The story of the Titanic has been retold so often, most frequently during 2012 when the centenary of its capsizing rolled around, that it is hard to see why it would need to be done again. But perhaps that is to miss the point of Gareth Russell’s book. People who consume one thing about the Titanic tend to consume many, and there is always a shivery pleasure in accompanying old friends as they climb aboard once more, unaware that they are walking not only into a deathtrap but into a metaphor that will rattle down the ages.
In stateroom C-77 is the Countess of Rothes, the public-spirited British aristocrat who is on her way to join her husband in the US, where they will celebrate their 12th wedding anniversary. Along the corridor, in C-55 and C-57 are Isidor and Ida Straus, a devoted couple who touchingly – and vulgarly, according to the way these things are usually done in the “best circles” – choose to sleep in a double bed. They are on their way home to Macy’s, which Isidor owns, having spent the winter weeks warming their ancient bones in the south of France. One floor down, on B deck, is 47-year-old John Jacob Astor IV, the richest man on board if not in the world, who has scandalously married Madeleine Fiermonte, aged 17, now five months pregnant. Also slinking around the first-class quarters is J Bruce Ismay, the son of the founder of the White Star Line, which owns RMS Titanic. No one can stand him. It’s not that Ismay has done anything demonstrably wrong at this point – that will come later, when people start whispering about how he has managed to survive the sinking while so many other men go down. It’s just that he has an uncanny ability to misread social situations, barging into conversations that don’t concern him, and generally creeping out everyone on board, especially the ladies.
It is fun too to wander once more through the Titanic’s preposterous interior. The writing room is late Georgian, the lounge is Louis XV and the dining room has nods to Hatfield House, Elizabeth I’s childhood home. The tapestries are vaguely medieval but there’s also an unlikely smattering of cottagey pebbledash. You do, though, need to manage your expectations if you’ve got one of the cheaper first-class cabins: many of them don’t have their own lavatories, which means you’ll have to scuttle along the corridor to find the nearest shared convenience. There is no dressing for dinner on the first night, and you can’t just barge into the smoking room if you fancy a fag – it’s strictly men only. And don’t, just don’t, ask if you can have a tour of the third-class accommodation to check that the people in steerage are comfortable. At least one Lady Bountiful has attempted this version of maritime poor-visiting, and it went down badly. You can almost feel Julian Fellowes, who has done the cover blurb for Russell’s book, shuddering with embarrassment at someone so posh getting it so wrong.
In truth it is hard to see what Russell adds to a story that has been worn smooth by a century’s worth of popular histories, Hollywood blockbusters and TV documentaries with terrific underwater footage. Even his decision to concentrate on a cluster of individual passengers has been done before by Richard Davenport-Hines in his excellent Titanic Lives. Russell’s variation on this methodology is to spend much longer on his travellers’ backstories in the hope that, plaited together, the result will be something like a synoptic account of the 20th century in its debutante days. So a section on Dorothy Gibson, a silent movie star travelling with her mother in cabin E-22, gives Russell a chance to retell the story of America’s early film industry, which is located not in California but New Jersey. Then there’s the Macy’s owner Isidor Straus, whose immigration as a nine-year-old from Bavaria to Georgia in 1854 pitches Russell into a long digression about patterns of slave-holding amongst Jewish families in the antebellum south.
Russell doesn’t stop there though. He projects the tale of his voyagers forwards too, so for instance we learn that Dorothy Gibson, who relocated to Europe in the 1920s, has an ill-advised flirtation with fascism, which nonetheless leads to her imprisonment by the Nazis in 1944. By contrast, the Countess of Rothes, who proves herself an absolute brick in one of the lifeboats, pursues a post-Titanic life of strenuous philanthropy, having discovered, she says somewhat ominously, that it is the best way she knows to be happy.
In principle there is nothing wrong with wrenching the Titanic away from its frozen moment and restoring it to the ebb and flow of ordinary time. The problem is that this isn’t what Russell really wants to do. As his portentous title suggests, he is in the business of making the Titanic story huge and metaphorical, a morality tale about the collapse of a somewhat slipshod civilisation. The result is as unconvincing as the ship’s haphazard interior, a pile-up of the gaudy and the mundane.
Обозначения:
to miss the point of – интересные, полезные слова и выражения
the richest man on board if not in the world – интересная грамматическая структура
In truth it is hard to see what Russell adds to a story - слова, выражения, конструкции, которые могут быть использованы при написании review
Along the corridor – описание продвижений по кораблю (вверх, вниз, вдоль)