USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > A modern history of New Haven and eastern New Haven County, Vol. I > Part 6
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And this was not wholly because the community needed Yale. It was getting along very well by itself, it believed. It had its own music, its own amusements, its own education, its own athletics. Yale needed the publie. The better under- standing still to be attained was what was to remove entirely the feeling of antagonism between New Haven and Yale, and make tangible and fully real- ized the fact of their historical and destined unity. Yale must make a sacrifice, in some measure, to bring that about.
There was no citizen of modern New IIaven who saw this more elearly than did George Dudley Seymour, who soon after 1900 enlarged his already wide acquaintance with the people of his community by fathering the sometimes
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SKULL AND BONES FRATERNITY HOUSE. YALE UNIVERSITY, NEW HAVEN
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SCROLL AND KEYS FRATERNITY HOUSE, YALE UNIVERSITY, NEW HAVEN
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despised but destined to be useful "city beautiful" plan. A loyal and under- standing son of Yale, he was also loyal and wise for New Haven. Now he attacked the problem of bringing in a better harmony between the university and the town. Ilis first proposal was very simple. Let Yale extend to certain parts of Sunday afternoons, in all but the summer months, the hours of publie opening of Peabody Museum and the Art School. It was so simple a plan that it failed, at first, to create a sensation.
But Mr. Seymour was not surprised or discouraged. He knew the forces of conservatism with which he had to contend. le knew that no suggestion takes in New Ilaven on its first application. So, gently but firmly, he returned repeatedly to the attack. He frankly put the suggestion to the officials of Yale. Through the newspapers he proposed the thing to the public. He received substantial backing from at least one newspaper, which kept the matter before the public insistently until the battle was won.
For it was won, and sooner than might be expected, perhaps. In 1908 Yale University formally announced that it would, beginning with November, open the museum and the Art School on Sunday afternoons from 2:30 to 5. It may perhaps be suspected that the university did this more from the motives which influenced the "unjust judge" than out of faith that there would be a response from the public sufficient to justify the concession. Even Mr. Seymour and those who were with him in the endeavor were weak in the faith, at first. But the newspapers did their part in telling the publie of the innovation, and men- tioning the hours of the openings. Some of them went further, editorially, by pointing out the significance of the change. The result was such as pleasantly to astound Yale and cordially to strengthen the faith of those who had worked for this change. The public responded in an intelligent. not a spasmodic manner. Those who came were not mere curiosity seekers. The response was steady, appreciative, not sensational. The first year the average number of visitors to the two exhibits on Sunday afternoons was not far from two hundred, and the attendance was well maintained until the end of April, when the university judged it wise to end the season. This was some four months longer, there is reason to believe, than some of the officers had believed the "fad" would last.
There was some anxiety on the part of those who had promoted the plan to see whether Yale would remember to resume the arrangement in the following fall. To tell the truth, they did not trust entirely to Yale's memory. And the Sunday openings were resumed that season, with the definite announcement that they would continue to April. They have continued since, each season up to the present writing. The results have eminently justified the continuance. The New Haven publie has steadily used these exhibits for instruction, not for curiosity.
Soon after the first opening, the opportunity was enlarged by adding the Steinert collection of musical instruments in Memorial Hall, and later the School of Religion's archaeological exhibits were also opened on Sunday afternoons.
A few years after the completion of Woolsey Hall and its organ, Harry B.
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Jepson, son of New Haven's loved old music master, Prof. Benjamin Jepson, now Battell professor of musie at Yale, inaugurated the eustom of Monday afternoon organ recitals, for which a small admission was charged. These were enjoyed by many hundreds of music lovers, but their hour was such that the attendance was always limited. Joining in the movement of opening Yale's doors to the larger public, Professor Jepson now introduced two popular Sunday afternoon organ recitals in the season, one in the Christmas holidays, the other at Easter, both free to the public. These were from the start overwhelmingly attended, and Professor Jepson found it desirable, in a few years, to enlarge their. number, giving a series of recitals every Sunday afternoon through January and Febru- ary, in addition to the Christmas and Easter ones. It is needless to add that these opportunities were improved to the fullest extent.
