Songs of Yale -- 1701 -- The Whiffs

Speranza

AN AUTHENTIC ACCOUNT OF THE FOUNDING OF THE WHIFFS

During the early nineteen hundreds a coveted privilege for any member (usually a tenor) of "The Yale Glee Club" was to be chosen to sing in what was then known as "The (Old)  Varsity Quartet".

 

The Old Varsity Quartet was featured in EVERY (I mean every) concert given by the "Yale Glee, Banjo and Mandolin Clubs," whether on their annual tour of the country during the Christmas holidays, at the Junior Prom and Commencement festivities, or in various nearby cities in New England.

At alumni dinners and smokers all over the East, as well as at undergraduate functions, the Old Varsity quartet's services were in demand.

 

Even a staid Phi Beta Kappa banquet once sought the group out to enliven their evening following an after-dinner speech delivered by one faculty member completely in Latin and a scholarly address delivered by then President of Princeton, Woodrow Wilson.

 

Thus, what with getting new songs ready and polishing up old ones for public occasions, the four fortunate enough to be chosen, plus one or two alternates, acquired a great deal of experience in singing together.

This was particularly true during the winter of 1908 when we had a quartet of veterans.

 

Carl Lohmann, known to generations of Yale men as "Caesar," and his classmate George Pomeroy had accomplished the incredible feat of beginning their services on The Old Varsity Quartet during their Freshmen year.

 

Ask them how.

 

Traditionally, the Glee Club of those days was composed almost entirely of juniors
and seniors, but these two youngsters had voices the Glee Club couldn't afford to miss, and having
proved their worth in the chorus they were selected for the quartet too. 

 

Howard in fact sang with them as a sophomore that year.

 

The following season another member of their class, Meade Minnigerode (God bless his soul), joined them.

 

 

By mid-winter of their junior year and Howard's senior year, they had sung together so much that,
to an extra-ordinary degree, we had the feel of each other's idio-syncrasies and instinctively blended
into a well-rounded musical entity.

 

The whiffs enjoyed singing too well to limit ourselves to public occasions.

 

So did Denton Fowler, a light-hearted senior affectionately known as "Goat."

 

He had been an alternate member of the Old Varsity quartet and often joined us as we sang on Old Campus, in The Vanderbilt Court, or in what was then "The Berkeley Oval", i.e. the quadrangle were White, Fayer-Weather and Lampson Halls used to stand and where the acoustics were out of this world.

As winter weather in New Haven is hardly suited to out-door vocalizing, and life was too crowded
with activities for whiffs to look each other up for a song, one day Goat Fowler suggested to Minnigerode that we go to Mory's once a week.

 

There we might have an early dinner, sing our songs in comfort, and get away in time for later appointments.

 

The whiffs began it one evening in January, 1909, and soon it became a habit to keep inviolate that weekly date:

 

"Mory's at six".

Louis Linder, then proprietor of the "dear old Temple Bar," was delighted, for, as a matter of fact, he did love good singing.

Moreover, the music brought customers.

 

Many who enjoyed listening took to dropping in for a meal or glass while the five whiffs poured forth their souls in unrehearsed and often spontaneously-altered harmony.

 

Lohmann's gorgeous bass, which became so familiar to New Haven music lovers in later
years, Minnigerode's effortless tenor which knew no top note, and the inventive genius of Pomeroy,
whose accurate ear and extraordinary range enabled him to fill in a fifth part in any passage which
might be enriched by it, were priceless assets.

 

And these, coupled with the perfect sense of pitch, timing and feeling for harmony which the whole group shared, produced an effect which - at least in memory - suggests Tennyson's lines about how "mind and soul, according well, may make one music as before, but vaster."

Two members of the class of 1909 were among those who came regularly to Mory's on such
evenings.

 

Neither Dick Hosford nor Bob Mallory could carry one single  tune, but they, however, did love (or seemed to love) to listen to the whiffs' singing and were drawn by it to the table where the whiffs sat.

