Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World (7 page)

Margaret Brown was still feeling chilled from her long wait on the tender and decided to forgo a lavish dinner in the dining saloon for the warmth of her cabin’s electric heater and the cozy coverlet on her brass bed. Many of the Southampton-boarded passengers had already been at table in the dining saloon when the Cherbourg tenders arrived, as photographer Francis Browne recalled:

As we sat down to dinner—we were eight at our table—we could see the newly arrived passengers passing in the lobby [reception room] outside and hear the busy hum of work as the luggage and mails were brought on board. But soon it all quietened down and after a time someone remarked, “I wonder have we started yet.” We all stopped for a moment and listened, but noticing no vibration or noise the answer came, “No we can’t have started yet.” But the waiting steward leant over and said, “We have been outside the breakwater for more than ten minutes, Sir.” So gentle was the motion of the ship that none could notice its movement (and there was no drink on the table stronger than Apollinaris!)

Francis Browne was in his second year of theological studies in Dublin, preparing for his ordination as a Jesuit priest. He had been given this trip, his first on an ocean liner, as a treat by his uncle, the bishop of Cloyne, whose cathedral was in Queenstown (now Cobh) in Ireland, which would be the
Titanic
’s next stop. Browne was traveling to Queenstown with the Odells, an English Catholic family known to his uncle, who were taking a motoring holiday in Ireland. Luckily for posterity, Browne had remembered to bring along his camera, another gift from Bishop Browne. Photographs actually taken on board the
Titanic
are few and those from the “Father Browne Album” comprise the largest and most significant part of them.

Browne had begun snapping pictures that morning at London’s Waterloo Station before the 9:45 departure of the Boat Train. When it arrived in Southampton, Browne took a sweeping shot from the gangway of the port side of the
Titanic
towering above Ocean Dock. After documenting the near collision with the
New York
, he ate a hurried lunch in the dining saloon since he wanted to be up on deck when they sailed past the Isle of Wight. As he was photographing one of the four round stone forts that stand in the waters of the Solent off Portsmouth, an American passenger bore down on him. In a loud, penetrating voice that, in Browne’s words, “
had not learned its intonation on this side of ‘the Herring Pond,’ ” the American asked, “Could you tell me, Sir, why is the channel so narrow here?”

Francis Browne photographed author Jacques Futrelle standing beside the gymnasium on the boat deck.
(photo credit 1.21)

“I suppose when they built those forts they never calculated on having ships as big as the
Titanic
,” Browne replied.

“Oh, I did not mean that. Why is the land so near here?”

With wry Irish wit, Browne responded, “Well, I suppose that they could not shift the Isle of Wight back any further than it is.”

Undaunted, the American went on to question him about the distance between Dover and Calais and to ask “Why don’t you English cross here?” At this, Browne recalled “a ghost of a geography class” and replied, “Oh, that’s not France, that’s the Isle of Wight.”

“I see. I thought it was France,” the American replied and moved off.

Inquisitiveness would have been in character for this large, rumpled American with the Georgia drawl. His name was Jacques Heath Futrelle, and he was the author of a series of mystery novels that had earned him the nickname “the American Conan Doyle.” His popular Thinking Machine stories, which featured the brilliant amateur sleuth Professor S. F. X. Van Dusen, had first been serialized in Hearst’s
Boston American
, where Futrelle was a staff writer. The public’s enthusiasm for the character allowed him to quit journalism and concentrate on writing mystery novels. With his royalties he was able to acquire a large house called “Stepping Stones” on the harbor in Scituate, Massachusetts, for his wife, Lily May, also a writer, and their two children. If Futrelle’s faculties were less than keen during his exchange with Francis Browne that afternoon, it was perhaps because he and his wife had not slept the night before. A party with friends in London to celebrate his thirty-seventh birthday had lasted until 3 a.m., and instead of going to bed, the Futrelles had decided to simply pack up and make an early start for Southampton.

Francis Browne soon spied Futrelle again up on the boat deck and took a photograph of him standing outside the arched windows of the ship’s gymnasium. Browne then stepped inside the gym and snapped the white-clad instructor happily posed on a rowing machine. He then went down to A deck and took a photograph beneath the ship’s bridge that shows Frank Millet’s friend, Archie Butt, standing in the distance in conversation with two men. Archie is wearing a black military overcoat over his U.S. Army major’s uniform. Sailing day on a maiden voyage was clearly an occasion that warranted his being in uniform. He had worn civilian clothes for his departure with Millet on the
Berlin
five weeks before, which had prompted a
New York Times
article headlined
MAJOR BUTT’S SUIT A WONDER
. The reporter described Archie as boarding the ship “in a suit of clothes that won the admiration of every passenger on the deck of the liner.…”

Browne also snapped Archie Butt on the forward end of A deck chatting (at right) with two other men. The boy on the right is eleven-year-old Jack Odell.
(photo credit 1.22)

His cambric handkerchief was tucked up his left sleeve.… He wore a bright copper-colored Norfolk jacket fastened by big ball-shaped buttons of red porcelain, a lavender tie, tall baywing collar, trousers of the same material as the coat, a derby hat with broad, flat brim, and patent leather shoes with white tops. The Major had a bunch of lilies in his buttonhole, and appeared to be delighted at the prospect of going away. He said that he had lost twenty pounds in weight following the President in his strenuous tour through the West.

