Good-bye, My Lady
Encyclopedia
Good-bye, My Lady is a novel
by James H. Street
about a boy and his dog. It was published by J. B. Lippincott Company
in June 1954 and reprinted in paperback by Pocket Books
in February 1978. It is based on Street's short story
"Weep No More, My Lady", which was published in the 6 December 1941 issue of The Saturday Evening Post
.
who lives with his uncle Jesse in a one-room shack in the swamps of the Pascagoula River
in Mississippi
. He has heard the sound of a strange animal in the swamp near their shack, and one summer evening he convinces his uncle to help him go out and find it. When they do, they see it is a small animal with short red and white fur that makes a chuckling yodel sound and cleans itself like a cat. Jesse is unsure what the animal is, but Skeeter is convinced it is a dog
.
The next day, Jesse's friend Alpheus "Cash" Evans, owner of the general store
in the nearby village of Lystra, comes to help Skeeter and Jesse track down the animal. With Evans is his tracking dog Gabe and two vicious hog dogs named Bark and Bellow whom he keeps leashed. Evans releases Gabe at the spot where Skeeter and Jesse saw the animal, and Gabe eventually picks up its scent and starts tracking it. As they listen to Gabe tracking the animal it becomes clear that it is outrunning Gabe. It bursts into the clearing, and Evans releases Bark and Bellow. When the animal stands its ground and fights back against the hog dogs, Evans calls them off and allows it to escape. He acknowledges that Skeeter was right - the animal is a dog.
The following day, Skeeter sets out to tame the dog. He is able to locate it, and it proves to be a friendly female who allows him to leash her and bring her with him to the shack. Jesse convinces Skeeter to let her off her leash, and she remains with them. Skeeter decides to name the dog Lady.
Skeeter and Jesse take Lady out with them, and when Lady flushes a covey of quail
Skeeter becomes determined to train her as a bird dog. However, Lady's behavior makes it clear that she is someone else's dog, and Skeeter fears that Evans will discover who her real owner is.
Skeeter is horrified when Lady chases and kills a water rat, something no true bird dog will stoop to. He ties the half-eaten rat around her neck, and brings her back to the shack. There, he find Evans visiting with an English Setter
he has just purchased. Evans had planned to give his new dog to Jesse and Skeeter to train (for which he intended to pay them three dollars a week), but seeing Lady with her rat causes him to change his mind. When Skeeter apologizes afterwards, Jesse shrugs it off and tells him to concentrate on training Lady.
Within a few months, Skeeter has trained Lady to cast and point like a proper bird dog. A visiting Evans sees Lady pointing at a clump of sage fifty yards away and refuses to believe she has detected birds from so far away. Jesse wagers the cost of a sawblade Evans had given him on credit that Lady is indeed pointing birds. Skeeter is privately dubious, but Jesse wins his bet when a covey of quail break from the sage.
Evans is impressed, and he spreads the word about Skeeter's remarkable dog. In time, Evans hears from a traveling salesman out of Mobile, Alabama
that a kennel in Connecticut
lost a Basenji
near Pascagoula. The description of the lost dog, named Isis of the Blue Nile, matches Lady. A sorrowful Evans tells Jesse, who passes the word on to Skeeter. When Lady responds to the name Isis, Skeeter knows he has the lost Basenji, and decides to return her to her rightful owner. A wire is sent to the kennel, and a man named Walden Grover flies down from Connecticut to take possession of Lady.
Skeeter himself must put Lady in the crate in Grover's pickup truck, then watch as Grover drives off with her. Evans then asks Skeeter to finish training his English Setter, and the boy accepts. With the $100 reward Grover gave him, the boy buys his toothless uncle a set of false teeth, and puts a down payment on a 20 gauge shotgun for himself.
story. When Skeeter tames Lady, Jesse acknowledges the boy's right to keep her, and defers to Skeeter in all matters concerning Lady. Skeeter's growing maturity is also marked by his uncle's willingness to allow him to drink coffee
, which is regarded as an adult beverage. As the novel opens, Skeeter is not permitted to drink coffee. After he tames Lady, his uncle allows him heavily creamed coffee, and after he allows Grover to take Lady away, Jesse tells Evans that Skeeter (whom he now refers to by his given name, Claude) drinks his coffee black.