These results had opened the eyes of Yale's governors to the virtue of fellow- ship with the community. The result was the adoption of the policy of offering or granting the use of Woolsey Ilall as a place, in general, for public mass meetings. Enterprises which moved for the common good, which called together large gatherings of the people, found the doors of the great assembly hall open for them. Conventions representing or interesting any considerable mimber of the people of New Haven or of a wider circle had only to ask to receive Yale's hospitality, and often it was offered. The dining hall was likewise opened to many great banquets, notably those of the Chamber of Commerce, where men of international reputation, presidents of the nation and publicists of large emi- nenee, were among the speakers. Organizations of New Haven men and women, having occasion to gather for a banquet in greater numbers than any other banquet hall in town could accommodate, met around the tables of this noble banquet room, where the portraits of former presidents of Yale looked down on scenes such as the men in their lifetime had never dreamed of seeing.
1I
The gates were open, but there was another important means by which Yale was "getting solid" with people who might never have entered through Peabody or the Art School or any of the doors of the great building at the corner of College and Grove streets. Yale athletics had a growing hold on the New Haven public. Yale was the ideal, in sporting achievement, of the average young man of the town. Yale games, whether in baseball or football, have always had an attraction over games by other than college players. The attendance at these games constantly increased, but the Yale athletie management set out to popular- ize them still further. It placed the prices on its early season games at a point attractive to the publie, and the public responded. Many a "Brown game." even before the days of the Bowl, had an attendance rivaling that of a Yale- Princeton game in the 'nineties.
But not all of this attendance was always paid, to the credit of Yale. Some years before the new field was developed or the Bowl built, in the earlier days of the regime of Everard Thompson as the manager of the Yale ticket depart-
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ment, the plan of offering football tickets as rewards of merit in the New Haven High School was inaugurated. On a basis which the teachers arranged, each week a certain number of pupils who had shown an approved proficiency in scholarship or effort were given free tickets to the Saturday game. The munber rose, at one time, as high as two thousand at a game, and every son and daughter, we may easily imagine, was a loyal "rooter" for Yale. It is easy to see the pace at which Yale's friendships grew by this process.
. Then there was the "Brown game," which became an annual institution in New Haven. Each year, the week before the big game with Harvard or Prince- ton, Yale played the team from Brown University. That enterprising institution at Providence had achieved a substantial reputation by sending up for two suc- cessive years in the early nineteen hundreds a team which very neatly "trimmed" Yale-more of a feat at that time than it was a decade later. There were many New Haveners, in and out of the college, who liked to watch that game. Inci- dental mention might be made of the "Whiffenpoofs." a unique body of Yale vandevillians, who about this time took it upon themselves to provide burlesque entertainment in the intermissions of this particular game.
New Haven always saw this game. Youthful New Haven also saw it, because of another pleasant custom. It began with Judge Albert MeClellan Mathewson, who had a sort of George Junior Republic organization of boys which he called the Good Government Club. Many of them were boys unlikely to have money to spend to see a football game. He put the ease before the Yale athletie authorities, and they agreed to admit free, in a body, as many boys as Judge Mathewson would sponsor. Naturally, the plan met great favor with the boys, and naturally, too. the number of those willing to come in under the judge's charge grew yearly. Starting with a hundred or a little over, it increased by the addition of newsboys, members of boys' elubs and schoolboys in general until the group down at one end of the stands numbered at times 1,500. Their loyalty and their enthusiasm heightened the enjoyment of the game alike for players and spectators.
There was still a drawback, in the athletic department. New Haven. as its fellowship with Yale inereased, heeame inereasingly desirons of seeing the "hig game" which was the climax of the boothall season. But there was no more room on the old football stands, then seating 35,000 at the most, than was required by the Yale multitude-that is, the graduates, undergraduates and their friends. Except as they borrowed applications for tiekets, or as they were included in the invited groups, New Haven people were limited to a rapidly disappearing public sale of tickets. In the elosing years of the old stand, there was no publie sale.
