uva – Page 6 – Jarrett House North

The first part of the 1921 Yellow Journal

I’m gradually scanning and uploading the pages of the April 1921 Yellow Journal, that scurrilous anonymous satirical broadside at the University of Virginia. This morning I’ve uploaded pages 1 through 4 along with an index of the stories. The pages available through my site are 100dpi PNG files; TIFFs have also been produced.

For now, these are scans of photocopies, as I’m reluctant to subject the fragile newsprint to my color scanner directly (mostly because every time I unfold it I run the risk of cracking the pages). I intend to get scans of the original artifact, but these black and white copies hopefully give some flavor of what the original is like.

My favorite excerpt from the issue so far may be the one liner on page 3: “Mike Wagenheim says that Norfolk is the greatest town in this state. Quite right. No other town could be in the state that Norfolk is in.”

Virginia Glee Club: the musical comedy years

No, that’s not a typo, and no, I didn’t post the wrong picture–at least, not if the attributions in the Holsinger Digital Collection at UVA are correct. Today’s stroll down history lane with the Virginia Glee Club covers an era in their history which is, perhaps justifiably, forgotten–their days as a musical theatre troupe.

To understand how a group founded on moonlight serenades, that eventually became a serious musical organization, spent time in the footlights with greasepaint and drag clothing, it’s helpful to go back to the re-formation of the Glee Club in 1910. At that time, the Glee Club, after a few years without any qualified student direction, reconstituted itself, responding, according to University historian Philip A. Bruce, to the disbanding of the musical theatre group the Arcadians. Through contemporary eyes, it’s easy to read this as meaning that the students from that group of musical players saw the error of their ways and became serious choral singers. Apparently not. Instead, this incarnation of the Virginia Glee Club appears to have arrived to fill a market void and spent at least some of its time doing real musical theatre.

And by musical theatre, I mean drag. The photo above, taken by the Holsinger photographic studio on April 4, 1916 (note the date), is attributed to the Glee Club with a question mark, as if to say, “No way!” Alas, other documentary evidence says “Way!” I have in my possession a copy of the April 1, 1921 edition of the Yellow Journal, the University’s anonymous satirical newspaper, in which a reviewer describes a performance of the Glee Club’s April Fools show for that year, “The Visiting Girl”:

“The Visiting Girl” presented by the University of Virginia Glee Club, John Koch, president, director and chief actor. Jefferson Theatre as an April Fool joke, April 1, 1921. We last saw this show in December and later we saw it in Richmond during February. If it hasn’t improved, and we doubt whether it has improved, we advise you not to go to see it. … The chief attraction of the show is Jack Parrott as a girl and John Koch as a rube. Jack plays his girl’s part very well, though he is a bit awkward. The girls’ chorus looks about as much like a bunch of girls as a litter of pups does. …

I could write it off as satire, but then there’s the ad in the back pages of the paper (the ads, while written to be funny, all are for real products or events):

TO-NIGHT

University Glee Club

IN A MUSICAL COMEDY

Suggestion: Why not cut out the “musical”?

Suggestion: They might cut out the “comedy” too.

The YJ’s hostility to the performance is partly a put-on (they spend the whole issue carping about class issues, and there’s “no one notable” in the Club), but the event is all real. It may well have been an April Fools tradition, judging from the dates of the evidence points, but the events were clearly real.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out other photos from this era in the Holsinger archives. Yeah, the Glee Club did some of their “musical comedy” in blackface. I guess this isn’t surprising in a group doing musical comedy in the South in the early 20th century, but it’s still sobering to realize that the Glee Club really was of its time.

