The Letters of Cole Porter

by Cole Porter

  In 1905, Porter enrolled at the Worcester Academy in Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded in 1834 as the Worcester County Manual Labor High School, it was intended, as the original prospectus states, as ‘a school for the education of youth in languages, arts and sciences; for promoting habits of industry and economy; and for inculcating the principles of piety and virtue’;3 in 1846 it officially became Worcester Academy.4 During Porter’s time there the principal (1882–1918) was Daniel Webster Abercrombie, who between 1905 and 1909 was in regular correspondence with Porter’s mother, Kate.5 His correspondence details the boy’s progress, his health, and above all Abercrombie’s affection for Cole:

  13 May 1905: Daniel Webster Abercrombie to Kate Porter

  My Dear Madam:

  As regards music lessons, he could take a lesson a week either on the piano or violin, but it would not be best for him to pursue both at the same time. He would not have time enough for practice, and there would be too great diversion from his regular school work, and too great tax upon his time and strength. There is a school piano available to him for practice but I would advise him to take the violin as practice on that can be done in his own room; however, we occasionally allow a boy to hire a piano and have it in his room to practice out of study hours. I should be entirely willing to have him do this . . . Competent instruction on both piano and violin can be had in Worcester.

  19 September 1905: Daniel Webster Abercrombie to Kate Porter

  My dear Mrs. Porter:-

  I am grateful to you for the kind suggestions of your letter and I shall give them weight and shall try to keep Cole from entangling himself with too many interests.

  I saw at once that he was a delicate rather than a robust boy and with that in mind I questioned whether he would be able to stand up under school work and music too, the latter, however, may be a source of recreation to him and so not provide a drain upon his time and strength.

  I am delighted with the boy. He seems most ingenious and delightful in spirit and I am sure that we can look forward to only happy relations with him.

  15 January 1906: Daniel Webster Abercrombie to Kate Porter

  My dear Mrs. Porter:-

  I was very much concerned about his physical condition at the end of last term, and he is not today in the condition I wish he were in or he should be in. He has been subject to colds since coming to us, and they wear him down and exhaust him. My heart ached for the little fellow when I saw him starting home Christmas. I wondered if you could feel that we had taken any care of him, and yet I had tried to be unfailing in my observance of his condition and in my advice and help. He is very careless and runs around uncovered, and is careless about his swimming the pool, going out immediately, improperly clothed . . . He is interested in his work, studies well for so young a boy, is full of play at the proper time and spirits of the proper sort . . . The boys like him. He loves the boys and is fond of them all. He is wise in his companionship, pleasant to everyone and discreet as to whom he admits to the inner circle.

  Porter intended to return home for the summer of 1906, but his departure was delayed by a camping accident, as reported in the Peru Republican:

  SUSTAINS BROKEN LEG

  COLE PORTER MEETS WITH A

  DISTRESSING ACCIDENT.

  Popular Young Peruvian With a Number

  of Classmates on an Excursion

  and While Making a Bed in a Hay

  Mow Falls Through a Hole.

  Cole Porter’s summer of ideal recreation and instruction was brought to a sudden termination last Saturday by a painful though less serious accident than might have been expected from the circumstances.

  Cole is a student at Worcester Academy, Massachusetts, and instead of returning home to Peru for the vacation immediately upon the close of school, started with his teacher of athletics and a party of fifteen schoolmates for a yachting cruise along the New England coast, provided with suits of oil skins and all the paraphernalia necessary for learning practical seamanship. Landings have been made for canoeing and camping and all sorts of outing experiences.

  The party has been having a wonderful time in the Maine woods and Cole has been writing home that he was developing a prodigious muscle and becoming as strong as Samson.

  The boys were having the time of their lives and had established a camp on Bibber’s Island in Cascoe Bay, which was poetically christened “Camp Wychmere.” From this point, side trips into the wilderness have been made and it was in returning to camp from one of these, a canoeing trip on Lake Sebago, that the larking young men decided to top off their list of unusual doings by sleeping in a hay mow. It was a hilarious experience for the city boys but resulted disastrously for one of their number. The hay slipped with their weight and carried Cole down an opening to the barn floor below, he striking a scaffolding in the fall. A fracture of the leg a few inches above the ankle joint resulted. It was a mercy and a mystery that no more serious injury was received.

