The Sequel

I read a book as a youngster of about 9 or 10. Even then, I had a voracious love for reading. So much so, my friends used to come up to me and ask for a book recommendation. At the aforementioned age, I had recently read Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster. So whenever anyone asked for a recommendation, I would suggest the novel. It was, and still remains, an all-time favourite. Daddy Long Legs is the story of an orphan girl. The story, written entirely in letters, tells us about the girl’s life in an orphanage under a harsh mistress. But, as all children’s/young adults’ novels, it had to have a happy ending. So, by the end, we come to know through the letters she writes to her sponsor (who sends her to college), that she has grown up to find herself a man worth keeping. Who is he? You’ll just have to read Daddy Long Legs to find out.

Years have passed since I read Daddy Long Legs. The novel is confined to the ‘sweet memories’ part of my brain. A few days ago, while doodling on the Net, I came across a site which offers free, legit downloadable ebooks. The best thing of all – most of them are classic! For a classics-fanatic like me, this was brilliant news. I found loads of brilliant classics that I downloaded. Of the existence of some of these, I didn’t even have a clue – such as the Scarlet Pimpernel series! (Did you know there was more than one book? I didn’t!) So then imagine my great joy when I discovered the sequel to Daddy Long Legs, and by the same author; not one of those pointless sequels written by some random person who can never have a hope in hell of capturing the writer’s essence (who ever can?). I downloaded that faster than you could say Google Chrome, and started reading it immediately. I read it at work, at home, even while travelling.

The story of Dear Enemy (the sequel) is something like this: while at college, Jerusha Abbott (the protagonist of Daddy Long Legs) made a life-long friend in well-to-do Sallie McBride. While Sallie is a sweet-natured girl, she is shown to be a little flaky and frivolous, unlike Jerusha, in Daddy Long Legs. Dear Enemy opens with Sallie as the protagonist. Jerusha Abbott (now married) has taken it upon herself to institute Sallie as the superintendent of the very orphanage where she herself grew up. (If I tell you how that happens, I’ll be giving away who is Jerusha’s man.) Sallie takes up the position only to show her friend Gordon Hallock (whom we see early on as a romantic prospect) that she is capable of the responsibility. Earlier quite opposed to her job, by the end of a few trials and tribulations and many laughs, Sallie McBride is a changed person. She is a frivolous girl no longer; she has matured into a responsible woman. The name of the novel is the title give by Sallie to the on-site physician, Dr. Robin McRae, whom she always gets into arguments with, but whose wise counsel she always seeks – she, an Irishwoman, and he, a Scotsman. I will say no further, but it is obvious where the story ends.

The point of narrating this is to give a little bit of background before I establish why it’s important. Both these books, similar in their writing style (Webster is hilarious and possesses amazing dry wit – a quality I’ve found to be present in abundance only in Wodehouse so far – not that I’m comparing them; Wodehouse is a class apart), were introduced to me at very different stages of my life. The first I read as a little girl who didn’t know much about the world. My life was my family and friends; I had a sheltered upbringing between school and home. The other, I read as a 22-something-year old. My world is still family and friends, though a lot of priorities have now changed. I am no longer naïve (well, at least not as much as I used to be), I have seen a lot of the good and bad that the world has to offer, been through various dramatic moments in life, and still emerged more or less in one piece, though maybe not entirely unphased. Oh well – that’s life.

But the effect of Dear Enemy is what is important. A person can be irrevocably changed due to his/her experiences in life; I have too. But Dear Enemy evoked in me the same feeling of happiness that Daddy Long Legs did. I wrote a few days ago that “Hope is a brilliant, fascinating thing. No matter what the circumstances, no matter how dire the situation, it refuses to die and burns on...” and the truth of that is resounding in my emotions towards Dear Enemy. You could blame it on the fact that I’m a hopeless romantic – guilty as charged. But the idea that no matter what, the end is happy, and in fact happily ever after, never ceases to give me that warm, fuzzy feeling; to make me happy and to take away, even for just a little while, the veil of constant cynicism that I wear.

Literature, in its simplest form, has had a tremendous effect – on a 10-year old, and a 22-year old.