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The letters of Miss Jerusha Abbott to Mr. Daddy-Long-Legs Smith
2I5 FERGUSSEN HALL,
September 24th.
Dear Kind-Trustee- Who-Sends-Orphans-to -College,
Here I am! I traveled yesterday for four hours in a train. It's a funny sensation is n't it? I never rode in one before.
College is the biggest, most bewildering place --- I get lost whenever I leave my room. I will write you a description later when I'm feeling less muddled; also I will tell you about my lessons. Classes don't begin until Monday morning, and this is Saturday night. But I wanted to write a letter first just to get acquainted.
It seems queer to be writing letters to somebody you don't know. It seems queer for me to be writing letters at all--- I've never written more than three or four in my life, so please overlook it if these are not a model kind.
Before leaving yesterday morning, Mrs. Lippett and I had a very serious talk. She told me how to behave all the rest of my life, and especially how to behave toward the kind gentleman who is doing so much for me. I must take care to be Very Respectful.
But how can one be very respectful to a person who wishes to be called John Smith? Why couldn't you have picked out a name with a little personality? I might as well write letters to Dear Hitching-Post or Dear Clothes-Pole.
I have been thinking about you a great deal this summer; having somebody take an interest in me after all these years, makes me feel as though I had found a sort of family. It seems as though I belonged to somebody now, and it's a very comfortable sensation. I must say, however, that when I think about you, my imagination has very little to work upon. There are just three things that I know:
I. You are tall.
II. You are rich.
III. You hate girls.
I suppose I might call you Dear Mr. Girl-Hater. Only that's sort of insulting to me. Or Dear Mr. Rich-Man, but that's insulting to you, as though money were the only important thing about you. Besides, being rich is such a very external quality. Maybe you won't stay rich all your life; lots of very clever men get smashed up in Wall Street. But at least you will stay tall all your life! So I've decided to call you Dear Daddy-Long-Legs. I hope you won't mind. It's just a private pet name --- we won't tell Mrs. Lippett.
The ten o'clock bell is going to ring in two minutes. Our day is divided into sections by bells. We eat and sleep and study by bells. It's very enlivening; I feel like a fire horse all of the time. There it goes! Lights out. Good night.
Observe with what precision I obey rules --- due to my training in the John Grier Home.
Yours most respectfully,
JERUSHA ABBOTT.
To Mr. Daddy-Long-Legs Smith.
Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster, with illustrations by the author.
Published October, 1912 (Grosset & Dunlap Publishers, New York)
Jean Webster McKinney
1876-1916
Jean Webster, christened Alice Jane Chandler Webster, was born in Fredonia, NY on July 24, 1876. Her mother, Annie Moffett Webster, was a niece of Mark Twain. Her father, Charles Luther Webster, was Twain's partner and publisher in the ill-fated Charles L. Webster Publishing Company. From 1894-1896, Jean Webster attended the Lady Jane Grey boarding school in Binghamton, NY. It was at Lady Jane Grey that she changed her name from Alice to Jean when she discovered that her roommate was also named Alice. In 1897 she entered Vassar College as a member of the class of 1901. As an undergraduate Jean Webster wrote a weekly column of "chatty news" for the Poughkeepsie Sunday Courier and a number of stories for the Vassar Miscellany. It was also at Vassar that she met Adelaide Crapsey, the poet, who remained her close friend until Crapsey's death in 1914.
After graduating from Vassar, Webster earned her living as a free-lance writer and novelist, living in New York City. Her first novel, When Patty Went to College, was published in 1903. It chronicled the trials, tribulations, and adventures of life at a women's college. Altogether Webster wrote eight novels and countless unpublished stories and plays, in a style often described as realistic, refreshing, and witty. Daddy Long-Legs, the story of an orphan whose anonymous benefactor sends her to college, was a best seller and later adapted to the stage by Henry Miller, starring Ruth Chatterton. The play enjoyed a long and successful run in New York, and also toured the Midwest, California, and London. Later film versions starred Mary Pickford and Janet Gaynor, among others.
Jean Webster possessed a love of travel her entire life, beginning with a semester abroad in France, Italy, and England while at Vassar. In 1906/07 she embarked on a world tour with Ethelyn McKinney, her future sister-in-law, and Lena Weinstein, a close friend. Together the women journeyed to Egypt, India, Southeast Asia, China, and Japan.
Webster also had a deep interest in many social reform movements. She was concerned for the plight of orphans and in orphan asylum reform as well as prison reform. In addition, she was a staunch suffragist. One interesting episode in Webster's life was the incident when she was called to jury duty because the authorities had assumed she was a man. Since she was a woman, however, she was not allowed to serve on a jury, much to her chagrin.
For seven years Jean Webster was secretly engaged to Glenn Ford McKinney, a wealthy lawyer and son of the oil magnate John Luke McKinney. Glenn, married to another woman who was plagued by bouts of insanity and weighed down by personal problems himself, couldn't help but submit to Jean's sunny disposition and charm. He finally obtained a divorce in June of 1915, and he and Jean were married among a flurry of activity on September 7, about the same time that "Daddy Long-Legs" was touring and its sequel, Dear Enemy, was published. The McKinneys made their home at Tymor Farm, in Union Vale, Dutchess County, NY, a sanctuary of fields, deer, wild ducks, and pheasants. On the evening of June 10, 1916, the inseparable Ethelyn McKinney and Lena Weinstein accompanied Jean to Sloane Hospital in New York City for the delivery of her baby girl, Jean Webster McKinney. The next morning, June 11, Jean Webster died of complications from childbirth.
The excerpt from Vassar College Libraries
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