The First and Second Comings of the Yellow Journal

I’ve had the pleasure this week of collaborating with an anonymous Wikipedia editor on a history of the Yellow Journal–that scurrilous student humor magazine at the University of Virginia. In the process we found more than a few interesting points, like:

The Yellow Journal was originally founded in 1912 by the journalistic fraternity Sigma Delta Chi, later to become the Society of Professional Journalists! Anyone who saw the 1990s incarnation (which I had a small hand in) knows how unlikely that origin story is… but it’s not only true, it’s attested in an official UVA history (Dabney, pp. 98-99).
Perhaps because of the ΣΔΧ connection, the early Yellow Journal got press in the New York Times! The Times, which up through the 1930s still published bulletins about social doings in Charlottesville, had a nice article in 1913 about Easters which included a description of the Yellow Journal which is dead on: “…did not spare individuals, events or institutions in its ridicule and quips. It was well illustrated with appropriate cartoons. The character of the sheet can be best gathered from its motto, which is one of Mark Twain‘s witticisms: Truth is precious–therefore economize with it.”
The YJ was first shut down over its scurrilous anonymity — presumably a perceived violation of the honor code–rather than its equally scurrilous content. (See, for instance, headline on the final 1934 edition above.)
The reincarnated 1990s version of the Yellow Journal got tied up in UVA’s Supreme Court case over the funding of Wide Awake, thanks largely to the issue with the Sinéad O’Connor inspired picture of Pope John Paul II with the legend, “Tear Here.” As a result, about the only thing you can find about the late era YJ on Google is that it was “a humor magazine that has targeted Christianity as an object of satire.”
The YJ’s “rejected Dr. Seuss titles,” originating as kickers (jokes along the bottom of each page) in a 1990-1991 issue, turned into a veritable Internet meme.

Alas, there isn’t much out there generally about the YJ. But a few alums and I have been thinking about republishing some of the best content from the 1990s run, maybe even turning it into something like a proper book. I’d love to hear from any Virginia alum who thinks that’s a great idea–or a terrible one. Also, if there are favorite memories about the YJ, please share in the comments.

Student directors of the Virginia Glee Club

I uncovered another student director of the Virginia Glee Club this weekend, poking through the New York Times archive. It got me thinking about how the group’s governance and musical direction has changed over the years and how large a role students have played in its direction.

Virginia is not unusual in having had students conduct its Glee Club. Princeton didn’t have a professional conductor until 1907, and the Harvard Glee Club invited its first professional conductor, Dr. Archibald Davison, in 1919. But the Virginia Glee Club is unique in having returned to student and other non-faculty conductors as a consequence of its separation from the UVA music department.

Most of the students who conducted the group are doomed to anonymity, but a few have names that have been recorded, even in the earliest years of the Club. I suspect that more could be found were someone to go through and comprehensively digitize the old University of Virginia Magazine (hint, hint). Some of the students went on to lead interesting lives. Here’s a snapshot of four of them.

John Duncan Emmet (ca. 1879-1880). One of the Club’s first directors, Emmet was there during Woodrow Wilson’s first year at the University, the 1879 – 1880 season. Wilson’s presence earned Emmet immortality, as the New York Times dug into Wilson’s student past to uncover a few gems about the Glee Club:

The [University of Virginia] Magazine contains several humorous descriptions of the reception accorded the Glee Clubbers on their serenading expeditions. A pert comment on the editorial page of one issue is typical of the many to be found in the files: “Painfully do we record the last unhappy adventure of the unhappy Glee Club. Most lamentable was their failure! Wrapped in sweet sleep the serenaded slumbered peacefully on, unconscious of the frantic efforts of the serenaders. We can only wish them better success next time.

Emmet graduated with his medical degree in 1880, and went on to bigger and better things, serving as the chief gynecologist at St. Vincent’s Hospital and founding the American Gynaecological and Obstretrical Journal. Emmet was the grandson of Dr. John Patten Emmet, professor of chemistry at the University, and namesake of Emmet Dorm.

Harrison Randolph (ca. 1893-1894). I’ve written about Randolph before. The only student director named by University historian Philip A. Bruce, Randolph went on to the presidency of Charleston College.

John Amar Shishmanian (ca. 1904-1905). Shishmanian is a little bit of an enigma. His leadership of the Club is attested by a 1905 Atlanta Constitution article about the Club’s concerts there: “The clubs are now undergoing bi-weekly rehearsals under the leadership of Mr. Shishmania [sic], the winner of the southern intercollegiate oratorical medal last winter.” Digging deeper, we find Shishmanian’s accomplishments as an orator attested in John S. Patton’s Jefferson, Cabell and the University of Virginia,which preceded Bruce’s account and is packed with all kinds of trivia–including a list of Jefferson Society medal winners. Shishmanian, who was registered with the University from Lexington, Kentucky, was a graduate student in law, having finished his BA at the University of Kentucky. The October 1903 Alumni Bulletin was a little more forthcoming about his origins: “an Armenian resident in this country, has entered as a student in the course recently established leading to a consular service certificate.”

