Eden's Outcasts (39 page)

The next month was marked by a farewell. On June 17, Louisa attended a memorial service in Boston for Theodore Parker, who had lost his battle with tuberculosis in Florence, Italy, a few weeks earlier. There was no man apart from Emerson and Thoreau whom Louisa admired more, and she was grateful that he had called her his friend. Bronson, too, felt the loss, for he knew of no one who could take up the minister's work and carry it forward. June was also the time of a return. On the twenty-eighth, the Hawthornes came back to Concord, and the Alcotts soon had to accustom themselves to the strange habits of the author whose compulsive interest in observing human behavior verged on the voyeuristic. To Louisa, Hawthorne seemed as queer as ever. It was certainly unnerving to catch glimpses of him darting through the hills or skimming by as if he expected the House of Alcott to reach out and clutch him. For his part, the novelist was too shy and introspective to share Bronson's inexhaustible love of conversation. He also could not have felt entirely at ease in the radical political atmosphere of Lexington Road. Since his college days at Bowdoin, Hawthorne had been a bosom friend of Franklin Pierce, who had occupied the White House for four years as a proslavery Democrat. Like Pierce, whose friendship certainly colored his own political views, Hawthorne felt it was wrong to jeopardize the Union over the question of emancipation, which he viewed as a local issue. As for John Brown, Hawthorne thought no man had ever been more justly hanged. It is likely that, in his conversations with the other literary lions of the town, he acquired some practice in biting his tongue.

He was less guarded as to his opinions within his own family. Once, at the behest of his children, Hawthorne poked fun at his neighbor in a poem aping the style of Edward Lear:

Hawthorne's wife, the former Sophia Peabody, made periodic social overtures to Abba and always seemed to be on the scene when the Alcotts most needed a helpful neighbor. However, she could hardly have forgotten that she was dealing with the man and woman who had pried into her sister Elizabeth's private correspondence, and she was less than fond of Abba's notorious temper. The Hawthorne children were a mixed lot in Louisa's eyes. She had little good to say about sixteen-year-old Una, whose only talent seemed to be horseback riding. She regarded Rose, the baby of the family, as an attractive child with an artistic look. Since she always liked boys best, it is not surprising that Louisa saved her warmest regards for Julian, “a worthy boy full of pictures, fishing rods and fun.”
⁸⁵
As she was forming her opinions of the Hawthorne children, they were looking back at her, and not without discernment.

More than sixty years later, Julian Hawthorne wrote a pair of short memoirs of the days when his family and the Alcotts were neighbors. Somewhat distorted by a fading memory and still more by an inclination to fictionalize, Julian's recollections are only intermittently reliable. However, his mental image of Louisa remained clear. When he first met her, she was “a black-haired, red-cheeked, long-legged hobbledehoy of 28,” though she seemed much younger to him. He observed “power in her jaw and control in her black eyes,” and he considered her a natural leader. He recalled her honesty, her common sense, and her inherent grasp of comedy and humor. Like her sisters, she was jolly and wholly un-Platonic. How she had come from a father like Bronson, he could not imagine.
⁸⁶
Especially dear to Julian's memory was the mildly racy practice of coed swimming in Walden Pond, in which he and his sisters indulged with Louisa, Abby May, and the Emerson children. These encounters stirred his romantic interest in Abby, and some rather restricted Victorian lovemaking reportedly ensued. The young Hawthorne felt no romantic yearnings for Louisa, who was fourteen years his senior, though it puzzled him that, to his knowledge, she had never had a love affair. The only explanation he could give was that her self-control was even greater than her capacity for passion, and that she could set aside personal happiness “for what she deemed just cause.”
⁸⁷

More and more often, the cause for which Louisa put aside more carefree amusements was her writing, an activity that now sometimes absorbed her to an almost alarming degree. Louisa had a name for the kind of creative fit that enabled her to produce prodigious amounts of writing in compressed periods of time. Such a mood, she said, was a “vortex,” a revealing term for the state into which she periodically descended. Louisa's most detailed description of this descent came in an intensely autobiographical chapter in
Little Women
. In the passage below, Louisa's fictitious counterpart Jo March flings herself into her first novel with single-minded fury:

To describe her creative process, Louisa used the imagery of a whirlpool, with its connotations of downward spiral and chaos. Time and again in the western literary tradition, wandering seekers after truth and love—Orpheus, Odysseus, Aeneas, Dante—must descend into Hell before their quests can be fulfilled. For Louisa, the search for artistic excellence also involved a chaotic descent. In her downward plunges, however, she did not experience feelings of anguish or torment. Falling into the vortex was, for her, a lone but exhilarating mental journey into the heart of wonder.

