Goodbye, Violet Eyes

She has left us - the last true "icon" of Hollywood.

Yes, there are many famous actors much older than her - and probably better actors than her - still left.

But being famous, even "legendary", does not automatically bring the status she had.

She embodied the kind of stardom that is unattainable nowadays - the Icon, familiar to all generations in any given home.

And today the world, surprisingly or not, feels much emptier without her.

Certainly unsurprisingly, most of the recent coverage of her passing dwells on her eyes. Her violet eyes. Did she or didn't she have violet eyes?

Ah, those eyes! They really were extraordinary - but not necessarily, certainly not only, because of their colour or "prettiness".
When she was a child, her eyes were old beyond her years. They were solemn, earnest, questioning eyes; and always, always there was in them a voracious, almost desperate hunger for life.
As she grew up, and grew older, the eyes remained the same; the hunger for life remained the same, perhaps tinged with awareness that nothing lasts forever - not beauty, not love, not life.

But fair enough: did Elizabeth Taylor have violet eyes?

Those who knew her say, almost without exception, that she did, yes. Startling violet eyes that cinema goers never really saw. Not even the best camera film is a match for the colours of Nature.

Of course "violet" eyes are, in fact, blue eyes shaded by (in her case) double rows of eyelashes - a genetic mutation of the most felicitous kind.

And she wasn't the only one in the world who had them.

Princess Margaret's eyes were said to be almost violet at times.

So are Terence Stamp's eyes.

And the eyes of many anonymous people across the world.

But there was only one Elizabeth Taylor: the shrew, the wench, the loud and passionate woman who wrecked many a heart, including her own, and contributed to the (not exclusively cinematic) entertainment of millions; the compassionate and fiercely loyal generous friend; the selfish home-wrecker and courageous survivor; the mediocre-to-OK but always gorgeous decoration of many films, and the astonishingly effective and unforgettably poignant actress in A Place in the Sun and Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; the Film Star par excellence.

Regardless of personal tastes, her beauty was undisputed by all and sundry.

And contrary to many internet postings, I think she aged quite well, all things considered.

She didn't have the best stylists - they should have told her to lighten her eyebrows and darken her hair, not the other way around - but if you look at her most recent photos, the essence of her beauty was untouched. All the booze and excesses did remarkably little damage to her skin - and none to her eyes.

Only Life inflicted damage to her eyes - to her gaze.

It was a sad gaze, damp with regret - the regret we are all familiar with: the cruel passing of the tender buds of May. Not even of their beauty but of their promise: the promise of rainbow's ends to be chased, of inexpressible secret bliss that the Future - and the Future only - holds.

Farewell, Elizabeth.

I hope - for your sake and for the sake of all of us - that there really is a dimension, a Time, that runs parallel to ours, unseen but perhaps felt at times, where you can chase rainbows again and your eyes dare to be young again.