Squee from the Keeper Shelf is a feature wherein we share why we love the books we love, specifically the stories which are permanent residents of our Keeper shelves. Despite flaws, despite changes in age and perspective, despite the passage of time, we love particular books beyond reason, and the only thing better than re-reading them is telling other people about them. At length.
If you’d like to submit your reasons for loving and keeping a particular book for Squee from the Keeper Shelf, please email Sarah!
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Jean Webster—Alice Jane Chandler Webster (1876-1916) if you want to be stuffy about it—was a grandniece of Mark Twain, and it shows. She died relatively young; Daddy-Long-Legs is her best-known book.
Trigger warning: Daddy-Long-Legs came out in 1911. If you look at it with modern eyes, you may find something creepy and even stalkerish in the way the love story plays out. Therefore, do not look at it with modern eyes. Really. I mean it.
Meet our heroine. Jerusha Abbott was raised in an orphanage. (Spoiler alert: We never learn who she “really” is. It is not that kind of book.) In her last year of high school she writes an essay about “Blue Wednesday”, the day the orphanage’s trustees come to visit. The management are Not Amused … but one of the trustees is. In fact he is so amused, he arranges for Jerusha to go to college to be educated as a writer. The only condition: She must write to him regularly. Her letters—with wonderfully crude stick-figure illustrations—make up the rest of the book.
Our heroine gives her benefactor the name “Daddy-Long-Legs” because all she has ever seen of him is a tall shadow. He refuses to give any information about himself, asking her to call him Mr. Smith. One of her first letters includes the impassioned query “ARE YOU BALD?” No reply. In fact he never writes back; it’s a strictly one-sided correspondence. Everything from his end is relayed through a secretary.
Do you dread the prospect of, well, Jerusha? I feel your pain. I once read a 20th-century novel whose heroine was named Beulah, and kept waiting for the author to jump out and say Haha, just kidding, it’s really Betty. (Spoiler: She never did.) But Jerusha Abbott is another story. The moment she arrives at college, she informs everyone that her name is now Judy. Ahh, that’s better.
Freshman year:
We meet Judy’s roommates: Sallie McBride who is nice, and Julia Pendleton who is stuck-up. They both have their uses, though, as Sallie has a nice brother at Princeton named Jimmie, while Julia has a nice uncle named Jervis. So there’s your two Potential Men, right off the bat.
Judy goes out for the freshman basketball team. (“I’m little of course, but terribly quick and wiry and tough.”) Did you know that girls in 1911 played basketball? They sure did; in fact the sport was tailor-made for them. An indoor arena meant the young ladies wouldn’t get wet or muddy—and if they built up an unbecoming glow, you could always lock out everyone but close friends and relatives. Eat your heart out, WNBA.
One of Judy’s most appealing traits is that she’s not perfect. She does make the basketball team—Julia, neener-neener, doesn’t—but she also fails two classes, and has to retake her exams. (Spoiler: She passes.) And, unlike Harry Potter, she is not dumped back in the orphanage each summer. Daddy-Long-Legs arranges for her to stay on a farm. And here the plot thickens: By amazing coincidence, the owner of the farm knows Julia’s Uncle Jervis—“Master Jervie” to her—from way back. He comes to visit, and sparks fly.
Sophomore year:
At year’s end, conflicts develop. Judy has been invited to spend the summer with Sallie’s family, including the nice Princeton brother. Instead of being glad to be rid of her for a few months, Daddy-Long-Legs vetoes the plan and packs her off to the farm again. Spoiler: This is the last time he will win this particular battle. The quest for independence will be a big part of Judy’s character development over the next two years.
During the summer, Judy learns that in spite of those freshman-year fails, she has won a scholarship that will free her from Daddy-Long-Legs’ support. Not that she’s got anything against him—how could she, when she’s never set eyes on the guy?—but she wants to make her own way. This time he can’t prevent her from accepting. (“Are you still harping on that scholarship? I never knew a man so obstinate and stubborn and unreasonable, and tenacious, and bull-doggish, and unable-to-see-other-people’s-points-of view as you. If you make any more fuss, I won’t accept the monthly allowance either.”) Go Judy!
