Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
My first foray into the Sanctuary of Elegance came through my maternal grandmother, Shirley Margaret Zorn. My cousins and I were visiting and playing in her living room when Grammie entered and told us to take our feet off of the davenport. When she could have said couch, Grammie said davenport. With a single word, I was momentarily transported into a world less common and unspeakably fine.
Years later, I recall my grandmother describing a home in her community as elegant. Even as she spoke the word, I took note. This was an event, not a passing moment. Elegant. From the mouth of Shirley Margaret Zorn, each syllable emerged, equally rich and wholly unrushed. In the ceremonial hush that followed, I became a willing initiate into the Sanctuary of Elegance.
Elegance is rarely–and not necessarily–opulence. It lives in the clean lines of Jacqueline Kennedy’s pillbox hats, and not in the spectators of British royal women, hats that sprout exotic feathers and that sport bedazzlements crafted in the workshops of Willie Wonka. Although most Americans preferred to call their First Lady Jackie–a name that warmly bridged the gap between American political royalty and the common folk–card-carrying members of the Sanctuary of Elegance deliberately deferred to Jacqueline–a name that sounded just as elegant as the woman herself.
Those who truly understand the nature of elegance, however, know that it must not be confused with simplicity. The messages in commercial greeting cards are simple. Their rhymes and verses are simply sentimental, leaving their saccharine residue on the soul. One would be hard-pressed to ever call these verses elegant, comforting and well-intended as they may be. But the rhymes and verses in the Sanctuary of Elegance? They defy simple description or definition. They suggest something profound: fine and lasting.
In my father’s poem, “Listening to a Pavane by Gabriel Faure,” he writes:
The flowers of a pavane turn slowly in the wind.
In a world filled with killings they offer you their petals.
The voices of the flowers are ocher and umber,
the voices of the flowers are vermillion and rum.
Sometimes it is like this when you listen to a pavane,
the petals of the flowers, their sounds in the wind,
amaryllis, sweet william, vermillion and rum.
Amaryllis, sweet william, vermillion and rum. Now these are rhymes for the likes of Shirley Margaret Zorn and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. And these are sentiments from the pure maple sugar, the deep tap root of the heart. These are words of elegance that will stand the test of time, returning as a soul-chorus like words of scripture stored away for just a time as this.
I will admit that I am a fan of kitsch. Those who know me well have seen my penchant for the tacky and utterly uncivilized. At any given moment, I can make a kitsch impulse-buy (my collection of early 1960s American Whimsie Dolls is more than enough evidence to support my claim here). Still, I am equally a big fan of elegance. Black and white photography from those who have an artistic eye for compositions that suggest–rather than announce–is powerfully elegant to me. Just a square of fine, dark chocolate or a single cup of perfectly-brewed Brazilian coffee is elegance extraordinaire. And the eyelashes of my sleeping granddaughter and grandson? The personification of elegance, to be sure.
Shirley Margaret Zorn ushered me into the Sanctuary of Elegance. Although my cousins and I will most remember the games we played in her ordinary basement and ordinary yard, the comfort food she lovingly fed us (caramel cinnamon rolls and magnificent pie), and a lap big enough to hold all of us, I remember and revere those moments during which I could see beyond our commonness into elegance.
If she were here today, I would ask her if she wanted to go furniture shopping with me, for I wished to buy a new davenport. She would understand that, in the Sanctuary of Elegance, you should never settle for a couch.
