{"id":2931,"date":"2015-02-01T17:28:28","date_gmt":"2015-02-01T21:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/?p=2931"},"modified":"2017-11-01T18:08:05","modified_gmt":"2017-11-01T22:08:05","slug":"so-help-me-alan-quatermain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/so-help-me-alan-quatermain\/","title":{"rendered":"So Help Me, Alan Quatermain"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>
A formal meeting of Sigma ‘Eta Delta. The reverse of the photograph is dated 1890. (Click images to enlarge.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The 1870s and ’80s saw the rise of several secret societies or fraternities at Williston Seminary.\u00a0 Initially there were four: Iota Zeta, L.L.D., Pi Beta Pi, and F.C.\u00a0 A fifth, Phi Rho Alpha, appeared somewhat later, although its existence was sometimes not acknowledged by the four “legitimate” societies.\u00a0 History knows relatively little about them; as secret organizations, they kept their petty confidences, and worse, to themselves.\u00a0 So we have no idea what the initials stood for, not even for the two societies that didn’t affect Greek names.\u00a0 We do know that their membership was selective; that at least some of their alumni remained loyal to the clubs, often at the expense of loyalty to the school, and that they posed as “service” organizations: in 1916, for example, their leaders formed the first Student Council.<\/p>\n

None of the preceding can be said of a sixth fraternity, Sigma Eta Delta.<\/p>\n

In fact, the Greek letters \u03a3\u0397\u0394 were a rendering of the society’s real name, the South Hall Devils.\u00a0 (Since classical Greek doesn’t accommodate the “H” sound, it was the preference of the membership to spell “Eta” with an apostrophe: Sigma ‘Eta Delta.)\u00a0 The group was formed in the winter of 1889, mostly to poke fun at the elite, thus much-resented, fraternities.\u00a0 Membership was open to any resident of South Hall, the dormitory with the least desirable and least expensive rooms \u2014 thus a dorm shunned by any self-respecting (and they were nothing if not that) frat boy.<\/p>\n

\"South<\/a>
South Hall, ca. 1890.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

<\/p>\n

\"George<\/a>
George Wardman ’89, founding Arch-Fiend<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Devils appear to have been the brainchild of one George Wardman, class of 1889, who served as their first leader, a.k.a. Royal Arch-Fiend.\u00a0 The charter members were all from the classes of 1889-1892.\u00a0 What probably began as a joke quickly took on a life of its own, as the society acquired a constitution and by-laws, officers, and a set of traditions.\u00a0 Typically the Devils would gather around midnight in “Hades” \u2014 a basement room in South Hall \u2014 to transact business, the first order of which was to elect the officers of the night, the “Angel,” who kept the minutes (i.e., “Recording Angel”) and a couple of imps.\u00a0 If new members were elected, it was the imps’ role to ascend to Earth to condemn them \u2014 in other words, to enter their rooms in the dead of night and carry them down to Hades.\u00a0 Following an initiation ceremony of questionable taste, and the administration of an oath, the Devils talked and feasted until the small hours of the morning.\u00a0 While there may have been elements of hazing that would not be tolerated today (and should not have been then), it was mostly in good fun.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The South Hall Devils Oath of Membership. Since good protestant schoolboys, even in Satanic mode. were reluctant to take the Lord’s name in vain, members invoked (and misspelled) Alan Quatermain, the hero of a series of popular adventure novels by H. Rider Haggard (King Solomon’s Mines, 1885)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Another<\/a>
Another 1890 image. The students appear to be toasting with shaving mugs. The Latin inscription is from Tacitus: “We raise the dead by magical incantations.” Such is the benefit of a classical education.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"From<\/a>
From the By-Laws: In keeping with their anti-elitist principles, SHD extended membership to residents of the Mansion House, provided they were otherwise un-clubable.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The<\/a>
The Mansion House, the closest thing Easthampton had to a grand hotel. Early in the 20th century Williston purchased the building, which older alumni will remember as Payson Hall.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The fraternities survived until 1926, when Headmaster Archibald Galbraith (served 1919-1949), with the unanimous support of the faculty and trustees, undertook to abolish them.\u00a0 \u03a3\u0397\u0394, though never acknowledged by the other societies, had to go as well.\u00a0 There was general agreement that the frats had far too much influence in the life of the school, while simultaneously the origin of the bulk of campus crime and bullying. \u00a0 In his memoirs,1<\/sup> Galbraith wrote, “In spite of many attempts made over the years, it had been impossible for previous Principals to get the sincere cooperation of the fraternities in matters of school welfare and morale.\u00a0 When the chips were down, loyalty to the small intimate personal group had a way of seeming more important than loyalty to the greater good of the impersonal institution.”\u00a0 The effort was successful, such that by September 1928 the societies were inactive and there were no enrolled students who had ever been members.<\/p>\n

\"Devils'<\/a>
Devils’ alumnae met annually and feasted with student members, often at considerable distance from the campus. Harold Magner was a member of the class of 1922.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The<\/a>
The menu and toasts from the Devil’s Banquet of 1900.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

1<\/sup>Archibald Galbraith, The Galbraith Years, 1919-1949.<\/em>\u00a0 Easthampton, Mass.: Williston Academy, 1967.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 1870s and ’80s saw the rise of several secret societies or fraternities at Williston Seminary.\u00a0 Initially there were four: Iota Zeta, L.L.D., Pi Beta Pi, and F.C.\u00a0 A fifth, Phi Rho Alpha, appeared somewhat later, although its existence was sometimes not acknowledged by the four “legitimate” societies.\u00a0 History knows relatively little about them; as … Continue reading So Help Me, Alan Quatermain<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[140,53,453,25],"tags":[175,255,356,360,361,357,359,358,251],"class_list":["post-2931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alumni-alumnae","category-campus-and-building-history","category-student-life","category-williston-seminary","tag-archibald-victor-galbraith","tag-bad-behavior","tag-fraternities","tag-mansion-house","tag-payson-hall","tag-sigma-eta-delta","tag-south-hall","tag-south-hall-devils","tag-student-humor"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2931"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2931"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2967,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2931\/revisions\/2967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}