With the looming 100th Anniversary of the sinking of the Cunard passenger liner Lusitania by a German U-Boat beginning to trend in the media, the emergence of this item in an auction box lot I recently purchased seemed interestingly timed – A 1912 Roycroft first edition of Alice Hubbard’s “Myth In Marriage”, signed within the front endpapers by Elbert Hubbard.
Elbert Hubbard, – well-known writer, iconoclast, and founder of the Roycroft artist community and the associated Roycroft Press in East Aurora, NY – was a frequent traveler and, as one of the better-known intellectuals of the late 19th and early 20th century, was connected to many of the social and intellectual elites of the day. When the Titanic sank in 1912, a number of friends and acquaintances of his were aboard, and he was so moved and distraught by the tragedy that he wrote what became a well-known essay about the disaster, singling out in particular the story of Ida & Isador Strauss – Ida, when confronted with the option of taking a seat in a lifeboat ahead of male passengers, chose instead to stay onboard and together with her husband Isador, and they both were ultimately lost. Hubbard wrote of them, “Mr. and Mrs. Straus, I envy you that legacy of love and loyalty left to your children and grandchildren. The calm courage that was yours all your long and useful career was your possession in death. You knew how to do three great things—you knew how to live, how to love and how to die.”
Hubbard and his wife Alice found themselves on the Lusitania in May of 1915, on their way to Europe where Elbert hoped to cover WWI as a journalist for his own publications, when they found themselves in the line of fire on May 7th. When faced with the demise of the ship, Elbert and Alice, perhaps inspired by the Strausses, reportedly passed up opportunities of lifeboats and vests and went together into a cabin and shut the door to go down with the ship rather than be parted. In fact, Elbert had stated to a journalist earlier in the trip that this is what they would do, should the ship be torpedoed, and they held true to his word.
Alice was a noted feminist and suffragist, and the book is a treatise on economic equality in marriage, but the general subject matter, along with his signature, in her book, published by his press, along with the backstory makes for a poignant and unusual piece.
