Editor’s Notes

In 1992, Mom send me the first draft of her memoir. In her description of our first morning in Belize, she had written:

We strolled through the lobby, out under the porte cochere and down the drive to Cork Street.

I thought, “porte cochere?” My knowledge of Spanish and French told me that porte related to door and cochere related to car. I also could picture the entrance to the Fort George Hotel, where the roof extends out past the front door and over the driveway to shelter cars dropping off passengers. So I knew what Mom meant. But I’d never heard the word porte cochere and I wrote next to the paragraph, “I’d suggest using a more common word.” My husband Tom had never heard the word either. After reading the draft, he wrote at the top of the page, “Your use of language is wonderful, but watch for baroque words.”

Mom argued that porte cochere was a perfectly good word and that we were both illiterate.

To test whether we were really off base, I asked my friend Christine Pfeil whether she knew the word porte cochere. Whereas Tom and I have interests, strengths, and training in mathematics and science, Christine’s inclination is toward the liberal arts. I’ve been impressed with her vocabulary since I was in my twenties when she used the word disabuse in a casual conversation, early enough in the day that not everyone’s brain was fully in gear. I must confess that, at the time, I didn’t know what that word meant.

I felt vindicated when Christine laughingly said she’d never heard of porte cochere. But within a few months she reported having come across the word a few times in her reading. Even I came across it in my reading. Some years later, when Tom and I met my cousin Charlie Hurst in Alaska, I was amused to hear him use porte cochere as if it were a perfectly common-place word. I conceded that Mom had been right (but I never told her so).

In the mean time, Mom prepared a second draft. At the top of the page describing the same scene she wrote:

“Porte cochere” is back in. Have read it five times in various novels since you were here. Anyone with a smattering of Latin or Romance languages should guess its meaning.

At the end of this note, my Aunt Rebekah, who had read the draft, wrote:

To DDC (Dear Dahlin Carli) Your mother says it’s now back in. I beg to differ—it’s never been out.

As a compromise to assist illiterates like me, Mom had reworded the sentence to make it clear what a porte cochere is:

We strolled through the lobby, out the main entrance with its porte cochere that protected arriving and departing guests from sudden tropical squalls, and down the drive to Cork Street.

I was delighted to find photos that illustrate the two portes cocheres that Mom mentioned!