Alcott, Louisa May - SSC 14 (3 page)

 
          
Between
“Pauline’s Passion,” written in 1862, and The Mysterious Key, which appeared in
1867, Louisa wrote other gaudy, gruesome, and psychologically perceptive
thrillers. Sitting incognito behind her pen, she produced “V. V.: or, Plots and
Counterplots,” an involved tale about a danseuse, Virginie Varens, whose flesh
bore the tattooed letters V. V. above a lover’s knot. A mysterious iron ring,
drugged coffee, four violent deaths, and a viscount parading as a deaf-and-dumb
Indian servant were the ingredients of this heady witch’s broth. Poison vied
with pistols or daggers for “the short road to . . . revenge,” garments were
dyed with blood, the heroine concluded her dark bargain, and the author
doubtless recalled with nostalgia the comic tragedies of her childhood. This
flight into the all-but-impossible not only emblazoned the pages of a
sensational newspaper but was reprinted as a ten-cent novelette.

 
          
Like
“V. V.,” “A Marble Woman: or, The Mysterious Model” was filled with a variety
of plots and counterplots as well as a colorful cast of characters that
included a sculptor, Bazil Yorke, and an opiumeating heroine. The plight of
Mme. Mathilde Arnheim was pursued by the indefatigable writer in The Skeleton
in the Closet, the narrative of a woman married to an idiot husband and bound
to him by a tie which death alone could sever.

 
          
Of
all the blood-and-thunder tales conceived by Louisa May Alcott when her hair
was down and her dander up, the most extraordinary—in this critic’s opinion at
least—is the one that gives this book its title. “Behind a Mask: or, A Woman’s
Power” is not only per se a suspenseful story recounted in a masterly manner;
it fuses in its crucible many of the elements that had gone into the life of
its author.

           
It engrosses the reader while it
makes use of and reflects the experiences and emotions of its creator. “Behind
a Mask” is therefore a Gothic roman a clef, a fast-moving narrative whose
episodes unlock the past not only of the heroine Jean Muir but of the writer
Louisa Alcott. Behind this mask, perhaps, the future author of Little Women
sits for a dark but revealing portrait.

 
          
Jean
Muir is many things: a woman bent, like Pauline Valary, upon revenge; a woman
who, to achieve her ends, resorts to all sorts of coquetries and subterfuges
including the feigning of an attempted suicide; a woman filled with anger
directed principally against the male lords of creation. But she is primarily
an actress.

 
          
The
arrival of a new governess at the ancestral
Coventry
estate in
England
—a role played by Jean Muir—sets the plot in
motion. She appears, pale-faced, small, and thin, not more than nineteen years
old, and the first scene she enacts is an effective, sympathy-arousing faint.
“Scene first, very well done,” murmurs the astute Gerald, to which she replies,
“The last scene shall be still better.”

 
          
The
mystery is suggested, the suspense begun, the plot laid down when, in the
privacy of her room, Miss Muir proceeds to open a flask and drink “some ardent
cordial,” remove the braids from her head, wipe the pink from her face, take
out “several pearly teeth” and emerge “a haggard, worn, and moody woman of
thirty. . . . The metamorphosis was wonderful. . . .
her
mobile features settled into their natural expression, weary, hard, bitter. . .
, brooding over some wrong, or loss, or disappointment which had darkened all
her life.” Very gradually Miss Muir's transformation is made intelligible until
she develops into one of Miss Alcott's most fascinating heroines. Like Pauline
Valary she is, of course, a femme fatale with whom every male member of the
Coventry
household, including the fifty-five-year-
old Sir John Coventry, falls madly in love. Her background is mysterious. She
has lived in
Paris
, traveled in
Russia
, can sing brilliant Italian airs and read
character. Her powers are fatal. She confesses to one of her lovers, “I am a
witch, and one day my disguise will drop away and you will see me as I am, old,
ugly, bad and lost.”