He was the president of the Jefferson Society in 1905, and was also awarded the medal for oratory in that year. He is attested as a speaker at the honorary initiation of Virginia governor Claude August Swanson into the Delta Chi fraternity in 1905 or 1906. He graduated in 1906 and went west, joining the firm of Barbour and Cashin, before going east, eventually far east, joining the faculty of Robert College in Turkey.

Michael Butterman (1989-1991). Butterman is better known to modern Glee Club members, serving as joint conductor of the group with Cheryl Brown-West in the first season after its separation from the University, then taking over as solo conductor in 1990-1991 during the 120th anniversary year. Butterman was a grad student at the time, and left in 1991 to head to Indiana University in their conducting program. He’s now conducting the Boulder Philharmonic and the Shreveport Symphony, and is director of outreach for the Rochester Philharmonic, according to a 2007 Boulder Daily News interview.

The Virginia Glee Club disbands — in 1912

gleeclub_1914

This week’s Virginia Glee Club history post comes a little late, but better late than never because it sheds light on an interesting chapter of the Club’s history—its apparent, and apparently intermittent, disappearance in the years between 1905 and 1915. Thanks to a new item that has turned up in Google Books, and which I finally got a photocopy of today, I think we can piece together a fairly decent timeline.

We can piece together the history from a few scraps of evidence. First, UVA historian Philip A. Bruce, who wrote the history of the University’s first hundred years, alluded to the Club’s troubles between 1905 and 1915:

…no play was offered in 1910-11. This fact led to the revival of the Glee Club, an association which had disbanded in 1905. A mass-meeting of all the students interested in music was held; a new vocal and instrumental club organized; and rehearsals at once began. This club was composed of twenty members. It gave two concerts in Cabell Hall and four beyond the precincts. Choruses, quartets, and vocal and instrumental solos, were skilfully rendered. This association failed to re-form in 1912-13 and 1913-14, as the result of the absence of an experienced and attentive director and manager.

We know that the group was still active in the fall of 1905. A letter written on October 29, 1905 by Sue Whitmore, the mother of a University of Virginia student, mentions her enjoyment of hearing the Glee Club perform.

We also know that the Club was around in January 1914, from photographic evidence (above). Then, in 1915, the group was “reorganized” and “trained scientifically” by Professor A. L. Hall-Quest.

But what happened to the group between 1905 and 1914? What did Bruce mean that it “failed to reform”? He laid its failure to succeed on poor leadership, but on what evidence? Here’s where the new discovery sheds some light.

In early October of 1912, the following notice appeared (and was reproduced in the Alumni Bulletin, series 3, vol, 5):

We, the officers of the University of Virginia Glee Club, in consideration of the disadvantageous circumstances under which the afore-mentioned club has operated within the past three years, do officially declare said club disbanded, believing that by so doing an ultimate success may be achieved along another line. (Signed): Roger M. Bone, president, Robert V. Funsten, vice-president, Vaughan Camp, secretary, C.A. McKean, treasurer.

(Thanks to the fine folks at Special Collections for sending me a photocopy of the bulletin.)

So now we have a timeline:

In late 1905 or maybe early 1906, the Glee Club disbands.
In 1910, the Club reforms, responding to a musical vacuum left by the demise of the Arcadians, a musical theatre group, and struggles for a few years with inexperienced musical and logistical leadership.
At the beginning of the third season, in October 1912, the officers of the time disband the group temporarily.
At the beginning of the fall 1913 semester, the group re-forms (though the photo is dated January 1914, the re-formation must have happened in the fall—the odds of getting so many young men into matching suits for an official portrait in less than a month are probably no better then than they are today).
In 1915, the students connect with a professor, A. L. Hall-Quest, who has connections to the Princeton Glee Club tradition and who sets them on a sturdier footing.

