Clarence Day Junior and Clarence Day Senior -- Garbo

This post is part of a series of author profiles based on my perusal of the 800s section of the public libraries in the early 1970s when I was a teenager tried to find out how to be a writer. 

The image below -- unfortunately -- is the headshot most often used as the author photo for biographies of Clarence Day, Jr., who wrote the bestseller Life With Father.

Weird portrait, isn't it? I think the issues may be a combination of the lighting used in early photographs (Day died in 1935), the fact that Day had a light complexion and dark hair, the strange effect of the small-lensed wire-rim eyeglasses, and the head tilt forward. 

Day also has an odd smile in this portrait, maybe because at the same time his eyes gaze so intensely into our own?  Perhaps five seconds before or after the camera shutter clicked, Day looked more benevolent.  We'll never know.

Every time I see this photograph, it seems to me that the subject's mind is off somewhere else. Is he, for instance, wondering about the exact weight and heft of the ax used so effectively (allegedly) by Lizzie Borden?  

I've searched online for other images of Clarence Day, in the hope of finding one which shows him looking a little more - well, normal. All I've come across so far are a couple of little dashed-off drawings. 

Day was a cartoonist as well as an author, and I assume he drew the scribble of a self-portrait used on the cover of the biography written by his daughter (about whom we will learn more next week).

I do know Day did this next illustration from his first book, This Simian World, and I've always assumed this is Day looking at his ape ancestor. A curious fellow with inquiring eyebrows and a charming smile.  

I'm sure some part of why Day's smile looks soforced in the author photo was  that he was  in pain. In 1898, as a young man, Day joined the Navy  to fight in the Spanish-American War, but had been forced to leave in 1899 because of the onset of severe arthritis. 

Day tried health cures in sunny climes, but turn-of-the-century medicine didn't have much to offer. Day spent most of the rest of his adult life in bed. Joint damage meant he had to hold a pencil in the same kind of grip used by young children, yet the author and cartoonist turned out a good number of illustrated books before hitting the big time with Life With Father. 

The father in the title, of course, was Clarence Day Sr. Here he is. 

The elder Day was a stockbroker, and his son had joined his father's firm after graduating from Yale. But the younger Day disliked the Stock Exchange, and left it, even though he'd been made a partner and he'd paid considerable money to buy a seat. So off he went to the Navy and then his health collapsed and he was off to his sickbed.

Day portrays his father as such a strong personality that it's perhaps not surprising that the younger Day wouldn't want to spend his work day with the elder Day, having spent a childhood in his father's home. Day Sr. took a better photo than his son; he doesn't look mean-spirited but he does look stern and forceful. 

Back to that first photo of Day Jr. In the first place, he WAS a Junior. He didn't have his own name, he had a minimized version of his father's. I'm sure (based on Life With Father) that the young man was aware every moment that his clothing, food, and Yale tuition were provided by his father's hard work. Day Jr. had the rare opportunity to become a partner in a thriving brokerage, but he didn't want it. He preferred to join the Navy and make his own destiny. Then the bout of arthritis struck. And perhaps all of this explains the expression on Clarence Day Jr.'s face in the photograph.

By comparison, here is Day Sr.'s father, Day Jr.'s grandfather, Benjamin Day, who founded a newspaper, The New York Sun, and a humor magazine. To analyze his photographic portrait, first one has to adjust to that mid-19th century stovepipe hat. But I see both determination to get to the bottom fo things and considerable humor there. Do you?

Next week: Life With Father, Life With Mother, and the Adventurous Daughter.

Garbo