A modern history of New Haven and eastern New Haven County, Vol. I, Part 7

Author: Hill, Everett Gleason, 1867- [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1918
Publisher: New York, Chicago, The S. J. Clarke publishing company
Number of Pages: 620


USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > A modern history of New Haven and eastern New Haven County, Vol. I > Part 7


Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).


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Such was the play. And never playwright had such a playhouse. "Some genius," wrote a chronicler for the Yale Alumni Weekly, "had foreseen the effects which might be gained in that large amphitheater, the Yale Bowl, on a elear autumnal day." It was not with fear or misgiving that the management had accepted the Bowl as the place to stage such a spectacle. Already its visual, its accoustic, its spectacular qualities had been tested in football and Greek play and grand opera, and on each trial it had surprisingly responded to every requirement. Built for football, built only with the thought conveniently to gather, comfortably seat and safely disperse mighty multitudes of people, it had proved to have qualities for eonserving and refleeting sound not possessed by any structure of its sort in America. Now, of course, its qualities for dis- playing a spectacle were to be especially tested.


Many were the misgivings with which fond parents and sensitive spectators had looked forward to this afternoon. The costumes which made that feast of color were flimsy things, poorly qualified for resisting the chill blasts and threat of frost which the afternoon of the third Saturday in October might easily pro- vide. And there might be a nip and an eagerness in the air which would make sitting for three hours to view a pageant less than a thing of joy for those in the least sensitive to cold. In strange and thrilling measure these fears were allayed, these misgivings made vain. It was such an October afternoon as even that rare month might not furnish twice in a dozen years. Out of a sky without a cloud, through an atmosphere erystally elear, with only just a relieving breeze, shone the autumn sun. It brought out at their best its spectrum colors, multi- plied to countless shades that the rainbow never knew, in the costumes of the participants. Over that rich sward where a month later the dun-elad cohorts of Harvard and Yale were to race and tear in one of the great games of the century -- and erown the Bowl with a Yale vietory to remember-proceeded in measured dignity the appointed persons of the play.


And over them bent the thousands. The Bowl has seen greater crowds. But 50,000 of the friends of Yale and New Haven, gathered from near and far, with such a motive and for such a sight, is a multitude not to be despised. Its own color and variety, its life and its magnetie expectaney, completed the wonder of the occasion.


It is two o'clock on that never-to-be-forgotten afternoon, and though this is an amateur production, and one of the most difficult ever handled, Director


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Markoe is ready. But before the gates are opened, there is a wondrous prelude. At one end of the great amphitheater, under a reflecting canopy, there is such an aggregation of bands as even musie-blessed New Haven never had on one plat- form. And back of them is a chorus of 500 people. It is the Derby Choral Society-neighbors glad to share in the great service. Led by Professor William Edward Haesche, who has written the music, it launches into the stately numbers of Charlton Miner Lewis's "Invitation to the Pageant." Its opening words are fulfilled before the people, and seem to have been prophetic :


October's glory ripens to its close :


The flaunting splendors fade ; yet still abides The warm sun, wizarding from brown to rose The bastioned refuge of the Regicides.


And the eastern gates open, burst hy a noise of trumpets. From out their portals comes a procession of the Middle Ages. Pages and bards and men-at- arms lead the way for maids and gentlemen and ladies in their gayest garb. For it is nothing less than the bridal procession of the fair Margaret. Forth she comes with her knightly bridegroom, each riding upon a horse that seems to sense the ancient dignity of the oceasion. It is the first glimpse of the glory of color that shall be. For on Margaret and her maidens, on pages and on the eaparisoned horses, shines a blazonry of many hues that needs but the dun garb of the men-so like, in this respect, to the modern wedding-to bring out by contrast its magnificence. And so was Margaret wedded to the brave Ellis ap Griffith. So was the house of Yale founded. The romance, the imagery of the scene grip the beholder.