Bruce overstated the hiatus by a year, based on the photographic evidence, but otherwise he was right on. The timeline speaks of an organization that was making it, or not, year-to-year, with little to no institutional support. That sort of existence resonates with my memory of the group between 1990 and 1994, with one difference: we had alumni who cared about the group enough to keep it afloat, and the Club guys of the early 20th century did not. There wasn’t a real alumni association, to speak of, until the first World War.

The next question, which will have to wait for another post, is: what happened after Hall-Quest left? He resigned in 1918, and Arthur Fickénscher didn’t take his job at UVa, and the directorship of the group, until sometime in the 1920s. But this answer might have to wait until I can get back to Charlottesville to do some real research.

Songs of the University of Virginia: the 1906 songbook

It’s Friday, so it must be time for some Virginia Glee Club history.

Before the first Songs of the University of Virginia album, there was the songbook. Compiled by A. Frederick Wilson in 1906 and featuring a combination of the still familiar (“The Good Old Song,” “Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes”) and the unfamiliar (“The Orange and the Blue”, “Upidee,” just about anything else), there are some fascinating trends in the music. Certainly lots of drinking songs, two sung fully in Latin, and lots of fight songs where “old Eli” (Yale) and “the tiger” (Princeton) are the opponents.

And there is much that is destined to remain obscure: certainly I can’t imagine how to interpret the song “The Man Who Has Plenty of Good Peanuts,” with its verse “The man who has plenty of Pomp’s peculiar patent perpetual pocket panoramic ponies for passing examinations/And giveth his neighbor none /He shan’t have any of my Pomp’s peculiar patent perpetual pocket panoramic ponies for passing examinations/When his Pomp’s peculiar patent perpetual pocket panoramic ponies for passing examinations are gone.” But with the majority of songs containing four part harmony, and with many fight songs that could be revived, the book is definitely worth a download.

Yes, download–you can get the PDF from Google Books, since the book is out of copyright. So while you’re waiting to purchase the Glee Club‘s new album Songs of the University of Virginia, check out some of the historical precedents.

For incentive, here’s the foreward, in which credit is given to the Virginia Glee Club of the time for keeping the songs alive:

P.S.: This is one of the only sources I’ve seen for sheet music for “Upidee,” one of three songs mentioned as a Virginia favorite in 1871 just before the first appearance of the Glee Club.

Where was the Cabell House?

The standard biography of the Virginia Glee Club traces their formation to the creation of a glee club at the University of Virginia’s “Cabell House,” which the group’s history calls the “Cabell House Men.” Inspired by my visit to the University this weekend, I went digging to find where and what the Cabell House was.

Jefferson’s original university design had 54 student rooms on the Lawn and a similar number on the East and West Ranges, holding somewhere between 150 and 200 students (assuming double residency for all the Lawn rooms except the Bachelor’s Row). So the growth in University attendance from 128 in 1842-1843 to more than 600 in 1856-1857 (figures from Philip Bruce’s History of the University of Virginia vol. III), combined with the lack of further dormitory space, led to a growth industry in Charlottesville boarding houses. One of these was the Brock Boarding House, later known as the Cabell House. Later called the “Stumble Inn,” the two-story brick structure, located on the north side of West Main Street between 9th and 10th, was ultimately razed. Today the block hosts a handful of businesses and a book shop and overlooks the train station on the other side of West Main Street.

The Glee Club’s formation wasn’t the only brush with fame the Cabell House had, however; it was also infamous as the site where John Singleton Mosby, later famous as the Confederate raider known as the Gray Ghost, shot fellow University student George S. Turpin.

2009 University of Virginia reunions

I returned yesterday from an extended weekend attending my 15th class reunion at the University of Virginia. It was a great weekend and I had a lot of fun, though not necessarily because of the reunion itself.

We started the weekend on a rocky note, driving through pouring rain through Connecticut and New York before it finally cleared away when we got to New Jersey. Lisa and I drove on solo the next morning and made it to Charlottesville about 3 pm. I had grand plans of catching up with a few folks in town but was exhausted by the drive and we punted, managing only to have a few drinks at Michael’s Bistro and to get over to L’Etoile. Okay, so that wasn’t such hardship. In fact, Friday was a pretty amazing date, the first we’ve had in quite a long time.

