No act of friendship is so difficult as the letter of condolence upon the loss of one who is near and dear. Strive as we may to avoid vapid conventionality, we find ourselves drifting into reflections upon the course of nature, the cessation of suffering, the worse that might have been, and such offers of comfort to others which we are conscious would be of little help to ourselves. In writing to you and your wife on the sorrow of two worlds, which has fallen so heavily upon your home and family, I feel no such difficulty. There is no temptation to be conventional, but it is hard to express in words the very real consolation which will long be cherished by the wide circle of those now bitterly deploring the early death of one who was clearly marked out for a great career in the chief doing part of Irish life.
Of the worth of your son I need not speak to you—nothing I could say of his character or capacity could add to your pride in him. But you ought to know that we all feel how entirely to his own merits was due the extraordinary rapidity of his rise and the acknowledged certainty of his leadership in what Ulster stands for before the world. When I first saw him in the shipyard he was in a humble position, enjoying no advantage on account of your relationship to one of his employers. Even then, as on many subsequent occasions, I learned, or heard from my Irish fellow-workers, that this splendid son of yours had the best kind of public spirit—that which made you and Sinclair save the Recess Committee at its crisis.
It may be that the story of your poor boy’s death will never be told, but I seem to see it all. I have just come off the sister ship, whose captain was a personal friend, as was the old doctor who went with him to the Titanic. I have been often in the fog among the icebergs. I have heard, in over sixty voyages, many of those awful tales of the sea. I know enough to be aware that your son might easily have saved himself on grounds of public duty none could gainsay. What better witness could be found to tell the millions who would want and had a right to know why the great ship failed, and how her successors could be made, as she was believed to be, unsinkable? None of his breed could listen to such promptings of the lower self when the call came to show to what height the real man in him could rise. I think of him displaying the very highest quality of courage—the true heroism—without any of the stimulants which the glamour and prizes of battle supply—doing all he could for the women and children—and then going grimly and silently to his glorious grave.
So there is a bright side to the picture which you of his blood and his widow must try to share with his and your friends—with the thousands who will treasure his memory. It will help you in your bereavement, and that is why I intrude upon your sorrow with a longer letter than would suffice to tender to you and Mrs. Andrews and to all your family circle a tribute of heartfelt sympathy.
Pray accept this as coming not only from myself but also from those intimately associated with me in the Irish work which brought me, among other blessings, the friendship of men like yourself.
Believe me,
Yours always,
HORACE PLUNKETT.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In Belfast a memorial to Thomas Andrews and the other Belfast men who died in the wreck has been generously subscribed to by the citizens, and by the Queen’s Island workers. He is also included amongst those to whom a similar memorial is to be erected in Southampton. The Reform Club in Belfast is honouring his memory with a tablet.
[2] It is interesting to note the circumstances which brought these two men together. Mr. Adams, who is now Professor of Political Theory and Institutions at Oxford, was then Superintendent of Statistics and Intelligence in the Irish Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction. He went to Andrews as the man most likely to give him reliable information and sound opinions upon certain industrial questions of interest to the Department. A peculiar value attaches to the high regard in which Thomas Andrews was held by this distinguished political and economic thinker.
[3] Report of Mersey Commission, pp. 61 and 71.