Cole Porter at Yale

ROBERT KIMBALL

In the September twilight in the fall of 1909, young men with golf bags, suitcases, hatboxes, and mandolin cases hurried from the New Haven train station to find lodging in the rooming houses that lined the York Street trolley tracks. Then upperclassmen hustled them to the intersection of College and Chapel Streets, where, linking arms, they lined up in a huge procession that was forming outside Osborn Hall. The Second Regiment Band struck up "Down the Field" and led a whirling, winding, snake-dancing torchlight parade through the city streets to the Old Campus. Chanting the Greek cheer Brek-ek-ek-coax-coax and stepping in time to "Boola" and other Yale marching songs, members of the class of 1913 arrived on campus.

The students formed a spacious semicircle in the shadow of the moon-drenched towers and witnessed the freshman-sophomore wrestling bouts. Then they were shepherded back to York Street, where they mixed it up with the sophomores in a sweating, chaotic "rush." After some mild hazing and various choruses of "Wake, Freshmen, Wake," the festivities were over, and lights went out all along York Street. Once again the strange amalgam of ritual, pageantry, and song that graced Yale before World War I had done its work, and several hundred individuals had been welded together for the first time as a class.

Cole Porter, Yale '13, settled in Garland's lodging house at 242 York Street, now the site of Davenport College, where he installed an upright piano in his single room (Porter roomed alone through most of his Yale career so that he could compose and play far into the night without disturbing a roommate) and promptly established a reputation as a fine entertainer. His classmates included W. Averell Harriman and future Yale grandees Arnold Whitridge, Sidney Lovett, and Ralph Gabriel. Porter majored in English, minored in music, studied French, and even received credit for singing in the university choir.

Porter's English courses at Yale College included English Poets of the Nineteenth Century (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, et al.), Tennyson and Browning, and Shakespeare. Porter thought Tennyson's "The Princess" had an "excellent libretto for comic opera." There is no evidence that reading Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew had any influence on Porter's future masterpiece Kiss Me, Kate.

The years 1909-13 were good years for anyone interested in pursuing music at Yale. When freshmen arrived on campus, they were greeted with a barrage of ads: "Pianos for rent"; "Learn to waltz, two-step, and Boston"; "Instruction in banjo, mandolin, and guitar"; "Let us build up your voice for the Glee Club trials." The Whiffenpoofs came into existence early in 1909 (Porter was a member during his senior year), and Yale's leading music professor, Horatio Parker, had his prize-winning opera Mona performed at the Metropolitan Opera.

Gustav Mahler brought the New York Philharmonic to Woolsey Hall for a concert of Bach, Berlioz, and Richard Strauss. Outstanding vocalists such as Geraldine Farrar, Alma Gluck, Marcella Sembrich, Louise Tetrazzini, and John McCormack attracted droves of admirers (including Porter) to their recitals. Porter's classmate Swede Reilly told me that "Cole, knowing how much I admired McCormack, took me to hear his New Haven recital."

Rather early in Porter's freshman year, an editorial in the Yale Daily News called for original musical compositions by the undergraduates. That summons may have encouraged Porter to submit his number "Bingo Eli Yale" in the 1910 football song competition. He had begun composing songs in earnest at his prep school, Worcester Academy, in Massachusetts. Two of his songs, "When the Summer Moon Comes 'Long" and "Bridget McGuire," survive from his freshman year at Yale.

"Bingo" was formally introduced by Eddie Wittstein and his orchestra at the Yale dining hall dinner concert on 29 October 1910. (Wittstein was a famous musical figure in New Haven for several decades.) The words to "Bingo" were printed in the Yale Daily News, and the song itself was successfully tried out at several football rallies.

Music at meals was a regular feature of Yale life; twice and sometimes four or five times a week, Wittstein, ensconced with his orchestra in a balcony overlooking the University Commons dining hall, performed a concert of staples from the symphonic and operatic repertoire — gems from light opera, waltzes, marches, two-steps, hits from the current musical comedies, and even an occasional ragtime piece. The concerts were always well received, and Wittstein recalled that sometimes the students kept time to the music by beating on the glasses and crockery. "Glow-Worm" was certain to evoke student participation, while a performance of the "Anvil Chorus" scattered glass and broken dishes all over the floor and nearly put an end to the concerts.

Wittstein, who conducted other Porter premieres at Yale, including his first musical comedy, Cora, in 1911, remembered Porter as "quiet, suave, intelligent, a real gentleman. He was a good pianist, and although not an especially talented singer he was excellent at putting over his own lyrics. I always liked him and played a lot of his football songs at the dining halls and the Yale Proms. I remember going up to his room where he told me he was influenced by the music of Richard Strauss. He was studying Der Rosenkavalier before it was...