 

The whiffs welcomed the company of Hosford and Mallory and dubbed them their trainer and manager.

 

They took over the not too arduous duty of ordering the mutton chops or scrambled eggs and sausage which were standard dishes at Mory's in those days, and the beer which was our lubricant.

 

No cocktails, no "cup."

 

The emphasis was always on SINGING, not on eating and/or drinking, and the fellowship was one of song and song-lovers.

After the meetings were well established the whiffs decided it was time to adopt a name. 

 

The whiffs were perhaps influenced in this by an older group with whom all of us had sung from time to time the previous year. The called themselves

 

"The Growlers", and they have their place in Whiffenpoofs history.

Originally, their number had included Ludlow Bull and Rosewell Park, but these two had, alas,
graduated.

 

The remaining "Growlers" -- Philip Collins, Nathanial Holmes and Mark Mitchell -- were joined by others of their class, and there was always a welcome for any of the Varsity quartet
who happened along.

 

Bereft of Lud Bull's lovely tenor, they were particularly happy to have Minnigerode join them regularly, and the rest of us did so whenever we could.

It was Goat Fowler who suggested the whiffs call theirselves the whiffs.

 

Fowler had been tickled by the "patter" of one of the characters in a Victor Herbert musical comedy called "Little Nemo" which had recently been running on Broadway.

 

In a scene in which there was great boasting of terrific exploits in big game hunting and fishing, comedian Joseph Caw Thorn told a fantastic tale of how he had caught a  ral "whiff".

 

It seems that Caw Thorn had coined the word "whiff" and its derivative "whiffenpoof" some years before when he and a fellow actor were amusing themselves by making up, typically, nonsense verses.

 

One they particularly liked began as follows:

 

a drivaling grilyal yandled its flail

one day by a whiffen poof's grave.

 

Caw Thorn recalled the verse in making up his patter for "Little Nemo" and put it into his act.

Whether the word meant fish, flesh or fowl was irrelevant to the whiffs' purpose when we chose it as their name.

 

"Whiff" fitted in with their mood of free and exuberant fancy and it was adopted with
enthusiasm.

 

As Carl Lohmann later explained:

 

"We were Whiffs because if your infuriated us with food and drink, we came up and squaked."

 

The word 'whiff' quickly caught on with "our public," and the name stuck.

 Members of the Glee Club, on their Christmas trip in the winter of 1907 heard some one sing
an unpublished setting of Kipling's "Gentlemen-Rankers" at an alumni smoker after their concert in
Columbus, Ohio.

 

In fact, the complete Gentlemen-Rankers (a barrack-room ballad) had been fully set to music by Scull, of Harvard.

 

Although "Gentlemen rankers" is known to have been sung at Yale as far back as 1902, and
while it was not unfamiliar to some of those present at the smoker, to many if not most of the whiffs it was
entirely new that night, and it was an immediate hit.

 

Pomeroy recalled that the whole crowd sang the
refrain several times.

 

Lohmann recorded a similar memory on our thirtieth anniversary, and Minnigerode, in a letter to me in 1958, described a still vivid impression of hearing it that night for the first time.

 

It IS a lovely barrack-room ballad -- and you should hear it in full --. That phrase, 'from here to eternity', does stick.

At the piano during the smoker was Tod B. Galloway, whose setting of
another Kipling poem, "The Gypsy Trail," had been on the concert programme.

 

For many it was
believed that T. Galloway composed the music for "Gentlemen-Rankers."

 

Indeed, in the copyrighted version of
the Whiff  Song, published in 1935 by the Miller Music Corporation and included in "Songs
of Yale" edited by Marshall Bartholomew, the tune is attributed to Tod B. Galloway.

Our faith in the Galloway hypothesis was shaken when, as we were preparing the third version of this

article for the Whiffs Anniversary pamphlet.

Carl B. Spitzer wrote Howard that he had evidence that the music for "Gentlemen-Rankers" was composed (of all things) by a Harvard (of all places) man (of all people).

