by Cole Porter
Dear Mr. Stark:
Yesterday I was at the Hospital and found Mr. Porter somewhat brighter than previously. He asked me to send you his thanks for the additional K.m.K.clippings. All for the Scrap Book.
He thought he would be at Harkness only about “a week longer” – but I don’t know whether or not this is wishful thinking. Time will tell.
Best,
[Signed:] Madeline P. Smith
A few days later, he was back at the Waldorf:
29 June 1964: Cole Porter to Jean Howard117
Dearest Jean: –
Thank you so much for your note. I hope you will come to the West Coast during the Summer.
Love,
[signed:] Cole
[Annotation in Madeline P. Smith’s hand:]
Dear Mrs. H. –
He is back now in 33-A – but weak. He really plans on going to Calif. this Saturday.
Best,
M.P.S.
In her next letter to Stark, Madeline Smith not only summarizes Porter’s current health but also comments on his letter-writing (or lack of it):
8 July 1964: Madeline P. Smith to Sam Stark118
Dear Mr. Stark: –
Thank you for your July 3rd letter. It is always nice to hear from you.
Mr. Porter did not have to stay too long at the hospital, thank Goodness. It was an “impacted∗ hip-fracture” which did not have to be operated on. So, he was able to leave on July 4th for California – taking with him two valets, 1 chauffeur and wife, and others to meet him at the West Coast end. He could not wear his artificial leg as it hurt him, and, while he looked very well in the face, he is thin and quite introspective. I think, on the Coast, he seldom sees his old-time friends, alas.
How nice of you to think of something for him that he can use. I’m sure the flashlight will be most useful. If it arrives here, I will see that it is forwarded to California.
If only he would show even a little interest in doing any of his special work at all, and especially in doing MY AUNT MAXINE* – but, as you surmise, this is a lost cause now. I have had to return every script that has been sent to him since his amputation – “with regrets”. (And with those “one-liners” that he always dictates these days.) He never wrote long letters, but now they are less than short. I am always glad when he will even dictate his own replies.
All good wishes to you and Mrs. Stark,
Sincerely,
[signed:] Madeline P. Smith
∗One in which one fragment is driven into the other so as to be held fast.
- Gould’s Medical Dictionary.
Porter continued to write briefly only to his closest friends, such as Jean Howard and Sam Stark, from California in July:
12 July 1964: Cole Porter to Jean Howard119
Dearest Jean:
Your letter of July 6th, from London, arrived and made me very happy. I do hope you will come to California later and, if possible, with Michael.
Lots of love,
[signed:] Cole
18 July 1964: Cole Porter to Harriette and Sam Stark120
Dear Harriette and Sam:
Thank you so much for the beautiful flashlight and holder. This made my birthday worth while [sic].
Love to you both.
[signed:] Cole
Mrs Smith, too, only received brief notes from him while he was away at his other residence: ‘. . . I don’t know whether or not I have given you any late report on Mr. Porter – but, inasmuch as I, too, get only one-line notes, I asked him right out – in my subtle way – recently, how his hip was progressing. He wrote back that it was “infinitely better”, so I hope he is really much better; he never says unless I ask. He will probably stay a little later this year, as he left late for the Coast (July 4th).’121 More forthcoming was Tully, his secretary in California: ‘. . . I asked Cole to loan me $1,000.00, assuring him I can pay him back by the first of the year (I get a nice bonus at Christmas) and he was so darn sweet and told Ford to make me out a check right away. He said “Tully, don’t be embarrassed. I’ve asked for a loan many times.” What a darling he is and so understanding. I sometimes feel he is living in another plane but he understood this situation. I have to be practical and make arrangements for a burial plot and services because something might happen to [Tully’s mother] at any time . . . Cole is simply marvelous – very talkative and seems to feel so much better. That was terrible thing that he had to fall – on his stump yet – but the hip seems better and I notice his left does not throb from the phantom pain. He is now seeing people for the first time in a long time – I mean people like Vivian Leigh* etc. She was over for dinner the other night . . .’122
But within weeks, he was back in hospital, this time in California. He declined rapidly and on 14 October, Stanley Musgrove reported that ‘Cole is very low this afternoon, so the situation is touch and go.’123 The following night, he died:
16 October 1964: Madeline P. Smith to Sam and Harriette Stark (9:54 AM)124
JUST TO LET YOU GOOD FRIENDS KNOW COLE PORTER DIED LAST NIGHT PRIVATE FUNERAL IN PERU INDIANA NO FLOWERS PLEASE MADELINE SMITH
A week later, Mrs Smith wrote to one of Porter’s closest friends, Jean Howard, to describe his death and funeral:
23 October 1964: Madeline P. Smith to Jean Howard125
Dear Mrs. Howard: –
Out of a stack of letters awaiting a reply, I will give your’s [sic] precedence, for I know how much you will want to know details. Your letter arrived in this morning’s mail. I sent Sylvia (la Princesse) a wire immediately upon Mr. P’s death, asking her to inform you (as I did not have your London address, but I knew you often see her). Am so glad you put your current address inside your letter, as the one on the envelope was almost illegible, owing to the postmark all over it.