Louisa's headlong rushes into creativity, followed by periods of irritable despondency, seem to have been the pattern of activity that she found most conducive to her art. However, they also signified a turbulence that would express itself again and again through the course of her career. She found it impossible to do anything by half measures. At this early moment in her creative life, when she was young and strong, she could manage these vortices without ill consequences. She would not always be able to make such demands on herself without paying the price.

In December 1860, May's zeal for independence led her to look beyond Massachusetts. Like Anna before her, she went to Syracuse to live with her Uncle Samuel and, like a good Alcott, take her turn as a schoolmistress. Louisa escorted her to Boston on the first leg of her journey. The lonesome feeling of watching this youngest bird leave the nest was relieved somewhat when Emerson invited Louisa to hear him speak on the subject of Genius—a clear indication that he regarded her as a respectable intellect. Nevertheless, a palpable dreariness descended over Orchard House. In May's absence, Louisa and her parents passed a quiet Christmas, having only flowers and apples to exchange as gifts. There was no merrymaking, with Anna and May both elsewhere and Lizzie resting under the snow. Ironically, her parents had finally found a permanent family home, just in time to watch that family disperse. Louisa's own irony was still sharper. The sister with the deepest talents and the fiercest ambition, she was finding it hardest to claim an independent life in the world.

As Louisa closed her journal for the year 1860 and wondered whether greater chances would come her way, Bronson wrote to his mother about her, observing, “She is not wanting in Talent and Character. I see nothing to prevent her becoming a favorite with the public, as she becomes generally known. Her mother hopes good things of her,—in which hope her father certainly joins.” And he wrote that her book was nearly ready.
⁸⁹

T
HE YEAR
1861,
WHICH WAS TO MARK A CATACLYSM IN
American history, began quietly at Orchard House. Upstairs, Louisa busied herself with the manuscript of a full-length novel that she had provisionally called “Success,” a title she no doubt hoped would prove prophetic. After sending Anna and her husband a book on marriage titled
Faithful Forever
, Bronson sampled his home-brewed hard cider and brought bottles around to the neighbors. The Hawthornes marked the new year by giving Bronson and Abba a wooden bread dish, which Bronson described as “ornamented with wheat ears and very pretty.”
¹
Louisa herself received thirteen New Year's gifts, including a pen, a mince pie, and a bonnet. She was moved to remark on the “most uncommon fit of generosity [that has] seemed to seize people on my behalf.”
²
Emerson, too, continued in his generous ways. Whenever the family seemed more pinched than usual, a small sum would magically appear from under a book or behind a candlestick. Although Emerson tried to keep his contributions to the Alcotts' fortunes anonymous, Louisa was not fooled for a second. Of the thirty dollars that Bronson earned that January from a series of conversations at Emerson's house, she guessed that twenty had been slipped into the till by Emerson himself. Louisa was grateful for Emerson's “sweet way of bestowing gifts,” and she wrote admiringly, “A true friend is this tender and illustrious man.”
³

Louisa had to break off her work on “Success” when her mother became briefly but seriously ill. When she got back to writing in February, it was not “Success” but the manuscript of another embryonic novel,
Moods
, that absorbed her attention. Nothing else that Louisa ever wrote seized her imagination and energies as much as
Moods.
When writing the first draft of the novel the previous August, she confessed to being “quite possessed by my work.” She descended into her “vortex” on February 2 and remained there twenty-three days, during which time she found sleep almost impossible. Except for a daily run on the country roads at dusk, Louisa barely rose from her writing desk. Abba, initially stirred by Louisa's excitement, made her daughter an actual thinking cap out of green silk and red ribbon. Later, however, Abba came to view her daughter's single-mindedness with anxious concern. Thirty years of marriage to a compulsive writer had not prepared her for a daughter who almost forgot to eat when her muse was in view. Abba tried to be helpful, making sure, for instance, that a steady supply of tea made its way upstairs, but her requests that Louisa join the family for meals were seldom granted. Midway between admiration and sarcasm, May observed from a distance that her sister was “living for immortality.”
⁴