The long hoped-for football stadium, which turned out to be a Bowl, completed in time for the Yale-Harvard game of 1914, had offered another opportunity for the co-operation of Yale and New Haven. It was a great financial undertak- ing, and Yale offered New Haven money a chance to share in it. The offer was gladly accepted by many men who had no alumni connection with the college, for it ineluded the privilege of subscribing each year for a certain number of tickets for the big game for each one hundred dollars eash subscribed for the
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Bowl. In this way a considerable number of the men of New Haven's affairs came to feel a share in one of the great enterprises of the university, and came into intimate touch with one important feature of its life.
The completion of the Bowl, with its initial seating capacity of 65,000, seemed to offer to everyone who desired it a chance to see the great game. Provisions had been made to extend the seat sale, not only generally to the New Haven public, but throughout the state. What was the consternation, then, of Mana- ger Thompson to find, as the time for the game approached, that he had appli- cations for tickets something like 25,000 in excess of the number of seats which even the great amphitheater would provide. Immediately some 8,000 extra seats were added, but even then the most heroic measures had to be adopted to keep the attendance within the capacity. Conditions somewhat similar pre- vailed in 1915. But in both years the management was loyal to New Haven. The Chamber of Commerce had expected a block of about 2,000 seats at the game which opened the Bowl, and it was not disappointed. In 1916 the pressure was even greater, but again the applicants of the Chamber of Commerce were supplied.
These are evidences of the degree to which the animosity between the college and the public in the Nineteenth century had changed to harmony in the Twentieth. There were many others, less obvious but even more important. The university had come to realize its relation and its duty to the community with which it was inseparably identified, and to do something about it. The community had begun to appreciate the honor and advantage offered by the existence of Yale. And there was to be a tangible demonstration of this relation which should attract the attention and enlist the participation of a great many who had not previously noticed. That was the Pageant of 1916, of whose details we shall proceed to learn.
CHLAPTER VIII
THE SEAL OF THE UNION
THE PAGEANT OF 1916, ITS PREPARATION AND HISTORIC CELEBRATION IN BAATTELL CHAPEL- THIE GREAT SPECTACLE AT THE BOWL
I
The "wedding" of New Haven and Yale took place when the trustees of the collegiate school, in session at New Haven on October 17, 1716, formally though not unanimously voted that the school, or eollege, should be established in New Haven. Preparations suitably to celebrate that wedding's two hundredth anni- versary began considerably earlier than October in the year 1916. The officers of Yale, indeed, had for several years realized that the event should have a unique celebration, and had begun their plans for one.
Early in 1916, there was appointed on behalf of Yale a general committee consisting of Eli Whitney, chairman; Edwin Rogers Embree. secretary; Rev. Joseph Anderson and Mr. Otto Tremont Bannard of the corporation, and eighteen other members of the faculty and prominent graduates of Yale. The City of New Haven appointed a citizens' committee of thirty-eight members, of which Mayor Frank James Riee was chairman. From these were chosen an executive committee, on behalf of Yale of Franeis Hartman Markoe, Edwin Rogers Embree, Howell Cheney, Frederick Blair Johnson and Prof. Clarence Whittlesey Mendell ; on behalf of New Haven of Mayor Frank James Riee, Vice Mayor Samuel Campner, Joseph Edward Hubinger, James Thomas Moran, Louis Ezekiel Stoddard. and Isaac Moses Ullman.
Mr. Markoe. a Yale graduate with a considerable experience in similar under- takings, was chosen master of the Pageant-for the Pageant was to be the central feature of the celebration. His assistants were Prof. Jack Randall Crawford and Dennis Cleugh as stage manager. Prof. George H. Nettleton was editor of the Book of the Pageant. Prof. David Stanley Smith was chosen master of the music, and Miss Christine Herter was the artist of the Pageant. Mrs. Dennis Clengh was mistress of the robes, Frederick Blair Johnson was business manager and Charles Emerson Cooke director of publicity.
Thus officered, the great undertaking was launched early in the year. The committees, and a number of guests representing various activities of the city which it was expected to enlist in the Pageant, met at luncheon in Memorial Vol. J-4
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Hall early in the spring, and the plans for the project were presented in some detail. There was the most evident enthusiasm, and earnest pledges on the part of several of the most influential citizens to do all in their power to carry the project to success. Those pledges were faithfully kept.
