How to Survive the Titanic

by Frances Wilson

  The Edwardians ‘deified’, as E. M. Forster put it, ‘personal relations and expected them to function outside their appropriate sphere’. Human beings, it was felt, formed a part of one another; personal connections were occasions for epiphanies. Mrs Thayer experienced an epiphany when she talked to Major Butt, Ismay had an epiphany when he talked to Mrs Thayer. Lucy Honeychurch and George Emerson experience their first embrace in A Room with a View (1908) as a divine revelation; in that moment they ‘crossed’, as Forster says, ‘some spiritual boundary’. In Howards End (1910), Forster reiterates the mantra of the day, ‘Only Connect’: it is ‘personal intercourse, and that alone, that ever hints at a personality beyond our daily vision’, this is what will win us ‘immortality’. For Mrs Thayer, who had long tried to make sense of life and death by finding patterns of order, cohesion, balance and oneness, human relations had become an answer for all of this horror. She believed that she and Major Butt had met in a previous life; she believed that she had crossed over from the other side in the past and that the lost souls of the Titanic may therefore cross too. She was deeply interested in spiritualism. No doubt, while she was on the Titanic she also talked to the journalist and social reformer W. T. Stead, founder of the spiritualist journal Borderlands. Stead, who predicted during seances his own death by drowning, had published an article in 1886 called ‘How the Mail Steamer Went Down in the Mid Atlantic by a Survivor’. ‘This is exactly what might take place,’ he concluded, ‘if liners are sent to sea short of lifeboats.’

  ‘Writing to you,’ Ismay now tells Mrs Thayer, ‘makes me feel as if I was speaking to you. How I wish I was.’ When he writes that since leaving America he has ‘talked to you so much’ he is adopting her particular language: she believes that communication is not dependent on presence. ‘You are’, Ismay repeats, ‘constantly in my thoughts’; forgetting Mrs Thayer would be ‘absolutely impossible’. They are the same in their ‘grief and loss’, she for her husband, he for his ship. They are both missing the centre of their lives, neither of them now has a future. But occasionally Ismay feels a flash of hope: he does perhaps have a future — Marian Thayer, in some form or other, is his future. His relief is so overwhelming that it feels like love. She understands so much — her great gift is her understanding, she is practically telepathic — but can she understand something as strange as his feelings for her? Ismay knows that she can. He is sure she is ‘acting bravely and not giving way’ to her desire to give up her life, that she is ‘thinking of others who are so dependent on you and who you love’. He is ‘absolutely convinced that we will meet again very soon. Something tells me this and I am satisfied we will always be a good deal to each other. You know what I mean.’ Marian Thayer knows what everything means, this is what is so overwhelming for a man like Ismay, who finds expression difficult. He does not need to spell anything out. But equally wonderful for Ismay is that he also knows what he means: for the last three weeks he has not known what anything means. What Conrad describes himself as doing for Augustine Podmore Williams, his model for Jim, Mrs Thayer does for Ismay: she ‘seeks fit words for his meaning’. ‘You must not be morbid or distressed,’ Ismay tells her. ‘As you say, the easiest way would be to join those who have gone before. I well know the feeling. As I’ve told you, time alone is the healer of our great sorrows and we must thank God that this is so.’ Ismay is trying his best to carry on Slow Ahead.

  The Adriatic landed in Queenstown on 10 May and Florence went on board to meet her husband, about whom she had not stopped thinking for nearly a month. She now knew that he was not the hero of the hour, that he had jumped into a lifeboat with the women and children, but she was still grateful. So many wives were without their husbands, so many children without their fathers, but her family had been saved from such a tragedy. She was desperately upset, particularly at Ismay’s treatment in America, but also curiously elated; the chance of his survival, and the chance they, as a couple, had been given were both so extraordinary.