Bronson was captivated by Louisa's creative intensity. He pronounced his daughter's dedication “fine,” and he brought up “his reddest apples and hardest cider for [Louisa's] Pegasus to feed upon.” Her headlong, single-minded passion appealed strongly to him, just as her refusals of food and sleep resonated with his ascetic temperament. On those rare occasions when she did come down to supper, he was delighted by the “dashes of wit and amusement” with which she stirred up “us chimney corner-ancients.”
⁵
Louisa wrote that all kinds of fun was going on in Orchard House and that, for all she cared, the world might dissolve into chaos as long as she and her inkstand alit in the same place. Down in his study, Bronson too was writing with purpose. He had begun to conceive a book on the philosophical dimensions of horticulture, in which the garden would serve as an extended metaphor for the fertile and well-cultivated mind. He was in marvelous spirits, for it seemed he had finally found a subject that might satisfy both his philosophical interest and a reading public. Happily, he wrote to May that he was getting something good to show for his season's work.
⁶

At the end of her vortex, Louisa was exhausted. She “found that [her] mind was too rampant for [her] body…[her] head was dizzy, legs shaky.”
⁷
There can be no doubt that she saw dramatic similarities between herself and the heroine of her story, Sylvia Yule, an impetuous young woman who seemed incapable of controlling the fits of strong emotion that periodically seized control of her, and whose efforts to fit in were continually thwarted by her rebellious impulses. When Louisa looked over what she had written, she was aware that the manuscript was still not in the shape she wanted and that much more revision was in store. But whereas one vortex was sufficient for many of her books, not even two could do the trick for
Moods
. Louisa continued to write and rewrite
Moods
even after its publication in 1864. She was not to publish the last, definitive version of the novel until 1882. It was a project she could neither perfect nor abandon.

Although the book never completely pleased her—none of her work ever did—Louisa nevertheless felt a sense of achievement when she put down her pen on February 25, 1861. The fact that she had produced a complete manuscript was ample reason to feel satisfied, but her greatest triumph of the winter came when she plucked up her courage and read the manuscript aloud to her family. The reaction was better than she dared hope. The responses of both her mother and Anna were predictably sympathetic; the former pronounced the writing wonderful, and the latter laughed and wept, “as she always does,” Louisa noted. To Louisa's delight, Bronson's verdict was the most emphatic of the three. He declared, “Emerson must see this. Where did you get your metaphysics?” Never mind the fact that to live almost thirty years under Bronson Alcott's roof without acquiring any metaphysics would have required fierce determination. What mattered was that she had spoken a language that had kindled a flame in her father's mind. Flush with the evening's success, she told her journal, “I had a good time, even if it never comes to anything, for it was worth something to have my three dearest sit up till midnight listening with wide-open eyes to Lu's first novel.”
⁸
For the time being, though, she was content to let
Moods
be a private victory. Although Emerson asked to read it, she was afraid to show it to him. She was still less prepared to look for a publisher.

Despite the Alcotts' happiness, the rest of the country was beset with brooding expectation. In late December 1860, South Carolina had seceded from the Union. In the ensuing months, ten more states would follow suit. As war appeared ever more likely, even a seemingly apolitical event like the annual Concord School Exhibition, held in March, could generate controversy. A few days after President Lincoln was inaugurated, Louisa dashed off a set of patriotic lyrics to be sung to the tune of “All the Blue Bonnets Are over the Border.” She included the lines: “Here are our future men, / Here our John Browns again; / Here are young Philipses [
sic
] eyeing our blunders.” Emerson pronounced the lyrics “very excellent.” Much influenced by his eminent friend's opinion, Bronson hailed Louisa's effort as “the pride of his life” and arranged for it to be sung at the exhibition.

The mention of John Brown was enough to cause a flutter among the “old fogies,” as Louisa called them, and an attempt was made to prevent the offending stanza from being sung. The attempted censorship stunned Bronson, especially because it was leveled at the daughter whose worth he was coming more and more to appreciate. Abba angrily denounced the entire town. Louisa was defiant; if the attendees would not sing the entire song, she would not let them sing any of it. Fortunately, Emerson rescued the situation. When Bronson suggested that it might be prudent to give in, he declared, “No, no, that [stanza] is the best. It must be sung, & not only sung but read.
I
will read it.” And so he did, to the astonishment of the crowd and to Louisa's great surprise and pride.
⁹

