Titanic Memorial: A Tribute to "Friendship"

Just a few yards from the White House south lawn sits a little-known monument related to the ill-fated passenger ship Titanic, which struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage on April 15, 1912. Described as a “tribute to friendship,” this fountain along E St. honors Francis Davis Millet and Archibald Butt, two men who went down with the vessel, selflessly assisting women and children as the ship sank. Millet was 60, and Butt 46 at the time of the tragedy.

The two “devoted friends” shared a house in DC, even though Millet had married (his wife lived elsewhere). Butt described Millet as “my artist friend who lives with me.” Their only recorded spat was over the wallpaper Millet had chosen for their home (too many red and pink roses for Butt’s taste). Their live-in Filipino houseboys served presidents, cabinet members, ambassadors and Supreme Court justices during lavish parties and dinners the male hosts were famous for. President Taft wept openly when he learned that Butt had perished in the Titanic tragedy, yet the two well-connected men have been forgotten with the passage of time.

The joint monument is a stone fountain designed by the sculptor Daniel Chester French and architect Thomas Hastings. Among other of French's works here in Washington are the seated statue of Lincoln inside the Lincoln memorial and the Dupont Circle Fountain. Hastings was architect of the elegant amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery, but his best known building is the New York Public Library. At any rate, the design team boasted impeccable pedigrees.

This memorial was paid for by funds raised privately by friends of the two men, both of whom were widely known in Washington's cultural, social, and political circles. Frank Millet (above), a skilled painter, was a member of the Fine Arts Commission who also directed the American Academy in Rome, Italy. Major Butt had been a military aide to both President Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. The fountain today sits not far from where Major Butt's White House office was located.

The two men had a tenant in their Washington home, a young diplomat named Archie Clark Kerr, who worked at the British Embassy. He returned to Washington 35 years later as Lord Inverchapel, the British Ambassador. Kerr caused quite a stir among diplomatic circles by suddenly disappearing to Eagle Grove, Iowa, to stay with a strapping farm boy Kerr had come upon while the lad was waiting for a bus on the streets of Washington. So there you have it.

Frank Millet had a studio in Rome in the early 1870s, and one in Venice a few years later. While in Venice Millet lived with Charles Warren Stoddard, a well-known American travel journalist and poet who had a sexual interest in men. Historian Jonathan Ned Katz published letters from Millet to Stoddard that confirm they lived a bohemian life together in a romantic and intimate relationship. But the most important relationship of Millet’s life was not with Stoddard or even his wife – it was with Archibald Butt.

Fast forward to the early spring of 1912. Millet and Butt (left) together boarded the steamship Berlin for a six-week trip to Europe. To say that they were a conspicuous pair is understatement. Butt wore bright, copper-colored trousers with a Norfolk jacket, fastened by big ball-shaped buttons of red porcelain, a lavender tie, a tall collar, broad-brimmed hat, patent leather shoes with white tops, a bunch of lilies in his buttonhole and a handkerchief tucked into his sleeve. The two men returned home to America together, too, in first class cabins aboard the “unsinkable” Whitestar liner RMS Titanic. On the night of April 14, the ship struck an iceberg and sank the next morning with Butt and Millet among the 1,517 victims of the disaster.

Although the intimate relationship between Millet and Butt was never mentioned publicly, it was common knowledge among Washington insiders, and the fact that their friends erected a joint monument to their memory is a remarkable and poignant tribute, considering the mores of the day.

The 8-foot tall marble fountain displays bas-reliefs of both men. On one side of the shaft placed atop the fountain is a military figure with sword and shield representing Major Butt, and an artist with palette and brush represents Millet. Besides being a memorial, the fountain was designed to double as a water fountain for the horses ridden by U.S. Park Police while on patrol.

Inscription carved around the upper rim of the fountain:

IN MEMORY OF FRANCIS DAVIS MILLET · 1846 - 1912 ·
AND ARCHIBALD WILLINGHAM BUTT · 1865 - 1912 ·
THIS MONUMENT HAS BEEN ERECTED BY THEIR FRIENDS WITH THE SANCTION OF CONGRESS

Richard Chamberlain

Note: this is a much updated version of my post from 2013.

UPDATE: Richard Chamberlain died at age 90 in Hawaii on March 29, 2025, from complications of a stroke.