 
          
Jean
Muir is indeed a psychological if not a Gothic witch. Proud and passionate,
mysterious and mocking, she wields a subtle spell. Motivated like Pauline by
thwarted love, she carries out her intention of ruining the
Coventry
family with deliberation, using all the
dramatic skills known to the theater. She lies or cries at will, feigns timidity
or imperiousness to suit her needs. In a remarkable episode, when impromptu
tableaux are performed in the great saloon of Coventry Hall, Miss Muir darkens
her skin, paints her brows, and writes hatred on her face. Success crowns all
her efforts for she captures her prize —the middle-aged head of the House of
Coventry
and with him a title and an estate.
Meanwhile her secret is out. And what a feminist secret it is!

 
          
The
temptation at the Mill Dam, the humiliation at Dedham, the theatrical
barnstorming, the readings in Gothic romances were all stirred in the caldron
of “Behind a Mask.” So too were Louisa’s conflicting emotions, her hates and
her loves, her challenge to fortune. Weaving from these varied threads a tale
of evil and passion, of fury and revenge, A. M. Barnard had used her sources
well.

 
          
Just
why Louisa May Alcott selected that pseudonym remains conjectural. “A.M.” were
her mothers initials—Abigail May; “Barnard” might have been suggested by the
distinguished
Connecticut
educator Henry Barnard, who was a family friend. For the most part, the
thrillers, whether pseudonymous, anonymous, or upon one or two occasions in her
own name, were issued by two publishing firms. One of them boasted an editor
who was as much of a femme fatale as L. M. Alcott could conjure up. The other
included a partner whose life strongly suggested the episodes of a sensational
novel. In her editorial and publishing negotiations therefore, A. M.
Barnard—whether she was aware of it or not—was among kindred spirits.

 
          
“Wrote
two tales for L.,” Louisa noted in her 1862 journal. “I enjoy romancing to suit
myself; and though my tales are silly, they are not bad; and my sinners always
have a good spot somewhere. I hope it is good drill for fancy and language, for
I can do it fast; and Mr. L. says my tales are so ‘dramatic, vivid, and full of
plot,’ they are just what he wants.” And a few months later: “Rewrote the last
story, and sent it to L., who wants more than I can send him.”

 
          
1862
was the year of
Antietam
and
Fredericksburg
. It was not for the home circle alone that
so-called family newspapers and cheap paperbacks were printed, but for soldiers
in camp who could while away tedious hours between battles by escaping to an
ancestral estate in
Britain
or a tropical paradise in
Cuba
.
As the war gathered
momentum, the market for such literature widened and with it the need for new
authors and new stories.

 
 
          
The
"L.” of Louisa’s journal, to
whom
she offered
'‘Pauline’s Passion” in competition for the announced hundred-dollar prize, was
well aware of this need. Frank Leslie
,28
publisher of
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, had his hand on the public pulse. He had
begun life as Henry Carter, wood engraver in
England
, adopted the pseudonym of Frank Leslie, and
migrated to
America
. Ruddy, black- bearded, aggressive, dynamic, he had in 1855 launched
his Illustrated Newspaper, a project that was to make him a power on
New York
’s Publishers’ Row. With its graphic cuts of
murders and assassinations, prizefights and fires, the weekly was to dominate
the field of illustrated journalism for nearly .three-quarters of a century. It
sported just enough text to float the pictures instead of just enough pictures
to float the text. Thanks to a clever and ingenious device, Leslie was able to
produce his pictures—sometimes mammoth double-page engravings —with
unprecedented speed. Thanks to his editorial staff, he was able to select text
that titillated an ever-expanding readership whether it gathered at hearth or
campfire.

