Eden's Outcasts (48 page)

By contrast, in Europe, Louisa had never stopped thinking about how to turn almost everything she saw into a salable product. Her journey up the Rhine, her stay in a French pension, and a day's wanderings through London in search of the places she had known only through reading Dickens: all would eventually be converted into short articles for
The Independent,
a New York journal with an interest in travel pieces.
²⁰
Louisa was now very little different from the woman who, three years later, was to write the book that made her famous. Her attachment to family, her fierce and countervailing need to proclaim her independence, and her profound regard for self-sacrifice and shared struggle were all firmly established parts of her character and were ready to emerge as components of her literary vision. There remained but one more indispensable formative experience before the defining phase of her career might begin. It was waiting for her in Vevey, Switzerland, at a pension nestled behind five tall poplar trees on the shore of Lake Geneva.

It was the end of September 1865 when Louisa and the Welds arrived at this place of unique beauty, one where, as the younger Henry James observed a few years later, grandeur and charm were constantly interfused and harmonized. Through the sloping land above the lake, visitors followed grass-grown footpaths through fertile orchards. Quaint villages nestled so deeply in the greenery that an observer looking upward from the lake hardly knew they were there. The particular shimmer of the lake also impressed itself on people's imaginations and memories. To James, the water seemed to fling up its blue reflection into his approving eyes.
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The blueness of the water also struck Louisa as she and the Welds arrived under sail from Lausanne. She was equally enchanted by Pension Victoria, where George Weld told his half sister and Louisa good-bye and departed for Paris. The pension, which the two ladies called home until December 6, lay at the base of a hillside adorned by a vineyard and a rose garden. Looking up from behind the house toward the summit, one could see a venerable chapel and a stately chateau. On the opposite side, a terrace wall rose directly out of the lake and was continuously washed by its waters. The terrace looked out across the lake, dominated by the white Alps of Savoy, which greeted Louisa's eyes “shining in the sun like some celestial country seen in dreams.”
²²

The pension played host to an assortment of guests whose diversity Louisa found both amusing and eye-opening. Across the residence's dinner table, her frank American gaze met the stare of a Russian baron, whose manner Louisa considered turbulent and barbaric. She chuckled inwardly at an overfed Frenchman who imagined that he resembled the emperor and was continually striking Napoleonic poses. Two elderly sisters from Scotland engaged Louisa's literary interest by prattling about Sir Walter Scott, whom they claimed to have known personally in their youth. An Irish dowager, morbidly immersed in recollections of death, sat heavily bedecked in crepe and would not remove her black gloves even at meals.

Nearby sat a handsome, courtly English colonel of “gigantic powers” who had accepted the task of filling his six pale little daughters with knowledge and excruciatingly correct breeding, although he seemed to have denied them the luxury of personalities.
²³
His half dozen captive pupils seemed to be all the same age, and their father and mother dressed them identically. They spoke four languages and were walking storehouses of geological and astronomical data. Nevertheless, Louisa felt sorry for the sextet of scholars, whom she dreaded to approach lest they respond with a torrent of historic dates or algebraic equations. Anyone who knew her history would have understood Louisa's pity as she heard the colonel lecture his children on “the Spanish inquisition, the population of Switzerland, the politics of Russia, and other lively topics, equally well suited to infant minds.”
²⁴
The barrage of information against innocent brains surely reminded her of the methods of Dr. Blimber in Dickens's
Dombey and Son
, and more personally and painfully, the imperious assaults of Charles Lane. Her father's strange but gentle methods seemed obviously preferable to the teachings of all the colonels in England.

