But my dear, dear Robin, what a foolish man you are! How should I ever have dreamed all those months that you were caring for me when you acted so abominably SCOTCH? With most men, behavior like yours would not be considered a mark of affection. I wish you had just given me a glimmering of an idea of the truth, and maybe you would have saved us both a few heartaches.
But we mustn’t be looking back; we must look forward and be grateful. The two happiest things in life are going to be ours, a friendly marriage and work that we love.
Yesterday, after leaving you, I walked back to the asylum sort of dazed. I wanted to get by myself and think, but instead of being by myself, I had to have Betsy and Percy and Mrs. Livermore for dinner (already invited) and then go down and talk to the children. Friday night—social evening. They had a lot of new records for the victrola, given by Mrs. Livermore, and I had to sit politely and listen to them. And, my dear—you’ll think this funny—the last thing they played was “John Anderson, my joe John,”51 and suddenly I found myself crying! I had to snatch up the nearest orphan and hug her hard, with my head buried in her shoulder, to keep them all from seeing.
John Anderson, my joe John,
We clamb the hill thegither,
And monie a canty day, John,
We’ve had wi’ ane anither;
Now we maun totter down, John,
But hand in hand we’ll go,
And sleep thegither at the foot,
John Anderson, my joe.
I wonder, when we are old and bent and tottery, can you and I look back, with no regrets, on monie a canty day we’ve had wi’ ane anither? It’s nice to look forward to, isn’t it—a life of work and play and little daily adventures side by side with somebody you love? I’m not afraid of the future any more. I don’t mind growing old with you, Sandy. “Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.”
The reason I’ve grown to love these orphans is because they need me so, and that’s the reason—at least one of the reasons—I’ve grown to love you. You’re a pathetic figure of a man, my dear, and since you won’t make yourself comfortable, you must be made comfortable.
We’ll build a house on the hillside just beyond the asylum—how does a yellow Italian villa strike you, or preferably a pink one? Anyway, it won’t be green. And it won’t have a mansard roof. And we’ll have a big cheerful living-room, all fireplace and windows and view, and no McGURK. Poor old thing! won’t she be in a temper and cook you a dreadful dinner when she hears the news! But we won’t tell her for a long, long time—or anybody else. It’s too scandalous a proceeding right on top of my own broken engagement. I wrote to Judy last night, and with unprecedented self-control I never let fall so much as a hint. I’m growing Scotch mysel’!
Perhaps I didn’t tell you the exact truth, Sandy, when I said I hadn’t known how much I cared. I think it came to me the night the John Grier burned. When you were up under the blazing roof, and for the half hour that followed, when we didn’t know whether or not you would live, I can’t tell you what agonies I went through. It seemed to me, if you did go, that I would never get over it all my life; that somehow to have let the best friend I ever had pass away with a dreadful chasm of misunderstanding between us—well—I couldn’t wait for the moment when I should be allowed to see you and talk out all that I have been shutting inside me for five months. And then—you know that you gave strict orders to keep me out; and it hurt me dreadfully. How should I suspect that you really wanted to see me more than any of the others, and that it was just that terrible Scotch moral sense that was holding you back? You are a very good actor, Sandy. But, my dear, if ever in our lives again we have the tiniest little cloud of a misunderstanding, let’s promise not to shut it up inside ourselves, but to talk.
Last night, after they all got off,—early, I am pleased to say, since the chicks no longer live at home,—I came up-stairs and finished my letter to Judy, and then I looked at the telephone and struggled with temptation. I wanted to call up 505 and say good night to you. But I didn’t dare. I’m still quite respectably bashful! So, as the next best thing to talking to you, I got out Burns and read him for an hour. I dropped asleep with all those Scotch love-songs running in my head, and here I am at daybreak writing them to you.
Good-by, Robin lad, I lo’e you weel.
SALLIE.
THE END
Explanatory Notes
Thanks to my research assistant, Adena Spingarn, Princeton’03, who helped with the introduction and the preparation of these notes and also consulted the Webster archive at Vassar.
