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Show FALL 2013 UHQ pp 304-385_UHQ Stories/pp.4-68 9/16/13 1:25 PM Page 339 Russell also had left the ship, the “Nabobs of the Times” took Marconi to a midnight dinner. Meanwhile, Russell sat down to his typewriter, both to tell Harold Bride’s tale and to recount how Marconi had come to visit Bride onboard the ship.45 As Russell later described, he was “on the fourth page of my story about the wireless boy. I saw that the ribbon was ‘going wrong’ and spreading ink about, and became aware that tears were Harold Bride, being carried up a falling on the paper in gobs as big as those ship’s ramp, 1912. Bride’s shed by the old [police] sergeant” who guided description, written by Russell, is Russell and Marconi through the crowds. He likely the best-known eyewitness pondered how he would have knelt “or at account of the Titanic disaster. least should have bowed” if Marconi were still with him. Instead, Russell “turned back to my typewriter. They say Literature is Truth touched by Emotion. I have written steadily for twenty years or more. If ever I wrote Literature, that was the night.”46 Yet Russell’s accomplishment was not without controversy. According to him, the senator who later would lead the Senate’s investigation into the tragedy of the Titanic was reportedly “furious” that Marconi and a Times reporter had boarded the ship “against all orders.”47 As part of its inquiry into the accident, Congress summoned Bride, Marconi, and other company representatives. Other newspapers claimed that the Marconi Wireless Company made an exclusive agreement with the Times for the story of the wireless operators. Harold Bride was accused of holding back information from the President of the United States about Major Butt, among other things, in order to profit from telling his experiences. Bride testified for hours before a congressional committee, acknowledging that he had received $1,000 from the New York Times the next morning for his story.48 The committee may have summoned Russell to Washington, 45 [Russell], “Marconi Pays Visit,” April 19, 1912. In the same issue that Russell’s retelling of Bride’s story appeared, the Times published an account by Russell of his visit with Marconi to Bride on the Carpathia. Russell, unpublished manuscript on visit with Harold Bride, 9, Russell Papers. 47 Russell, unpublished manuscript on his visit with Harold Bride, 9, Russell Papers. The senator who chaired the Senate’s investigation was William A. Smith of Michigan. 48 U.S. Senate, Committee on Commerce, “Titanic” Disaster, 133–39, 896–907. 46 339 LIBrAry OF CONGrESS hArOLD BrIDE INTErVIEW |