Saturday was a more structured day. This year I went in with the expectation that we would go to a few things that interested us and otherwise spend most of the day with friends. And it worked out that way, kind of. We did hear Julian Bond speak about the connection between civil rights, changing demographics, and the evolution of R&B and rock music–an unexpected but pleasurable discussion with an old professor, if not perhaps as consciousness raising as some of Bond’s past lectures have been.

Then it was lunch, which was unpleasant. The Big Tent was raised over yesterday’s muddy grass, our claustrophobia was in full swing, and we retreated to a stone planter near the Small Special Collections Library to eat our hot dogs (good) and hamburgers (overcooked). A slow stroll around Grounds followed, during which I snapped the majority of the photos from this trip. We sat in the Rotunda for a disappointing class panel, but the real unexpected jewel was sitting in the Shannon Garden along the west side of the Rotunda. Named for Edgar Shannon, who presided over the University during its most turbulent period since the Civil War during the 1960s and early 1970s, it was a fittingly tranquil place that I had walked past many times before but never appreciated until the weekend. (The picture above shows the colonnade that Stanford White added during the post-fire renovation of the Rotunda to create what became the Shannon Garden.)

The reunion part of the weekend was the least successful, primarily because the 15th reunion is not too well attended for a lot of folks, and partly because I didn’t sign up for enough fun activities. (Lesson learned: will sign up for wine tasting next time.) But we had a great time catching up with Greg, Bernie, Anne and the other folks from the class that were there, and the reunion left me wanting to go back in five years and do it again–which I suppose is the goal of all good reunions.

Charlottesville dinner: L’etoile

Ah, Charlottesville. You continue to surprise me, even after I thought I had experienced it all. Superbly professional at the C&O? Check. Deep beer list and occasionally funny, regularly reliable bistro fare at Michael’s? Check. Surprisingly regionally wonderful at the late lamented Southern Culture (ah, the sweet potato fries!)? Check. Late night emergency room visit after the mushroom soup at the late unlamented Northern Exposure the night of my graduation? Uh, check.

But nothing prepared us for dinner at L’etoile tonight. Well, appetizers at Michael’s helped. But seriously: duck confit amuse-bouche was a tiny morsel of duck perfection. Sweetbreads: large yet delicate and just browned, with bacon and mushroom demi-glace lending depth beneath. Trout, superbly prepared with a turnip puree holding together just enough Virginia ham and peas still toothsome…. and that’s just what I had. Turns out they’ve been around for more than ten years and we never had found them—until tonight, when sitting over beers at Michael’s, Lisa gave my iPhone a shake, and Urbanspoon came up with the name.

Alas, Charlottesville! As various cleverer people than I have said, I would go back there tomorrow, but for the work I’ve taken on.

Getting ready

I’ve been out of circulation a bit over the last day or two at an offsite, so haven’t had a chance to post much about the week I’ve got ahead of me. I’m heading back to UVA for my 15th reunion starting tomorrow, and really looking forward to it.

Logistically, it won’t be simple–we have to take the whole family, including the dogs, down to New Jersey and then Lisa and I will head on solo the following day to Charlottesville. Two days of driving each way, for only two days in Charlottesville. Sigh.

This will be a good reunion for me, I think. Last time around we caught up with a lot of folks but were a little distracted by other business (we were in the middle of selling our house in Kirkland and moving back to the east coast). This time, not only will I hopefully find time to get some better photos of Grounds in full sunlight, but I’ll be fully plugged in to my surroundings in a way I haven’t been before. Doing all the research on the Glee Club has made me much more conscious of the history of the University, and in some ways I feel closer to the place as a result.

A physical reunion in the age of Facebook feels a little like an anachronism, but I feel like, having reconnected with so many folks virtually, I’m ready to seriously hang out and have a lot of fun with everyone without having to do all the small talk.

