A Night to Remember

by Walter Lord

Up the stairs they trooped—a hushed crowd in jumbled array. Under his overcoat Jack Thayer now sported a greenish tweed suit and vest, with another mohair vest underneath. Mr. Robert Daniel, the Philadelphia banker, had on only woolen pajamas. Mrs. Turrell Cavendish wore a wrapper and Mr. Cavendish’s overcoat … Mrs. John C. Hogeboom a fur coat over her nightgown … Mrs. Ada Clark just a nightgown. Mrs. Washington Dodge didn’t bother to put on stockings under her high-button shoes, which flopped open because she didn’t stop to button them. Mrs. Astor looked right out of a bandbox in an attractive light dress, Mrs. James J. Brown—a colorful Denver millionairess—equally stylish in a black velvet two-piece suit with black and white silk lapels. Automobiling, as practiced in 1912,

People were so scrambled that they just threw on whatever warm clothes they had.