Jerry Junior
By Jean Webster
The young man laughed.
“I don’t wish to hurt your feelings, Gustavo, but I’m not sure I should answer if my eyes were shut.”
He picked up the letter, glanced at the address to make sure—the name was Jerymn Hilliard Jr.—and ripped it open with an exaggerated sigh of relief. Then he glanced up and caught Gustavo’s expression. Gustavo came of a romantic race; there was a gleam of sympathetic interest in his eye.
“Oh, you needn’t look so knowing! I suppose you think this is a love letter? Well, it’s not. It is, since you appear to be interested, a letter from my sister informing me that they will arrive tonight and that we will pull out for Riva by the first boat tomorrow morning. Not that I want to leave you, Gustavo, but—Oh, thunder!”
He finished the reading in a frowning silence while the waiter stood at polite attention, a shade of anxiety in his eye—there was usually anxiety in his eye when it rested on Jerymn Hilliard Jr. One could never foresee what the young man would call for next. Yesterday he had rung the bell and demanded a partner to play lawn tennis, as if the hotel kept partners laid away in drawers like so many sheets.
He crumpled up the letter and stuffed it in his pocket.
“I say, Gustavo, what do you think of this? They’re going to stay in Lucerne till the tenth—that’s next week—and they hope I don’t mind waiting; it will be nice for me to have a rest. A rest, man and I’ve already spent three days in Valedolmo!”
“Si, signore, you will desire ze same room?” was as much as Gustavo thought.
“Ze same room? Oh, I suppose so.”
Genre: Fiction And Literature | Romance Books
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Jean Webster
Jean Webster was the pen name of Alice Jane Chandler Webster (July 24, 1876 – June 11, 1916), an American author whose books include Daddy-Long-Legs and Dear Enemy. Her best-known books feature lively and likable young female protagonists who come of age intellectually, morally, and socially, but with enough humor, snappy dialogue, and gently biting social commentary to make her books palatable and enjoyable to contemporary readers.
Biography.
Back in Fredonia, Webster began writing When Patty Went to College, in which she described contemporary women’s college life. After some struggles finding a publisher, it was issued in March 1903 with good reviews. Webster started writing the short stories that would make up Much Ado about Peter, and with her mother visited Italy for the winter of 1903–1904, including a six-week stay in a convent in Palestrina, while she wrote the Wheat Princess. It was published in 1905. The following years brought a further trip to Italy and an eight-month world tour to Egypt, India, Burma, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Hong Kong, China, and Japan with Ethelyn McKinney, Lena Weinstein, and two others, as well as the publication of Jerry Junior (1907) and The Four Pools Mystery (1908).
Jean Webster began an affair with Ethelyn McKinney’s brother, Glenn Ford McKinney. A lawyer, he had struggled to live up to the expectations of his wealthy and successful father. Mirroring a subplot of Dear Enemy, he had an unhappy marriage due to his wife’s struggling with mental illness; McKinney’s wife, Annette Reynaud, frequently was hospitalized for manic-depressive episodes. The McKinneys’ child, John, also showed signs of mental instability. McKinney responded to these stresses with frequent escapes on hunting and yachting trips as well as alcohol abuse; he entered sanatoriums on several occasions as a result. The McKinneys separated in 1909, but in an era when divorce was uncommon and difficult to obtain, they were not divorced until 1915. After his separation, McKinney continued to struggle with alcoholism but had his addiction under control in the summer of 1912 when he traveled with Webster, Ethelyn McKinney, and Lena Weinstein to Ireland. During this period, Webster continued to write short stories and began adapting some of her books for the stage.
In 1911, Just Patty was published, and Webster began writing the novel Daddy-Long-Legs while staying at an old farmhouse in Tyringham, Massachusetts. Webster’s most famous work originally was published as a serial in the Ladies Home Journal and tells the story of a girl named Jerusha Abbott, an orphan whose attendance at a women’s college is sponsored by an anonymous benefactor. Apart from an introductory chapter, the novel takes the form of letters written by the newly styled Judy to her benefactor. It was published in October 1912 to popular and critical acclaim.
Jean Webster