  He was taken by trolley immediately to a hospital in Portland where medical attention rendered him as comfortable as possible. The broken limb was placed in a plaster cast and Cole himself wrote that he was suffering scarcely at all.

  S. F. Porter, his father, upon receiving the news, which came by letter Wednesday, started at once for Portland and will bring his son home to convalesce.6

  Before his return to Worcester in the autumn, Porter participated in a concert at a local church: ‘At five o’clock Sunday evening a vesper service consisting of song and instrumental music was held at the Presbyterian church. In addition to the congregational service a special program was rendered in which Mrs. Anna Constant Shutt, of Washington, D. C., gave a number of organ selections in the exquisite style for which she is noted. Cole Porter played a violin solo with organ accompaniment, a slumber song by Johnson. His management of the violin is a delight. A vocal solo by Mrs. E. H. Griswold, sung splendidly, was an important number on the program.’7

  Abercrombie’s correspondence with Kate Porter resumed the following winter and addressed in particular Cole’s relationship with other boys at the school as well as his academic progress:

  17 January 1907: Daniel Webster Abercrombie to Kate Porter

  My dear Mrs. Porter:

  Cole’s record is unsatisfactory not because he does not do good work, but because he does not quite do the work that he is competent to do . . . I have talked to him several times last term and this term in regard to doing his best all the time. He always responds to me delightfully. I think he knows my affectionate regard for him and my warm interest in him. I caution him steadily in regard to his associates. He does not go with bad boys but he goes with those considerably older than himself who while they do not exactly pet him yet show their kindness toward him in a marked way. I believe it is better altogether for a boy to associate with his equals in age, as a rule, and I have so told Cole . . . if Cole should identify himself in personal relations with the boys of his own class, and there are some delightful boys in the class and it is a strong class, it would be far better for him, but his cuteness and brightness and versatility commend him to older boys. This is the only undesirable tendency that I see in Cole.

  28 March 1907: Daniel Webster Abercrombie to Kate Porter

  My dear Mrs. Porter:

  That I write is in strictest confidence . . . While I feel very kindly toward Karl Mertz, he is not a boy with whom Cole ought to become intimate. His traditions and ideals are far different from Cole’s, and from those that Cole has always lived among, and your feeling in regard to Cole’s passing his vacation with him at Atlantic City is very wise . . . I cannot tell you how deeply I love your son, and how careful I have been to try to pour the good of the school into his life and save him from the objectional [sic] that is found, and must always be found, among boys and among men.

  14 April 1908: Harry Ross* to Kate Porter

  My dear Mrs. Porter:

  We quite agree with you in what you say in a previous
letter in regard to our responsibility for keeping Cole at work. He has never fallen low in his work; and our worrying is not at all along that line, but rather that he is inclined to attempt a good many things and is not very strong physically . . . I wish you might have seen him in his portrayal of the character “Bob Acres” in the play of the “Rivals”† which the juniors gave last term. It was very finely done and worthy of [a] much more experienced hand in stagecraft. This was one of the things which we allowed him to go into beyond his studies, but that is now past and I think there is nothing special to draw him away this spring term.

  Porter was home again in the summer of 1908, at which time Abercrombie wrote to Kate Porter about the coming academic year:

  20 July 1908: Daniel Webster Abercrombie to Kate Porter

  My Dear Mrs. Porter:

  I wish I might see Cole during the summer, and I may find time to write him. I am very deeply interested in his welfare. I want this coming year to be a very different year in his life from last year as regards getting down to his work. He will be in my class for the first time, and I shall try through my contact with him there to inspire him to concentration and to steady purpose in work to use a hunter’s phrase, he “scatter his fire”. Sociality is such an element of his nature, that proves a weakness to him instead of a strength. He gives too much of his time and self to others, he saves too little for the definite purposes which bring him to school. He is an able boy, who is very popular. Do you think that one may be too popular? Proverbs say that “beware when all men speak well of you”. Some of us need have no such caution but Cole should. You cannot doubt the spirit in which I am writing. I know no other way to show my friendship in a boy than by my frankness, though frankness is often misunderstood, even by elder persons than boys, but believe me, that what I have written is from the heart, out of the deep seated purpose to help Cole. I can help him and will if he will allow me to. Please give him my best love.