But there is no lingering. This is only the prelude. The Pageant has not vet begun, and the play's the thing. As silently as they eame the flashing eos- tumes are gone. The sorely tried nerves of the amazed modern New Haven horses are soothed again in the free air outside the echoing portals of the Bowl. And from another portal bursts a strangely different seene. Stiffly eome Pastor Davenport and Governor Eaton, leading their party of pilgrims, weary from their long voyage, and muddy from their climb up the red clay banks of the creek. With surprising promptness comes from another quarter a mournful procession of Quinnipiaes, and the scene shifts in faney to the meadows of Morris Cove. Borne on a litter is Shaumpishuh, sister of the Sachem Momauguin, siek unto death. The women wail their lament to the Great Spirit. The tribe dances its medicine danee. There is all this in the swift scene, and if one makes a little allowanee for the ardor of the unpracticed young Indian aetors, he gets the serious import of it. Still more life is injeeted by the sudden appearance of the war-painted Mohawks-they are at their old game of demanding tribute.


But the Quinnipiacs fear the death of the pestilence more than they fear the death of battle. They resist and overcome the tribute-seekers. Whereupon they note the presence of the pilgrims, whom they aceept on faith at once as friends. The pilgrims give thanks for their deliveranee from the perils of the sea, and for their friendly greeting. But Shaumpishuh eannot survive, and the procession now takes up a real lament for the dead, and proceeds sadly out from the portals.


حمد


NEW HAVEN'S TRIBUTE TO THE PAGEANT The Given as decorated October 16 to 22, 1916


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matter of fact, despicable things compared with the rich garb of the Foot Gnards -figure again. It is a solemn scene. We are spared. of course, any attempt at the execution itself, but the grim preparations are there. We are glad, on the whole, when the scene vanishes through the portals.


There is a richness of costume, especially feminine, in the scene representing the visit of Washington to New Haven after he became President. We have the men in stately grandeur. And Washington and his staff ride well, assisted by one or two trick horses such as, probably, would greatly have annoyed the old general in his time. Then the field clears, and we are ready for another interlude -an Allegory of War and Peace.


It was not the intention, evidently, to paint war in any attractive colors. These gnome-like figures, hooded and cloaked in brown, who come crouching in to the droning of dismal music, are the spirits of Starved Desire and Fear of Brotherhood. Others no more attractive follow, the warped souls of Dema- gognes and Self Lovers, and these unite to utter, in something like song, "The Wise Voice of the Old. Deep, Unchanging World." But the chorus strengthens by the addition to the Holy Servants of war's sacrifice, the Young Men Who Have Found Their Manhood. Presently join these the Contented Dead, and then the mothers who raise their boys to be soldiers, to speak in flippant phrase. There is weird and thunderons music, and Life's Wastrels cavort over the scene. The Noble Wives, the Old Men, the Calm Fathers and other Heroic Hearts follow in quick succession, ehanting a solemn hymn. Then the music changes, a hush comes over the wild clamor, and sweet, calm, majestic, radiant Peace is there, with the little children in white robes playing about her. The Rout of War falls back from the altar, the weary sufferers welcome Peace, and the air is rent with a shout that is greater than victory. Brimming over the rim of the Bowl pour down from all sides the processions of Peace-Youth and Dawn and Spring, waving blossoming branches and singing a song of the beauty of sweet nature. Summer, Day and Growth follow with golden boughs of laurel, singing their hymn of praise. Evening, Autumn and Completion sing an evening hymn, which merges in the one general chant of peace as all advance with their offerings of praise, and crown Peace forever.


The opening scenes of the nineteenth century episode are in lighter vein. Well may the Town and Gown riots be treated lightly, for they are things of the past. They are nothing more than comedy, as presented. There is war, to be sure, between the firemen and the footballists, and there is some attempt to suggest what a terrible thing this might be, but with the machinery at hand, and the evident refusal of the actors to take the thing seriously, there is little to do but laugh.


The Burial of Euclid, of course, is but a college prank. It proves to be no more than a fairly well rehearsed performance of the Whiffenpoofs. One wonders if the boys themselves realize how important a thing it was in its day. It is good fun, which serves fairly well to relieve the sobriety of what must be, in the main, a serious performance.


There is not a little of burlesque, little as it is meant so, in the next scene.