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All spring, all summer, the committees and sub-committees, the pageant officers and their aids, labored unceasingly. There was to be an elaborate pro- gram-religious, scholastic, historical, literary-covering the three days of Octo- ber 20, 21 and 22, but the great day was to be that of the Pageant, Saturday, the twenty-first. Waiving the exact date of the anniversary, Saturday was chosen because of the number of school children it was proposed to enlist in the production, and because of the better opportunity the day afforded for the attendance of the people. It was proposed to have about 7,000 participants in the various scenes of the Pageant. Different departments of the university, several of the graduate classes, alumni organizations of other colleges, the Gov- ernor's Foot Guards, the Grand Army of the Republic, the Sons of Veterans, several chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Young Women's Christian Association, the New Haven Caledonian Club, several lodges of the Order of Red Men, the Naval Militia, the Spanish War veterans, the Yale Battery and several other organizations, besides a large number of unat- tached individuals, were represented in the east. There was an endless detail of costumes to be provided, and the rehearsals for the play constituted, when the number and variety of the participants is considered, a tremendous under- taking. There were many discouraging features. But the committee for the university and the citizens worked faithfully on. And the end erowned their labor and justified their faith.
The third week in October of 1916 promised to be much like other mid- autumn weeks in our uncertain New England climate. As the erowning require- ment to the Pageant's success was good weather, its developments, weather- wise, were somewhat anxiously watched. The opening feature of the program was the repetition of John Jay Chapman's Florentine masque, "Cupid and Psyche," which had been given at the Art School in June, and for that the weather did not so much matter. It was a somewhat severely classical and dis- tinetly college event, but as it was given in commodious Woolsey Hall. it had an audience containing many of the townspeople. There was some fear as to how the somewhat delicate and in a sense parlor event would fit into massive Woolsey Hall, but if it may be judged by the enthusiasm of the audience, it was in every respect a success. It was produced by ladies of New Haven, and though wholly of Yale authorship, was in its nature especially appropriate to celebrate the union of the college and the town.
Friday afternoon had been rainy, and Saturday forenoon continued the storm. Up to mid-forenoon, the prospect was decidedly unpromising. The hearts of the thousands to whom the Pageant meant so much were as gloomy as the weather. There had been a dress rehearsal of the spectacle on the previous Saturday, which had raised many hopes. But so much depended on the weather !
Meanwhile, there were some historical exercises on Saturday forenoon. I
YALE SCHOOL OF RELIGION, NEW HAVEN
مهمة
بيرة
BATTELL CHAPEL, YALE UNIVERSITY. NEW HAVEN
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the excitement and anxiety, they were overlooked by too many New Haven people. Battell Chapel was entirely sufficient to accommodate all who went to hear them. It was an important and remarkable program, worthy of mention in some detail.
Most gracefully, as is his wont, President Hadley opened the exercises with his tribute, on behalf of the university, to New Haven. Quoting at the start from Jeremy Dummer's letter to Governor Gurdon Saltonstall, in which he felicitated New Haven on the happy consummation of the nuptials, and mentioned Elihu Yale's satisfaction thereat, President Hadley paid tribute, first to the ministers whose unflagging zeal and loyalty to New Haven had so much to do with bringing it about, and second to the community whose real substance deserved and won the institution for its own. He praised the hard work and hard cash of the New Haven citizens by which they enabled John Davenport the younger to exult in that realization of which the first John Davenport was denied, and closed by saying :
"To the descendants and successors of those that builded the house, no less than those that first taught therein, high honor and cordial congratulation are this day due."
Of the responses by the city the first was, appropriately, by the lineal dle- seendant in office of John Davenport and James Pierpont, the twentieth century pastor of Center Church on the Green. Discerningly, appreciatively, did the Rev. Dr. Oscar E. Maurer make reply. Gracefully he referred to the ambition of his first predecessor to be the founder of a college in New Haven, and to the unbreakable bond, none the less close and firm because it was left to those who came after John Davenport to realize the fulfilment of his prophecy, between Center Church and Yale I'niversity. But he spoke as well for all the churches of New Haven and Connecticut, which united in rejoicing at the union and its anniversary. "Yale and the church, " he said, "are united in a common destiny, their mission is a common mission: and so, Mr. President. speaking for the churches of New Haven and Connecticut, deeply thankful for all the blessed ties that have bound us together in the past, I pledge to you our continued devotion and loyalty for the years that lie ahead, and the assurance of our fervent prayer that Yale and the Church may together go on and ever on in their holy mission of Truth and Light."
