And the Band Played On (22 page)

I asked the same questions myself in 2010 and bought one, for £1, from a collector on eBay. It is an important-looking brass button. It has a roped rim inside which run the embossed letters AFRICAN ROYAL MAIL. At the centre is a flag of St George fluttering from a flagpole, a crown at its centre. It invited further inquiry. The African Royal Mail line was owned by Elder, Dempster & Co, running steamships, including the
Scot Union
and the
Calabar
, from Liverpool to the Cameroons via Madeira. There was a weekly service, every Friday, from Southampton to the Cape, also via Madeira. Elder, Dempster & Co also owned the
Port Royal
, on which Jock had sailed to Jamaica. And then, another coincidence: Charles Lightoller, second officer on the
Titanic
(who survived) worked for the African Royal Mail in West Africa for three years. Was the West Africa run another of Jock’s ‘regulars’? Did Jock and Lightoller know each other from way back?

The following year, through solicitors, Mary asked Andrew Hume if she could have something ‘personal’ of Jock’s to remember him by. She was told there was nothing – and, anyway, she had his child.

16

The Missing Violins

10 September, New York

Andrew Hume had been outraged when he received the bill from C.W. and F.N. Black for alterations to Jock’s uniform. Two months later he had felt hurt and humiliated by the letter from the White Star Line dismissing Jock’s possessions as ‘of trifling value’. Now, piling further insult upon grief, came the news that none of the bandsmen’s families was entitled to compensation.

A case brought by some of the families against the musical agency Black’s had failed in Liverpool county court on a legal technicality. Because the band were employed by Black’s and travelled as passengers, they were not covered by the Workmen’s Compensation Act or the Merchant Shipping Act as were the rest of the crew, which relieved the White Star Line of any responsibility. So the families had to look to Black’s and their insurers who successfully denied any responsibility.

The judge was sympathetic although unable to rule in the families’ favour: ‘I cannot forget that these brave men met their deaths while performing an act which was of the greatest service in assisting to maintain discipline and avert panic. There are three interests affected by this matter – the White Star Line, Messrs Black, and their insurance company. It is impossible to decide which is responsible for the exceedingly shabby treatment of the bandsmen.’

At the same time, stories began to appear in newspapers about successful compensation claims for loss of life and property, further inflaming Andrew Hume’s grievances.

It had been reported that one First Class passenger who survived, American socialite Charlotte Cardeza, was claiming $177,352 for fourteen trunks, forty-three bags, a jewel case and a packing case. Another passenger, Hakan Bjornstrom-Steffanson, son of a Swedish pulp millionaire, had filed a claim for $100,000 for a painting by Blondel, which had gone down with the ship.

These reports undoubtedly sowed the seeds of an idea for a compensation claim against the White Star Line, which Andrew Hume would spend many months pursuing. As insurance frauds go it was as daring as it was imaginative and its success depended on Andrew’s expertise in the one subject he knew about: the value of violins.

Erlbach, where the four corners of Turingia, Bavaria, Bohemia and Saxony meet, is known as ‘the green heart of Europe’. Here, high in the Alpine forests, grow the best quality maple and spruce that produce the richness of tones that distinguish a great violin from an ordinary instrument; in the valleys below are the workshops of some of the Germany’s finest violin makers. It was here that Andrew said he mastered the craft of violin making in his teens. And it was here that he came later, or so he claimed, to purchase supplies of wood, glue and varnish with which to make violins. He almost certainly made some violins; but he also bought violins ‘in the white’ – unvarnished and sometimes unassembled instruments, but cut to perfect templates by the master craftsmen of Bohemia. Many violin makers took this short cut, signing the finished product with their own initials.

Hume laid so many false trails about his past that it is difficult to know which one to follow. Quite clearly he acquired during his teens some knowledge of violin making and saw an opportunity for producing or selling quality violins. In Dumfries High Street Mr Hannary was selling violins for less than £1 whereas Andrew Hume knew that wealthy men paid hundreds of pounds for a beautiful instrument. Whether or not forgery was in his mind at this time we cannot know but Hume certainly developed skills which would serve him well later in passing off instruments that weren’t always what they seemed, including many that bore his own initials. He studied the designs of Stradivarius, Guarnerius (Paganini’s favoured violin), Guadagnini, Amati and Maggini, advancing in letters to the trade press his theories that a smaller instrument frequently had a clearer and more responsive tone than one of larger dimensions. He championed the idea that modern violins could capture the full, soft tone of old violins provided the right varnish and glues were used. He proudly showed his students his stock of seasoned wood acquired during visits to Bohemia.

Around this time, Andrew became a regular correspondent on the letters page of
The Strad
, the respected publication of the violin trade and music profession, writing knowledgeably and at great length about techniques, glues and varnish. His favourite theme was the profession’s prejudice against new instruments versus the old, such as those made by the great Italian masters including Antonio Stradivari. ‘I beg to differ from the assertion that the art of producing tone equal to the old Italian violins is a lost art,’ he wrote.