Louisa reserved her harshest judgments, however, for another guest of military rank: Colonel Polk, a former Confederate who had brought his wife and daughter to Europe to distance himself from the memory of the war that had cost him virtually all his property, including five hundred slaves. Throughout their uneasy time under a shared roof, Colonel Polk routinely raised Louisa's blood pressure with tales of Yankee treachery and his fervent assertions that his loving slaves had been forced away by the northern armies and were yearning yet to come back to their master. A different story was recounted by the Polks' black servant Betty, who privately told Louisa and one of the English ladies that the family's more able-bodied slaves had run off as soon as the Union soldiers had come near. Those too old to fend for themselves had lingered in the hope that, having extracted a lifetime of labor from them, Colonel Polk might now repay his debt by taking care of them. Instead, Betty said, “He runned away hissef, and lef 'em to starve.”
²⁵
When the Englishwoman circulated this account among the other guests of the pension, the Polks, who had thus far enjoyed the sympathy of most of the guests, saw their popularity fade appreciably, much to Louisa's delight. However, the colonel was still not deterred from singing the praises of Jefferson Davis and gleefully recollecting how a rebel surgeon had intentionally amputated the healthy limb of a wounded northern soldier. Hearing such anecdotes, Louisa must have reflected that, while the war may have ended, the peace had not begun.

But all else that Louisa heard and saw at the Pension Victoria paled in comparison with a single radiant acquaintance: a young Polish man who cut a striking figure in his blue-and-white university suit and cap and whose name gave her New England tongue no end of difficulty. In
The Independent
, she gave his first name as Stanislas and abandoned her effort at his surname after the initial W., advising her readers that “two hiccoughs and a sneeze will give the last name better than letters.”
²⁶
In truth, Louisa knew the name of Ladislas Wisniewski as well as her own. Ladislas's brief but unforgettable passage through the life of Louisa May Alcott began with a cough. Sitting by the fire at the pension on a blustery autumn day, Louisa heard someone in the adjoining passageway trying to clear his lungs as the wind rushed in through an open door. She soon beheld a tall, thin young man of about twenty with an intelligent face and the prepossessing manners of a foreigner. With nothing more than courtesy in her mind, she moved over slightly to make a space for him before the fire.

Ladislas's delayed reaction, however, betokened more than courtesy. That evening at dinner, finding that he was seated too far from her to initiate much conversation, he surprised Louisa by rising and bowing toward her. Raising his glass to his casual benefactress, he announced in French, “I drink good health to the Mademoiselle.”
²⁷
Louisa, wondering perhaps whether she was observing the correct form, returned his wish, but the shadow that instantly crossed his face informed her that her reply had not satisfied him. It dawned on her that he had intended something more heartfelt than a compliment. She was not conscious of any feelings toward Wisniewski until the following day when, during a friendly conversation, he disclosed a pair of facts that she found almost irresistible. He was, he said, a veteran of a recent nationalist revolt against the occupying forces of Tsar Alexander. In broken English—the prettiest Louisa had ever heard—he told of being thrown into prison after taking part in a student uprising. Reminded of the “brave boys in blue” she had tended in Georgetown, Louisa was already in a fair way to being captivated.
²⁸
Her sympathies became fully engaged, however, when she discovered the reason for young Ladislas's cough. As a result of his struggles against the tsar, the young Pole's health had been broken. During his imprisonment, he had contracted tuberculosis. Ladislas tried to make light of his disease and did not care to mention it. Nevertheless, Louisa believed that this boy in blue, like John Suhre and so many of the others she had met in Georgetown, was dying.

However, it was impossible in Ladislas's company to think only of the foreboding future. Despite his weakened state, the young man was a whirligig of a fellow. The topics of conversation into which they drew each other seemed unending, even though Louisa's bad French and Ladislas's limited exposure to English presented some barriers. Louisa decided on a less cumbersome nickname for Ladislas, “Laddie,” and appointed herself his English tutor. Laddie responded by helping Louisa, never a quick study at languages, with her French. Louisa found his progress more impressive than hers, although she wrote that he would occasionally slap his forehead and exclaim, “I am imbecile! I never can will shall to have learn this beast of English!”
²⁹
Laddie was also an accomplished musician. With a Russian woman who was also staying at the Victoria, he put on impromptu piano recitals. Louisa had long enjoyed the writings of George Sand. Only a few days before arriving at the pension, she had taken time in Frankfurt to buy some pictures of her bohemian idol. Now, as she listened to her own minor Chopin, it must have seemed to her that, in a modest way, she had stepped into George Sand's world. In a stylish cravat and collar, Laddie seemed to grow more deeply inspired the longer he played. Louisa wrote that, as he and the Russian came together in their artistic furor, the piano vibrated, the stools creaked, and the candles danced in their sockets. The guests at the pension sat rapt as the four hands flew over the keys, and it seemed faintly possible that both the musicians and the instrument might vanish into a musical whirlwind.