DADDY-LONG-LEGS
1 Michael Angelo: Michelangelo (1475-1564) was an Italian painter, sculptor, and poet.
2 Maurice Maeterlinck: Successful dramatist and poet (1862- 1949), known as the “Belgian Shakespeare.”
3 Second Punic war: One of the wars between Rome and Carthage in the third and second centuries B.C.E. over control of Sicily. Specifically, the second, lasting from 218 to 201 B.C.E., was called the “Hannibalic War,” which ended in the complete triumph of Rome.
4 Three Musketeers: 1844 novel by French writer Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870).
5 Mother Goose ... Rudyard Kipling: Mother Goose is the traditional designation for a body of nursery rhymes, some dating back to the seventeenth or early eighteenth century. Although this is most likely the work Judy means by “Mother Goose,” the term was also popularized by French author Charles Perrault (1628- 1703) in the subtitle of his 1697 fairy tale collection, Stories and Tales from the Past: Tales of Mother Goose, which included his now standard versions of stories such as “Cinderella” and “Blue Beard.” David Copperfield is the 1849 novel by the English writer Charles Dickens (1812-1870). Ivanhoe is the 1819 novel by Scottish poet and novelist Walter Scott (1771-1832). The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719) is a novel by English novelist and journalist Daniel Defoe (1660-1731). Jane Eyre is the 1847 novel by English novelist Charlotte Brontë (1816- 1855); see also note 41, below. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) is a fantasy novel by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832-1898). Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was a British author born in Bombay who merged the east and the west in his stories and poems.
6 Henry the Eighth: Henry VIII (1491-1547) ruled England from 1 509-1 547 and was married six times.
7 Shelley: Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was an English Romantic poet.
8 Robert Louis Stevenson: Scottish-born author (1850-1894).
9 George Eliot: Pen name for English novelist Mary Ann Evans (1819-1880).
10 Mona Lisa: Painting—and one of the most recognizable images in the world—by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519).
11 Sherlock Holmes: Detective protagonist in a number of popular novels and stories by Scottish-born writer Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930).
12 Tennyson’s poems: Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), was the poet laureate of England.
13 Vanity Fair: 1848 novel of the Napoleonic Wars by English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863).
14 Plain Tales: Rudyard Kipling’s 1887 collection of short stories about India.
15 Little Women: Beloved 1868 novel about four spunky sisters by American author Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888).
16 pickled limes: An item from Little Women. Made with limes and salt, they are exchanged among the schoolgirls as a symbolic measure of friendship.
17 Matthew Arnold’s poems: Arnold (1822-1888) was an English poet and critic.
18 Judge not that ye be not judged: Matthew 7:1.
19 Richard Feverel: The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859) by British novelist and poet George Meredith (1823-1909). The novel tells the story of a proud, opinionated father who tries to turn his son into a perfect state of manhood through a repressive system of education.
20 Emerson’s “Essays”: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), American poet and essayist, wrote a series of essays based on lectures he gave during the 1840s.
21 Lockhart’s “Life of Scott”: John Gibson
Lockhart (1794-1854), Scottish writer and editor, was Walter Scott’s son-in-law. His multivolume biography of Scott was considered one of the most impressive life histories in the English language.
22 Gibbon’s “Roman Empire”: English historian Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) wrote a multi-volume history of the Roman Empire, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788).
23 Benvenuto’s Cellini’s “Life”: Cellini (1500-1571), Italian artist, metalsmith, and sculptor, wrote an autobiography of his romantic adventures.
24 Livy: Roman historian (59 B.C.E.-C.E. 17).
25 De Senectute . . . De Amicitia: Works by Roman orator and politician Marcus Tullus Cicero (106-43 B.C.E.).
26 Wuthering Heights : English novelist Emily Brontë (1818-1848) wrote this 1847 novel, a saga of two Yorkshire families and a passionate love story.