Our “Little Boss” died at 11.05 Thursday night, Oct. 15 – the day he should have been returning to New York. They took him to St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica on Sept. 22; he was desperately ill the week before he died and did not recognize anyone. They hoped not to have to operate for the removal of a kidney stone, but eventually found they had to. But, his weakened body could not take it, uremic poison set in and he lapsed away. Bobbie Raison leaned over him shortly before he was gone and asked Mr. P if he knew him; Mr. P smiled but could not talk. Stanley Musgrove was also there that night. Our peculiar and secretive valets said all along, “it is nothing serious” but Max and Helene, Tully, Mr. Jules Omar Cole and [Robert] Raison kept me informed and we knew from their reports that it was almost the end. I had everything ready, names, addresses, telegrams, etc. (remembering all we did for Mrs. Porter’s funeral) – but to no avail! They sealed the Waldorf apartment immediately (midnight) and we could not get in. So I did all I could from home, luckily having an address book that I used for Mr. P. on occasion while at home.
The body was flown directly to Peru, Indiana, where the funeral was held on Sunday, Oct. 18 at 2:30 in the afternoon, with only “the relatives and a few close friends” present (this was stipulated in the Will). It was a dreary, drizzly day – even the skies were weeping. And, alas, another tragedy had taken place: the 23-year-old Grandson of Jules Omar Cole was killed in an automobile accident the same day Mr. P died. So there were two funerals. It is all so sad. I will save assorted clippings for you to read, if you like.
I am glad you agree with me that we must not grieve for our friend, for he will never have to suffer again. This is the end of an Era. Three great and good men have left the Waldorf now: General MacArthur, Cole Porter, and Herbert Hoover, this year.
They are retaining me probably until the estate is settled, along with Mr. P’s accountant, Frances Kingston (two truly honest souls). It will probably take a long time before everything is settled. I have been there the longest of anybody now – 17 years. I might mention that he left his Meissen china to you.
The leg amputation was really the beginning of the end – and all we could do was sit and see the downward trend – fo
r, no matter what anyone on the outside says, he was not a man to be lead [sic] around in any way, try as one might; it only worried him to be “pushed”.
His cousin, Mrs. Bearss, is still in Peru, but I shall hear her news when she returns. Jules Omar Cole (Mr. P’s first cousin, and only 19 days younger than C.P.) is the Executor and has charge of everything along with our lawyers. All will be worked out in due time – but how I shall miss that beautiful apartment (and how I miss my desk and my stuff NOW while I am locked out! The Law, you know.)
SO many friends have been perfectly darling – not knowing any of his relatives, they have written to me or telephoned, and I will tell the Peru Coles, but they will not know the people as I do. It is a great comfort thus hearing from Mr. P’s many friends.
I hope you are having a happy time in London. Elise (daughter) spent several days with Sylvia in her lovely 15 Audley St. house before going on a cruise around the Grecian Islands. Give Sylvia my love when you see her.
Thank you for your letter, and I hope this one will ease your mind a bit.
With my love,
[signed:] Madeline P. Smith.
* Alford Van Ronkel (1908–65) was a writer and actor, known for Destination Moon (1950).
* Presumably a friend of Stark’s.
* Porter’s dog.
