A few days ago, a “for sale” sign appeared at a Charles Village crossroads. The 19th-century childhood home of Lucile Polk Carter, Baltimore’s most celebrated Titanic passenger, is up for sale.
There’s never been a plaque on the gray stone and slate residence at the northwest corner of Saint Paul and 29th streets. But 113 years ago, almost to the date, reporters were banging on her father’s door for word of the fate of this dashing Baltimore debutante when word reached shore of the ship’s fate.
Carter, as one of the wealthy first-class passengers, was safe and had joined a lifeboat with her children, among them, a daughter also named Lucile.
Carter was a resourceful mother. When there was some question about whether her 11-year-old son, William, would be considered eligible for a lifeboat seat, a woman’s hat (obtained with the help of her fellow passenger John J. Astor) disguised him.
(One footnote: The Renault coupe de ville car her husband was bringing back from Europe to America was featured in the storyline of the 1997 James Cameron film, Titanic. The car’s interior is where Jack and Rose found a secluded spot. (In reality, the Carter’s coupe may have been in pieces for easier shipment.)
The Carters were not a deliriously happy couple. The ship’s sinking provided a story to tell the judge at their divorce proceedings.
“When the Titanic struck, my husband came to me and said, ‘Get up and dress yourself and the children.’ I never saw him again until I arrived on the [rescue vessel] Carpathia”] at 8 o’clock the next morning, when I saw him leaning on the rail. All he said was that he had had a jolly good breakfast, and that he thought I wouldn’t make it,” she said in divorce proceedings later reported by The Baltimore Sun.
The Baltimore-bred Titanic historian, Walter Lord, whose “A Night to Remember” rekindled the Titanic story in the 1950s, suggests an alternate sinking-ship scenario. The British Board of Inquiry found that her husband, accompanied by White Star steamship chair Bruce Ismay, left the Titanic a full 15 minutes before Mrs. Carter and her children, who set off in Lifeboat 4. (Her servants perished as part of the Titanic’s tragic loss of 1,517 souls.)
Lucile and Willie Carter perhaps never quite achieved the fame of other Titanic passengers: Molly “Unsinkable” Brown, John Jacob Astor IV, Benjamin Guggenheim and Macy’s department store owner, Isidor Straus and his wife, Ida, who declined to leave his side.
But it’s time that Carter gets her due. She was a tough, determined woman.
Carter supplied the muscle to row her lifeboat the night the Titanic sank. Newspaper accounts cited her strengths as a polo pony rider and six-horse carriage driver as she worked the oars.
Reporters tended to swamp Carter, whether because of the disaster or the summer season at Newport, Rhode Island. A Texas newspaper described her as a “beauty of the pronounced type.” She cut quite a figure while summering at Newport, where gushing society reporters devoured her haute couture.
“In an accordion plaited Eton suit of red and with a red hat, a red parasol, red slippers and silk stockings of the same shade her Dresden china coloring seems even lovelier than when she wears less striking costumes,” one wrote.
Everyone agreed that Carter was a beautiful woman, athletic, tough and determined.
She obtained her divorce after citing her husband’s actions that night. She soon married another Philadelphia Main Line grandee, steel manufacturer, George Brooke. She lived in sprawling chateau “Almondbury” at Villanova, Pennsylvania. The neighboring estate was Ardrossan, which became the setting for the play and film, “The Philadelphia Story”
Her story takes another twist. After her second marriage, she had another child, a daughter, Elizabeth “Betty” Brooke, later Betty Blake, born in 1916. That daughter lived to be 100 and died in 2016.
Carter’s daughter, Betty, was also unbound by convention. A devout Christian Scientist, she neither smoked nor drank. She was sent to the finest finishing schools in the U.S. and France and made an opulent debut at Newport, where she owned a home that clung to the edge of the rocky coast. Named Seafair, it was also known as the Hurricane Hut.
She was also a much-praised collector of modern art. Among her five husbands was Jock McLean, the son of Evalyn Walsh McLean, who owned and wore the Hope Diamond.
“Her mother survived the sinking of the Titanic, yet, Betty’s own challenges were no less epic: She weathered hurricanes, five husbands, and the death of her first son — all the while, her dry sense of humor doggedly intact,” said PaperCity, a Texas magazine in an article published shortly after her passing.
Have a news tip? Contact Jacques Kelly at jacques.kelly@baltsun.com and 410-332-6570.