Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage

by Hugh Brewster

  Even in worship, the distinction of classes was observed on the Titanic; assistant purser Reginald Barker conducted the service for second-class passengers in their dining saloon, and a Catholic mass was held in the second-class lounge by Father Thomas Byles, followed by one for those in third class. (There was no Sabbath observance for the significant number of Jews on board, though kosher food was available in all classes.) The first-class church service ended shortly after eleven, and Daisy Spedden, an accomplished pianist, stayed on to play the piano while the dining saloon stewards rearranged the chairs and prepared the tables for Sunday luncheon. At noon, the day’s mileage was posted and this again became a principal topic of lunchtime conversation with many noting that today’s tally of 546 nautical miles was the best so far. A pink-cheeked Archibald Gracie likely recounted to his tablemates Edward Kent and Jim Smith how he had arisen early that morning for a game of squash with the ship’s racket professional and followed it with a dip in the pool. Over the past four days he had enjoyed the ship’s lavish meals and comforts “as if I were in a summer palace on the seashore,” but now felt in need of some exercise and had made an appointment with the ship’s racket professional to play squash again the next morning.

  Archie Butt, Frank Millet, and Clarence Moore were back at their regular table for Sunday luncheon, and that afternoon Archie and Moore took a walk on deck despite the chilly weather, which kept many passengers indoors. After luncheon, Archibald Gracie repaired to his usual haunt, the lounge, and returned his finished copy of Old Dominion to the library steward. Once again he chatted with Isidor and Ida Straus, who told him that they were sending a wireless message to their son and his wife who were traveling to Europe on board the German liner Amerika. The canister containing the Strauses’ message would have joined many others in the wire basket in the Marconi Room since the wireless equipment had been out of commission for most of the night and the two operators were now working furiously to clear the backlog. At 1:40 p.m. they paused for an incoming message from the White Star steamer Baltic, which notified them that “the Greek steamer Athinai reports passing icebergs and large quantity of field ice.” This message was quickly forwarded to Captain Smith, who, instead of giving it to the officers on watch, put it in his pocket. He soon ran into Bruce Ismay chatting on the windowed A-deck promenade with George and Eleanor Widener and passed the message to him. Ismay gave it a brief glance and then pocketed it.

  Around this time, cards were being dealt for a poker game hosted by Charlotte Cardeza’s son, Thomas, on the private deck of their deluxe B-deck suite. Among those present was a New York theatrical producer named Henry B. Harris, who had invited his wife René to sit in as the eighth “man” at the table. During an earlier poker session, there had been suspicions that one of the players was a professional gambler, and rather than bar him from the next game, it was thought easier to simply let him see that the table was full. When the suspected cardsharp was later pointed out to René, she “thought he was a minister of the gospel, he looked so virtuous.”

  (photo credit 1.40)

  René and Henry B. Harris (photo credit 1.24)

  René also recalled that stakes were a dollar a chip and that she was ahead by $90 when the bugle signaling the dressing hour ended their card play. If any of the more conservative matrons on board had spied the petite René playing poker (and very likely puffing on a cigarette) while surrounded by seven men, there would have been some raised eyebrows. Yet this would not have troubled René in the slightest—it was her brash and outspoken nature that had attracted the more reserved Henry—“my boy,” as she called him—in the first place. And for René, the Titanic so far had been “one big party” with “a spirit of camaraderie unlike any I had experienced on previous trips.” She and Henry had bonded with Jacques Futrelle, the mystery writer whom Francis Browne had photographed on the first day, and with his wife, May. The Harrises already knew the Futrelles, probably from when Jacques had worked in the theater some years before, and were pleased to discover that their cabin was just across the corridor. Other acquaintances on board included John and Madeleine Astor.