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This is a depiction of the Kansas Volunteers, an ante-Civil war plan to abolish slavery, which was nipped in the bud. We have citizens of New Haven in queer, bottle-green tail eoats, and flat-topped hats. The relieving effect of feminine costume is there, improving the opportunity of the strange fashions of 1856. Henry Ward Beecher is supposed to appear and make an address. The re- cruits are escorted on their way in very impressive fashion, if one chooses to take it so.


The death of Theodore Winthrop, reviving an almost forgotten episode of Yale in the Civil war, is made memorable by the earnest participation of almost the entire strength of the Grand Army posts of New Haven and vicinity. Win- throp was the first northern officer to fall in the battles of this war, and the seene depiets the request for his body by his eomrades and its formal surrender, with full military honors, by the Confederate troops. The men in Gray are the product of the costumer and the stage manager, though they do their parts well, but these men in Blue, with their slouch and tasseled felt hats-they are living over again seenes that are still vivid in their memories. Their part in this seene, carried out to the last solemn detail of military exaetness, makes a tremendous impression on all beholders. It is an historie event, and in it alone the Pageant repays all it eost. It is worth our while to pause here and read, from Brian Hooker's masterpiece of deseription of the whole Pageant, his thrilling toneh of that particular seene :


"Now comes a company of gray-clad soldiers through the western gate. They staek their rifles and lounge about with a easnal air of waiting for someone. So they are, and so are we; and after plenty of time, out come the Union soldiers on the other side, to the small squealing of one fife and the beat of two rather tremulous drums. These are no dressed-up mummers, but the very men them- selves: Grand Army men, some 200 of them; their old blue uniforms hanging loose over shrunken shoulders-and their rusty old Springfields at the carry. There is no hurrying these old fellows. Very deliberately, very professionally. with the off-hand, almost clumsy correctness of men to whom the drill is no new lesson bnt the memory of an old business, they form in line facing the Southern- ers. Order arms. Parade rest. Offieers to the front. And the small group with its flag of truce goes out to meet the enemy with all military formality, and to receive Colonel Winthrop's body in its new pine coffin. Present arms. The Confederates fire a salute. The coffin is borne back to the line in Blue. Another salute is fired. They wheel slowly into column and with arms reversed start slowly to move away. And then something happens. For ten minutes those two hundred or so old gentlemen of our fathers' times have been going through what for them was not play-aeting but the very truth itself. For ten minutes they have stood there remembering ; and their memory reaches out and strikes the watching multitudes like an invisible wave. As the long column plods toward the stands, the grim gray heads held high and the thin fife piping a eraeked hymn tune, 30,000 people are on their feet and uneovered, not knowing why or how; and the applause rises and swells and erackles into one deep roar! Someone whispers : 'God! look at their faces!' And we look, and read things written


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there. These men did not keep us out of war. They faced it, and brought us through on the right side. They were too proud to fight with words alone. They fought with more than words; and the fire of things we cannot understand shines on their steady faces. In all the Pageant there has been nothing like this; for the rest was allegory and reminiscence; but this is a resurrection."


There is less of imagery and more of realism in the third Interhide, wherein certain ladies and gentlemen of New Haven and the university improve the opportunity to exploit the wonderful costumes of the Civil war period. It is, as the program tells us, "a Hoopskirt Prom." Or, as the more dignified Book of the Pageant hath it, "the Wooden Spoon Prom." It is depieted with such dignity as the cumbersome costumes compel on the field before us, and is soon over. It seems to lack something, after the previous interludes.


For the fourth or modern episode the Book of the Pageant had a series of fourteen impressive panels, which were to be presented as tableaux. But the afternoon draws near its close, and if the finale is to be presented while yet the autumn sun will give life to its color, something must be ent. So the Yale Battery, the triumph of Mars which many have been waiting to see comes on. Refreshed after the terrors of Tobyhanna, trim in olive-green khaki, the soldier hoys bring on their guns and go through their evolutions, ending with a salute which rattles the nerves of the timid and fills the Bowl with the smell of powder. The din of battle dies away, the faithful Boy Scouts who have been doing page duty between the aets make their last appearance, and we are ready for the finale.