* For example, his presence was noted at the opening of the Bolshoi Ballet’s production of Romeo and Juliet at the Metropolitan Opera on 16 April. See Anon., ‘Bolshoi Opening Hailed by Crowd’, New York Times, 17 April 1959, 1.
* i.e. for a replacement.
† Porter’s dog.
* Porter’s butler in California.
* Porter’s dog.
* On the reverse there is a handwritten note from Stark: ‘. . . Thank you for letting me know about Mr. Porter. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night worrying about him. I think of our past happy times together + his many + great kindnesses to me . . .’
† Letter of 17 July 1961 from Madeline Smith to Bella Spewack (Spewack Papers, Columbia University). Smith reveals that Porter spent only two nights in New York before returning to California. She refers to an eight-foot ‘Embrassez-moi Caterine’ (Kiss Me, Kate) poster spread out on the sofa and says Porter seemed ‘fine’ but ‘still nervous’ with a ‘bird-sized appetite’.
* Frederick Brisson (1912–84), prolific theatre producer and husband of the celebrated actress Rosalind Russell.
† Peru, Indiana.
* Noël Coward’s Sail Away, which opened on 3 October 1961 at the Broadhurst Theatre in Manhattan.
* Presumably, Kaufman held anti-German sentiments after the Second World War.
† Presumably Styne and Sondheim’s Gypsy, which ran from March to December 1961.
* Frank Sinatra, Jr. (1944–2016) was the son of the more famous Frank Sinatra (1915–98) and, like his father, was a singer and actor.
† Edouard Bourdet (1887–1945) was a French playwright. It is unclear which of his plays had been offered to Porter.
* Berlin’s birthday was 23 May.
† A songbook. It does not appear that such a volume was published in the end. Porter lists Berlin’s song hits from the 1910s and 1920s.
* Harriette Stark donated the precious volume to the library. See https://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/viewFile/11656/13102 (accessed 20 September 2018).
* Diana Forbes-Elliott’s memoir of her aunt, the actress Maxine Elliott (1868–1940), was published by Viking in 1964. Elliott was a friend of Porter’s in the 1920s and 1930s.
* Vivien Leigh (1913–67), the celebrated actress perhaps best remembered for her landmark appearances in MGM’s Gone With the Wind (1939) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1951).
ENDNOTES
ABBREVIATIONS
ALS: autograph letter signed
TL: typed letter
TLS: typed letter signed
ARCHIVES
AHC: American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming
CPT: Cole Porter Musical and Literary Property Trusts, New York
LC: Library of Congress, Washington
NYPL: New York Public Library
SOA: The Shubert Archive, Shubert Organization, New York
UCLA: University of California, Los Angeles
USC: University of Southern California, Los Angeles
1 FROM PERU, INDIANA, TO BROADWAY, 1891–1919
1. Richard Hubler, The Cole Porter Story, as Told to Richard G. Hubler (Cleveland, 1965), 5.
2. William McBrien, Cole Porter (New York, 1998), 4.
3. We are grateful to Frank Callahan for this information.
4. https://www.worcesteracademy.org/page/about
5. Source: Worcester Academy. Abercrombie’s letters to Kate Porter are given here in extract only.
6. Peru Republican, 20 July 1906, 1.
7. Peru Republican, 14 September 1906, 4.
8. Robert Kimball, The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter (New York, 1992), xxvii.
9. Letter of 22 February 1916: Abercrombie to Meylert B. Mullin.
10. A copy of Porter’s ‘scholarship record’ at Yale survives at Yale University, Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, MSS 131, William McBrien Papers, Series IV, Box 5, folder 162.
11. Hubler, The Cole Porter Story, 11.
12. See Kimball, The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter, 4–9.
13. Source: Yale University, Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, Cole Porter Collection, Series 2, Box 49, folder 295 (transcription at CPT, Correspondence 1912). For the texts to The Pot of Gold, see Kimball, The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter, 18–24.
14. Yale Alumni Weekly 23 (1913–14), 166: ‘166 Alumni Associations . . . The second meeting of the Boston Yale Club and the first regular dinner of the year was held on the evening of October 22 at the Boston City Club . . . One of the features of the evening was the general singing, as well as solos by Cole Porter, ’13, which Professor Phelps characterized as the best singing he had ever heard at any alumni dinner.’
