Sarah Flower Adams | Armstrong Browning Library & Museum

By Melinda Creech
Graduate Assistant, Armstrong Browning Library

The Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, more commonly known as the White Star Line, was a prominent British shipping company. Founded in 1845, The White Star Line, operated a fleet of clipper ships that sailed between Britain, Australia, and America. The ill-fated Titanic was perhaps their most famous ship. The Armstrong Browning Library has a few connections to the Titanic. One connection relates to a set of postcards that disappeared with the Titanic and another relates to the author of the hymn, “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” the song that was purportedly playing as the Titanic sank. The Armstrong Browning Library’s collection includes a letter with the White Star logo in its heading and several letters written on board ships or while individuals were preparing to board ships. The letters, written between 1841 and 1912, are lines from people who were passengers on SS (Steamer Ships), RMS (Royal Mail Steamers), or HMS (Her Majesty’s Ship). It is interesting to note that one of the first purposes of steamers crossing the Atlantic was to deliver the mail. These lines, written from steamer ships, may shed some light on the adventure and danger presented by steamer travel in the late nineteenth century.

This post, although not directly related to the steamers, draws a connection between the author of “Nearer My God to Thee,” the song reported to have been played on the sinking Titanic, and the Armstrong Browning Library’s collection.

Postcard of “Nearer my God to Thee and the Titanic

It was purported by several passengers, including Mrs. Vera Gillespie Dick (1894-1973), that “Nearer my God to Thee” was the song that the band was playing as the Titanic sank. Able to board a lifeboat, Mrs. Dick later reported

Even in Canada, where we have such clear nights . . . I have never seen such a clear sky. The stars were very bright and we could see the Titanic plainly, like a great hotel on the water. Floor after floor of the lights went out as we watched. It was horrible, horrible. I can’t bear to think about it. From the distance , as we rowed away, we could hear the band playing ‘Nearer , My God To Thee.’

Logan, 238

The bandleader on the Titanic, Wallace Hartley (1879-1912), was reported to have said to a friend that if he were on a sinking ship, “Nearer, My God, to Thee” would be one of the songs he would play (Barczewski, Stephanie. Titanic: A Night Remembered. Bloomsbury Academic, 2006, 132). There are, of course, arguments against the “Near my God to Thee” story, and it is likely that the tune, which might have been either Horbury or Propior Deo, was not the one that we recognize today, written my Lewis Carey.

Image of Sarah Flower Adams

However, the words, based on the story of Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28:11–12, were written by Sarah Flower Adams in November of 1840

Sarah Flower Adams.”Nearer My God To Thee” from Conway, Moncure Daniel. Centenary History of the South Place Society:Based on Four Discourses given in the Chapel in May and June, 1893. London, 1894.

and first published in Hymns and Anthems by W. J. Fox, 1841. Sarah Flower Adam had eleven hymns published in the book, and “Nearer My God to Thee” is No. 85.

“Nearer My God to Thee” in Hymns and Anthems by W. J. Fox, 1841. Courtesy of the New York Public Library.

Robert Browning was a childhood friend of Sarah and her sister Eliza. They often discussed religion. Robert Browning writes in a letter to Eliza, Sarah’s sister, circa 1841, that “all this music I shall be so thoroughly gratified to hear,” referring to the Hymns and Anthems. Robert Browning himself had a hymn in the book, No. 146, based on his poem Paracelsus:

I stoop
into a dark tremendous sea of cloud,
It is but for a time ; I press God’s lamp
Close to my breast ; its splendour, soon or late,
Will pierce the gloom : I shall emerge one day

The Armstrong Browning Library has a letter written by Sarah Flower when she was twenty-two years old and Robert Browning was fourteen.

Sarah Flower to William Johnson Fox, 31 May 1827.

The very large letter written on one sheet of paper begins: “What in the name of fortune is the girl going to do with this tremendous sheet of paper?” She then proceeds to fill the entire sheet with words, front and back. In the letter Sarah says: “I wonder what I am to be when I go into that other state, —whatever it is? I have often fixed on a bird, a blossom, a star, it all depends on my mood—.” This resonates with the words she later wrote in her hymn, “Nearer, My God, to Thee”—

Or if on joyful wing, cleaving the sky,
Sun, moon, and stars forgot, upwards I fly,

This letter is important to the Armstrong Browning Library, because it also contains Sarah’s transcript of two of Robert Browning’s earliest poems.

