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Message: [QUOTE="Martin Williams, post: 265768, member: 141861"] Yes but...'formal' is only a relative term, isn't it? In my earlier post, I took Thomas and Edith Pears as examples to illustrate my point that the social dynamic in first-class was actually much more varied and complex than most people imagine (or as James Cameron showed in that maddeningly simplistic film of his!) There was almost as great a difference between Colonel Astor and Thomas Pears as there was between Thomas Pears and the humblest steerage passenger. Fifth Avenue and Newport are a long, long way from Isleworth! And I very much doubt that Edith bought her clothes on the rue de la Paix. I can't help but wonder how all these various individuals related to each other during the voyage. Maybe I'm much more conscious of the nuances of class and background than the passengers were themselves. But, from everything I've read about life in 1912, I bet I'm not. So I wouldn't necessarily say that things in first-class were informal. The dressing for dinner, the complicated etiquette, the observation of certain customs - this is what makes the idea of a 'Gilded Age' so appealing from the perspective of the casual, 'anything goes' twenty-first century. Yet if any of us on this board were asked to live under the same conditions as our great-grandparents (with all the moral, social, technological, even sartorial, restrictions that would entail) most of us wouldn't last a day. On another thread, we've been busy speculating on the exact nature of the relationship between Benjamin Guggenheim and Leontine Aubart. On the basis that they were NOT married, but were travelling together - and setting the individuals in the context of the period - we've put together a scenario in which she is a 'kept woman' and possibly even a high-class prostitute. Yet, today, this arrangement wouldn't raise so much as an eyebrow. Oh, 1912 was formal alright! [/QUOTE]

Verification: In which year did the Titanic sail?