  The high life would once have seemed an unlikely prospect for Irene (René) Wallach, the seventh of nine children born to a large Jewish family in Washington, D.C. Her father owned a jewelry store located beside the Willard Hotel but died when she was six, leaving her mother with five children to support. The family took in boarders to help make ends meet, and several of them were secretaries on Capitol Hill. One suggested to the teenaged René that she take a stenographic and typewriting course, which she did, and by nineteen she had landed a job as secretary to a Tennessee congressman. She also studied law at night school, and after three years moved to New York to take a clerical position with a Manhattan law firm. After only a few months in her new job, however, René found she “couldn’t do a damn thing” as she sat at her desk with a dreamy smile on her face. The cause of the smile was a theatrical promoter named Henry Harris who had been wooing her with flowers, dinners, and carriage rides in Central Park. The romance had begun unpromisingly when Henry had stroked the back of her neck while sitting behind her at a music hall matinee. René had rebuffed him for being “fresh,” and when the lights went up she had turned around to rebuke “Mr. Freshy” but then quickly realized, “I knew I couldn’t hate him. He had the softest eyes and the loveliest smile I ever saw.”

  On October 22, 1899, Henry Burkhardt Harris, thirty-two, and Irene Wallach, twenty-three, were married. René gave up her legal ambitions and transferred her considerable energies to Henry B. Harris Enterprises, the company her husband set up in 1901. She helped out at the office, read scripts, attended rehearsals, and even played a small part in one production. The couple took an apartment at the Wellington Hotel where René befriended Evelyn Nesbit, who was living there with the support of Stanford White. René found the sixteen-year-old Nesbit to be “childlike and lovable” and would often play Ping-Pong with her in the lounge. She was aware of the famous architect’s interest in Evelyn but never believed any romance was involved until the story made the headlines. Another famous acquaintance was Lillie Langtry, who became a friend when Henry acted as her U.S. manager in 1902. Still beautiful in her fifties, Lillie was a big draw when she brought plays to Broadway and would later even tour in a one-acter on the vaudeville circuit. According to René, Lillie spoke openly of her affair with King Edward VII when he was Prince of Wales, and on a 1906 visit to London she introduced the Harrises to the king at Epsom Downs, where they were invited to watch the races from the royal box.

  The early years of the new century were good ones for Harris Enterprises. In 1903, Harry (as Henry B. was known) and a partner built the lavish Hudson Theater, which featured a one-hundred-foot lobby, the largest on Broadway, crowned by a backlit Tiffany stained-glass ceiling. The playhouse opened with Ethel Barrymore starring in the comedy Cousin Kate. The Hudson would also present the first exotic, Eastern-styled performances of dancer Ruth St. Denis, one of the pioneers of modern dance and a teacher of Martha Graham. Within two years, Harry was able to buy out his partner and own the Hudson outright, and he would soon acquire another theater, which he named the Harris after his father, who was also a theatrical producer. As the money rolled in, the couple moved to a swankier apartment on Central Park West, with windows overlooking the park, where René would sometimes enjoy a morning canter wearing the smartest of riding togs. “Life was all play for me and I had but to enjoy myself” is how she would recall these heady years of champagne and first nights. Yet René was much more than a pampered wife. “If anything happens to me, she could pick up the reins,” Harry would often say of her in words that would prove to be prophetic.

  One of Harry’s few missteps was the opening of the Folies Bergère Theater in 1911, a New York incarnation of the famed Paris nightspot. “Harry lost $430,000 in nine months,” René recalled of the venture. Even though it introduced Mae West to Broadway and premiered such ragtime tunes as “Oh You Beautiful
Doll” and “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” Harry was forced to turn the cabaret back into a conventional theater named the Fulton. In search of a moneymaker, he backed a musical comedy that had been a success in London, called The Quaker Girl. It proved to be a hit in New York as well, starring one of Harry’s discoveries, the winsome Ina Claire, as the girl whose simple Quaker garb becomes all the rage in Paris. Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald recalled being smitten by Ina Claire when he saw the show as a teenager. It was a lavish production with beautiful gowns designed by Lucile, another acquaintance who would greet Harry on the Titanic.

