Character Profile: Harry Elkins Widener

Harry Elkins Widener

Age: 27
Residence: Philadelphia, PA
Occupation: Gentleman
Class: First class
Cabin: C-82
Survived? No


Harry Widener was traveling home to Philadelphia with his parents George and Eleanor Widener after several weeks in London and Paris. The Wideners were one of the wealthiest and most prominent families in America, enjoying the same celebrity afforded to other millionaire families of the time (Astor, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Carnegie, etc.). Harry's father made his fortune as the owner of the Philadelphia Traction Company, which operated every streetcar line in Philadelphia.

The Wideners were building a summer home in Newport, RI, and had traveled to Europe to purchase artwork for the new estate. Harry, an avid collector of rare books, seized the opportunity to purchase several antique volumes for his collection. By age 27, Harry's personal library contained an impressive 3,500 books. He boarded Titanic with an extremely valuable 1598 edition of Bacon's Essais.

Harry always fulfilled his social obligations, attending his mother's charity balls at the family estate, Lynnewood, with his younger brother and sister. However, Harry was generally quiet and bookish, preferring the characters in Shakespeare's plays to the coquettes of Philadelphia's high society.

On the night of the sinking, Harry joined his parents on the boat deck, and the three of them were sent to the promenade to board lifeboat 4. An hour and a half passed while crew members figured out how to open the promenade windows to let passengers through. By the time they opened the windows, only boat 4 and the collapsibles were left.

Harry helped his mother into the boat and bid her goodbye, stepping back to join his father. He was urged by his friend William Carter to try to save himself, but Harry refused, saying, "I think I'll stick to the big ship, Billy, and take a chance." Carter escaped in lifeboat C minutes later.

Harry stayed by his father's side until the end. Both perished, and their bodies were never recovered.

In Harry's memory, his mother funded the construction of the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library at his alma mater, Harvard University. She donated his entire 3,500-volume collection so that, in death, he could enrich the lives of young scholars for generations to come.

Titanic Tidbit: Our Coterie

As I write this story, I find myself constantly wishing I were in some sort of writers' group, a small gathering of peers with whom I can share advice and ideas. The concept isn't new; in fact, there was such a group aboard Titanic, a group that survivor Archibald Gracie affectionately called "Our Coterie."

Our Coterie was composed of seven first-class passengers, all of them writers in one respect or another. After meeting aboard the ship, they gathered every evening of the voyage in one of Titanic's cafés to discuss not only their own work, but various works of literature popular in Europe and America at the time.

The members of Our Coterie were:

• Helen Churchill Candee, 53
• Edward Austin Kent, 58
• Hugh Woolner, 45
• Col. Archibald Gracie IV, 53
  
• Edward Pomeroy Colley, 37
• James Clinch Smith, 56
• Mauritz Björnström-Steffansson, 28

They were an interesting and diverse group, to be sure. Of the seven, Candee and Gracie were the only published authors. Candee was an acclaimed author on interior design, and Gracie on American history. It is said that Gracie was a shameless self-promoter, and relentlessly tried to convince many passengers to read his latest book, The Truth About Chickamauga.

As the only female member of Our Coterie, wealthy divorcée Helen Candee was endlessly doted on by her male companions, and there have long been rumors of Kent and Woolner vying for her affection. After Titanic struck the iceberg, both men rushed to find Helen. Woolner reached her first, and he was escorting Helen up the stairs when they ran into Kent. Fearing for Kent's life, Helen handed him a treasured cameo of her mother, making him promise to return it after they were rescued. Indeed, her cameo was returned to her—it was found tucked safely in Kent's vest pocket when his body was recovered two weeks later.

Colley and Smith also lost their lives in the disaster. Their bodies were never recovered.

Woolner and Björnström-Steffansson were the last people into the last lifeboat, Collapsible D. As it was lowered past the promenade, the two took a flying leap and tumbled head-first into the boat just before it touched the water.