  Ismay was the last passenger to leave the Adriatic, and the Daily Sketch reported that although he ‘seemed to be suffering from nervous strain when he embarked… his health has improved during the voyage’. The next day he was back in Liverpool, where he was met by cheering crowds waving hats and handkerchiefs. Once more looking ‘pale and haggard’ he acknowledged, through a spokesman, the kind messages he had received, ‘which he very much appreciates in the greatest trial of his life’. It was unclear to the press which trial he was referring to: the wreck of the Titanic or his treatment in the US inquiry. The spokesman also requested that Ismay not be pestered for a statement, ‘first because he is still suffering from the very great strain of the Titanic disaster and subsequent events; again, because he gave before the American Commission a plain and unvarnished statement of facts which has been fully reported, and also because his evidence before the British Court of Inquiry should not be anticipated’. The ‘statement of facts’ given by Ismay to the US inquiry had not been ‘plain and unvarnished’, as anyone who had followed the proceedings in the British papers would know, and the reference to the ‘round unvarnished tale’ by which Othello woos Desdemona must have been Ismay’s own. ‘She loved me for the dangers I had passed,’ Othello explained to those who could not understand how the fair Desdemona could feel so ‘unnatural’ a love, ‘and I loved her that she did pity them’. Ismay was thinking of Marian Thayer.

  He returned to letters of condolence, but also anonymous letters and — most terrible of all — letters from those wanting comfort themselves. His world had been reduced to endless words on paper. On 15 May, Ismay opened the following:

  Sir,

  I am writing to you in reference to my dear brother Arthur Hayter who was a steward on the ill-fated Titanic and was among the drowned. I heard from his wife that he had you to look after during the voyage and I thought perhaps you might be able to let us know if you saw anything of him at the last, on that fatal night. It would be a little consolation to us, his broken-hearted brothers and sisters, and to his aged parents who are 82 and 84 respectively. He was such a good brother and son. Excuse me for taking the liberty of writing to you, and thanking you, sir, for a reply.

  I remain, yours sincerely,

  Louise Hayter5

  Ismay’s reply was doubtless along the same lines as his letter from Washington to the grieving brother of Francis Millet. He heard also from Lucille Carter, whose husband had shared his lifeboat. Mrs Carter was glad to hear that Ismay had been welcomed home, and appalled at the way he had been treated by the American press. William E. Carter’s own survival had been of no interest to the papers, nor had he been asked to give evidence at the US inquiry.

  Ismay was home, but sea-changed. His nightmares woke the house, he was blackballed from his club, an old friend turned him away from the front door. Florence realised that their lives, as she put it, were ‘ruined’. Ismay was the loneliest man in the world, and at the heart of his aloneness lay a horror she could do nothing to soothe. Florence believed, as Bruce did too, that he had been saved by the will of God, but the ‘feeling was there’ for Ismay that it was his own will which had saved him, that his survival, rather than being divine intervention, had gone against the natural course of things. In building the Titanic he had placed his trust in the material rather than the spiritual world, and God had now abandoned him. The air was thick with theories of a universe determined by human rather than divine strength. ‘I am the master of my fate,’ wrote Conrad’s admirer, W. E. Henley, ‘I am the Captain of my soul.’ It was hard for Ismay to hold on to the belief that it had been God’s wish that he jump into Collapsible C, or that his life had been saved for any purpose other than to experience hell on earth.

  He did not want his wife’s easy sympathy; he was appalled by her suggestion that the disaster would bring them closer together. However hard she tried, Florence, he believed, could never understand what he had experienced because she had not been there. Their marriage had changed after the death
of their eldest son in 1891 — neither had recovered from the shock and grief — and here was Marian Thayer offering to console him over the death of 1,500 people. Florence now made a decision she would later regret: the Titanic was never to be mentioned again in her husband’s presence. He was not to be allowed or encouraged to talk about the ship, the whole thing was to be forgotten. In addition, Florence decided that Bruce had behaved impeccably. She was not going to face the world as the wife of a coward. As Conrad put it in Victory, ‘the last thing a woman will consent to discover in a man who she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage’.

