Marmee & Louisa (53 page)
Authors: Eve LaPlante
26
persuaded their parents: SJM,
Memoir of SJM
, 22–23.
27
“darling little sister”: Ibid., 22. SJM’s first dame school was run by Mrs. Cazeneau and her daughter on Milk Street, from which Abba was lost, as described here in chapter 4.
28
“rational, selfish, and intellectually superior”: Eve Kornfeld,
Margaret Fuller: A Brief Biography with Documents
, 8.
29
“deficient”: AMA, Diary for 1872, HAP.
30
Abigail’s uncle: William Dawes was the husband of Colonel JM’s older half-sister Mehetabel May.
31
“pretty country town”: Edward Everett Hale,
A New England Boyhood
, 2.
32
“Town and Country seem married”: Enock Wines, a late eighteenth-century visitor to Boston from Philadelphia, quoted in Rawson,
Eden on the Charles
, 32.
33
Lydia Maria Child: “Autobiography,” SJM Anti-Slavery Collection, Cornell Library, in Carolyn L. Karcher,
First Woman in the Republic: A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria Child
, 199.
34
her “Aunt Q”: Dorothy Quincy Hancock Scott (1747–1830), Abigail’s great aunt, was an aunt of Abigail’s mother, Dorothy Quincy Sewall (1758–1825), and the
youngest sister of Abigail’s grandmother, Elizabeth Quincy (1729–1770). Aunt Q’s parents were Judge Edmund Quincy and Elizabeth Wendell.
35
Grandma Shaw’s late aunt: LMA,
An Old-Fashioned Girl
, 102–106.
36
“most petted”: AMA, journals, HAP.
37
his “strong” mother:
Memoir of Colonel JM
. The May family genealogy notes that Abigail Williams May’s mother “was of such strength that she could lift a barrel of cider from the ground (which few men can do),” and had “much experience in ‘breaking in’ colts.”
38
Spanish, Portuguese, and Jewish forebears: My aunt Charlotte May Wilson described this to me in the 1970s. According to a genealogy of the May family, Mays in England were said to be “of the Portugal Race.” In 2012 researchers at NEHGS were able to “confirm the existence of the tradition (dating back to at least 1684) that the May family in Sussex County, England, was from Portugal.”
39
except at extreme high tide: Not only did the tides shrink the Boston to Roxbury Neck, but also storm tides completely covered the neck. The first stanza of a poem Emerson composed on the December 1873 centennial of the Boston Tea Party is: “The rocky nook, with hill-tops three, / Looked eastward from the farms, / And twice each day the flowing sea / Took Boston in its arms.”
40
a “considerable” dealer in lumber:
Memoir of Colonel JM
. According to the May family genealogy, Samuel May, Abigail’s grandfather, “had considerable skill” as an architect and built the Episcopal Church that still stands in Harvard Square. “His mansion on Orange, now Washington St., was still standing in 1854.”
41
gift for singing psalms: Ibid.
42
left their church: Ibid.
43
Thomas Patten: He was born in Boston on April 4, 1734, and died on January 31, 1805. Patten’s wife, Anna Woolson, was born on September 25, 1742, and died on January 5, 1800. The Pattens likely moved to Alexandria as adults. In 1793 their son Thomas Patten Jr., born in 1769 in Roxbury, married Mary Roberdeau of Alexandria, Virginia. Around 1810, after Mary’s death, Thomas Jr., “having failed in business by his ships being lost at sea, and other misfortunes beyond his control,” went to Louisiana with his eldest son, Joseph May Patten, to start a plantation, according to
Genealogy of the Roberdeau Family
. Thomas Jr. was not old enough to start a business with Colonel May in 1781, so his father must have collaborated with May in a business the son may have inherited.
44
“thrice related to the Quincys”: AMA, Memoir of 1878, HAP.
45
Old South Church:
An Historical Catalogue of the Old South Church (Third Church) Boston, 1669–1882
.
46
According to a historian: Nina Moore Tiffany,
Memoir of SES
, 3.
47
equivalent to $310,000: All dollar equivalencies in the book were calculated at
www.measuringworth.com
using the Consumer Price Index.