Mayor Frank J. Rice was not able to represent the eity on that occasion. As we shall see, his active work for the city he loved was over. and he was compelled to content himself with watching from the distance the consummation of the celebration in which he had taken so great an interest. Samuel Campner. acting mayor, responded for the city in his place, and did so with an under- standing eminently commendable. He rejoiced in the older history of Yale, that part of it which belonged to the era before New Haven. But he saw it now as only a background to the new, the greater Yale which was largely because of the union now being celebrated. Ile made clear the existence of the spirit of entire harmony between the New Haven which is and the Yale which is, and looked hopefully forward. "May the life of Yale and of New Haven," he hoped,
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"flow together through the centuries of the future as one life, one unit, one body politie-the embodiment of one idea-the expression of the lofty, pro- gressive, God-fearing and God-serving spirit of free America."
Fittingly closing the exercises was the scholarly, complete historical address . of Prof. Williston Walker. With the historian's sense of proportion, with the understanding of the scholar, with the eloquence of one baptized with the spirit of the hour, he portrayed the development of two hundred years. Going back of the two century period, however, he showed on what foundation of vision and sacrifice and holy ambition of the founders was laid the structure raised in New Haven. Dramatically he told of the struggles of those years; with what a battle the college was won for New Haven. Feelingly he drew the picture, touching in the brighter lights of the understanding which the discerning had from the first of the proper relation between the college and the community, of true kinship of the mother and daughter-New Haven and Yale.
"So today," he coneluded, "as we commemorate the two hundredth anni- versary of the settlement of Yale in New Haven, it is with gratitude toward those who in the days of small things made this much possible. They had their abundant perplexities, their contests, their discouragements. They had, also, an unconquerable faith. and a courage adequate to their needs. They builded well, and we have entered into the fruit of their labors. Nor can we forget the noble succession which for two centuries, in city and in university, has carried on their work, building fairer and nobler year by year, till we have the New Haven and the Yale in which we now rejoice. What the future may have in store none may know : but of this we may be assured, that Yale and New Haven will continue in inseparable connection, in growing helpfulness each to the other, and in increasing appreciation of the common advantages of their associ- ation. May the memories of the last two hundred years be perpetuated and strengthened in the association and growth of Yale and New Haven for genera- tions to come."
The heavens smiled on such faith, such brave and thoughtful words. As the historical worshippers eame from Battell Chapel, they found that the October storm had been transformed to October beanty. Not soon will New Haven, and especially those who participated in the exercises, forget the beauty of that afternoon. And who did not participate? Seven thousand men and women, boys and girls, representing all phases of the ancient and modern life of New Haven and Yale, were in the moving life, the historical depiction, the glorious picture and color, of the Pageant. And every one had friends. All sides of the life of the city had been touched in the preparation. All the schools had been drawn upon. A large number of the societies and organizations of the city had been woven into the story. No wonder New Haven noticed.
It was such a plot as Shakespeare would have coveted. Here was to be told a story of two centuries rich with drama, tonehed with humor, pathos, sentiment,
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tragedy. Far back of the beginnings of New Haven the writer had gone for his prologue, to that 1485 when the union of Margaret, daughter of lenkyn ap Ievan to Eilis ap Griffith of Cwyddelwern laid the foundation of the house of Yale. Through the colonial times, with their wealth of romance and fascination of history he had built the beginning of his story. He had not missed the thrill and adventure and inspiration of the Revolutionary days. The strifes and the sacrifices and the abundant human interest of the early Nineteenth century were faithfully and effectively portrayed. And there was a wealth of modern epi- sode to lead up to the elimax, the bright realization of the light and truth of the ancient everlasting union.
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