 
          
It
was E. G. Squier who wrote to Louisa May Alcott in December, 1862, when she
herself was nursing at the Union Hotel Hospital: “Your tale ‘Pauline’ this
morning was awarded the $100 prize for the best short tale for Mr. Leslie’s
newspaper, and you will hear from him in due course in reference to what you
may regard as an essential part of the matter. I presume that it will be on
hand for those little Christmas purchases. Allow me to congratulate you on your
success and to recommend you to submit whatever you may hereafter have of the
same sort for Mr. Leslie’s acceptance.”

 
          
E.
G. Squier, scholar-archaeologist serving temporarily as a Leslie editor, was
married to another Leslie protegee who could have served as prototype for every
one of Louisa’s
femmes
fatales. Miriam Florence
Squier30 had been born in
New Orleans
in 1836, and throughout a stormy, flamboyant, and successful life in
the North she remained a southern belle. Much of that life would have
fascinated A. M. Barnard. Between Miriam’s first two marriages she had gone
barnstorming with Lola Montez under the stage name of Minnie Montez. As
knowledgeable editor of the House of Leslie she sported a blue stocking on one
leg, but her other leg was encased in a stocking as scarlet as any worn by
Pauline Valary or Jean Muir. Eventually Mrs. Squier would marry not only Frank
Leslie but his publishing domain, becoming a grande dame and a forcible power
as head of the House of Leslie before going on to other conquests marital and
extramarital.

 
          
In
A. M. Barnard’s heyday, during the early 1860’s, this was the colorful trio who
managed the Leslie publications. With the new year of 1863 Frank Leslies
Illustrated Newspaper announced that, after deliberating over the moral
tendency and artistic merit of over two hundred manuscripts, the editor had
decided to award the first prize to “a lady of Massachusetts” for “Pauline’s
Passion and Punishment.” In the next number, the first half of a story of
“exceeding power, brilliant description, thrilling incident and unexceptionable
moral” was anonymously published, with appropriate illustrations of “Manuel reading
Gilbert’s Letter” and “Gilbert’s Despair at Pauline’s Final Rejection.”
“Received $100 from F.L.,” Louisa commented in her journal, “for a
tale which won the prize last January; paid debts, and was glad that my winter
bore visible fruit.”

 
          
Other
seasons also bore visible fruit that ripened in the Leslie periodicals. “A
Whisper in the Dark,” a tale too mild for A. M. Barnard but too lurid for L. M.
Alcott, and “Enigmas,” a mystery about Italian refugees, a spy and a woman
disguised as a man, made their bows in the Illustrated Newspaper. In 1866
Miriam Squier reminded Louisa May Alcott that Frank Leslie would be glad to
receive a sensational story from her every month at fifty dollars each.

 
          
By
that time the tireless author was receiving between two and three dollars a
column for thrillers produced for a
Boston
publishing firm headed by yet another
remarkable trio. In the ears of those three gentlemen the call of the wild
still echoed, for one had edited tales that embodied it, a second had yielded
to it by sailing to New Granada aboard the Crescent City, and a third had been
the hero of a sensational novel which, if written, would have included chapters
on the conquest of California, gold digging, a jaunt to the Sandwich and Fiji
islands, China, and Australia. If A. M. Barnard was ever at a loss for a plot
she needed merely to hearken to the lives of Messrs. Elliott, Thornes, and
Talbot of Boston. William Henry Thornes, who had succumbed to gold fever, had
also encountered Indians, coyotes, and grizzlies, had sailed aboard an opium
smuggler that plied between China and California, and was himself a mine of
suggestions for authors whose thrilling romances he would publish. As publisher
of the True Flag, James R. Elliott had edited the type of story William Thornes
had lived. The two formed a publishing partnership in
1861,
a year after the
New York
firm of Beadle had introduced their dime- novel series to an avid
American reading public. Joined by Newton Talbot, who had listed to the call of
the wild by sailing to
New Granada
,
the trio set out their shingle on
Boston
s
Washington Street
and, like the House of Leslie in
New York
, proceeded to issue a chain of periodicals
and novelettes that would bring adventure and romance to a nation at war.