  Intending to apply to Yale University, during the late summer of 1908 Porter – who had failed the Classics portion of the Yale preliminary examinations – received additional tuition in Greek from Alfred E. Dame, a Worcester Academy faculty member. But when he re-took the entrance examination, Porter failed in algebra:

  26 September 1908: Daniel Webster Abercrombie to Kate Porter

  My dear Mrs. Porter:

  You will be pleased to hear of Cole’s success at Yale this last week, though unfortunately he failed in Algebra which last June he passed.

  I think it is a very narrow point of view which they hold at Yale in such matters. A boy who passed Algebra in June ought not to be put to the necessity of another examination in September. If he knew enough Algebra shown by their own test in June, the fair assumption is that he knew enough in September, but according to Yale’s cranky ways, the [sic] have conditioned him in Algebra, although they passed him in it last June. I shall write to Yale and try to get the condition removed, though I doubt my success.

  One of the more revealing letters in the Abercrombie–Kate Porter correspondence dates from March 1909, Porter’s final year at the Worcester Academy. In it, Abercrombie explains a drop in her son’s grades – which he attributes to the boy’s increasing engagement with his music to the detriment of his other studies – and reacts to what Kate Porter apparently described as the ‘disgust’ of Porter’s father with his son. This letter is one of the few sources to document the antagonism between Cole and his father:

  6 March 1909: Daniel Webster Abercrombie to Kate Porter

  My dear Mrs. Porter:

  Your note is received. Are you not more disappointed than the facts warrant? If you will compare Cole’s report for the first half of this term with last terms [sic] record you will find that he has tow [sic] A’s and one A- for the first term, which is an advance and that one of his marks namely, his mathematics, has dropped from B- to C so his studies about balance. There is a decline, however, in his deportment from A- to B-. I was not in the Faculty meeting when his name was marked for deportment and on referring to the slips on which the comments of the teachers are preserved, I found an explanation of Cole’s deportment mark which is D- these words, ‘Irregular, room disorderly, doesn’t study alone, Piano in study hours.’ From the last words I infer, of course, that he has been playing his piano in study hours. I would say that probably these comments are fully deserved and yet I don’t think that you ought to be greatly disappointed, and I certainly don’t think there is any justification whatever for his father being disgusted, or suggest bringing him home.

  Porter composed a number of songs at Worcester Academy, including ‘Fi, Fi, Fifi’, ‘The Bearded Lady’, ‘The Tattooed Gentleman’ and ‘Class Song – 1909’, none of which survives.8 And despite his low grades at times, he had considerable academic success as well. In June 1908 he was awarded the Dexter Prize for excellence in declamation, and in 1909 he was the class valedictorian. Nearly thirty years later, in 1934, a classmate of Porter’s, R. P. Robinson, wrote to him with news of their mutual friends and recalled the poem with which Porter had concluded his valedictory address: ‘You to the right, and I to the left / For the ways of men must sever. / And it well may be for a day or a night / And it well may be for ever.’*

