Everyman for Himself

National Review, Jan 27, 1997 by Jeffrey Hart

THE Titanic has been with us ever since it went down early in the morning of April 15, 1912. There is no sign that it will soon go away, and, no doubt, the disaster is worth long reflection. Now we have a novel by Beryl Bainbridge, "one of England's leading novelists," and a survey by Harvard instructor in "writing" Steven Biel of the journey of the Titanic through culture: that is, the many messages the Titanic disaster has sent to different constituencies.

We also look forward to a musical about the disaster, opening on April 10, the day the ship sailed from Southampton. Titanic fanatics, such as myself, will enjoy Miss Bainbridge's novel in the sense of meeting old friends: the scenes at Southampton, the details of the ship, the Astors, Strausses, and Guggenheims, the iceberg reports, the "juddering" when the ship scraped along the iceberg, the sinking. But this homework by Miss Bainbridge exhausts the interest of the book. (Not all good homework. She thinks the band played "Nearer My God to Thee," which it did not.) She does a good sinking scene in the calm, 28-degree sea. Otherwise her novel is worthless -- cardboard characters and oatmeal prose. As for Professor Biel, he must have a trunkful of index cards, and he catalogues almost everything that was said by way of interpreting the disaster. He appears to resent the emphasis on the chivalric behavior of the wealthy men who bit their lips and willingly died. He never shows that they did not in fact die according to the gentleman's code, so the sources of his resentment are obscure. I treasure the fringy preacher who thought God had doomed the ship because Colonel Archie Butt, President Taft's advisor, had been on a supposed secret mission to the Pope. The anti-technology people, so to speak, went overboard. The fact is that Captain Edward Smith, not quite aware of the characteristics and size of the ship, sailed at full speed, 24.5 land mph, into an ice field he had been repeatedly warned about. One response Professor Biel somehow misses is John Erskine's famous 1913 Phi Beta Kappa address, "The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent." Instead, for mysterious reasons, he chooses for his title a line from an obscure and trivial Negro ballad.