Lost in the library: The New York Public Library Digital Gallery

A tip from Jonathan Hoefler led me to the NYPL Digital Gallery, now fully searchable and browsable, with low resolution images free for non-profit use (including personal blogs, though not Wikipedia). Some really fascinating stuff, including a number of University of Virginia related items: detailed close-up shots of the pediments of East Lawn, the post-1895 Rotunda, the serpentine walls, two different views of the famous pre-1895 engraving showing the Lawn from the West with the Rotunda annex, a view of the full map of Virginia from which the 1826 engraving of the Lawn is drawn and a separate close-up of that engraving, other early engravings likely not drawn from life (since they don’t show the terraces on the Lawn) but including the pediment around Pavilion X, the exterior and interior of Edgar Allan Poe’s room on West Range following one of the Raven Society restorations of the room, and my personal favorite, pictures from a visit that Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas made to the University in 1935, including a shot with faculty and students, the pair in front of a pavilion, and this nifty shot of Stein in front of the Rotunda.

I’m pretty sure you could kill hours just looking through this site–for me, the old photos from Newport News are just about as fascinating as the UVA material.

A Shadow’s on the Sundial: initial notes

My copy of the Virginia Glee Club‘s 1972 record, A Shadow’s On the Sundial, arrived today. I haven’t listened to much of it yet, but a quick scan of the first few tracks on the first side and a review of the liner notes (transcribed) provide the following observations:

This is a completely different group than the rough-hewn group from 1951 (or was it 1947) that recorded Songs of the University of Virginia. No monophony here, no vigorously gasping phrases, no mediocre baritones. Don Loach should rightly be credited with introducing the tradition of countertenor singing to the Glee Club, as evidenced in the first four madrigals, and for generally setting a high level of musicianship. When I joined the group, in the second year after he and the group parted ways, much of the musical philosophy of the group was still proceeding in the fundamental direction laid down by him.
Only four of the Summer Songs, settings written by the group’s conductor David Davis of poetry by the group’s student business manager, Michael B. Stillman (class of 1963), are included on the recording—not included is the oddly funny “Little Polly Ethylene.”
The record’s liner notes reveal the identity of the mysterious Harrison Randolph, who in 1893 broke it out of the Glee, Mandolin and Banjo Club and set it on its path of independent existence: he was the organist in the University Chapel.

More notes as I finish listening to the record…

Virginia Glee Club 1972 European Tour

Continuing this week’s back to school theme (hey, in the fall I get a little nostalgic for UVA), I did a little more spelunking through the broken Cavalier Daily archives and turned up a review of the Glee Club’s 1972 European tour. Check out Around the Western World in Eighteen Days: A Glee Club Diary, and marvel at the thought that college students could once visit the Hofbrauhaus on a University-sponsored trip.

New Dorms replacement project underway at Virginia

It’s great to find out about happenings at my alma mater through Wikipedia. In this case, an edit on the University of Virginia article tipped me to some new developments on Grounds: a new style of dorm that will end up replacing the “New Dorms” that were my home in my first year at UVA.

I like that the new dorm is named “Kellogg House” after my late professor, Robert Kellogg. It’s the first time that one of my professors has had a building named after him.

The dorm looks pretty fancy, but of course the important question is unanswered: what sort of view do the Kellogg kids get into the windows of Balz? And how long will it be before all the dorms are converted over? And how long until the kids start hiding contraband behind the panels in the dropped ceilings shown in the photos? I am deeply envious of the view, but not of the hike that the kids in Kellogg must have had on move-in day…

Virginia, Hail, All Hail

Ten thousand voices sing thy acclaim;
Ten thousand hearts beat high at thy name;
All unafraid and girded with good,
Mother of men a queen thou hast stood;
Children of thine a true brotherhood,
Virginia, Hail, All Hail!
Virginia, Hail, All Hail!

Long let thy praises live and resound;
Long let thy virtues in us abound;
Let morning radiance set thee in sight;
Let noonday brilliance crown thee with light;
Let ev’ning sun sink kissing goodnight,
Virginia, Hail, All Hail!
Virginia, Hail, All Hail!

It’s the kickoff of football season (UVA vs. USC at 3:30 pm today), so here’s a little lyric of inspiration from J. A. Morrow (class year unknown). Go Hoos!

I’m looking forward to hearing another recording of this song—I found and bought a copy of A Shadow’s on the Sundial on eBay today.