48
“Mr. May gave up everything”:
Memoir of Colonel JM
.
49
“sufferings which this disaster”: Ibid.
50
“keenly alive to”: Ibid.
51
“seriously ill”: AMA, August 22, 1876, journals, HAP.
52
“this exquisite family-choir”: George B. Emerson, “Memorial to Colonel JM,” NEHGS Register, 27 (1873), 113–121.
53
“Dear Louisa [Abigail’s sister] and SJ”: AMA, August 22, 1876, journals, HAP.
54
“unusual attractions”: David H. Fischer,
Paul Revere’s Ride
. Donald Yacovone,
SJM
, 8, mentions that “according to family tradition [Dorothy Quincy] dallied with Aaron Burr before marrying John Hancock.”
55
Boston in early April 1775: Historical details derive from Fischer,
Paul Revere’s Ride
.
56
“modest decency, dignity”: John Adams to Abigail Adams, November 4, 1775, in
Dames & Daughters of Colonial Days
, 192.
57
“houses by Bulfinch”: Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Elsie Venner
, 1861.
58
“union of new wealth”: George Frederickson,
Inner Civil War
, xi–xii.
59
active into his seventies: See the Gilbert Stuart portrait of Joseph May at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
60
portrait had always hung: A portrait of Judge Samuel Sewall still hangs in Abigail’s bedroom at Orchard House, alongside pictures of her brother Samuel Joseph May and her father.
61
“the right of women”: Samuel Sewall,
Talitha Cumi
, 1725. Judge Sewall wrote that “[so] many [women] are such good lawyers, and are of such quick understanding . . . they have no reason to be afraid” that they are inferior to men. The manuscript of
Talitha Cumi
, contained in Judge Sewall’s diary for 1725, was donated in the early nineteenth century to MHS by AMA’s cousin the Rev. Samuel Sewall of Burlington, Massachusetts.
62
“better faculty than I”: Samuel Sewall, January 29, 1704,
The Diary of Samuel Sewall
, 496.
63
fundamentally equal: Samuel Sewall,
Talitha Cumi
, 1725, reprinted in LaPlante,
Salem Witch Judge
, 304–311.
64
Chauncy Hall: “IN MEMORIAM—Samuel Joseph May,” Unitarian Congregational Society of Syracuse, 1871, 13–14.
65
Joseph May and other fathers: The founders of Chauncy School also included Otises, Parkers, and Eliots.
66
“puny”: SJM,
Memoir of SJM
.
67
Samuel E. Sewall: a first cousin to AMA. Sewall’s father was the eldest brother of Abigail’s mother. Many Alcott biographers have erroneously said that SES was related to AMA “by marriage,” perhaps because the cousins did not share a surname. (For instance, see
Little Women Abroad
, Daniel Shealy, ed., 55.) Of course surnames, like land and property, passed through the male line, which is why during Abigail’s youth the first Judge Samuel Sewall’s famous diaries were owned by another first cousin, the Reverend Samuel Sewall, a Congregational minister in Burlington, Massachusetts.
68
sixty other young men gathered: SMJ’s Harvard classmates included the diplomat Caleb Cushing, the Boston mayor and congressman Samuel Eliot, the historian George Bancroft, the educational reformer George B. Emerson, who was Ralph Waldo Emerson’s cousin and SJM’s closest college chum, and David Lee Child, the abolitionist husband of Lydia Maria Francis Child, Abigail’s close friend. Details of SJM’s education derive from his memoir and from Hale,
A New England Boyhood
.
69
brother read the classics: As a Harvard freshman SJM wrote a prize-winning essay on Hume and Montesquieu.
70
“Illness much interrupted”: AMA, Diary for 1872, HAP.
71
2 Kings 4:32–37: This page is turned down in the family bible at Orchard House that was owned successively by Dorothy Sewall May, Abigail May Alcott, and Louisa May Alcott.
72
right hand had been badly burned: AMA, Memoir of 1878, Autobiographical Sketch, 1800–1882, HAP.
73
“Divines”: ministers.
74
“Nothing is of unimportance”: SJM to AMA, August 15, 1815, family letters, HAP.
