The Band That Played On (24 page)

It can be difficult for contemporary commentators to appreciate the place that hymns occupied in the lives of typical Edwardians. They were not indicators of doom and gloom but of hope and joy. They were also a register of commonly held assumptions about the most important issues in life. The difference between the early twentieth century and the early twenty-first century can be illustrated by Elizabeth Nye’s reminiscence: “On Sunday the 14th it became very cold. We couldn’t stay out on deck so we all came together in the dining room for a hymn sing.” It’s hard to imagine passengers on a twenty-first-century cruise liner opting for such an alternative.

When survivors specifically mentioned that hymns were played, the consensus was that it was toward the end. It would make sense that the band members played the popular tunes as the lifeboats were loaded and the more reflective pieces once they only had themselves and their destinies to contemplate. Survivor Charles William Daniels (aka Robert William Daniel), who was on lifeboat 3 lowered at 1:00, recalled: “All the lifeboats reached the water safely and the ship’s band played as the boats were being lowered. The musicians played selections from opera and the latest popular melodies from Europe and America. Only before the final plunge did they change the character of their music. They then played ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee.’ We had been in the water for two hours at least [
sic
].”

All of the band members had been raised as churchgoers—Bricoux, Krins, and Clarke as Catholics, Hume as a Congregationalist, Woodward and Hartley as Methodists, Brailey and Taylor as Anglicans. Harley and Taylor had sung in choirs, and Hume played his violin in church. It’s impossible to determine the commitment they each had to the religion of their birth, but it’s likely that they all had knowledge of and affection for hymns.

The
New York Times
drew the conclusion that “Autumn,” the music mentioned by Bride, referred to an Episcopalian hymn tune and claimed to have found a hymnal where this tune was the setting to words that began “God of mercy and compassion” and ended with a verse beginning “Hold me up in mighty waters / Keep my eyes on things above.” This reference to “mighty waters” appeared to prove the appropriateness of this hymn to the occasion. The
Times
said that line in particular “may have suggested the hymn to some minister aboard the doomed vessel, who, it has been suggested, thereupon asked the remaining passengers to join in singing the hymn, in a last service upon the sinking ship, soon to be ended by death itself.”

What no one pointed out at the time was that Bride wasn’t an American Episcopalian and, even if he had been, would have been more likely to refer to a tune by the first line of the hymn’s words than by its name. The tune “Autumn” wasn’t in the White Star music book. Additionally, although there was a hymn known as “God of Mercy and Compassion,” it wasn’t in the Church of England or Methodist hymnals, and no version that anyone has been able to find, other than that discovered by a
New York Times
journalist in 1912, includes a verse about being held up in mighty waters.

“God of Mercy and Compassion” was written by Edmund Vaughan (1827–1908) and starts:

God of mercy and compassion

Look with pity upon me

Father, let me call you Father,

’Tis thy child returns to thee.

The version quoted by the
New York Times
on April 21, 1912, already deviated from this by the second line of the first stanza:

God of mercy and compassion!

Look with pity on my pain;

Hear a mournful, broken spirit

Prostrate at thy feet complain.

The only clue the
New York Times
gave about its origin was that it was found in “an Episcopalian hymn book.” No doubt there was such a collection, but it couldn’t have been widely used.

Walter Lord speculated that Bride may not have been referring to a hymn at all but to a hit tune of 1912 (in London, at least) called “Songe d’Automne,” written by popular orchestra leader Archibald “the Waltz King” Joyce. Not only was this music commonly referred to as “Autumn,” but it was also in the White Star song book carried on the
Titanic
. Lord’s source for this information was Fred Vallance, bandmaster on the
Laconia
in 1912, who said there was general agreement among musicians that Bride must have been referring to the waltz tune that was an often-requested number in 1912 and popular in roller rinks and cafés. In several long, handwritten letters to Lord in 1957 written in response to the speculations about music in
A Night to Remember
, he argued that the mournful opening to Joyce’s popular tune could have been mistaken for a hymn and the jerky finish could have been heard as ragtime.
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Interestingly enough, Bride made no further comment about “Autumn” and, when he arrived back in England after the sinking, he was the honored guest at a memorial service given by his local church in Shortlands, Kent, on May 19, where his father read the lesson and a solo of “Nearer, My God, to Thee” was performed.

The reports of the band playing “Nearer, My God, to Thee” were enthusiastically received, particularly in England where the “Autumn” story was hardly pursued. The words of the hymn seemed so fitting to a culture where religious sentiment still held sway. The gist of the song is that whatever hardships befall us, they can only serve to bring us closer to God. In terms of the
Titanic
disaster, the image was of people being dragged to the depths of the sea and yet, paradoxically, scaling the heights of heaven. It was based in part on the story of Jacob’s dream (Genesis 28:10–22), in which he sees “a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.” It may have been a particular favorite at the Bethel Chapel in Colne because Jacob marked the spot where he had the dream with a stone “and he called the name of that place Bethel.”

Nearer, my God, to Thee.

Nearer to Thee!

Even though it be a cross

That raiseth me;

Still all my song shall be,

Nearer, my God, to Thee

Nearer to Thee!

Though, like a wanderer,

The sun gone down,

Darkness comes over me,

My rest a stone;

Yet in my dreams I’ d be

Nearer, my God, to thee,

Nearer to thee.

There let my way appear

Steps unto heaven,

All that Thou sendest me

In mercy given;

Angels to beckon me

Nearer, my God, to Thee,

Nearer to Thee!

