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.
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 hereâwell!”
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.
19
Mais parlons d'autres choses!:
But let us talk of other things!
20
Cristabel:
A ballad by English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834).
21
Kallikak book:
The Kallikak family was the subject of a best-selling 1912 study by Henry Goddard,
The Kallikak Family: A Study in The Heredity of Feeble-mindedness,
which argued that genetic transmission caused mental deficiency.
22
Wells's latest novel:
H. G. Wells was a prolific and popular novelist, but this might be
The Wife of Sir Isaac Harmon
(1914).
23
bakshish:
In some Oriental countries, a small sum of money given as gratuity or as alms.
24
Massachusetts Agricultural College:
The University of Massachusetts was founded in 1863 as a land grant institution in Amherst, and became a leading center for agricultural research and instruction.
25
Gösta Berling:
1891 novel by Nobel Prize-winning Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf (1858-1940) about twelve cavaliers led by a charming renegade priest named Gösta Berling.
26
Genetic Philosophy of Education:
Probably refers to a work by David J. Hill,
Genetic Philosophy,
which argues that truth is not to be made, but to be discovered through recurrence and order.
27
Dolly Dialogues:
A light novel by the British novelist Anthony Hope (1863-1933).
28
Bloomingdale Asylum:
Opened in 1821, a place of “moral treatment” for the care of the insane.
29
Montessori method:
An educational method founded by Dr. Maria Montessori (1870-1952). Rather than “teaching” a child, the Montessori environment was designed to stimulate the child's interest in learning with little or no adult intervention.
30
The Laird o' Cockpen:
Popular melody by Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne (1766-1845).
31
Monarch of the Glen
...
Stag at Bay:
Two mid-nineteenth-century oil paintings of majestic stags by English painter Sir Edwin Henry Landseer (1802-1873). His brother Thomas engraved many of his paintings.
32
Bernard Shaw:
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Dublin-born playwright, critic, Socialist, satirist, and wit. Perhaps his most famous play was
Pygmalion,
which was first produced in 1914.
33
R.L.S.:
Scottish essayist, novelist, and poet Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894).
34
Did you once see Shelley plain . . . :
The first lines of Robert Browning's poem “Memorabilia.”
35
Sally Lunn:
A rich round bread bun.
36
Thoreau . . . Walden: Walden
is the 1854 record of the two years that American naturalist and writer Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) spent in an isolated hut he constructed on Walden Pond.
37
Herbert Spencer's “System of Synthetic Philosophy”:
Spencer (1820-1903) was an English philosopher of the great scientific movement of the second half of the nineteenth century. His
Synthetic Philosophy
proposed an inscrutable power called the unknowable and presented progress as the supreme law of the universe.
38
Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff:
The journal of Russian artist and writer Marie Constantinova Bashkirtseff (1860-1884). See also
Daddy-Long-Legs
note 37.
39
Century: The Century: A Popular Quarterly,
was a New York magazine that published illustrated articles on history and politics, as well as fiction. The issue of May-October 1914 had several articles on China.
40
Froebel theory:
Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel (1782-1852), a German philosopher and educational reformer, invented the concept of “kindergarten” in his
The Education of Man
(1826), arguing for the necessity of play as an important educational and developmental tool.