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in Philadelphia society. The short and stocky fifty-eight-year-old widow was happiest hunting big game and had, for a time, owned her own steam yacht, the Eleanor , which was large enough to take her to Africa for yearly safaris. Her son, thirty-six-year-old Thomas, who had been living in a hunting lodge in Hungary, was returning home with her for medical treatment. Charlotte may have thought that relaxing in seclusion on their private promenade deck would be good for her son’s health, but Thomas would instead use it as a place to host floating poker games.

     
    Charlotte Cardeza and her son, Thomas, on board her yacht, the Eleanor (photo credit 1.82)
    Although Charlotte Cardeza seems another likely candidate for Frank Millet’s “obnoxious, ostentatious” category, she was not one of those women he observed carrying tiny dogs, despite Violet Jessop’s portrayal of “Mrs. Klapton” toting a Pekingese. But Myra Harper, the wife of Henry Sleeper Harper of the New York publishing family, did carry a Pekingese, topically named Sun Yat-sen, for the new president of China. Another lapdog called Frou Frou was carried by newlywed Helen Bishop, aged nineteen, who was returning to Dowagiac, Michigan, after a four-month honeymoon trip with her husband, Dickinson Bishop, who was twenty-five. And a Pomeranian belonging to Elizabeth Rothschild, and her husband, Martin, a New York clothing manufacturer, could also have caught Frank Millet’s eye as he waited on the tender.
    Though Millet admired the Titanic ’s spacious staterooms, the small inner cabin that he had booked down on E deck was not one of them. Frank was a frugal Yankee who, as a rule, did not like to spend much money on shipboard accommodations. Yet with empty first-class staterooms available, a number of passengers managed to trade up to better rooms and Frank may have been among them. Norris Williams and his father were quite content with their two-berth cabin and found it to be larger than they had expected. Norris immediately began describing it in a quickly jotted letter to his mother that he sent back on the tender to Cherbourg. “Of course there is room after room—smoking-reading-lounge-palm room,” he noted, “you can imagine that there are many other rooms but as we have only been on board about 10 minutes … we have not been able to see everything.”
    Edith Rosenbaum was impressed by her luxurious stateroom on A deck and pleased that she could store some luggage in an empty cabin opposite. On her way down to dinner she couldn’t help being impressed by the size and luxury of the Titanic ’s public rooms that to her seemed larger than those in most Parisian grand hotels. Yet in a letter sent to her secretary the next morning, she complained, “It is a monster, and I can’t say I like it, as I feel as though I were in a big hotel, instead of on a cozy ship.” In signing off, she wrote, “I cannot get over my feeling of depression and premonition of trouble. How I wish it were over!”
    Margaret Brown was still feeling chilled from her long wait on the tender and decided to forgo a lavish dinner in the dining saloon for the warmth of her cabin’s electric heater and the cozy coverlet on her brass bed. Many of the Southampton-boarded passengers had already been at table in the dining saloon when the Cherbourg tenders arrived, as photographer Francis Browne recalled:
As we sat down to dinner—we were eight at our table—we could see the newly arrived passengers passing in the lobby [reception room] outside and hear the busy hum of work as the luggage and mails were brought on board. But soon it all quietened down and after a time someone remarked, “I wonder have we started yet.” We all stopped for a moment and listened, but noticing no vibration or noise the answer came, “No we can’t have started yet.” But the waiting steward leant over and said, “We have been outside the breakwater for more than ten minutes, Sir.” So gentle was