Then, with my waking thoughts

Bright with Thy praise,

Out of my stony griefs

Bethel I’ ll raise;

So by my woes to be

Nearer, my God, to Thee,

Nearer to Thee!

And when on joyful wing

Cleaving the sky,

Sun, moon, and stars forgot,

Upwards I fly,

Still all my song shall be,

Nearer, my God, to Thee,

Nearer to Thee.

Although popular among mainstream Protestants, the words were actually written by a Unitarian who was smitten by doubt. Raised in Christian orthodoxy, she was concerned about the faith she had lost. For the poet Sarah Flower Adams, the words were an expression of her one remaining certainty, which was that whatever spiritual torments she endured, God was always there. When the hymn first appeared in 1841 (with music by her sister Ella), and her Unitarian beliefs were made known, the Baptists and Methodists refused to include it in their collections.
³

American theologian J. Gresham Machen, writing in the 1920s, thought it was not as theologically sound as it first appeared:

The thought is not opposed to Christianity. It is found in the New Testament. But many persons have the impression, because the word “cross” is found in the hymn, that there is something specifically Christian about it, and that it has something to do with the gospel. This impression is entirely false. In reality, the cross that is spoken of is not the cross of Christ, but our own cross; the verse simply means that our own crosses or trials may be a means to bring us nearer to God. It is a perfectly good thought, but certainly it is not the gospel.

There were suggestions after the sinking that journalist and spiritualist W. T. Stead, who calmly went down on the ship, may have requested that the band play “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” This wasn’t because anyone overheard such a conversation, but because he’d recently authored a book called
Hymns That Have Helped Me
, for which he asked well-known people for their recommendations. “In our pilgrimage through life we discover the hymns which help,” Stead wrote in the introduction. He continued:

We come out of trials and temptations with hymns clinging to our memory like burrs. Some of us could almost use the hymnbook as the key to our autobiography. Hymns, like angels and other ministers of grace, often help us and disappear into the void. It is not often that the hymn of our youth is the hymn of our old age. Experience of life is the natural selector of the truly human hymnal.

There is a curious and not a very creditable shrinking on the part of many to testify as to their experience in the deeper matters of the soul. It is an inverted egotism—selfishness masquerading in disguise of reluctance to speak of self. Wanderers across the wilderness of Life ought not to be chary of telling their fellow travelers where they found a green oasis, the healing spring, or the shadow of a great rock in the desert land. It is not regarded as egotism when the passing steamer signals across the Atlantic wave news of her escape from perils of iceberg or fog, or welcome news of good cheer.

Titanic
featuring violinist Jonathan Evans-Jones as bandleader Wallace Hartley (1997).

The Prince of Wales chose “Nearer, My God, to Thee” for Stead’s project and it became widely known as the prince’s favorite hymn. He thought there was no hymn “more touching nor one that goes more truly to the heart.” Stead printed all five verses along with two stories of people who had gained sustenance from the words. The second of these was of a boy soldier in the American Civil War who had lost both arms at Fort Donelson and yet “died on the battlefield singing with his last breath, ‘Nearer, my God, to Thee.’ It might fairly be called the most popular hymn among all sorts and conditions of men in America.”

It was also the favorite hymn of President McKinley, who supposedly used the words as a form of prayer as he lay dying after being shot by the anarchist Leon Czolgosz at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, New York, in September 1901. The song was sung at his funeral and at all the various memorial services that followed.

One of the most compelling pieces of evidence, though, for the use of “Nearer, My God, to Thee” was the fact that it was the best-loved hymn of Wallace Hartley and had been introduced to the Bethel Chapel by Wallace’s father, Albion Hartley, when he was choirmaster. A friend from Colne told the
British Weekly
: “It was the custom of the Bethel church choir leader to choose the hymn or chant after prayer and Mr. Albion Hartley often selected ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee.’ The hymn was also a great favourite with his son, the bandmaster of the
Titanic
, for a cousin mentioned that he would often be kept waiting for Wallace to go and play cricket because he was practicing ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’ in variations on the violin.”

Ellwand Moody, Hartley’s friend from the
Mauretania
, told the
Leeds Mercury
in April 1912: “I remember one day I asked him what he would do if he were ever on a sinking ship and he replied ‘I don’t think I would do better than play “Oh God Our Help in Ages Past” or “Nearer, My God, to Thee”.’” In a statement attributed to Hartley, but not sourced and therefore dubious, he confirmed it as his favorite hymn but added: “I’m keeping that one reserved for my funeral.” E. J. Elliot, president of the Musicians Union in Louisville, Kentucky, told the
Brooklyn Eagle
that it was a tradition for American musicians to play the music of the hymn at the graveside of departed colleagues. “I believe, knowing they were doomed as a result of their own heroism, the members of the ship’s orchestra thus commended their own souls to their God, giving expression to their petition in the notes of their instruments.”

In his 1986 book
The Night Lives On
, however, the follow-up to
A Night to Remember
, Walter Lord raised an interesting issue that questioned the validity of the story of the tune’s use. He pointed out that although apparently both Americans and Britons recognized it, the hymn was sung to different tunes on either side of the Atlantic. The Church of England used a tune called “Horbury.” The Methodists in England preferred a tune written by Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan) named “Propior Deo” and Americans generally used a Lowell Mason tune known as “Bethany.” He concluded: “Unless the band played all three versions (an absurdity), more than half of those who remembered the hymn must have been mistaken.”
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