A STEINWAY COMES TO ST. JAMES

The year was 1855. Millard Fillmore was president. Walt Whitman published “Leaves of Grass.” Also, in 1855, Dr. William Hermes left Germany for a second time: destination both times, Texas. That year a small committee of La Grange citizens applied for parish status and received official acceptance from the Texas Episcopal Diocese and St. James’ Episcopal was born. In 1853, just two years before, German Heinrich Steinweg established a piano factory in Manhattan. One hundred and sixty-eight years later, a Hermes Steinway piano would leave its home in the Hermes mansion on North Main and wind its way across the city to its new home in the little red-on-yellow church across from the HE- B on Monroe Street.

Why is this significant? Those who know the magnificence of a Steinway & Sons grand … know. For those who don’t, take it from Texan Van Cliburn: “The Steinway piano––with its beauty and power––is the perfect medium for expressing the performer’s art, drama and poetry.” Or maybe the great Emanuel Ax: “When one plays a Steinway, there is a warmth and nobility in the sound that is unequalled by any other instrument.” Or even the late, great jazz pianist Billy Taylor: “Steinway is the finest piano ever made.”

The path to the Model S Steinway––hand made in December of 1962 in their New York factory, not their Hamburg, Germany one – to its brand – new home is circuitous. It starts with the German wave of Texas land grants to German citizens in mid-19th century. William Hermes came to colonize and farm near Industry in the 1840s. He soon found the hardscrabble life did not suit him, so he returned to Germany, got his pharmacology degree, and then returned to Texas in 1855, this time to La Grange. He opened his store, the Hermes Pharmacy, in partnership with Dr. Eck soon thereafter.

He and many other German transports left for Mexico and South America to avoid the Civil War, a fight they had no dog in, as they say. After the war, he returned and relaunched Hermes Pharmacy along with many other endeavors.

One of his sons, William, Jr., married Augusta Pauline Willenberg in 1892. This same year St. James’ received its 700-pound bell from the Meneely Bell Company of Troy, New York. Its cost: $700. William, Sr.’s wedding gift to his son andAugusta was the eight-room Hermes House he had built next to his own. (No, rumor mill, those cabins behind the Hermes House are decidedly NOT slave quarters. They were built in 1907, after all. They were meant to be sharecropper cabins or rental units. Of the 37 planned only seven were finished.)

William, Jr.’s son, Gilbert, had a daughter he named Clara Augusta Hermes. This is where the piano story starts.

Clara was quite a historian of the Fayette County area and an accomplished pianist and organist. In 1991 Clara bought an organ and the beautiful Steinway from the estate of Ruth Lewis who was a popular piano teacher in Austin. Her New York-made Steinway is of a group known for their complexity and richness.

One of Clara’s daughters, Karen Hermes Dokos, tells how she and her four sisters would lie in bed upstairs night after night listening to their mom play on the Steinway. One might be excused for feeling somehow Clara’s soul is imprinted on that instrument.

Clara passed away in 2008 at the age of 77. Her daughter Karen played the Steinway but only when visiting the area: she resided in Houston most of the time her mom owned the instrument. For the most part, the Steinway was mute.

The now St. James’ piano–– we could call her the Spirit of Clara––was welcomed and blessed last Sunday by the ninth Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas Andy Doyle. The church’s superb pianist and organist, Mary Ann Hatfield played a masterful prelude, When in Our Music God is Glorified. The sound was glorious, and the reception was thunderous and emotional.

And thus, a new era was ushered in.

Psst, there is talk of announcing a new Steinway piano concert series coming to St. James’ soon. Stay tuned.