Emotions are a universal matter, spanning all times and all places.
Throughout the centuries, a million nieces have tasted the nagging pang of
defeat.
I was forced to admit that Aunt Edith, fanatically nationalistic as she was, had a point.
"It's very small, dear – are you sure this is the right room? You could have had an even nicer one on a Cunarder for the same amount, and much closer to the deck. It's very dark, my love."
I allowed her to discourse on the respective merits and failures of British and American shipping companies while I silently admitted that my cosmopolitan image of a ship filled with everything modern and American was not really materialising. On a maiden voyage, one expects to pay more, but even I, enthusiastic as I was, thought almost sixty pounds a little steep for this – an E-deck, first class stateroom, décor of the mass-produced style, utterly lacking the gilding and marble inherent in White Star's publicity. Small, with furnishings identical to a hundred cabins on this deck alone, a thousand others on a dozen White Star ships carrying pretentious girls like me across the ocean on the strength of their insubstantial bank balance – two beds, cot-type, sofa, wash basin (ceramic, not marble, brass taps, not gold, though I didn't really expect that), multi-purpose, suburban-style table (of the dressing, writing, and bedside order), and chair with somewhat alarming throwbacks to provincial working men's clubs across the north.
I had come in search of a journey quite different from anything ever experienced by me before, and been granted an inside (but with narrow passage to horrid porthole, ergo, "outside") hole with carpet fabric that, I now began to realise, resembled greatly in its one dimensional floridity the strip of carpet that adorned the landing outside the sewing room back at Manchester Square, dating from some time around the death of Prince Albert.
Positively, I forced myself to think, the ship is the largest in the world, on its maiden voyage, and taking you to America. Where you will have the best time ever, and marry an American, who will, obviously, be wealthy, influential, and liberal enough to let you saunter the world in the best staterooms of ships just like this one. Yes, I affirmed, vaguely aware, at the edges of my consciousness that Aunt Edith had mercifully ceased to talk – this voyage was merely a stepping-stone, to better things.
I almost reversed my opinion at Cherbourg, where the ship docked that evening before dinner. Our midday departure went unwitnessed by my aunt and I in the midst of my unpacking on E-deck, in spite of what we later learned to be quite a lengthy delay that became the talk of those crashingly dull enough to have remained on deck to watch England slip blessedly into the distance. The Titanic's suction (a bizarre concept that I, at the time, could simply not comprehend – but how I understood later, and how I shook!) had caused another ship to break free of its moorings and swing dramatically into the path of the ship, causing an hour's action to occur, involving tugs, ropes, and all other whatnot.
In any case, At Cherbourg, I became almost immediately converted to Aunt Edith's school of thinking, and berate myself for ever thinking of leaving England. All the detrimental discussions on Americans – they never give you time to breathe, they have no sense of order, they are by far to friendly with their betters – came flooding back as grotesque specimen after grotesque specimen clambered aboard at D-deck as we went into dinner. All seemed to be monstrously fat, with equally obese husbands in tow, swaddled in, respectively, layers of fur and frilliness, and layers of unnatural and synthetic fabric. Many had a dog, apparently to be spoken to as a child never should be, equally apparently incapable of walking, engulfed by fat hands with too many rings and destined to a life of pointless pampering. I was not best pleased.
I very nearly abandoned my whole enterprise. Although the unwritten objective of my journey was to acquire me a husband (a seemingly easier task in a land of little sense of order), I seriously considered simply having a nice holiday as, Aunt Edith on arm, I processed into the dining saloon – depressingly Jacobean.
Fortunately for me, that deity whose responsibility seating allocations are looked down favourably upon me. Just as I despaired of making an American marriage without ending up obese and positively canine, I sank down in my overstuffed chair, only to be greeted by Caroline.
I was forced to admit that Aunt Edith, fanatically nationalistic as she was, had a point.
"It's very small, dear – are you sure this is the right room? You could have had an even nicer one on a Cunarder for the same amount, and much closer to the deck. It's very dark, my love."
I allowed her to discourse on the respective merits and failures of British and American shipping companies while I silently admitted that my cosmopolitan image of a ship filled with everything modern and American was not really materialising. On a maiden voyage, one expects to pay more, but even I, enthusiastic as I was, thought almost sixty pounds a little steep for this – an E-deck, first class stateroom, décor of the mass-produced style, utterly lacking the gilding and marble inherent in White Star's publicity. Small, with furnishings identical to a hundred cabins on this deck alone, a thousand others on a dozen White Star ships carrying pretentious girls like me across the ocean on the strength of their insubstantial bank balance – two beds, cot-type, sofa, wash basin (ceramic, not marble, brass taps, not gold, though I didn't really expect that), multi-purpose, suburban-style table (of the dressing, writing, and bedside order), and chair with somewhat alarming throwbacks to provincial working men's clubs across the north.
I had come in search of a journey quite different from anything ever experienced by me before, and been granted an inside (but with narrow passage to horrid porthole, ergo, "outside") hole with carpet fabric that, I now began to realise, resembled greatly in its one dimensional floridity the strip of carpet that adorned the landing outside the sewing room back at Manchester Square, dating from some time around the death of Prince Albert.
Positively, I forced myself to think, the ship is the largest in the world, on its maiden voyage, and taking you to America. Where you will have the best time ever, and marry an American, who will, obviously, be wealthy, influential, and liberal enough to let you saunter the world in the best staterooms of ships just like this one. Yes, I affirmed, vaguely aware, at the edges of my consciousness that Aunt Edith had mercifully ceased to talk – this voyage was merely a stepping-stone, to better things.
I almost reversed my opinion at Cherbourg, where the ship docked that evening before dinner. Our midday departure went unwitnessed by my aunt and I in the midst of my unpacking on E-deck, in spite of what we later learned to be quite a lengthy delay that became the talk of those crashingly dull enough to have remained on deck to watch England slip blessedly into the distance. The Titanic's suction (a bizarre concept that I, at the time, could simply not comprehend – but how I understood later, and how I shook!) had caused another ship to break free of its moorings and swing dramatically into the path of the ship, causing an hour's action to occur, involving tugs, ropes, and all other whatnot.
In any case, At Cherbourg, I became almost immediately converted to Aunt Edith's school of thinking, and berate myself for ever thinking of leaving England. All the detrimental discussions on Americans – they never give you time to breathe, they have no sense of order, they are by far to friendly with their betters – came flooding back as grotesque specimen after grotesque specimen clambered aboard at D-deck as we went into dinner. All seemed to be monstrously fat, with equally obese husbands in tow, swaddled in, respectively, layers of fur and frilliness, and layers of unnatural and synthetic fabric. Many had a dog, apparently to be spoken to as a child never should be, equally apparently incapable of walking, engulfed by fat hands with too many rings and destined to a life of pointless pampering. I was not best pleased.
I very nearly abandoned my whole enterprise. Although the unwritten objective of my journey was to acquire me a husband (a seemingly easier task in a land of little sense of order), I seriously considered simply having a nice holiday as, Aunt Edith on arm, I processed into the dining saloon – depressingly Jacobean.
Fortunately for me, that deity whose responsibility seating allocations are looked down favourably upon me. Just as I despaired of making an American marriage without ending up obese and positively canine, I sank down in my overstuffed chair, only to be greeted by Caroline.