Junior year:
Victory again! (Score to date: “Mr. Smith” 1, Judy 2.) Come summer, Judy flatly refuses to go along with Daddy-Long-Legs’ plans for her, and instead goes to work tutoring two college-bound sisters. In the meantime, we’ve seen a lot of her hanging out with the other students, getting involved in student government, writing for the school paper, tramping across the countryside in “short skirts”. (In 1911, this can only mean—horror!—above the ankle.)
By year’s end, it is obvious that Brother Jimmie is out of the running. He’s just too young—only a year older than Judy. Uncle Jervis, on the other hand, is a comfortable 14 years older.
Senior year:
Clouds on the horizon—and some disgruntlement, as Daddy-Long-Legs doesn’t show up for Judy’s graduation. Maybe he’s offended at the way she keeps refusing his help. When he learns that Snooty Julia is going to Europe after graduation, he offers to send Judy too. Once again she declines, and instead spends a final summer at the farm writing, writing, writing. Her first novel is accepted! (Publishers worked a lot faster in those days.) With the advance, she starts paying back Daddy-Long-Legs. Surprisingly, he doesn’t even try to send back the money. By now he knows who he is dealing with.
But all is not well. We learn from Judy’s letters that Jervis has proposed, and she has turned him down. You may remember that he is related to the rich Julia; Judy can’t bring herself to come clean about her own raised-in-an-orphanage background. She is miserable. So is Jervis; he runs off to Canada, and comes back deathly ill. By grievous coincidence, Daddy-Long-Legs is also dangerously ill—and this, at last, forces him to break his resolution about letting Judy meet him.
Final letter:
My very dearest Master-Jervie-Daddy-Long-Legs-Pendleton-Smith,
P.S. This is the first love letter I ever wrote. Isn’t it funny that I know how?
I don’t know when I first discovered Daddy-Long-Legs. I only know that it’s one of those books you can reread an almost infinite number of times, and it always leaves me feeling happy.
Daddy-Long-Legs comes from Louise Rose’s Keeper Shelf! When Louise isn’t making ebooks, Louise writes about things nobody in their right mind would be interested in at Fifty Words for Snow.
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I’m very fond of this book, too – and its sequel, Dear Enemy (plot: Judy’s buddy Sallie hired to reform Judy’s orphanage). There are interesting little feminist moments in DDL, where Judy remarks in passing that women can’t vote and wonders why female college students have to listen to sermons about not wearing out their delicate bodies with study, and male ones don’t. Not to mention that she plans to earn her living as a writer.
Both are still in print, but I’m the Very Proud owner of twin copies bound in suede and stamped with illustrations. If you haven’t read these, get started!
I think I read this first because it was a “love story” (-ish), but I go back to it because Judy’s growth is just so satisfying. (And, OK, Jervis is lovely!)
Second the squee. This book is both hilarious and sweet. Very readable, and tremendous fun.
I feel like a 30-something guy selecting his own personal teenage orphan and grooming her was probably kinda creepy in 1911, too.
I’ve never read the book, but, as much as I love the dancing of Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron, the movie version is kinda creepy. Possibly because, as Jervis, Astaire is 30+ years older. I could live with a 14 year difference after that.
This reminds me that I really need to reread my copy. *firm nod*
I recently reread these (Daddy-Long-Legs and Dear Enemy) and greatly enjoyed them, though I found Dear Enemy had an unfortunate fixation on the genetic predisposition to crime/alcoholism/etc. (On that point, it was of its time, and not in the good way.)
I also stumbled across the Mary Pickford silent movie of DLL, which was pretty good (though it overwhelmingly embellishes the Orphan Years with comic bits in the early part of the movie before getting to the Judy-goes-to-college part, and also tosses in some unfortunate side bits with cupids later. Pickford and her co-star, Mahlon Hamilton, were only 12 years apart.