Sources:

Marshall, Logan. The Tragic Story of the Empress of Ireland: An Authentic Account of the Most Horrible Disaster in Canadian History Constructed from the Real Facts Obtained from Those on Board Who Survived and Other Great Sea Disasters. John C. Winston Company, 1914.

Conway, Moncure Daniel. Centenary History of the South Place Society:Based on Four Discourses given in the Chapel in May and June, 1893. London, 1894.

Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee!
E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me;
Still all my song shall be nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee!

Though like the wanderer, the sun gone down,
Darkness be over me, my rest a stone;
Yet in my dreams I’d be nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee!

There let the way appear steps unto heav’n;
All that Thou sendest me in mercy giv’n;
Angels to beckon me nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee!

Then with my waking thoughts bright with Thy praise,
Out of my stony griefs Bethel I’ll raise;
So by my woes to be nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee!

Or if on joyful wing, cleaving the sky,
Sun, moon, and stars forgot, upwards I fly,
Still all my song shall be, nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee!

Sarah Flower Adams
“Nearer My God to Thee”
Hymns and Anthems, compiled by William Johnson Fox
London: Charles Fox (1841)

Virginia Blain, professor in English at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, editor of the Feminist Companion to Literature, and editor of the new Dictionary of National Biography, suggested to me that Sarah Flower Adams was best known for her composition of “Nearer My God to Thee.” The song became famous for allegedly being played by the musicians of the Titanic as it sank. The song has also traditionally been played at the funerals of American presidents. Less well known about the hymn, probably because all the verses are seldom sung, is the fact that the song is based on the story of Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28: 10-28. In the story Jacob, traveling to his homeland to look for a wife, retires for the evening with a stone for a pillow and dreams of angels ascending and descending a ladder to heaven. The Lord stood at the top pronouncing a blessing on him and his descendants and promised to be with him always.

Sarah Flower Adams was born in Essex, England, the daughter of Benjamin Flower, a radical journalist and political writer. Sarah and her sister Eliza, a composer, were close friends of Robert Browning and corresponded with him frequently. Eliza is said to have been the inspiration for Robert Browning’s Pauline (1833). After her father’s death, Sarah contracted tuberculosis. Recuperating on the Isle of Wight, she composed her first long poem, “The Royal Progress.” Sarah wrote poems on social and political subjects, a religious catechism for children, dramatic poems, and even attempted a career as an actress. In 1834 she married William Adams, a civil engineer. Her greatest achievements, however, were literary rather than dramatic. Adams’ longest work, Vivia Perpetua: A Dramatic Poem (1841), recounts the third century martyrdom of Vivia Perpetua. Of course, Adams is best remembered for her hymns. Blain suggests those “simple expressions of devotional feeling at once pure and passionate, can hardly be surpassed.”

The Armstrong Browning Library owns a copy of Vivia Perpetua: A Dramatic Poem (1841), inscribed by the author, “Celina Flower. With love from The Author – 1841.” The ABL also owns a very important letter written by Sarah Flower Adams to William Johnson Fox. After the death of her father, Sarah lived with the Fox family and contributed to the Monthly Repository, a magazine Fox was managing at the time. In this letter, written to Fox on May 31, 1827, Sarah Flower begins by bemoaning the degradation of the “immense hot house” of London and reminiscing about her recent glorious stay in the country. She then introduces Fox to the juvenile poetry of “the boy” Robert Browning, quoting two of his poems, “The First Born of Egypt” and “The Dance of Death.” This letter is significant because Browning eventually destroyed the manuscripts of his entire first volume of poems, Incondita, and these two poems transcribed by Sarah Flower are all that remain. The last two pages of the letter contain the transcription of Robert Browning’s poems.

May 31, 1827
Sarah Flower to William Johnson Fox
courtesy of the Armstrong Browning Library

Melinda Creech

Armstrong Browning Library & Museum

A blog that explores the work of Robert & Elizabeth Browning and 19th-century Victorian literature and culture

Tag Archives: Sarah Flower Adams

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