  Mrs Thayer replied to Ismay’s first letter with a long and ‘splendid’ one of her own; so long indeed that she feared he would be disinclined to read it all the way through. Everyone is being very kind to her, she says, but she thinks she will have to give up their wonderful house, and she doubts that she and Ismay will ever meet again. Ismay, who read her letter through many times, waited until Florence had gone out before settling down to compose his reply. ‘My wife has gone to church and I am sitting writing to you by the open window, looking over the garden. Oh, how I wish you were here and we could sit out in the garden and help each other. It would be lovely. I feel, now, that you are very close to me. I wonder if you are.’ Ismay was desperate to talk about the Titanic; he fell upon Mrs Thayer as he fell upon the journalists at the Waldorf-Astoria when he felt misrepresented by Senator Smith. For a man whose ‘watertight compartments’, as Forster said of Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with a View, ‘never broke down’, Ismay often finds it hard to contain himself. ‘How I wish I were near you,’ he says to Mrs Thayer again; ‘I know I would never be angry or vexed by anything you said.’ It is wonderful, he feels, that he can open up to her like this. ‘Really at times the outlook for the future is very very black,’ he continues, ‘and I wonder if I can face it. Everyone here is most kind and sympathetic but I feel my heart and spirit are broken and feel at times I must give in. But why mention my troubles.’ He is sending her some lines which he tells her to put on her own dressing table:

  With cheerful steps the path of duty run

  God nothing does, nor suffers to be done,

  But thou thyself wouldst do it, could thou see

  The end of all events as well as he.

  Engraved on the silver frame are Ismay’s initials and Marian Thayer’s, and the date the Titanic went down. Ismay is ‘absolutely certain’ that they will meet again, ‘and perhaps sooner than you think’. The most ‘difficult thing’, he explains, is ‘taking some interest in [my] surroundings… I cannot interest myself in anything. My mind seems to refuse to retain anything but the recollection of that awful disaster.’ Time will help, he continues to hope. On lighter matters he wonders if she has seen Philip Franklin lately — ‘What a truly splendid man he is — loyal and true’ — and whether young Jack — ‘a boy to be proud of’ — has now gone to college? His letter is becoming too long, he will be boring her, ‘but you must forgive me as I feel it is the next best thing to talking to you’.

  On 31 May, Marian Thayer and her relation, Florence Cumings — who also lost her husband on the Titanic–go to a luncheon given by Madeleine Astor, the teenage widow of John Jacob Astor. The guests of honour are Captain Rostron and Dr McGhee of the Carpathia., but it is unlikely that Mrs Thayer shares with either man her knowledge of Ismay’s current state of mind. She gives the doctor a gold cigarette case and Mrs Astor presents Rostron with a gold watch. The following day, the Captain and the doctor accompany Mrs Thayer back to her home in Philadelphia, where she holds a dinner for them and includes amongst the guests several other Titanic widows. Mrs Thayer belongs to a community of grief.

  In London, the British Board of Trade inquiry into the wreck has been in progress since 2 May, but Ismay does not make his first appearance on the witness stand until 5 June. He follows the proceedings in the press, but does not mention the inquiry to Mrs Thayer until his ordeal is over. His next letter is written on 18 June, when he is staying at his brother’s Scottish hunting lodge. ‘Of course I could not misunderstand anything you write,’ he reassures her. ‘You must never think of such a thing and I hope you will always write me exactly as you feel.’ He hopes she is taking an ‘interest in matters’ and admits he has ‘been very depressed lately’. He has ‘lost all desire for living’ and sees ‘no future’ for himself. He says that he is sorry that she was ‘asked to give evidence’ to the Senate inquiry and regrets that ‘it must have been very trying’. In her affidavit, Mrs Thayer had described ‘rowing continuously for nearly five hours’.

