And the Band Played On (12 page)

And perhaps it would take a grandchild to bring Andrew Hume to his senses and accept Mary as Jock’s wife.

6

Jock’s Memorial Service

21 April, Dumfries

We are here to drop a tear on the watery grave of one who for years sat within these walls as a member of the Sabbath school and as a member of our Band of Hope. We knew him as a child, a boy, and a youth. His presence, up to the time of his leaving for the sea, was a familiar one here. We see him again with his violin rendering assistance in the conduct of the service of praise in the Sanctuary. We see on his lips and in his eyes the smile which was a striking characteristic of his familiar countenance. Through our tear-dimmed eyes we see him as he leads his bandsmen in the last of theirs and their vessel’s life, in the sweet, holy strains of the music of the well known hymn, ‘Nearer My God To Thee’. Thus he died. We weep for him, we weep with his friends.

On cue, sitting in the front pew of Waterloo Place Congregational Church, Jock’s sister Kate started to weep. The Revd James Strachan had written and rehearsed his sermon for maximum dramatic effect and Kate’s tears were visible reassurance that he had struck just the right note. Strachan had been confident enough to drop off an advance copy of his sermon at the offices of the
Standard
the previous afternoon to ensure that it received maximum coverage in Wednesday’s edition. Pausing briefly, as if struggling to control his own emotions, the vicar gripped the front of the pulpit and announced the next hymn, ‘Nearer My God To . . .’

Miss Muir the organist had not intended to start playing before the vicar had finished speaking but, like Kate, she had been overcome by the emotion of the moment and having hit the keyboard accidentally, there was no going back. Fortunately, it only took the congregation two lines to catch her up. The vicar had insisted that she played the ‘Propior Deo’ version of the hymn by Sir Arthur Sullivan and not the Lowell Mason score with which she was more familiar and which, as she pointed out, Jock would have preferred. Jock had often accompanied her on his violin at church musical evenings and carol concerts and they shared similar enthusiasms. But as always, the Revd Strachan stuck to his own agenda.

Next to Kate, at the end of the pew in the front row, Andrew Hume held his hymn book in front of his face, trying to look dignified rather than furious, which is what he felt. Strachan had sprung the memorial service on him when he called at the house to express his sympathy. Andrew thought it far too soon to hold a service, but when Strachan told him that the Revd Slesser was holding a memorial service at Maxwelltown Parish Church for young Thomas Mullin, who had also lost his life when the ship went down, Andrew reluctantly agreed that it should go ahead.

There was another reason why Andrew had tried to persuade the Revd Strachan to call it off: the prospect of a confrontation with Mary Costin. Andrew had arrived early at the church to avoid her, he and Alice sitting protectively either side of Kate and young Andrew, like bookends. Nell and Grace had been living and working away from home for more than a year and had been unwilling to return to Dumfries for the service. Hume’s plan was to use Strachan as cover at the end of the service, pretending to wait by the door to receive condolences but making a dash for it at the last moment. With a bit of luck he wouldn’t even see Mary, still less speak to her.

He thought for a moment that Mary had not come but in the middle of the first hymn he glanced over his left shoulder and saw her sitting at the back. Mary and her mother Susan had slipped into the church just as the service started, joining Mary’s brothers, John and Menzies, who had come a few minutes earlier to keep a place for them. Mary had no interest now in speaking to Andrew Hume. She held him in contempt and if he hated her, then the feeling was entirely mutual. She had come only because she wanted to see Jock’s friends, to tell them how sorry she was and to let them see that she was all right.

In spite of the vicar’s amateur dramatics, she liked what he said about Jock, particularly the bit about Jock’s lips, his eyes and his smile. Those were the things she remembered best, too. But she had been embarrassed to hear Jock described as
leading
the band. That was another one of his father’s lies, which the vicar had inadvertently written into his sermon. Andrew had also told the
Standard
that Jock was the bandleader and played only in First Class, neither of which was true. He had even lied in the death notice – that was a first:

Mr and Mrs Hume and family beg to tender their sincere thanks to all friends for their very kind and sympathetic notes and telegrams on the loss of John Law Hume, leader of the orchestra in the First Class cabin of the unfortunate
Titanic
.

They were silly lies because the national newspapers had already published pictures of Wallace Hartley, who was the leader of the orchestra. Jock would never have pretended to be something he wasn’t. What was it about Andrew that made him always fudge the facts?

As the service drew to a close, Miss Muir started to pump wind into her organ, pushing the pedals as hard as if she were riding her bicycle uphill. The last part of the vicar’s three-act tragedy was about to begin and she had the starring role, playing the ‘Dead March’ from
Saul
, by Handel. There would not be a dry eye in the house by the time she finished if she could possibly help it. ‘Will you please stand,’ the vicar told the congregation. The opening bars triggered another outbreak of sobbing from Kate Hume, who had spent most of the service with a lace handkerchief clamped to her face. When Miss Muir reached the end of the ‘Dead March’ the Revd Strachan stood facing the congregation to give the blessing.

The Costin party, who were nearest the door, were the first to leave the church, walking briskly back to Buccleuch Street. Susan Costin thought how proud Jock would have been of Mary – dignified, elegant and in control. As they reached the top of Buccleuch Street, Susan said to her daughter: ‘When are you going to tell Andrew Hume that he’s about to become a grandfather?’

