My Prince Eddy error

F.G.O. STUART Enlarge Image

RMS Titanic departing Southampton on April 10, 1912

Talk about re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

For years, it's been an article of faith among Brandon residents that the original furnishings for the Prince Edward Hotel had gone down on the Titanic.

It was an easy story to believe — the Titanic was easily the biggest news story of the year, and would have lodged in peoples heads right beside the biggest local news of 1912, the gala opening of the Prince Eddy.

I've heard variations that the furniture was made in England, made in Ireland, or even — recently — that the Prince Edward was actually the beneficiary of furniture that had been intended FOR the Titanic.

But I just couldn't find an original source for any of it.

For my ongoing history of the Prince Edward Hotel special feature (the hotel would have turned 100 this month) I've done countless hours of research about the history of the Prince Edward Hotel, and I've been privileged to go through early editions of the Brandon Sun from the 1910s.

Through all my research, though I found plenty of articles about the construction of the hotel, and plenty of articles about the Titanic disaster (Brandon residents were horrified, and pitched in a ton of charity donations), I couldn't find anything that linked the two.

In fact, the earliest reference I could find was a Brandon Sun column from 1975 — the year the 'Eddy closed — mentioning the connection.

There was no source for that anecdote, which was presented as fact, and none of my research had turned up a contemporary connection.

Plus, the circumstantial evidence seemed to be against it. The hotel had originally been due to open in January 1912 — anything shipped on the Titanic would have arrived too late. Even had the furniture been shipped over on the Titanic, it would have arrived in New York in mid-April — and the hotel needed it for its opening just six week later.

Enough time for stevedores to unload the furnishings, to ship them from New York to Brandon, and for them to be installed and set up? Maybe — but it would be tight.

Plus, and I considered this the nail in the coffin of the Titanic rumour, the owner of the Prince Eddy, the Canadian Northern Railway, was in the trans-Atlantic shipping business itself, with two steamers making regular crossings. Why wouldn't the company have used their own ships?

Triumphantly, I figured that the balance of probablities was against the Titanic connection, and wrote it up as an urban legend.

But insert something about needles, something about haystacks.

Because today, checking a fact for this Saturday's feature about the eventual demise of the Prince Edward Hotel, I came across this two-page feature from the Brandon Sun's 75th anniversary edition, in 1957.

(Click here for a much larger, more-legible version. This copy is from the Daly House Museum.)

This article contains a lot of neat details from the opening of the hotel that don't appear in accounts from 1912. They add new details about the fashion worn by ladies of the time, plus details about the official ribbon-cutton that opened the building, and even the songs played by the band ("Casey Jones" and Irving Berlin's "Easter Parade").

They had the ring of truth.

So, when I noticed that here, too, they mention that the original furnishings for the hotel had gone down on the Titanic, I sat up and took notice.

This was a reference nearly 20 years earlier than the previous earliest one I had found.

The reference, here, is in this lengthy paragraph:

Opinion was unanimous that the second floor Music Room (now designated as 121) was the latest word in elegance. The original furnishing ordered from abroad had gone down with the Titanic in the horror of that disaster three months before. The replacements were magnificent. Panelled in pale gold damask satin with matching draperies, the focal point was an Adams Fireplace in white. The furnishings were Louise Seize in gold velvet. A grand piano lent the final soigne note. Young ladies fresh from eastern finishing schools ere thrust upon the bench to prove publicly their acquired graces. Half a Chopin nocturne or a recognizable bar or two by Carrie Jacobs Bond would satisfy.

That, alone, wasn't enough to satisfy me that I had been in error. After all, the hotel was 45 years old  plenty of time for an urban legend to take root. But it was a much earlier reference than I had ever seen before, and it sent me hunting some more.

And what to my wondering eyes did appear? But this article, from the Brandon Daily Sun on April 24, 1912:

Note that this article doesn't quite match with the information from 1957 — the furnishings reference here are for the dining room, not the Music Room, and it's apparently chairs only, not "all the furnishings".

But still, it's enough to make my thesis — that there was no connection, except through civic vanity — completely, utterly wrong.

So, mea culpa.

I'm sorry to have impugned the historial skills of people who, in 1975 and 1982, wrote of the lost furnishings. I was too stingy to give them credit without them citing a source.

Well, now I've found that source, and I apologize.

So, how did I miss it?

The short answer is, I don't know. The article appears right in the centre of the front page from that day (although it's just one of many smaller headlines). And I managed to find Prince-Edward-related articles from elsewhere that month.

I must have simply missed it.

It's maddening, because I spent hours and hours looking specifically FOR a connection between the two. I did extensive searches through the Manitobia.ca archives, and yet didn't find it.

Perhaps it's because, by 1912, the hotel had alredy been named, and it was commonly called the "Prince Edward." Earlier that decade, references to "the CNR hotel" or "the new CN railway hotel" were common, but by April 1912, it was mostly referred to as the "Prince Edward." I must have missed the "CNR " connection while I was looking for the "Prince Edward" one.

Anyway, sad as I am that I didn't manange to uncover this connection before that first section went to print, I'm glad that I did manage to find out the real truth, and have the opportunity to present it here.

Titanic myth: Confirmed.