To his sure knowledge, one Guy H. Scull, had set Kipling's barrack-room ballad to a tune
which was sung during his undergraduate days at Harvard.

A friend of both Spitzer's and Scull's, Beatrice Ayer Patton (whose husband, General George Patton, made history in the phoney war) had said that she often accompanied Scull and his companions on the piano when they sang "Gentlemen-rankers".

And, although there was no manuscript or printed copy of the music, Beatrice Ayer (Patton) had made a recording of it for Spitzer.

The resemblance between this and the Galloway version was so close that it left no doubt in
the minds of those who heard it that what we enjoyed that night in Columbus originated not with
Galloway -- but with Scull.

About that same time, Marshall Bartholomew wrote me that Sigmund Spaeth, in his History of
Popular Music in America, had declared that it is now established that the tune was probably
composed by Scull of Harvard, although Galloway is still given credit for it.

Still later, in researching for his unfinished History of Music at Yale, Bartholomew turned up a
traditional Negro spiritual in which the recurring theme in the VERSE of our Whiffenpoof classic was
sung with the words:

been a list'nin' all de night long ----- to the tables down at Mory's
Been a list'nin' all de day ------------ to the place where Louis dwells

 

The phrase, repeated three times in the verse and twice in the refrain, completely dominates the song -- in some say, a rather 'boring' way (not I!).

Whatever its origins, "Gentlemen-Rankers" was frequently sung at Yale in 1907, mostly by "The
Growlers", with whom it was a favourite -- or, shall we say, 'theme song' or 'signature' tune.

 

The late Charles Seymour, a lover of song and an acceptable baritone (who prized his election as an honorary whiff almost as much as his earlier elevation to the Presidency of Yale), recalled that the Kipling ballad had been sung in chorus at the 1908 Class Day exercises.

 

It was natural, then, that when The Founding Five began their singing dinners at Mory's the following winter, "Gentlemen-Rankers" was one of "the songs we love so well," along with

 

"'Shall I, Wasting' and 'Mavourneen' and the rest."

It was however Meade Minnigerode, along with George Pomeroy, who, together, got the inspiration for a whiff adaptation.

 

One evening they brought out a manuscript on which they had collaborated, and read to the whiffs the now famous words:

to the tables down at Mory's

to the place where Louis dwells,
to the dear old temple bar we love so well
sing the whiffenpoofs assembled

with their glasses raised on high
& the magic of their singing casts its spell.

 

 

--- cfr.

 

"to the place where the Linders dwell" -- (for Louis Linder was a married man).

Anyone familiar with Kipling's dry barrack-room ballad can appreciate how these new words transmute the cynicism of an old barrack-room at some for-saken outpost of the British Empire to the genial and cozy atmosphere at Mory's.

 

In the original, one sees a group of  aristocrats, dis-inherited perhaps, serving as enlisted
men in Her Majesty's forces and drinking themselves to death as one of their number sings a verse:

 

TENOR SOLO:

 

to the legion of the lost ones

to the cohorts of the damned
to my brethren in their sorrow over seas
sings a gentleman of England

cleanly bred, machinely crammed
& a trooper of the Empress, if you please.

Then the rest joins in the refrain:

 

we're poor little lambs
who've lost our way
baa baa baa
we are little black sheep
who've gone astray
baa baa baa
gentlemen rankers out on the spree
damned from here to eternity
god ha' mercy on such as we
baa baa baa.

The bitterness totally disappears in the whiff version, as it should.

The gentlemen songsters off on a spree (mutton chops and beer at Mory's!) may sing of being damned from here to eternity, but they don't MEAN a word of it.

The whole spirit of the song is changed from DISASTROUS to a light and playful humour in perfect keeping with the name and the mood of the Whiffenpoofs of 1909.
When the whiffs sang it for the first time that evening at Mory's, they knew that was IT!

One can almost hear Lohmann's characteristic exclamation:

"Gentlemen, this is immense!"

"This," cried another, "should be our national anthem!"

