Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World by Hugh Brewster Read Free Book Online

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