There was a time in my boyhood when I felt that Father had handicapped me severely in life by naming me after him, “Clarence.” All literature, so far as I could see, was thronged with objectionable persons named Clarence. Percy was bad enough, but there had been some good fighters named Percy. The only Clarence in history was a duke who did something dirty at Tewkesbury, and who died a ridiculous death afterwards in a barrel of malmsey.
As for the Clarences in the fiction I read, they were horrible. In one story, for instance, there were two brothers, Clarence and Frank. Clarence was a “vain, disagreeable little fellow,” who was proud of his curly hair and fine clothes, while Frank was a “rollicking boy who was ready to play games with anybody.” Clarence didn’t like to play games, of course. He just minced around looking on.
One day when the mother of these boys had gone out, this story went on, Clarence “tempted” Frank to disobey her and fly their kite on the roof. Frank didn’t want to, but Clarence kept taunting him and daring him until Frank was stung into doing it. After the two boys went up to the roof, Frank got good and dirty, running up and down and stumbling over scuttles, while Clarence sat there, giving him orders, and kept his natty clothes tidy. To my horror, he even spread out his handkerchief on the trapdoor to sit on. And to crown all, this sneak told on Frank as soon as their mother came in.
This wasn’t an exceptionally mean Clarence, either. He was just run-of-the-mill. Some were worse.
So far as I could ever learn, however, Father had never heard of these stories, and had never dreamed of there being anything objectionable in his name. Quite the contrary. And yet as a boy he had lived a good rough-and-tumble boy’s life. He had played and fought on the city streets, and kept a dog in Grandpa’s stable, and stolen rides to Greenpoint Ferry on the high, lurching bus. In the summer he had gone to West Springfield and had run down Shad Lane through the trees to the house where Grandpa was born, and had gone barefoot and driven the cows home just as though he had been named Tom or Bill.
He had the same character as a boy, I suppose, that he had as a man, and he was too independent to care if people thought his name fancy. He paid no attention to the prejudices of others, except to disapprove of them. He had plenty of prejudices himself, of course, but they were his own. He was humorous and confident and level-headed, and I imagine that if any boy had tried to make fun of him for being named Clarence, Father would simply have laughed and told him he didn’t know what he was talking about.
I asked Mother how this name had ever happened to spring up in our family. She explained that my great-great-grandfather was Benjamin Day, and my great-grandfather was Henry, and consequently my grandfather had been named Benjamin Henry. He in turn had named his eldest son Henry and his second son Benjamin. The result was that when Father was born there was no family name left. The privilege of choosing a name for Father had thereupon been given to Grandma, and unluckily for the Day family she had been reading a novel, the hero of which was named Clarence.
I knew that Grandma, though very like Grandpa in some respects, had a dreamy side which he hadn’t, a side that she usually kept to herself, in her serene, quiet way. Her romantic choice of this name probably made Grandpa smile, but he was a detached sort of man who didn’t take small matters seriously, and who drew a good deal of private amusement from the happenings of everyday life. Besides, he was partly to blame in this case, because that novel was one he had published himself in his magazine.
I asked Mother, when she had finished, why I had been named Clarence too.
It hadn’t been her choice, Mother said. She had suggested all sorts of names to Father, but there seemed to be something wrong with each one. When she had at last spoken of naming me after him, however, he had said at once that that was the best suggestion yet–he said it sounded just right.
Father and I would have had plenty of friction in any case. This identity of names made things worse. Every time that I had been more of a fool than he liked, Father would try to impress on me my responsibilities as his eldest son, and above all as the son to whom he had given his name, as he put it. A great deal was expected, it seemed to me, of a boy who was named after his father. I used to envy my brothers, who didn’t have anything expected of them on this score at all.
I envied them still more after I was old enough to begin getting letters. I then discovered that when Father “gave” me his name he had also, not unnaturally I had to admit, retained it himself, and when anything came for Clarence S. Day he opened it, though it was sometimes for me.
He also opened everything that came addressed to Clarence S. Day, Jr. He didn’t do this intentionally, but unless the “Jr.” was clearly written, it looked like “Esq.,” and anyhow Father was too accustomed to open all Clarence Day letters to remember about looking carefully every time for a “Jr.” So far as mail and express went, I had no name at all of my own.
For the most part nobody wrote to me when I was a small boy except firms whose advertisements I had read in the Youth’s Companion and to whom I had written requesting them to send me their circulars. These circulars described remarkable bargains in magicians’ card outfits, stamps and coins, pocket-knives, trick spiders, and imitation fried eggs, and they seemed interesting and valuable to me when I got them. The trouble was that Father usually got them and at once tore them up. I then had to write for such circulars again, and if Father got the second one, too, he would sometimes explode with annoyance. He became particularly indignant one year, I remember, when he was repeatedly urged to take advantage of a special bargain sale of false whiskers. He said that he couldn’t understand why these offerings kept pouring in. I knew why, in this case, but at other times I was often surprised myself at the number he got, not realizing that as a result of my postcard request my or our name had been automatically put on several large general mailing lists.
During this period I got more of my mail out of Father’s waste-basket than I did from the postman.
