Helen Churchill Candee

Helen Churchill Candee (née Helen Churchill Hungerford 5 Oct 1858, New York City – 23 Aug 1949, York Harbor, Maine) was an American author, journalist, interior designer, active feminist and geographer whose book about Angkor, Angkor The Magnificent (1924), is regarded as the first major English-language study of the ancient Khmer temples.

A determined and independent traveler, Helen Candee escaped death during the sinking of the HMS Titanic in 1912 — a part of her account of the disaster is said to have inspired the world-famous ​“sunset scene” in the eponymous movie. As a nurse with the Italian Red Cross during WWI, she attended wounded soldiers and reporters, among them Ernest Hemingway. In 1924, as she was living in Beijing, she was caught into the Chinese Civil War and sent dispatches from the front lines — on the side of the Nationalists — to the New York Times. 

She could have claimed to be a scion of USA ​“Founding Fathers’, as she descended from Elder William Brewster, who came to Plymouth on the Mayflower in 1620. Educated in private schools in New Haven and Norwalk, Connecticut, she was a strong-willed young woman, and did not shy away from obtaining a decree of separation from her husband, Edward W. Candee, who had abused her and their two children, Edith and Harold. ​“Harry” was with her when she visited Angkor in 1922 - she nicknamed her The Beguiling Guide or The Beguiler in her account -, but died of pneumonia in 1925, 39 years of age, one year after the publication of her acclaimed book.

Back to the divorce, Linda D. Wilson has explained in The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture why Helen Churchill’s first novel was based in Okhlahoma: ​“A life filled with entertaining and travel masked a troubled marriage to an alcoholic, abusive husband. After an unsuccessful attempt for a divorce in New York in July 1895, Helen and her two children traveled to Guthrie, Oklahoma Territory, where divorce seekers could obtain a decree after establishing a ninety-day residency. F. B. Lillie, the first registered territorial pharmacist, and his wife opened their Guthrie home to Helen Candee. While staying in Guthrie, Candee gathered ideas for her novel, An Oklahoma Romance (1901). Probably the first novel written about Oklahoma Territory, it tells the story of a land claim dispute, after the Land Run of 1889, between a young doctor and a politically established man. Several Guthrie citizens recognized themselves as characters in her novel. Candee also published articles in national magazines about the social and economic conditions in Oklahoma Territory as well as an article about the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Opening in 1901. Hiring Guthrie lawyer Henry Asp, Candee obtained her divorce in Judge Frank Dale’s court in 1896. She returned to New York City, and she continued to write.”

Already renowned for her books and press articles on women’s rights and decorative arts, Helen Candee traveled to the Far East after the war and wrote a major description of Angkorian ruins. While this book was publicly lauded by the French government and the King of Cambodia, she was invited to read parts of it to King George V and Queen Mary at Buckingham Palace. In 1927, she followed up with another book, New Journeys in Old Asia. One chapter of this work is titled ​“Leaving Angkor”.

According to biographer Randy Bryan Bigham, ​“New Journeys in Old Asia, a thorough treatment of her Oriental dreamland, touching on Bali, Siam, Java, Bangkok, Singapore and Thailand, was the culmination of three years of traveling, accompanied by her friend, artist Lucille Douglass, who provided the book’s etchings. In the course of that trip King Sisowath Monivong of Cambodia and the resident French government honored Helen for her earlier work, Angkor the Magnificent.” 

As for the Titanic tragedy, Helen Churchill Candee wrote in 1912 a piece, ​“Sealed Orders”, in which she noted: ​“The rescue ship plucked Helen and 711 other survivors from the sea. For every life on board, three braver ones had surrendered theirs in God-like selflessness. The icepacks lay for miles, dazzling in the sun, peaks rising proudly here and there. Seals, black and shiny, showed in the waters, gulls flew and cried — active white against silent white. Superb, thrilling, dominant, the ice held the region with nature’s strength. The power greater than man’s had prevailed, the crushing force against which there is no defense, no pity, no sparing. It was the power that is of God, which is the divinity of noble men.”

In-between her two successful books on Southeast Asia, she was among the nine founding members of the Society of Woman Geographers in 1925, later becoming a frequent lecturer on the Far East, and keeping publishing articles for the National Geographic until the late 1930s, when she was in her eighties. She remained active in the world of interior decoration, becoming the editor for Arts & Decoration in Paris in 1920 – 1, then staying at its editorial board.

In Helen Candee’s biography by Randy Bryan Bigham for The Encyclopedia Titanica, we can see a photo of the author leading the 1913 suffrage parade ​“Votes for Women” on horseback in Washington, D.C.

Publications

1. Susan Truslow, 1900 or 1901.
2. How Women May Earn a Living, Macmillan & Co, 1900.
3. An Oklahoma Romance, The Century, 1901. [her only fiction book.]
4. Decorative Styles and Periods in the Home, Frederick A. Stokes Co, 1906.
5. The Tapestry Book, Frederick A. Stokes Co, 1912.
6. “Sealed Orders”, Collier’s Weekly, 4 May 1912 (Vol. 49, no. 7); repub. in Angkor the Magnificent 2008 | repub. Sealed Orders: A Lost Short Story of the Titanic by a Survivor, Spitfire Publishers, 2018.
7. Jacobean Furniture, Frederick A. Stokes Co, 1916.
8. Angkor the Magnificent: Wonder City of Ancient Cambodia, Frederick A. Stokes Co, 1924; repub. Angkor the Magnificent, eds. Randy Bryan Bigham, Kent Davis, DatASIA, 2008. ISBN 978−1−934431−00−9.
9. New Journeys in Old Asia: Indo-China, Siam, Java, Bali, Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1927. 
10. Weaves and Draperies: Classic and Modern, Frederick A. Stokes Co, 1930.