  In December of 1911, Harry had decided to sail with René to Europe for a working holiday during which he would scout out foreign plays that might help recoup his Folies Bergère losses. Their four-month hiatus from Broadway would include some shopping in Paris for René as well as side trips to Italy, Egypt, and Morocco, before they made their way to London, where business awaited. From London, Harry sent a letter to his office saying that he hadn’t seen any plays that would work on the New York stage. But he told the London Standard that he had signed a contract to produce his first motion picture, a movie version of the play The Miracle. Before boarding the Titanic, he also sent a telegram to Ruth St. Denis assuring her that he would fund a dance recital for her on his return.

  WHILE THE POKER chips were piling up beside René Harris on the Cardezas’ wicker table that Sunday afternoon, “the Two,” as Helen Candee called herself and Hugh Woolner, were braving the cold on the boat deck. To warm up they stepped into the gymnasium, where the ever-eager instructor, T. W. McCawley, put Helen on the mechanical horse and then sat down on a rowing machine and suggested Woolner take the other one and try to “beat him with a Cambridge stroke.” After an hour on what Helen called the “toys in this wonderful retreat,” “the Two” went back onto the boat deck to find that it was still sunny but getting colder and that even the loungers on the A-deck promenade had been abandoned. There were more people walking on the enclosed promenade, however, and when a beautiful young woman passed by, Helen accused Woolner of “flirting with the prettiest girl,” to which he could only reply sheepishly, “Man is omnivorous.” (“The prettiest girl” was almost certainly Dorothy Gibson, a twenty-two-year-old illustrator’s model and silent-film actress who was returning with her mother from a European vacation.)

  In a quick recovery, Woolner interjected, “One of the women I most admire is this one,” noting Ida Straus walking arm in arm with her husband. “They have just finished a Marconi chat with their son, whose east-bound ship is talking to ours,” he added. The Strauses had indeed received a reply that afternoon from the Marconigram they had sent to the Amerika, an indication that operators Phillips and Bride had caught up with their message backlog. The Titanic’s Marconi Room had also received and relayed a wireless message that the Amerika had sent to the U.S. Hydrographic Office in Washington, D.C., reporting “two large icebergs” in the same area as those already noted by the Caronia and the Athinai. Since this message concerned navigation, it should have been sent to the bridge, but it was not.

  J. Bruce Ismay (photo credit 1.54)

  As the sun drew lower in the sky, Marian Thayer went to the B-deck cabin of her grieving friend Emily Ryerson to persuade her to come and see what promised to be a beautiful sunset. Until now, Mrs. Ryerson had not left her cabin except for some walks with her husband after dark when they were less likely to meet anyone. After strolling for about an hour, the two women settled into steamer chairs on the A-deck promenade, where J. Bruce Ismay unexpectedly joined them.

  “I hope you are comfortable and all right,” he said to Emily Ryerson as he seated himself on the next chair. She thanked him for providing an added stateroom and steward for her family, though she was in no mood for conversation and wished he would leave.

  “We are in among the icebergs,” Ismay suddenly announced, in what Mrs. Ryerson called “his brusque manner.” He pulled out the message from the Baltic given to him earlier by the captain and held it up for her to see. “We are not going very fast, twenty or twenty-one knots,” he continued, “but we are going to start up some new boilers this evening.”

  Mrs. Ryerson noticed a reference to the Deutschland (a German oil tanker) in the Marconigram and asked what that meant.

  “It is the Deutschland wanting a tow, not under control,” Ismay replied.

  When she inquired what he was going to do about this, Ismay answered that they were not going to do anything about it but instead would get into New York early and surprise everybody. When the two women’s husbands arrived, Ismay departed. Back in their stateroom, Emily Ryerson discussed with her husband what they would do if they arrived in New York on Tuesday night rather than Wednesday morning.

