ask for a divorce in order to marry a younger woman, and Agatha would vanish for an 11-day real-life mystery. Anybody who’s suffered an Agatha Christie addiction will love this book. Christie was a prolific writer whose life was, except for her divorce, amazingly uneventful, and this record of her travels reveals the source of her inspiration for exotic settings, convoluted plotlines, and memorable characters. Immediately following her grand tour, Christie wrote her third mystery, The Man in the Brown Suit, which draws heavily on her travel experience. Alas, I grieve the passing of books such as The Grand Tour. How many contemporary luminaries — literary or otherwise — bother to write letters, scribble witty postcards, and print photographs? Textual scholars must be in despair. Fifty years from now our descendants will be reading The Collected Tweets of Justin Bieber. OH Stephen Smith’s most recent book of poetry is A Short Report on the Fire at Woolworths. He can be reached at travisses@hotmail.com.
20 O.Henry
February 2013
The Art & Soul of Greensboro