Helen Churchill Candee: Titanic Survivor
Helen Churchill Candee (October 5, 1858 – August 23, 1949) was an American author, journalist, interior decorator, feminist, and geographer. Today, she is best known as a passenger on the first and only voyage of the RMS Titanic in 1912 -- and lived to write “Sealed Orders” about her experience in rowing Life Boat 6 with a woman who became known as “The Unsinkable Molly Brown. Candee also is known for her later work as a travel writer and explorer of southeast Asia. Helen was born Helen
Churchill Hungerford, the daughter of New York City merchant Henry and Mary Elizabeth (Hungerford) Churchill. She spent most of her childhood between Connecticut and New York, where her family’s affluence underwrote a quality education at several of the most fashionable schools for girls.
Because of her parents’ posh lifestyle and their elite social circle, Helen was introduced and married Edward Candee, a successful New York City businessman from a family well-settled in the social elite in 1880. Despite Helen’s posh schooling and the couple’s affluent lifestyle of travel and entertainment, soon after the births of the couple’s two children -- Edith and Harold -- their marriage was doomed to fail. It became apparent Helen’s husband had become an insatiable alcoholic who, in his rages, transformed into a physically and mentally abusive monster for everyone in the house.
Once Edward Candee abandoned the family, Helen Candee supported herself and children as a writer for popular magazines such as Scribner's and The Ladies' Home Journal. Initially, her articles focused on subjects most familiar to her—genteel etiquette and household management—but soon branched into other topics, such as child care, education, and women's rights.
Receiving no financial support from her errant husband, this determined young woman packed bags for herself and her children and took a train to Guthrie, a small town in Oklahoma’s Indian Territory. Welcomed by the Lilly family, Helen waited to establish her 90-day residency before filing for divorce. In that day, 90 days would expedite the long divorce process in either Oklahoma or Reno, Nevada. Both of these refuges became “vacation” home to hundreds of newcomers seeking so-called “quickie” divorces each year.
In the meantime, Helen, a resolute feminist, published her first best-seller, How Women May Earn a Living (1900) before collecting information and completing her second book, published in 1901, titled, An Oklahoma Romance, a book promoting the possibilities of living in Oklahoma’s Indian Territory.
The several years she resided in Oklahoma, her magazine articles and book about that region helped catapult her to national prominence as a journalist.
Candee’s feminist beliefs, was evidenced by her best-selling first book, How Women May Earn a Living (1900). Her second book, An Oklahoma Romance (1901), was a novel that promoted the possibilities of settlement in Oklahoma Territory.
Now a established literary figure, Candee -- her divorce finalized -- moved to Washington, D.C., at the turn of the century, where she became one of the first professional interior decorators. Candee's book, Decorative Styles and Periods (1906), embodied her principles of design: careful historical research and absolute authenticity.
While in Washington, Candee served on many civic boards and involving herself in Democratic politics. Candee also was a trustee for the Corcoran Gallery of Art, a member of both the Archeological Society and the American Federation of Arts, and a board member of the Washington chapter of the National Woman Suffrage Association. In 1925, Candee was among the nine founding members of the Society of Woman Geographers. As late as 1935-36, when she was almost 80, Candee was still traveling abroad, writing articles for National Geographic magazine.
She wrote eight books –– four were on the decorative arts, two were travelogues, one was instructional, and one was a novel. Candee's biggest seller was The Tapestry Book (1912), which went into many editions.
Candee was traveling in Europe in the spring of 1912, completing research for The Tapestry Book, when she received a telegram from her daughter, Edith, advising that Candee's son, Harold ("Harry"), had been injured in an accident. [6] From Paris, Candee hurriedly booked passage home on the maiden voyage of the new luxury ocean liner, the RMS Titanic.
Since personal items were not allowed aboard the lifeboats, Candee gave two precious items, an ivory cameo miniature of her mother and a small flask of brandy, to a male friend, New York architect Edward Austin Kent, who had pockets. These were miraculously retrieved from his floating remains and, in 2006, sold at auction for around $80,000 for the locket and $40,000 for the flask.
Candee boarded lifeboat 6 but fell and fractured her ankle. This injury required her to walk with a cane for almost a year, but by March 1913, she was able to join other feminist equestriennes in the "Votes for Women" parade down Pennsylvania Avenue (Washington, D.C.), riding her horse at the head of the procession
She gave a short interview about her experiences to the Washington Herald and wrote a detailed, serialized article on the disaster for Collier's Weekly. This cover story, “Sealed Orders,” was one of the first in-depth eyewitness accounts of the Titanic.
During World War I, Candee worked as a nurse in Rome and Milan under the auspices of the Italian Red Cross, which decorated her for her service. One of her patients in Milan was Ernest Hemingway.
After the war, she traveled to Japan, China, Indonesia, and Cambodia, and her adventures became the basis for two of her most celebrated books: Angkor the Magnificent (1924) and New Journeys in Old Asia (1927). Candee was honored by the French government and the King of Cambodia for these works; she was also commanded to give a reading of Angkor to King George V and Queen Mary at Buckingham Palace.
In 1949, at age 90, Candee died at her summer cottage at York Harbor, Maine. A ceremony was held at her daughter’s home. Her remains were cremated and buried in First Parish Cemetery.