James Street, a native of Mississippi, was politically liberal, and his fiction often involved an attempt to reconcile his heritage with his liberal views on race. Good-Bye, My Lady includes an African-American family, the Watsons, who own a 60 acres (242,811.6 m²) farm across the river from Jesse and Skeeter. The Watsons' eldest son, Gates, is a college graduate. Towards the end of the novel Skeeter learns that Gates Watson knew all along where Lady came from, and also about the reward for her return, but remained silent out of friendship for Skeeter.
After Street's death, Warner Bros.
pictures began production of a film version of the novel
, starring Brandon de Wilde
as Skeeter, Walter Brennan
as Uncle Jesse, Phil Harris
as Cash Evans, and Sidney Poitier
as Gates Watson. The film was produced by John Wayne
's Batjac Productions
, directed by William A. Wellman
, and the screenplay was written by Albert Sidney Fleishman. Veronica Tudor-Williams provided the Basenji, named My Lady of the Congo, who played Lady in the film, and also provided four additional dogs to serve as "doubles" for My Lady. After filming ended, My Lady was adopted by de Wilde, and the other dogs were adopted by various members of the film crew. The film version was released on 12 May 1956. It has also appeared under the titles Goodbye, My Lady and The Boy and the Laughing Dog.
Good-Bye, My Lady was released by Warner Home Video
on VHS on 13 December 1993. The film was released on DVD in December 2010.
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by James H. Street
James H. Street
James Howell Street was a U.S. journalist, minister, and writer of Southern historical novels.Street was born in Lumberton, Mississippi, in 1903. As a teenager, he began working as a journalist for newspapers in Laurel and Hattiesburg, Mississippi...
about a boy and his dog. It was published by J. B. Lippincott Company
J. B. Lippincott Company
J. B. Lippincott & Co. was an American publishing house founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1836 by Joshua Ballinger Lippincott.Formed by descendants of the Religious Society of Friends, Joshua Lippincott's company began selling a line of Bibles, prayer books and other religious works before...
in June 1954 and reprinted in paperback by Pocket Books
Pocket Books
Pocket Books is a division of Simon & Schuster that primarily publishes paperback books.- History :Pocket produced the first mass-market, pocket-sized paperback books in America in early 1939 and revolutionized the publishing industry...
in February 1978. It is based on Street's short story
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
"Weep No More, My Lady", which was published in the 6 December 1941 issue of The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...
.
Plot summary
Skeeter is a 14-year-old orphanOrphan
An orphan is a child permanently bereaved of or abandoned by his or her parents. In common usage, only a child who has lost both parents is called an orphan...
who lives with his uncle Jesse in a one-room shack in the swamps of the Pascagoula River
Pascagoula River
The Pascagoula River is a river, about 80 mi long, in southeastern Mississippi in the United States. The river drains an area of about 8,800 sq mi and flows into Mississippi Sound of the Gulf of Mexico....
in Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
. He has heard the sound of a strange animal in the swamp near their shack, and one summer evening he convinces his uncle to help him go out and find it. When they do, they see it is a small animal with short red and white fur that makes a chuckling yodel sound and cleans itself like a cat. Jesse is unsure what the animal is, but Skeeter is convinced it is a dog
Dog
The domestic dog is a domesticated form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The dog may have been the first animal to be domesticated, and has been the most widely kept working, hunting, and companion animal in...
.
The next day, Jesse's friend Alpheus "Cash" Evans, owner of the general store
General store
A general store, general merchandise store, or village shop is a rural or small town store that carries a general line of merchandise. It carries a broad selection of merchandise, sometimes in a small space, where people from the town and surrounding rural areas come to purchase all their general...
in the nearby village of Lystra, comes to help Skeeter and Jesse track down the animal. With Evans is his tracking dog Gabe and two vicious hog dogs named Bark and Bellow whom he keeps leashed. Evans releases Gabe at the spot where Skeeter and Jesse saw the animal, and Gabe eventually picks up its scent and starts tracking it. As they listen to Gabe tracking the animal it becomes clear that it is outrunning Gabe. It bursts into the clearing, and Evans releases Bark and Bellow. When the animal stands its ground and fights back against the hog dogs, Evans calls them off and allows it to escape. He acknowledges that Skeeter was right - the animal is a dog.
