Daddy-Long-Legs

Daddy Long Legs Spider (Pholcus phalangoides), originally uploaded by berrimbillah.

I am terrified of spiders - particularly large black creepy crawly ones.  For some reason, I tolerate daddy-long-legs and will happily welcome one into my home and treat it as part of the family.  One summer, I happily co-habited our bathroom with a large daddy long legs.  At present there is one sitting in my mix master and I will let him stay there until I need to use it for cooking.  I have never understood this until I re-read Jean Webster's Daddy-Long-Legs and Dear Enemy.  I read and adored both books as a young teenager, but have not read them since.  Perhaps my tolerance for daddy-long-leg spiders comes from warm memories of reading this book.

I have intended to re-read both books for ages.  A few years ago, my Mum asked me to buy her a copy of both books from Amazon as she had not been able to find them in any book shop near her.  She bought two and gave the second copy to Susannah for Christmas, and I had planned on reading it after she had.  However, it disappeared into the bowels of Susannah's room not to resurface and I forgot.  Again, after reading the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, I thought that I must revisit Daddy-Long-Legs.

Last week I received a beautiful gift from my aunt, who I made a quilt for - she gave me her copies of these books.  They were both printed in 1917 and had belonged to her father, my paternal grandfather and I read them immediately with much enjoyment.  In fact I couldn't put them down they were so entertaining.  Daddy-Long-Legs consists of letters written by Jurusha Abbott, a little orphan girl who grew up in an orphanage, who is given the opportunity to go to college by a wealthy benefactor - one of the orphanage's trustees.  He wants to remain anonymous, and his only stipulation is that she write letters to him about her college education.  Jerusha catches a glimpse of this man and sees that he is very tall and thin, so she calls him Daddy-long-legs.

According to my aunt, these books were great favourites of my grandfather, and she has had them in her collection of books for years.  They have travelled with her from England in 1976 to reside in Australia until 1990 and returned to England.  They are now in my hands back in Oz, so they are well travelled , and much loved.  I have nothing that belonged to my Grandfather, who died in the mid 1970s shortly after celebrating his 50th wedding anniversary.

This is the only photo I have of my grandparents with all their grandchildren.  It was taken during a summer I spent in England with my mother and sister.  Guess which one of these girls is me?

Through the letters that Jerusha or Judy writes, you enter her college world, meet her friends and go on a journey as she discovers literature and art and about life.  Imagine growing up not knowing anything about anything and suddenly discovering the world and its wonders for the first time?  

"Did you ever hear of Michael Angelo?  he was a famous artist who lived in Italy in the Middle Ages.  Everybody in English Literature seemed to know about him, and the whole class laughed because I thought he was an arch-angel.  The trouble with college is that you are expected to know such a lot of things you've never learned."

Discovering the world through Judy's eyes is refreshing.  There is much in our world that we take for granted.  The book is also delightfully innocent and free from sex and violence and seediness.

I particularly liked one of her musings in which she says:

"It isn't the great big pleasures that count the most, it's making a great deal out of the little ones - I've discovered the true secret of happiness, Daddy, and that is to live in the now.  Not to be for ever regretting the past, or anticipating the future, but to get the most that you can out of this very instant."

Dear Enemy is also a collection of letters - equally entertaining and enjoyable.  I devoured both books very quickly and look forward to returning to their covers again.  I will save them for a time when I am feeling sorry for myself or sick and spending a day in bed.

I love writing letters, but have become lazy in my letter writing.  They have been replaced by emails, which are rarely kept.  I have been making "retro card holders" in an attempt to encourage snail mail.  There is something about letters that no other type of communication quite replaces - or perhaps I am getting old.  I have several boxes of letters that friends have written to me over years and years.  One bundle is from my friend Melinda and we have corresponded since 1976. Another bundle is from my friend Rhonda during her time in England.  It was only a year, but we wrote each other a letter every week.  Rhonda kept the letters I wrote her and gave them to me on her return.  It would be interesting to look at them - an interesting snapshot into the lives of two women, during a season of life that was rather demanding.  When Keith and I started going out, I went to the United States for two months.  We wrote each other a letter every day - we got to know each other so well through these letters.