Hume started to use the letters page ruthlessly to promote his own instruments, which he would later advertise for sale in
The Strad
. But his unerring tendency to be economical with the truth soon got him into trouble with the distinguished violinist and composer John Dunn, author of the definitive
Manual on Violin Playing
. In the February 1910 issue of
The Strad
Andrew Hume wrote:

I recently submitted to Mr John Dunn two violins made of the finest wood procurable . . . his opinion is, ‘both your violins are exceedingly fine . . . as compared with my Strad, if there is any difference it could certainly only be detected by an acute and very highly trained ear.’

In the following issue of
The Strad
Mr Dunn took Hume to task for misrepresenting his remarks and quoting him without his permission: ‘There was a difference, as compared with the tone of an old violin like my Strad; in the matter of richness and penetrating powers . . . Mr Hume’s violins are lacking,’ wrote Dunn.

Andrew batted back a reply, with the briefest of apologies, before moving swiftly on to contradict Dunn and praise his own violins again. Hume’s letter, published in
The Strad
the following month, is as shameless as his defence when he was caught poaching salmon:

I much regret having used Mr Dunn’s name and have written him a personal note of apology . . . but I must take exception to one of his sentences: in the matter of richness and penetrating power (of my violins) I have the most incontestable proof that the reverse of this is the case.

He continues his letter with what was to become a familiar whine of indignant self-justification: ‘I have been a professional player and teacher for 21 years and the construction of violins and the making of oil varnish has been my pet hobby and occupation . . . not from any pecuniary benefit that might accrue.’ Far from having any pecuniary motives, Andrew Hume was already selling violins commercially and, within a year, would be using
The Strad
’s advertisement pages as the shop window.

If the White Star Line placed no value on his son’s life, Andrew Hume reasoned, perhaps they would be obliged to recognise the worth of Jock’s violin that was now a piece of flotsam somewhere out there in the North Atlantic. What if he exaggerated the value of the violin that Jock had taken with him on the ship? There was no one alive who knew that Jock’s violin was an instrument that he himself had made. Everything had gone down with the
Titanic
, so there would be no risk of him being caught out on the lie. But how big a lie could it be? A violin by Antonio Stradivari? No, that would be pushing his luck: there were too few of them in existence and they were too valuable. Also, it was unlikely that a twenty-one-year-old bandsman on a ship, however fine a violinist, would have a Strad. How could he have afforded it? Receipts and valuations would be called for. Better to claim for something almost as valuable but less well known. A second-division violin would be a safer bet. One by Nicolo Amati, perhaps? No, too ambitious. And also too expensive. Andrew now cast his mind back to a week he spent in Milan in his late teens when he had held – briefly – a violin by the great eighteenth-century Italian violin maker Giovanni Battista Guadagnini. Yes, a better choice. A Guadagnini could go to the bottom of the ocean and no one would be able to challenge the claim. Andrew had friends whom he could trust to produce some ambiguous documentation. So many members of the Guadagnini family had made violins over successive generations and their instruments always held their value – £200 would be a modest price to put on the claim for compensation.

Andrew Hume thought about this some more. Who was to say that Jock didn’t take with him on the
Titanic
not one but
two
violins? Must not be too greedy. Best not to claim for two Guadagninis. What about Guadagnini’s contemporary rival in Naples, Thomaso Eberle? He made fine instruments, also expensive, but not in the same class. Worth, say, £125 and even less trouble to obtain receipts and valuations. He would say that he, Andrew, had borrowed them and that Jock had taken them with him on the
Titanic
to choose one as a ‘life instrument’. Life instrument had an authentic ring to it, Andrew thought, especially in the hands of a man who would be taking it to his death. It wouldn’t bring Jock back but it would go a long way to righting a wrong.

Having made his choice of violins, Andrew Hume wrote a letter to the White Star Line claiming £625 compensation: £300 for the loss of his son’s life, £325 for the violins. Unfortunately no record of this original correspondence has survived, the White Star Line destroying most of its files at the time of its merger with Cunard in 1934. But a subsequent letter from Hume, setting out the substance of his claim, has survived in the U.S. National Archives. It is clear from this that Hume’s demands for compensation were turned down by the White Star Line and that appeals to its chairman, Bruce Ismay, now safely back in his office in Liverpool, also brought no satisfaction.

In January 1913 Hume turned to the United States to pursue his insurance claim, writing to Alexander Gilchrist Jr., a clerk of the New York District Court who had been appointed special commissioner to deal with claims for compensation resulting from the loss of the SS
Titanic
. The letter is handwritten and Hume has expressed the total of his claims in US dollars, the exchange rate being approximately five to one in 1912.