Laddie's willingness to share a keyboard with a Russian at first surprised Louisa and eventually won her admiration. Laddie had spoken to her not only of his own mistreatment during the rebellion, but also of how tsarist troops had massacred a crowd numbering in the hundreds for singing the Polish national hymn. Touched by the story, Louisa asked him to play the song at the piano. Laddie demurred; he did not wish to offend the Russian guests at the pension, especially the irritable baron. “Then play it,” she urged him. “He dare not forbid it here, and I should rather enjoy that little insult to your bitter enemy.” Laddie, however, was good-natured but firm as he gave Louisa a lesson in manners: “Ah, Mademoiselle, it is true we are enemies, but we are also gentlemen.”
³⁰

Laddie shared confidences with Louisa and slipped little notes under her door, which he referred to as chapters in the great history that they would write together. Their dictionaries and grammar books became serviceable go-betweens, supplying a prim and respectable reason for meeting but easy enough to cast aside when the mood called for games and dancing instead of conjugations. As she and Laddie wandered the shore of the lake, they made splendid plans for the future. It is hard to imagine, though, what plans they could realistically have entertained. For the fiery American woman, well into her thirties and her fortunes still unmade, any candid look into the future must have included much hard work with uncertain prospects of reward. For the gentle, infirm Pole, the word “future” could never have been spoken without a hint of hollowness. It was the present that these two must look to. There would not always be time, but there was time now for walks in the chateau garden, for taking a sailboat out onto the lake, and for wondering why time must always go on.

November 29, Louisa's birthday, was wild and windswept, “very like me,” she observed, “in its fitful changes of sunshine and shade.”
³¹
Thousands of miles away, her father was turning sixty-six, precisely twice her own age. She thought of him and felt a trifle empty at having to miss the modest ceremony that they always had on that day. Anna Weld brightened the day by giving her a painting of the nearby castle of Chillon. Laddie, with nothing tangible to give, played her a concert and wished her “All good and happiness on earth and a high place in heaven.” Louisa admitted to herself that, despite the pleasant times with her father, she usually felt sad on her birthday. Today, however, was an exception; she was happy and hopeful and enjoyed everything with unusual relish. It was true that she felt rather old for thirty-three, but as she gratefully acknowledged, there was much in her life to keep her young.
³²

The romance lasted into December. Louisa and Miss Weld had intended to move on to Nice earlier, but an outbreak of cholera in that city had combined with their current sense of comfort to dampen their enthusiasm for the trip. When they at last decided to press on, the farewell festival that the pension organized in their honor was not sufficient to dispel the melancholy. Laddie traveled with them as far as Lausanne and then, kissing their hands, he bade them a disconsolate farewell. For Louisa and Miss Weld, the journey to the Mediterranean was a sullen passage, its discomforts perhaps sharpened by the fact, now apparent, that Miss Weld, too, had been attracted to Laddie and considered him
her
particular favorite. At some point, Louisa went back to the page of her journal in which she had initially commented on her “little romance” with Laddie and scratched out what she had written with such vigor that she destroyed the paper. It is the only place in her surviving journals where she canceled an entry with such violence. Next to the remaining portion of the entry, she wrote, “Couldn't be.”
³³
However, it was easier to efface Laddie from her journal than from her memory. She wrote about him in
The Independent
and years later in a story titled “My Boys” in a collection of sketches she called
Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag.
In these factual reminiscences of him, Louisa noticeably avoided the word “love.” Yet there is no better word for what she felt.