Explanatory Notes
The most determined singer in America sends his warm regards to the most notorious one. {Signed}
Langdon Clemens.
Elmira
j. e. larkin
, Blacksmith elmira, n. y.
The lady is his aunt, who sat for his mother & did it very well indeed, with the exception of
resemblance—she broke down there. In her photograph album, Olivia labeled another print of this picture of Langdon and Susan Crane
“Langdon Clemens 6½ months,” indicating that John E. Larkin took it around 21 May 1871 (CSmH; Boyd and Boyd, 143). Olivia is not known to have posed for a
photograph with Langdon. Although she had been “as feeble as ever” in April, by early June she was
“much stronger” and could have sat with him (4
Apr 71 to OC; 7 June 71 to OC and MEC). She did not,
possibly because Langdon soon became “seriously ill” (23 July 71 to Bowen). By 28 September, shortly before the Clemenses moved to Hartford, they had
exhausted their entire supply of baby pictures, including the present one (28 Sept 71 to Lant). Clemens evidently enclosed the Larkin photograph (reproduced here
from a print by Robert D. Rubic) in a letter to Bret Harte (now lost) after they resumed
good relations. Clemens had campaigned for a reconciliation, sending letters to Charles Henry Webb and Thomas Bailey
Aldrich—Boston friends of Harte’s—in which he extolled Harte and explained their inadvertent
falling out (26 Nov 70 to Webb; 27 Jan 71 to Aldrich). He had thereafter either met with Harte in Boston or received a
letter (now lost) from him.
Source text(s):Previous publication:
L4, 397–398; Winterich, 20.
Provenance:The photograph, on exhibition in 1936 at the bookshop of G. A. Baker and Co., was at an unspecified date acquired by Mrs.
Craven’s father, Sidney L. Krauss.