Man, first The Blue Castle, now Daddy Long Legs. I have found my people! I also have read Daddy Long Legs and Dear Enemy many many times. I’m disturbed by the eugenics stuff in Dear Enemy (the “grooming” aspect of DLL never occurred to me in all the years I’ve been reading it), but it wasn’t a deal-breaker because it felt like a misguided product of its time and I always hoped that Sally/Jean Webster would realize how problematic the ideas were later on.
@Violet – the Caron/Astaire movie is a travesty for many reasons, the creepy age difference being only one. You MUST read the book. It’s a joy, and very funny.
I don’t think the “grooming” aspect of Daddy Long Legs is much of an issue because it’s specifically mentioned that Jervis does NOT pick out Judy based on physical appearance (he’s never seen her but only heard her composition) and that he has in fact sent OTHER orphans to college as well (though they have all been boys), because he is seriously interested in trying to help disadvantaged kids. (As his amusingly awful sister says “he’s a socialist, except thank Heaven, he doesn’t let his hair grow and wear red ties.”) Plus there’s the small point that Judy in fact is economically independent enough to pay him back by the end of the story, and has friends, a career and a support system, and is in love with him BEFORE she knows who he is, so there’s never the weird power differential.
That said, and while I love Daddy Long-Legs, I think I love Dear Enemy even more. Sallie was a heroine much closer in background to Jean Webster, and her evolution from giddy society girl into a serious professional is both realistic and a joy to watch. (Judy is sometimes unrealistically perfect for a deprived orphan. The orphans in Dear Enemy are marvelous.) The eugenics stuff is painful in light of the use the Nazis made of it, but I’m with Laurel that there’s no way Sally would ACTUALLY condone killing off the “unfit” even though she jokes about it in the book. Still less would the doctor she addresses as “Enemy” for spoilery reasons revealed at the end. Also, when she’s not making slightly squirm-worthy jokes, Sally does distinguish between things like Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (which is a real thing, which she describes to perfection) and flaws in “moral” character. WE may take it as a given that of course a child isn’t prone to “vice” if it was born illegitimate, but as she says in the novel, lots of adoptive parents of the time would only adopt babies whose parents could provide a marriage certificate. Think of Marilla at the beginning of Anne of Green Gables deciding to keep Anne because “she’s ladylike. It’s likely her people were nice folks” after finding out that Anne’s parents were married and well educated. Sallie firmly insists that being illegitimate “doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference” in a child, and blows up at a pompous trustee who tells her that she’s “educating these children out of their station in life.” Also, in the context of the time, the idea that crime and poverty were linked to alcoholism, mental illness or “feeble-mindedness” (to use Sallie’s term) was an argument AGAINST their being an expression of outright “evil” or moral failings – and the logical extension of that was the idea that both prisons and hospitals should be more humane institutions.
More importantly (since the references to eugenics in Dear Enemy are actually a very small percentage of the book), Dear Enemy is feminist in ways that were not only radical one hundred years ago but are still radical today. Sallie starts out as a recent college graduate from a wealthy background who believes that “family” means marrying a “suitable” boy from the same background as her own, and having two or three children of her own. Over the course of the story she meets and/or reconnects with a pair of older ladies (who are hinted to be a same-sex couple) who adopt an emotionally troubled boy, a young woman who has been divorced and is happier single and with a career, and a motley group of orphans who she jokingly refers to as her “chicks” – and realizes that giving up her career and “her” orphans to get married would in fact leave her miserable rather than fulfilled. When she finally does decide to marry she enthusiastically tells her future husband how much they will enjoy doing “work we love” together….but what she doesn’t emphasize is that she is technically in a higher position in the institution than he is. (He’s an independent consultant, not an employee, so there’s no squicky boss-employee dynamic, but she is the one in charge of the institution.) How many romances from ANY decade can you think of which end up with the heroine being in a position to give orders to the hero in a professional setting where it’s no big deal?
I could keep going about the many scenes I love in Dear Enemy, which in my opinion far outweigh a couple of problematic ones, but that would turn into another full length squee.
