[Texas]: [Music]: [Rogers, Larkin C.]:

[Archive of Manuscript Letters and Printed Ephemera Centering on Early-20th Century Texas Musician Larkin C. Rogers].

[Various locations in Texas and elsewhere]: Mainly 1914-1926. Approximately 130 manuscript letters, totaling 275 pages, written on a variety of paper sizes and stationery, many with original transmittal envelopes, plus a handful of printed ephemera. Letters arranged chronologically in several manila folders and housed in an archival folder. Original mailing folds, general wear. Very good. Item #4528

A unique collection of manuscript letters mostly sent to Larkin C. Rogers of Mineral Wells, Texas. Larkin C. Rogers (Charlie or Larkin to his family) began studying at the Kidd-Key Conservatory of Music at Sherman, Texas in 1915. Friends and family write to him there, occasionally sending him notices of musical events, and throughout the correspondence are receipts for his orders for musical scores. Larkin’s mother and sister Nancy try to get him musician jobs in the Mineral Wells area but times are hard. His mother’s letters are long, chatty, and detailed; as such she provides good local color on her particular area in North Texas. In May 1917, Larkin’s mother writes: “How are you all coming in about the War excitement? Think you’ll have to go? And are you patriotic enough to want to go? I see all musicians who can read music well are wanted and will be trained, after joining, on some instrument - I suppose suitable for the bands. Then when they’re not needed in the one they’re used in the hospitals. I like that better for you - if you do go - than to have to be in the fighting. They say the music is a necessary thing - so they have to have them. You’d better get to learning some band instrument - how do you like a piccolo?”

Larkin’s brother Edwin is already in the Army, training near Waco, and is overseas by June of 1918. In May 1918, Larkin’s mother again suggests he might like to enlist. By April she is urging him: “For we can never have universal peace till the Huns and all such are conquered. No one part is as essential as another - and where you are best fitted to serve it is your duty to get into - so leave no stone unturned to get into a band either in Waco or Camp Bowie.” By May he has enlisted but is not yet in a band - training at Camp Travis near San Antonio, where he asks his mother to come in order to help him find a band. By October 1918 he is overseas. Larkin’s mother continues to provide motherly advice in her letters, including lecturing him against smoking. At this point, there is a long absence of news from him - and his family fears the worst.

By May 1919, Larkin is shipped back to the States and admitted to the Army hospital at Oteen, North Carolina. His mother writes with home remedies, and fears that he is in for an “unmentionable disease.” In a sign of the times, however, he has influenza and bronchial complications. By this time, his parents him they have moved to Dallas, mentioning that although they still get mineral water to drink (from their hometown of Mineral Wells), the Dallas area is flat and at a lower altitude. Larkin’s sisters are friendly and sometimes humorous; they write him about music recitals and tease him about a “cootie garage” under his nose. Larkin informs them that a woman near the hospital is allowing him to practice at her piano. His mother visits him at the hospital and is quite upset that he is sometimes bedded down with a patient with hereditary syphilis. In January 1920 his mother learns that all places of amusement in Ashville have been closed because of flu, which worries her as he is still not completely recovered. She knows about the flu, as they all have had it in Dallas. His mother reads that there is complete vocational pay for disabled soldiers; she tries to obtain the disability pay for Larkin in order to take a concert pianist course. Larkin’s sister Lois in Williamsburg, Virginia wants him to apply to a new music school in Richmond where she gets a teaching job - not to go to the Domrosch School in New York as she complains that it is "full of Jews and has an atmosphere which kills fineness." However, she highly recommends New York in general: "Boston is a place. New York is life - a world - an experience which must be in every life before it is complete. You are an atom – but there is no place where life as a tiny atom receives such consideration and such kindness, if its good!"

By January 1921, Larkin is out of hospital and studying again in Sherman. He gives his first post war recital in April. His brother Edwin has a job with the Dallas engineering department. In 1923, Nancy causes a flap and panic when she quarrels with her sister Lois and the music school in Virginia and goes off alone. Lois begs her mother to stop writing her altogether as it is too stressful. Both Nancy and Larkin end up in New York City in the music scene and their parents end up back in Mineral Wells. Their mother writes Larkin a very nasty anti-Semitic letter about the rumor Nancy is going to marry a Jew. She fulminates also about the illicit and dreadful drinking that Americans seem to have slipped into. The last letter, from Larkin’s father, indicates that the two sisters and Larkin plan to combine households and stay in New York. An interesting collection of one Texas family’s correspondence centering on a young musician who also served in the First World War before returning to his life in music. Worthy of further and deeper research.

Price: $1,250