27 Heathcliffe: Heathcliff was the Byronic and darkly glamorous hero of Wuthering Heights.
28 pie-plant: The old-fashioned name for rhubarb.
29 I asked no other thing . . . : From Emily Dickinson’s poem “Part One: Life.” Webster and her classmates studied this poem at Vassar, well in advance of Dickinson’s critical acclaim as a major American poet.
30 The Portrait of a Lady: 1881 novel by American-born writer Henry James (1843-1916).
31 Cher Daddy-Jambes-Longes . . . : Judy makes several mistakes in French, and invents her own hybrid Franglais in this letter. Translation of the letter:
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
You are a brick!
I am very glad about the farm because I’ve never been on a farm in my life and I’d hate to return to the John Grier home, and wash dishes all summer. There would be a risk of something terrible happening there, because I have lost my former humility. I’m afraid that I would just break out someday and smash every cup and saucer in the house.
Pardon the brevity and the writing-paper. I cannot send more news of me because I am in French class and I’m afraid the professor is going to call on me right away.
He did!
Goodbye,
I love you very much,
Judy
32 Jamais je ne t’oublierai: I will never forget you.
33 Marcelle waves: A deep artificial wave in the hair, named after Marcel Grateau, who invented the method.
34 Lesbia in Catullus: Roman lyric poet Catullus (87-?54 B.C.E.) fell in love with a woman named Clodia, who appears in his poetry as “Lesbia.”
35 Doric columns . . . Ionic: From Greek architecture, a Doric column has a fluted shaft and plain capital, while an Ionic column is characterized by scroll shapes on either side of the capital.
36 William Shakespeare: English dramatist and poet (1564-1616).
37 Marie Bashkirtseff’s journal: The melodramatic diary of the Russian artist and writer Marie Constantinova Bashkirtseff (1860- 1884), who began it when she was thirteen. Her account of the struggles of women artists inspired many women readers.
38 William the Conqueror . . . 1492 . . . Columbus discovered America . . . 1066: William, Duke of Normandy (?1028-1087), invaded England in 1066 and took the English throne as William I. Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), Italian navigator, set sail in 1492 on a westward voyage from Spain bound for Asia and instead found America.
39 Hamlet: Play by William Shakespeare written in about 1601. Contrary to Judy’s Ophelia, the character in the play is rejected by Hamlet, prince of Denmark, and goes mad.
40 As You Like It: Play by Shakespeare from about 1600.
41 Jane Eyre: Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel, about a gifted and intense orphan girl who seeks independence as a governess and defies class expectations to find love with her rakish master, Rochester, has obvious parallels to Judy’s life.
42 Lowood Institute: The charitable school young Jane attends unhappily in Jane Eyre.
43 set of Stevenson: The works of Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894).
44 South Seas: In ailing health, Robert Louis Stevenson sailed from London for New York with his wife in 1887 and never set foot in Europe again.
45 Treasure Island: Stevenson’s 1883 adventure novel of a young boy’s voyage with pirates.
46 violet cream: A kind of candy.
47 Life and Letters of Thomas Huxley: Leonard Huxley wrote and edited this 1900 biography of his English biologist father, Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895).
48 archaeopteryx: The oldest known fossil bird, of the late Jurassic period. It has wings and feathers like a bird, but teeth and a bony tail like a reptile.
49 stereognathus: Middle Jurassic mammal.
50 Plato: Greek philosopher (?428-348 B.C.E.).
51 It’s the one touch of nature . . . : From Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida.
52 Fabian: A member or supporter of the Fabian Society, an organization of British intellectuals aiming at a gradual rather than revolutionary achievement of socialism. In May 1898, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, two of the founders of the Fabian Society, spoke at Vassar on “The Scope of Democracy in England.”
53 Wordsworth’s “Tinturn Abbey”: Poem by English Romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850) about memory and the past, part of his Lyrical Ballads collection.
54 Byron, Keats: English Romantic poets Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron, 1788-1824) and John Keats (1795-1821).
