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Among the period pieces played by the salon orchestra in the film Titanic before the ship goes down is the once popular Valse Septembre (1909) by Felix Godin. It made Godin’s reputation, and he was able to trade on its success for the rest of his career. Recently the piece was given renewed currency by its inclusion in Hyperion Records’ ‘British Light Music Classics - 3’, played by the New London Orchestra conducted by Ronald Corp (Hyperion CDA 67148).
Godin never equalled the success of that waltz, though he tried often enough - most notably in similarly French titled waltzes such as Juin Charmant (1910), Valse Décembre, Valse d’Avril, Valse Ravissante and Valse Mai (1912), as well as such later examples as A True Lover’s Knot (1920) and Anticipation (1922). Godin had his own orchestra, which he conducted in the summer of 1922, for example, at the Villa Marina, Douglas, Isle of Man.
For all his French name and fashionably French titles, Felix Godin was not quite what he seemed. Nor, indeed, was his ‘wife’ Agnes Ann Godin. The name ‘Godin’ itself hid the rather more prosaic, and decidedly English, identity of Henry Albert Brown. As for Agnes Ann, letters of administration granted after Godin’s death describe her as Agnes Ann Middleton, spinster. That they never married despite a stable relationship of many years, together with the fact that Agnes Ann (born in 1880 of a Norfolk agricultural family) was much younger than he, suggests he was already married to someone else.
The age of 60 given on his death certificate implies that ‘Felix Godin’ was born in 1864 or 1865; but the name ‘Henry Albert Brown’ is too common to pinpoint a specific birth. Was he, perhaps, the Henry A. Brown, 16-year-old solicitor’s clerk, living in Newington and born in Walworth (both in north London) who is to be found in the April 1881 national census? If anyone can tell me more about the origins of ‘Felix Godin’, I’d be delighted to hear from him or her.