Deeply closeted for most of his life, actor Richard Chamberlain (1934-2025) was outed by the French women’s magazine Nous Deux (We Two) in December 1989, and the American tabloids took up the story, plastering the news on their front pages. But Chamberlain steadfastly denied his homosexuality. It wasn’t until 2003, at the age of 69, that he publicly acknowledged the truth in his memoir, Shattered Love. The press generated by the book gave Chamberlain a boost in popularity, and he was greatly relieved to find his fans supportive and positive.

Chamberlain, born in Los Angeles in 1934, was a star of television, films, stage and (like Tab Hunter) pop music. An unknown Richard Chamberlain was inducted into the Army in 1956, becoming a sergeant in Korea. Three years after his military service his name was already a household word.

Those of a certain age might remember a TV show called Dr. Kildare (1961-66; clip at end of post), which made Chamberlain an overnight sensation. He played a young intern who wrangled with the medical and personal problems of his patients. He also recorded the song, "Three Stars Will Shine Tonight" (clip at end of post), with the music from the show's familiar opening theme.

After the hit TV series ended, he went to England to pursue a successful stage career. In 1969 Chamberlain performed the title role of Hamlet with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, becoming the first American to play the role there since John Barrymore in 1929. He earned excellent reviews and reprised the role the following year for television, for The Hallmark Hall of Fame.

Chamberlain had a significant live-in affair with a younger TV actor, Wesley Eure (pronounced “your”), who went on to appear on the NBC soap opera Days of Our Lives for almost ten years. Eure was fired from the show when his homosexuality became known to his employer, even though Earl Greenburg, head of NBC Daytime, was himself a gay man. In those days being outed as gay meant no work as an actor.

Wesley Eure recently spoke of the social atmosphere at the time he was dating Chamberlain. “We'd go to parties at private homes, because we couldn't go anywhere in public. I remember being told about set designer Jacques Mapes (Singin in the Rain) and movie producer Ross Hunter. They were at a big private party in pre-1950s Hollywood. One was Tyrone Powers' lover, and the other was Errol Flynn's lover, and they were the two handsomest boys in town on the arms of important closeted celebrities.” Ross recounted to Wesley, "I remember I was at the top of the stairs, and there was Jacques. Our eyes met, and we left the party, dumped our famous boyfriends, and we've been together ever since." Wesley added, “There was this whole subculture, a hidden culture of gay socializing. I used to go to those parties, and the most famous people you can imagine were there. If the public had any idea...”

Soon after Chamberlain ended his relationship with Eure, he took up with handsome actor-writer-producer Martin Rabbett (b. 1953), who became his partner for almost 40 years. Chamberlain had legally adopted Rabbett to protect his assets. In the spring of 2010 Chamberlain moved from Maui to Los Angeles because of work possibilities, leaving Rabbett behind at their luxury home in Hawaii (above, listed for sale in mid-2010 for $19 million). Later that year, responding to gossip about a split, Chamberlain said in an interview with Advocate, “Well, we haven’t really split. In other words, we’re still very, very close. The essence of our relationship has remained the same; we just don’t happen to be living together. I went home for Thanksgiving and had the most wonderful time, and we’ll be spending Christmas together with friends in New York. So we’re not split, really. I just moved to L.A. because I wanted to work more. Martin, unfortunately, doesn’t like L.A. at all, but he’s thinking of moving to San Francisco.” 

UPDATE: Rabbett and Chamberlain resumed living together until Richard's recent death.

In the film Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986), a bearded Chamberlain and his real-life lover Martin Rabbett played brothers. In this still, a kneeling Chamberlain has a firm grip on Sharon Stone. Rabbett is in white.

After the Maui house sold, Rabbett did indeed move to San Francisco, and in April of 2012 Chamberlain said, “We’re curiously not living together at the moment, but we’re better friends than we’ve ever been.”

In May, 2012, Chamberlain appeared in a Pasadena Playhouse production of The Heiress (left), taking the role of the unyielding Dr. Austin Sloper, who was portrayed by Basil Rathbone in the original 1947 Broadway production.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Two decades after Dr.Kildare, Chamberlain appeared in some of the most widely-seen television miniseries in history, including the epic Shōgun (1981) and The Thorn Birds (1984). Around 110 million television viewers watched The Thorn Birds (nude clip at end of post!). In the period spanning the years from 1975 to 1989 he was nominated for four Emmy Awards and six Golden Globe Awards, winning three of them. Chamberlain received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2000.