75
device called a blackboard: “Rev. Samuel J. May,”
American Jouranl of Education
, March 1866, vol. xvi, no. xlii, 142.
76
“Endeavor to accomplish”: Louisa May to AMA, July 5, 1816, family letters, HAP.
77
of average height: SJM was 5 feet 8 inches tall, according to his biographer Donald Yacovone.
78
“kindness and cheer”: Bedell,
The Alcotts
, 1.
79
“rather a favorite”: SJM,
Memoir of SJM
, 4–12, 17–19.
80
“minister by nature”:
Little Women
, Book 2, describing the Rev. Mr. March.
81
Anyone seen driving: Hale,
A New England Boyhood
, 106.
82
“a deep interest”:
Memoir of Col
.
JM
.
83
“I cannot but pity”: William Ellery Channing, 1828 essay on humanity’s “Likeness to God.”
84
Unitarians still experienced: Thomas O’Connor,
The Hub
, 88. O’Connor described enlightenment Unitarianism as “the best of two worlds” to the Mays and their community because it “accepted the lessons of scientific reason, while still acknowledging the traditions of Boston’s Puritan religious heritage.”
85
“perfectibility of human nature” : Hale,
A New England Boyhood
, 164.
86
“Liberal Christianity”: “IN MEMORIAM—Samuel Joseph May,” Unitarian Congregational Society of Syracuse, 1871.
87
“an emphatic pressure”: SJM, in “Joseph May” chapter of
Lives of American Merchants
, vol. 1, Freeman Hunt, ed., footnote to 444.
88
“To be good is to be happy”: Colonel JM to AMA, September 6, 1811, family letters, HAP.
89
questioned the lawfulness: On May 7, 1696, Judge Samuel Sewall wrote in his diary, “the lawfulness of the intermarrying of Cousin-Germans [first cousins] is doubted,”
Diary of Samuel Sewall
, vol. 1, 349.
90
Charles Windship: Abigail’s sister Catherine’s son, Charles May Windship, was born in 1809, attended Harvard Medical School, and become a doctor like his father, Charles Williams Windship.
91
“virtually betrothed”: AMA, Memoir of 1878, HAP.
92
“radical new idea”: Stephanie Coontz,
Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage
, 5.
93
“the bane of our family”: LMA, “The Mysterious Key, and What It Opened,”
Louisa May Alcott Unmasked
, 489–490.
94
“most valuable” supervision: AMA, Memoir of 1878, HAP.
95
Pythagoras: On November 29, 1861, ABA gave AMA a blank journal “with her favorite motto from the Golden Sayings of Pythagoras written on the title page.” The motto is unidentified.
96
“until you can remember”: SJM to AMA, May 19, 1819, family letters, HAP.
97
“a model worthy of imitation”: AMA to her parents, March 25, 1819, family letters, HAP.
98
“I may yet earn”: AMA to her sister Eliza May Willis, July 1819, family letters, HAP.
99
“flowing, full pen”: ABA to AMA, August 3, 1857,
Letters
, 246.
100
“old passion”: AMA to LFM, July 25, 1830, family letters, HAP.
101
what she wished to do: Cynthia Barton, in conversation with the author, fall 2010.
102
“not willing to be found incapable”: AMA to her parents, October 10, 1819, family letters, HAP.
103
“be allowed to refuse visiting”: AMA, ibid.
104
“those gay scenes”: AMA, ibid.
105
friends had already started schools: AMA’s friend Lydia Francis (later Child) in her early twenties taught at Madame Angeline Canda’s academy for Young Ladies in Boston. The Peabody sisters had also started schools.
106
“Louisa’s capability”: AMA to Eliza May Willis, July 1819, family letters, HAP.
107
Samuel Greele: His surname was pronounced, and later in the century written as, “Greely.” Lydia Maria Sewall Greele died in August 1822, without issue.
108
Eliza May Willis’s death: SJM,
Memoir
, 78.
109
“Soon he will be rivaling”: AMA to Eliza May Willis, July 1819, family letters, HAP.
110
“My time is expired”: AMA TO SJM, February 4, 1829, ibid.
111
“I have felt a loneliness”: AMA to SJM, August 1828, ibid.
