Clarence Day, Jr
Clarence Shepard Day, Jr. was a notable American writer and cartoonist, born on November 18, 1874, in Murray Hill, New York City. He hailed from a prominent family, being the son of a stock brokerage owner and the grandson of a founder of The New York Sun. After attending St. Paul's School and Yale University, Day joined his father's brokerage firm and became a partner. However, his life took a drastic turn when he was struck by a debilitating arthritic disease in 1899, which left him bed-ridden for the rest of his life.
Despite his health challenges, Day pursued a prolific writing career, contributing to various prominent magazines and authoring several books. His most notable work, *Life with Father*, published in 1935, achieved immense popularity, selling over 110,000 copies in its first year. A Broadway adaptation of the book further expanded his audience. Known for his wit and humane satire, Day's writing often reflected his philosophical optimism about humanity and democracy. He passed away from pneumonia in 1935, shortly after gaining widespread recognition for his literary contributions.
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Subject Terms
Clarence Day, Jr.
American essayist, poet, and cartoonist
- Born: November 18, 1874
- Birthplace: New York, New York
- Died: December 28, 1935
- Place of death: New York, New York
Biography
Clarence Shepard Day, Jr., “a thoroughbred New Yorker,” was born on Murray Hill, on November 18, 1874, the son of the owner of the Gwynne and Day stock brokerage firm and the grandson of Benjamin H. Day, the founder of the New York Sun and a weekly humor magazine. Clarence attended St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, and then Yale University, where he was elected secretary of his class in 1896 and editor of the class yearbook. After graduation, he entered his father’s firm and a year later was made a partner. Later, he purchased a seat on the stock exchange. Day enlisted in the Navy in April of 1898 when the Spanish-American War broke out and served as a pay yeoman on the Nahant, the old Civil War monitor still in use at the time.
A crippling arthritic disease struck Day in 1899; after several futile trips to Arizona and Colorado for his health, he settled down in New York City, a bed-ridden invalid for life. Day was able to hold a pencil between his thumb and third finger and manipulate it by flexing a muscle in his shoulder. Despite these difficulties he wrote several books, drew cartoons, and carried on a large correspondence with Yale classmates and friends.
For a while, he edited the book department of Metropolitan magazine and was a regular contributor to The New Republic. He maintained a mild interest in Wall Street during these years but concentrated most of his efforts on writing. His stories, poems, and cartoons appeared in magazines such as The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, The Saturday Review of Literature, and The Ladies’ Home Journal. Critics have often compared his cartoons with those of George Thurber. In 1928, he married Katherine Briggs.
Day had always been known and admired by a small, devoted group of readers, but when his book Life with Father appeared in 1935, his fame and reputation spread quickly. More than 110,000 copies of the work were sold during its first year of publication. His work reached an even wider audience when the dramatized version of Life with Father (augmented by parts of God and My Father), by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, appeared on Broadway in 1939. Always modest, Day once said, “I’m not what they call a real writer. I write chiefly to pay the bills, not because of Higher Reasons.” His irony and wit, while always trenchant, were essentially humane and sympathetic, and his satire was always tempered by the personal suffering that he daily experienced. His personal philosophy was a generally optimistic belief that humanity is evolving toward goodness and that democracy will win out over all other political systems. Day’s humor always moderated his views, and his realism tempered his opinion. He died from pneumonia in 1935, the very year in which large groups of readers were beginning to appreciate his gifts for the first time.
Bibliography
Canby, Henry S. American Memoir. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947. Includes a brief discussion of Day.
Canby, Henry S. “Clarence Day, Jr.” Saturday Review of Literature, August 24, 1935. A piece that appeared shortly before Day’s death.
Knopf, Alfred A. “Random Recollections of a Publisher.” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 74 (1961). Addresses Knopf’s memories of Day.
Laufe, Abe. Anatomy of a Hit: Long Run Plays on Broadway from 1900 to the Present Day. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1966. Contains a brief analysis of Life with Father.
Schwartz, Richard Alan. “Clarence Day.” In American Humorists, 1800-1950, edited by Stanley Trachtenberg. Vol. II in Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit: Gale Group, 1982. A standard source.
Yates, N. W. “Life with Clarence Day.” In The American Humorist: Conscience of the Twentieth Century. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1964. Discusses Day’s wit.