The following day, Skeeter sets out to tame the dog. He is able to locate it, and it proves to be a friendly female who allows him to leash her and bring her with him to the shack. Jesse convinces Skeeter to let her off her leash, and she remains with them. Skeeter decides to name the dog Lady.
Skeeter and Jesse take Lady out with them, and when Lady flushes a covey of quail
Quail
Quail is a collective name for several genera of mid-sized birds generally considered in the order Galliformes. Old World quail are found in the family Phasianidae, while New World quail are found in the family Odontophoridae...
Skeeter becomes determined to train her as a bird dog. However, Lady's behavior makes it clear that she is someone else's dog, and Skeeter fears that Evans will discover who her real owner is.
Skeeter is horrified when Lady chases and kills a water rat, something no true bird dog will stoop to. He ties the half-eaten rat around her neck, and brings her back to the shack. There, he find Evans visiting with an English Setter
English Setter
The English Setter is a breed of dog. It is part of the Setter family, which includes red Irish Setters, Irish Red and White Setters, and black-and-tan Gordon Setters. It is a gun dog, bred for a mix of endurance and athleticism.- Appearance :...
he has just purchased. Evans had planned to give his new dog to Jesse and Skeeter to train (for which he intended to pay them three dollars a week), but seeing Lady with her rat causes him to change his mind. When Skeeter apologizes afterwards, Jesse shrugs it off and tells him to concentrate on training Lady.
Within a few months, Skeeter has trained Lady to cast and point like a proper bird dog. A visiting Evans sees Lady pointing at a clump of sage fifty yards away and refuses to believe she has detected birds from so far away. Jesse wagers the cost of a sawblade Evans had given him on credit that Lady is indeed pointing birds. Skeeter is privately dubious, but Jesse wins his bet when a covey of quail break from the sage.
Evans is impressed, and he spreads the word about Skeeter's remarkable dog. In time, Evans hears from a traveling salesman out of Mobile, Alabama
Mobile, Alabama
Mobile is the third most populous city in the Southern US state of Alabama and is the county seat of Mobile County. It is located on the Mobile River and the central Gulf Coast of the United States. The population within the city limits was 195,111 during the 2010 census. It is the largest...
that a kennel in Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
lost a Basenji
Basenji
The Basenji is a breed of hunting dog that was bred from stock originating in central Africa. Most of the major kennel clubs in the English-speaking world place the breed in the Hound Group; more specifically, it may be classified as belonging to the sighthound type...
near Pascagoula. The description of the lost dog, named Isis of the Blue Nile, matches Lady. A sorrowful Evans tells Jesse, who passes the word on to Skeeter. When Lady responds to the name Isis, Skeeter knows he has the lost Basenji, and decides to return her to her rightful owner. A wire is sent to the kennel, and a man named Walden Grover flies down from Connecticut to take possession of Lady.
Skeeter himself must put Lady in the crate in Grover's pickup truck, then watch as Grover drives off with her. Evans then asks Skeeter to finish training his English Setter, and the boy accepts. With the $100 reward Grover gave him, the boy buys his toothless uncle a set of false teeth, and puts a down payment on a 20 gauge shotgun for himself.
Major themes
Good-Bye, My Lady is a coming of ageComing of age
Coming of age is a young person's transition from childhood to adulthood. The age at which this transition takes place varies in society, as does the nature of the transition. It can be a simple legal convention or can be part of a ritual, as practiced by many societies...
story. When Skeeter tames Lady, Jesse acknowledges the boy's right to keep her, and defers to Skeeter in all matters concerning Lady. Skeeter's growing maturity is also marked by his uncle's willingness to allow him to drink coffee
Coffee
Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...
, which is regarded as an adult beverage. As the novel opens, Skeeter is not permitted to drink coffee. After he tames Lady, his uncle allows him heavily creamed coffee, and after he allows Grover to take Lady away, Jesse tells Evans that Skeeter (whom he now refers to by his given name, Claude) drinks his coffee black.
