Cruisin’
Jeanne Cooper, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, compares the social interworkings among guests on a month-long cruise of the South Pacific to a Jane Austen novel.
In a form of social matchmaking Austen would have understood (but perhaps my husband would not), I was instantly steered to the handful of other adult children and older gentlemen in want of traveling companions. The pressure was taken off, however, by the revelation that an even more romantic figure had boarded in Auckland: a newly minted multimillionaire who’d just sold the New Zealand island where he’d lived alone for several decades — and whose wardrobe looked like it.
The stories going around about him were so intense that eventually the ship screened a New Zealand TV documentary about him, where we all learned that he didn’t like to be called a hermit (other people could always visit his island) and that he wouldn’t say exactly how much his island had sold for (rather a lot, we gathered). I tried to restrain my own curiosity when he joined our lunch table the next day, but I like to think Austen would have approved of my polite small talk, even if it did not lead to a marriage of minds and fortunes.
There’s more about the actual cruise here. A point of interest is that the ship Discovery was formerly the Island Princess, one of those seen on THE LOVE BOAT. No wonder the authoress’ mind was turned to Austen!