The program has warned that any who want to hurry away must do so before this finale, because the portals will be in use by the performers for a little time after it. Unfortunate are they who thought they could not wait. It is the climax, the summary, the ensemble, all in one. It returns to the glory of imagery, it employs the feast of color. In it shines the Light and out of it stands the Truth of Yale. The Bride of New Haven, the Mother of Colleges and of Men. herein is glorified.


Throned amid lilies and attended by blue-clad figures representing the nine departments, Mother Yale is borne in, while around her throng and flow again her water-children, the Waves of the first interlude. Then from out each portal comes a beautifully gowned woman-thirty of them, representing the thirty colleges of which Yale is the mother. Then, all at once, high at the crest of every aisle of the vast Bowl, appears a wind-blown figure as if at the rim of the horizon. There is a pause as these figures spread their arms like wings. A little more, and there are pouring into the Bowl from every portal the whole of the 7,000 who have participated in the Pageant. All the pomp. all the color, all the glory are there. They gather and group themselves appropriately, on a previously arranged plan of effeet. "The whole Pageant at once: all places and times together, spirit and substance, hero and jester, history and tradition and dream."


The great crowd rises from its seats. Nothing must be lost of such a seene. Its like will never come again. The Bowl will see strange sights and witness brave deeds. It has wonderful times ahead. But there can be only one Pageant


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therein, and this is the supreme moment of that Pageant. The multitude stands as if entranced, while slowly the mass untwines, resolves itself into a solemn march, chanting the grand old hymn of eall to worship :


Lord God Almighty ! Who hast blessed our fathers, Bless us and guide us by Thy Holy Light.


Slowly the grandeur and glory and song melt into the portals, and presently the velvet green of the field is as quiet and serene as if it had been untrodden. So far as concerns the scene of its production, the Pageant of 1916 is a thing of memory only.


The Pageant is not over. New Haven had participated generously in the main production, but the eity as an organization had its part. For the three days of the celebration the historie old Green, for more than two centuries a sharer in every event that had concerned Yale and New Haven, had been notably decorated in honor of the occasion. From the Liberty pole as a center, streamers of white and blue bunting extended to the four corners and sides of the lower Green. Yale and New Haven seals were set on standards all around the Green. Underneath and around the Liberty pole was a canopy or court of honor, where on that Saturday night after the Pageant a band played to some 20,000 people, while searchlights from the neighboring buildings played upon the scene.


The elosing event of the great occasion was next day at Woolsey Hall, when President Hadley preached the anniversary sermon. Fittingly he had chosen his text. "For we are members one of another." It was a thoughtful, con- vineing presentation of the oneness of Yale and New Haven well worthy to close this celebration. Especially did it show that the men who have honored Yale most have also honored the eity most ; that their highest ideals and highest service have been for the two together; that in the achievements of such men "eollege and eity ean elaim an equal share and look with equal measure of pride." Ile dwelt not altogether in the past; he gave good advice. Admitting that there have been misunderstandings, he sought to show how they may be avoided in the future, how harmony that has less of the name and more of the faet ean be attained. He dwelt on the ideal which he had preached before, of Yale and Yale men in publie service. Applying this directly to the relations of Yale men and the city in which they live he said :


"In order to make this spirit of mutual understanding effective and useful we must develop the habit of co-operation between eity and college. The best way to understand one another is to work together. We have been too much absorbed in our separate problems-the teacher with his teaching, the scholar with his studies, the merchant with his business, the politician with his polities. These things are a large part of life, but they are not the whole of life. The affairs of society are as important as each man's private affairs; and the affairs of society eannot be properly managed unless the men of theory and the men


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of practice act together in managing them. This is becoming more and more obvious as years go on. Questions of public education, of public administration and of publie morality are every day coming more and more into the fore- ground."


In such practical words the president of Yale recognized that the ideal had not been attained, while felicitating his hearers on the measure of harmony which the Pageant celebration had sealed. The Pageant was over; he was draw- ing some lessons from it. Much as had been attained, it was only a glimpse of what might be. But at least New Haven and Yale had by this two hundredth anniversary celebration come into the consciousness that they were one, and that their future progress must at least be along parallel, not divergent lines.