7

A Second
Titanic
Hero

29 April, Dumfries

On 24 April the
Dumfries & Galloway Standard
published a prominent letter headed ‘A Dumfries Hero’. It was from a colourful character called Robert MacKenna, a celebrated local poet who had ‘forsaken the muse’ some years earlier to dedicate his life to medicine. Now an equally celebrated dermatologist in Liverpool, he had kept his muse alive as an obsessive writer of letters to newspapers and magazines, in particular the
Standard
, where his greatest fan, Mr Thomas Watson, was the editor.

The son of a Dumfries vicar, Dr MacKenna was still widely revered and respected in the town and his letter from Liverpool, the city whose name
Titanic
carried on its stern, caught everyone’s attention, particularly Mr Watson who wrote a leader in the same issue commending the letter to his readers.

MacKenna’s letter began: ‘In the long roll of brave deeds associated with the disaster to the
Titanic
, there is none so sublimely heroic as the conduct of the ship’s band.’ It continued in the most florid prose for several hundred more words before coming to the point:

In that little band of brave men, Dumfries had a noble representative . . . I think it only proper that his fellow townsmen should do something to perpetuate the memory of Mr J. Hume and commemorate his glorious death. I venture therefore to suggest that a committee be formed . . .

The following day a committee was formed and on the evening of Monday 29 April a meeting to discuss a
Titanic
memorial was convened at the Town Hall by Provost Thomson; it was attended by every worthy in the town. Mr MacKenna, the originator of the idea, was invited but sent his apologies. Andrew Hume was invited to attend but declined on the grounds that as no one had yet informed him that his son was dead it seemed somewhat premature to be erecting monuments to Jock’s memory.

MacKenna’s proposals for a monument had been quite modest – a blue plaque on the wall of the Humes’ house in George Street. But Provost Thomson opened the meeting by pointing out that not one but two sons of Dumfries had died on the
Titanic
. He proposed that any monument should also include Thomas Mullin, Jock’s school friend at St Michael’s.

In the general outpouring of grief and praise for the heroism of the band, Tom’s death had been overlooked by many people, largely because he lived in Maxwelltown – a few hundred yards away on the other side of the river to Dumfries and therefore seen as having nothing whatsoever to do with Dumfries. Provost Thomson said there had been ‘a reluctance to trespass upon Maxwelltown’s duties’ by including Mullin in Dumfries’s plans for a memorial. But it was now accepted that Tom was Dumfries born and bred, and that ‘the two lads should be classed together’. This suggestion was greeted with loud applause.

Dr MacKenna had failed to mention Tom at all in his letter to the
Standard
but people who knew Tom and his family – they were ‘admirable people’ – came from far and wide to make sure that he received proper recognition, and not just on a monument. Many affectionate tributes were paid that night to both Jock and Tom, but the meeting in the lower room of the town hall focused for once on Dumfries’s other brave young man who had suffered the most terrible misfortunes with great fortitude – only to lose everything on the
Titanic
.

Jock and Tom’s former headmaster, John Hendrie, was the first to point out that the family’s circumstances were not good. Tom’s mother and father had died within a very short time of each other, leaving three younger children who were now being looked after by their grandmother. Both Tom and Jock were ‘loving and pleasant in their lives’ and he was glad that in their ‘sad, deplorable and tragic deaths’ they would not be divided.

Bailie Hastie said that Tom had sent £1 home shortly before boarding the
Titanic
. Judge Macaulay added that Tom had been sending money home regularly and recommended that something should be done for the three children and their grandmother. Tom, he said, was ‘as heroic as anyone’ on the
Titanic
.

Mr S. Charteries said that both Tom and his father had worked for him at Rosefield Mills. His father was an excellent and capable man and young Thomas, who had been a pattern weaver, had given up work only because his sight failed him. He was sure that ‘the working classes’ would rise to the occasion and heartily support the movement to erect a monument.

Another speaker referred to ‘the admirable family life’ of the Mullins and Tom’s grandmother, Mrs Gunyeon. Tom had gone to sea after coming out of the infirmary, where nothing could be done to help his eyesight, but he had got on very well in his new career as a steward and promotion was likely.

Provost Thomson moved that a memorial fund be established and ‘hoped very much indeed that it would be taken up heartily by the working classes’, as ‘their threepences and sixpences and shillings would be the best testimonial they could give’.

8

A Bill for Your Dead Son’s Uniform

30 April, George Street, Dumfries

Fifteen days had passed since the
Titanic
foundered, yet there was still no formal confirmation that Jock was among the dead. According to the
Dumfries & Galloway Standard
, the
Mackay-Bennett
had been delayed by storms and would not now arrive back in Halifax until later that day. Having anxiously awaited its return, Andrew was now dreading it: as the ship carried only a cargo of corpses, he reasoned that it could only bring bad news; either Jock’s body would be on board, or it would not. Either way Jock was dead.

Of the 2,209 passengers and crew, only 711 were known to have survived, most of them rescued by the
Carpathia
in the immediate aftermath of the sinking. They had been taken to New York, where they were now giving interviews to the world’s press. The stories they told – of the band bravely playing on as the ship went down – only deepened Andrew’s despair. A British teacher and journalist, Lawrence Beesley, who had been on board the
Titanic
and was among the survivors, wrote a dramatic account for the
New York Times
, which was republished at length in British newspapers on 30 April. It began: ‘Many brave things were done that night, but none more brave than by those few men playing minute after minute as the ship settled quietly lower and lower in the sea . . .’

Andrew wondered if the fathers of the other bandsmen would feel a warm glow of pride when they read these words. He himself felt only intense irritation with Mr Beesley, whose observations on the death throes of the ship had been made from the safety of a lifeboat two miles away and whose scoop was already making him rich and famous.