elegance - noun - the quality of being graceful or stylish
Although most of you know what "elegance" means, it is not a word that you hear much lately. Unfortunately, in everyday life, "elegance" has taken a backseat to "shabby chic" (another term that could just be outmoded). On the other hand, if you look hard enough, you'll be able to find it among the relics of the past.
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of experiencing what elegance looked like in the 1930s. For Mother's Day, my daughter treated me to a tour of the Queen Mary, a seafaring vessel much larger than the fabled, ill-fated Titanic and much faster. Originally named Queen Victoria, the suffix ia in keeping with Cunard line's tradition, the ship was renamed after King George V's wife Mary ("Queen Mum"), not quite as grand a monarch as Victoria, but you couldn't sway King G; his queen was nonpareil. As the cruise ship is permanently moored in Long Beach, California, you can book a stateroom for as little as $130 a night, not a bad deal considering the high price of time travel these days. (Of course, I'm joking.)
Our tour's docent, a retired history teacher, presented us with myriad facts, enough to fill the captain's quarters sans him in it. What I'll always remember pertains mainly to World War II. The vessel had been freshly christened when the U.S. military commandeered it to transport 800,000 soldiers and personnel to the battlegrounds of Europe from New York. (Churchill had quarters on the ship. His bed was terribly small, poor man.) The initial bunch of soldiers that were dispatched numbered over 16,000. Considering the ship was built for only 2,000 passengers, it was a tight squeeze for the men that had to rotate bunks every eight hours. Sheets were rarely changed. I kept thinking the whole time that my dad who had been drafted into the infantry of the U.S. Army in the early 1940s might have been one of the thousands who didn't have an opportunity to experience the original elegance of the ship as it had been stripped down entirely to accommodate all of the brave young and painted gray to camouflage it from German submarines. Even the murals were covered so that the anxious passengers would not be tempted to leave marks of immortality on them.
At present, the overall tonal effect of the ship's interior is a subdued sepia like a tired photograph, which the wooden paneling and veneers, deep, albeit faded browns of fall, and tarnished golds create. The only bright colors emanate from a few oil murals depicting subject matter leagues from anything having to do with the sea.
The most memorable room on the Queen Mary, an Art Deco ballroom complete with a stage for the privileged first class few, has been a favorite of Hollywood location scouts looking to recreate the time period. For example, on its teak floor slow-dance Robert Redford and Kim Basinger in "The Natural," a fantastic filmic ode to baseball based on Bernard Malamud's short story. A actor friend of mine, who was an extra in the scene, told me all were transported back to the romance of the time and held breathless for the hours it took to film the scene. I can only imagine how elegant the elegance of those recreated moments were.
After making sure we saw every inch of the ship, my daughter and I disembarked only to sail off in our Uber, glancing over our shoulders to hold the last few glimpses of the radiant black, white and red Queen Mary in all of her royal majesty in our minds. The tasteful elegance of the Queen Mary (1936-1967) will never be surpassed.
#personal essay, #QueenMary, #elegance, #blog, #blogger
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