Tom the Nipper and Baxter, the domestic cats of this story, were regarded as belonging to Mildred, Lee’s youngest daughter, known in the family circle as “Life.” Lee’s son, Captain Robert E. Lee, Jr., in his Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee, quotes a letter of the General to Mildred, dated December 21, 1866, in which he says, “Our feline companions are flourishing. Young Baxter… gives catlike evidence of future worth… and is strictly aristocratic in appearance and conduct. Tom, surnamed ‘the Nipper,’ from the manner in which he slaughters our enemies, the rats and the mice, is admired for his gravity and sobriety, as well as for his strict attention to the pursuits of his race.” Captain Lee goes on to relate the story of the cat attracting attention by miaowing outside the house during a stormy night and then climbing up the crutch that the General held out of the window.
Traveller’s evening chats with Tom Nipper are imagined as beginning in April, 1866, and continuing intermittently until October, 1870. In the story, most of these can be more or less dated from the daily events to which he refers. For example, we know that the mare Lucy Long was restored to the Lee ménage on December 21, 1866. Lee’s riding holiday with Mildred, Traveller and Lucy Long (when the ferryman refused Lee’s money) took place in late June, 1867; the whistling-back incident at the canal-boat landing happened in July of the same year, and so on.
Accounts of the injury to Lee’s hands on August 31, 1862, vary in detail, but I have relied on that of Colonel Walter H. Taylor, an eyewitness, in Chapter 8 of his General Lee, 1861-1865.
Anecdotes of Lee and Traveller are, of course, innumerable. The books I have most enjoyed are Douglas Southall Freeman’s R-E. Lee, the above-mentioned book by Captain R. E. Lee, Jr., and Charles Bracelen Flood’s Lee: The Last Years. Also of value are J. William Jones’s Personal Reminiscences, Lee’s own Life and Letters and Colonel A. L. Long’s Memoirs.
In particular, I acknowledge with admiration and gratitude the invaluable instruction I have received from Lucy Rees’s book The Horse’s Mind and also from her personal advice on equine matters.
On Richmond’s illness I had excellent guidance from Mr. G. H. Gilbert, M.R.C.V.S.
The authenticity of Traveller’s Virginian idiom I owe almost entirely to Dr. Donald J. Lineback and to Dr. William L. Tazewell.
Friends who have given encouraging support and help include particularly my editor, Bob Gottlieb; and Barrett Clark, who found me scarce source books that I could not otherwise have obtained.
Finally, I am deeply grateful to my secretary, Mrs. Elizabeth Aydon, who not only typed the manuscript most accurately but corrected and checked it in detail with admirable perception and discernment.