15. Yale Alumni Weekly 23 (1913–14), 715: ‘The New York Alumni Dinner. Well over a thousand alumni from New York and more remote places filled nearly one hundred and fifty tables which were crowded into the grand ballroom, the two balconies, and a room adjoining, of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York, on the evening of March 13 . . . Features of the cabaret show were solos by Herbert Witherspoon, ’95, and Ericsson Bushnell of New Haven, selections by a sextette from the University Mandolin Club, a melodramatic burlesque by graduates and undergraduates, several vaudeville sketches by Yale talent, and a pianologue by Cole Porter, ’13.’
16. The book for Paranoia survives at Yale University, Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Miscellaneous Manuscripts Collection P-R, Polymnia Literary Society, Group 352, Series VII, Box 46.
17. Yale Alumni Weekly 23 (1913–14), 1,023.
18. Kimball and Gill, Cole, 24 (facsimile; source location not given).
19. New York Daily News, 4 November 1939; see McBrien, Cole Porter, 51.
20. Source: facsimile in Kimball and Gill, Cole, 30 (telegram).
21. Ibid.
22. Source: facsimile in Kimball and Gill, Cole, 30 (TLS).
23. Source: facsimile in Kimball and Gill, Cole, 31.
24. Ibid, 27.
25. The following telegrams are reproduced from facsimiles in Kimball and Gill, Cole, 31–2.
26. See the New York Times for 1 April 1906, 10; 16 June 1911, 2; 8 October 1911, 12; 17 December 1912, 14; and 30 May 1916, 8.
27. Evening World, 29 March 1916, and Evening Sun, 29 March 1916; see McBrien, Cole Porter, 54–5.
28. History of the Class of Nineteen Hundred and Ten Yale College (New Haven, 1917), ii, 245.
29. New York Daily News, 8 November 1953; see McBrien, Cole Porter, 56.
30. The Paint and Varnish Record, 15 February 1917, 6.
31. The song is not mentioned in Kimball, The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter.
32. New York Times, 1 February 1
917.
33. Yale Alumni Weekly 26 (1916–1917), 10 November 1916, 202.
34. http://myall.bangordailynews.com/2016/10/07/home/cole-porter-and-cannon-fire-a-brunswick-franco-american-in-ww1/
35. Peru Republican, 5 October 1917.
36. See McBrien, Cole Porter, 59.
37. Yale University, Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, Cole Porter Collection MSS 82, Box 87 (AL but not signed).
38. George Eells, The Life that Late He Led: A Biography of Cole Porter (New York, 1967), 53.
39. Ibid, 53–4.
2 COLE PORTER IN EUROPE, 1918–1928
1. https://www.ebay.com/itm/PORTER-COLE-PORTER-B-autographed-letter-GREAT-CONTENT-GOLDENAGE-ESSENTIALS/182832251530?hash=item2a91a6c28a:g:PIQAAOSw76JZ4zf3 (TLS on stationery of the American Embassy, Paris; accessed 31 October 2017).
2. McBrien, Cole Porter, 70.
3. See New York Times, 31 December 1921, 6: ‘Five liners sail today for Europe carrying numbers of prominent Americans who are going to spend the Winter in the South of France, Algeria and Egypt and a few of the passengers have expressed their intention of going over the newly opened route from Cairo to Cape Town in February. The list of more than 600 first cabin passengers on the White Star liner Olympic for Cherbourg and Southampton includes . . . Mr. and Mrs. Cole Porter.’
4. Yale University, Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, Cole Porter Collection MSS 82, Box 87.
5. New York Times, 31 December 1922, 15.
6. Kimball, The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter, 133–4.
7. They are not listed in ibid, or mentioned in McBrien, Cole Porter.
8. Kimball, The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter, 85.
9. Robert Craft, Stravinsky: Selected Correspondence. Volume 1 (New York, 1981), 75.
10. Wilfried Van den Brande, ‘Cole Porter, European’, in Don M. Randel, Matthew Shaftel and Susan Forscher Weiss, eds, A Cole Porter Companion (Urbana, 2016), 44.
11. Evergreen Museum, Johns Hopkins University, Alice Garrett Papers.
12. Kimball and Gill, Cole, 50.
13. See Kimball and Gill, The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter, 131.
14. The Times, 20 September 1920, 8.