"Yes," added a third, "to be sung at every meeting, all reverently standing!"
And so it was.

And so it is to this day.

 Although I am sure none of the whiffs "really" believed they were Founding an Institution, they made believe that they were when someone suggested that, to insure perpetuity, they should have a Constitution.

 

Ideas to be included in such a document immediately burst forth from one after another seated around the table.

 

Undoubtedly it was Lohmann who jotted them down, for the meticulous accuracy which he
became famous for during his years as Secretary of the University was foreshadowed in his
undergraduate days.

 

It must have been he who typed the manuscript brought in for the rest of the whiffs' approval, for
when the original, framed and hung on the wall at Mory's was stolen some years later, Caesar calmly
produced a carbon copy from his files to replace it.

A model of simplicity, the Constitution contained

 

General Laws

Special Laws, and

By-Laws.

 

It
limited the membership to seven.

 

And to emphasize this, a motto borrowed from Wordsworth was
included:

 

"We are seven."

 

Provision was made for only two officers, a trainer and a manager.

 

And the
future was guarded from corrupting changes by Article IV of the General Laws:

 

"This Constitution shall not be amended."

 

 Perfection had been achieved!
Or had it?

 

The very next year two daring innovations were introduced.

 

When four 1910 songsters
(Carleton A. Connell, Thomas Hewes, Frederick Hotchkiss and Reginald Roome) were chosen to
replace the four who graduated in 1909, the number still stood at seven.

 

But after Christmas holidays
an eighth member was added.

 

Ted Coy, a song lover with a good ear and a nice tenor voice, who had
hitherto been too busy acquiring fame on the football field to have time for music, became a
Whiff.

 

To cover the heresy, he was given the title "Perpetual Guest."

The second innovation was more dramatic.

 

Meade Minnigerode recalled that "Td Coy's prom girl
joined us for the Whiff sessions, sang us a swell song, and was duly elected an Honorary Member."

 

When she appeared with Coy in Woolsey Hall for the Prom concert, the whiffs gathered around Td Coy's prom girl and sang her the Whiff Song, just inside the door to the auditorium."

 

The lady's name was Cecile Marie Charlotte Jeanette Murphy, which accounts for the mysterious initials

 

"CMCJM"

 

carved on the 1910 Whiffenpoof table at Mory's along with those of the regular members.

 

The may have been other occasions on which members of the opposite sex were welcomed into this
all-male fellowship, but the only one we know of occurred many years later.

 

During the spring trip of
the Glee Club in 1935, at a special dinner at Antoine's in New Orleans, Mrs. Marshall Bartholomew
was with great ceremony elected an Honorary Whiff --a distinction accorded to her husband
some years earlier.

 

Actually, Bartholomew's intimate association with the Whiffs even
ante-dated his return to Yale in 1921 as director of the Glee Club, for way back in 1907 and 1908 he
frequently sang at public appearances as one of the "Varsity Quartet" from which the original
membership was derived.

Over the years such gifted musicians as Marshall Bartholomew, Arthur Hall, Fenno Heath and others
have contributed significantly to the increased artistry of the Gentlemen Songsters.

 

Moreover, good
musical backgrounds and training are now common, and the larger groups with this kind of
equipment make possible a more ambitious repertoire that the earlier members could attempt.

 

The
only concern expressed by some "old-timers" is that, with the greater sophistication, modern whiffs
may have lost some of the spontaneity which used to be a Whiffenpoof hallmark.

On the occasion of one of the Whiffenpoofs Anniversaries when the whiffs were writing the first full account of their ancient beginnings, some spoke for the three of us who were left of the Founding Five.

 

Now, in the words of the prophet Elijah, "I, even I only, am left."

 

Let me then speak for all five of them and
declare the confident hope that, for many decades to come, "Gentlemen Songsters off on a spree" will
still be singing here at Yale for the joy of their own souls and the delight of their listeners.

 

I think, if
we listen closely, we may hear, from a distant shore, four voices joining in a confident AMEN.

 

Or not!