We’re only a fortnight away from April and I’ve already read three books about the Titanic. Don’t worry, I won’t put you through three posts. Two of the three have been passenger accounts, The Loss of the Titanic by Lawrence Beesley, and Women of the Titanic Disaster by Sylvia Caldwell, both second class passengers who survived the disaster. While I have opinions on them as pieces of literature, it doesn’t feel quite right to review them. After all they are personal accounts of one of the world’s worst maritime disasters and biggest losses of life at sea before the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff in 1945.
My journey with Titanic began long before James Cameron convinced Hollywood to build him replica in Mexico*. The Titanic is a favourite topic of my father’s, our staircase is a mini exhibit of paintings, a reproduction of the ship’s bell, an airfix model that I glance at every time I leave my bedroom, and I know there is more to the collection in the loft. Unsurprisingly the interest passed on to me. Apart from getting to see the ship intact (for which I’m very thankful to the team behind Titanic: Honor and Glory), I have never wanted to be on the Titanic, I have never wanted to know how I would react to being on a sinking ship. I have, however, never felt satisfied with just knowing the details of the sinking, I have always been more interested in the people on board. Who were they, where had they come from, why were they going to America, did they live, did they lose anyone in the sinking, how did they survive? Enter on the port bow, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage, by Hugh Brewster.
Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic’s First-Class Passengers and Their World by Hugh Brewster
Much has been written about the sinking of the Titanic and everyone knows the stories, the band playing to the very end, the lack of lifeboats, the freezing water, and so on. In Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic’s First-Class Passengers and Their World, author Hugh Brewster draws on twenty-five years of experience with the Titanic to explore the lives and times of the ship’s first-class passengers. There are the most famous names of the Titanic story, like Molly Brown and J.J. Astor, and some more unfamiliar, like Frank Millet, all illustrating just what a microcosm of Edwardian society was on board.
Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage can be roughly divided into three; first-class passengers boarding at Cherbourg with biographies of passengers either as they appear in the Titanic story, or in relation to a subject of life on board, such as segueing from ladies evening wear to Lucile Lady Duff Gordon’s life. Up until the collision when the focus is turned to the experience of previously mentioned passengers during the sinking; using both survivor accounts and a certain amount of expert conjecture to piece together the last moments of those who didn’t make it to a lifeboat. Then lastly it deals with the aftermath with short epilogues to the passenger’s stories, what they did with their lives after the sinking, when they died.
It is an incredibly detailed book, exploring histories and lives of passengers that even some ardent Titanic enthusiasts may find themselves learning something new. I certainly did, although having a lifelong curiosity of the Titanic I had barely heard of Archie Butt, Francis Millet and W.T Stead, and certainly not in connection to the ship, and I very much appreciate not having to read over the same quartet of Astor, Strauss, Guggenheim, and Ismay. That is something this book has in spades, evidence that there’s more to the Titanic than the glimpsed details in James Cameron’s movie. However, if you are new to the topic, perhaps have only seen the 1997 film, I don’t think any of the information within will be lost on you. Brewster writes in a style that is accessible, unsurprising perhaps considering he has written middle-grade books also on the Titanic, and can easily be dipped in and out of, or read in long sittings.
I recommend it with a warning, however. If you want a step-by-step guide to daily life on the Titanic as a first-class passenger a la The World of Downton Abbey you might want to stick with Julian Fellowes and A Night to Remember, though I would suggest that book if you’re interested in the Titanic regardless. That’s not to say there is no detail about the voyage, only that I found much of it was used to link one paragraph and another, one passenger and another. In some places the wealth of detail can be difficult to parse through. Biographies of highlighted passengers can be a little drawn out and tangent away, describing the lives of a passenger’s siblings, or a murder one was associated with but not a witness to. If I’m honest there were times when I forgot which passenger was connected to the sentence I was reading. To a degree I wonder if that was caused by the book’s structure, it felt as though Brewster (or his editor…) couldn’t decide whether chapters should be divided by the progress of the voyage, or if each chapter should focus on one passenger in particular.
While a part of me was a little frustrated with the digressions, having finished the book I can see how even the most distantly related person or event was tied to the voyage of the Titanic. It gives an impressive insight to the context of the disaster, both historically and at a more general society level. Teddy Roosevelt’s military aide shared the same deck space with a chairman of the White Star Line; Madeleine Astor, a teen bride to one of the richest men in the world, walked down the iconic grand staircase at the same time as women, such as Lucile Lady Duff Gordon and Edith Rosenbaum/Russell, who were using fashion to assert their independence and agency six years before the Women’s Suffrage would make headline news. Yes, perhaps an opportunity was missed to show the glamour of the Gilded Age; how it was concentrated in one ship whose voyage would signal not only the end of the golden age of transatlantic liners but of Gilded Age itself before it would be shattered by World War One. But, I think the title must be kept in mind, Gilded Lives, not Gilded Voyage. If you are interested in the Edwardian world, in the world of the Titanic’s passengers, then do pick up this book.
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* Yes, yes, Titanic is my favourite film, sue me, I’m a dumb romantic, Kate Winslet is pretty, and it was the perfect fusion of the Titanic story and 90s lipstick. And did you know you can see mountains in the background of the famous ‘flying’ scene in the non-remastered edit of the film?
The Curvy Bookcase 