His more recent television appearances include Desperate Housewives, Chuck, and Leverage. At the age of 76 Chamberlain signed on to take a role as a gay man on Brothers and Sisters (2010). Also, in early 2013 Chamberlain published "My Life in Haiku". A description from Good Reads: A philosophical, spiritual, perceptive, subtle and intimate Richard Chamberlain delights the reader with a collection of incisive, spirited and, at times, quite suggestive haiku. He half-opens a window onto a personal history with its bright and dark tones that he backs up with reproductions of some of his paintings, unveiling the hitherto cryptic meaning of a few. The haiku bear witness of his art to capture meaning in a very condensed poetic form and of his command of the language. “My Life in Haiku” confirms the human, spiritual and intellectual stature of a multi-faceted and highly talented actor and painter, above all of a man who has never stopped pondering. An enriching read!

To learn about his career as a painter (a talent he shared with Tony Bennet, Duke Ellington and Henry Fonda), and for updates on Mr. Chamberlain's recent projects, visit:

www.richardchamberlain.net


Dr. Kildare: Flaming Youth
A clip from Dr. Kildare. Richard Chamberlain appears at the 1min 40sec mark, and this is fairly typical of the series, which made Chamberlain a star.




Red Skelton Variety Hour: Haven't We Met?
TV clip from 1967, as a guest on the Red Skelton variety hour. This was just after Dr. Kildare ended its run, and it was the custom at the time for TV and film stars to be invited as participating guests on variety shows. He sings (sort of) and dances (sort of), but he is handsome as hell throughout, as everyone agreed.



“You Are the Most Beautiful Man I Have Ever Seen...”
This clip from the 1984 miniseries The Thorn Birds is beyond creepy. The best part is that Richard Chamberlain is naked and wet. A much older Barbara Stanwyck paws a nude priest, sending millions of TV viewers straight to confession.




Richard Chamberlain sings! 
He had several hits albums and singles in the 1960s.
Three Stars Will Shine Tonight (1962; theme song from Dr. Kildare)

Karol Szymanowski

Celebrated Polish pianist and composer Karol Szymanowski was born in 1882 in a small village in Ukraine into a Catholic family of wealthy Polish nobles. His compositional style progressed from post-Wagnerian romanticism to impressionism, then orientalism, finally settling on inspiration from Polish folk music. Part of it was geography, with Protestant Germany to the west, Orthodox Russia to the east and Islamic Turkey to the south. All of these cultures were reflected in his music. Tracking this musical journey, Karol became the foremost Polish composer of the early twentieth century.

He was also a distinguished homosexual. Szymanowski fell deeply in love with a 15-year-old Russian boy, Boris Kochno (Бори́с Евге́ньевич Кохно́), and he wrote four explicitly gay poems for him. Szymanowski later rediscovered Kochno in Paris, learning that Boris had become the lover and collaborator of Diaghilev (see sidebar), before moving on to a torrid affair with the American song-writer Cole Porter (see sidebar). Szymanowski also authored a two-volume gay novel, Efebos (1918), of which only fragments survive. Following two visits to Sicily as the guest of a wealthy male friend and admirer, Szymanowski told the great Polish pianist Artur Rubenstein, “There I saw a few young men bathing, and I couldn’t take my eyes off them. They could have been models for Antinous (see sidebar).” Rubenstein related to others that Szymanowski had thus confirmed his homosexuality. At ease with his sexual orientation, Karol wrote some of the most ecstatic music ever composed for the opera house in “King Roger” (Król Roger, 1924), in which a Sicilian king falls in love with a shepherd.

Curiously, Szymanowski was more highly regarded outside of Poland during his lifetime. During the last two decades, however, there has been a renaissance of Szymanowski’s music, and his works are programmed all over the world. There are hundreds of YouTube videos of his music.

Szymanowski died from tuberculosis in Switzerland in 1937 at age 54.

Sources: Wikipedia, Interlude.hk, Queer Places, Bay Area Reporter