Authors: Greg King
Keeping proper time while traveling aboard
Lusitania
demanded some work. Each afternoon, as she steamed ever closer to her destination,
Lusitania
’s clocks were gradually advanced to accord with Greenwich Mean Time. By the evening of a beautiful and sunny Wednesday, May 5, the ship had completed two thirds of its journey.
(
1
)
“Travelers’ watches,” advised a guidebook, “should be set accordingly, as the hours of meals are dependent entirely upon these clocks.”
(
2
)
In the hours following tea, many First Class passengers retreated to the comfort of their staterooms, both to relax and to prepare for the evening. Gentlemen kept appointments with the ship’s barbers, Lott Gadd and Reg Nice, who presided over what had been the first installation of its kind on an ocean liner, a white-walled shop at the end of the Promenade Deck, complete with a spinning chair atop a black and white tiled floor.
(
3
)
Here they offered shaves, haircuts, and other grooming services, generally from early morning until seven at night. Although technically members of the crew, the barbers were considered private contractors, and all accounts were to be settled with them when service was rendered rather than placed on a bill.
(
4
)
Despite some changes wrought by the Great War, dinners for
Lusitania
’s First Class passengers were still largely formal, ritualized affairs that demanded sartorial splendor. “I liked the idea of dressing for dinner,” recalled
Mauretania
passenger Theodore Dreiser, “and seeing everything quite stately and formal.”
(
5
)
Steamer trunks and wardrobes revealed a bounty carefully wrapped in tissue paper. Valets laid out trousers, shirts, white waistcoats, starched collars and cuffs, and dinner jackets; only waiters wore tailcoats aboard ship. Ladies’ maids smoothed dresses that only awaited shimmering diamond brooches, necklaces, bandeaus, or feathery aigrettes to complete the impressive display. Emily Post warned travelers against overdressing on a liner. “People of position,” she wrote, “never put on formal evening dress on a steamer.” For a lady to wear a ball gown to dinner, she wrote, was a sure sign that she had “no other place” to show off her “finery.”
(
6
)
Extended breakfasts, luncheons, and dinners also offered a useful way of filling up time for many passengers, and were often the highlights of days at sea.
(
7
)
“The Cunard Company,” declared a promotional guide, “has always been famous for its high class cuisine.” To produce the necessary three thousand meals a day took a staff of dozens. Etienne Pierre Seurre served as
Lusitania’
s French chef, assisted by additional cooks, bakers, butchers, a roasting cook, vegetable cooks, a soup cook, a confectioner, and a dozen other members of the crew assigned to the kitchens. First and Second Class shared one galley, while Third Class had its own kitchen. The First and Second Class Galley eclipsed “anything afloat,” a publication insisted, with “every modern device for the preparation of food under the best conditions.” Stretching nearly 130 feet and spanning the width of the ship, the facilities included pantries; a still room; a bakery; a pastry kitchen; a confectionary kitchen; a vegetable preparation room; a fruit room; and immense walk-in refrigeration rooms. The main range was over seventy feet long; fourteen ovens, roasting spits, and steam closets offered an array of working space.
(
8
)
These arrangements, wrote a contemporary, “are not equaled by many hotels ashore.”
(
9
)
Breakfasts tended to be informal, though the menu itself offered a rich variety of choices designed to appeal to both British and European travelers as well as passengers from America: fresh fruits, juices, cocoa, and tea or coffee, followed by cereals, oatmeal, smoked kippers, fried turbot, calf’s liver, roasted lamb, baked apples, eggs cooked to order, bacon, pancakes with maple or golden syrup, and pastries, scones, marmalades, and jams. Luncheon was also generally informal: although one could order a variety of hot soups, ham, spring chicken, roast beef, salads, and vegetables from the menu, a cold buffet might offer roast game, turkey, figs, cheeses, bread, and pastries.
(
10
)
Dinners, though, were intricate affairs, surrounded by all of the pomp that
Lusitania
could muster. As seven o’clock approached, the corridors and public rooms were awash with splendidly attired ladies and gentlemen slowly drifting toward the Dining Saloon. Dreiser especially remembered “the bugler who bugled for dinner. That was a most musical sound he made, trilling in the various quarters gaily, as much as to say, ‘This is a very joyous event, ladies and gentlemen; we are all happy; come, come, it is a delightful feast!’ It was like something out of an old medieval court or a play.”
(
11
)
Entering
Lusitania
’s Dining Saloon, after the sedate Georgian splendors of the Lounge, Smoking Room, and Reading and Writing Room, was to abandon the illusion of the English country house in favor of the glories of Versailles. The Dining Saloon was the grandest of
Lusitania
’s public rooms, and one of the finest spaces on any liner, measuring nearly ninety feet square, spanning the width of the ship, and rising over C and D Decks between the third and fourth funnels. Cunard prided itself on the room’s height: White Star’s
Olympic
and
Titanic
might have been larger, but their squat dining rooms seemed oppressive. “Low ceilings,” an official for the rival French Line once sniffed, “don’t aid the appetite.”
(
12
)
The Dining Saloon evoked the period of Louis XVI, with mahogany-paneled walls enameled white, set with mirrors, carved and gilded festoons, and pilasters with gilded Corinthian capitals and bases. A seventeen-foot-long mahogany sideboard with ormolu pulls stretched along one side of the room. At the center of the lower deck, carved Corinthian columns supported a wide, circular well open to the deck above. Over this stretched a twenty-nine-by-twenty-three-foot elliptical dome rimmed in gold, rising to a height of nearly thirty feet and divided into panels covered in frescoed cherubs depicting the
Four Seasons,
in the style of François Boucher. The lower level could seat 323 diners, with another 147 above; being smaller, the upper level was considered to be the more exclusive space in which to dine. Large windows on the port and starboard walls of both decks flooded the room with light. The result was an airy space, neoclassical in feel; only the crimson brocade chairs, bolted to the rose-colored floral Brussels carpet to steady them in rough seas, shattered the illusion that this was not an ocean liner but a fine hotel.
