Titanic
tale of violin playing as the ship went down - and sold yesterday for
£1,185,000
Wallace Hartley 'struck
up Nearer My God To Thee to calm passengers'
· Was
inscribed 'For Wallace on the occasion of our engagement from Maria'
· She
paid £40 for the instrument in 1910, the equivalent of £2,630 today
· Sold
at aucti
on in Wiltshire for more than £ m to British Titanic 'connoisseur'
Even amid the tumult, his last words are said to have resounded
clearly. 'Gentlemen, I bid you farewell.'
With that, Wallace
Hartley, bandleader of the Titanic, was washed away - with his precious violin,
in its case, strapped to his waist.
Folklore has it that,
moments earlier, in an incredible act of stoicism, he struck up the hymn Nearer
My God To Thee to calm passengers as the doomed liner slid beneath the icy
waters of the North Atlantic.
Perhaps the story has
been embellished a little over the years since. Certainly it is one of the most
memorable scenes from the James Cameron's 1997 film Titanic.
Yesterday, Mr Hartley's story reached its extraordinary conclusion
in the sleepy Wiltshire town of Devizes. There, his precious violin - which
memorabilia hunters regarded as something of a Holy Grail and assumed had been
lost forever - was sold at auction for more than £1 million to a British Titanic 'connoisseur'.
Hartley and his seven
fellow band members all died in the tragedy in 1912. Their bodies were
recovered two weeks later.
A gift from Hartley's
fiancee Maria Robinson, the violin was inscribed 'For WALLACE on the occasion
of our engagement from MARIA'.
Wallace was the son of a humble Lancashire choirmaster but Miss
Robinson, 32, was a woman 'of private means' - the daughter of a wealthy cloth
manufacturer. She paid around £40 for the violin in 1910, the equivalent of
£2,630 today.
The fate of Hartley's violin
has always been a mystery to Titanic scholars. The bodies of the band leader
and two other musicians were pulled from the water by a search crew from the CS
Mackay-Bennett and taken to Nova Scotia, Canada.
Violinist John Law Hume
from Dumfries in Scotland and bass player John Frederick Preston Clarke
from Liverpool were laid to rest in Halifax but Hartley's body was
repatriated to England and buried at Colne, Lancashire, the town
where he was born and raised.
Newspapers at the time reported that Hartley was found fully
dressed with his violin strapped to his chest. However, when the effects of
Body 224 were itemised by The Office of the Provincial Secretary in Nova
Scotia, there was no mention of it.
Other than his clothes
and spare change, he had only a ring, a pen, a silver matchbox, a gold cigar
holder, a watch and chain, a collar stud, a pair of scissors and two pieces of
correspondence. It was not among the possessions handed back to his father
Albion Hartley, who collected the body from the ship The Arabic at
Liverpool docks. The assumption has long been that the instrument was spirited
away by someone involved in collecting the corpses.
So when the violin
re-emerged in 2006 - it was found in an attic in North Yorkshire - its
rediscovery prompted feverish debate over its authenticity.
Titanic specialist
auctioneers Henry Aldridge & Son insist that nearly seven subsequent
years of research and tests have proved it to be the genuine article.
For while the violin was
never included on any official inventory, it had indeed been recovered. This
was because Maria, devastated at Wallace's death, wrote to the authorities
explaining its sentimental importance and asking for it to be sent directly
back to her.
The draft of her
subsequent thank-you letter to the authorities in Maria Robinson's diary reads:
'I would be most grateful if you could convey my heartfelt thanks to all
who have made possible the return of my late fiance's violin.
'May I take this
opportunity to express my appreciation to you personally for your
gracious intervention on my behalf.'
Steve Turner, author of
The Band That Played On, which tells the story of 33-year-old Hartley and the
Titanic's band said: 'The story behind the violin involves love as it was a
gift from his fiancee. And it of course symbolises bravery and religion.
He added: 'It sums up
all that you would like to believe from the tragedy. You can't imagine anything
more iconic.'
He added: 'Because the
violin was a gift from Maria to Wallace on their engagement, it makes sense
that she was the rightful heir rather than Hartley's parents. I wonder whether
Hartley clung on to it so tightly because it was a gift from his wife-to-be.
Otherwise he might just have let it go.'
The violin remained
Maria's most treasured possession and she never married. On her death in 1939,
it was passed to her sister Margaret Robinson who in turn donated it to the
Salvation Army at Bridlington, East Yorkshire.
'Then it was passed to a
Salvation Army music teacher who played the violin. She passed it to one of her
pupils called Eve, who held on to it until she died in the 1980s,' said Mr
Turner. 'When her son, a lecturer, came to clear out her loft he fondly
remembered playing it as a youth and put it in his own attic.'
There it remained until
2006 when, unaware of its provenance, he began to wonder whether 'it might be
worth something' and asked an expert to 'cast an eye over it'.
By the time the experts
arrived at his modest three-bedroom bunglaow, he had already worked out that it
was 'Titanic related' and 'might be of interest'.
But in an yet another
twist it emerged yesterday that the lecturer, who has not being named, died two
months ago. 'His family has become the main beneficiary,' said Mr Turner. 'He
wanted a lot of the money to go to charity.
'It was never about the
money with him, though, as he would have sold it years ago.
In yesterday's auction,
the violin had a reserve price of between £200,000 and £300,000 and was
expected to reach as much as £400,000. About 200 people packed out the sale
room in the hope of capturing a piece of history. Many stood at the back
of the room as there were not enough chairs.
Within a couple of
minutes, bidding had broken £100,000 and soon passed the £220,000 world record
for Titanic memorabilia as the competition between four telephone bidders
hotted up. There were gasps from the audience as the price reached £350,000 and
then raced upwards to £600,000.
The room fell silent when
bidding hit £750,000.
The violin eventually
sold for £900,000 (£1,185,000 once commission and VAT were added) after fierce
bidding between two telephone bidders. Selling the violin had taken just ten
minutes.
Auctioneer Andrew
Aldridge said the 'ecstatic' new owner was British. 'He is a very
knowledgeable Titanic connoisseur.
'He will enjoy it and
probably put it on public display in the future. He's a very successful
individual.'
The violin has been on
exhibition since May at Titanic Branson and Titanic Pigeon Forge in the United
States where more than 315,000 viewed it and later at Titanic Belfast, the
award-winning visitor attraction in Northern Ireland.