I love both books, but Dear Enemy is my favourite, for all the reasons Rebecca gave. I love the growth we see in Sallie, her independence, and the caring and respect she shows for her orphans. She isn’t perfect, she makes mistakes and admits to her character faults. She develops from a socialite with no particular ambitions to a woman capable of running an institution efficiently and humanely. And she’ll stand up to anyone and do whatever it takes to keep the children safe, comfortable, and happy, and to prepare them for life.
I love “Daddy Long Legs” and also enjoyed “Dear Enemy.” Have DE on kindle and DLL in an ancient hardcover photoplay edition! I think my copy was my mom’s, and I ran off with it.
The 14-yr age difference (given this was 1911 when most women had a much shorter life expectancy than most men; given that I know plenty of couples with considerable age differences now; and given that Judy was already mature/marriageable, according to the standards of the time, when the relationship began. She wasn’t twelve) troubles me not at all, and I never felt there was any “grooming” going on.
I perceived that Jervis went to considerable lengths to keep his benefactor and suitor personae separate so that Judy would never be in the position of accepting a proposal strictly out of a sense of obligation. That’s a trope that we see CONSTANTLY in historical romances (the obligation) and it is generally much less well-thought-through than in DLL.
Jervis clearly falls in love with Judy based on her letters – i.e. her intellect and personality – long before he arranges to meet her in person. She was not the kind of girl his posh family would have chosen for him – another trope – but because she has already thoroughly charmed other people he knows, it simply isn’t an issue (though she does have the little “I don’t even know what kind of people I come from” moment).
And yes, Judy is a feminist heroine, possibly the first one I ever encountered. I’ve been reading this book over and over again since I was maybe 10.
I love this book! I love how Judy grows at college by reading and visiting families and is just so darn plucky.
Daddy Long Legs looks fantastic. I am currently reading The Big Buddha Bicycle Race by Terence Harkin, taharkin.net for his info. I wasn’t sure if I would like a war romance, but this one is really good.
Squeeing too, whoa, everything has been written already above, but DLL is my go-to book when I’m sick and in need of comfort, because it’s funny, and terribly uplifting and hopeful, with a heroine rewarded for the RIGHT reasons (still relevant in 2017), and unlike the weird interest in eugenics we find in Dear Enemy (which is the one slightly cringe inducing aspect of the book that I can find fault in), Daddy Long Legs is not remotely outdated or creepy in my opinion, not even the way the love story plays out. If you like those novels, try also The Wheat Princess by Jean Webster, it’s harder to find but worth reading.
DDL is an old favorite and I love your squee. I hadn’t realized there was a sequel, so I’m really psyched to hunt it down. Thank you so much.
Me too with loving DDL and never knowing that there was a sequel for the lovely Sallie.
I first read DLL when I was an impressionable 14-15 year old at boarding school. I was very jealous of Judy’s hi-jinks. It is one of my comfort re-reads when I’m feeling sick and weary (like right about now as I have streaming cold/hacking cough mid-summer this so sucks….) So thank you for reminding me of a lovely book which I will very much enjoy re-reading.
Reviewer here:
When I talked to Sarah about doing this book, I said, I bet there will be commentors coming out of the woodwork saying “Oooh, I loved that book!”
Ay-yup!
(Incidentally, I had a brain fart while writing. Mentally replace all occurrences of “1911” with “1912”. Dear Enemy came out in 1915, the year of the author’s death.)
For those who haven’t found it already, the silent movie is here. Skip the first half if 27-year-old Mary Pickford playing a child is not your cup of tea. I don’t recommend the 1955 musical; in fact I’ve never come across anyone who does recommend it.
I was about to join in the squee and say how much I adored this book as an impressionable young child…
And then I caught myself and wondered, is this why as a teenager I was obsessed with older men?!!
Oy vey!!
I first read “Daddy Long Legs” at about the age of eleven, in a paperback edition that was old even then and fell apart on subsequent readings. I always loved that part of Judy’s education is reading all the children’s books and classics she missed growing up in the orphanage. Somehow I never knew about “Dear Enemy” till I found an old hardcover copy at a secondhand bookstore a few years ago, and it was lovely to revisit the world that I’d first enjoyed decades ago. Also, my copy of “Dear Enemy” has an awesome cover: it’s blue plaid!
