Read Online Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World by Hugh Brewster - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Hugh Brewster
Tags: United States, History, Biography & Autobiography, Travel, 20th Century, Rich & Famous, Ocean Travel, Shipwreck Victims, Cruises, Upper Class - United States, Shipwrecks - North Atlantic Ocean, Titanic (Steamship)
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from.’ ” But Hammad Hassab was actually a young, unmarried dragoman of striking good looks, and despite the fashion for having exotic servants, his presence with the Harpers had a whiff of impropriety to it.
A trio of Canadian bachelors who were known as “the Three Musketeers” could also possibly have drawn Millet’s attention, although he would have spotted only two of them, Thomson Beattie and Thomas McCaffry, since their traveling companion, John Hugo Ross, was ill and confined to his cabin. Ross and Beattie were both successful real estate agents in Winnipeg, Manitoba, then a boomtown with Canada’s largest per capita population of millionaires. To escape the fierce prairie winters, Beattie and his close friend McCaffry, a Vancouver banker, were in the habit of boarding liners for destinations like North Africa or the Aegean. This year, they had been joined by Ross, another dapper, witty bachelor, and the three men had departed from New York in January bound for Trieste and a three-month tour of Italy, Egypt, France, and England. After two months of travel, Ross had fallen ill with dysentery in Egypt and his travel-weary companions had become anxious to get home. Beattie had written from Paris to his mother in Fergus, Ontario: “We are changing ships and coming home in a new, unsinkable boat.” The usually energetic Ross was so frail he had to be carried aboard the Titanic in Southampton and spent the rest of the voyage in his cabin. Beattie and McCaffry, whom the Winnipeg Free Press would describe as “almost inseparable,” shared cabin C-6, a room with a large window that looked out on the forward well deck.
Though bachelorhood, it must be noted, is not necessarily an indicator of homosexuality, it took considerable resilience to remain single in an era when marriage bestowed manhood. For lesbians the social pressure was less intense since “maiden ladies” living together drew little scrutiny. In America, these alliances between women were sometimes known as “Boston marriages,” a term coined from Henry James’s 1886 novel The Bostonians , which described two “new women” living together in a marriage-like relationship. If Frank had observed the portly and mannish Ella White gesturing with her walking stick to her soft-spoken younger companion, Marie Young, on the Nomadic , he may have suspected that the two women had such a relationship. Some “Boston marriages” were platonic, however, and it is not known if there was a sexual component to Ella White’s relationship with Marie Young. But the two women lived and traveled together for thirty years, and when Ella White died in 1942, the bulk of her estate was left to Marie Young.
We also cannot know whether Frank’s closeness to Archie Butt ever extended beyond the bounds of mere friendship. Archie was far too careful to ever pen anything as indiscreet as Millet’s correspondence with Stoddard. Yet within Archie’s letters there are enough clues to picture him as a Ragtime-era gay man hiding in plain sight. Archie had the same gift for observation and waspish wit found in gay diarists from Horace Walpole and Henry “Chips” Channon to Cecil Beaton and Andy Warhol. He also had a remarkable eye for the details of women’s clothes and jewelry and could, for example, describe from memory a selection of First Lady Edith Roosevelt’s gowns and include such details as “black velvet with passementerie down the front.”
Archie also remarks often on the “pulchritude of the male element” he sees at social gatherings, employing expressions like “as handsome as a young Greek athlete.” And although Archie was often named as one of Washington’s most eligible bachelors, he was unable to sustain a relationship with any woman other than his mother. To modern eyes, Archie’s attachment to Pamela Boggs Butt seems extreme. During his three-year posting in the Philippines, he had pined so much for her that he had arranged to bring her
A trio of Canadian bachelors who were known as “the Three Musketeers” could also possibly have drawn Millet’s attention, although he would have spotted only two of them, Thomson Beattie and Thomas McCaffry, since their traveling companion, John Hugo Ross, was ill and confined to his cabin. Ross and Beattie were both successful real estate agents in Winnipeg, Manitoba, then a boomtown with Canada’s largest per capita population of millionaires. To escape the fierce prairie winters, Beattie and his close friend McCaffry, a Vancouver banker, were in the habit of boarding liners for destinations like North Africa or the Aegean. This year, they had been joined by Ross, another dapper, witty bachelor, and the three men had departed from New York in January bound for Trieste and a three-month tour of Italy, Egypt, France, and England. After two months of travel, Ross had fallen ill with dysentery in Egypt and his travel-weary companions had become anxious to get home. Beattie had written from Paris to his mother in Fergus, Ontario: “We are changing ships and coming home in a new, unsinkable boat.” The usually energetic Ross was so frail he had to be carried aboard the Titanic in Southampton and spent the rest of the voyage in his cabin. Beattie and McCaffry, whom the Winnipeg Free Press would describe as “almost inseparable,” shared cabin C-6, a room with a large window that looked out on the forward well deck.
Though bachelorhood, it must be noted, is not necessarily an indicator of homosexuality, it took considerable resilience to remain single in an era when marriage bestowed manhood. For lesbians the social pressure was less intense since “maiden ladies” living together drew little scrutiny. In America, these alliances between women were sometimes known as “Boston marriages,” a term coined from Henry James’s 1886 novel The Bostonians , which described two “new women” living together in a marriage-like relationship. If Frank had observed the portly and mannish Ella White gesturing with her walking stick to her soft-spoken younger companion, Marie Young, on the Nomadic , he may have suspected that the two women had such a relationship. Some “Boston marriages” were platonic, however, and it is not known if there was a sexual component to Ella White’s relationship with Marie Young. But the two women lived and traveled together for thirty years, and when Ella White died in 1942, the bulk of her estate was left to Marie Young.
We also cannot know whether Frank’s closeness to Archie Butt ever extended beyond the bounds of mere friendship. Archie was far too careful to ever pen anything as indiscreet as Millet’s correspondence with Stoddard. Yet within Archie’s letters there are enough clues to picture him as a Ragtime-era gay man hiding in plain sight. Archie had the same gift for observation and waspish wit found in gay diarists from Horace Walpole and Henry “Chips” Channon to Cecil Beaton and Andy Warhol. He also had a remarkable eye for the details of women’s clothes and jewelry and could, for example, describe from memory a selection of First Lady Edith Roosevelt’s gowns and include such details as “black velvet with passementerie down the front.”
Archie also remarks often on the “pulchritude of the male element” he sees at social gatherings, employing expressions like “as handsome as a young Greek athlete.” And although Archie was often named as one of Washington’s most eligible bachelors, he was unable to sustain a relationship with any woman other than his mother. To modern eyes, Archie’s attachment to Pamela Boggs Butt seems extreme. During his three-year posting in the Philippines, he had pined so much for her that he had arranged to bring her
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