Mary E. Larkin Joline
Mary E. Larkin was born in 1853 to Francis Larkin and Sarah Elizabeth Larkin, and married Adrian Joline in 1876 at age 22. Both during and after Adrian Joline’s passing, she helped to manage and contribute to his extensive collections of acquired manuscripts as well as the publications of his writings (namely, Rambles in Autograph Land, which she published in 1913 after his death). She also engaged in significant philanthropy after his death, distributing the couple’s impressive fortune of more than $300,000 (nearly five million dollars today) between family members as well as Barnard and Columbia University, where her husband had attended law school. She bequeathed $100,000 specifically to Barnard to support the establishment of a music department and/or professorship.
Though few traces remain of her own papers and correspondence, we discovered that some things could be pieced together from the letters that Adrian Joline exchanged with Elizabeth Jordan. His affection for his wife shines through his writing, and a hazy image of what her life might have been slowly comes into view.
… Mrs Joline is doing my will — that is to say she is having a very rapid convalescence. She got up to-day for fifteen minutes. There is no reason for anxiety. …
From the correspondence that survives, it seems that Jordan might have initially been closer to Mary Joline, as Adrian largely writes when his wife is unwell, and sometimes in her stead. And it does appear that Mary Joline was often sickly: Joline writes of an attack of pleurisy, of an injured wrist.
Dear Miss Jordan,
Mrs Joline on Sunday had an attack of pleurisy — She has been very ill — but I think she is past the crisis. She has two nurses in charge & the Dr comes up daily from N.Y-. I am not alarmed as she is responding very well to treatment….
By 1910, however, Joline addresses his letters to ‘Elizabeth,’ and we can assume that a friendship that might have begun either thanks to Mary or as a product of Joline and Jordan’s involvement in the literary scene had become more intimate.
My dear Elizabeth,
Mary has yours of the 19th and it is good to hear from you again. She hurt her wrist in a little accident just before we sailed and the health has grown worse so that it is very difficult for her to write. It is the right wrist. Writing is very painful — Hence I am writing as a poor substitute….
But Mary and Elizabeth’s friendship continues to lurk behind the written words, and if Mary Larkin Joline was friends with such a woman, an author, a fighter for women’s rights, we can suppose that she, too, had some interest in literature and women’s political life and education. Perhaps that is why, at the end of her life, she left her and her husband’s collection of manuscripts to Barnard College.