  In June 1909, Porter again failed the Greek section of the entrance examinations to Yale. Two months later, on 20 August, Abercrombie wrote to Edmund Scott, a tutor at Worcester Academy: ‘I think I have never had a boy’s failure disappoint me more than Cole’s. This also to me appears a lack of sincerity and of real work in the boy. I have been greatly distressed in mind ever since hearing of Cole’s failure. He has done great discredit to his teaching but he needs a great many hard bumps before good sense will come to him. He ought to have been a great credit to us . . .’ It is not out of the question that the experience of his final year at Worcester soured Porter on the Academy. Barely six years later, in February 1916, three years after Porter had graduated from Yale, Abercrombie wrote to Meylert B. Mullin†: ‘I thank you very much for your kind note which reached me this morning, with its enclosure of the item about Cole Porter. What a genius he has for such work. I haven’t laid eyes on Cole since he graduated from school. I think I have not heard from him. His alienation from the school is very sad to me, and without explanation. I don’t understand it. It is one of those little tragedies of my life for which I find no explanation and which always bring me real sorrow . . .’9

  Porter’s difficulties with the entrance examinations notwithstanding, he enrolled at Yale in the autumn of 1909, where he majored in English and minored in music. Over the course of four years he took classes in English, French, German, Latin, history, philosophy and biology.10 Yet much of his time was spent on musical and theatrical activities. He joined the Yale Glee Club, the Whiffenpoofs, a small, a cappella singing group established in 1909,‡ and was a regular participant in the Yale Dramatic Association, for which he composed two of his earliest shows, Cora (1911) and And the Villain Still Pursued Her (1912), for both of which only the lyrics survive.* By his own account, Porter also composed more than three hundred songs at Yale,11 of which only eighteen survive, including ‘Bridget McGuire’, ‘Since Dolly’s Come to Town’ and ‘Antoinette’.12 His football songs, ‘Bingo Eli Yale’, ‘Bull Dog’, ‘A Football King’ and ‘If I Were Only a Football Man’, were especially popular. An article in the New Haven Register for 12 September 1911 takes special note of them while at the same time promoting a common, if in Porter’s case untrue, trope about self-taught ‘genius’, though perhaps in this instance tongue-in-cheek: ‘. . . there are several new songs this year and among them two by Cole Porter, of Peru, Indiana, a member of the junior class in the academic department and one of the best entertainers who has ever been at Yale. This year his songs are “Bulldog,” and “Eli,” and he wrote the music and words . . . Mr. Porter had no musical education but had natural ability along this line. Some of the peculiar and distinctive features of his work have been explained
by the fact that he spent several years in the mountains of Roumania, and heard many strange birds while up there.’

  In 1912, Porter composed his first surviving show, The Pot of Gold, which premiered at the Delta Kappa Epsilon on 26 November 1912. A significant correspondence with the author of the book, Almet F. Jenks Jr. (1892–1966), documents the genesis of the work:

  [Summer 1912]: Cole Porter to Almet Jenks13

  Westleigh on the Mis-sis-sin-e-wa, Peru, Indiana

  My Dear Almet:

  As for “Manalive,” don’t you think it offers very little: All talk. I have tried in vain to get “The Dead City” without success. I shall keep on trying but it looks very hopeless.

  One thing, the idea of Manalive himself might be excellent if applied to Yale. We must have this show such that the audience can comprehend the plot and no drunken DKE crowd would travel to Beacon House.

  I do hope you will be obvious and uninteresting. Otherwise we will suffer defeat, for my music was never the result of inspired imagination.

  I have written the following songs--

  “She was a fair young mermaid”

  “I want to be married”

  “If I were only a football man”

  “My Salvation Army queen”

  All I can ask is that you dash off a scenario and send it to me so I can work on opening choruses. Also tell me whom you select for different parts, and I can write fitting songs the more easily.

  Don’t forget color. We must have lots of that. Be naif and I can join you.

  Goodbye.

  Devotedly,

  Cole

  [Summer 1912]: Cole Porter to Almet Jenks

  Almet, My Dear:

  I am delighted I received a letter from you in which you showed a descent from the ethereal.

  As for the title The pot of gold being trite, I think it is truly wonderful. A title is good only when it means nothing until the fall of the final curtain, and you must admit that in this case, the final curtain must fall. As for the caste [sic], it seems rather large, but I suppose you consider it necessary. Of course with so many, rehearsals will be exceedingly difficult. Then, too, a chorus girl is worth more than a small useless part.