  The message from the Baltic remained in Ismay’s pocket until Captain Smith ran into him in the smoking room at around seven-ten and asked for it back so he could post it in the chart room. The captain was already fully aware that ice lay ahead, and for this reason he had delayed the ship’s turning of “the corner,” the point at which it changed course to steam due west for the Nantucket Lightship, from 5:00 to 5:50 p.m. This set the Titanic on a course ten miles south of the normal shipping route. When Second Officer Lightoller came on duty at 6 p.m., he asked Sixth Officer James Moody to calculate what time they would reach the ice. Moody soon reported that it would be around eleven o’clock that evening.

  With poignant symbolism, the Titanic’s final sunset was indeed its most beautiful. When Edith Rosenbaum went on deck that evening she noticed a group of men looking over the side toward the stern, admiring the reflection of the sunset on the water that was being thrown up from the propeller in “a wide blood-red band from the ship’s side to the horizon.” She had been feeling the cold that afternoon in her cabin and soon noticed how frigid it had become out on deck.

  By then “the Two” were seated snugly amid green cushions by the glowing fireplace in the lounge, where they were served tea and toast. It reminded Helen Candee of settling down before a home fire after a frosty afternoon ride over the fields. The Strauses came in and sat nearby and, on seeing Colonel Gracie in the room, told him of receiving a message in reply from the Amerika. When the bugle sounded at 6 p.m., the lounge began to clear as passengers returned to their staterooms to dress for dinner. One deck below, the Cardeza poker party broke up and the Harrises walked to the grand staircase to go down to their C-deck stateroom. Suddenly, René slipped on a greasy spot left by a dropped tea cake and, in her words, “took a header down six or seven steps” and landed “in a heap at the foot of the stairs.” Several men, including Harry, rushed to her aid and lifted her up. “I knew that I was all right,” she recalled, “except for my right arm. I couldn’t bear to have it touched.”

  She insisted on walking to her stateroom, where Harry called for the ship’s doctor, William O’Loughlin. The “little doctor,” as René called him, pronounced the arm broken and began to prepare a cast where her arm would be held straight out. But René wanted a second opinion. She had heard that there was a New York orthopedic surgeon on board and, with apologies to Dr. O’Loughlin, asked if he could be consulted. Very soon the burly, bewhiskered figure of Dr. Henry Frauenthal, a specialist in joint diseases, arrived at their cabin door. He recommended that her arm be set with its elbow bent and the palm resting on her shoulder. After this was completed, bed rest was recommended, but René was determined to keep their dinner date with the Futrelles in the Ritz Restaurant. “Although I was suffering torture,” she recounted, “I knew I would feel it no less if I stayed in my room … so I struggled into my dinner dress—a sleeveless one, of course.” Meanwhile news of René’s accident had spread. “Before I left my room,” she recalled, “I had a dozen or more sympathetic messages.”

  The evening gown that René struggled into was likely one that she had recently purchased in Paris. Her friend and table companion May Futrelle later recalled “how fondly” the women wore their newly acquired Parisian finery that evenin
g. And René’s tumble on the stairs may also have been fashion-related—the narrow, tapered “pencil” skirts then so much in style hampered movement and could have contributed to her becoming, quite literally, a fashion victim. Most constricting of all was the ankle-cinched “hobble” skirt championed by designer Paul Poiret, which had been much in vogue in 1910–11. In reaction, Lucile Duff Gordon had designed some of her “pencil” skirts with slits (discreetly covered with fabric) to allow for freer movement. But tapered skirts were for day wear only, and for this Sunday dinner, the most gala so far, the ladies in first class were selecting their showiest evening gowns. Helen Candee observed the women in the Palm Room “shining in pale satins and clinging gauze” before dinner and spotted “the prettiest girl” in a “glittering frock of dancing length with silver fringe around her dainty white satin feet.” (Dorothy Gibson would later include just such a pair of white satin slippers in her lost luggage claim.) During the dressing hour, jewelry cases had been retrieved from the purser’s safe, and May Futrelle recalled how jewels flashed from the gowns of the women at dinner.