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passagers dans le grand salon, et l’arrivée d’un jeune homme enjoué,
qui lui offrit un morceau de glace, et expliqua gaiement qu’ils avaient
heurté un iceberg. Peu après, la gîte s’aggrava, et on sut par le bruit
que l’on préparait des canots de sauvetage…
Il n’y avait guère de passagers sur le pont, mais un fourmillement
d’hommes noirs et maigres, des chauffeurs-mécaniciens qui, eux,
savaient que le navire coulait. Depuis le salon, montait lentement
une procession silencieuse de passagers, tous équipés de bouées de
sauvetage, leur dernière ressource en mer. « Some were over women’s
evening gowns, some over men’s bath-robes, and above each was a
pale face of courage. The crowd looked strangely like dancers in a
fancy-dress ball. The Dance of Death to be the next number. “Is this
Captain’s orders?” asked Woolman. “Yes, Captain’s orders.” Perhaps
the last act of my steward’s life was to equip us three with life-belts »…
(« Quelques-unes [des bouées] étaient mises sur des robes de soirée,
d’autres sur des peignoirs d’hommes, et au-dessus de chacune était
un pâle visage de courage. La foule ressemblait étrangement à des
danseurs à un bal costumé. La Danse macabre devait être le prochain
numéro. “Est-ce par ordre du capitaine, demanda Woolman. – Oui,
par ordre du capitaine”. Le dernier geste dans la vie de mon steward,
peut-être, fut de nous équiper tous les trois de bouées »). Elle lui
confia un flacon en argent, et une miniature de sa mère, malgré ses
protestations ; ils ne devaient plus se revoir.
Elle rend hommage aux chauffeurs-mécaniciens, que le capitaine, d’un
mot sec, renvoya en bas :
« Complete acceptance, sacrifice unresented »
(« Acceptation totale, sacrifice sans rancune »). Elle évoque les appels
au secours par télégraphe et fusée, et la hâte que mettait la
Carpathia
à rejoindre l
e Titanic
et son iceberg,
« the third one of the trio which
had sailed under Fate’s sealed orders. She hastened to the terrible
tryst, her people all aware of their errand, while deluded ones on the
Titanic, went to bed in ignorance » (« la troisième du t
rio qui voguait
par ordre scellé du Destin. Elle se hâtait vers le terrible rendez-vous,
ses gens tous conscients de leur tâche, alors que bernés d’illusions,
d’aucuns du Titanic se couchaient ignorants »). Elle descendit dans le
canot n° 6, dans le noir ; elle se fractura la jambe. Peu à peu d’autres
femmes la rejoignirent. Elle dit au revoir gaiement à ses compagnons,
plaisantant qu’elle boiterait sur l’Olympic, mais lorsque le canot toucha
les vagues, elle sut qu’elle avait été sauvée, sans même avoir compris que
la mort était imminente ; le navire éclairé paraissait préférable. Elle décrit
leurs efforts pour obéir à l’ordre de s’éloigner, et la lente disparition du
navire, les lumières, les unes après les autres, disparaissant dans l’eau
dans une lente et inexorable descente… Elle cite la Genèse (« L’esprit
de Dieu se mouvait au-dessus des eaux »), livre ses impressions de
leur situation, de la folie de contempler les étoiles à pareil moment, du
défilé irréel d’icebergs à proximité… Elle ne se détache pas des âmes
envolées, toutes proches, désireuses de donner de leur courage et
leur abnégation à ceux dont la journée de la vie n’est pas terminée.
La divinité de l’homme, le triomphe de l’esprit, c’est ce qu’elle voit se
mouvoir au-dessus des eaux… «
I awake on the
Carpathia
when some
ministering hand pours a glass of whisky down my throat »
(« Je me
réveille sur la Carpathia lorsque quelque main secourable verse un
verre de whisky dans ma gorge »).
Candee donna une brève interview de ses expériences au
Washington
Herald
et publia un compte-rendu détaillé de la catastrophe dans
Collier’s Weekly
[Helen Churchill Candee, « Sealed Orders », in
Collier’s
Weekly,
4 mai 1912].