James Street, a native of Mississippi, was politically liberal, and his fiction often involved an attempt to reconcile his heritage with his liberal views on race. Good-Bye, My Lady includes an African-American family, the Watsons, who own a 60 acres (242,811.6 m²) farm across the river from Jesse and Skeeter. The Watsons' eldest son, Gates, is a college graduate. Towards the end of the novel Skeeter learns that Gates Watson knew all along where Lady came from, and also about the reward for her return, but remained silent out of friendship for Skeeter.
Other media
English Basenji breeder Veronica Tudor-Williams tells of a letter she received from Street in 1942 saying that he first got the idea of writing about a Basenji after seeing a photograph of Veronica Tudor-Williams with some Basenjis in an American magazine. He also wrote that the reader reaction from his first story was so strong that he wrote a sequel, "Please Come Home, My Lady", reuniting Skeeter with Lady. "Please Come Home, My Lady" appeared in the 11 April 1942 issue of The Saturday Evening Post.After Street's death, Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
pictures began production of a film version of the novel
Good-bye, My Lady (film)
Good-bye, My Lady is a 1956 American film adaptation of the novel Good-bye, My Lady by James H. Street. The book had been inspired by Street's original story appearing in The Saturday Evening Post. As written, the story takes place in Mississippi, but was Hollywood changed to the state of Georgia,...
, starring Brandon de Wilde
Brandon De Wilde
Andre Brandon deWilde was an American theatre and film actor. He was born into a theatrical family in Brooklyn. Debuting on Broadway at the age of 7, De Wilde became a national phenomenon by the time he completed his 492 performances for The Member of the Wedding and was considered a child...
as Skeeter, Walter Brennan
Walter Brennan
Walter Brennan was an American actor. Brennan won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor on three separate occasions, which is currently the record for most wins.-Early life:...
as Uncle Jesse, Phil Harris
Phil Harris
Harris and Faye married in 1941; it was a second marriage for both and lasted 54 years, until Harris's death. Harris engaged in a fistfight at the Trocadero nightclub in 1938 with RKO studio mogul Bob Stevens; the cause was reported to be over Faye after Stevens and Faye had ended a romantic...
as Cash Evans, and Sidney Poitier
Sidney Poitier
Sir Sidney Poitier, KBE is a Bahamian American actor, film director, author, and diplomat.In 1963, Poitier became the first black person to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Lilies of the Field...
as Gates Watson. The film was produced by John Wayne
John Wayne
Marion Mitchell Morrison , better known by his stage name John Wayne, was an American film actor, director and producer. He epitomized rugged masculinity and became an enduring American icon. He is famous for his distinctive calm voice, walk, and height...
's Batjac Productions
Batjac Productions
Batjac Productions is an independent film production company founded by John Wayne in the early 1950s as a vehicle for Wayne to produce as well as star in movies. Its first release was Big Jim McLain with Warner Brothers in 1952, and its final film was also with Warner Brothers, McQ, in 1974...
, directed by William A. Wellman
William A. Wellman
William Augustus Wellman was an American film director. Although Wellman began his film career as an actor, he worked on over 80 films, as director, producer and consultant but most often as a director, notable for his work in crime, adventure and action genre films, often focusing on aviation...
, and the screenplay was written by Albert Sidney Fleishman. Veronica Tudor-Williams provided the Basenji, named My Lady of the Congo, who played Lady in the film, and also provided four additional dogs to serve as "doubles" for My Lady. After filming ended, My Lady was adopted by de Wilde, and the other dogs were adopted by various members of the film crew. The film version was released on 12 May 1956. It has also appeared under the titles Goodbye, My Lady and The Boy and the Laughing Dog.
Good-Bye, My Lady was released by Warner Home Video
Warner Home Video
Warner Home Video is the home video unit of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., itself part of Time Warner. It was founded in 1978 as WCI Home Video . The company launched in the United States with twenty films on VHS and Betamax videocassettes in late 1979...
on VHS on 13 December 1993. The film was released on DVD in December 2010.