At the age of twelve or thirteen, I stopped writing for these childish things and turned to a new field. Father and I, whichever of us got at the mail first, then began to receive not merely circulars but personal letters beginning:
DEAR FRIEND DAY: In reply to your valued request for one of our Mammoth Agents' Outfits, kindly forward post-office order for $1.49 to cover cost of postage and packing, and we will put you in a position to earn a large income in your spare time with absolutely no labour on your part, by taking subscriptions for The Secret Handbook of Mesmerism, and our Tales of Blood series.
And one spring, I remember, as the result of what I had intended to be a secret application on my part, Father was assigned “the exclusive rights for Staten Island and Hoboken of selling the Gem Home Popper for Pop Corn. Housewives buy it at sight.”
After Father had stormily endured these afflictions for a while, he and I began to get letters from girls. Fortunately for our feelings, these were rare, but they were ordeals for both of us. Father had forgotten, if he ever knew, how silly young girls can sound, and I got my first lesson in how unsystematic they were. No matter how private and playful they meant their letters to be, they forgot to put “Jr.” on the envelope every once in so often. When Father opened these letters, he read them all the way through, sometimes twice, muttering to himself over and over: “This is very peculiar. I don’t understand this at all. Here’s a letter to me from some person I never heard of. I can’t see what it’s about.” By the time it had occurred to him that possibly the letter might be for me, I was red and embarrassed and even angrier at the girl than at Father. And on days when he had read some of the phrases aloud to the family, it nearly killed me to claim it.
Lots of fellows whom I knew had been named after their fathers without having such troubles. But although Father couldn’t have been kinder-hearted or had any better intentions, when he saw his name on a package or envelope it never dawned on him that it might not be for him. He was too active in his habits to wait until I had a chance to get at it. And as he was also single-minded and prompt to attend to unfinished business, he opened everything automatically and then did his best to dispose of it.
This went on even after I grew up, until I had a home of my own. Father was always perfectly decent about it, but he never changed. When he saw I felt sulky, he was genuinely sorry and said so, but he couldn’t see why all this should annoy me, and he was surprised and amused that it did. I used to get angry once in a while when something came for me which I particularly hadn’t wished him to see and which I would find lying, opened, on the hall table marked “For Jr.?” when I came in; but nobody could stay angry with Father–he was too utterly guiltless of having meant to offend.
He often got angry himself, but it was mostly at things, not at persons, and he didn’t mind a bit (as a rule) when persons got angry at him. He even declared, when I got back from college, feeling dignified, and told him that I wished he’d be more careful, that he suffered from these mistakes more than I did. It wasn’t his fault, he pointed out, if my stupid correspondents couldn’t remember my name, and it wasn’t any pleasure to him to be upset at his breakfast by finding that a damned lunatic company in Battle Creek had sent him a box of dry bread-crumbs, with a letter asserting that this rubbish would be good for his stomach. “I admit I threw it into the fireplace, Clarence, but what else could I do? If you valued this preposterous concoction, my dear boy, I’m sorry. I’ll buy another box for you do-day if you’ll tell me where I can get it. Don’t feel badly! I’ll buy you a barrel. Only I hope you won’t eat it.”
In the days when Mrs. Pankhurst and her friends were chaining themselves to lamp-posts in London, in their campaign for the vote, a letter came from Frances Hand trustfully asking “Dear Clarence” to do something to help Woman Suffrage–speak at a meeting, I think. Father got red in the face. “Speak at one of their meetings!” he roared at Mother.
“I’d like nothing better! You can tell Mrs. Hand that it would give me great pleasure to inform all those crackpots in petticoats exactly what I think of their antics.”
“Now, Clare,” Mother said, “you mustn’t talk that way. I like that nice Mrs. Hand, and anyhow this letter must be for Clarence.”
One time I asked Father for his opinion of a low-priced stock I’d been watching. His opinion was that it was not worth a damn. I thought this over, but I still wished to buy it, so I placed a scale order with another firm instead of with Father’s office, and said nothing about it. At the end of the month this other firm sent me a statement, setting forth each of my little transactions in full, and of course they forgot to put the “Jr.” at the end of my name. When Father opened the envelope, he thought at first in his excitement that this firm had actually opened an account for him without being asked. I found him telling Mother that he’d like to wring their damned necks.
“That must be for me, Father,” I said, when I took in what had happened.
We looked at each other.
“You bought this stuff?” he said incredulously. “After all I said about it?”
“Yes, Father.”
He handed over the statement and walked out of the room.
Both he and I felt offended and angry. We stayed so for several days, too, but we then made it up.
Once in a while when I got a letter that I had no time to answer I used to address an envelope to the sender and then put anything in it that happened to be lying around on my desk–a circular about books, a piece of newspaper, an old laundry bill–anything at all, just to be amiable, and yet at the same time to save myself the trouble of writing. I happened to tell several people about this private habit of mine at a dinner one night–a dinner at which Alice Duer Miller and one or two other writers were present. A little later she wrote me a criticism of Henry James and ended by saying that I needn’t send her any of my old laundry bills because she wouldn’t stand it. And she forgot to put on the “Jr.”
“In the name of God,” Father said bleakly, “this is the worst yet. Here’s a woman who says I’d better not read The Golden Bowl, which I have no intention whatever of doing, and she also warns me for some unknown reason not to send her my laundry bills.”
The good part of all these experiences, as I realize now, was that in the end they drew Father and me closer together. My brothers had only chance battles with him. I had a war. Neither he nor I relished its clashes, but they made us surprisingly intimate.