55 Locksley Hall: 1842 poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
56 aniline dyes : A synthetic dye made from a colorless oily liquid.
57 recherché: Exclusive.
58 figurez vous: Can you imagine?
59 C’est drôle ça n’est pas?: That’s funny, isn’t it? (Judy’s French is still ungrammatical).
60 Are women citizens? I don’t suppose they are: The Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, granting American women the right to vote, was not ratified until 1920, eight years after the first publication of Daddy-Long-Legs.
61 Schopenhauer: Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), anti-Enlightenment German philosopher whose chief work emphasized the central role of blind, irrational human will as the creative, primary factor in understanding.
62 Sam’l Pepys: Samuel Pepys (1633-1703), seventeenth-century English naval administrator and lively diarist of contemporary life. Like many readers of Pepys’ diary, Judy can’t resist imitating his style.
63 Rousseau: Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Swiss-born French philosopher and author of The Social Contract. Rousseau had five children with a servant girl and placed them in an orphan asylum.
64 Anthony Trollope’s mother: Frances Milton Trollope (1779- 1863) was a prolific novelist and travel writer.
DEAR ENEMY
1 single tax: A system by which revenue is derived from a tax on one thing, usually land.
2 It’s up wi’ the bonnets o’ McBride and MacRae!: Sallie is parodying a famous ballad by Sir Walter Scott about the Highlands military hero John Graham, Viscount Dundee, known as “Bonnie Dundee,” who died at the Battle of Killiekrakie. Sallie thus indicates that she is going to do battle with Dr. MacRae. The chorus of the Scott ballad goes:
Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can,
Come saddle my horses, and call out my men.
Come open the West Port, and let us gae free,
For it’s up wi’ the bonnets o’ Bonnie Dundee!
3 C’est à rire!: It’s laughable!
4 Where did you come from . . . : Inexact quotation of “Baby,” a poem by George MacDonald (1824-1905), which reads
“Where did you come from, Baby Dear?
Out of the everywhere, into the here.”
5 There may be heaven . . . : A rewriting of the last two lines of Robert Browning’s (1812-1889) poem “Time’s Revenges,” which reads “There may be heaven; there must be hell;/Meantime, there is our earth here—well!”
6 Altman & Co.: New York City department store founded in 1865.
7 Muckle-mouthed Meg: In a legend described by Sir Walter Scott in Border Antiquities, “Muckle-Mouthed Meg” was the “ill-favoured daughter
” of a baron who forced a young man to choose between marrying her and hanging. “Muckle-mouthed” means having a very large mouth.
8 felon: Infection of the fingertip, often caused by a splinter.
9 samp: Porridge made of coarsely ground maize.
10 model institution at Hastings: The Graham-Windham Home for orphans and foster children, part of the oldest nonsectarian child welfare agency in the United States, was in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. It is now the Graham School. Thanks to Janet Murphy, reference librarian at the Hastings Public Library for this information.
11 Vive la bagatelle!: Long live small talk!
12 Soyez tranquille: Stay calm.
13 Vere de Vere: A reference to “Lady Clara Vere de Vere,” a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. The Vere family was a noted English family reaching back to the eleventh century.
14 Uriah Heepish: Uriah Heep was a hypocritical character in Charles Dickens’ 1849 novel David Copperfield.
15 Now follows the dim horror . . . : Lines from “Bob Polter,” a ballad by Gilbert and Sullivan.
16 Binet test: A test used to measure intelligence, especially of children, developed by French psychologists.
17 Jukes family: Pseudonym for a family from Ulster County, in upstate New York, with a large percentage of criminals, studied by psychologists to determine why people engage in undesirable and antisocial behavior, in order to facilitate crime prevention and correction.
18 Punch: The puppet character Punch, in seaside British Punch-and-Judy shows, or Italian commedia dell’arte, is a likable rogue who fights with his wife and bullies his child. His violence is a cartoon-like fantasy of rebellion against civilized morality.