Gracie spent hours perched atop the overturned Collapsible B with about 30 other men. He barely survived, nearly succumbing to hypothermia during the night. He immediately went to work writing a book about his survival after the sinking, and was in the process of proofing the manuscript when he died in December 1912, just eight months after the disaster. He had never recovered from the trauma of that night. His final book, Titanic: A Survivor's Story, is still in print today.

Character Profile: Elsie Edith Bowerman

Elsie Edith Bowerman

Age: 22
Residence: Hastings, East Sussex, England
Occupation: Suffragette
Class: First class
Cabin: E-33
Survived? Yes
Lifeboat: 6

Elsie Bowerman and her mother Edith Bowerman Chibnall boarded Titanic bound for America to visit a friend, Mr. T. Guthrie of Cleveland, Ohio, at Guthrie's invitation. The two planned to travel on to Canada and eventually Alaska. This was not unusual for the two ladies, who often traveled long distances and were accustomed to a cosmopolitan lifestyle. The two ladies occupied first-class cabin E-33.

At a time when many women attended university for the sole purpose of finding a husband, Elsie took her studies very seriously. She enrolled at Girton College, Cambridge, in 1908, where she studied medieval and modern languages. While in college, Elsie devoted much of her time to athletics, especially field hockey. She was also a talented pianist and was elected class representative in her first year of school.

Elsie's father died when she was only five years old, and, never seeking the company of men, Elsie lived a life free of male influence. Fiercely independent, Elsie joined her mother in 1909 as an active member of the the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), the leading militant organization campaigning for women's suffrage in the UK. She quickly became the organizer of the Hastings branch of the WSPU, promoting debates and selling copies of Votes for Women.

Though Elsie inherited her father's fortune at age 21, she and her mother preferred to live modestly, saving money wherever they could. The first-class ticket the two purchased in 1912 was a rare indulgence indeed.

Elsie was woken by a steward on the night of April 14, 1912, and she and her mother hastily dressed and made for the boat deck. Both ladies were saved in lifeboat 6, the first boat launched from Titanic's port side.

The sinking did not interfere with Elsie's travel plans, and she continued on to Ohio, British Columbia, the Klondyke, and Alaska.

Welcome!

Welcome to The Life We Knew, a story near to my heart. The story, which as of this writing is about 25 percent complete, follows the journey of prominent aristocrat William Edmond Farrister from Southampton, England to New York on the ill-fated RMS Titanic in April 1912. Son of paper industry giant James Farrister, young William is the commercial managing director of the Pierce-Arrow Motor Car Company in Buffalo, NY.

Farrister faces a life-altering decision. Should he give up his controlling stake in his father's 33-million-dollar company and commit to his career in an infantile and unpredictable industry? Or should he hold on to the sinecure that ensures him a place in the upper echelons of American society? The answers lie with several of Titanic's passengers and a pending business arrangement of unprecedented magnitude.

The Life We Knew closely follows the journey of more than a dozen real-life passengers of the RMS Titanic—a suffragette, a railroad president, a wealthy widow, a streetcar magnate, an architect, and several others. While they might not all have known each other in reality, they are brought together in a story that shows them for who they really were.

Farrister is, in fact, the only fictional character in the entire story. During the lengthy process of writing this novel, I have made every effort to preserve historical accuracy. People's careers, interests, even personalities are written true to life. They live as they truly lived and die as they truly died. Accuracy is, above all else, the goal of this novel.

"But Patrick," you may be asking, "The Titanic genre has been done to death, hasn't it?" Indeed it has. As a longtime Titanic buff, I've been disappointed with how it has been portrayed in film and literature. The stories, while often compelling, are rife with inaccuracy. Embellishments are made, liberties are taken, and what we are often left with is a fantasy involving fictional characters in ludicrous situations. I think it's time that we have a Titanic story that is, at the very least, believable. Thats why I'm writing The Life We Knew. My hope is that it will teach people something about the Gilded Age and the people who truly experienced it.

I hope this blog will be a resource for Titanic buffs, a place to learn about history, and a comfort to writers who face the same challenges I do. In addition to providing updates on the story and the writing process, I plan to update this blog twice a week: once to post a new character profile, and once to post an interesting Titanic tidbit.

I appreciate your feedback, and once again, welcome!