The Band That Played On (8 page)

The former George Street Wesleyan School, Colne, where Hartley was educated.

Musically Hartley learned from his father, who had him join the choir at the Bethel Chapel, and from one of the congregation, Pickles Riley, who taught him violin. One of his school friends, Thomas Hyde, recalled music lessons at school around 1890. “We all started learning music and the violin together in the bottom classroom at George Street,” he remembered. “There would be about 20 of us and we were all about eleven or twelve years old. I don’t remember that Wallace was any different from any of us in his violin playing but he seemed to come on remarkably afterwards.” Writing to the
Huddersfield Examiner
in 1958, the old headmaster’s son, J. M. Baldwin, had a slightly different recollection of Hartley’s reputation from the same period. “He was one of my heroes,” he said, “for I knew from the talk of my elders that he was already a musician of repute, but more definitely because he possessed a bicycle, one of the earliest ‘safeties’ to be seen in Colne.”

Just as his schooling came to an end, his father was promoted to assistant superintendent at the Refuge Assurance Company in Colne. Possibly because of the increased wage, he moved to 90 Albert Road, a terraced house close to the railway station and on Colne’s main street. Albion wasn’t keen for his Wallace to become a professional musician. He wanted him to pursue something more secure. An obedient son, Wallace took his first job as a clerk at the Craven Bank that stood on a corner five minutes up the road from the Hartley home.

Wallace Hartley at eighteen, with his music teacher Pickles Riley, after receiving an award at a Methodist music festival.

90 Albert Road, Colne. Hartley’s early teenage home.

Hartley didn’t like office work. He said he found it “irksome.” His joy in life was to be playing music and he sought every opportunity to do so. He accompanied his sister Mary on the violin when she sang at local concerts. And when the manager of the bank, James Lascelles Wildman, who was a Methodist circuit preacher and the son of a Sunday school superintendent, formed the Colne Orchestral Society, he joined.

It’s not easy to build up a picture of Hartley’s character at this time because all the comments made by those who knew him were collected after he’d become a national hero. Albion thought he was “an ideal son” who “never caused his father or mother a single moment’s trouble.” A Methodist preacher, Thomas Worthington, confirmed that he was a “strong Christian”; Thomas Hyde found him “smart looking,” “fun,” and a “very nice lad”; an anonymous friend described him as “a noble manly fellow, incapable of anything mean.” The only note of discord came when Hyde added that he was “a bit what you might call ‘roughish,’ ” a description that seems at odds with all the talk of delicate fingers, artistic sensitivity, and filial obedience.

Plaque on the Albert Road house in Colne.

The former bank building where Hartley worked in Colne.

Hartley left Colne with his family in 1895 when he was seventeen. Albion’s career was still progressing and he would soon become a superintendent. They moved over the border to Yorkshire and a home at 35 Somerset Street in Huddersfield. It’s unclear where Hartley worked during his early years in the new county, but we know that he played with the Huddersfield Philharmonic Orchestra and that in the 1901 census he was able to describe his occupation as “professional musician.” Two years later he was first violinist with the Municipal Orchestra of Bridlington, a resort on the Yorkshire coast.

It was in vogue at this time in Britain to employ Austrian and German conductors because of their connection to the lands that produced Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart. The Bridlington Orchestra was no different. It had engaged the services of Sigmund Winternitz, a thirty-three-year-old musician from Vienna with a waxed mustache, whose influence on the orchestra was such that it became known as the Royal Viennese Band. The members were kitted out in dark trousers, military-style jackets, and stiff felt hats and were expected to give two daily performances at the bandstand during the week and a concert of sacred music on Sundays. In 1904 they moved indoors to the Floral Pavilion, which could hold seventeen hundred.

In 1905 Hartley’s parents moved to 48 Hillcrest Avenue in Leeds. This is likely to have been when he joined the Municipal Orchestra in Harrogate, which performed at the newly built Kursaal at least twice a day, excluding Sundays, alternating performances with a military band. Leeds became his new base. He apparently joined a local bohemian arts group called the Savage Club that met in an artist’s workshop, and certainly led the orchestra at Collinson’s Café in King Edward Street in the heart of a newly developed shopping area.

Wallace Hartley with the Bridlington Municipal Orchestra aka Royal Viennese Band (front row fourth from left). Orchestra director Sigmund Winternitz stands next to him.

The recording industry was in its infancy in the early 1900s and music was still synonymous with live performance. Children learned to play instruments not with the hope of becoming a “star” but because playing and singing were regarded as social assets. (James McCartney, born in Lancashire in 1902, told future Beatle Paul: “Learn to play the piano, son, and you’ll always get invited to parties.”) It was the age of sheet music and the pianoforte, when families would gather in living rooms to sing the latest popular songs. Collieries, mills, and factories, particularly in the north of England, formed bands and the Victorian emphasis on temperance and clean living resulted in parks, “recreation grounds,” and “pleasure gardens” furnished with often-ornate bandstands.

Teahouses and coffeehouses began as genteel rest spots where people could take light refreshments in a nonalcoholic environment. They were safe alternatives to public houses, and women, in particular, were drawn to them. During the first decade of the century, they began to offer afternoon “tea dances” and fashionable restaurants introduced dance floors. Prestigious hotels such as the Ritz and Savoy in London already had their own orchestras that would play during afternoon tea and evening drinks.

Collinson’s Café, Leeds, now a Jigsaw fashion store but with many origianl features retained.

Roof at the site of Collinson’s Café, Leeds, where Hartley played in the orchestra.

Collinson’s Café was a stylish property that opened in 1903 and would become a Leeds institution. A long narrow entrance area opened up into a large semicircle where the orchestra would have played. Above them was a balcony and above the balcony a tall glass dome. Staircases swept upward from the ground-floor level and all the windows were leaded with stained glass designs. The streaming light, colored glass, and music combined to produce an atmosphere of elegance and beauty.

Towns and cities considered their musical calendars to be indicators of sophistication, and seaside resorts used music to pull in visitors. Visitors might choose Eastbourne over Bournemouth or Southport over Blackpool simply because of the quality of music available in the hotels, bandstands, pavilions, and concert halls. Local councils would subsidize orchestras because of the value they added to their towns.