  Ismay has been in Scotland for ten days now. ‘It is the wildest place you can imagine and you never see a soul. I spend my time fishing and walking and am not tempted to do any work. I could not do so if I wished to. The doctor tells me the strain I have been through has affected my heart and it will be a long time until it recovers. Any ambitions I had are entirely gone and my life’s work is ruined.’ He speaks of the loss of his future ambitions, but he had no future ambitions; Ismay had planned to retire the following year. He tells Mrs Thayer that ‘I can never again take any interest in business and I never want to see a ship again, and I loved them so and took such an interest in the captains and the officers. What an ending to my life. Perhaps I was too proud of the ships and this is my punishment. If so it is a heavy one.’ He is sinking into himself; he has reduced the enormity of the disaster to a personal tragedy, a blight on the quality of his life. The only other life it has affected is Mrs Thayer’s, but her pain is nothing compared to his. She is not hiding out in a hunting lodge in Scotland; she can at least show her lovely sad face to the world; she is not being blamed for the whole thing. He will send her a photograph of himself as she requests, but he dislikes being photographed and has only one picture which was taken a few years ago. She is in his ‘thoughts’ and he invites her to ‘come to see us’ when she is next in England; ‘It would be such a pleasure’. He closes by apologising for having ‘bored’ her with ‘such a long letter but it is the next best thing to talking to you’, and repeats that he is certain they will meet again.

  During his stay in Scotland, Ismay receives a nervous letter from his son Tom, who at seventeen is the same age as Jack Thayer. ‘I very much hope that the worst is over now, and that you will never again be misjudged and your words misinterpreted,’ Tom writes to the man who rejected him when he was left crippled by polio. He also hopes that while his father is in Scotland, he will ‘not be recognised’ or ‘worried by any anonymous communications… I know this letter is very badly expressed, but I hope you will realise the spirit in which it is written is none the less sincere for that.’

  Ismay now hears about an isolated house by the sea in Galway, on the west coast of Ireland. It is wild, has superb salmon fishing, and is on the market. He buys it, sight unseen: Ireland, where the Titanic was born, will be his future.

  Ismay wanted to make a second statement to the press in which he could explain, in his own words, his behaviour on the Titanic. ‘I don’t think the portion of the public whose opinion we value,’ Harold Sanderson carefully advised him, ‘requires any further instruction as to your views or the merits of your action. The subject is dying and no longer interests them and I would leave it alone.’ Prevented from talking about the disaster both in private and now in public, Ismay told Sanderson that ‘I am afraid we look at the position from entirely different points of view; you have not been attacked, whereas I have, so you can easily afford to sit still and do nothing.’6 Ismay had never been good at doing nothing.

  The report of the British Board of Trade inquiry was published on 30 July, after which Franklin came over to England on White Star business. He spent some time with Ismay and returned to New York on the Olympic, where he wrote thanking him for his ‘frank and generous hospitality… you have always been most courteous and kind to me, and it was always a great pleasure and honour for me to serve under you’. Because he has never before travelled on the Olymp
ic, Franklin ‘had no idea what a splendid, comfortable and marvellous steamer she is, but all the time I cannot help thinking of your good self — the man that had the nerve and ability to order and plan her, and then of what happened, and it all seems too cruel, but I suppose there was some good reason for it’. Franklin, who has only now been told that Harold Sanderson is to take over the presidency of the IMM, ‘feels hurt’ that no one informed him of the secret arrangement. He understands that ‘recent developments’ have made it ‘clear’ he will never be promoted to the position of president himself, and feels ‘a little blue about my future’. He closes by saying that Ismay’s ‘position regarding the Titanic is improving every day’, and that he has ‘absolutely nothing to reproach [himself] with. You were saved for some good purpose and must take advantage of it.’7

  In August, Ismay writes again to Marian Thayer. Still unable to face work, he has been shooting in Yorkshire for three weeks and is about to return there. ‘I love it so. The heather and grass.’ But despite the isolation, he has not been happy. ‘I always have the memory of that awful time before and cannot think of anything properly. How I wish the hands of the clock could be put back. Think of all our ambitions ended — at least mine are — and all one’s work ruined.’