The festival was a grand success. Thoreau thought that the speeches and recitations of the young scholars reflected such credit on their superintendent that “Alcott is at present perhaps the most successful man in the town.”
¹⁰
The gathering ended with a touching scene, orchestrated without the superintendent's knowledge. Frank Sanborn asked the crowd to stay for a moment while Bronson was invited to the stage. There, he was met by a tall, handsome boy who made a brief speech about the love, respect, and gratitude that the children felt for him. He then presented Bronson with fine new editions of George Herbert's poems and, inevitably,
The Pilgrim's Progress
. Bronson blushed, and his eyes filled with tears. He hugged the beautiful books tightly to his chest and managed a few words of thanks before the children rose to shout and applaud him. In Louisa's eyes, her father deserved all the adulation and more. She sent Anna a glowing account of the day, at first reporting that the festival had “stirred up the stupid town immensely.” Then, realizing that this was the wrong occasion for pettiness, she crossed out the adjective.
¹¹

Secession brought troubled thoughts to the minds of Bronson's transcendental brethren. Normally the most peaceful of souls, they now confronted a moral problem whose only apparent solution demanded violence. As the crisis over Fort Sumter neared its decisive moment, Thoreau, who had been so galvanized by the raid on Harpers Ferry, now seemed to wish only that the bad news would go away. He wrote to his abolitionist friend Parker Pillsbury, “I hope [my prospective reader]
ignores
Fort Sumpter [
sic
], & Old Abe, & all that…. What business have you, if you are ‘an angel of light' to be pondering over the deeds of darkness?”
¹²

Four days after the first shot was fired, Emerson called the war “the most wanton piece of mischief that bad boys ever devised.”
¹³
However, he soon took a more sympathetic view of the war fever. He started keeping a separate journal of his thoughts about the conflict, and in it he wrote, “I do not wish to abdicate so extensive a privilege as the use of the sword or the bullet. For the peace of the man who has forsworn the use of the bullet seems to me not quite peace.” There were invisible scriptures, he said, that could be read only “by the light of war fires.”
¹⁴

When the war finally came in April with the firing on Fort Sumter, Bronson recorded the event in his journal with red ink. He believed that the cannonade over Charleston Harbor had done more for abolition in one day than Garrison and Phillips had accomplished in thirty years. Just as the battle at Concord Bridge in 1775 began a war that led to independence, Bronson was confident that Fort Sumter was the first engagement in a fight that “is to give us nationality.”
¹⁵
Greatly simplifying the actual state of affairs, Bronson commented that the North's resolve was unanimous, and he pronounced this perceived unity of purpose “a victory in itself.”
¹⁶
Lest any fool should doubt the Alcotts' sympathies in the conflict, the family took in John Brown's daughters as boarders.
¹⁷

All at once, the Concord town common was thick with blue-coated recruits, fumbling to obey the orders of sergeants still trying to master the tones of command. Louisa, observing the strange goings-on, was amused by the amateurism of the newly enlisted soldiers. She wrote that the hapless recruits “poke each other's eyes out, bang their heads & blow themselves up with gunpowder most valiantly.”
¹⁸
Although she derided their skill, however, Louisa admired their spirit. She was stirred by emotions both martial and maternal. She longed “to fly at some body & free my mind on several points,” but in a softer moment she wrote: “[I]n a little town like this we all seem like one family in times like these.”
¹⁹
Almost before anyone knew it, Concord's young men began to disappear, bound for what many imagined would be a brief summer of adventure and glory.

The families of the New England literati were by no means exempt from the call of battle. Emerson's son Edward formed a detachment of soldiers called the Concord Cadets. Garth Wilkinson James, a younger brother of William and Henry James and son of the older Henry, with whom Bronson still traded philosophical ripostes, also enlisted. The Alcott women, too, took up the cause; for the better part of a month after the outbreak of the war, Abba and Louisa could be found at Concord Town Hall, helping out with the sewing of some five hundred “patriotic blue shirts” for the soldiers. Louisa wrote to Alf Whitman that, after having done her share, she was more than happy to put down her needle and take up her pen, since the former tool was her abomination and the latter her delight.
²⁰

During these weeks, Louisa was struggling with a sense of personal insignificance, which her exclusion from the grand events of the war had heightened and which no amount of sewing could diminish. She told her journal, “I long to be a man; but as I can't fight, I will content myself with working for those who can.” Yearning to do something to help defeat the “saucy southerners,” she started spending her spare time curled up with a medical treatise on gunshot wounds. When she was able, she meant to take a turn at nursing in the Union army hospitals. Such appointments were not freely given and would require appealing to some social connections. Nevertheless, by the time the army had gotten itself into “a comfortably smashed condition,” Louisa hoped she could answer the call.
²¹