Thank you for the memory of a book I read decades ago and have not thought about since until today. I never kept a list of the books I read, I was too busy reading so it is an ego-ish pleasure to see that as a kid I unknowingly had excellent taste.
Recommended these to a friend with a 14-year old daughter who has never read them and then realized I need to start re-reading them myself immediately. I’m already through her first semester at college!
I first read this book at 16, when one of my brother’s friends lent it to me. (It was the only way I’d leave him and my brother alone: Lend me a book). I *forgot* to return it, and have forgotten for over fifteen years.
I adore it. I just wish that in this world of twice-told tales, someone did Jervis’ side of the story. Just to firmly establish in my head that there was no grooming going on. I agree with all the arguments posted above as to the fact that there were no hidden intentions, but I’ve always wondered how did he deal with the age-gap and power differential.
I absolutely adored the book, so teenage-me was excited when one of the classic movie channels was going to show the Caron-Astaire movie version. Expectations were high! Then, when it was over, I told my parents how disappointed I was that I found the movie so horrible. They said, Hollywood does that to a lot of books!
I read an homage to Daddy Long Legs that came out a year or 2 ago (can’t recall the title) in which Judy comes from a foster care group home. I liked it, also liked Daddy Long Legs. Would be interested to hear if any of y’all have read the more recent version, and if so, what you thought.
Daddy Longs Legs was turned into a musical!
It’s really sweet and very close to the original book, except that in the musical version you also get a bit of Daddy’s side of the story.
The 2015 Off Broadway soundtrack is still available on amazon and if you have a BroadwayHD account, it’s available for streaming online. I cannot recommend it enough and what makes it really fun is that in the livestream Daddy and Judy are played by a RL married couple.
@Alissa, by any chance, could it be “Dear Mr. Knightley: A Novel” by Katherine Reay ?
I read Daddy Long Legs in primary school and I’d forgotten most of the events in the recap, but I did remember the start of that last letter and my feeling of delighted satisfaction when Judy realised her benefactor’s identity. The historical aspects of the book mostly went over my head when I was ten;
I think my much older self should read it again.
Daddy Long Legs was a childhood favorite, and having loved Gene Stratton Porter as a kid, I was able to grit my teeth at the eugenics portions of Dear Enemy and appreciate it too.
I cried actual tears when I found out that the reason Jean Webster hadn’t written more books was that she died from childbed fever the year after Dear Enemy was published. A course of antibiotics would have saved her life, but it would be another couple decades before sulfa or penicillin were available.
Just as an FYI, Daddy Long Legs, Dear Enemy and The Wheat Princess are all available at Project Gutenberg.
@lilah80 Gene Stratton Porter was into eugenics? The Girl of the Limberlost is another on my keeper shelf (which I wouldn’t be surprised to see here someday) and I can’t think of anything eugenics-like in that. Maybe something about Billy’s dad/origins? I read Laddie back in the day, too, but my library was sparse on her work so I’m not familiar with all of her work.
I have a habit of haunting used bookstores and buying old books that grab my attention and realized while I was reading this that I own a copy of DDL. It’s been sitting on my insane tbr pile for over a year, but you just inspired me to finally read it. Thank you!
I read the review until I reached “Freshman Year” – by that point I was totally sold on this. The less I know, the more I’ll enjoy the book… 😀 Will come back to read the whole review later. Thanks for the recommendation!
I love the Squee Shelf posts <3 🙂
As Curly said, some of Jean Webster’s stuff is available at Project Gutenberg, although I believe their version of Dear Enemy (and maybe Daddy-Long-Legs too) lacks the illustrations–which is sometimes confusing, because they’re referred to in the text. Both books are also available (in scanned versions, as well as pdf, epub, etc.) at Open Library, though, along with some of Webster’s other books.
I am late to this comment thread, but also wanted to recommend Webster’s books Just Patty and When Patty Went to College, which is how I found her! More collections of stories without much through-plot, but they’re still delightful and a nice window into boarding school/college life for women of the time.