(
13
)
At night, the Dining Saloon glowed with soft, diffuse light from gilded sconces on the walls, electric bulbs hidden behind glass screens drawn across the portholes to give the illusion of sunlight, and silk-shaded gilt bronze lamps that stood on tables.
(
14
)
Moving past ranks of potted palms, passengers found the white-damask-covered tables set with an array of crystal and silver: a delicate Arts and Crafts–inspired floral design in soft blues and reds edged the white Wedgwood china plates, bowls, cups, and saucers.
(
15
)
Roses and carnations offered bursts of color. It was still the era of the grand dinner, and anyone who could not distinguish between a fish fork, an oyster fork, and a salad fork was doomed to social censure. Creamy damask napkins stood in elaborate folds, next to embossed menu cards edged in gilt, with the Cunard logo and the ship’s name against sinuous and colorful designs.
(
16
)
Seating arrangements led to minor wars. A few scheming passengers, hoping to mix with aristocrats, celebrities, and millionaires, casually forced themselves on the unsuspecting, offering a place at their table with promises that it was the best situated or home to the most entertaining conversation. With a single name of note thus drawn into his orbit, the Arriviste would use his cornered star as a walking advertisement to others, gradually gathering a circle of prominent acquaintances “whom he could not possibly have gotten together without just such a maneuver,” as Emily Post warned travelers. “The question of what he gets out of it is puzzling, since with each hour the really well-bred people dislike him more and more intensely, and at the end of a day or so, his table’s company are all eating on deck to avoid him.”
(
17
)
Although the notoriously reclusive Captain Turner rarely presided, social battles still waged over seating at his exclusive table. It was often up to the chief steward to make these assignments; he would scan the passenger list and select the worthiest and most notable travelers for this honor. Hinting to the chief steward that you would “consider” dining at the Captain’s Table was a sure sign of the Arriviste.
(
18
)
Other passengers were advised to request specific seating assignments on boarding to ensure prominent tables.
(
19
)
Being noticed was important to Rita Jolivet: she made sure that she had a table near the main entrance, where everyone who entered the Dining Saloon could not help but spot her.
(
20
)
Passengers were not above bribing stewards for better seats. Always on the lookout for any irritation, Oliver Bernard found himself the apparent victim of one such social climber. Armed with his table number, he entered the Dining Saloon and went to take up his assigned seat only to find that an “abominably supercilious” steward had changed the arrangement “without warning or explanation for the benefit, it so appeared, of a more important passenger.” Infuriated by this “social discrimination,” Bernard cornered his steward and demanded, “Will you condescend to inform me why the genius of marine engineers, shipbuilding, and financiers who have built this ship must be depreciated because you think some passengers are entitled to more attention than others?”
(
21
)
Then there was the problem of socializing with one’s tablemates: thrown together by circumstance, many struggled to find diverting conversation that avoided politics or points of view. Emily Post warned travelers to adjust their speech accordingly. “People always speak to those next to them. None but the rudest snobs would sit through meal after meal without ever addressing a word to their table companions.”
(
22
)
On this voyage, passengers paired off and united, forming tables with friends, traveling companions, or likely new acquaintances. Charles Lauriat had “a jolly time” with his neighbor, Boston genealogist Lothrop Withington, and made plans to see him in London, without ever suspecting that his delightful companion was a bigamist.
(
23
)
Wealthy passengers from Montreal dominated one table: Lady Allan and her two daughters, along with Frances Stephens, Dorothy Braithwaite, Robert Holt, and Frederick Orr-Lewis. The Montreal table was a little more festive than usual that evening: on May 5, Dorothy celebrated her twenty-fifth birthday aboard
Lusitania
. James Houghton arranged to sit at the table of his old college friend Richard Freeman. “We had a fine time at meals,” he recalled; although “the conversation was mostly on mining topics, I enjoyed it immensely and felt that I was acquiring a great deal of information on that subject.”
(
24
)
Throughout the meal Madeira, sherry, Chablis, Burgundy, and champagnes came in waves, followed by liqueurs and port. The culinary variety offered by a First Class dinner was staggering. Although simpler than the lavish twelve-course meals of the period served ashore, dinner generally followed the familiar pattern. The meal might begin with caviar, crab, oysters, or lobster mousse served on chilled plates, followed by a soup, either consommé or cream-based. Broiled salmon, turbot, or poached sole in cream sauce might come next. The principal meat course, or
relevé,
followed. This was generally some form of beef, accompanied by entrées of asparagus in hollandaise, sweetbreads, foie gras, browned potatoes, or vegetables in rich sauces. Roasted seasonal game included partridge, grouse, quail, pheasant, and duck, usually accompanied by a salad. After a selection of cheeses, passengers could choose from an array of cakes, puddings, tortes, petit fours, and ice cream.
(
25
)
“A band played in this gallery during meals,” a former passenger noted, “and the whole scene seemed more that of a gay restaurant than a ship at sea.”
(
26
)
People chatted, made plans, and observed their fellow diners. George Kessler was particularly taken by a lively, fair-haired “charming little boy” who sat with his mother at an adjacent table. “This, of course, is not generally permitted,” he noted.
(
27
)
It was true: Cunard liked to keep young children out of the saloon, providing them with their own dining room. Yet on this voyage, the boy’s engaging mother, Trixie Witherbee, had somehow convinced a Dining Saloon steward to bend the rules in favor of nearly four-year-old Alfred Jr.
(
28
)