When asked if it were true that he was engaged to Miss Dorothy Williams of Washington, Major Butt replied sadly: “I wish it were. This bachelorhood is a miserable existence. I have distress signals flying at the fore, and will refuse no reasonable offer to enter the matrimonial field. I’ll do the best I can, and if this leap year gets away before I get a wife I shall feel very much discouraged.”

The gallant Major did not wear an overcoat, and he winced once or twice when he was posing on the windswept deck for the photographers.

Archie was well known as a dandy—seven trunks had accompanied him to Europe just to carry his wardrobe. But the description of a lavender tie and lilies in the buttonhole suggests a flamboyance bordering on effeminacy. Archie was a good-humored man who enjoyed joking with reporters and feeding them tidbits of White House news—as a former journalist himself, he knew how to please the press. And the fact that reporters from several newspapers were on hand for his departure is an indication of just how well known a Washington figure Archie had become. But he would not have been amused by the
Times
article and one can imagine him venting his pique about it with the same sardonic wit he so often employed in the letters he wrote almost daily to his sister-in-law Clara.

Archie intended his letters to Clara to be compiled and published as a journal of his White House years. They were written quickly, often at the end of very long days, but with considerable flair. “
I never reread or correct my letters,” he claimed to Clara. “I have decided to postpone that until my old age, if I have one.” In their spontaneous form Archie’s letters provide a remarkably intimate picture of both the White House and the Washington social scene during the Theodore Roosevelt and Taft administrations. Archie knew his letters would be of interest to historians, and before leaving for Europe, he carefully instructed Clara that “
in case of accident of any kind,” she was not to edit out any names, “for letters if they have any historic value must be printed as written.”

Archie had joined the U.S. Army at the outbreak of the Spanish-American War and had been a highly efficient quartermaster during tours of duty in the Philippines and Cuba. This, coupled with his impeccable manners and creamy Southern charm, had made the forty-two-year-old captain a perfect choice for presidential military aide. The position was primarily a ceremonial one—providing some uniformed pomp for ambassadorial receptions and the like—showing some gold lace, as Archie termed it, though he would parlay the job into something much more. His White House posting began on April 8, 1908, and it wasn’t long before Archie had endeared himself to President Theodore Roosevelt, joining him for vigorous games of tennis and on horseback jaunts in Rock Creek Park. The president soon put Archie in charge of the White House stables, including the care of his own horses. The two men also bonded over their shared Southern heritage—Roosevelt’s mother had been from Georgia—and soon the ebullient Teddy would be styling Archie and himself as “
two old Southern gentlemen” as they swigged mint juleps in their tennis clothes and made jibes about New England Yankees.

First Lady Edith Roosevelt, too, found Archie to be an amiable addition to the White House staff and a suitable escort to take her to the theater or social functions when the president was engaged. In late July she invited him to join the family for a few days at Sagamore Hill, their summer retreat on Oyster Bay, Long Island, and it was here that Archie was virtually assumed into the Roosevelt family. In four letters to his mother. Archie describes balmy days at the “summer White House” with “
endless tennis and swimming and boating and riding … and I am keen for it.”

Archie’s high spirits made him popular with the six Roosevelt children, and he describes one family swim after tennis where “
everyone joined in the water fight and sides were chosen to see who could clear the float [swim raft].” When Archie climbed out of the water, his leg was bleeding from scratches inflicted by the barnacles under the raft. The president asked Archie how this had happened and he jokingly replied that another guest, a wealthy young New Englander from the State Department named William “Billy” Phillips, was responsible. Roosevelt hooted loudly and later announced to a group of visitors that “
Phillips had worn his spurs in the water and that I [Archie] had said that if Phillips was a gentleman he would cut his nails.” Archie went on to describe how Phillips, who was “the most ultra-type of a cultured Bostonian, could see no humor in the remark at all.”

Billy Phillips and his “water spurs” became a running gag that continued even after their return to the White House. That October, Archie decided to repay his hostess by inviting her and her daughter Ethel to a lunch at his home. As soon as Theodore Roosevelt got wind of this, he invited himself along—instantly making it an occasion of greater import since the president rarely dined outside the White House. Despite his claim that bachelorhood was “a miserable existence,” Archie actually managed the domestic details of his life with considerable aplomb. He kept a well-furnished home staffed by a cook and Filipino houseboys, with rooms that he rented to other bachelors. Archie describes the planning of the presidential luncheon in loving detail to his mother—from the table setting (place mats rather than a tablecloth) to the planning of the Southern-style menu and the selection of the other guests. One of these would be the ultra-refined New Englander from the Sagamore Hill visit, Billy Phillips. During the soup course, Archie (with the president’s encouragement) had arranged for Phillips to be served a bowl of water in which were placed a pair of spurs with a scroll attached. Phillips gamely unrolled the scroll, which announced:

GEORGIA recognizes New England’s right to set a new fashion in warfare, and in token of such recognition Mr. William Phillips of Massachusetts is hereby created KNIGHT of the WATER SPURS by direction of the President with the consent and advice of his Aides.