[TITANIC].
C
ANDEE HELEN CHURCHILL
(1858-1949).
American author and interior decorator.
Autograph MANUSCRIPT,
The North Atlantic. TITANIC
;
40 folios, in-4 or in-8 format, in blue-green ink (trace of rust
on page 1); in English.
30 000 / 40 000 €
Exceptionnel témoignage de première main par une rescapée du
terrible naufrage du
Titanic
, paquebot réputé insubmersible, dans
la nuit du 14 au 15 avril 1912
.
After an unhappy marriage, Helen Churchill Candee supported herself
and children as a writer for popular magazines such as
Scribner’s
and
The Ladies’ Home Journal.
She initially wrote on the subjects
most familiar to her – etiquette and household management – but
soon branched into other topics such as child care, education, and
women’s rights. Helen Candee was on board the
RMS Titanic
on its
one and only sad voyage. On the memorable night of 14 April 1912,
the mighty
Titanic
rubbed against a massive iceberg and the ship
was doomed to sink in a matter of hours.
Her story was one of the sources of inspiration for James CAMERON
and his film Titanic (1997), which itself portrays the character of
Rose (albeit younger). The manuscript, perfectly legible, includes
interlinear additions for the use of typographers, as well as some
sketches and erasures.
Helen Candee was touring Europe when she got word from her
daughter when she got word from her daughter that her son Harry
had been injured in an accident. The
Titanic
was the only ship
heading immediately across the ocean to America: she booked her
passage in First Class. Candee devotes several pages to life aboard
the most luxurious liner in the world, to the amenities of the liner,
to the passengers, to the premonitory remarks of several of them…
After a last drink at the ship’s Ritz restaurant, she retired to her cabin:
“The ship’s engines thumped a harmony, and sang a melody. You
can always hear music on a ship with the engines going. I was in my
bathgown ready for a stinging hot bath. The music of the engines
was beating and singing, rhythm and harmony. Then the shock came.
Ararat’s mount with the Ark stuck fast on top of it, was the mental
image. The impact was below me. It toppled me over. We had struck
the top of a mountain in the sea, a mountain never before discovered.
It must be so. With the door of the cabin thrown open two or three
things were sinister, a silence absolute, a brilliance of light as in a
ball-room, and an utter absence of human presence”…
It was soon known that lifeboats were being prepared. There were
hardly any passengers on the deck, but a swarm of black and skinny
men, driver-mechanics who knew that the ship was sinking. From
the living room, slowly mounted a silent procession of passengers,
all equipped with lifebuoys, their last resource at sea:
“Some were over women’s evening gowns, some over men’s bath-
robes, and above each was a pale face of courage. The crowd looked
strangely like dancers in a fancy-dress ball. The Dance of Death to
be the next number. “Is this Captain’s orders?” asked Woolman.
“Yes, Captain’s orders.” Perhaps the last act of my steward’s life was
to equip us three with life-belts”… Candee pays her respects to the
mechanics that were sent back down in the ship’s hold: “Complete
acceptance, sacrifice unpresented.”
Candee speaks of the pleas for help by telegraph and distress rocket,
with the
Carpathia
rushing to save a few from the disaster, a “trio”
composed of the iceberg, the
Titanic
and the
Carpathia
: “…the third
one of the trio which had sailed under Fate’s sealed orders. She
hastened to the terrible tryst, her people all aware of their errand,
while deluded ones on the Titanic, went to bed in ignorance.”
When the Titanic started to sink, Candee was in lifeboat no. 6 and
fractured her leg while descending in the lifeboat joining other women:
“I awake on the Carpathia when some ministering hand pours a glass
of whisky down my throat.”
Candee subsequently gave a short interview about her experiences
to the
Washington Herald
and published a detailed account of the
disaster in
Collier’s Weekly
[Helen Churchill Candee, “Sealed Orders,”
in
Collier’s Weekly
, May 4, 1912].