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ALLISTAIR NEWTON>> Hello, I'm Allistair Newton and I'm speaking today with author Hugh Brewster,
author of the new book R.M.S Titanic: Gilded Lives on a Fatal Voyage. Now, there have been
a million permutations of the history of the Titanic, but there actually is this very fascinating
*** historical moment going on there too, and that's sort of at the centre of your book.
Could you talk a little bit about that?
HUGH BREWSTER>> Yes, I have a chapter called *** a lot of people, and my two protagonists
Frank Millet and Archie Butt, I believe were both gay. We have very strong evidence that
Frank was gay from some very ***-*** love letters he wrote as a young man, and Archie
from his letters too. And then I speculate about some of the other gay lives we have
on board, some of which I have evidence for and some of which were speculated. But clearly
there are just as many *** people a century ago as there are today.
ALLISTAIR NEWTON>> So talk to me a little bit about Frank Millet. He sort of becomes
a little bit of a protagonist. You found this very fascinating letter at the Smithsonian,
can you talk a little bit about that?
HUGH BREWSTER>> Frank Millet to me exemplifies the gilded edge, in fact I joke that he's
the Forest Gump of the gilded edge because where ever things were going on, Frank Millet
was there. He was a drummer boy in the civil war after which the gilded edge began. He
was an artist in Paris in Momart with all the ex-pat artist set. He was the man who
made the white city white for the 1893 Chicago worlds fair. Yet he also steps outside the
boundaries. In the archives I discovered these very unabashedly ***-*** love letters
that he'd sent as a young artist to a San Francisco poet. And the very last letter he
sent from the Titanic to his good friend Alfred Parsons, an artist and garden designer and
a life long confirmed bachelor talks about the *** lot of people onboard. Now he probably
doesn't mean *** in the modern sense but he goes on to say "there does appear to be
a whole lot of 'our' people onboard in inverted comas. So I speculate ok so now if he did
mean "our people" and it's a little early for any sort of gay identity I do realize,
but if he did mean our people, who would they be? And then I talk about some of the other
people on board who in all probability were gay people.
ALLISTAIR NEWTON>> So talk to me about Archie then. Who was Archie?
HUGH BREWSTER>> Archie is one of the most fascinating characters. He was a 47 year-old
dandified bachelor. He changed his outfits at least seven times a day at the white house.
He was devoted to the memory of his mother and he lived in a Washington town house that
he shared with some other bachelors and some Filipino house boys surrounded by momentos
of his mothers. And he wrote letters, almost daily. First to his mother and then, after
she died, to his sister in law describing in detail the life of the white house and
the life of social Washington. And to me these letters reveal a ragtime era gay man hiding
in plain sight. Archie could remember, from memory, a full selection of first lady Edith
Roosevelt's evening gowns including such details as black velvet with pasa monte re down the
front. Show me a straight male who can do that. He also talks about the pulchritude
of the male element and that someone was as handsome as a greek athlete. And one letter
was devoted entirely to the beauty of a young sailor from the presidential yacht, as seen
in his bathing costume. I've never met a straight man who has all those attributes in one person.
ALLISTAIR NEWTON>> And in terms of 'our people', there were some Canadians that were among
'our people'. These were the three musketeers. Can you tell us about them?
HUGH BREWSTER>> The three musketeers were three middle aged bachelors, very close friends.
There was reportedly a fourth musketeer, possibly a partner of Hugh Ross's. Again, it's reading
between the lines but it took considerable courage in 1912 to remain a bachelor when
marriage represented respectability and manhood. And so most gay men, like Frank Millet, married.
But the three musketeers never did and they used to travel together every winter, and
this year they had taken a trip down the Nile where Hugo Ross had come down with dysentery,
and so he was sick in his cabin for most of the voyage, but the other two were often spotted
in the smoking room. All three of them died and only Thompson Beady's body was recovered.
ALLISTAIR NEWTON>> And there is a fascinating track in the book relating to Oscar Wilde
and W.T. Stead. Who was W.T. Stead?
HUGH BREWSTER>> Well W.T. Stead, who was on the Titanic, was the most famous journalist
of his day. He was more famous than Bob Woodward or anyone you can name today. He was the pioneer
of investigative journalism. And on the Titanic as Frank Millet is writing his last letter
about the *** lot of people onboard, W.T. Stead was writing what would be his last letter
onboard because he would die on the Titanic as well. And these letters were to be dropped
in Queen's Town, Ireland when the Titanic anchored off shore there on its second day.
And in one of his last letters, Stead calls the Titanic a monstrous floating Babylon.
Now Babylon was a biblical reference that everyone at the time understood which meant
decadent and sinful and so on. And it also invokes Stead's most famous journalistic crusade
which was known as the maiden tribute of modern Babylon: An investigation of underage prostitution
in London in support of the criminal law amendment act of 1885. And because of Stead's sensational
articles, which absolutely caused a sensation, they caused riots in the streets as people
tried to get them. They had never read such frank *** content in print before. At any
rate, that spurred a law in parliament informally known as Stead's law. And at the last moment
during the debate, someone also inserted a clause that made relations between men illegal,
thus criminalizing homosexuality in Britain until 1957. So Stead never intended this but
he was indirectly the man who put Oscar Wilde in prison. 10 years after Stead's law was
passed, Oscar Wilde was convicted under this law and sent to prison for the two years of
hard labour that the law required and of course lead to his early death.
ALLISTAIR NEWTON>> Well thank you so much, Hugh Brewster for speaking to me. The book
is RMS Titanic: Gilded Lives on a Fatal Voyage available now.
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