CHAPTER IX THE OLD AND THE NEW


THE CONTRAST OF THE CENTURIES AND THE ELEMENTS TILAT MAKE IT-A GENERAL GLIMPSE OF TWENTIETH CENTURY NEW HAVEN


I


We have seen the small and difficult beginnings of New Haven. We have seen that, ambitions as was the plan of the founders, they were content, after a few hard knocks from fate, to take what the gods sent them, and maintain their existenee. It looked for many years as though New Haven would have to be content among the minor cities of Connecticut. Through the latter half of the seventeenth and all through the eighteenth centuries, New Haven had half a dozen rivals that equalled or surpassed her in size. It was not until 1820 that New Haven positively took first place, stepping into the rank which she has maintained so long.


It was apparent almost from the first, to be sure, that New Haven was to be one of the most important towns of the state, whatever its size. Its rank was so impressive that Hartford was, from early in the eighteenth century, fain to share with it the honor of being the capital of the state. The establishment of the college in New Haven at once gave it a prestige as a center of education and in- fluenee, a source of supply of the state's professional men and leaders. Then, with the beginning of the nineteenth century, it began to forge ahead in physical size. until it beeame noticeably a leader in population, and for a long time, in wealth.


But New Haven was never a boom town. It developed slowly, it grew steadily, not spasmodically. Conservatism became characteristic of it. Conservative it has remained until now. All through the nineteenth century, while steadily growing in strength and substance, it never outwardly startled the beholder. Those who really knew the city came to love it for its "parts" rather than for ostentatious prosperity. It was a city of traditions and history, a city content to have intensive rather than extensive growth.


There were, as we have noticed, some who wearied of having their city known merely as "the seat of Yale college." They longed to have other qualities of New Haven, which to them seemed more important, brought to the front. They knew that the city had, and had long possessed, manufacturing institutions, for


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instance, qualified to make it internationally famous. Knowledge of these was not wholly suppressed, and in the "geographies" of the latter nineteenth century, New Haven became rated as the home of the clock and the producer of fine carriages and ferocious firearms, as well as the home of Yale.


Yet New Haven had not awakened as the modernists would like to see it. Its great manufacturers and its substantial merchants, knowing within them- selves that they had substance and quality, were willing to keep the information to themselves and to a few of their people. Their business was prospering. The discerning took their goods. Their trade was increasing, according to their standards. Why should they ask for more? The age of advertising had not arrived, at least not in New Ilaven. A chamber of commerce-and New Haven had possessed such an institution since 1794-was a dignified commercial club to the members of those days. It held a banquet once a year, and that was suffi- cient to justify its existence. There eame a time when somebody pointedly asked what it did between meals. but that was later.


Such, in more material particulars, was the New Haven which woke on the morn of its 264th year when it celebrated with Yale the completed two centuries. The opening of the twentieth century had seen a different New Haven, if it had but known it. Things had come to it to make it different. The tele- phone had come. In 1878 New Haven had been the place of the establishment of the first telephone exchange in America, and its original directory of sub- seribers, printed on one side of a fairly small sheet of paper, is a curiosity to exhibit today beside the 400 pages of the Southern New England Telephone Company's big directory of Conneetient, with its over 66,000 subscribers in New Haven.


The eleetrie railway had come. When, in 1892, the first electric ear, un- loaded from a freight at the New Haven station, eame by its own power from the station to the Green, horses drew all the cars on the few street railways of New Haven. Still, and for several years later, they were keeping a spare horse at the corner of Elm and State streets, to help the loaded Fair Haven ears up the Grand Avenue grade. That first electrie car, by the way, was a storage battery affair. When it reached the Green, its power gave ont. and there it stuek until ignominiously moved away by horses. The experiment did not encourage New Haven to try the storage battery system, and when it went, a year or two later, into the electric ear business, it adopted the well known trolley. New Haven well remembers its first electric line, which ran from the Green out Church and down Elm, thence to State and out to James Street, where it abandoned the well known route for Lamberton and Ferry, going on down to Chapel. That was in 1893. When, a little later, the line was continned to Morris Cove and Lighthouse Point, New Haven opened its eyes in wonder. and the rival lines took notice.




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